Central Calgary’s Main Historic Street – photo by flickr user Stephen Colebourne

(This essay was originally written in my role as an outside consultant to the city of Calgary’s cultural plan. For this entry, I was asked to reflect on the possibility of developing a collective impact model for the arts in Calgary. You can read all of my contributions to that process here.)

Through its #yycArtsPlan process, Calgary has the opportunity to pursue what may be the first full-fledged collective impact model in the arts. Will it take the reins?

Collective impact is a term coined by John Kania and Mark Kramer of the consulting firm FSG Social Impact Advisors in 2011. In a nutshell, the concept is this: the social sector is best positioned to accomplish real change through centralized, strategic, and coordinated action, rather than through decentralized and isolated interventions that can often work at cross purposes. This seemingly obvious insight is fleshed out in substantial detail in Kania and Kramer’s original collective impact article as well as many follow-up publications. Kania and Kramer outline five essential elements of any collective impact initiative, as follows:

Since the publication of the original article, collective impact mania has swept across the North American nonprofit sector. And yet, of the collective initiatives that have sprung up in response to this wave of interest, not one so far has specifically focused on the arts. This gap opens up an opportunity for Calgary to blaze a new trail yet again, but in doing so local leaders should be mindful of how collective impact differs from run-of-the-mill collaboration and consider the barriers that have kept the arts sector from fully embracing collective impact until now.

Collective Impact: A Giant Leap Forward

Some of the requirements of the collective impact model may seem familiar to arts leaders at first glance. For example, it’s true that most large metropolitan regions in the United States and Canada benefit from a municipal or regional arts council, whether structured as a government agency or independent organization, and that these entities are the obvious candidates to provide the “backbone support” ingredient of the collective impact recipe. Likewise, cultural planning efforts (such as Calgary’s) aspire to create a shared vision around priorities and goals, much in the same way that collective impact requires a “common agenda.”

Nevertheless, even in the most collegial and infrastructure-rich arts communities, there are some key ways in which collective impact raises the bar for coordinated action. A major weakness of many cultural plans is that, once the document is written and the funded process for convening stakeholders has come to an end, it is difficult to sustain energy and motivation to implement the resulting recommendations. The three elements of collective impact not mentioned in the previous paragraph – shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, and continuous communication – are all about providing this missing link.

We should not underestimate the extent to which a fully implemented collective impact model represents a radical departure from the status quo. Collective impact is about more than just collaboration when it’s convenient and working together on isolated projects that happen to lend themselves to shared action. Collective impact requires the full commitment of all participants to a concrete set of goals, and alignment toward making those goals a reality through whatever means are most appropriate. It requires participants – including the so-called “backbone organization” leading the effort – to put the goals, not themselves, first. Jeff Edmondson, leader of perhaps the highest-profile collective impact model, Cincinnati’s Strive Network, puts it this way (emphasis mine):

…[C]ollaboration is often one more thing you do on top of everything else.  People meet in coffee shops or church basements to figure out how to do a specific task together and in addition to their day job.  Collective impact becomes part of what you do every day. It is not one more thing because it is truly about using data on a daily basis – in an organization and across community partners – to integrate practices that get results into your everyday contribution to the field.

Arts-Specific Challenges to the Collective Impact Model

So why is it that the arts haven’t more rapidly embraced collective impact as a strategy? I can think of a number of possible reasons, ranging from the practical to the philosophical. On the practical side, the arts are an under-resourced field generally. And within the arts, unlike other areas of the nonprofit sector, philanthropic dollars tend to flow most readily to direct service delivery (i.e., local institutions and ensembles) rather than large infrastructure organizations (i.e., the arts equivalent of the American Cancer Society or UNICEF). As a result, arts practitioners and funders alike often find themselves making do with shoestring budgets that don’t easily accommodate the level of staff attention needed by a collective impact initiative. Furthermore, the arts are not as well integrated with the rest of the nonprofit sector as other cause areas such as education, the environment, and social services, and thus have been slow to pick up on similar trends in the past.

