Minding the Gap: A Cross-Generational Dialogue, Part I

This is a dialogue about generational leadership transition in the field of community arts (or community cultural development) between Arlene Goldbard, a leading writer and consultant in the field for more than 30 years, and Lee Ann Norman, a 2006 graduate from the Master's program in Arts and Youth in Community Development at Columbia College Chicago.

The conversation started when, in early 2006, Lee Ann Norman took the initiative to send the Community Arts Network "A Response to the CAN Report." It analyzed the state of the field presented in our report on the CAN Gathering of U.S. field leaders in 2004. Norman saw many problems and unanswered questions in the report, and put forward the suggestion that the field is being led almost exclusively by aging white Baby Boomers who often don't seek the advice and counsel of the younger generation of people who are being formally trained in new courses and degree programs emerging around the country. She felt some new solutions might be found if they all sat down together at the same table as peers.

Norman's essay set off a chain reaction of responses on listservs and Web sites across the country. One of those was "Nobody Here But Us Chickens," a post on May 19 by Arlene Goldbard on her blog. It drew a flood of reactions from her readers, in response to which she wrote "Re/Generation," May 23. It wasn't long before Norman and Goldbard were writing to each other, and they shared their e-mail correspondence with CAN. It airs some feelings, questions and answers about power and transition that are apparently not limited to this field. As the older generation faces the complex and dismaying issues of "retirement," often with no resources to fall back on, how will the wand be passed to the next generation? —Linda Burnham

Part I

June 6, 2006, 11:06 a.m. (EDT)

Dear Lee Ann,

I suggested this conversation because I read and heard younger-generation community artists talking about my generation (I'm 59) in terms that felt untrue or unfair. It seemed to me that colleagues in this struggling, diverse and often marginal field were being lumped in with folks with corporate sinecures — accused of hogging power and position, of refusing to learn from or with their younger counterparts, or in some cases, of having messed up the world almost beyond repairing and not knowing when to get out of the way. Your essay on CAN was thoughtful and measured, but some of what I was hearing reminded me of what a French friend told me about such conflict in her field. She said there, the watchword was "Pousse-toi, je veulent s'asseoir" (roughly, "Shove over, I want to sit down").

There will always be forces that push the generations apart, but this seemed big. When I wrote a series of essays about it on my Web site, I attempted to portray the actual circumstances of veteran practitioners as I knew them: that to retire on a corporate pension was quite different from leaving a group one had started and husbanded through several decades of political opposition or, at best, indifference. Probably, both sets of circumstances can be found in the community cultural development field (I imagine there are some people in institutional settings who have great benefits or who've lost their zest for the work but not for the salary — but to me, institutions are by no means the core of the field). Based on my own experience, I believe the picture I drew is more common than the incidence of the abuse of leadership and power.

Some younger people then contacted me to say they felt unfairly characterized by people in my generation: they respected their elders, they said, but felt disrespected in return. I saw two generations in conflict that — for the good of the field — should be allies. How did this happen?

I see many different factors at play. I think there may be enough difference in perspective to bring some of us up short. For instance, I recall that in the pioneering community arts cohort, people's primary impulse was not to accede to the positions of our elders, but to start our own enterprises to our own specifications. I'm sure this impulse was grounded in what Paul Goodman called "a foolish optimism," but that was a product of the times. To be sure, practical considerations are a factor in the difference between then and now: it costs much more to live now, so starting things is harder. But I think not so much harder that economics are determinative; rather, economics plus zeitgeist equals a feeling of scarcity, a feeling that the pie has already been baked and there are only so many slices to go around. After all, it's not as if our paths were paved with gold in decades past; people got by with food co-ops and communes and thrift-shop clothes in order to finance our community work. It felt as if the world were changing, so we were less likely to think about a future based on getting our share of the existing pie than to imagine what we could bake up ourselves. That was a time of hope, not of hoping to survive, and perhaps that made all the difference.

Recently a young activist told me one thing he'd learned from my generation is to sock something away for retirement. I see his wisdom; my own grasshopper-like m.o. will probably keep me working unto death. But I also feel the strangeness of it, how different it must be to be young and thinking about things like security, retirement and succession as opposed to being young forty years ago and imagining the future as a different world. (My husband sometimes jokes a little bitterly that he never planned for retirement because he was banking on social change; and now wonders if he'll be left asking for spare change.)

Perhaps it is difficult for the members of each generation to put themselves in the other's place and feel what they feel. It reminds me of my aunt Ruth trying in the sixties to impress me with the hardships of her generation during the Great Depression. She told me she had to save all week for a pair of stockings. I looked down at my own bare legs and thought, "Who needs stockings?"

So in terms of reality check, I would like to suggest a couple of thought-experiments for younger community artists (in the hope you'll suggest some for me and my cohort). First, imagine that you've labored for a few decades to realize a vision that has just recently begun to seem viable, in that some measure of resources have become available to support what has long been supported in marginal fashion by the immediate community. There isn't the money for major expansion, but for once, existing salaries are secure for a while. You work with a mural program based in your Latino community, or a theater group based in your diverse urban neighborhood. How long should you be able to work with these new resources before you are seen as standing in the way of a younger generation? Few of us feel old; and for most who are seeing any result of this kind, it feels like a little reward after a long struggle. How does it feel to put yourself in that position?

Second, as you've pointed out in our earlier exchanges, learning is a two-way proposition. You were kind enough to say you'd learned from some of my writings. I'm not an academic, and my opportunities to be in formal learning/teaching situations are few. So imagine you're one of those veterans who's labored long and hard and learned a few things from experience. Like me, you're freelance and not a part of existing institutions. You've made your willingness clear; you work with all the younger people who come your way, but they are few. You remember the earlier generation gap and hate to see it coming around again. You are a mentor to some activists and learn a good deal from their experience and perspective. But in the community cultural development field, the mentorship framework is not there. How does it feel to put yourself in that position?

I look forward to your own thought-experiments before we move on to talk about organizations that are facing leadership transitions, about the topic of succession and generational change. I hope and trust our dialogue about what is needed can be grounded in a sharing of perspectives that will help each to see the other's truths, and that will be of value beyond ourselves.

Best, Arlene

June 6, 2006, 3:07 p.m.

I think when it is said that there is nothing new under the sun, it’s true. It sounds as if history is repeating itself and when we say we’ll never become like our parents, for the most part, we’re sincere and work toward that end and are even successful, but history repeats itself again and again.

Youthful optimism and passionate dreams are what fueled much of the activity that I now participate in today, and for the entrepreneurial spirit coupled with the belief that there is a better way, a different way, I am grateful. Grassroots activists have forged a way against odds, in spite of adversity and abuse to help nurture important and vibrant activity that has sustained and will continue for many more years. The pioneers and founders recognized that change was in the air and it was time to try something different, and then perhaps try something else; my generation is experiencing the same feeling — that “white noise” telling us “now is the time.”

I love learning, and personal discovery, and getting glimpses and insight into other perspectives and ways of seeing, doing, being, living. Life and nothing about it consists of one generalizing “mammoth experience.” We live in an age where people are more connected than ever before, yet we remain so distant and set apart. As someone who is “coming up through the ranks,” it frustrates and saddens me that too often, knowledge is not shared, learning exchanges are not horizontal, and there seems to be a resistance to trying something different. My colleagues and I often speak of working smarter in what we do — efficiency. Not that we’re lazy, afraid of hard work, always seeking a short cut, but we find it extremely important to find ways to use our access to knowledge, skill, information, and apply it to our work in meaningful ways because knowledge can’t exist in a box, in the classroom, in the book on page 245, on the shelf. As we gain understanding about the commoditization of culture, we feel urgent about using technological resources efficiently so that we will always be able to self-determine and thus create social change.

