by Jennifer Wright Cook
On Sunday, January 19th The Field was privileged to curate (oh yes we did!) a session at APAP on failure, success and privilege with 10 stellar artists and presenters/producers.
I had many aha moments but the one that is still sticking with me came from the unbelievably smart Kristy Edmunds of UCLA.
There’s a crisis of courage.
It takes deep courage to make art. It takes crazy courage to put it up publicly and risk critique, opprobrium, humiliation, disdain and even boredom. It takes courage to ask friends, family and strangers for money to support your art.
It takes courage to present artists too. It takes courage to say to your Board, your boss, your audience “Yes, this work is important to see. It’s not easy, it’s intense, it’s smart, it’s odd, it’s provocative – and yes, we will present it.”
It even takes courage to run an arts service organization like The Field. Every choice we make is based either in courage or in fear. And every choice, one way or another is a moral choice. Meaning, for instance, I put a line item in our 2014 budget for health insurance for our staff (and me!). Our current health insurance is mediocre at best. And it’s going up 20% from $567 to $682 a month per staff member. We can’t afford this. We just can’t. After all, our funding hasn’t gone up 20%. Nor have our fees. So in order to afford this increase, we would need to cut other expenses (like rent? like our audit? Nope. They don’t budge down either).
So I get afraid. As a leader. How can we do this? Do we choose (again) mediocre health insurance for our staff (and myself!) or do I ask staff (and myself) to pay a higher percentage of it (currently staff pay 10%)?
These are moral decisions.
A budget is a moral stance.
A presenter’s season is a moral offering.
A funder’s grant is a moral relationship.
When we say yes to one thing, we say no to another. And this says something about us and our values.
I have crises of courage on a daily basis. But I try hard to push myself, and The Field, toward courage, toward abundance, toward transparency.
My question to you dear reader: what’s your crisis of courage? Tell us on Facebook.
P.S. There has been a huge conversation online that brings up questions of courage in the arts. I am not commenting yet but if you haven’t read it, you should, with a glass of whiskey perhaps. http://www.culturebot.org/2014/01/20493/considering-alastair-questioning-realness/
The Field provides strategic and creative services to thousands of performing and media artists and companies in New York City and beyond. Founded by artists for artists, we also respond proactively to sector-wide challenges through special programs such as Field Leadership Fund: a fellowship that offers real opportunities, remuneration and access to ambitious artists, arts organizations and arts managers.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Steve Gross: Prison Psychology and the Arts
I've always been the type of person (and artist) who imports from one arena/discipline/set of experiences into the other - and find that there's often a synergy that can happen as a result. The series of talks I will be doing through The Field is my first formal attempt to bring my experience of working in the prison setting back into the community and community of artists.
During the past five years, however, I haven't been idle regarding this cross pollination...I've been doing most of the importing in the other direction, from my Field experiences into my work as a psychologist, therapist, and supervisor. I wrote the following short essay for the newsletter that is disseminated among the psychologists who provide mental health services in prisons throughout New York State.
When I practice, one of the experiences I refer back to on a regular basis is facilitating feedback groups for choreographers. In these groups, called Fieldwork, artists show their work in progress before putting it in front of the public.
The basic rule for showing work in Fieldwork is that the artist can't talk. She can't tell the group what came before the section she is showing. She can't say the intended meaning of the work, what influenced her choices, or what artistic tradition served as inspiration. She can't describe the music or the lighting to come. She can't say how unprepared she is because the heat in the studio where she rehearsed was out.
Not only do artists showing work have a boundary – viewers do as well: don't ask questions, don't make suggestions, just tell the artist what you get from the work. “Get” covers an enormous range, well beyond what actually happens on stage. “Get” includes what meaning the viewer thinks the artist is trying to convey, what rings true (or doesn't) onstage, what seems to be going on under the surface, what comes across as meat and what comes across as filler.
As therapists, we are both artist and audience. As the artist, we don’t really talk about our work. We don’t announce our interventions (unless that is part of the intervention, which it can be). We don’t ply our patients with explanations of how they should feel or think (unless that is part of the intervention, which it sometimes is). We don’t convince patients of our effectiveness. Instead, we do – we embody the work, through modeling, through interaction, through our relationship with our audience. If we mess up, we don’t provide all kinds of excuses, we own them and weave them into the work: (“I feel like I went down the wrong track with you during our last session – did you sense that? What was it like for you?”).
We are also the audience. We “see” what’s on stage – our patients show us themselves all the time (in session, in groups, in the bull pen, on the walkways, in notes they send us and poetry they share). Their explicit words and behaviors are only one stream of information – ideally we are set to receive on all channels, ranging from our “gut,” to historical patterns, to familiarity with inmate dynamics in our facility. In fact, what our patients display is rarely the critical part, the part that leads to the most effective interventions, whether that’s a crisis unit admission or placid, steady attention.
Seen in this light, treatment is a dance, an interplay of seeing and being seen, no matter what the costume or lighting. The most powerful art usually translates, whether robed in the red velvet of an opera house or the zigzag of cinderblock.
