Americans for the Arts

Michael Gold

As an arts-based practitioner I have participated in events sponsored and promoted by The Arts and Business Councils of both New York City and Chicago.

Over the past decade these civic organizations have partnered with interested corporations like Metropolitan Life and McGraw Hill to present examples of arts-based learning for business that were open to the public.

The impact was palpable especially in the nature of questions asked by participants in the Q&A portion of the program.

People immediately grasped the relevance. They asked questions about trust, ambiguity, autonomy and empathy- all aspects that fall outside the “dehydrated language” (thank you Nancy Adler) of the corporate boardroom culture.

The Conference Board's "Ready to Innovate" report.

A few years ago, The Conference Board, an international non-profit business research organization, released Ready to Innovate, a study that unequivocally says, "U.S. employers rate creativity and innovation among the top five skills that will increase in importance over the next five years, and rank it among the top challenges facing CEOs."

But as The Conference Board cautioned, “educators and executives must be aligned” and that is happening much too slowly. I think what the study was suggesting was that somebody has to take the lead.

So who’s going to align the educators and the executives and how? Where is the leadership?

The problem, I fear, is with businessmen and women…and with the educators, and the artists too, who are best suited to play the lead.

John Hagel III, co-author, along with John Seely Brown, of The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, made a rather telling observation that business recruiters are always looking for creative people. Then noted that they look again at these creative people on their “exit interview.” So be it for too many corporations.

Prompted by a fluctuating economy and technological advances indirectly threatening to usurp the traditional live arts experience, we are at the height of buzz surrounding the possible identification of new business models for arts organizations; specifically, alternatives to nonprofit incorporation.

I agree – nonprofit incorporation isn’t for everyone. But what I feel is absent from these conversations is a real discussion on what we are striving for on the other end of these supposed magic bullet business models.

There seems to be a sense that we somehow trapped ourselves into the 501(c)(3) model. And so instead, we’re looking for alternative structures; other structures within which we can operate. That also seems limiting and honestly a little backwards to me. 

(This title and entry is not meant to insult any one artist, institution, or dog.)

From my perspective, many artists originally incorporated because they saw other people doing it; other people getting grant monies to support their work and determining 501(c)(3) must be the way to go. These same artists somehow persevered, endured, and/or emerged as institutions thirty or forty years later and feel the nonprofit ball-and-chain is something that somehow happened to them. Is this need for alternative models a real issue or is it a midlife crisis for the incorporated arts field? 

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Taboo Cards

Some artists, if you mention the word “business” at all, they recoil, but let us play a field-wide game of Taboo, and have a brainstorm discussion about the future of the arts sans these words or any derivation of them:  “innovation” and “business models.”

Could the private sector keep itself from using all the jargon accumulated in business school and really talk about what they want to accomplish and how to do it?

So often, organizations of all kinds create job descriptions or individuals write their resumes hiding behind platitudes of these perceived “good” business skills without being specific. That or trying to identify a new direction for one’s organization can feel like when we were little kids and played “office” or “school” or “house.” You weren’t exactly sure what you were supposed to be doing, but you emulated what you saw and played out whatever notions you had about working in such a place. 

Founded by Steve Orr back in 1994, a former Wall Street dude and co-founder of his own consulting firm Orr Associates, Inc. (OAI); he saw the critical need for infrastructure support for New York City’s youth organizations. Since its’ creation, Steve has helped raise over $37 million for NYC youth!

How do they do it?

“By applying best practices from the corporate and nonprofit sectors we empower our partner nonprofits with the tools to achieve sustainable growth.”

It’s a multi-layered board structure at Youth, I.N.C. which includes a formal Board of Directors (governs the organization, providing financial oversight and strategic direction); the Consulting Advisory Board (recruits corporate professionals to serve on the boards of our nonprofit partners); the Sustaining Board (designed to leverage the experiences, insight, and expertise of former board members still committed to building and investing in the future of Youth, I.N.C.); and the Young Professionals Committee (organizes fundraising events, learning opportunities, and volunteer projects for young professionals).

Giovanni Schiuma

Today’s business organizations are challenged to deeply transform themselves and find new ways to create value in a more sustainable way.

