Another Look at Recovery: Music & Community
Practically every region of the country has been affected by the prolonged economic downturn, and musicians are feeling the pinch. Arts budgets are being slashed. Yet there is also an increased awareness in policy making circles that creative culture can create new opportunities for growth. Some towns and cities have already had some success in allowing music to help energize local economies. What can we learn from those experiments? What can government — federal and otherwise — do to encourage this trend? Government officials, musicians and music entrepreneurs talk about how to make music a force in American recovery.
Presenters
Michael Bracy is a partner in the government affairs firm Bracy Tucker Brown & Valanzano. He also co-founded the Future of Music Coalition and currently serves as Board President and Policy Director. Michael also co-founded and co-owns Misra, an independent record label.
Michael is known for his policy work in front of Congress and the FCC, including media consolidation, radio regulation (including Low Power FM), and ensuring public interest principles are at the heart of the legal structures that will help dictate new technological frameworks. Michael is a recognized public advocate both for the music community and for the need for increased citizen participation in the policy process. He has testified before the Congress and the FCC, and speaks often on these issues at conferences and in the media, including CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Washington Post, New York Times, Billboard and elsewhere.
Michael attended Georgetown University, where his courtship with his future wife, Kelly, began in earnest when they co-hosted a radio show on the campus station. After graduation, Kelly and Michael spent seven years in Seattle, where Michael worked in the educational communications field specializing in producing and directing live, interactive educational and government television programming. Kelly and Michael have three children, Eliza, Sophie and Owen, and live in Arlington, VA.
On September 6, 2011, Dan Lurie was appointed Senior Advisor to National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman, and Director of Strategic Partnerships for the NEA.
At NEA, Dan is leading Chairman Landesman’s efforts to align NEA’s core work with the broader Obama Administration efforts—through new funding opportunities, new leveraging of private capital, more streamlined regulations, new policy development, and better deployment of technical assistance—to provide better targeted federal resources and expertise to support local communities’ strategic priorities. This work includes, for example, finding new partnerships among federal agencies and local governments around arts and education and identifying new approaches to linking the built environment, public health and the arts. It also includes championing new, innovative ways for arts and culture stakeholders to support economic and community development towards the emergence of more vibrant and resilient rural and urban places—“creative placemaking”.
Prior to joining NEA, Dan was Senior Advisor to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Deputy Secretary Ron Sims. Dan was part of Secretary Shaun Donovan’s leadership team that recognized in a world where flexible and resilient economies win, communities need a flexible, locally responsive federal partner. In addition to working with the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on the Department’s day-to-day management and long-term organizational change initiatives, Dan oversaw a broad portfolio of community development issues, including helping launch and guide HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, managing HUD’s partnership with HHS focusing on the connections between the built environment and social determinants of health, and leading HUD’s emerging creative placemaking work.
Before joining HUD in June of 2009, Dan was Deputy Chief of Staff to the Chicago Transit Board at the Chicago Transit Authority. Dan is a graduate of the University of Michigan (B.A. and J.D.) and lives in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC.
Cary Clarke is the Arts & Culture Policy Director for Mayor Sam Adams in Portland, Oregon. He oversees implementation of Act for Art, the Portland region's creative action plan, and collaborates with local arts organizations and artists of all stripes to ensure that all Portlanders enjoy the economic, educational and social benefits of a strong arts and culture community.
In practical terms, this includes working on everything from cultural tourism to arts education, television production to arts technology, equity initiative to concerts at City Hall.
Prior to joining Mayor Adams' staff, Cary was the co-founder and co-director of PDX Pop Now! (a non-profit organization dedicated to Portland's music community), the local music columnist for the Portland Mercury alt-weekly, an ELL educator at Parkrose Middle School, and a member of the band At Dusk.
Dena Morris is legislative director for U.S. Senator and Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois. That's a technical term for managing a policy staff of really smart people in a fast-paced, political environment.
Dena graduated Indiana University with a political science degree and Georgetown University's graduate school in public policy. But she's learned more working for Senator Durbin in the legislative branch of government.
Dena and her husband Peter Rogoff are proud parents of Niles and Lulu and big fans of Lulu's middle school cover band, The Boxx.
Amy B was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. After completing her under and post graduate degrees at NYU and Columbia in a field of expertise that unbeknownst to her at the time would also come in handy in the music biz (Psychology and Anthropology), she headed West to do what everyone needs to do once in their life; spend a summer hanging on the beach figuring themselves out.
And thus she came to realize where her passion lies- not with sand and surf, but with music. During that time, the light bulb of light bulbs occurred- how can she make a career out of the two things she loves most in the world, music and talking on the phone. Ding! Band management!
She began managing bands under the tutelage of some of the greatest old schoolers around, and when her first band began to generate more action than her boss’s clients, she was (thankfully) kicked to the curb and struck out on her own.
16 years later, she has a vibrant and successful roster, a thriving business and a core philosophy that remains in tact despite surging tides of change in our industry. After 5 wonderful years further honing her skills as part of the team at Tsunami Entertainment, she has now joined forces with CookmanMGMT. Her current clients are Money Mark, multi-Grammy winning Ozomatli, multi multi multi-Grammy winning Producer/Mixer/Engineer Robert Carranza, Camilo Lara and Mexican Institute of Sound.
Thursday, March 15
