Category

Art & Social Change

Jun 27
0

The Real Adventure

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | No Comments

The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

             –Marcel Proust

One of the most powerful changes for humanity is to see the world with new perspective. Yes there is tingling excitement in experiencing the momentary splendor of aesthetic beauty but growth comes from changing preconceived notions. Art possesses the powerful ability to give humanity new eyes. It is with this in mind that Michael Owen, the creator and visionary behind the Baltimore Love Project, is working on a new series called “Explore”.

Although not a native of Baltimore, Michael is very much a product of Baltimore. He has made the city his home for the past 12 years, having landed here, like many others, for higher education and not quite able or ready to leave upon graduating. For the past decade, Michael has been working on the streets of Baltimore. He is not hawking something illegal, nor is he a vigilante with spray paint. Michael is commissioned to express ideas on wall-sized canvases. Michael is a professional mural artist. He has hustled enough that he is now implementing his own visions like the Love Project and Explore.

With a studio on the streets and the ambition to make provocative statements, Michael has experienced Baltimore in ways that few others have. Michael has taken flight from “Smalltimore.” He has expended his understanding beyond MICA, the Inner Harbor, Bolton Hill, and Station North. He has even gone beyond Canton, Fell’s, Mount Vernon and Hampden.

Michael knows that the city is not just the areas around the water and the Charles Street Corridor. He has seen beautiful pockets of greenery. (Anyone heard of Leakin park on the west side? Bigger than Patterson and Druid Hill combined.) He has seen that Pittsburgh is not the only town to have produced steel. He has seen that as a caucasian male he is actually a minority in Baltimore. He has seen that his emerging artist income far exceeds that of many in Charm City. Through experiencing the vast landscape of Baltimore, Michael knows himself differently and he knows the city differently.

“Explore” is an effort to share the city of Baltimore. Explore is an effort to share landscapes that many would not experience on their own. Explore is an effort to help people birth new eyes.

Much like the Love Project, Michael is seeking out walls spread geographically across the city. Once a wall is found he creates depth and nuance in the image by layering numerous brilliant colors in a graffiti-esqe fashion on the surface. The patches of vibrance appear to be revealed by peeling away the surface as he utilizes much of the native background in the canvas.

Each wall has an ethereal human figure created in the vibrant hues that seems to be floating in a vast unknown. Finally, to draw connections to the larger project, each wall contains one of the letters from the word “explore”. The combination of the colors, the technique, the content and the concept put out a strong appeal to look deeper.

Michael has put out a call to experience a city that he has come to know. His work is birthing not only new aesthetic gifts to Baltimore, but quite possibly something far more valuable — new perspective.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Michael Owen].
Jun 13
0

Art to Stand On

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | No Comments

There are many attributes to art. Art can have aesthetic quality. The work can be satiating to the eye, and beautiful in a very traditional sense. Art can have a purpose. The work can be functional and exceptionally well designed for human interaction. Art can have meaning. The work can challenge the mind and change our perspective. A work of art that captures all three attributes well is likely to have great impact.

Flux Foundation knows how to make work that leaves an impression. The foundation, most well known for their monstrous work at the mecca of bohemian culture that is Burning Man, recently did an installation for the Coachella music festival in Coachella Valley California. The Sidewalk’s End was a powerful work that considered aesthetic, purpose, and meaning.

With thoughtfulness about the community, Flux created a piece that was simple yet provocative in aesthetic. It played with Shel Silverstein’s title that was likely very familiar to the younger audience of Coachella. The Sidewalk’s End literally and tastefully looked like the end of a sidewalk.

The work served a powerful purpose without distracting from the event. It was a man made grassy knoll that offered a better view and means to enjoy the tunes. It also offered respite from the heat with a semi enclosed outdoor room with misters. The work challenged perceptions. The Polo Grounds venue is a flat expanse that one would think is already ideal for a concert. The piece added a physical dimension, it was 80 feet long and rose up 12 feet from the ground. It also provided an opportunity to experience Coachella in a unique way with sweeping vistas of the grounds not previously experienced.

