Tracy Graziani

At the recent Americans for the Arts Annual Convention the Arts and Economic Prosperity IV research was released to the public and the media. One of the trends noted in the presentation is the increasing urbanization of America. More and more people are moving to cities. This reality is posing unique challenges for small and medium-sized cities and towns.

In the 90s the big box stores descended upon Middle America with pervasive force, edging out “mom and pop shops” left and right. Some bemoaned the change, others viewed it as progress, and ultimately the “boxes” took over.

In the recent economic downturn many of those big box stores have left small towns, or significantly reduced their inventory. Now the residents can’t buy what they need at the big box or the “mom and pop,” so they turn to the internet or drive to a larger town. Of course the problem with this is that the commerce is then benefiting another community either where the online business resides or simply a bigger city in another county nearby.

The decreased tax revenue as well as the loss of commerce has a direct negative impact on the livability of these communities. Either the taxes have to go up or public services like nonprofits, schools, police, fire, and roads suffer. At least in our small town, the latter is what we have faced.

This leads us back to where we started—the research. When the livability of a community is subpar, educated and affluent people are more likely to leave, hence the migration to larger cities and towns. Some people even refer to this migration as “brain drain.”

Mansfield, OH, is a town that typifies this scenario. The arts organizations, nonprofits, and public services are all struggling to find their way in an economy that is increasingly unfriendly to small towns. The people of Mansfield, like the people in countless small towns across America, love their community and have high hopes for reviving their hometown. They have come together in some interesting ways as we adapt to the tougher times.

Here is an example of the ads you can run promoting arts and business partnerships in your area. Click on the photo to visit The pARTnership Movement website to learn more.

Our community development group, Richland Community Development Group (RCDG) has very active sector groups including the “Be Focal Buy Local” action team.  This group in particular has been pivotal in helping my organization, the Mansfield Art Center, develop business partnerships in creative ways.

A key theme at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention was the value of creating corporate partnerships. In the traditional sense, that is nearly impossible in small cities and towns. Nearly all corporate presence in Mansfield is at best tertiary to the main office of a given corporation and none of the decision makers who affect philanthropy are in our town. As you can imagine, that means very little corporate sponsorship is available for the arts and other nonprofits.

One notable exception is the model used at Aetna. They have a long tradition of corporate philanthropy that is very friendly to the arts, in fact last year Americans for the Arts awarded them a spot on their BCA 10: Best Companies Supporting the Arts in America.

This company utilizes a large work-from-home employee base. These employees can volunteer at local nonprofits while being paid their regular Aetna wage. In fact, Aetna has even taken an active role in leveraging some of that work from home staff at the Mansfield Art Center. That’s a really great contribution they’re making. It’s not a check, but I need volunteers as well.

Another trend, also discussed at length during the convention is the local movement. There is increasing focus on shopping, dining, and sourcing locally. Whether through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or a simple focus on shopping at local and independent merchants, the local trend is becoming popular in big cities like Detroit, where they just celebrated “8 weeks under 8 Mile”, or small towns like Mansfield, with our active “Be Focal Buy Local” group. At least for my organization, this is our tipping point where we are seeing the greatest impact on sponsorships and corporate membership.

Our active involvement in the “Be Focal Buy Local” action team has led to some less traditional sponsorships. A local auto dealership, Mansfield Motor Group, like many businesses, places philanthropy in the hands of their marketing department. They were interested in supporting the arts, in large part because our patrons are a key demographic they hope to reach for their business. The dealership’s owner and I created a customized sponsorship that met his marketing needs and provided us with the sponsorship we needed for our summer arts festival, Mansfield Art Explosion. He wanted to do something that would show off his cars, and an outdoor arts festival is a great location.

The resulting idea is fun and fits the needs of both organizations. We will have five white cars on our lawn that day, which will be painted with water-soluble paints by local artists. Thanks to their financial support we have the money to more aggressively market the festival with billboards and radio ads, something we couldn’t afford to do in the past. Of course Mansfield Motor Group will receive credit in all of our marketing.

Another interesting opportunity that has emerged as a result of our involvement in the business community is our new text marketing campaign and sweepstakes. Another member of the “Be Focal Buy Local” group owns a text marketing business, MOcoopinz.com. He offered the Mansfield Art Center a special reduced rate on his services since we are a nonprofit and he wishes to support the arts.

Text marketing could help us better reach that coveted 24–35 demographic that we hope to expand within our membership, so we were excited to start the campaign. One of the best ways to build up a good cache of “opt-ins” for text marketing is to offer a sweepstakes.  This is where another interesting sponsorship opportunity emerged.  It is even more impactful to offer a small reward for every opt-in in addition to the grand prize.  We really couldn’t afford to buy prizes to pass out for the opt-ins, but a local wine shop and wine bar, The Happy Grape, made a very generous offer. Not only would they give a $50 gift certificate toward the grand prize, they would also give a free piece of chocolate cake to every person who opted in. Let’s face it that is a pretty sweet deal, who doesn’t like cake?

In Middle America’s small towns we have much to be concerned about. There is a fear that our way of life may be fading away in the shift toward all things urban and corporate, but there are glimmers of hope that a new future will emerge for towns like Mansfield.

The Mansfield Art Center has experienced over 30 percent growth in memberships this year and things just keep getting better. All of this is thanks to our willingness to adapt to our changing economy. Are times tough? Absolutely, but the staff at the Mansfield Art Center is innovating in exceedingly creative ways as we find our place in a shifting economy.

This post is one in a series highlighting The pARTnership Movement, Americans for the Arts’ campaign to to reach business leaders with the message that partnering with the arts can build their competitive advantage. Visit our website to find out how both businesses and local arts agencies can get involved!

Ben Davidson

Way back in May of 2009, Americans for the Arts began recruiting local, regional, and statewide partners for the Arts & Economic Prosperity IV national economic impact study. After three years of day-to-day project managing, data collecting, number crunching, and report writing, the study is finally complete and the findings have been released. Trust me, NO ONE is more excited about that than I am!

A research project of this scope and magnitude delivers a myriad of emotional highs and lows. Mistakes are made; then mistakes are fixed. Deadlines are missed; then “extended” deadlines are set. We all know the drill.

I am 100 percent certain that at least once, each of the 182 study partners wished I would just go away and leave them alone. I’m incredibly thankful that each of the partners stuck with the process. Their hard work made this study the largest and most comprehensive of its kind ever conducted. Many people have asked me about the specific challenges and successes of the project, and I’m happy to share my perspectives on a few of each.

