Advocacy: For and By Teaching Artists
By Eric Booth, 2017
Teaching artists are proudly passionate and eloquent about their work. But…are we good advocates for teaching artistry? The empirical evidence doesn’t suggest that we are. Teaching artistry remains under-funded and largely unrecognized even as it is heavily relied upon by large sectors of the arts and arts education. Of course, there are many hard realities that entrench the status of the field. However, as individuals and as a field, we haven’t succeeded in changing that standing.
In fact, the larger field of arts educators in the U.S. (of which we are a part) hasn’t succeeded in changing its status either—our students average one quarter of the arts instruction time of the average UNESCO nation. Whatever the reasons for these sad realities (and weak advocacy is certainly not among the most prominent), few would argue with the assertion that we can do better. Now is a good time for us to think about doing better as advocates, because there is unusual interest in the field of teaching artistry. Quite possibly, change is in the wind, and with better advocacy, we can add to it.
Is advocacy part of your responsibility as a teaching artist? When I ask that question of teaching artists, rarely do I hear a resounding yes. More often, I hear some nos, and most often, I hear equivocations and explanations, with a timbre of guilt, about being an advocate. Artists who passionately promote the value of their theaters or dance companies often shrug about pushing forward their work in teaching artistry.
That has to change, if the field is to grow. Every teaching artist must recognize and advocate for the value of this work. Relentlessly. At family gatherings, in professional settings, in the grocery store line. Every time you are asked about your work, you must enthusiastically include a mention of the larger national and international field—every time. Does that sound unrealistic? No profession ever changed its status without the enthusiastic pride and determination of its practitioners.
Apart from our ambivalence about our role as advocate, why have we been so unsuccessful as advocates for changing the status quo? It would take a book to answer that question (a book that few, including me, would want to read), but here are a few key misconceptions about advocacy, and then a few key guidelines about how to amp up your effectiveness.
MISCONCEPTIONS
- Advocacy is about convincing people of your point of view. More about this naïve view below.
- Advocacy depends on your first pitch. It is rare to have anyone change entrenched views after a single encounter. It takes time, repeated encounters, a relationship. Successful advocacy is more about cultivation, about building a relationship, than about a miracle conversation. It takes more than talk—it takes evidence, first-hand experiences, stories and dialogue, over time.
- The content of your argument is the most important thing. Actually, I think three other things are more important. 1. The quality of your listening, so that you connect your views with that person’s understandings and personal interests. 2. Your authenticity; the passion and engaging clarity you have about your work and goals matters at least as much as the arguments you muster. 3. The frame in which the conversation happens—more about this in a bit, because it is the single most overlooked reality of advocacy.
- Advocate for your big idea. No, advocate for the impact of your big idea. Good marketing executives know that you don’t sell the product; you sell the benefits of the product. Don’t sell the mop, sell the clean floor. Don’t advocate for teaching artistry—few people care about that—but advocate for the impact of teaching artistry. Pick one key benefit of the work, a benefit that both you and the person you are addressing care about…more engaged school students, expanded audiences, healthy care improvements among the elderly, etc.
Etymologically, the word advocate means to call in, rather than our common usage of to tell about. In calling people in to your understandings, the most overlooked skill is listening. Good advocacy begins with good questioning—or even before that, establishing a good atmosphere for an honest dialogue in which you can ask sincere questions and get genuine responses. Then come the good questions that surface what that person (or group) cares about and is concerned about. And then you apply the set of strategies that call that person into your views.
My most sobering lessons came from my own failures as an advocate. I would hit a group with my best shot—say, a speech to a school district board of education. They would be enthusiastic in response, sometimes with a standing ovation, some tearing up, and many thanking me. And then, within a month, they would vote in a budget that cut arts education painfully. I slowly came to recognize that advocacy is not about changing people’s minds. Advocacy is about changing people’s actions, and people base their actions not on what they think but on what they believe. It is a much higher bar to change what someone believes, but it is the only legitimate goal of advocacy. Otherwise, you have them “feeling and agreeing” with you one week, and taking the opposite actions the next.
To change what someone believes requires time and relationship. It requires reliable data to satisfy the intellect, stories to establish the personal connection, and personal experience to lodge in the gut. That’s why the “elevator speech” challenge of a concise pitch must contain a story that lingers, a taste of strong objective data, a question that resonates with the concerns of the individual, a metaphor that captures the big picture succinctly, and evident passion and belief. And the giver of the elevator speech must remember that at best that pitch is a toe in the door, that must be opened by sustained positive contacts—there are no instant conversions in our business.
THE FRAME
And it requires one more thing; omitting this one thing is the most common mistake in advocacy. The frame. The frame defines and overpowers the content.
George Lakoff writes about this convincingly. He often focuses on politics, pointing to the difference of the leadership frame he sees in conservatives and progressives. Conservatives carry a metaphoric frame of good leadership as a strong, strict, dominant parent. Progressives carry the metaphoric frame of the nurturing, empathic parent. Whatever the information, even the raw facts, that are presented, they are received and interpreted through the frame. For example, to a conservative, any mention of welfare is heard through the frame of the recipients’ failures and “refusal to act responsibly,” taking advantage of taxpayers. Any mention of welfare to a progressive is heard through the empathic frame of people who need help. In making a point to either side, outside of their frame, nothing can make an impact beyond confirmation of their beliefs or rejection of everything being presented unless their frame is dislodged for the duration of the exchange.
The same applies to us in the arts. Most people to whom we advocate carry with them certain definitions of the arts and arts education that serve as the frame for everything we say. You know the standard definition-frames: The arts are a lovely entertainment for an elite who like them, and good for others to visit or dabble with on occasion. Arts education is a lovely enrichment for kids, good for all kids to have a little taste of after the serious business of learning is attended to; and deeper arts education should be available for that small subset of kids who take it seriously as a career.
