<100k Project
This is the blog of Scott Walters’s <100k Project, an innovative effort to bring resources for and awareness of artists and arts organizations to small and rural communities with populations of less than 100,000. What little I’ve read of Scott’s work so far indicates a keen understanding of key issues in the community arts and of things in general. Well worth checking out.

CultureFuture
Guy Yedwab is an arts management student at NYU who, like seemingly everyone else I run into, is interested in arts policy. He has embarked on a research project seeking to identify and quantify the kinds of metrics one needs to use to identify healthy arts communities. So far, he’s off to a great start.

off-stage-right
Jodi Schoenbrun Carter, former managing director of the Westport Country Playhouse, has been getting her blog on something fierce the last few months. She writes mostly about theater topics, but there are some larger arts-related posts as well — her take on Rocco Landesman is worth reading, for example (though it’s unfortunate that she quotes an entire NYTimes article in her post — not kosher, people!). Jodi also Twitters up a storm at @jodisc.

Springblog for the Arts
This is the official blog for a fascinating-looking organization called Springboard for the Arts that’s based in St. Paul, Minnesota. They seem to be kind of like a Midwest-centric version of Fractured Atlas, though they’ve been around for a decade or so longer. As for the blog itself, I first came across it because of this great essay by Eric Booth from Chamber Music magazine, which was reprinted with permission on Springblog. Eric had a key role in putting together the content of last summer’s National Performing Arts Convention, and makes reference to Jim Collins’s keynote speech in the article.

• The Hewlett Foundation has finally released phase two of its Youth in the Arts report, conducted by Barry Hessenius. This edition used focus groups of young arts professionals to explore the implications of generational change in arts adminstration. Many of the themes resonate with my Ten Strategies for Engaging Generation Y in the Nonprofit Workplace. The full report is available here. I read it as a very powerful indictment of the status quo and I hope it helps change some common attitudes and practices regarding entry-level employees.
• Via the Artful Manager, a report on the National Performing Arts Convention from last June.
• The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article from a week and a half ago on how Cleveland is openly embracing the idea of supporting artists as a strategy for local economic development. It makes sense; artists (especially visual artists) do well in converted industrial spaces, and the Rust Belt certainly has plenty of those. In response to the article, Kwende Kefentse from the Creative Class Exchange asks,
  

  So are the artists we refer to in the gentrification and renewal discourse really more of an economic model – liberal people with fixer-upper money, within a limited margin? Why doesn’t it seem that local street artists who are embedded in the community, often telling the story of the community, don’t have the same renewal/gentrifying value as the sculptor or the graphic designer who move in? And how can we create that value?

  I wonder if what’s really going on here is that the economic value actually comes from the “fixer-upper” part – and that artists are valuable to communities precisely because so many of them are willing to essentially donate their time and funds doing just that in exchange for the opportunity to take advantage of the fruits of their labors. I’ve suggested before that arts-led economic development tends to be more successful when storefront spaces are involved, not just the presence of artists in a neighborhood. I don’t mean to suggest that that’s the entirety of the economic value that artists provide, but it certainly seems like both (a) a big part of the story and (b) a necessary first step in order to make further value creation possible in depressed neighborhoods. Leonard Jacobs has some additional thoughts.

• While we’re on the creative economy kick, Louisiana [edit: Lieutenant] governor Mitch Landrieu is apparently a believer…
• …and Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, writes about a “creativity stimulus” in The Nation.
• More hard times for arts journalists: the ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards were abruptly suspended last week. I don’t know how much these were costing ASCAP, but to the extent that quality journalism helps to promote the music that the organization represents, the decision seems a bit short-sighted to me.
• Americans for the Arts’s Adam Thurman has a hilarious cautionary tale for people thinking about starting their own arts organization that might hit a bit close to home.
• MaryAnn Devine tells arts organizations not to be afraid of competition, and also highlights this very witty marketing blog.
• A new $250,000 visual art prize, which will be the largest such prize in the world, will select the winner via popular vote. I’m kind of intrigued and horrified at the same time. As much as I am not a fan of gigantic prizes to individuals, at least this one is leveraged in service of a cool event that looks like it will bring a lot of people to Grand Rapids, MI and raise interest in contemporary art. So good luck to them.
• Speaking of new grants, the Ford Foundation has spun off the first foundation specifically for Native American artists.
• And remember how there was that whole kerfuffle last summer when Leona Helmsley directed that all of her foundation’s assets should (literally) go to the dogs? Well, the first round’s grants are out, and aside from $1 million in “canine grants,” they look pretty normal.
• Not all organizations are taking this recession sitting down: the Wall Street Journal has a round-up of some creative responses.
• You must, must view this amazing presentation from Swedish researcher Hans Rosling, developer of Gapminder, from the TED Conference. Arts freaks will especially appreciate how he values culture vis-a-vis other human development goals.

Isaac raises a few issues with the RAND study. First, he questions the third strategy mentioned above, the idea of transitioning to providing more nonfinancial support. The RAND study takes care to emphasize that

…this strategy does not imply that SAAs will discontinue grantmaking altogether. SAAs tend to see themselves, perhaps correctly, as the only source of funding for certain artists, arts organizations, and activities they view as vital to the healthy cultural life of their states. Their objective for strategy 3, therefore, is to make sure they use all their resources, nonfinancial as well as financial, as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that an increased focus on nonfinancial tools would result in “reducing their financial support for selected organizations and activities (exactly which organizations and activities will differ by state).” Isaac doesn’t like the sound of this:

The issue goes back to pragmatic realities… it’s not that matchmaking and information gathering are “better suited’ period but rather than they are “better suited” given that SAA budgets are likely to remain meager for the forseeable future and that even if their budgets are increased, if they’re increased following RAND’s vision for the future their grantmaking capabilities will not increase at the same pace. I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing, and it actually gets to something that doesn’t really get mentioned a lot in the study thus far: the Federal Government’s role in all of this. If SAAs want to move their missions away from grantmaking and funding, but there’s no increased Federal Government support to make up for the gap, they’ll be creating the next generation of audiences while arts organizations and venues are going out of business all around them.

I am definitely open to the idea that SAAs should move away from funding, that they may be better suited to accomplish other goals, but absent increased subsidies for the arts elsewhere, it might cause a whole mess of trouble.

I definitely feel where Isaac is coming from on this. When I was at the National Performing Arts Convention in June, I was surprised and slightly disturbed by how little the issue of funding in general and specifically the funding of, you know, actual artists came up as a concern during the policy discussions. (This might have had something to do with the fact that administrators far outnumbered artists at the event.) The RAND study seems to take for granted the idea that state arts budgets will inevitably continue at their paltry levels or decline in the forseeable future. While there’s clearly a possibility that this will be the case, I’m not so convinced that additional revenue generation through, for example, creative tax schemes is such a ridiculous idea (particularly since it’s already worked quite well in places like Cleveland and Denver). And as Isaac argues, sometimes the best solution really would be to throw more money at the situation.

Isaac also takes issue with the study’s assertion that arts education and creative economy work are more in line with state priorities and thus should receive more focus from state arts agencies.

At the same time, I get twitchy when I read stuff like this. Youth arts education isn’t art, it’s arts education. Development of the creative economy isn’t art, it’s economic development. Many SAAs and the NEA were set up to fund the making and showing of art not the teaching of art or the usage of art for economic development.

To me, this really gets back to the “why?” behind the arts, which as I’ve mentioned remains one of the most vexing questions we face. I think what Isaac is getting at is that there is an argument for funding art not just for social benefit, not even for “intrinsic” private benefit, but for advancement of the art form itself. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing that gets pols excited, generally, but think about it: our museums, tourist attractions, etc., the ones that celebrate the great achievements of humankind, the great bulk of them are dedicated in some form or another to what a participant in Yale SOM’s recent philanthropy conference called the “eureka moment” — the product of ingenuity and creativity grounded by a dedication to craft and a persistence of vision. The eureka moment isn’t something that is easy to predict or conjure up out of thin air; you have to create systems by which those moments are easily generated and then retained for posterity. That, in my opinion, is how state arts agencies (and any grantmaker or organization involved with arts policy) can best help arts organizations with what, for most of them, is their core mission: making great art.