Maybe we see ourselves along side corporate/capitalistic life because those values are so pervasive — post colonization into globalization and beyond. I find it increasingly important to critique the critique and question, always being aware of that pervasive influence — the climate of change, the “white noise” that affects us all. Just because we know it exists doesn’t make us immune from its effects. I believe in the work, the goodness of intention of all of us who participate and share in it, but it’s time for something different. We have to honor the hybrid nature of our work. We have to draw on the resources and lessons of fields from which we borrow like social service and education. We have to acknowledge all of the influence, old and new, and be ready to deal, adapt, and cope so that we’re not left behind, so that what we do sustains and impacts. Unfortunately, we do live in somewhat desperate times. I hear young people from West side communities in Chicago talk about the gun shots they heard last night, or the empty lots and drug deals outside their windows, the gang bangers, how their parents won’t let them stand out in front of the house out of fear … and sometimes I think, maybe there are more pressing concerns for them than the fact that they don’t have many arts programs or cultural activity in their neighborhood, so.… But people get by. People have started art classes out of their basements here, started up a culturally focused Saturday school there, all without external money, outside resource. History repeats. We too, are our own entrepreneurs, innovators, change agents, but we are also thinking, just like you—we should be working together. We, too, wonder why there doesn’t seem to be any room.

I think my generation sees our work as equally, if not more important than that of mainstream/corporate life, thus we think about how to get seemingly revolutionary things like health care coverage at a nonprofit, community-based youth arts organization (and make it happen), or find alternative models of administration so that maybe we can hire a core group of teaching artists so that people can “pay the bills” doing what’s important to them, rather than doing that, and also waiting tables or temping. A different way…

Does this make us “bad,” part of “the system” or agents there of? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. What IS bad is the idea that there isn’t room for the collective — this either/or, neither/nor mentality is so pervasive… Vertical vs. horizontal. Shouldn’t someone be able to work with the mural program or the theatre group for as long as one is able, willing, and has something to give? Is it not about bringing others up with you? Next to you? In front of you, even? This is where ego comes in. Leadership is not about doing everything from start to finish, from idea to plan to product. It’s about motivating others to share in a vision to create something that is larger than anything you could do on your own, as individual parts. I think I’ve failed if I haven’t raised someone up, if I haven’t “reproduced myself,” if I haven’t passed on knowledge, relationship, skill, if I haven’t grown in my own learning from that process, that interaction. Maybe that’s the teacher in me.

Edward Said wrote that everyone in society has the responsibility of being an intellectual, but generally we don’t recognize that because we’ve been trained that intelligence and learning is affirmed by a series of steps, like academic degrees, years of study, etc. etc. So many of the best teaching artists I know don’t have MFAs or Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees, or anything like that in their specialty area. Knowledge comes from different places, and sometimes the best kind is via a “non-traditional” route. Someone said to me once that it’s not about what I will do with my master’s degree, but rather, what I will do with myself. More than any other, I think our field honors that.

A critical part of my graduate program was the practicum placement, where we were paired with mentors in youth arts CBOs. It was so valuable for me to learn that the things I was learning in my grant writing class about the ratio of total expense to fundraising expense didn’t mean as much as cultivating the relationships with program officers, or that some of the things I learned during my three semester financial sequence don’t mean anything when your organization has an operating budget of less than $500K. It was so good to have a safe space to apply the knowledge I was getting, so I could evaluate it and apply it in a way that makes sense in a real world context. Our academic training gives us a leg up, for sure, but we need the mentorship to help us make sense of it in context. I wish it wasn’t so intimidating for some in your generation — us being academics, the increasing number of us who have the privilege and access to advance programs of study. And you’re right, the mentorship model doesn’t really exist. As an exchange, what do YOU think it could look like? What do you bring to the table and how can we work together to give and get? I think it’s important for us to really think about those things — what DO we have to offer? Why is it important to share, transfer, and pass on?

No one wants to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes when we look at how things are going down, we think, perhaps naively, or even flippantly — just put that in a spreadsheet, or just stream it on the Web site, or that’s FASB rule number blah blah blah … but I think it’s just a sign of the times. Same song, different verse. We want and need your support, not your alienation and hostility. We have a huge investment in this too.

Lee Ann

June 6, 2006, 3:56 p.m.

Dear Lee Ann,

I find myself in agreement with so much that you say about your own motivations and commitments. And of course with Edward Said's exhortation: without much formal education (but a long time in the school of life as well as with my nose in a book), I define my own role as public intellectual. I agree with Said's definition too: that an intellectual's mission in life is to advance human freedom and knowledge.

