Creative Economy: 13 Years of Avoiding Whiney Things

A couple of weeks ago, before all the brouhaha hit the Kansas Arts Commission, I attended the Creative Communities Exchange at MassMOCA in North Adams, MA. What a difference a 13 years makes!  Hosted by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) and Berkshire Creative, it was a two-day celebration of New England’s creative economy in a location that has become synonymous with the term.

In the summer of 1998 at Tanglewood, then-Boston Pops Music Director John Williams gave a talk to about 70 arts and business leaders from around New England.  The arts community had been through a major national crisis a few years earlier, the result of the Sen. Helms-inspired, Speaker Newt Gingrich-led Congressional effort to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.   John Williams presented a concept that had for a few years been gaining traction in Europe.  There was a new force at work in our communities,  one that most people were familiar with, but that was difficult to define and measure by most economic theorists and policy analysts.

Williams called it the “Creative Economy.”  To paraphrase his words, he said, the Creative Economy was what happens to a place when the arts are encouraged to thrive.  Not only is there an immediate and measurable economic benefit when public dollars are invested in the arts, but there is a far more lasting, though less easy to measure, improvement in the quality of life in a place.  People living in a creative community tend to care more about the aesthetics of their built spaces.  They care more about the quality of their schools.  They care more about the degree to which school-children are engaged in school and civic life.  They tend to trust the social contract that is implicit in the relationship between taxation and social services.  They tend to shop locally and support their own community’s efforts at revitalization.

At the time, the Berkshires had ridden out the economic downturns of the mid-1980s and early 1990s fairly well and, with the notable exception of Pittsfield (the county seat), had little difficulty with its recovery.  Why?  Because the significant presence of the arts throughout the length and breadth of the county was attracting visitors, wealthy second home-owners, and—most tellingly—entrepreneurs who, with a modem and a keyboard, could build their start-up from anywhere in the country so why NOT start up in the Berkshires?  From Great Barrington to Williamstown, from West Stockbridge to Otis, Berkshire County boasted nearly the same number of arts organizations in all of Vermont, and some of them were among the most prestigious organizations of their kind in the world. Collectively, they were an economic developer’s dream.

Today, 13 years later, even Pittsfield has joined its sister communities in Berkshire County and is, as a result of its mayor's eight-year commitment to investing in the arts, well on the road to recovery.

It was necessary, Maestro Williams concluded, for business and industry in New England, to understand the relationships that exist between and among all the sectors (public, private, and nonprofit) to support the Creative Economy as it grows and develops throughout the region.   Over the years different states, and even different regions within states, developed their own particular “brand” of Creative Economy. 

In Vermont, for example, most people think of the Creative Economy in terms of value-added agricultural food-products that are intimately connected to Vermont’s identity as a rural, slow-foods-oriented area.  In Boston and Providence, the Creative Economy is more closely identified with the technology industries—particularly in the areas of medical and entertainment services. 

Higher education was increasingly recognized for its role in shaping the 21^st century workforce, and it, in turn, began to sound the alarm to policy-makers about the our K-12 school system and its inability to prepare our children for those demands.

In all, a lot of great work has occurred in the 13 years since the term took root in New England’s fertile soil.  Two are worth mentioning.

First is MassMOCA itself.  We visited the newly-reopened converted mill in North Adams 13 years ago and while the museum was magnificent, the town of North Adams itself hadn’t quite caught up to the changes that were happening.  Now, it is safe to say, North Adams has made serious headway.  There were at least four restaurants between the Holiday Inn and the museum itself about 2 blocks away, and numerous galleries, studios, and small businesses dotting the downtown as well as a new (or apparently revitalized) Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.  The art at Mass MOCA was amazing (as usual) but it was no more amazing, from my perspective, than the town itself.

The second was the award given to Vermont’s own Robert McBride and RAMP (Rockingham Art and Museum Project) during the gathering.  With the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chair Rocco Landesman in attendance, and in front of more than 250 professionals from all over New England, Robert received the first “Creative Economy Award” presented by the NEFA.  Robert has been laboring for nearly 20 years in Bellows Falls, Vermont, to restore the center of Bellows Falls using the arts as a catalyst for business development and community revitalization.  That he was recognized in this setting, by a group of 250 of his closest professional colleagues was an honor of great significance for him and for Vermont.  Congratulations (again!) to Robert and his partners in the town of Rockingham and the Village of Bellows Falls. It is a well-deserved honor.

Best of all was what Robert said as he accepted the award.

“If you have creative people around the table with you, you’ll do creative things.  If you have whiney people around the table, you’ll do whiney things.  Ask yourself, what kind of table would you like to be at?”

Well put, Robert….

How Art Supports us All

It’s the time of year when budget discussions and funding priorities cause me to awaken each day with a need to prove to someone new that the arts matter; to explain that far from being a social amenity or, worse, a luxury for the elite, the arts provide vital connections among, and social, intellectual, and emotional content to, all parts of society.

I have put together a few examples of exactly how and why the arts really DO matter –not just to people directly involved in creating and presenting art, but to everyone.

A Town and Agency Dilemma

Several years ago we were asked by the Transportation Agency to see if the Arts Council could help it with a project in a town in the Northeast Kingdom.  The Agency and the town had—at that time—spent more than 25 years disagreeing with each other about how a federal highway, which doubled as the town’s “Main Street” would be rehabilitated to current USDOT standards without ruining the essential character of the village center and its village green.    

Within a matter of 20 months, artists had been selected to work with a town/agency committee, developed a design charrette that explored a variety of creative design solutions, the final result of which received the unanimous blessing of the town’s select board, its people, and the Agency.

The artists’ commitment to the project, and more importantly, their ideas, were an essential part of putting to rest the project’s troubled history and putting it on track.  And it wasn’t just the “art people” who benefitted.  It was the entire town—the vendors who sell their wares on the town green on market day; the kids who play catch on the green or enjoy the fall foliage festival, the folks who pay their local taxes at the town clerk’s office, or shop at the local country store.  The project breaks ground this April, and when, two years from now, the work is completed, the parking will be improved, the viewscape will be enhanced, the safety of pedestrians and passersby will be ensured, and dotted throughout the ¾-mile long “canvas” will be works of sculpture and built objects that will provide echoes of the towns past and markers for its future.

A few artists helped make it happen, but everyone benefits.

Poetry:     Out Loud but Not Heard

Six years ago, at the urging of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Council organized Vermont’s participation in an annual poetry recitation contest, similar in concept to the Scripps Spelling Bee Competition.  Each year one Vermont High School Champion is flown to Washington DC to compete for top honors in front of a distinguished panel of judges.  Winners get scholarships and their schools receive significant visibility and—perhaps more important—funds to purchase books.

Last week I and two colleagues attended a different kind of Poetry Out Loud competition—a pilot project with the Community School of Vermont whose students, for reasons that will soon be apparent, are unable to participate in the regular competition.  Our journey took us almost to the Canadian border, down a country road, through a parking lot next to a wall topped with coiled barbed wire, into a waiting area, through a “lock-down” portal and into the community activities room at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport.  There, six young men treated us and about 25 of their fellow inmates to an hour-long recital.

It was a two-week pilot, offered for credit, and these six young men were as passionate and professional as any other kid I’ve seen in the POL finals.  One or two might have suffered from a learning disorder, or a lack of schooling “on the outside.”  But the intensity they brought to their performance clearly showed how this project had reached them.  Two things were particularly noteworthy.  One was a poem written by Eddie* reflecting on the (presumably autobiographical) circumstances that put him in prison. “Lying there, stretched out on the pavement, he was dead.  And the gun was in my hand.  I hadn’t been man enough to walk the other way.  Now I had to run.”  In the next segment he read a work by Tupac Shakur: “The Fear in the Heart of a Man”: 

Against an attacker, I will boldly take my stand
because my heart will show, fear for no man
Before a broken heart, I run with fright
scared to be blind in the vulnerable night
I believe this fear is in every man
some will acknowledge it, others will fail to understand
  there's no fear in a shallow heart
because the shallow heart is faint and don't fall apart
because the shallow heart is faint don't fall apart
But feeling hearts that truly care
are fragile to the flow of air
And if I am to be true then I must give.. my fragile heart
my fragile heart

The second was a poem written by Michael *—a paean to “My Main Squeeze” in which he describes in great detail how his Main Squeeze is so important to him—is there for him night and day; there to inspire him; there to talk him through the lonely times; there to be nibbled on and caressed by his sweet lips; and who will be waiting for him when he gets out to help him put his life back in order…  His Main Squeeze, it turns out, is his ballpoint pen…

The poignancy of the first and the humor of the second was proof that these were not “average” people—assuming, that is, that one could look past their being incarcerated.  These six young men are in trouble now.  But what happens next? 

If the few thousand dollars we spent helps inspire even one of these six young men to turn his life around and stay out of prison—that is a huge savings to taxpayers and well-worth exploring further.  Again, a few artists make it happen, but everyone benefits.

Artists May Hide, but They Can Also Run…a business that is.

We hear it all the time.  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly be do that (fill out a form, learn to use a computer, apply for 501(C)(3) status, etc.).  I’m not a business person.  I’m an artist!”  Well tell that to Simon Pearce.  Tell it to Judi and Fred Danforth.  Tell it to Warren and Lorraine Kimble, to Sabra Field, to Grace Potter, to Charlie Shackleton and Miranda Thomas, to the good people at Wall Goldfinger and Conant Metal and Light, and to the hundreds of filmmakers and photographers and thousands of other creative artists and craftspeople around the state whose work adorns our walls and table-tops; whose songs fill our mp3 players and smart phones, and who employ hundreds, even thousands of “average” people in shops and studios around the state.

