December 30, 2020

The National Guild for Community Arts Education

Statement of Support for Americans for the Arts’ (AFTA) Arts Education Advisory Council

 

The Board of Trustees, the Racial Equity Committee of the Board and the Staff of the National Guild for Community Arts Education are writing to voice our deep concern about the issues raised by the Arts Education Advisory Council for Americans for the Arts to actualize racial equity in policies, practices and priorities. We join the AFTA Arts Education Advisory Council in the call for change. We also support the call for change regarding the accounts of a hostile work environment at AFTA by current and past staff members.

The Guild, a longtime member and partner of Americans for the Arts, stands in alignment with the AFTA Arts Education Advisory Council in a united call for Americans for the Arts, our nations’ largest and most powerful organization serving the arts sector, to proactively address longstanding unresolved racial inequities in the arts sector along with labor matters in the AFTA organization with deliberate speed and transparency.

As national organizations serving the arts, it is our moral and cultural responsibility to dismantle the oppressive systems that have dominated the arts sector for decades. As a national membership organization in the arts field, the Guild continues to listen to the call for accountability; to reflect on how we have been complicit in the white supremacist, patriarchal, ageist, and ableist culture of the arts sector and the larger society in which we operate; and to devise ways to put into action recommendations like those from the Arts Education Advisory Council.

Structural racism is by design. (Sentiment expressed in the book "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America," by Ijeoma Oluo with which the National Guild concurs)

The fact that the vast majority of leadership/decision-makers (CEO’s, executive directors, board members), staff and faculty of non-profit arts organizations are white is by design.

The dearth of fully resourced arts presence in BIPOC communities is by design.

The dearth of arts in schools for Black and brown participants is by design.

The dearth of BIPOC artists and teachers is by design.

 

Racial equity as “window dressing” rather than as authentic promotion of anti-racist practice in arts organizations is by design. We at the National Guild believe that we are either dismantling structurally racist designs and creating new equitable ones or we are complicit in the maintenance of oppressive systems in the arts. There is no middle ground.

We, the Board officers and senior staff of the National Guild for Community Arts Education would welcome a conversation with the AFTA Board about these matters, including our concerns about the leadership of Robert Lynch and his capacity to serve as an effective advocate for the growth and strength of the vast racially and culturally diverse arts sector in this country.

We at the National Guild recognize the necessity of our organization aligning in partnership with organizations that share our values, principles, and policies. Given the issues raised above we need to discern if AFTA is an organization with which we can remain in alliance. We look forward to a conversation as soon as possible.

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Signatories on behalf of the National Guild for Community Arts Education's Board of Trustees

Duffie Adelson

Board Chair, NGCAE

 

Sandra Bowie 

NGCAE Board Vice Chair and Co-Chair, Racial Equity Committee; Executive Consultant

 

Kyle Carpenter

CEO, MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis, MN

 

Chad Cooper

Executive Director, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn, NY

 

Eric Delli Bovi

President & CEO, Urban Gateways, Chicago, IL

 

Sofia Fojas

 

Dr. Derrick Gay

Co-Chair, NGCAE Racial Equity Committee; Diversity and Inclusion Strategist

 

Lili Hussey

Principal/Founder, Mariner Consulting, LLC

 

Darren Isom

Partner, The Bridgespan Group

 

Lee Koonce

NGCAE Board Secretary; President & Artistic Director, Gateways Music Festival

 

Karen LaShelle

Co-Chair, NGCAE Racial Equity Committee; Executive Director, Creative Action, Austin, TX

 

SoYoung Lee

Executive and Artistic Director, Rocky Ridge Music Center, Estes Park, CO

 

Gayle Morgan

NGCAE Treasurer; retired grantmaker in the arts

 

Robyn Newhouse

Civic Leader, Springfield, MA

 

Nancy Ng

Executive Director, Creativity and Policy, Luna Kids Dance, Inc., CA

 

Myran Parker-Brass

Boston Public Schools (Retired)

 

Martha Rochelle

Board President, Armstrong Community Music School, Austin, TX

 

Katie Smythe

CEO and Artistic Director, New Ballet Ensemble and School, Memphis, TN

 

J. Curtis Warner Jr.

Founder and Past Executive Director, Berklee City Music, Boston, MA

 

Lecolion Washington

NGCAE Board Vice Chair; Executive Director, Community Music Center of Boston

The Rootwork Learning Cohort is a small cohort that is coming together to study, practice, and document new models of community arts education practices informed by, and supportive of the many varied lived experiences of our communities in the unique context of our current moment. These six teams of community arts educators were selected through an application process to attend the “Rootwork | Grounding Community Arts Education Beyond the Pandemic” speaker series, and then use the sessions as inspiration over the next five months to design new, adaptive models for community arts education that respond to our current moment. 

The teams are being guided in this process by a trio of Rootwork Advisors: Karla Estela Rivera, Calida Jones, and Barbara Mumby-Huerta.
Meet the teams and the advisors here.

Our board’s Racial Equity Committee and Guild staff shared our recently finalized Racial Equity Guiding Principles and Policy Statements at the Guild’s 2020 Annual Meeting November 20th. These Principles and Policies represent many hours of work from Guild board and staff, particularly our Racial Equity Committee, and have been developed this year as part of our ongoing transformation towards becoming an anti-racist organization.

 

You can read (and watch) more here:

Read history and context of our racial equity work, including graphics summarizing the principles and policies.

Read our full Racial Equity Guiding Principles and Policy Statements document.

Watch the recording of the Racial Equity Committee’s presentation at the annual meeting.

At the National Guild 2020 Annual Meeting, we virtually presented our Annual Awards. The 2020 National Service Award was presented to Carol Ross, and the 2020 National Leadership Award was presented to Rhiannon Giddens. 

Read the award recipients’ bios.

Watch Carol Ross’s acceptance of the National Service Award

Watch Rhiannon Giddens’s acceptance of the National Leadership Award

The latest edition of the National Guild Benchmarking Data Report contains a wealth of data—on staff and faculty compensation, instructional fees, income and expense ratios, and more—that can inform your planning and budgeting and help funders and policy makers better understand the needs and impact of our field. The data, gathered from 179 Guild member organizations, is presented in easy to read charts and tables.

For the first time, the report also includes sections on racial equity, creative aging, and analysis of salary information by organization type, type of community served, and organizational budget size. Our Development Manager, Kate Riley, wrote a blog post about how the decision to include questions about creative aging in the survey was part of our effort to confront ageism and promote inclusion for community arts education students of all ages, and what the resulting data tells us. Read the blog post on the Aroha Philanthropies website.

Access to the Benchmarking Data Report is $50 for members; $100 for non-members. Membership is currently pay-what-you can. 

You can learn more and purchase a digital copy of the report here.