New Seeds Mic - Mar - Corporate Personhood

Mark your calendars! In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on corporate funding, March's topic will be on the legal "personhood" status of corporations and its ramifications.

New Seeds Mic - Feb - Mass Media and the Sexual Exploitation of Women

Another amazing night! Vanessa Brown gave a great presentation on Mass Media and the Sexual Exploitation of Women. In the ensuing discussion, she related a poignant personal story about a 14-year old caught up in a world of stripping and gangs. Issues brought up were: the pros and cons of stripping; and is the exploitation of women a consumer driven event? Venus Jones presented challenging pieces, including one on the female paradigm of beauty and another on getting attention through violence. Robin presented comedy ranging from motherhood issues to Iraq. Vanessa sang her wonderful "Ten Past Eight", and "Slipping Through". Suzanne presented pieces on women's images in the media and pay and the women's psyche.

Women Ski Jumpers Frozen Out of Olympics

Check it out on MSNBC.

The world record for that Olympic hill is held by a woman,
Lindsay Van, yet she can't compete.

What's astounding is after going through the courts to change
this, Dick Pound's (from the IOC) arrogance.

He says, "Perhaps it's disappointing, even frustrating..." If it
were a man's athletic career he was talking about, would he
be so trite?

He goes on to say perhaps it will take longer to accept the
women if they embarass us.

Did you not embarass yourself first by excluding the women?

Astounding, absolutely astounding...

Seattle's Creative Vitality Index

First of all, apologies for not posting sooner. I was coding a major project and that took up most of my time.

However, since my last post on measuring the economic impact of the arts or how well an art house 'serves' the community I went looking for any similar measurement. The Seattle Arts Commission has a measurement, called the Creative Vitality Index. While this index does not strictly measure the 'well-being' an art house imparts to its community (it bills itself as measure of the health of the creative economy), I think it deserves mention.

The Creative Vitality Index draws its data from 3 sources: the Dept of Labor; the 990 and 990 EZ forms filed by non-profits; Claritas, a database of consumer and b-2-b marketing. The index has 2 components: 60% is community participation and 40% occupation. In looking at the sub-index for community participation, music store sales and photography sales are included (are internet sales included in this figure?). Baseline score is 1, above is stronger than average and vice versa.

Although this index measures the arts in a community more generally, kudos to the commission for making inroads in quantifying the arts community.

I think, then that the Arts Development Index I proposed would still qualify as a measurement on the 'well-being' a community specifically receives from an arts house.