Running To Catch Up with the People: A Conversation with Robert Gard, Ralph Kohlhoff and Michael Warlum, 1969

The following conversations took place in the offices of Wisconsin Idea Theater at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, during the spring of 1969. In this last year of the Arts in the Small Community project for the National Endowment for the Arts, one of our commitments was to disseminate what we had learned in our three-year experiment.

We had finished work on "The Arts in the Small Community: A National Plan," now popularly known as "The Windmill Book" [available as a download on the Gard Foundation Web site: http://wisconsinacademy.org/gard/WindmillProjects.htm]. To accompany it, we envisioned a larger, more comprehensive work charting our experience and the philosophy behind our efforts. This book, for a variety of reasons, never came to be.

As a step toward realizing the book, we recorded several of our conversations. We hoped that, in them, we could capture the essence of what drove our thinking. Now, 30-odd years later, a transcription of some of these conversations has come to light. An edited version follows. The participants were:

Robert E. Gard, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to his extensive community arts development work, he published more than 40 books, including "Grassroots Theater: A Search for Regional Arts in America" (1955). He was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow and instructor at Cornell University. He also was director of the Alberta Folklore and Local History Project. Beginning in 1945, Gard was director of the Wisconsin Idea Theater. He conceived of and directed the Arts in the Small Community Project, a three-year research and development program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Gard passed away in 1992.

Ralph Kohlhoff, Ph.D., co-coordinator of the Arts in the Small Community Project 1967-69. He subsequently became executive director of the Florida State Arts Council; Arts United, Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Tucson Pima, Arizona, Arts Council; the Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids, Michigan; and the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Arts Association. He passed away in 1995.

Michael F. Warlum, Ph.D., co-coordinator of the Arts in the Small Community Project 1966-69. He went on to be founding executive director of the Indiana State Arts Commission and director of community services for the Michigan Council on the Arts. He was development director for Seattle Repertory Theatre and created a degree program in community arts development at Shoreline Community College in Seattle, Washington. He currently works as a trainer and consultant and is the author of a number of books and articles.

—Michael F. Warlum

Warlum: Professor Gard, your book, "Grassroots Theater," expresses your philosophy of life and work. You wrote it a number of years ago and must have gained further insights since then. Does your philosophy remain the same or has it changed?

Gard: In working with people to arouse their responses in behalf of a cultural side of life, you set certain landmarks for yourself. Taking the years as a whole, these landmarks really don't change much. They're all rooted in personal experience and in the past.

When you're young, the inclinations you develop in response to various situations result in visual images that become meaningful to you. You become aware of things you've never really seen before: The way grass looks at different times of day, or trees in winter.

Sometimes these images burst upon you in a revealing way when you're young, so that a landmark is established. You always remember shocks, revelations and flashes of truth and insight. You also remember the first person who articulated something of the same sensations you feel about nature, about other people, about responses you've observed of one person to another.

As you go along, you develop a way of thinking about your actions in relation to people. Landmark events become more and more important to you. As I went through college and graduate school, I encountered teachers who had a profound effect upon me. These teachers were able to make me respond in ways I never had responded before. I had never before experienced a certain joy that opening a door can give.

These landmark experiences helped me develop definite points of view. Fairly early on, I began to believe that people in their environment and the way they react to that environment are of paramount importance. I began to investigate just why this was so.

On one hand, there's the daily intercourse among people. They converse with one another and respond to one another. How they converse and respond lends a certain tone or flavor to a setting. I became aware of this and tuned my ear so as to distinguish exemplary statements, ways of talking, ways of thinking and ways of seeing which are typical of a particular environment.

I began to feel that the intimacy of places is a revealing and valuable tool. I saw it as a microcosm of life in a place. I could distinguish its outline, its visual character. Within this microcosm, I fit the beings that inhabit the place. I saw the kinds of dwellings they live in. I began to understand why they stay in this environment and what they do in this environment. Instead of becoming a cut-and-dried stereotype of daily behavior, their whole pattern becomes a rich and meaningful tapestry.

The interpretation of intimate patterns in particular places leads me to be interested in seeing how these patterns can be changed. Inserting certain irritants, stimuli and ideas can alter them. People don't respond as a mass any more than any body of matter responds to a touch here or there. Therefore, one can't really see the stimuli permeating the whole community. Still, I believe out of my concern may come some effective changes related to landmark events.

Warlum: What excites you about changing people? Why do you want to put irritants into their lives?

Gard: You asked me whether my philosophy has changed through the years. I have to say it hasn't. Naturally, I always have to question whether altering the pattern of life toward what I consider something better is the right thing to do. Betterment is a debatable thing. Better for me may not be better for somebody else.

Nevertheless, as a specialist in this field, I've come to believe society can be altered so that the ordinary person can live a more complete or satisfying life, resist it though he might. The arts developer doesn't and shouldn't become a dictator who pins a person down and says, "You must go to the movies, go to a gallery, go to hear a lecture, and so on." That would defeat the purpose. What you're really trying to do is encourage people to respond to something you believe is good. For them, you become a special person in this picture, because you are the determinate. If you think a thing is not good, then you will probably not try to encourage it in a particular community. The fact that you are encouraging it means that you yourself accept that it is good for the people in that place.

Why does someone want to change people? He or she wants to change them to better society. It's as simple as that. There are more complex and deeper reasons. One might be that you're so convinced the arts, say, are important in community life that you want to promote them out of your own ego gratification. But basically it should be at least out of a desire to improve the patterns of society for the people in a particular environment.

Warlum: I've heard people say you've carried out your work in Wisconsin because of ego involvement. They claim you like your name in the paper, that you like being Mr. Big. I've heard you refuse to defend yourself against these criticisms. I'd like you to defend yourself against them now.

Gard: I have to start by saying that anybody in community work who's worth his salt has to believe in himself. This is criterion number one. If you don't think what you're doing is important, get out of it, and quit. To accomplish what you think is important is a touchy matter and rubs many people the wrong way, particularly those who have an incomplete understanding of what you're attempting or who would like to be attempting it themselves. You can count on ruffling a lot of feathers along the way.

Over the years, I've come to believe that visibility is worthwhile and necessary to the process of development. I also think the involvement of a community with a particular personality is valuable. I want people to know me in the places where I go. I'd like to have them all think that what I'm doing is great, but if some think it isn't, that's immaterial.

The point is that as a developer you're trying to bore in with something. Somebody's bound to resist you in this process. You might as well accept their existence and go ahead. Either overcome the resistance or make it work for you. Sometimes it can also be helpful among those things I suggested earlier as irritants in the process of developing community interest.

If you have a fellow who is against you and is articulate about it, he's going to set up a certain wave in the community. The wave may be a helpful one. As a developer, you're making waves yourself. These waves may clash sometimes. Sometimes they engulf people. But that doesn't happen often. The situation eventually achieves a balance in the way that good and evil tend to balance out over a long period of time.

Warlum: Do you see yourself as a symbol, a "character" so to speak?

Gard: Well, I don't consider myself Jesus Christ. But I definitely feel that after working 25 years in the State of Wisconsin with bold programs which arouse comment and interest, I would be failing society and myself if I didn't think I had some small symbolism. When people see me come into a community or hear my name on the radio, they say, "That's Bob Gard. He's always plugging for us to have a community theater here. He's the guy who went to La Crosse and helped get one going there."

I like to be thought of in that way. I think this is the way leaders in the arts are apt to be thought of. Over a period of time they get a certain amount of symbolism attached to them because they are there. They are part of an idea that is accepted, by some at least, as having importance to their personal lives.

Kohlhoff: Can we generalize from this? You're a pioneer in the field of arts development. You've set precedents. In training arts developers, would you recommend they attempt to become well-known individuals that are highly visible in a community?

Robert Gard (far left) and Robert Kohloff (far right) in 1969. (Others unidentified. Photo courtesy of Steenbock Library, UW-Madison.)

Gard: I think it's inevitable. I don't know whether this should be an end you set out to achieve, but it's pretty much what happens to people who do this kind of work, no matter what level they're on. Mrs. Joe Hansen over in Washington or Portage County or wherever she lives has made a continuous effort to involve young people in a rural drama program. She draws continuous attention to herself. I don't think she necessarily wants to, but she does. People come to consider her a sort of a minor fountainhead of training for young people. I don't know how you can avoid it.

Kohlhoff: There's one point of view that says an arts developer should be the person who pulls the strings. He or she works quietly in the background to develop leaders in the community and publicize them. They end up thinking the ideas are theirs, even though they're actually the arts developer's ideas.

Gard: I think it works both ways. Naturally it does. I certainly work both ways.

Warlum: But you've turned yourself into a kind of shorthand, haven't you? When you come into the community and they see you, or when they hear your name, they automatically think, "Arts, Arts Development, Grassroots Art."

Gard: It would be ideal if that would happen wherever I go. It used to happen with Ed Gordon, "Pop" Gordon. When Pop went into a place they'd say, "Here comes the music man. He's going to teach us to sing." He was known far and wide for this.

It's easier to become known with something like singing because all you need to do is pull together a bunch of people and get them to respond to you. What is hard is going into a place and trying to create a new attitude toward the arts so you can get some concrete things done, a building built, a new program established, or a community theater group formed.

I think arts development has the best chance of success when there is somebody who has an air of authority and can say, "You're doing a great thing. This is what you ought to be doing." And the next morning the paper will say, "Professor Gard was here last night. He said the idea of a community theater is absolutely great, and this is how to go about making it happen. And the group went home after taking an action to establish a community theater in town."

This is the kind of thing that happens. There is a point directly after that where your influence should decline. You should drop out because you aren't going to live in the community.

Warlum: You make it sound like the work of Johnny Appleseed. Are you saying your only role is to go around the state spreading culture like some sort of traveling salesman?

Gard: Yes, it's often happened that way, partly because I don't have the time to get back often enough. I know I went up to Merrill, in Northern Wisconsin. I helped people establish a community theater. I haven't been back since. It was a great evening we had up there. The thing caught fire, and it's been going ever since.

Kohlhoff: Are you saying they were on the verge of it, so the community arts developer can just be a trigger?

Gard: Yes, you can be a trigger. The same thing happened at La Crosse, and I can give you other examples where this was the process. I didn't germinate the idea of a community theater in Merrill. Somebody else germinated it. It wasn't my idea. I would have approved of it, of course. But when they got the thing up to a point where they wanted somebody to come in and say, "That's great," or "That's what your group ought to do," or "You ought to do it in this way," I was on hand to do that.

Kohlhoff: Do the people always need to have somebody to encourage and sanction their ideas?

Gard: Many experts have said this, and it's probably true. People feel more secure if somebody comes in and says they have a chance to do something to draw attention to the community from all over the state. In any case, I think it's a mistake to overlook the role of arts developer as symbol.

Robert Gard with Ladybird Johnson in Spring Green, Wisc., on the first Lady's visit to the Gard-Warlum-Kohloff project to see how NEA money was being spent in rural America. (Photo courtesy of Steenbock Library, UW-Madison.)

Warlum: Professor, suppose people say they want something to happen in the arts in their community. Maybe they want something specific, such as a community theater or an arts council. Or maybe they just have a feeling something should be done. What do you say to them?

Gard: Generally I begin by asking some probing questions, because so often people come with different motivations. Sometimes it's out of a sense of duty. They come because other forces in the community are pressing them to act. Sometimes they come because they have a sincere desire to see an art activity started, but they don't know much more about it than that. They'd like to see something done, although they've had little background or experience in the arts. They come to the University, as to the fountainhead, seeking help and light.

I try to find out why they have come and what they have in mind. I try to clarify what they want to accomplish by such a development. For example, they may have the idea that if cultural activity is generated in a place it's going to change the character of that place.

I've been asked, "What can we do to make this a more attractive place for young people? There's nothing for them to do. All they do is travel around at night in automobiles and park or go to the drive-in movie over at the corners." Or they say, "The teenagers are frustrated in school. They're bored because they don't have enough creative cha1lenge placed before them by the teachers." Or they say, "There's no central place where the kids can meet and do something creative. What can we do about this?" Or they say, "The community's gone stagnant. Nobody has had an original thought for a generation. We go about our daily tasks, we play bridge, we go to our Monday literary circle, we have the church tea parties, the ladies' sewing group, and so on, but there is nothing happening beyond this."

What they're saying chiefly is, "We want a sense of excitement in our lives. We want our lives to be changed."

So, I probe with people, and sometimes I discover what they really want. Sometimes I terrify them, because when they truly understand what's involved in developing a program they back off and say, "We're not capable of doing that. We thought it was something the university would come and do for us."

Unless you clarify as soon as possible what people want and what they're willing to do to accomplish it, you and they are going along separate avenues, and you may never meet.

Warlum: We've established that the arts can be used to bring change to a community. But why do you use the arts as the vehicle for it?

Gard: Actually, many other activities could be used. For example, sports are often used to bring about community change. I use the arts because art is the thing I'm interested in. I believe art can be a cohesive force in society. It can also be a divisive force, depending on how it's used.

In the way we use it in our programs, it combines the best in people, their creative selves. If you can get one creative individual working with another toward a common objective, you often get a most satisfying development, not only for the two of them but for everybody in the community.

Warlum: Do you think that using the arts merely as a tool for development underrates them, making them something less than they should be?

Gard: That's one of the oldest arguments in the world. I don't know what good there is in pursuing it. But, briefly, I agree that art for therapy's sake or art for good-deeds sake is probably not especially worthwhile. It's not worth serious consideration from the point of view of a person sincerely dedicated to the arts. There are many more satisfying results than achieving a sort of therapy for somebody, although this is widely espoused.

It's not one of my main drives. What I'm trying to do is to so impress the sensibilities of people that whatever creativity they have within them may somehow rise and express itself. Whether we take the point of view that development of highly skilled professional artists should be the result or that any art expression is good if the person doing it is sincere isn't something we need to worry about. It's all part of the same piece of cheese. It's a matter of how the cheese is cut.

Certainly only a few individuals are going to be outstanding artists. Many more will be satisfied simply by taking part in the activity. The result, it seems to me, depends on the degree of creative ability in the particular person. I happen to think the expression of creativity is the most precious thing in the world. That's the reason I'm interested in it. I believe individuals who develop their creativity can make an impression upon society.

The farm woman paints a picture. It may be only a representation of cows in the barnyard, but when she shows it to her husband and children it may amaze them. They may think this is the greatest art they ever saw, not only because their mother did it and they didn't know she could, but because it shows their cows. "It's our cows." But it's not really their cows. It's a rendition on a simple scale of a work of art. This is what makes it so wonderful to them. If it were the real cow there they wouldn't give a hang about it. But it isn't the real cow. It's their mother's impression of a cow. You see?

Warlum: Yes, I think I do. But I've heard complaints that some people who have been in the regional art movement for a long time think their movement is the know-all and the end-all of art. They decide that the stuff they and their fellows do is great art. Shouldn't people know that there are other things happening in art, and that maybe their stuff isn't the greatest?

Gard: If you're in a situation in which such an attitude is demonstrated, and if you're in a position to educate that attitude to a more universal point of view, you are failing your duty unless you attempt to do so.

On the other hand, the way you do it is an important consideration. A snobbish attitude can destroy a whole local movement, which in its primitive way is very beautiful. Why should you destroy such a primitive thing of beauty simply because you think these people need to have the doors of the world of art opened to them?

To open such doors sometimes takes a long time and some hard and careful work. What you want to do is nourish the small flower or plant and make it become something else. I think this can be done. That's the reason I think the great work here in regional art has been so worthwhile. It is not to be turned off by people who say, "This is no good. This is only an expression of a bunch of farmers who are looking at cows and painting chickens."

That's all beside the point. The point is the joyful expression of the person that allows him for a little moment to become a kind of god. Well, he's a god on a certain level. But there's no point in pushing that image out and smashing it on the floor -- at least that's what I think.

