American Theatre had some encouraging news about a trend to improve summer theatre internship programs. The need for this was seen last year as interns and other staff were walking off the job at some of the most prestigious gigs in the country. A number of theatres are focused on making the experience more accessible, … Read more
When I was an undergraduate, and even after I graduated college, I applied to work at the Williamstown Theater Festival, one of the most prestigious summer theaters in the country. Recent reporting makes me think I may have dodged a bullet when I wasn’t accepted. You may have seen that back in July, the sound … Read more
Just before Christmas Non-Profit Quarterly called attention to a situation of some concern. Recently the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned an administrative law judge’s ruling and determined that employees were not protected when they advocated for non-employees. In this particular case, it was employees of Amnesty International signing a petition supporting paying unpaid interns … Read more
I was really excited today when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the headline, “Diversity organisation celebrates placing 1000th paid intern.” The concept that some entity was able to secure PAID internships for over 1000 people in creative field was amazing to me. I was a little disappointed upon realizing moments later … Read more
I recently got around to reading the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) special report on internships in arts fields. There is a lot of interesting findings in the 23 page report, including the (to me) dismaying news that 87% of those who did at least one arts administration internship were unpaid. That is the … Read more
For the last year or so, non-profit arts organizations have been somewhat nervously wondering whether the criteria being used to define what constituted an internship might be applied to the non-profit industry as well. The concern arose over a ruling against Fox Searchlight pictures in a case where interns on the film Black Swan where … Read more
There was a post on the Harvard Business Review blog site about a recent leadership study – Why You Lead Determines How Well You Lead. According to the study, people with an internal motivation to lead are more effective than those with external motivations. More surprising, a person who has a mix of internal and … Read more
I recently misread the title of a post on Museum 2.0. But in that second of misapprehension, my brain flooded with assumptions about the subject of the post. I misread “A Shared Ethics for Museum Internships” to be something like “Ethics for Shared Museum Internships.” In that moment, I thought shared internships was a great … Read more
The subject of paying interns has been in the news fairly frequently. This summer I noted that while non-profits are currently exempt from some of the rules of the Fair Labor Standards Act, this may not be true for long. Classifying employees as interns or independent contractors may not be valid, even for non-profits depending … Read more
I am a busy, busy boy this week which is why I ended up not posting yesterday. Hopefully things will calm down a little by next week. So by way of recompense for not posting yesterday, I offer you four links to practical information for use in your arts organization. I am sure at least … Read more
Bit of a cautionary tale about how we process and evaluate the deluge of information we receive these days thanks to microblogging sites like Twitter. I follow a number of people via Twitter and I think it has helped the quality of my blog posts because it is easier for me to get information on … Read more
A few weeks ago I did an entry on the social impacts and elements of internships in the arts and very briefly referred to the question of whether unpaid internships were legal. It only occurred to me later that the whole legality question wasn’t really dealt with very well. I read a lot about it, … Read more
Hat tip to Artful Manager Andrew Taylor for noting Doug Fox’s piece on how poorly Internet media outlets and blogs were involved in the National Performing Arts Convention. Generally, I don’t replicate links to which prominent bloggers like Taylor have drawn attention, but I was just astounded by how few references and links a highly … Read more
Came across something a little disturbing yesterday. I don’t remember where exactly. It took me awhile to track it down via Google. According to the Center for Digital Democracy, phone and cable companies are moving to make every action we make on the internet billable. There is also the possibility that competitors and people espousing … Read more
Ruth Hartt made a post yesterday that is getting a fair number of responses from folks in the arts community, including somewhat gratifyingly, board members who need to be invested in the goals for which she advocates. She discusses the need for cultural organizations to align their programming, practices, and operations toward meeting outcomes desired … Read more
Yesterday I received an email letting me know that Colleen Dilenschneider and her colleagues at IMPACTS Experience had released a new post titled Ticket Purchasing Frustrations Are On the Rise. (subscription required) I knew this would be a topic I wanted to write on. An hour later, I get an email from someone who knows … Read more
I was recently drawn to the story of Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia opening a retail dancewear store out of their location. They spent $150,000 renovating a space that used to contain two offices into a street level store space. The director of the school noted most dancewear stores stock up to $150,000 … Read more
Last month, Forbes website hosted an article “6 Things That Arts Leaders Should Do Right Now” It is written in the context of all the funding cuts and policy changes being promulgated on the federal level. Except for the suggestion to emphasize the economic impact of your work in the community to garner the support … Read more
If you have staff working from home or are considering moving in that direction, I recently made a post on ArtsHacker regarding some tips for creating a successful asynchronous work environment. The post largely draws from some tips assembled by ArtsMidwest about different tools and approaches an organization can use. As I write in the … Read more
Colorado Public Radio has a weekly Q&A feature they run. A recent question about why some sports teams are named for Denver and others for Colorado even though they are all based out of metro Denver reflects the ways in which technology and connectedness change our perceptions. Reporter Ben Marcus noted that older teams like … Read more
A story I was watching throughout December was the threat of Berlin cutting its funding for arts and culture. Right before Christmas, the city did indeed cut funding by $130 million which represents 12% of funding. A lot of arts professionals in the US are probably thinking their city’s arts and culture budget isn’t anywhere … Read more
Today I am following on yesterdays post about the National Endowment for the Art’s report on a dozen listening sessions they conducted this past spring and summer, Defying Gravity: Conversations with Leaders from Nonprofit Theater. Yesterday, I focused on theater leadership’s perception that they didn’t have enough time to digest research on promising practices* and … Read more
Museums As Progress sponsored a talk with John Falk today on a chapter from his upcoming book Leaning Into Value: Becoming a User-Focused Museum. The chapter addressed the value of data to museums, but I was obviously approaching it from the perspective of the value of data for all sorts of organizations. Falk mentioned many … Read more
Last month, the Bloemencorso Zundert, caught my attention. It is the largest flower parade in the world held in Zundert, Netherlands. Twenty hamlets compete to have their parade float judged as the best. Apparently, they only use dahlias are used in the Zundert parade and six of the nearly eight million flowers are cultivated in … Read more
There was some disappointing news a week or so ago when the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) announced the sunsetting after 28 years of the National Theater Project and National Dance Project due to a priority shift by the Mellon Foundation. Across the course of my career, I availed myself of the opportunity … Read more
In another refutation of the argument that we should stop funding libraries because no one reads books, on Friday there was a public radio piece from Marketplace illustrating the increased role libraries play in communities. In this particular story, they featured a library in Taylorsville, KY where not a lot of people have internet access … Read more
Via Artsjournal.com, a thought provoking interview with Professor Justin O’Connor, author of the book, Culture Is Not An Industry. His basic premise is that if culture was an industry, decisions about it would play a bigger role in international policy and relations. If we treat culture as a real industry, in the classical sense of … Read more
Freakanomics did a two part show about how the Broadway play Stereophonic came together. The first part is broadly about the 11 year creative process playwright David Adjmi went through to make the show. The second part focuses a bit more on the economics behind a Broadway show. If you have been involved with the … Read more
A recent post from Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS analyzes survey data that shows trust in cultural organizations has grown since the pandemic. Trust in cultural entities exceeds that of media sources, state and federal agencies and non-governmental organizations. Among the more interesting insights from the data is that from 2010 to 2019, … Read more
Bloomberg had an article on a trend that presents an opportunity for arts and cultural organizations. In some respects it could be considered rather mundane news – Gen Z Is abandoning dating apps in favor of in person singles events. Arts and cultural organizations have the opportunity to create specific experiences for this group either … Read more
Continuing from yesterday’s post about the Wallace Foundation’s evaluation of their five year audience building and sustainability initiative, In Search of the Magic Bullet, the best summary of the findings was report author Francie Ostrower’s statement: …our analyses highlight that expanding audiences may happen, but not necessarily on the organization’s original terms. An overarching message to … Read more
Last Monday, Ruth Hartt sent out an email newsletter noting that the Wallace Foundation’s five year, $52 million Building Audiences for Sustainability Initiative basically failed to identify any definitive way to achieve that goal. I have been following Wallace Foundation efforts for years so I was surprised I had missed this news. But sure enough, … Read more
You may have heard the disconcerting news that the 150 year old University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia abruptly announced their closure last week, less than a year after Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts announced they were discontinuing their bachelor and master of fine arts degrees. What is particularly galling about the closure … Read more
