Americans for the Arts

The work of CERF+ is vital within the larger context of the complex challenges cultural organizations and individual artists have managing—and surviving—disasters and emergencies. As emergency planning has become an ever-higher priority for cultural facilities throughout the country, CERF+ puts key strategic questions on the table: How do local cultural communities prepare for the enormous challenges of floods, fires, earthquakes, and storms? How do we meet the economic and human costs of such life-changing circumstances? With major support from foundations and other funders, local arts agencies across the country have developed programs to provide grants to individual artists. Though much of this support is earmarked for creative work, there is a growing recognition of what is required to sustain creative careers over many years or a lifetime. CERF+ is committed to helping artists sustain their careers and develop the tools and support to protect and preserve their livelihoods, studios, and creative output.

The spotlight of a crisis environment illuminates the character, values, and worth of a leader. As you prioritize functions, maintain order, and move the enterprise’s decision-making horizon further ahead, be reminded of the following principles for effective crisis management: Take stock of your assets. Maximize the good will and revenue potential of those programs and services whose value is increased by the new and changing environment. Manage time. Manage key external decisions. Manage perception of the crisis by key audiences. Review delegation in light of the tasks at hand. And think “collective impact.” This concludes a series of blogs intended to stimulate dialog about characteristics desirable in leaders during crises, the ways effective crisis managers think, the special needs and opportunities for leadership during crises, and the management principles that prove most valuable during crises.

This blog considers leadership action during the kind of crisis caused by a ubiquitous challenge that imperils the value in many kinds of transactions and organizations. Its examples are current actions being taken by the arts and cultural community in the following ways: Demonstrating concern for the challenges others face; making a special effort in a crisis environment to learn the current values and priorities of your stakeholders; taking advantage of opportunities to demonstrate the ways in which you can be of value and service consistent with your mission; motivating your stakeholder groups such as board and donors with opportunities to play meaningful roles to advance recovery and reposition the enterprise; and considering the lasting benefits of leading collective coping and organizing strategies. Treating others with empathy, generosity, and family feeling when everyone shares adversity will strengthen their support for you now and in the future.

During the kind of crisis caused by a ubiquitous challenge that disrupts the general operational environment, how can we stimulate, organize, and retrieve our best thinking when we need it? Where your daily actions and thoughts take you is going to provide you with questions and observations and insights, but not necessarily when you want them or when you can use them. But, if you organize your thoughts as they happen, you’ll position yourself to use and communicate them clearly, when the occasion is right, and in a way that both shows the reasoning and how your ideas will apply in the future. In mid-crisis, it’s difficult to make decisions about the future because so many variables are unclear, but it’s very useful to recognize and prepare for the kinds of decisions that will need to made in the very near future.

What should artistic and cultural leaders aspire to exemplify and accomplish in a time of crisis? Some crises are caused by an operational problem that approaches or passes a point where the survival of the enterprise is at risk. Other crises may impact before their cause is readily understood, with such impact or with such complexity that a leader must act before optimal information can be gathered. Let us focus on a third kind of crisis: one caused by a ubiquitous challenge that imperils the value in many kinds of transactions and organizations, threatening or disrupting the general operational environment. The COVID-19 pandemic fits this description. So does racism (about which there are many lessons to be learned by considering for whom this issue has been a crisis their entire lives and for whom this issue is perceived as a crisis more recently—and why). This blog is intended to stimulate dialog about characteristics desirable in leaders during crises, the ways effective crisis managers think, the special needs and opportunities for leadership during crises, and the management principles that prove most valuable during crises. 

Times have changed. The alarm has been struck, and it is declared that for the next few months we are living in a state of emergency. The alarm will persist in the background for months as we try to make sense of our world. For many, our lives have become paralyzed as we wait for announcements and instruction on how we are to continue working. Others continue their commutes to their jobs, as the essential laborers and custodians of our world. For now, many of us are remotely reporting via digital platforms, supervising the structures of a disordered world through virtual windows. As a curator of public programs, I am tasked with the delicate observation of people—understanding their needs, anticipating their questions, and often regulating their movement. It is in the nature (and definition) of this work that I care for all individuals through their experience in artistic environments. In the midst of this emergency, I have observed how institutions have immediately taken action to facilitate programs. I admire the resilience of the arts sector—its agility and improvisation are often pulled off with success, disproportional to anemic budgets with robust audiences. Yet, I am also dismayed that the arts, once again, confronts a different crisis, an unprecedented crisis.