Warlum: I think a person can appreciate art of all levels. I've gotten so I can enjoy all sorts of theater, from the work of professional companies to things done by amateur groups that aren't really defensible theatrically. These amateurs are experiencing themselves and don't start out to say, "I am John Barrymore." The actor may be an accountant or a farmer, but he also likes to act, and his neighbors come to see him. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Gard: We've had great troubles among drama people over the term "folk drama." To many it has become a term of derision simply because it is taken to be a kind of a crude representation of life at a certain level. It's seen as surrounded by characteristics that are easily discernible in dialect and in appearance and in mannerisms which are a folkish or bucolic expression.

I don't know that this has much more validity than arguing whether a painting of a cow by a farm woman is justifiable art or not, but the point is that a group of rural people expressing themselves joyfully on the stage is a thing of great value and great treasure. These moments in which you see joyous expression untrammeled by the pitfalls of sophistication are to me very wonderful.

I have seen great scholars who are authorities on world drama and the aesthetics of theater take their major delight in going out into the country and seeing a group of rural folks put on a play. This is a joyful expression because it is free, in a way. The slickness and perfection of professional theater is a thing to be valued and enjoyed as a fine jewel is enjoyed. But you can also appreciate the stuff from which the thing arises, and this is inevitably from the people.

You can't disassociate drama from the people. If you have a crude production, one that is full of joy, it is something to be appreciated. It is the crude production which has no joy which is to be avoided. This is sometimes what you get when people approach language from a sophisticated point of view without the background to actually do so.

I think joy is a key word, especially in the theater. It might also be the key in certain types of music, but it is certainly true of the theater. Joyful theater can be great theater even though produced at a primitive level. Sophisticated, professional theater without joy is often as sterile as anything that could ever be done in a rural area

Warlum: I've never heard you express this before. It makes such good sense. But, is there a dilemma here? Are you saying people ought not to be trained in theater?

Gard:         No, I didn't say that at all. I simply said you shouldn't try to prevent the people from expressing themselves in drama. Because drama, when you get right down to it, is as legitimate a primitive expression as it is a highly sophisticated expression. It can be either one. The point is that it depends on its involvement and imitation of people.

Warlum: Is this why doing warmed-over Broadway in community theaters is so bad? Is it because people can't be expected to identify with sophisticated comedy or drawing room drama?

Gard: If I understand your question, what you're really saying is that imitation of what somebody else is doing is likely to be devoid of the finest kind of creativity. And, yes, there is danger of this. It is not at all dangerous to take a good play, no matter where it's been produced before, and approach it in a highly creative way to put on something that is unique and fresh from your point of view. This is a legitimate and desirable thing to do.

At one end of the spectrum is the entirely original drama which has been written especially for this production. You take it and shape it just as you would a clay image or a piece of sculpture. You make it just the way you see it or feel it or want it.

At the other end of the spectrum is the crass imitator, who has heard a speech delivered in a way that got a good laugh. He tells the actor, "You must read these lines exactly this way because if you do you'll get a laugh." This is despicable imitation.

You have a wide range of choice. I don't really buy the statement that it is bad to imitate Broadway. What is bad is to imitate ways of doing things that are not necessarily yours, that are not fresh, that rely on factors outside of the purity of creative interpretation.

Warlum: Do you see us any closer than when you wrote "Grassroots Theater" [1955] to developing a real Midwestern drama literature of the people?

Gard: Why, it seems to me that it is on every side. People are much nearer than they were a generation ago to taking creative views of life. They're seeing objects and seeing life in a much more creative way. You can notice this in the homes you go into. You don't see nearly as much of what we used to call cheap imitations in the homes you go into. You do see a lot of that still, but you don't see the same kinds of things we had so much in the 1920s. For instance, there was a particular kind of lamp that stood by the piano. It had a large pink shade with fringe. Almost everybody had one. I don't see any such copying today. The homes are much more individualistically decorated.

Warlum: It's the same with fashion for both men and women isn't it?

Gard: Fashion for most men and women is much more creative. There are many people who abhor some of the stuff people are wearing. On the other hand, I think it demonstrates an individual creativity which leads to the point of view that we may be on the threshold of some exciting things.

A people's literature is something that has been striven for for a long while. Expressing the likes, the will, the ways and the manners of the people and doing this in a highly creative fashion has been the dream of many philosophers. This depends on great individual talents. I don't know whether we've got many of those in our midst or not. I do not see many of them, but I think the climate is improving. If we can get the climate into a creative state, maybe it will breed some of these interpreters who will synthesize what they see and make it live in terms of what the people are.

Michael Warlum speaking at the "The Arts and the Wisconsin Idea: New Vigor for Local Arts" conference, UW-Madison, October 23, 2003. (Photo courtesy of Robert E. Gard Wisconsin Idea Foundation.)

Warlum: You spoke earlier of the spontaneity of drama done with joy. I saw some scenes on television the other night from the musical, "Hair." They had a nice feeling of spontaneity. They didn't seem to be planned dance routines. The actors sort of shuffled around if they wanted to. The songs seemed as if they'd been made up on the spot. The actors wore what you might see them wearing on the street. They seemed to be expressing themselves from the heart. Is this some of that joy we talked about? Or is it all a contrivance?

Gard: It's likely that this is a kind of faddism. The hard fact of the matter is that you do not produce great art without a great deal of artistic force being brought to bear on a creative problem, such as the playwright sets up for himself. I think that's really why, when you have a group of spontaneous performers, you may get something which is quite intriguing. But when you try to fix it, it withers away. I think it depends again on the individual creative artist taking the material and carefully shaping it into a fine play.