And of course I agree how unreasonable it is that activists in this country are so often expected to work without decent conditions or compensation, for instance, without medical insurance. The chief irony and unreason in my experience is that often, people controlling their own choices (as in collectives) have felt forced by scarce resources to do triage. They've ended up "voluntarily" giving up on the things that many workers in the mainstream economy (though unfortunately not all, especially in a nation where private sector unionization is well under 10% of the workforce) expect as part of having a job. If your generation succeeds in changing this, that will be a wonderful accomplishment.

I am sorry you have had so many experiences with people whose minds are closed to new ways of doing things. I'm a little stumped about how to discuss it, because many of the practitioners I'm familiar with seem hungry for new ideas and ever-ready to improvise. Writing in general terms, you're describing a situation in which "there isn't room for the collective," where some leaders don't care about "motivating others to share in a vision to create something that is larger than anything you could do on your own," where senior practitioners are "intimidated" by younger folks with more academic training, expressing their "alienation and hostility." I am appalled that this is what you are encountering. I need help understanding how this manifests, because it's so different from what I've seen myself. I appreciate it may be impossible to name organizations or leaders when you tell about such experiences, but I'm asking if you can offer a story, even a no-name story, that helps me understand how these attitudes have manifested.

What I mean by mentoring has a lot of layers. I resonate with your practicum experience. In fact, I'd say that it is almost always true that practical experience is more essential than coursework, not because the passing along of information in courses is irrelevant, but because of the nature of community cultural development practice itself. My own sense is that the key skills and awarenesses involved in deeply successful community cultural development work depend on developing keen senses: a sense of possibility, what Isaiah Berlin wrote about so beautifully as a "sense of reality," a highly developed empathy that enables one to discern, to really hear and see people and to enter into creative relationship with them. How to read the subtle signs.

Personally, I think the most valuable mentorship is to do what is recommended in Pirke Avot, a compilation of rabbinic teachings: "Find for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend." To me, that exhortation exposes the double direction of the most powerful learning, its foundation in relationship. I see it as a kind of spiritual practice: two people facing each other regularly, repeatedly, to share what they are thinking about their work, what they are feeling about it, their challenges and their questions, each recognizing the differential experience and knowledge of the other.

I would love to be teamed up with one or several younger practitioners and theoreticians who are interested in this type of relationship. It would be splendid if there were resources to support this type of thing, but I'd be willing to find a way to take part under any circumstances.

I'm feeling that buzz of change too. I'm taking heart from the low level of confidence in the Bush administration and its war agenda, and the feeling that people are waking up. I love the idea that my sixties cohort (we who have been wanting to feel that buzz again) and your cohort (who are sensing it now) could join hands. But no one wants to team up with someone hostile, intimidated and close-minded. So from your perspective, what has to be cleaned out to make that linkage possible?

Best, Arlene

June 6, 2006, 5:20 p.m.

True collectivity is more like partnering, right, where all voices are valued and heard — that’s how the sharing in a vision and working toward a greater good can happen. I don’t think I think of collective as having “to do triage” per se, but maybe it is about circumstance — or is it reactionary? I think I like the model, though, because leadership is shared, it’s harder to create these “cult of personality” kinds of environments, and two heads are better than one, multiple cords aren’t as easily broken and so on. I also like the idea of planning and forethought — or at least having a framework so that when you improvise and think on your feet, you can do it in a way that makes sense — you’re not just pulling things out of the air, if you will. I think some of my experience has been a push/pull between those two schools of thought — improvising something new — creating a thing, a program, a combination of … something else, then writing the framework while evaluating it later — and also the approach of writing/crafting the plan before the action. I just think it’s difficult to go down that improvisation road all the time. I had an experience where that was the theme of each day. Staff was to create new programming off the cuff for survival. I’ve learned that has to do a bit with crafting strategy and implementing it. The art world in general is pretty resistant to “structure,” feeling it inhibits the creative process, so maybe this hesitation toward is an offshoot of such thinking.