Yesterday, the Western Arts Federation (WESTAF) sponsored a webinar on accessibility lead by Betty Siegel, Director Office of Accessibility and VSA at The Kennedy Center. Siegel was absolutely fantastic. Her presentation was dynamic, full of relatable examples, and humor. One example she gave as the best sources of information about the history of accessibility was … Read more
Seth Godin recently made an interesting post about non-profit fundraising, in particular the inefficiencies that exist in the process that can’t be fixed by technology, because it can, but rather the expectations of the donors. Along the way, it’s not unusual for a nonprofit to spend 50% of the money they raise on the expense … Read more
Back in February I caught a broadcast of NPR’s podcast show Code Switch where the episode was about the music that came out of or was inspired by Japanese internment. Artists like Kishi Bashi and Mike Shinoda of the band Linkin Park are among descendants of internees and wrote music how that impacted their family, … Read more
This past Friday, February 23 marked the 20th anniversary of this blog. While Drew McManus often remembers the anniversary better than I do, I did recall the anniversary was coming up prior to the actual date. When I first started back in 2004, I used a platform provided by my internet service provider for a … Read more
Last August, I called attention to the dwindling number of qualified piano tuners posing a threat to arts organizations’ ability to host concerts. Along those same lines, Artsjournal.com posted a story last week about the shortage of engineers posing a threat to the continued operation of public radio stations. Where radio stations used to have … Read more
Yesterday I cited a Seth Godin post about rethinking how we measure work productivity. Around the same time he made a post along the same lines noting that while strictly following instructions might have been valuable in an economy that was focused on industrial manufacturing, the current economic model requires employees to be more autonomous … Read more
Broadway Producer Ken Davenport posted last week about The Broadway League’s attendance report for the 2022-2023 season. The 2022-2023 season was the first period in which a full season of shows was able to run so being able to compare it against the 2018-2019 benchmark season is valuable. Overall, the numbers are pretty good. Compared … Read more
Apropos to my post yesterday about Richmond Ballet dancers suing the organization for exerting so much pressure about their weight, there was another story a couple weeks ago that I forgot where the Executive Director and Artistic Director of the Cleveland Ballet were suspended after they chose not to renew the contract of a dancer … Read more
Well apparently my optimism about the direction of the Indianapolis Museum at Newfields was a little premature. In late September I wrote about how the museum had just hired. Belinda Tate, a new director who it was hoped would help the museum move past the controversy surround a job posting in 2021 which said they … Read more
The China Project recently spotlighted Taylor Swift’s amazing fluency in speaking Mandarin Chinese. It is amazing to think she is able to gain this level of proficiency while attending to her billion dollar business empire. Except that she can’t speak Chinese that well and the video of her, and others, doing so in the China … Read more
A number of arts organizations made strong commitments to diversify their offerings and the composition of their staffs and performers as they emerged from Covid restrictions. Recently there was a story on Artsjournal.com about the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s (PNB) new dancer roster which is younger and 50% composed of persons of color. The organization had … Read more
There was a short piece in Fast Company today that discusses hiring employees in similar terms to what is required to broaden and diversify audiences – You have to hire for the company culture you want rather than hiring someone to fit existing work culture. Basically, you can’t expect the changes you want to happen … Read more
Caught a timely article from The Guardian about the dwindling number of piano tuners in Australia. I am fairly certain arts and cultural organizations in other countries are having a similar experience when trying to schedule piano tuners. Personally, I have been in a situation where we had a choice of two-three tuners which dwindled … Read more
There was an interesting and rather lengthy article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week about the puppetry program at West Virginia University. It is apparently one of the few degree programs in puppetry in the country. As you might imagine, it is in danger of being shutdown. The article notes that while puppetry … Read more
So in an illustration of the importance of the exercise of soft power, the U.S. has agreed to rejoin UNESCO and pay back dues to the tune of $600+ million. The US stopped paying dues in 2011 when Palestine was included as a member and the Trump administration decided to have the country withdraw entirely … Read more
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 … Read more
Earlier this month, the Albany Times-Union reported that there won’t be much theatre occurring at the storied Willamstown Theatre Festival. The reason is based on the staff walkouts and subsequent investigative reporting by the LA Times I wrote about back in 2021. Recognizing there are many issues to address in addition to the complaints of … Read more
I was wondering if you would enjoy that Ray.
Thank you for the post. Simon Rattle and the students made my day!
Santa Cruz Shakespeare has several tiers of benefits for donors/members. Some, like season-announcement parties, are open to several tiers. Some,…