Okay special double blog post today. Since my other entry was dealing with education and arts people following their passion, I felt I needed to call attention to the Emerging Leader conversation that has been transpiring in a special blogging salon on Americans for the Arts website. It started October 16 and just finished today.
There are a lot of great entries on the blog, including ones that question the definition of Emerging Leader in terms of age and experience. American’s for the Arts defines Emerging Leader as “either new to the field, with up to five years of experience, or are 35 years of age or younger.”
Ian Moss’ post on Generation Y and Entitlement garnered a long series of comments and is worth reading if have any young people working for you or ever plan to. Other participants add to the conversation like Ruby Classen’s entries on why jobbing hopping by a younger generation seeking a broader skillset can be viewed as lack of loyalty by long time arts leaders.
What was also interesting was reading that a number of veteran arts leaders were contacting people involved with organizing Emerging Leaders at Americans for the Arts and 20UNDER40 who saw these efforts as a storm the Bastille and kill the old folks.
Just as great to read the rebuttals from the veteran leaders too both as entries and comments. It shows that people from many stages in their careers are aware of these issues and engaged in these conversations.
It was also a little disconcerting to learn that because of the internal politics of some organizations, people who wanted to participate felt they had to remain silent.
People share their stories about lack of confidence they have had about their career choices and direction. This includes difficulties in finding jobs in the first place, of course. As many entries as I have linked to, it ain’t near all of them. If you have any interest in arts administration at all, bookmark the site and resolve to spend a couple minutes everyday reading a few entries until you have gotten to them all.