Barbara Schaffer Bacon

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the result it gets.”
— W. Edwards Deming (possibly apocryphal)

Cultural equity is critical to the arts and culture sector’s long-term viability, as well as to the ability of the arts to contribute to healthy, vibrant, equitable communities for all. At the core of the challenges related to cultural equity are the historically inequitable distribution of resources and the value systems, biases, and systemic barriers associated with that distribution.

“Art in the public realm activates public space for its intended democratic purpose,” noted Anne Pasternak, former director at Creative Time and currently director at the Brooklyn Museum in an NEA interview.

These are the sooty days and nights of fire, ashes and displacement. The aftermath of loss is reassessment and ultimately, response. We artists — poets, musicians, painters, photographers, craftspeople, writers, graphic designers, actors, sculptors, singers — possess the skills that can unpack the events and emotions brought forward by the devastating inferno of 2007. Our skills will also help us imagine a new San Diego. Our creative response to this tragedy serves neighbors, but our colleagues, students, and ourselves as well. We have not suffered more than others. Instead we suffer in league with our fellow San Diegans. We must help them cope, recover and flourish anew.

As they always have, artists are working in, with, and for communities. They are working as animators, cultural organizers, and teaching artists and in a myriad of other roles. They are making work in community settings by choice. For many, this work is their central creative practice, while for others, it is a dimension or portion of their work. Interest, opportunity, and training for community-based work are growing despite the fact that such work is often underfunded and the artists are poorly paid.

Trend or Tipping Point: Arts & Social Change Grantmaking assembles a first-time portrait of arts funders, social change funders, and others supporting civic engagement and social change through arts and cultural strategies.