January 24, 2007

Hello and a belated Happy New Year to you all.

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

I'm making a few changes to the Blog that I hope will make it both more interesting and of greater use to you.

First, the HESSENIUS Group - the McLaughlin style roundtable discussion with five to six of the group members (now numbering some 25+ of the country's foremost leaders in the nonprofit arts sector)addressing major issues in the arts over a two day blog dialogue - will now run six times a year or approximately every other month. First up will be a discussion of why America so values "celebrity", and so undervalues the artist. I hope to have the group consider this question in February (subject to some international travelling I am doing).

In the alternate months, when the HESSENIUS Group isn't featured, I will present a series of one-on-one in-depth interviews with leaders in the arts field. First up, is an interview with JOHN KREIDLER - recently retired Executive Director of Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley, and formerly the Senior Program Director for the Arts & Humanities Program of the San Francisco Foundation (see bio below). Cultural Initiatives is itself an interesting organization in that it was designed to work with the Silicon Valley community to promote and facilitate arts education in the county's schools, and had a built-in "sunset" provision that mandated that it would cease doing business after a specified period of time. It thought it could accomplish its stated mission objectives within that time period, and it did, and true to its charter, it wound up its business and has ceased official operations.

Third, I am going to try to attend four or five of the major arts conferences this year (Americans for the Arts, Grantmakers in the Arts, Association of Performing Arts Presenters - next January, and a couple of others)and be your roving reporter at these conferences - reporting back to you each day via this blog on the buzz I overhear, conversations I might have with delegates to these conventions, information gleaned from keynote speakers and select breakout sessions, news about new research, developments, funding or whatever else I can pick up that I think might be of use, or interest, to at least some of you. My purpose is to give you a sense of what went on at some of our major covenings that you might have liked to attend, but for whatever reasons were not able to get to.

Other blogs during the course of the year will be my usual take on issues that I think are of importance to the field, along with my thoughts, opinions and analyses. And I will try to offer these blogs every month.

And finally, I will soon be announcing the launch of a brand new version of barry's blog, this new one directed and targeted at working artists - focusing on issues that are relevant and important to artists (whereas the current blog is directed towards arts administrators).

So, here is John Kreidler's bio:

Until December 31, 2006, John Kreidler served as Executive Director of Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley: an organization focused on improvements in public school arts education, advancements in avocational arts, and development of business and civic leadership supportive of the arts. As planned, Cultural Initiatives closed on the tenth anniversary of Silicon Valley's regional cultural plan, so John is currently involved in several projects, including a new cultural policy simulation entitled, Creative Drive. He is the principal designer of a 2001 cultural policy simulation entitled, Great Cities, and co-author of The Creative Community Index, an analysis of cultural activities and aspirations in Silicon Valley. For the two decades prior to Cultural Initiatives, Mr. Kreidler worked for The San Francisco Foundation in the post of Senior Program Executive for the Arts and Humanities. While in this post, he began to design computer simulations of cultural policy and wrote a widely published article, Leverage Lost, about the systemic history of the American nonprofit arts environment. Early in his career, he worked in Washington for the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, where he served as a policy and budget analyst specializing in Federal government labor programs. Mr. Kreidler currently teaches a class on the art, politics and culture of medieval Sienna, Italy for the U.C. Santa Cruz Extension, and has been a frequent lecturer at the Stanford University School of Business, University of San Francisco Public Management Institute, University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, and University of Wisconsin Arts Administration Program. He holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Public Administration, also from Berkeley.

And here is the interview with John:

BARRY: You've been involved in trying to establish (or perhaps re-establish is a better way to put it) arts education in the schools in Silicon Valley for the past ten years or so. What are the principal lessons you've learned from that experience?

