The State of Film: Massachusetts Media Arts Organizations Grow a Community of Practice and the Practice of Community
One thing Boston has not done well is to tell the story of its place in the world of independent filmmaking, something a band of media arts organizations, with the backing of a small but determined family foundation, has set out to change.
This twenty-first century cultural uprising began in the unassuming offices of the Cambridge-based LEF Foundation. The foundation convened an advisory group and later a carefully selected complement of nonprofit media arts organizations - all committed to fostering independent production - to build upon past efforts while forging a new collaborative venture. These modern day storytellers are now asserting their identity and importance in the cultural and economic life of New England s largest city. They re now ready, as one participant put it, "to thrust ourselves onto the national stage." The 2005 launch of their joint effort, the Mass Motion Media Initiative, should do just that. It received a major boost this past February with a high profile economic development grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
This article reflects on the leadership activities of the LEF Foundation and its stated effort to "strengthen the visibility and infrastructure for media arts in the region," as well as the collective work of five core media arts groups. While much is yet to unfold, the story to date holds a variety of lessons in regards to philanthropic practices, collaboration, and the building of community identity. Perhaps the most important lesson, however, can be found in how these groups recognized and tapped unique strengths residing in their leaders, their organizations, and their city. They ve strategically brought these assets together to enhance and leverage the position of their industry and their place in history. As a result, they re building a community of practice while practicing the building of community.
Boston s Media Arts Landscape
In the midst of what former Harvard Film Archive curator Bruce Jenkins calls "a productive, robust environment," especially in nonfiction filmmaking and animation, Boston s independent producers consistently consider themselves working in a quiet backwater. "It does feel like it s less than the sum of its parts," Jenkins admits.
Despite its illustrious history, Boston s image has remained staid. Renowned Bostonian innovators and storytellers include Ricky Leacock, Henry Hampton, Fred Wiseman, Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, and Sol Levine. Major figures in film regularly visit, teach, and show work at Boston s multitude of academic institutions. Longtime observers like Jenkins and Susi Walsh, founder of the Center for Independent Documentary, note the clear and profound influence these teachers have had on generations of makers.
Local broadcaster WGBH, the country s largest producer of public television programming, employs nearly a thousand people, with many independents also on contract. The station was the longtime home of the now defunct New Television Workshop, an important center for experimental work in the 1970s and 80s. (Its neighbor, the internationally known M.I.T. Media Lab, is by some accounts inaccessible and less than relevant to the local scene.) Boston s best-known center for independent media, the Boston Film/Video Foundation, closed its doors in early 2004, short of its thirtieth anniversary.
A 2003 report by the Boston Foundation, one of the region s largest philanthropies, characterized the funding landscape as highly competitive. Indeed, the report cited that most foundation funding for arts and culture comes from outside the state, with the bulk of it going to larger, nationally recognized institutions. Measured against the nine comparable cities studied, the picture in Boston is more heavily weighted towards the majors. The metropolitan area boasts a well-educated population and an enormous number of colleges and universities, all of which heightens the demand for cultural activities. Ironically, another Boston Foundation report notes that the region suffers from an outflow of young people attracted to other urban areas that offer a livelier urban experience and more affordable housing.
"Boston is a real entrepreneurial, can-do community," says Ann McQueen, program officer for arts and culture at the Boston Foundation. The flip side, she adds, "is that people aren t looking around to see what others are doing and might be better off collaborating with an existing project rather than going it alone."
This trait seems prevalent within the city s media arts community as well. In spite of this and other challenges, however, optimism is running high that deep pools of intellectual resources, small and strategically placed organizations, and a spirit of collective action will propel Boston s independent media community to new heights.
A Stalwart Funder Takes a Risk
Founded in 1985, Cambridge-based LEF Foundation operates on a relatively small endowment and the active involvement of founding family members. Grantmaking is divided equally between the regions of the benefactors home cities of Boston and San Francisco. Grants made in New England will total almost $650,000 in 2005. Since 1992, LEF director Lyda Kuth has focused the foundation s New England giving on contemporary arts, supporting artist-driven projects that demonstrate aesthetic excellence, are imaginative in form or treatment, and have relevance.
"LEF has a very particular niche that s not otherwise being occupied by funders in Boston," observes McQueen, who earned a graduate degree in film and used to "hang out" at Boston Film/Video Foundation. Few foundations have been willing to support work by living artists, but LEF has approached this risk-taking with gusto. LEF is distinguished in the region as the "premier funder of film," according to Lisa Simmons, founder and director of the Color of Film Collaborative.
"It seems appropriate that LEF, which funds experimentation in grantees work, should also be willing to experiment," says LEF program officer Louisa McCall. She emphasizes the importance of moving beyond giving dollars "to allow organizations the privilege we have, as a funder, of stepping out of the day to day to see the larger landscape in which they work."
Through two grantmaking cycles per year and the use of independent advisory panels, LEF always had an interest in film and video. This grew during the 1990s, until LEF s support for media art approached nearly half of its available funds. At this point Kuth and McCall began to think about separating out film and video funding - making "general fund" grants to other artistic disciplines during one of the annual cycles and media awards during the other.
In 2001, a special initiative began to emerge. The foundation convened a focus group in April of that year and asked participants, "How would one create a more sustainable environment for the production, exhibition, and distribution of New England-based film?"
The Moving Image Fund Becomes a Catalyst
In 2002, the Moving Image Fund was launched to fund both film projects and media arts organizations. Over two-thirds of LEF s cash support, or $175,000, was committed to artist projects; the remaining $75,000 was flagged for infrastructure. During the first year, grants to organizations covered a wide spectrum, including exhibition, education, and other projects.
"Organizational support was not well defined," says Kuth. "We realized we needed a more strategic approach, one that reflected our primary mission to support the creation of work, and decided to look at ways to support the organizational infrastructure that targeted production." While the dollars were significant in an environment hungry for arts funding, equally important was the approach LEF took, one that evolved as they learned. LEF chose to step into the delicate role of convener and partner, requesting proposals from selected organizations to participate in a group learning process. During an initial twelve-month phase, LEF gave $10,000 to each of six organizations - Boston Film/Video Foundation (BFVF), Center for Independent Documentary (CID), Central Productions, Filmmakers Collaborative, the Color of Film Collaborative, and WGBH Local Productions - in exchange for the commitment to send two key leaders to eight meetings and provide written assessments of what they learned. While all of these groups, except WGBH, are tiny and represent only a fraction of the entire media arts landscape in Boston, they are key players in fostering and facilitating the production of independent work.
"As a funder of independent work, one of our goals was to arrive at a very good description of the role media arts organizations play in facilitating production and how they can be most effective," says Kuth. However, as the groups began their year-long set of meetings, she ended up learning even more. "One lesson for me was to respect their unique sensibilities. Each organization has a wonderfully refined approach aesthetically and a seasoned ability to vet projects and provide guidance."
"When you put people around the table, it s hard - there s the implication of a grand plan," Kuth explains. "I felt that what was of importance would bubble up, that it had to come from the organizations themselves. I think they trusted the fact that LEF did not have some grand design." She added, "I was clear, however, from the outset, where LEF s funding would be directed. We were keeping our eye on facilitating production. This is where our expertise and commitment was. We didn t want redundancy, we wanted to know the grantees better - this was the grander plan."
"At first I tried to figure out what they wanted," says Color of Film s Lisa Simmons. "Funny - after a while they weren t a funder, but an organization trying to help us figure out where we fit and how we could work together. They were a catalyst."
LEF s McCall admits she approached this more proactive role with both trepidation and excitement. "There are no how-to books in this work," she notes with a laugh. Kuth reveals that they debated whether to make grants that required collaboration but eventually went with a more open approach, insisting that the direction of the work come from the organizations themselves. "This was not about shirking responsibility," adds McCall. "Sharing leadership and vision among funders and grantees is a delicate balance."
Simmons, whose organization focuses on supporting filmmakers of color and cosponsors the Roxbury Film Festival, felt the process helped build and strengthen relationships. "This business is about relationships," she observes. "Networking and knowing people as people makes your organization more valuable." She describes it as an opportunity "to sit at the same table - not as competitors, but to talk about our passions."
The process provided Susi Walsh, director of the Center for Independent Documentary, a rare reflective opportunity "to see who I am more clearly and to see places where we can do things together and do it better." She describes Kuth as bold and thoughtful. "Lyda integrates what she hears on the ground, and moves on that. She s warm and nice, makes everyone feel at ease. If anyone changed more through this process - the funder or the fundees - it was the funder. They feel more comfortable as a partner, and that s good!"
Midway through the year, LEF found that its objective - to focus and reflect on the specific practice of production support - was overtaken by the organizations need for strategies to build organizational capacity and achieve simple survival.
"The challenge was to refocus on the fundamental mission and practice of these organizations and make the connection between best practice and organizational strength," writes McCall in her assessment. "While some of the organizations were certain of the positive value of sharing resources, others questioned the cost of centralization and whether commonalties could be found without diminishing distinct voices and constituencies. " Meeting for a year proved highly instructive - a way for the groups involved to respect each others strengths and begin to feel comfortable calling on each other for advice and help. The meetings became a place to identify where they might combine their interests.
