reciprocity

Curtain Call

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:19:02 -0500

We’re in the thick of end-of-the-school-year celebrations, recitals and performances at my house. It’s rare that I don’t get at least a little choked up during the curtain call of any performance, add kids and it’s pretty much guaranteed. When it’s my own kid? Well, I’m a goner.

As I found myself streaming tears after an elementary school performance of The Lorax last week—a performance where about 1 in 20 lines were audible and I had to peek through a forest of parents to catch a glimpse of my daughter’s arm—I realized that part of this emotional reaction is sentimental, and part of it’s parental, and part of it is the endorphin cloud and anxiety release that comes at the end of a show. But mostly it’s the clapping.

Arts education has myriad benefits. For me, one of the most important is that performing provides an opportunity for us to gather our children and applaud them. Every kid should have the experience of standing in front of a room of adults and hearing them clap. Growing up is filled with anxieties and challenges and it demands persistence and bravery. Curtain calls give us a chance to say: you’re doing great, keep going, this collective community of people have gathered in this room to celebrate you, your risks, your growth, your voice. Well done.

Take a bow, kiddo, we’re here for you.

(it’s a good photo, right? you’ve now seen about as much of The Lorax as I did.)

The Line

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:06:07 -0500

the big picture: laura zabel on art’s new roles in the community

I always love when John Spayde writes about our work. He has a real depth of understanding and level of nuance that really resonates with me. In this nice feature on The Line, he manages to cut through my excited talking and hand waving and make sense of what I’m trying to say.

http://www.thelinemedia.com/features/laurazabel050113.aspx

Shine or Undermine?

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:11:20 -0500

This won’t be the most popular thing I ever write. The most popular thing I ever wrote is this letter I wrote when I got really mad at the Governor of Kansas.

Which makes sense – we share things that are “against”, “take downs”, “rebuttals”, and “refutations” Don’t get me wrong, I love a well-worded smack down, especially if I agree with the author. And, certainly, there are many ideas who’ve had their time, people who could use a humbling, and wrongnesses that need to be pointed out and challenged.

And I count among my closest friends energetic questioners, enthusiastic hole-pokers, challengers, dissenters and the sassy, grouchy and downright curmudgeonly. And sometimes I get so mad about something that I have to express it, and sometimes I want to publicly challenge assumptions.

But it’s not what I want to be known for. If I have the great fortune and luck to be known or remembered for something, I want it to be something I added, not something I took down. That’s the challenge I am trying to give myself, before I comment, before I write, before I grouse about how somebody else is doing it wrong. What am I doing to make it better? What solutions am I offering? Can my work speak for itself? What if I spent the time and energy I was going to spend on critique on making something awesome instead?

It’s a whole lot harder to shine than undermine…

Knight Foundation Blog

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:22:22 -0500

Thanks to the Knight Foundation for this feature on their blog about our new healthcare toolkit and an interview with meeeeeee.

Connecting Artists to Communities

Springboard for the Arts: Springboard’s Artists Healthcare program- model now available to communities nationwide

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:18:24 -0500

Springboard for the Arts: Springboard’s Artists Healthcare program- model now available to communities nationwide:

Really proud of this work and excited to see what happens next!

springboardarts:

Artists’ Access to Healthcare: Simple innovation can equal big change

Access to healthcare is one of the biggest career threats to making a life as an individual artist. With the individual health insurance requirement on the horizon, the need for artists to connect to…

Guest Post for State of the Artist

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:25:49 -0500

The McKnight Foundation asked me to respond to their fantastic data visualization project that they created for the artist fellowship program.

Zig-zagging Careers and the Artists Who Love Them

“It makes me think that artists are like bees—going from flower to flower, pollinating, creating hybrids, feeding, taking, making things bloom.”

OpEd in MinnPost

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:21:35 -0500

Thanks to MinnPost for publishing this piece I wrote with Andriana Abariotes:

Let’s use the power of the arts to stimulate community development

“Creating or experiencing art can give people a fulfilling sense of personal power. We all have something to say about the world, and art helps us find our voice. It can also help us find each other. Arts activities provide valuable opportunities for people to gather and interact. Personal power gained through art can become community power, and collective action that results from that power can be transformative.”

