Government Relations

When Good Ideas Occur To Lazy Readers

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Occasionally I get a sense that I have a bunch of interesting ideas percolating in my subconscious because I will occasionally misread the title of an article and have a whole slew of assumptions about the article which don’t bear out. It makes me think my subconscious has these ideas but is just waiting for someone else to do all the hard work of proving they are viable.

This occurred with an piece in Fast Company about how Minnesota based Artspace (not to be confused with ArtPlace) prevents artists from being displaced from communities due to the gentrification they helped encourage.

Artspace has done this by building all types of artist housing/work spaces in the Twin Cities (as well as 21 other cities in the US). Because Artspace controls the housing, the artists aren’t as apt to be priced out of the neighborhood as they have been in so many other place.

But the article title which included the words “artists revived an old warehouse district–and got to stick around to reap the benefits of what they helped create” and “Give Artists Their Own Real Estate Developers,” made me think someone came up with a plan where the artists received some increasing financial benefit as the neighborhood improved.

I imagined there might be some sort of version of the 1% for art for the neighborhood where artists received a share of every real estate transaction that occurred–every time a construction project began; every time a property was sold or leased to a new business; every time an apartment was rented and re-rented–artists actually benefited financially from the improving fortunes of the neighborhood.

Since all this came flooding into my mind when I caught sight of the titles, I am not quite sure how it would work. But I wonder if a city would be willing to license an organization like Artspace or create a sort of investment fund which would receive a cut of all transactions for 25-30 years. I am not sure at what stage this might happen. Gentrification of a neighborhood often starts when artists move into spaces they aren’t really supposed to be inhabiting so they wouldn’t want to call attention to themselves too soon.

All charter artist members of the organization/fund would get a payout every so often which would help diminish the impact of the gentrification and benefit those responsible for inspiring the improving conditions. If the money was going to a non-profit like Artspace, perhaps they would use a portion of the funds to develop low cost artist accommodations and seed similar artist beneficial gentrification efforts in other cities.

Imagine artists having a piece of every Starbucks lease, every high rise luxury apartment construction project, every boutique shop renovation, every bar and restaurant opening, every skyrocketing apartment rental or sale.

And if having to pay that percentage inhibits this sort of development–well that is all the longer that artists can actually afford to live there. It would actually be good if companies started moaning publicly about paying a percentage because it would start to illustrate the real economic impact of the arts.

Just think if rather than just real estate, every transaction, from cups of coffee and shoes sold to parking fees and haircuts, within a district was charged even a quarter of a percent in support of the artists there. At the end of every year you would have some real hard data about the economic growth the presence of artists initiated in that neighborhood.

No Simple Solutions

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While I was out in the middle of the Mongolian steppes gazing out from my yurt, I happened upon a copy of the Oxford Business Group’s report on Mongolia in the dining hall. I put aside the novel I was reading and devoured the report. It was intensely interesting to me to read about all the factors that contribute to the emergence of a developing nation. In many respects, I saw some parallels to the arts and culture sector.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of Mongolia’s greatest assets is its land. The people are largely nomadic and their large herds of horses, sheep, goats and cows benefit from the grazing land. Tourists such as my friends and I come for the natural beauty. And the country has large mineral wealth.

There are many factors that must align for the country to be economically successful in each of these areas. The banks must have enough capital to support investment; insurance companies must have the resources to insure the industry; the government must be stable and generally unified in its vision; people must be confident that laws will be fairly applied and agreements honored; work force must be well trained and industrious; a quality transportation infrastructure must be in place.

This is no small task for a country that moved from Soviet style communism to a parliamentary republic in the early 1990s. The report mentioned that even countries like Canada which has a more mature and practiced economy and political system were challenged in trying to exploit their mineral wealth.

One of the things the report made clear is all these elements are interrelated. Success depends on addressing deficiencies in all theses areas and that balance is necessary. For example, there is a growing concern that the rise of the mining industry with its good salaries not develop to the detriment of other industries like manufacturing and tourism leaving the economy too dependent one segment. The impact of copper prices falling sharply a couple years ago is still fresh in people’s minds.

In the same respect, problems faced by the arts and culture sector in the U.S. and elsewhere won’t be simply fixed solely by achieving one of the following: more government funding, better cultural policy, more corporate donations, better board governance, changes in foundation policy, arts education in schools, new business model or marketing to younger audiences.

Its all of these and no one thing. We all generally know there are no simple answers, but it is difficult to remember when we are told the solutions to our problems can be achieved with a simple pill; in as little as 30 minutes a week; or just cutting/raising taxes.