CHALLENGES

1. Providing project oversight for 182 separate partners is a difficult task. It’s a frustrating feeling when you send an e-mail to 182 people, and your inbox immediately starts filling with requests for clarification. I knew immediately when my directions weren’t clear enough.

2. Utilizing multiple sources of data can be confusing. In the states where the Cultural Data Project (CDP) has been implemented, we used CDP data in addition to our AEP IV organizational survey (so that arts organizations submitting a CDP profile didn’t need to complete our survey as well). This tactic definitely reduced the burden on the organizations from which we needed to collect data. Unfortunately, it definitely increased the burden on my team and on our study partners located in those CDP states.

3. The fact that the study partners collected more than 150,000 audience-intercept surveys was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because it is unquestionably the largest sample of audience spending data that has ever been collected. It was a curse because that equates to 32 legal-sized boxes full of surveys that required sorting, coding, and data entry. As my team processed the mountain of surveys, we stacked the boxes in my office. This worked fine until one Monday morning when I arrived at the office and discovered that a stack nine boxes high had collapsed across my desk—spilling neatly bundled surveys out into the hall, crushing my work phone, and staining my office door with blue ink from the boxes. Colleagues said I was lucky that I wasn’t at my desk when it happened, but I thought it might have been a fitting way to meet my demise… 

The great audience survey collapse of 2012 in my office.

MILESTONES & SUCCESSES

1. I received the first shipment of completed audience-intercept surveys from ArtsMemphis (thanks Karen!) on January 26, 2011. At that point, there was no turning back.

2. Early in the process we knew that the fiscal year we were studying was on the tail end of the Great Recession. Cultural organizations were facing unprecedented funding challenges during FY2010; some were even closing their doors permanently. More than once I said that the headline for the findings would likely be “Researchers Choose Wrong Year To Conduct Economic Impact Study.” But the findings are once again a GOOD NEWS story for the nonprofit arts in America. In spite of the economic challenges that all industries faced in 2010—crests in unemployment and foreclosures, troughs in consumer confidence and discretionary spending, and declines in overall attendance to arts events, professional sports, and leisure travel—the nonprofit arts have proven to be a resilient industry that supports local jobs and generates government revenue…even during the worst recession of our lifetime!

3. Meeting so many of the study partners at our Annual Convention in San Antonio last month was my personal highlight. I found value in watching the partners become more comfortable with the data during the daylong media training preconference. I was happy for the opportunity to answer their questions and to thank them for their hard work.

4. Largest. Study. Ever.

I’m proud of the work that my team and our partners accomplished on the Arts & Economic Prosperity IV study.

Of course, I’ll need some time before I’m ready for AEP V!

Taking a convention break to enjoy a puppy webcam.

“I kept looking around and wondering: Do I belong here? Do I want to belong here? I mean…What if I don’t want to be a nonprofit rockstar?”

The question hit me hard. I was leading an informal roundtable on work/life balance at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, and a young mother was talking to me about her experience at the Emerging Leaders Preconference.

She was referencing the second of two mind-blowingly awesome sessions by Rosetta Thurman, a 29-year-old writer and career coach who co-authored How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar: 50 Ways to Accelerate Your Career with Trista Harris, executive director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice.

In the session, Rosetta led us through the seven tenets of the book, including Developing Expertise and Practicing Authentic Leadership. You’ll have to buy it to find out the other five. I did buy it, marking the first time I’ve purchased a speaker’s book immediately after leaving a session.

There’s something weird about being in a room filled with really, really motivated young people. This was a room with the future head of the National Endowment for the Arts, the next Artistic Director of Actors Theatre of Louisville, the budding arts manager who will re-envision the museum-going experience for the 21st century.

And then there’s me.

At least, that’s always where my brain goes. Not in a good way—more of a “Why am I here and why am I in a suit?” way.

As you’ll find out if you spend more than five minutes with me, I’m from a town of about 600 people in rural northern California. I think that’s part of the reason I never feel comfortable in my business gear, and why my redneck accent creeps back every time I’m in one of these go-getter, emerging leader, nonprofit rockstar rooms.

It’s a not-so-subconscious act of rebellion against a lifestyle I’m afraid I’ll slip into, the kind where I’m still at my desk at 8 p.m. while my husband microwaves a pizza and my friends go to happy hour without me.

The young woman now sitting at my table had two small children waiting for her at home. She said, “I sat there listening to the importance of networking, self-promotion, building my online reputation, and all I could think about were my sons. I don’t know that I can do those things and still make my family my priority.”

I think we had both missed something important.

When I went to Rosetta Thurman’s book signing, she surprised me with how soft-spoken and shy she seemed. Her first session at the Emerging Leaders Preconference focused on crafting a personal mission statement based on your values; she used a photo of her grandmother to illustrate her own top value, family. She talked about being true to yourself and seeking what feeds you.

And then I—and the young mother—went to lunch, forgot everything Rosetta said, came back to the next session and chose to feel inadequate and anxious in a room filled with smart, motivated people.

When Rosetta asked someone to share what he wanted people to see as his #1 trait, he said “EXCELLENCE” with such conviction that I felt like going back to my room and finding the Hoarders marathon that is always available on hotel TVs.

I firmly believe everyone was miserable in middle school. This is something I wish I’d realized at the time, as it would have made it easier to empathize with the other miserable little wet rats trudging the halls at Scott Valley Junior High.

Here’s my attempt to share a similar belief that might make us all a little more honest at leadership convenings. I believe everyone in the room—even (or especially) “EXCELLENCE” guy—has that moment of self-doubt. For some of us, it leads to posturing or defensiveness. For others, it feeds into a pattern of perfectionism that points toward chronic stress and early burnout.

Take it easy, guys.

I like you all and it breaks my heart to see so many amazing arts managers leaving the field at 30 or 35 because they’re tired and they want to have a family. You don’t have to walk around with your hand outstretched, business cards at the ready, to be a stellar arts leader. You can live a mindful, meaningful life, and those around you will see and appreciate this. I have a strong feeling Rosetta would agree.

My heroes are not the executive directors who spend 70 hours a week behind a desk. They’re the funny, irreverent female leaders who turn off their computers and go home to their families or a large glass of wine.

My hope is to have a fulfilling life that includes children, plenty of time with my brilliant husband, and a career I love, not to achieve a certain level of greatness or storm the Kennedy Center. Also I would like a chinchilla. And a yard with some vegetables and a hammock.

These are not lofty goals but they’re far more important to me than what my title is. That’s not to say I don’t work my butt off at the office—but I also commit to my relationship, my volunteer life, and watching every episode of Fashion Star.

We all belong in the room. We are smart and passionate and we are all leaders, regardless of where we lead.

I will see all of you at the 2030 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention. So turn off your freaking computer and go home.

(Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on the Emerging Arts Leaders/Los Angeles website on June 20, 2012.)

Marisa Muller

During the Arts & Economic Prosperity IV (AEP IV)launch at the Annual Convention, Randy Cohen announced the findings of American’s for the Arts fourth economic impact study of the nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences.

As the most comprehensive study of its kind ever conducted, AEP IV documents the quantifiable economic impact of 9,721 nonprofit arts and culture organizations and 151,802 of their attendees in 182 study regions, representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In revealing the results of this extremely thorough study, Randy stated, “The arts mean business,” and he could not have been more on target.

According to the study, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $135.2 billion of economic activity, which breaks down to $61.1 billion in spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations, plus an additional $74.1 billion in event related spending. In addition to generating economic activity, the arts and culture industry also supports 4.1 million jobs and generates $22.3 billion in government revenue.

AEP IV also showed that arts audience members spent on average $24.60 per person, per event (beyond the cost of admission) in 2010. Additionally, the data revealed that arts tourists stay longer and spend more than the average traveler. Among those audience members surveyed, 32 percent live outside the county in which the art event took place and their event-related spending is more than twice that of their local counterparts ($39.96 vs. $17.42).

Even in the face of the recession, the arts have remained resilient. The 2010 expenditures by arts organizations were just three percent behind their 2005 levels ($61.1 billion vs. $63.1 billion). Although there was an 11 percent drop in spending by the typical arts patron from 2005–2010, it is still evident that communities that draw cultural tourists experience an additional boost of economic activity that continues to fuel local economic engines.

“As all budgets—local and national, public and private—continue to reel from the effects of the economic downturn, some may perceive the arts as an unaffordable luxury reserved for only the most prosperous times,” said Jonathan Spector, president & CEO of The Conference Board. “Fortunately, this rigorous report offers evidence that the nonprofit arts industry provides not just cultural benefits to our communities, but also makes significant positive economic contributions to the nation’s financial well being regardless of the overall state of the economy. This certainly is something to applaud.”

By focusing on the quantitative economic impact of the arts, Arts & Economic Prosperity IV elucidates the connection between the arts and the economy and validates the arts as a resilient industry with cultural and economic benefits.

“Many businesses support the arts across the country because they intuitively understand that the arts matter,” said Stephen Jordan, executive director of the Business Civic Leadership Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It is great to get the facts and a clearer understanding of the links between the arts and economic prosperity.”

This study compels nonprofits, businesses, and government officials to consider the arts and culture industry as a job creator and an economic stimulator.

By prompting a reevaluation of the arts, Arts & Economic Prosperity IV can be an extremely useful tool in attracting arts advocates and developing stronger, more meaningful partnerships across sectors.

As Janet Brown, executive director of Grantmakers in the Arts notes, “Americans for the Arts continues to develop the tools for arts advocates and the evidence to persuade decision-makers that the arts benefit all people in all communities.”

Stephanie Hanson

There are currently four different generations existing in the workplace and living within our communities. Each generation has unique characteristics, and preferred ways that they interact with technology, each other, and their relationship between work, life, and family.

During our Annual Convention last week, presenters for the Shift Happens in the Generation Gap session led attendees in a conversation around new approaches and strategies to promote intergenerational collaboration within the workplace. They also discussed new practices to connect with ethnically diverse audiences.

Rosetta Thurman, owner and principal of Thurman Consulting and author of the book How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar began the session by leading us through the characteristics, similarities, and differences of the four different generations:

• Matures were born between the years 1925–1945. They are best characterized as wanting to continue contributing and providing mentorship.
• Boomers are the largest generation with 80 million of them in the workforce today. Born between 1946–1964, they have a strong sense of optimism and tend to operate under the assumption that they will be around forever.
• Generation X is best known as the Slacker Generation. Born between 1965–1979, they tend to be very individualistic, but are also not interested in the corporate world. They are half the size of Boomers, and often considered the “forgotten generation” in that can be passed over for leadership opportunities simply because there aren’t as many of them.
• Millennials  were born between 1980–2000, and are growing up as the most educated generation to date, but also carry the largest amount of student debt. Once they enter the working world, they expect to be paid well not always out of entitlement but out of necessity. This generation is very technology centered and thrives in a constantly connected world.

After taking session participants through that overview, Rosetta invited us to think about our own experiences, and to highlight similarities and differences that people are seeing amongst generations in their own work. After 10 minutes of discussion, everyone came back together, and reported out from our conversations.

Here’s a few items that we discovered:

• Similarities between generations include the fact that everyone, no matter what age, wants rewards and respect. The only difference is they want it in different ways depending on which generation you’re from.
• There seem to be different attitudes around work/life balance, with session participants reporting that in their view, boomers and matures will stay at work until the work gets done, whereas X’ers and Millennials, while committed to their jobs, will leave for the day at 5 p.m.

Rosetta encouraged mentorship and creating space for intergenerational collaboration. For example, when one staff member attends a training or workshop, they must come back and report the learning from that event out to other staff.

Next, Richard Evans, president of EmcArts, talked about the challenges between the complexities in our field and the four generations working within it. He believes that as a field, we need to move towards an Adaptive Leadership model developed, practiced, and taught by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksy. Evans says leaders of organizations need to “mobilize individuals’ hearts and minds to do things different.”

There are two challenges we face. Technical challenges are those that we face every day, such as raising funds for a new program or initiative. We can improve and measure our performance on overcoming that challenge. The other kind of challenges, the adaptive challenges, rely on shift in our organizational and field wide culture that require working in new ways.

Richard encourages arts administrators to not assume that older or more experienced leaders have the sole responsibility of taking on adaptive leadership qualities. He encourages all generations to be the kind of leader who is not only heroic in driving initiatives forward, but someone who can also collaborate and facilitate well. He suggests we all download the 10 Actions of Highly Adaptive Leaders and build the principles into our work.

EmcArts recently completed a survey to NextGen leaders, (which I previously wrote about), and found that those individuals who are in highly innovative organizations are more interested in moving up within those organizations rather than those working in organizations who are doing business as usual. This is a significant reason why intergenerational leadership is an issue we need to take on sooner rather than later.

Richard posed the following question for session participants to discuss in their roundtables: “What new strategies to promote intergenerational collaboration are you seeing in your own organizations or in other organizations?”

We came back together and briefly discussed the use of consultants or contractors who have specialized skills and expertise who can provide support but don’t necessarily want to move up in the organization. We also talked about organizations that blur the boundaries between full- and part-time staff members to get work done.

One organization shared an example of how they approach everything from the point of you of who is not at the table and who isn’t speaking up. This allows the individuals at that organization to develop the ability for listening, sharing responsibility, and creating an open forum where everyone can plan a role in having a face in the organization.

Salvador Acevedo, president of Contemporánea, switched focus a little bit, to expand upon our strategies to diversify leadership and generations internally, to how we connect and diversify our audiences externally.

He began by citing our most recent census data, which announced that the majority of births in our country are now coming from an ethnic minority. Younger generations are much more diverse than older generations, and this is leading to our children being more used to collaboration and working with people who are different from them.

However, our census data does not match the leadership of our arts organizations. As an example, the Association of American Museums cites that 85 percent of museum professionals are known to be white, highly-educated individuals. So how do we make sure that our organizations are representative of our communities?

For the final question of the day, Salvador asked participants to identify what they experience as new practices to connect with ethnic and diverse audiences. Amy Miller from Ordway Center for the Performing Arts gave a fantastic example for how her organization connects with new audiences. Ordway works through cultural liaisons in the communities, preferably representing different age brackets, and reaches out to them to ask them what they need. If a community feels the responsibility for initiating a performance opportunity, they will show up.

Participants left the session by writing down one thing that they can personally do to address the millennial issue within their organizations or the diversity issue within the larger field in general.

I hope this session and conversations encourage many small changes and initiatives that could lead to big impact for not only our organizations and field, but our larger community as a whole.

Charles Jensen

One of the most important sessions I attended at this year’s Annual Convention was Salvador Acevedo’s talk on “How Changing Demographics Are Shifting Your Community.”

One of Salvador’s main points asked us to change our thinking from embracing “multiculturalism”—discrete ethnic identities that fit into neat census boxes—to “interculturalism,” a more broadly defined approach that invites people to define their identities contextually—and, to some degree, interchangeably.

Salvador cited research indicating the demographic landscape in America is rapidly changing. California is poised to become the first “minority majority” state, while several others already have collective non-white populations that outnumber the white population. Since half of all current births are non-white (or perhaps non-solely white), it’s clear a sea change is inevitable.

Salvador asked the audience in his “reverse Q&A” at the end of the session to talk about a time when we realized diversity was important to our organization. I talked about my participation on the Emerging Leaders Council (ELC) and how, just a few years ago, we released a slate of nominees for ELC election only to be criticized by our arts colleagues for releasing a slate of exclusively white candidates.

It wasn’t like we didn’t realize “diversity is important.” Of course we do. But the criticism pointed out a valid flaw in both our process of choosing nominees and the process inherent in populating the ELC.

Since then, the ELC has engaged in difficult, uncomfortable, and oftentimes unresolveable conversations about how we ensure our elected body is representative of the future of the field. Salvador’s talk provided a helpful context for thinking about the challenges we face in doing this.

On the one hand, by taking responsibility for the racial and ethnic makeup of our elected body, we a) ask candidates to fit into the troublesome “identity boxes” we will ultimately need to abandon, and b) ask candidates to “represent” communities in a way that is possibly inauthentic.

As a white person, I don’t feel like my election to the ELC was representative of white people throughout the field, nor do I feel I, in any way, sit there as a representative of my gay and lesbian arts colleagues. I can’t speak for people who look like me or love like I do. I don’t try to. To paraphrase Salvador, you can’t hold a community of people in the palm of your hand—a community is always, always a gathering of like—but not identical—individuals.

However, the perception from outside the elected body is potentially different. By being an out arts professional, my service on the ELC may communicate to other LGBT arts colleagues (and our straight colleagues as well) that Americans for the Arts and the field in general view us as legitimate leaders of the future. While I don’t personally represent them, I represent possibility. I am a presence. Still—I don’t choose this role. If it does exist, it is assigned to me by others.

How to navigate these issues in a process that involves vetting nominations and then sending candidates to our field colleagues for election is a kerfluffle the ELC is still untangling together.

The question of equity and fairness in the process continues to be the linchpin in solving our problem. Do we take racial and ethnic backgrounds into account when vetting nominations? Or do we evaluate them without any consideration of personal identity and hope for the best? At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves if our process puts anyone at a disadvantage and, if so, what that says about our values as a leadership body.

I commend my colleagues on the ELC for the open and honest discussions we’ve had about our process and about how we can move more swiftly toward intercultural awareness. But we still have work to do.

Ryan Hurley

During our Americans for the Arts Annual Convention ARTventure to San Antonio’s culturally rich Westside neighborhood, we spent the afternoon with San Anto Cultural Arts, a local organization that builds community through the process of creating murals. Outside of their small office there is a large religious mural featuring a profile of Jesus surrounded by two angels. One of the organization’s co-founders, who was kind of hanging in the background of our tour, was encouraged by the tour guide to tell this story.

When heading back to the office one day he noticed a woman, whom he later found out was a prostitute, hanging out on the border of their property near the mural. As soon as she saw him approaching she apologized for loitering and promised to leave right away. He told her not to worry and began talking with her. She told him that the church down the street wouldn’t allow her to enter, so she would often come to this outdoor mural to pray.

The storyteller wasn’t trying to commodify this story or use it as a sales pitch. He shared this experience so we could understand the human element of their work. Those moments that we experience everyday and assume that others can summon when we talk about that abstract “power of the arts,” need to be shared, built upon, and married to supportive data.

During the Emerging Leaders Preconference, Americans for the Arts President and CEO Bob Lynch said something to the effect of “…for a group of artists, we need to become better storytellers.” I think this was said in the context of arts advocacy but I believe it is interrelated to growing as a community.

It was probably because of our own personal narratives or the persuasive narratives of others that convinced us to spend our lives in a financially (and emotionally) unstable field taking up the banner for the arts. This is not to underestimate the power of studies such as the new Arts and Economic Prosperity IV (4.1 million jobs are supported nationally by the nonprofit arts sector, nice!). These studies are invaluable to a diverse field that hosts a diverse audience, but these two quantitative and qualitative narratives could benefit from becoming more intertwined.

Politicians know the power of storytelling. Listen to upcoming presidential elections (yes, sometimes storytelling goes way too far and is way too contrived, see Joe the Plumber) and you’ll hear all about “Sue from Eau Claire, Wisconsin who…” fill in the blank.

I think it is important to find consistency in narratives and strong community leaders understand that with the swinging pendulum of extreme economic, political, and social uncertainty our biggest strength is our humanity.

Again, I don’t want to underestimate the numbers, advocacy and community building needs to be a multi-tiered strategy and depending on your audience, sometimes the most compelling story is data (another example from AEP IV: The arts industry generates $135.2 billion in economic activity every year!). But I’d love to have conversations about strategies for coalescing the op-eds and the business sections into a holistic narrative.

