• 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.

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?

Supposedly, all of the comments from all of the sessions (including any “gems” as identified by conference organizers) will be preserved and disseminated, somehow, at some point. In the meantime, I left the conference with profoundly mixed feelings. The potential was no doubt enormous, the ambition sky-high, but it seemed like only a fraction of it was realized. As exhausting as it was, I feel the best solution would have simply been a longer conference. I was just starting to get the lay of the land when it all disappeared through the plane window on the way back to New York. It’s clear that so many things about last week were just a beginning of a very, very long process. And I’m okay with that, in principle. I just wish that we could have taken things farther given the amount of effort that everyone put in.

Update: the NPAC Blog has some of the results from the final session, including the most popular strategies. (Topic 1; Topic 2; Topic 3)

One of the major features of the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention is the series of “caucus sessions” designed and implemented by an organization called AmericaSpeaks. At the first session on Wednesday we worked to define an overall vision for the performing arts community, at the second session yesterday we identified three major opportunities and challenges facing the field, and today we discussed strategies associated with those priorities. Tomorrow at the culminating “21^st-century town meeting,” we’ll get together in one big room and vote on the strategies we’ve identified.

Obviously, it’s an extraordinarily difficult challenge to achieve any sort of unity and still give 4,000 people an individual voice. The caucus sessions have been explicitly designed to maintain that balance, however, and the method is intriguing. Each caucus room is filled with tables that seat 8-10 people, preferably representing a reasonable cross-section of convention attendees (though since the process is essentially random, we have ended up with all-music tables, for example). A facilitator leads the discussion at each table, being careful to incorporate the views of every participant. At the end of the process, each table comes up with its own answer to the questions of the day, and participants self-select to share these insights with the rest of the room. Afterwards, a “theme team” collects the responses from all of the tables in all of the rooms, and teases out the most common threads. These results are then shared via newsletter format at the next caucus.

To be sure, it’s an imperfect process—cutting off the number of opportunities and challenges at three, for example, seems horribly arbitrary even if some kind of narrowing is absolutely necessary. Now I understand why the mainstream political process in this country is so fraught. But I’m impressed with the amount of thought that went into this. It’s extremely ambitious, and we’ll see tomorrow if it results in anything actionable.

• Who knew, he’s a new music fan! He’s talking about how he was just at the Ojai Music Festival and became totally transfixed by an opera and Steve Reich’s Drumming (strange to think that I have friends who were involved with that performance). Later he name-drops Tan Dun.
• “An America without great performances would be impoverished, no matter what our GNP.” Jim Collins said it, so it must be true, right? I have to hand it to him, he knows how to give a speech. Feels a little like a stump address, but he’s a performer for sure.
• Apparently the #1 performing stock among all publicly traded stocks from 1972-2002 is Southwest Airlines. I suspect this might involve some cherry-picking of dates (what’s the best-performing stock from 1972-2008?), but it’s still surprising given the industry. He’s trying to make the point that choices have more significance than circumstances.
• He says that the answer to the performing arts field’s problems is not to become more like a business. He’s making the point that there’s mediocrity in all fields (yes!) and that just because a practice or habit comes from the corporate world doesn’t mean it’s better. The important difference (as he puts it) is between “good” and “great” and the key factor is a culture of discipline. Momentum takes a long time to build, even for so-called “overnight successes.”
• Hammering home that we each need to think about our own role in this puzzle, not just sit back and say to ourselves, “yeah, we should totally change the way we do things as a field” and then assume that other people will take care of it. Applicable to any desirable social outcome. That said, his insistence on calling us the “performance arts” is a little grating.
• Now saying that concentrated executive power, as we seen in companies, is actually the special case, not the general case. In the social sector and in society at large, it’s much more common to see diffuse power maps in which many parties have enough negative power to kill action. So the most effective leader (a “Level 5” leader in his taxonomy) in the social sector is not the one who can just make the right decisions, but the one who can create the conditions in which the right decisions can happen. In other words, a facilitator more than a despot. Man, maybe I need to read this book.
• Since money is merely a necessary input to the social sector, rather than a signal of success, Collins suggests a hybrid approach to measuring impact in the social sector, particularly in the performing arts. He likens it to a trial: building a case for impact, using a mix of quantitative and qualitative factors. “Thou art guilty of great results!”
• Points out the differences between values and practices. Practices can change, values cannot. As much as traditions are revered, they are not values, they are practices. The challenge is to adapt by changing practices while holding values constant.

