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...]
Trust
Crazy-making. So much so that, of course, it's hard to concentrate on issues around community engagement. The troubles are simply too numerous, too big. Even so, occasionally something bubbles up that returns me to my CE thinking. One such instance was a New York Times article about masks and vaccines: How to Actually Talk to Anti-Maskers. The initial story was about doctors trying to get Guineans to take the vaccine for Ebola in 2014. There … [Read more...]
Closet Cleaning
For a lot of us, these last few months have provided an opportunity to clean out and organize our closets, cupboards, garages, and workshops. The process involves resolving to do it (!), clearing everything out, choosing what things we don't need, and putting the remainder back. In some cases, we also choose to add things that will help us make those spaces more functional. Stick with me, there will be a point to this. The culling process … [Read more...]
There Is No “Try”
My post last week (Justice) prompted Jerry Yoshitomi to comment, "It seems that we must ask our Black colleagues to share some benchmarks/metrics that we as a field might strive to meet." So maybe this could be the catalyst to get us past good intentions (the industry equivalent of "thoughts and prayers") to action. Long ago Barry Hessenius charged us to move from thinking of the pursuit of equity as a "issue" to making it an obsession. So, if … [Read more...]
Community Citizenship
Do you consider your organization's deepest responsibility to be to art or to people? I don't mean what is your mission. (That's a question for another time.) Rather, in extreme instances, what is most important? If many in your community are hurting is your focus on art? The tendency to focus on art almost exclusively is one reason people outside of the arts view our work as insular, out of touch, and/or irrelevant. In times of crisis, such … [Read more...]
Ask
Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Like most people on the planet, I have been consumed with reports on the pandemic threatening us all. I have also been trying to figure out what I can do, both in reducing the spread and in making things better for people. I've had much more success with the former. I've also been watching with great interest the number of arts organizations making content … [Read more...]
Crisis as Opportunity
Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago and former Chief of Staff for the Obama White House, famously said, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste." He went on to explain "And what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." Well, the world is facing a crisis the full impact of which is unkownable at this time. What we do know is that things are shutting down, slowing down, contracting in response … [Read more...]
Why and How
A couple of months ago, a new reader of one of my books got in touch to say “I haven’t finished it yet because I’m constantly having to digest the ‘YES’ and ‘AMEN’ moments I get from each section.” She, like many passionate new readers, went on to ask why they and their colleagues had not heard of the books before. The blame, of course, is on us at ArtsEngaged®. Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the United States … [Read more...]
Beware Arrogance
As a teenager I was a huge (huge) fan of Peter, Paul, and Mary. Their folk music roots, musicianship, social consciousness, and wry humor blew me away. They had a number of breakout hits (slightly unusual in the late 1960s for what was essentially a folk music group). And one of these was a song I (and I guess many others) heard as funny: Peter,Paul & Mary I Dig Rock & Roll Music (1968). I had not thought about it much since then but … [Read more...]
Doomed to Fail
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are–rightly and way too belatedly–important topics in the nonprofit arts world right now. I heartily applaud the focus. However . . . I worry about the way the topics are being approached. If an arts organization attempts to incorporate DEI awareness and efforts without a deep, mission-level commitment to being of the community; to forming mutually beneficial, lasting relationships with new communities; to … [Read more...]