I don't know whether what you're talking about is spontaneity or not. It might well be. But is it great art or theater? It might be. It's probably not a major force in life or art in the small community, unless you could develop a spontaneous theater that would involve many of the citizens of the community. They used to do this in big community pageants. They'd get everybody into those things.

Gard: What are some of the hazards for small community arts on the national scene?

Warlum: One hazard is that nobody fights you when you talk about community arts. I took part in a seminar on environmental aesthetics here at the University two summers ago. It included professors from 15 different disciplines. Whenever I spoke about the importance of developing the community arts, everybody agreed. That is, they agreed until it came to formally listing considerations for the modern environment. Then, my ideas weren't included.

It's the motherhood-and-apple-pie syndrome. Nobody's against the arts. People simply believe that a host of other considerations come ahead of them. With all the war, hunger and destruction in the world, their viewpoint is partly justified. But, certainly, there is room for development of the arts. Admittedly, you can get programs established at the community level. Trying to do it nationally and internationally is another problem, because the public doesn't see the arts as a priority.

Kohlhoff: This is a symptom of the belief among planners that the small community is dying, will continue to die, and can be ignored because it will be gone in a few years. This point of view isn't sound. There are Department of Agriculture statistics showing that movement from the small community to the big city is stopping in certain areas. Some people think we'll have to pass laws to stop cities from growing any further. They believe a rational approach to solving the problems of urban life is to revitalize the small community. We are part of this movement.

Warlum: When we talk about arts development in small places we mean programs that grow out of the community and are based on the community. In his book, "Grassroots Theater," Professor Gard calls it "the art of home places." These programs are unique. They're not about a town bringing in a ballet company from New York City, not about imposing 18th and 19th Century high culture upon the community.

Instead, these programs analyze where people are, present something familiar to them and build the content there. To learn, human beings must be able to tie a new experience to something they already know. This is one of the important things we do in community arts development. If a community has certain ethnic traditions, the program may trade on them. If it is situated in a unique type of landscape, the program can be tied to the physical environment. The program becomes germane to the community and something special for the community. It's not simply mimicking what's going on in New York City or some other so-called culture capital.

One hazard to community arts is that people harbor a stereotype regarding what art and culture are. They decide art must be Mozart or must be the work of the Old Masters to be valid. What we're saying is that culture is the joyous expression of people at the grassroots creating and experiencing art.

Gard: That's all highly appropriate. Another hazard that occurs to me is that most people are looking for somebody to tell them what to do. They look to agencies, such as a university, a museum, a city or county government, a school, or a foundation to tell them they ought to be interested in the arts in their home places. Left alone, without somebody to spark them, they won't do much about it.

The large charitable foundations in the United States have made a conscious effort to set the tone of what America ought to do in developing its cultural arts. Those foundation officers in charge of arts programming have had highly selective points of view. Many foundations have been devoted to the art interests of metropolitan areas, to the professional arts per se, or to those segments of society, notably educational institutions, that are doing something with the arts but doing it in a limited periphery. If you look at the whole picture, one of these approval-making agencies we've been discussing is certainly the charitable foundation. I suspect that because of their unwillingness to do much in the rural areas or the small towns they've held back grassroots development.

In the 20 or so years when David H. Stevens was director of humanities for the Rockefeller Foundation, he focused attention on rural culture. He funded projects in North Carolina, Montana, here in Wisconsin, and in other places. For a while these went great guns. They were successful partly because of the Depression. The Depression focused cultural interest on people and places because of the limited range of things people had the money to do.

But it was more than just the Depression. It was a feeling that for the first time America was beginning to have a sense of its roots. Roots are people. People live in places and root themselves there. They develop a soil. They develop shoots of growth, which illustrate and emphasize who and what they are. The arts are one of those shoots. For a while the arts were nourished. Then, for a long time they weren't nourished. The arts aren't being nourished very well now.

Warlum: If people were developing their roots and finding their own cultures during the Depression, why did development stop?

Gard: You have to look at American development in terms of World War II. World War II provided a tremendous impetus for building and economic development. Then came our involvement on the international scene. Unfortunately it wasn't a cultural involvement.

In any case, there hasn't been much focus on community arts in America at all. The last 20 years or so is analogous to the frontier days of this country. In frontier times, we were busy developing new lands and new areas of habitation. Building was necessary. The fields had to be broken and opened.

In a sense, what we have been in for the last 20 years is another period of dynamic material development. I suspect this is the chief reason why so little has been done in the arts. In the Depression, not much was being done because there wasn't any money to do it. When we did have money again, we put it into land, buildings, products, automobiles and gadgets.

Warlum: Do you agree that there's now a growing interest in developing real grassroots cultures in this country? Is there evidence of a desire to develop unique cultural programs?

Gard: That's a complicated question. I don't believe there's any more interest at the grassroots level, if as much, as there was when I first came to Wisconsin in 1945. In 1945 there was a distinct hunger. During the war years, people had been deprived of music, of theater. Afterwards, there was a rush back into them. For a while it was a fruitful thing to develop community theaters or community music programs in the small communities.

Then interest began to lessen. Four or five years after the end of World War II, there was a decline in interest. People were involved in other activities that were more interesting to them. The advent of television made development much more difficult for a long time. It was not easy to compete with the new television set in the home. Television was a wonderful gadget. People sat around it all the time. It changed the habits of life, particularly in small communities. At the same time, people in small communities lost interest in the motion picture. The movie-going public declined until finally the theaters couldn't go on.

