“I want change” by m.a.r.c.

Toward the end of the summer, bioethicist Peter Singer raised the hackles of art lovers everywhere with a New York Times op-ed that considered a hypothetical dilemma: should you donate to a charity that combats blindness in the developing world or should you spend that money instead on an art museum? After running through a cost-benefit analysis of each option, he determined that the charity addressing blindness “offers [donors] at least 10 times the value” of the museum.

Ouch.

To no one’s surprise, the arts community didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for the piece, calling Singer’s argument “a shocker,” “absurd,” and “tyrannical.” Another round of alarm ensued recently when none other than megaphilanthropist Bill Gates threw his support behind Singer’s thesis. The responses from our field to date have generally coalesced around two broad counter-arguments:

•  Why does it have to be “either/or”? Why can’t we support both? Singer forces a false choice in “assuming charitable giving is a zero sum game.” Weighing the value of saving a life against the value of donating to an art museum is comparing apples to oranges when “both are essential, and if either disappeared you’d be in bad shape.” We need a holistic approach to ensure we don’t “solv[e] Third World crises at the expense of fostering crises right here at home.” Just as we have “multiple passions in [our] lives,” donors can and should target multiple causes and direct their charitable dollars in a “proportionally prioritized” manner. Anyway, we can’t really be sure than curing blindness is more important than inspiring the next Jackson Pollock, and even if we were, concentrating all our resources with one or two tried and true nonprofits runs counter to the “messiness and power of America’s [decentralized] approach to charity.”

• Saving lives is all fine and good – but only if those lives have meaning. If we’re so concerned with making sure that people can see, shouldn’t we also try to make sure they have beautiful things to look at? Singer’s logic is dangerous because he fails to acknowledge the “creative outlet[s] and emotional oas[e]s that only art museum[s] can provide.” If all philanthropic dollars were channeled toward alleviating disease and poverty, arts and culture would languish, society would become monochromatic and dull, and life would cease to be worth living.

As satisfying as these rebuttals may feel to arts advocates, they unfortunately miss the point. The crucial assumptions behind Singer’s argument are that

1. “there are objective reasons for thinking we may be able to do more good in one [sector] than in another,” and
2. we have a moral obligation to make choices that do as much good as possible.

It’s important to understand this perspective in the context of “effective altruism,” a relatively nascent but growing area of applied ethics that has been featured more than once on this blog, not to mention a recent edition of This American Life. Besides Gates, fellow philanthropic heavyweight and past Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest has declared himself a fan. “Effective altruists,” or EAs, are on a quest to “do good” by way of hard-nosed rationality. “Doing good” doesn’t mean recycling a little more, or occasionally doling out spare change to a beggar on the street. It doesn’t mean foregoing a high-powered corporate career to work for a nonprofit. It means taking the time to analyze how to do the most amount of good possible with the resources available – or, to use a more nerdy turn of phrase, to “[use] science and rational decision-making to help as many sentient beings” as they can.

Most funders are already in search of a big “bang for your buck,” but in trying to identify the objectively best causes to support, effective altruists stray from the conventional wisdom of mainstream philanthropy. EAs cast a global net when determining where to focus, and often settle on supporting causes in faraway parts of the world, the results of which they may never see in person. They also believe that while human lives are created equal, philanthropic causes are not. Those causes that can save or improve the most lives must take first priority.

How does this play out in practice? Let’s say you donate to the free medical clinic in your area. You do this for good reasons: you care about inequities in the American healthcare system, and want to give back to your community. You like the feeling you get when you walk by that clinic every day. Maybe you even know people who benefit from the services the clinic provides. The clinic gets its donation, and you get warm fuzzies. Everybody wins. Right?

Not so, an EA would counter. Despite your good intentions, your donation amounts to a near-waste of resources:

We understand the sentiment that ‘charity starts at home,’ and we used to agree with it, until we learned just how different U.S. charity is from charity aimed at the poorest people in the world. Helping people in the U.S. usually involves tackling extremely complex, poorly understood problems… In the poorest parts of the world, people suffer from very different problems…

We estimate that it costs [Givewell’s] top-rated international charity less than $2,500 to save a human life… Compare that with even the best U.S. programs… over $10,000 per child served, and their impact is encouraging but not overwhelming.