JOHN: The first thing that struck me when I began at Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley was that everybody wanted arts education. . A survey was done in 1997 in Santa Clara as part of a master county wide cultural planning process and 90% of all the people surveyed and it cut across race, income and education levels, geography it was really a representative sample of the whole county almost everyone wanted more arts education. Teachers, parents, administrators, everybody. I think there is an almost universal feeling, in California anyway, that the schools have failed in providing creative education, and people want more of it. So for me it was almost as though there was a mandate to do this, and I think that reservoir of good will is important to recognize.

BARRY: Why did we lose arts education in the schools in the first place then?

JOHN: It started in 1970 with the Ryan Act which eliminated any requirement for California classroom teachers to have any training in the arts which insidiously created a lack of sympathy to the value of the arts. Over time it had the effect of eliminating any active advocacy for the arts and negating any real understanding of the arts or the value of arts education. It some ways, people turned on the arts as a reaction against permissive education. It harkens back to Superintendent of Public Instruction (the California statewide elected chief of education) Max Rafferty days when the sentiment was that education was becoming too liberal - not necessarily in the political sense, but education was viewed as too permissive. There was a back to fundamentals movement, and art was not considered a fundamental; it was the beginning of the math / reading push and relegation of the arts as not an academic subject. And, of course, budget deficits and economic downturns only solidified removal of the arts from the core curriculum. The trend line seems to have begun to change in the mid 90's perhaps with the Getty Foundation pushing for state standards in arts education which were, I think, adopted in 1999 / 2000 somewhere in that period. And ultimately, all the efforts of arts supporters began to lead to a groundswell of demand for more arts education. Then the Ryan Act was repealed in 2002 and we've made strides in the push for a reintroduction of the arts. But, I think, now it will still be a generation or even two before we can fully put the arts back into the schools because we have to get teachers and administrators back into the system who understand and care about arts education and that doesn't happen with just a change in appropriation or standards.

BARRY: So of the $105 million for arts education that the Governor put in this year's budget as an ongoing line item, which is to be allocated on a per pupil county by county basis, do you know how the money is likely to be spent in each school district?

JOHN: Out of 58 counties and however many school districts there are, the majority are probably not prepared yet to spend the money. There are five or six counties in California. I can think of (Santa Clara, LA, SF, Alameda Santa Cruz)) that are prepared out of the box to move forward. There is an effort through the statewide association of county superintendents offices to deal with appropriation of these funds this year, but it's all on a district by district basis, and while my understanding is that there was some effort to include language governing allocation of the money to standards based arts education, however the individual counties wanted to proceed, I'm not sure that language made it into the statute. It's common where money for any project is first put out that local bodies aren't necessarily ready to spend the money, and I'm not ready to say that all the money will be spent wisely this year, but that doesn't mean that next year appropriation language (mandating spending the money on sequential, standards based arts education) won't be required. The good news is that there is an effort underway to study all of this as it's happening. The Hewlett Foundation is putting up the money to do a study as to how this is all implemented so we will have some sort of baseline to build on.

BARRY: What are the next steps?

JOHN: Well, I know there are school administrators that feel that what the governor owes them (given the money taken from their allocation in the past) is now unrestricted money not money restricted to arts education or physical education, and so this doesn't necessarily make them happy. I know district administrators who are pro arts who are not happy that the money is coming back this way. So that is the context in which we are operating.

Looking at those districts in the state that have been actively trying to reinstate the arts as universally available to their student populations, I think there are several lessons: First of all, one of the reasons I went to work in Silicon Valley in the first place is that I loved the fact that a plan had been set forth to bring arts education back and that the plan recognized that every district, even every classroom is different, so that if you're going to make a difference you have to give up very early the idea that one size fits all. No outside intervenor including nonprofit arts organizations can say ok every class has to have this or that. Trying to impose a model top down will result in failing really badly.

The ultimate goal is that kids get exposure to aesthetics, to actually making art, to be able to criticize, to think freely and creatively and have some sense of tradition and history and those are the elements that we want kids to experience by the time they get out of school and that's not going to happen in five years. It's probably going to take a generation or two. I think in Silicon Valley its going to take another 25 years to get us all to a point where we would agree would be the point we want to get to, and we've been laying the groundwork here for eight years so in some ways we are ahead of the curve.

