Warts and All: The Partnership that Built a Community Arts Graduate Program

Inspired by the impending retirement of a generation of gifted leaders and the urgent need for savvy incoming leadership for community-based youth arts organizations, two complementary units within Columbia College Chicago developed a new graduate concentration. The Arts in Youth and Community Development (AYCD) concentration of the Masters in Arts Management at Columbia College Chicago was established in 2002 to address the professional-development needs of future leaders in the field of community-based youth arts. Although the collaboration has ultimately proved fruitful, it was not without significant partnership challenges within the institution. The AYCD graduate concentration was explicitly designed around partnerships with community organizations, but the most difficult partner relationships were the ones inside the institution. This paper examines multiple structural obstacles faced in creating a community-engaged graduate program, and illuminates how conflicts were resolved.

Cross-disciplinary Collaboration within an Institution

After five years of operation, many successes and challenges are apparent. One area worth examining is Columbia’s institutional collaboration that created this academic program: the partnership between Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) and the Arts, Entertainment and Media Management Department (AEMM). An analysis of five years of the partnership explored such issues as the vision of the program versus how it actually unfolded, conflicts over funding and program design, institutional and structural constraints, the differing accountabilities between CCAP and AEMM, the construction of roles within the program, and the struggle to express the explicit values of community cultural development in the partnership between CCAP and AEMM.

While it is true that CCAP and AEMM each combine unique resources and areas of expertise in order to offer the AYCD concentration, the AYCD program was launched before those assets could be clearly identified, given value and challenged when appropriate. As an additional challenge, this was the first time in the 30-year history of the Arts, Entertainment and Media Management Department that they had ever partnered with another entity to offer a degree program. In the ten-year history of the Center for Community Arts Partnerships, CCAP has never become embedded so deeply in an academic unit of the college. AYCD remains one of only two such partnerships in all of Columbia College Chicago. Although the AYCD program has proven successful by a number of measures, the internal partnership struggle of the two offices has been an ongoing challenge — one that may ultimately prove a source of strength and balance.

The Jumping-off Point

Initial impetus for creating a graduate program emerged from the Center for Community Arts Partnerships. Staff members Julie Simpson and Giselle Mercier were recognizing that the partnerships they had built with community-based organizations (CBOs) in Chicago were strong, and that there was partnership expertise growing on both sides of those partnerships that might be utilized in the training of students and other young leaders. CCAP was also working closely with educator Shirley Brice Heath, and her research into the positive effects of afterschool arts programs on youth were very influential.* However, an assessment of the state of the field revealed that in spite of the overwhelmingly positive evidence, youth arts is still at a critical juncture in its development. The field suffers from lack of definition in the public arena, patchy funding, a dearth of applied research opportunities and, most important, few learning opportunities for current and future leaders. Even the most dedicated organization cannot survive without steady funding, connection and communication to a network of support, and the promise of leadership succession. Studying the state-of-the-field assessment, CCAP leaders recognized that higher education could support the field through the traditional institutional functions of convening, training and information dissemination, thereby providing a service to the development of the youth-arts field while ensuring its legitimacy. Moreover, Columbia could set a precedent by offering a degree program in youth arts development.

The Center for Community Arts Partnerships is not an academic unit, and therefore cannot confer academic degrees. CCAP sought an academic department with whom to partner in offering a graduate degree related to community arts, and found willing collaborators in the Arts, Entertainment and Management Department.

Initially, the title of this project was “Building A Field,” and it was based on the idea (influenced by early consultancy with Shirley Brice Heath), that creating a formal education program could build enhanced visibility for the field of community-based youth arts. The project focused on community-based organizations that provided youth arts outside of the context and hours of the school day. While AEMM colleagues were unsure of their ability to “build” a field that already existed, they were confident that they could develop a sound professional education program for management and managerial leadership in this field in anticipation of the succession of existing program leaders. CCAP staff members were deeply invested in leveraging the resources of the college to support the community-based art work of partner organizations. Many CCAP staff members have worked in the community-arts field and remain committed to social justice and human rights for youth. CCAP brought to the table an almost missionary zeal to promote youth arts development, to train the best possible leaders in the field, and to provide a valuable service to the organizations doing that work in Chicago.

As part of its commitment to engaging youth-arts practitioners in the creation of the AYCD program, CCAP convened the “Campus/Community Advisory Committee,” a group of internal colleagues and leaders in the field. CCAP was anxious to hear the input of youth-arts experts and faculty colleagues, but they neglected to include their very own AEMM partner faculty in these initial discussions. This exclusion of AEMM colleagues not only prevented their learning from these lively conversations, but it also created hurt feelings and mistrust from which the partnership suffered for years to come. It is not clear to current CCAP staff why AEMM colleagues were not included in early meetings of the “Campus/Community Advisory Committee,” but whatever the reason, it’s hard to imagine it was worth the injury it caused.

