Arts Intranet

Young(er) arts advocate, do you realize that you are powerful? Do you realize that because you took your stand with grace and strength, your community will be changed?

Sometimes I feel like I’m not making a difference as an arts administrator because I’m not actually creating art. Making change, however, is my time to get creative at work. It’s exciting to examine procedures from a new perspective, find ways to push limits with policy, create sincere relationships with my coworkers, be confident in my administrative choices, and feel like an agent of change in my work. Change isn’t easy, but these strategies can be. 

How does cultural identity impact arts leadership?

“We really need someone who’s more out front, who relishes the spotlight, who can shake the hands and kiss the babies.” (A major donor)

Let us picture the figurehead of an organization. The lighting rod. The glad-handing executive, the creative dynamo, the visionary. The confident and outspoken advocate with the answers. Is that what we want from a leader? Can that be anyone, any gender, any age (within reason), any race? Can it be a senior black woman? A young disabled veteran? Can that be a third-generation Asian-American, like me?

Throughout this year, our Emerging Leaders Council will be developing an Emerging Leader Vision for the Field, using vision statements that encapsulate shared hopes for our field as a starting point in conversation with emerging arts leaders and Americans for the Arts’s Emerging Leader Networks through a variety of in-person and online platforms. This blog salon is the formal start of that year-long dialogue.

“You need to pay your dues.”

This statement has always hit a nerve with me. Not because I don’t believe there is some truth to it, but because I believe that it focuses on a problem and not a solution. This often means that the task of “paying one’s dues”, which can be defined as “you need more experience,” is forced upon the emerging leader with no assistance and no direction provided. Decision making is for those with experience, for valid reasons, but what I question is how organizations help provide that much-needed experience to their emerging leaders.

Our society has created a narrative that says we must either keep young people safe from themselves (censorship), or we must keep others safe from young people (a group a young folks sitting under a park gazebo must be up to no good). These thoughts create a deficit model approach. Why is this the default when the assets young people possess are plenty? To truly engage young people from the beginning, they must be at the table when the outlines are created. Their full bodies and selves need to be a part of planning and development spaces.