So here are the building blocks then: First, it takes sitting down with schools that are willing to change. I don't think outsider intervenors or just money coming in is necessarily going to change attitudes and so in Silicon Valley we have only gone into the school districts that have wanted us. We've used money as the lure, but what we've said to school districts is: Here's what we want to do with you, (not to you) and this money is available to you if you will begin a plan, and do a needs assessment, to provide arts education to all kids based on the statewide adopted standards. We'll assess together, plan together, and then we'll give you money and you can do whatever you want with it hire teachers, spend it on programs as long as you're building towards the ideal of universal arts education based on standards it's up to you. So the first lesson is that every district is unique.

Just putting the money on the table doesn't mean the job is going to get done. If I was going to be appropriating the $105 million and I wanted to get the most bang for the buck, I wouldn't go about it on a per capita basis, but that's what the politics favor and we all know how that works. Still, in the end, even though several leading county offices of education are being set up to provide technical assistance in the allocation of the funding, it still comes down to whether or not those individuals in charge are going to be open and sympathetic to the arts and knowledgeable about the issues involved. And inevitably, the situation is going to be different in each district. And that's the second lesson the local district administrators, teachers, educators have got to come to know the issues attendant with arts education, and many don't yet.

Now in Silicon Valley, I'm encouraged. Over the last eight years we got our program going in three fourths of the elementary school districts.. They had assessed, developed and formally adopted plans that met the state standards for arts education including curriculum. Their plans were different some started from weak positions, some were already strong, and our money helped them all to do planning, teacher training, and move forward, but it took us eight years. And we still didn't get a quarter of them  primarily those schools in lower performing districts where they felt significant pressure from the Federal government due to the No child left behind Act. But by the time we finished after eight years, that last quarter of schools all wanted in but by then we were shutting down. Now our program (and our staff and funding) has moved over to the country office of education and they are beginning to work with that last one quarter of schools.

BARRY: What are the dangers facing the arts?

JOHN: I don't have any worry about the future of art itself.. I feel confident that art will survive. The question is more one of will people have access to the arts. To me the great, great danger in the United States is that we all just become consumers of art, and that we're no longer activist ourselves at making art; that we simply turn on the television or go to our favorite opera when we think about art. I don't care if art is created by a for profit or nonprofit, by amateurs or professionals my point is that for the arts to really survive Americans need to be involved as creators not just customers.

BARRY: You spent a large portion of your career in the foundation world. What is the biggest mistake foundations continue to make with respect to their funding of the arts? (or put another way what opportunity to make a real impact is the foundation community perhaps inadvertently squandering?)

JOHN: First, I believe that a variety of American arts funders, and foundations in particular, rescued the arts from the doldrums of the 1950s. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations led this movement, which was then picked up by the NEA when it was founded in 1965, and later by a host of other funders, mostly operating at the state and local levels. The main objective of this movement was to stabilize venerable arts institutions and to start new ones. In large part, the mantra of this movement was to improve the quality of American arts, mostly in response to a shared belief that U.S. arts were inferior to Soviet and European arts. Although I've never subscribed to the notion of national cultural inferiority, I would say that much good came from the early emphasis on institutional stability and development. In California, one has only to look at the remarkable variety of nonprofit cultural institutions that now exists, in comparison to the landscape of the 1950s. The mistake, as I now view this landscape, is that many funders are continuing to follow the institutional stabilization and development approaches of the past irrespective of shifts in taste, demographics (age, race, education, income, etc) and developments in the commercial culture. In my view, we need to look at the entire ecology of the arts in California, including the state of arts education, participatory forms of cultural expression, and the professional sector of artistic goods and services, and then make investments that serve the interests of the broadest number of people, and that move toward a condition of cultural health.

BARRY: What will be the most obvious differences in the way the typical nonprofit arts organization looks ten years from now?

