Dear Arts Patrons, Aficionados and Supporters,
Northern Virginia is slowly reopening, but we urge everyone to please stay safe. We also stand with all those arts organizations who are speaking out in support of Black Lives Matter and against the racial injustice and brutal treatment of George Floyd. We pledge to do whatever we can as an organization to achieve the highest level of diversity and cultural equity possible in our nation’s theaters and galleries.
Calendar of Arlington Arts Organization Online Productions/Events
6/4 – “Independence Eve”, Urban Arias, Watch here. (6:00 pm)
6/6 – Going Polar Online Party, Jane Franklin Dance, Register here.
6/18 – “Blue Viola”, Urban Arias, Watch here. (6:00 pm)
7/2 – “Why Is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me?”, Urban Arias, Watch here. (6:00 pm)
Continuously streaming
Visual Arts:
The Arlington Arts Center has several classes, workshops and activities to do at home online.
Online Gallery of Art, Arlington Artists Alliance, View
“Artists and Poets Response to the Pandemic”, Arlington artists, View
Dance:
BalletNova has several dance classes available online, Watch here.
Bowen McCauley Dance Co., Live Virtual Classes for Parkinson’s Disease, Watch here.
Dance Classes, Jane Franklin Dance, Find schedule here.
“Best of 30 Years,” Festival Argentino, Watch here.
Children’s Theater:
Encore Stage & Studio is offering classes and camps online. Details.
Educational Theatre Company offering online classes. Details.
Opera:
Opera Nova streaming “Celebrating African-American Opera Singers: Past and Present” Concert”. Listen.
“After Life/Josephine”, Urban Arias, Watch here.
Performing Arts/Theater:
Synetic Streaming Various Productions and Events, Buy tickets
Tuesdays at 8:00 pm – Signature Strong Live, Signature Theatre, Watch here.
Poetry:
“Written in Arlington,” Arlington Poets, Read the poems here.
Input to Governor Northam Reopening Task Force from Northern Virginia Arts Organizations:
The Embracing Arlington Arts President Janet Kopenhaver conducted outreach to the theater representative serving on Governor Northam’s “Reopening” Task Force to offer our help as they discuss reopening alternatives and strategies. She asked us to survey northern Virginia Visual and Performing Arts organizations (we included our Fairfax peers) to provide input as to how they are planning to reopen their venues and/or programming. Here is the Executive Summary from their responses:
Overall, visual arts venues/galleries are looking to reopen in the fall, although without their usual opening receptions. They would follow CDC and regional guidelines for visitors to the gallery and require social distancing, masks and have sanitizer available.
Performing arts/theater responses tended to break down by budget size and whether they had their own venue. Larger organizations with their own venues anticipate not reopening until January/February/March 2021, or when a vaccine and/or effective treatment is available.
Mid-sized theater organizations with their own venues offered mixed responses, with some hopeful that they could open in the fall, but others saying not until a vaccine was available. They all are anticipating social distancing, limited seating, masks, etc. Others are researching other options and replanning their production schedule and types of performance.
The smaller theater organizations who perform out of rented venues are more hopeful that they can begin productions in the fall. However, they all state that the ultimate decision is up to the venue.
Every organization submitting responses have ramped up their online content, are keeping in close contact with their patrons and supporters through email, social media and telephone calls, and are making plans for even more live streaming events and programming.
Weekly ZOOM “Support Groups” Calls:
We continued our ZOOM “support group” calls for arts organizations and due to popular demand have opened them up to other northern Virginia arts jurisdictions who complimented us on this initiative. Most recently we invited a professional fundraiser from the company “Capacity Partners” (which specializes in non-profit arts organizations) to provide best practices for fundraising during a crisis. We also conducted a call for arts organizations to share their reopening plans and strategies with each other in an open forum.
Our “COVID-19 Resources” page on our website has added numerous sites and survey results about the reopening of northern Virginia, as well as the likelihood of patrons returning to a live performance in the near future.
Corporate Sponsor of the Month:
Our corporate sponsor of the month is JBG SMITH – an S&P 400 company that owns, operates, invests in and develops a dynamic portfolio of high-quality mixed-use properties in and around Washington, DC. Through an intense focus on placemaking, JBG SMITH cultivates vibrant, amenity-rich walkable neighborhoods throughout the capital region, including National Landing where it now serves as the exclusive developer for Amazon’s new headquarters. To get a bird’s eye view of some of the improvements they are planning for the area, follow this link.
“Embracing Arlington Arts Talks“ Podcast:
In an effort to help arts organizations remain visible to their patrons and audiences, we continued airing our weekly podcast show “Embracing Arlington Arts Talks.” We started off the month of May chatting with the Director of the Festival Argentino Daniel Manzoni who updated us on the plans for the 2020 Festival, as well as gave us details about their newly released video of the “Best of the Past 30 Years of the Festival.” We then found out about collections at the U.S. Mint from the agency’s curator Robert Goler who told us about his job, upcoming coin collections ad opportunities for artists.
Switching to the performing arts, Tom Prewitt, the Artistic Director of Avant Bard Theatre Tom Prewitt gave us updates on the theater’s upcoming season, as well as his views on how the industry will be permanently altered following the pandemic. Finally, we rounded out the month with a very interesting chat with photographer Zac Perkins who gave us insight in to the photography world, as well as his job as a combat documentation production specialist.
To listen to these interviews, or any others in the past, follow this link.
We took the opportunity this month to publish an ArlNow column submitted by Embracing Arlington Arts thanking all the Arlington Arts organizations who are “keeping the lights on” and helping us all stay sane during this shutdown.
Our arts organizations continue to keep highlighting their organizations and events through our ArlNow Community Post subscription, reaching over 400,000 online readers. Again, thanks to the Fred Schnider Investment Firm and Embracing Arlington Arts supporter Annie Sweeney for underwriting our 2019-2020 subscription.
Our current subscription will be ending in the fall and we are hoping to continue providing this FREE service to all Arlington non-profit arts organization. If anyone is interested is underwriting and sponsoring our 2020-2021 subscription, please contact us. It is also a wonderful opportunity for companies to achieve their own marketing goals because EVERY column begins with an acknowledgement of your sponsorship and a link to your website. Especially due to this prolonged shutdown, economic downturn and increased anxiety about the future, this free service to our County’s important non-profit arts sector would be very much appreciated.
Jane Franklin Dance published a column about all the online productions and classes her organization is offering in this column. Encore Stage & Studio continued to advertise its online summer camps and classes with their submission. Finally, the MusicLink Foundation wrote a truly uplifting piece about the work they are doing to offer instruments and music lessons to children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to enjoy this experience.
If you would like to support the work Embracing Arlington Arts by making a donation, here’s how:
* Make tax-deductible contributions online.
* Tax-deductible contributions by check: check made out to Embracing Arlington Arts and sent to Embracing Arlington Arts, 754 North Vermont Street, Arlington, VA 22203
Every dollar helps us help the arts in so many ways. Thank you in advance!
Embracing Arlington Arts 