Charles Jensen

Some Expressions about the Arts and Creative Expression

Posted by Charles Jensen, Jun 23, 2015


Charles Jensen

I was thrilled to sit in on the “Vocabulary for Arts and Arts Education” session at Americans for the Arts' Annual Convention this year. All three presenters—Christopher Audain, Kevin Kirkpatrick, and Margy Waller, along with moderator Margie Reese—were all on point for the session and I perhaps overtweeted in my enthusiasm over what they shared.

As I left the session, I started focusing on what Kevin presented on changing the conversation about arts and culture. Arts Midwest recently released the study Creating Connection: Research Findings and Proposed Message Framework to Build Public Will for Arts and Culture, which examined how existing attitudes and values of our audiences connect with our field’s message output. The study suggests reframing arts activity to be “creative expression” will have a more effective connection to broader audiences, and that connecting with others, with their families, and with their inner selves is their largest motivation for participating in arts and culture.

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Charles Jensen

Let Others Lead: A Mid-Career Manifesto

Posted by Charles Jensen, May 15, 2018


Charles Jensen

As an emerging leader in my late 20s and early 30s, I was desperate for a chance to be heard. I sought out opportunities to get involved with organizations and groups that would both connect me to other people in the field and allow me chances to organize, empower, and lead others. I had ideas. I wanted to share them. And I wanted to learn in the process. As the sun set on my emerging leader status—though I’m not sure exactly when that started happening, just when it was over—I had a pretty stark shift in my attitude about leadership. I found I wasn’t hungry for it anymore—not in the same way, at least.

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Charles Jensen

Leadership and Identity Equity

Posted by Charles Jensen, Jun 19, 2012


Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen

One of the most important sessions I attended at this year’s Annual Convention was Salvador Acevedo’s talk on "How Changing Demographics Are Shifting Your Community."

One of Salvador’s main points asked us to change our thinking from embracing “multiculturalism”—discrete ethnic identities that fit into neat census boxes—to “interculturalism,” a more broadly defined approach that invites people to define their identities contextually—and, to some degree, interchangeably.

Salvador cited research indicating the demographic landscape in America is rapidly changing. California is poised to become the first “minority majority” state, while several others already have collective non-white populations that outnumber the white population. Since half of all current births are non-white (or perhaps non-solely white), it’s clear a sea change is inevitable.

Salvador asked the audience in his “reverse Q&A” at the end of the session to talk about a time when we realized diversity was important to our organization. I talked about my participation on the Emerging Leaders Council (ELC) and how, just a few years ago, we released a slate of nominees for ELC election only to be criticized by our arts colleagues for releasing a slate of exclusively white candidates.

It wasn’t like we didn’t realize “diversity is important.” Of course we do. But the criticism pointed out a valid flaw in both our process of choosing nominees and the process inherent in populating the ELC.

Since then, the ELC has engaged in difficult, uncomfortable, and oftentimes unresolveable conversations about how we ensure our elected body is representative of the future of the field. Salvador’s talk provided a helpful context for thinking about the challenges we face in doing this.

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Charles Jensen

No One Calls Himself a Hipster and Other Emerging Fallacies

Posted by Charles Jensen, Dec 03, 2012


Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen

In a recent edition of Thomas Cott’s “You’ve Cott Mail,” readers encountered a series of blogs and articles exploring the utility—and, in one case, the aftermath—of embracing a term like “emerging” in its application to artists.

It was earlier this year when Barry Hessenius, too, addressed in his blog the importance of identifying emerging leaders. “I wonder whether or not we are isolating these people by relegating them to their own niche as ‘emerging,’ and whether or not by confining them to their own 'silo', we might be doing them, and ourselves - at least in part - a disservice,” he wrote.

By identifying emerging leaders, the early impulse was to provide support and resources. But it was the majority group who defined this difference. The term does not apply to them, only to a separate group. A discrete category. Others.

Or, to put it another way, by creating “emerging leaders,” the term separated the field into two groups: “emerging leaders” and “leaders.”

Before continuing, three illustrations:

1. The term “hipster,” like its predecessor “yuppie” in the 1980s, has become inextricably linked to this cultural moment. Yet, who is a hipster?