Occasional over-the-top motivational speaker moments aside, a good speech and a good session. Later, I attended seven different panels for about fifteen minutes each thanks to NPAC’s inexplicable decision to pack all of the four-day conference’s dozens of breakout sessions into one three-hour period. My divide-and-conquer strategy wasn’t all that successful, since I only caught little bits of each event and couldn’t manage much context from it. The most interesting sessions I saw were “The Not-So Distant Horizon” featuring Artsjournal.com‘s Douglas McLennan and “futurist” David S. McIntosh and “Stop Taking Attendance and Start Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Your Programs” with WolfBrown and officials from the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland. The former attempted to put in one place all of the broad cultural trends affecting the performing arts, while the latter demonstrated a novel approach to measuring emotional and spiritual impact by borrowing techniques from psychological research.

I’m here in Denver for the National Performing Arts Convention, an event bringing 4,000 artists, organizations, businesses, and patrons together for a conversation about collaboration and advocacy. Despite a rather harrowing trip here (my plane was delayed some five-plus hours due to weather conditions around New York), it’s an exciting and somewhat overwhelming feeling to be a part of this. My nametag lists me as being from “Music with a Capital M,” but I am unofficially here as a current business school student and a future grantmaker. So far, I’ve let my anti-social tendencies get the better of me a bit (I already spent an hour catching up on email at lunch), but I’m looking forward to getting into my networking groove as the conference wears on.

Some thoughts from the first few hours thus far:

• The Colorado Convention Center is enormous. It takes up a double- or triple-size city block, and most of it is being used in some way or other by this conference. Interestingly, the Center is located right across the street from the Performing Arts Complex and has clearly woven art into the permanent design of the space. There’s a giant sculpture of a bear leaning threateningly against the outside of the building, and other sculptures nearby. One of the restaurants in the exhibit hall is called “Sub Culture.” There’s a sound installation of people laughing on the downward escalator that gets louder the further you descend—very subtle and cool. I’m generally not a person who gets caught up in convention center mystique, but I have to admit this is an impressive creation.
• The exhibit hall has a fun but sort of hokey setup that’s modeled after an actual street map, in an effort to evoke the ideal “Arts Town.” Tables are given “addresses” like “905 West 5^th Street” which corresponds to an actual location within the hall. It’s cute, I guess. Some of the exhibitors really went all-out, though, like this lighting company and a two-floor costume/lighting/sound/scenery exhibit that was the United States’ entry into the Prague Quadrennial.
• The opening convocation featured a speech from Dana Gioia, who reported that the Interior Subcommittee had recommended an NEA budget for next year of $160 million, which if approved would represent an 11% increase from last year. Still way too little, but you have to hand it to Gioia (seemingly one of the few competent appointees from the Bush administration), who despite years of right-wing leadership and economic turmoil will leave the NEA in a much stronger position than when he started. Addresses by Anna Deveare Smith (who is awesome) and Bill Rauch followed, and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (what a great name!) capped it off with a honkey-tonk piano performance before his speech.
• There’s a definite political edge to this conference, and a palpable excitement among the attendees about recent developments in the news. Perhaps not surprising given the deep-blue political leanings of most artists, but I’m a bit surprised at how much it’s come up in the opening session. The collectivist worldview in evidence is in stark contrast to the pro-competition ethos in my other life.
• Still at the opening convocation: in the middle of the Mayor’s presentation, actors come up from the audience and begin a performance of scenes from Shakespeare, in English and Spanish, sandwiched around a modern dance routine juxtaposing ballet-esque moves with two breakdancers, all accompanied by video scenes of Denver in the background. A little cheesy, but…damn, I love that they’re integrating actual art into this thing! Solo trumpet performance? Check. African choral music with hand percussion (sung by middle-aged white men, of course)? You got it. Okay, but now we’ve got more theater and this is starting to drag on a bit. Gotta know when to fold ‘em, guys. Ooh, but serious lesbionic flirtatiousness on stage! Scandalizing! Never mind, carry on. Back to Romeo & Juliet and it ends with the Mayor reciting the closing lines of the play. Wow—not what I expected!
• Consultant Eric Booth, who played a role in putting the conference together, calls NPAC a “structured improvisation.” Word.

That’s it for now, will have more later!

“Food is always at the intersection of art and community.” – Bill Rauch.