June 2009 Archives

I was surprised to answer my home phone the other night and have my local Congresswoman's pre-recorded voice invite me to stay on the line to participate in a Phone Town Hall Meeting.

I'm an advocacy guy and my family was shopping so I decided to listen in. I was quickly connected to her live voice speaking about health care and the economy. She also said anyone listening could ask her a question directly by pressing zero. I decided to do that too.

When people started asking questions and revealing very personal aspects of their lives I knew Congresswoman Davis was on to something with this conference call format. One woman described caring for her two autistic children and shared her growing distress because the minimum percent due on her credit cards had suddenly jumped substantially. Other stories were equally intimate. The Congresswoman answered each one and often asked the individual to phone her staff in the morning to get help with the specifics of their situation. I was able to ask my question too, which wasn't about the arts but about strengthening banking regulation so we don't have a rerun of last Fall's meltdown.

There I was, sitting at home speaking to my Congresswoman on the topic of my choice after she initiated contact with me and many others! This is an amazing example of  being proactive to make yourself relevant to the community and expanding the envelope of interaction. My Congresswoman and her colleagues aren't changing the way they fulfill their primary responsibility of passing legislation, but they are clearly rethinking how to strengthen their ties to the community. In fact, I'm guessing she was on the phone in her Washington, D.C. office, not even in San Diego.

I want to see arts organizations be this proactive at building relationships and connectivity in their communities. When I worked at Goldman Sachs ten years ago, conference calls were standard practice for investor relations communication by every major public company. Has any performing arts organization used a conference call to interactively announce its season to subscribers, convene pre-performance lectures, or a post-performance dialogue? I believe the conference call format would appeal to performing arts attendees because it mixes the live with the convenient.

The League of American Orchestras has identified the adoption of new technology as a major weakness in the orchestra field so this is now one of its strategic focuses. After my call from Congresswoman Davis, I was reminded that technology need not be the latest web or desktop tool to be under utilized by the arts. It can be so old that Congress has even started using it.

Monday was a big day for arts policy and data wonks. We got two major arts focused reports from the federal government and substantial media coverage for both. The NEA released its 2008 Arts Participation survey findings and the Department of Education released the NAEP Arts Report Card.

You can find Richard Kessler's two AJ posts on the NAEP report here and here and Andrew Taylor's AJ post on the NEA report here. The news is pretty basic: 8th grade students' music and visual arts knowledge has dropped since 1997 (theater and dance were not assessed) and attendance at professional non-profit museums and performing arts as well as participation in direct art making has dropped dramatically for all art forms except photography.

On the surface, the juxtaposition of these two reports suggest the truism that if students don't get arts education they will not become arts attendees or creators. Yet the NEA report also shows that participation is dropping amongst the more educated segment of the population. This is the same segment that has been the historical base of arts participation. The solution to expanding arts participation should certainly include arts education but it has to extend to new ideas too.

I contend the answers will come from listening to the next generation and our own communities.

I was at the League of American Orchestras conference last week and discovered an interesting perspective amongst the 35 and under attendees that gathered for a night away from the hotel and the orchestra old guard. (Thanks to the League for organizing this event!)

I asked multiple people at the party if they felt the conference discussions they'd experienced so far were focused on the agenda established by the conference title "The New Reality: Economics and Public Value." The consistent answer I received was "no." When I pressed further one woman succinctly stated, "The discussions are about today, not tomorrow."

I witnessed the field's broad focus on the present and its limited focus on tomorrow when I split my time between two sessions during the same hour. The "Philanthropy in the Arts: What Lies Ahead" session was full beyond capacity with at least 200 people in the room. Despite the forward looking title, I went expecting near-term information, and that is what I heard from the foundation and corporate speakers. They were sharing the same organizational assessment list our local foundations are currently using. (Did the nation's foundations have a conference earlier in the year to coordinate their language and thinking? Probably.)

After witnessing this large assembly devoted to making a fund raising case, I was shocked to find only 35 people or less gathered for the "Making the Case for Our Non-profit Status" session. Here is the real long-term issue that must be addressed for orchestras to continue to be eligible for foundation grants and tax-deductible contributions and almost no one was present. The conference program description for this session asked "Are orchestras prepared...to meet a new and higher standard?" At the moment, I'd have to say orchestras are generally not. Nor do they seem to be paying attention to the fact that national and state leaders are questioning non-profit status in general despite their own League's efforts to engage them on the subject.

