Barry's Arts Blog and Update: September 2009 Archives

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September 29, 2009

NEA FORUM - PANEL 3 - THE FUNDING COMMUNITY

Hello everybody.

“And the beat goes on...... “

PANEL # 3 – FORUM ON THE NEA (Funders – Foundations and Government)

SCROLL DOWN FOR THE WEDNESDAY ENTRIES.

And please scroll down to the previous week’s blog(s) to review the remarks and comments of the previous Panels.

PARTICIPANTS:

Ben Cameron - Program Director for the Arts, Doris Duke Foundation
Daniel Windham - Director of Arts, The Wallace Foundation
Janet Brown – Executive Director, Grantmakers in the Arts
Moy Eng – Program Director, Performing Arts, Hewlett Foundation
John McGuirk – Program Director – Arts, Irvine Foundation
Frances Phillips - Program Director, Arts & The Creative Work Fund, Haas Foundation
John Killacky – Program Officer, Arts, The San Francisco Foundation
Victoria Hamilton - Executive Director, San Diego Office of Arts & Culture
Laura Zucker - Executive Director, Los Angeles County Arts Commission; Director of the Masters in Arts Administration program at Claremont Graduate University
Loie Fecteau – Executive Director, New Mexico Arts

BARRY: Given the crisis in funding for the arts (due to shrinking stock portfolios of private foundations and severe cuts to state and local government budgets), how can the funding community (foundations, states, cities & counties) work with the Endowment in a more strategic and collaborative holistic approach to the challenges facing the sector? Some cities and states fare better than do others. Are there any lessons to be learned from those that are successful in maintaining funding streams or is it primarily luck of the draw?

DANIEL: The opening question should resonate loud and clear, given the crises or absent the crises: how can we work effectively and efficiently? One answer might be to consider reframing the target of our joint efforts from overcoming challenges “facing the [arts] sector,” to overcoming challenges facing people in our communities, cities and the nation, challenges that preclude them from participating in a rich and diverse arts ecology. Funders and policymakers typically help to propel individuals and organizations on the supply side of the equation (that is, support for the performance or exhibition of works of art). But our commissioned research (Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy, RAND Corporation, 2008 -click here: www.wallacefoundation.org/KnowledgeCenter/KnowledgeTopics/CurrentAreasofFocus/ArtsParticipation/Pages/cultivating-demand-for-the-arts.aspx argues that a focus on the demand side, that is, cultivating the capacity of individuals to have engaging experiences with works of art, has received inadequate attention from policymakers and funders. An opportunity, therefore, exists for the Endowment to discover and pursue with members of the private funding community mutual interests and explore the design of inter-related and supportive strategies that lead more people to see, hear, and feel what works of art - in and across different cultural traditions - have to offer.

Certainly, funding for the arts has been the “go to” indicator of vitality. However, in our current work with 54 arts organizations in six cities (Wallace Excellence Awards), a systems strategy to try to improve practice in arts organizations, we have observed that efforts that prioritize participation building as a civic “good” and highlight the importance and value of engaging more people in the arts, can increase the visibility of the arts sector and attract local funders to work in partnership. Perhaps the lesson is the harder and more collaboratively we work, the luckier we will be.

LAURA: Starting with the last part of the question first, no, it’s not an accident that some local and state arts agencies fare better than others when it comes to funding and other mechanisms to support the arts. There are always larger economic forces at work and the overall political orientation of a community certainly plays a role. That being said, however, there are those who are more adept at figuring out which issues are more likely to get traction, which way the river is flowing, and can construct programs that go with the flow. You can have the greatest idea in the world but if you’re fighting the current you’re just a whole lot less likely to succeed.

You’ve got to identify the decision makers and find out what’s important to them-- I’m always amazed at how many rabid arts advocates don’t take the time to do this. We have to ask how we can address our priorities while fulfilling theirs. Not subjugating what the arts needs in the service of solving public and social service problems, but getting a two-fer.

An example is the arts internship program we created ten years ago as a sister initiative to the Getty Foundation’s stellar program. We both fund arts organizations to employ approximately 125 undergraduates to work for ten weeks each summer. It’s a win-win: the arts organizations get much needed assistance, not to mention a lot of reverse IT mentoring, and the program addresses the county’s goals for summer youth employment. This program was slated for elimination by our CEO this year due to the economic crisis, but I believe it will survive because cutting a program that creates job just doesn’t make sense in the face of the huge job creation initiatives underway in most communities.

NEA funding will always be a drop in the bucket compared to the mega-streams flowing through other federal agencies. This is just as true on the state and local level as well. The NEA can leverage its meager resources by making sure the arts are integrated into the agenda of every other federal agency.

Example: When Los Angeles County announced a major $80 million initiative to address homelessness, we surveyed our arts organizations and found that more than 20 were already doing important work in this field. But because there was no data to prove that the work helped move people into housing, our arts organizations were shut out of this funding stream. We received an NEA grant to make five pilot grants to arts organizations working in partnership with social service organizations serving the homeless, and used this as the basis for the first objective evaluation work in this area. The report that shows that these programs can be part of the solution will be released in a couple of weeks at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference. And hopefully, the decision makers’ thinking will change.

VICTORIA: Many voices, one message.
Strategic collaboration is the primary vehicle to manage the financial challenges that face the arts at the local level and certainly for the Endowment. To maintain funding streams, the first lesson to learn is that there are many ingredients to successful collaboration.

A colleague of mine, Hal Conklin, former Mayor of Santa Barbara, said that this process starts with a visioning process and that secret to success is, as he calls it, the three C’s:

• Communication is critical and needs to be constant, this means put your vision out there and continue to communicate and revisit it often,
• Commitment to your vision is a long term proposition, and
• Collect stakeholders, seek feedback and input, even from the naysayers.

And from my own experience in the field, I would add three more C’s to Hal’s ingredients:

• Choreography orchestrating the commitment and collection of stakeholders through community engagement opportunities such as candidate questionnaires and forums,
• Charm others with enthusiasm, confidence and background materials that assist them in understanding the issues such as economic impact reports, and
• Celebrate successes along the way. Celebrate the short term gains as well as the major achievements all of our partners need to feel involved and valued.

It is not luck of the draw.
There are three kinds of groups - those who make things happen; those who wait for things to happen; and those who wonder what happened.

FRANCES: As context, I need to say that the Walter and Elise Haas Fund does not have a 2010 budget, but, because we set our budgets based on a percentage of a three year rolling average of the value of the endowment, at present we are living on the average value of our endowment in 2006, 2007, and 2008—two good years and one bad one. I anticipate that that budget will be reduced in 2010 from its 2009 level and that 2011 will be cut further. In 2009, our program budgets were kept at their 2008 levels, but we achieved that “flat” state by not budgeting for capital grants or for some special cross-program initiatives. Decisions about our future budgets are in the hands of our trustees.

Looking around, many of my colleagues at other foundations and public agencies already know about their funding cuts and are in the midst of delivering bad news. Many very fine, very deserving organizations are learning that sources they have long depended upon are either going to be smaller in the coming year or are disappearing. Right now, working with my flat budget, I am in a lucky position, but it is extremely difficult to take on new grantees or re-introduce groups that received Walter and Elise Haas Fund support in the past. I have not yet had to interrupt expected three-year funding for a nonprofit (our Fund’s common behavior is to support something for up to three years) unless its work or management has declined. I expect that will change next year.

Everyone is asking questions about being strategic and collaborative right now. I admire that rhetoric but this is one of the most difficult times I can imagine for collaborations. Many organizations are facing sudden changes and must move quickly to adjust. Sharing resources, reducing overhead, and combining programs makes good sense, but making those deals requires attention to detail and periods of courtship. I manage a collaborative artmaking grant program for artists and nonprofits to work together, and again and again I beg applicants to remember that collaboration takes time. It is a rich process, a meaningful process, but it is not an efficient process. Mergers should not be rushed, shared services agreements should not be rushed, dissolutions should not be rushed. By rushing we create collateral damage–angry, mistrustful subscribers, abused employees, sullied reputations.

I would argue for grants that create the gift of slowness, of thought, of re-imagining for our nonprofits. The economic crisis is a healthy excuse for questioning old habits and assumptions, for finally tackling those deferred conversations. If resources are limited, rushing a half-finished piece to the stage is irresponsible, marketing in the same old ways is wasteful, and providing exposure to the arts when you could empower students to really learn about or master an art form is cavalier.

At the same time, someone needs to pick up the pace and likely it is we funders. As I say this, I feel like a charlatan: I know that I’ve been slowed by the workload that has grown in the context of greater demand for the same amount of money. The level of scrutiny rises when one has to say “no” to more people. But, if other pieces of the puzzle could fall in place, I could push myself to deliberate more quickly, and maybe our trustees would consider more frequent board meetings, shorter proposal analyses, more conversations, and less paper. The Endowment set a fine example when its staff managed the recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. A bureaucratic agency’s moving with that speed was remarkable.

Two kinds of grantmaking seem to me to be the most vital and important right now: general operating support, which gives the grantee maximum flexibility to adapt; and innovation/transformation funding to help agencies change the ways they do business. The Doris Duke Foundation and James Irvine Foundation are working together on an innovation fund that, I believe, Duke devised. There’s a positive buzz around that effort. I can imagine something that would be a hybrid of the old NEA Advancement program and these new models—a program that would pressure nonprofits to innovate in the face of reality and that would not encourage growth as the only evidence of vitality. The Endowment’s research division could be a strong partner in sharing what was learned.

Why some cities and states fare better than others do when it comes to sustaining their support for the arts deserves deeper analysis than I can give it. Of course, some states (California among them) were hit particularly hard by the economic downturn based on the nature of their industries and real estate markets, and the sources of their tax revenues. And some states and cities seem to clearly embrace artistic leadership as a source of civic pride (Chicago’s Millennium Park and its recent celebration of Daniel Burnham’s contributions come to mind.) Some states and cities see the arts as vehicles for something else that they want to accomplish—be it a stronger creative sector or more tourism. And different regions have different personalities. Advocacy matters, good institutional behavior matters, and history matters. But, I don’t think there’s a magic formula that preserves or grows public resources for the arts. It takes the same effort that any kind of fundraising takes—cultivation, cultivation, cultivation.

BEN: In pondering the list of 5 questions as a whole, I wonder whether we aren’t being encouraged to think of a coordinated funding approach to the arts that emphasizes specific values or objectives—and wonder equally whether that is a good idea. It seems to me that the funding landscape is equally at its healthiest when it has a diverse set of objectives, approaches and values—that there is great value in a landscape that can support artists and arts organizations for gen op and projects like productions and exhibits, education programs, research and restoration, and that prizes artists and arts organizations who strive for social justice, those who are engaged in community formation, and those who are engaged in arts for arts sake, for example. Indeed, there has been much behind-doors exasperation over the years over funder ADD and the sense that priorities change too singularly and too quickly—a kind of flavor of the month approach that has prioritized diversity, for example, and then shifted to arts education and that now seems to be headed towards innovation. All of these issues (and others) are clearly important, but the degree to which one dominates the funding landscape at a given point in time can be disorienting and potentially destabilizing to organizations and artists.

The question about the NEA therefore may well be for the agency to ask the question about where the “holes” in the funding landscape are. In those earlier Endowment days, the value of seasonal support/gen op that was at the heart of the agency’s programs (and which was subsequently outlawed by Congress) was important precisely because it offered this complementary balance to local funders and corporate support, which tended to be project focused. The NEA was often about building infrastructure—remember Challenge and Advancement—more than about supporting discrete projects. Assuming for the moment that the agency cannot persuade Congress to release its restrictions on seasonal support/gen op, the question may be less about trying to pull people together around a set of objectives that the NEA defines than about the NEA declaring a clear set of priorities and goals, and then issuing the invitation to appropriate partners to see how working together might be of benefit to all.

Clearly, maintaining funding streams is about being able to position the arts as having value—whether economic, educational, social, aesthetic or emotional/intrinsic. Different funding bodies will respond differently to each of these, and there is no “magic bullet.” Clearly Congress has its eye on economic value these days, but we need to continue to establish the educational value of the arts for funding to be maintained at the Department of Education and at local schools, the social value to foundations engaged in community building and social justice, etc. The NEA’s research division has been critically important in helping quantify such value over time—a role that the agency will, I hope, continue to play.

LOIE: The NEA has a powerful infrastructure in place with the state arts agencies and regional arts organizations across our country and should use this partnership and trust the states. We are your voices in the trenches. I do think it important for the NEA to continue to focus on making sure each congressional district can show a direct benefit from NEA funding. In a recent conversation with Americans for the Arts State Captains, Congressional Arts Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., said that has been extremely important in getting Congressional buy-in and support to increase NEA funding. Like it or not, that’s just a very basic political reality – and it’s one where the SAAs and RAAs can help the NEA make its case with Congress. It’s also true that NEA funding has become even more important to some of the states because of state budget cuts which is why it is all the more important that this funding be maintained and preferably increased.

Regarding strategy, I think we, the arts community, need to do a better job in telling our story. We need to reclaim our place at the table as we have been marginalized for too long. The arts recovery funding (ARRA) is a tremendous opportunity and the importance of the $50 million for the NEA that Congress included in the recovery effort cannot be overlooked. And while this arts recovery effort was begun before Rocco Landesman came on board, it will come to fruition under his watch. So it is incumbent upon all of us who have gotten these funds to make sure the NEA has compelling arts recovery stories to tell. For example, in New Mexico we are requiring the recipients of our Arts Jobs funds to provide us with photographs and bios of each person benefitting from these arts recovery funds. We want to put a human face on our Arts Jobs program. As Rocco Landesman put it so well: “Artists are every bit as employed as people who work in auto plants.” We need to hammer this message home.

JOHN MCGUIRK: California and New York, and particularly the major metropolitan areas within these two states, historically have been very successful in obtaining NEA support. This is an opportunity for the new Chairman, however, to build upon the work of Ivey and Gioia to distribute NEA resources broadly, widely and equitably across the nation, including inland and rural regions so that everyone has access to arts and culture.

JOHN KILLACKY: Bay Area foundations and local governments generously contribute about $50 million annually to regional arts organizations. Because of this largess, cultural groups have been less reliant on individual donors than their peers nationally. With the dramatic loss of assets, approximately $15 million less will be contributed this year from foundations and local government agencies which is destabilizing our arts ecosystem, large to small. Almost everyone agrees funding problems will become more acute in the upcoming three years. The only growth area in the near future will be support from individuals, both from box office and contributions. Arts organizations that have dynamic, interactive, authentic relationships with their constituents, audiences, and neighbors are the ones that will come out of this maelstrom stronger.

MOY:
No, it is not primarily the luck of the draw. A combination of factors affect the ability of funders to “play together”:
• Leadership
• Donor/agency history on funding priorities
• Distinctive role as grantmaker
• Size and scale of arts grantmaking
• History and approach in collaborations
• Return on investment for private sector funders and budget constraints for public sector funders.

Collaboration requires a commitment, a commitment by participants in time and resources toward a common goal, at times significant commitment of both. For national private and public sectors funders such as the National Endowment for the Arts at the size and scale of ambitions/goals, number of grant awards, geographic breadth, the working assumption is the power of the NEA’s imprimatur and to leverage other non-federal government funding and the imprimatur of an NEA grant may not be enough on long-view issues which demand a coterie of committed, influential leaders working toward a collective bold vision. There is a prime opportunity to work together on selected ones such as arts education, arts participation and with over 120 languages/cultures in the San Francisco Bay Area region, the artistic/cultural expressions by artists/culture bearers working to preserve or mix it up. The first two are explicitly articulated in the NEA’s 2006-2011 strategic plan.

JANET: We start by talking to one another, not just at conferences and large convening’s, but by sharing strategic information, research and planning actions together. There are “big picture” issues that need to be tackled by the entire funding community, private and public. They include the “re-entry” into philanthropy by corporate America which has withdrawn for economic and perceptual reasons; the perception as elitist or unnecessary of the nonprofit arts community and artists by the American public; solutions to the undercapitalized nature of organizations and the challenge to increase philanthropy in the arts from individuals and foundations during a time when their resources are stretched. Enough to do?

The National Endowment for the Arts continues to be an organization with clout and power despite the fact their appropriation isn’t what we all believe it should be. Private foundations also have the influence to change the perception of the public and operational practices of grantees. Working together as grantmakers with the sole purpose of creating a country where artists are respected and the arts are cherished by individual citizens seems to a no-brainer. Working together…is the key word here and often times the arts community has been its own worst enemy. Connecting national, state and local public funders with private foundations, corporations and donor designated individual funds is the mission of GIA. The NEA plays a huge role in coming to the table to develop strategies that will benefit artists and arts organizations and in turn, support a more creative America.

Some cities do better than others in public funding because they have created a culture that integrates the arts into the lifeblood of the community. New York City is the “2000 pound gorilla in the room.” The economic indicators drive the support. Many other cities have found this to be true: cultural growth means economic growth. The cost of investment to create a culturally interesting city where people want to live and visit is minimal compared to other investments cities need to make. A strong infrastructure of organizations, a primary advocate in the local arts agency, leadership that “gets it” in the mayor’s office are all part of the formula. It’s not hit or miss. It’s strategic and developed. Those arts advocates at the local level in cities that support the arts stand today on the shoulders of their predecessors from forty and fifty years ago. Our job is to make the connections between the arts and the lives of ordinary citizens.

BARRY: From your vantage point, what are the greatest current needs of the arts organizations you serve and how might the Endowment play a greater role in addressing those needs?

DANIEL: It’s evident from our work that arts organizations are looking for effective ways to reach more people and are recognizing the need to better understand their audiences, both current and potential. There is also a newly noticed interest among some organizations to understand why people are not coming to their venues not only as a way to “capture” a greater share of audience, but as a way to better understand the relationship of the organization to its communities and so better serve those communities. Most often, they cite lack of funds for this kind of research. (Research was the #1 underfunded need identified by arts organization leaders we surveyed.) The NEA already tracks public participation in 7 major disciplines via the SPPA. Given that the arts faces competition from other activities, it might be helpful to understand how Americans make choices about the arts in the context of those other activities, and how they see barriers and opportunities to participation.

JOHN MCGUIRK: It would be interesting to reframe this question – what are the greatest current cultural needs of the public and how might the Endowment play a greater role in addressing those needs? Clearly access to, and engagement in, arts opportunities would be a high priority, as well as arts education and life long learning activities.

JANET: We need new thinking and new strategies. The National Endowment has always been a leader in requiring organizations to apply appropriate business practices like planning, professional development and adequate staffing. The role of the NEA influences the programs and criteria of state arts agencies. Recent studies by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the William Penn Foundation indicate that arts organizations are undercapitalized. This is no surprise to anyone involved in funding. So, after forty years of putting together a network of private and public funding, what hasn’t worked? In this day and age of rapidly changing technology, what’s the new direction? Are we training leaders for the organizations of tomorrow or ten years ago? Now is the time to evaluate the status of arts education, individual artist support, major institution stability and sustainability and the support of small and mid-sized organizations. These are big picture issues and the NEA can be a leader in driving both public and private funding discourse and focus.

FRANCES: The arts organizations I serve need basic operating support, courage, and the will to change themselves. If those of us who were funding them and asking them for outcomes and reports could devise some shared expectations and then get out of their way, they could achieve their best.

The Endowment’s role could be to place the needs of arts organizations and artists alongside other parts of the federal agenda—health insurance and health care reform, job development, re-aligning the United States’ relations with other nations, creating demand for quality U.S. products. The Endowment could shape policy advances in these arenas combined with thoughtful grantmaking that recognizes artists’ and organizations’ needs and vehicles with which they can be creative contributors to our society.

VICTORIA: My goal in participating in this blog was not to be parochial, but you asked the question!

From my point of view one the greatest needs of arts organizations in San Diego is funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. San Diego is the second largest city in California and the eight largest in the country with a population over 1.25 million. And, in spite of the fact that the 72 organizations funded by the Commission for Arts and Culture, under its Organizational Support Program, stimulate the local economy with $180 million in direct expenditures, employ a workforce of over 6,300 and reach over 5 million people, they continue to be over looked at the state and national level.

For example, though we were pleased to learn that about $4.5 million Endowment American Recovery and Reinvestment Act direct grants were awarded to 99 arts groups in California, only two of the 99 grants were awarded to arts organizations in San Diego. This compares to over 40% awarded in Los Angeles and 54% awarded in Northern California, predominantly in San Francisco.

Going forward, I would encourage Chairman Rocco Landesman to make site visits to communities throughout the country, consider geographic distribution in future grant cycles, advocate for an additional allocation of stimulus funds and increased funding to the Endowment and support a prescribed percent of Endowment funding to local arts agencies to regrant to the field.

LOIE: Survival is an issue for many arts organizations right now which is why the arts recovery money is so important. It would be great to see expansions in this area, as previous panelists have suggested, such as an Arts Corps program or an expanded arts recovery program that would employ individual artists similar to the WPA.

The decline and graying of audiences is another issue where the Endowment could help by expanding arts education programs, as well as by helping arts organizations invest and get grounded in the new technologies. Technological needs are huge right now and arts organizations need to find a way to capitalize on and use these new technologies, particularly to engage and capture younger audiences. Technology is an area where the NEA should invest and show leadership.

