Americans for the Arts

The 2015 Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention was also my first visit to Chicago. Having arrived early, I heard that the Chicago Architecture Foundation offered outstanding tours. I arranged to join the “Must See Chicago,” tour and was not disappointed. My inner geek enjoyed learning about Daniel Burnham, bundled tube construction, and remembering the contributions to mid-century modern architecture of Mies van der Rohe from art history class. While I spent a considerable amount of time “looking up” at numerous behemoth skyscrapers, I was grounded by a treasure trove of public art. It felt like opening a new box of crayons-truly inspirational. That was only the beginning of my #AFTACON inspiration.

At the Americans for the Arts 2015 Annual Convention, I was honored to accept the 2015 Public Art Network Award on behalf of the Association for Public Art (aPA) and also the early innovators who guide our work today. I am acutely aware that as the nation’s first non-profit public art organization, aPA has a unique 140+ year legacy. While we do not operate in the same environment as government agencies, I believe that recognizing our shared public art legacy can fortify our position by imparting clarity, credibility, and clout.

So who were those civic-minded people who founded and supported the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) and established the earliest percent for art programs in the United States?

There is never money and there's always money. I have never met a mayor, a city manager, or a school superintendent who ever had any money, but I have never seen one who quit spending it. A lack of money is not the key problem. In my opinion, creativity is the problem. Money follows ideas. Arts administrators need to be as creative as we expect our artists to be.

Across the country, communities are calling for justice in education. High stakes testing, disproportionate discipline by race, and the mass closing of public schools in certain regions profoundly impact the lives of young people. In an environment where education reform, vouchers, charter schools, and increased accountability dominate the landscape, what does it mean to impact the very heart and bureaucratic structure of public school districts and build trust, equity, and meaningful change?

I live in a community that clearly values the arts and creativity – arts participation in Portland and in Oregon is among the highest in the country according to the NEA. Even so, private philanthropy lags significantly behind the national average.

How can we convince more Oregonians to support the arts? Anytime we launch a new private sector initiative, we turn to our government partners first. (Perhaps that’s partially because our local arts agency, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, was a city bureau until 1995.) In any event, public-private partnerships have become the standard way of growing the Portland metro region’s arts community.

At times I have been asked, “How did you find your career path in the arts?” Actually, it’s more often phrased, “How’d you get in this business?” I have held a number of wonderful posts, both public and private, and am currently Director of Advocacy and Public Policy for ArtPride New Jersey, the state arts advocacy organization. My story is evolutionary, organic, and having tilled these fields for over 30 years, long. In this age of sound bites I’ll boil it down to this—“teachers and inspiring leaders.” For me and so many others, it all started with an art teacher.

Norie Sato receiving the 2014 Public Art Network Award at Annual Convention

The Nashville PAN Preconference has come and gone, sniff sniff, I miss seeing everyone already. I was thrilled to be able to speak to so many of you and to be with smart, hard working people in the field. The PAN preconference is such a great time to reconnect with old colleagues and meet new people as well as to learn. And so many issues and things to learn just to keep up or to innovate do not fit into the time we had. A special thanks to those who worked so hard for us to organize the conference.

But in the spirit of constructive feedback and reflections back on the precon, I offer the following:

1)  The Preconference is TOO short. We had essentially only 1 day. 2 panel session slots do not give us enough time for the various issues that need covering. At least another half day would have allowed us at least another session slot to allow for some more breadth and depth would truly be desirable. The Nashville team worked hard to showcase their city…and maybe we (I) could have spent more time in it, as well.

Malissa Feruzzi Shriver

Nashville is not for the faint of heart, and neither is an Americans for the Arts' conference. There were scheduled sessions that ran until midnight, where some of the panelists broke into song, and early bird specials—eight AM, lights, camera, action.  Nashville has nothing on Americans for the Arts, and Americans for the Arts has something for everyone.  More than one thousand arts advocates enjoyed networking, performances, and fascinating panels, myself included.  Convention themes ran from arts and community to building core skills (does being on your feet for fourteen hours build core strength too?), embracing diversity, reinvention and sustainability, and supply and demand. This conference was definitely not short on supply, and judging from the attendance, demand was high.

