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Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice. I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/) My most recent role is as Theater Manager at the Rialto in Loveland, CO Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

Arts Not An Indulgence When So Many Social Justice Issues Need Attention

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Apparently Vu Le of Nonprofit AF blog spoke at Association of California Symphony Orchestras last week. (those lucky dogs) In his post this week, he addresses the question about whether arts and culture have value when there are so many health and social justice problems that need to be attention. As the executive director of a social justice non-profit, he knows very well just how much organizations like his need funding and attention.

He says yes, arts and culture definitely play an important role in society and helping to address the problems we face. He mentions that as an immigrant from Vietnam, both music and art saved his life and made him feel valuable when he was doing poorly in school due to his lack of English literacy.

“I began to look forward to the art projects. For so long I had sucked at everything that required English, including gym (I could not understand the rules of various activities, like volleyball). With art, I felt competent and respected and sure of myself. My being good at something changed the way the other kids saw me. Art motivated me to continue to learn, to explore. It gave me confidence. It kept me in school.”

In blog posts throughout the years, I have often pointed out that people turn to art, music, theater, etc to help them cope with tragedy and difficulty in their lives. But of course, as a person in the arts, I am predisposed to look for those connections. So I was happy to read that Le had observed similar situations.

He is definitely aware of all the places arts and cultural organizations fall short of serving all segments of their communities. But he disputes the argument that the arts are indulgent in when there is such need in the world and expresses gratitude for the work arts practitioners do.  As long as the following excerpt is, a number of his expressions of gratitude are edited out so it is worth reading the whole post just for that.

I’m telling you these stories because when there is so much going on, so many problems to solve, sometimes we think of art and music as indulgent. Who has time for singing and dancing and stained-glass snowflakes when kids are starving or locked in cages? By thinking this way, we forget about art and music’s power to heal, mobilize, build community, and so much more.

[…]

Art and music are critical in our work for social justice, as frequently they are the only things that can reach people, that can provide comfort or generate the visceral, raw emotions needed for social change. After the election in 2016, when many families and children were terrified, Families of Color Seattle gathered the kids and used art—having the kids draw themselves as superheroes, for example—to help them process their feelings. And this year protesters in Hong Kong, are singing “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Miserables as they do a sit-in at the airport.

Yes, there are plenty of things to improve on. Art and music are not always accessible to marginalized communities. Resources are not equitably distributed to artists of color, artists with disability, LGBTQ artists. And in public schools, art and music programs are always the first to get cut, and the schools with the most low-income kids and kids of color are disproportionately affected. Symphonies, orchestras, ballets, and other art forms continue to struggle with diversity and community engagement.

While we work on those challenges, though, let’s take a moment to appreciate the organizations and professionals who are creating art and music, whose skills and dedication bring beauty and hope and happiness to a world sorely in need of it.

IMPORTANT: Changes To Music Licensing May Impact Any Performance At Your Venue

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Some important information about changes to music performance rights came to my attention today and I wanted to share it with readers.

Apparently the consent decrees under which ASCAP & BMI operate are up for review by the Department of Justice. The public comment phase is ending on Friday, August 9.  You can find out more about the consent decrees on the MIC Coalition website.

Basically, because ASCAP & BMI operate akin to monopolies, they and other performing rights organizations (PRO) are limited as to what they are able to do when licensing performing rights. They want these limits loosened. You can provide feedback to the Department of Justice here.

Even with these limits, dealing with these companies is often confusing and criteria seems inconsistent. Many have felt they were forced into purchasing broader licenses than they needed.

Today I received a huge flurry of emails urging myself and others to oppose the loosening. I was confused about why there was this sudden urgency when the public comment phase opened at the start of June. I started to wonder if there was an effort to create a huge sense of urgency by rallying support at a late date. Especially since there were initially few details provided about why one should voice their opposition.

Come to find out, the reason is that a large number of organizations across the country received revised licensing agreements from BMI this week containing some alarming changes. There is some suspicion they timed the mailing to hit toward the end of the public comment phase.

Here is a page of the agreement that is causing the biggest uproar.

In section 1 (g), terminology has been changed from “Gross Ticket Revenue” to “Gross Revenue.”  According to the new definition, in addition to ticket sales, calculation of a fee will now be based upon revenue from sales on the secondary ticket market, service charges, handling charges, VIP packages, advertising revenue, box suites, sponsorships, merchandise, concessions and parking.

So essentially, if you have a sponsor for your show; sell VIP packages, merchandise, food, and charge for parking, all that gets factored in to what you pay BMI rather than just ticket sales as was the case in the past.

From what I am told, the definition of “licensee” has been expanded to include a wider range of activities.

For events without an admission charge, the definition of what is included in the fee calculation has been expanded from a flat fee based on seating capacity to one based on entertainment expenses like room, board and transportation costs for the artist.

There are other problematic issues which are a little difficult to explain in a blog post and might not apply widely to many venues. I suspect there are problems that people have yet to discover.  If you do any sort of licensing with folks like BMI and ASCAP or if you have been trying to fly under the radar, you want to pay attention to this.

If you don’t think this applies to you at all, but you have live music performance, you may find that it does. That band that plays at your museum during First Fridays is probably subject to music licensing.

With more opportunities for revenue available, especially if the strictures of the consent decrees are loosened, there is more incentive find the places that have been trying to slide under the radar.

If you have concerns, check out the MIC Coalition website to learn more or provide feedback to the DOJ.  Also –read any new licensing agreements you get very, very carefully.

 

What Is Your Arts Employees Rights Policy?

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Barry Hessenius recently wrote a post about Arts Employees Rights. Given the amount of conversation and news stories about sexual harassment and other unwelcome activities throughout the creative industries, this seems a very timely subject. I see the topic appearing with increasing frequency on the schedule of arts and culture conference panels.

In addition to issues of safety, Hessenius discusses the need to examine pretty much every category heading of an employee manual. It occurred to me that while I have seen many of these topics discussed separately in posts, I can’t recall many “this is everything that should be in your employee handbook” posts.

I don’t know that we should necessarily take it for granted that every arts organization has an formal employee handbook much less that people have a complete sense of what should be included in the document.

Since equal compensation is a focus of broad conversation these days, it is no surprise that concept straddles a number of his category headings. (Which include Safety, Support, Equality, Compensation & Benefits, Termination, and Career Trajectory.)

He asks many of the difficult questions facing non-profits (this is only a smidge):

Should that minimum wage for full time employees be a living wage – defined as sufficient enough to cover minimal living expenses of room, food, transportation, et. al. for the cost of living of a given area?  (So someone working in Silicon Valley or New York City would need greater revenue that someone living in Fresno or Buffalo).  But can small and mid-sized arts organizations afford such a suggested requirement?  What would have to change to make that a reality?   Should all arts organization employees be provided a minimal level of health insurance?  Is that affordable?  What about retirement benefits or contributions by the employer?  Is that possible?

These are difficult questions for many arts organizations. The better you treat your employees, the fewer you may be able to employ, especially in the face of declining philanthropy.

You may recall about three years ago the Department of Labor was preparing to implement rules that would raise the salary criteria for non-exempt employees, meaning that many, many more non-profit employees would have been eligible for overtime pay than before.

I wrote about an Atlantic article that noted that this placed many non-profits in a strange position ‘“…between the values that many nonprofits hold and the way they treat their own staffs.”

Basically, non-profits work hard advocating for better pay and working conditions for people in general, but find themselves opposing that for their staffs due to lack of funding for operations.

More recently, the CEO of a Goodwill in Illinois tried to shame the governor into vetoing a minimum wage hike by laying off people with disabilities the organization employed, blaming it on the increased costs.

Hessenius acknowledges providing people with appropriate compensation is difficult, but challenges arts organizations not to discard it as a topic of serious discussion. It is easy to say the revenue stream will never support our ideals about compensation so it is futile to even discuss the question. He says there is a need for a conversation about how compensation fit holistically into the organization policy and philosophy on  employee rights.

 

We Will Accompany Them On The Beaches, On The Playgrounds, In The Parks And At The Opera!

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After I posted last week about how English towns installation of chat benches aligned with other stories I had covered about organizations trying to create personal connections between strangers, one of my neighbors, Regina Sweeney messaged me on LinkedIn about a study about buddy benches conducted in elementary schools. (I think this is the first time I have had someone I see on a fairly regular basis read my blog and send me a link.)

A number of schools use buddy benches to help kids make connections. If you are lonely at recess, you sit there and other kids are supposed to come over and invite you to play. There hadn’t been a lot of research done on the effectiveness of these benches so a group set out to conduct one at a school in Utah.

They found that introducing the benches reduced the number of solitary students. As part of the study, they removed the benches for a couple weeks and then returned them to the playground. When they were removed, the number of solitary students started to return to the baseline number observed before the benches were introduced. When the benches were reintroduced, the number of solitary students decreased.

While you can’t necessarily make assumptions about adults from the observation of a small group of elementary school kids, this result seemed to point to the usefulness of some sort of mechanism to facilitate connecting people. Providing people with a way to signal their willingness and desire to connect was useful.

There were kids that abused the benches. Some kids would sit on the bench and then rebuff all overtures to play. Teachers observed that kids who were normally very social seemed to sit on the bench to call attention to themselves. There were also those who made fun of those sitting on the bench.

Many students thought the benches were a good idea, but for other people.

“It appears that while students liked the idea of a buddy bench at their school, many may have thought of it as an intervention to help other students and not necessarily themselves.”

Kids in the upper grades (4th-6th) thought it was only useful for kids in the lower grades. Some students felt that they were introduced too late in the school year after cliques had been formed.

I imagine these general perceptions about the utility of benches might be more deeply entrenched in adults. Though I would also say adults might be more apt to resolve to participate in one role or the other if they knew the goal was to reverse a trend toward social isolation.

One take away from the study that I think is applicable for people of any age is the necessity to consistently make people aware of the program. Every teacher prepared their students for the introduction of the buddy benches and the benches were placed outside 100% of the time during the intervention stage. However, the principal reported only encouraging their use in morning announcements 80% of the time and the teachers monitoring the playground were often too preoccupied with other playground activities to seek out solitary students to encourage them to use the benches.

Those conducting the study felt these situations kept the project from being as successful as it might have been.

I would think the necessity of repeatedly communicating the availability of chatting/buddy programs would even be greater for arts organizations given that the attendees change for every event and they aren’t being exposed the availability of these initiatives everyday the way kids at school are.

I had written about the buddy seating program I had created at my previous theater which paired people in the audience chamber. As I read this study, I wondered if it might be good to have “meet someone new” seating in a public place like the lobby as well. People probably aren’t going to arrive alone at an event seeking a companion, but people new to the experience might welcome the opportunity to chat with those who are equally clueless about what to do or with someone who can offer some advice. Having a bench or row of chairs specifically to that purpose might be useful.

While this seems obvious in retrospect, it only occurred to me as I was re-reading the study and saw a line about the buddy benches being useful as”…a reinforcement by giving students a place to gather should they feel intimidated when seeking out play activities on their own.” This resonated with my recollection of a post Holly Mulcahy made yesterday about people who ruin the concert experience for newbies by enforcing a behavioral orthodoxy.

It wouldn’t eliminate the glares at clapping in the wrong place, but a buddy bench would give people a place to ask “Sooooo…I what’s the deal with not clapping at the end of some songs, but jumping to your feet at the end of other songs?”

If you are involved with education and want to bring buddy benches to your school, you need to read the study because I didn’t touch upon even 10% of what was involved and what they felt needed more rigorous study.

Data You Need To Believe Over Your Gut

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I so frequently tell my readers that Collen Dilenschneider has made an awesome post on her blog that it makes it difficult to convey the increased urgency to read one of her pieces when she has made an even awesomer post.

Despite this impediment, believe me when I say she recently made a post that is even more awesome than her usually awesome posts. Last week she wrote about how research results often contradict our gut feelings about a situation, despite being true. She confesses that as much as she deals with data every day, there are some instances where she asks the experts to revisit it just to be sure.

She goes on to list five data points that even she and her co-workers really wanted to believe were untrue.

Let me just say, I have seen some of this data before but part of what makes her post so great is this “contradicts our gut” framework she employs. As much as I read and write about arts administration, there are a fair number of instances where I raise mental walls against information I come across. It is useful to be constantly reminded that we need to take a deep breath and open our minds.

1) Local audiences have negatively skewed perceptions of the organizations in their area 

IMPACTS tracked 118 visitor-serving organizations and found that on average, people living within 25 miles of the organization indicate value-for-cost perceptions that are 14% less than those of regional visitors living between 25 and 101-150 miles away. In other words, locals believe their experience is less worthy of the admission cost they paid compared to the perceptions of those living further away. Interestingly, locals paid 20% less for admission, on average, than non-local visitors thanks to local discounts and promotions! They are also much less satisfied with their experiences than non-local visitors.

Even if this is influenced by a sense of sunk cost where long distance visitors arrive with a firmer conviction than local residents they will enjoy an experience given that they have already invested so much more time and money in planning and execution, it is important to recognize this dynamic is operating for different visitor segments.

2) An average visitor attends a cultural organization type only once every 27 months – and the average member returns to take advantage of free admission only once per year.

The average person who visits an art museum will not visit another for 28 months, on average. The average person who visits a history museum will not visit another for 32 months, on average. In total, the average visitation cycle for organization types that we monitor is 27 months. Here’s more on that data and what it means.

[…]

Subscription-based organizations such as theaters and symphonies: You’ve got it a bit better. Your members visit twice each year, on average.

I had actually written about this idea around 8 years ago. In the research presented at that time, it wasn’t that people felt they had enough of the organization and were going to wait a few years to go again, it was that people were so emotionally connected with the organization, they would swear they had just been there within the last year when it had been about two or more years.

Don’t immediately delete people from your mailing list if they don’t buy tickets to return, give it 3-5 years before you decide they are disengaged. (This assumes annual/semi-annual mailings vs. more frequent ones.)

3) Millennials are not “aging into” caring about arts and culture

Oooh, pay attention to this one!

This isn’t surprising to me and we have so much on this we’re getting into a “ridiculous” data volume category here, but this shocks other folks, so it’s making this list!

Millennials are not “aging into” caring about arts and culture as a natural function of getting older. Millennials also are not “aging into” other things some entities are banking on, like the belief that dolphins should be kept in captivity.

[…]

Millennials are a very important group for cultural organizations to engage. The take-away of these findings is critical: “Let’s just wait for people to think we’re important” is a failing engagement strategy.

Here is another point to be particularly mindful of–

4) On average, attendance goes back to baseline 5 years after a major expansion (but operation costs tend to be increased forever).

In a nutshell, attendance decreases in the years prior to a major building project as folks defer their visits until after the expansion opens. When an expansion opens, attendance certainly increases – 19.6% compared to the ten years prior! But that increase gradually decreases until attendance levels retreat to the baseline of the ten years prior after only 5 years. And the increased building space also means more staff members, more programming, more electricity, and more ongoing maintenance.

[…]

If you’re fundraising for or undertaking a major building expansion, make sure that you are clear on your goals and objectives – and that your expectations for long-term attendance and ongoing maintenance are grounded in reality.

And finally… (note the distinction she makes between mobile web and mobile apps)

5) Mobile applications do not significantly increase visitor satisfaction

Interestingly, people who use social media onsite in a way that relates to their visit report 7% greater visitor satisfaction scores than people who do not use social media in relation to their visit. Mobile web users experience a 6% bump in satisfaction. Even though all three of these methods (mobile applications, social media, and mobile web) take place on a mobile phone during a cultural organization visit, social media and the web significantly contribute to the visitor experience. Mobile applications do not reliably do this. One explanation for this may be that social media and mobile web “meet audiences where they are” and are examples of onsite technology facilitating the experience. Mobile applications, on the other hand, can be examples of technological intervention in which a visitor must interrupt the experience to figure out how to engage with the technology, or download it in the first place.

As much as I have quoted here, it is only about 1/3 of the data and rationale she presents in her post so check it out in order to get a more complete picture of things.

Waiting For A Nice Chat

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I came across an article about English towns that are installing  “chat benches” with signs saying, “The ‘Happy to Chat’ Bench: Sit Here If You Don’t Mind Someone Stopping To Say Hello.”

If this sounds vaguely familiar, you may recall that four years ago, I posted about a bus company in Brazil that reserved seats on buses and provided conversation prompts for people who wanted to meet someone new.

I actually used that as an inspiration for a program at my last venue to match up individuals wanting to see show who didn’t have anyone with whom to attend. ArtsMidwest picked up on it and apparently are still talking about as part of their Creating Connections program because people keep telling me they heard about the idea at one of their seminars.

Birch Coffee in NYC had a policy of not turning on the Wifi until 5 pm and providing conversation prompts at their tables. (A look at their website and social media presence couldn’t confirm if they still hold to this).  Their goal was to create a greater sense of community than was possible with people constantly looking at their screens.

The intent of the bench project in England is combat loneliness among senior citizens, though they encourage everyone to have a seat.

Burnham-On-Sea police community support officer Tracey Grobbeler told Burnham-On-Sea.com, “Simply stopping to say ‘hello’ to someone at the Chat Bench could make a huge difference to the vulnerable people in our communities and help to make life a little better for them.”

The initiative was launched to coincide with United Nations World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. According to a recent poll, more than a third of seniors reported feeling a lack of companionship at least some of the time, while 27 percent said they feel isolated some of the time or more often. While the project was conceived with the elderly population in mind, the Burnham-On-Sea police department encourages residents of all ages to use the chat benches.

Something I wonder about all these projects is whether the initial intention is fully realized. Clearly you can’t just set up a bench somewhere and expect conversations to happen organically. A framework was set up for each of these efforts. At the same time, as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. People may not behave in a way that conforms to your ideals.

Just as with my search of Birch Coffee’s web and social media presence sites (as well as some media reports) didn’t have any mention of the no-Wifi policy, I haven’t really been able to discover whether the Brazilian bus company had success getting people to strike up conversations or if the seats were monopolized by the same people who refuse to cede their seats to the elderly on public transport worldwide.

I would be interested to know if anyone has come across projects with similar intentions and had a sense of their success. My hope is that if things diverged from the original intent, the results were even better than the creators envisioned. It would be great to know how any sort of successful outcome emerged or if important insight was derived from disappointing results.

In an attempt to become regarded as more of a community asset, I am sure a lot of arts organizations would be pleased to learn about moderate successes. Everything doesn’t have to be about racking up huge numbers for grant reports.

If there was a case where an arts organization said, “well we invested a little bit of time and money for six months up front and now there is a consistent presence of 10-15 people hanging out, chatting all day in our lobby or sidewalk where no one had been before,” there is a low level, but consistent good-will benefit accruing for the organization.

This Is Not The World We Planned For

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When the topic of strategic plans is discussed, there is often an admonishment actively reference the planning documents throughout the plan period rather than drop it on the shelf until it is time to create a new strategic plan.  The organization is supposed to be measuring itself and its success against the plan.

I recently read a piece on Medium that suggested an organization should scrap parts, if not the entire plan, and create a new one if the operating environment has changed so much that assumptions upon which the plan is based are no longer valid.

Laura Weidman Powers, writes that when she was CEO of Code2040, the organization sat down during the early part of 2016 and underwent a pretty comprehensive process to develop a strategic plan.

And then Donald Trump was elected president. Our core communities (Black and Latinx people) were and felt threatened and silenced as white supremacists were emboldened. Tech companies who had been publicly pro-diversity in the Obama years clamped up. And as the winds continued to shift, my heart sank.

We had created a beautiful, functional, coherent, inclusive, actionable strategic plan — for a world we no longer lived in.

She writes that they knew there would be a need to make some course corrections throughout the life of the strategic plan, but had no sense that things would change so quickly and radically and moot most of their strategic plan.

In hindsight, she says she would have made sure that the assumptions upon which the plan was based were specified in the plan. If those environmental factors no longer existed, it would be time to scrap the plan and start over again. She is careful to specify that constantly challenging a strategic plan can lead to organizational paralysis. At the same time, if the ground beneath your feet is no longer stable, efforts to make progress become increasingly futile.

If I were doing it again, I would have had a section up front that enumerated the 2–3 key assumptions that needed to hold true for this plan to be valid. I would have kept an eye on those and empowered anyone on the team to throw up a flag if they thought they had evidence that the assumptions were no longer holding. Outside of that, our goal would have been to execute against the strategy as written.

Delivering Social Services At Libraries

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Hat tip to Artsjournal.com which posted an NPR story about libraries that are bringing social workers on staff. The main reason is that libraries are serving the role as a community resource beyond a source of books. Libraries are increasingly a place for classes, after school activities, meetings as well as providing daytime shelter for homeless and unfortunately, those with drug addictions.

I served on the board of a library until about a year ago and there were frequent conversations regarding concerns about used needles and blood splatters in the restrooms. There were also debates about whether to stock Narcan and what the library’s liability might be if doses were administered. Just before I left the board, we were discussing signing a letter of agreement with social service agencies to provide services at some of the library branches.

The NPR story touches on these same issues facing the social workers at the libraries they profile. One of the benefits of having a social worker in a library is that it changes the dynamics of the traditional relationship people have with social services. Instead of people going to a government run office and waiting to petition for assistance, the social worker circulates among patrons, discusses services that are available and helps them connect with those services.

“I walk around and try to talk to people who might be experiencing homelessness. We never ask them directly, but I would just come up to them and say, ‘I don’t know if you’re aware there’s a social worker and there are social services here,’ ” she says. “Because of my role as a professional, clinical social worker, I can do assessments and determine if I need to provide extra support by linking them with community services such as clinics or mental health or for them to see a doctor.”

[…]

But Esguerra says the idea of bringing social workers into libraries isn’t just meant to help librarians; it encourages people in need to take advantage of the services the library-based social workers offer.

“Coming to the library is not attached with any stigma, unlike coming to, like, you know, other traditional settings,” she explains. “So public libraries really are the best places to reach out to the population and be effective at it.”

While not every arts organization serves groups that need this type of social service support, there may be other social support activities they can make available.  In some instances, they key may be to take the same approach as the social worker in the library. Instead of saying come here to receive these services with an eye to attracting larger groups of people, just have the services available in a low key way for those that do arrive.

During the summer there are a lot of free plays and concerts offered across the country. There may be people who show up whom an experienced eye could identify as potentially having a need for everything from food and medicine to help registering for school and getting school supplies. I am sure I am thinking too narrowly in terms of the type of support arts organizations might offer.

Then there is the approach from the other direction where arts organizations are present at social service and medical facilities. One of my favorite stories the project that put pop up art stations at a health clinic in Minneapolis.

 

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ VR Headsets

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On Saturday, the Knight Foundation will be issuing a call “for ideas exploring how arts institutions can present immersive experiences to engage audiences” (disclosure: Knight Foundation has funded projects for my day job and supports tons of stuff in my community.)

In the announcement, Knight Foundation staffer Chris Barr writes about how virtual and augmented reality is already being used by arts organizations on an experimental basis.

From digital overlays of  museum spaces and VR interpretations of surreal landscapes, to artistic interpretations of climate change and digital recreations of fragile Cuban sculpture, artists, museums and other arts institutions are experimenting with these emerging technologies.

What they are looking for is projects in which technologists, companies and artists will partner with museums and performing arts organizations to explore some of the following ideas:

We hope to find innovative uses for this technology, new approaches for moving audiences through these experiences, and opportunities to engage new and diverse audiences.

How can these technologies help us reach new people? How do we make the experience before, during and after putting on a headset delightful? How do we service these experiences efficiently? How should these experiences be distributed and exhibited? How can this new form of storytelling be used for more inclusive stories? How can we use immersive tech to expand the reach of the arts beyond physical locations?

One thing I appreciated was that in asking how to make the experience before, during and after delightful,  they seem to understand that it is the entire experience and not just the technology that provides value.

As much as many of us, myself included, might resent the way the growing prevalence of technology/media is encroaching upon and competing with our practice, this is an opportunity to proactively be part of a conversation and effort at the genesis of the concept and application. The alternative is the current situation where you react to the emergence of a technology or trend.

Which is not to say that anything one might contribute to won’t quickly evolve and be used in a manner you hadn’t intended or conceived. How many of us knew a boxy cellphone would evolve to the point it replaced a watch, iPod, television and even voice conversations are moving to the margins.

When I saw the mention of “putting on a headset” in the passage I cited above, I chuckled because I suspect (and hope) that people will blow the concept of headset based delivery out of the water with the ideas they have.

If you are looking for some context or jumping off points for your own ideas, I have written about a number of projects associated with augmented reality in the past couple years, as well as projects in the Knight Foundation Prototype Fund

If you have an idea germinating,  guidelines will be posted on the Knight Foundation website on July 27. You can sign up for the July 30 informational webinar now.

When Mozart=P-Funk – Metadata Ain’t Worth Much Without Good Search Functions

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Via the Marginal Revolution blog, I caught this link to an interesting Financial Times article (registration required) discussing how classical music is at a disadvantage on streaming services due to lack of metadata.

In short, most music produced today is organized by the artist performing it rather than on the artist composing it. If you hear funk for the first time and discover you are listening to Parliament-Funkadelic, you can go to Spotify, conduct a search and find more content from the group.

If you hear a classical music piece and are told you are listening to Mozart, if you go to Spotify and search, you will get a list of every recording of Mozart performed by every group of every size and quality, starting with the most recent recording.

The article says it is difficult to filter by composer “performance, time of recording, location or conductor” on Spotify.

“…for classical music this is an existential problem — detailed metadata are not just a means of organising content so people are paid, but is also is crucial to help discover it. IDAGIO, unsurprisingly, is trying to address this issue.

It is no wonder then that classical music buyers still revert to compact discs — where they can guarantee to find their favourite performances, when it comes to consuming the genre.

[…]

The lack of available metadata on Spotify, and the other main streaming platforms, also has another detrimental effect on classical music: it becomes a genre which exists as a means, rather than an end.

Take this Guardian article from earlier this year, titled “Young people are turning to classical music to escape ‘noise of modern life'”.

While the article speaks breathlessly of a new-found life for classical music among young listeners, the stated reason is clear. No longer is classical music a genre with competing styles and sounds — varying from some of the most abrasive music ever written to some of the sappiest — but a sonic type which acts as a countermeasure to the chaos of modernity.

The reference to efforts by IDAGIO comes from a study sponsored by the streaming service that came out last month. The study surveyed 8000 people in five European countries, South Korea, Mexico and the US, learning the different habits people have for consuming classical music. (A section header summarizes it thus: “South Koreans most likely to have specific Classical listening sessions while speaker-based listening key in nordics and continental Europe.”)

The study authors take a bit more of an optimistic view than the author of the Financial Times piece. So many people responded with “relaxing piano music” as a genre they listen to that it now constitutes a distinct category of music.  The study authors see this as a potential entry point where the FT author seemed to feel this indicated a trend toward pieces being regarded as indistinguishable from each other.

In the introductory paragraph to the concluding section, the study authors say “We will discover how ‘relaxing piano music’ has become a significant way to bring, new, younger listeners into classical,…” but that is the last time they mention that group.

Other than improving metadata on streaming services so that the playlists suggested to listeners are more consistent in content and quality, I wasn’t sure how they envisioned people making the transition. (Granted, this is a US-centric view, opportunities for conversion may be better in other surveyed countries)

Though, as I note, the authors of both the FT piece and the IDAGIO sponsored study feel that the listening experience will improve with the addition of better metadata.

I Don’t Know, The DMV Line Is Usually At Least Novella

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I saw a really cool story via Americans for the Arts in May about a partnership between the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles and the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. They worked together to place kiosks that delivered short stories in a motor vehicles branch. People standing on line to conduct business can select, print out and read one of the short stories.  The library sees this as an opportunity to serve their community outside of their branches.

The stories are printed on demand and scroll out of the kiosk somewhat like a register receipt.

The story kiosk has a library of more than 8,500 short stories, varying in length. Stories are free, and readers can choose between selections for kids or content for all ages. Short Edition has also made the machine earth-friendly with eco-friendly paper that is FSC- and BPA-free.

I took a look at the website of the French company that makes the kiosks. Even though they talk about the printers being useful for business where people have to wait for service, I noticed some of the accompany pictures depict the stories being read at leisure in uncrowded cafes.