JOHN KILLACKY: As colleagues focus on helping organizations stabilize finances with an eye to sustainability, I wonder if funding interventions might be better directed by capitalizing toward mission delivery, helping to build supply and demand. Artists and arts organizations need money in order to develop great work. Lowering artistic ambition during these draconian times leads down a slippery slope as to audience appeal. Michael Kaiser from the Kennedy Center is adamant: "We mustn't be scared into thinking smaller. Small thinking begets smaller revenue that begets smaller institutions and reduces excitement and involvement." Even with less discretionary income, audiences are flocking to interesting and compelling work. Berkeley Rep’s musical adaptation of Green Day’s “American Idiot” sold out its entire run before it even opened. This punk musical became an intergenerational must-see.

The NEA’s funding has always had a catalytic impact, both as a seal of national excellence, but also in terms of its matching requirements. During this time, the Endowment must reinvest in America’s creativity by supporting the creation and presentation of works at an unprecedented scale and use its imprimatur to galvanize increased box-office and donations from individuals.

BEN: In a series of national conversations the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) supported in 2006, we heard a wide variety of needs articulated by participants. We divided those needs into three different categories: 1) idiosyncratic needs, i.e. needs particular to one field but not to other fields. Career transition for dancers is clearly a critical issue for the dance field, but simply did not resonate in the jazz field, where musicians often perform into their 60’s, 70’s and beyond, for example; 2) chronic needs, including undercapitalization of organizations and under-compensation of professionals, including artists, managers, administrators and technicians—critical needs to be sure but ones that we heard in similar meetings 10, 20, 30 years ago and more; and 3) issues that cut across our priority fields of jazz, dance, theatre and presenting, but that we did not hear with the same degree of urgency a decade ago, namely eroding audience levels in every field, the yet-to-be-understood impact of emerging technologies on the live performing arts field, and an impending generational transfer of leadership, as the founding generation in many arts organizations retires or moves on. Any of these areas warrants support, and a funder could build an entire strategy or funding portfolio around addressing any one of these issues; fortunately the arts philanthropic community when taken in whole is invested in addressing all of these problem areas.

We at DDCF believe that the economic crisis has exacerbated the financial challenges organizations face today but that the real crisis—the crisis reflected in changes in audiences and the power of technologies (whether as competition, as shapers of consumer expectations, or as redefiners of cultural economics) that predate the economic downturn—is a crisis of relevance. The issue organizations face today is: how do we find the clarity and discipline to nurture core activities and programs and discard no longer effective or ancillary ones, while finding the resources (intellectual and financial) to create and test new strategies, activities and programs that will position us more effectively for the long run in an ever- changing world?

I think the NEA can best serve the fields in two ways: 1) reanimating its powers of convening, listening through those abandoned but so important annual field policy panels, and taking an aggressive stance as a spokesperson for those field needs; and 2) choosing a strategy and framework that allows them to explore questions with depth—to forego, as Olive Mosier has already said, trying to do everything.

LAURA: Every organization will always say its primary need is money, but this masks the real needs: a stronger board (to raise the money), a more knowledgeable staff (to know where to look), greater connectivity to one’s community (to have a larger base of support), and most importantly, an exciting artistic vision (to compel support).

So how can these needs be addressed by a federal agency? By building capacity from the top down. The NEA should make having a strong state agency in every state one of its top priorities. Then the state agencies would do the same to foster strength at the local level and the locals can do the capacity building work on the ground. When the California Arts Council had a vibrant state-local partnership going, with “branch offices” it funded in all 58 counties in the state, it was a beautiful model of how this could work, with dissemination of services flowing down and information flowing up through the same pipeline.

MOY: Arts organizations quite simply want and need unrestricted support to make and present work, pay artists, the rent/mortgage and the light bills. Given the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of arts organizations, the National Endowment for the Arts cannot meet the real need adequately or may not be able to provide such unrestricted support.

BARRY: Is there anything that can be done that would facilitate foundations working more closely with each other in a systemic approach to accomplishing specific goals that they might mutually share? And has the time come for foundations funding the arts to consider allocation of some grants to projects that serve the whole of the arts sector as distinct from specific geographical territories?

LOIE: I’m not sure it’s possible or feasible to tell private foundations what they ought to be doing but the NEA could help foster and develop partnerships and collaborations that include both the public and private sector. We obviously have a lot of common ground in terms of funding many of the same groups and wanting artists and arts organizations to succeed.

JANET: I believe two things: (1) some foundations have been working together for years supporting research and joint projects that have vastly improved cultural climates in many areas; and (2) the economic downturn has prodded some foundations to collaborate in ways they haven’t done in the past. There are great success stories like the Cultural Data Project, which started with regional foundations in Pennsylvania, expanded to public agencies and is now a national movement to collect data with numerous states participating. Grantmakers in the Arts is a catalyst to bring members together (both private and public) and to highlight the tremendous outcomes that are the result of collaborative work. We’re doing that in Brooklyn in October at our annual conference and through Thought Leader Forums next year.

Having said that, we must always remember that private foundations are “private” foundations. Their mandate is not that of public agencies that receive and grant tax-dollars. These are private dollars with legal requirements in order to maintain a tax-exemption. It is still their money to do with what they like while adhering to government regulations. Whether it is a small family fund or a large institutionalized independent foundation, these are philanthropists who have choices and make decisions based on their own mission and vision, not a public mandate. There is no entitlement to their money within sectors of the larger nonprofit world. Given this, I am amazed daily by our members who are dedicated, passionate arts program managers from the private sector. They advocate for the arts within their organizations and to the outside world. They care deeply about the artists, arts organizations and communities they serve. And they care deeply about each other and the work of their colleagues.

Most national private foundations and corporations already support projects that serve the whole of the arts sector. Projects that started regionally are duplicated in other regions. Research and studies on the economic downturn and its effects are an example of this. Again, the Cultural Data Project is an example of something that started in one geographic location and has expanded nationally. Private funders, like public funders, don’t operate in a vacuum. They are continually looking for successful programs that can be duplicated and expanded upon.

MOY: 3a. Foundations in the San Francisco Bay Area have had a long running and successful history of working together to address problems. Examples include:

• 28 year old Arts Loan Fund, which provides low interest loans to address cash flow problems for small and mid-sized cultural companies and has made 1200 loans totaling $14.8 million.

• 2 year old California Cultural Data Project, funded by private and public sector funders, including Hewlett and Irvine Foundations, with 30 participating funders and more than 1100 arts and culture organizations, which will provide first-ever comprehensive data on the nonprofit arts sector in the state. Part of the now national Cultural Data Project, the CDP plans to be in operation in as many as 22 states by the end of 2014, engaging up to 70 percent of all cultural organizations throughout the country that apply for public and/or private funding.

• Efforts to increase arts education have been multi-faceted from the internal Hewlett Foundation arts and education collaborative initiative in this arena to external efforts including joint funding by California foundations on arts education policy advocacy and model projects and a meeting of Hewlett/Ford/Wallace and Heinz Foundations working in arts learning.

3b. Yes, there are foundations which already do this. For those who have not yet, the appetite and capacity will surely depend on the balance of the foundation priorities and financial ability to support initiatives that potentially could impact the whole arts sector.

FRANCES: Geographic focus is a key defining characteristic of most foundations and it is certainly not the kind of thing that a program officer or foundation president has the power to change over night. It is deep in the bones and the bylaws. I believe the Foundation Center’s data notes that 70% of foundations focus their grantmaking in the communities in which they are based.

And while some may think that a regional or state focus leads to provincial attitudes and narrow concerns, I don’t think that localness is a bad thing. For those of us doing locally-focused program work, we have opportunities to really know our grantees. Most of the out-of-touch, wasteful grants I have observed have been awarded by national foundations that are far from the regions in which their money is being spent. (I also have observed some outstanding grantmaking by national funders.)

A down side of locally-focused foundations is that they are unevenly distributed throughout the states and country, but that is largely because the industries that have created wealth over decades and centuries have been clustered. When funders of the arts are found clustered together, they become one of several factors that leads to a gathering of artists and arts institutions. (Strong higher education programs are another factor.) And when that happens, you are more likely to get creative foment, exchanges of ideas, controversy, and dynamism.

Another side of this question is whether foundations should work together and share knowledge. Absolutely. That’s one of the reasons I’m so committed to Grantmakers in the Arts and for its efforts to expand the conversation to include representatives of public and private resources.

JOHN KILLACKY: Bay Area philanthropy is very collaborative. For decades, foundations and local government agencies contributed to a pooled Arts Loan Fund that addresses short-term cash flow issues. Here at The San Francisco Foundation, we benefit from many funding partnerships, including the East Bay Community Foundation, Irvine, Hewlett, LINC, Wallace, Surdna, Wattis, Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund of San Francisco, and support from our Donor Advisors.

More and more we see the benefit of working regionally. Our funding partnerships helped establish the East Bay Cultural Corridor, whereby Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville, and Richmond created a “510Arts” marketing initiative highlighting the myriad offerings of the region. The “Big List” is another example. With support from Wallace, 112 arts organizations in nine counties merge and share audience lists to better facilitate targeted marketing and increasing returns.

In the coming years, foundations must continue to work collaboratively to help arts organizations become more adaptable through strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and back office collaborations. Mergers, consolidation, and even sunsetting should be supported, allowing an organization to celebrate its legacy and end with dignity if necessary. The Endowment may wish to consider supporting regional efforts in these adaptive measures.

BEN: The upcoming Grantmakers in the Arts Conference may be a step forward in this direction. Many of us understandably work in a relative vacuum, understanding the needs of a set of grantees and applicants, but not always understanding fully the actions other grantmakers are taking or the progress that other communities beyond those we fund are making. GIA is trying to foster a dialogue to help us all understand the aggregate impact of our individual actions and is dedicating significant time to this goal in the October conference agenda.

Clearly the depth vs. breadth question is a critical determinant in defining the reach of a foundation or funder: with limited resources, do we want to be open to organizations across the country? (A question which has real implications for staff size, infrastructure support and—potentially—for grant size as well.) Do we want to invest more meaningfully in a smaller geographic area? (Which can often mean more immediate relationships with applicants and grantees, more site visits, etc.) The decision a foundation makes is more than a philosophical one: it has very real financial, structural and logistic consequences.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation considers itself a national funder, and we consciously ask ourselves “What should we do that we would not do if we defined ourselves as a local or regional funder?” All of our initiatives are open to organizations across the country, and we have specific initiatives to fund national projects (e.g. national research, national convenings, etc.) and to strengthen national arts service organizations. We do, however, depend on peer panels to adjudicate our grants—our way of keeping our own infrastructure lean while responding to potentially thousands of applications—and therefore have less personal contact with many groups who apply or are funded, a situation which can be frustrating for many grantseekers.

That said, we recognize that there is enormous value in local and regional, and prefer to think of our work as adding to the funding landscape rather than as being a proscriptive solution. The NEA potentially can leverage this same value—as a complement to local and state arts agencies as a form of government support but one that can uniquely tackle issues and funding solutions that a local or regional funder cannot do. What is the “value added” of the national purview the NEA has?

JOHN MCGUIRK: There are recent examples in California and other states implementing the Cultural Data Project where government arts funding agencies at the state, county and city levels have joined in collaboration with private foundations, corporations, community foundations, and local arts councils to work towards common goals. Similarly, we currently partner to support a variety of arts service organizations and regranting intermediaries. I believe there are opportunities to strengthen this collaborative funding approach -- to stabilize the arts sector during this economic recession, and position it for increased public value and support in the near future.

LAURA: Maybe because we have fewer foundations based in LA than other major metropolitan areas (and fewer corporate headquarters, too), we’ve had to learn to work more collaboratively. It’s usual for foundations in LA to collaborate on areas of mutual interest, whether to support a service organization for individual artists or sustain an arts loan fund. And we work easily across the public/private divide as well, on initiatives like arts education for which we actually have a pooled fund to address regional infrastructure needs.

There’s a different between a public entity competing with its constituents for funds from the private sector and partnering to accomplish mutual goals that can’t be achieved alone. We haven’t seen these kind of collaborative ventures happening on the federal level, but we should.

DANIEL: In my brief tenure at The Wallace Foundation, it is common-place to discuss shared interests and opportunities with colleagues at other foundations. We recently joined with the Ford Foundation, The Grable Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundations to convene representatives of city and county based arts learning collaboratives in Seattle. The appropriateness of the idea emerged during our participation in a forum of the Arts Education Partnership. Since many of our grant recipients are working on similar issues, we felt a joint meeting could not only be helpful to them but cost-effective, as well. Embedding those meetings in the annual conference of Americans for the Arts added valuable content and much appreciated logistical support. So, perhaps the problem is historical; Carpe diem!

Our systems approach to identifying promising ideas and sharing useful lessons with the sector is the reason I came to Wallace. Our city-based approach to strategy development is possibly akin to a regional or otherwise geographic focus. Is the problem, therefore, how we allocate our funds or how funders and practitioners collect and analyze data that might have broad applicability for the sector? It may be that not being an expert in the history of arts philanthropy leaves me at a slight disadvantage with the question. That said, I look forward to more opportunities to peruse commissioned research from other foundations and sit with them to explore how our field experience and research can be used to increase our effectiveness.

September 24, 2009

CONTINUATION OF SECOND PANEL / NEA FORUM COMMENTS

WRAP UP OF SECOND PANEL COMMENTS:

Scroll down to the previous blog entry for the first part of the Second Panel discussion. And to the entry before that for the Panel 1 discussion.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24TH

BARRY: How do we best go about formulating an overarching national policy for arts & culture in America and what planks should that policy include?

JONATHAN: A national policy for arts and culture should guide federal agencies, including the NEA, to broaden and deepen public participation in the arts and cultural activities across sectors in ways that attract increased public and private investment at all levels. Several formulations already exist – with planks identified – and previous answers by others are examples. NASAA’s formulation, based on principles developed and considered over years by state arts agency leaders, is called Advancing America’s Creativity: An Agenda for Leadership in Support of the Arts and Cultural Activities. It guides NASAA policy recommendations for the president and Congress and its executive summary follows. Please note that it implies public planning and consultation processes to identify specific goals and program strategies in several places. Not everything needs to be done at once and opportunities – like gaining support for a couple of big initiatives by a new agency chair – should be taken advantage of, but, over time, one would hope to see a coherent arts and cultural vision integrated across agencies.

Purpose: To empower the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and other federal agencies with the authority and resources to broaden and deepen participation in the arts throughout the United States.

I. Support a National Endowment for the Arts with the Capacity to Provide National Leadership

Reauthorize the NEA and enable its grant making to broaden and deepen participation in the arts throughout the United States by building the capacity of American arts organizations and artists to create and share their work, by initiating national programs, by partnering effectively with state arts agencies, and by helping to ensure that the basic education of every American includes learning in the arts.

II. Increase the NEA Appropriation to a Level that Enables it to Advance its Vision of “A Nation in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported, and available to All”

Identify the public benefit outcome goals to be provided by NEA programs and increase NEA funds to provide the American people with those benefits. As a step in this process, increase the NEA appropriation to its l992 level ($176M) adjusted for inflation and population growth ($319.2M). As a major priority, fund the NEA to make flexible grants that employ American arts organizations and artists to create, distribute and explore with audiences the meaningful arts experiences that provide economic, educational and civic benefits.

III. Ensure a Strong Federal-State Arts Support Partnership

Continue the NEA-state arts agency Partnership Agreement program that enables federal funding to reach communities in every state and territory, and to leverage matching public and private funds in support of arts activities at the state and local levels. Continue the very constructive ongoing federal-state dialogue that leads to identification of shared priorities, to complementary activities, and to collaborations that maximize the impact and benefits of public dollars.

IV. Build on the Success of an Arts Education Program within the NEA that Includes a Strong Partnership with State Arts Agencies

Provide NEA the resources to lead federal efforts to ensure that all Americans receive the quality of arts education that develops their imaginative and innovative skills, and thereby prepares them to compete successfully in the 21st century workplace. Continue support for NEA to advance education in the arts (from pre-K through graduate school and lifelong) by providing grants and assistance to schools, educators, artists, arts organizations, and arts education groups. Sustain resources for the Arts Education Partnership, the nation’s arts education forum supported collaboratively with the U.S. Department of Education. Encourage the NEA to continue its investment in arts learning through the highly effective Partnership Agreements with state arts agencies that leverage state and local commitments to help make the arts basic in pre-K through 12 education in every state and territory. Affirm the NEA commitment to its annual Education Leadership Institute, intended to convene over time a leadership team from every state to advance arts education for all students.

V. Support NEA Leadership within the Federal Government and Support the Roles other Federal Agencies Play in Enhancing America’s Cultural Life

Encourage all agencies of the federal government to draw upon the resources of the arts to achieve their goals by building national and federal-state partnerships and by including eligibility for the arts field in their programs. Specifically, support the U.S. Department of Education role in ensuring a place for arts education in all of its programs, applaud its investment in the Arts Education Partnership, and recommend an appropriation for Model Development and Dissemination Grants consistent with the goals of that program. Identify desirable levels of cultural benefits to be provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Smithsonian Institution, and other federal agencies and give them the authority and level of funding necessary to provide those benefits.

VI. Support the Participation of Americans in Global Cultural Experiences

Provide NEA resources to facilitate the ability of American artists to reach global audiences, as well as to provide all Americans access to the work of artists from throughout the world. Foster and fund collaboration between the NEA and the Department of State to incorporate cultural diplomacy as a powerful means to advance international understanding, people-to-people relationships, and our nation’s policy interests. Encourage the NEA and the Department of State to collaborate with and complement state-level international programs and cultural diplomacy.

VII. Identify and Charge Executive Branch and Congressional Mechanisms to Address Significant National Cultural Issues

In order to address significant national issues affecting the arts and culture that cut across the purview of federal agencies and congressional committees – such as intellectual property rights, use of digital technologies, charitable giving policy, immigration and visitor policy, and cultural commerce between nations, identify, charge and provide appropriate staff and funding to a mechanism in the executive branch that draws upon the leadership of the NEA and the NEH. Organize a joint congressional committee on cultural issues.

NASAA continuously works with other organizations and coalitions on how to implement policies we have in common.

PATRICK: Establish public policy for what arts value system? Fine arts? - celebrating the achievement of a quality of art that are known or understood by a few, celebrating the product that has been created or will be created and displayed, performed, museumed, or sold? Art as propaganda? - designed to present a message, a way of thinking, an intense political/social view of the world in an attempt to try and persuade people they should share those beliefs? Community arts? changing the arts paradigm from art as product and citizen as patron to art as process and citizen as participant, celebrating citizen access to the arts by providing opportunities for them to participate in and experience the arts on a personal basis? Art as individual express? - promoting the total, unfettered freedom of expression for artists (individual or groups) to create, unencumbered by anything except the artistic vision that haunts them, drives them, consumes them. Which one?

There are more value systems that merit public policy but these four encapsulate most of them. It doesn’t take long to realize they are not necessarily compatible. And it points to one of our ongoing, overarching problems for arts advocacy - those of us are not all advocating for the same thing and many times our efforts are cross-purposes. Or, as I would say, “cross-values.”

I believe any attempt to establish an authentic public policy on the arts has to take at least these four core value systems into account and find a way to engage them in an authentic public discourse together. What do we share, what is our common values/vision/mission for what it is we are trying to do? To do anything else is simply to continue to pursue establishment of public policy and public funding for a particular value system (regardless of which one although I think most of us know which one it will end up being) which will result in it having dominance over all the others. We need a cohesive public policy on the arts that is inclusive of all of our myriad, diverse forms and processes and structures and expressions. It is a conversation long overdue. Until we do that for ourselves, until we learn to talk with each other, we can’t expect anyone to understand what it is we are trying to accomplish with public policy.

ANNE: A national policy for arts and culture…what a concept.

I’d rather use the word “creativity” – the fuel of the 21st century – and a truly American policy for arts and creativity would contain these values and priorities:

• Access to the arts for all Americans
• Unleashing and supporting the artistic and creative potential and diversity of all Americans
• Transforming the American economy and educational system for the Creative Age
• Creating and sustaining vibrant communities through investment in arts and creative assets.

The Obama campaign and administration arts policy work contained and contains many aspects of this policy, so right now it seems we’re moving in the right direction. The challenge is to turn those values into action – for that we need to use the policies to enact a national 21st century plan for the arts and creativity.

BOB: I think that the overarching national policy that we already have is one of nonprofit organizational self direction and self survival. Our American system unlike most other nations relies on a very broad multi source support structure (roughly 50% earned, 7% government (local, state, federal), 43% private (individual, foundation, business). This means that no source area actually has enough power or influence to do much more than help leverage other sources. Certainly with an individual organization one funder can have a lot of influence but not any one funding sector in general. Certainly the federal money as the smallest piece of this equation cannot dictate an overarching cultural policy as it can in France for example. Unlike many folks I have heard speak about this I think this diversity of support much like a diversified personal investment strategy is a great strength in our American system. I think that the only way to get anywhere close to some kind of national consensus in the arts then must be accomplished through collaboration. Funding sources however can exert influence through leverage. For example when the federal government held out promises of fairly small amounts of federal money to states and later to locals, the states and municipalities were coaxed into appropriating far more money. The same kind of leverage can and has been used for getting groups to pay more attention to key issues such as diversity, art education, international collaboration and others.

CELESTE: The development of an overarching national policy for arts and culture would obviously need to have active participation from a broad spectrum of agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the National Science Foundation, in addition to the NEA and the administration. The concept of having national agencies work together to achieve shared goals is very appealing to me, since the museum field is broader than the visual arts and is active with other national funding agencies. Our field also includes history museums and historical societies, science centers, natural history museums, zoo and aquariums, and children’s museums. Too often, people view disciplines as dividing lines – that they can’t possibly collaborate because the content of their exhibits, performances, or programs is different. I think we have a lot more in common than we think—not the least of which is to serve the public. At a local level, there are some stellar examples of individual arts and cultural organizations (from symphonies and art museums to zoos and libraries) leveraging their resources and collaborating to serve new audiences. We could learn from how these local collaboratives are functioning to inform policy development for arts and culture at both state and national levels.

