HESSENIUS GROUP on the lack of the arts in the President's State of the Union Address

Hello Everybody.

"And the beat goes on................"

Welcome to the February HESSENIUS GROUP on the arts. This month's panel:
Cora Mirikitani
Anthony Radich
Diane Matarazza
Jonathan Katz
Moy Eng

The dialogue between the panel members will continue until Friday, February 17th - so check back daily for new entries.

Feel free to enter you own comments at any time. Scroll to the end. We are screening comments to eliminate commercial and bad taste entries from unknown sources that seem to plague blogs now. But all comments will be posted as of the day they are entered - subject to editing for space reasons.

Thanks.

And Happy Valentine's Day.

ISSUE ONE:The President's State of the Union Address
In the State of the Union address two weeks ago, the President made a point of the importance of "creativity" to our economic future. He spoke of a Competitive Initiative that would focus a priority on math and science. Yet again there was no recognition whatsoever of the role the arts play in fostering and nurturing creativity; no mention of what role the arts ought to, and might play to insure America's creativity; no acknowledgment that the arts of value in teaching math and science, no appreciation of the fact that the mere teaching of math and science does not insure that those so trained will necessarily use their acquired knowledge or skills in a creative way; no understanding that human creativity is a force that might be honed, nurtured, expanded etc.

Despite our efforts to educate government of the role the arts might have in developing America's creative power, despite the burgeoning recognition by corporate America of the value of the arts in fostering creativity within the workforce, despite minor increased support for the NEA, despite the progress with groups such as the Governor's Conference as to an appreciation of the arts, we still face this ignorance, this barrier.

What do we do?

There is a math and science lobby -- one that obviously far outstrips any arts lobby. It makes headlines and gets results. Does this lobby appreciate the arts and its potential to complement their objectives? Have we made any attempt to educate this lobby?

What do we do? I ask you Anthony Radich

ANTHONY RADICH:
There are many things we can do. Following are some ideas:

* We need to recognize that the Richard Florida creative class conversation has created a buzz in state and local government. Though in my opinion Florida overreaches, we need to systematically take advantage of the fact that he has prompted many non-arts people in this country to think and talk about creativity and its value to the economy for the first time.

* We need to stop being so desperate in depending on inadequately researched and even false claims about the contribution the arts make to education. I believe the arts do make a difference in the educational process; however, the proof the field has used to argue this point has been unconvincing to those genuinely seeking more robust evidence.

* We need to recognize that a far more sophisticated education and lobbying effort needs to be put into place for the arts than exists today. I appreciate the efforts that are underway today in this regard. However, compared to the sophisticated approaches employed by other interests--and for many years now--the work of the arts field as a whole remains poorly grounded, unfocused and inconsistent.

* We need to recognize that this country has a deep-seated strain of ambivalence if not hostility toward the arts. We need to understand that this situation will not change overnight. Perhaps we are talking about a 100 year effort to fundamentally change the perception of Americans about the value of the arts. Are we ready to develop the 100 year plan?

If the President thought a conversation about the value of the arts and creativity would resonate with a public he is desperate to reconnect with, I am certain we would have heard him address the arts in his State of the Union speech. But we did not. He has chosen not to lead the way on this one. Our task must be to create a thirst for the arts among the followers and to fashion that desire with an insightful, creative and disciplined strategy that is well executed. Then we will hear a president ask the nation to support the arts.

BARRY:
Diane, Anthony echoes a 'mantra' near and dear to my heart - to wit: the Arts lobbying effort is still anemic at best. What's your take on that claim?

DIANE MATARAZZA:
Given this administration, I think we need to continue to keep the arts message as strong and as visible as we can on the national level, while pushing for funding policy gains at the local and state levels.
Americans for the Arts has come a long, long way in successfully promoting the arts message nationally. For the time being, it's probably the smartest use of our resources. Some have criticized the content of the 'Arts, Ask for more Campaign,' but for the first time, the arts message is consistent and visible, and that's in our favor.

Though advocacy success closer to home at the local and state levels has been hard earned, we've made great gains accessing education, transportation, tourism, community development, job training, youth development, and other kinds of funding for the arts. Local and state policy makers are more accessible, relationship building is easier, strategies are more manageable and local and state level governments are more transparent. Our field has learned to navigate those waters well - in some communities and states - very well. Sharing successful strategies from communities of all sizes is something we should continue to do.

(But) I think current federal priorities and the kind of lobby machine needed to affect policy within the DC beltway far, far exceeds our means. I googled the American Competitiveness Initiative in the President's State of the Union to learn more. The majority of funding looks like its for the 'continued and new programs' of three standing federal agencies over the next 10 years: the National Science Foundation, Dept of Energy's Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology within the Dept of Commerce. The combined budgets of those three ACI named agencies is in excess of $30 billion. Even with the combined federal arts, museum and humanities purse ($500 million), trying to leverage support and build alliances at those bigger agency tables would be no more than tilting at windmills. Curiously, the President's American Competitiveness Initiative also recommends $5.9 billion in FY 2007 for the Dept of Defense and its DARPA Program [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency].

So what about those math and science initiatives? At about page 16 of 23 in the American Competitiveness Initiative document are the details. $400+ million is recommended for spending in the next 10 years: $122 million is earmarked over five years to bolster International Baccalaureate teacher training programs in underserved areas; $250 million is for "Math Now," tools, training and research for elementary and middle school students and $25 million is proposed for an adjunct teacher corps. Between now and 2015 there's supposed to be 30,000 new souls from outside the public education system recruited to shore up the ranks of math and science teachers. ($25 million has to be matched by the States and private sector.) Yes, there is money for math and science education initiatives - but it would be curious to hear what math and science education leaders think.

