by Amelia Northrup-Simpson This post is part of a series in conjunction with TRG Arts on developing relationships with both new communities and existing stakeholders through artistic programming, marketing and fundraising, community engagement, and public policy. (Cross-post can be found at Analysis from TRG Arts.) Do you treat arts patrons like customers, clients, or collaborators? In the first post in this series, Doug Borwick laid out … [Read more...]
Customer, Client, Collaborator?
In January, Doug McLennan published a post Is Earning Making Money The New Audience-Building Strategy? In a comparison of for-profit and not-for-profit enterprise, he began to intrigue me when, addressing the former, he said "More than ever consumers are about relationships – the kinds of relationships that non-profits have worked on for years." He then went on to consider whether crowd-funding, which began as simply a way to raise money might be … [Read more...]
Relationship Maintenance
The arts industry is event-oriented, if not event-obsessed. Our principal contribution to public life is in the presentation of events. On the very deepest level we are “do-ers.” There is an inbred impatience with anything that delays doing. This is why, when discussing the process of building relationships with communities, a common question is how to “exit” the relationship when the event is over. (Insert my scream of pain here.) To be clear, … [Read more...]
Community Learning
As I discussed in Transformative Engagement, the foundation of successful community engagement is deep understanding of the communities with which an organization is engaging. This body of information–key players, concerns, identity, etc.–is not necessarily common knowledge among an arts organization's staff and board. Indeed, it is often far off the radar. As a result, community learning is an essential component in preparing for and … [Read more...]
Committing to Engagement
In Engage Now! I discuss the importance of making a public commitment to engagement. When new communities meet representatives of arts organizations they often assume the intent of the latter is to get them to buy tickets or make donations. That's many people's experience with the arts. Successful community engagement needs to be based on mutual benefit. An official statement of the organization's reasons for engaging and a dedication to … [Read more...]
Diversity and Genuine Engagement
In February Malesha Taylor posted "Is Your Theatre Only 'Diverse and Inclusive' Twice a Year?", a meditation on diversity initiatives, outreach, and inclusiveness on HowlRound. There were so many spot on observations it's hard to know where to begin. She begins by describing a ten-week consultancy she had with a theatre company to foster diverse audience development. When she began she "was in a mindset of 'audience development' but soon … [Read more...]
Orange Mound
Last year ArtsMemphis invited me to speak and do a little consulting work. In the process I learned about their Community Engagement Fellows program and that program's focus on the Orange Mound neighborhood in Memphis. (According to Wikipedia–former academic colleagues, forgive me–Orange Mound was the first African-American neighborhood in the United States to be built by African-Americans, dating back to the 1890's.) I was deeply impressed both … [Read more...]
The Arts in the Small Community
Today's post is by guest, colleague, and dear friend–Maryo Gard Ewell 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of The Arts in the Small Community project led by Robert E. Gard, and we invite you to celebrate with us! Robert E. Gard was a visionary in the field of community arts. While many people in the 1940’s and beyond were talking about “access” to the arts for people, typically, that meant that Everyman should be in the audience or … [Read more...]
Internships and Privilege
Stop me if you've heard this before. Someone says, "[X historically disenfranchised group] should stop complaining. They have way more privileges than I do." When thus confronted, I have had to resist the visceral impulse to leap across a table to strangle the speaker, knowing that would be counter-productive and, I guess, felonious. I do understand that on an individual level it's very difficult to see systemic privilege if you are the one … [Read more...]
Funding Is Not an “Issue”
Title got your attention, didn't it? Recently Doug McLennan wrote about ArtsJournal's survey of readers about issues in the field: We Asked: What’s the Biggest Challenge Facing the Arts? By far the most cited was funding, beating out relevance, diversity, and leadership by a wide margin. In one way this is surprising in that the most talked about issues in the field of late have been diversity, equity, relevance, and leadership. On the other … [Read more...]