The traditional management systems and business models need to be reinvented acknowledging the fundamental human-based nature of the organizations and of the economic ecosystem

In the new business age the capacity of an organization to survive and growth is increasingly tied to its ability to engage and inspire workforce.

Business issues such as productivity, adaptability, and innovativeness are more and more affected by how people within organizations are motivated to give the best of themselves in their daily working activities and are moved to exercise their imagination and creativity to face and solve emergent and unpredictable problems.

In addition, today’s economic recession and tension for continuous change are creating organizational contexts in which stress and negative feeling proliferate. This prompts managers to identify new ways to handle emotional- and experiential-based dimensions in order to shape organizational atmosphere which can be conducive of positive and energizing experiences for improving business performance. 

Michael Gold

Integrating the arts with business fundamentally questions the siloed position of the arts as a cultural function that takes place outside the mainstream of everyday life.

This opens a new “space” that challenges us to integrate our collective artistic intelligence in new ways. But it’s also an ancient space for there have always been cultures that have not distinguished between the experience of the arts and that of other types of social interaction.

The fact that the arts “have relied on patrons for thousands of years” points to the source of an enduring cultural and spiritual ennui that has gone unquestioned in the social fabric of western culture for far too long.

The arts are a gift of human nature that holds the source of insight into the depth and nuance of “being” together in the world. It is ironic that existential changes in the world of business bring us to this realization about the value of the arts. But perhaps business is, itself, every bit an art form as any other form of artistic expression?

Kelly Lamb Pollock

It’s no secret that innovation is valued, even revered, in today’s society. The recent passing of Steve Jobs put into perspective the deep impact even one individual’s revolutionary creativity can have on our world.

Some say Steve Jobs, thankfully for us, was a pioneer.

No matter what you call him, if he is the ideal, shouldn’t we determine how to inject his brand of thinking into that of more of our business leaders?

Yes, becoming more innovative can, and should, begin with arts education and access to the arts at an early age, as my colleague Ken Busby said in his blog post in honor of Jobs.

However, I’m such an optimist that I believe that all is not lost for those GenXers or even, gasp, the Baby Boomers already in the workforce.

It was this thinking that led COCA (Center of Creative Arts) in St. Louis to explore how we could help to foster productive innovation in business through the arts.

Valerie Beaman

As arts organizations and businesses continue to face a recession coupled with rapid changes in demographics and technology, everyone is scrambling to rethink their strategies.

Many businesses are focusing their corporate giving on initiatives that demonstrate shared values and can also provide a return on investment. Arts organizations are exploring opportunities to partner with businesses that can be mutually beneficial and trying to figure out the messages that resonate with the business world.

All of these changes have provided an opportunity for the arts and business to explore new ways of working together.

For this Blog Salon, we’ve invited a select group of bloggers to tackle some of these questions and others, as they come up including:

How can the arts best demonstrate their benefit to the business world?
How will arts service organizations help foster these new partnerships between arts and business?
How have discipline based arts organizations embraced these strategies?
How will partnerships with business change arts participation?
Whatever happened to art for art’s sake?

(l to r) Joseph C. Dilg, Managing Partner, Vinson & Elkins LLP and Chairman of the BCA Executive Board; Herbert V. Kohler, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Kohler Co.; Bob Lynch, President & CEO, Americans for the Arts

Last month, Americans for the Arts recognized several outstanding businesses that support the arts during the annual BCA 10: Best Companies Supporting the Arts in America.

Set in the elegant Central Park Boathouse in New York City, the Awards Ceremony fell somewhere between formal banquet and lighthearted celebration.

The evening began at 6:00, when the honorees and their guests arrived. The excitement in the room was almost palpable as CEOs, vice presidents, and managers, representing businesses small and large from all across America mingled, brought together by their common passion for supporting the arts.

It was during the acceptance speeches that it became clear how, for these companies, supporting the arts is far more than a philanthropic duty.

Ian David Moss

(This three-part post is the first of a series on emerging trends and notable lessons from the field, as reported by members of the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Council.)

The three enterprises discussed in Parts 1 and 2 are hardly the only examples of conservatory musicians or classically-aligned individuals shaking up the classical world with innovative ideas.