2013-04-12-18.14.54-w1280-h1280-795x263

To accomplish work that embodies such meaning, the foundation leans heavily on process. Their mission is “to build art with community. To build community with art.” Their work starts and ends with the community, which requires a process that goes beyond just the creator. The implementation requires a team of designers, carpenters, fabricators, programmers and neighbors to bring a piece to life.

For “The Sidewalk Ends” building with community and for community was a process of considering heavily the context of the work. Coachella is a HUGE outdoor gathering around alternative music. The work could not be the end itself. The work had to enhance the experience of the younger audience enjoying music.

The Flux Foundation is onto something with their thoughtful creative process. They recognize that art has many values. When all the potential of art is explored, not just the aesthetic, we have the opportunity to change how people experience the world around them. Now imagine if the multiple values of art were applied beyond a weekend festival devoted to music. We might find that art is a solid foundation to build meaningful change.

IMAGE CREDIT. [http://fluxfoundation.org/blog/coachella-loves-flux/].
Jun 06
0

Creative What?

By | Art & Social Change, Art That Counts | One Comment

Since this column started, one of the topics I’ve read the most about and wanted to eventually cover has been creative placemaking. Those two words, placed together just so, were so full of intrigue to me and seem to provide an umbrella under which all my other public and community art interests are sheltered. I was introduced to the phrase “creative placemaking” when I met Deborah Patterson of ArtBlocks at CreateBaltimore in 2011. Because our meeting was a brief one—pretty much throwing our business cards at each other and saying we liked what the other was saying in the last session while running off to a new session—it didn’t really provide me any context for the phrase. And then, as so often happens, I suddenly was encountering the phrase everywhere (this is called the “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon,” by the way—you’re welcome!).

Eventually, I dove into some research and discovered the National Endowment for the Arts‘s (NEA) basic definition of what creative placemaking is:

In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, nonprofit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, tribe, city, or region around arts and cultural activities.

In order to be or appear inclusive, prepositional phrases have been hitched all over the place to this definition, and I find it all quite gets in the way of understanding what it’s all about. Breaking out the red marker, the definition can be whittled down to this:

In creative placemaking, partners strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood around arts and cultural activities.

The NEA’s definition matters a lot to people not just because of their role in influencing thought, but also because they have a grant program specific to creative placemaking. The Our Town grants were launched in 2011, and, over the last two years, have provided $11.58 million in funding in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. However, even in its simplified form, this definition is too wordy for a tweet and still manages to lack specificity. ArtBlocks’ mission statement cuts through all that and includes a definition that is tweetable and understandable:

Our mission is to provide communities with creative placemaking, a grassroots, bottom-up design tool used to identify their goals for their public spaces.

I gravitate toward this definition because:

  1. It identifies that placemaking is a tool. In the NEA definition, creative placemaking just sort of is. It might be a collection of strategies, but that’s not super clear.
  2. It creates a sense of ownership: Creative placemaking is for communities, their goals and their spaces. The NEA definition names a lot of players and a lot of places, but it doesn’t establish that the power in creative placemaking is bottom-up and is within the communities themselves.
  3. As is evidenced in the very existence of this blog, I’ll always choose concrete—and hopefully measurable—goals over “strategically shap[ing] the physical and social character” of anything.

Of course, there isn’t a shortage of definitions for creative placemaking and just because I found one close to home doesn’t mean I stopped collecting them. The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is the grand-daddy of creative placemaking organizations; they’ve been at it since before I was born and play an active role not just in projects that have a placemaking approach, but also in terms of promoting placemaking and providing resources and training for individuals and other agencies. Back in 2006, they asked for individual’s definitions of placemaking and the resulting list represents a variety of perspectives, some frustratingly broad, others inspirational. My favorite states:

[Placemaking is] the art and science of developing public spaces that attract people, build community by bringing people together, and create local identity.

