May 07, 2007

 

Hello everyone.

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

Further consideration of the Generational Succession issues.

Over the past two weeks, Moy Eng and I, together with local arts organizations and sector leaders, convened Open Forums to talk about the findings from the Report from the INVOLVING YOUTH IN THE ARTS project that the Hewlett Foundation commissioned me to undertake, in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco. We had an average of 90 to 100 people in each venue.

Download the Full Report and / or the Executive Summary:
click here: http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/PerformingArts/Publications/YouthReport.htm

We recognize that each community is separate and different; that each has its own set of local circumstances and so we sought to explore what each of these communities might consider as they work on the local level to address the challenges of involving more young people. The Report considered the barriers and opportunities attendant to any effort on the part of arts organizations to compete for young people's involvement - and the discussions at these Forums echoed those findings:

As to what makes it difficult for arts organizations to become involved in the effort, the response was almost universal that it requires staff time to oversee the program and money to make it work that many arts organizations simply do not have. And that comported well with what those organizations that do have programs aimed at involving young people told us, virtually all of which cautioned not to undertake such an effort unless the organization was willing to make a time and money committment. All advised that such a committment was essential to obtaining a good result.

Findings in the Report:

As to advice given by those organizations that had sucessfully made the effort in one the areas we were interested in (governance, as financial supporters, as advocates, as part of our audiences and as new artists), three lessons learned stood out:

1) Young people are looking for some kind of meaningful involvement - even at the most fundamental entry level. They are looking for respect, for some kind of 'authority' and decision making power as part of their involvement (even if low level)and for mentoring so that they might "learn" something from the experience. Thus, they won't easily be fooled by the organization wanting their participation primarily as cheap part time labor to lick envelopes or set up the room for a fund raising dinner. The experience, if it is to be competitive, has to be deeper than that -- at least at its core.

2) They prefer communications mediums with which they are familiar and comfortable; they are less likely to respond to messages sent in forms, and via means, they really use infrequently, if at all.

3) In terms of being audience members, the experience has to be relatively easy to avail themselves of -- and thus tickets have to be affordable (and that doesn't mean the cheap balcony seats that "suck" by anyone's standards); times and places need to consider their schedules and who they are, and the content needs to at least occasionally move towards relevance to their lifetimes (from their point of view).

Now this advice came from organizations who have programs seeking to involve young people. Clearly, more surveying of young people themselves, more data on what they do and don't like, want, need et. al. would be of enormous value to the sector and we recommend such inquiries be a priority of funders, but young people at our Forums confirmed these feelings.

HIGH SCHOOLS vs. COLLEGE CAMPUS OUTREACH:
We seem to have something of an infrastructure based on our outreach programs from our performance based arts groups to high schools, and the foundation that that outreach has helped to create has been expanded in efforts to provide training, tutoring and opportunities to practice and perform (be it music, dance, theater etc.) We have far more limited outreach efforts to college campuses than we do to high schools and we also recommend that organizations begin more college campus ties and bridge building.

LACK of 'MENTORING' and DEEPER LEARNING EXPERIENCES:
What we don't seem to have is any system to truly provide 'mentoring' to young people who might want to become invovled with us -- not on any surface level for volunteers and / or interns, nor really on any deep level either for lower level, entry employees. In each venue, this point was made. There are young people who want to work at arts organizations -- for the experience and to learn, but for whom the opportunities for real mentoring just don't seem to exist. At the Los Angeles Forum, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission's model internship program was lauded, but the lack of any pipeline that would move people from that program to deeper involvement - either on the job or to something like the Arts Administration program at local Claremont College - was decried.

LOW PAY & BURNOUT:
Couple the lack of mentoring / learning opportunities with the common low pay for entry level arts administrators, and the package is not an attractive one to young, potential future arts leaders. While young people want work that will allow them to "make a difference", and money isn't the only criteria - nonetheless people have to live. One audience member in Los Angeles, noted that while she had a master's degree, the pay offered her simply wasn't enough for her to afford even a modest living space in Los Angeles. Overwork, together with underpay, fuels early burnout noted a San Francisco Forum member.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T:
Arts leaders at the Forums told us they were concerned with overwork and burnout as factors that would make it difficult to retain the young people they recruited, that low pay made it more difficult to compete against the private sector, and that not only did they have limited time and resources, but that it was difficult to change the way their organizations looked at young people and the importance of involving them for the future because a 'culture' had been established that did things the same way they had been done for some time, and that changing that 'culture', those long held beliefs and assumptions.