During an arts education roundtable we discussed the power of pairing narratives and data, for example, data showing the decreased drop-out rate by students who participate in arts programming with personal narratives, better yet, giving those youth an opportunity to share their own story.

On the shaky social ground of which we’re standing, movements begin and are sustained by the interconnected power of the people, and it is our diverse yet parallel narratives that help bring us together for that long journey.

Johnny Kolasinski (Photo: Daniel Garcia)

I’m sitting in my hotel room at the 2012 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention and Emerging Leaders Preconference in San Antonio, and I’m a little overwhelmed by the whole thing. This is not only my first time at this Convention, it’s my first multiple day conference, period.

I’ve gotten an incredible amount of amazing information and met so many people in such a short period of time. Here’s some of what I’ve learned in my few days here, and some of the best advice I’ve been given.

Bring more business cards than you think you’ll need

Never in my life have I received so many business cards. I could wallpaper my living room with the new cards in my case, and still have some left over. I’m trading cards at almost every interaction. I’ve met some folks, though, that have run out of cards, or didn’t have them with them. I’d say I’ve already forgotten about 80 percent of those people. Be memorable. Carry your cards, and bring enough.

Bring snacks

You’re going to be hungry. It’s a given. “But Johnny,” you say, “my opening session has a breakfast, they’re providing lunch, and there’s a reception tonight. I don’t need to pig out.” It says they’re providing breakfast—it might just be a bagel and coffee. The lunch might be delicious and Texas-sized, but the speaker might be so enthralling that you only get to half of it.

By the time you get to the reception, your fellow arts admins might have descended on the poor, unsuspecting waitstaff like hyenas, leaving you with nothing but a quesadilla slice and three glasses of merlot.

You’ll be much happier if you’ve got an apple, some jerky, or a bag of Cheezits squirreled away.

Take personal notes

You’re probably already taking notes in your sessions. (I hope you are, at least. Conferences ain’t cheap.) Some people do it on their laptop, some use an iPad, some prefer to do it analog. It’s essential—you’re mostly here for the information, and you can’t remember everything.

Are you taking notes of the people you’re meeting? At the end of every roundtable, I’m writing down who was there and what’s sticking with me about them. It’s been a lifesaver as far networking goes—even without going back to them, I’m doing a much better job than usual connecting names with faces.

One of my colleagues gave me another great tip—at the end of the day, before you head down to the bar, go through all those business cards and put notes there. Six months from now, when you’re trying to remember who the guy with the beard that ran a similar sized theatre…somewhere…was, that five-word note will save you from three hours of Googling.

Talk to everyone

Even if you’re shy, put yourself out there as much as you can. Conferences are weird. Everyone’s here for the same reason, and no one knows everyone in the room. The people you meet expect to hear about you, they expect to hear about your organization, and they probably really like to talk about work. You’ve got an easy in.

Not only that, but most of the folks here are in a great position to either help you, help your organization, or be helped by you. Even the presenters will appreciate knowing that you’re really taking something away from their panel.

If you’re an emerging leader, (and since you’ve read this far into a post for conference newbs, I think that’s a safe bet) don’t be afraid to talk to someone you admire or you consider “out of your league.” They were in the same boat once.

Pack a sweater

This year’s Convention was in San Antonio. It was 100 degrees outside, and I packed accordingly. Inside the conference it was a balmy 68 degrees. I was freezing. Learn from my mistakes. Bring a sweater. (Editor’s Note: We always warn attendees to bring those layers, but some have to learn the hard way! :0) )

Take some personal time

There’s enough going on over the course of your stay to keep you busy from sunrise to sunset, and that’s without including happy hours, receptions, after-hours events, and pub crawls.

There’s going to be at least one block of sessions that doesn’t appeal to you. Don’t feel obligated to go—take time to sit by the pool, look over your notes, watch the free HBO, or write a blog post about what to do with your personal time. You’re going to be on the brink of information overload—give yourself a rest. That way, you’ll be at the best for the sessions that really matter to you.

Have any advice or stories you want to share? Leave a comment!

(Editor’s Note: This entry was originally posted on Johnny’s An Eye on the Arts blog on June 10, 2012.)

Liesel Fenner

2012 marks my tenth Americans for the Arts Public Art Preconference, six of which I have planned and orchestrated over the years with the help of Public Art Network (PAN) Council members and local hosts.

This year proved to be another shining star, aptly-hosted in the Lone Star state of Texas and San Antonio, a sparkling gem of creative community that rolled out the red carpet for us.

Held at Pearl, Preconference attendees were greeted to hearty breakfast tacos (localvore favorite) and iced coffee, in preparation for the 90 degree-plus predicted temperatures. Newcomers were welcomed to an orientation in Pearl’s Center for Architecture, the American Institute of Architects local chapter office with crisp-geometric interiors offering flexible meeting space (everything on casters) for PAN’s breakout sessions throughout the day.

Attendees trekked across the Pearl campus to the nearby historic Stable, an oval-shaped plan once housing up to 70 horses, today hosting 270 Preconference attendees! Texas hosts, Martha Peters of the Ft. Worth Public Art Program and PAN Council member and Jimmy LeFlore of Public Art San Antonio, led everyone in a rousing welcome.

Representatives of the PAN Council presented a state-of-the-field report highlighting critical issues the Council is addressing including: public art and quality of life, evaluation, and social practices and community engagement.

The 2012 Public Art Year in Review followed with curator presenters, Jean Greer, Daniel Mihalyo and Celia Munoz. The presenters deftly described the 50 selected projects from an applicant pool of 429. Check out this year’s projects on the 2012 Year in Review CD, or reference the project list online.

Themes that emerged from this year’s selections as described by Greer included: environmental interventions; social and political interventions; landmarks and grand gestures; community symbols and narratives; travel transformed; and pedestrian, rail, and air.

Three morning breakout sessions were offered and since I could not be in three places at once, I attended The Third Hand: Digital Tools in an Analog World. Artists, Brad Goldberg, Norie Sato, and Daniel Mayer described the development of large-scale artworks designed at reduced scale through computer-aided design software to on-site installation and the realization of projects at built scale, on-site.

Mayer’s presentation was particularly compelling with his background in art books translated to the grand corridor-scale glass art in a new addition at the Phoenix Airport, opening soon.

Attendees explored the Pearl campus with noontime tours following boxed lunches. This former beer brewery, now adaptive re-use site is still in development with construction crews actively building housing, highlighted its gold LEED rating featuring Texas’ largest solar installation to drought-resistant xeriscaping.

Site-specific artworks included a chandelier of vintage sparkly Pearl beer bottles and brightly-colored yarn bombing projects covering exposed utility pipes—creative interventions of this new San Antonio cultural destination.

A brief presentation by Preconference sponsor, Google’s Leor Stern highlighted new mapping features applicable to public art as well as the new Google Art Project segued to local host Jimmy LeFlore and highlights of the San Antonio public art walking tours scheduled for second day of the Preconference.

The afternoon breakout session on Responding to Crisis through Art was a long-overdue topic for a PAN forum and commenced with Craig Nutt of CERF (Craft Emergency Relief Fund) presenting an overview of how artists and arts organizations can prepare for emergencies.

Mary Len Costa of New Orleans presented post-Katrina artworks both temporary and permanent including the proposed ‘Wave’ an iconic evacuation way-finding project designed by Doug Kornfeld. While natural disaster preparedness was the major topic, terrorist attack response was covered by John Haworth of the National Museum of the American Indian of lower Manhattan. Check out CERF’s website for detailed preparedness tools and resources.

A highlight of all PAN Preconferences is socializing and catching up with friends and colleagues at the PAN Reception hosted by the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center.

Founded by artist Bill Fitzgibbons, Blue Star’s vast gallery space accommodated PAN and local arts guests. A blues trio treated the crowd while margaritas and delicious Tex-Mex cuisine kept coming from the kitchen. Special thanks to Blue Star, Public Art San Antonio, and Guillermo Nicholas for generous reception sponsorship.

PAN Council member and artist Sioux Trujillo, curated the ever-popular evening event, 5 in Five, with 11 artists, presenting five images in five minutes. Year in Review curators, Daniel Mihalyo and Celia Munoz were two of the selected presenters highlighting their own work, as well as reception host and artist, Bill Fitzgibbons from Blue Star.

The 7:30 AM Breakfast Roundtables are a challenge to rise for but always well-attended with topics ranging from Global Issues to The Lowdown Dirty Guide to Public Art. Alternatively, attendees had the option of taking a morning walking tour of downtown public art.

Following, attendees gathered for the presentation of the 2012 PAN Award presented to artist Mel Chin. Always unleashing the unexpected, Chin played acoustic guitar singing a melodic verse as prelude to a visual PANoply of his career capped by the current Fundred Project. Attendees dutifully filled-out a Fundred to contribute to Chin’s accumulating cache.

The Closing Plenary was a coming together of the Public Art and Emerging Leader Preconferences. Presenters Jason Schupbach, director of design of the National Endowment for the Arts, and John Bela of Rebar, were posed questions by moderator Letitia Fernandez Ivins, covering placemaking projects and interweaving the presenters’ career trajectories and leadership in the overlapping fields of art, design, and planning.

If you missed this year’s Preconference start planning for 2013, when we will be hosted in Pittsburgh, June 14–16. Stay tuned for the upcoming Call for Proposals and start thinking about topics you would like to see presented at PAN.

As we wrapped-up the 2012 Preconference, we part with an ever-friendly Texas-twanged, “see y’all next year!”

Gregory Burbidge

Last year at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, I remember two comments specifically from the town hall session. The first comment was from an emerging leader who thought that it was time for established leaders to move out of the way. It was, at best, nonsense.

Intrinsic Impact?

The second comment, the one that actually bothered me more throughout the full year, was a comment that the person was tired of hearing about the economic impact of arts and culture. They wanted a return to a focus on the intrinsic impact of arts and culture. I didn’t see that person this year, though with the focus of the conference being the release of the Arts & Economic Prosperity IV report, that person may have chosen to skip a year. I myself am data hungry and the report will give me much to chew on.

This year, more than most, the thing I noted was a pleasant drift from intrinsic impact. The subtle drift in a direction I am happy to paddle towards is into the territory of collaboration and a healthy mix of “arts and.” When we listen closely to the needs of our community the arts can help provide answers to many issues. It does require a willingness to be flexible that a focus on intrinsic impact does not necessarily provide.

Arts and…healthcare

Two of the most interesting sessions to me this year explore the intersections of arts and health. Both the intersection of the arts and healing (Art of Healing) and what the arts can do to ease the transition home for our veterans (Boots to Brushes: The Arts Serving Veterans’ Needs) are ways that the arts are meeting at the cross sections of arts and healthcare.

Arts and…journalism

Our good friends at the Knight Foundation have been hard at work for the past several years trying to fund creative solutions to the problem of a lack of arts criticism. Together with the National Endowment for the Arts, they have funded three exciting programs that everyone should be keeping an eye on (Meet the NEA: Arts in Journalism).

Arts and journalism is a challenge everyone has been talking about. Exciting innovations in arts journalism may end up finding solutions not just for the lack of arts criticism, but may in fact help establish new models of journalism that may help that field with their own sustainability crisis.

Arts and…diplomacy

A session I wandered into, and followed up with a lunch to continue the discussion, focused on the use of arts in diplomacy (Backyard Diplomacy—New Strategies for Supporting International Cultural Engagement in Local Communities). Originally I thought the session would just focus on inviting international performers into communities. I ended up hearing a story about how an American Embassy hosted an evening of jazz performances, and that diplomats that would never step foot inside the embassy showed up to enjoy the evening. The arts served as an incredible bridge and starting point to discussions that could not have taken place in any other context.

Arts and…education

Of course, our community broadly thrives when arts is integrated into education. Arts Education as Social Reform touched on one of my favorite opportunities to integrate arts into community solutions. And as luck may have it, at the $5 book table I finally found a copy of Third Space. The book follows 10 exemplary arts schools that may be filled with economic disadvantaged students, but through the use of arts integration have become beacons of success in school reform.

Arts and… 

In a shameless plug for an Americans for the Arts product, I plan to go back through the sessions that are available via Convention On-Demand to watch additional sessions I missed that cover areas of the arts being integrated into community needs.

I will be listening closely this year for those opportunities of intersection in my own familiar community, where arts can become arts and. Those places where arts meet workforce development, the disenfranchised, the military.

The arts can be amazing tools when we choose to share them in other contexts.

I would love to hear more success stories of where the arts stretch beyond intrinsic impact to intersect in other spaces. Please share in the comments below.

Susan Pontious

This session was billed as one that would explore the “new normal” for public art by considering programs, events, partnerships, and policies required for sustaining vital, culturally rich communities.

Valerie Vadala Homer from Scottsdale, AZ, began by presenting the premise that traditional percent-for-art programs enabled by legislation passed by cities, counties, and states across the country in the 1960s and 80s may have become obsolete as cities approach “build out.” She presented alternatives of replacing permanent work affixed to construction with a model that focused on art events like “Glow” in Santa Monica and temporary installations that attracted audiences and enlivened the urban landscape.