When I was able to do some work at an organization this past year, I was involved in a project that would analyze student participation and representation throughout the city. My initial analysis showed most of our students in the signature program came from the highest performing schools in the city of Chicago, so even though they were from different neighborhoods, they all had similar experience with art and creativity. I said that if we tell people we bring quality arts programming to underserved communities in Chicago, it’s not really true. Even if you live in the Englewood, or East Garfield Park neighborhoods, how underserved can you be when it comes to arts and culture when your high school typically has the highest number of National Merit Semifinalists and Scholars in the region? There was a kind of tension because these students produce good, quality work, that has allowed the organization to receive recognition, but not reaching out, or reaching beyond to students at schools on district “watch lists” — are we honoring our mission? At another organization, teaching artists informally surveyed students about what their interests outside of ceramics, painting and drawing, and history. They found out there was this large group that was interested in fashion and digital arts, but the director wasn’t willing to change up the program model to include these things because the organization was known and recognized for its mosaic works and murals.

I’m not sure how to talk about this issue either, since you also mentioned investment, nurture, love, and cultivation (blood, sweat, tears) in work that so many in your generation have endured and only now are perhaps beginning to feel and receive recognition. I think it’s important to look at our positions too. I am much more in the position of “administrator” than “artist” these days even though I write and even facilitate a little. We’ve been speaking very personally about these two aspects (being “on the ground,” in front of the people, the kids, as well as planning and running the programs). It brings a unique perspective in thinking about leadership in the field, the sensitivity of what it’s like to be the teaching artist, and also understanding the administrative needs that support the art activity.

Value seems important here — what’s valuable, what’s valued, to whom, by whom.… Is it more important to be recognized on television, appear in magazines and trade publications for your reputation as an innovative organization/leader and visionary, while your staff undermines and sabotages each other and your kids say they’re bored in your after school program or when you say you serve diverse and underserved populations, but all of your students come from the highest performing schools in the city; or should you be “under the radar” with young people who can offer sophisticated critiques on issues using their art as a tool? So what is “good work, quality work?” What makes a good leader, a good organization? How much humanity…? How much responsibility…?

It could be because our field is still marginal, but sometimes, we do it to ourselves by not drawing on the lessons, experiences, innovations of those from which we borrow, for still falling into the trap of excluding voices and perspectives. Sensing is something that you can’t learn from a book, attuning is not something you can take a course in and be able to apply in 30 days or less. It comes from watching, learning, experience. I don’t see a lot of that willingness to share partly because we haven’t been recognized by the main, and then we haven’t really created a way to recognize and uplift our own. It’s weird that what we do is not some “underground” thing that only a few are doing, but yet, we are so unaware of each other — even in the same city. What is the history of this work that we choose to tell? When does it start? With whom? Continued by whom? There is this culture of competition and suspicion, don’t you think? Perhaps because we compete for the same pool of money for survival along with a number of other sectors … maybe it’s because a space hasn’t been made for multiples to exist. Maybe that needs to go away in order to create an environment where linkages and exchanges can occur. We have to value and recognize our own, our colleagues before we can expect anyone else to honor us in a way that is meaningful.

I think it’s a difficult balance. I mentioned before that worlds seem to be connecting and intersecting more now. You can now study what we do at university. Does it give the ones who do more “legitimacy”? Do the ones who don’t go that route — are they more “authentic” in their work? It’s also here that heads bump. It’s important to have that exchange because it then ensures that the heart of the field is not lost in the ivory tower, that theory is applied and adapted in a way that is contextually relevant to this kind of work and the certain nuances effectives leaders require. I’ve always found it valuable to look for similarities and celebrate differences because if we were all the same, then someone wouldn’t be necessary for dialogue, you know?

Your generation wasn’t doing something completely radical and revolutionary, though that was most certainly the theme of the day in the 1960s. There’s always been counterhegemonic activity by those on the fringes.… What experiences in history did you draw upon? Did you have any mentors/teachers who lived through earlier social change movements, were you, yourself a participant in movements of the time? Where did you get your personal inspiration?

Thanks for the exchange today; I look forward to the rest. Talk tomorrow... Warmest, LAN

June 7, 2006, 10:17 a.m.

Good morning, Lee Ann,

You bring up a topic dear to my heart. Over the last three decades, I've worked as a consultant to organizations, with something of a specialty in collectives, co-ops and other democratically managed groups. The dialectic of improvisation and planning you mention has been amazingly central to that work.

