For Donna Walker-Kuhne, the real champions of the arts are not just the actors that perform onstage or the writers that pen the stories or the crew that stages the show and brings it to life. The real champions are the enthusiastic theatergoers, who make it their mission to bring new audience groups for the theatrical experience.
“The people who make that happen, they are the champions of the arts,” Walker-Kuhne, founder and President of Walker International Communications Group, Inc. told Our Time Press.
“Champions are those that create access to the arts. That’s what community engagement looks like.” In her new book Champions for the Arts: A New Guide to Equitable Community Engagement, Walker-Kuhne, offers a groundbreaking guide to creating theatre multi-cultural audience development through tactics and success stories.
Walker-Kuhne is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on audience development.
She is an award-winning thought leader, scholar, educator, writer and strategist for community engagement, audience development and social justice. She is a former dancer, who holds a law degree from Howard University. A renowned arts enthusiast, her career spans from leadership marketing roles at the Apollo Theater and New Jersey Performing Arts Center to working with Arthur Mitchell at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and George Wolfe at The Public Theater.
Walker-Kuhne has brought her innovative audience development strategies to shows like THURGOOD starring Laurence Fishburne, August Wilson’s Radio Golf , A Raisin in the Sun, Topdog/Underdog, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Bring in da’’ Noise, Bring in da’ Funk, STICKFLY, Time Stands Still, Driving Miss Daisy and Ragtime. This year, she was a consultant on the acclaimed Alvin Ailey, Edges of Ailey, exhibit at the Whitney Museum.
In her book Champions for the Arts, Walker-Kuhne, a Brooklyn resident, honors several Black Brooklyn residents who have been instrumental in her 40-year career in bringing Black audiences to theaters.
Featured in Champions for the Arts is the late Fred Powell from Barbara’s Flower Shop. He was a theatre enthusiast and on the board of Audelco when they met.
“I remember Fred telling me how much he loved the arts. I asked Fred about how he engaged with the churches when bringing flowers to them. He told me he would be happy to take my postcards and flyers to the churches.
At the time, I was at Dance Theatre of Harlem and Fred brought postcards of our events when he delivered flowers. He was going to 30 churches in Brooklyn, Harlem and Queens delivering flowers. He would report back to me that people really liked it.” When she went to the Public Theater, working with George Wolfe on shows from Bring in da’ Noise, Bring in da’ Funk to Shakespeare in the Park, he continued the outreach.
“Fred told me that the ministers really trust what I bring,” she said. “They know that I’m not going to bring something that has defamatory language. Or uses the N-word. It’s healthy positive content. That, they can comfortably distribute to their constituents.”
The late Rev. Anita Burson is also celebrated in Champions for the Arts. “She loved the arts. Anita would connect with different ministers. She taught me how to approach a church directly,” said Walker-Kuhne. “You just don’t go up there and distribute cards. But you bring the artist with you. They would stay through the entire service and answer questions. To ask for placement in the church bulletin and the website. Anita was amazing she would do panels with me.”
Retired Brooklyn public high school teacher Brenda Glase is spotlighted in Champions for the Arts. Before she retired, Glase would help Walker-Kuhne with programs for high school students to attend Broadway shows and special events. “Brenda still brings groups to everything.
She’s constantly telling people about different arts events. She has joined theaters and museums, so she has access, discounts and advanced notice,” she said. “I see Brenda everywhere. She is a true champion of the arts. She loves connecting people with art experiences.”
A youth advocate, Walker-Kuhne has developed innovative outreach and educational projects. At The Public Theatre, she created programs for Bring in da’ Noise that increased attendance by 20,000 children and also involved 33,000 students in a variety of related programs. In 2010 she was co-founder of Impact Broadway, a socially and technology audience initiative serving 300 African American and Latino students throughout the five boroughs of New York City.
The purpose of the program was to expose and empower a multicultural group of high school and college aged youth to aspire to become active participants in the performing arts community. She has spoken about audience engagement across the US and has been a professor of arts marketing and arts multicultural diversity at New York University, Columbia University, Bank Street College, Brooklyn College and Fordham University.
The arts have been part of Walker-Kuhne’s life since childhood. She vividly remembers her first experience with theatre as a small child in Chicago in the 1960s. Her mother had taken her and her twin sister Barabara to a performance of the opulent Bolshoi Ballet. Enamored, the sisters begged for ballet classes and later took African dance classes. “That began my professional career as a dancer.
My mom was a champion in the arts because she made sure, we had everything that we needed to be able to perform and go to rehearsals. She became active as a backstage mother,” she recalled. “Throughout my career, up until till she passed away three years ago, she loved the arts.”
“I encourage everyone to be a champion for the arts,” said Walker-Kuhne. “To support the arts where you are. If there’s a dance school down the street. If there’s a museum up the block. Go over there and support it. The arts need our community’s support.”
