Beyond Richard Florida: A Cultural Sector of Our Own
Article by Ann Daly
Once upon a time, it seemed a promising gambit to latch on to the coattails of the newly-minted, seemingly ascendant creative class. But it turns out (anyone surprised?) that the category is so diffuse as to be meaningless for any other purpose than the theoretical, or—more politically expedient—the rhetorical. Florida’s prescription for economic growth—in part, to build the vibrant street culture that is sought after by the creative professionals who drive business development—has yielded no tangible benefits for arts and culture per se.
In my own most creative hometown of Austin, for example, Florida’s theories—or at least a reduced version of them—were a boon for the PR machine. But as of yet no policymaking has been undertaken to rescue the eroding base of our famed but fading grassroots arts scene. Despite the best efforts of arts staffers, city leaders continue to focus on exactly what Florida warned against: wooing corporations with tax breaks and other incentives. Artists are left to compete amongst themselves for a slice of the cultural contracts program. We coast along without any sense of urgency to shore up the straining cultural infrastructure and without any real demonstration of belief (lots of lip service, though) in the fundamental role of culture in Austin’s future. Only last month was funding approved for a cultural master plan.
Likewise, there hasn’t been much obvious success from the sector’s “economic impact” strategy, despite hopeful early indicators. Lumping in rock concerts with local theatre productions and dance concerts in order to claim a larger impact for the “performing arts” didn’t much impress anyone but ourselves. What we learned from that campaign was that people—even politicians—don’t take action based solely on numbers. Besides, there is always going to be another interest that’s got better numbers; the arts will never win on economic terms alone. The latest report on the economic impact of the arts may get some media play on a slow news day, but has any such report ever prompted an agency or politician or patron to significantly bump up support for arts and culture?
What does that mean, anyway, to “support” arts and culture? What does the cultural sector require by way of human, financial, and technical resources? How do we need to proceed in order to achieve our goals? Before we’re distracted by the next big idea (before Florida, there was Robert Putnam—remember Bowling Alone?), let’s seize the moment to get clear about where we stand, and what we need to do. To that end, I make five modest proposals.
1. The cultural sector needs to look beyond institution-building
Once upon a time America was giddy with its own cultural energy. We could indulge in fantasies of arts institutions as invincible as corporations anchoring towns and cities across the country. The Ford Foundation envisioned that brave new world, and used the matching grant as leverage to ensconce these behemoths in our midst.
Back then, we couldn’t foresee that lean-and-agile would supplant large-and-stolid as the growth mode of the 21st century. Or that the number of nonprofit arts organizations would explode from about 8,000 in 1965 to 50,000 in 2004. “Sustainability” wasn’t yet part of the lingo.
It turns out that arts institutions are no more invincible than their corporate prototypes. Even the most successful of arts institutions today are straining under their own weight. Young and mid-life 501(c)(3) organizations are regrouping, or folding. Emerging artists, without any investment in the corporate ideal, don’t think twice about bypassing that model altogether. They feel much more kinship with the energy of a start-up.
In an informal, random email survey I conducted with artists in all disciplines across the country, I encountered a groundswell of dissatisfaction about the generally accepted model of a corporate-style 501(c)(3), with board and manager. The board is too cumbersome, and the manager unaffordable. Within that classical hierarchical structure, my respondents told me, the tail begins to wag the dog. For young companies, the administrative demands threaten to displace the primacy of the artmaking, because artistic directors are doing double-duty as company manager. Companies that want to expand find it nearly impossible to make the necessary leap in the business life cycle from sweat-equity to professional management. For companies that prefer to remain flexible, there simply isn’t any payoff from the bureaucratic set-up.
I heard from a lot of artists and arts organizations who had dropped out of the 501(c)(3) model altogether, choosing instead to remain informal, working from project to project, less bogged down in board meetings and IRS paperwork. Two trends emerge here. First, the increased importance of fiscal sponsorship programs, which enable these artists to apply for non-profit funding under the umbrella of a 501(c)(3) organization. Second, the turn toward entrepreneurship.