Steve Gross began making dance/performance art in the late 1980s. His work was shown at various downtown venues including Performance Space 122 and Dance Theater Workshop and supported by various funders including the NEA, NYSCA, and Art Matters. Simultaneously, he transformed The Field from a fledgling performance space into a service organization for performing artists. Having been spoiled by 19 years with the best arts administration job on the planet, he went back to school to become a psychologist. He currently is the Chief Psychologist for Corrections-based Operations of Central New York Psychiatric Center - the organization that provides mental health services to New York State's 56,000 prisoners. He also practices privately.
Steve Gross began making dance/performance art in the late 1980s. His work was shown at various downtown venues including Performance Space 122 and Dance Theater Workshop and supported by various funders including the NEA, NYSCA, and Art Matters. Simultaneously, he transformed The Field from a fledgling performance space into a service organization for performing artists. Having been spoiled by 19 years with the best arts administration job on the planet, he went back to school to become a psychologist. He currently is the Chief Psychologist for Corrections-based Operations of Central New York Psychiatric Center - the organization that provides mental health services to New York State's 56,000 prisoners. He also practices privately.
Click here to sign up to attend any of Steve's three talks at The Field!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
"to fail and fail big" In Action: the revolution will not be funded?
by Jennifer Wright Cook
In September 2013, I met twice with the superb folks from the Brooklyn Commune to talk about our study, “to fail and fail big”. From this point of view, they interviewed me about the funding landscape and the challenges therein. In November I attended their opening night event and participated in a rousing, discussion about MFA debt and its huge impact on artists, the onerous structure of the 501c3 model and the lack of transparency about money in the arts. Stay tuned for their white paper that tells it all.
In September 2013, I met twice with the superb folks from the Brooklyn Commune to talk about our study, “to fail and fail big”. From this point of view, they interviewed me about the funding landscape and the challenges therein. In November I attended their opening night event and participated in a rousing, discussion about MFA debt and its huge impact on artists, the onerous structure of the 501c3 model and the lack of transparency about money in the arts. Stay tuned for their white paper that tells it all.
One big aha that strikes me hard with the Commune and over the past few years: “can the revolution be funded?”
(Terrible to admit but I’ve only read the reviews and summaries of the 2007 book that pushed this question forward for me, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex” – but it’s on my list and I think I get the basic jist. It scares me.)
The non-profit sector can be a dirty world. You have to work with honed clarity, great governance and nuanced reflection to keep focused on your mission and its delivery in an ever changing and über competitive world. You can easily be pulled off mission and off integrity. Sometimes, taking charitable dollars can pull you down a rabbit hole where your politics and your work are worlds apart.
In our regular lives, however, many of us make strategic life and consumer choices based on fair trade processes, green choices, humane labor practices, etc. We align our politics with our actions and our purchases. We aim to stay on mission and on integrity. It’s not always easy and it takes more time but we try.
What if we did the same in our non-profit work when offered philanthropic dollars? Could we, for instance, say no to a grant from (Insert Questionable Company here)? Some folks did just that back in the day when Philip Morris was one of the biggest NYC arts funders. Some folks said nope, no thanks. I am not okay with tobacco money. Other folks said yes, my work is worth it and the money can be put to good purpose now. And one group right now is having an amazing conversation about funding from Exxon/Mobile and their dilemma about accepting money from sources they find questionable.
Do you know where your money comes from? Are you ok with how it was made? Can your work remain “clean” if the money to fund it is dirty?
On top of all the “dirty money” that can stall a revolution, the revolution won’t be funded because the non-profit machine grows so fast and mission delivery is often left behind. Fundraising begets more fundraising begets more fundraising…and which requires more administration of stuff and people and things.: Yyou have to hire more development staff to keep up with all the grants you have to write; you have to pay them competitively because they are expensive; you have to hire more admin staff to fill out even more paperwork for all the oversight and compliance you have to do for all that money. And there are scandalously few grants to pay for any of these things because they aren’t very sexy.
So suddenly you are squeezing money from YOUR MISSION WORK to pay for for the administration of it all its management.
So the revolution you aimed to start is dead.
Now Now maybe the play you are working on or the dance you are creating is not a revolution per se. Maybe it’s just a play or a dance. your art work may not be aimed at starting a revolution. At The Field ours isn’t. But it is aimed at changing an artist’s life and the artist’s landscape for the better.
And money has changed us over the years. And The Field, our work, is not really a pursuing a revolution either.
As the crazy smart Diane Ragsdale wrote in her September Jumper blog “…what happens in the psyche of a grantee when a little bit of money comes in and when it, inevitably, goes away. In response to the question, Would it have been better not to have received these grants than to have received them and lost them? I find[ing] myself wanting to shout back at the page, “Yes! You would have been better off never having received the money!”
I love this idea. I fear it. I love it. Taking the money changes you. It forces you to comply with larger systems you might not agree with. It creates dependency. It forces you to compromise to survive.
But I am not sure I am courageous enough to say no to money.
Our question to you: Are you funding your revolution?
P.S. I am not at all a hater of in full support of hiring amazing development or administrative staff (to write grants and fill out all the paperwork). I do think we need, ironically enough,But, I think we need more unrestricted grants that FUND the administration of and fundraising for programs and the general operations that undergird all of this non profit machinery. Lastly, the ongoing frustration: why are artists often paid way less than administrators?
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