I do believe, however, that the practical barriers to collective impact can be overcome given sufficient motivation to do so. I’m more interested in what I see as philosophical barriers: reasons why arts stakeholders may feel resistance to collective impact due to a perceived conflict with their values. I will go through each of these perceived conflicts and discuss why I feel that they need not be conflicts at all.

Formulating the Problem

Kania and Kramer define a common agenda as follows: “Collective impact requires all participants to have a shared vision for change, one that includes a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions.” Note that vision under discussion here involves solving a problem. This is one reason why the arts often don’t fit in easily with other nonprofit causes: what problem is being solved, exactly, by the Calgary Stampede or the EPCOR CENTRE? The arts are usually best presented as an opportunity rather than a problem: an opportunity for human beings to express themselves to the fullest and for others to witness, experience, and take part in that expression. Fortunately, the language of economics gives us a way of drawing an equivalence between problems and opportunities in the form of opportunity costs. By neglecting to take an opportunity available to us, we miss out on it, and that is a problem if it leads to a worse outcome. Thus, while the problem-solving language of collective impact may feel somewhat alien to arts stakeholders, conceptually it should not stand in the way of forming a shared agenda for the arts.

Measuring the Unmeasurable

Collective impact’s emphasis on shared measurement systems is not just about measuring progress towards a goal – it’s about holding participants accountable for moving a vision forward into reality. Otherwise, vague conceptualizations of the road ahead leave open the potential for multiple and self-serving interpretations of how far we have to go, or if we’re even still on the right path.

The arts, however, have a particularly fraught relationship with measurement and data. One explanation lies in the resource challenges described above – measuring things takes time, money, expertise, and effort, and arts organizations are often stretched for all four. But I believe there’s another factor at play as well, which is that many in the arts simply bristle at the idea of their work being reduced to a number or a statistic. They have seen quantitative data being misused in other contexts, and are afraid the same thing could happen to them. And besides, how can you express the pure joy of creation in a bar graph?

These concerns are understandable. But a truism of measurement is that if it matters at all, it can be measured. That doesn’t mean that measurement is always easy–but the tools we have available to us for research are remarkably flexible and adaptable to almost any situation. It’s applying them in a scientifically valid manner that is the challenge. So-called “intangibles” are very much measurable, and people have been measuring them for centuries. If the arts really are healing souls and changing lives, that is going to show up in the data if the right data is being collected.

It’s important to note that, in order for a collective impact model for the arts to work in Calgary, the #yycArtsPlan process will need to get much more specific about defining concrete data points to associate with the values articulated in the cultural plan. Right now, the plan articulates five goals, some of which readily lend themselves to quantification (“every Calgarian under 18 has the best possible opportunity for arts participation and education”), and some of which don’t (“create a new postcard of Calgary!”). Regardless, it is agreement on these common goals and ongoing tracking of the associated measures that will create the environment of accountability needed to see the vision through.

Diversity vs. the Borg

Critics of collective impact have enjoyed comparing the model to the Borg on Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Resistance is futile.” The reference conjures up an image of faceless robot-like entities that have no individuality, but are instead controlled by some unseen “hive mind.” Such a nightmare vision seems antithetical to the values of the arts, which celebrate diversity, variety, and above all, individual expression. Wouldn’t a collective impact model, with its shared goals and need for structure, interfere with the essence of what the arts are all about?

Actually, I don’t think it needs to – if that model is implemented well. Collective impact means that everyone is working towards the same goals, but contrary to a common misconception, it does not mean that everyone is doing the same things. Just as a homemade meal tastes no less delicious if one cook chops the vegetables while another marinates the meat, collective impact implies a division of labor among participants that nevertheless are all committed to a common goal. Thus, it’s not a problem for one organization to focus on presenting classics of the Western canon while another creates opportunities for immigrants while yet another celebrates the creative achievements of our brightest four-year-old minds – as long as they all understand precisely how their work fits in to the broader puzzle of a creative Calgary and can make decisions accordingly.

