Today’s Sampler
Dunkirk NY – Yesterday I had a day off from rehearsal as I prepare for the final push. The set has arrived, the costumes have not (we hope they get there today). When we do an opera here it’s the only show we rent out, as our schedule does not allow us to build the show from scratch. Nothing is more nerve-wracking that waiting for all these elements to arrive and looking at what you really have. The set is more worn than perhaps I’d like, and I have to stress-test it to see exactly how many people can fit on the upper platform. Pictures and ground plans never tell the whole story.
My morning routine has for many years now been coffee, check email, and the morning “read.” I check headlines, check blogs, find an article or two here and there. In trying to do the Nov. blog-a-thon I have deleted the morning read, but this morning it just so happened that in my email was the daily digest from the Association of Teaching Artists, a Yahoo! group I joined a few years back as I became more interested in developing a curriculum for preparing teaching artists at the college level. I want to pass on to you two interesting reads I received in the email. One is by Arlene Goldbard, a well-known community arts activist, and another by Janet Brown from Grantsmakers in the Arts. Both of them express a frustration at the inability of community arts in this country to make any headway. Arlene looks at it from the national level, Janet from the personal level.
From Ms. Goldbard’s post:
But since [the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities] is closest thing we have (which is not to say very close) to the type of public-sector collaborative other countries may seek in a coordinated cultural ministry, it becomes necessary to point out that despite community artists’ and teaching artists’ support of and role in the Obama arts platform, despite their active, energetic commitment to cultural recovery and its role in national recovery, despite all of their contributions to actually practicing cultural democracy, their commitment to embodying the values that got President Obama elected, there is not a single appointment reflecting the knowledge and perspective they bring. Nor is there anyone who is known for a body of work on the important issues of culture, community, democracy and equity that ought to inform the deliberations of any such body. Nor is there anyone whose work focuses entirely on art in the service of social justice.
And from Ms. Brown:
I’m no arts education expert. I learned what I know in the trenches. I was a theatre teacher. I was married to a teaching artist. I ran a statewide arts advocacy organization and developed programs to train generalists where there were no specialists and to help specialists network with each other. I brought arts integrated schools based on Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory into the state. We trained entire staffs at the elementary level to implement the program. I helped write state standards and fought for graduation fine arts requirement credits. We trained students, parents and arts groups to become activists. I wrote op-eds and gave speeches about creativity and work-force development in the 21st century. I was chair of a performing and visual arts department at a small college whose primary graduates were arts educators. This does not make me an expert. It makes me frustrated.
Artists who create art as a consumer product should be interested and alarmed by this. I believe there is a very, very wide gap between practicing artists and arts educators of all stripes. This gap is something which continues to exacerbate the situations these two people speak about. I hope I will have the opportunity in coming posts to discuss this question further. For now, give them a read and see if they resonate with you. And if you have time, take in Ms. Goldbard’s immediately preceding post, which dicusses assumptions we have about arts funding. -twl
