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Involving Youth
It’s a longstanding habit of mine. Whenever I walk into an arts environment — theater, gallery, conference, board room — I immediately take note of the demographics. It’s a rarity to see any young people.
What kind of future can our sector expect without any young people involved?
Not a bright one, points out a new report entitled “Involving Youth in Nonprofit Arts Organizations: A Call to Action.” Released this month, it was prepared by Barry Hessenius and commissioned by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
“Involving Youth” takes a broad brush to the issue, investigating the activity of young people (ages 16 to 30) in six domains: governance, membership, financial support, advocacy, audience development, and artist support.
The report makes the usual recommendations about dialogue, commitment, resources, partnerships, etc.
In the real world, where the arts are underappreciated, overcommitted, and barely capitalized, I cannot imagine calling the sector to undertake one more “top-priority.” Even the best internship programs profiled here, for example, don’t make the grade. Low pay, grunt work duties, and lack of staff mentorship don’t make for an effective or scaleable pipeline into the sector. The human and financial costs are unmanageable for organizations that are already spread too thin.
If we are to attract the best and the brightest into the arts, and this is the report’s explicit call to action, then we need to do three things, two of them easy and one of them perennially elusive:
1. Include young people on the board of directors.
This requires no funding, no grant writing, and no staff oversight. Not only does a board appointment engage the best and the brightest in a meaningful way, but it may be the only way that the sector will begin to really address the needs and lifestyles of young people. We need to address those needs at the site of core decision-making, not as a programming or marketing after-thought.
2. Hire marketing specialists under age 30.
If our message — in both form and content — is ever going to attract youth, we’ve got to stop kidding ourselves that the over-50 crowd is the most adept at making that connection. Let’s go to the source.
3. Make the arts relevant.
This is the perennially elusive strategy. (This is the perennially elusive strategy that would solve most problems in the sector.) If we listen to young board members and young marketing specialists, then perhaps we will begin to understand that the benefits of the arts to the old guard are not necessarily the same benefits defined by a younger generation. It may rub us the wrong way, but the fact is: environmentalism has become a sexy issue and a draw to young people because it was adopted and endorsed by Hollywood celebs, not because we told kids it was “good for them.”
Best,
Ann
April 2007