Located in Camden, New Jersey, Camden FireWorks is a Black-led, community-based arts organization that works to grow, gather, and invest in artists and artists-to-be in the Camden community. Executive Director Asiyah Kurtz is an applied anthropologist with 20 years of experience in leadership of private, nonprofit, and public sectors. “As a young arts organization, we had previously only relied on volunteers to teach our open studio workshops for our first five years of operations. With the support of our Board, one of the changes I made this year was to pay a meaningful wage to teaching artists for their time, labor, and talent. If I have anything to do with it, there will be no starving artists in Camden.” 

It is important for cultural leaders and individual artists to know the work of organizations elevating Native artists. This is of special urgency given the current challenges faced by local and regional arts agencies: Leaders in the cultural sector simply must have a broader understanding of social and economic justice issues. As our field does more to support civic engagement and informed public dialogue about these key issues, local arts leaders have the opportunity to assume leadership roles on the complex challenges in our communities—promoting equity, addressing the climate and other issues, and promoting civic literacy about the issues we face. As arts administrators and managers, it is not enough to be informed about the issues—we need to know how to communicate effectively with broader, more diverse publics that we serve. Local arts agency leaders must understand these issues on ever deeper levels as they develop meaningful competitive grant review processes and find effective ways for arts organizations to take central roles in public discourse. 

To our members, strategic partners, patrons, artists, and the entire arts and culture community: Americans for the Arts Board of Directors and senior leadership want to share, with all sincerity, that we have used these last months of organizational transition to reflect on our actions, and their effect on those we serve. We have taken a deep and critical look in the mirror to better understand how our work is being impacted by the societal issues affecting our members, partners, and all those dedicated to the arts and culture community. In our introspection, we acknowledge the importance of shared advocacy and shared leadership within the broader arts and culture community. We want to be better partners in this regard, and we realize our best efforts can only occur by rebuilding trust and realignment with the field. We know that it will take time and, more importantly, actions. We have come to fully recognize that Americans for the Arts can do better in delivering consistent, high quality, and mutually beneficial leadership and service as a national organization. We want to begin this recognition by offering the findings from the board commissioned Task Force for Racial and Cultural Equity.

This summer, we had the opportunity to intern at Americans for the Arts. Callia, a student at Harvard University, worked with the Government Affairs team, and Bella, a recent graduate of Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, worked with the Marketing and Communications team. Both of us hope to pursue artistic careers in the future: Callia as a filmmaker and Bella as a visual artist specializing in soft sculpture. Having gotten a taste of the arts administration and advocacy world this summer, we wanted to share our experiences and discuss the ways we have found that the arts and advocacy are intertwined.

As I reflect on my journey as an Arts & Culture Leaders of Color Fellow with Americans for the Arts, I am unsure of when I started referring to myself as an “arts administrator,” or if I have yet fully embraced the term. I’ve always lived and worked in the community engagement lane, in theater arenas. My resume reflects a career path synonymous with the definition of arts administrator, but I never really claimed that title out loud. I knew, however, that this fellowship would put me in community with other people of color outside of the American Regional Theater network. A space that I initially thought would be pure refuge from my (at the time) predominantly white working environment ended up being so much more. It was affirming, challenging, and, at times, liberating. I felt seen and inspired by my cohort of fellows.

Founded in 2008, with start-up funding of $10 million from the Ford Foundation, NACF supports Indigenous artists, culture bearers, and Native-led arts organizations through fellowships and project funding. Betsy Theobald Richards (Cherokee), who served as Ford’s Program Officer in Media, Arts, and Culture from 2003 to 2010, provided key leadership in establishing NACF. Other Native leaders and artists were involved from the get-go: the civil rights lawyer Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), poet and musician Joy Harjo (Muscokee-Creek), museum director and artist Elizabeth Woody (Yakama Nation Wasco descent and Citizen of Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs), and singer, artist, and educator Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree First Nation of Canada), among others. It’s powerful to have such dynamic and creative national and community-based leaders setting the stage for NACF’s work. The organization is currently in the early stages of developing a major cultural facility and new headquarters: the Center for Native Arts and Cultures in southeast Portland, Oregon, with a vision to create a “vibrant gathering place” for Indigenous artists as a convening ground for cultural ceremonies and celebrations; as an incubator for Native artists to create; and as a venue for presenting contemporary exhibitions and performances, workshops, and seminars.