HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY, CREATIVEGROUND!
This past year has been full of growth for CreativeGround. Read on for our year in review as well as upcoming opportunities and helpful hints.
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| Sandglass Theater, a NEFA grantee, knows how to celebrate a birthday. Photo by Joe Mazza |
What we've been up to...
We've added new users and welcomed additional types of businesses and institutions in order to better illustrate the rich tapestry of the New England creative economy:
- Nearly 90,000 visitors to the site and over 2,500 hours of use in the past year.
- Over 700 new profile creations and 110 existing profiles claimed by users.
- A more responsive iframe that allows anyone to display specific CreativeGround search results on their websites. Contact the CreativeGround team if you want assistance with an iframe showcasing your local arts family on your website.
We love to bring this online community offline and face-to-face, and we visited all six New England states last year:
- Six office hours and workshops allowed us to get up close and personal with your needs.
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We exhibited or presented at
nine events
including New England Library Association Conference, and an open house at NEFA's headquarters in Boston.
- We distributed thousands of postcards across New England to match unclaimed profiles with their rightful owners.
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| Connecting the dots in New England... |
What's in store...
As Year Five begins, we're actively engaged in planning around the use of CreativeGround as local arts directories. If you're interested in being part of a test group, please contact us! As always, we use your feedback to guide and inform site enhancements and developments.
Travel plans for this year are underway, and we hope to connect with mo
re of you than ever before. With your help we can bring the team to your community! Reach out to
creativeground@nefa.org
to get an event started in your locale this summer, fall or the foreseeable future.
Welcome to the team!
We're excited to welcome Morganna Becker to the CreativeGround team as our new program associate.
Read more
about Morganna, and
get in touch
with any questions about your profile.
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West Claremont Center for Music & the Arts
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Caryn B Davis Photography
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Kahana Hula Luau Shows and Polynesian Cultural Arts
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CreativeGround is brimming with compelling artists, creative businesses, and cultural nonprofits, and we are excited to feature exemplary profiles
on our Home and About pages! This cohort showcases members of the New England creative economy that
are cultivating inter and intra community exchange in unique ways.
Images provided courtesy of the artists
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Spring Cleaning is Coming
We're about to do our next round of regular data cleaning. For our users, this means you can
help by taking a look at the profiles in your town, and submit suggestions/flag out of date profiles. You can also prompt your neighbor directly to spruce up their CreativeGround presence. A big postcard mailing and email campaign is forthcoming but a little peer pressure couldn't hurt!
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Updating your CreativeGround profile is fun with great company (and a beer!) Why not have a profile update party with your colleagues? Photo by Sancho Maulion
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It's Grant Panel Season at NEFA! If you applied or are considering applying to any NEFA grant program, we strongly recommend you update your CreativeGround profile for the grant panelists. *wink*wink*
- Grants due 4.02.2018 for New England States Touring (NEST)
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NEFA, Jacob's Pillow, and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) are reigniting the National Dance Presenters Forum in July. Apply online by 3.28.2018 if you are an individual who has been "presenting dance or are based at an organization that has been presenting dance for less than five years."
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New England Opportunities
National Opportunities
- The National Endowment for the Arts has upcoming deadlines for grant programs that serve individual artists and cultural organizations:
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- You can find more national artist calls on CaFÉ™ from WESTAF.
Read NEFA's opportunities blog post for more grant deadlines, auditions, and job listings. |
UPDATE OR CREATE YOUR PROFILE!
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There's no time like the present to work on your CreativeGround profile. Read our
tips and tricks
, as well as detailed steps for how to get started updating or creating your profile.
What can I do make my profile more searchable?
- CreativeGround users and visitors are more likely to click on your profile if you have a profile image. Use an image of your art, yourself at work, or your organization in action- NOT a headshot or logo.
- Write in your About section with simple, explanatory language describing the how and what of the work you do. Flowery or theoretical language can fail to mention the medium you work in, the instruments you use, or the achievements you have accomplished in your career. Use the keywords a potential client or collaborator will use to search for you and your talents!
- Having trouble describing the your unique spin on your craft in your About section? A picture is worth 1,000 words. Use the Image & Video Gallery to show instead of tell.
- Continuously update your I Have Worked With section. Focus on recent and/or ubiquitous relationships that demonstrate your involvement in the Creative Economy. Your connections don't have to have a CreativeGround profile (or even be New England based, though we love when they are!)
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ABOUT
CREATIVEGROUND
A project of NEFA, CreativeGround is brought to you through ongoing partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, the Maine Arts Commission, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Vermont Arts Council.
Learn more.
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