Can arts and culture make waves with ‘Ripple Effect’?

The U.S. arts-and-culture sector has been searching for a long time for the most effective way to tell its own story – the story that will finally and reliably convince Americans that arts and culture matter tremendously to our society, provide real benefits for everyone and deserve to be nurtured and taught, practiced and promoted and, above all, financially supported.

How can the Joe Six-Packs and soccer moms of the 50 states be persuaded to care about cultural enrichment so much that they’ll write checks and vote for more taxes?

Opinions on that have changed over the decades. In the 1960s, arts and culture were perceived and/or positioned to represent the values of great European civilizations American G.I.s had seen first-hand in World War II and the Great Society they hoped to build at home: They were the marks of a gifted, prosperous and benevolent people. Over the next 40 years, as the pendulum of political and economic reality has swung between closed minds and tight fists on the one extreme and orgiastic abandon with money and self-expression on the other, arts and culture have gone from extolling their effects on soul, spirit and status to emphasizing their impacts on economic development and students’ academic success. 

The latter arguments have been working pretty well in some communities lately, especially with civic leaders and elected officials desperate to help their cities survive the current recession and the larger transition to high-tech knowledge economies requiring trained creative workforces.  But those aruments are rather complicated – and the general public doesn’t respond to complicated terribly well.  What it responds to is the likes of “Eat Mor Chikin.”  

So now the Fine Arts Fund in Cincinnati, Ohio, believes it has discovered a simpler and better message for arts and culture – one that will make the difference with its own community and others. A study the fund released Monday finds that the phrase “Ripple Effect” best and most vividly conveys to the general public the idea of benefits spreading from arts and culture to everybody. In addition, it finds that two specific kinds of good effects prove most inspiring to members of the public and most likely to elicit their financial support for arts and culture. First: that vibrant, activity-filled neighborhoods result from arts and culture. Second: that arts and culture can connect and bring together a community’s diverse residents. 

The study closely resembles a business-branding process. It used focus groups of diverse area residents to test what arts benefits and catch-phrases captured people’s imaginations, gave them the message that arts and culture make their community better, and fired enthusiasm about “sharing responsibility” (i.e. financially supporting) arts and culture.

” ‘Ripple effect’ is a kind of shorthand – people have a common understanding of what that is,” said Margy Waller, vice president/arts & culture partnership for the Fine Arts Fund. “It’s a way of starting a conversation with them. People get very excited about it.”

The two particular ripples that move them to take action on behalf of the arts imply a kind of economic benefit – neighborhoods where there’s a lot of good, engaging, connecting activity going on - but don’t stress dollars-and-cents issues or training and educational outcomes. That’s because those issues tended to elicit undesirable responses from the focus groups, the report explains: Pitching educational benefits led people to zero in on the needs of children, not the  broader community, while the topic of economic development resulted in people thinking about other economic factors, such as jobs  and natural resources, that they believed were more important than the arts.

The study concludes that the “Ripple Effect” concept has the power to reorient people’s perceptions of arts and culture, that it “positions arts and culture as a public good – a communal interest in which all have a stake – and provides a clearer picture of the kinds of events, activities and institutions that we are talking about.”  Once the two specific ripples of vibrant neighborhood and connected residents have enlisted people’s enthusiasm and active support of arts and culture, then the community conversation can expand to include other arts-related benefits, Waller said.  

 The study may represent the first time anyone has scientifically applied a standard business-branding process to arts advocacy. But arts advocacy has long embraced the very similar processes of political and advertising campaigns in trying to get legislation passed, tax issues approved and candidates elected.

What’s at all new about the “Ripple Effect” seems to be the specific tweak given to the arts-and-public-benefit argument. And whether the study’s conclusions are borne out or not will depend on how the Fine Arts Fund and other cultural groups put that tweaked message to use, said Tom Schorgl, president and CEO of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture in Cleveland, Ohio. Questions such as where the ripple message will be aimed geographically within Cincinnati, what kinds of neighborhoods will be targeted, and what success will look like need to be answered before the ripple concept can be called effective and useful, Schorgl said.

Americans for the Arts, the national service organization for the arts and culture sector which has been following the development of the study, will likely help get word out about it by providing information to Americans for the Arts members, said Mara Walker, the organization’s chief operating officer. In trying to get people to recognize the value of the arts, she added, “you need as many arguments in your pocket as possible.”

That means the way to reach community leaders about arts and culture may still be through economic development and education, even if the “Ripple Effect” ends up favorably influencing the general public. Because which argument works best, Walker said, really depends on who you’re talking to.

Mek Mor Rippuls

Talking turkey on the arts – and don’t forget the survey

I wrote not long ago about the Ohio Arts Council ’s regular efforts to sound out constituents across the state on their community successes and problems and organizational and artistic needs, in order to better serve them.

