A Grassroots Internet Strategy Needed for the Performing Arts
The National Performing Arts Conference (NPAC) took place last week in Denver, Colorado. Earlier this week, I wrote about what I thought was the conference's ineffective Internet strategy, which the NPAC conference blog was kind enough to reference.
In today's post, as an alternative response to the results from the AmericaSpeaks 21st Century Town Meeting, which was a centerpiece of the NPAC conference, I would like to propose the creation of a grassroots Internet campaign to promote, strengthen and expand the performing arts in the United States. This bottom-up strategy would embrace the large-scale, distributed nature of the online world to reach, engage and energize audiences, artists (professional and amateur), teachers, children and arts supporters.
To review the results from the Town Meeting, you can visit the conference blog, Program Notes or visit the results for the main topics: diversity, education and advocacy.
As you look at the results of this participatory idea-generation process (read Andrew Taylor's, Drew McManus' and Molly Sheridan's description of this process -- and also read the interesting reflections of Greg Sandow who was not there), you'll notice that the delegates tend to support top-down strategies for improving the success of the performing arts in the US. Here is how the audience voted to the following question about arts advocacy:
What should we do about arts advocacy and communicating our value at the NATIONAL level?
The audience using electronic keypads voted, in what strikes me as a very traditional and conservative fashion, for their favorite answer:
- Organize a national media campaign with celebrity spokespersons, catchy slogans (e.g. "Got Milk"), unified message, and compelling stories - 27%
- Create a Department of Culture/Cabinet-level position which is responsible for implementing a national arts policy - 23%
- Lobby elected political officials for pro-arts policy and funding; demand arts policy platform from candidates - 14%
- Create a coordinated national performing arts policy campaign involving artists and organizations - 12%
- Collect, analyze and disseminate data demonstrating the value of the arts (e.g. economic, intrinsic, developmental/educational values) - 12%
- Establish a National Arts Day/Festival with free performances, open houses, and art-making opportunities - 8%
- Explore interactive new media initiatives to increase access and relevance (e.g. create a "Google Arts"-type resource, blogs,YouTube) - 5%
I think that Drew McManus captured the essence of these voting results when he wrote a recap of the NPAC conference this morning:
...my impression is that the majority opinion seemed to center on "Messiah-centric" solutions in the form of creating some national figure to step in and solve everyone's problems.
Drew's "messiah-centric" description is confirmed by the two most popular answers above. The audience wanted famous spokespeople and a cabinet-level position for the arts.
Well, to put it simply: This desired top-down, hierarchical approach to advocacy and communications is just one possible approach that can be taken by the performing arts community. There are other avenues that can be considered and, I believe, there was a real missed opportunity to consider these other possibilities in a more meaningful way.
Democracy in a Vacuum Doesn't Really Work
The last option of the results above deals with "interactive new media initiatives" and "Google Arts" -- I really don't know what this means -- and only received 5% of the votes. Does this mean that the delegates thought that the Internet was irrelevant? Or is this poor formulation a reflection of what Molly Sheridan wrote about this AmericaSpeaks process:
That said, the AmericaSpeaks process was a lesson in everything that seems wrong to me with democracy--many people making decisions on topics most don't have the time to fully grasp before voting requires them to take ill-formed stances.
I'm an advocate of this (or other) participatory initiatives to seek ways to improve the performing arts. But, if as Sheriden might be recommending, pre-conference materials were created to prepare delegates for this Town Meeting, the generated strategies might have been more thoughtful and comprehensible. For example, one of the pre-conference briefing papers could have provided an analysis of successful online grassroots efforts. This way delegates would have formulated a better question about using the Internet and would have had more background information before choosing which of the advocacy strategies made the most sense to them.
Performing Arts Organizations Already Support High-Level Advocacy
The leading organizations within the performing arts community in the US already devote time, money and resources to support The American Arts Alliance, which is an
advocate for America's professional nonprofit arts organizations, artists and their publics before the US Congress and key policy makers. Through legislative and grassroots action, the American Arts Alliance advocates for national policies that recognize, enhance and foster the contributions the performing arts make to America.
Why don't these performing arts organizations make the same investment to support grassroots advocacy via the Internet? One of the reason why the Howard Dean campaign and now the Barack Obama campaign have been so successful is that they understand that enthusiastic supporters, in the millions, can be reached and energized via the Internet. And these supporters will, in turn, connect with their friends, family and colleagues to encourage them to vote for Obama.
This grassroots approach to advocacy is no longer new or novel. And it's time for the performing arts to jump on this bandwagon.
Next Post: An Implementation Strategy for a Grassroots Campaign
Next week, I'll continue this discussion by writing a post that will offer a specific implementation strategy for how the performing arts community can go about the process of creating a grassroots campaign.
Posted by
Doug Fox on June 20, 2008 9:20 AM
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3 Comments
This is exactly the type of thing I'm interested in studying or becoming more active in, especially showing 'what is the value of performing arts in society'.
A national arts policy would be wonderful, but that seems like an extremely long-term goal.It's achievable, but not anytime too soon. (Just being realistic; this is the performing arts afterall.) I do think that a national initiative at a policy level is important - perhaps also working with the Education department to keep the performing arts active and strong in our schools systems.
What would help build stronger support is more work in and around this statement: "Collect, analyze and disseminate data demonstrating the value of the arts (e.g. economic, intrinsic, developmental/educational values)". If it's based on empirical data, it's much harder to argue that the performing arts are not as important to our culture and society as are math and science. (And, by culture and society, I don't just mean the US.)
I'm also interested in learning more about this statement: "Explore interactive new media initiatives to increase access and relevance". This site and others are indicators that the performing arts are moving online. The question is what are the implications of that movement and how can it be leveraged.
Finally, I would love to understand how the performing arts can be leveraged by non-performing arts industries or schools of thought. (E.g., Is there a place for the arts in engineering? How can choreography be used in interaction design? http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=30674&action=post)
These things fascinate me to no end, but there's so little organization or cross-over around this that I don't know how to get started. I'm actually shopping around for doctoral programs, but I'm really unsure of promising programs. I don't think this type of cross-disciplinary study exists. But, I'd love any suggestions!
Allison,
Thanks for your post and I share many of your interests.
Starting from the end of your message:
- I'm fascinated too, as you can tell from above, about how choreographers, dancers and experts in somatic education (Laban Movement Analysis and others) can contribute outside of the dance world. This is topic I've begun to explore and look forward to learning more about.
- I don't know much about doctoral programs that may have a cross-disciplinary focus. But I assume they must be out there. Maybe other have some suggestions?
- When it comes to promoting the arts, I think that there are two important approaches, both equally important. One is the approach of working toward promoting the arts on a national level and working to influence policy, funding and education. The other, as I wrote about above, is the grassroots approach that can be spurred, in large part, by the collective efforts of online arts advocates. I'll try to post my thoughts on the specifics of such a grassroots campaign this week.
Good luck in your doctoral program search!
My current work The VICKI Project
addresses these issues.
Take a look. http://thevickiproject.wordpress.com/
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