For an update on arts issues in Congress, or to directly contact your congressmen, click here: http://www.capwiz.com/artsusa/home/

You can receive regular Arts Action Alerts right in your inbox by becoming a member of Nebraskans for the Arts. For more information, please visit our membership link.

On the national level, you can stand up for the arts and arts education in America and make your voice heard by joining the Americans for the Arts Action Fund. For more information, visit www.ArtsActionFund.org.

Confused about the difference between advocacy and lobbying? Check out the following issue of the NASAA Advocate: "Advocacy and Lobbying: Speaking Up for the Arts"

Why Advocate?

With the advent of term limits in the state legislature, our primary challenge is keeping our senators informed about the importance of the arts to education, quality of life, and economic development.  As an advocacy organization, Nebraskans for the Arts works to let our policymakers at the local, state, and national levels know that the arts mean business in Nebraska and that public funding is essential for the cultural health and economy in our state.

From “Advocacy and Term Limits: Developing Arts Support in the Legislature Early”, NASAA Advocate, by Thomas L. Birch:

Strategies That Work—Term Limits or Not

1. Contact newly elected legislators immediately after Election Day to get a head start on educating them about the arts in your state.
2. Call on each new legislator when the legislature session convenes; offer a visit to an arts program in the home district.
3. Host a congratulatory breakfast or dinner for newly elected legislators as an opportunity for them to meet arts council members and be briefed on the work of your state arts agency.
4. Assign politically involved arts council members to make connections with new legislators that can develop into working relationships with your state arts agency.
5. Invite a new legislator to write a column for your newsletter; select a legislator with an important committee assignment or politically key position in the legislature.
6. Involve city and county officials in your activities; politicians holding office at the local level often move up to the state legislature.
7. Talk about the arts in terms of public value—education, tourism, community building and economic development—to draw the attention of new legislators with a broader public policy agenda.

For the complete article, click here.

Five Ways to Convert Legislators Into Arts Advocates

Tom Birch, Legislative Counsel

National Assembly of State Arts Agencies

• Stand up at election time and begin educating politicians before they take office. 
  • Participate in candidate forums, town meetings and “meet and greet” parties in your neighborhood. 
  • Educate them on the role the arts play in their communities. 
  • Ask the candidates where they stand on issues of public arts policy.

• Get to know your legislators from the beginning. 
  • Put them on your mailing list.
  • Help them cover the blank walls in their new offices with art and posters from their constituents to emphasize the vitality of the arts in their home communities.

• Make every arts event an advocacy event. 
  • Involve legislators personally with the arts in your state – your performances, festivals and exhibitions. 
  • Make the opening night, for example, of every performance or exhibition function as an advocacy event as well by inviting politicians to attend, and make a point of introducing them and acknowledging their attendance. 
  • It is a perfect time to thank the invited officials in public view for their support of the arts.

• Invite a legislator to become personally involved.
  • Ask him or her to address a conference on the arts, or to write a column for your newsletter. 
  • Your request will force that individual to focus thoughts on your issues and, in the process, become better informed about the arts in your state. 

• Link public arts funding to other issues in education, social concerns and economic and commercial development. 

• Government spending on the arts increases when legislators understand how the arts can help them advance their particular policy agendas. 
  
  
• Advocates can draw on a wealth of research demonstrating the arts’ role in improving student learning, in helping to build the economic strength of a community by promoting tourism, and in attracting businesses to expand local job opportunities.

 This month's art quote:
No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
--Edward Hopper