In February Malesha Taylor posted "Is Your Theatre Only 'Diverse and Inclusive' Twice a Year?", a meditation on diversity initiatives, outreach, and inclusiveness on HowlRound. There were so many spot on observations it's hard to know where to begin. She begins by describing a ten-week consultancy she had with a theatre company to foster diverse audience development. When she began she "was in a mindset of 'audience development' but soon … [Read more...]
Orange Mound
Last year ArtsMemphis invited me to speak and do a little consulting work. In the process I learned about their Community Engagement Fellows program and that program's focus on the Orange Mound neighborhood in Memphis. (According to Wikipedia–former academic colleagues, forgive me–Orange Mound was the first African-American neighborhood in the United States to be built by African-Americans, dating back to the 1890's.) I was deeply impressed both … [Read more...]
The Arts in the Small Community
Today's post is by guest, colleague, and dear friend–Maryo Gard Ewell 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of The Arts in the Small Community project led by Robert E. Gard, and we invite you to celebrate with us! Robert E. Gard was a visionary in the field of community arts. While many people in the 1940’s and beyond were talking about “access” to the arts for people, typically, that meant that Everyman should be in the audience or … [Read more...]
Internships and Privilege
Stop me if you've heard this before. Someone says, "[X historically disenfranchised group] should stop complaining. They have way more privileges than I do." When thus confronted, I have had to resist the visceral impulse to leap across a table to strangle the speaker, knowing that would be counter-productive and, I guess, felonious. I do understand that on an individual level it's very difficult to see systemic privilege if you are the one … [Read more...]
Funding Is Not an “Issue”
Title got your attention, didn't it? Recently Doug McLennan wrote about ArtsJournal's survey of readers about issues in the field: We Asked: What’s the Biggest Challenge Facing the Arts? By far the most cited was funding, beating out relevance, diversity, and leadership by a wide margin. In one way this is surprising in that the most talked about issues in the field of late have been diversity, equity, relevance, and leadership. On the other … [Read more...]
Engagement Is a Means, Not an End
So much interesting stuff has been written recently about engagement and related topics, I barely know where to begin. The Irvine Foundation has published a series of mini-essays responding to questions about engagement. [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3] Diane Ragsdale posted an extended response to Irvine's question "Is there an issue in the arts field that is more urgent than engagement?" And Doug McLennan presented the results of an ArtsJournal survey … [Read more...]
Definitions, Again
Last November Matt Lehrman, author of Audience Wanted, ran a series of posts attempting to address the meaning of “audience engagement.” The need to do so will probably never end as we have so many different uses for those words and so many different factors to consider when we do so. Nevertheless, definitions are one of my abiding passions. I confess to great sympathy with everyone struggling with definitions. In the four plus years I have been … [Read more...]
Engaging Early Music
I recently had the opportunity to meet with leaders of several arts groups in Seattle. One was Gus Denhard, executive director of Seattle's Early Music Guild. In the course of the conversation, he told me about a fundraiser his organization has been involved in. Ordinarily, I am not enthusiastic about fundraisers as community engagement activities since they usually simply involve giving a portion of an event's proceeds to some worthy cause with … [Read more...]
AfAS Follow Up
“Art for art’s sake” is a concept that always generates discussion and passion. My last post (Art for Art’s Sake Revisited) was no exception. My good friend Andrew Taylor took me to task both for things I said and for some he assumed I did. (See his comments following the post.) He forced me to refine the intent of that post and in the process several things were clarified for me. There are two points I was trying to make. First and by far the … [Read more...]
Art for Art’s Sake Revisited
One of my most widely read (and/or infamous) posts is Art for Art's Sake: There's No Such Thing. The thrust of that essay was that art always does something and is always for someone and so the concept of art for art's sake, while it is an acknowledgement of the power of art is, taken at face value, a meaningless and perhaps unhelpful concept. Before I go on let me reiterate that I am wholly in sympathy with the phrase's intent of celebrating the … [Read more...]