From “Finding a New Tune: How Arts Organizations Balance Creativity and Operations” by Corbett Barklie in the latest issue of The Nonprofit Quarterly:
By its nature, infrastructure is a barrier that splits the focus of an artistic group and demands attention. At its most positive, it protects the artistic product over the long term and ensures continuation. But to achieve long-term stability, the present must also be considered and planned. This planning often leads to self-conscious creative behavior, which can divide the artist from his art and the art from its community. Without equally considering the potential loss of spontaneity and engagement, recommending the development of infrastructure as the source of long-term security seems irresponsible.
[...] In Los Angeles, we bemoan the lack of a cohesive arts community. Here the number of artists and arts groups is immense and often separated not only by budget size and artistic intent but also by gridlock. Even so, the larger arts landscape features various smaller arts clusters organically united by need, vision, and respect. These community clusters are vibrant and collaborative and undeterred by freeways or traffic. And if we were to examine these clusters closely, we might discover that, rather than lamenting the absence of a single, cohesive community, we should celebrate the existence of many. Perhaps now is the time for the community to inform leadership and shape the dialogue. And perhaps there is no single conversation, but instead three or four.
[..] If we re-imagine the ways art is created, identified, and supported in our communities, we can find enduring solutions that truly support arts groups.
This article sparks a number of questions about the definition and leadership of the non-profit artistic community — both in Los Angeles and in any city. But two essential quandaries stood out to me: first, how does infrastructure allow for creativity and how does it interrupt it? (In other words, how does institutional growth occur in tandem with “impulsive” and creative audience engagement?) Moreover, should we perhaps reconsider how we talk about infrastructure in the first place? Sure, non-profits theatres and dance ensembles and philharmonics share concerns, fears, hopes. Yet considering those three very different organizations as a single, cohesive community does not always benefit them. Nor does it benefit a newly-formed arts collective and well-established performing arts institution to be discussed interchangeably. To support art on the whole, we need a more detailed picture of who creates it — and who partakes in it.
What would you say? When does it make sense to discuss the whole “arts community” and when is it better, in a sense, to consider it in distinct and important pieces? And how can “we open the possibilities for the identification of relevant leadership and broaden its definition?”