{"id":36,"date":"2008-06-17T22:26:38","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T22:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp\/?p=36"},"modified":"2008-06-17T22:26:38","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T22:26:38","slug":"the_government_we_deserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2008\/06\/the_government_we_deserve\/","title":{"rendered":"The Government We Deserve"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While I’ve been overcoming the sleep deprivation and the jet lag, I’ve been reviewing what went down at this year’s massive National Performing Arts Convention and contemplating why it’s left me both incredibly inspired and intensely frustrated by the state of the arts.<\/p>\n

Unlike the sort of test-run NPAC in Pittsburgh in 2004 where meeting-and-greeting outside my field was possible due to proximity in hallways between sessions but a high hurdle to clear, this time around the individual disciplines had a reason to talk to one another–they were trapped at tables together every day for an hour or more and were obliged to discuss the great issues of the day. This was a great improvement. That said, the AmericaSpeaks<\/a><\/i> process was a lesson in everything that seems wrong to me with democracy–many people making decisions on topics most don’t have the time to fully grasp before voting requires them to take ill-formed stances. The results: average, predictable. The challenges we enumerated as a voting group of some 3000 performing arts community members:<\/p>\n

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  1. Our communities do not sufficiently perceive the value, benefits, and relevance of the arts, which makes advocacy and building public support for the arts a challenge at every level.<\/li>\n
  2. The potential of arts education and lifelong learning in the arts is under realized.\n<\/li>\n
  3. The increasing diversity of our communities creates an opportunity to engage a variety of ages, races, identities, and cultures in our audiences and organizations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That said, overcoming some of these challenges and making improvements will certainly help our social and economic standing, if not our art. In many cases it may add spice there, too. But the process that carried us to embracing these goals wasn’t designed to push at the field’s status quo. In our conversations together (often limited to 20 minutes at most per topic area) there was no time to think beyond the usual suspects, beyond the usual frame of reference. Voting felt like boiling things down, not building possibilities up. Maybe my expectations were too great, my desire to have it all now too outsized. Perhaps that’s where we are now set up to go next time, without tripping in the ditch of misunderstanding where our colleagues in other areas are coming from. I often find I’m set to “full steam ahead” at the risk of immediate scalding. But still: profile, education, diversity. You don’t say?<\/p>\n

    Speaking of not understanding where people are coming from, I admit that I was one of the groaners when it came to plenary speaker Jim Collins. “Doesn’t he write those books business people buy in airports,” I’d announce to everyone I discussed his session with. But he gave his “Why Business Thinking is NOT the Answer” talk with revival-tent bravado and it was filled with some take-away gems. Survival is not about circumstance, but about choice and discipline. “Who” comes before “what” when choosing the team, and then the impetus needs to be on creating conditions and leadership where people can unify around not the “consensus” idea, but the “right” idea. (Yeah, well, no one said it was crystal clear and easy. He still wants you to buy his books at airports.)<\/p>\n

    Collins also stressed that we need to look to the successes in our field like beacons, that greatness is cumulative action not a single event, and that decline can be in process long before we see the shadow it’s casting. But fire a bullet, not a canon ball, and calibrate your strategies before empting your clip.<\/p>\n

    In the end, he urged those in the room to hold true to our core values but not to fear changing our practices. The key, he suggested, is to hold tight to who we are<\/i>, but not to confuse that with keeping a death grip on what we do and how we do it.<\/p>\n

    Now that we’ve come back down the mountain, sounds like it’s time to go to work. The next challenge is a personal one for anyone who wants to lend a hand: What can I do to further these goals?\n<\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    While I’ve been overcoming the sleep deprivation and the jet lag, I’ve been reviewing what went down at this year’s massive National Performing Arts Convention and contemplating why it’s left me both incredibly inspired and intensely frustrated by the state of the arts. Unlike the sort of test-run NPAC in Pittsburgh in 2004 where meeting-and-greeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}