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October 22, 2009
CONCLUSION OF NEA FORUM - PANEL 6
Scroll down to the previous blog entry for the first parts of the Panel Six discussion. You can access previous panel discussions in this NEA Forum series by scrolling down and accessing each in the Recent Entries section on the right hand side.
Thursday, October 21st
BARRY: As a working artist do you see yourself more closely aligned with the nonprofit arts sector or with the ‘for profit’ arts field? Why?
HOMER: I work with both whenever I can. My greater interest is in making passive capital. [Work once, get paid multiple times.] That is more or less impossible in the non-profit sector. I also find that my 20 years experience in the non-profit arts sector benefits others far more than it benefits me. And my desires and dreams of reaching out beyond the non-profit realm are not always welcomed or understood. However, lately, I have been invited in to explore just those kinds of ideas.
LILY YEH: As a working artist I am much more closely aligned with the nonprofit arts sector as this sector best supports my interest in making the arts broadly accessible. As the founder and former executive director of the Village of Arts and Humanities and now founder and Artistic Director of Barefoot Artists I see no other way to carry out my vision for creating peaceful, compassionate, living social sculptures to transform broken and traumatized communities into hope. This kind of work creates the opportunity to also support social and economic development for the world’s neediest people. I can only do this through the non-profit organizational structure with a combination of public and private funds. Through these non-profit organizations, I have sought to create mission-based for-profit enterprises to ensure sustainability.
CLAIRE: Always with the nonprofit sector, since that is where I've been working as an arts administrator and contractor, and that is where I form my community. I am a writer, and my involvement with the nonprofit sector increases as the publishing industry continues to falter, and take fewer risks, and publish fewer authors overall and fewer first-time and "literary" writers. Nonprofit and academic publishers become increasingly the only game in town, and self-publishing looks more and more feasible and necessary. The funding communities are behind the times with the publishing situation, not recognizing self-published books or setting up any quality control or gate-keeping functions with self-published work. But I trust that at least local entities will catch up soon, since reputable, published writers are increasingly turning to self-publication as publishers close their imprints. And writers will continue to be able to find some support in grants both for writing and for self-promotion. I've seen a few grants for self-promotion, publicity, and all-around DIY presentation efforts go past. Seems to be a trend that fits in with the recent mania for "artist entrepreneurialism."
Of course, I'll be publishing a chapbook this winter with an independent for-profit publisher ... but I'll make very little money from it, except indirectly, as publication makes me more eligible for grant money and residencies. And I'll continue, cockroach-style, to seek out the best funding and publication opportunities available to me. As there seems to be little money in presenting written work anymore, especially written work not easily fitted into publishing categories, I'll need to spend most of my "business" time pursuing the money to be had supporting the writing of the work in the first place.
DIEM: I seek profitability and choose to present my work in the commercial field of multi-media productions including music, performance poetry and filmaking.
RALPH: Even though I’m incorporated, my thinking is more aligned with the nonprofit mentality. Income is never a primary focus. As a public sculptor my practice can be seen as analogous to that of an architect whose interests are a.) esthetic excellence, b.) site specificity, and c.) “function” (social, not physical).
LILY KHARRAZI: There are so many entrepreneurial skills involved with being an artist those skill sets seem transferable to profit. We see this most explicitly in the tech and new media realm. Traditional artists are very much thinking in this way as well. Websites for commerce are more frequent; the interaction between diaspora communities and home countries abound in ways that were not available except by aerogram not too long ago. It is a rapid change and one being embraced fully by traditional artists.
PAUL: I have to maintain relationships with both to survive as an artist. Neither completely satisfies artistic priorities. “For profit” entities of necessity prioritize cash flow, and NPs prioritize programming to mission and fundraising. Corporations dominate the arts field today. They align with each other. I have chosen to align with art, artists, democracy and community, roughly in that order. Except to engage in civilities at openings or other social functions peculiar to the art business, or to introduce within the exhibit context the requisite representational/dimensional auto-content, I have chosen to leave my personal life/alignments out of the picture. As to the why: Reciprocation is the guiding principle in every case.