Looking Ahead

Much work still needs to be done before Calgary will truly be ready to take on the first arts collective impact effort. And yet Calgary has already made great strides in building a supportive environment for this sort of collective action. In addition to firming up the will and buy-in among local participants for moving forward, Calgary arts leaders will need to translate the #yycArtsPlan’s goals into clear, quantifiable targets that the entire community can rally behind. They will need to set up structures for regular communications among relevant parties and shared data and knowledge networks that directly relate to the vision’s targets. And they will need to define a set of mutually reinforcing activities that the existing arts community can map on to, pinpoint what gaps lie between the current reality and the desired outcomes, and formulate specific strategies to close those gaps that take maximal advantage of the community’s assets. It’s going to be an ambitious ride, and I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

For my second essay responding to the #yycArtsPlan process, I thought I would focus on the last paragraph of the “Summary of Vision Statements from the January 26 Summit”:

The vision of our attendees is that by 2023, Calgary will be a major artistic centre in Canada, in terms of the work it creates and the training it provides, promoting both excellence and access. It will be a city where everyone understands the true value of the arts as an essential part of a well-rounded life—where the arts include everyone, and everyone includes the arts.

It’s a beautiful sentiment, expressed with impressive concision. But the central insight I’d like to offer here is that everyone is a lot of people. Are arts supporters in Calgary truly prepared to extend the olive branch of creativity and expression to every single one of their neighbors? And is it even possible to do such a thing without radical changes to the status quo?

Let’s separate the statement into its component parts. What is needed for the arts to include everyone? As noted in my previous essay, this inquiry will be helped enormously by first asking who is not currently served by the arts, and why. I don’t know the local context in Calgary well enough to answer that question definitively, but if things are at all similar to the situation in the United States, we can guess that relatively underserved populations might include poorer Calgarians, recent immigrants, people without a university degree, and people with disabilities, to name a few. This is not to say, of course, that nobody fitting those descriptions is active in the arts, but rather that if we’re looking for people who are not included by the arts, those are probably good characteristics to start with. Remember, the mandate here is to include everyone, not everyone in theory or everyone as long as it’s convenient for us.

The good news is that it’s likely there are already organizations in Calgary and environs with a specific mission to serve these populations and expand the audience for the arts. And again, if things are anything like they are in the States, they probably aren’t getting the kind of support that higher-profile organizations designed to position Calgary within the national and international arts community do. Which makes sense, in a way: after all, one of the basic realities of a market economy is that it is easier to serve some consumers than others, and so if efficiency is a goal, the consumers that are harder to serve (because they live far away from everyone else, for example) will be more likely to get left out.

At the same time, switching focus to include everyone need not require all arts organizations to change their missions or think only of the lowest common denominator. Just as a complex orchestral program or abstract expressionist art might be intimidating to someone with no previous exposure to these art forms, an introductory dance class is likely to feel limiting for someone who has professional training in ballet. A healthy and truly inclusive arts ecosystem affords opportunities to participate and get involved at various levels that are appropriate to the wildly diverse interests and capacities seen in the population as a whole. I would submit, however, that the efforts of a government-funded “backbone” organization such as Calgary Arts Development might be most productively focused on filling the gaps left by the market economy and private philanthropy in providing said opportunities, whatever they may be.

It seems to me that the second part of the vision, that everyone includes the arts, is rather more difficult to realize. Because now you’re not just talking about reallocating some resources and perhaps creating some new programs, but a wholesale attitude adjustment on the part of an entire population over whom artist, organization, and government alike have limited influence.

You may recall that I talked about ArtsWave in Cincinnati in my previous essay – remember, this was the community-funded grant-maker that re-envisioned its grant-making in response to research revealing a new way of framing the arts as a public good. ArtsWave has supported this strategy not only through funding, but also by taking a central role in communicating the value and relevance of the arts to the general public via this new frame. Besides placing media stories in mainstream sources like local television and newspapers, the organization regularly sponsors both ongoing and special events designed to be visible, extremely accessible, and highly participatory. Two examples of this kind of programming were a Paint the Street event near the ArtsWave office and a flash mob-style “Splash Dance” in the central business district. Both of these events offered citizens opportunities not only to witness the final product (in a centrally located, public place), but also to participate directly in its creation. And with no admission charge in either case, of course.

