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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.

Live Streaming Broadway Performances, Nigh or Nay?

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The “Why Won’t Broadway Livestream/Broadcast” argument has been going on for awhile now but a recent article on Fast Company suggests that time may be drawing near as Netflix’s influence and reach continues to wax.

The article is better written than many that tackle the subject because it acknowledges the objections and resistance to live streaming have a rational basis.

For instance, author Christopher Zara acknowledges there is something lost when a live performance is broadcast.

Theater is special. It’s not meant to be consumed on a screen because it’s fundamentally better than anything you’ll ever see on your computer, or your TV, or even in your local multiplex.

[…]

Even at the Tony Awards, which the Broadway League coproduces every year, the season’s best work often doesn’t hold up once it’s televised. “One of our biggest challenges is having the musical numbers on screen come off as great as they do in the theater,” St. Martin says of the awards ceremony.

At the same time, better technology and recording techniques are improving the ability to depict the live experience with greater fidelity.

Zara also mentions the concerns that broadcasts will cannibalize audiences. He cites general concerns of tour producers who fear the road business will diminish. I saw a specific example of this just a week ago where the Chicago Tribune predicted Hamilton would close in Chicago within a year because three performance venues in Wisconsin would be presenting the show.

On the other hand, Zara suggests streaming might help diversify audiences for Broadway shows given that last year ” 77% of ticket buyers were white, and most had an income of over $75,000 a year.”

Another point that often comes up in stories about why more Broadway shows aren’t broadcast is the stubbornness of the unions, all of which want to be paid. The Fast Company positions Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin against Actors’ Equity Deputy Francis Jue in an obstruction vs. fair pay view of the situation.

Actors are compensated for streaming content via upfront payment and additional profits–a model that dates back to deals used for television. “Additional work requires additional pay,” Jue says. “Our contracts on Broadway are paying us to maintain the show on Broadway, so the additional work of creating new content distributed in a new medium is additional work.”

[…]

The League negotiates contracts with 14 different labor unions, and Actors’ Equity is just one of them. Musicians, set designers, choreographers–they all want to get paid, and St. Martin says that can be cost prohibitive for streaming outlets looking to distribute Broadway content. “They’re going to have to make it more affordable,” she says.

I think one key phrase in there is the concept that streaming payment are based on the television model. It is likely that arrangement is no longer relevant or increasingly less so and will change.

Last week in a Huffington Post interview, Anthony Ramos, who originated two roles in Hamilton talked about the lengthy negotiations the cast had to go through to get a share of the earnings.

“On Broadway, we had to negotiate with our producers to share some [earnings]. That was an ongoing process, but everybody came to an agreement,” he told HuffPost. “But we didn’t … the show didn’t financially make any of us rich. It provided for us and helped open doors to create other opportunities that helped us make money. But the show itself didn’t necessarily change my life or most people’s lives in the cast [financially]. The checks we get after that long negotiation for profit share have helped us after.”

[…]
Like in any other industry, Ramos believes success in the theater world hinges on an ability to fight for what you feel you deserve.

“People don’t take into consideration that you won’t be in the show forever. You’re doing it eight times a week. You don’t get paid when you get hurt. You have to earn every single dollar,” he said.

When I heard Oskar Eustis speak a couple years ago, I seem to recall he mentioned that providing for the Hamilton actors to share in the earnings right from the development stage was a relatively new thing. I don’t doubt that both Hamilton and live streaming will have great influence on future negotiations and challenge the standard way of doing things.

I will leave you with one of the final paragraphs from Fast Company as an argument about why streaming is probably inevitable:

Consider last season’s Dear Evan Hansen, which took home the Tony for best musical. It became a monster hit with younger audiences not just because of its storyline about an awkward high schooler who becomes a social media sensation, but because teens could discover the music on YouTube, post fan-made videos, and engage with the show in a way that would not have been possible a decade ago.

 

The Coolest Art Around

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The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival just started a couple weeks ago. Despite temperatures which hover in the -20s, they are expecting about 1.5 million visitors before the festival ends in February.

You can see pictures of the works like the one above on a number of websites. Every year, the artists try to out do the spectacle of the year before.

However, the ice doesn’t cut and cart itself out of the Songhua River. Every year, starting in December, farmers looking for some extra money during the winter get up at 3-4 am and work 12-13 hours cutting ice blocks.

Sixth Tone had this short video below  accompanying their story about the workers who have been doing this job for years, despite swearing they will never do it again.

Like people all around the world, they raise the familiar complaint about “kids today.”

Most of the ice cutters are farmers from nearby villages, ranging in age from 30 to 55. Nobody younger is willing to take up the job. “The work is too difficult,” Tang said. “[Young people] can’t deal with the hardship. They don’t need to do this to make money.”

 

I am sure most haven’t forgotten, but just another reminder that art doesn’t just happen. The creative expression we see is just the final stage of a lot of hard work and sweat (well, if it were warm enough to sweat.)

They Predicted The End of Paper Too

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Apropos of my post on Monday about physical objects being valued more than digital copies, there was a fairly long piece in The Guardian about how a paperless society hasn’t been achieved yet. The implication being that people perceive a need for physical representations of ideas.

Since the death of various arts disciplines at the hands of technological developments have been predicted for ages now, there are a number of parallels with the arts in the piece.

The central focus of the article is on a paper manufacturers conference in Chicago last March. Since there has been discussion about a need to update pretty much every element and experience at the arts conferences I have attended, I had to wince when I recognized some parallels in the mild criticism of clinging to antiquated approaches at the paper conference.

…the latest issue of the Paper2017 Convention Daily, published in three separate editions for each day of the conference, and printed on obscenely large 16in by 11.75in glossy tabloid that serves as an oversized “screw you” to palm-sized devices. It is printed by O’Brien Publications, which also publishes PaperAge magazine, the newspaper of record for all things pulp and paper since 1884.
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I stroll through the CL, drawn to an unmanned National Paper Trade Association table piled high with juicy-looking literature on paper’s many virtues. I take one of each and sit down at a cocktail table to thumb through my haul of brochures announcing paper “myths” and paper “facts”.

While the paper industry may be showing some resistance to the growing use of digital at their conference, they aren’t blind to the changing environment. Use of printing and writing paper has been in decline since 2008. At the same time, with Amazon packing small items in boxes surrounded by paper and placed in bigger boxes, and increasing resistance to plastic waste, there is growing opportunity for other types of paper products.

Mohawk Paper on the other hand, says they are ignoring the consultants and have been growing their business 3%-4% a year just focusing on the core value of manufacturing really great paper.

To make it work, they have been positioning their product in the context of the satisfaction found in a physical product. (my emphasis)

It’s not that Mohawk ignores the digital revolution; rather, they have made a choice to sell the ethos of paper to the digitally fatigued. Melissa Stevens, Mohawk’s senior VP of sales, hands me Mohawk’s Declaration of Craft, an absolutely gorgeous piece of printed material chock-full of new-agey thingness. Its thesis: “In an era of impermanence, an extraordinary movement has emerged. A movement of makers where craftsmanship and permanence matter now more than ever.”

Mohawk’s communication strategy is built around this “maker” movement, which is illustrated with hipsters throwing clay in their basements, forging wrought iron and side-hustling in saxophone design. It’s impossible to tell if this is brilliant marketing or sheer impudence, or both.

I see parallels for the arts and culture sector in this as well. First, is the renewed focus on personal creative expression advocated by groups like Arts Midwest

Even more immediately and literally, I emailed Drew McManus last night observing that since he updated the design of my website to include a print option in the social sharing tool bar, I have been surprised how many people have used it. I added that over on the Arts Hacker website, an entry that hasn’t been printed at least once is the exception rather than the rule.

Even though it may be more convenient to bookmark an article and access it on demand, people are apparently printing them off for themselves or to share with others.

I started to wonder–does the knowledge that an article has been printed out 1-4 times have more value for Drew and the Arts Hacker contributors than some number of times the articles are shared on social media since printing represents that extra investment of time and material?

Speaking for myself, the fact someone did take the time to print my last AH post out is probably worth 5-10 shares. On the other hand, I was really pleased when I saw the Pennsylvania Arts Council shared the post since they are influential. So it this issue really isn’t clearcut, especially since I have no concept of the identity or influence of the others who shared the post.

NPO Execs Much More Concerned By Lack of Board Diversity Than Board Chairs

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I recently published a short piece on ArtsHacker about how important the leadership of non-profit board chairs was to the success of the organization. Much of the information was draw from a webinar Non-Profit Quarterly hosted about Board Source’s most recent Leading With Intent report.

I just got around to reading the report in the last week. Since the finds are summarized pretty prominently on the Leading With Intent home page, I will leave readers take a look themselves and hopefully choose to focus in on areas of interest, if not read the whole thing.

Of course, general observations don’t give you the full story. While I wasn’t surprised to read that board membership isn’t becoming more diverse and their current composition is inhibiting efforts at diversity, I was interested to read that executive directors felt much more strongly than board chairs that the lack of diversity was a problem.

Sixty-five percent of executive directors versus 41% of board chairs were somewhat or extremely dissatisfied with the level racial and ethnic diversity.

It is possible chief executives express higher levels of dissatisfaction with the board’s racial and ethnic diversity because they are more exposed to the way it is affecting their organization. Seventy-nine (79) percent of chief executives say that expanding racial and ethnic diversity is important, or greatly important, to increasing their organization’s ability to advance its mission.

Additionally, chief executive responses highlight an understanding of the many ways that diversity (or lack of diversity) can impact an organization’s

reputation: 80 percent of executives report that diversity and inclusion is important, or very important, to “enhancing the organization’s standing with the general public.”

reach: 72 percent of executives report that diversity and inclusion is important, or greatly important, to “increase fundraising or expand donor networks.”

If an organization is facing issues and challenges due to a lack of board diversity, chief executives are wise to help the board understand these issues rather than continuing to make the case for diversity without the board fully understanding what is at stake.

My guess is that pretty much everyone in the arts and culture sector understands that the recent push for greater diversity in commercial entertainment and associated award shows isn’t just applicable to commercial or entertainment enterprises.

If you are under the impression that this is all just a fad and will stop at the edge of the televised red carpet, ooooh boy, you better pay closer attention. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if inclusion displaced overhead ratio as a primary measure of effectiveness and worthiness among funders, patrons and donors.

While lack of diversity in terms of race/ethnicity was the biggest source of dissatisfaction, lack of diversity in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, sexual orientation and persons with disabilities was roughly equal for executive officers (~30%) and presumably growing.

The neutrality gap between satisfaction and dissatisfaction in each of these areas varies widely and might be a source of interest to readers. (page 10 of the PDF, page 11 in printed version)

A Bird In The Hand Is Worth More Than Two In Computer Memory

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Roger Tomilson tweeted about Harvard Business Review article that provides some food for thought about how people might experience arts and culture.

I’ll jump right to a quote since the article title, “Customers Won’t Pay as Much for Digital Goods — and Research Explains Why,” pretty much provides the all the introduction you need.

The greater value ascribed to physical than digital goods persisted when we accounted for people’s estimates of production costs and retail prices. It even held for goods with no resale value. Plausible alternative explanations, such as physical goods lasting longer or being more enjoyable to use than digital goods, also failed to explain this difference.

Only a difference in the extent to which people feel a sense of ownership for digital and physical objects explained their preference for the physical format. Indeed, the value gap disappeared for goods participants rented and expected to give back.

[…]

Because ownership entails a link between a person and an object, we found the gap in their value increased when that link was easy to form and disappeared when that link was hard to establish. Participants valued a physical copy of The Empire Strikes Back more than a digital copy, for instance, only if they considered the Star Wars series to be films with which they strongly identified. Participants who weren’t Star Wars fans valued physical and digital copies similarly.

To summarize: People value physical objects more than digital ones when the object represents something with which they closely identify, even if it has no monetary value, if they don’t have to give it back.

As much as I would like it to, this doesn’t really address whether people value physical encounters with transitory experiences like attending a performance or visiting a museum versus seeing a recording or a digital copy of a piece of visual art.

Even if I did try to wedge a rationalization in there, we’d still be left with the finding that, regardless of format, people place an equal value on things they don’t feel are relevant to them. Which means, people won’t automatically start to value art if they experience the physical manifestation. (You probably didn’t need research to tell you that.)

What I wondered is whether having something physical to take away from the experience facilitates in creating more value for people. Do well designed, informative playbills/programs/information sheets/gallery maps, etc help to solidify value for people even if they ultimately decide to toss it? Versus nothing or an digital media tour that is only available at the venue.

If so, does the effect increase if a hand-on activity is provided which produces something people can take with them? Is a link forged when someone executes an expression of personal creativity? It may have no value to anyone else but it is simultaneously allowing people to participate in the creative process and generating a physical manifestation connected to the experience.

Does this provide a greater  sense of ownership and investment in the experience?

And if you are nodding affirmatively and thinking “yes” to yourself, here is the next question – Where do selfie pictures fit in?

They are creative expressions but in digital form.  Research has shown people feel selfies and digital recording  enhance the experience…they just can’t accurately remember the content of the experience.  One potential way to mitigate this is to offer background and props for people to use in selfies as a way of saying, “we would prefer you not use your devices during the show, but we want you to remember this experience.”

Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas?

I would be interested to see if the presence of a gift shop/souvenirs increases value for people over places that don’t offer them. How many of you would stock cheesy snowglobes if there was a correlation with increased return visits in a 5 year period?

If You Like Taking A Shower, You May Like Nudism

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As soon as I saw the first four lines of a post Seth Godin made last month, I knew what I wanted to write.

Then he wrote a lot of it for me.

Want to go visit a nudist colony?

I don’t know, what’s it like?

You know, a lot of people not wearing clothes.

Show me some pictures, then I’ll know.

Well, actually, you won’t.

You won’t know what it’s like merely by looking at a picture of a bunch of naked people.

The only way you’ll know what it’s like is if you get seen by a bunch of naked people. The only way to have the experience is to have the experience.

He goes on to say that we often try to put a new experience in a familiar box in order to insulate ourselves from the fear of a new experience.

My initial impulse was to write about how seeing video of performance or pictures of objects in a museum doesn’t provide the actual experience of encountering these things live. I was also thinking of writing about how in recent years even those people who do travel to see something live use an electronic device to mediate the experience for them.

But I also got to thinking that the reverse is also true.

We in arts and culture like to criticize participants and potential participants for avoiding an authentic experience and deciding they know about the experience after accepting some form of substitute.

The truth is, the arts and culture sector reinforces to this by talking about their work in the context of other work. While this does provide a frame of reference for entirely unfamiliar experiences, it does the experience and the creators a disservice to frame their work in terms of “just like artist Y,” “if you liked Z, you will love X.”

It is done to sell an experience and we all gotta eat right? People increasingly look for this type of information since their online buying experience so frequently features this form of recommendation. Replicating this process helps people make decisions about participating in an arts and culture event.

But then you can’t turn around and accuse people of being averse to trying something unfamiliar if you continually use the simplest common elements to frame complex and nuanced experiences.

There were stories in November about the works of Jin Yong being translated into English, each which proclaimed him the J.R.R Tolkien of China. Amateur translations of those works have been a guilty pleasure of mine. I can tell you the comparison is only true in the broadest terms.  (Like showers and nudism.)

Likewise, if you decide changing expectations and perceptions about what an artistic/creative/cultural experiences are will require rethinking the whole experience, simply scaling down current practices and placing them in novel settings isn’t ultimately going to be the answer.

In the article upon which I based my post yesterday about a health clinic in Minneapolis that started experimenting with pop-up arts offerings I saw some parallels with arts engagement practices.

Neighborhood clinics like the one depicted in the story are an attempt to bring health services offered at places like hospitals closer to the people who need to be served. That has helped up to a point (not to diminish the work of a clinic that has served a community for 45-50 years). The executive director identified barriers for people: disinterest in health classes/discussions, anxiety, distrust, etc.

Clinics like the one in the story have started to expand their definition of what health entails.

You’re doing the art sitting next to people and you start talking to each other,” Shella said. “It creates community and is therapeutic in the sense that the hospital becomes less sterile—it gives it a sense of beauty and helps people feel more at peace and connected to others.”

Shella said that such activities have emerged from health care providers’ desire to give patients a positive experience. This means seeing them as “whole people,” not just a specific problem or organ that needs fixing. “It’s the recognition that people also have psycho-social needs,” said Shella.

One of the tactics they started to employ is using the pop up arts events as a conduit for information, discussion and lowering of barriers with the focus less sharply on health and more on creating community.

In the same way, the recent trend in arts and culture has been to broaden the definition of what constitutes arts, culture and creative activity. As we have seen in the recent CultureTrack report, the general population has already changed their definition of these things to focus more on food trucks and less on museums.

In the long run, arts and cultural organizations are going to have to continue to re-imagine what it means to have a creative experience. I suspect that means a transition from doing things like scaled down pop-up performances in bars, shopping malls, airports, etc and manifesting in a way that builds community.

I am not saying there is anything particularly wrong with these type of experiences. Obviously, the intersection between health services and a scaled down creative experience has had significance in Minneapolis. I just don’t think that the concept of taking activities to where the people are should represent an end point. There is a next step and new manifestation(s) that haven’t been realized yet.

Fingerpainting As A Gateway Drug To Better Health

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Head over to CityLab and read an interesting piece about how Minneapolis health clinic used pop-up art stations to provide services in their community.

People’s Center Health Services hired 16-17 artists to spend a few hours every Thursday over a summer in an attempt to “…engage with the community about health in a less disease-focused and more organic way.”

Part of the People’s Center’s mission is to engage its community in health education and outreach. But it has found that more traditional mechanisms like classes and workshops had not been well attended.

“If you invite people to a class on health, no one will show up because it’s boring,” said CEO of People’s Center Clinics & Services Sahra Noor.

[…]

The People’s Center asked the artists to engage with those who sought treatment at the clinic, as well as staff and passersby. In addition to Hirschmugl’s trailer, pop-ups included a ping pong table, letterpress station, and tented spa offering facials and tea.

[…]

”You’re doing the art sitting next to people and you start talking to each other,” Shella said. “It creates community and is therapeutic in the sense that the hospital becomes less sterile—it gives it a sense of beauty and helps people feel more at peace and connected to others.”

Shella said that such activities have emerged from health care providers’ desire to give patients a positive experience. This means seeing them as “whole people,” not just a specific problem or organ that needs fixing. “

The pop-ups did have a health focused element that they tried to get people to respond to, but everything was offered in a low-key manner without much pressure. The goal seemed to be to get people to have positive social and trusting relationships with the clinic so they will feel comfortable coming to discuss physical and mental health questions at a later date versus getting participants to commit to any immediate changes in behavior regarding their health.

Though the pop-ups weren’t just about making people feel more comfortable about approaching the clinic for services. Those with appointments at the clinic had the opportunity wait in a more relaxed environment than the typical waiting room.

Being an old hand at the grant writing game, I was particularly sensitive to the discussion of outcomes and impact in the article. I don’t know what the appropriate organization is going to write in their grant report, but Mimi Kirk, who authored the CityLab piece, seems to feel that the clear quality of the program outweighs an attempt to quantify the value in numbers.

It’s hard to quantify the pop-up’s impact. While more than 500 people participated, and an evaluator reported that as many as 30 people would cluster at a popular station at any given time, Noor said it’s not possible to gauge whether the people will now use the center’s services more or if they feel differently about the space.

But Noor and others felt the pop-ups were a success based on their observations. Laura Zabel, the executive director of Springboard for the Arts, the organization that facilitated the artists’ involvement, noticed that some participants who had brought a child to an appointment would go home afterward, fetch their other children, and bring them back for the fun.

And Noor said that when she would leave work at 7 p.m.—two hours after the clinic closed—kids would still be playing outside, their parents talking to the artists. “The artists needed to leave, but they didn’t, because people were enjoying themselves,” she said. “I had feared we were forcing people to engage, but I realized that people want this.”

By the way, Laura Zabel wrote about this project for Shelterforce in the context of similar work Springboard for the Arts is doing around Minnesota. I wouldn’t have made the connection except both articles used to same image and it drove me crazy trying to figure out where I had seen it before.

New Year’s Resolution Moment of Zen

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For those of you looking to make resolutions in the new year, (or just appreciate good illustrations of concepts), I offer Edgar Allan Poe’s thoughts on Procrastination as illustrated on Zen Pencils.

Along the same lines are sentiments expressed by Won Hyo, an influential Buddhist thinker from Korea.

“As evening draws near, you regret that you did not practice early in the morning. The worldly pleasure which you enjoy now becomes suffering in the future. Why then are you attached to this pleasure? One moment of practice becomes lasting pleasure. Why then do you not practice?”
– Won Hyo

While he was likely speaking directly about practices like meditation, he probably recognized it can be applied to any activity in life from artistic practice to learning a new skill to exercising patience with children.

I don’t usually put a lot of stock in the worldwide inventory of words of wisdom, aphorisms, and pity sayings but this one has stuck with me for nearly 15 years. Perhaps it is because it only requires the investment of a moment.

Certainly I am going to invest more than a moment of effort in something that will provide future benefit. There is something in the psychology involved with only needing to give up a moment of current pleasure that isn’t present in Lao Tzu aphorism, “A journey of 1,000 li begins with the first step,” even though the underlying sentiment is the same.

Who likes to be faced with a 1,000 li journey? How about 360 miles? That is what 1,000 li measures out to be. Just shows how much perception factors into our decisions. That is actually the basis of Won Hyo’s enlightenment experience.

Supposedly he and a friend took shelter in an earthen structure during a rain storm one night. Once he was safe inside, he found a bowl full of refreshing water which he drained. It wasn’t until the next morning that they discovered they took shelter in a crypt and Won Hyo drank brackish water from a human skull. Nothing changed in the facts of the situation from night to day, but his perception of reality impacted his acceptance and enjoyment of the experience.

More to consider than I originally intended to lay on you my faithful readers, but there you are.

Best wishes for a happy, prosperous and thoughtful New Year.

Piped Music Vs Paying The Piper

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CityLab recently had an article that resurrected the subject of a debate I have been having internally and with others going on two decades now.

The article is about efforts people are making in England and the US to limit piped music in public places. The plethora of Christmas carols being played everywhere make it a timely subject.

The specific part of the article that reinvigorated questions for me was the following:

“My goal is no music in public places, unless it’s live music,” Hunter said. “Let’s keep music special. Music is not special when it’s part of the wallpaper.”

My issue is that often even live music in public places can end up part of the wallpaper because it doesn’t register on people’s awareness. But due to the prevalence of piped music, when it is live then there is a better chance for it to be noticed. More live music means people will become increasingly inured to its presence over time.

I don’t begrudge musicians an opportunity to make money in the least. My concern would be that if music in public places was banned unless it was live, there would be an increase in unpaid “opportunities for exposure.” Licensing piped music is cheaper than needing to pay licensing and someone to perform it.

Though I could see a scenario where more musicians do end up being paid even as the increase in live performances reduces the overall percentage of musicians being paid.

So what are your thoughts, dear reader? Will removing piped music make live music more special?

As you answer, consider that if you are involve with music performance, you may have a bias toward paying attention to any live music out of professional courtesy. At the same time you may be completely blind to the presence of visual works of art. Visual artists may orient on those works while being unaware if music is live or piped, if they consciously register its presence at all.

Something else to consider. If people saw more live music under the imprimatur of a mall, cafe, or other business, even if the performer wasn’t being properly compensated, would that repetition reinforce the value of live music in one’s life?

Or are all these questions moot as people increasingly plug headphones into their phones and select a soundtrack by which to experience the world?

Good Partners Start Planning For Christmas In August

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Community engagement is a common topic in the arts and culture industry. We talk about how important it is. We talk about successful programs that have been executed.

However, there is rarely a discussion about all the time, effort, trial and error involved in executing these programs well. By the time you hear about a program after the fact, you are left to assume that an organization is staffed with brilliant people who effortlessly bask in the adoring gazes of fulfilled participants.

That is why I was pleased to read Rebecca Noon’s account on that Americans for the Arts blog of Trinity Rep’s efforts to involve different community groups in their production of A Christmas Carol.

While it sounds like the participants directed a lot of adoring gazes Trinity Rep’s way, there was a lot of work involved in getting those participants in the room.

The directors of A Christmas Carol had the idea of involving non-profits they admired in the production. They viewed Scrooge as a man who cut himself off from the community and then decides to reconnect with it again. Involving area non-profits was a great way of reinforcing this concept.

Even though they only planned to have two rehearsals with each group, there was a lot of effort involved in making it happen. And not only on the part of the Trinity Rep staff. Part of their planning recognized that the staff and volunteers of non-profit organizations aren’t just sitting around waiting to be asked to participate in something.

While many people were thrilled to perform in such an iconic show, some people couldn’t afford the time it would take to organize. Even for the 18 groups who decided to participate, there was sacrifice that we, as the larger institution, needed to acknowledge and address, and so we got to work addressing them. We allocated small travel and food stipends from the Community Engagement budget; our development department offered trade they have with the parking garage; the education director stepped in as Assistant Director to help rehearse the community groups; we negotiated a limited number of comp tickets with the marketing department; and throughout the run, actors in the show self-organized to provide snacks for the community group’s dressing room. All summer and fall, we worked on this one aspect of A Christmas Carol as a team of artists and administrators, ensuring that our institution could live up to our community’s needs 100% of the time.

Perhaps most importantly, the staff established a context for extending the invitations and addressing expectations before asking the first group to participate:

Invitations would be simple, honest, and transparent, clearly defining what we needed and what we had to offer. Angela would listen closely to what the community groups needed, in order to understand why they were saying yes or no. If we could offer what they needed, then we would. If we couldn’t, we’d tell them why, and end the partnership as friends. No false promises, no agreements that felt like compromises on either side.

This seems to me to be a good set of general guidelines to employ for similar projects. There is a sense of reciprocity. Each group is seen as providing something of value to the other in this opportunity. There isn’t a sense that one group is doing another a favor by providing them with exposure and they would be foolish to turn it down. There is an effort being made to understand barriers and work around them, but no umbrage taken if it doesn’t work out.

If They Can Be A Successful Non-Profit, Why Can’t You?

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If you feel like you don’t have a clue how to run a successful non-profit and are just winging it, you probably know that you are in good company.

If you are wishing there was a book someone could give you for Christmas that explained the process to you, according to a recent piece on The Conversation, such a book doesn’t exist because no one really knows the answer.

The reason why it doesn’t exist is due to the way the successes of non-profits are studied. The author of the piece, Fredrik O. Andersson, basically blames human nature and biases for this.

When people want to know what works, they tend to focus on the successes which means they learn very little about what contributes to failures. This is known as selection bias, the most famous example being Abraham Wald’s counter intuitive suggestion to armor the parts of WWII bombers without bullet holes since presumably that is where the planes that did not return got hit.

Or as Andersson writes:

Imagine that researchers want to investigate and isolate the factors that make gamblers successful. If they study only the gamblers who win all the time, they would reach the obviously false conclusion that gambling is always profitable

Carter Gillies who frequently comments on the blog has often brought up selection bias as a problem in the mindset and approach to non-profit problems. Now here I am writing about it, validating the point he has long held. I hate it when he is right so often and identified these issues so far in advance.

Except, Carter would point out this is an example of selection bias and one of the other problems Andersson identifies- flawed memory. I am only focusing on those times Carter was right and only remembering those times because I have later come across someone else reinforcing his view.

Andersson notes that any research performed directly on non-profits only provides a snapshot view of what is making them successful (or not) at this moment of time and doesn’t really provide insight into the process leading to that success. The researchers are left to ask the non-profit board and staff  to relate what factors lead to their current state. The problem is, their memories of how things evolved is often very flawed.

This is a huge issue because everyone from founders to donors and other funders are likely to look at successful examples and determine that is the path to success that should be followed either by themselves or those they fund.

Andersson writes about working with non-profit entrepreneurs where he asked them a series of questions and then followed up 6-14 months later and asked them to recall their answers. (my emphasis)

I asked participants in the workshop about three things: why they wanted to start a new nonprofit, where they anticipated getting funding and how likely they believed it would be that they might actually launch a new organization.

[…]

Three out of 10 recalled having a different reason for wanting to start a new nonprofit than they asserted in the first survey. And both of those reasons, of course, could not be accurate.

Nearly half incorrectly recalled the source of funding they had anticipated. The expected chances of a successful launch also differed. The people who did launch a new nonprofit were somewhat more likely to say they had anticipated this success during their second interview. The people who failed to get a new nonprofit up and running were nearly 20 percent less likely to say they expected to succeed during their later interview.

[…]

Since stories are malleable, the best way to reduce the risk of hindsight bias is to observe startups from the very beginning and follow them over time.

Some people forget, others get the details mixed up and others ascribe a rationale they didn’t have in mind at the time when they’re asked about events that have already transpired.

While his sample size is admittedly small, I suspect that this general trend would be observable with larger numbers. I have written about this general issue before with artists mis-remembering the amount of work that went into their first success and attributing a big break to luck rather than effort.

Breaking Even But We’ll Be Broke If Something Breaks

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The National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) released the results of a study last week that, while not the most cheery news to release during the holiday season, is not terribly surprising.

Looking at the data of 4800 arts organizations, they found that it is becoming increasingly difficult for arts groups to meet expenses. They based these assertions on an evaluation of three data measures: unrestricted surplus before depreciation, operating surplus before depreciation and operating surplus after depreciation

Looking at unrestricted surplus (before depreciation), the average organization saw an unrestricted surplus of 2.1% of expenses in 2016. In the same year, overall operating bottom line (before depreciation) was 0.4% of expenses—virtually break-even. However, surpluses fell to a negative 4.2% when factoring in depreciation, meaning that the average organization is not reserving sufficient funds to repair and replace their fixed assets, which can lead to future challenges, particularly for organizations with high levels of fixed assets.

Somewhat surprising, smaller organization were doing better than larger ones when the three measures were applied.

  • Smaller-budget organizations, with lower fixed assets and less fixed costs, demonstrate the highest surpluses by all measures, continuing a four-year upward trend. Conversely, larger organizations tend to end the year with deficits, continuing a four-year negative trend.
  • Across all sectors, small organizations buck the overall sector trend—i.e. even in sectors where bottom lines trended downward, the smaller-budget organizations within the sector actually grew, sometimes by over 50%.

However, it should be noted that these three criteria aren’t necessarily the only ones that matter in organizational financial health. NCAR’s next step is to:

…take a look at working capital and access to available cash. It may turn out that organizations with high fixed costs and fixed assets also have sufficiently high levels of cash reserves to cover annual shortfalls and future asset repair and replacement. If not, organizations might consider how they can become more nimble if a break-even budget is a goal.

