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MICHAEL ALAN FELDMAN

As Principal at Transitions International, Michael Feldman provides strategic and public engagement advice to local and international arts and scholarly organizations. Michael offers demonstrated ability to advance arts, scholarly, and policy goals by implementing innovative programs to energize partners and engage audiences. Over more than 25 years, he has persuaded diverse stakeholders to devote prestige, leadership, and funding to pursue common objectives in culture, policy outreach, research, and education. He has experience engaging with the U.S. Congress, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on budget requests, funding allocations, and project oversight. Michael also curates and moderates policy discussions that investigate themes raised by theatre and other art forms. Michael is the Creator of the Theater and Policy Salon and serves as a creative producer and dramaturg for scripts and theater projects dealing with policy, cross-cultural, and global issues. Michael is also a judge for the Helen Hayes Awards, the DC area theater awards. For more than five years, Michael has worked with area theaters and cultural partners to organize theater and policy events that inspire action on local and global real world issues. Michael has been awarded successive District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) Fellowship and HumanitiesDC grants for his work on theater and policy in the context of the Theater and Policy Salon. Michael served as an Editorial Team Member at Createquity - a virtual think tank and online publication - through its sunset in 2017. Michael is a former cultural attaché and diplomat whose experience bridges the arts, development, and public policy worlds. Michael was a director at PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief; a director for Europe and Central Asia at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and professional staff of the Budget Committee of the U.S. Senate as part of a fellowship with the American Political Science Association. At the US State Department, Michael served in Europe and Central Africa; he oversaw assistance for the Balkans; and he negotiated policy with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the G-7/8 process, and the European Union. Michael graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Economics and speaks German, Czech, French and Italian.

 Arts and Policy Events

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Across the River Theater and Policy Salon

On Thursday, October 19 at 630pm, the Salon is hosting a  public event tells a story of parallel turning points in America’s troubled journey to a more perfect democracy - the 1804 Hamilton-Burr duel and January 6 - then digs into the issues facing our democracy today.   The event will be held at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC.

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October 11 event on Ukraine and Children in Conflict 
Theater and Policy Salon in DC or online hosted a performance of "The Clear Blue Skies: Diaries from Ukraine” followed by a policy conversation about Ukrainian Children and the War in Ukraine featuring a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and an expert on global children’s issues. As a follow up, the Salon is partnered on a live broadcast by C-SPAN with New York University’s DC and Prague campuses.
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MY LATEST RESEARCH AND PROJECTS

Art to Action Panel on Climate and Environmental justice. See the co-curated "From Art to Action" panel discussion for the Opening of  "Fragile Beauty" exhibition opening and on May 12, 2022 at the DCCAH Gallery at 200 I Street SE in Washington in the Navy Yard-Capitol Waterfront neighborhood.

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What does it take to "make it" as a professional artist? Here's a discussion of a new Danish research study that provides evidence of whether a formal arts education fosters success in pursuing careers as an artist.  The question that remains - especially in countries with high cost of education - is the chance to succeed as a professional artist equally available to people of all backgrounds and income levels?  

PREVIOUS EVENTS

Sec. Albright and Amb. Palous panel with excerpts from Havel's Protest at Georgetown University, produced with New Music Theatre & Czech Embassy   
Talk Tank Policy Conversations
Forum Theatre
Wall, I Call My Brothers, Nasty Women Repertory, and The State
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