The latter portion of this definition reminds me of some other ChangeEngine posts on branding cities and Baltimore specifically and works for me when I tie it back to ArtBlocks’ emphasis on communities (or neighborhoods or tribes or cities) having the power to create and emphasize their own identity. Unlike so many efforts that focus on bringing in tourists, creative placemaking has the opportunity to be about the community itself and have a result that may or may not be meaningful or attractive to outsiders. It certainly can, but it needn’t be; it doesn’t have to justify itself based on the number of hotel beds filled, for example. (Which isn’t to say creative placemaking doesn’t have to justify itself at all; more on that soon!)

In addition, while I don’t look to diminish the impact of the NEA’s funding—Station North was a recipient of one of the inaugural grants, afterall—it’s certainly not the only way for creative placemaking to occur. PPS specifically highlights and encourages a “lighter, quicker, cheaper” approach to placemaking:

Whether you want to move your office outside, organize a citywide cooking festival, or start small by making a concerted effort to engage directly with your neighbors every day, know that your own actions are an essential component of your neighborhood’s sense of place, by virtue of the fact that you live there. […] Great places are not created in one fell swoop, but through many creative acts of citizenship: individuals taking it upon themselves to add their own ideas and talents to the life of their neighborhood’s public spaces.

While creative placemaking may seem like a fad or be dismissed as something frivolous, definitions like those provided by ArtsBlocks and calls to action like those issued by PPS remind me that place matters. The sense of ownership and identity related to place are strong motivators; you hear it in the arguments between sports fans — we’re seeing it in the images from Gezi Park.

This post, of course, is just scratching the surface of creative placemaking. Future installments will focus on specific placemaking projects and successes in Baltimore and also rumblings about the role of outcomes and evaluation in creative placemaking. And, for those of you reading who still question if creative placemaking is useful or effective, I leave you with these words from architect Jody Brown and encourage you to click through and enjoy the photos and the rest of this piece:

Thank you public plaza, for giving pigeons a place to poop.

Thank you public plaza, for flooding whenever it’s humid.

Thank you public plaza, for that patch of green in that concrete planter over there. I had almost forgotten about nature.

 

May 30
0

Literacy Beyond the Book!

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | No Comments

Change is a result of access to information. The accelerated rate of societal change from the middle ages to present is likely a result of access to written information. During that period we experienced the invention of the printing press, increased rates of literacy, and greater emphasis on individual pursuit of knowledge. Today we see the manifestation of accelerated change with the torrent of information available along the information superhighway. Access to information is a means to level the playing field of opportunity for humanity. As social change makers, access to information should be a top priority.

Art in all forms is a medium to convey information. As noted above, we certainly recognize that art packaged in the written word is information, but do we understand that rhythm, color, and choreography also convey powerful messages? Literacy with respect to written words is important, but what about literacy in visual art, performing art, and music? Do we miss an amazing opportunity to convey ideas that go beyond the spoken word when we neglect other forms of “literacy”? I think as social change makers we must consider access to art a fundamental right.

What does making access to art a fundamental right look like?

We must first consider where “art” presently resides. It is everywhere but stereotypically speaking art resides in buildings. More specifically art resides in museums, galleries, music venues, and theaters. How do we provide greater access to these buildings? We must remove barriers to entry. Many of our Baltimore institutions have realized one of the barriers as economic. As a result their visionary leadership has made the collections accessible for free at various times. This model may seem flawed, but historically speaking admission fees are not what keeps the lights on at cultural institutions. There is opportunity to explore new business models that make art more economically accessible.

A static location is also a barrier. Despite living in the age of automobiles, many cultural venues are not accessible to the audiences most in need of their information. It is not reasonable for an institution to regularly move their collection, scale their operations, or worry about the next venue for their performance. But what would happen if we re-imagined how an institution shares its work? What would happen if we went beyond the walls? The Walters Art Musuem in Baltimore is exploring that question with their “off the walls” exhibit. They have placed replicas of their collection in public places beyond the museum walls. Another example of beyond the venue thinking is Performance Kitchen. They are exploring what heightened audience engagement is, including bringing art to audience instead of bringing audience to art.

