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Creative Practice at Work
There’s a lot of talk these days about bringing creativity to the workplace, but what exactly does that look like?
My brother and I started a consultancy dedicated to making the creative practices of artists accessible to anyone, anywhere. This means that we spend an unusual amount of time (for artists, that is) with executives in industries like aeronautics, energy and pharmaceuticals. In fact, when we ask any room of executives–with specialties in operations, compliance and engineering–if creativity is essential to the success of their company, the overwhelming majority, and I mean 99%, of the group will raise their hands. I wrote more about this on ArtsBlog last month.
They have been told to think big and innovate, get outside of boxes and comfort zones, but no one has given instructions for how to do this. We say, “It’s easy, all you need to do is commit to practicing a little every day!” For many this just feels like one responsibility on the never ending to-do list. However, we know that even a short experience with creative practice can have powerful effects.
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Finding the Art Within
Have you ever had an experience and realized, in that very moment, that your way of thinking was changed forever? That happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I found myself at a meeting of our local STEM collaborative. Through a series of seemingly unconnected events, I was about to begin my journey toward understanding the potential of the STEM to STEAM concept but not the way you might think.
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Who are the “Arts” Mayors?
Recently, I was in Orlando to re-present the Americans for the Arts and The United States Conference of Mayors 2016 Public Leadership in the Arts Award to Mayor Buddy Dyer. I was joined by over 50 local arts organizations to honor the mayor for making the arts a central part of his administration. Under Mayor Dyer’s leadership, last year Orlando opened its new $500 million, 333,000 square-foot performing arts center. Additionally, each year, Mayor Dyer commits more than $1.8 million of the city’s budget to local arts organizations and he has expanded the city’s public art program. This award is part of a series that Americans for the Arts presents along with our various public sector partner organizations over the year to elected officials at every level of government.
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Art Tribe
My sister, Cath, and I are both painters. She’s also a sculptor and I make collages, mostly when I can’t figure out what to paint. I’m three years older than she is, (“three and a half,” she’d be quick to tell you,) and it was probably the best thing in my young life when I realized we both could draw. I was seven or so, and there we were with the crayons when we began our journey. Life changed and opened, and making art became as much a part of our lives as fighting with our siblings, avoiding chores, and listening to Rock & Roll.
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Connecting Art and Business in Practice
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? We all know the answer to this old chestnut but there’s a reason why the joke persists.
After spending a lot of time considering how we might use our skills as artists to provide do something of value beyond amplifying the voices of others (through advocacy, marketing, design, etc.) my brother and I launched a consultancy, Another Limited Rebellion, focused on the creative development of individuals and organizations. What does that mean?
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South Dakota Celebrates Poetry Out Loud
I’m really excited at work these days because Poetry Out Loud in South Dakota is in full swing. If you don’t know what Poetry Out Loud is, you should probably spend the next several days watching videos of these amazing kids at the National Finals and reading through the poetry archives and teaching resources on the website. It’s a really cool, intensely educational program available to all high school students across the nation.
The main purpose of Poetry Out Loud is to encourage the nation’s youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.
We’re fiercely dedicated to Poetry Out Loud at our state arts agency because poetry is an artistic representation of life. Poetry includes everyone. It helps us understand each other and the world around us. It helps us connect the past to the present, as it’s been practiced for centuries. Poetry is a living, breathing art form that can be enlightening both on the page and off. Poetry is for everyone, and Poetry Out Loud helps students and teachers see that concept to fruition.
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Five Macro Trends That Arts Organizations Need to Watch
2016 is off and running, and guaranteed to be a dynamic presidential election year. Along with a new administration in Washington, five broad cultural and economic trends are sure to impact sectors across America--affecting our work in the arts in the coming years. Candidates at all levels of government will need to evolve positions on each of these trends so we can work more strategically to ensure that the arts continue to thrive and enrich the lives of every American.
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Creative Assessment for the Arts
All across America, students and teachers are hard at work on the business of learning. Students attend classes, set goals and complete work that demonstrates what they are learning, while teachers check and double check that standards, benchmark and mastery are being met. That is, until about the 100th day of school…that’s when we all enter the shadow of…THE TEST. Everything changes in the shadow of the test, from the way teachers teach to the format of student practice, and it’s not changing for the better. Is there a better way to assess student growth than to bubble in recalled facts for a computer to score?
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Advocacy in "Interesting" Times
This article was originally published by CultureWork: A Periodic Broadside for Arts and Culture Workers, in January 2016. CultureWork is a publication of The Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy at the University of Oregon. The following blog post is an abbreviated version.
The idea that advocacy should be a daily activity, and not just something that is reserved for once-a-year visits to the State Capitol, hit home for me a few years ago. An enthusiastic constituent made the trek to Madison from a small town on the Mississippi River—a trip of at least four hours each way—to attend Arts Day. At the end of the day, she told me that she had had a great time learning and networking but didn’t get a chance to visit with her legislator. She said, "I'll come back to Madison one of these days to meet with him." My response was, "Well, he'll be home this weekend, and every weekend, so why don't you just call him up and meet for coffee at a local café?" That's when I realized…there's a misconception out there that advocacy is something separate from life, that you have to make a special effort and drive a long way to meet with your legislator to be part of the civic discourse.
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Out-Of-School Time Arts Programs Are (Inherently) Awesome!
With one foot deep in the arts education world and the other deep in youth development and out-of-school time (OST) work, I have come to the not-so-shocking realization that arts programs easily and thoroughly align with and fulfill what experts and participants agree are the key characteristics of successful youth development programs – hurrah for Creative Youth Development!
I participate in Milwaukee’s city-wide OST network, Beyond the Bell, and recently became a trained external assessor for the Youth Program Quality Intervention (YPQI), a quality improvement process developed by the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality. The purpose of the process is to quantify the quality of a youth development program and help organizations create quality improvement plans. The Weikart Center also offers Methods Trainings focused on quality improvements relative to the measures in the tool.
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#artssowhite - How can arts education help build equity in the arts?
Oscar season is upon us and rather than debating who will win Best Picture or Best Actor/Actress, the debate has been how “white” the Oscars are. #oscarssowhite went viral and African American actors began to boycott. As a result, the Academy (which is 94% white) responded by making the bold move to change their composition to reflect more diversity.
The Oscar issue is reflective of a much larger issue across all sectors of the arts; lack of diversity. I just returned from the annual meeting of American’s for the Arts and all of their advisory councils. This issue was front-and-center over the three-day meeting, as it has become a top priority for AFTA. As I sat and looked around the room I could see why.
