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Germany Would Like You To Perform With Confidence

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Big thanks to Rainer Glaap who sent me a link to a news report that Germany has created a $2.5 billion cancellation fund that would allow event organizers to plan shows in the third and fourth quarter of 2021 with some confidence by promising to cover any Covid related losses. They are also working on funding to mitigate against losses due to capacity restrictions.

Scholz said that the federal government would like to reimburse all costs “which were made in optimistic expectation and cannot be realised due to corona restrictions” for events in the second half of 2021. “Otherwise the pandemic will be over at some point, but there will be no concerts. And so the whole machinery with the many self-employed soloists and musicians gets back on its feet,” he added.

Scholz says he is also working on a funding program to support cultural events that are financially impacted by capacity restrictions enforced due to coronavirus, as well as hybrid shows.

Apparently Austria implemented a similar program in October and ended up putting it into practice a short time later:

The protective umbrella was put to use sooner rather than later when Austria went into lockdown on 3 November. The lockdown was lifted today, however leisure facilities and cultural institutions will not be permitted to reopen.

Similarly motivated to stimulate cultural activity, the article reports that Denmark had provided subsidies for organizing socially distanced events in September and October.

The insurance and subsidy approaches both provide interesting models for the Save Our Stages effort in the US. I suspect other countries have arrived at additional plans that would be equally viable and worth exploring.

Who Is Prioritized In Programming Decisions

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The Atlantic ran an article about how museums are having to deal with questions about equity and representation in their programming that are posed by both external and internal constituencies.

The content of the article is pretty much applicable to every arts and cultural organization, regardless of discipline because the root of the problem seems to be the process by which programming decisions are made.

The collection departments at museums don’t tend to engage with the educational staff—who help interpret exhibitions by organizing lectures and seminars that can enhance public understanding of a display’s importance—until too late. “When I was first in the art-museum world as an educator, we were presented exhibitions after they had been curated and decided upon,” she said. “And then it was our job to figure out how to teach from those exhibitions. How the content mattered, how relevant it was to our community, all those decisions were made outside my office.”

In that sense, context enters the conversation at the end of the decision-making process. And even when educators are involved, they can sometimes focus too much on scholarship—as with the “White Gold” exhibit—trapping museums in a cycle of overemphasizing academics and underemphasizing analysis in a racial and historical context, leading to misguided exhibitions. “What curatorial processes could benefit from are open-ended questions rather than setting out theses to prove,” Bradley said.

This basic scenario has long existed across arts and cultural disciplines. This is part of what people are referencing when they discuss silos in organizations. A programming decision is made by one group and then another group is tasked with marketing it to some segment of the community. What this does is put those who weren’t involved in the decision making in the position of reverse engineering a rationale for the value of the programming and trying to make it stick. A better alternative would be starting from the question of what will be valued by the community and letting the programming decisions emerge from that.

How one goes about discussing the question of what will be valued differs from place to place and organization to organization. Some of the museums mentioned in The Atlantic article received feedback from community partner organizations, others made an intentional decision to involve people without formal arts training so that the process didn’t get bogged down in academic lingo and context.

Wasn’t Looking For Substantive Discussion of Workplace Equity On An Orchestra Podcast, But There It Was

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I may owe some apologies to Drew McManus because I would have never expected that a podcast about the classical music industry would provide one of the best discussions about the complexities of workplace equity that I have heard. (And I have heard a lot, even in the last 10 days.)

The most recent episode of Shop Talk features a conversation with Ruby Lopez Harper, Americans for the Arts Senior Director of Local Arts Advancement; and Dr. Brea M. Heidelberg, Associate Professor & the Director of the Entertainment & Arts Management program at Drexel University.

The fact both guests had an established rapport from having previously worked together allowed them to move quickly to a substantive discussion of workplace equity efforts. For the most part, Drew just stood back and let them delve into the subject.

Even before they brought it up, I was already thinking about what the future might hold when workplace equity programs are no longer the hot priority for funders. It occurred to me that the test-focused values of our education system is reflected in many other aspects of our lives. (Likely the education system is also a reflection of broader values.)

Just as knowledge is only valued until a test approves of our apparent mastery, there is a feeling that once you have taken the equity seminar and received the certificate, the problematic elements have been eliminated and you are now an approved good person.

So it would make sense that there might be a similar transactional approach to funding: Once X amount of dollars has been spent on the problem and Y positive outcomes have been reported, (and as we know, every funded program comes off exactly as planned, at least in final reports), then the bulk of the important work as been done and the funder can move on.

It also occurred to me that the mindset of orchestra musicians, though not necessarily the boards and administration that run the organizations, might be among the best suited for work place equity efforts. Musicians know that the attainment of knowledge and ability is not complete when a passing grade is received but rather it is a lifelong pursuit of self-improvement — much as the pursuit of equity.

Kudos to Drew for pulling this off. This is not an easy topic to get honest, quality discourse on. Take a listen.

As Drew writes,

…it’s more frank than candid and I mean that in the best possible way. Even if you don’t think you’re the sort of person who “needs” to hear this, you do. If you’re white, you’ll probably feel uncomfortable, but again, only in the best possible way. Don’t miss the section on #TraumaEntrapment around the 40min mark.

Economists Don’t Like Economic Impact Studies?

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Michael Rushton is singing my song. Today he posted a critique of using economic impact as a measure of the value of the arts. It is “quick and dirty” as he says, so it won’t take much time to read the whole thing.

I have made many similar posts before, but what I appreciated about his post was that he points out not only are arts and culture not so special that something else can’t be substituted in its place, but the economic impact data is not useful for making policy decisions. I had noted the substitution problem 13 years ago, but the issue of usefulness of the data for policy making hadn’t gelled for me before today. (Rushton’s emphasis)

And so, to consider an arts example, suppose a mayor says “we should spend money building a new performing arts center. Construction costs would be $3 million, and the total economic impact of the construction would be $7.5 million”. An economist would say: “you could do a lot with $3 million: you could repair infrastructure, you could expand after school programs, you could lower taxes by $3 million and leave it to individuals to have more money to spend. Any of those options would also have ‘economic impact’. So ‘economic impact’ doesn’t justify spending on the performing arts center. What would justify a new PAC would be if the public benefits from using it exceeded the costs of building it and running it, i.e. a proper cost-benefit analysis. Building a PAC is a cost, it is not the benefit.”

Economists don’t like “Economic Impact” studies – they know that the conception of them is wrong, and they lead to bad reasoning.

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…I’ve studied this subject for twenty-five years, and have never seen evidence that economic studies have informed decisions on public spending on the arts.

Second, the numbers don’t give any policy guidance. Suppose I were to tell you that the annual economic impact of the nonprofit arts sector in Bloomington is $73 million. If you were on city council, what would that tell you? That arts support should be increased? Or decreased? That this is a very big number? Or about what one would expect? That we should increase spending on arts program X but decrease it on arts program Y? I have never seen a policy decision where the economic impact number made a difference. (To see this, imagine that I told you “I’m sorry, I made a typing mistake, it’s not $73 million, it is $63 million”. How would that correction affect any arts policy decision?).

Government Cultural Policy Making For The Unknown

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Last day in my series this week covering the UNESCO document, Culture in crisis: Policy guide for a resilient creative sector. Big thanks again to Rainer Glaap for calling attention to it. As much as I try to keep an eye on international culture developments, Rainer is much more plugged in than I am. I definitely benefit from his multi-lingual fluency.

The last section of the UNESCO policy guide, Enhancing the competitiveness of cultural and creative industries, is couched in much broader terms than the previous sections.  This is largely because it is focused on assessing what the next normal post-Covid will be and creating policies to support training and development of cultural & creative entities to operate in that unknown environment.

The subsections here are: Participatory needs assessment and feasibility studies; Adapting business models; promoting national content; tax incentives for foreign investment.

The needs assessment section advocates needs assessment and feasibility studies to see what will help the creative sector. They advise taking the time to clearly understand needs, but don’t make perfect the enemy of the good and delay implementing the first phases of needed relief until the most complete study had been made.

Adapting business models is an area that is familiar to anyone who has participated in the digital delivery vs. live experience debate. The document says the old models will no longer be valid so work needs to be done to understand, implement and support the new models. While there is a suggestion that the next normal will involve digital, it also allows that this may not ultimately be what emerges as a dominant practice.

Indeed in a recent podcast interview Drew McManus did with Scott Silberstein and Mark Larson, it was noted that when TV first became a new medium, people didn’t understand its full potential and were basically doing radio shows on TV.

In previous entries, I hadn’t really called attention to the good practices portion of each section where they list what different countries are doing as examples of what is being proposed. However, I did want to call attention to the partnership between Mexico City and Buenos Aires mentioned here. If two cities in two different countries can partner to provide content to their respective audiences, there is definitely an opportunity for cities in different states within a country like the US, (or provinces/territories in Canada, etc) to work together to illuminate the value of the resources in their cities:

The Culture Secretariat of Mexico City, Mexico and the Ministry of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina agreed, in April 2020, to combine their digital information and dissemination platforms to present the diverse artistic and cultural expressions of both countries to wider audiences, using the most modern technological means.  Thanks to this agreement, the Mexican platform “Capital Cultural en Nuestra Casa” (Capital of Culture at Home) and the Argentine platform “Cultura en Casa” (Culture at Home) offer a wide variety of programs that are part of the cultural life of both cities.

The Promoting national content section of the guide seems focused on emphasizing the value of domestic content over that of international content. I suspect that the international content they have in mind originate from pop culture producers like the U.S. At the same time, I don’t think I am alone in feeling the U.S. government does a poorer job of promoting its non-movie/television/streaming creative content both domestically and internationally so this is definitely a tip to be embraced all around the world.

On the other hand, the last section of the guide, Tax incentives for foreign investment, pretty much promotes the use of tax credits to attract foreign film and television production to different countries.

In any case, these three entries have been a significant summary of the content of this document. If anything written in the first or second entries catches your attention, take the time to do a deeper dive.

 

Saving Culture and Creativity Without Compromising Their Best Interests

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Very big THANK YOU to friend of the blog Rainer Glaap who sent me a link to an UNESCO document, Culture in crisis: Policy guide for a resilient creative sector. At this point I think I am going to approach this document over the course of multiple entries because there is so much I see to talk about. At 56 pages, it probably isn’t comprehensive but the suggestions it makes are well-considered.

UNESCO proposes three different areas in which governments can take action to support the culture and creative industries in light of the impact Covid has had upon them: 1 – Direct Support for Artists and Cultural Professional; 2- Support for Sectors of the Cultural and Creative Industries; and 3- Strengthening the competitiveness of the cultural and creative industries.

They have a number of proposed measures within each area. Today I am going to focus on the Direct Support area which had four suggested course of action areas: Social Benefits, Commissioning and purchase of works, Compensation for loss of Income and Skills Development.

I am going to provide screenshots of the content because I think they do such a good job presenting it. In each section they describe the measure, explain why it should be chosen, things to consider, pitfalls to avoid and then examples of good programs in different countries with different budget resources.

I appreciate the international perspective for the wide range of ideas of how to approach Covid related challenges, but also because it acknowledges not every country has the resources of a large industrialized nation, but can take effective measures to cultivate and preserve creative and cultural resources and practitioners.

What I really loved was Actions to Consider and Pitfalls to Avoid sections of each area because they anticipate things like support being perceived as hand outs or make work schemes as well as the problems with employing institutional standards to individual practice.

This is the one for the Social Benefit measure

Here is the one for commissioning work.  Take note about the concern for maintaining intellectual property rights, valuing the work properly, supporting artists but guarding against institutional seizure of power.

Here is the one for compensation of lost income. Note the concern for proper remuneration for female artists.

Finally, the skills development measure which is focused on experimenting so creatives are ready for the next normal.  Note that among the concerns is that this not be viewed as a stopgap until things revert back to “normal” as well as that the skills developed be put into practice quickly.

As I mentioned, there are also explanations of each category and examples of good international practices which I didn’t screenshot for this post so definitely check out the document to learn more.

We Are Gonna Need A Slower Elevator

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There has been an ongoing conversation among the arts community that there needs to be less effort invested in selling people on an arts experience and more listening to people to find out what they are looking for.

Seth Godin made a post earlier this month that encompassed that when he suggested substituting the elevator pitch with the elevator question.

The alternative is the elevator question, not the elevator pitch. To begin a conversation–not about you, but about the person you’re hoping to connect with. If you know who they are and what they want, it’s a lot more likely you can figure out if they’re a good fit for who you are and what you want. And you can take the opportunity to help them find what they need, especially if it’s not from you.

[…]

Instead of looking at everyone as someone who could fund you or buy from you or hire you, it might help to imagine that almost no one can do those things, but there are plenty of people you might be able to help in some other way, even if it’s only to respect them enough to not make a pitch.

The truth is, unless you are in the presence of a very narrow demographic, chances are that few people you meet can fund or buy from you. Since we know that the narrow demographic most inclined to buy from us is not sufficient to support our work long term, you do need to talk to a lot of people whose general inclination toward the arts and your organization is less known. Therefore the elevator question is going to be better alternative.

Of course, the elevator part is a misnomer for this concept because there is likely no way the conversation will effectively be completed on an elevator trip between floors. It may be months or years.

Just because you aren’t practicing to deliver a frantically paced pitch between floors doesn’t mean you should neglect to provide a focused introduction of yourself and the work you and your organization does. There is so much more you can talk about if you aren’t trying to milk a sale out of precious seconds, but people will appreciate an organized, interesting self-introduction as much as they appreciate not feeling hustled to buy into something.

Don’t Forget Lessons Learned About Business Insurance

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One of the panel sessions at the recent Arts Midwest-Western Arts Alliance virtual conference was on Reopening. The one panelist that really caught my attention was Anna Glass, Executive Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH).

She said when the Covid emergency hit, the Cultural Institutions Group, a collection of major arts institutions in NYC area which had been organized some years prior, provided a great resource for information sharing during the crisis.  Apparently there were group calls seven days a week for the first two months to discuss the issues and they have scaled back to four times a week now. The group organized itself into various working groups to help figure out solutions to problems and organize advocacy efforts.

