Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
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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.

Draw Me A Picture of An Arts Attendee

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Even though the articles on Non-Profit Quarterly’s website are relatively short, I found an article last month about fundraising for the homeless gave me a lot to think about.

According to the article, homeless charities are essentially forced to pander to the image of the homeless as old men living on the street in order to raise money even though the truth is 36% of homeless are families and 65% don’t live on the streets.

Research published in the British journal Sociological Research Online noted (my emphasis)

“Given the homogeneity of the images produced in this research, and further studies which show complex, contextual information can lessen the impact of a fundraising campaign, we could argue that charities are acting rationally in continuing to fundraise in such a way, even though in rooflessness they are focusing on a relatively small element of the overall problem of homelessness: ‘the public must be given what they appear to want: images of charitable beneficiaries that fit comfortably with widely held stereotypes about ‘victims’ and which prompt the largest amount of donations.’”

The article talks about how some charities recognize the need to balance educating the public about the truth while also acknowledging that “you also have the way that people perceive that problem and what they perceive the solutions to be…”

Reading this, I saw some parallels with what arts organizations face. There has been a lot of conversations in recent years about the mismatch between what arts organizations need funding for (i.e. operations) and foundation funding priorities.

What really got me was the idea that non-profits are often slaves to the image the public has of the constituencies it serves. The British researchers had people draw what they envisioned when they thought of homeless people and many people drew the whiskered old guy sleeping on the street. (I should note the study sample size isn’t terribly large so the results may not be entirely conclusive.)

I wondered if arts organizations were to ask their patrons or people in the community to draw their concept of an arts event attendee, would the pictures be of people in suits/tuxedos and evening gowns even if the reality was jeans and khakis with barely a necktie in sight?

In light of this research, I started wondering if arts organizations might be better served by embracing the high society stereotype they are trying to escape, at least when it comes to fundraising efforts.

If regular event attendees end up rendering an image that diverges from reality of the experience, it may be that they associate their self image with the one on paper. In that case, you may not want to do anything to disabuse them of that notion.

Though this is a complicated situation. They may have drawn the pictures they did because all your marketing materials feature performers in tuxedos and evening gowns reinforcing that image even though your audiences largely don’t dress in that manner or identify with that image.

In this case, continuing an effort to have marketing and fundraising materials and events attempt to diverge from the high society stereotype and more closely align with the audience reality may ultimately garner better attendance and donations.

While there are a lot of nuances of audience psychology to factor in, the rather obvious element in all this has always been that wealthy people make large donations that help keep everything operational so the image arts organizations have tried to project is one that appeals to them.

Like those who serve the homeless, arts organizations may be trapped into perpetuating an image that attracts the most donations versus presenting an image the best reflects the reality or ambition of their activities.

All that being said, I am still intrigued by the idea of asking people either to draw or describe the type of person who attends an arts performance. I have this feeling that a survey requesting a picture might actually end up with a higher response rate than a typical survey.

And it may provide some insight into the image the organization should be projecting in order to appeal to the community. (I have to confess, I had an amusing vision of a crayon stick figure drawing of a man in a top hat and woman in an evening gown slamming the door of theater in the sad faces of two less finely dressed people.)

If anyone tries this, I would love to hear what the results are. This isn’t out of line with what people are asked to share on social media sites and there are arts organizations who are already engaging people in this manner. Nina Simon could ask of visitors at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History to do this and no one would think it particularly novel.

Info You Can Use: Does The Blue Logo Make You Trust My Blog?

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If you are one of those organizations which find success packaging and promoting their shows as part of seasons, you may be looking toward the design of promotional materials for your upcoming year.

With that in mind, it seems like a good time to point out this article on the Psychology of Color that appeared about a year ago on the Entrepreneur website.

(Though you don’t need to have a subscription campaign to design for this article to be of use to you.)

The article does a good job of addressing all the ideas people have about what color means, what colors best appeal to different genders and which are best used for calls to action.

The author, Gregory Ciotti, essentially says most of the assumptions and theories are complete bunk. People bring too much of their personal and cultural experiences to colors to be able to attribute an consistent, specific emotional reaction to them.

It is better to try to pick colors that will generally align with your brand personality rather than to evoke a specific feeling with a color. Context matters more that just about anything else.

Certain colors DO broadly align with specific traits (e.g., brown with ruggedness, purple with sophistication, and red with excitement). But nearly every academic study on colors and branding will tell you that it’s far more important for your brand’s colors to support the personality you want to portray instead of trying to align with stereotypical color associations.

Consider the inaccuracy of making broad statements such as “green means calm.” The context is missing; sometimes green is used to brand environmental issues such as Timberland’s G.R.E.E.N standard, but other times it’s meant to brand financial spaces such as Mint.com.

And while brown may be useful for a rugged appeal (think Saddleback Leather), when positioned in another context brown can be used to create a warm, inviting feeling (Thanksgiving) or to stir your appetite (every chocolate commercial you’ve ever seen).

Bottom line: I can’t offer you an easy, clear-cut set of guidelines for choosing your brand’s colors, but I can assure you that the context you’re working within is an absolutely essential consideration.

One thing that may or may not enter your consideration of color is gender. There is a difference in color prefer between males and females. Given that women often drive the attendance experience, it may be useful to cater to women’s color biases.

(Though you should probably avoid anything that runs strongly counter to male biases lest the sight of a brochure or webpage entrench their resistance to attendance.)

Additional research in studies on color perception and color preferences show that when it comes to shades, tints and hues men seem to prefer bold colors while women prefer softer colors. Also, men were more likely to select shades of colors as their favorites (colors with black added), whereas women were more receptive to tints of colors (colors with white added)

The last thing that Ciotti works on debunking is the idea that a specific colored button on a website increases the number of purchases. He says rather it is the isolation effect making that button highly noticeable on a webpage, even if you have poor eyesight, that helps create a call to action.

So a red button on a page with a lot of green is more successful than a green button on that same page. The same is true with a mix of color and font size.

The article has a lot of infographics and images which illustrate his point so if any of this sounds interesting, it is worth a visit to the article.

What Does Your Recommendation Cost You?

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Seth Godin had a great post about word of mouth last week that really bears reading and thinking about. We all know that word of mouth referrals are often more powerful than any piece of advertising you can create.

In fact, back in 2003 a Harvard Business Review piece suggested that if you only had an opportunity to ask customers one question, “would you recommend this to a friend,” was the most effective measure of satisfaction.

Given that people are abandoning traditional forms of media, arts organizations are increasingly dependent on word of mouth, especially in the form of social media.

Godin lists six reasons why people may be reluctant to give a business a referral, but the three that seem to most closely apply to art organizations deal with the basic concern of “what does this referral say about me?”

Do I want to be responsible if my friend has a bad experience? Will I get credit if it works, blame if it doesn’t?
[…]
How does it make me look? Do people like me recommend something like this? When I look in the mirror after recommending this, do I stand taller?

Is this difficult to explain, complex to understand, filled with pitfalls?..

These seem to be issues an arts organization needs to address most given that the arts are often viewed as an elitist pursuit that is not easy to understand.

Even if you are passionate and excited about what you saw, if your friends don’t seem to have the same level of interest and curiosity in the arts that you do, you may be reluctant to encourage the experience in case they don’t enjoy it as you have; think you are an elitist snob for enjoying the arts; or think you don’t share the same values because you enjoy and understand such dense, complicated material.

The one benefit I see to social media is that it allows you to commit to different levels of referral. If you are really anxious about what people will think about you, you can simply Like something. If a friend is incredulous about your apparent interest in modern dance, you can save face by saying a couple of the moments in the video were interesting or you thought one of the dancers was particularly attractive.

But really, since everyone will like anything with little prompting, a Like can help you test the waters and perhaps even introduce your friends to the concept of liking the arts without being too detrimental.

If you are feeling a little more confident that your friends will enjoy something as much as you do, you can share without much comment. Again, if your choices are challenged, you have some room for deniability.

If you are really confident, you can post or share with comment about how much you like something.

In this respect, social media provides insulation from the negative results of an in person recommendation.

Of course, we know that insulation goes both ways. If people are going to react negatively to something you are passionate about, they may say worse things about you online than they would in person and their scorn can linger for all to see.

Godin’s last line pretty much confirms what we already know about making arts more accessible to people. Having a high quality product isn’t enough, the whole experience has to be great as well.

“Being really good is merely the first step. In order to earn word of mouth, you need to make it safe, fun and worthwhile to overcome the social hurdles to spread the word.”

There is a lot that can contribute to “safe, fun and worthwhile.” It can the social experience and the crowd you attract. Ease of parking and finding your building can be a factor. Educational programs and materials can contribute. Every community and situation is different so you need to figure out what that means for you.

Marketing Vs. Practice. No, Marketing IS Practice

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There is a piece on the Forbes website discussing a recent study IBM did on customer satisfaction.

The article title says “IBM Study Finds Consumers Are Disappointed By Marketers.” But as I read the article, what really appeared to be the problem was that the companies weren’t delivering the product or experience the marketers were promising. Either the marketers were promoting something that didn’t exist or the company as a whole wasn’t maintaining the standards it set for itself.

The Forbes author, Kimberly Whitler writes, “I wonder if this is a soft warning bell to marketers—and those that hire them.”

It seemed to me that real issue in this case isn’t hiring the wrong people in marketing, it is that these days everyone in the company needs to embrace the idea that marketing is everyone’s responsibility. If you have been reading the blog for any length of time, you know I frequently return to this theme.

Most of the time, the failure of marketing is that it doesn’t resonate with you in the first place. If marketing leads you become a customer of a company, it generally isn’t the marketing that loses you, it is the disconnect between what the marketing causes you to expect and the the experience you have.

I believe this quote at the end of the first page sums it up best.

I think we’re at a point where the challenge isn’t perfecting the technology or unifying our data. The real challenge now is human,” said Stefan Tornquist, VP, research at Econsultancy. “We want to build long term relationships with people but our thinking is short-term and selfish. Most companies want to differentiate through customer experience, but most will only take half measures because really devoting themselves to what consumers need means rebuilding from the inside out.”

This seems much more an issue of execution and practice rather a failure of marketing.

About the only case I can think of where marketing might lose you as a customer is if they decide to shift the demographic focus of a product. If marketing has brought you to a product or service by positioning it as something that is hip and edgy and then they decide to go after your parents (or if the product starts to appeal to your parents despite the marketers efforts to the contrary), then the marketing can be blamed for losing you.

One thing Whitler wrote that I fascinating was the following (my emphasis)

“The research reminded me of a visit I made to a sophisticated, CRM-based entertainment firm a decade ago. They had state-of-the-art systems and tools to understand behavior. It was quite impressive at the time. They could predict when a customer would defect. The problem was, they couldn’t figure out how to stop the consumer from defecting. Their marketing team was comprised of “quant jocks” who could describe but not sell. Perhaps this research is a reminder that marketing is not just about insight, but the ability to use that insight to create change.”

I take some solace from the fact that a company with the resources to do a lot of data analysis couldn’t figure out how to stave off customer defection. If massive CRM data crunching isn’t the sole answer, then there is hope for non-profit arts organizations that don’t have those resources at their disposal.

Whitler indirectly confirms the idea that marketing is a function for the whole company by noting this company’s team could “describe but not sell.” It shows the importance of having better integration between those doing the analysis of customers and those interacting with customers.

Getting that integration right is incredibly hard. Those interacting with the customers may have a skewed view of what the problem is based on the feedback they are getting and need a dispassionate analysis to show that the real problem lies elsewhere and the complaints received are just the easiest way to express that dissatisfaction.

But if the data is not being collected in the correct way, it may be impossible to arrive at the correct analysis. Given their limited resources, gaining that understanding of a customer base can be a problem for arts organizations.

On the other side, a good analysis can identify the problem, but it requires an effective practical execution to bring about satisfaction and that can be difficult to pull off. Just think how many times you have thought that an intention behind an effort was good but the execution was flawed.

Again, lack of resources can hamper arts organizations.

But putting data analysis aside and getting back to the original idea of this post, an important question to consider is whether the organizational practice is fulfilling the promise of the marketing.

I will leave questioning whether your marketing is resonating with the audience you want to reach to Trevor O’Donnell who address that better than I can. One of his frequent basic themes is that advertising should show the audience having fun rather than focusing on how awesome your organization is.

All art administrators know that if they show people having fun, then people should have fun at your events.

But does the rest of the organization know that? Is that value reinforced? Are they encouraged to point out opportunities to increase fun and decrease disappointment?

Again, marketing is part of everybody’s job. All employees (not to mention board members, audience members and donors) reinforce and embody your brand.

Will Not Let You Go. (Let Me Go!)

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I don’t know if you have been following the story about the planned shutdown of Sweet Briar College, an all-women’s school in Virginia. I have been keeping an eye on the situation for the last month, having initially seen it as a positive example for non-profit organizations. Since then, the situation has evolved to the point where I am not sure if it is a positive example any longer, but can still provide some lessons.

When Sweet Briar College first announced they were going to close down, the news was generally well received. A decision to close had been made before things had gotten particularly dire. The school planned on using its endowment to provide severance packages to employees and assist students in transitioning to other schools.

All in all, it seemed like a responsible move in terms of attempting to soften the blow for employees and students rather than making an abrupt announcement that left people panicking.

Since I have written on the benefits of starting an arts organization with a definite expiration date in mind, I appreciated that they were looking to cease operations in a relatively constructive way with an opportunity to liquidate or pass on assets while they retained some value.

Later, various constituencies came together to try to save the school and called for the resignation of the president and board of trustees for not living up to their responsibilities and not exploring other funding avenues. Non-Profit Quarterly drew comparisons to other recent examples of board action, including the planned closure of San Diego Opera, where the stakeholders said not so fast and changed the outcome.

I am not going to suggest that any of these popular actions were wrong or just delaying the inevitable. However, as I thought about this in the context of the earlier idea about organizations with expiration dates, I wondered the idea were possible in practice.

Essentially, can you quit while you are still on top? When you reach the planned point to wind things down, will there be push back from people suggesting it would be irresponsible to abandon a project that so successfully serves the community? Especially if there is not a similar entity present to transfer resources to which could potentially pick up the work.

Is it in human nature that we have an easier time accepting the need to buy a new car before the current one falls apart than we have deciding to dissolve an organization? Basically, does the organization have to be further along in its decline before we will give it up?

This was what was on my mind as something I might write a blog post about until the most recent twist in the Sweet Briar College situation. It seems that the college accepted a million dollar estate gift about two weeks before they decided to close the school. The letter accepting this gift is being used in a lawsuit against the school.

This struck a real chord with me because December 23, 2013, I received a letter soliciting a donation from the Trey McIntyre Project. Then in January 2014, there came the news that the dance company was being disbanded as of June 2014. At the time, I wondered at the timing of the solicitation since they surely knew they were moving toward this decision.

Yet the letter read,

“As we look towards the new year, we are driven to educate more minds and heal more bodies through the vehicle of Trey’s art and the talent of our dancers. We need your financial support to make it happen.”

While the organization technically hasn’t closed, but rather has shifted its focus in other directions that doesn’t include the dance company, that solicitation email implies the dancers will be part of the future.

I have frequently praised the company in my blog entries, including praising them for quitting while they were still on top. That solicitation email has obviously stuck in my mind as a false note. But I think it goes to illustrate that every organization is going to make its missteps.

As to how big Sweet Briar College’s missteps ultimately end up being, that remains to be seen. There are likely more lessons to come that one can derive lessons from so the situation will bear watching.

The title of this post is, of course, inspired by one of the greatest songs of all time. Which you now long to listen to–

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ARuoSFflc

Dynamic Pricing Backlash

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I learned today via a post on Twitter from TRG Arts that the University of Michigan will stop using dynamic pricing at their football games as a result of protests from the general public.

The article talks about negative feedback from alumni and students as well but much of that relates to a separate issue with season and student tickets which were more expensive, but not subject to dynamic pricing.

Living as I am in Ohio, I am obligated to suggest that this only goes to illustrate the inferiority of the Michigan football program.

What really interests me about the policy change was that two years ago I wrote about how University of Michigan and the Cincinnati Reds were going to be using dynamic pricing for their games. I took a quick check of the Red’s website and they will continue to use dynamic pricing during their 2015 season.

My post two years ago emphasized that value is not price presenting some thoughts on that concept. As I looked into University of Michigan’s decision to eliminate dynamic pricing, my effort to determine where the balance between price and value became further complicated.

If you look at the bottom of this article, you will see students protesting with signs invoking tradition over money and the university brand. But if you read my original article, I note at the time tickets were already on sale on the secondary market for far more than the published price, prior to single tickets going on sale. At that point, the only ones who had them were season ticket holders and maybe some students.

While not everyone is going to try capitalize and sell their tickets to hot games on the secondary market, it is clear that some of the tickets are more valuable than what you paid for them. Shouldn’t you be happy about getting such a great deal?

As much as you may want to complain about students and alumni being malcontents who want to maintain the status quo rather than acknowledge increasing costs and value, there really isn’t any difference between them and the people who comprise your audiences.

Except maybe they are much more passionate about football than your programming. (Which is why I can’t have shows on Saturdays in the Fall.)

I suspect one of the biggest factors in whether people will tolerate dynamic pricing or not is the level of investment they have in the activity and how strong the sense of community is. The Cincinnati Reds and Broadway shows can probably get away with it because people expect to pay more or less dependent on the popularity of the event.

College football isn’t just a sporting event, it is entwined more deeply with personal identity. For students and alumni, it is directly associated with your occupation for four plus years. You didn’t just live in a locality with sports teams, all the buildings you occupied all day in were owned by the entity that owned the team. All the people you worked, ate and played with everyday were members of that entity.

There is going to be so little distinction between value, price and identity that change to any one of these will result in a strong reaction.

It probably doesn’t help that the university was requiring $150 donation to be considered for season tickets with no guarantee you would get some and no refund if you don’t. (And this is a very common practice among larger university sports programs, even ones that don’t perform very well.)

I don’t think University of Michigan’s decision should dissuade an arts organization from considering dynamic pricing in itself. I think it points to the fact that you need to consider the level of investment your potential audience has in your work and what the tenor of that investment is.

For some, a higher price may only increase the sense of investment as it indicates a greater level of personal prestige. Not surprisingly, for others it will be a sign of exclusionary elitism. Other communities may barely notice the prices changed since they weren’t paying attention to begin with.

Clyde Fitch Report Wants To Be Bigger And More Bad Ass Than Their Namesake

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Just wanted to make a quick shout-out today drawing attention to the Clyde Fitch Report’s (CFR) Kickstarter campaign.

I have been checking out CFR on a weekly basis for a number of years now, getting a lot of art news and opinion. Sometimes what I learn there has served as the basis for post of my own. Oklahoma City Ballet Executive Director Shane Jewell’s post encouraging arts organizations to use shirtless men in advertising being one of the more recent examples.

If you are wondering who Clyde Fitch is, you probably aren’t alone. He was an incredibly famous and successful playwright in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If you read the “Who Was Clyde Fitch” section of the website, you will wonder how the heck he ever faded into obscurity. The guy was making $250,000 a year in 1900s dollars.

The Clyde Fitch Report unfortunately can’t claim the same level of resources. Founded by Leonard Jacobs, it is definitely a labor of love. But like Clyde Fitch, when you watch the Kickstarter video, you will be surprised to learn how many people from across the country contribute to the site.

Essentially, Jacobs is trying to scale up the quality of what the site offers and do a little better by the contributors by paying them a pittance instead of nothing.

Everyone is probably well aware that arts journalism is suffering greatly these days. Just yesterday I spoke before the local Rotary Club and was asked why there wasn’t more post-performance coverage in the local paper.

Leonard Jacobs and the CFR crew isn’t going to solve that problem overnight, but they are looking to experiment with some alternative approaches.

Info You Can Use: Should I Make Video Ads?

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Thomas Cott recently drew attention to a post on Capacity Interactive encouraging people to eliminate a print ad in favor of creating a video. Erik Gensler makes many points worth considering about the value of a video to the promotion of a performance.

Something I learned was that Facebook provides far more organic reach to videos uploaded to their site over posts with links from YouTube. Still, given that I can’t post a Facebook video on my website, Twitter feed or in my email blasts, Facebook has some work to do if they really want to be YouTube’s competitor.

A couple things to remember about video advertising is that

1- People receive video and print through very different delivery channels and process the information in different ways. Gensler seems to acknowledge this when he encourages people to cut a print ad, singular, rather than ditching the format altogether. With some populations, print may still be effective.

2- While organic reach on Facebook may be free, the cost to make the video is not. If you already have some footage on hand or available from another source, the cost in time and labor to edit it into something usable may be the same as what a graphic designer might spend. Creating something from scratch is a more involved undertaking.

In that regard, Non Profit Quarterly recently posted an article that addresses the practical considerations and mistakes non-profits make with video.

The piece is somewhat geared toward video made for fund raising and reporting purposes, but the warnings and suggestions are equally valid for promotional videos as well. Among the points that made me nod in agreement were those about the CEO possibly not being the best spokesperson and a reminder that your board of directors is not the audience for the video. I am sure we have all seen videos where it was obvious these parties had far too much influence.

In terms of the practical aspects of video making, the Non-Profit Quarterly article reinforces the need to be clear about the story you are going to tell and the goals of the video you are making because it is going to demand a lot of time and resources from your organization. But much of that is about the editing side. They also encourage people to think about all the possible applications of the information and keep the raw footage around for other purposes.

8. Thinking your video is a one-time gig

Video costs are primarily driven up by the number of days shooting, so it’s OK to double-dip and repurpose raw footage for other videos and projects. Use interviews, visuals and even finished videos on more than one occasion and maximize your return on what often becomes a significant investment. Showing a video at your annual dinner? Post it on your website, too. Making an informational video? Show it at recruitment events, and link to it online afterward. Nonprofits should always think about how to strategically leverage video content.

9. Reacting instead of pro-acting

Creating a video is an intensive process that requires full attention from you, your staff, and your beneficiaries. If you choose to make a video, make sure it’s the right time for the organization. A classic mistake is entering the production process for political reasons. If you do, you may find yourself struggling to find the right story and wasting a lot of time and money.

Some Parts Of This Post May Be Boring

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I was going to hold off featuring this in the blog until a later date, but Carter Gillies comment on my recent Distract Me From My Distraction post decided me.

Maria Popova recently assembled the thoughts of many luminaries on Brain Pickings, In Defense of Boredom.

Years before the internet, video games, cell phones and the like, people were already thinking about the value of boredom in shaping us as individuals.

Popova’s opening thoughts probably won’t be news to anyone.

Today, amid our cult of productivity, we’ve come to see boredom as utterly inexcusable — the secular equivalent of a mortal sin. We run from it as if to be caught in our own unproductive company were a profound personal failure. We are no longer able, let alone willing, to do nothing all alone with ourselves.

She quotes philosopher Bertrand Russell:

We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement.

Perhaps most applicable to the arts are the words of Susan Sontag:

People say “it’s boring” — as if that were a final standard of appeal, and no work of art had the right to bore us.

But most of the interesting art of our time is boring. Jasper Johns is boring. Beckett is boring, Robbe-Grillet is boring. Etc. Etc.

Maybe art has to be boring, now. (Which obviously doesn’t mean that boring art is necessarily good — obviously.)

We should not expect art to entertain or divert any more. At least, not high art.

Boredom is a function of attention. We are learning new modes of attention — say, favoring the ear more than the eye— but so long as we work within the old attention-frame we find X boring … e.g. listening for sense rather than sound (being too message-oriented). Possibly after repetition of the same single phrase or level of language or image for a long while — in a given written text or piece of music or film, if we become bored, we should ask if we are operating in the right frame of attention. Or — maybe we are operating in one right frame, where we should be operating in two simultaneously, thus halving the load on each (as sense and sound).

Sontag’s thoughts bring up a whole host of questions. Some are familiar like whether it is appropriate to have the expectation of art to be entertaining. The concept of being in the wrong mode or modes of attention is new to me. I have certainly been to performances and encountered works of visual art where I understood it was less about the meaning than the general sensory experience.

But I don’t recall consciously deciding I needed to make that shift. It leave me wondering if I should have asked myself if I was operating in the wrong mode when I was bored. I also wonder how you educate audiences about making this shift without sounding superior and condescending. (i.e. The reason you didn’t like it is because you didn’t realized you weren’t supposed to search for meaning and understanding, you were supposed to focus on the holistic sonic and visual experience.)

Writer and filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky echoed a sentiment made by Bertrand Russell about the need to learn to handle boredom. His last sentence is definitely worth some consideration.

I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to be spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.

This idea that it is important for children to learn to navigate boredom appears again in the words of psychoanalyst Adam Phillips who like Russell and Tarkovsky characterizes it as a crucial milestone in personal development.

How often, in fact, the child’s boredom is met by that most perplexing form of disapproval, the adult’s wish to distract him — as though the adults have decided that the child’s life must be, or be seen to be, endlessly interesting. It is one of the most oppressive demands of adults that the child should be interested, rather than take time to find what interests him. Boredom is integral to the process of taking one’s time.

I call attention to all this because one of the central challenges the arts face is this innate, growing fear that boredom means something is wrong with your life. Since this issue has been commented on for 200 years, to some extent this fear is a natural part of being human. The problem is that since stimulation comes at an ever increasing rate, the interval after which a person decides they are bored becomes increasingly shorter.

Since parents and general socialization continue to reinforce this concept of boredom, there is likely little the relatively “slow” format arts and culture organizations can do to combat it other than repeating a mantra of “it is okay to be bored.”

I am sure he is amused that I keep bringing this up, but I think one of the most effective efforts in Drew McManus’ “Take A Friend to the Orchestra” campaign was when he took a guy to a concert at Carnegie Hall and told him it was okay to get bored and Drew admitted that even he gets bored at concerts.

Introducing the possibility that parts of an experience might be boring by giving someone permission to be bored might bias them against the experience from the outset. It is highly likely they were already afraid they might be bored anyway, (along with every opportunity in life that presents itself, it ain’t just you), so being given license to dislike some aspects might be a relief.

Info You Can Use: Holding A Mirror Up To Fundraising

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Simone Joyaux wrote a must-read, “physician heal thyself” post for development teams in a recent Non-Profit Quarterly post.

In her column, Fundraisers: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, she enjoins development teams to look in the mirror before blaming others for failures. (If you have a hankering to listen to the theme music for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly movie while reading, there is an interesting guitar rendition here.)

Joyaux addresses many common complaints development departments have about board members not providing assistance with fundraising, board members not donating, issues with opinionated executive directors and weak economic conditions inhibiting efforts.

She provides some advice about dealing with each situation, mentioning a different approaches to use. In nearly every case though, she challenges fundraising staff to examine their assumptions and understanding of the situation to see if they are at least partially contributing to the difficulties.

Often she asks if the development team has sat down and spoken with someone to understand their limitations and concerns and whether the development staff has been providing sufficient support to a board member’s efforts on their behalf.

There are some things Joyaux writes about that I have rarely, if ever, heard mentioned in relation to fund raising efforts.

(By the way: How do you define fundraising? I hope you aren’t thinking about asking for money only. There’s so much more to fundraising than the asking point. Do you know all the steps and the neuroscience and the psychology and communications and all the rest? Can you help board members apply that, in partnership with each other and in partnership with you?)

When she mentions them, neuroscience and psychology make sense as factors to consider, but I can’t remember ever hearing them mentioned in connection with development before. (Actually, I have to admit I only have guesses on how neuroscience relates.)

As Joyaux notes, becoming effective at development is a process and there isn’t anyone who hasn’t committed some sort of poor practice.

In my early years, I know I must have behaved this way. I saw glimpses in the mirror. How about you?

Bad fundraising performance #1: The fundraiser didn’t handle well leads suggested by several board members.

Bad fundraising performance #2: The fundraising staff didn’t ask for specific support from a specific board member, and explain why, and provide support.

Bad fundraising performance #3: The fundraising staff doesn’t spend much time learning about the program. The fundraising staff doesn’t collect stories from program staff. The fundraisers rarely observe a program or talk with client beneficiaries. This produces weak solicitations, bad links with our heroes, the donors.

Oops, actually that last point reminds me I need to follow up with some participants of an education service we hosted last week.

Distract Me From My Distraction

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I frequently cite Seth Godin’s blog posts because so much of what he writes is applicable to arts organizations and an observation he made last week was no exception.

He says we spend too much time teaching people technique when it is really commitment to endure failure and frustration that allows people to become skilled at something.

But most people don’t want to commit until after they’ve discovered that they can be good at something. So they say, “teach me, while I stand here on one foot, teach me while I gossip with my friends via text, teach me while I wander off to other things. And, sure, if the teaching sticks, then I’ll commit.”

We’d be a lot more successful if organized schooling was all about creating an atmosphere where we can sell commitment (and where people will buy it). A committed student with access to resources is almost unstoppable.

I think most people in the arts can identify with the feeling that they are being challenged to capture and hold people’s attention while they engage in some other activity. While distracting people from what they are doing has always been something of a function of advertising, these days arts organizations are faced with the unspoken challenge at their own events of “try to distract me back from my distraction and maybe I will pay attention.”

Teaching in the framework of commitment rather than technique would probably have profound implications for the education system because it would diminish the mindset of retaining knowledge long enough to pass the test. It might necessitate the elimination of the vast majority of tests. (I say “might” since Japan has a culture that emphasizes committed pursuit of excellence in an endeavor and they also have a lot of testing in schools.)

The people shaped by an education focused on commitment might not be any better disposed to the arts than people are today, but presumably those who did attend a performance or enter a museum would arrive with the intent of directing their attention to the experience.

Godin doesn’t really say what commitment focused education would look like. I think it would be easy default to repetition of task. But playing the piano for hours or sitting outside the kung fu master’s house in the rain is only proof of commitment, it doesn’t instill or model it as part of the education process.

I would think experiential learning would be a part of it. Witnessing people go through a process and going through a process yourself begins to give you a sense of the level of attention and commitment  involved.

The arts can play a big role in this as preparing a canvas, working with clay and rehearsing for a performance are all labor intensive and time consuming. But the same can be said for preparing for a science experiment and that fact can be underscored by visiting labs or formulating your own experiments.

A slight shift in emphasis in talking about history can add a conversation about the effort someone went through to research, assemble and restore an artifact to a discussion of the history of the artifact. Again, reinforcing the importance of dedication rather than just emphasizing dates and facts.

Of course,  skill of delivery will still determine whether anyone is interested in learning about history.

The Old Utility of Art Argument

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I bought the bowl below at a sale of student art. I have been displaying it on my desk for the last month or so. I recently had someone come in and comment that the difference between art and craft was whether you could use it or not, so this bowl must be art.

By that definition, the Paul Randolph designed Orange County Government Center must be art because it is a really difficult place to work in.

I grew up in Orange County and was in and out of the center fairly often.  When I was really young it was always a crazy looking place that presented a lot of places to potentially hide and play in (If I could only get away from my mother.)  As I got older, it was still a crazy looking place that captured my imagination, even driving by. But even 30+ years ago I noticed there were a heck of a lot of buckets deployed to catch leaks.

The argument about whether a work of art is worth the expense based on its perceived lack of usefulness is an old one. The criticisms become even more pronounced if the work isn’t immediately aesthetically pleasing or comprehensible.

In many respects, architecture faces greater difficulty with these issues. People may be angered by a performance they attended, but the experience is transitory. People may be scandalized by the amount paid for a piece of visual art, but it often disappears from view behind a museum or collector’s walls. Even if it is a piece of public art that reminds people of their dismay every day as they go to work, the expense of its existence is generally in the past. (Unless something falls off on to your head.)

Buildings, people have to live in and the cost of the distinctive design can frequently persist for years. To paraphrase an old saying, it is easier to buy a piece of art than to live in one. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, for example, has been faced with various problems particular to its design.

Unlike Fallingwater which is now a museum, and similar efforts to preserve  buildings as a historical tourism sites,  the government center is seeking to renovate a building with a long history of problems so that it can continue to serve its original function.

They are faced with a number of options and I obviously like the idea of turning the space into artist residences and workspaces. But this situation provides an interesting illustration of the tension between functionality and artistic and historical value.

Often we hear stories about an historical building being slated for demolition in order to build a parking lot, condo or supermarket. Does it count for anything that these renovation plans will allow the building to continue with its function?

There are a number of art works for which the natural degradation is a planned feature. Since even buildings without a distinctive design inevitably develop issues as they age, should this expectation be factored in during the design stage?

If arts organizations shouldn’t assume they deserve to persist forever, should creatives expect their work to be preserved forever? This is a logical extension of the sentiment that really hasn’t been touched upon.

In recent years an idea has been espoused that legacy arts organizations have become too entrenched in their practices to be responsive to an environment where expectations shift so quickly. The suggestion is that it is arrogant for them to think they deserve to be continually funded if they are not effective at delivering their services.

By that thinking, does the Orange County Government Center deserve to be preserved if it doesn’t allow for the effective delivery of services?

Should a sculptor expect their fountain to be preserved forever after the mechanisms to keep it working are no longer made? The full intended effect of the work is diminished by the impossibility of restoration.

Should muralists expect their works to be restored after a leaky roof damages it? What if it were demolished by a tornado?

I am not suggesting that some performing arts organizations don’t need to do a little introspection about their existence. Or that the Sistine Chapel’s time has come. I just want to point out that when you start to employ criteria like effectiveness in relation to the arts, you open the door a little wider for the age old utility argument.

Along those lines, it occurs to me that one of the reasons many of our public buildings are functional but so uninspiring and unremarkable is that governments don’t want anyone becoming invested in preserving anything about them.

 

Evidence of Creativity

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Since Americans for the Arts is having a blog salon on Arts Education, this seems like a good opportunity to call attention to one possible solution to the question of how you integrate the arts and creativity into academic subjects.

While he isn’t specifically integrating the arts into instruction, teacher Larry Ferlazzo is using episodes from the National Geographic show Crowd Control to inspire his students’ projects.

His goal is to get his students to investigate a question and create their own evidence.

“Another that is considering the role of imagination in art talked about their creating various items and having people evaluate them using an imagination “criteria.” One other group taking on the topic of if technology is truly necessary in order to “advance” society said they might come up with a list of technology achievements and ask people which one they think would be most important if they had to choose one for a brand new country they were creating.”

This approach gets students invested a project they care about and helps them learn from the experience. The questions they ask and the results they receive might be flawed, but the process they engage in will inform future learning.

Besides, arts organizations can’t cast too many aspersions. The questions and methodologies used in audience/community surveys are frequently just as flawed.

A creative approach and an empirical approach to problem solving are not mutually exclusive. The poop-o-meter in the Crowd Control video Ferlazzo uses in his post could have been just as easily used to incentivize the submission of samples for a canine health study instead of getting people to clean up after their dogs.

Info You Can Use: Board Members Can Be Personally Responsible For Gross Inaction

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Responsible governance by non profit boards is becoming an increasingly important and discussed topic. Non-Profit Law blog recently pointed out a court decision that emphasizes the need for boards to take their oversight duties seriously.

The following should especially be of interest: (my emphasis)

…that governing boards of not-for-profits who have actual knowledge of mismanagement by the officers of the corporation and choose to ignore it and/or not take appropriate action, can be held financially liable for breach of their fiduciary duty of care. The decision carries special weight because it turns on its head the long-held assumption that nonprofit directors are insulated from financial exposure, barring personal involvement in corruption, venality or fraud. This should be a wake-up call to nonprofits about the very real perils of inattention or inaction.

This case is related to the board overseeing a not-for-profit retirement home where the board’s inattention was particularly egregious. Board meetings were poorly attended, there was no treasurer, no finance committee as required by bylaws and the board was aware that the chief financial officer wasn’t maintaining records properly.

It is the fact the board was aware of the mismanagement at the retirement home, (I haven’t listed even 1/4 of it), and allowed much of it to continue, exposed them to liability.

Many states have laws similar to that of Pennsylvania where this case occurred, which says a board member is:

“…entitled to rely in good faith on information, opinions, reports or statements, including financial statements and other financial data” prepared by employees or experts. However, “[a] Director shall not be considered to be acting in good faith if he[/she] has knowledge concerning the matter in question that would cause his[/her] reliance to be unwarranted.”

If a board member has based her decisions information and advice she has every reason to believe is accurate and dependable, then she is more greatly insulated from personal liability should mismanagement and impropriety be surreptitiously running rampant.

Most people need not fear joining a non-profit board of directors, even for an organization that appears to be struggling financially, if they are diligently monitoring the situation and taking steps to rectify it. (And making sure such actions are being properly recorded in the meeting minutes.)

As I have noted in the past, if you do find yourself on the board of a failing non-profit, even though it may occupy an inordinate amount of time and energy, it much better to stick it out until the bitter end than to potentially expose yourself to greater liability by quitting.

Be Careful What You Bring To Your Data

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I heard about this crazy theory that there is a correlation between parking and a country’s productivity.

An international business professor did some research and apparently, Americans tend to back into public parking spaces more often, selfishly blocking the flow of traffic around businesses while they continually reposition their vehicles so that they can experience the gratification of immediately pulling out when they are ready to leave.

Chinese pull in forward more often so they reduce their impact on the flow of traffic and will patiently yield to approaching vehicles when it comes time to back out and leave.

This is why China is more productive than the United States. They are more attuned to how their actions contribute to the good of the whole of society.

Oh wait a minute, that isn’t what the research says at all.

Actually, it says Chinese back into spots more frequently than Americans, showing their propensity for delaying gratification and that is why they are more productive. They are more willing than Americans to forgo comfort now for prosperity later.

You can read a quick recap of the research on this NPR story about it.

When I first heard about this research, I thought it was a bunch of baloney and sounded like confirmation basis. Backing in to a spot as a manifestation of delayed gratification supports the narrative of Chinese as patient just like it supports the narrative of Americans being selfish in my fake survey results.

Did you find it easy to believe my fake example by the way?

I don’t necessarily care overly much about parking and productivity. I just thought this was a good illustration of how our biases can shape our perceptions of data. When we survey our community and look at the results, we often make conclusions about what has lead to those answers based on what we think we know. In addition, the choices we made while collecting the data might have pre-biased the results toward our existing assumptions.

It is only when you don’t believe the results that you take the time to scrutinize them closer and see if there are any problems. If you agree with the findings, you aren’t motivated to do so.

The author of the parking study presents some numbers that show a correlation between parking style and productivity so there may be some evidence in support of his hypothesis. But I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t been inclined to think that the way you park your car was the product of a wide variety of factors and not a manifestation of delayed gratification.

It can be difficult to do, but when you review data about your organization, be it surveys, ticket sales, attendance, etc., it can be good to occasionally step back and wonder, is this what the data really says or what I want it to say?

Shirtless Men As Institutional Marketing

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Oklahoma City Ballet Executive Director Shane Jewell wrote a piece recently on the Clyde Fitch Report discussing the ways in which his organization has used performance and institutional marketing to promote itself.

In discussing the familiar practice of performance marketing, Jewell goes to some length to distinguish the video they did for their production of Cinderella as a trailer rather than a commercial. What might be confusing is that in the next sentence he states the commercial won Gold at the Oklahoma City ADDY Awards.

After re-reading the post, I assume he wants to emphasize that they didn’t view it as a commercial because it diverged from the expected pattern of

“…live-performance footage with voiceover and text. This is possibly a company’s biggest waste of time and money. The only people who would enjoy this type of commercial are those who are already fans of ballet, and more than likely they do not need a commercial to alert them of upcoming performances… The goal of performance marketing is to attract new audiences.”

My initial concern was whether the trailer might set up unrealistic expectation in people who were not familiar with ballet. (Though on the other hand, we pretty much expect trailers won’t be completely accurate representations of movies so it probably isn’t a big problem.)

What I really want to focus on though is the ballet’s handling of less frequently used institutional marketing–essentially the effort of demonstrating that your organization is a part of the community rather than apart from the community.

Noting that their community is very athletically oriented, the ballet created a print ad using their dancers to depict the fierce cross state rivalry between Oklahoma State University and University of Oklahoma. (You can see the ad in Jewell’s post.)

They also created a video emphasizing the athleticism of their dancers which they ran during the portion of the year they weren’t performing.

Oklahoma is a sports state so we played to the athleticism of our dancers and you don’t even realize you are watching a ballet commercial when it begins.

Here is the ad. Whether it was intended or not, I felt like the “Oklahoma City” graphic at the end with “Ballet” only popping in for the last second, communicated a sense of “we are you.”

After seeing these ads, it probably won’t surprise you that Jewell’s last bit of advice is- “know your audience. And have your men take their shirts off.”

You may be looking at this videos and thinking it must be nice to have the production budget to be able to make these videos. Jewell said the ballet trailer increased ticket sales enough that they covered the expense of making it.

While it is true that you often have to spend money to make money, I can personally attest it can be very easy to direct funds toward ineffective efforts. It can be extremely difficult to justify spending money on marketing that is not connected to a revenue generating activity. That is money you could use for that very purpose three months down the road.

There are opportunities for institutional marketing that don’t necessarily involve producing ads. I am reminded of the activities the Trey McIntyre Project engaged in around Boise, ID. In addition to their concerts, they generated flash mobs, danced at the local NBA farm team basketball games and participated in an art installation in a local hotel (starting around 3:30).

Certainly these type of things demand resources of their own. Time spent on them is not being spent on rehearing or creating, but the option is there.

And there is always having your men take their shirts off.

Memento Labore

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Last month I wrote about a 2012 study that found the biggest impediment to creativity identified by Americans is lack of time.

A recent piece on Medium tells the story of an author who contacted 275 creatives to be interviewed for a book he was writing and was told “No” by one third of them. Another third said nothing.

Of those who did say no, a great deal of them cited a lack of time as the reason. The article author, Kevin Ashton, suggests that the reason why so many of these creatives were successful is that they said no to requests which would divert them from their work.

Time is the raw material of creation. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating.

Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation. The common thread that links creators is how they spend their time.

No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.

From time to time I have written about how companies will bring a consultant or improv group in to teach their employees exercises that will help them become more nimble and creative. The mistake being made is thinking the exercises are the answer to the problem rather than recognizing it is the time spent with a shifted mindset that yields creative results.

The emphasis being on time spent.

Even creative artists can fail to recognize that their “break out” work was actually the result of a long period of failure and refinement and become discouraged when inspiration doesn’t immediately gift them with their next great idea.

I revisit this idea here periodically because it is useful to be reminded.

I frequently arrive at the solution I seek when I am mowing the lawn or in the shower. But generally the process hasn’t just encompassed the time it takes me to mow the lawn. I have already done a great deal of thinking and research leading up to that moment or have drawn my knowledge and experience to that point. The flash of insight I receive while mowing helps to coalesce all the ideas into a possible course of action.

[The title of this post is a riff on the Latin memento mori – remember you must die. My cobbled together meaning is remember you must work]

Info You Can Use: We’ll Help You Be Pinterest Awesome

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I saw a tweet today that immediately struck me as using a great approach for getting people to see a connection between their interests and the role of an arts organization in their community.

Full Disclosure: I worked for Appel Farm for a few years.

It is just a simple identification of an area that people in the community would have a strong interest in and positioning a program to meet that interest.

If you are familiar with Trevor O’Donnell’s repeated refrain that arts marketing needs to be focused on the audience and not be about how great the arts organization is, this is a good example of how to do it.

These classes are the type of instruction they already offer, but they couched it in terms that appeal to a passion people have. I don’t visit Pinterest and it excited me even before I thought about it as something I could mention on this blog.

Would The 18 Year Old You Listen To Career Advice From 40 Year Old You?

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Yesterday Thomas Cott tweeted two articles taking a Pro and Con view of the value of arts degrees. The first talked about how you don’t have to appear on Broadway to have derived value from your theater degree. The second wondered if BFA and MFA programs in dance aren’t part of a pyramid scheme.

My criticism of both articles is that they overlook just how important self-motivation and the influence of social dynamics are as factors in your success.

The piece about theater degrees rehashes lists I have seen in multiple places about how many key life and business skills you pick up by studying theater. These lists ignore the simple fact that you only acquire these skills by applying yourself diligently — something you can accomplish by working in construction, catering, and auto repair while pursuing any number of humanities degrees.

Theater doesn’t enjoy some special lock on the cultivation of creativity and marketable skills.

In the piece about dance degrees, I agree that too many training programs in the performing arts, including dance, don’t emphasize the need to develop career skills nearly as much as they should. I have done a lot of tongue biting over the years when I have wanted to scream in protest.

To some degree it is difficult to communicate the importance of acquiring these skills to young adults who just want to perform. In theater, it is hard enough to get actors to seriously apply themselves to learning technical theater skills even knowing the skills make them more employable.

The thing is, training in higher education is expensive across the board. If you think you can acquire the knowledge and skills on your own either through a series of employment opportunities or by independent or online study, that is great.

But for most people, going to school is the only way to raise your abilities to the standard required or the only way to keep yourself motivated and focused on acquiring those skills.

While I probably could have picked up the same abilities I acquired while pursuing my MFA in Arts Management through jobs and studying, I don’t know if I would have been motivated enough to do so at the time I enrolled. It probably would have been a number of years later before I was together enough to do so on my own.

In some respects, I use the audience for this blog as a substitute for the formal school environment to keep me motivated to constantly read, research and think about arts management.

That brings me to the other factor I mentioned earlier, social dynamics. This is something that exists in every arts training program, that no school can honestly represent the quality of.

How you interact with other students, faculty, members of the general public can have an enormous influence on you. This can determine how driven you are, how culturally omnivorous you are and what opportunities you avail yourself of.

I say that no training program can honestly make claims about how supportive the environment that their school is because these dynamics are constantly shifting and changing. Numbers of students, faculty and performance opportunities printed in a brochure have nothing to do with it.

I worked in places with a large number of undergraduate and graduate students who were involved with a good number of projects. Except, as mentioned in the article about dance programs, they were all associated with the academic program and few people worked on independent projects.

I have worked at a community college that didn’t even have a minor in a performing arts discipline and students were involved with creating their own performances on campus, forming performance groups with people from the community, involved with other established performance groups and picking up cross-disciplinary skills in the process.

Some of this was facilitated by efforts the academic departments made, but by and large it was the result of a cohort of students who kept each other motivated and managed to sustain their energy even after graduations. None of it was part of some long range plan. It just happened.

I can’t say who has the better chance of being employed as artists over the long term. Formal training programs have the imprimatur of a degree, the cachet of their name and the network contacts of alumni and faculty.

People who have been omnivorous in their pursuits may develop a following and recognition that their creativity, range of knowledge and skills and entrepreneurship are well suited to the current arts environment.

The truth is, it isn’t too long after you graduate that what you have done and what you can do right now becomes more important than where you studied. (Though certainly there are places whose name recognition is still impressive 20 years after you graduated.)

But as anyone who reads this blog can tell you, working in the arts is really hard.

Admittedly, when you are 18-20 years old, it is extremely difficult to know what education and career path you should be pursuing to bring the most success. The same is pretty much true at 40.

When you are looking at a career in the performing arts, the cost of attending a training program or forgoing it is not as real to you as it is four years or so later and you look back in regret at choices made or not made.

Let’s also be honest that training programs want to sell you on attending them. As an aspiring artist, you are going looking for them. It may actually be to the credit of BFA & MFA programs moreso than many other academic disciplines that they reject a lot of people. This may be the biggest favor they do for many.

Yes, they need to do a much better job in respect to preparing people for careers and should be working harder to discourage people who aren’t exhibiting the discipline and skill at that time that they need to succeed.

But it really is not in their best interest to dissuade people too strongly.

The benefit students today have over students from 10-15 years ago is that so much about the reality of an arts career is discussed online now. It is possible to make a much more informed decision today.

Think back though. Even if you sought out or were given links to articles like the one about dance programs being a pyramid scheme, would the 18 year old you have been dissuaded?

Can Fundraising Be Inspirational To All Involved?

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Last Thursday I attended an art show opening at the shop of a wood furniture maker. The owner of the shop invited some college kids in to festoon his walls with their work which leans heavily toward graffiti.

A couple things struck me while I was there.

First, the owner of the shop sells his furniture starting at about $2500 and going up. Except for a handful of people, few attendees at the opening could likely afford to buy his work because they were mostly college students.

Likewise, the fact the artists worked in a graffiti style, the art work isn’t likely to attract the type of people who will spend $2500+ to his store while the art show is up.

Clearly, the store owner was motivated by a desire to support local artists and not by a desire to grow his customer base.

I was impressed by the work the students had put into the installation. There were a few hundred hours worth of effort invested.

What I valued more was the opportunity this offered the artists to talk about their work with people they had never met. This is an important skill for an artist to acquire and be comfortable with as they work to advance their career.

These guys were really well organized. They had prints, tshirts and stickers for sale. They also had a laptop with a slide show of their work so you could order tshirts.

On the whole, they were doing a really good job of promoting themselves with the help of this business owner.

You may take inspiration from this story or it may give you ideas for a program you can cultivate among businesses in your community.

Much about this story is exactly what occurs when a non-profit organization asks a person or business for support in some fashion.

People give, and even though the organization may offer different levels of recognition, unless the donor/sponsor is giving a major amount or your organization is a focus of social and business activity in the community, there may not really be any direct benefit to their company in the form of goodwill or increased business.

As I thought about it, I realized when it happened to someone else, it was inspiring and exciting. When you have to solicit support for yourself in order to secure fiscal stability, it is business and somewhat burdensome.

When I tell you, look at this case, the gesture this business owner made enabled these artists to hone their communication skills and promote their work, it sounds so exciting and inspirational.

Telling a donor or granting entity that their support will enable fledgling artists to improve their ability to discuss and promote their work, it doesn’t feel as exciting. Maybe because you know this is only a small part of what the money will be used for or perhaps because the solicitation doesn’t have an immediate and direct connection to the result.

I have been wonder since last Thursday if there were any way to instill more of a sense of excitement and inspiration into the solicitation process but I can’t really think of any.

The artists who showcased on Thursday got their opportunity because they met the business owner at a similar opening that occurred in December. The person who is rumored to be doing the next show met the owner in much the same way.

But by and large, no one will know you need support unless you tell them so you need to go through the solicitation process. There is a certain degree of scrutiny and follow up reporting that is involved with any significant transfer of monetary and material support.

As much time, inconvenience and effort the business owner has spent by allowing different artists to showcase in his store, the expense hasn’t been terribly large for him at this point.

The only time the process isn’t going to require bothersome and boring effort that I can see is if you happen upon a comedy movie ending where you inherit an enormous sum from an unknown admirer.

For all my doubts, I still wonder if it might be possible to make fund raising/solicitation an enjoyable experience for everyone involved. I would love it if the experience I had last Thursday was scalable so I am especially curious to learn if anyone out there has managed to design such an experience.

Recent Trends In Non Profit Governance

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Last month Non-Profit Quarterly (NPQ) published a summary of BoardSource’s governance index, Leading With Intent.

The summary is encouraging in that it shows a vast majority of non-profit boards engage in good governance practices. (Although NPQ notes that the results may be slightly skewed given most people on BoardSource’s survey mailing list tend to be people who have contacted them due to interest in good governance.)

The disappointing, though not surprising, finding is that most board and executive leaders are Caucasian and over 40.

“But the lack of inclusion of younger people and people of color on boards and as executive directors seems to point to an unwillingness to join in and make best use of the current societal disruption.

Young people have a different experience base in the political and social uses of networks, which relates to the ability to approach big questions. Additionally, smaller boards can best work for the good of a larger community if those boards have an understanding of how to interact effectively with a larger, more diverse, and unbounded governance system of stakeholders. This cutting edge of governance requires cultural wisdom and the wisdom of younger leadership.”

I was interested to learn that board size has shrunk by 20% between 1994 and 2014 and there is a de-emphasis on people with connections to money. (my emphasis)

The thought that boards must be packed with influential connectors seems to be going the way of the dodo, at least for many organizations. This fits well with the idea that boards should know how to interact effectively with larger systems of governance and support. “Interacting effectively” in these times means that board members are connected enough to the organization and its stakeholder environment to ensure proper communication with stakeholders. Board members should be capable of listening with an educated ear for the tremors and trends in the organization’s environment. A lack of diversity on the board interferes with the capacity to accurately “listen.”

Although NPQ was generally optimistic about it, I had mixed feelings about the news that executive directors have remained in their jobs rather than making a mass exodus as was once feared. My feelings are the same as they were back in 2007/2008 when the concern about mass retirement of executive directors was first expressed.

At that time there weren’t many organizations with succession plans in place or an active efforts to cultivate people to assume those positions and according to the current NPQ article, there still aren’t. While NPQ acknowledges the lack of succession planning is a problem, my focus is more on the cultivation of new leaders.

My fear is that if potential leaders don’t feel like they are being challenged and provided with significant responsibility and decision making opportunities, they may choose to shift their careers elsewhere. The result may be a new generation of leaders with very shallow experience with non-profit work.

I often encourage people to read the full text of a report and that is especially true for this one since NPQ is soliciting articles that make use of the compiled data. If this is a topic which interests you, consider writing about it.

Info You Can Use: Talking To Strangers

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The recent NEA report on why people don’t attend arts and cultural event mentioned not having someone to attend with was a barrier to entry. Daniel Pink recently tweeted a story that gave me an idea for alleviating that issue.

Seats on buses in Brazil are being reserved for “making new friends.” You sit in the seat if you are open to having a conversation with strangers. There are Post-It notes attached to the Reserved Seating signs with conversation starters provided.

Even though the content of this video is in Portuguese, I am pretty sure no translation is necessary-

The application for arts organizations is probably pretty evident. Reserve some really great seats at an attractive price for people who are open to having conversations with strangers.

You would want to sell them individually so friends couldn’t grab them themselves or at least sell them in odd numbers if you think you can trust two people who are acquainted to include the individual sitting next to them in a conversation.

The museum version might be having stickers people can wear or a bench at which people can wait in order to pair/group with like minded strangers and wander the galleries together.

Like the bus program, you can provide conversational prompts that are both generic ice breakers as well as specific to the event people were attending.

But don’t hand the ice breakers out to participants at the box office. Having little signs and Post It prompts attached to the backs of the seats in front of the participants is a good way of promoting the program and it gives other passersby an opportunity to grab some questions for themselves.

If you can provide an after event socialization opportunity in the lobby, local restaurant or bar, so much the better.

And if you can provide discounted tickets for a year to anyone who participated in your “Make New Friends” program, even if they only come back alone, that would be really great!

Having to increase the number of seats available to your “Make New Friends” program because former participants kept returning in order to extend their year of discounts wouldn’t be the worst problem to have.

Having them return with their newly made friends is no problem at all.

Bring Your Own

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I wasn’t aware until recently that airlines have started to strip all the video equipment from their planes and have begun requiring people to bring their own personal devices and headphones in order to enjoy some form of entertainment during a flight.

Passengers on United can tap into the Wifi for a price if they want to go online or into the onboard entertainment system signal for free.

While the onboard system offers a fairly large library of videos, this development requires people to bring a personal viewing device with a full charge and manage the power so they can watch something for the duration of the travel.

As much as this situation depresses me from the perspective of how much enjoyment is disappearing from air travel, it occurs to me that if airlines normalize this practice for the public at large, it may be possible for arts organizations to extend the “bring your own…” trend for its own uses.

The benefit to the airlines is that they don’t have to place television screens on the backs of seats along with all the wiring to serve them. All that is needed is wifi transmitters.

In the same way, arts organizations can provide different “channels” of ancillary material in support of a program within their walls. This might be especially useful for museums which may want to provide visitors with a choice of a video talking about the artist, the subject of the painting, the historical period and artistic period in which a painting falls—or the history of the entire museum for those who suddenly find themselves curious in the middle of a gallery.

Instead of physically displaying text or a video screen which all those standing before a work must share, the museum can offer any of these immediately upon demand and at the speed the visitor requests. Granted, many museums already offer something similar, but there is always opportunity for refinement and scaling things up.

A performing arts organization might offer similar supporting materials during a pre or post show event or on demand as the audience files in prior to the show.

However, there might be a bigger benefit to performing arts venues. As I was thinking about possible opportunities, I recalled something Alan Brown said about how a venue might need five or more rooms to meet the different expectations people how about what their experience would be.

He said he asked them to describe what they would envision as a perfect jazz club. They said it would be a coffee house during the day but a bar at night with a separate room where those who wanted to be full immersed in the music could go. However, there would also be an anteroom where people could talk with friends and still listen to the music and still another anteroom where people could interact with friends more and listen less.

It seems like a tall order to design a building to provide this experience. However the impression I took away from what Brown had to say was that people at every age really desire an experience at an intermediate stage between listening to a recording and fully attending a formal concert. He described this as a place to drop in and hang out and get more information.

That was from a post I wrote seven years ago. Since then, technology has advanced to the point where a venue need not provide five different rooms to cover all expectations.

If people got used to the idea of bringing a personal device with them they could sit in a single additional room with friends and simply chat with the music coming faintly from the performance space. They would have the option of turning part or full attention to the video and audio feed coming from the other room via their personal devices without leaving their friends.

This provides a fair bit of flexibility to a performing arts entity because they can provide a performance in a number of venues without needing to bring video monitors or audio equipment to create a listening experience where the visibility and volume suit everyone equally. They might still have to haul wifi nodes around with them, but it can be easier to set up and there is a fair possibility a venue may already have an in-house system.

The thing I don’t like about this idea is that it validates experiencing a performance through a meditating device over the value of attending live. The way live performance attendance becomes valuable is when the accompanying materials or information stream being provided is only available during the live performance.

For example, a simulcast from backstage where the audience can witness every entrance and exit, set change, interaction. Though there is a danger that knowing you are always “on” might inspire more interesting performances backstage than on stage.

Info You Can Use: Do You Know The Value of A Volunteer’s Time?

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Did you know I am a contributor to ArtsHacker, a website dedicated to offering all sorts of solutions to arts organizations?

Did you know that a volunteer’s time is worth an average of $22.55/hour and may be worth more in your locale?

Did you know you can actually claim each volunteer’s time on grant reports and financial reporting that you submit?

Did you know I wrote all about these things in a post that appeared on ArtsHacker last Wednesday?

Did you know that a meme about volunteering featuring the World’s Most Interesting Man makes your post more interesting?

Well, hey, now you do.

All kidding aside, volunteer hours are very valuable to an arts organization both as a result of the effort they expend on its behalf and for the value you can claim on various financial documents. And with even just a few volunteers working for you, it can add up to quite a lot.

There are accounting rules, of course, that limit what and how much of a volunteer’s time you can claim. But even if you use this information for nothing more than helping your organization recognize the true value of a volunteer’s effort, calculating this number can be worth it.

Do you know the value of your volunteers’ time?

Ah January, When The Conferences Flock To NYC

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Broadway producer Ken Davenport recently noted that the very first BroadwayCon would occur next year.

Davenport envisioned that many participants would follow the practice of the Comic Book Conventions and dress as their favorite Broadway characters.

They’re planning on roundtables, master classes, autograph sessions and a whole lot more. And please tell me that people are going to dress up like their favorite Broadway characters. I’m dying to see a convention center filled with Mormons, Elphabas and a bunch of giant Pumbaas.

[…]

It’s going to be a great opportunity for fans to come together in person (instead of in a chat room – imagine that, actual offline communication) and share their love of all things Broadway.

And it’s going to be a great opportunity for shows to market to those fans, because they’ll be in one specific place.

BroadwayCon is still in the early planning stages so many of the speakers and other activities haven’t been publicized. I was encouraged to see that they anticipate a younger crowd since they require that anyone under the age of 18 must attend with a registered parent or have a notarized permission form.

This all sounds like a lot of fun and will help people connect more closely with the performing arts.

However, I did notice something that was somewhat disappointing. BroadwayCon is happening in January, right around the same time as two other major performing arts conferences.

The International Society of the Performing Arts (ISPA) is meeting January 12-14. Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) is meeting January 15-19. Three days later, in the exact same hotel as the APAP conference, BroadwayCon is meeting -January 22-24. (This being BroadwayCon it should go without saying it is held in NYC)

Being the first year for BroadwayCon I wouldn’t really expect them to plan cooperative efforts with other conferences. It is just that having them scheduled so closely seems like there will be missed opportunities.

That said, I will admit to a bias toward ISPA and APAP. Since the scope of the performing arts is so broad, I don’t think either ISPA or APAP will benefit from the increased presence of Broadway show promoters at their conference. APAP is already attended by a number of agents representing Broadway shows and artists.

My ulterior motives are for the people attending BroadwayCon to be exposed to the variety of artists that perform during the earlier conferences. This may certainly still be a possibility even for the upcoming 2016 BroadwayCon.

The Under the Radar Festival often overlaps with ISPA and APAP dates and work with these conferences to offer discounted tickets to attendees.

While some onsite performances associated with the APAP conference are generally closed to the public, the off site ones often tend to be public performances to which conference attendees are invited and have a mix that leans heavily to the general public.

Similar opportunities could be afforded to attendees of BroadwayCon.

Though I suspect the Broadway producers like Ken Davenport will be offering attendees very enticing opportunities of their own so it might be difficult to motivate someone who has traveled to NYC for BroadwayCon to go to a flamenco performance instead.

Would You Trade Board Oversight For Investor Scrutiny?

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The Clyde Fitch Report takes a close look at a bill being proposed in the U.S. Senate to give Broadway investors the same tax break as those who invest in movies.

The goal of the legislation according to a press release put out by the bill’s sponsor, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer is to provide more incentive for banks and investment funds to invest in Broadway shows and therefore spur job growth.

“..Due to the tremendous risk involved, it is very unlikely that any managed fund or banking institution in the United States will lend resources for live theatrical productions, so the majority of capitalization comes from small or independent investors.”

After some analysis The Clyde Fitch Reports’ asks if there really is a dearth of investors and they wonder if banks should really be investing clients’ money in an endeavor widely acknowledged as likely to lose money.

Do you believe banking and investment institutions should gamble their clients’ money to produce Broadway shows?

Do you believe 233 names, sets of names and/or entities listed over the title of a random list of 10 Broadway shows represents a problem generating a “pool of interested investors in Broadway”?

Do you believe investors in commercial Broadway deserve a tax break?

Are there any other individuals in the American theater for whom tax-code tweaks might be desirable?

When I first read the article, I thought it was a proposal to get investors paid earlier in the process. While it isn’t, I wondered with the weight of large investment institutions present, would the arrangement get altered so that investors recouped sooner and “Hollywood accounting” adopted resulting in the creatives getting little.

I also wondered with more money behind them, would Broadway productions become more adventuresome, or even more oriented toward stage adaptations of proven works and revivals.

On the other hand, since I am always keeping my eyes open for alternative funding models, I also wondered if this might provide more options nationally to arts organizations.

When I first read the following from the Schumer press release, I thought perhaps these investment tax breaks might be applicable to artistic projects created around the country.

“On average, Touring Broadway contributed an economic impact to the local economy that was 3.5 times the gross ticket sales. This income is also vital to sustaining our nation’s theatres, as more than 50% of Performing Arts Center’s ticket sales derive from patrons attending the Touring Broadway series. This revenue permits local venues to offer opera, ballet, unique exhibitions and to fund much needed arts education curricula. Without Touring Broadway, all of these vital programs would suffer.”

Then I realized, no, what the release is saying is that Broadway needs the tax breaks so everyone else can present Broadway tours.

I am a little skeptical about the economics cited here. I don’t know about the venues with week long runs, but while Broadway audiences are among our biggest, they are also the shows that tend to lose the most money for us. We ain’t funding anything else off the proceeds.

Now if they were obliged to lower their rates for non-profits in return for this tax break, that would be beneficial to us. But I don’t see that happening.

All the same, I do wonder if the law being proposed could benefit people in other parts of the country looking to run a performing arts center as a commercial enterprise by allowing them to solicit investors.

Or perhaps it could help turn other cities into development centers by attracting investment for works that weren’t necessarily contemplated to go to Broadway but rather stay put in Portland, Minneapolis, Miami, etc. as a significant attraction for the region.

The productions may not gain the same cachet it would from Broadway, but what it did develop might be enough to create regional or national interest in a tour of say a multi-media dance work that generated a respectable return on the investment.

If the legislation is not written in such a way to include non-Broadway productions, is it worth lobbying to have the scope widened?

As the title of this post suggests, it would change the complexion of the way performing arts entities operated.

Even More Live, Live Performance

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A lot of people are going to be entering a dark room and putting on blindfolds. No, I am not talking about fans of 50 Shades of Grey.

ArtPride NJ tweeted an article today about a Sensory play being offered in Jersey City.

The Shapeshifter,” a sensory play by local writer Meg Merriet, is designed for sight-impaired audiences and uses fragrance, atmosphere, texture and sound to bring the story to life. Sighted audience members, on the other hand, are blindfolded.

[…]

“I realized that the theater world was very much in need of a catch-up when it came to ADA-compliance and accessibility,” said Levie. “The goal of No Peeking is to create a new experience by taking away the privilege of sight and adding other sensory elements to live arts, be it theater performance, poetry readings or live music.”

As I read this article, it occurred to me that this was an arena in which live performance could compete with recorded and digital media. Perhaps organizations offering live performance need to double down and offer more “food for the senses” by asking people to deprive themselves of sight.

Because most people are so dependent on sight, it wouldn’t take much effort to create interesting and tantalizing experiences. All that would be needed was a hint of something and let people’s imaginations fill in the blanks.

Then there would be the overwhelming desire to look at one’s cellphone on top of the already overwhelming desire some people have even when they can see.

Although, even that could play a part in a sensory play if someone created an app that connected the phone to the action (or provided attendees with some other device they could hold) that would synchronize programmed sensation with the action.

A sensory performance need not depend solely on removing people’s sense of sight. Providing earphones that pumped white noise to remove a sense of hearing or provided audio that synched with the action, but not in the way someone might expect is also an option (think Pink Floyd-Wizard of Oz synchronicity in Dark Side of the Rainbow, only intentional.)

Because of allergies, I would imagine choices for smell, taste and touch would be very limited. But as the process was refined, a wider range of options might open up. (Just imagine a theatrical supply companies opening up entire new lines of hypo-allergenic products.)

All this being said, the idea of providing sensory experiences isn’t new. Movie theaters tried smell-o-vision and seats with rumble packs to provide different sensations. The results were not very good. Technology has come some way in solving this, but accurate mass delivery of the same experience is going to be expensive.

But as I said, the advantage live performance has is that living element. There is no need for fancy sound equipment to simulate someone walking from right to left, because they are. The idea of a person being hit and falling is much more present for you when it is live rather than closing your eyes in a movie. The prospect that someone might even be moving closer to you, even if it is only 3 feet, is experienced in ways that even the best surround sound system can’t replicate.

By Faith Alone

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Yesterday I wrote about the need for grace in the face of criticism. It must have struck a chord with some folks because the traffic to that post exploded (I am sure a great deal of credit goes to Thomas Cott, though.)

Today I wanted to touch upon the equally frustrating, but much more gratifying “that was amazing, too bad more people weren’t there,” event.

To be clear, this isn’t the show that your staff and arts insiders from your community thought was excellent for its artistic quality. This is the show at which 100 regular members of the community filtered into your 550 seat theater and absolutely loved it.

You know they loved it because right at intermission as you move to use a urinal a total stranger thanks you for taking the time to visit his group and tell them about the show.

(If you are a guy, understand just how much he must have loved the show that he couldn’t adhere to the unspoken rules about not holding a conversation with a stranger at the urinals.)

You know they loved it because strangers keep coming up to you at restaurants and supermarkets for weeks later to tell you how excited they were.

Not to mention the social media conversations that you may catch.

This is the type of reaction that makes a career in the arts worthwhile. Few other professions get this sort of heartfelt thanks.

Except, you know, you would probably be okay trading a “that was awesome” for “that wasn’t bad” if it meant having 300-400 more people in the audience.

That brings me to the real purpose of this post, which is to ask a question.

There is some received wisdom that once people learn they can trust your organization to provide a quality experience, they will be more willing to take a risk on unknown and unfamiliar shows.

So my question is, is that really true? Can anyone point to a case where their local community grew to trust their judgement and attended unfamiliar events in sustainable numbers based on faith?

I am not talking simply about growing an audience. I increased attendance at dance concerts when I was in Hawaii. But that was more about marketing and making dance programs and schools more aware of performances and talking to them about what we were planning for next year.

While this certainly generated trust in our work, it was more a matter of effectively tapping into an existing interest group than cultivation.

I have also definitely had people who have said they weren’t sure about a performance, but attended because they knew we did quality and interesting work.

The problem is that their numbers were relatively small and while they may have represented the unexpressed sentiment of a larger group, attendance often made it clear there weren’t numbers to be sustainable.

At the base of this is the necessity of taking a critical look at whether pursuing audience trust as a long term goal is realistic or is it a pleasant ideal to which non-profit arts organizations have subscribed.

Research has shown that audiences in general don’t discern between whether an event is being held by a for-profit or non-profit entity when choosing what to attend. With that in mine, are there that many in our communities that really appreciate that you are pursuing excellence when others seemingly are not?

It is likely that audiences aren’t thinking in terms of excellence as much as having an awesome or amazing experience, and that is fine. But we all know that it is relatively easy to provide an experience that will be evaluated in these terms by offering a commercially recognizable name.

So again I come back to the question, after having mastered marketing and awareness building, has anyone managed to grow a following/loyalty/what have you, in your community based on faith in your work? How did you do it? Where did you do it? What is the scale of the program?

I don’t doubt that success is possible in cities and communities where the underlying dynamics encourage curiosity and experimentation. But a lot of those places can have higher costs of living so question about being self-sustaining becomes relevant.

Since there is rarely anything in the arts that is truly self-sustaining, what I mean is a program central to the organization’s operations that has become increasingly less dependent on grant support or infusions from other parts of the program. An after hours program doing edgy programming in the black box theater seating 80 is being subsidized by all the other events that keep the organization in business.

A company that has gone from not paying anyone and depending on everyone to costume themselves to paying a stipend equivalent to $1.12/hr and costuming from Goodwill is an improvement, but probably isn’t a proven model yet.

Grind Your Teeth and Then…?

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Sometimes I think Seth Godin is writing just for me because one of his recent posts about graciously accepting critical feedback came across my Twitter feed shortly after we got a “you don’t advertise enough” comment on a survey.

My suspicion is that since she is a season subscriber and doesn’t need to pay close attention to our advertising, the digital billboard at the center of town and the special emails her husband receives are probably slipping under her notice. Those are just the communication channels I know with certainty they encounter.

Getting this type of feedback can make you grind your teeth in frustration. But for a commenter of the type that Godin previously labeled the Generous Skeptic, providing this type of feedback because you care about the person or business can involve a degree of vulnerability.

When the generous skeptic speaks up, she’s taking a risk. If you respond to her generosity by arguing, by shutting down, by avoiding eye contact or becoming defensive, you’ve blown it. You’ve taken a gift and wasted it, and disrespected the gift giver at the same time.

[…]

“Tell me more about that,” is the useful and productive response, not, “no, you’re wrong, you don’t understand.”

There’s always time to ignore this feedback later. Right now, dive into it, with an eager, open mind. It’s a gift you’re not often offered.

In his previous post about the Generous Skeptic, Godin spoke in the context of individuals interacting. In his most recent post, he illustrates how the interaction might manifest between a business and an individual.

You can react to the feedback by taking it as an attack, deflecting blame, pointing fingers to policy or the CEO. Then you’ve just told me that you don’t care enough to receive the feedback in a useful way.

Or you can pass me off to a powerless middleman, a frustrated person who mouths the words but makes it clear that the feedback will never get used. Another way to show that you don’t care as much as I do. And if you don’t care, why should I?

One other option: you can care even more than I do. You can not only be open to the constructive feedback, but you can savor it, chew it over, amplify it. You can delight in the fact that someone cares enough to speak up, and dance with their insight and contribution.

Your first reaction to getting criticism may always be to grind your teeth. As bad that might be for your dental bills, you have a choice about what you do next, either as an individual or a company.

Donor Cultivation In The Digital Age

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Last year the Wyncote Foundation released a report about how cultural institutions were using digital technology, Link, Like Share: How Cultural Institutions Are Embracing Digital Technology. The report goes into some best practices for putting digital resources and personnel at the center of your organization’s focus. This includes having the digital department drive some of the decision making.

I was pretty interested to read their section on focusing on capabilities, not projects. They noted cultural organizations need to be looking at long term capabilities and only focus on “fast-fail” experimental projects to help them achieve the long term goal of developing capabilities. This section spoke of the need for grant making to shift to supporting capabilities rather than short term projects.

What really caught my eye was their discussion of the implications that a digital orientation had on development efforts.

“Meanwhile, the legacy cultural sector in the U.S. still relies on what one of our study organizations called “the tyranny of the purchase funnel.” By that he means that the dominant logic of the sector is based on the user’s progression from awareness to sampling, then on to occasional and eventual loyal user, committed contributor and finally to the legacy bequest. This patron development pipeline is in the mind of nearly everyone at a legacy institution because it has been a proven route to revenue.

But digital is the new frontier, the Wild West. Legacy enterprises area vulnerable to new entrants who are digitally nimble, lean and responsive. It’s an unruly and unpredictable environment where major players, new and old lose major money. So why invest? And why not invest cautiously? Why risk effort that could be put toward the known and use it for the unknown?

My feeling is that while we have been talking about how arts and cultural organizations need to be innovative and nimble in the way they interact and communicate with their communities, how fund raising may need to change hasn’t been part of that conversation.

Think about how much you may have been focusing on the former while operating under the assumption that development would still be a gradual process.

The need to revise the approach to the development process has been implicit in the conversation, but never explicitly stated beyond providing ways for people to donate online and possibly needing to use services like Kickstarter as a fund raising source.

There is a lot of earned revenue oriented discussion about what changes people expect from their attendance experience, but not as much about how there may be an evolution in the method of cultivating and persuading toward greater investment in the organization.

The long arc of relationship building may no longer be viable. As cynical as it may sound, getting someone to donate as much as you can in the moment via their phone may emerge as the most successful strategy.

On the optimistic side, we are told the millennial generation wants to be involved with something they feel makes a difference so the challenge may be in finding ways to involve and engage them even more than your organization has in the past.

The issue that may emerge might be that the definition of what is meaningful may be strongly influenced by a person’s social network and shift accordingly.

For example- How many people are doing the ice bucket challenge or making donations now? How many people have become involved with supporting ALS related organizations?

I actually don’t know the answers to either of these questions. But if support has fallen off, is it due to the failure of ALS organizations to engage people or because the cause has slipped out of vogue?

The vast majority of arts and cultural organizations will likely experience fewer extremes in community involvement during the evolving digital age. But at this point, it may be difficult to know whether the fluctuations in personal investment are something wholly in your control or if it will be subject to the vagaries of popular taste.

You Bet Your Art!

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In recent years, after every Super Bowl, the city whose team lost not only loses a great deal of pride, but an art object of great value. When you think about it, some of the most expensive bets on the Super Bowl are made by directors of art museums. They both wager a work of art and the museum that loses the bet lends the work to the museum that won.

This year it was the Seattle Art Museum and New England’s Clark Art Institute. Last year it was the Seattle Art Museum and the Denver Art Museum. In 2011 it was The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

I am not sure when this practice started, but I have been hearing about these wagers for a number of years. My first recollection was the 2010 bet between Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

It occurs to me (and I am embarrassed to admit it has taken so long) that such bets are a good way to raise the profile of arts organizations in a community and shouldn’t just be limited to the Super Bowl.

What better way for an arts organization to show they have the same investment and pride as everyone else in a local team, be it high school, college, Triple AAA baseball team, or big league team, than to enter into a bet with colleagues at an arts organization in the opposing community?

If much ado is made in both communities when the performers or art work leaves/arrives in order to pay off the bet, both organizations can benefit from the increased attention. There might be a fund raising opportunity available to enable an organization to support the trip to the other location.

Because you know, those guys are gonna make you suffer and gloat about their team’s victory all through the performance, so we need your support!

Of course, the reality is, if the visitors are received with grace at a big picnic/dinner with lots of pictures taken to post online, bonds can be formed between organizations and communities that are potentially constructive in the future.

It Is About Time, All The Time

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You have probably been hearing or reading a lot about the recent National Endowment for the Arts survey results, particularly about why people they don’t participate in arts activities.

I was recently looking at some old articles I had bookmarked and the statistics from a study on creativity caught my eye. Curiosity sent me scurrying back to the NEA report to see if my suspicions were true.

In 2012, StrategyOne surveyed 1000 people each in the U.S. UK, Germany, France and Japan about their relationship with creativity. It is graphic heavy and very interesting to read.

A couple years ago, Jeffrey Davis summarized the StrategyOne results for the U.S. on Creativity Post.

When Americans were asked what their biggest challenge to being able to create were:

For the Americans surveyed, self-doubt (27%), other personal obligations (29%), other work obligations (22%), and one’s age (13%) ranked fairly low.

That leaves two self-perceived blocks: Time and Money.

54% of surveyed Americans claimed they didn’t have the financial resources to let them create. 52% perceived that lack of time kept them from being able to create.

But when you unpack this question, its potential answers, and the actual responses, much if not all of it comes back to time.

Our perception of time is tied to how we view our obligations. If we think we don’t have enough money to create, this means in part that we think we don’t have enough money to be freed up from other obligations to afford us the solitude and “off-time” necessary to be “on” creatively.

If you look at the NEA study results about barriers to attendance 47% said time, 38% said cost, 37% said access.

I suspect there is a stronger relationship between time and money being the top answers in both surveys than I can imagine. One of my initial thoughts was that creativity is seen as a frivolous pursuit.

With so many other activities that are perceived to be more important, creativity gets lowest priority and so of course there is no time left to pursue it as an attendee, participant or self-directed creator.

As much as I would like to damn society for giving people this message and encourage everyone to free their minds like me, if I am honest I have to confess to feeling the same pressure.

This past Christmas when things were quiet, I felt guilty about catching up on professional reading when I should be doing something constructive like writing press releases. What I was reading were materials provided by our state arts council and still I felt like I was avoiding my real responsibilities.

That is a pretty insidious mindset, eh?

Fortunately, I was able to make up for it and flex my artistic tendencies by blasting music and singing at the top of my lungs since there was no one else on my floor.

Something to think about though. The challenge may not be as simple as getting people to make time to see shows, it may be about getting them to make time for the more fundamental task of being creative.

I suspect if you succeed at the second battle, you will have already made great headway on the first. But that second one is a real doozy to try to accomplish.

Pick-up Trucks Singing Karaoke

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Howard Sherman tweeted an article today by Jake Orr about theatre being intellectually inaccessible. I mention this only as a reference point for a comment on the article. I will probably circle back to write about this issue on another date.

What I wanted to address today is the conflict arts organizations often feel between appearing accessible to all potential audiences while simultaneous attempting to project an image that justifies high priced tickets and retains long time donors and subscribers.

One of the commenters on Orr’s post, Mark Shenton related his thoughts about London’s Royal Opera House possessing an ambiance that is intimidating even to veteran arts attendees.

…So often we all feel ‘excluded’ from the club, whether it be a theatre, or a sports event (I’m sure I’d feel the same as your partner if I was taken to a football match….) But the trouble is when the VENUE welcomes the exclusivity and sense of its own (self) importance.

I once had a conversation with the head of PR at the Royal Opera House, and said to him that, as a (relatively!) sophisticated theatregoer (well, it is my job and I do around 5-6 times a week!), I feel intimidated still by going to the ROH. His answer? “I can’t deal with your psychological problems!”

So, it was MY fault that the Opera House feels intimidating! A couple of years ago, I was at the ROH — for the Olivier Awards, as it happens — and seated next to the Reece Shearsmith. And he looked around and marvelled at how beautiful it was, and said to me, “I’ve never been here before!” Now Reece, too, is a sophisticated theatregoer — and a cultural figure in his own right — and for him to have never been here struck me as very revealing.

I reckon that the venue is a club, and a lot of us feel VERY disconnected from it.

This isn’t a new idea. There have been a number of studies and surveys that have emphasized the importance of physical environment to an attendance experience. Ten years ago, I wrote about an Urban Institute study that found not liking the venue along with not having an enjoyable social experience as the factors that would keep people from attending again.

But as I mentioned, there is also a need to create an environment that speaks to the quality of the performance product to long time donors and subscribers that value this type of experience.

Now before anyone starts sputtering about how this perpetuates an exclusionary ideal that alienates people, I would like to suggest that it is actually a matter of almost elementary consumer psychology.

To wit I give you the karaoke singing pick up truck.

Engines in trucks and high performance vehicles are so efficient now that their natural noise profile is much quieter than in the past. In response, car and truck manufacturers are using sound enhancing tail pipes or digital sound effects to replicate a throaty engine noise.

Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry’s dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks. Without them, today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away.

Softer-sounding engines are actually a positive symbol of just how far engines and gas economy have progressed. But automakers say they resort to artifice because they understand a key car-buyer paradox: Drivers want all the force and fuel savings of a newer, better engine — but the classic sound of an old gas-guzzler.

I think it is easy to brand arts lovers as being snobby and elitist for wanting to maintain a traditional experience. If we are honest in the context of this article, the reality is that they are manifesting the same attitude toward the arts attendance experience as people who value the traditional images experience of driving F-150s and Mustangs. Neither is really that distant from the other in the continuum of basic human psychology.

For arts and cultural organizations, I think the last sentence in the quote above provides a key concept: People want advanced features, but the illusion of a traditional experience. I started this blog on the premise that technology was creating evolving expectations of their experience, but that there were still traditional elements that they still valued.

Learning what that ever-shifting balance is, is the challenge arts organizations face. What is important to remember is that not all elements of traditional experience need to be discarded in the name of expanding accessibility.

The article on sound enhancements for vehicles has sums up that conflicting issues arts organizations face pretty well.

“Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, says automakers should stop the lies and get real with drivers.

“If you’re going to do that stuff, do that stuff. Own it. Tell customers: If you want a V-8 rumble, you’ve gotta buy a V-8 that costs more, gets worse gas mileage and hurts the Earth,” Brauer said. “You’re fabricating the car’s sexiness. You’re fabricating performance elements of the car that don’t actually exist. That just feels deceptive to me.”

Since the arts often involve the creation of illusion, I am not sure they need to worry about coming clean with audiences about fabricating the sexiness of an experience. But both organizations and customers that value traditional experiences need to be aware there is a trade off in trying to maintain them exactly.

It is possible to provide a high quality experience. Technology enables some of this at increasingly lower costs every day. But there comes a time where one has to settle for an acceptable illusion or pay the higher price for the real thing.

