In early April, as the City of Boston became an escalating COVID-19 “hot spot,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s office responded with forceful measures on many fronts. In the midst of extreme circumstances, on April 3, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) also announced the fourth cohort of artists-in-residence in its Boston AIR program. The program pairs local artists and staff from City of Boston departments to co-design projects that test new approaches to City policies and processes and that often address the social and political context of that year. In the years ahead, municipal and county government officials face unfathomable challenges in recovery and reconstruction stemming from COVID-19. Programs such as Boston AIR and Los Angeles County's Creative Strategist Artist-in-Residence have demonstrated that artists working in partnership with government are essential workers who bring creative practices and solutions to issues that municipalities face. Local arts councils and commissions often play a big role in conceiving and coordinating these programs in tandem with local government.

We need to celebrate the important work that artists do every day. They imagine creative courses to solve problems. They create welcoming spaces to exercise cultural and civil rights and to challenge the status quo. They orchestrate rituals of spiritual and emotional healing. They configure single words, movements, marks, sounds to make meaning, purpose, and full-on expressions of beauty that remind us of the most fundamental things we humans share. Especially now, as we strategize to ensure that artists are supported and integrated into COVID-19 recovery and reconstruction, we need ready stories of their unique contributions substantiated with the real impacts of their approaches. Beginning with this post, a new ARTSblog series will celebrate the 11 music artists who were the exemplary nominees for the 2020 Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities. Vastly different in their artistry—from classical orchestral work and blues, gospel, and American roots traditions to punk rock, improvisational, and genre stretching forms—each artist in their own right is advancing community, civic, and social goals.

Cultural space doesn’t just live in traditional retail space. Cultural space is born where culture thrives. While on the surface it seems that four artists created the Black art center Wa Na Wari, it is actually the continuation of the legacy of Frank and Goldyne Green, who were cultural space activists before there were words for this type of work. We don’t always think of our family homes as cultural spaces, but this Green home, and their other five properties, operated in this way. After the passing of Frank Green, artists Inye Wokoma, Jill Freidberg, Rachel Kessler, and I wondered what it would mean to rent it for a year as a cultural center. This social practice project was about the act of reclaiming so much of what has been lost in Seattle’s Central District. Our formerly redlined neighborhood has experienced drastic gentrification and displacement of our Black community. A neighborhood that was at one time 80% African American is now less than 10% Black. Wa Na Wari explores what it means for Black people to reclaim space in gentrified communities. Wa Na Wari is an art house and a community organizing effort. It is a model for how black homeowners can stay in their homes while also convening around black art. 

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.

I often ask my students what they want to be when they grow up. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I loved dinosaurs and spent hours in my school’s elementary library reading up on every dinosaur book and watching every documentary I could get my hands on. Had I been a child during this pandemic, my ideal scenario would be curled up in my school library with the internet and a treasure trove of dinosaur books at my disposal. However, that’s not feasible for most of my students. In fact, roughly two-thirds of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District students don’t have access to a computer or similar device at home. One third of our families do not have access to reliable high-speed internet. But what is waiting for them—once the district hands out hotspots and computers—is something I wish I had access to at their age. They will have access to each other, a support network of friends and teachers who are eagerly awaiting them. In particular, one teacher who is so excited for the moment they reconnect because he has collected a handful of dinosaur facts he can’t wait to share with them.

During the last half century, the local arts agency (LAA) movement in the United States has flourished—with the number of LAAs growing from 400 to 4,500. They provide programs, services, and funding to strengthen their local arts and cultural sector, integrate the arts into the fabric of the community, and make the arts accessible to all. It is no surprise, then, that Americans are now more engaged in the arts than ever before, with nearly three-quarters of the adult population attending the arts and nearly half personally involved as arts makers. It is because of this vital presence that tracking the health, operations, and impact of LAAs is a matter of pressing concern. The 2019 Profile of Local Arts Agencies is our annual survey of local arts agencies. It focuses on a core set of LAA indicators—budget trends, partnerships, programs and services, and diversity and equity policies. I conducted my first LAA survey for Americans for the Arts in 1991; the one constant over the years is my ongoing appreciation of how LAAs evolve to keep pace with how their community evolves. 

Amid this COVID-19 pandemic, many arts organizations—as well as those outside the sector—have been working to determine how to offset financial impacts on their organizations. One type of program that finds its head on the chopping block is the internship program. For organizations that provide arts internships for an hourly wage or a seasonal stipend, the expenditure for an intern or an internship program may appear to be an added burden at a time when we must all make difficult choices. At Americans for the Arts, we too have unfortunately had to cut our own Summer and Fall internship program to save on expenditures.While that decision had to be made for the organization, the Equity in Arts Leadership team has been able to reimagine the organization’s 28-year-old Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) internship. We recognized the stress and collective trauma our country—and our world—is experiencing during this time, and determined it was important for our team to focus our internship restructure on a deliberate, community-centered approach. In deciding to move forward with our internship program, we had to ask ourselves many questions regarding the feasibility of continuing this program this year. 

This is an unprecedented time in our history—one I’m still processing and reacting to as things change every day. I’m reminded how grateful I am to still have a job I love and basic necessities such as food, electricity, and technology (especially to connect with loved ones). This experience also has taught me several important lessons and reminded me why I chose a career in the arts to begin with: creating is essential to mental health and provides an opportunity for human connection. People are rallying around the arts, donating money, collecting data, creating artwork, hosting live performances, and even collecting shared stories and histories around this experience to add to museum collections. It’s no coincidence that people are using the arts to stay connected to each other. The arts have always had a way of bringing people together, and this has been true even before we hit a global pandemic.

“We own what we make.” That’s the watchword of a national grassroots-to-grassroots coalition called Performing Our Future, which we both help lead. It unites communities across the country who have spent generations resisting economic exploitation—who historically have not owned what they make—and who have long been set against each other along racial, political, regional, and rural-urban lines. How have these communities come together? Through the work of cultural organizing. Cultural organizing is not the same as conventional community organizing or activism. Conventional community organizing and activism typically work from deficits: identify what’s missing in our communities, find and mobilize the people who agree with you, call out the inequity and injustice, and fight the bad guys. In the coalfields of East Kentucky and the inner city of West Baltimore, where we work, this usually means “organizing around” problems like unemployment, drugs, or disenfranchisement. Sometimes a meeting might start with a poem, or a protest might include beautiful puppets. But that’s still not cultural organizing. Cultural organizing is more than activism-plus-art.

Whether or not we can name them, we all function from a set of values. From when we’re young they get passed down from our caretakers and life experiences. However, as adults we can be more intentional. We are empowered to think about the person we aspire to be and align our values accordingly. Our core values should not be relegated to a page in a shelved binder or a forgotten annual report. Use them as a tool to navigate your leadership as an arts administrator during this pivotal moment in history. While we create new avenues for arts and culture engagement in this changing landscape, our individual and institutional core values will light our paths towards new solutions and new ways of being as arts practitioners, participants, and leaders.

Sometimes the source of our perceived needs is shielded, just to remind us of the greatness we take for granted and get us to yearn for something regular again. For many, that greatness is integrated in art, through creation and sharing. The brilliance of the solar system and the access to the sun is something we all share. Despite the classes we put ourselves in, despite the prejudices we choose to uphold and create, our sun is seemingly the same. It is a reminder of a new day beginning and, ready or not, another chance to be. My biggest lesson from the excessive alone time and relaxation of busyness is that though it seems many things are inaccessible, I still have access. I can still create, think, make mistakes, and breathe. 

COVID-19 has heightened the stress levels in lower-income families and put people in extreme survival mode. If you’re not on the top of the socioeconomic ladder, this is a very scary time with lots of uncertainties. Removing vital systems of support like school and community programs throws people into a fear-filled tailspin. We started doing a lot of arts integration work back in 2007 with a couple of different school districts, and we found that because of the shift in budgets teachers began teaching P.E. To support them, we build a hip-hop dance-inspired, web-based learning platform called PassToClass.com. Because of COVID-19, we offered free access to PassToClass.com to all our school partners as a fitness and creative expression resource for distance learning. We need to expand access as much as possible right now. Partnering with creative nonprofits that have tight community ties and boots on the ground means our under-resourced communities get the information and resources they need to stay safe.