Leveraging Change: Increasing Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas

In 2015, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) received funding in the first round of collective impact grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to launch the pilot initiative, Leveraging Change: Improving Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas. The authors conducted research which included a literature review and interviews with arts education leaders in rural areas. Using the research compiled through this process, a pilot convening was held in western Massachusetts' Berkshire County to activate ideas, stimulate the exchange of information, and generate cross-sector collaboration focused on strengthening support for arts education in the region. This working paper is a summary of the research results and insights gleaned from this pilot initiative

Direct Farm-to-Institution Marketing: The Common Challenges and Keys to Success of Northeast Producers

This research discovers what are the shared barriers Northeast producers engaged in the institutional market consistently face and what enables them to establish, maintain and strengthen a sales relationship with institutions. The findings can help producers understand the challenges and opportunities, how and when to approach, and provide strategies to enhance their success with the institutional market. The research concludes with implications for non-grower farm-to-institution stakeholders. The common challenges producers faced in establishing, maintaining and strengthening institutional sales relationships included buyers who focus on low price points, uncommitted buyers, food service management companies, demand for processed products and laws and regulations. Producers have been able to overcome some or all of these barriers with institutions through having wholesale experience and systems that allow producers to better access and serve institutional markets because of the product consistency, and lower price points they can provide. Producers have successfully established, maintained and strengthened relationships with champion buyers through effective initial and on-going communication that result in product satisfaction

Copyright Contracts and Earnings of Visual Creators: A Survey of 5,800 British Designers, Fine Artists, Illustrators and Photographers

There is a common perception that digitisation has prompted changes in creative labour markets. In particular, it is widely assumed that exploiters insist on "grabbing rights" (i.e. broadly conceived assignments of rights), that visual artists are not able to negotiate, that they are paid less and less, and that they are compelled to waive their moral rights. This study suggests a much more equivocal picture. In place of a straightforward narrative of decline, the results of the survey suggest that in most fields there has been less change over the last decade than one might have expected: that, terms of exploitation are most often about the same. That is not to say that there are no discernible changes in particular occupations and media. Respondents and interviewees identify some important shifts. Perhaps surprisingly, it seems there are changes in practice that are, from the creator's perspective, both positive and negative. The most positive change is identified amongst the fine artists where half (50%) see their personal bargaining position as having improved, with only 6% perceiving a weakening. The most disturbing changes are in relation to photographers. About half of all photographers (49%) say their bargaining position has worsened, with only 22% reporting improvements. A significant percentage of photographers (40%) report an increase in assignments (compared with 6% who think they have decreased). Moreover, 24% report an increase in moral rights waivers (compared to 3% who identify a decrease), and a decline in the practice of attribution. 31% of photographers see attribution as decreasing over the last decade, and only 8% increasing. 28% say income from secondary use has decreased, while only 16% say it has decreased

Panel II: Public Appropriation of Private Rights: Pursuing Internet Copyright Violators

It seems to me that the story of music on the Internet over the past five or six years is the story of two fantasies colliding. The first fantasy is that information wants to be free, that with the Internet we can throwaway all the bottles and just have the wine and the free flow of data, which apparently was generated from somewhere and then circulated forever. So, there was that fantasy, that we would not need copyright anymore because everything would be available to everyone. The other fantasy is the record companies\u27 fantasy of perfect control, that there would be some way to control every use, every copy, of music that was digital

Value-based Design of Collaboration Processes for e-Commerce

Designing cross-organizational e-business applications faces the problem that the collaborating businesses must align their commercial interests without any central decision making authority. The design process must therefore yield a clear view of the commercial value of the collaboration for each economic actor, as well as a clear specification of the activities to be performed by each actor and a specification of information systems to be used by each actor. We present guidelines for designing the value network of the collaboration, which shows the commercial value of the collaboration for each participating actor. We then present guidelines for transforming the value network into process models, which show the feasibility of implementing the value network in the business processes of the actors. Our approach has been developed in different consultancy projects. We illustrate our approach with a consultancy project performed at a company that we will call the Amsterdam Times