Working In The Arts

Hey You Damn Kids, Come On To My Yard!

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About three years ago, I heard about the PorchRokr Festival in Akron’s Highland Square neighborhood.  I had since learned that there was a whole series of Porchfests that have sprung up since the 2007 inaugural effort in Ithaca, NY.

Just before Thanksgiving CityLab had an article that mentioned the revived interest in porches as an architectural feature, citing the Porchfests in the process.

To younger urbanites, he says, porches look like stages. In the Instagram age, the front steps have become places to see and be seen, throw a rocking concert or party, and to foster metropolitan community in a walk-by, stop-in-for-wine sense. “Not by design but by accident—by having strangers descend on their yard, having a musician play, sharing a beer, and meeting some new folks—I gave all these people a tool to look at what porches mean in a new way,” Doyon says.

In 2016 as part of the lead up to the PorchRockr festival, the organizers were holding sessions to teach people how to replicate the festival in other communities. They also held 4 workshops on consecutive weeks to teach participating music groups how to get organized for the festival, deal with stage fright and engage in banter with the audience.

At one time porches and front stoops were central to communal life for families and neighborhoods and show hints of reclaiming that role again.  According to CityLab, one woman in the Buffalo, NY/Toronto, ON area sponsors a whole series of events.

In the warmer months, on her own front steps, she also hosts a “Stories From the Porch” series of speakers on art, history, and culture. Her events have attracted participants as young as 11, who—like her twentysomething kids—love hanging out on the porches. Glica takes pleasure in redefining her community’s relationship to an American architectural feature once dismissed as old-fashioned. “It’s subtle,” she says. “In 10 years we’re going to go, ‘When did that happen?’ But it’s definitely happening.”

While these types of activities can certainly manifest as outgrowths of an organization’s current activities, as someone who believes every bit of creative activity helps to cultivate the cultural ecology of communities, I offer these ideas up to readers as things they could do as individuals as well.

“This Is Not The Art I Am Looking For” — What To Say About Creative Work If You Aren’t A Jedi

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There was a pretty interesting article and ensuing discussion on a Harvard Business Review article about providing and receiving feedback on creative projects.

As much as I have written about arts and culture related topics, I don’t think I have really addressed how to provide constructive feedback in a creative environment before. If nothing more, the article provides some things to reflect upon in regard to one’s own practices.

Author Spenser Harrison discusses the results of a study he and a collaborator conducted which found that feedback was most effective when it was solicited out of curiosity and when it was given by people who recognized their feedback was subjective.

Asking for feedback out of curiosity. … Sometimes requests for feedback are overly narrow…There are often underlying reasons for asking a specific question like this, including limiting a coworker from attacking your work or showcasing something you’re proud of (in which case you really don’t want feedback — you want admiration).

This approach, however, limits the potential of creative work, because it doesn’t allow for the possibility of novelty. Changing one color, for example, may not push the boundaries to create something that peers and potential customers haven’t seen before.

Our research showed that highly curious individuals asked extremely open questions like “What do you think?” or “Where could I go next with this?” These designers received significantly more feedback than those asking narrow questions, and their final designs received higher scores…In this way, creative work is like dancing: Questions born out of curiosity signal that the creative worker is looking for a dance partner.

Provide feedback based on subjectivity.

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When providing feedback to creative workers, signal that your opinion is exactly that: an opinion. This seems deceptively easy. Doing it requires providing feedback that includes first-person pronouns: I, me, and my. “I see…” or “What strikes me is that…” or “My opinion is…” Many managers find this difficult, because they have been trained to solve concrete problems, not to consider what something really means. Providing feedback on creative work means setting aside the managerial impulse to plan and retain control. Doing so allows managers to understand that their opinions provide potential trajectories a creative worker might try — not the “right” road to take.

I have had people use that tactic of limiting the scope for feedback before but hadn’t recognized the motivation behind it. (I suspect I have used it a couple times myself.)   As much as managers would love to be able to exercise Jedi mind powers and get everyone to agree this is not the art they were looking for, other approaches are necessary.

What I really helped expand the concepts presented in the article were some of the observations made in the comments. The one I appreciated most was made by Gabby Rosi who probably spoke for a situation a lot of people find themselves in when asked to evaluate work created for their use.

…My typical dialogue goes like this: “this is a good start… I like how you did XXX… what do you think about this…” when I really want to say is “this is way off the mark.” Occasionally, I end up not including this person in a project because it is uncomfortable for me. Yes, not the best approach that I want to change.

In his response, author Spenser Harrison offered the following:

First, Kim Elsbach (UC Davis) has done really fun research on Hollywood pitch meetings…If we deem the person as not creative then we often feel a pull to provide remedial feedback like your “this is way off the mark” comment or we try to train them on what to do.

In some of my earlier work with modern dancers and R&D designers, we saw that feedback, especially in early phases, was most helpful as a question. That is, before we can criticize the idea, we need to understand the pool of ideas that the idea came from and the exploratory process that led to that pool. Often when creators feel they have a feedback provider up to speed with their creative process they’ll explicitly ask, “what should I do next?” That’s the golden opening for providing some gentle advice.

Placemaking As Imagined By The People Who Live There

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The Shelterforce website had an interesting article about some data collection techniques being used for Creative Placemaking efforts. Author Keli Tianga’s description of a crowdmapping process was the approach that most intrigued me.

In crowdmapping, participants get out on foot and survey a neighborhood for its existing creative and cultural assets. “Every small group gets a small section of [a neighborhood’s] overall map to work from—this is so they can focus their efforts and share ideas with one another,” said Leo Vazquez, executive director of the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.

Teams are given color-coded stickers, and mark places on the map they’ve identified for their potential. Large, blank walls on the sides of buildings can become canvasses for murals; empty, fenced-in land owned by private business can become a site for temporary large-scale sculpture installations; community gardens can also become venues for outdoor music performances, and small parks can become designated spots for contemplation or solo art-making.

In the process, I made special note of being outside and observing how a community moves and interacts with one another and with space—where people are gathered, which streets have the most pedestrians, which playground is the most popular are all things to remember when at the point of trying to reach people “where they are.”

Crowdmapping’s virtue is its practicality and democracy—it requires no prior training, and everyone’s viewpoint is useful…

What appealed to me most was that is such great participatory activity that can go a long way toward solving the problem of involving people who are most impacted by decisions but may not show up to formal meetings. People who don’t feel like they are represented or have their voices heard can gain a measure of confidence that their contributions matter when they are made responsible for imagining/suggesting what a neighborhood might become.

The article discusses how places like Baltimore are using these type of maps, overlaid with other data about social and economic indicators to make decisions about how to deploy resources.

Keli Tianga also writes about some really intensive one on one discussions that were conducted in Cincinnati as part of a process called “design thinking.”

Following a link to a story about the design thinking process on the ArtsPlace America site provided some usefl insight about why people are reluctant to participate in community meetings soliciting feedback about development plans.

…we discovered barriers that hadn’t been considered before. Many of the events weren’t physically accessible to Walnut Hills’ older residents. Other residents said they didn’t feel safe leaving their homes, or were afraid that by vocalizing their concerns they’d be labeled as “snitches.” Finally, some admitted that they thought attending these meetings would only encourage and accelerate the gentrification of their neighborhood.

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High Fives was ultimately seen as a huge success for both the RF and Design Impact. Residents who hadn’t previously participated in listening sessions or community council meetings stepped up to plan what High Fives looked like, when it would happen and how to get other residents involved. Those who felt less comfortable leading tasks still contributed by spreading the word or distributing signs, a reminder that “resident leadership” can look different depending on the person.

Someone Loses When Everybody Wins

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I would swear sometimes that Seth Godin is spying on me and then writing blog posts based on what I am thinking at the time. Or maybe he is just good at writing stuff that you can easily project your own experiences upon.

In any case, today he wrote about how you can make people feel like outsiders even if that is not your intention.

You can’t have insiders unless you have outsiders.

And you can’t have winners unless you have losers.

That doesn’t mean that you’re required to create insiders and winners. All it means is that when people begin to measure themselves only in comparison to others (“How did I rank?”) then you need to accept the impact of those choices.

It’s entirely possible to be happy and engaged and productive without creating this dynamic. But in a culture based on scarcity, it’s often easier to award or deduct points and to keep a scoreboard instead.

Just yesterday I cited Nina Simon’s Palo Alto TED Talk where she talks about this very idea. In her talks and book, The Art of Relevance, she mentions that even if you are providing more opportunities for a wider range of people and not reducing service or access to the demographics you have long served, there will be people who will view themselves as having lost out in the process.

I have written about two of Nina’s talks on the subject before so I won’t expound too much on the subject except to reiterate Godin’s point that you need to understand people may evaluate their situation in these terms.

Godin’s last sentence is particularly applicable to arts organizations who definitely operate in a culture of scarcity and are apt to adopt score keeping.   The state arts council or large foundation may be pleased that they have been able to increase funding in your community by 25% over last year. Instead of viewing this as a testament to the burgeoning creative vitality in the community, it can be easy to focus on the fact that another organization got more than you even though your own funding didn’t decrease, or decide you would have gotten more funding if not for the 5 new organizations that emerged in the last two years.

From this perspective, you might begin to empathize with the long time insider who insists they have lost out even as you believe everyone in the community should be excited that your hard work and sincerity opened new doors for a wider range of people without closing off existing opportunities.