Arts and Culture
Improving the financial and creative health of Arizona’s arts-and-culture organizations.
Flinn Arts & Culture
The Flinn Foundation supports arts and culture in Arizona principally through the Initiative for Financial and Creative Health, which helps Arizona’s largest arts-and-culture organizations identify and design strategies to impact priority capitalization needs.
The Foundation also supports SMU DataArts, which gives Arizona’s arts-and-culture sector access to standardized data to strengthen organizational effectiveness, and the Creative Communities program of the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
Flinn-Brown Fellow Sarah Douthit strives to improve criminal-justice system as county chief probation officer
Sarah Douthit, a Flinn-Brown Fellow and chief probation officer for the Coconino County Adult Probation Department in Flagstaff, was awarded funding from the Creative Communities program for an arts project that resulted in client-created murals that allowed her office to focus on the creative strengths of her clients to make a positive impact on the community.
Douthit, who also answers questions about her profession, public policy, and the Flinn-Brown Network, is dedicated to servant leadership in Arizona to promote successful outcomes and healthy communities. [Read more]
Flinn Foundation extends grantmaking response to COVID-19 in Arizona
With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening and profoundly changing Arizonans’ lives, the Flinn Foundation is offering consultations for Arizona arts-and-culture organizations with a nationally recognized financial planning expert to map out scenarios for the future.
As it looks ahead, the foundation anticipates directing the vast majority of the grant funding it has earmarked for the arts in 2020 and 2021 to help its grantee pool respond to the pressures of the pandemic. The foundation also made more than $450,000 in emergency grants to protect frontline health-care workers, accelerate development of therapeutics, and support outbreak modeling and tracking. [Read more]
Arizona Opera opens enterprising RED Series with Frank Lloyd Wright production
Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home until his death in 1959, was one of eight of the iconic architect’s buildings named UNESCO World Heritage sites in July.
And now, two months later, Arizona Opera is set to premiere a new, “Taliesin West” version of the opera “Shining Brow” for Arizona audiences, chronicling the rise of a young Wright.
This renewed version of the 1990s opera “Shining Brow” will premiere on Sept. 27 at the Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix, with additional performances on Sept. 28 and 29. The opera will also be performed at the Temple of Music and Art in Tucson Oct. 5 and 6. [Read more]
FLINNtalks: Matt Rolland | Flinn Scholar Class of 2005
Class of 2005 Flinn Scholar Matt Rolland has had a fiddle in his hand since the age of four. Best known as the bandleader and fiddle player for the Tucson-based band, Run Boy Run, Matt has performed at festivals and concert halls across the country, released six studio albums and was twice featured on American Public Media’s popular radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion.” In addition to being a touring musician and recording artist, he is the director of programs at SAACA (Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance) and serves on the board of the Tucson Folk Festival. Matt is a graduate of the University of Arizona and was a Fulbright Scholar to Mexico. [Watch the video]
Musician and entrepreneur Gerd Wuestemann enters second year leading Scottsdale Arts
For Gerd Wuestemann, having grown up in a small town in Germany, Arizona might not have seemed like the obvious choice to find his home and inspiration.
But with a last name that translates into “desert man,” it looks like his path to leading Scottsdale Arts was destined.
Wuestemann became the CEO and president of the nonprofit arts organization in March 2018. The multifaceted institution, based in Old Town fronting the lawns and fountains of Scottsdale Civic Center Mall, includes the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale Public Art, and the Scottsdale Arts Education and Outreach programs. [Read more]
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News and Updates
Arts and Culture
Flinn-Brown Fellow Sarah Douthit strives to improve criminal-justice system as county chief probation officer
Flinn-Brown Fellow Sarah Douthit (2013) is the chief probation officer for the Coconino County Adult Probation Department in Flagstaff. She has held a variety of positions in the criminal justice system in Arizona, including with Adult Parole, Adult Probations, and the Arizona Supreme Court. She is also an active member of the American Probation and […]
Arts and Culture
Flinn Foundation extends grantmaking response to COVID-19 in Arizona
With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening and profoundly changing Arizonans’ lives, the Phoenix-based Flinn Foundation has made a series of emergency grants to protect frontline health-care workers, accelerate development of therapeutics, support outbreak modeling and tracking, and help sustain vulnerable nonprofit organizations across the state. The more than $450,000 in grants have been issued to a […]
Arts and Culture
Flinn Foundation issues grant to support COVID-19 testing, cancels events
Conference center closes, staff to work from home Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Phoenix-based Flinn Foundation has issued an emergency $100,000 grant to the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) to support population-based testing of the novel coronavirus in Arizona and to help TGen immediately and dramatically ramp up its capacity to analyze individual samples for the disease. Meanwhile, following guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease […]
Arts and Culture
FLINNtalks: Matt Rolland
Matt Rolland | Class of 2005 On the road—from stockbroker, to touring musician, to arts leader Class of 2005 Flinn Scholar Matt Rolland has had a fiddle in his hand since the age of four. Best known as the bandleader and fiddle player for the Tucson-based band, Run Boy Run, Matt has performed at festivals and […]
For information about Arts and Culture, please contact:
arts@flinn.org or (602) 744-6829
Tammy McLeod, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Julie Anderson
Bioscience & Arts Program Coordinator