Capacity Building for the Arts in Puerto Rico
2022 Conference Blog
Jasmine Liu
"Puerto Rico (San Juan)" by R9 Studios FL (Thanks to all the fans!!!) is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
On Monday afternoon, I attended “Capacity Building for the Arts in Puerto Rico: Arts, Innovation and Management (AIM) Program and Other Efforts,” with Flamboyan Foundation executive director Carlos Rodriguez and Bloomberg Philanthropies arts team member Ethan Joseph presenting. The Flamboyan Foundation, which addresses educational inequity in Puerto Rico, launched an arts fund in 2018 together with Lin-Manuel Miranda, his family, and Hamilton, In fall 2020, the two organizations partnered together on the AIM Puerto Rico program to support ten cultural institutions they identified as essential, and supported them by providing them with management training.
The immediate crisis the program was established to respond to was the economic downturn in Puerto Rico since 2011 — with significant out-migration that has made staffing at arts organizations challenging compounded by losses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, how could the AIM program best bolster efforts at these ten organizations to continue to provide arts and cultural programming? Like many organizations, many in the AIM program were largely mired in day-to-day operational concerns, and their participation allowed them to take a step back and devote time to general development.
One critical way in which the AIM program supported the organizations it selected was by conducting strategic planning in concert with them. Strategic planning involves an analysis of what organizations do well, where they are underperforming, and externally comparing the organization with others like it. Strategic clarity can be especially important in times of crisis so the organization knows what to prioritize.
The AIM program also conducted resilience training with these organizations. Joseph noted that many of these organizations already knew quite a bit about resilience and responding to crisis. The most important part of resilience training, he said, was training staff and ensuring that they had a plan. Of the organizations from the AIM program that Joseph highlighted included the Mueo de Arte Contemporaneo (MAC) — which he identified as the most resilient organization because of its tight connection to the community and its reputation within it as a collaborative hub for artists — and Museo de las Américas, which in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria was left without power for 80 days but which since undergoing strategic planning has become better at telling its own story and writing grant proposals. For all organizations, the primary concern was fundraising.
This session foregrounded how funders might be able to help organizations focus on longer-term concerns and prepare for risks.
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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