On July 18th the State House hosted a gathering on Vermont’s Creative Economy, attended by 200 people from all walks of life. As part of the day’s activities, the Speaker of the House, Gaye Symington, spoke and during her speech offered these words: ”the Creative Economy is not just about decoration.”
With all due respect, Madam Speaker, I disagree.
I’m sure most people have heard the story of Prime Minister Churchill’s famous response, at the height of the blitz, to a ranking member of Britain’s war department who proposed closing the theaters and all other “non-essential” businesses in London. “Good God, man, what are we fighting FOR, then?!”
I take Speaker Symington’s remark about decoration as a metaphor for the arts and culture in general since yes, literally, she’s right—the Creative Economy is not just about “decoration.” The most compelling aspect of the Creative Economy is that it offers clear targets to policy makers who are trying to figure out how to best make strategic investments in areas that benefit the public. The Creative Economy forces the public at large to discuss with each other how they want their communities to function. Part of that functionality has to do with housing, streetscapes, and job-creation; part of it has to do with schools and how well they prepare our children; and part of it has to do with recreation and art and culture and the opportunities to build “social capital” in a place.
I maintain that one of the clearest indicators that a place is primed for investment, for job creation, and for raising a family, is the degree to which its cultural life is supported locally. In order for a cultural life to thrive, there must be opportunity, recreational outlets, good schools preparing kids for jobs and for life, and other attributes that attract entrepreneurs and young marrieds and provide them with the wherewithal to call that place “headquarters” or “home.”
Where most or all of these conditions exist, there you are most likely to find a thriving cultural life, (this is key) and vice versa! It has become accepted fact that in so many cases, art and culture has led the way to the revitalization of the community. Artists discover a community, and move into its marginal structures especially if they are large and cheap. After a while, collectors and “groupies” show up, followed soon after by restaurants, galleries, and other community service providers (like laundromats and hardware stores). Following these come more infrastructure and “business development” investment, including better schools. Soon you have a thriving, integrated community.
From Soho to North Adams; Santa Fe to Burlington, Savannah to Brandon, we in the cultural community have seen this pattern over and over again. To us, metaphorically speaking, it IS about the decoration.
But that is only part of why I disagree with Speaker Symington. The other part is a little more mundane. The arts and cultural community need new funds for investing, for marketing and promoting its products and services, for developing its future leaders and sustaining its core institutions. As a sector within the Creative Economy, Art and Culture is far more sophisticated than it has ever been. We are creative collaborators. We are problem-solvers. We are trained to look at the unknown and revel in its possiblities. For us, a blank canvas, a blank score sheet, an empty, dark stage is an opportunity to try something new—to explore new cultures, new ways of communicating. And where the engineer is creative in that if you have a problem he/she will find a way to solve it, an artist is creative in that he/she will look at the engineer’s solution and say, “Cool—what else will it do?”
That approach is what sustains our popular culture today. Robert Moog took the contraption that created electronic tones and made the first functional synthesizer. But it was Walter (now Wendy) Carlos who created Switched On Bach and spawned a mega-industry that remains the United States’ number one export—popular culture.
But we have one problem…our history of marginalizing our artists and our culture because their outputs are considered “a luxury” by policy makers. Why is this? Is it because we have allowed the debate about the value of the arts to be centered on “how expensive it is” instead of “how many benefits are reaped as a result of investing in it?”
Value-added and niche-product Agriculture has a champion in Vermont in the multi-million dollar Agency of Agriculture. The money is there to be invested in ways that support “creative economy approaches to agriculture.” All it takes is a little political will.
But not so for the arts and cultural sector. We are historically under-resourced, and forced to compete among ourselves for an ever-dwindling supply of corporate and individual contributors. I for one am tired of this approach. We have solutions that can help our prisons, our state hospital, our schools, our communities, and our souls. If nothing else, the Creative Economy HAS to be about Art and Culture.
It’s like the social worker in South Bronx said 10 years ago: “We have all the money we need to fix the drug and homeless problem. What we are lacking are the aesthetic things that make life worth living—that make a community care enough about itself to make a difference. How about a garden with beautiful flowers? How about some art?”
For him, it is all about the decoration. For us too.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Welcoming the Creative Economy
A little more than 9 years ago I had the pleasure of representing Vermont at a small conference at the Tanglewood Center for the Performing Arts in Lenox, Massachusetts. The keynote speaker was John Williams (perhaps the most respected and successful composer/arranger/conductors of all time, especially for films) and in the course of his talk he introduced the phrase “creative economy” to me and the 50 or so other attendees from all over New England. Mr. Williams was surprised that at a reception earlier he had overheard a member of the economic development “establishment” in the Massachusetts State House wonder why, despite all indicators elsewhere in the state that showed the Massachusetts economy tanking, Berkshire County seemed immune. “Wasn’t it obvious?” asked Williams. “It’s because the Arts Organizations in Berkshire County have formed the backbone of what I refer to as its Creative Economy.”
Fast forward nine years—past two regional studies conducted by The New England Council (a regional Chamber of Commerce), numerous regional gatherings from Maine to Connecticut, and, in Vermont, thousands of hours of community-based planning meetings held in more than a dozen towns and villages in Vermont alone, not to mention additional work done locally throughout Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts—and the phrase has finally become a movement.
We can thank Paul Costello and the Vermont Council on Rural Development for that. For all the time I and the Vermont Arts Council have invested in promoting the Creative Economy, we couldn’t have done half as good a job as putting it in front of policy makers in Vermont as Paul and the VCRD have done.
On July 18th they will showcase what the Creative Economy really is in a conference entitled “Advancing Vermont’s Creative Economy”. The daylong “summit” at the Vermont State House will celebrate models of community success and explore how Vermont can best understand and adopt policies and programs that not only improve the state’s economic situation, but do so in a way that enhances and protects the quality of life Vermonters have come to value almost above all else.
The Creative Economy is not a Thing—it’s more like a state of mind. It is the set of conditions that must exist in a place in order for there to be a thriving sense of community with all that word implies—a good school system, good jobs, accessible cultural and recreational amenities, people who care about their neighbors, and about the condition of the world at large, and so on. And it is the result of what happens in a community when all of those amenities (schools, cultural institutions, etc.) are allowed to flourish: entrepreneurs, young marrieds, wealthy retirees, social engineers, are ATTRACTED to such places. They create jobs and families, build social networks, care for each other and foster a sense of shared values that gets passed on to future generations.
Last week I got an email from the head of our National State Arts Agency Association. He wrote, “The not-for-profit arts world is engaged in entrepreneurial adapting and hybridizing … to address the always increasing relative expense of labor-intensive endeavors in a technological society, to diversify revenues, and to aggregate capital in ways that enable it to compete with for-profit leisure time providers.”
(I actually spent some time deciphering this DC-speak) He’s saying what we in Vermont already know—or will certainly find out on July 18th. We have to adapt to survive. We have to identify and welcome new partners. We have to identify and adopt new practices and procedures. We have to encourage our institutions to develop what social scientists refer to as “a culture of change.” We have to welcome new ideas and not be afraid of them.
We have to welcome the Creative Economy.
Fast forward nine years—past two regional studies conducted by The New England Council (a regional Chamber of Commerce), numerous regional gatherings from Maine to Connecticut, and, in Vermont, thousands of hours of community-based planning meetings held in more than a dozen towns and villages in Vermont alone, not to mention additional work done locally throughout Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts—and the phrase has finally become a movement.
We can thank Paul Costello and the Vermont Council on Rural Development for that. For all the time I and the Vermont Arts Council have invested in promoting the Creative Economy, we couldn’t have done half as good a job as putting it in front of policy makers in Vermont as Paul and the VCRD have done.
On July 18th they will showcase what the Creative Economy really is in a conference entitled “Advancing Vermont’s Creative Economy”. The daylong “summit” at the Vermont State House will celebrate models of community success and explore how Vermont can best understand and adopt policies and programs that not only improve the state’s economic situation, but do so in a way that enhances and protects the quality of life Vermonters have come to value almost above all else.
The Creative Economy is not a Thing—it’s more like a state of mind. It is the set of conditions that must exist in a place in order for there to be a thriving sense of community with all that word implies—a good school system, good jobs, accessible cultural and recreational amenities, people who care about their neighbors, and about the condition of the world at large, and so on. And it is the result of what happens in a community when all of those amenities (schools, cultural institutions, etc.) are allowed to flourish: entrepreneurs, young marrieds, wealthy retirees, social engineers, are ATTRACTED to such places. They create jobs and families, build social networks, care for each other and foster a sense of shared values that gets passed on to future generations.
Last week I got an email from the head of our National State Arts Agency Association. He wrote, “The not-for-profit arts world is engaged in entrepreneurial adapting and hybridizing … to address the always increasing relative expense of labor-intensive endeavors in a technological society, to diversify revenues, and to aggregate capital in ways that enable it to compete with for-profit leisure time providers.”
(I actually spent some time deciphering this DC-speak) He’s saying what we in Vermont already know—or will certainly find out on July 18th. We have to adapt to survive. We have to identify and welcome new partners. We have to identify and adopt new practices and procedures. We have to encourage our institutions to develop what social scientists refer to as “a culture of change.” We have to welcome new ideas and not be afraid of them.