Several young people at the Forums made a point that they didn't appreciate being patronized or talked "down to". Those in their mid twenties or above noted they hardly consider themselves to be "youth" anymore. And one person noted that he was tired of being "outreached to". The point is we need to break down some of the communications barriers and assumptions that keep us from talking at a deeper level. One participant in the San Francisco Forum noted that arts organizations need to consider delegating more authority and decision making to young people and allowing them to do some things "their" way, instead of the "way" things have always been done (at least as an experiment).

Along this same line, there were people at the Forums from differing kinds of arts organization models. Thus for example, in San Jose (we really met at the Hewlett offices in Menlo Park), Elena Serrano from the East Side Arts Alliance (a self-defined 'community' based organization - that happens to have arts as its focus - attended, and brought up the necessity for an institutionalized "regeneration" process as a part of the organizational culture -- something not necessarily considered by the average arts organization, but more common to hybrid groups like East Side Arts Alliance. And regeneration protocols embody the making of space for young people to do things in their own way.

YOUNG PEOPLE AS DONORS:
As previously noted we have absolutely no organized efforts to target young people - either right now or for the longer term future - as financial donors and supporters. When kids have enormous disposable income and impact family spending decision making; when $125 for a pair of jeans or $150 for a pair of tennis shoes or $75 for a concert are not out of the question expenditures - we wonder why arts organizations long ago concluded that young people as we define them (high school, college and post college up to 30 years) simply don't have the financial resources to be donors to our programs and organization, when that simply doesn't appear to be true, and certainly not the assumption of nonprofit organizations in the environmental sector (as but one comparison).

AUDIENCES:
People in San Diego agreed that issues as basic as pricing affected whether or not young people were successfully recruited as audience members. Thus, for example, young people were less likely to purchase season tickets for a given arts discipline / organization's performances. One audience member suggested that what was needed was a "sampler" season ticket that would allow the purchaser to see five or six shows - with decent seats - at five or six different arts organizations across two or three disciplines. Another suggested that offering free performance tickets to volunteers might be a good way to initially involve young people. It isn't that young people are not necessarily interested in Western European classical art forms - it's just that at this point in their lives they aren't necessarily interested in those forms being their exclusive art choices. The arts need to figure out how to offer them a more attractive package to "try" their offerings.

HOW DO YOU KEEP EM' ONCE YOU GET EM'?
At several Forums, people spoke of the problem of 'retention' after 'recruitment'. The nature of technology impacting younger people's lives with a 24/7 bombardment of information, offfers, and "pitches" for one kind of involvement after another - all of which have an intense "immediacy" - makes it difficult for the arts (or anything else) to compete. Along the same lines, the point was made that young people have their own way of doing things just like every generation has had its own way of doing things.

FOOT SOLIDIERS:
Nor does there appear to be any effort whatsoever to organize young people to be our grassroots advocates, to carry the message of the value of the arts to their parents and communities, to defend us, to act as our boosters. This, despite the fact that there is substantial evidence other sectors - including the environmental sector - have successfully recruited and involved young people in just that role. (I note that no one ever comes to my house in the suburbs on a Sunday morning intent on convincing me that we need to "save the arts" (and we do you know). Young people (not older people) frequently come to my door to ask me to help save the panda, and the ozone and some river; some even come to my door seeking to "save" me as it were - but not the arts.

CLARION CALL:
What we hope is that each community, each organization and the sector as a whole will continue to formulate concrete strategies to quantifiably, measurably involve more young people by 2010. There are three things we are asking each organization to do in the next six months:

First: Make the issue of generational succession and the involvement of young people an Agenda Topic for discussion at your next Board of Directors meeting.

Second: Add someone under the age of 30 to your Board of Directors.

Third: Do something, anything, to start some direct link between your organization and at least one college campus in your area.

