Editor’s note: This piece is one of an occasional series on nonprofit leaders in Milwaukee. The responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Terry Murphy joined ArtWorks for Milwaukee as executive director in 2012, after a similar role at an arts program in Michigan. ArtWorks for Milwaukee offers internships that link area high school students with professional artists. Two years ago, ArtWorks received the largest grant in the program’s 15-year existence, which increased the number of teens eligible for internships.
Q: Why is art important when it comes to young people?
A: Art is something that can knock down barriers. It helps with self-expression, reflection and creativity. When we have a group project, the interns can focus on problem solving and developing innovative thoughts through collaboration — things that are very important in today’s working world.
Q: How has your group affected the Milwaukee art community?
A: Since 2001, we have had over 800 high school students in our programs. Some have had interest in pursuing careers in the arts and others have not. Our programs use the arts to engage students to help them develop transferable art skills for the workforce. We see our former interns out in various parts of the community doing all sorts of great things. We recently invited 15 alumni to come back and share their stories with our interns to show how they can use their experience to advance their careers.
Q: What kinds of decisions do you have to make as a nonprofit leader?
A: The most important decision that I make is finding the right type of program to offer our youth. The decision is driven by our mission. If we’re not offering programs that help our youth, then we have no business being here. I keep that in mind for every decision I have to make for this organization, whether it’s the types of grants we ask for, or the types of partners we pursue.
Q: Where do the “big” ideas come from in the organization?
A: The ideas for the internships we offer our youth come from all over the organization. We’re lucky to have a great program manager and program coordinator as well as a wonderful board of directors. It really revolves around being open to new ideas anyone within the organization may have. It could be a neighborhood association asking to do a piece of public art. Maybe we want to teach our teens video skills, so we develop a video internship position. There are so many possibilities and we try to be open to all of them.
Q: How do you allocate your time?
A: I spend a lot of my time connecting with my colleagues, the other executive directors in the city. I get involved in initiatives especially the collaborative ones like Beyond the Bell and Milwaukee Succeeds. Whenever I can meet with other youth-serving leaders or Milwaukee-serving organizations, I try to attend. I think it’s important for nonprofit leaders to connect with the rest of the community.
Q: How do you measure the success of your program?
A: We’re always evaluating the ways we can measure and get a sense of our success. How many volunteers were able to engage with the youth? How does the staff feel about the program? Those things are important to me and the whole organization. We look for feedback whenever we can through our funders, interns, lead artists and the rest of the staff. We’re always incorporating feedback so we can keep our organization vibrant.
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Follow the money, follow the work. Who’s getting the bulk of the money, and who’s doing the bulk of the work?
Please take a look at how much funding these organizations take in versus how much goes to pay actual artists. Arts “administration” organizations, some of which are not at all local but the arts equivalent of national charter schools that siphon money from local public education, are fond of crowing to the media about how they get artists to volunteer their time. The media love that story and never seem to question it. However, while the artists may be pressed to volunteer, the organization and its administrators are just about always getting paid. The artists may have conceived of a project, staffed a project, done all of the direct work with learners or audiences, and yet received little to no pay or recognition (I don’t see many artists’ names listed in this article, for example). Meanwhile, the organization, often trusted by donors by simple virtue of being an organization and helped along by credulous reporting, cashes in. Arts bonuses for business people. Is that really our ideal? Business and administration are an important and valued part of the arts, to be sure, but there needs to be a balance. In Milwaukee, little balance exists, either in funding or in news coverage.
Readers, if you care about Milwaukee having its own thriving professional arts community, including the students mentioned in this article who might want to make a living one day as artists in their own community, make sure that your arts support money goes to organizations who pay local artists respectful wages. If the vast majority of a 10+ year arts organization’s funding goes to compensating administration or preserving an unnecessary location, you should maybe reconsider trusting that adoring news story, as well as that donation. CharityNavigator.org or Guidestar.org can help you to get started, as can an organization’s own website.
MNNS, it really is your responsibility to do your homework on the financials of these organizations and include them in any similar story. An informative follow up on ArtWorks’ financials would help to balance this story, for example. This kind of reporting could be a big help to local artists who have invested significant time and money into quality training yet are repeatedly required by a gullible media and sometimes predatory, often well-funded organizations to volunteer or near-volunteer while the organizations themselves are fairly flush.
However there truly are credible arts organizations in Milwaukee where business people and artists collaborate to provide opportunity, exposure, and the best pay they can muster to local artists. As the boat rises for these organizations, the same is true for Milwaukee artists. ArtWorks might be one of those, but I don’t know, and it doesn’t appear that the writer here made any effort to find out.
Find out. What you discover could help ArtWorks to do even more good work for artists, students, and the rest of our community. If what you find doesn’t shine a positive light, though, it will still help Milwaukee arts. In a field where people have to scrap for funding, articles like this one are an uncritical giveaway. Make sure it’s a worthy one.