The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

We also have students on our board of directors,
and they are not tokens. We have a “give or
get” $5,000 minimum for board membership,
and there are no exceptions. The students on
our board have to raise $5,000. This year, one
of those student board members played a
significant role in obtaining a $50,000 appropriation
from the legislature for Working Classroom.
She is 15 years old and looks very young—and
she is a dynamo. She went before the entire
legislature, introduced herself, said that she
was on the board of directors and had the
responsibility for raising $5,000 this year. She then
addressed the legislature and asked it to please
help her meet her fundraising commitment. It
did. It was quite astounding and reminded
me, once again, how much we underestimate
young people. No matter how high we raise
the bar at Working Classroom, students are
always ahead of us in terms of their ability
to work, to be committed, and to use their
talents to address issues that concern them.
What I would say to organizations discussing
diversity is: Hire people, mentor them, provide
them with opportunity. That commitment,
and those actions will transform the cultural
and artistic landscape of this country.
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“Core Values,” Working Classroom, 28
Oct. 2006 .
The third pillar is action. We try to use our talents
to affect public policy, to raise awareness, to
provoke discussion. We are constantly searching
for ways to use art to address social issues and to
provoke discussion rather than to confirm opinions.
There is a lot of art and theatre—at least
in New Mexico—that confirms identity and confirms
shared values but doesn’t provoke people
to really question those values and/or their own
attitudes. So, we try to use art to do that.
Finally, mentoring is the fourth pillar. We have
a motto at Working Classroom, which is “help
and be helped.” I think it is one of the keys
to a successful program that mentoring or
leadership isn’t from here to here to here in
a linear hierarchical line. It’s all around, and
everybody has a part in helping each other.
So that is our model. It has been created
by students over a period of 17 years. It
has been influenced by the staff and guest
artists. It works, more or less, most of the
time—sometimes better than others.
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