An Alliance for Artists
Remarks by Susan V. Berresford at the Southern California Association for Philanthropy Los Angeles, California June 6, 2002
It is a pleasure to be here in Los Angeles. This is a city in which the Ford Foundation has always found innovative people and organizations. That is clear in the nearly $43 million in grants we have made in Los Angeles over the last five years. I am also pleased to be here because you are donors who care about the strength of our nation's artistic and cultural life. Your city and its cultural products are a powerful force in the world. Los Angeles shapes the dreams and lives of many millions of people in America and in the world. So it is fitting that donors meet here and think together about the future of our cultural resources and what may be done to strengthen them.
I hope we can work together to reaffirm the importance of creativity in our society. In particular, I hope we can develop more adequate support systems for creative individual artists from diverse communities across the nation. Those men and women are the mainstay of our cultural life and the people on whom our cultural institutions depend for their vitality. They are, after all, the people whose efforts will shape our cultural identity in the 21st century and our cultural legacy.
Today I want to propose that large and small donors come together in a long-term alliance to create support systems that can help nurture the talents and creativity of our artists. We can do this by pooling our ideas and some of our arts funding, but also by drawing on ideas and funds in areas such as housing, education and financial services.
It may appear foolhardy to propose a new alliance to support artists at a time when so many cultural institutions are in trouble. National, state and local budgets have been strained by a variety of factors, ranging from the economic slowdown to the costs imposed by the post-9/11 world. Today, as in the past, when budgets are tight, the axe often falls first and hardest on arts funding. Certainly, Californians know first-hand about the impact of state budget cuts on arts organizations.
I believe we can help arts institutions survive this period of funding cuts and at the same time begin the process of meeting the needs of individual artists. Again, history can serve as a guide. In the past, funding cuts for arts institutions have been restored and funding was even enlarged when times improved. But the needs of individual artists have never really been fully addressed, in good times or in bad. It is important to start that process now and prepare ourselves to seize the opportunities better times will bring.
Before I talk about how we might do that, it may be helpful to identify five beliefs I hold about the arts that I hope we all share.
- First: artistic talent abounds in all communities and is an expression of our humanity and human identity. People create art whenever and wherever they live -- in caves 3,000 years ago, on Wilshire Boulevard and in Brooklyn today.
- Second: direct involvement in the arts -- learning to play an instrument, perform a play, write a poem -- should be a component of every child's education, regardless of background or economic status.
- Third: cultural institutions such as theatres, dance companies, museums, schools, music groups and others are crucial sources of support for our nation's creative talent.
- Fourth: creative and artistic talent is an important contributor to urban and regional economies.
- Fifth: by probing sensitive questions, exploring values, maintaining diverse traditions and inspiring both action and reflection, art constitutes an important resource for democracy.
To put it another way: Art can be the source of enormous social, political and economic capital in the 21st century.
These beliefs drive donors to allocate a healthy portion of our funding to the arts. In fact, four out of five foundations make arts grants, a higher rate of participation than in most other fields. The Foundation Center's research shows that funding for the arts and culture increased by more than $244 million between 1999 and 2000, totaling about 12 percent of U.S. philanthropic funding, a percentage that has held fairly steady for the past decade.
Many of you in this room help make such impressive figures a reality. You are the artistic patrons on which so many organizations depend. Your financial support helps to spark our imaginations, build our economy and keep our democracy strong.
At Ford, we are, and I believe we always will be, an arts funder. New Directions/New Donors, or ND2, our biggest recent program supporting the arts, was launched in 2000. ND2 was designed to build endowments for new creative work and provided over $40 million to 28 particularly innovative cultural groups across the U.S. In California, those groups include the Japanese American Museum and the San Francisco Ballet.
We are pleased with the way grantees in the ND2 initiative have raised matching funds and have continued to innovate. But we have also been struck by a message we received from many of these grantees. A good number told us they were worried about the lack of support for individual artists. As they repeatedly pointed out, individual artists are our source of creativity but we don't do very much to ensure their well-being. They noted that existing supports for individual artists are fragmented and under-financed. The National Endowment for the Arts used to provide about $10 million a year in fellowships to over 400 artists in all disciplines. Now it has virtually eliminated such funding and provides awards to only about 40 writers and traditional artists each year. The 50 state arts councils have aggregate budgets exceeding $300 million, but allocate only about $9 million annually for awards and fellowships directly to artists.
A number of our ND2 partners asked us to explore what might be done to support America's artistic wellspring. Eventually, 38 large and small donors pooled support and a team began exploring the many and varying needs of individual artists and what might be done to meet those needs. Among our 38 funding partners in this area are the Durfee Foundation, the Getty Trust, the Flintridge Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the Hewlett and Packard Foundations and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Team members interviewed almost 300 artists across the country, along with several hundred cultural leaders, funders, academics, media people and others. What emerged is a fairly comprehensive picture of current programs and services for artists.
