Let me be the last, seemingly, to jump on the bandwagon of Diane Ragsdale's post, If our goal is simply to preserve our current reality, why pursue it? Most blogs dealing with the future of the arts are picking up on it, and many of the Emerging Leaders who posted as part of Americans for the Arts recent blog salon referenced it. The latter phenomenon I take to be particularly heartening. I would simply ask all of them to remember this after they … [Read more...]
A Question of Focus
In my last post, More or Different?, I said I was going to present a sequel detailing an alternative way to think about expanding reach in arts organizations. What I have in mind is a mental model I suggest to students when introducing marketing ideas. I begin by asking them to explain why there are (seemingly) hundreds of kinds of toothpaste on the shelves in drug stores, grocery stores, and big box conglomerates. Their eventual conclusion is … [Read more...]
More or Different?
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 … [Read more...]
Bimodal Engagement
When I first became sensitized to the need for change within the arts community to a greater focus on community engagement (now over twenty years ago), I sometimes felt like a voice in the wilderness. (I know I wasn't alone, but some of us who felt that way were not connecting with like-minded peers. This may simply have been a pre-Internet issue.) Today, as I have observed in recent posts, engagement has become a buzz word in the industry. I … [Read more...]
Clout
Arlene Goldbard and Barry Hessenius have just concluded a fascinating blogfest, Clout, dealing with policy, advocacy, and the arts in the U.S. They invited a group of thought leaders (Roberto Bedoya, Dudley Cocke, Ra Joy, and Diane Ragsdale) to join them in discussing what might be necessary to move the arts community to a position of real political power. The selection of the guest bloggers was what first got my attention, not just because I … [Read more...]
Civic Engagement by Stealth
I have been waiting to catch my breath in order to comment on Clayton Lord's New Beans post from last October, Directing the Impact Echo. I haven't really caught it, but this is good a time as any. It is possible that some out there may be hesitant to dive in to community engagement work (so *that* explains the picture!) because they are uncomfortable with examples they have seen. Social activism is prominent in the field, and some, due to … [Read more...]
Systemic Marketing
I have an innate tendency to believe that subdividing or categorizing things leads to more problems than doing so solves. I have throughout my career quietly disbelieved that a liberal arts education is served by breaking it up into separate departments. The structure leads to division, competitiveness, and, most importantly, missed opportunities for larger understanding. There is no such thing as self-contained knowledge. Everything is … [Read more...]
Wrapping Themselves in the Arts
Occasionally (albeit rarely) a post nearly writes itself. . . . The New York Times recently ran an article about Venezuela's famed El Sistema becoming a political football: Music Meets Chávez Politics and Critics Frown. The LA Philharmonic's current tour of Venezuela with native son conductor, El Sistema graduate, and classical music phenomenon Gustavo Dudamel has raised the issue of who gets credit for El Sistema. Socialist President Hugo … [Read more...]
The Results Are In
Even very casual readers of this blog have seen numerous mentions of Nina Simon, her blog Museum 2.0, and references to her work at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz. There are at least two reasons for that. First, she writes well and often in her blog. Second, and more important, her work puts into practice a deep belief in community engagement as a key to successful arts organizations. Having spent my life in academia, I have a … [Read more...]
LAA’s and the Community
In my previous post, The Ink People, I highlighted a fascinating local arts agency that is facilitating community engagement work by acting as an incubator for arts-focused engagement work. This time, I want to follow up, as promised, with some ideas put forward by Roberto Bedoya (Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council) in another ARTSblog post, Stewardship: Culture Wars 2.0 and Placemaking. He has a very particular view of the role … [Read more...]