We re in This Together
"I think the process has been significant in helping us know we re in this together," says Denise DiIanni, WGBH s local production unit director. "We ve known about each other and we ve been supportive, but being in the room together in a concentrated way has us invested in each other." She called the approach by LEF "simple and brilliant. It s gotten people to understand and engage in a common agenda in an extraordinary, noncompetitive way. It s additive, not competitive."
"I came to appreciate the other organizations and see where we can collaborate," says Filmmakers Collaborative director Bonnie Waltch. She related how CID and Filmmakers Collaborative discovered they were both trying to put in place a new DVD project. Because of these meetings they re now working on it together.
Central Productions, a production and exhibition group that presents the annual Boston Cinema Census, hadn t been involved in any organizational collaborations before. According to cofounder and director Mike Bowes, "We learned better how to work with each other and with other organizations, to focus on what we do best and on growing it." They have since begun a screenwriting workshop in collaboration with Grubb Street Writers Group.
In the early months of 2004, as the series of meetings came to a close, so did BFVF. After a long struggle with solvency, it closed its doors and its assets were liquidated. At this point the five remaining groups were invited by LEF to make proposals to develop their work facilitating production. While none of the proposals involved direct collaborations with others, all claimed they benefited from new clarity about their individual strengths and what had been learned about "best practice" as it relates to production. LEF gave each of the groups a $15,000 grant, with the indication that funding would continue for a second year.
In her review of the grants, McCall wrote, "I think the groups had decided that they were not ready to comfortably merge commonly shared production needs and services into a continuum of support for film projects. Instead, they decided it would be better to focus on strengthening and enhancing their individual production support, tailored to the filmmakers they serve." The places where the groups work crossed over included providing information, teaching workshops, and scheduling and promoting events, observes Kuth. She was pleased to see that modest collaborations were resulting from the year of convening. "The groups began to see each other as a resource and seek input from each other," she says. "We understood from the outset you couldn t talk about production in isolation, separated from the other dimensions of education, exhibition, etc., but we wanted more clarity on how these aspects relate and impact one another. This was beginning to happen."
These media arts groups, McCall notes, "have a landscape in common that they have the capacity to strengthen." Connecting with that larger landscape was something everyone involved knew was important; the challenge was to see whether they could raise their sights and work together. The opportunity to apply together for an economic development grant provided the right reason at the right time for this fledgling consortium - demonstrating that they were ready to act on behalf of the larger field.
As a funder, Kuth found her continuing challenge was to be an "ambassador" for work LEF had invested in. Like the groups they re working with, LEF has found its own special identity. Distinguishing itself this way, the foundation has leveraged its unique strengths to affect greater change in the landscape in which it operates.
A Community in Search of Identity
Kuth is excited about the synergy arising from creative-economy advocates coming together with the commercial and nonprofit media sectors. She is a member of the executive committee of the New England Creative Economy Council and also chairs the Film Working Group. It s a role that allows her to link media nonprofits with an emerging coalition, centered in the for-profit sector, that is currently lobbying the legislature for favorable policies to attract production to the region.
Kuth believes the region s competitive edge resides in its intellectual capital; this is a place where things are designed, not just made. She makes a comparison to New Hampshire s nineteenth century tool and die industry. These often family-owned shops, she says, are now producing one-ups for NASA. While small in scale, these shops continue to be key to innovation and to future industries. This strategy of building an identity and infrastructure around innovation, quality, and intellectual rigor is one that Kuth sees has meaning for the region s media arts.
"Boston has an incredibly rich history, particularly around the documentary," says Walsh. "Great innovators have worked and taught here. The place just resonates with the work." While she cites M.I.T., Harvard, and other institutions as having great influence on young filmmakers, she says the tradition of political activism through film comes more from Boston s grassroots. The blending of these strengths and characteristics, she claims, puts Boston in a historic role of essentially creating the activist documentary tradition.
Others, including Bruce Jenkins, concur. They say considerable infrastructure to support work exists in the area, and they agree that part of this strength comes from what Kuth calls the city s "passion for the humanities." Jenkins, now dean of undergraduate studies and professor of film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was at Harvard from 1999 until 2004. "What Boston has that s unique and taken for granted is brainpower," he says. "There are the makings or raw materials for a diverse range of film practices."
"There s also a subculture of animation, experimental, and narrative work," Waltch adds, not wanting to ignore the breadth of the city s independent media. She s quick to point out, however, that the city "lacks a cohesive community and place to come together as a community. Boston is a thriving town but should be more so."
"We ve been doing a poor job creating an identity as a place for independent work," says DiIanni, whose twenty-three years at WGBH have included teaching at BFVF and working as an independent filmmaker. "There s something in the presentation and spin we haven t been thinking about in a forward-looking way."
