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Creativity Fills In The Blanks

May 17, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

We were participating in a scavenger hunt for a local 3rd grade class today. The kids were given clues associated with museums, galleries and public art around the downtown area. In addition to an architectural feature of our building, I was asked to reference the ghosts that linger in our 103 year old venue.

As you might imagine, the kids asked a lot of questions about the ghosts.

As they were leaving, they started reporting that the curtains moving by themselves and seeing a figure looming in the projection booth. I asked them what they thought was going on and they started relating all sorts of stories. One kid forgot her water bottle so I turned the lights back on for her and was chatting with a teacher when she came scurrying nervously out clutching the water bottle.

It isn’t a surprise that people will fill in the blanks with information that isn’t available. Unfortunately, this fact has fueled a lot of conspiracy theories. On the other hand, there may be something to be said for the traditional practice of implying terrible things happened off-stage, both in a literal and metaphorical sense.

There are worries that younger people today won’t be ready for the jobs of tomorrow because they lack the trait of creative thinking. The blame may be placed on the easy availability of content on the internet, video games, streaming, etc. But it is pretty clear that kids in 3rd grade haven’t lost the capacity to generate creative answers.

Perhaps part of the solution is to ask them to expound upon their ideas and showing that someone is paying attention rather than encouraging them to occupy themselves with phones and other devices.

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity

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Maintaining Relationships Has Been Key To Recovery Of Arts Orgs Post-Shutdown

May 16, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

TRG Arts recently released some data showing that not all segments of performing arts have recovered from pandemic shutdowns at the same rate. Comparing four factors from 2019 to 2022: Tickets, Ticket Revenue, Gifts, and Gift Revenue, they report that Performing Arts Centers have fared best in these categories. Ballet had done as well in terms of tickets and gifts, but had seen ticket revenue and donor revenue increase. Theater fared worse with classical music doing slight better and showing signs of improvement. The data is drawn from US, Canada and UK arts organizations.

TRG credits performing arts centers’ relative flexibility with their ability to start recovery in attendance and revenue earlier than other areas. Overall, they say the lessons to draw from this data is the importance of maintaining relationships with audiences and having aggressive retention practices.

Maintaining relationships with customers and donors, keeping their connections with the arts engaged and active—appears to be a key factor in driving organizational recovery from the pandemic. There were many creative ways this happened during the 2020-2022 period, from digital distribution to small ensemble performances to Zoom donor and ticket buyer gatherings to use of outdoor venues until going inside was permitted or felt safer.

[…]

Plan aggressively for customer retention. As your organization re-builds, do NOT think short-term, but instead make every dollar spent on acquisition go further by investing in customer relationship building and retention. We don’t have time or money to waste now…every campaign must include follow-up, invitations for our customers to join us again, and more.

[…]

Add to this reality the fact that by 2040 community demographics will be wildly more diverse than today. The result? Arts organizations will need to become expert at asking and listening, rather than assuming and telling. The art of the conversation with our customers—we’re going to need to get much better at it.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Symphonies Telling Stories Of Local Relevance

May 15, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

A link to a great story came across my feed today about a Hawaii Symphony Orchestra’s production that was really focused on resonating with the interests of the community they serve. Last month, they performed an original work, Symphony of the Hawai’i Forests for school children. (Instagram video here.)

The program featured new music performed by the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra (HSO) accompanied by new animations based on kaʻao (legends) that were created for this project that tell stories about how we can connect and care for our forests of Hawaiʻi.

Teachers were provided with online educational resources by the Mālama Learning Center about the forests of Hawaiʻi to prepare their students for the topics that would be covered during the symphony. Meanwhile, classes were encouraged to learn a hula about the water cycle so that they could then perform together en mass at the concert.

This was a significant undertaking that required collaboration with many partners, including state and federal forestry services, as well as those developing the animation, dance, and educational content. Programs like this will likely go a long way in showing students how a symphony orchestra can be relevant to their lives.

Following some other links, it appears they offer programming for adults along the same lines so it isn’t the case that kids intrigued by their symphony experience growing up only have the core classical canon as an option when they get older. In 2019, HSO presented an original concert paying tribute to the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s successful circumnavigation of the globe in 2017 using traditional navigation techniques on the voyaging canoe, Hōkūleʻa. (I wrote about the 40+ year effort to achieve that back in 2017) That too was a huge production involving over a thousand people between the singers, musicians, dancers, visual artists, etc. Again it emphasized the value of local stories to the community.

Audience Relations, creativity, Marketing/PR

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Striking While The Engagement Iron Is Hot

May 10, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

I was scrolling through Reddit while waiting for a show to end Friday night and happened upon a post that reflects great engagement by the St. Louis Blues hockey team. A guy discovering hockey for the first time and bemoaning his city’s loss of the Rams football team back to Los Angeles gets an invite from the Blues to attend a game.

When the nascent fan, Tony X. says he wants to buy the jersey of the biggest underdog on the team, a team member responds suggesting his jersey and later offers to sign it. The Blues apparently captured Tony X’s picture at the game as well.

Given the hashtags on this, I assume it all transpired in 2017 and it just bubbled back up on Reddit as so many topics do. It still provides a great example of how to really grab someone and keep them engaged when their interest is piqued. Many of the questions Tony X asks are similar to those first exposed to a new arts experiences – Why is that guy doing that? What should I wear?

Note that even though Tony X was a sports fan, his focus was on football so even though he knew some of what to expect from the experience, there were still some aspects that would be new and possibly intimidating.