NEW YORK CITY – Nato Thompson, the chief curator of Creative Time Inc., would not have a fulltime job if it weren’t for federal stimulus money.
Creative Time Inc. is an organization based in Manhattan that commissions and produces public art projects both in New York City and across the nation.
The jobs in the arts that they make possible help drive things like tourism, stimulate local businesses and liven neglected neighborhoods.
As they begin to dip their toes into the global art realm, Creative Time has the potential to reach thousands, if not millions, of people, according to Rachel Ford, the director of development. Ford said that Thompson is critical to the strategic plan of harnessing this potential.
“Without the Recovery Act money, he wouldn’t be able to keep his job fulltime and our artistic director and president would have to take on more responsibility in terms of curating the programs,” said Ford. “It wouldn’t mean that we wouldn’t continue our projects; we just wouldn’t be able to do them to the extent that we can now.”
In February 2009, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was signed into law as the response of President Obama to the economic crisis in the U.S. This ordinance distributed federal funding in order to sustain and create jobs and, therefore, stimulate economic growth throughout the country.
Among this federal funding give-a-way was a $50,000 grant awarded to Creative Time Inc. used to sustain the salary of Thompson.
In the following interview, Ford talks about why they applied to sustain Thompson’s salary and what he does at Creative Time.
The Recovery Act emerged in February as a two-part process, doling out money to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as well as state agencies that would then distribute the funding to organizations that they chose to sponsor. Ford chose to go through the NEA.
“I was worried, given the way that state funding processes can go, so I opted to apply for the money directly through the NEA and it was really great because a typical NEA application is a major undertaking—it takes a good week or so to put together all the various parts—this was a very streamlined application process,” she said.
Thompson has an interest in art that is attached to a social issue, which tends to involve artists who are engaging a community in some way.
An example of this social art is “The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice” that took place last October and will continue over the next couple years. Last year it allowed over 35 international artists, curators, critics, scholars, anarchists, and activists to give presentations about their work and issues of social justice.
“Artists are doing amazing things all over the country from working in prisons to working in housing projects and their work goes largely unnoticed by the art establishment because their not doing it in museums or galleries,” said Thompson.
Creative Time’s hope in having this program, “The Summit,” is to explore the questions about what it means to do work in the social sphere and how to engage the public and how to talk about it in a critical way. The plan is for it to culminate in 2011 with the social practice triennial where 30 artist groups will gather in the Essex street market and engage the people of NYC.
“I think the key to getting the money for this particular grant was emphasizing what communities would be impacted by not having [Thompson] fulltime. Not being able to have the Summit program continue would mean not being able to have these artists come to the forefront who are doing community outreach work,” said Ford.
Thanks to the Recovery Act grant that they received this year, Creative Time Inc. is able to continue harnessing their potential to impact people across the country.
“In terms of our funding goals, I don’t know that we would have met them without this money,” said Ford.
For more information about Creative Time Inc., check out their website: http://www.creativetime.org/index.php
