Social Practice

This is a wonderful opportunity for the right person:

Managing Director

Job Description

Application Deadline EXTENDED: July 10, 2010

Watts House Project is seeking a Managing Director to start full-time in September of 2010. The Managing Director of Watts House Project is responsible for overseeing and coordinating the complex legal, financial, and operational aspects of the organization with the Executive Director. The Managing Director oversees the staff, including the administrator, Resident Coordinator, development team, and interns, and works in tandem with the Executive Director on project phase development and organization. The Managing Director oversees fiscal operations and accountability, and manages the organizational growth with the Executive Director. The Managing Director also programs fundraising and community events, liaises with the Board of Directors and Advisory Board, oversees fundraising with the Executive Director, and liaises with the construction managers and artists involved in the project regarding contractual agreements, legal requirements, finances, permitting, and project stage benchmarks. The Managing Director works in tandem with the Executive Director and Board Committees on protocol and reporting. The Managing Director oversees the Resident Coordinator, and coordinates extensive community outreach and feedback initiatives. The Managing Director is also responsible for maintaining press, website, Basecamp, digital and archived files, donor database, and other organizational systems.

The Managing Director with the Executive Director and the Board is constantly evaluating the long and short-term goals in their effectiveness in achieving the mission of the Watts House Project. The Managing Director will work in close collaboration with the Executive Director in the fulfillment of their responsibilities.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

PROGRAMMING RESPONSIBILITIES

* Serves as Chief Organizer with the Executive Director & with Board approval, responsible for selection of artist, architects and designers and whom they collaborate with in House Renovation Projects.

* Assures all projects are produced in accordance to WHP’s programming goals.

* With the Executive Director and with Board approval defines scope and direction of all WHP programming. Work in coordination with Resident Coordinator, Executive Director, additional staff as needed, and Board.

* With the Executive Director and with Board and the Board’s approval, develops and coordinates public programming at the Platform, within the neighborhood and in coordination with residents, stakeholders and organizational partners.

RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

RESPONSIBILITIES

* With the Executive Director and Board of Directors, assures adequate funds are available for annual operations and programs, and to meet strategic goals related to sustainability and/or growth.  Creates strategies with Executive Director and the Board for maintaining an engaged donor base, producing effective fundraising activities, and maximizing earned income.

*Works with the Executive Director in the preparation and management of the annual budget for Board approval. Assures effective delegation of financial management responsibilities among the Board of Directors Finance Committee, staff, and outside providers in carrying out the position’s responsibility for the overall financial and operational condition of WHP.

* Partners with the Executive Director and Board of Directors in initiating and preparing long-term plans and budgets.

* Works in coordination with the Executive Director, Development Director and Board and provides oversight in preparation of all grant requests and participates in the proposal process when appropriate.

OPERATIONS RESPONSIBILITIES

* Oversees overall WHP operations of public programs and building projects and assures that all activity is carried out in concert with organizational policies and goals, and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and building codes.

(a licensed professional must perform these duties with the Managing Director & the Executive Director with Board approvals)

* Works in coordination with the Executive Director in the hiring of staff and consultants upon board approval of position and salary/fee

BOARD AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS RESPONSIBILITIES

* Serves as a liaison (with Executive Director) between WHP staff and board.

* Serves as a liaison for the Board of Advisors and obtains their counsel as appropriate.

* Represents (with Executive Director) WHP in the local community.  Works to promote the organization’s influence and visibility in Los Angeles, as well as its national and international profile. Works with the Managing Director and the Board to coordinate and work with other organizations in the area.

* Partners with Executive Director and the Board of Directors to develop and maintain effective communications and systems that ensure the Board’s ability to govern effectively.

* Works effectively with Executive Director and the Board of Directors and in partnership with a variety of individuals and organizations essential to the organization’s success – residents, local stakeholders, artists, dealers, donors, the media, local government, business people, volunteers and the general public.

