The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced their Arts in Crisis initiative this week (covered here in the Washington Post), designed to provide emergency planning assistance to cultural organizations in trouble during tough economic times. Through the system, any nonprofit arts organization can request advice and counsel — both from the leadership and staff of the Kennedy Center, and from a growing list of mentors who can sign up through the web site.
It’s a wonderful example of an established and well-resourced cultural institution embracing its position and its privilege as a platform to help their smaller peers. And it’s great to see such quick and proactive response from an organization who could easily have claimed it was not their job.
But while I applaud and honor the effort, I hope it also comes with a willingness to embrace a larger truth: The Kennedy Center is part of a network of networks, part of an ecology of resources focused on the task. Their impact will be exponentially more profound if they do not assume they are going it alone.
The crisis in the arts, or any other industry, is an ecological one. Any crisis can certainly benefit from unilateral and independent action. But a more resilient and encompassing response would also include recognition and interconnection of the entire ecosystem that provides coaching, counseling, mentorship, and responsive strategy support to organizations and leaders at the edge of collapse.
National service organizations in the arts, state and local arts councils, national nonprofit support organizations like CompassPoint or the Nonprofit Finance Fund, regional endeavors like Springboard for the Arts, and academic centers of research and service in nonprofit cultural management have been doing this work for decades, and may have some best practices and systemic knowledge that could promote both the capacity and the success of the Arts in Crisis mission. Simple initial efforts such as staff awareness of the many players in the game, and effective referral efforts for incoming requests would help. Lists and links to regional and local resources for advice and counsel would help as well (even the Small Business Development Centers across the country have extraordinary and productive insights to share).
Clearly, quick action is needed. And blissfully, the Kennedy Center and Michael Kaiser have stepped up as they have so often in the past. But neither the Kennedy Center nor Mr. Kaiser has the capacity (or full range of insight) required to engage the tidal wave of cultural leaders who need help.
Only by recognizing the full network of resources in the system, and engaging in a way that both aligns individual energy and builds the capacity of the network, will we effectively navigate this current cycle and emerge more strongly on the other side.
Well put Andrew.
I would also like to add that the difference in the enterprise, from large organization, to mid-size, to small; from type of organization from presenting/exhibiting, to arts education, to service organization; and all of the various points of the spectrum, require a range of expertise that can only come from the larger ecology itself. The executive director of the larger institution, as skillful as he or she may be, many not quite know what to make of the smaller organization where the executive director is more like “chief cook and bottle washer.”
There is also a risk that Kennedy Center staff, including the indefatigable Michael Kaiser, may be distracted from providing the attention these groups in crisis need, in order to address the Kennedy Center’s own financial challenges.
I have had a good look at the press releases and coverage of this Kennedy Center announcement and I have to say it looks like a disingenuous PR move. The notion that “planning assistance” is what is needed right now by most arts groups is naive and patronizing. While Mr. Kaiser is much admired for his business acumen with large institutions I am not inspired to call on him for example to help beef up the boards of small, community-based or grassroots arts and cultural groups–by design they are often stakeholders and not likely to write big checks. Nor do I think Mr. Kaiser or his Executive Staff can provide some magic marketing advice for artists whose work is not the production of art as commodity.
Thank you for pointing out some better resources, such as Minnesota’s Springboard for the Arts. They have been in the boat rowing with the rest of the arts community all along and are much appreciated here.
You are very gentle and kind hearted , Andrew, about this well funded Kennedy Center effort. Groups often get the most useful help from people and organizations who have faced similar sized problems or have similar organizational cultures and leaders. I hope you would consider writing some op-ed’s or articles in arts publications or additional ones you know about aimed at letting others know about the rich resources avaliable to them if they need help. Your blog comments are a great start. BTW, I am sure there are funders and board members who are lost as to what high quality outside low cost management help is available on a systematic basis.
This is an admirable and gutsy effort. The questions of scale are valid, and it remains to be seen how the deep expertise of Kennedy Center staff will be received by and applicable to the many diverse and varied institutions that respond to their offer. In the best of all possible worlds, they will learn from those who call on them.
What I think is most interesting, is that it is a funded effort. Kennedy Center isn’t doing this out of their own budget or their own generosity. This program was launched through a generous $500,000 grant from philanthropists Adrienne Arsht and Kennedy Center trustee Helen Lee Henderson. ”Brava” to them!
Not only does this funding allow Kennedy Center to provide services to other non-profits arts organizations, but it also likely helps them hold on to management staff in these rough times. Everybody wins.
This is a model worth replicating. There are numerous regional organizations that could provide similar expertise, perhaps on a scale applicable to smaller non-profits, or with insight beneficial to culturally-specific community organizations.
Arts funders are grappling with potential reduced budgets and other questions raised by the recession. Here’s a concrete positive program of action that could be replicated regionally on many levels. All it takes is some funders to step up and make it happen.
This quote in the Washington Post article really stuck out, “The center’s president said he is not as concerned about smaller organizations — which are used to dealing with difficult situations…”
It seems the opposite is actually true, the small and especially the mid-size organizations are struggling, because they have no endowment (even a greatly diminished one) to fall back on, no reserve fund built up and are essentially living paycheck to paycheck.
It’s interesting to compare this initiative to the ArtsLab program (www.artslabonline.org) – a 3-year, intensive, capacity building program for 19 organizations in MN that includes grant money, consulting and training for small & mid-sized organizations. More like early-intervention instead of triage. Although, right now I think we probably need both.
And, thanks for the Springboard shout out!
I recently read Michael Kaiser’s book, Art of the Turnaround. As a director of a small non-profit arts organization, Gallery at the VAULT in Springfield, VT, I can assure you there is much to be gleaned from the wisdom of Michael Kaiser. If you have the ability to apply his concepts to a smaller scale you can improve your situation, even during an economic downturn. First lesson I took from the book was the need to grow our base. An appeal was launched, and I was pleasantly surprised by the support we received. We’re developing new programs as well. I was thrilled when I read the PR on the Kennedy Ctr. initiative. Bravo to Michael Kaiser! http://www.galleryvault.org.