Americans for the Arts

Every day at work, I am reminded that the intersection between art and government continues grow in importance. Funding, allocation, and government spending is essential to developing our education system. I intern for Americans for the Arts because advocating for equitable access to art and arts education vastly improves our education system. Research shows that marginalized communities consistently have little to no access to arts education in schools. Some of the most diverse voices are being shut out of conversations and art creation. We are left with an education system that refuses to elevate some of the most integral voices in diversity for our dialogue and our art. I had the privilege of art shaping my entire childhood, but there are some places youth have no access to art at all due to systemic inequality in our education system. 

I work in the nonprofit arts sector in Portland, Oregon, which is 76% white despite the growing racial and ethnic diversity in the country. This whiteness was deliberately designed. In the 1800s, exclusionary laws were ratified into the Oregon constitution and the language wasn’t officially removed until 2002. This history is reflected in who lives, works, and plays here, including the demographic makeup of who runs our cultural and artistic institutions. In 2016, a group of us arts administrators came together with the evocative question: “Why are the arts so white?” A truly grassroots operation, Arts Workers for Equity (AWE) is a collective of ten individuals who represent a multitude of intersectional identities. Alone and individually, we had limited power to effect change. But collectively we’ve influenced Portland’s nonprofit arts sector, citywide.

While helping with research for Americans for the Arts’ Emerging Arts Education Leadership toolkit, I was able to find the true potential in the reciprocal exchange and cyclical mentorship of arts leaders in the field. Originally, I came to this project as just an artist and, therefore, a believer in the power of the arts, but I knew very little of the landscape and infrastructure of support for the arts in my region or my nation as a whole. I lacked that knowledge of how to create coalition as an arts leader, how to inspire others to action in the best way, or that there was even a cycle of mentorship that could tap into. Through this project, I realized how many resources and how much support there really is (and how much support there can be) for the intersections of identity and culture within arts education programs in America.

There is so much to write in a blog about female leadership in the nonprofit arts world. I’ve been incredibly lucky in my professional and personal life. My experiences in adversity are real, but they are also privileged. I’m white, come from a wonderfully loving home, and am able-bodied. I have generally been surrounded by supportive people—women—family, friends, coworkers. I don’t have a lot of stories about being held back or feeling discrimination, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have them. The Nonprofit Leadership Workbook for Women notes that while 73% of all nonprofit employees are women, we only account for 45% of nonprofit CEOs. Slightly better than the 5% of female CEOs in the Fortune 500. I was honored to become the executive director of my organization very early in career, well before I was ready. But that’s the thing about women, right? We face challenges head on. We take advantage of opportunities when they arise. We figure it all out as we go. We must. We’re spending our days making the world a better place.

The pursuit of cultural equity is a journey of mountains and valleys, someone once told me.  It is a series of hard climbs, brief moments of celebration, if you’re lucky, and then the progression begins again.  It is the type of work we do against our comfort, because it is necessary.

The pursuit of cultural equity for someone like me—someone who had the luck and privilege of not being confronted by the inequities of this country for the first two decades of my life, and then did—is a series of moments of confronting parts of myself that go against the idealized person I strive to be (and sometimes the person I see myself as).  There is irony, and a disappointment, in catching myself using the term “pow wow” when leading a session on issues of equity.  There is irony, and a disappointment, in catching myself exerting my positional power in a conversation where I am in a disagreement with someone else about whether positional power is a thing. The irony, there, comes tinged with the pain of recognizing a part of me that is less-good than I want it to be.

Access to the arts builds and strengthens community.

Innovative access to the arts can transform communities by creating new venues and opportunities for artists while also offering opportunities for community members to collaborate and engage—providing a platform for preserving the authentic voice and character of their community through creativity.