In the Depression, there was a grasp of basic values. People turned once more to the earth for nourishment. It was the only solid thing they had. They knew they could put some seed in the ground, water it and get food out of it. This is what many people were doing. People were making their own bread. They were making their own household utensils, because they had no money to buy any. This environment was conducive to appreciating culture in one's personal life. You don't have to have fine clothes to enjoy good music. The farmer in his overalls could go to a community concert and enjoy it.

Warlum: One of the first meetings I ever went to with you, Professor, was out in Richland Center, west of Madison. You were teaching a class for University Extension. That night a redheaded woman came up to us. She talked at great length about her daughter and about how pleased she was with Wisconsin Public Radio.

On the way home, you said, "It seems every time I go to a small community, there's some woman there, usually with red hair, who has to tell me how cultured she is. She usually has a daughter who's starring in 'Time Out for Ginger'." Would you comment on pretension in the small community?

Gard: It's a modest disease that's always been with us. It's related to the competitions people develop with one another. They try to outdo one another in possession of material things. They think these things will make them seem more acceptable on a higher level of society. You do get personalities and groups in small communities that make themselves pretentious in their search for "Culture."

As a result of this search, these people are suckers for anybody who comes along with the claim that if they do some specific thing in Blank Corners they're going to be doing exactly what is done in metropolitan areas. Or, if they send their children into a certain environment, those children will have a better chance of competing on a higher social level than they would have otherwise.

This is an attractive delusion to many people. Some fine people fall for it simply because they want the best for their child. They may have been exposed to something they remember with prideful pleasure, something that set them up as a member of the artistic set. These people often form a clique and produce a closed environment. They do this so they can appreciate together this holy thing they call ... I don't know. You find a word for it.

Warlum: This is a common community theater problem, isn't it?

Gard: Yes, and it's a common problem with certain types of ladies' clubs, with certain dinner clubs, or listening groups, or groups which have a stated laudable intention. What it boils down to is that there is a little set in the community that is closed to the rest of the community. Those who are part of the set hope to gain prestige by being able to talk about the latest best-sellers, or by going in a group to the nearest metropolitan area to see some production that others in the community don't have an opportunity to see. And the set likes to come back home and talk about it.

Warlum: It's kind of the fraternity syndrome, isn't it?

Gard: Yes, and I suppose it's one of the greatest hazards the community arts face. It's not what you and I would like to see. We'd like to think of participation of all segments of the community in a cultural program without pretense, a program that exists simply because people have a love of music or a love of theater.

Warlum: Isn't there some way that snob groups can be used to advantage? Do they always lead to something bad?

Gard: I have seen some instances of what you call snob groups that have changed because of a concerned leader or through an opening up to the needs of a whole community. We saw an inkling that this could be done when you and I consulted in Texas. There we met with the Junior League, which seemed to have all the social pretensions. I had the feeling that if they could be led in the right way, these wealthy ladies would be of great assistance.

Warlum: It sounds as though a group like that can only be helpful in a community arts program if it sheds its snob appeal. Can a clique be used as a small group to foster a program? I suppose there are tremendous dangers in that.

Gard: There are dangers. These groups often include the moneyed people in a community. If they wish, they have the money to make certain things possible. Therefore, you mustn't ignore them. I think they do more harm than good. To be frank, I wish they didn't exist. But in arts development you almost always run up against such groups. They're stumbling blocks when you go into a community. If you don't take them into account, you may get your hair pulled out before you've gone very far. They'll go to the mayor, just as they did in that town in Texas, and they will stop your program before it ever gets off the ground.

Warlum: Ralph, I think we'll agree that one of the hazards for community arts is what you call cultural elitism. Explain to us what cultural elitism is and how it poses a threat to the programs we're talking about.

Kohlhoff: One of the chief threats in trying to make the arts a more meaningful part of the lives of the majority of people in the United States is a conventional kind of thinking about the arts. The arts are usually equated with being creative and, yet, the institutionalized arts world is tremendously formal. Certain treasured viewpoints are held regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Cultural elitism is an attitude held by many of our arts institutions. It posits the idea that the arts and their role in society stem from a prior historical period. The arts were developed under and have always been identified with aristocratic, despotic governments. Under these circumstances, the arts were available only to a minority. This might be a minority of the blooded nobility or of wealthy individuals who controlled the destiny of the country and of society.

In America we have broken this mold and are creating a truly democratic society in which people can derive the blessings of what used to be considered the good life. Even though this is taking place, the arts lag behind. The concept is still held that the arts are for a wealthy minority. Therefore, they remain a concern for only the wealthy minority.

If you read historical novels, "the provinces" is a phrase that's heavily weighted. Most of the art developed in culture capitals. Moscow was a culture capital. Paris was a culture capital. You didn't have the arts where people lived. If you wanted the arts, you had to go someplace to get them. Because the wealthy could travel, they were the ones who consumed the arts in the culture capitals. It became a truism that no great art can ever develop in the provinces, the small communities or rural areas.

What the elitists are not taking into account is the fact that the world has changed.

In the days of Paris and the other culture capitals, it took 15 hours to get ten miles out of town. There was no communications network such as we have today. Today, even the most remote areas are in the general American communications network, with radio and television and improved roads, etc.

All that was once true about provincialism has changed. Therefore, we have to rethink the institutional structure of the arts. And, of course, as citizens in American democracy, we cannot accept the concept that the arts are destined for any particular group for whatever reason. The arts are valuable to all human beings. If this is the basic premise, we cannot tolerate elitism. Once we accept this, we must apply it to all the arts institutions that exist and to their policies. If they are elitist, they cannot be supported by arts developers.