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Charles Jensen

Don’t Discount the Back-Up Singers

Posted by Charles Jensen, Apr 09, 2013


Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen Charles Jensen

This week, hundreds of advocates are gathering in and around Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, to communicate to our national elected officials the value and impact of the arts on local communities, on families, on individual lives.

This is an important day, not just for the arts community, not just for our Senators and Representatives, but for the people served by us, those who cannot be in Washington having these conversations.

I’ve worked within and outside of advocacy over the course of my career in the arts, so I understand why arts administrators are willing to make the commitment to travel to Washington, or even to their own state legislature, to promote the value of the arts. I know there is confusion about what roles arts nonprofit staff can take in the name of “advocacy” without jeopardizing their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS.

And I know our arts leadership, those most likely to speak with legislators, are also our busiest, most called-upon experts, and often feel that devoting several days to the work of advocacy is the best they can do under their current circumstances.

But, friends, it’s not all. The work happening in Washington this week is the chorus of the song we sing all year long: the arts build communities. The arts turn around lives. The arts stimulate the economy. 

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Charles Jensen

From Academia to an Independent Nonprofit Arts Organization

Posted by Charles Jensen, Oct 23, 2009


Charles Jensen

I worked on two of the nation’s largest college campuses for a grand total of thirteen years. At the University of Minnesota, I cut my teeth in residential life, in community arts programming, even working with a data collection group on a research study. At Arizona State University, I continued my work with residential life, only to migrate into teaching English and creative writing, and then managing and helping to grow Phoenix’s largest community-oriented writing center.

Working in academia has its pluses and minuses. All summer long I enjoyed what amounted to a private city, with restaurants empty at lunch time, wide sidewalks and quads free of pushing and shoving and skateboarders, and on-campus services like the gym and library that seemed to be waiting for me to command them into activity. It’s a stark contrast from the other nine months of the year. Throughout the academic year, students swarm the campus like picnic ants. Waiting for Starbucks was more excruciating than waiting for Godot. And food in the union, when it was even available, was like revenge—always cold and never what you were expecting. On a given day, I was once told, the University of Minnesota gathered 75,000 people, making it the fifth-largest city in the state.

I was frequently reminded of Matthew McCaughnahey’s iconic line about high school students from Dazed and Confused: “I keep getting older, but they stay the same age.” While that was a turn on for him, all it succeeded in doing for me was making me feel old.  Like codger-old.

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Charles Jensen

Everything I Need to Know About Organizational Change I Learned by Watching Bravo

Posted by Charles Jensen, Dec 21, 2009


Charles Jensen

Bravo has been running a lot of this show lately, and since I've been laid up (or, more accurately, laid out, like a cadaver) with a wrenched back, I've watched a bunch of episodes. And I'm kind of hooked. I was initially sort of reproachful about the show's premise--über-wench Tabatha Coffey (formerly of the first round of Shear Genius) goes into a failing/miserable/grody hair salon, knocks everyone around, makes a lot of noise, and teaches them but good. But you know what? The arts manager in me really likes this show a lot.

Last year I spent some time reading Michael Kaiser’s The Art of the Turnaround, which is basically a series of vignettes in which Michael, like Tabitha, goes into a failing/miserable/grody arts organization, makes a lot of important observations, puts forward a new agenda, and re-enlivens the staff and community.

Tabatha does go into salons that are basically on their last curling iron, and yes, she does brusquely put people in their place, and she can be a little terse. But she's also encouraging, fair, professional, and, in the end, she turns the salons into high-functioning team environments focused on customer service.  Arts organizations might be able to find some inspiration for fostering change within themselves by considering what Tabitha does—which, in a lot of ways, is similar to Michael does in his book, but with the added dimension of hairdresser insanity.

Organizational dysfunction sometimes seems so common it has become "function." Workplace environments are chock full of people with issues, people dodging responsibility, people viciously guarding their little fiefdoms, and people hating each other. Even the best teams I've worked on have had these elements to them in some proportion; at worst, that's all there's been. This is why the workplace is such a common setting for sitcoms. (And why The Office is funnier if, you know, you work in an office. See also Dilbert.)

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