JOHN: I would guess that there will be fewer professional nonprofit arts organizations in the future because the clientele that they serve is becoming smaller and because the commercial arts sector continues to expand. Increasingly, I expect the nonprofit arts sector to serve relatively narrow niche markets.

BARRY: If you had ten million dollars to invest to improve the lot of nonprofit arts organizations how would you spend it?

JOHN: With $10 million, I would found 10 regional centers throughout California based on the model of San Francisco's South of Market Cultural Center. The Center is a large old industrial building bulging with trucks and equipment that are used to support all manner of parades, festivals and neighborhood arts activities throughout the City. The staff of the Center is a brilliant group of community arts activists, including Jack Davis and Ernie Rivera, that has been at work for more than 35 years in the service of community cultural expression. I believe that much of San Francisco's cultural vitality, especially its rich menu of parades and festivals, can be traced to the South of Market Cultural Center, and it's not a massively expensive enterprise to duplicate in other places.

BARRY: What is the one area you always meant to work on but never had time to get to?

JOHN: Banjo. Ten years ago, I purchased a banjo with the intention of learning basic bluegrass music. Given that I'm left-handed, my expectations of achieving a high level of performance were never high, but the truth is, that banjo has hardly been touched in the past decade.

More to the point of this blog, I've wanted to develop a computer-based simulation of the dynamics of the arts in a regional environment. Until arts leaders have a better understanding of the key dynamic factors driving our sector, the sector will be in a weak position to articulate cogent policy. If the arts and culture are ever to be taken seriously as a policy field, on a par, let's say, with the economy, health care and the environment, we will need to use some of the same modeling and simulation tools that these fields have adopted over the past half century. In 2000, Cultural Initiatives released the first-ever model of a regional arts ecosystem, a simulation-game entitled Great Cities. At present, I'm at work on a more ambitious user-defined simulation entitled Creative Drive, which attempts to move toward the level of sophistication found in leading econometric, health care and environmental models. By mid-2007, I expect that Creative Drive will be ready for release as an Internet-based simulation, though a lot more effort will be needed to achieve the level of models in use by other policy fields.

BARRY: What are the three most important skills the successful nonprofit Executive Director should possess?

JOHN: Avoid all aphorisms regarding the most important skills the successful nonprofit Executive Director should possess.

BARRY: What do you think the arts can (should) do to insure that the field will successfully recruit new young people to lead its organizations, comprise its audiences, support it financially and advocate for its needs in the future?

JOHN: Echoing a previous point, I am concerned about young people becoming passive consumers of culture, and not having the capacity to actively engage in active forms of cultural expression. Cultural Initiatives view has been that the foundation of culturally healthy individuals and communities is literacy in the fundamentals of arts and culture: Fluency in arts practice (e.g. singing, drawing), cultural traditions, aesthetics and criticism. Better formal arts education is an important driver of literacy in culture, but there are many other drivers as well, including families, communities, commercial media, and religious institutions.

Thank you John.

Everybody have a great week, and
 
Don't Quit.

Barry

December 11, 2006

Hessenius Group - Year End Wrap Up

Hi Everybody.

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

As a year end wrap up, I asked the members of the Hessenius Group this:


What is the one issue you think the arts should pay more attention to next year?

 
Here are their responses:

Jerry Yoshitomi: 
Easing demand for arts participation experiences
Increasing opportunities for people to express their own creativity through arts participation
Developing synergistic ties with both the informal, unincorporated arts sector, as well as small commercial (e.g. music, book and art supply stores)
Listening to the next generation of arts leaders and give them encouragement and support to implement ideas (some of which my generation might be uncomfortable)
Benefit from the increased participation, income and new ideas from above to take the time to relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor.


Jodi Beznoska:
I hope we focus on customer- and technology-driven programming, marketing and operations. How can we use the way people actually communicate and make decisions to make them choose us for their inspiration and entertainment?

