More on SAAs

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As I was reading the Rand report yesterday, it seemed that the report itself just expounded a bit more upon the summary at the beginning of the document. As a result, I chose to publish my blog entry. However, when I reached the section on future initiatives by State Arts Agencies (SAAs), I realized there was some interesting information to report and so, I continue today.

The Wallace Foundation granted funds to 13 SAAs to support their State Arts Partnerships for Cultural Participation initiative (START).

“By many measures, the successful proposals were quite innovative. Several START agencies proposed to teach themselves the latest audience-development and other participation-building techniques so that they in turn could pass them on to selected local arts organizations. Several also proposed to create new grant categories for demonstration projects to model these techniques. Relatively few of the proposals, however, looked beyond traditional nonprofi t arts providers as their instruments for boosting participation.”

The Wallace Foundation brought in Mark H. Moore to speak, a professor from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to speak with the SAAs. Moore has focussed a great deal of work “on developing concepts and tools for public sector strategic management.” After working with him, the SAAs shifted their focus to examining themselves as public service agencies with participation boosting activities receiving a secondary focus.

In theory, all SAAs serve the public interest. But on examination, they found they were really focussing their efforts to help artists, art lovers and arts organizations. Grants were distributed according to “whether programs ‘meet the needs of the field,’ not the needs of the various communities around their states.”

The SAAs are beginning the planning of new programs no longer tend to fund the same organizations on an annual basis.

“They are eager to develop all sorts of partnerships-be they with other government agencies, non-arts civic institutions, local communities, for-profit and amateur arts groups, etc.-any person, group, or institution with the potential to get more and different kinds of people involved in the arts is a candidate. However, even these START agencies are quite anxious about diverting scarce resources away from artists and arts groups they have long known and respected.”

As a result, the SAAs have been changing granting criteria to encourage arts organizations to pay better attention to serving the community needs. It will be interesting to see how private foundations respond to the change in the way SAAs support arts organizations given the Independent Sector paper I cited in April encourage long term support of non profits.

The Rand report cites an interesting anecdote illustrating the way funding policy is shifting.

“A jazz presenter, recounting his dire financial situation, was pleading for money from the agency. The staffer, who has been very involved with the START initiative, responded, ‘We don’t give you money because you need it.’ Startled, the jazz presenter replied, ‘You don’t?’ ‘No,’ said the staffer. ‘We give you money because you deliver something specific to the public that the state would like to have happen.’ According to the staffer, at some level her agency understood this prior to START, but lacked both the framework and the language for making it clear. Now they are in the midst of figuring out what that ‘something specific’ looks like in order to explain it to their would-be grantees. Most of the START agencies are doing likewise.”

The report notes this sort of approach will probably begin to alienate state arts organizations a little. Even though they may not lobby for SAAs as they once did, arts organizations are still better advocates of them in the political arena than members of the general public. The report also notes that legislators might not be pleased if prominent venues in their districts are denied funding. One of the first priorities they suggest is that SAAs begin to strengthen their political ties. The report also encourages SAAs to work hard to quantify the often hard to measure benefits of the arts on communities.

Ultimately, what the SAAs need to do is go to where the people are and discover what it is the people want so they can serve the public at large better. (How this will jibe with The Artful Manager’s recent discussion of the Simple Truth 1 that the general public doesn’t really know what they want remains to be seen.)

State Arts Agencies

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Thanks to Artsjournal.com, a study of state arts agencies done by the Rand Corporation came to my attention today. State Arts Agencies 1965-2003: Whose Interests to Serve by Julia F. Lowell took a look at how 13 state arts agencies were fulfilling the purpose for which they were created. The report feels that the recent cuts to state arts agencies (SAAs) by state governments may turn out to be more than just a passing thing.

The report is prefaced by a summary of the history of SAAs from 1965 when they were first beginning to be formed. They first came as a way to decentralize the power of the NEA and prevent it from becoming “European-style ‘Ministry of Culture’.” Many were formed for the sole purpose of getting federal funds rather than from an interest by states to join in the arts funding trend. Among the assumptions of early agencies was that only high arts like ballet, opera, orchestras, etc. should be funded rather than individuals and community groups. As a result, the interests of a small group of arts buffs rather than the public as a whole was served.

There was a revolt against this view as many people felt the views and cultures being presented represented too narrow a portion of what was available and that the interests of too small a group was being recognized. Many states decentralized themselves and local arts agencies were set up to direct money to community interests. A consequence was that:

“The political impact of the changes they introduced was disappointing: Local arts councils received much of the credit for regrants run through the budgets of decentralized agencies, and community-based artists and arts organizations did not turn out to be an effective lobbying force. At the
same time, many of those who believed firmly that preserving and nurturing the high arts should be an arts agency’s first priority began losing their faith in SAAs.”

In the 1980s, the decentralization of the 1970s lead to a drop in support of SAAs by the major arts organizations. Many lobbied on their own behalf for funding rather than for support of the SAAs.