It is worth looking closely at the study data and methodology to get a better sense of what this all means.

For example, when deciding what budget size constituted a large, medium or small organization, they used different numbers for each artistic discipline. A $2 million budget makes a large theater or dance company, but a small art museum and a very medium sized opera or performing arts center.

Their notes on trends in the Opera sector say that one organization heavily skewed the results for the whole sector and that if left out, there would be a more positive trend. There are similar notes in other sections, especially breakdown by geography where nearly every metro region had an outlier skewing the data.

The other area of the report that was interesting was their Driving Forces section which left me asking “Why Is That…?”

Total Unrestricted Revenue Drivers

  • Having more arts education organizations, music organizations, and opera companies in a community tends to raise the unrestricted revenue tide for all organizations in these sectors in a market, while having more performing arts centers tends to lower the unrestricted revenue for all organizations in this sector.
  • As the level of individual philanthropy in the market increases, unrestricted revenue goes down.  The fact that there is more giving in a market does not necessarily mean that it is being directed to arts and cultural organizations.  Unrestricted revenue also tends to be lower in more densely populated communities and those where with proportionally more Asian Americans.

Operating Revenue Drivers

  • Operating revenue tends to be higher for organizations that target young adults or African Americans, and with higher levels of local and state funding.
  • More public broadcast activity in a market tends to drive down arts and cultural organizations’ operating revenue.

I am making a broad assumption that the observation about public broadcast activity is a result of competition for donated revenue. What I wondered was if there was a benefit to underwriting sponsorship on public broadcasting that helps offset that effect by providing additional earned revenue. Or is there no sense that one should support the activities of cultural organizations that support public broadcasting?

What I wondered about the observation regarding unrestricted revenue tending to be lower in densely populated areas was if this meant people in densely populated areas placed greater restrictions on the way funds were used or if they simply gave less. In the context of the sentence that precedes it, the answer would seem to be that people give less, but that doesn’t necessarily need to be the case.

It would be interesting to know if people in less densely populated areas placed fewer restrictions on their donations, perhaps implying a higher level of trust in the organization or a confidence in their ability to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization.

Your Resolution To Create Connections With Arts And Culture Starts Today! (or maybe tomorrow depending on when you read this)

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For over two years now I have been talking about Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative to build public will for arts and culture.

While readers have had an opportunity to review the materials on the website, few have been able to attend the Arts Midwest presentations and ask questions in person.

Well you are in luck! Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 19 @ noon CST Creating Connection program manager Anne Romens will be hosting a webinar to discuss the project and findings. You can register by following that link.

Anne also hosted a webinar on the subject last week. The video of that webinar is available if you don’t have the opportunity to participate on Tuesday. You’ll want to pay attention around the 33 minute mark for the shout out to some work I have been doing.

Even if you don’t think you will become the full throated advocate for the project that I am, at the very least you can come away from the webinar with some tips on how to change your messaging and promotional materials to be more audience and experience focused.

The webinar comes at the right time to allow you to resolve to do a better job in the New Year so check it out.

Pop Up Virtual Museum Tours

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You may be aware that Google offers the opportunity to take virtual tours of museums, world heritage sites and other landmarks. This past summer, Wang Yuhao, the CEO of Aha School, set out to provide 100,000 children in China an opportunity to tour 10 different museums around the world.

All Google owned sites are blocked in China so that option wasn’t available to him, but he also wanted to offer the type of experience that went beyond what the Google tours could offer by having their team members provide commentary. They ended up enlisting 150,000 participants by tapping into social media.

Many people were surprised by our business model. How could we offer our product for 19.9 yuan in a world where the average cost of attracting a new customer online exceeds 100 yuan? … We took advantage of WeChat’s built-in relationship networks to offer group deals for our broadcasts. In this way, we could turn one user into 10, 10 into 100, 100 into 1,000, and so on, with our longstanding customers demonstrating an incredible willingness to introduce the product to their friends on social media. By offering our service at such a low price, we were able to maximize sales volume.

Wang and his team’s process was light on planning on heavy on faith, some things didn’t work out for them but their method provided a degree of authenticity for participants.

“Our greatest challenge”, Wang told me, “was uncertainty. When we launched, we had confirmed nothing. No museums were confirmed, no anchors, we hadn’t decided which exhibits would be discussed, nor the script or how we would deliver”.

The project was very much a living one, an educational practice in itself, from idea to execution. While children were guided virtually through each museum, parents simultaneously wrote reams of commentary, which Aha School then used to improve the broadcast for the following day. “My daughter is transfixed and we adults can enjoy it too!” wrote one parent, “We’d like to see more of the museum itself and the beautiful architecture”.

[…]

“Our task was to piece together these fragments of information and to allow children to digest them”, said Wang. “The key to our broadcasts was to enthuse children, to make them interested.”

They did so, not by filming after hours in search of the perfect silent shot, but by filming from bustling museums where ordinary people walked through the screen, sometimes even blocking exhibits, giving viewers a sense that they too are there. In one case, the Guggenheim in New York showed such great support that they offered to film after closure and arranged a curator to explain the artworks through a translator.

The practice of revising as you go pretty much embodies the concept of failing fast and revising. While it does increase the possibility people will find the initial product to be of such low quality that they won’t continue with the program, there is an element of nimbleness that allows you to avoid the cost of the planning phase and offer the product inexpensively.

If they had a large number of people who shared the sentiment of the one commenter who noted they enjoyed the experience and were pleased their daughter was transfixed, they probably retained enough people to support the next iteration which is supposed to happen in February.

Read up a little about what they did, maybe your conscious or subconscious mind will absorb it and spit out some inspiration. There are some real short videos about the project available

Scratching An Itch

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There is a story I first saw in Non-Profit Quarterly that has been bothering me for a couple weeks. San Diego based arts organization ARTS (A Reason To Survive) is apparently in danger of closing after it’s founder left and replacement subsequently quit after four months.

While this is unfortunate and regrettably not as uncommon a story as we would like, that isn’t what bothered me. What has been something of a low level irritation since I first read the article was a quote from the founder, Matt D’Arrigo, in the original article about the financial difficulties.

“It’s the classic tale of a founder transition,” said D’Arrigo, who’s back at ARTS as a part-time consultant until the nonprofit is on stabler ground.

While he would certainly be in a position to know best since he is there on the ground and there may be elements to the story that remain unreported, what made me think this wasn’t the real problem was something the woman who replaced him said.

…Remmell said that even after she got a sizable grant to turn the organization around, she recommended the “indefinite suspension of all operations and an organized closure” because of a lack of immediate general operating funds. In an interview, she said that the grant and other money the organization had in the bank was earmarked for specific programs and infrastructure and couldn’t be used on other costs to keep ARTS going.

D’Arrigo acknowledged that Remmell walked into a difficult situation.

“We never had a huge financial cushion,” D’Arrigo said. “Part of my burnout was that I was constantly on a hamster wheel of raising money. My job was constantly keeping it together … that’s one of the reasons I left. And it wasn’t as strong as was needed in order to successfully do a founder transition.”

When I read that, I immediately thought that the real problem was that so much of their funding had restrictions associated with it and there wasn’t much flexibility to use the money for general operations. Despite all the success the organization had realized, including an Oscar winning documentary about one of the homeless teens they helped, they couldn’t find anyone willing to provide unrestricted funding.

Once my initial indignation about the non-profit funding environment passed, I recognized that the problem might also be rooted in a failure to diversify their funding sources. Looking at their most recent 990, their earned revenue was about 18% of their budget with the rest in grants and donations. If the founder was feeling burnt out by the constant need to fund raise, he may not have had the opportunity to identify sources that would provide unrestricted funding or develop programs that could generate additional earned revenue.

In any case, I don’t think this is a case of founder transition at all since it doesn’t appear any of the challenges facing the organization emerged after his departure. There are probably lessons in here about not letting your ambition outstrip your capacity to generate revenue.

The fact the organization wasn’t moderating their ambition might be cause to closely monitor how funds were being deployed. However, the idea that their funders and donors didn’t might not have trusted them enough, despite their successes to loosen restrictions on how money was used, sticks in my craw.

Before Sesame Street: Kermit the Coffee Thug

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Recently Artsy had an article in which they noted that, “…TIME Magazine described (Georgia) O’Keeffe in 1940 as the “least commercial artist in the U.S.”  The article, which was about Dole providing Georgia O’Keeffe with an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii to paint an image to help them sell pineapples, went on to mention that,

…in reality the American painter had long dabbled in corporate commissions. One of her earliest jobs was as a commercial artist in Chicago, where she drew embroidery and lace designs for fashion advertisements. Later, after she’d achieved some measure of fame, she would contribute to the interior murals at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and paint four jimsonweeds in bloom for a Manhattan beauty salon.

I looked up the TIME magazine article which is actually about the Dole commission and the first words indeed are “Least commercial artist in the U. S…” (it doesn’t start with “The.” Least is capitalized.)  Finding that article reinforced my first instinct upon reading the phrase in Artsy–why was it so important to frame the information in terms of her not being a commercial artist? Does the idea that not being commercial equals purity go back to the 1940s?

I subsequently wondered when the idea that you were selling out if you did commercial work started. I guess I always thought of it emerging a little later in the 50s and 60s.

In any case, that reminded me of a piece on the Ozy site in April 2016 which pointed out a lot of artists worked commercially before achieving the fame for which they are known. In fact, the piece is introduced with, “Why You Should Care: Because sometimes artists have to be willing to sell out before they can sell themselves.”

The article lists a number of creatives whose later work ran contrary to the tone and content of the commercial work in which they got their start.

…Eric Carle, author of the children’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, was a graphic designer for The New York Times and an art director for an advertising agency, illustrating lobsters and insects for allergy-tab advertisements. Shel Silverstein worked for years as a cartoonist for Playboy while also deploying his skills toward more PG-themed fare as an author of such children’s classics as The Giving Tree.

Even the indomitable Dr. Seuss, who wrote such anticonsumerist works as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Lorax,…capacious imagination had largely fueled advertising campaigns for his largest client, Standard Oil Company.

While some would say Jim Henson’s most important work was the creation of a PBS television show that taught children many life lessons about tolerance, empathy and cooperation, the earliest iterations of his Muppets employed extreme amounts of violence in the service of selling coffee. There is less involved in the sale of other products.

While the character isn’t Kermit the Frog, hearing the voice of a childhood friend make a blase commentary after inflicting injury is a little disconcerting.

According to the Ozy article,  commercial work informed the later work of some of the creatives.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of bestsellers like Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle, was hired in 1947 at the age of 24 to join… global energy giant General Electric…Vonnegut interviewed numerous GE scientists about their research, and some of what he learned about — such as attempts to control the weather — would form the basis for several key creations of his own, such as the Ice-9 featured in Cat’s Cradle.

“The capitalist market economy,” Cowen argues, “is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of coexisting artistic visions … [and] helping consumers and artists refine their tastes.”

I think it reveals an additional degree of inconsistency in the general thinking about selling out. People don’t seem to mind if a creative makes money in the commercial realm before they get to know their work. But if a creative person or group gains some notoriety and then embraces opportunities for commercial work, they have sold out.

It can’t be money that is the factor. Some of these people made much more money after having left commercial work behind them.

My theory is the crucial issue is a sense of  ownership of creative identity by fans and admirers. It is okay if you as a creative make millions of dollars pursuing the role that made me your fan. Who cares about your previous commercial career? I didn’t know you then.

However, if you start to expand your reach beyond the scope I have assigned to you, then you are a sell out. But perhaps more accurately, you have sold me out and betrayed the relationship I have manufactured for us.

Obviously, this is no great revelation. For nearly a century now performers especially have needed to maintain a public persona which left open a minuscule hope that any fan might be able to enter a relationship with them.

As has often been observed, the whole dynamic has served to reinforce the concept that poverty equals purity.  It is useful to tell stories about creatives that had day jobs before their creative pursuits became their day job in order to combat this impression.

Having a day job no more guarantees success in creative pursuits than eschewing a day job out of a sense of hewing to purity.  It is also not necessarily an impediment.

Both narratives need to be held as equally valid because a lot of time, as noted in the Ozy anecdote about Dr. Seuss, it is happenstance more than anything else that changes the course of a career.  Did Seuss’ commercial practice make him better prepared to exploit that opportunity than had he been solely working for himself or would his self-discipline left him equally prepared in all eventualities?

Increased Funding Options For Artists Nationwide Via Springboard For The Arts

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If you hadn’t seen the press release floating around social media, Springboard for the Arts announced that they partnered with the microlending platform Kiva to provide artists a loan of up to $25,000 for 36 months at 0% interest.

Springboard executive director Laura Zabel probably laid out the best rationale for pursuing a loan versus a grant:

“Grants are great, but when you apply for a grant or fellowship, you’re putting that timeline and power and agency in someone else’s hands, to decide if you get that money,” says Laura Zabel, Springboard’s executive director. “At Springboard, we like platforms or mechanisms that put the power back in the hands of the artist. It’s a much more active way that you can pursue building your business.”

Since many of you may know that many of Springboard’s activities are focused in Minnesota, I should emphasize that this program is available to any artist anywhere in the U.S.

It probably also should be noted that this is only one of a few microloan programs for artists and it appears to be the only one that isn’t limited by geography or discipline. If nothing else, Springboard is breaking new ground by offering alternative funding options to artists.

According to the FAQ about the program, as a Kiva Trustee, Springboard for the Arts endorsement means they can “provide matching funds to help artists reach their fundraising goals on Kiva’s platform and a wide network of business support to help artists build and expand their businesses.”

The way Kiva funding is generally set up, the artist needs to come up with 20% of the funding and the Kiva community covers the other 80%, thereby putting less of a burden on an artist’s family and friends. It appears that Springboard will match what an artist raises with a loan as well, providing access to a larger pool of money.

Springboard has a whole curriculum of business skills for artists, consultations and other resources to help support those looking to develop and execute a business plan, regardless of whether they are participating in the loan program.

Since you have to attach a business and a repayment plan to the Kiva loan application, those education and planning materials may be a good place to start for people.

Hey You Damn Kids, Come On To My Yard!

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About three years ago, I heard about the PorchRokr Festival in Akron’s Highland Square neighborhood.  I had since learned that there was a whole series of Porchfests that have sprung up since the 2007 inaugural effort in Ithaca, NY.

Just before Thanksgiving CityLab had an article that mentioned the revived interest in porches as an architectural feature, citing the Porchfests in the process.

To younger urbanites, he says, porches look like stages. In the Instagram age, the front steps have become places to see and be seen, throw a rocking concert or party, and to foster metropolitan community in a walk-by, stop-in-for-wine sense. “Not by design but by accident—by having strangers descend on their yard, having a musician play, sharing a beer, and meeting some new folks—I gave all these people a tool to look at what porches mean in a new way,” Doyon says.

In 2016 as part of the lead up to the PorchRockr festival, the organizers were holding sessions to teach people how to replicate the festival in other communities. They also held 4 workshops on consecutive weeks to teach participating music groups how to get organized for the festival, deal with stage fright and engage in banter with the audience.

At one time porches and front stoops were central to communal life for families and neighborhoods and show hints of reclaiming that role again.  According to CityLab, one woman in the Buffalo, NY/Toronto, ON area sponsors a whole series of events.

In the warmer months, on her own front steps, she also hosts a “Stories From the Porch” series of speakers on art, history, and culture. Her events have attracted participants as young as 11, who—like her twentysomething kids—love hanging out on the porches. Glica takes pleasure in redefining her community’s relationship to an American architectural feature once dismissed as old-fashioned. “It’s subtle,” she says. “In 10 years we’re going to go, ‘When did that happen?’ But it’s definitely happening.”

While these types of activities can certainly manifest as outgrowths of an organization’s current activities, as someone who believes every bit of creative activity helps to cultivate the cultural ecology of communities, I offer these ideas up to readers as things they could do as individuals as well.

Has Cost Suddenly Become Less A Barrier To Participation?

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Back in October I wrote a couple posts about the newest iteration of the Culture Track report.  The operative word there is iteration. The study is conducted every three years in an attempt to track the shifting trends in perception and participation in cultural activities by the general population.

In my excitement to talk about the findings, I didn’t really take the time to examine the “shift” element that is intended to make this data so valuable. While preparing to do a presentation on the current findings, it occurred to me to take a look at the past finding as a point of comparison so I downloaded the 2014 data.

Even in a superficial scan of the 2014 materials, this next graph jumped out at me.

The legibility is a little tough at full size so I cropped it down to the top 10 responses about barriers to participation. The blue bar is the 2011 responses and the mauve is the 2014 responses.  A mauve only bar indicates they only started asking the question in 2014.

Now look at a representative sample of the top responses for the 2017 survey. One caveat – as best I can tell, the 2011 and 2014 didn’t break out these results by discipline as they did in 2017. Nor did they break it out by barriers for attendees and barriers for non-attendees. That may skew the results in some manner.

In the 2017 responses, regardless of discipline, among those that participate. The number one barrier was “inconvenience.” For the majority, number two and three were “didn’t think of it” and “rather spend time in other ways,” respectively

Among those that didn’t participate, every number one barrier, again regardless of discipline, was “Its not for someone like me.” For the majority, number two and three were “inconvenient” and “didn’t think of it.”

For nearly every discipline, with both participants and non-participants, “It’s Value Is Not Worth the Cost” is number five. (Except for zoo participants where it is fourth and dance participants where it is sixth.)

This significant change in placement really left me wondering what happened in the last three years.

Is cost no longer as big as factor? Does separating out the responses by discipline and participation level provide a truer picture of what presents a barrier to people? Did the researchers ask the questions in a different way that lead to different responses?

This last issue might have been an influence. In 2011 and 2014 they asked if the economy had impacted respondents’ cultural participation and how that manifested. These questions, which seem to have been absent from the 2017 survey, may have primed people to think about costs and their ability to pay.

There was also a question on 2011 and 2014 asking how cultural organizations could make it easier to participate. Lower cost of admission was number one. This question also doesn’t seem to have been included in 2017.

The lack of questions in 2017 suggesting economic factors were a problem and part of a solution may have diminished frequency with which people agreed or strongly agreed that cost was a factor as a barrier. From the information I have been able to find about how each survey was created and conducted, I can’t say if any of these things could have been an influence.

Cost isn’t the only category that make a significant shift. Look at where “I’d rather spend my leisure time in other ways” falls. In 2017 it is usually third or fourth but it was ninth in 2014. I can’t think anything so compelling that has emerged in the last 3 years that has caused people to shift it up in their priorities.

I would like to think that we can attribute these differences to the fact that the researchers are getting a lot better about the way they ask these questions and parse the data.

Even Wagner Can’t Shush The Italians

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When discussion turns to how audiences were once pretty raucous but are now expected to sit quietly, you get the impression that those times are long past. Those who are plugged into the opera world are probably aware, however, that at least a certain segment of the audience at La Scala is still pretty vocal. According to a piece on History Today, in 2013 the opening performance of La Traviata was accompanied by catcalls and hissing.

…having interrupted the performance several times with noisy catcalls, they rounded off the evening by booing loudly during the curtain call. The cast were devastated. The Polish tenor, Piotr Beczala – who had sung the part of Alfredo Germont – was so appalled that he refused to perform at Milan’s most celebrated cultural landmark ever again.

It wasn’t the first time that the loggionisti had made their feelings heard. In 2006, the Franco-Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna stormed off stage midway through a performance of Verdi’s Aida in protest at the furious cries that were hurled at him. Even the great Luciano Pavarotti was not spared the loggionisti’s wrath. In 1992, he was booed while playing the title role in Verdi’s Don Carlo.

Shortly before taking the Artistic Director post in 2014, Alexander Pereira, declared his determination to stamp the practice out.

The loggionisti, however, disagreed. Believing that the audience have every right to take sub-standard singers to task, they have continued to raise merry hell.

While we may want to cite numerous interruptions by cellphones, talking, consuming food, etc that occurs these days as a similar manifestation, note that the loggionisti are, at least theoretically, invested in paying attention to the performance and are relatively knowledgeable.

Though when you are talking about interruptions, that is perhaps a distinction without a difference. I wrote about similar situations before when audiences in the US were so invested in performances, they might complain during a show when an actor’s interpretation of Shakespeare didn’t align with their own.

Reading the History Today piece, you might start to think history repeats itself with its discussion of designing pieces to suit short attention spans.

Realising that no audience would listen to an entire work, composers started to produce pieces that took account of their inattention. These often included an aria di sorbetto (‘sherbet aria’), an incidental passage that allowed the audience to buy food or drink without fear of missing anything important.

Like most articles on this topic, it credits Richard Wagner’s influence and demanding plot structure as the reason audiences started to sit silently and pay attention.  The fact Wagner’s name inevitable comes up as the reason for this change makes me wonder at the veracity of this claim. Could he really have been that influential or is everyone who writes about this reading from the same source (or quoting sources that all quote that original source)?

The History Today article does say that societal changes were of greater importance in the effort to bring peace to opera houses. It suggests that with the wider variety of entertainment options available in the informal atmosphere of music halls, opera houses got quieter, leaving those that appreciated opera a growing appreciation of the silence.

What implications might this have for the current cultural environment? There are pretty strong indications that people appreciate the convenience, informality and variety of entertainment available to them at home via streaming services/video games/general Internet.

I might have come to the conclusion that cultural organizations should therefore offer a wider variety of programming in an informal environment. However, the Seattle Symphony findings I wrote about on Monday make me reconsider that.  Their newer audiences gravitated toward the informal, short programming certainly, but it was also the most narrowly programmed season.

Granted, they are a single organization practicing a single cultural discipline which ultimately constitutes a pretty minuscule sample. But reading about it makes me pause before making any blanket statements. The only thing that is easy to say is this is a complex situation requiring careful thought.

There has been this assumption that newer works that connect with the tastes and values of younger audiences need to be presented rather than returning perennially to the old warhorses. But as I wrote in an email to Drew McManus, it turns out, for the Seattle Symphony at least, that the audience open to the most eclectic mix of programming is the one that is dying out.

As I say, this may only be true for a single organization and/or classical music. It made me a little embarrassed to think that an apology might be owed to a devoted audience that has been characterized as stodgy and tradition bound when it turns out they might be the radicals.

Getting back to the History Today article. As much as I don’t want a return to the chaotic environment described in articles like this, I continue to return to the subject to remind myself (and you) that we need to keep thinking about the environment we are providing. When I wrote about the Culture Track study last month, I used a lot of slides related to motivators to visit museums and galleries but the slides for live performance events are similar.

The top motivator across most genres was Having Fun, second was Interest in Content, followed by things like feeling inspired, new experiences and social opportunities with friends. People aren’t looking to scream across the room at their friends and wreck the place. There is a strong interest in the content and its value as well.

“This Is Not The Art I Am Looking For” — What To Say About Creative Work If You Aren’t A Jedi

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There was a pretty interesting article and ensuing discussion on a Harvard Business Review article about providing and receiving feedback on creative projects.

As much as I have written about arts and culture related topics, I don’t think I have really addressed how to provide constructive feedback in a creative environment before. If nothing more, the article provides some things to reflect upon in regard to one’s own practices.

Author Spenser Harrison discusses the results of a study he and a collaborator conducted which found that feedback was most effective when it was solicited out of curiosity and when it was given by people who recognized their feedback was subjective.

Asking for feedback out of curiosity. … Sometimes requests for feedback are overly narrow…There are often underlying reasons for asking a specific question like this, including limiting a coworker from attacking your work or showcasing something you’re proud of (in which case you really don’t want feedback — you want admiration).

This approach, however, limits the potential of creative work, because it doesn’t allow for the possibility of novelty. Changing one color, for example, may not push the boundaries to create something that peers and potential customers haven’t seen before.

Our research showed that highly curious individuals asked extremely open questions like “What do you think?” or “Where could I go next with this?” These designers received significantly more feedback than those asking narrow questions, and their final designs received higher scores…In this way, creative work is like dancing: Questions born out of curiosity signal that the creative worker is looking for a dance partner.

Provide feedback based on subjectivity.

[…]

When providing feedback to creative workers, signal that your opinion is exactly that: an opinion. This seems deceptively easy. Doing it requires providing feedback that includes first-person pronouns: I, me, and my. “I see…” or “What strikes me is that…” or “My opinion is…” Many managers find this difficult, because they have been trained to solve concrete problems, not to consider what something really means. Providing feedback on creative work means setting aside the managerial impulse to plan and retain control. Doing so allows managers to understand that their opinions provide potential trajectories a creative worker might try — not the “right” road to take.

I have had people use that tactic of limiting the scope for feedback before but hadn’t recognized the motivation behind it. (I suspect I have used it a couple times myself.)   As much as managers would love to be able to exercise Jedi mind powers and get everyone to agree this is not the art they were looking for, other approaches are necessary.

What I really helped expand the concepts presented in the article were some of the observations made in the comments. The one I appreciated most was made by Gabby Rosi who probably spoke for a situation a lot of people find themselves in when asked to evaluate work created for their use.

…My typical dialogue goes like this: “this is a good start… I like how you did XXX… what do you think about this…” when I really want to say is “this is way off the mark.” Occasionally, I end up not including this person in a project because it is uncomfortable for me. Yes, not the best approach that I want to change.

In his response, author Spenser Harrison offered the following:

First, Kim Elsbach (UC Davis) has done really fun research on Hollywood pitch meetings…If we deem the person as not creative then we often feel a pull to provide remedial feedback like your “this is way off the mark” comment or we try to train them on what to do.

In some of my earlier work with modern dancers and R&D designers, we saw that feedback, especially in early phases, was most helpful as a question. That is, before we can criticize the idea, we need to understand the pool of ideas that the idea came from and the exploratory process that led to that pool. Often when creators feel they have a feedback provider up to speed with their creative process they’ll explicitly ask, “what should I do next?” That’s the golden opening for providing some gentle advice.

When You Realize Your Hip “Wear Jeans” Series Audience Is Actually More Conservative Than The Masterworks Audience

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Earlier this year, I wrote about studies funded by the Wallace Foundation that helped Ballet Austin gain some insight about their audiences. Recently I discovered the Wallace Foundation had supported a similar study by the Seattle Symphony.

The piece is a short read, but if you don’t even have time for that, watch the accompanying video. There are some interesting contrasts between what the symphony assumed and the reality.

The study focused on three programs the symphony felt would connect with younger and newer audiences: Untuxed, an informal series where the musicians perform sans-tux (and black dress). Start time is earlier and program duration is no longer than 75 minutes.

Sonic Evolution – a series that draws on the influences and music of Seattle area pop music bands and incorporates video.

The third series is Untitled, a late night (10 pm start) chamber series set in the lobby with alternative seating and special mood lighting featuring “challenging 20th and 21st century compositions.”

What they found was that only the Untuxed series had a significant draw for new audiences. They were also interested to learn that the audience for the edgy Untitled series skewed older than they had anticipated.

Somewhat to the administration’s initial disappointment, the Untuxed audience seemed to prefer the “greatest hits” of classical music, making the tastes of the Masterworks audience look progressive by comparison.

They appreciated works like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Copland’s Symphony No. 3 and Bernstein’s Candide Overture—nothing more adventurous. “Untuxed is actually the most conservative audience that we have,” said Wade; they wanted music that they “know and love.”

…said one audience member. “I love the fact that it is ‘the best of’.” Another, who found the music “relaxing,” agreed and voiced appreciation for Untuxed’s other key draw—its early start and short span. “I am going to be able to make it home for my kids’ bedtime, and that means a lot to me,” she said.

They had also hoped that Untuxed would be an on-ramp to transition audiences to their core Masterworks series. Unfortunately, few have made that transition. In fact, most people who attended Untuxed had attended a Masterworks concert first. The good news, however, was that the cheaper Untuxed series didn’t cannibalize the Masterworks audience as was first feared.

…Untuxed, like Sonic Evolution and Untitled, is a separate program—or brand extension—neither more nor less. But all three are valuable, even without affecting attendance at the core Masterworks concerts, because they draw new audiences to Benaroya Hall. They are providing, as Wade says, “another lens on the orchestra,” taking SSO deeper into the community.

Among the other steps Seattle Symphony Orchestra is taking to grow their audiences is directly approaching businesses, hotels, condominiums and apartment complexes in the downtown area with ticket offers for employees and residents. That effort brought in $177,000 in sales to new or lapsed audiences.

They are really focusing on customer service training at every level and making a special effort to welcome new attendees.

SSO has also created a “Surprise and Delight” program for new subscribers. In it, staff members greet them by name when they arrive at Benaroya Hall and tell them SSO is glad they’ve come. “What we found,” said Wade, “is that, in fact, the people that we greet renew at a significantly higher rate than people that we don’t greet.” In the 2016-17 season, that tally was 41 percent versus 29 percent.

At each concert, about 35 new members also hear a buzz when their ticket is scanned, and are told to go to the information desk. “They are looking curious,” Kunkel said—and about five to seven of the 35 never go to the desk, he added. Those who do, however, are thanked and given free drink tickets. “Their concern falls away,” said Kunkel, who works the desk, “and they get a big smile on their faces.”

Thanks For The All Creativity

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I am going use the assumption that everyone is focused on traveling for Thanksgiving and not on reading blog posts as a license to be admittedly a little lazy here and not dwell heavily on arts and cultural administration related topics today.

Over on ArtsHacker, we posted about what we were thankful for as arts administrators.  If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you won’t be surprised to read I appreciate the efforts people and organizations are making in advocating for the cultivation of an individual’s capacity for creativity.

More importantly, they are getting out there and providing people with hands on opportunities to help them recognize that capacity.

Hope everyone has a great time with family and friends this holiday season and travel safely.

It was with some sympathy that I read today that traffic will be awful in cities that are usually great to commute in whereas places with awful traffic jams will hardly notice it has gotten worse. Be safe out there.

In a list of the 25 U.S. metros that draw the most Thanksgiving travelers, Cleveland, Ohio, turns out to have the highest spike in pre-holiday traffic—probably because on a normal day it’s generally one of the world’s less stressful cities in which to drive.

Turkey-destined slogs through towns more generally besieged by traffic—Seattle, Dallas, and San Francisco, for example—will be still be arduous, yes, but not as shockingly so. Small comfort, I know.

Placemaking As Imagined By The People Who Live There

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The Shelterforce website had an interesting article about some data collection techniques being used for Creative Placemaking efforts. Author Keli Tianga’s description of a crowdmapping process was the approach that most intrigued me.

In crowdmapping, participants get out on foot and survey a neighborhood for its existing creative and cultural assets. “Every small group gets a small section of [a neighborhood’s] overall map to work from—this is so they can focus their efforts and share ideas with one another,” said Leo Vazquez, executive director of the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.

Teams are given color-coded stickers, and mark places on the map they’ve identified for their potential. Large, blank walls on the sides of buildings can become canvasses for murals; empty, fenced-in land owned by private business can become a site for temporary large-scale sculpture installations; community gardens can also become venues for outdoor music performances, and small parks can become designated spots for contemplation or solo art-making.

In the process, I made special note of being outside and observing how a community moves and interacts with one another and with space—where people are gathered, which streets have the most pedestrians, which playground is the most popular are all things to remember when at the point of trying to reach people “where they are.”

Crowdmapping’s virtue is its practicality and democracy—it requires no prior training, and everyone’s viewpoint is useful…

What appealed to me most was that is such great participatory activity that can go a long way toward solving the problem of involving people who are most impacted by decisions but may not show up to formal meetings. People who don’t feel like they are represented or have their voices heard can gain a measure of confidence that their contributions matter when they are made responsible for imagining/suggesting what a neighborhood might become.

The article discusses how places like Baltimore are using these type of maps, overlaid with other data about social and economic indicators to make decisions about how to deploy resources.

Keli Tianga also writes about some really intensive one on one discussions that were conducted in Cincinnati as part of a process called “design thinking.”

Following a link to a story about the design thinking process on the ArtsPlace America site provided some usefl insight about why people are reluctant to participate in community meetings soliciting feedback about development plans.

…we discovered barriers that hadn’t been considered before. Many of the events weren’t physically accessible to Walnut Hills’ older residents. Other residents said they didn’t feel safe leaving their homes, or were afraid that by vocalizing their concerns they’d be labeled as “snitches.” Finally, some admitted that they thought attending these meetings would only encourage and accelerate the gentrification of their neighborhood.

[…]

High Fives was ultimately seen as a huge success for both the RF and Design Impact. Residents who hadn’t previously participated in listening sessions or community council meetings stepped up to plan what High Fives looked like, when it would happen and how to get other residents involved. Those who felt less comfortable leading tasks still contributed by spreading the word or distributing signs, a reminder that “resident leadership” can look different depending on the person.

If Your 990 Were Being Interviewed, What Would It Say?

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If you are gearing up for Giving Tuesday and getting all sorts of great promotional materials out in circulation, you may want to consider what potential donors might see when they start to investigate your organization to see if you are worthy.

I had a post that appeared on ArtsHacker today based on a helpful Non-Profit Quarterly article that charts out what sort of information is communicated in each section of your 990 filing.  Obviously, there is nothing you can do between now and Giving Tuesday to change the impression people infer from your 990 filing. Presumably your solicitation strategy extends beyond the next couple weeks meaning there is still an opportunity to affect the information people receive in the future.

The ArtsHacker post that appeared today also drew on some other pieces I wrote. One about the potential for lawsuits by beneficiaries, marginalized board members, donors who use the increasingly easy access to 990 filings as the basis for a claim.  Another dealt with the IRS’ increased scrutiny on good governance and whether an 990 indicated appropriate policies were in place.

As I also point out the 990 doesn’t need to be a major source of worry. The form provides a section for supplementary materials.

“… where you can attach additional information you think is pertinent. This may be a discussion of changes in operational and philosophical direction that resulted in an atypical shift in your finances. This is also an opportunity to mention any points of pride or information of interest to make a case for your worthiness to those who may be perusing your 990 filing to learn more about your organization.

 

 

Someone Loses When Everybody Wins

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I would swear sometimes that Seth Godin is spying on me and then writing blog posts based on what I am thinking at the time. Or maybe he is just good at writing stuff that you can easily project your own experiences upon.

In any case, today he wrote about how you can make people feel like outsiders even if that is not your intention.

You can’t have insiders unless you have outsiders.

And you can’t have winners unless you have losers.

That doesn’t mean that you’re required to create insiders and winners. All it means is that when people begin to measure themselves only in comparison to others (“How did I rank?”) then you need to accept the impact of those choices.

It’s entirely possible to be happy and engaged and productive without creating this dynamic. But in a culture based on scarcity, it’s often easier to award or deduct points and to keep a scoreboard instead.

Just yesterday I cited Nina Simon’s Palo Alto TED Talk where she talks about this very idea. In her talks and book, The Art of Relevance, she mentions that even if you are providing more opportunities for a wider range of people and not reducing service or access to the demographics you have long served, there will be people who will view themselves as having lost out in the process.

I have written about two of Nina’s talks on the subject before so I won’t expound too much on the subject except to reiterate Godin’s point that you need to understand people may evaluate their situation in these terms.

Godin’s last sentence is particularly applicable to arts organizations who definitely operate in a culture of scarcity and are apt to adopt score keeping.   The state arts council or large foundation may be pleased that they have been able to increase funding in your community by 25% over last year. Instead of viewing this as a testament to the burgeoning creative vitality in the community, it can be easy to focus on the fact that another organization got more than you even though your own funding didn’t decrease, or decide you would have gotten more funding if not for the 5 new organizations that emerged in the last two years.

From this perspective, you might begin to empathize with the long time insider who insists they have lost out even as you believe everyone in the community should be excited that your hard work and sincerity opened new doors for a wider range of people without closing off existing opportunities.

What Is Curation These Days?

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I was perusing the Arts and Letters Daily site and saw a link to a Weekly Standard article discussing how the idea of curation has evolved from PT Barnum’s American Museum to a professionalization of the process to the current state where:

…“curating” has emerged in recent years as a ubiquitous cultural tag for fashion, groceries, Instagram posts, Pinterest accounts, and much else. Grammy winner Usher “curated” a July 4 fireworks and light show for Macy’s. On its website, a strip club in New York promised a few years ago to “curate a night of Curious burlesque.” Self-help gurus suggest that by self-curating—decluttering your life—you can find inner peace.

The mention of social media posts as forum to present a collection of things, ideas, images, etc that one has personally curated reminded me of a post I made last month about the search for authentic experiences.

In that post, I cited a CityLab piece that suggested that in aggregate, the unique experiences presented on social media sites blended in a bland sameness.

Consumers craving “authentic” experiences tend to build their digital personas by recycling the same kinds of content that populate their own feeds. Especially on Instagram, photos of under-the-radar coffee shops, building interiors, and artful design objects begin to look utterly banal as they aggregate by the thousand. The real world, without any impetus other than the encouragement of the market, has conformed to these aesthetic standards in response.

I started to wonder if arts organizations might have a role to play in helping people stand out by bringing the focus more sharply on them as an individual again. Nina Simon has talked about setting up pop up museums in bars where people can display artifacts of their failed relationships. Providing this sort of opportunity allows people to curate as a fish in a much smaller pond and lends some of the prestige and imprimatur of an arts organization to the individual.

Even if every other arts organization replicates the same program, the fact the experience is only occurring at a single physical location avoids the problem of being able to see 100 variations on an idea in 15 minutes that exists with social media curation.  Sure the curator receives fewer “likes” but hopefully the face to face validation ultimately feels more valuable.

Now my suggestion that an arts organization would be lending their prestige to amateurs might raise the hackles of some who fear the diminution of their reputation. Others would counter that arts organizations need to recognize reality and not seek to preserve their reputation at the cost of a diminishing audience.

Both views have merit. The degree to which an arts or cultural organization invests themselves in providing these opportunities and promoting what people have curated should be well considered.

Being associated with something silly or low quality may be embarrassing, but there is an opportunity to recover. The Weekly Standard makes reference to the Confederate statuary which is being torn down around the country. It is often mentioned that many of those statues were erected years after the Civil War ended and were funded by various interest groups which strikes me essentially as a form of curation by the public. Towns and cities permitted the placement of those statues and now find themselves involved in some controversy.

Lest you interpret this as a cautionary tale against being too permissive or emphatically supportive in any future programs that allow community participation, it is just as much a warning about hewing closely to any longstanding, potentially unsavory associations your organization has had that may come to light. Being viewed as increasingly open and welcoming to involvement by the breadth of the community might mitigate any negative historic associations.

Math, Science, Theater All Win Today

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This video tweeted by Massachusetts Math teacher Kim Spek made me very happy today. h/t to Sarah Carleton

Perfect statement illustrating the intersection of science, math, theater and wonder. Nothing more I can say except follow the link and check out the slo-mo version on her Twitter feed to better see how the transformation works.

Forging Your Our Purpose(s)

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There was a piece in Harvard Business Review that made me realize we need to place “finding one’s purpose in life” in the same category as concepts about finding true love and instant success being experienced by special geniuses. It makes for great movie plots, but the reality is that all these things are nearly always the result of unacknowledged hard work and dedication.

The title of John Coleman’s piece, “You Don’t Find Your Purpose — You Build It” sums it up as all good titles do.

It isn’t just movies, but inspirational books/speakers and societal expectations like declaring your college major at 18 years old which reinforce this idea that we need to have a purpose to drive us through life.

In the article, Coleman expounds on the following misconceptions we have about life’s purpose.

Misconception #1: Purpose is only a thing you find.
Misconception #2: Purpose is a single thing.
Misconception #3: Purpose is stable over time.

The article is short so I will let you read the details on each if you would like to know more.

One brief passage relates back to what I have been writing about recently in regard to the idea that creativity is a personal choice and shaped by society:

In achieving professional purpose, most of us have to focus as much on making our work meaningful as in taking meaning from it. Put differently, purpose is a thing you build, not a thing you find. Almost any work can possess remarkable purpose.

Just as the individual decides whether something is a creative exercise and societal pressure often shapes that, so too can an individual determine whether what they are doing has purpose and societal pressure likewise can shape that.

I probably don’t have to point out that while these are similar dynamics, they aren’t necessarily closely related. There are plenty of creative pursuits that individuals and society don’t find to be worthwhile and plenty of things deemed to be worthy purposes that are not considered to be particularly creative.

Nobody Wants To Play Find The Non-Profit

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I have mentioned before that people don’t normally perceive a difference between non-profit and for-profit cultural organizations. Colleen Dilenschneider has a good summary of the research showing this.

What makes people care about the difference between for-profits and non-profits is the positive social impact that the organization is achieving.

Dilenschneider writes:

Nonprofits do not “own” social good. Corporate social responsibility is a necessity for companies today. There are countless articles on the importance of for-profit companies doing good. It is a key tactic for gaining customers and increasing sales.

Being good at your mission is good business. Data demonstrate that organizations highlighting their missions outperform those marketing primarily as attractions.

Interestingly, this is the one area in which non-profit identity definitely works in favor of their tax status. In a piece on The Conversation that Non-Profit Quarterly cited last summer, researchers found the following (my emphasis):

In one study, we asked people to donate money to an organization supporting literacy and education. The only difference was that some people were told the company was a for-profit social venture – it had a social mission and also made a profit. Other participants were told it was a nonprofit. People gave 40 percent less money when they believed the organization was a for-profit social venture.

In another study, we gave people money and asked them to purchase a decorative notepad from one of two organizations. When given a choice to buy it from a nonprofit or a for-profit social venture, nearly two out of three people went with the nonprofit.

It seems people don’t think companies can make a profit and support a social cause at the same time.

These findings along with Dilenschneider’s data may emphasize the value of highlighting your organizational mission and the impact you have over encouraging people to engage with you in a commercial manner.

Before you get too excited thinking this could be good news if you just change your messaging, the researchers in The Conversation had additional insight that recalls our old nemesis, Overhead Ratio.

…emphasizing a social cause makes people think the company is altruistic. When the company also makes money, this flies in the face of a belief that it’s generous or altruistic. When companies have a social mission, people tend to think that all money should go to the social cause…

This doesn’t mean that nonprofits always win though…when people were told the nonprofit was known to have excessive spending, the majority of people flipped and bought their notepad from the for-profit social venture.

Creativity Is Partially A Social Construct

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When I was writing my post last week about research suggesting that creativity is often a choice people make, I kept seeing citations referencing an article written by Howard Becker. So I followed up on those citations. It was actually Becker that pointed out many times creative practice involves executing repetitive tasks.

In his article, Becker suggests there is a lot of what we would objectively consider creativity being done out there. It isn’t rare or special at all.  However, societal rules often dictate who and what gets to be considered creative. It is not what is being done, but rather who is doing it.

This doesn’t contradict the idea that creativity is an individual’s choice because internal perception about what is worthwhile is often shaped by external factors, including societal perceptions. Whether you decide to self-censor or just do it, and the rationalization behind just doing it, can be very personal.

There have been other articles written about the fact that people say they value creativity but are afraid of the disruption it might introduce so what is acceptable creativity often falls in a pretty narrow range.

Or as Becker puts it, (my emphasis)

I think it likely that what we, from a different standpoint, might call creative often makes trouble by being “too” creative, too different, not easily assimilable by the organizational apparatus already in place to deal with the category its products belong to, and thus not entitled to such an honorific title as “creative.” Only a short distance separates “creative: from “pain in the ass.”

Becker says there is creativity all around us, but it is being performed by groups who aren’t “allowed” to be creative for various reasons.

Conventional judges, working in conventional organizations, may well classify whatever such workers do as ordinary, certainly not creative or original, because that entire category of work or, alternatively, any kind of work done by members of those social categories, conventionally falls into the category of “uninteresting” and therefore essentially incapable of generating creativity. If the problems those people deal with in their work aren’t “important,” no solution they create can deserve the label of “creative.”

I wondered if an element of this is what reinforced the idea of the starving artist–the sense that the suffering outsider has license to be creative in a manner and magnitude that a person without that backstory isn’t. Accidentally mix up the bios and maybe the starving artist has to starve a little longer while the person standing to their left gets discovered.

Becker cites the example of a mother who has to balance the dietary preferences of a family of fussy eaters against a food budget, what is stocked in the stores and how much time is available for preparation. In other environments, a person navigating such challenges with aplomb might be lauded. Mom’s efforts often pass without comment.

No one gives “genius awards” to these inventors. Not even James Beard Awards for creative cookery. Their creativity goes unremarked and does not provide the subject matter for studies in the field (although culinary critics of course will treat similar experiments by well-known chefs with awe and reverence). Conventional thinking does not imagine that women who are not specially trained and educated can be creative, and some people still think that women are simply, perhaps genetically, incapable of the kind of unusual thinking that merits the word “creative.”

I think there is still more to consider about creativity than what I have written about in the last few days. In an email last week to Carter Gillies, I noted that people often talk about creative practice providing a sense of transcendence and connection with something greater. Theater, dance, song and visual arts all originated with religious and spiritual practice. It isn’t unreasonable to think that people continue to identify with some element of this.

In part, whether you feel a sense of that greater connection may define whether you view an activity is drudgery or having creative associations.

Creativity Is Partially A Choice

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Last week Isaac Kaplan wrote an editorial on Artsy about a study that suggested whether you were creative or not was partially a matter of perception.

I might not have gone on to read the study, but the title, “I Don’t Take My Tuba to Work at Microsoft”, kinda reeled me in. (Actually, the full title is, “I Don’t Take My Tuba to Work at Microsoft”: Arts Graduates and the Portability of Creative Identity.)

In the quest to help people recognize their capacity for creativity, figuring out how arts graduates craft their identities can be an important first step.  The authors of the study note that the narrative we have for ourselves can serve as a coping mechanism in potentially disappointing outcomes,

…our notions of personal success and professional status, including the expectations we think others have for us; what roles we imagine for ourselves; and what work we are willing to do…for example, shows that an artistic or bohemian identity helps middle-class kids justify taking working class jobs.

Because viewed objectively, creative practice often requires executing repetitive tasks

“… for example, we label playing in a symphony “creative,” though it is to a certain extent “extremely repetitive and boring work..”

The researchers drew a large part of the data for their study from the The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). The “don’t take my tuba..” in the title is a quote from one of the respondents.

As you might imagine, while some people didn’t find the work they were doing to be creative, others saw opportunities to employ the skills they had acquired in their arts training.

(The following are from three separate sections of the study, as reflected by the breaks in the left edge line)

As another former music major responded, “I can often apply the same creative thinking strategies I learned as a musician to scientific problems.”

Research is a remarkably creative process, which relates to the training I received at [arts school].

My education has been a solid foundation for being open and creative with my work, although it is an indirect relationship to my major course of study. I have been very effective professionally in large part because I use creativity in my approach to solving problems, planning, and innovating. I am able to see possibilities where others can’t, and I’m able to identify the consistent and related themes woven among seemingly divergent concepts . .

As an executive assistant, I have a boss who thinks in very grand sweeping terms and a staff that thinks in very precise “tell me exactly what I need to do” terms. As a theater director, I’ve learned how to speak both languages fluently, and often serve as “translator” to others. I also have a strong creative thought process, which I’ve applied to suggesting overhauls to many of our procedures to make our work much more efficient.

Likely none of the respondents were told their artistic background would be helpful in these ways when they were hired. They saw the opportunity to apply what they had learned to the situation.

I am by no means implying that the difference between people who view their training as being applicable to their positions and those that don’t is a matter of having an optimistic, can-do outlook. There are plenty of environments where initiative and innovation are not welcomed and actively stifled.

What I took away from the piece is that creativity is both a factor of perception and opportunity. It is not enough just to give people the opportunity to be creative, the perception needs to be cultivated and reinforced.

Packing boxes containing 100 bowls in the back of a truck may feel menial and boring whereas putting 100 bowls into a kiln to be fired may feel creative despite the first act taking 10 minutes and the latter taking over an hour.

It isn’t as simple as deciding the artist feels more invested in their work than a person loading a truck. Both may employ the same amount of diligence to avoid breakage. There is no guarantee the person loading the kiln isn’t an assistant hired to keep a space clean and yet feels they are engaged in a creative endeavor a la the old “…what and quit show business? joke.

How do you help people find that ineffable quality that makes all the difference?

End of An Era, Who Will Pick Up The Torch

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Over the last week you may have seen mention that after 10 years in existence,  Createquity will be ceasing operations at the end of the 2017 calendar year.

This is a great pity. One of the goals founder Ian David Moss had as he developed his blogging project into a think tank was to facilitate arts administrators’ ability to understand research findings since they so often didn’t have the opportunity to review, much less finish research reports. Just last week, I cited one of his recent entries as the basis for a post.

It will probably come as no surprise that difficulty finding suitable funding for Createquity’s efforts is the basis for the decision to cease operations. Ian discusses all the options they weighed and opportunities of which they tried to avail themselves.  Ultimately, in summary he says,

These are among the reasons why the arts field has, since the 1980s, dug a formidable graveyard for failed think tank initiatives, some of which have become so buried under the weight of history that I only learned about them for the first time earlier this year.

The project I most regret seeing fall by the wayside is their effort to chart what we know about the benefits of the arts in improving lives.  Createquity graphed out research studies about the benefits of the arts on a scale that indicated the quality of the evidence and whether the research said a benefit existed.  This information is extremely important to know if you are going to advocate for arts and culture and cite research findings. Looking at Createquity’s evaluation, the evidence that supports commonly made assertions about the benefit of arts in educational and social outcomes is weaker than it is made out to be or there is a lack of corroborating research.

Think about it this way. TV news programs often have short segments where they talk about the amazing benefits of dark chocolate, red wine, acai berries, etc., but when you take the time to really examine the evidence you discover you would have to consume three times your body weight daily to realize those benefits.

Funding for arts and culture entities is already tenuous as it is, (to whit, Createquity), the sector doesn’t need to have people denouncing it for making overblown claims. (And as I have often argued, we shouldn’t be invoking the utilitarian value of the arts to justify it anyway.)

There the end of his post, Moss talks about the preparations they are going through over the next few months. They will be publishing summary articles about the work they have done.  (One on cultural equity was published today.)

They intend to make their work available to anyone who might wish to continue where they are leaving off.

Over the next couple of months, we will be polishing up our internal training materials and resources to make it as easy as possible for people in the arts community to carry on aspects of the work we’ve started in their own spaces and in their own names. And in November and December, you can expect to see some parting thoughts from our team to philanthropists and researchers seeking to optimize their investments in the arts in the decade ahead. Our goal in all of this is to activate the latent potential of our work over the past ten years into the most accessible and actionable content possible.

I think there are many who join me in hoping that someone will be able to continue the important work they have started.

Planning Out Your Creative Utopia

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About two years ago I started an after (work) hours art show that would provide students and local artists an opportunity to show their work and get experience speaking about it with people who didn’t have the shared vocabulary of visual artists.

Last Thursday we had the 4th iteration of the event, which we have been holding every 6 months or so.  Due to my involvement with the Creating Connection initiative, I consciously tried to employ suggested language about personal capacity for creativity in the promotional materials. I referenced people’s past comments about not realizing their neighbors were so talented or even interested in creating works of visual art.

Our frequent local partners/collaborators, the Creative Cult, had approached me about having a hands-on activity for attendees so the opportunity to create something yourself also figured heavily in our promotional materials. Since we usually have more artists enter than we have space to accommodate, we originally discussed placing the activity in a side corridor off the lobby. However, we had fewer applications than expected so we were able to move their activities to a prime spot.

They got people involved in executing their vision of a Creative Utopia…in cardboard. While the idea was to theoretically rebuild our town with the features that would make it a great place for people to express their creativity, few people felt constrained by that basic concept. And who could blame them.

The cardboard village was dubbed “Cult-topia” since the guys from the Cult provided all the art materials and scrounged up a lot of cardboard in advance.

While young kids were the most enthusiastic and added the most color to the project, there were a lot of people of all ages who contributed to the creative utopia.

One thing we noticed about the event– People lingered a lot longer than in the past, even those who weren’t helping to build Cult-topia. We aren’t exactly sure why. Did they like watching people have fun making ugly buildings out of cardboard? Was it the presence of more cafe tables to sit at? Even though the crowd was the same size as the past, did the ambiance feel calmer and less frenetic because the layout was a little more spread out?

I was reminded of an observation Nina Simon made in her book where she mentions that her museum started offering all-ages participatory activities at their events and exhibitions. She says none of the activities were specifically targeted as family events. Kids and adults just worked side by side at many of the events. Little by little, they noticed the melded events were packed, but the Family Day branded events saw decreasing attendance. She characterized it as the appeal of a room that was large enough to accommodate everyone versus a special segment.

I wondered if something along those lines was in operation in this situation. Did the presence of participatory activities keep all attendees engaged for a longer period of time regardless of whether they contributed or even viewed themselves as someone who would dive in to cardboard construction projects with gusto?

At the end of the night, I was asked if we could leave Cult-topia up on display for a few days. Some might feel it was a mistake to agree to leave a shabby looking project created by committee prominently placed in an art center lobby. This is the type of thing that draws derisive commentary about something not being art, art being dumbed down or the infamous, “I could do that.”

But that is sort of the point. By leaving it up for about a week, we hope to validate people’s capacity to make a creative contribution. No one is saying it is great art. Just that people had a great time putting it together. It is a small step in a journey of 1000 miles.

It can be a risky move and could diminish the organization in the eyes of some. But probably the easiest way to combat the perception that work by “people like me” doesn’t appear at an arts event is to display the work of people like them.

Considering The Essence Of Being Mainstream Or Culturally Specific

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Earlier this month Ian David Moss wrote a piece challenging the arts and culture community to evaluate the language and mindset in which we frame artistic and cultural expression and practice.

He make a case that:

Separating our concepts of “mainstream” and “white” could allow us to treat European art forms as just one of many types of cultural expression within a mix of organizations and communities, instead of privileging them as the historical default.

Starting this post off with that may raise a sense of defensiveness in readers and a reluctance to continue reading which is probably why Moss doesn’t bring it up until the last quarter of his post. Nonetheless it is an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant.

Moss says there is something to consider in response by Justin Laing, a former senior program officer at Heinz Endowments, to a post last year about cultural equity,

Moss provides further context noting:

…The logic on researchers’ part is that “culturally-specific” organizations explicitly target a specific demographic population, whereas “mainstream” organizations target everyone.

[..]

But many cultural equity advocates see orchestral music as unabashedly and irredeemably white: it originated in Europe, the vast majority of composers presented (even by Latin American and Asian orchestras) are European or European-descended, and most of the people who enjoy it are of European origin. To them, when we talk about culturally-specific organizations, that includes symphony orchestras–and ballets, and operas, and encyclopedic art museums. And it’s not at all obvious to them why certain culturally-specific organizations should continue to receive such a disproportionate share of public and philanthropic support compared to other culturally-specific organizations.

Moss acknowledges there are arguments to be made for the universal appeal of these forms, citing Venezuela’s pride in El Sistema and the fact that many arts organizations have been successful at attracting attendance from Black and Latin communities.

This week Artsjournal linked to a Dance Magazine piece talking about how Philadelphia was a hub for black ballerinas from the 1930s-1950s. (Article has video interviews with some of the women that trained as dancers during the period.) There is a sense of hope that there is a trend in this general direction again.

He points out that while there is crossover appeal, it is also clear that opera, ballet, symphony, et. al are by no means the most popular art forms in the U.S. and are perhaps more appropriately labeled as culturally specific rather than mainstream if they are indeed not serving everyone.

This is where the concept of divorcing “white” from “mainstream” comes in. (Moss’ emphasis)

Were the field to adopt this new understanding, an unavoidable question would face every organization celebrating European cultural heritage in the midst of a substantial nonwhite population: is our foremost loyalty to our art form or our local community? In answering, boards and executives would need to realize that true commitment to the latter could mean dramatic changes, changes that would make their organizations unrecognizable to the individuals who founded them. Yet reaffirming a primary commitment to an art form with clear ethnic roots–which, I want to emphasize here, is an equally valid choice under this paradigm–would be a signal to the world that the organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts can only reach so far. And yes, that may make it untenable to go after large sums of money from foundations and government agencies on the premise of being a local “anchor institution.”

So much of this paragraph reminded me of a post I wrote last year citing a similar piece on the topic written by Ronia Holmes where she writes,

All that being said—I don’t think arts organizations are bad entities filled with bad people doing bad things…They really do believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and really do want to offer meaningful, authentic moments of connection.

The problem is that most organizations are not built to do that, and are constantly struggling with it because of expectations that they should be something they are not. Every year, organizations jump through hoops to secure restricted grants that necessitate yet another outreach program or diversity week or community partnership, hoping that if they impress the funders enough they will be given money that can be used for what the organization actually has a mission to do.

If real, authentic, genuine community building isn’t central to your mission, if it isn’t your raison d’être, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Because chances are that not only are you doing it badly, you’re doing it at the expense of your real mission. The mission of most arts organizations—the real mission—is simple: to present an art form. And that’s ok. We need organizations that prioritize preservation, development, and presentation of an art form, and I for one don’t think any organization should be penalized for it.

Both Holmes and Moss are acknowledging the existence of the same dynamics. I can’t imagine they are the only ones thinking along these lines which suggests that perhaps there is both potential and need to have additional conversation and thought in this direction.

It may be uncomfortable to discuss and acknowledge much of what is involved and needs to change, but the general framework of this paradigm is a fair and generally constructive way forward.

(I would suggest, however, that being completely forthright and declaring your mission is to preserve and perpetuate European cultural heritage is not going to be constructive on oh so many ways.)

Incentive To Throw An Expensive Gala

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There was recently a piece on The Conversation which, contrary to my expectation, said that tax deductibility rules allow charities to throw high priced galas and still maintain a low fundraising expense ratio.

The costs of a fundraising event attributable to things donors enjoy, including food, drink and auctioned items, don’t have to be recorded as fundraising expenses. Instead they can, in accounting jargon, be “netted” against donations.

In other words, if a donor pays $1,000 to attend a gala but gets a swag bag of goodies that cost the charity $900, the event reflects a (net) donation of $100. It does not have to treat the $900 spent on the bag as a fundraising cost. That approach, in turn, helps keep the costs associated with throwing fancy galas under the radar of ratings agencies, since many of the costs are not considered fundraising expenses but instead are buried in the details.

And this routine accounting practice means that charities with incentives to be frugal are generally free to break the bank for special occasions.

[…]

Here’s the bottom line: While galas don’t automatically signal wasteful spending, you can’t count on the authorities or other experts to call it out when they do.

I had never really thought about the fundraising overhead ratio in this light before. On top of that, if some of the items in the swag bag was donated, the charity makes more money, thereby lowering the ratio even further. The donor still can only claim a $100 deduction because the fair market value of the contents are still $900.

While I opened this post using the term “deductibility rules allow,” the article authors characterize the rules as incentivizing large gala fundraisers.  So when the conversation comes up questioning why people hold these fundraisers when they rarely make money, it might be worth acknowledging that the way the accounting is handled allows non-profits to throw a big party and not suffer under the disapproving gaze of watchdog reporting.

The article also acknowledges that many charities are foregoing large charity events in favor of No-Go Galas where you donate the amount you would have spent getting dressed up and attending. In this way there is even less of a cost to the charity.  Basically it is asking for a donation with added context to encourage you to give more than you might to an annual appeal

Does Cultural Track Data Challenge Assumptions About Your Community?

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As I promised in my last post, I took a deeper look at the Culture Track reporting over the weekend.  More specifically, I took at a look at both the Top Line deck and Supporting Data documents which are available for download. I didn’t review the raw data.

The Supporting Data document is presented with visual graphs which makes it easy to interpret. Though I also hungered for some analytical commentary from the Culture Track folks about what the greater implications might be.

A few observations from Supporting Data in the hopes of making the opportunity to dig in irresistible for readers.

First of all, the charts seem to belie the idea that Millennials are  abandoning cultural experiences. Except for watching TV (which includes streaming) they lead in every category. This is only one of three pages.

 

Now you may be saying, sure but participation once a year isn’t a high hurdle.

However, that generation also leads in frequency per month too.

 

If you remember what I quoted and wrote last week about the perceptions of those who were high frequency attenders, this has some important implications.

People who attend three or more cultural experiences per month are 94% more likely to cite “it doesn’t change” as a barrier to more frequent cultural participation compared those who attend one or fewer cultural experiences per month.

Given that what people define as a cultural experience is pretty broad, the chances that your average attendee is participating in three or more experiences a month is pretty good. Being 94% more likely to feel lack of change is a barrier to participation is pretty significant.

While you shouldn’t take all this information at face value without digging in and questioning the basis of the findings, the fact the data depicted may contradict your assumptions can be enough to get conversations started reevaluating long held beliefs.

The study authors slice and dice the data through a number of different lenses which make for interesting viewing. Most every question is presented in terms of generation, race/ethnicity, community size, education level, marital status and parental status.

So for example, the following information about where people get advertised and non-advertised information about cultural activities is presented in these contexts. (There is also a chart for offline information sources which I haven’t included)

 

Perhaps of most interest to different arts and cultural organizations, they break down motivators and barriers for participation for 12 different disciplines/cultural activities.

Below is a sample for art museums. There is also a chart with barriers for non-participants for each area.

 

 

NOTICE: The Response I Give May Only Reflect My Current Preferences

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You may have already heard that the CultureTrack report was released yesterday. Compiled and released every three years by LaPlaca Cohen, the report helps track the ways in which attitudes toward culture are shifting.

I haven’t read the full report yet. Just looking at the summary on the animated and interactive site they set up for the report, I knew this would probably be something I returned to a couple times. So for your homework, review the site and we will talk about it more on Monday.

….Unless I get distracted by something else.

What first alerted me to the release of the study was an advance piece on Artsy titled “37% of Art Museum Visitors Don’t View Them as Culture,” which did its job in getting me to read more.

Sure enough the article notes that,

“For many respondents, going to the park or eating at a food truck counts as a cultural experience, while attending a museum does not.”

This wasn’t far off from some of the responses my organization got last winter during our listening tour where people listed going to the speedway as a favorite cultural experience.

Another interesting finding highlighted in the article was largest motivation to engage in cultural activities was to have fun.

Cultural activities continue to be a source of leisure and relaxation for many. The survey found that 81% of audiences are motivated to attend a cultural activity because they want to have fun. A desire to feel less stressed was tied in third place, along with “experiencing new things,” with 76% citing both as reasons for participation. 71% cited learning something new as a reason to participate in culture.

This doesn’t mean that levity must replace education at museums, noted Harnick, but rather that the two cannot be divorced from one another. Culture offers the opportunity to connect with other people and take a pause from daily life—today’s audiences are full of anxiety and looking for a chance to relax, a conclusion that gels with other findings that show high levels of anxiety among the general population.

I spoke to someone today who suggested the current political environment in the country might be contributing to that sense of anxiety.

In terms of barriers to participation, feeling that the experience wasn’t “for someone like me” topped the list.

I can’t really cover all the findings I found interesting, but here are a few to consider.

In terms of loyalty, people rated trustworthiness, consistent quality and customer service as the top three factors. Pricing and discounts were fifth and sixth. Social media and advertising were 10th and 11th with 15% and 13% of responses, respectively. So pricing and advertising aren’t big factors in building loyalty.

Since there is a discussion about whether people want to experience culture as a passive observer or an active participant, I was interested to read that 28% of people wanted their experience to be active and 24% wanted their experience to be calm. But as with everything, there was a bit of nuance illuminated by the data. (their emphasis)

Cultural audiences—like everyone—are multidimensional, and they have different needs and wants at different times, or even simultaneously. In fact, 15% of cultural consumers who chose “calm” as one of their top-three descriptors of an ideal cultural activity also chose “active,” while 24% of those who chose “reflective” also chose “social.”

In the same section, was another valuable insight about the desire for new experiences by active culture consumers (Their emphasis).

People who attend three or more cultural experiences per month are 94% more likely to cite “it doesn’t change” as a barrier to more frequent cultural participation compared those who attend one or fewer cultural experiences per month.

Given that what people define as a cultural experience is pretty broad, the chances that your average attendee is participating in three or more experiences a month is pretty good. Being 94% more likely to feel lack of change is a barrier to participation is pretty significant. I hope there is something in the report that provides more detail about what types of experiences people are participating in and what they feel isn’t changing. Is it the programming? The overall experience?

The section on the role of digital technology in a cultural experience was also quite interesting. People responded that they felt digital enhanced their experience, provided deeper understanding and allowed them to share their experience with friends.

However, the lack of opportunity to use digital made people feel they were able to focus and become more invested in the experience, made the experience feel more authentic and less complicated.

There is a lot more to learn from the detailed study. Or perhaps it is better to say, there is a lot more I hope to learn from the detailed study.

Perhaps the takeaway is, people are more nuanced than the feedback they are giving you at the moment. Whether it is an audience survey, a comment made on social media, or to the box office a statement should be view as “this is how I feel right now, but in other times and situations, my preferences may contradict what I just said.”

Watch How You Step

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A friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video that suggests that the way humans walked changed with the evolution of footwear. For Europe this shift started around the 1500.

People apparently shifted from stepping toe first to stepping heel first as the bottoms of their shoes became sturdier to deal with urban environments.  Heel stepping was a gateway drug to poor calf definition and bad posture because it is a more forgiving mode of movement that allows for a degree of laziness.  You’ll fall over if you have bad posture while toe stepping.

What does this have to do with the arts you ask? Well there are pictures in the video of artwork and fencing manuals created prior to the 1500 which show people moving toe first.  This reminded me of a lecture I heard years ago that said ballet was based on the idealized movements of members of the (French, I think) court. The speaker made a particular point in discussing how the clothing of the time dictated how people moved– the necessity of holding your arms away from your body, etc.

Seeing this video made me think that perhaps the footwear and attendant walking style of the time were also elements that entered ballet.

I also got to thinking, has the fact that people no longer walk toe first contributed to a sense that ballet is not relevant to people’s lives? Not that we move around in the fashion of really any type of dance. It just got me wondering if lacking familiarity with toe stepping as a mode of movement adds an additional layer of alienation.

Check out the video.

https://youtu.be/EszwYNvvCjQ

Take A Rare Opportunity To Review Others’ Reflections

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Back in August I called attention to a transmedia project in Reading, PA, “This Is Reading,” that playwright Lynn Nottage and a host of others worked on creating to help the community tell stories about itself.

I had initially learned about the project via a post by Margy Waller and must credit her again for tweeting about a follow up conversation that occurred.

With such a push for placemaking and community building projects like “This Is Reading,” having access to the reflections of project participants is of great value to others engaging in similar work.  There are a number of observations and lessons learned that can provide guidance about what worked and what needed to be done better.  It is rare to have this type of material shared publicly so take advantage of the opportunity.

Not only does the newspaper article provide a summary of the report, the report itself is embedded in the webpage and is available for download.

The first thing that caught my eye was that the meetings from which the feedback was collected appeared to be driven by the participants’ desire to continue the momentum started by the project.  The impression I got from the article was that a post-mortem conversation hadn’t been planned, but the project leadership were wise enough to recognize the need to do so.

“The reason we wanted to do this meeting is because this was a more than five-year process,” he said of the installation. “A lot of the volunteers and a lot of the participants expressed interest in what’s next. To me, it was ‘Let’s debrief, let’s talk about it.’ “

The fact of Reading’s decline plays a large part in the content of the project and the subsequent feedback. (Recall the railroad was famous enough to be included in the Monopoly game.) There are multiple times in the report that the investment young people have in the community is called into question. This is in tension with the perception that the nostalgic project content had a greater resonance with older attendees than younger.

The article mentions that the phrase “Reading was…” kept coming up in conversations during the development phase of the project so the title “This Is Reading” was an attempt to emphasize the need to break from a focus on the past and dated thinking.

Given that this exactly mirrors the conversation occurring in the arts (perception youth are not committed, content only relevant to older generation) there are any number of lessons here for the arts and culture community.

Here is the summary listed in the newspaper article:

• Being a person of color in Reading is wrought with stress, tension and discomfort.
• Reading can be a vibrant center of arts and culture if there are significant outreach efforts to invite and welcome; the art is interesting to people of different ethnic, racial or economic backgrounds; and obstacles that prevent or deter participation are eliminated.
• Its self-perception impedes the city’s ability to move forward.
• There is a strong interest and desire in the resurrection of a rail system that would connect our community with nearby communities.
• Long-held community “stories” or narratives can be rewritten by the arts in public spaces.
• There is a desperate need for a shared downtown public performance arts space.
• The city needs a vision that focuses on what Reading is and can be, not what it was.
• Youth and young adults in Reading need to be encouraged, developed and engaged.
• Leadership is needed to champion efforts to build on “This Is Reading,” and the most effective champion would be the city.

An Authentic Experience Is A Branded Experience

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When people are surveyed about what they want out of an interaction with the arts, among the top answers are authentic experience and an opportunity to share that experience with family and friends.

Within the last two days I saw two articles that address how many companies are addressing this expectation among consumers.

The first was a story on Slate about how Apple’s Genius bars were developed to answer this emerging desire.

…stores and malls are looking to adopt the holistic, experiential attitude toward retail space that Apple helped pioneer, one that lures customers out of the house with an idea of service that goes far beyond sales. Sephora will put on your makeup. Sur la Table will teach you how to cook. After last week’s TaskRabbit acquisition, it looks like Ikea is about to start assembling your furniture.

[….]

…Apple retail head Angela Ahrendts unveiled at the company’s keynote last month in Cupertino, California. “We actually don’t call them stores anymore,” she said. “We call them town squares.” As a metaphor for the tech industry’s appropriation of the public sphere, it seemed a bit on the nose. But it’s a fitting culmination of Johnson’s initial strategy to cloak the exchange of cash in civitas.

If you think recasting an Apple Store as a town square is a cynical corporate attempt to cultivate a relationship with consumers, you may not like reading a piece that appeared today on CityLab that talks about corporate attempts to create a “branded experience.” In the context of the Slate story, Apple either pioneered the idea or was on the leading edge of an emerging trend.

The story primarily talks about branded environments in NYC so the demand for such experiences may not translate to other communities. Though I would suspect the differences are only a matter of time and degree.

I was interested to read the following which makes an argument for why in-person interactions in physical spaces remain important even if they aren’t as convenient.

The current conventional wisdom on retail holds that digital sales cannot reach far enough on their own to build sustainable customer bases, so digital-first brands have migrated toward physical stores, pop-up shops, and other experiential marketing strategies.

[…]

The new branded space doesn’t merely satisfy a customer preference for finding products IRL. It opens up a new inflection in retail’s historical role as a venue for urban sociality, spectacle, and leisure.

So while brands strive to enable people to represent their own personal brand, the ubiquity of images of other people’s similarly “authentic” experiences creates a growing sense of dissatisfaction with one’s own. In other words, back before social media expanded our awareness, ignorance was bliss.

What happens when everyone is hunting for unique markers of personality and taste while simultaneously emulating widely popular and algorithmically curated patterns of behavior?

Consumers craving “authentic” experiences tend to build their digital personas by recycling the same kinds of content that populate their own feeds. Especially on Instagram, photos of under-the-radar coffee shops, building interiors, and artful design objects begin to look utterly banal as they aggregate by the thousand. The real world, without any impetus other than the encouragement of the market, has conformed to these aesthetic standards in response.

As they (actually, Alfred Korzybski) say, the map is not the territory. The experience is the experience, not the picture of the experience.

Perhaps one of the challenges arts and cultural organizations will face is that after pouring a lot of thought and energy into wholly revamping the experience they provide, people may still be dissatisfied due to what they value.

But that isn’t new. There has never not been a misalignment between an experience and what is valued by those present. Not everything we do is for everyone. You don’t have to stand for an ovation at the end of the show and clap as hard as the next person.

If you read the CityLab article and shudder at the prospect of having to compete with the expectations created by a Cadillac showroom/lifestyle space  that bills itself as “Public Meeting Place Where Innovators, Creators and the Curious Can Find Inspiration–and one another,” yeah that is simultaneously intimidating and perplexing.

Chances are, that showroom concept isn’t going to be exist outside of NY, LA and Chicago. You know your community and the opportunities that exist to shape experience expectations. It is good to be aware that influences like Cadillac House are likely to seep into your community and influence expectations so stay aware and consider your response.

Intersection of Sports and Art Has Occur For More Than Just One Guy

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Last week this tweet from Howard Sherman caught my eye.

If you read the article, you can really see his point. Except for the fact that the musical Daryl Morey is putting together is about basketball, there is really nothing sports related in the article.

Morey talks about how much he loves theater, the conversations he had that pulled the creative team together, the process of putting the production together–all things that you would expect to see discussed in the arts section.

Except, you know, the NY Times has cut back on its arts coverage, especially outside of NYC. (The show is opening in Houston with hopes of moving to Broadway.)

I don’t know if that is the reason it appears in the sports section. Given that Morey was the general manager of the Houston Rockets, he would likely have a better relationship with the sports staff than arts staff. The former would be more likely to get a better interview out of him.

If I am being optimistic, I also see the article as a good example of how a love of sports and arts are not mutually exclusive. If you are looking for someone with some gravitas in the sports world to make a case for theater, Morey is your man.

The musical, called “Small Ball,” which is now bound for rehearsals and a six-week run in Houston, bridges two of Morey’s great loves: basketball and Broadway…Morey — former high school trombonist, current theater obsessive — has relished the chance to sneak behind the curtain.

“Someday,” Morey said, “I want to live in New York and just go to shows.”

and later

Morey was a band geek at Highland High School in Medina, Ohio. After performing excerpts from “Les Misérables,” he was hooked. He recalled coming across a rare cassette recording of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” a thrill for a young fan of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Today, Morey’s appreciation for Stephen Sondheim runs so deep that he recently paid an artist to re-create “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” the seminal work by the painter Georges Seurat that became the same work upon which Sondheim based his musical, “Sunday in the Park with George.”

When asked on social media what he would be doing if he wasn’t in basketball, he answered he would probably be doing theater. Still even he admits there isn’t a big intersection between people who love basketball and theater.

Perhaps the most encouraging lines in the whole article are the last ones.

Still, Morey said he came away feeling energized. He also gained an appreciation for the talent of the actors and for his theater colleagues’ managerial skills.

“Let’s keep it vague,” Morey said, “but I’m like, ‘Geez, they deal with more stuff than I do.’”

If you are thinking, boy we could use 100 more like him, the truth is they are out there. Many of them are already participating in our events and serving on our boards. Maybe they don’t feel like they have the ability to clearly express the passion they feel and need some guidance to do so.

If they are talking about their passion, it might be in front of like minded people at gala fundraisers or chamber of commerce meetings. Perhaps it ends with “that is why I encourage you to give….” which might turn people off. That ain’t all the arts are about despite what the job descriptions of arts executive directors say. It might even be better if these conversations are encouraged at a bar stool or supermarket…or basketball game.

Hey Buddy, You Want To Share A Creative Experience?

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Back in August I presented material in a pre-conference session at the Arts Midwest (AMW) conference alongside AMW President/CEO David Fraher; Creating Connection Program Director Anne Romens; and my friend Nick Sherman. (Slides on the AMW site, scroll down to “Messages that Matter: Tapping into What Audiences Value + Creating Connection: What Does Your Community Value?”).

For my part of the presentation, I spoke about some of the programs we had instituted in our community based on materials from Creating Connection, or as I often refer to it, Building Public Will For Arts and Culture.

One program I hadn’t talked about was our Arts Buddy program which we developed to respond to the problem of having no one to attend an event with which is often cited as a major impediment to event attendance. Long time readers will remember I started developing the idea back in 2015 after being inspired by a program instituted by a Brazilian bus company.

Anne Romens wanted to know more about the program so they could discuss it in workshops they were conducting in September. We ended up turning our discussion into an interview which Anne posted on the Creating Connection blog last week.

Anne told me she presented the idea at 5 workshops in September and people loved the idea. They pulled out their pens and started scribbling. One person apparently asked if I had legal rights to the idea or if she could use it.

I had I known it would be so popular I would have patented it and started a licensing program!

(The idea was developed with feedback from a number of people both through my blog and emails so neither I, nor anyone else should be looking to patent it.)

You will have to read the interview to see what all the excitement was about.

Major Case Of Do As We Say, Not As We Do

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Back in August, I came across the most extreme example of failing to plan for an executive transition that I have seen to date. When the executive director of MarinSpace decided to step down, the board chose to dissolve the organization rather than to look for a replacement.

The board’s vote to dissolve occurred when longtime CEO Shelley Hamilton announced she no longer wished to play that role, opting instead to take another, part-time role.