This made me wonder if there might be a use for the technology to deliver supplementary material at performances or perhaps only the parts of the playbill you are interested in. If you don’t care about the bios but want the program notes, you might choose to only print those and save on paper. Granted, this may not please those who paid to have their logos placed in the program, but perhaps they can be included on the print out on an ongoing basis.

Being able to see what types of material people are printing on demand might provide the organization with a better sense of what information to provide people in promotional materials to help them make the decision to attend. Likewise, it could be used to shape the programming and attendance experience to reflect these interests/needs.

How Many Times Can You Cut The Budget And Still Claim To Be World-Class?

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If you don’t already read Drew McManus’ blog Adaptistration, you may want to take a look some of his recent posts as well as the conversation on Facebook that ensued.

Drew started out yesterday linking to an article on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that suggested the drop in people auditioning for the Pittsburgh Symphony might be a consequence of the pay cuts musicians agreed to after a strike in 2016.

The article in and of itself is interesting in terms of considering if musicians are factoring this in a decision not to audition versus those that are just eager to gain some relatively stable employment, regardless of past labor negotiations. While I was reading it, I wondered if there might be a similar drop in applicants and auditioners in states whose governments have enacted laws and rules artists and administrators deem problematic.

Drew goes on to mention the “orchestra caste system” providing some insight into the dynamics between orchestras.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: those who earn less and work in organizations with smaller budgets must defer to those who earn more or work at larger budget groups because the latter are “better” than the former.

…For example, if musicians from an orchestra like Minnesota are on strike or locked out, it is assumed they have carte blanche when it comes to offers of substitute work at a smaller budget orchestra, like Grand Rapids. They won’t be expected to go through any formal substitute hiring process and existing subs will get booted in order to make room.

But if the situation were reversed, you’re far less likely to see a group at the level of Minnesota extending the same degree of latitude. Instead, you’ll see positive thoughts and well-wishes and by the way, we have this substitute hiring policy and you’ll to go through that before we can offer you any work.

He goes on to talk about how standards are established and enforced in orchestras. That is the part that has turned into a lengthy conversation on Facebook that gets into the standards being enforced, who is enforcing them, if others can override, people taking leadership about standards and so on.

The conversation got so involved, when last I looked, there was a suggestion that a few conductors, musicians and Drew get together and videotape a discussion of the issues.

Even if you aren’t involved in the classical music/opera scene, check the conversation out because some version of this situation probably exists in your field, just with different players wielding the power and influence, but also preferring to skirt similarly difficult conversations.

Posted by Drew McManus on Monday, July 15, 2019

Ripples Moving Fish In Other Ponds

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When I caught the name, “Penis Monologues” out of the corner of my eye, I felt a moment of trepidation that some men’s rights group was mounting a show as an aggressive counter to the Vagina Monologues. However, it turned out that the show is actually an attempt to combat the culture of “dominant male temperament” in China, a  term which is somewhat analogous to the English term, “toxic masculinity.” The show was created by a noted sexologist in China, Fang Gang.  (It should be noted that the title in Chinese doesn’t use the word “penis.” The articles doesn’t indicate what the actual title is.)

It was interesting to read how other cultures are experiencing the global conversations about gender roles. (China has had its own spate of #MeToo stories.) Many male participants in Fang’s project really had to overcome their reticence. Given that a number had never performed before, and unlike the generally empowering tone of the Vagina Monologues, the show dealt with some pretty negative subject matter, their reluctance is understandable.

But the play’s subject matter hasn’t made it easy for Tao to find willing actors. Most men she approached declined after reading monologue titles like “Penis Size,” “Domestic Abuser,” and “Erectile Dysfunction.” “They are afraid of being mocked or judged by the public,” she tells Sixth Tone.

When 42-year-old business owner Yu Lei read the play for the first time, he was shocked that it so boldly addressed taboo subjects. But after attending one of Fang’s sex-ed public lectures and seeing members of the audience calmly taking notes, he decided to join the troupe, despite never having acted before.

Tao assigned Yu to the play’s first monologue, “Date Rape,” which tells the story of a male college student forcing his girlfriend to have sex with him in a hotel room. Yu was so nervous about performing that he told his wife he was taking part in a charity event organized by White Ribbon, the advocacy organization launched by Fang in 2013 to end violence perpetrated by men against women. But he needn’t have worried: His performance wins thunderous applause from the 90 or so people in the audience, though Yu later confesses to Sixth Tone that he slightly regrets doing it. “I’m afraid people might think it was my own story,” he says.

According to article, in addition to challenging audiences to question the societal norms that men need to be dominant in their careers and relationships with women, the show also addresses some pretty ingrained binary definitions of gender.

That pain is familiar to Ye Chuyang, a queer actor portraying their own experiences in the monologue “Gender Queer.” “I don’t agree with binary gender divisions, because it limits people’s possibilities,” Ye tells Sixth Tone. “Most people think men are supposed to be macho, decisive, and strong. They don’t appreciate feminine or delicate men. Though my parents appreciate the sensitive and gentle side of me, they prefer me to be strong and tough just like other boys.”

Ye thinks the play is a chance to both educate people about sexual diversity and help more men understand the experiences of women. “If men could break the rules and speak out, women would feel encouraged and less lonely in this battle,” he says.

In addition to illustrating the power of arts and culture to facilitate conversations on difficult topics, for me this story represents the degree to which the world is becoming metaphorically smaller. We may be frustrated by lack of progress in our own local spheres, but the motion of a movement can create ripples that begins to bring resonant changes in other parts of the world.

Isn’t Everyone Creating A Museum In Their Basement?

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There was an article in Forbes last month about the glut of empty museums in China. While many museums in the United States have larger collections than they can possibly display, storing the majority in basement vaults, museums in China have the opposite problem in that there is more museum space than objects to display.

Part of the problem, according to Forbes is rooted in the way commercial property development is handled,

According to Johnson, what has fueled China’s museum building boom has been a strategy where a local government will grant a developer a prime parcel of commercial construction land on the contingency that they also build and operate a museum (or an opera house, library, etc). In this way, a city can obtain their iconic public buildings while having someone else pick up the tab.

…After receiving accolades for building a world-class landmark, the developers often find themselves in more unfamiliar territory: actually running a museum.

“That isn’t to say that they can’t hire someone to be the curator to develop content, but at the end they don’t really care,” Johnson proclaimed. “They’re building it because they want to build the tower on the site adjacent to it to make their money.”

It light of this, it was somewhat ironic that on my recent trip to China, I found myself touring an extensive display depicting the Ancient Tea-Horse Road and elements of the Naxi ethnic minority in the basement of a family owned hotel in Lijiang. The owner and her father had created a 120 meter long diorama showing each stage of the journey in the tea-horse trade. (Though they currently only have room to display 80 meters.)

The floor of the basement are reverse frosted plexiglass with pictographs of the Dongba script once used by the Naxi along with the corresponding Chinese hanzi and English translation. The owner described how she, her husband and a friend created each panel.

The owner and her father spent a great deal of time and money both personally and hiring scholars and artists to assist in creating the diorama and floor displays. Clearly a labor of love and a testament to their pride in regional history and Naxi culture. But it is only accessible to guests of the hotel who are personally accompanied by the owner.

My sister and I just happened to choose the hotel from those that were available and then noticed the reviews mentioned that there was an amazing display in the basement.

I didn’t really press the owner to learn why her family continues to invest so much effort in a project so few people will ever see. Judging from the superior service and hospitality ethic she exhibited during our stay, it may just be rooted in the idea that pursuit of excellence brings it own rewards independent of external recognition.

 

A Harvest of Performers

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My summer vacation this year took me back to China. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet with China arts administrators on this trip, though I did try to secure some introductions and arrangements.

One arts related thing that struck me this time was the Impressions: Lijiang performance I attended. The show is directed by Zhang Yimou (Raise The Red Lantern, Hero, 2008 Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies) and was the second of seven shows he and his collaborators created for scenic places around China.  The show in Lijiang is performed in full daylight in a 2000 seat open amphitheater on Jade Dragon Snow Mountain near Lijiang.

There are about 500 performers and 100 horses in the show. As you will see from some of the pictures below, some of the performance happens in the aisles and the horses gallop around the entire rim of the amphitheater.

The interesting thing about this production is that all the performers have been cast from the local farmers, representing about 10 different ethnic minorities that live in the region, (including the Muoso, one of the few matrilineal societies in the world). So the cast is telling the story of their people who have lived there for generations. Historically, the people of Lijiang and Yunnan province in which the city is located have participated in the Ancient Horse-Tea Road trading route, thus the significant presence of horses in the show.

As far as I have been able to tell from what I can find in promotional content about the other six “Impressions” productions, it appears this show may be the only one that is performed by “amateurs.” I put the term in quotes because that is how many information sources about the show refer to them.

However, because everyone kept mentioning they were farmers, I asked if the show needed to be scaled back or cancelled during harvest and planting time to allow the performers to return home to help their families.  I was told performing was their full time job now and was assured they were making better money than if they were still living on the farm. As best I can tell the amateur term is likely a translation of the idea the performers haven’t received formal training rather than a reference to lack of skill or salary.

I wondered if the casting of farmers was intentional in order to help stimulate the economy by increasing the income of residents or was a practical matter due to the difficulty of finding 500+ trained performers in southwestern China, (though they likely didn’t need to be trained to handle and ride horses), or a combination of both. Given the way things operate in China, all the shows in the Impressions series were likely instigated by, and receive significant support from, the government. As much as I would love to use this as an example of government support for minority cultures, it wasn’t all that long ago that official policy was to suppress the cultural practices of these same ethnic minorities.

As you may have surmised from my pictures, it was raining the day we saw the show so the spectacular majesty of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the background is not apparent. Check out the video below which was taken during better weather.

Just To Take The Edge Off

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A couple weeks back, Slate had a long form article on people using beta-blockers to help with nervousness and stage fright. Just seeing the title, I immediately recalled a piece Drew McManus wrote 15 years ago wondering if the use of beta blockers among orchestra musicians was akin to athletes using performance enhancing drugs.

The Slate article made me wonder about the pressures orchestra musicians face because both performing artists quoted in the article were orchestra musicians. One was a performance psychologist on faculty at Juilliard who was against their use. The other was a cellist who actually founded a company that provides online consultations with doctors to help people access medicines. He is a frequent user of beta-blockers.

A 2015 study the Slate article links to shows that 72% of musicians have tried beta-blockers. 92% of responses indicated beta-blockers were most effective at dealing with nervousness (91% indicated experience was most effective). All those surveyed were orchestra/chamber/opera musicians since the survey was an update of a 1987 survey for International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians.

Use of beta-blockers is growing according to the commentary on the 2015 survey,

With regard to beta-blockers, the study shows that 72% of ICSOM musicians have tried using beta blockers for performance anxiety. Out of that group, 90% said they would consider using them for auditions, 74% would consider them for solo or featured performances, and 36% would consider them for orchestra performances. By comparison, in 1987 a reported 27% of ICSOM musicians had tried beta-blockers, representing a significant uptick (45%) over the last 28 years. Also in 1987 of those who’d tried beta-blockers 72% said they would use them for auditions while only 4% would use them for orchestra performances compared to today’s 36%.

While there has been an increase in the number of those who have or intend to use beta blockers, on a positive note, musicians have increased efforts at lead healthy lifestyles and pursue alternatives,

Today’s classical musician also reported better than average health and there was major increase in physical exercise as a method to address performance anxiety. In 1987 61% of musicians reported regular exercise and in 2015, 68% reported regular exercise. As a means for addressing performance anxiety, however, exercise was used by 17% in 1987 and 74% in 2015, a striking increase.

In both Drew’s 2004 piece and the recent Slate piece, there are people who swear beta-blockers are the best thing in the world and pretty much survive day to day by using them.

There are two big issues, however. The first is the obvious point that the pills are just masking the effects so that the root cause of stage fright/anxiety is never addressed so it is no wonder that people feel they need to continue to use them.

The second, and perhaps bigger problem is that the FDA has not approved the use of beta blockers for anxiety. They were created to address chest pain and heart arrhythmias. Taking them incorrectly or if you have a medical condition you are unaware of could result in everything from fainting from low blood pressure to heart attacks.

Going off them abruptly—say, if you took them for a string of presentations, then stopped—is dangerous, too, because blood pressure can spike in response, argues LeRoy.

This is a topic that bubbles up every few years that bears paying some attention. Since there are so many musicians using beta-blockers with apparently no ill-effects, (unless there are unreported incidents at auditions and performances), I imagine people will continue to use and swear by the pills. But this focuses on the symptoms without questioning the causes.

Perhaps the easiest place to start investigating is the training process itself to see if that might be engendering anxiety. The 2015 report asked the age people experienced their first performance anxiety and the largest response was approximately 33% between 11-15 years old. Approximately 25%-28% between 16-20 years old and 15% of respondents between 5-10 years old.

Bring Your Trash To My Open House

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This will be the last retrospective post of the series covering the time I am on vacation. I should be back at the helm Monday, hopefully with pictures and thoughts to share.

I am writing this post two days before I go on vacation but I am wishing I saw this old entry sooner.

The day before I am going on vacation, we are having an open house at my theater. A number of people haven’t seen the space since the most recent renovation in the Fall so we want to provide an opportunity to get in and look around. For those that have been to a show since then, we wanted to provide an opportunity to look around and ask questions without the pressure of getting to your seat in time for a performance.

We will be offering snacks, refreshments and such. However, I just came across an old post I made that suggested we encourage people to bring stuff to us, too.

In a post titled, Destroy Your Way To New Audiences, I had a brief moment of inspiration where I suggested renting a mobile paper shredder and inviting people to check out your organization and bring their boxes of documents that were too sensitive to just throw away.

Nowadays, another option might be to bring computers and phones to be recycled.

It struck me that this is the type of community service an organization could offer that will NEVER in a million years show up on a survey as something you could do to help the community. It is one of those things people need but don’t realize they need when asked.

This is also the sort of thing that breaks down barriers to attendance. You advertise an open house barbecue picnic at your organization and as someone who has never been to an arts organization, I might figure the only difference between the picnic and attending a performance is good ribs. Faced with the prospect of being the only person there who doesn’t know how to speak theatre/ballet/classical music/visual art, there may still be a high anxiety factor even if I don’t have to go into the building.