My brain is spinning with the implications of what I've taken to calling the I-Pod Syndrome, and this is where I believe we need to focus our energies. Because, for all of the new gadgets and frantic new ways consumers have to construct their own virtual life, there is still a need and desire to connect with people. In fact, I would argue that the need is greater than ever, because there's only so much "virtual living" we can do. One only has to look at the sports world to know that the appeal of live events is huge. But with sports, the live event is only part of it. It's the rest of it, the pre and post game analysis, the online and water-cooler discussions, etc, that get people excited. It is the ownership of the experience that hooks them - what's stopping the arts from generating the same excitement? That's the question I hope we consider in the future.

Sam Miller:
In the world of YouTube and open source social and cultural networking how are the artists going to be paid in the future?

Andrew Taylor:
Several indicators and bubbling conversations seem to suggest that 2007 will focus more attention on the amateur arts...the non-professional enthusiasts and creative individuals who are finding a greater voice on-line, and seeking a more hands-on involvement in creative experience. This renewed focus (which isn't new at all, but ebbs and flows) will lead many professional organizations to rethink their interaction with nonprofessionals (tighter connections between professional symphonies and community symphonies, for example). And those who don't reconsider these connections will find the amateur artists convening without them.

Cultural planning and cooperation that incorporates the full range of creative activity -- informal, community, and professional -- may make some traditional professional nonprofits cranky at their shuffled place in the food chain. But a more balanced and inclusive ecology may make every player more strong.

Bob Booker:
With all the focus on developing new audiences, increasing participation, and growing donors and patrons, we continue as a field to pay no attention to the marketing and promotional images we use. Take a look at most any arts program from an arts event and look at the images included? Are there a variety of people with different faces and backgrounds shown? How many piano's with a dozen roses and our "best wishes" from a law office are there? By the way, do you see images of anyone under 45 among the pages other than charming well dressed children with hands folded? Not to mention that gray haired conductor in tails with his baton in the air?

Truly all of the work we have done as a national arts community can be lost if we do not take a hard look at the collatorial materials we and our designers create. As a group of people that pride themselves on their visual abilities, we are lost in a sea of outdated images and trite clip art.

It seems simple, but take a minute and look for yourself. If you took these programs to your grocery store and said...Hey is there a place for you here? I wonder what folks would say. Even the latest commercial for a national dog show has expanded its images of dogs to include show dogs, street dogs, barnyard dogs, and pampered pooches. Maybe we in the arts community should invite all the dogs to our events too.

Randy Rosenbaum:
We need to ensure that our elected officials view the arts and culture as an essential societal need, one worthy of investment (certainly) but also as a "full partner" at the table of public discourse. We've been invited to that table, from time to time, but I can't help feeling like we're expected to sit at the "kid's table". The "grown-ups" are at the table with health and human services, economic development and education, transportation and housing. We get to sit at that table, on occasion, but we are just a visitor. Let's improve that situation, and a lot more can happen as a result

Betty Plumb:
Although it seems like an overly-discussed and well-exhausted subject, a challenge I continue to hear from many local arts administrators is how to increase participation in the arts. Even when arts organizations are able to have sufficient funding for their programming, it's their constant challenge to get people in the seats of their performances, in the streets for their downtown festivals, in the exhibition halls of their galleries, or in their facilities for programming.
 
With so many distractions and demands on people's time, they are always looking for "what works". What arts experiences appeal to the general public and how can you most effectively market to a diverse audience?
 
Knowing a community and how to communicate with them can be is key. Arts organizations will have to place a higher priority on marketing and research, including resources and staff time. Finding solutions that address building participation in the arts continues to be a costly and critical issue.

Shannon Daut:
In the next year, I believe arts organizations should explore potential partners that exist across the non-profit/for-profit creative divide. By doing this, I believe we can strengthen and energize the field, expand our audiences to younger demographics and create a new group of arts advocates. I'm not advocating for a turn to a more commercial or entertainment-driven arts field, but with the incredible shift of how individuals access cultural experiences, I think the time is ripe to explore new ways of partnering with organizations or businesses that are outside of the groups that we traditionally seek out. If people aren't in your audience, how might we develop ways to provide artistic experiences in an unusual setting? Over the next year, what is one thing that your organization can do that is different and unexpected?