Isaac also makes an argument for funding smaller arts organizations, which if you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll know I would agree with as well. He also points out a weirdness in the summary that I noticed too:

The opening event was a keynote conversation between John Brock, Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises and Carter Roberts, director of the World Wildlife Fund. Coca-Cola Enterprises is not the same as Coca-Cola; it’s a separate company that handles the bottling and distribution of Coca-Cola products. Brock began by describing his company’s recent focus on developing specific targets for sustainability, things like introducing hybrid electric trucks. As he put it, “most of the things we do [in the sustainability space] not only make sense for the planet but also pay off economically.” Roberts gave a brief history of WWF, which started out solely as an organization protecting species. However, as time went on, they realized that to protect species, you need to protect their habitat; to protect their habitat, you need to protect the environment; and to protect the environment, you have to change how the world works. So they’ve now expanded into areas like policy, commodity markets, and an international network of people on the ground. For example, Amazonian forests are being cut down to grow soy, which are being sold to China to feed chickens and cattle, which are being sold to an increasingly affluent middle class there. So, Roberts argued, if you want to save the rainforest, you have to start with China. Roberts also spoke about consumption in the US, which is completely out of control. By itself, our country consumes 1.2x what the planet as a whole can sustain over the long term. If the rest of the world were to catch up with the US, we would need 11 planets to sustain our hunger! Carter says that the businesses that survive and succeed are going to be the ones that realize this and figure out ways to do more with less.

The focus of the partnership between WWF and Coca-Cola Enterprises is water conservation. Right now, CCE uses 1.77 liters of water for every liter of water it transmits to the consumer. That’s down from 1.9, but there’s a long way to go to get to parity. Coca-Cola proper would like to take this even further—doing reforestation and other initiatives to replace the liter that’s taken out. The sugar in Coke actually takes more water to produce than the beverage itself. As a major buyer of sugar, Coca-Cola has a lot of leverage to determine the sustainability practices of its suppliers.

Coca-Cola Enterprises has set a goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 5% over the next six years, despite 4% year-over-year growth. However, climate change in the Arctic Circle is now on track for the worst-case scenario. Companies acting alone, voluntarily, won’t be enough—we’ll need legislation and participation from everybody as well. John Brock then talked about setting intermediate goals regarding water conservation of reducing that 1.77/1 ratio by 10% next year. (As an aside, I can only imagine what it must be like to be on the sustainability case for a ginormous company like Coca-Cola or Wal-Mart. Thrilling, in a way, but talk about pressure—you could be holding the future of the world in your hands, in a very real way. Not meeting your targets on the business side might cost you your job, but at least it won’t cost a few coastal cities here and there.)

Next was a discussion about bottled water, which the moderator calls “the elephant in the room,” referring to the two bottles of Dasani on the table. (Dasani is owned by Coca-Cola.) Carter pointed out that Dasani is actually not as bad as some competitors, since it uses local sources (and not as wasteful as Coca-Cola either, since there’s no sugar content). That doesn’t speak to the packaging, however.

During the brief Q&A portion of the event, an audience member from Baruch College asked about environmental labeling for consumer products. Brock gives qualified support, and suggested that it’s on its way eventually. Another questioner asked what Coca-Cola is doing to promote health and wellness in light of its product mix. Brock responded by talking about the “panoply” of products available to consumers, including the healthy ones; they’re starting a “Get up and run” campaign in association with its products. (Interestingly, no one had any questions for Carter Roberts.)

Overall, I think this cross-sector work between two very high-profile organizations is very cool—and quite groundbreaking. However, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed in Brock’s answers, which betrayed some hesitancy and defensiveness around issues (such as nutrition, plastic bottles, etc.) beyond what his company had already committed to. The willingness of him and other company leaders to play ball on the environmental front undoubtedly represents progress. I just hope that it won’t turn out to be too little, too late.

I’ll be back with more from the Net Impact North America Conference later today.

What should we do about arts advocacy and communicating our value at the NATIONAL level?