BRAD: Setting an overarching national policy for arts and culture seems to go beyond the purview of any one agency. This feels like an opportunity for the President to name a special commission that could convene a broad spectrum of arts and culture leaders to collaborate on drafting a policy paper that could guide federal efforts to support and leverage the arts. The President’s election campaign holds a model for how such a group could be gathered and engaged. Any national policy statement on the arts should construct a frame articulating the value of the arts to the American people and to American society. A national policy would help give ongoing strategic direction to the National Endowments as well as the Department of Education and other federal agencies that impact the arena of arts and culture. And a national policy would provide the President and other officials with an intellectual platform for discussing arts and culture with the American public.

BARRY: Why doesn’t the arts sector develop more political clout? Why is it so resistant to digging into its own pocket to fund real advocacy and lobbying efforts at all levels – local, regional and national? How do we effectively lobby on behalf of the Endowment (so that its funds are someday increased to comparable levels with Europe for example) unless and until we become more politically engaged in the same way any other interest group in America is engaged – from teacher unions to the pharmaceutical industry.

PATRICK: For decades, the arts producers and arts presenters and individual artists and arts consumers have been outraged at how little support for the arts there is in this country. While justified to a degree, some of this outrage is based on an increasingly out-dated and, to be honest, increasingly self-serving “sense of entitlement” that has made many in our field believe they are owed public funding. Many in the world of arts believed the NEA was simply another form of arts patronage, following the model of the Italian patron families during the Renaissance. I suspect their thought was, they deserved it and needed to do nothing to justify it. They were entitled to it and they had no responsibility to be accountable with what they were given. I believe the community of art in the United States grossly misunderstood the politics of public funding of the arts in this country. They certainly underestimated the core, historic religious value system that was used to found the beginnings of this country and have never fully recovered from the onslaught that occurred because of this values collision.

When you add to this “sense of entitlement” a growing sense of lack of responsibility or accountability, combine it with diametrically opposed values within the arts (internal values) as well as conflicted external values (mostly, but not all, religious) it becomes even harder to move forward effectively with developing sustainable political clout of any kind. When you add those two together, you end up with where we are today – with a National Endowment that is so under funded it is ridiculous, an embarrassment to ourselves and the world. People put their money where their values are and, obviously, the arts are not valued in this country. We have to ask ourselves why. Really, with all that we have at our disposal, the intelligence, the creative capacity, the tenacity, persistence, and sheer determinism to get it done – why haven’t we been successful.

We spend our time advocating for what we in the arts need, deserve and hardly ever spend any time communicating effectively to the world outside the arts as to who we are, what we do, and why we do it. We are getting better at describing what it is we actually contribute to their lives as individuals or communities or the entire culture but we still aren’t invited to the tables at which we need to be sitting. We do what we have to do to survive so we can do our art but we live in a growing vacuum. We are often viewed as self-serving and mercenary when it comes to sharing the limited wealth that exists within the community of art in the world in which we live.
We become incensed at the evangelical religious right for all the horrible things they do to those of us in the arts and in the process, spew out the same vile, angry, hostile political venom because we end up feeling the same level of marginalization and victimization they feel. I have said on many occasions, the individuals who are part of the evangelical religious right aren’t our enemy, they are a large part of our audience (certainly in our rural/small communities). The problem is, we don’t always like our audience and we won’t take the time to get to know them. We want their support but we aren’t nearly as interested in listening to them. Therefore, as a result, we spend our time advocating to ourselves and wonder why nothing meaningful has changed in public arts funding in this country for the past fifty-sixty years.

BRAD: One of the reasons that arts leaders have cited is the very low return on investment such “digging” would provide their own organizations—at least in the immediate future. Is this attitude shortsighted? Perhaps. It’s also reflective of the kind of pragmatism that drives most arts organizations, almost all of which are chronically, and often severely, under-resourced. Why should an arts organization spend a $1,000, say, on funding advocacy if those efforts are likely to produce $1,000 or less in grants from a given public agency? There is a cart/horse issue here of course—if no money is spent we can pretty much assume we’ll see mighty limited success. But arts leaders cannot be faulted for expecting dollars spent on advocacy and lobbying to result in dollars back to their own organizations—at a point in some foreseeable future. Certainly the teacher’s union and the pharmaceutical industry expects tangible results for the monies they spend to influence public policy. So do arts leaders.

Individual artists that I know see even less of a correlation between advocacy efforts and betterment to their own personal situations, vis a vis acquiring more arts-making work, earning better pay, and finding access to affordable health care. Until we can convincingly make a line between advocacy for the arts and bettering the working and personal lives of individual artists, we’re going to have mighty hard time bringing artists on as troops for our cause.

BOB: I think the same organizational self survival mentality I mentioned before means that many arts organizations are so focused on getting support for their own organizational needs that it is difficult for them to get enthused about giving money and effort out for a result that has wide benefit rather than specific benefit to them right away. I think it takes constant communication, education and clarity about successes. Even then this is a business where most sub sectors are fiercely independent and like to go their own way. DeToqueville noticed this as an American trait in general and arts organizations and artists are even more proudly entrepreneurial and independent than many other parts of our society.

ANNE: Let’s not be so negative. $50 million in stimulus funding for the Endowment IS political clout. Achieving that funding this spring shows what can happen when political leadership meets a compelling message and strategy and dedicated grassroots action. (By the way, here’s another opportunity for me to give a shout-out and thank-you to Rep. Dave Obey of Wisconsin as one of the political leaders who pushed through the NEA’s stimulus package!)

This growing political movement has been led and coordinated in large part by Americans for the Arts and partners at the national level and by the extensive network of statewide organizations like Arts Wisconsin at the state level, with countless foot soldiers on the ground at the grassroots level. We’ve seen significant gains in the past few years, including the stimulus money and steady increases in the Endowment’s budget. It’s not a lot, but it’s an important start.

Instead of beating ourselves up about what we haven’t accomplished, let’s be pro-active and positive. The efforts to change the hearts and minds of America to truly support and invest in the arts is a creative “movement” similar to the civil rights movement or environmental movement. Those political movements took years to build up and achieve goals, with stops, starts and tragedies along the way. I’m the most impatient person in the world, but I know that this kind of change happens slowly and on a haphazard course. Consider that this political involvement by the arts is, in relative terms, a very new effort. It’s been nurtured by 50 years of the local arts movement, but has really only been awakened to true political involvement since the beginning of the 21st century. I was a member of the Obama National Arts Policy Committee, and would even say that the election of Barack Obama, and the cultural policy work done around his campaign and new administration, is a “call to arms” with opportunities that we haven’t seen in a long time.

As for how to effectively lobby – there’s no mystery about that, folks. Success depends on a unified message, purpose, strategy and plan, not to mention relentless optimism and persistence. True, effective advocacy is everyone’s responsibility and a daily activity, not just the job of the advocacy organization or the civic leader.
We in the arts need to reach out to develop relationships and make the message relevant to those beyond our institutions and our sector. We need to stop arguing about who is an “artist” and an “arts leader” and who is not. People have been expressing themselves creatively since the beginning of time and everyone has the capacity to be creative. Business, education, political and civic leaders are all involved in the arts and creativity in some way, and are ready partners in the effort to achieve more support for the arts in schools, in civic spaces, in our lives.

JONATHAN: The “why” the not-for-profit arts community does not exercise significantly more political clout than it does is easy to answer in one way: not-for-profit arts organizations do not devote sufficient time and energy to the following:

1. put “advocacy” in the job description of every board member
2. identify a point person for advocacy (preferably a board member)
3. invest in and participate in an advocacy network
4. identify specific advocacy objectives and the decision makers who can make them happen
5. systematically cultivate relationships with the people who can achieve advocacy objectives
6. cultivate stakeholders and spokespersons from other fields
7. devote regular staff and board time to what needs to be done and who will do it
8. report on advocacy progress as a regular board agenda item
9. MAKE EVERY ARTS EVENT AN ADVOCACY EVENT

There are many notions of what public benefits the not-for-profit arts community offers and plenty of ideas what values the not-for-profit arts community SHOULD offer, some of them expressed by this group of commentators, but none of them is likely to attract a jump of two or three times the current levels of public support at any level of government without taking these advocacy behaviors to scale.

Why hasn’t the not-for-profit arts community made the necessary commitment? People think (very wrongly) that their service organizations or their government agencies can and should do this work? The current levels of public funding make it seem that time and energy developing financial resources are better invested elsewhere? It’s easier to complain about decision makers than to take the responsibility for correcting their understandings and behaviors, for making one’s wishes known in person?

It may be that stepped up advocacy alone could maintain or grow funding for the not-for-profit arts community as it does for other industries. Maybe. Here are a few questions back that I think are becoming more and more salient for both the not-for-profit community and public agencies to consider:

1. Which changes in purpose and public benefits for arts groups can actually produce new, active, more effective advocates (gaining or losing existing ones?)? What evidence do we have or why would we think so?

2. What are the characteristics of not-for-profit arts groups that are maintaining or increasing participation and financial viability? Would seeking funding to increase the ability of organizations to achieve these characteristics increase the effectiveness of advocacy?

3. Are public agencies that expand their services and/or funding to include the for-profit and amateur arts sectors better positioned to maintain or increase funding?

BARRY: We seem to have at least some grasp on the composition of the arts “organization” field, and even some success in gathering that field to mutual purposeful action. How do we incorporate the “artist” community within that structure? And what should the Endowment do to nurture, protect and promote multicultural arts – legacies, artistic expressions and access to?

ANNE: Yes, we do have a grasp on the composition of the established arts sector, although now that we do, it’s changing as we speak. There are many things about the nonprofit model that don’t work, although I have no idea what the future legal and organizational configurations for arts engagement might really look like. A positive sign is that individual artists are becoming more entrepreneurial, and those that realize that they have to think that way are becoming more involved in advocacy for the arts in general. As our world changes to a more entrepreneurial mindset, the younger generations (!) is more willing to speak up for their causes. They’re doing it through FaceBook and YouTube, but they’re doing it.
I’d like to stop putting “multi-cultural arts” into a separate category. The U.S. has always been a multi-cultural society, and the 21st century is already being defined and shaped by our glorious mosaic of people and heritages. The old system says that “multi-cultural” means only the culture of people from certain ethnic groups or parts of the world, and that somehow we need to keep those traditions separate from other traditions. As I have said in previous answers, the Endowment should lead the way to examine, acknowledge and support the whole of our multi-cultural society through the arts.

BOB: The artist community and artists are not as nurtured and supported by our system as they ought to be. Every level of government needs creation or growth of artist support mechanisms. But more can be done by the private sector as well. Since most artists seem to or at least feel that they are making their own way without much help it is difficult to mobilize the broad artist community. Sharing success stories is a start but working hard to create more actual shared benefits for artists is the longer term necessary strategy. I think the need to address the nurturing and support of multicultural organizations is an even bigger area of necessary focus at every level of support public and private. So a dialogue is a beginning, then a push for more resources targeted to the multicultural arts community is essential.

PATRICK: Do we have a grasp on the “arts organization field?” Really? I am not sure I agree. We have such a variety of organizations, structures, and individuals who make that organization work. And, even if I did, I would challenge the effectiveness of what it is on which we have a grasp. I’m not sure our current cultural infra-structure is working. And it certainly at risk due to the economic conditions we are facing.

To be honest, I’m not sure I know what the “arts organization” field really is. Is it organizations or the people who make those organizations work? And I am very clear that at least in my field, community arts, almost all of our identity is wrapped up in the organizations we serve. If you are not part of an arts organization or structure, person has no standing in the field of community arts, you have little professional identity and quickly drop off the radar screen. Our identity and, often, our sense of worth, is tied up in the organization(s) with which we work and the work we are doing. In that sense, many of us who are outside the normal arts/cultural infra-structure feel the same separation, isolation, and lack of support many of individual artists feel.

Regarding individual artists directly, the ones who (by themselves or in collaboration with others) create the works of art we are always talking about – they are hardly ever at the table for funding, public policy discussions, and/or general strategic planning. And what a loss that is because they are certainly the most likely to be thinking outside the box, beyond the status-quo. That goes back to the core value systems in the arts that have hardly ever been recognized, understood. We need a more robust and diverse set of voices working together to try and get things where we believe they should. After almost fifty years of public funding in this country, we should at least be willing to say that whatever it is we have tried to do just hasn’t worked. It’s time to go back to the drawing boards – or perhaps, better said, the creating boards.

The NEA can be the catalyst to bring all of this together. I’m not sure it is interested in doing it but it could if it wanted to. Special Federal Initiatives, research, convenings, regional and state conversations – all can be utilized to get a serious discourse begun in the community of arts that can then focus on how to expand that beyond to the general population. Individual artists are essential to this process and must be part of it.

BRAD: I can’t see the Endowment as a broker, per se. I can see the NEA continuing to encourage collaboration and joint application for funds. Potential grant dollars are a pretty strong motivator for encouraging partnerships and collaborations.

BARRY: What role should the Endowment play in brokering meaningful collaboration and partnership opportunities by and between the arts and other sectors?

BOB: The Endowment along with other support leaders has a wonderful opportunity to convene large and small groups or to help others do such convening. There is an effort right now in the conservative press to attack arts organizations for discussing the role of the arts and involving the arts in societal issues such as health, education, race, job creation etc. Yet these kinds of issues are the content that art has been made about and around for thousands of years. More connection between the art makers and producers and funders and the sectors that focus on these broad societal issues is healthy for the future of the arts but also for the futures of communities and nation.

PATRICK: Everything, everything, everything! We need the political savvy and creative thinking of the NEA staff, and the political clout of the National Council. The vision of the guiding enabling legislation of the NEA should help shape public support for the arts in this country. Mind you, I didn’t say financial support – public support. If we get the public to support us we will be funded. We need to be at the table in the smallest unincorporated communities, the rural areas, the neighborhoods in the large urban communities. We need to be at the table in educational reform, farm public, rural development, economic development and, dare I be so bold as to say, the health care debate. If we had the kinds of collaborations and public/private partnerships we are capable of – the arts could serve as a model for a divided and conflicted nation.

Convening us, getting those of us from different persuasions, value orientations economic, social, and cultural systems together – from public sector to the private sector – together, as one, talking about the same subject, listening to each other, working through the differences and difficulties to reach consensus about what it is that matters to each and every one of us. That is what the NEA should be doing, could be doing, if we set our minds on thinking less about “how we survive” and more on “how we help our country survive.”

BARRY: According to the most recent study released by the NEA last June: "Audiences for the arts in the U.S. continue to decline and age at significant rates.” What, if anything, should the Endowment do to address this startling fact?

BOB: The overall arts community needs to look at the broad arts sector to really understand data. Audience participation is interesting in that looking broadly some art forms might be experiencing a decline but others are growing. Some venues of presentation might be experiencing a decline but others are growing. Looking at the increasingly blurred lines between non profit, for profit, and unincorporated arts sectors might provide some fresh perspective on audience change. And collecting broader data sets for the many ways that audiences engage culture today could be very useful as various subsets of the arts try to plan for the future.

BRAD: Helping to connect the arts with the American people is a core goal of the Endowment, so assisting arts organizations with reaching new audiences and deeply engaging audiences in their work should be a clear priority for the NEA. The Endowment could fund research with actionable implications and collaborative efforts to attract, retain and develop audiences now and for the future.

PATRICK: There is an audience for the arts. Oh, it may not be the arts that our culture has come to know and consider “our national arts.” But there is an audience out there, waiting for something to help them break out of their numbness and feel something besides discouragement and despair. And there are artists out there who are creating now with no public funding and no articulated audience but they are creating non-the-less. . .without any public support and he national community of arts, are not quite as indispensable as we have come to think we are. . .and until we start opening our eyes and realize there is a “cultural re-revolution” going on all around us, the parade is going to pass us by. We are spinning our wheels, talking to ourselves (and not doing that very well) and we allowing one of the most incredible opportunities we have had in fifty years to make our case and show our worth and value.

The arts will survive, they always have, always will. Maybe not the arts organizations and institutions we elevate high on our cultural pantheon, but the arts – the voice of the people, of determined, persistent, driven, impassioned individuals will continue to be expressed and heard. The arts are the remnant that remember the future – the arts are the dance that make the circle whole. They can not be stopped or silenced.

As long as there is a voice crying out for hope or out of despair, reaching out from the depths or to heights of human existence, struggling with the confusion and chaos or longing the confidence of creating consistency – there will be an audience. That is what people want, that is what people need. Fine arts, propaganda arts, community arts, or art as pure expression. That is what the arts deliver, every time to anyone who is open to the experience. Now, we have to be about the business of helping everyone understand this and we should start with figuring out how those of us in the arts can finally learn how to work together.

ANNE: I would amend that sentence to read, “Audiences for the established arts sector in the U.S. continue to decline and age at significant rates.” Judging from my teenage son and his friends’ devotion to their music, dance and art, the level of interest in the arts and creative expression in this country remains as strong as ever. What’s changed – and is changing daily, or by the minute - are the mechanisms by which creative endeavors take place. Again, they’re doing it through FaceBook and YouTube, but they’re doing it.

Now the institutions must take a long hard look at themselves and figure out ways to deal with these changes. . Of course there’s a fine line between keeping the best of the old ways and throwing away too much in order to embrace the future, and we all have to walk that line continuously. The Endowment has a great opportunity to lead the conversation by bringing together the different constituencies and audiences, again, to find common language and common ground.

CELESTE: I think the definition of “audience” needs to be examined if we are calculating the size of it– or we need to measure participation in the arts in different ways. I think the arts are an integral part to every American’s daily experience and it seems unlikely that participation has declined “at significant rates” at the same time we are experiencing a rapid expansion of social networking and other forms of expression. The arts and other cultural fields need to both embrace new strategies for tapping into these shifts in how Americans experience the arts as well as our corresponding measures. This is not to say that an online experience will replace a visit to an art exhibit or attendance at a symphony performance. Some experiences will be more impactful than others and we should strive to emphasize those that will have a lasting impression.

Thank you all very much.

Some quick wrap up thoughts tomorrow then Panel 3 (The FUNDING COMMUNITY) beginning next Tuesday, September 29th.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Dear Colleagues:

We’re now done with Week #2 of the National Forum on the NEA, and we have already had a wealth of information and ideas presented.

I know this can seem overwhelming – information overload even. But a deep and rich exchange of a wide range of ideas is precisely the kind of engagement I think we need if we are to do any meaningful rethinking of our national goals and objectives and any re-envisioning of the priorities of the Endowment. I hope you will make the time – over a period of time – to read and think about the points this current dialogue (not only the two panels thus far, but the coming panels over the next four weeks) may suggest to you. It is my hope that this can promote an on-going national conversation not just on the role and future of the Endowment, but on the wider subject of art provision in America and all such a broad topic implies. This is only a beginning.

A few thoughts on some of the remarks by the second panel:

Several panelists called for more Endowment involvement in, and support for, organizational capacity building – the strengthening of our organizations to survive – in securing funding, in arts administrators becoming better trained managers, in the arts field becoming better advocates and more. The Endowment has actually done remarkably little of this kind of thing in the past. Indeed most of those goals were initiated by foundation funding initiatives. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the Endowment to revisit what it might accomplish in helping our arts organizations to fare better, and might even explore ways it could cooperate and collaborate with foundations in this area.

Several other panelists remind us that the Endowment’s funding is wholly inadequate, and that somehow, we as a field, have got to figure out how to get that funding up to a truly meaningful level ( half a billion to a billion dollars?). But it was also pointed out in the question on advocacy, that the field simply lacks the tools, motivation, expertise and willingness to pay for effective political clout. And more than one panelist implied that the reason we as a field don’t move towards more effective advocacy is that as individuals – individual artists and individual arts organizations – we simply don’t see the direct advantage and concrete benefit in making the necessary time, energy, and financial commitment to acquiring more political clout. For all our talk, it really isn’t a major priority.

The panelists call for a variety of initiatives to strengthen the arts in America – everything from increased strategic planning to more arts education, from helping art organizations and artists with more secure funding sources to improving networking and communications by and between those in the arts - but we remain painfully vague on specifics. How do we accomplish all our lofty goals? What specifically do we do? At some point the discussion must move from the conceptual to the practical and we will need to develop specific, action steps to address specific challenges.

While we clearly haven’t been able to articulate a comprehensive national arts & cultural policy yet, perhaps this is an opportune time to begin to conduct an overall review of programs, grant making and priorities of the Endowment, and really, of the sector. Some panelists argue that we should develop an overall framework and context for arts in America that local communities and organizations could buy into and operate under as a first step in moving forward.
Some argue that artistic excellence lies beyond the agency’s purview; that what we should strive for is a policy that promotes the relationship of the arts to the value (not yet fully defined) that art offers the public. Some say that value is centered on “access” to the arts – access as both audience and creator. Some question the utility of the local arts agency – as community arts hub – as a viable model for today, and others argue there is no conflict between the promotion of excellence in the arts and access and other public goods.

We seemed to have talked around the issue of whether taxpayer funds should support the organizations that employ artists, or should support the artists themselves in some more direct way. Some implied it might be politically inopportune at this juncture. Of course, such a question involves distinguishing between individual visual or performance artists and those that work in a group setting and thus through organizations - such as symphony orchestra musicians, dance troupe performers, or actors in the theater.

