Readings

The arts and culture sector continues to have conversations on multiple levels about how to advance the causes of equity, inclusion, and diversity. The discussion is not new, but the momentum toward implementing clear action steps is building. A new level of understanding of the ways in which racial and social inequities are the result of complex systemic issues has given rise to a realization that the path to truly effective solutions will require deep, and deeply challenging, institutional change.

How MAP took concrete steps to enact greater racial equity in our grantmaking by incorporating Agile practices in our application processes

In this moment of upheaval, challenge, and resistance for our country, the phrase “speaking truth to power” has taken on a new urgency. Rarely asked amid the fervor pervading the corner offices and Twitter feeds of so many of our foundations and other civic institutions in recent months, however, is an important question: Where does our “truth” come from? How do we make judgments about truth in so subjective a field as arts and culture?

As arts funders, we know that extensive research has shown that the presence of arts and culture activities at the neighborhood level can improve health and safety and promote a sense of well-being among residents. But how do we identify what activities already exist in a community and, as important, where there are gaps so we can be proactive in advancing a community’s livability?

In early 2016, I became president of the Jerome Foundation, following Cindy Gehrig’s remarkable thirty-seven-year tenure. With so many changes in the world at large as well as in the arts, our board of directors was eager to explore these changes, debate what the future might hold, and engage in self-scrutiny as a prelude to setting a new strategic framework to guide Jerome’s grantmaking during our next chapter.

Social movements need the arts. Should we ask tougher questions to optimize their influence?

Creative voices, widely and rightfully credited as moving “hearts and mind,” are increasingly understood as playing a core role in speaking to, supporting, or even triggering broader social change. Talented storytellers are disrupting the status quo, fostering new connections, challenging dominant narratives, sharing bold visions for equitable and joyful futures, and creating vehicles for action.

Do you think that we are living in a zeitgeist of catalytic change? I have heard the word catalytic used so frequently that I find myself accessorizing moments with this adjective as if it holds the weight of tectonic shifts. It seems to promise the kind of change that either redirects historical systems of oppression toward equity — gradually erasing calcified notions of otherness that fuel supremacist behaviors — or catapults us back into a time where Flintstones-like ideals become presidential norms.

We need to engage with a dynamic world, a world that will not return to a steady state after the challenge. We don’t live in a world of change but rather one that is asking us to constantly create.
— Ian Prinsloo, The Rehearsal Process