Next month the Council will host its fourth “Breaking into Business” Workshop in Windsor.  The word about these two-day intense workshops is out…we have more than 45 applicants for only 25 spots. 

Our constituents wanted our help in learning how to better market and promote their work, both in Vermont and beyond its borders.  They wanted the state to partner with them in promoting Vermont’s artists and art works.  They wanted help in learning how to take advantage of the internet and of social media and social marketing tools like websites, facebook and twitter.   They wanted to meet other like-minded people so they could share resources and provide mutual support. 

In a time of scarce resources, we have to help people make connections, provide them with training and support services and zero in on just a few critical skills that are really effective at helping people help themselves.  By helping one artist to become the next Simon Pearce or the next Judi Danforth, employing dozens of people in their manufacturing process, their gift shops, their fulfillment warehouses –we are helping others who aren’t artists.

All of which, by the way, are examples of how art supports me, you, your community, and the state Vermont.

Stay safe and be warm.

*Not their real names

100% Essential

We are lucky to have a President, a Congress, and in Vermont, a Governor and a State Legislature who generally agree that the arts matter. But one legacy of the "Culture Wars" is that many ill-informed media pundits continue to assert that the arts are a luxury. Now, with the economy in the shape it's in, I keep hearing that it is time for all "nonessential government expenditures" to be cut, including the arts.

Let's take a long look at why this would be a huge mistake.

On a macro level:
1) The arts are a huge part of our gross national product. Film, television, video games and music production are collectively considered one of the biggest sectors of our economy--certainly our biggest export. Imagine the artistic output that goes into a film like "Avatar." Now imagine that plot occurring on a planet that looked like the moon and not like the Amazon rainforest. Do you think Avatar would be the second best all-time ticket seller in the history of film? Not a chance.

Now ask yourself a simple question--where did all those artists and musicians and dancers and actors come from? Where were they trained? How did they learn to draw, to compose, to play, to develop plot lines, to use their imaginations to create whole universes outside our comprehension? If we turn off the spigot that fosters and encourages those artists during their childhood years, we will truly create a bleak future for ourselves.

2) The arts generate tourism. As far as I can tell, hardly anyone visited Bilbao, Spain until the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim opened in October of 1997. The same could be said of North Adams, Massachusetts. A depressed milltown opens up MassMOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and voila!--a tourism mecca is born. Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York tried to cut all public funding for the arts in retaliation for a work put on display at the Brooklyn Museum that he found offensive. He changed his mind when he learned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the combined arts groups that comprise Lincoln Center alone generate more tax revenue for the city of New York than the combined professional sports teams operating out of Yankee and Shea stadiums, the Meadowlands, and Madison Square Garden.

On a micro level:
1) Artistic decisions--or aesthetic decisions if you prefer--govern our individual behaviors every day. From deciding what to wear, and what make, model, and color car to drive; to what makes us choose our favorite restaurants and stores, or our favorite neighborhoods when it's time to buy a house and raise our families, how something looks or sounds or complements our personal aesthetic is almost always what causes you to decide to buy or not buy. Who makes all this stuff? And why did you buy the blue sweater and not the green sweater? If life is all about function rather than form, then we would have all evolved to wear the same clothes, drive the same cars, and enjoy the same activities. But form matters, which means design matters, which means the arts matter.

2) The arts exist, in part, to improve the human condition. For many, this is achieved through an exploration of the emotional or psychological connections that art conveys to the viewer. But for others, this is achieved in very concrete terms--in communities that renovate a community performance space (Vergennes, Derby Line, White River Junction and others) which fosters other business to locate nearby; entices good teachers to apply for jobs at the local school; and to provide a sense of place--of community well-being.

Ask yourself, why do you live and work where you do? I remember once asking a friend in DC what it was like to live in Crystal City (a complex of apartment buildings adjacent to National Airport with all its amenities like shopping and dining built underground). As a DC bedroom community it was ideal. Convenient, easy access to everywhere by Metro, and completely weatherproof. The problem, she said, was that it had no soul. It was a man-made moonscape across the river from one of the country's most vibrant cities. If she could have afforded to, she would have moved to DC in a heartbeat.

Most people will agree that responding to Haiti's needs is an essential government expense. So is fixing our own infrastructure and our own economy. Our government needs to figure out how to fund job-creation, learn how to effectively deal with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other extreme terrorist organizations without killing (and radicalizing) civilians. It needs to reorganize the delivery of affordable health care, and take care of its citizens who have the least capacity for caring for themselves. All of these are essential to restoring our government and our country to its position as a world leader.

