Professional Development Series: Q & A with Sara Bateman

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We feel very privileged to have Sara featured in this week’s ELANblog post and we look forward to meeting with her and exploring the One Million Bones Project this weekend as part of our Art Venture trip to Seattle.

1. Hi Sara! Can you tell us a little bit about your current role with Americans for the Arts?

Sure! I’m currently working with Americans for the Arts as the Local Arts Advancement Coordinator, a contract position working to oversee the organization’s emerging leader initiatives. In this position, I’ve been providing oversight of the Emerging Leaders Network, including supporting the work of the Emerging Leaders Council, facilitating the Local Arts Classroom, and planning the 2013 Emerging Leaders Preconference (an opportunity all emerging arts leaders should not miss!). We’ve been working on some exciting emerging leader-related items lately, including the selection of the 2013 Emerging Leader Award and the upcoming Emerging Leaders Blog Salon.

The work has been incredible in scope, and has been a wonderful opportunity to connect with and be inspired by other young arts leaders throughout the country.

2. How has your previous leadership (Chair) role with Emerging Leaders for the Arts prepared you for your role with AFTA?

Having served as the Chair of the Emerging Leaders in the Arts Network (ELAN) has been immensely valuable – in fact, I can’t imagine navigating this current role without having been involved in ELAN. The general understanding that I gained of the Emerging Leaders Network from my time in this local chapter has informed my current work. It also allowed me to develop a personal network that extends to the work I am doing today. Many of the individuals I am working with and that I rely on for support on an ongoing basis came out of my time with ELAN and through attendance at AFTA-related events while serving on the Leadership Team.

3. We are planning to visit the One Million Bones Project in Seattle when we arrive next weekend for our ArtsVenture excursion! Can you tell us a little bit about the One Million Bones project and it’s aim towards arts + activism?

First off, I am so excited for ELAN to visit Seattle this week! It’s a city that I grew up in and love dearly, and it has so much cultural potential that I think everyone will really enjoy experiencing.

Since October, I’ve been working here in Seattle with One Million Bones to implement the project in our community. The aim of One Million Bones is to raise awareness of genocides and atrocities happening around the world through hands-on art making and education. The final culmination of this project is an installation of 1,000,000 handmade bones on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from June 8-10, 2013, that will serve as a visual petition against humanitarian crises.

The project was initiated by artist Naomi Natale, who has been working tirelessly over the course of three years to bring this effort to the scale it has reached. Naomi wanted this to be social practice based and has secured cross-sector collaborations and individuals such as myself to go out into their communities and engage artists, students, schools, community groups, and beyond in participation. While there are many, many collaborators on this project, two of the most substantial are Students Rebuild (an initiative of the Bezos Family Foundation) and CARE. Through this partnership, Students Rebuild is sponsoring each bone, up to 500,000 bones, for $1.00 each. That money will then go into CARE, an organization that does on-the-ground humanitarian relief and rebuilding work in Central Africa.

Here in Seattle we have a goal of contributing 7,000 handmade bones toward this effort. We’ve gone a step further and are collaborating with Students Rebuild and the Olson Kundig Architects [storefront] to bring an exhibit and community bone making space to Seattle for the month of April. The entire exhibit planning process has been a participatory experience in itself, which has really kept the entire process in line with the vision of this being the effort of many, not just one.

The project is truly a beautiful example of how arts and activism can work together. Getting people to be hands-on with art making creates an experience and awareness like no other, and being able to collaborate with other organizations and put a monetary value on the work being done allows the project to grow beyond an idea and into an actual relief effort.

4. In your opinion, what is the biggest benefit of attending ArtsVenture as an emerging arts leader?

A combination of experience and networking made the two ArtsVenture’s I had the opportunity to participate in engaging and valuable. It was nice to have the opportunity to remove yourself from the silo of your community and experience arts and culture somewhere else – and in both an urban and rural environment over the course of the two years I attended. The fact that our Arts and Administration Program has four different concentration areas, and that this was considered while deciding which organizations to visit, created opportunities to experience people and places I might not normally engage with, and these sometimes ended up being the experiences that resonated with me the most.

I’m always a fan of networking too, and this trip allows you to do just that. If I ever need to reach back into the communities we visited, I know have contacts. In fact, I recently used one of those contacts here from our 2011 ArtsVenture to Seattle!

5. For the individuals who didn’t attend last year’s trip to Bend, Oregon, can you give us a little recap of the trip?

We spent a few days over in Central Oregon, visiting the rural-based communities of Bend and Sisters. We were in our third year of running ArtsVenture, and both years we had visited urban areas. We decided it was time to examine a rural-based environment, and with a burgeoning arts and culture scene in Central Oregon, it was the perfect opportunity.

We tried to touch on the different concentrations represented by our degree program, scheduling visits with community, museum, performing, and media-based organizations. These included Arts Central, the region’s local arts agency; the High Desert Museum; Tower Theatre; BendFilm Festival; and Caldera Arts, an organization offering an artist-in-residency program and art and environmental programming for youth.

6. What was your internship like in Washington, DC with Animating Democracy?

Hot and humid. If you’re a West Coaster deciding to intern in Washington, D.C. in the dead of summer, prepare yourself!

In all seriousness though, it was a wonderful opportunity. Being someone who is interested in the intersection of arts and social change, I can’t think of a more substantial internship opportunity. During the summer that I was there, Animating Democracy was moving forward with work on their Arts & Social Change Mapping Initiative, which looked to highlight arts- and humanities-based civic dialogue and engagement organizations, projects, artists, and funders through an online database.

It was a lot of research, web work, and Excel data sheet preparation. Some days, I would find myself envious of my colleagues whose internships had them working hands-on creating art with youth or putting on large-scale arts festivals, but in the end it was such a valuable experience in expanding my knowledge of the arts for change landscape. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience or a better organization to intern with.

7. Do you have a piece of advice for emerging leaders who wish to make a mark nationally and get involved with AFTA even outside of ELAN?

If you are interested in national level work, an internship is a great place to start. It will help you understand the work being done and how to navigate a large-scale arts organization. If you can’t commit to an internship which, let’s admit, can be costly and logistically difficult, I’d encourage individuals to become members of organizations like Americans for the Arts, attend national conferences, keep your eye on blogs and emails being distributed by these organizations, and stay abreast on nationally-based research.

For younger leaders such as ourselves, I’d also encourage looking into leadership development fellowships and courses, and national level advisory bodies, such as the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Council, that you can serve a term on. These will allow you to gain national level experience while still staying locally based and grow a network of leaders you’ll know for the remainder of your career.

Sara Bateman currently works at the intersection of art and activism and she is also pursuing her Master’s degree in Arts Management at the University of Oregon. Coming from the field of photographic arts, she is primarily interested in how photography can be used as a tool for civic engagement and social change. Sara is involved with Americans for the Arts as the Local Arts Advancement Coordinator and as a State Coordinator for the One Million Bones project.