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April 24, 2007
April 25, 2007 Barry's Blog
Hi everybody.
"And the beat goes on........................."
TOPIC: GENERATIONAL SUCCESSION: Involving Youth in Nonprofit Arts Organizations
There is a growing concern that the arts sector is courting disaster by failing to make generational succession issues a higher priority. The concern isn't so much where the future artists will come from -- we see them everywhere, and as a field we are doing a pretty good job its seems in making connections to them, providing them with support and opportunities to perform and exhibit.
The concern is that all the other sectors of society - nonprofits and "for profits" - seem to already be aggressively courting the previously limited, and now shrinking pool of new talent (from which our next generation leaders and board members, not to mention, our future grassroots advocates, our financial supporters and our audiences must ALL come) - and we aren't. We're already arguably at a competitive disadvantage because this just isn't yet one of our major priorities. We can't offer the compensation packages corporations can, and we aren't yet marketing the benefits that involvement in the arts offer nearly as successfully as other sectors are making involvement in their causes appealing and attractive to young people.
As our baby boomer leadership retires, as mid-career arts administrators are increasingly leaving our field, for financial and other reasons, and as there will be more jobs to fill than young people to fill them over the next decade, we are nearing the proverbial rock and a hard place. If we are going to have any chance to compete for the participation of the next generation, we need to begin a national dialogue immediately about how we can address this issue. I found scores of leaders across the country share my concern. The clock is ticking......
INVOLVING YOUTH IN NONPROFIT ARTS ORGANIZATIONS - THE PROJECT
It is in this context that the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation commissioned me to undertake a study on generational succession issues in California. The project included a study of existing efforts in the arts sector in California, a comparison and contrasting of what organizations in the environmental movement were doing to attract, recruit and retain the involvement of young people (with an eye towards what we might learn from their experience), a look at some of the variables that are involved in creating programs that seek to involve young people in five areas:
1. Governance - as future staff and board members
2. As financial supporters and members of our organizations
3. As grassroots advocates and boosters
4. As future audiences
5. As artists
and identification of some of the barriers and opportunities in any effort to increase the particiaption of young people. Finally, we sought to make some simple and basic recommendations as to what the sector, individual arts organizations, and those involved in funding the arts might do in the near term so that we might achieve some quantifiable, measurable progress by 2010.
The report involved a surveying and mapping of efforts in a cross section of the arts field in California - which because of its geographical, discipline based, budget sized and diversity breadth and depth provided a picture we believe is fairly representative of the national picture.
FINDINGS:
Basically the report found and confirmed what one might expect -- the arts are doing a good job of reaching out to young artists - providing them with training, mentoring and other kinds of support, as well offering them opportunities to perform and exhibit their works. But in virtually every other area, we are not making as much progress. Far too few arts organizations have even one young person on their board of directors(and we defined - for purposes of this study - young people as in three categories - high school, college and post college up to age 30). By and large arts organizations are doing nothing at all to recruit and deploy young people as grassroots advocates, nor to solicit them to contribute as financial donors. And little is done to separate out, study, and track young people as part of our audiences. In terms of some sort of systemic approach to the involvement of young people, we are not doing much of anything. Yes, many arts organizations have very good programs that are designed to (and successful in their attempt to) attract young people (as board members, as interns, as audience members etc.) - and we highlight some examples of what can be done easily and without great expense - but the effort is piecemeal - not systemic or across the board. This observation isn't meant to diminish the efforts of those who are pioneering work in this area, but as a whole, the field has not yet embraced this issue -- certainly not when compared with, say, the environmental movement. There are a few shining stars on the national, regional and local levels -- programs that seek to nourish and support our emerging leaders and at least expose some young people to who we are and what we do. On the plus side, we have long standing ties and contacts with high schools across the country. We need to begin to have the same outreach efforts to colleges as well, and to better exploit the relaionships we do have to recruit new leaders and supporters -- to move beyond exposing them to our performances and get them involved in our organizations.