BARRY: What role(s) do you think working artists can play in arts education and how might the Endowment (if at all) help facilitate that involvement?
JAMES: I’m going to merge this answer with what would be my answer to question 3. I like the ArtCorp idea immensely. I’d also be in favor of restructuring the education system in a more holistic, culturally aware manner. In a way that puts the emphasis on equality among the arts and sciences. No more arts as an elective kind of thing.
DIEM: Working artists, interested in Arts Education, should seek the appropriate training to become qualified (and in the case of Los Angeles) certified to teach their craft to youth in and after school. The Endowment can support professional development activities and programs which provide such training.
RALPH: Guest lectures in schools (K-12) would go a long way. Most kids have never met a practicing artist and such exposure would be invaluable. When asked, I’ve readily agreed.
LILY YEH: Working artists bring quality, inventiveness, commitment and passion to arts education programming. It is important that the field of arts education remain open to a wide range of artists with varying levels of artistic training and accomplishment. Self-made and outside artists have as much to contribute to the field as artists with academic and professional education. The NEA can support the role of working artists in art education by providing support to establishing standards and training for artists of all levels. Additionally, NEA support of effective arts education programs can provide ongoing employment opportunities for working artists.
Artists can also contribute not only to art education but to education in general by bringing creative thinking, methodology, and implementation strategies into the learning process in general and to social skill building.
HOMER: Artists can do many things to support arts education, but naively stepping into a multi-billion dollar world with its own multi layered issues like the world of public education is not very wise. These kinds of efforts have already exhausted and frustrated thousands of artists and organizations across the country. I really believe if the world of arts education wants and needs us, they can and will reach out. If it is a need that they truly value, they will come prepared to negotiate as well. However, I must add that when others tend to reach out to us, it usually comes with a price.... to us. In fact, earlier this year, even as President Obama was signing Economic Stimulus legislation in the hundreds of billions, he talked about expanding the arts, but combined it with volunteerism.
LILY KHARRAZI: If CETA type money were available to locales to hire artists, I believe there would a flurry of activity to hire artists again in a host of education and social service sectors.
PAUL: Artist education has been a major component of my artist activities. I have taught technical skills in private, museum and school settings (up to and including collegiate level), instructed all age groups from toddlers through elders, in a diversity of communities and cultural demographics, and lectured. I have also engaged in art studies through the terminal MFA, and my art education has been supplemented by: many kinds of work/study jobs, including some at the field’s best support shops; and attendance at many lectures; pursuit of independent research projects; participation in residencies with education components, etc.
By far the best art education method is mentor/master-apprentice transmission. The worst is critique, which - for the decades it has reigned as standard practice - has proved itself an abject failure on many levels, not least being the degeneration of craft competence throughout the artist domain. On another point, artists are wrong to not advocate forcefully for unionized teachers and the other NEA (the National Education Association). The National Endowment for the Arts should expand its material support for visual art apprentice/master programs, but that only makes sense if the Endowment is willing to again define and standardize recognition of American art and reward achievement by individual US artists. NEA apparently can do so for other disciplines, and should do so for visual arts.
The most devastating consequence of NEA’s failure to identify individual excellence and achievement for visual artists - aside from the cost to artist’s lives and livings- is inflicted on arts education. Beuys and Warhol win out: Everyone is an artist, and everything an artist makes is art. This cheerful-sounding mythology constitutes cultural fraud, and disenfranchises hundreds of years of craft tradition and the American artists who cleave to those traditions.
A final comment on college art programs (undergrad and post-grad): Art academies that offer critique-based, careerist (corp/art-org-centric) “practices” as curricula are really Ponzi schemes designed to generate institutional/financial sector revenues. The Ponzi-value is illustrated by schools like Yale’s, which effectively promote exclusive professional networks as feeder systems for the Super Class-oriented art market. With respect to art education and artist advocacy, NEA must confront the gutting of America’s artist “middle-management” – the so-called mid-career artist/educator. The standard corporate anti-labor practice (pushing out expensive but proven workers for cheap, young and underequipped replacements) over the past several decades has not only impoverished the nation’s middle class, it also has adversely impacted the American art ecosystem, to our collective detriment. A cursory review of college art programs reveals the trend’s damage: tenure positions disappearing, education quality down, etc.
