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When Workshops Become Personal
Recently I was privileged enough to conduct a NAMP workshop in Western NY…Buffalo.
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Five 2016 Policy Symposium happenings that wouldn’t have occurred in 2008
Do you remember Where's Waldo? Let's play for a minute. Can you find all the pieces of technology in this picture from the 2016 States of Change Policy Symposium?
In 2008, when I started attending national arts education events, it was rare to see someone using a piece of technology. There were two of us using Twitter at that time, which made for an uninteresting backchannel. The main technology conversation was about social media and if we could use it for professional reasons or for harnessing student learning in the arts. There were many skeptics who saw educational technology as a flash in the pan.
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Quality Arts Education for Every American Student
The arts are on an upward trajectory in many places across the United States. This positive path includes states’ adoption of new arts education standards influenced by the National Core Arts Standards model released in 2014 and the flourishing STEAM movement which has STEM proponents and funders acknowledging the natural—dare we say essential—place the arts have in fostering the skills today’s students need to become tomorrow’s innovators. And, federal funding for the arts is more secure than in recent years.
These were some of the takeaways from the recent State Policy Symposium, States of Change which was produced through a partnership with the Arts Education Partnership, Americans for the Arts, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Education Commission of the States.
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Five Takeaways from This Year’s State Policy Symposium “State of Change: The Arts leading the Way
I love going to meetings and trying to encapsulate what I’ve learned in major threads or realizations. After considering the wide-ranging presentations and conversations from the Symposium a few weekends ago, I’ve arrived at five salient points.
1. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) presents huge opportunities for arts education. There is, however, no guarantee that we will be the beneficiaries of those opportunities. First, the regulation process is ongoing as the Department of Education tries to decipher nearly 400 pages of legislation and convert that into practical guidelines. Second, even when those regulations appear, the place of arts education is not ensured. Instead, two rather important phrases need to be understood.
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Emerging Leaders Work Together Across the Country (An Americans for the Arts Member story)
It’s been a few months since I joined the Americans for the Arts team and I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about the interesting and diverse work that you're doing and how our tools, resources, and member network are helping you get it done.
We often share your stories in our member e-newsletter Monthly Wire, but I wanted to dig a little deeper into some of your projects and programs and really get to know your work. I'll be jumping in periodically to share what I'm learning about member activity so that you can get to know each other a little better and to find some new, creative ways to use your membership!
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On Shifting Systems and Equity
In 2011, I came across a professional development program that was centered on connection, peer learning and “real talk,” Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco/Bay Area (EAP/SFBA) was a new home for me as I entered the full time arts admin workforce. I was drawn in by the brilliant and compassionate people who represented experiences along the career spectrum, were not afraid to hold space for each other to have tough conversations about work, life, and the field. I share this because the Arts Leadership Forward report reflects EAP/SFBA conversations and I see the connection between Hewlett’s recommendations and successful pilot projects around the region.
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Untold Stories: Wells Fargo on Arts & Diversity
Diversity and inclusion is more than a hiring statement header. For many of America’s most successful businesses, diversity efforts are an essential part of company culture. They help to communicate the company’s values and goals and build bridges to the communities it serves.
As one of the oldest American companies still in operation, Wells Fargo’s history is reflective of America’s history, and diversity plays a big role to this day. In the 1870s, Wells Fargo created bilingual publications to facilitate commerce between Chinese-language customers and businesses. One hundred years later, Wells Fargo employees joined with a local radio station in California to produce a Spanish language series on banking and financial literacy.
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Cross-Generational Leadership: The Future of Effective Arts Leadership
It’s safe to say the arts leadership landscape is changing. Given the external societal changes such as late-career professionals postponing retirement, highly-educated millennials entering the workforce poised to make meaningful contributions, and a more culturally diverse group of emerging leaders, arts organizations must recognize the urgency of these challenges and determine what structural changes or model implementations they will make to reconcile these forces impacting leadership in the arts sector.
In Moving Arts Leadership Forward, it is important for organizations not to remain stagnant. They must understand the state of the arts sector and realize that change is both imminent and inevitable. Working in stagnation will stunt the growth of the arts administration ecosystem, particularly if early- and mid-career leaders are underutilized and arts organizations are left unable to serve their constituents to their full capacity. How will these emerging leaders be able to have real impact within their organizations with limited influence in the workplace?
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To Certify or Not to Certify: Is that the Question?
Maybe “to certify or not to certify” was our original question, but when in September and October last fall we convened teaching artists around the state of California, it became clear that consensus is emerging that the real question is “how to certify with integrity, flexibility and proper support”.
Nearly 200 teaching artists participated in person and in written responses in regional conversations focused specifically on the issues surrounding questions of professionally strengthening our field. One of our core strengths is the depth and diversity of pathways artists take into teaching artistry, with a continuum from self-taught, informally or formally mentored, individualized training, and formal academic training all providing valid and challenging forms of professional development. With increasing calls for teaching artists to step up and step in as partners in education, social services, social justice and community settings, our collaborative network thought it was high time we grappled head on with the challenges of documenting competence and making mastery visible.
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The Conceptual Emergency in Arts Leadership
Congratulations and appreciation to our colleagues at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for this thoughtful, action-provoking report, Moving Arts Leadership Forward. It describes A Field at Risk. Or, to use a phrase coined by the International Futures Forum in the U.K., we have a conceptual emergency. Some key concepts from the report:
P. 15: Failure to take into account these dramatic changes in the larger landscape could result …in decisions that inadvertently reinforce the status quo, leading to stagnation in the sector.
P. 1: The change required is in many ways antithetical to the more traditional form of leadership that our sector currently embraces.
P. 10: Most executive leaders express a desire to change organizational culture to be more inclusive of generational expectations, but feel they lack models and the support for doing so.
P. 10: Increasing cross-generational leadership across the field would help it better reflect—and maintain relevance in—a continually diversifying environment.
P. 14: No longer feasible for one leader alone to manage and respond to the increasingly complex and changing environment.
- See more at: http://blog.americansforthearts.org/2016/03/15/the-conceptual-emergency-...
P. 15: Failure to take into account these dramatic changes in the larger landscape could result …in decisions that inadvertently reinforce the status quo, leading to stagnation in the sector.
P. 1: The change required is in many ways antithetical to the more traditional form of leadership that our sector currently embraces.
P. 10: Most executive leaders express a desire to change organizational culture to be more inclusive of generational expectations, but feel they lack models and the support for doing so.
P. 10: Increasing cross-generational leadership across the field would help it better reflect—and maintain relevance in—a continually diversifying environment.
P. 14: No longer feasible for one leader alone to manage and respond to the increasingly complex and changing environment.
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Sharing Is Caring: If I Truly Care, I Will Practice Shared Decision Making Structures
“Every artist was first an amateur” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
When invited to write a blog response to the Hewlett Foundation report on arts leadership, I jumped at the opportunity. Along with my professional and civic interest in advancing leadership models that work across various lines of social difference, it is a topic around which I have feelings and thoughts.
As a 33-year-old executive director of an organization I co-founded while in college, who has no academic training in arts administration and has only held one job as an adult, I read the Moving Arts Leadership Forward report as timely for my career and interests. I can say with candor and hope that it is my desire to remain as the leader of WonderRoot for decades to come—but I would only dream of this so long as my leadership continues to advance the mission of the organization and the people it seeks to serve.
