My name is Victoria Saunders and I’ve been following emerging leadership – what I call Next Generation Arts Leadership – issues for more than five years now. It started when I was at the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and talked our Executive Director into letting me plan and host a Creative Conversation. That led to the formation of an Emerging Leaders of Arts and Culture group that lasted for several years. There is a movement to regroup and strengthen the program, but I have moved on to other aspects of young arts leadership. Now an independent consultant, I am often asked to weigh in on various issues related to the next generation of arts leaders and I continue to explore this topic as a result.

A year ago I was hired to conduct statewide research around emerging arts leadership for The James Irvine Foundation, one of California’s largest philanthropic foundations and one that gives heavily and cares deeply about leadership and arts and culture. Without going into the details of the research or outcomes, I’d like to share a tidbit that resonated with my research partner Dewey Schott and me and continues to do so with me today.

We spend a great deal of time working to make the case for the power and value of the arts to communities.  That is why it was great to learn that the American Planning Association (APA) is looking at the role of arts in planning. As part of a collaborative project with the RMC Corporation and with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center is developing a series of briefing papers to illustrate how planners use arts and culture strategies to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals. The briefing papers will provide a comprehensive definition and overview of the arts, culture, and creativity field and explore four topic areas: community engagement and participation; community pride; economic development; and cultural values, heritage, and history.

This framework will help support the work of policymakers, planners, and economic development and community development professionals, as well as professionals in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, arts, culture, and creativity in the creation and development of healthy communities.

In response to Edward Clapp’s call for papers for 20Under40 and “This is our Emergency” open letter, I invited my brother to co-write a chapter proposal with me. We have been a screenwriting team for over ten years, and though we have had some success in writing for television, we have not had the success we wished for in film. He was the first to point this out to me: what do two people like us have to say about the state of working in film today? I believe we have everything to say, but his skepticism got to me: does not “making it” make us failures?  Does that mean we can’t be leaders, despite our continued attempts to break into the industry?

Like many younger sisters, I have spent my whole life looking up to my brother. He is the funniest person I know. He is able to tell stories visually, concisely, and always pull it off with humor and style. He is a perfectionist in the most devoted and irritating way—he will always push you to make what you have better, to see it a different way, or to entirely abandon it in pursuit of something much edgier and more unique. The thing is, he knows he is all of these things—he knows he is good at what he does. So why does he feel so powerless to speak about his craft? Is it him; is it the film industry specifically; is it the ambiguous state of success in the arts more broadly; or is it, as Edward Clapp and Eric Booth might say, a generational disempowerment perpetuated by an organizational structure borne from a field-wide complex?

I graduated at the top of my class at a top university. On graduation day, I sat next to my friends who had clear paths to their next steps. Emily was going into banking and had a job lined up in Chicago. Rob planned to work in a medical research lab for two years while applying to medical school. Ross and Jeff were off to law school in the fall. David was working in hotel management and had already looked into opening his own hotel. They knew where they were going next, and they were relieved and excited to be done with a chapter of their lives that they felt they were growing out of.

I sat on the roof of my college apartment in a panic for the weeks before graduation, looking down at College Ave, wishing I could start over. This time I would do it right, take relevant classes, market myself. I wondered why I was the only one so apprehensive about moving on. Did I just love college more than my friends did? Did I need school structure to feel direction? Grades to feel purpose? One of my writing teachers asked what my post-graduation plans were. I told her I was moving back home with my parents to finish the novel I began in her class, until it was time to pay back student loans. “Great, but what are you going to do?” I froze. All the books I had read about writing said you needed to give yourself time and commit to it like a job, and I expected her to be pleased with my dedication to my craft.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about working to support myself—of course I had.  But I expected that whatever job I chose would be a form of permission to continue my creative work. What I did not expect was the discomfort of not having a clear professional path, the confusion about what kind of job best suited the creative lifestyle, and the guilt about holding onto a dream that felt less and less important each time I heard about Emily’s promotions, Rob’s med school acceptances, and David’s new hotel. They weren’t just on a path—they were making it happen. They were adults. I was a kid. I was stuck in my college memories, and they had work friends and business suits. I could not get a job as an unpaid intern at a magazine, and they had 501Ks and health insurance. 

Greeting Emerging Leaders and the women (and men) that love them.

My name is Adam Thurman.  I'm 33.  Been working professionally in the arts since I was 26.  In that time I've been the Executive Director of a small theatre, the Marketing Director of a large theatre, a teacher, a consultant, a Board member, a grant panelist, etc.

During my career I've had good days, bad days and "want to punch somebody in the face" days, so I can relate to pretty much any emotion you are going through right now. It's in that spirit that I want to share the single most useful piece of advice I was ever given about a career in the arts:

Stop thinking about it as the arts.

I'll explain.