To my mind, this is a symptom of not listening to our communities. Elected officials are charged with being the voice of our communities and they are asking all non-profits to demonstrate value to justify their special tax status. I don't think orchestras are the only arts organizations continuing to operate and program with little attention to community context or perception. How often do arts organizations ask what X soloist/artist/playwright or Y repertoire/exhibit/play has to do with their local community? And even if there is a local connection, how well do they communicate and demonstrate the connection to the community?

If non-profit arts organizations want to have audiences then they have to genuinely connect to the people of their community. They have to work to give people the feeling that the art or performance belongs to them. And they can't look down their noses if the community likes Pops concerts over Masterworks. To my mind, using the term "Masterworks" already implies to the public that these works are held in higher esteem by orchestras than the others they perform.

If they have to, it is arts organizations' responsibility to "make a market" where one doesn't exist for their cherished works. This means making themselves an indispensable part of the community. This is not the job of schools, government arts agencies, or national service organizations. Nor is it achievable with one project a year or a half hearted commitment to community engagement. It has taken Jose Antonio Abreu 35 years to grow El Sistema into an internationally recognized music program where none existed before. Despite its growth and reputation, all reports indicate that it still operates with deep roots in each neighborhood and town it serves.

Community now dominates the internet, from Facebook to Twitter to reader comments and forums. The evolution of this activity in the present is showing us that Community is where the future lies. I look forward to learning about those arts organizations and arts leaders that are finding their way into this new Community reality.

We learned this week that the survival of the arts really is at stake if we don't make discussing tomorrow our top priority.

In my experience, sitting through local government meetings is generally dull. Not because the topics are unimportant or because the decisions are of little consequence but because the meetings lack the focus of drama or ritual. As a result, time passes slowly, comments by the public and elected officials are rooted in the personal, and formal decisions are seldom a surprise. This isn't true at the Board meetings of the San Diego Unified School District.

The SDUSD meetings are unpredictable and they have been for years. They are known for the Board members talking over each other and expressing frustration with district staff leadership. Superintendents have seldom had the support of the full board over the past 10 years.

The special meeting held last Tuesday morning, the day after our arts education rally, had nearly 250 in attendance. This was a huge turnout for a meeting announced only the Friday before. Since I only knew 10-15 people in attendance I wasn't sure if the Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) would be well represented.

Things started surprisingly when the Board Chair altered the standard procedure by making a preliminary statement and inviting her 4 colleagues to each do the same before opening the microphone to public comment. They proceeded to tell us that this was the worst budget situation they'd ever seen, that legislators in Sacramento had to hear from the public about the importance of maintaining schools funding, and that they had been receiving incomplete budget/expense figures from staff so their ability to make informed choices was hampered. Then it got stranger. One of the members told us he was concerned many people were rallying for programs in response to rumors and not actual proposals. He specifically mentioned VAPA as one such area. This struck me as disingenuous because the meeting agenda had a single budget item, "2009-2010 Budget Development Discussion and Action on Proposed Solutions for a Balanced Budget" which left all possibilities open. Likewise, the board had already voted once in the months before to include VAPA in its Plan B cuts to balance the budget. We'd have to see how the meeting unfolded to know if his comments were an effort at political cover for his last vote against VAPA or for the votes he would cast later in the day.

Public comment began with nearly 10 straight speakers in support of VAPA and I only knew 2 or 3 of them. I thought this was a good sign. Everyone was limited to 1 minute because there were speaker slips from nearly 100 people.  Even with a time limit, public comment ran for over 3 hours. VAPA supporters made the best showing of the day with athletics in a close second. (The proposal to eliminate all high school athletic teams was also on the table - or was that rumor too?)

Those of us that spoke in support of VAPA attended without planning who would make public comment or what each of us would say. We knew that a volume of speakers from across the community was just as important as the message. This loose approach resulted in VAPA speakers coming to the microphone throughout the entire several hours and each speaking with different evidence and facts. I reminded them that community programs like our SD Youth Symphony couldn't fill the gap if they eliminated VAPA. We teach 500 students a year which is far far fewer than the 100,000+ students enrolled in SDUSD.

