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Where's the Beef?
Over the last several years I have been amazed at the pace of cultural facility development in the United States, especially the development of performing arts centers. So, a couple of months ago, when I created a set of Google Alerts for myself, I created one that feeds me new stories about performing art centers.
It should come to no surprise to anyone that there are lots of stories being written on this subject . What surprised me is the surprising similarity to most of them.
Knowing that these facilities cost from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, I’ve been curious about how community and cultural leadership has made the case for development to both donors and taxpayers.
What vision for the future has been conjured? What mission will drive their operation? What critical mass of performing arts organizations will help make the ecology vibrant and sustainable? Is the performing arts center an inevitable culmination of a community’s development? Will its incarnation be “the best of all possible worlds?�
I’ve read a lot of news stories over the last couple of weeks scrounging for some evidence that these issues are being considered. If news articles are any sort of reliable indicator, whatsoever, that these issues are being discussed, then it appears to me that they are not.
What I’ve read are what I would characterize as “milestone� stories about events, decisions, large financial gifts, and the occasional dust-ups about cost overruns, labor disputes, and private scuffles going public.
When I have discovered what I would “case language,� the focus has been on economic development and diversification, and other marketplace considerations. There is plenty of wallet but not much heart in the reports.
Clearly there are people in these communities who have created, and then enrolled other people in a vision to better their communities. I am wondering what those visions are?
I worry that this frenzy of development is just another phase in city-building like the development of transportation systems, convention centers, and other infrastructure.
While city-building is not a bad thing, not everything that is built is sustained. Those things that last are sustained because they create value for people within communities over time. They keep their promises, both explicit and implicit.
If those promises are mostly instrumental - as in the realm of economic development and diversification - I wonder at our sector’s ability to both keep our promises and manage the evidence that we’re keeping them. A great proportion of the economic value that we create is soft and very difficult to quantify. I suspect that getting better at measuring won’t get us as far as we might hope it would.
Over the years, I continue to be astonished at the stickiness and durability of promises. People remember what other people promise, and they can be bitterly unforgiving when breaches of trust occur.
As leaders in the cultural sector, we would be well-advised against over-promising. Framing our case authentically and prudently is extremely important, and not just to our present fortunes but also to our future. A jury cannot be expected to deliver up justice without truth of facts in evidence. Communities deserve the same service.
The arts have been characterized in many unflattering terms over the years - unrealistic, idealistic, and naive. Let’s hope that cynical and craven aren’t added to the list.
Posted on August 8, 2006 09:18 AM | Permalink
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Comments
hi-- just saw this and was delighted to read what you have up here--and to reconnect with you via your blog.
hope to see you at WAAA.
all well here. a huge detour into circus directing for a while--now making a new work about what people think happens to us after we die... life is rich! best--tandy beal