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Month: June 2022

When Good Climbing Shoes Are Important For Vocal Warm Ups

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The Artsjournal daily newsletter today linked to a Smithsonian Institution article using the title “Warm-Up Vocal Exercises From Three Very Different Classical Singing Disciplines.”  From that I assumed the disciplines would be something like opera, choral, and musical theatre and that I would learn about some distinctions I wasn’t aware of.

In fact, it was much more interesting than that. The article compared warm up practices for Western Opera, Chinese Opera, and Carnatic Music, a classical form from southern India I really hadn’t heard about before.

So there was definitely content I hadn’t known. While I was aware that different part of China had different stylistic approaches to the operatic form, I didn’t know that rehearsing in high places was part of the warm up and training regimen.

Li’s parents undertook dantian and vocal warm-ups to a much greater degree than she does today: “My parents would take fabric and tie it like a belt really tightly and go up to the mountain and practice the heptatonic scale”—a seven-note scale common in Xiqu, or traditional Chinese opera. Li tells me that elevation was important. When away from the mountains, her parents would run up to a rooftop to do their exercises.

While there are video clips of singers doing warm ups for western opera and carnatic music, I was disappointed to find there wasn’t one for Chinese Opera. I did some searching and found some video of performances, but not warm ups. I will confess to half wanting to see people scaling mountains or perching themselves on an apartment or performance facility rooftop to do their warm ups.

On the other hand, carnatic music warm ups are apparently traditionally practiced an hour or two before sunrise. The singing technique is apparently contrary to the best practices of western vocal training.

Once, a company Doraiswamy sang with hired a Western-style voice coach to teach her how to take care of her voice. Hearing her sing, the coach claimed Doraiswamy’s vocal cords wouldn’t last two years. Scared by this reaction, she didn’t sing a note for a week. In reality, South Indian singers have sung without injuring themselves for centuries. A warm-up for Western classical vocalists simply would not be used to train the voice of a classical Carnatic singer, although these exercises might seem healthier by Western standards.

Check out the article by Zofia Majewski, especially if you have an interest in vocal performance.  You are likely to catch some nuance and revelations that I have missed.

Wait, Top MBA Programs Block Grade Disclosure?

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This post might go a bit on the cerebral side, but bear with me it should go along pretty quickly. Thanks to Marginal Revolution blog I learned that top MBA programs have a policy of grade non-disclosure (GND) which prevents students from revealing their grades or grade point average to potential employers.  This only applies to full time MBA students, not part-time students even if they are taking the same classes taught by the same professors.  This provided something of an opportunity for researchers to do a study  by making comparisons between the two groups.

What they found was:

We study the effects of grade non-disclosure (GND) policies implemented within MBA programs at highly ranked business schools. GND precludes students from revealing their grades and grade point averages (GPAs) to employers. In the labor market, we find that GND weakens the positive relation between GPA and employer desirability. During the MBA program, we find that GND reduces students’ academic effort within courses by approximately 4.9%, relative to comparable students not subject to the policy. Consistent with our model, in which abilities are potentially correlated and students can substitute effort towards other activities in order to signal GPA-related ability, students participate in more extracurricular activities and enroll in more difficult courses under GND…

What most interested me was the idea that while student effort decreased when they knew their grades wouldn’t be reported to potential employers, they were more likely to engage in extracurricular activities and take more difficult courses. (It should be noted most part time MBA students are already employed and taking classes for promotional opportunities. If their employer is paying, it is often contingent upon maintaining a certain GPA)

I recently made a post about how classroom grades are not an accurate reflection of future performance or capacity, extrapolating that to comment that not all metrics are meaningful to decision making. This is a similar situation. While they may prefer to have GPA revealed, employers will hire MBA graduates from top programs due to reputation, networking and the fact one was admitted to the school signals something about their economic, social and educational background.

Similarly, the work of top arts organizations in communities is perceived as valuable due to reputation, networking, and status of people attending associated with it. Like economic impact, none of these factors can be used to measure the quality and value of the work in the community.

Organizations with resources can afford to pay for product created by the highly skilled and provide a great experience. If that attracts people from out of town so they spend in restaurants, shops and hotels, then a lot of people are happy for its presence.