Most importantly, artistic literacy is a barrier. I do not propose to be an expert on education, but I do see a flaws in our educational system. One of those major flaws is the lack of value placed on art. This manifests in many ways. It is the cutting of arts programs in schools but it is also reinforced on our streets. If you look around at our opportunity for art in public places it is as if we have settled for Dick, Jane and their dog spot. All too often we expect our public art to be cute, aesthetically pleasing, and easy. We expect that the art empowers the community for a moment in time but never allows them to grow. We need to challenge society and let them achieve Mark Twain and maybe even James Joyce level art work on our streets. There is opportunity to expand conversation by pushing artistic bounds.

There are barriers to making art a right for all populations. But the opportunity for change through artistic literacy and access to art should make it a top priority of anyone in pursuit of impact.

IMAGE CREDIT. Off the Walls.
May 22
0

The Power of Story

By | Art & Social Change, Art That Counts | No Comments

I was heavily involved and invested in museums for the first decade of my career — as a staff member, a fellow, an intern, a volunteer and a museum studies student. So it was a delight to attend the annual meeting of the American Alliance of Museums in Baltimore this week, greeting the people in the field that I follow avidly via Twitter and blogs and the icons of the museum world to the city of which I’m such a fan.

AAM Schedule (photo by Michelle Gomez)
Photograph of AAM program/schedule courtesy of Michelle Gomez and via Instagram.

The theme of this year’s conference was “The Power of Story.” And while that might not seem that relevant to data and evaluation on first glance, it’s data that gives power to our stories. Inside museums, evaluation and measurement are done in some ways that might be familiar to the casual visitor (e.g., visitor surveys, comment cards, program evaluations), but also some that might be unexpected or go unnoticed, as a profile from the Wall Street Journal illustrates:

Matt Sikora doesn’t look at the Rembrandts and Rodins at the Detroit Institute of Arts. His eyes are trained on the people looking at them. Mr. Sikora watches where visitors stop, whether they talk or read, how much time they spend. He records his observations in a handheld computer, often viewing his subjects through the display cases or tiptoeing behind them to stay out of their line of sight. “Teenage daughter was with, but did not interact, sat on bench, then left,” read his notes of one visit.

It’s not uncommon for museum evaluators to shadow visitors in the galleries, learning from their movements what areas or objects are engaging and for how long. In addition, before an exhibition opens to the general public, many elements, including label text and interactive gallery displays, are prototyped and tested. Through these evaluations, exhibit designers, curators and museum educators learn more about visitors’ reactions to exhibits: which elements are engaging, confusing or overlooked. In addition, some evaluation tools also provide information about what visitors take away from their time in the gallery — what was learned, what inspired them, what connections they made and, hopefully, what will draw them back again.

What was so empowering about this year’s conference was being able to evaluate those tools themselves, and to learn. Surprisingly, technology is not always the answer. Visitor evaluation consultants and staff members from the Brooklyn Museum and Monticello shared various scenarios where their attempts to survey visitors went awry because technology got in the way or skewed results, the target audience was elusive or just straight-out avoided their polling attempts. It just goes to show that even bad data can teach you something, even if it’s not what we set out to learn!

Even more surprising was the lesson that data doesn’t necessarily persuade, no matter how clear or comprehensive. Often, beliefs trump facts. As Stephen Bitgood, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Jacksonville State University and Founder of the Visitor Studies Association, said, “When strong belief is pitted against reason and fact, belief triumphs over reason and fact every time.” Despite our expectation that data should persuade, prove and set people on the right course, it simply doesn’t override gut instinct, what people feel or believe to be true. Again and again, presenters told tales of data being met with questions or disbelief. Unfortunately, no solutions were presented to either circumvent or resolve this issue, but I am filing this under “knowing is half the battle” and keeping it in mind when data is presented as all-powerful or all-knowing.

