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Art Helps Get The Buses Running On Time And Where They Are Needed

February 3, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

Last week Shelterforce had an article about places around the country that are using arts and culture strategies as part of transit planning processes. They provide examples of projects in beginning, middle and final stages in three communities around the country. However, these efforts are occurring in far more communities than that. The article mentioned an inaugural program of Transportation America which placed Arts, Culture and Transit Fellows in three additional communities.

These fellowships are”…designed to give art professionals opportunities for hands-on learning about the transportation planning and design process in their respective regions.’

At a nascent project in Northwest Arkansas, there is an effort to extend the hours and reach of transit lines. What the artists are contributing is collecting stories from

…constituencies whose feedback is often left out of planning discussions. Wilhite says those are the people they will pull in to participate in listening sessions and story circles “to get a conversation going about what’s proposed.”

Wilhite sees their role as artists and storytellers to be not just gatherers of information from a wider range of communities, but gatherers of stories that are more nuanced than what can be gleaned from an online survey. “We get the same answer but make it more complex, which is to [not only] say that people want transit, [but that] it needs to be here, and there.”

[…]

They are planning to facilitate citizen ride audits, in which residents of different backgrounds and transit needs—possibly students, seniors, the disabled—ride and record in various media their transit experience over a period of time. Another planned activity is the production of a theater piece that will be performed on bus lines.

…They will also work with a local arts center to create a temporary bus shelter—there are none in Springdale—in its parking lot. “Our goal is to increase ridership eventually, but [for now], get people excited, familiar, and even just aware [of the buses] maybe for the first time.”

Another project in Nashville helped address concerns about safety at a particularly dangerous intersection. In this case, feedback at community meetings was facilitated by hands on art projects. I am intrigued by the idea that modeling a pedestrian refuge out of clay and pipe cleaners might have directly contributed to the creation of a pedestrian refuge in the street improvement project.

Attendees used Play-Doh and pipe cleaners to create what they wanted to see in the area, be it transportation systems or parks, and on sticky notes they wrote how Nolensville Pike made them feel. The ideas specifically relating to pedestrian safety included adding more crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, and separate bike lanes along the corridor.

“Art definitely helped take down that barrier that people have when they don’t know what to say in a public meeting,” Carpenter says. “It helps stimulate people’s thinking about any issue [so they can] participate more in the conversation.”

[…]

The resident and business feedback resulted in change. ENCP was able to secure $1 million from the city budget to make positive changes along Nolensville Pike that included adding a traffic signal, crosswalk, and a permanent pedestrian refuge island in front of Azafrán Park,…

[…]

“I can guarantee that these specific projects … would not have happened were it not for us demonstrating the feedback that we got from people,” Carpenter says. “To have people testifying that they want these kinds of improvements on the Nolensville Pike [was important].”

The third project the article covered is one I have mentioned before, and one of my favorite stories, the use of cultural experiences to mitigate the impact of the construction of the Green Line light rail in St. Paul, MN on area businesses. In short, Springboard for the Arts trained a number of arts groups who went out and did everything from visual art projects to performances in Vietnamese restaurants, all of which helped draw people into area businesses despite the construction.

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Working In The Arts

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Glasses Are Just One Way To Hear People’s Light

January 29, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

About two weeks ago, I wrote about how England’s National Theatre has been developing technology and processes to provide closed captioning glasses to audience members who may be D/deaf and hard of hearing. In the last week I saw a story in American Theatre about how People’s Light theatre in Malvern, PA had started distributing those glasses developed by National Theatre to their audiences.

I had initially just thought I would make a quick mention in a post or just tweet as a follow up to my earlier post. However, the American Theatre article included such great feedback and observations of people using the glasses, I felt the need to draw more attention.

One thing I wanted to note is that People’s Light is using the glasses as one option among many that they are offering . They originally pulled out the glasses when their existing open captioning technology stopped working in the middle of the show, but they mention they are still providing open captioning and American Sign Language at performances. Their goal is to provide these services on a consistent basis so that anyone can decide to attend on the spur of the moment rather than being restricted to a couple of signed or captioned dates.