Organize a national media campaign with celebrity spokespersons, catchy slogans (e.g. “Got Milk”), unified message, and compelling stories – 27%

• Create a Department of Culture/Cabinet-level position which is responsible for implementing a national arts policy – 23%
• Lobby elected political officials for pro-arts policy and funding; demand arts policy platform from candidates – 14%
• Create a coordinated national performing arts policy campaign involving artists and organizations – 12%
• Collect, analyze and disseminate data demonstrating the value of the arts (e.g. economic, intrinsic, developmental/educational values) – 12%
• Establish a National Arts Day/Festival with free performances, open houses, and art-making opportunities – 8%
• Explore interactive new media initiatives to increase access and relevance (e.g. create a “Google Arts”-type resource, blogs,YouTube) – 5%

I’ve talked before about the national media campaign idea. My favorite among these, though it wasn’t a strong one, was “Lobby elected political officials for pro-arts policy and funding.” My experience at the Saving Our Cultural Capital event last month reminded me that politicians will listen to pretty much anyone if they just squeak loud enough. Artists up until now have been hopelessly disorganized in their grassroots political engagement, so this is the area with perhaps the most room to grow. Best of all, it doesn’t require cash falling from the sky in order to make happen.

What should we do about arts advocacy and communicating our value at the LOCAL level?

Create an arts coalition to get involved in local decision-making, take leadership positions, and strengthen relationships with elected officials – 21%

Forge partnerships with other sectors to identify how the arts can serve community needs – 21%

• Foster cross-disciplinary conversations to share data and best practices, develop common goals, and create joint activities/ performances – 14%
• Mobilize audiences to be advocates for the arts – 13%
• Utilize existing advocacy and data to influence local funding, policy and public support for the arts – 9%
• Create collaborative local marketing campaigns in mass media and public venues – 8%
• Develop and promote recognizable champions for the arts – 7%
• Create new cross disciplinary events and festivals to promote the local arts community – 6%

My favorite for this one was “Create collaborative local marketing campaigns in mass media and public venues.” Unlike national advertising, local advertising is cheap enough that pooling of resources among arts organizations really can make an impact. There is an effort not totally unlike this in the Bay Area that was initiated by the Wallace Foundation: arts organizations are banding together to create a giant mailing list of arts patrons in the region. The first of the winning suggestions (creating an arts coalition) is a good one as well. I really believe that local is where it’s at as far as advocacy for the arts is concerned.

What should we do about arts advocacy and communicating our value at the ORGANIZATIONAL/INDIVIDUAL level?

Build relationships with non-arts groups, including governments, corporations, community development organizations, etc. – 26%

• Create opportunities for active participation in the arts for all ages (including interactive websites, open rehearsals, etc.) – 24%
• Expand relationships across the community to find and develop new leaders (e.g. through Board development) and local champions for the arts – 12%
• Participate in the local political process by lobbying city council, school board, etc. – 10%
• Create multi-media marketing strategies (including YouTube, Facebook) to communicate and demonstrate value and relevance – 9%
• Connect the stories and experiences of local community members to new and existing artwork – 9%
• Create arts supporters out of our audiences – 7%
• Build relationships with local media to widen their coverage and exposure of the arts – 4%

Again, I feel that local is where it’s at for advocacy. Having arts-aware and -friendly leaders is the surest path to achieving policy changes when we need them. Thus, I voted for “Participate in the local political process by lobbying city council, school board, etc.” The most popular suggestion also addressed this idea in a broader (but vaguer) way.

What should we do about arts EDUCATION on a NATIONAL level?

Devise an advocacy campaign to promote the inclusion of performing arts in core curricula – 36%

• Enlist artists as full partners in all aspects of arts education through training and creating an AmeriCorps/WPA-type program – 22%
• Lobby for education reform, including rescinding No Child Left Behind – 20%
• Form partnerships with national education infrastructure (e.g. National Education Association, PTA, teachers unions) – 13%
• Invite new constituencies to experience the performing arts and create opportunities for lifelong learning by providing more points of entry – 5%
• Research successful models / best practices and disseminate via the web – 2%
• Establish diverse cross-sector committee to create an enriched arts curriculum – 2%

This is the topic on which I’m least knowledgeable, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt. I voted for “Form partnerships with national education infrastructure,” since I’m always for collaboration whenever possible, and this one seems like a natural fit. I considered voting for rescinding No Child Left Behind since that just seems like a good idea regardless of its bearing on the arts.

What should we do about arts EDUCATION on a LOCAL level?

