The annual Grantmakers in the Arts conference has long been a closed affair — gathering foundations and funders for several days of discussion, workshops, and panels to inform their work. The reasons for the closed circle are obvious: Funders can speak more freely about their challenges and opportunities if they’re aren’t being swarmed by potential grantees. Plus, as a community of practice, they can benefit from reasonably pure peer-to-peer connections.
Nonmembers can come if they’re invited (I’ve been to two of them, which makes me cool). But otherwise it’s a bit like Fight Club and its first rule. Which is why it’s rather nice to have a blogger on-site this year, in the form and phrases of Ian David Moss of the Createquity blog. Ian engaged the tension of blogging from a closed conference in one of his posts:
The conference is traditionally closed to all but staff of grantmaking organizations and invited speakers. In addition, there is a strict policy against solicitation of any kind… The result is that the conference creates, as GIA board member Janet Rodriguez characterized it, a ”safe space” for the sharing of ideas among colleagues. However, at the only major national convening for arts funders every year, this strategy can also remove the possibility of healthy confrontation in a field in which getting honest feedback can be a challenge.
Lots of great summaries and perspectives. Although I’m rather eagerly awaiting the reports from the morning workshop entitled ”The Future and Our Role in Shaping It” where Ian was not invited. If ever there was a topic for funders to engage with transparency, openess, and full-on critical engagement, that’s it.
Generally not one for conspiracy theories, I really do think that the self-important title does beg some input from us “shaped futures”. I’m not proud of saying this, but is that the last great monopoly to be investigated? If a grantor wishes or doesn’t wish to fund someone, fine, make that known, please be clearer and less cloistered about your own goings-on and stop wasting our time writing what takes weeks only to hear that internal changes have caused a different funding pattern. If a grantor is going to want to know everything, including what I just had for lunch, why wait until an entire full-blown complicated application to be able to tell if you will grant to an organization or not?
I suppose the title “The Future and Our Role in Shaping It” does sound a little self-important outside the context of the meeting. The session asked funders to respond to the questions, “What do you envision a vibrant and healthy arts ecology looks like in 2020? ” followed by ” What should you be doing in 2009 to ensure that happens?” So the goal was to get funders thinking long-term and beyond a recession-of-2009 mentality. The responses of the 300+ participants will be digested and summarized and published in early 2010 on http://www.giarts.org.