Catalogue readers will notice the importance of collaboration among the organizations we feature here. Music, dance, and theatre groups are presenters and performers, but they also offer programming to young people, schools, and neighborhood groups. Community arts organizations, which use the arts to address social issues or concerns, are at the same time serious about the art itself, and their work enriches the lives of participants and community members alike. Small arts groups and schools have been successful in creating partnerships with large arts organizations in DC that work with them to offer dance, music, and visual arts to children and families. Many organizations support, supplement, and seek to improve our schools in a system where the cost per pupil is high but the satisfaction low. Partnership is a big story here.

So too, alas, is the loss of funding for cultural organizations. Arts generate huge economic returns for a community – not to speak of pleasure, power, and delight – but lawmakers see them as easy targets when times are tough. Budgetary cutbacks, a declining stock market (only recently on the rebound), unemployment, and worries about war: all these affected giving this year and had a significant impact on attendance at cultural events and sites. So your support is crucial, even, perhaps especially, in hard times.