While I’ve been overcoming the sleep deprivation and the jet lag, I’ve been reviewing what went down at this year’s massive National Performing Arts Convention and contemplating why it’s left me both incredibly inspired and intensely frustrated by the state of the arts.
Unlike the sort of test-run NPAC in Pittsburgh in 2004 where meeting-and-greeting outside my field was possible due to proximity in hallways between sessions but a high hurdle to clear, this time around the individual disciplines had a reason to talk to one another–they were trapped at tables together every day for an hour or more and were obliged to discuss the great issues of the day. This was a great improvement. That said, the AmericaSpeaks process was a lesson in everything that seems wrong to me with democracy–many people making decisions on topics most don’t have the time to fully grasp before voting requires them to take ill-formed stances. The results: average, predictable. The challenges we enumerated as a voting group of some 3000 performing arts community members:
- Our communities do not sufficiently perceive the value, benefits, and relevance of the arts, which makes advocacy and building public support for the arts a challenge at every level.
- The potential of arts education and lifelong learning in the arts is under realized.
- The increasing diversity of our communities creates an opportunity to engage a variety of ages, races, identities, and cultures in our audiences and organizations.
That said, overcoming some of these challenges and making improvements will certainly help our social and economic standing, if not our art. In many cases it may add spice there, too. But the process that carried us to embracing these goals wasn’t designed to push at the field’s status quo. In our conversations together (often limited to 20 minutes at most per topic area) there was no time to think beyond the usual suspects, beyond the usual frame of reference. Voting felt like boiling things down, not building possibilities up. Maybe my expectations were too great, my desire to have it all now too outsized. Perhaps that’s where we are now set up to go next time, without tripping in the ditch of misunderstanding where our colleagues in other areas are coming from. I often find I’m set to “full steam ahead” at the risk of immediate scalding. But still: profile, education, diversity. You don’t say?
Speaking of not understanding where people are coming from, I admit that I was one of the groaners when it came to plenary speaker Jim Collins. “Doesn’t he write those books business people buy in airports,” I’d announce to everyone I discussed his session with. But he gave his “Why Business Thinking is NOT the Answer” talk with revival-tent bravado and it was filled with some take-away gems. Survival is not about circumstance, but about choice and discipline. “Who” comes before “what” when choosing the team, and then the impetus needs to be on creating conditions and leadership where people can unify around not the “consensus” idea, but the “right” idea. (Yeah, well, no one said it was crystal clear and easy. He still wants you to buy his books at airports.)
Collins also stressed that we need to look to the successes in our field like beacons, that greatness is cumulative action not a single event, and that decline can be in process long before we see the shadow it’s casting. But fire a bullet, not a canon ball, and calibrate your strategies before empting your clip.
In the end, he urged those in the room to hold true to our core values but not to fear changing our practices. The key, he suggested, is to hold tight to who we are, but not to confuse that with keeping a death grip on what we do and how we do it.
Now that we’ve come back down the mountain, sounds like it’s time to go to work. The next challenge is a personal one for anyone who wants to lend a hand: What can I do to further these goals?
Although I would like to believe that socialism or democracy would work for the arts, I am not convinced. On the other hand, a meritocracy is wholly dependent on who and how to judge “merit,” not to mention the sometimes-deliberate and sometimes-unwitting exclusion of people operating outside the usual channels.
Two questions:
What would happen if mandatory term limits were applied to Artistic Directors, and they had to move to a different organization after four or five years?
What if consortium commissioning became the norm for new works? When presenters/ensembles join forces to bring a new work into being, it ensures multiple, geographically diverse performances, it provides a larger pool of financial resources to compensate the creative artist(s), and it might lead to more creative and wider-reaching promotion of the work-to-be. On the other hand, this could also lead to the “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem.
Molly, a lot of people have raised concerns that not enough artists, or not a wide-enough range of artists, were represented at the conference. I haven’t heard this complaint (yet) from anyone who was actually present at the conference. What was your take on the ratio of artists to administrators and/or promoters? Were there some people who wore multiple hats, people who were artists as well as administrators/promoters? Did the artists and administrators interact beyond when they were trapped at tables together?
Molly replies: Oooh, Corey, good points. A lot of care and attention was paid to making sure artists felt welcome and hundreds were present (not sure of the exact number). Their presence was palpable, and I feel like it did make a real difference. A composer–Gabriela Lena Frank–actually spoke very elequently at the closing session on behalf of the artists present.
Also, it’s rare to meet an “administrator” who isn’t also a passionate artist, even if the daily grind of paperwork has stifled the performer inside them. In addition to term limits, which I think is a very interesting proposal you make here, giving our administrators the space to venture back on the stage might be another place to grow.