Though the OAC has a great rep for being particularly conscientious about that sort of thing, it’s not alone. In spite of the widespread perception – pervasive since the American culture wars of the late 1980s and early ’90s – that civic and political officialdom is generally anti-arts, many private organizations and government agencies have made it their business in the last decade or so to find out what’s undermining our local and national arts-and-culture sectors and do something about it.

Leveraging Investment in Creativity (LINC) especially comes to mind. The mission of this 10-year-old New York City-based group is to make the work and lives of American artists easier by researching communities, finding out what resources are and are not available to artists and then offering support – grants, information and idea-sharing – to help those communities provide a better climate for artmaking.

Americans for the Arts does in advocacy what arts councils and groups such as LINC do in financial and infrastructure support. Americans for the Arts makes the case for art and arts education nationwide, spreading the word about their value, keeping arts issues in front of national and community leaders and working to improve support for the arts among the public and elected leaders. 

They can do their work a lot more effectively when they have input directly from members of the arts sector. So, leaders of arts organizations, you can help by filling out the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Network survey about current professional-development needs and trends. Both novice and experienced leaders are welcome to participate.

The only way the American public will ever develop a more widespread and lasting appreciation for arts and for creativity in general is if those of us who believe it’s important keep speaking up. We need to untiringly remind our fellow citizens that those two things are among the best of what humanity has going for it – they’re means to the changed and better world in which we all want to find ourselves. 

So on Thursday, I’ll wish a happy Thankgiving to all the people everywhere who are using their imaginations, their powers of expression and the skill of their hands to enrich, inform and improve our lives. 

People like you.

Public Art: Change appearance, change destiny

Public art can revolutionize the look, atmosphere, significance and fortunes of a community. Americans for the Arts recognized some good examples for its 2009 Public Art Year in Review. Here are some other cool creative ones:

“I See What You Mean,” by Lawrence Argent at the Colorado Convention Center, Denver 

“Cambier’s Quilt,” by Mark Fuller at the Municipal Parking Garage in Naples, Fla.

“Long Wave” by David Rokeby at Allen Lambert galleria, Toronto

Innovation makes winners of public artworks

Western states including California, Washington and Arizona did well this year in the Americans for the Arts ninth annual Public Art Year in Review selection of the best and most innovative public artworks in the United States  – but Cleveland, Ohio, will be happy to find that it made the list, too.

From 300 entries, independent public-art experts Janet Echelman and Mildred Howard chose 40 works – representing 32 cities in 15 states - worthy of recognition at the 2009 Americans for the Arts annual convention this past weekend in Seattle, which was home to a lot of the winning artworks. The pieces could be either permanent or temporary, but had to be created or unveiled in 2008.  

The artists and commissioning organizations whose pieces were chosen will receive congratulations and letters of recognition from Americans for the Arts President Robert Lynch.

If you click on the Public Art Year in Review hyperlink above, you can get to the pdf that lists the 40 winning artists, their pieces, where they’re located and for whom they were created. To save Clevelanders some time: The winning piece was The Verdant Walk by Toronto artists Peter North and Alissa North of North Design Office, a temporary work commissioned by Cleveland Public Art for Mall B downtown.

The Verdant Walk. Photo courtesy of Cleveland Public Art

The Verdant Walk in daylight. Photo from elaur

Arts Advocacy Day revisited

When it took place about six weeks ago, Arts Advocacy Day may not have registered with all the people for whom a job and a home have suddenly become unattainable needs. 

In fact, the annual event co-organized by Americans for the Arts may not have registered with anyone much at all outside the national arts community, because so many Americans still regard expressive pursuits as frivolous, elitist self-indulgences unrelated to a normal life.  And they are so wrong.

I hope some of them will take a few minutes to learn how essential the arts, and creativity in general, are to the healthy mental and emotional development of children, to the mastering of brain skills none of us can live or work without, to culturally and thus economically vital communities, and to the formation of strong and lasting personal bonds.

I hope they’ll listen to the testimony of artists such as Wynton Marsalis and Linda Ronstadt and find out what music gave them as children and as adults. (Cleveland, Ohio, readers will be especially interested in Marsalis’s story about the late Bob Bergman, who used to be the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art and who taught Marsalis how to think about, and look at, images.) With their art, they have earned livings, won fame, enriched lives and have since invested their skills and knowledge in helping others benefit as they did when their families sang together or because someone handed them an old guitar to play with. 

That kind of gift can’t be left to luck. It has to be offered to all as part of a standard education and a normal community life, or Americans will become less than we can be – a people of stunted imagination, limited ability and small heart.

Americans for the Arts has a great plan – now let’s expand it

Americans for the Arts has posted a new strategic plan. Based on the results of an ”environmental scan” – or survey of the organization’s constituents and stakeholders - it identifies issues of concern to artists, arts organizations and arts service groups that must shape how and for what results AFTA needs to work.

The top concern is money. No surprise there – finding or earning sufficient bucks has always been the arts’ worst chronic problem and now that the economy has gone deep south, money is everyone’s biggest worry, whether artist or Philistine. But AFTA’s new plan also codifies trends that have been changing the arts sector for at least a decade: the arts’ rising public reputation as an educational, economic and community-revitalization force; the move toward better business practices and leadership in the arts sector; the arts industry’s newfound political clout (based on its proved community impact) and its willingness and ability to use that clout; and the crucial interrelated needs to keep the arts thriving and further heighten public awareness of their value.

The arts – which have always been controversial in a nation founded by people who largely thought them either sinful or trivial - serve as a kind of canary in the coal mine of American social politics. Are we well off, relaxed, feeling indulgent about our liberties and other people’s welfare? We support the arts. Are we frightened, financially pinched, seeking control over a world full of random threats? We punish and suppress the arts. Their fate reveals the American Zeitgeist at any given moment.

Except for now. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, the U.S. is in desperate circumstances and people aren’t using the arts as a whipping boy or a Salem witch on whom to vent their misplaced, panicky vengeance. Instead, communities across the country are turning to the arts as a solution for many ills from poor school attendance and test scores to falling property values and tourism rates.

This is beyond hopeful. In fact, it’s revolutionary and it shows that arts leaders’ patience and hard, often discouraging, work on behalf of their industry is at long last paying off. After decades of struggling to devise the means of measuring and proving the arts’ value, of persuading business and political leaders that arts mean better educations, better workers, healthier commerce, more jobs, more wealth, improved communities and happier, more fulfilled citizens (and voters), arts leaders have got the attention of the American public.

They must not ever lose it. An essential part of that perpetual task will be to demonstrate that the arts are not some freakishly different kind of activity, not an enclave of disturbing wackos or erudite elites, but simply the most vivid and freeing example of the creativity that belongs to all humans by biological heritage and that drives every field of endeavor. If you read the AFTA plan and substitute the word creativity for arts all the way through, you get a more accurate vision of the bigger goal we all have to help our nation achieve: a greater understanding, deeper appreciation and increased practice of creativity of every kind.    

The arts are of, by and for all of us because creativity is us. So with the arts as creativity’s ambassadors, let’s take the revolution beyond the realms of  music, image, performance and literature and change the U.S. even more profoundly, to a nation that sees and values the promise of creativity in all of its citizens, communities and pursuits.

From the arts hearing: signs of progress and one epiphany

The numbers are grim. Artists suffering unemployment at twice the rate of other workers. Ten thousand nonprofit arts organizations nationwide in real danger of closing and taking 260,000 jobs with them. Arts and artists losing more of their tiny piece of the nation’s 40-percent-smaller philanthropic pie to other causes such as health, while ticket-sales drop, forcing severe cost reductions including lay-offs.

And yet, scary as the information was that emerged from yesterday’s House Education & Labor Committee hearing on the impact of the arts on the economy and employment, it may not impress an American public that’s been listening to the sound of the world collapsing for months now. Bad news is everywhere – with banks failing, the stock market falling down a mine shaft, the newspaper industry dying and real estate worth about as much as Confederate dollars, the arts industry’s plight probably doesn’t seem any more important than the retailers’ or automakers’ or the airlines’. All of us are, or have friends, in trouble.

In fact, the American public may never fully understand just how stunning this hearing was – not because it revealed an arts industry in financial crisis, but because it revealed one with an economic, social and political clout that artists and their supporters could hardly have imagined even 10 years ago.

For generations – centuries, really - artists in the Western world have been despised as vagrants and low-order servants, shiftless eccentrics, dreamers, emotional basket cases and addicts, at best impractical and at worst morally dangerous. Their work may have been enjoyed, even prized, but they themselves seemed permanently marked as a kind of untouchable class by both the wealthy holders of power and the starchy keepers of bourgeois industry and respectability.

In 20th-century America, the public’s perception of artists as elite beggars, drains on the public and private coffers of prosaic, hard-working citizens, kept artists and their enterprises largely exiled from the circles of civic and economic influence – as generally disregarded as women by the bluff, tough, masculine money-makers and political power brokers.

And now? In the last decade or so, through the hard work of advocates, agencies and artists themselves, arts and culture  have begun to be more widely recognized as the vital economic and social forces they are. Giant money-generators and employers, irreplaceable educators, international ambassadors, community unifiers amd developers - the arts have been discovered to be all of these. And more: the key, along with all other creative professions, to our economic future.

