ARTS ADVOCACY DAY
April 8–9, 2013
Washington, DC
Each year, Americans for the Arts hosts advocacy training for arts advocates from across the country. This year, 529 attendees received the training they need to effectively make the case for arts support from Capitol Hill all the way to their city halls. After a day of training, (and inspiration at the Hanks Lecture and Congressional Arts Kick Off) our advocates met with their members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
On Arts Advocacy Day, 1,537 individuals visited Americans for the Arts’ ARTSblog. Observers and participants also sent more than 1,900 tweets; viewed the Flickr feed 1,829 times; and logged 22,765 impressions on Facebook. On April 8 alone, viral chatter about Arts Advocacy Day on Twitter reached 22,975 followers.
New this year, our special guests Yo-Yo Ma, Matt Sorum, and Bob Lynch led a live Google Hangout focused on arts education. Streaming from the Americans for the Arts YouTube channel, the Hangout featured speakers from across the globe including Damian Woetzel, Lisa Phillips, Gigi Antoni, Jason Vieaux, and Nathan Cole.
“This year, the NEA will make grants in every congressional district in the country. So, when you go out on the Hill, we are the one industry that exists everywhere, and the power of the arts is in our scope and in our reach. We can only succeed when the entire arts ecology, at the federal level, at the state level, and especially at the local level, are working together.”
– Joan Shigekawa, Acting Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts