When I first became sensitized to the need for change within the arts community to a greater focus on community engagement (now over twenty years ago), I sometimes felt like a voice in the wilderness. (I know I wasn’t alone, but some of us who felt that way were not connecting with like-minded peers. This may simply have been a pre-Internet issue.) Today, as I have observed in recent posts, engagement has become a buzz word in the industry. I certainly have my misgivings about the potential for trivializing or misunderstanding the nature of engagement necessary (substantive, ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships with individuals and organizations outside the arts community), but it still is gratifying. However, I repeat myself.
I am developing a notion about what we are seeing today in the arts establishment around this issue. On the grassroots level, small community arts councils and neighborhood-focused arts organizations have always had an “ear to the ground,” responsive to their constituents. This has been true even when the art being presented has not been particularly attuned to community cultural backgrounds, tastes, or interests. Their emphasis has been on the local, on relationships. The artists and organizational leaders often know their constituents personally because they can. The population base is small enough to know and be known. It has been where my observation “All the arts are local” has had it’s best expression. [Yes, I know that many others use that trope on Tip O’Neill’s dictum about politics, but I’ve been saying it for a long time and did use it before I had *seen* anyone else do so. Being first in one’s own mind may be worth something.] Sometimes people attend arts events because one of the performers buys their groceries from them.
And over the last few years, there have been increasing calls from national arts service organizations for community engagement. There are also more and more major arts institutions identifying engagement as important to their mission and to their success. In a short period last year, I heard the following people say the following things:
- Clive Gillinson, Executive and Executive Director of Carnegie Hall:
How can Carnegie Hall contribute to the lives of people?
I’m never thinking about audiences. I’m thinking about serving people.
We will matter if we matter to society.
- Arnold Lehman, Director, Brooklyn Museum of Art said that the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in transforming itself, added a core value focused on enhancing the visitor experience and a commitment to the Museum’s neighborhood.
- Jesse Rosen, President and CEO, League of American Orchestras, identified three priorities for success at the 2011 Conference. One of these was
“Realign with community needs.” In articulating this priority, Mr. Rosen cited Milwaukee Symphony principal violist Robert Levine who said, “Getting community engagement right will involve orchestras rethinking themselves from top to bottom as cultural service agencies rather than high-end entertainment companies.”
- Howard Sherman, COO, Los Angeles Music Center:
How do we stay relevant in the Twenty-first Century? In adhering to our mission statement that commits us to “building civic vitality by strengthening community through the arts.”
- Leonard Slatkin, Music Director of the Detroit Symphony at the conclusion of the strike in 2011:
If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that we have to be more involved in the communities outside of Orchestra Hall. We won’t abandon it, but direct connections with other populations are absolutely critical.
To me, these are all stunning statements of commitment to community coming from major figures in the arts.
Where I hear somewhat less of this is in the vast middle, albeit with wonderful exceptions, some of which I have mentioned in posts here. I may simply be imagining this bimodality because I am not hearing enough stories. [Before I get a lot of responses saying “Yes, we are doing it.” I want to remind readers that I am talking about the gold standard of engagement: repeating what I said above, substantive, ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships with individuals and organizations outside the arts community. That’s a high bar. Many activities called engagement by their sponsors don’t come close to it.]
But if it’s not my imagination, it’s not surprising. Arts organizations occupying that vast middle ground came into being in emulation of existing large institutions, made in their image in the mid-20th century. They are simply doing what the big outfits did. It is these mid-size groups that, arguably, have the least flexibility to undertake change (busily attempting to keep the door open in difficult times for the industry) and the least opportunity to take a step (or three) back and think strategically about the future. And the type of transitioning required takes time, training, and resources. If national organizations are shifting focus it may take a while for the examples to trickle down.
I am in no way presenting this thought as a truth. I *am* putting it out there for consideration by all of us in the industry. If it’s true, there needs to be work done to address it. If it’s not, we need to have more opportunities to learn the stories. (In the near future I am going to talk about what Engaging Matters will be doing to assist with that.) And, if as is usually the case, reality lies somewhere in between the extremes, we need to be doing both.
Thanks for considering this.
Engage!
Doug
There have ALWAYS been “trends-du-jour” in philanthropy and to the point of this discussion, in the arts. Arts education, arts in prisons, public murals, capacity building, rural, urban, underserved, endowments, capital, touring and presenting, “outreach” (a word I hate and refuse to use) all get their time to shine in the spotlight. Which isn’t to say they are immaterial or antithetical to advancing the multitudes of artistic missions and goals of both artists and the organizations that employ and showcase them.
Having said that, funding trends CAN, especially when espoused by a preponderance of the field of funders, be a programmatic prism with blinders. I am thrilled that small underfunded organizations in rural areas with strong ties to their communities (like WormFarm Institute–full disclosure–I’m on the board) get their due after years of struggle. But that probably means some other worthwhile work is invisible to the new philanthropic prism. Twas ever thus.
To me, the buzz, buzz, buzz of community engagement forces us to rethink its definition and execution. I fully agree with your gold standard definition, Doug. And, more importantly, what does success look like when aligned to the core missions of our organizations. It’s also easy to engage in ways that tick off all the boxes but really don’t move the needle.
In my own work (day after day, alone on a hill,) I am working to make sense of the ecology of linking where art originates to how it gets expressed/engaged/connected to audiences and community. I noted in the Clout blog that with a new institutional hat, I need to find paths to explaining that R & D for artists is as important as coaches to Olympic athletes and laboratories for bio-chemists. That freedom of expression is a backbone value of this country. That the exploration process of the artistic soul is as important as what may end up on stage, screen, wall, DVD player or concert hall. That the process of creative expression by people who have chosen (or are driven) to do it for a living matters. If we don’t pay attention to the headwaters, the ocean can never be healthy.