How did they get to this point and how they should go on? The answer to both is education – not just the formal education of our children, which is indeed crucial, but the education of the public. Research, from RAND reports on the value of arts in schools to the economic-development studies of “The Rise of the Creative Class” author Richard Florida, has provided the tools; indefatigable public-awareness campaigns by leaders from Americans for the Arts down to local arts-council directors have provided the force. Slowly for a long time and now, at last, rapidly, they have been wearing away the blinders and barricades that have kept Americans from seeing the truth about the arts.

After perhaps a thousand years of advocates trying to persuade Western societies that art was valuable because it was good for the spirit, we’re seeing  two completely practical themes – the job-training benefits to children and the financial benefits to local economies - completely change how community leaders think about the arts.

Artists need not be afraid that positioning their work as a kind of grease for the wheels of capitalism will result in art losing its true value. Those capable of being moved by art always will be. But it’s absolutely essential that the very many who believe art has nothing whatever to do with them come to understand that art is, at least, important to their own prosperity. Their education must progress.

Luckily for advocates whose job it will be to continue that education, actor Tim Daly has discovered the next significant tool: technology.

America is in love with technology as an economic driver and as entertainment. And as Daly pointed out during his testimony at yesterday’s hearing,  ”Without art, there’s no iPod.”  It was a moment of head-smacking epiphany for some of us – what he meant was, without design, without artistic content, our beloved music players, computers, flat-screen TVs, CDs and DVDs would never have come about. No one would be scrambling to get cell phones with camera, game and internet entertainment functions or satellite radio with a zillion music stations or Wiis with their lifelike sports experiences or endless other products that those with artistic and creative skills have made more imaginative, exciting, effective, comfortable or beautiful.

Daly’s is a message that the American public – and American businesspeople and politicians - will understand: The arts create the cool, money-making products we want. Other ideas will likely emerge from the Education & Labor hearings this spring, but even if none did, this one might be powerful enough to take the arts movement to a whole new level.

It’s Miller time – to answer questions about his arts hearings

How hard should it be to get a U.S. Congressman to answer a few questions about his own public actions?  Well, you be the judge:

For about six weeks now, I’ve attempted to get U.S. Rep. George Miller to respond to some specific questions about the arts hearings he plans to hold as chairman of the House Education & Labor Committee. As I reported yesterday, these committee hearings will begin Thursday by examining the impact of the American arts industry on the nation’s economy and employment.

But in spite of cheerful assurances from Miller’s online outreach specialist that responses would be forthcoming, I have not received answers to these questions:

U.S. Rep. Miller moves forward with arts hearings

Here’s an update on the Congressional-level arts hearings I mentioned back in February:

The economic role of the U.S. arts industry and the disproportionate job losses it may be suffering in the current recession will be examined by the House Education & Labor Committee in hearings starting Thursday, March 26.

Titled “The Economic and Employment  Impact of the Arts and Music Industry” and chaired by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.),  the initial hearing will investigate how American communities are affected economically by arts activity. The committee will also examine the the arts and music industries in light of media reports about heavy job losses and endangered institutions, economic troubles reflected by a National Endowment for the Arts study that found unemployment in the arts to be substantially greater in 2008 than the national unemployment level for that year.

U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who co-chairs the Congressional Arts Caucus, will provide testimony, as will Robert Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts; Michael Spring, director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs; Michael Bahr, education director of the Utah Shakespearean Festival; and Tim Daly, co-president of the Creative Coalition, an arts, education and First-Amendment-rights advocacy organization co-founded by the late Ron Silver.

I expect to have more to report on this soon.

Update on arts and the national stimulus package

Americans for the Arts had this to say about the reinstating of $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts in the federal stimulus package passed by the House of Representatives Friday and signed yesterday by President Obama (there’s a 2 p.m. EST webinar to sign up for, too):

Arts Recovery Funds Restored in Economic Stimulus Bill
February 13, 2009—Today the House of Representatives voted 246 to 183 to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The bill includes $50 million in direct support for arts jobs through the National Endowment for the Arts and language that would have prevented museums, theaters, and arts centers from receiving stimulus funds was removed.

“It was not politics as usual in Washington, as the Congressional conferees’ final version of the bill seized the opportunity to provide much-needed stimulus support for the nation’s creative workforce. The National Endowment for the Arts will distribute $50 million of the stimulus funds to arts projects in all 50 states which specifically preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector that have been most hurt by the economic downturn.  Additionally, the final version of the stimulus bill further recognized the role the arts play in the overall U.S. economy by removing the Senate ban on state and local governments from using any of the recovery funds to benefit museums, theaters, and art centers,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts.

Americans for the Arts will hold a webinar on this topic on Wednesday, February 18 at 2 pm. Free for professional members, it will update arts organizations on the economic stimulus package and other federal sources of arts funding.

To register for today’s webinar, click here and scroll down to the end of the first news story, where you’ll see the registration link at the end of the webinar announcement.