Glass is the co-leader of the insurance working group and spoke about the rude awakening groups like hers had when they discovered how lacking their insurance policies were.  One thing they didn’t realize was that there were caps on the amount of money their policies would pay out. So while DTH face the cancellations of events that annually brought in over $1 million, their policies were capped at $30,000. On top of that, while they were so sure that they could make a business interruption claim based on government action due to Gov. Cuomo’s executive order, they learned their policies would only cover them if there was physical damage to their buildings.

Glass said her insurance working group provided a lot of information to the greater Cultural Institutions Group membership about how to read their policies, make claims, etc. The working group encouraged everyone to make a claim even if they didn’t think they had a chance of having it approved just to make some noise about the issues with business insurance.

Glass said she paying greater attention to her insurance policies and really pushed back on her (previous) insurance broker for “not working for me.” She is determined not to make the same mistake twice.

The brief silver lining Glass sees in all this is that arts organizations in the NYC area are cooperating, collaborating and advocating as a unified groups in a way they hadn’t before. She hopes that becomes an ingrained habit/practice moving forward.

I wanted to bring this up in general for the broader lessons about cooperation and advocacy this has for us all, but specifically to remind people to pay attention to things like insurance policies and contracts moving forward. I am sure it will be nigh impossible to get appropriate coverage for epidemics, but you still need to think seriously about what types of coverage you need and what you will or won’t accept from a policy. There is so much other crap going on right now, it will be hard to effect change but eventually there will likely be a movement to reform insurance coverage.

What I Opposed In Good Times I Praise You For In Bad

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Recently I have been talking about how Covid times have brought a greater tolerance on the part of boards/audiences for experimentation with programming choices. I guess I have been talking about it with colleagues and co-workers because when I went to find my post I made so I could link to it, I couldn’t find it.

In any case, Drew McManus posted another episode of his Shop Talk podcast today where he talks with Jeff Vom Saal, Executive Director of Spokane Symphony & Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox and Zak Vassar, President & CEO of the Toledo Alliance for the Performing Arts.

At around the 16 min mark, Drew talks about the difference between creativity and innovation and notes there really hasn’t been a lot of the latter in the orchestra world and in fact many great administrators have been punished by boards and donors for pushing boundaries and taking risks. He says now arts organizations are paying the price for failing to become nimble enough to respond to the current challenges.

Vassar responds by talking about a trustee that recently pulled him aside and said:

“You’re trying to do something that in a good economy I would have voted down everyday of the week. But now is the time to experiment and to be nimble and to learn what we didn’t know and learn how to do it better. Because by the time the economy and the world comes back online, you’re gonna be at least one hare’s run faster on the track than the slowest tortoise…”

Let’s just ponder that for a second. I am not saying organizational staff don’t buy into this sort of thinking as well, but just imagine having a board member tell you that they would have fought you tooth and nail in better economic times, but now that you are really wondering about how you are going to meet payroll, have no audience willing to show up, slimmer fundraising prospect and almost no staff to pursue donations and grants, this is the best time to invest non-existent time, energy and resources into innovating?

I understand that when you feel you have nothing left to lose and find your perceived competitors on a level playing field (or teetering at the edge of the field) it seems like seeking new pathways is the best course of action.

Why were the decisions we are making now problematic when the economy was better and there was more ability to mitigate the impact of failure?

Perhaps the first thing in need of change the organizational dynamics that won’t tolerate change until complete failure is imminent.

We have seen the results of this type of thinking for decades – people rally around an organization at the moment its existence is imperiled. Those cases are isolated and individual. Now everyone is imperiled and we realize there is a need for a broad, communal rally–probably necessitating listening more to the other people at the rally.

Or more aptly in the terms of this metaphor, inviting a lot more people to the rally than in the past and listening to them.

If you have a board member that is either explicitly or implicitly communicating they would have opposed you before, but now they are willing to support you, you need to have a very honest talk that makes it clear there can be no return to those old modes of thinking when the economic picture improves. While the economy may improve, the operating environment and expectations people have will not return to what they were before.

Budgeting More Money For Culture, Despite Covid. You Can Probably Guess Where

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Last week Artnet reported that Germany’s 2021 draft budget held an increase in funding for cultural organizations in the country.

You may recall that I made a post in May that clarified German cultural organizations didn’t receive $54 billion in aid as had widely been reported.

German arts administrator Rainer Glaap had brought the misunderstanding to my attention and provided links to stories that explained that the money was spread across a wide swath of industries and that since each German state had their own programs and interpretations of how funding was to be used benefits to cultural entities varied wildly with freelance artists often receiving short shrift.

The most recent story seems to be more specifically focused on funding for cultural entities since the budget numbers cited are $2.26 billion and it quotes the German culture minister

Culture minister Monika Grütters says that such a strong budget for the final year before the German elections underscores the country’s commitment to culture, especially on top of its existing billion-dollar coronavirus rescue program.

“Especially in times of crisis, culture is the foundation of our social cohesion,” Grütters says in a statement. “Art, culture, and the media make us aware time and again of our great privilege to live in a country of freedom of the press, culture, and opinion, where controversial debates are possible, desired, and endurable. The protection of these freedoms remains the highest principle of federal cultural policy.”

The German government’s cultural budget has grown by about 60 percent since Grütters took office in 2013, and 85 percent since the German chancellor Angela Merkel came to power in 2005.

The story doesn’t really get into whether the different states were taking steps to make sure freelancers and small business groups were better able to access funding or other supports than previously.

 

While the erroneous $54 billion amount had caused no shortage of envy among arts and cultural professions last Spring,  I wanted to point out prioritizing culture is not an outlier. Not only has improving funding for cultural organizations been a priority this year, it has been a priority for over a decade. It should be noted, this budget has to be approved by the German Senate before it is put in effect.

Artist Waits 50 Years For A Wrong To Be Righted

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Quick post today since I am going to link to something longer worth reading.

The venue I run is associated with a university across town that made things right for an alum after it was deferred for 50 years. One of the first Black women admitted to the university back in the 60s was pursuing a career in medical illustration and so was majoring in both biology and art. However, as a result of some racist motivations, the chair of the art department at the time denied her an opportunity to mount a final exhibit. As a result, she was able to graduate with the biology degree, but not the art degree.

That student, Gwendolyn Middleton Payton, had a chance midnight meeting at the Atlanta airport with one of the university history faculty and happened to relate her story. The faculty member advocated for her leading to Payton receiving her final exhibit and degree last Friday.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) wrote an extensive story I referenced earlier. If you are interested, there is a video on Facebook of Payton’s remarks at the exhibit.

Our marketing director was responsible for shepherding a lot of the details along, including the AJC interview and had mentioned Payton’s son was on The Walking Dead. For some reason, I didn’t make the connection that her son is Khary Payton, who I actually knew better as a voice actor for a lot of superhero cartoons, until his mother mentioned him in her talk.

Through our marketing director, I learned some roadblocks and assumptions that thwarted her earlier efforts to get her full degree that illustrated people did not appreciate the enormity of the challenges Payton faced. She said she had to pick her battles and if you read the AJC article, you will see she fought a lot. She just chose not to fight the final exhibition battle when graduation was imminent.

The Man Who Decided To Raise Artists Instead of Chickens

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It was with some sorrow that I learned this week that a great man who has literally been part of the grassroots effort to provide arts experiences to young people died last week. Albert Appel who, with his wife Clare, founded, or he might say floundered, into establishing an arts and music camp just turned 98 on July 5. A tribute to his life appears on the Appel Farm Arts and Music Campus website.

When I say he was literally part of a grassroots effort, it is because when he and his wife started giving music lessons to neighbor kids back around 1960, he was running a farm with 20,000 chickens, feed crops, and other animals. Gradually, the chickens began to be replaced by children. Again, literally. When I worked on the concert presenting side of the organization back in the early 2000s, two of the camp dorms were still refurbished chicken coops and were referred to as North & South Coop.

Albert, and his wife Clare, who had passed away before I started working there, are an admonishment against making assumptions about the artistic interests and capabilities of farmers. Albert trained to be a farmer, but he also played violin. He actually met Clare when friends told him they needed a violinist to fill out their string quartet.

The way Albert liked to tell it, he and Clare started the camp because kids would come over for music lessons and would never go home so he started charging their parents to let them hang around his house.

When I moved to South Jersey to take the job in winter 2000, I was told I could live in Albert’s house until I found a place of my own. I was given two room that used to be offices for the camp. As you moved through Albert’s house you could see that they had continued to add on to the house to accommodate camp activities. There were also some out buildings behind the house that got used. Finally, they moved a lot of the operations across the road–into the chicken coops, among other buildings. However, some of the original rooms continued to be used as living quarters for the camp counselors and staff during my tenure there.

The founding philosophy of the camp was that every kid has the capacity for creative expression. Come to think of it, working there may have serve to form my own views along those lines. A camper’s day was spent pursuing one major and two minors. The major was the area they identified as their core interest or area of experience and the minors were things they hadn’t really done, but wanted to explore. The subjects ranged from acting, dancing, music, ceramics, painting, photography, creative writing, video production.

Due to security concerns, folks like myself who didn’t work for the camp program weren’t generally allowed on the grounds past the administration building. However, I frequently helped distribute the mail and even without hearing them say it, it was clear that for a lot of those kids camp was a place they felt they could be themselves surrounded by people with similar interests versus who they had to be at home and at school.

But as I said, I wasn’t directly involved with the camp. My job was to run the operations for the concert series and music festival as well as to support the school outreach efforts. I count myself lucky to have lived in Albert’s house for a short time because even after I moved out, I would get invited to join him and his second wife, Peimin, when they were entertaining guests. Often it was groups like the Corigliano Quartet who were staying over in preparation for school residencies.

Albert would often pull out his violin to play or talk about his children’s music lessons on various instruments. Nearly all of Albert’s children play an instrument to some extent or another. His son Toby is a violist on the Julliard faculty. One story I recall involved inducements for him to practice piano. There are also a couple wild stories about Albert I heard from his kids.

Albert was definitely a character. Even though the livestock and poultry mostly departed the farm, all campers were required to work in the camp garden and the vegetables all made it to the kitchen for meals. Albert often gave the gardeners a hard time about how they were going about planting. A farmer can never really retire. He was just as passionate about creating an environment for people to cut loose with creative expression. At 80, he was pulling out his violin to play beside the campers. You would also hear the low drone of the instrument across the fields in the middle of the winter.

Obviously at 98, his death wasn’t unexpected but it is still saddening. Though at his 80th birthday party, he kept joking that if he had known he would live as long as he had, he would have taken better care of himself and he might have already made it to 90. Apparently someone was taking good care of him if he was so seriously pushing 100.

His legacy runs much deeper than thousands of kids attending arts camp over 60 years. As I mentioned, when I worked there the other nine months of the year were devoted to a concert series, school outreach programs and a pretty active conference calendar. Shortly after I left, Appel Farm started offering afternoon and evening arts classes to kids and adults and were the arts content provider for a local school district.

Now they have added a Families to College program that works with the whole family to provide an environment aligned with increasing the chances of success for college bound students. They are also involved with providing a charter school STEAM program. In a rural portion of southern NJ, programs like these can have big impacts.

I am sure there has been some positive impact on the economy of Elmer, NJ and Salem County that wouldn’t have existed if Appel Farm Arts and Music Center wasn’t there. But when we talk about the value of the arts, few would have the patience to wait 90 years, or smaller increment thereof, to see the result of giving 8 year old Albert music lessons. (Or his wife Clare for that matter, I am told she eclipsed him in passion for the camp’s mission.) And yet, there are thousands upon thousands of people who will attest to the immeasurable value of their experiences.

What’s This Soft Landing Thing You Speak Of?

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This week Vu Le at the Nonprofit AF wrote a pretty thought provoking post about the way the left-leaning non-profit sector consumes, rather than supports, its leaders as more conservative focused groups do. Le had recently left his job when someone reached out to ask if he had a “soft landing.”

I got to understand what Angie meant by “soft landing.” This is what conservatives do for their leaders. They provide them with support to ensure that their work continues….They understand that their most effective leaders are their greatest weapon, so they do everything they can to protect and invest in them and their ideas.

The progressive side, meanwhile, treats people like batteries. Batteries are only as valuable when they have any juice left to power machines. As soon as they are empty, they are worthless and you toss them and you get fresh batteries. People burn out, they leave and are sometimes never heard from again, and we are OK with it, because we just find new people/batteries to replace them with…As Pia Infante of The Whitman Institute said, “The right invests in people and ideas; the left invests in projects and programs.”

Le goes on to enumerate how this manifests. It isn’t just that arrangements might be made for a conservative to get a book deal, a job with a think tank, or a seat on a company’s board of directors where a progressive won’t. He notes that if organizational leadership transitions, funders will take a wait and see attitude before continuing to support them as if the good work the organization had done was inseparable from the leader.

Le speaks of his own experience working with foundation program officers for decades and having them tell him an innovative idea he has to expand the impact of his organization work doesn’t align with the foundation priorities. He says if funders sincerely want to make the difference they profess they do, they need to at least trust those with whom they have a long relationship to execute what is needed.

He provides a good number of other examples that are worth reading and considering. He ends his post with a bright bit of hope. The woman who had contacted him about his soft landing came through with a grant that will support Vu Le during a time when his speaking engagements were cancelling.

“What’s the catch?” I asked Angie skeptically. Funders had reached out with encouraging words, but almost none had offered financial assistance. “Are there metrics, outcomes? Do I need to pay it back?” I asked. “No,” she said, “just keep writing or working on your sketch comedy show or whatever. Your voice is important, and for everyone who wants to see the nonprofit sector and its funders change, we need you.”

Talking More About The Real DNA of Your Successes

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Nina Simon was recently a guest on a podcast hosted by Culture Reset. As always, I find anything she has to say increases my contemplation about the way arts organizations, including my own, operate and interact with the community.

There was one part of Nina’s commentary about her career that caught my attention because it resonates closely with a central topic I have been writing on for a couple years. (By the way, MANY thanks to Culture Reset for providing a transcript of the podcast, I was not looking forward to having to transcribe this by ear.) (also, my emphasis)

…I identify very quickly the board cared about attendance, dollars and good press. And so I said, ‘OK, I’m going to make change in the direction I want, that generates those outcomes, and then I’m going to show them those numbers on a platter. And I’m going to tell them here are the activities, the weird activities we did that led to those outcomes. And I am going to buy myself more and more space to pursue this strategy as long as it delivers these outcomes.

But the fatal mistake I made is that (and this is very personal for me. I actually haven’t talked about this before) is that as the years went on and we did more and more of this work, I kept delivering those same outcomes to the board and I delivered the strategy where we shared that area of change, we shared all the data, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when I was getting ready to leave and when they started to recruit my successor, there was a real battle that was rooted in the fact I think, that the board had never fully internalised these strategies, led to those outcomes. And that is my fault because it was easier for me to sell them those outcomes and have them nod and be happy and for me to go on with my team doing the great work we were doing than it was to really say to them, we’ve got to talk about how different this is and what we are willing to do to keep this, you know, that what is in the DNA of the success that you’re so proud of.

While anecdotal, this is another example of why we can’t continue to simply use economic value of the arts as a justification of its existence.

As I have quoted Carter Gillies a number of times before in connection with this idea:

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient. That’s never only what they are to us. Sometimes we just have to make the case for a lesser value as the expedient means to secure funding or policy decisions. It’s better than not making any sense at all.

Nina basically says at first she used these metrics to help her gain some room to operate so that the board would be more open to some of the more orthodox approaches she was looking to implement. If you know Nina’s history, with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, you know it was in dire shape when she took up the mantle of executive director so there was a need to implement a turn around couched in the terms that met the board’s criteria of success.

But even in the face a wondrous revitalization which included a growth in staff and attendance and a expansion into adjoining property, she and the board never got around to having a serious conversation about the fact that it was those wacky ideas she and the staff implemented that made people feel the museum was a place made for them. The metrics they were looking for followed that effort, but the metrics weren’t the measure of the organization’s success.  The measure was that people felt heard, represented, and respected. To them museum was more invested in them than before, and they became more invested in turn and showed up at the door.

The conversation Nina regrets not having needs to happen more often and it will get easier with each attempt. (Not to mention it is the stuff of good grant narratives.)

Success isn’t a matter of good budgeting, advertising and the highest quality programs the organization can afford. From what I remember, I think some of the stuff Nina did that people engaged with most involved activity prompts, paper, and magic markers.  Success is a matter of the highest quality experiences and interactions.

One of the stand out memories I have of this past Friday is a conversation our marketing director had while asking permission to take the picture of three little girls in a very unsocially distanced hug where one declared “She is practically my best friend!” There wasn’t any special investment on our part, though the father appreciated being asked if we could snap the photo, but it was pretty clear that despite all the Covid related signs and paraphernalia, the group felt good about the interactions they were having.

It often doesn’t take much to help people feel they, their family and friends are welcome. What can be tough is asking and correctly discerning what the things that make them feel welcome are and deciding to effect the changes to include them.

Even Covid Can’t Stop Translating Plan Into Action

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If readers have been paying close attention, you probably know I currently run an historic theater in Macon, GA. Last week, the Macon Arts Alliance released the cultural master plan the community had been working on for the previous year or so. It won’t surprise you to learn that it had originally been slated to be released at the start of March, but concerns over coronavirus delayed that. There is likely some argument to be made that the plan should have been released at a later time when things were more stable, especially since it calls for the creation of a cultural liaison staff position by a county government facing a financially problematic environment.

However, the plan was developed in parallel with the next iteration of the county master plan and the current election cycle will see a change of mayor and council members so it was important to get the cultural master plan into circulation.

I participated in about 90% of the public meetings that were held for the plan, plus served on a subcommittee so I have some investment in it. Macon is fortunate in that it is one of the communities in which the Knight Foundation is highly active. They, alongside a number of other local foundations, provided the funding needed to bring a team from Lord Cultural Resources to conduct all the meetings and data crunching.

One thing I feel the cultural plan does well is acknowledge the connection between race, household income and access to cultural assets:

The majority of assets are located in or around downtown Macon. Average income in the downtown area is in a lower tier ($14,700-60,600); this is because, despite higher rents in new downtown developments, many students live in the downtown area. Beyond downtown, most cultural assets are located west of the Ocmulgee River, where income is higher on average. Macon’s large African-American community can be better served, as currently most assets are clustered in areas with whiter populations. The east side, where incomes are generally lower, has relatively few cultural assets beyond key attractions such the Ocmulgee Mounds, Fort Hawkins, and the recently renovated Mill Hill Community Arts Center.

The video that accompanies the plan almost immediately acknowledges the perception of crime and blight associated with the community. These same issues came up repeatedly in the community conversations that informed the plan. In fact, one of the biggest lingering image problems that exists is that the downtown isn’t safe. So while a lot of the cultural assets may be downtown, they may not be accessed as much as they could be. (I obviously have a vested interest being the leader of one of those assets.)

While I think the plan is still oriented too much on a conventional concept of arts and culture, (I grumble at the Bach underscoring a video for a community that boasts significant rock and soul roots), even before the protests surrounding George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, there was an acknowledgement of the work that needed to be done to create a more equitable environment in the community.

Keeping in mind my frequent refrain not to engaged in whole cloth adoption of bylaws, policies, etc of other organizations as your own, I link to the plan for communities that might be considering similar efforts so you can get a sense of the things you need to be considering and addressing.

 

Yeah, I Have Weird Feelings, Too

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Hat tip to the National Endowment for the Arts for linking to this video of an 11 year old taking The Bob Ross Challenge – basically trying to keep up and replicate Bob Ross’ painting instructions as he relates them during an episode of his show.

The kid, Khary Halsey, an avowed Bob Ross fan since he was six, is charming and hilarious just on his own. But it is right at the end of the video that he says something that encompasses what the creative experience should be for everyone, “From the looks of it, I did horrible, but I feel great.”

Okay, so obviously people shouldn’t always think they did horrible, it is the satisfaction and enjoyment of the experience regardless of the perceived quality of the product that I am advocating as the ideal.

Khary isn’t sure if he is supposed to be having this contradictory experience so he follows up saying, “I have weird feelings.”   The truth is, those feelings are quite normal and shared by a lot of people, including, I am sure many with long careers in the arts.  There are a lot messages we get throughout the day, both overt and subtle,  that equate quality with marketability. (And don’t get us started on “you shouldn’t expect to get paid if you are having fun.”)

Do We Need Hysterical Strength To Bring About Required Change?

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It appears Indiana University’s Center for Cultural Affairs was having some sort of virtual convening around the topic of New. Not Normal: Artists, the Creative Sector, and Innovation after the Pandemic. I only became aware of it because I was starting to see the videos recorded by some of the featured speakers appear in my Twitter feed today.

I watched the videos by economist Tyler Cowen and self-described philanthropy wonk Lucy Bernholz, both of whom had some thoughts about what the post-Covid future held for the arts. However, the person who envisioned the greatest necessity for transformational change was artist/activity Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

His suggestion was that instead of paying artists to create new works, they should be contracted to lead organizational leadership and stakeholders through a process of envisioning the role the organization should play in the community. In his words, rethinking theater as a site for creative wellness. This is based on the assumption that performing arts organizations can no longer exist with the goal of filling every seat. Even absent restrictions by governments, people will be reticent to return.

As an aside, something that has occurred to me that one has mentioned. If there is any group that turns out to attend performances in sufficient numbers to make an event financially viable, assuming they don’t become severely ill, their influence on what happens in arts and cultural may be cemented for decades to come. Depending on who constitutes that group of attendees, it could either be productive or detrimental in the long term.

Joseph says the smart performing arts entities will be those that embrace

“…social practice artistry, public health, fiscal health, brand expansion, digital production, embodied creative commons…how could currently empty theatres and music halls be utilized in service of social health, used as food service platforms, or testing sites or polling places or spill over waiting rooms for hospitals.”

Near the end of his video, citing the superhuman feats people are capable of when faced with a situation of alarming urgency, he suggests that the pandemic provides both the motivation and “hysterical strength” to rescue the collective arts and culture community from the threat being faced. Though he likens the strength of courage to that of survival so he may not be suggesting we are experiencing a type of disaster that gives rise to instinctive terror.

 

Get Legit Data About Covid-19’s Influence On Your Audience

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N.B. I just noticed the deadline to apply to participate in end of day, Thursday, April 23 so if you have an interest, send an email to Matthew Jenetopulos listed at the bottom of the Culture Track page.

Long time readers of the blog know that I am a big fan of the results of the Culture Track survey conducted every three years to gauge shifting attitudes and perceptions about cultural activities. The people behind the survey, LaPlaca Cohen are teaming up with Slover Linett Audience Research to conduct a special Covid-19 version of their research project and are looking for arts and cultural organizations to help distribute a survey to their audiences.

While you may be reluctant to ask your audiences to complete a survey during challenging times, it can be quite worth your while to participate because Culture Track will provide you with the results for your mailing list in the context of national trends.

You’re probably interested in this study because you want to understand your audience’s and community’s needs at this crucial time, and because you want to be able to earn their continued engagement and support. We’re working to develop an online interface that will let you log in to view your audience-members’ survey responses and download that data for your own use (with no visibility into the data of other organizations’ survey respondents). We’re hoping that this tool will also let you compare your data to the U.S. population averages and to the aggregate of other cultural audiences nationally. Of course, we’ll also be creating a series of special-edition Culture Track reports and web materials based on our analysis of all the data, which will be freely available online.

I had gotten an email about the study a week ago but it slipped my mind amid all daily challenges we face so I have to credit Nina Simon for reminding me and getting me moving on it. (And also for providing a title for this post)

The Wallace Foundation is funding the effort so there will be no cost to you. They will provide you with a unique link to send to a segment of your mailing list. Segment is the operative word. They ask that you send the survey link to people who have both high engagement as subscribers/donors/multi-year ticket buyers, as well as those who have only attended once or twice across a couple years or may be on your email list but haven’t attended yet.

They want participation from the entire range of cultural entities,

of every size and focus — including community-serving, culturally specific, and socially engaged organizations — from art museums, history museums & historic sites, science centers & natural history museums, and botanic gardens to theaters, orchestras, dance companies, opera companies, film festivals, folk festivals, libraries, and the like.

In another part of the webpage, they reference people who provide writing classes or use art in healthcare environments so they definitely want everyone.

They would like the first wave of survey links to go out on Wednesday, April 29 so if any of this sounds appealing to you at all, check out the informational webpage and figure out what you need to do to make it happen.

Thought Exercises About Your Revamped Future Organization

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Non-Profit Quarterly recently wrote about the big impact the closure of libraries during coronavirus has had on communities. In recent years there have been people who have opined that libraries don’t serve a purpose because nobody reads, etc. and should be shutdown. Now everyone gets to see the implications of that.

In addition to being a place where people grab books and do their homework, libraries have long provided a raft of community services from available meeting spaces, use of computers, mentoring, shelter for homeless, life skill classes. When I served on a library system board of directors, I was always amazed by the amount of income came in a nickel or dime at a time during this time of year as people photocopied tax forms.

All those services are inaccessible now. My local libraries are boosting/relocating their wifi modems so that people can sit in the parking lot and use the internet. Staff is also streaming themselves reading books for kids. If you have access to the right devices, you can download ebooks. But all the historical archives and other resources are locked away.

According to the NPQ article, some libraries are using their 3D printers to make facemasks for the community and medical staff.

I bring this to your attention because as pointed out in the Wired article NPQ links to, during bad economic times the budgets of libraries get cut. So as bad as things are now, the situation may not get much better once the libraries open their doors again. Everyone knows they can’t access these services now, but once the library opens, people will be looking to use them again and they may not be there.

In some cases, budget cuts may literally create a situation where a library is literally no longer there. Certainly that may be the case for a lot of arts & cultural non-profits.

As a person in the creative field, you may be pondering how your organization or how you as an individual might have to change your business model or scope of activity to reflect the changes the current situation may create. There are indications things will change and we won’t be able to go back to doing business as we had in the past. As you are thinking about that, you may want to consider what your potential might be to fill voids left by shuttered libraries or other organizations.  Do you have large unused spaces? Relationships with service providers and educators you might be able to leverage if need be? Technology or material resources?

It certainly isn’t something we may be comfortable contemplating, but if there is another entity’s program you admire and think the community would be the worse off for its lack, you may want to perform a thought exercise about your capacity to absorb the program and what conditions might have to exist to allow you to do that.

For example, there are a lot of foundations out there that recognize the situations nonprofits are in and are deviating from their normal procedures to make it easier for non-profits to retain and report (or not report) on the use of fund. It may not be out of the realm of possibility that a conversation with the foundation about how you are assuming responsibility for an amazing after school program might allow it to retain full funding on top of the funding you already receive from that foundation. (Well, you can hope.)

A Pandemic Is All The More Reason To Resist “For The Exposure”

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One of the concerns I have had with so many artists providing their talent and content for free over the internet while people are sequestered at home during the coronavirus epidemic is that there would be an expectation that it would all continue to be free as we transitioned away from this situation.

I have seen a couple articles addressing the practice of artists contributing their talents to the general effort to combat the virus.

The first comes from Arts Professional UK which drew attention to a call to artists from the UN. The UN is looking for creative ways to communicate the necessity of good hygiene & social distancing practices as well as dispel different myths to people in different cultures.  While it is prudent to craft messages that are specific to each culture rather than one size fits all, the issue is that the UN wanted the creatives to do it for the exposure.

“You have the power to change the world”, artists have been told, and “the UN needs your help to stop the spread of coronavirus.” It is asking creatives to submit “a range of creative solutions to reach audiences across different age groups, affiliations, geographies and languages”.

No fees are being offered for the work, which is viewed as an opportunity for creatives to contribute to the global fight against the pandemic while raising their profile across the world, including among major corporations.

While the company coordinating this for the UN says they “…would normally be the first to champion the payment of proper fees to artists and creatives, it feels like this is the one time to make an exception,” this still sounds a little exploitative during a time when artists are experiencing a difficult time. Exposure is only gonna get you sick without the ability to pay your bills.

