Arts and Community Development

Like program officers everywhere, I spend a lot of time immersed in the minutia that pours from one proposal folder after another. How, then, can I keep my eyes on the big picture? Individual programs are evaluated, of course, but how can my colleagues and I measure the overall health of the city's arts and cultural sector? And what about the rest of the city? Where do the arts and artists fit into the city's economy? Our public school system? Housing? My search for the big picture reminds me of the Gauguin painting at the Museum of Fine Arts which asks “Where Do We Come From? What Are We?

There are an abundance of theories — and even more clichés — about why the arts should be in young people's lives. However, academically rigorous research that demonstrates the power of the arts is scarce. This article summarizes a decade of research by a team of anthropologists in after-school programs identified by young people themselves as high quality. The researchers found common characteristics that made these programs successful, whether their focus was academic, sport, community service, or the arts. The balance of these characteristics differs among programs, though.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
-William Henry Channing, 1810-1884

Typically when businesses decide to support the arts they do so through a grant-giving mechanism or through a program that places employees as volunteers and consultants in arts organizations. But, I've noticed a different kind of interaction between the profit-making and not-for-profit art worlds in recent years. Some business people have set up foundations dedicated to improving the ethical and cultural context in which their own professions practice.

2006, 280 pages, Fieldstone Alliance, 60 Plato Boulevard East, Suite 150, St. Paul, MN 55107, 651-556-4503, bandrews@FieldstoneAllicance.org.

2006, 27 pages. Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, 2324 University Avenue West, Suite 114, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55114, 651-645-0402, www.mrac.org

Download pdf at The Bush Foundation website

"Harmony is not an arts destination. We seek the arts at the core of everyday lives. We simply want a more solid community, a well-rounded community, beauty in our lives." — Paula Michel, Harmony Arts Council

"Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear

Imagine throwing an arts event and the entire community shows up. This is oftentimes what takes place in the towns delightfully portrayed in Bright Stars, a publication from the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Neal Cuthbert's foreword to this award-winning piece, it is underscored that rural communities in Minnesota are suffering in several ways due to listless econo-mies and dramatically shifting demographics.

As arts funders, we often perceive our capacity to direct financial resources to worthy arts organizations as the most valuable tool at our disposal. That's probably correct and, indeed, as it should be. After all, most of our institutions have been established by donors for the core purpose of grantmaking, and the law mandates that we award grants for public benefit.

This article is dedicated by the author to the memory of Mois Cruz Sánchez. Moisés, like Filemon, was a native of San Juan Mixtepec in La Mixteca in Oaxaca. He was a migrant farmworker. His dream was that Mixteco citizens in his village elect one of their own to the village governing body, independent of the local caciques [political bosses]. He fulfilled that dream and was elected mayor of his village four years ago. He also worked for the transnational organizing of the Mixteco people and founded an organization for that work.