Incidentally, this information will become the National Information Network for Artists ("NINA"), a comprehensive database that will be available online this fall. The team is now completing case studies that illustrate how the current array of programs and services actually work -- or don't work -- for artists in 10 representative locations across the U.S.
As they near the end of this exploration, the team has sketched some very interesting ideas about how we can better support and utilize the artistic talent in our society. But their ideas can only be realized if a group of donors discards pessimism about arts funding, takes hold of a big idea, and works together from this early stage to build on existing resources and create new supports over a decade. In other words, we need courage, collaboration and consistency.
Let's turn to what the team found. They focused attention on four clusters of issues:
- nurturing young and emerging artistic talent;
- creating financial and community supports for artists and their families;
- expanding connections between artists and audiences;
- making the case for public support of artists.
Let me ask you to imagine with me what a changed philanthropic landscape in each of the four areas might look like if we had venture funds to follow up on some of the team's recommendations.
First, the effort to nurture artistic talent. Let us suppose that a large fund of $40 to $60 million was established, and made available over the next 10 years for a new national fellowship program for promising artists. We might call them the American Wellspring Awards. One hundred to 150 carefully chosen artists from diverse communities might be awarded $25-50,000 each year or over two years. That could enable those talented artists to devote themselves full-time to creative work instead of depleting their energies in survival jobs. The concentrated work could boost their artistic production and prominence.
Or let us suppose that we created a consortium of innovative arts schools with funding to reshape curricula that better prepares artists for the diverse roles they will play in the 21st Century. Emerging talent would have access to the best training in artistic theory and technique, as well as acquiring skills that enable successful work in nonprofit, commercial or community-based environments. Such outstanding arts schools as the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California at Monterey Bay offer inspiring examples that might serve as models.
Or let us imagine challenge grants to colleges and universities for the integration of artists into campus life. Grants could also stimulate the revival of the national artists-in-schools programs that have been lost to budget cuts. As Sony recognizes with its workforce development investments in Culver City schools, there is no substitute for young people having personal and inspirational exposure to mature artists. We have it in our power to make that happen.
The study team's second area of recommendations urges us to create financial and community supports for artists and their families. Many possibilities for donor activism emerge here. One might be to challenge a dozen cities and towns to work with us to create artistic empowerment zones that increase artists' living and working opportunities. We might be able to draw on housing subsidies and community development monies to provide living, working, exhibition and performance space for artists. Such innovative development exists today in our nation, including some here in Los Angeles such as the Traction Avenue Corridor and in Chinatown. In my hometown, New York, we have a cultural district being created around the Brooklyn Academy of Music. There could be many more, and present ones could be grown to stimulate even greater economic and social value.
Another important idea we could help to make a reality is a national artists' service corporation. Such an institution might offer health insurance, provide financial services and other resources to artists who cannot obtain them or can only do so at great cost, and aggregate the purchasing power of our 1 to 2 million artists. Maybe some of the health-oriented foundations will work with us on health insurance. Similarly, an arts donor alliance could try to create a national royalty licensing service to license art works and distribute royalties to artists, ensuring compensation without perpetual control. Such efforts now exist on a small scale and we could build on them and expand the systems. And an alliance of cultural funders could help expand ideas for new tax incentives and ways to increase revenue streams for artists across the nation, perhaps building on the "1% and 2% for the arts" programs that now exist in about half of the states and an increasing number of localities.
Let us turn our imaginations to the third area, expanding connections between artists and audiences. Here we can build on much good work that is already under way. We have all seen the results of sustained partnerships between cultural institutions and artists. Just think of examples from such diverse institutions as the Mark Taper Forum, SPARC, Self-help Graphics, and the Japanese American National Museum, to name just a few. But these long-term partnerships between cultural groups and artists are the exception, not the norm. If those partnerships were common, music ensembles, theaters, dance companies and others could enable artists from diverse communities to create new work and even to hold extended community residencies. These would engage audiences in the creative process. A donor alliance could also seed the creation of commissioning clubs across the country. These would encourage small groups of people to pool resources to commission and present new works by artists, thus connecting thousands of people with the thrill of supporting the creative process.
And we might take a leaf from the national and youth service corps that place thousands of young and mature people into service roles throughout the U.S. and overseas. The service programs have grown from Americorps, created by President Clinton, to The Freedom Corps under President Bush. Why not create an Artistic Freedom Corps that would develop ways to involve artists in domestic and international service? Youth service and youth development monies may make this possible.
The final area, making the case for public supports to artists, also offers many opportunities. A donor arts alliance could help to recruit and train cultural journalists and strengthen local and national coverage of cultural issues and arts criticism. Such coverage would also generate wider, more informed discussion of the ideas of cultural leaders and artists. Maybe there are journalism funders willing to collaborate with us on this. We could also launch a sustained public relations campaign on the social value of the arts, celebrating the men and women who create artistic value in our lives and communities. We ought to shine a light on interesting research about the arts. For example, one article I saw recently told of a study in Louisiana that found that students from Vietnamese immigrant families who maintained cultural traditions did better in school than students whose immigrant families discarded their traditions.
These are just a few of the ideas that caught my imagination in the interim briefing I recently received from the team doing the exploratory work.
Many of the 38 donors that supported this exploration did so as a gesture of concern for individual artists without expecting to be either large or ongoing partners in subsequent initiatives. I applaud their generosity and concern for the basic problem. But it also means that we are now seeking second round partners who want to work on some of these ideas. Current and future partners will want to test whether over the next 10 years we can really make a difference for individual artists in America. Our coalition wants to prime the wellsprings of our nation's artistic talent and leave an enduring mark.
I have been at the Ford Foundation for over 30 years and I know that these kinds of broad explorations can take on a life of their own. Donors come forward, grasp an idea and shape and fund it in ways the exploratory team never imagined. Such donors are philanthropic artists, with their own form of creativity. Some of those philanthropic artists are among us today and I hope I will hear from you if you connect with these ideas. We want to hear from you whether you are an arts funder, a health funder, a youth funder, a housing funder or have other interests. We can find and build connections. The Ford Foundation is ready to work together with others who want to join in this new effort. We're not just looking for foot soldiers, either. In some elements of our work, we may lead, in others we will follow your lead.
This is all in service of ideas that I believe we need to reaffirm today in this back-to-basics, post-9/11 culture. We need to reaffirm our commitments to freedom of expression, to a healthy debate of diverse ideas, to creativity rather than conformity and to the talent we know resides in all communities, including the most marginalized. Artists help us do this. We also have to hold onto and build what some call social capital -- the community ties that knit our diverse population together through a wide variety of shared experiences. Social capital is built in many ways, not just through the bowling teams that recent social capital research highlighted. Artists can and do build social capital. Post 9/11, we also need to think about the cultural images we project to the world. If we help our artists do their best work and get them out into international cultural markets, our nation's export image will be more than fast foods, cars and pop stars.
About two years ago, the Ford Foundation announced a large, new, 10-year fellowship program that will give 3,500 emerging leaders from poor communities free graduate education anywhere in the world. At the launch, Wilmot James, a Ford Trustee from South Africa made a point about leadership that bears repeating here:
"Reproducing our thinkers and leaders does not happen by accident, it requires planning and forethought. Leadership in a democracy, obvious as it may be to you, requires investment in a diversity of fields and people. It also requires the capacity to reward, encourage and honor strong and rigorous independent thinking."
His point applies to artistic leadership as much as it does to political, economic or social leadership. Artists emerge naturally from all populations, just as people emerge with remarkable mathematical or scientific talent. But many other countries, in Europe, Japan and Canada, for example, do much more than we do to nurture this talent. In the U.S., we seem to believe that the naturally occurring form of artistic talent is sufficient for our society. We assume that if talent is outstanding, it will get trained, presented, be bought and sold in the market. We assume that the cultural institutions we support with our grants and just plain brute talent will win the day.
I suppose that is true to some extent. But it ignores the reality of discovering greater possibilities. Think what it is to be an artistically gifted child in a school with no art program and be told that since you have no love for math and can't yet write a good essay, you don't measure up. How many such young people soon become disaffected from education altogether and how many artists are discouraged this way? Think also of what it means to be a young, talented poet or dramatic writer who needs the mentorship of fine teachers to become a truly great author but can't afford the tuition. How many such artists are without the money to develop their talent and have to substitute long hours of work in menial jobs in order to survive? And think of those who are gaining recognition for their art but face financial ruin when illness strikes because they are among the 40 million Americans without health insurance.
I wonder how many world-class artists we discard in this way. And how many promising talents are shunted away from creative lives.
Is this what we want in our society? Absolutely not!
We want vibrant cultural institutions with a firm financial base. We also want a decent system of support for the men and women who are the creative lifeblood of these institutions. Their work is an important source of creativity and cohesion for communities and society. Those two necessities for a healthy arts climate -- vibrant institutions and support systems for artists -- are complementary. We easily recognize their interdependence, but we don't put our money where our mouths are.
If we can make those connections and work together in a creative donor alliance for artists that support and strengthen those connections, we will seize an important opportunity for America in this new century. Over the past half-century, the philanthropic community has helped to build an array of cultural institutions second to none in the world. We now have the opportunity to build a similarly robust and dynamic support structure for artists. And by doing so, we will also strengthen American creativity, American communities, and American diversity and democracy.
I hope we will grasp this opportunity. I want to hear from you if you are interested in trying.
Thank you.
The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.