Roberto Bedoya | Arts Administration & Policy

Alumni

School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Arts Administration and Policy

Roberto Bedoya is the Cultural Affairs Manager for the city of Oakland, CA. His career-long commitment to expanding the definition of inclusion and belonging, as well as to art-based civic engagement projects, have made him a leader in the national conversation about the arts in public life.

In his previous position as Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC), Bedoya established the innovative P.L.A.C.E (People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement) Initiative to support artist initiatives, and during his tenure as Executive Director of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO), from 1996 to 2001, he developed numerous initiatives in support of artist-led alternative spaces.

Bedoya’s essays, “U.S. Cultural Policy: Its Politics of Participation, Its Creative Potential” and “Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging,” reframed the discussion on cultural policy to shed light on exclusionary practices in cultural policy decision making. He is also a poet, whose work has appeared in numerous publications, and an art consultant, with projects for Creative Capital Foundation, the Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Urban Institute.

Roberto Bedoya received his MA in Arts Administration & Policy in 2005.