But these kinds of efforts can only take one so far. Ultimately, we can’t rely solely on democratization of access to change attitudes, because if attitudes are already set, the opportunity to participate in something in which one has no interest is not going to mean much. Instead, we need to dig deeper to understand the motivations and experiences of people who aren’t especially friendly towards the arts, the people who currently act as a barrier to the desired reality, and make some inferences about what could catalyze a shift.

We can start to get a clue to this by reading the bios and statements of the participants in the Citizens’ Reference Panel. It’s probably a stretch to call this a truly random sample of the population, even though great lengths were taken to reach outside of the traditional arts community, since the process represented a significant time commitment and there was likely substantial selection bias observed in the people who chose to participate. Nevertheless, we can pick up clues from the participants’ stories as to how “regular people” can and do relate to the arts in their lives. For example, take a look at these profiles:

Chris Pryce

I’m a firefighter for the City. I am originally from Ontario, where I went to the University of Western Ontario. My father has been a professional artist (he’s a painter) since I was born. I have been involved in martial arts since childhood and have started taking acting classes over the past few years. I also pencil sketch and study psychology and sociology in my spare time.

Mark Sutter

I am family man and father of two young children. Professionally, I am an Alberta Land Surveyor and the manager of an office in Calgary. I have a great love for the outdoors and enjoy escaping to the mountains at any time. Although the arts do not play a prominent role in my life I see value and opportunity for my family. Although very small, I wish to leave an imprint on helping make this city great for all citizens.

Pamela Hansen

I was born and raised in central Alberta. My parents were mixed farmers, raising livestock, hay and grain. My first school was Happy Hill, a one-room school where the teacher taught kids from grade one to grade nine. I got to school riding a pony called Tarbaby. My mom offered me a chance to attend Banff School of Fine Arts, but I did not feel I could make a living as an artist. I chose business machines training instead. In 2002, I came to Calgary to start a new life with my daughters Jessie and Adrienne and granddaughter Shea. While caring for aging relatives, I became isolated, with few connections beyond my family. It is my intention to expand my relationship to art and begin painting. I greatly appreciate this opportunity to connect with and be of service to my community.

Stephen Kohan

I am the father of two boys in elementary school, live in the suburbs, coach minor hockey, and own a minivan and two motorcycles. I’ve been married to the same wonderful woman for 17 years and she still can’t properly explain how I managed to pull that off — so I’ve wisely stopped asking. My interest in the arts likely stems from a musical upbringing — I play guitar (somewhat, and rarely) and took drama in High School (in classes and outside the 7-Eleven along with everyone else) and ended up with a degree in English literature from the University of Calgary. I’ve worked in the Litigation Management Branch of Aboriginal Affairs Canada, in varying capacities, for 20 years.

What strikes me about these peripheral connections to art is how often they involve a) relationships with other people (whether existing or aspirational), b) the direct practice of art (not just appreciation), and c) sustained exposure at a young age, in approximately that order of importance. How well is Calgary’s current arts infrastructure set up to support these kinds of connections?

To inform this inquiry more broadly, I believe it would be instructive to study the plentiful research literature on social movements. While not an expert in that subject, I can’t help but note that in the United States, we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic societal shifts in recent memory: the rapid drive towards widespread acceptance of gay marriage over the past 10 years. This movement will likely be analyzed to death in the coming years and decades, but speaking as an observer, it seems that a few key factors have been crucial in leading to social change:

• Popular conception of marriage and the wedding as a joyful event – specifically, an event in which we are happy for someone else;
• The lived experience of seeing the country “experiment” with gay marriage, first in Massachusetts and later in other states, and the lack of obvious harm to heterosexual marriages as a result;
• The enormously successful “It Gets Better” campaign, which took full advantage of viral platforms and social networks to put a human face on the struggles of gay teens;
• Acceptance and advocacy on the part of Hollywood, starting with Ellen DeGeneres and continuing with gay characters written into popular sitcoms like “Modern Family”;
• The increased visibility of gay and lesbian individuals encouraged, in part, by the previous factors: more teens and adults coming out sooner, to more people, in more social contexts;
• And finally, and most importantly, the impact of the above in helping more people to realize that someone they know is gay and that they want good things for that person – like the “warm glow” of a wedding and marriage to the person they love.