Display at AAM2013 (photo by Mariel Smith)Display at AAM2013 (photo by Lindsay Smilow)
Photographs of AAM display, top to bottom, courtesy of Mariel Smith via Instagram
and Lindsay Smilow via Instagram.

So evaluation and measurement can fail or go awry. Testing our tools and techniques in small batches prior to rolling out the full survey or other strategy gives us an opportunity to see it in action and identify areas to fix or improve. If evaluation and measurement are treated as afterthoughts, as so often is the case, these tests are even less likely to occur and, as a result, the final data may prove useless, further cementing the idea that evaluation itself is a useless activity. It’s a difficult cycle to break out of, but worth identifying and tackling so that we can truly tell a more powerful story.

May 15
0

Building Bridges

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | No Comments

Art is a bridge. It connects the mind to reality.

One of the most powerful connections that art can make is between people. Art can bring the CEO next to a hipster in a stank bar to indulge in some tunes. Art can reach deep into our soul as we explore the fallacy of our thoughts on material things. Art can even connect us to people we may not know. Art that tells the story of the unknown is among the most powerful in creating change. When we bring light to mystery it allows us to see and navigate.

In 1999 multidisciplinary artist Alfredo Jaar sought to bring to light a dark issue in Montreal. He used the amazing canvas of the Copula of the Marche Bonsecours to tell a story of homelessness in the city. “Lights of the City” thoughtfully considered how to draw attention to an issue that society would rather ignore. On many occasions portraits have captured the story of overlooked people, but “Lights of the City” sought to maintain the dignity of the subjects and not exploit their current circumstances. With respect, the instillation drew attention to the situation and suggested that it is only temporary.

As a monumental part of the sky line, the canvas was a beacon for much of the city. Jaar installed a hundred thousand watts of red lights into the copula. The lights could be flashed on with audience participation at several strategically located switches. The switches were placed in the office of an organization that serves the homeless, and several missions located within 500 yards of the copula.  Every time a homeless person entered any of the institutions they were welcome to flip the switch. This allowed the individual to be recognized without being humiliated.

Jaar created a connection for society. Just as a bridge cannot deliver us to our destination, his installation alone cannot eradicate homeless. It is on society to press onto our goal of a better life.

As a final thought I wanted to share some words from fellow Baltimore artist Gaia, on how to take this installation to the next level:

“Eventually all the shelters for homeless people in Montreal could be wired and connected to the Cupola. This way, a major landmark and historical monument in the city would be acting as a non-stop lighthouse, producing endless, painful distress signals to society.

With enough media coverage and public outrage and support triggered by these ongoing distress signals, homelessness could be completely eradicated from Montreal.”

IMAGE CREDIT. Wikimedia Commons.
May 01
0

Rise from the Rust: Art and Economic Development

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | 2 Comments

Grand Rapids, Michigan — an urban town — is becoming the envy of American metropolises. Forbes magazine just cited it as one of 15 cities to watch. ArtPrize is likely a significant factor in the rise of this emerald city in the heart of America’s rust belt. The five-year-old event is shaping the mini-metropolis’ economy and the global dialog about art.

ArtPrize began as an experiment of visionary entrepreneur Rick DeVos. As a third-generation entrepreneur and Grand Rapidian, DeVos knows something about vision and cared deeply about his home town. In 2009 he devised an event to crown the largest prize awarded in art in Grand Rapids. The novelty of the idea went beyond the size of the prize and the non-art-mecca location of small-town-America. The award was open to any artist from across the globe. Any venue or public space within the boundaries of downtown Grand Rapids could serve as a gallery. Finally, and likely most risque, the award was to be decided by popular vote of the people physically present in downtown Grand Rapids during the event.

The event proposes some interesting questions:

What happens when anyone can identify themselves as an artist?

What happens when any venue can be declared a gallery?

What happens when anyone can be a critic?

The answer is twofold: economic impact in a post industrial city and rich dialog!

The event was an economic force in it’s first year! It was obvious to the restaurants in the heart of the event, many ran out of food to serve during the first weekend of the two week extravaganza! In post event reports, the second competition had economic impact of over $7 million. Data for 2012 event has not yet been published but 2011 saw $15.4 million of economic activity and brought over 300,000 visitors to the urban town!

With an additional “Christmas” type retail season in the early fall, the event has attracted many new restaurants, bars, and boutiques to the downtown area. One of the more interesting additions was a “pop-up” storefront for Wolverine, an international shoe brand with offices in Grand Rapids. The brand opened up a store in downtown for what was anticipated to be a short-term during ArtPrize 2011, but in the end has held onto the spot. The success of the “pop up store” inspired the brand to open up their first store in New York City.

Beyond the economic success, the event has created conversation. ArtPrize is devoted to Art! The previous four events have attracted over 5,000 creative installations and hundreds of thousands of visitors. New thoughts are certainly formed and voiced with the presence of new minds in the town; add art, good or bad, and conversation abounds.

ArtPrize is a jackpot! ArtPrize awards $200,000 to an artist for a single work. To put that in perspective, Baltimore’s own Sondheim prize and Baker’s artist awards are $25,000. Even the prestigious Turner Art Prize awarded annually by the Tate in London is only 40,000 pounds ($62,300) and the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss award is $100,000. ArtPrize is a large boost for the “starving” artist.

The ArtPrize is awarded democratically. The popular vote of the prize suggest that anyone has the opportunity to express their thoughts on art. This has attracted more “attention” than any other element of the prize. For quite some time the art establishment has been a tight community with prolific educational or economic hurdles as barriers. ArtPrize is leveling the playing field. By allowing the vote of anyone in the community to count, art is now something anyone can talk about. The metropolitan socialite, the hipster, the farmer and the homeless man can all voice a statement. In 2012, ArtPrize added a $100,000 juried award, suggesting a desire to be serious about the art but still placing the emphasis on accessibility of art to the general population. It will be interesting to see if ArtPrize ever awards both prizes to the same work.

ArtPrize is creating change. A small city in west central Michigan is on the minds of city planners, events organizers and the global art community. The interesting thing about ArtPrize is that it does not have to be confined to a geographic area. Many elements of the concept could be exported and the future may hold a global movement of democratically awarded art prizes that foster the economy and expand thought.

IMAGE CREDIT. “Open Water No.24” by Ran Ortner; Photo by Flickr user Haunting Notions.
Apr 24
0
Community art

Meaning & Merit in Community Arts

By | Art & Social Change, Art That Counts | No Comments

So much of establishing metrics and evaluations for an organization or program is about asking the right questions and sometimes those questions take you unexpected places. For Rebecca Yenawine and Zoë Reznick Gewanter, their questions have led them on a multi-year research project encompassing not only the outcomes of community art projects, but also illuminating the meaning and merit of the field itself.

Yenawine and Reznick Gewanter are both involved in MICA’s Community Arts program (Yenawine is an adjunct faculty member and community art evaluation consultant and Reznick Gewanter is a graduate of the Masters of Art in Community Art and research assistant for studies through the Office of Community Engagement) and collaborators in the Reservoir Hill-based youth media nonprofit New Lens. In pursuit of useful evaluations for New Lens, the pair realized more contextual research was needed in the area of community art. They’ve designed and are in the process of completing the following three-phase research project:

  • Phase I (2010): Conducted 14 national interviews with community arts practitioners with ten or more years experience.
Chart describing the outcomes of community art

Outcomes of community art cited by current practitioners in the study. Source.

  • Phase II (2012): Interviewed more than 80 youth participants of Baltimore community arts programs.
  • Phase III (ongoing): Studied the impact of community arts programs in five Baltimore neighborhoods (four with active community arts programs, plus four control neighborhoods), collecting 1,000 surveys.

As a whole, this research looks to document the impacts of community art in order to help other practitioners, organizations, communities and funders. This sort of broad multidisciplinary research is rare and provides a benefit to the entire field. In its first two phases, the study provides a common language with which to discuss outcomes in community art, and the final phase includes the development of an assessment tool that can be adapted across organizations and communities. In addition to better describing the outcomes of community arts programs, the research of Yenawine and Reznick Gewanter also challenges practitioners and organizations to invest in evaluations that are specific to the impact and influence of the field and not simply generic metrics. On the Americans for the Arts web site, Yenawine writes:

If art is in fact offering a space for developing social understanding, for connecting and building relationships, and for developing greater cohesion, part of the story that needs to be told is about how and why this is a valuable counterbalance to a society whose bureaucracies emphasize productivity, economic success, and competition without fostering the larger social fabric of communities.

This is really the value of outcomes and metrics. Data is more than numbers in a spreadsheet, charts submitted with reports; at its best, it empowers our descriptions and understanding of our communities, our work and their merit.

IMAGE CREDIT. Photograph courtesy of New Lens.
Apr 17
0

Why Change Can’t Be Built In A Day

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | 2 Comments

Creating social change is not easy. Creating social change within the confines of cultural norms today is near miraculous. In my previous two posts, I have explored the challenges culture throws at social change makers. In part one, I explored the larger picture through the perspective of a national non-profit fund raising expert, Dan Pallotta. In part two, I explored the challenges on a personal level through my experiences using public art in Baltimore to create social change. In my final post in this series, I hope to suggest things that we can do as a society and as social change makers to make the process of lasting impact easier.

Compensation: Know what it is worth and ask for it.

Pallotta points out that society sees nothing wrong with compensating the developer of a violent blockbuster video game tens of millions of dollars, yet struggles to pay the guy ridding the world of malaria several hundred thousand dollars. Society knows how to keep score for the video game developer. Society has the company’s balance sheet. Society does not know how to keep score for the guy curing malaria. There is no balance sheet. Culture needs to consider that value goes beyond a bottom line. Change makers need to do our part to describe that value. On the personal front, Love Project artist Michael Owen and I had no idea how much work it would take to complete our “simple” project. We now know and as a result we understand better the value of such monumental tasks. We need to share this information with other folks: funders, artists, community developers and anyone working in the area of adding social and economic value through art. We need to help set the “appropriate” market rates for this type of work and ask for the appropriate rate.

Advertising and Marketing: There are more efficient methods than development.

One of Pallotta’s over-arching themes is how society perceives overhead in non-profit work as evil. Society needs to know that overhead may actually work to fight evil. The current methods of non-profit fundraising are ripe for corruption and cronyism. Development, the protocol for traditional non-profit fundraising,  is about relationships with people who already value you or your work. This mindset is supposed to reduce the amount of effort (dollars) spent on raising money as you are not working to find new supporters, but rather expanding the “charity” of the current supporters of the cause. This sounds great but not only does it lends itself to support coming from family, friends and the business acquaintances of the executive director’s spouse, it suggests the pool is only so wide and yet infinitely deep. In for-profit business, a development mindset would be ludicrous. It suggest that the pool of customers never expands; it just grows in depth. Business does marketing because it is easier to make the market wider than it is to make the market deeper. We as change makers need to make some noise on this issue. We need to fight for the opportunity to market and let our funders know that expanding the pool alleviates financial stress on them.

Risk: Failure is a part of learning even in social change.

A trend in start-up business these days is to “fail fast” and change. The notion is that it is better to figure out early that an idea is not going anywhere and move onto the next thing than to linger and waste resources on it. Mr. Pallotta points out that in for-profit that failure is seen as a pivot point, or learning opportunity. In non-profit, failure is viewed as a moral lapse of judgement. Society needs to understand that failure is still a learning experience in non-profit just as it is in for-profit. We need to accept and encourage risk, meaning failure might happen, so that we can grow. If social concerns are still with us, there is still opportunity and a need to try new methods of change. We must learn in order to create change.

Time Horizons: Be real about achieving social change.

