ARTSblog

Drew Cameron, photo by Kari Ovik

Like many recently separated veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan era of wars, I enrolled into community college as soon as I left active duty. The war I had been a part of was just two years old and I remained uncertain about identifying as having been in the military. I was a diligent student and kept to myself but enjoyed the classroom dialogue. Occasionally related material about the wars would surface and I would share my perspective with the class. There was always a sudden quiet when I chose to speak about the war as a veteran, as if I had a just trumped the other’s ability to have a contribution any further in fear of offending or denigrating mine. “I can’t imagine what it was like over there,” was the collective sentiment much to my dismay.

Workshop in progress, photo courtesy of Combat Paper

Fast-forward a few more years of deployments, a growing population of young veterans filtering back into towns across America, the demanding fervor of war fighting and the inevitable growth of arts groups, workshops and collections of activists seeking to illuminate the complexity of it all. Yet still, our common greeting of the day for those who have returned from war is, “Thank you, welcome home, I don’t know if I have the framework to understand your experience.” There it is, but if you honestly asked yourself, don’t you want to know?

Since beginning to facilitate workshops with veteran and civilian communities in 2006 with the group Warrior Writers and then Combat Paper Project, I have noticed a growing trend in others seeking to do the same thing. Historically there is a strong tradition of individuals, groups, and organizations turning to the arts to investigate and connect affected communities in warfare. Today, whether it intuition or mandate, I am encouraged at how the arts are once again connecting not only the veteran population but civilians as well through a massive growth in workshop based practice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pomegranate Center works with communities to imagine, plan, and create shared public spaces designed to encourage social integration and build local identity.

In the world of commerce scaling up has a long history. In the eighteenth and ninetieth centuries, mass production spawned the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, scaling applied to retail businesses like fast food and electronics manifested as chain stores and franchising.

The intention with these enterprises is to maximize profit by providing reliable and affordable products and services through economies of scale. In terms of profitability, mass production, chains, and franchising have been stupendously successful.

On the nonprofit side, given the significant gap between community needs and resources it is understandable that policymakers and funders are going to eager to find ways to extend the benefits of what they see as effective ideas and practice. Slow Food USA, Link TV, and KIPP charter schools are good examples of how innovative nonprofits have shared and spread the wealth.

The downside, of course is that one-size-fits-all predictability and sameness can have a sterilizing effect on the delicate strains of quirk and diversity upon which vital culture depends to multiply and thrive. For people like me who are concerned with community cultural development, or in the current vernacular, creative placemaking, this is no small thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Jenna Hartzell

When the call for applicants went out for the first ever Local Arts Classroom (LAC) program with Americans for the Arts I didn’t hesitate to apply.

I had attended the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in 2011 and returned to work thinking, “I need more.”

I felt the need to stay connected to what’s happening on a national level, but had a desire to learn more about what I should be doing as a Program Director of a local arts agency. I read blogs, followed @Americans4Arts on Twitter, and was connected on a surface level, but missed the sense of camaraderie the convention facilitated.

Enter the LAC and a chance to learn about cultural planning, making space for art, advocacy, board and staff development, fundraising, and making the case for the arts; a chance to learn with arts administrators from all over the country; a chance to absorb different perspectives and experiences of those who know what it’s like to be an arts administrator.

I say “absorb” because that was how I approached the class: to be a sponge, and absorb every concept, idea, and piece of advice I could possibly take in.

One concept that I’ve applied frequently since I graduated from LAC is one about fundraising, planning, and community:

When planning for an event or fundraiser, organizations typically take this approach:

• Name the activity/goal/event
• Plan
• Execute
• Evaluate
• Ask: What is a success for the organization?
• Ask: Was it a success for the community? Read the rest of this entry »

Renan Snowden

Let’s be honest: sometimes evaluation can feel like taking medicine. What’s more, the results of evaluation often take the form of dry reports that are unwelcoming and, at worst, hard to penetrate. But evaluation doesn’t have to be this way.

Evaluation can be a useful and engaging process that incorporates creativity and participation to help an organization learn how it can more effectively reach its goals. Evaluation presents an opportunity for arts organizations to demonstrate the impact they are making in their communities. Incorporating artistic practice and a combination of narrative documentation and compelling graphics can make evaluation interesting and build off of an arts organization’s existing skill set.

Artists and arts organizations have an advantage with evaluation: you want it to be a creative process. Right now, some arts organizations are taking the lead in including drawing, storytelling, and graphic design as part of their evaluation process and reporting.

By making evaluation a creative and dynamic process, these organizations are helping make assessment more attractive to practitioners by showing that evaluation can build off the work your organization already has expertise in.

As a graduate student in urban planning, I’m interested in ways that the arts can help create shared spaces for community development. Writing short summaries of the in-depth resources available on the Animating Democracy website as the spring IMPACT intern, I began to notice that some of the best case studies of measuring the impact of social change incorporated the arts as part of the evaluation process. These innovative approaches to evaluation are facilitating new ways of evaluation that emphasize experience and engagement as key components of evaluation. Read the rest of this entry »

The plug first—Today is the early bird registration deadline for the 2012 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention.

Register today to save up to $175 and join us in San Antonio from June 8-10.

As if the video wasn’t enough, here are some more reasons why you should attend:

This year’s Americans for the Arts Annual Convention focuses squarely on how arts organizations can change and thrive in The New Normal—a landscape of economic uncertainty and shifting demographics. And for me, the key word is “change.”

There are so many opportunities for nonprofit organizations of all shapes and sizes to rethink how they do what they do, how they could do it all better, and what needs they are really interested in serving.

It’s the new ideas and innovations coupled with best practices that always makes the Annual Convention exciting for me, whether it’s attending as a staff member of Americans for the Arts or as an Emerging Leader 13 years ago for the first time in Atlanta.

Sessions on arts in healing, programming for culturally specific populations, and serving veterans through the arts will present what the discoveries of arts groups on the cutting edge. And speakers such as Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, and Naomi Shihab Nye, inspiring poet, will remind all of us why we chose the nonprofit arts field in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Roseann Weiss

In the second week of April, when St. Louis was blooming with an early spring, 292 people came for Rustbelt to Artist Belt: At the Crossroads—an arts-based community development convening—to be part of the discussion about the arts and social change.

This conference combined the three Rustbelt to Artist Belt meetings that took place in Cleveland and Detroit with the At the Crossroads convening that took place in St. Louis in 2010.

I proposed this combination when attending the conference in Detroit and the idea stuck with Seth Beattie from Cleveland’s Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC), the organizer of Rustbelt. With phone calls and emails back and forth and with a grant from the Kresge Foundation, we did it!

I wondered whether our gamble—combining the people who talk about creative regeneration of neighborhoods in the Rustbelt with people who practice community arts and social engagement—would pay off.

Would we all be able to significantly connect these threads that make up the fabric of positive social change? Read the rest of this entry »

Sara Bateman

For the past year, I have been captivated by the concept of how tomorrow’s arts leaders must also serve as community leaders. Hailing temporarily from Oregon, where I have been pursuing a master’s degree in arts management that focuses on community arts, the line between arts leader and community leader is one that is quickly blurring for me.

As an emerging leader who is continually drawn to work that falls at the intersection of arts and social change, my eyes are most often focused on projects that look to address civic engagement, social justice, and community development needs.

In order to produce and promote effective programming at this intersection, I have delved into graduate courses, practicums, internships, research, and beyond to inform myself in the areas of not only arts management, but also community cultural development, arts learning policy, community arts theory, and social art practice.

Leaving Oregon with my degree in hand in just a few short months, my view on the art world has widened.

I entered the degree looking for solid skills in what I defined as arts management—the programmatic, financial, and administrative aspects—and left with much more. Becoming informed in the areas of community cultural development, community organizing, activism, and beyond have opened my eyes and abilities to effectively straddle the line between arts leader and community leader.

In being both a great arts leader and community leader, there is much knowledge needed of an individual. And sometimes, as we often feel in the nonprofit world, we can’t do it all, even though we are asked to. Read the rest of this entry »

Nancy Biberman

Last month, The New York Times documented an incredible group of local artists coming together to turn a rundown (but not forgotten) Bronx building into a work of art.

The canvas was the Andrew Freedman Home, which originally opened in 1924 as a home for New York’s high society elders who had fallen on tough times in their senior years.

Decades later, when the building itself was in economic turmoil, it was saved by a community group and used for services, but “much of the rest of the vast building has been kept sealed off like a tomb, a time capsule monument to the Bronx’s grand past, awaiting a new kind of future.”

Much of the Bronx is on the threshold of this “new kind of future.”

In spite of being dealt a nearly impossible hand when the city systematically disinvested in the borough in the 1970s, the Bronx survived, and in many ways, flourished.

A haven for new immigrant populations since the early 1900s, the Bronx became a melting pot where music and culture were shared. Its diverse neighborhoods fostered both the passing on of traditions and musical mash-ups. Read the rest of this entry »

Robb Hankins

In downtown Canton, OH, through an ongoing partnership with the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce (and its Special Improvement District), we’ve spent the last five years creating the Canton Arts District.

The results have been totally amazing and changed everyone’s thinking about this downtown coming back.

In 2005, we started with three strategies: live music, galleries/artist studios, and public art. We had only one art gallery—-and not a single artist studio.

Today, the Canton Arts District has 26 galleries and studios.

The first art studios opened when local developer Mike King bought an old building down on 4^th Street NW, deciding to convert it into Studio 5. It would have five artist studios downstairs and five independent artist apartments upstairs. ArtsinStark partnered with King on spreading the word and providing a small rent subsidy for the first year.

