What Are Activist Artists & Cultural Organizers Accountable to in Their Work?

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:00

Hey there, here's a question. To whom or what are activists, artists and cultural organizers accountable to in their work?

From the center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Art is Change, a chronicle of art and social change where activist artists, cultural organizers share the strategies and skills they need to thrive as creative community leaders. My name is Bill Cleveland.

Now in our last episode, the storied theater director Jerry Straupnicki shared a kind of to do list he calls the a principles that he created to help communities effectively design, conduct and assess change focused community theater projects. It's really a good framework for good work that he shared as a part.

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:56

Of a great conversation.

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:57

So if you haven't already partaken in episode 135, I would encourage you to have a listen now.

At various times, my colleagues and I have crafted similar frameworks for artists and their non arts partners doing social change and organizing work in communities and institutions.

So inspired by Jerry's principles, in this episode of the Artists Change Weather Report, we're presenting the first in a series of what we're calling hard questions for creative change agencies.

In it, we'll be exploring and debating what skills, strategies and practice we think will be most relevant to artists who are working to build the caring, capable and equitable communities we need to persevere and grow in the anti authoritarian pro democracy struggle.

I should point out here that when I say we, I'm referring to myself and my partners in crime for this endeavor, namely activist, performer, impresario, historian and gunrunner for the arts Lenny Sloan and educator, author, art and democracy animator and sage cultural advisor Barbara Schaefer Bacon. Both of whom have been making and supporting arts based change work well forever.

Which if my math is right, means that we have over 120 years and literally thousands of miles on our collective community arts odometers to do this.

We'll be asking some very basic but often vexing questions about what constitutes an effective and ethical art and change community centered practice.

I should note that Barbara and I are joined by Mr. Sloan a few minutes into the show after he manages to slay a few of the digital dragons he encountered en route to our conversation. Barbara, welcome to the show.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:03:02

Hi.

Bill Cleveland: 00:03:03

There you are. You sound great.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:03:06

All right, so we're answering the question to whom or what are we accountable in community cultural engagement.

Bill Cleveland: 00:03:12

Yeah. And why is it important?

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:03:16

I believe that if creative work is being done with the intention for civic impact, whether that is engagement on a very long or broad spectrum of activity, it must be accountable to those who would be impacted or affected by that work.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:03:35

So.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:03:36

So who are the stakeholders? That's who you're accountable to. It's not necessarily your funders or enablers.

In the best work I have seen, those folks who are doing that wonderful work are very aware and in connection and communication with the people for whom the project is intended to be done in a collaborative way and to have value and impact. And I was thinking about many of the artists who do phenomenal work. Marty Pottinger.

She's both brilliant and it's really interesting how she works because she always takes the time to get to know her stakeholders and to be sure she can hear and connect to those voices and their actual feelings before she really sets in on what kind of a project would actually move or address the issues that they are concerned with.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:31

So for folks who are unfamiliar with.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:34

Marty Pottinger, she is a treasure, to be sure. Her work over multiple decades as a playwright, performer, and cultural organizer is a.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:46

Wonderful hybrid of theater and social justice and civic engagement, dealing with an amazing range of community issues like urban renewal and neighborhood identity, public works, labor rights, police reform, and much more.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:05:04

Yeah.

So if the Portland, Maine Police Department is having a public relations problem, the community is feeling like their police department is not there for them. What are the ways to do a creative project that humanizes the police and puts them in contact with their community?

And the stakeholders get to define how they would know if that were happening, and so that accountability was to the police who would be affected in their communities.

Bill Cleveland: 00:05:35

Here's one example of how that played out. First with Marty Pottinger and then with a Portland police officer.

Marty Pottenger: 00:05:46

What we're about to see now is our roll call poet reading his third poem he's ever written.

Portland Maine Policeman: 00:05:53

All right.

Speaker F: 00:05:54

The poem's entitled Jenny and I. A complainant hears a scream, then silence. I speak to mom in the kitchen. Nothing's going on. Jenny stands in her crib.