EAs advocate making evidence-based decisions even if they don’t resonate on an emotional or intuitive level:

Effective altruism is consistent with believing that giving benefits the giver, but it’s not consistent with making this the driving goal of giving. Effective altruists often take pride in their willingness to give (either time or money) based on arguments that others might find too intellectual or abstract, and their refusal to give suboptimally even when a pitch is emotionally compelling. The primary/driving goal is to help others, not to feel good about oneself.

If this approach leaves you with an empty feeling in the back of your throat, it is by design. “Opportunity costs” – the costs of choosing not to behave in a certain way – weigh heavily on EAs. Every time you make a donation, considering where your money could have gone is as important as considering where it will ultimately go (emphasis mine):

In the “Buy A Brushstroke” campaign, eleven thousand British donors gave a total of £550,000 to keep the famous painting “Blue Rigi” in a UK museum. If they had given that £550,000 to buy better sanitation systems in African villages instead, the latest statistics suggest it would have saved the lives of about one thousand two hundred people from disease…  Most of those 11,000 donors genuinely wanted to help people … But these people didn’t have the proper mental habits to realize that was the choice before them, and so a beautiful painting remains in a British museum and somewhere in the Third World a thousand people are dead.

Weighing choices isn’t limited to how we spend our money – it also applies to how we spend our time. Just as EAs dispute the notion that people should support whichever charities they feel “passionate” about, they question whether channeling those passions into a nonprofit or medical career is the best way to make a difference. Many suggest instead that people “earn to give,” saying they “might be better off…in a high-earning job and making a deliberate commitment to give a large portion of what [they] earn away.“ The organization 80,000 Hours, founded to “become the world’s number one source for advice on pursuing a career that truly makes a difference in an effective way,” elaborates,

Working at a non-profit can be a great way to make a difference. But it’s no guarantee. Amazingly, lots of non-profits probably have no impact. And do workers at [a] non-profit have more impact than the people who fund them? The researchers who push forward progress? The entrepreneurs who transform the economy? Policy makers? Maybe. No one stops to ask.

Putting ideas like these on the table is a great way to make those of us in the arts squirm. While there are echoes of the effective altruism movement in some recent trends within our field, like the “universal call” for better data on the impact of the arts and the pointed questions about who ultimately benefits from arts funding, the arts are chock-full of people – artists and arts administrators alike – who were drawn to their work by that same passion that EAs claim clouds our judgment. The idea of allowing cold rationality to dictate and limit our quest to “do good” flies in the face of our artistic sensibilities, and challenges the assumptions many of us made when we entered the nonprofit sector in the first place – even those of us who have a sincere desire to address social inequities.

Tempting as it may be, it would be short-sighted to dismiss the EA movement as the pet project of a bunch of aesthetically stunted curmudgeons. It’s hard to dispute the notion that we could improve the human condition if only we could get our act together and commit our resources to a data-driven approach. After all, the nonprofit darling of the moment, collective impact, is based on the same premise. What effective altruism does is counter our cause-specific argument for the arts with a dizzying moral appeal for cause agnosticism. And to be honest, it’s hard to see how the arts win if they play the game by the EAs’ rules. The “both/and” argument mentioned previously is unlikely to sway an effective altruist who weighs each decision as a choice between two different futures, one in which a museum gets funded and some lives get saved and one in which the museum struggles and more lives get saved. Even if the museum shut down completely, its patrons could probably find or create an alternative “creative outlet and emotional oasis,” while the people dying of malaria can’t very well make the mosquito nets themselves. The “we give lives meaning” argument likewise rings hollow when we’re talking about lending privileged lives (anyone living on more than $2 a day is privileged in a global context) a dose of incremental “meaning” at the expense of giving others a shot at basic survival. It also comes across as incredibly condescending to those others considering that they would likely never get the opportunity to visit or benefit from Singer’s hypothetical museum. In any case, art is hardly the only possible delivery mechanism for meaning. In the words of one effective altruist,

Trying to maximize the good I accomplish with both my hours and my dollars is an intellectually engaging challenge. It makes my life feel more meaningful and more important. It’s a way of trying to have an impact and significance beyond my daily experience. In other words, it meets the sort of non-material needs that many people have.

Whether the EA movement sputters or gathers steam, taking the time to engage with its principles, even critically, is a healthy exercise. The bottom line is that EAs may actually be onto something when they argue it’s possible to make a bigger dent in one sector than another. Rather than insisting otherwise or dodging the argument altogether, we could heed the call to examine how altruism really manifests in our work, particularly when examined through the lens of what benefits the people we engage, rather than what benefits our organizations or our donors. Might we, too, have objective reasons for thinking we may be able to do more “good” in one program, or with one population, than in another? Do we, too, have a moral obligation to maximize that good? How would that change how we operate and who we serve? Do we want to change how we operate?

If the effective altruism debate makes anything clear, it’s that to be able to make art, not to mention argue about it, is to be fortunate. Taking a hard look at our assumptions about what draws and keeps us to this work may not be easy, but if we squirm a little, so be it. In the grand scheme of things, a little squirming is a luxury too.

National Portrait Gallery. Photo by ehpien

That’s the title of a slightly silly “debate” on the Huffington Post Culture section in which I am featured, perhaps surprisingly, as the spokesman for the “no” camp. The debate is with former dancer and research scientist Carla Escoda, whose writing I had come across thanks to Thomas Cott’s highlighting of a very good article she wrote on the same topic a couple of months ago on the website ballettothepeople.com.

I had some subversive motives in taking on this assignment. As you’ll see below, my post takes advantage of a technicality present in the question to position myself as actually for increasing federal appropriations to the NEA even while arguing against the adoption of a full-on Western European model of arts support. (There’s plenty of room in between, believe me.) Part of the reason I agreed to do it was that I knew I’d be boxing out a perspective that might be more hostile to the idea of government funding the arts at all. And judging from the frustrated comments from some readers, it seems my little gambit worked:

(You are so welcome!) Anyway, I guess I can take a bit of grim satisfaction in knowing that, so far, I’ve “convinced” more readers than Carla of the rightness of my position. Perhaps I’ll regret this post one day, but it was a fun challenge to play devil’s advocate and write a bit outside of my comfort zone while still maintaining my integrity. What do you think, dear readers?

If you were expecting a fiery screed against the evils of the National Endowment for the Arts or the inherent wastefulness of government funding, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I support the NEA and will fight any and all efforts by either party to drive its already “pathetic” budget even further into fiscal oblivion. Indeed, I believe that government has an important role to play in distributing and equalizing opportunities for making and experiencing art, especially geographically and across class divisions.

But that’s not the question at hand. The Huffington Post doesn’t ask us whether the federal government should support the arts, it asks whether federal government money is the best way to support the arts – a key distinction. For as much room as the United States has to step up its commitment to the arts in the form of public dollars, we are not likely to see the federal government become the primary source of support for the arts in this country in our lifetimes, or those of our children or children’s children for that matter. And frankly, that’s probably for the best.

This year, Americans for the Arts (our field’s chief advocacy group) is asking for $155 million for the NEA, a 6% increase over last year’s enacted level, and $12.5 million below the agency’s appropriation in FY2010. Such small potatoes! But the truth is that the NEA’s budget could increase a hundredfold and still not pay for even a quarter of nonprofit arts organizations’ $63 billion in annual spending. Where does the rest of the money come from? Not from the government, according to a study commissioned by the NEA itself. Taken together, federal, state, and local investment generates just 13% of the typical arts organization’s budget. (And that number almost certainly goes down even further when you throw for-profit arts organizations into the mix.) No, the vast majority of arts funding in the United States comes from the private sector: either earned revenue from ticket sales or other services, or donations from foundations, corporations and individuals. And most of that money comes from people like you and me, voting with their dollars.

Arts supporters in the United States often look to our more cultured brothers and sisters across the Atlantic Ocean with longing for their civilized systems of arts funding that provide far more capital per resident than our own.  The numbers just look so inviting: Germany’s federal government, for example, plowed some 1.22 billion euros, or about $1.7 billion, into its cultural ecosystem in 2007. That investment of over $20 per German citizen absolutely dwarfs the 41 cents per red-blooded American provided by the NEA. What artist wouldn’t want to live there?

But that comparison is deceiving, because United States has a secret weapon: the charitable tax deduction, and more importantly, the culture of private giving that has grown up around it. It turns out that the counterpart to all that money that Americans give annually to the arts just doesn’t exist in Germany, or any other developed country for that matter. Oh, to be sure, it would be inaccurate to say that there is no private giving in Germany – there is, and there are tax incentives for it too. But according to a 2006 analysis by Charities Aid Foundation, the USA’s charitable giving is more than seven times that of Germany’s as a percentage of GDP – and no other country in the sample comes even as close as half. Assuming that the percentage of money given to the arts is comparable between countries, we can figure that German arts organizations receive something on the order of $250 million per year in private funding, compared to $13.3 billion on our side of the pond. How do you like them apples, Berlin?

Perhaps that’s why, in the face of recession-induced cuts, a number of governments in Europe are starting to give the American model more serious consideration – and a number of European arts organizations are going after American donors. Which highlights another downside of a government-dominant system: any shock to public revenue streams could be life or death to grant recipients, rather than just another challenge to overcome. A survey of arts groups in the UK found that more than a ninth of those who lost their funding in a round of government cuts intend to close up shop, and another 22% considered themselves at risk of failure. And this was after relatively mild cuts of 15% from Arts Council England, which is already a bit of a hybrid between the European and American system. Dutch cuts of 25% last year resulted in a dramatic reshaping of the national cultural landscape that particularly affected smaller and grassroots institutions. Following federal government cuts of 100% in 2010, staff at Sarajevo’s National Museum have gone unpaid for seven months! Here in the US, we fight hard every year for the NEA to survive, and we should – but there is nevertheless some comfort in knowing that if it goes away, the arts won’t be dragged down the drain with it.

Finally, it must be pointed out that we can’t take for granted that government funding for the arts will always be virtuous in purpose. One could argue that Western Europeans have lucked into a happy accident of history that combines exceptional largesse with a largely hands-off approach. Some countries, such as the former Soviet Union and modern-day China, have had no qualms about using state power to exercise censorship on a vast scale and co-opt the arts for nationalistic purposes. Closer to home, even Hungary’s arts community has seen significant turmoil due to the meddling of a newly elected conservative government. And while it’s hard to imagine anything destroying Sweden’s commitment to public funding of the arts, the recent scandal involving that country’s culture minister cutting a “racist cake” certainly gives critics some ripe material.

So, arts lovers: go ahead and write your letters to Congress asking for level funding, that 6% increase, or whatever you want. A $200 million or $300 million or even $500 million NEA would be a great thing for this country. But once federal funding becomes less of a joke, it may well become more of a headache. It’s all well and good to point to the Europeans as a model; just don’t be surprised if they’re the ones mimicking us in the end.

STOCKHOLM (FRIA TIDER). A macabre scene with racist undertones took place on Saturday when Swedish minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth attended a tax funded party for the Stockholm cultural elite. The self-proclaimed “anti-racist” Liljeroth declared the party officially started by slicing a piece of a cake depicting a stereotypical African woman.

Oh, but it gets better – soooo much better. Because the whole thing is supposed to be a comment on female genital mutilation, Liljeroth sliced the cake from where the woman’s clitoris would be while the artist whose actual head, in blackface, was on top of the cake, screamed in mock pain.  Now THAT takes some serious chutzpah! The pictures have to be seen to be believed, but what truly takes the cake (if you will) is the video, which is below. Warning, it’s not for the faint of heart:

I find this whole thing interesting on so many levels. My high school English teacher, who happens to be black, was deeply offended by this episode, seen as it was through the lens of a conservative online rag that was jumping at the opportunity to savage a government official of which it didn’t approve. (Choice quotes include “The shocking photos show several established left-wing members of the Stockholm cultural elite watching and laughing as Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth slices a cake depicting a black African woman with minstrel-esque face.”) His Facebook friends all felt the same way, at least those who commented, and I imagine many readers of this blog will as well.

The full story is a bit more complicated, however. The artist, a fellow by the name of Makode Linde who is no less black than Barack Obama, turns out to specialize in “revamping the blackface into a new historical narrative” by exaggerating racist stereotypes to grotesque extremes. In the Skype interview below with Robert Mackey of the New York Times‘s The Lede, Linde claims that he is interested in “problematizing racism” and defends the organizers of the World Arts Day event for which he created the cake sculpture.

For her part, Liljeroth has refused to resign over the incident and posted a statement on the Ministry of Culture website that reaffirms her commitment to free expression, averring that “art must…be allowed room to provoke and pose uncomfortable questions.”

Wow. Before we go further, let’s take a moment to consider this: can you imagine the shitstorm that would have ensued if Rocco Landesman had found himself mixed up in something like this? Folks, this is why the NEA does not support individual artists. This, right here. Exhibit A. Trust me, it’s better this way.