We have to welcome the Creative Economy.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Hard Work
For the past couple of years I have had the pleasure of sharing a significant part of my summer with my children performing at a small theater company here in Central Vermont. I started out as a “child wrangler” while my three sons were in the chorus of “Annie.” Last year I graduated to a part (Lazar Wolf) in “Fiddler on the Roof” (the boys were cast as choristers/villagers), and this year my 12-year-old boys and 10-year-old daughter were cast as waifs and thieves and I as Mr. Brownlow in “Oliver.”
This could be an essay about the importance of spending time with your kids and creating lasting memories that no photo album or journal could adequately capture. It could also be an essay about the joy of community theater.
But it’s an essay on that which is often overlooked by people who haven’t worked behind the scenes to produce a theater, music, dance or other arts event. This is about the HARD WORK that goes into making these productions come to life and the valuable lessons learned in the process.
All our friends say, “You must be having such a great time doing such a great show with such great people” “Yeah”, I say, “but it’s also HARD WORK.”
Except for a half-hour break for meals, every moment we are at the theater is taken up working on dance routines, rehearsing our lines, going over our blocking, and figuring out our characters’ reasons for behaving the way they do. The fact is that as much fun as the end product is, as effortless as the choreography and singing appears to people in the audience, and as cool and self-assured as we players pretend to be—it really all comes down to those two words: HARD WORK.
All four of my children know all the songs and all the lines of everyone in the show and I think my kids get a great deal of pleasure in watching Dad stumble over the words to the fourth (or is it fifth?) verse of Food Glorious Food for the 20th time. But delightful and chipper as they feel at the beginning of rehearsal, they are stone tired and in a foul mood by the end of rehearsal. Why? HARD WORK.
At home the kids tend to be slobs…leaving their clothes (costumes) and their toys (props) in discrete piles all over the place.
Not at the theater.
At home Mom and Dad make sure they get their homework done, get to bed on time, eat food that is good for them (hahahaha!), and take them to their next play date.
Not at the theater.
At the theater, they have to learn their own lines, rest when they can, eat what is served to them (and say thank you as well), and get themselves to their next entrance, on time and on cue.
At the theater, they are on their own. They depend on each other to know who does what in the correct sequence. They have to take care of their own costumes, know where their own dance shoes are, clean up their own area after dinner, wash their hands, preset their own props and put them back at the end of the scene, say their lines in the proper order, and dance with other kids who aren’t even of the same sex (yuck)!!!
Then, when they’ve run every scene perfectly in sequence—twice—and they have demonstrated they know what to wear, what to say, what to sing, and how to dance, they have to do it all over again…“from the top.”
My daughter, for whom this is a first-time experience, looked up with a very tired expression on her face after the first week of rehearsals. “Dad,” she said, “for two years I’ve been so jealous of you and my brothers going off every day to rehearsals. How come you didn’t tell me this was such HARD WORK!?”
It’s all I can do to keep the smile off my face.
This could be an essay about the importance of spending time with your kids and creating lasting memories that no photo album or journal could adequately capture. It could also be an essay about the joy of community theater.
But it’s an essay on that which is often overlooked by people who haven’t worked behind the scenes to produce a theater, music, dance or other arts event. This is about the HARD WORK that goes into making these productions come to life and the valuable lessons learned in the process.
All our friends say, “You must be having such a great time doing such a great show with such great people” “Yeah”, I say, “but it’s also HARD WORK.”
Except for a half-hour break for meals, every moment we are at the theater is taken up working on dance routines, rehearsing our lines, going over our blocking, and figuring out our characters’ reasons for behaving the way they do. The fact is that as much fun as the end product is, as effortless as the choreography and singing appears to people in the audience, and as cool and self-assured as we players pretend to be—it really all comes down to those two words: HARD WORK.
All four of my children know all the songs and all the lines of everyone in the show and I think my kids get a great deal of pleasure in watching Dad stumble over the words to the fourth (or is it fifth?) verse of Food Glorious Food for the 20th time. But delightful and chipper as they feel at the beginning of rehearsal, they are stone tired and in a foul mood by the end of rehearsal. Why? HARD WORK.
At home the kids tend to be slobs…leaving their clothes (costumes) and their toys (props) in discrete piles all over the place.
Not at the theater.
At home Mom and Dad make sure they get their homework done, get to bed on time, eat food that is good for them (hahahaha!), and take them to their next play date.
Not at the theater.
At the theater, they have to learn their own lines, rest when they can, eat what is served to them (and say thank you as well), and get themselves to their next entrance, on time and on cue.
At the theater, they are on their own. They depend on each other to know who does what in the correct sequence. They have to take care of their own costumes, know where their own dance shoes are, clean up their own area after dinner, wash their hands, preset their own props and put them back at the end of the scene, say their lines in the proper order, and dance with other kids who aren’t even of the same sex (yuck)!!!
Then, when they’ve run every scene perfectly in sequence—twice—and they have demonstrated they know what to wear, what to say, what to sing, and how to dance, they have to do it all over again…“from the top.”
My daughter, for whom this is a first-time experience, looked up with a very tired expression on her face after the first week of rehearsals. “Dad,” she said, “for two years I’ve been so jealous of you and my brothers going off every day to rehearsals. How come you didn’t tell me this was such HARD WORK!?”
It’s all I can do to keep the smile off my face.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Believe it or not, You are a Business-Person
As Director of the Arts Council I have become used to conversations in which someone insists that arts managers and artists are “just as important” to the fabric of a community as business people. I always make the point of disagreeing with these well-meaning folk, but not for the reason you think. You see, I believe that artists and arts managers are important to the fabric of a community because they ARE business people! And many other things besides!
The following was received by us last week in reference to our Arts Calendar:
“Dear Arts Council: I am with [name withheld] from [location withheld] and I am trying to list one of our [events] which has somehow been omitted from your events calendar. When I try to list this I am told that I must be a Vermont business person!? We are a nonprofit summer [discipline withheld] festival, not a business. Will you please list our event for us? We would appreciate it ever so much...”
Let me attempt to use this as an educational moment, and ask a series of questions in return.
1) Does your festival employ anyone?
2) Does your festival sell tickets?
3) Do you, as its manager, engage the services of volunteers?
4) Do you engage the services of contractors (from musicians/artists to lawn-care professionals)?
5) Does it pay any sales taxes?
6) Do its employees pay income taxes?
7) Does it occupy space that needs climate control or lighting, and if so, do you or anyone else pay for it?
8) Do you or anyone else pay for telephone or computer connection services?
9) Do you or anyone else pay for program/brochure design/production/mailing services?
10) Do you report to the IRS using a Form 990 (or any of its variants including the about-to-be-required-of-all-nonprofits-whose-annual-operating-budget-is-under-$25,000 Form 990-N)?
11) Do you, as chief executive officer, report to a Board of Directors?
12) Does your organization have Bylaws?
13) Is your organization registered as a Vermont corporation with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office?
If the answer to ANY of these questions is “yes,” guess what? You run a business. You are a business-person.
And this isn’t just true for you if you are an arts administrator.
If you are in individual (a so-called “sole proprietor”) who brings a bunch of friends together to create art and showcase it to an audience (who either buys tickets or buys the art), or an individual who creates art in the hopes that someone will buy it, guess what? You, too, run a business. You are a business-person.
A local Chamber of Commerce executive director even referred, just last month in fact, to individual artists as perhaps “the purest form of business person” because (and I paraphrase) “they do it all, from creating the product, taking it to market, selling it, paying taxes (reporting), and thinking long term about what they will do next.”
Isn’t this the essence of running a business? And, since you DO run a business, doesn’t it make sense to take advantage of the same services that are offered (often free of charge) by the State of Vermont and federal government to business people from the private, for-profit sector? Ever logged onto the SBA website? How about USDA’s website? How about the services provided by your local Chamber? Most have pretty good insurance programs for small businesses.
The bottom line is that the essential difference between a for-profit business and a not-for-profit sector business is that: (are you ready?)
The mission of a for-profit business is to maximize net revenues for the owner(s) of the business. The mission of a not-for-profit business is almost always a statement about the public benefits that will accrue as maximized net revenues are plowed back into programs and services designed to achieve the mission-related goals.
That’s it.
Both for-profit and not-for-profit companies maximize net revenue, but for some reason not-for-profits often to do so by, in part, under-compensating employees and skimping severely on marketing and promotion costs. One wonders why?
If you labor under the impression that not-for-profit businesses should not be paying competitive wages because providing service to the constituent is all-important, for goodness’ sake, treat your volunteers well! If you labor under the impression that anything more than 15% for administrative expenses is a waste of donor dollars and you consider marketing and promotion to be an administrative expense, welcome to the slippery slope to insolvency, in which employee burnout is exceeded only by board confusion about where it all went sour.
“But!” you say, “You’re wrong! Our overhead (including marketing and promotion) is 15%, we sell out every year, we have a healthy bottom line, we pay our people well, and we are a community institution with a great and long-standing reputation for artistic excellence.” Bravo! You may be one of those proverbial exceptions that prove the rule.
