First, they define the community. Then ask what they need, not what they want. Finally, they don’t confuse it with some irrelevant “artistic vision.” Why isn’t yours doing that?
One of the great bugaboos of the nonprofit arts industry is that, while it must be responsive and responsible to the communities in which each individual charity operates, the definition of community can sometimes be purposely made vague to suit the organization’s operations.
A community to be served cannot be defined solely in terms of ticket-buyers and donors. That kind of self-indulgent, wrongheaded thinking in the nonprofit arts sector has relegated it to the irrelevant elitist dog show that it has become. A community is defined as a group of people whose relationship to each other defines their existence. One nonprofit arts organization defines it like few others.
Welcome to Arts Capacity.
“I think it’s the structure in our country that doesn’t allow us to be our best selves,” said Arts Capacity’s founder, Holly Mulcahy, a brilliant orchestral musician in her own right. “We’re considered elitist, and it just boils down to human nature, wanting to belong and wanting to exclude. To me, that defeats the purpose of what we have. It’s wanting to feel like you’re part of something, and in order to do that, you need to exclude somebody else. The classical arts have never gotten away from that structure that started in Europe, where our patrons were kings and where artists were at the mercy of the wealthy.”
If not for Arts Capacity, an organization created to pull together and solve the problems of the incarcerated community — and yes, that is a community — the general public and the prisoners themselves would be relegated to an unrelenting vicious cycle of crime, incarceration, release, quick recidivism, incarceration, quick recidivism, etc.
They do not work with the incarcerated community in order to get good reviews, achieve some vague definition of excellence, or to sell albums. The company’s intention is to create a better world. The core of the mission statement can be restated as this: “Arts Capacity helps people in need.” As their website states, they do it through establishing a common language of music in order to help prisoners “cope with challenges and develop the capacity to experience change for good.”
“Our intent is twofold,” continued Mulcahy. “We offer a way for the incarcerated population to use music and the arts to find feelings, to harness ways to connect with people through prosocial behaviors, to enhance emotional intelligence, all using a platform of either creating art or digesting art. The other reason is that I wanted to quantify the value of music. In this industry — whether it’s symphonic, chamber, or what have you — we all say ‘Music makes you feel better. It’s so wonderful. It’s so good for you.’ But we don’t quantify it. That’s what I’ve been doing for eight years, is gathering the data. I can give you the numbers, and I can give you the success rates to quantify the value of the arts.”
“In the symphony world,” she sighed, “where I have been for 30 years, everybody is convinced that children need music. Children need concerts. ‘We must have busloads of kids coming to our concert halls.’ Then the only data that some organizations show is that 30,000 kids come to their concerts. But that’s not a metric, is it? If nothing else happens, it’s just a pleasant field trip. Arts Capacity does keep quantifying. Sure, we know how many people show up. But we also know if the audience is growing, what kind of music they like, how they like the music, how it’s tracking, and how it’s affecting recidivism. It’s taken eight years to get the recidivism data metric.”
“Some of the surprises come with new looks at the data,” she beamed. “How is what we do positively impacting prison staff? How is it positively impacting the regular concert audiences that are curious. Why did a given prisoner resonate with a Jennifer Higdon string trio, and why should I go to live music concerts? That anecdotal data is important stuff, and we can point exactly to why that conversation got started. So it’s not just prisons, it’s 360 degrees, expanded in every direction.”
Arts Capacity’s devotion to service came, at least at first, without the ropes of extortion that too often accompany major gifts. Mulcahy was the concertmaster for the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra and started this program 30 miles south of there, at Walker State Prison in Georgia.
“Of course, we had to meet budget and to pay musicians,” Mulcahy recollected. “But it wasn’t like we need a gigantic chunk of cash. We started with a story. We started to show the success rate of prisoners. It was the focus on impact that manifested amazing curiosity from donors big and small. We focus on the story of why music works for this population and how it can work for anybody on the outside who may have life struggles that are similar to, say, Inmate John Doe at Walker. We came out with sincere, heartfelt stories. We’ve shared those just here and there on social media for the last eight years, that started to draw attention, and the attention started to get exponentially larger. Then when we felt it was right, when we could stand on our own and say, you know, we’ve done this the right way, which is we’re it’s not about us, it’s about what the music does. The centerpiece of this is what music does for people. We’re standing on proof, and we’re standing on something that has been sincere from the get-go. I’m just, I’m totally in love with all of this, because it speaks so much to why nonprofit arts organizations exist.”
She continued enthusiastically. “How can music help people find their own emotions, temper their own emotions. How can it help their own creativity? How can it help them connect with their families? It’s never been about saving people. I’m not here to offer music because, ‘you poor thing, you need it.’ From that, we discovered that the stories that people have in these situations mirror society in uncomfortable but awesome ways. That discovery helped me amplify what I do on stage for the paying audience.”
What separates Arts Capacity from the majority of nonprofit arts organizations in America? They do not do community service as a sideline, as an add-on, or as a program that is more attractive to grantors than the mere presentation of art (which is not a tax-exempt activity, according to the IRS). This is all they do, they do it well, and an entire community of people is made whole by their work. Get it now?