There is keen interest in this topic and there is a growing body of other papers, research, studies and articles on the subject. Here are some links you might find both interesting and useful on the subject:

www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?articlenumber=3289

http://aad.uoregon.edu/culturework/culturework36.html

www.humanics.org/site/c.omL2KiN4LvH/b.2480105/k.1764/Initiative_for_Nonprofit_Sector_Careers.htm

www.missionbased.blogspot.com/search/label/Generation%20Change

www.buildingmovement.org/artman/uploads/up_next_001.pdf

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_alt_category.html?category_id=95

THANK YOU:

Moy and I want to thank those who accepted the invitation to join in these Forums and to those individuals and organizations kind enough to help us as co-convenors (Victoria Hamilton, Rick Prickett and Alan Zeiter in San Diego; John Arroyo, Tomas Benitez, Leslie Ito, Cora Mirikitani and Claire Peeps in Los Angeles; Bruce Davis in Santa Clara County; Nancy Gonchar and Kary Shulman in San Francisco.)

The June 15th Sacramento Forum is coming. More to follow.

Moy is considering how she and Hewlett might in some way support the idea of brokering mentoring between those established leaders in the arts and those younger people who become involved because they want those learning opportunities and what kinds of future follow up reports and studies might be appropriate to this effort.

Next week the HESSENIUS GROUP will do an online discussion of these issues. If you have any comments, thoughts or ideas on the topic that you want to share, please scroll down and enter as a comment to this blog.

Have a great week.

Don't Quit!

Barry

April 24, 2007

 

Hi everybody.

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

TOPIC: GENERATIONAL SUCCESSION: Involving Youth in Nonprofit Arts Organizations

There is a growing concern that the arts sector is courting disaster by failing to make generational succession issues a higher priority. The concern isn't so much where the future artists will come from -- we see them everywhere, and as a field we are doing a pretty good job its seems in making connections to them, providing them with support and opportunities to perform and exhibit.

The concern is that all the other sectors of society - nonprofits and "for profits" - seem to already be aggressively courting the previously limited, and now shrinking pool of new talent (from which our next generation leaders and board members, not to mention, our future grassroots advocates, our financial supporters and our audiences must ALL come) - and we aren't. We're already arguably at a competitive disadvantage because this just isn't yet one of our major priorities. We can't offer the compensation packages corporations can, and we aren't yet marketing the benefits that involvement in the arts offer nearly as successfully as other sectors are making involvement in their causes appealing and attractive to young people.

As our baby boomer leadership retires, as mid-career arts administrators are increasingly leaving our field, for financial and other reasons, and as there will be more jobs to fill than young people to fill them over the next decade, we are nearing the proverbial rock and a hard place. If we are going to have any chance to compete for the participation of the next generation, we need to begin a national dialogue immediately about how we can address this issue. I found scores of leaders across the country share my concern. The clock is ticking......

INVOLVING YOUTH IN NONPROFIT ARTS ORGANIZATIONS - THE PROJECT
It is in this context that the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation commissioned me to undertake a study on generational succession issues in California. The project included a study of existing efforts in the arts sector in California, a comparison and contrasting of what organizations in the environmental movement were doing to attract, recruit and retain the involvement of young people (with an eye towards what we might learn from their experience), a look at some of the variables that are involved in creating programs that seek to involve young people in five areas:

1. Governance - as future staff and board members
2. As financial supporters and members of our organizations
3. As grassroots advocates and boosters
4. As future audiences
5. As artists

and identification of some of the barriers and opportunities in any effort to increase the particiaption of young people. Finally, we sought to make some simple and basic recommendations as to what the sector, individual arts organizations, and those involved in funding the arts might do in the near term so that we might achieve some quantifiable, measurable progress by 2010.

The report involved a surveying and mapping of efforts in a cross section of the arts field in California  which because of its geographical, discipline based, budget sized and diversity breadth and depth provided a picture we believe is fairly representative of the national picture.