In no particular order, our panelists so far have also identified the following areas that they would like to see the Endowment play some role, take some leadership position for, or collaborate with others in the addressing of the challenges facing the sector -- the basic A & E goals:

• Allignment by and between the nonprofit and for profit arts – for the benefit of the public and artists.
• Arts education
• Audience development
• Articulating a vision
• Access to more art and creation of art
• Advocacy
• Artist support -- Helping artists to earn a decent living being artists.
• Expanding creativity for the benefit of all of America’s growth
• Expanding – research
• Educating the public
• Enabling administrators to be better managers.

We lament the absence of more artists at the decision making tables, but don’t seem to have any specific plans to address that imbalance – perhaps a good place for the agency to do some convening – another area people suggested the agency could be more involved.

And our panelists noted that while audiences for more traditional arts may be on the decline, newer forms of artistic expression and newer ways to access all art as an audience may be growing. The questions looms: what are the implications of this new reality? If access is a goal, then all kinds of audience building is important. Another convening opportunity for the Endowment perhaps.

Of course, no summary of our panelists thoughts and ideas can incorporate all of the questions raised by their analysis. Doubtless you, as the readers, will have many more that I hope you will raise in the coming months as the dialogue continues and expands.

Next week Panel # 3 (funders – public and private) takes the stage. Beginning Tuesday, September 29th.

PARTICIPANTS:

Thank you all for following along.

Have a good weekend.

Don’t Quit

Barry

Posted by msaunders at 09:07 AM | Comments (3)

September 21, 2009

SECOND PANEL ON THE NATIONAL FORUM ON THE NEA

Hello everyone.

“And the beat goes on.........."

THE SECOND PANEL ON THE NEA ONLINE FORUM:

Welcome to Week #2 of the online forum on the future of the NEA. Please scroll down to last week’s blog to review the remarks and comments of the First Panel (and / or to the previous weeks before that for an overview of this whole online Forum project). Here are the participants in this week’s panel.

Bob Lynch – President & CEO Americans for the Arts
Jonathan Katz – Executive Director, National Association of State Arts Agencies
Patrick Overton – Director, Front Porch Institute
Sandra Gibson – Executive Director, Association for Performing Arts Presenters
Anne Katz - Executive Director Arts Wisconsin, Immediate Past Chair, State Arts Action Network
Don Adams – Cultural Policy Analyst
Brad Erickson – Executive Director, Theater Bay Area (San Francisco)
Celeste DeWald - Executive Director, California Association of Museums

Thank you all for participating.

BARRY: Apart from funds allocated to arts organizations, states and regions, what kinds of initiatives do you think the NEA should launch that might help strengthen the infrastructure and ecosystem of arts provision in America and in particular that of arts organizations?

JONATHAN: I would distinguish between program initiatives and national leadership activities. Program initiatives directed by the NEA need to be very few and powerful; their justification is the need to put a spotlight on the unique impact a government arts agency at the federal level can provide. It’s a good thing for the head of the NEA to be able to describe the work of the agency concisely: our core programs address our goals as informed by artists and arts organizations who produce the arts and encourage participation; the portion to states and regions addresses our goals as guided by public plans developed in every state and territory, and our program initiatives illustrate why public sector leadership at the federal level is essential and worth the investment. The expertise and passion of the head of the NEA is important in the selection of a program initiative. One obvious option is an initiative to advance arts education, since arts education opens doors to participation in the arts, whether in not-for-profit, for-profit or amateur contexts.

With regard to national leadership activities, what’s important to bear in mind is that the real operational impact of a public agency derives not only from what its personnel and advisors do, but even more from how successfully its activities motivate, engage and empower its partners, grantees and the people it serves to provide public benefits. Here are a few suggestions for operating the NEA as a center of national leadership. I’m not suggesting these are new ideas, nor that some have not been done to some extent.

 networking among the associations, centers, higher education institutions, and others who plan and conduct arts-related research. Encourage them to share, collaborate, and build a research agenda that will yield the best ideas and information to address a variety of goals.

 Realize the information, learning and leadership potential of routine NEA operations. For instance, tap the expertise and perspective generated by grant panel convenings to identify trends; engage in dialogue with national service organizations to organize and send information to the field and the public; draw upon National Council members as ambassadors, reporting on NEA activities to their state, regional and local arts agencies, state and local officials, and/or service organizations and reporting back.

 Maintaining a priority commitment to the not-for-profit arts sector, identify leadership activities that can broaden and deepen public participation in the arts through for-profit and amateur participation in the arts; facilitate conversation among these sectors—and enlist for-profit and amateur arts participants as NEA proponents.

 Regularize communication with national arts service organizations and other networks, drawing upon their interests and expertise to identify emerging issues and opportunities to broaden and diversify participation in the arts.

 Work with colleagues to identify the information, messages, documentation and networks that can most effectively communicate the value of the arts, the NEA and the activities it supports to key decision makers and the public.

BOB: The key federal cultural need is the appropriation of more financial support for nonprofit arts organizations and artists in America. The dollars currently available are simply not enough to realize the promise of the arts in our country. This fact holds true for government support at the federal, state, regional and local levels. Working on changing this is job number one for all of us in the cultural industry. Earlier this year Americans for the Arts proposed and then joined together with a number of national arts service organizations together to propose $1 billion for the arts through the NEA in the economic recovery bill which resulted in a $50 million appropriation. Figures like a billion dollars are what we need to be talking about for the federal appropriation and even that is less than 2% of the roughly $63 billion estimate of the collected budgets of the nonprofit arts industry, as reported in our Arts and Economic Prosperity III study.

The National Endowment for the Arts has traditionally reflected to some extent contemporary issues under each of its Chairmen. In my twenty five years at Americans for the Arts, each Chairman has launched efforts that had focus areas that were a bit different than their predecessors or successors. For example, Chairman Hodsoll spent a great deal of time on federal, state, and local support partnerships and spent time focused on leveraging local government dollars; John Frohnmayer had a particular focus on the arts in rural communities; Jane Alexander initiated some key artist service and international arts projects; Bill Ivey did some terrific work in making sure that the arts served every part of the United States; and Dana Gioia launched initiatives to bring heightened attention to the value of the arts. Each did many more things in their respective tenures. There is important value to consistent focus at the NEA on basic grants contributing to the basics of nonprofit arts organization programs and general operating support. However the current federal appropriations is about one fourth of one percent of the $63 billion expenses of the total industry so I have always seen the federal dollars as really more like recognition and stimulus dollars to leverage more support. There is critical value to using the wonderful leveraging power of the federal dollars to advance the pool of support itself at the federal, state and local government levels as well as in the private sector and to encourage all organizations to use the fact of NEA support to apply that same leveraging to their own fundraising.

In addition, however, some issues that need attention either from the NEA or from any other part of the sector were surfaced in our own Americans for the Arts planning survey, completed over the last two years where approximately 6,000 responses came in from throughout America. That is a very large sample group. What they said was important, and includes the following dozen or so key issues:

1. Strategy for dealing with the challenged American economy

2. Changing demographics; need to address the broadly diverse American public

3. Greater professional and volunteer leadership capacity

4. The impact of technology on art and management; the blurred lines between the non-profit and for-profit arts sectors

5. Arts and education

6. Articulating the “arts value” message

7. The audience as the new curator

8. The changing financial support mix and metrics

9. The arts as tools for community advancement and competitive edge

10. New non-profit arts business models

11. Support for individual artists and new work

12. International role of the arts

Here is the link to the entire study if anyone wants to explore further www.americansforthearts.org/about_us/environmental_analysis/default.asp

ANNE: “We need to create environments - in our schools, in our workplaces , and in our public offices where every person is inspired to grow creatively. Why?...because as the world evolves, the very future of our communities and institutions will depend on it.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson

The “we know what art is good for you” approach has passed its shelf life for the Endowment or any other arts organization. Now the Endowment must be pro-active about strengthening the creative economy, supporting arts and creativity as integral components of 21st century education, and developing the arts at the local level.

• Community cultural development--- organizational and community planning issues and actions

• Strategic planning and implementation

• Organizational effectiveness and capacity-building, including training, leadership development, organizational stability, nonprofit organizations entrepreneurship

This approach allows for a great deal of opportunity for partnership and collaboration with other public agencies and national independent organizations, as well as doing more to help political leaders and the American people understand and support the arts as beneficial to all.

DON: That the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities was begun in the mid-1960s, at the height of the Cold War, and with questionable support for having a public cultural agency, meant that it was based on fairly narrow foundations. The Rockefeller panel on the performing arts, Baumol and Bowen and other studies had shown an "income gap" for existing institutions, with the public role being to help private philanthropists cover this shortfall. The Kennedy administration had invited Pablo Casals to the White House, reinforcing the sense that the arts belonged in the nation's living room, but in a genteel sort of way that reinforced their status-quo identity as something nice for people of a certain class and taste. Though the Endowment grew quickly under Nancy Hanks' politically foxy leadership, it developed as a kind of specialist preserve, focused on the professional arts fields, which are of course very important to our national cultural life, but leaving out the big picture of public interest and public cultural policy: this left the agency weak when the likes of Jesse Helms focused in and began their attack. Forty-plus years later, we need to build a new foundation for federal cultural policy. We need to articulate the real needs and values of cultural development in the nation as a whole, as almost every other country in the world did in the '60s and '70s, defining sensible leadership roles at every level of government and catalyzing strong, decentralized leadership in every community in the country. This is the missing "moral " leadership of national cultural policy - not in terms of enforcing moral standards, as censors might, but in terms of articulating democratic values of participation, freedom, cultural diversity and equity of access that should characterize our national and community cultural lives.

PATRICK: I do not believe the NEA has the financial resources, the inclination, or the political capital to re-activate the individual artist grants program. The NEA should keep those programs that honor “body of work/life’s work” of artists as National Treasures as only a national agency can do. Any effort to provide support of individual artists will place the NEA once again in the middle of an invigorated cultural war environment. I fear that all the will come of it is for the NEA to be used as new fuel to inflame the rhetoric and the incivility in this country that has absolutely nothing (and never did have anything) to do with the arts.

Some of my individual artists friends/colleagues have informed me we have a whole generation of individual artists emerging onto the scene that do not assume federal/state funding will be available. They have moved beyond a “sense of entitlement of public money to do their art” and have started looking at new, innovative, edge-line ways to make their art happen. We need to explore what this means for the NEA and other public and private funding sources. This paradigm shift is already underway. We need to listen to these voices and be willing to learn from them. We might be surprised at what we learn.

CELESTE: As an advocate for arts and culture, reliable and current research that demonstrates the impact of public investments in arts and culture is key to its sustainability and growth. The purpose of these studies should help articulate how Americans are benefiting, as both citizens and communities. I would not want a research or data collection project to be on a level that minimizes the agency’s support for arts organizations or duplicates information that is already available. But, not investing in these kinds of initiatives, on some respectable level, would make it extremely difficult to articulate WHY continued funding is important. Anecdotal stories are good – but they don’t provide the hard data that advocates need.

SANDRA: As a participant in the meetings that culminated in the creation and circulation of the Arts Transition Paper on arts policy for the Administration, I’m a supporter of the recommendations for the NEA and the proposed increase in funding support and resources so that the NEA could provide the kind of national leadership needed to advance the arts in America:

• Create a capacity-building initiative to support artistic excellence, improve organizational financial structures, develop a national cultural arts infrastructure, and broaden participation by all Americans (a separate proposal was developed for this and submitted to NEA leadership by a small group of us on behalf of a larger arts coalition two years ago;

• Support arts education by engaging educators, artists, and arts organizations in extending the experience in arts education through lifelong learning, and collaborating with the U.S. Department of Education to advance the federal role in K-12 arts education;

• Make flexible grants that increase the capacity of American arts organizations and artists to create and present meaningful arts experiences for Americans, recognizing the value of establishing fellowships to individual artists, providing grants for multi-year support, and permitting arts service organizations the opportunity to re-grant funds;

• Expand the research capacity of the NEA and the federal commitment to initiating research on issues in the arts and cultural policy; we need ongoing and comprehensive research about the impact of the arts economically and “emotionally” (how the arts make us better citizens and individuals and how we are motivated to participate in the arts).

• Involve close consultation with artists, arts organizations, and the communities they serve in developing and advancing new programs and initiatives at the NEA as well as enhancing existing programs.

• Nurture collaboration around goals shared by not-for-profit arts organizations and the commercial arts sector;

• Strengthen the National Council on the Arts through appointments broadly representative of artistic disciplines and concerns, geographically diverse, and characterizing the multiple and collective cultural interest of all Americans, and create a stronger forum for expanding the presence of and access to the arts in this county.

• Encourage increased public/private partnerships to maximize resources used for the promotion of cultural exchange, including the creation of new opportunities to participate in cultural exchange, subsidized touring and multi-year, sustainable exchange programs.

Finally, as a musician and longtime practitioner working for many years in arts support organizations, I know the critical need for and value of supporting young and emerging artists in exploring their talents directly. The NEA can play a role nationally, as well as on a fundamental local level by creating innovative programs in schools and communities.

BRAD: For a number of reasons, the National Endowment for the Arts has a unique role to play in strengthening the overall ecosystem of the arts in this country. For one thing, despite its modest (or even miniscule) budget for a federal agency, the NEA grants more money to the arts, on an annual basis, than any other funder. Probably even more importantly, as an arm of the federal government, the NEA holds a position of leadership and prestige in the national arts community which is unparalleled by any other private or public entity. The NEA doesn’t have the capacity to single-handedly ensure a healthy environment for the arts nationally. It very much can invest in and support organizations that are already providing a network of programs and services that link and nurture art-makers and arts organizations, nationally, regionally, and locally.

The NEA is now providing financial project support to a number of service organizations and that support should absolutely continue. (As the executive director of a service organization which does occasionally receive NEA funding, this may seem an incredibly self-serving observation, but I’ve got to make it.) Beyond dollars (always needed and appreciated), the NEA could provide thought-leadership for service organizations that would multiply the impact of its financial investment many times over. Convening the conveners is a function singularly well-suited to the NEA. Too often, service organizations conceive, create, execute and sometimes discard programs and services in not-so-splendid isolation, re-creating the wheel time and again, depleting scarce resources of time, energy and cash. Better links between organizations serving a variety of locations, disciplines, and interest areas would allow service organizations, as a sector, to build on each other’s research and experience. The NEA could sponsor a regular (annual, biannual?) convening of these groups, and provide or at least offer support for year-round links that would establish an ongoing platform for sharing information and best-practices.

In terms of advocacy, perhaps the greatest service the NEA could provide the field as a whole is ongoing thought-leadership in articulating the value of the arts to individuals and to society. As a government agency, the NEA is rightfully constrained on lobbying for its own appropriations, but the NEA can and should offer intellectual leadership in defining the critical role the arts play in our multi-cultural, 21st century democracy. Assertions that eloquently answer the question, “What’s art for?” (and that are backed by continually refreshed research) would arm advocates across the country in making their case to local, state, and federal public-policy makers as well as private institutional funders.

To this end, and to further guide the field as a whole, the NEA should strengthen its commitment to research and data collection, providing top-notch analysis and disseminating its results in compelling and widely-accessible reports.

BARRY: In recent years, local arts agencies have lost visibility and funding streams at the Endowment, yet the locals are one part of the arts infrastructure that has experienced growth in demand for services. What should the NEA do to nurture and protect the system of locals and how might a healthier locals infrastructure benefit discipline based arts organizations and/or individual artists?

ANNE: The arts sector is only as strong as its weakest link. So a healthy local arts infrastructure benefits every discipline-based arts organization and every artist in a community, not to mention benefitting the business, education, government and political sectors and the general public overall. Every community needs a voice for the arts on the grassroots level, to pay attention to the bigger picture, connect the arts to community issues, speak up for the arts as integral to the community’s future.

Too many places don’t have that connective “mechanism” that is a local arts agency or council. There may be a lot of arts programs in a community, but too often those organizations and programs exist in a vacuum, in a state of competition instead of partnership. Without a sense of the bigger picture and connections to the larger arts sector and community overall, individual organizations make uninformed and short-term planning decisions and don’t have a way to understand the impact of those decisions on other organizations and on the community, without thinking about partners that could enhance the overall effort.

The simple answer to “what can the NEA do to nurture and protect the system of locals” is to invest in programs that support and strengthen local infrastructure. As a wise arts leader friend of mine once said, “There’s nothing you can’t do with time, money, and staff.” To create such a program, or enhance the current locals program so that it supports organizations and communities, not just projects and programs, requires a re-imagining of the Endowment’s programs so that community cultural development becomes an issue worth of funding.

BRAD: With hundreds and hundreds of local arts agencies across the country, the NEA can’t possibly fund each one of them to any meaningful degree. In this way, publicly-funded local arts agencies aren’t very different from the multitude of private, non-profit arts organizations the NEA is also called to support. The NEA can, though, help every local arts agency by serving as the ultimate model for a public arts agency, clearly articulating the value of the arts to individuals and society, creating logic models that justify public support for the arts (answering the perfectly reasonable question that, “While the arts may indeed be a wonderful and even necessary thing, why should tax dollars be spent on it?”), and nurturing innovation and best-practices through the occasional granting of outstanding projects that can serve as national models.

PATRICK: I think most of what the NEA should be doing is to re-focus its energies on how it can help regional, state, and local organizations/agencies provide the resources needed to repair, build up, and expand the cultural capital (financial, human, and social) essential to the future sustainability and well-being of our communities and the citizens who live in them.

In 2003, WESTAF held a Symposium on “Re-Envisioning State Arts Agencies.” It was a powerful event and the proceedings should be read by everyone engaged in the discourse we are having right now about the NEA. The recommendations I made for the future role of state arts agencies at that event applies to the NEA as well. They include:

• Have the NEA play a critical role in giving federal and state certification of local programs and services. Being able to say “Funding provided by q state arts agency and the National Endowment for the Arts” can be used to leverage much needed additional funding support;

• Have the NEA provide much needed professional and organizational development “deep-training” resources, especially for the thousands of local, community-based, rural/small community organizations and institutions that is appropriate to their place and their situation;

• Have the NEA help identify a clear set of nonprofit, community-based organizational standards to help guide the nonprofit community-based arts organizations and professional competencies of those individuals who lead them;

• Have the NEA broker essential federal/regional/state inter-agency public/partnerships to help create innovative ways to support the arts at every level and in every community;

• Have the NEA be the catalyst to help regional/state arts agencies coordinate, implement, and support regional and statewide convocations of the community of arts for the purpose of professional, organizational, and artistic development;

• Have the NEA be the force behind the development of public policy on the arts and, through effective advocacy efforts, help promote the contribution the arts make to the existence and sustainability of communities all across this nation – regardless of their location, their size, or their cultural resources.

BOB: Local government support for the arts is the largest public funding stream for the arts in America, but it is a sleeping giant. The NEA proved in the 1980’s the amazing leveraging power that federal support has in urging local government leaders to appropriate more dollars to the arts. (The NEA had already proved in the sixties and seventies the federal leveraging power for state dollars which actually helped spawn the majority of state arts agencies and the significant current appropriation from the states today.)

It has always been the policy of Americans for the Arts to urge the NEA to do as much as possible to help foster more local government support. Local arts-enabling organizations have many names, local arts agencies, arts councils, united arts funds, business committees for the arts, arts and business councils, cultural alliances and more. The majority are local funding agencies and are even now in aggregate the largest public funding sector for the arts both in total dollars and in numbers of grants. The number of such entities has grown to some 4,000 but the full potential for leveraged dollars from these existing agencies or for the creation of such a local arts support mechanism in every community is not yet realized. A decade ago, with the slashes in federal government appropriations, there needed to be less of an emphasis on this mechanism simply because basic support for our nation’s cultural organizations seemed to be such a need and priority with such limited resources. Today, with the federal appropriations nearly back to where they were and hope in the air, it would be a good time to think creatively about how the role of government support at all levels can be maximized.

CELESTE: My focus has really been at the state and (to a lesser degree) the federal level. I know that museums benefit greatly from the local arts councils and commissions across California and that they are a fundamental part of the funding tapestry for nonprofit arts organizations. Particularly in California, I have witnessed the extremely painful cuts in local governmental funding. As a federal agency that has ties in every state, I would hope that NEA would encourage state councils to take a role in nurturing and/or meeting the needs of the “locals”.

SANDRA: It’s certainly critical that NEA conduct a strategic review of its programs, initiatives and funding policies to set the direction for the next few years. Local arts agencies and organizations form a critical part of the funding, producing and presenting infrastructure for the arts in the U.S. They put the resources of the NEA in the hands of the people who are working at the most fundamental level and reflect back to agency the national identity on the ground floor. A healthy local infrastructure could help to extend the NEA’s reach across the country and across the field, especially through the offering technical assistance, professional development and other capacity or knowledge building services effectively at a grassroots level and connecting professionals and artists across genres and disciplines. Funds appropriated at the local level, whether directly to arts councils and commissions or to arts producing and presenting organizations that are line timed in municipal or county budgets are leveraged many times over to create broad access to the arts for entire communities and to deepen the engagement in the arts for many. Stakes are high for individual artists at state and local funding levels, and local arts organizations could be valuable intermediaries between the NEA and individual artists. I would want to see the NEA create a broad definition of what constitutes high quality, effective local arts service. Traditional arts councils offer vital services at the local level and should be supported. It is also critical to discover and support providers that are outside the mainstream or traditional realms and that may reveal a richer fabric of arts creation and cultural identity.