EUGENIA: Artists would be valuable as artists-in-residence at K-12 schools and universities not only teaching their craft, but working with teachers and students across disciplines to use the artist’s particular specialty to explore the subject matter being taught. The artist as educational consultant, so to speak, as well as educator. The NEA can fund these residencies; work with the Dept of Education to identify schools in great need of this kind of collaboration; find private sector funding partners for this kind of venture.
BARRY: Much, if not all, of the NEA’s funding and initiatives seems to be directed in favor of the arts organization ecosystem and infrastructure, though some would argue that most of the funding ultimately enables the creation of art. What services is that ecosystem providing that you as a working artist find valuable and would like to see extended? What services are not being provided that you would like to see?
CLAIRE: As I wrote above, this "ecosystem" or culture is created to provide creative communities with ALL their needs as a creative community, but perhaps I have a broader definition of the ecosystem than you are employing here. Of course, it's the small, community-based arts nonprofits that tend to focus on fulfilling artist needs more specifically; often, larger institutions focus more on audience needs and opportunities than artist needs and opportunities. But they're all part of the same ecosystem. I -- and I suspect most artists -- go to different orgs for different needs: to Kaya Press (kaya.com) for publication opportunities; to Kearny Street Workshop (kearnystreet.org) to get public readings, teaching gigs, and to stay in touch with artists of all disciplines; to Hyphen magazine (hyphenmagazine.com) for opportunities to share my ideas and create public discussion; to Intersection for the Arts (theintersection.org) for literary awards that fit my circumstances; to the local arts commissions and foundations for funding for my own work or projects I administer; etc. I also contribute money, time, and skills back to all of these orgs.
All this is by way of saying that if there's a service I see lacking, I go looking for it elsewhere, ask for it directly, or create it myself. It's essential to this ecosystem and its success, that the working parts can operate independently (and mix metaphors at will.) I see the NEA as an organization at one end of this particular culture or ecosystem, so I find it strange that the question is formulated to sound like the NEA stands outside the ecosystem. Each ecosystem contains a chain of providers and consumers: the grantors are providers of funds which the orgs consume; the orgs provide opportunities which the artists consume; the artists provide arts which the audiences consume; and the audiences feed funding back to the grantors and orgs. As usual, the only real problem with this system is mismanagement of the existing system, obsolescence of particular parts, ways and means, and -- the big one -- not enough hard resources to go around.
I see in a number of these questions a desire to find ways to increase resources by making lateral connections between discrete ecosystems or funding cultures: nonprofit to for-profit. Nice idea, but moving the existing resources from one area to another doesn't increase resources overall. I think the only way to increase resources is to increase the value of the arts in general in this country; to bring more money overall into all areas and ecosystems of the arts. I've said it before above and I'll repeat it one more time: the NEA needs to be marketing the arts effectively, so as to increase overall personal and financial participation in the arts ... in other words, to create a creative-participatory culture out of the coldly consumerist mainstream of the US.
HOMER: I disagree that "most of the funding ultimately enables the creation of art." I would venture to suggest that the cost of keeping the HEPA/HVAC systems at optimum temperature in museums and theaters throughout the country, totals more than the sum of all funds distributed to individual artists. I believe in competition. I believe in open calls. I believe that my work can stand or fall on its own and that revolving panels of my peers are able to determine that. My work did well in those public kinds of forums. Whenever, my work is reviewed in a closed system, whenever it's about nominations, recommendations and personal relationships, I lose. And I lose, usually by simple omission.
LILY KHARRAZI: Encourage the folk and traditional arts sector in every state. There are people who are both practitioners and academics who can assist the state and local agencies with this endeavor. There is a strong cadre of leaders who can provide the expertise needed for sub-granting opportunities to these communities. Micro loans have revolutionized the social justice field. Micro-granting does this for the arts sector as well.
RALPH: Health care is an issue common to all citizens. Artists will benefit from sane improvements at least as much as other sectors of society.
EUGENIA: I’m fortunate in that as a playwright I’m working with two different organizations in San Francisco. One, the Playwrights Foundation, a new play development center, and the second, Cutting Ball Theater. The Playwrights Foundation provide guidance, advice, support, even marketing help. Cutting Ball’s many-hatted founders and tiny staff do everything from commissioning, publicity, development. Together we’ve raised funds and written grants. My concern is for the artist who is unconnected to an organization or experts that can offer guidance and help, or the time in an artist’s life when one finds herself self-producing. Perhaps NEA can provide funding or training initiatives that teach administrative, marketing skills – or enable networks to form an organization.
BARRY: How might the nonprofit arts sector better go about organizing the working artists of America into a cohesive public voice as advocates for more public support and other outcomes of benefit to artists, or is that not possible?
HOMER: I'm not sure about that. On the most part, institutions do not serve artists in those kinds of capacities. They only present art, be it visual, theatrical, movement-based, media, literary or auditory. Or they primarily fund institutions. The answers to that question will most definitely different according to where one lives and works. I see it as a regional or even community based issue. In some places, many artists don't trust the institutions to do anything but sustain themselves. Other artists trust them to a fault and are willing to attend meeting after meeting when nothing eventually gets done. Still others have wonderful relationships with institutions that support them and they in turn support the institutions. But, in my experience, I don't think that institutions can or should speak for us at all.
LILY YEH: The NEA could partner with large national foundations who are already gathering artists for shared learning and leadership development. Examples include the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wallace Foundation, and the Pew Trusts. The Village of Arts and Humanities benefitted from programs like these. If the NEA were to serve as convener of several of these large entities the potential to advocate for increased support and benefits for artists as one cohesive voice is great.
CLAIRE: How to better organize the working artists of American into a cohesive public voice? By organizing the working artists of America into a cohesive public voice at all! The question assumes that anyone is trying to do this. But no one is trying to do this. No nonprofit arts presenting org takes its artists aside and says, "Hey, let's talk about a message we can all agree on to advocate for the arts in America! And then lets take five minutes out of every presentation to make this point!" If the NEA required all of its fundees to do this, there might be the start of a cohesive public voice of artist/advocates for public arts support. As it is, everyone expects/allows artists to be concerned solely with being the best self-servers that they can be.
And I'm not talking about the usual "give us money" speech that all nonprofits give. That's self-serving too: the "self" being the individual org you're supposed to give money to. Arts audiences love to hear interesting arguments about the arts. And I've heard a lot of really interesting, compelling arguments about the arts in this blog discussion alone. Where I haven't heard them is before, during, or after arts presentations. And when I do hear some watered down version of advocacy, it's always delivered in a "serious" monotone, with a lack of humor and interest in it. Even professional emcees turn off the charisma to deliver PSAs. It's like there's a rule against charming people into caring about the arts, as if charm and delight had nothing to do with art. As if using charm and delight would not be playing fair.
How about this? Every NEA-descended grant for every project, would come with a small side-package of money for one artist, who was not involved in the funded project, to come and do a live, 30-second NEA advertisement. Instead of the logo on the program and the monotone "thank you" to a restless and captive audience, the NEA ad would be a creative commercial spot produced independently by an artist. So someone could get up on stage before the opera and do a 30-second tap dance in leather chaps while singing "This was brought to you by the N... E ... AAAAAA!" A Butoh strip-o-gram could arrive at the exhibition opening, and draw "Brought to you by the NEA" in ashes on ground with his feet. Whatever. What if the NEA was actually fun? What if people started realizing viscerally that the letters "NEA" represented living culture rather than school field trips and PBS specials? What if people started connecting the NEA to their pleasures and not their fears?
How about this? Every NEA-funded presentation would require fundees to hand out slips of blank paper to audiences at the beginning of the program with the exhortation to "write down one way in which the arts have saved your life," or "what would your neighborhood look like if arts were wiped from the face of the earth?" or something similar. A different question for each program, actually, so that audiences would get used to being asked a challenging question about their own relationship with art before each presentation. Even if they didn't write, even if they didn't think, the questions would be posed to them directly. How often are those questions posed to arts audiences? The NEA could fund a program to put those questions on a frame in movie theaters during the pre-movie show, while people are bored and talking to each other. It could do radio PSAs posing such questions, with long silences, no answers. Put it on MTV. Put it on YouTube. Have a retweeting campaign on Twitter and Facebook. There are a million ways the NEA can challenge audiences directly, simply, connecting their arts consumption with questions about the value of art, and connecting their questioning of the value of art with the NEA.
To reiterate: if you want artists to start forming a cohesive voice to advocate for the arts, you have to *task them with it.* The NEA is in a unique position to hand out such tasks on a national scale. Why not use it?
JAMES: What happened to NAAO? There was something that seemed to work for awhile but no one wanted to pick it up and keep it going. I thought that was a valuable asset for artists to have someone at the table. I absolutely believe that either a similar org should be resurrected, or a new one needs to emerge that can speak for the needs of artists and the valued role we can continue to play.
[BARRY ASIDE: I sat on the Board of a resurrected NAAO in 2007-08, as a small group of people tried to re-start the effort. Alas, it proved too Herculean a task and there were no funds available.]
BARRY: Part of the mission of the NEA is to increase public access to all of the arts – both as audiences and as participants in the creative process. In your estimation how successful have they been in achieving this goal, and have their efforts in this regard been beneficial to artists?
LILY KHARRAZI: As a national body, the NEA has had to respond to the administration in office. We have not seen an embrace of culturally specific arts to the degree that would reflect our national profile. The NEA has been the sacrificial lamb of political whims as we saw in the infamous culture wars somehow fulfilling a symbolic role befitting of something so crucial to our psyche that it is the first to be skewered and lanced by attack. I would like to see a strong leader at the helm that will not be distracted by these maneuvers. Advocate for the full spectrum of artistic spectrum.
HOMER: I think that the NEA has done that work well. The NEA has given hundreds of millions of dollars to provide exhibitions, performances, free and discounted tickets, promotions, workshops, and training, all over the country for years. That's actually easy. The hard part is to become something that truly represents our democracy, something fluid, and living and fertile.
EUGENIA: In the SF Bay area where I live and work, it seems that private and local public agencies have provided the bulk of the funding ,The city, county, state and private funders support public access and engagement programs, be they poetry slams, books-in-common, performances in the schools, free nights of theatre, free days at the museum, public concerts, etc. However, I know that the NEA provides the Jazz Masters, Big Read, and Poetry Out Loud programs, and there are two new NEA programs that directly benefit artists and the companies they work with, the Distinguished New Play Development Initiative and Distinguished New Play Award. Those are substantial funds that a playwright working with an organization can apply to, which are much appreciated.
Wrap-up. Friday, October 23rd
The Artists Panel noted some consensus among the participants, notably that:
• There really isn’t an oversupply of artists nor of patrons, the current economic crisis notwithstanding.
• They align themselves with the nonprofit sector more than the ‘for profit’ field.
• Artists are, by and large, not seated at the decision making tables.
• Health care is a major area of need for artists and the Endowment might look into this area as a place to help working artists.
• They would like to see the Endowment exercise creativity in leadership and support for artist involvement in arts education.
The majority are in favor of re-establishment of some kind of direct funding to artists, but some would like to see the Endowment allow local agencies to re-grant funds, arguing that would allow needs and priorities to be addressed locally.
There were some interesting, and I thought, excellent specific suggestions by some individual panelists.
I would again like to thank all six of the panels for participating in this online NEA Forum experiment, and to all of you for following along.
This then concludes the 2009 National Forum on the NEA
Posted by msaunders at October 22, 2009 08:48 AM