By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota One of the key roles of Arts South Dakota is to encourage South Dakotans to speak out in support of the arts. We call it arts advocacy—but it is really just telling positive stories about the many ways the arts make a difference in your life.  It’s [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota December marks the season of giving. As we consider those to whom we wish to be generous, we need to remember our friends in the nonprofit arts community. Throughout the nation, arts organizations are looking to audiences, patrons and arts advocates to help fill their stockings with [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota The South Dakota Department of Tourism, in partnership with the South Dakota Arts Council, has launched a social media campaign, #StateOfCreate—and we think it’s great. Tourism and the arts are vital partners in our creative life and our economy, and you can track the campaign by following [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota The strength of South Dakota’s creative community comes from its diversity, weaving together threads from all cultures across our lands and celebrating through the arts our common connections. This is especially meaningful to consider as we celebrate Native American Day and the first people to call this [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota Recently one of the people helping to bring arts funding to South Dakota toured our state and was blown away by the diversity and quality of our cultural environment. Michael Orlove directs National Endowment for the Arts funding and other assistance to 56 state and jurisdictional arts [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota During the summer, Arts South Dakota co-hosted a number of Arts Happy Hours around the state, from Hill City to Aberdeen and from Yankton to Faulkton. Situated in popular local after-hours gathering spots, the events brought neighbors together in an informal atmosphere to share ideas, concerns, program [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota The arts should be a part of every classroom—and the arts can make every subject fun to learn. That’s one lesson of the Arts Education Institute, being held July 15-18 on the campus of Northern State University in Aberdeen. Over 100 South Dakota teachers, administrators and arts [...]

By Jim Speirs, Executive Director, Arts South Dakota For many of us, the portal to the joys of making music was opened by a band director during our school years. Those first tentative notes became an exciting new skill, shared by other band members as we learned one of mankind’s first art forms. Band directors [...]