BRATTLEBORO — The volunteer is present in every organization doing what needs doing - stuffing envelopes, cleaning up after events, building stages, offering in-kind services of every imaginable manner, greeting joyfully, serving on boards.
Board participation is demanding, and I'd like to acknowledge right now the first-rate efforts I have witnessed on the several boards I've worked with. It's impressive, it's time consuming, and it asks every bit as much attention to detail as the “day job.”
Since my family and I have moved here, I have served on four boards (Brattleboro Arts Initiative, New England Youth Theatre, Arts Council of Windham County, and the New England Center for Circus Arts); as well as three advisory groups (the Arts Campus, Town Plan Advisory Group, and Sustainable Brattleboro); the Town Arts Committee, which I currently chair; and the Alliance for the Arts.
And I've learned a thing or two.
• If you volunteer to paint the newly built NEYT's interior to save on construction costs, remember to quadruple the square footage. You are painting four verticals, not one horizontal. And if the color is particularly imaginative, it will take three coats.
• If you volunteer to run a charrette, be prepared to steward the results. They do no one any good sitting on the paper they were written on.
• If you chair a group, committee, or board, be prepared to take the blame for what doesn't get done if you think you can accept any of the credit for what does get done.
• And, in all these cases, if you have a vision, you will find push-back. It isn't necessarily seen as the vision you think it is; it is seen as that electric word - agenda.
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So, I've volunteered quite a lot of time on the arts here, and my family has as well.
My husband Jim has served on the Brattleboro Music Center board (and, full disclosure, he painted far more than half of the NEYT paint job that I just took credit for). My mom volunteers at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center and NEYT, and my daughter Cass had accumulated more than 100 community hours before graduation this past June.
On the subject of the volunteer, the Americans for the Arts study published a few years back assessed that Brattleboro uses 13 volunteers for every one paid arts job here.
Thirteen to one.
I think there is more to unpack in this equation.
Consider that there is then no employee salary circulated in the local economy by these volunteers.
Pew Charitable Trusts acknowledges this result and examines further, finding that there are consequences of inefficiency due to the need to retrain new volunteers at a faster pace than staff, there is constraint to strategizing, and there is an impact on simply getting the job at hand done and on schedule.
Most negative, in my mind, and a hidden consequence - or maybe unintended consequence - is that free labor perpetuates the idea that the arts are primarily a charity.
Yes, the IRS sees the arts that way, but I think this is something to challenge, first in our thought and then in the larger economic structure.
Free labor suggests that the arts are dependent on it, from the artists as well as from the arts supporters. It suggests that we all do all this work for the love of it. Almost like a religion.
Well, of course, we love it, we love what gifts the arts continually bestow.
But the charity paradigm is in large part responsible for the fact that operating costs are so difficult to secure. Such costs are just now being looked at by major foundations as a primary need. They had always been all about programs, what wonderful things were you going to do. They did not look at what the financials have to say about how much of an impact marketing might have on your revenue.
But when volunteerism crosses over to the artists as well, it creates an unchallenged and false paradigm.
The artist is skilled - please don't think of asking your Realtor to do a trapeze act for a fundraiser or your attorney to sing a concert. The artist can provide a visual or a performance that draws on a creativity that has resulted very possibly from years in training.
The quaint phrase “starving artist” trips off the tongue, but I tell you, there is nothing about starving that I find in the least charming.
If Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had something to say in a 45th Symphony, there is nothing at all charming about the fact that he died of and in poverty. Mozart was a lousy businessman. Shakespeare, on the other hand was brilliant. Their talent level was probably about equal.
So, is it the luck of the draw? Shakespeare just had the smarts, too? It certainly isn't about being good enough - as in, “Well, if your art is good enough, it will succeed.”
There is no quaint “spin” to the continuum of Vincent Van Gogh's life. Examples like this go on and on.
I want to ask - are we really okay with this? Really?
I'm not. Not when there is a way to address this.
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So, this brings me to my agenda, which I see as a vision. (I've had my fair share of run ins on this agenda/vision subject.) Yes, it has to do with a shift in thinking and in resource allocation.