Mobilize and collaborate with K-12 and higher education institutions to strengthen arts education and arts participation as core curriculum – 23%

• Strengthen relationship with school boards and policy makers through lobbying, electing “arts friendly officials”, involvement in local politics – 17%
• Innovate financial models to fund the arts: link to tax base, develop dedicated sales tax, connect to corporate funds – 15%
• Integrate arts teaching in educators’ professional development and integrate teaching programs in artist organizations – 16%
• Bring art into non-traditional spaces (e.g. parks, workplaces, social programs) to create new educational opportunities — “enter into the communities we serve” – 14%
• Develop joint arts education programs across disciplines and within the community for fuller distribution and comprehensive programming – 8%
• Establish and share assessments that create empirical data to demonstrate correlation between arts and educa
  tional impact – 7%

I chose “innovate financial models to fund the arts” not because I see any connection whatsoever to the issue of arts education (I don’t), but because I think this is desperately needed. Denver has a very interesting system tied to the local sales tax that has resulted in a funding base for the arts of $40 million a year, quite remarkable for a city its size. Money isn’t everything, but it’s amazing what actually having enough of it can do for achieving one’s goals.

What should we do about arts EDUCATION on an ORGANIZATIONAL/INDIVIDUAL level?

Lead lifelong education programs that actively involve people in multigenerational groups. “Make the arts part of a lifelong wellness plan.” – 23%

• Directly engage teachers to integrate the arts into their teaching and create professional development programs to address their needs – 19%
• Commit your entire organization to arts education in mission, budget, programs, and collaborations – 13%
• Create new partnerships to share responsibility for planning and delivering local arts education – 11%
  
• Leverage new technology to create art, engage more people (especially young people), and support learning. – 10%
• Run candidates for school boards and local government – 9%
• Use comprehensive education models to engage the whole family in your mission and programs. – 8%
• Join, be active, and take leadership roles in civic organizations – 7%

I may sound like a broken record, but of course I voted for “Join, be active, and take leadership roles in civic organizations.” Local is where it’s at!

What should we do about DIVERSITY on a NATIONAL level?

Charge national service organizations to create dialogue at convenings, create training programs, promote diverse art and artists, and partner with grassroots organizations who are already connected to diverse communities – 43%

Diversify boards, management, and staff in all national arts organizations – 26%

Create a media campaign with artists from diverse communities including celebrities to provide exposure to diverse art – 15%

Raise national funds to support internships, reduced price events, and under-represented artists – 9%

Create national forums, listserves, and websites to support sharing of successful diversity efforts – 7%

So, my question about this one is: why put it all on the service organizations? Why is it their responsibility to create this change? I mean, of course they have a role to play, but I really think this thing is larger than that. As I said to my table, any discussion of diversity has to acknowledge that there are groups of people in this country that simply don’t talk to each other. A few band-aids here and there won’t do anything to solve the underlying problem, which is that our social circles are too often defined by these stupid labels, and that our school funding systems (among other things) exacerbate race and class divisions in particular instead of easing them. So my reluctant first choice here is “Diversify boards, management, and staff in all national arts organizations”–because I think these social divisions make it important to welcome people who can serve as bridges between communities into the fold–but realistically, that will at best make a small dent in a problem that is much too large for the performing arts community to handle alone.

What should we do about DIVERSITY on a LOCAL level?

Open an honest dialogue across community groups and sectors to share priorities and identify barriers to participation – 31%

Partner within the arts, as well as with community organizations, to build relationships – 23%

Expand beyond traditional venues to establish new points of access – 17%

Create programming to address the experiences of the diverse elements of the community – 11%

Engage community leaders from outside the arts to serve in arts leadership positions – 7%

Use diverse voices, experiences, and traditions to market arts programming – 7%

Organize a recurring local performing arts convention – 4%

I actually agreed with this one. I think an honest dialogue is so important, and once again, the local level is where to have it. I got so frustrated with being at tables with other white people at this conference and feeling like we were talking in circles around this issue. But the dialogue can’t be a one-off kind of situation–it has to be sustained and fed and followed up on. And both (or all) sides have to want it, too.

What should we do about DIVERSITY on an ORGANIZATIONAL/INDIVIDUAL level?

