Louise T. Blouin Foundation

Some gems from a recent article about a new arts organization, the Louise T. Blouin Foundation:

• The international nonprofit arts organization has a wide-ranging agenda to support cultural development around the world, through research and new programs.
• Louise Blouin MacBain, a 46-year-old French-Canadian, has pledged $30 million to establish the Louise T. Blouin Center for Creativity in London and to fund the first year's program budget. MacBain said that after she learned she had dyslexia at the age of 8, she became aware of how creative many bright people with learning disabilities are, making links among seemingly disparate subjects. So through an interdisciplinary, international foundation, she said she hoped to show how creativity benefits countries economically and culturally.
• Robert Lynch, the president and chief executive of Americans for the Arts, said that he was particularly intrigued by the foundation's international ambitions and its research agenda on creativity and connections between the arts and the economy.
  “Creativity is at the core of the American economy right now,” Lynch said, adding that his group's recent study on creative industries found that 578,486 businesses in the United States alone are connected to the arts in some way.