Communities take care of things . . . that matter to them. That sentence, without the ellipses, made it into my notes from some conference in the last year or so. I have no idea what conference. That's one of the big problems with a life lived in conference sessions and without adequate notes. The statement has been staring at me, gnawing at my mind from the series of legal pad pages that serve as home to blog post ideas, for months. … [Read more...]
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
I have been waiting for some time to write about this fascinating blog post by Greg McKeown from the Harvard Business Review: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It is in the tradition of Jim Collins' Good to Great. Indeed, Mr. McKeown's graphic looks a lot like Collins' Hedgehog Concept graphic. He suggests we identify our core passion, that at which we are best (talent)–not merely good but best, and that which is most needed in the world. What we … [Read more...]
Holiday Gift
Few people are really spending time investigating professional reading at this pre-New Year moment. However, for anyone who stumbles across this, here's a Holiday gift. In November I had the opportunity to hear Nina Simon's keynote address at the NAMP conference in Charlotte. While several others (notably Ian David Moss in Createquity) have already pointed to her presentation about the transformation of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and … [Read more...]
Small Enough to Succeed
I have, for most of my life, been suspicious of the “growth is good” assumption that we often make in this country or did as I was growing up. (Sometimes when I replay in my mind the famous Gordon Gecko speech from Wall Street, it’s not greed I hear him praise but growth.) At the risk of appearing to trivialize something that is incredibly serious, cancer is a demonstration (an extreme one to be sure) that not all growth is beneficial. Less … [Read more...]
No Words
Like so many others, I have no words to respond to last week's tragedy. Newtown, CT will never be the same. We will never be the same. Having no words, I had intended not to post anything about it. That was until I read yesterday's NY Times Article "Seeking Comfort in Song Amid the Whiz of Bullets" by Sam Dolnick and Michael Wilson. Here are a few cherry-picked sentences: Mrs. Wexler, who spent 20 years in corporate finance before turning to … [Read more...]
Playin’ in Peoria
In mid-November I had the pleasure of presenting two workshops for Illinois' Local Arts Network, an organization of local arts agencies supported by the Illinois Arts Council and Arts Alliance Illinois. These two gigs, in Oak Park and Peoria, were the shakedown cruise on a new workshop, "Mainstreaming Engagement," designed to provide artists and arts organization a chance to think through how a systemic approach to community engagement would … [Read more...]
What Is the Arts Business?
The problem with unconscious assumptions is that they are . . . unconscious. Even for me, spending time as I do questioning the status quo in the arts, the basic nature of the arts enterprise–deeper even than the "business model"–often remains unexplored. But the arguments for and against community engagement inevitably have at their root this fundamental question. What is the arts business? Individual or Community Resource? A good (and … [Read more...]
Well Rounded Organizations
A recent NY Times Sunday Magazine featured an article about child prodigies, musical and otherwise. In it there was a discussion of well-roundedness (or the lack thereof) of extremely gifted young people. The author, Andrew Solomon, says in the article, "Musicians often talked to me about whether you achieve brilliance on the violin by practicing for hours every day or by reading Shakespeare, learning physics, and falling in love. 'Maturity in … [Read more...]
When You Care Enough to Argue
Several months ago at a conference (I honestly cannot remember which one) I overheard a disagreement about the best approach for an arts organization to take in engaging with their community. Was it better to begin with the things that the arts organization does well or with the things that the community most needs done? Despite my guilt at being an eavesdropper, I was nearly overwhelmed by the conversation. First, there were two people who … [Read more...]
Brilliant Advice
I recently returned from the National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Charlotte where I led a roundtable on mainstreaming engagement (pursuing all organizational systems from a community engagement perspective) and had a book signing. I had been concerned that I might feel like a fish out of water. (A pre-conference session was entitled "Monetizing Engagement" for heaven's sake!) On the whole I felt it was a worthwhile trip for me and I … [Read more...]