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, mutually beneficial relationships between arts organizations and many, many new communities. ArtsEngaged® and this blog call that process “community engagement.” The work itself has focused on the frustrating but often still necessary effort to convince people of the first two and providing “how to” guidance for the third.
[Important note, Captain Obvious: The “hell-in-a-handbasket” reality in which we live today represents issues far more important than anything discussed in this blog. Yet the arts and community engagement is my portfolio, so I’ll soldier on.]
Unfortunately, the pandemic has made the existential crisis immediate for many arts organizations. Recently, Nonprofit Quarterly published an article, “In 2020, Arts Nonprofits Have a Choice: Connect to Community or Go Under“, making the case for our second and third premises. Here are some highlights:
- [T]he secret [to viability] is to create financial stability through offering mission-driven programming that draws in broad swaths of the local community.
- The key is “for organizations to integrate with their local communities in a way that builds loyalty and ensures financial security, giving organizations the stability they need to change with the times.“
- The Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas worked with local groups: “{The] partnerships not only created a sense of trust and loyalty between the chorus and the partner organizations, they also exposed new people to the chorus and invited them to take part. This kind of relationship-building is key to audience development—and making sure that your pool of potential constituents is ever-growing is key to organizational survival.”
- The “practice of relationship-building—paired with delivering programming that communities care about and see themselves reflected in—can be a win-win for the organization and its neighbors. Such efforts don’t just generate revenue, they create long-lasting trust that can turn first-time attendees into stakeholders.”
- “The hopeful news for these organizations is that funders are beginning to appreciate this pivot to community-oriented programming and award grants to projects that make connections between organizations and their communities, especially underserved populations. Arts and culture organizations that can learn to grow their audiences and leverage these connections into long-term financial stability may learn that a successful pivot is often one that turns toward their neighbors.”
Amen NPQ.
Engage!
Doug
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Doug: Thank you very much for your always insightful perspectives.
During these times, as I look at ‘logic models’ and ‘theories of change’, it seems to me that for many of us, the arts are a means to an end. To paraphrase Angela Davis, it’s the art that helps us feel emotions that words cannot express. In other words, the intrinsic becomes instrumental. Coincidentally, the Wallace Foundation addressed this many years ago. I remember Michael Moore saying that those of us working in the arts “are in the meaning business.
It is within the relationships that people have with each other that connect them back to the arts organizations that were ‘instrumental’ in providing those intrinsic impacts.
It’s also my opinion, that in these digital times, that it’s possible for arts organizations to connect people from all parts of the world with interest in a particular genre or culture. I’m wondering how many grandparents of a Children’s Chorus would donate to help create a high quality video of a concert.
When the Lied Center at the University of Nebraska re-opened this summer after closing for Covid, the first performance in the was a recital by a local dance school. Everyone wore masks and socially distanced. 600 people in a 1500 seat hall. Grandparents were able to see their grandchildren for the first time since the lock-down.
The Lied Center will be back in the future with its roster of ‘world-class’, but for the people in the hall during that weekend in July., the young dancers on stage were in a ‘class of their own.’