The First Big Thank You (The Big Ask, Part 4)

A couple of days ago the Vermont House Appropriations Committee voted the Appropriations bill out of committee, and the Arts Council was recommended for an increase of $100,000 to $607,607.

While some reading this post might be tempted to be upset or disillusioned by this reduction to the Governor's recommended increase, the truth is that was the second act of a four-act drama that comprises the 2013 legislative season—at the end of which we hope to end up with an increase of $210,000, not $100,000.  So for now, my message to all of you supporting our efforts to increase support for the arts in Vermont is a very huge and heartfelt “Thank You!”

Arguing on behalf of the arts when so many important programs are seeing large reductions is difficult in the best of circumstances.  That we all have, thus far, convinced the Governor and the House that an increase is necessary (the question is now not “whether?” but “how much?”), is an incredibly important hurdle to have overcome in what is being reported as the most contentious budget battle in recent memory.

There are two more acts before this year's show is over.  Attention first turns to the Senate Appropriations Committee who needs to hear from you that you support the Governor’s recommendation of $210,000 before it votes out its own version of the Appropriations bill in a few weeks’ time.  Of vital importance is to communicate to this body of key legislators that, as it stands now, the House's recommendation will not even allow us to draw down the Federal funds that we have coming to us.

Every Senator on the committee represents dozens, if not hundreds of artists, and several, if not dozens of arts organizations.  They also represent teachers, entrepreneurs, planners, designers, and a host of others whose lives and communities are significantly impacted every day by the arts.  Drop them each a note (remember to cc zeastes@vermontartscouncil.org) sharing your hopes that they will support the Governor’s recommendation.

The final act, during which we will have a final chance to sway the Legislature's decision on our appropriation, is during the conference committee when three House and three Senate members duke it out.  But let’s cross that bridge in a month.

For now, let’s take a breath, remind ourselves--again!--that the House’s recommendation will not allow us to draw down the full amount of Federal funds that we expect to have coming to us, and  turn our attention to the Vermont Senate.On to Act III...

(break a leg!)

Experience Matters

One of my great frustrations with working at the Vermont Arts Council is the number of times in a week or a month that I have to explain what I do for a living. It’s not the work itself.  It’s because the best way to get people to understand what we do at the Council is to show them, not tell them, and I can’t SHOW everybody!

Experiencing art (engaging it, confronting it, attending it, or simply being in its presence) is frequently the only way to understand its intuitive and powerful impact.  I can talk until I am blue in the face to anyone about certain works, certain performances or artists that have elicited a visceral response so powerful that words simply fail to do justice to the experience.  Talking about it doesn’t have anywhere near the impact of giving people an opportunity to experience it for themselves.

Back-to-back events last week provided a wealth of opportunities for folks in Vermont to experience for themselves the power of the arts, and for one of them, it might become a life-altering experience.

On Tuesday, March 12 Legislators returning from the Town Meeting Day break were greeted by a fabulous installation in the State House Card Room by Elizabeth Billings and Cora Vail Brooks.  Consisting of large sheets of brown parcel paper with stenciled words cut out, hung from the ceiling by clips and pins, the exhibit, “Almost,” was created to gently remind anyone who came into the Card Room, that the arts surround us, invite us in, cause us to have an unexpected(?) reaction, and leave us with a changed outlook.

Judging from the responses that we saw on peoples’ faces, and the comments they wrote on our feedback sheet, we touched a lot of people, mostly in a very positive way, and created a new appreciation for art and, yes, for the Card Room itself.  The Card Room itself was a place legislators used to adjourn to while waiting for, say, conference committees to finish their work.  To pass the time, they played cards with each other.  Today, the room is used for special interest groups to share information about their causes.  In the past, the Arts Council has had displays of grantees’ works, slide-shows of cultural facilities’ improvements that we have funded, held poetry readings, and in general shared information with folks in the building about our programs and services.

This year we gave them an experience they won’t soon forget.

On the very next day we celebrated the 8^th Annual Vermont Poetry Out Loud Competition in the Barre Opera House.

For eight years, Vermont high school students have labored to learn three poems well enough to recite them in front of their school-mates, and be selected to compete in a semifinal competition in Barre.  Finalists are selected from the 30-plus semifinalists, and the winner receives some scholarship money and the opportunity to do it all over again in Washington DC against the winners from the 52 other states and jurisdictions; and his/her school receives money to purchase books.  All very simple and straightforward, right?