JONATHAN: According to Americans for the Arts, before a decline in 2009, local government funding for the arts has grown rather steadily for the past 25 years, and rather significantly between 2004 and 2008 to an all-time high that approached $900 million. I think it would be useful to have more detail on the growth in demand for services referenced in the question. I think a role for the NEA in nurturing the effectiveness of local arts agencies is appropriate. Any of supporting research and the exchange of information among local arts agencies, testing the effects of various models and strategies, fostering leadership development, exploring productive local-state working relationships, and educating local decision makers to the advantages of local arts support might be leadership activities for the NEA.

DON: Stronger, clearer national policy leadership would equip local leaders to couch their work within a more comprehensible public-policy framework. Much of the strength, development and innovation within our post-1965 public-arts-agency system arose from the 20% requirement to fund state cultural agencies: there wasn't much money involved, especially at first, but it effectively required people in every state of the union to engage in discussing what needs and potentials existed in the arts and culture - even in places like my native state, South Dakota, which otherwise would never have come onto the radar of national arts policymakers. Different approaches were needed in such very non-urban places, and new models of work slowly arose, as state arts agencies sought greater independence from the "NEA model" in the '70s. When support to local agencies first came onto the National Council's agenda in the early '80s, Council members' reactions were bizarre: two in particular asserted that the bland proposal to allocate funds for re-granting by municipal arts agencies brought should be "leaked to the KGB" as a way of undermining the Soviet Union, then being described by the new President as the Evil Empire, because nothing would so rapidly undermine quality in the arts as this kind of decentralization. Advocates won the Council's lukewarm, limited support by assuring them that local agencies gave the lion's share of their local grantmaking to the same major-institutional grantees as the NEA did, rather than using such other arguments that they could support smaller, more diverse and innovative programs closer to the ground. This is why I think federal policy is important here: to articulate values such as freedom of expression, cultural diversity, innovation and public service that inspire innovation in our decentralized pubic cultural-support system. Decades later, I think it would behoove planners and policymakers as we embark on this path to look back to some of the seminal texts in international policy-making, like Austin Girard's Culture and Development, where intelligent discussions of the roles of central and local government are laid out and where the importance of decentralization is stressed. Earmarking matching funds for local agencies - which should indeed exist in every Congressional district, and even more locally, throughout the country -- could being about a diversification and strengthening of the public-support system, emphasizing democratic values in cultural policy and contextualizing the importance of creativity and active engagement in the arts.

BARRY: Where should the balance lie between artistic excellence on the one hand, and criteria such as geography, large and small organization size and budget, the various disciplines, multicultural considerations etc. in the allocation of the Endowment’s grant funds? And what consideration should be given to the administrative or non-artistic costs associated with an artistic program grant application?

SANDRA: I feel strongly that as a national arts agency that the NEA should support first and foremost efforts that have artistic merit and high quality, whatever the expression or aesthetic; and the NEA should support a full array of artistic expressions and aesthetics. Authorizing legislation also commits the NEA to supporting work and projects that have significant reach, value and that reflect the diversity of cultures, traditions and peoples living in communities in the United States. These remain important aims for NEA to balance along with ensuring there is wide access to those living in the urban centers to rural reaches of the country and the range of communities between the two. I believe that NEA can also balance the need to reflect geographic, discipline and organizational diversity through its funding of state arts agencies and regional arts organizations that sub grant funds and through the support of arts service organizations that are much closer to the ground where the arts are developing and advancing. These organizations extend the reach and impact of the NEA.

PATRICK: The issue isn’t access or excellence – it is access to excellence. I believe everything starts with access. Without access to the arts experience, individuals, organizations, and communities cannot achieve excellence in the arts. Excellent art doesn’t just happen - it is hard work and it isn’t created in just one place under one set of conditions by certain gifted people. It is difficult to create funding support that finds its way into the complex cultural ecosystem that can’t be divided as neatly and cleanly as people have tried to do over the past two generations. The NEA has not been nearly as successful in its mandate for access to the arts for all Americans as it has its effort to promote excellence in the arts. It can’t just be one or the other – they are intimately connected.

Our nonprofit, community-based arts organizations are standing at the edge. It is a precipitous position for organizations that have been stretched too far and too thin the past fifteen to twenty years. Many of these organizations are “broke” in both senses of the word and may not make it. They are broke because of dwindling financial resources and, perhaps just as importantly, they are broke because of the demands being placed on them to function efficiently, creatively, sustainably and to do so with full public accountability regardless of their size or location. Funding from the NEA to agencies/institutions that can deliver effective organizational and professional development technical assistance to address these issues can make the difference as to whether or not these organizations survive.

We need to start looking beyond the existing community-based nonprofit model and explore what other options exist. Low-profit and, in some instances, even for-profit structures are springing up in response to the need for something new. What does this mean? How do they work? Are the successful? This needs to be explored. Whatever it is do we have to do something. We can’t just stand by and continue to watch. Our cultural organizational structures have to be more nimble, flexible, and adaptive to changing conditions. And the professional administrators leading these agencies must be equipped and prepared to help these organizations accomplish these tasks. There is nothing the NEA could do right now more important than providing the funding support necessary to make the organizational and professional development assistance needed to help our local, state, regional, and national cultural infrastructure reinvent itself.

BOB: Since it’s authorization in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts has focused on creating the opportunity for every American to have the gift of the arts and arts education in their lives. And equally, the NEA mandate was to focus on ensuring that this art was of the highest quality. I think that continuing to look at these two principles as applied to every program, every initiative, and every part of our federal government support program for the arts is appropriate. Large and small organizations are both important to the arts ecology, all disciplines should be considered including new evolving ones, and the cultural contributions of all of America's diverse cultures must be embraced fully and fairly.

CELESTE: I think the challenge is in achieving an acceptable balance of all the factors you mention, perhaps with different grant programs for various purposes. That may seem like just a safe answer – but I also believe it is the best one. I have sat in a legislator’s office and had him ask how the organizations and constituents in his state/district have benefited from a particular agency. I have also had colleagues from small or discipline-specific organizations ask why they should support a cause if they don’t get funded. Ignoring a specific geographical region, discipline, or other group undermines the sustainability and growth of NEA and, subsequently, accessibility to the arts across the country. That said, I think artistic excellence is extremely important and hope the agency will reward innovation and set high standards that will challenge organizations across the country.

BRAD: On its website, the NEA names “supporting excellence in the arts” as its very first goal. Next up is “bringing the arts to all Americans.” And here the tension seems to lie. But the NEA, and its observers, should not view supporting excellence and supporting diversity in geographic and multi-cultural art-making as an either/or proposition. It is not impossible to combine the NEA’s top two goals and say that the agency’s mission is to “bring excellent art—both old and new—to all Americans.” Old, new, of European lineage, of Asian, African, Latin American and Native American derivation as well. And in every one of the 50 states, or how will the NEA fulfill its mandate to bring this excellence to all Americans? The NEA should not shy away from holding up excellence as a standard. But excellence can certainly be achieved in the hinterlands as well is in Chicago or San Francisco. And not just in a few idiosyncratic locales (e.g. Ashland, Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival or Western Massachusetts’ Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival). Excellence can be found as readily in the performance of traditional ethnic dance in California’s Central Valley as in experimental performance works in the East Village. The role of the NEA is to call art-makers in every discipline and in every community across the country to achieve excellence in their own venues, and to provide Americans with access to excellent art in their own communities and in cities and towns far away.

ANNE: Just reading that list of qualifiers shows how very many diverse interests and agendas the Endowment must satisfy – and that’s just within the arts sector. Then there’s Congress…

I don’t believe that artistic excellence is a category unto itself, but is at the heart of any artistic experience. It’s not an “either-or” situation. There is sometimes an assumption that excellence is only realized by “professional” artists, and that it lives only in classical arts in an urban setting. There seem to be different criteria for a community-based effort in a small town or rural area or a new art form coming from a young creative mind.

But of course excellence exists in small places as well as large, and in “amateur” efforts, too. In Wisconsin, we have people like Tom Every of Baraboo, known as Dr. Evermore, who builds outsized, fantastic “outsider art’ scrap metal sculptures that have become known around the world. Is this artwork “excellent”? (Some would even ask, is it art? I don’t want to get into that discussion!) I don’t know, but it sure is creative. (Click here for a photo of the Forevertron, the world’s largest metal sculpture: http://www.neatorama.com/2007/09/11/forevertron-worlds-largest-scrap-metal-sculpture-by-dr-evermor/) In the city of Amery in northwest Wisconsin, population 3000, which has designated an official Poet Laureate position, a poem is read before each City Council meeting. Milwaukee has embraced the arts as community assets in myriad ways, from designating the spectacular Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum as part of the city’s “brand” to supporting an award-winning strings program at the Latino community center.

Wisconsin is special, of course, but there are incredibly creative people and places in every corner of this country. Not all should be eligible for Endowment support, but the Endowment should lead the way in providing visibility and credibility to those people and places. Since the Endowment is s a public agency concerned with the common good, I’d like to see the agency provide a more balanced approach to supporting “excellence” with supporting creative expression, access and community engagement and vitality.

Every famous artist or performer starts as a child taking classes and lessons with the local music theater or community theater or art school. Someone or something has got to start fanning the creative spark in that kid and then release him or her out into the wider world.

As the great Robert Gard, the University of Wisconsin professor and arts advocate said, “If we are seeking in America, let it be for the reality of democracy in the arts. Let art begin at home and let it spread through the children and the parents, and through the schools and the institutions, and through government. And let us start by acceptance, not negation—acceptance that the arts are important everywhere, and that they can exist and flourish in small places as well as large, with money or without it, according to the will of the people. Let us put firmly and permanently aside the cliché that the arts are a frill. Let us accept the goodness of art where we are now, and expand its worth in the places where people live.”

As for the administration or “non-artistic” costs – how did it happen that our funding system (not just at the Endowment, but the funding system overall) came to regard administrative costs as an aside, as inconsequential? That mindset has wreaked havoc on the arts sector and the nonprofit system in general, because it’s made having the funds to actually operate an organization so difficult to find and to sustain. All nonprofit organizations, regardless of their budget size, spend too much time chasing the elusive operating money, to the detriment of the creative “product” of their organizations. I’d like to see more understanding and emphasis on the real costs of producing an artistic product, including administration and overhead.

DON: Excellence in the arts - and this means multiple qualities, plural, rather than some singular question of "quality" - is the job of individual artists and companies. Producing the highest-quality art is the primary motivation of any artist, professional or amateur, and is not the result of government or legislation, though public agencies can and should underwrite all the elements needed to support artists and citizens in producing and having access to the best artwork that our people can produce. This means providing facilities, training, opportunities for cross-fertilization, innovation and experiment in every aspect of the arts - in their content, their form and presentation, the contexts in which they are supported, deployed and enjoyed. It should be our clear national goal that the arts be supported and enjoyed everywhere in the United States, with no "flyover" zones, and should be supported by for, in and among all our culturally diverse citizenry. This will look different in rural Utah than in Manhattan or San Francisco, but cultural development and a high quality of cultural life should be available to everyone, everywhere, if we are to enjoy life in a cultural democracy.

BARRY: What an excellent start to this week's discussion. Again, there are so many questions suggested by your comments and observations.

The discussion will continue tomorrow with more questions for the Second Panel.

Please feel free to enter your own comment by using the comment feature below.

Thanks to the Panel and to the readership.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23rd - 8:00 am Pacific Time

BARRY: By law, the NEA allocates approximately 40% of its funding to the states and regions. Should this formula be maintained or changed?

DON: I don't think there's any magical percentage: as long as the entire system is guided by strong policy, I think decentralizing resources - especially if federal funds are used to boost public subsidy at every decentralized point cities, towns, counties and neighborhoods. The main issue is the puny size of the federal cultural budget. Such dramatic controversies have been fanned up over an amount of money that is merely token. The entire NFAH allocation zeros out in the federal budget, yet its critics treat it as a deplorable waste. The investment needs to be multiplied federally and at every level of government so that this percentage - whatever it is - generates a much more substantial level of public investment. This can't happen without clear, accessible statements of the value of public investment in creativity and culture.

ANNE: Making recommendations and decisions about the “right” formula for distribution requires some thoughtful analysis, research, and projections on how the current system and policies work and the potential results of any changes. I am sure that Mr. Landesman’s leadership will include an examination of the funding structure and policies of the agency, including the specific programs and formulas currently in place.

CELESTE: As I mentioned above, I think a balance is appropriate and needed for sustainability and continued growth. I absolutely believe it is possible to reward excellence at a state level, especially in California. Having a geographical formula helps guarantee that every state and/or region is benefiting from our nation’s investment in the arts. I just wish there was more money to spread around, so more Americans and communities benefit from the arts.

BRAD: I am going to go way out on a limb and wonder about the mandate that requires 40% of the NEA’s funding to be dispensed to the states and regions. For its own good, the NEA should make its support clearly visible to lawmakers and the electorate. When nearly half of the agency’s appropriations is diverted to others, it’s much harder to show impact and raise the profile of the agency—to promote its “brand” in marketing terms. Maybe there is a way that state grants, when augmented with NEA dollars, should credit a portion of that support back to the Endowment. The more voters see the NEA logo inside the playbills and museum brochures of their own local arts organizations, the more likely they will be to favor increased support for the Endowment—since they can see its impact on their own community.

PATRICK: Consideration should be given to reverse the current percentage formula. I think 60% of NEA funding should go to the state and regional organizations but it should not be limited to traditional public funding agencies. Consideration also should be given to have these additional funds awarded on a competitive basis. Regional and state funding agencies should be challenged to show how they will use this new funding to fulfill both purposes of the NEA (excellence and access).

This wider distribution of funding across the country is vital to the ability of the NEA to be in a position to get increased funding in the future. People need to see what it is that public funding can accomplish. Therefore any grant received by any agency, institution, or artist(s) from a regional or state agency should acknowledge a portion of its funding comes from the NEA. This way, people can begin to see how it all fits together.

From the beginning of its existence, the NEA has been more of a “reactive” agency, responding to what exists, not what might exist. This is understandable. It is hard for a government agency to be creative even though it is an agency that supports creativity – but that is the task given to the NEA. Unfortunately, the NEA has been a political lighting rod that is disproportionate to the amount of the Federal budget it receives and has been discouraged to take the risks needed to provide effective leadership to the community of arts in America. But this probably will always be the case because most people in this country fail to understand the difference between the “value of the arts” and the “values the arts express.”
Maybe this is the time for leadership at the NEA needs to step forward and embrace its role as cultural catalyst. You can’t support creativity without taking risks. And if there was ever a time our country needs to have creative resources available to address difficult challenges, it is now.

SANDRA: Overall, as mentioned in an earlier question, I think it’s important for the NEA to look at all its existing programs and funding allocations, including states, regional arts organizations, organizations and individuals – all in an effort to enhance the effectiveness, value, and impact of federal dollars allocated through all contracts and grants awarded, and to advance the arts. NEA support to state arts agencies remains critical at a time when many states are sustaining significant cuts to their budgets, which threaten the health and sustainability of the arts nationwide. State arts agencies have demonstrated the ability to assure great geographic, demographic reach and impact with NEA funds, and many states have had great success in articulating and creating public value through the arts as well as a strong track record of effective statewide planning and assessment that has ensures knowledge and capacity building across the arts sector. The NEA provides critical support to state arts agencies that is leveraged many times over and that has helped to sustain state government appropriations and support. This must continue. For most of our constituents, the stakes are far higher at the state and local government levels than at the federal level.

JONATHAN: The NEA employs two basic methods of distributing its funds to fulfill its mission: directly via national panels and indirectly through state arts agencies. I’ll note four reasons that the 40% of the NEA budget distributed through the 56 states and jurisdictions, and their regional groups, contributes powerfully to Congressional support of the agency. One is that the state formula guarantees that a predictable portion of the tax dollars invested annually in the arts by the federal government will go to each state. The NEA is not a foundation. Every Senator and every member of the House of Representatives represents constituents who pay taxes, vote, perceive the arts as important, and want to see the federal investment in artistic excellence and access include their district. The distributive principle maintains the NEA’s viability as a government agency just as it does for the federal agencies with responsibility for education, transportation, housing and urban development, the humanities and other public benefits. The most revealing example of the value of the state portion in sustaining Congressional support for the NEA was when, in the process of reducing the NEA budget from $176 MM to $98 MM in the 1990’s, Congress doubled the state percentage to its present level. (At the same time, Congress limited allocation of the NEA program budget to no more than 15% to any one state and stipulated that the National Council should be geographically representative. This is also about the perception of fairness.) Secondly, beyond distribution, the state portion increases the reach and impact of federal arts support. When agency staff and panels at the state level make decisions and provide services to artists, arts organizations and the public with federal dollars, they do so with knowledge of each state’s unique cultural, social, economic and artistic environment. They cultivate means of reaching every corner of their state suitable to each state’s circumstances – including presenter networks, touring programs, arts education programs, state-local government partnerships, cultural district incentives. Since the NEA requires and approves state plans that must be informed by a public process, must support arts education, and must serve the underserved, the state portion of its budget supports a system through which statewide priorities are identified and addressed compatibly with national goals. I should point out that the unique value of the 40% portion continues to be revealed. When the NEA decided that it would directly award ARRA funds only to recent grant recipients, it meant that in some states only a small number of groups could even apply. The stipulation by Congress that 40% of ARRA funds be distributed through states and regions ensured that jobs in arts organizations would be supported even in areas of the country where arts groups are sparse. Thirdly, the state portion greatly leverages federal support for the arts, stimulating support for the arts at other levels of government and from private sources as well. At least half of the state arts agencies were started by governors in response to NEA incentive grants in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Early on, the state portion made up half of state arts agency budgets; now, state legislatures typically allocate about nine times the state portion annually and 2 ½ to 3 times the total NEA budget – certainly one of the most successful of all NEA programs. It’s important to note that NEA support to state arts agencies is still a quarter, a third, or more of many of their budgets and, especially in tough economies such as we are now experiencing, the desire not to lose NEA state partnership agreement funding provides an extremely important incentive to state governments looking for agencies to eliminate. It’s useful to note as well that state arts agencies have, through the work of their community development coordinators and their grant making, fostered the local arts agency movement. Even though distribution of locals is uneven and some states have only a few, state arts agencies most recently awarded 14% of their grant dollars to many hundreds of locals and to the statewide assemblies of locals. Fourthly, the state portion supports and diversifies the NEA mandate to advance excellence in the arts. If you exclude California, which has so many arts organizations that both the NEA and the state arts agency support a relatively small number of them, state arts agencies support two-thirds of all NEA grantees – and, on average, with twice as much money. In numerous states – Arizona, Illinois, Rhode Island and Tennessee, for instance, the state arts agency supports between 80% and 90% of NEA grantees. The point is that NEA dollars are being put to work raising the quality of participation in the arts both when the NEA makes grants directly to as many as 700 communities in a given year and when the state arts agencies make grants annually in over 5000 communities.

The state portion at 40% of NEA program funds continues to demonstrate its value and position the NEA for overall budget growth. The state arts agencies are strongly committed to neither decreasing it, which would reduce its value in advancing the mission of the NEA, contributing to Congressional support of the agency, and leveraging state arts support, nor increasing it, because we value the national leadership roles of the NEA.

DON: I'm a strong advocate of the public interest in the arts, but right now, I'm most concerned about employment opportunities for professional artists, emphasizing a much more diverse and imaginative deployment of artists' skills, talents and social imagination. Fellowships are good and important, but this should not be the primary function of central government: this kind of support should be available to artists at the state level and locally, protected by a clear understanding of freedom of expression and avoiding partisan political interests in supporting creative artists. (I also think federal-level fellowships should also be restored, but more as a fail-safe to a more generous array of state, local and private-sector options, supporting work that's too controversial or experimental to win more support in more conservative local areas, and to highlight the accomplishments of national-important artistic innovators: obviously, this would challenge federal grantmakers to strongly assert the importance of not censoring artwork produced by individual artists. And we know how difficult this challenge is, thanks to the NEA Four controversies of the late '80s and '90s.) The most important place to address artists' employment lies not in fellowship support, but in public service employment for artists. As in the '30s, with the WPA, and the '70s, with CETA (the comprehensive Employment and Training Act), we've seen the lasting value of employing artists in community contexts all over the U.S. With intractable unemployment at the top of our national economic picture, I'd like to see the new administration make a big statement and a very large public investment in artists' employment in every conceivable community context: schools, hospitals, public artwork, neighborhood projects, social-service agencies, recreation programs, public performance and participatory arts and cultural projects.

I'd also like to see the Endowment's direct focus on the needs of each arts discipline restored, to help guide the entire public-agency infrastructure as well as its own national-level grantmaking. The "Theme park" funding of arts institutions complicated what had been a more straightforward way of dealing with key institutions in various arts disciplines. At the same time, federal-level programs should focus on special needs and issues in the cultural arena, like the situation of minority cultural communities, folk and traditional arts, and the largely untapped opportunities available through community-based cultural development projects, supporting research and development and pilot-project work in cross-cutting areas like these as well as in each separate arts discipline.

BOB: The formula for distribution of funds has been analyzed and changed several times over the history of the National Endowment for the Arts. Congress I am sure will look at this again in the future but that is not happening right now. As I mentioned earlier, the key focus now needs to be on more money for supporting the arts and the amount of money that is distributed, whether through the states, directly to arts organizations, to artists, or through mechanisms like local arts agencies, all need to be increased. It is my hope that the dialogue will focus on this great advancement for growing all available resources rather than quarreling over what percentage of the whole goes where.

