Turnaround Arts
The Client
Turnaround Arts is a national program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It began in 2011, after the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) published the landmark report Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools. Turnaround believes that equitable access to the arts in school for all students is a fundamental civil right. As a national network, it supports the work of local schools and communities to amplify and enrich student-centered teaching and learning through strategic use of the arts.
The Need
Ten years of community-building and programming, combined with key institutional and leadership transitions, a pandemic, and the urgent need to realign programs and priorities with its commitment to racial equity, meant that Turnaround Arts was primed to develop its first strategic plan.
The TOCG consulting team was brought in to design and lead Turnaround Arts in a strategic planning process that would move the network forward toward a set of common goals, facilitate the community to reflect on where it's been, consider what it's learned, and engage in a collaborative process to examine where it's going.
The Process
Edie, Tom, Rani, and Christine worked as a team to:
Co-create a strategic planning structure that was both time-sensitive and allowed deep engagement
Design an inclusive and representative process wherein multiple groups of stakeholders could be engaged for input and feedback
Design and deliver a series of working sessions with the Turnaround Arts National team alongside regular retreat days that would keep current work moving forward while engaging the team in authentic reflection
Develop and conduct a needs assessment based on feedback and data provided by Turnaround’s core constituencies
Define guiding principles, goals, strategies, tactics, and accountability questions based on input from core constituencies, and grounded in Tema Okun’s antidotes to white supremacy culture and Turnaround Arts’ commitment to racial equity
Write the full Strategic Plan in partnership with the Turnaround Arts National team
The Results
The resulting Turnaround Arts 2022 Strategic Plan was released in June 2022 and is available to view here. In addition to the delivery of the strategic plan, this work forms the foundation of TOCG’s current collaboration with Turnaround Arts on program design, business models, and operational systems.
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