Founders Award for Civic Leadership
The Founders Award for Civic Leadership acknowledges groups and individuals of national stature for his or her contributions to the stewardship of communities. 
Bonnie Burnham is being honored for dedicating her career to preserving historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world. Burnham is President of the World Monuments Fund, which has worked at more than 500 sites in 91 countries.
Bonnie Burnham began her career as a supporter of cultural heritage with the International Foundation for Arts Research in New York. Appointed as the executive director in 1975, Burnham took on the seemingly insurmountable task of manually compiling the Art Theft Archives temporarily housed in the New York Explorer’s Club, her desk down the hall from the life-sized, stuffed Polar Bear.
Burnham was appointed the executive director of the World Monuments Fund in 1985. From that point forward, the World Monuments Fund became an invaluable asset in the fight to protect cultural heritage sites worldwide. With the support of major corporations such as American Express, the WMF produces the World Monuments Watch List every two years, identifying cultural heritage sites in danger of being eroded or destroyed. Today, the World Monuments Fund is the leading international voice defending cultural heritage and historic buildings throughout the world, leading hundreds of communities to embrace their heritage and imparting a greater sense of pride amongst residents.
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Founders Award for Civic Leadership
The Founders Award for Civic Leadership acknowledges groups and individuals of national stature for his or her contributions to the stewardship of communities.
Robert L. Lynch is being honored for more than 50 years of work to advance the arts in schools and communities across the United States. His work has resulted in public policy that recognizes the value of the arts in our society and his successes have promoted and protected access to the arts for the whole population. Lynch is the president of Americans for the Arts.
A true leader in the field of arts advocacy, Robert L. Lynch became the executive director of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies in 1985. He oversaw its successful merger with the American Council for the Arts twelve years later, creating the nationally-renowned advocacy group Americans for the Arts. Under Lynch’s leadership, the organization has grown to 50 times its original size, with a permanent staff of more than 60 individuals working in offices in New York and D.C. and an annual budget greater than $11 million.
Americans for the Arts has become the defining leadership group for arts advocacy in America in terms of membership and advocacy. Outside of his work with the organization, Lynch has served as counsel to the President of the United States on matters concerning the arts and has lent his expertise to the boards of a number of influential arts organizations, including the Craft Emergency Relief Fund and the Arts Extension Institute. Lynch’s admirable history of arts advocacy has allowed countless communities to enjoy the benefits that the arts can bring, and the creation of this leadership group is a truly great achievement for the arts in America today.
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 Photo Credit: Alan Rosenblum
Courtesy of Estudio Teddy Cruz
Home to the nation’s busiest United States-Mexico border crossing, San Ysidro is a suburb of San Diego, California, that lies just north of Tijuana, Mexico. Comprising mostly third- to first- generation immigrants, San Ysidro is often ignored, viewed as a place to pass through on the way to and from the border. Many San Ysidro-Tijuana families live in a bi-national condition, a state of being that finds families, work, education, affordable housing, health care, and economies tied to one another, and one that is currently struggling with the hot spots of drug cartel violence. Casa Familiar, a San Ysidro-based nonprofit organization, is working to invigorate the community by advocating for and assisting the residents in such areas as immigration services, education, and job placement[i].
Lyz Crane draws on the work of practitioners and researchers to characterize the field of arts-based community development in which arts and culture can help achieve place based change related to the physical, social, and economic dimensions of place. This paper examines the premise that the existence of arts is considered a powerful end in itself, Crane then outlines the variety of ways that the actors and activities involved in arts and community development work can relate to and interact with each other to create sustainable communities. Looking at the cultural ecology of place, creative economy development focuses on fostering local creative businesses and supporting creative workers both in the arts and in supporting industries while cultural development may focus on preserving cultural assets—traditions, language, stories—or on building on them to create stronger, more connected communities. There is also a complex community development ecosystem of organizations, interests, and tools. Stakeholders may involve arts in their agendas, create arts programming, provide or develop arts spaces, employ artists, and/or partner with arts organizations. Indeed, both the arts and community development are part of the same ecosystem and all of these  interactions fall into the category of arts and community development.
Crane places different types of intersections on a passive-active continuum of presence, participation, and application. Prominent nodes of intersection between the arts and community development are identified: animating public spaces; activating public spaces; serving as an anchor or focal point; and serving as a planning engagement tool. Crane points out that, in terms of outcomes, there may not be much difference between an arts organization with a community-based program and a community organization with an arts-based program. Oftentimes, the choice of language has to do with their founders or how they are being funded. The difference in effectiveness between these two methods and even a third that is an equal arts organization–community organization partnership is only recently beginning to be explored.
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Terms:2012, Arts & Culture, Business, CBC Report/Publication, Community Building, Community Development, Community Engagement, Creative Economy, Cultural Institutions, Featured, Other Reports/Publications, Placemaking, Public Art, Public-Private Partnerships
By Diana Nash of the Pink Line Project on July 12, 2012
There is a buzzword circulating in the DC arts scene that I had not heard about until I returned to the city two months ago. While the concept of using the arts to spur economic and community development is not new, DC is getting attention for the success of its “Arts and Culture Temporiums” since the first one launched along the H Street NE corridor in 2010. Temporiums fall under the larger category of the Temporary Urbanism Initiative, a project undertaken by the DC Office of Planning. The goal behind the initiative, and more specifically, temporiums, is to activate vacant or underutilized spaces by using them to showcase the talent of local artists and other creative entrepreneurs, along with the retail potential that lies within emerging neighborhoods. Think of them as “Pop Ups” that stay around a little longer and have greater potential benefits for the communities where they take place. Jessica Scheuerman, of Partners for Livable Communities, explains that temporiums allow people to “take risks, explore partnerships, and to commit to something” without the burden of a long-term commitment. Temporiums connect creative people seeking affordable space in their neighborhoods with landlords who have the available space that they haven’t been able to lease. It is a smart and increasingly popular concept that lays the groundwork for longer-term collaboration between property owners and neighborhood entrepreneurs.
Building on the success of earlier temporiums, the Office of Planning is targeting four emerging creative neighborhoods to benefit from a $250,000 grant to the city from ArtPlace, an unprecedented new private-public organization. ArtPlace is part of a national “creative place-making” movement that aims to drive revitalization across the country with arts at the center of economic development. The launch of DeanwoodxDesign marks the next step in the OP/ArtPlace grant initiative.
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Terms:2012, Announcements, Arts & Culture, CBC Press/Media, Community Building, Creative Economy, Culture Builds Communities, Neighborhood Revitalization, Other Events, Public Art, Washington, DC
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