Advocating to Capitalize on Windows of Possibility
2022 Conference Blog
Jasmine Liu
How can organizations pursue the most effective advocacy strategy, and what kinds of advocacy should be prioritized at what times? Research and advocacy work are often deprioritized or neglected when there doesn’t seem to be an immediate or urgent cause for doing it, even when it can be the source of the most significant structural change.
The afternoon session “How Arts Funders Can Advance Systems Change: Developing Advocacy in the West and Beyond” focused on these questions, jumping off from the experiences and successes of the Western Arts Foundation (WESTAF)’s Alliances, Advocacy, and Policy division. In 2020, WESTAF established a Western Arts Advocacy Network, part of a larger push to improve the connectedness and capacity of advocacy efforts across organizations and geographic regions. WESTAF also presented how organizations used awards that they received from WESTAF’s State Advocacy Funds program, which between 2007 and 2022 distributed over $2 million to organizations engaged in arts advocacy and cultural policy work. The top categories that organizations applied their money toward were legislative education and public awareness and hiring or contracting a lobbyist, followed by the state arts agency budget.
Adam Fong from the Hewlett Foundation spoke about what drives their policy work: meeting the end goal of ensuring that every Bay Area youth has access to arts education. Establishing this ground work can be clarifying in deciding what kind of policy work to focus on. The advocacy approach that he tries to take is allowing communities to advocate for the cultural life that they want — which he says is both what they deserve and what UNESCO outlines as a human right. Fong highlighted that even if trust-based philanthropy feels like a cliché, it is important because it centers communities, who know what they need best. As an example, he pointed to research work that the Hewlett Foundation did in Berkeley around housing. Instead of asserting that artists needed housing more than other groups, such as teachers, they funded research on what disparities existed and presented it to the city so that they could make an informed policy decision. He stressed that it was important to monitor when policy windows are open, and to have advocacy plans ready to capitalize on those windows when they do open.
During a fishbowl that followed the presenters’ speeches, interesting points that surfaced included the importance of paying people to show up to have advocacy conversations, thinking about ways to build sustainable advocacy that is not cyclical or one-time in nature, and navigating tensions around pursuing equity goals while still appeasing the interests of large cultural organizations that might stand in the middle of that.
This session was especially provocative in raising questions around who advocacy is for, and how to best do advocacy on behalf of a group without misrepresenting their needs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jasmine Liu is a staff write for Hyperallergic.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
The 2022 GIA Annual Conference begins on Thursday, October 6 and runs through Wednesday, October 12. In the meantime, get familiar with our virtual portal and check out the in-person sessions!
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