My Arts Aunties.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:06:01 -0500

In the midst of the swirling conversation started (this time) by Sheryl Sandberg, Forbes published this piece called Why Women Need Sponsors Not Mentors. And it made me reflect on all of the incredible people who have helped me along the way. There is so much value in the idea of mentorship. I don’t mean the kind that comes from a program, but in real, authentic friendship that involves advice giving, energetic questioning and pushes you to be better at your work and your life. But, like the Forbes author, I dislike the word mentor and I’m not sure sponsor is a better word for it. When I think about my own experience, I am lucky to have a whole collection of teachers, mentors, sponsors, bar-raisers and challengers. Including these women –

(Linda Hope, Charla Jenkins, Kathy Pryor)

I studied theater at the University of Kansas, and I got a fantastic education in performance: movement, voice, text, history. I also got a well-rounded liberal arts education. And I got these women. These 3 women worked for the University Theater – leading the marketing, box office, front of house, fundraising and systems of the theater. KU has some really great programs that intentionally connect students to the inner workings of the theater – work study positions in the box office and fellowships that include helping run events and auditions; but more than those programs, it was the personality of these 3 women that made a difference.

They showed me so much about life and work, taught me lessons I use every day and trusted me to try things out for the first time. They were more informal than teachers, more like allies than sponsors and more fun than mentors. They were (and are!) confidants, role models and friends. They are my arts aunties.

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit all three of them as part of an alumni event at KU. It reminded me again of their impact on my life and career and some of the important things I learned from them:

-You have to be in your community. Serving on committees, helping with events, elections, showing up at parades—participating in the broader community is part of the job.

-You have to care about the work deeply. You have to be invested beyond the job, if you don’t love the work, you’re never going to put up with the crap that comes with it.

-It’s work. You’re going to have stay late, clean up messes (literal and metaphoric), deal with personalities, and get up tomorrow and show up on time and do it again.

-The quickest way to build loyalty is to show your staff that you will always have their back.

-Do not eat your lunch on the counter of the box office.

-Don’t put your lipstick on at the table.

I’m so proud and grateful to have these women in my life and to know that after nearly 20 years of friendship, I can drop back in and they can still teach me things.

What about you? Who are your aunties?

Instructions for Life (according to Mom)

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:15:00 -0600

A while ago I was looking for my daughter’s birth certificate and my marriage certificate. This involved dragging a file cabinet out from under a pile of shoes/junk/suitcases/flotsam in the back of my closet and then searching through smushed papers/manuals for electronics I owned in college/diplomas/birthday cards from files that are labeled important/misc/save and looking for the paperwork. On the downside, this exercise always makes me frustrated that I can’t just keep track of things like an adult (on a related note, when will I start getting out of bed more than 20 minutes before I need to be somewhere?) on the upside, sometimes I find fun things that I never would have rediscovered otherwise. I never did find the papers I was looking for* but I did find this little book that my mom made me for high school graduation:

There’s a lot of good quotes and advice from other places in the book, and then at the end she added her own advice…this is my favorite part:

Remember that your family loves you no matter what.
Even though you know your family loves you no matter what, don’t take them for granted. Let them know you love them, too.
If you’re really feeling down, do something nice for someone else - there’s no reason for two of you to be depressed.
Don’t make any life-altering decisions unless the sun is shining.
The best place to consider important problems is outside - sit under a tree or go for a walk, no matter what the weather.
Remember in dealing with difficult people, everyone is the center of his or her own universe - we all look at things from our own history.
Follow Stuart’s advice** and tell yourself something affirming every day.
Everyone has an interesting story to tell.
Sit in the front row.
Cultivate people who can make you laugh.
Make lists.
Change your oil.

My mom is pretty smart. I’m glad I found this list.

I notice she didn’t include “be well organized”-so that’s a relief.

———-

*Will you remind me that I put the new copies in the back of my jewelry drawer the next time I need them?

**My mom loves the Al Franken character Stuart Smalley. Who knew he would end up being our Senator?

2013 Trends

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:19:51 -0600

I’m honored to be included in this round of trends from this week’s Pollen:

http://bepollen.com/pollen/trend-spotting-in-2013.html

In which I reveal I know nothing about sports.

