As Program Manager, Ariani Huguenin provides support for Cathedral Arts Project’s (CAP) direct service programs by ensuring Northeast Florida’s teaching artists and students receive the resources and support they need. Since joining CAP in 2017, Huguenin’s portfolio of work has included volunteer engagement, family communication, logistics coordination, and teaching artist support. “Arts education starts with technical skills and leads to life skills that empower students to know their worth and think creatively to problem-solve. At CAP, we have been able to track ‘Why The Arts’ matter through student attendance, behavior, and grade improvement. Quantifiable measures are wonderful, but the greatest impact of arts education is seen in the students that wanted to give up, but persevered and learned something new.”

Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix is the Dean of the College of Creative Arts and a professor of theater at Miami University in Ohio, where she teaches courses in world stages and American theater. As a theater historian, Mullenix writes about Antebellum culture/theater, cross-dressing, the American Civil War, first wave feminism, and gender/feminist theory. “I think theater has always been a great way to promote social change because it has the power to educate, raise consciousness, and emotionally impact audiences. The intimacy created by live theater affects people—audiences experience stories shared in real time by real people, stories about oppression and prejudice and how the world needs to change. Good theater can make people care and make them think.”

Over the last couple of years especially, the major national arts service and membership organizations have given greater attention to engaging diverse communities more effectively. Building meaningful dynamic and collaborative relationships with community-based partners informs programming and audience building work. Working effectively with organizations serving diverse communities has become an ever-higher priority for state, regional, and local arts agencies throughout the country. Addressing cultural equity in tangible and effective ways is critically important for all of us, including how arts organizations recruit staff and identify board candidates. With a heightened awareness in our society about these issues during this time of major social and political change, the work of organizations like the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) takes on even greater significance. Becoming more familiar with the work of ATALM (and likewise with similar organizations serving diverse organizations) gives professionals working in local arts agencies both a better understanding of key issues, as well as connections to colleagues in the Native cultural field, to help them address these crucial matters. 

In the recent Arts Marketing Coffee Chat entitled “Research & Data: What Do You Need?” I shared the process for how arts organizations can address a specific a business problem by identifying data that an organization has or needs, which can provide insights into developing an effective solution. 

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.