Guest blog by Joseph Wilson Jr, IPP ’24
I have spent 30 years of my professional life working as an artist. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a BA in Government/Political Science, I had every intention of going to law school and some day running for political office. That was the plan, until the second semester of my junior year in college when I enrolled in my first acting class. My life’s path would be forever changed by that experience. I ended up not going to law school after having been accepted into several across the United States. Instead, after being chosen through an audition process administered by most professional training programs, I attended the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theatre performance training program, earning a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Acting!
This moment would mark the beginning of my 30-year career as a professional actor and director in the American theatre. Having worked On and Off Broadway and in theatres regional theatres around the country, I have lived ‘in the shoes’ of so many different characters. These dramaturgical creations are often ordinary ‘people’ who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. My training has taught me the importance of seeing without judgement each of the characters I have the privilege of playing. My job as an actor is to represent through action the dogged pursuit of a character’s unique desires from their individual points of view. How a character pursues their objectives are directly related to the given circumstances of their lives and their lived experiences.
Drama exists as a negotiation between individuals with competing needs and desires. There is no drama without conflict. Characters in a play will experience both wins and setbacks that ultimately lead to an outcome. All plays must to come to an end. One may not get what one wants and there may be no resolution. But through my artistic practice and process I have come to understand and appreciate the power of PDIA as a method of implementing public policy that centers, celebrates, and elevates process as most important to achieving meaningful, effective and lasting outcomes.
January 2025 will mark my second year as the Director of the Department for Art, Culture and Tourism for the City of Providence (ACT). I am so grateful to be able to bring my life as an artist to the work of advocating on behalf of artists, arts and cultural institutions, and culture bearers in my beloved adopted hometown. My journey through this executive education program has been a perfect compliment to the life changing decision I made to accept this mayoral appointment.
COVID was a difficult and transformative time for me personally and professionally. The global pandemic laid bare the fragility of my life as an artist, the vulnerability of a sector, while needing to center equity and justice. The arts and cultural sector continue to struggle to return to pre pandemic levels of programming and community engagement. More broadly, as a city and state, our economic development and collective prosperity will rest on the policies and investments that are created to protect and preserve all our ‘Creative Capital’.
The creative economy in Providence is a billion-dollar industry when we consider the direct, indirect and induced income generated on behalf of the city and state. The data gathered through our recent work with Americans for the Arts has shown us that the performing arts sector in the City of Providence generates over $100,000,000 in spending and revenue. In addition, through my departments recent findings because of our comprehensive Life at Night Assessment, we understand that arts jobs are indeed real jobs in our ever expanding and impactful gig economy land scape. An ever-expanding amount of data exists that supports arts and culture as vitally important to bettering quality of life and wellness in community. This is made evident by a growing effort to center the prescriptive power of art and culture as a literal healer of minds, and bodies. The State of Massachusetts is leading the way in this work, and this year my team work in a cross-sector partnership with the Departments of Housing and Human Resources and the Providence Housing Authority in the One Nation One Project/NLC Project.
PDIA has been a powerful tool in laying out a process toward creating the conditions to address the public policy challenge I have outlined at the beginning of my journey through this program. Leading with data, gaining authorization by building trust based, being authentic and trustworthy, telling/developing a compelling narrative, remaining flexible and adaptive, celebrating small wins, understanding that power is not always top down and the path toward meaningful solutions is not a straight line have all been very important components of the PDIA tool kit that my team and I take moving forward. I have learned that PDIA shares many similarities to process as an actor/theatre maker. For example, a team working to produce a play/musical are all working from the same script. While the ‘given circumstances’ of the play are what they are, every member of the team as well as every character in that play may have very differing views on the experiences they have to the place and time, and the ongoing relationship they want to have with the people and places featured in a particular story we are putting on stage. Characters exist in the world of the play or come at the work as artists with unique points of view that are in conflict. Points of disagreement may be small or even sometimes they prove to be insurmountable, but the process of finding consensus, and building responsive communities must be centered as much as the outcomes we hope to achieve.
ACT is working every day to further support our gig economy workers, artists and nonprofit and for-profit venues and small business by commissioning and completing the development of a comprehensive assessment of our city’s life at night economy completed just 2 weeks ago. The data from this report shows us that the economic impact of our life at night industry is at $990,000,000. This assessment also makes recommendations to support residents and business on issues such as transportation, licensing and permitting, sound pollution, lighting and continued efforts to destigmatize and celebrate our nighttime economy. I am also proud to say, that as a result of the work of my department
In addition, we are laser focused on how we can continue to expand our support for middle school and high school students, as well as support for students post high school. We are exploring ways in which we my assist in scaffolding a cross discipline, creative workforce training initiative. This work is already happening in so many of our arts and cultural institutions without much fanfare or even awareness by the public at large. Our goal with this work has been to expand the public and elected officials understanding of the importance of making consistent investments in what can often only be understood by the products we create as artists and cultural workers. With this in mind, the mayor has outlined his legislative priorities in the next budgetary cycle. I am so proud to be able to announce that two policy initiatives will be introduced in the state legislature that will all our cities to create tax opportunities that will generate permanent funding sources that will be administered to our creative arts community by departments like mine.
ACT’s Providence Commemoration Lab, we are deeply engaged in the work of examining commemoration through art and the future possibilities for our public art landscape. We support and celebrate community driven decisions as to ‘Who do we commemorate’, ‘What do we commemorate?’, ‘How do we commemorate?’, and ‘Why?’. The department will continue to champion our creative sector as it is uniquely equipped to tell the story of this extraordinary city and its people to the state, region, nation and the world. Public art of any kind is in itself a form of commemoration, adds to our quality of life, and is an important place keeping tool. The city has recently launched a public art initiative that does just this. Working with a community collaborator, my department is currently funding 5 new murals in the city along with creating art to adorn 50 new electrical boxes in Providence. This project will also center young voices in the process, nurturing the next generation of visual arts makers in our city.
ACT is deepening our commitment to realize the vision for our city as a global destination for the arts, humanities and design. We envision a community where all of our neighbors celebrate diverse cultures and artistic experiences, and where residents and visitors feel in a visceral way the power and vibrance of The City of Providence. To this end, all of us in the tourism sector are for the first time working together to create a more inclusive narrative about what makes our city so vibrant. Celebrating our diversity will be critical in the further development of this important part of our creative economy.
Finally, the department continues to build our cross-sector partnerships by leveraging the work of other departments that further the work of our team. Planning’s new Lighting Initiative/Illuminate PVD, and the current work in developing the city’s new Economic Development strategy present the opportunity to build alliances, and broaden the coalition of partners that will help us build a Providence, a community, a city that exudes pride and lives in abundance, from its deep understanding of its vital and immediate relationship to arts as a practice, making as a process and where we all truly believe and celebrate culture and the humanities as critical, and essential elements to our personal and communal wellbeing, and the preservation of civil society.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 42 Participants successfully completed this 6-month hybrid program in November 2024. These are their learning journey stories.