Anyway, to the piece itself. Aside from disgust and revulsion, the other dominant response I’ve observed so far is the one from defenders of the work like New York Times commenter Brian, who writes that “The piece, the reaction to it, the reaction to the reaction…all of this is part of what makes this ‘art’.” I see where Brian’s coming from, and obviously the fact that I’ve decided to write a blog post about it counts as evidence that it’s been successful in provoking dialogue. But I’m not sure that it’s the kind of dialogue that the artist had in mind. He complains himself in the Skype interview about the images being taken “out of context,” but how could they not be? Has he not heard of Facebook? The fact that this has apparently taken the folks involved by surprise is mind-boggling to me.

My problem with art that deliberately sets out to shock is that, all too often, it’s just bad art. I believe in respecting an artist’s intent, but assuming the label of “artist” doesn’t let one off the hook for accountability. If the intent is to shock, my question is “to what end?” It’s not a rhetorical question. Is it to raise awareness of some important social issue? To gain attention for the artist himself? Or just for the sheer thrill of seeing the shock you’ve created on other people’s faces? Some of these goals are more virtuous than others, and frankly sometimes I’m not so sure where the real motivation lies. But even assuming a virtuous goal, we have to ask the question of whether it succeeded or not. Has this raised awareness of female genital mutilation, and in anything resembling a helpful way? It seems to have raised awareness of Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth more than anything else.

But, in fairness, I’m open to being convinced. Digging around for material on this turned up some pretty racist stuff on Swedish websites, so maybe it will ultimately be successful in driving a dialogue about that rather than FGM. And the piece does raise some fascinating questions, even if unintentionally. Like the one in the title of this post, for example. Can art that’s supposed to be ironic in its racism end up being earnestly racist by accident? That seems to be what has happened here, at least judging by the reaction of my former teacher and his friends. Not to even mention the whole man-acting-out-female-genital-mutilation bit – all I can say is that someone’s going to have a lot of fun writing their critical race theory/gender studies dissertation chapter on this whole mess.

[UPDATE: here’s another perspective, the most interesting I’ve found from among many others that are out there.]

Characteristically, MAP founder and champion Jane Golden has fought back against the bad vibes, and frankly, $1.5 million $1 million a year in city money for a program that has now produced over 3000 murals and contributed considerably over time to Philly’s identity and reputation strikes me as a pretty ridiculous bargain. But rather than get too deeply into the merits of MAP here, I’m more interested in this broader notion of “bad” public art.

Mural by Jane Seymour (yes, that Jane Seymour) and Cathleen Hughes

A few years ago, I had this fantasy of starting an anonymous photoblog featuring user submissions of ugly public art. (I guess if I do it now, it won’t be so anonymous!) Think a Regretsy for public art – and judging by the number of my artist friends who are fans of that website on Facebook, I’m guessing there would be an audience for it. Because, let’s face it, not everything we do in this field is drop-dead amazing. And sometimes, the ravages of the elements can take their toll on outdoor artworks over time. In the worst cases, I do believe that public art can actually be (or become) a form of blight in its own right. Having a forum for people to call out the prime offenders encourages us to raise our game, or alternatively, invest in needed funds for maintenance and repair.

But more than that, I sometimes wish we wouldn’t take what we do so damn seriously all the time. Maybe this is coming from someone who’s spent too much time on Roadside America, but I think that by pretending that all artwork is sacred, we unwittingly make failure (acknowledged or not) unacceptable. Of course art is subjective, but that’s precisely the point. Maybe it’s okay to hate a specific piece of public art, if that’s one’s honest response. Maybe we should be encouraging honest responses. Especially to public art, which, unlike a bad performance, is still there the next day and, unlike bad museum or gallery art, is visible to you whether you want it to be or not.

Anyway, don’t worry, I’m not going to start that website. But no guarantees that someone else won’t – Huffington Post has already got us started down this road, and given the success of Regretsy it’s probably only a matter of time. Even if you hate this idea, you might not be able to escape it. Kind of like bad public art.

[UPDATE: in the comments, Philadelphia’s Chief Cultural Officer Gary Steuer clarifies that the city’s annual investment in MAP is closer to $1 million, not $1.5 million as has been widely reported.]

This all started with a throwaway comment I made to Ian when I was dropping him off at the airport. Sharing an idea that you’ve been mulling over for awhile, but never said aloud and aren’t sure you’re ready to discuss, is best done when the sharee is dashing for a flight and won’t really engage. Or so I thought.