But if people within walking distance of the space don’t feel welcome there, does the organization have value to the community?

Neighbors feeling welcome may be just as problematic a metric as others, but why is economic impact the standard against which all cultural organizations are measured?  I feel like there is a growing trend on a local level toward valuing sense of welcome, especially post-Covid. Though I would argue given the mission statements of most non-profits, welcome should be more important than economic impact.

To a large degree we make conscious decisions about what is most important when we choose where to live, work, and play based on myriad personal and social criteria.  But we like to eliminate the nebulous factors and hew to lists created using arbitrary criteria. Which is why you can see five Best Places To Live articles a week where only a few places overlap. It is fun to see your favorite places on the list, but is that information helpful for decision making?

Donor Advised Funds Receive More Giving Than Public Charities

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Earlier this month Vu Le of the Non Profit AF blog linked to a piece reporting that Donor Advised Funds (DAF) had surpassed charities as recipients of charitable revenue.  The problem with this, as I have previously written, is that unlike public charities which are required to spend at least 5% of their funding each year, donor advised funds have no such requirement but the donor gains the tax benefit of making a donation.

In other words, the government is subsidizing giving that is not necessarily providing any charitable benefit. From the Inequity.org article:

Of particular concern are DAF sponsors that are affiliated with for-profit Wall Street financial corporations. As we have documented, these commercial DAFs provide enormous publicly-subsidized tax benefits to their high-rolling contributors while actively encouraging the warehousing of charitable wealth. And commercial DAFs have been growing explosively.

In fact, the largest commercial DAF sponsors now take in more money each year than our largest public charities.

The article has an animated graphic illustrating how over time DAFs have occupied six of the top ten recipients of charitable revenue, displacing United Way Worldwide from its top spot to number four.

There has already been some discussion about how the required minimum 5% annual distribution by charities was a low bar to meet, especially since some of the charity’s administrative expenses and activities can count toward the 5% expenditure rather than purely distributed as grants.  So the fact that so much more money is being directed toward DAFs than ever before with no requirement that it be distributed is of growing concern.

Housing Appraisal As Art For Social Change

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Back in March I made a post about an artist’s project in Pittsburgh that called attention to the disparity in appraisals between White homeowners and Black homeowners.  In a story of art having some success at bringing about social change, that project apparently lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to investigate whether there might be appraisal discrimination occurring.

One part of artist Harrison K. Smith’s project involved having a house appraised, first with the Black homeowner and then with a White stand-in. The appraisal came in higher for the stand-in.

The Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh (FHP) filed a housing discrimination complaint against the appraisal company, Ditio Inc., which conducted the first appraisal last year, after reading about Smith’s exhibit in the news. (The second appraiser wasn’t identified.) The Fair Housing Partnership found fault not only with the appraisal discrepancy, but also in the manner in which the appraisal was carried out.

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Through HUD’s administrative complaint process, the FHP is hoping to change Ditio’s appraisal practices, and potentially open the door for broader policy changes across the industry down the road. FHP says HUD is investigating the complaint and is currently in a fact-finding stage.

You can read the article about the issues FHP has raised about the appraisal process.

Check out my March post about the details of Smith’s project if you weren’t already familiar with it. There are multiple parts and the appraisal stand-in is arguably the least interesting phase given that people in other communities have attempted the same thing.

The fact he talked a museum into taking out a mortgage on one of their properties to support another segment of the project seemed much more bold and far reaching to me.

Ushering Them Off With Great Fanfare

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I have read a fair number of articles about transitioning problematic board members off a board, but I have to credit Vu Le for laying out a relatively detailed process for accomplishing the task.  Le’s approach, which he terms the “Plaque and Sack,” requires essentially killing the board member with a ton of kindness.

I wouldn’t imagine it is 100% effective, but it is intended to help mitigate any negative repercussions that might result.  It is also meant to be used in extreme cases after much thought and consideration.

Basically, it involves identifying a high visibility event at which to honor the board member with an award for all they have contributed and accomplished, both with the organization and in the community.  The occasion should feel prestigious and significant and involve lionizing the honoree as a pillar, supported by a video montage of people likewise praising them as they retire from the board.