I heard from individuals and groups who have made a conscious decision not to structure themselves as non-profit organizations. They run the gamut from sole proprietorships to S-corporations to limited liability corporations. As one arts agency administrator wrote to me: “the traditional paradigm of non-profitism and boards is dead in the water.” More and more artists are looking for a market niche rather than a grant. My personal favorite is the former lawyer who stages performances for attorneys to earn continuing education credits. Others choose to partner with 501(c)(3) organizations, as a way to bypass paperwork and build audiences at the same time.
Nevertheless, in some traditional contexts the 501(c)(3) model is still the route to “legitimacy.” One choreographer described it as providing a stable structure that overcomes the limits of informal management and offers a “framework for action.” It provides, she has found, “self-containment, independence, validation, continuity, and fundraising.” But even those remaining as 501(c)(3) organizations are radically rethinking its structure and process, resisting the imprint of institutionalization. They are experimenting with flat organizations inspired by collectives of the 1960s. Some organize in flexible interlocking circles they call “pods,” others share directorships, still others have invented “virtual” boards without the necessity of routine, large-scale meetings.
Inspired by the social entrepreneurship (or social venture) movement, others are looking to hybridize the for-profit and the non-profit by exploring the possibilities of structures like subsidiaries and limited partnership models. Artists are devising revenue-generating projects that exploit artistic skills, provide artist employment, and leverage assets (like real estate or costume/set inventories), while contributing to a core mission. The ideological line between “for-profit” and “non-profit” is blurring, as artists aggressively identify and structure earned income streams for their art, their skill sets (e.g., pilates and technical, business, or arts consulting), their rental space, and their intellectual property. I heard about a bed-and-breakfast that will help to support an art gallery/school/studio, a combined non-profit/LLC with a retail store, an arts agency that hires out its expertise in project management to the private sector, and an “investment” model for building stakeholder involvement.
Artists are making a virtue out of necessity. They are leading the way into alternative organizational models that better suit the realities of a diminished funding base in a highly networked society. And they’re waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
2. The cultural sector needs to focus on infrastructure
What’s a grantmaker to do?
That’s what program officers are asking themselves these days. I spoke with one such funder, from a small private foundation, not too long ago. She talked about working to stay “ahead of the curve,” trying to anticipate what artists need in order to make their art. “How,” she asked, “do we get cash in their hands?”
Traditionally, cash-in-hand has been the default method for supporting artists in the process of making art. Off in the soft-focus distance, say 40 years ago, a $5,000 grant made a life-changing difference for an artist. But as the economy, politics, and social life in America have transformed themselves in the interim, the amount of available cash-in-hand for artists has dwindled into the realm of the negligible. For one thing, the current competition for funding is fierce. The number of people making their living as artists, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, quadrupled from roughly one-half million in 1965 to about two million in 2003. For another, costs—of living, of making art—have skyrocketed. Cash-in-hand one project at a time just doesn’t scale any more.
What if, instead of focusing on cash, we think value? How can government, corporate, community, and other private funding build infrastructure to help whole communities of artists instead of offering pocket money to one artist or program at a time? It’s a very old, and effective strategy, teaching a person to fish, rather than handing her/him a fish.
Artists are exhausting themselves, endeavoring to make their art and patch up their arts community at the same time. They are trying to fill the vacuum of failed local service organizations. They are trying to respond to funder demands for institutional capacity-building without any support for general operations. They are trying to mentor their young colleagues.
If we really want artists to make art, then let’s relieve them of the burdens of overhauling a weak infrastructure.
This movement is clearly afoot, with the impetus of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) and its 2003 study (conducted by the Urban Institute), “Investing in Creativity.” There are so many ways that we can deliver value to artists: small business loans, microloans, health/life/disability/retirement insurance, subsidized studio/housing, mentoring programs, tax credits, and arts incubators.
Investment is the linchpin here, replacing the old (unspoken) notion of payout. But the shift will not likely be easy. Project grantmaking is seductive, because it is a pretty safe, low-risk practice with dependable short-term deliverables (a concert, an exhibit, a book, etc.). There is a tangible outcome, which can be photographed and described in the next annual report. Building infrastructure, while it promises to yield much larger returns, for more people over a longer period of time, resists easy assessment. Funders’ internal challenge will be to measure infrastructure effectiveness and its impact on an entire community over the long term.
Despite this challenge, the shift toward investment and infrastructure is inevitable. As goes institution-building, so goes project-driven funding.
3. The cultural sector needs to think and act systematically
As the cultural sector’s renewed commitment to artists gains momentum, I worry that it will be a replacement for, rather than a complement to, the existing commitment to organizational programming. And that it will provide a convenient, if justifiable, rallying cry for the foreseeable future, at the expense of the big picture and the long view. Remember when the focus was on community, and on audience engagement? Now people are asking, “What about the artists?” It’s a great and important question, but it’s not the only question. And in the meantime, what happens to the audiences, communities, programs, organizations, and case-making? Not to mention the students, avocational artists, teachers, scholars and critics, galleries and museums, schools, presses, presenters, and the rest of the sector? I’ve just gotten wind that arts education is no longer pushing the “Mozart makes our children smarter in math” campaign. Apparently, we’re back to arguing “arts for art’s sake.” Why does it have to be either-or? And why does it sound like we’re just trying to convince ourselves?
The cultural sector has yet to raise its sightlines high enough to take in the entire view. Organizations are not mutually exclusive of artists, who are not mutually exclusive of the public. When the trend is to focus on only a part of the entire system, we run the risk of unintended damage. In order to truly develop our field in the long term, we need to take the time to understand not just that we exist in a complex, interdependent system, but even more so how that system works. Only then can we make effective interventions.
Furthermore, we need to understand that the cultural sector is itself part of larger systems. We do not act out of our intentions alone. We cannot effect change through sheer force of will. There are driving forces in our collective life that we ignore at risk of marginalizing ourselves: social, economic, scientific/technological, political, and environmental drivers. The cultural sector’s efforts to improve our country’s well-being are shared by workers in such areas as community development, health care, public safety, social justice, public housing, religion, transportation services, economic development, unions, and education. We are also part of a much larger non-profit universe. And how much longer can we ignore our intimate connection—or lack thereof—to the commercial arts and to the unincorporated arts? At the largest level, we are embedded within political, social, economic, and ideological systems that afford and constrain our options.
The irony is, all the many pieces of this puzzle are being examined. They’re just being examined by discrete, single-focus disciplines. It’s no wonder that our thinking is atomistic, when that is how we have organized ourselves as a community. I try to attend a broad cross-section of conferences, and I am always struck by how distant they are from each other, in terms of concerns, methods, and membership. I see almost no overlap among the agency staffers at the Americans for the Arts conventions, the academics at the Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts conferences, and the artists at Dance/USA. Each defines culture in a different way and circumscribes its values and needs accordingly.
The cultural sector is not a natural category, and its boundaries are permeable, and shifting. Richard Florida demonstrated as much. If we can imagine culture in its larger contexts, and with more complexity, then we can harness energy within and beyond ourselves to create a system that is fluid, synergistic, and productive.
4. The cultural sector needs to anticipate the future strategically
Once we understand the cultural sector as a dynamic system interacting with other dynamic systems, then it’s possible to improve our effectiveness. Instead of being buffeted by the travails of the market or the whims of politicians, we can anticipate emerging conditions—the bright spots as well as the rough spots. We can leave the knee-jerk rhetoric (think “creative class”) behind. We can begin to operationalize reports like the Rand’s on the performing and now visual arts by extending them into larger discourses beyond the borders of “the arts.”
Otherwise, we’ll remain as vulnerable as we were during the “culture wars” two decades ago. The problem wasn’t simply that we could not make a case in our own defense. The larger problem was that we were surprised when the blows landed. Reactivity permeates the sector:
- Many an organization finds itself unprepared for the pullout of a long-time sponsor. The question is not if a patron will move on; the question is when a patron will move on. What planning is done by organizations to cultivate an ongoing stream of sponsorship?
- People are spending more of their leisure time at home (consider Netflix) or in activities with flexible schedules (like clubs or museums). What planning are the live arts undertaking to adapt?
- American demographics are shifting radically. In Texas, for example, the Hispanic population will soon be the statistical majority. What planning is the sector doing to serve all its public?
- Local performing arts centers count upon touring Broadway blockbusters for dependable ticket sales. But those shows may now be considering a run in Las Vegas rather than a national tour. What planning are presenters doing to take up the slack in revenue?
Just because the cultural sector is underfunded doesn’t mean that it is powerless, limited to reactive behavior. Conversely, we must be all the more attuned to the changing environment, in order to make decisions that are informed by the future rather than the past.
