One of the coolest things about the book I’m working on is the way I’ve been able to finagle really smart people into contributing. Then I get to read what they write and (up to a point) steal their ideas. Today’s victim is Diane Ragsdale. (Yes, I’ve already cited Diane–see ArtsJournal’s Jumper blog–as a source once here. Now that she is back from her honeymoon and can defend herself, in the future I’ll need to steal from others for a while.)
In December, Diane published a post reflecting on the lessons of the slow food movement for the arts. She expanded upon that in an essay for the book and has developed some fascinating insights about the things we in the arts might learn. The critical lessons are first in what the movement has accomplished and second in how. Re: what, the slow food movement has
- made (and to a large extent sold) the case for quality. Local, natural products, in spite of sometimes being more expensive, are sought out by consumers; and
- transformed the food industry. Happy Meals now come with apples rather than fries for Pete’s sake! Chain supermarkets now include local and organic produce as a matter of course.
And regarding the how, it
- nurtures direct relationships between producers and consumers,
- provides educational opportunities that do not assume someone is somehow lacking if they can’t identify arugula, and
- encourages participation–both in food production and food preparation.
Many in the arts seem unsure whether it is actually possible to educate people to quality. The slow food movement has. I suspect the real secret is the amount of energy (and creativity) that has been invested in the process and the fact that the public has been treated with respect in spite of the fact that they are not knowledgeable at the beginning.
Probably what most excites me about this analysis is the way it challenges my despair about the capacity for change in any industry. Here we have an example where in about 25 years, a movement has transformed an entire industry, one of the biggest in the world. The day after I received the draft of Diane’s essay I was shopping at a local supermarket and could not resist getting out my phone and snapping this picture:
Photo by Doug Borwick
At moments when I am despondent about the potential for change, I will try to remember this picture.
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Since we’re talking about food, let me cite a sublimely relevant example of engagement. The NEA recently announced its Our Town grantees. One of the recipients is the Wormfarm Institute, “a 40-acre organic vegetable farm and creative hub in Reedsburg, Wisconsin.” Here is a link to an NEA podcast about their work. The Institute supports artist residencies, a gallery, and, as a highly visible flagship program, artist-designed Roadside Culture Stands. The stands are used in both rural and urban areas, have the practical role of selling both fresh produce and works of art, and provide information about area cultural events. That’s way up on the list of “high concept” ideas. Memorable. And what ideas do you have for making the arts more meaningful in your communities?
Engage!
Doug
The slow food movement is a metaphorical way of saying that the essence of culture is local. Culture produced somewhere else is less likely to reflect our own identities and perspectives. It will thus be less connected to the community and less engaged with it.
This suggests that the NEA should have a very clear policy of sending its funds to the states, and that the states should see that the funds are distributed on the most local level possible – preferably by municipal and county governments. Europeans, who rely almost exclusively on public arts funding, distribute the large majority of their funds on the municipal and state levels.
Considerations about the local nature of culture also highlight the problems with our private funding system, which inevitably concentrates money for culture in a few financial centers where the wealthy tend to live and work. Cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, thus have rich cultural lives while regional cities with large metro populations are starved like Tulsa, Albuquerque, Boise, Columbus, etc. This is unfortunate because large regional cities are where the majority of Americans live.
Another problem is that a funding system by the wealthy inevitably creates destructive forms of classism in the arts that alienates large portions of the community. Funding by the wealthy has a neo-feudalistic character that is the antithesis of the egalitarianism and democracy represented by community engagement.
Anyone genuinely concerned about community engagement in the arts should continually stress that our private funding system is generally harmful to community engagement and that a public system is much better. Though a few exceptions might exist, the principle is fairly obvious: communities pay for community engagment, not rich people.
I love this idea of the slow food model expanding to arts engagement…so much so that I wrote a masters thesis on it, published early last year. Link to pdf: http://goo.gl/hv54k
Hi and thanks for your article!
I am an artist and also a Slow Food Chapter Leader.
Here in Greenville, SC we have a great collaboration between the arts and Slow Food, especially in our Earth Market Project, a local farmers market on the grounds of a local art gallery, the McDunn Gallery.
Our local chapter began before Slow Food USA got their feet on the ground, with another artist, Debbie Cooke, high school teacher (The Fine Arts Center, Greenville) and photographer, who did an “Artist in Residency” with University of Georgia in Italy, and attended a Slow Food dinner with founder, Carlo Petrini.
Debbie came back to Greenville and started Palmetto Slow Food, one of the first in the USA.
Carlo Petrini called them the “Convivio Artistico” and the group has had a creative endeavor ever since.
Food Arts and Fine Arts work well together. We care about social justice, the environment, and beautifully crafted pieces of art to the betterment of human welfare.
At our famers market, the Earth Market in Greenville (www.earthmarkets.net) we host a guest artist each month, on the grounds of a working wood arts studio. http://www.slowfoodupstate.com
Come see us.
Sept. 15, 2-6 pm 741 Rutherford Rd. Greenville, SC 29609
also Nov. 19 and Dec. 17, 10-2 same location.