One of the most salient statistics that hit us was the prediction by the Employment Policy Foundation (EPF)that between 2003 and 2013 over 30 million jobs (in all sectors) would be created for candidates with two years or more of a college education, and yet there would only be 23 million such graduates available to fill those jobs. That's a projected 7 million shortfall - and that is before 2013 - now only six years away. It will only get worse. How many of thoses 7 million unfilled jobs will be ours. Where then will the best and the brightest young arts leaders, supporters, patrons, defenders come from? How we will get at least our share of the market? What can the field do as a whole for the smaller arts organizations that are not situated and positioned as well for this competition as some of our larger institutions? How do we deal with declining budgets, lack of time and other obstacles to even thinking about this problem? These aren't academic questions any more.
Download the Full Report and / or the Executive Summary: click here: http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/PerformingArts/Publications/YouthReport.htm
OPEN FORUMS TOUR:
So, to jumpstart the dialogue, Moy Eng and I -- working with local hosts in five cities - San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento - are holding open Forums to present the findings and recommedations of the study, and to faciliate brainstorming sessions in each venue to see if local arts leadership can begin to develop strategies to work together to address the challenges of attracting young people to our field - in their areas (because each territory will likely be dealing with differing circumstances). We invite you to attend one of these forums if your schedule permits (some of the venue locations are limited as to how many people they can accomodate so you must RSVP to those venues as indicated below.) I'm sorry not to give you more notice, but you know how that goes sometimes --- 'The best laid plans of mice and men..........."
OPEN FORUMS SCHEDULE:
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25th 1:00 to 3:00 pm SAN DIEGO
click here for info / RSVP http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/rrprickett@yahoo.com/youthinthearts
THURSDAY, APRIL 26th 10:00 am to Noon LOS ANGELES
click here for info / RSVP http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=871943594507
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2nd 9:30 to 11:30 am - SAN JOSE (Menlo Park) NOTE: to be held at the Hewlett Foundation. Space is severely limited. You must reserve your place by RSVPing to David Keppel for reservation: dkoppel@artscouncil.org
THURSDAY, MAY 3rd 10:00 am to Noon - SAN FRANCISCO. NOTE: Space is severely limited. You must reserve your place by RSVPing to Sharon Page Ritchie at the SF Arts Commission Sharon.Page_Ritchie@sfgov.org
FRIDAY, JUNE 15th - SACRAMENTO - time and specific info to follow
In a couple of weeks, after we complile the feedback and ideas from these Forums I will devote another blog and convene a HESSENIUS GROUP to discuss the Report, the Forum ideas, and the issues so that we can dig deeper into what response the field can have to the challenges we face. I am particularly interested in your thoughts and ideas and I hope you will share them with me so I might share them with the full subscriber list. I hope this might be a topic of discussion on the agenda of every arts organization's next board of directors meeting and a session at all of the arts service group national conventions over the course of the next year or two.
In the next blog I will also include some links to some other studies on the same subject. If you know of others, I would appreciate your letting me know.
We have to do something about this soon or we are going to come up with the short end of the stick. We ALL have to do something.
Thank you for your consideration.
Reminder: The National Association of Arts Organizations (NAAO) meets in Los Angeles beginning Friday, April 27th - click here for more information: www.naao.net
And Americans for the Arts is meeting in LAS VEGAS at the fabulous Flamingo Hotel June 1-3 Click here for info: www.americansforthearts.org/events/2007/convention/default.asp
Have a great week.
Remember: Don't Quit!
Barry
Posted by BarryH at April 24, 2007 01:17 PM
Comments
Thank you so much for all the ammunition for my art gun. We need more public voices now not later. Again thank you.
Gary
Posted by: Gary Lockwood at April 24, 2007 09:05 PM
Barry, I just discovered your blog from Andrew Taylor's blog entry. Interesting conclusions. They seem related to two bits I thought I might add to the discussion.
First, Greg Sandow and I had a discussion recently about the seemingly low influx of young audience members. You can read that in a ten-part series starting at http://preview.tinyurl.com/yq9pw7. The inferences seemed to support your conclusions.
Second, you note that there was less concern about where future artists would come from. Drew McManus and I did an exploration of that phenomenon at http://pegasuscom.com/aar/model7.html. Without spoiling the experience of exploring the model too much, our simulation model suggests that the relative abundance of artists may be a sign of a systemic, structural problem in the business.
I hate to be a downer. The good news is that approaches such as this can help in the process of finding solutions, too.
I'd be curious in your reactions and observations.
Posted by: Bill Harris at April 25, 2007 09:32 AM
Hello, am I missing something or is there not "About Barry" link on the blog to let readers know who you are and what your background is? Is this by design? -Brennen
Posted by: brennen Jensen at April 25, 2007 10:05 AM
It's great to see that more and more initiatives like this are popping up across North America.
Check out the recently launched Emerging Arts Professional Network site www.eapnetwork.ca
Posted by: Ella at April 25, 2007 03:52 PM
On the issue of our successors in the Arts...
All I can say is TEACH THE KIDS! And for government agencies and Arts-supporting organizations...Provide grants to teach kids, particularly to schools.
Over my career, I have seen miracles. I could go on for hours with absolutely tear-jerker stories about childrens' lives turned around through Art.
Barry, you may remember me as the teacher at the tiny isolated rural schools of Pacific Valley in Big Sur, and San Lucas, in the south Salinas Valley. We had an ARTWORKS grant program called SURMOUNT. It is still alive and we have sent lots of new future artists into the world, inspired and doing awesome stuff. Now we have (5 years running) aa "revolutionary" student community-service, peer-teaching outreach program, called "Ambassadors for the Arts and Environment", in which our students have formed peer-teaching teams. We do field trips to neighboring isolated schools, and the students pass in their wealth of learning to their peers. The results have been unreal, and "contageous". In 1995, we were recognized with the Governor's Environmental and Economics Leadership Award"...the program crosses Art with Environmental Stewardship. One of our mainstays is to teach kids how to recycle scrap paper from the wastebasket into beautiful works of handmade paper, complete with painting and scupltural elements. If you send me an e-mail contact, I can send you a more extensive description with some photos full of kids with BIG smiles and literally acres of works of art they have created.
David Allan
Art Teacher,
Pacific Unified School District
69235 Highy 1
Big Sur, Ca 93920
davidallan7@hotmail.com
Posted by: David Allan at April 25, 2007 08:09 PM
It's a longstanding habit of mine. Whenever I walk into an arts environment--theater, gallery, conference, board room--I immediately take note of the demographics. It's a rarity to see any young people.
"Involving Youth" takes a broad brush to the issue, investigating the activity of young people (ages 16 to 30) in six domains: governance, membership, financial support, advocacy, audience development, and artist support. The report makes the usual recommendations about dialogue, commitment, resources, partnerships, etc.
In the real world, where the arts are underappreciated, overcommitted, and barely capitalized, I cannot imagine calling the sector to undertake one more "top-priority." Even the best internship programs profiled in the report, for example, don't make the grade. Low pay, grunt work duties, and lack of staff mentorship don't make for an effective or scaleable pipeline into the sector. The human and financial costs are unmanageable for organizations that are already spread too thin.
If we are to attract the best and the brightest into the arts, and this is the report's explicit call to action, then we need to do three things, two of them easy and one of them perennially elusive:
1. Include young people on the board of directors.
This requires no funding, no grant writing, and no staff oversight. Not only does a board appointment engage the best and the brightest in a meaningful way, but it may be the only way that the sector will begin to really address the needs and lifestyles of young people. We need to address those needs at the site of core decision-making, not as a programming or marketing after-thought.
2. Hire marketing specialists under age 30.
If our message--in both form and content--is ever going to attract youth, we've got to stop kidding ourselves that the over-40 crowd is the most adept at making that connection. Let's go to the source.
3. Make the arts relevant.
This is the perennially elusive strategy. (This is the perennially elusive strategy that would solve most problems in the sector.) If we listen to young board members and young marketing specialists, then perhaps we will begin to understand that the benefits of the arts to the old guard are not necessarily the same benefits defined by a younger generation. It may rub us the wrong way, but the fact is: environmentalism has become a sexy issue and a draw to young people because it was adopted and endorsed by Hollywood celebs, not because we told kids that it's "good for them."
Ann Daly, PhD
Ann Daly Arts Consulting LLC
anndaly@anndaly.com
http://www.anndaly.com
Posted by: Ann Daly at May 3, 2007 07:53 AM