Question of the Day

I was doing some research for the Obama Arts thing and I recently had a conversation with grant administrator for a state arts agency, and we were talking about national arts funding and I asked her what we could do to make the NEA better, and in the midst of lots of stuff we're all familiar with (allow direct funding to artists, raise the amount of funding etc.) she hit me with one I hadn't heard before: Stop mandating programming through grants.

We talked a little more about this, and her opinion was: look, let theaters and artistic directors do their jobs and stop mandating (for example) Shakespeare by having a grant that only goes to funding Shakespeare (or the American classics or whatever).  Just give the theater money and let them produce what they're producing.

This made sense to me except i thought... well, I've proposed some things that would involve mandating programming or how its produced.  Like, I'd love to expand the grants that only go to productions of new plays. And I'm sure Scott would love to see NEA funding that was restricted to hiring locally.

But is that good? Should we thought out the concept of mandating programming through grants altogether, or is it that it goes to to the wrong things? Is this one of those "If I Ran The Circus" type of situations, or is it better that the Government stay out of trying to determine what artists and companies do with the money they provide?

I guess where I stand on this right now (Gut check speaking) is that if the NEA had a lot more funding, having mandate grants would be fine, because you could just have a lot of them devoted to different things (one for classics, one for new work etc. and so forth) and that way you could ensure that the NEA wasn't overdetermined by who was appointed to run it.  But while there's less money, it's probably best that the NEA has more freedom so that all available funds don't just go to like Ibsen festivals or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with Ibsen, mind you. Your thoughts?

Comments

[Scott Walters]

Let me ask a question. Let's say we followed the direction your friend suggests. How is it that we decide who gets grants? Would a value-free (by which I mean reflecting no preference as far as what sort of work is done or where) zone lead to a likelihood of the rich getting richer? And if so, is that a good thing?

It seems to me that NEA funding, which is a miniscule part of any theatre's annual budget, should be like venture capital: encouraging things that wouldn't be done otherwise.

[DJA]

Hi Isaac,

There is, I think, an enormous difference between a mandate for "new plays" (which I think is very worthwhile and necessary) versus a mandate for, say, "new plays that challenge existing modes of communication" or "new collaborative interdisciplinary multimedia works" or whatever the hell.

In music, there is a real phenomenon of projects that are created not for aesthetic reasons, but because they look good on paper. They are essentially grant-bait. And lots of nonprofits and emerging artists could really use some general operational support -- "Here's some money in recognition of all the great work you've already been doing. Use it as you will."

I don't know if I have recommend my friend Ian Moss's blog to you -- he is a composer who got his MBA and is currently studying nonprofit administration, and his blog is cenetered around arts funding issues. His latest post touches on a lot of these issues, you should check it out:

http://createquity.blogspot.com/2008/09/thoughts-on-thoughts-on-effective.html

[Elizabeth]

I've been floating the venture capital idea of funding around in the valley (Silicon Valley) for a few months now. Just asking a few friends and acquaintances (mostly VC's) what they thought of a fund for theater that worked like venture capital. They were intrigued by the idea and see the value in it, but the consensus is that there's no incentive (read money) for an individual or a private organization/business to act in that capacity for theater or for any other art form. And then there is the question of how to form a method of selection (which doesn't really seem to be a barrier, it just needs to be created).

I'm still thinking about the idea - trying to flesh it out and see where I can take it.

It would be nice if the NEA could function like a VC firm, but you're still using taxpayer money to fund art that may or may not align with their values. There may be no incentive or desire for taxpayers to want to devote money to art, although they seem to have gotten used to funding the Military Industrial Complex so maybe there's an argument to be made for creating a standing arts community throughout America (ha!). If I remember correctly there is NEA money that goes towards preservation of cultural arts heritage - like quilt-making, pottery, handicrafts etc. This seems like a result of the NEA 4 controversy.

Speaking of which, I wonder how many of the NEA mandates are a result of the retooling of the NEA in the wake of the NEA Four Trial. I have no data points on this. I'm just curious.

[Guy Yedwab]

I don't know if the VC spirit can necessarily be summed up in "producing work that would otherwise never be done." I mean, obviously, some work is bad, which is why it can't get money. To have the government spend money on bad plays rather than good plays would not serve us all that well.

Elizabeth: The reason that the VC model is difficult for theater is that theater is currently on a non-profit basis. If theater companies started incorporating as /for/ profit ventures, then they might attract VC-style funding. As it stands, even very commercial houses (read: Broadway) don't return very large margins, even when they're wildly successful. VCs basically are betting large sums of money on what they hope will be explosive growth. They tend to be looking to double their money, not grow it by 1% or 2% if things go well, and balance that against shows which could wind up making significant loss.

It's very difficult to break down what makes a good investment--especially when we're talking about an investment to return culture, not an investment to return money. How do Foundations decide what they're willing to risk on? It's a question that has to be tackled because the main reason the taxpayer turned against the NEA in the first place in the 1980s was because Reagan portrayed the money that was going to the NEA as being spent on very bad, negative works (and the Supreme Court case with Karen Finley/Piss Christ did not help).

I don't think that mandated grants are very good. Even if they are well intentioned: how does a mandated grant take into account an idea that hasn't been thought before? If the people mandating the grant knew how to expect new ideas, then we'd already have a much healthier arts network, because people wouldn't see any risk in the new ideas--they'd already recognize them. The best we can hope is that with unmandated grants, they'll be able to respond to the artists on the ground in a more flexible manner. Now, we can set some sort of a guide-line on what sort of /groups/ can apply for grants, and how the money should be appropriately /used/, but mandating the sorts of art you want to see seems like a recipe for stifling new ideas.

Not that old ideas shouldn't be supported. If we can't get a government that can support new ideas, at the very least, we should be able to do something as straightforward as preserving quality literature.

[CB]

The problem I've seen with mandated grants is that they tend to lead artists down paths they didn't intend to follow, only to secure the funding. For example, I've seen several theater companies transform from straight-up theater companies to arts-education organizations only because there is a relatively large amount of arts education dollars out there to pursue. Of course, there's nothing wrong with arts education programs, but in these cases the companies' missions were completely reoriented to what the available funding was. A year or two ago, I heard a panel of asian-american playwrights say that they were compelled to write specifically racial identity-focused works because that is what their funders expected. And I've seen people try to shoehorn video and new media into their work because of some available grant for that purpose.

Of course, no one is FORCING any of these people to engage in this "fundchasing," but you know, with the economies of producing work so tight, the temptation to accomodate yourself to whatever funding is available is hard to resist.

The "mandates" that you mention - "new plays" or "hiring locally" - are pretty general in mandatedness. I don't think they'd really drive programming as specifically as it is now. Mind you, I'm speaking of what I've seen of funding in general. I don't know the specifics of what NEA grant mandates are.