Americans for the Arts

Lately I've been saying, in conversations and speeches, that this is a time of great opportunity for the arts. People look at me like I'm crazy. How can there be any hope for the arts in the middle of the worst recession in 75 years? The difficult economic times have affected every aspect of our lives, personally and professionally. In general, there is a sense that we are losing ground while working even harder to catch up.  There doesn't seem to be an answer or a solution, or an end, to the myriad local and global problems we face.

So let me be clear - I agree that it's a terribly anxious and disquieting time for the arts, and for every person, every organization and business, and every community in this country. There are critical issues for the short term that we must all deal with. As director of a small nonprofit organization, I lie awake at night worrying just like everyone else. The rent demands to be paid, tomorrow (or actually, yesterday).  But, as important and as pressing as those short term issues are for us all, it's precisely because the times are extraordinary that it's a time of great opportunity for the arts.  We must turn focus and vision to the long-term opportunities ahead for the arts, and for all of us, locally and globally. The 21st century world demands new ways of thinking and doing. So what's going to get us out of the mess we're in?  Creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship-all qualities inherent in and integral to arts participation and involvement.

I picked the topic title above from the list provided by Americans for the Arts because I don’t believe what it suggests is necessarily true.

We have seen some clear changes in program direction and focus from a handful of large and visible private foundations. The Ford Foundation is probably the poster-child for this topic. The bulk of these program changes have been the result of long-term planning efforts and/or changes in leadership, and not responses to the economy. The fact that some of these announcements coincided with the recession has muddied the waters a bit.

At the same time, we are also seeing both new foundations with a strong commitment to the arts come online, and program shifts in private foundations that strengthen the position of the arts and artists in their priorities.

It is also problematic to define “trends” from observations of activity among foundations. By and large, they communicate very little with each other (despite the efforts of GIA and others) and decisions are made independently and privately. While we look at the field of arts funders as a group, each is guided in their funding priorities by their individual missions, and those missions were often established a generation or more ago. In many important ways, foundations that fund the arts are more diverse and eclectic in their approaches than they are similar.

We recently ran a Creative Economy Workforce grants program with funding provided by the special Community Development Block Grant allocation increase under the Recovery Act (CDBG-R). Quite a mouthful, and quite an ordeal in terms of paperwork to administer. BUT, what operating this program highlighted was the need to move beyond our traditional definition of how we define the arts, and the sorts of activity that is funded or supported. In effect, we are trying to perform sophisticated surgery on the patient with rusty sabers and sledgehammers—our tools are not appropriate to the job we have to do.

Increasingly, creative activity is happening within a for-profit or hybrid context. Many of the most innovative artists studio and live/workspace developments happening in Philadelphia right now are not initiated by nonprofit organizations but by creative entrepreneurs who have identified a market niche and are seeking to fill it. We have a commercial developer looking to create a public sculpture garden because they feel it will add value to their property and help attract and serve their tenants. We have a recycling company that wants to add artist studio space to their recycling plant so artists can work on site with recycled materials. One of our most successful creative economy/technology co-working spaces got started with no government input or support or even any type of philanthropic support.

From Wikipedia
In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: "cutting out the middleman". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate (such as a distributor, wholesaler, broker, or agent), companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet. One important factor is a drop in the cost of servicing customers directly.

Disintermediation initiated by consumers is often the result of high market transparency, in that buyers are aware of supply prices direct from the manufacturer. Buyers bypass the middlemen (wholesalers and retailers) in order to buy directly from the manufacturer and thereby pay less. Buyers can alternatively elect to purchase from wholesalers.”

Yes, indeed disintermediation has come to the arts.  Just consider the changes in arts consumerism on the broader scale:

As the late Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill said famously, “all politics are local.” Could this be a lesson for the arts sector? I was interested in a recent article in The New York Times on February 17th about the formidable Huntington Theater in Boston which is charting a new course to become more relevant to its neighbors. Artistic Director, Peter DuBois noted – “The fact is, the artistic and business models of the regional theaters in the 20th century are over, given the costs of creating theater and the competition for people’s time, so I needed to rethink our relationship with our home community.  To thrive we need a theater with work and audiences that look more like the city of Boston in terms of class, age, race, background. And you have to talk to people here to learn how to do that.”

Maybe that’s our answer for this arts-challenged time, listen first, then talk and make sure you speak the local dialect.