"Provincialism is a problem," suggests Walsh. "Boston s off the map among other organizations and funders. There was once a national voice coming out of Boston" - something she says is further exacerbated by the demise of BFVF. And she points to the national leadership role former BFVF director Anne-Marie Stein took in NAMAC. No one else has stepped into that role, she says.
Seeking a New Center of Energy
Responding to BFVF s closure, Simmons, says, "The state of film in Massachusetts is up in the air. It s a loss of an identifiable place to go to." Kuth is concerned about filmmakers ability to "read" the landscape without BFVF, especially young, new makers who went there as a starting point. "It leaves a metaphoric and a real community gap," says Central Productions Bowes. "People just starting or those making films for fifteen years knew they could intersect with other people there. It was a physical location."
Bonnie Waltch cautions that "BFVF wasn t the complete solution either," but acknowledges that with its demise "there s now a lack of cohesiveness." At the same time, adds Susi Walsh, watching the deconstruction of BFVF was a lesson. A veteran of over twenty-five years in independent media in Boston, Walsh is an advocate for creating a repository of this history for the field. The recent hurried and forced move of CID from its twenty-five-year home by the Department of Homeland Security - an intricate and upsetting saga worthy of an article of its own - resulted in the loss and dissipation of much important work, including film masters and important documents. Walsh is concerned that much of the history held at BFVF has likewise been lost.
Whatever the cause of the community s lack of cohesion, Bowes laments, "Boston is a small town, yet the information network is not strong. You often find out about stuff after the fact." Bruce Jenkins concurs, "Like a lot of independent communities, it s riddled with the problem of communication. People are working in isolation; they feel like nothing s going on because they don t see the totality."
This is what LEF and the groups it convened have come to learn is important: the need to pay dual attention to the work and the infrastructure that supports it, all the while building on the city s history and strengths.
"With our grants to organizations, initially we were not considering a role on the macro level," confesses McCall. "We started out focused on individual organizations and ended up helping to build a community of practice. While LEF is committed to supporting the production of work through our grants to filmmakers and organizations, we also have a responsibility toward the system as a whole, and to supporting this in collaboration with others - for example, the Mass Cultural Council."
Bowes, along with the others, would like to see the city recognized as "the production hub of the Northeast," and adds that identity is important, for it helps define the work coming out of the region and helps more of it get made. He believes the whole can be greater than sum the of the parts. By working together, the groups convened by LEF have "the potential to be a player as a community."
McCall agrees, but cautions that while a strong independent film community is an essential ingredient, "This group shouldn t shoulder responsibility for advancing the region s entire film industry." She cites other important assets, including the creative and intellectual capital housed in academic institutions and technology-based companies. The question for her is "how to access those resources and pair them with the content that filmmakers create." McCall believes that the field can push itself forward by "mining the intellectual and technological resources that reside here."
The Next Stage: Mass Motion Media
The $60,000 Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) grant announced February 1 lifts local efforts to a new level. It provides recognition that the independent media community is a player in efforts to advance the state s creative economy. Also launched in 2005 was the John and Abigail Adams Arts Program - named for the U.S. president, a Massachusetts native, and his wife. This creative-economy legislative initiative aims to "promote innovations in the arts and humanities that have the capacity to revitalize communities, stimulate income, create or enhance jobs, and attract tourism."
Mass Motion Media sets out to stimulate production and build a more experienced, skilled, and economically vibrant production community. It hopes to create a strong consortium of both commercial and noncommercial media makers, distributors, funders, businesses, and organizations.
The consortium will use the grant money, together with $75,000 committed by LEF for 2005, towards this new effort. First up is an economic impact study of the media production industry. Secondly, the group will expand itself, creating an alliance between the profit and nonprofit sectors. After that they ll continue to coordinate their work facilitating independent production, begun under the LEF initiative. The efforts of the five organizations will be packaged under the rubric of "incubator activities that create a climate of creative opportunity." This will be supplemented with a fourth activity expanding training, new knowledge cultivation, and networking. They ll do this partly by building on the annual Filmmakers Open Studio, initiated by Filmmakers Collaborative, to create a New England Media Expo and Marketplace.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the coalition will launch a promotional campaign and brand identity to tell the story of their rich history and growing strengths as a community. All involved agree that without LEF s initiative, Mass Motion Media would never have been born. The individual players would have toiled away in relative isolation. The illustrious history of Boston s celluloid storytellers may have been relegated to a dusty archive, and the possibility of re-energizing this cultural and economic hub would never have had a chance. By joining hands to mine their unique talents and resources - and those of the landscape around them - these Boston cultural rebels are writing a new chapter in the history of their city and of independent media.
TOM BORRUP is a consultant, writer, and teacher based in Minneapolis. He consults nationally with nonprofits, foundations, and public agencies on the intersections of culture, economic development, and community building.