Ian said: 1) Now that’s worth discussing. 2) I’m not sure whether I agree with you. 3) Maybe you should write a blog post about it.

Ha.

So – now you know how I ended up here.

The Theory: Shhhhhhh 

Shhhhhhhh

Here’s the theory I pitched at Createquity that day: Advocates for the arts might be better off doing their work under the radar than trying so hard to get a lot of media and public attention when fighting for public funding of the arts. 

Createquity readers get regular updates on public funding of the arts. So we all know this was an especially rough year for many state arts councils.

But is this unique? Nope. We all have examples in our catalogue of “can-you-top-this” horror stories about arts advocacy experiences from over the years.

Like this.

When President Obama proposed including funding for the National Endowment for the Arts in the stimulus legislation, the media covered the topic in typical he-said-she-said style with headlines like “Stimulus funding for arts hits nerve: Some doubt it would create jobs.”

The arts are often used as a way to politicize and undermine bigger issues (like the stimulus bill), because the public tends to erupt with charges of elitism like this one:

“Why should the working class pay for the leisure of the elite when in fact one of the things the working class likes to do for leisure is go to professional wrestling? And if I suggested we should have federal funds for professional wrestling to lower the cost of the ticket, people would think I’m insane….” — Catholic League President Bill Donohue speaking of an exhibit at the Smithsonian in 2010.

Media coverage like this encourages a debate over the “facts.” Unfortunately, rebutting the doubts with our research findings means that arts supporters have to stay in our opponents’ frame.

They Aren’t Listening Anyway

A debate that lives within the position of a critic (like arts jobs aren’t really jobs or the arts should be supported by the rich) does little to shift the public landscape of a widely-shared belief, such as: the arts are a low priority for public funding.

Unfortunately, facts and research we’ve accumulated to prove the value of the arts as a public matter of concern, and then worked hard to get reporters to cover, are too often dismissed or ignored when seen through the lens of an idea that’s not new and about which people have already made up their minds.

Most people will simply ignore the rest of the story (where all our snappy facts live) once they’ve seen the headline. We all filter the barrage of information in today’s info-heavy world, paying little attention to all but those matters of deepest interest to us. A headline that presents an issue we’ve already decided for ourselves is likely to be read as: “Oh, that again. I know what I know about that. And I don’t need to know anymore.”

Worse Even: The Backfire Effect

But even worse is the possibility that a public debate makes things harder for arts advocates in the long run because, as Chris Mooney explains, “…head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect” where people react by defending their position and holding onto their views “more tenaciously than ever.”

In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers (PDF). Our “reasoning” is a means to a predetermined end—winning our “case”—and is shot through with biases. They include “confirmation bias,” in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and “disconfirmation bias,” in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.

It’s true that in the end, Congress included some funding for the NEA in the stimulus bill. But it took a very heavy lift — well executed by Americans for the Arts — to set up hundreds of conversations between constituents with influence and members of Congress. It’s certainly sometimes possible to overcome bad press and the fear felt by elected officials that they might doom their own careers supporting an unpopular cause. But it’s seriously labor intensive and asks a lot of our supporters — not an ideal way to ensure success year after year. And it forced us to revive an old debate – possibly making things harder for arts supporters next time around.

An Alternative: Don’t Try to Change Minds, Change Perspective

One solution to this dilemma is to craft a new communications strategy —one built on a deeper understanding of the best ways to communicate with the public about the arts—that would increase a sense of shared responsibility and motivate public action in support of the arts. That’s what we’ve done at ArtsWave.

Instead of reviving an old debate, we sought a new way to start the conversation – based on something we can all be for, instead of something we’re defending against an attack. And importantly, we aren’t trying to change people’s minds, but present the arts in a way that changes perspective. Therefore, we held the message accountable to factors such as whether it prompts people to focus on certain aspects of the topic (such as broad benefits) rather than others (such as personal tastes); whether a message is coherent and memorable; whether it promotes the idea of public/collective action; and so on.

After a year of investigation and interviews with hundreds of people in the our region and surrounding states, this research—conducted by the Topos Partnership for ArtsWave (happy disclosure, the writer is affiliated with both) —found that public responsibility for the arts is undermined by deeply entrenched perceptions. Members of the public typically have positive feelings toward the arts, some quite strong. But how they think about the arts is shaped by a number of common default patterns that ultimately obscure a sense of shared responsibility in this area.

