(This essay was originally written in my role as an outside consultant to the city of Calgary’s cultural plan. For this entry, I was asked to reflect on the possibility of developing a collective impact model for the arts in Calgary. You can read all of my contributions to that process here.)

by Ian David Moss, Senior Director of Information Strategy at Fractured Atlas (This essay was originally written in my role as an outside consultant to the city of Calgary’s cultural plan. You can read all of my contributions to that process here.) For my second essay responding to the #yycArtsPlan process, I thought I would focus on the last paragraph of the “Summary of Vision Statements from the January 26 Summit”:

Tyler Cowan has an interesting post (referencing a Financial Times article) on corporate investment. He quotes from the original piece:

source: Flickr For the past several months, I’ve served in my Fractured Atlas capacity as a “consulting critic” to Calgary Arts Development (CADA)’s Arts Plan process, also known as #yycArtsPlan. Calgary is a fast-growing oil and gas boomtown in Canada’s western region that has been characterized to me by more than one person as the “Texas of Canada.”

Way back when I was a fresh-faced intern with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program almost five years ago now, I made a startling discovery. In the course of researching various conceptions and definitions of cultural asset mapping in preparation for what would eventually become my work here at Fractured Atlas, I came to realize that a significant body of literature existed on the arts and economic/community development with which I had been entirely unfamiliar. That wouldn’t have been so notable except that I had previously taken an interest of my own in the topic; I considered myself pretty knowledgeable, certainly relative to my former coworkers and business school colleagues. And yet here I was coming across hundreds of pages of stuff, great stuff, really fascinating, ground-breaking stuff, and hardly anyone in my professional circles knew it existed.

Last week, Barry Hessenius interviewed Jamie Bennett, chief of staff and director of public affairs at the NEA, about his thoughts on the arts and culture landscape as Rocco Landesman’s chairmanship comes to a close. When asked about the most critical issues facing the field in the near-to-mid term future, Jamie responded with some thoughts on preference discovery engines:

Over the summer, Michael Kaiser published a series of posts complaining about a lack of specificity in the ongoing chatter about a need for “new models” in the arts. I responded on this blog, both times, with my own thoughts on the subject. Last week, Kaiser published another post in which the critics are once again faulted for a lack of specifics:

This is perhaps a little old, but it’s thought-provoking enough that I had to share it: Colby Cosh on artisan chocolate and social revolution. Cosh’s blog post/essay muses on some very big ideas about the future of labor and society:

In our last episode, I responded to Michael Kaiser’s frustration with “new models” chatter. Well, this week he’s back with New Models, Part 2, and you knew I wasn’t going to just sit here (even if I am supposedly on vacation!) Kaiser once again criticizes the critics for a lack of specificity: