Art Smart: Lisa Canning on the State of the Arts
Inverness native Lisa Canning readily admits that “it would have been way easier” to stay immersed in the business world, but the musician and entrepreneur, having spent a lifetime around artists, decided to take on the challenge of making sure that they starve no more.
The words come in a rush for Lisa Canning, even though she’s telling the tale of a path that took a lifetime to cover. Her hands drum on the table as she tries to recall a thought that shifted to the side during a tangent. She punctuates blunt observations with laughter. When she mentions that September 21 is already looming on her personal calendar – that’s the projected first day of class for the Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE), her nascent Chicago-based graduate school – she admits to feeling pressure. But she makes it clear that it’s a good kind of pressure.
“I’ve made so much progress. It’s amazing what a year will do. I think another year will do even more,” said Lisa, who spoke with Quintessential Barrington in 2010 about training artists “to make a self-sustaining living” from their vocation.
“We’re in the beginning of the real lift. We’re applying for grants, we’re trying to find stakeholders, board members and students. Yeah, I’m about as stretched as I can possibly go. The tricky thing is that everything is new. I mean, this has been an odyssey, and how many new, difficult things can you take on?
This has all been by choice, and perhaps out of lifelong habit. The daughter of Harvard graduates who, she recalled, taught her that “creativity was about self-expression, growth, innovation (and) finding new things and new ways forward,” Lisa attended Northwestern University to study music and simultaneously ignited her first business at age 17. Even then, she said, it was about challenging herself, about reinvention. Visitors to Des Plaines might recall Music Starts Here, and she still operates Lisa’s Clarinet Shop in Lombard.
“I started a business (as a college freshman) because I saw a lot of my colleagues being unhappy and just feeling sort of trapped in their profession. Because in the arts, there are very few places to go. Either you get into a major orchestra or you’re on a major stage, and if those things don’t happen to you, then what? Especially if you’re extremely well-trained and you come from a prestigious school and you’ve devoted your life and put all your eggs in a single basket.”
“Then, I stopped and pivoted,” she said. “I realized that what I needed to do was something else that was closely related to this. So I sold my businesses and, in fact, began the process of reinventing myself ... We don’t always get it right the first time in life. I’m newly remarried and very happy, and in a new experience and an adventure that I find refreshing as well.
More than just shifting gears
Lisa is reinventing more than her life. She’s taking on the extraordinary task of changing the paradigm of the starving artist. “As artists we leave the womb wired to be emotionally and intuitively based,” she said. “Most courses offered in higher education don’t include training to incorporate our emotional and intuitive selves as an equally important part of our creative and financial development.”
The problem for artists, as she sees it, is getting their art to fit into an economic model. “The challenge I’ve observed lies in the artist’s inability to channel their artistic and creative obsession – that juice that fuels their creativity – into a productive economic vehicle. So the ‘starving artist’ problem continues,” she said.
America sees its artists as visionaries, rebels, outsiders, and eccentrics. “These long-standing stereotypes have become mainstays of pop culture. They are so entertaining,” Lisa says with her signature chuckle. “A troubled dreamer, a footloose Bohemian, or a charming deadbeat can take us away from our own lives and into the fantasy world they create. These stereotypes portray artists as outsiders, fascinating creatures who somehow manage to survive on the margins of society, who we can live vicariously through not play havoc with the realities of our own lives. And then we keep them there.”
“As an artist and a musician, I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have felt that family, friends, and people who don’t even know me have in some way typecast me as economically naive, foolish, or even irresponsible for pursuing my creativity,” Lisa said.
Creative capitalism
A 2010 National Endowment for the Arts report, “Artists in the Workforce,” demonstrates that such caricatures misrepresent American artists and even contribute to their marginalization in society. There are now almost two million Americans who describe their primary occupation as artist. Representing 1.4 percent of the United States labor force, artists constitute a sizeable class of workers—only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the United States military (2.2 million).
Artists represent a larger group than the legal profession (lawyers, judges, and paralegals), medical doctors (physicians, surgeons, and dentists), or agricultural workers (farmers, ranchers, foresters, and fishers). The size of the artistic community gives the group enormous aggregate income, approximately $70 billion annually. In terms of sheer numbers, artists represent a powerful labor force whose economic contributions go largely unrecognized by both the general public and the government.