I was impressed on so many levels. Four jam-packed days of sessions, exhibitors, meet and greets, and all the big organizations, big names and big ideas. I learned about public art and placemaking, leadership skill development, and how art can translate data, and was fascinated by topics like engaging the biases, values and privileges underneath your work. I am grateful that AFTA organizes these conferences to invest in our field, inform leaders, and stimulate dialogue about relevance and sustainability.

Robert Bush

My first Americans for the Arts (AFTA) conference—at the time, the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (NALAA)—was in 1984, in Charleston, S.C., and in the middle of Spoleto.  Selena Roberts Ottum was the chair of the NALAA Board.  I was in awe.

Being the executive director of a small county arts council in North Carolina seemed like a different world from all the arts leaders I heard speak over those few days.  But what I took home was inspiration to take our modest efforts to new levels of community engagement and excellence.  And I made it a priority to attend NALAA—and later AFTA—conventions and advocacy days and to get involved in the work of its interest areas and leadership groups as well.  It wasn't always easy due to small budgets, but over the last 30 years, I've made it to most.  Why, you might ask? It’s because what I found in Charleston so many years ago was not just professional peers but family.

"Creative Placemaking" as described by Anne Gadwa Nicodemus and Ann Markusen offers artists and arts administrators a template to engage business and civic leaders in the articulation of new cultural policies at the local level. In her paper, “Fuzzy Vibrancy: Creative Placemaking as Ascendant U.S. Cultural Policy,” Nicodemus states that one of the hallmarks of creative placemaking is the development of cross-sector partnerships to promote “arts-centered initiatives with place-based physical, economic and/or social outcomes.”

Does this widespread interest in creative placemaking present an opportunity for us to expand and develop cultural policy at the local level?

Norie Sato

In the late 1970s, artists and critics were asking “Is Painting Dead?” In the face of new approaches, media and concepts, the art world was looking at new ways of art making versus the old.   It was somewhat of a facetious question, yet there was a lot of truth in it. Public art as we know it, as “government-sponsored” percent programs, is getting to be more than 40 years old. Programs are celebrating 30, 40, 50 years of existence. It is no longer a new thought, no longer exciting in its promise, reach and approach…or is it? I’m not sure I can answer that question yet, but here are a few observations that may signal a trend.

Robert Bush

If a Local Arts Agency (LAA) doesn't produce plays or present concerts or mount exhibitions or offer classes, why does a community need an LAA? Why does your LAA need your support?

A fundamental part of an LAA’s role in the community is to increase public access to the arts and work to ensure that everyone in their community or service area enjoys the cultural, civic, economic, and educational benefits of a thriving cultural sector. In 1999, when the LAA community and Americans for the Arts (AFTA) celebrated the 50^th Anniversary of the local arts agency movement, access was the theme that ran through our collective vision plan for American communities through 2025, which included the following:

• Fostering a lifelong continuum of arts creation, arts experiences, participation and education;
• Bringing cultural equity and equality into existence;
• Helping the arts bring diverse people together and bridging differences;
• Enabling people to value the arts by participating at both amateur and professional levels;
• Ensuring arts diversity is valued and celebrated as an expression of our humanity.

Donna Collins

For many individuals outside the circle of arts advocacy and arts policy there seems to be a recurring question: What is the role of the arts in job creation, economic sustainability, and the quality of life of our citizenry? The dollar, and not the soul, seems to be at the core of the discussion. I dare say you can’t have one without the other.

My knee jerk response to such queries is to shout from the rafters that by investing in the arts and incorporating arts and culture into every economic development plan, the yield will be abundant benefits to our economic, social, civic, and cultural vibrancy. The significance of the arts allows a community to generate an increasingly stable and creative workforce, new and increased tourism, fiscal infusion, and more sustainable neighborhoods.

Malissa Feruzzi Shriver

Here is a recipe for success. Take a failing elementary school, invest time and treasure in professional development, help them develop a strategic plan; assist them in maximizing their budget with expert technical assistance. Bring in the non-profit arts providers, credentialed specialists, teaching artists, universities, the local community, and parents. To top it all off, add in a famous artist - as a mentor, as an advocate, and to bring in the media. With a potent combination of discrete arts education in all four disciplines and arts integration, this program proves that the so-called achievement gap is indeed an opportunity gap: an opportunity gap for the principals, teachers, students, and their parents - but also for their communities and for our society. As John Dewey said, what the best and wisest person wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and unchecked, destroys our democracy.