Bob Lynch:
In the midst of creative industies data, the expanded breadth and capacity of the commercial arts, the quality of electronic delivery systems, and the massive growth of unincorporated arts activity (choral arts, folks arts being just two examples), I think that the key issue that the 'arts' need to pay attention to is one of identity. What do we mean when we say the 'arts', the whole gamut? When we look at particiation in the 'arts' do we look at the almost 100% participation in the full spectrum or the latest % in the NEA study of nonprofit arts participation. And at the core what is it that we are actually for accomplishing as an industry or a set of concerned citizens who love the arts. Do we want to fight for more money for more non profit arts activity. Do we want to fight for more support for quality for art whether non profit or for profit. Do we want something else entirely.

Judy Weiner:
I believe a key issue for 2007 is Advocacy. Specifically, we need to focus on developing new resources for the arts industry in collaboration with elected officials. This could include the following:

Legislation to stimulate new revenue
 
Incentives for private investment
 
Entrepreneurial ventures
 
In addition, we need to focus on building the capacity and the infrastructure of local (statewide) advocacy organizations that have the (potential) capacity to reach and mobilize huge numbers of people at the grass roots level. Statewide and national advocacy efforts can only be as effective as the infrastructure upon which they are built.


Rick Hernandez:
I think there are two very important questions actually. The first is the changing nature of financial resources for the arts. As a funder I am concerned that the dollars that come to us continually have more strings attached, forcing our constituents to change themselves in order to chase the dollars. This is happening at all levels, federal initiatives, return on investment requirements for hotel/occupancy (tourism) dollars, the wishes of private sector donors, etc.

The second is succession planning.

Diane Mataraza:
My mantra remains increasing general public awareness, relevance and access to what the arts have to offer.

Anthony Radich:
This is the year for arts administrators engaged in work across the field to cease being in denial about their need to take a leadership role in the advancement of arts education. Whether arts education will occur in the schools in the future or not, we must take the steps necessary to ensure all young people, K-12, have access to a quality, sequential arts education. The young people of today need access to aesthetic tools and also to know the language of the arts in order to create tomorrow’s art.


Paul Minicucci:
The use of technology has really democratized the arts in that more people have more access to more art than ever before. However, with that access comes issues of content, standards, complexity and depth. On the one hand there seems to be a willingness on the part of audiences to dabble in installation art, digital art, film and video. Often the new forms of art are flashy and visually stunning. The average person is more willing to allow cutting edge art into their life. "The arts" however seem not to take the digital means or modes seriously with respect to funding, policy development, marketing etc. often relegating them to "entertainment media." So at the same time more people spend more time on-line and using the new transmission devices of the future, I-Pods, mobile devices of all sorts, the arts infrastructure seems not to be incorporating these forms into their offerings.
 
I noted that the new general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb has challenged his audience to support eight new operatic works annually instead of four and to become active in accessing information and music on-line as well as doing more web-casting and broadcasting. The Met broadcast the opening of Madame Butterfly in September to Times Square, a move than did not sit well with many supporters.

So the issue is: Are we missing a huge opportunity here? Is digital transmission the mode of the future or do we expect to re-capture the attention of audiences back to more traditional forms of art? Is it okay that much of the art making and patronage will occur in the commercial venues of on-line transmission? Maybe it is. Maybe the new access is through a personal choice made in the privacy of one's study or sitting at a coffee house. If the arts want to embrace digital transmission ought we start taking steps to do more broadcasting, web-casts, satellite radio or pod-casting? Shouldn't we get more involved in debates on what is (are) the new esthetic(s)?


