News, interviews, speeches, and more from Barr staff, grantees, and other partners to illustrate the challenges we are focused on and what we are learning.
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New Details and Typical Grants from Barr’s Global Grantmaking Pilot
In 2010, Barr launched a pilot initiative – Barr Global – to explore if and how the Foundation could have an impact beyond Boston. Since then, the Barr Global team has been building a portfolio of projects focused on the interconnected areas of Livelihoods, Health, Environment and Education, predominantly in rural areas. From sub-Saharan Africa, to Haiti and India, the team has collaborated with a variety of partners – ranging from local grassroots organizations to foreign ministries, to internationally recognized social entrepreneurs, and large international organizations.
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Tackling the Economic, Environmental, and Social Sides to Sustainability
Blasted as the “City of the Damned” in March in Boston Magazine, Lawrence, Massachusetts gets a very different treatment in an April piece on the Smart Growth America Blog – one that features, hope, connection, and unmistakable enthusiasm for a new future that residents are creating together.
Date Posted: April 24, 2012 | Categories: Grantee Features
Topics: , climate change, great neighborhoods, lawrence, massachusetts smart growth alliance, smart growth, smart growth america, sustainability -
Barr Announces Awards to 15 Boston Arts Organizations Under New Grant Program
Can you imagine Boston without its vibrant cultural life? We can’t, either. Yet a difficult economy and the departure of several longtime arts funders have created a “new normal” for arts in Boston. After many conversations with arts grantees about how best to respond, Barr is taking a new approach to its arts grantmaking – providing deeper, longer-term support for cohorts of mid-sized arts organizations. Starting in the fall of 2011, Barr issued its first open requests for concept papers. We are pleased to introduce the 15 organizations that will receive support under this new program.
Date Posted: April 17, 2012 | Categories: Grantee Features, Barr News
Topics: , arts, cohort, economy, new normal, strategy -
From Boston to Haiti – A Barr Fellows Learning Journey
In January, 2012, a group of twelve Barr Fellows spent a week together in Haiti, during what was also the two-year anniversary of Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake. I had the opportunity to join them to help document the trip through images, video, and now this post.
Date Posted: April 10, 2012 | Categories: Barr Fellows
Topics: , barr fellows, haiti, learning journey -
Squaring Circles
How does one change the unchangeable? It happened earlier this year in Boston. After years of contentions debate and litigation, the famously unalterable Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum unveiled a new wing. The Boston Globe, called it “luminescent” – adding that the architect had “squared a circle,” with an addition that somehow leaves the Gardner unchanged, “only better.” In her first Quarterly Perspective of 2012, Pat Brandes calls for a new intuition – one that recognizes the architects of change capable of similarly “squaring circles” in the seemingly inalterable domains of climate change, public education, and global poverty. And she features examples where that kind of breakthrough thinking is on display – in a recent article from the journal Science and in the work of several new Barr grantees.
Date Posted: April 03, 2012 | Categories: Quarterly Perspectives
Topics: architecture, arts, climate change, global, isabella stewart gardner museum, renzo piano, squaring circles -
One Reality Bender’s Vow to Give Up on Chicken-Flotation Devices
At the end of February, Barr sponsored a symposium exploring the role of arts as a vehicle for raising awareness and inspiring action related to climate change. In a post on her new Change Practice blog, Barr Deputy Director, Melinda Marble offers a few takeaways from the day – including reflections on how, when faced with unexpected challenges, we often end up trying to “bend” rather than face reality, and how likely we are to promote bent-reality remedies of outside experts, who are just as blind as we to the paths of lasting change.
Date Posted: March 27, 2012 | Categories: Barr News
Topics: arts, chickens, climate change, ducks, flotation devices, maps -
New Budget Calculator Asks You to Show the T How to Find $160 Million
The MBTA – Greater Boston’s Public Transportation System – is facing a $161 million gap in its budget for fiscal year 2013. To address this gap, MBTA officials have proposed two different packages of fare increases and service cuts. At public hearings across the region in recent weeks, both proposals have met with stiff opposition. Now, a new, interactive budget calculator developed by two Barr grantees lets people come up with their own ways to close the financing gap.
Date Posted: March 20, 2012 | Categories: Grantee Features
Topics: budget, climate, dukakis center, mapc, mbta, transportation -
Barr Foundation seeks a Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture
The Barr Foundation seeks a Senior Program Officer to manage the Foundation’s Arts and Culture portfolio – a new position.
Date Posted: March 15, 2012 | Categories: Barr News, Job Opportunities
Topics: arts, culture, senior program officer -
Talking ELL’s in BPS
Over two years ago, the Gaston Institute at UMass Boston issued a scathing report on the status of English Language Learners in the Boston Public Schools. The report caught the attention of the Department of Justice, which launched an investigation. A year ago, the District and the DoJ finally reached an agreement. Recently, Pat Brandes sat down with Claudio Martinez – a Barr Fellow, Boston School Committee member, and Co-Chair of the English Language Learners Task Force. They talked about what it’s taken to move this work forward, what’s different now for kids and their families and for teachers and their schools, and what success looks like.
Date Posted: February 22, 2012 | Categories: Barr Fellows, Grantee Features
Topics: barr fellows, boston public schools, education, english language learners, immigrants, racial justice -
New and Refined Directions for Early Education at Barr
A 2011 strategy review of Barr’s approach to early education led to new and refined directions for this work in 2012 and beyond.
Date Posted: February 14, 2012 | Categories: Barr News
Topics: , early education, education, strategy