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The State of the Arts: 3 Ways to Build The Arts in Your Community

It’s not enough to talk about things, we must move into action. The 2015 Leadership in the Arts Summit was a rally point to start a conversation about making things happen. At the end of the day you were expected to do just that: Make. Things. Happen.  Among the catalyst conversers were keynote speaker Roberto Bedoya and presenters Reginald Adams, Regina Agu and Emily Chambers.  

Here were our three takeaways from the summit:

#1 Represent yourself and others.

What you need: People, purpose and politics

It’s time to turn emotion into advocacy and demand representation for the arts. We live in a nation where we can opt in for true representation, but efforts must go beyond coffee shop conversation. A deliberative democracy means that you rally your friends and call upon the ears of your elected officials.

Presenter Reginald C Adams said it best, “Rarely do we bring arts as a focus to our elected officials.”

By gathering people to walk alongside each other on the arts trek, you ensure that people remain in every blueprint iteration to move the arts forward. Before you develop a plan, a festival, a petition to keep a historic building in tact or a park installation, you have to understand the history, culture, economics, diversity and ethnicities in the community.

To truly move culture forward you must activate people.  You do that by belonging to and taking responsibility for the community you live in.

#2 Think beyond traditional collaborations.

What you need: Shared purpose, paradigm shift and bigger thinking

A lot of times we see collaboration as this idealistic entity that means Team A and Team B get together and make big changes happen. Or a simple collaboration like meeting with your neighbors to get the neighborhood park cleaned up. But collaboration should go beyond that. It’s not just about the pendulum that swings back and forth between you and your collaborator, it’s about the bigger circle of what happens to, around and within the community.

For instance, if you’re collaborating on a film festival with community partners the return is not just good for you and your partner, but you are giving to the audience too. They are also a collaborator on the journey of art, expression and culture retention.

Finding shared purpose with your collaborators is key, so that the size of your budget becomes less critical and your value lies in what you share with others. Your community has given you the soil to stand your art on, make sure your community is represented in the work.

#3 Go beyond metrics.

What you need: Open mindedness, progressive value system and community spaces

The impact of art is hard to measure. Art shapes culture, evolves over time and changes with its community—it is an intangible and a deep internal experience that, at many times, cannot be seen. Some of the most genuine art experiences resist commodification—they cannot be duplicated, replicated or sold—so profit margin is not the only go-to benchmark.

Beyond measuring success through profit, many arts organizations are measured by their sustainability—even though sustainability doesn’t take into account passion, perseverance and risk-taking. Benchmarks like this hamper small and minority arts organizations.

Luckily, there has been a national movement to create spaces for community engagement, known as place-making. You can see these beautiful art installations on Heights Boulevard or in the East End where they are sourcing local artists to do benches and street-lights. Because of movements like this, doing the work has become more meaningful than making money and has become an evident shaper-of-culture—and this is truly the most valuable and enduring metric.

So, go out and find more places to make art, invite more people to become collaborators and demand representation of the arts in your community.  Keep the conversation going and contribute to the future of the arts in our city by going to byyoucity.org.

@ShearCreativity: