Iola Residency, 2012

I'm back in Iola, KS this month, doing another performance residency for most of September. This is thanks to the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. 

I don't think I've given enough credit to the Bowlus in the past. This is an excellent arts center in rural Allen County. The Bowlus presents all kinds of performances--music, theater, arts--from regional and national companies throughout the year. The Bowlus is also well known for the annual Buster Keaton Celebration, coming up on Sept. 24 and 25. The Center hosts the school district art, drama, speech, forensics and music programs. It's one of the reasons I have hope for the arts in Kansas. 

The benefactor, Thomas H. Bowlus, is quoted on the front of the building:

Yes.

This residency in Iola was contingent upon funding from the Kansas Arts Commission, which of course did not come through (see my previous post), but the Bowlus is committed to the arts in this community, so they honored the contract. They have had a storyteller in the schools every year for many years. Last time I was here was in 2007.

As I've written before, residencies come in different forms. In some residencies, I visit the same classes multiple times. Some are workshops instead of performances, like the Deep Roots, Strong Kids Family Story Residency. This one is a performance residency, one in which I visit every elementary school classroom in the district (three towns) once, tailoring each session to the age and grade of the kids. It's a treat for me to visit classrooms instead of doing assemblies. 

More on residency reflections next. 

The arts in Kansas, again

"In the long history of man, countless empires and nations have come and gone. Those which created no lasting works of art are reduced today to short footnotes in history's catalogue.

"Art is a nation's most precious heritage, for it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves, and to others, the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish."

Lyndon B. Johnson

Photo at a rally in Topeka by Ann Dean, with permission.

Usually I try to keep this blog non-political. However, I also try to write about what's going on in my storytelling life, and at the moment, politics in Kansas affect this.

I know I wrote about the arts in Kansas last winter, when Governor Sam Brownback abolished the Kansas Arts Commission by executive order. This was overturned in the Kansas legislature. There was bipartisan support to fund the KAC at $685,000. In May, Gov. Brownback did a line-item veto on all KAC funding, and planned the vote for a day when many legislators weren't there .Zero funding. Kansas is now the only state without a funded arts commission. Governor Brownback instead created a private arts foundation. His philosophy is that the arts should not be state-funded, but should be supported by private funds only. This completely ignores the fact that the arts in Kansas have always been a public-private partnership. It has never been a free lunch.

Before this, the KAC received matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and other organizations. Without the KAC, Kansas is no longer eligible for these funds.

I've been on the KAC Arts on Tour Roster since 1994. Organizations around the state would apply for funding for 40% of my fee from the KAC. This year, the organizations that hired me with KAC grant funds are still having me, scraping the funds together from other sources, but in the future, those contracts are unlikely to be written in the first place. A teacher workshop day I usually participate in didn't happen this year because of the issue. I'm affected outside Kansas as well: by dint of being on the KAC roster, I was on the Mid-America Arts Alliance Roster which offers grants to surrounding states. The KAC doesn't fit the guidelines, so today I received a letter telling me I'm no longer eligible for those grants. I'm not sure what this does to a grant that is pending for work in Oklahoma in November.

This affects my livelihood, but what's much worse is that it limits how much art the kids--and adults--in Kansas are exposed to. Small town arts organizations used KAC money to support all kinds of arts projects, from storytelling to murals to music. I've been brought in to tell stories to preschoolers, to provide writing workshops for fourth graders, to teach middle school kids about oral communication skills. Governor Brownback wants all the funding to come from the private sector. There are wonderful people and businesses all over Kansas that have supported the arts for years, but they're tapped out.

Not all of my work comes from the KAC, by any means, but it does make a difference. I also want to live in a state where the arts are encouraged and supported. Fortunately, there are many people in Kansas who support public funding for the arts. I know I'm not the only one to write to my legislators. There have been rallies in Topeka. Kansas Citizens for the Arts has been organizing planning meetings.

We will make our voices heard.

P.S. on the arts in Kansas

If you live in Kansas, please consider writing an e-mail or calling your representatives about overturning the Governor's Executive Order #39 eliminating the Kansas Arts Commission. Don't know who your representatives are? You can find them easily on the KU Institute for Policy and Social Research.

The arts in Kansas

I'm pretty sure I've told stories to some of these kids. They sent this clip to The Maddow Blog to show that Kansas kids do value the arts.

I should be in Topeka right now, at the rally to support the Kansas Arts Commission. Our new governor has issued an executive order to eliminate the KAC. It will be gone by July 1 unless the legislature overturns the order.

I'm not at the rally because I woke with a full-blown cold. It has been coming on for days, but I hoped I could bundle up and march. Tomorrow I have three shows at schools in Clay Center, KS though, so I had to weigh short term and long term goals. Short term: be able to perform tomorrow. Long term: help save the KAC, which is funding a portion of my performances tomorrow.

Governor Brownback's action is ostensibly about money, about saving the Kansas taxpayers that .29 per capita the state spends on the arts. It completely ignores the matching funds from sources outside the state that will be lost (cutting $575,000 of the KAC budget jeopardizes $778,200 in federal funds).

If this order stands, small communities around the state will lose out. Let me be specific: tomorrow I'm going to three schools in Wakefield and Clay Center under the aegis of the Kansas Arts Commission. Wakefield has a population of 898, Clay Center has 4366. The KAC has provided a percentage of my fee and the Clay Center Arts Council has raised the rest locally. When I wrote the contract, I included the phrase, "contingent upon grant funding." If the arts council didn't write these grants, they might not afford artist visits in the schools. Not all of my work is underwritten by the KAC, but when it is, I am aware that the community I'm visiting values the arts.

So why support the arts? We need citizens to be creative thinkers, savvy problem solvers, effective communicators. The stories I tell subtly teach moral and ethical lessons. The arts teach about the wider world, in ways that cannot be tested with a No. 2 pencil. Kids develop their emotional intelligence through the arts.

The governor wants to make the KAC into a nonprofit organization, funded privately. This completely ignores the fact that many local private donors have already given and given and given. They're tapped out. And some of us are highly suspicious of the board Brownback has appointed already to this Kansas Arts Foundation--he has a strong right-wing agenda, with support from the Koch brothers. Who will determine what art is "appropriate" in this nonprofit organization?

That's a disturbing aspect of this executive order that is not being mentioned: it's not about the money. Here's what Arlene Goldbard wrote on her blog Life Implicates Art:

In truth, when politicians decide to decapitate arts funding, they aren’t even trying to make a significant economic impact. Instead, they are using budget cuts as a form of political speech by cutting something that most voters don’t perceive as directly affecting them or creating widespread pain. That is because, even though the dollars involved are insignificant enough to be dismissed as a rounding error in other budget areas, the cuts garner plenty of publicity: artists and their advocates are very good at communicating their displeasure. In essence, politicians use arts advocates as a megaphone to issue a political message: Look at the criticism I’m willing to take to save voters money! I lopped the head off all this unnecessary crap like art before even trimming the fat from the things you really care about! Money is the sizzle, not the steak.

I recommend her entire blog post. Later she says,

The most important policy question is this: Who are we as a people? How do we want history to remember us? What legacy do we wish to leave the next generation: our stupendous ability to punish, or our vast creativity? [Earlier, she noted that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.]

Who do we want to be? That's a huge question. I want us to have all the opportunities to be the vibrant, creative, thoughtful, emotionally aware beings we could be. The arts can go a long way toward this. And in the process, why not make Kansas into a place people want to move to or visit, because the people here have those qualities.