“Anyone … is a pilot on a calm sea.” — Seneca, Epistle 85

What should artistic and cultural leaders aspire to exemplify and accomplish in a time of crisis? This series of four blogs (Blog II | Blog III | Blog IV) is intended to stimulate dialog about characteristics desirable in leaders during crises, the ways effective crisis managers think, the special needs and opportunities for leadership during crises, and the management principles that prove most valuable during crises.

Let’s think of a crisis as a problem so serious and urgent that it threatens the ability of an entity to address meaningfully its priority goals or mission. Some crises are caused by an operational problem that approaches or passes a point where the survival of the enterprise is at risk. Leadership success in this case will likely require directing an adept problem-solving process. Other crises may impact before their cause is readily understood, with such impact or with such complexity that a leader must act before optimal information can be gathered. Leadership success in these situations will benefit especially from accurate, rapid situation analysis and timely deployment of human and financial assets. Let us focus on a third kind of crisis: one caused by a ubiquitous challenge that imperils the value in many kinds of transactions and organizations, threatening or disrupting the general operational environment. The COVID-19 pandemic fits this description. So does racism (about which there are many lessons to be learned by considering for whom this issue has been a crisis their entire lives and for whom this issue is perceived as a crisis more recently—and why).

Blog I: Leadership Roles and Goals

In any kind of crisis, a leader who strives to maintain the mission capacity of an enterprise must be successful in fulfilling several critical functions.

1. Embody the mission in order to clarify how it applies or must adapt to the present crisis. Effective leaders make connections that motivate their audiences to purposeful action.

• The staff and leadership of the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) explain that their mission calls them to oppose racism, bigotry, and hate because “Thousands of students regularly turn to their trusted teachers for their words, insights, and advice on how to manage the confusing world they see around them.” Therefore, they have published resources advising teachers how to address equity and social justice in science instruction and commit to “making diversity and equity more prevalent in our conferences, in our professional learning opportunities, and in the content NSTA’s members use in their classrooms.” (“Statement,” June 3, 2020).
• The International Thespian Festival, June 22-26, 2020, subscribes to the slogan we all know: “This June, the show must go on, virtually! ITF will fulfill their mission by ‘offering more than 50 workshops for you and your students’ as well as special teacher-only sessions, including ‘Directing a Musical in the Age of COVID-19.’”

2. Provide a unifying spirit, direction, and agenda, uniting a diverse following.

• The Canada Council for the Arts 2016-2021 strategic plan commits the agency to be part of the national government’s overall effort to transform radically “the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, and between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state.” Such a powerfully values-driven policy facilitates leadership during crisis. On June 16, in the contexts of the pandemic virus and racist violence, Steven Loft (Mohawk), director of the Arts and Cultures of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Peoples program, issued a statement on behalf of the Council. The premise of the agenda it proposes is that shared artistic and cultural understandings lead to shared senses of community and equity. The statement asks the people of Canada to “read books by Indigenous and Black authors, listen to some amazing music by musicians from these communities, watch films and media by Indigenous and Black directors (from the comfort of your home), or visit a virtual exhibition or performance by Indigenous and Black artists. I also encourage you to actively support Indigenous and Black communities in their struggle against injustice, inequality and violence.”
• In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the Academy of American Poets sponsored #ShelterInPoems, a social media initiative encouraging participants to share poems that provide them with “courage, solace, and actionable energy.” Following the homicide of George Floyd, the Academy invited its audience to “…join [them] in reading and amplifying poems addressing racial injustice, human rights, and the right to protest.”
• Each March, The Poetry Coalition, a diverse group of more than 25 poetry presenting organizations (including several that serve poets of “specific racial, ethnic, or gender identities, backgrounds, or communities”), engage a common social justice theme—such as “poetry and migration” and “poetry and democracy”—through programs, publications, panels, and readings. This year’s theme was “I am deliberate/ and afraid/ of nothing: Poetry and Protest.”

3. Deter panic, which otherwise results in the counterproductive use of resources.

• Early in the coronavirus crisis, Americans for the Arts collaborated with the Association of Performing Arts Conferences to present a webinar connecting the arts community with authoritative CDC information entitled “We Are Stronger Together: Navigating Crises and Sustaining Healthy Relationships in the Era of Coronavirus.”