FINDINGS:

Basically the report found and confirmed what one might expect -- the arts are doing a good job of reaching out to young artists - providing them with training, mentoring and other kinds of support, as well offering them opportunities to perform and exhibit their works. But in virtually every other area, we are not making as much progress. Far too few arts organizations have even one young person on their board of directors (and we defined - for purposes of this study - young people as in three categories - high school, college and post college up to age 30). By and large arts organizations are doing nothing at all to recruit and deploy young people as grassroots advocates, nor to solicit them to contribute as financial donors. And little is done to separate out, study, and track young people as part of our audiences. In terms of some sort of systemic approach to the involvement of young people, we are not doing much of anything. Yes, many arts organizations have very good programs that are designed to (and successful in their attempt to) attract young people (as board members, as interns, as audience members etc.) - and we highlight some examples of what can be done easily and without great expense - but the effort is piecemeal - not systemic or across the board. This observation isn't meant to diminish the efforts of those who are pioneering work in this area, but as a whole, the field has not yet embraced this issue -- certainly not when compared with, say, the environmental movement. There are a few shining stars on the national, regional and local levels -- programs that seek to nourish and support our emerging leaders and at least expose some young people to who we are and what we do. On the plus side, we have long standing ties and contacts with high schools across the country. We need to begin to have the same outreach efforts to colleges as well, and to better exploit the relaionships we do have to recruit new leaders and supporters -- to move beyond exposing them to our performances and get them involved in our organizations.

One of the most salient statistics that hit us was the prediction by the Employment Policy Foundation (EPF)that between 2003 and 2013 over 30 million jobs (in all sectors) would be created for candidates with two years or more of a college education, and yet there would only be 23 million such graduates available to fill those jobs. That's a projected 7 million shortfall - and that is before 2013 - now only six years away. It will only get worse. How many of thoses 7 million unfilled jobs will be ours. Where then will the best and the brightest young arts leaders, supporters, patrons, defenders come from? How we will get at least our share of the market? What can the field do as a whole for the smaller arts organizations that are not situated and positioned as well for this competition as some of our larger institutions? How do we deal with declining budgets, lack of time and other obstacles to even thinking about this problem? These aren't academic questions any more.

Download the Full Report and / or the Executive Summary: click here: http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/PerformingArts/Publications/YouthReport.htm
OPEN FORUMS TOUR:

So, to jumpstart the dialogue, Moy Eng and I -- working with local hosts in five cities - San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento - are holding open Forums to present the findings and recommedations of the study, and to faciliate brainstorming sessions in each venue to see if local arts leadership can begin to develop strategies to work together to address the challenges of attracting young people to our field - in their areas (because each territory will likely be dealing with differing circumstances). We invite you to attend one of these forums if your schedule permits (some of the venue locations are limited as to how many people they can accomodate so you must RSVP to those venues as indicated below.) I'm sorry not to give you more notice, but you know how that goes sometimes --- 'The best laid plans of mice and men..........."

OPEN FORUMS SCHEDULE:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25th 1:00 to 3:00 pm SAN DIEGO
click here for info / RSVP http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/rrprickett@yahoo.com/youthinthearts

THURSDAY, APRIL 26th 10:00 am to Noon LOS ANGELES
click here for info / RSVP http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=871943594507

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2nd 9:30 to 11:30 am - SAN JOSE (Menlo Park) NOTE: to be held at the Hewlett Foundation. Space is severely limited. You must reserve your place by RSVPing to David Keppel for reservation: dkoppel@artscouncil.org

THURSDAY, MAY 3rd 10:00 am to Noon - SAN FRANCISCO. NOTE: Space is severely limited. You must reserve your place by RSVPing to Sharon Page Ritchie at the SF Arts Commission Sharon.Page_Ritchie@sfgov.org

FRIDAY, JUNE 15th - SACRAMENTO - time and specific info to follow
In a couple of weeks, after we complile the feedback and ideas from these Forums I will devote another blog and convene a HESSENIUS GROUP to discuss the Report, the Forum ideas, and the issues so that we can dig deeper into what response the field can have to the challenges we face. I am particularly interested in your thoughts and ideas and I hope you will share them with me so I might share them with the full subscriber list. I hope this might be a topic of discussion on the agenda of every arts organization's next board of directors meeting and a session at all of the arts service group national conventions over the course of the next year or two.

In the next blog I will also include some links to some other studies on the same subject. If you know of others, I would appreciate your letting me know.

We have to do something about this soon or we are going to come up with the short end of the stick.

We ALL have to do something.

Thank you for your consideration.

Reminder: The National Association of Arts Organizations (NAAO) meets in Los Angeles beginning Friday, April 27th - click here for more information: www.naao.net

And Americans for the Arts is meeting in LAS VEGAS at the fabulous Flamingo Hotel June 1-3 Click here for info: www.americansforthearts.org/events/2007/convention/default.asp

Have a great week.