The fact is that 20% of form 990 filers in Vermont have operated with a deficit for the past three years, and 10% of form 990 filers actually have a negative fund balance. Equally scary, about 15% of form 990 filers have barely enough operating capital to survive a month should a major funding stream disappear.
Remember, the true opposite of “for-profit” is not “not-for-profit.” It’s bankruptcy.
That is the lesson for the day.
So if you believe you don’t run a business (and you are an arts manager or an artist); and/or
If you aren’t making sure that your organization is setting aside a healthy percentage for administrative costs and even MORE for PR and marketing; and/or
If you experiencing what I call “employee churn” (staff stays for a maximum of a year before moving on to higher-paid positions elsewhere); and/or
If operating deficits don’t seem to bother the you because you and your board are totally devoted to your mission to the point where everything and everyone must be sacrificed to it; and/or
If closing up shop (i.e. bankruptcy) simply isn’t an option; then perhaps it’s time to start thinking about another private-sector strategy: mergers and acquisitions.
Is your organization ready for this conversation? If not, be aware of one very interesting cognitive dissonance: more and more, when talking to people in Vermont who enjoy its arts and cultural offerings, I hear “Vermont is terrific! There is so much to do! So much great stuff going on; so many terrific artists doing such great work on any given weekend, we almost don’t know where to go first! Vermont’s in great shape!”
Is it? You tell us…
We have a survey out to artists, arts educators, and arts administrators. If you fall into one of those three categories and you haven’t filled a survey out yet, please do so. I think the results will surprise us all.
The following was received by us last week in reference to our Arts Calendar:
“Dear Arts Council: I am with [name withheld] from [location withheld] and I am trying to list one of our [events] which has somehow been omitted from your events calendar. When I try to list this I am told that I must be a Vermont business person!? We are a nonprofit summer [discipline withheld] festival, not a business. Will you please list our event for us? We would appreciate it ever so much...”
Let me attempt to use this as an educational moment, and ask a series of questions in return.
1) Does your festival employ anyone?
2) Does your festival sell tickets?
3) Do you, as its manager, engage the services of volunteers?
4) Do you engage the services of contractors (from musicians/artists to lawn-care professionals)?
5) Does it pay any sales taxes?
6) Do its employees pay income taxes?
7) Does it occupy space that needs climate control or lighting, and if so, do you or anyone else pay for it?
8) Do you or anyone else pay for telephone or computer connection services?
9) Do you or anyone else pay for program/brochure design/production/mailing services?
10) Do you report to the IRS using a Form 990 (or any of its variants including the about-to-be-required-of-all-nonprofits-whose-annual-operating-budget-is-under-$25,000 Form 990-N)?
11) Do you, as chief executive officer, report to a Board of Directors?
12) Does your organization have Bylaws?
13) Is your organization registered as a Vermont corporation with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office?
If the answer to ANY of these questions is “yes,” guess what? You run a business. You are a business-person.
And this isn’t just true for you if you are an arts administrator.
If you are in individual (a so-called “sole proprietor”) who brings a bunch of friends together to create art and showcase it to an audience (who either buys tickets or buys the art), or an individual who creates art in the hopes that someone will buy it, guess what? You, too, run a business. You are a business-person.
A local Chamber of Commerce executive director even referred, just last month in fact, to individual artists as perhaps “the purest form of business person” because (and I paraphrase) “they do it all, from creating the product, taking it to market, selling it, paying taxes (reporting), and thinking long term about what they will do next.”
Isn’t this the essence of running a business? And, since you DO run a business, doesn’t it make sense to take advantage of the same services that are offered (often free of charge) by the State of Vermont and federal government to business people from the private, for-profit sector? Ever logged onto the SBA website? How about USDA’s website? How about the services provided by your local Chamber? Most have pretty good insurance programs for small businesses.
The bottom line is that the essential difference between a for-profit business and a not-for-profit sector business is that: (are you ready?)
The mission of a for-profit business is to maximize net revenues for the owner(s) of the business. The mission of a not-for-profit business is almost always a statement about the public benefits that will accrue as maximized net revenues are plowed back into programs and services designed to achieve the mission-related goals.
That’s it.
Both for-profit and not-for-profit companies maximize net revenue, but for some reason not-for-profits often to do so by, in part, under-compensating employees and skimping severely on marketing and promotion costs. One wonders why?
