Detail from "The Travelers," by Inland Empire sculptor Paulden Evans, at the Riverside Art Museum. The Museum has expanded its outreach to local artists to bring greater visibility to the region's talent. (Photo: Michael Elderman)

It's old news, but no less critical today: state support of the arts has eroded to the point of near-nonexistence. This despite mounting research showing the arts to be a formidable economic engine in California, a proven benefit in stimulating children's learning, and one of the most effective means available for creating true, cross-cultural understanding in our society.

California currently spends 3 cents per person on the arts. After fiscal year 2003–04, when the California Arts Council suffered a 94 percent budget cut from $17 million to $1 million, California became the lowest-ranking state in the nation in per-capita arts spending.

With this jarring drop in support being echoed at the national level — where combined state funding for the arts more than halved in 2003, from $550 million down to $272 million — arts organizations of all sizes must rely increasingly on support from private sources, including foundations.

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Investing in Creativity: A Study for the Support Structure for U.S. Artists, a groundbreaking study done by the Urban Institute in 2003 with support from Irvine and an unprecedented group of 39 arts funders nationwide, found that the majority of artists produce without the supports most professionals enjoy. Most artists hold multiple jobs, earn less money than others with comparable skills and education levels, and lack basic benefits such as health care. By gauging the current state of support for artists — what they need, what they're (often not) getting, and the cost to society — the study found the problems confronting most artists have escalated in the wake of the federal funding declines of the mid-1990s. The report also identified an interconnected framework of needs that artists face: training and professional development, communities and networks, material supports, information, validation, and demand and markets for their work.

The time and space to do one's work is one of the most important, most expensive, and most elusive necessities for most artists.

With the more recent reductions of state and most public funding for the arts in California, the situation is especially acute for the state's artists. That's why Irvine — the largest, statewide private funder of the arts in California — has committed to supporting individual artists through several strategies as part of its Arts program. One way to address a key need identified by the recent study — the need for time and space to work — is through artist residency programs.

"The time and space to do one's work is one of the most important, most expensive, and, unfortunately, most elusive necessities for most artists," says Marcy Hinand Cady, Irvine's Program Director for Arts. "Providing space, material support, and a supportive network to individual artists is an important means of nurturing individual talent while simultaneously creating the sort of dialogue of ideas and creative expression that is essential to a healthy cultural community in California."

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The Foundation's new Program Director for Arts discusses her experience in the arts, the challenges and opportunities facing the arts in California, and how Irvine plans to meet both.

Marcy Hinand Cady Program Director, Arts

Irvine Quarterly: What did you do before Irvine? How did you enter the field?

Marcy Hinand Cady: After I earned an M.F.A. in poetry I began looking for other avenues for pursuing my interest in literature and the arts outside of academia, which was not for me. So I applied for and was awarded a fellowship with the National Endowment for the Arts and moved to Washington, D.C.. It was there that I got hooked on the idea of making grants on behalf of the arts. I learned about the country's arts infrastructure, about what state and local arts councils did, and how federal support worked — during an era of very high funding for the arts, at all government levels. Arts leaders often came and spoke with the NEA fellows about their work in the field — people who were very passionate, who'd committed their careers to it. It was inspiring. I was enthused by the idea that if there are very good people in the arts field — running the organizations, facilitating the grants, and attracting people to give money to the arts — that the arts would continue to flourish and be alive in this country. Even back in those days we saw that the funding for the field was in jeopardy. I felt that the arts had been so central to my life that I didn't want them to be threatened in any way.

Since then, I have worked for 15 years in grantmaking and with nonprofit arts organizations. For the past seven years, I've been affiliated with a private consulting firm, TCC Group, that does consulting across several sectors — social service, education, arts, etc. I worked exclusively on contracts with private foundations and arts organizations, doing strategic planning with such small arts organizations as Poets House in New York or the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas, and managing much larger projects, such as a Knight Foundation cultural participation program for community-based arts organizations in North Philadelphia, or managing a $42 million initiative for the Ford Foundation on capitalization of major arts organizations nationwide.

Irvine Quarterly: As a consultant for arts organizations of all sizes, what are some of the reoccurring issues arts organizations confront?

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Is the ballot initiative broken? Recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California suggest to some observers that the direct democracy tool California made famous, on display in this November's special election, may be in need of serious reform.

Californians still show strong support for the ballot initiative in principle, believing that it should have more influence over public policy than either the governor or the legislature. Yet 63 percent say the initiative process is in need of change.

Recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California asked: Are initiatives a tool of voluntarily engaged citizens or well-financed political operatives?

"The process seems to have evolved from its original purpose as a tool for the average citizen when the legislature isn't addressing a need, to a mechanism that's much more often utilized by well-financed individuals and interest groups," says Amy Dominguez-Arms, Irvine's Program Director for California Perspectives. "The reality is that average citizens have very little involvement in developing most initiatives and then are faced with an all-or-nothing proposition, which is very difficult to amend once passed. We're supporting the exploration of reforms that could make the ballot initiative process a more effective tool by which to realize the public's interests."

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Can California's high school classrooms propel students into careers as well as colleges? A growing wave of education reformers believe the answer is yes. Boosted by the September passage of a bill putting $20 million into vocational education, new initiatives to elevate career and technical education (CTE) in the state's high schools are gaining steam.

Career and technical education (CTE) helps engage young people by linking challenging academic curricula with the working world through work-based learning, internships, job training, and mentoring programs.

Supporters see improved CTE as a timely response to some significant challenges facing California schools. Maybe the most pressing of these: a rising dropout rate among the state's high school students. "People recognize that the dropout rate is alarming and that we've got to provide students with additional incentives and support to stay in school," says Anne Stanton, Irvine's Program Director for Youth. "California has some of the highest standards in the country, yet if we drill only academic skills, we could lose the kids who are most at risk. Connecting formal education to the broader world will help young people see the role academics can play in their life choices and careers."

Reformers say the dropout trend highlights the need for a "multiple pathways" approach to high school education. Rather than a one-size-fits-all direction, a diverse student population requires a diversity of possible paths to educational success. This notion is at the heart of Irvine's Youth program strategy. "There's no silver bullet," says Irvine's Stanton. "We need a broader menu to engage the young people whom we're not now engaging and provide focused support to help them succeed academically."

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In the quest to motivate California students to consider a range of postsecondary and career options, help is coming from a unique source: the state's professional arts schools. In San Francisco's Mission District, Julio Morales, an instructor from California College of the Arts, works with high school students to create performance videos, radio shows, billboard designs, and other art projects for a summer exhibition at the local Galera de la Raza. Four hundred miles to the south, faculty and students from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) teach courses to young people from Los Angeles neighborhoods in subjects as varied as computer animation, puppetry, and world music.

Grants made to five California arts colleges through a joint effort of Irvine's Youth and Arts programs are funding arts training and mentoring programs to low-income students.

Both are examples of the kinds of programs that five arts colleges, with support from The James Irvine Foundation, now deliver to low-income students in the state. The grants, which fund arts training and mentoring programs, are the latest in the Foundation's efforts to make instruction more relevant and effective for California students ages 14 to 20. And as a joint effort between the Foundation's Youth and Arts programs, the grants are significant in another way — reflecting a growing commitment to work across grantmaking programs to maximize impact.

For grantees, the project involved working with staff from the Foundation's Arts and Youth programs to examine how their existing youth outreach might be enhanced and expanded to help youth develop in broader educational directions as well as artistic ones. Steven Lavine, president of CalArts, one of the grantees, says about the cross-program effort that "we went from being skeptical at first to being thrilled that we got into this. It helped us see that there was a lot more college-preparatory work we could be doing. And I think it's a direct result of it being supported through an effort that combines arts with a concern about preparing students for postsecondary education. Over time, I think it's going to have a profound effect on the shape of our programs."

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When the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) began a campaign several years ago to pass a living wage in San Diego — a city historically known for its conservative politics and, more recently, its fiscal troubles — few would have predicted success. But succeed they did.

On April 12, 2005, by a 5 to 4 vote, the city council approved an ordinance requiring city contractors to pay janitors, security guards, and other workers a minimum of $10 an hour. The vote marked a significant step forward for low-wage workers in San Diego, the culmination of a bold organizing campaign, and a striking example of the art and power of citizen action.

Irvine's "Mobilizing Californians" strategy aims to increase the civic engagement of communities that have traditionally been underrepresented in the political process.

How did this improbable victory happen?

Not overnight, Donald Cohen, Executive Director of CPI, will be the first to tell you. Over several years, CPI and its partners beat the odds by patiently laying the groundwork for their push for a living wage. Their effort amounts to a four-part, long-term recipe for resident mobilization: research the issue, communicate the findings to focus public attention, build a broad coalition based on trust, and organize residents to act.

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Since Heyday Books was founded by Malcolm Margolin in 1974, it has emerged as an institution responsible for over 100 books, two successful magazines, and a 30-year record of producing quality public educational programs. In 1997, Heyday created Clapperstick Institute, a nonprofit organization, to support its educational and public-interest work, and in 2004, Heyday merged with Clapperstick to create the Heyday Institute. In 2001, Irvine supported Heyday in the startup development of its Great Valley Books series and, this year, in its two-year project to produce a literary anthology focused on past and present writings relating to the Inland Empire.

Irvine Quarterly asked Malcolm Margolin about the literary wealth of the Inland Empire, lessons learned from the success of the Great Valley series, and how humanities programs might enrich a region.

Irvine Quarterly: How valuable are local literature and humanities programs to regions in full flux, such as Riverside and San Bernardino counties — places of burgeoning development and newly arrived people, and where nearly a third of the residents don't speak English as their primary language?

Margolin: Good question. I can say this: you're not going to solve all of a region's problems by producing literature. I think books work in a complex social and cultural world. They are not, in and of themselves, going to correct poverty or cure smog. They can contribute depth and social awareness and understanding, as well as celebration and laughter. They can make people feel that even when you criticize a place, if it's done gracefully and well, it honors the place to have first-ranking intelligence and imagination pay attention to it.

I also feel — and this is the way Heyday operates — that doing books is not a sufficient enough activity in and of itself. Producing a book and sticking it in a bookstore and then going out and doing another is of value, but that's not what we do. We involve ourselves with other organizations so that the book becomes part of their programs.

We've done phenomenally influential books that have sold just a few copies. They've been influential not just because the right kind of people have read them, but because they've been the excuse for reviews, the excuse to get people on radio and television — the ideas get spread and planted well beyond the people who've read the book, and people learn something because of the ripples books make as they flow out through other media and cultures. And so, in terms of people who don't speak English, or even people who are not in the habit of picking up a book and reading, a book nevertheless, through all of these other media, has its effects.

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Professional athletes have long had coaches. Corporate CEOs by the hundreds now benefit from their services and support. So why aren't nonprofit executive directors, typically far more strapped for help than their private sector counterparts, using the services of a new breed of executive coaches focusing on the nonprofit sector?

When your executive director develops his or her skill set, time management, and confidence, it ripples throughout the organization, says Torie Osborn, executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation and an executive coach.

The answer, according to recent focus groups on executive coaching funded by The James Irvine Foundation, has two parts.

For one, many executive directors of nonprofit organizations, especially newer ones, simply aren't aware of the option. "They may be in leadership roles for the first time, and they don't know what they don't know. And many are not aware of the resources out there to help them specifically with their leadership development," says Diane Schweitzer, a consultant to philanthropy who conducted the focus groups.

"Coaching is often an overlooked tool," says Martha Campbell, Irvine's Vice President for Programs. "We were surprised that many of the executive directors in our focus groups didn't know about executive coaching - in particular, how flexible and customized and powerful that kind of support can be."

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Do California's high school students suffer from motivation deficiency? Many experts see lack of student engagement at the root of the state's growing struggles with student dropouts and achievement. Walk through the typical high school today, says UC Berkeley professor David Stern, "and occasionally you'll see actively engaged students who are on-task, but it's rare. Instead, for the most part you see polite attention or inattention, and in a lot of cases disruption, acting out, or opting out. Motivation is a big problem in high schools."

Rather than the one-size-fits-all approach, a movement of education reformers is seeking to provide students a wider range of possible paths to educational success. This multiple pathways approach is at the heart of the new strategy of the Irvines Youth program.

Studies show that, even as most students say they plan to attend college, a large slice of them will not end up doing so. "If you look at the numbers, the proportion of young people who attain either a four-year or a two-year college degree is still, for all our efforts, a little over one in three," says Harvard professor Bob Schwartz. "If you look at the flip side, we've designed a system that is essentially not serving at least two kids out of three very well."

Support for rigorous curricular standards remains high. The new push is for more relevance.

"The core business of high schools ought to be to equip kids with a solid foundation of academic skills so they can move on to whatever they're going to do next," says Schwartz. "But there's this increasing tendency to say 'Let's run everybody through a standard college-prep curriculum.' This is where I jump off the train. For a lot of kids, the argument that they need this for college simply isn't very motivating. It doesn't connect to who they are or their interests or experiences. Historically, one single pathway - leading kids to a four-year, higher education institution - hasn't worked for the majority of kids."

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