Warning: Rant Alert! Adam Huttler of Fractured Atlas fame recently blogged about data mining and preference discovery a la Amazon and Netflix as having important (although as yet unrealized and little examined potential for the arts). [Is House of Cards the Future of Cultural Programming?] This is vitally important territory, but as a self-acknowledged underachiever when it comes to research, I'll let others dig into this vital work. What … [Read more...]
Farewell Rocco
Rocco Landesman's departure from the NEA and Barry Hessenius's interviews of Rocco and his Chief of Staff, Jamie Bennett, provide an occasion to reflect a bit on Mr. Landesman's legacy in federal arts policy and advocacy. (Disclosure: Jamie has been very good to me in providing support, advice, access to NEA staff, a brief "meet and greet" with his boss, and the Foreword that Rocco wrote for my book.) I suspect (hope) that the lasting impact … [Read more...]
Balanced Learning
I am just back from two weeks on the road. I spoke and "workshopped" in Toronto and Austin. (Temperature contrast! The highs in Toronto were in the teens; in Austin, in the 70's.) Thanks to everyone in both places for great hospitality and the opportunity to field test the ideas I've been developing around audience and community engagement. And, as usually happens, due to this work a new thought is creeping into the equation. Anyone in the … [Read more...]
Matter by Mattering
In Communities Take Care of Things I raised the issue of mattering. It is our marginalization from the broad public that is a principal hindrance to sustainability. If we matter to our communities, we will be supported by them in all ways that are important, including financially. How do we reach this nirvana-like state of support? (Or more realistically, how do we simply get on the community's radar screen in a positive way?) Communities must … [Read more...]
Overcoming Artcentricity
In Shifting the Center I began a consideration of transforming the way we think about the relationship between art and community. Many of us in the arts see the world from the perspective of our arts discipline, and that discipline–along with the work that is its expression–is a value unto itself. Our commitment to art can be nearly all-consuming. But this is a hindrance to relationship building. It gets in the way of engagement. We cannot and … [Read more...]
Outreach and Audience Engagement
I'll admit it. I have a bad attitude about the word "outreach" in the context of the arts. Whether that attitude is rooted in the way the word has been used or in some quality inherent in it is not clear to me. I have difficulty with what often seem to be paternalistic activities undertaken in its name. If you think about the meaning of the word, at least it appears this way to me, outreach puts the reacher at the center and the other outside, … [Read more...]
An Engagement Continuum
[Note to new readers: This is a very old and widely read post. In the interest of providing up-to-date information about thinking on this topic, you can find updated definitions of terminology related to community engagement and related arts management tools on the ArtsEngaged website here.] I'm on a roll talking about types of engagement (New Thought on Audience and Community Engagement). So I thought I'd take a crack at one I've not … [Read more...]
The Trash Project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ZBlYdyoeQ One of the joys of all the traveling and speaking I am undertaking is the opportunity to find out about cool examples of engagement work going on around the country. I am going to Austin for the Texas Commission on the Arts & Texans for the Arts conference, Strategies for Success. As part of the preparation, I asked the organizers to send me examples of interesting projects. The subject of this … [Read more...]
New Thought on Audience and Community Engagement
[Note to new readers: This is a very old and widely read post. In the interest of providing up-to-date information about thinking on this topic, you can find updated definitions of terminology related to community engagement and related arts management tools on the ArtsEngaged website here.] Let me make it clear up front that I am talking about a concept in progress here. That caveat out of the way . . . . As I have said before here, there … [Read more...]
Mainstreaming on My Mind
My basic beliefs about the arts and community engagement are fairly well-known to anyone who reads this blog or who has read my book. 1) Community engagement is vital to a healthy future for the arts; 2) substantive community engagement is relatively rare in the established arts world; and 3) since there are no extra resources to add "new" stuff to the list of what we do, mainstreaming engagement–making engagement the core perspective in all … [Read more...]