QUESTIONS
CRITICAL
Rules of Engagement As orchestras are increasingly questioned about public value, how can they better engage with their communities? New tools from the League help orchestras determine and demonstrate their worth in their communities.
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few weeks ago, New Jersey Public Television aired a video of hundreds of Newark schoolchildren happily showing off their violin-playing prowess. The scene was a concert by the Early Strings program run by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Since its inception in 2000, the NJSO’s Suzuki-inspired program has served more than 2,600 students and, with community support, invested nearly $2 million in the education of underserved children of Newark. This is only one example of how orchestras have been building on a tradition of great music-making to become more farreaching cultural citizens who support the arts education of our children and define audience to include all segments of our communities. So it was troubling to read this recent AP lead, picked up in hundreds of papers, including The Washington Post: “Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emerging arts groups that serve poorer communities that are more ethnically diverse, according to a report being released Monday.” The report, Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change, was commissioned by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) and presented at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference in October 2011. Among its findings and recommendations:
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• The largest arts organizations with
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budgets exceeding $5 million represent only 2 percent of the nonprofit arts and culture sector. Yet those groups received 55 percent of foundation funding for the arts in 2009. The majority of current arts funding supports larger cultural organizations dedicated to classical European artistic traditions and American iterations of these idioms. Both the audiences of and donors to these institutions are predominantly upper-income and white. This pronounced imbalance restricts the expressive life of millions of people, thus constraining the creativity of our nation. Philanthropic investment in the arts should benefit underserved communities and promote greater equity, opportunity, and justice.
At the League, we heartily support the last recommendation, and it should be central to the mission of all arts organizations that want to be meaningful in today’s society. But we take issue with the suggestion that foundation support to large-budget organizations and those that perform the Western canon is, by definition, at odds with the goals of benefiting underserved communities and promoting greater equity, opportunity, and justice. The League spent several weeks pointing out through multiple channels that America’s orchestras are important vehicles for achieving these goals, by
Klaus Lucka
by Jesse Rosen
Jesse Rosen, president and CEO, League of American Orchestras
virtue of their capacity to serve a broad range of audiences with accessible, relevant, and even transformational musical experiences. We delivered this message in an interview that I did with WQXR radio with Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the NCRP; through blogs on
More than 60 percent of the 32,000 concerts given annually by League member orchestras for a wide range of audiences are specifically dedicated to education or community engagement. Some 50,000 young people perform in more than 500 youth orchestras. our own website and on ArtsJournal; in a mock Congressional debate between Dorfman and Heather Noonan, our vice president for government affairs, at the Independent Sector conference; and in an upcoming issue of the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader. We explained that more than 60 percent of the 32,000 concerts given annually by League member orchestras for a wide range of young and adult audiences are specifically dedicated to education or community engagement, and that 50,000 young people perform in more than 500 symphony
WINTER 2012