My vision is a community where artists can support themselves, and where the arts sector is enabled.
I am not looking for more, or for enhancing what's already working. Brattleboro is one of the most remarkable towns in America. We could, however, maximize the resources here for the good of the community, for the good of the artist. The artist should be able to navigate life and make a living.
Sound too lofty? In 2009, Toronto, despite a $9 billion creative industry economic impact, launched a study to answer why, within five years of their college graduation, a huge percentage of the graduates of some of the best arts schools on the planet were no longer practicing art or they were in economic depression, or both.
These artists, some of whom are plenty famous now, had incredible difficulty in transferring their intellect and skill sets into a profitable life.
Remember Mozart and Shakespeare. It isn't about talent.
The report is detailed, but it begins by outlining conditions I see here as well, such as fragmentation in support systems that make the path unnavigable, and no sense of strategy - or the need for it.
But Toronto, since this report, has also identified ways to mitigate these issues.
The plan is described as a Hub or Center for Creative Entrepreneurship. It proposes tailored business-skill development - financials, business plans, marketing, management, etc. - and shared information, networking, and administration.
There is a need for business acumen. The artist is sometimes good at this. We have examples here in town. New England Center for Circus Arts was designated the Vermont Organization of Note by the New England Foundation for the Arts for business savvy. But sometimes the artist falls into the Mozart camp.
But is it logical to allow success or failure to be dependent on coming to the table with business skills?
Let me ask it a different way. If you need a surgeon, does that surgeon necessarily have an innate talent for business? Do you care?
We do need the artist just as much as the surgeon. We have since we painted on cave walls.
If we want to look at this in a numbers sort of way, let's do that. The creative industries are the fifth-largest industry in Vermont. Brattleboro is crawling with artists, crawling with internationally acclaimed artists. Some of them are gifted teachers, some are out there performing, some are showing in trade fairs. We are an incubator of the arts like few towns in America. I like to say the arts are like bacteria in yogurt - it's all about the conditions for interaction.
The arts inspire other creative enterprises and innovations as well as the knowledge industries, resulting in what we call the creative economy. The Berkshires are cultivating their arts industries, and their economy is growing.
In a recently written document concerning Brattleboro's sustainability, written from an economic development standpoint, the arts and cultural endeavors are identified as one of the “greatest assets to this town.”
The connection is not hard to see.
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Another question I have: Why not aim to have Brattleboro be the headquarters of this fifth largest industry?
The Town Arts Committee's charrette for the arts sector gathered 20 pages of input - they are now edited to five clear goals. The Town Plan 2011 has a draft chapter on the arts that provides a blueprint for the future. This input aligns with the Toronto results.
So I offer a challenge to this community. If we are going to claim Brattleboro as an arts destination, then we also claim it as an arts town as well.
To the philanthropists: Make art accessible to more people than those with disposable incomes. Create a system like the Kalamazoo Promise, where that city promises a college education to any kid who wants it, and gets the necessary grades.
We can promise art to our kids. We can be the town that says art is for all our citizens, that says, “This is an arts town.”
To the business sector: Work with us to devise a plan that will dent the 13-to-1 ratio. Let's work toward 10-to-1, so that the community's gross domestic product is raised.
To the established arts institutions: Stop asking artists for freebies.
Pay artists for fundraisers, for programs, to help mentor the middle groups. The ACWC as fiscal agent takes on the fledgling organizations and gets them going, but there is need for shared expertise, shared infrastructure. Not to the extent that would have a negative impact, but if your organization has a good thing going, seek out others in need of a leg up. Your boards can mentor younger boards.
To the artists: Being an artist is as legitimate a life choice as any other profession, and it asks the same, if not more, rigor of training, strategy, dedication, and purpose.
The occupation asks for you as an artist to develop skills as an inherent, obvious, intuitive so-logical-it-isn't-even-talked-about part of your life.
And please realize that when you do your art for free, the artist next to you will be expected to do it for free as well.