Discover arts in your community offered by cultures other than your own and establish peer relationships – 37%

Set long term goal and plan to have staff, board, programming, and audiences reflect the demographics of your community – 32%

Program more diverse artists and content – 15%

Create an internship / entry-level staff program that attracts and recruits diverse staff – 6%

Convene diverse ad hoc steering committees (including youth) for specific projects – 6%

Produce at least one large-scale, publicly accessible event per year – 5%

I agreed with this one too. At one point one of my caucus table-mates was talking about how audiences tend to want to stay inside their comfort zone, and I said, “Yeah, totally–like when was the last time any of us at this table went to a hip-hop concert?” Of course, nobody could remember the last time. So much of the performing arts community is afraid to collaborate outside of its own peer group, much less with an entirely different culture (unless the group representing that culture is from another country–then it’s hip).

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, can we talk for a second about the internship program idea? Someone thought that the way to empower underrepresented minorities is to have them stuff envelopes for $100 a week for three months? Because that’s what most internships in the performing arts are, slave labor masquerading as “educational opportunities.” I would call that one problematic.

Anyway, I think that’s the last post I’ll do on NPAC, at least for now. These are important issues and I’m glad we at least got a conversation started about them.

Note: for more on this, read Adam Natale on the Fractured Atlas blog.

[W]hat was missing from all of this was any discussion of the world in which these initiatives will have to be launched. And without that discussion, how can anybody know which of the many ideas presented are likely to work? Just imagine a commercial company making plans to promote a product. Wouldn’t they do market research? Wouldn’t they want to know what people think of the product, and what things about the product might (or might not) be appealing?

And yet here we have the arts — an endeavor that most people involved would think was far more important than a mere commercial marketing campaign — and all we bring to it is (forgive me) unfocused amateur enthusiasm. Organize a media campaign! Well, what’s it going to say? OK, fine, leave that to the professionals who’ll eventually run it. But if you yourself have no idea, how will you know whether the professionals will make sensible plans? (And, by the way, who’s going to pay for this campaign? It’s going to be expensive.)

Greg hits the nail on the head here, but it’s interesting to me that no one has asked an even more obvious question: did the “Got Milk?” campaign (or others like it) even work? Sure, it was witty and memorable and entered public consciousness and became parodied by everyone from Saturday Night Live to the New England Foundation for the Arts‘s Matchbook.org project, which asks on the front page, “Got Mariachi?” In a sense, as a work of art (as commercial ad campaigns go), it was very successful. But was it successful as a commercial ad campaign? Did it increase sales? Did it cause milk to be a greater, more meaningful part of people’s lives?

And the surprising answer is no! The Got Milk? campaign was introduced in October 1993. Consumption of plain (i.e., non-flavored whole, skim, and lowfat) milk in the US had been on a generally upward trend since 1987, peaking at 52.3 billion pounds in 1991. Yet during the heyday of the Got Milk? campaign in the mid-’90s, US plain milk consumption actually declined 2.3% from 52.2 billion pounds in 1992 to 51 billion in 1998, lower than in 1987! Worse, per capita plain milk consumption fell 6.7% during the same period. The Got Milk? campaign has continued running into the new millennium, and sales and consumption figures have only continued their decline, despite rising demand for flavored milk, cream, and yogurt. Now, obviously, it’s silly to conclude from this that one of the most successful ad campaigns in history is actually causing people to drink less milk. Rather, the lesson is that the societal forces and generational shifts that are causing people to drink less milk are too powerful for even the greatest ad campaign in the world to overcome.

I hope we think about this the next time we’re tempted to look to marketing or advertising as the answer to all of our problems as a field. To be sure, an ad campaign can work wonders in the right context and under the right circumstances. But advertising history is littered with high-profile failures, too. Another suggestion from the NPAC final session was “Establish a National Arts Day/Festival with free performances, open houses, and art-making opportunities.” But really, how many national what-have-you days/weeks/months are there already that we never hear about? Did you know that November is Celebrating Philanthropy Month, for example?

Do we really want to roll the dice with the limited resources we have as a field, essentially playing double or nothing? Or do we want to invest those resources more wisely, by investigating small changes that make a big difference?