Lisa uses the term “creative capitalism” to explain the necessary paradigm shift from starving artist to an artist who has a place in the overall economy. “Creativity is an essential, irreplaceable human resource. It is the rare artist out there who even suspects that their discipline has a role to play in closing the global “ingenuity gap” – the gap between the problems we face in the world, and our ability to find the necessary ideas to solve them,” she said.
As a result, she explains, we have an enormous amount of “creative arts capital” that needs to become a productive tool in society, one that can be utilized to innovate and for economic advancement. By training artists to work in all sectors and strands of society and leverage their creativity for advancement into them, we will create creative capitalism.
According to an Urban Institute 2003 study, there is a substantial demand for artists in hybrid markets, yet few programs or funding sources exist to support their development. One issue is that funders and policy makers don’t know how to categorize their work. Part of Lisa’s vision for the IAE is to bring clarity to the value of these hybrid roles to the community through comprehensive training that helps define the value of hybrid artistic roles in society.
Preparing the canvas
How has the process unfolded for reaching the first day of school? For starters, facilities have been leased on the North Side of Chicago at Flourish Studios and the Greenhouse Theater Center, both on Lincoln Avenue. The Institute is scheduled to open with a core faculty of five – including Lisa herself — and an anticipated enrollment of 25 students. A post-graduate curriculum has been drawn up consisting of 750 contact hours split between six modules.
A primary and ongoing component, Lisa explained, was seeking out stakeholders and organizations that dovetail with the school’s mission.
For example, last July, she made a connection with the Aspen Institute, a non profit based in Colorado and Washington, D.C. (See sidebar). Lisa said she felt her prospective curriculum would be a match with the international institute because “art has an incredibly important role to play in helping relationships between Americans and Muslims” in the current state of affairs. She said talks have been held with the U.S. State Department about offering art instruction to students in Marrakech, Morocco, in 2012.
A relationship is also being forged with Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit based in New York and Washington, D.C. that, among other missions, seeks to help “arts education thrive and contribute to more vibrant and creative communities.” Lisa said she feels this would be a perfect fit with the concept of stimulating local economies with business-educated art students.
“They’re a very strong advocate (of the arts). They’re heavily involved in politically making sure the arts are advanced by knowing every single politician’s view on the arts and documenting them,” said Lisa, adding that early discussions indicated that “they’re very interested in the work we’re doing, and they’re extremely interested in the cultural diplomacy initiatives we’re hoping to work on (with the State Department).”
Closer to home, Lisa said she’s also taken steps toward alliances with the University of Illinois School of Arts & Design and the Chicago Public Schools. There has also been the nuts-and-bolts work of crafting a curriculum that offers, according to the Institute’s literature, “two years of entrepreneurial training to develop the skills (artists) need to realize their artistic visions.”
“I can see that we’re making the climb. It would have been way easier to stay where I was, except it was knawing at me,” she said. “When you’re starting over again and reinventing yourself, you have to know who you really are – and the arts teach you about who you really are.”
For more information on the Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship, visit www.theIAE.com or call 773-756-2163. To reach Lisa Canning, email her at Lisa@theIAE.com.
A world of opportunity through art
Lisa Canning offered this perspective on the importance of art during her recent presentation at Judson University:
“The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking scores predict people’s creative accomplishments. For the last 18 years, creativity has continually inched downward. A 2010 IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the number one “leadership competency” needed for future success. The stakes are colossal: the imperative for human ingenuity is undisputed.
Our nation’s economic growth is hardly all that is at stake: we are inundated with national and global matters that cry out for creative solutions. Giving artists new purpose through entrepreneurial training will help them discover potent uses for their creativity and deepen its social impact.
Artists are already embedded into projects in their communities. Whether they realize it or not, they are everyday social entrepreneurs. Their creativity enhances and contributes to their surroundings. Their imaginations inspire social change and new ways of doing things. The artist as social entrepreneur is a powerful and practical approach to artist employment and community development.”
Leaders in national and international concerns have taken notice of the mission of the IAE, and have reached out to partner with Lisa and her organization. Leaders from two of those organizations share their missions and how they are partnering with Lisa and the IAE.
Mickey Bergman is the Director of Middle East Programs at the Aspen Institute.
“The Aspen Institute is a place where leaders from around the world convene to discuss the great challenges of our time, as well as craft solutions to those problems. It is a place where ideas are born and new initiatives are launched. We are proud to have been asked by the U. S. State Department to shepherd an important public-private partnership, the Partners for a New Beginning’s North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (PNB-NAPEO) that will focus on bringing economic opportunity to the Maghreb through job creation and entrepreneurship. The Aspen Institute will serve as the Secretariat of this partnership.
The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship adds a unique element to PNB-NAPEO. With a focus on fostering value-based leadership within the arts community, IAE seeks to help artists translate their creativity into other sectors of society. By combining creativity and value-based leadership with entrepreneurship, IAE will add value in the United States and in North Africa, and help address a major problem facing the North Africa region – youth unemployment. There is a growing need for the creative industries and Lisa is positioned to help make a difference.
Lisa is a successful entrepreneur who has shown leadership and commitment to helping artists both in the U.S. as well as in the North Africa region pursue their passions and create jobs and businesses in their communities. We reached out to her, asking her to become what we call a “lead partner” in PNB-NAPEO. This means that the work that Lisa is doing through the IAE will have the backing of the Aspen Institute’s Secretariat.
We will assist her in identifying and connecting with partners who can help stay connected with the local North African leaders to address needs and implement the project on the ground. Also, this is a public-private partnership, which means the U.S. State Department is lending its support in various ways including offering expertise and publicity. The Aspen Secretariat will help coordinate this support for Lisa’s work on the IAE.
Marete Wester is the Director of Arts Policy for American for the Arts.
With a record of more than 50 years of service, Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. Research is finally beginning to emerge that helps us build a better understanding of how the arts impact social issues—like healthcare, economic development, reducing poverty and under-employment, improving race relations and cultural understanding—and not least of which, our role in spurring on creativity and innovation.
Lisa is steadfastly committed to ensuring that artists have the skills and opportunity to succeed as both entrepreneurs and agents of social change. The research we have done and our work with local arts agencies over several decades gives us convincing evidence of the powerful role artists can and should play in our communities. We’ve been playing an advisory role as the project with the Aspen Institute and U.S. State Department North Africa Partners for Economic Opportunity (NAPEO) continues to unfold. The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship is a key part of the NAPEO strategy.
One of the most exciting trends in the arts world is the increasing use of collaboration across not only arts sectors, but with other NGO’s as well as government and the private sector to achieve major social change—on both a domestic and global scale. Finding others who share your goals is key.
Future artists share Their Views
In April, Lisa Canning visited with seven Barrington High School students who are planning to pursue art in college. These students are leaders in the fine arts program. They shared their views about being an artist.
The group talked about art as a powerful tool, and that it is a part of who they are. The students allowed their vulnerability to show and discussed the emotional aspects of being an artist. Several agreed with Connor Murray that the fine arts department is a safe haven for who they are, and where they need to be – that it is sacred to them. “Art is a shelter that helps us cope with what’s going on around us,” Ryan Fish said.
These art students are concerned that creativity is in decline. They have friends in other schools who don’t have access to art classes due to the economy, or who are just choosing not to take them because art is an elective. Kayleigh Karbowski noted that it “seems like art is becoming a recreational thing” and asked about where our value was for art. They all spoke highly of the program at BHS. Amanda Rogers said, “We are lucky to have the programs we do.”
Amy Johnson said that the decision to pursue art as a career has developed a negative stigma. “Many believe that it should just be a hobby, or that one could not make a reasonable living doing it,” she said. “What Lisa Canning is starting with her school is an important discipline every person serious about pursuing art should pay attention to. Her idea to form a new generation of creators who are ready to use their skills to better the people around them could greatly impact how art is perceived.”
Lisa’s program is relevant in that it emphasizes the use of art to better society. The cultural exchange programs and the international relations were interesting points made about the potential of the world of art,” Catherine Mehringer said. She added, “I think her overall idea is different in that it involves doing art with a strong purpose that could ultimately lead to bettering relations. The universal language of art is certainly something that unites us all, and I think it is important that we embrace that.”
About the IAE:
The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE) is a two-year, post-graduate certificate program open to actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers, culinary artists and fashion designers. There is no age limit for the program, although the IAE projects that most students will be between 20 and 40 years of age. The program is also open to self-taught artists who can demonstrate they are working at a professional level. If a student does not have an undergraduate degree, the only requirement is proof that the artist has worked as a professional.