Americans for the Arts

This summer, 24 Diversity in Arts Leadership interns from all over the country are working at arts nonprofits in New York City, New Jersey, and Des Moines, Iowa for ten weeks to explore and build skills in arts administration and leadership. This series will feature our DIAL NYC cohort in two parts. Six interns are profiled here and in a previous post, six more! For 27 years, Americans for the Arts has been hosting the DIAL internship program as an investment in a more equitable arts management field. Special thanks to DIAL interns Kadiatou Balde, Andrea Lewis, and Carlos Nuñez for writing, curating, and taking photos for this post!

This summer, 24 Diversity in Arts Leadership interns from all over the country are working at arts nonprofits in New York City, New Jersey, and Des Moines, Iowa for ten weeks to explore and build skills in arts administration and leadership. This series will feature our DIAL NYC cohort in two parts. Six interns are profiled here and in a later post, six more! For 27 years, Americans for the Arts has been hosting the DIAL internship program as an investment in a more equitable arts management field. Special thanks to DIAL interns Kadiatou Balde, Andrea Lewis, and Carlos Nuñez for writing, curating, and taking photos for this post!

In early May 2019, I had the honor of being one of 75 participants of the Spring 2019 American Express Leadership Academy (AELA). I gathered with others from across the country to explore our own personal strengths and weaknesses as leaders, and to collaborate on strategies to take that information and be better. Towards the end of the week, we each met for 90 minutes with an executive coach who’d reviewed all of our assessments, self-reflection, and organization information. We also began to reflect on how we could practically use our epiphanies and discoveries. The experience was incredible. Never before have I been afforded the luxury of three and a half days to focus on myself, not just myself in the context of the work I do. The information I received allowed me to ruminate on what I was learning and how it specifically impacts leadership in the field of arts education—and what I can pass on to my colleagues in the field. 

First launched in 2012, the pARTnership Movement is a program and online platform of Americans for the Arts which demonstrates that by partnering with the arts, businesses can gain a competitive edge. Over the past seven years, Americans for the Arts has developed toolkits, shared stories of success, published how-to workbooks to engage employees, and continued to celebrate America’s best businesses supporting the arts—all for the purpose of supporting the work of local arts organizations and businesses as they seek to build creative relationships. Our goal has always been two-fold: build the capacity of the arts field to cultivate and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships with business; and make the case to businesses why partnering with the arts is good for their people, their companies, and their communities. We are pleased to introduce a new pARTnership Movement website to help us (and you) further this work.

THEM: “We can’t pay you, but you’ll get lots of exposure!”

ME: “I can’t eat or pay my bills with exposure!”

If I had a nickel for every time the sentiment of exposure as compensation was offered to me as an artist, I probably would not need to be writing this blog post about the importance of compensation for creatives. Too often artists are asked to provide their services in exchange for nothing or for compensation that is not comparable to the time and effort that is required to create and efficiently develop their artistry. Soul Artistry LLC’s goal is to push a new culture and narrative forward that begins to normalize the practice of artists being compensated for their work. Soul Artistry LLC is the company I started in 2012 when I began to understand the importance of artistry professional development and adopting business practices as an artistic entrepreneur. At the beginning of 2019, Soul Artistry LLC launched the pay artists. campaign. The idea for the campaign was birthed from many conversations and experiences that fellow creatives and I had been having very frequently.

Tulsa has a storied history in the arts. As the one-time oil capital of the world, arts and cultural enterprises have been prevalent in our community for well over a century. We are still the smallest large city in the U.S. that maintains an opera company, a ballet company, and a symphony orchestra. Add to that renowned museums like Gilcrease and Philbrook, along with unique offerings like the Woody Guthrie Center, the Bob Dylan Archives, and the future OK Pop Museum, and you have the ingredients for a cultural tourism mecca. Despite a strong cultural community, when we started Arts Alliance Tulsa in 2012, local corporate giving was stuck at an average of 3% to the arts, while it was at 58% nationally if you combined corporate and workplace giving. After the first two years of AAT’s existence, overall giving to our individual member organizations (not including what AAT allocates) grew by 18%. We are a living example of a city that has seen all the boats rise with the tide as a result of the presence of our United Arts Fund.