Some groups of this type were founded out of the desire to avoid the abuse of power people had seen in conventional hierarchies. The founders emphasized sharing and participation, but often they had only a vague idea of how that would work. I've seen it go wrong in two main ways. First, people sometimes inadvertently give their own power away, throwing out the baby with the bath water. For example, some collective groups had no official leaders, but their lack of planning and boundaries created a kind of pushover situation in which a clever individual could become the de facto leader by manipulating everyone else through force of personality. In a chronically under-bounded situation, the assertive person often rules. Second, I've seen people bend too far in the other direction, getting so wrapped up in processing everything and including everyone at each step that all the energy goes into working out relationships or sharing feelings, and very little into getting the job done. The organization turns inward.

So it's a real and worthy challenge to share power with a workable balance of collectivity, improvisation and planning. I've loved working with groups that have been committed to this challenge, seeing them succeed. In a society marked by competition, as you've pointed out, it takes real social imagination to pursue true collaboration. The past groups I referred to in my previous message as "doing triage" weren't put in that position because they were collectives, but because resources seemed to be so scarce. I was making the point that deprivation (like having no medical insurance) isn't always imposed by insensitive leaders; I've actually seen it self-imposed by people who were facing hard choices and decided going without was the lesser of two evils.

The situation you describe, where a leader acts to be "recognized on television, appear in magazines and trade publications for your reputation as an innovative organization/leader and visionary, while your staff undermines and sabotages each other and your kids say they’re bored in your after school program or when you say you serve diverse and underserved populations, but all of your students come from the highest performing schools in the city" — well, I have to say this strikes me as hypocrisy on the leader's part, straight up. And maybe the question it raises is how practitioners can stay true to the values they profess. I believe in remaining in touch with colleagues and community members who can help you get a reality-check. I believe in finding humane ways to ask for and receive criticism as well as praise. But in this field as in any other, how is it possible to impose ethical standards on those who do not hold themselves accountable?

And now I've come to one of my personal hobbyhorses. I've written quite a bit about the ethics of community cultural development practice, and I would dearly love to see more opportunities to discuss, debate, learn together about them. It seems to me that an active engagement with ethics is the dividing line between the types of leaders you described (who profess one set of values and work by another), and those I would see as good leaders. But for myriad reasons, ethics study seems to be a hard sell at the moment.

As to antecedents, I agree with you on the perpetual plastic persistence of counterhegemonic activity. In my new book, New Creative Community, coming out in October, I start with the cave painters of Lascaux (only a mention though), then go on to draw more deeply on particular antecedents that go back more than a century. Personally, I remember being hugely fascinated with the activist artists of the American Artists Congress, the labor theaters and the WPA arts projects of the 1930s, and I actually got to meet some of these people before they died (as well as studying the copious documentation which is happily still available). In theater, some of my cohort were students of other thirties initiatives like the Carolina Playmakers. The rich history of activism and culture before the Red Scare of the 1950s was deeply inspiring.

From what I have seen, people come to community cultural development by two main routes. Either they are artists dissatisfied with conventional roles and wanting to matter more (which is something like the story you shared of your own trajectory) or they are organizers dissatisfied with conventional approaches and wanting to include the whole culture, the whole person, in social change.

I guess my story has a little of each. I grew up with a talent for drawing and a taste for activism. During the Vietnam War, I was an organizer and draft counselor, and on the side, I did posters and graphics for organizations and events. In time, I made a living of sorts as an illustrator and designer. It was a rich time for movements that connected cultural identity with social action, an important contribution, I think. I wish I could convey the revolutionary quality of aesthetic and political fusion in hearing "Black is beautiful" for the first time, for instance. In the early seventies, I wanted to bring the two perspectives together, art and activism, and became one of those whose mission was organizing activist artists. I suppose you could say I was a bridge person, bringing what I'd learned from each world into the other. And that led me to my work in this field and as a writer.

