Arts Dialogue

In Spring ’19, I presented at the annual Face to Face Conference managed by the New York City Arts and Education Roundtable, held at the City College of New York on Wednesday, April 24^th, 2019. This presentation was a panel format, and I was the moderator. I have always been a frequent conference attendee, but this was my first time presenting. At this time, I was still a Program Officer working with the city government administering funding for the arts in New York City. I was steeped into the research at that time, investigating local and national trends around the disproportionate distribution of philanthropic dollars in the arts and culture. A lot of the research I read at that time alarmed me, especially the ‘Not Just Money’^[1] report from Helicon Collaborative. I was also taking a Design Thinking^[2] class, developing the proposal for the conference, and I wanted to include some of that methodology in my line of inquiry. The ‘Not Just Money’ report concluded that “despite important efforts by many leading foundations, funding overall has gotten less equitable. Cultural philanthropy is not effectively – or equitably – supporting the dynamic pluralism of our evolving cultural landscape (Sidford 1)”. Sidford goes to provide quantitative analysis to prove the point that, “Just 2 percent of all cultural institutions receive nearly 60 percent of all contributed revenue, up approximately five percentage points over a decade” (Sidford 5). Furthermore, in a 2018 study commissioned in part by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, principal consultant Lisa Yancey concluded in her Thrivability^[3] report that, “One cannot expect sustained change with temporary solutions that assuage symptoms without eliminating the core problems. We can only get to these core problems by investing differently and collaboratively in capacity, shared learning, and behavioral modifications that can lead to field-wide culture shifts (Yancey 35)”.

Perhaps, the hardest part of this presentation for me was using a beginner’s mindset and letting go of my assumptions about the solution. I read a lot of research to gain initial insights, but this process has shown me that keeping an open mind in this process and being receptive to feedback is crucial to listen to people truly.

I include an outline of the panel presentation below, photos from the presentation, and a review of my presentation from Professor Courtney Boddie as additional artifacts.

^[1] Collaborative, H. (2017). Not Just Money: Equity Issues in Cultural Philanthropy (Rep.). New York, NY.

^[2] Egri, C. (2014). Introduction: Design Thinking for Learning. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(4), 640-640. Retrieved March 27, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/43696651

^[3] Yancey, Lisa. ALAANA Thrivability Report. Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, 2018, pp. 1–51,