Beyond Importance
Friday, January 22, 2010 at 2:00PM | 12 Comments | Email Article | Share Article | Print Article | Permalink 
Andrew Taylor’s must-read blog, The Artful Manager, currently features a post entitled “Broken” that sums up how I’ve been feeling about the cultural sector for several years now. Click here to read Andrew’s post.
Andrew and I talked several times during this year’s Arts Presenter’s conference. It was two weeks ago today that we sat together at Remi sharing a light lunch and a heavy conversation about the state of the field and the challenges confronting us. It is no secret that we are not in our “salad days.” Challenges abound. Disruption and change dominate the contextual landscape within which we operate, yet from all appearances many people continue doing the same old same old while expecting better results.
My feeling of frustration has reached the palpable stage - that stage where my better instincts tell me to closet myself away in some remote location far away from friends and colleagues until I have restored some semblance of balance. It is sobering to feel the inner curmudgeon that I swore that I would never become taking center stage in my personal and professional persona.
This year’s conference theme supposedly focused on how to operate more effectively during tough times. My experience of the conference sessions that I attended was that this theme was paid scant respect. In its place I heard our sector’s doxology dutifully repeated over and over and over and over again:
Glory be to the arts. The arts are important. We are necessary to the well-being of society. We bolster healthy economies. We save children. We build community. It is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.
If our sector were a person, we would be an intolerable bore - like the person one meets at a party or worse, a networking event - who is driven by a compulsion to persuade everyone with whom s/he speaks how terribly impressive and important s/he is. Is it any wonder that policy makers’ eyes glaze over in sector meetings at least until they commence scanning the room for exit signs?
Let’s assume that with some people that the “We’re indispensable” argument is still required. Please, somebody tell me what our next topic of conversation is? Do we have an agenda beyond our “art-as-spinach” compulsion (Eat it. It’s good for you.)?
Let me hasten to add that I do not believe that this lack of rigorous self-appraisal and evaluation within the cultural sector is Arts Presenters' (the organization's) fault. The problem is with the field, itself: Us. We are the problem.
Sometime, in the not-so-distant past, when our sector was the subject of disrespect and derision and characterized as the toy department of life, we answered the call to defend ourselves and to make the case that what we do is valuable. At some point we've either made the case or we haven't. Either way, it is now as if we are stuck in a message-loop where all we seem to do is to act as arts advocates.
Some would say that the advocacy job is never done and never will be. They may be right. I suspect, however, that our ceaseless affirmations have stolen focus from reinventing ourselves, and from evaluating whether we're creating the value we must in order to deliver on our promises.
I would like to speak up and suggest a theme for next year’s conference: GET REAL. I would love to come to a conference where participants engage in candid and unvarnished dialogue about assessment and evaluation. No, I’m not talking about sharing evaluation that affirms that we’re important. That would be more of the same.
I’m suggesting that our sector just might have blown through a lot of time, money, and opportunities over the last couple of decades. Or, perhaps not. The point is that there is almost never any discussion about how and where we refresh and reinvigorate our sector, its people, and what we have to offer our communities. Beyond “We’re important.”
I would love to listen to conversation about mistakes or errors in direction. Poorly thought-out initiatives. Ideas that didn’t pan out. Most importantly, I’d love to hear people talk about how or whether organizational learning and advancement occurred as a result of those errors, and - if not - why not.
It is very difficult for people and organizations whose sole agenda is to be affirmed by others to engage in a robust and fearless self-appraisal. Personally I think we are strong enough and good enough to have these conversations. Whatever opportunities or resources we might have wasted cannot help but pale when compared to the good work that we’ve accomplished.
Reader Comments (12)
Neill,
I feel for your frustration, and bless you for your candor. If we REALLY care about our field, we would continue every effort to see it clearly, honestly, and with humility. Therein lies our most powerful advocacy for the future.
OMG, yes, yes, yes. You have articulated, as only you can, Neill, what I have been feeling, thinking and sometimes even ventured to say out loud. Sign me up for the GET REAL conference, but please don't make me wait an entire year to attend.
Bravo Neill!
If we are listening to our customers, I believe that this is what they are feeling and saying. And demonstrating through their declining participation. It seems our industry feels the need to insulate from the changing realities. Everywhere around us we are hearing about the "new norm", but we are steadfastly denying that it applies to us. Heck, I guess I should not be surprised - this is the same industry that abhors the term, customer! Plug on Neill, to lower your voice would leave a big vacuum.
