Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
NewsRoom Contact Us

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.

Stuff To Think About: The Profitability Equals Value Assumption

by

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.

[…]

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.

Say Musicals Aren’t Serious Drama, But They Are Seriously Hard To Emulate

by

Telling a story in an interesting and compelling way ain’t easy. Sure, we all know that, but an article about efforts Chinese creatives are making to tell their own stories through musical theater reminds us it isn’t as easy as it looks.

Broadway and West End musicals are pretty popular in China, but Chinese artists understandably have a desire to see works with domestic origins onstage as well. While China has opera traditions that were considered to have reached their maturity 800 years ago, the basic format and practices don’t easily translate over to musical theater conventions.

“People prefer to see foreign musicals because they’re more mature productions,” said Jin. “Our original musicals still have many issues — with the market, theaters, production, rehearsals.”

One particular issue, believes Qiu, is that Chinese musicals suffer from clumsy scripts. Many playwrights consider musicals to be simply a matter of “adding a storyline to a gala” or “a drama plus songs,” he said.

“Our creators and producers are lagging behind actors and musicians,” said Jin. “They need to slowly work out the laws of musicals.” Jin believes that most local productions are hastily thrown together without a clear development process; he previously complained… that domestic productions focus too much on visuals and too little on the music and script.

In contrast, Zhou pointed out, successful international productions often center on strong narratives and timely themes. “Americans are good at telling stories; they’re good at finding problems that exist in the here and now,” she said. ….“Only when we find things that we want to express will we truly find the soul of original musicals,” Zhou said of Chinese productions, which she believes rarely address contemporary societal issues. “Only then will musicals really be good and will people really want to see them.”

The lesson I take from the perspective of outsiders trying to adopt the form is that we often take for granted just how much development, both rapid innovation and quiet increments, has been involved in familiar modes of artistic expression.

Last year I saw an Ira Gershwin musical from the 1930s that sounded good on paper but left me wondering how it had won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The experience gave me a greater appreciation as to why shows like Oklahoma! were considered groundbreaking for unifying story, song and dance. So much of what I expect from musical theater is a result of the changes Oklahoma! brought to the stage. No one could imagine hewing to the previous conventions after that.

Given that the performing arts in the West are faced with a similar challenge of finding a new narrative with which their audiences can relate, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that Chinese creatives might help provide the template for doing so.

Know Thy Self And Don’t Keep It A Secret

by

Last month Barry Hessenius made a post that expanded on a concept proposed management guru Peter Drucker’s article, “Managing Oneself,” that I wrote on a decade ago.

Drucker had suggested that people understand how they work and then communicate that to other people to help others help you to be more effective.

“Whenever someone goes to his or her associates and says, “This is what I am good at. This is how I work. These are my values. This is the contribution I plan to concentrate on and the results I should be expected to deliver,” the response is always, “This is most helpful. But why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

And one gets the same reaction – without exception, in my experience-if one continues by asking, “And what do I need to know about your strengths, how you perform, your values, and your proposed contribution?” In fact, knowledge workers should request this of everyone with whom they work, whether as subordinate, superior, colleague, or team member. And again, whenever this is done, the reaction is always, “Thanks for asking me. But why didn’t you ask me earlier?” Organizations are no longer built on force but on trust. The existence of trust between people does not necessarily mean that they like one another. It means that they understand one another.”

Hessenius suggests very much the same thing in the context of writing a “Users Manual” for others. He cites some suggestions made by Abby Falik, founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year,

She synthesized these answers into a six-section manual: Note: See link for her excellent user manual for ideas.

My style
What I value
What I don’t have patience for
How to best communicate with me
How to help me
What people misunderstand about me

Then he added some of his own suggestions:

Here are some variations of the above (with just a couple of ideas in each) along the same theme:

How I communicate – preferences (e.g., do you prefer direct contact, phone calls, emails, tweets, Facebook or something else)
What’s important to me in workplace relationships (e.g., do you like blunt, direct communication or do you prefer gentle tact)
What I don’t like, what I try to avoid (e.g., do you abhor people who are late, or are you flexible with timelines? Do you like ad hoc conversations or consider them a waste of your time?)
How you can help me work better……
How I can help you work better…….
Things that don’t mean much to me (e.g., is getting credit really important or is the idea itself what you are after?)
What I’m not so good at, but trying to improve (e.g., do you have a short fuse or are you calm and steady; are you detailed oriented or a big picture person?)
Bad habits that drive me crazy (e.g., does it make you crazy when people tell you they will call you in the afternoon with an answer and then don’t?)

Hessenius’ thoughts are a good update from Drucker’s original concept given the advances in technology since Drucker originally wrote “Managing Oneself.” What technologies and methods of communication people are comfortable using might be included in the manual.

Since there is a blurring line between work and personal time, someone might want to declare whether they are open to being contacted after 5 pm, on weekends and vacation periods. Likewise, organizations might declare their values are that no one is expected, overtly or tacitly, to regularly work or respond outside of regular business hours.

Indeed, since there so many options and opportunities for collaborating to reach certain goals than in the past, the necessity of creating a statement about your process and expectations may be more of a requirement than an option.

It also occurred to me that someone might be inspired to use such an “owners manual” at some point in a romantic relationship. While I honestly think it could help avoid a good deal of misunderstanding and miscommunication, when I imagine people using it, I envision Frazier and Lillith from Cheers. (I am sure there is probably a similar scene from Big Bang Theory, but you gotta love the classics)

Public Radio Has Appeal Among Its Most Truculent Detractors

by

There was a very interesting piece on Current.org last week about just how many truck drivers listen to NPR in seeming contrast to the ““business leader,” “educated lifelong learner” or any of the profiles described by National Public Media.” 

Even truckers who hate the politics and values embodied by public radio programs tend to be regular listeners. After using a disparaging term for the network, a driver who is a member of the KKK is quoted saying he can’t stop listening because it accompanies him across the country. Another says he listens for much the same reason even though he finds public radio “disturbing.” One driver said she wore out a booklet listing all the public radio stations in the US she received for pledging and wished she asked for two.

This information came to light when long haul truck driver, Finn Murphy, started talking to public radio stations about a book he wrote. Most were incredulous at the news that a large swath of truckers listen to NPR.  Some stations and programs do recognize that there are a lot of drivers among listeners, but

…the system has a blind spot, said John Sutton, general manager of WESA in Pittsburgh…When people in public radio look at research and talk to potential underwriters and foundations, Sutton said, they focus on how public radio listeners are different — how they’re well educated and more likely to volunteer and engage with the arts.

“Those things are important, but … we often blind ourselves to how similar our listeners are to the average American,” Sutton said. “There are a lot of people who listen to us who don’t have college degrees, and we just don’t focus on those people in a lot of our discussions.”

Murphy suggests that public radio stations try giving a shout out to truck drivers during pledge drives to see if they would be willing to donate. If nothing else, the acknowledgement helps build relationships and goodwill for the network of stations.

You have probably intuited the point I am working toward. Misconceptions about the demographics of existing and potential audiences are a problem shared by a wide range of arts and cultural entities. So don’t get down on yourself for doing a bad job of it because you are in good company. But it is something that needs to be done better.

Oh Sure, I Love Doing That…But That’s Not Art

by

Tyler Cowen featured a study on the Marginal Revolution blog noting that children in India couldn’t do formal math problems, but had no difficulty finding the solution when it was framed as a market transaction.

It has been widely documented that many children in India lack basic arithmetic skills, as measured by their capacity to solve subtraction and division problems. We surveyed children working in informal markets in Kolkata, West Bengal, and confirmed that most were unable to solve arithmetic problems as typically presented in school. However, we also found that they were able to perform similar operations when framed as market transactions. This discrepancy was not explained by children’s ability to memorize prices and quantities in market transactions, assistance from others at their shops, reliance on calculation aids, or reading and writing skills. In fact, many children could solve hypothetical transactions of goods that they did not sell. Our results suggest that these children have arithmetic skills that are untapped by the school system.

This somewhat paralleled the concept I have raised many times here. If you ask people if they are a visual artist, dancer, singer, actor, etc, they will say no. But if you ask about their hobbies you might find they are a woodworker, sing in the church choir, design and execute elaborate parade floats, etc.  All of which yield some artistic and creative product.

There has been an effort, in varying degrees, from the National Endowment for the Arts to Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative, to reframe what people do to help them recognize their capacity for creative expression.

The last line in the passage I cited above was what made the connection for me. Just as the children have arithmetic skills untapped by the school system, people in general can have creative ability untapped by the way creative/artistic expression is currently framed.

Solving problems on a piece of paper is difficult math. Handling a complex financial transaction which ensures a livelihood is something simple you learned when you were five.

Creating a delicate sculpture is something only real artists can do. Recreating a spindly Eiffel Tower out of lumber, chicken wire and flowers so that it is structurally sound enough to travel a windy route as a parade float is the type of exciting challenge you dive into every year.

Discussing creative expression in different frames of context can help people recognize they already participate in some manner or can help remove the intimidation factor by modifying the concept of what being creative entails.

The process of that discussion takes time which is why Creating Connection is envisioned as a long term effort. It will also take creativity to help people make those connections to their personal creativity.

Fortunately, that is one resource we don’t have a shortage of.

The Secret of Magic (And Pretty Much Everything Creative)

by

I was catching up on episodes of This American Life this weekend and came across a great piece that illuminates so many underappreciated elements of the creative process.

They speak to Teller of the duo Penn & Teller about a magic trick he worked on.  It was a re-imagining of a trick that was created in 1920s/30s so you might think the adaptation process would be relatively easy but it took him 18 months to get it to the point he was satisfied with it.

To some extent, mastering the technical aspects were easy compared to being satisfied with the framework of the trick.  Teller’s partner Penn disliked the trick, even when it eventually became part of the show but there were points in the process where he hated it. When it became part of the show, he just disliked it because it wasn’t too his taste. Still there was a point where Penn told Teller he would be fine with making it part of the show but Teller wasn’t satisfied and kept working on the presentation.

What I loved about the story is that it explored all the elements that went into the creation of the piece: How Teller would work on the trick every evening after the Vegas show and in his pajamas while on vacation. All the input Teller got from different people about how to frame the trick. What bits of psychology and storytelling are important to creating and presenting a trick.

Perhaps most significantly, despite the long,  uncomfortable series of conversations Penn and Teller had about the trick. These type of conversations have been part of a 40 year partnership.

Ira Glass

… Here are these two men, who respect each other but don’t socialize or hang out together, who have been arguing, they say, constantly and fiercely, but productively, for over 40 years, and Penn knows how much work Teller has put into this trick and how much he would enjoy performing it every night.

Penn Jillette

He’s not saying this outright, but it’s implicit. This is beautiful. This is mystifying. This is entertaining. People will love it. It’s really important to me. All those five things are true. So it’s very, very uncomfortable.

Ira Glass

Uncomfortable because Penn agrees. It’s a great trick. It totally works. He just doesn’t like it. It doesn’t feel like their show to him, this red ball that’s also a disobedient puppy….

Part of the solution that gets the trick on stage is letting the audience in on part of the secret—the trick is done with a piece of thread. This actually isn’t ground breaking given that Penn and Teller are known for telling people how tricks work. They believe this adds to the enjoyment of the trick.

Teller

If you understand the good magic trick, and I mean really understand it right down to the mechanics at the core of its psychology, the magic trick gets better, not worse.

[…]

Ira Glass

Teller gestures to the ball like he’s summoning it with his hand and it glides along the thread to him. That’s the sound you’re hearing. Now, what’s mind-bending is that David and I can actually see that he’s tilting the thread downwards and that’s why it slides towards him. We can see the ball’s on a thread. We can see how it’s done. We hear it sliding along.

David Kestenbaum

God, that’s pretty.

Ira Glass

And at the same time, it totally looks like he’s this sorcerer who enchanted this inanimate object into obeying him.

David Kestenbaum

That is so beautiful, actually, when you see the thread.

[…]

Ira Glass

He then takes the hoop and spins it around the ball in various ways, which makes it look like there can’t possibly be a thread there. But of course, we can see the thread.

David Kestenbaum

Can I say that’s crazy? That’s so convincing. Your brain really cannot sort that out.

Teller

Your brain cannot sort this out. It’s visual double-talk. It’s amazing. I’m sitting here and I’m doing it, and it’s still fooling my brain.

I felt like this provided some reaffirmation about inviting people to witness and participate in the creative process. If even the guy who knows exactly how it is done is fascinated, how much greater still is the enjoyment of the people who are allowed to witness the secret?

The secret isn’t just the technical execution of the trick. It is understanding what makes your mode of creative expression work. It is the commitment to not settling. It is acknowledging that conflict is part of productive partnerships.

I have written before about how often we just assume a great idea or skilled execution springs fully formed from the brain of geniuses whose abilities we can’t match. The truth is pretty much every creative work or idea is the either directly or indirectly the culmination of previous efforts.

As I listened to the program, I also realized that it isn’t just enough to literally or figuratively give a back stage tour in an effort to provide insight into the process. Backstage tours can be illuminating and intriguing for those who have never been, but they also tend to present a superficial perspective into what really goes on.

It is one thing to say people work together to develop elements of a performance. When you talk about the challenges Teller faced in developing a trick, how he sought to resolve them and how sometimes the solutions were perceived as worse, it provides much deeper dimension to the concept of working together to develop something.

How to do that effectively is called good storytelling. Sometimes you need someone else to help you do it. Could Penn and Teller have told that story in 20 minutes or was This American Life best suited to the task?

Here is a video of the trick by the way. You may actually enjoy it more if you listen to how it came together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZDoXUWGhtQ

Small Glint Of Hope In The Overhead Cost Conversation

by

I have to give Brad Shear of the Facebook group Non-Profit Happy Hour a significant tip of the hat for calling attention some interesting information about the non-profit starvation cycle buried in a Harvard Business Review piece about Business Management needing the influence of philosophers. I would likely not have read the piece long enough to come across the information.

Briefly, the non-profit starvation cycle is characterized by grant makers funding a program but only allowing a small portion of the money to be used for the overhead costs necessary to execute the program.

In the HBR article, authors Roger Martin and Tony Golsby Smith discuss a scenario they ran into regarding assumptions being made  about donors and foundations.

The consulting firm accepted this framing of the problem and believed that the strategic challenge was figuring out how to persuade donors to increase the percentage allocated to indirect costs. It was considered a given that donors perceived indirect costs to be a necessary evil that diverted resources away from end beneficiaries.

We got the firm’s partners to test that belief by listening to what donors said about costs rather than selling donors a story about the need to raise reimbursement rates. What the partners heard surprised them. Far from being blind to the starvation cycle, donors hated it and understood their own role in causing it. The problem was that they didn’t trust their grantees to manage indirect costs. Once the partners were liberated from their false belief, they soon came up with a wide range of process-oriented solutions that could help nonprofits build their competence at cost management and earn their donors’ confidence.

This is the first time I ever read that donors acknowledged the problem and their role in perpetuating it. That was cause for optimism.

I disliked reading that there such a level of distrust that the grantees would manage costs well. I would venture to say that insufficient funding contributed to a situation where organizational staff members were filling too many roles to properly focus on cost management. Though I don’t doubt that some organizations needed to improve practices regardless of staffing levels.

I am curious to know about what the process-oriented solutions were and if they required significantly more effort or if the solutions helped the organizations manage their costs more efficiently while roughly investing the same effort.  Probably more importantly, were the solutions indeed successful at earning a higher level of trust and funding from the donors?

 

Hoping To Not Just Change The Name, But The Smell Of The Rose As Well

by

In the last couple weeks two arts service organizations have taken the arguably long overdue step toward establishing greater parity among their members.

Last week at the Arts Midwest Conference, Ohio Arts Presenters Network (OAPN) president Robert Baird announced that the organization would be changing its name to Ohio Arts Professionals Network. While the acronym remains the same, the change was effected to acknowledge that agents, artists and other professionals were members of the organization.

Today, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) made a similar announcement that going forward they would be the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.

This isn’t the first time APAP has changed its name to reflect the composition of its membership. It started in 1957 as Association of College and University Concert Managers (ACUCM). In 1973 it changed to Association of College, University and Community Arts Administrators (ACUCAA) and became Association of Performing Arts Presenters in 1988 to acknowledge the membership wasn’t primarily based in higher education any longer. (Though I think ACUCAA, pronounced ah-koo-kah, was a lot more fun to say than APAP)

More than just superficially changing the name, APAP committed to a new program to help artists become members,

In addition to the updated name, this year the organization has introduced a pilot initiative called Artist Access, a one-year introductory membership program allowing qualified individual professional artists who have never been an organizational member of APAP, and who have never attended APAP as a full registrant, to become an APAP member and attend its annual members conference at reduced rates. More information is found at artistaccess.apap365.org.

Certainly, there is more work to be done to help everyone feel like an equal member of the respective organizations. (As with my cable company’s special pricing, I wonder where are the discount and benefits for long term loyal artists who have felt marginalized.) The format of the artist/agent/presenter interactions at the conferences often leave all involved feeling uncomfortable.

There have been efforts to change this situation. Over a decade ago, the Western Arts Alliance started experimenting with the physical layout of their conference, seeking to change the power dynamic.  Along with the name change, last week OAPN expressed their commitment to making attendance at their conference feel less confrontational by shifting the focus to a block booking format where artists, agents and presenting organizations sit down and try to set up beneficial routing arrangements that save the presenters money and get the artists working.

It will be interesting to see how these efforts develop and what new initiatives emerge to address concerns about the state of this corner of the creative and culture industry.

The Battle Against Ticket Brokers Inflating Prices Has Been Waged For Over A Century

by

I re-discovered an interesting story I had nearly forgotten about.

You may be grateful when you go around with posters for your event and businesses agree to display them for free. At one time in NYC, Broadway theaters would give merchants tickets in exchange for displaying posters. That practice contributed to a precursor of the famous TKTS booth in Times Square where one can purchase discounted tickets.

Apparently in 1894 tobacconist Joseph Leblang started taking tickets he got, as well as those he collected from other shopkeepers, and sold them at a steeply discounted rate.  While the shows may have initially been upset by him re-selling tickets he got for free, he was selling so much that the theaters began to send their surplus to him.

Today it’s known as The Broadway League, but in 1905 it was called the Producing Managers’ Association and Leblang’s relationship with them rotated between adoration and contempt. Most Broadway producers were personal friends of Leblang, but loathed his business model, which they charged lessened the value of their product. They made a number of attempts to run Leblang out of the business, but as Leblang went on to save a number of Broadway shows from closure he became an integral part of the Broadway show landscape.

Interestingly, both Leblang and the Producing Managers’ Association disliked ticket brokers because they contributed to ticket speculation which alienated audiences. It just goes to show how long the effort to stop ticket brokers from reselling tickets at sky high prices has been going on. Leblang was just beginning to see success with a plan to limit their impact when he died.

As Ken Davenport wrote in The Producer’s Perspective,

Joe took something that was handed to him, and turned it into a business. At the same time, he revolutionized an industry.

The irony is that a zillion other shop owners were given those free tickets. They all could have done the same thing. They all could have made that money . . . and more importantly . . . made that significant impact.

Opportunities are out there. You just have to keep your eyes open, and then act on them.

Is Anyone Playing With Classics Anymore?

by

Does anyone know of a show, comic book, cartoon series, etc that is injecting classic literature/music/art, etc in a similar manner that Bugs Bunny cartoons had classical music soundtracks?

Every so often someone mentions how Carl Stalling injected classical music under the Warner Brothers cartoons. Or as in the case of classics like the Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera Doc, did their own interpretations of opera.

While people mention the cartoons frequently, I don’t recall anyone asking why there isn’t anyone clever enough to do something similar today.

Some years ago, I wrote about how Donald Duck comics sell 250,000 copies a week in Germany where the Disney icon is adored far more than in the US. Donald is much more erudite in Germany. According to the Wall Street Journal, thanks to translator Ericka Fuchs who references German culture,

He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”

When I was younger, I used to read Classics Illustrated which adapted literature into comic book form. More recently, I have read manga/manhua books and seen anime based on historic events and classical literature of Japan and China. While they aren’t completely true to the source material, (nor was Bugs Bunny, after all), they are relatively popular and introduce readers and viewers to the basic people and dynamics in an engaging way. Obviously it can be done and be well received.

Other than TNT’s loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s lift, I can’t think of any current attempt in this vein, but perhaps I am nothing thinking and looking broadly enough. To clarify, I am thinking more about ongoing, long term efforts to use content rather than attempts to revive and/or reinterpret a single piece of content on Broadway or in a movie.

Do Differences Still Impede Collective Action?

by

I am off at the Arts Midwest conference this week, but as always have prepared some entries to cover my absence.

I thought it would be appropriate to revisit part of a report that was issued after the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention.  (I took a more extensive look at the report back in 2009. Some of the discussions are dated with the passage of time.)

The convention was attended by representatives of theatre, dance, choral and instrumental music disciplines, including those respective service organizations.  In assessing the opportunities for cross-disciplinary collective action, the report found that differences in language and culture were potential impediments.

Nearly 10 years later, I wonder if people still feel this is the case or have things developed to the point that the different disciplines can join in a more united front.

Were these really significant impediments to action at all and the will is simply lacking?

…our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals).

Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

[….]

Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “Being an executive director is an incredibly lonely job because you’re the only person in your community who has this set of challenges. You build your network. I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”

Insight Into Creating Public Art Works

by

Last week Americans for the Arts had a blog salon covering lessons learned from public art projects. As a person who is always interested in the process people went through to execute their project, I read many of the entries with great interest.

Two stood out for me. The first was Jessica Witte’s discussion of how she got people involved with the creation of an intricate 400 foot long seed drawing near the St. Louis Arch. She gave examples of how previous works lead to the project and then how she executed the project.

I appreciated that she mentioned the different considerations that went into the project. Things like chalking out the design the night before are pretty obvious but she also discusses how she made sure there was water, picnic tables and food trucks available to encourage people to linger and explore.

She also reached out to non-profits whose mission aligned with the project early in the planning stage which she noted will constitute a network of advisors and assistance for future projects.

She hired Art Ambassadors to help her welcome people, explain the project and encourage them to join in. Part of this effort also involved crowdsourcing the documentation of the project.

Throughout, she reflects on how she would improve the project for the next time.  I appreciated all the detail as a resource of things to consider if doing a similar type project.

 

The other entry I liked was Daily Tour les jours’ post about how they prototyped the Musical Shadows installation in Mesa, AZ. I may have posted on the project before, but I can’t find the entry. Here is a video of the final result:

Again, for me learning about the process was interesting. I would never have imagined that an early stage involved placing post it notes on the ground of a concrete plaza in order to get some initial feedback about the concept from people.

There is a short video of them using a piece of paper on the end of a cordless drill to help make a shadow over their sensors. That apparently helped them determine “the spacing of the sensors would have a large impact on the interaction, and forced us to begin considering different sensor layouts”.

Then there was field testing of various types including getting feedback from people about what sounds worked best. In total, they list eight different prototypes before delivery.

This entry made me appreciate just how much work goes into projects like this. Embedded in that are lessons about failure and revision that are valuable to remember.

I hope you will explore the entries a bit more and even take a look at the whole salon since there is likely something in there that will impress you in ways that didn’t strike me.

Do We Underestimate The Power Of “Wow, I Didn’t Know You Were So Talented”?

by

I had mentioned before that I will be presenting part of a pre-conference professional development session at the Arts Midwest Conference next week. I was going to make a shameless plug for people to sign up, but I see it is sold out (woo hoo!…oh wait, also increased pressure!)

The session deals with Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection/Building Public Will For Art and Culture program that I frequently discuss.

One of the central tenets of the program is helping people recognize their capacity for creativity.

As I was developing the content for my contribution, it occurred to me that one things we lose by having less art in K-12 schools is the affirmation and validation of one’s capacity to be creative. Basically, the experience of having someone walk up and say some permutation of, “Wow, I didn’t know you were so talented.”

It seems like a simple thing to stick your kid’s art up on the refrigerator, but the effect is likely cumulative. And when the opportunities for creativity stop, so does the reinforcement.

Obviously, not everyone is going to reveal a great talent or have an inclination to apply themselves.  I suspect that when art instruction, and more importantly, active creative expression, is a regular part of a child’s education rather than intermittent, the child grows to take their basic creative capacity as much for granted as they do their basic mathematic and reading ability.

This may seem blatantly obvious but I remember a time when I mentally conceded that if kids at least got exposure to the arts in school, that was acceptable.  Even that is disappearing now. Now I realize a compromise of that nature gives up development opportunities that can never be regained.

Being Smart About Lawyer-Board Members

by

Non-Profit Business Advisor recently published a piece to make non-profit organizations aware of the potential problems related to having a lawyer serve on the board. Back in 2016 I provided similar information on ArtsHacker.  I wanted to revisit the topic due to how easy it is for both the lawyer/board member and the rest of the organization to misunderstand the role the lawyer is fulfilling

The general aim of both pieces was to emphasize the need to distinguish the context in which advice and comments are being made.

Some of the questions both raise are:

When the lawyer board member makes a comment, is it a legal opinion or personal opinion? Are people according the member’s personal opinion more deference due to their profession?

When they provide their professional opinion, could it be clouded by the fact they earlier advocated or voted for a related course of action?

Is a conversation covered by attorney-client privilege?

Loss of Attorney-Client Privilege. Are you communications with the rest of the board protected by the attorney-client privilege? If it’s clear that the communications are to be attorney-client communications, they should be protected by the privilege. However, such protection may be lost if it’s not clear that you are communicating only as a lawyer or if the communication is recorded in minutes to which other persons have access.

If a lawyer represents a statement as professional advice, do they actually have the specialized knowledge and experience to offer that advice?

Actually, as I notice the strong similarities between my ArtsHacker post and the recent Non-Profit Business Advisor article, I realize that both were drawn from lawyers at the same law firm so either of the links here represent a good resource for exploring the nuances of this topic more carefully.

RARRRRR!! Express Your Creativity And Smite Your Inner Demons!

by

My admiration of Zenpencils artist Gavin Aung Than continues to grow with his illustration of Berne Brown’s thoughts on personal creativity. Below are screenshots of the first few panels as an inducement to visit his page rather than passing over my text link to the page. Clicking on the images will take you to his site.

Interestingly, he had originally made a comment dismissing the current trend of coloring books for adults as an outlet for expressing creativity. People took exception to his remark. He subsequently apologized and offered high resolution versions of his art for people to color.

When Kissing Feels As Safe As Being Stabbed

by

From the “why hasn’t this existed before” file is an article about staging intimacy with the same care employed with fight choreography.

The fact I came across this mention on economist Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog rather than a performing arts industry aligned publication somewhat compounded my curiosity about the lack of conversation the topic.

The article in the Louisville Eccentric Observer discusses the need for clear rules when employing any type of intimacy onstage. Whether it is a kiss, nudity, simulated consensual intercourse or staging emotionally and physically intense depictions of sexual violence, abuse and unwelcomed physical contact, performers shouldn’t be left on their own to negotiate the interaction.

Those interviewed discuss the need to have someone act as third party providing an element of control and clarity for each situation. In some cases, they take a page from fight choreography practice and place the recipient of an action in control. (For those who aren’t familiar, in situations where a person is grappled, thrown, choked, pulled around by their hair, the person being attacked rather than the attacker is generally in control.)

Even if you could be guaranteed that everyone would be well behaved and well intention and no one would take advantage of the opportunity afforded by the way a show is staged to take liberties for their own gratification, being asked to engage in an unfamiliar action with an unfamiliar person is difficult for people.

Having someone who works toward assuring a environment of safety and comfort for all parties when it comes to intimate acts just as they do with stage combat seems like it should have been a standard practice for years. Reading the article I wouldn’t doubt that many groups may already approach these interactions with the same care they would have approached fight choreography and never thought they were doing anything special.

I do want to suggest a different term for the role be created. I have a sense that being asked to work with the “Intimacy Director” might make people as uncomfortable as being told to just improvise the scene because the director didn’t have any ideas about how it should be staged.

The article suggests that while every theater company may not have the means to hire an intimacy director, they can use existing guidelines to make things safer and more comfortable.

Among those guidelines and suggestions are the following:

They are practitioners who use concrete guidelines and techniques, such as the “four pillars” of intimacy direction, according to Alicia Rodis, a member of Intimacy Directors International.

Consent: Get the performers’ permission — including concrete boundaries and out of bounds body parts, and do it before you start.

Communication: Keep talking throughout the process. What’s working, what’s not, who’s touching who and how and do they feel safe.

Choreography: Performers wouldn’t spontaneously add an extra pirouette to a dance number or an extra kick to a fight scene. Don’t add an ass grab or extra kissing.

Context: Just because you kiss someone in one scene doesn’t mean you can kiss them in another scene without communicating about adjusting the choreography and seeking consent to do so. Just because someone is topless with you on stage, it doesn’t mean they won’t mind being topless around you offstage, or in another scene onstage.

Being Heard Is Not Necessarily Being Acknowledged

by

There is often mention that if the performing arts want to be relevant, audiences need to see themselves and their stories on stage. More and more frequently I am hearing about projects like the one in Reading, PA Margy Waller wrote about last month.

A number of artists and arts groups worked together to create a transmedia production called “This Is Reading,” that allowed the residents of the city to talk about and depict their experiences in the community.

One of the collaborating groups, The Civilians, went to other cities around the country and videotaped interviews with residents about their best and worst memories as part of a virtual dialogue with the residents of Reading, PA.

The various elements of performance, projection and interactions were staged in a community event involving food trucks and special lighting.

According to Margy Waller, the producers went to great pains to ensure participation by a wide spectrum of the community,

“The producers made sure that residents got tickets, delivering them in person to people they were afraid might not learn of the show through traditional marketing. All of the tickets were free. When the first two weekends of six shows sold out quickly, they extended the show for a third weekend.”

As I read Waller’s post and explored some of the other links and videos about this event, I recalled assertions that the last Presidential election resulted as it did because people didn’t feel like they were being heard. I wondered if events like the one in Reading might provide the sense of being heard, even if the relevant political leaders didn’t attend.

It is theoretically easier to make oneself heard to a wider group of people than ever before thanks to the Internet and social media. I suspect that this method of expression doesn’t provide the confidence that what one has said has been sincerely acknowledged in a way that existed 25-30 years ago when the effective reach of a statement was much more limited.

Even as people are increasingly able to experience creative expression without leaving the comfort of their homes, perhaps the value that local arts and cultural organizations can offer is the sense that people are being heard and what they say has value. The quality of experience when others are present to witness your story depicted in a performance, visual representation, broadcast or projection is entirely different from having your story appear on an online forum for 100,000 anonymous eyes.

How Quickly Things Progress

by

If you want some evidence about how quickly new technologies and methods of doing business are having an impact on our lives, check this out:

In May 2009 I wrote about the potential legal consequences of posting solicitations for project investors online.  It just so happens that Kickstarter was founded a month before, April 2009, but it hadn’t really started to have a noticeable presence.

October 2011 I started writing about legislation and rule changes starting to take place that would remove many of the previous limits that limited giving to Kickstarter type campaigns to donation status rather than allowing investment with an expectation of return.

By December 2011, people were talking about this as a potential funding model for productions with Off-Broadway show or smaller budgets.  A short time later, people were writing that some of the limitations may not be conducive to those type of project.

I am not sure where things stand at this time. I know the laws have continued to evolve. In 2015 Broadway producer Ken Davenport wrote about how recent regulation changes would have made the crowdfunding effort he engaged in for 2012 Broadway production of Godspell a lot easier. At the time he claimed, “Yep, my friends, for-profit crowdfunding is here.”

This might be a funding model people would want to look into for future projects.

While it didn’t seem like it unfolded that quickly at the time, looking back I am surprised as how quickly things transitioned from the founding of a crowdfunding platform to the establishment of a critical mass that made authorization of new avenues of investment important. (Though granted, anything that facilitates the flow of money for investment is going to be prioritized in the US)

 

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say, We Don’t Want To Hear It

by

A long time complaint about arts coverage in newspapers has been that the writers seldom get it right. They don’t present the full story or employ fair criteria.

Of course, more recently the complaint has been that newspapers have completely eliminated their staff providing arts coverage.

Back in 2009, I wrote about an exchange between the communications director for the Guthrie Theatre and a writer for the Minnesota Star Tribute.

The former accused the newspaper of not engaging in substantive journalism about real stories and the latter accused the Guthrie of only participating in stories they liked and shutting down in the face of potential criticism. The incident was so noteworthy that even though the link to the communication director’s original letter no longer works, Minnesota Playlist reprinted it as part of a retrospective in 2014.

Even though arts organizations may not get arts coverage from local media the way they once did, I think the real value of my original post is in the discussion of transparency that arts organizations exhibit when sharing information about themselves in any forum.

Looking Back At Some Of My Favs

by

Back in the day, Drew McManus ran an annual series on Adaptistration during the month of April which he christened,  Take A Friend To The Orchestra month. I found an old post which recounted some of my favorite entries which provide some great insight into the way different people experience attending the orchestra.

One post I linked to but didn’t quote was composer Alex Shapiro’s. As I re-read some of the entries I cited, I wanted to call attention to some of what she said.

If this orchestral thing is so enjoyable, why the heck do we need to fortify, inform, pre-warn, pre-inform and generally pre-experience it for someone? Is it actually that scary? That risky? Will body armor be necessary? Are we supposed to treat a new listener like a piece of food and soak her in a rich marinade of background information in order to ready her for the searing flame of the auditorium seats? Ouch!

As with all live concerts in any genre- chamber, jazz, rock, reggae- symphonic music washes over us as a sensual experience. If we insist on viewing it as difficult and challenging (perhaps because that automatically makes those of us who like it look awfully darn smart), we’re missing the point. And equally sadly, we’re sending a message that it’s an awful lot of work to listen to music. With an implication like that, people just might stay home, or opt to do something with their money that they perceive as a more obviously enjoyable experience. Hmmm. Sound familiar?

Later she talks about the way the L.A. Phil was advertising concerts. While this was in 2006 and the L.A. Phil has probably made changes to their promotional style, I am pretty sure there are still groups that employ the methods about which she complains:

One day last year as I was driving, a radio ad for the L.A. Phil came on. A haughty-sounding middle-aged white woman was cooing an oily, British-inflected voiceover into a high-end microphone, telling listeners just how marvelous the upcoming season was and that we won’t want to miss the “divine splendor and magnificence” (or some such combo of adjectives) of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

I was livid. This was “my” wonderful orchestra that was trying to get backsides into the seats, but this truly obnoxious ad “reached out” to only a very small and specialized segment of our population. How was this elitist presentation supposed to build audiences for the future? I love hearing the Phil at Disney Hall, but that radio spot even made me want to stay away, thinking, “gee, I guess this isn’t for regular folks.” These are the kinds of approaches that must be reconsidered, if the great tradition of the symphony orchestra is to continue. It has to do with the attitude we wear- not the clothes.

I know you have heard these sentiments about promotional efforts made before, but it is always good to be reminded. Especially because we don’t often hear “insiders” empathizing with the negative impression audiences might have of the way arts organizations talk about themselves.

Any way, I hope you will check out some of my suggested posts. They are a good mix of humor and insight about the experience of concert attendance.

Shredding Perceptual Barriers

by

From the “Stuff We Didn’t Know We Wanted” file, a few years back I wrote about the idea of using a mobile shredder to help lower perceptual barriers with your community. At the time I had seen sign inviting people to “engage in some Spring cleaning and bring their sensitive documents to be shredded. While there people can participate in a potluck/streetfair type event.”

I totally forgot about that, but you can bet before I started writing this entry I added it to my running list of ideas so I wouldn’t forget it again.

As I had written in my post,

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

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

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

Though as I noted, even with this approach it still may take people showing up five years in a row before they feel comfortable participating in your regular activities.

What’s Art Good For Thought of the Day

by

A few years back I wrote a post that included the following quote from Fractured Atlas’ Adam Huttler.

No need to read my original post, I just offer this as a thought of the day that hasn’t lost its validity. (my emphasis)

I’m always skeptical of arts advocacy arguments that emphasize the importance of arts as a hobby in support of other (presumably more serious or important) endeavors. You know, like when people claim arts education is important because it helps kids do better at math. That’s great and all, but what’s wrong with the fact that it helps kids do better at art? Why isn’t that enough? Even setting aside the intrinsic value of the arts, the direct benefits to society from arts and culture activities are well documented (economic development, urban renewal, etc.) We shouldn’t have to justify our existence on the idea that, by supporting and practicing the arts, some totally unrelated but positive thing might happen by accident.

A Manufactured Rival Might Be Better For You Than An Actual Rival

by

I am taking some time off to spend with family so I am plumbing into the archives again for a bit.

A few years back, I wrote about a company that didn’t feel they had enough competitors to force them to be innovative so they invented one.

Nothing consolidates a team and brushes away internal squabbles like the threat of a common enemy. Because ePrize’s next largest competitor is too small to raise their blood temperature, the company created Slither Corp.

By asking its employees what they think their counterpart at Slither would do differently, Linker says ePrize “creates a fun, safe opening for continual discussion about what the company could do better.”

Ask yourself these three questions to see if a threat can unblock your business’ innovations.

Who or what is our worst enemy?
What is our enemy doing that we can do better?
Can we create an enemy to spark new ideas?

Since most arts organizations probably feel they have no lack of competition, I had suggested using a fictitious enemy to remove some of the emotional associations which might get in the way of objectively addressing issues the organization may face.

It can be difficult to get motivated to do better if you perceive that the other organizations in town get all the grants, have the more affluent donors, get more recognition, get the benefit of the doubt when they make missteps, etc.  It is easy to make excuses why you will never succeed if you are focused on how great other people are rather than your own successes and capabilities.

The suggestion I made back then is worth considering.  Essentially, competing against the pretend rival you inflate in your mind might be more constructive than competing against the actual rival who you have inflated in your mind.

By creating an imaginary enemy, you can concentrate on responding to events without the emotional subtext lurking beneath the conversations. Yes, there are plenty of groups out there eating your lunch, but your biggest problem is The House of Extraordinary Matinee idols. (THEM) Your fictional enemy, THEM, noting the trend of sold out shows has decided to program seasons of 100% musicals. How do you position your next season in relation to this imagined challenge?

The fictional enemy doesn’t have to be a proxy for an actual rival in the community, it just has to present a credible challenge to your organization in order to spur innovation and creative thinking.

See Me (And Other Cool People) Talk About Building Public Will For Arts and Culture

by

I have been writing enthusiastically about Creating Connection (a.k.a building public will for arts and culture) for so long, the folks at Arts Midwest have asked if I would speak enthusiastically about the topic.

On August 28 I will be joining Arts Midwest CEO/President, David Fraher, and Arts Midwest Program Director, Anne Romens,  to present the in-depth seminar, Messages that Matter: Tapping into What Audiences Value.

The session is being held just prior to the Arts Midwest conference in Columbus, OH, but you don’t need to be registered for the conference to participate. If you are going to be in the area, I would love to meet you.

As an added bonus, I will be bringing at least one of the members of the Creative Cult that I have written about who will talk about their founding philosophy and the work they are doing.

Hope to see you there.

Here is the session description:

What core values inspire your potential audience to participate in arts, culture, and creativity, and which messages should you use to connect people to your programs?

This in-depth seminar will share the data-driven strategies coming out of Creating Connection that can help strengthen the power of your communications, programming, and outreach. Arts Midwest leaders will discuss a growing body of research around the intersection of creativity and public values, and offer tangible messaging strategies, tools, and real-time examples aimed at helping you attract and retain audiences and connect more deeply with your communities.

Work in tandem with your artistic, marketing, and support staff during this session, and be prepared for hands-on learning that you can take back to your organization to start exploring how your offerings—no matter whether you’re a presenter or an artist or manager—can tap in to the values and motivations of diverse stakeholders.

Enough With Problems This Week. One Suggested Solution

by

Back in June, The Stage had an article about the dire need for changes in the theatre industry in the UK. The article summarized a report that mentioned a lot of familiar issues: low pay, overwork, dependence on unpaid interns, lack of staff from low income and minority backgrounds, and closed recruitment practices. I recently finished reading the report which expounds upon these issues.

However, since I have spent the week talking about inequities in the arts, I didn’t want to continue the week highlighting more problems. Instead, I wanted offer some encouragement and solution to some of these issues by drawing attention to a piece written by Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director of the California Symphony.

If you are an ArtsHacker reader, you might remember Aubrey was cited as one of the Most Creative People In Arts Administration for her leadership of the California Symphony.

Back in May, Aubrey wrote about how the symphony decided to invest in talent development for the staff.  She acknowledges it isn’t necessarily an inexpensive undertaking and offers tips to leverage conference and training opportunities to their fullest.  Part of that process seems to include the mandate that as a staff member, your purpose in going is to learn and when you return you need to share that information as well as a plan of action for implementation.

What’s not acceptable at the California Symphony is to attend a conference/seminar/workshop and feel inspired and warm and fuzzy for about a week. I want action from the investment, so employees are required to report back at a future staff meeting what they learned, their key takeaways, and what they plan to implement in their work here based on all that….

1. This holds everyone accountable, so their performance can be evaluated against the goals and ideas they set for themselves.
2. They’ve just passed on the inspiration, ideas, and takeaways from conference in a personal way to the rest of the staff. #win

Aubrey attributes their growth in revenue over the last few years to the benefits of investing in talent development.

She suggests new hire boot camps for everyone.  The California Symphony uses this orient people to their audience development plan and intends to expand it to a messaging overview.

(i.e. brand personality, how we talk about ourselves, key words or messages to use in our public communications…because every single role is public-facing to some degree, not just the marketing personnel).

She also talks about providing staff with a professional development stipend they can use at their discretion and advocates for mentoring.

What she proposes won’t solve all the problems outlined in report featured in The Stage, but these steps can significantly change the general tenor of the work environment in a positive direction.

Consider: Underserved Reflects Funding, Not Number Of Orgs Serving Community

by

Hat tip to Artsjournal for linking to an American Theatre article about the inequities in arts funding citing a Helicon Collaborative study which found “..58 percent of arts funding goes to 2 percent of big-budget arts organizations.”

Those of us who have worked for smaller arts organizations are probably familiar with the sting of seeing the dominant large arts organizations in the community consistently garner a large portion of funding.  The opening of the American Theatre piece relates a particularly sharp sting adding insult to injury for an organization which saw another group get funding to present the programming they specialized in.

….St. Paul’s much bigger Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, which received $86,039 to present Notes From Asia, “a series of performances, films, conversations, and an exhibit that will highlight arts and culture of Eastern Asian communities for East Asian, Asian American, and broader audiences.”

Reyes felt this as a blow, since that description isn’t far off from the kind of programming Mu does. Why give the grant to a larger, non-culturally specific theatre? Said Reyes, “There are these assumptions that they can do this culturally specific programming because they’re the Ordway, and we somehow don’t have that capacity to work with a community that we have been working with for 25 years.”

The statistics cited from the study that were most unexpected were the large number of organizations serving communities of color:

More specifically, the study found that organizations focused on communities of color make up 25 percent of all arts nonprofits but receive just 4 percent of all foundation giving.

The study notes that these funding disparities are out of sync with a nation in which 37 percent of the population are people of color and 50 percent are low-income.

I think the common idea of many conversations is that there are no organizations doing work that resonates with communities of color so it falls upon more mainstream arts orgs to provide the programming.

That 25% is out of 41,000 organizations by the way. That is a lot more than I would have guessed. I would suspect that they don’t have large budgets or capacity, but that doesn’t disqualify them for support.

In fact, wonder if the term “underserved community” isn’t more a reflection of funding directed to a community than number of extant entities providing services.

As I was reading about these particular stats, I remembered Ronia Holmes’ post “Your organization sucks at “community” and let me tell you why“, that I wrote about last Fall.

Disinvested communities are not devoid of arts and culture. In America particularly, communities who historically have been excluded from the table have responded by building their own tables, using whatever resources could be scraped together. Marginalized communities have established organizations that don’t treat them or their cultural output as deviations from the norm to be celebrated for diversity, but as fundamental components of society. The organizations they created, and continue to create, are replete with artists, leaders, decision-makers, and workers who look like and are part of the community they serve, who share similar lived experiences, and have a deep understanding of what programming will truly resonate.

I encourage you to read Holmes’ full piece because I think she is quite incisive on the matter- critical of current practice, but sympathetic about what motivates that practice.

When I originally read Holmes’ essay, I didn’t imagine that there were as many organizations out there as the Helicon Collaborative says there are. My first impulse is to advocate for greater funding to help them gain greater visibility and potentially have greater impact in their communities.

However, I am also mindful of what Holmes wrote about larger established arts organizations making overtures to welcome disinvested communities:

“And they fail to hear this critical question: “Why should we abandon our own table for a small chair at yours?””

Enabling the underfunded 25% to achieve greater impact and visibility is all good, it just can’t come with expectations that they abandon or reconstitute the tables they have constructed for themselves.

I don’t necessarily want to see places like the Ordway lose funding. Except that it seems non-profit funding is often a zero sum game. I have heard people of color speak enthusiastically about the Ordway’s programming and partnering with their communities.

If you think about it though, if more mainstream arts and culture organizations are given funding to break down barriers with underserved communities that don’t frequent their programs, shouldn’t the organizations that have developed in those communities considered underserved be provided reciprocal funding to break down barriers with audiences that frequent mainstream arts and cultural organizations?

Unexpected Development In Student Debt

by

There was a warning shot across the bows of university/conservatory arts training programs whose graduates have debt out of proportion with their earning potential in the Chicago Tribune last week. Harvard University is suspending graduate admissions for their theatre program for three years after receiving a failing grade from the Department of Education.

Simply put, the federal policy looks at the debts-to-earnings ratios of career-training programs (and, yes, the arts are a career) in an attempt to discern whether the programs provide students reasonable returns on their investment in tuition. The 2015 regulations hold that the average student’s debt from the program should not exceed 20 percent of their discretionary income or 8 percent of their total income. If that is not the case, then the program could lose access to federal student loans.

[…]

Which brings us back to Harvard and… the A.R.T. Institute, …. The Institute has been facing two big problems.

The first is that the median debt rate for students of the two-year program, which enrolls about 23 people a year, is a whopping $78,000 and the typical post-graduation income of those students is miserably low when compared with that debt: just $36,000 a year. If you’re trying to make it in New York City, or even in Boston or Chicago, $36K per annum sure does not allow a lot of cushion for debt repayment.

Such are the entry-level salaries in the arts, which long have been subsidized by those who work therein, especially those in the kinds of jobs you can expect straight out of graduate school.

Tribune reporter Chris Jones goes on to suggest that arts training programs should be held to similar standards as trade schools rather than claiming an exception,

“…based on the mostly spurious argument that students are pursuing their creative dreams, know the cruel realities of the profession and thus have some awareness of the financial risks and the inequality of its rewards — some people, obviously, make a whole lot.

In many cases, these students are going into debt to acquire credentials and, yet more importantly, a network to aid them in a profession that, to its detriment, is growing ever-more nepotistic and lazily elitist, especially when it comes to its dominance by a few well-known training programs.”

That last sentence about the industry being partially to blame for using the imprimatur of a brand name as a shortcut for hiring decisions evokes the recent conversations about arts careers only being accessible to people with the means to take on debt and support themselves during unpaid internships.

Well, actually Jones goes on to explicitly talk about that, no extrapolation of concepts required.

But who wants the arts dominated by debt-free elites?

[…]

…If these programs cannot be made more affordable and accessible without the promotion of onerous indebtedness, then more attention must be paid by the culture industry to those programs that can.

Many fine public universities offer excellent arts education, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The issue that needs fixing is whether such programs can open an equivalent number of doors.

The ultimate question of course is, will people start to make the effort to seek out talent elsewhere or will the status quo remain?  I don’t really want to wish complications upon anyone, but I wonder if the issues Harvard faced might crop up with other schools and that will provide greater incentive and necessity for arts and media companies to look elsewhere when hiring.

Good Basic Advice At Any Career Stage

by

Juilliard Professor Benjamin Sosland shared some advice he gives his students as they think about developing their careers. Some of the advice is pretty common across most career advice articles, but there were a number of suggestions I hadn’t seen very often and wanted to share.

(I would share a fair bit more but MusicalAmerica seems to take pains to inhibit easily excerpting from articles on their site.)

• Are you meeting people who can offer guidance and a helping hand? (Networking is not a dirty word. Really)

[..]

• Do you maintain a mailing list and is your website and use of social media reaching the audience you hope to attract?
• Is there a self-generated artistic project that you have always dreamed of realizing?
• Have you gained the necessary financial literacy to plan and advocate for such a project? (A good budget is based on research, not wishful thinking.)
• Do you write thank you notes to anyone and everyone who ever offers even the slightest bit of assistance? (Not to get all Emily Post or anything but, wow, is this ever a powerful tool.)
• Have you developed a vocabulary to be a convincing advocate for your art? (Here is a good exercise. Defend this sentence: The arts are important.)
• Do you have role models whose careers you admire and do you know the story of their journey? Case studies on successful people are fascinating. (Hint: there is no such ting as a self-made man or woman.)

I don’t believe I have mentioned the self-generated artistic project too much here on the blog, but I bring the topic up with students with a fair bit of frequency. I just had such a conversation about two weeks ago.  Sosland’s follow up point about financial literacy to plan and advocate for the project is one of my motivations for such conversations. Of course, I often talk about the need to develop these skills regardless of the method.

Some of these suggestions are good regardless of the stage you are in your career. As much as I write on the topic, I don’t feel I am as adept as I should be when it comes to speaking extemporaneously as an advocate for the arts.

If you have read my blog for any length of time, you will know I heartily support that last suggestion about examining the career journeys of people you admire. I am a big proponent of breaking the illusion that success and talent are exclusive blessings from the heavens rather than the result of a long term (often unexamined) process and effort.

Finally, the thank you note suggestion I could definitely do a much better job at. Despite my mother inculcating the practice in my siblings and myself, my sisters are much better at the follow through than am I.

For- & Non-Profit Difference Is In Relations, Not Good Intentions

by

Last month, Non-Profit Quarterly reprinted a piece by Paul Hogan that explored the basic differences between for- and non-profit organizations that are not clearly understood and often lead to the “should be run like a business” statements.

Hogan says that companies that focus on the well-being of their employees and are dedicated to stewardship of the environment and other causes still have more in common with other for-profits than non-profits, despite their worthy intentions.

Higher fixed costs lead to lower net profits. But consider that in this way, the profits aren’t lost at all: They are simply allocated differently, to the greater benefit of employees or the community in which the business operates. Regardless, the for-profit enterprise still is fundamentally extractive, transactional, and profit-driven.

In comparison,

Nonprofit enterprises, on the other hand, are relational and restorative, or generative. The basis of activity in the nonprofit enterprise is personal and interactive, and seeks to restore or help generate whatever people need to improve their lives, or the life of the community in which they live.

[…]

It could be argued that even this exchange is transactional, no different from a for-profit interaction. But there is a critical difference: The person to whom the service is being provided is not usually the source of the payment for the service. I don’t pay my doctor or my dentist or my phlebotomist. Someone else does, and generally, I have no idea what amount is actually paid. So, the nonprofit person-to-person interaction is not zero-sum or about money or profit at all; it’s about the relationship that is established. And it is this disconnect of the cost of service from the third-party reimbursement for that service that destabilizes the nonprofit sector in ways that the for-profit sector does not deal with or need to understand.

And specifically in relation to the arts:

This isn’t restricted to healthcare or human services, either. The amount you pay for a ticket to many of the arts organizations you attend is subsidized, sometimes heavily, by outside public or private funders. If most arts organizations had to charge the full amount they needed in order to operate, most of us wouldn’t be able to afford to attend. That’s important because the health of people and communities depends as much on arts and culture as it does on all other nonprofit work, and arts must be as accessible as healthcare and education.

I apologize for the long series of quotes from the article, but I wanted to highlight his logic in contrasting for- and non-profit businesses and how he related insurance payments with fundraising.

I was especially interested in the way he compared insurance payments by a third party with third party funding of the arts (or any non-profit org). The idea that you need insurance because you might not otherwise be able to pay a medical bill is widely understood. That context provides a smoother segue to discussing why most of those non-profits serve couldn’t afford access to the services provided without a third party subsidizing their operations.

Of course, health insurance and healthcare costs being a hot button issue, you have to quickly insert assurances that there pretty much aren’t any heavily inflated costs related to the work you are doing.

Ever Think About How Many Staff You Need Per Attendee?

by

Last week the National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) released some interesting data about the ratio between the number of full time employees at arts organizations and the audiences/visitors they serve.

An average of 3,547 people attend for each full-time employee. That is the relationship between an overall average of 38,741 attendees and 11 full-time staff members annually.

Finding that attendance at many organizations has either decreased or is flat, but number of staff has grown NCAR says,

This means that organizational capacity expanded at a slightly faster rate than growth in the number of people served. This does not mean that staffs became bloated. Instead, modest staff expansion can mean that an organization realizes it has maxed out its current staff’s capacity to provide high quality offerings and services, and the ability to attract more future audience members depends on making initial investments in people.

They break down the data by sector, organization size and market size.

Every Answer Raised More Questions

The part that really interested me and left me wanting to know more detail was in the Ecosystem Highlights section where they talk about “What Drives In-person Attendance?” (their emphasis)

• In-person attendance varies by sector and increases with organizational age, square footage, budget size, the number of programmatic offerings, the amount spent directly on programs (emphasizing the importance of findings related to the Investment in Program Index), targeting kids or Asian-Americans, and having higher levels of local funding.
• Attendance tends to be lower when organizations receive higher levels of support from state or federal agencies, when their lowest ticket prices is not terribly low (representing the importance of an accessible price point), if they produce proportionally more world premieres, or if they target young adults, African-Americans or Hispanics/Latino

Bearing in mind that correlation doesn’t equal causation, I really wanted to know more about the relationship of attendance increasing when programming targeted Asian-Americans or when there was higher levels of local funding.

Does the fact that attendance is lower when there is higher levels of support from state and federal agencies have any significance? Does that say something about the value of NEA funding? Are there restrictions on federal and state support that don’t exist with local funding that leads organizations to program and promote in ways that don’t connect with the local community?

This could be the case since NCAR found,

The number of world and national premieres increased contributions from trustees and other individual donors but decreased government contributions and program and earned revenue.

and

Government Grant Activity has a positive effect on fulltime employees, program expenses and total expenses but a negative effect on the number of offerings and direct marketing expenses.

So maybe federal funders aren’t really supporting the new work, broader programming and marketing that is needed to engage larger audiences.

I started to assume local funding meant high giving from individual donors until I read (my emphasis),

Physical attendance is lower in communities where the total population is larger, there is a higher percentage of children in the community, and the community’s overall level of philanthropy is high.

So I guess higher levels of local funding associated with higher attendance must be either local foundations or government?  Except, apparently federal funding is helpful except when it comes to securing money from foundations:

The receipt of an NEA or IMLS grants had a positive effect on nearly all outcomes except foundation funding, which was lower for federal grant recipients.

Some Surprises About Demographics Orgs Want

Why is attendance lower for young adults, African-Americans and Hispanics/Latinos? Is it something about those segments or are arts and cultural organizations as a general group doing things that don’t resonate well with those groups but do resonate with kids and Asian-Americans? (Keeping in mind we aren’t necessarily talking about the same organizations doing well with the latter groups but not the former.)

There seems to be an inverse relationship on these same factors when it comes to Full Time Employees.

• Organizations that target people under 25 years old or Hispanics/Latinos, and those awarded NEA or IMLS grants tend to have more full-time employees.
• The number of full-time employees tends to be lower for organizations that present higher levels of local and world premieres and for those who target Asian-Americans.

I wondered if organizations that targeted young adults and Hispanic/Latinos also got more federal grants. Since young adults and Hispanic/Latino audiences are often mentioned as groups arts organizations aspire to attract, this might mean these efforts are targeted to receive more federal funding. There is a suggestion this might be the case:

And Government Grant Activity has no effect on program or earned revenue and a negative effect on physical attendance and engagement; this negative effect may reflect government support for arts and culture organizations that are initiating outreach efforts targeting traditionally underserved populations.

Is there an implication of racism/classism in the suggestion that government grants have a negative effect on physical attendance because the grants support targeting underserved populations?

Knowing that organizations that target Asian-Americans have smaller staffs and that organizations that target Asian-Americans have higher attendance, does that mean Asian-Americans are easier to attract? Or are these statistics just a result of there being only a few small organizations specifically targeting Asian-Americans and they are doing a good job with that demographic segment?

Among the interesting pattern NCAR noted in regard to organizations focused on serving minority populations:

Organizations that target African-Americans attract higher levels of contributed funds but tend to have a smaller footprint, with fewer offerings and lower marketing and development expenses and lower program revenue, attendance, and engagement.

Organizations that target Hispanics/Latinos have higher contributed revenue, program salaries, development expenses, and total offerings but lower marketing expenses, and program and earned revenue.

Other Notes Of Interest

Some other interesting observations that don’t necessarily fit with the aforementioned topics:

Youth Orgs Have It Great Until The Kids Grow Up

And organizations targeting children have lower marketing expenses that yield higher attendance, engagement and program and earned revenue, and higher development expenses that yield lower unrestricted and total contributions. This puzzling finding seems to suggest that parent-contributors have a short-term focus on immediate benefits for their children without necessarily supporting the long-term financial health of the organization.

A Vibrant Arts Community Is Great, Except For Attendance

Total Arts Dollars in the community is positively related with nearly every performance outcome, with physical attendance being a prominent exception; this negative relationship likely reflects the presence of many small arts organizations in a thriving arts and culture community competing for audiences.

The Number of Arts Providers in the community positively impacts program and total expenses and contributions from every source except foundations; there is no effect on program and earned revenue and the impact on attendance and engagement is negative, again suggesting competition for audiences.

A Wealthy Community Is Great, Except For Attendance

Higher socio-economic level is negatively associated with physical attendance and engagement – likely reflecting increased access to other leisure opportunities like travel – and positively associated with program, development, and total expenses and program and earned revenue, reflecting the ability of arts organizations to invest more in the art and charge higher prices.

Just to repeat the old saw about correlation not equaling causation, while these findings are interesting individually one should be careful drawing assumptions and relationships between them.  Even some of the things listed together as having positive outcomes may not necessarily lead to a positive outcome when all present together. (i.e. You won’t necessarily increase attendance by expanding your physical plant, offerings, budget, spending and programming to Asian-American kids in a place with high local funding.)

On The Hook With Arts and Culture

by

Back in 2008, I wrote how the voters of Minnesota passed an amendment to support both the arts and outdoor wildlife as a result of a political alliance between the arts community and outdoor sport enthusiasts.  The amendment increased the sales tax by 3/8 of 1%.

According to the website created to report how the money was being used, this is how much of the collected revenue has been allocated between fiscal year 2010 and 2017.

Minnesota has been known for its outdoor activities and support of the arts so it isn’t necessarily surprising that the citizens supported this tax increase. The alliance between the groups was not a forgone conclusion though. As I quote from an article from that time by Jay Weiner:

“As it was, the pioneers of the amendment idea — the sportsmen with bullets and hooks — were wary enough of the arts being included … until they saw the political power of the statewide arts and cultural organizations.”

I went on to write:

Every state should be lucky enough to have an arts community with enough political clout to help get a constitutional amendment passed. Of course, that influence didn’t magically appear, the state arts community would have been working on cultivating it over the course of years and probably decades.

[…]

The other thing he [Weiner] mentions is that berating the arts and parks people perpetuates an environment which keeps sports fans from forming coalitions.

If this program appeals to you and you want to replicate it in your state, another article written at the time outlines the pros and cons of the amendment. I am sure that nine years later, those who advocated for the amendment and those who have dealt with the appropriation and administration of the money can give valuable feedback about best practices and mistakes to avoid.

Not Apologizing For Raising Money

by

Looking back in the archives can be really rewarding when it comes to reminding yourself about things you long forgot.

Back in October 2008 Seth Godin  reproduced Sasha Dichter’s Manifesto in Defense of Raising Money which begins “I’m sick of apologizing for being in charge of raising money.”

In the post I made, I quoted Dichter’s thoughts about the fear associated with asking for money,

“…wealth is associated with power, and not having wealth can feel like not having power. So going to someone who has money and saying, “You have the resources, please give some of them to me” doesn’t feel like a conversation between equals.

How about this instead: “You are incredibly good at making money. I’m incredibly good at making change. The change I want to make in the world, unfortunately, does not itself generate much money. But man oh man does it make change. It’s a hugely important change. And what I know about making this change is as good and as important as what you know about making money. So let’s divide and conquer – you keep on making money, I’ll keep on making change. And if you can lend some of your smarts to the change I’m trying to make, well that’s even better. But most of the time, we both keep on doing what we’re best at, and if we keep on working together the world will be a better place.”

Looking back at the original post, I had mentioned the importance of storytelling as a skill. At the time I didn’t pay as much attention to Dichter’s suggestion that the work non-profits do to improve the world is interrelated with the work others do.

Do you really believe that the “real work” is JUST the “programs” you operate? (the school you run; the meals you serve; the vaccines you develop; the patients you treat?) Do you really believe that it ends there? Do you really believe that in today’s world, where change can come from anyone and anywhere, that convincing people and building momentum and excitement and a movement really doesn’t matter?

That can be important to remember when you are thinking that some other group is more worthy of support than your own.

Revisiting Fuzzy Definitions

by

I am off on vacation to the Canadian Rockies for a week or so. If you don’t hear from me again, it may be that the Banff Centre for the Arts is as awesome as I hear and I am hiding out there.

As always when I am traveling, I have looked back at my archives to see what past thoughts may still have relevance today.

I came across a post I did in 2008 where I spoke about Alan Brown’s observation that in the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts conducted by the NEA.

Brown lists an admittedly small excerpt of the verbatim responses to the question: “What was the last “classical music” concert that you attended?” Among the answers listed are Tito Puentes, The Stompers, Showboat with Tom Bosley, Music Man, King and I and Oliver.

For the question, “What was the last “opera” that you attended,” Phantom of the Opera appears five times along with Les Miz, Brigadoon and “It was on Broadway” (remember, these are recorded verbatim).

Not having access to all the raw data, I have no idea what percentage of the answers these represent. As I suggested, it does make you wonder when people answer surveys that they enjoy and want to see more classical music or opera, if your concept of classical music/opera is the same as theirs. These results are from 10 years ago so I wonder how much less significant these categories are to people these days.

Now it is 20 years since that survey was conducted so I think what people consider as falling into those categories may be less defined. In that 2008 post, I wondered if it might be better to de-emphasize labels to a great degree.

Acknowledging that people don’t care how performances are categorized as long as they have an enjoyable experience changes the way you market performances. If the definition of classical music is rather nebulous, the fact that the violinist received a Pomme Rouge when they were 17 is nearly bereft of meaning. (As it should be, my mother was giving me pommes rouge before I was 5 years old.) Marketing has to focus on why someone will enjoy the performance and not overly concern itself with convincing someone they like the organization’s definition of classical music or whether the recipient likes classical music at all.

[…]

Of course, the water flows both ways in regard to this sentiment. When asked if they liked opera, someone might say they liked Phantom but didn’t really care for The Magic Flute. A good experience with what they think is opera, classical music, Shakespeare (but really Oscar Wilde), won’t guarantee liking the “real” thing. Nor may it inspire experimentation even if they equate Phantom with opera due to simple lack of name recognition.

At the core the idea is that defining labels allow people to decide whether they like something before they try it. We have done it since we were kids and asked what was in food so we could decide we didn’t like it if it had an ingredient we don’t like. We have probably all run into people who said something along the lines of “you said that was jazz, but that isn’t REAL jazz because…” They can’t enjoy it because it doesn’t fit a slot neatly.

At the same time, I am not suggesting the approach should be, “trust us sight unseen, you will like it.” Provide people with information, video links, etc so they can make a decision. I am just suggesting not to place that information behind a label that allows them to decide without exploring.

Wait, Look Behind You

by

I don’t remember where I came across this recently since the story is over a year old. Photographer Oliver Curtis embarked on an interesting project where he started taking pictures with his back to famous landmarks.

The project came about back in 2012, when Curtis was visiting the Pyramids of Giza. Upon turning around, he realized that he had never seen the “hidden side” of that well-known place. So, he began documenting these views in a project of his own…

In each of the photos in the series, captured over the past 4 years, the viewer is told where the photo was captured and is invited to look upon the scene without the smallest glimpse of the actual landmark that people visit from all over the world to see.

The full collection of images for the Volte-Face project are on the artist’s website. If you want the challenge of trying to guess where things are without the benefit of visible captions, you should view it there.

He has images facing away from the Statue of Liberty, The Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Buckingham Palace and dozens of other places.

What initially hooked me was his photograph facing away from the Mona Lisa. We hear tales of people rushing through the Louvre and crowding in front of the painting trying to get a picture. It either wasn’t crowded in the gallery when he took the picture or he stood with his back to the crowd.  The sense of this is what you are missing if you focus solely on the famous was interesting to me.

I won’t claim to always be observant and absorb all my surroundings when I am visiting a famous place, but I think I do a pretty good job of taking in my surroundings.

What is sometimes surprising is just how mundane and unassuming some of the places appear when you have your back turned to them.  The bench and pool in front of the Taj Mahal, you would expect based on pictures of the landmark. However, the fresh tree stump and apartment buildings taken while facing away from the Eiffel Tower makes you wonder how close to the structure he was when he took the picture.  The same with the utterly unremarkable view away from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Pronouncing Citizenship

by

Here is a cool tidbit for the 4th of July.

A friend of mine owns a business that provides the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciations and translations for operas and Latin masses. So if you need to sing an aria but don’t speak Italian, German, French, etc, you can purchase a guide to the correct pronunciation and literal translation of the work from him.

What I never really thought about is that people who don’t speak English also need help singing songs in that language as well.

This week, my friend posted about how the US State Department had contacted him back in 2013 to get the IPA pronunciation for the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Pledge of Allegiance” so that immigrants seeking naturalization would have help with both.

Like the rest of us, they are left on their own to wrestle with the vocal range of the national anthem.

 

Cycling With Your Board’s Soul

by

I don’t think I could have timed it any better…

Last week, Anne Midgette wrote a piece in the Washington Post about the various and confusing roles boards of directors play in the performing arts.

What do boards do? It varies from one company to another. Some performing arts boards serve in a purely advisory function — voting on new hires, for example, sometimes only nominally rubber-stamping choices made by the artistic staff. Other boards, though, have fiduciary responsibility, providing vital financial support to keep the doors open.

[…]

Yet there’s an odd disconnect between the size and financial heft of performing-arts boards and their actual function. Some board members would laugh at the idea that they exercise considerable influence on an organization; some, indeed, resent being viewed as “walking checkbooks,” with the implication that they should pony up and shut up. Although board members often bring considerable business expertise to the table, the attitude often prevails that they don’t really understand art and shouldn’t sully it with mundane business considerations. This leads to a Catch-22, whereby board members are branded as Philistines by harping on issues such as financial viability and ticket sales, but are kept at arms’ length from creative mandates — or from exercising oversight in a meaningful way.

Where the good timing comes in relates to a piece that I tossed in the hopper at ArtsHacker.com that ended up published today, the same day I saw Midgette’s article. (h/t Artsjournal.com).

The ArtsHacker post calls attention a fascinating article from the Non-Profit Quarterly about the cyclical stages a board will go through. I have rarely, if ever, seen the topic discussed. This is regrettable because it brings clarity to a topic that is replete with stereotypes, assumptions and misunderstandings.

According to the article boards tend to go from deferring to the executive staff to becoming more involved in the wake of a crisis to really being engaged with the organization to ceding authority to the executive staff and then becoming more engaged again after a crisis.

Many of the issues Midgette mentions pop up at different points in the cycle. At some points the board sees their role as bringing expertise to the organization. At a different point, the board is mostly about prestige and the members only start thinking about the challenges facing the organization about 30 minutes before the meeting.

At their best, the board is engaged and focused on good governance, working in active partnership with the staff and holding them to account for decisions. At worst, they are relatively disengaged and unfocused on the concerns of the organization.

By and large, I don’t know staffs or boards of directors of non-profits are really aware that this cycle of changing dynamics exists. Those in a bad situation grouse reinforcing established stereotypes and those in a good situation count their blessings and pray it continues until they retire or cycle off the board.  There is no sense that one can actually exert influence over the situation.

By understanding the characteristics of each stage, you can better identify where your organization’s relationship with its board is. Knowing that, you can work on moving things toward a more productive stage or work to prevent a good environment from souring.

Piquing The Artistic Impulse

by

A little irreverence today after talking about philosophical questions like “what is art for?”

In the past few years, I have done a lot of writing about the need to help people recognize they have the capacity to be creative.

When I was in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago, I visited the Warhol Museum and found myself inspired by some of the projects he engaged in. Much of what he did was an attempt to take the idea of art off a pedestal and bring it into everyday experience.

There was one piece in particular that appealed to me, though perhaps for the wrong reasons.

Among the museum collection was one of Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings. The piece was created by priming the canvas with metallic paint and then applying a substance that would cause a oxidation reaction.

In Warhol’s case, it was urine.

According to the card next to the painting, he and his friends and assistants:

“…experimented with both pattern and coloration…Variations in the maker’s fluid and food intake affected the oxidation impact…Warhol was particularly thrilled by the striking colorations caused by his studio assistant Ronnie Cutrone, who was taking vitamin B supplements.

Oxidation Painting, 1978

As much as you may be disgusted by the idea, (and lets face it, most paint is more toxic than urine), you have to admit that the technique would definitely pique the interest and desire to experiment in many people.

Okay, sure it might be more appealing to younger males and females, but males often see art as an effeminate activity as it. This is a way to engage more men!

I will confess that I sent this picture and information about how it was made to my friends who hold creative process events and made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion this be the next project.   While you can’t create an authentic relationship with creativity and the arts through stunt events like this, the example of it can combat the image of art as staid and inscrutable.

Even if someone looks at the painting above and says it isn’t art based on appearance alone, they can at least connect with the impulse behind its creation because everyone has had a related impulse at some point in their lives. (And may even continue to harbor that impulse in their hearts.)  You have an entirely different conversation and relationship with this piece than you would have if Warhol used ink or paint to create images many might associate with Rorschach blots.

Art As Currency For Experience

by

This week Diane Ragsdale wrote a piece addressing the difficultly people have with the idea of Art for Arts Sake.  She says when she conducts workshops and asks arts administration types to fill in the blank in the phrase, Art for ____________’s sake, they never say “art.” In discussions, people aren’t able to really define what is meant by “art for art’s sake.”

She suggests part of the issue has to do with the way we define value. She uses the example of an artist she invited to speak in her class. When the artist asked if there were any questions, a business student asked if she was being responsive to the market by painting so many orchids. The artist said she was basically painting orchids because she enjoyed exploring the form and would do so until it no longer interested her.

After the fact, as I reflected on this moment, I thought it was quite brilliant. A quite reasonable question from a business school student: Is there sufficient demand for orchids? Do you know your market? Do you think you may need to diversify?

And a quite reasonable answer from an arts student: I’m interested in the idea for its own sake; right now, I’m not thinking about whether there is a market for orchids.

And I could not have architected a better moment to convey the different logics or rationalities of business and art, or what art for art’s sake, or research for the sake of research, or exploration for the sake of exploration, or excellence for the sake of excellence are all about. Through this brief conversation between an artist and  business student, I was able to experience the world of business and the world of art as parallel systems of value. This experience finally helped me make sense of, and come to terms with, the phrase art for art’s sake.

Ragsdale provides a chart created by Bill Sharpe discussing “five “economies” and their “shared denominations of value.”” For example, in competitive games, the currency is the score; in democracy, it is votes; in exchange, it is money; and in experience, it is art.

She says,

What Sharpe’s framework seeks to illustrate is the incommensurate nature of these various currencies of shared valuation. The score of a sports game may tell us who won or lost but it can’t help us understand the individual or shared experience of the game, for example.

For me, this coalesced ideas that Carter Gillies wrote in a guest post for Ragdale’s blog (my emphasis):

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.

Just as the score of a baseball game can’t describe the experience of attending, many of the criteria people wish to apply to the arts aren’t relevant as a measure of value. Arts may be good for the economy insomuch as an exchange is taking place, but we all know the value of the art is not reflected in the amount paid.

The arts may be good for cognitive development, but there is no relationship between value of a painting, play, dance or musical composition and test scores. The masterwork of a painter doesn’t raise test score higher than the preliminary sketches they made in preparation for the piece.

If Sharpe is correct that the currency of experience is art, I guess that validates John Dewey’s book, Art As Experience.

I don’t know that telling people the currency of experience is art will help people understand art better. People don’t necessarily associated the joy they experience playing with a newborn as being partitioned into units of art.

It is helpful to be reminded that many things are not valued solely in dollars, as much as it may seem that way. That we have recently seen that the amount of money thrown at an election doesn’t necessarily translate proportionally into victory seems to bear out Sharpe’s statement that votes are a distinct currency from money in the election economy.

Recently the big news has been about the Arts & Economic Prosperity 5 report. It is great that activity in the arts and culture industry has had such a strong impact in so many communities outside of the usual urban areas. But it is important to remember these numbers are just like a baseball score. They don’t tell us anything about the experience of the creators and participants, the quality of the work, or a handful of other things we might list as important before we even care about the amount of money that got exchanged.

A Reminder About The Necessity For Patience and Effort Sustained Long Term

by

I wanted to call attention to the recent return of the Hokule‘a, a double hulled voyaging canoe, to Hawaii after a three year voyage around the world that saw the canoe travel 42,000 miles to 150 ports and 23 countries and territories. It is the first time a Hawaiian canoe has circumnavigated the globe completely under wind power. You can see photos of the return on the Star-Advertiser newspaper site. Apparently about 50,000 people showed up to welcome the canoe.

While the voyage is impressive of itself, the Hokule‘a represents so much more in Hawaii. The canoe was first launched over 40 years ago in 1975 in an attempt to reclaim Hawaiian cultural heritage and knowledge as part of the Hawaiian Renaissance. The Polynesian Voyaging Society sought out the few remaining people who still knew how to navigate in the traditional way without instruments. Only Mau Piailug of the Federated States of Micronesia was willing to teach them.

If you have seen the movie Moana where the title character begs Maui to teach her to navigate, you have gotten a very small hint of what is involved (expand the Read More under Nainoa Thompson’s picture). While later voyages have use Western instruments like compass and sextant and have been supplemented by some technological aids, those first voyages marked the first time in over 500 years that Hawaiian sailors navigated between Hawaii and Tahiti using traditional methods. Later they would use the same techniques to travel to other Pacific Islands and reinvigorate interest in seafaring traditions among other peoples.

The canoe and its voyages have contributed a great deal to the shared cultural consciousness of Hawaii. In 1978, the canoe capsized while still within the archipelago. Crew member Eddie Akau went to get help, paddling his surf board to the island of Lanai. The rest of the crew was rescued, but Eddie was never seen again.  To this day, 40 years later, you will drive around and see bumper stickers saying “Eddie Would Go,” as a testament to his selflessness, long  established during his career as a lifeguard where he saved over 500 people, often in dangerous surf conditions.

Educators have developed curriculum and programs in connection with the voyages covering a wide range of topics from environmental concerns, geography, tides, navigation, the physics of raising the mast, and genealogy. Star Trek has a Hokule‘a class of starship

I should note, the effort to revive and employ traditional sailing methods wasn’t primarily driven by a desire for authenticity and eschewing modern options. The Hokule‘a was conceived and launched as part of a general effort to recognize and reclaim the validity of Hawaiian music, dance, language, dress, etc after a long period belief that Western/modern ways were superior. The ship answered doubts about the ability of early Polynesians to accurately and consistently navigate between Tahiti and Hawaii using available technology.

As I read about what they have accomplished, it reinforces the long view and sustained effort  required to accomplish their goals. Even that first voyage of 40 years ago was preceded by a long period of preparation. It puts the whole process of judging viability by the success or failure achieved increments of 12 months or less in perspective. I think there are lessons here about the power of cultural practices and their ability to fire the imagination.

 

Shared Leadership Provides Opportunity To Manage Up

by

Last month Non Profit Quarterly suggested that organizations undergoing executive leadership transition consider the shared leadership model that many performing arts organizations employ.  They note that it can be valuable to have one person focus on artistic or programmatic issues freeing the executive director up to focus on developing organizational capacity and funding.

This week, Createquity tweeted about a study dealing with the same dynamic from the perspective of the employees on the organizational chart just below the executive leadership. These people can be torn between the conflicting demands of programming and economics represented by the two leaders and be unclear where their duty and loyalty should reside.

People in the performing arts can already attest to feeling squeezed by situations like this. What was interesting to me though was that the authors of the study suggested the ambiguity of the situation can provide those in the tier below the executives with the ability to essentially “manage up” and serve as arbiter between the two leaders.

The paper referenced in the article was based on research conducted in the Dutch movie industry and focuses on the role of the 1st Assistant Director (1st AD) who is responsible to both the Director and Producer. They note that while the director is more powerful in Italy and the producer more powerful in Hollywood and more balanced in the Netherlands, the organizational chart is essentially the same in all countries. (my emphasis)

However, role conflict and role ambiguity also provide 1st ADs with opportunities to define their role expansively. By doing so, 1st ADs can increase their ability to act as a buffer between the dual leaders. Moreover, the more the director and producer employ a narrow definition of their respective roles, the more space they leave for the 1st AD, and the more likely it is that positive effects ensue from the 1st AD facilitating collaboration between the dual leaders, and bridging the artistic and commercial sides of the organization.

Our study has a number of practical implications, the first of which is to suggest that organizations could profit from designing structures in such a way that it leaves space for lower-level organizational members, who can mediate between dual or multiple leaders by expanding their role, while taking into account how leaders can directly and indirectly facilitate such behavior. Second, because employees, also in non-project-based organizations, tend to have increasingly less stable, defined and demarcated roles, they have to be able to, or learn how to, proactively define their own roles. Finally, managers need to learn how to accommodate the positive aspects of role expansion while at the same time mitigating its potentially negative effects on organizational stability, especially as a result of discontent by those organizational members whose roles are being invaded.

Given that so many arts organizations are already operating under this structure, this seemed like valuable advice for both employees to identify how they can expand their role within their organizations and for the leaders to create an environment that allows employees to carve out a little more space for themselves.

No Tall Tales To Tell

by

You wouldn’t think fishermen needed help telling a story, but according to Non-Profit Quarterly, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking for just that.

They are getting help from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod in securing the services of a digital storyteller to serve as part time artist-in-residence for a year. (Deadline to submit is June 30)

According to the Non-Profit Quarterly,

This is a unique opportunity for an enterprising photojournalist/videographer seeking to tell the story of a normally hard-to-reach profession. The Fishermen’s Alliance goal for the artist-in-residence is to give the general public a better understanding of organization’s value to Cape Cod.

Presently, the Fishermen’s Alliance YouTube channel has 25 subscribers. The 20 or so videos have a modest number of views. Their tagline is, “Small Boats. Big Ideas.” That message is not apparent in their existing videos. However, their plan to engage an artist-in-residence is certainly a big idea. One would not expect this kind of initiative to be launched by a relatively small-membership organization of commercial fishermen. Any nonprofit would do well to watch what the Fishermen’s Alliance artist-in-residence begins to produce online and take careful notes.

[…]

…Perhaps the biggest challenge for any nonprofit is strategic: How to create content that people want to consume, and how to create engaging videos that get shared. The Fishermen’s Alliance artist-in-residence will need a solid understanding of metrics and how they point the way for continual improvement. Yes, there is the still photography part of the job, but the cornerstone of any nonprofit’s content marketing efforts today needs to be video. From 360-degree videos (for the ambitious) to Facebook Live, all nonprofits need to respond to their audience’s shorter attention span by making content interactive and visual.

This can be valuable advice for non-profit organizations as something they need to strive for. But for arts organizations, the story may illuminate new opportunities. Can your organization or artists with whom you work offer similar services to non-profits and businesses in your community to help them attain similar goals.

 

Post title a riff on Love and Rockets’ “No New Tale To Tell”

The Authentic Experience of 12 People Touring A Room Designed For One Person

by

I visited Fallingwater this weekend. Believe it or not, my impetus for being there wasn’t due to the 150th anniversary Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, but rather because for the last 6-7 years, I have been obsessed by the idea of visiting the Nationality Rooms at University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. Visiting Fallingwater actually came in second as a “well since I will be in the area…” consideration.

First of all, let me just say visiting the Cathedral of Learning is absolutely worth it. The idea of inviting different countries to set up classrooms to reflect a learning environment in their nation makes a positive statement about the people of the United States in these contentious times. The newest rooms in development are Finland and Iran. The newer rooms on the 3rd floor are open for regular class use (with some stern warnings about keeping them clean) which would make for an interesting learning experience.

As for Fallingwater, it will come as no surprise that visiting was pretty great. It is one of the most highly esteemed works of architecture in the country.  One of the things I was interested to learn was that when the original owner’s son bequeathed the house to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the two conditions he set for opening the house to the public was that there not be any velvet ropes, nor could there be any scripted tours.

If you have toured the house, you know to be grateful for the first condition. The interior is intentionally cramped based on Wright’s desire to force people to go outdoors.

Assuming the prohibition against scripted tours eliminates recorded guides, humans are guaranteed employment.  Given the cramped quarters and original furnishings, you probably want humans keeping an eye on things.  I assume the Conservancy does monitor the quality of the tour narration and has a list of things to cover.

Something I didn’t appreciate until later was that the tour guides were scrupulous about mentioning what furniture had been removed from each room in order to accommodate tours.  I also visited the Frick Pittsburgh which had a room depicting furnishings of a historical period. Next to the portal was a big sign next saying how controversial period rooms are because they don’t accurately reflect how the inhabitants really lived.  Learning this, I saw a number of the points made about the authenticity of certain features (or lack thereof) at Fallingwater with a new perspective.

As I have mentioned recently, decisions about how to depict, represent, discuss, etc., artistic works, cultural practices and even daily lives of others are never clear cut and easy. I am sure that the classrooms in the Cathedral of Learning don’t accurately reflect classrooms in the countries they purport to represent. But given the time invested in creating them, I don’t doubt that they accurately reflect an important essence of those individual countries.

I think the 24 hour news cycle and prevalence of social media is underscoring the importance of fully considering the impact of decisions and what our potential response might be.  Artist training programs may want to consider a renewed emphasis on philosophy and rhetoric as artists are increasingly called upon to defend their decisions without contributing to controversy.

Fallingwater

Don’t Look To Musical Theatre For National Anthems

by

Given all the controversy about the depiction of presidents as stand-ins for Julius Caesar, I thought I would offer a somewhat more light-hearted example of how what we think we know about a theater piece has caused some political/diplomatic discomfort.

The belief that “Edelweiss,” a song created for The Sound of Music, is the Austrian national anthem (or of Austrian lineage at all) has crept into presidential remarks. (h/t Michael Walls on Quora for this story).

Back in 1984, references to the song kept cropping up in various remarks at a White House reception with the Austrian ambassador,

…but edelweiss, the flower “The Sound of Music” made famous, bloomed only in Reagan’s remarks: “Before the song ends, the lyrics become a prayer for Austria itself. It is a prayer Americans join in: ‘Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, and bless your homeland for ever.’ ”

Earlier in the day, music seemed to swirl through the luncheon Secretary of State George Shultz gave for the Austrians. And Austria’s ambassador here found out that the tune “Edelweiss” is just as sacred to Americans as apple pie and motherhood.

“There are 200 million Americans who know it’s the Austrian national anthem,” U.S. Trade Representative William E. Brock III told Ambassador Thomas Klestil at the luncheon.

“And whether you like it or not,” Brock teasingly said of the Rodgers and Hammerstein tune that became known to millions through “The Sound of Music,” “it is definitely yours.”

Klestil told about going to a Texas charity function whose theme for the evening was Austria. At one point he said he was invited to join everyone in singing “a beautiful Austrian song, ‘Edelweiss.’ ”

“I didn’t know the words,” Klestil confessed. “I said, ‘It is not an Austrian song, it is a movie song written in Hollywood.’ When I said I didn’t know the words, they were all shocked and they looked at me as if I were not a patriot.”

Just then, Muffet Brock, also registering shock, interrupted to ask: “You mean it isn’t the Austrian national anthem?”

Klestil shook his head, gave what some would have sworn was a polite gulp, looked across the table at Margit Fischer, wife of the Austrian minister of science and research, and began to sing “Edelweiss, Edelweiss . . .”

“You see,” said Klestil watching Fischer’s expressionless face, “here’s the wife of an Austrian government official and she doesn’t know it either.”

As amusing as the story is, it might also be subject for some serious introspection.

First, you may decide it proves Americans are ill-informed about the world and make assumptions based on pop culture. Even though this happened in 1984 prior to the information access afforded by the Internet, I don’t know that the basic problem as resolved itself.  (And I would have thought Reagan’s speechwriters would know enough so as not to characterize the song as a rallying cry for Austria.)

This story might also reinforce the argument that misrepresentations of other cultures and stories of other cultures, (The Mikado & Whitewashing in casting controversies, for example), ill-serves both the source materials and the audiences viewing them.

Or in a self-depreciating context, it is a funny story.

As we are seeing right now, snap-decisions about the meaning of things and personal bias can politicize pretty much any occurrence. (Or leave it devoid if political value if everyone decides not to pay attention.)

While this isn’t news to anyone, I think events over the last few years are reinforcing the necessity to think about how stories are being told and if it is necessary to have an informative conversation around it to illuminate the context.

The answer isn’t to simply call for people to cleave to authenticity because that removes options for interesting storytelling. The rationale behind why it is acceptable that Hamilton depicts the Founding Fathers in a range of races, but Martin Luther King can’t be cast as a white man in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop seems clear to me. I can intuit the distinction, but it might take me awhile to adequately explain all the nuances to someone else.

For a lot of people, a short, simple answer isn’t enough and can feel dismissive. Though if they have already made up their minds about what it all means, a long, thoughtful answer or series of conversations, isn’t going to help.

This took a more serious direction than I intended. I am disturbed and at a loss at how to extricate ourselves from the return of the divisive culture war environment.

Perhaps there is incremental benefit to simply making small efforts to correct relatively non-controversial mistakes like saying, this is actually the Austrian national anthem, not Edelweiss.

Cultivate Paranoia Or A Constructive Environment?

by

Over the years I have written about studies which have found that the younger generation starting careers in non-profit organizations weren’t content to put in long hours and pay their dues. There is a desire for work-life balance and ability to advance in the organization relatively quickly.  The general caution to non-profits has been that if workers don’t feel that their labor is allowing them to make a difference, they may look elsewhere.

Yesterday, Non-Profit Quarterly suggested there might be another facet to the way that idealism manifests –leaking/whistleblowing.  The evidence of this trend is mostly anecdotal, but it bears considering (if only because you shouldn’t be doing anything shady in the first place).

Harris writes that workers and potential workers are increasingly clear that they must “be their own brand.” So, if the ethical choices of an institution do not align with that of a millennial who is confident about his or her own brand, including their moral reasoning, and if the social stakes are high enough, the millennial may go with his or her own commitments even if that institution is the federal government.

While there have been a number of instances of notable mismanagement, malfeasance, and outright fraud in the non-profit sector, there are plenty of less serious issues employees might bring to light.

Certainly, employees need to exercise good judgment and maturity so as not to mischaracterize the difficult work that non-profits do as illegal exploitation. However, there is a thin line between asking people to work hard for low pay and asking people to work hard and pressuring them not to claim overtime or comp time.

While the NPQ article suggests an increased threat of whistleblowing will keep employers honest, it might be more productive to view changing expectations as an impetus to effect change toward a more constructive work environment rather suspiciously eyeing new worker for signs of betrayal.

Giving Circles As Next Iteration of Crowdfunding?

by

Last week, Non-Profit Quarterly noted that the number of Giving Circles in the US were growing and wondered if this had implications for institutional giving. If you haven’t heard of them before, Giving Circles are usually comprised of a number of individuals in a community who pool their money and collectively make decisions about what causes the circle will support.

Lynn O’Connell, DFW’s grants chairwoman, belongs to four giving circles. She said, “No circle looks or acts like any other. Dues, size, structure, and mission are all a little different. It’s not just about writing a check, but the circles area a major force in helping people learn about philanthropy and about nonprofits.” Further, because giving circles have very little overhead, most of the money raised goes directly to grants.

I want to call attention to two things in this quote. First, low overhead being cited as a benefit. Despite efforts to reduce overhead as a criteria of effectiveness, it remains part of the conversation. The second is a little more promising – the fact that circles are educating people about philanthropy and non-profits. A trend in this direction can be benefit non-profits.

An additional positive perspective: “A previous giving circle study by the University of Nebraska found that people who join giving circles give more, volunteer more, and are more engaged in their communities.”

The financial support that giving circles provide is relatively small scale compared to large established foundations. However, they are apparently growing out of a distrust of donating through mediating entities.

It’s also interesting to contrast the giving circle form as it relates to the trend away from “intermediated” giving, which has weakened general funds in United Ways and community foundations and boosted the use of donor-advised funds. Perhaps this tropism is less about greater individualism and more a “no confidence” vote on past intermediaries.

Something I wondered was if we might see online giving efforts evolve from models like that of Kickstarter where many people give to projects, to virtual giving circles where those of shared interest and giving philosophies might cooperate regardless of geographic separation.

Since wealthier individuals might have more tax incentive to form and give through foundations, it is possible that some Internet based giving circles with thousands of members could emerge as influential in diverse sectors either competing with foundations or providing leadership in new directions. A geographic spread of members might also see giving less concentrated around urban regions.

Myths And Truths About Your Brain On Music

by

Pacific Standard had an interesting piece about the misconceptions music teachers and students studying to be music teachers have about the neurological benefits of music and music education.  The study was conducted in Germany so the author the article suggests that perhaps neurologists in the US do a better job of communicating the truth about music education better than their German counterparts, but I suspect that isn’t the case.

In the study, both music teachers and students were roughly equally adept (or bad) at separating myth from truth.

“Teachers and students correctly rejected 60 and 59 percent of the seven neuromyths,” the researchers report. Proven statements were correctly seen as true by 76 percent of music teachers and 78 percent of students.

That means there were a whole lot of wrong answers…

“The three most-trusted neuromyths included neuroscientific terminology, such as ‘brain hemisphere’ or ‘cognitive abilities,'” the researchers note. This suggests music teachers, like the rest of us, can be fooled into thinking an assertion is true if it is stated using neuro-jargon.

The researchers warn that this tendency may lead teachers to assign their pupils worthless or counterproductive homework. For example, 44 percent of teachers, and nearly 40.1 percent of aspiring instructors, believed this unproven statement: “The ability to improvise on the piano is controlled by the right hemisphere; special exercises can enhance the performance of the hemisphere.” In fact, such “exercises” would be a waste of time.

You can read the full study on the Frontiers in Psychology website.

The following chart from the study shows which of the myths and which of the proven statements the study participants correctly identified.  As you can see in the myths category, among some of the biggest misapprehensions were associated with music improving calculus ability; relationship between dominant hand and speech and music processing; and the impact of music education cognitive ability.

Among the substantiated theses, answers started to get a little iffy on the subject of the conditions which contributed to the positive influence of passive listening.

As the article suggests, the language used in some of these statements can be a little difficult to unravel and may influence participants’ perceptions. (At least in English, I am not sure if German terminology is clearer.) Questions 7M and 8S deal with similar concepts and probably appeared in sequence with each other.

Given that the survey was administered to music teachers and educators in training, I am sure they struggled with 1M that suggests musicians are smarter than everyone else. The fact that 75-80% answered it correctly can probably be attributed to a suspicion it was a trick question.

Being aware of what claims of benefits of arts and culture participation have been substantiated and which haven’t can be important for advocacy efforts. You don’t want to get caught citing debunked data.

Back in December, I called attention to Createquity project to survey all the available studies and evaluate the strength of the findings: Everything We Know About Whether and How the Arts Improve Lives. That page is a good place to start if you want to get a sense of whether the claims you are making are borne out by research and how strong the results are.

Holding A Note, Six Weeks At A Time

by

I recently became aware of the Young Professionals’ Choral Collective out of Cincinnati and was impressed at how they structured themselves to facilitate involvement by a younger demographic.

They position their identity in the following way:

Do you love to sing? Did you sing in high school/college/church and miss the music-making, the friendships, the fun and the community of a choir? Do you want to get more involved in Cincinnati arts scene? Do you want to find new friends to go with you to all the new bars and restaurants in OTR & Downtown Cincinnati? Do you want to sing in a choir but can’t commit to a full-year weekly schedule? Then check us out!

What impressed me most was that they structure participation in 6 week cycles. You only need to commit yourself for that period of time. Given that so many surveys about arts participation mention lack of time as an impediment to participation, I thought this was a smart way to respond to this challenge.

Currently they claim over 850 members. There are no auditions for their self-produced concerts nor do they place limits on how many people can participate in each cycle. Presumably, they work with whomever they have.

Of course, since they have positioned themselves as a place where people with an avid interest in choral performance can continue to practice their passion, new members are likely to have some degree of experience and coaching.

Socialization is definitely a primary ingredient in their organizational model. In a TEDx talk about the group, Artistic Director KellyAnn Nelson repeatedly jokes about the role of alcohol in their activities. They rehearse in bars and go to a different restaurant after every rehearsal as a way of publicly supporting area businesses.

Given how boisterous she claims they are at these dinners, I imagine it also provides some publicity for the group’s concerts and acts as recruitment for new members.  They encourage members (and prospective members) who aren’t able to participate in a cycle of rehearsals to stop by, hang out and eat with the group when they can make it.

The ease of joining, stopping and rejoining, probably relieves people of internal distress over conflicting obligations and makes them more apt to join in the first place.

It may also create a sense of membership in people who only participated in one cycle five years ago. The ability to rejoin without much guilt may provide a sense of continuity with the organization that makes them more apt to evangelize about the group even if they never sing with them again.

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I often use the example of people who sing in a church choir not seeing themselves on a continuum with Aretha Franklin. I am not sure if singing in a civic choir would necessarily solve that issue, but I would see a small victory if a person considered themselves a singer because they continued to identify as a member of a group five years after participating.

The Arts Should Be Like…

by

Carter Gillies emailed me a question this morning relating arts with sports which set off a whole cascade of thoughts.

First of all, we often talk about how arts organizations and creators need to behave in relation to the frame work of other professions and industries, does anyone ever talk about how other industries need to conduct themselves more like artistic and creative entities. (Other than maybe Disney, Pixar and Hollywood?)

Second, I got to thinking that there are three general areas that the arts are compared with: Sports, Business and Religion.

Sports

My very first blog post, I cited a piece by Chris Lavin about “Why the Arts Should Be Covered Like Sports.” Fifteen years later, it is still a pretty engaging idea. In fact, back in 2008 The Guardian newspaper had their sports and arts writers cover each other’s beats.  Jon Silpayamanant would occasionally write about arts and sports, making comparisons of their business models.

There are other stories I could cite, including perennial stories of after school arts and sports activities competing for the same funding in schools with the arts often losing.  I offer some of these as examples of the way arts and sports are compared and therefore are accorded some equality.  Like being a dog person or a cat person, there is a sense a person can’t be both an avid fan of sport and art.

Business

I think I and others have written enough about how the arts need to be run like a business (or artists need to be more entrepreneurial) in the last few years that I don’t need to do much linking. I don’t think anyone will deny that arts organizations need to take some lessons in operating efficient, making decisions informed by data, and being aware of effective methods of promotion and awareness building. But as my friend Carter Gillies will argue more eloquently than I, profit making should not be the driver of creation. Financial success is not a measure of artistic value.

Religion

It probably isn’t a coincidence that in my very first blog post, I talked about religion as well as sports. Religion and art have been intertwined throughout history. The first forms of theatre come from religious ceremonies. Religions organizations have long history commissioning works of visual art and music.  Of course, religious groups have also sought to ban art. Art and religion have many similarities. Both tap into passions of their practitioners in similar ways in that they will say they feel driven by some greater purpose. You are supposed to practice for the sake of doing so rather than out of desire of some reward.  There are claims that both will make you a better person.  There are frequent calls for various reformations to enable better service of the community.

Which Is Right For You?

As I thought about these three general areas, it occurred to me that often arts organizations and the communities that coalesced around them could have a strong orientation toward one area over the others.

The identity of some places are primary focused on entertainment. That is what they do, that is what people are attracted by. They want to experience the newest big hit.

The identity of others is oriented more around success and prestige. They are the exemplar of the highest value. There are important people having important experiences.

The identity of still other places emphasizes the purity of experience and the enrichment of self. Authenticity, investment and understanding of the experience are valued.

These all roughly correspond with sports, business and religion. Obviously, not every organization is focused on providing a narrow set of experiences. Not everyone in the community who is engaged with a certain organization is focused on having the same experience as everyone else. One may be having a self-enriching experience while everyone around them is in it for the entertainment or prestige.

While I will admit that these insights may not be fulled developed at this point, I wondered if there was some value for arts organizations in taking primary lessons from the “thing” they are most like.

Instead of thinking your organization is similar to sports, for-profit businesses and religion, recognize that what you offer and why most people are drawn to you is akin to a religious experience.  It won’t exempt you from keeping the books straight, practicing good governance and being prepared to discuss your identity and activities in an engaging context that doesn’t allow it to be dismissed as a niche esoteric pursuit.

It may help add clarity to your mission and objectives if you aren’t promising to consistently and simultaneously provide an experience with broad commercial appeal, at the highest level of excellence and prestige, and soul-enriching authenticity.

Understanding who you serve, what people value about you and making peace with the fact you can’t be all things to all people can take a bit of pressure off yourselves. (Or can shape decisions of a direction you want to go).

You obviously can’t focus on one type of experience to the exclusion of all others because no two people are going to have the same degree of motivation for participating. Also, you can end up reinforcing the negative side of all these types: too commercial; pandering to elites/lowest common denominator; too inscrutable, etc.

But there are also some frames of reference that will never provide a shortcut allowing people to relate to the arts. A few weeks ago, a Basquiat sold for $110 million in auction. You can liken it to a bidding war for an athlete all you want, but it isn’t likely that a significant number of people will decide they need to pay closer attention to the arts.

The fact there was a record setting competition for the painting doesn’t help people understand the value of the work. If it had sold for $110, fewer people would have a negative impression of rich elites, but their journey to understanding and cultivation of an interest in visual art would be equally as long

You Want A Tarantella On A Violin, I Want A Tarantula

by

Almost as soon as I published my post yesterday about building community around augmented reality, I started thinking about how that might work with live performance.

One of my first thoughts was that augmented reality could allow everyone in the audience to experience the event the way they wanted. When symphony orchestras project things behind them while they play, purists often complain that it detracts from the experience.

With augmented reality, some people could watch the concert with some sort of animated overlay while others watched without any enhancement at all.  There could be different “channels” of programming available at an event. One might have the animations, another might have program notes, another might have subtitles in your chosen language. There may be a choice of animations geared toward different age groups.

Credit where due, a recent repost of one of Holly Mulcahy’s blog entries with a picture of a tarantula crawling on her violin started getting my imagination going about what sort of things might possibly be overlaid on people during a concert.

The features could be educational as well as entertaining. During a concert, you might be prompted to “catch” notes cascading from a changing selection of instruments which would help people learn different orchestra instruments.  Granted, this might result in wild physical movements that others might find distracting so an organization would obviously need to be judicious about what they used when.

The technology might also open the possibility for people to create custom overlays that demeaned whatever was being looked at, reinforcing attitudes about art by placing statues, paintings and performers in lewd context.

That same possibility for custom augmentation also provides the opportunity to engage a larger community in live experience of art and culture. Whenever I start thinking about how to leverage technology to benefit the arts, inevitably I think about the cost of having someone create this content and getting staff to implement it.

But the cost and staffing needs don’t necessarily need to be burdensome. I am writing this post using the Firefox browser adorned by a custom skin someone made. If there was enough interest, there might be people around the world who would create program notes, animations, editable supertitles for operas, games, etc that could be licensed for use.

Part of the promotion for the event could include mention of program notes by a famed Japanese commentator, animations by a Brazilian artist, or maybe contributions by a local person of note.

The opportunity to tap into the expertise and passion of a worldwide pool of creators could be very beneficial by creating stronger bonds between members of an international community.

The local community and audiences might also be involved in providing content. You could have little QR code or other visual cue attached to an actor that a phone might pick up so that people could understand the character’s backstory during an opera. Audience members might submit questions or make comments that could either contribute to a clearer packet of information in the future or could be answered live by on-duty staff.

Obviously, too much of this type of interaction touches on the current debate about technology and live performance. Specifically, what is the value of live performance if your experience is mediated by technology? Clarifying information can be valuable to attendees, but a chatroom environment which occupies the majority of a person’s attention becomes problematic.

While I tend toward keeping distracting (both to oneself and seat mates) technologies out of a live experience, I will admit that I would really be excited to see how imaginative different people could be in creating new contexts for familiar works.  I also wonder if we wouldn’t see more people trying out unfamiliar experiences if they knew they could consult a guiding source of information. Indian dance and Kabuki performances might pop up in more unexpected places.

What Does A Community Built Around Augmented Reality Look Like?

by

Two months ago I confessed I may have misread the impact and potential of the Pokemon Go game on attracting new customers and audiences.

However, the Knight Foundation feels that the basic technology and dynamics of the augmented reality game may have potential use for engaging communities. Earlier this month, they announced a multi-year partnership with Pokemon Go developer and publisher Niantic.  They started out by shutting down three miles of streets in Charlotte, NC during the Open Streets 704 events and creating places with which players of Pokemon Go and Ingress games can interact.

I haven’t seen any follow up articles evaluating how it went. I suspect it may be awhile before anyone makes any statements. The Knight Foundation was approaching the whole project with an open mind and few pre-determined expectations.

We don’t know, but we believe that in embracing change, we might get a glimpse of how to build cities and communities of the future that are even more active and engaging than today.

Our plan in this partnership is to learn. This year, Knight Foundation and Niantic will work together to explore how Pokémon GO can bring more people, more energy and more excitement to great public places in some of the 26 communities where Knight Foundation invests.

[…]

Neither of us knows exactly where this partnership will lead us, but we hope that, together, we’ll learn something about the power—and limits—of technology to support more engaged communities.

This seems like something to pay attention to see what develops. When I first talked about Pokemon Go last July, my approach, along with dozens of other commenters, was to find a way to respond to an emerging trend. The intention of Knight Foundation appears to be toward more proactively developing an emerging technology and the accompanying social dynamics for community building.

I imagine what attracts the Knight Foundation to Niantic’s games is that they have gotten people up and moving around physical communities.  There are a number of communities and transactional interactions that have developed on the online, but the big complaint has been that this has removed the need for in-person interactions.

Augmented reality games may have a digital element that keeps your gaze averted, but it requires moving about reality to play which can be seen as an improvement (up to the point you fall into an open manhole, I suppose). If the Knight Foundation does have an agenda that are going into the partnership with, I suspect it is to find ways to induce people to share/employ augmented elements in each other’s presence.

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

/ Find It!

/ Recent Comments

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