Arts, Culture, and Museums

This post was originally released on AEA365 in 2023, and was so popular the first time around, it is being reshared from the archives at the request of the Arts, Culture, and MuseumTIG. I’m Vincent E Thomas, a dancer/choreographer/professor. I move the body as a way to unearth layers of self for deeper understanding of …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Dance as a Means of Documentation, Exploration, Interpretation and Communication of What and How We Value by Vincent E Thomas and Geri Lynn Peak Read More »

Sister IAsia Thomas is an equity practitioner, arts administrator, director for Children’s Windows to Africa, and is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative work is guided by Dr. Asa Hilliard’s precepts on Being an African Teacher and Fu-Kiau’s Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. Thomas served as Pittsburgh Public Schools from 2014 – 2024 as project …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: De-Weaponizing Evaluation in a Public School District Arts Initiative by Sister IAsia Thomas and Rodney Hopson Read More »

I am Shanaé Burch, an artist, public health creative, and cultural worker. I believe in the power of storytelling to revive health and reconcile hearts, so I study health justice and equity through the lens of better leveraging arts and culture for wellbeing with contemplative arts-based research methods. This blog begins with a statement of …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Listening/Creating Healthful Narratives: What else can we be? by Shanaé Burch Read More »

Justin Laing is the principal of Hillombo LLC, a capital and race critical strategy, research, planning, and evaluation consultancy rooted in Black Studies.

Recently, I’ve been thinking that the justness and criticality of my evaluation or reflection work is related to my consideration of the dominating histories of “culture” in Western Europe and the U.S. I have been persuaded by the argument of Raymond Williams, in “Culture and Society: 1780-1950,” that “culture,” as it is exists today in the name of philanthropic “arts and culture” programs, originated in the 18th and 19th centuries as a strategy of capitalist reform and perpetuation. Worsening matters, Williams’ case for “culture as reform” connects well with Dylan Rodriguez’s argument that reform is a strategy of counterinsurgency.

¡Hola/Hello! My Name is Eva Maria Chavez (Eva, as in “4-eh-vah-eh-vah”), and I am a community-based evaluator and organizer who, until recently, worked at The Music Center of Los Angeles (TMC). TMC provides cultural events for the diverse community of Los Angeles County. My role was to operationalize the theory of change across the organization …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Linguistic Inclusivity: Navigating Language Justice in Creative Spaces by Eva Chavez Read More »

Greetings from Vidhya Shanker, convener of The May 13 Group. Art history taught me to ask why makers choose some forms and not others. In his video echoing the idea that Nicky Bowman, Jara Dean-Coffey, and myself have shared—to use a forest ecosystem instead of a single tree as a metaphor for the knowledge economy …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Trees of Knowledge & Trees of Life: Modernist Discourses of Art and Evaluation by Vidhya Shanker Read More »

Hi there! We’re Myrline Newton and Brianna Smith–Program Managers of Equitable Vaccines! Myrline here, I am typically the one “on the ground,” facilitating events. Brianna here, I typically handle “behind the scenes” tasks like developing program resources and also serve as one of the program evaluators. Program Snapshot Equitable Vaccines is a collaborative initiative between …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Enhancing Vaccine Confidence in a Culturally Responsive Way by Brianna Smith and Myrline Newton Read More »

I’m Vincent E Thomas, a dancer/choreographer/professor. I move the body as a way to unearth layers of self for deeper understanding of our purpose. This is a throughline that permeates all aspects of my teaching and creative work. I’m Geri Lynn Peak. I practice evaluation through the lens of spiritual demography creating more durable and …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Dance as a Means of Documentation, Exploration, Interpretation and Communication of What and How We Value by Vincent E Thomas and Geri Lynn Peak Read More »

Hi! We are Angela Fingard and Daima Machang’u. Angela serves as the Managing Director of People & Programs for TimeSlips Creative Storytelling, Inc specializing in building meaningful engagement with older adults through creative communication. Daima is a licensed physician and Fulbright Scholar at Georgia State University pursuing a Masters of Public Health. He is interested in …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Arts Evaluation and Engaging with Elders with Memory Loss by Angela Fingard and Daima Machang’u Read More »

Hi. I’m Justin Laing, and I’m the principal consultant of Hillombo LLC, a company working to deepen praxis in the 501-c(3) sector through Black Studies informed experimentation in evaluation, organizational development and planning. In this post I offer a few ideas for identifying  ways that institutions in the 501-c3 arts system reproduce the social relations …

Arts, Culture, and Museums TIG Week: Arts Institutions and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism by Justin Laing Read More »