Expansion Arts at The Rhode Island Foundation
In 2010 I conducted a practicum under the supervision of the grants program officer for arts and culture at The Rhode Island Foundation. I focused on assessing the state’s Expansion Arts funding stream and professional development workshop, which has been a touchstone for leaders of culturally specific arts organizations (eg. non-white, non-legacy, community-based arts institutions) in Rhode Island since the 1980s. For my final report on the program I integrated archival research at the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts and Rhode Island Foundation that helped me frame and contextualize the truly cutting edge work of the state’s Expansion Arts administrators with participant observation and targeted interviews with past and then-present participants. Integrating these complimentary research methods enabled me to forcefully call attention to the program’s successes as well as its shortcomings. My report formed the cornerstone of later work that I did as a consultant with Expansion Arts and my recommendations resulted in the Foundation’s hiring of a full-time organizer and advocate to work with all participating funded organizations, an outcome that has vastly improved the efficacy of the program. Today Expansion Arts is administered by The Rhode Island Council for The Humanities.
Project image courtesy of Eastern Medicine Singers