JONATHAN: Here is a list of recommendations for the NEA similar to those I submitted on behalf of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) to the new administration’s transition team:

1. Articulate a set of priority outcomes related to participation in the arts in the United States and link strategic roles for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to each. Align grant programs and leadership roles such as research, convening and organizing stakeholders, encouraging collaborations, and broadening support.

2. The NEA should extend its leadership and partnerships to enhance the accessibility and quality of participation in the arts provided in not-for-profit, for-profit and amateur contexts.

3. Integrate artists and arts organizations into national policy priorities such as health insurance reform and public service.

4. Build the federal government’s capacity for cultural diplomacy and adopt a comprehensive approach to arts education.

5. Establish a communication plan with priority messages to target audiences about (a) the arts and (b) the NEA. Advance nationwide understanding of the arts as a multisector industry that contributes to employment, a healthy economy and a creative, competitive work force; as essential to American democratic practice and community life; and, therefore, as part of basic American education. Help the First Family portray the value of arts participation.

6. Play an active role with the White House, Congress and other federal agencies to (a) address cultural policy issues and (b) draw upon and support artistic resources to help achieve their program goals.

7. Cultivate a strong federal-state arts support partnership.

ANNE: Although I disagreed with the Endowment’s previous “top-down” approach, I do applaud the agency for paying more attention to access and to making sure that funding was more obviously distributed throughout the country. Now, it’s time (past time!) to lead the way to turn the country’s attention to the role of creativity in the 21st century world and the public value of the arts.
Mr. Landesman, the Endowment’s agenda and priorities should be:

• Ensuring access to the arts and creative opportunities for everyone, everywhere in America.

• Advocating for a strong American creative sector as an important component of the nation’s economy , and, for infusing creativity into all sectors of the economy.

• Supporting and nurturing a healthy and sustainable arts sector, which includes individual artists making a living as creative entrepreneurs and for-profit and non-profit arts and cultural organizations and businesses working as social change agents and community partners.

• Championing and supporting arts and creativity as the bedrock of 21st century education for all American children.

• Partnering with local, state and regional advocates to speak up for the agency and increased funding for the arts in America.

PATRICK: The NEA didn’t get to where it is overnight. We didn’t get to where we are as a country overnight either. There is no magical “re-set” button we can hit to return things to where they were with the NEA twenty years ago. And to be honest, I’m not sure where the NEA was twenty years ago is where I would want it to be today. But, the fact is, the NEA has never been funded at an appropriate level and neither have the state arts agencies and nothing is going to happen overnight to change this. I think the reason for this is clear - the arts are not part of the day-to-day lives of most Americans. The reason the NEA doesn’t get the funding it needs/deserves isn’t because people don’t like art or don’t think art is important – it is because the arts have never been a part of the average citizens’ life - they aren’t part of the average citizen’s day-to-day vocabulary.

Maybe what we should be doing is what Baker Brownell suggested sixty years ago - just quit talking and clacking about art and start doing it. Perhaps, instead of the NEA funding a few acting companies to tour all over the nation to expose citizens to the works of Shakespeare, the NEA should provide the funding needed to make it possible for citizens in communities all across the nation to participate in and experience Shakespeare on a personal basis by doing the productions themselves. Now, that is a project that would transform communities and put the arts into the day-to-day vocabulary of people.

People give their money to where their values are. When we build a sustainable, community-based arts infrastructure from the bottom up because people want to participate in and experience the arts on a personal basis – the NEA will be funded at the right level because citizens will insist their Senators and Congressmen fund it this way. State arts agencies will be funded at a level they need to be funded and no one will have to force the legislators to do it – they will know it is the right thing to do. And individual artists and arts agencies and institutions will be funded the way they need to be funded because they are accountable to the people who fund them because they are part of a value system that places the arts within the life experience of each individual and community.
This is the paradigm shift I was talking about earlier. It is already happening. It has been happening at the local community level for hundreds of years in this country and it has hardly ever been “funded.” Now, what can those of us involved in the NEA, state arts agencies, and other public/private funding agencies learn from that.

BRAD: The NEA should have as its priority creating an atmosphere in this country that understands and embraces the value of the arts to 21st century Americans. Helping us all understand and articulate “what the arts are for” in a multi-cultural, technologically driven society that is the unquestioned world super-power, will support not only the prospects for the Endowment’s own funding, but undergird efforts across the country to deliver the community-enriching, personally-transformative power of the arts to all Americans—and can help create a new image of America as a society that is not only rich materially and powerful militarily, but expansive of spirit, profound in understanding, and crackling with creativity.

BOB: The arts in America are America’s secret weapon for change and for making a better nation. They hold great promise as a key tool in America’s relationship with the rest of the world. However, the arts have been too much of a secret and the value of our arts activity in America is virtually unknown globally. There is a great opportunity with more resources to support the great artistic work that is already happening, to strengthen and enable the 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations working to make better communities everywhere, to allow all Americans to realize the asset that is in their midst, and to enable American non-profit arts to fully participate in the great global dialogue of our day—whether international exchange, advancing to new markets, or solving problems through cultural diplomacy. The NEA and all of us need to be even more vocal, more persuasive, more articulate, and relentless in spreading the word of the value of our sector. When questioned or attacked (as American for the Arts was this week by the Washington Times) we need to fight back. The arts are not just decoration, they should be fully part of all contemporary issues and discussions whether racism, crime, economics, war, or health care. Great artists and great art have dealt with all of these issues and more for thousands of years . The NEA currently has just a little bit of money but two great assets , the power to leverage and a bully pulpit. What I would tell the Chair of the NEA is dream big, speak loudly, make change, build the best support infrastructure possible at all levels, use leverage, take chances, discuss ideas widely, partner, think about all of America, make mistakes, celebrate successes, and know (I hope) that 100,000 non-profit arts organizations in America have your back.

CELESTE:
• Invite feedback
• Listen
• Determine needs
• Ascertain what is sustainable and viable given the political environment
• Propose
• Listen again
• Reach general consensus
• Fearlessly take Washington by storm
• Repeat

SANDRA: Arts Presenters held a meeting of a small group of presenting practitioners and artists with the NEA in January 2009 to talk about the future of the NEA and the following priorities issues and needs, were identified:

• Determine the role of individual artists with and their relationship to the NEA

• The establishment of a capacity building and sustainability initiative for the arts (as mentioned in question # 1); provide operating support to arts organizations that acknowledges the excellence of organizations and provides for infrastructure building

• The need for the arts to receive support in stimulus funding packages and for the NEA to play a role in the development and distribution of jobs corps funds for the arts

• The role of the NEA in responding to and prioritizing that the field respond to the vast diversity and demographic shifts that have taken place in the U.S. over more than 30 years (in programs, leadership, audiences and organizations)

• The importance of the NEA supporting the full array of artistic expression and aesthetics in the projects and initiatives funded

• The need to foster and facilitate global cultural exchanges and cultural diplomacy programs as well as advance policies favorable to cultural exchange and diplomacy

• Support arts education and lifelong learning in the arts in and outside the classroom

• Foster and facilitate relationships and partnerships in the arts with other federal agencies

• Support the field in the full understanding and use of new media and technologies

• Support arts initiatives that provide platforms for communities to come together and address social issues

• Develop a brief and policy statement that communicate the value of creativity in the arts and arts as an important domain of creative endeavor

• Expand research activities and assist the field in establishing new metrics for and means of assessing the impact of programs and efforts

• Engage the arts sector in sustainability/climate change issues and the green movement

• Revive the convening role of the NEA and establish NEA as a leader among as well as a convener of funders and other arts supporters

• Create new public awareness of the value and impact of the arts to communities

This is a long list of critical issues and needs, and given the agency’s resources, the need to focus the NEA’s agenda for maximum impact and field value is clear. It is my hope that Chairman Landesman will conduct a strategic review of NEA’s initiatives and efforts in determining the priorities for the agency going forward.

BARRY: Some follow-up questions and responses tomorrow. Please feel free to add your own comment or pose your own question by clicking on the comment button below.

Posted by msaunders at 05:51 PM | Comments (2)

September 14, 2009

LAUNCH OF NATIONAL FORUM ON THE NEA AND ARTS POLICY IN AMERICA

Hello everyone.

“And the beat goes on..........”

WELCOME TO THE ONLINE FORUM ON THE FUTURE OF THE NEA AND ARTS POLICY FORUMULATION IN AMERICA.

Today we launch this ambitious six week national dialogue on the National Endowment for the Arts, and indirectly, on a national arts & culture policy. Scroll down to the last two blog entries for a complete description of this project, all the participants, and some of topics and subject areas that we hope will be covered.

I am pleased to introduce our First Panel – all of whom have some direct previous experience working at the Endowment or the National Committee on the Arts – which oversees the Endowment and approves its grantmaking activities.

OLIVE MOSIER – Director, Arts & Culture Program, William Penn Foundation; former Deputy Director NEA.

DIANE MATARAZA – Independent Consultant; former Director Local Partnership, NEA

TONY CHAUVEAUX – Deputy Director the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; former Deputy Director, NEA

PETER HERO – Vice-President, California Institute of Technology, former member National Council on the Arts, former Executive Director Silicon Valley Foundation

STEVEN J. TEPPER – Associate Director Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy, Vanderbilt University

Thank you all very much for participating.

Let’s get started. I’d like to first set some context for this whole six week project by asking each of you to share some insights on the how the Endowment works and the ecosystem in which it operates.

BARRY: Describe the culture of the NEA as it relates to how the decision making process works at the agency. How are priorities determined? What factors affect its policy formulation: The relationship to Congress? To the White House? To its constituents?

TONY CHAUVEAUX: How are priorities determined? During my service at the NEA, priority was given to serving all Americans and bringing to them excellence in the arts. These priorities resulted in highly visible, artistically excellent programs such as “American Masterpieces”, “Shakespeare in American Communities”, “The Big Read”, “Poetry Out Loud”, “Operation Homecoming”, “Great American Voices”, etc

During my service at the Arts Endowment, I would suggest the agency’s highest priority was serving its constituents. The agency’s constituents were seen as the American people. The agency sought to serve this constituency by joining with and funding our partners – arts organizations throughout the country – to bring the best of the American arts to every community. As a result, a series of programs were created and launched – all designed to be highly visible and of indisputable quality reaching into every corner of the nation. Chairman Gioia was able to walk into any member of Congress’ office and, in response to the anticipated “What have you done for me lately?” question, demonstrate specific NEA funding which had been awarded to cultural organizations in that member’s district. These initiatives resonated with Congress and for the first time since the agency was in jeopardy of being eliminated in the 1990’s, the NEA appropriations were routinely passed by voice vote in both houses of Congress with no debate.

OLIVE MOSIER: The priorities of the NEA are influenced not only by the sensibility of the NEA staff leadership but by the National Council on the Arts (NCA), the White House, and Congress. The NEA needs to factor in all of these perspectives as it shapes its agenda for the next four (and hopefully eight) years under the Obama Administration. All of us who have come into the agency under a new Administration look to put a new stamp on the place that is reflective of larger goals and policies of the country’s leadership. Nonetheless, the agency shouldn’t change simply for the sake of change but because it feels there are more effective approaches to doing its business in service to the field. The NEA, like every other funder, cannot fund every organization worthy of support. Like every other arts service organization, the NEA can’t address all obstacles facing the field. It needs to determine how it makes the most significant impact given its resources, but in a way that reflects the goals of the Administration and supported by Congress. The political atmosphere in Washington seems highly charged. Even a strong arts advocate in the White House cannot necessarily help the NEA overcome resistance by Congress. However, I have no doubt that the new leadership at the NEA will find an effective, principled agenda in service to the field

PETER HERO: I am not close enough to the NEA anymore to answer this effectively.
I do know this: its priorities should be set by those professionals in the field who have the most experience/knowledge of theatre, visual art, dance, etc. Their recommendations should go to a knowledgeable NCA which must balance and prioritize. That body should give extra consideration to projects which support and celebrate our artists; it is not enough to send Shakespeare productions around the USA, even to every district, let the Humanities Endowment do that. James Thurber once wrote, “In the house of life American artists feel as if they have never been asked to take off their overcoats”.
Recognizing and celebrating individual artists in their lifetimes was always a key objective of starting the NEA in the first place, and if you do not believe that then go back and read Congressional testimony from the mid-late 60’s… The NEA’s greatest supporters, by far, were conservative politicians who argued (vs. Soviet style official art) that Americans encouraged free speech/art (hence no content judgments were to be made by NEA panels… only quality) and that Americans welcomed and celebrated diverse independent artists in their midst. What happened to all that??!.

I know, soon as the Wall came down in 1989 right wing politicians had to find new “devils” to blame for our ills, the Russians, now de-clawed, and some of those politicians settled on artists, gays, minorities to blame. But, look, for how long do we let Jesse Helm’s cold dead hand forever hold the NEA in its grip, terrified of recognizing the real creative spirits among us?

Gad.

STEVEN J. TEPPER: The broad question for this first panel is “what can and should the NEA do?” Like many conditional statements, the “should” might not, in fact, follow easily from the “can.” Not unlike the majority of government agencies, the Endowment is beholden to its past and its current stakeholders. The NEA did not emerge in the 1960s from a coherent vision for the arts in America. It was built upon the intuition that America faced a deficit of fine arts in this country and that increasing the supply of fine arts would bring a set of worthy, yet somewhat vague, public benefits -- enlightened citizenry, soaring spirits, shared heritage. As the Agency evolved, its role and relevance was shaped by political expedience and pressure. First, it became a handmaiden of Cold War politics – serving American interests by showcasing the freedom and creativity of our citizens and artists. Then, the NEA saw its program areas expand under pressure to be more inclusive and to embrace the spirit of the Civil Rights (expansion arts, jazz program, folk program). Finally, as the Cold War receded and Congressional pressure increased, the Endowment moved toward spreading and diffusing the fine arts to small and mid sized cities and communities across the nation. Through matching grants to nonprofits, the Endowment embarked on closing the “fine arts divide” between the big cities and the rest of America.

Throughout this evolution, Endowment budgets increased and the Agency was able to innovate around the margins to be more inclusive and to expand its geographic reach. But, throughout, as the nonprofit arts grew and as the major arts institutions in America gained prominence and standing, the Endowment faced an increasingly organized “special interest” constituency that sought to maintain or expand current funding levels. Many of the national arts service organizations exist, in part, to ensure that their disciplines and their members (nonprofit arts organizations) are “at the table” and can exert pressure on the Endowment to continue to fund their programs and organizations at adequate levels. While the Endowment continues to experiment and innovate around the margins, and while its peer-review panel system is a notable model of efficiency, excellence and effectiveness, in public policy speak, the NEA is very much “captured” by its primary stakeholders.

So, what the NEA “can” do is obviously limited by political realities. But what the Endowment “should” do is another matter altogether. As a federal agency, the Endowment must establish policies and programs and set priorities based on the “public interest.” How is the public interest advanced by grants to the nonprofit arts in America? If I were a congressman voting on re-authorization for the Agency, this is the primary question I would seek an answer to. And, it is not enough to show that grants to excellent nonprofit fine arts organizations produce benefits for many people. And, it is not enough to show that these organizations pay taxes or bring in revenue through tourism. It is not enough to show multiplier effects for every dollar invested in the arts. Every government program benefits somebody. Instead, the NEA must show that by spending its money this way and not that way (grants to nonprofit organizations verses funding arts in the schools) it maximizes the public interest in art and culture in America. We have never had a sustained conversation in this country about the “public interest” in art and culture. We have never attempted to come to some consensus about what “cultural vitality” would look like and how it might be achieved. Instead, we have simply defaulted to instinct, anecdote, preference, and generalities about the glory of the arts and the importance of growing the nonprofit arts in this country. Can the National Council for the Arts serve more like the Council of Economic Advisers? Can it take up real policy issues and examine cultural regulation and grant making in the context of the public interest?

BARRY: What about the Endowment is undervalued, underutilized, under developed and what misconceptions does the arts sector have about the Endowment? What are the best programs and initiatives of the Endowment in your opinion? What are the principal barriers and obstacles to the Endowment changing direction, to expansion, to its success? --- Is it politics? The legacy of doing things a certain way? A lack of consensus among its constituent / client base?

OLIVE: When I was at the NEA, the work of the Research Division was often perceived as taking funding from the grantmaking programs, despite the fact that the budget for the Research Division comes from a different source within the NEA’s appropriation. I believe that there is now broad recognition of the need for reliable information, research, and data about the nonprofit arts sector. Despite the valuable work of NEA’s Research Division, this has historically been an underfunded program of which much was expected. But good research costs money, and I hope the new administration at the NEA is able to make this work a priority.

TONY: The quality and dedication of the NEA staff are, without a doubt, the most undervalued and unrecognized assets of the Arts Endowment. Additionally, at a critical time in its short history, I believe Bill Ivey and Dana Gioia were absolutely the right leaders at the right time to save the agency from the threat of elimination and then begin to build the agency back up -- Chairman Ivey in his quiet deliberative manner of spending endless hours on Capitol Hill convincing members of Congress to save the agency and then Chairman Gioia’s highly visible programs of excellence which reached literally into every Congressional District in the nation. I believe the biggest misconception that the arts sector has about the Endowment is that it is an agency decision that individual artists should receive no funding. Congress mandated that, with the exception of the honorary awards such as the National Heritage Awards, Jazz Masters, and the NEA Opera Honors, the NEA not award grants to individual artists.

Many may disagree, but I am convinced that placing a direct NEA grant in every Congressional District is critical, particularly now, to the continued success of the agency. In 2000, over ¼ of the nation’s 435 Congressional Districts received no direct funding from the NEA. How could the National Endowment for the Arts be truly “national” if over 60 million Americans received no benefit from our nation’s cultural agency? Clearly this move was the political savvy thing to do, but it was also the right thing to do if the agency was to serve its constituency. Likewise, the aforementioned series of national initiatives demonstrated the agency’s commitment to artistic excellence and delivered that programming throughout the nation.
Politics, without a doubt, is the agency’s principle barrier. Members of Congress, regardless of their political leanings, are being backed against the wall over the major principal issues of the day and, like it or not, their support for or against the National Endowment for the Arts is not high the agenda. Topping each member’s list is re-election. With the economy at the center of every issue, the appropriate use of taxpayer dollars will be scrutinized and if there exists even the slightest suggestion of a misuse of public funds, it will be fully aired. I dare say that no member of Congress is willing to risk re-election if it means defending the ultimate destination of a $10,000 NEA grant. There remains a vocal base out there that does not see the benefit of public funding of the arts. When a national cable news network reports that NEA stimulus funding went to support “pervert revues and underground pornography” or audio tapes surface suggesting the questionable use of the arts community as a “tool of the state” not only does the NEA suffer but all cultural organizations in our nation suffer and in turn, the American people may be deprived of the fulfillment and joy that the arts can bring into every life.

PETER: The NEA is under-appreciated and always has been.
It can exert influence beyond its peanut budget and yet it refuses to do so. For example it can be an advocate for the arts, and for artists. It should focus on CREATIVITY, the currency of the 21st Century, as a the rationale for supporting the arts, not on art’s supposed economic impact (mostly bogus numbers anyway in my opinion, even crime is good for the economy), or art for therapy, or art for the homeless, or art for anything else. Get over it.
The NEA should take a leadership role to show that the link between science and the arts is creativity, that both artists and scientists teach us to see the world in new ways. Ask any Silicon Valley entrepreneur what is America’s key leg up on the flood of Asian `engineers/scientists competing with us, and they will all tell you it is American creativity, imagination, the capacity to be driven not by what someone else shows you how to do but by “what if….”.
And, with this approach the NEA could answer the critics, energize the field to support it, and provide a solid rationale for why a nation would devote resources to encouraging the creativity of its citizens as a public good and cultural necessity.

BARRY: What opportunities has the Endowment failed to capitalize on?

TONY: Since the Chairmanship of Bill Ivey, the National Endowment for the Arts, with the support of its cultural organization partners throughout the nation, has slowly and steadily climbed from the brink of elimination to a consensus of support by the Congress of the United States. This progress is due to visionary leadership, a directed message, attention to administrative detail and a concerted effort to make the work of the agency non-partisan. At this very moment, there is a huge opportunity to capitalize on this recent record of success. To squander that opportunity by less than anything but meticulous attention to every detail of the agency’s operations and message would be a tragedy of untold proportions.

OLIVE: I can only address this issue from my own time at the NEA. In 1994, at the request of the White House, NEA Chairman Jane Alexander convened the NEA’s first national conference on the arts, entitled ART 21: Art Reaches Into the 21st Century. Held in Chicago, people from around the country came to talk about the future of the arts and the NEA. Despite much commitment and energy from those who attended in person as well as those who participated online through Arts Wire, we at the NEA failed Jane and the field when we did not find a way to keep the momentum moving and keep those who had been engaged with us involved in planning for the future of the agency.

BARRY: Where do you think the Endowment should allocate its funds – as between organizations and artists, initiatives and programs, the creation of art and organizational operations?

TONY: The NEA is prohibited by law from funding artists directly. Our nation is too large and too diverse to expect an agency as small as the NEA, by itself, to adequately serve all Americans. Only by strategically allocating funds to its partner arts organizations throughout the nation can the NEA support excellence in the arts, bring the arts to all Americans, and provide leadership in arts education. 40% of the agency’s grant funds are directed to the states by means of formula grants. I believe the agency can best use its remaining 60% of grant funds through the careful crafting of programs and initiatives designed to both support and advance the work of the agency’s partner organizations while at the same time bring the arts to all Americans.

