Tag: Arts Advocacy

Conclusion: We hit what we aim at

I wrote a post a while ago about how to be an artist I was needing to be more an administrator. I wrote that if we work hard, and are lucky, we hit what we aim at. While I wanted to aim at being an artist, I realized that to do that I had to aim at being more of an administrator.

I just saw an article that reminded me how – in the industry – we hit what we aim at, too. The article, titled “Low Pay a Problem for Dance Sector” by Lalayn Baluch reports on the Arts Council England’s (ACE) findings that many dancers earn very little money. The ACE study will be used to develop ACE’s new national arts strategy, which will be published in 2010.

Arts Council England has raised concerns over the “sustainability” of careers and leadership within dance, after research revealed that 23% of people working in the sector earned less than £5,000 last year. The funding body’s Dance Mapping report – the largest piece of research of its kind – described the dance workforce as “highly educated”, with 62% of people in the sector holding a degree. However, it also revealed that 38% only earned between £5,000 and £20,000 in 2008/9.

ACE fears that the low pay will affect the sustainability of careers, leadership and the ability for “potential dance champions to emerge”. Responding to the findings, ACE director of dance strategy Janet Archer, said the sector needs to “generate the confidence to value itself and position itself assertively”.

She said: “[Dance] artists and producers will often elect to work for nothing or very little, in order to get things done. It should not be acceptable for talented people to rely on passion alone to fuel their work.

As a dancer, I appreciate the study, and the ‘you should value yourself’ stuff.  I had been really uncertain of my self-worth, but now that someone else says it’s wrong we get paid so little, I feel much better. It’s just unfortunate that everything she said is completely useless blather. It looks to me like this person wants to find reasons to pump more funding into a specific type of funding program, and she’s found her ammunition to get it done with this study.

empty-stageWe exist in a (global) economy which sets prices on things. Don’t you think that journalists would love to ‘value themselves’ more? If more people wanted to pay to see dance, and wanted to pay more to see it, dancers would make more money. As musicians, bakers, painters, and car-makers. One of the problems with the non-profit world is that it seems to have no understanding of economics. Non-profit industry maintains a revenue stream (donations, foundations) that for profits do not. But it still exists in the economy, and the basic laws still apply.

If arts administrators are clueless about economics, they develop pie-in-the-sky clueless solutions for artists. You can’t fake an understanding of how the world works. I think it would be real progress to see all arts administrators going through basic econ, statistics, micro, and macro classes. I’m certain the impact on the field would be immense.

The article goes on:

“We have many outstanding dance leaders working in the field. Unfortunately, many choose to leave to pursue more realistic career options.” Archer said that ACE acknowledged that dance needs more investment, and that more should be done to help and support dance artists and create opportunities for them to work. “Dance is highly trained profession and yet the bleak reality is that personal earnings from dance continue to be low,” she added.

In the sense of “we hit what we aim at”: funders want to understand the scene, and be able to help. In my roll as chair of the DC Advocates for the Arts I see the work, and the genuine desire to really help. Part of that is looking for efficiency, to make the most of what they can offer. The desire to help is real. But when funders try to unhook the arts profession from every other profession, they develop wasteful solutions.

I think larger arts fellowships, and more of them, would be great. But the number of individuals and organizations seeking funding will probably always be far, far, far larger than any foundation can support. It’s not nearly as sexy, but efficiency in funding would probably have a larger impact than ‘creativity’ in funding.

3 Facts About Earmarks that the City Council Should Know

This isn’t a policy paper below. These are my thoughts after working out at the gym. I do think I’m right, I’m just hedging for the reasons you’d imagine. Here it goes:

3 Facts About Earmarks

1. They infantalize the arts community.

The earmark process turns professionals into professional suck-ups. Filing grant applications is reasonable. Making us need to establish succubent relationships with you to get what we need is dis-respectful to all involved. Everyone likes people who give them money. We’ll bring you flowers if you let us. But it exposes that somewhere in there, politicians think of artists/the arts community as pets. The city would benefit from being a real world class arts center. If you make the arts community a petting zoo, thats all its gonna be. You have to take yourself out of the equation. The work we’re doing isn’t meaningless. You need to respect it beyond politics. It’s like religion. It’s art. Please participate, and get out of the way.

2. They undermine the ability of the State arts agency/ DC Commission on the Arts to effectively design integrated community support/granting programs.

Using earmarks – two or three a year – is one thing. But using em constantly to grow organizations and fund special projects It would be absurd if I was walking into the DPW and after listening to a friend of someone who lives on a street spend one quarter of the DPW budget on something more or less out of the blue. Its nonsensical. Thats what you are doing when you write earmarks. Haphazard support is wasteful support. Support must constantly evolve and it requires attention. The decisions you allow yourselves to make in a few hours undermine all that attention. Put your faith in the experts youve hired to get it right and make certain they do. If you are committed to getting the maximum return on the citys investment,  you need to give the commission more money (including a discretionary fund that could be used – with oversight from the commissioners – to handle emergency-type need), and make us stop grabbing for scraps at your table.

3.They skew the success curve toward fundraisers, away from artists.

Artists – and the arts organizations that serve them – are notoriously NOT politicians. Right now the organizations that are getting the extra pieces of the pie are the ones who are the best at development work. Are you trying to fund an arts program or are you handing out pie to people who court you well? Do you know enough to really know what our community wants/needs? What it already has, and is already developing? Have some patience, and faith in the process you oversee. I know you’re only trying to help, and they’re all around, and very nice, and very convincing. I know that. And you do help with earmarks – a few a year. But for the reasons outlined above, its not really good for the city.

To sum up I’d like to add two things. One: I really want an earmark, and would make excellent use of the one-time investment. Two: the problem with earmarks isn’t transparency, or funding unworthy things. Infantilizing, skewing programming, funding fundraisers not artists… that’s the problem.

Arts In America Wrap Up Post on Ovation–

This is the last post in the initial series I did for Ovation TV.com. We’ll be doing a follow up post once a month with new interviews and investigations into Arts in America.

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Read the intro blog here.

Looking at the videos from the Ivey book event has given me an appreciation for the long view. Here where I write and work from – in Washington, D.C. – we are about to celebrate an important anniversary. This fall the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Corcoran’s decision to cancel a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, and the WPA’s decision to host that show. The Mapplethorpe controversy was the beginning of what came to be called “The Culture Wars,” the outcome of which included the savaging of the NEA’s individual artist granting programs.

Robert Mapplethorpe died four months before the Corcoran/Culture War began. Which is to say: he was not affected by the controversy his work generated. But artists like Mapplethorpe and Serrano grow their vision from participation in their communities. When we look back at what happened after the Mapplethorpe, and Serrano, controversies, the impact is measured not on individual artists, but on communities.

In 2000 Bill Ivey stated that the Mapplethorpe controversy was “the one that let the genie out of the bottle and demonstrated the power of images in creating political conflict around artistic work.” Despite almost 20 years distance, the Culture War mentality has not disappeared; it has infiltrated how we relate to the arts today. Public funding for artists reflects support for the individual, sometimes controversial, voices which come from diverse communities.

When the City of New York eliminated arts education in 1977, Agnes Gund stepped in and created an organization to fill the need. Just like the Washington Project for the Arts decision to host the Mapplethorpe exhibit, her actions should be lauded. But they shouldn’t be necessary. Our individual voices and choices are the last line of defense, but they should not be our only defense.

To read the rest of the post, click here.