On the other hand, a felt a little differently when I read about an effort by Broadway Cares to stream a concert of Disney show recorded back in November as a fundraiser for a Covid-19 emergency assistance fund.  The Actors’ Equity & SAG-AFTRA unions agreed to waive fees but the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) refused to do so despite the willingness of the 15 musicians who performed in the concert and the president of the local to allow it to be streamed without a fee.  The musicians had been paid for the performance back in November, but AFM president Ray Hair felt that in these times in which artists find themselves in difficult financial straits, the organizers should be willing to pay.

The result is, the fundraiser won’t be able to go forward.

If you are going by the general standards I espoused in the UN example, you should want the artists to be paid. The fact were already paid once shouldn’t necessarily factor into it as there are a lot of unfair situations which deprive artists of royalties on recorded content. Nor should the fact the musicians are willing to forgo payment necessarily make it okay since there are plenty of artists in the UN example who are willing to do it for the exposure when they really ought to be paid for their work.

These two examples show how difficult it is to employ uniform standards in relation to fair remuneration for artists.

For me, there was an option Broadway Cares presented that I felt should have provided a fairly equitable win-win situation for everyone. Because of most favored nations contract clauses, Broadway Cares can’t pay the musicians without then needing to pay members of the other two unions who participated in the November event. However, Broadway Cares offered to make a $25,000 payment to the musicians’ emergency fund on top of the $50,000 it had already given to musician assistance programs. This amount would have been more than they would have paid the 15 musicians and benefit a wider range of musicians who were facing these difficult times.  That offer was also refused.

You Know You Have Developed Good Relationships When A Coal Miner Supports A Solar Power Project

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About two years ago I briefly mentioned a presentation made by Ben Fink at a conference about a community solar project Appalshop was working on in the heart of Kentucky coal country. Fink recently had a piece on the Brookings Institution website that went into detail about the where the effort stands today.

I wanted to point to it as an example of a cultural organization working in productive partnership with a community whose politics might strongly differ from their own .

The solar project wasn’t something Appalshop decided to do whole-cloth because they thought it was the right thing for the community. It was built on the relationships and trust developed over the course of years while working in partnership on other projects that aligned with the interests and needs of the community.

Results of this community wealth-building work have included expanding an award-winning farmers’ market into a community kitchen, reviving Kentucky’s oldest community square dance, and starting a brick oven bakery where neighbors recovering from addiction and incarceration could find work.

Despite being in the middle of coal fields, one of the biggest challenges facing companies and organizations was rising energy costs that threatened the existence of everything from the local markets to the volunteer firehouse.  While solar provided a solution to this ironic situation, being located in the middle of coal fields also made it a hot button issue.

Bringing solar to coal country was risky. Coal had been king for generations, and there was plenty of propaganda accusing solar supporters of siding with “elite, anti-coal activists.” It would have been easy to assume “the community” would oppose the project—except for the fact that the community was the one running it….

[…]

But the relationships built through the CCED process remained strong; the fire chief, a former strip mine boss and lifelong right-winger, continued to champion the project.

This work is not about changing residents’ political views. It’s about neighbors coming together across differences to create a new story about the place we all live in and love. To some, it’s a story about saving the planet. To others, it’s about saving money or fighting an energy company. But to everyone, it’s about supporting our communities and the centers that keep them strong.

The reference to the fire chief remaining a supporter was a testament to the strengths of the relationships they built. The fire house was a partner in the solar project but backed out when a gas company guaranteed the firehouse would never lose its gas supply. The fact the fire chief remained a supporter illustrates that his involvement wasn’t just motivated by desperate need.

Fink suggests that the relationships they formed helped overcome the perception that life in their community was a zero-sum prospect where what was better for someone else meant you lose.

Being Generous With Your Creativity

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Since I have been on the topic of arts and cultural organizations broadly providing content to anyone who happens by virtually, I figured there is space to point to another voice in the conversation.

Seth Godin made a post recently titled Generous isn’t always the same as free.  I raised the idea yesterday that maybe providing all this content isn’t in the best interests of creative entities in the long term.

Godin’s idea of generous not being the same as free may hold a key to resolving questions about this. He uses examples of a doctor taking the time to understand your needs, a waitress anticipating your needs and a boss who provides the challenging work you need.

In this last case, the generosity might actually result in you working longer and harder than before in order for you to grow. It may be a few years before you recognize that bit of generosity was beneficial and required more of your boss than they need have invested in you.

I don’t bring this up to transition to an argument about suffering contributing to the eventual growth or appreciation of creative organizations or those that participate in their activities. Lord knows there has been plenty of “suffering for your art” conversations throughout history.

Rather, I wanted emphasize Godin’s point that the common element in each of his examples is the contributions to stronger relationships.

Gifts create connection and possibility, but not all gifts have monetary value. In fact, some of the most important gifts involve time, effort and care instead.

[…]

In this moment when we’re so disconnected and afraid, the answer might not be a freebie. That might simply push us further apart. The answer might be showing up to do the difficult work of connection, of caring and of extending ourselves where it’s not expected.

When you are pretty anxious about the future of your organization, you may not feel you have the luxury of the deliberative, multi-week process Nina Simon laid out in her blog post I excerpted yesterday. You should have the time, though, to consider whether choices made and effort expended are generous gestures that will contribute to a relationship, albeit over a long term, or a simple freebie.

Imagine That, Creative Expression Retains And Increases In Value In Difficult Economic Times

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By now you have probably heard about all the residents of cities around the world who have emerged on balconies and rooftops to sing together or provide impromptu concerts to those in their neighborhoods.  Imagine all the economic value they are generating with this creative activity! Surely it will help sustain the commerce of their communities in this difficult time.

Except, no it won’t. No one is doing any of this to bolster the economies of their communities, they are doing it to bolster a sense of hope and solidarity among their neighbors.

If there was any time to illustrate that the value of creative expression is independent of economic outcomes, it is now.  People are singing together across streets and alleys. Libraries are streaming their staff reading books. Organizations are providing creative activities that families can do at home together as downloads or video demonstrations. I saw a link to a public radio story about a group in NC who will provide a 30 minute virtual concerts to loved ones.

The biggest danger is the one that  has always existed–the assumption that if you were willing to provide this content for free during tough times, you can find some other means of support during better economic times.

Yet there is also the opportunity to turn around and say, when people were scared and panicking about whether they had a sufficient supply of toilet paper, expressions of creativity forged bonds between citizens, buoyed their spirits and gave them hope.  Artists provided a great service in maintaining the mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being of their community in a time of national angst. While this activity normally does yield economic benefits in a ratio significantly greater than the funding inputs, the real value creatives provide is unrelated to the economy.

While we may say these things all of the time in different ways, right now there are a lot of examples floating around broadcast and social media one can reference when making the case for support to funders.

In addition, while you wouldn’t necessarily want to continue doing something for free indefinitely, there is also an opportunity to leverage processes and expertise you may have developed communicating and providing content from afar into a more significant program. (i.e. You never had the time and resources before to stream content until your priorities were shifted for you.)

Likewise, once the current crisis is over, there will be an opportunity to hopefully solidify any relationships your activities for those in isolation have helped you develop.

In the meantime, pay attention to all the ways in which creative expression is exhibiting its value to society and take notes for later use.

Respecting The House Rules As A Guest

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While looking for something totally different, I happened upon a tribute to the recently deceased executive director of Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo Service Center, Dean Matsubayashi. What attracted me to the article was the title, “Welcome to Little Tokyo, Please Take Off Your Shoes.”

I wanted to know what that was all about. My intuition about the intent of slogan was pretty much on the money.  Apparently when she was a student, Christina Heatherton, coined the phrase which was seen as a something of a counterpoint to bumper stickers declaring “Welcome to California, Now Go Home.”

The author of the tribute article, Josh Ishimatsu said the “Welcome to Little Tokyo” slogan embodied the goals the Little Tokyo Service Center had in

…being true to the underlying values of anti-gentrification and anti-displacement. In a piece that Dean and I wrote about LTSC’s role in the larger Sustainable Little Tokyo project, we said:

For LTSC, the challenge was to frame a vision of anti-displacement work that did not reify NIMBYism… How do we honor the past, prevent erasure, AND welcome the new in respectful ways… And, most of all, how can we do all this in ways that are equitable, sustainable, and empowering?

[…]

The slogan “Welcome to Little Tokyo; please take off your shoes” expresses the ethos that newcomers are welcome, but need to acknowledge and respect that they are entering a place with a pre-existing identity and normative culture. In this spirit, the Sustainable Little Tokyo planning process not only includes the participation of longstanding community stakeholders but also involves new residents who appreciate the role that the neighborhood has played (and continues to play) as a cultural hub and in supporting the community’s most vulnerable residents.

I feel like that last paragraph above not only embodies the approach people should have when entering a new neighborhood, but also one arts and culture organizations should embrace when approaching a new demographic/geographic area they previously haven’t served or feel they have under served.

I have written about this recently in relation to the concept of “arts deserts” and groups that don’t see themselves as hard to reach or having low arts engagement. The basic idea being that people who are deeply invested in the cultural traditions and practices of their community won’t necessarily welcome people coming in with a pitying attitude and offering to lift them up to respectability.

Portland, OR Art Tax Update

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Back in 2012, Portland, OR approved a $35 tax to supports arts education and arts organizations around the city. In 2017 I wrote a post about how overhead was starting to cut into the amount of money available to distribute to programs. Part of that overhead was attributable to the fact people weren’t paying the tax and so funds had to be diverted toward enforcement.  Last week, via Artsjournal, is another article mentioning that the tax hasn’t proven to be the boon supporters hoped it would be. For one, people still are resistant to paying it.

The art museum, like the rest of the big five, never received the targeted 5 percent support.

That’s in part because the tax has never brought in the $12 million a year voters were told to expect. (Revenues were $9.8 million the first year and peaked at $11.46 million in 2016.)

Portlanders have been reluctant to pay it. Although the city’s population has risen nearly 12 percent since November 2012 and tax receipts should have increased proportionally, figures show revenues still never reached levels proponents forecasted.

A point I want to clarify. The article makes it sound like arts funding for schools has diverted money that was intended for non-profit arts organizations. However, from my earlier posts, it appears the law that was passed intended to fund the schools first and then the non-profits would receive funding. In fact, this recent article says when the measure was passed in 2012, funding the schools was politically more attractive to voters than funding non-profits. While the arts organizations had been pushing the art tax idea for a long time prior to the vote, when the time came, the resolution being voted upon was written to fund the school first.

The other thing the article notes is that between the collection effects and the art tax name, there are public relations and perception issues which have proven problematic.

While arts leaders all favor more Portlanders paying the tax, some worry the city’s zeal to collect is counterproductive. “You get pinged with a letter, you get pinged with a postcard, you get an email saying time to pay the arts tax,” says Portland Center Stage’s Fuhrman. “That’s where I think the bad PR comes in.”

Andrew Proctor, executive director of Literary Arts, which produces the Portland Book Festival, says the public’s ill feeling has a cost. “Even the name ‘arts tax’ sounds punitive,” he says, “and it misleads citizens that in paying the tax they have supported arts institutions. They haven’t. It can damage our fundraising efforts and can polarize the conversation.”

[…]

Hawthorne, the former RACC official, says he fears the public may believe the tax works. “Ten to 12 million is a lot of money,” Hawthorne says. “People may perceive the arts have had their influx and now it’s time to focus on more pressing needs.”

The whole article provides a lesson for those considering advocating for an arts tax of some sort. The basic idea isn’t bad, but the way it is structured and executed needs to be thought out. The example of Portland points to things people want to avoid. The name; the way in which it is collected, structured and discussed; all call negative attention to it.

It is worth reading the whole article because it also mentions the Regional Arts and Cultural Council’s (RACC) initiative to provide more equitable funding for smaller arts organizations. Back in 2012, RACC was starting to require more diversity on the boards, staff and eventually audiences of Portland’s arts organizations. In January, I had written about how the Arts Council of England was instituting similar requirements, forgetting that Portland had been working toward that goal for nearly a decade now.

Last year, RACC shifted their funding model to better align with this philosophy which includes size and economic diversity among its criteria. As a result, the larger organizations in town receive less of the art tax money than they once did.

There Is No Business Case For Social & Cultural Advancement

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H/T to Artsjournal.com for linking to a FastCompany article about the problem with making a business case for diversity. I saw a lot of parallels between the rationale laid out by author, Sarah Kaplan, and the conversations I have been having about trying to justify the value of the arts in terms of economic/educational/social outcomes.

Kaplan writes (my emphasis):

Corporate leaders would be better served if they stopped trying to justify diversity with profit margins and stock charts—a mentality that can ultimately hurt the very groups these policies are meant to help (more on that in a moment)—and instead embrace diversity because it is the right thing to do.

[…]

Why doesn’t the business case work? Recent research suggests that what’s required for transformational action is a moral and legal case. The business case, because it is based in an economic logic, undermines moral arguments and weakens resolve to make anything other than incremental change. Indeed, experiments show that making the “business case for diversity” can increase bias against diverse groups while the legal case can inhibit bias and increase equitable behavior.

The business case for diversity also provokes people to focus more on economic than equality-based metrics of success. As a consequence, when there are downturns in organizational performance, believers in the business case are more likely to see diversity efforts as ineffective and to support dropping the organization’s investment in diversity programs.

Rather than go straight to that 3rd paragraph above, I did want to include her thoughts on justifying and implementing diversity because they are just as germane to the daily operations of arts and culture non-profits as anyone else.

There isn’t necessarily a moral and legal case to be made for the value of arts, culture and creative expression. However, there are similar consequences in using economic based metrics of success for arts and culture as there is for diversity goals. If there is a perceived lack of return in terms of economic activity, test scores, etc., interest flags and attention turns to the next big thing promising results in those areas.

In the long term, becoming adept in advocating the support of forms of creative expression because it is the right thing to do is going to be the better strategy.

One thing I was interested to read was Kaplan’s following thoughts that the business case for diversity is something you arrive at having successfully implemented a plan to achieve it. Her point seems to be, we really don’t know the actual benefits until it comes to pass. All the current rationale behind the business case for diversity are made on assumptions based on observations of the past and are focused on a narrow set of outcomes. Not only that, but it envisions that full diversity will unfold in a vacuum independent of everything else, neither affected by or affecting anything else.

It is worth noting that one of the reasons we don’t yet have compelling evidence about the economic impact of diversity is that we haven’t truly moved to inclusion and belonging. Diversity by itself will not produce the benefits that companies and policymakers wish to achieve. My sense is that by taking principled action, we will find myriad ways that more diverse workforces benefit companies and society. Said differently, we will eventually arrive at the business case; we just can’t start there.

In the same way, every claim made about how arts and culture can benefit the economy, education, social interactions, etc is based on piecemeal efforts supported by intermittent, unpredictable funding.  We have no idea what the real impact a unified, consistent, long term investment in cultivating creative expression will have on economic, education, socio-political fronts. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it were revealed that advancements in diversity were significantly associated with creative expression, and vice versa.

Creative Placemaking Is More Than Just Murals

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Recently the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published an issue of their Community Development Innovation Review  (CDIR) focused on “Transforming Community Development through Arts and Culture.” If you think it strange that a Federal Reserve Bank should be devoting an entire 200 page issue to this topic, a few years back I wrote about a Non-Profit Executive Transition Toolkit published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.  Some interesting things related to non-profit arts come out of these banks periodically.

I am only about a quarter of the way through the CDIR issue which is comprised of many short pieces by different arts, cultural and community development professionals around the country. There was a piece by Paul Singh from NeighborWorks America, (page A49) an organization he describes as providing capacity-building resources to 250 community development organizations nationwide.

What caught my eye was Singh’s list of challenges organizations face “in pursuing creative community development.”

• Insufficient understanding of the potential value of creativity, cultural expression, and artistic practice to community development
• Difficulty demonstrating and articulating the impact of creative community development
• Struggle with identifying arts partners and developing shared expectations and frameworks
• Need to avoid gentrification-led displacement and promote inclusion
• Difficulty in securing financial resources

Even though I generally advocate for staying away from discussing the utilitarian or prescriptive value of the arts, (e.g. add art to solve X problem), the fact that people even had difficulty providing justification on that basis points to a need for people in the creative field to become more skilled at discussing the value of arts and culture. Ideally, the area in which people become most adept is explaining the value for its own sake–why they enjoy it; what it makes them feel or think; how it contributes to personal growth; how sharing the experience with others strengthens bonds with family and friends.

But again, acknowledging that we live in a society which has evaluates everything in the context of utilitarian, neo-liberal value sets, it is prudent to be skilled in carrying on a discussion in those terms so you can introduce the idea there are other ways of measuring value.

Singh expounds a bit on where organizations in NeighborWorks network meet some obstacles:

Many network organizations that we spoke to shared that their early efforts were limited by preconceived notions of what constitutes “art” or “creative placemaking.” They initially tended to prioritize artistic products (e.g., the archetypal mural project) over partnerships with artists that could yield creative ways of addressing a range of problems. Community developers can also be risk-averse, which can limit receptivity to creative processes that delve into ambiguity or the unexpected.  External models and examples that can expand the vision are often required, along with an internal champion who pushes boundaries, to introduce and keep creative community development at the forefront of an organization’s strategy.

I was really hoping he would provide some concrete examples about what type of approaches had worked in different communities, but much of what he indicated needed to be done was general and theoretical. In some instances, I got the impression that implementation of some strategies was so new there hadn’t been time to let them work, much less collect data on their effectiveness.

Social Class & Wealth And The Pursuit Of Creative Careers

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It appears that concerns about how social class and wealth limit access to creative careers may be a hot topic of discussion in England these days. Via Artsjournal.com is a The Stage piece by Lyn Gardner addressing how the issue impacts theater professionals and via a Twitter post by Arts Emergency was an article about the same situation with journalism in England.

The latter article talks about a mentoring program called PressPad which provides people pursuing journalism careers two important assets- a place to live and a mentor from the industry. It appears these things are rolled together, with the young person living with their host mentor in London which is definitely not a cheap place to live. One person interviewed for the story decided to pursue journalism in South America because the cost of living was so high in London. PressPad also provides other networking and support services.

As has been mentioned numerous times before in regard to creative careers, the article cites one of the most important factors contributing to whether people are able to pursue a journalism career as coming from a social/financial background where family resources and connections allow you to pursue a career while receiving little to no pay and working unpredictable schedules.

Additionally, one of PressPad underlying goals is

“…trying to change the culture of the journalism community: “We have some really high-profile hosts – some topic editors and senior journalists in our industry. Where else would they meet a 19 year old, working-class white girl who has been on free school meals? They wouldn’t! The real thing is- it’s a two way street.”

On the theatre side, Lyn Gardner opens her article noting,

Just before Christmas, Arts Council England announced that from next year regularly funded organisations will be required to report not just on the gender, ethnicity, age and disability representation of workforces but also on the socio-economic backgrounds of employees.

Part of the motivation for this was the recognition that only 10% of theatre directors were from working class backgrounds. I recall seeing similar statistics about actors. There is push to reduce auditioning fees for training programs as well.

I had seen some implications that there might be penalties if organizations could not demonstrate representation among these categories, but it was never clear what this might be. It also wasn’t clear if there would be a standard set to ensure representation in jobs of higher authority and responsibility and not just custodial, secretarial and food services employees.

Presumably, there would be if the goal is to provide more opportunities to working class individuals, but I haven’t received a clear picture of what those standards might be.  I get the sense from Lyn Gardner’s writing that despite welcoming the new focus on improving the environment for working class individuals, as with the journalism program, she feels a larger cultural shift is required.

If we don’t reinvent drama training to reflect the different needs of students from much more diverse backgrounds – and that includes those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds – it’s like holding the door open so that they can get in the room, then blaming them when they leave quickly because they feel uncomfortable or can’t afford to stay.

When you change the intake of an institution – whether a training school or a theatre – if you don’t also change the culture, then it is not real change. Just as more diverse casting on our theatres’ stages is only virtue-signalling if it doesn’t extend beyond the wings into the entire building.

There are strong imperatives to hold the doors wide open, not least because if you widen the creative pool you immediately boost the creative possibilities. A huge advantage of bringing people from diverse backgrounds into theatre and training establishments is that they bring a new perspective, questioning rather than accepting the way things are done.

My perception is that in the U.S. we are having similar conversations about how large a factor family wealth and social expectations contribute to the success of people pursuing creative careers, but there is a lack of institutional mandate from governmental entities on the state or federal level. At this time I can’t recall any major, influential funders embracing something along these lines as a central policy initiative.

One Of The Most Significant Music Venues In Washington DC Is Outside A Cellphone Store

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Today CityLab had a post titled “How Go-Go Music Became Kryptonite for Gentrification in D.C.” This was actually a follow up to an article that had come out in the Spring that I bookmarked with a notation “A T-Mobile store is the cultural axis for Go-Go music?”

I had bookmarked the story with the intention of returning to it in order to draw attention to the way centers of cultural signficance often emerge organically rather than by plan. I don’t think anyone uses a cellphone store as a model when drawing up plans for a cultural facility.

Briefly, the story here is that a guy who owned a nightclub which featured go-go bands opened a cellphone store when the venue closed and started playing his go-go music collection over the speakers outside his store. The neighborhood has gradually gentrified since the mid-1990s and residents of the new condo across the street complained about the music being too loud.

You may not know that residents of Washington DC claim go-go as their own, feeling the music style is synonymous with the city. Hearings were held on October 30 in support of a bill to make it the official music of the city.

They rallied around the store in a big way:

Thousands of people flooded Shaw’s streets and thousands more signed a petition (80,329 to be exact) demanding that Campbell be allowed to keep playing go-go at his corner, all done under the banner #Don’tMuteDC, which was to say “don’t mute—or erase—black people in D.C.” … which was to say, “don’t let gentrification have the final say.” And it didn’t. Several forces converged—including the CEO of T-Mobile, which owns the Metro PCS cell phones and service Campbell sold at his store—to declare that “the music will go on,” which led to the condo tenant dropping the complaint and acquiescing to the will of the streets.

Often speakers/writers about non-profit organizations challenge people to think about their place in the community and ask the question, who would miss you if you were gone, as a way to gauge the degree of relevance your organization has in the community.

Something of a corollary to this question is whether there is an entity in the community so that is so closely tied into the identity of the community that people would become angry if it disappeared. It may not be your organization, but really asking the question and paying attention might be revelatory. On the surface, it may seem obvious. In some communities, everything may seem aligned toward high school or college football. But there may also be some powerful, but overlooked element your organization could do a better job embracing and/or magnifying. Or at the very least recognizing and acknowledging the importance of.

Colorblind Grant Evaluation Measures Aren’t

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There was an opinion piece on the Chronicle of Philanthropy website today by Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, discussing how the evaluative measures often employed by funders tend to discriminate against non profit organizations lead by, and serving, people of color.

He writes,

What I did not realize then was how colorblind application of financial assessment and funding practices can make it harder for organizations led by and serving people of color to get grants and make the most of them.

The problem often originates in the fact that these organizations don’t have access to networks of influence and financial resources that other organizations do.

So requiring dollar for dollar matches for grants or using rates of donations by board members as a measure of engagement and investment are difficult criteria for many non-profits to meet.

The same problem arises when using budget size as a point of assessment.

Determine grant size based on the value of the work rather than the current revenue of the organization: When you recognize the structural barriers that prevent many well-run and effective organizations from gaining traction, you come to see how distorted the link can be between an organization’s size and capacity. And the formal accounting rules that determine what counts as revenue make the problem worse. For example, pro bono legal advice from a corporate law firm counts as revenue. The many hours a volunteer spends reading to young people in a community center does not.

A better approach: Rather than creating rules that peg grants to a share of revenue, spend time understanding the value the work would generate and the full cost to undertake it.

Obviously, these evaluation measures don’t just present problems for organizations run by and for racial minorities. Many non-profit organizations run by racial minorities lack resources, but not every non-profit lacking resources is run by and for racial minorities.

Bugg-Levine provides a link to a guide recently issued by the Nonprofit Finance Fund which charts racially-based financial analysis and provides suggested alternatives.

There are some issues you might not immediately anticipate. For example, having access to a wealthy private donor allows organizations to take government contracts which tend not to cover full costs. Having the imprimatur of a government contract provides other funders with a greater degree of confidence in the organization, leading to better funding opportunities. But not having a relationship with a wealthy private donor makes it difficult to secure the government contract in the first place.

Another example identified in the chart is that:

Funders associate small organizations with community authenticity

Organizations will intentionally limit their revenue (often below $1 million/year) to remain eligible for “small organization” grants, because some funders will cut them off when they become larger. But, they still can’t make the leap to effectively compete against larger organizations for larger grants, given the dearth of funding options for organizations in the $750,000-$3 million/year revenue range.

Even an organization’s accounting method can be a source of bias. The indication that the organization employs accrual based accounting vs cash based accounting  favors better funded organizations that have the resources to pay for accrual accounting services because,

If an organization is using cash-basis accounting, which counts money when it is received or spent, rather than when it is earned or billed, their finances appear less stable. This can lead to suspicion about the soundness of their leadership and overall financial health, and create a perception that making a grant to this organization is riskier than if they were using accrual accounting

Gradually Finding The Leader Within

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Long time readers know I am a fan of Peter Drucker’s short piece, Managing Oneself.  It has been awhile since I have sung its praises so it is timely that a TEDx Talk by Lars Sudmann about self-leadership came across my social media feeds recently.

Actually, it was a written summary of the talk on the TED website that initially came to my attention.

One of the first things I appreciated about Sudmann’s talk was that he acknowledged that good leadership is a lot easier in theory than in practice. As a subordinate, we always have ideas running through our heads about how we would do a better job than our bosses if we were in charge. Then when we are actually put in charge, we get bogged down with all the details and demands for our time.

Sudmann talks about walking in to his first staff meeting, resolved to be an inspiring, dynamic and awesome leader only to have the conversation bogged down by a discussion of email signature files.

Where I really agree with Sudmann is his suggestion that self-reflection and introspection is one of the most important traits of a good leader. It isn’t enough to simply make a list of your strengths and weaknesses and acknowledge them, you have to be in the practice of evaluating your daily decisions and activities.

Drucker covers this in his piece too. He urges people to become aware of their strengths and what they need to become better and encourages people to share how they work best with co-workers as a way of enlisting their in providing materials and opportunities in a manner that aids your improvement.

Sudmann cites Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher recognized as one of the better Roman Emperors, who focused much of his time practicing self-leadership versus trying to lead others.

Sudmann suggests that a little self-examination can result in a realization that we share many of the traits we dislike about those we consider bad leaders. You can do the same thing with the traits you admire in others:

Every day, take 5- 10 minutes to think about the challenges you’ve recently handled and the ones you’ll soon face. While Marcus Aurelius was fond of reflecting in the evening, Sudmann likes doing this over morning coffee. Questions to pose include: “How did my leadership go yesterday? How would the leader I’d like to be have faced the challenges I faced? What about my challenges today? What could I do differently?” Write down your thoughts so you can refer back to them and learn from them.

Prioritizing issues is also an important part of leadership. If you hadn’t guessed it already, a discussion about email signatures shouldn’t occupy important staff meetings.

You should engage with 9s and 10s right away, but you’ll find that many things which shatter your calm will be of lesser importance. With anything that’s a 6 or lower, either excuse yourself physically (“I need to take a quick break; be right back”) or figuratively (“Let me take a minute to go over what you’ve said”). Then, give yourself a moment to think: “How would the leader I aspire to be handle this situation?” The answer will come to you.

There are pretty much direct parallels between strategic plans and developing leadership skills. Just as you shouldn’t put a strategic plan on a shelf after investing time in examining the state of your organization and creating a plan to guide the organization into the future, you don’t want to scrutinize your strengths and weaknesses and do nothing to address them until the next crisis or next scheduled board/supervisor evaluation.