Doing so, however, will take a lot of creative thought; a lot of anticipating the problems and rehearsing ways to get around them. It's going to take some creative vision to share what our world will look like after this exhausting and scary period is over. We're not going to do it by just listening to the economists and the militarists and the jihadists. We're going to have to listen the artists as well. They are the most creative problem-solvers and community builders among us.

So...essential? Absolutely! The arts matter now more than ever.

Eight Places to Visit in St. Johnsbury

The Arts Council held its fall retreat in St. Johnsbury recently, and if our experience there is any indication, people living in or planning to visit the Northeast Kingdom have a lot to look forward to in the coming years.

I've mentioned a few times in this blog about the efforts all over the Kingdom to collaborate on marketing and promotional efforts. Trying to develop a single-themed message about such a huge and diverse area of Vermont presents many challenges. There is the sustainable, value-added agricultural movement whose focal point appears to be Hardwick. There is the Nulhegan Basin (surrounding Island Pond) whose primary industries are wildlife recreation and (value-added) wood products. There are the two major ski resorts--Jay Peak and Burke Mountain-- and some world-class mountain biking to be had at Kingdom Trails. There are three colleges: Johnson State College (I know, technically in Lamoille County), Sterling College in Craftsbury and Lyndon State College that provide excellent post-secondary education experiences across a broad spectrum of disciplines that build on and feed the cultural and recreational sectors. And all through the Kindgom are located hundreds of artists and artisans--all of whom create a variety of works that can be found by visiting their studios, farmer's markets, or fairs and festivals.

The Northeast Kingdom Travel and Tourism Association serves as a collection point for all kinds of information about "things to do" in the Kingdom, from outdoor recreation, to agritourism, to cultural and heritage tourism. From North Troy and Jay to St. Johnsbury; and from Canaan to Hardwick the Northeast Kingdom is diverse, quirky, independent-minded, and--as our experience in St. Johnsbury proved--generous to an extreme.

Our meeting was held in the "new" Catamount Arts Center--the former Masonic Lodge next door to Catamount's old location. (sidebar: the old Catamount site has been bought and being converted to a studio recording house by Neko Case. Check her out!) Catamount Arts now boasts two cinemas, showing independent and foreign films daily--and even the latest digital performances from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera (the next one is Puccini's Turandot, airing November 7th). They also have a cabaret room in the basement (where we held our board meetings) which, along with a few other smaller utility rooms, serve as classrooms for people of all ages. They have a gallery just behind their ticket office which, during our meeting, was showing the Art of Vermont, an exhibition featuring works that are part of the State's significant art collection. Best of all, however was the incredible spirit flowing throughout the building--no doubt caused by the excitement generated by the performance and outreach programs put together by Jody Fried and his staff . Metaphorically speaking, Catamount Arts is one of the Northeast Kingdom's significant sources of renewable energy.

Within a stone's throw of Catamount are new fewer than seven other community/cultural institutions--almost all of which, over the years, have received significant facility or program support from the Council. The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium (Charlie Browne, Director) is a "must stop" for anyone visiting St. J , as is the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, the public library donated by the Fairbanks family which contains one of the great examples of Hudson River School Art, The Domes of Yosemite, by Albert Bierstadt, in its very accessible gallery.

The day after our Board meeting ended, I returned to the Athenaeum to attend a concert by Helena Baillie who performed the three Bach Partitas for violin as a benefit to raise money for the Athenaeum's new Steinway grand piano. It was a tour de force and I can only hope that Minnesota Public Radio, who recorded the event, will allow its Vermont affiliate to air the program. The Athenaeum's director, Irwin Gelber, is doing for the Athenaeum what Jody Fried is doing for Catamount. The energy and excitement in both places are palpable.

Across from the Athenaeum is the Caledonia Courthouse which has wonderful public art by photographer Michael Sacca and tapestries by Elizabeth Billings--installed about 10 years ago with Art in State Buildings funding when the Courthouse was significantly renovated.

Practically next door to the Courthouse is the South Congregational Church--a venue used by many arts groups looking for world class acoustics and significant seating capcity. Like the Catamount Center, The Fairbanks, Athenaeum, and Congregational Church have all received significant funding from the Council's Cultural Facilities Program over the years--as well as frequent program support.

And while we're still "on the hill" it hardly bears mentioning that the St. Johnsbury Academy is one of the preeminent secondary educational and cultural institutions in the New England. It boasts significant programs and instruction in the visual and performing arts--comparable in quantity and quality to such storied New England boarding school as Exeter, Andover and Milton Academies--and its guest artists' performances are almost always open to the public.

Just down the hill from Catamount Arts on Railroad Street is the new visitor's center (home of the NEK Chamber of Commerce in the old Railroad Depot)--again, a facility that has benefited from the Council's Cultural Facility program, and in the middle of the next block heading east on Rte 2 is the Northeast Kingdom Artisan's Guild, a gallery and store chock full of high quality arts and crafts. Those are the seven (eight, including Catamount) I know about--there probably are more.

I realize that this is sounding a lot like a travel writer's diary, but before I leave you to discover your own favorite part of St. Johnsbury, I have to mention the hardware store across from Catamount Arts where you can purchase just about anything you could possibly need for your home; the outstanding Elements Restaurant which had no problem accommodating the Council's board, staff and guests for dinner; and--perhaps the biggest surprise of all--the incredibly well-appointed Comfort Inn where several of us stayed.

St. Johnsbury--you really should see it for yourself. It's a great way to start your visit to Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.

Looking Forward

The Times-Argus recently printed an article which gave a pretty bleak assessment of state budget woes in the coming years. According to the article, this recession is "different from the three previous recessions...[because] employment and consumer spending aren't expected to bounce back as quickly."

Among the measures states will have to use to balance their budgets are to increase college tuition, reduce funding for the arts and other cultural programs, and push costs for employees and repairs into the future.

Thomas Friedman predicted this back in a June 2003 NY Times column. The federal government is out of money. The $789 billion it borrowed last spring will stave off some things for a while. But the budget crunch is, according to how I read Friedman, the result of services that used to be paid for with federal dollars (that, as taxes, are significantly less for you and me) now being paid for by the individual states (which, especially in a low population state like Vermont, are considerably more expensive for you and me).

I'm neither an economist nor an educator, but it seems strange to me that every time our government (federal, state, or local) gets into trouble financially they look first to the arts and to education to start restoring some sort of balance.

I can just hear the conversations around federal and state policy-maker's cabinet-room tables.
"What?! We have a deficit of 4 trillion dollars?!"" Shocking!!" "We must do something!" "I know, let's take away all funding for the arts at the federal AND state level. That will save us a solid $500 million. $350 million for the states, and $150 million for the feds." "Oh, good show, that should keep the middle class distracted and at bay for a few more years." "Well done!"

Trouble is, when the national debt is pushing $12 trillion and growing by nearly $4 billion a day, the problem will not be solved by cutting arts and education.

In fact, picking the arts first as a place to cut seems a little disingenuous...

Employment and revenues are the biggest problem (if you're a glass-half-full kind of person) or health care, interest payments on the debt, defense spending, social services, and corrections are the biggest problem (if you're a glass-half-empty kind of person). Either way you look at it, the arts sector and the education sector are a significant part of the solution to what is or is not in the glass.

The arts sector is a significant employer/training ground for much of what drives our high tech economy (where do you think, for example, the film and music industries get their talent from anyway?). After family, education is probably the single biggest indicator of how a person will become socialized as an adult. The longer one stays in school--or, more accurately, the longer one continues his/her commitment to learning, the more positive one's life experiences are likely to be.

Why in hell is anyone thinking of cutting these things?

Here's what I've learned over the years. With only a few brave, sometimes controversial exceptions (like Richard Florida), economists generally don't know what to do with "the cultural sector." It is a sector that has either matured in the past decade or so--usually well after most economists finished their graduate training, or it matured millennia ago and economists (and the policy-makers they advise) have lost touch with it.

In either case, today's economists and their their measuring tools are inadequate to the task. It is certainly possible keep track of ticket sales, and art purchases. But there is nothing other than the so-called "multiplier effect " that allows us to infer the kind of spending that goes on in parking lots, gas stations, restaurants, and hotels as the result of arts events. And that's just barely capturing the true value of the cultural sector.

How does an economist measure the impact of a teaching artist? Or the impact of a clustering of visual artists in run-down warehouse district? Or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? What tools has the economics profession developed that will convincingly relate the presence of a high-quality theater company or a cartoon school to the social and economic well-being of a village? (Yeah, White River Junction, that's a big shout-out to all of you! :))

What is it going to take for the soft science of economics to develop some harder edges where the arts and culture are concerned?

It seems to me that education and the arts are the absolute LAST places that government should cut. Biases aside, it's just not worth the price of elimination. Education is all about our future--our children's future. The arts are all about creativity and imagination.

We are going to need a lot of the latter if we are going to have a hope of delivering on the promise of the former.

So...if you want to do something to put a little more in the glass, click here. And, on behalf of artists and arts organizations in Vermont whose work inspires, thrills, entertains, and challenges us all, thank you for your ongoing support.