The 1990s of course brought close inspection of how public funds were being used to support the arts. SAAs were in the position of trying to convince the public and legislators that the arts were important to people’s lives and that SAAs were important to the arts.

Today, supported by grants from the Wallace Foundation, some SAAs are working to refocus themselves to represent the entire population of the state rather than just arts attendees, organizations and individuals artists. The report promises to monitor the strategies and tactics each participating SAA uses to generate monographs in the future.

Binding of Art and Science

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Some positive movements lately on the job search front kept me from posting yesterday. We will see what develops.

I came across an essay by John Eger titled “The Future of Work in the Creative Age.” It sort of added another piece to the puzzle of how to attain Richard Florida’s creative communities. In a time where outsourcing fears cause anxiety about one’s job future, Eger says the US should focus its efforts on cultivating creativity.

Many, like the Nomura Research Institute, argue that the stage is set for the advance of the “Creative Age,” a period in which America should once again thrive and prosper because of our tolerance for dissent, respect for individual enterprise, freedom of expression and recognition that innovation is the driving force for the U.S. economy, not mass production of low value goods and services.

Today, the demand for creativity has outpaced our nation’s ability to create enough workers simply to meet our needs. Seven years ago, for example, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers asked the governor of California to “declare a state of emergency” to help Hollywood find digital artists. There were people aplenty who were computer literate, they claimed, but could not draw. In the New Economy, they argued, such talents are vital to all industries dependent on the marriage of computers and telecommunications.

He goes on to mention a couple schools which are rearranging their cirriculum to integrate an arts focus. He also quotes HP CEO Carly Fiorina as saying soon pools of skilled creatives will replace tax incentives and infrastructure as the elements which entice industry to a locality.

He suggests that divorcing the arts from math and science of the last couple decades has actually been detrimental to America’s ability to compete in these areas. He points out that Einstein played violin, Galileo wrote poetry and Samuel Morse painted portraits. They may not have had the time and talent to become virtuosos in these pursuits, but the implication is that they supplemented the quality of the scientific products of these men.

Unfortunately, the subtle influence of arts upon scientific accomplishment and vice versa is one of those areas that resists precise measurement by standardized testing and other empirical measures. Only after a sustained shift in policy are we likely to realize the benefits of a more holistic education and exposure.

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

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My apologies to my readers, my days since my last entry have been rather full with the preparation and execution of the festival. On Thursday at about 4pm, the forecast for Saturday changed from sunny to rain. To avoid the problems of past years, the executive director cancelled the craft portion of the festival and had the craft fair coordinator call all the vendors to tell them not to come. This decision was not popular with many people, including some board members. The real strange thing was, despite the change in the forecast, there was actually a surge in ticket orders on Friday.

The festival coordinator wisely moved some of the tasks to be completed on Friday to Thursday and we spent most of Friday moving sheets of aspenite to staging areas to be used if the grounds got too muddy on Saturday. The executive director also had crushed concrete laid down the length of one of our parking fields. We had done this a couple years ago in another field, but there has been a desire to preserve the green space of that particular field for a few years now. Given that the executive director helped tow 150 cars out last year, I believe he decided the paved lane across the meadow was the lesser evil.

In the end, it did rain, but the mantra of the day was “This isn’t as bad as last year.” It was rather muddy, but because of the preparations and lower volume of rain, only three cars actually had to be towed out. (Other cars got stuck, but they extracted themselves before the tow vehicle could arrive.)

The fact we had less rain didn’t keep the lighting and sound trucks from becoming embedded in the ground. Last year nearly everyone was freed by 10:30 pm, but mysteriously this time I was up until 1:30 am getting the two equipment trucks pulled out. (My contribution actually consisted of shivering in the drizzle while the tow truck crew winched trucks forward, pulled ahead, winched them along a bit more, pulled ahead, etc. However, there had to be a representative of the organization on hand until the grounds were vacated.)

Sunday morning I had to run to Philadelphia to pick up performers at their hotel and transport them to the train station. This probably wouldn’t have been necessary in most cases except they were hauling equipment and instruments which a taxi wouldn’t have been able to accomodate. Then it was back to the festival grounds to start the clean up. As usual, few of the volunteers who signed up to help clean up showed up. We seldom give festival admission to people who only sign up for the day after so we weren’t cheated out of tickets.

The day was long and hard, but fortunately this year I am not a full time employee so I got to go home at the end of the day when my contract was up. The full time coordinator and her assistant will be tackling the remaining portion of the clean up over the course of the week. Most of the heavy work was completed yesterday so they will be faced with tedious chores like putting signs and tables back to where they are usually stored.

I, on the other hand, am returning to my job search and will go back to writing more from a research point of view. As I suspected, if any arts organization tries to have a person blog about their experiences during the process of creating a work, the product might be intermittantly produced due to the demands of the job exhausting the writer.

All in all of course, an enjoyable experience.