I also see parallels between the approach Sudmann  espouses and Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative.  (You knew I was going to tie something back to that sooner or later!)  Just as building public will for arts and culture is a long term plan focused on continuous improvement and consistent messaging, so too is the process of becoming a better leader.

 

Why The Sudden Interest In Non-Profit Record Access?

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Three years ago I wrote an article for ArtsHacker.com about being aware of the open meeting requirements your state imposes on non-profits.

I basically pointed out that while pretty much every state requires a non-profit organization receiving state funds to comply with open meeting laws, every state is different when it comes to defining at what degree of state support an organization needs to begin complying.

In some states, the existence of your non-profit pretty much needs to be established by an act of the legislature, while in other states being provided with a meeting space in a state owned building is all that is required to make your organization subject to the state open meetings and records laws.

I am not sure what has happened in the last year or so, but pretty much once a month now someone leaves a comment asking if an organization in their state is subject to open meetings or open records laws.  I pretty much end up saying, “You should really consult a lawyer on this subject, but here is what I found online about the laws in your state.”

I have yet to find a state that doesn’t have the rules governing non-profits posted online somewhere, pretty clearly labeled. So if you are curious about your state, I encourage you to check online first because that is all I am going to do. (Check both the sections on open meetings and retention and access to records.)

Some states have some pretty good guides created to answer questions about open meetings and non-profits. It is good to have your secretary of state telling you clearly what the state laws do and don’t require.

I call attention to all this because I am wondering why there is a surge in questions on the post.  There are far more comments on that post than anything else I have written on the site. Have search engines started giving it better placement in results?  Are people seeking greater transparency from the organizations with which they are involved and don’t know where to find answers? (Or perhaps, the closure of so many local newspapers means a lack of people to help them find answers)

If anyone has theories, please share.

I should note, I am not sure any of the queries have come from people involved with arts and culture organizations.  Only about half provide any details that identify what sort of organization they are working with and none of them have been arts related.

Is Your Non-Profit Subject To Open Meeting Laws?

Is The Violence And Sorrow Of The World Too Strong For Art?

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Somewhat apropos of the whole value of arts theme of my posts this week, novelist Michael Chabon had a letter titled “What’s the Point,” printed in The Paris Review announcing that he would be stepping down after 9 years as Chairman of the Board at the MacDowell Colony.

When he starts out, he basically sounds defeated, observing that despite overcoming his introverted tendencies to advance the slogan that, “MacDowell makes a place in the world for artists, because art makes the world a better place,” the world is much worse now than 9 years ago.

Or, I wonder if it’s possible that I was wrong, that I’ve always been wrong, that art has no power at all over the world and its brutalities, over the minds that conceive them and the systems that institutionalize them.

[,,,]

Maybe the world in its violent turning is too strong for art. Maybe art is a kind of winning streak, a hot hand at the table, articulating a vision of truth and possibility that, while real, simply cannot endure. Over time, the odds grind you down, and in the end the house always wins.

Or maybe the purpose of art, the blessing of art, has nothing to do with improvement, with amelioration, with making this heartbreaking world, this savage and dopey nation, a better place.

As he goes on, his tone shifts:

All the world’s power over us lies in its ability to persuade us that we are powerless to understand each other, to feel and see and love each other, and that therefore it is pointless for us to try. Art knows better, which is why the world tries so hard to make art impossible, to immiserate artists, to ban their work, silence their voices, and why it’s so important for all of us to, quite simply, make art possible.

The metaphors he uses defending the value of art revolve around the personal experience and connection. This dovetails with the concept raised in yesterday’s post that people don’t believe in the value of arts and culture in their lives unless they or a loved or a loved one has a direct experience.

I don’t know why, but there was something about his prose that put me in mind of the “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus” letter. My inner monologue commented, “Yes, but the situation is much darker and more cynical than back then.”

I looked up the Yes, Virginia letter and found it had a lot of parallels to my recent posts.

I forgot the letter started out referencing, “the skepticism of a skeptical age.”  And maybe I subliminally made a connection with the idea of people only giving credence to things they personally experienced because Francis Church continues, “They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.”

And then of course, the passage that pretty much describes the aspirations of those in the arts, culture and creative field:

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

I have to say, I didn’t start out to write an optimistic post. I actually felt Chabon moved to feel-good sentimentality out of a sense of obligation to end on a higher note.

That his letter evoked memories of another letter I was moved to seek out and I was delighted to find alignment in everything I talked about this week sort of proves Chabon’s point I guess.

Not Words, But Deeds

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Last week Doug Borwick wrote a blog post saying it wasn’t enough to tell people that the arts have value in their lives.

As I started reading his post, I agreed with this sentiment because we have long acknowledged the argument that the arts are good for you isn’t really that compelling for people. I have talked about how the arts shouldn’t be viewed as a solution to all sorts of problems a number of times before.

But there is also the basic experience we all have growing up being told that food/medicine/classes/experiences are good for us. We roil when forced to consume such things under the eye of parents and authority figures and often happily reject them when provided the freedom of choice. Sometimes we come back to them with appreciation, but other times the bias is so ingrained, we resist any opportunity presented to engage with these things again.

As Borwick’s post continued though, the situation became a little more complicated in my eyes. He quotes the former CEO of National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Jonathan Katz about how little stock people put in empirical evidence about art.

“Neither professionals [or community leaders] in the relevant disciplines nor the general public put sufficient stock in . . . studies to alter policy. This disinclination to believe is rooted in unexamined assumptions that the arts do not touch the lives of more than a select few.“

Borwick continues, (his emphasis)

In other words, people do not believe the stories or the studies because they don’t believe they can be true. For many, the arts are so inconsequential, so void of impact on their own lives, any proof of their power is literally unbelievable.

So whether you are trying to convince people of the merit of the arts or the value of your organization or you are simply trying to get them to attend your events, there is a profound chasm of disbelief to be overcome. The way across this divide is not by words. It is action alone that will work. Being perceived as valuable must be earned by doing things that make us so. If we have to tell people we are valuable, we’re not to them.

Now to echo my friend Carter Gillies, just because you can measure something doesn’t mean what you have measured is relevant. We all know that the amount of revenue something garners has no relationship to the artistic value or quality of that thing.

But what Borwick is saying means that regardless of whether you are providing accurate data derived of the most rigorous methodology possible or not, people won’t believe the evidence if it doesn’t align with their personal experience. (Which granted, doesn’t just apply to the arts and also contributes to things like the current political divide in the U.S.)

So in the end, it is actions that enter someone’s experience, including that of individuals they value, that will serve as proof of the value of arts/culture/creativity.

Tell Your Tales of Advocacy

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Question for readers- Have you ever attended an arts advocacy day at your state capital or Washington, DC?

Actually, for those readers outside the US, I would be interested in hearing about your experience as well.

I recently attended a meeting where the topic of arts advocacy day attendance came up and the experiences people related were something of a mixed bag.

I realized that while I have often been to meetings where people have been encouraged to participate in an advocacy day, I have seldom heard people discuss their perceptions of the efficacy of those experiences. This seems strange given that I have heard/read plenty of people’s thoughts on the good, bad and ugly of attending conferences.

In terms of good experiences, one person at the meeting I attended talked about participating in arts advocacy activities organized in Washington DC by Americans for the Arts where there was a type of advocacy boot camp one night and then visits to legislators the next day. Even in those meetings that were only attended by a staffer, there was a feeling of things being accomplished.

In terms of experiences that felt less than productive, people talked about attending events where no one of significance attended and no office visits had been organized. Another spoke of events that were a lot of exciting pageantry, but didn’t feel like they did anything to move the needle in a positive way.

One person brought up a situation that I hadn’t considered. Because their state arts council is organized under an economic development division, the contribution of arts and culture alone wasn’t touted separately from hotels, sports and gambling during their state’s big event.

It all made me curious about other people’s experiences collectively advocating for arts and culture at a seat of government on defined day(s).

Who does it well and why? Who could do it better?

If I get some good responses, maybe I will turn it into an ArtsHacker.com post (or arrange for someone to make a guest post.)

Is Artistic Authority Being Eroded?

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I was glancing at an interview with Arti Prashar on Arts Professional UK site as she departs her position at Spare Tyre Theatre Company. I had come for the title of the article, “Exit interview: ‘We’re asked to follow a business model that just doesn’t work'” but it was something else that really caught my attention.

She says,

“…I began to observe, slowly but surely, that the authority of artists was being eroded. I wasn’t having that, so I negotiated becoming the Artistic Director and CEO.”

It struck me that she felt she needed to become CEO in order to retain authority. (Her first 8 years at Spare Tyre was as Artistic Director.) It made me wonder if this was the case globally outside of the UK. I suspect it is.

I have discussed the problems with the sentiment that “arts should be run more like a business,” in a number of blog posts over the years. I wonder now if that concept, combined with the sense that artists should be more business minded might be contributing to the erosion of artists’ authority.

Artists should definitely be knowledgeable enough to monitor the health of their own careers so that their work is not exploited by others. But if an artist is not perceived as possessing authority in their own realm independent of their business acumen, that is troubling.

Prashar doesn’t give specific examples of how she felt artists’ authority was being eroded. As I thought about how this problem might manifest, I began to wonder if this was actually related to the question of why we value art.

If an artist doesn’t feel they have the authority to say a work has value on its own, but needs to cite relevance in connection with social and political movements to convince others it has value, that may be just as problematic as economic impact and ability to raise test scores being the only rationale for granting funding.

You may be thinking that these elements are all important for getting people to participate in an event or other opportunity. People need to either perceive something is relevant to them or is worth their time and money as part of their decision to be present.

But can an artist walk into a room and say this thing is important and worth doing and be believed simply based on their authority as an artist? If not, why?

Is it because we have come to doubt or suspect their authority to make that statement despite 15 years of practice?

If I walk in and say the same thing is important and worth doing because 1000 people will pay $50, do you doubt my authority to make that statement? Do you think to inquire how much experience I have in making these predictions if I am waving a spreadsheet around instead of a violin bow?

Museum 2.0 Gets Writer/Convenor 2.0

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Hey all – You may or may not know that some months back Nina Simon, writer of Museum 2.0 blog, announced she was leaving her position at Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) to devote herself more exclusively to OF/BY/FOR ALL which strives to “make community organizations.”

What does this mean? It means that if you want to be FOR your whole community, you have to be representative OF them and co-created BY them. If people don’t see themselves as part of your work, they won’t see your work as an essential part of their lives.

Putting up a “welcome” sign is not enough. To involve people in meaningful, sustainable ways, you can’t just make programs FOR them. You have to involve them in their creation. And that means becoming OF and BY them too.

Nina recently made her final post on Museum 2.0 saying she was handing the blog over to Seema Rao. Rao had actually done a few guest posts back in July. By quirk of the feed I use to read blogs, I caught her first few posts and, not realizing it wasn’t Nina, wondered how the heck Nina had had the time to visit all these museums she was talking about AND run MAH AND be hitting the speaking circuit so much.

Since I was already intrigued by what Rao was writing under a mistaken identity, needless to say I think the blog is being left in good hands. I look forward to seeing what she posts.

In her final post, Nina reflects on her 13 years of blogging and how conflicted she was with her sense of obligation to the blog and readers. Then how she came to accept the trade-offs of going to a more infrequent, but perhaps more satisfying publishing schedule.

I can relate with her feelings on the subject having had many of the same thoughts myself throughout the years. Like her, I have often regarded blogging as a way to “think out loud” and organize my thoughts on different subjects. When I go back through the archives, I can certainly see how both my personal philosophy and the collective mind of the arts and cultural industry have evolved over the last decades.

I write this post as a tribute to the difficult and thoughtful work Nina has done over the years, providing leadership for many of us in the arts community as she is likely to increasingly do in the future. I am also writing to encourage people to pay attention to Museum 2.0 as a blog because Nina’s choice to transition it to a new writer is really a manifestation of the philosophy and intent she has long espoused:

Nina writes:

1. Museum 2.0 is about participation, but I never fully succeeded in making it participatory. Because I’d built the blog originally to do my own writing and learning, I rarely invited guest writers. I never experimented here with models for collective writing. … I wished Museum 2.0 could break free of me and become more dialogic, led by a strong writer AND online convenor. I believe Seema Rao is this person and I hope you’ll join me in reading and participating as Museum 2.0 grows. There will be new experiments and approaches – alongside the archive of what we’ve built thus far.

Arts Not An Indulgence When So Many Social Justice Issues Need Attention

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Apparently Vu Le of Nonprofit AF blog spoke at Association of California Symphony Orchestras last week. (those lucky dogs) In his post this week, he addresses the question about whether arts and culture have value when there are so many health and social justice problems that need to be attention. As the executive director of a social justice non-profit, he knows very well just how much organizations like his need funding and attention.

He says yes, arts and culture definitely play an important role in society and helping to address the problems we face. He mentions that as an immigrant from Vietnam, both music and art saved his life and made him feel valuable when he was doing poorly in school due to his lack of English literacy.

“I began to look forward to the art projects. For so long I had sucked at everything that required English, including gym (I could not understand the rules of various activities, like volleyball). With art, I felt competent and respected and sure of myself. My being good at something changed the way the other kids saw me. Art motivated me to continue to learn, to explore. It gave me confidence. It kept me in school.”

In blog posts throughout the years, I have often pointed out that people turn to art, music, theater, etc to help them cope with tragedy and difficulty in their lives. But of course, as a person in the arts, I am predisposed to look for those connections. So I was happy to read that Le had observed similar situations.

He is definitely aware of all the places arts and cultural organizations fall short of serving all segments of their communities. But he disputes the argument that the arts are indulgent in when there is such need in the world and expresses gratitude for the work arts practitioners do.  As long as the following excerpt is, a number of his expressions of gratitude are edited out so it is worth reading the whole post just for that.

I’m telling you these stories because when there is so much going on, so many problems to solve, sometimes we think of art and music as indulgent. Who has time for singing and dancing and stained-glass snowflakes when kids are starving or locked in cages? By thinking this way, we forget about art and music’s power to heal, mobilize, build community, and so much more.

[…]

Art and music are critical in our work for social justice, as frequently they are the only things that can reach people, that can provide comfort or generate the visceral, raw emotions needed for social change. After the election in 2016, when many families and children were terrified, Families of Color Seattle gathered the kids and used art—having the kids draw themselves as superheroes, for example—to help them process their feelings. And this year protesters in Hong Kong, are singing “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Miserables as they do a sit-in at the airport.

Yes, there are plenty of things to improve on. Art and music are not always accessible to marginalized communities. Resources are not equitably distributed to artists of color, artists with disability, LGBTQ artists. And in public schools, art and music programs are always the first to get cut, and the schools with the most low-income kids and kids of color are disproportionately affected. Symphonies, orchestras, ballets, and other art forms continue to struggle with diversity and community engagement.

While we work on those challenges, though, let’s take a moment to appreciate the organizations and professionals who are creating art and music, whose skills and dedication bring beauty and hope and happiness to a world sorely in need of it.

IMPORTANT: Changes To Music Licensing May Impact Any Performance At Your Venue

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Some important information about changes to music performance rights came to my attention today and I wanted to share it with readers.

Apparently the consent decrees under which ASCAP & BMI operate are up for review by the Department of Justice. The public comment phase is ending on Friday, August 9.  You can find out more about the consent decrees on the MIC Coalition website.

Basically, because ASCAP & BMI operate akin to monopolies, they and other performing rights organizations (PRO) are limited as to what they are able to do when licensing performing rights. They want these limits loosened. You can provide feedback to the Department of Justice here.

Even with these limits, dealing with these companies is often confusing and criteria seems inconsistent. Many have felt they were forced into purchasing broader licenses than they needed.

Today I received a huge flurry of emails urging myself and others to oppose the loosening. I was confused about why there was this sudden urgency when the public comment phase opened at the start of June. I started to wonder if there was an effort to create a huge sense of urgency by rallying support at a late date. Especially since there were initially few details provided about why one should voice their opposition.

Come to find out, the reason is that a large number of organizations across the country received revised licensing agreements from BMI this week containing some alarming changes. There is some suspicion they timed the mailing to hit toward the end of the public comment phase.

Here is a page of the agreement that is causing the biggest uproar.

In section 1 (g), terminology has been changed from “Gross Ticket Revenue” to “Gross Revenue.”  According to the new definition, in addition to ticket sales, calculation of a fee will now be based upon revenue from sales on the secondary ticket market, service charges, handling charges, VIP packages, advertising revenue, box suites, sponsorships, merchandise, concessions and parking.

So essentially, if you have a sponsor for your show; sell VIP packages, merchandise, food, and charge for parking, all that gets factored in to what you pay BMI rather than just ticket sales as was the case in the past.

From what I am told, the definition of “licensee” has been expanded to include a wider range of activities.

For events without an admission charge, the definition of what is included in the fee calculation has been expanded from a flat fee based on seating capacity to one based on entertainment expenses like room, board and transportation costs for the artist.

There are other problematic issues which are a little difficult to explain in a blog post and might not apply widely to many venues. I suspect there are problems that people have yet to discover.  If you do any sort of licensing with folks like BMI and ASCAP or if you have been trying to fly under the radar, you want to pay attention to this.

If you don’t think this applies to you at all, but you have live music performance, you may find that it does. That band that plays at your museum during First Fridays is probably subject to music licensing.

With more opportunities for revenue available, especially if the strictures of the consent decrees are loosened, there is more incentive find the places that have been trying to slide under the radar.

If you have concerns, check out the MIC Coalition website to learn more or provide feedback to the DOJ.  Also –read any new licensing agreements you get very, very carefully.

 

The Arts Aren’t The Cherry, They Are The Yeast

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Apparently I watched a lot of TED Talks in 2009 as this seemed to be recurring element in my retrospective posts these couple of weeks. However, this is one I have remembered clearly for the last decade.

Mallika Sarabhai talks about using artistic expression to teach as well as deal with sensitive topics like justice and injustice. She starts out her talk telling a story about a monkey who witnesses a rape by the god Indra noting that the way Indra expiates the offense leaves the monkey confused. She says she has told that story around the world more than 550 times at schools and black tie events and has been able to discuss a rape due to the framework of the story.

Now, if I were to go into the same crowd and say, “I want to lecture you about justice and injustice,” they would say, “Thank you very much, we have other things to do.” And that is the astonishing power of art.

The part of her talk that has stuck with me for 10 years though is when she relates the health of people has been improved thanks to a performance that teaches people in villages to use a piece of cloth folded 8 times as a water filter. I think it is the practicality and survival element that has lead me to remember it.

All of these examples lead up to her very memorable policy statement about arts and culture:

What I need to say to the planners of the world, the governments, the strategists is, “You have treated the arts as the cherry on the cake. It needs to be the yeast.”

Door To Seat As Important As The Quality Of The Event

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All right. A little gripe time here. I have been nursing a sense of dissatisfaction for a couple weeks now but it sort of came to a head when I saw the title of Ceci Dadisman’s recent post, “Unpopular Opinion: It is our job to remove barriers to engagement.” She talks about removing perceptual barriers, but the source of my dissatisfaction is related to physical barriers.

I had submitted a grant this past Spring and recently had an opportunity to listen to the panelists discuss our application over the internet. There were a number of criticisms which I can concede as deficiencies with our application. There were other places where panelists misread what we wrote, but I can understand that given the number of applications they read. (Though I did panic momentarily as I scurried to find the document we submitted.)

What annoyed me was a criticism of our response to a question about a recent program that had an impact on the community. Being new to my position, I had spoke with staff, board members, volunteers and long attending audience members about what events had made an impact. This resulted in some good conversations about the distinction between impactful experiences and popular, well-attended experiences. I wrote our grant response about the performance program that many people had mentioned had an unexpected impact.

Then, because I had the room, I mentioned that something that can’t be discounted was the impact a renovation to the physical spaces of the facility had on the community. I discussed the fact that it is very easy for people to make the decision to stay at home and every element associated with going to a live event from restaurants, to babysitters, to parking must align conveniently for people to make the decision to go out.

I went on to talk about the pre-renovation experience where the line to the women’s restroom in our facility was so long that it extended out the front door and the men’s room often had to be closed to men in order to accommodate women. Still intermission would need to be extended. I spoke about the restroom renovation garnering the most effusive response from people. I explained that as amusing as it might be to think toilets are the most popular part of a renovation, this represented a very real impact on the community perception of the venue and shouldn’t be dismissed especially given most attendance decisions and arrangements are predominantly made by women.

My mention of the impact of the renovations met with some criticism by the panel. What annoyed me most about this was that the panel was comprised of artists or those associated with arts entities drawn from throughout the state.  I could understand if panelists drawn from the general public didn’t understand the importance of the physical environment in arts and cultural experiences.

I intentionally wrote about the importance of environment in order to introduce the idea to funders and policymakers.  What I hadn’t expected was a dismissal by arts and cultural practitioners.

As Ceci mentions in her article, as insiders, arts and cultural practitioners can be blind to some of the perceptual barriers we erect around and experience.  I guess there also needs to be more frequent mention of the influence tangible physical elements play on the experience, just to be aware of these factors even if you can’t exert control over them.

 

From The Why Hasn’t This Been Standard Practice For Decades File

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I recently wrote a piece for ArtsHacker about the emerging role of intimacy direction for productions on stage and screen.  When I first read about intimacy direction a few years ago, it was at a time when there were revelations about people exploiting their position or opportunities without the full consent of others.  The role of intimacy director seemed to be about ensuring a level of protection and security.

However, the more I have read about the role, the more I realized it is really addressing a long neglected part of the creative process. In every instance when performers are exerting themselves in close quarters with each other, whether it is dance or stage combat, movements are rehearsed and scrutinized in detail until it is right. Then someone is assigned to make sure everyone warms-up and rehearses those motions prior to every performance.

When it comes to intimate moments, performers are often told to go off and figure it out themselves or given vague direction. This lack of proper attention can result in a very awkward moment or an all too authentic moment, both of which jar the audience out of the established reality.

The customary practices surrounding dance and fight choreography may be tedious and boring, but they have a goal of providing audiences with a consistent quality experience while ensuring no one gets hurt in the process. In this context intimacy direction is about addressing a long standing lack of attention that has risked these objectives.

When you think about it, you can almost credit the problem as an extension the oft observed phenomenon where people are unfazed by scenes of massive death and destruction but recoil at hints of nudity or intimacy. Perhaps people have been more comfortable micromanaging fights, but prefer to distance themselves from intimacy.

While intimacy directors are increasingly becoming part of the production process, demand far outstrips supply so if you are interested in getting trained, check out Intimacy Directors International to find out more.

Also check out the ArtsHacker post for additional links, videos and examples.

Preparing For A Kiss Like An Eviscerating Slash – As Boringly As Possible

Do They Know They Are Hard To Reach?

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On the Arts Professional UK website, Imrana Mahmood, discusses her experiences becoming a creative producer in a manner that reminded me of two other speakers/authors I often cite. Mahmood’s experience seemed to be at the crossroads of Jamie Bennett’s TEDx Talk about people not recognizing their capacity to be creative even though they already engage in creative activity and Ronia Holmes’ piece on how disinvested communities aren’t bereft of creative and artistic practice.

Mahmood’s article immediately recalled Holmes to me thanks to the title, “A Seat at The Table.” Holmes had talked about how people in disinvested communities are often offered a small seat at the big table by other organizations  when they actually own the entire table in their own communities. Mahmood’s article starts along much the same lines (my emphasis):

As a British Muslim woman of Pakistani heritage, I grew up with an intrinsic love of the arts, including qawwali, henna, calligraphy and poetry. It was therefore a surprise to be labelled as being part of a hard-to-reach community with low arts engagement, as I struggled to reconcile the reality of my lived experience with an inaccurate perception of my identity.

She was encouraged to apply for funding as an “emerging creative producer,” but says she was initially reluctant “to view myself as an arts professional.” I attribute this to her mention earlier in the piece that

“…a career in arts was not considered to be a proper job. This was despite spending much of my spare time running community arts projects as well as having a keen interest in visual arts and live performance.”

Throughout the rest of the article she mentions experiences which involved perceived tokenism and gatekeeping as well as instances when she felt she and others had license to express themselves on their own terms.   If you take one thing away from this article, it should be her call for organizations to reflect on their own inaccessibility.

Paying lip service to diversity and only conversing with creatives of colour as though we exist as a monolith is hugely problematic. It is time that organisations committed to engaging hard-to-reach communities reflect on the reality of their own inaccessibility.

Along those lines, I have some reluctance in citing Ronia Holmes’ original piece as if it were a monolithic representation of the needs and sentiments of all communities, but I often return to it because it for its perception of all the dynamics motivating arts and cultural organizations.

Enacting Your Solution Or Your Funder’s Solution?

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Often when we talk about arts and cultural organizations applying for grant funding, there is mention of how organizations might try to recast what they are doing in a context that makes it appear that their work aligns with that of a funding organization. There might also be a mention of an organization creating a new program in order to qualify for funding with an eye to doing the least possible in order to use that funding for their core operations.

When there is discussion about how foundation agendas are shaping what type of work get done, it is often in the context of the contortions non-profits will go through to secure the funding or how they need to piece support together based on narrow criteria of what an organization will or won’t fund.

While we all agree this situation is bad for non-profits because it diverts resources from the organizations core activity, less discussed is whether funder agenda is shifting the core activity of organizations in an nonconstructive manner.

Non Profit Quarterly had a story about the research Megan Ming Francis conducted on the relationship of the NAACP and one of their first major funders, Garland Fund.  Based on records of the interactions between the two organizations, the NAACP reluctantly ended up shifting away from their efforts to get state and federal entities to address lynching and mob violence to align with the Garland Fund’s education and unionization agenda because Garland was one of the few groups willing to fund them.

From a Vox piece on Francis’ research,

Garland’s organization also started out with a firm commitment to not “attempt by promise or by the setting forth of conditions or by any other means to control the policy of any group or individual entrusted with this money or a part of this money.” That, though, eventually changed, according to Francis.

The Garland Fund was most interested in education and organized labor, two areas it saw as the most important foundations for improving society. Over time, according to Francis, it discouraged the NAACP’s work on racial violence in favor of a focus on black education, and effected a swing in priorities that still guides the NAACP today (though the fund stopped operations in 1941).

[…]

Francis points to evidence that black leaders at the time didn’t think of desegregation as the pivotal success that we see it as today. Other researchers have emphasized that the fight for Brown was somewhat out of step with what black communities prioritized at the time.

Francis refers to this shift in priorities as “movement capture.” In the podcast interview that accompanies the NPQ article, it seems little has changed in the grant application process. Francis paraphrases an NAACP member writing to a member of the Garland Fund, “I have no pride of authorship. I basically just regurgitated what you wanted me to write.”

If you work in an arts and cultural organization, you may not think that some of the programming you are doing is counter to your interest. After all, if schools aren’t offering arts programming, your organization needs to pick up the slack by going into schools or adjusting operations to allow for school group visits and matinees. Children are the future of the arts, right? But might it not be more in the interest of museums to be open later in the day to better accommodate visitations at night when people got off of work?

I don’t know that museum operating hours are really dictated by a perceived need to be available for visitation by school groups. Megan Ming Francis suggests that the influence of funders have in shaping standard practice is underestimated.

She worries that funders often assume they have a better picture of the problem when they might not — and she thinks funders underestimate the costs to the movement of grassroots organizations aligning themselves with the funding zeitgeist.

I hadn’t set out to draw the connection when I started this post, but I realized the question of whether your organization would be focused on school outreach if educating wasn’t such a priority among funders is related to an frequent topic of this blog of late: Would your operations and activities look different if you didn’t have to justify your value in terms of economic impact and test scores?

If this line of thought intrigues you, check out the NPQ article and listen to the accompanying podcast interview with Megan Ming Francis where she discusses movement capture and wonders how funding may change the goals of groups like Black Lives Matter.

Things To Ponder When Endeavoring To Tell Other People’s Stories

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There is a lot of conversation about the need for people to see themselves and their interests reflected in arts and cultural experiences if arts and cultural organizations were going to remain relevant.  I saw an article on Arts Professional UK that gave examples of what organizations across the Pond were doing along these lines. Many of the observations about the challenges involved which are just as true in the US as the UK.

