Artists Not Just For Art's Sake, But For Community's Sake

By: Rodrigo Guerrero*

This blog is published as part of the #KeepMakingArt campaign. The curated series features voices in the arts/culture, education, and social change sectors to capture the deep thinking and innovation occurring as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Nonprofit arts organizations come in many different shapes and manners: they work in a myriad of genres and styles, with wildly different approaches and serving incredibly distinct communities and age groups across the country. They derive their funds from, yet again, a diverse pool of funders: from big trusts and endowments, to enthusiastic individuals, to all sorts of philanthropic endeavors which take it upon themselves to ensure support for one or many artistic manifestations through their efforts.

However, one key term unites all this diversity of practical or funding concepts: The public benefit. 

It’s always there, lurking within some grant request form or framing a mission statement. At one point or another, the question is asked (even if the vocabulary changes, its always the same core concept): 

“What do you do to serve your community?”

“What is the value of your presence in this community?”

“How are young people and community members impacted by your work?”

Even when not asked directly, organizations will still go a great length in explaining how they do so much more than celebrate arts and creativity, to further their case and make themselves more attractive for funding.

Funding Ingenuity and Innovation

It sounds like a complaint, but it actually isn’t, the philanthropy and the arts sectors have found common ground in identifying the powerful tool that the arts and creativity can play in our society: filling in gaps and voids of service and empowering participants and communities to recognize their agency and celebrate their identity and capacity for creating beauty and joy. The mere celebration of aesthetics moved to a place were its existence is mostly warranted by how it connects with the communities it exists within.

In these past weeks, as the world has faced the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen how these investments and partnerships have taken their community responsibility to new heights despite quarantine- and shelter-in-place orders sweeping the world. The very nature of social distancing (though necessary) feels completely at odds with our field. And yet, the field has risen to the challenge, putting a tremendous deal of ingenuity, perseverance and passion to the test to continue proving the statements of value they claimed in every grant application form that sustains their mission.

Courtney Clark teaches from her home in the Berkshires.

It hasn’t been easy for programs which employ communal efforts as part of their everyday work. Such is the experience of Kids4Harmony in Pittsfield MA, where Courtney Clarke and her team had to shift their orchestra program into a new form: one-on-one lessons on diverse apps and programs, to ensure their young musicians wouldn’t miss out on their participation. This required staff and families to learn new technologies and everyone to engage in a considerable scheduling effort so that the teachers would be able to provide lessons individually. 

It’s not just about creating a virtual space for youth to be able to take class and stay busy, Kids4Harmony and its parent organization, 18 Degrees, hire Family Liaisons in the two communities they serve in the Berkshires. These paid positions work year-round to ensure that communications between the program, youth participant, and parent/guardian are clear and effective. Now, they have become facilitators in navigating all sorts of new boundaries because of COVID-19-related societal changes. 

Gerdlie taking lessons at home from K4H.

The Liaisons are now in charge of making sure the young musicians make class, but also coordinate with parents to identify nearby food banks and health service orgs, keeping in touch with them and being a friendly support unit through the difficult quarantine days of no school and probably no paychecks. To them, Kids4Harmony its not just the music teacher, but the community that comes with orchestral practice, with families coordinating support for each other, with the assistance of K4H staff making sure that everybody is fed, healthy and has the proper parts to join the coming digital efforts to bring small ensembles together through the web. 

Innovating Programs, Maintaining Impact

Not all of these heroic tales have immediately positive resolutions. In Lawrence MA, Elevated Thought’s approach at delivery, consists of training and supporting local artists with space and salaries to take on local beautification projects and school residencies, in a beautiful and empowering symbiotic relationship with their community. For Marquis Victor, the Executive Director, the projected loss of revenue for his organization makes up for more than a third of his annual budget. This dramatic revenue loss, paired with the inability to meet with his participants face to face, has forced Marquis to create new digital spaces to meet his staff and constituents while  dramatically cutting back on hours paid to make the budget last longer. 

The usually bustling space at Elevated Thought .

