Dennis Baker

Earlier this month, I used my cellphone to interview Dennis Baker; a teaching artist, entrepreneur and social media expert. We had a wide-ranging conversation and here are the results. Dennis has kindly typed and edited the interview. It's good stuff.

Q: Hi Dennis! I am so glad you've agreed to answer a few easy questions. It's February 2nd, and I am in San Francisco. You are based in Los Angeles. We are doing this by phone, and since my cellphone bill is ludicrously high and I am underpaid,  I'll get right to it.

(Here we pause because an incredibly loud protest demonstration of California State Workers passes by banging drums and screaming something about draconian budget cuts. It will be over soon.)

Q: Dennis, what are the critical issues facing Teaching Artists?

Dennis Baker: Money is always a critical issue.  This is going to get some people upset, but I am going to say it, teaching artists are the migrant workers of the arts education field. Administration justifies paying $25/hour for a teaching artist with a masters degree in education, with no benefits, because they think that teaching artists choose to be freelance workers. Teaching artists are freelance workers, because there is no other choice. If there was a full time resident teaching artist position created, with the benefits and pay of an administrator, the teaching artist application pool would be huge. In the U.S., we live in a society where the goal is to get everything as cheap as possible, without truly asking what that means to the people that we pay the lowest price. This mindset does not account for the whole picture. I am not implying that every arts education organization chooses not to pay their teaching artists a living wage, but the standards are not at a sustainable level.

I think the issues that actors have with the amount of work, in relation to pay, is the same problem for teaching artists. In the acting field, there has been questions of why is there so many MFA programs, graduating actors year after year, for a field that can not sustain the numbers.  Some of the statistics are:

·      14.4% of Equity members (actors and stage managers) work in any given week in ’08-‘09

·      49.3% of Equity members are unemployed for the whole year of ’08-‘09

·      Median AEA member made $7,688 in ‘08-‘09

My guess is that these numbers are pretty close to the teaching artist field. We are seeing more and more schools creating theater education programs, for a field in which a teaching artist cannot make a living wage.  Why? One reason, higher education institutions are businesses. If there are enough students willing to pay for it, they will create a degree, with no consideration of whether there is a field to sustain their graduates. Manifest destiny is at the bedrock of all we do.  Grow and expand, without thinking of the consequences. Does any theater program advertise the above statistics? No, because their might be less student enrollment. So until we are willing to have a national conversation regarding the relation of higher education to the number of jobs in the field, there will be an ever-increasing supply and demand problem. Is the answer a union? That is a good start to increase standardized pay, but that will not address the amount of work in the field.

            Regarding pedagogical issues, how can we find ways to integrate the education of becoming a teaching artist with that of the classroom teacher?  Do teaching artists need to take some classes in a credential program?  As I begin to teach theater education and teaching artistry, I find that I am lacking in truly understanding the mindset of the classroom teacher.  While I know the basics through working with teachers in the past, and looking at state standards, in general teaching artists do not know the language of classroom teachers and principals.

Q: What is the future field for professional Teaching Artistry? Where are we and where are we going?

Dennis Baker: There is no doubt that the field has come into its own in the last decade. The field and conversation has grown. It is a time to truly reflect and find ways to move forward in a sustainable manner. Sustainability needs to be the future of the field.  We are not there yet. We are pockets of people without a unified voice. We live in a time where business and entertainment is looked in higher regard than education. For sustainability to occur, this national mindset will need to shift.  Without this national shift, we are a field that is fighting for scraps at the table.  Honestly, I am talking of a change that is beyond any of our life times, if it is to happen at all. In the mean time, one needs to be a creative, entrepreneurial teaching artist. 

Q: Dennis, I see you working all over the place. You're on Twitter. You're an actor, teaching artist, fight director, audition coach, web designer, and social media expert. Aren't you exhausted? I mean, how are you pulling all of this off?

A: Individuals in business are learning what it is like to live and work with less, something artists have always done. At the same time the entrepreneur discussion that is going on in the business sector is something artists need to be listening to and figuring ways to adapt it to the teaching artist field.  Artists can learn just as much from people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki as they could from leaders in the education field.  While living in New York, and planning to move back to Los Angeles, I was talking to a fellow teaching artist expressing my concern that Los Angeles did not have the same infrastructure for work in the theater arts education.  He said, well then you will have to create your own. What keeps me positive is that we as humans are adaptable. How are we as teaching artists creating our own work? How are we forging relationships with teachers, principals, school districts and organizations to create opportunities for work?  We need more of these conversations in the field. Coming out of graduate school, I was hired into a one of the biggest theater education organizations in New York.  There I formed my teaching artistry, but due to the size, all the business aspects was taken care of for me. I just had to show up for the various curriculum trainings, give them my availability, and they would email me with jobs. That is not the norm. So how do we become entrepreneurial teaching artists?

First, what do you do exactly? You might say I am a teaching artist. Too broad. What is your niche, your specialty? What are the two to three things that you are good at teaching? Shakespeare? Physical Theater? Elementary age children? In the area where you live and work, you need to be considered the expert in areas of your specialty. This is where living outside a metropolis might help you. It takes more work for me to be considered an expert in a theater or acting field in Los Angeles then it would for a teaching artist working in a field that is less populated with theater artists.

Second, do people know you are an expert in that field? This is where connection is key. Are you in conversation through social media, attendance at school district functions, PTA meetings, etc. You need to be at the places where you can make connections with people that would want to hire you. Principals, teachers, parents need to know you exist.  Are you reading the mommy blogs, and commenting on posts in regards to education? Are you at the school district meetings?  Are you using social media, not as a tool to talk, but as a tool to listen?  So many people say I don’t get twitter, what am I supposed to say.  Don’t say anything, just listen.  Listen to the conversation that is being held on the local level, as well as the national level.

Third, create a need that then you can fill.  Businesses are great at this.  They sell us a product that we don’t even know we need, and once we do, they are there to provide us with it.  Everyone agrees that education is important and needed, but what does that mean?  How can you go about influencing hearts and minds in your local community that the work of a teaching artist is needed? There is numerous articles that show how arts education is needed, but minds are not changed with statistics, they are changed through experience.  How can you provide administrators, teachers, parents and students with an experience in where they have an “a ha” moment and realize that teaching artist work is needed in their school, community organization and community?

Lastly, in this current time you will not make a living wage as a teaching artist. While you need to find your niche within the teaching artist field, you need to diversify your job skill set. You need to find other part-time freelance jobs that will compliment your teaching artist work.

......................................

Here, all conversation ended because those last few sentences from Dennis nearly killed me. I encourage you to read it again to yourself, slowly, carefully and aloud.

Thank you Dennis Baker for your thoughtful comments on the state of the field. Fellow teaching artists, if you would like to join this ongoing conversation, push the comment button below or email us here.

On the Money

Often, I have noticed, teaching artists are called Freelancers.

Sometimes, we are designated as Independent Contractors.

Once in a while, I hear us referred to as Consultants.

Less frequently, we're Employees.

What's the difference between these designations, and, more importantly, how does it affect the teaching artist's pocketbook?

Frankly, I have no clue, so I am providing some handy links to information about this topic. Maybe you and your customer, client, or boss can sit down and figure it out together?

Three articles are below:

Answers About Freelancers @ The New York Times

Ban the Label "Freelancer"  @ Findlaw

What is the Difference Between an Independent Contractor and an Employee @ About.com

Also: You Never Give Me Your Money - The Four

More, Or Less

It is kind of an open secret that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is one of the non-profit sector's most reliable anonymous donors. Through an arrangement with the Carnegie Corporation, the richest man in town annually gives millions of dollars away to arts and cultural organizations across the city--usually without requiring groups to submit huge amounts of onerous paperwork.

A recent New York Times article reveals that some questioned the mayor's altruism all along, and confirms that nothing lasts forever:

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City’s richest man and biggest philanthropist, is quietly pulling the plug on an unusual program that has poured nearly $200 million of his fortune into nonprofit groups across the five boroughs."

In Politics: President Barack Obama postpones a Pacific trip, because a Sunday vote on the "health care" legislation is likely, and he wants to be here to take the blame or credit.

Plus: It is Friday and ATA is on Facebook!

Also: Jill Scott - Hate On Me

Closing

In the Daily Digest, ATA Executive Director, Dale Davis reports that Partners for Arts Education has posted the following message on its website:

TAP and art$tart funding
no longer available

TAP and art$tart funding, formerly administered by PAE, has been returned to the New York State Council on the Arts.  The Partners for Arts Education offices are closed and the organization has gone dormant.

Axis Mundi

Education Week reports on a new study that finds that "achievement gaps between students of different genders and racial, economic, and linguistic groups are large and persistent...even as they seem to be narrowing for K-12 students as a whole."

Also: An excerpt from How Do We Think About Our Craft?, an essay by Maxine Greene published by Teachers College, Columbia University.

