President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) co-chairs George Stevens Jr. and Margo Lion today announced the expansion of PCAH’s successful Turnaround Arts initiative – a program designed to help turn around low-performing schools, narrow the achievement gap, and increase student engagement through the arts.  The program is expanding to 6 additional states this year including ten California schools.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced today it would invest $1.56M in grant funding Los Angeles County arts and culture organizations.  Grantees include organizations staging theatrical productions, providing arts journalism coverage, and museums, among many other types of programs and events.  

The President recently released the FY 2015 budget request to Congress, which includes funding for the nation’s cultural agencies and programs. 

Some important items included in the budget: 

On Tuesday night, Congress released the details of its massive FY 2014 Omnibus spending bill. A petition circulated by the Arts Action Fund, signed by more than 40,000 arts advocates, reinforced the need to allocate a robust fund to the National Endowment for the Arts. The agency has been budgeted to receive $146 million for the year.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced its next round of Art Works and Creative Writing grants this week, which will send $1.14 million to Los Angeles County to support artists and arts organizations throughout the region.

Via our partners Californians for the Arts and Americans for the Arts:

The United States House of Representatives Appropriations Committee recently released the 2014 Interior Appropriations bill, which proposes deep cuts to both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Two communities in LA County received significant awards from the National Endowment for the Art’s “Our Town” grant intiative.

This week hundreds of arts advocates from across America gathered in Washington, DC, to promote the value of public and private investment in arts and culture.

The Arts Council for Long Beach was recently awarded $150,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to create the “A LOT” series, in which dance, music, theatre, and spoken word by Long Beach artists will take place in vacant lots throughout the city.