By the time Studio 5 opened every unit was rented out and there were eight artists on the list hoping for another building. Here’s a video of how Studio 5 looked when it was just opening

As the Canton Arts District began to take shape we needed a way to let people know, so we decided to host a monthly party—-First Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Sara VanLanduyt

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Arts Council of Johnson County (ACJC) held a series of forums in 2010 for arts educators, organizations, and artists to gain a better understanding of how to support their work in the community. These ended up being the impetus for ACJC’s new website and solidified our role as a connector; a hub for the arts in our community.

The forums also introduced us to Nicole Emanuel, an artist and community developer, and inspired a partnership between Nicole, ACJC, and the Arts and Recreation Foundation of Overland Park that would become the InterUrban ArtHouse.

The brainchild of Nicole, the ArtHouse project’s initial inspiration came from her need for studio space close to home.

Through her research we confirmed that many artists living in suburban Johnson County felt disconnected from each other and from the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City. Armed with this information Nicole’s vision for the project grew exponentially; the ArtHouse would be a gathering place for artists, a catalyst for small business developmen,t and a critical link to the greater regional arts community. Read the rest of this entry »

Erin Williams (Photo by Paul Kapteyn)

Worcester, MA, is a New England industrial city busy reinventing itself.

Worcester is the heart of the Commonwealth; home to 180,000+ residents and 32,000 college students.

In the late 1990s a group of cultural organizations came together to create a unique coalition, in partnership with the City of Worcester, which shines a spotlight on the creative activity taking place in the region.

The Worcester Cultural Coalition is the unified voice of the cultural community. Today 72 cultural organizations (from the stately Worcester Art Museum to the feisty arts collective Fireworks) work together with creative entrepreneurs to incite a panoply of creative activity, encouraging residents and visitors alike to get engaged.

Inspired by the work of Charles Landry, an international authority on city futures and the use of culture in city revitalization, the Worcester Cultural Coalition organized a series of forums in 2005 to encourage a civic dialogue about our great city.

More than four hundred people – artists, entrepreneurs, business and civic leaders, students, and neighborhood activists – took part in many conversations led by Landry over the course of four days, which opened up a dialogue and encouraged people to express their unique vision of the city and its future direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Tatiana Hernandez

This Salon sought answers to a very big question: what will it take to move and sustain arts and culture in community development, civic engagement, and social change?

The 21st century is all about intersections, networks, and hybridity. Our goal should be to ingrain arts in community development through cross-cutting projects that seek to anchor people to place. Caron Atlas nailed it by highlighting Arts & Democracy’s new book: Bridge Conversations, People Who Live and Work in Multiple Worlds.

The Stockholm metro is not only informally known as “the world’s longest art gallery” but it’s also a leader in energy conservation — harvesting body heat from passengers to help ease heating requirements.

An example of the art inside the Stockholm subway. (Image via Wacky Owl)

This is a creative solution that puts people (literally) at the heart of the work. Erik Takeshita said it best, “the importance of culture – not just art – is critical.” To Takeshita’s point, the Stockholm metro isn’t art specifically, its culture; a way of expressing the values of a society. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Roper

On behalf of the Orton Family Foundation, I was recently visiting communities in Montana and Colorado, assessing whether they would make good Heart & Soul Community Planning demonstration projects. Part of my message during this tour was that community building and planning is broken in the United States.

Approaches to engaging the public over the last 30 years have become top-down, tired, and seemingly irrelevant. Who wants to come to a meeting to provide input on a plan developed behind closed doors and when it’s pretty clear a decision has already been made? Who ever catches the notices in the newspaper or on the bulletin boards that all look the same, are always in the same places and use technical or hot button words like updates, zoning, transportation trip levels, etc.?

In a country that expects another hundred million people by 2050, we’ve got to wake up and shake up the usual way of doing business.

To move from the left brain to the right brain, to excite people and entice them or inspire them to participate, to open up the government model and build on the assets found in our human, social, and natural landscapes. Art and the creativity it embodies and unleashes can play a critical role in this regard. Read the rest of this entry »

Harlan Brownlee

I recently attended the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in San Diego and I return from these conferences inspired and energized.

Of particular relevance to our work at the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City is the changing role of the arts in community development.

We often talk about how nothing like the arts can serve to build community. The arts create multiple points of view and bridge the gaps between social class, race, gender, and even political differences. The arts are a great unifier, allowing us to experience our common humanity.

The convention confirmed that there is a growing movement across our country in which arts organizations and arts councils, in particular are serving a meaningful and significant role in the building of community. The arts sector can work in partnership with community development agencies to be a part of the solutions needed for a neighborhood, a city, or a region.  Read the rest of this entry »

Blair Cromwell

Surreal is a good word to describe how I feel working for the Bentonville Convention and Visitors Bureau these days.

Why you ask? Well, in just five short months I will be just blocks away from the works of Thomas Hart Benton, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Wyeth, Asher B. Duran, and John Singer Sargent to name a few.

These are the guys that I fell in love with in my Art History 101 class my freshman year in college, and now, some of the actual paintings printed in my college text book will be feet away from me as I stroll through the galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

On November 11, 2011, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will open its doors to the public, changing the face of Bentonville and the state of Arkansas forever. Read the rest of this entry »