BARRY:
Cora, if Diane is right, and we can't yet "lobby" our way to greater success, will further educating government people be enough?

CORA MIRIKITANI:
I wasn't surprised that there was no mention of the arts in the State of the Union address. Nor that the generous use of the word "creativity" was not linked in any way to the arts. And here's the really sad thing - I don't think further "educating" our current political leaders is the issue here, because their disregard (and even distain) for the arts comes more from an opposing ideology on content-related issues, or a lack of political will, than from a lack of information.

So what can we do about this? First, we need to find our voice. I've been involved most recently with an organization called the Center for Cultural Innovation that is developing a broad range of knowledge, networking and financial tools for individual artists. Our experience has shown that there's a huge need for more functional artist services out there, but one thing is particularly striking - that artists in LA, and everywhere across the country, I think - want a place to belong, to be connected, and to have a voice that can speak to their issues. In politics, a collective voice, especially a BIG one when you add up all the artists and creative entrepreneurs across the country, means clout. So getting organized and finding our voice - that's the first thing we could do.

Second, we need to find our heroes. By this, I mean that we have been focusing mostly on top legislative leaders at the federal and state levels to advocate our cause. This is good, but what I'm talking about is finding and advancing a broader range of leaders in the arts who have been making a difference - trustees of nonprofit organizations, painters, musicians, community arts activists, art school teachers - there are so many unsung heroes who are making a big difference every day. We need to find out who they are and help them to tell their stories to a broader audience of influentials.

And third, I think that the arts field (who is this exactly? I'm not sure) needs to figure out how to better collaborate. This word has been used so often that I'm almost sick of hearing it. But there is something about the arts that are very insular, and therefore not well understood by other fields and domains that would have a natural affinity - in math, the sciences, technology, you name it. We need to change that and to encourage our cultural policy leaders to reach out beyond their current power bases and comfort zones to see how the arts can support other fields, and to ask for help.

JONATHAN KATZ:
Decision makers who control resources can be persuaded the arts are worthy of investment by different means. Some will respond to evidence of (a) the value of arts learning and arts experience, (b) the public benefits they provide, and (c) the necessity of an investment at their specific level of government. Others will respond to (a) maintain and build influence, (b) enjoy the affection and esteem of valued people, and (c) make a beneficial difference in the world. These investment decisions are personal. Therefore, key elements in advocacy must be personal relationships and personal experience. When arts advocates organize their efforts effectively around these elements, they have the kind of success we have seen in New Jersey when a governor recommended zeroing cultural agency budgets and now NJSCA has higher funding than at that time, in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County when county board members who recommended cutting the arts fund appropriation because of their disapproval of a theatre grant were removed the next election amid increases in private contributions to the fund, in Sarasota when it was necessary to pass a tax increase in order to build the arts education program, and in Maryland when a campaign to invite legislators into arts classrooms preceded increased state arts support. For efforts such as these to become the rule rather than the exception, the cultural community has to organize at the level of the policy or resource to be affected; artists and arts groups must spend time in targeting decision makers, establishing personal relationships with them, and sharing the experience of the arts; arts groups must engage their board members. When we all make every arts event an advocacy event, sharing and documenting arts experiences in a purposeful, personally rewarding way with decision makers, the people who become governors, legislators and presidents will be better prepared to foster creativity as they should.

BARRY:
OK - so where do we start to make this happen? How do we "find" the collective voice you refer to Cora? How do we launch collaboration that will insure that "every event is an advocacy event", as Jonathan says. Hell, Bob Lynch started the Arts Action Fund PAC several years ago; why don't more people send in $20 so we can organize ourselves. The problem, is it not, is that this kind of effort takes time - people hours - tens of thousands of people hours - and staffing, and the arts are basically small organizations that don't have the time to do that themselves. We know that do we not? Why then can't we contribute to a common cause that will do the work for us -- professionally, competently, comprehensively -- instead of thinking we are still in some damn Mickey Rooney movie where we're all going to get together and hold a big dance and save the school? Virtually every other sector has done this, but in the arts efforts such as Bob's grow very, very slowly. How do we change that mind set?

I ask you all.

ANTHONY:
The design of an effective national advocacy effort is a huge challenge. I agree that AFTA has made large and impressive steps toward the shaping of an effective national effort.
Perhaps the kernel of the problem is that the tent for national-level advocacy is very broad and diverse, yet the barely-disguised more narrow purpose of the effort is the support of the nonprofit arts, individual artists, public sector arts funders and the arts education "establishment." The arts advocacy tent welcomes the money and influence of interests from this country's for-profit arts sector, but really doesn't seem to care much about their issues. In addition, the effort generally disdains the advocational artist [I can't think of one avocational artist in arts advocacy leadership today--at least one who is known for that quality and who speaks for that huge community.] In our efforts, we need to conceptualize the nonprofit arts and those in close nexus with it as an important--but actually very small part of the overall arts ecosystem. We also need to ask ourselves if we have--and if we have wanted the leadership from the other parts of this ecosystem genuinely on board our national-level advocacy engine.

CORA:
It's true that getting a truly effective national advocacy effort for the arts started is like getting a giant boulder to roll it'll take a lot of hands-on pushing by many people to get it to go. My particular interest is in seeing how artists can be mobilized to advance this agenda, and this has to begin by having a new mindset about who artists are. There are so many creative people who "get it" who we have excluded from our conversation because they earn their living commercially in the arts, or because they practice art for the love of it, or are art students, or take part in culturally-based traditions. Somehow, when we talk about "artists" in the nonprofit sector, a lot of these people disappear off our radar. So my first point is that we have to allow more people to define themselves into our discussion as artists.