Janet Echelman, best known for her ethereal “net sculptures,” showed an overview of her work, which has been funded by a variety of sources in many different kinds of locations. She spoke from an artist’s perspective about how she was adapting her work so that her dramatic installations could travel and be installed into pre-existing architectural settings.

Edward Uhlir, from Millennium Park in Chicago, showed us what can be accomplished when a city can summon astounding sums in private patronage to commission bold, daring art and architecture on a scale unprecedented in this country.

Finally, Janet Kagen gave us a tale of two cities; one was a successful project in Clinton, NC, the other was a project for the city of Durham that was aborted when it ran into opposition by other city powerbrokers. Durham then proceeded to legislate a public art ordinance so bureaucratically Byzantine that its failure was all but guaranteed. This experience caused Kagen to conclude that communities that don’t have ordinances should “stay that way.”

This session never really delivered on its premise of providing new forms, approaches, or partnerships for public art. Since the Medicis, the world has known what the rich can do for public art when they choose to be civic minded.

What strategies did Chicago use to assemble Millennium Park’s funding consortium and what are the strategies for sustaining the level of funding needed to maintain the park’s artwork into the future? How does Chicago’s experience translate to other cities that don’t have a similar corporate presence?

We applaud Scottsdale’s successful program for temporary installations, but the concept is hardly new. What strategies did Scottsdale use to leverage public/private funds to support their program? What new funding and presentation models have they developed that can be helpful to other communities?

And please, let’s not throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water when it comes to traditional civic percent for art programs. I would argue that the failure in Durham was not that they passed a public art ordinance. It’s that they (purposefully it would seem,) passed an ineffective one. Durham could have looked to the many effective legislative models used by other cities throughout the country.

The strength of percent-for-art programs is in how they can affect the built environment. This is what they were designed to do. The results have been that artists, supported by their collaborators in both government and the community, have used these legislative mandates to take art where no one had thought of taking it before, making an impact on every aspect of the civic landscape. To suggest that this could be sustained by private funding, or even voluntary ad hoc public funding, is wishful thinking.

It is precisely because these programs are mandated that artists and administrators have had the clout to insist on the inclusion of artists in every capital project, sometimes in radical new roles. While private donors might be found for high-visibility projects, it is the mandated programs that penetrate the city fabric and help ensure art equity for every neighborhood park, recreation center, fire station, branch library, and transit station.

Of course percent-for-art programs can’t and don’t do it all. How could they?

Programs for temporary installations, art events, community, and artist-initiated projects are all great ideas and expanded private funding can make them possible.

We are inspired to expand our reach and to find new ways and means for support, identify new allies, and forge new partnerships.

You will be able view many sessions from the 2012 Annual Convention via our Convention On-Demand service which will be available in about a month, but you can pre-order and preview several sessions on the site now.

Theresa Cameron

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend another amazing Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in San Antonio. The theme of this year’s meeting was “The New Normal” which was perfect for these times of change and transition in the arts in America.

Sessions ranged from very practical like New Ways of Doing Business and Arts Education as Social Reform to the innovation sessions like How Changing Demographics are Shifting Your Community. Every session was designed to get folks thinking about ways they need to look ahead and rethink and reimagine ways they are currently dong business.

In many ways it reminded me of an Americans for the Arts Convention I attended as  a young arts administrator in Los Angeles. That convention was another time of change in America and it was an important time for conversations around money, power, and the arts in the community.

Just like those times in L.A., this year’s event helped return us to important discussions around change and where are we going as community.

What will we look like in five to ten years?

Who will be leading us?

What are the new creative funding opportunities and how can we stay relevant?

Of course, besides the sessions, there were many hallway discussions with attendees focusing on where we are going and how to get there.

It was so refreshing to hear how folks who are working to create positive change in their communities are using their local artists and organizations to move a community forward. We are all about creating change using the arts—especially in light of “The New Normal.”

I can’t wait to see where we go from here…

You will be able view many sessions from the 2012 Annual Convention via our Convention On-Demand service which will be available in about a month, but you can pre-order and preview several sessions on the site now.

Valerie Beaman

Suzan Jenkins, CEO of the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, moderated a convention panel on creative methods for growing new funding born out of the experiences of the recession. The rise of online funding campaigns, emphasis on creating partnerships with businesses and, more radically, treat all philanthropic support as start-up funding and don’t rely on it for core operating income were some of the ideas explored. The consensus was to, remain flexible but, above all, stay true to your mission.

Maud Lyon, executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan, used the Community Foundation Challenge in Detroit as an example of the challenges and best practices for online giving/day of arts giving campaigns. A major goal of the Challenge was to raise awareness for the arts and culture sector.

Referencing it as “Glitches to Riches,”  Maud said the Challenge program raised $4,992,000 million for 75 organizations in one day. While the larger organizations raised higher dollar amounts, smaller organizations raised a higher proportion of their budget size. Existing donors were the mainstay of the Challenge (59 percent), but the Challenge brought in a significant number of new donors as well (28 percent).

Lessons learned by the arts community include: the importance of being prepared with technology and social networking in order to be able to respond quickly to challenge opportunities; the future of online giving is with younger donors; and, convenience, ease, flexibility and lack of pressure are the appeals of online commerce.

Maud emphasized the necessity of a good donor database and an excellent donor stewardship program. She personally donated to twelve different organizations during the Challenge, received very few thank you letters, and only three of the twelve followed up the following year for new donations. Lost opportunities!

3-Legged Dog Media + Theatre Group in Manhattan not only suffered the loss of their facility on 9/11, they also saw a 92 percent drop in foundation funding and a 67 percent decrease in government support between FY 09 and FY 10. Kevin Cunningham, executive artistic director, believes that the current economic climate demands that we all take radical steps toward a long-term revision of operating assumptions.

Here is 3-Legged Dog’s plan:

• Refocus on mission
• Build new assets (media and design services-based earned revenue)
• Increase earned revenue (907% increase in earned income between FY09 and FY12 )
• Increase government funding from international sources (contributions in place from Danish, Norwegian, Spanish, and British partners).
• New alliances in progress with Germany, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Czech Republic
• Strengthen our flexible, responsive governance structure by rebuilding a streamlined, efficient entrepreneurial board.
• Be aggressive–use assets. You can’t “cut” your way out of disaster (have cut budget by 50 percent but with no program cuts or delays)
• Grow! (multiple new partnerships and long term contracts—many new partners across disciplines and sectors. Caveat: only partner with people who share your mission!
• Act tactically, opportunistically, and entrepreneurially (flexible space scheduling, re-imagine artistic, technical and business networks and collaborative structures as a resource)
• Spend as you go, spend to grow (no new debt incurred since FY 08—on demand labor model in place)
• Treat all philanthropic support as start-up funding (no reliance on philanthropy for core operating income)
• Build and leverage non-monetary assets: talent, facilities, and equipment
• Don’t compete. We are not a competitive business. Cooperate and collaborate!

To Kevin’s last point, he created the Lower Manhattan Arts Stabilization Fund to help member organizations resolve capital and disaster related debt.

Laura Adlers, national program manager for Business for the Arts of Canada, introduced artsVest, a Canadian national program now in its second year. artsVest is a national sponsorship training and matching incentive program created by Business for the Arts of Canada and funded in Ontario by the Government of Ontario, Ontario Trillium Foundation, and Canadian Heritage.

artsVest is designed to stimulate innovative business sponsorship and corporate engagement in arts and culture. The program is helping to build healthy, prosperous and creative communities across Canada by teaching small and midsized arts and culture organizations how to forge successful, long-term partnerships with the private sector. In addition, artsVest provides matching incentive grants for new sponsorships raised by participating organizations to spark local business support of arts and culture.

You will be able view this 2012 Annual Convention session and many others via our Convention On-Demand service which will be available in about a month, but you can pre-order and preview several sessions on the site now.

Anette Shirinian

After attending Salvador Acevedo’s session, The New Mainstream: How Changing Demographics Are Shifting Your Community, at our Annual Convention in San Antonio this past weekend I learned that there are already five minority majority states in the U.S., and they’re not little.

California, Texas, New Mexico, District of Columbia, and Hawaii all currently have less than a 50 percent White population. This is a huge shift considering that America’s population was about 90 percent White up to the 1970s. It has since declined to 60 percent and continues to follow this pattern. The Hispanic population on the other hand is growing rapidly with an estimated 167 percent growth by 2050 (142 percent Asian, 56 percent Black, 1 percent White).

How does this affect the arts?

Well it proses a huge problem when less than 50 percent of our nation’s population is White, yet your audience is 70–90 percent White. As Salvador said, “we must diversify our audiences, otherwise we will become irrelevant.”

As “prime vehicles for intercultural understanding” (my favorite quote from the session), arts and culture will not survive if it does not reflect our population as a whole. So how do we prevent ourselves from becoming irrelevant?

You must practice what you preach. The change must start internally within your organization before you can start to diversify your audience. Salvador calls this the “intercultural strategy.”

What is interculturalism? It is when cultures actively integrate with one another and form a completely new identity. We can see this trending in popular culture already. Salvador had some great examples to help illustrate this idea for us, one of them being food trucks.

He used a popular San Francisco food truck named Sushirroto that combines sushi and burritos to create a new type of food. Sushirroto is not considered sushi nor a burrito, not Japanese nor Mexican, but rather its own, new identity. The important thing to point out here is that even though two cultures come together to create a new identity, it is still very much prevalent which two cultures they are.

Interculturalism maintains the originating culture’s identities and respects them as a combination rather than a blend. To further illustrate this point, Salvador showed us this commercial for DJ Hero 2:

This same concept also applies to sub-segments within a certain demographic that also integrate with one another. Marketing and engagement is proven much more successful when all integrating parts are respected and targeted to.

Now none of this will be effective if you don’t represent the audience you are trying to reach. This is where the “intercultural strategy” takes place and here are three steps that Salvador outlined for us to implement the strategy internally:

Your organization must publicly take a stance on diversity

1. One or group of staff members must be appointed to take responsibility and action upon this stance
2. Structural changes must be put in place internally

In order to reach a diverse audience authentically, you must have real live representation of that audience within your organization. Solving the problem from the inside out increases communication and integration, resulting in more efficient audience engagement.

Salvador proved to be a very engaging speaker and was able to deliver loads of valuable information in just a little over an hour and it was really great to have him present at our Convention.

The artist-initiated Victory Garden project outside of San Francisco City Hall in 2008 spurred a city-wide urban farming movement.

The Public Art Network and the Emerging Leaders Preconferences converged for their combined closing plenary session: “Multiple Meanings: The Expanding Role of Leadership in Creating Place” with Jason Schupbach (National Endowment for the Arts [NEA] Director of Design) and artist John Bela of Rebar in San Antonio on June 8.

The session sought first to explore the somewhat unsuspecting backgrounds of Jason, with a B.A. in Public Health and M.A. in Urban Planning, and John, whose education skipped from biochemistry to sculpture, performance, and landscape architecture, illustrating the benefits of their eclectic and complimentary experience to the arts field.

What does this reveal about the work of creative placemaking?

Because, in my unauthorized definition, creative placemaking is about cross-sector collaboration in which artists are a catalyst for public participation and community transformation. In order to infiltrate community, master planning processes, and policy, artists and arts professionals alike must speak the language of the architect, the planner, the social worker, the community activist, the health care provider, and the politician OR find internal allies so that we have support in the calculated risks that are intrinsic to making a social impact and to making art.

John’s formula for creative change: the Advocate, the Artist and the Guerilla Bureaucrat. For me, the latter offered the biggest conference take-away (the tantalizingly oxymoronic term also mentioned in a previous Public Art Network session).

What does this mean? What does this look like? John gave us a personal example. He led the now international “Park(ing) Day” movement with the encouragement of an admiring San Francisco planner who advised that the event not become an official government sanctioned event, but one ultimately facilitated by, though not associated with, the planning department. This latent support allowed for the event to flourish organically, sending an independent plea to city officials for more parkland.

So, how do we support naturally occurring creativity within the communities that we work? The economic crisis, the spike in urban growth and the local movement beg us to produce work that is not only relevant but also authentic to the site. This means, as discussed in the following Convention Town Hall, that tapping local culture and talent as a source of distinction, pride, and social capital is a strategy for achieving community health.

Where do artists fit into this picture? Artists, as affirmed by Jason, will always be called upon to create high-quality artworks, however, in the work of placemaking, experience in public practice and a greater variety of disciplines is an asset. Artists will never work the same way, nor conform to a certain practice in order to get more work.

Authenticity, too, is key to an artist’s style. Artists must align their personality and unique process to their mode of accessing the public and sourcing inspiration outside of their studio. With that, I am heartened by the NEA’s vocal of process—from the process of engaging a neighborhood in order to understand its creative pulse to long range community development planning in which an artist is at the table.

Let us follow their lead by entering into comprehensive strategies that make room for what we do best: experimentation.