“Art strengthens communities,” David N. Cicilline, Providence’s mayor, told us at Saturday morning’s keynote address, “and helps build civil societies.” While this may sound like a cliché, my mind keeps returning to this phrase.
Because it’s true.
We talk about the struggling economy. We talk about ways to market our products and raise revenue for our programs—that is, after all, why we’re here at NAMP. But lost in the mad dash after attention and cash is, sometimes, the very reason our organizations came into being in the first place: the arts we cultivate.
Of course, we don’t lose track of the art our organizations cultivate; we’re neck-deep in it every day. We’ve even given up our weekend to travel to Providence to ply our trade. (Not just any weekend, either. Halloween weekend! How many of you had to check sorry, can’t make it on at least one friend’s Halloween party Evite? I did on two.)
Which leads me in a slightly random way to the thrust of this post: Why did you get involved in the arts? Was it simply because it was the first job you got out of college? Or was it because you had a passion for this particular art all your life? I’m willing to bet that most of you would probably say it’s the latter. You have a vested interest in cultivating the artistic field your organization does because you love it. Not only do you love it, maybe you even create it yourself.
And here’s the Million Dollar question for those of you who consider yourselves artists: Now that you’ve got a job in the arts, do you keep at your art? Honing your craft? Do you make a space for it in your non-working life? Too often, I hear from arts marketing colleagues who tell me they’ve been too busy to actually find the time to work on their own stuff, whatever that “stuff” happens to be.
Conferences like this are great at bringing a load of talent together. But they also remind me how much time we—the lovers and promoters of the arts—lose on our own art while in the service of promoting our organization’s noble arts (like giving up our weekends to attend this conference!). What mayor Cicilline says is true. Totally true. Art does indeed strengthen communities. And it’s our goal—no matter what type of organization we work for—to spread this message far and wide.
But by serving the interests of this larger goal, we all need to make sure we don’t lose sight of our own personal artistic goals. Art strengthens communities, the scores of people you hope to turn on to your organization. But it also strengthens us, the individual, too.
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