A shredder truck in the parking lot on the other hand is a service I can actually use. While I am there, maybe I grab some hamburgers and look around a little. If things get a little uncomfortable, the shredder provides my excuse as I notice the line is getting shorter, excuse myself and go over there. Heck, there isn’t much danger in bringing the kids either. Even if the arts stuff doesn’t appeal to them, watching papers get consumed by a giant machine is always interesting.

Signs Of When Seeds Were Planted

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So 2009 was long before ArtsMidwest started their Creating Connection initiative and before I started my correspondence with Carter Gillies regarding the value of the arts, but I found a blog post that made me think the underlying philosophy behind Creating Connect was already entering the collective unconscious.

Writing on a blog post by The Nonprofiteer (which unfortunately does not exist any longer, it appears a consultancy has her URL), I quoted part of her post,

Let’s get the discussion about public funding for the arts to the level of conceptual agreement we have for public education, and then we can engage in any further battles that might need to be fought.

In other words, brethren in the arts community: stop talking about public funding for the arts as if the point were for the public to support YOU. No one cares about you. What we care about as a society is US, and how exposure to what you do will improve us.

Given that support of public funding education has begun to flag, or is at least less stable than it was a decade ago, it is probably good that Creating Connection evokes the grassroots movement to ban smoking in public places as a model for building public will for the arts.

The idea that exposure to the arts will improve us as a society is a core part of Creating Connection which cites researching finding:

…people believe that the benefits of engaging in or experiencing creative expression are related to their quality of life: increased happiness, reduced stress, improved health, and more time spent with family and friends.

When asked what would be different if we had more opportunity to express or experience culture in our lives, respondents indicated a range of personal benefits that span concepts around growth, voice, well-being, and happiness.

One of things I like about doing these retrospective posts is discovering that these ideas had occurred to me long before I began regularly voicing them. (my emphasis today)

While improving test scores, reasoning skills and developing geniuses in the womb are probably part of what she is suggesting we talk about, it can’t be the entirety for the simple reason that it excludes anyone who is not a child. People care about their kids, yes, but everyone will only be persuaded when they perceive they are included in the benefits. I think it is pretty clear that the reasons we give can’t be about what we want people to experience but what they want to experience.

We want people to experience transcendent moments and there is a good chance the first time they sit down to hear a symphony play, they won’t have a transcendent experience. The measure of their satisfaction with the experience that night may simply be that no one caught on to their utter cluelessness.

The Arts Aren’t The Cherry, They Are The Yeast

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Apparently I watched a lot of TED Talks in 2009 as this seemed to be recurring element in my retrospective posts these couple of weeks. However, this is one I have remembered clearly for the last decade.

Mallika Sarabhai talks about using artistic expression to teach as well as deal with sensitive topics like justice and injustice. She starts out her talk telling a story about a monkey who witnesses a rape by the god Indra noting that the way Indra expiates the offense leaves the monkey confused. She says she has told that story around the world more than 550 times at schools and black tie events and has been able to discuss a rape due to the framework of the story.

Now, if I were to go into the same crowd and say, “I want to lecture you about justice and injustice,” they would say, “Thank you very much, we have other things to do.” And that is the astonishing power of art.

The part of her talk that has stuck with me for 10 years though is when she relates the health of people has been improved thanks to a performance that teaches people in villages to use a piece of cloth folded 8 times as a water filter. I think it is the practicality and survival element that has lead me to remember it.

All of these examples lead up to her very memorable policy statement about arts and culture:

What I need to say to the planners of the world, the governments, the strategists is, “You have treated the arts as the cherry on the cake. It needs to be the yeast.”

Art Is STILL Infecting My Brain

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Over 9 years ago I wrote about a TED Talk given by Golan Levin where he was demonstrating technology that being used to generate images based on sound input. The things he was doing was fun to watch because it was so interactive for the individual. Now 10 years on, we might be a little more blase about it all.

The one part of his talk that caught my attention was a visualization they had created of Jaap Blonk performing Kurt Schwitters’ tone poem The Ursonate.

At the time I wrote,

Much to my surprise, the cadence of Blonk’s recitation ran around in my head for a few days after. I don’t know if it qualifies as an ear worm since I couldn’t tell you a single word. Though I could spout nonsense syllables in an approximation of Blonk’s performance.

The thing is, it is 10 years later and as soon as I read this entry, Blonk’s recitation started bouncing around in my head. I started trying to recite what I remembered. I want to say I did a good job of recreating what I recalled. It is hard to know what the standards for accurately reciting nonsense sounds are.

In the interests of infecting you, watch the TED Talk (Blonk’s piece starts around 6:30) or watch the full recording of Blonk below.

I keep using the term “infected”, but it will probably evoke the pleasure you experienced as a kid playing with blurting out a made-up language.

I wrote back in 2009,

“Listening to Blonk’s and some of Schwitters’ recitations today, I recognize just how fun language can be. (I haven’t listened to all the different recordings.) Blonk especially seems like he enjoys playing with the sounds, luxuriating in the pleasure of pronunciation and takes joy in the enthusiastic exclamations.”

There have been times when I realized I got yelled at for doing stuff as a kid that is deemed artistic when done by adults. A lot people post Picasso’s quote, ““Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” It seems to me that the appellation “Artist” is the reward you get for reconnecting with the what you got punished for doing when you were a kid.

There Are No Small Theaters, Just Theaters Who Think They Are Small

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I wrote last week about how small nuances that alter our perception of a situation can make a big difference.  Back in 2009 I wrote another post along the same lines featuring a TED talk by Rory Sutherland.

At the time I felt the following bit Sutherland imparted was worth consideration for arts organizations. I wrote,

….at the end of his talk where he cites a quote “Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new.” Though in the case of the arts and current attendance trends, the familiar may be an entirely new experience.

He says it isn’t a bad definition of what advertising people’s job is: “To help people appreciate what is unfamiliar. But also to gain a greater appreciation and place a far higher value on those things that are already existing.”

Now that I have gone back and watched the video again, along with two other similar TED Talks he gave, I have a slightly different perspective. If you have been reading my blog recently, you may have seen my post about the importance of the physical environment surrounding an arts experience.

The challenge for a lot of arts organizations is that they may be operating out of older buildings that don’t have the newest technology and amenities. In his talks, Sutherland emphasizes that it is often more important to fix the perception rather than the problem.

He mentions that people were more satisfied with their experience in subways when digital displays of the next train’s arrival time were installed. It didn’t make the trains arrive any faster, but it removed the sense of uncertainty about how long one might have to wait.

In the UK, Sutherland says, the post office had a 98% rate of delivering first class mail by the next day and nearly destroyed themselves trying to improve that rate. The worst part is, when asked people guessed the next day delivery success rate averaged at about 50%-60%. Sutherland says it would have been cheaper and more effective to just tell people that the rate was 98%–especially if framed in reference to Germany.

“…tell people that more first-class mail arrives the next day in the UK than in Germany, because generally, in Britain, if you want to make us happy about something, just tell us we do it better than the Germans.”

In other example, he show the elevator buttons in the Lydmar hotel in Stockholm which allows you to choose your elevator music. He suggests that an expensive renovation of your hotel room won’t distinguish it enough from any other room in a high-end hotel in your eyes, but the novelty of those buttons will make a lasting impression for a fraction of the cost.

Amusing distractions won’t make up for the fact that your restroom facilities are too small to accommodate the your entire audience during intermission. However, if they are sufficient, the most effective response to complaints about the wait is likely to be less expensive than a renovation to enlarge the restrooms.  The primary concern for the audience member isn’t whether they will be able to use the restroom, it is whether they will be able to use the restroom and perhaps get a drink before intermission ends.

Wow, “Run Arts Like A Business” Has Been A Thing For Awhile

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As I was looking back in the archives for content to post on while on vacation, I was surprised to see that I was writing back the dangers of the sentiment that “arts organizations should be run like a business” a decade ago.

I cited a piece in The New Republic discussing that manufacturing in the US began to decline when leadership started to be drawn from people focused on finance rather than operations.

“Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM’s top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background….But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, “That’s how you end up with GM rather than Toyota.”

At the time, I expressed my concerns that leadership of arts organizations might become increasingly divorced from the metaphorical manufacturing process if those making decisions had never deeply engaged in creative pursuits.

I linked to a post I made in 2004 about observations that the back office at an orchestra was seemingly disassociated from the performances.

Thoughts on whether this situation has gotten better or worse in the last 10-15 years?

Is it a good sign that in the last couple months, you can’t turn around without seeing an article praising what California Symphony Executive Director, Aubrey Bergauer, a tuba player, has accomplished? Or is she just an outlier?

It’s Still Not Ann Margaret

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I am going on vacation for a couple weeks so the blog will be featuring some interesting posts from the archives.

Back in 2009 I wrote a lengthy article about a Mad Men episode where the ad agency reproduced the opening of Ann Margaret singing Bye, Bye Birdie, in order to sell Pepsi’s new Patio diet soda. Even though it was exactly what they asked for, the client felt there was something wrong. When they leave, one of the ad men points out what was wrong was that it wasn’t Ann Margaret singing the song.

One of the points I made at the time was that people often try to copy or adopt something that has emerged as wildly successful in the assumption that they will be able to cash in on that popularity. The problem is that they don’t comprehend the nuanced elements that made the original so successful.

What made this old post more timely is that last week, there was a similar illustration of the “its not Ann Margaret” effect. The recent release of a video game based on the Avengers: Endgame movie was widely panned because few of the characters in the video resembled the actors who had portrayed the heroes in movies over the last decade or so.

A somewhat different perspective on anticipating and managing expectations.

Many have pointed out that the console versions of their favourite characters do not resemble the Marvel Cinematic Universe superheroes. Custom playable identities have instead been created, meaning Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, Chris Evans’ Captain America and more are nowhere to be seen.

“Wow, the new Avengers game looks… really bad,” wrote one fan on Twitter. Another said: “They can’t even use the Avenger’s theme song? Like WTF.”

Education vs Learning

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Seth Godin had a post recently where he made the distinction between education and learning. The way he differentiated the two was that education is  based in compliance and authority–you were able to memorize information or perform in an approved manner in order to pass a test measuring your mastery of content on a certain day.

Learning, by his definition, is part of an ongoing process.

Learning that embraces doing. The doing of speaking up, reviewing and be reviewed. The learning of relevant projects and peer engagement. Learning and doing together, at the same time, each producing the other.

While there is some degree of compliance and submission to authority associated with training in arts disciplines, (some to a greater degree than others), there is a large component of practical doing involved as well.

In the process, one gains many of the tools and skills required for evaluation. Whether one uses those tools to reinforce compliance and authority or to enact self-reflective change is another matter.

It occurred to me that there is some irony to the fact that skillsets that are a result of education with little practical content is frequently more highly valued than an education that has a high degree of practice.

Basically, a person who graduates with a dance degree likely has a lot more experience in real life application of their skills than a graduate with an accounting degree, but which is valued more?

Certainly, not all practical experience is valued, regardless of how good you are at it.  Even the best shepherd in the world is going to have a difficult time finding a job in the US.

What Godin says is needed is engaging in the boring, methodical work of self-assessment, data analysis, etc that helps you learn about yourself and what works.

Of course, there is always something we don’t know so we do need to get instruction from somewhere. But there is no seminar or workshop that will provide all the magical answers, it will just point you to the place to start asking questions.

 

15 Years Later, An Arts Criticism Model Where Open Access Is Assumed

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If you didn’t happen to see it rolling around social media or on Artsjournal.com last week, Carolina Performing Arts’ festival, The Commons, experimented with a new model of criticism.  Their reflections on the process appeared under the attention getting title of, “Uh, We Sort of Made an Arts-Criticism Utopia? Here’s What We Learned.”

What they did was pretty simple, but more resource and labor intensive than most media outlets have invested. They assigned two critics to a show, one who was embedded for the entire creation process, and another who only saw the final product.

The premise was that critical documentation is at once changing in form, diminishing in frequency, and urgently needed. And it’s not just documentation of performances that is needed, but also of the work and conversation that surrounds and sustains them.

My read on their process was that since the traditional media sources for arts criticism were divesting themselves of the practice, there is room to re-imagine what it means to discuss the merits of an event/performance/work. Part of the re-imagining seems to be examining what the critic, artists, and readership are really looking for from a critique. In the process, a lot of old rules are ripe for being broken.

The Commons Crit was designed to test several hypotheses, which we raised again at the start of the roundtable: that criticism should not always be beholden to a coverage model; that critics should have the space and freedom to experiment; that critics and artists are allies, not adversaries; that artistic process deserves as much attention as the final product; and that artists have legitimate ideas about who can authentically represent the cultural perspective of their work.

[…]

In journalism, it’s a no-no to let an artist pick their reviewer, but in The Commons, to a large extent, we did. At least, we consulted the writers about what sort of person would be an apt conduit for their cultural perspective. For example, Victoria and Stephanie—accomplished writers, but not performance critics—were selected for their fluency in Spanish and border issues, while Chris and Michaela built upon longstanding relationships with Justin. For Eb. Brown, a male African-American embedded writer was essential, but it would take the perspective of a female African-American writer (Danielle Purifoy) to round out the performance’s meaning.

The thing is, in my very first blog post over 15 years ago I linked to an opinion piece by Chris Lavin, “Why Arts Coverage Should Be More Like Sports,”  where he basically calls for exactly the rule breaking relationship the Carolina Performing Arts Festival has engaged in.

And, in my experience, many arts critics see themselves as critics first, story-tellers second. Some actually keep a distance from the performers, directors and theater executives to “”preserve their objectivity.” Getting the full range of stories that capture the drama of making art is difficult even if the arts organizations were interested in seeing that full-range of stories. I’m not sure they really are.

When compared to the open access a sports franchise allows, most arts organizations look like a cross between the Kremlin and the Vatican. Casting is closed. Practices closed. Interviews with actors and actresses limited and guarded. An athlete who refuses to do interviews can get fined. An actor or actress or director or composer who can’t find time for the media is not uncommon. How would a director take to a theater critic watching practice and asking for his/her early analysis of the challenges this cast faces with the material — the relatively strengths and weaknesses of the lead actor, the tendencies of the play write to resist rewriting?