I left after 2 1/2 hours of public comment to be at our Mayor's release of the 2008 San Diego Arts and Culture Economic and Community Impact Report. (You can download it here) It was a busy advocacy day. I received reports through the afternoon from colleagues that stayed at the school board meeting.

After public comment they took a break - one that everyone needed. Then the Board started making decisions and referencing the data provided by District staff. Apparently it got rather heated at points because the staff couldn't provide accurate or up-to-date budget data. Instead of the customary sniping at each other on the Board, they went after the staff. Since I don't know how school budgeting works, when I see the elected Board members complaining that they don't have solid numbers from the "expert" staff I begin to wonder what is broken in the system or what agenda the staff/superintendent is trying to push through by limiting information.

Late in the afternoon after they'd made many decisions, including increasing class sizes, Board member Nakamura proposed VAPA be removed from the list of possible cuts for 2009/2010 because it had already seen mid-year cuts earlier in the winter. Her colleague DeBeck asked for athletics to be included in this proposal. A short discussion ensued in which the Board President Jackson expressed her desire to see all programs share in the cuts. Her argument did not prevail and for the first time the newest members of the Board, Barrera and Evans, voted with Nakamura and DeBeck in support of VAPA. Jackson opposed.

We, the public with a passion for arts education, had succeeded in convincing the Board to preserve the VAPA department for another year. I'm assuming that if they could vote NOT to eliminate VAPA at the meeting then the opposite is also true. Thank goodness we responded to rumors.

It's been a full advocacy week in San Diego since I wrote last Thursday. Richard Kessler posted on his AJ blog yesterday that the Board of Trustees of the San Diego Unified School District voted to keep the Visual and Performing Arts Department intact. Here's what we did in the short-term to convince them to do it.

Thursday evening those of us monitoring the situation on behalf of the San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition had gotten little indication the majority of the Board would vote to keep VAPA intact. Three of the five members had voted earlier in the spring to include VAPA on a list of cost cutting solutions - despite the fact that parents had responded to their budget survey with overwhelming support for the arts.

With only four days (two of them on the weekend) to save VAPA from budget cuts, we decided more pubic pressure was essential. Thursday evening we started discussing the idea holding a rally the night before the Board meeting. At 8pm, I confirmed my Youth Symphony production staff could provide chairs, music stands, a PA system, and staffing. (I hope you never believe anyone who says youth symphonies aren't supportive of school music programs) The next morning we worked to confirm some teachers would be able to attend the rally with students prepared to perform. We knew student performers were the key to excellent media coverage. By the end of the day on Friday, we only had two confirmed teachers but assurances that more would come through. This was enough to start contacting media and promoting the rally.

Two of the local public radio stations agreed to run PSA's all weekend announcing the rally and include details on their websites. We emailed word of the rally to every arts constituency we could find and called on them to continue emailing the School Board. We also directed people to join our Facebook group for updates. Before the day ended, we contacted District staff at the central office to let them know what were planning. They were very helpful. Saturday and Sunday were devoted to creating a production plan and prepping the media release for distribution Monday.

Monday morning some of our team had a meeting with one of the Board members we were trying to convince and his comments were much more positive than in the weeks before. Likewise, another of the worrisome Board members began emailing a response to those that had written him indicating that he viewed VAPA favorably. This raised our hopes that continuing our efforts would bring positive results.

At 3pm I met my staff Production Coordinator at the rally site and introduced him to the other organizers as well as the District's facility staff assigned to assist us. When I left at 3:30 to attend my Youth Symphony board meeting there we no more than five people at the site. When I returned two hours later I found three mobile TV news crews still there with one broadcasting live a live report. I also heard tales of a packed lawn, giant puppets, jazz ensembles, string quartets, drummers, banners and cars honking in support. The third Board member of questionable support had even attended and asked for an opportunity to speak. Her comments were not picked up by the media however.

You can see how well the rally turned out in this news report that led the Monday evening broadcast on the local CBS affiliate. (Sorry it inlcudes a 15 second ad) Tomorrow, I'll continue with details on the Board meeting itself and how we continued there to convey our message of support for VAPA.