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Engaging Matters

Doug Borwick on vibrant arts and communities

The Eightfold Path to Community Engagement

August 27, 2011 by Doug Borwick

OK, The Arts' Four Noble Truths was entertaining but contained little if any real substance. I'll grant you that. I hope this continuation of my trope on the essential tenets of Buddhism will be a little more nourishing. And let me acknowledge to those of you who are Buddhist that I know this all has little, if anything, to do with actual Buddhist teachings. Engagement, to me the key tool for healthy arts organizations, is a relationship … [Read more...]

Winds of Change-2

August 24, 2011 by Doug Borwick

Some rights reserved by m.prinke Bit by bit, engagement–as a real commitment rather than lip service or a funding ploy–appears to be entering the mainstream of the arts establishment. I have been waiting for years to see this kind of awakening begin. In an earlier post I mentioned how many good articles about engagement there were in the latest issue of Symphony from the League of American Orchestras. [Symphony Magazine-Summer 2011] I love … [Read more...]

Slow Food, Engaged Arts

August 20, 2011 by Doug Borwick

One of the coolest things about the book I'm working on is the way I've been able to finagle really smart people into contributing. Then I get to read what they write and (up to a point) steal their ideas. Today's victim is Diane Ragsdale. (Yes, I've already cited Diane–see ArtsJournal's Jumper blog–as a source once here. Now that she is back from her honeymoon and can defend herself,  in the future I'll need to steal from others for a … [Read more...]

Under the Radar

August 17, 2011 by Doug Borwick

Last week, in Winds of Change, I began a series of posts sharing examples of established arts organizations committed to substantive community engagement. This week I am introducing another category for your consideration. The arts began engaged with the communities they served. That's the history of the field. The disconnect that is a foundational concern of this blog is 1) comparatively new, 2)  a function of socio-economic evolution, and 3) … [Read more...]

The Arts’ Four Noble Truths

August 13, 2011 by Doug Borwick

For those of you who have seen the first few posts, I guess it's now time to get on with the interesting task of providing some kind of systematic overview of what we'll be considering here. I could be very serious and professorial about it, . . . but who would want to read it? (And my students would probably not recognize me.) For the record, I would like to be clear that this post and the follow-up on the Eightfold Path to Community Engagement … [Read more...]

Winds of Change

August 10, 2011 by Doug Borwick

Some rights reserved by m.prinke In my last post, "Click," I wrote about awakening to a disconnect between arts organizations and their communities. There has been little in the arts infrastructure that has encouraged commitment or relationships that went beyond the bounds of the arts establishment. And yet boundary-busting has been the norm in the community arts movement–a grassroots movement focused on community betterment largely unheralded … [Read more...]

Click

August 7, 2011 by Doug Borwick

There is a thought experiment I give students in a not-for-profit governance class: A nameless, generic not-for-profit board recognized the need for more diversity in its membership. Aware that they functioned in a community with a large Hispanic/Latino population but had no members from that group, they placed an add in the local H/L paper to recruit someone to the board. What is wrong with this picture? When I first began posing the … [Read more...]

Why?

August 4, 2011 by Doug Borwick

First, thanks to everyone who bothered to click through to see the New Blog on the Block post. It's gratifying to know that there are people out there interested in this stuff. That said, the pressure is on to see whether anything sufficiently interesting can be said in Engaging Matters to keep people coming back. (I almost said "engaged.") So, why, again, am I doing this? It has something to do with the fact that the arts are important; … [Read more...]

New Blog on the Block

July 30, 2011 by Doug Borwick

You have just stumbled upon yet another "new blog on the block." To get immediately to the point, the fundamental premise of all that follows is: The arts have incredible, but insufficiently utilized, power to improve people's lives–instrumentally, instrinsically, extrinsically, schmeztrinsically . . . and every which way but loose. This is excellent news for people and it's good news for the arts. However, the unforgettable words of Fanny Brice … [Read more...]

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About Doug Borwick

Doug Borwick is a past President of the Board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and was for nearly 30 years Director of the Arts Management and Not-for-Profit Management Programs at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. He is CEO of Outfitters4, Inc., providing management services to nonprofit organizations and ArtsEngaged providing training and consultation to artists and arts organization to help them more effectively engage with their communities. [Read More …]

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About Engaging Matters

The arts began as collective activity around the campfire, expressions of community. In a very real sense, the community owned that expression. Over time, with increasing specialization of labor, the arts– especially Western “high arts”– became … [Read More...]

Books

Community Engagement: Why and How

Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the United States Engage Now! A Guide to Making the Arts Indispensable[Purchase info below] I have to be honest, I haven’t finished it yet because I’m constantly having to digest the ‘YES’ and ‘AMEN’ moments I get from each … [Read More...]

Gard Foundation Calls for Stories

The Robert E. Gard Foundation is dedicated to fostering healthy communities through arts-based development, it is currently seeking stories from communities in which the arts have improved the lives of citizens in remarkable ways. These stories can either be full descriptions (400-900 words) with photos, video, and web links or mini stories (ca. 200 words) […]

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