Le admits that perhaps the hardest part of the whole process might be swallowing anger and resentment while organizing the occasion.

9.Try to suppress your bitterness and resentment: I know it can be hard to watch someone get praised publicly when they have been terrible for the mission, but close your eyes to keep them from rolling, …

And that, my friends, is the art of the Plaque and Sack. Besides board members, it may work on difficult volunteers and donors. Again, do not deploy this lightly.

 

Asking “What Would You Like Future Attendees To Know?”

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I had planned to write about something different today but this post by Ruth Hartt on LinkedIn grabbed my attention.

Cain Lewis goes on to talk about how he doesn’t care about Airbnb:

So telling me ‘we’d love to know how it went’ doesn’t compel me to leave a review at all 😴

But I *do* care about helping other travellers like me find good experiences. And avoid the bad ones.

Because I appreciate reviews when I’m looking to book something too.

I’d bet most of their customers feel the same way.

So, here’s what I’d change it to:

‘Remember to leave a review for your Northwest Jeep Experience. Your feedback will help other travellers know what to expect!’

Less about Airbnb, more about supporting the community that I rely on so heavily myself.

This got my mind going because Hartt is right, this slight shift in perspective has wider implications. Many arts organizations send surveys after events so directing people to your social media pages when asking people to complete a survey aligns with the concept that their response will help other attendees. Asking people to complete a survey alone based on an appeal to help other visitors know what to expect will likely be met with skepticism.

Even though people may make negative comments on your social media pages, at least those comments are in a place you can see and know about rather than in places far outside your awareness.

Just the same, I think that the perspective of  your answers as a participant are making things better for the next person can be applied to surveys that only staff are likely to see.  Reframing survey questions in this context can communicate a sincere desire to improve the experience.

For example, instead of asking people how they would rank a performance, the service they received and restroom cleanliness on a Likert scale (1 being worst, 5 being best), questions can ask, “What would you like future attendees to know about our performances/ticket ordering experience/restrooms?

Obviously, it doesn’t have to be that exact syntax repeated for every question, but the general subtext can be present.  This line of questioning has “would you recommend us to your friends?” baked into it while adding a sense of “what do you wish you had known/read about us before you arrived?”

For repeat attendees, some of these questions will be a bit less relevant because they are familiar with your physical plant and how to navigate purchasing and attendance. But you can also get feedback about things a first time attendee might think was a one off mistake but a frequent visitor has noticed and wants to warn others about. i.e. “They will tell you they are having problems with X tonight, but it is always like that.”

I also think that asking questions in this manner with a sincere intent to remedy what you can, the first rule of surveying is never ask a question you aren’t willing to act upon, is that it will differentiate your organization from others. Perhaps it will even encourage people to respond to your surveys more frequently.

I know Americans for the Arts are making a strong national survey push over the next year, but their focus is very much on economic impact and asking you how much you spent before you leave the venue. Those who are frequent arts attendees are going to be asked to complete the survey often over the next year. It may be difficult for organizations to find people who are willing to complete their personal, non-AftA surveys, so asking questions focused on the interests of other attendees versus the organizational interest may make the difference.

Just as an added aside – the venue I am currently at will have alternating bursts of reviews for events on our Google profile and Facebook page. I have no idea what the common element is. Why did 10 attendees of a dance recital review us on Google, but a handful of attendees to another event flock to Facebook? Anyone have any insight based on what they have observed?

Visiting For The Gift Shop

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Whenever I have visited a museum that forces you to go through the gift shop before you can exit, I have viewed the design as a cynical cash grab. As I think about it, while I have frequently purchased gifts for others at museums, they weren’t institutions that forced you to exit through their retail spaces.

So it was with interest and curiosity that I read Colleen Dilenschneider’s post about the strong link between museum gift shops and museum memberships.  This is definitely not something I had considered before. If you have a gallery or museum type organization, take a close read of her piece because she includes a number of caveats about reading the results in a certain manner which I am definitely not going be able to accurately reflect here.

