PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER

Ten days ago we sent out an email asking you to send emails to your legislators in support of a $180,000 increase to the Arts Council’s budget that would fund what is currently called our Local Arts Partnership Initiative.

What happened?

It worked. By the time you read this, more than 300 of you will have generated more than 1300 emails to your respective members of the Vermont House and Senate. In a state where five emails on any given topic is a cause for concern and re-evaluation of priorities on the part of legislators, this response can only be characterized by one word.

Phenomenal.

As I sat in House Appropriations mark-up last week, it was abundantly clear that I was persona non grata to many members of the committee who had received dozens of these emails. But that’s okay. I’d rather be non grata to them than to all of you. My job is to represent you to them. Their job is to listen to you and pay attention. Trust me. A few individuals may be annoyed, but there is no doubt that they are paying attention.

My job is to make sure that they know how you feel about funding priorities. Their job is to figure out how to juggle those priorities so that everyone is equally happy…or unhappy. For the last few years, our field has been made increasingly and disproportionately unhappy. Why? In part because we were nice and understanding to the Governor and Legislature when times were flush and they were replenishing the Rainy Day funds for…well…rainy days. We were nice and understanding when the dot-com boom went bust. We were nice and understanding when the President’s tax cuts began to require services that were once paid by the federal government to be increasingly paid for by the state. We were nice and understanding when the high cost of health care, education, and the war began to hit taxpayers harder and harder. During the past 10 years I have heard every year that “There’s no money. Where’s the money for this increase going to come from?”

This year is no different, except for one thing. We’re not so nice and understanding anymore. Why? Because so many of our core institutions are one or two payrolls away from closing. Because 20% of them have less than a month’s operating reserve (the standard is six months minimum). Because several of you have closed or merged or “gone dormant.” Because for the second time in the last four years, despite there being “no money” the state has managed to authorize an emergency spending bill on behalf of the ski industry for a $200 thousand plus media blitz in major east coast markets to “help offset a bad January.” And because all this time (since 1991) state government has grown 86% and the Arts Council’s budget has only grown 11%. That’s why we’re so disproportionately unhappy!

The arts are an industry, much like any other. There are nearly 550,000 arts business in the U.S., and those businesses employ 2.7 million Americans. The arts contribute $135 billion to the economy each year. To put those numbers into perspective, the arts create more jobs in our country than the steel industry. (By the way, more information like this is available on the Americans for the Arts website. Arm yourself with knowledge!)

Although we supposedly operate in a free-market system, dominated by a laissez-faire economic philosophy, business and corporate interests receive enormous amounts of government support, publicity, and subsidies. Yet when arts advocates lobby for increased government support for our economic sector, we’re told the arts are a luxury, and the field should fend for itself. Imagine the hue and cry that would go up if government told other industries like textiles, agriculture, and automobiles, that they were on their own, and that they’d better shape up if they wanted to keep their jobs.

I have been told to my face by people who should know better that “Jobs in the arts aren’t good jobs.” I simply smile at them with a pitying look on my face, and reply that they may not be “high-paying jobs but you really can’t touch them for satisfaction and enrichment and their many other quality of life features.” Then I ask them how much they enjoy being Secretary of the Agency of—well, you get the idea.

Here’s what I’d like from you next. Send me a paragraph explaining why, in three sentences or less you actually think your “no good arts job” is in fact a great job! If enough of you respond, I’ll share it with those insensitive clods who still believe that the arts don’t deserve their attention.
In the meantime, keep in touch with your legislators. If you haven’t emailed them yet, there is still time. One request: make sure to include something personal about why this budget increase matters to you. Also, changing the subject header will distinguish it from the other 1300 emails that are already out there. Have fun. You’re doing great. Thank you.

THE QUESTION OF 'ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE'

For the past several months I have labored mightily to give birth to the Arts Council’s next five-year Strategic Plan. This is not an exercise to be taken lightly. In fact, I have come to Ever since the United States started down the road of public support for the Arts in 1964 a primary driver for determining who or what gets support has been whether it demonstrates something called “artistic excellence.”

