As an emerging leader, the road to professional success seems long and confusing. We experience the daily tension of being where we are with where we want to be. Particularly in a recovering economy, more young leaders are in jobs where they feel over-qualified and underpaid. It can be frustrating, but are we really as far off as we feel? If you’re like me, you can envision the perfect career in your mind, but you face the challenge of making it a reality. Or your frustration may come from not knowing what you want to do, but knowing you … [Read more...]
Skunk Works: A Place for Innovation
What happens when you try to create something new in your organization? You might be lucky enough to be able to go off in a corner and sprint through the design work without any disturbances. But more likely, you are encumbered by some pesky obstacles otherwise known as policies and procedures. You work tirelessly, are just inches from a reaching a Eureka! moment, only to have one of the following happen: You get thrown out of the conference room because you didn’t sign up for the time slot You get dragged into staff meeting You need … [Read more...]
On the Value of the Arts
Why do the arts matter at all? For some, the special characteristic of the arts and humanities to teach us to hold more than one truth in our heads at the same time (Martha Nussbaum identifies this as training in the Socratic Method – an essential skill for a functioning civil society) is reason enough.[1] The uniquely vicarious experience that experiencing a great work of art gives us allows for a particular kind of empathy – an understanding of how someone else views the world. And surely we need that now. Last year a study was released … [Read more...]
Sinéad Cusack, An Ode in Prose
In honor of Arts Advocacy Day, we at NAS are pulling back the curtain a bit and share our own thoughts on why the arts matter? We're continuing where we started last week with posts by members of our team. We invite you to add your thoughts as well. As a 14-year old boy at school in Alexandria, Virginia, I had an embarrassment of riches: the chance to see as much theater as I wished by merely signing my name on a piece of paper at school. For a short time, I decided to ignore this in favor of more important pursuits like buying a fake ID … [Read more...]
Bringing People Together to Improve the Place They Love
Before coming to National Arts Strategies, my office was a shady spot under a mango tree in the front yard of my compound in Ati Atovou, Togo. Days in Ati-Atovou passed mostly in the same manner as they do in my DC neighborhood: people wake, do good work, laugh with the people they love and nourish their bodies with favorite local dishes. When I made the decision to spend over two years in Togo as a Peace Corps volunteer, I was worried that I was turning my back on a career in the arts that I was so passionate about. What could Togo offer … [Read more...]
Arts as an Engine of Unrest
Or, How the Arts Ruined a Perfectly Good Childhood
Art makes people happy. Lots of individuals and institutions are now looking at proving and understanding this link. To some it’s the holy grail of arts impact. Who doesn't want to feel good? Well… I don’t. Or, at least I don’t think that’s where the real power of the arts lies. For me, the arts matter because of their ability to do just the opposite. I was raised in a tiny farming community in Northern Arkansas. We didn’t have a symphony. We didn’t have a museum. We didn’t have much “Art” to speak of. If forced to name the town’s cultural … [Read more...]
Everything I Know about Why Art Matters I Learned from My 5-year-old
I have the privilege of working in a museum that prioritizes making meaningful connections between art and people’s lives, and because it is my job to help frame opportunities for visitors to ask questions, to try new things, and to stretch their perspectives through art, it becomes easy to see, on a daily basis, why art matters. Art is an equalizer in those moments, helping individuals or groups make connections across diverse viewpoints, backgrounds, and ideas. But, it is my five-year-old daughter who has reminded me how naturally creative … [Read more...]
Why the Arts Matter
In honor of Arts Advocacy Day, we at NAS wanted to pull back the curtain a bit and share our own thoughts on why the arts matter? Throughout the week, we will add posts by members of the team. We invite you to add your thoughts as well. … [Read more...]
The Case for Cultural Fluency
In this excerpt from "The Case for Cultural Fluency," Mikel Ellcessor introduces the concept of Cultural Fluency as it can be applied by arts and culture leaders. You can read and download his full white paper here. It’s déjà vu all over again. Picture this: you are in a meeting and you have been in this meeting many times. After another detailed mapping of the problem, someone takes a stab at a solution and says it: “We have to move beyond the current audience and into new audiences and communities.” This feels like success, right? … [Read more...]
The Under-resourced Nonprofit Sector – Crisis or Chimera?
"How many times have You heard someone say If I had his money I could do things my way" – Johnny Cash, "A Satisfied Mind" (Written by Jack Rhodes, Red Hayes) Though I lack hooves, I have a burr under my saddle. In years of working with nonprofits, I have long since lost count of the number of times I’ve heard colleagues whose work and opinions I think highly of refer to our under-resourced sector. In conference panels and on blogs, in keynotes and cocktail conversations, we are witness to (and to be fair, participate in) references to … [Read more...]
Reading List: Hacks
This post appears as a the first of an occasional series of tricks and tips you may find useful in tackling your daily challenges. Does your team ever get stuck in a creativity rut? Do you think you need a license to be creative, especially if this isn’t part of your job title or job description? Do you need a shockabuku? Even the best teams get stuck once in a while, but you don’t have to be on the artistic side of the organization to be creative. What you do need to do is practice. In this HBR blog post, brothers Tom and David Kelley of … [Read more...]
Are You a Board Member or a Bored Member?
As a leader who has a strong interest in boards and governance, I try to stay current on publications and discussions about board engagement. I have heard and read many opinions on how to keep a nonprofit board engaged, but it is usually advice for the executive director. Many articles, such as Guidestar's "Keeping Your Board Engaged for Your Cause," offer tips to the executive director about keeping a board informed and clear on their roles, goals and objectives. While this advice is extremely valid, I believe board engagement is a two-way … [Read more...]
Solving Field-wide Problems Together
How do we engage collaborators in shaping our institutional agendas? How do we create 21st century boards? How do we develop transformational employees and systems? How do we maximize the field’s value in the eyes of the public? Answer: Together. Last year, NAS brought the participants of The Chief Executive Program together at an ideation conference to collectively work on solutions to the four problems listed above. We shared our framing of those issues here in hopes of starting a conversation about them. Now, we want to … [Read more...]
Resolve to Take Back Your Time
I don’t have time to exercise because I’m too busy. I can’t spend time with my husband because I’m staying late at work. I won’t be able to see a doctor until February because I’m never free on Mondays. How many times have you used a version of the above statements? Chances are, you tell yourself or someone else “I don’t have time for that” on a daily basis. My life changed when I decided to stop thinking about my schedule as filled with commitments the universe has shackled me to, but rather as choices I’ve consciously made about how I … [Read more...]
To Be (a charity) or Not To Be, That is the $40 Billion Question
Editor's Note: With "Comments We Can't Ignore," we addressed the need to more effectively demonstrate the value of the arts to the general public in response to Robert Reich's "What 'charity' should really mean." Here, Marc Vogl offers his thoughts on charities and tax policy. Reich makes a surprisingly baseless charge when he says that the tax deductions claimed by people giving their money to charities is a $40 billion hand out "going largely to wealthy people who use much of it to enhance their lifestyles.” He takes an illogical leap … [Read more...]