As always -- you have provided insight and provocation that benefits us all. Thank you. Copernicus had a tough time convincing people that the earth wasn't at the center of the universe, but accepting that fact changed history, scientific discovery, geographic exploration -- you will have accomplished a great deal if you can move our field into looking up, around, and further down the road. Russell
Interesting points to apply to all fields of work, I think. As always, a great read, too.
As someone whose bread and butter comes from arts organizations and from being in British Columbia where arts funding has been cut by at least 50% in 2009, the issue of advocacy and the role of arts has been very much in our faces. I am "guilty" of helping start up an advocacy organization.
Still, I have been battling with the whole direction of where the role of the individual artist and arts organization sits and if I'm being honest (fearless self appraisal?), I think "Shut up, already. Let's get on with our lives."
Perhaps a starting place to get beyond "We're important" is to realize that to even make the statement makes us not important. Sports teams don't have to say it. Successful businesses don't have to say it. They just do what they do and people buy their product, or don't. End of subject.
Ok, not very clear on my part, but I'm still wrestling with all this. Thanks for the great thought-provoking post.
I have been mulling this over for such a long time, my appreciation for your articulate post is simply enormous.
As a funder, I meet with organizations that are suffering and others that are flourishing. So why are some gaining ground and not others? The core of this seems to be relevance. What is relevant to us, we will support with our energy, our spirit, our time, our ideas, our financial resources.
I want to go to the Get Real conference and talk about this. Yes, let's dig into the problems and the mistakes in order to learn, but let's also see who has succeeded in connecting with their community and in meeting their needs. And what does that even mean in the arts? I work in other sectors so "meeting needs" is much clearer and cleaner in the hunger relief or disabilities community. But we are creative, are we not? I agree with you Neil that we can find ways to evaluate our work and learn more about how we can engage and connect with more people.
Thank you.
Neill,
I have taken sabbatical from the arts world in order to discharge my curmudgeon and find that semblance of balance. My exasperation with all the “talk” reached a breaking point. Fear is a great motivator, and it’s always easier to talk about problems rather than to face them and take actual risks. The train of obsolescence is barreling straight at our field, and has been for a number of years now, and all we can do is point at it and discuss whether we should move out of the way.
In the meantime, you might find comfort in these Strategies articles which layout in very clear language the good and bad of real initiatives.
GET REAL should require attendees to undertake real initiatives in the year prior, and be ready to talk about them in detail at the conference.
Mark Gordon
Amen, brother. To my mind, the best art is challenging, exploratory, vexing and hopefully, ultimately exhilarating. We NEED to challenge the conventional. The policy makers who demand we justify ourselves and then ignore our sector or pat us on the head benignly will NEVER get it. Let's just look really probingly at how we can challenge assumptions, reinvent how and what we communicate, and make good, lasting, impactful art. I'm TOTALLY on board for GET REAL!
Speaking as the marketing director of a small professional theater in South Carolina (Centre Stage, Greenville), let me add this to the mix. We're in the ENTERTAINMENT business. That's how we sell tickets. It's also how we get sponsors. Grants, however, still must be won by tauting the "importance" of our "art."
The thing is that advocacy and affirmation don't need to, and shouldn't, be synonymous. We can be arts advocates without being annoyingly self-affirming or self-righteous.
We actually have a lot to learn from spinach. The "Eat it, it's good for you" is the argument parents use to force kids who aren't old enough to understand or care about the actual health benefits of spinach to eat it. But spinach does have documented health benefits that can be clearly and objectively stated. You can construct a more convincing argument about spinach. The most important project for would-be arts advocates should be constructing a more convincing argument about the arts.
And the construction of that argument can/should happen in a wide variety of different ways. Documentation, experimentation, reevaluation, reinvention, self-criticism, they're all important parts of discovering how we can make a case for the arts that's a strong one. One that isn't simply preaching to the choir.
Broaden the definition of "arts advocacy" as I believe it should be broadened, to include much more than affirmation, and I think I'd side with the folks who say that the advocacy job is never done. What you're calling for is for us to be thoughtful, dimensional, ACTIVE advocates rather than disembodied mouths mindlessly screeching praises that are fast ringing hollow.
Neill,
You make great points about needing to see our world in a different light. The old way of doing things is not going to get us ahead in the new economy. People are thinking differently and we're all fighting to keep our buggy whip factories in business. That's not how we will grow and thrive. The landscape has changed.
I don't have any answers but I do have a lot of questions. The big one is - how do we continue to make arts and culture relevant beyond those of who are already 'believers'.
Thanks for keeping all of us on our toes.
Amy