“It’s just not the same” he laments on our call, “the awkwardness of the technology and the gloom of the situation make for a difficult environment for engagement motivation and creativity.” For now, he meets with his staff on Zoom to talk about their experiences on social distancing, creating staff workshops to share resources that can be used to stay active and creative. Seemingly unbeknownst to Marquis himself, through his decision to shift the typical delivery of services, he has become, yet again, the much needed safe space for his participants to come - a place where their voices are heard and celebrated, amplified and empowered to go about their lives as we continue to learn more about how the future looks like, on an almost hourly basis. 

Amidst the discomfort of trying new platforms and dealing with newfound apps and unusual scheduling, new advantages can be found.  As Ariana Falk, Education Director for Worcester Chamber Music Society’s  Neighborhood Strings program tells us, “Technology has its quirks and it’s not ideal, but it also has given us a very cool intimacy to have the chance of practicing in the living room with our students -  maybe a parent or sibling drops in to say hi, maybe meet a pet or two…” 

They are also making the most of concert and rehearsal cancellations for the professional musicians that make up the teaching staff: “[We are] having a chance to have all our teacher together in a Zoom meeting, talking about the future of the program, and where do we want it to be five years from now, how can we make our teaching better?, how can we make the program all that it can be?,  that’s a nice luxury of time.”

Connecting Practice to Policy

No one claims that this is easy, but as Alysia Lee, Fine arts Coordinator for the Maryland State Department of Education tells me: “We work closely together (with organizations) and that has made the difference, to put humanity at the forefront and not bureaucracy.” 

She wears dual hats between her State administrator position and her role as Artistic Director of Sister Cities Girl Choir in Baltimore. Alysia makes sure that the state is informed of the great efforts that grassroots organizations are doing to continue services in one way or another. She also coordinates with her own organization to make sure that her singers are engaged and accounted for. “Transparency helps deal with the situation,” she says, “being sincere with all stakeholders that we are walking in strange territories, makes resource sharing easier and more rewarding, but most importantly fostering a sense of trust with the community on the continuation of services, both at state level and with my organization.” 

Changing Organizational Strategies and Responsibilities

Through it all, reports from across the field keep informing us of incredible shifts in organizational strategies to ensure that the community continues to receive the benefits of community arts organization’s presence and work. Not just as artists, but as community members and leaders, individuals can help navigate the situation, spot and share resources, and ensure that all stakeholders continue to function in this completely new situation, with some semblance of stability, the spark of creativity, and the assurance that in their work they will find bold solutions to face this crisis. As its not unheard of, our teaching artists and administrators are always learning new roles within their scope of responsibilities to the “Public Benefit” becoming a hybrid artist/social worker/community leader, and now diving deeply and quickly into technological depths that were not in everybody’s radar 3 months back. 

Kaylianne Martinez reherarses in her living room with Ariana Falk from Worcester Chamber Music Society

In the end, it’s our teaching artists, arts administrators, and leaders who will continue to be at the forefront of need making a case for the arts and art making. “We have an opportunity to be there for the world as a source of healing,” Alysia tells me from her home in Baltimore, just before she jumped in to try a new app to sing in a choir with her girls. In the Berkshires, Courtney Clarke worries about silence from funders, enlisting the assistance of her filmmaking partner to document as much as she can: “They have to know what we’ve been doing, in case we have to do it for a while longer.”  From her house in Worcester, Ariana Falk sighs, “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be happy to go back to live teaching and music making, but we are still finding some pretty cool silver linings in this whole strange experience.” And in Lawrence, a slightly more cheerful Marquis Victor tells me before we hang up, answering my question on the continuity of art making in his program: “It’s going to be something else, but we will make it together.” 

*Rodrigo Guerrero

For 20 years, Rodrigo Guerrero has been trotting the globe in the name of Social Action Through the Arts and Creative Youth Development. Serving in all manner of administrative and advocacy roles in his native Venezuela, he was an integral piece of the international musical and educational phenomenon El Sistema, where he closely worked creating partnerships and cooperation opportunities with arts organizations in 5 continents, connecting government efforts and grass roots movements in countless countries to the philosophy of el Sistema’s founder, Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu.

After relocating to the US, he served as Creative Youth Development Program Manager for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, working closely with over 90 programs across the state, providing technical assistance and direct consultation services to strengthen the growing field of practice.

Currently, Rodrigo works as a freelance grant writer and arts administration consultant, working with organizations and funders in the United States and Europe.