Fall Speaker Series: Advocacy at Different Levels

This Wednesday, October 9 from 6-8 p.m. AAGA will be hosting Fall Speaker Series: Advocacy at Different Levels.
Throughout the panel discussion, attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions about advocating for the arts/cultural sector at the institutional, municipal and state levels.
Here are some questions that we discuss. You will have the opportunity to ask further questions throughout the event.
What is Advocacy? Opposed to Activism and Lobbying?
How does your organization go about advocating for the arts?How do each of your approaches to advocacy differ with the different levels of government you work with, respectively? - local, state, federal - or do you find that your tactics are rather similar?
What would you consider the state of public support for the arts to be on the local level? state level? federal level? Do you think we are in a status of sustainability?
What are some current issues you are working on?
During Mitt Romney's run for President last year, he was in support of completely cutting funding for the NEA or eliminating the agency altogether. How much of a possibility do you think this actually is in the future?
We are in a rare situation as far as the government shutdown. How is this affecting your work?
The NEA has undergone a number of changes over its brief life span. How do you think its current role and relationship with state arts agencies effects public funding for the arts? Do you feel that the NEA’s role should be more of a figure head organization or do you feel that they should be able to make more direct funding decisions as they have in the past?
A Drexel Arts Administration education entails a lot of discussing reports and studies in support of the arts, most of which fall into the economic impact study or intrinsic impact. How often do you use these tools and do you have a preference for which to use? Do you feel that one gets better responses than the other?
One of our core ideas in Arts Administration is the focus on evaluation. How do you evaluate your work? Can advocacy efforts be evaluated?