I will confess that one of my first thoughts was whether this model could be sustainable –until, of course, I remembered this was one of the very first topics I wrote about on the blog and many places have found a way to sustain their sports reporting.

I think what would help make it sustainable is writers who are adept at the storytelling aspect of the job. Audiences are ready to accept the opinions of people on social media whom they have never met so the value of a certified objective opinion has greatly diminished.

When it comes to sports, people are more than ready to identify with a good story and argue its merits with their neighbors without worrying overly much about the objective truths of the matter. The arts are much more about storytelling than sports. There are no statistics about a dancer’s range of motion at the matinee versus the evening performance to bog the conversation down.

You can read the reviews on The Commons Crit page. One of the things that is somewhat confusing for the first time visitor is that there is no clear delineation between what appears to be preview pieces and the the reviews. The reviews have both the thoughts of the embedded writer and one-time writer in one place, but there are also other stories by the embedded writer about that same event. (Here is another such pairing.) If you are coming to the site to figure out what your experience might be, it can be difficult to determine, but that is an easy matter of labeling.

 

Baumol Effect Is A Blessing, Not A Disease

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Economist Alex Tabarrok recently made an interesting post on Baumol’s cost disease.  The concept usually explained by noting that since it doesn’t take any less time to perform a string quartet than it did when Beethoven wrote it, orchestras have no way to save money by taking advantage of advances in productivity and efficiency.

Tabarrok comes at it from the perspective that it is only more expensive to perform a string quartet now because productivity has increased in other industries.

The Baumol effect is easy to explain but difficult to grasp.

[…]

Growth in average labor productivity has a surprising implication: it makes the output of slow productivity-growth sectors (relatively) more expensive. In 1826, the average wage of $1.14 meant that the 2.66 hours needed to produce a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 had an opportunity cost of just $3.02. At a wage of $26.44, the 2.66 hours of labor in music production had an opportunity cost of $70.33. Thus, in 2010 it was 23 times (70.33/3.02) more expensive to produce a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 than in 1826.

[…]

The focus on relative prices tells us that the cost disease is misnamed. The cost disease is not a disease but a blessing. To be sure, it would be better if productivity increased in all industries, but that is just to say that more is better. There is nothing negative about productivity growth, even if it is unbalanced.

If that is a little hard to understand, he uses a more relatable example to point out that “…over time prices have very little connection to affordability.”

If the price of the same can of soup is higher at Wegmans than at Walmart we understand that soup is more affordable at Walmart. But if the price of the same can of soup is higher today than in the past it doesn’t imply that soup was more affordable in the past, even if we have done all the right corrections for inflation.

So just because a ticket costs more than it did years ago, doesn’t mean it is necessarily less affordable. Granted, it may still be a bit more difficult to get the funds together than in the past. I have had people tell me they were able to see Broadway shows for $15 at one time. While I suspect they may be mis-remembering how much of their weekly salary that $15 represented, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that tickets today are a greater portion of the weekly salary for that same job today. The production values are likely a lot higher than people saw when they were paying $15 so the ratio of value to money spent is probably fairly good.

Based on Tabarrok’s explanation, the concept that certain artistic expressions are fated to be an increasing burden on society because they can’t be executed with greater efficiency is not valid. Productivity growth in other areas provides the capacity to support those artistic expressions.

When Ignoring “Show, Don’t Tell” Is The Best Option

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Hat tip to Artsjournal.com who listed an article from The Conversation about how your phone can interrupt a concert experience. Author Christine Van Winkle discusses research she and her team conducted at outdoor summer music festivals over the course of five years.

Because the research was conducted at festivals, the detrimental effects of using a phone at a concert was more focused on the quality of the user experience rather than the impact on those around the person. With factors like heat, cold, rain, bugs and people bumping into you, the glow of a phone screen isn’t as big a distraction to others as it can be in a concert hall.

As a result, the research is potentially more effective at persuading people not to use phones because the message is about why they aren’t having the best experience rather than that they are causing others to have a poor experience.

As you might imagine, some of those participating in the study intentionally left their phones at home and didn’t miss them. Others were discomforted without their phones or by the failure of the phone battery.

It is interesting to note that the anti-social behavior of peering over your phone in a group can create social pressure on others to use their phone in a similar manner:

Festival goers described sitting with friends who were texting or searching on their phones and suddenly they felt compelled to use their phone as well. This mirroring behaviour is a well known response people have in social situations.

The idea that phone use is “infectious” may provide some incentive to arts entities to prohibit the use of phone. But it isn’t just the performers and venues which may be dissatisfied with this type of phone use, the practice can lead to disappointment for the phone user as well.

The research shows that when we decide to use our phones to check work email, to check up on the kids or any other activities that have nothing to do with the festival, our satisfaction with the experience goes down.

However, Van Winkle’s research shows using the phone for activities related to the experience doesn’t impact satisfaction either positively or negatively. While the outcome is currently neutral, it may be worthwhile for artists and organizations to think about creating content that augments the experience. The lack of a positive sense of satisfaction may just reflect the fact that most activity related content mentioned in the study is of neutral value like schedules and maps.

When we do use our devices at festivals it doesn’t affect our satisfaction with the event if we are using our phones for festival-related activities like looking at the festival schedule, the venue map or even texting to meet up with friends who are joining us.

Van Winkle offers some tips for phone use, most of which involve limiting your interactions with the phone and the amount of content you receive from others. What was most interesting to me was her suggestion that offering too much information can actually diminish the number of opportunities you have to relate your experience to others. Essentially, contrary to all prior storytelling advice, this would be the one time to tell, don’t show. (my emphasis)

Wait to post. It’s fun to share your experience with your extended network but consider waiting until you return home. Sharing the memories captured on your phone after the experience gives you an opportunity to reflect on the day and prevents you from being distracted by other people’s posts while you are at the event.

Consider not posting any images of your experience to social media at all — you might find it leads to more conversations with people when they ask about your weekend or summer. Often, once people have seen your post they assume they already know how your weekend was, robbing you of the opportunity to share your experience with them.

Why (And How) Are You Apologizing?

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Seth Godin recently wrote a lengthy post on the subject of apologies.  He addresses the issue of entities providing insufficient apologies but also the expectation of restitution which is out of proportion with the offense.  Since good customer service is one of the primary attributes that contribute to the success of non-profit arts organizations, it is obviously worth considering what he has to say.

We can start by asking, “what is this apology for?” What does the person need from us?

  • To be seen
  • Compensation
  • Punishment for the transgressor
  • Stopping the damage

The first category is the one that most demands humanity, and it’s also the most common. A form letter from a company does not make us feel seen. Neither does an automated text from an airline when a plane is late. One reason that malpractice victims sue is that surgeons sometimes have trouble with a genuine apology.

He says when people don’t feel they have been seen, it leads to demands for the other three elements: Compensation to make good on a real or perceived loss; Punishment which allows the victim to feel the transgressor has also suffered; Stopping the damage so that no one else suffers the same harm in the future.

These other three categories can be executed in a constructive manner, though it is easy for punishment to turn into a recurring cycle of damage.

However, Godin says some psychological and social expectations related to compensation, punishment and stopping the damage can have a destructive result.

Compounding these totally different sorts of apologies is the very industrial idea of winning. Victims have been sold that it’s not enough that your compensation is merely helpful, but it has to be the most. That you won the biggest judgment in history. That the transgressor isn’t simply going to jail, but is going to jail forever, far away, in solitary confinement. We’ve all ended up in a place where one of the ways to feel seen is to also feel like you came in first place compared to others.

Though it may not prevent someone who seeks to win to the detriment of others, Godin says the best way for an organization to address damage is to train and empower front line staff to provide an empathetic response.

The challenge that organizations have is that they haven’t trained, rewarded or permitted their frontline employees to exert emotional labor to create human connection when it’s most needed.

[…]

The alternative is to choose to contribute to connection by actually apologizing. Apologizing not to make the person go away, but because they have feelings, and you can do something for them. Apologizing with time and direct contact, and following it up by actually changing the defective systems that caused the problem.

“Yikes, I’m sorry you missed your flight–I really wish that hadn’t happened. The next flight is in an hour, but that’s probably going to ruin your entire trip. Are you headed on vacation?”

Door To Seat As Important As The Quality Of The Event

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All right. A little gripe time here. I have been nursing a sense of dissatisfaction for a couple weeks now but it sort of came to a head when I saw the title of Ceci Dadisman’s recent post, “Unpopular Opinion: It is our job to remove barriers to engagement.” She talks about removing perceptual barriers, but the source of my dissatisfaction is related to physical barriers.

I had submitted a grant this past Spring and recently had an opportunity to listen to the panelists discuss our application over the internet. There were a number of criticisms which I can concede as deficiencies with our application. There were other places where panelists misread what we wrote, but I can understand that given the number of applications they read. (Though I did panic momentarily as I scurried to find the document we submitted.)

What annoyed me was a criticism of our response to a question about a recent program that had an impact on the community. Being new to my position, I had spoke with staff, board members, volunteers and long attending audience members about what events had made an impact. This resulted in some good conversations about the distinction between impactful experiences and popular, well-attended experiences. I wrote our grant response about the performance program that many people had mentioned had an unexpected impact.

Then, because I had the room, I mentioned that something that can’t be discounted was the impact a renovation to the physical spaces of the facility had on the community. I discussed the fact that it is very easy for people to make the decision to stay at home and every element associated with going to a live event from restaurants, to babysitters, to parking must align conveniently for people to make the decision to go out.

I went on to talk about the pre-renovation experience where the line to the women’s restroom in our facility was so long that it extended out the front door and the men’s room often had to be closed to men in order to accommodate women. Still intermission would need to be extended. I spoke about the restroom renovation garnering the most effusive response from people. I explained that as amusing as it might be to think toilets are the most popular part of a renovation, this represented a very real impact on the community perception of the venue and shouldn’t be dismissed especially given most attendance decisions and arrangements are predominantly made by women.

My mention of the impact of the renovations met with some criticism by the panel. What annoyed me most about this was that the panel was comprised of artists or those associated with arts entities drawn from throughout the state.  I could understand if panelists drawn from the general public didn’t understand the importance of the physical environment in arts and cultural experiences.

I intentionally wrote about the importance of environment in order to introduce the idea to funders and policymakers.  What I hadn’t expected was a dismissal by arts and cultural practitioners.

As Ceci mentions in her article, as insiders, arts and cultural practitioners can be blind to some of the perceptual barriers we erect around and experience.  I guess there also needs to be more frequent mention of the influence tangible physical elements play on the experience, just to be aware of these factors even if you can’t exert control over them.

 

Loving Work, Fearing Leisure

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There is often conversation about how people employed in arts and cultural pursuits overwork themselves (or are overworked) and are seeking to throttle things back to achieve a work-life balance.

However, a recent FastCompany article suggests that people across the board are overworking themselves. In describing the situation, they draw parallels to the type of longing for meaning associated with spiritual or religious pursuits.

“We have spiritual lives, we have physical lives, we like to have intellectual stimuli in our lives, we have our communities and our families and friends; humans are complex, and to have a really healthy balance, it requires all of those components,” says Rachel Bitte, Jobvite’s chief people officer. “Expecting all of that to come from your work could be an unrealistic expectation.”

The authors mention that at one time it was assumed that the more affluent people became, the more leisure time they would pursue. In the 1980s, that was generally the case. Yet in the last 30 years, the opposite has happened and work is valued over free time to the point where we actually fear having work taken away by automation.

Thompson adds that this concept of pursuing passion through work can be beneficial to many–and he includes himself among them–but a majority aren’t able to pursue meaningful work, and the expectations placed on work are often unrealistic.

“We expect to realize our full humanity in work, within the job, rather than other parts of life. That is new,” says Benjamin Hunnicutt,..

Hunnicutt adds that the fear of automation replacing human labor would have been unimaginable to the philosophers and thinkers who questioned the meaning of work throughout history. “Before, the promise of technology was labor-saving devices,” he says. “Now it frightens us. We can’t imagine an alternative to work.”

As I read this, it occurred to me that there was another nuanced dimension to the belief that artists don’t work because they are doing what they enjoy.

In the context of few people finding fulfillment in their work and the concept that people fear “forced leisure,” the idea that artists find fulfillment in something that appears to be a leisurely pursuit probably frightens people on a subconscious level.

At one time people welcomed the advancements of automation on an assumption that robots would create things of value for the benefit of general society. But when work itself is valued to the point where survival is only available in exchange for work, then robots are perceived to be stealing work from you and transferring the benefit to a few.

Instead of pursuing leisure, you have it involuntarily thrust upon you and want to be rid of it so you can support yourself again.

When artists appear to voluntarily be doing what many would long to do if they could have leisure without fear, AND ask to be paid, there is a suspicion that something is amiss. The only way this situation could exist is if there were some secret cheat those artists are keeping to themselves, right?

Yes, it takes many fewer words to encapsulate this long-winded discussion as “you are doing something fulfilling and fun, you shouldn’t be paid for it…”

But if you think about it, you would realize that phrase wouldn’t be thrown in your face so often if the benefits of automated labor were more widely welcomed and shared, removing 40++++ hours work as a critical element of survival.

People may think that those in the arts are following their bliss while they live in fear of their livelihoods, but honestly I get a little anxious about our livelihoods when I read articles evaluating the ability of artificial intelligence to create viable prose, music and visual arts compositions.

That shift in attitude didn’t happen so very long ago. Perhaps an opportunity exists to reverse that trend over the next 30 years.

That Great Experience Two Years Ago? Seems Just Like Yesterday

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A confluence of events and information made me realize that it might be time to revisit the subject of one of my favorite posts.

Last week I was talking to one of my staff about who to include in our season announcement mailing list. I told her we should reach back at least 2-3 years and then cited the fact that people maintain an emotional investment with an arts organization for 2-4 years after a visit.

When I mentioned this, I was thinking about a talk given by Andrew McIntyre  back in 2011 that I wrote about.  He talked about a number of people in focus group conversations that gushed about the great experience they had at a show last year….except that it was 2+ years ago. In their minds, they were still connected with the organization and considered themselves frequent attendees and supporters.

Thanks to Arts Midwest for maintaining the video link, you can watch it. Still very much relevant today and caused me to re-evaluate the concept of butts in the seats to be brains in the seats.

When I was catching up on reading my backlog of blog posts by others this weekend, I saw that Colleen Dilenschneider recently covered the same topics in two recent posts.

In the first, she mentions this same idea about people re-engaging on a roughly two year cycle (her emphasis):

We at IMPACTS often encounter a myth among cultural executives: That audience retention means that people come back every year… and if they’re not coming annually, then you aren’t retaining them as visitors.

As it turns out, this is a high bar – and one that does not line up with actual visitor behavior.

Museums have members and performing arts organizations have subscribers who may visit specific organizations more than once per year. In reality, most people who visit cultural organizations do not visit another organization of that type in two or more years.

She goes on to talk about how there is a disconnect between thinking about attendance in annual terms and actual human behavior. This can be an important consideration in regard to efforts to increase inclusion and diversity. Measuring success on an annual basis may cause you to misinterpret flat attendance as failure. The fact may be that you have doubled the number of people who feel invested in the organization over a two year period– it is just that attendees from the first year may not have started to cycle back to the organization. Your efforts may not bear visible results for three or four years when people begin returning in larger numbers.

In her second post, she warns arts organizations not to assume that people who buy memberships but don’t use them are disengaged with their organization. For many of the most highly engaged people, purchasing a membership is viewed as one of the best ways to support their organization. They are motivated by their passion for the organization, not by the availability of membership benefits.

Not only are the infrequent visitors more likely to buy a more expensive membership than those who regularly attend, they are also more likely to renew.

One reason these members aren’t visiting may be because they don’t live near the organization. (We’ve found that the more admired a cultural organization is perceived to be by the public, the higher percentage of non-local members it has.) Like non-visiting members, non-local members buy more expensive memberships and are more likely to renew them!

[…]

People believe the single best way to support a cultural, visitor-serving organization’s mission is to become a member. (Yes, even more than becoming a donor.)

We also know that mission-based members – people whose primary motivation to become a member involves supporting the organization and its mission – are particularly valuable

As Dilenschnedier is wont to do, the second post has a video that wraps up the concepts of both entries pretty well so be sure to check it out.

From The Why Hasn’t This Been Standard Practice For Decades File

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I recently wrote a piece for ArtsHacker about the emerging role of intimacy direction for productions on stage and screen.  When I first read about intimacy direction a few years ago, it was at a time when there were revelations about people exploiting their position or opportunities without the full consent of others.  The role of intimacy director seemed to be about ensuring a level of protection and security.

However, the more I have read about the role, the more I realized it is really addressing a long neglected part of the creative process. In every instance when performers are exerting themselves in close quarters with each other, whether it is dance or stage combat, movements are rehearsed and scrutinized in detail until it is right. Then someone is assigned to make sure everyone warms-up and rehearses those motions prior to every performance.

When it comes to intimate moments, performers are often told to go off and figure it out themselves or given vague direction. This lack of proper attention can result in a very awkward moment or an all too authentic moment, both of which jar the audience out of the established reality.

The customary practices surrounding dance and fight choreography may be tedious and boring, but they have a goal of providing audiences with a consistent quality experience while ensuring no one gets hurt in the process. In this context intimacy direction is about addressing a long standing lack of attention that has risked these objectives.

When you think about it, you can almost credit the problem as an extension the oft observed phenomenon where people are unfazed by scenes of massive death and destruction but recoil at hints of nudity or intimacy. Perhaps people have been more comfortable micromanaging fights, but prefer to distance themselves from intimacy.

While intimacy directors are increasingly becoming part of the production process, demand far outstrips supply so if you are interested in getting trained, check out Intimacy Directors International to find out more.

Also check out the ArtsHacker post for additional links, videos and examples.

Preparing For A Kiss Like An Eviscerating Slash – As Boringly As Possible

If You Were Really Passionate You Would Let Me Exploit You

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Big tip of the hat to Sarah Carleton for tweeting about research that proves what we long suspected — people are more likely to exploit the labor of those viewed as pursuing their passions.

Even the biggest companies try to leverage “do it for exposure” or pressure people to accept goods as compensation rather than cash.

As KQED first reported in March, despite reaching a valuation of $1 trillion last year, tech giant Apple doesn’t pay the artists performing in its stores, compensating them with low-end merchandise such as AirPods and AppleTVs instead.

A recent study at Duke University provides some research to support all the anecdotes shared among the creative community.

Through eight different studies with over 2,400 participants, researchers discovered that people find it more acceptable for managers to ask passionate workers to work extra hours without additional pay, sacrifice sleep and family time, and take on demeaning tasks outside of their job descriptions

[…]

Furthermore, when reading about a graduate student subjected to verbal abuse and unreasonable deadlines, participants rated him as more passionate than someone who didn’t experience mistreatment.

“When people read about the exact same job but learned that the person enjoyed their work, they think it’s more fair, or less illegitimate, to have them do things that would objectively be considered approaching exploitation,” says Kay.

Pay attention to those last two paragraphs. When someone was subjected to abuse and unreasonable deadlines, they were perceived to be passionate. When people were told that someone enjoyed their work, exploitative treatment was perceived as “more fair, or less illegitimate.”

I think you could probably hold a day long conference just discussing the implications of those two sentences.

The fact that people think your suffering is okay if you are smiling is enough to diminish that smile, if not transform it to a pained grimace.

It is one thing to feel like the time and effort you invested in developing a skill is being undervalued or dismissed. Having some confirmation that they feel their exploitation is validated by your enjoyment of the work you do is pretty damn depressing.

So yes, apparently the whole world does want you to be miserable at work.

More Creative Expression That Touches The Divine

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This is turning into a video heavy week with my posts. With all my talk about helping people recognize their capacity for creative expression, this seemed to be a ready made example.

The BBC website hosted a short documentary video of women in southern India drawing kolam. (Unfortunately, the video doesn’t embed well so you will have to follow the link.)

Every morning they will create intricate designs with rice flour near the thresholds of their homes. Foot/car traffic, weather, animals and birds wear it down/consume it over the day and they start again the next morning. (Though the materials seem remarkably resistant to smudging and dissipation as vehicles drive over it.)

There is a belief that the practice will bring protection on the household. One of the women interviewed says it is a great stress reliever for her. The women also see the designs they create as an expression of their inner selves.

The two women who are the primary focus of the video participate in a competition so you will definitely want to watch to video to get a sample of the broad array of designs the dozens of competitors have developed.

Does Gazing Out From The Belly Of A God Provide New Perspective?

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There was an interesting video on Shanghaiist in the last week about a hotel whose architect designed three giant deities for the facade to combat rumors that the building was constructed on a cemetery.

The three deities, Fu (福), Lu (禄), and Shou (寿), represent the three attributes of a good life, “prosperity,” “status,” and “longevity,” respectively. They were added to the design of the 40-meter-tall building by a local architect to compensate for rumors that the structure was being built on top of an old cemetery.

I will let you take a look at the video first. (Let me just say I present this mostly as a diversion and basis of idle musing rather than subject for serious analysis.)

 

One of the first thoughts I had was, if this was in the US, would this be considered some form of artwashing? For example, if someone had used positive imagery on a hotel constructed on a toxic waste site or some other dubious association as a way to assuage fears.

I am not trying to conflate toxic waste with human remains. Personally, I would have no problem staying in this hotel. I have worked in enough theaters that were purported to be haunted or built on sanctified land that this doesn’t bother me. The placement of the hotel and anticipated repercussions appears it has a much stronger social and cultural significance in China than it might in the US.

I just found myself musing about cultural differences. Would something along these lines this be viewed with skepticism in the US while in China it might be viewed as an appropriate gesture given the history of the plot of land.

I also wondered why a hotel might choose to go to the expense of the extra construction. Presumably people coming from out of town wouldn’t be aware of the rumors. Though if it is the sort of place that gains more business from people visiting local residents or conducting business with government or local companies rather than tourism, they might depend more strongly on word of mouth.

I was amused by the comment made by one of the residents that the building unexpectedly became a distinctive feature of the community. I was thinking to myself, how could three 120 foot high deities NOT become a distinctive feature of the community? If nothing else, you could navigate the streets in relation to where it was on the horizon.

Perhaps people did initially see the statues as a cynical use of spectacle to make money but ended up finding that it created a unique sense of place in the neighborhood.

Thinking about all this made me start to wonder how efforts at creative placemaking might appear from the outside through the lens of other cultures. Does it appear like we are trying to manufacture a sense of community where one doesn’t exist organically? (I get the image of some foreign visitor paraphrasing Regina George “stop trying to make community happen, it isn’t not going to happen.”)

Better Civic Pride And Well-Being Is Just A Short Walk Away

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CityLab ran an article from The Atlantic today discussing how the availability of amenities like libraries and cafes within walking distance of your home bolstered civil society and personal well-being in that neighborhood.

A new study shows that living near community-oriented public and commercial spaces brings a host of social benefits such as increased trust, decreased loneliness, and stronger sense of attachment to where we live.

If this sounds interesting, read the whole piece because it offers much more detail about how this situation increases civic participation and trust in neighbors and local government.

These issues were on my mind Saturday as I was attending a block party in the nearby Pleasant Hill neighborhood here in Macon, GA. Pleasant Hill has been a historically black neighborhood since the professional class started building homes there in the 1870s. However, in the 1960s the neighborhood was bisected by the construction of I-75 and portion of those buried in the cemetery were disinterred. Conditions began to worsen as people moved out of the neighborhood.

Now with the widening of I-75 carving more of the neighborhood away there is attention and effort being paid to improving the conditions. A colleague of mine has been an energetic crusader in this regard and has been awarded a number of grants in support of her proposed projects.

The block party on Saturday was part of one of these projects. She and some others had gone door to door asking people what they would like to see happen with an abandoned community space. Five designs created based on that feedback were on display at the block party on Saturday. People were invited to vote for their favorite design by placing a colored dot on a poster board.

Since I know that there is often a lot of will behind building a space, but less support for operations, I was evaluating the plans for sustainability. All of them had some elements associated with artistic programming, but some emphasized the creation of community gardens. Another had some retail space with barber shops and nail salons. Another was oriented toward counseling services, study spaces and writing programs. Two of them were totally about artistic expression. There were dance studios; spaces for painting and drawing and performance spaces.

Most of the dots were ending up in the columns of these heavily arts spaces. I sighed inwardly. Those would be some great spaces, but they didn’t seem optimized for self-support. One of those designs might get built, but was there a plan to support it? (Good lord! This sounds just like the funder rational I often criticize. I have been infected!)

Besides, didn’t they already have activities like that at the much larger community center across the street?

No, actually they didn’t.

I walked across to see what was in the community center and it was quickly clear there hadn’t been any activities or staff of any kind in there for quite a few years.

This might be even more of an argument for a self-sufficient design, but it also possibly provided insight into the preferences of the voters.

People were drawn to the project designs that would provide them with what they didn’t have — a place to participate in some basic creative expression. Kids were congregating in front of the pictures of people taking dance and art classes because they didn’t have access to anything of the sort.

I was considering whether I wanted to write about this today as I walked back to my car on Saturday. The article on CityLab decided me because the idea that such places create stronger community bonds and a sense of identity aligned so strongly with what I felt I was observing.

I Probably Don’t Really Know What My Audience Values Even Though I Am In The Lobby Before, After, And At Intermission

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I bookmarked a guest post on Museum 2.0 a month ago. Now I feel guilty for not circling back to it sooner. Nina Simon invited Martin Brandt Djupdræt, a manager at Danish museum,  to write about how his organization has all the decision makers interact with visitors as part of their audience research effort.

Their approach is super simple, though a little time consuming. A member of management approaches a random visitor and asks if they can follow the visitor around to observe where they go in the museum and what they interact with. Three weeks later they give the visitor a call and ask:

• why they chose this museum,
• what they noticed especially during the visit,
• whether they interacted with anyone, and
• whether they had talked to anyone about the museum after the visit, and what about

Every decision maker in the organization seems to be required to participate, from management to curators. Djupdræt says the goal is to get managers up and away from their desks interacting with people with whom they wouldn’t normally come in contact.

As you might imagine, what the managers and curators were sure people valued about the museum wasn’t quite accurate. Even those with more direct contact with visitors were surprised by what they learned.

The curators were surprised by how important other parts of the museum besides the historical content were for the visitor. The F&B manager and the head of HR were surprised by how many objects and stories the visitors were absorbed in. This has also given us insights into the work of our colleagues and made us appreciate their work to a larger extent. Now we all have useful and inspiring stories about visitors’ choices and the impact the museum had on them.

Another observation was the importance of food and drink. In our trackings we could see how much time the visitors spent on the museum’s eating places and the great social importance these breaks had. Something we learned about food through the interviews was that the guests consider the food at the museum as part of the museum’s storytelling. This insight has encouraged us to focus on food and food history as a priority topic at the museum, and a colleague is going to work particularly with that subject.

[…]

Visitors have always been a focus for the management, but the research have personalized our audience and they are discussed differently now. As the head of finance described it: “I normally look at whether a task is well done, financially possible and efficient, but now I also consider more seriously how a visitor would feel and react to the changes we plan.”

I especially wanted to include that last section as a reminder that measuring success by efficiency and expense doesn’t necessarily equate to providing a fulfilling experience.

One thing Djupdræt didn’t cover that I was curious about was why they waited three weeks to follow up. I didn’t know if that was a social practice in Denmark where it was rude to immediately survey people about their experience or if it was calculated to see how much of the visitor experience still made an impression three week later.

The whole article is a reminder not to depend entirely on surveys as an evaluation tool. Yes, it is an important practice to have people in the back office interacting directly in a focused manner with the people the organization serves, but there is also the shift of perspective this practice brings. You would assume a food and beverage manager would have fairly extensive interactions with visitors and would be paying close attention to trends.  That person at the Djupdræt’s museum still found themselves surprised by some of the insights they gained.

Dark Side of Word of Mouth

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I participated in a work session for the development of a cultural masterplan for the county today. My table was focused on ideas to attract creative professionals to the community. There was a pretty good cross-section of arts disciplines plus a couple people from the general community involved in the discussion so the quality of the conversation was surprising informative.