And yes, interaction continued beyond the tables, but it was a continual struggle to fit in everything. It seems we are only limited by time at these things. No other prejudices or hidden hostilities divide us. Conference could have easily lasted all month.
Much thanks for sharing your skepticism about the AmericaSpeaks process at NPAC.
The short time-frame for processing ideas does tend to support the status quo and leaves few opportunities for innovative approaches to percolate to the top.
One of my frustrations, as somebody who was not at conference, was that the conversation that started at NPAC about the future directions of the performing arts does not appear to be a conversation that will continue online or in any other format. Here’s my post in my Great Dance blog about what I think is the failed Internet strategy for the conference.
In the best of worlds, I believe, this interdisciplinary conversation would have started a month prior to the conference. So when the face-to-face brainstorming started, everybody would have had more time to reflect on what ideas and suggestions they wanted to propose.
Molly replies: Just to be clear, though I was frustrated by the process, I still think good work can come out of what we’ve started in Denver. As in any democracy, however, no one else is going to do it for us. Now it’s our turn to take up the mantle. To start, let’s make this space a place to continue the conversation. If there are any materials we need to do so, I’ll try and get them for us.
I did not attend the Performing Arts Conference, but I’m off to Americans for the Arts later this week and judging by the session topics, some of these same issues will be on the agenda. The question I would like to raise is this: we seem to be talking a lot in the industry about educating civic leaders about the economic, educational and civic benefits of the arts, but then we make the assumption that what they need to do is to provide us more funding without questions (because we are the Art Experts) to do exactly what we do now. Why do we assume that everyone else needs to change but we do not?
This is the same question I ask when people talk about the benefits of arts education — as in the statement above that the benefits of arts education are underrealized. One of the benefits that is often mentioned is that the arts allow students (and the implication is, especially at-risk students) an opportunity for health self-expression. Yet most school music programs consist primarily of choir and band — exercises in discipline and teamwork for sure, but not self-expression. Very few students can participate in music other than as an audience member if they are not talented enough to participate in a performance ensemble — or even can find the time in their schedule to take something else if they are in sports. Massive reforms in arts education would be needed to allow ALL students and ALL citizens to realize the benefits of the arts. We would need to institute participatory experiences for students other than the “talented” ones, regular and meaningful appreciation and history courses, regular exposure to the arts of cultures different than our own (other than the requisite Hannukah song on the primarily Christian holiday choir concert) and opportunities for self-expression on all levels.
Perhaps that’s the next conversation!
Molly, I agree that much good can come from the process that was started at conference. And for this to happen, I think that conversation has to continue in a meaningful, spirited manner online.
The first thing we need to do is get the data, charts and results from the townhall meeting so that we have a beginning point for these online conversations.
I actually emailed AmericaSpeaks this morning and I’ll email the publicity people for the conference.
Molly replies: Here are some of the initial slides. More are promised.
UPDATE: There are posts featuring the detailed voting results of the NPAC Town Hall Meeting up on the AJ NPAC blog. Click through for results on:
I agree with Corey that truly democratic implementation of arts education is unlikely in this country. Having not attended the conference, and really only knowing arts education from a student’s perspective, it seems to me that yes, proving the arts’ worth, at least at the grade school level, is an important goal, but how we prove it is another story. One of the relatively popular (12%) responses to one of the survey questions about improving the arts’ image on a national level was providing data the refects the arts’ value. Instead of teaming up with big name artists to promote the idea of arts education, perhaps big name scientists, or scientists from big name universities, could demonstrate music’s cognitive benefits to the growing mind – the relationship between music and math; the mental exercise of learning a new written language of time and pitch; etc. This type of information, and stats to support it, could entice the government to support arts education to a greater extent. If more kids are playing music, and actually continuing it instead of dropping it after middle school, and they’re doing better on the state or national tests because of it, most people aren’t going to argue. I think the hypothetical worth of a young person’s self-expression, which the arts can provide, is just too vague to be used tactfully in an argument.
Another issue that came to mind when I looked at the survey graphs was the percentage of participants involved in ‘popular/world/new’ music versus orchestra or band. Since most kids are a lot more excited by pop than classical, and since we’re well into the age when major political figures are bringing popular music into their campaigns, why not add more of this into standard music education? I hate to reference School of Rock (which I’ve only seen part of), but there’s probably some truth in teaching to kids’ daily culture to some degree. And at a conference for the arts, shouldn’t pop and world genres be represented to a larger degree?
Molly,
After reviewing the summary data from the slides of the Town Meeting process, what strikes me is the general support for a top-down strategy for enhancing arts advocacy.
From my perspective, I think little consideration was given to grassroots efforts, especially those involving the Internet — I wrote about this topic in my blog this morning.
I also feel that too little time was provided for the delegates to reflect on the topics they were voting on. So they were not nearly as informed as they could have been.