4. Take responsibility, building trust and loyalty and fostering constructive risk-taking.

• On March 13, Association of Performing Arts Professionals President and CEO Mario Garcia Durham had to send one of the most difficult messages imaginable to his membership. To do so, he identified with their shared mission and spirit, provided his evidence and reasoning, and envisioned the difference that present action would make in shaping the future: “I say this with heaviness in my heart as what I’m asking of you is antithetical to ‘the show must go on’ spirit of our industry. We must act now—I truly believe this is the right thing to do if we are to have any hope of slowing the spread and stemming this crisis. We must bear the short-term pain now to, hopefully, prevent the long-term and irreparable impacts on our artists, our audiences, our revenue, our staffs and our industry.” He went on to cite resources for professional development and information during the crisis, to alert his field to the potential need for advocacy in order to be included in economic assistance programs, to invite input, and to promise continued communication. Months later, we are getting solid research findings that “the worst COVID-19 outbreaks occur when hundreds gather in close proximity, usually indoors.” According to one study of Hong Kong, 20% of cases, all involving social gatherings, led to 80% of transmissions. (“Coronavirus rise feared as protests engulf cities,” The Week, 6/12/20, p. 5)

5. Inspire a sense of shared responsibility for solutions, fostering collaborations, facilitating creative problem solving, achieving scale of resources to implement a complex strategy.

• Afa Dworkin, President of Sphinx Organization, reminds us that even though “the global pandemic has affected communities of color in a disturbingly disproportionate manner,” artists of color are making heroic contributions during the health crisis—giving quarantine concerts, fighting on the frontlines of COVID as healthcare workers, bringing world-class music to homeless shelters, composing works of art that address complex issues of social justice. She encourages Sphinx’s closest colleagues to “continue perpetuating the stories of struggle, excellence, compassion, and pride,” her allies to “remember the power of representation,” and the broader public to “ensure that these voices are not only heard but listened to, known, and understood” so that “we can all be a part of telling a more just story by transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts.” (“Sphinx President Responds to National Crisis,” 6/10/20.)
• Americans for the Arts’ Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resource and Response Center serves as a one-stop location connecting the arts and culture field with news and knowledge from the CDC, federal and D.C. governments, and other sources. The response center features information for organizations and individuals including field tools, research, an Arts Agency Action Kit, and equity/mental health resources. The center also includes perspectives from the field on reopening from national, state, county, and local levels.
• The transition from military service back to community life represents a crisis in the life of a great number of men and women for many reasons related to physical and mental trauma. The February 2019 Congressional testimony of Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch highlighting the Creative Forces program, and the testimony of Master Gunnery Sergeant Chris Stowe on behalf of the American Art Therapy Association, together explain how artistic, medical, and military skills are addressing complex problems effectively and winning Congressional support for NEA and state arts agency programs.

Read Chris Stowe’s Testimony

Read Bob Lynch’s Testimony

6. Bond emotionally, helping to heal crises of spirit, establishing a sense of community that transcends rational agreement on a direction or policy, building ties at a level that leads to relationships and solutions instead of further crises.

• Cultural leaders, in addition to telling stories that illustrate the value of artistic abilities, activities, and organizations, often draw upon their own artistic skills to establish bonds with their audiences, stakeholders, colleagues, and communities. William Cleveland, author of Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines, presents inspiring examples of arts activities that dramatize and interact with the crises around them. Also the author of Art in Other Places: Artists at Work in America’s Community and Social Institutions, he is a powerful performer of songs written by prisoners, having pioneered arts in prison programs that demonstrably lowered rates of both onsite incidents and recidivism. Read Arts-In-Corrections: Department of Corrections A Case Study (1988) here.
• Cultural leaders also strengthen emotional bonds by demonstrating relevance, commitment, effectiveness, accountability, and trustworthiness. As climate change and sustainability became crisis issues in 2009, a broadly-based community group in the city of Manchester, England produced a shared plan entitled “Manchester: A Certain Future” with objectives that included reducing the city’s carbon emissions and embedding “low carbon thinking” in the lifestyles and operations of the city. A Manchester Arts Sustainability Team (MAST) evolved, met regularly, and, as the overall effort was keeping pace with year over year decreases of 7%, the arts coalition broadened to 27 member groups including arts centers, theatres, museums, galleries, and the University of Manchester.
• Another dimension of value that comes from the skills and activities that promote bonding is social capital—the communal benefit that accrues when people engage in group activities. Cultural and civic leaders who draw upon cultural resources to explore civic issues foster the sense of community that mitigates and avoids crises. One excellent source of social capital ideas and projects is the Americans for the Arts Animating Democracy program. Additionally, the “Civic Dialogue” and “Community Cohesion” sections of the “Social Justice” feature in Americans for the Arts’ Arts and Social Impact Explorer includes referrals to such practice examples as Chicago’s Catalyst Institute, the Bay Area’s SubArtSF project, Philadelphia’s Mural Arts program, Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen, and others.

These blogs are intended to stimulate habits of mind rather than to be definitive resources. For more information and to keep updated, readers are advised to consult such authorities as the Disaster Preparedness feature on this website and Harvard’s Kennedy School Program on Crisis Leadership.