The 50th anniversary has been a time of reflection and an opportunity to imagine forward. The Arts Extension Service’s (AES) past is filled with remarkable accomplishments and many “firsts” for the arts and arts management fields. Some of these accomplishments have been articulated in 50th anniversary articles written by colleagues, instructors, and Advisory Board members. Several of our students have also shared their experiences via video. As director of AES, I believe one of AES’s contributions has been an unwavering commitment to artists and creatives as core to the arts ecosystem as well as our trajectory of training and publishing to support the learning and development of artists and arts managers in the field and as students at the University.
At its inception, AES aimed to develop and nurture arts and culture in communities and community development through the arts. From founder Stan Rosenberg’s vision to current staff, AES embraced the UMass land grant directive to share the arts resources of the university with the community and these efforts continually evolved to serve artists, arts managers, and communities.
AES’s first three decades were a laboratory of on-the-ground arts programming with multiple goals. The New England Artist Festival & Showcase (1976-1985), for example, inventoried the region’s wealth of artists in all disciplines; at the same time providing a platform for them to be discovered by a purchasing public and venues seeking to hire artists. Other special programs included the New England Film and Video Festival in collaboration with Boston Film/Video Foundation, serving as western MA coordinator for Very Special Arts Massachusetts to mount accessible arts programs for children and adults with disabilities, and coordinating the National Public Art Policy Project in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts as a celebration of our 40th anniversary.
AES turned its programming expertise into training and publications. AES found innovative ways to leverage limited dollars and offered free or low-cost training and consulting. For example, the Peer Advising Network (PAN) trained trainers in order to provide affordable technical assistance for arts organizations across the country. See articles by Craig Dreeszen and Maryo Gard Ewell about the impact of PAN.
The Arts Festival Work Kit guided communities to design and implement events tailored to their cultural and community goals. The Fairs and Festivals directory provided creatives with a comprehensive resource to find opportunities to show and sell their work. The Artist-in-Business book evolved from our experience of consulting with and training artists on how to run a business while upholding the integrity of their art. Having taught dozens of these trainings myself, this work, and getting to know the artists, has been some of the most gratifying in my career at AES.
Our Fundamentals of Arts Management book was the culmination of this evolution. Research became workshops, became chapters, became classes, and the cycle continues. The Fundamentals book has been used by 45 percent of colleges and universities that teach arts management. The upcoming 7th edition will equitably feature BIPOC authors and will draw upon concepts taught in AES’s Cultural Equity course which was developed in 2017, three years before the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests. The course is part of AES’s academic offerings and continues to be one of AES’s most sought out by those striving to more equitably serve their diverse artist, arts organization, and community constituents.
Over its 50 years, AES has been housed within the Division of Continuing Education and the Outreach Division and, in 2011 moved to the College of Humanities and Fine Arts (CHFA). The evolution of our programs reflects the missions and mandates of these departments, the University, and the community arts field. In 1998 we were among the first on the UMass campus to offer online courses and AES now offers three online arts management certificates: Core, Professional, and Leadership. In progress are additional collaborative degrees and programs with colleagues in several departments and a graduate arts management degree with the Isenberg School of Management.
It was the move to CHFA that sparked our first-ever programs and classes for traditional-aged undergraduate students and dramatically shifted our energies to building out leading edge academic courses and certificate programs to prepare the next generation of arts leaders. It has been a joy to see our students take a chance on a class in a field they have never heard of then walk out excited to pursue a Masters or Ph.D. program in arts management, a career in arts management, or start their own artist-based business or nonprofit.
In 2015 AES received support from the Vice-Chancellor of Research and Engagement to launch the Arts Entrepreneurship Initiative to create an internship program that would expand mutually beneficial opportunities for arts organizations/artists and arts and humanities students, offer arts entrepreneurship education, and work on regional creative economy efforts. Through this Initiative we have directly served more than 13,800 students and artists and counting!
The Entrepreneurship Initiative also enabled AES’s participation in the development of the ArtsHub. This free-to-join online resource was developed during the pandemic with funds from the Mass. Office of Business Development and is chock full of exhibition opportunities, articles featuring regional creatives, and the latest on making a living as an artist. Launched in collaboration with area creatives, creative economy organizations, and the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), the ArtsHub integrated NEFA’s CreativeGround artist directory into the site. The site kicked off in January 2022 with 14 virtual sessions predominantly led by regional artists and arts leaders. In 2023 alone more than 31,000 unique visitors explored the ArtsHub site and it is among the top driver of visits to CreativeGround.
Finally, in keeping with AES’s spirit of leading-edge initiatives, we move forward on the intersectional issues of sustainability, resiliency, and justice, areas in which I believe the arts can play a significant role. In 2010 I created the Greening Your Arts Nonprofit course as a first step in developing the Culture for Climate Action (C4CA) initiative. Currently, with colleagues at UMass Clean Energy Extension, Vermont Arts Council, Double Edge Theatre, Ohketeau Cultural Center, Paper City Clothing Company, plus UMass Sustainability alum Lauren de la Parra of Culture Climate Strategies, we are testing the C4CA pilot. The pilot guides arts and humanities organization staff in how to cut their emissions, add clean energy, leverage their buying power, tap programming to involve their communities, and work to build regional resiliency as well as a just transition to a clean future.
Through Double Edge Theatre, for example, we are exploring what it means to serve as a rural resiliency hub ready to serve their community during power outages and extreme weather. From Ohketeau we learn about opportunities to restore resilient Indigenous food systems and what it means to truly access land. From Paper City we witness efforts to revitalize an abandoned building while creating an educational space for creative youth and a regional art gallery. The goal is to integrate this work as a natural and ongoing part of programming and operations that ultimately saves resources, increases resiliency, and positions arts organizations as climate leaders. Thanks to an EmPower grant from Mass Clean Energy Center, partners look forward to future opportunities to continue our collective efforts.
AES’s half-century of contributions to the landscape of the arts has an enduring legacy of excellence, curiosity, service, and deep connection to the arts and community. It manifests in the experiences and successes of those who attended events, took part in Arts Management Institutes, completed certificates or an online degree, served as a case study organization or an internship provider or intern. Your successes, if in any way supported by AES, deserve to be shared! In that spirit we invite you to send us your story and we will post as many as we can on our website and share in social media. 50 years was only possible thanks to the efforts of instructors, students, artists, event participants, and many staff and advisors, and each contribution has built this legacy and we invite you to stay connected. As we always say, “Once a part of AES, always a part of AES.”