Vermont Value

It's official.
For the first time in my eleven plus years as director of the Vermont Arts Council a study conducted for the Vermont Council on Rural Development by The Center for Rural Studies (the same folks that conduct the annual "Vermonter Poll") has shown unequivocally that 89.2% of Vermonters believe that Vermont's creative communities are valuable to the state.
With a confidence interval of 99% and a margin of error of +/- 5%, the top seven values were:

• I value the working landscape and its heritage (97.2%)


• I am proud of being from or living in Vermont (93.6%)


• I value Vermont's spirit of independence (93.1%)


• I value the privacy I get in Vermont (91.0%)


• I believe Vermont's creative communities are valuable to the state (89.2%)


• I value the small size and scale of the state (87.9%)


• I trust my neighbors (86.2%)

If, at the end of each of these statements, one adds a connective word like "because" and then finishes the sentence, you will create a series of statements that might look like this:

• I value the working landscape and its heritage BECAUSE "homegrown" products and services have a special cache that consumers value.


• I am proud of being from or living in Vermont BECAUSE it was the first state to outlaw slavery, the first to embrace same-sex unions, and civil rights are very important to me.


• I value Vermont's spirit of independence BECAUSE I don't have to explain to my relatives from away why my political views are so different from theirs.


• I value the privacy I get in Vermont BECAUSE living in Vermont gives me the perfect excuse for not answering my cell phone, checking my email, or otherwise being in a constant state of connectedness.


• I believe Vermont's creative communities are valuable to the state BECAUSE they attract "cultural tourists" and bright, energetic, entrepreneurs to return to Vermont to start their businesses and raise their families.


• I value the small size and scale of the state BECAUSE it means my political voice is louder than it would otherwise be.


• I trust my neighbors BECAUSE they know when to pay attention when not to.

If you remove from the top seven values the five that are oriented towards the self, you are left with two values that have to do with things that are intrinsically valuable to Vermont: the first one (Working Landscape and its Heritage) and the fifth one (Creative Communities).

This is significant because the impulse that drives us to value the land and our heritage is the same impulse that drives us to value our creativity. This impulse might be caused by the presence of art, artists, and arts organizations in a community. It might also be caused by something more subtle like that which happens in a place when smart, creative people from any field put their minds together to get something exciting to happen (like vertically integrated, value-added farms that produce world-class award-winning cheeses or soy products). This "value" is essentially human-centered, built on relationships that sometimes go back generations and always built on a person's respect for his fellow man. It is creative, and it requires constant nurturing.

What is perhaps not so surprising is that it has taken so long for this value to be documented in a formal study. Six or eight times a year I attend a monthly meeting of a group of Vermont State marketing and promotional professionals and at the most recent one, we suffered through yet another presentation of the latest, greatest ad campaign exhorting people to come to Vermont.
There was not a lot of new material.

It was a case of the same old skiers and snowboarders, same old snow; same old fall-foliage walks down a country lane, same old trees; same old beautiful mature couple sipping warm cider and noshing on some of Cabot's finest, same old B&B; same old kayakers, same old lake.
Where is Vermont's culture? I asked. We only respond to what's in the data related to Vermont’s brand studies, was the response.

Well now. Here's a new study and a new thing to showcase...Vermont's Creative Communities. Nearly 90% of Vermonters believe them to be of value.

So get cracking, people. There's a whole new brand attribute for you to explore and a whole new group of players to involve. Start in Brattleboro or Bennington and work your way up to North Hero or North Troy. You'll have more creative material to entice people to visit Vermont than you'll know what to do with. You won't be disappointed.

Neither will the state economists who are charged with forecasting state tourism revenues. And neither will our elected leaders who are charged with creating a working environment that is conducive to business development.

The Word on the Street

The Word on the street is…

Uh-oh!

In response to deteriorating economic conditions, the State of Vermont has exacted its first “pound of flesh” from government agencies and is telling us to expect a second round of cuts in another month or two. The state is doing this because it is anticipating significant economic dislocation and social unease during the coming winter season. The state is encouraging municipalities and other "units of local control” to put in place emergency plans that will encourage neighbors and families to move in with each other, to purchase food staples in bulk, to car-pool, and even prepare to have sheriff’s deputies and/or the National Guard accompany heating oil delivery trucks on their rounds in case they are hijacked! Zoicks! Zounds! Is it really that bad? Evidently…

I appreciate the foresight it takes for people working in the public interest to cut costs and manage expectations in the face of a Vermont winter. But what I don’t get is why an administration that gets so specific with the “cost” side of the state’s budget is so frequently wrong about their revenue forecasts. I get frequent emails from the administration touting the fact that “income for the month exceeded forecasts by X million dollars.”

