Advocacy

Info You Can Use: Rural Arts

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Last week, Americans for the Arts held a blog salon on Rural Arts.  There were a lot of familiar names and faces with posts by Wormfarm Institute and Springboard for the Arts’ rural offices, but there were more people with whom I was unfamiliar.

There were three posts that jumped out at me, likely because they were aligned with my penchant for practical knowledge. Two were by Savannah Barrett with Art of the Rural which is coordinating 2014 as Year of the Rural Arts.

Her first post suggests working with Cooperative Extension Services in your community as a method of developing the arts. Cooperative Extensions in many states operate arts extensions as part of their services and apparently the national 4-H has recently started placing a greater emphasis on communication and expressive arts according to Barrett.

Her second post lists federal and philanthropic resources that are involved with rural arts.

The third post was made by Shannon Ford from the Tennessee Arts Commission. He lists 6 characteristics which he has identified as making arts rural programs successful. Most of the characteristics are common to pretty much any activity planned by an arts organization- clarity, sustainability, evaluation. However because resources are often particularly scarce in rural communities, the need to be focused on these areas is especially important given the small margin of error.

This is why he emphasizes visibility and partnerships as a way of leveraging good will and shared resources as a way to communicate your goals to many corners of the community and achieve investment.

His last characteristic, authenticity, seemed most important of all given that the values of a rural community are shared. By which I mean in the general sense and in the course of conversation. Even if two people aren’t of like mind about your efforts, whatever you do is going to be a topic of  their conversation. As Ford notes, “No good ever came of ignoring your community’s cultural context or norms, and rural perspectives have a long history of being ignored.”

If you are interested in learning more, Americans for the Arts is hosting a three webinars on the rural arts starting Wednesday, February 26, each at 3 pm EST.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014: Economic Development and Art in Rural Communities

Thursday, February 27, 2014: Resources For Rural Arts

Friday, February 28, 2014: Placemaking in Rural Communities

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been Creative?

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There was an article on Salon this weekend which noted that while people in creative fields are facing increasingly difficult times, the amount of literature/media celebrating creativity continues to increase. The author basically concludes that the idea of creativity is valued, but society doesn’t really actively seeks out and support creatives.

He says the same basic examples are recycled over and over again to illustrate how beneficial creativity is to the economy, but there isn’t an expanding effort toward cultivating creatives.

It is the story of brilliant people, often in the arts or humanities, who are studied by other brilliant people, often in the sciences, finance, or marketing. The readership is made up of us — members of the professional-managerial class — each of whom harbors a powerful suspicion that he or she is pretty brilliant as well…the real subject of this literature was the professional-managerial audience itself, whose members hear clear, sweet reason when they listen to NPR and think they’re in the presence of something profound when they watch some billionaire give a TED talk. And what this complacent literature purrs into their ears is that creativity is their property, their competitive advantage, their class virtue. Creativity is what they bring to the national economic effort, these books reassure them — and it’s also the benevolent doctrine under which they rightly rule the world.

This reinforces the uneasiness I felt when I learned the National Endowment for the Arts decided to expand their definition of participation in arts activity to include viewing/listening to recordings and broadcasts. Suddenly 74% of adults were participants.

I support the idea that the survey should acknowledge that technology was a valid way to interact with the arts, but I was still left asking, “So what?”

That 74% was twice the number who reported having attended an arts event. That means that 38%+ did not view themselves as having participated in an arts activity.

Even if you went and told them, “Hey, that thing you do? It is participating in an arts activity,” they basically didn’t have to make an effort to change their lifestyle in order to continue being counted as a participant.

Those who cared about being considered a participant gained a measure of satisfaction they didn’t have and those who didn’t care could just live on.

Since that initial study came out in 2008, there hasn’t really been any initiative to encourage people to up their game and be more of an active participant.

I am not talking about fulfilling the self-interest of arts organizations to get people through their doors. That portion of the study didn’t really change anything for arts organizations. They knew long before then that people were watching broadcasts and listening to recordings and doing other things rather than attending and it was going to be necessary for arts organizations to change their approach.