Dilenschneider suggests that museum retail may be a strong element in re-engaging with members and the community at large in the post-Covid next normal. Many lapsed members intend to renew next time they visit and members are 15% more likely to have first visited the museum for the gift shop than non-members. So the retail space may be what draws lapsed members back first.

One thing she mentions is that gifting objects from museum retail spaces are often closely tied to self-image.

Critically, we know that people believe that visiting a museum makes them better friends, neighbors, and parents. Purchasing an item from the gift shop can reinforce perceptions that someone is the type of person who supports their community by way of supporting an organization, purchases unique gifts for friends and family, and leaves their home to have educational experiences. This factor may be even stronger for members.

While she can not definitively say self-image is stronger motivator for members, data shows that members make purchases from museum gift shops in higher percentages than non-members and tend to spend more on those purchases than non-members.

The fact that they may get a discount is ranked relatively low in importance as membership benefit.

Members consider benefits such as supporting the organization, free admission, priority access, and positively impacting the museum’s mission significantly more important. Nearly a quarter of members are having a retail interaction. Instead of assuming they’re there for the discount, consider that those interactions can be an important touchpoint of engagement for strengthening this community of supporters.

On the question of “Are members important to retail or is retail important to members?” Dilenschneider says that there are myriad interrelated factors comprising the museum experience. People’s motivations shouldn’t reduced to a single simple question. Rather as she mentions in the last line quoted above, museums/galleries should focus on using the retail touchpoint to deepen relationships with members and an opportunity to potentially cultivate non-members into members.

While Dilenschneider provides examples of two museums that do encourage membership sign ups in their retail spaces, I suspect this might be accomplished in well-designed, soft-sell manner. I am just thinking about all the stories of people who attended a performance once and resented being barraged by phone calls and mailings about subscribing and donating.

So You Want To Name A Stadium…

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Via the Marginal Revolution blog I came across a piece analyzing the economics of stadium naming.   The basic conclusion was that if you see a corporation buying naming rights for a stadium, you should sell your stock because most of the time the company ends up under performing.

What got me to read through it was the promise that by the end  I would know:

How to decide whether a company you run or advise should buy the naming rights to a sports venue (e.g. high school stadium, college stadium, major league stadium, etc).

I was hoping there would be some differentiation between the benefits of sponsoring a high school or college stadium vs. major league stadium which might point to a possible benefit to a company for sponsoring performing arts venues and interior spaces. Unfortunately, the article only deals with major league stadiums and doesn’t cover college or high school at all. There is a promise of a more detailed analysis if you subscribe to the author’s newsletters.

Overall the analysis is interesting to read due to the context of why different company’s stocks under performed. Banks and financial institutions were bailed out by the US government. Energy companies profiled were involved with all sorts of scandals or were part of a sector that just broadly under performed.

There were two examples of companies that beat the overall trend and did better:  Qualcomm which stepped in when San Diego was desperate for funding to complete a stadium expansion. As a result, Qualcomm paid much, much less than they might otherwise have.

Target was the other example. Their deal apparently included additional enhancements that sponsorships generally don’t. Among them were appearances of NBA players at stores and potentially merchandise deals.

I have never really paid much attention to stadium naming news, but the insight the article provided about some of the arrangements and how beneficial it has been to the company stock† sheds light in an easily digestible format into an area which isn’t widely reported on.

†Since I frequently mention that not all measure of value are relevant, I feel I should point out that just because the stock for many of these companies didn’t do well doesn’t mean the naming arrangements weren’t valuable to the companies in other ways.

This Place Has Rats. But They Will Be Gone Soon!

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I know for a fact that for at least 30 years now, market textbooks and classes have made the distinction between marketing and advertising/promotion the first definition provided.  That has pretty much been a useless effort because people generally think of the terms as synonymous.

I don’t expect to move that needle much at all today, but I thought I would share a recent post Seth Godin made on the topic to get readers thinking about their own practices.

If an exterminator puts signs and banners in front of a fancy house when they’re inside killing rats, that’s promotion. But it’s not good marketing.

Marketing is creating the conditions for a story to spread so you can help people get to where they hope to go. Marketing is work that matters for people who care, a chance to create products and services that lead to change.