Jonathan Katz:
Well, that depends where you are in "the arts." If you are an artist or arts organization, I'd recommend paying attention to how the experience you offer connects with, complements and competes with all the other alternative ways people could spend their time--especially how your experience connects meaningfully with what people consider the most important ways they spend their time. If you are a participant or advocate, I'd recommend paying attention to how you can share the arts experience you value with at least one person, hopefully two or three, who can do something to sustain or increase the resources available to the arts. Sharing the experience with a valued companion and an understanding of what your role in making it available should be is more powerful than a stack of arguments, however well phrased and documented.

Moy Eng:
How do artists make their living now? What are the areas of enormous opportunity and what are the greatest challenges? (To identify ways in which philanthropy can be more helpful and strategic)

Gary Steuer:
The biggest issue I see for 2007 in the arts is the growing focus on the role of the arts in workforce readiness, and worker attraction and retention. This knits together arts education with arts and business with lifelong learning into one seamless cradle-to-grave value proposition for the arts that directly links the arts to global competitiveness and the 21st century workforce.


BARRY:
For me, the issue is how to involve more young people in the arts -- beyond the generational succession issue, (really across the broad spectrum of governance - i.e., more young people on our boards, on our staffs, as volunteers, and as advocates and boosters on our behalf, as financial supporters and contributors, and finally as members of our audiences. How do we attract and retain the involvement of more young people now(and how will we fare in that effort over the next decade as the pool of young people to recruit from gets smaller and the demand for those people grows and becomes much more competitive?)

If YOU have a thought on what issue the arts should be focusing on next year, please enter it as a comment below and I will integrate your thoughts onto the main blog page each day.

Thank you to all the members of the HESSENIUS Group, for their participation this past year, and to all of you for following along and for what you all do every day to keep the arts alive and well in America.

Have a great week,

Don't Quit.

Barry

CLICK ON THE COMMENTS LINE BELOW TO READ THE VIEWER'S THOUGHTS ON WHICH ISSUES THE ARTS OUGHT TO SPEND MORE TIME ON NEXT YEAR.

November 21, 2006

Barry's Blog - November 21, 2006

Table of Contents:
I. Give the Gift of Art!?
II. Policy - Who cares huh?

Hello Everybody. Gobble, Gobble!

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

I. The GIFT of Art?
 
"Have yourself a Merry little Christmas..............."

As the Christmas shopping season opens, I am again struck by the fact that there are so few publicized opportunities for gift-givers to give Art instead of the usual commercial products being pushed. I love Open Studios - and most of those programs not only bring people into contact with artists, but result in huge sales of actual artwork. Museum gift shops, on average, do very well and contribute to the bottom line. Art isn't going to effectively compete with the newest Playstation or ipod - I know that, but that's not the goal. But why we don't collaboratively rent empty storefronts for the month of

December and push our own products via our own marketing channels is beyond me.
We are committed to providing opportunities for performance artists to perform, to earn a living thereby; indeed, we fund countless performance organizations that do exactly that. But for visual artists, artists that create tangible physical artwork, we invest little funding and effort to significantly increase the places they can show their work, and more importantly sell their work so as to make a living. Museums help train artists and provide them with other services, but very few artists are provided access to exhibition via museums. What then do we do to help artists earn a living through their art? Besides open studios? Wouldn't some kind of collaborative Christmas campaign help to address this unmet need?

Boomers have money and have gotten to the point where a piece of original art costing several hundred dollars is certainly within their budgets and the range of money they intend to spend on certain gifts and would have far more of an impact on the person's life to whom the gift is intended than almost anything else; would likely be a gift far more appreciated and remembered than any other gift -- so why don't more people give artwork as presents at Christmas. And I do not believe you can't pick out artwork for someone you know that they will appreciate. I think you have a better chance of picking out artwork that they will like than you do to pick out a sweater they will like.

And wasn't Christmas originally about hand made gifts? Wasn't Santa Claus an original craftsman artist - or were those the elves? I just think the market is ready to respond to a campaign to sell artwork as Christmas gift ideas - and that, who knows, we might even get someone like our old friend American Express to partner with us next year in a campaign to have a one month art store in every city and a campaign to give art for Christmas!

