In a (very) recent post (Shut Up and Listen) I alluded to the article that Sandra Bernhard has written about Houston Grand Opera's HGOco for Building Communities Not Audiences. I also promised (some might say threatened) to follow up on it. One of my very real concerns about the current burgeoning (and gratifying) acceptance of community engagement in the arts community is that it is somehow understood either as an organizational add-on or simply … [Read more...]
Shut Up and Listen
In this blog I attempt to highlight essential principles of effective community engagement work. In my recent posts Lead or Follow? and Equality in Engagement, I have tried to make the point that communities have valuable things to tell us when we work with them–not just about topics or issues to be pursued but about content, form, and media of the art that comes out of the collaboration. In the last week two things have gotten me focused even … [Read more...]
Authority-based Culture
One of the real pleasures of working on the book Building Communities, Not Audiences–that will indeed be complete before too much more time passes–is reading the insights of my contributors. I've recently been working with David Dombrosky, Chief Marketing Officer at InstantEncore.com and former Executive Director at Carnegie Mellon's Center for Arts Management and Technology. His article for the book is about social media, the arts, and community … [Read more...]
Equality in Engagement
Ever since my Lead or Follow? post, I've been stewing a bit on its central premise. I suspect that a bit of amplification or clarification might be in order. The danger in trying to say several things in a single blog post is that the individual points can get lost. So, at the risk of being way over-repetitious, let me reiterate what is, I think, the critical foundation for successfully engaging with one's community. Engagement is built upon a … [Read more...]
Lead or Follow?
ArtsJournal's recent blog series, Lead or Follow, on the role of arts organizations' relationship with their communities was fascinating in the variety of points of view on the subject. I began reading with what I assumed was a typical academic's aversion to either/or constructs. While that was true of my response, the more I read the more I came to believe that the lead/follow dichotomy also held within it a central problem with engagement as … [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...]
Healthy Art!
Ever since I posted an entry citing lessons from the Slow Food Movement for community engagement work–Slow Food, Engaged Arts (still my most widely-read post)–I've been bookmarking articles dealing with the arts and health. It's a surprisingly long list. Coming on the heals of the Holidays, it seemed this might be an opportune time to be thinking healthy thoughts. In a post last September (Museums Can Change the World: Improving the Nation’s … [Read more...]
Survival First?
In my introductory course in not-for-profit management, early on I pose a question to the students, "For a not-for-profit corporation, which is more important: mission or survival?" There is usually some lively chicken and egg conversation around the fact that no good can be done if the organization ceases to exist, but when reminded of the structural theory of the sector, it always comes down to the public service mission. If that is sacrificed, … [Read more...]
The Question of Equity
I am gratified to see that the question of equity and the arts remained on people's radar screens over the Holidays. A number of end-or-the-year posts listed it as a major topic of 2011. (Notably, Ian David Moss's Createquity post The Top 10 Arts Policy Stories of 2011 and Barry Hessenius's Barry's Blog post Resolved.) It looks like it will continue to have some traction. And, as is always the case when there is the prospect of oxen getting … [Read more...]
Process and Product
Most arts and community engagement workers at some point (if not frequently) make the case for the process being at least as important as the product in this field. This is heard so frequently as to have become a truism, even if little discussion of the idea takes place. And discussion is important because, in the context of professional arts genres with origins in the European upper class tradition (the vast majority of professional arts in … [Read more...]