There hasn’t been strong effort to say, what you are doing is considered participation, now try picking up a guitar, writing poems and short stories, sketching the clouds.

I don’t discount the possibility that people are already quietly doing this. Perhaps the next NEA survey should ask if listening and watching broadcasts and recordings has lead to further exploration through taking a class, experimenting with Photoshop, keeping a journal, etc,.

The very act of asking that question might reinforce the idea that creative efforts should be valued better than a series of television and print ads encouraging people to get up and paint in the manner of exercise campaigns.

In the past I have advocated asking people what they liked about their last arts experience when you encounter them at supermarket check out line or at dinner parties. It occurs to me we should add asking if people do any acting, singing, dancing, painting, writing, etc., themselves to introduce the idea there is value in self-improvement and education.

While the Salon article takes a fairly cynical tone about feeling self-important after reading a book on creativity or watching a TED talk, it is true that creativity can’t be achieved through passivity. Quiet time is certainly helpful, but the creative process is active, full of mistakes, risk, disappointments and blisters as well as the sublime.

Audience Development As Disagreement

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In a post Seth Godin made today, he says:

The easiest way to disagree with someone

…is to assume that they are uninformed, and that once they know what you know, they will change their mind. (A marketing problem!)

For a long time that was the mode in which arts organizations operated, believing that once people were exposed to the arts, they would fall in love with them forever and ever.

I really never thought of that view as “disagreeing” with a potential audience member, but I guess in a way that is what it is.

It wasn’t until I read Godin’s post that I realized that the view people would fall in love with the arts once they were exposed is probably based on a longstanding sales philosophy that being told “No” simply meant that people didn’t have enough information.

I don’t know how many jobs I had where I was told that. I always thought it was a pile of baloney because there are plenty of reasons for not wanting to buy something other than lack of information. I suspect it was just a semi-manipulative way of making the sales person blame themselves for not making the sale.

Godin has a couple more levels of difficulty for disagreeing with someone. However, he says (my emphasis)

The hardest way to disagree with someone is to come to understand that they see the world differently than we do, to acknowledge that they have a different worldview, something baked in long before they ever encountered this situation. (Another marketing problem, the biggest one).

There actually are countless uninformed people. There are certainly craven zealots. And yes, in fact, we usually hear what we want to hear, or hear what the TV tells us, or hear what we expect, instead of hearing what was said, and the intent behind it. Odds are, though, that we will make the change we seek by embracing the hard work of telling stories that resonate, as opposed to dismissing the other who appears not to get it.

So while Godin’s answer does sort of embrace the idea that the problem is a lack of information, that deficit isn’t solved by delivering a spiel*. Rather the most effective approach will likely be a long term communication process based on an understanding of the other person–the audience and community in the case of most arts organizations.

(*Mahagonny-Songspiel might work, but I doubt it.)

Oh, You Want Us To Teach It, Too?

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Last month on Americans for the Arts’ Arts Blog, Elizabeth Laskowski, wrote about how she welcomed standardized testing for the arts because it was making her school finally take her seriously.

My first thought was that she was basically embracing the philosophy of the kid who always acts up in class–even attention in a negative context is better than no attention.

Because students will now be tested in the arts area, Laskowski will now receive regular evaluations of her teaching, attending her class will no longer be a “carrot and stick” privilege afforded well-behaved children, students will get up to 135-180 minutes a week with her instead of 30 and the grades in her class will actually count.

It probably goes without saying that I think it shouldn’t take the threat of testing to create a situation where a music teacher is thrilled that:

“We will no longer be simply a prep time for general education teachers, or a way for the kids to blow off a little steam before they get back to work. The arts will be full fledged, real, and valuable subjects, worthy of time, money, and respect.”

Elizabeth Laskowski’s post illustrated for me that it isn’t enough to just advocate for arts in the schools, requiring that they be treated seriously and taught is also apparently necessary.

Parents may have to scrutinize claims of arts classes being offered. It appears all classes are not created equal and one should not assume that three years of music class provides roughly equivalent instruction hours as three years of French.