From the observations of those interviewed, the potential range of people who might use the services appears much broader than one might expect.

There are some obvious applications. One woman who experienced hearing loss in her 40s said she stopped attending performances even though People’s Light was just down the road and hearing aids were semi-helpful in understanding dialogue. Once she saw the email about the captioning devices, she said it took her 30 seconds to decide to attend shows again. Another woman who lost her hearing 30 years ago and helped People’s Light purchase the LED screens they use to provide open captioning also took part in the trial use of the National Theatre equipment. She was equally enthusiastic about the options it opened up.

Perhaps the best testament was related by People’s Light staff:

“On the first night, we had a woman who arrived late,” Bramucci says. “It was her first time coming to People’s Light, and rather than throw her into the theatre, we had to give her the tutorial. We were in the lobby explaining to her how the glasses work while the curtain speech was playing on a monitor. When she put the glasses on her face for the first time, her face just exploded in this smile.

“After the performance, she could not have been more enthusiastic or effusive in what this meant to her,” Bramucci continues. “She felt that she was in on the experience. When people were laughing, she was able to laugh with them. She felt incredibly empowered, and she said she thought, this is what it must feel like to feel normal.”

But in terms of potential wider use by unanticipated constituencies,

Abigail Adams, People’s Light’s artistic director and CEO, felt similarly when she tested the glasses (which are now available at all National Theatre productions) during a performance of Follies. “I’m more of a visual person than an aural person, and I really liked having that text available,” she tells me. “I think it speaks to the different ways that people process information.”

People’s Light is considering how they might use the technology to provide greater access to non-native English speakers on an ongoing basis. But also, perhaps employing them in a reciprocal manner to stage performances entirely in another language and provide the English translation on the glasses.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, State of the Arts

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Creative Placemaking Is More Than Just Murals

January 27, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

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.

Advocacy, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Government Relations, State of the Arts

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Worrying Prohibition Or License To Get Out Of Boring Meetings?

January 22, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

A couple years ago I wrote a piece for ArtsHacker debunking the notion that anyone who was an ex officio member of a non-profit board did not have the power to vote. The fact is, they have the right to vote unless the organizational bylaws specifically indicate they don’t.

More recently though I discovered that some states like California actually prohibit a non-profit board of directors to have non-voting members which lead me to write a new ArtsHacker post.

The thought is that the role of director comes with certain responsibilities and obligations and so only those fully invested with the decision making authority to fulfill those obligations should be a director. This applies to any committees that exercise board powers as well, which is pretty much all of them (i.e. Executive, Finance, Governance, Nominating, Compensation, etc).

Since some boards have non-voting emeritus director positions or bestow major donors with honorary director titles, the law requires either the title be changed or the bylaws altered to provide these people with votes. (Though if the person has all the rights, responsibilities and authority of a director, they are considered a director regardless of their title as Trustee, Governor, Visitor, etc.)

Other people can attend these board and committee meetings to provide feedback and advice, but they are considered guests or advisors.

Now you may be thinking that the presence of executive leadership at board and committee meetings is crucial to the operations of a non-profit organization and it undermines their credibility if they are only considered to be a guest at the official proceedings.

The authors of the document providing advice about the law, (though they point out that they are not providing official legal advice, nor am I), suggest the following approach:

For example, a corporation may include in its bylaws a provision that the chief executive is required and has the right to attend every board meeting, unless specifically excused by the board. Such a person would be able to express opinions about matters up for discussion, present reports and be involved in the logistics of organizing board meetings, such as notification and setting the agenda.

(I suppose there are some executive leaders who were momentarily excited by the prospect of feigning their dismay at not being allowed to attend an interminable board meeting, but unfortunately, it is the law.)

Check out my full post on ArtsHacker. It may bear doing a little research to learn if your state has similar laws regarding board membership.