To a listener who holds those definitions as the frame of his hearing, everything you say is heard and judged through it, and more commonly you are not even heard if you are speaking through a different frame. So the first challenge of advocacy is establishing the frame in which you want the exchange to occur, which usually means changing the frame the listener brings. How do you do that?
Here’s an example. Years ago I was to speak at a fund raiser for an arts education organization in Chicago, to maybe fifty high-powered people in a fancy private home. Among them was a conservative man who was running in a primary campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. When he learned I was the speaker, he launched into a series of attacks on the positions he assumed I had (he was right about my views, actually). He spouted all the standard positions, and I realized arguing was pointless because he wasn’t listening. So I paused his barrage and asked if I could ask him a question. I said, “Do you believe every public school student in Illinois deserves a highly engaging school day?” He began to talk again without answering. Again, I asked him to pause and answer that question. He thought about it, with a look of cautious skepticism, as if I were laying a trap. After some seconds, he figured saying no would cause him trouble, and it was not too risky to agree. “Yes,” he said.
“Great,” I said, “you and I agree on that. Here’s a second question. Do you think there is a direct relationship between the level of a student’s engagement, and the quality of learning that ensues?” Again a wary pause and a calculating scan of his options and potential traps. “Yes,” he said, “I am sure a kid who is into learning learns more.”
“We agree again. Do you know anything about the research on what students find engaging?” Now I had him. He had entered my frame, and I was introducing objective data, not opinion. I gave him two or three succinct and dramatic research confirmations of the power of arts learning to amplify engagement, and some examples of how it works in specific Illinois schools. He listened; we talked. I would like to claim a Saul of Tarsus conversion on the spot, but it didn’t happen. However, he took in what I offered, and we had a genuine exchange. New ideas entered his head, and that never would have happened if I hadn’t brought him into my frame. My frame was arts education as catalyst for engagement of learners.
People bring frames to exchanges about teaching artistry. Mostly, they bring confusion about what you are talking about and deem it an arts-fluffy concept of peripheral concern. Many bring their default notions of arts and arts education and add them into the pre-conception mix. Unless you clearly define or redefine teaching artistry in a way that reframes their attention, you can talk for a week, and you will make no advocacy advance. Here is the crucial question: what frame do you carry about teaching artistry? Clarify it for yourself, and practice sharing your thoughts succinctly and compellingly within that frame.
I use several frames, depending on the situation, but please develop your own rather than assuming I recommend mine. Your belief in your own frame—your ability to improvise within it and to provide succinct support information for it—is what gives it power.
With most arts funders, my frame for teaching artistry is that it is the crucial workforce for innovation, new audience development, and expansion of the relevance of the arts—basically, teaching artists as essential personnel to create a better future.
With educators, my frame is teaching artists as experts on creative engagement, as creativity coaches, and as catalysts for activating learning in all subjects. With orchestras, I frame teaching artistry as providing the solution to the entrenched survival problems of orchestral organizations, finding exciting new partnerships and relationships with audiences who currently have no interest in orchestras.
With climate crisis leaders, I use the frame that teaching artists deliver a crucial response that no other part of the arts ecosystem can deliver. The rest of the arts make good contributions: artworks (often beautiful, sometimes powerful) that address issues of the environment; using artistic means to communicate scientific information in potent and effective ways; direct political action on the front lines. Climate-passionate people in the arts often claim their work is "transformative," but I don't see much transformation happening as people watch ballerinas make lovely ballet moves in a beautiful short film set in a forest or listen to a musical composition with whale sounds woven through it. My frame is that the code red climate crisis requires that we actually change what people believe and do, their sense of agency and hope to make a difference, and their taking action. Working directly with people in communities, using the power of creative engagement, can accomplish that—and that is the teaching artist's distinctive contribution. So, fund it if you really care about addressing the climate crisis through the arts.
It similar for other social impact goals. For an audience in the health sector, what is your frame for the distinctive advantage teaching artists (not the arts in general) can deliver regarding issues of wellness or mental health? For an audience concerned with social justice, what can teaching artists accomplish that no one else can? With a business audience, what need of theirs can teaching artistry address in ways nothing else can?
You get the idea. Identify your audience and find your frame. Then pull together the kitbag of advocacy material that will be strong, succinct, surprising within that frame. Formulate the key questions you will ask. A range of stories you are ready to share. A handy précis of research that nails particular aspects of your view. Dramatic examples that clarify. Personal statements that communicate your own passionate conviction in one sentence or two. The next steps you can recommend your listener take, to follow up.
Finally, think of a resonant metaphor that captures the essence of your point. This may be what your listener remembers, so you want it to be rich. A teaching artist as the creativity coach for a school, as the pioneer discovering how the arts can live in a new future, as the research and development department for the arts— whatever holds your understanding.
I can tell you from experience that advocacy feels great when you are prepared and can bring listeners into your frame. It is an improv, almost an art form. In this context, in fact, advocacy is the work of art, and you are an artist in the challenging medium of personal beliefs.
I can also tell you from experience that advocacy feels lousy when you are not prepared and unable to shift the standard frame. No wonder teaching artists are ambivalent about the role—they aren’t well prepared. No one is going to prepare you, so you will have to do that yourself. Is it your role? If not yours, whose is it?
Is advocacy part of our responsibility as teaching artists? The answer must be a resounding “yes” if we are serious about changing the status quo. We need to frame our future as teaching artists, and call people into that frame.