Or not as you may prefer. Just another thought.

II. Policy?
"I'm late, I'm late, no time, no time, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late......."

In October Bob Lynch President and CEO of Americans for the Arts and Robert Redford, Chairman Sundance Preserve, co convened the First meeting of the National Arts Policy Roundtable of Americans for the Arts, at Sundance. The National Arts Policy Roundtable was conceived as a national convening of top level decision makers from the public and private sectors such as elected officials Corporate and Foundation CEOs and board members and individual philanthropists to discuss cultural policy issues and help forge cultural policy positions and eventually public and private cultural policy itself. The Policy Roundtable is chaired by Marian Godfrey of the Pew Charitable Trust. This first Roundtable convening looked at the slippage over the last decade in the percentage of private sector giving going to the arts and discussed policy change at the Corporate, Foundation, and Individual Philanthropic levels as well as public sector polices that affect the private sector such as tax laws. A complete report is expected after the first of the year.

I look forward to that report, and hope that it stimulates more discussion of how we are going to formulate policy for the arts in the future -- not just what the policy might be, but how we will go about determining what it might be. I fear that we will, in large part, leave formation to others; that we won't have the time, energy, resources or inclination to discuss, debate and determine what our policies might be and so we will allow whatever policy might exist to be determined largely by default - by our failure to act.

I'm not criticizing here. I understand. I've been there, done that. There is no time to consider such lofty considerations; we have no tools or resources to encouage formation of policy; and only a few people have the luxury to even think about it. Where is its practical application? How does it specifically impact - anything? or anybody?

Alright Barry, if you want to help those people in the trenches - then figure out a way that you can raise more money, increase the funding pool somehow, that will pay for their operations. Not their programs - but their operations. Staff salaries and salary increases. Staff expansion - adding new people to do the work that so desperately needs to be done, but for which there is no time for ME or anyone on my staff currently to do. Cut back the paperwork and all the hoops I have to jump through to get even a teeny, tiny little grant. Expand the grants programs so that all of us way back in the pack here - those of us who are NOT the big cultural institutions - can get our hands on some amount of money that will actually mean we can move forward a little instead of just running in place and getting tired. Get me some board members who will go out and raise some money and stop wanting to plan my programs for me. That's what I need, ok - and what has "policy" formation to do with any of that? (And just a minute, ok, please note that those of us out here who are defined as the "big" cultural institutions - are pretty much in the same boat everyone else is, and all we're talking about is size and scale, and the fact is that we carry our weight and give back far more than we take, and all the talk about all the money going to us isn't doing anybody any good and besides, it isn't true, and it's getting old already, ok?)

So what does policy have to do with all of that? Good question. It's like asking what does a U.S. foreign policy that states that America has the right to pre-emptively invade any nation that we believe may be a threat to our security, irrespective of tangible acts indicative of such threat, have to do with getting mired down in Iraq in the middle of what has become a civil war?

The answer is that you need to have some guiding principles that will allow you to travel a path that avoids as many pitfalls as possible and maximizes the opporunties so that you can move towards your mission. Lots of room to disagree about what that might be, and that is why the more it is discussed the better the final result.

We should protect all of the arts organizations in the sector so that we can develop as a supportive community? Or not? What's the policy? What are the implications? We should or should not be active lobbyists and get involved in candidates campaigns, in the quest for more government money? Which one? What's the policy? What are the consequences either way? Foundations will support organizational operations AND programs, or only programs and not operations? What's the policy? What's the result?

Complex stuff. But whether we consciously tackle the problem of policy formation or not, we will end up with policies in place - by default or by common action -- like it or not, and policies do affect action.

Anyway, I hope Bob Lynch's Roundtable helps. At least it's some movement, something positive. I hope that somehow policy formation filters down to the lowest levels, because sound policy has widespread ownership.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Remember, Don't Quit!

Barry