Charles Jensen | Writer

Writer

Lost Angels

I’m driving to Los Angeles today to meet up with my colleagues on the Emerging Leader Council of Americans for the Arts for our annual Winter Meeting and planning session.  We’ll spend two days working out how we want to spend our year together, what we can do for Emerging Leader networks nationally, and what we think Americans for the Arts should be more aware of in regards to emerging leaders.

I’m really happy that Americans for the Arts revised its definition of “emerging leader.”  Since the ELC started, it has been defined as an arts professional under age 35 with fewer than 5 years of experience in the arts nonprofit field.  Now we embrace anyone with fewer than 10 years of experience, which I think is a good option since the Great Recession has changed a lot of people’s lives and careers, particularly in the nonprofit world.

For the last few months I’ve been working to reboot the Tucson Emerging Arts & Culture Leaders group, which is just a local network of arts professionals, culture workers, and artists who work both in the nonprofit and for profit worlds.  It’s been slow going but I’m hopeful that 2012 will bring new members and more energy to the group, which has been off to a good start thanks to some highly motivated and committed folks.

Expect photos.  I love Los Angeles.

Charles

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2 responses to “Lost Angels”

  1. Aimee Baker Avatar
    Aimee Baker

    Oh! Tell me more! Locally, the only active arts center excludes literary artists from its programming so I’ve been thinking of how to convince them to promote writers, but alternatively how to engage arts professionals and artists independently of them. Due to our geographic spread this presents a whole variety of issues, but I would be interested to hear how Tucson Emerging Arts & Culture Leaders are regrouping and even more basically what role they play in the community.

    Reply
  2. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    Awesome, Aimee! Well, the TEACL network is starting off small and slow–it takes a while to build momentum–but as long as you realize this about your area and commit to the long haul, I think it pans out.

    There’s a helpful resource on the Americans for the Arts website (http://www.americansforthearts.org/networks/emerging_leaders/news_networking/001.asp) that can help you get started. Because I have some connections at TPAC and the state arts commission, I was able to get a lot of contact info for arts orgs in Tucson and I used that to start reaching out to emerging leaders and planning social events to get people to come out and meet up. I only have about 8 folks in so far, but I hope that more and more opportunities to convene, with some speakers attached to the next events, will bring out new folks.

    It can be challenging to do this in a rural area, but not impossible. It looks like the closest networks to you are in Buffalo or NYC, so you can always look to them for some help. If you register that you have a network with Americans for the Arts, then you can get connected to me and the Emerging Leader Council members for help. We have a quarterly conference call with network leaders across the country that is really great for idea sharing, support, and advice.

    Does that help….? 🙂 xoxo

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