I have now officially been posting long enough that I can’t really remember which topics I have beaten to death and which I have not.A recent ArtsBlog post, Is There a Point of Diminishing Returns for the Arts? by Michael R. Gagliardo, has energized me enough to take the risk that even though I may have been down this road before, I’m going again.
The issue Mr. Gagliardo raises is the industry’s need to reach more people. He begins by saying:
In the arts world, we find ourselves constantly searching for ways to engage the community. Every day we think about how we draw in more constituents: bigger audiences, more donors, a larger base of support, etc. And often the answer seems obvious—offer more. . . .
It’s the old question of quantity versus quality. Sometimes it seems like the only way to bring new audiences to the table is to offer more—more concerts, more exhibits, more performances, more, more, more.
Are we really bringing a new crowd to the work that we hold so dear? Or are we simply “watering down” the arts in an attempt to make them “user friendly?”
I know I’ve ranted about the quality vs. community argument before. I guess my real response to this argument is that the assumption needs examination, and perhaps not in the way you might imagine. The post suggests that Sibelius (as an example) is not “for all.” In other words, offering music by Romantic era nationalist composers is not the way to expand our reach. In an ideal world, I’d like to argue against that point. But as much as I resist reality, I know I don’t live in an ideal world. It’s true, performing the music of Sibelius (or Smetana or Grieg or the Russian Five) or any “classical” composer will not by itself lead to sustainable income streams as we move forward
So far, I’m pretty much in agreement with the diagnosis. However, the common response, reflected in this post, is that the only alternative is “watering down” programming or “selling out.”Let me be clear that I am not, here, ranting against Mr. Gagliardo or any of my friends and colleagues that see things this way. This is a fairly typical view of the situation, one that often seems like the only option.
What I’d like to offer (again) is an alternative view. I agree that we need to do other things, but it’s the nature of those things that is at issue. I’d like to suggest doing “different.” Out of dialogue with communities, arts organizations can construct programming options that have depth of content and high quality and are meaningful to those not currently part of the arts world. It requires arts organizations and artists to think differently and to do different things. It is also, as I have acknowledged frequently here, very time consuming. But in the end, it’s my conviction that there’s not an alternative.
This is such an important issue that I’ll continue on the topic in my next post. In the meantime,
Engage!
Doug
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Sibelius – or any single example of any art – may not to be to everyone’s taste, but that is 1) normal and 2) not the point. The point is, and what is lacking in Western art is the idea that the only good art is something that is made by a tiny group of experts who are far away and probably dead. Otherwise stated, if you yourself did it, it couldn’t be any good. Nothing wrong with “expert” art – there will always be those who are better or worse at anything – only when it kills the idea that everyone not in this group has no right to create because what they/you do is not as good. I’ve run into this “Why create – I’m not Beethoven!” argument before. One answer to this is: you’re also not a Nobel prizewinning author, and yet you write everyday in various ways. You’re not a world class orator, and yet you have conversations – all improvised, I might add – every day. You express things that are important to you in language that is familiar to you. You might even do some sports (e.g. a pickup basketball game) and yet you are not an NBA All-Star. Why not do music in the same context? There are many cultures where there is not even a word for “musician” – because _everyone_ makes music, and you don’t need a word for it any more that you need to have a word for “air-breather”. Traditional music training, however, excludes all personal music creation from training and you have people graduating with doctorates in music who cannot write a simple piece for their own instrument, play Happy Birthday by ear in any key, or improvise a variation on Mary Had a Little Lamb. Music training silences voices. We’ve developed a creative art without creativity (although we’re very good a re-creating). What we need is arts education that gets everyone creating from the kindergarten (or before!) onward. Creativity is about expression and about solving problems. The world of this new millennium needs innovators and creative thinkers – and that’s where the creative arts come in.