Dialogue with the Director Archives Dialogue with the Director

Director Saralyn Reece Hardy speaks with Ann Evans and Tim Van Leer.

The Spencer continues to seek innovative ways--on large and on smaller scales-- to partner with other arts organizations, and regular communication is a vital part of achieving such aims. For example, director Saralyn Reece Hardy and several other leaders of Lawrence arts entities have regular lunch meetings that combine information sharing with brainstorming. Here is a discussion she had recently with Ann Evans, executive director of the Lawrence Arts Center since 1975, and Tim Van Leer, director of the Lied Center of Kansas since June 2001. Others in the informal group are Judy Billings, director of the Lawrence Convention & Visitors Bureau; Mary Doveton, managing/artistic director of the Lawrence Community Theatre; and Steve Hedden, dean of KU's School of Fine Arts.

Saralyn Reece Hardy: It has been such a pleasure for me to join the artistic community in Lawrence. I have felt since I have arrived that we were embarking on several strategies to continue good collaboration across disciplines and across University and the community. You both are obviously very committed to collaborations with other groups. What is it about collaboration that seems so important to your work?

Ann Evans: I'm going to start because I'm the one who's been here the longest! I think the short answer is that's just the way we've always been in Lawrence, Kansas. Working in a community arts organization, that's definitely the way we are. It means to me that there's so much going on here, and it's good for all of our patrons. Plus, it's a lot more fun.

SRH: When you say it's better, how do you think collaboration really nourishes creative activity?

AE: It creates many more opportunities for our audiences across the board, from concerts to exhibits to classes. And it makes for a much richer community.

Tim Van Leer: I think that the creative process is really in the long run a collaborative process. Even as an individual artist, you may have a creative process, but there's a collaboration that has to go on after the creation of the work to exhibit it, to sell it, to print it, to present it, to perform it. My work as a performing arts presenter is all about collaboration in music, in dance, in theatre. And in Lawrence, one of the aspects of the positive town and gown relationship is the arts....When we talk about the arts community we don't separate KU and Lawrence. The student creative process on campus, the professionals we bring into the Lied Center, the museum, all of those elements are part of the entire Lawrence arts community.

SRH: Tim, you intimated a little something about the audience as collaborator, and that to really bring artistic work to audiences there's a collaborative process involved. Do you see collaboration in any greater degree than say we did 10 years ago for presenting in the Lied Center? Are artists themselves working with that more?

TVL: Absolutely. I think what we've seen even in the last three or four years is a change, from the artist's point of view, to looking at the wholeness of the art. The idea that it's not just what the artist creates; it's the experience that it provides for the audience, which participates in it as well. Audiences now want to be participatory. They want an experience. They want to be able to learn more about the creative process that they're a part of now. They want to know more about how it happened, about the artist, about the background that the artist brought to the creation of the work. And artists are recognizing this now, and it's having I think a positive effect on the artists' creative abilities as they think about work for the future.

SRH: We've been using this word engagement a lot: civic engagement, artistic engagement. It indicates a kind of back-and-forth, interactive activity that implies this growing participation that you're talking about. In Lawrence we have a lot of platforms for engagement. Ann, are you seeing audiences desiring more participation than they used to want?

AE: Certainly. They want to know the artists in the gallery and on the stage, why they created the works that they did. And it also means many times that they themselves want to learn how to create the things they admire. So they don't just want the presentation of the art; they want to learn to do it because it helps them appreciate even more what the artist did. So our adult classes just keep growing.

SRH: So there are all these levels of engagement we might think about. One is how you hear about something, and we all talk about the need for people to hear about it. But there's also the deeper, transforming experience of the art itself, which means that someone changes, someone expands, the world takes on a slightly different cast. And I think most of us who are in this business look for that. Is there something that comes to mind that made you think This is why I got into this in the beginning ?

AE: For the first time, we've been having classes for the Head Start program here in town. They are so excited. The teachers there, the director there, they are saying all the things that we like to hear about students: the kids are learning, being more responsive, paying closer attention, focusing better. And they directly relate it to the addition of the arts program in the Head Start program. So that's starting at the youngest level, which is so, so important.

TVL: As presenters one thing that we have always talked about is the engagement between the artist and the audience. And something I've heard from many of our patrons over the past few weeks is that they've had opportunities to come to events that they didn't know that much about, and they've made the commitment to come, and they've been transformed. It's like I never thought I would like this particular music or this particular dance, but I'm so glad I came! So they were transformed. They were educated. They were engaged. And now they have something to look forward to engaging again. So they've expanded their artistic experience.

SRH: You used the words expanded their artistic experience and I think that's a very good concept in terms of what our larger position in the arts needs to be, which is not relegated to one section of society but actually playing a central role in the lives of people as they go about making decisions about all manner of things including politics, public health, education--all of the central concerns in our society have touch points with the arts.

AE: When people are introduced to the arts and have a really good experience, they get very excited and really appreciate what we do, and yet, so many people don't think that it is something that would really interest them. It's rewarding to see how they respond and how they change when they have had that positive experience. So now, how do we reach more people, especially with life in general getting so busy? I think there are many, many more people ready for those kinds of experiences.

SRH: We come together for this monthly or occasional lunch, and embedded in it I think is an implicit desire for us to collaborate, to share strengths. So I'm wondering if both of you could describe your highest hopes for community-wide collaboration. What would that look like? What would we hope to achieve together?

AE: A dream I've had, having been here a long time--and it would take all of us working together--is to have events that would let the rest of the world know all of the wonderful things we have happening here, from the artists we bring in to the artists we have right here in town.

TVL: I agree. I really think there will be opportunities for those kinds of things. I think what Ann is talking about is the aspect of What are we going to do in five years? And that could very well be the next step for all of us. As our arts organizations mature and reach certain levels, together we can reach another level by creating whatever that activity is, perhaps a huge festival of some sort...But I think that as our organizations reach a variety of artistic and engagement goals, we can look together to see how we can make the next steps together in larger projects.

SRH: I'm really interested in what both of you have to say because obviously we need to continue to build our base of audiences, extend our reach, but sometimes I'm the most interested in the kind of collaboration that comes from someone who calls and says Here's this person who needs to get involved in the museum. I think that that one individual can represent the power that occurs when people are working together to somehow expand a life. It's almost, rather than getting bigger getting smaller --you know, one person at a time as we think through how to provide these experiences that have an intensity and a depth and are vivid in a number of ways, as opposed to the gate-count.

TVL: Part of that engagement aspect is convincing people that if they don't come, they will not have the opportunity for that transforming experience. It's never a guarantee that you're going to have that experience, but you'll never have it if you don't come in the first place. And I think one of the other reasons that the arts thrive in Lawrence is that we support each other. It's the same thing-- Do you know about this event? You ought to call them. I think we all believe that as each of us succeeds we all succeed.