I asked her for her definition of a prison community. The depth of the answer surprised me.
“Every single prison has a different culture. For instance, the Walker State Prison, which is a medium-security, faith- and character-based prison, is fully supported by the community. They’ve got church support, they have job support, they’ve got college classes. They have high school GED. They are supported. It’s a healthy culture for a prison.
“Some of the prisons in Kansas have large populations. They are not faith and character based. Their populations are maximum- and Supermax-security, which means that they include the worst crimes. There are lifers in there. It’s equally important to give the lifers the same kind of care and treatment as the people who are going to get out. Lifers are pillars. If you mistreat the lifers, they’re going to treat everybody around them badly, including the new prisoners that come in. If you treat a lifer well and with respect, they’re going to set the tone. They know they’re never getting out. But they’re going to set the tone and be supportive of the people that will.”
The lifers are the community’s elders.
“Here’s why the lifers are important,” said Mulcahy. “You’re talking about somebody that’s going to be spending time in a prison, maybe 50, 60, 70, years, depending on when they enter, they’re never getting out. But think how many wardens they’re going to see. Think of how many staff changes they’re going to see. The workers are not pillars. Those are people that are going to a job. But the people who are stuck in the prison are so much more important as far as keeping the culture positive, and a warden can make it or break it for those people, especially for the other part of the community: their children, their families, The wives, the friends on the outside — these are the people that we don’t talk about in society. Prisoners might be seen as just people to be warehoused and forgotten about. But people like you and me — we might have somebody in prison to go visit. We might be children that go to visit their parents. So it’s important to make sure those communications are stable and open and available. There’s a lot of stigma, but the part of the community that is outside of the prison is very much attached.”
Outside the prison walls, performances and workshops can bring families together. Arts Capacity produced an opera for the inmates of Walker State Prison. After that, at the request of the prisoners themselves, they did a second performance outside the walls. That legitimized the art that was created. They performed the same piece for the prison families at no cost.
This was a stunningly happy discovery for Mulcahy.
“Many times,” she said, “prisoners will take our concert programs and mail them to their children, and their children will start the clarinet, or the children will start the violin, and that gives them something to talk about at visitation. Both the prisoners and their children talk about music.”
In the summer of 2024, Mulcahy and the group performed at a Level Four and Five prison in brutally hot Arizona. One of the inmates regularly downloads opera. Pardon the expression, but he’s a die-hard opera fan now.
She has listened both to supporters and detractors of the program. The latter group generally believes that prisoners should not receive any services. To them, the words “Correctional Facility” are just that, words. They believe prison should be all about punishment and not at all about rehabilitation or attempting to remove recidivism from the equation. Mulcahy has an answer to that group of individuals.
“Like it or not, the people who get out will be your future neighbors,” she tells them. “Do you want them to be able to handle their emotions because they’ve discovered new ways to process that through music? Or do you want them to come out just knowing how to weld and not process emotions? Asking those questions to people takes the defensive mechanism out.”
These are the laws. Any judgment short of the death penalty tells us that the corrections system should be in the business of correcting, not punishing. But Mulcahy and Arts Capacity are not looking at the population through rose-colored glasses.
“They’ve committed terrible crimes,” said Mulcahy, “but I wasn’t in their shoes when they committed them. I didn’t grow up the way they did. You just don’t know. But what I do know is the people that are going to get out are terrified. They’re embarrassed. They don’t know what to expect, and if they are supported well, as they are at Walker State Prison, there’s a better chance for winning. Don’t we all want that in our society, a better chance for winning?
“When they get out, should they continue to be punished? The law says no. I’m not a lawyer, but I know that when they get out, there’s a certain process. When that stops, they’re out, they’re done. They’ve paid their price. But still, some of them can’t vote. Some cannot get jobs, because, you know, you check that box on the job application, and that’s it. So what are these people supposed to do? They’re still here. Don’t we want them to be a functioning part of society, right?”
I asked Mulcahy to tell me (without using the words in the mission statement) her description of the punch-to-the-gut mission.
“It’s music for the people. People matter, making the music matter.”
Why does the music matter?
“It’s a platform for community, and many times when there’s miscommunications in our screwed up and challenging world, music and the arts allow for a way to speak to each other in new ways that are productive in expressing our human condition.”
In case you’re wondering, I’m a donor to Arts Capacity. They’re a beacon of charity in a nonprofit arts sector in which there are few…for now. And as I would do with a good movie, a great restaurant, or a terrific store, I want you to share in my good fortune for having found them. Send them your year-end donation, if you still do that. But give. They deserve it. And it goes without saying, but the cynics among us request this: no, they paid not a cent for this article. This is not an “advertorial.” In the coming months, I’ll be featuring more companies that walk the walk — if for no other reason than to show you that it is, in fact, possible to use art as a tool and not as a product. And to national foundation program directors: do a mitzvah and include Arts Capacity in your giving portfolio. They’ll make your foundation more valuable.
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