If you labor under the impression that not-for-profit businesses should not be paying competitive wages because providing service to the constituent is all-important, for goodness’ sake, treat your volunteers well! If you labor under the impression that anything more than 15% for administrative expenses is a waste of donor dollars and you consider marketing and promotion to be an administrative expense, welcome to the slippery slope to insolvency, in which employee burnout is exceeded only by board confusion about where it all went sour.
“But!” you say, “You’re wrong! Our overhead (including marketing and promotion) is 15%, we sell out every year, we have a healthy bottom line, we pay our people well, and we are a community institution with a great and long-standing reputation for artistic excellence.” Bravo! You may be one of those proverbial exceptions that prove the rule.
The fact is that 20% of form 990 filers in Vermont have operated with a deficit for the past three years, and 10% of form 990 filers actually have a negative fund balance. Equally scary, about 15% of form 990 filers have barely enough operating capital to survive a month should a major funding stream disappear.
Remember, the true opposite of “for-profit” is not “not-for-profit.” It’s bankruptcy.
That is the lesson for the day.
So if you believe you don’t run a business (and you are an arts manager or an artist); and/or
If you aren’t making sure that your organization is setting aside a healthy percentage for administrative costs and even MORE for PR and marketing; and/or
If you experiencing what I call “employee churn” (staff stays for a maximum of a year before moving on to higher-paid positions elsewhere); and/or
If operating deficits don’t seem to bother the you because you and your board are totally devoted to your mission to the point where everything and everyone must be sacrificed to it; and/or
If closing up shop (i.e. bankruptcy) simply isn’t an option; then perhaps it’s time to start thinking about another private-sector strategy: mergers and acquisitions.
Is your organization ready for this conversation? If not, be aware of one very interesting cognitive dissonance: more and more, when talking to people in Vermont who enjoy its arts and cultural offerings, I hear “Vermont is terrific! There is so much to do! So much great stuff going on; so many terrific artists doing such great work on any given weekend, we almost don’t know where to go first! Vermont’s in great shape!”
Is it? You tell us…
We have a survey out to artists, arts educators, and arts administrators. If you fall into one of those three categories and you haven’t filled a survey out yet, please do so. I think the results will surprise us all.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
VERMONT DAYS HOME VIDEO CONTEST
Ahhh…the long days of spring and early summer. A perfect time to get out and enjoy the beautiful natural scenery Vermont offers. Visit your local park; take a hike, ride a bike on a trail, teach your kid to fish, and wind it all up with a concert at your local historical site. Sounds like an ideal way to bond with your soul, not to mention your family and friends, right?Actually, Vermonters do it all the time and on one weekend each year, “Vermont Days” weekend (June 9th and 10th), you can do it all for free, thanks to a collaborative effort of your friendly state agencies of Commerce, Natural Resources, and the Arts Council.
This year, however, with a lot of encouragement from Loranne Turgeon (interim Film Commissioner) we have added a new layer of opportunity to the mix. You know your favorite commercials, like most of the ones you see during any given Super Bowl? The ones that tell a story? The ones that you remember?
We want you to grab your digital video camera, go out and have fun during Vermont Days (next week!), and create a one- to two-minute film about your experience. You can think of it as being your own personal commercial. Or you can think of it as your own (2-minute) “Godfather, part 4.” (Okay, maybe “Dances with Moose” might be more contextual.)
The point is, we want you to enjoy Vermont Days (why not, since you live here?), take some footage, and share it with us. It’s a contest, but a very low-impact, low-budget contest. The rules in fact say, “Winners will receive some really cool stuff.” We mean it!
Think “America’s Funniest Home Videos goes to Cannes” and you’ll have the idea. So please, check your batteries. Bone up on your downloading skills (or is it uploading skills?), and enjoy Vermont Days. You won’t regret it!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Steamed and Ready to Roll: 2007 Congressional Arts Competition
Monday, May 14th, was a day of transition in Vermont. For the first time, the statewide, high school art competition came to a close and Sen. Jim Jeffords was not front and center doing what he loved most—talking to kids, exhorting them to greater heights of accomplishment, and basking in the admiration of his young cultural constituents.
That pleasure belongs now to Congressman Peter Welch who did an admirable job in bridging what the esteemed Senator started 26 years ago when he was in the US House of Representatives. VIEW PHOTOS OF THE WINNERS' ARTWORK
My role was to present the “People’s Choice Award” (to Armando Veve of South Burlington) and I used this opportunity to expound on the latest of my “soapbox” ideas. At past events, I have talked about the alternative to the Education Community’s worn “3 Rs”—the “3 As” (Academics, Athletics, and the Arts)—as a means to engage individual students, entire schools and even school systems in a more integrated and creative approach to learning. I have also exhorted students in the room, contrary to exhortations by the Governor and other members of the administration, “to leave Vermont as soon as they are able, put the great Vermont values they were raised with to the test in as many different cultural settings as possible, and only when they are good and ready to settle down, create a job, have a family, THEN come back to Vermont!”
This time I had a new soap box to stand on.
It seems that policy-makers, in particular the group that has been appointed to serve on the Governor’s task force to examine the economic development future of Vermont, chaired by Bill Stenger (of Jay Peak), have come up with a new acronym to capture the what students need to know as they prepare themselves for Vermont’s 21st Century workforce.
It is “STEM” which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math.
(You see where I’m headed, don’t you? Of course you do; you’re probably one of the so-called “cultural creatives” whose hidden talent is to see connections where others don’t!)
Like the 3 Rs (which aren’t), STEM leaves out the crucial part of student learning that allows them to access the right side of their brains. In an age where magazines like Forbes and Business Week are touting such things as “the MFA is the new MBA,” and where medical schools like Columbia are requiring students to go to art museums to increase their observational skills and learn how to better communicate about things that are subjective and interpretive, and where people like Daniel Pink (author of “A Whole New Mind”) are earning $25,000 a pop for lecturing on the value of integrating right-brained thinking into business, it is astonishing to me that our policy-makers are so slow to recognize the value of the arts.
STEM should be STEAM. All of us should make it clear to our elected and appointed officials at the state and local level (especially school boards!) that STEAM (not renewables!) is the potent force of the future.
Of course, if STEAM doesn’t do it for you, perhaps TEAMS will. Or MEATS (if it’s lunchtime). Or even MATES (if you are on the prowl or like to play chess).
The point is, it’s time for the Arts to be shared by more than just the artist community. Let’s make it happen. Full steam ahead.
That pleasure belongs now to Congressman Peter Welch who did an admirable job in bridging what the esteemed Senator started 26 years ago when he was in the US House of Representatives. VIEW PHOTOS OF THE WINNERS' ARTWORK
My role was to present the “People’s Choice Award” (to Armando Veve of South Burlington) and I used this opportunity to expound on the latest of my “soapbox” ideas. At past events, I have talked about the alternative to the Education Community’s worn “3 Rs”—the “3 As” (Academics, Athletics, and the Arts)—as a means to engage individual students, entire schools and even school systems in a more integrated and creative approach to learning. I have also exhorted students in the room, contrary to exhortations by the Governor and other members of the administration, “to leave Vermont as soon as they are able, put the great Vermont values they were raised with to the test in as many different cultural settings as possible, and only when they are good and ready to settle down, create a job, have a family, THEN come back to Vermont!”
This time I had a new soap box to stand on.
It seems that policy-makers, in particular the group that has been appointed to serve on the Governor’s task force to examine the economic development future of Vermont, chaired by Bill Stenger (of Jay Peak), have come up with a new acronym to capture the what students need to know as they prepare themselves for Vermont’s 21st Century workforce.
It is “STEM” which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math.
(You see where I’m headed, don’t you? Of course you do; you’re probably one of the so-called “cultural creatives” whose hidden talent is to see connections where others don’t!)
Like the 3 Rs (which aren’t), STEM leaves out the crucial part of student learning that allows them to access the right side of their brains. In an age where magazines like Forbes and Business Week are touting such things as “the MFA is the new MBA,” and where medical schools like Columbia are requiring students to go to art museums to increase their observational skills and learn how to better communicate about things that are subjective and interpretive, and where people like Daniel Pink (author of “A Whole New Mind”) are earning $25,000 a pop for lecturing on the value of integrating right-brained thinking into business, it is astonishing to me that our policy-makers are so slow to recognize the value of the arts.
STEM should be STEAM. All of us should make it clear to our elected and appointed officials at the state and local level (especially school boards!) that STEAM (not renewables!) is the potent force of the future.
Of course, if STEAM doesn’t do it for you, perhaps TEAMS will. Or MEATS (if it’s lunchtime). Or even MATES (if you are on the prowl or like to play chess).
The point is, it’s time for the Arts to be shared by more than just the artist community. Let’s make it happen. Full steam ahead.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
OUR FIVE-YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN: 2008-2012
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 rue the moment I thought to myself, why pay a consultant when we can easily do this ourselves. Well, I have just four words to say to myself for that thought: What was I THINKING!?
The good news is, we are now ready to share our most recent draft with all of you.
I am going to tell you what is in the document. And then I’m going to tell you how we got there. And finally I will ask you to read it and give us—me, actually—your feedback.
What’s in the document is exactly what you would expect to be in a document of this type only without any of the boring details of exactly how many people we met with over the last 12 months, where we met with them, what we talked about, the questions we raised, the questions we tried to answer. Remember, this is a draft for comment, and some of the research is still being done (surveys to artists and arts organizations, for example) which will help refine future drafts and the final product.
But for now, there’s an Introduction which explains why we plan. Then there is a brief Executive Summary which, at least on the web, will have internal links that will get you directly to the meat of the plan. Next there is a background section which gives information about the national trends and research, and work done here in Vermont around the Creative Economy, the Palettes project, and other items that will give you a kind of “environmental context” for the plan itself, including our all-important mission/vision/values statements.
And then there is the Plan with its three very straightforward goals, two of which are directed outwards towards our constituencies, our supporters, or collaborators, and our Governor and Legislature; and the third of which is directed inward towards the Council itself.
How did we arrive at this plan? I know it seems hard to believe, but it was mainly by listening. The work of the Council is always so much greater than the sum of its parts. But it is the many parts working together that drafted this plan. Among the most influential parts of the planning process was the many days spent on the road visiting about 40 communities all over Vermont in our PaletteMobile as part of the Palettes of Vermont project. Diane Scolaro, herself a former local arts agency director, had the pleasure of doing most of that work, and the kind of information that those site visits provided to us has been so valuable. These visits, combined with ongoing input from grant panelists, from our board advisory committees, and, perhaps most important of all, our public Planning Forums held throughout the state in January, gave us almost more information and input than we could absorb.
I said “almost”…!
Since February, my challenge has been to distil everything we heard, both individually and collectively, into a clear and concise document that, as the Introduction says, “is a road map describing how we expect to engage with supporters and partners who believe in the power of art to change lives and improve the fiscal and social health of our communities. Our plan makes it clear to anyone who might consider collaborating with us, applying for support from us, or giving us funds exactly what we and they should expect in return from that collaboration, grant activity, or donation.”
So what I want you to do in the next couple of days—or even right now!—and click on this latest draft. It’s about 10 pages long, but the really important stuff is on the last two or three pages. Please, read it, and get back to me with your input.
This is important. It’s only been three months of my life so far. But we’re really talking about the next five years!
The good news is, we are now ready to share our most recent draft with all of you.
I am going to tell you what is in the document. And then I’m going to tell you how we got there. And finally I will ask you to read it and give us—me, actually—your feedback.
What’s in the document is exactly what you would expect to be in a document of this type only without any of the boring details of exactly how many people we met with over the last 12 months, where we met with them, what we talked about, the questions we raised, the questions we tried to answer. Remember, this is a draft for comment, and some of the research is still being done (surveys to artists and arts organizations, for example) which will help refine future drafts and the final product.
But for now, there’s an Introduction which explains why we plan. Then there is a brief Executive Summary which, at least on the web, will have internal links that will get you directly to the meat of the plan. Next there is a background section which gives information about the national trends and research, and work done here in Vermont around the Creative Economy, the Palettes project, and other items that will give you a kind of “environmental context” for the plan itself, including our all-important mission/vision/values statements.
And then there is the Plan with its three very straightforward goals, two of which are directed outwards towards our constituencies, our supporters, or collaborators, and our Governor and Legislature; and the third of which is directed inward towards the Council itself.
How did we arrive at this plan? I know it seems hard to believe, but it was mainly by listening. The work of the Council is always so much greater than the sum of its parts. But it is the many parts working together that drafted this plan. Among the most influential parts of the planning process was the many days spent on the road visiting about 40 communities all over Vermont in our PaletteMobile as part of the Palettes of Vermont project. Diane Scolaro, herself a former local arts agency director, had the pleasure of doing most of that work, and the kind of information that those site visits provided to us has been so valuable. These visits, combined with ongoing input from grant panelists, from our board advisory committees, and, perhaps most important of all, our public Planning Forums held throughout the state in January, gave us almost more information and input than we could absorb.
I said “almost”…!
Since February, my challenge has been to distil everything we heard, both individually and collectively, into a clear and concise document that, as the Introduction says, “is a road map describing how we expect to engage with supporters and partners who believe in the power of art to change lives and improve the fiscal and social health of our communities. Our plan makes it clear to anyone who might consider collaborating with us, applying for support from us, or giving us funds exactly what we and they should expect in return from that collaboration, grant activity, or donation.”
So what I want you to do in the next couple of days—or even right now!—and click on this latest draft. It’s about 10 pages long, but the really important stuff is on the last two or three pages. Please, read it, and get back to me with your input.
This is important. It’s only been three months of my life so far. But we’re really talking about the next five years!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
