Rather than getting sucked into the vortex of divisive generalizations or defensive justifications, I thought perhaps what I could offer is, well, an intervention.

Could everyone come on over and have a seat in the circle? No, you guys split up… ok, ok, let’s count off by two’s, so we don’t have all the under-40’s over here, and the over 40’s over there… Thanks. Take a minute to introduce yourself to your neighbor. Exchange cards. If you’ve been in the field for some time and would be willing to act as mentor/buddy to someone looking for some guidance or a connection, please write “O2M” (open to mentorship) on your card.

Great! Let’s get “present” for a few minutes here so we might be more able to listen well… we can take a deeeeep breath in….aaaand out.

I’m interested in what it is that brings us here, and that seems to cycle back for more attention. And it’s not about “Arts Leadership,” specifically. There is an interpersonal and intra-professional phenomenon here that I think needs some earnest addressing in order for us to coalesce as a field and do the work together that needs to be done.

I worked on two of the nation’s largest college campuses for a grand total of thirteen years. At the University of Minnesota, I cut my teeth in residential life, in community arts programming, even working with a data collection group on a research study. At Arizona State University, I continued my work with residential life, only to migrate into teaching English and creative writing, and then managing and helping to grow Phoenix’s largest community-oriented writing center.

Working in academia has its pluses and minuses. All summer long I enjoyed what amounted to a private city, with restaurants empty at lunch time, wide sidewalks and quads free of pushing and shoving and skateboarders, and on-campus services like the gym and library that seemed to be waiting for me to command them into activity. It’s a stark contrast from the other nine months of the year. Throughout the academic year, students swarm the campus like picnic ants. Waiting for Starbucks was more excruciating than waiting for Godot. And food in the union, when it was even available, was like revenge—always cold and never what you were expecting. On a given day, I was once told, the University of Minnesota gathered 75,000 people, making it the fifth-largest city in the state.

I was frequently reminded of Matthew McCaughnahey’s iconic line about high school students from Dazed and Confused: “I keep getting older, but they stay the same age.” While that was a turn on for him, all it succeeded in doing for me was making me feel old.  Like codger-old.

So when are all of those baby boomers working in the nonprofit arts sector going to retire? I keep reading about the fact that they are all retiring and there will be lots of opportunities for those who are younger, and that in fact, there is going to be a great need for new leaders.

Never mind that:

• Boomers’ retirement funds lost 30-50% of their value, and the very concept of organizations providing retirement dollars in the nonprofit arts sector wasn’t even thought of by the organizations they worked for then, or now, until they were into their ‘30s;
• These boomers decided to stay in a profession at lower pay when many of their colleagues quit the nonprofit arts sector in their late ‘30s and ‘40s, so now they don’t think that they will be able to afford retirement;
• The boomers’ kids are struggling to find work if they have finished college, or are in graduate school, and their younger kids are just starting college;
• Some boomers who would have become CEO’s lost out when it became fashionable a few years ago to hire people who had retired early from the for profit sector to be the new CEO, rather than an experienced, career professional in the arts;
• It seems that the only boomers who are able to retire are those who worked in state government or higher education which are part of larger retirement plans – rather than independent nonprofits.

I’m sure the boomers can find a few more items to add to the list.

Why would people want to step aside – when they have bills to pay, passion for their work, and years of productivity ahead? Why would they step aside "when they are," as Degas said on his deathbed," just starting to get it" (‘it’ meaning a better salary, the opportunity to do the work they have always dreamed of doing, being able to balance personal and professional time after years of long work weeks, or however you define ‘it’)?

When I was a little girl I would watch cowboys on TV on Saturday mornings. Besides the dust, the visual images I most remember were that the good guys had white horses and the bad guys wore black hats.

This seemed like a great idea to me at the time.  I felt too inexperienced to reach those conclusions on my own, so the fact that someone else decided for me seemed like a great plan. As I acquired more worldly experience I also developed stronger feelings of independence and a much greater desire to reach my own conclusions about everything.

Words, gestures, labels, symbols --- their meanings are sometimes so personal that I have no idea what they mean to someone else.  Sometimes they are destructive and other times they become a helpful kind of shorthand.

Some observations about this set of blog exchanges.

1. Very little heat or disagreement. When Edward introduced 20UNDER40 to a dialogue on NECAP's (New England Consortium of Arts-Educator Professionals) blog, there was a lot of reactivity against the very notion of the book. It was the most active blog outburst in their history. The anger seemed to come from some over-40 teaching artists who felt under-heard themselves and felt dissed by a book dedicated to younger voices.

Since this AftA blog appears under their Emerging Leaders banner, the participant pool seems much younger, and entirely accepting of Edward's concept and project. Even the over-40s (I know some of you who are!) who have posted seem in support of the book. This blog-population seems entirely in support of the book.

2. Stephanie Evans at Americans for the Arts has been telling us that the participation in this blog has been extraordinarily high by their norms--not just the number of posts and responses but a huge number of page views that didn't post messages. Even without controversy or burning issue. This suggests to me that we are looking at a lot of untapped energy around this topic. I have been calling it "a movement" with Edward to try to capture my amazement at the size and quality of the submission response to his call for chapter proposals.

So, young leaders, what are you going to do about it?