A brief story first, then I’ll get to my point…
A friend of mine who worked in an elementary school told me a story about a 7th grade student who was somewhat problematic and was often getting into trouble.
One day he was found misbehaving in the hallway so my friend told him he would have to go see Mr. St. Pierre (the principal), to which the student replied “Who the hell is Mr. St. Pierre?”
What does this have to do with arts advocacy? I’ll get there, but one more story…
Yesterday, a friend of mine who is a chartered accountant (and my landlord at the moment) was dropping by as we were having some painting done by a man who once worked as a CGA, but had chosen to do house repair and general contracting. In other words, both, educated people
We were speaking about various options for changing the blinds on our windows to get better blockage from the sun. One of them said, “you want to make sure they are opaque.” True enough, and I remarked that we didn’t want them to be like one of Margaret Atwood’s favourite words “diaphanous.”
I’m not surprised they didn’t know what diaphanous meant (I didn’t until I’d heard Margaret Atwood refer to it) but I was surprised that neither of them had ever heard who Margaret Atwood was!
I’m not laughing at them or feeling superior because I knew who Margaret Atwood was and they didn’t. I’m thankful for the exchange because it was a good reminder that we make incredible assumptions in our own little worlds about everything else. In the case of our student earlier on, one would automatically assume he would have known the name of the principal.
I thought about some of the amazing things Margaret Atwood has said about the arts and how we (in the arts world) copy and paste her comments everywhere and send them to our politicians and the general public as evidence that even big names support the arts and so they should, too. We essentially say, “Isn’t it obvious?
We forget that many people don’t even know who Margaret Atwood is and so don’t even register the same significance that we see.
If we want to tip the needle of support for the arts, we’re going to have go a lot further afield than our own world.
I believe this comes about by having people in other fields getting on board as spokesmen in a similar way that boards of arts organizations often have business people on them. We also need members of the public telling their politicians directly why the arts matters to them.
Sitting around in circles of arts-only people talking about this is not going to go far. Haven’t we learned this yet?
John McLachlan
PS – Who the hell is Lady Gaga?
Now Lady Gaga may be a good spokesperson; – “calls them as they is!”
I agree that we in the ARTS need to have people advocate for their support of the arts and we will do well to empower them with experience and knowledge.
It takes a politician to know a politician and to speak – “politician”.
There is a much larger and powerful voice out there, and we in the ARTS have not gone far enough to empower or even involve them – it is all the “attendees” who “buy” into our product.
I have said this before and I shall say it again; whining is just that whining, anger gets people angrier; but by speaking from the heart words come out as “truth”.
Build our strength in alliances, collaborate, communicate, and create a powerful audience to speak with us, about us, and then about their support for the ARTS.
Yes, there is a great deal to be done, but, why not start a movement and move on and forward.
Susan, I’m whining. Guilty, as charged.
Thanks for the reminder and I agree, it’s the movement that we need. I just have a hard time figuring out how to start that or take part in that with everything else going on.
Small steps, I suppose.