I’ve got my eyes on two new groups of young Arts leaders in Texas, and hoping to pull out a few advocates and leaders from these groups. Meet them…

The North Texas Emerging Leaders. They have one Americans for the Arts annual conference, and one Creative Conversation under their belts.  The organizations they represent will benefit from their networking and certainly the field will be richer as they grow in the profession.  (Their challenge is to learn that my bark is much worse than anything they will encounter on their journey.)  They have gotten to share the stage with Eric Booth and John Paul Batiste. Not a bad start, but I need to see more…

The second group is my Univ. of North Tx Politics and Advocacy class.  Despite my weekly rants to get them to talk back to me- they do come back! Good sign. These graduate students have written too many research papers and not had enough practical experience. Not a slam against the Academy-just a challenge for me.  The class will host their first Creative Conversation later this month, targeting the student body at UNT. They have scoured the Arts Action Fund site and created a great interactive event to celebrate National Arts and Humanities Month. They have a target goal signing up 100 new members to the Arts Action Fund via a combination of jazz, doughnuts and arts advocacy. Gotta give them an A for inventive marketing strategies right?

Leadership is an action word.  Our young arts leaders need to be encouraged to “do” more.  There’s plenty these young thinkers can teach us.  I’m almost ready to hang up my dancing shoes and step aside.