Here are a few other notable instances of classical music entrepreneurship that I’ve come across:

•    The Wordless Music Series burst on to the scene in New York five years ago, presenting a head-spinning mix of programs combining first-rate classical ensembles with esoteric indie rock bands on the same bill. Founded and curated by a former Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center staffer, Ronen Givony, Wordless Music bills have included Godspeed You! Black Emperor, composer Nico Muhly, and the United States premiere of a string orchestra piece by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. In many cases the events happen at unusual venues, such as churches, that are totally alien to the participants from the popular music realm.

•    The International Contemporary Ensemble has pioneered a remarkable hybrid structure that combines elements of performance group, presenter, and producer across multiple venues and even cities. More centralized than the grassroots chapter network of Classical Revolution, ICE is ostensibly based in Chicago and New York, but its network of ensemble members is spread out across the country. Founder Claire Chase, as well as many of the musicians, graduated from Oberlin Conservatory.

Marete Wester

Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA)—a national association serving arts and culture funders—recently held its 2011 conference, Embracing the Velocity of Change, October 9-12 in San Francisco—and Americans for the Arts was there.

For close to twenty years, Americans for the Arts has been pleased to represent the 3,000-plus field of local arts grantmaking agencies in communities both large and small at GIA.

Our history of support of GIA is part of our ongoing commitment to sharing information and deepening the understanding between local arts agency grantmakers and their natural partners in the private funding community.

Collectively, local arts agencies fund more than $1 billion annually in public funding and more than $100 million annually in private funding, providing support for the arts and arts education in communities across the country. The GIA conference is an annual opportunity for us (along with arts funders across the country) to present session ideas for juried selection.

A word cloud generated by the discussion at the National Arts Policy Roundtable.

On September 22-24, over 40 top-level private and public sector leaders along with renowned as well as emerging artists, converged at the Sundance Resort and Preserve for the sixth annual Americans for the Arts National Arts Policy Roundtable, “Innovating for Impact: Arts-Based Solutions for a Stronger America.” The Roundtable is convened in partnership with the Sundance Institute.

The questions put forth were as big as the brilliant blue sky above the reddening autumn leaves dotting the Wasatch Mountain range—“how do the arts bring innovation to social problem-solving?” and “how, as leaders from foundations, business, government and the social sector, can we encourage and support the arts as agents of change?"

Presentations by participants informed the discussion. Artists were at the core both demonstrating and explaining how their work is leading to change on the ground.

Poignant stories told through film, theater, and visual art highlighted the value the arts have in leading to change. Arts projects magnified through the lens of television and social networking revealed how the artistic process and products can be transformed into larger movements and calls to action.

The issues the arts addressed ranged from alleviating poverty to overcoming intolerance, and trying to understand the emotional complexities and personal devastation buried underneath the economic downturn.

With economic gloom dominating the news, it’s invigorating to focus on joy and beauty. At the end of September, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the Metro Nashville Arts Commission launched Artober Nashville, the city’s most expansive celebration of the arts and everything creative.

Mayor Karl Dean received a lesson in African Drumming from Tulip Grove second graders Jaidyn MacAdoo during his visit to the school for the launch of Artober Nashville on September 29.

Artober Nashville showcases all artistic genres through more than 250 galleries, music venues, cultural organizations, and neighborhood festivals and more than 550 activities in October. The hope is that Nashvillians will experience “Arts. Everywhere.”

During the month, the city will showcase the International Bluegrass Music Festival and the International Black Film Festival, and additionally, our Grammy Award-winning Nashville Symphony hosts a free day of music, the Frist Center displays Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum; and the Rep, the Opera and Ballet will stage unforgettable classics.

Four Americans for the Arts Advisory Councils -- the Arts Education Council, Emerging Leader Council, Private Sector Council, and the Public Art Network Council -- are currently seeking nominations for new council members to serve three-year terms from January 1, 2012 through December 30, 2014.

Americans for the Arts asks, first and foremost, that the councils advise our staff on programs and services that will build a deeper connection to the field and their network members.

This gives council members the opportunity to be spotlighted as national leaders and to give back to the field by connecting the national work of Americans for the Arts to the local level.

Here are quotes from current leadership council members on the value of serving in that role:

“Having people from across the country serve on the council gives Americans for the Arts insight into the unique challenges we face on a day-to-day basis. It helps connect ELs at a very grassroots level by connecting networks and creates a web of resources and support for ELs.” – Ruby Harper, Emerging Leader Council