Dr. Brea M. Heidelberg

Diversity in Arts Administration is Not Inevitable

Posted by Dr. Brea M. Heidelberg, Mar 14, 2016 2 comments


Dr. Brea M. Heidelberg

This report treats diversity as an inevitability. This is true when it comes to demographics–we are all familiar with the statistics about how the country is becoming more racially diverse. However, true diversity (including age, gender, physical ability, and race) is not inevitable when it comes to working and advancing in our field. Numbers do not change power structures–marginalized people often outnumber those in power. It is the assumption that diversity will magically happen that permits some leaders within the field to sit idly by while the sector disenfranchises and loses quality talent. Change is not a passive process.

While this report offers some valuable considerations for creating and maintaining an effective intergenerational workforce in the arts, it starts in the middle of the story. We did not spring, fully formed, into the issues we now face. Nor did we get to this point by walking hand-in-hand down a road paved with good intentions. This may be true in some cases, but certainly not all, and arguably not the majority. The real start of this story, the beginning of the real work, is getting everything out in the open. The report starts us off: We have a leadership pipeline issue. We have a diversity issue. But there’s more: These issues are largely one in the same. Treating them as separate issues is problematic. We actively contribute to and maintain these issues. We are culpable, sometimes through explicit action but much more often through implicit means.

The report references the Silent Generation. Do not be fooled by this misnomer–this generation speaks volumes through implicit policies evident in grant categories & application requirements, donation choices, and the establishment of evaluation criteria. It would be unfair to claim that the practices we reify through compliance, reinforce in the arts administration classroom, and solidify through workplace and field socialization were created with nefarious intentions. But once practices are identified as harmful their continued use is, at best, benignly neglectful and at worst, malicious. We must, in word and in deed, clearly and purposefully identify harmful practices.

The powerful act of naming harmful practices is the most important part of the change process. It is the foundation upon which systemic and effective change can occur. Otherwise, we are building sandcastles right before high tide. This report mentions that the field has a “shared value of diversity and innovation” a number of times. This is a potentially harmful rose-colored view. Yes, we are a field that has made some strides toward diversity and inclusion. But we are also a field that has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into acknowledging that audiences needed to diversify. We have executed masterful choreography, tap dancing around the fact that diversifying audiences is the end of a long process that requires diverse administrators, executive leadership, performers, and board members. The good work of a few organizations and leaders does not buy a pass for the rest of the field. Claiming that the field has a shared value of diversity is a large umbrella and not everyone standing beneath it deserves the shelter. Worse yet, this kind of shelter can, and often does, prevent many from asking themselves tough questions. Lasting change rarely starts when people are comfortable.

The field needs people throughout the sector: funders, researchers, educators, artists, and arts administrators who are willing to hold themselves and others accountable when their words and their actions don’t match up. The entire field must critically examine its deeply entrenched habit of being vocal about diversity as an abstract concept, but silent on diversity in practice – as a series of individual, organizational, and field-wide decisions to do better.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s report, Moving Arts Leadership Forward, describes a changing arts leadership and workforce. Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the Hewlett Foundation, has asked a diverse group of arts leaders to respond to the report’s findings and the recommendations it makes for the field.

2 responses for Diversity in Arts Administration is Not Inevitable

Comments

March 17, 2016 at 8:12 pm

What a powerful response to the report.  Thank you very much for this.  You're correct that the report does begin in the middle of the story, and we need to back to the beginnings to understand where the problems lie today.
Your comment that:  The powerful act of naming harmful practices is the most important part of the change process. - I am wondering if you'd be willing to monitor a conversation here where others could weight in with their concerns?
If so, at the beginning of my list would be in the grants system, that the largest grants go to the largest organizations.

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March 24, 2016 at 2:24 pm

I'd be delighted to moderate such a conversation - I think having those difficult conversations is a necessary first step. 

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