Brown curly hair, solid brown eyes. Quiet. Dave carries Jenny to the kitchen, her cheek pressed to his shield. Look at this. Four red lines blaze on her cheek and neck.

We can see the handprint. Only the thumb is missing. I look at Mom. Want to try again? She wouldn't stop. An ambulance ride.

Caseworkers from the state en route and the ER all gather around Jenny. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, child protective. Minutes pass by. Then a gasp. Oh no. Officer, come look. Bare skin on her back, exposed.

Four curls of flesh like her. Wisps of hair. Raw, tender. A bloody bite. Mom has left her mark on Jenny. I look around the Room. Tears spill from those gathered around her.

Mom cries the most as I lead her away. Jenny's eyes are brown, solid. No tears. My 18 years wearing camo, then blue. Her 18 months wearing black and blue.

Jenny and I have learned we cry inside.

Marty Pottenger: 00:07:29

What does it mean for a police force and their citizens to see each other in such a radically different light? How does it affect a resident to know that their police officers have written a poem? Art at work is an idea. It's a practice. It's a methodology.

It's an experiment. It is being used. The ideas are being used in Portland and Holyoke and Hollowell and London and Broward county and Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

When we make art, we're smarter. I've watched it happen in thousands of people over the decades I've been a theater artist and activist. We're smarter. We can work better together.

We're more willing and able to hold contradictions and come up with complex challenges.

I've watched people in the risk of just making a simple word poem, face such fear that fear ends up making them able better to come up with never before thought of ideas, ideas that can change the way things look in our future. The kinds of ideas that you have in your minds, the ideas that shift the bones of the world.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:08:42

And I've always liked that particular project because how do I know it was effective? Because at a press conference, it wasn't Marty talking about her project or the funder talking about her project.

It was the police chief talking about her project and how it had made a difference for the force.

Bill Cleveland: 00:09:01

So one of the things that you're.

Bill Cleveland: 00:09:02

Just describing is that not only was there consciousness of accountability, her partners knew.

Bill Cleveland: 00:09:10

That they were being listened to and.

Bill Cleveland: 00:09:12

Taken seriously and ultimately owned the outcome of the work.

Which is literally saying, we will not go forward without understanding that you understand and that we are on the same page with what's going to happen, which is, I think, gigantic, because some people think accountability is just taking other people into account.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:09:38

It is.

And the way that another reason this is important and valuable is that it is out of that accountability that some of the brilliance and creativity of how that project unfolded or was unfolded came. So having police write poems, that's a thing. And you could claim a lot of victory in police took the risks and wrote poems.

Having police deliver those poems in public forums, that. That was a whole other thing.

And putting those poems and the pictures in a calendar of police poetry that was in people's houses and kitchens, it took home the fact that they were really trying to help police communicate and that they were willing to go out and interact with the community in that regard. So ultimately, there's all kinds of levels of accountability.

Bill Cleveland: 00:10:34

Yeah.

So what I would say the symptom of accountability achieved is in the fact that those three layers of the project that manifested all required a significant amount of trust because they were all courageous acts on behalf of the police that were involved in the project.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:10:59

I mean, there's.

There's a lot of great work that is in your face and disruptive and so on, but all of those, to me, are not necessarily a successful community arts work.

If you've disrupted, but that has not been done in a context that has allowed folks to actually come together or talk together, that's not necessarily great work, and it is certainly not accountable to the communities that are going to end up in a divisive conversation or no conversation.

Bill Cleveland: 00:11:28

Well, it always comes back to how you're defining the community being served. And if it is a broad, diverse, often in conflict community, then the challenge is greater and the victories are harder to come by.

And this accountability thing is gigantic because you often get people who can't agree on anything involved in the project. And so asking the question, and I think of Marty's project ultimately comes down to what are we up to here?

And how will we define success with we being the operant definition?

