Scott Walters's Public Library

10 Dec 09

Senior Deputy Chairman Joan Shigekawa Convenes Arts Service Organizations and NEA Discipline Directors to Discuss the NEA's 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts

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NEA arts_participation research

09 Dec 09

How Events Can Use Social Media

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diversity arena_stage social_media

08 Dec 09

New Play Blog

"“Diversity can become a shield against action, if you define the issue so broadly that nothing can be done, you ensure that nothing is done.”"

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diversity arena_stage

A playwright of color said that we live in a country that’s not quite ready to let go of the idea that people of color are inferior. Thus, when you work in a Big White Theater, there’s the perception that they’ve given you a gift.
Example of Lynn Nottage: Playwright who writes very mainstream traditionally structured plays. There’s a lot of playwrights of color who write that way. If you’re hung up on a mainstream aesthetic, people of color write those plays too.
11 more annotations...
- One person from an institutional perspective brought up “the quality conversation” as an elephant in the room. “How do we create standards of what is good and bad and how is that informed by our standards of diversity?”
- Younger folks don’t see diversity the same way older folks do.
- The idea of “Following the Work”. A lot of institutions aren’t following the work, they’re doing tokenism instead. If you follow the work, that’s a ripcord that creates an opening to diversity in many forms.
- “If you have a choice between your play catering the party at the big house or providing dinner for the community, what are you going to do?”
- Institutions try to diversify without tackling first why it’s valuable to them to be diverse.
- “The only way to get a river to change its direction is to change the riverbed. There are times that I feel like we’re throwing really beautiful flowers on the river without changing the bed”
  
  “One of the obstacles to diversity is that we send our artists through the same system and when they come out of that system, they all sound the same.”
- One person from a theater that’s housed in a community raised the point that since it is in a specific community, the cardinal value is reflecting that community on stage and in the audience. As it’s a majority African American community (with some Latino and Asian and White audience members), it’s largely African Americans on stage and in the audience. Now they’re asking the question "Are we a black company?” They’re perceived as a Black company (even though the founders are White). As their community gets more diverse, and particularly more Hispanic, how will that change the work they do? So diversity for them specifically applies to the community they’re serving. “If everyone in the community gets to see themselves on stage, then we’ve accomplished our mission.”
- One person who runs a community-centered theater space commented that diversity is generally thought of racial and generally thought of as black-white. For her, she’s started thinking more about diversity of life experience, diversity of approach to work, diverse approaches to systematizing work.
- One value of diversity within an organization is a diversity of values and perspectives of people in the room “As a dominant culture, we think that what we think is true and real. But it’s not the case just because we say it’s the case." With diversity, you get the opportunity to discover that there are other realities in the world.
- “We have to take the idea of diversity and turn it into the idea of democracy. Democracy in the arts. The humane social action and process and practice that elevates and promotes the best in individuals. The book has been written on multiculturalism and diversity. We need to change the frame.”
- “Diversity can become a shield against action, if you define the issue so broadly that nothing can be done, you ensure that nothing is done.”

07 Dec 09

Wiki-style finals

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finals wikis

26 Nov 09

Arlene Goldbard » Blog Archive » Change and That Other Thing

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government arts arlene goldbard

So there’s change, and there’s that other thing: the fact that no administration thus far has taken cultural questions seriously enough to entrust them to people whose vision and knowledge is comparable to leaders in the areas of public interest they actually do treat seriously. Liberal or conservative, none of them have been able to wipe the stars from their ideas and see the real and important challenge of policy for culture in a democracy. I am so disappointed that the rapture with celebrity we’ve seen since the new administration’s earliest arts-related initiatives seems to have won out over the impulses that should shape policy.

Since this is such an impressive group of well-known individuals, though, virtually all of them seen as accomplished, intelligent and independent in their fields; and since all of them are free to exercise their duties as they see fit, I hope they will decide to bring two things to their task: