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Joe Patti

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

Stuff To Ponder: Cultivating Creativity For Corporations

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I frequently advocate for arts organizations to find ways to help for-profit companies instill creativity and energy in their employees. Last month, the Partnership Movement of Americans for the Arts posted an essay with some case studies illustrating how this might be accomplished.

The Partnership Movement post talks about the benefits of partnering with arts organizations in the context of employee retention and engagement, providing statistics about how companies with engaged employees tend to have better revenue growth and lower employee turn over.

In general, the case studies provide some conceptual starting points for identifying a need and designing partnership programs to meet them.

The Arts & Science Council of Charlotte, NC created a Cultural Leadership Training (CLT) program to help cultivate new board leaders for the non-profit organizations in the region. At one point in the year long program, they hold a “speed dating” session to match participants with arts organizations seeking new board members.

Over the last 10 years participation in the program has become highly competitive and is a tool that the businesses themselves have used to identify potential leaders.

This self-selection process sometimes helps companies to identify ambitious and talented employees whom they might otherwise have overlooked. “Firms absolutely use CLT to identify potential leadership candidates,” says Mooring. “We had one law firm tell us that they would not have picked a certain employee as leadership material, but they transformed their opinion of that employee’s potential within the firm after watching that person go through our program and serve successfully on an arts board.”

Alternatively, companies can use CLT as a low-risk way to test whether an employee who is already identified as “leadership material” lives up to his or her potential by watching how that person performs during CLT and post-graduation on an arts board.

This case study helped assuage some of my concerns about how receptive employees of a business might be to participating in a hands-on practical arts experience. It sounds good in theory, but how do you put it into practice with people who may not see themselves as artistically inclined?

“The first time we tried asking the CLT participants to participate in art, we were kind of terrified,” she admits. “The people in our classes are bankers and lawyers and accountants. What if we put violins in their hands and they freaked out and just refused to participate?”

In fact, just the opposite happened. It turned out that everybody not only wanted to play music—they wanted to try every instrument!

Not only did the executives enjoy the participatory and creative elements of the CLT program, it turned out that the experiential aspects of the program actually made the education part “stickier” or more memorable.

Of course, one caveat to remember. The CLT participants were all self-selected. Mandatory or highly encouraged employee participation may result in a different experience.

The other case study, COCAbiz, a program created by Center of Creative Arts (COCA) in St. Louis is more along the lines of what I initially envisioned when I started thinking about how arts organizations can help businesses cultivate creative practices and thinking in their employees. COCAbiz works with teaching artists to help them create and deliver programs businesses find effective for their employees.

Depending on its partners’ needs, COCAbiz uses teaching artists from a variety of artistic disciplines including choreography, set design, theater, and poetry. Working with the business facilitators, these teaching artists help business people discover new skills and approaches in areas such as leadership, collaboration, communication, risk-taking, creativity, and presentation skills.

A number of the participants have found these classes invaluable to shifting their mindset and practices to be more constructive.

One part of the workshop consisted of improvisational theater. “These improv exercises helped me realize that to be an effective influencer, you really have to listen to other people and incorporate their ideas,” says Boland….Rather than just pushing my own agenda, I had to figure out what the other person wanted to get out of the skit and incorporate their ideas, too.”

[…]

“Much of my job involves synthesizing observations and then analyzing data to create strategies,” says Wurth. “Experiencing how actors and directors use the See-Think-Wonder method showed me a really powerful way to communicate and offer suggestions in a way that promotes dialogue rather than shutting it down.”

When people from COCAbiz talk about how they developed and delivered this program, collecting feedback and revising comes up frequently as an important part of their process. There was a sense that the business community with which they worked had high level of expectations of the program so they couldn’t leave any part unexamined.

You Can’t Min-Max Board Membership

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I have a post about board recruitment over on ArtsHacker today where I call attention to a webinar Non-Profit Quarterly recently conducted on the subject.

My focus in that article was on how the webinar is a good resource for thinking about how you recruit for and structure your board. But there are a lot of philosophical issues raised in the webinar that I wanted to call attention to as well.

Presenter Anasuya Sengupta noted that when the responsibilities of board members are listed, duty of care, loyalty, fiduciary stewardship and compliance are standards across the entire non-profit sphere. She opines that this list sounds as if a lawyer wrote it up. This made me realize that while the purpose of a non-profit is generally service to a cause or community, that isn’t among the standard criteria for responsible governance.

Sengupta also suggests legality can be a low bar for ethics and risk aversion and compliance can be a very low bar for decision making. She notes that risk aversion and compliance are largely reactive orientations rather than the proactive approach non-profits should be taking. She says that these things, along with the legalistic list of responsibilities should be considered basic practices rather than best practices.

It occurred to me that this could be one of the results of the “run it like a business” philosophy we have seen espoused lately. Reduce costs, increase revenue, avoid risk, do the least possible for the most gain (aka low overhead ratio) all seem to be symptoms of this idea.

When your purpose is to deal with people on a social level rather than as consumers of goods and services, things are less apt to be neat and tidy.   The whole endeavor of trying to involve under served audiences requires interactions with people who don’t know all the rules of behavior and possess basic knowledge of the usual audiences. Almost by definition, someone is likely to be discomforted in the process.  Additional time and effort may be required to accommodate and educate them, including providing your services in a non-standard time, place and format entirely customized to the needs of the groups with which you are working.

Another presenter, Ruth McCambridge, said that even if you perfectly followed all rules for diversifying your board, your efforts might fail. This is because the underlying premises are flawed, most of which seem to be based on the idea that filling certain slots automatically solves that problem.

I go into a bit more detail in the ArtsHacker post, but briefly the problems are:

-recruiting members of under served communities:  the person you recruit may be a member of that community, but not representative of that community.

-recruiting people who can raise/give money: In Human Service Non-profits, studies show recruiting board members for ability to raise money actually negatively impacted their budgets. In the arts, it does help build the finances.

-recruiting to fill a skill slot (lawyer, accountant): the person assumes they were recruited to provide that skill, doesn’t focus on general governance, working cohesively with entire board

The other bad assumption McCambridge mentions is that fund raising boards and working boards are mutually exclusive and you can only have one or the other.

Put in this context, I got the sneaking suspicion that the concept of a board of directors emerged during the Industrial Revolution because there seems to be an underlying utilitarian philosophy. So much of board composition seems to be based on the idea that if you find the optimal mix of skills or insights to match your institutional mission, you will realize success. If you are not successful, you must have the wrong mix.

Despite optimism about Millennials being more meaning and purpose driven than their predecessors, I don’t see this changing without focused, intentional effort. The prevalence of video gaming and the attendant Min-Maxing approach to gameplay will only serve to perpetuate this as an ideal.

Undiscerned Value Hidden In The Cracks and Corners

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There have been a lot of library closings in the UK over the last few years so VICE went around and asked people what libraries meant to them and how they were using them.

People they spoke to valued libraries as quiet, distraction free study spaces; as a location to organize meetings; resources for learning and internet access; and as a plain old place to get reading materials and fire the imagination.

This reminded me of a post I wrote around 18 months ago about how the Columbus (OH) Metropolitan Library surveyed patrons asking what libraries meant to them in their youth and what they anticipated it would mean to them in the future.

By and large, the responses from Columbus were similar to those in the UK in that people valued the ability to access information and conduct the important activities of their lives.

As I quoted from a CityLab article in that post:

“The physical library will become less about citizens checking out books and more about citizens engaging in the business of making their personal and civic identities.”

One obvious question I didn’t raise in my earlier post is whether arts organizations can effect a similar change in the relationship the community has with their facilities. A frequent criticism of performance venues and stadiums are that they are only used when there is a performance resulting in a type of waste whereas museums are used more consistently.

While the location of some performance venues is not conducive to easy use due to the lack of sidewalks, foot traffic and general environmental dynamics, there may be other opportunities that would position the venue as more of a resource to the community.

On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes it is difficult to know if trying to improve the environment might be counterproductive. For example, I noticed an increase of people hanging out in our lobby sitting/laying on benches reading and listening to music on headsets. I had considered getting some cafe tables and chairs people could sit at so they had a surface to work on. Since people have mentioned they value the quiet, I wondered if adding more amenities might attract more activity and ruin the environment people had sought out.

In the last two years, I started noticing people hanging out in strange locations that I couldn’t imagine were comfortable to sit in. Even though there were outlets in these places, the people who consistently staked them out as their own didn’t often have devices plugged in. I think it was the fact it was even more quiet and private than the lobby.

Then there is the woman who occupied a slightly more private, though still visible nook to practice yoga.

If someone came by and asked for a room to meet/study in or a place to hold a yoga class, that would be difficult due to the level of activity in the building. But if someone only needs a corner for themselves and a few others, it is available, provided they aren’t picky.

It is in those minute, almost imperceptible circumstances that an arts facility can have the opportunity to alter the manner in which they are useful to the community.

Stuff To Ponder: Who’s Volunteering? Who’s Not Volunteering?

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VolunteerMatch’s Engaging Volunteers blog recently drew attention to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report (BLS) that shows volunteer rates are continuing to drop.

As the post author Tessa Srebro notes, the BLS report gives us a lot of statistics about what demographic groups are more likely to volunteer than others, but-

What don’t we see? We don’t see the why.

There’s an endless supply of reasons that could explain why volunteer rates are falling. Last year, upon seeing the results, VolunteerMatch President Greg Baldwin argued that volunteer rates are falling because we as a nation don’t invest enough resources in the nonprofit sector. Without resources, nonprofits simply don’t have the capacity to effectively engage volunteers.

Someone in the comments of that post argued that the falling rates can be attributed to the fact that more people are overworked with less time on their hands. Others say people are simply lazier than they used to be.

I personally think it could be attributed to a shifting trend away from community involvement, due to the emergence of online communities, young people moving more often, and other factors.

There were a good number of comments to the Engaging Volunteers post and the number continues to grow. A large number of the commenters express frustration with the organizations they approached being un(der)prepared to train or employ them. Another common complaint was that the organizations wanted them to fulfill menial tasks rather than ones that challenged and engaged their interest.

I am not sure what the percentages have been in the past, but in this recent survey by BLS, the percentage of people who started volunteering after they were asked (41.2%) is almost exactly equal the number who were motivated to volunteer on their own (41.6%).

Given that this latter number represents those who are actively volunteering, it is possible that the percentage of people who are self-motivated to seek volunteer experiences is far larger than those who are motivated by the request of others. That 41.6% doesn’t include self-motivated people whose efforts were frustrated and are not volunteering.

As I have mentioned before, effectively utilizing free labor requires a significant investment of money, resources and attention.

There is a lot in the Engaging Volunteer’s post and the BLS report to consider and so much we don’t know about volunteers’ motivations. There seems to be an increasing desire to have a volunteer experiences be meaningful.

Thinking back to the Hewlett Foundation report I wrote on last month that suggested non-profit CEO’s were looking to continue working for a longer period of time with their organizations, albeit in a diminished role, perhaps it is not too far a reach to extrapolate that skilled professionals in general might desire to continue to apply their high level skills in a volunteer role after they enter retirement.

One last thing I wanted to point out for consideration is the breakdown of areas of interest for different demographic groups the BLS report shows. Knowing this might help your organization better design volunteer experiences for people. (Though you don’t want to stereotype.)

For example, while “Collecting, preparing, distributing, or serving food was the activity volunteers performed most often” according to the BLS report,

…main activities differed among men and women. Men who volunteered were most likely to engage in general labor (12.3 percent); coach, referee, or supervise sports teams (9.3 percent); or collect, prepare, distribute, or serve food (9.2 percent). Female volunteers were most likely to collect, prepare, distribute, or serve food (12.9 percent); tutor or teach (10.6 percent); or fundraise (9.9 percent)

There are similar trends based on education level, marital status and whether people have kids.

Social Status: Where Cold Rises and Warmth Flows Down

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I was really intrigued by the results of a recent study coming out of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs that shows “managers play down their competence to appear warmer to their subordinates while the subordinates hide their own warmth in an effort to appear more competent.”

According to the researchers, because people are uncomfortable with discussing/acknowledging the differences in social status in the workplace, they tend to match a stereotypical image they have of the other person in an attempt to connect by trying to act against the stereotypical image of their own status.

Past studies have shown that managers are typically seen as competent and cold, while lower-status employees may be seen as warm, but not entirely competent.

[…]

“In doing this, people might actually talk past each other, making people have more of an awkward misunderstanding,” said Jillian Swencionis, lead author and doctoral candidate in psychology and social policy at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

[…]

The stereotypes people hold about others may not necessarily be true, so when they’re trying to ‘match’ the other person, they’re matching what they think the other person is like. These kinds of diverging impression management strategies may be one reason for misunderstandings or otherwise awkward situations people have in these interactions,” Swencionis said.

The researchers intend to do the same study with students in higher and lower ranked universities to see if they get similar results.

The study made me wonder if the same thing might be in operation in the arts.

  • Do arts organization personnel who interact with audience members and donors they perceive as higher status try to mirror a stereotype they hold about the patron, but end up making a poor impression?
  • Do audience members of lower social status do something similar when they feel they are interacting with other audience members, staff and perhaps artists that are of higher status?
  • What about in the opposite direction, do audience members, donors and staff who perceive themselves of higher status change their behavior when they are interacting with people of lower status?
  • What are the stereotypes each seeks to embody about the other? Do people of lower status in an arts environment try to appear reserved, refined and educated when dealing with someone of higher status?
  • Do people of higher status make an effort to be enthusiastic, effusive, warmer and solicitous when dealing with someone of lower status?

Does any of this contribute to/reinforce the image of the uncultured poseur vs. the snooty and condescending?  Those trying to embody higher status stereotypes may come off as inauthentic and trying too hard. Those trying to be warm and welcoming to people of a lower status may come off as condescending.

As the Princeton researchers note, competence and warmth are not mutually exclusive traits (nor are incompetence and cold personalities). These are all interesting questions to think about and to observe in our own behavior in respect to employee and audience intra-actions and interactions.

Can Non-Profit Arts Orgs Be Better Friends?

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Seth Godin recently posted that it is good to share our “give up goals,” the things we are going to give up in order to improve ourselves. The idea is that if we backslide, our friends will keep us honest.

On the other hand, he says, common wisdom encourages us to keep our “go up” goals a secret:

Don’t tell them you intend to get a promotion, win the race or be elected prom king. That’s because even your friends get jealous, or insecure on your behalf, or afraid of the change your change will bring.

Here’s the thing: If that’s the case, you need better friends.

This came to mind today during a conference call when someone mentioned that while some arts groups are good about collaborating with others on planning to their mutual benefit, many are very proprietary about discussing their performance seasons.

I don’t know why groups would take this approach. I am 90% certain that a comment I made to a colleague last December helped sufficiently firm up the routing of a touring group we are presenting next year. The tour might not have come together or it may have been more expensive had I not discussed what groups we were looking at.

Yesterday, even though it wasn’t covered by the radius clause in our contract, I got an email advising me a group would be performing in the region six months prior to our date and asking if we had any issues. Again, we didn’t really have any basis upon which to object, but the our relationship with the artist and agent is such that they were sincerely ready to take our concerns into consideration.

Right now I am working on a capacity building grant that encompasses two other arts organizations in the community.

I can understand where organizations might feel protective of donors and funding sources. Funders will decide they have invested enough in a certain geographic region. Mergers and shifting priorities among businesses and foundations or even the emergence of more non-profits in the area can result in dwindling funding capacity and willingness.

But in terms of being reticent to talk about your general “go up” goals of growth and doing exciting things, I agree with Godin, we need better friends.

As much as I grind my teeth every time I read about how millennials are wonderful and everyone should devote slavish attention to them, I will say that I would welcome their reputed tendency toward collaboration.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying organizational leadership should leapfrog Gen X.

Clearly, GenXers are wiser, more grounded, intelligent, attractive, funny, capable, sexy, sweeter smelling, awesomer unicorns (get the shirt!) than Millennials. (Not to mention, I think many possess the requisite collaborative mindset.)

I just feel that the presence of Millennials who value collaboration and meaning in the work they do can have a positive influence in shifting the outlook of some arts organizations in a positive direction.

When The Tenors Are Sixers At Best

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My interest was recently piqued when I read a piece in The Economist which reported that two opera conservatories in Sweden declined to admit male singers because they were not up to standard.

The conservatory decided that even though it would make for skewed student productions, it could not admit male singers on the grounds of gender alone. The Gothenburg University College of Opera has found itself in a similar position. Of the 45 singers who auditioned this year, nine were men, but as the Dean of Studies Monica Danielsson tells Prospero, “none of them reached the level of admission”. Consequently, none of them won a place.

As a comparison, the article cited Indiana University Jacobs School of Music which,

…receives a similar ratio of female to male applicants. But unlike Swedish conservatories, the school admits a weighted student body. In effect, sopranos have to score much higher marks to gain admission. “We have to strive for a balance between the voice parts,” explains Professor Mary Ann Hart, chair of the school’s voice department. “You can teach singers repertoire but at an opera school, at some point, they have to act on stage.”

It should be noted that there is no mention about whether the men admitted to Indiana are up to standard or not, only that there is much more competition among women than men due to the ratio of applicants.

I have never really viewed myself as much of an activist when it comes to the subject of the gender imbalance in arts job opportunities. But I feel that whether what is happening in Sweden is isolated or indicative of a trend, it bears attention.

When the argument a male is more highly qualified evaporates and the criteria for admitting or casting a male is based on a piece written hundreds of years ago needing one, it is probably past time to start creating new works with more roles for women.

When it comes to the performing arts, I am always going to lean toward high level of skill as a criteria. Arts careers are difficult to pursue so if someone only has the capacity to be mediocre at the end of their training, they shouldn’t be lead to believe they can compete at a high level. If the guys can’t meet an objective measure of this ability, then it may be for the best if they are cut.

Is it fair to women who entered the conservatory at 8 striving to raise their proficiency 9 if they are forced to perform beside a man who operates at 6 and was admitted so that a performance could be mounted?

Admittedly this is a tricky question. Working alongside others who force you to bring your best everyday is important. Yet as the professor at Indiana says, practical experience, not theory, is the ultimate goal of the training. Right now the male voice is needed for that purpose when it comes to opera.

This isn’t just an issue with opera, musical theater and acting programs, with some exceptions, face a similar ratio of female to male applicants.

I have seen training programs where there are 300 theater majors and you are lucky if you get on stage once in all the years you are there. That type of arrangement sucks. What would be worse is if there were a similar situation where you would be lucky to perform before you graduated if you were female, but averaged a role every other semester if you were male.

If it was just a matter of more women applying to programs than men, that would be one thing, but if there is a large number of very highly skilled women applying to programs (or even just auditioning based on the skill they have been able to cultivate), then there is a demand for challenging roles to suit them.

Ideally, there would be more roles written with built in flexibility so that choosing to produce a good show didn’t have added baggage of the gender mix. I suspect currently there would be a tendency to cast men rather than women in those roles. I can’t see how a blind audition process like orchestras use could be devised that would mask gender and still accurately evaluate ability in singing and acting.

Leading 1.25 Days A Week

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By and large I keep things general and relatively low on direct criticism in my blog posts. However, since the goal of  this blog is to engender better practices in arts organizations, I feel like I need to address a topic that is under discussed –writing effective, accurate job descriptions.

I see a lot of poorly written job descriptions but there was one that came across my Twitter feed last week that was particularly egregious. Even after a weekend, it still bothered me. I won’t name names, but I am going to pull some lines from the description rather than obliquely referencing it.

The job is for an executive director. The one line that left me incredulous was:

Responsible in developing and executing a management plan where within two years the role of Executive Director will spend 75% of time on fundraising.

To put that into context, 75% of your time is 3.75 days a week. Now you may say the executive director wouldn’t be doing this every week, some months would be more focused on fundraising than others but that is still 9 months out of the year. No matter how you slice it, 75% of a person’s time is still a significant amount of time. If the Executive Director takes 2 weeks vacation, that means leadership and other functions get the 2.5 months that are left.

The amazing thing is, this is listed as number 8 of 8 primary responsibilities. How can something that is expected to take up 75% of an executive director’s time be listed last in a list of primary responsibilities?

Now, I will admit if you read the whole description the fact the person will be expected to do a lot of fundraising finds its way into pretty much every line:

• The position works within a team environment and is responsible for ensuring strong working relationships across the arts and grantor community;
• Plays a central role in fundraising including individual donors, corporate sponsorships and writing and obtaining grants;
• Executing a strategic plan including: education and outreach goals; development of a donor engagement plan including annual giving, events, corporate and volunteer relations; establishment of a major gifts program; and execution of a technology initiative including both hardware and software;
• Financial oversight including drafting and meeting a detailed annual budget;
• Ability to create and nurture relationships with new and existing funders, as well as write and secure grants to underwrite new and ongoing initiatives and general operations;

It would be better if the 75% commitment to fundraising was listed first and then what followed illustrated how that would manifest itself.

But this is more than just a matter of poor formatting and organization of ideas. Overall, I felt like there was a misunderstanding of the role of an executive director and a large mismatch in expectations.

Among the qualifications listed of the applicants are:

• Bold and creative thinker to lead a talented staff;
• Demonstrate good governance, financial oversight, and best non-profit management practice;
• Comfortable with traditional and emerging media;
• Proven leadership skills identifying profitable opportunities and growth within the communities we serve;
• Preferred demonstrated passion for the mission of arts, arts education and outreach to all communities;
• Familiar with STEAM and the maker movement;
• Experience and enjoyment in managing multiple challenging initiatives concurrently;

There was one line in the expected qualifications about possessing fundraising skills, but the primary responsibilities are replete with references to fundraising and grant writing. The qualifications and responsibilities don’t seem to be in synch with each other at all.

The expectations outlined in the qualifications are in line with an executive director, the expectations expressed in the responsibilities are generally more appropriate for a development director.

Where is there time in the 1.25 days a week or 3 months not dedicated to fundraising to devote to leading the staff, focusing on good governance, identifying opportunities for increasing revenue and growing the organization, pursuing a mission of arts education and outreach?

One of the primary responsibilities listed does call for “examining and evaluating the role art plays in the communities we serve and subsequently installing new, progressive and sustainable arts initiatives,..”

I have a suspicion that they started with the qualifications list and then started brain storming about responsibilities. As that list came together, whomever was contributing came to the realization this person would have to work on fundraising a lot and may have arrived at the 75% number without thinking about how that really broke down time wise.

That said, if they really do need someone to devote 75% of their time to fundraising, it would be better to hire a separate development person who only focused on that. If there isn’t money to hire two people then either expectations need to change or priorities need to be evaluated. Does the organization have a greater need to raise money or for focused leadership?

If the answer is money, then hire the development person and the board needs to decide on some sort of ad hoc leadership structure shared between the other staff and board members.

An executive director definitely does participate and contribute to fundraising efforts, but theirs is a leadership position. That leadership can not be exercised 25% of the time and still meet the expectations that staff, funders, business people and community partners have for a person with that title.

A person spending 3.75 days a week/9 months of the year soliciting support is going to be making significant commitments on behalf of the organization. Who is going to be setting the standards, researching best practices, creating policies and leading the staff to meet those commitments? The executive director in the other 1.25 days/3 months?

Who is going to make sure those commitments are met, gather supporting data and materials and do the follow up reporting? That is part of the executive director’s 75% time attending to fundraising you say?

Okay, yeah, maybe, but in the process something is going to suffer. These tasks are time consuming and reporting requirements are increasingly out of scale with the funding received.

There are a lot of factors at play here. Many aren’t specific to this job description. The description just reflects a lot of poor practices that have permeated the non-profit arts. If there is an Everyman, much of this description is Everyjob.

The questions I raise are among those that really need to be considered when writing a job description. Every organization is different so it is close to impossible to borrow sections of other company’s job description and do a good job generating your own.

I am willing to give the organization the benefit of the doubt and believe (even hope) that this description (and other like it) doesn’t match the reality of the position and more attention needs to be paid in making it accurate.

If it does reflect reality, bless the person who takes the job.

A Future Without A Ticket Office Window

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When I read a post on Marginal Revolution blog about high end stores hiding cash registers in favor of roving sales associates with mobile checkout devices, I immediately wondered if there might be some type of benefit in eliminating or diminishing the physical box office for the arts attendance experience.

As such this is largely an intellectual exercise. I don’t pretend to have thought through all the benefits and repercussions.

Tyler Cowen makes the following observations about the Wall Street Journal article that described this retailing practice. There seemed to be an idea that not having to stand in line was one element that gave online retailers a competitive advantage.

1. Waiting in line is described as “unenlightened.”

2. I enjoyed this remark: “We’re downplaying that last transactional part of the experience…” And this: “”Researchers have identified a concept known as “the pain of paying,” said Ziv Carmon, a professor of marketing at Insead, a business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. “Doing away with the queue and even with the register makes the upcoming pain of paying less salient,” he said.”

3. When customers are not waiting in line but rather having their purchases processed “privately,” salespeople are encouraged to socialize with them and get to know them better. And: “Stores say sales associates are expected to sense when a shopper is ready to pay.”

Positioning staff to socialize with customers and get to know them better is definitely a plus for arts organizations.

I did see a couple factors that would make it difficult to replicate the experience of a retailer.

First, unlike retailers, people are looking to make a purchase the moment they walk through the door at an arts event. On the other hand, the fact that many may have already purchased tickets in advance means that when service reps aren’t busy they can engage patrons in conversation in a manner they couldn’t behind a ticketing desk.

Second, the physical design and experience of performance spaces means a person is likely to have to stand online at some point- getting in/out of the theater, buying food at concessions, getting out of the parking lot.

In terms of benefits for performing arts environments, one of the first applications I thought of was for admission to outdoor music festivals. Since people people often queue up early, roving sales people can allow the people who showed up at 3 am stay at the very head of the line without needing to pass through the box office position.

Multiple delays can be avoided if people are able to purchase tickets while waiting to pass through a security checkpoint, rather than waiting on the ticket line and then the security line, etc.

The other thing I envisioned for arts facilities was having large monitors mounted off to the side and overhead similar to how airports have the flight status boards. That way people can gather around them and view up to the second seating status and discuss where they would like to sit. If they have questions or have made their decision, they can gesture to a sales person hovering at the fringes. (Ideally, the sales person will have read their body language and approached them already.)

When the sales experience is designed in this way, those who know what they want aren’t held up in line behind people who are debating the relative benefits of different seating arrangements. This can also help further physically separate the will-call line from the purchasing line.

It would probably be best for cash sales to occur at a physical box office since staff pocketing thousands of dollars while wandering the lobby is both awkward and a huge security risk. There might be some issues if the wifi signal carrying credit card authorizations wasn’t secure, but on the whole a larger number of cash less transactions and mobility of technology can eliminate the annoyance of yelling through plate glass to buy tickets.

By Abesty (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Abesty (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Now, of course, this requires a certain level of technology. In order to sell tickets in this manner, a sales person would have to have access to a small printer they could carry around that printed a sales receipt and slips of paper the purchaser could use for admission. Or a small kiosk/pedestal nearby that they could retrieve the receipt and tickets from.

You wouldn’t necessarily need large monitors mounted in the lobby if the roving ticketing staff could check ticketing status on a tablet computer and point out available seats on it or a printed seating chart.

It also assumes the lobby is large enough to accommodate these sort of activities. On the other hand increased mobility could allow for sales in parts of a small or strangely shaped lobby that a full box office and associated line wouldn’t be able to fit. That in turn might open up the flow of people through the lobby and make the experience more welcoming. (Especially if congestion in the lobby previously force people to stand out in the weather.)

Any insights, inspiration or concerns about this idea?

Artistic Ability Is As Much A Birthright As Language Ability

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Jason Gots, editor and creative producer over at Big Think recently wrote about “The Upside of Amateurism.” He is troubled by the perception that so much value is being placed on expertise that it is stifling curiosity and creativity, a concern shared by many in the arts, business and education world, among others.

…I fear that the present day is a place/time where expertise is so valued and specialties so specialized that people are shamed out of experimentation and curiosity, the only two impulses other than love that (as far as I’m concerned) make life worth living. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin could be a printer, fiction writer, inventor, scientist, and statesman and end up a hero of the age. Today he’d be an eccentric dilettante with branding problems.

Let’s take the example of music. The Japanese educator Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998), creator of the world-famous Suzuki method of music instruction, believed that we do violence to children when we teach them that music is a “gift” you’re either born with or not. We ought to be teaching music, he believed, the same way we teach language — as a birthright.

[…]

But we don’t teach kids to worry about whether or not they’re “talented” in their native language. Or to give it up by adulthood if they haven’t yet won a scholarship. Yet how many adults do you know who play, sing, or write music on a regular basis? If it’s more than a handful, you and your friends are a cultural anomaly. And that’s a real shame, isn’t it?

I have often heard about the Suzuki Method, but I really wasn’t aware of the philosophy before reading this article.

When Gots pointed out that we don’t worry about whether kids are talented in their native language, (grammar and spelling criticisms on social media notwithstanding), it immediately reminded me of Stephen McCraine’s “Be Friends With Failure” webcomic I wrote about a few years ago.

In one of the panels of that comic, McCraine says we don’t tell kids to give up if they don’t master language immediately so we shouldn’t tell ourselves to give up if we don’t master some artistic form within a short time.

I was also reminded of Jaime Bennett’s TEDx talk where he notes that we easily identify ourselves as tennis players and golfers, but not as having artistic talent.

“why we can so easily see ourselves on a continuum with Serena Williams and Tiger Woods, but we don’t think anything we do has anything in common with Sandy Duncan.”

This all ties back to the general effort by organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to disseminate a message that everyone has the capacity to be creative. In the case of the NEA, one of the steps they have taken toward this is widening the definition and scope of what constitutes participation in an artistic experience.

To a degree, the idea there is too much focus on expertise ties into the Hewlett Foundation study I wrote about yesterday that reported there was a concern that the professionalization of the arts management field may be narrowing access to those jobs.

Arts Leaders Plan To Be Buried With Their Desks

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Today the Hewlett Foundation released the results of a study on a question I have regularly written about over the last 7-8 years– When will non-profit executives retire so the younger generation can move into those leadership roles?

As before, the answer given by the report, Moving Arts Leadership Forward, was: Not any time soon despite all the predictions that mass retirements were upon us.

However, a ray of hope comes in the form of a qualification that hasn’t appeared before (my emphasis)

Sixty percent expected to remain in the paid workforce at least until the age of seventy, and eight percent said they did not expect to ever stop working for pay. Most late-career leaders are Baby Boomers, and the field can expect a durable Boomer presence through at least 2034, when the youngest Boomers will turn seventy. However, these late-career leaders weren’t looking to continue in the same positions indefinitely. Many were looking for capstone projects or positions and wanted to work in ways “where they are less in charge and have more flexibility and less responsibility

That bit of news made me wonder if this desire may have been part of the decision by the executive director of Forecast Public Art to step down after 38 years to take on the role of Director of Community Services for the organization.

The research report mentions that while it was once a concern about whether there were enough qualified people to replace the anticipated mass retirement, now there is a concern about whether enough early and mid-career professionals will patiently wait for executives to retire or if they will move to find careers in other areas beside the arts.

I should mention an important difference between this research report and ones I had previously cited. Where the others encompassed the non-profit field in general, this one specifically focuses on non-profit arts. Rather than trying to make general assumptions about what was likely to happen in the arts based on what was occurring in the non-profit field as a whole, we can get a more accurate picture from the responses of arts professionals.

One of the recent issues that seems to be specific to the arts is the term “emerging leader.” There has been a fair bit of discussion and a little controversy over the term because it has tended to be associated with age rather than career stage. As the report notes:

However, our data also found that the categories tend to associate age with career development needs, which does not reflect the realities of nonprofit arts leaders. And, late-career leaders can feel excluded by the terms, hindering the development of cross-generational connections that are vital to the health of the field.

In the report they use emerging leader to refer to people between the ages of 18 and 40, but in the future they say they will use different terms to delineate between people in early, mid and late career stages of leadership.

Another issue that emerged as fairly arts specific is the growing prevalence of arts management training programs over the last 20 years that have served to professionalize the sector. In the discussion of the consequences, they indirectly reference the ongoing conversation about who has the opportunity to participate in internships.

They also suggest that professionalization may lead to degree inflation that permeates most job descriptions, regardless of industry.

But professionalization of the sector has had unintended consequences. It creates an especially challenging environment for individuals with less formal education, raising questions about who has access and what resources are needed to realize a career in the arts today. Increased competition for positions of authority drives some early-career leaders to seek employment in sectors that offer more immediate opportunities for elevated responsibility, rapid career advancement, leadership status, and better pay. And increased professionalization, combined with a more crowded workforce, means that organizations can demand professional credentials for more mid-career positions, feeding the cycle of professionalization.

A concept I had not really seen discussed before was the necessity of mastering internally facing leadership and externally facing leadership.

“Internally facing” leadership includes the skills and knowledge that are needed to develop and align the resources (including people) within an organization to advance its goals. Professional development for internally facing leadership involves traditional opportunities, such as attending a conference dedicated to one’s field or bolstering one’s fundraising skills. “Externally facing” leadership extends beyond the walls of a single organization. It often focuses on field-level or cross-sector leadership, and embraces working for the good of something larger than one’s own organization.

What I found most appealing about this were the terms “field-level or cross-sector leadership” because I feel that this orientation will be important in helping arts organizations grow and develop.

The report notes that far from covetously grasping at their authority and historical practices, many executive leaders would like to create a more inclusive, cross-generational organizational culture. They “just lack models and the support for doing so.”

In an attempt to provide some useful guidance, starting around page 18 of the document, they make recommendations for moving toward more constructive organizational cultures which encompass everyone from foundations, boards and arts organization staff and leadership.

On page 21 they have a quiz to “help non-profit arts organizations identify and reflect upon the ways in which they currently practice leadership, and structure leadership opportunities across generations.” The quiz asks about adaptability, culture of learning, participation and decision making.

Following the quiz is a conversation guide to help with further reflection.

“If Only…” Only If You Are Committed

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One of the most interesting This American Life shows that I have come across and have listened to a couple times is about an auto manufacturing plant that Toyota and GM built in partnership.

When Japanese cars were outselling American cars by a wide margin, people wanted to know why. What was it about the way the Japanese made their cars that made buying one preferable to American cars.

Toyota told GM everything holding nothing back. (from the episode transcript)

Frank Langfitt Schaefer says when he realized how much of the Japanese system happened off the factory floor, it answered something that had never quite made sense to him. Why had Toyota been so open with GM in showing its operations?

Ernie Schaefer You know, they never prohibited us from walking through the plant, understanding, even asking questions of some of their key people. You know, I’ve often puzzled over that– why they did that. And I think they recognized we were asking all the wrong questions.

We didn’t understand this bigger picture thing. All of our questions were focused on the floor, you know? The assembly plant. What’s happening on the line. That’s not the real issue. The issue is, how do you support that system with all the other functions that have to take place in the organization?

If you listen to the episode or read the transcript, you can learn about the exact details. The bottom line was that GM didn’t have the will to implement all the changes to their procedures and corporate culture that would allow them to replicate Toyota’s successes.

The same applies to any effort to effect change in any group, company or organization. The words “If only…” are often uttered implying if a simple change was made, everything else would fall into place. If only we hired/fired a person. If only we had a little more money or a different opportunity.

While a simple change often can change the entire dynamics, the will or natural inclination to reach a certain goal already has to be present. In organizations and groups where there is truly one bad apple souring things among others who are already making positive efforts, a single change may result in an immediate and significant improvement.

Otherwise, you can get rid of a person who is poisoning the work environment, but the environment isn’t going to get any better if there are still 10 other people making disparaging comments and undermining each other. Hiring a charismatic leader who has brought constructive change to other organizations isn’t going to be effective if the board or employees aren’t committed to following the leader’s plan for improvement.

Much like the This American Life episode, the solutions to many of our problems can be found in business journal articles, blog posts and conference sessions, no secrets withheld. Without the will to commit to the full range of changes necessary to implement them, those strategies, procedures and techniques aren’t your solutions.

I do a lot of preaching here on the blog about what people should be doing better, but I don’t necessarily do them myself. I don’t see anything criminally inconsistent or hypocritical in that because I am clearly aware that some of those techniques are not suited for my current situation or is there the will to make them manifest.

It is all worth talking about because it raises awareness for other people and cultivates and evolves the general perspective about the arts. There are things that we weren’t ready to undertake in the past that we started to grow into.

Got Stagefright?

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In the process of trying to convince people of the value of attending a live event, performing arts people will often cite the opportunity for chaos. They will say something along the lines of a recording will be the same every time, but in a live performance, anything can happen.

I wonder if this is really fair to the performers and crew that worked on the show because it essentially tells the audience they should be rooting, just a little, for something to go wrong.

It may seem relatively harmless, especially if you aren’t out there loudly proclaiming the certain death of the lion tamer or acrobat who operates without a net. There are a lot of performers out there who (mostly) quietly suffer from stage fright and even just a little hype can exacerbate their anxiety.

A book review in the New Yorker last August recounts some of the more famous/infamous instances of stage fright suffered by Daniel Day-Lewis,  Laurence Olivier and Glenn Gould, among others. It talks about the different things that weigh on performer’s minds, no matter how hard they try, including whether they can live up to the legend that has been attached to them.

The audience rooting against them or judging them is among the anxieties they suffer:

Some performers displace this cruelty onto the audience. The pianist Charles Rosen believed that the spectators were out there waiting for the performer to slip up: “The silence of the audience is not that of a public that listens but of one that watches—like the dead hush that accompanies the unsteady movement of the tightrope walker poised over his perilous space.”

[…]

Baryshnikov believes that it is the feeling of obligation to the audience that triggers stagefright: “Suddenly the morality kicks in. These people bought a ticket to your show.”

The problem of stage fright may be more widespread than we are generally aware. In addition to silently coping with the problem, the New Yorker article notes that many artists use beta-blockers to help them deal with their fear. This is not without some controversy.

Some people said they resulted in “phoned in” performances. Some raised the ethical question, asking whether the use of beta-blockers by pianists was any different from the use of steroids by athletes. (There is an important distinction, though. Steroids add to the body, increasing muscle mass in order to improve performance. Beta-blockers remove something from the body—the flutist’s lip tremors, the cellist’s hand tremors—in order to permit the person to produce the kind of performance he has already shown himself capable of, outside the auditorium.)

This reminded me that Drew McManus had written about the issue of “performance enhancing drugs” for musicians a dozen years ago for The Partial Observer.

I briefly thought that a more constructive use of the “anything can happen” phrase might be to associate it with idea that you may see a breakthrough performance or a moment of inspiration and synchronicity that transcends the normal experience.

I quickly realized this approach may increase the anxiety for the audience. “Am I witnessing a transcendent moment? How do I really know? I wasn’t really bowled over, but maybe I missed it. I should probably join the standing ovation just to be sure, right?”

The truth is, live performance has the potential for witnessing some crises and participating in moments of transcendence. To ignore that these opportunities exist does a disservice to the experience. Regardless of whether these factors are mentioned, performers are still going to experience stage fright and audiences are still going to wonder if they are missing something everyone else seems to get.

Not to mention, these experiences aren’t unique to the performing arts. Athletes fear they will lose the edge that makes them great and many spectators find themselves unable to figure out what is going on or why anyone gets excited by the sport in the first place.

While it is generally acknowledged that the arts have to be sensitive to the barriers that may exist for audiences, the same isn’t really true for the performers.

In many other fields of employment there are coaches, counselors and human resource personnel available. Granted, many of these resources are less than perfect. A highly paid athlete is going to get a lot more support and guidance from the team’s infrastructure if they fall into rut than a fast food worker will from their company.

How many theater companies, dance companies and orchestras have a program in place to provide coaching for a performer who has lost their edge? (Actually, the dance company practice of having regular classes might count as that.) Or acknowledge that people might have debilitating stage fright, much less provide help for people who are experiencing it?

I am left wondering how prevalent it is since it isn’t often discussed. Given that seven people, (a fairly large number for that column), commenting on Drew’s Partial Observer admitted to using a drug to deal with anxiety, I suspect it is more prevalent than we imagine.

Becoming Queen of Classical Music Culture

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I was listening to an interview with Chattanooga Symphony and Opera Concertmaster Holly Mulcahy today and there were a couple things said that jumped out at me.

(Not the least of which was interviewer Hugh Sung declaring her “Queen of Classical Music Culture.” Tireless dedication, seeking out exciting new works, blogging, awesome themed dinner parties, she has earned the title)

But seriously, when she was talking about the perennial question about what to wear to the symphony, she made me realize just printing “Whatever you are comfortable wearing” on websites and in program books doesn’t really assuage anxieties people have about that subject. She suggests that people who are making an effort to put themselves out and experiment with a new experience may do everything they can to insure they don’t stand out. They really want to know what everyone else is going to be wearing.

Holly has written more detailed guide that still emphasizes “wear what you want,” but goes on to say “but if you are still worried about what everyone else is wearing…”

As she also points out in the podcast interview, often people view attending an event like a symphony performance as an opportunity to strut out in clothes they don’t often get to wear. Telling them jeans are okay is too low a bar in their eyes.

Back in January, Drew McManus posted about a video a woman created showing how she and her friends made an occasion of attending the symphony.

[vimeo 127883928 w=500 h=281]

Holly also talks about the role of the concert master (around the 16:30 mark). I was aware of some of the things she talked about already, but when she mentioned sometimes she had to make up for a lack of numbers in the string section by playing to create a fuller sound, I wanted to know why. Is the lack due to budget cuts? Could they not find enough available substitutes to fill out their numbers?

One of the more compelling things she talks about is why she walked away from a full time position with one orchestra, turned down a similar position with another orchestra and gave up playing for two months, in part due to the unhealthy environment that she experienced. (~34:00). People thought she was crazy for doing so since competition for any position is so fierce, gaining one is akin to a miracle. Giving one up is akin to apostasy.

These are stories that we seldom hear that we need to hear more of in the arts. Nothing is ever wrong unless contentious contract negotiations go public.

There has been more self-examination in the arts of late which I partially attribute to the fact that the Internet allows people to get their stories out, allows others to realize their experience isn’t unique and allows people to have a conversation about it all. There needs to be more conversation and examination. I expect there will be.

One of the stories Holly told that was most interesting to me was how she got her violin. (~46:00) Since violins are often passed down over centuries, they tend to gather interesting tales around themselves. In her case, she had about given up on finding an instrument that suited her when she happened to run into Eugene Fodor at a violin shop as he was coming in to sell some of his violins.

She describes how Fodor urged her to play Brahms on it and then paced between a couple rooms shouting corrections to her. I think I would have been a wreck, but she loved the instrument and walked away satisfied she had purchased the right violin.

But, We Will Be Careful #FamousLastWords

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The one activity related to performances that regularly is a source of frustration for my staff is getting certificates of liability insurance from people.

This is one of those requirements common to both contracts for venues one is renting to mount a performance and contracts venues/promoters send artists requesting they provide some sort of performance.

I wrote a piece covering what liability insurance is and how to go about getting it for ArtsHacker.

Since the goal of ArtsHacker posts is to provide a relatively quick reference about topics, I didn’t really get too deeply into WHY the coverage is important.

Just a quick explanation for those who don’t want soak in more of my genius on ArtsHacker. Liability insurance,

“protects you (and the spaces in which you work) against lawsuits from the public resulting from accidents, injuries, insults etc. Note: this insurance does NOT cover you or your employees.”  (Source: National Performance Network)

People generally accept that they have to pay to use a space and equipment just like they have to pay for costumes, set pieces, props, musical equipment, etc., all these things make for a better experience. Insurance just seems like an extra unwarranted expense that doesn’t contribute to the success of the event so they resist the requirement to obtain coverage.

About 15 years ago when I first started managing a performance hall I insisted every renter carry this insurance. The first group this applied to grumbled that they were never required to carry it before, but complied. In one of the performances one of their stage hands wasn’t paying attention and lowered our rear projection screen on a row of strip lights melting a lovely long gash right across the screen.

Since that day, I have blessed my insistence that they carry the insurance because that is what paid to get the screen replaced.  Neither the renter or my department could have afforded it. Since then I have never wavered in my determination to require that every renter carry it. I have shown up before load-ins on weekends when I could be relaxing if it was necessary to play the bad guy and refuse a group entry due to lack of insurance coverage.

Fortunately, I have never run into another situation that required an insurance claim to be filed. But there have been dozens of instances where renters damaged something they elected to replace out of pocket. There have been plenty of close calls as well.

For many of the same reasons, it is becoming an increasingly common practice to require performers one has contracted in for an event to carry the insurance. They are bringing in equipment that you are not familiar with. You don’t know how well-maintained it is. They may insist that no one else touch certain equipment. While that prevents you from being blamed for breaking it, you also don’t get a chance to inspect it closely.

So what happens when a speaker stack they built falls into the audience? What happens if a singer starts swinging the microphone overhead and it flies off the cable and someone gets hit? If a sword slips out of someone’s hand during a combat scene? If the lead singer elbows someone in the face while crowd surfing? If a member of the stage crew anchors a hammock to the mechanism that releases the fire curtain in an emergency and takes a nap? (true story)

Do you as the venue want to be responsible for things you have no direct control over like poor condition of equipment and poor decision making?

Many artists’ require that the venue or promoter reciprocate and carry various types of insurance to protect against these exact same issues on their part.

Large shows usually have the liability insurance set up because they know it is going to be required. Smaller groups may not be as familiar with it and don’t carry it as a practice. There can be a lot of negotiation and conversations between all parties involved in these situations.

Occasionally we may waive the requirement for groups we contract to perform if we don’t think there will be much danger of damage. But if you are going to do that, my advice is to have a complete understanding of what the performers are going to do. Don’t just blithely assume classical musicians aren’t going to do something extreme. I have had people raise the lid and remove the music rack on a grand piano so they could set glasses of water on the strings or strike/pluck them with various objects.  (If God wanted a piano played with a claw hammer, he would have designed it that way.)

 

The Secret Magic Power Called Repetition

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While I driving around recently, I heard an interview with This American Life creator, Ira Glass, talking about the early days of his career (from about 16:00-20:00 minutes)

The main thrust of that segment was a combination of the brief comments he made in 2009 on storytelling and creativity and the myth that people are essentially born proficient geniuses that I have addressed before.

As in his comments from 2009 (illustrated below in kinetic typography), Glass says when he was first starting out his working at NPR HQ in Washington, DC, the quality of what he was producing was bad to adequate.

As he looked around, he felt like everyone around him had some magical power to know exactly what was needed to make something good- emphasize a point here, edit something out there, etc. He didn’t think he would ever learn that skill. He even resorted to paying people around the office at NPR $50 to look at his work, figuring it was cheaper than going to graduate school.

Ultimately, he realized that obtaining proficiency was a largely a matter of experience, logging the hours and making mistakes.

It may require making mistakes for a long time. In the same 2009 segment that the kinetic type video above is excerpted from, Glass plays a piece he wrote in his eighth year of reporting and critiques it. He admits he doesn’t even understand what his point was and then gives a one sentence description of the situation which is interesting and comprehensible.

I bring up this idea periodically on my blog because I think it is important to be reminded that just because something/someone amazing seems to pop out of nowhere, that success may have been decades in the making.

The interviewer at WOUB was of the same mind. He specifically prefaces his request that Ira Glass talk about this experience “because we have a lot of students that listen…” Glass agrees noting that whenever you see a movie about an artist, they are always depicted as being great and inspired from the beginning, but that isn’t true to life.

In an early part of the interview, Glass notes that they kill around 50% of the stories at This American Life–not the ideas, the actual stories they are in the process of working on or have completed. So even as acclaimed as he and his team are, they are regularly making mistakes or producing work that falls short. Glass says their success is as much attributable to being ruthless about cutting as it is to being capable story tellers.

The idea that you shouldn’t become so emotionally involved with your work that you can’t let it go is not a new one, but it is a lesson that is worth revisiting from slightly different perspectives.

What’s My Personality Got To Do With It?

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Last week I was sent a link to an infographic purporting to list what arts careers were best for what personality types.

I offer this as a bit of fun and entertainment for your Monday. Generally, the Myers-Brigg Personality Type test isn’t viewed as particularly valid. Also, while they list seven personality types associated with arts careers, on average they connect five or six personality types with a job. In the case of art director, they list nine.

There is little danger that you will have to do some soul searching about whether your personality type is suited for your job.

The list is primarily focused on visual artists so you can also entertain yourself hypothesizing the best personalities for classical musician versus jazz musician; ballet dancer vs. contemporary dancer; stage directors vs. choreographers; executive directors vs. artistic directors, etc, etc.

(Yes, I know these distinctions are about as arbitrary as anything else here.)

Art Careers By Personality Type
Source: CollegeMatchup.net

Leave A Question, Answer A Question

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14 years ago today, I started writing this blog. I really never think of myself as a writer, but looking back to some of the earliest posts I see proof of just how important constant practice is to improving the quality of your writing.

I wanted to take this opportunity to throw things open and ask my readership if there are any questions they have or if there are any topics they might like to see covered in the blog.

I have the impression there may be university classes that include my blog as suggested reading because there are a number of Northern Arizona University and University of Martha Washington email addresses among my subscribers. (Hi all, thanks for reading!)

I am pretty sure there may be a fair number of students from other schools reading as well.

If you have any questions, let me know.

But I also have a question of my own for you.

A few weeks ago, one of our game design faculty was being interviewed on a podcast. The faculty member said he often asked his students what they thought the future of video games was going to be. He asked the podcast host what he thought the students answered. The host said, Virtual Reality.

The faculty member said even though he expected virtual reality to be the answer as well, his students were actually interested in seeing hologram games like the one depicted in the original Star Wars movie. (It also appears in the Force Awakens, exactly where it leaves off in the original movie.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZE_gN4hB44

So my question to all the university students out there (and anyone else can respond as well) is what you envision will be the future for the way people experience the visual and performing arts.

So Many Emails That Snail Mail Starts To Distinguish You From The Crowd

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A bit of harsh truth here that I think is pretty much widely recognized, but also generally remains unspoken.

A lot of the correspondence I get from artists and agents goes directly into the trash. It isn’t just me. There is a fair bit of conversation among colleagues I meet at conferences and meetings about the sheer volume of promotional material we receive.

I hate to make such a summary judgment on people’s pitches. I would like to give each due consideration and respect. But the amount of material I get each day is close to overwhelming. The first thing I do in the morning and upon returning from lunch is delete blocks of email that have come in. When I think about the fact that we are not a major presenting organization, I can’t imagine what it must be like for the people in corresponding jobs at other venues.

The solution isn’t as simple as just unsubscribing from email lists or blocking senders because there have been some interesting performances that have come to my attention via email. It is just that the percentage of productive emails received in a year out of the hundreds I get a day is pretty minuscule. There are definitely people out there ruining it for everyone else because the volume they send out eats up the attention I might spend checking out the person who makes a single disciplined, focused bid for my attention.

Drew McManus suggested I set up a dedicated email address just for pitches and politely direct people to it so that I can set aside time each week to evaluate them.

But believe it or not, I am not writing this post to complain or as a bid for sympathy but to acknowledge the effort and expense some performers have to go through to get themselves in front of programming decision makers. I am not ignoring the travel and other expenses artists have to bear to attend conferences and showcases, but I am going to focus mostly on correspondence today.

The reality is, since it is so easy and cheap to send email these days, there is actually some benefit to sending physical mail nowadays. It may also end up in the trash, but there is less of a crowd that a mailed piece needs to stand out from.

That was the case with a piece I got in the mail last week from Greg Kennedy who bills himself as an innovative juggler. For various reasons I decided it wasn’t something we were interested in and I was thinking about whether I wanted to throw the mail away or pass it on to another arts organization that shares our building when the quality of the envelop paper and the presentation gave me pause.

As you can see below, it has a pretty interesting mailing label. You might also notice it cost $1.64 to mail. The contents were pretty substantial.

envelop

Inside was a brochure that had special cuts so that it could be assembled into a theater.

brochure theater

He had a little card for each of his shows that you could place into the theater.

theater with card

This is a pretty damn expensive piece to put together and mail out. If you notice, the line of the curtain and the grain of the floor on the card insert corresponds to the theater you place it in. There is some attention to detail there. I wondered what the return on investment was. Couldn’t he have made a piece that was less expensive and time consuming that would have garnered the same return?

(I should note that since he talks about his engineering background and his show heavily uses boxes, a constructed brochure definitely ties in and illustrates his thought process.)

He may have gotten more exposure for having sparked enough of my interest that I posted about him on my blog, but he couldn’t have counted on that. (By the way, I have been writing this blog 14 years as of tomorrow and this is the first time I have posted about an artist’s brochure. Don’t go sending me your brochures in the hopes I will feature them.)

It didn’t escape me that arts organizations face many of the same challenges getting ticket buyers to pause and read their printed and mailed materials as artists and agents do with performance buyers. Everyone complains about being as deluged by emails as I did at the beginning of this post.

It is just that my particular deluge comes from a particular category of email lists I didn’t sign up to be on. While I do feel a twinge of regret for discarding mail and email so quickly, I am being paid to do more than just evaluate emails.

One of the big challenges for any promotional effort is to determine where the cost-benefit ratio has transitioned into unfavorable territory. Spending too little effort and money yields a result of such poor quality that it doesn’t effectively communicate the value of your product. If you have spent money and effort in great excess of any possible return, you have wasted resources.

In terms of Greg Kennedy’s piece, regardless of how nice it is, his show probably still isn’t a good fit for us. However, I will pass the materials on to someone else (and I have posted it here) so there is still potential for a return on his effort.

The Need For More Marketing To Older Audiences

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Last week there was an article on Salon with the click bait-y title, “Stop buying old Bob Dylan albums: “Every time somebody buys a reissue, they’re just taking money away from new musicians.” I started to get a little worked up thinking that money not spent on reissues wasn’t automatically going to be redirected to newer releases.

As you might have inferred, the argument being made was a bit more complex than that. The article was an interview with Wall Street Journal pop music critic Jim Fusilli who suggested one of the reasons why you think the music of your youth was better than the crap they are playing today is that:

I don’t think the industry knows how to market music to grown-ups. When you reach a certain plateau in life and you have family and a career, when you’re involved in your community, you measure things in a different way and your affiliation with pop culture doesn’t matter as much anymore. So music ceases to be a part of your identity. It’s just music. You’re not looking for heroes at a certain stage in life. You’re just looking to hear something that excites and stimulates you. And I don’t know that the industry knows how to talk to those people. I don’t think the industry knows how to hand a grown-up a piece of music and say, This is really good for the following reasons, and none of those reasons has anything to do with clothes or hair or who they’re dating or whatever.

[…]

Maybe this is an unfair example. I don’t know the guy, so I’m not picking on him. But Don Henley put out that album last year, and it got a lot of buzz. Why did it get a lot of buzz? Because he used to be in the Eagles. Anybody who follows Americana and traditional country can tell you that there are 50 better albums than “Cass County.” Totally accessible work, with traditional storytelling, great vocals, great arrangements, absolutely proving that the art of songwriting is still alive. But then there’s Don Henley everywhere. Maybe this is harsh, but maybe the industry thinks it should throw a bone to grown-ups. Rather than saying this is an excellent album by a new artist, they just say, Here’s the new Don Henley.

If nothing else, Fusilli’s arguments deserve some consideration and reflection to determine how valid they are.

When I was thinking about this interview over the weekend, I wondered, with all the complaints about how arts marketing and programming are so focused on the older generation, did I really want to write a post saying the music industry needed to do more to connect with the older generation?

In some respects, it makes good sense and might be beneficial for arts organizations. If you can raise interest for recent music in your current, older audience demographic, it is easier to make a case for those groups to boards of directors/programming committees. Maybe this results in programming that is attractive to the wider age demographic everyone says non-profit arts orgs should be serving.

Frequently the conversation about marketing the arts is about attracting a younger audience to works enjoyed by an older audience. Or the focus is on providing programming that the younger generation can connect with.

What I think may be the unspoken thought behind these idea is wanting to have programming that our current audience likes that also has an appeal to younger audiences. How often is the converse employed as a programming philosophy– what the younger audience likes is what we try to make appealing to older audiences?

Being realistic, it is safer economically to try to supplement your core audience with those that may have related interests than the reverse. You can also find success by deciding to focus an event entirely on a non-core audience without any attempt to involve your core audience.

But deciding you are going to start to do a little programming for a non-core audience and try to generate buy-in from your core audience? That can be risky and scary. Not to mention it might force an examination of the double standard behind expecting young people should be open to experiencing ballet but not expecting older audiences to be open to experiencing b-boying/b-girling.

How the shift in music marketing implied in the interview might be accomplished, I am not entirely sure. I feel like it could be more easily accomplished nowadays when distribution channels and gatekeeping are more decentralized than in the past. However, those same conditions also provide the opportunity for a greater focus on appealing to a specific niche to the detriment of uniting the larger community behind an artist.

Arts organizations would still need to change aspects of their marketing in order to correspond to the larger effort to attract a wider audience. My guess is different aspects of an artist would be magnified for different audiences. As Fusilli points out, grown-ups identity isn’t as tied to music as it is for young adults.

I wonder if there were any lessons for music companies to be learned from the attempts arts organizations have made to attract wider audiences. I suspect there are a lot of excellent ideas out there that have suffered from lack of both resources and ability/will to commit long term.

This Painting Best Viewed From Downward Facing Dog

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With the news that people are increasingly valuing a degree of interactivity in their cultural experiences sitting in the back of my mind, I have been keeping my eyes open for interesting practices.

One thing that recently came to my attention was a program the Spartanburg Art Museum is creating for “art-savvy senior.”

Yeah, everyone is concentrating on attracting younger audiences, but you can’t ignore the fact the Baby Boomer generation is retiring and looking for things to do.

There is much to like about this new Classic Contemporaries program. Perhaps one of the most appealing aspects is that there really isn’t any of the usual cliche terminology in the name that implies it is for senior citizens. This may impede some of their communication efforts, but for those who feel 70 is the new 50, it may resonate more closely with their self image.

The first event connected with the Classic Contemporaries program is the museum’s Cognitive Dissonance show.

“Four main components within the Classic Contemporaries program bring education, socializing, and creative exploration together. Participants will take part in a presentation that gives some historical background to the medium of ceramics, followed by a tour of the current exhibition, Cognitive Dissonance. Lunch is served, and for those feeling encouraged to stretch their creative muscles, there is time to learn about working with ceramics in an informal studio setting.”

Their planned activities include elements things that people value in an arts and cultural experience – expanding knowledge, socialization, opportunity for hands on participation and food.

Poking around the rest of their site, I was interested to see they offered a class in making ceramic sushi serving trays, plates, soy sauce dishes and tea cups culminating in a sushi party at the last class meeting.

Apparently every other Wednesday, they hold yoga classes in their gallery amid the art works. If nothing else, Uttanasana pose will give participants a new perspective on the works around them.

I am sure there are a lot of arts organizations out there offering a lot of fun and interesting activities that I haven’t heard of. My guess is that many readers haven’t heard of them either so please feel free to share some ideas and examples.

Artists Make Great Tour Guides

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A couple days ago, CityLab had an article about a fledgling sharing economy start up called Lokafy that pairs tourists with local residents willing to act as tour guides to the “real” areas of their city. Lokafy is so fledgling that it is only in Paris and Toronto with plans to shortly start the service in New York City.

What grabbed my attention about Lokafy was that they value people with artistic temperaments as guides.

Samra recruits “Lokafyers” through the “creative gigs” section on Craigslist. “I think it’s really great for travelers to meet the artists in a city because artists are the ones who kind of step back and interpret life and soak in what’s going on around them,” she says. She views the local guides as something between a tour leader and a friend.

Travelers can expect to see the hidden gems, says Samra. In Toronto, one Lokafyer took her guests to St. Lawrence Market by way of side streets so that they could see street art they may have overlooked.

This concept appealed to me on many levels. It provides a little flexible employment for people, especially artists. It exposes tourists to the work of local artists and helps them become invested in the city in ways they might not have on the usual tourist circuit.

It also gives creatives an opportunity to practice talking to regular people about art, allowing them to make mistakes and get feedback in a relatively low stakes environment.

As with other sharing economy services, I wondered in the back of my mind if this service would be able to scale up and still maintain its intimate connection with tourists. Just as real estate companies have come to dominate AirBnB listings in some cities, tour operators may end up taking advantage of the Lokafy’s image to the point where tourists frequently find that their local tour guide has ushered them on to a full tour bus.

It occurred to me that the value of this idea goes beyond tourism. Even if Lokafy doesn’t take off or spread to smaller cities around the U.S., a similar service sponsored out of the chamber of commerce, local arts council or convention and visitor’s bureau would be great for new residents.

Just moved to Columbus, OH; Birmingham, AL; Chattanooga, TN and want to get to know your city but don’t really know where to begin?

What if you could get a pre-screened personal guide to take you around to many interesting corners of the city, point out hidden treasures and provide historical insight into things you see everyday on the way to work, deepening your appreciation of your new home in ways the printed/web visitors’ guides can’t?

Only problem I see with this program becoming popular is that either: 1) You become good friends with the person who hired you as a tour guide. So should you be charging them to hang out tomorrow? or;

2) Your current friends think you are so awesome they want you to give tours to their friends and family for free, or;

3) Just like with your art practice, people think you shouldn’t need to be paid to have fun, ignoring the fact that you have spent time scrupulously assembling notes and plans for different neighborhoods.

If you have been reading my blog for the last year or so, I see this as an extension of the general “talking to strangers” concept I have been collecting and making attempts to implement.

Is This Organization Big Enough For The Two Of Us?

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I don’t recall what originally brought it to my attention or caused me to read it more closely, but the Executive Director job search announcement for Forecast Public Art struck me as interesting.

Forecast is looking for a new executive director because the founding executive director is stepping down after 38 years to become the Director of Community Services. At first, I thought this might be part of a leadership succession plan where the former executive director would be around as a resource as he transitioned into retirement.

However, after reading the press release on the matter, the narrative I was making up in my head about the situation changed. Based on the statement that Forecast has “seen an increase in the demand for its public art community services,” I started to think that executive director Jack Becker decided that community services work was where his passions really lay versus the other efforts Forecast pursues.

The truth may be a combination of both or something else altogether. If anyone has any additional information, I would love to know.

Regardless of the real reasons, how arts organizations handle leadership issues is an area of interest for me so I would like to see how things turn out. It may require a fair bit of discipline on the part of many people to look (or direct others) to someone else for leadership decisions after 38 years of one person holding the executive position.

Just two months ago, I wrote a piece for ArtsHacker that dealt with conducting searches for non-profit executives. In that post I included a link to an excellent Nonprofit Executive Succession-Planning Toolkit put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

While useful in every succession situation, it may be particularly applicable in the case of Forecast because it contains a self-reflection questionnaire designed for the departing executive. One of the things it asks is what the departing executive envisions their relationship with the organization to be in the future, a question which covers everything from a complete split to emeritus status to a continued daily role such as the one at Forecast.

There are also tools and advice in both the toolkit and other resources I link to in the post to help guide the board of directors through various different scenarios that sees the executive depart.

Stuff A Computer Programmer In Your Arts Hole

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Possible evidence of what I suggested yesterday regarding the need to discuss all the career paths available to arts grads comes in a post last week by Alex Tabbarok Marginal Revolution blog.

Tabbarok opens by reviewing graduation data he used in a book he published showing more students graduated with a bachelor’s degree in visual and performing arts in 2009 than in “in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined.”

So what has happened since 2009? The good news is that enrollment in STEM fields has increased dramatically. The number of graduates with computer science degrees, for example, has increased by 34%, chemical engineering degrees are up by a whopping 49.5% and math and statistics degrees have increased by 32%.

The bad news is that we are still graduating more students in the visual and performing arts than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined. As I said in Launching nothing wrong with the visual and performing arts but those are degrees which are unlikely to generate spillovers to society.

In the comments section there is a lot of discussion about the relative usefulness of different majors. The following observations about the mix of proficiencies one needs to create a successful product in computer science caught my eye.

Floccina February 4, 2016 at 10:04 am

The CS majors could be made easier. There are hard programming tasks and easy programmings task, there IMO are even programming where less intelligent people can do a better job by making interface that is easier to understand. Some programing task require less intelligence and more art. So perhaps there should be an easy Computer programming major. And perhaps it would make us all better off by increasing total production.

Fill disclosure I am a programmer who not so smart. When I have a difficult algorithm to write that I cannot look up I get help from a smart person.

Andy February 4, 2016 at 11:09 am

I agree. I’m a liberal arts major in English and Information Studies (not programming), and lucked out by finding a job that trained me in administrative computing. CS majors are really needed for software engineering but for programming for basic business processes they can really screw things up, often because their communication skills aren’t that great. The setup we have at my university – train liberal arts majors in computing – has worked well because they draw smart people from areas and occupations that emphasize communication and critical thinking. I’m always hearing horror stories of young CS majors who overengineered systems to the point of unmaintainability and can’t be reasoned with.

An inch below that, someone comments that Apple was able to produce a successful product because Steve Wozinak was a genius at writing effective code and Steve Jobs knew that the user interface needed to be simple and attractive to users.

The problem with Tabbarok’s view, which is generally shared, is that it assumes a computer science major gets plugged into a computer science job hole and a psychology major gets plugged into a psychology job hole and if there are no corresponding jobs needing to be plugged into, then those majors are useless.

This ignores the fact that the value of computer programs, chemicals, medicine, etc., don’t become self-evident upon creation. Like it or not, marketing, advertising and design communicate something that draws attention and causes people to value those items. Whether that thing deserves to be valued is another conversation altogether.

Would you have even known of the existence of the original Macintosh 128k, much less wanted to buy the boxy thing if it weren’t for the iconic 1984 Super Bowl ad? Why did VHS trump Beta when the latter was the superior format? Acai berries always had the same nutritional qualities so why were they miracle berries one year and barely mentioned the next?

The value of something isn’t completely dependent or proportionate to its usefulness.

From a certain point of view, the computer science, chemistry and biology degree really only has value because the creative team at a marketing firm has made the software, artificial sweetener or drug important. Even then, the product may fail for intangible and unexpected reasons just as high budget movies do.

To some degree, more computer science jobs create more creative jobs and creative jobs help create more computer science jobs. This sort of interdependence is illustrated by the success of Amazon, Google and Facebook. Nobody would be hired in one group of jobs if the other area was deficient. (Lord knows, whoever keeps updating the TOS for Facebook has nearly screwed things up a number of times.)

This gets back to what I was saying yesterday. Everyone is done a disservice when they are told actors can only act, violinists can only be in an orchestra, psychologists can only get jobs in clinical, counseling and school psychology.

God help us if a tuba player starts a technology company!

This isn’t to say that there is no value in pursuing a discipline toward a highly specialized end. There is a lot of training, study and practice behind orchestra musicians, surgeons, major league baseball players, ballet dancers, etc. It is widely acknowledged that there are only a few such slots available to the tens to hundreds of thousands of practitioners (except surgeons, of course, I hope there aren’t that many people practicing surgery for fun).

Those who don’t have the ability and will to operate at an elite level shouldn’t have other options closed off to them by a siloing mentality if they have skills that overlap well into other areas.

A Real Artist Wouldn’t…

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Throughout my life I have frequently seen articles about all the careers you can pursue with X major. Some of the options seemed a little far fetched and based on individual outlier examples. (Though philosophy majors have racked up some interesting achievements so perhaps it is I whose vision is limited.)

Over the last few months it occurred to me that when it comes to arts careers, the “if you are not suffering, you are selling out” philosophy might be influencing mentors and educators when it comes to providing advice to young students and practitioners. More accurately, it may be less about starving as purity of practice.

I haven’t assembled enough examples to really support this thesis, but I thought I would toss the idea out there to spur some thought and draw attention to how career options are being communicated, including in one’s personal practice.

I started thinking along these lines last Fall when I was attending the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship in Education SAEE conference. One of the research presentations found that music conservatory graduates felt they hadn’t been prepared for anything but a career as a member of an orchestra or as a soloist.

This isn’t necessarily groundbreaking news. It has long been observed by both faculty and students of all disciplines, including arts, science, business and law, that more people are being graduated than there are open positions. One of the goals of SAEE is to find ways to train students to better manage their careers and make their own opportunities. It is still a fledgling effort, though.

A little more recently, I was listening to faculty from the video game design program at my university on a video conference talking about the program and career opportunities. It wasn’t until a prospective student asked what other career options existed for the degree that the faculty members mentioned there were some graduates that had gone into medical imaging and simulation and were actually making quite a bit more money than those who went into the gaming industry.

I was surprised to learn that there were good options in the medical field. It had never occurred to me that such opportunities existed. I don’t think they were intentionally hiding that fact, especially with all the other things they needed to talk about. Still, there was something in the way they spoke about the medical field careers that made it sound like the less preferential option versus the core focus of the program. Given that the program is pretty competitive and rigorous, it could only raise the profile if they touted a range of career options.

It is natural that we are all biased toward what we perceive to be the pure practice of our discipline. The question remains, are we telling the broadest, best and most interesting range of stories about the opportunities our disciplines afford?

It isn’t enough to convince people that what the arts and culture represent and create have resonance and meaning in their lives with an eye to making them consumers. There is also a need to mention the diverse ways these skills can be manifested and practiced even if they lack some elemental of idealized purity. Or if we feel some practitioners are bastardizing and demeaning an art form with lack of skill and discipline.

At the very least this would create a growing awareness of all the ways artistic vocations are practiced and improve the perception of the arts as a career path.

The Water Balloon War Final Exam

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I was listening to some Big Think videos this weekend when I was struck with an insight about educational philosophy. I am pretty sure it isn’t a new insight, but the metaphor that occurred to me might help a little bit with the conception of the problem.

At the tail end of an interview with psychologist Laurence Steinberg, he says that there is no problem with teaching to the test if the test is measuring something that you want kids to achieve.

Sir Ken Robinson and others have pointed out that our goals for education are based in Industrial Revolution thinking where education was meant to create a competent workforce. (Robinson’s words are entertainingly illustrated in the Zen Pencils cartoon I shared last week.)

As Robinson has pointed out elsewhere, we barely know what the world will look like in five years time, much less what skills will be needed in 15-20 years time when students being educated today start to enter the job market.

The thing that struck me, perhaps influenced by the Super Bowl this weekend, was that our current education system is akin to having the evaluation of effectiveness measured by success in a football game at the end of the year.

People complain that the approach is brutal, damaging, favors certain genders, races and physical types (or learning styles in the case of education), and doesn’t really confer the skills required for employment or even college.

The counter example that occurred to me was having a water balloon fight as the end of year evaluation. Even though both football game and a water balloon fight would be informed by history lessons in battle tactics, geometry and physics, a water balloon fight lends itself more widely, creatively and easily.

There are many more lessons to be learned preparing for a water balloon fight about the use of terrain and technology in battles that would bring history alive. With options of hand throwing, catapults, slingshots to launch water balloons, geometry and physics have to be factored in constantly by participants.

Chemistry class can be devoted to investigation of whether adding gelatin changes the ballistic properties of the balloons and whether the stickiness upon explosion will be sufficient to gum up the works of enemy weaponry and thwart hand launching attempts.

Biology class can include investigation of using biodegradable materials for balloons so the battle doesn’t ruin the environment. Literature classes would study speeches, poems and stories that inspired people to great feats from Beowulf to Shakespeare to Martin Luther King.

On the whole, a water balloon fight final exam promotes greater creativity and inquiry, exactly the type of skills we want to engender in students. It is fun and engaging and doesn’t heavily favor gender, ethnicity, physical or mental ability.

If you haven’t guessed by now, water balloons in this metaphor are arts and creativity in the classroom.

The reason why, literally and figuratively, few school districts would move from a football final to a water balloon final despite the exciting opportunities it affords, is because no one views water balloon fighting skills as marketable but football skills are viewed as such.

As we know, the same perception exists for education today. Even though few people can be employed solely based on their football skills/K12 education, those skills are still the main focus because there are a handful of people that achieve great renown.

Just as it is easier to cut arts programs than sports programs in schools, politically it is very difficult to shift away from teaching what is quantitatively measurable to what is qualitatively measurable.

Yet we still know what the results are. When students enter universities, even if they don’t require remediation, effort is still required to move students from regurgitation of facts to an inquiry mode of thinking.

Even upon graduation from university, businesses are saying their biggest need from employees is the creativity to help their companies move forward.

Integrating creativity into the classroom and returning arts classes to schools won’t solve all the issues with the education system any more than a water balloon fight is automatically superior to a football game.

Though really, wouldn’t you be more excited to learn if you knew it was connected with the Great Water Balloon Fight?

Like the water balloon fight, the inclusion and advocacy of arts and creativity has the potential to change the dynamics of the learning environment, level the playing field and increase accessibility for a wider range of people.

The reality is, there is nothing idealized, impractical, theoretical or metaphorical about my water balloon example. Winter weather aside, you could use water balloons tomorrow in connection with different subject areas in the ways I have suggested and see a lot of investment from students.

Inspiring Comics Break

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If you are looking for fun, inspiring thoughts to start your day, I would direct your attention to Zen Pencils. It is not updated every day, but given the time cartoonist Gavin Aung Than invests in creating each one, you wouldn’t expect it to be.

Along with illustrating the words of prominent figures like Dalai Lama and most recently, Jane Godall, he tackles issues near and dear to the hearts of creatives.

Among some of my favorites, (and I haven’t yet read them all); are animator Chuck Jones assertion that “creative work is never competitive;” Richard Feynam on how science adds to the appreciation of art; director Kevin Smith noting, “It costs nothing to encourage an artist;” director Shonda Rhimes reminder that dreams require work; and Sir Ken Robinson talking about how education needs to encompass both body and mind.

One comic that I appreciated was his own “The Calling,” which depicts the some of the possible consequences of heeding the call for an artistic vocation. No one wants to have things go poorly for artists but I was glad that the comic reflected reality rather than trying to be overly optimistic.

How Green Was My Wicked Witch

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There has been an ongoing debate about whether simulcast performances from the Metropolitan Opera or London’s National Theatre will serve to erode audiences for live performances. According to research over the last few years, the answer isn’t entirely clear.

I have been thinking in the last couple weeks that one event I wouldn’t mind having the opportunity to live stream is the proceedings of BroadwayCon. The first Con a couple weeks ago seemed to exceed expectations despite the snowstorm that hit NYC.

The fact that so many people traveled great distances to meet each other, dress as their favorite characters and pick up new skills indicates there is potential to serve the large number of people who can’t make it. A live stream or two from the major speakers and panel events would allow groups across the country to organize their own local convention around the main convention schedule.

Sure, regional conventions like those organized for gaming, comics, anime, etc could be hosted independently around the country to tap into the enthusiasm a different times of the year. However, a live stream from the NYC Con (or other significant Con that subsequently pops up) could help provide performing arts entities in smaller communities that aren’t going to be able to attract celebrity guests an opportunity to organize people in their area.

This sort of event might serve to get people into their venue in the first place and create an energetic and friendly environment to introduce people to live theater. When major events aren’t being broadcast, workshops, panels, meetups, costume contests and such can be conducted where the rabid fans and the relatively uninitiated could mix together without a high intimidation factor. (Though debates over the correct shade of green to accurately depict Elphaba pose their own challenges.)

The biggest question would be the cost of streaming. I think it would be in the best interest of the BroadwayCon organizers to keep it low. Even if they lost money on streaming the event, they would likely be stoking the desire attend in person in people across the country.

For those who are tired of NYC and Broadway being held up as the be all and end all of theater in the country, I am completely with you there.

But my thought is that if you have a horde of people in your venue, some of which have never been there, and you are having classes in costume construction, giving tours of your fly gallery, holding acting classes and hosting karaoke sing alongs, not only have you found a way to fulfill your mission but they have new incentive to come back in the future.

That is, of course, dependent on you providing events and activities that are appropriate to their interests. It can’t be exciting times once a year and then a return to a situation that has little resonance with that same demographic the other 51 weeks. (Or other 11 months of the year in the case of Black History month programming.)

After a month or so when the dust settles, I was considering dropping the BroadwayCon organizers a line to see if they might entertain this idea. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas on the matter?

One of the first things that popped in my mind given the weather this year was whether there would be a way to avoid paying for the stream if snow forced you to cancel your local branch of the convention.

They Are Us, We Are They

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Seth Godin made a post in which he listed some of the following features of crowds:

[…]
The crowd gets on its feet when your band plays the big hit, and sits down for the new songs….

The crowd will always pick the movie over the book.

The crowd would rather wait in line for the popular attraction.

The crowd likes to be chased.

[…]

The crowd’s favorite words include fast, easy, cheap, fun, now and simple.

The crowd needs a deadline.

The crowd is the group of people who don’t get what you do, who loom on the horizon as the reward for making your work more popular.

And yet, the crowd continually gets more than it deserves, because people like you make work that matters. Work that you’re proud of.

Many of us can identify with that final line. We are under appreciated for the work we do in our communities.

It is important to remember, we too, are the crowd.

Most of these sentiments can apply to each of us as well in regard to that bakery, bookstore, school, fund raiser, festival, etc., that we think is really great but we don’t have the time, energy or opportunity to frequent as much as we would like. There are people who complain about our lack of engagement with them as much as we complain about theirs in regard to us.

I used to like to say, “Customers are idiots, I should know because I am one.” There is an incident that occurred at a Tesco in Ireland eight years ago that I am still not sure if I was being a stupid, clueless American or the employee was being inattentive. (I suspect I was being stupid and clueless regardless of nationality but there is room for doubt.)

It is impossible to be as attentive and have the same level of priorities as every struggling entity needs us to have. Working in the arts and non-profit sector, we are able to be a little more empathetic and mindful than most of the consequences our choices have on others.

As members of the crowd, we are also cognizant of the fact that it can be really difficult to inspire and motivate us contrary to our taste and priorities.

It is just that we forget that or wish it to be otherwise when it comes to other’s lack of investment in our work which is clearly better than they deserve.

Removing Overhead Ratio As A Measure Is Not Enough

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On Non-Profit Quarterly Claire Knowlton wrote a piece advocating for moving past a focus on overhead costs and direct program expenses in favor of full funding of non-profits by foundations. (Or at least recognition of full costs incurred by a non-profit.)

She seems to start from the premise that programs undertaken are essentially jobs non-profits do to further the interests of the funders. This sort of shifts the whole dynamic from a situation where non-profits cast about to find money in order to provide services to one where foundations seek skilled entities to solve problems for them.

Imagine if your personal paycheck were like a restricted grant. Instead of representing your value and level of responsibility in the company, your paycheck is based on a predetermined line-item budget that details exactly how you can spend your earnings. A portion of your paycheck can be used for rent, some for utilities, but most is earmarked for business attire, transportation to work, and coffee to keep you productive throughout the day. The thinking here is that by tying your paycheck to the expenses that contribute to your work, the company is making sure that you will show up on time, appropriately caffeinated, and properly dressed. It’s as if every penny of your paycheck is spent before you cash it.

To some extent, you had a say in your paycheck budget. In fact, you had to present a proposed paycheck budget when you applied for the job. Your friends on the inside said no one who spends more than 20 percent of his or her paycheck on rent has ever been hired. To get the job, you cut your rent line item. That means making do with an efficiency unit above an all-night bowling alley, but it’s better than not having a job at all. Some line items were nonnegotiable from the start: As a policy, your company won’t pay for haircuts; but that’s okay—you can let your hair grow long.

She goes on with this analogy noting that the “company” wants to make sure you are working effectively so they require you to generate reports–except that the cost of doing so will cause the ratio of time you devote on administrative tasks vs. the central tasks they are paying you to accomplish to skew higher. The employer won’t like that.

Because every penny of your paycheck is pre-spent, there is nothing left over for the future or to take care of retirement, emergencies and replacing your aging car (equipment).

In terms of a solution, she says:

“If we start to fully fund nonprofits for their day-to-day program and overhead expenses, and abandon overhead measurements as a proxy for mission fulfillment and efficiency, it’s the equivalent of giving nonprofits control over their paycheck.”

But she says the term “full costs” include:

Day-to-day operating expenses + working capital + reserves + fixed asset additions + debt principal repayment = full costs

In addition to laying out her argument, she makes suggestions to both non-profits and foundations about how they can change the conversation and practices.

Full funding of costs according to her definition would allow non-profits to be more focused on outcomes rather than compliance in order to survive.

This distinction is important. One of my initial thoughts when I read this was that what Knowlton was talking about would primarily be applicable to social service non-profits because fewer foundations would be interested in funding an arts non-profit primarily focused on creating performances.

The thing is, many performing arts organizations are just as focused on compliance and survival as any other non-profit. There are a lot of sincere ambitions that get abridged and curtailed because there isn’t possibility of revenue or funding.

I don’t know how many conversations I have had that started enthusiastically but were quickly ended by the phrase, “…unless we can get a grant to cover it.” Enthusiasm to do a week long residency with multiple interactions turns into a single lecture-demo for lack of funding. Opportunities for single lecture-demos get turned down for not being revenue generating. The outcome focused on is surviving another season.

After awhile, no one even entertains exciting ambitions and settle for minimal token gestures that will garner them a little bit of funding.

A situation where both the organizations and foundations embrace philosophies that make a complete assessment of what would be required to fully fund an arts non-profit could yield amazing outcomes from some.

In addition to funding capacity building for the organization so that everything from the board governance to hiring practices were strengthened, a rigorous study of what the local market would bear in terms of pricing, (including the optimal pricing spread for events), would provide a clear picture of what the capacity is for revenue.

This way there is a good basis for decision making by the organization as well as stronger justification of the funding that is needed to offset the difference between earned revenue, donations and program expense.

While I am skeptical full funding will happen, articles like this one and the conversation about eliminating overhead ratio as a measure of effectiveness are indications that there is potential for a shift toward more constructive policies.

More Discussion On The Value Of The Arts

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Since I was on the subject of how people value the arts yesterday, I thought I would call attention to a post that appeared on HowlRound last summer. Edward Einhorn wrote about Money Lab, a show his company put together that involved the audience in money related games and activities.

One of the things they instituted was a patronage auction.

It was not a commission. The artist would have the full freedom to create whatever he or she wanted to create, in the manner he or she preferred. The patron would merely be providing funding for one hour of that artist’s time, during which the artist would create…something. The only obligation of the artist: afterwards, a “grant report” (a short email) would be sent to the patron, giving an account of that hour of creation time.

When I conceived of the patronage auction, I expected we’d be pushing it to reach $20. Still, I thought, $20 an hour is a pretty good salary for an artist, in our society.

The lowest the hour of artist’s time went for was $42. The highest was over $200.

Over the course of the production run which took place at a number of venues, about 2/3 of the time the audience instigated/requested a change of format that turned the patronage auction into a crowdfunding effort.

Einhorn mentions when they moved the show from Brooklyn to Manhattan, the amount raised by the patronage auctions were low at first which was disappointing.

To me. Not to the artist involved. Because no matter what the amount, the money said to the artist: You are valued, so much so that an audience member, more often than not a complete stranger to you, was willing to give away his or her own money to ensure that you had at least one hour in which you could create, without the pressure of economic reality hanging over you.

…But I do know we only experienced one low total during our final week of performance. It was the performance when an economics class had bought out over half of the house.

“Why should we bid?” I heard one pondering after the show. “What value do we get in return?”

It’s a good question. What value did the patrons get in return? All they were promised was an email two or three sentences long. It’s a question I confront all the time, when looking for funding for my theatre company and my own work. Grant applications constantly ask me to justify the value of what I do, by filling out forms in which they ask me to explain not only my artistic but also my social value. In return, I sometimes get a small sum which, when combined with other similar sums, can add up to enough to create one underfunded project.

The whole Money Lab project is pretty interesting because it explores the psychology of our relationship with money, including the sunken cost fallacy which influences people’s decision to attend performances.

The Willingness to Pay question comes up again as people who have probably paid for admission to a show exhibit willingness to spend additional money to fund an artist during the show. Is it because they are having a good time? Is it due to peer pressure or desire for social recognition? Is it because they can see and immediately identify with the artist being funded?

Does having people pay after they have seen all or part of the show bear further investigation? You may recall I wrote about a Spanish theater that was using facial recognition software that only charged you if you smiled/laughed.

Giving to charities often spikes during the times of tragedies and often online/via social media. I am not suggesting arts organizations trot out their emaciated performers and tell their audiences they can help feed them for only dollars a day.

I really dislike lengthy curtain speeches where you are enjoined to donate, but perhaps I should reconsider. People often respond to the immediacy of things right in front of them and social media giving makes it easier to do so than ever.

How Much For A Year Of Your Cultural Enjoyment?

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Last week I briefly noted that people and businesses often value being in a community in which arts organizations are present, even if they don’t participate in their activities. I mentioned this constitutes an intangible value that the arts organization has in the community.

That reminded me of a post made by Sunil Iyengar, NEA Director of Research and Analysis about a novel approach being used to assess the value of cultural institutions in the UK.

Rather than using Willingness to Pay as a measure of how much people valued an arts/cultural institution (as in, how much would you be willing to pay for…?), they asked how much people would be Willing to Accept in order to maintain quality of life in the temporary absence of that organization.

Crucially,” the report explains, “compensation is only offered to those who previously indicated that their life satisfaction would decrease if the institution were temporarily closed.” To these respondents, a questionnaire asks:

“Now imagine the following situation. Suppose that in order to compensate you for not being able to visit the [cultural institution] during one year, you were given a cash compensation. How much money would you have to receive, as a one-off payment, to give you the same life satisfaction that you have now (not better nor worse, but just the same) during this period until the [institution] re-opened? Think about this for a moment please.”

Think about this concept for a moment and run the hypothetical scenario through you mind. First ask yourself how much you would be willing to pay at your favorite performance hall or museum. Now think about how much you would ask for if someone said they would compensate you for your loss of life satisfaction while that favorite place is closed for a year.

I don’t know about you, but if I am being honest that second number is at least 1.5 times more than the first, sometimes 2 times as high as the first.

Kinda gives you pause to think about your real priorities and values, doesn’t it?

The full research paper evaluating this as a viable approach to researching how much people value a cultural institution notes a few problems with using Willingness to Pay (WTP) as a measure. Among them:

Last, but not least, some have raised ethical concerns about the appropriateness of using WTP at all to value services like health and culture. This may, for example, be because value is related to ability to pay and the prevailing income distribution may be seen as inequitable; or because using money to value health and culture may send an undesirable signal (namely that health and cultural services are just like any other commodity bought and sold in the market place) (Fujiwara and Dolan, 2014)

and when Willingness to Accept may be provide a valuable measure:

…there are times when WTA could be warranted. This may be when respondents come from very poor backgrounds, say, such that their WTP amounts are severely constrained and they feel uncomfortable about being asked to pay (even if they might be prepared to pay a small amount), and hence offer a protest zero. Another scenario which may warrant use of a WTA question is when property rights are such that respondents can be judged to have some intrinsic right to the good/service – and what’s more they recognise this. This may be especially relevant for cultural activities and institutions.

The researchers compared WTP and WTA in relation to the Tate Liverpool Gallery and National History Museum and the differences weren’t as great as I imagined. The mention of intrinsic right to good/service made me wonder if there would be a difference between the U.S. and UK in that the more subsidized access to art of the latter might cause residents of the UK to take access to culture more for granted.

It could be equally possible that as an arts professional, I value arts and culture more highly than regular citizens of either country might.

The paper evaluating WTA as a tool goes into such detail about the relevance and accuracy of data obtained that I felt a little out of my depth trying to understand it all. I would suggest not trying this at home without deeper study because it is not something to blithely toss into audience surveys.

It can be useful as thought experiment (or blog post) to drive a conversation and self examination about how we value arts and culture in our lives.

The prospect of an arts organization’s absence from the community for a year may not be a cause of concern for individuals and businesses that don’t participate in activities, but like the idea of living in a community that provides those activities. If there is going to be any method that comes close to quantifying the intangible value a cultural institution has in the community for these groups, this may it.

Do I Really Need A Degree For That?

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Dan Pink called attention to publisher Penguin Random House’s recent decision to no longer require job applicants to have a university degree. From what I see in corroborating stories, the little catch is that this seems to be limited to the publisher’s UK operations.

The firm wants to have a more varied intake of staff and suggests there is no clear link between holding a degree and performance in a job.

[…]

Last autumn, professional services firm Deloitte changed its selection process so recruiters did not know where candidates went to school or university.

Ernst and Young has scrapped a requirement for school leavers to have the equivalent of three B grades at A-level or graduates to have an upper second class degree.

The accountancy firm is removing all academic and education details from its application process.

PricewaterhouseCoopers earlier this year also announced that it would stop using A-levels grades as a threshold for selecting graduate recruits.

As you might imagine from the references to A-levels, these decisions all appear to be limited to the UK operations of these companies.

Still, it got me wondering with all the recent conversation about the legality and morality of unpaid internship practices in the U.S., as well as data showing that arts internships appear to benefit people with higher socio-economic status, should this be the sort of practice the arts should be considering?

My thinking here is that while you don’t need to have a degree or be enrolled to do an internship, internship plus degree tends to have better job prospects which represent a larger financial investment. I’d venture to guess many of the jobs college degree holders are getting can be accomplished by someone with a high school degree and an internship/short training period.

There are definitely different philosophical approaches to job training between the U.S. and the UK. For example, the school leaver program for Deloitte and Ernst and Young make not going to university appear preferable to attending and promises a rigorous 5 year training program. These are typical choices for students in the UK. A quick search for school leaver programs shows similar ones at IBM, Rolls Royce, Pret A Manger and others.

Two years ago I wrote about the UK’s National Skills Academy apprenticeship training programs for creative industries.

These sort of training options are not as widely available in the U.S. The closest we have are co-op programs, which are few and far between and barely promoted as an option.

But while the method of delivering training may be different, the question about whether a university degree best provides that training still remains, regardless of which country we are talking about.

One observation made in the story about Penguin’s decision resonates pretty strongly in relation to the challenges faced by the arts. (my emphasis)

Neil Morrison, human resources director, says they want talented staff “regardless of background”.

“This is the starting point for our concerted action to make publishing far, far more inclusive than it has been to date,” says Mr Morrison.

“We believe this is critical to our future – to publish the best books that appeal to readers everywhere, we need to have people from different backgrounds with different perspectives and a workforce that truly reflects today’s society.”

There is already a conversation about how paid internships help to open up opportunities to people from a wider socio-economic range. Perhaps the next aspect of the conversation needs to include an examination into whether a degree really is absolutely necessary to success in the job or not.

The arts are frequently accused of being irrelevant because people don’t see themselves and their stories being portrayed. Penguin saw requiring a university degree as literally inhibiting their ability to do just that.

The Stakeholders Are Watching

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In Non Profit Quarterly, Ruth McCambridge wrote a pretty involved comparison between the stakeholder revolts which reversed board decisions to close San Diego Opera and Sweet Briar College.

There is a lot to be gleaned about how popular support has apparently turned things around for the two organizations. It is worth reading on that basis alone.

There were a few things that popped out at me as general lessons, not necessarily dependent on these scenarios, about the environment in which arts organizations are operating.

First was an observation by current San Diego board chair, Carol Lazier, that:

“…the community was absolutely furious. We had a great opera company, a cultural jewel, and no one wanted to lose it. We had people who didn’t even go to the opera who were fighting closure, saying, ‘This is not right—this is owned by the public; this is not owned by the small group of people on the inside.’”

It is easy to have mixed feelings about this response because indignation by people who never attended doesn’t pay your bills. Yet we clearly know that arts organizations are viewed as a community asset by both individuals and businesses. People may not actually participate in your activities, but they like the idea of living in a community that has an opera, symphony and art museum. Businesses and individuals will relocate to places with these amenities.

While the presence of your arts organization is definitely an intangible asset, the value of which is difficult to quantify to politicians and others who want to cut arts funding, this type of reaction does allow you to answer the question about how your community would be impacted if your organization didn’t exist.

Another observation made about San Diego Opera board governance provided some insight into a downside of a “Get, Give or Get Off” policy of board membership.

The San Diego Opera was one of those organizations where having a large number of people on the board was a function of fundraising. You pay x amount of money and you’re on the board, and no one wants to alienate any of those folk with contentious conversations that cause discomfort. But that is certainly not a good modus operandi for an organization facing the whitewater of the twenty-first-century cultural organization. And, it was not only the business model that had to change but the governance model, too.

The implication that a non profit needs to have a governance structure that allows it to be nimble is something to seriously consider. Scrutiny of non-profits is shifting focus about the role of a board away from fund raising and toward effective governance.

The San Diego Opera board went from 53 to 24 in the course of a few days due to resignations. A quick look at the opera website shows it continues to maintain those numbers two years later.

Not only is there no correlation between the ability to make large donations and the ability to effectively govern an organization, some people may have no interest in doing so. This made me recall a story told by an executive director about a large donor who showed relief when presented the option of NOT serving on the board because they didn’t see it as a reward at all.

Finally, in relation to the Sweet Briar closure, I was quite intrigued to learn that generally those who most supported the closure were from among the earliest graduates. When they attended, a women’s college was the only option for higher education. Now that a woman could attend anywhere they wished, they didn’t feel single gender higher education was relevant any longer.

It is the younger generations that intentionally chose to attend Sweet Briar when hundreds of other options existed that have been the most invested in keeping the institution open.

This information brought to mind the question that arts organizations have increasingly been challenged to ask themselves over the last few decades: Given that so many other options exist for people, are you providing those who intentionally choose to engage with the arts a reason to continue to do so?

The example of Sweet Briar seems to illustrate that answering in the affirmative is what turns people into invested stakeholders.

Reaching The Unknown Non-Participant

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I almost threw money away, literally.

I received piece a mail last week bearing the logo of a state university indicating a survey was enclosed. I was just about to throw it away when I became curious to see if they were doing a market survey to gauge the educational needs of the community.

When I opened it, I saw it was a public health survey. Just as I was about to throw that away, a $2 bill fluttered out on to my coffee table. I understand why they may have chosen to include the money as an inducement to complete the survey, but I wonder how much money has literally been thrown away in unopened envelopes around the state this week.

I feel some empathy for those administering the survey because this illustrates the effort and expense you have to go in order to reach people with whom you don’t have a relationship.

One of the challenges the arts have is to have a conversation with those who aren’t participating in order to learn why they aren’t. There will always be people who will never participate in an activity, regardless of what you do, but there are many who will be willing but do not participate for various reasons.

These reasons might be lack awareness; currently lacking the time due to child rearing obligations which will abate in a few years; perceive they lack the time, knowledge, etc, for whom opportunities exist and can be communicated or created.

Reaching these unknown people to survey them or even communicate with them is even more difficult now than a decade or so ago. So many people lack landlines that there is no destination for even an annoying robocall to reach.

Thanks to the option to receive financial statements, bills and other communications online, it is much easier to identify the few pieces of postal mail that is relevant to you without even opening them. (Those emails about winning $5 million in the Irish-Nigerian lottery that was liberated after a palace coup dispossessed the prince of an oil rich nation still almost fool me.)

As we can see, even trying to bribe people to participate is fraught with its own challenges.

My feeling is that an effective campaign to reach the unreached is going to require much more personal interactions either with organizations reaching out to individuals in an involved, relationship building effort or calling upon people with whom they already have a relationship to reach out to people and encourage them to at least respond to a request for information.

Certainly, technology can facilitate this by allowing people to spread the word quickly over social media. A degree of trust in all involved parties needs to be there. I am thinking, in part, about the post I made last week about a greater lack of willingness to trade privacy for benefits than we have been lead to believe.

It would be great if someone could figure out how to create survey that engaged as many people as asking about what color lightsaber you would wield while yielding, effective, meaningful, actionable results. (Which of Yo Yo Ma’s cellos are you?)

Until then, it may take a lot of asking.

Arts Need A Standardized Curriculum To Combat Patron Anxiety

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Last summer Vox had a post, Everyone can be an opera buff. Here are 7 steps to get started.

It got me thinking that creating page like this on an arts organization’s website could be a much more constructive approach to engaging audiences than the “How To Act When You Visit” lists found on many arts organizations’ webpages.

While a number of arts orgs have very entertaining and humorous approaches to such lists, a page like Vox’s can serve multiple purposes. For example, while answering the question about seats, Vox includes a picture of the audience with most people wearing tuxes and dresses, but also features a young woman in a football jersey and someone taking pictures with their camera.

This image provides a clearer sense of what people might expect when attending a performance. The website may say it is okay to wear jeans, but the reality may be, if the venue doesn’t manipulate the photo shoot to reflect their aspirations, most people in the orchestra section aren’t wearing jeans.

What I appreciated about the Vox article was the way the advice about approaching opera was given. One of my initial thoughts was that a venue could appeal to younger audiences by creating a page that replicated the feel a Buzzfeed listicle with its animated GIFs.

What the Buzzfeed format lacks, however, is the additional depth of an informational article.

The first suggestion takes an entirely practical approach, for example:

1) Pick your first opera for maximum fun, not for what the curriculum says

Picking your first opera can be paralyzing, but don’t just choose one from the canon. When you take a kid to her first movie, you’d opt for a kids’ movie rather than jumping into Citizen Kane. Same here. You don’t need to earn a PhD, you need to get your money’s worth — and that means picking a show you might like.

Since your opera options depend on where you live, look at what’s offered and get some advice. “Call the company,” Plotkin suggests. He says the box office will be happy to simply tell you which opera in a season is best for a neophyte…

Also, see if there’s something you have a natural affinity for. To take one example, this season the Washington Opera is premiering a revised version of Philip Glass’s Appomattox. You won’t find that on any Wikipedia lists of classic operas — but if you’re obsessed with the progression of civil rights or the sound of Philip Glass, it’s probably a better first opera than a classic like Carmen.

and from the Third suggestion (my emphasis):

3) Listen to the music and Wikipedia the plot

Avoiding spoilers is the wrong approach for opera. Often, operas are in another language, so you want the plot in your mind already. That will help you appreciate the performances, setting, and spectacle instead of trying to parse who’s actually talking. Your program book will have a summary, too, but it’s best to just glance online the night before you go.

We’re trained to expect prestige entertainment to have emotional nuance, challenging intellectual themes, and difficult narratives. Opera doesn’t have that. It’s like the best episode of Scandal you’ve ever seen, so just don’t sweat the plot and enjoy everything else. People who like opera can make their enthusiasm seem pretentious, but opera isn’t pretentious at all. It’s literally screaming for you to love it.

I have been debating for awhile whether to tackle this subject as a post here or on ArtsHacker as an idea people might try. I decided to post here because it occurred to me that the idea could do with a little more development before it is used.

Specifically, it might be good if each arts discipline develop some standard concepts they wanted reinforced so that no matter what website people visited, they would receive the same underlying message. So there might be five standard concepts an arts organization would intersperse with 3-4 localized tips that draw attention to some feature of the physical setting or program enhancement.

I guess what I am suggesting is almost akin to standardized education curriculum, without the baggage that subject seems to have acquired. Everyone wouldn’t use the same content since every locale and organization has its own character. They would make an effort to include messaging on the chosen topics.

It would really just be a matter of addressing discipline wide anxieties people may have. Many arts organizations do a pretty good job of addressing the concern about what to wear, but aren’t as effective with questions about enjoyment and comprehension. Uniform guidelines and sharing suggestions may help change that.

The Vox article about opera deals with those questions indirectly when it advocates reading and listening ahead of time; urges not worrying about spoilers; saying opera is “like the best episode of Scandal you’ve ever seen”; and “Appreciate the things that make opera like a Broadway show on steroids.”

It is smart to handle these ideas indirectly. It is one thing to be direct when answering a question about what to wear, but it can be incredibly easy to come off as condescending and offensive when directly answering “What if I don’t understand it or enjoy it?”

Of course providing a webpage isn’t the only option available. There are some great video resources as well like the one on visiting a museum I noted last month.

So let it percolate in your mind. What are the basic issues your discipline needs to address? What are effective direct/indirect ways of getting that message across?

No, Everyone Is NOT Giving It Up For Free Stuff

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Last Wednesday I made a post about non-profit arts organizations deserving to expect a little more of their customer relationship management (CRM) software. I briefly referenced the fact that collecting a lot of data on people could potentially become creepy and intrusive.

This drew the attention of Drew McManus who expounded upon the idea in a post of his own, saying:

I can’t remember the last time ethics were part of a discussion about CRM capabilities but it is never a bad idea to ask “just because we can use technology to do a thing, does it mean we should?” Consequently, it’s good to see these questions work their way into larger discussions about features and functionality.

This idea dovetailed well with a recent study that suggested marketers are misrepresenting the American’s public willingness to trade privacy for discounts.

“..a majority of Americans are resigned to giving up their data—and that is why many appear to be engaging in tradeoffs…Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to manage what companies can learn about them. Our study reveals that more than half do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened.

By misrepresenting the American people and championing the tradeoff argument, marketers give policymakers false justifications for allowing the collection and use of all kinds of consumer data often in ways that the public find objectionable.

Among their findings are that:

• 91% disagree (77% of them strongly) that “If companies give me a discount, it is a fair exchange for them to collect information about me without my knowing.”

• 71% disagree (53% of them strongly) that “It’s fair for an online or physical store to monitor what I’m doing online when I’m there, in exchange for letting me use the store’s wireless internet, or Wi-Fi, without charge.”

• 55% disagree (38% of them strongly) that “It’s okay if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me.”

The authors of the study note there is an inconsistency between these responses and actual behavior. Contrary to the third finding, when it comes to supermarket discount cards, 40% of those who don’t agree with the third statement participate in grocery store discount programs. The authors say this inconsistency arises from both the sense of resignation and a lack of understanding about what merchants and websites are legally allowed to do.

Among the examples they give are that 49% of people think a supermarket and 69% think a pharmacy needs your permission to sell your data. 65% think that if a website has a privacy policy, it means they won’t sell your data. All these are untrue.

“55% do not know it is legal for an online store to charge different people different prices at the same time of day.” (The same erroneous belief is held by 62% of people regarding off-line/physical stores.)

The study is interesting to read because it discusses how the research conducted by marketing and consulting firms finds people express a strong discomfort with the way personal data is handled. Observing the inconsistency between the expression of discomfort and action, the firms have chosen to interpret this as consciously choosing to trade privacy for benefits. While the study authors suggest that the irrational choices are due to resignation and ignorance, it is difficult to clearly discern the truth.

If nothing else, like teen promiscuity statistics, this trade off study helps to provide a sense that no, everyone else isn’t necessarily doing it.

I almost wish I had held off writing my post on CRM last week because a day later, I had a real life illustration of what the study was suggesting. I was presenting our board of directors some examples of the CRM capabilities available through the ticketing software services we had been considering. The examples contained a list of tickets and donations made by a hypothetical customer along with standard address information and notes about relationships with some people and employers.

Because the example was meant to illustrate the history of an avid attendee over the course of a number of years as they purchased tickets, merchandise and made donations, the bulk of the information was rather repetitive and mundane. For example, there were a lot of $2 donations for what was either a tacked on restoration fee or the guy rounding up his bill by donating to that fund.

The issue was, this made record of activity rather long and cover a few pages. People were concerned about amount of data that appeared was being collected on a person (all be much of it in $2 increments). It didn’t take long for someone to point out that far more data was being collected by Amazon, other retailers and websites than actually appeared on the sample profile I had provided. By then other people had already begun expressing resignation that this sort of thing was inescapable.

This reaction left me a little anxious that my hopes of making fundraising and marketing efforts more effective with better data collection and evaluation might get impeded right from the start. Later, thinking about it in the context of the trade-off study, I could see some benefit in providing some transparency and actually encouraging some oversight of the data usage by the board. That way they could better understand the process and provide assurances to the greater community that we were handling the information responsibly. Hopefully such assurances would result in increased confidence and support of the organization.

Info You Can Use: Getting Meaningful Feedback From Your Community

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Last month, I wrote about attending a session at creative industry conference where Marc Folk, Executive Director of The Arts Commission in Toledo, spoke about learning that one needs to go out to the community as a guest, asking to be hosted at meetings, gatherings, etc.

At the time, I wasn’t sure exactly how that idea translated into practice. Initially I envisioned something akin to the  electoral process in NH where people host intimate meetings with political candidates in their homes or perhaps being invited to speak at a community or church meeting.

I also thought that he might have meant participating as a true guest at first where you weren’t necessarily the focus of attention as a speaker, etc, but just invited to sit quietly and observe the first time out.

Marc had mentioned sometimes there was a tendency to view yourself as “riding in on a white horse” to save a community so I thought being the guest of honor at a meeting might reinforce that conceit.

Just last week, Margy Waller addressed the same issue in an Americans for the Arts blog post, “We Are From the Arts and We’re Here to Help.”

“In one of the sessions, a group of participants had a passionate discussion on using the word “help.” They noted that it really isn’t possible to have a conversation about an equitable community if one party is offering to help the other. The word help itself implies that one group has more than the other—more to offer, more knowledge, more resources, more capacity, and so on. Using the word help shifts the perceived balance of power—in a way likely to shut down true collaboration and partnership efforts.

The solution? If you find yourself using the word help when talking about the role of arts in community, stop. Listen carefully and ask whether this is really the way toward an equitable community.”

Curious about the process he and his staff used, I reached out to Marc just prior to the holidays to learn more, summarizing my impressions and assumptions noted above. With his permission, I am reprinting a portion of his response:

Our approach utilized a combination of techniques, including what you listed above.

As far as process we first identified a local community partner.  If possible, it was a community center or arts center in the neighborhood.  We then reached out to the leadership of the center or another community group if the center did not have leadership, or there was no center and asked for a meeting.  We then met with them and/or their board leadership to ask for their help in organizing a community meeting.

Once a meeting was called, we went back into the community centers/host venues and held “a listening tour” if you will.  An important technique was that we hired a facilitator/consultant that facilitated these sessions.  This created a degree of separation between the Arts Commission staff and the community issue and allowed for a more open and candid dialog from the community.

Out of this, we became more connected with “culture” or activities in these neighborhoods which has led to the building of genuine relationships.

A copy of the plan can be found here.

The reports from the neighborhood conversations can be found at the back of the plan.

I think the most important lesson is about language syntax/communication and authentic relationship development.  My point at the conference about the white horse or “going into these neighborhoods” revealed much about our perspectives and gave great clue to where we needed to start our work.

For those that are interested, the neighborhood reports start around page 50 of the strategic plan.

I greatly appreciate Marc taking the time to outline the process for me. The importance of involving a facilitator was something I suspected in the back of my mind that he confirmed.

Based on his response, I have already started a conversation with my board president about how we might adapt this in our own community. I have mentioned to colleagues at other arts organizations I had some ideas I wanted to run past them in the hopes of establishing a cooperative listening tour.

What Is On Your Customer Relationship Management Wishlist?

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At my day job, we have been looking into the possibility of getting a new ticketing system. We have passed the RFP (request for proposal) deadline and are evaluating the submissions. One of the areas we are really focusing on is customer relationship management (CRM) features because keeping track of all the ways a person interacts with us is increasingly important…and increasingly difficult.

This whole process reminded me of an article that caught my eye last summer, Why Nonprofits Deserve CRM Innovation. Author Gabe Cooper’s central thesis is that there is nearly $340 billion in donations being directed toward non-profits annually, yet the available CRM tools are oriented toward business sales rather than building relationships that connect with a donor’s passions.

“Charities and social enterprises face growing pressure to cut through marketing clutter and connect personally with younger Millennial donors. Their software can no longer afford to see donors as “leads” or “transactions”; instead, they must focus on the personal passions of each giver.”

He identifies five areas in which improvements to CRM will benefit non-profits.

Generosity-specific predictive data analytics. Nonprofit CRMs must predict and customize each donor’s experience. Successful systems will combine tried-and-true fund-raising data analytics with social media signals and even current events to create a holistic, personalized relationship with each giver.

Giver-managed relationships. Nonprofit CRMs must enable two-way communication and create open conversations with givers about the success of individual projects. Nonprofits can no longer report on cold institutional metrics.

Completely removing the “sales” paradigm. Nonprofit CRMs shouldn’t be modeled on sales/transactions. Instead, they should focus on long-term relationships around generosity, social engagement, advocacy, etc.

Open APIs and integrations. The days of monolithic donor management systems are over. Nonprofits want to use best-in-breed tools for email marketing, donation processing, etc. The new CRMs should embrace these choices and provide easy integration.

Increase efficiency and decrease overhead. Nonprofit CRMs must help reduce the unnecessary costs common to charities. Back-office tasks like donation importing, gift receipting, and foundation giving management can suck up hours of staff time and create massive overhead. The new CRM needs to understand the very specific needs of nonprofits and provide efficiency tools that allow charities to go about the work of accomplishing their mission.

I am sure there would be a lot of people cheering if the activities listed in his last point became much easier. Given that donor acknowledgment letters need to go out this month, it would probably move to the top of everyone’s wish list.

I had also been thinking that it might be useful to be able to record notes from every interaction whether it be phone call, face to face interactions, emails and social media. These things may already be possible in a way that doesn’t treat them as sales calls.

I wondered if any existing tool allowed you to record indirect signs of investment in your organization like people mentioning or tagging you on social media. Can you take screenshots of positive comments and electronically file them away?

I was a little leery at the mention of combining “fund-raising data analytics with social media signals.” That phrase made me wonder if he envisioned a system that tracked the social media activity of anyone who engaged with you and sent you tips noting what a person was passionate about. I could see that getting really stalker creepy fast.

On the other hand, if you have entered keywords into someone’s file regarding what they were passionate about and the system alerted you when a related topic was trending on social media, that might be okay. Or if the system collected keywords from the social media profiles of people who engaged with you and then spit out a report letting you know 58% of those people are passionate about animal rescue, Indian food and bluegrass music, that could also be help inform strategy development without feeling overly intrusive.

Are there any features on your wishlist you would love to see as part of a CRM package?

What To Unlearn To Be More Creative

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Dan Pink tweeted a story by Art Markman on the Inc magazine site, “4 Things You Learned in School That Make You Less Creative.”

I often talk about how artists and arts organizations can exhibit their value to the business community by providing training in various areas like conflict resolution and creativity. As I was reading this article, I recognized that it provided a good basis for conducting a training session. The content can be useful to either to overtly say, these things you learned as a kid run counter to what we are trying to achieve or just to help a trainer understand some of the socialization and training people have received which makes it difficult to embrace the creative process.

One of the things that really ought to be acknowledged is that there is a degree of “do as I say, not as I do” when it comes to arts classes. The assessment structure in most school classrooms (versus classes you might take at the local arts center) impose expectations that actually run counter to, and may impede, the creative process. Students are told creativity is a gradual process by which you learn from your mistakes–so hurry up and make sure it happens by the time grades are due.

Even people with formal arts degrees need to keep some of these points in mind so they don’t pressure themselves with unrealistic expectations.

The first lesson Markman lists is, There is an answer. Find it and move on. He makes the point that creativity is about finding answers to questions no one has thought to ask and that there are many potential solutions to a problem.

This is probably the one lesson that runs entirely counter to life experience. There is rarely a single answer to a problem in life. Even if there appears to be, you can’t discard it the moment you have used it. At the very least, you have to have a sense of what to do when your go-to solution fails.

Markham notes that schools teach us to be risk/mistake averse. Basically, the fewer mistakes you make on a test, the more successful you are regarded as being. Risk taking is frequently mentioned these days as an crucial element of the creative process so it may not come as news that this important for people to embrace.

Markham also mentions the class room lessons of Study what is going to be on the exam and Make steady progress. Both are intertwined with the previous two lessons. Schools value being able to perform with few mistakes on demand, but don’t emphasize retention of information and skills as strongly. Not only is retention not highly valued, but applying knowledge in a novel manner is barely encouraged at all. Yet that is considered the very definition of creativity.

Accepting mistakes requires that you accept that your progress won’t be steady. Even when you aren’t making perceptible mistakes or experiencing setbacks, creativity requires patience with status quo long enough for your mind to make the leap to another of the many potential solutions.

When I write about creativity, I often emphasize this last point about creativity requiring time and patience. The tools we may use like brain storming sessions, free play, improv, change of venue, etc are merely ways to carve out time and brain processing power for creative endeavors. They don’t guarantee a creative outcome of themselves.

Being open to making mistakes and accepting slow progress may be the most difficult elements of creative practice to teach because minimize mistakes and making steady progress are two lessons that are rewarded in life. If you produce work quickly without many mistakes at your job, you can set yourself up to receive a promotion and more challenging projects.

When Honesty Is Better Than Doing Your Best

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Back in September, Seth Godin wrote a short post on the idea of doing one’s best.

It’s a pretty easy way to let ourselves (or someone else) off the hook. “Hey, you did your best.”

[…]

By defining “our best” as the thing we did when we merely put a lot of effort into a task, I fear we’re letting ourselves off the hook.

[…]

It’s entirely possible that it’s not worth the commitment or the risk or the fear to go that far along in creating something that’s actually our best. But when we make that compromise, we should own it. “It’s not worth doing my best” is actually more honest and powerful than failing while being sort of focused.

Since it is the beginning of the new year, a time of making resolutions to do better, I thought it was an appropriate time to call attention to this idea.

(By the way, what does it say that I took a short post about doing your best and abridged it further, thereby lowering expectations of the reader’s attention span?)

I chose this post of Godin’s and edited it as I did because I wanted to focus on the sincerity inherent in being realistic rather than being idealistically aspirational.

There is already a lot of idealism in the non-profit arts, especially when it comes to creation, and there is nothing wrong with that. If there is, I am among the chief offenders.

There is also a lot of idealism in non-profit arts organization mission statements that promise to offer the “highest quality, best-in-class, world-class, superior” etc., product or experience.

In the face of declining donations and revenue generating attendance, groups often don’t have the resources to provide the highest quality product and experience. Instead of making a resolution for the new year to strive for some nebulous standard of excellence†, I think it is worth engaging in a little self-examination along the lines Godin suggests and acknowledge where you are not providing the best.

For example, are you offering the very best events your budget will allow, even though that means there will only be four events a year? Or are you making compromises so that you can offer a wider variety of experiences over the course of 8 events?

Is your staff trying to do more with less or have you scaled back services due to budget constraints?

An honest assessment of this situation rather than continuing to mouth platitudes about offering the highest quality interactions may help you better understand the implications of these trade offs. If you can say, yes we decided it wasn’t worth keeping the office open as many hours six days a week, you take responsibility for choosing not to serve a segment of your community or at least choosing a course that makes it difficult for some to receive service.

While it can be disappointing to face the areas in which you are falling short, it is a more constructive approach than claiming you are at a loss to know why attendance is falling or a demographic of the community is failing to engage with you. You can better address these issues if you have a good sense of the causes behind them.

†If you have a well-defined plan for achieving excellence with criteria, milestones and resources dedicated to achieving it, by all means go for it!

What Does It Take To Do Your Job?

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So here we are on the crux of a new year. People start toying with the idea of changing their lives and perhaps their careers.

What would you tell someone who wanted to enter your career about your job?

Yes, in many disciplines supply outstrips demand and there may not be a lot of respect for artists so the first thing many people would say is either have a high tolerance for disappointment and poverty or find some other line.

At the same time, one of the reasons why there isn’t a lot of respect for artists is that people don’t understand what the job requires. People in the arts industry aren’t particularly adept at talking about their career path. The general public really only perceives instant successes when someone emerges on the scene and not the 10 years of mistakes and experimentation.

That said, when you think about the answers to the following, think of it in terms of minimum qualifications for anyone, not the qualifications you hold.

What educational background is required/expected?
Where are good places to get that education?

What kind of experience is required/expected?
Where are good places to get that experience?

Where are the jobs? Who does the hiring?

Will there be jobs in this field in 5 years? 15 years?
Should I be pursuing skills in those areas instead or concurrently with skills for today’s jobs?

What are the “big names” in the field?
Who are the people I should be using as role models if they aren’t the same people or are not suited to my goals.

What personal characteristics are needed for success in this field?
Include mental, emotional and spiritual if necessary. Does one need to work well in a team
or tolerate long periods of working alone in a studio under their own motivation?

What physical characteristics are needed for success in this field?
Are there are any people who have achieved success without those characteristics? (dancer’s body, pianist’s fingers, etc)

What are common misconceptions about this job/field and what it takes to be successful?

Any other questions you would suggest? Any answers you want to offer that may run counter to common expectations?

Practical Aspect of Grail Quests

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Some years ago I wrote a “road less taken” entry encouraging people not to measure their worth against the progress others have made by quoting a passage from Joseph Campbell recounting a story about the start of the Holy Grail quest:

‘They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest at the point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path.’

“No way or path! Because where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path.”

Much of what I said in that entry stands, but there is the practical side of me that says such idealism is all well and good, but hacking a new path through the forest is tough work. Who is doing the hacking? Has someone been hired to help? Who is paying, feeding and sheltering them? How are they supporting themselves?

Are villagers following them, donating to support their holy endeavor or are they scoffing at them for blazing a trail to places no one in the community is particularly interested in traveling?

Grail quests are fine when it comes to the individual but get increasingly complicated the more people you start to get involved.

The one advantage non-profit arts organizations have over the grail seekers is that there was only one goal for the latter to pursue. Arts organizations can choose from many grails and myriad paths to tread that others have not.

The lessons of my initial post still stand, however. When a quest is lead by a committee, it is easy to get bogged down with discussions about changing the focus of the quest and taking what appears to be an easier, well traveled, path given the wear and tear of the last few years on people and equipment and what supplies remain.

It is easy to be distracted (and almost seduced) by false representations of success if you don’t have people to keep you on track.

Resolve To Be More Respected in 2016

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As I was looking back in my archives for some content to post about, I came across Dan Gioia’s 2007 commencement address at Stanford.

He acknowledges there had been a little controversy about his choice as commencement speaker due to his lack of celebrity.

If you weren’t aware he was the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003-2009, you may have proven his point.

He notes that at one time, public figures came from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines.

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

[…]

The same was even true of literature. I first encountered Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, and James Baldwin on general interest TV shows. All of these people were famous to the average American—because the culture considered them important.

Gioia doesn’t entirely blame the fickle nature of the media and general public:

Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

It started me thinking that perhaps things have improved marginally since 2007 given that astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson has developed a profile as a public figure.

Now as we move into 2016, I was thinking that between the current thought that artists need to embrace more entrepreneurial practices and the fact that control of media and communication channels are so decentralized, it may be possible for a wider array of artists and intellectuals to realize success investing more effort increase their profile.

It may not necessarily be “themselves” that they need to put forth

Dali may have received recognition for his talent as a visual artist, but he also cultivated DALI! as a separate persona from Salvador Dali.

Similarly, there is the Lady Gaga who wears skirt steaks as a skirt who is slightly different from the Lady Gaga that sings Sinatra and duets with Tony Bennett who is different from Stefani Germanotta.

Granted, sustaining those persona takes a lot of will, energy and time and not everyone is interested in that. Nor do they necessarily need to.

For 2016 it will be enough to resolve to raise your personal profile among those who live around you. Raise awareness among those who don’t know you, let those who do, know you better.

When You Hit The Sculpture, Break Right Past The Expressionists

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I am traveling to see family for the holidays so I have a couple retrospective posts scheduled to cover my absence.

If you are traveling or just have a little time off over the holidays, maybe you might want to try something new like visiting a museum or visiting a museum you haven’t been to before.

Back in 2007 I posted an entry that contained links to posts that Tyler Cowen and Donald Pittenger had written about how to walk through an art museum.

About a 18 months ago, The Art Assignment made a video about visiting art museums.

The primary content of each is interesting, but there is some really great stuff in the comments sector of each, especially The Art Assignment video.

If you ever wanted proof that how people enjoy art is dependent upon their relationship with the idea of art and the people with whom they are experiencing it, it is all there.

Everyone has a different rules for themselves when entering a gallery, but it is clear that the social rules they set for themselves also influence their enjoyment.

One person writes that because his style and that of his significant other differ, he spends a lot of time waiting for her at the portal to the next gallery. Another person says their rule is not to accompany or wait for each other at all other than to rendezvous at an agreed upon time.

After reading all the content, I started to think that anyone who says viewing art is a passive experience is a prisoner of their own rules and expectations because there are plenty of options available. (One of the more extreme essentially advocated a zone defense of whatever you were looking at to prevent others from encroaching) May those options need to be promoted more widely.

I’m Selling Out!

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Erm, I mean, I am featured on Goldstar’s Selling Out blog. A post with an interview they did with me went up online yesterday.  I had a lot to say and I give them credit for including it all.

They contacted me with the request right after Thanksgiving so it is been hectic preparing for that, plus writing my own blog postings, doing Christmas shopping….

In addition, Barry Hessenius asked me to write a guest post about what I had learned over the course of my career for Barry’s Blog.

Keep your eyes open for it. My guess is that it will come out some time around the new year. I guess I still have a lot to say because there is only about three sentences overlap between the post I did for him and the Selling Out interview.

I will be heading off to visit family for the holidays starting tomorrow. Not to worry, I have prepared and scheduled posts to appear as normal.

Hope everyone has a great holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

It’s Not About Our Great Dark Ale

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About a week ago I was at a conference that was addressing creative placemaking and revitalizing communities. Mary Cusick from TourismOhio made a presentation on the new tourism campaign that is being worked on.

As she talked about marketing the state, I was interested to see how similar the attitudes research participants expressed about Ohio were to attitudes people express about the arts.

While people were generally neutral about Ohio, having no positive or negative associations about the state in general, they did feel there was a degree of tribalism. If you aren’t plugged in to the Ohio State University culture, erm I’m sorry, THE Ohio State University culture, you feel left out. In addition to the stress on THE, there is also the O-H—I-O cheer, among other identifiers that one can invoke at any occasion over a fairly large geographic area and receive a response.

We know that people have similar feelings about the arts with language, behavior and particular dress code which feel exclusive.

Another thing that Mary Cusick noted is that nearly every travel destination ad features the beauty and majesty of their outdoor attractions with people doing outdoorsy stuff.

However, research shows that people are aspirational in their responses about what they want to do on vacation. When you ask people about their plans, they talk about outdoors activities, but when you sit them down and ask what they actually have done and what the most important goal of a vacation is, the answers are a bit different.

And by sit them down, I mean literally. The tourism office research involved talking to people from Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania in their living rooms. They showed us video excerpts of the interviews.

I had a sense that the responses on arts participation surveys may also be on the aspirational side and was a little depressed that there wasn’t funding to do deep research like TourismOhio did. (I will say that part of me suspects arts participation surveys have included that degree of deep surveying. It’s just that seeing even brief video of the process during a presentation made a deeper impression than being told 100 people were surveyed in their homes)

What was important to people when they traveled on vacation was that it was an opportunity to de-stress and connect with family and friends. These are exactly the reasons given by people surveyed about what they valued from participation in an arts or creative activity. (graphics on pages 10 & 13).

Cusick reinforced Trevor O’Donnell’s constant message about advertising focusing on the patron/participant/consumer experience when she talked about the philosophy behind the ad campaigns being developed. She said it wasn’t about the great roller coasters, microbreweries and awesome ice cream shops in the state. It is about getting scared out of your wits, sharing your darkest secrets with your best friend over a pint of dark ale, and ice cream mustaches on your kids’ faces.

The print and broadcast pieces she showed us were all right in line with that approach.

Interesting and valuable insights to think about moving forward.

If You Were Really Creative, You Would Already Be Embezzling From Me

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About a week ago, I think it was Dan Pink that tweeted a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled “Why Creative People Are More Likely to Be Dishonest.” I bookmarked it, but before I moved on I retweeted the link with a comment that this was an aspect of creativity we shouldn’t tout too frequently.

Creativity is getting a lot of attention these days. When I saw Tom Borrup speak yesterday, he mentioned that one of the few sectors not spending a lot of time researching creativity was arts and culture. Business, he said, sees creativity as an important asset in the effort to gain a competitive edge and is investing in studying it.

The researchers in the HBR article found that people who believed creativity was something only a few possessed were more likely to be dishonest than those who felt creativity was a talent everyone shared. The researchers said for the less honest people it appeared the idea they had a rare skill lead to a sense of entitlement that different standards applied to them.

In order to combat this, the researchers suggest companies should create a sense that creativity is something everyone shares and can tap into; focus on the team being a collective of creative individuals that succeed together; don’t give people special treatment and

Carefully define what creativity is and is not. Our results demonstrate that the definition of creativity is not fixed and can be changed. While creativity involves a certain degree of risk-taking, managers should make clear that taking risks does not mean ignoring the rules and moral guidelines.

I was pleased to see the idea that everyone can be creative being promulgated. If the arts and cultural sector is going to have a long term goal of disseminating this concept, it is helpful if the message is being spread by entities and in situations that are not perceived as being aligned with arts and culture organizations.

I emphasized the point of defining what creativity is and is not because it often feels like I read about businesses who equate creativity with the risk taking and out of the box thinking that is going to catapult them to the next stage or whatever. Most of the time creativity doesn’t really step out of the box at all but reinterprets the contents of the box to emphasize different elements.

Nearly every social media app can be described as providing the ability to share images, videos and short messages with friends. What separates Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Tumblr, Pintrest, Snapchat etc from each other is what features each focuses on.

It is probably important to point out, as the people in the article’s comment section do, that not all creative people are dishonest and not all dishonest people exhibit creativity outside of being adept at masking their dishonesty. It is also easy for people to feel entitled for reasons unrelated to recognition of their creativity.

In a number of past posts, I have noted that there is no magic formula that will engender creativity in people and organizations over the course of a short seminar. Creativity is gained by practice over time, a sentiment echoed by HBR article commenter Linda Adams.

Raise your hand if you have had an experience that resembled the first sentence:

A lot of people think creativity is simply brainstorming a bunch of ideas and that’s it—that’s where writers get “I’ve got this great idea. You write it and I’ll split it 50-50.”

But creativity is far more than coming up with ideas. It’s executing them—which is a skill that can take years or decades to learn–and taking the dynamic leaps into the unknown to see if something works. It’s taking a risk because something that we try might not work at all, but trying itself is part of the creative process and a learning experience. But most people are not going to take that much effort, and those who try are sometimes surprised about how much hard work it is.

Humility In Service

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I was attending a creative industry conference today which gave me a lot to think about. One of the topics that came up was creative placemaking. Right now that is a big push for improving communities around the country. ArtPlace is one of the bigger efforts to this end.

However, one of the things keynote speaker Tom Borrup noted was that often placemaking has an element of placetaking.

It is widely acknowledged that gentrification displaces artists which planted the seeds for vibrancy within neighborhoods. The process of placemaking seeks to improve conditions in neighborhoods which may end up displacing a wider spectrum of residents beyond artists. Even if it doesn’t immediately displace them, the placemaking vision may implicitly be imposing a different type of art and culture than already exists there.

Borrup suggested one of the most important questions to ask is whose art and culture is being employed in the placemaking effort. Should there be an effort at placekeeping? That is, an intentional effort to determine what should be left in place rather than replaced.

This reminded me of the woman I wrote about two weeks ago who was selling a condo in San Francisco’s Mission District at below market rate. She was requiring the condo buyer to commit to a cultural promissory note to contribute to the community. One of the conditions I hadn’t mentioned was that she required the buyer not to complain about the Day of the Dead celebrations.

Whether that is a reasonable expectation of a property buyer or not, this shows a concern that the existing culture of the neighborhood not be disparaged or displaced by new residents.

Along the same lines, in another session Marc Folk, Executive Director of The Arts Commission in Toledo noted that arts people often talk about the necessity of going out into the community since the community doesn’t come to them. He said that he often approached that as if he was metaphorically riding out on his white horse to save the community.

He said after a time he learned that really first you needed to go out as a guest and ask to be hosted at meetings, gatherings, etc. which is a much more humble approach. I had visions of the electoral process in NH where people host intimate meetings with political candidates in their homes. Though I also suspect he may have meant being a true guest and not being the focus of attention at all the first few times out.

Similarly, in another session a panelist noted that after experiencing a lot of resistance from educators, they finally asked what they were doing wrong. They were told that generally arts organizations come along and ask the schools to participate in their programs rather than asking what initiatives the schools were pursuing that they could participate in. (I guess in some cases, arts organizations put schools into grants as program participants without even consulting with the schools.)

This general sentiment reminded me about the diversity panel I attended at the Arts Midwest conference this past Fall.  When I wrote about the session, I noted:

..the focus of engaging diverse communities has been on how the arts/cultural organization can benefit from the inclusion. This can make the effort feel disingenuous and leave people feeling marginalized. Few organizations can say why engaging diverse audiences is meaningful beyond seeking to expand sources of revenue.

The first step then is to articulate why it is important and what the organization’s concept of diversity is given that the term can encompass cultural, ethnic, social, sexual and other affinity groupings.

The Arts Midwest panel talked about consulting representatives of the segment that aligns with your concept and letting them tell you what is relevant to the community rather than engaging an artist or program and expecting/telling that segment they should find your offerings relevant to them.

If you think about what is required to do any of this, you realize that you need to take the approach of truly serving the community rather than doing things you think the community will like.

Internships, The Paid and The Unpaid

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I recently got around to reading the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) special report on internships in arts fields.

There is a lot of interesting findings in the 23 page report, including the (to me) dismaying news that 87% of those who did at least one arts administration internship were unpaid. That is the highest rate of unpaid internships in any of the categories.

What I was most interested in learning was the reality of the claim that the ability to participate in an internship was dependent on receiving support from families. Sure enough, even though there was negligible difference in the amount of debt accrued by students who did an internship and those who did not, those who could depend on support from families more frequently participated in an internship.

Sixty-seven percent of recent alumni who did not intern while enrolled in school indicated that parents or family helped pay for their education; the figure is 8% higher (75%) among alumni who did intern.

The gap in family support is similar between recent alumni who had unpaid internships and those who did not; 75% of former unpaid interns indicated they received such support, compared to only 67% for alumni who did not undertake an unpaid internship.

Gender, race and socioeconomic status also were factors in choosing to do an internship and whether it was paid or unpaid.

Women were more likely than men to have undertaken an internship during their undergraduate education (56% compared to 51%). While women and men were equally likely to ever have done paid internships, women were much more likely to have been unpaid interns (57% compared to 46% for men).

Black and Hispanic/Latino alumni were less likely to have done internships than their White and Asian counterparts. Black and Hispanic/Latino graduates were also slightly less likely to have done paid internships and more likely than White alumni to have done unpaid internships.

First-generation college graduates were less likely than non-first-generation college graduates to have been interns while enrolled in school (51% compared to 56%) as well as before or after graduation (paid or unpaid)…

SNAAP data are consistent with many commentators’ concerns about the intern economy in that women, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and first-generation college graduate arts alumni all appear to have held a disproportionate number of unpaid internships—which, as will be considered below, are tied to significantly weaker career payoffs than paid internships. However, one possible explanation for this over representation might be that these demographic groups tend to cluster in majors in which unpaid internships are more common than paid ones. For this reason, to further investigate the findings above, our study considered the subsample of recent design alumni

The report authors note that in the design sub-sample, the demographic trends are even more pronounced than within the general sample. (Page 9 if you want more detail.)

Most interestingly was their finding that paid internships were more valuable than unpaid internships when it came to finding jobs. Those who did an internship were more successful at finding a job than those who did not (66% vs 57% four months after graduation, 86% vs 77% one year after graduation.)

However, the authors,

“…find that paid internships are even more closely related to finding a job than unpaid internships.

[…]

Figure 6 shows that having an unpaid internship does not appear to be related to finding a job more quickly after graduation. Conversely, having a paid internship has consistently been related to finding a job more quickly after graduation. Recent graduates (2009–2013) who have done paid internships, during school or outside of school, have fared especially well compared to alumni who have never been paid interns, with 89% of the former finding work within one year of graduation compared to 77% for the latter.

Simply securing a paid internship doesn’t necessarily guarantee a job. The authors note that ambitious, talented internship seekers who secure a paid position may apply those same traits to a job search.

They may also be securing the paid internships thanks to family connections and a familiarity and ability to navigate social interactions and systems that first generation students and other demographic groups don’t possess or are comfortable with.

There is a lot of interesting data in the report. If nothing else, you can get a sense of what percentage of undergraduates in your discipline intern and what the paid versus unpaid numbers look like.

With the current conversation about inequity and exploitation related to internships, it can be easy to overlook the finding that those who participate in internships report a higher satisfaction with their training and education experience than those who don’t participate.

Which is not to say they wouldn’t be that much more satisfied if they were paid and treated a little better.

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