I’ve gone through many a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis with arts groups, and the most difficult part of the exercise comes with the question of external opportunities and threats. What I’ve found is that arts organizations in general don’t much look beyond their own borders, or even beyond their immediate situations. As a result, they are unable to identify, let alone deal with, those environmental factors that their existence may come to depend upon. If a musical ensemble does not take note of the trend toward home-based entertainment, if a painter renting loft space does not pay attention to the direction of the real estate market, if none of them understand the effects they’ll feel if the area’s biggest employer pulls out of town, then they are operating blindly, fated to worry about imminent demise instead of ever being able to plan for development.
In order to grow, we need to look not just up, but down the road as well, toward the inevitable cycles of the economy, the real estate market, material costs, political administrations, etc. Can we build the adaptive capacity to engage productively with emerging opportunities and challenges? I wonder, what plans does the sector have for the day when we succeed in making our case for the full funding of the arts? If we are eager to grow, then what is our plan for doing so? In that scenario, I daresay, we will find ourselves in an even more fraught situation.
I do not suggest that we become fortune-tellers, but that we become forward-thinking in our analyses and decision-making. And that our plans be predicated on the basis of emerging conditions rather than past practices.
5. The cultural sector needs interpretive advocates
During the “culture wars,” the cultural sector was unable to muster forth much hard data to counter accusations of our irrelevance, ineffectiveness, and inaccessibility. Since then, unsurprisingly, there has been a noticeable spike in the number of published research studies. My office floor is littered with piles of research reports, meeting reports, convening reports, initiative reports, funding reports, economic impact reports, and the list continues. They come from foundations, think tanks, academic journals, governmental agencies, service organizations, advocacy groups, scholarly organizations, consulting firms, and the like. The result is a welcome (if chaotic) increase in information. But has our influence expanded apace?
Information is necessary—but not sufficient—to spread a meaningful and memorable message about arts and culture. It’s not enough to publish reports. They are written by insiders for insiders, in a discursive style and format that only an insider could love. What we are missing is the interpretive advocate who brings these reports to life, and brings them to the people they are meant to ultimately inform and influence. Who renders them useful. The function of this role in any sector is to translate, interpret, and deliver expert information into user-friendly terms. This function serves to track patterns in the data, make sense of it, and explain what it is about. An interpretive advocate offers meaningful commentary and compelling stories. She explains what is at stake, creates a human context, and provides a vision of the future. Without interpretation, those piles of research reports just continue to collect dustballs.
This kind of thought leader compels attention and credibility from public and policymakers alike. S/he is comfortable speaking to artists and politicians, academics and journalists. Ben Cameron, the charismatic and ubiquitous executive director of the Theatre Communications Group, is our best example. He commands the data, he explains what it’s about, and he convinces you that it’s important. Bill Ivey is quickly emerging as another high-profile interpretive advocate for the sector, in his most recent appointment as director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.
But two is not enough. With a full complement of interpretive advocates spreading our message, we can transform research data into public opinion and new policy. Fully humanized and framed by compelling vision, our numbers will become meaningful, and convincing. The only question is, how do we develop career paths and media outlets for these interpretive advocates? How do we invent our own Richard Floridas?
(Note: This is a sequel to Ann Daly’s essay, “Richard Florida’s High-class Glasses,” originally published in Summer 2004 in the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader. The author thanks all the artists and administrators who so generously shared their experiences of running an arts organization. The author also thanks Bill Bissell for commissioning this essay and Nicole Plett for her editorial counsel.)
Based in Austin, Texas, Ann Daly Arts Consulting LLC provides strategic advising to individuals and organizations that make, fund, or serve the arts. Together we share a commitment to shaping a meaningful future for the cultural sector.A longtime thought leader in arts and culture, Dr. Daly is a frequent author and speakerbooks on the performing and visual arts and has served as cultural commentator for the New York Times, Village Voice, Chronicle of Higher Education, and NPR's “Marketplace.” She has contributed articles to Dance/USA Journal, Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, Inside Arts (Association of Performing Arts Presenters), and International Arts Manager.
Article used by Permission of the Author
© 2005Ann Daly
Originally commissioned by Dance Advance,
funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by The University of the Arts
Fall 2005
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