Funding Challenges

Among AYCD’s challenges, funding has been a major concern. The main funding challenge for AYCD is the fact that the program was uniquely designed to include an intensive five-semester practicum experience in community-based youth arts organizations. Reflecting CCAP’s core values of reciprocity and economic justice, the practicum is a paid position for students, and the practicum organizations are paid a stipend for their participation. The launch of AYCD was contingent upon securing funding for the practicum. There was a great deal of excitement to develop and implement this program within a short period of time. This rush was influenced, in part, by external funding. CCAP raises approximately 75% of its budget from foundation, government and corporate grants — so when funding came through for the paid practicum portion of the AYCD graduate program, CCAP was obligated to launch the program. This happened before AEMM and CCAP had done the work of fully defining their terms or speaking in depth to each other about vision and values.

From the start, this program was to benefit from the fundraising prowess of (then) CCAP Executive Director Julie Simpson. The funding reality for CCAP is that it has limited programmatic support from the college. On the other hand, academic programs like AEMM have more robust support. In not fully working out the details, the partners made commitments to the college modeling CCAP’s funding reality: that is, the partners committed to launching an academic program dependent on external funding in the hope that external funding would continue to materialize. This led to the college’s misunderstanding of the financial realities of AYCD’s funding needs. When grant money did not develop as anticipated due to changes in the external marketplace, the program was left strapped for cash and the partners were left in the frustrating position of having to justify AYCD’s vitality again to the college in its fourth year of existence. But ultimately Columbia College recognized AYCD’s value to the AEMM department and the school as a whole.

Currently, the practicum program is supported through off-campus Federal Work Study funding advocated by AYCD staff, and by internal funding lines added to AEMM’s budget. However, whereas both partners (CCAP and AEMM) formerly had financial resources outlined in their budgets to support the program, budget management and accountability has currently been shifted to AEMM. Since institutions award decision-making authority to the people authorized to spend money, this budgetary consolidation was initially a cause for concern. But as CCAP has continued to secure external funding for the program, budgetary support is currently shared between the two departments.

The Constraints of the Institution

Over the years, AYCD staff and faculty have come to understand the ways in which institutional constraints have hindered good partnership. The primary institutional issue is the fact that interdepartmental collaboration at Columbia is encouraged in word only. The college has not yet clarified ways for tuition revenue generated by collaborative programs to be recognized clearly as an institutional contribution and returned to the Centers and academic departments as budgetary support.

As a Center at the college, CCAP staff changes more quickly than academic departments. This was true during the process of envisioning and launching the AYCD program. In the first year of the graduate program, CCAP experienced an executive-director transition. This was a serious challenge for AYCD especially because the founding E.D., Julie Simpson, had been a visionary leader and fundraiser for the program. Another clear reality is that AYCD was taken very seriously as a groundbreaking and important program throughout CCAP, with many staff engaged in various aspects of it. By contrast, AYCD was simply the fifth concentration of an already-existing Master’s of Arts Management program within AEMM. The structure of AEMM demanded that only two faculty members be consistently involved in the planning and implementation phases of AYCD. As a result, it took a few years for all full-time AEMM faculty to understand AYCD and its goals.

Early on, CCAP staff stepped on many AEMM toes in their urgent advocacy for changes to the curriculum or faculty. CCAP understood that it was staking part of its reputation at the college and as national leaders on the quality and success of the AYCD program, and they were not accustomed to the slower pace of growth and change that is the norm in academic departments. CCAP’s early successes and exponential growth had encouraged the young staff’s ambitions and promoted the sense that CCAP was a “standard bearer” for community partnership activities. CCAP was also accountable to funders: It had made projections about what would happen in AYCD, and when those projections were not met, the staff felt pressured to make changes in the program to address the need to continue external funding. This is not a pressure most new academic programs are under: Academic programs are typically given five to ten years to measure success, not 18 months.

New Roles in a New Academic Field

Because of the unique structure of AYCD within Columbia College Chicago, program staff and faculty were faced with the challenge of defining new roles within an academic program. The definition of roles and accountabilities is an ongoing process. One of the issues revolves around title/authority confusion. In the academic departments, when faculty members have direct responsibility for a portion of the curriculum they are called coordinators. So, within the AEMM department there are coordinators of each professional focus — that is, coordinator of Music Business, coordinator of Performing Arts Management, etc. Consequently within the AEMM department there is a coordinator of AYCD: Phyllis Johnson.

