Arts Intranet

This is an incredibly challenging time to be a leader in any capacity, but especially in a community arts organization. Let’s be honest: as leaders, we don’t know with absolute certainty whether our ideas, our strategies—our leadership—will result in our vision of impact. This is especially true at this very emergent time. Arts funding is constantly under attack. We find ourselves having to repeatedly justify our existence, often pushing us into survival mode and stifling creativity in the very places it should thrive.

Add to that, the roadmaps we once used to guide our organizations are no longer very useful. They are incomplete at best, and our path forward is definitely not linear.

Historically, community arts organizations have looked to large-scale, stable, and well-resourced arts institutions—our symphonies, operas, and museums—as models of success. We tried to follow their lead: recruit large, affluent Boards; make sure we have a long-term strategic plan; plan our programs at least three years out; build a large endowment; develop polished marketing materials ... you get the idea. While all these elements have their place in institutional capacity building, I’m not convinced that these are the most important measures of success for creating more relevant, sustainable community arts organizations.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you fire your Board or cash out your endowment investments. We should definitely keep the best of the best practices from our arts institution friends. I’m saying that we must also remind ourselves that the word community comes first in our field for a reason.

As community arts organizations, our ambitions for our communities should be big and bold. We must play a larger role in transforming individuals and communities. We must take on our missions with great intentionality and ask ourselves how we can deploy our assets and our capabilities as a force for good. Ultimately, we need to ask, “How are we accountable to our communities?”

As the Executive Director of COCA – Center of Creative Arts, a multidisciplinary community center for arts learning in St. Louis, MO, I’m constantly contemplating the best path forward for our work. While arts education is at the core of what we do, COCA has a purposely wide-ranging portfolio of programs and an extremely diverse body of students, participants, and stakeholders. It has never been easy to benchmark our success against other organizations “like us.”

For now, I’m reframing the way I think about our work in community arts and approaching COCA’s role as “infrastructure development” for St. Louis. Like the infrastructure we build for water, or for transit, the work we do in the community arts space is necessary for the health and vitality of our community. We are building social infrastructure. While, it is just as important as physical or economic infrastructure, social infrastructure works differently. It is measured by human connectedness and trust. It is about providing opportunities for people to feel, to think, to empathize, to dream ... to build something meaningful together. It is the artists, makers, dreamers, and designers that facilitate this process. They provoke us, push us, and hold a mirror up to society. Honestly, I don’t think our investments in physical and economic infrastructure will work until we spend more time and attention in building our social capital and designing a bright future that includes all of us.

So, if this is our charge in community arts, how do we approach this work? What does our roadmap look like? I offer the following as “landmarks” to consider as you head down the road to relevancy:

Work at Intersections

The arts should serve as connective tissue in our communities … catalyzing change, solving problems, driving economic development, and building understanding. Working at intersections requires collaboration with unusual suspects. And, when we collaborate with unusual suspects, we reach new audiences and build our networks, which allows us to scale our impact in new and bigger ways. At the end of the day, our job is to deliver impact.

Focus on People and Process

It sounds like a given, but we must start with our students, our patrons, our people, and engage them in our work. After all, the great power and beauty of community arts is that it is very democratic. It’s hands on, it’s messy, it calls for inclusive participation with others, it reflects what matters to us, and it is a demonstration of what we hope for the future. While the product matters, the real power is in the process. Making art—and making art together—makes us think and encourages a better version of ourselves.

Put Inclusivity at the Core

The inequities across our country are holding back generations of young people from reaching their full potential. The arts and arts education are resources that can help level the playing field and allow diverse voices to shine. Art is a powerful instrument for social justice. It is a means for people to share history, culture, and perspectives, celebrate differences, challenge assumptions, and find common ground.

Practice Radical Hospitality

At COCA, we often talk about making sure our building is a “house of the people.” That means going above and beyond to meet people wherever they may be when they enter our doors. We need to constantly be questioning how we can create an environment that values differences, invites courageous conversations to take place, and works toward greater understanding of each other. Being more intentional about creating welcoming spaces for our communities is an assignment we should all be championing.

Be Learners, Not Experts

In the arts (and I guess in life) we like to be experts. We like to curate and tell you what is good for you. I don’t want to suggest that there isn’t value or need for experts, teachers, or content specialists; rather I’m suggesting that we, as organizations and leaders in organizations, take more time to listen, to reflect, and to ask questions. The world is rapidly changing, and we don’t all have the answers.

Be Nimble

To be relevant to the communities we serve, we must also be able to respond quickly and decisively to what we hear. Long-term plans and strategies for our organizations are important, but they should serve as guardrails on our journey. We need to be fluid enough to be able to react and respond to changing circumstances in the world around us. Only then, can we truly live into our role as dynamic community arts organizations.

As leaders, one of our most important jobs is to manage attention. We have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to focus our people, organizations, and communities on what matters. There are endless directions we can take (and detours along the way!), so it is important to recognize that guiding our work in community arts is iterative. It is a journey, not a destination.