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Home My WebLink About07-03-25 Correspondence - MT Arts Council - ARTeries_ News from the Montana Arts Council for Early July 2025From:Montana Arts CouncilTo:Bozeman Public CommentSubject:[EXTERNAL]ARTeries: News from the Montana Arts Council for Early July 2025Date:Thursday, July 3, 2025 2:47:17 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. ARTeries - The Lifeblood of Arts In Montana White Divider Envoy leadership training with group using improv theater methods to communicate. Theater teacher Elizabeth Byland (center, pictured here at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches) led a leadership training session for Montana state employees in how to use improv techniques to build teamwork. Last week I got to take two days of leadership training, led by four fab folks from Envoy, an outfit that specializes in negotiation, executive education, and strategy development. About 200 state leaders across many departments spent both days together, focusing on four areas: Innovation & ideation; negotiation & influence; team communications; and building connections. Stay with me here: this training demonstrated something important. What executives need most to develop skills, strengthen their teams, and return the highest investment to their employers is innovation, creativity, empathy, and teamwork—all skills developed through the arts. The entire training was rooted in the practices that participation in the arts develop: deep listening, clear communication, collaboration, making space for creativity, imagining yourself into someone else’s perspective. The importance of storytelling and framing. Approaching conflict with curiosity. Building trust. Confronting disagreement with “yes, and…” like improv actors do. To make this training most effective, they used design, storytelling, humor, and theater games. We danced, we made up goofy handshakes—every moment was rooted in the arts. The primary message was: we cannot bring value to our lives, our state, our nation, without the skills that develop our deepest humanity and creativity. We in the creative industries know how inseparable the things we call “the arts” are from everyday living. We know how a kid involved in community theater just might grow up to be a brilliant and articulate negotiator, or how a nerd writing punk rock songs in the garage might one day be a mighty force in the world. We know singing in a choir teaches you to listen; and learning art history gives you new ways to synthesize information. To me, it was a two-day lesson in how deeply we all need arts education, and more opportunities to make stuff, sing, move, make noise, and imagine together, with other people. In every business, every state, every community, we hunger for that. Art makes stronger people. So chin up, my creative friends. Krys Holmes Executive Director krys.holmes@mt.gov Arts In the News Top portion of the original Declaration of Independence Happy birthday, America. The nation has launched the America 250 project, and how can you celebrate (or even pronounce) next year’s Semiquincentennial—it means 250th; get used to it—of the Declaration of Independence without art? Party planning has begun, and there are opportunities for artists and arts nonprofits to step to the forefront. MAC will launch a small-grant program soon – still in development, so stay tuned. Also, the NEA will offer a few $25,000 grants for projects that focus on a particular list of American heroes. Deadline is July 15. More info here: NEA "Celebrating America250". (We’re imagining an opera that features Jeanette Rankin, Mary Fields, Chief Joseph, and Alex Trebek…) And our state’s MT 250 Commission recently hired the dynamic AshLy Tubbs to organize a full calendar of events, with a $500,000 budget funded by the legislature. You can upload any America 250-related events here: Montana 250. As all these efforts come together in the next few months, now’s the time to be thinking about events and opportunities you’d like to create. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” What does the Declaration of Independence mean to you, your community, your Tribe? Let’s talk. Join the Arts Northwest Board of Directors Help shape the future of performing arts in the Pacific Northwest! Arts Northwest is seeking dedicated and passionate board members from Montana to help guide one of the leading performing arts service organizations in the Pacific Northwest. This is a unique opportunity to make a regional impact, connect with a vibrant network of artists, presenters, and agents, and champion the cultural and economic vitality of our communities. Apply by July 30 to be considered for this year’s cohort. Apply here: https://www.artsnw.org/board-member-nominations [artsnw.org] Or email Kyle LeMaire, Executive Director: kyle@artsnw.org. Resources For Artists Are you on the cusp of growth, but need help with resources and guidance? Are you a creative ensemble but wish you had some of the resources of a nonprofit? You