Putting Pen to Paper: Writing to Advance Performing Arts Priorities and Interests
CommUNITY Collaborations’ Opinion Editorial Cohort. Photo credit: Denise Mattson
Leadership and Advocacy Action Group establishes first cohort of performing arts leaders dedicated to elevating performing arts coverage in news outlets and beyond.
The Chicago performing arts sector has long faced a significant challenge: functional silos that separate dance, music, and theater. During the COVID pandemic and even today, many new leaders in the Chicago performing arts community have had fewer opportunities to connect and engage in-person with other local arts leaders, furthering sector divisions.
In January 2022, Walder Foundation, recognizing the need for shifts in public support and greater unity within the arts community, launched the CommUNITY Collaborations Initiative to address these issues. The Foundation formed a "table" of thought leaders, including performing artists, policymakers, academics, and field experts, to meet regularly and address sector-wide challenges, opportunities, and goals. Over time, participant “action groups” formed to address specific challenges and needs.
The Leadership & Advocacy Action Group, one “action group” of the larger CommUNITY Collaborations initiative, formed in 2024. Throughout the year, group members empowered one another and collaborated on programming and advocacy efforts. One programming effort was to educate a cohort of arts professionals on best practices in opinion editorial engagement and writing for traditional press outlets. By leveraging artist knowledge, skills, and experience, action group members felt they might better spur response and community understanding of opportunities and threats to the performing arts on a local, regional, and national scale. Convening such a group would also offer more space for artists to connect and generate personal feelings of empowerment.
Research supports this. According to a 2018 article in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, opinion editorials can indeed play a crucial role in attracting citizen opinion and persuading people to act. However, a majority of opinion pieces in highly regarded papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post have not necessarily represented the diversity seen in the performing arts sector, and have advanced several other thoughts and narratives far outside the performing arts space.
Starting in January 2025, the first opinion editorial cohort was trained on opinion editorial best practices during in-person, collaborative sessions at Harris Theater. The training focused on how to both write and digest opinion editorials. It was led by Susanne Dumbleton, a respected writer, educator, and consultant. Virtual, independent learning and mentorship with program facilitators followed.
As a result of the training and mentoring, Amanda Delheimer, a cohort member, noticed changes in her news consumption and understanding.
“I'm certainly reading and digesting the news differently—in a way that it's not just about what is going on, but also ‘what is my opinion about it?’ I think this has been a really lovely change.”
Beyond consumption changes, she also noted that writing techniques for opinion editorials also carry over to writing techniques for other important communications needs and mediums.
“Being able to use the techniques and processes we learned in other ways was something unexpected that came from the training,” Delheimer said. “I realized that if there are 20 different writing skills, each of those individual skills could have 50 different applications.”
Upon completion of the full eight-week program, members of the cohort also collaboratively designed a process for quickly engaging in media cycles, identified and cultivated community resources and experts to assist cohort members, and developed a process for recruiting and training new cohorts.
The overall learnings have been vast, and many members of the cohort have expressed increased feelings of empowerment as a result of practicing skills alongside fellow performing arts champions. These workshops have resulted in opinion editorials being published in reputable local and regional news sources, too.
“It felt great to practice having a voice and really putting that into practice and refining it, then coming back to it and double-checking to see if the words are matching up to what you really are trying to say,” shared Tony Bondoc, a cohort member. “That was a great practice that I don't feel like I have had the opportunity to practice outside of this cohort.”
Efforts like those of the opinion editorial cohort, alongside other CommUNITY Collaborations Initiative efforts, represent a significant step towards uniting Chicago's performing arts sector and positioning the arts for continued and sustained success.
Stay engaged with efforts from our Performing Arts pillar: walderfoundation.org/performing-arts
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