As the program was being developed there was an idea that an administrator was needed to support the AYCD program. The plan was to initially hire someone with half-time responsibilities for AYCD and half-time responsibilities for fundraising within CCAP. The person hired was Nicole Garneau and her position was called coordinator. So, for quite some time the AYCD program had two coordinators. This created some confusion both internally and externally over who had authority for what. CCAP operates much like a nonprofit organization, re-defining roles and responsibilities quickly as new programs are launched and funding is secured. In the role shuffle that followed the resignation of CCAP’s executive director, Garneau transitioned out of fundraising and into other administrative work for CCAP, and eventually her position shifted to one that is largely consumed by AYCD.

Johnson’s understanding was that the AEMM department had responsibility, and consequently accountability, for the classes, the course of study, course revision, faculty hires and student advising. CCAP focused its attention on the management of the practicum sites and practicum mentors and their relationship with the students and the college. CCAP has shouldered all of the responsibility and success for fundraising. The two units share responsibility for marketing, student admissions and scholarship decisions.

Managing the multiple responsibilities held by the key operating folks in each department (Phyllis Johnson and Nicole Garneau) initially created stress. In the first years of the program, CCAP has been more effective in reorganizing itself to the benefit of AYCD. AEMM is now seeking to relieve its operating staff and create more support for AYCD by adding a brand new faculty position for AYCD.

As AYCD has developed over the years, managed by a cross-disciplinary team of staff and faculty, program the staff has come to understand that often what seem like budgetary concerns or administrative details actually point to deep underlying differences in values and beliefs. Phyllis Johnson believes the key here is the lack of time devoted to an explicit understanding of what was at stake for each unit. This led each party to try to achieve its goals individually, which has resulted in the need to develop trust and cooperation well after the beginning of the program. This has interfered with the development of the partnership. It has led to confusion over responsibilities. It has caused anxiety among faculty, partners and students. Hopefully, this analysis actually serves to strengthen this partnership for the benefit of the AYCD program.

The hard work and tenacity of everyone involved in AYCD has resulted in a strong program with a staff that maintains ambitious goals. There is good evidence that AYCD has had a positive influence on the rest of the graduate program at AEMM and will continue to do so. From the perspective of CCAP, the relationship with AEMM has become a model for the kind of partnerships the future should hold.

After Five Years, a Moment to Reflect

The success of the program has actually provided the freedom for the kind of reflection and analysis in this paper. By many accounts the AYCD program is doing well and improving: There is a healthy number of well-qualified applicants, from which typically only 25% are admitted; the combination of coursework with paid practical work in the community youth arts field is resulting in deep and successful student learning; community partners report that AYCD students make significant and meaningful contributions to their organizations and the field; students are finishing in good standing and getting good jobs. Some small amount of budgetary stability has allowed CCAP and AEMM to step back for a moment and continue work on the internal partnership relationship, hopefully for the benefit and continued success of AYCD. In truth, the process of creating this text has in itself allowed the partners to delve into areas of previous frustration with the intention of understanding, mending and moving forward with renewed passions for the training and support of emerging leaders in the field. This text has provided an analytical framework for discussions about how to create deeper levels of integration within AYCD. It is expected that these conversations will continue as CCAP and AEMM work together to blur traditional boundaries in the service of the field of community-based youth arts.

This essay is part of the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, 2008, funded by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant to the Maryland Institute College of Art. The essay was reviewed and selected by the project's Editorial Board: Ron Bechet, Xavier University of Louisiana; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Ken Krafchek, Maryland Institute College of Art; Sonia Mañjon, California College of the Arts; Amalia Mesa-Bains, California Statu University Monterey Bay; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; and Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University.

Phyllis Johnson is associate chairperson of the Arts, Entertainment and Media Management department at Columbia College Chicago and the faculty coordinator for Arts in Youth and Community Development. She received her M.M. degree from Northwestern University in labor relations and marketing. She serves on the board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and Music Theatre Workshop.

Nicole Garneau is assistant director of Community Partnerships in the Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) at Columbia College Chicago, where she staffs the Arts in Youth and Community Development graduate program. She is also adjunct faculty of the college. She is a board member of Insight Arts and the National Performance Network. Nicole is a practicing artist in Chicago. Her Web site is http://www.nicolegarneau.com.

NOTES

[*] “Living the Arts Through Language and Learning: a Report on Community-based Youth Organizations” by Shirley Brice Heath with Elisabeth Soep and Adelma Roach. In Americans for the Arts Monographs, Volume 2, No. 7, November 1998. Selected youth from arts organizations completed the National Educational Longitudal Survey (NELS), and were then compared with a random sample.

Original CAN/API publication: July 2008