For example, it is natural and common for people who are not insiders to think of the arts in terms of entertainment.  In fact, it’s how we want people to think when we are selling tickets or memberships. But, in this view, entertainment is a “luxury,” and the “market” will determine which arts offerings survive, based on people’s tastes as consumers of entertainment. Consequently, public support for the arts makes little sense, particularly when public funds are scarce.

Perceptions like these lead to conclusions that government funding, for instance, is frivolous or inappropriate. Even charitable giving can be undermined by these default perceptions. People who target arts funding, as they did in the stimulus bill, know that these dominant ways of thinking about the arts will work in their favor. Our investigation identified a different approach, one that moves people to a new, more resonant way of thinking about the arts.

What is it? The arts create ripple effects of benefits, such as vibrant, thriving neighborhoods where we all want to live and work.  This is not only compelling, but it also sets an expectation of public responsibility for the arts.

However, even though most people agree with this view already (so we don’t have to change their minds), we know that it will take time, repetition, and many partners across the nation to bring this way of thinking to the forefront of people’s minds.

Stay Off the “Front Page”

So — back to my theory about arts advocacy – until we effect that change, the better strategy, when possible, may be to keep stories about public funding for the arts off the front pages and out of the media.

To some this may seem counter-intuitive. Or at least uncomfortable. If we care about the arts, shouldn’t we be shouting about it? Getting people to pay attention to our facts and our data.

Well – it depends. Is our advocacy goal a widely seen news piece outlining all sides of the issue? Or, do we want a successful budget outcome?

I think it’s the latter. And when it can be achieved with a quiet effort, making sure to begin modeling this new way of thinking about the arts in our meetings with decision-makers, that is preferable to another big public debate. Because the big fight in the default way of viewing the arts is very losable. And in our efforts, we’re forced to expand a precious resource: the time and energy of staff and key supporters who have to work so hard to convince public officials that they won’t suffer consequences in the next election.

Moreover, every time the fight is public, we’re likely to be reinforcing the dominant ways of thinking about the arts that are getting in our way now. When attacked, we rebut with facts, and the media covers the issue as a political fight with two equal sides – both seen through a lens that sets up the arts as a low priority on the public agenda. And as we know, this can have the effect of making people defensive and hardening existing positions. Of course, it should be no surprise that even officials who are friendly to arts funding are reluctant to be in the middle of that kind of coverage.

The Ohio Success Story

This past year, I watched closely as our state arts advocates at Ohio Citizens for the Arts carefully managed what seemed to be a stealth campaign to retain funding for arts and culture through the Ohio Arts Council. Despite an initial proposed cut by the newly elected Governor, the final outcome was an increase in funding over $4 million more than the previous budget.  Each step of the process brought an increase in the proposed funding level — the House vote, the Senate vote, and the reconciled proposal sent to the Governor, resulting in $6.6 million more than the proposed executive budget. And it went forward without fanfare or comment when signed into law.

Compare this scenario with the nightmare that was Kansas.  Of course, the Governor started a fight there — and there’s some evidence that this battle to the death did bring out supporters. But it clearly brought out opponents too.

As a little test, I tried two Google searches: One for blogs mentioning ‘“Ohio Arts Council” budget’ and the other for ‘“Kansas Arts Commission” budget’. In both cases, I limited findings to the first six months in 2011. The Kansas search revealed over 1000 posts, compared to only 42 in Ohio. An even greater disparity than I had imagined.

It appears that the Ohio advocates strategically sought to keep the campaign under the radar. And it worked.

To be sure, I called Donna Collins – the executive director of the Ohio arts advocacy organization. And she confirmed my theory.

“We didn’t want to be in the headlines,” she said. “We didn’t want to see masses of people on the statehouse lawn with signs about funding the arts. We wanted people on message, talking with their own elected officials at home, as well as in Columbus.  Our advocates, from the smallest rural community to the large urban centers, all had compelling stories about the positive impact of the arts.”

Collins credits long-term investment in relationship building with state decision-makers and encouraging a consistent message: the value citizens place on the way arts make places great. She organized a meeting about this message for partners on the morning of a well-attended statewide Arts Advocacy Day in the capitol. There was no big public fight, no need to defend a position in the media, no risk of the opposition hardening in place – and therefore little reason for politicians to fear supporting the increase in funding for the arts.

So…this is a theory, and one deserving of more study. But until we have a new landscape of public understanding, it seems a theory worth testing again.