In early December the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis brought me in to support its work in community engagement. Several elements were new. One was a discussion of misconceptions about the nature of community engagement. The other was specific one-on-one work with arts organizations in engagement planning.
Here is the gist of the first part:
The Myths
Community engagement is
- A Fad
It’s true that there is an over-focus and, more to the point, an overuse and profound misuse of the word in the arts establishment today. However, the need to connect with a greater portion of our communities than is currently the case will never go away.
- Charity Work
Engagement might be charity work if the only communities the industry needed to address were the homeless or those subsisting on incomes below the poverty line, but there are plenty of other non-participating communities with whom it is valuable to build relationships. The universe of those unassociated with or disaffected from arts organizations is depressingly vast. (Not limited to homeless or poor!)
- “Only” Code for Diversity
Of course pursuing, welcoming, and achieving diversity is essential for the future of the arts industry. And community engagement is a path to that end. However, community engagement is even broader than traditional understandings of diversity. It’s a really, really big tent, including all populations that are not currently falling all over themselves to take advantage of what we do. (See “Charity Work”)
- Expensive (a drain on resources)
Some choices might be expensive, but engagement is fundamentally a habit of mind. Rewiring to see how what we already do can serve the end of effective engagement is the first step. Changing habits of thought may be extremely difficult but it is not expensive.
Few things in life have no cost, but many things organizations already do (and for which budgets exist) can be re-purposed with a greater emphasis on communities and relationship building without radically overthrowing the enterprise. Besides, if the things you are doing are not working, is it reasonable to continue doing all you are doing the way you are doing them?
- Pandering
The common and not infrequently willful misunderstanding/misrepresentation of community engagement–that it demands/requires presentation of inferior art–is infuriating and demeaning of the public we seek to reach. I’ve written about this so often here, I’m not going to address it further. This is a “don’t get me started” topic.
- A Distraction from Mission (or Contrary to Arts Missions)
If art is not for people, for what is it? Art gains its deepest meaning in connection with people who experience it. Community engagement is in a very real sense the deep fulfillment of what should be the essence of the mission of the arts.
Engagement Planning
As for the second part–engagement planning–the work is to assess organizational readiness for engagement (attitudes, commitment, and allocation of resources), devise processes for preparation for engagement, identify communities for new engagement work, and develop and implement plans for more fully engaging with current stakeholders (a core community) as well as the new ones. Relatively simple in principle; long and demanding in practice. It is, however, essential for our futures.
Many thanks to RAC-St. Louis for the opportunity to do some field testing. (If anyone else is interested, feel free to get in touch!)
Engage!
Doug
- Photo:
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Pandering to the whims and desires of a general public may not be the subject you wish to talk about but it is the issue we should be talking about.
If the new NEA survey is any indication 95% of the community you wish to engage doesn’t have the time or the desire to attended art museums.
We can window dress engagement to mean some vague means of sparking the general publics interest but sooner or later we have to talk about the danger of pandering.
As you know, this is not a subject “I do not wish to talk about.” It’s a subject I’ve talked to death: Pandering Straw Man, The Pursuit of Excellence, Quality and Community, Quality and Community-2
And, “Community engagement is not about “giving them what (we think) they want.” It does demand learning enough about “them” (and the mindset that defaults to “them” is worth another blog post) to know what work of the international cultural canon will be meaningful to them. And then programming that with them.”
The knee-jerk assumption that wanting to reach more people equates to pandering is, frankly, tiresome.
Thanks Doug, for writing so clearly and concisely. I work in classical music and wonder if the fierce resistance we hear for engaging non-traditional communities in fine arts isn’t the fear of cultural fragmentation. In the industry we hear a lot about preserving the art, the music, the structure that makes it incredible for the cognoscenti. But engaging communities that value raw expressions such as rock and blues, over refined and restrained manners as does classical SEEMS like it would demand some dumbing down to warm it up.
What you and I know is that we can reset the context for refined music on humanist arguments. There’re times and music to sing and dance along, and then there’re times and music to simply listen in a spirit of meditation, closing our eyes even to let music take us on a magic carpet ride. There’s another place where we all do this regularly, although it’s not so quiet you can’t whisper to the person next to you, and that’s at the movies. But to make a useful comparison still invites accusations from those charged with preserving high standards. It may be fine for kids, but not for young adults.
How can we convince our colleagues not to fear that art is adaptable, not carved in stone, and both-and? Ultimately, if we’re not willing to sacrifice anything, then we really don’t intend to engage anyone who’s not already predisposed to finding us. How quickly does the low-hanging fruit grow back anyway?