Warlum: Isn't that a bit harsh? Isn't there any place for museums, symphony orchestras and other institutions that preserve the art of the past?

Kohlhoff: I'm not saying all arts institutions are elitist. A museum in a large city, for example, isn't automatically elitist. Many are, but this is no blanket indictment. I'm merely suggesting that there are people who hold the viewpoint that art cannot develop in small communities because it did not develop in small communities in the past. I'm saying this viewpoint has to be questioned. We believe you can development the arts anywhere. You can change the role the arts play in society if you believe you can do so.

Warlum: What was the size of Florence in the days when Michelangelo lived there?

Gard: The population was about 12,000.

Warlum: Would Florence have been a cultural center in those days?

Gard: It was a fairly sizeable community for that part of Italy.

Warlum: So, we can't make the argument that in the case of Florence culture developed in a small community?

Gard: I wouldn't think so. Florence was an important trade and law center. The nobles had their palaces there. The big cathedral was there.

Warlum: In other words, it fostered the worst kind of snobbery. I was thinking how effective it would be to cite a situation, whether in history or in the present time, where great artists have developed in a small community.

Kohlhoff: In Renaissance Florence very few artists were needed, because of the social and economic structure. Likewise, few arts institutions were needed. If you consider the number of people in the America today who are trained in the arts, you'll find there are many more than existed in the Renaissance or at any other time in history.

Warlum: In fact, probably more than the total that existed in all the rest of history.

Kohlhoff: That's right. Of course, we're hindered by a lack of statistical research about the arts. But if you went to the trouble of finding out how many artists there were in the cultural capitals of the past and how many artists there are now, you'd find there is absolutely no comparison between any other period of history and our own.

Warlum: When you say this, you mean both the fulltime and the part-time artists, don't you?

Kohlhoff: Yes. Getting back to elitism, elitists will say they are against the amateur art movement and the dilettante. But if you study art history you'll find that not only was the aristocrat the patron of the arts, he was also a dilettante. Young nobles and their ladies were the only ones who had leisure time. They had the wealth to be patrons of the arts, but they also had the leisure to be dilettantes in the arts.

The ladies painted watercolors. As part of his training, the gentleman learned to write poetry. With patrons as artists, the arts were limited to a small number of people. The great revolution in this democracy is public education. We have made the arts a part of public education. The arts have always been a part of liberal education.

Warlum: It sounds as if the elitist is standing atop a glacier while it melts, because public education from the elementary schools on has shoved the arts down the throats of the people. There are still people all over the country who have a clarinet hanging up in the attic that they used to play in high school.

Kohlhoff: Of course. In his book, "The Culture Consumers," Alvin Toffler presents statistics showing that there are amateur artists in the millions and that millions of dollars are being spent by people to become amateur musicians, painters, playwrights and so on. There is an enormous amount of art activity.

The elitist stands on his pedestal and deigns to ignore what is going on. He says, "It does not fit my concept of what there arts are. Therefore I will ignore it." And, of course, it becomes increasingly apparent that the elitist concept of arts institutions isn't working. Other forms of arts development are superceding them.

This is not recognized because cultural elitists reside primarily in New York City. New Yorkers have a vested interest in preserving the position that all of the arts that have any validity take place in their city. To preserve this vested interest, they must ignore all evidence to the contrary. If people want to find out about the arts, they read Time Magazine, Look Magazine, Life Magazine or watch NBC television. All these sources of information emanate from New York City. They also have a vested interest in maintaining that all that goes on in the arts goes on there.

Warlum: You might be being a little harsh on New Yorkers. I don't know whether it's so much a vested interest as it is a blind spot. They see what goes on around them, and that's what they report on. It never occurs to them to look elsewhere. New Yorkers are notoriously provincial.

Kohlhoff: Let's bring this back to our point about prejudice against small towns and rural areas. If your opinion is that all art occurs in New York City, it follows that you're not going to tolerate any art that comes out of a small community. You believe the art for the entire nation comes out of one city of eight million people. It becomes a cause-and-effect relationship. If it's art, it must come out of a city with a population of seven or eight million. This wouldn't be questionable logic if nothing were going on in the rest of the country, but we know it is.

Warlum: Ralph, the other day you said that Chautauqua died 20 years ago and for good reason. You said it is no longer appropriate for us as arts developers to be trying to revive a movement where experts go out into the hinterlands and deliver lectures. I took this to mean you feel that now is the time for participation by the people in the arts, and that participation is what we ought to be encouraging. Do you agree?

Kohlhoff: We're in the position of Gandhi. When asked, "Where are you going?" he said, "I am running to catch up with the people, for I am their leader." Whether we like it or not, people are participating in the arts in great numbers all over this country. They're recognizing what exists, what is true.

At the same time, an arts developer can't ignore the importance of bringing professional artists and performers into the community. But in order for people to appreciate the professional you have to have the amateur. It is amateur artists that make up the nucleus of an informed audience. By endorsing and supporting the amateur artist, we create a better climate for the professional. The man who works with a car, the kid who tinkers with a car at home, they're the ones who go to the stock-car races. It's a matter of interest. If you like something, you'll like to do it, and you'll like to observe others doing it.

Warlum: Are we trying to put the arts ahead of all other activities in small communities?

Kohlhoff: No. People who think about what role the arts should play in society are inclined to take the prejudiced, fanatical view that art activity is superior to all others. You get the arts people together, and they'll say, "Isn't it terrible that people spend their money on clothes or on going to the movies when they should be attending a concert or reading Shakespeare." This is a fallacious point of view. It's also a losing point of view.