The other thing we need to do is to create the appropriate platforms so that artists can have a larger, connected discussion that can begin to harness their collective political (and financial) voice. We've seen an inkling of what might be possible in MoveOn.org, and should work on developing both the technology and in-person networking platforms to get more of these discussions going.

BARRY:
I think you've hit on an important point to me Cora: the creation of platforms, or access points, so that there are "ways in" - entry points - for the huge mass of nonprofit arts workers, artists and those that support the arts. Somehow we have to make it easier for people to get involved, to participate - at whatever level they are able - and then market those entry points and platforms. We haven't yet exploited the potential for increasing the "demand" for arts, in part, because we haven't yet made it easy for people to get involved. Any suggestions on how to do that?

MOY ENG:
Am I surprised that our president did not mention the arts when advocating creativity and job development? No! Arts and culture have been low priorities in the public policy arena, except when used as a political tool during the cold war years and in the early 1990s attacks on individual artists. This is so for many reasons, a few of which were succinctly articulated by Mr. Radich. If we continue to presume that it is important, if not essential, to engage our policymakers and political leaders in funding the arts, then we need to identify elements that have real saliency for them and the general public, outline a plan of action, build our collective voice (as Cora wrote) and go for the long term until we win the war. Or using a singular event/issue as a catalyst, develop a coordinated, comprehensive effort to engage leaders from education, business, policy, arts, science as well as the general public in support of increased funding.

Perhaps a question to consider is what if we turn our focus to significantly increase individual funding of arts and culture? Given the projected intergenerational transfer of trillions in the years to come and community foundations' role as the "to go" to resource on community issues and building community support on those same issues, should we turn our attention away from the government?

JONATHAN:
A few observations about strategy in the long term. There's no more strategic investment for our time and money than advocating for arts education. Arts experience makes arts supporters and after childhood it's all remedial work--uphill, expensive and labor intensive. There is lots of documentation of organized citizens groups influencing school boards, superintendents and principals. Absent rewards and penalties for directing resources to arts education, educators will respond to other pressures. A great resource, bloggers, is the Arts Education Partnership, the national forum for advancing arts education directly supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts, aep-arts.org.

I like the points that have been made about the need to enlist avocational artists as advocates, to engage for-profit and not-for-profit stakeholders in common cause, and to devote more attention to individual giving. Coalition advocacy holds promise and needs strengthening at every level--federal, state and local. And while we're lamenting the distance between what we think our appropriations should be and what they are, we should recognize what coalition advocacy already accomplishes on a regular basis. At the national level, for instance, the Cultural Advocacy Group, which consists of arts, humanities and cultural interest groups who lobby Congress on behalf of the federal cultural agencies, unites the voices that Congress currently hears around a common agenda and organized activities.

Congress has sustained the NEA and grown the budgets of NEH and IMLS in recent years--in this awful budget environment. Each year when the president zeros out the $30+ million the Dept. of Ed. invests in arts education and the House goes along with that, the Senate restores that money and the Senate prevails. Interestingly, many, if not most, of the individuals who lead the associations whose members accomplish this are avocational artists. Those I know best are serious singers, musicians, dancers and creative writers. And they represent amateur constituencies, too--Chorus America, VSA Arts, and others. At the state level, where overall budgets have been devastated in recent years, we're seeing support build around "new economy" coalitions with names like "creative economy," "cultural economy," "creative class," "cool cities," "21st Century Communities" and others. Their hallmark is bringing together the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

When I suggested in an earlier comment that every arts activity should be an advocacy event, what I had in my mind's eye was a meeting where board members, management and artists decide on a few influential individuals they will cultivate that year by establishing a relationship with them, inviting them to share an arts experience, and rewarding them in a way they would find meaningful. Then they plan exactly how they will do that, and they do it. If 50 organizations or creative industry businesses did that for a few years in any state or city, I believe it would broaden support for community cultural life enormously.

CORA:
I'm taking a moment to reflect on the diversity of thoughts and ideas offered by my colleagues - there is so much to do! I think Moy's suggestion that we consider the role of individual giving to the arts really resonates with the idea that we need to make ownership of culture and arts in this country more widespread. Choosing the right tools and strategies may be the easy part. Getting people engaged - that's our challenge!

DIANE:
I think we're all saying the next iteration of arts advocacy must significantly expand the ranks of those who care.

So what are a few more advocacy ideas to expand the reach and relevance of the arts?

Of all the creative industries, let's identify two or three with which we have the strongest affinity. In what new ways can we communicate with, work with and form alliances with them for greater mutual gain? Given those partners, what are manageable translations of relationship-building strategies that can be worked at the state level and at the community level? (Let's remember strategies should be simple and easy for busy people to implement).

Let's use technology and existing networks for more efficient dissemination and sharing of good research and thinking. For example, how could WESTAF's current assessment and plan to reinvigorate and better position the 12 state agencies in the West as more proactive advocates be applied in all 50 states? Why can't AFTA's 'Art, Ask for More Campaign' be a link on the home page of every arts and cultural website in the country? In what other ways, and in what other arenas, could the campaign be promoted to reach more people? Across the board, how can we be more efficient in sharing ingredients of successful strategies so we don't unknowingly expend limited resources on duplicative endeavors?

How can we better extend our messages outward? In addition to the ideas offered by Cora, Moy, Anthony, you and Jonathan, and other contributors, what if the agenda of every state superintendents annual conference, every state association of counties annual conference, and so on, there were presentations, keynotes and/or panels highlighting specific examples how the arts advanced those sector agendas, maybe the messages would result in more lasting impressions. This same strategy could be applied to national and state gatherings of our creative industry partners. And if presentations were delivered by arts champions from within those sectors ranks, perhaps they would have even more credibility.

