Through funding, promotion and community building, the Asian American Arts Alliance is dedicated to supporting and strengthening Asian American artists and arts/cultural groups in New York City. With the city’s growing and ever-diversifying population of Asian Americans, the Alliance stays busy providing their members with access to resources, work opportunities, and audiences. Program director Nico Daswani oversees the Alliance’s programs, including events, research and new initiatives.

Who are the artist communities that you serve?

We serve artists and small arts organizations across all disciplines and aesthetics. This means that in our network we may have an Indian immigrant who is an abstract painter, a second generation Japanese-American doing traditional Japanese music, or a small multi-ethnic dance collaborative creating work on issues of identity. The range and diversity of our members, their art forms and their aesthetics is incredible. You have to come to one of our Town Halls or check out our new online platform, a4Hub, to get a sense of the cultural richness and depth of experience that exists amongst our members.

What is special about the Asian American arts communities in NYC?

I think that what is remarkable is the diversity of communities within the broader umbrella of “Asian American”. Identity politics are always evolving so the definition of term “Asian American” is never fixed. Also, our members rarely consider themselves only “Asian American”. They also feel that they belong to national, ethnic, aesthetic or other types of communities, yet they relate to the Asian American experience. It is this depth of experience across all our members combined with the ever-changing definition of what it means to be Asian American — and the implications that this can have artistically — that make this artistic community unique.

What programs and services do you provide for artists?

We serve as a platform for peer learning, resource sharing and collaboration. Our programs include our popular Town Hall, every first Tuesday of the month for artists and arts workers to pitch events, call for collaborators, learn about opportunities, and network and form partnerships; our brand new online platform, a4Hub, which is fully interactive and is like a virtual and ongoing version of Town Hall; our new Brainstorm! series of lively conversations on sources of earned income for artists, focused each time on the case study of an artist in the community; and we also send out our e-News every two weeks to more than 5,000 subscribers to highlights members, events and community news.

What are some of the highlights of your website?

We just completed a major upgrade of our web site and it is now fully interactive. On this platform, which we have nicknamed a4Hub, people can add profiles, upload their work (images, music, videos), add events, participate in forum discussions and contact each other directly. This is a big step forward for us as we strive to increase the ability for our members to have their work seen and to find meaningful partnerships. We launched it on May 1st for the start of Asian Pacific American Heritage month and we already have more than 150 profiles, hundreds of images of artwork and lots of new connections.

Have you seen an increase in demand for any of your services in particular during these tough economic times?

What we find is that people are looking for partnerships even more than before. Budgets are tight and collaborating with other artists and with people that have certain sets of skills is often the only way to get a project off the ground. In this sense, Town Hall continues to be a cornerstone event for the community, and we are working hard to make sure that a4Hub is too.

When and how do you know that you are succeeding in your mission?

We strive to make our programs high quality and relevant to the needs of our members. We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback to measure the success of our programs. I think that seeing if people come back to our events, are making working connections and are staying engaged in the community through the Alliance is one of the best ways to judge whether we are fulfilling our mission.

How people can get involved with Asian American Arts Alliance?

The simplest way to get started is to set up a profile on the new a4Hub platform and to come to one of our monthly Town Halls. The level of new connections made through Town Hall has been astounding. We serve as a gathering space for the community, so if you are interested in learning about what others are doing, want to promote your work, find collaborators and resources, we are the place!

Do you have any events coming up?

On May 24, 2010 from 6 to 7 PM we are holding the first of a series of information sessions about how to use a4Hub and how to use the platform to maximize visibility.
Location: Asian American Arts Alliance, 20 Jay Street, Suite 740, Brooklyn. RSVP here.

Our next Town Hall is on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 from 10 AM to 12 noon at Asian American/Asian Research Institute, 25 W. 43rd St, 18th floor. RSVP here.

* * * * *
If you are an arts organization based in the United States with 50 or more members, or if you have a defined constituency of 50+ artists who you support, you may be eligible to participate in Fractured Atlas’s Open Arts Network. Contact Adam Natale for more information: adam.natale@fracturedatlas.org, 212-277-8023.

Images:
1) May 6, 2010 Brainstorm! session. Photo by George Hirose.
2) Screenshot of a4Hub.
3) Cham dancers from Bhutan on Liberty Island. Photo by Diane Bondareff. Courtesy of Rubin Museum of Art.