The nature of arts professionals predisposes them to assert that “artistic excellence” should always be the prime directive for public funding agencies. That way, simply by receiving funds an arts professional (an artist or an administrator) may claim that the work he/she does is of high quality and therefore worthy of (more) support—a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

After more than 25 years in the arts (on both sides of the funding equation), I no longer buy the artistic excellence argument where public funding is concerned. Here’s why.

Public agencies (like the Vermont Arts Council) derive most, if not all, of their grant dollars from the American taxpayer. Every taxpayer, that is. Not just the one’s who prefer Pilobolus to Jay-Z, or Shakespeare to Spielberg. We therefore, as people who work for a state arts council, have an obligation to address the variety of tastes and preferences that are out there, and lead, wherever possible, everyone to as full an understanding of and appreciation for those disciplines we refer to as “the arts” as we possibly can.

The simple fact is that not everyone likes classical art forms. Not everyone likes Jazz. Or Abstract Expressionism. Or poetry. Or Shakespeare. Or Mamet.

Right?

Isn’t our job, then, to find out the breadth of what people do like, and introduce them to creative works from other cultures and, perhaps in this process, expand their world-view, and increase their opportunities to discover for themselves what art (in whatever genre or form it takes) brings into their lives?

In this eclectic, difficult-to-compare-apples-to-oranges situation, how does “artistic excellence” fit in? In my experience it really only works when artists and administrators are “doing the absolute best they can” under the circumstances they face. Context, therefore, is crucial.

Several years ago there was a great debate between Lloyd Richards of the Yale Rep. and Robert Brustein of the A.R.T. in Cambridge on just this topic. Brustein, if I recall correctly, said that art did possess an absolute standard where excellence was concerned and that the only the works of the highest caliber should ever receive support. Richards took the approach that not all producers have access to the best talent, the best facilities, and that context needed to be taken into consideration where funding decisions were made. It all boiled down to an argument in which Richards ended up advocating for a position that seemed to say that any art is probably better than none.

I agree with Richards on this one. The phrase “artistic excellence” used as criterion for funding suggests that people agree on what that term actually means. In my experience, they don’t. Most panel meetings I’ve been involved with are more like an elaborate and unspoken negotiation among smart, experienced people with definite points of view. Consensus gets reached around what should receive funding. But often, artistic excellence, by any one person’s standard, is too subjective to measure. Think about it. How often has a good friend come up to you with a new CD and said, this is great, ya gotta check this out…and you have and you say “how interesting” because you can’t find polite enough words to express how you really feel about the work. Different strokes for different folks, right?

What really determines funding decisions in my opinion is context. Context imbues a project in North Troy with the same relative urgency that a similar project in New York or Los Angeles possesses, despite the obvious differences in resources one might assume could be brought to bear in each of those different communities. The audience in North Troy may be smaller and have less opportunity to experience diverse cultural experiences, than one in L.A. The amount they can pay an artist might be less. And they most likely don’t have the kind of access to an enormously diverse and talented pool of artists in North Troy that they do in L.A.

But our question has to be, is the community is doing everything it can to get the best artists it can afford? If so, don’t we have an obligation to do whatever we can to support it? Yes.

So let’s ask the $64 dollar question: What deserves public funding?

This is easy…arts activities that benefit the public, ALL the public. Not just the stereotypical subset who think of art as that which is created to sustain the legacy of dead, European, white males. (Yes, I’m talking stereotypes here!)

And the $63 dollar question: Who makes the fund/not fund decision?

This is even easier…a “peer-review” panel is by far the best mechanism anyone has ever devised to review a varied set of applications. The panel reviews all the material, taking context into consideration, and its recommendation gets forwarded to an authorizing body (for us, our Board of Trustees elected by our membership) and in most cases they accept the panel’s recommendation. Applicants get a fair review from knowledgeable people. The public interest is served by the oversight provided by the Board.