[…]

If you have to interrupt, trick or coerce people to get the word out, you might be doing too much promotion and not enough marketing.

I especially like this first illustration he uses. While it isn’t a universally applicable example of the difference, it does make the point that what is good promotion doesn’t necessarily create an environment that is in everyone’s interests.

In the same way, a message of “come see this show” is different from “this is a place that provides an opportunity to share experiences with family and friends.” The latter is part of a narrative about attaining what people aspire to rather than selling a single specific product.

Upgrade Your Theatre Seat For More Legroom?

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I caught a story on NPR’s Marketplace yesterday that discussed the way airlines use premium seating.  One of the people interviewed mentioned that airlines craftily use the separation of time to get people to upgrade. Because the flyer is offered the opportunity to change to premium economy around the time they check in, months or weeks after they purchased the ticket, consumers view the upgrade payment as a different transaction from the initial seat purchase rather than thinking about the total amount they have spent.

Of course, that got me thinking about how this could be applied in the arts realm. While there are performing arts venues that employ dynamic pricing to extract additional revenue from ticket sales, by and large most organizations don’t have the interest or the computing infrastructure to implement that sort of ticketing.

However, many venues have ticketing systems that are capable of providing the view of the stage from a particular seat or notes about which seats have more leg room.  There may be other characteristics about the performance space people value that can be integrated into seating choice as well.

An email can be sent out a week before the event with information about how to prepare for the visit, including parking, restaurants, etc., and offering an opportunity for an upgrade in terms of sight lines, leg room, or whatever.

The offer of the upgrade doesn’t have to wholly be driven by a profit motive. It can be offered as a loyalty incentive to help fill houses now and in the future. Because you have been a loyal attendee or purchased well in advance, you can upgrade from the $35 seat to a $60 seat for an additional $10 rather than $25.

If you know that part of your audience base are price sensitive, last minute purchasers, you have just freed up a cheaper seat that can be sold and incentivized loyal patrons who plan in advance to continue to do so.

While I was thinking about all this, I recalled an instance where a person on my staff suggested that a renter do something of an inversion of the usual seat pricing approach and price seats up close less than those further back. I was a little conflicted about this because while we as insiders felt that seats in rows G-L are among the best seats, pricing should be based more on what seats the buyer thinks are the best.

But I also wondered if people have been trained by the way things are priced to think the highest priced, closest seats are the best? Given their choice in a general admission setting at a live, non-festival experience, people rarely head immediately to the front and fill in as close as they can possibly get.  More often than not, the front 2-3 rows are virtually empty by the time the show starts unless the event is close to sold out.

Is there a psychological element inherent to reserve seating events that changes the calculus for people? If the front few rows are priced less than those behind, do people think the venue management are fools and they are getting away with something by paying less?  And is that necessarily a bad thing if it has people watching closely for when tickets will go on sale so they can grab those great seats at a cut rate? Will they relent and buy slightly higher tickets if the cheaper ones sell out before they get there?

Of course they need to be confident those seats did sell and weren’t held back to manipulate sales or weren’t grabbed by resellers. This approach wouldn’t work well in places that are subject to scalpers with an automated purchase process.

My Freshman English Grade ≠ 2022 Writing Proficiency

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There was an article on The Conversation website back in March by Elisabeth Gruner discussing how she stopped giving grades on student papers in favor of comments and wished she had done so sooner.

I was reminded of Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where he mentions doing the same thing in his classes at Montana State University in the late 1950s. Pirsig’s students reacted much like Gruner’s did some 70 years later. Basically, they freak out at the prospect of not being given a grade.

I have written about Pirsig’s book before, though it has been about 15 years since my last reference to it. My experiences since then have somewhat supplemented my perspective. In recent years I have been writing on the idea that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the resulting data is an accurate depiction of value.

In the same way, a grade doesn’t really help you master content and improve. While an instructor can obviously provide a grade and comments, as Gruner notes, students will flip past all the comments to find the grade and then they are done.

Granted, students always have the option of ignoring comments and choose not to improve their skills. But that is a choice all humans have when faced with critique and not limited to educational settings.

