Americans for the Arts

Tim Mikulski

“Something big is going on in American cities. It is urban. It is real. It is transformative.” “It is a golden time for an urban renaissance.”

Those are just short soundbites from former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former Mayor of San Antonio Henry Cisneros during his introduction to our Town Hall session to start day two of the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention.

Following that stirring introduction, Cisneros joined five other panelists, and Americans for the Arts President & CEO Bob Lynch, in a fascinating discussion about how the arts can be involved in all aspects of creative placemaking.

Opening Remarks

In a round of opening remarks, the panelists were asked to respond to Cisneros' statements about the arts, cities, and placemaking.

Knight Foundation Vice President of Arts Programs Dennis Scholl asked several questions including: “What role are we going to play in this urban renaissance?” (as described by Cisneros) and “How are we going to seize this moment?” More importantly, he stated unequivocally, “I want a seat at the table and a national cultural policy.”

Los Angeles County Arts Commission Executive Director Laura Zucker stated, “Arts and creativity is a special sauce...if we could bottle and resell it to people, everyone would want to buy it. The challenge is to sell it.”

Trey McIntyre Project (TMP) Executive Director John Michael Schert explained how the dance company chose to make Boise, ID, its home because founder Trey McIntyre wanted to be part of shaping the community—how the city sees itself and how others see it.

In a fine example of placemaking at its core, Schert described how vital TMP has become to the community as they were named economic development cultural ambassadors and the fact he can walk down the street and local residents know who he is and often look to TMP as a resource for guidance. 

Joanna Chin

As the lead for developing Animating Democracy’s new website, I can tell you that it’s filled to the brim with incredible resources from our Arts and Social Change Mapping Initiative and Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative as well as earlier publications, tools, and resources from the program’s first decade of contributions to the field.

In fact, I’d wager that if you’ve gone to the site, one of the problems is that there’s too much there! Have 10 minutes?

Let me walk you through my shortlist of the top-5 things to do on our new website:

• Become part of a growing database of arts for change practitioners and supporters. Create a profile for yourself as an artist, project, and/or organization.

• Learn about how evaluation has helped two artists learn the social outcomes of their work with Pam Korza’s and Barbara Schaffer Bacon’s paper, Evaluating Impact/Appreciating Evaluation.

• Find artists and groups doing work in specific disciplines or issue areas through our searchable profiles and through links to specialized databases.
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Bill Rossi

One two three, one two three, one two three...Nate was in a groove, the ensemble was cookin', and Miles Davis' tune All Blues had never sounded better.

As the lead drummer, Nate stayed with that simple beat, rode it out to the end, then finished in perfect time. He beamed as the audience roared in appreciation, and if you hadn’t known him you would not have believed that one year ago he’d been unable to count rhythmically or sit still for more than five minutes.

But those who’d known him—who had seen his eyes light up at that first simple beat and watched over the year as he learned to focus, to listen, and to succeed—we knew what had happened. Nate had found himself through the arts.

The challenges Nate once faced are growing more common every day. Attention deficits, oppositional defiance, and incidents of youth violence and suicide have increased as our society has become preoccupied with materialism. As our focus has gone off taking care of our kids, the opportunities for to them to discover and express their voice have diminished. As ARTSblog readers know, the arts can fill this need.

I believe it’s also evident that any modality which can cause healing can also mitigate or even prevent illness. Unfortunately, our culture has segmented the arts, commercializing them into a “privileged” position. Perhaps we could learn from other cultures.

In many other cultures, the arts serve as a cohesive fluid in which the community operates. People get together informally through music, dance or song to relax and enjoy themselves and each other, with the performance aspect of art secondary to a self-participatory way of being together.

Kacy O'Brien

Change starts small, right?

We have seen time and again that small pockets of people, when seized with an idea, can come together and with the right leadership, momentum, and tools can affect change.

Change often starts with one person and a vision. If we want to be part of the “cultural zeitgeist, actively addressing the social inequities in our country” and reach “exponentially greater numbers of people,” as Diane Ragsdale suggests, then we need to do it in our backyards.

That may sound counter-intuitive—“to reach more people stay close to home”—but in my experience thus far as an early-career theatre producer, it seems to be the only way we’ll stay relevant to our respective communities.

In addition, cultural institutions need to have the room to try out ideas that are related to our missions, but not bound by them. That is not a new idea, by any stretch, but I think if we’re able to consider programming—not funding (though we could use that, too!)—in terms of venture capitalism, we may see large equity returns by way of audience growth, community partnerships and social relevance.

We talk a lot about relevance to our communities in the arts sector, particularly in regional institutions, and I think that the future of arts institutions and artists would benefit greatly from pursuing high-potential, high-risk programmatic change—what I’ll dub “venture capital projects.”

When I began working at Drexel University earlier this year, one of the most interesting developments that fell on my radar was hearing of College of Engineering’s Professor Youngmoo Kim’s directorship of the Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center:

Professor Kim’s background in music includes performing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Boston Symphony Orchestra coupled with his Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Music (Vocal Performance Practice) from Stanford University.

The mission of the ExCITe Center focuses on harnessing the talents of professionals working in the fields of research, education, civic engagement, and entrepreneurship as interdependent ingredients for creating transformative regional development.

Molly O'Connor

Spring is in the air…which means that in Oklahoma the redbuds are in full bloom and one can look forward to the regular chorus of tornado sirens.

For me and my colleagues at the Oklahoma Arts Council, springtime also brings new promise and excitement for the arts as we coordinate and present our Leadership Arts Program.

Founded in 2008, Leadership Arts, is a professional development program open to 30 class members from across the state of Oklahoma. Now in its fifth year, this program continues to build up a growing statewide network of arts advocates.

Leadership Arts class members represent a diverse and talented mix of individuals from communities both small and large and every corner of the state. The class is generally made up of arts administrators, civic/community leaders, educators, artists, tribal, and cultural representatives.

Each class meets for two days over the course of four months in a different community in Oklahoma. Class curriculum specifically addresses how the arts play a crucial role in the economic impact, education, and quality of life throughout Oklahoma.

Recently I met with Georgia Williams, co-founder of Leadership Arts and former cultural development director for the state arts council, to learn more about how the concept for this program originated.