Should We Bother?

My post reflecting on the presidential election, Blindsided, drew a thoughtful comment that seems to me to be worthy of a fuller response than a simple “Reply.” Here is a link to the comments section.

The gist of the comment was that there is little merit in engaging with people who will not leave their homes for what we have to offer. I certainly understand the sentiment and it is worth considering. However, there are a couple of rather serious issues I have both with the premise and at least an impression I have about “where those thoughts are coming from.” So here are some of the points, followed by my observations.

• You can’t pry most Americans out of their homes to participate in many of the cultural activities [we] hold dear. (The writer pointed primarily to high tech forms of entertainment as the stumbling block.)

and

• No amount of audience development will draw most citizens from their homes.

It is probably true that the threshold motivation required for moving people off the sofa to go out is higher than it was a generation ago, however there are factors beyond the attraction of big screen TV’s. Dual career couples and single parents can often barely stagger in the doors at night much less find the energy to go out again. Economic factors also come into play. It is absolutely true that audience development can do little to counteract these issues. However, we also know that, especially on weekends, athletic events can be extremely well attended, craft breweries are over-run with people, and farmers markets are buzzing with activity.

So what are we to do? Throwing up our hands and waiting for some transformation of society to resolve this will do no good. For me, assuming the status quo is the only possible “quo” seems to discount the creativity of arts organizations and the power of the arts experience to move people. It also seems to imply that those who are not already active arts supporters are somehow incapable of being interested in things we might offer. (I’ll say more about this in a moment.) From a pragmatic standpoint, that they are not interested in the things we do offer is far more our problem than theirs. We’re the ones with the most direct vested interest.

My call for engagement is not audience development. It is a call for building relationships. Out of those relationships we can gain understanding of the people we want to reach and offer things that are of meaning to them. [And for the zillionth time, this is not just “giving them what they want.” http://artsengaged.com/essentials] As one very, very small example, here is an excerpt from an old blog post of mine:

I am particularly struck by the way [the Sun Valley Center for the Arts] responded to reaching the town’s construction workers and craftsmen for a show of fine woodwork by George Nakoshima. They threw a kegger! “Sun Valley bought a keg of beer and invited the guys to come in after work. Poole says, ‘They were down on their knees examining his work. It was the most engaged audience we could have hoped for.'”

It seems we ought to invest in doing new things (consistent with faithfulness to missions that honor both art and the public) to be of value and interest to more people.

There is one potentially troubling element in the comment, directly related to the essence of my full post:

• On a road trip from Chicago to Raleigh, NC the writer “[saw] a plethora of franchise eateries, cheap stores, salons and religious supply outlets filling the malls, watched Fox News beamed to motel breakfast lobbies, [and] saw scant evidence of the arts nonprofits support (or even movie theaters).”

This is clearly true, but there are malls and chain stores (as well as Fox News feeds in public places) along with scant representation of the nonprofit arts on the interstates in virtually every corner of the country, not just in flyover states and the South. This statement, coupled with the apparent dismissiveness of the observation that you can’t “pry most people out” to participate in arts activities sounds a bit like the myopia that led to our being blindsided by the election. I don’t presume that this is an attitude of the writer, but I’ve heard such sentiments enough (in situations where the inflections tell the tale) to be hypersensitive. In both my previous post and in community engagement work generally, I am deeply concerned that we learn to respect the people we seek to engage. If we can’t or won’t we shouldn’t try. We should, then, not be surprised at being marginalized as a sector.

On the positive side, an area of considerable promise lies, I think, in offering participatory arts activities. As the writer said,

• Only encouragement and accessibility of participatory arts activities can orient kids to assume active engagement with creativity.

But I would add that this need not/should not be limited to children. There is a powerful need to make more people identify with the arts. Helping them learn to do the arts may be one of our most effective options.

And finally, I submit for your consideration the following quote:

• Reality TV is “cartoons for the chronologically adult.”

I include this simply because it is so eminently quotable and amusing.

Essentially, Blindsided was a call to pay attention to a large group we have not often included in our thinking, what Joan Shigekawa called “the disaffected middle class.” If we engage them with respect or at the very least with a willing suspension of disrespect, we may find pathways to mutual interest and greater relevance for our work.

Engage!

Doug

Photo: Some rights reserved by Laurelinde