Arts policy congress examines role

BANGOR – Eric Booth, an actor and leader in the national arts scene, recited Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 to more than 100 artists, educators and arts organizers Friday at the Bangor Civic Center.

Booth offered introductory remarks but they were not about literary history, sonnet form or iambic pentameter. Instead, Booth asked the audience to consider four preparatory questions: What do you call it when you feel down in the dumps? How do you behave when you feel that way? How do you feel about others during that time? And what lifts you out of that state?

Only then, when Booth had the full attention and involvement of everyone in the room, did he recite the poem about feeling unlucky, disgraced, jealous and ultimately uplifted by the power of love.

Booth was behaving as an “agent of artistic experience,” one of the several guiding principles delineated during Friday’s Congress of Arts Policy and Current Issues, a daylong program sponsored by the Maine Arts Commission. Participants included visual artists, performing artists, artistic directors, educators and producers who focused on Booth’s suggestions about building communities by actively enlisting people’s personal experiences for understanding the arts.

In addition to facilitating two hour-plus focus groups and synthesizing participants’ responses, Booth spoke of the image Maine has beyond its state lines.

“There is a general impression around the country that there is something brewing here in Maine, that something positive is starting to happen in the arts,” said Booth, who teaches arts and education at the Juilliard School in Manhattan and has published a book on trends in the arts. “Your reputation is starting to have a distinct identity.”

The potential for arts to build communities is not a new notion to civic groups in Bangor and throughout Maine. But Booth’s goal was to expand the participants’ definitions of community beyond ethnicity and geography, and into other groupings such as lifestyle, religious beliefs and value systems.

He also challenged each participant to adopt the model of “agent of artistic experience” in the community. Marketing and advertising are important to promoting the arts, Booth said, but to truly tap into returning arts audiences the artist or arts organization must make provocative connections between people’s lives and the arts.

“You can have a fantastic museum but unless the individual can enter into that and find rewarding experiences, you don’t have arts building in the community. It’s more than bricks and mortar,” said Booth. “Arts don’t build a community just because they are there. Arts build a community when people are able to build artistic processes.”

U.S. Rep. John Baldacci made a brief appearance early in the day to encourage the efforts of the Maine Arts Commission.

“I feel very strongly about the arts and feel it’s an important part of the community in Maine,” said Baldacci. “Arts has a universal appeal and that’s something we need a lot of right now because our country is struggling.”

In his hometown of Bangor, Baldacci added, “The arts has put a lot more smiles on people’s faces and has added to the character of the city.”

While some information Booth related was familiar, his charismatic delivery invigorated many in the audience.

“There seems to be a hunger right now to do things in the arts community in our state,” said Susan Jonason, executive director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. “Maine is not this black hole. The arts are alive. I’m really energized by today. I can visualize how I can apply this to my work with the symphony and with the arts.”

The congress, which is the first of its kind in the state, was planned as part of the Maine Arts Commission’s goal to build Maine communities through arts networking and advocacy, and as the first state-organized meeting among arts leaders since the tragedies of Sept. 11.

“Being with people who are interested in a different level of this work allows for more creative juices to flow,” said Martha Rynberg, program coordinator at Very Special Arts in Portland. “Tapping into the community is what we try to do all the time so the work of understanding how art and community relate is at the heart of our mission.”

It is also at the heart of a mission spearheaded locally by leaders such as John Rohman, vice chairman of MAC and a Bangor city councilor.

“This is another step in Bangor’s effort to use art as a tool for community building,” said Rohman, who is also chairman of the National Folk Festival to be held in Bangor for one weekend during each of the next three summers.

In his closing remarks, Booth said the congress may have left some participants unsatisfied because it posed more questions than answers.

“This is a day of generating seeds of ideas,” said Booth. “This is what the first level of conversation looks like. This conversation is the conversation. It doesn’t move fast. It’s not a single magic idea. But this is how community is built: laboriously and with a hammering out of a consensus and building of key ideas. It’s a process of taking already good programs and pushing them forward. We’ve taken the right first substantive step toward expansion of existing success.”