Music as Care by Sarah Adams Hoover is a book devoted to “arts in health.” The topic is light years from my area of expertise so I was surprised when Sarah asked me to take a look at it. I am extremely glad she did. The book provides an excellent (and fascinating) overview of a rapidly growing field, one that appears to hold much promise for the future of healthcare. But what struck me most was the way it humanizes music; for the arts to be … [Read more...]
What Was Said
In May and June the Community Engagement Network hosted Conversations addressing the topic Benchmarking Equity. While we did not take the advisability of benchmarking as a given (Benchmarking? Maybe Not), the premise of the discussions was that without some form of accountability, statements committing to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion can easily be as toothless as “thoughts and prayers” about gun violence. For those interested, the notes … [Read more...]
Engagement Readiness Quiz
The verdict in the George Floyd murder trial provides your arts organization with an opportunity to take a very simple quiz to determine its readiness for engaging with communities. Here are three questions: Did your organization immediately think "In what ways can we help the people of our community deal with this?" Awareness of community issues is one of the most basic elements of community engagement. (Of course, it's a little difficult … [Read more...]
The Pursuit of Equity
Last week Selena Anguiano (Benchmarking? Maybe Not) cautioned us about attempting to develop benchmarks for progress toward equity. She was responding to the announcement of the Community Engagement Network's next Conversation, Benchmarking Equity. In her post I see her identify two primary problems with benchmarking. First, there is no one size fits all approach that's workable (no two organizations are even remotely alike) and, … [Read more...]
Benchmarking? Maybe Not
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
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
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
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
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
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...]