ANTHONY:
The point was made that arts education can be a powerful rallying point for advocacy on behalf of the arts. I strongly agree with this. Parents care deeply about what their children's experiences and are one of the last groups left willing to bleed a little to get something done. Interestingly enough, the arts, particularly the formal and classical arts, are currently suffering the disbenefits of the decline in arts education. So we in the arts have a strong nexus with this issue, and we should have a strong motivation to become active in the area of arts education advocacy. Before we do though, I think we need to look at our dismal past in the area of arts education advocacy and ask questions such as:

1) Why have over 30 years of public art funder involvement in arts education failed to arrest the decline in arts eduction--or at least the public's perception of the value of arts education in our society?

2) Isn't it time for us to realize that in many places, implementing or sustaining a K-12 sequential quality arts education within the schools is not going to happen. While not giving up on that ideal, shouldn't more of our efforts be directed to sequential quality arts education in before and after school programs?

3) How have traditional arts educators helped us in this work? What is it about their interests that, in my view, prevent us from reaching a solution to this problem?

4) Why have arts education efforts historically been assigned such a small role in the work of public sector arts agencies?

5) When we talk about arts education advancement, what should we consider to be a victory? Pilot and model programs are nice, but when the arts education delivery system is collapsing around you, are these not an unnecessary distraction?

Finding a solution to the arts education provision conundrum will not be easy. But we have to start somewhere and I propose we begin with a little self examination. Arts education is an area that is very critical for all of us. We have not done very well with it to date. We have got to do better!


BARRY:
I want to thank this month's panel for a lively and thought provoking discussion. And thanks to all of you who took the time this week to follow the discussion - I hope you feel it was worth your effort.
The next HESSENIUS GROUP will begin on Tuesday, March 14th. The regular BARRY'S BLOG will return in two weeks (or sooner). Please tell your colleagues to subscribe.

Have a great President's Day weekend, and remember

Don't Quit.

Barry

January 11, 2006

Postcard from Thailand - just a personal journal - you may wish to skip this.

A POSTCARD FROM PHUKET THAILAND THE TSUNAMI REMEMBERED ONE YEAR LATER.

December 26, 2005 8:00 am Phuket, Thailand

I am lying on the couch in my rooms in Patong Beach on the island of Phuket in Thailand. This is my seventh year of traveling to Thailand, to what some ex-pats call the "Kingdom" a paradise some ten thousand miles from San Francisco and my home in Marin County. I fell in love with Thailand on my first visit, and have developed enormous affection and respect for the people and the place. While the beauty of the northern areas of Chaing Mai and Chaing Rai are captivating, I prefer the tropical paradise and beaches of the south.

I have stayed at the same small guest house owned by a Thai woman and her Swiss husband that I discovered some six years ago. I have gotten to know them now the nephew who handles maintenance, the sister who runs the maid service and their son - who has grown up before my eyes.

It is early morning on a day that will mark the single most tragic loss of life to mother nature in my lifetime. Laying on the couch watching television, thinking about a shower before I head down to the beach and breakfast as is my custom several days a week, I think I feel a very slight earthquake. It is not the wind. I am a native Californian I have been in earthquakes. I know how they feel. Yes, this is an earthquake but so slight that it must be far, far away. I give it no further thought.

I read some of the murder mystery novel that I have started. One of ten or more I have brought with me. Mindless fiction satisfying on a purely pedestrian level.. But hunger calls so I shower and throw on shorts and a tee and head out the door. The beach is three hundred meters or so away a four minute walk. The restaurant is named Sabbaiâ (which in Thai means happy) is really nothing more than tables and benches on the sand surrounded by a bamboo fond fence, with a small kitchen built on a cement slab. The ocean is but forty yards away and the early morning vista and quiet are the main attractions for me to have my bacon, eggs and coffee here and not elsewhere. It is obviously run by an extended family- and all the sons and daughters, their husbands and wives and children, and the aunts and uncles work here. I have gotten to know them over time not personally or to any real extent - I don't even know all of their names, and couldn't remember them if I did but I know them well enough as a patron over two to four week periods each of the last five years so that I recognize them and they me.

My rooms are on the second floor of the first building of the guest house at which I stay, and I lock my door and walk down the stairs and out to the little Soi (meaning both street and alleyway in Thai) and head towards the beach a circuitous route through a warren of right and left turns past this building,and that house, until it opens on a narrow ten yard stretch lined by beer bars on each side and to the main Beach Road. I get about two thirds of the way, with but one more turn remaining, and I see people running towards me the kind of unmistakable panic one can recognize in peoples eyes no matter where you are, what language you speak.

I hear someone yell "water" and though I don't comprehend as the throng nears me, I turn to run with them. Over my shoulder I see water pushing what appears to be a car and a bus unbelievably tossing them over like they are toys. My mind cannot process the data quickly enough I know nothing of tsunamis, I have no reference point. I am jostled by the crowd, pushed this way and that, and I lose my balance and stumble. I scurry to get up and am pushed again as fear grabs a hold of strangers who wish me no ill but for whom I am not a priority either. I get up again and run. By the time I am back to the front of my small guest house the water has dissipated “ blocked in part by the buildings that stand in its way. Another hundred yards and I am to the main road and the water that has chased us is now but ankle deep.

Nervous banter on faces with incredulous, but relieved looks, is in the air. We keep walking to the other side of the street not sure what just happened, or what will happen next. Within minutes sirens fill the air and emergency vehicles speed this way and that. Uniformed police are blowing whistles moving people away from the beach area and people desperate to understand what it all means talk and pass on rumors amid fact. A consensus arises that a tsunami hit. What is less agreed on is what it did and what will happen next. People move towards the main street that leads into the mountains.

What had happened the world is now fully aware. The single largest natural disaster of our times, claiming 300,000 lives, many of whom remain lost a year later.