OLIVE: I’m not certain it’s productive to opine on funding allocations when a holistic approach to the agency’s work is what is needed to inform all of these ideas.

PETER: I think the old NEA, pre-1990 or so had it about right.

It gave primary focus to arts organizations, and a prescribed % to the states and LAA’s. I would re-examine the latter—states and LAA’s—in light of their growth, the NEA”s now severely constrained budget and see if the proportions still make sense, likely they do.
For organizations I would pour more into Challenge Grants, and expand their use even for smaller orgs, perhaps with a TA (fundraising) component kicked in. I would re-ignite fellowships for artists, but wrap it with more recognition in addition to the grant itself, all the research says artists value such recognition/marketing exposure almost as much as or more than the $$$. I would make organizational grants as unrestricted as possible, if the organizations are worth funding then they are worth leaving them alone to decide their priorities, operations vs. programming; project funding makes us all concoct make believe grant proposals written as much to fit the tight guidelines as to really helping meet an organizational priority. In my opinion most arts groups need to spend MORE money on operations than they do, why is “administration” such a dirty word in the arts and in nonprofits? Where in the world do funders think the presentation of art comes from: Administrative support. Duh.

Finally, I would revisit all discipline categories to see if there are collaborative opportunities to relieve NEA budgets, ie, can the Humanities be roped into more Folk Arts funding/presentations?

BARRY: Ok, let me get to the guts issue. What would you like to see the Endowment accomplish in the next four years? What policies should govern its actions? What should be its priorities? What advice would you offer the new Chairman as he sets his agenda for the next four years?

PETER: It is time for the endowment to return to being an outpost of the arts in government instead of government in the arts.

Jane Alexander, God bless her, did many wonderful things there 15 years ago but she truly, in my opinion, ate the seed corn when she agreed to: 1) Do away with the discipline programs in favor of broad general cross cutting “themes” as an organizational structure; 2) Discontinued artist fellowships in the face of Congressional hostility, and, worst of all: 3) changed the National Council on the Arts from a panel of arts experts with a few patrons to a vanilla group of political appointments of mostly patrons.

So, not surprisingly, I argue for return of the disciplines (museums, visual arts, music, etc), restore fellowships, for this will re-ignite advocacy at the local level when arts groups and their Boards can see money going into THEIR field (recognizing this creates discipline competition but so what?) plus will fill the NEA again with artists, managers, real arts leaders who can be persuaded to leave their field for the betterment of the arts in America; then, most important, revert the National Council to the 26 member presidentially appointed group it originally was. Let’s get artists on board again! What made NEA great was Donald Hall, Yo-yo Ma, James Earl Jones, Jamie Wyeth, Arthur Miller, Beverly Sills, Theo Bikel, Arthur Mitchell, Martha Graham, Isaac Stern, etc; let Obama use them as his “shield”, i.e., if he does not like a particular grant he can always say “yes, but, I will not tell the NCA what to do, they are the experts!” Well, make them expert again

And get Congress out of the NEA’s structure.

In other words, re-organize the agency. Do this first, do this well, do it thoroughly, do it only once.

We have a Dem congress, lets use it, and these changes can be made in an appropriation bill, we do not have to wait for re-authorization. In its present form the agency’s structure is vague, hazy with cross sector jargon, so poorly funded that the average mid-large size community foundation in the USA gives more to the arts locally than does the NEA nationally. Its budget is smaller than when I was on NCA in 1994.

STEVEN: The first thing the new chairman could do is reenergize the National Council for the Arts and actually give them a mandate to research, evaluate, and suggest a coherent framework for addressing the public interest in art and culture in America. A second thing the chairman could do is to continue to look for ways to make cultural policy a “West Wing” and not an “East Wing” issue in Washington. The NEA’s work with the Department of Justice and its work around disability and design are critical arenas for engaging public policy where the arts are in a position to lead. These efforts should be models as the new chairman considers future paths.

If I could close my eyes and re-envision a government agency whose purpose was to advance cultural vitality and nurture and deploy the arts in the service of the public interest, I honestly don’t think I would arrive at the model we have now. Others very well might choose this model and it is incumbent upon them to defend it in a way that clearly shows its advantage for advancing cultural vitality and our collective good. If it were me, I might focus on a government agency that was all about “access” – giving citizens the tools to enable their own creative capacities. How about providing vouchers to every citizen to learn some artistic skills/craft – from painting to dance to media production or design? Or, why don’t we orient the entire Agency around the Arts Corps concept. Let’s not just ask artists to volunteer for their communities. Like AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps, lets pay young people – artists, filmmakers, composers, dancers – to spend two years dedicating their craft and talent to serving their communities. I believe either cultural vouchers or a robust Arts Corps could easily be defended as the appropriate role for government in advancing the cultural interests of our American democracy. There might be an equally good argument for our current model, but, frankly, its never been articulated in a way that would be convincing to most Americans, and not just to those who are committed patrons and fans of the fine arts.

TONY: I think it obvious that our hope for the future of the National Endowment for the Arts is continued success, expansion of its funding, increased support to its many partners – the arts organizations that it serves and funds – for ongoing projects, and funding newly created programs and initiatives heretofore not supported by the NEA.

The mission of the NEA should govern its actions -- namely to support excellence in the arts – both new and established, to bring the arts to all Americans and to provide leadership in arts education. The future of the NEA hinges on its ability to demonstrate to Congress, to its cultural partners and to the American public that it is going about accomplishing these three broad GOALS. While dozens of “priorities” come to mind, no priority can be accomplished without adequate funding. Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts comes from a single source: Congress. Therefore, members of Congress must recognize the value of the NEA and the specifically the value that NEA funding brings to his or her Congressional District.
I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Chairman Landesman, but I offer to him my sincere congratulations and best wishes. First and foremost, I would suggest that Chairman Landesman value the judgment of the NEA staff who I know eagerly anticipate his leadership. Each artistic discipline that receives NEA funding is well represented by NEA staff colleagues who are passionate advocates for their assigned discipline and are keenly attuned to the needs, issues and concerns of that discipline. Next, include on your staff individuals who know the “inside the beltway” ropes. At a minimum – and at times it’s hard to do -- respect the ways of Washington. Spend time on the Hill cultivating the support of those that will ultimately determine, to a large degree, the success the agency will enjoy over the coming years. Finally, get out of Washington whenever possible. Make time to see our country and the remarkable artists and arts organizations found in every community.

OLIVE: I had the opportunity to work at the NEA (1993 to 2000) as the director of policy and research during the Clinton Administration. I think it’s fairly safe to say that the last thing anybody currently at the NEA is interested in hearing are the musings of former staff. But I do think that there are actions the NEA can always undertake that transcend the party in power and whoever the chairman is and can be agreed to by most if not all current and former staff:

• As an advocate, the NEA is uniquely positioned to champion the value of the arts. And it is not only the chairman who can play this role. The program directors are experts in their fields and can speak knowledgeably and persuasively about the sector in general and their discipline in particular. They get to see work from across the country and understand the breadth and depth of what is out there. Grantmakers in the Arts has found that among the things most needed by the arts and cultural sector right now in this economic downturn are foundations and other arts agencies using their bully pulpits to talk about the importance of the arts and why arts funding is important.

• The gathering and publication of data and research has been an important, longstanding role of the NEA, and I hope that role not only continues but is strengthened. Too often undervalued and under resourced, the NEA’s Research Division has provided reliable information on a vast array of topics, ranging from audience participation to analyses of trends in the arts fields and disciplines. How effectively we manage and fund our cultural institutions depends largely on how well we understand the influences affecting their businesses. We can only make cogent cases for the arts if we understand audiences and their motivations for participating, or not. Increased funding would allow the Research Division to more of this valuable work.

• Lastly, the NEA can’t do everything. Trying to respond to all the needs we have for leadership in the arts will only diminish the effectiveness of the NEA. Each new administration at the NEA, in consultation with the program directors and National Council on the Arts, needs to establish priorities for the role it can uniquely play in service to arts and culture, including individual artists. Having said that, newly appointed senior deputy Joan Shigekawa is extremely knowledgeable about media and media policy, and it will be interesting to see whether the NEA sees any potential in building on her expertise as it sets priorities. The implications for arts groups and artists in the arenas of media, media policy, social media, etc., with regard to the creation and distribution of and participation in the arts are substantial.

My advice to Rocco Landesman is to realize that, while the NEA operates in a highly charged political environment, he is surrounded by well-qualified program directors who, along with senior deputy Joan Shigekawa, can help him maneuver the agency toward an effective agenda while understanding the political culture. Genuine change can be slow-going in Washington, and it often takes newcomers a while to recognize that. But it is possible if people are patient, strategic, and savvy in their tactics. An example of this is how, slowly and carefully, the NEA has expanded its recognition of individual artists, most recently adding opera to the mix of individual honorees. Steps like this can lead to a potential reinstatement of artist fellowships somewhere down the road.

DIANE: my advice to Rocco Landesman would be:

1. Continue to define, support and promote excellence in all artistic disciplines.

2. Set a strong example of the importance of funding both organizations and individuals.

3. Explore new delivery systems and organizational models for nonprofit arts that will enable them to thrive. Given the spirit of the Obama administration to deploy new energy and new thinking to address inequities, fix things that don’t work or build systems that will, what an opportune time for the NEA to focus some of its energy on development of a more financially self-sustainable, more manageable, delivery system for the arts. Organizations have grown too dependent on the tenacity and passion of those who work in this field, and too reliant on outside sources (God bless them). The nonprofit platform is doing little to ensure or fuel the future sustainability and vibrancy of our sector.

4. Create more effective initiatives to help the sector increase market share. This is not happening fast enough.

5. Harness the interest, energy and resources of the for-profit creative sector to support the nonprofit creative sector, especially in its pursuit of all of the above.

6. Make a stronger, more visible national case for the essential role of the arts in community development. Identify other private and public sector resources to invest (side-by-side with the NEA) at the national, state and local levels.

7. Encourage more cross pollination of arts, culture, history and heritage at the national level to expedite partnership development at the local level. Silo-ization of funding, policy, support systems, etc. is impeding collaboration and partnership development in communities.

BARRY: Fascinating discussion. I'll have some follow up questions for the panel members tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I would like to encourage all our upcoming panelists to comment on anything said thus far, and / or to pose questions of their own. Note also that the readership can comment at any time or pose their own questions.

MORE TO FOLLOW..............................

Wednesday, September 16.

STEVEN: In several posts, people suggest a core mission of the Endowment is to bring excellent art to citizens across the country. I do not read the authorizing language in this light. Why is artistic excellence, promoted by the government, necessarily serving the public interest? Or why is it serving the public interest better than say efforts to enable the creative capacity of all citizens (through arts learning or through giving citizens an opportunity to access the materials they need to pursue their creative passions)? I am happy to entertain that the government should be in the business of supporting “excellence in the arts” – but we need to support this position with clear and convincing public interest arguments.

BARRY: Let me ask a couple of follow up questions:

It would seem the agency is once again a lightning rod for political controversy. Without analyzing or deconstructing the motivations and machinations behind current or future attacks on the Endowment, or the arts in general, what can the agency do to protect itself from being cast as a partisan issue? Is the current political atmosphere so charged that the success of Chairmen Ivey and Gioia in drumming up widespread bipartisan support in Congress is now again at risk? How can the Endowment best maintain its neutrality and still move forward with advancing the arts as a part of the process of policy formulation, or should it? And if it should, then in what areas? What would the proper role be of an Endowment that was more at home in the West Wing than the East Wing?

OLIVE: First, much has been said about the successful tenures of Bill Ivey and Dana Gioia, but the success of Jane Alexander has been overlooked. Jane became Chairman in 1993 on the heels of the controversies of Serrano/Mapplethorpe; an uproar over how much of the NEA funding allocation should go to state arts agencies; the resignation (some said firing by President Bush) of John Frohnmayer, and numerous other high-profile incidents that caused the agency to be vulnerable in the eyes of an unfriendly Congress. Despite Jane’s best efforts to build bipartisan support, the agency was dramatically downsized in 1995/96 during her administration, but only because the NEA like other government agencies got caught in the so-called Contract with America led by the Congressional leadership at the time. The action taken had nothing to do with anything the NEA did or didn’t do. After the downsizing, the restructuring that Jane undertook (referenced by Peter Hero) did not do away with the discipline programs but rather organized them under functional frameworks that were intended to encourage cross-discipline collaboration among the programs. While it may not have been the most artful restructure, it was the tactical move that kept the agency largely intact and free from further Congressional interference, which in turn allowed Bill Ivey and Dana Gioia to work toward rebuilding the agency, albeit each in quite different ways.
Also, the artist fellowships Peter Hero cites as having been eliminated by Jane Alexander were actually eliminated by Congress. Elimination of artists’ fellowships was never sought by Jane.
I believe that skirmishes the NEA has had with Congress often have had more to do with political posturing by Congressional members who viewed the NEA as an easy political football than with legitimate policy differences. The atmosphere currently seems ripe in Congress for similar disputes, and there is probably little the NEA can do to avoid them. The best defense may be a good offense by way of a principled agenda set by the Rocco Landesman and his team.

STEVEN: The political controversy is the result of a young, inexperienced communications director essentially breaking the law by asking grantees to advocate for the President’s agenda. It will be hard to undo the damage done and the West Wing of the White House will be very leery of developing any close ties with the Agency for fear of controversy and political fallout. My own sense is that a focus on the arts and service to the nation would fit, in a relatively nonpolitical way, with the President’s own agenda for emphasizing and encouraging community service. Again, the Arts Corps could be a signature initiative that refocuses the debate away from what is best for the arts and toward what is best for communities. Of course there are political land mines in every initiative, but focusing on young people, service, and community seem like a pretty good bridge to West Wing policy.

BARRY: If the Endowment has been a handmaiden to political objectives, whether internal in the form of arts discipline special interests as Steven suggesed earlier, and external to Congress as both Tony and Peter opine, and has, as far back as the 1990’s Cultural Wars, been a target for attacks that may have had other ulterior target objectives for which the arts were but a strawman -- is there a realistic chance that a return to funding for individual artists is possible in today’s climate? Is it possible to rethink the Endowment’s broad mission and purpose without opening a Pandora’s Box of potential problems – at least at this time? If it is highly unlikely that we will be able to achieve Peter’s goal of “getting Congress out of the NEA’s structure”, and Tony’s assessment that Congress may likely run from any controversial charges leveled at the agency, how does it defend itself?

STEVEN: It could be the perfect time to realign the Agency with the public interest, given the swelling needs of the public in the face of the economic free fall. Focusing on work, service, and preparing kids for an economy based on innovation and creativity are themes that should resonate. I think any grants to artists should be part of the larger jobs program, and not necessarily a realignment of Agency goals and objectives.

OLIVE: The NEA is faced with the challenge of creating programs that are meaningful and useful to the field while avoiding becoming a political football. Too often, those programs that have gained popularity in Congress have done little if anything to advance and strengthen the arts. I hope the agency will be able to build political goodwill, but the mood in Washington doesn’t seem to be conducive to that. I think it is possible to have a relevant NEA without necessarily pandering to Congress. Reading some of what Rocco Landesman has said about his intentions for the agency, the NEA seems poised to do that now.

BARRY: Why doesn’t, as Olive and Diane suggest, the NEA use its bully pulpit more to champion the value of arts & culture, or as Peter suggests, do we rely too much on such things as the economic value argument? And as Peter wonders: why doesn’t the agency take more of a lead role in brokering mutually beneficial initiatives between the arts & the sciences?

STEVEN: I love the idea of brokering mutually beneficial initiatives between the arts and the sciences; or mutually beneficial initiatives between the arts and the State Department; or between the arts and disability services; or between the arts and transportation; or the arts and the Office of the Trade Representative. Links already exist for these relationships, but they should become a priority for the Agency. This is what Bill Ivey would have done had he had another 4 years as Chairman…. He would have gone agency to agency to involve the NEA in the public policy interests of a range of agencies – both as those agencies impact the arts and as the arts can serve to help meet the policy objectives of those agencies.

OLIVE: We don’t know what the NEA will do under its new leadership, so it may end up doing all of these things. Past NEA administrations have emphasized partnerships with other non-arts federal agencies, such as Peter Hero suggests, but I don’t know how actively such initiatives are sought or where they fall in the list of priorities.

Also, I didn’t mean to imply earlier that the NEA does not use its position well as a voice for the arts – I think that the various chairs have been out on the stump, as have the program directors. I am sure this will continue. And there is probably a role for National Council members to be voices as well. But the NEA tends to get the most media coverage when there’s a controversy and not when its staff is out across the country making the case for the arts.

BARRY: Peter and Tony's responses coming later today, and Anthony and I will recap tomorrow.

UPDATE NOTE - Thursday 9/17 4:30 pm : As John Steinbeck observed in his famous novel: "The best laid plans of Mice & Men often go astray". Despite as much prior planning as could be done, and the best intentions of everyone involved, in online discussions like this -- cast over several days -- some participants inevitably have things arise which takes them off their schedule. Obviously Tony and Peter have both gotten caught up in the pressing matters of their workaday jobs, and haven't yet been able to add their thoughts to the follow up questions. This may happen from time to time over the course of the next six weeks. My apologies. Still, I am very pleased with the first panel and thank them for their insightful observations and thoughts and for a provocative launch to this continuing discussion. They have already given us much to think about.

I will add Tony and Peter's responses just as soon as I receive them.

In the meantime, Anthony Radich and I will summarize this first panel tomorrow and add some of our own thoughts on some of the comments made so far, and preview next week's panel.

Please check out the comments to date - click on comments below.

Friday, 9/18. 8:30 am

Here's Tony's thoughts to the follow-up:

TONY: What can the arts agency do to protect itself from being cast as a partisan issue? Is widespread bipartisan support in Congress again now in jeopardy?

First, I would offer that Barry’s August 9, 2009 entry entitled “Back to the Future - Fighting the Cultural Wars of the 1990s All Over Again” should be required reading for anyone concerned about the future of the National Endowment for the Arts and arts policy in general in our country.

Is widespread bipartisan support in Congress again now in jeopardy? Yes it is. Take a look at the editorial printed this week in the Washington Times – www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/14/inartful-politics/ While the flap over NEA stimulus funds proceeds was for all practical purposes baseless, this current controversy has the potential to undo the progress and advances made with Congress over the last 12 or so years. One controversial headline has the ability to race through every media outlet and the halls of Congress with dazzling speed. The trick is to immediately communicate directly to members of Congress and their staffs the facts of the matter, and at the same time stalk the story, provide the media with the facts and demand corrections whenever possible. The “no comment” stonewall approach will not work when it comes to scrutiny of the NEA.

I don’t think it reasonable to expect to get Congress out of the NEA’s structure. The culture of Washington DC is the culture of power. Power is enabled by money. Congress wields power through the appropriations process. While I like the sound and feel of some of my colleagues alternate missions for the agency, it seems to me that -- in the economic and political climate that is our reality – it still boils down to Congress and the perceived use of the taxpayer dollar. The NEA must serve all Americans and bring to them excellence in the arts.

As is being evidenced on a daily basis, a roomful of screaming constituents upset at their elected MOC over government waste and excessive spending is fodder for the media and potential failure when it comes to re-election. A single FALSE news item regarding the work of the NEA– if not immediately answered and clarified – has the potential of clearing the room of members of Congress when it comes time to maintain appropriations for the NEA. A FACTUAL news item evidencing questionable use of the taxpayer dollar through an NEA grant will do the same. For this reason alone, I would not think it advisable to return to grant support for individual artists. As was learned in the 1990’s, all it takes to bring down the NEA is one artist who places more value on his or her artistic message than on the precious little cultural funding set aside for the NEA and its grantees.

BARRY: I think this first panel has given us much to think about. What are your thoughts on what has been said so far Anthony?

ANTHONY RADICH: One thing that strikes me about what has been written, is that the group finds great value in a federal arts agency, even if they believe it to be imperfect. I too honor the NEA and all it has accomplished over the years. However, like some of the writers, I also think the agency needs to find a more contemporary and compelling policy reason to--not just exist--but flourish. I often say that much of the public sector arts world is working hard to realize a vision for the arts in America as that vision existed in 1975. I was there, it was a great vision--but calendar year 2009 is rolling toward a close.

BARRY: What keeps us then from updating that vision?

ANTHONY: This lack of a vision with meaningful public traction is, I believe, very much related to the common overreaction of the public sector arts community to charges form the political right. In most cases, charges made from that part of the political spectrum have been rooted in poor information, a twisting of the facts, and the need for grandstanding. Yet, some of the criticisms have been on the mark. I believe the field overreaction to these critical pin pricks is rooted in the fear that once the core issue of what the value public support of the arts has for the public is raised, the public's embrace of funding would be revealed to be very thin. Thus, anyone who raises the issue of the value of public support for the arts has tremendous power because, even if their critique might be readily refuted, that critique holds the potential to reveal the fragility of the public's embrace of sector support of the arts.

I was surprised that the invited writers said very little about the modest scale of NEA support for the arts, and what that may imply for the future. In real dollar terms, the agency has not enjoyed growth for many, many years. While I would embrace a vision of $500 million or one billion federal dollars for the arts, the advocacy infrastructure for that level of funding is not in place. Because the realization of such a goal is not realistic in the short term, the NEA and others should work to help the nonprofit arts become relatively more self sufficient. That means the agency should be supporting the development of a strong national infrastructure for the nonprofit arts. Such support would be realized through more substantial investment in the areas of research, professional development, assistance in the support of entrepreneurship focused on the development of earned income, and investment in the development of technology to aid in the administration of the arts. Investments in these types of field-building endeavors would help leverage a stronger cultural community--and one that could live in a world where, unfortunately, public sector funding for the arts is likely to be limited until the national advocacy effort is mature enough to successfully argue for substantial new federal funding for the arts.

BARRY: How does the Endowment possibly move in any other direction when there is a whole entrenched contingent of grantees largely dependent on agency funding – including many smaller states?

ANTHONY: The NEA, like all federal agencies inevitably do, has become partially ensnared by its own cluster of special interests. These special interests are commonly more interested in the status quo than reshuffling the program and funds-allocation deck in a way that allows the agency to move forward. To break the back of those who cultivate the stagnation of the agency out of self interest, NEA leadership needs to invite them and others into a new vision for the NEA agency and work with them to negotiate a migration of the special interests away from their pots of gold and special ears in the agency. Doing so will give the NEA the programmatic and fiscal freedom to move into the twenty-first century.

BARRY: Intelligent discussions more often than not, raise as many, if not more, questions than they answer.

• How we can balance the positive gains that might be made in embracing, as Peter Hero suggests, the artist, and those that would come from turning our energies toward strengthening the infrastructure as Anthony convincingly argues for? Or might that choice be only an either / or option?

• Has the absence of charismatic artists championed by the NEA diminished our opportunity for public support?

• Is the political reality and the fragility of the support for the Endowment and arts in America such that our options are severely limited in re-envisioning the agency’s mission if we want to avoid another round of attacks and defense?

• How do we begin to frame a national policy for arts & culture provision, and move to involve the arts in a whole panoply of programs where they might add value as we begin to ‘suss’ out what the arts can or cannot do for the public good, as Steven questions?

• How do we free ourselves of the yoke of the special interests that have a stake in the status quo of the agency (noted by both Peter and Anthony) as a pre-condition for the process of creating a new vision for the Endowment?

• Should the impetus for a national policy for arts & culture reside somewhere like the National Council for the Arts, or should it come from the grassroots bottom up?

• Will the arts ever embrace real advocacy capacity - not just on the federal level but on state and local levels as well – which I certainly argue is essential if we are ever to achieve meaningful government budget support?

• Without an increase in its funding pool, how does the agency re-allocate (were such a move wise or not) any of its current funding without angering those who now see Endowment funding as an entitlement?

There are doubtless many more questions suggested by the comments proffered by our First Panel.

Please feel free to add you own comment below.

NEXT WEEK - Tuesday, September 22nd – the SECOND PANEL will tackle these and other issues as we continue the discussion -

Bob Lynch – President & CEO Americans for the Arts
Jonathan Katz – Executive Director, National Association of State Arts Agencies
Patrick Overton – Director, Front Porch Institute
Sandra Gibson – Executive Director, Association for Performing Arts Presenters
Anne Katz - Executive Director Arts Wisconsin, Immediate Past Chair, State Arts Action Network
Don Adams – Cultural Policy Analyst
Brad Erickson – Executive Director, Theater Bay Area
Celeste DeWald - Executive Director, California Association of Museums

More to follow.........................

Have a great weekend.

Don't Quit

Barry

Posted by msaunders at 05:30 PM | Comments (4)

September 07, 2009

TOPICS & SUBJECT AREAS FOR THE SIX WEEK NATIONAL FORUM ON THE NEA AND AN ARTS & CULTURE POLICY

Hello everyone.

“And the beat goes on...............“

SOME OF THE TOPICS FOR THE SIX WEEK FORUM DISCUSSION ON THE NEA AND CULTURAL POLICY

Next week, on Tuesday, September 15th, we will launch the six week forum discussion on the role of the National Endowment for the Arts in the nonprofit arts field, and the wider American society, and in the process begin a dialogue about what a national policy for arts & culture might look like. [Scroll down to last week’s blog entry for a complete description of this ambitious experiment including the six panel schedule, focus of each, and the panel members participating.)

Note addition of new participants Brad Erickson & Celeste DeWald and Sixth Week Private Sector Panel members (so far)].

• It is our hope that all of you out there will make a little time in your busy schedules to check out this ongoing dialogue and discussion over its six week run, and will chime in with your thoughts, opinions and comments when and where you think appropriate.

• We also hope you will help us to spread word of this forum discussion among your colleagues, clients, constituent bases, boards, supporters and audiences via your email newsletters, website link or otherwise so that as many people as possible might be aware of the issues that are involved in rethinking the NEA and a Federal Arts & Culture Policy framework. Use this link: www.westaf.org/blog

Below is a listing of just some of the issues that may be touched on in this forum; it is by no means meant to be exhaustive of all the issues on our collective table. Our purpose here is to stimulate analysis, thinking, problem solving and consensus building as to what the NEA might be doing and how it might be doing it. It is not our purpose to simply be critical, but rather to foster positive suggestions for how we, as a field, move forward to address the myriad issues and challenges that face us. The NEA is a valuable national asset. We are a very diverse field, and we have differing opinions and ideas about what our priorities should be and how we should best deal with the problems and challenges we face. We believe an open, frank and ongoing discussion involving as many of us as possible will move us forward as we grapple to make things better.
If, in review of the topics we have identified there are other topics or subject areas you think need to be addressed, please enter your ideas as a comment – either to this blog or one of the future panel discussions.

TOPICS for the NEA ONLINE BLOG

The following are topics / subject areas that we hope might be touched on over the course of the six weeks of this forum discussion. These are primarily guidelines just to stimulate thinking among our panelists who may address any or none of them as they so choose.

Each week’s panel will be asked to respond to five specific questions tailored to the panelists that week – and those questions will likely be culled from the questions and subject areas below. All panelists and you can comment on any issue or topic at any time by entering a comment at the end of that week’s blog.

All panels will be asked the first question under the Advice subset (as one of the five required questions for their week):

"What would you like to see the Endowment accomplish? What policies should govern its actions? What should be its priorities? If you were to advise Rocco Landesman on what the agenda for the NEA should be --what would you tell him?"

TOPICS AND GENERAL SUBJECT AREAS FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

1. WHAT SHOULD BE THE ROLE FOR THE NEA, IF ANY, IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS:
(and how should that role be properly manifested in terms of specific actions or programs – i.e., in initiating, facilitating, funding, brokering, sponsoring or otherwise supporting or enabling Endowment involvement in these areas?)

a. Advocating with government, the media and the general public as to the value of the arts, including regional, state and city efforts to gain governmental support for the local arts sectors?

b. Research and gathering data and information useful to the nonprofit arts sector.

c. Brokering active partnerships, collaboration, and cooperation between the nonprofit arts and other sectors (e.g., academia, the private business sector, the “for profit” arts and entertainment industries etc.)

d. The provision of training for arts administrators in basic business skills and management – from fundraising and marketing, to budget planning, personnel issues, board relations, etc.

e. The promotion and creation of greater public access to the arts – including direct support for the presenting community?

f. Establishment of sequential, curriculum based K-12 and college arts education with standards and assessment?

g. Promotion and support of international programs by and between the arts & culture sectors of other countries and the arts & culture sector of the United States.

h. As a catalyst, energizer , incubator and nurturer for new art and artists?

i. In the preservation and growth of multicultural arts in America.

j. In fostering collaborative and cooperative efforts between private foundations and funders and government funders of the arts?

k. In the periodical and regular convening and gathering of arts leadership in various cities, regions, and states?

l. What other kinds of initiatives should the Endowment launch or support?

2. IN TERMS OF THE ALLOCATION OF NEA FUNDS:

a. Should the NEA return to providing grants to individual artists, and what should be the balance be in allocation of funds between artists and arts organizations?

b. Should geography, artistic discipline, organizational budget size, multicultural or other categorical designations be part of the criteria for the distribution of the total of the NEA’s available funds so as to achieve some sort of equity in allocation? How important should artistic excellence be in the overall determination of the allocation of grants?

c. Due to likely continuing limited funding, is it time for the NEA to reposition its funds to assist with the development (preservation) of the infrastructure of the field, and substantially reduce the funding of art programs?

d. Should a percentage of funds be allocated to special initiatives addressing needs such as the kinds set forth in Question #1 above and if so, what would be the proper balance between funding those kinds of projects and providing operational grants to organizations and creative grants to individual artists?

e. What kind of funding should the Endowment allocate, if any, to expanding public access to the arts?

f. Do the programs and services the Endowment currently offers reflect the best use of its money? Do you think the NEA has (is) doing enough to promote and nurture smaller arts organizations and newer, more cutting edge art? What about its support for multicultural arts? What should the NEA do to ensure that it makes provision for these kinds of arts and arts organizations? Where should the proper balance lie between support for traditional Anglo America arts forms, arts expressions and legacies, and arts organizations, and both multicultural arts and newer, more avant garde artistic expressions of younger generations?

g. If, and when, the Endowment’s budget is increased by Congress, what should be the priorities in terms of allocation of the additional available funds?

h. By law, the NEA allocates approximately 40% of its funding to the states and regions.

i. Should this formula be maintained or changed?

ii. Can (and should) the NEA do more to direct these funds in a way that would stimulate stronger growth and development of the state and regional arts organizations and the geographic areas they serve?

3. CULTURAL POLICY:

a. What should the basic pillars of a national arts & cultural policy be?

b. Should such a policy be basically a simple, declarative statement (even somewhat nonspecific) or should it be detailed and specific? (e.g., a national arts education policy might be: The United States of America values and seeks to have standards and curriculum based, sequential and comprehensive arts education provided to all children – K through 12 and as part of the college and university offerings. Or it might be much more detailed and specific – setting out how each of the parts of this declarative statement might be achieved and why each is crucial).

c. How can we arrive at a consensus based national arts & culture policy and what are the first steps in an attempt to put such a policy into words?

4. ADVICE:

a. What would you like to see the Endowment accomplish? What policies should govern its actions? What should be its priorities? If you were to advise Rocco Landesman on what the agenda for the NEA should be --what would you tell him?

b. What do you think are the major challenges and obstacles facing the Endowment and how should they be addressed?

c. What untapped opportunities do you think the Endowment should pursue?

If you have other topics you think the panelists for this six week long online Forum should address, please enter your comment below.

And please pass on information about this Six Week Online Forum to your colleagues, friends and anyone else you can so that we have as large an audience as possible for this important discussion. Pass on this link www.westaf.org/blog

Thank you very much.

Have a good week.

Don’t Quit!

Barry

Posted by msaunders at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2009

SIX WEEK ONLINE FORUM DISCUSSION OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS and FEDERAL ARTS POLICY

Hello everyone.

“And the beat goes on.................“

LAUNCHING A MAJOR ONLINE FORUM DISCUSSION OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

Dear Readers:

Never before has the National Endowment for the Arts been more important to the health and vibrancy of art & culture in America, and not for some time has the Endowment been poised to expand to its fuller potential. Yet at the same time, deeply entrenched partisan politics and contentiousness on issues large and small may again make the Endowment a convenient target to attack.

For quite some time, we have been talking about the development of a national policy for arts & culture in America. Perhaps the time has come to ratchet up that dialogue and move towards action steps in finally arriving at a consensus for such a federal policy.

Beginning Tuesday, September 15th I am pleased that Barry’s Blog will host one of the longest and largest online forum discussions of national arts policy, (and specifically the role of the National Endowment of the Arts in the life of nonprofit arts organizations and artists of every discipline) yet attempted within our sector. We have invited a veritable Who’s Who of arts leaders, private sector companies with a direct or indirect stake in the arts, and artists from across the country to participate in a major discussion and dialogue of a wide panoply of the issues that consideration of a national arts & culture policy and the role of the NEA suggests. Over forty of these leaders and artists will participate over a six week period.

The purpose of this unique and unusual blog forum is to promote a national dialogue on what the Endowment ought to be, what it might become under the Obama Administration, and what rethinking as to its structure and priorities might yield in terms of its growth and relevance. Indirectly its purpose is to begin to flesh out the principal elements that might make for the foundation of a national policy on arts & culture in America.

BACKGROUND:

There are strong opinions within our sector as to what the priorities of the Endowment ought to be, about what should be funded and what shouldn't. There are different thoughts as to the role the Endowment ought to play (if any) in expanding access to the arts, in promoting arts education in the schools, in preserving cultural legacies, in supporting individual artists, and in such things as training arts administrators, developing next generation leadership, research and data collection, providing marketing support, audience development, and facilities expansion as well as convening leaders within and outside the arts sector.

While, as a field, we agree on many issues, we disagree on many others including, for example: 1) where the balance might properly lie in terms of allocating federal funds on equal discipline, geographic, and other criteria; 2) which types of programs and / or initiatives should be the agency's priority; 3) the proper division between funds for arts organizations and for individual artists; 4) whether the Endowment should spend more money on avant garde artistic expression and innovation or keep the emphasis on the more traditional Anglo mainstream arts of our past; and 5) what the role of the agency should be in the nurturing, incubation and growth of various multicultural arts expressions, legacies and histories.

Of course underlying such a discussion of the Endowment is really a broader discussion of a Federal arts & cultural public policy, and all of the questions that topic suggests:

• What should be the role of arts & culture in the economy, in foreign affairs, in education, in health services, in civic life?

• How can the various federal agencies that have some role in arts funding or otherwise coordinate their efforts, and where and how should the arts be represented in the White House and in formal policy making – or should it?

• How do we best nurture and develop all the multicultural arts traditions of a diverse society?

• How do we create equal access to arts & culture for every citizen?

• How do we build bridges between the "for-profit" and nonprofit arts industries and promote cooperation and collaboration where it is to the mutual benefit of both parties, or to the larger society?

And what should be the role of the Endowment in any of this? In terms of a national arts policy, what do we want for our artistic community in America, and what do we want from it?

We hope to have a frank, open and respectful discussion as to what various interests and constituencies within our sector think the Endowment is doing right, what it is doing wrong, and what directions it might go. In the process we will undoubtedly be touching on national cultural policy. We hope to offer thoughtful and well meaning suggestions and advice as the new Chairman arrives, as to how the Endowment might be improved for the benefit of all, and, as importantly, how we might rally increased support within the sector and the general public for the Endowment and its mission. And we hope this will begin a sustained national conversation within our sector and the wider society as to the development of a meaningful and workable cultural policy that can help guide public and private efforts to support art and creativity as a national asset, and that help bring sustainability, increased capacity and greater predictability to the public support for the arts.

We recognize that the Endowment means different things to different constituent groups and that its relevance and importance likewise has different meanings and interpretations. We also note that different interest areas want different things from the agency and that some sectors are satisfied while others are not. We want this discussion to have representatives from all the various camps, to include diverse voices, representing our various disciplines, organizations of all sizes from all geographic locations, all political persuasions and different generational perspectives. We have tried to invite people that fairly reflect all those groups.

We very much want your voice as part of this historic discussion, and we will need your help in participating as commentators over the course of this forum to make sure all voices are heard, and we encourage all of you and all those connected to your organization to join with our national leaders in this forum

BLOG DETAILS:

• We will host six separate four day sessions over as many weeks.

• Each week Anthony Radich (Executive Director of WESTAF) and I will ask that week's panelists several initial questions about the role of the Endowment. Those questions will have bearing to that week’s participant’s field of expertise and those initial questions and answers will be posted on the blog as of 9:00 am on the Tuesday of that week.

• Over the next three days, we will ask follow up questions of that week’s panel and they will respond to those follow up questions and may comment on one or more of the observations of their fellow panelists, or even ask questions of them.

• After the Tuesday posting of each week, all of the participants from all six weeks are free to offer their comments, opinions, ideas or thoughts at any time. Each week's questions will build, to an extent, on the previous week's participant responses.

• YOU – the readers are encouraged to join the discussion by entering your own comments, reactions, thoughts, ideas or submitting questions of your own at any time during the full six week run.

We recognize that time constraints will not allow people to monitor the comments on a daily basis, but hope that the exercise will be of sufficient interest and importance that all of you (and our participants) will check-in to view each weekly post and chime in to the extent you feel so motivated throughout the entire process.

Here is a breakdown of the six week’s panels – the dates and the focus of each, and the panelists participating.
(we may still add people to the panels, and we are in the process of finalizing the participants in the last two panels – those from the private sector and artists from across the country in various disciplines, and will provide those panel lists shortly.)

WEEK #1 – September 15 – 18 Former NEA perspectives:

The first week launch of the discussion will feature participants who have previously worked at the Endowment, along with a couple of national leaders who have long standing relationships with the agency. The focus of this first week's discussion will be on the agency's organization, culture, priorities and initiatives so as to set the context for subsequent week's discussions.

PARTICIPANTS:

Olive Mosier – Director, Arts & Culture Program, William Penn Foundation; former Deputy Director NEA.
Diane Mataraza – Independent Consultant; former Director Local Partnership, NEA
Tony Chauveaux – Deputy Director the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; former Deputy Director, NEA
Peter Hero – Vice-President, California Institute of Technology, former member National Council on the Arts, former Executive Director Silicon Valley Foundation
Steven Tepper – Associate Director Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy, Vanderbilt University

WEEK #2 – September 22 – 26 National arts leaders perspectives

The second week will feature national arts organization leadership, including the various sub-sector discipline and interest areas (e.g., the presenting community, state arts agencies, theater, dance, music, and visual arts etc) and will focus on the needs of the field, whether or not the Endowment is meeting those needs and how the agency might better address those needs.

PARTICIPANTS:

Bob Lynch – President & CEO Americans for the Arts
Jonathan Katz – Executive Director, National Association of State Arts Agencies
Patrick Overton – Director, Front Porch Institute
Sandra Gibson – Executive Director, Association for Performing Arts Presenters
Anne Katz - Executive Director Arts Wisconsin, Immediate Past Chair, State Arts Action Network
Don Adams – Cultural Policy Analyst
*new - Brad Erickson – Executive Director, Theater Bay Area
*new - Celeste DeWald - Executive Director, California Association of Museums

WEEK # 3 – September 29 – October 2 Funders - public & private - perspectives

The third week will feature the funding community -- major foundations together with state, regional and local arts agencies (and the relationship of those agencies with the Endowment) and will focus on the economic climate, the limits and opportunities for funding strategies and how an ecosystem for collaboration and cooperation with the Endowment might be structured in the future

PARTICIPANTS:

WEEK # 4 – October 6 – 9 Arts Education leaders, Academia, Emerging Leaders, and Consultant perspectives

The fourth week will include select national nonprofit arts consultants, emerging young arts leaders from the field, academic representatives from universities offering degree in arts administration programs, and arts education leaders and explore those perspectives.

PARTICIPANTS:

Andrew Taylor – Director BOLZ CENTER for Arts Administration / UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN – MADISON SCHOOL OF
BUSINESS; author of The ARTFUL MANAGER blog. Invitation pending
Jodi Beznoska – Communications Director Walton Arts Center
Ian David Moss – Blogger Createquity.com
Shannon Daut – Deputy Director, WESTAF
Neil Archer Roan – Independent Consultant
Doug McLennan – Founder / Publisher ARTS JOURNAL
Cora Mirikitani - Director Center for Cultural Innovation
Hollis Headrick – Founding Executive Director, The Center for Arts Education, New York, New York; Program Director Arts in Education New York State Council on the Arts
Steven Lavine – President, California Institute of the Arts

WEEK # 5 – October 13 – 16 Private Sector / Stakeholder perspectives

The fifth week will include business, trade and corporate representatives from the private sector entertainment and high tech industries, and focus on the possible intersections between these potential stakeholders and our sector, how the Endowment might facilitate those relationships, and the policy implications of those intersections.

Kristen Madsen – Senior Vice-President – The Grammy Foundation
Terri Clark – Executive Director, The Television Academy of Arts & Sciences Foundation
Cary Sherman - President RIAA (Record Industry Association of America)
Mary Luehrsen - Director of Public Affairs & Government Relations, NAMM (National Association of Music Manufacturers)

We have invited representatives from companies such as Google, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and others from the high tech industries. Full list of confirmed participants soon.

WEEK # 6 – October 20 – 23 Artists perspective

The sixth week will include artists – new and established – from various disciplines and geographic areas around the country and focus on the relationship between working artists and the Endowment.

We have invited a dozen artists to participate. Full list of confirmed participants soon.

NEXT WEEK I will provide you with some of the questions and topics of discussion that are being provided to the participants and which we sincerely hope will be touched upon and included during the course of the six week discussion. Please feel free to email me any suggestions you many have for topics or questions of any of our panels which you think we may have overlooked.

Because this type of discussion is likely to yield as many questions as answers, The seventh week will be a follow up synopsis of some of the main themes of the discussion, including a summary of reader comments and thoughts, and include suggestions for future consideration and the major issues the field ought to prioritize.

This blog has 10,000 subscribers. Often that number increases if people pass on the word that something is on the blog that others might find interesting. For this discussion, we would like the largest possible audience, and ask if you would please consider advising your staff, boards, client bases and affiliated constituent groups of this forum discussion and post a link to the site – www.westaf.org/blog We would be greatly appreciative of anything you can do to publicize this important dialogue and encourage people to follow along and participate.

CORRECTION from last week’s blog: I erroneously listed Anne Katz as still the chair of the State Arts Action Network. The new Chair is Donna Collins of Ohio Citizens for the Arts. My apologies.

Thank you very much

Have a good week

Don’t Quit.

Barry Hessenius
Anthony Radich

Posted by msaunders at 09:04 AM | Comments (3)

Barry's Arts Blog and Update

News, Advice, & Opinion for the Arts Administrator

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