Tamsin Curror opens by citing, Glenn Jenkins, who has collaborated on projects with her organization,

“Imagine a scenario where all of the creative choices in your own home, the colour and style of the decor, the music you play and the films you watch were all up to somebody else to decide. This would be pretty disempowering, yet in our neighbourhoods or collective homes this is exactly how it is…”

This is the perception people can have when entities create a work purporting to reflect the experience of a group of people without the involvement and input of those who are/were part of the experience.

As much as we in the arts and cultural sector believe that what we offer contains a degree of universality with which everyone can identify, that may not be the perception in every community.

Project Director, Nancy Barrett, says: “A lot of touring work didn’t ‘speak’ to diverse urban communities and we needed to create something that would resonate with the intended audience.”

As I was reading that I wondered if this has always been the case and the greater arts and cultural community hasn’t recognized it because the focus of work has been so oriented toward a middle-class, Caucasian experience. Or if perhaps the isolating effect of social media has magnified the feeling that no one else shares your experience.

If you are only seeing the best selves of those around you rather than engaging in conversations about the boring, difficult situations they face, and therefore don’t feel you have much in common with your neighbor, it may be doubly difficult to discern shared universal themes in a creative work.

It isn’t saying anything new to observe that the time and energy required to build an authentic relationship with the communities with whom you wish to be involved in telling their stories is pretty prohibitive for most non-profit arts and cultural organizations. Added to that is something I hadn’t fully considered – the disconnect between relationship building and the funding cycle. (my emphasis)

“You need to build good relationships with people on a permanent basis, not just be pulling people in…. because if they think you’re just someone that comes in and then goes… you’re a one trick pony,” said a resident of Mereside Estate in Blackpool.

We’ve learnt that you can’t underestimate the time needed to really listen, facilitate and build mutual trust and respect. Being transparent and open about the process and budgets is also key. There’s got to be a genuine, long-term approach, and this raises questions about responsibility to the communities we work with and how to sustain this work over long periods within shorter-term funding contexts.

What Is The Value Of Fire? How Do You Know?

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Friend o’ the blog, Carter Gillies recently had a piece appear in the Arts Professional UK noting some of the problems with focusing on the instrumental value of the arts.

One of the issues he raises is the danger in making general claims about the value of the arts based on individual examples. One thing he cites that has been noted in other conversations on this topic is that if you tout the benefit of the arts to solve problems, you run the risk of something else coming along that does a better job and can be adopted as a replacement for the arts solution.

However, he points out that this also applies to employing problematic examples to make general statements about the lack of worth of arts and culture,

In fact, scepticism about the arts often does make exactly this type of argument: doubting their value in general, because there are obvious examples of offensive artistic work. They take these instances as being representative of the arts as a whole, when clearly they are not. And if we are combating such scepticism merely with the idea that some art actually does benefit society and individuals, then we have made the same mistake. The general case is not made or defeated with individual examples.

He also warns that an instrumental view of arts and culture can easily lead to the parsing of which forms of expression in particular are more effective at solving a particular ill. What is best at improving test scores? Does the same thing work for economic stimulus? (my emphasis)

Let’s think about what would follow if the point of art is its instrumentality. If it turns out that painting rainbows and unicorns is the most beneficial artistic practice, then we should start emptying museums right now. We have all the justification required to shed collections of Rembrandts, Picassos, and more.

My point is that the arts are valuable far and above their instrumental benefits. They weren’t invented to improve health and wellbeing outcomes. That they do is a happy coincidence. The arts aim at many things, and hardly ever directly at a particular cause. That is far too narrow a scope for understanding what the arts are, and why they matter.

As I have said many times, just because you can measure an effect doesn’t mean that measurement reflects the actual value of something. If there were more hot dogs and beer sold at the Super Bowl this week than the previous year, does that mean it was a better football game? Whether it is true or not is only a happy coincidence as Carter says, but it has no bearing on why people play or enjoy football to begin with.

Kids don’t organize games in their backyard or try out for local teams in the hopes of increasing hot dog sales in their community. Sure they had a winning season and exciting games before sold out crowds, but most people insisted on bringing potato salad from home instead of buying at the field, so sports are bad for the community by that measure.  You may laugh because it seems ludicrous to use the sales of picnic food as a measure of success, but it is easy to get confused when presented with a measurement that is very important in some instances that isn’t necessarily relevant in others.

Which is the worse forest fire? The one that totally burns 50000 acres where no one lives or 50 acres with 15 houses valued at $2 million each?  Which is more likely to cause people to denounce the value of fire in our lives?  There are so many factors that contribute to forest fires and the discussion of management and prevention is complicated and nuanced. Not only can’t you use a few examples to make general statements about forest fires, the use of fire is so integral and entwined with our lives and who we are that you can’t use forest fires as a measure of the value of fire.

Trees Come With Unexpected Baggage

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In my post yesterday I referenced the difficulty non-profit arts organizations have with conducting outreach activities that have relevance to communities. I and others have also frequently written about the problems with the way arts organizations approach relations with underserved communities, especially communities of color.

The honest truth is, a lot of non-profit organizations find the work they are doing has poor resonance with the communities they hope to serve. I was reading a piece on CityLab today about an organization that is trying to plant trees in Detroit. You would think this is a pretty non-controversial endeavor, but many neighborhoods in Detroit had a narrative of distrust in which trees figured prominently.

But as I read the article, I felt like so many phrases and terminology were exactly the same ones that crop up in discussions about how arts organizations need to frame their approach and relationships with underserved communities.

For example,

Elliot Payne, described experiences where green groups “presumed to know what’s best” for communities of color without including them in the decision-making and planning processes.

“I think a lot of the times it stems from the approach of oh we just go out and offer tree plantings or engaging in an outdoor activity, and if we just reach out to them they will come,” Payne told Taylor.

Cut out the references to tree planting and outdoor activity and it immediately sounds like a conversation at an arts conference without even needing to insert arts terminology.

Then there was this passage:

However, from reading excerpts of Carmichael’s interviews with TGD staff members, it’s clear some of the tree planters thought they were doing these communities an environmental-justice solid. After all, who would turn down a free tree on their property, given all of the health and economic benefits that service affords? Perhaps these people just don’t get it. As one staff member told Carmichael in the study:

You’re dealing with a generation that has not been used to having trees, the people who remember the elms are getting older and older. Now we’ve got generations of people that have grown up without trees on their street, they don’t even know what they’re missing.

How many times have you been part of a conversation where those advocating for the value of the arts talk exactly along these lines? – People don’t understand the value of the arts and the benefits they afford. The younger generation isn’t used to attending/participating in arts experiences. They have grown up without arts educational classes or opportunities to attend performances, they don’t even know what they’re missing.

What was really interesting to read was how residents of neighborhoods and the city were operating from two different narratives about trees. A researcher was surprised to learn that nearly a quarter of the 7500 residents the tree planting organization approached rejected the trees. When the researcher spoke to residents, they told her about how the city cut down the elm trees that used to line the streets after the 1967 race rebellion so that it was easier for police to conduct helicopter surveillance. The city, on the other hand, said they cut down the trees and sprayed them with DDT from helicopters in order to stem the spread of Dutch Elm disease which threatened during that time.

It was this conflicting narrative that motivated residents to reject the trees. They were already well aware of the benefits of trees in providing shade, improving home values, filtering air pollution, etc., it was just that they didn’t trust the motivations of the city.

This made me wonder if people were more aware of the benefits of the arts than we believe and there are narratives that inform a sense of distrust. Ideas about what the arts are and who they are for may comprise a large part of that narrative.

There was also a far more practical consideration fueling the rejection. People felt someone else was deciding what should be planted and where without having any conversations with the people who would have to live with the trees —and rake the leaves and branches that fell. The city doesn’t have the resources to trim the trees or remove dead ones that threaten the fall so the residents would bear the consequences.

What I could really empathize with was that The Greening of Detroit, the organization planting the trees, probably felt like they were doing a lot to have conversations and involve the community in a discussion about the tree planting.  In retrospect, there were missteps in their approach and they didn’t dedicate enough staff resources to outreach. However, they held community meetings and placed door hangers, both of which discussed their plans and their commitment to maintain the trees for three years following the planting.

Unfortunately, none of these things made the right connection with the residents but I could see a lot of arts organizations in similar circumstances feeling that making the investment to take those steps was doing a good job by residents.

It seems like the really, really retail, one-on-one interactions that were part of the researcher’s follow up was what was needed to make residents satisfied they were being heard.

One Detroit resident whom Carmichael interviewed for her study told her: “You know what, I really appreciate you today because that shows that someone is listening and someone is trying to find out what’s really going on in our thoughts, the way we feel, and I just appreciate you guys. And maybe next time they can do a survey and ask us, if they would like to have us have the trees.”

Is Art Dishwasher Safe?

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After long correspondence (both in years and text length), I finally had an opportunity to meet with Carter Gillies over Thanksgiving weekend.  On at least one occasion I dubbed Carter “potter-philosopher,” because he has studied and practiced both disciplines.

Carter has been a big proponent of measuring the value of the arts on their own terms rather than their instrumental value to stimulate economies, raise test scores, cure cancer and bring world peace.

We spoke and debated for many hours on these ideas. However, the really challenging conversation was the one I had with myself days later. It is a conversation that millions have had and never concluded satisfactorily.

Before I left Carter’s house, he took me back to his studio and told me to pick out whatever I wanted. I grabbed a bowl that caught my eye and Carter discussed why he liked the glaze he applied to it, pointing out the subtle golden flecks that dotted different places.

A few days later he wrote me thanking me for visiting and hoping I enjoyed eating out of the bowl.

I was mortified. How could I eat out of that bowl? It was a piece of art that represented the culmination of our relationship to this point. I had it prominently displayed on a table in front of my sofa.

But then when I thought about it, I have two mugs given to me by one of the directors of the art museum back where I previously lived in Ohio. I drink out of those all the time. In fact, I am drinking out of one of them right now, totally unplanned. To leave them in the cupboard and not use them would be a small betrayal of my relationship with her, implying they were not good enough to eat out of.

I have endowed both the bowl and mugs with value derived from my relationship with the makers. My conclusions about what the appropriate treatment of each are completely opposite and pretty illogical.

I am not even sure the question here is “what is art?”

Does mundane and common use diminish an object’s identity as art while preserving it in an untouched and stationary state except to dust it impart greater identity as an object d’art?

The makers are both in my mind and heart when I see and use these objects which is part of the value for me. Does sentimentality contribute or detract to the objective value of these items?

These are questions that can be addressed forever. But this also illustrates why it is so much easier to talk about the value of art in terms of instrumentality. Instrumental measures are things people can grasp on to much easier.

The big problem, however, as Carter points out is that we never really try to introduce the conversation with policy makers about why we value the arts.  It can be really easy to talk in a passionate way about why you value the bowl on your coffee table and the mugs in your cupboard as well as the stuff hanging on your walls.

Yes, there is no facile way to empirically say the bowl is more valuable than the mug. There is a whole lot of complicated factors that contribute to record breaking auctions at Sotheby’s .

People value art and creativity in their lives for reasons that have nothing to do with what they can sell it for or enhancing their test scores.

The first step is opening your mouth to mention that the true value of a creative expression is divorced of these measures and potentially even divorced from another person’s perception of that creative expression.

“Change Starts From Within” Means You

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Cyndi Suarez wrote a piece for Non-Profit Quarterly that bears considering as non-profit organizations make an effort to have the demographics of their staff and boards better reflect that of the communities they serve.

In writing about the challenges faced by people of color entering organizations predominantly staffed by Caucasians, she notes, (my emphasis)

“…they’re expected to both bring a particular value as a person of color and fit into the dominant culture. This puts the person in what one described as being at odds with “the truth in my heart.” The organizations don’t expect to have to change, and it’s extremely difficult for these people of color to address the challenges from within the organization, in isolation from others like themselves or any other support.”

Seems a little silly doesn’t it given how often the phrase, “change starts from within,” is blithely thrown around?

While I have heard discussions about the disconnect between wanting to expand involvement and participation by groups without considering that it will mean changing things about the organization, I hadn’t considered that the following problem also exists:

“…even though that person of color is a symbol of the potential change that often ushers in the money, she usually has no decision-making authority over how that money is used, and it is rarely presented as a budget at her disposal. Or, even worse, as with Carlos, the person is expected to take the lead in identifying the money himself.”

An organization in the initial phases of trying to expand involvement and participation may not be in a place to put a new hire in direct budgetary control of funding, but there should be consideration of creating a strong relationship between the funding and the scope of the new hire’s responsibility/decision making in its use.

Suarez makes other worthwhile observations about the changing dynamics in the work place in her piece. These are the ones that primarily jumped out at me.

Unexamined Initiatives Are Not Worth Implementing

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It is no news flash to even casual readers of the blog that I am involved with Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection program to build public will for arts and culture. Last week, they ran a webinar just to present the basic research and program. In recent months they have been featuring two case studies where people talk about how their organizations are putting the research and messaging into practice. This session was aimed at giving people more complete information about the program.

As much as I have been a fan boy cheer leading the program, what I really appreciated about the webinar last week was the number and type of questions people were asking of the presenters.

It was an indication of just how serious people were thinking about implementing the research that webinar attendees were questioning the research methodology. I think people in arts and culture field are wise to scrutinize whether a new approach to doing business is a popular fad soon to fade or has some rigorous thought behind it. They have little enough time and resources as it is and don’t want to waste it on initiatives lacking substance.

What I really appreciated was when one person, identified as Zi Li, asked about case studies on failed programs because they were interested to learn why those program failed.  My friend Carter Gillies often mentions the problem of survivorship bias  where you only study the successful cases rather than gaining insight from those that failed.

The music on the Awesome 80s radio station is always going to be better than the music today because you are comparing the cream that rose to the top and endured the last 30 years to all the music being performed today, both good and bad.

If you are new to the concept of Creating Connection or just want a refresher, take a look at the video from the webinar which includes all the questions and comments made that day.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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