Some of the conversation revolved around the lack of infrastructure to ensure a consistent transition for creatives through all stages of their development. People could gain education up to a certain point, then had to leave to continue their education, but could return because there were some opportunities suited to that education. There was discussion about how to fill in that gap with things like mentoring or apprenticeships.

There was a similar conversation related to the frequency of film productions in town who had to leave to do editing and scoring elsewhere because there were no facilities for that locally. Yet there are a number of highly skills musicians capable of contributing to film/tv/video game scores. There are two product that might be of mutual benefit to each other, but nothing to bind them together.

As much as discussions like that raised my awareness about resources, there were some parts of the conversation with which I was all too familiar. A big impediment to attracting new creatives to the community was the lack of value placed on the artistic product.

People want musicians to play for free. People want to pass very little for lessons, apparently unaware of the rent and material costs associated with teaching visual arts disciplines.  Local people view the work on display at the major ceramics show as overpriced while people from out of town swoon at getting great work so cheaply.

Something that did catch my attention was mention that it is apparently difficult for new arts schools to make people aware of their existence due to the decline of traditional media channels and the way social media like Facebook has prioritized information from friends over ad content and news.

Basically, in a place where there is good word of mouth advising people where to send their kids for lessons, it is difficult for new players to break in.  From what I was told, the person trying to open a new school found that those yard signs people put up during elections were pretty effective. Unfortunately, zoning laws prevented where they could be placed and for how long. There are 3-4 existing schools in the same category and they apparently all said they don’t advertise and depend solely on word of mouth to get business.

Now theoretically, some good search engine optimization should provide the new kid in town with some exposure for anyone randomly searching for lessons. But sometimes even new residents try to tap into the local reputation network as they get themselves set up rather than doing general searches. One woman mentioned she was a long time resident of the community, but a friend just moving into the area told her where she should be looking for schools and services for her family. The newcomer had been investing a lot of effort soliciting word of mouth recommendations.

Learning this was a small peek into the dark side of word of mouth. I haven’t thought about it and paid attention to behavior enough to make any pronouncements about implications for arts and culture in general. If this is a reflection of what is happening in many communities, then a dependence on word of both in the context of a national fracturing along socio-political lines could be quite concerning. But if this is a dominant factor in my community and only associated with extra-curricular activities, then it probably isn’t a big deal.

It still may be worth paying attention to how reputation networks are operating in your communities.

Big Kids Play With Bigger Blocks

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I saw an article on Gizmodo in the last couple weeks about scientists who designed 3,900 pound concrete structures that can be moved by a single person. As I read about cuts to arts in schools and the elimination of recess, I figured there was a need to toss out an example in support of unstructured free time.

There are a bunch of fun to watch GIFs on the article’s page, but here is a video of what they did:

As some of the commenters to the article point out, yes it is one thing to roll pre-cast objects over a concrete floor and another to quarry stone to transport over muddy ground. So while this may not entirely explain how Stonehenge, the pyramids and the Moai of Rapa Nui were created, there is some proof of concept upon which to base the design of structures to be used in emergency situations.

From my point of view, the development of the objects people are moving around have some basis in playing with Legos or other building materials and may move on to increasingly practical applications. I am sure that at some point in the past, at least one person who contributed to the design of the project was afforded the time to juggle things around in their hands to see how it all fit together and explore the properties of what they made were. Leaps of imagination and experimentation occurred until someone made a video of people rocking two ton chunks of concrete around with a light push.

Time to play with the simplest objects can result in new insights. But that is difficult to accomplish if you grow up thinking there is no value in such activities, exploration and curiosity.

This may not be the first time you heard about someone gaining insight into ancient construction techniques. A retired construction worker in Michigan demonstrated some much more compelling theories about ancient construction techniques some years ago. (I couldn’t find any better quality video than this.) He employed the same design elements of rounded/beveled edges to great effect, especially considering he was moving blocks across less prepared surfaces and using tools more readily available to anyone.

Though to use his techniques in an emergency situation, you would need much more knowledge to construct barriers and structures than with the prefabricated concrete objects in the first video.

Path To Promotion Doesn’t Necessarily Have To Be Vertical

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You have probably heard some form of the Peter Principle expressed before. At its most cynical, it is usually defined as, “A person will be promoted to their level of incompetence.”   While this has often been used somewhat tongue-in-cheek, according to Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, some researchers set out to test if this was really the case.

Studying more than 40,000 sales people at 131 firms, they found this was largely borne out. It has often been assumed that the skills that made people successful at sales would be transferable to management roles, even though there are metrics that are reliable predictors of managerial effectiveness. In fact, the effectiveness of salespeople under the supervision of an improperly promoted supervisor is often inhibited.

…we find evidence that firms systematically promote the best salespeople, even though these workers end up becoming worse managers, and even though there are other observable dimensions of sales-worker performance that better predict managerial quality.

[…]

What is striking, however, is that – among promoted managers – pre-promotion sales performance is actually negatively correlated with managerial quality. A doubling of a manager’s pre-promotion sales corresponds to a 7.5% decline in manager value added; that is, workers assigned to this manager will see their sales increase 7.5% less than workers assigned to the manager who was a weaker salesperson.

What drew my attention to the Marginal Revolution post was the discussion of how to motivate people to perform well without necessarily promoting them to a position which is a mismatch to their strongest skillset. Non-profits often don’t really have the option of providing the increase in pay that would generally accompany a promotion. In many cases, people applying for positions at non-profits are motivated by tangible and intangible factors other than money. (I shouldn’t need to add that this is not a license to normalize paying ridiculously low wages.)

This is good because the first thing the researchers suggest as an alternative to promotion is incentive pay and that may not be a viable option for non-profits. They do caution about totally eliminating promotion as an option since some workers are more motivated by promotion than salary increases. What they do suggest is decoupling job performance in a current position from a set career ladder associated with that position.

So for example, in a non-profit setting you may not look to promote an event coordinator working in the Development Office to assistant director of development if they don’t have the best social skills. Instead, you may want to shift them toward a management or director position in an operational role in recognition of the superior organizational and planning skills they exhibited with events.

Some Reasons Acquiring New Customers Can Be Expensive

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As so often is the case, Seth Godin recently made a post many elements of which are often cited as mistakes arts organizations make.

It should be noted that the things Godin lists are not meant to apply specifically to arts organizations. As often as we talk about how it is not appropriate for non-profits to be run like businesses, it is important to remember that since we are both trying to appeal to human beings to use a product or service, there are still a whole lot of problems we have in common.  The over arching philosophy and motivation which guide the responses to these challenges is what often differentiates non-profits from for-profit entities.

The fact the post is titled, “When your project isn’t making money,” doesn’t mean it is aligned to businesses with a profit motive. Non-profits need to make money to pay their expenses, after all.

Of the 16 or so issues he identifies under the “It might be that your costs of acquiring a new customer are more than that customer is worth” subheading, only about 4-5 aren’t directly applicable to non-profit operations, and it only takes the slightest bit of imagination to see parallels.

Here are some of the more significant issues he lists. You have probably seen many of them mentioned before.

Because there’s a mismatch between your story and the worldview of those you seek to serve.

Because the people you seek to serve don’t think they need you.

Because it costs too much to tell these people you exist.

Because the people you seek to serve don’t trust you.

[…]

Because you’re focusing on the wrong channels to tell your story.
(just because social media is fun to talk about doesn’t mean it works)

[…]

Because the people you seek to serve don’t talk about you, thus, you’re not remarkable.

Or the people you seek to serve don’t like to talk about anyone, and your efforts to be remarkable are wasted.

Because your product doesn’t earn traction with your customers, they wouldn’t miss you if you were gone–the substitutes are easy.

Because even though you’re trying hard, you’re being selfish, focusing on your needs instead of having empathy for those you seek to serve.

Issues of lack of awareness, lack of trust, selfishness, competing substitutes are all topics of discussion in the non-profit arts community.

In fact, you may not associate some of Godin’s points with for-profit businesses. Do you immediately associate empathy with those whom you seek to serve as a characteristic of a for-profit business?

If you think about it, when call a customer or tech support number with a sense of dread and get your problems solved within five minutes, you may have been dealing with a company employing empathy for those they seek to serve. (Or at least one making an effort to retain your loyalty)

When You Try To Break Out Of Siloed Thinking, You Suddenly See Them Everywhere

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When I was looking at Arts Professional UK for yesterday’s post, I saw an article by Lucy Jamieson about rewiring your thinking.

One of the things she talks about is eliminating silos both within an organization (i.e. development is responsible for fund development, and marketing does marketing work, and programming does programming), and between organizations.  The latter being not only the elimination of duplication of effort by multiple entities but also exploring things like where the interests of arts, social justice and climate change advocacy might intersect.

One section of Jamieson’s piece caught my eye:

We talk a lot at the moment about resilience, about being agile and adaptable, about scalability… Yet sometimes it feels as though the more we say the words (resilience, agile, adaptable), the more we’re convincing ourselves that we’re actually doing and being those things.

Back to the Naomi Klein talk. She spoke at one point about the fairly recent shift from the idea of the individual as part of a collective movement, to the individual as a brand (think social media influencers)…

The parallel I’m drawing here is that if we really do want to be ready for change, and therefore resilient, we should also be prepared to instigate that change. And we’re far more likely to be able to do that by partnering up with someone else, no matter how small the change may seem.

I have been helping review grant applications over the last few weeks. Something that struck me recently was that both here in Georgia and in Ohio where I also served on grant panels, there are some amazing, well-designed after school writing programs targeted at helping kids living in difficult circumstances express themselves.

I get excited when I read about the contexts some of these programs connect with writing. Often these are the type of situations where you’d be grabbing a pen and paper in order to participate, never thinking it was a writing exercise and never raising the common student objection about when you would you ever use this skill in real life. Then there are other assignments that definitely asked you to write with intention and introspection.

Reflecting on this last week, I couldn’t help wondering why these techniques weren’t being used in school or why these groups weren’t being brought in to teach a class and give the teachers a break. Some programs I have come across have been sited at schools, but even those were conducted after hours.

The kids participating in these programs are, almost by definition, not handpicked cream of the crop who have a better chance of exhibiting positive outcomes. So schools can’t cite the programs as being inappropriate for their student demographics.

The only reasons I can think for these programs not being in schools is that either:

1- No one made the logical jump that these techniques or groups might be an effective tool for instruction. Perhaps it is a result of siloed thinking that teachers teach in schools during school hours and non-profit groups conduct their activities at other times or are a special, occasional presence in schools. It may also be that while funders are willing to support the time and labor intensive process of writing programs for non-profits, many don’t consider doing the same for schools (or letting them know they are interested in doing so.)

2- The other reason might be that they have different measures of effectiveness. While some of the non-profit grant applicants reference improvements in grades or behavior, by and large they are focused on helping participants feel personally empowered to express themselves. Schools measure effectiveness in terms of test scores which is a secondary or lower ranked concern for the non-profits.

Do They Know They Are Hard To Reach?

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On the Arts Professional UK website, Imrana Mahmood, discusses her experiences becoming a creative producer in a manner that reminded me of two other speakers/authors I often cite. Mahmood’s experience seemed to be at the crossroads of Jamie Bennett’s TEDx Talk about people not recognizing their capacity to be creative even though they already engage in creative activity and Ronia Holmes’ piece on how disinvested communities aren’t bereft of creative and artistic practice.

Mahmood’s article immediately recalled Holmes to me thanks to the title, “A Seat at The Table.” Holmes had talked about how people in disinvested communities are often offered a small seat at the big table by other organizations  when they actually own the entire table in their own communities. Mahmood’s article starts along much the same lines (my emphasis):

As a British Muslim woman of Pakistani heritage, I grew up with an intrinsic love of the arts, including qawwali, henna, calligraphy and poetry. It was therefore a surprise to be labelled as being part of a hard-to-reach community with low arts engagement, as I struggled to reconcile the reality of my lived experience with an inaccurate perception of my identity.

She was encouraged to apply for funding as an “emerging creative producer,” but says she was initially reluctant “to view myself as an arts professional.” I attribute this to her mention earlier in the piece that

“…a career in arts was not considered to be a proper job. This was despite spending much of my spare time running community arts projects as well as having a keen interest in visual arts and live performance.”

Throughout the rest of the article she mentions experiences which involved perceived tokenism and gatekeeping as well as instances when she felt she and others had license to express themselves on their own terms.   If you take one thing away from this article, it should be her call for organizations to reflect on their own inaccessibility.

Paying lip service to diversity and only conversing with creatives of colour as though we exist as a monolith is hugely problematic. It is time that organisations committed to engaging hard-to-reach communities reflect on the reality of their own inaccessibility.

Along those lines, I have some reluctance in citing Ronia Holmes’ original piece as if it were a monolithic representation of the needs and sentiments of all communities, but I often return to it because it for its perception of all the dynamics motivating arts and cultural organizations.

The Gallery At The End of The Rainbow

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There was a piece on Hyperallergic last month that seemed to be continuing an ongoing conversation about the fact that most university based arts programs seem to be oriented toward training students to enter a narrowly defined career path. Where theater programs seem focused on Broadway and music programs on orchestras, Sharon Louden suggests visual arts programs identify gallery shows as the goal.

I hadn’t really thought about visual arts programs promoting unrealistic expectations about an ideal career path given the myriad media suggest so many options to pursue, but it makes sense that one might exist.

Louden says that for most visual artists, gallery sales are not a stable source of income. Many artists have become adept at diversifying their income streams and gallery sales isn’t at the top of the list of revenue sources most pursue. She argues that by subscribing to an emerging centralized MFA Fair, artist training programs are sending a message that gallery sales should be the central ambition of graduates.

Louden’s second objection really caught my eye because she says art schools are doubly profiting from their students by advancing participation in the MFA Fair.

We are all likely aware of the incredibly high cost of enrolling in MFA programs around the country. If universities end up paying for booths and/or taking a percentage of money from recent MFA artists, shouldn’t that be considered a form of double-dipping? Students who often have to take out huge student loans to pay for their education are now going to provide work to their alma mater so it can take a commission from sales of that work?

If a training program is profiting off the labor of students, Louden asks, doesn’t have a greater incentive to cultivate students’ whose work is more marketable and suppress those who push boundaries and take chances? As she says, time in a training program is the period when artists should have the most permission, (if not insistent prodding), from their mentors to diverge from the commercial motive.

