Joe's Birthday Wish

Wow! The campaign is now within $70 of reaching its goal. I am truly overwhelmed by your generosity throughout the past couple of weeks.

If this is your first time hearing about this campaign, please feel free to scroll down to the first two entries to see what this campaign is really about.

Many thanks to those of you who have contributed since my last update!

Sherry Heyl
Amy Ingles
Kathy Janich
Enid Sanstad
Nikki and Thomas Strickland
Lauren Wojenski

In the meantime, the campaign is set to end the day after my birthday. More precisely, it appears it will end at 2:00 p.m., July 20. Will you be the one to carry the campaign to its goal?

Just a couple of days away from my birthday, and enough contributions have come in to bring the campaign past the 50% mark. Thank you!

Catherine Clark
Theresa Hackett
Tracy Hughes
Ben Lower
Zabrina Rios

This list deserves a post of its own. I'd like to take a moment to thank all of you who have given so far.

Unlike a lot of campaigns out there, it doesn't take much to move the bar closer to its goal. With donations ranging from $5 to $36, you brought the campaign 30% toward its goal. Every contribution here makes a difference!

Many thanks to all of you:

Erin Boxt
Catherine Clark
Robert Drake
Aaron Gotlieb
Marcy Hoen
Rebecca Levin
Cathy Poley
Hong To
Jarrod Winter

First, I'd like to give a round of thanks to Rivka, Marcy, Cathy and Robert for your donations over the first 24 hours of this campaign. Your contributions took this campaign nearly 10% toward its goal on the first day. Thank you!

As promised, I'm going to take you a little more through my journey in arts service.

The question now isn’t “Funding the arts, yes or no?” That keeps the conversation focused on crumbs. It’s time to ask this instead: Who are we as a people? What do we want to be known for: our stupendous ability to punish, or our immense creativity?
-- Arlene Goldbard

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to produce a podcast, where I interviewed dozens of arts leaders. Thanks to that experience I heard the real-life stories of the impact artists have on both individuals and whole communities. I learned that it takes a creative mind to imagine a brighter future for yourself and your community. And it takes vision and perseverance to carry that brighter future to reality.

Over the past year, we've been honored to include among our programs a seminar developed by Kamal Sinclair: Entrepreneurship in the Arts. So far, we've held the seminar twice, and watched as these two groups of artists began the process of developing their business plans.

They all had the capacity to imagine a brighter future for themselves. But they needed a little extra push to develop realistic plans for realizing those dreams. Many of our seminar graduates still have a long way to go, but we're proud of what they accomplished.

The work of building a creative economy is of course bigger than any one organization. Part of our vision is to see these seminar graduates working toward the betterment of themselves and their communities. Your donation will be put to work to find new resources to help these artist-entrepreneurs through their continuing professional development.

People have this notion of the artist as this solitary genius. I think we need to fight that. I believe artists are an R&D department for humanity, working together towards a better possible future.
-- Zach Lieberman, speaking at the EyeO Festival

A year and a few months ago, Jessyca and I began a journey to launch a new arts service organization. As much as I'm proud to talk about the partnerships we forged and the programs we launched, these things are ultimately not what C4 Atlanta is all about to me.

When we began this endeavor, it was under some of the worst possible economic conditions we faced in our lifetimes. Businesses in nearly every sector were hemorrhaging jobs, and the Atlanta region was among the unfortunate leaders in this race to the bottom.

I thought to myself, "This is a better time than any to try to create some jobs."

But if one thing is for certain, the typical job in the 21st Century will not look like the typical job in the 20th Century. In the service economy, creative skills will be among the most valued.

My birthday wish is to raise $500 for C4 Atlanta because I believe that it takes a small push in the right direction to build a sustainable, creative economy. My dream: Atlanta's artists and arts organizations will have the tools they need to thrive in the 21st Century.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll talk more about this journey and keep you up-to-date on the campaign's progress.