Saturday, December 24, 2006:
I arrived back in Phuket yesterday 25 hours, three planes and 10,000 miles after leaving SFO at 12:10 am on Thursday morning. I am returning to Phuket for yet another "high" season as I have for the past seven years now back to the same guest house and the same area I have come to know very well. I am anxious to see how it has been rebuilt how different is will be or not from the pre-tsunami isle of just a year ago when the beach of Patong was a sister paradise of Maui or Mexico with palm trees blowing in the gentle breeze at water's end.

After settling in and a quick nap, then shower, I walk the back entrance down the same Beach Road that had been my escape route a year ago, this time to survey the rebuilding effort. I have thought a thousand times in the past months how lucky I was – that if I had left my rooms just five or ten minutes later I would have been on the beach and likely would not have made it when the power of the tsunami hit.

But unlike in Banda Ache where the tsunamis wake was measured in miles, in Phuket the waves traveled less than a thousand yards inland. It was only the beach road hotels, corrugated tin mini shops and the two main streets leading from the main thoroughfare - Rat-U-Thit road Soi Bangla and Sawaddirak Road - where property the debris of smashed, overturned busses, cars and motorbikes gave such dramatic emphasis to the loss of life that the tsunami wrecked on this community. And eerily, the mound of debris from the beach and the twisted vehicles on both Soi Bangla and Sawaddirak Road stopped half way up the street between the Beach Road and Rat-U-Thit as though a powerful dragon that simply ran out of breath mid way on its charge.

Last year they had begun to bulldoze the beach road debris even before I left some five days after the tsunami and the cleanup had made noticeable progress on my last foray to the beach. Now a year later, virtually everything is re-built much of it the same as before the tragedy same businesses, same locations, often the same look to the building. Tourists who have never been to Patong before would be hard pressed to realize that such a devastating act of mother nature had even occurred. Yet as I talk with local merchants, what is obvious to anyone who has spent time here is that tourism is down maybe by as much as fifty percent. The farrang (Thai slang for foreigners) just haven't yet returned in numbers anywhere near the past. There are normally three seasons in Thailand the "High Season" from mid-November through April when the weather is not so oppressively hot, but rather a pleasant range of the mid to high 80s in the day, and 70s at night, the "Hot Season" when the temperature tops 100 and the humidity drives one into the air conditioned edens of the countless 7-11 convenience stores that dot the landscape of the country, and the "Monsoon Season" that runs from August or September into November and causes mild to severe flooding depending on the year and location (particularly long this year I am told). Christmas and New Year weeks are traditionally the peak of the high season here, and account for a healthy percentage of the tourism trades annual take and tourism is Phukets lifeblood. Americans count for only six percent or so of the tourists, with most coming from China, Australia, Japan, Germany and Scandinavia roughly in that order.

Somehow it seems to take at least two years for any area to recover from the precipitous drop in tourism that inevitably follows a calamity from mother nature. No matter that 95% of the entire island of Phuket, including over half of the beaches, saw absolutely no impact from the tsunami, or that those areas that did suffer are now rebuilt as though nothing had happened; no matter too that the chances of another tsunami are doubtless far less than having lightening strike your head repeatedly over a week period people stay away. I guess they just have it in their minds that the recovery will not be complete, that they will be stranded without conveniences, that the jeopardy of another awful event looms likely  and so they just aren't yet ready to throw their money away on a vacation in what they perceive as a disaster zone. Not good for the Thai people.

As I walk down the Beach Road on the ocean side, the thing that strikes me most is that the beach the sand is now several feet higher than it was last year. Where before, in places, you walked down seven or eight stair steps to get to the sand, today there are only three steps down, and in places, none at all. Last year along the stretch of the Beach Road where there are shops only on the opposite side of the street leaving a view to the water from the road, there were steps down every hundred yards or so, with cement / brick columns framing each set of steps. On the tops of each of these columns were embedded in the cement iron sculpted dolphins, turtles and other animals, with man made patinas of aged copper green. The force of the tsunami had cracked several columns, and in places had simply knocked off these embedded sculptures as though the were made of balsa wood. Two men with sledge hammers might have spent a hour or two trying to accomplish a similar result.

It is hard to watch the video footage of the waves as they first hit Patong in the amateur shot films and appreciate the real power of the tsunami. If you imagine a crescent shaped beach a mile long, and that each cubic yard of ocean water weighs something like 1200+ pounds, and that the tsunami was two to four stories high, containing millions and millions of cubic yards of water, all traveling at over 500 miles an hour when it broke and it is easier to understand that very little could withstand its awesome power certainly not little children and older retirees unfamiliar and inexperienced in the ways of tidal waves and drawn out of curiosity to the retreating water that left fish and shells uncharacteristically exposed that is the way of the tsunami; too late for those who would have the least chance of running fast enough on sand to escape. If the tsunami had hit at noon instead of at 9:30 am, there would have been 10,000 dead in Patong instead of the thousand or so on this part of the island that didn't make it.

The next morning I make a pilgrimage to the one beach location that has haunted my thoughts all year. For many seasons now, on half the mornings of my time in Patong, I would wind my way through that backdoor warren of turns and make my way to the beach to have my breakfast at one of three or four small restaurants on the sand some fifty yards from the water. These restaurants were little more than tables on the sand, surrounded by a few trees and a makeshift palm frond enclosure. The only real structure to the one I frequented was a cement slab that housed the enclosed in kitchen area where food was prepared.

Sabbai was a little restaurant with a million dollar view of a pristine and beautiful Patong Bay and it was owned, as I said, by an extended family that I had come to know if not by name then by sight  if not intimately then well due to the passage of time.