Wrong.  This competition is extremely intense and yet it is among the most engaging and uplifting programs we undertake.  The mechanics are straightforward, but the results are anything but.  High schoolers of all ages and types have to not just learn a poem, but inhabit it, internalize it, and make it their own.  Then they must convey the poem's meaning and power with a minimum amount of theatrics and a maximum amount of passion and oratorical skill.  Props are occasionally used, but rarely to any great effect.  This year, the most powerful competitor (in my opinion, of course!) was the guy who barely moved, but held each of us in a steely gaze, and delivered up a stunning result—using just his voice.  He didn’t win.  Instead, that honor went to Christian DeKett of St. Johnsbury Academy and if he goes on to the Nationals and does as well as last year’s Vermont entry, Claude Mumbere, his life may be truly altered in profound and exciting ways.

The real point, however, is that more than 4000 students across the state participated in the competition.  They challenged themselves to do something far outside their normal comfort-zone.  It was far more than learning the words (which I gather is the easy part).  The students not only had to truly understand the poems, they then had to bring that awareness and understanding to the audience, especially the judges.  The judges, in turn, were looking at the difficulty of the poem, the student’s understanding, his/her ability to convey that understanding, his/her delivery, and the quality of the overall performance. 

So many critical skills come in to play for the participants.  In addition to the poem itself, the student has to consider the impact of the clothes they wear, how they approach the microphone, the tone and volume of the voice they use, the degree to which they can overcome their natural fear of being in the spotlight and being judged. 

Probably only a handful or two of those participating will go on to a career in the arts, and fewer still will become poets.  But I can absolutely guarantee that 10, 20, 50 years from now, when asked by a friend or family-member what do they remember most about high school, most will probably say, the experience that this competition gave them. 

Learning is no more about rote memorization than education is just about training.  There are times when rote memorization helps achieve a certain end and when training kicks in and enables us to respond automatically to a set of circumstances that might (as in a fist-fight) save our hides.  But learning and understanding require a deeper commitment that serves as a gateway to life-long learning.

This is what the arts can do.  This is why adding the A (Arts) to STEM instruction is so vitally important.  We can all be trained up in the specifics of science, technology, engineering, and math, but it is the Arts that enable us to learn and to live.

CHOOSE ART (The Big Ask, Part 3)

Several months ago I outlined the case for the Vermont Arts Council’s request for a 100% increase from the State appropriations process in two posts: The Big Ask, and The Big Ask, Part 2.

It gives me great pleasure to report that last week Governor Peter Shumlin released his 2014 budget with a significant increase to the Arts Council’s budget:  $210,000, or 41%.  In addition, the Governor recommended increasing the Vermont Humanities Council‘s budget by $45,289 (or 26%), the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s by $27,393 (or 24%), and the Vermont Historical Society’s by $74,525 (or 9%).

Without belaboring the point that this increase will almost certainly enable us to avoid leaving Federal funds on the table, this makes Governor Shumlin by far the most arts and culture-friendly Governor since Phil Hoff, and the thanks for this significant step forward is due to all of you who phoned, wrote, or in countless other ways let Governor Shumlin know that standing up for the arts at a time of economic uncertainty is good for business, good for communities, good for schools, good for tourism, and, in general good for Vermont.  So, good for all of YOU who made this case to the Governor, and Thank You!

So now the hard part begins…

Regardless of your political affiliation, the Legislature has very hard choices to make this year. For example, should it fund low-income heating assistance or fund weatherization? Fund programs that help incarcerated individuals transition out of prisons, or fund programs that help prevent young men and women from going to prison in the first place? Fund more arts education, or fund more free and reduced lunch programs in schools?

Where public funding is concerned there is always going to be disagreement among well-informed, well-intentioned leaders.  To me, however, this is really not an “either/or” but a “both/and” conversation.  Every one of the choices listed above are good.  We need BOTH heating assistance AND weatherization.  We need programs BOTH for incarcerated individuals AND for those who are at-risk.  We need BOTH reduced lunch programs AND the arts in order for our students and our communities to prosper.

But let us not lose sight of several important pieces of information that are frequently overlooked by policy-makers.

Where the arts thrive, so thrives the school—attracting young parents to the community, and providing a broad range of activities (beyond academics and athletics) to engage young minds

Where the arts thrive, so thrives local business and entrepreneurship—attracting and retaining businesses requires more than just a salary.  Businesses need art and culture and recreation in order to have healthy, productive, educated workers who are happy doing their work

Where the arts thrive, so thrives the economy—for every dollar of public (state and local) investment in the arts, Vermont and its municipalities receive more than $6.50 in tax receipts.  (Note: this is real impact, not an expression of economic activity.  There’s a huge difference)

Where the arts thrive, so thrives the community—communities that pay attention to the “look and feel” of their downtowns, to what happens to their graduating seniors, to the quality of life that their senior citizens enjoy attract more civic-minded and creative people to serve on school- and select-boards, planning commissions and other community-oriented bodies

This year, for the first time in a generation, Vermont’s Governor has asked the Legislature to increase the support for art and culture state wide.  Now it is your turn.  Please ask YOUR legislators to support the Governor’s recommendations. 

Ask them to choose art.

Transformation

(inspired by Martin Niemöller)

First they came for the teaching artists because they weren’t employees and their “value added” couldn’t be measured. And I wasn’t a teaching artist, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the music teachers because band and string instruments were expensive to buy and maintain. And I wasn’t a music teacher so again, I said nothing.

Then they came for the dance teachers because, they reasoned, the Physical Education teachers could get the students to move just as easily. And not being a dance teacher, I again said nothing.

Then they came for the art teachers because even though the cost of supplies was small, student “outcomes” were too difficult to measure.  And not being an art teacher, I remained silent and said nothing.

Then they came for the choral teachers and theater directors because those critical after school hours spent rehearsing and preparing for shows and concerts was considered better spent studying so-called “real” subjects.  And I wasn’t a choral teacher or a theater director, and so said nothing.

Then they came for the sports teams like football and hockey, whose equipment and injury costs were high. And though I and others around me began to get nervous, still we remained silent.

Then they came for all the remaining extracurricular activities: all sports activities, clubs, yearbooks, proms, and other student-centered committees because it was all so expensive.  At that point, there was nothing we could really say.

Finally they came for the school itself: the buildings, the buses, the desks and chairs, the kitchen equipment.  And left us with nothing.

They left us with nothing, that is, except an open field and a couple of hundred isolated teenagers each stoically studying the STEM curriculum (science, technology, engineering, and math)…

And then one day we looked over at the young children who weren’t quite school-aged.

And the children were singing.  And dancing.  And clapping. And drawing with sticks in the dirt. And playing tag and keep-away.  And their lives were full of joy and excitement and an obvious eagerness to learn.

And we were no longer silent.

The Vermont Arts Council urges you to support your local school budgets and to voice a vigorous objection to any attempts to cut music, art, dance, theater, or film programs. 

For Which I Stand

“I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” 

                   -- Pledge of Allegiance as amended, 1954

How many of us have stood proudly facing the flag with our right hands over our hearts, earnestly intoning these words? It’s a memory for me that goes clear back to Mrs. Orne’s first/second grade class at the Chatham Center Elementary School in upstate New York.

This week, my heart is heavy and the country symbolized by the flag to which I pledge allegiance is traumatized by the senseless slaughter of innocents in Newtown, Connecticut.  If the recent election did not show how divided our country is, surely the waves of angry comments for and against gun control on Facebook and Twitter do so now.

We, the people, are the Republic for which our flag stands.  The question is what do we stand for?  For me, it’s simple: the Children.

I stand for childhood, that wonderful time of innocence and exploration.

I stand for the outdoors and fresh air and all the opportunities that nature presents to kids to learn about the earth we live on and the foods we eat.

I stand for parents of all genders whose devotion from the moment they start caring for a child NEVER wanes.  The loss of a child at any age is inconceivable, a wound which no amount of consoling can possibly bind and heal.  But the loss of so many six and seven year-olds is appalling to us all.

I stand for public servants of all kinds, but especially for teachers who are increasingly tasked with the “job” of raising our children, feeding them, sometimes clothing them, and teaching them manners as well as ABCs.

I stand for first-responders who step into every situation, regardless of any personal danger, and take care of our children, whether they are in school, in a mall, or in a movie theater.

I stand for those who care for and treat our children for all illnesses, whether they are physical and mental.

After the Columbine massacre, well-intentioned counselors descended on the high school, anxious to begin the process of healing that devastated community.  Someone had the good sense to ask the children what THEY wanted.  It turned out, most of the students didn’t want counseling at all.

The previous year they had worked with some professional (theater) artists and created several original scenes that had been highly successful at engaging the entire school community—as theater usually does.  The school contacted the artists and re-engaged them to help understand what had happened,  create a narrative context that could help people understand the motivation of two of their own to do such unspeakable acts, and then share the results within the community.  This was the ONLY thing the students cared about, according to my colleague from Colorado who reported this story to us at our next national assembly of State Arts agencies.

For years I’ve been arguing that the arts inspire us, unite us, bind our wounds, heal us, fix us, and set us back on track.  Perhaps I am wrong about that.  But I have learned over the years, to trust the voices of children.  In the sad and sorry context of Newtown, CT, the children of Columbine have much to offer. Perhaps we should let their experience serve as a guide. 

I’ll stand for that.

Sequestration Blues

Anyone out there interested in what it will be like to show up for work on January 2^nd, the day “sequestration” begins and nearly $600 billion in spending cuts and revenue enhancements automatically go into effect?  Want to know what it will be like to have to decide which bill to pay, and which stores to buy supplies in?  Need help figuring out which services are essential and which are luxuries?

Then contact your local arts organization.  They’ll tell you.  They live this life pretty much every day of every year.  In good times and bad, nonprofit arts organizations relentlessly prepare themselves for the inevitable “doomsday” scenario in which a key donor passes away, the promised corporate gift fails to materialize, or the storage facility with all the sets and costumes burns down.

Extremely well-managed non-profits have developed a two-tiered financial cushion.  The first tier is a six- to 12-month cash reserve fund that will allow them to operate at current capacity without interruption, and will buy them time to make additional plans for more austerity or for replenishing their coffers in due course.  The second tier is the much less liquid endowment fund whose corpus may, under duress, be accessed but only with a great deal of hand-wringing by trustees, legal counsel, and parties “of interest.”

Unfortunately, when I last checked, most non-profit cultural organizations in Vermont barely have a positive fund balance much less a reserve account or an endowment. So with January 2^nd fast approaching, what will become of them?  How will they survive?

The short answer is they will do what they always do.  They will cut where they need to, explore new ideas and new collaborations (within their means, of course), and create, present, perform, exhibit, compose, and write their way towards, inevitably, the next crisis...

But wait, you say, it’s not just the cuts that will happen. It’s the tax increases especially on the wealthy that will result in significantly more pain for the nonprofit sector.  Who will underwrite the next production if not the wealthy donors whose taxes are low and discretionary income is high?  If their charitable deductions are capped, what will happen? How will we cope?

Two things: first, people who have a lot of money give to charities because they believe in the charity's mission, not because they get a tax deduction.

Second, this reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago with my then-eighth-grade child. “Dad, I just spoke to my friend who just finished 9^th grade math and he told me all about quadratic equations and functions and I’m really sure I’m going to fail math next year.”  I assured him that by the time he got to this point next year his teachers would have taught him everything he needs to know. 

Like all good teachers, life has a tendency to prepare you for what is coming next.  Whether it is a macro-cosmic issue like global warming or a so-called fiscal cliff, or a micro-personal issue like learning quadratic equations, life has a way of giving us the time and resources to learn how to navigate through what seem like insurmountable shoals and emerge into a new awareness.  As far as the fiscal cliff is concerned, I agree with Warren Buffet. Congress will figure it all out.  Maybe not by January 1, but certainly soon thereafter. 

Until then, I’m going to get out as much as I can and enjoy the season.  I have places to go, people to meet with, hand-made, high-quality gifts to buy, and four extraordinary artists in Brattleboro to celebrate!

What's In A Symbol?

The election is over; pundits are winding down their post mortems; the country is heaving a sigh of relief if not at the outcome, at least at the fact that it’s over; and our lives are returning to normal. Much has already been written about what happened on November 6, from the really interesting analysis by researchers at University of Michigan describing how “red” and “blue” break down across the country, to the extraordinary confrontation between Megyn Kelly and Karl Rove on Fox News shortly after Ohio was called for President Obama.  Historians and political analysts will spend a generation (at least) pulling apart every single moment of the 2012 Presidential campaign to try to pinpoint exactly what happened and why.

   

Let me make it easy for them.  I can tell you EXACTLY when Mitt Romney lost the election.

Let me first state that I am not a professional politician, nor do I possess a degree in political science.  I think of myself as a student of human nature as well as a reasonably observant (and very minor) participant in the political process.  Several weeks before the election, I ran into my friend Gerry, a lobbyist who has a much broader view of how politics works than I ever will. I asked him how he thought the election would go.  At the time, he was pretty sure the President would serve just one term.

And then the debates happened. 

Most agree that Romney won the first debate (by a lot) and that both candidates acquitted themselves well during the last two debates.  Maybe Obama won one or both, or maybe Mitt Romney did.  As far as I was concerned, however, Mitt Romney lost it about halfway through the first debate.  I don’t mean he lost the debate (I actually agree with the prevailing sentiment that Romney won the first debate). 

I mean he lost the election.

In response to a question about what he would do to lower the deficit, Romney took on Big Bird.  He said that among his first items of business would be to “defund” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and fire (my word) the debate moderator, the especially wounded-looking PBS news host, Jim Lehrer, from his “day job.” And yes, that would probably take care of Big Bird as well.

To me that was as telling a moment, as big a turning point, and as colossal a mistake as the Howard Dean scream at the end of the Iowa Caucus in 2004.  The difference, however, was that Dean’s scream was more the result of a unidirectional microphone he held himself during a crowd roar and thus an accidental, or circumstantial mistake that could have happened to anyone.  Romney’s mistake was deliberate and therefore both cruel and unnecessary.

While everyone commented about this gaffe at the end of the debate, and several articles were written, few pundits took it seriously.  Despite the surge of Big Bird’s popularity on social media of all kinds (I won’t pretend to understand exactly what a meme or a trend is in this context; all I know is that Big Bird took off like….well, a VERY big bird on Twitter and Facebook), most traditional reporters and pundits were treating the comment like what it was—a symbol for the presumed "cold, business-like efficiency" of the Romney Presidency.  What they didn’t understand was that it wasn’t just a symbol. 

It was a SYMBOL, dripping with kids, and education, and mom ‘n’ pop and apple pie; of afternoons spent playing on the living room floor in front of the teevee, waiting for Mom to come home to fix you a snack, or dinner—pretty much everything, in short, that makes life for a preschooler in these United States a grand adventure.

Firing Big Bird, dismissing it, in effect, as being an inconsequential piece of Americana that is not deserving of our collective support, quite possibly appealed to the ultra-right, tea-party base of the Republican Party.  But it awakened the sleeping beast inside every man, woman and child under the age of 40 who, I assume, grew up with Big Bird and his (her?) buddies on Sesame Street.  If Romney could so casually fire Big Bird, who or what would be next?  And if this is what he is like as a candidate…how much WORSE will it be if and when he becomes President?

The work of an artist, any artist, is to capture Life’s meaning in symbolic languages.  Whether articulated in music, sculpture, painting, poetry, prose, dance or film, the symbolic meaning of art tends to be far more profound than the sum of its parts.  Big Bird is not just a yellow and orange collection of cloth and feathers.  Big Bird is not just a big, goofy-looking puppet with a kindly voice providing guidance and comfort to legions of kids who need something constructive to do after 3 pm and before Mom and Dad come home from work.  Big Bird is not just one of several dozen large puppets that cost several hundred thousand dollars a year to put on television for a couple of hours a day, every day.

Most people don’t care a lot about candidates’ positions for or against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or the Institute for Museum and Library Services.  These are the Federal agencies whose combined $1.5 billion budget, if cut, will drastically harm the arts and cultural sector across the country, and will save only a tiny tiny fraction of one percent of the US deficit this year.  CPB, NEA, NEH, and IMLS are, in short, just a bunch of initials to most people.

Big Bird, however, is different.  Big Bird is a symbol of how precious life is, especially the lives of our pre-school aged children who are hungry to learn their ABCs, to count to 20, and to share.  Big Bird symbolizes the potential that we all have within us to aspire, to be more, to be better, to live a fulfilling life, and above all, to learn the basic rules of civic behavior.

Fire Big Bird?!? Take away Big Bird’s funding?!? Not a chance. Not for my kids.  Not for their kids, either. And certainly not if my vote has anything to say about it.