Steve's Blog

As a conference blogger, I sat at Marc’s Keynote Performance at the Plenary Breakfast Session on Monday at the Grantmakers for the Arts 2011 Conference, confident in capturing the essence of the experience while having my morning coffee with a ballroom full of my colleagues.

It became very clear that Marc operates at speeds unfamiliar to most people and I was left both delighted and bewildered by his message.

My take-away from this conference is that the arts funder’s legacy of acting pretty much alone is no longer thought to be the preferred way to approach goals, and certainly not a viable way to deal with the “velocity of change” that was the theme of the gathering. I think the potential of this sleeping giant may in the not too distant future surprise even themselves.

While this will be my final post as one of the three official conference bloggers, I have no doubt that so very much of what I encountered idea-wise will infiltrate not only my blogging on Dewey21C, but also my work for quite some time. That statement should tell you a lot about how I experienced the three days.

Mason Bates represents change in a vitally important way. He is, in so many respects, representative of the modern American composer. He’s hip, smart, also a DJ, draws upon a palatte that is not limited, by a long shot, by what most consider to be “classical” music, and here’s the best part, he’s one of two composers in residence with the orchestra that I consider to be among the most tradition bound. It’s the orchestra considered by many to be the standard bearer of quality and tradition. Not known for relationships with the American experimentalists nor great shape shifters of the 20th and 21st centuries, in my mind, the appointment of Mason Bates should be enough for people to rethink their long held opinions of what canonical organizations are and aren’t. Oh, and yes, by the way, he can compose.

(Tuesday) started out with a continental breakfast that included scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and croissants—a definite step up from the usual hotel continental fare—served in the Fairmont’s Venetian Room—once a high end night club in San Francisco where Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey (look her up all you Millennials out there—she was the real deal) and Tony Bennet held court.

The opening plenary featured Marc Bamuthi Joseph, sporting one heck of a stingy brim fedora.

“I am a grantmaker, I give and receive, I sustain culture, I am an artist, I give and receive, I sustain culture.”

Getting quickly to a sweeping review of the history of the NEA, Marc got to his point, a good way to set the tone for the entire conference and underscore the theme: Embracing the Velocity of Change.

Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change outlines compelling demographic, aesthetic and economic reasons for foundations to rethink their grantmaking practices to stay current with changes in the cultural sector and to continue to be relevant to the evolving needs of our communities. Regardless of its history or primary philanthropic focus, every foundation investing in the arts can make fairness and equity core principles of its grantmaking. It can do so by intentionally prioritizing underserved communities in its philanthropy and by investing substantially in community organizing and civic engagement work in the arts and culture sector. By doing so, arts funders—individually and collectively—can make meaningful contributions toward a more inclusive and dynamic cultural sector, and a fairer, more democratic world.

My overall impression of this first (long day) was that despite the bad news of the last year—all the cuts to state arts agencies, all the organizations struggling to stay alive, all the money that is no longer available, the drop in audience attendance, the competition for ever scarce individual donations—there is ample evidence of just how resilient the arts sector is, and there are a lot of success stories too.

Can any of us remember a time where so many things were changing all at the same time? I am not so sure it’s the velocity of change that I find most remarkable, but rather the sheer mass of what’s been tossed up into the air, all while we wait for it to fall to the ground so we can begin to understand what it all really means. That’s right, it feels to me like we’re trying to understand things while they are still up in the air. Think about it, the economy, the politics, the technology, the Arab Spring, nations on the verge of default, at least one decade long war, and more. It’s a time where business models are challenged, relevancy is called into greater question than ever before, the charitable contribution is scrutinized, and issues of equity rise no matter who you define the term or to which particular context you place it. You have a Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. You have those calling for an expansion of K-12 curriculum while creating and implementing policies that accelerate the narrowing.