How does the institution-turned-gallery decide who gets to show? Will they only accept artists who make conservative work that’s most likely to sell? What happens to the artist who makes work that is not easily accepted in the gallery paradigm? And most darkly, what happens when a former student sues a university for not including them in this fair?

Finally, she asks, if the metric of number of students selling work at an MFA Art Fair becomes a recruiting tool in the same manner as US World Report university rankings, does this not create pressure for non-participant training programs to join or suffer from the inability to guarantee “employment” upon graduation granted by the imprimatur of having a small percentage of students sell works?

Don’t forget there is a growing general societal pressure that university students pursue majors with proven career paths. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility that training programs will look to accentuate the successes of graduates by arranging high profile opportunities.

Lollipop Philanthropy

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When I was at the Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit last week, one of the other participants asked if there was a way to communicate to funders that they can’t just fund a program and forbid using the money to pay the people who will actually run the program.

I spoke up and mentioned she wasn’t alone,  this was a big topic of discussion among non-profits and cited Vu Le’s Non-Profit AF blog as a place where this is frequently addressed.

Along these same lines, I was happy to see FastCompany (h/t Artsjournal.com) is refuting the non-profits should be run like a business argument.  The case they lay out isn’t anything you haven’t heard before. They too mention the prohibition on paying people to run the program. It is good to see a business oriented magazine criticizing the practice. It helps circulate the topic outside non-profit circles.

One of the main things raised in the article is that while for-profit success is measured by effectiveness at making a profit, non-profits’ successes are measured by doing everything from treating drug addiction and diminishing gang violence to education about climate change and music lessons.  There is no easy metric for any of these, nor is there any relevance in comparing reduction in gang activity to an increase in musical aptitude.

(my emphasis)

…that hasn’t stopped some deep-pocketed donors from trying. In one case, a venture philanthropy denied a grant to the founding board member and chair of an organization that works with homeless kids because the “cost per life touched” ratio was too high, despite the fact that there was no analysis of how the group compared to others in its area. “Ratios seem rigorous, when in fact it was an inappropriate comparison, given the expense of reaching the different populations,” he says. The measurement didn’t take into account all the benefits that could occur in communities if these life changes stick either. To simplify the argument: “My friend said, ‘I could give everybody in the city a lollipop, and I would have touched a lot of lives.’”

That lollipop metaphor is a tangible illustration of the problem non-profits have been facing with some philanthropic entities. There is a desire for a large quantity of touch points on the cheap. Fleeting impact on thousands this year feels more satisfying than enduring solutions for hundreds over a decade.

Take It From The Folks Who Have Done It 7000 Times –Short And To The Point

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A piece from Artsy regarding what they had learned writing 7000 bios for visual artists came across my radar a few weeks ago and I quickly tagged it as something I to which wanted to circle back. Now that I have done so, I realize it was written about 3 years ago.

The basic observations they make about artists’ bios are worth the attention of anyone in any arts discipline to when it comes to writing promotional copy for websites, brochures, etc.

They found that the sweet spot is between 80 and 140 words with the ideal being 120.  Any more than 150 and people’s attention starts to waver. While they have observed this in relation to gallery labels, it is probably all the more true for websites. They go further to say that a tightly written 80 word bio is better than a 120 word one with repetitive or filler content.

Some of the points to consider when writing an artist’s bio are specific to visual arts but are relatively simple to transfer to any arts discipline. As I mentioned earlier, these rules are just as applicable to describing a performance involving 40 people as it is for one person.

As with most things, the most important element is a strong opening:

The bio should open with a first line that encapsulates, as far as possible, what is most significant about the artist and his or her work, rather than opening with biographical tidbits, such as where the artist went to school, grew up, etc. For example: John Chamberlain is best known for his twisting sculptures made from scrap metal and banged up, discarded automobile parts and other industrial detritus.

Though in the case of promoting a performance or other event, I would start with a sense of why people will enjoy themselves rather than any sort of biographical information. Even if they know the show, no one is going to get excited about seeing Phantom of the Opera if it opens with “Written by the man who revolutionized the musical theatre form with shows like Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Evita, Starlight Express….”

Among the mistakes they say are the biggest people make when writing bios are some familiar faces: hyperbole, laundry list of accomplishments and “artspeak”:

It can be tempting to sing your artists’ praises. We’ve noticed, however, that readers do not respond positively to unsubstantiated claims about an artist’s import (e.g. “Artist X is considered one of the most important artists of the post-war period,” or, “Artist Y is widely regarded for her beautiful work”). Most readers will see right through trumped-up language …The best way to maximize the power of a good bio is to try to educate, not “hard-sell,” your reader. Numerous studies have shown that the hard sell doesn’t work, especially for younger audiences (read: tech-savvy collectors), who respond most positively to simple and authentic messages.

[…]

Impressive as these may be, these laundry lists are tedious to read in prose format. They also take up precious real estate, which you could otherwise devote to a real discussion of your artist’s practice.

There are certainly instances where it makes sense to include one particularly outstanding prize or exhibition, for example, an artist’s inclusion in the Venice Biennale. In this case, try to find a way to naturally include mention of the distinction in the normal flow of the text.

[…]

Instead of trying to impress other curators, academics, and galleries, focus on your audience of new collectors who may be completely unfamiliar with your artists. Readers want to glean information from your writing, and the best way to do that is to use simple language. A good rule of thumb is to impart one idea per sentence.

Obviously that last point should be applied to new attendees rather than new collectors. I would doubly apply the caution about artspeak to the injunction about laundry lists. As insiders, there are a lot of prizes, associations, and accomplishments we might deem particularly outstanding that means nothing to a newer attendee.

Trevor O’Donnell often invokes the “person in Starbucks test” where you recite your promotional copy conversationally to someone in a Starbucks. (or any other random casual encounter.) If they look back at your uncomfortably, he says your text needs a rewrite. Before you even get to that point, you might want to ask a person in Starbucks if a particular accolade means anything to them and leave it out of the description if they look at you cross-eyed or clearly as pretending it sounds familiar.

Is Creative Placemaking The Poor Man’s Gentrification?

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Part of last week I was attending the Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit for the South and Appalachian region.

I am sorry to say that one of the biggest impressions I came away with is that poverty is the rule rather than the exception in this country. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. I grew up in a rural town and spent a good part of my youth consuming government cheese, rice and powdered milk. I worked in an Appalachian community that was notorious for pill mills and opioid addiction nearly 20 years ago before it was considered so much a crisis that organizations started refusing donations from pharmaceutical companies.

But these all seemed to be generally isolated instances compared to the whole of the country. More and more I am not so sure.

I spent three days last week listening to the majority of the presenters talk about the great projects they have enacted in communities where the median income for a household of four hovers between $19,000 and $32,000 a year.

One of the questions in the first session I attended was about whether placemaking was happening predominantly in rural and impoverished communities. At the time I was thinking about all the urban gentrification that has been going on so I didn’t think that was the case, but by the time I got to the end of conference, I started to wonder if anyone was using creative placemaking as a tool in affluent urban communities. More and more it seemed like Creative Placemaking is something people turn to in order to improve economically depressed communities.

I began to suspect the effort to improve in big cities it is just termed development. If there is any creative element that emerges, it is in compliance with percent for art requirements forcing projects to add artistic elements.

Most of the presenters and attendees seemed to be from small communities. There were some people from Miami and Alameda County, CA at the conference but they talked about how their projects were improving lives in impoverished neighborhoods and creating more positive relationships with the police.  No one was talking about projects on the scale of New York City’s Highline or Hudson Yards

I will confess that this is a large chunk of cynicism talking right now. So much of what is accomplished in smaller communities is definitely due to governments, developers and community advocates entering in conversations to find innovative solutions that improve the status of the entire community. Maybe bigger cities aren’t attending these conferences because they don’t feel the need to participate since they already have developers salivating to build something. As a result, I am hearing the stories of communities with fewer resources.

At the same time I listen to people talk about all small projects they bootstrapped into being viewed as a vast improvement because it added a small walking trail and pole barn pavilion. The fact that this trail is touted as something people can use to spend time with their families after a 10 day of work almost has undertones of those commercials telling us we can improve the lives of people overseas “for pennies a day.” Except that it isn’t overseas. It is kinda dispiriting.

I don’t have to tell those of you in the arts community that even when a project clearly has improved conditions, it isn’t necessarily valued. Germaine Jenkins talked about the farm she and her colleagues at Fresh Future Farm created in North Charleston, SC, transforming an empty lot into a garden with a store that charges people on a sliding scale according to their need. Her lease is up in September with no indication of whether it will be renewed.

There was a time when people were criticizing the superficial understanding of Richard Florida’s observations of the relationship between Creative Class and vibrant communities. There was a sense that you just needed to attract creative people to place and they would take care of the rest. I feel like Creative Placemaking reflects a more sophisticated understanding that a complex mix of factors from public policy, community dynamics, business and cultural resources, etc need to be in place and requires constant attention and balancing.

Yet I am starting to wonder if people see the success of creative placemaking efforts elsewhere and perceive it to be the panacea for the problems that plague their communities.

Yet, perhaps this is what is needed at this juncture– the example of success elsewhere as a model of what should be done locally. Last week Notre Dame cathedral burned down and people apparently recognized that there was a spate of recent church burning in the US that had not received the attention and support that the cathedral did and started donating toward the restoration of those US churches. The people who are undertaking these project understand that there is a lot of hard work and consensus building required. Maybe the examples of others will bring a positive result in the long run.

Gather Your Neighbors For A Castle Raising

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I am always up for spreading around awesome ideas that people execute. I wanted to give a shout out to my old collaborators, at the Creative Cult. They have been involved with all sorts of cool stuff since I moved away from my previous job, but recently they did something I knew I needed to call attention to.

They partnered with a group who was showing, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the documentary film about Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to add a little something to the attendance experience.

In advance of the show, the Creative Cult sent out a call informing people that they would be building a cardboard castle in the spirit of Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make Believe.

Roger. Legends say of him that he wrote every show until his very last. He will be dearly missed. WE WILL BUILD THE…

Posted by Creative Cult Lives – cmar on Tuesday, April 2, 2019

And of course, they got people to help them build it and turned it into the primary entry point for entering the screening.  Seeing stuff like this makes me ask, why haven’t I thought of something like that? Don’t tell them—I am definitely gonna steal the idea 😉

https://www.facebook.com/creativecultlives/posts/1249691825197286

Theater Seeking Animation With Creative Vitality

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Something I thought might be interesting to readers.  The City of Douglas, GA has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to purchase and run a historical theater.  You don’t see this that often so it was interesting to me the type of things that go into an RFP to run a theater.

The 750 seat Martin Centre was constructed in 1939-41 as a movie house but was renovated to accommodate live performances. The city is looking for someone to purchase the venue for at least $200,000 and continue to operate it as an arts venue.

The City is seeking proposals with the following indicators:

a)Recognize the historical significance of the building and maintain architectural characteristics of the theater’s façade.

b)Honor all upcoming rental contracts where the lessee has paid deposit and/or rental for the booking.

c)Deliver a use that will further promote Downtown Douglas as an entertainment and cultural destination location in South Georgia and Georgia and be cohesive with existing downtown uses.

d)Clearly demonstrate economic feasibility.

e)Demonstrate a positive economic benefit to the downtown Douglas area and the City of Douglas.

f)Offer a purchase price of at least $200,000.00.

As part of the proposal, they essentially request that the applicant outline how they will accomplish all these things. They also list how each criteria will be weighted.

For me, it was interesting to see how the RFP reflected the hopes and ambitions for what the Martin Centre might be for the city. They highly encourage people to discuss potential use of an adjacent plaza as part of the proposals. They are definitely hoping the new owner’s vision extends beyond the physical walls of the space.

Since I expect the listing to go off line after the May 6 deadline, I am archiving a copy of the PDF here for future reference for RFPs along these lines.

The Games That Are Played In Cultural Facilities

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Hate the fact that your city will provide millions to fund an arena that only gets used 20 times a year but not arts organizations that each host hundreds of events a year?

Concerned that the availability of home entertainment systems with huge screens and gaming systems are keeping people at home rather than participating in cultural activities?

Well now your fears and concerns are combining to haunt you even more!

According to CityLab a $50 million eSports Arena is being constructed in Philadelphia. There are other eSports facilities around the country, but this will be the first standalone facility.  Just to be clear, I am not sure if the local government has subsidized the construction of this arena. According to the article, it is being built by Comcast Spectror.

Some might see this as an unnecessary shrine to a niche subculture. But for fans of esports (or professional video-game competitions), this was an inevitable next step. An estimated 250 million people watch esports, although most do so from the comfort of their homes. Global revenue is slated to hit $1.1 billion this year, and the industry is growing into a more social, spectator sport.

This article didn’t catch my eye because I perceived eSports arenas as a threat to arts and cultural organizations. Actually, I see some potential in providing a venue for gaming.

I was at a meeting a couple months ago and someone said they had started hosting video game related activities in their facility. They identified people living within a certain radius of their facility who posted game walk-through videos on YouTube and Twitch and set up sessions where local residents could come in and play against them.

They were only charging about $5 a person, but the overhead was low and they also earned money from concessions. They saw getting a new group of people walking into the facility and feeling comfortable as a win. Plus they got an opportunity to get a sense of what the people might be looking for in terms of programming.

I have started talking to staff about trying to set up something in our facility. One of my tech crew is a professional gamer who travels around the country competing. We haven’t lined anything up yet. If anyone else has had success and has some tips, let me know.

People might be horrified that a performing arts space is being desecrated by such base activities as video game tournaments.

I am not actually raising a hypothetical situation here. A director of the state opera house in Kyrgyzstan was fired for allowing a video game tournament in the building.

Many people were aghast at the thought of the competition in that space, but others felt that it was both relevant and fiscally responsible:

Liberal opinion leader Bektour Iskender disagreed in a January 21 Facebook post:

Hello?! A Dota tournament at the Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of the coolest ways of advertising opera and ballet. And its not as if you can just find 180,000 som (the total Beeline paid to rent out the building) lying on the ground.

Note: 180,000 som is about $2,600

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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