An application for support for a symphony project in Island Pond thus gets the same contextual review as a symphony project in Burlington. It’s only fair. It’s only right.

And, if the truth be told, if it’s a symphony project that involves the Vermont Symphony it will have a whole mess of artistic excellence thrown in for good measure, too!

Thank you!

H3. AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

Please allow me to be the first to call for increased support for Vermont’s cultural institutions through H.3, a bill currently before the Vermont House Appropriations Committe. While needed capital improvements to cultural facilities has been generously supported in recent years through the Capital Bill, my concern is now on how to maintain the vibrancy of our core cultural institutions in towns and villages throughout the state.

H.3 would provide additional funds to our local constituents that provide programs and services in the public interest. Their work is crucial to maintaining our communities as wonderful places to raise families, start businesses, visit (often), and educate our children not just because they exist, but because they are involved in educating our children and providing key social and health care services to our citizens. Cultural institutions are an essential element of the glue that binds the Creative Economy into a powerful force for improving our local quality of life.

Imagine the Chandler Center in Randolph without its community theater programs and concerts by Midori. Imagine Stowe without Helen Day Arts Center, Shelburne Farms without the Mozart Festival, or Rutland without the Chaffee Center or the Paramount Theater. Imagine Burlington without the Flynn, the Fleming, or the South End Art Hop. Imagine Dorset, Bennington, or Weston without the Dorset Playhouse, Oldcastle Theater, or the Weston Playhouse. Imagine Brattleboro without the Museum or the Music Center; Marlboro without the Music Festival, Putney without the Yellow Barn or Sandglass Theater, or Glover without Bread and Puppet. What if Craftsbury offered no chamber music, or White River Junction no Briggs Opera House or Cartoon School? St. Johnsbury without the Athenaeum; Vergennes without the Opera House? Inconceivable! This list goes on and on. For now, Vermont is blessed with these wonderful assets. But what if these entities started to disappear from Vermont’s cultural landscape? Vermont would be like a ski resort with no snow; nice to look at, but not much to do.

It is ironic that at the same time the Creative Economy movement is infusing new life and new leadership into the community economic development activities of our towns and villages through, in large measure, the engagement of the arts community in core civic activities like planning, education, social services, and health care, that these very entities on which the Creative Economy depends for sustenance, inspiration, and leadership are, themselves, struggling to survive.

In Vermont the Arts have never been the sole property of wealthy patrons who can afford any luxury they want. Don’t let it start happening now. Please support the passage of H.3 for the benefit of all Vermonters.

Thank you.

GOT CASH?

From previous columns you’ve come to understand that in my world view, advocacy is not about money. It’s about the idea. It’s about relationship-building. All very well and good, you say. But as an arts organization, I have to pay my electric bill this week and payroll next. What are my options?

I’m afraid to have to tell you that if you are looking to state government or any other public source for funding to alleviate your immediate cash flow problems, it may already be too late. In very rare circumstances, the timing may work out and a corporation or foundation may have some “year-end” funds lying around waiting to be spent. But it’s rare and, in truth, these entities are looking to “maximize a positive outcome” not respond to or, worse, “fix” a drastic situation.

What are your options? You have three.

* Option One: Bring your Board in on the problem and help them to understand why it is theirs to “own.” All organizations have cash-flow problems from time to time, and as an administrator, you should not be forced (by your own conscience or by your board) to assume sole responsibility for the circumstance that you find yourself in. Sharing the burden may cause a moment or two of embarrassment, but doing so will be much easier than explaining why, three weeks from now, you suddenly had to close your doors and now have to explain why no one but you saw it coming. That is a mistake you want to avoid. Sharing also helps you sleep at night.

Spend a day or two developing a realistic understanding of what your three- to six-month cash-flow needs are, bundle them together and tell your board that this is what you need for them to contribute and/or raise in the next eight weeks to get you past the crisis. You might be pleasantly surprised at who steps forward to take a leadership role in this effort.
* Option Two: In addition to bringing your Board in on the problem, bring your audience and donors in on the problem. Remember, your patrons are your friends! They have given you money because, in return, you have either offered them entertainment or shown your organization to be an important part of the fabric of their community.

Make a game out of sponsorship opportunities. “For a mere five hundred dollars (above your annual gift, of course) you can become next month’s official ‘Please Turn Off Your Cell-Phone And Pager Phone Bill Sponsor’ or ‘Not-A-Cold-Seat-In-The-House Natural Gas,’ sponsor. Get three of each, and make sure that all your publicity recognizes their contributions (or not, if they don’t want the recognition!). You get the idea. As with Option One, you might be pleasantly surprised at who steps forward to take a leadership role in this effort from this larger pool of audience and patrons.
* Option Three: Tap the line of credit you were smart enough to get six months ago from your local bank sponsor when you were flush with funds. Okay, yes, I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek with this. It’s almost never a good idea to tap a line of credit to cover basic operating expenses. A line of credit is best used when you simply have a timing issue where cash flow is concerned. For example, say you have $5,000 coming in from the Arts Council in six weeks, $1,000 of which is to cover a portion of the overhead relating to the program you’re putting on whose expense is being incurred now. Tap the Line of Credit for $1000 now, and pay it back when the grant comes in.

There are probably a dozen other things that you and your peers have thought of to move past these types of crises. The bottom line is that the healthiest organizations are the ones that spend a great deal of time looking at the big picture, looking at the long term, looking at trends, building long-term and varied relations with suppliers, vendors, local elected officials, statewide and national elected officials, patrons, and foundations.

Advocacy, ultimately, is about relationship building and education; reaching out not just to people with money, but to everyone who you think should be interested in your programs and services, and inviting them inside. You want to show them, let them experience for themselves, what the arts bring to their lives, the impacts art has on their communities.

Sometimes, this means that introducing them to cultural programs they are already familiar with (think Kronos Quartet playing works by Jimi Hendrix) and THEN introducing them to works (Mozart? Stockhausen?) you want them to hear.

If you are putting on high quality performances of Wagner in a “Bluegrass Only” community, you might want to rethink your business plan.

If you claim you are reaching 1800 people a year with your six-concert chamber series, and it turns out you’re performing in a 300-seat hall to the same 40 people six times, you’re not going to fool us (or anyone else) for long because we will hear what is really going on from others in your community. People talk. People want to do what’s right.

Use that to your advantage. Listen to them. Design your programs to address their needs first. Eventually they will become supporters and advocates for the work that you do. When that happens, you will have far fewer cash flow crises.

Thank you!

A Tale of Two Towns

It’s easy, when one advocates for the arts, to conjure up a Cuba Gooding-like fantasy in which a talented (but perhaps unknown) artist shouts “Show me the MONEY!!” and, poof, it magically appears. In my last column, in addition to demonstrating how infinitesimally small public funding for the arts is as a percentage of federal and state budgets, I said that advocating for the arts was actually not about getting more money. I even suggested money wasn’t really all that important. In this column I explain what I mean.

This is a story about two communities. One is large (population 9500), the other small (population 1900). One is, by Vermont standards, urban and industrialized; the other decidedly rural and still very much agricultural. Except for one thing, which I shall address in a moment, those are the basic differences between the two. What these towns have in common is a legacy of families who have a deep and abiding love and respect for Vermont in general and their communities in particular; major issues with traffic and safety; a high school that is under increasing pressure to produce outstanding students with fewer and fewer resources; an innate distrust of “flat-landers” who are, according to the “man on the street,” ruining all that is good about Vermont; and reasonably good access (eight miles or less) to a major interstate highway.

For the past generation or more, these two towns have had to confront significant issues around economic, social, and cultural survival. The larger town has seen its core businesses erode and, particularly in the last two years, a significant number of vacancies on Main Street. The small town has had to confront enormous pressures to upgrade transportation facilities, to cater more and more to the tourist economy instead of focusing on ensuring the vibrancy of its farm economy. Both are seeing their young adults leaving because there are too few jobs capable of supporting young families, and social, cultural, and recreational amenities are minimal—especially in the small town.

But there is one significant difference between these two towns, and it is this: the small town has become very good at articulating what it cares about, what it values, what matters to its citizens. The large town has not. The small town appears to be more concerned with making decisions that are in the public’s interest, that add to the perception that the town is a vital community worth preserving and protecting. The large town, with a few notable exceptions, has not.

The result of these two “public mind-sets” (if you will) is that the small town is managing the changes placed on it by globalization, the economy, and Vermont’s demographics in a way that is empowering its citizens and enhancing the community’s self-image. The large town is, by virtually any standard of measurement, foundering. The emphasis for the small town is on what matters, what people value; for the large town, it’s now only about how much (or little) things cost.

The difference between these two towns is like the difference between one who advocates for the arts based on a clear articulation of the “value-added” the arts bring to a place, to a community, to a project, and one who only focuses on what he could do if he only had more money.

The truth is, I have yet to meet a single person who has made a convincing argument that an arts council “needs money” as much as a food bank, or a child-welfare program. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is difficult to deny.

But in my world-view, every coin has two sides. Government, the will of the people, must not be allowed to address all of society’s ills without also investing in society’s benefits: those things that bring joy, beauty, and (forgive me) social capital. It has been demonstrated over and over again that one cannot simply throw money at a problem without also throwing money at the solution. Problems are easy to spot; solutions are more subtle. Increasing police presence in a community to put young men and women in jail for what are essentially antisocial crimes (drug abuse, for example) is easy and politically defensible. But just doing that will not address the root cause. Arts programs that engage kids after school, that offer alternative outlets in addition to recreation programs, that allow kids to freely “express” themselves in a safe environment that is mutually supportive can, do, have, and will offer a lasting solution. And that is just one example…there are many others.

The program, the service, the project, the outcome, the value to the community—these are what our advocacy has to focus on. We have to model our behavior after the people of the small town. If we only focus on the money, and how our administrators and our artists and our suppliers all need more, we will spiral downward and wonder, like the large town, where the heck we went wrong.

“All well and good (you say) but I have an electric bill 60 days overdue and I can’t make payroll next week. I need the money NOW.”

Stay tuned…

The Vermont State Budget and the Arts

In my last column I tried to contextualize the National Endowment for the Arts budget in ways that might amuse or even shock readers. I promised to do the same for our own State General Fund and Arts Council appropriation in this column. So here goes.

The average taxpayer shells out $3,485 to fund the Vermont General Fund of $1.07 billion, of which about $530,000 supports arts activities, institutions and education throughout Vermont. Of the $3485 “average taxpayer” bill about $1.73 goes to support the programs and services of the Vermont Arts Council. Expressed as a percentage, the Arts Council’s appropriation is 495 ten-thousandths of 1% of the total State General Fund appropriation.

So here we are again—impossibly small percentages of impossible-to-imagine amounts of money. Let me make it a little more real for you . . .

IF THE STATE GENERAL FUND OF $1.07 BILLION WERE:

* an eight-hour school day, the Arts Council’s appropriation would represent 14.26 seconds of arts activities. Coupled with its share of the Federal dollars (reported in my last column), the total amount of time available for the arts in this “school” would be 16.82 seconds per eight-hour day; barely enough time to sing the first line of the Vermont State Song. If the state were to budget “one minute” for the arts in this eight hour school day, the Council’s budget would jump to $2,229,000—slightly more than four times its current investment. For the record, this is unlikely to happen in our lifetime.