Certainly when you are operating in perpetual crisis mode, or at least a low grade state of emergency as seems to be the case in the arts and culture sector, thinking the solution lies in achieving progress in one fairly significant goal provides the hope you need to carry on.

While it shows the reality of the situation to perhaps be more overwhelmingly complex, in the context of the factors necessary for developing the Mongolian economy, it is obvious that a more holistic and balanced approach to improving the operating environment is necessary.

It only makes sense that financing, infrastructure, law, education, etc are all important to a developing country. Progress won’t be made if one area is deficient. Trying to convince others to stop trying to advance conditions and policies in other areas and devote their time to what you think is important may ultimately be counter-productive.

Something to remember if you are making the rounds of conferences and such this summer and you are getting a lot of messages about what is absolutely the most important thing to do.

In Which I Have A Belated Realization

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The lovely people at my state arts foundation sent me some information about National Endowment programs today that I thought I would share. The first is that there will be a webinar for the Challenge America FastTrack program on April 18. If you are thinking of applying and have questions, sign up!

The second thing I got was a PDF of the Our Town application guidelines webinar. I was interested to see that the program encompassed more than I originally assumed. The focus is on Creative Placemaking which means they are looking to improve quality of life, encourage creativity, support artists and engender a sense of community.

I had assumed they would support arts in public places, creation of arts districts and cultural facilities. I know some projects have included artist housing. I was pleased to learn that they would also support creative entrepreneurship, the development of creative hubs, design of public places and wayfinding systems. I hadn’t realized they were interested in cultivating an entire infrastructure. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me given the NEA is a partner in ArtPlace. There seems to be a desire to re-purpose existing spaces rather than new construction.

As you might imagine, they won’t support anything that doesn’t have arts and culture–and their practitioners–as central elements. At the same time, they also require local government at the city or county level as a partner to the non-profit. A government entity can only submit one proposal, which they define as:

“Eligible local government partners include counties, parishes, cities, towns, villages, federally recognized tribal governments, local arts agencies, local education agencies (school districts), or local government-run community college.”

Soooo….. as I got to finishing this entry, I realized that the deadline for this grant was March 1. I suspect the folks at my state arts organization didn’t realize this either when they sent the information out with a “please share” request. The Our Town link from the NEA home page isn’t working so it wasn’t immediately apparent the deadline had passed. I did find the application information page through other means.

If nothing else, it is a good resource for planning for the next cycle. (Which they indicate there will be.) This year the application window was December 1 to March 1. Unless you already had something in the works with your local government, it would have been a real crunch to get an application together. Let’s face it, few people are really going to be working on a grant application during the Christmas holidays.

Intrinsic Value As A General Value

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Recently there has been a sentiment that the arts community shouldn’t use economic benefits as an argument for supporting the arts. I agree with this because there are a lot of problems with the argument which can weaken your position. The difficulty is that in trying to reframe the argument in other terms, you are fighting a sort of cultural inertia.

Arts Alliance Illinois Executive Director, Ra Joy retweeted lobbyist Dan Johnson who wrote “Instead of using the phrase “I’m a taxpayer” to legitimize a comment about government, we should use the universal phrase “I’m a citizen'”

We have a consumerist mentality which leads us to feel we get a say in how all our money is used and should expect a certain level of satisfaction. Businesses we make purchases from extend money back guarantees to assure our satisfaction so there is a tendency to apply a similar outlook to other areas of our lives. In addition to those addressing concerns to the government, students often use the my taxes/tuition pays your salary argument with their teachers.

The problem is, people often over estimate how much of the cost their share actually covers. Hamilton College recently launched a campaign at their students showing that after February 23, someone else was paying for their education. As most of us in the arts world know, a taxpayer’s share of the National Endowment for the Arts funding is below fifty cents.

And, of course, in many cases the price of a ticket to a performance at a non-profit organization only covers about 1/3 of the cost of the production.

Johnson’s suggestion to use “I’m a citizen” is essentially the argument for the intrinsic value of the arts. It harkens back to the social compact theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau that influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States. (My first major was Political Science.) It is an argument that the government owes us based on the intrinsic nature of our relationship rather than our dutiful payment of taxes.

The influence of money which drives the concerns over the Citizens United decision and those of the Occupy Movement illustrate the problem of equating economic influence with general worth and merit. It is probably time to emphasize intrinsic value in general and not solely in the arts.