{"id":3175,"date":"2015-12-09T23:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T04:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/?p=3175"},"modified":"2015-12-10T08:55:51","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T13:55:51","slug":"you-gotta-know-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/2015\/12\/you-gotta-know-why\/","title":{"rendered":"You Gotta Know Why"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sundance_24\"<\/a>This week, we’re\u00a0sharing reflections on the process and the ideas leaders in our Chief Executive Program: Community and Culture worked on during their Summit at Sundance last month. We encourage you to add your voice, your questions and experiences to the conversation, and to use the information and conversations to inform action!
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Communities, funders and the environment all shift over time. Arts and culture organizations can get stuck in patterns of doing and being. How might we change so that we remain relevant when our communities change?<\/p>\n

I found the early discussion of this question particularly interesting. This idea came out of a majority of the participants saying that access and being accessible were top issues facing the field. In the lead-up to the Summit at Sundance we had a couple small group discussions to dig into this topic and try to arrive at a singular challenge to address. What was at the heart of this issue? What was something concrete that we could focus on during our time at Sundance? What was our design challenge<\/a> in the parlance of Design Thinkers and human-centered designers and the disciples of IDEO. (Oh, my!)<\/p>\n

The conversation included a handful of CEOs from around the country. People who run symphonies, art and children\u2019s museums, performing arts venues and arts initiatives for a mid-size city. There were a number of ideas about what access, accessibility and community meant but the conversation kept circling back to the question of \u201cWhy?\u201d The more we talked the more apparent it became that how<\/em> you broaden access depends upon why<\/em> you\u2019re broadening access in the first place.<\/p>\n

There are a number of forces \u2013 funding streams, changing demographics, failing business models \u2013 pushing us to broaden access to arts and culture. Each comes from a different motivation and may have a different definition of what \u201caccess\u201d and \u201ccommunity\u201d mean. As arts and culture leaders, we need to be more than just aware of the forces having an effect on us? We need to understand \u201cWhy?\u201d and \u201cWhat?\u201d before we can effectively address this issue.<\/p>\n