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:12:09

How are we defining success, and how are we building out the project? You and Lenny are so good at coming up with metaphors, so I was like, yeah, what are yours?

So I started out with the cultural activist who is a prickly cactus. They're not easy to work with, and they're scratching all over the place, making people uncomfortable.

And that is a useful force in work that can lead to change, and it can be a useful. And some artists that can do the prickly stuff can also organize and operate within a community system. So then I was thinking about two other ones.

One is parade leaders. They are willing to get in front of the crowd and start to move in a direction and do things that help folks come with them, join them.

We're seeing a lot of that, I think, right now, literally today, with no kings actions. And then I was thinking a lot of cultural community artists. They are parade makers. They help the community to create its engagement. It's celebration.

It's dinner down main street, where we're talking about what this Main street should look like.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:31

All right. Hey, Sloan, are you back?

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:13:34

You're here, you're here, you're here. All right, Lenny, when you answered this question, in your first exchange with Bill, you talked about cultural accountability.

I hope you'll talk about that again. And you brought in the word sin and that notion. So I hope you'll talk about that too.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:56

Yeah, so go for it.

Leni Sloan: 00:13:57

So in all the years we have known each other, we have gone through several fields of thought and attempt to answer this question. I mean, we had a conference called Cultural Competency based upon cultural.

But cultural competency means to me that you have immersed yourself in and understand the vision, the mission, the objectives, the tactics, the strategies of bringing a culture's consciousness forward to a broader community. So you have to ground yourself before you can begin to establish a dialogue with a community.

When you add the word accountability to that equation, I think that first, accountable to yourself to try to get it as right as you can, whatever the it is, then you are have to be accountable to understand the language. Not only the language you use, but the language that the listener, the end user, the community uses in which to have dialogue about this culture.

I mean, if you don't understand the dialogue, if you don't understand the language, then you're miscommunicating.

And so I think that a competency in your skill and craft and trade of building objects, artifacts, art projects that advance and expand understanding of another culture, whether that's ethnic culture or a culture of identity or a literary culture.

Before, I was talking about the fact that I was part of the dance community, a race walkers community, food cooking community, community of arts administrators. My community in the boardroom is different than my community in the studio, a church community.

And so I've worn glasses since I came out of my mother's womb. So those people who are listening know that when you sit down in the chair, they start moving lenses back and forth in front of your face.

Does this look clear? This clear?

I'm like, how do I know it is clear, Barb, when I'm blind through this, how do I know which one is better when I have never seen this before? So that's what I mean about cultural grounding and cultural competency as the first accountability.

Bill Cleveland: 00:16:59

So, Lenny, if I hear you right, you're saying that accountability is more than just partners showing up and crafting and fulfilling an agreement, that cultural competency, or even an awareness that you do not have a grounding in the culture you're working with, is foundational to the work and critical to forging the trust based relationships that the agreement, the eventual agreement.

Bill Cleveland: 00:17:35

Is supposed to represent.

Bill Cleveland: 00:17:36

I think that's really key. And I think a lot of well meaning collaborators don't recognize that. Now, as Barbara noted, you mentioned sinning.

How are sinning and accountability connected?

Leni Sloan: 00:17:53

Sinning is an old term. It comes from ancient bow and arrow archery. Sinning means missing the mark. To sin is to miss your mark.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:18:07

Well, the interesting thing to me about that in this context of accountability in community arts work, is that missing the mark is relational. You've missed the mark. And we can ask, whose mark? And we can ask to whom and for whom.

And it is not the sin against God or sin which is forever not forgiven. So to me, if I understand sin as missing the mark, an artist can constantly go back and ask, am I hitting the mark?

And who is getting to set the mark?

Leni Sloan: 00:18:43

You have to start with who set the mark. What am I shooting at? What am I shooting?

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:18:51

What am I shooting at? That?

Bill Cleveland: 00:18:53

What am I shooting for?

Leni Sloan: 00:18:54

Exactly. Yeah, but let me go backward to go forward, Barb, because I wanted to use this example of bam.

Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance Africa, which is a tremendously successful event and really powerful, started by Chuck Davis and wanting to go to Africa to discover dances and bring those dances back to New York and present them on the New York stage. And so now you airlifted them, Barb, out of their original roots, breaking the circles and making them squares as you fit them to a stage.

You're taking them from ritual to social. As you light them and present them, you're selling tickets.

So you're actually beginning to interpret them for an audience, and they are from and of that source.

But the process of translating them, the process of translating culture onto a canvas, into a book, or into a song or into a dance, requires that you first accept that you're an appropriationist and then understand what is the correct, honest, clear way to move this thing or appropriate it out of its original source, even if that source was a dream. Billy. And clarify, like, when you cook something down, you keep cooking and cooking it down until you get the essence of the thing.

Then you're ready to move to community.

Bill Cleveland: 00:20:46

But, and in fact, your definition of what that community is, what it needs, how it manifests, is the ability to adapt your definition. Moving that target around.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:21:03

Right. You know, you're inverting it, really. I mean, if we were starting with how is Dance Afrique, the good community arts program?

And you're saying, well, wait a minute, let's talk about what happened to Dance Afrique before we get to placing it in harmony in the community. We've just made all these changes, what it is and how it is practiced and delivered. And how interesting to think from both directions.

Leni Sloan: 00:21:31

an that. These were dances of: 1850

These are dances that Catherine Dunham found or that Pearl Primus found, and they had even. They changed it when. When Katherine Denham is doing her Bamboula dance in a nightclub in Los Angeles.

Bill Cleveland: 00:22:07

That's not the same deal.

Leni Sloan: 00:22:09

No.

Bill Cleveland: 00:22:10

So let me jump in here with my little accountability continuum here. And it's not a metaphor, actually, for the first time in my life. So I started with what Sloan started with, which is ourselves.

We come with our own history and our own craft. And one of the first accountability questions is, why are you here? Well, I'm here to get paid. I'm here because it's a gig.

I'm here because this story matters to me. And then above and beyond understanding that why you are here can change in the course of the journey you're having. The next one is if.

If you're a dancer or if you're a painter, if you're a multidisciplinary artist, you have an accountability to your creative practice, your skill set and the history.

Bill Cleveland: 00:22:58

Of it, because you're in essence, carrying that history. You're pulling it with you.

Bill Cleveland: 00:23:04

And to be able to refer to it is super important. And it came from a multi generational chain of creative communities, and you're passing it on to another community.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:23:13

Right.

Bill Cleveland: 00:23:14

And then the next one is, and I mean the word partner, it's very broad, but this whole idea of who your partners are.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:23:21

Right.

Bill Cleveland: 00:23:22

And they could be anything from the city that you're in to organizations that exist in the community, to just individuals with whom you've forged a collaboration, but just recognizing that they are probably not going to have the same definitions of success, which is great and wonderful, but it's makes it more complicated, obviously. And they have accountability to people who are not in the room often.

And then there's one that we often leave out but to our detriment, and that is somebody paid for this, probably. And some people have a light hand. They say, go do your thing. But often that is not the case.

And so it might be the invisible hand of the outsider, or it might be a very obvious hand. And everybody in this circle needs to.

If that's an invisible hand, then you're barking down a dangerous path because you are Accountable to all these other folks.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:30

So if a funder or a powerful supporter, you know, wants a change, everybody needs to know where that comes from and why.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:40

I think funders often get themselves in trouble in the community arts world is that they have no idea how much influence they have. Even when they just scratch their nose, everybody worries about it. And finally, obviously, the last one in my sequence here is the continuum is.

Bill Cleveland: 00:25:00

Not just the community of direct involvement.

Bill Cleveland: 00:25:02

Which is obviously important. People who are from the community who are on stage with you, who are helping craft the story, paint the mural or whatever.

But if your intention is to have a demonstrable sustained effect, then unless you're.

Bill Cleveland: 00:25:18

Like Lily Yeh, who spent more than a decade in Germantown in Philadelphia, or.

Bill Cleveland: 00:25:25

Carlton Turner returning to live in his hometown in Utica, Mississippi, or for that matter, Marty in Portland, the sustained effect is not going to come from you, it's going to come from the community. And if they don't own it, meaning that they feel accountable to it, then that sustained effect is not going to happen.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:25:48

I like everything you're saying, but I think that a small shift what's happening out there these days is that there are more cultural activists arising from their communities. And I think that's a positive.

I do think that we have some great creative advocacy and action that is coming from within, because there are more folks living within that are claiming creative and.

Bill Cleveland: 00:26:13

Yes, and back to Lenny's point about.

Bill Cleveland: 00:26:16

Cultural grounding, cultural competency, as you say.

Bill Cleveland: 00:26:19

Barbara, artists who are from a place will naturally have more of that. This is, this is why the partnerships that are at the heart of this.

Bill Cleveland: 00:26:30

Work are so, so important when it comes to accountability.

Leni Sloan: 00:26:35

I wanted to add quickly, we have cooperation, and cooperation is you bring the ham, I'll bring the potato salad, Bill will bring the beverages, and we'll all have a good dinner. I did my part. I don't want to know about the ham. If I'm the water, I don't want to know about.

You know, I did my part, I put my thing on the table, and cooperation is the first way that artists think. Then there's collaboration. And to use this metaphor again, collaboration is like, no, let's all work on the menu together.

Let's not just bring our favorite dish or our expertise, but let's put this menu together. Co creation is the hardest because it's like, I need to know more about ham. You know, even though I'm the potato salad. Yeah.

And I'm really getting off on your choice of bottled water. So let me get into you and you into me. And that's the hardest, is to see through someone else's eyes. The same vision and the same process.

Bill Cleveland: 00:27:54

You're right. It's sometimes more about diplomacy than it is about art.

Leni Sloan: 00:27:59

Speaking of that diplomacy, both you and Bob touched on something that I wanted to add, which is one part of the field suffers the perpetually emerging organization syndrome. You, I mean, you have to emerge, you have to come out of the incubator, you have to.

Like another part of the field suffers the soul S O L E, S O U L Soul founder syndrome. So knowing when it is your time, knowing when you don't have to do this, I mean, there's not the need for you. So when have you hit the mark?

When are you done? You hit it, Quit it.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:28:47

Yeah.

Bill Cleveland: 00:28:48

And that awareness of your place in a project, a community, your organization, or even the history and legacy of the work is another aspect of accountability.

Barbara Shaffer Bacon: 00:29:04

And we're also here so far talking about projects.

And when I look at Lenny working with a set of actors who knew how to embody historical figures and take that into any number of conversations in any number of settings over time. So the impact of that organizing, that creative organizing had a long tail. It went out in a very different kind of a way.

And sometimes I think we think too much about the project ones versus the things that literally created something longstanding that could keep moving forward on their own.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:46

Sustained impact, infrastructure, permanency.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:50

So I'm going to actually bring us.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:52

To a close here.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:53

I know we could go on, but as you said, Lenny, we hit it. Accountability is not an option. It's complicated.

And being conscious and accountable in a way that makes change and builds the trust you need to continue working together is a learned skill that takes lifelong practice. So thanks Lenny and Barb, for sharing your wisdom and stories. And thanks listeners for listening and hopefully learning and then passing it on.

Please know that this dynamic trio will return next week to continue another exploration of our hard questions. Namely, can cultural activists become community leaders? And if so, how does that happen?

Art is Change is a product of the center for the Study of Art and Community Art theme and soundscapes spring forth from the head, heart and hand of the maestro. Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe. Our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of OOP235.

So until next time, stay well, do.

Bill Cleveland: 00:31:12

Good and spread the good word.

Bill Cleveland: 00:31:15

Once again, please know this episode has been 100% human. 1.