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:40:00 -0600

(maybe we should be inviting people to wear helmets and braids to the opera instead of trying to dispel the Brünnehilde myth)

Yesterday the Guthrie announced they were ending the year in the black. Good for them. But also in this article in the StarTribune they announced their year end attendance figures of 425,932. I have to admit that number really startled me. The Guthrie’s total attendance is not something I think about a lot, but it’s a lot bigger than I would have guessed. Big enough to rival things that I do think of as having huge attendance figures. Like football, maybe?

First of all, let me just be clear - I know exactly nothing about football. Zero. Nothing. Seriously. Nothing. However, I didn’t let this lack of knowledge stop me! I used the internet to look up the annual attendance figures for the Minnesota Vikings. 421,668. Wow, that’s really close to the Guthrie’s number. I should tell people about this incredible fact I have discovered that I’m sure no one has ever thought of before! I posted this on Twitter: “Guthrie announces annual attendance figure of 425,932. Total home attendance for the Vikings? 421,668”

Obviously, I don’t think the Guthrie and the Vikings can be compared that simply. But it’s still interesting to me. Several people on Twitter pointed out that the Vikings only have 8 games but the Guthrie has hundreds of shows. Yes. The Vikings also have much more seating capacity. And I might argue that in terms of economic benefit, restaurants would rather have a few hundred people every weekend of the year than tens of thousands of people eight times a year.

The more interesting thing that other people pointed out was how much more visible sports fans are - because they’re dressed up in helmets and face paint and jerseys and cooking their food in a parking lot (this is what happens at football games, yes?) I got some tongue-in-cheek suggestions like:

“Clearly, the lesson here is that theater-goers need more face paint. Let people know they’re there.”

“Maybe the Guthrie should add tailgating and apparel sales.”

I think these tweeters were being funny, but I think they are on to something. One problem the arts have isn’t actually that there are fewer super fans. I imagine the people who held those 400K+ tickets to the Guthrie are just as connected and passionate about the Guthrie’s importance as the 400K+ Vikings ticket holders. It’s with everyone else that it’s different. Take me for example—I’ve never been inside the Metrodome. I’ve never been to a professional football game in my life. I’ve never watched an entire football game on TV. The last time I knew a football player’s name was when I had a crush on a boy in high school. And yet, when the stadium debates rage, I find myself thinking, “Well, it IS an important asset to the city, I mean what kind of metro doesn’t have professional sports, if we’re going to compete for talent and reputation as a “real city” we need these things, right?” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the number of people who have never been to the theater who think of the Guthrie as important to the city are fewer.

There’s a theory called “Basking in Reflected Glory” that was most influentially researched and written about by Robert Cialdini. The best part about this theory is that it has an awesome acronym: BIRGing. Basically, BIRGing is when you feel good about yourself because of someone else’s success. Cialdini’s study found that students associated themselves with the success of their school’s football team by wearing team colors (particularly after wins) and referring to the team with the “we” pronoun, etc. That’s exactly what we need - more BIRGing! Arts BIRGing!

So, how do we increase BIRGing for the arts? Well, the research says, “A feeling of involvement is also necessary for BIRGing to occur.”

Oh, so I guess we’re back to what we already knew we need to do: engagement, involvement, relevance. PLUS t-shirts and facepaint.

—

P.S. I KNOW there are all kinds of holes in this comparison - I didn’t research how many repeat ticket buyers are represented in those numbers, or the numbers of bussed-in, captive audience children in the Guthrie’s number, or the number of Vikings fans so drunk they don’t remember that they had the experience, or really much of anything beyond looking up one number on the internet. I also wrote a blog about twitter, so what do you expect?

P.P.S. I also recognize that “being like sports teams” is not going to solve all our problems, yes our major orchestras are both locked out…so is our professional hockey team. Apparently all the BIRGing in the world doesn’t solve intractable labor disputes.

P.P.S. BIRGing!

In defense of yes. (or at least "oh alright, I suppose so.")

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:43:00 -0600

It’s very much in vogue right now to espouse the benefits of “saying no” And, of course, I believe that you shouldn’t do things that make you unhappy or work with people who don’t add to or feed the work. But I also believe there is great value in sometimes doing the thing you don’t want to do, doing someone a favor, even doing something out of obligation. Because sometimes that thing we think we’re going to hate turns into the thing we actually love and every once in a while the person we wrote off, ends up being exactly the person we need. And even when that doesn’t happen, even when the thing turns out to suck as much as we thought it would, sometimes it’s just the right thing to do. The trick is to find the balance between self-actualization and selfishness, right?

Letter to the Tulsa Ballet

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:33:00 -0600

(I wrote this a few years ago, but the blog we hosted it on is long gone, so I thought I’d share it here)

Dear Tulsa Ballet,

Thank you. Over 25 years ago you gave me an incredible gift. Your touring company came to my small Kansas town and I got to be in your Nutcracker production. I was actually in the production twice – once in 1983 and again in 1985. In 1983, I was 8 years old and I played an angel. I loved the beautiful costume. I remember one of the costume crew pricked her finger on a pin while she was helping me and I remember the bright blood on the beautiful white gown. She saw my horrified look, laughed, told me that “spit always gets out blood,” and sure enough, it came right out.

But it’s really the second time, when I was 10, that I remember most vividly. I played a little boy at Clara’s party (an upside of a really unfortunate haircut.) I remember the audition, how nervous I was. I remember the day my mom called to find out if I had gotten a part. And how she told me that the roles of the children were the “best” parts – because I had to learn a real dance, not just “look cute in a mouse costume.” In retrospect, she was probably, wisely, trying to head off any second thoughts I had about playing a boy in a show full of beautiful dresses.

But I loved my part and I took it very seriously. I remember the rehearsals in the big dance studio at the university, how professional it felt. I remember my brown corduroy suit and my black ballet shoes. I remember how tough the teachers were, how we had to sit with one leg crossed underneath and one knee up – at attention – while we were waiting for our turn. I remember mastering the hand over hand grapevine. I remember waiting backstage and being in awe of the professional dancers – real ballerinas. I remember how hard they worked. I remember the hush of the audience, the music, the smell and the aliveness of being on stage.

I learned so much from those experiences – about art, about hard work and discipline, about confidence and pride, and about theater magic. Those things have informed my whole life and certainly the work I want to make in the world.

I’m not sure I realized how important and formative those experiences were to me, until this year, watching a beautiful production of the Nutcracker in Minneapolis, with my daughter sitting on my lap. Afterwards I told her, “you know, Mama was in the Nutcracker when she was a little girl” “Oh,” she breathed, “I want to do that.”

Guest post for Americans for the Arts

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:12:05 -0600

Guest post for Americans for the Arts:

AFTA has a great blog salon on scaling happening this week. And they asked me to contribute!

Welcome to the Argument in My Head

Guest post for National Arts Strategies

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 22:00:36 -0500

NAS asked me to contribute some thoughts on value and the arts, as a part of their Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Leaders. Here are those thoughts:

Just be valuable.

Here, there and everywhere.

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 22:29:31 -0500

I’ve been traveling a lot lately. At least a lot more than I ever have in my life. I even have that fancy medallion status on Delta, just like all the fancy business people.

On the one hand sometimes these trips feel like a blur of planes, cabs, hotels, nametags and receptions. On the other hand they enrich my work and my life in innumerable ways. I always learn something, meet great people, see new places. And often I get to reconnect with people I’ve met in other places and continue and deepen these inspiring relationships. It is really an amazing feeling to feel like I have a national community of colleagues to bounce ideas and have big, sticky conversations with. These are just really fantastic people who I am lucky to know.

some recent travel photos:

art (with quote from President Obama) in New Haven, CT where I attended the annual convening of grantees of the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

Damian Woetzel from backstage at the Aspen Institute convening on the Citizen Artist, where I also got to do this:

totally took this photo of the program so I could send it to my mom.

Hollywood. Moderated a panel on art and transit projects for the Railvolution conference here.

Fabulous young musicians from New World School of the Arts at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Miami. I was on a panel about the national, time-limited funder collaborative, LINC.

Downtown Denver. Spoke on a panel about creative placemaking for the Urban Land Institute.

Guest post on Minnesota Playlist

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:09:42 -0500

How Do You Define Quality?

I’ve decided I’m Quality Agnostic - I believe it exists but I think it is unknowable.

Tour of the Kirkbride

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:31:26 -0500

I had an amazing experience today. I was visiting Michele, Springboard’s Rural Program Director, at our office in Fergus Falls, MN. Michele arranged a special tour of the historic Kirkbride building.

A bit about the 750,000 (yeah, you read that right!) square foot building:

The Fergus Falls RTC, known commonly as the “Kirkbride Complex,” was named after psychiatrist and founding member of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride. It possesses a distinct “Kirkbride plan” design that is indicative in all Kirkbride buildings: a layout that allows maximum amounts of light, open space, ventilation and natural settings, all of which Dr. Kirkbride thought was conducive for healthy patient recuperation. Architect Warren Dunnell integrated Dr. Kirkbride’s layout proposal into designing the Fergus Falls RTC. Construction began in 1888 and was finally completed in 1907.

The Fergus Falls RTC once housed 2,078 patients on a self-sufficient campus complete with a farm, orchards, garden, bakery, power plant, and nurse’s quarters. The Kirkbride complex was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Today, it remains the only iconic sample of Kirkbride architecture in Minnesota and is owned by the City of Fergus Falls.

Today the RTC is empty - an amazing and challenging asset just waiting to start its next life. Gene and Maxine Schmidt, leaders of the Friends of the Kirkbride group, were incredibly generous with their time and led us on a really wonderful tour of this beautiful place. It was an absolute joy to see their passion and dedication to the Kirkbride and to their community. I’d seen the Kirkbride from the outside many times and heard about its history and the difficult conversations surrounding its future, but none of that prepared me for seeing it from the inside.

Thank you, Gene and Maxine!

———

If you are near Fergus Falls, there is a community happy hour tomorrow at 8:30pm at The Spot:

Community Forum: How do you solve a problem like the RTC?

Built over a century ago in the Kirkbride style and once home to thousands of patients, the Fergus Falls State Hospital / Regional Treatment Center now stands empty and faces an uncertain fate.

Join us for an open conversation with neighbors and visiting attendees from the Statewide Historic Preservation Conference to discuss the past, present, and future of this building.

CSA: Fargo

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:55:21 -0500

Tonight I got to attend the final pick-up event of a very successful Community Supported Art program in Fargo, ND. Like all the CSAs I’ve had the great fortune to visit, this one is unique and completely locally-owned. Dayna Del Val of the Arts Partnership in Fargo is a truly passionate and inspired leader and has done amazing things in a very short amount of time.

I love seeing the ways that this simple model gets adapted and changed and made better by every community that touches it. The Arts Partnership really made the most of the pick-up events, stretching them over 6 months; and they also used the CSA program to start a new grant program for individual artists (awesome, right?!) And I love the things that all the CSA communities share: like the passion of the artists and the amazing projects they come up with – at this pick up I got to hear the Northern Plains Botanic Garden Society talk about their process of stonecasting cabbage leaves; potter, Brad Bachmeier, talk about arranging grasses and plants to imprint in clay and the ancient glaze he uses; and photographer Ann Arbor Miller talk about visiting CSAgriculture farms to make her photos and how her CSA project led to a gallery show.

I got to see shareholders filling their beautiful handmade bags with art to treasure and share. I got to see community members meeting each other, connecting, eating delicious food, sharing a glass of wine. I got to hear the fantastic Bonnie and the A-Men vocal group. The evening ended with a staged reading by Fargo-Morehead Community Theater of UNITED: The Heroes of Flight 93 by local playwright, David Lassig. It was a simple play that shares the stories of the passengers of flight 93 on September 11, 2001. I was so moved by this reading – obviously the subject and context of the day was moving. But I was also moved by the ritual that theater provides. The common human need to share our stories, to stand on a stage and tell the story of another person, to share our common narrative, to connect to each other, to make sense of the world.

Driving away from the event, I was struck by how ordinary and how powerful art can be. Art allows us to come together – to laugh, to share, to meet, to learn and sometimes to weep. To connect.

Visit to the Denver Botanic Garden

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:45:43 -0500

Last week I had the best layover ever. Enroute to meetings for the Knight Foundation National Arts Advisory Committee in Aspen, I arranged a quick trip to the Denver Botanic Garden. Well, I actually didn’t arrange anything, Lisa Eldred, the fabulous Director of Exhibitions at the garden arranged everything for me. I got to see the amazing gardens, including these wonderful installations by artist Tetsunori Kawana that were part of the Kizuna: West Meets East exhibit.

I also fell in love with this wonderful haiku tree:

After the tour, Lisa and I hung out with David Dadone, the executive director of Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMOCA) and talked about the fantastic Community Supported Art program that Lisa and David are cooking up as a partnership of the Denver Botanic Garden and BMOCA. Awesome.

see? best layover ever.