"Gradually becoming aware of all this, we are beginning to recognize that every young person must be encountered as a center of consciousness, even as he or she is understood to be a participant in an identifiable social world. Each one may be encountered as a being who is at once a distinctive individual and someone whose consciousness opens out to the common, an intersubjective world in which he or she is inextricably involved."

Soul Searching

Once again, writer/activist Arlene Goldbard explains it all for you.

Ms. Goldbard is, of course, the writer of an impressive series of articles advancing the idea of a "New New Deal" for artists. She is a fierce advocate for positive social change, and her blog on culture, politics and spirituality is a destination point for teaching artists and others in the field.

Ms. Goldbard's latest essay explores the phenomena of disappointment in both political and emotional terms.

I read it, and was amazed, moved and grateful.

See what I mean:

The Disappointment System
by Arlene Goldbard

My friends tend to a few views of President Obama and the Democrats at the end of Year One. They seem different, but actually, all are part of the Disappointment System, my new name for the combination plate of hurt and response which has become our national dish. As is so often the case, what we are as political animals in the wide world is largely due to what we eat in the little world of relationship and emotion.

Read the rest of the essay, after the jump.

Success

Over at the website of Keep Arts in Schools we find research, resources, news and inspiring quotes.

All of this useful stuff has been gathered to help make the case for the arts as tools for character building and doorways to success.

See this:

"The human conscience relies on a feeling of empathy for others and on the anticipation of anxiety, guilt, or shame for violating a community norm. Children need a deeper understanding of these feelings and the arts contribute to this goal."

-Jerome Kagan, Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Harvard University.

And this statement, from First Lady Michelle Obama:

"My husband and I believe strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation's leaders of tomorrow."

- Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that business leaders Goldman Sachs are right back at it; making money:

NEW YORK TIMES
BUSINESS
For Goldman, a Swift Return to Lofty Profits
By GRAHAM BOWLEY and JENNY ANDERSON
Published: July 13, 2009

Most of Wall Street, and America, is still waiting for an economic recovery. Then there is Goldman Sachs.

Up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing that Goldman, which only recently paid back its government bailout money, will report blowout profits from trading on Tuesday.
Analysts predict the bank earned a profit of more than $2 billion in the March-June period, because of its trading prowess across world markets.

If they are right, the bank’s rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so drastically only months after the nation’s financial industry was shaken to its foundations.

The Rescuers

Sometimes, you need help figuring it all out.

Also: Laura Nyro w/ Labelle - It's Gonna Take A Miracle

Without a Doubt

Over at Education Week, Ms. Meir and Ms. Ravitch take turns questioning what David Brooks calls the "Harlem Miracle."

What A Feeling

Hundreds of artists responded to a request from the New York Times for stories about how the economy is affecting our lives and our work.

"I love it. The only thing that makes me sad is that I can’t make a living right now."

--Karl Allen, former technical director of Performance Space 122 in Manhattan

Text and images.

Also: Public Enemy - Fight the Power (possibly NSFW - they curse twice.)

Waste Not

The New York Times reports that a short film created by a Greenpeace veteran is the sleeper hit of the year. 

The Story of Stuff purports to show how "American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned. "

Over 5 million people have viewed the film on the filmmaker's website. The piece, which mixes animation with live action, has been shown in classrooms across the country and, apparently, it has made some people mad.

Art engenders a response.

Watch it here and decide for yourself: storyofstuff.com

The Situation

According to the Washington Post, cultural groups have declared a state of emergency:

"I have never seen a situation like this in my 25 years in the business," says Michael M. Kaiser, the president of the Kennedy Center and a veteran arts administrator. After cutting its own budget by 6.5 percent -- a modest trim by current standards -- the Kennedy Center in February started an Arts in Crisis program to counsel troubled organizations. Some 350 have already sought advice."

Also, President Barack Obama holds a live press conference to mark his first 100 days. I do not think he mentioned the arts, but I may have missed it.

The New York Times speculates that the president will appoint a pragmatist to the supreme court. Sure, that's fine with me.

In a long running conversation in the Sunday magazine, the president talks about how his policies might change everything about American life. He touches on nearly everything and manages to argue that "...young people generally are going to benefit from a good, solid liberal-arts education. That’s what I got."

He continues:

"But, again, I think the big challenge that we’ve got on education is making sure that from kindergarten or prekindergarten through your 14th or 15th year of school, or 16th year of school, or 20th year of school, that you are actually learning the kinds of skills that make you competitive and productive in a modern, technological economy.

That’s why I don’t just want to see more college graduates; I also want to specifically see more math and science graduates, I specifically want to see more folks in engineering."

Also: Aimee Mann - Save Me

Do Business

Founded by Kiff Gallagher, Music National Service Initiative (MNS) is a new non-profit organization that uses music to address civic and social needs. In the fall of 2009, MNS plans to pilot MusicianCorps, a "musical Peace Corps" to recruit, train and place musicians in public schools and low-income neighborhoods. MusicianCorps pitches itself as a first step in the creation of a national, multi-disciplinary arts service program. 

The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which would dramatically increase funding for AmeriCorps and other volunteer programs, has passed and is awaiting President Barack Obama's signature.

It's the great depression. I want to believe, but I do not understand why we have decided that one of our most high-profile national priorities should be the creation of new volunteer opportunities for artists. 

Also: Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 

   I all alone beweep my outcast state, 

And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, 

   And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

   Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, 

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, 

   With what I most enjoy contented least: 

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 

   Haply I think on thee,--and then my state 

(Like to the lark at break of day arising 

   From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; 

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings 

   That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Material

Crain's reports that the Manhattan rental market is slowing, but that the rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan has came down nearly 7% in a year. The city has lost about 105,029 jobs since August, 2008 and, as you may have noticed, unemployment hovers at 8.1%.

Also: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra attributed to Patanjali by Barbara Stoler Miller   

All life is suffering for a man of discrimination, because of the sufferings inherent in change and its corrupting subliminal impressions, and because of the way qualities of material nature turn against themselves. (15)  

Suffering that has not yet come can be escaped. (16)

Live

742,000 people got fired in March.

According to CNBC "Layoffs were led by the government and non-profit sector with more than 25,000 job cuts, and the sector also led in announced hirings with 11,741."

Also: Cabaret @ Youtube. Possibly NSFW. Possibly.

Pay Day

Remember when we were all into "we demand an economic stimulus package for the arts!"?

How's that going, I wonder?

The New York Times reports that the civil servants at the National Endowment for the Arts are evaluating more than 2000 applications submitted by cultural organizations seeking a portion of the $50 million in stimulus funds allotted to the arts by President Barack Obama.

The NEA has already passed out 40% of the money through grants awarded to State Arts Agencies and Regional Arts Organizations like The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA.)

Meanwhile, over at Reason Online, contributor Greg Beato says American artists "sold themselves out at the ridiculously low price of $50 million" furthermore, he asks, "Wouldn’t it have been more provocative, inspiring, and educational if they’d simply said, “No, thanks”? "

At the Nation, Jeff Chang notes that "Artists played a largely unheralded role in Obama's victory" and then poses the obvious question: "So why haven't community organizers and artists been offered a greater role in the national recovery?"

Which reminds me, remember how we were all like "Please, Mr. President, appoint an "arts czar!"?

Apparently, he did...twice.

The Experts

I have recently been reading old issues of the New Yorker that I have never read before, and I discovered this old article featuring Philip Tetlock, a prominent researcher, who contends that experts are no better at predicting outcomes than are novices.

In a more recent article on CNN, Tetlock shares his findings on the economic experts who failed to predict the great depression which is now upon us:

We found that our experts' predictions barely beat random guesses - the statistical equivalent of a dart-throwing chimp - and proved no better than predictions of reasonably well-read nonexperts. Ironically, the more famous the expert, the less accurate his or her predictions tended to be.

From now on, when I need an expert opinion, I will simply refer to Oblique Strategies; a handy deck of cards created by artists Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975.

The cards make suggestions and pose questions that users can apply when they reach a creative impasse. For example: "Are there sections? Consider transitions."

The card in my hand says "repetition is a form of change"; my new mantra.

Cut You Down

I read David Brooks because I have a short memory.

"Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know. Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions..."

Also: Moby - Run On

Les Misérables

The MTA raises subway fares and cuts services on all forms of mass transit in an effort to rein in a huge deficit.

Unemployment in New York City reaches 8.1 %.

Chancellor Joe Klein wants more power and more money for the New York City Public School system.

Also: Jeanne Moreau - Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud

The Journey

Wall Street rises on the news of President Barack Obama's new bank-bailout plan.

Paul Krugman despairs.

Nicholas Kristof starts another fight about education reform and the relative importance of quality teachers.

Ted Hughes was married to Sylvia and they had a son.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Plus: Jimi H. - All Along the Watchtower