Aspiring arts administrators get day of advocacy training

Arts advocates from around the country are in Washington D.C. today for National Arts Advocacy Day – and a Philadelphia graduate program is using the lobbying event as a learning opportunity for its students.

Arts advocates from around the country are in Washington D.C. today for National Arts Advocacy Day – and a Philadelphia graduate program is using the lobbying event as a learning opportunity for its students.

Transcript:
Drexel University has one of the country’s top graduate programs in arts administration.  So sending graduate students to DC to sit in on meetings with federal representatives is a natural extension of their classroom studies.  Students pay for the trip with an art auction, which grossed 8000 dollars this year and has sent 12 students to the capitol.  Quiana Clark-Roland came to Philadelphia from Kentucky for Drexel’s program and has one semester left.

Clark-Roland: “I’m always advocating, keeping up with listservs, seeing what’s out there, finding out the new issues affecting the A&C sector. To be an advocate, you don’t necessarily have to be very forceful in terms of your views. Being informed can make you a very good advocate.”

Some of the issues the Philadelphia delegation is focusing on are health insurance for artists, visas for visiting performers, and funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.