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A Newly Created United Arts Fund for Our Community: Arts Alliance Tulsa (or AAT)

Aired on Monday, January 11th.

Last fall, about 40 local non-profit arts organizations joined Phil Lakin, CEO of the Tulsa Community Foundation, in launching Arts Alliance Tulsa (or AAT), a United Arts Fund that aims to provide funding for -- and audience-development support for -- the City of Tulsa's various cultural assets. (United Arts Funds, as noted at the AAT website, "seek to raise money to provide ongoing operating support to local arts institutions. Over the past 65 years, more than 100 communities across the country -- both large and small -- have established UAFs. There are currently about 60 UAFs operating in the United States.... Loosely based on the United Way model, UAFs seek to raise substantially more money [than a given organization could raise by itself] to provide ongoing operating support to their member organizations.) As Lakin noted of AAT at the time of its creation: "AAT will be of great value to so many people like me.... I don't know all the needs of our quality arts and cultural groups, but I know I want to support them, and make opportunities available to our kids and our adults, not only for observing, but also for performing." Lakin joins us today to talk more about AAT -- which will announce the specifics of its first annual fundraising campaign next month -- and we are also joined in this regard by Todd Cunningham, AAT's Executive Director.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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