Impact Map: Coming to Terms

In arts administration there is a lot of terminology that gets thrown around when it comes to people interacting with an arts experience. Example:  Board members and staff at an arts org are trying to build audiences by partnering with teachers who educate students. These students then invite their parents to a free event hosted for the community. I think I've heard every step in this example called "ENGAGEMENT" including the very first -- board and staff working together.  I'm not even sure I know what engagement means anymore.

From my experience it all comes down to two ideas: Who is driving the interaction, and who is ultimately meant to benefit from it?

Here is a map of what I mean:

Okay, it's a graph with a bunch of words on it, but I think it could be really useful. Let me try to break this down.

Each quadrant of the map shows a different type of activity. The X axis is the range of primary impact, i.e., To what extent are the main effects of the activity felt personally by the individual or more collectively as a group? (Of course, with any framework there are a bunch of superimposed assumptions--things that are supposed to fit into nice little boxes, but don't in reality. In this case, there will always be a blend in any activity and cumulative effects that happen overtime.)  The Y axis shows the extent to which the activity is driven by an arts organization or by the constituent. For "constituent" I just mean any person or group that is meant to benefit from what is being offered (even though the organization also benefits).

Why is this important? I think that arts organizations are at a critical point of needing to articulate what their real mission is. This plays into tax-status debates, relevance in popular culture, perceptions (or actual acts) of elitism, and the role organizations play in making communities a better place to live. ALL of the activities on the map are valid, and I'd like to spend some more time on this blog exploring each quadrant and defining the chop suey of terms that comes up along the way. In the meantime, I think it's most important that arts organizations are brutally honest about which arrow they are following at any given time...not only internally with themselves, but with funders and especially with those they intend to serve.