• Home
  • About
    • Engaging Matters
    • Doug Borwick
    • Backstory-Ground Rules
    • Contact
  • Resources
    • Building Communities, Not Audiences
    • Engage Now! A Guide to Making the Arts Indispensable
  • EM’s List
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Engaging Matters

Doug Borwick on vibrant arts and communities

Benchmarking? Maybe Not

April 14, 2021 by Guest Blogger 1 Comment

Guest Post by Selena Anguiano Selena Anguiano is a member of the Advisory Board of the Community Engagement Network. (Her bio is given below.) She has expressed some concern about CEN's next Conversation, Benchmarking Equity as announced in the last blog post here. Here are her thoughts. Next time we'll try to address the concerns. In trying to achieve equity in nonprofit (arts) organizations, there is a basic question - can one really … [Read more...]

Join the Conversation

April 7, 2021 by Doug Borwick Leave a Comment

Engaging Matters has been "dark" (as they say in the theater) for longer than normal. Some of that is pandemic ennui, some sheer laziness, some a sense that in this tenth year of the blog (more on that later this year) I've said a lot of what I want to say, but most of it is that I've been focused on other things. I continue to train small cohorts in community engagement, I do some "how to" consulting with arts organizations seeking to be more … [Read more...]

Reimagine Yourself

February 17, 2021 by Doug Borwick

I had already clicked Save on Build Back Better when I saw the NY Times article about GM's plan to sell only zero-emission cars by 2035. Wow. Just wow! A world leader for decades in the production of vehicles with internal combustion engines has decided its business is personal transportation and is not specifically tied to those engines. This is exactly like the reimagining that libraries have been/are doing transitioning from a self-image of … [Read more...]

Build Back Better

February 3, 2021 by Doug Borwick

One day –whether it's six months, a year, or two years from now– arts organizations will have emerged from their bunkers to once again make in-person arts experiences indoors. The trauma that we as individuals and as an industry have experienced between last March and then will be the backdrop for whatever that reality looks like. Many are making big picture suggestions: a 21st-Century WPA program, a cabinet-level department devoted to … [Read more...]

Matter

January 27, 2021 by Doug Borwick

We have been considering the prospects for making the most of our organizations' post-pandemic potential. (Getting the Question(s) Right and Connect.) The thread that binds these posts together is this quote from Getting the Question(s) Right: So our questions should be, first, "What are our communities feeling/ experiencing?" and second, "How can we help them?" Once we have our questions right, we will need to position ourselves to be of … [Read more...]

Connect

January 13, 2021 by Doug Borwick

The viability of our industry depends upon significantly expanding our base. To do so, we must connect with and come to matter to more and more people. This post is a follow up to an earlier one, Getting the Question(s) Right. It would probably be a good idea to read that if you've not done so. Here is an excerpt from the close of that post: So our questions should be, first, "What are our communities feeling/ experiencing?" and second, … [Read more...]

Getting the Question(s) Right

January 6, 2021 by Doug Borwick

As a blogger, I think I'm supposed to begin the New Year with reflections and projections. But the traumas of 2020 are still too fresh for me and the way forward, while bringing hope, is far murkier than it has been at the beginning of almost any year of my life. So I won't try to do either. What I will do is suggest that at least one question I've seen raised about the nonprofit arts industry in 2021 is the wrong one. Roughly put, it is "How … [Read more...]

Why Engage?

November 11, 2020 by Guest Blogger

Guest Post by Penny Brill When we investigate the disconnect between what we are doing with our art and what we might do, we become aware of who has been left out of what we present, preserve and protect, what has been disregarded, who does or does not benefit using our current model, and who has been harmed by our decisions. We have excluded large segments of our communities and have not demonstrated that we value their … [Read more...]

Viability

October 7, 2020 by Doug Borwick

For years, my work has been built on three simple premises. First, the combination of skyrocketing costs and rapidly withering traditional arts funding represents an unavoidable, near-term, existential crisis for arts organizations. Second, the only path to viability is a dramatic increase of arts organizations' reach–the pool of people who could realistically become arts supporters. Third, the means to that end is the development of trusting, … [Read more...]

Trust

September 30, 2020 by Doug Borwick

Crazy-making. So much so that, of course, it's hard to concentrate on issues around community engagement. The troubles are simply too numerous, too big. Even so, occasionally something bubbles up that returns me to my CE thinking. One such instance was a New York Times article about masks and vaccines: How to Actually Talk to Anti-Maskers. The initial story was about doctors trying to get Guineans to take the vaccine for Ebola in 2014. There … [Read more...]

Next Page »

About Doug Borwick

Doug Borwick is a past President of the Board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and was for nearly 30 years Director of the Arts Management and Not-for-Profit Management Programs at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. He is CEO of Outfitters4, Inc., providing management services to nonprofit organizations and ArtsEngaged providing training and consultation to artists and arts organization to help them more effectively engage with their communities. [Read More …]

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 693 other subscribers

About Engaging Matters

The arts began as collective activity around the campfire, expressions of community. In a very real sense, the community owned that expression. Over time, with increasing specialization of labor, the arts– especially Western “high arts”– became … [Read More...]

Books

Community Engagement: Why and How

Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the United States Engage Now! A Guide to Making the Arts Indispensable[Purchase info below] I have to be honest, I haven’t finished it yet because I’m constantly having to digest the ‘YES’ and ‘AMEN’ moments I get from each … [Read More...]

Gard Foundation Calls for Stories

The Robert E. Gard Foundation is dedicated to fostering healthy communities through arts-based development, it is currently seeking stories from communities in which the arts have improved the lives of citizens in remarkable ways. These stories can either be full descriptions (400-900 words) with photos, video, and web links or mini stories (ca. 200 words) […]

Share this:

  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Jerry Yoshitomi on Benchmarking? Maybe Not: “My thanks to Ms. Anguiano for these remarks. Her participation in this process will be invaluable if/as it moves forward.…” Apr 14, 12:35
  • David Pankratz on Reimagine Yourself: “Hi Doug, Appreciated the library and automotive analogies. Here’s another from the world of public transportation. There’s an ongoing debate…” Feb 17, 11:22
  • Jerry Yoshitomi on Build Back Better: “Doug: Thank you again for this. Again, right on the mark. I’ve heard that rebuilding a house that has been…” Feb 4, 17:10
  • Alan Harrison on Build Back Better: “Excellent. If, in a year, the nation sees the arts as an elitist escape for the privileged – as they…” Feb 3, 03:01
  • Alan Harrison on Matter: “Brilliant once again. I think the issue of inward-facing acclaim (instead of outward-facing impact) being so prevalent among dying arts…” Jan 27, 07:17

Tags

and artcentricity artists arts Asia Pacific board of directors box office business model change community engagement creativity dance definitions diversity equity examples excellence funding fundraising future governance grants implementation inclusion instrumental international Intrinsic mainstreaming management marketing mission museums music participation partnership placemaking programming public good public policy relationships research Robert E. Gard Foundation structure terminology theatre
Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.