{"id":700,"date":"2005-05-23T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-23T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2005\/05\/the_footprints_and_the_giant\/"},"modified":"2005-05-23T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-23T20:00:00","slug":"the_footprints_and_the_giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/thoughtbucket\/the_footprints_and_the_giant.php","title":{"rendered":"The Footprints and the Giant"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Value of the Arts to Communities<\/b>
\na speech to the Rotary Club of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, May 23, 2005
\nby Andrew Taylor<\/i>\n<\/p>\n


\nNOTE: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
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\nAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License<\/a>, which means that you may copy it, print it, distribute it to colleagues, paper your wall with it, or republish it in your own newsletters or web sites without the specific permission of the author. Just follow the basic rules of the license.
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\nThank you for your invitation to speak to you today about the impact of the arts on communities. It’s an essential topic any day, but particularly these days, as cities and counties come upon tight budgets and tough choices. And it’s a subject that occupies a great deal of my work, for many reasons.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe title of my talk today is ”The Footprints and the Giant,” for reasons we’ll soon explore together. But since all public speeches are supposed to begin with a joke, here’s mine. Forgive me if you’ve heard it before, but there’s a point to it [NOTE TO WEBLOG READERS: Yes, I know I used the very same joke in my keynote to a Toronto conference<\/a>, but it’s such a flexible joke. I promise to retire this particular joke after this use.<\/i>]:\n<\/p>\n

\nSherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are out in the woods on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Sherlock Holmes shakes Doctor Watson awake and says to him, ”Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you deduce.” So Watson rubs his eyes and looks up at the night sky, saying: ”I see a billion stars, among which there may be a million planets, among which there may be planets much like our Earth, and upon which there may well be sentient life looking back at their night sky at this very moment, wondering if we might exist.” After this speech, Sherlock Holmes pauses for a moment and responds, ”No Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nThe point of that particular joke for today’s topic is this: Sometimes we work so hard to see the details in the distance, that we completely miss the essential truth directly in front of us. I’m going to suggest that that’s true when we explore the value of the arts to any of us and all of us. There are important details, to be sure, and we’ll walk through them together. There are economic benefits, social benefits, educational or personal benefits, and broader civic benefits. These are important. They are compelling. And they are convincing when we ask individuals and groups to support the arts with time and money. But I’ll also suggest that these arguments are really just the details in the distance I just mentioned in the joke. They are effects and not causes. They are the footprints a giant leaves behind, but they are not the giant. Today, we’re going to talk a little about the giant, as well.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd, yes, I promise to do all this in the 15 to 20 minutes I’ve been provided to speak with you. While we’ll likely argue about the value of the arts and how they should be supported, we all share a common value for our time. It’s precious. And I won’t waste too much of yours today.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut first a little background about me, so you know where I’m coming from. I’m the director of the MBA degree program in Arts Administration<\/a> at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. It’s a full-time, two-year degree program, now in its fourth decade, training future managers and leaders of primarily nonprofit and public cultural institutions — theaters, symphonies, festivals, performing arts centers, museums, public television and radio stations, foundations, government agencies, and such. Our graduates help bring arts experiences to small towns and big cities, here in Wisconsin, and across the country.\n<\/p>\n

\nNow, I realize that to some people, combining ‘MBA’ with ‘Arts’ might seem as odd as combining ‘jumbo’ with ‘shrimp.’ But you’ll have to trust me that cultural institutions are businesses, they are complex puzzles, and they require a mastery of business strategy, financial skill, and social finesse that’s often unrecognized. I’m sure that there are cultural managers and board members among you. Be sure to thank them, and thank yourselves, for doing the hard work required of this particular calling.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd as long as we’re defining things, let me define what I mean by ‘the arts’. It’s a fuzzy word, often left undefined. Today, I mean to discuss the arts in broad strokes, as an inclusive concept. Certainly, I mean the traditional nonprofit arts we all could name, such as dance, classical music, theater, visual art, sculpture, and such. But I also mean community or amateur arts like the community choir, the embroidery club, the quilting bee, the amateur theater, the school art program, and the adult pottery classes. And I even mean the commercial side of the creative world — the nightclubs, the recording studios, the live performance venues and festivals, the commercial art galleries, the popular performers you might catch on tour in a local venue.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn short, ”the arts” here mean any creative expression or experience available to you within your community — ticketed or free, formal or informal, professional or amateur, nonprofit or commercial, whether you watch it being made or you make it yourself.\n<\/p>\n

\nYou can find these experiences in many places, but for today, I’m primarily talking about art that you experience in person, and not mediated through an electronic box like a television, a computer, or a radio. Not that these aren’t important and meaningful. Just that I’m primarily talking about art in the community context.\n<\/p>\n

\nSo, given all that background, what is<\/i> the value of the arts to communities? Why should<\/i> we consider giving our money, our attention, our time, and even our tax dollars to be sure the arts are in our cities, our schools, and our civic life? Who cares if opportunities for creative expression and cultural experience are diverse, vital, and accessible to a full range of our fellow citizens?\n<\/p>\n

\nWell, for one, a lot of people do<\/i> care. They are the people that bring the arts to life: the artists, the volunteers, the audiences, the managers, the boards, the donors, the civic leaders. Ask most of these individuals and you’ll hear that one art form or another has deep meaning for them, that it connects them, that it challenges them, that it calms them, that it reminds them of important people and moments in their lives, and that it brings them together with people and ideas they enjoy being with. There are many in the room that would say the arts are important because the arts are important to them<\/i>…so important that they want other people to have that same experience, both now, and in future generations.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut for the civic conversation, the praise of enthusiasts isn’t quite enough. Some would say that it’s great for people to find purpose and meaning in the arts, but not everyone<\/i> does. Lots of people find purpose and meaning and even escape in fly fishing. But we don’t allocate tax dollars or school district budgets for that<\/i>. To expend community resources and attention, for any activity, we need reasonable assurance that the activity serves a public purpose…that it provides a public good.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis brings us to the broader arguments for the arts…the arguments that seek to show the wider public benefits of arts and culture, even to those who never attend. There are a lot of these arguments, but thankfully they come in four main flavors:\n<\/p>\n