Remember: Don't Quit!
 
Barry

April 02, 2007

Barry's Blog - April 3, 2007

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

Hello everyone.

This blog is about organizations that try to serve in some direct way the needs of the nation's artists.

The National Association of Artists' Organizations [NAAO] is a nonprofit dedicated to serving and strengthening artist-driven groups and organizations. NAAO addresses the field's ongoing struggle with issues relating to artists' rights, organizational stability, working conditions, and professional isolation across all disciplines and communities.

NAAO had been in existence previously, but had struggled to stay alive. The current incarnation is the result of a group of dedicated people across the couuntry who believe that there needs to be a national umbrella service provider organization for all of those arts organizations in America that have as their primary mission serving artists. Of course, virtually all arts organizations in America serve artists in one way or another, directly or indirectly - some providing technical assistance, others funding, still others performance and exhibition training, opportunities and more. There are groups like Lawyers for the Arts that provide educational services directly to artists via workshops, seminars and publications; there are local arts agencies that serve artists in communites wide and far, and presenting groups and multicultural organizations that are trying to address various needs of the nation's artists - and all of these organizations might benefit from belonging to a national umbrella group that could provide networking and other opportunities to share and exchange information and serve as an organizer of various aspects of doing business as an organization that primarily serves our artists.

NAAO is trying to fill that role. All of us in the arts sector have too many demands on our limited time, too many things on our plates, too little money, and so it is difficult to try to grow a national effort to unite any segment of our wider community. But I have seen efforts like what Sam Miller is doing with LINK or Cora Mirikitani is doing with The Center for Cultural Innovation grow in the recent past, and I think perhaps the time is right to again try to nurture a national umbrella group to serve all of these diverse efforts. That is the primary reason I joined NAAO's Board of Directors when invited to do so several months ago.

NAAO is hosting a national conference in Los Angeles, California April 26-29. Entitled VITALSIGNs: the conference will address the needs of both those organizations serving artists and the artists themselves.

The conference will address the internal and external challenges organizations dealing with artists face and to forge and mobilize collective responses to these challenges by providing convening, communications, visibility, and voice. Issues covered will range from health insurance for individual artists, to advocacy; there will be workshops on such diverse subjects as marketing for artists to creating and using websites, from recording and selling music to earned income strategies for artists.
Click here for Details on the conference: www.naao.net

This conference represents a ground floor opportunity to build a new national organization that can help the specific segment of our community that deals primarily with serving artists directly. If NAAO's effort succeeds, years from now people will look back on this gathering as the beginning of putting a face on the entire artist driven wing of our community - including the first real attempt in a long, long time to begin to organize artists. That is what I find really exciting.

I have long thought that we were missing the boat by not attempting to organize the artist community in some way to harness that incredible talent, intelligence and power of the sheer number of our artists. Imagine what a political advocacy and lobbying force might be created if our artists, at some point, decided that they wanted to be such a force and take more control of their futures. Imagine what influence even a semi-organized effort might exert -- on schools and young people, on the media, on politicans.

Moreover, if artists ever do decide to really organize themselves in some way - they will find many issues of great importance to them can then be more easily addressed. If just one million of the nation's ten, twenty million member artist / creative class were to loosely organize, as a group, they could easily negotiate health care at a reasonable price for all their members - something artist's don't have right now. The mind reels with what might be accomplished.

I know the "organizing" might be anathema to artists - contrary to what an artist, by temperment, is thought to be - like herding cats, one can't organize "free spirits" - but that's not really true in my experience -- artists are also practical, smart business-savvy people (they have to be to survive in a culture that so little values artists and teachers and the like)and we won't change America's failure to exhalt artistic accomplishment instead of celebrity nonsense without some organizing.

So, I hope at least people in southern California - and hopefully from across the country, will come to this NAAO gathering in Los Angeles - April 26 - 29.

NEXT MONTH PREVIEW: Next month's blogs will feature an interview with Nancy Glaze - retired after 20+ years in the arts and her involvement with the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, and the release of the Youth Involvement in the Arts Report - findings and recommendations of the study conducted for the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation on generational succession issues in the arts.

Have a great week.

Don't Quit

Barry