“Her skill set is so specific and unique that when she decided to move to part-time, the board decided it would be [too] difficult to move someone into that (executive director) role with that same skill set,” said interim ED Peter Lee. “Instead of trying to go through that process, we thought it would be better to dissolve and spread the wealth in Marin County.”

And the organization has no lack of assets to distribute:

After it dissolves, it will have between $2 and $3 million in assets, including a building worth $2.5 million, and these will need to be distributed. The 14,500-square-foot building currently houses other nonprofits at 20 percent below market rate.

[…]

Lee laid out three possibilities for distribution of the assets: one organization could acquire the assets and staff and run the group relatively as-is; assets could be liquidated and distributed among a number of nonprofits; or a nonprofit could acquire MarinSpace’s building and staff, but the cash assets of approximately $300,000 could be distributed to other groups.

The thing that really gets me is the disconnect between their mission and practice.  The organization’s mission is:

We believe positive social change happens best through collective effort. Our mission is to strengthen networks of community organizations by providing collaboration services and shared workspace.

and they boast

“…our CEO provides key leadership services to the Nonprofit Centers Network, both as a founding Board Member and as a senior project consultant.

They list Sustainability and Professionalism among their guiding principles.

Yet they have a situation whereby they have created a structure that they have decided can’t exist in the absence of a single person. How does that reflect best practices for leading non-profits that they were theoretically instilling in client organizations?   How have they worked toward their own sustainability?

What sort of effect might this decision have on the non-profits housed in their facility and those served by those non-profits? How does this decision and uncertain outcomes reflect their mission of collective effort?

Fortunately, they are taking a responsible course by intending to create and oversee a process of distributing their assets as part of the dissolution. As I have written before, sometimes non-profit boards will walk away from an organization and declare they have washed their hands of their involvement. In doing so, they can actually be held personally liable for anything that occurs in relation to the organization having lost the protection of director and officers liability insurance.

The Arts Gotta Get Cookin’

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In a piece in on the Harvard Business Review site, food industry consultant Eddie Yoon notes that even as audiences show interest in cooking shows, the desire to cook is waning.

Early in my career I gathered some data for a client on cooking…At the time, the sizes of the three respective groups were about 15% who love to cook, 50% who hate to cook, and 35% who are so-so on the idea.

Nearly 15 years later I did a similar study for a different client. This time, the numbers had shifted: Only 10% of consumers now love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it. That means that the percentage of Americans who really love to cook has dropped by about one-third in a fairly short period of time.

Beyond the numbers, it also suggests that our fondness for Food TV has inspired us to watch more Food TV, and to want to eat more, but hasn’t increased our desire to cook. In part, Food TV has raised our standards to discouragingly high levels: How many of us really feel confident in our cooking skills after watching Iron Chef? (My high school chemistry teacher quit the cello in college after playing a semester next to Yo-Yo Ma.)

He goes on to talk about how consumption trends and technology may force grocers to abandon whole categories of foodstuff that are aligned to the practice of home cooking. The article is worth reading if only for its discussion of food preparation technologies that will retain the fresh taste without preservatives or need for refrigeration, providing greater opportunities to fight hunger around the world.

The article raised a number of questions for me in terms of efforts to increasingly engage communities in creative expression.

We are told people would rather do something creative and participatory than to sit passively. Does the fact that people would rather watch cooking shows than to cook themselves belie that? Is this a situation that applies differently for cooking than for other creative pursuits? Is Yoon correct in suggesting that people are intimidated by cooking shows?

The intimidation factor is something to keep in mind when trying to engage people in creative activities and help them understand their capacity to do so.  The equivalent of a cooking practice as an egg wash that seems simple to insiders may intimidate people. (If just reading “egg wash” caused slight anxiety, you know what I am talking about.)

The other thing to consider is that cooking may suffer from the same problem as other artistic and cultural pursuits. It may be perceived as something other people skilled in secret techniques do that is outside personal ability.  By pursuing a goal of empowering creative expression in others, the arts and culture community could help revive an interest in home cooking.

Consider, while the percentage of those in Yoon’s survey who love to cook has dropped 5% in 15 years, there are also 5% fewer people who hate it.  Presumably both groups have moved toward lukewarm impression given that has increased by 10%. There may be a potential to move the dial closer to love again.

On the other hand, Yoon says cold cereal consumption is shrinking and buying breakfast at Taco Bell is growing, so it may almost be too late for some people.

Portland Vs. The Overhead Ratio Beast

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You may remember that back in 2012 voters in Portland, OR approved a $35 flat tax to benefit arts education in schools. The tax has survived a number of legal challenges, but according to a piece on Artsy, may fall prey to the dreaded overhead cost beast.

Even with the tax’s successes in schools, accounting concerns remain. The cost of administering the tax has risen above the allowed limits, while returns still have yet to reach the expected $12 million annually estimated at the time of passage.

In a memo to the city council last week published by the Portland Mercury, Thomas Lannom, Portland’s revenue division director, detailed some of the challenges—namely, that 7.7% of the total funds raised over five years has gone to administrative expenses related to collecting the tax….

Under the existing law, only 5% of the total raised by the tax should go to administering it. Think of it this way: Since the art tax began in 2013, the city has spent $3.69 million to collect a total of $47.99 million. Under the official cost cap, the city should have spent, at most, $2.4 million.

[…]

…. 7.7% of the total funds raised over five years has gone to administrative expenses related to collecting the tax. Averaged over the last three years, that figure is an even higher 8.9%.

Much of the overhead costs are due to the fact that residents are mailed a tax notice which they must pay separately from federal and state tax. If they don’t pay, the city staff has to take follow up actions and assess penalties.

The process is partly to blame for relatively low compliance with the arts tax. Original estimates predicted that 85% of Portlanders would fork over the funds. But only 73% of residents on average paid in the first three years of the art tax.

While a city government isn’t a non-profit organization, imposing a 5% overhead cap on the program feels just as much an unrealistic expectation as those imposed on non-profits. In the Portland Mercury article, the revenue division director says as much and mentions the 5% cap polled well. What I had hoped the article would mention is the overhead cost typically involved with collecting other taxes in the city.

The other taxes Portland collects are business and occupancy related. People are more habituated to paying these taxes so if those collection costs hovered around 4%-5%, you know it isn’t practical to assume a once a year tax assessed on individuals would have comparable expense levels.

You May Be Dead, But Thanks To A QR Code Your Memory Can Last Forever

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Over on ArtsHacker today, Ceci Dadisman wrote a post suggesting that the dreaded/derided QR code may be making a comeback thanks to improved functionality on Apple’s new iOS11.

I have been keeping an eye open for close to a year to see if QR codes might return given that they are used on and for E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G in China. With that sort of massive usage, it isn’t hard to foresee that companies will recognize the utility in transactions and encourage people to use them. When I say they are used for  everything in China, I mean beggars on the street have signs with QR codes on them so you can donate.  A village planted trees in the shape of a QR code that can be scanned from the air.

There are some other interesting uses like the shopping mall with a giant code on the side of the building so you can discover the hours as you drive by rather than pulling up and squinting at the sign on the door. QR codes also allow all those people waving signs on the side of the road/middle of the sidewalk get paid for catching your attention when you scan their sign to learn more.

The one use that really caught my eye, and you almost miss it in the article, is putting QR codes on tombstones so that people can learn more about the person.

But QR codes appear for dead people, too… Since people in China believe that QR codes are here to stay, even tombstones are engraved with QR codes that memorialize the life-story — through biographies, photographs, and videos — of the deceased. From the leadership of the China Funeral Association: “In modern times, people should commemorate their deceased loved ones in modern ways”.

While some obvious uses for QR codes in the arts would be to provide information about art works in museums and performers and their characters in performances, (especially interactive ones where a printed program might get in the way), I wonder what innovative uses for storytelling people might come up with.

One idea that just popped to mind is a quest that wasn’t dependent on the presence of physical objects. If you scan a treasure chest or information source without having first found and scanned a key/preceding information source, you won’t receive the treasure/solution. That way you can have multiple people play a game without having to make multiple versions of an item for people to claim.

Anything else pop to mind for people?

Looking To The Countryside

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As a person who has lived and worked in rural locations, I read an article about the Catskill Mountain Foundation (CMF) on the Inside Philanthropy site with great interest.  I thought some of the observations made in the piece were valuable both for funders who might be reluctant to fund rural organizations, and for organizations who were rallying support for creative placemaking and related endeavors in rural locations.

Writing for Inside Philanthropy, Mike Scutari suggests that some of the assumptions funders have about getting the most bang for their buck by supporting programs based in urban locales might not be entirely accurate.

Scan Inside Philanthropy’s archives and you’ll find examples of huge urban philanthropy efforts whose return on investment is murky at best. Most recently, David Callahan wrote that despite an influx of $1 billion from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to Flint, Michigan, life has mostly become worse in the city over the past half-century.

Finn’s smaller-is-more-impactful approach flips conventional wisdom on its head: Funders can move the dial more effectively by operating in more concentrated communities.

CMF Founder Peter Finn identified four challenges that particularly face rural organizations in addition to the perennial general concerns about the shrinking pool of available funding.

First, a feeling among some locals that change is not welcome. It’s an idea we sometimes see in urban creative placemaking, where some longtime residents can view arts organizations as interlopers and gentrifiers. Finn’s experience suggests that rural organizations aren’t immune from this perception. “The Catskill Mountain Foundation encountered this at times during the past 20 years,” Finn noted, “but seems to have finally gotten beyond this.”

Second, attracting sustained participation from the local community….

Third, finding talented staff. “We have been lucky that we were able to hire several excellent staff members…But in rural communities, the pool of talent to select from is limited.”

And lastly, the perennial specter of donor fatigue. “It is relatively easy to attract money in the early years for an energetic new arts organization that seems to be on path to success. All organizations encounter bumps in the road, and some donors are lost in this process. There has to be a core of key donors committed to sticking with the mission for the organization to become both successful and sustainable.”

Some of these points probably aren’t groundbreaking revelations. Still, it takes living in a rural community to appreciate the particular nuances of some of these points. I included the entire quote about CMF encountering resistance to change over 20 years because acceptance of the new tends to be a lot faster in urban environments. In many places rural locations you are considered a newcomer if you haven’t been around for about 50 years. I don’t doubt that some people may have finally warmed to them after 20 years.

Remind Yourself Maximum Performance Is Not Necessarily Optimum Performance

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Last week I wrote about a blog entry Seth Godin made in January that examined phrases like “The purpose of society is to maximize profit” and “The only purpose of a company is to maximize long-term shareholder value.”

I intentionally wrote about Godin’s January post in order to provide some additional context for a post he made recently. (Though last week’s post got some pretty good response so check it out too)

I once drove home from college at 100 miles an hour. It saved two hours. My old car barely made it, and I was hardly able to speak once I peeled myself out of the car.

That was maximum speed, but it wasn’t optimum.

Systems have an optimum level of performance. It’s the output that permits the elements (including the humans) to do their best work, to persist at it, to avoid disasters, bad decisions and burnout.

One definition of maximization is: A short-term output level of high stress, where parts degrade but short-term performance is high.

This excerpt from his post addresses a number of issues faced by non-profit organizations.

First is the obvious reminder that it is easy to equate optimum outputs with maximum outputs.

This mistaken equivalency is the basis for the whole “X needs to run more like a business,” and “X should be self-supporting or close” sentiment. The work non-profits do can’t be maximized because it involves interacting and responding to humans, not providing products for human consumption.  There is a difference between helping someone cultivate their creative abilities and producing the computers, instruments, paint, lighting or fabric that serve as a medium of creative expression.

Which is not to say it didn’t take Crayola a fair bit of time and effort to develop their new blue crayon, but the trial and error mixing chemical compounds can be accomplished a lot faster and with fewer repercussions than involved in trying to use that crayon to express what is inside yourself.

The second obvious reminder for non-profits is Godin’s point that humans are one of the elements that is susceptible to burnout. Optimum output is nowhere near the maximum output staff are capable of but the replacement cost is pretty high.

We are all pretty much aware of these issues because the problem is discussed across a range of forums. Still the press of societal expectations make it easy to succumb to the mistaken notion that maximum equals optimum and therefore if our organization isn’t working to its maximum ability, we are not producing optimal results.

Stuff To Think About: The Profitability Equals Value Assumption

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You haven’t been working in the non-profit arts and culture sector long enough or you haven’t been paying close enough attention if you haven’t heard/read someone say that an arts organization shouldn’t exist if it can’t be self supporting.

If you have found yourself at a lack of response to this argument, you might read up a little on a blog post Seth Godin made earlier this year where he addresses the mistake of equating profitability with value.

Profit is a good way to demonstrate the creation of value.

In fact, it’s a pretty lousy method. The local water company clearly creates more value (in the sense that we can’t live without it) than the handbag store down the street, and yet the handbag store has a much higher profit margin. That’s not because of value, but because of mismatches in supply and demand, or less relevant inputs like brand, market power and corporate structure.

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I hope we can agree that a caring nurse in the pediatric oncology ward adds more value than a well-paid cosmetic plastic surgeon doing augmentations. People with more money might pay more, but that doesn’t equate to value.

The best way to measure value created is to measure value, not profit.

The purpose of society is to maximize profit

Well, since profit isn’t a good measure of value created, this isn’t at all consistent. More important, things like a living wage, sustainability, fairness and the creation of meaning matter even more. When we consider how to advance our culture, “will it hurt profits?” ought not to be the first (or even the fifth) question we ask.

Pay attention to the last line of this next quote from Godin because it is basically verbatim a core point made by the Potter-Warrior-Philosopher Carter Gillies.

The only purpose of a company is to maximize long-term shareholder value.

Says who? Is the only purpose of your career to maximize lifetime income? If a company is the collective work of humans, we ought to measure the value that those humans seek to create.

Just because there’s a number (a number that’s easy to read, easy to game, easy to keep track of) doesn’t mean it’s relevant.

Okay, so Carter may not be a warrior, but he does fiercely fight to advance the notion that just because we can measure it, it doesn’t mean the measure is relevant.

One of my favorite quotes from Carter that runs along these lines is in a guest post he made on Diane Ragsdale’s blog.

The way we mostly talk to these people is we have found that our ends, the things we value in themselves, can be the means to their own ends. They value the economy? Well, the arts are good for the economy! They think that cognitive development is important? Well, the arts are good for cognitive development! We make our own ends the means to their ends.

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient. That’s never only what they are to us. Sometimes we just have to make the case for a lesser value as the expedient means to secure funding or policy decisions. It’s better than not making any sense at all.

Just as Godin says, concepts like economic impact and cognitive development can produce numbers that are easy to understand, game and keep track of which helps when making the case for funding and policy. But none of these numbers are expressions of the core value of arts and creativity. Why those of us in the field value it.

It takes more effort to explain a complex concept like the value of arts and culture which is why Arts Midwest and others are engaged in a long term project to build public will for it and create an environment in which a similarly shorthand expression of value is possible.  I don’t think anyone will necessarily equate the value of arts and culture with clean water and pediatric nurses. The goal is an environment where the value of arts and culture is generally assumed.

Back in June Diane Ragsdale made a similar post exploring the different concepts of value and cited an idea that there are different types of “economies” that exist, each with a different “currency” that serves as a valid measure of value and relevance. In this context, we wouldn’t equate the value of clean water and pediatric nurses with that of arts and culture any more than we would equate the winner of the World Series with the most effective Coast Guard cutter crew.

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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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