The ideal candidate for this position will have 3-5 years experience in a high-level management position of a non-profit organization of similar scale. The candidate will have excellent verbal and written communication skills (preferably in both English and Spanish), experience as a community organizer, and preferably experience in the Watts neighborhood or surrounding region. The candidate will have excellent event-planning and organizational skills, and proven ability as a fundraiser. The candidate will have experience relating productively to a highly engaged and involved board, and will put boundless energy into developing a fledgling organization into a well-oiled machine. The candidate will have detail-oriented experience in working with complex legal and fiscal matters, skills in creating and reporting on operational budgets, skills allocating and reporting on restricted grant monies, and a working knowledge of the complexities of community-engaged art and neighborhood development. Knowledge of social and public art practice, community redevelopment, housing, and/or architecture and construction are very helpful. The approved salary for this position is $42,000 per annum.

To apply, send a resume, cover letter, and three references to:

Elizabeth Gallardo

elizabethwhp@gmail.com

Application Deadline EXTENDED: July 10, 2010

Thank you!

Last week I left off with a question that arose in the Open Engagement Conference in Portland - should social practice artists get rid of the “art” altogether in their practices? Watts House Project was recently counseled by a fundraising advisor to do just that. “You can raise way more money and have way more impact as just a community development organization rather than an arts organization,” were her words of advice. “Impact” is the key word in that sentence. Is it true? Is it the “art” label that holds us back from affecting real change?

There is an aspect other than monetary to consider as well, which I noticed in the furrowed brows and distraught expressions of social practice artists at the conference. To art or not to art, that is the morally-inflected question many of these young artists are trying to work through. Certainly, works that are inherently participatory and aim to be expansive or community-based or even (gasp) aim to affect real social and political change, will involve audience and participants that do not have an art historical background or language, or indeed any way of locating what they are encountering as “art.” This was precisely the reason that Ted Purves’s project Temescal Amity Works presented itself as “storefront” or “clubhouse” rather than artwork. I heard from several artists that they shied away from even calling themselves “artists” when working in communities, even if they considered the work part of their practices, because they inevitably encountered intense distrust. The insularity of the art world, the unwillingness or the inability to rationally explain things in an accessible manner, the “sceney-ness” that another colleague told me he despised (and that’s from someone inexorably entrenched in the art world!), this culture of obfuscation has brought us to this place. No wonder artists are wondering if they should even call themselves artists, or what they do, art.

I return to Ted Purves, and his answer when confronted with this question. “Yes, it makes it more complicated [to call it an art project],” he said. “But it is what it is.” This was a little unsatisfying at the time, and I mulled over the question for about a week. Last Tuesday, I attended yet another conference, this time the enormous American Association of Museums conference in downtown LA’s convention center. One of the keynote speakers at that conference was Peter Sellars - UCLA professor and theater director extraordinaire who gave a well-known talk (but one that I had never heard before) entitled “Art and Social Action.” Besides just being an incredibly engaging and passionate speaker, Mr. Sellars made the important point that the deepest things in life must be addressed culturally - you cannot legislate or mitigate them. His example was a recent rash of teen suicides in the bush of Australia, and that neither cops nor judges nor social workers could affect the pattern, but that artists could. What art provides is meaningful empowerment, a reason to live, and a future shaped by vision rather than fear. This process is not a mass experience, but a person to person encounter, which art can also provide.

He spoke about how our culture privileges the “objective gaze” of neutrality and indifference - from journalism to public schools. Art, he argued, provides the ability to turn an “eye of equality” on our world, a transformative gaze of love that sees with moral energy and understands one’s responsibility to the world. He also said:

Art touches the deep chord of the thing you always knew, inside of you.

Art is the act of recovering your humanity.

Art can create the safe place that empowers people to face and recognize their fears.

This poetic vision of art as being core to the way we live in the world rather than additive or privileged, encapsulates the value of art to social practice. Some things, indeed, can only be addressed culturally, and this interior value provides distinction that give these practices the potential for deeper meaning and wider breadth than projects that exist without the “art.”