There are many valid things you can do as part of life in a community. People are involved in sports, for example. One of the points we mention in The National Plan is the relationship among sports, health and the arts. They are not inimical to one another or competing with one another. They're all healthy activities that human beings should be interested in.

A person should have a balance of intellectual and physical activities. In an ideal community, people should have time to themselves and time for others. They should have a time of rest and a time of activity. We aim to provide an enrichment of this blend, this balance. In addition to the other activities, time should be set aside for the benefits and advantages one can get from participating in and serving as an audience for the arts.

Warlum: The way I feel is, if they don't like it, don't push them. People in this country deserve a chance to be exposed to the arts, but with an understanding of what they're seeing or doing. You have to educate people as well as present a program to them. Anyone has the right to try painting or to see a play or ballet, to take part in acting workshops or sculpture classes. We need to expose people to a variety of arts activities. Once people try the arts, they discover the value in them.

Kohlhoff: Yes. If the arts are good and if they have the value people have said for centuries that they have, then you can go about developing them with confidence. You don't have to be jealous about some other activity of importance in the community.

Warlum: It's fair to say that as an arts developer you sometimes help destroy certain community organizations or turn them in the direction of the arts. In the work I've done in small communities, I've seen that because of a lack of arts programs people have developed other activities to which they give precedence simply because they've been participating in them for a long time. Sometimes in introducing people to the arts, you have to deal directly with these other organizations and these other activities.

Kohlhoff: What you're doing on an individual and an institutional level is the same thing. You're adding enrichment. There are organizations such as the Rotary Club or the Boy Scouts or the Homemaker Club that carry on certain activities. If you add the arts, you can improve what they're doing. You're not subverting or taking anything away. You're adding a new dimension.

Warlum: Perhaps what we're trying to do is cause the word "art" to disappear from the language. What we're talking about is an internalization of ideas. People perform art activities, which are at first considered a frill, until they're doing them as part of daily life without even thinking about it. They're living. They may not paint a picture. They may not create a sculpture. But they're living artistically. More than anything else, aren't we selling a way of looking at the world?

Kohlhoff: Yes. There's the example of the Island of Bali, where the word "art" does not exist in the vocabulary. Yet every village has participation in dancing, singing, sculpturing, composing poetry, the whole business. The Balinese don't call it art. They call it living. This is what we're aiming for. We're aiming for an ideal community. And what is an ideal community but a collective ideal life? Both the community and the individual can have a better life.

Gard: When we talk about an ideal community and the arts, what do you think an ideal community in the arts is? What is Utopia?

Kohlhoff: Utopias are individualistic, Professor. Your Utopia may be my Hell.

Gard: No. Let's take Utopia as the country is today.

Kohlhoff: That's an interesting point. Some people say, "Our country is on the verge of chaos." I'm more optimistic. Perhaps we're now in a position where your question makes sense. What kind of Utopian society do you want?

Warlum: All we'd have to do is plug in the right factors, and we'd have Utopia. Many of the qualities of Utopian societies are in place. Machines do much of our work. None of us, even in factories, work hard compared to what was once the norm. Food is no problem. There's beauty and ugliness, but certainly more beauty or possibilities of beauty in architecture because of new building techniques. We may be on the verge of Utopia.

Gard: There's more cleanliness than there was before. We use more soap and detergent. These are ruining the water, of course, but nevertheless people are cleaner.

Warlum: And much as we may dislike the foment that's occurring on this campus today, it shows us that the awareness level of problems and of society as a whole are certainly much advanced from what they were.

Kohlhoff: People are taking smaller and smaller problems and making them bigger and bigger. It's a healthy sign, because it means a lot of the larger problems have been solved. We don't have many people starving. Therefore, when a small minority of people is starving, it's a matter of greater concern. Whereas I'm sure that in the Depression people would die of starvation without much hue and cry.

Warlum: But doesn't this get confusing because it's different on different levels? Here we sit in the middle of a world that's going Communist. The Chinese want to blow us off the map. It's an immense problem. There are problems in the cities. In Washington, D.C., you can't walk down the street without getting mugged. Anybody who stands up as a leader these days is summarily shot, just as they died in Julius Caesar's time. I don't know. Sometimes it's such a confusing world because there are so many ways in which we are so close to Paradise, and in other ways we are as primitive as we ever were.

Kohlhoff: If you're talking about arts development, this is getting down to our concern. Even if those things are true, it's our feeling that in spite of them there has to be a professional body of concerned people. Sure, we're going to solve this problem. We're going to solve that one. And there are many people working on them. But our job as arts developers is to focus on what the Professor suggested. What is beyond the problems? Where do we go?

The majority of people are ready to move on to something else in life. We have now arrived at a point where the majority of people have leisure time and education. What are they going to do with their lives? How are they going to make their lives, the lives of their children, their families and their neighbors better?

The artist has always liked to stand back and say that one thing that's wrong with America is materialism and that the arts are somehow different from materialism. This is not true. The arts are a shaping of materialism. We applaud and are delighted with materialism because wealth is the lubricant of the arts.

For more information about the work of Robert E. Gard and his colleagues, see the Web sites of the Robert E. Gard Foundation (http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/gard/) and the Robert Gard collection in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library Archives (http://archives.library.wisc.edu/collect/Gard/scope.htm).

Original CAN/API publication: September 2004