There are a lot of potential lessons in the above, but two stand out to me as particularly important:

• The need to integrate the unfamiliar into the familiar: people were motivated to support gay marriage when being gay became something they could fit into the context of their daily lives and existing relationships, habits and identity. Christine Cheung’s observation that Alberta “spent more than half of its cultural spending ($1.8 billion) on ‘home-entertainment services and equipment’” is perhaps relevant here.
• The power of the younger generation to motivate change: realizing that one is gay is something that typically happens during adolescence, which enabled gay marriage supporters to take advantage of the separate social networks that exist among that age group. Consistently, polls in the United States find that support for gay marriage is highly stratified by age group, with young adults overwhelmingly in favour. And in turn, the adoption of gay marriage as a cause célèbre by young adults has influenced attitudes among older generations, at least if anecdotal evidence is to be believed. Universal arts education is often cited as a potential salve to the arts’ ills, but I think it needs to go beyond that – indeed, the arts need to be seen as an integral part of a healthy society by this critical group of young adults in order to motivate real, long-lasting change.

Expanding the frame of the arts to include everyone is a challenging goal, to say the least. But I do believe it is achievable, if accompanied by the right strategies and a willingness on the part of arts advocates to be somewhat flexible about the real meaning and essence of “the arts.”

The entire process has been pretty fascinating. First of all, it’s completely transparent, with all relevant materials posted to the dedicated website for the cultural plan. Second, and more radically, a crucial portion of the Calgary Arts Plan was developed by randomly selected ordinary citizens who formed what was called a Citizens’ Reference Panel. I really encourage you to click through to that link and drink in the incredible diversity represented by those 36 individuals.

My first contribution to the conversation included a fair amount of process-specific insider baseball, so I won’t go ahead and reprint it in full here. But there are a couple of excerpts that I thought readers might find of interest:

I have a confession to make: I’m in love with the Citizens’ Reference Panel. Just reading the bios of the 36 participants in the Phase II final report was almost enough to bring a tear to my eye. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but you have to understand: it’s so rare for the professional arts community to get real, sustained, substantive feedback from the citizenry in its community. In my experience, most arts organizations’ idea of “outreach” involves opening dialogue with audiences, which already limits the conversation to a small and non-representative slice of the general public. I think Calgary Arts Development, as a publicly funded institution, was exactly right to think bigger than that and open up the gates to people whose experience with and interest in the arts was tangential at best. It is incredibly valuable for those who strive to make a living in the arts to hear from this constituency, and I am jealous that you have that very, very special opportunity. Please savour it.

[…]

While I don’t mean to discount the importance of dreaming big, the reality is that making change in any social context is not an easy process, and depends on the cooperation of many factors beyond any single individual’s control. I could be wrong, but I suspect everyone will be happier in 2023 having made real progress on a few well-defined fronts rather than halting steps in a variety of directions.

[…]

I will close by reiterating how lucky Calgary’s arts community is to have had the opportunity, just as Cincinnati’s arts community did, to hear from members of the general public about how the arts relate—or could relate—to their lives. I strongly encourage Phase III participants to pursue further refinement of the visions and strategies in a way that fully respects and honors these citizens’ contributions and the values that they have identified as important to them. I say this because I recognize that there will likely be areas of tension between the public’s and arts producers’ visions for the arts. For example, the Phase II report indicates that “representatives of leading arts institutions, community organizations, festivals, as well as independent artists…were less supportive of recommendations they felt might limit the independence of artists or arts organizations,” such as increasing programming for underserved demographics and partnering with public schools. These concerns are completely understandable, but if one ambition is to grow the resources that the public makes available to the arts community, the arts community must be responsive, at least in part, to the public’s desires. Not only is that necessary to ensure broad-based buy-in for the Arts Plan, but indeed to ensure the long-term sustainability of public support for the arts in Calgary and elsewhere.

Over the next few weeks, I will share the full text of the second and third contributions to that process here.

One final note: in late June, Calgary was besieged by terrible flooding which caused almost Superstorm Sandy-esque havoc. Displaced from its downtown offices, Calgary Arts Development is now focusing its efforts on helping the arts community recover from the disaster. If you feel so inclined, please consider supporting their crowdfunding campaign.