I am attending a conference in St Louis hosted by the Regional Art Commission of St. Louis and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture of Cleveland. The conference’s title is Rustbelt to Artsbelt: At the Crossroads, Arts-Based Community Development Convening. I attended the initial At the Crossroads conference two years ago and found it a fascinating opportunity to connect with grassroots community engagement activity around the … [Read more...]
Altar Call
Let me be the last, seemingly, to jump on the bandwagon of Diane Ragsdale's post, If our goal is simply to preserve our current reality, why pursue it? Most blogs dealing with the future of the arts are picking up on it, and many of the Emerging Leaders who posted as part of Americans for the Arts recent blog salon referenced it. The latter phenomenon I take to be particularly heartening. I would simply ask all of them to remember this after they … [Read more...]
EM’s List
In Bimodal Engagement, I intimated that there was a plot afoot at Engaging Matters to spread the word about great examples of arts and community engagement activities. The form the plot will take is a recognition list called EM's List (Engaging Matters: EM. Maybe not clever but, for me, easy to remember.) I don't presume that anyone will be lining up to seek such an honor, but I do believe it's important to publicize the good work that is going … [Read more...]
A Question of Focus
In my last post, More or Different?, I said I was going to present a sequel detailing an alternative way to think about expanding reach in arts organizations. What I have in mind is a mental model I suggest to students when introducing marketing ideas. I begin by asking them to explain why there are (seemingly) hundreds of kinds of toothpaste on the shelves in drug stores, grocery stores, and big box conglomerates. Their eventual conclusion is … [Read more...]
More or Different?
I have now officially been posting long enough that I can't really remember which topics I have beaten to death and which I have not.A recent ArtsBlog post, Is There a Point of Diminishing Returns for the Arts? by Michael R. Gagliardo, has energized me enough to take the risk that even though I may have been down this road before, I'm going again. The issue Mr. Gagliardo raises is the industry's need to reach more people. He begins by … [Read more...]
Bimodal Engagement
When I first became sensitized to the need for change within the arts community to a greater focus on community engagement (now over twenty years ago), I sometimes felt like a voice in the wilderness. (I know I wasn't alone, but some of us who felt that way were not connecting with like-minded peers. This may simply have been a pre-Internet issue.) Today, as I have observed in recent posts, engagement has become a buzz word in the industry. I … [Read more...]
*Really* Not about El Sistema
This is just a very quick follow-up. My recent post, Not (Exactly) about El Sistema, has been one of my most-commented-upon. I should have realized that using El Sistema (in particular) to bring up an issue that really was not about that program specifically could be a tactical error. Most comments were, understandably, about El Sistema in particular. For that I am glad. It is a wonderful program from which there are many lessons to be learned. … [Read more...]
Clout
Arlene Goldbard and Barry Hessenius have just concluded a fascinating blogfest, Clout, dealing with policy, advocacy, and the arts in the U.S. They invited a group of thought leaders (Roberto Bedoya, Dudley Cocke, Ra Joy, and Diane Ragsdale) to join them in discussing what might be necessary to move the arts community to a position of real political power. The selection of the guest bloggers was what first got my attention, not just because I … [Read more...]
Civic Engagement by Stealth
I have been waiting to catch my breath in order to comment on Clayton Lord's New Beans post from last October, Directing the Impact Echo. I haven't really caught it, but this is good a time as any. It is possible that some out there may be hesitant to dive in to community engagement work (so *that* explains the picture!) because they are uncomfortable with examples they have seen. Social activism is prominent in the field, and some, due to … [Read more...]
Art Forms and Engagement
WARNING: This post will most interest community engagement geeks like me. In Not (Exactly) about El Sistema, I introduced the notion that the nature of an orchestra (separate from the content of the music performed) was an important factor in its effectiveness as a tool for transforming young people's lives. That provides me with a good segue to consider whether individual art forms might be particularly well-suited to specific types of … [Read more...]