To All Local Officials (and the staff who serve them),
A letter from Michael Rohd, CPCP Lead Artist for Civic Imagination
April 6th, 2020
Dear State, County, City, Town, and all Local Officials (and the staff who serve them),
First, Thank you.
Thank you for your work in this time of crisis.
Thank you for sleeping less and zooming more.
Thank you for fighting to save lives and livelihoods,
and thank you for thinking about today and tomorrow
even as tomorrow comes barreling at each of us like an unknowable eighteen-wheeler.
Second, I wish you, and your families and neighbors, health and safety.
None of us will be untouched by this in the end, I believe.
So I wish you strength and I send you solidarity.
Third, I am an artist and I am an educator.
I often facilitate and design process for people in spaces like the ones you walk day after day.
Public health departments. Municipal agencies. Community Development organizations.
In crisis, we need to solve problems.
In recovery, we need to collaborate and imagine.
In artists (and designers, culture makers and heritage holders),
your community has powerful responders already in place-
individuals whose lives (and skills) are about problem-solving, collaboration and imagination.
And Fourth,
Artists are often called on
in times of crisis and recovery
to bring their expertise to three areas-
communication, connectivity and hope.
Do that.
Work with artists to deliver messages that will save lives.
Work with artists to prevent social distancing from shredding social fabric.
Work with artists to inspire vision and help people stay strong and loving and generous.
But also-
Work with artists when local stakeholders hold varied and contrary perspectives around a challenging recovery issue
because artists don’t just bring people together in the abstract-
many have the skills to build real, effective coalitions.
Work with artists when, in this unprecedented moment, a new problem has arisen and you need to envision a truly creative solution
because artists don’t just solve problems in their studios-
many have the skills to help solve problems in civic space.
Work with artists when, in this time of economic hardship and system crashes,
you wrestle with issues of justice and transparency,
and you struggle with how to disrupt histories and practices of inequity,
because artists don’t just offer their own visions of what can be-
many have the skills to engage the public with purpose,
many have the skills to ask hard questions with love,
and many have the skills to hold space for difficult conversations with courage.
I invite you to not just call upon artists when you need the beautiful-
(though they will always bring you beauty,
and we need beauty now more than ever)
I invite you to call upon artists, culture makers, designers and heritage holders
when you need the powerful, purposeful practice
of building, and re-building, community.
Artists are in your place- they are, as my friends at Springboard for the Arts in St Paul MN say-
a natural resource everywhere.
Engage them.
Pay them.
Collaborate with them.
If you want support thinking about how to engage with artists,
or how to connect with local artists in your area,
please reach out.
We are happy to talk (for free of course in this time of crisis and recovery).
We wish you health, safety, and resilience.
Michael Rohd
Lead Artist for Civic Imagination
at Center for Performance and Civic Practice michael@thecpcp.org
www.thecpcp.org
And
Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Some resources when thinking about this work, include: