Author Archives: lindaessig

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About lindaessig

Linda Essig is Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Baruch College and principal/owner of Creative Infrastructure. The opinions expressed on Creative Infrastructure are her own and not those of Baruch College

Entrepreneurship, the Arts, and Creative Placemaking

Posted on December 6, 2012 by lindaessig

Thanks in no small part to the NEA’s Our Town program and its sister consortium of funding partners, ArtPlace, there has been a lot of activity – both actual and in the blogosphere — during the last two years about … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts entrepreneurship, Arts funding, arts infrastructure, Arts policy, Culture and democracy, Higher education, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Arts

Posted on December 1, 2012 by lindaessig

Recently, I came across an article about corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Harvard Business Review.[i] In it, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue that “to advance CSR, we must root it in a broad understanding of the interrelationship between … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts entrepreneurship, arts infrastructure, Arts management, Arts policy, Culture and democracy | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Swimming Upstream: Why I’m an L3C Skeptic

Posted on November 19, 2012 by lindaessig

I’m swimming against a current of alphabet soup with this post, publicly expressing some skepticism about the hot topic of last week, the L3C, a forum about which was livestreamed on newplay.tv: L3C and the Arts: Understanding the Potential of … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts entrepreneurship, Arts funding, arts infrastructure, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

My BIG Questions

Posted on November 14, 2012 by lindaessig

Here are the questions that keep me awake at night: How does an arts organization provide value to its community? Should an arts organization measure the value it provides to its community? If so, how? How does the way an … Continue reading →

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Election Eve

Posted on November 5, 2012 by lindaessig

I spent an hour yesterday listening to the launch announcement for  In the Intersection: Partnerships in the New Play Sector, Diane Ragsdale’s book-length documentation of a convening hosted by the Mellon Foundation and the Center for the Theatre Commons, then … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts funding, arts infrastructure, Arts policy, Culture and democracy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Sandy Taught Me

Posted on November 1, 2012 by lindaessig

It is now three days and some hours after I was supposed to have departed New York via Newark airport.  I was lucky – I rode out the storm and some of its immediate aftermath in a friend’s apartment in … Continue reading →

Posted in arts infrastructure, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Reading List in Progress

Posted on October 24, 2012 by lindaessig

Many thanks to those of you who responded here or via email to my query, “What to Read?” With just seven sessions, it is especially challenging to decide what to read in a short one-credit course focused on arts policy … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts education, Arts policy, Higher education, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

What to Read?

Posted on October 21, 2012 by lindaessig

Next spring, I will be teaching a short one-credit course for grad students “Readings in Arts Policy.”  The format is such that over the course of 7 ½ weeks we will read and discuss arts and cultural policy (in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts education, Arts funding, Arts policy, Higher education | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Approaching (Vibrant) Clarity

Posted on October 7, 2012 by lindaessig

Issues of Outcomes and Measurement included implicit criticism of the ArtPlace Creative Placemaking program for not using evaluation outcome indicators that reflected stated program goals, their overarching term for which is “vibrancy.”  I was not alone in this critique.  Therefore, … Continue reading →

Posted in Arts policy, Culture and democracy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Trial and Error

Posted on September 30, 2012 by lindaessig

I usually use my kitchen for cooking and have sometimes written about parallels between my cooking and arts participation.  Recently I’ve started to use my kitchen to experiment with the craft of papermaking.   This started on a whim when I … Continue reading →

Posted in arts infrastructure | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment