About Us
Become a fan of the Arts Fuse on Facebook: Make suggestions for what to cover in New England Arts, meet fellow Fusers, etc.
Arts Fuse is now a 501 (c) (3) non-profit. We have set up a membership program designed both to raise funds to support the project and to provide that critical, real-time experience that is still so vital to the cultural life of a city and a region. We are organizing a series of public forums and events.
Please become part of this effort to create a place for an ideal cultural dialogue, the kind that fosters an engaged community throughout New England by nurturing meaningful commentary about the arts online.
We have sent out our second monthly newsletter.
The newsletter includes a lot of news about exciting things happening at the Arts Fuse. I want to bring two items to your attention right up front.
First, we are now able to accept online, tax-deductible donations.
Second, we are offering a Founding Membership in the Arts Fuse for only $20.
I think our Founding Members will be a group you want to be part of. Think of it as the “Algonquin Roundtable of the Internet” — a gathering place of our contributors and close friends that will take place both on and off the internet. And, as with the original Algonquin Roundtable, there are quite a few surprises in store.
The Founding Membership is a limited-time offer only. While it is available, anyone who contributes $20 or more to the Arts Fuse will automatically become a Founding Member for a year.
Once the offer ends, though, we will accept no more Founding Members. Ever. After that, you will still be able to sign up but it will cost you more and you will just (alas!) be an ordinary member.
Why is it important to contribute to the Arts Fuse? For one thing, we feel if there is going to be a future for professional arts journalism, criticism, commentary, and previews in Boston, it will be through an organization like the Arts Fuse, which has been building up steam since 2007. We are a group of 30 critics and writers. We know the Massachusetts cultural scene backwards and forwards.
Another reason important to many of us is that your contributions will go directly towards paying our writers. As you know, the watchwords of the internet recently has been “everything for free.”
The downside to that mantra, though, is that if this keeps up, we will have no more professional critics at all. Newspapers and magazines are struggling. There are thousands of blogs, but how reliable are their opinions and evaluations?
So click one of the buttons below and contribute now!
Also, if you know of others who would be interested in supporting innovative and serious online coverage of the arts in New England please send them the Art Fuse newsletter
With all my thanks,
Bill Marx
staff@theartsfuse.com
To contribute via credit card, you may choose:
Razoo. Razoo is a new, online nonprofit network for charitable contributions. It is used by many arts and cultural organizations in the Boston area like the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. Razoo has taken in more than $20 million for nonprofits to date. You can donate through Razoo and be sure that your personal information will be absolutely protected. And because Razoo’s costs are covered by its own sponsors, 100% of your contribution will come to the Arts Fuse.
To contribute to the Arts Fuse via Razoo Click Here
PayPal. For those who prefer it, you can also contribute to the Arts Fuse via PayPal’s secure servers. PayPal is an on-line payment service you may know from on-line merchants like EBay. The Arts Fuse pays a small service fee to PayPal to process your contribution.
To contribute to the Arts Fuse via PayPal Click Here
For those who are more comfortable with a mail-in option, please make out your checks to Global Narratives, Inc.
Send your contribution to:
The Arts Fuse
P.O.Box 441283
Somerville, MA 02144
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The Arts Fuse Story
Starting last summer, a group of us at The Arts Fuse began to dream about what an ideal arts and culture website might look like.First of all, we decided that it should provide serious, informed criticism and opinion about the arts, not just random blog posts or “Tweets.” It should be literate, not wasting its readers’ time with rambling, poorly written copy. It should be thought-provoking. It should inspire a conversation among critics, producers, and consumers of the arts.
It should be local. A website in Seattle or Washington, DC, might provide good national political commentary, or useful garden tips, or even movie reviews, but it probably is not going to engage very directly in local theatre or the Boston jazz scene.
Finally, it should be independent and self-sustaining, not relying on free “user generated content,” hand-outs from interested parties (like the arts organizations themselves), or on hidden sugar daddies with motives of their own. It would fight for editorial and intellectual integrity.
Another thing we thought is that a good cultural website should not be entirely virtual. After all, the arts are still mostly a real-life, face-to-face activity. We don’t go to see theatre or art exhibitions on-line and chat rooms are no substitute for a good conversation after dinner.
This fall, we are starting to roll out these ideas on-line. We are introducing new and innovative features focused on the Boston and New England Community. The most visible online will be the introduction of a judicial reviewing paradigm, a fresh approach that combines editorial integrity with the community-making power of interactivity. Arts events will be evaluated by local panels of “judges” who will post majority and dissenting opinions in the form of written reviews or via video- or podcasts.
The panel will be made up of a combination of professional critics and non-professional observers. Our aim is to introduce a supervised space for educational, passionate, and incisive conversation about the arts that draws on the strengths of various levels of expertise.
Arts organizations, artists, and readers will be invited to file dissenting opinions or “friend of the court” briefs. Also, in individual blogs judges will address important issues raised by the arts in ways that encourage discussion.
– Bill Marx, Editor