Adding value that goes beyond the bottom line requires long-time horizons and there is always someone else behind you ready to take the money from the funder. Society (funders, the public, and organizations) needs to grow in our understanding of realistic expectations for change. We know that Rome was not built in a day, but do we know that the social ills of Rome were never solved? Change makers need to be realistic about the change that they can deliver and over what time. We need to do our part to demonstrate progress whenever possible. We need to embrace accountability and be able to clearly articulate the progress that IS being made. We need metrics and we need to know what they mean. It should be the goal of every organization to make their “balance sheets” available, and I do not mean financials. Funders also need to do their part to express realistic expectations and commit to the long term with organizations. Change will come but it will likely not happen tomorrow.

Social Capital Markets: Ownership of doing good.

When a non-profit organization wants to grow its infrastructure so it can deliver more services or products it relies on the same pool of dollars as it would for programming. Operations and build money are treated as one and the same. For-profit business would find this inefficient. Society needs to rethink the financial opportunities for social change makers. Yes, we are doing that with crowd funding platforms but these are limited by imagination and regulations. Could we imagine a platform that allows for distinctive “ownership” of social good? Could we create reasonable regulations that open up funding for social change? These are in the works but we must again accept some risk and allow for learning and growth so that our efforts to deliver social change can be made more efficient.

Social change is hard. I do not think that will ever change. But as a society, we can rethink our perspectives on delivering that social change and make it far easier. Many hands can lift a far greater weight when we don’t hold ourselves back.

IMAGE CREDIT. Aaron Logan/LIGHTmatter Photography via Wikimedia Commons
Apr 16
0

Fighting the Power With Craft

By | Art & Social Change, Crafting Change | No Comments

In today’s issue of Crafting for Change… anti-consumerism and knitting vaginas for reproductive rights – crafters challenging the status quo.

First off – craftivists fighting consumerism. The woman behind MicroRevolt knits logos of brands that are known to use sweatshop labor like The Gap and Nike into handmade garments as an exploration of labor, production and consumption.  She created a software program that creates knitting patterns from images so anyone can knit their own versions of brand-name goods, like the Gap legwarmers below.

GaplegwarmersMicrorevolt

While MicroRevolt is explicitly political, the Counterfeit Crochet Project is more of an open exploration of brands and why people covet them. The artist behind the project encourages people to make their own knockoff versions of designer purses. People have crocheted knockoff Gucci, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton bags, complete with crochet approximations of clasps, embellishments, and handles.

chanel_full_bagChanel, anyone?

Both these projects ask questions about what makes the brand so important to people and what people are able to create themselves. I like them because they make you think about what goes into these products and what you are capable of making yourself. Recreating a branded product connects people to the production process in a world where the norm is to buy things made halfway across the world by anonymous garment workers.

Probably because a lot of crafters tend to be women, lots of craftivists have also taken on reproductive rights issues. Government Free VJJ is trying to knit a female reproductive organ for every man in the Senate and House. They figure if congressmen have a uterus of their own, maybe they’ll keep the laws out of American women’s bodies. They’ve already sent a uterus or vagina to lawmakers in at least 36 states. This is a hilarious tactic to get politicians’ attention and make pro-reproductive rights voices heard.

uterusA knitted uterus sent to a North Carolina senator.

A women’s institute in the UK led the Embroideries Project to raise awareness of female genital mutilation, a widespread practice in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Women sewed and embroidered vagina quilt patches, and displayed the quilt at a shop in London. The woman behind the Uterus Flag Project has women craft images of their uterus to inform women about unnecessary hysterectomies and the overmedicalization of women’s bodies (more info here). Reproductive organs are not a typical subject of craft projects – these craftivists are breaking this taboo to make people think about important issues related to women’s bodies.

There are plenty more examples of people using crafts to speak up about issues that are important to them. These are just a few examples of craftivists taking on causes they care about in unexpected ways.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Photos via Government Free VJJ, MicroRevolt, Counterfeit Crochet Project, and riklizart].