The ABC Community Coaching initiative is designed to help your community (neighborhood, town, county or region) make more sustainable and cost-effective decisions in promoting community and economic development through the arts.
In other words, this program is to help communities become more livable, sustainable or prosperous through the arts -- not just to help the arts.
For example, the kind of initiatives we will support have a direct benefit to a community. We might help a community help an arts organization create a strategic plan that helps support arts education in the community. But if the project is to create strategic plan only to help the arts organization thrive, we would not accept that project in this initiative.
Every client community will get a coach, who will meet with the community team five times in each coaching period. Current coaching periods are May through September 2011, October 2011 through February 2012, and March through July 2012
The coach will help the community team explore its goals, challenge the team to critically examine its assumptions and objectives, and support team members as they explore their strategies.
At the end of the coaching period, the community team will have a well-developed set of strategies for creative placemaking that they can begin to implement in 2012.
Example: The team from Anytown, NJ wants to create a comprehensive vision for the arts in Anytown. In four months, they are able to reach out to enough residents, businesses and stakeholders to create a draft vision. By the end of the coaching session, they will have a draft vision statement that could be presented to the public, and (assuming they did the right types and amount of outreach), adopted by the Anytown Town Council. Or, the team isn’t able to reach out to stakeholders in four months because there are too many divisions and tensions in the town about the arts. In this case, the team will work on how to engage stakeholders and build consensus. At the end of the coaching session, the team will have an action plan for building a vision.
The coach will:
- Help the community team make good, cost-effective and sustainable decisions for the right reasons.
- Help team members build their capacity to ask good, tough questions about creative placemaking and to make difficult decisions.
- Provide useful information about creative placemaking.
- Guide team members as they analyze their own community’s opportunities and constraints for building, growing or sustaining creative placemaking.
But the coach will not:
- Conduct interviews or primary research in the community. However, the coach will review your work to help you determine if you have enough information to make effective decisions.
- Advocate or lobby on your behalf with funders, policymakers, or elected officials. However, the coach can provide you with advice on how to persuade these decisionmakers.
- Tell you what to do. The coach's role is to help you build your capacity to make better decisions.
Apply now for the program, or read on
Program logistics and questions and answers
· Communities can be as small as a neighborhood or as large as a multi-county region. Any community within a 2 1/2-hour drive of Newark, New Jersey is eligible to participate.
· Each community team can have as many as 10 members. At least one has to be a working artist, and one more a current elected official. Preference will go to teams that are larger, more diverse, and have more than one elected official.
· The coach will meet with the community team in the community at least once, and in the community or by teleconference at least four more times. The meeting times will be those that are mutually convenient for the coach and the community team. Each coaching session will last up to two hours.
· A majority of team members must be present at every coaching session. Not everyone has to be in every session, but at least one elected official and artist has to be in at least two of the coaching sessions. Team members in a coaching session are responsible for sharing information with the rest of the team.
· Every team will get a private, online virtual office for their project, and training in the use of the virtual office.
· PDI must receive at least one-third of the payment (government-sponsored purchase order acceptable) before the first coaching session, and the remainder within one month of the program start.
If you have any questions, please contact: Deborah Schulze, PDI Program Manager schulze@eden.rutgers.edu 732-932-3822, x635
Questions and answers about the coaching initiative:
· Do I need to have attended the conference in February to apply?
No. Any community within a 2 1/2 hour drive of Newark, NJ is welcome to apply.
· Can I apply as an individual, or as a single organization?
Sorry, no. To move from idea to action more quickly, it is important to have representatives from throughout the community.
· Who should lead our community team?
It doesn’t matter who from the team is the lead, as long as that person is willing to be a contact for the entire team.
· How should we choose team members?
Try to make your team as diverse as possible. The team should reflect a wide variety of interests, including those of elected officials, neighborhood residents, businesses and other stakeholders in the community. That kind of team is more likely to get more information and reach out more quickly to the people who are needed to support creative placemaking.
ABC staff can help you determine whom to invite to the team, and how.
· Who should be the elected official on our team? Why is it important to have an elected official on the team?
It doesn’t matter, as long as the person will remain an elected official throughout the time of the coaching session. It is important to have an elected official who can serve as a liaison between the team and the governing body of the community.
· What kind of artist should be on the team? Why is it important to have an artist on the team?
The artist should be a professional artist – that is, someone whose livelihood depends on creating and selling art, performances, literature, etc. It is important to have a working artist on the team so team members can better understand business and industry issues involving the arts.
· Why should we consider the coaching program if we can afford to hire a consultant?
This program can save you money by helping you get some of the knowledge that you would otherwise pay a consultant to get. It will also help you know the right questions to ask so you get the most value from your spending on consultants.
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