might want to learn about Fractured Atlas, a nationwide support center for artists and smaller arts organizations at every level of the cultural ecosystem, in every creative medium by providing fundraising tools, fiscal sponsorships, educational resources, and personalized support. Learn more here: Empowering Artists Everywhere | Fractured Atlas Call for public art – Wyoming: Central Wyoming College announces a $22,370 public art project for a new campus building, open to artists from Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. (WY artists will be given preference.) Entry deadline: July 31. More info and more calls here: CaFÉ - Call Listings For Arts Organizations White Divider Arts education grants to support arts learning experiences: MAC has opened the summer round of Artists in Schools and Communities (AISC) Experiences grants. These small grants (up to $2,500) support arts learning experiences by helping cover costs for: 1) direct engagement with guest teaching artists; 2) purchasing tools, supplies or small equipment for arts learning experiences; or 3) transportation to first-hand experiences with art or artists. Check the guidelines and preview the application here: AISCExperiencesFY26Guidelines_WebShare and please contact MAC staff if you have any questions. Deadline: August 14. Glacier Art Museum used their AISC Experiences grant to bring Blackfeet artists to Superior High School to teach traditional and contemporary arts, as part of their Traveling Medicine Show. Learn how to decipher your website analytics in a workshop by Firespring, a consulting company for nonprofits. It’s free (might include a sales pitch) and available here: How to Decipher Your Web Analytics - Firespring. Need some inspiration to tell your story? Here’s an article about how critical it is right now to invest in creativity as social infrastructure: Rebuilding Community Relationships Through Investments in Creativity, Arts, and Culture. It’s written to philanthropic organizations, but might give your arts organization some great talking points in the ever-tightening competition for philanthropic funds. Congrats to the Holter Museum of Art for receiving a $25,000 NEA Creative Forces grant. The Holter will provide hands-on creative experiences for military members as part of a new initiative. This year the NEA funded $886,000 in grants to 48 arts organizations across the country to support community-based arts projects that address the experiences, challenges, and strengths of our military communities. Learn more here: Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network | National Endowment for the Arts Creative Forces brings creative arts therapies to military personnel and veterans who are experiencing post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and related psychological illnesses. The program also offers community arts programming to improve the well-being and resilience of all military-connected people. Looking for a block-booking match: Looking to fill a hole in your presenting season? American Patchwork Quartet, founded by multi-GRAMMY Award-winning Clay Ross, has some open Montana dates in February 2026. These excellent, innovative musicians reached out to us because they love playing in Montana so much. Check their website here: APQ | Experience American Musical Unity American Patchwork Quartet: A multicultural musical excursion through America’s roots. Good To Know Want to live long and be happy? An 80-year Harvard study of Adult Development revealed that good genes are great, but joy is more important when it comes to living long and happily. Strong relationships, and getting together to share joy, has a more powerful effect on quality and length of life and health than almost any other factor, the study says. Yes, Professor Robert Waldinger’s TED Talk about this study has been out for nine years, but we think it’s worth rewatching: Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | TED "An American identity that can unite us all is worth fighting for. Our country has urgent problems and solving them requires the civic solidarity that thinking of ourselves as Americans helps to create. The historian Richard Slotkin has observed that a workable American identity must join both the descendants of the Indigenous and those who dispossessed them, the line of the enslaved and those who possessed them, those who can trace their lineage beyond the Revolution and the newly arrived, the natural-born and the naturalized; a teeming profusion of races, cultures, classes and religions. It is a challenge and a burden. It is also, Farewell Pat Williams, Montana Congressman, fierce defender of the National Endowment for the Arts. God speed, and job well done. “The National Endowment for the Arts is America’s little badge of courage.” —Pat Williams Image courtesy of Williams family though, a blessed inheritance." —Ezekiel Kweku, The New York Times July 3, 2025. ARTeries is produced by the Montana Arts Council. 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