I don't feel any need to assert the sixties' revolutionary character as unique (nothing new under the sun, said Ecclesiastes a long, long time ago, still true today if one is speaking of human beings rather than technologies). In the realm of generalities, it's true that counterhegemonic activity springs eternal; so does synthesizing activity or "mainstreaming," the impulse to blend tendencies that had been seen as oppositional. The wheel turns. But that doesn't make the specific stories any less interesting or useful. We just have to want to learn from them. You and I seem to be saying that we share that desire.

Best, Arlene

June 7, 2006, 11:35 a.m.

I’d like to hear more about your collective experiences. I am only REALLY familiar with the situation of my context, right now, the Chicago cultural community, which is influenced by a particular style of politics and activism strategy. Maybe old habits die hard, but people do things pretty much a certain way here because of the influence of such strong personalities like Alinsky for example. There have been some successful models of the collective like the Street Level Youth Media in its past, but it’s not that common anymore here. I’ll do some looking into that; I’m sure I’ve missed a lot… Have you always been mainly based in California, and is that where most of your experience with the collective comes from, or have you seen it play out in a variety of settings … tell me more … maybe I’m intrigued by it because of the dominance of hierarchical examples here. Ethics is a big issue. I’d have conversations at the art center with the teaching artists and other program staff who would talk about what things were like before they moved into the shiny, new big building, before the recognition in the trade magazines and television, etc. I would hear a lot of things like: when I get to that place, I might find myself having to make decisions, choices that I never thought I would make. And I thought, but I don’t want to be that way. I fear so much becoming that person — that leader who will say the ends justify the means no matter what. And it happens in so many ways — the grant that says you have to do something around first amendment issues in a particular way in your writing program, to take that sponsorship from THAT corporation or not … choices, choices, choices. How do you find that ethical challenge — balancing personal conviction with greater good?

There are a few galleries in the city that describe themselves as collectives, and one debate is whether artists should be allowed to sell their work in these spaces, which were not created for commercial purposes. I think it brings up the question of ethics again because people have to make a living, work and businesses need support, etc. etc. What are your thoughts on this considering the social, political, and economic climate of our times? Which speaks to inequities and disparities…

It’s strange because accountability of one type is built in from funding sources, right? The final reports to foundations, the annual reports if you choose to do that sort of thing — even the program at your annual benefit … all of these ways to report back. I actually think we need to throw responsibility back on ourselves, though. We can’t just blindly accept, though we should trust, right? But that’s one of the interesting paradoxes about doing community work. It comes out of a need, yes, but at the same time the goal is to achieve empowerment — which is something you do for yourself, to yourself, not to someone, or for someone. Here I think those questions about representation, and fighting all of the "isms" comes in. Marginalized communities seem to share this quest for self-determination rooted in types of resistance. I think the point of memory and story telling is an important point for that. How we remember history (which is complex and diverse with experience that varies across the board), who is allowed to tell it, and then who gets to hear it. How again, do you strike this balance of valuing self — seeing yourself and your community as an asset—and being honest about the complexity of human experience? I think we need to be careful about that in our field — we can’t idealize ourselves, our work, simply because it’s been dismissed for so long as “therapy” or because some people still say “community art” with disdain or think of it as low quality work, whatever that means for them. We have to be honest about our successes, and our failures so that we can make accurate assessments about where we’re at and chart a path of where we will now go.

I think that might be the real starting point of the intergenerational dialogue. We can’t be afraid of the whole story. We must be willing to embrace all of it, even when it doesn’t feel so good.

How have you addressed these things in your work?

Talk soon, ciao

June 7, 2006, 1:16 p.m.

Dear Lee Ann,

Once again, we find ourselves thinking along similar lines about many of the same things. I guess some questions are eternal, or at least persistent, hm?

My work has been across the U.S. and to a much lesser extent, in England. There's a pretty complete list of projects here: http://arlenegoldbard.com/?page_id=134. My first experience as a member of a collective was living in collective houses with other activists while I worked on an underground newspaper more than 35 years ago. People were very influenced by accounts of Chinese communes in David Hinton's Fanshen, one common practice being "crit/self-crit" (i.e., criticism/self-criticism). People confessed their own transgressions from the values or codes they professed, and denounced others' transgressions, with the goal of keeping everyone on the straight and narrow. You'd sit in a circle and talk "truth" to each other. Some of it was quite amazing, healing and deep. But much was not. That was a startling wake-up call for me about revolutionary ideals: I saw groups of people within the collective gang up on someone they disliked or resented, not because of any significant transgression that might damage the whole, but for things like consorting with the wrong people or being seen drinking Coke (!). So I understood then that no organizational structures or practices could inoculate you against the abuse of power; that required the frequent renewal of real human commitments.

The most satisfying experience was working for almost 20 years (beginning in 1984) with a co-op of social-issue documentary makers who banded together to distribute their work. (Apropos your question about the collective gallery, that experience certainly proved to me that co-ops and collectives can sell things, but they have to spend a lot of time and effort doing it equitably to make it work.) When co-op members asked my partner and me to work with them, they were on the verge of collapse: meetings had degraded into shouting-matches, people mistrusted each other, many were ready to resign. Over two decades, we helped them craft their policies and values and put them into practice. It was inspiring and fun and they are still going today, having successfully weathered a million changes in the independent media field and brought in several successive generations of younger members. (Here's a link to an article we wrote about it a decade ago:
http://www.newday.com/about/independentart.html)

The collective gallery you mentioned confronts a question of identity and purpose when it considers whether to allow artists to sell work. If it is allowed, then there are a ton of practical and ethical questions to resolve: how is income to be shared between artist and gallery? How are funds to be held and accounted for? Should marketing considerations be part of decisions about future shows? And so on. So on the one hand, I can understand wanting to avoid all that and just have an outlet for showing and discussing work. And on the other, the gallery is unlikely to have a long life unless it can be integral to people's livelihood. Do you know Julie Ault's books about the economics and politics of art collectives in the seventies? (I have an essay in it, along with many others: Alternative Art New York. <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816637946/qid=1149698223 /sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-0760690-9206313?s= books&v=glance&n=283155> )

Based on my experiences, I'm sure co-ops and collectives can be done, but the members have to be willing to invest some serious front-end effort into putting the organizational infrastructure in place, basing their policies not on some ideal but on what they really know about people in groups. For instance, some people talk more and take up more space than others, so it's smart to have policies that make room for everyone to weigh in. On the very simplest level, that might mean going around the circle from time to time at a meeting so everyone who hasn't spoken can contribute to the discussion, for instance. As things get more complex, more sophisticated mechanisms are needed. I seem to be citing a lot of other materials today, but here's an essay about this published on CAN in 2004: Don't Do It! Organizational Suicide Prevention for Progressives. <http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles /2004/09/donot_do_it_org.php>

Ethics is one place where mentoring makes exceptionally good sense to me. I think it's hard for a relatively inexperienced or "low-ranking" member to stand up to ends-justify-the-means thinking from leadership. No one else seems to be objecting, what can I do anyway, etc.? Then you find the problem holding your brain hostage in the small hours of the night. Back in my first communal experience, I would have loved to know someone I could talk to about "crit/self-crit," someone who could tell me about how such things have been abused in other times and places, and what interventions might help. You know "The Ethicist" column in the New York Times (BTW, the author is Jan Cohen-Cruz's brother — perhaps you've read some of her great stuff in CAN)? It would be cool to have an ethicist feature on CAN, wouldn't it?

Your last point is one of my favorite subjects too. I've written quite a bit about the culture of falsehood that permeates the grantmaking world, where you have to promise the moon, then pretend you delivered it, and since "everyone does it," the cycle never stops. I'll spare you another citation (but if you're interested, I'd be happy to send one.) But where is the place to tell the whole story? In the larger society, we're living amidst stories that leave so many people out, devalue their contributions, defame them; and we're trying to heal that with new stories (and much more). I love how John Berger said it: " "The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.”

I completely agree with you. Telling the whole story is essential, indispensable and holy. That kind of sharing has to be grounded in trust, and trust has to be grounded in experience, which brings us back to getting to know each other, generation to generation. I am interested that you and I started out with some friction, uncertainty and misunderstanding (but lots of goodwill) and have come to so many meeting-places.

Best, Arlene

Go to Part II

Original CAN/API publication: June 2006