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They Are Serious About Play

December 21, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

I didn’t properly record the source, but last week someone tweeted a link to the LEGO Foundation’s document, Creating Creators, which has the subtitle: “How can we enhance creativity in education systems?”

The document is a collection of seven essays on the subject. What interested me was the more international perspective on the topic than I had really previously seen. There are pieces written by the Minister of Basic Education for the Republic of South Africa as well as one by a student of that country’s University of Pretoria. Apparently teaching to the test is also perceived to be a problem in South Africa.

There was also an essay discussing how the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) will test for creative thinking for the first time in 2021. The PISA is the cause of much hand wringing over how students in the US compare to students in other countries in different subject areas so it can be worth paying attention to the results when they are issued and using them to initiate conversations.

That is if the PISA is administered next year. I was surprised there was no acknowledgement of the impact of the global pandemic in any of the essays. It turns out that while this document is new to me, it was actually published in 2019. With so much learning disrupted this year, they may decide to postpone the administration of the test for awhile longer.

I poked around the LEGO Foundation’s site a little bit and was not surprised to find they had created “A guide to playful distance learning – online and offline.” While it is focused on educational institutions it has a lot of fun ideas that arts & cultural organizations and libraries can use for their programs –or individual parents can use with their kids.

As the title of this post indicates, LEGO Foundation is serious about play and the Knowledge Base section of their website reflects that. It is a good place to visit for research and ideas on the topic.

Advocacy, Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology

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Maybe They Could Increase Residency By Offering A Pastry Of The Month Subscripton?

December 16, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

A little bit of amplification of my local community today. Next City ran an article on the Mill Hill artist village that is developing in one of Macon’s original neighborhoods, Ft. Hawkins. The project is a partnership between Macon-Bibb Urban Development Authority, Macon Arts Alliance and the Historic Macon Foundation which has developed renovated houses once used by mill workers into artist housing.

They also turned the auditorium building that once served the mill community into an activity space which includes a large industrial kitchen which is being used by a baking collective, but is also available for hourly rental on a more casual basis.

The industrial kitchen was installed as a result of interviews done with the local community when the project had barely been conceived. People had mentioned their mode of creative expression was related to food and that they were running businesses out of their home kitchens.

When the project first began, the people behind what would become Mill Hill worked with the local Roving Listeners group. They went door to door in 2015 for six months, getting stories from people. This included talking with people at Davis Homes, a 184-unit public housing development down the street from Mill Hill.

“We weren’t even talking about a forthcoming project,” Olive says. “It’s pretty common for development projects to go in and say, ‘We’re going to do this planning effort. We’re going to have community meetings. We’re going to do this.’ And it’s all sort of framed around ‘because we’re going to do this project in the future.’ And really, with the Roving Listeners phase, it wasn’t through any lens. It was just knocking on people’s doors.”

They recorded people’s stories and compiled some of them along with photos in a book called “Heard on the East Side,” distributing it to residents. They also referred back to those conversations when creating the Mill Hill master plan, which was completed in 2018.

Currently, there isn’t a lot of occupancy in the artist village. Of the seven houses that have been restored, only one has been purchased by a private individual. One the Arts Alliance owns for use by its artist-in-residence. As those interviewed for the article indicated, there hasn’t been a lot of marketing done to make people aware of the spaces. As a result, they haven’t reached a critical mass of interest.

I will confess to possibly contributing to that. When I was looking to buy a house around this time last year, I was seriously considering some of those houses but the fact listings indicated they had been on the market for over a year raised concerns about how easy it would be to resell a house if I decided to move.

However, one of the great benefits those houses have is that they are located right next to a pedestrian and maintenance gate into the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. It is basically a private entrance into an historic site with miles of walking & biking trails which also hooks up to an expanding community trail. I used that entrance a number of times when I was living in Macon’s downtown. Even when the historical park is closed, you can pick up the community trail about 1/4 mile away.

I should also mention that the houses are pretty nice with a lot of open space making them well suited for studio use.

While the houses might not be occupied, the former auditorium space gets used a lot for events, classes and meetings of all sorts. The kitchen the bakers used is HUGE and well-equipped. The best events are those which show off the talents of those bakers.

So overall the project definitely has potential for great growth and is something worth watching.

Arts Facilities, Business Models, creativity, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Decision Not To Grow≠Failure To Grow

December 15, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

An article on Daily Yonder making an interesting point came across my social media feed last week. They noted that part of the reason why rural communities are characterized as being in decline is that those communities that eventually grow much bigger are no longer classified as rural, they become a metro. It is almost like claiming that the life expectancy of caterpillars is getting shorter despite the increase in available flora without acknowledging that the abundance of flora allows the caterpillars to transition into butterflies earlier. This is a form of survivorship bias.

“Rural America is reported as declining in part because we no longer count as Rural those counties that grew into a Metro classification. We are measuring those counties that stay Rural which, by definition, have not grown,” stated the report.

[…]

Those that remained rural are far from homogenous, but the report stated that “they often have some economic specialization or dependence. Counties that stayed Rural and lost population tended to depend on farming, mining, or oil and gas. Counties that stayed Rural and gained population (though not enough to switch to Urban) tended to be recreation-dependent and/or retirement destinations.”

The way rural counties are classified and reclassified contributes to a skewed image of “struggling rural America.” Policy makers should consider this as they look for ways to help rural counties succeed.

This reminded me of the frequent complaint that the success of an organization or company is predominantly measured in growth. Is the number of people served or funds raised/earned greater than it was in the past? A lot of us know it is the less easily quantifiable depth and quality of the experience that can create deeper impact and lasting impressions in participants.

Heck, at about 4 pm this afternoon I got an email at my day job saying our outdoor fire escape concert series has been nominated for a special Covid Cultural Award. I would argue that a primary criteria for that was just “able to do something this year” rather than anything to do with growth.

I strongly suspect there is a dynamic at work in the non-profit sector as a whole, and the arts and cultural industry in particular, similar to the one observed in the Daily Yonder article. There are rural communities that see growth, but remain rural but there is often no differentiation between them and those rural communities that are doing poorly.

If you make a conscious choice to stay small or only grow large enough to provide sustainable salaries to staff and then reinvest resources into providing better and better experiences, you end up in the same category as groups that are just entering the field or entering your size classification. As a result, the perception of your organization is shaped by sweeping generalizations about your category.

If others in your category are struggling to deliver quality programs or lack the capacity to do good work, then by default the belief is you are as well despite having developed an extremely stable foundation over the course of decades.

This dovetails with my frequent discussion of how economic impact is a bad yardstick by which to measure the value of the arts. Just as the authors of the study of rural communities say different measures and different solutions should be applied to rural communities, a single standard of success is not appropriate for all arts organizations.

Art(ist) Education, Fundraising, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts

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This Christmas, Take A Vacation In The History of Your Neighborhood

December 14, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

A number of arts organizations like the one I run as my day job, have started focusing on programming that is locally and regionally sourced since drawing on artists from a greater distance is not practical. Back in April I saw an article on CityLab that seemed like cool idea that could be scaled up, adapted and lead by local arts organizations, even if it was over Zoom. I held off writing about it because best results probably depended on access to local libraries and historical archives and not many of them were open to the public at the time. While this still remains the case in some communities, I thought I would toss the idea out there as something to tool up for as vaccine distribution increases.

The article author Ariel Aberg-Riger, set out to discover the history of her neighborhood in Buffalo, NY and created a little pictorial guide to her journey. She delved into the archives of newspapers, libraries, Library of Congress and local historical groups as well as chatting online with neighborhood groups on Facebook.

Her account is rather engaging and amusing. She talks about how she thought it ridiculous that people were taking out classified ads with pictures of their kids—until she realized that practice was an early precursor of Instagram. She found out that in 1924 a burglar had been caught by a previous owner of her house when the burglar reached under his pillow and woke the owner.

She also learned that her street originally had a different name that didn’t appear on maps because the road wasn’t paved. More interestingly the person for whom the road was originally named opposed having it paved, but the city insisted on it so they could deliver coal to the public school. The compromise left part of the road unpaved for four years and as a result, the brick paving is two different colors right in front of Aberg-Riger’s house.

There is quite a bit more she discovered about how those who originally owned the land under her house were connected to the history of Buffalo at large, but I felt like just the little bit I shared here could provide the basis for creating short stories, plays, visual art works, storytelling sessions, narrative dances, etc, etc.

There are a number of directions an arts organization could go from involving people in researching elements of their community by holding contests for the best stories that are uncovered to getting them to participate in creating works based on information that is uncovered.

Stories from a more distant past might be useful in addressing uncomfortable topics of the present, including making people aware that history is seldom as clear cut as reported and problems faced today aren’t necessarily unprecedented and insurmountable and therefore capable of resolution.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, State of the Arts

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