My friend Patrick once praised my “desert optimism.” At first I was more confused than flattered. He explained:
“In a new state, you don’t have the luxury of longstanding traditions or long-established infrastructure. And in the desert you have to innovate to stay alive. You create and re-create, and seek opportunities everywhere. You’re out there in the middle of the desert; you either innovate your way into getting sustenance from a spiky, prickly cactus or you don’t survive.”
I was struck. There is indeed a great capacity for innovation and creativity in our state. It is who we are, and particularly in places like my home city of Phoenix, we wouldn’t be able to exist without the forethought of those who dared to imagine a bustling city in the middle of a sometimes blistering, unforgiving (though magnificent!) desert.
This idea scuttled back and forth across the surface of my thoughts throughout my recent, my first, Arizona Town Hall experience.
It is no secret: the last several years have been traumatic for Arizona’s arts and culture sector. For a sector which is undercapitalized in nearly every area – except perhaps talent and vision – the Long Recession has been bruising and demoralizing. And though the recession is supposed to be over, I’m fairly certain the sector will continue to feel its crippling effects for some time.
As an arts administrator working with ever-diminishing public funding, the recession has left me personally sapped and weary. Still, call it my “desert optimism,” but even on my worst days, I try to focus on the vast opportunities for progress and our Arizona capacity to innovate and improve.
Thankfully, the 98th Arizona Town Hall reinforced, for me, the validity of this optimism. To be honest, I was first worried about the effectiveness of Town Hall’s consensus-based approach. Chasing consensus often produces weakened results and spinning wheels, but in this case at least, the consensus recommendations are nothing if not sweeping, energetic and ambitious.
And it was truly exhilarating to work so closely with Arizonans representing different geographic areas, sectors and perspectives. I was buoyed by the Town Hall participants’ collective passion for investing in arts and culture, and their interest in developing comprehensive policy in support of the sector. It was an honor to work with such smart, engaged Arizonans, and I met some terrifically lovely people I know I’ll work with again. The process also provided opportunities to strengthen the bonds of trust between arts and culture professionals, which will be important as we begin tackling the Town Hall’s recommended action steps.
Professionally, and specifically related to our work at the Arts Commission, my panel’s discussions reinforced the need for (and importance of) non-grantmaking services. Over and over again, my panel-mates recognized that in a time when public grantmaking funds are diminishing (at least in the near-term), robust technical assistance, capacity-building and professional development services are even more critical to the success of artists, arts professionals and arts educators.
They called for increased convening of sector representatives, resource-sharing, thoughtful efforts to provide arts education programs outside of school systems, and comprehensive, multilevel promotional campaigns about the value of the arts to Arizona. At the Arts Commission, we have been engaged in this work for 45 years, and this feedback is particularly useful as we endeavor to streamline, refine and enhance all of these programs and services following significant budget cuts.
The experience was ultimately useful to me on several levels. I left last week’s Town Hall feeling inspired, mentally exhausted but still ready to focus on constructing a more prosperous future for the arts and culture sector as well as our state. Spiky and prickly as circumstances are at present, if we pull together, focus and work hard, tremendous opportunities lie ahead.