The other issue is that grades and comments are only a measure of your level of mastery at a moment in time.

As I mention in my post from 15 years ago, I wrote a paper based on Pirsig’s book arguing for comments on papers in favor of grades. My professor took me at my word and didn’t give me a grade until after we discussed her comments. (She was obligated by the school to provide a grade, I didn’t feel the need for one.)

Another professor commented on another paper I wrote, observing that the grammatical mistakes were legion, but that I had done a fantastic job of capturing the voice and flavor of the work upon which I based my composition.

There was a grade on that paper. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember the comment. Arguably, my writing skills have improved since then. There have been many factors which have contributed to my higher standard of writing, but it really wasn’t the grades. Memories of my educational experience and how I professors dealt with me are what have endured.

In a similar manner, measures of value that are often applied to the arts like economic impact are meaningless.  How does economic impact inform organizational decision making? How does knowing the economic impact number influence how those in the community conduct their lives?

There is a lot of other data which will help organizations strive to do better or effect change. There are other ways in which people’s lives will be impacted by an arts organization. The value of all this can be examined and observed over the course of years.

Something I wanted to call attention to that is somewhat unrelated to my point about the relevance of grades and certain metrics used to measure organizational value. I feel this is important to note for people who want to read Pirsig, or my early posts on his book, and take some lessons from his experience with grading.

In Pirsig’s book, when he talks about his experience eliminating grading in the classroom, he mentions that the A & B students’ work improved, C students either improved a bit or stayed average, and D & F students basically kept sinking.  Basically, the idea was that the students’ natural talent and work ethic were a constant regardless of whether they were graded.

Gruner has different perspective which I think is a reflection of the differences between who got to attend university in 1958 and 2020s.

My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student’s background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.

While I know that background influences the degree to which people are prepared for an educational experience, until I read that paragraph, my recollection of Pirsig’s observations about grading dominated my perspective.

A Little Night of Georgia Music

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About three months ago I mentioned that we were having a concert filmed for public television in our venue. We recently got word that it will make its broadcast debut on Georgia Public Broadcasting on July 4. After that, it will be available to stations around the country on their schedule. (So hint, hint, you should nudge your local stations to air it.)

The show is comprised of music by Georgia musicians including, R.E.M., Ray Charles, The Allman Brothers, Outkast, Ray Charles, and B-52s.  The show is a project by Mike Mills of R.E.M., classical violinist Robert McDuffie, and Chuck Leavell formerly of The Allman Brothers and currently keyboardist for Rolling Stones.

The show features Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra composed by Mills. The string orchestra performing in the recording comes from the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University.

A little bit of a preview below. I am sure there is more video to come.

Best Time To Fight Burnout Is Before You Start Feeling Burned Out

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So hat tip to Roger Tomlinson who made a social media post calling attention to “A Manager’s Guide to Helping Teams Face Down Uncertainty, Burnout and Perfectionism“    It appears it is pretty much hot off the presses because it references a number of recent events which can be contributing to the stress of staff.

While the guide is written for a broad swatch of work environments, there is a great deal with which readers are likely to identify. It isn’t very long, but does have a hyperlinked index so you quickly return to where you left off.

One of the first things acknowledged in the article is that manager in particular can be doubly impacted by burnout.

In this exclusive interview, Fosslien dives deeper into three of the weighty emotions they address in the book — but from the manager’s lens specifically. “In conversations with readers, I’ve noticed how managers are feeling particularly overwhelmed and exhausted,” she says.

Many managers are struggling with what I call “burnout burnout” — providing emotional support and looking after the well being of their team has become a bigger part of their roles in the last two years, and it’s starting to take a toll.

I am not going to even try to encompass all the contributing factors for burnout and pro-active steps the piece discusses. In broad strokes, though the authors address a lot of assumptions that people make which result in the compounding of stress. If you are implementing burnout reduction tactics when you start to feel stressed, you waited too long. But that is natural and what most people end up doing. If you don’t forgive yourself for that, it will only make dealing with it worse.

Check it out. It is an easy read with helpful illustrations with concepts worth considering.

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