The Dawson Research Internship

Past Presentations 2006: How We Make Meaning 2007: Professional Presenters and the Amateur Arts 2008: Learning to Lead: Where and How Do Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft? 2009: Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer Translated About the Initiative In 1996, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters created the William Dawson Education Endowment to celebrate and honor Bill Dawson, the association's Executive Director from 1972 to 1986. Bill's friends and colleagues sought to establish a fund that would help educate a new generation of arts leaders, incorporating Bill's belief in lifelong learning with his professional legacy of the successful partnership between higher education and the administration of the arts. A roster of donors to the fund is available on the Arts Presenters web site. The result is the William Dawson Research Internship. This research program, inaugurated in 2005, supports an annual research study by selected graduate students in the Bolz Center for Arts Administration on current trends facing the presenting field. The results of this study is presented annually at the Arts Presenters national Members Conference in New York City. The project is a close collaboration of Arts Presenters and the Bolz Center for Arts Administration, where Bill Dawson also played a formative and passionate role.

Connecting Students and Professionals,
Theory and Practice
Each year since 2005, the William Dawson Research Internship of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters has commissioned a group of Bolz Center graduate students to research, prepare, and present a national conference session on an emerging trend, issue, or question facing performing arts practitioners.

This year's topic explores an essential issue for the future of the field, and the health of the performing arts profession.

2010:
''Arts, Access, and the Bridges in Between''
Association of Performing Arts Presenters Annual Conference
New York, NY
Sunday, January 10, 2010, 9:00 - 10:45 am
Embrace new strategies for attracting and retaining a wider circle of constituents -- individuals and groups with significant barriers to participation in the community's arts and cultural life (geographic, economic, physical, cultural, cognitive, and others). What are some unique opportunities for artists and arts organizations to engage these audiences in creative experience? What can we learn from the leading innovators in the field? This session will include an overview of findings and conclusions from the annual Bill Dawson Research Initiative, focused this year on arts organizations and other industries that have successfully bridged these barriers and built new connections.

Project Team
Abby Ballain, Heather Biehl, Ken Fitzsimmons, Kelly Gauthier, Laura Maker, Brian Ramos
Moderator/Advisor: Andrew Taylor.
Discussants: Tim McCarty, President/Artistic Director, Quest: Arts for Everyone; Michael Reed, Senior Director Ð Cultural Participation and Programming, ASU Gammage; Vanessa Calderon-Rosado, CEO, Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion; Carlton Turner, Alternate ROOTS