I was delighted and almost giddy to arrive at Sabbai's back entrance and to almost immediately spy one of the young men who was a waiter and whom I recognized from the family. He recognized me too and there was a genuine moment of shared something. I asked about his younger brother and he assured me he was at their family home elsewhere in Thailand and was indeed ok as well. But without asking I knew that not all of the family had made it out that some must have been caught in the deadly undertow of one year ago. I could tell it wasn't something he wanted to talk about and I did not press him.

While Thailand is often referred to as the land of smiles because the Thai people surrender their smiles so easily and effortlessly, and while my friend with no name at this restaurant smiled again I could tell it wasn't the same, nor would it be again for him. He was young and had lost something that he had not yet replaced and wouldn't for awhile.

I shed a silent tear for him as he was, in that moment, for me the embodiment of the whole of the suffering of last year I grieved for him for the loss of his loved ones, and for the loss of his innocence as well, for he was no longer a boy, but a man reluctantly I suspect, at the hand that the fates had decreed.

Monday December 26, 2006 One Year Later

I get up early this morning. I want to go to the planned morning event to commemorate the one year anniversary of the tsunami. I have no idea what is planned, but I want to be there. It is to take place in the small park at the north end of the beach where the Beach Road again has open space on the ocean side of the street.

When I arrive a little before 9:00 am, a sizable crowd has already gathered. There are plastic chairs provided for guests, and reserved seating under canopies to shield the VIPs from the hot sun. The Prime Minister arrives a few minutes later in shirtsleeves to pay his respects to the families of the victims. I sit down on the last step of a large circular fountain immediately behind the plastic chairs. A podium stands in front of a makeshift monument announcing the one year anniversary of the tsunami. A woman soon sits next to me in the one remaining space on the step I share with a score of other people. We talk. She is Swedish, was not here at the tsunami last year, but has lived in the south of Thailand for the past dozen years. She and her brother and mother have driven up to Phuket. Her name is Tina. Blond, mid-thirties I guess she looks the part of the tsunami victims surviving family. I tell her what it was like to have been here last year and we share an abiding respect for the Thai people.

There is no shortage of television cameras set up to cover the event, and roving reporters are working the crowd looking for likely interview subjects. A woman reporter with the Sky Channel logo on her microphone stops and asks Tina if she was a tsunami survivor. Tina tells her no, but tells her that I was and nods in my direction. The reporter asks me if she can ask me a question on camera and I say "sure". She asks if I was in the tsunami last year and what has brought me back. I tell her that I am here because I have come every year for the last seven, and that I have come to this remembrance this morning out of respect for the Thai and foreign people who have lost loved ones and out of affection and admiration for the Thai people who were so caring and generous to their visitors last year. I tell her that this is an amazing country and that the Thai people who suffered the greatest loss were extraordinary in their generosity to their guests during that tragedy, in their ceaseless efforts to comfort and help the victims and that all of us who were here a year ago are grateful to be alive and share a bond that will last us our lifetimes. Like my generation knowing exactly where they were when JFK was assassinated, those in the affected areas on the rim of the Indian Ocean when the tsunami hit will likewise never forget that moment. She thanks me and moves on.

The Prime Minister is apparently gone. In his place, the Minister of Tourism and Sports (an odd combination) delivers the official remarks and hits just the right tone of sympathy, respect and hope for the future. The ceremony ends with guests invited to place flowers previously distributed to those present at the base of a marker denoting the day and time of the worlds worst natural disaster in recorded history. I get in line and fight the surge of people making their way to pay their respects. The television camera crews surround the site and make it that much more difficult to navigate to the monument which sparks the ire of a woman in the crowd, who mounts the stage and, using the microphone, decries the insensitivity of the press from her perspective in an emotional harangue. She is met with a smattering of applause from the crowd many of whom agree with her assessment. I understand her need to lash out somewhere her pain is just too much for her to cope with.

I think about last year again as I leave the area and make my way along the beach and then I think about the victims of hurricane Katrina. For a fleeting moment the question enters my mind why tsunamis aren't given names as hurricanes are but I guess they are too few and infrequent and thank god for that. A tear or two stay in my eyes as I pass the Sabbai restaurant and and continue down the beach the water calm and tranquil so very different than the angry and ranging powerful sea of a dozen months ago. Life goes on as it always does, and my guess is that more people were born on planet earth during the week after the tsunami than died as a result of its wrath. I am again so very glad to be alive and I say my silent thanks to god, buddah and the powers that be.

Have a good week.

Don't Quit!

Barry

December 13, 2005

HESSENIUS Group Year End Wrap-Up

Hi everybody.

"And the beat goes on..................."

I asked some of the group members to share their thoughts on this year and next. I asked them this:

ISSUE ONE: What happened last year -- what one (or two) major events, trends, etc. -- do you think had particular (significant) impact on the arts field this year (for example -- the merger of Business & the Arts Council with Americans for the Arts, or the publication / debate over the Rand Study, or the continuation of depressed arts funding). Or it might be something that happened within the whole of our culture, society, political arena etc. that had -- or continues to have -- impact on the arts field - e.g., the economy, Katrina or the impact on donor giving), and

ISSUE TWO:
What do you think will be the biggest challenge / opportunity for the arts for 2006? What do you suggest would be the best move the arts could make to improve their lot in 2006?

