The Eightfold Path to Community Engagement

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 building process. It takes commitment, time, and perseverance. When I first had the idea for this list, it was primarily intended as a lark. As I’ve lived with it, however, it’s turned into something that’s not totally crazy. Maybe it will get better over time.

Wisdom
1. Belief: know and trust that engagement is good for the arts and good for the community
No work in this field can be successful in the long term unless those involved truly believe it should be done. This cannot be entered into as “window dressing.” It must be and seem real.
2. Commitment: provide, ungrudgingly, the time and money that engagement requires
The early stages of relationship building should not immediately yield big projects. Be patient. Persevere.
Relationship
3. Fidelity: become a valued partner by listening/helping
Respect your partner. Establish dialogue. Listen. Be at the table willing to learn. Do small things together to build trust and avoid the ennui of “all talk.” As in successful personal relationships, avoid hidden agendas; acknowledge the value of establishing a relationship for its own sake.
4. Knowledge: learn what is important to the other
As but two examples, discover what issues are important to the partner and in what things the partner has a sense of pride?
5. Insight: discover areas of mutual interest
What arts activities touching on things important to the other are possible? Determining this can only be done after a relationship has been established. Only then is it possible to be aware of what might have meaning to those with whom no previous relationship has existed.
6. Collaboration: develop and implement mutually beneficial project(s)
Create and carry out an arts program or activity that is the contribution the organization can make to its community.
Evaluation
7. Assessment: gather feedback and performance data, determine successes and areas for improvement
Articulate the values driving the process, review the outcomes sought, collate the results, consider resources used and results attained, celebrate accomplishments, identify elements to improve or abandon.
8. Reformation: continually improve the quality of the relationship and of collaborative activities–build on successes, improve where needed
Make the changes suggested by assessment: build on successes, improve where needed.

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Speaking of respecting people (pathway step #3), here is an example from the museum world of a leap of faith from the Center for the Future of Museums: Crowdsourced Scholarship, a blog post by Elissa Frankle, an education consultant at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The essence of the post is a description of the Children of the Lodz Ghetto project at the Holocaust Museum, described as an experiment in Citizen History. Using Museum-posed questions, the project “invites citizen historians to mine our data, challenging them to find out what happened to 14,000 students from the Ghetto who signed a school album in 1941.” This is messy, real primary research reviewing historical documents and data. Ms. Frankle serves as quality controller for the work.

The point of using this example here is not its potential as a template for work in the arts but as a demonstration of a public organization taking its public seriously and engaging them in real work of the institution. What if the interested public were invited to participate in substantive discussions of arts programming–not by popularity poll, but by consideration of all issues around programming, including relevance to the community? Just a thought.

And while you are mulling over that question,

Engage!

Doug

Dharma Wheel by Viniciuscb at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dharma_wheel.svg