Arts

Collaborative work organizations: How organizations with a focus on the arts, entrepreneurship, and creativity join forces toward more productive ends for all; Creative campuses: New models for thinking about higher education at the intersection of creativity and entrepreneurship; and New funding models: Innovative ways of funding arts-based businesses. Each of these themes reflects current research and practice at the intersection of the arts and business and is part of a larger movement toward thinking about deep connections across fields.

Fractured Atlas is an arts nonprofit that's involved in software development. Earlier this year, they acquired for-profit tech firm Gemini SBS as part of a continuing expansion into software products. On Monday, they're formally unveiling free, web-based backend software for cash-strapped nonprofits. Artful.ly is described as a “web-based software system that transforms how smaller arts organizations sell tickets, raise funds, and grow their audiences and organizations.”

Artful.ly has allowed the group more control over its box office, rather than relying on a third-party to manage it, and offers a more detailed picture of its fans, which comes in handy when a patron inquires about buying up seats to an entire show for a private event. Now, she said, when she speaks to patrons, she knows if they have already donated to Third Rail Projects, or have come to see a show four times.

Now Matadero is evolving into a cultural laboratory, where a new arts financing strategy is being tested. Companies and institutions are providing financial support to supplement dwindling government arts subsidies, but with a twist: they don’t just send checks, they move in. Within the walled 59,000-square-foot center, there are public theaters and exhibition spaces that last year drew more than 500,000 visitors for music and art events and avant-garde plays.

Just the description alone – “an experimental performance by Jessica Earley featuring hyperbole, puppetry, dance, awkwardness, honesty and video projections to tell a story about heartbreak and healing” – was enough to conjure images of the kind of experimental performance art that was all the rage 40-plus years ago, but too often earns eye-rolls from today’s cynical audiences. “Hyperbolic” seems like the last adjective one might apply to the demure Earley, who I previously knew mostly through her visual art and past collaborations with performance artist Brian Feldman.

Budgets for cultural organizations are down, but a dazzling performing arts center is rising across from City Hall. Over the years, we have watched a symphony orchestra pull off a remarkable resurrection and an opera company go belly up. Arts groups wounded by the economic downturn and corporate funding cutbacks have been forced to go leaner in order to keep presenting their concerts, performances and exhibits.

FTA has also donated thousands of tickets to charities, underprivileged children and theater students, as well as more than $1.5 million in scholarships to theater students in the State of Florida. Most recently FTA has invested in a community spaces downtown called The Abbey and The Mezz, donating its use to charities and local arts groups, resulting in these groups raising more than $2 million for their respective organizations. EIGHTY PERCENT OF ALL PROCEEDS GENERATED BY FTA STAYED WITHIN AND HELPED THE ORLANDO COMMUNITY.

We are creating new opportunities for the most important arts organizations, the Orlando Ballet and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. By making these strong business decisions, we will ensure the Center’s existence and effectively fulfill its vision – Arts for Every Life.

Join me in helping make it happen for Pinocchio's Marionette Theatre - A Steampunk Beauty and the Beast on @indiegogo http://t.co/GOwZBJqw