DIANE MATARAZA:
Top on my list, Barry, for 2005 is the economy, how the war in Iraq and this year's rash of natural disasters affected it and, in turn, how the state of the economy has impacted the solvency of arts organizations. Costs to keep the doors open, lights on and pay staff livable wages outpaced most organizations' budget projections. For-profits passed on unanticipated increased operating costs to the consumer. Arts organizations have been reluctant to increase the price of participation for fear of driving away audiences or, worse, fueling perceptions of elitism. Given unprecedented compelling need for disaster relief, sustaining contributed income levels, never mind increasing them, has become an all-consuming activity. In my work in communities across the country, both small and large organizations with a broad, diverse loyal following (and the contributor base to match) are holding their own. Organizations and artistic genres with narrow audience appeal are being far more serious about audience development. And I'm seeing the realization among arts organizations whose existence has depended on the largesse of a few big funders that diversification of their support base is probably a good idea.

The biggest challenge/opportunity for the arts in 2006 and beyond is increasing arts relevance to the public. Endless excellent research and studies have been conducted on arts participation. Somehow, someway, we need to better translate for our field the volumes of participation research. That, plus adequate resources and assistance to help them apply it.

JERRY YOSHITOMI:
Biggest Impact in 2005

The publication of Gifts of the Muse http://www.rand.org/publications/MG/MG218/ and Creating Public Value Through State Arts Agencies http://www.artsmw.org/start/CreatingPublicValue.pdf, marked the completion of a series of tools that can fundamentally improve our capacities to increase participation in the arts as well as reveal the personal benefits and the public value of that participation. These publications joined A New Framework for Participation in the Arts http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1323/, The Values Study, Rediscovering the Meaning and Value of Arts Participation http://www.ctarts.org/pdfs/CT_Values_Study_Report.pdf, Engage Now (disclosure: written by Jerry Yoshitomi) http://www.artsmarketing.org/marketingresources/files/JYNotes-Apr022003.pdf, and many other resources that build participation, personal benefits and public value.

This work was initiated primarily by the arts program at the Wallace Foundation, first led by Holly Sidford and then by Michael Moore. Through a carefully orchestrated program of research, direct grants, convenings and communities of practice, significant advancements have been made in thirteen state arts agencies and in arts organizations throughout the country. Leadership in recent years was also provided by David Fraher and Emily Maltz at Arts Midwest and Kelly Barsdate at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

Results have included increases in:

State funding for participating SAA's
Broadened, Deepened and more Diversified Participation
Ticket Sales and Earned Income
Contributions
Communications with Ticket Buyers and Donors
Evidence of Personal Benefits and Public Value

Biggest Challenge/Opportunity for the Arts in 2006 will be making more of a transition from old ways of doing things to new ways of doing things. It will be about learning and putting into practice more of the new tools. Those that do will see increasing success. Those that don't will see a widening gap between aspirations and accomplishments, as well as between expenses and revenues.
I'm pleased to respond to any questions the readers might have. They can email me at meaningmatters@aol.com.

SAM MILLER:
1. Significant event in 2005 - the death of Susan Sontag - revealing the lack of meaningful thinking & writing about art, culture & ideas in her absence.
2. Challenge in 2006 - the increasing pressure on necessary dissent, finding the will to offset the multiple guises censorship comes dressed in these days - market, institutional, political, philanthropic, etc.
That will be a challenge.

ANDREW TAYLOR:
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Two trends of significance in 2005 involved the political devolution of America's cultural "hardware," and the rapid evolution social networking software on the web. The two may seem like separate trends, but they carry a common thread.

On the hardware side, America's built cultural infrastructure got more massive and more contentious in 2005, with controversy over several arts facility mega-projects. The Miami-Dade Performing Arts Center continued its trials with massive construction cost overruns and political bickering. The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts discovered higher operating costs and lower-than-expected revenues, along with continuing acoustical problems...filing suit against their architect for the lackluster sound quality of the hall. The Overture Center for the Arts in Madison had a public spat with the mayor over a proposal to refinance the facility just prior to its completion.

And the proposed multi-venue arts development in Richmond, Virginia, exploded into a political free-for-all when the committee behind it couldn't meet a fundraising deadline.

Meanwhile, Dallas broke ground on a new $275 million performing arts center, and Kansas City took steps toward its proposed $326 million complex.

The massive multi-venue arts center has been an icon of civic pride and boosterism for over 30 years...drawing inspiration and original concept from New York's Lincoln Center. Wealth and under-served arts markets sparked the trend, and a string of public arguments for professional arts facilities helped fuel the flame (economic impact, healthy cities, creative class, civic engagement, and on and on).

But the public challenges of these developments in 2005 suggest that a tide is turning. With the growth of wealth slowing or even dipping in the past years, with more saturated culture and entertainment markets, and with fiscal troubles in local and state governments, the multi-venue arts center is becoming a bit of an albatross. Managers and consultants are quietly suggesting that the economic model driving these facilities isn't working anymore (touring Broadway isn't the cash cow it used to be). Local arts groups and resident companies are seeing local philanthropic dollars and ticket sales sucked into the higher-cost infrastructure, and away from their programming budgets.

On the software side, other areas of society and business are moving in the opposite direction from large, central, professional-grade infrastructure. Social networking software -- like the Flickr photo sharing site, weblogs, Google maps and groups, and even podcasting -- are pushing production and content development out to the edges.

Passive audiences are now active producers of creative content on- line, and curators of their public self and personal entertainment mix.

As the arts have become more professional, they have also tended to become more detached from the daily creative lives of their communities. The big, boxy, multi-venue arts center will need to reinvent itself...perhaps not in 2006, but in the decade to come.

Problem is, we continue to build these facilities according to the old model of how they work. It will be difficult to reshape the granite and glass to a different focus.

The biggest challenge, suggested above, is to stop and take stock of the role of professional arts infrastructure in a participatory society. Audiences don't just want to sit and listen anymore, if they ever did. Sitting and listening are still powerful forms of participation, but only as part of a spectrum of creative experiences and expressions. That spectrum also includes participatory practice (a much less charged term than ''amateur'' arts), lifelong learning, curatorship of identity and self, creative expression through living (cooking, fashion, personal appearance), and ambient arts experience.
The wise arts organization will be finding ways to foster and support the creative lives of their communities, not just selling them content.