* a $30,000 per year salary, the amount of money available for the arts would be $14.85 per year—or about 57 cents out of every biweekly paycheck. If the legislature were to increase that investment to $1 every two weeks, the Council’s budget would make a more modest jump to $928,000. This might happen in our lifetime.

* equivalent to the annual budget of Montpelier, and the legislature were to apply the same percentage of its budget towards the Arts as Montpelier does (.066%), the State appropriation to the Arts Council would increase even more modestly to $706,200. If our economic development policy makers embrace Bill Schubart’s recent column in Seven Days, this might happen in the next couple of years.

Sadly, early indications are that we will be lucky if our budget stays at its current level. But I don’t like “lucky.” I’m the kind of guy who will go for the “one-minute of the eight-hour school day” and settle (reluctantly) for 30 seconds this year—more than doubling our appropriation—and going after the next 30 seconds next year. I’m the kind of guy who likes to point out that if we just charge each of the 46,000 tax payers who earn more than $75,000 a year the price of one family sized pizza with four toppings, we could triple the State’s investment in the Arts. (Now there’s a good idea!!)

But here’s the rub. I’m not going to do that. I can’t. It’s not because the cause isn’t noble and worth at least a pizza or two.

It’s because advocacy, in the end, is NOT about the money. All I’ve done is give you a sense of proportion when thinking about arts funding. None of us in the arts have enough money. Probably, we never will. Therefore, arts support is about something bigger. Something better.

I’ll clarify what I mean in my next column. In the meantime, go to a concert or two. Buy your loved ones gifts that someone you know, or know of, made by hand. (Palette note cards, anyone?) Support your local creative economy. And above all, be safe.

Happy Holidays.

The Federal Budget and the Arts

The election is behind us and now it is time to consider the arguments we have to make to all our recently elected officials that make the case for more arts support. The next few messages from me in this space will try to do this from the Council’s perspective. Feel free to give me your feedback and offer your own analysis, present your own findings, and include your own reasons for strengthening funding for the arts.

One of the most important first steps is to set a context.

The Federal budget is about $2.3 trillion (11 zeroes after the 3). The National Endowment for the Arts’ budget is $125 million—or about 54 ten-thousandths of a percent of the federal budget (.0054%). Since it’s hard to conceptualize what these numbers mean literally, I’ve made a few comparisons that you might find helpful as you talk to Congressman-elect Welch (Senator-elect Sanders and Senator Leahy have both heard this material before):

IF THE FEDERAL BUDGET WERE…

an eight-hour school day, then students would have just over 1.5 seconds to spend on artistic pursuits. But if the Congress were to budget just “one minute” of this eight-hour day to the arts, the NEA budget would become $4.8 billion.


a $30,000 per year salary, the amount of money available for the arts would be about $1.62 per year—or just over six cents out of every biweekly paycheck! If Congress were to budget just one dollar every two weeks to support the arts, the NEA budget would be $1.99 billion.


equal to the annual budget of Montpelier, VT (the smallest US capital city) of $15 million, then Montpelier would only spend $810 a year supporting the arts. BUT! Montpelier actually spends $10,000 per year supporting the arts—or about 66 thousandths of one percent (.066%) of its annual budget.


to devote the same percentage of its budget to support the arts that Montpelier does, then the NEA’s budget would equal $1.33 billion (.066% x $2.3 trillion) which would represent a 1226% increase over the current level of NEA support of $125 million.
Every year lobbyists like me descend on Washington (in March) to increase the NEA’s budget. Every year we are told to be happy with a five or 10 million dollar increase.

Well…I’m not happy. I want that “minute” of the arts in the school. I want that dollar every two weeks in my paycheck. I want Montpelier to set the tone for the US Government’s priorities where arts support is concerned. It seems reasonable—especially given the scale of what we are talking about. The impact on tax payers? Well, if each of my fingers represented a dollar, you could count the impact on each taxpayer on the fingers of my right hand.

My next column will do a similar analysis of the Vermont State Budget….