Arts and Community Development

The following article is adapted from "The World in Pieces: culture and politics at the end of the century," from Focaal no. 32, 1998, pp. 91-117. It is published here with permission from the author.

The highlight of summer in Santa Fe this year was the June 17 (1997) opening of the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, a project of the Burnett Foundation. Anyone needing a caterer, carpenter, or waiter was...well, disappointed. The entire town was consumed by opening festivities. As one grantmaker noted, this was Georgia's version of “Desert Storm.” The number of museum visitors staff predicted for the entire year was roughly 150,000—but in the six weeks following the opening, numbers have already totaled 90,000.

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On March 7, 1997, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, in conjunction with Community Partners, ARTS Inc., and the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, convened a workshop titled "Arts Incubators: Building Healthy Arts Organizations and Healthy Economies." The seventy-plus participants included representatives of arts organizations, local arts agencies, municipalities, and foundations.

Richard Hugo House is a two-year old literary arts center in Seattle named after the Seattle-born poet and creative writing teacher Richard Hugo who wrote squarely and poignantly about people and places often overlooked. Hugo House offers classes, workshops, events, performances, meetings, as well as simply the time and space to read and write.

Like program officers everywhere, I spend a lot of time immersed in the minutia that pours from one proposal folder after another. How, then, can I keep my eyes on the big picture? Individual programs are evaluated, of course, but how can my colleagues and I measure the overall health of the city's arts and cultural sector? And what about the rest of the city? Where do the arts and artists fit into the city's economy? Our public school system? Housing? My search for the big picture reminds me of the Gauguin painting at the Museum of Fine Arts which asks “Where Do We Come From? What Are We?

There are an abundance of theories — and even more clichés — about why the arts should be in young people's lives. However, academically rigorous research that demonstrates the power of the arts is scarce. This article summarizes a decade of research by a team of anthropologists in after-school programs identified by young people themselves as high quality. The researchers found common characteristics that made these programs successful, whether their focus was academic, sport, community service, or the arts. The balance of these characteristics differs among programs, though.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
-William Henry Channing, 1810-1884

Typically when businesses decide to support the arts they do so through a grant-giving mechanism or through a program that places employees as volunteers and consultants in arts organizations. But, I've noticed a different kind of interaction between the profit-making and not-for-profit art worlds in recent years. Some business people have set up foundations dedicated to improving the ethical and cultural context in which their own professions practice.

2006, 280 pages, Fieldstone Alliance, 60 Plato Boulevard East, Suite 150, St. Paul, MN 55107, 651-556-4503, bandrews@FieldstoneAllicance.org.