If you contribute through DonorBridge to a North Texas arts organization or other non-profit tomorrow, your gift will be matched.

The annual prize is presented by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture to a writer-scholar in the humanities who has demonstrated great promise — and is intended to encourage and assist them for their future accomplishment. A cash award of $50,000 provides the encouragement.

The National Performance Network has helped jump-start the careers of artists like the Blue Man Group, Liz Lerman and Blondell Cummings. Now the group’s coming to Dallas for it’s annual conference…and bringing opportunities for North Texas artists and performers. Guest blogger Vicki Meek fills you in:

DISD has been climbing out of the arts-education hole it dug back in the ’80s and ’90s. But it’s been able to do it with outside, non-profit money — from groups like the Wallace Foundation. We look at how Little Kids Rock is bringing the power of rock — for free — to young headbangers and songwriters in DISD.

What can arts groups do to build their audiences and make sure that number doesn’t fall again in 2010? Lower ticket prices? Program for a broader audience? Come up with new ways to get the word out about events? Drop us a comment and let’s get the conversation started.

Today in the roundup: Troubles in the Arts District, big ups for Bach and nailing the college audition.

New renderings of the visually striking Perot Museum of Nature & Science were unveiled today. The museum, being built along the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, will feature an acre of rolling Texas landscape around it as well as sustainable water and energy systems. It’ll open in 2013 but it still needs to raise another $50 million.

Ray Perryman, an Waco economist who has studied the economic impact of the arts in Texas, was the keynote speaker at Wednesday’s Arts Advocacy Day. The event drew about 60 arts leaders, who were there to learn more about how they can effectively campaign for greater monetary and media attention for the arts. After his address to the group, Perryman chatted with Art&Seek about the link between the arts and the economy.

About 60 local arts leaders gathered at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas this morning for Arts Advocacy Day. The event is designed to help arts leaders more effectively lobby city government officials for funding.

In the third management change to affect the Dallas Arts District and its performance organizations, Douglas Adams is resigning from the presidency of the DSO — effective Sept. 15. His announcement follows Mark Nerenhausen’s abrupt departure as CEO of the Performing Arts Center and Mark Hadley’s resignation as managing director of the Dallas Theater Center.