BETTY PLUMB:
*The on-going war in Iraq and the soaring Federal debt;
*The impact of national and international disasters on individual and corporate giving;
*The "branding" and "ownership" by conservatives of the term "moral values" and a sense of growing intolerance;

Representing my colleagues in the State Arts Action Network, Allen Hoffman suggests that philanthropic trends will have major implications down the road as public funds continue to dry up. Developing individual investors in the non profit arts sector is critical and how that might be developed should be of primary interest. A secondary issue would be a discussion of the Rand Report with participants that are both pro and con. He'd like to see that report taken apart as an in-depth discussion.

For question #2: What I hear from the local arts council field as issues of concern are:
*Leadership Succession - the "graying" of the arts administrative field;
*The challenge of building participation in the arts -- in the broadest of definitions;

ANDREW TAYLOR FOLLOWS UP:
Barry:
After I sent off my Hessenius Group contribution, an associate sent me news of a radical restructuring at the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They're basically discontinuing the venue as a professional performing arts center, and returning it to a university function hall. Among the driving factors:

The financial picture changed even more drastically than expected due to a decline in quality new Broadway product, changes in funding models and increased local competition for the discretionary entertainment dollar.

I was hoping not be so immediately reinforced in my gloomy outlook on large performing arts centers.

BARRY:
I think the Americans for the Arts Action Fund - an ARTS PAC - while still embryonic, is an encouraging sign that someday the arts might take back their own future by organizing and becoming a political force. As a sleeping giant, our field might wield tremendous clout if we were to accept lobbying as part of our jobs and were to make the financial commitment to becoming an effective, competitive "interest group" (which is what we are in the political arena).

I think moving along - city by city, state by state and nationally - the effort to become poltiical players is the challenge for the future.

GARY STEUER:
Well, Barry, you kind of gave me a hand-off in that first question that I can't resist grabbing!

It would perhaps be self-interested to say the merger of Arts & Business Council and Americans for the Arts was the most significant event of the year, but it certainly was the most significant in MY year, or even my decade. But let me instead highlight what I think this merger represents, and what it might mean for 2006 and beyond.

The merger was driven by heightened interest in the challenge of generating more private sector support for the arts. It was also driven by the challenge of achieving some greater scale and clout in the pursuit of that challenge. I think the issue of private sector cultural support and earned income was a theme of 2005, and will be with us for some time to come.

This does not mean that public sector advocacy has become less important “ far from it. We still must have a rigorous and effective effort at the national, state and local level. But increasingly we must realize that 90% of the average arts organizations revenue stream comes from private contributed and earned sources. Many newer arts organizations are highly entrepreneurial, sometimes generating almost all their income from earned sources, and sometimes even structuring themselves as for-profit organizations, transforming the model of what an arts organization is. Several of the artist-practitioners we are working with in our Creativity Connection program, for example, are structured as for-profit or sole-proprietorship entities rather than nonprofits. They are using the arts to inspire and educate a segment of the public (corporate employees), are employing artists, and are stimulating appreciation of the arts in potential arts attenders/participants. Does this mean they are not part of our community, or do we embrace them? And, of course, the traditional model of nonprofit arts group has not gone away if anything, their numbers and financial needs continue to grow. Are the resources available in our country to meet their growing needs, even with the best advocacy efforts possible? Are mergers like this one part of the solution, as we seek greater efficiencies in pursuit of our mission and goals?

Much has also been made this year of generational shifts in a variety of different ways. There is the issue of the aging Baby Boomer generation, leading to heightened interest in cultivating this populations segment as audience members, board members and donors; their leisure time will increase as they begin to retire and arts organizations must figure out how to capture their interest, or other causes will, and we will lose out. At the other end of the spectrum, we have a new segment of the population who have considerable wealth at much younger ages than in previous eras. These new philanthropists behave in a totally different way. They see the arts as represented by the major institutions, which they see as stodgy, belonging to their parents or even grandparents, and not having an impact on the community or needing their money. How do we change their attitudes, getting them to value our great cultural assets, recognize they need support too, yet also convey the message that the arts are also about changing lives, building community, and bringing people together values that resonate with this generation?

I believe 2006 will bring further dialogue on some of these tough issues: 1) making our case better to the private sector, and related to that the issue of how to develop better messages that resonate with the broadest population; 2) striving for more clout and more efficiencies in our operations, even if it means radical change; 3) rigorously examining the nonprofit arts model, along the lines of the recent paper by Bill Ivey, and figuring out how to embrace new models, including for-profit arts and informal arts, without undermining the case that needs to be made for the continuing support of our great nonprofit cultural assets. I think in 2006 we will see more mergers, maybe a few more major nonprofit arts bankruptcies or dissolutions, but also perhaps some high profile announcements of extraordinary cultural projects that break the mold and demonstrate new ways of operating and funding.

Happy Holidays to all!

NOTE:
Others in the HESSENIUS Group may add their own thoughts this week, and everyone is invited to chime in and enter their own comments.

The Hessenius Group will begin 2006 on Tuesday, February 14th.

I would like to thank all the members of the Group for their participation in this experiment this year. As an ongoing enterprise, I hope it will only get better as we can refine it. I would also like to thank the many readers who were kind enough to email me with encouragement, good wishes and sage advice. I hope too that more readers will share their perspectives and thoughts -- my whole purpose is to generate a real dialogue about the bigger issues the arts face. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

I wish all of us Peace on Earth - and I hope next year sees the arts prosper and thrive.

Thank you.

And remember: Don't Quit!

Barry