How does this happen? Don’t the budgeting pros know that every budget has an expense side and an income side? Don’t they know that some agencies’ impact is almost entirely on the income side of the budget, and that cutting their costs is, in effect, hurting the state’s ability to enhance its revenue? When are the Budget and Finance “experts” going to understand the relationship between the work that, say, the Tourism Dept., Parks and Recreation, the Film Commission, and the Arts Council does to market Vermont (including its products, services, culture and creative industries) and the State’s revenue?

A large portion of the state’s revenue comes from income tax. So what, you might ask, does the Arts Council have to do with job creation? If you ask people like Paul Millman of Chroma Technology who located his business in Bellows Falls, it was because the community was on the rise with a strong cultural sector and relatively low-cost housing. Entrepreneurs decide where they want to live first, then build their businesses there. The cultural sector is one of the leading “attractors” of business development and job creation in any community.

I think it goes even further.

I believe that the health of a community’s cultural sector is the best indicator of a community’s economic health and quality of life. The quality of schools is another great indicator. And if you have schools with great arts programs, you have achieved the “Quality of Life” trifecta because all three (schools, arts sector, and economy) are mutually dependent.

All of these attributes attract and retain businesses. And even when some businesses fail, these communities tend to weather it well enough to enable workers to reorganize, and create new businesses out of the ashes of the old.

It seems a bit short-sighted to me to be looking for a few thousand dollars here and there from these “revenue-enhancing” engines of state government, when the only sure result will be lower State revenue.

The next time the state’s revenue exceeds expectations by a significant margin, I’m going to suggest to the revenue forecasters that they find out why. I would love to know, once and for all, just how much does our state’s revenue depend on the health of its arts and cultural sector. I suspect it’s a lot more than people think. If that realization holds true, then maybe next time there is an economic downturn, the administration will actually INVEST money in the arts and cultural sector, not take it away!

Yuh…right.

CLEANING THE BASEMENT

Like many people I know, I do my most productive thinking while attending to menial tasks like driving, walking the dogs, or mowing the lawn. The tenor of my thoughts tends to reflect the type of disengaged activity I am doing at the time. My most ambitious thoughts occur when I am mowing the lawn and, with each pass of the mower, my mind expands in orderly progressions until I have cleaned up and straightened out all the problems of the world.

I tend to think about how to improve community life in Vermont when I walk the dogs. Hubbard Park is a beautiful setting, my dogs bound freely through the woods and greet each newcomer as old friends, and without any effort, my mind starts to ponder how the arts might continue to build that intangible thing called “social capital.”

It should come as no surprise then, that as I attacked my moldy basement with rubber gloves, plastic bags, a respirator, and some bleach, my thoughts turned to an increasingly dark and depressing place: the state of the arts in Vermont. Or more accurately, the state of the arts sector.

The arts themselves, if you ask the average guy in the street, appear to be flourishing. A lot is happening all over the state, from world-class music festivals to folk-based arts, crafts and food fairs, to exhibitions and local farmers markets, and history expos and historical reenactments, all of which feature some aspect of Vermont's prodigious creative output. We're ranked 4th in the nation in per capita amount of artists living in the state, and 1st in the nation for writers living here.

But the sector itself, particularly the organizations that are responsible for curating, presenting, preserving, and sustaining Vermont's artistic and cultural legacy are more fragile than ever.

This is a subject that many people, including me, have written about in the past. Baumol and Bowen in the mid 1960s were among the first economists to articulate the theory behind the inevitable decline in arts organizations due to their overwhelming reliance on human labor, the cost of which, over time, would geometrically out-pace an organization's arithmetic income-producing capacity. They forecast an inevitable "Malthus/Keynes v. Arts Organization Tag-Team Smackdown on Pay-Per-Vue" only we didn't really want to believe it. Well, start believing.

In case I haven't been this clear before: the sector is due for a shake-up—which may not be a bad thing. Ours is a mature field with many mature organizations (generally considered to be organizations that are at least 25 years old ). In the for-profit sector, where maximizing corporate profits rules decision-making, industry shake-ups occur regularly, if not frequently. Whole industries have been established to support this relentless drive towards economic efficiency and profitability. “Mergers and Acquisitions” are a subset of the banking and legal sectors. Bankruptcy is a great tool for capitalists, ensuring that the weak are culled from the herd as painlessly and efficiently as possible.

But in the not-for-profit sector, where virtually all organizations are mission-driven, and the profit motive is secondary (or in some unbelievable cases, nonexistent!), M&A and bankruptcy are incomprehensible alternatives. Why? If you peel away all the motivating factors it comes down to two things. First, boards and executives of not-for-profits (the former of which are almost always volunteers) don't want to be part of what many of their peers will consider a “failure”--the dismantling or reorganization of a charitable organization. Second, there are almost always a few very vocal community-members that, when their favorite charitable organization is threatened, reach into the deepest part of their hearts and rally just enough support to avert an immediate melt-down. Organizations who have, perhaps, outlived their original mission purpose, or that are so inefficiently managed that they are unsustainable, are thus allowed to survive for yet another year, operating at reduced capacity, with an ever-increasing bank of “ill-will” from suppliers, vendors, creditors and, yes, upstart competitors with newer, more efficient ideas.

If I'm right (and remember, I'm cleaning my basement here), how do we deal with this?

First and foremost, we have to change our mindset: We have to be PROFITABLE!!!

We have to re-examine our business model. We have to do a SWOT analysis to determine who the competition is and who our potential collaborators are. We have to get comfortable with adopting many of the practices of the for-profit sector in terms of devoting a significant percentage of our operating budgets to marketing and promoting our products and services. A quick scan a few years ago revealed that only a few organizations spend more than 15% on this expense, and most spend 5% or less. Why? Because "every extra dollar must go to program" --a phrase which has to be excised from our policy mind-sets.

Boards have to think of the resignation of an executive as an opportunity not just to stop and do a massive, national search for his or her replacement, but to consider—CONSIDER—reaching out to the arts organization up the road to see if it might be a good time to think about merging your two operations together.

We have to stop letting our administrators excuse or explain away a bad year by saying “but that's how we've always operated. This year it just didn't work!” We have to insist on professional development for managers so that at the very least, they can understand what their own financial statements are telling them about the health of their operations.

A colleague of mine in another part of the country had to tell a constituent why his operating grant had been severely reduced. In his first year as the director, the constituent had racked up a $500,000 deficit. To his credit, he had changed his management plan and for the subsequent four years, he had run a small, but positive annual fund balance (profit). To his own thinking, the director had a 4-1 record, four profitable years, and one (VERY) unprofitable year, and he couldn't understand why the grant review panel had cut his grant so much.

My colleague had to explain to him that his metaphor was wrong. His record wasn't 4-1. He was still in the same ballgame in which he had gotten behind by 500,000 runs in the first inning. At the top of the sixth inning the score was still 500,000 to 12,000. No for-profit would have carried that kind of deficit for that amount of time, and it was clear to the review panel, that this condition was severely cramping the organization's ability to fulfill its mission.

That's the mindset we need to be adopting.

And speaking of mindsets, I can't wait to be done with my basement and get back to walking my dogs and mowing the lawn.

CELEBRATE

In this week’s ArtMail we ask for nominations to receive the Council’s Governor’s Award in the Arts and the Walter Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts.

Why do we do this?

Several reasons…

The most obvious is because it provides all of us with an opportunity to come together in celebration of the work of a Vermont artist who has made a lasting impact on the arts, on the state of Vermont, and on some essential aspect of our humanity. There is something viscerally pleasant about being around someone while his or her work and influence is recognized and celebrated.

An equally important, but much less tangible reason we recognize our artists is to make sure that we retain—and even sustain—our connection to them. Recently I was party to a conversation among colleagues where the subject of “elitism and the arts” was raised. It was the same old discussion in which one person argues how “art” is usually something that only highly-educated, wealthy people with leisure time on their hands are able to enjoy. The response is usually along the lines of no, art is for everyone, it is a reflection of the human condition as seen through the eyes of someone who has the facility of communicating through visual means, dance, poetry, and other art forms. Blah blah blah. But then someone else observed:

“It’s not about elitism. It’s not about wealth, or access, or leisure time. It’s not that simple. What creates a separation between “us” (the people) and “them” (the artist and their work), is a sense of reverence for what “they” are able to do with a few brush strokes, a pen, a musical instrument, or an idea.”

Humans are drawn to those expressions like moths to a candle. How an artist’s work speaks to us, we may not quite understand. However, the more I am around great art and artists, the better I understand this sense of reverence that people direct towards them. It’s not an elitism thing, it’s a “wanting-to-be-connected-to-them” thing. It’s a connection that everyone should be allowed to experience often in their lives.

A third reason we recognize our artists is because someone who labors in the arts all their life is likely to get little else in the way of tangible remuneration. I had the pleasure of chatting with Ella Fitzgerald once back in the mid-1980s. She was well into her old age, but still making public appearances and, apparently, still “singing for her supper.” She was in a crowd and when I reached her I suggested we sit because she looked a little tired. She thanked me for my concern and I led her over to a seat and after a few words of small talk, I asked her, what brings you here tonight, performing for this particular crowd? Her answer stunned me:

I still have to pay the rent.

So, on behalf of all the Ella Fitzgeralds out there, please let us know who we should be celebrating. And while you’re thinking about it, make a donation to your local arts organizations or better yet, buy a work of art, or purchase that song you just downloaded from a friend.

Then join us in celebrating our next award recipients, whoever they may be.