Info You Can Use: Figuring Out True Program Cost

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After reading my post yesterday about how the federal government is requiring that non-profits receive at least 10% of grant/contract funding to cover indirect costs, you may be wondering how to accurately determine direct and indirect costs for your programs.

Getting an accurate picture of program costs is not only important for making sure you get proper allocations from government funded programs, but also for working toward a larger goal of providing boards of directors, funders and the general public with an accurate picture of the true costs of programs.

Providing an accurate picture is key in the campaign to diminish the use of overhead ratio as a measure of non-profit effectiveness.

In a piece on Social Velocity, Nell Edgington, emphasizes the need to present an accurate picture of costs and “break out of the nonprofit starvation cycle”

She also notes that it can help decide what programs really needs to be cut.

But don’t stop there. Turn this new knowledge about the financial impact of each of your programs into a strategic tool. Once you figure out what each individual program fully costs, you can compare the financial and social impact (how well it contributes to your mission) of each program to each other, like this in order to understand how well your entire program portfolio contributes to the money and mission of your nonprofit. Through this analysis you can determine what programs you should expand, which you should continue, and which you may need to cut.

She provides links to a rather detailed guide to determining the true costs of programs published by Bridgespan.

It isn’t an easy process. The estimated timeline in the guide is at least a month. Smaller organizations with fewer programs will take less time.

The guide discusses each stage of the process in detail, suggesting what staff roles need to be involved. It also provides some clear definitions and examples for what needs to be considered.

For instance, indirect costs:

Indirect costs can include general administration and management expenses (e.g. management staff salaries and benefits), infrastructure costs (e.g. rent and utilities, transportation, equipment depreciation, technical licenses), and other costs that are incurred for the benefit of all the programs within the organization (e.g. marketing costs, advocacy expenses).

It addresses questions about determining whether some salaries like those of the executive director and human resource personnel should be allocated across different programs or not.

(Just a note – The guide is about six years old and some of the internal links to templates and examples no longer work, but don’t be discouraged, most of them may be found in the appendix.)

Since there seems to be a slowly developing trend toward removing the stigma of overhead costs (that may evolve into a demand for a high level of transparency), nonprofits may want to start to invest in practices that will allow them to evaluate the true costs of their activities.

Info You Can Use: Know Your Funding Rights

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An event of note to be aware of is that last month the federal Office of Management and Budget said “that when governments hire nonprofits to provide services, those nonprofits legitimately need to incur and be paid for their “indirect costs”—which is government-speak for overhead and administrative expenses.”

According to Chronicle of Philanthropy, non-profits should receive at least 10%, if not more, “of the direct costs of their grant or contract to pay indirect costs.”

Given that non-profits are frequently anxious about revealing their true overhead costs for fear of having it count against them with donors and foundations, this mandate is seen as a victory because it starts to institutionalize the practice of covering those costs.

However, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy story, the enforcement of these rules may depend on the self-advocacy of non-profits.

While the new rules are now the law of the land, the indirect-cost regulations must be interpreted and applied consistently by tens of thousands of individuals in fragmented departments, agencies, and offices at “pass through” entities (usually state and local governments and large nonprofits) that use federal funds to hire nonprofits to provide services in their communities.

The regulations are already in effect, but the multiple levels and layers of government have not learned about or communicated the existence of the new rules, let alone provided consistent training programs, to employees scattered across these pass-through entities.

Making matters worse, there has been no transition time for the thousands of jurisdictions to purge and modernize their outdated statutes and regulations to enable them to comply with the new federal requirements.
[…]

Unless we all take concerted action, it’s quite possible that we will slide back to what had been the status quo: inconsistencies in our nation’s archaic, patchwork government-nonprofit grants and contract “system” that have left nonprofits at the mercy of often contradictory policies and practices of disconnected federal, state, and local government departments, agencies, offices, and employees. Arbitrary, unjustifiable caps on indirect costs could remain routine.

The author of the piece, Tim Delaney, chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits, encourages foundations to lend a hand with this advocacy. He points out that often grant makers end up filling the indirect cost gap that government entities may refuse to cover. Correct practices could mean a savings for grant makers who would no longer need to provide this assistance.

As an arts organization, you may be thinking that you don’t have any government contracts so this doesn’t apply to you. However, notice that these rules apply to pass through agencies which, depending on the program, may include arts councils and other organizations receiving funding from places like the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Council of Non-Profits has put together a guide to help people know their rights and advocate for them. It presents different scenarios where you may be told these new rules don’t apply and how to respond to them.

Two points brought up in the guide that lead me to think these rules apply to state and regional arts councils: One- it doesn’t matter whether it is called a contract or grant or any other term, the rules are based on the substance of the transaction.

Two – Sub-recipient non-profits who are required to acknowledge part of the funding is received from the federal government are covered under these rules.

If you have been required to acknowledge part of the funding is received from the NEA, these new rules are applicable to that program unless specifically excluded by by legislation.

If You Got The Data, She Wants To Study It

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Reader Heather Grob responded to my recent post asking about more information regarding propensity score matching to learn more about arts audiences.

Heather, an associate professor in the St. Martin’s University School of Business writes,

Hi Joe,

Yes, I have used propensity score matching in a different venue than the arts. It was in a study looking at workers’ compensation pension outcomes. When you have a subject where there are selection biases (for example, that the more educated are more likely to participate in the arts) then propensity scoring can help to control for the outcome to more precisely estimate the effect on outcomes.

I think you explained it pretty well to a lay audience. I imagine it would be useful to use when you have a lot of data on attendees and non-attendees (or season ticket holders and not is more likely).

If anyone has data they want to “play” with, let me know. I’m interested in doing more studies on socioeconomic phenomena in the arts. –Heather

I wasn’t sure anyone would respond to the post with more information much less be interested in getting their hands on data to study. If someone is interested in learning a bit more about their audience and potentially their community, if the data is available, you may want to follow up with Heather.

The Good, The Bad of The Ugly Glasses

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Even though most news outlets have only been carrying the announcement that Google was stopping sales of Google Glass in the last few days, for some reason I have known about it for a month or two now.

When I did originally hear about the decision to review and revamp the glasses in light of problems and negative perceptions, I had a moment of schadenfreude because I bristle at the intrusiveness of Google Glass on privacy. I was pleased by the news that I wouldn’t have to contend with people either engaging with me in ways I didn’t approve of or using the technology to further disengage from their surroundings.

This being said, I will concede that wearable technology is inevitable and something the non-profit performing arts community needs to develop policies and procedures for.

There are definite benefits of this type of technology for arts organizations. Arts and Management Technology Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University put out a paper this past summer about the positive and negative implications of wearable technology in a performing arts environment.

Some applications mentioned in the paper, “Performing Arts in the Wearable Age,” are fairly obvious because they take what is already happening with handheld devices and tablet computers and move them to platforms like Google Glass. Among these are: allowing musicians to get rid of music stands and have score scroll past their eyes; providing background information about the show and performer being looked at to audience members and replacing supertitles with your choice of language translation before your eyes.

The authors also talk about providing point of view experiences to audience members, something I imagined in one of my first blog posts. Imagine being able to see what the actor sees both on stage and backstage. Even more, imagine being able to “perform” opposite your favorite actor and be kissed, slapped, slain, etc by them.

What I hadn’t envisioned was its use as an evaluation tool, allowing students to see themselves perform through the eyes of their instructors or see what their instructors see when they themselves perform.

What never occurred to me was how useful this sort of technology might be for interactions at front of house. The authors mention better fidelity of communication between different staff members versus walkie talkies. They also note that individuals would be able to provide service to customers without directing them to a house manager or the box office because information would be fed directly to their devices.

“Virgin Atlantic has been testing Glass in certain airport terminals since February 2014. Once the customer identifies themselves, gate agents and staf members can aces flight information, seat details, and personal preferences. The result is streamlined, personalized service: the customer receives individualized information suited to her particular journey and needs, with the airline employee processing check-in more quickly and efficiently.”

As soon as I read that, I envisioned a situation where a volunteer usher could do a much more effective job if a glance at a ticket immediately scanned the people as attending and coached the volunteer with directions either visually or with an in ear audio cue. (i.e. Ah, you are through the even side door on the right, go through the door marked row L-O, your seats are about 2/3 of the way toward the center.”

Not only that, I imagined late seating could be facilitated if the customer was wearing something like Google Glass. All they would need to do is glance at their tickets before they entered the theater and the glasses would cause their seats and the one at the end of the correct row to “glow” when they looked at them. Ushers wouldn’t need to try to point them out in the dark with a flash light and it would be apparent someone else was sitting in the seats before the late comers started edging down the row.

Now you may be thinking that your ushers are a bit older and might be uncomfortable with handheld scanners without trying to access information through worn technology. My thought is that each unit would be programmed for a certain task so that the ticket ripper would only check people in and get directional cues while someone else’s accessory would perform more tasks. That way you assign people with different comfort levels to specific roles or specific devices.

While this is all exciting, issues of intellectual property and privacy would need to be resolved and the authors of “Performing Arts in the Wearable Age,” acknowledge many of them. The tricky thing, of course, is that nearly every piece of technology ends up getting used in a manner the creators never envisioned so trying to anticipate all the implications for the performing arts are nearly impossible.

If a performer is transmitting what they see as they walk backstage, then obviously greater operating discipline needs to be instilled backstage (language and state of undress being only some of the issues.) But what happens when someone hacks into a piece of wearable technology that everyone thinks is off and the result appears on tabloid websites?

If They Don’t Know J.F.K. & M.L.K, Why Would They Know Y.O.U.?

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You want quick proof that the performance you are doing probably has no relevance to those in their 20s and 30s? Hand them a famous historical speech and have them analyze it.

Last semester I was teaching a public speaking class and had to do a little work explaining why certain references were important. Students missed the significance of

“I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope, and the determination of the city of West Berlin.”

supporting the theme of freedom in JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. Living in a time after the wall fell, they were unaware of the geography that isolated West Berlin within East Germany, much less the politics and history that necessitated the Berlin Airlift.

Similarly, there was a lack of awareness about the foreboding element in the final lines of Martin Luther King’s “I Have Been To the Mountaintop,” where he speaks about not being afraid of the threats against him the night before he is killed. (The date of the speech aside, there was a slight lack of awareness he was slain.)

So what chance does your performance have if people aren’t aware of the relevant underpinning in the speeches of a guy who has his own national holiday?

You can bemoan the lack of knowledge and blame the state of the education system today. But the fact remains, this is the audience base that needs to be communicated with and related to.

The fact also is that you don’t need to know about these things to be aware that you are reading/watching a powerful and significant moment unfold. In the same way, you don’t need to be aware of all the original references and political undercurrents which infuse Shakespearean plays to enjoy them.

The question of relevance for the audience member has never really been so much about “Am I watching something significant?” as “Why should I make the decision to direct my attention to this?” Most of those students never really considered these speeches because there was no reason to do so. (Admittedly, I also learned a fair bit more for having taught the speeches.)

Barry Hessenius points this out in his recent review of the latest reports from the National Endowment for the Arts:

“It wasn’t that people were looking for ‘transformative’ experiences and couldn’t find any; it wasn’t because there was any perceived dearth of ‘excellence’, it wasn’t because there wasn’t any opportunity or choice — it was instead mundane issues.”

These mundane issues are lack of time, inconvenience, price and no one to go with.

Welcome and Thanks

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Welcome to everyone who has started to follow this blog in the last few months.

Whether you started based on Barry Hessenius’ recent listing of this blog as one of the 15 that have bubbled to the top of his reading list, his list of Top 50 Influential people in Non-profit arts, some other source or just by serendipity, I am glad to have you here.

If you haven’t checked out Barry’s list this week, you may want to do so. It is an interesting collection of sites. I believe, not including my own, I read 12 of those blogs on a weekly basis.

I am pleased to have been included on these list. As of February, I will have been writing this blog for 11 years. While I think I have made some great posts over the past decade, part of me has felt like I have really only hit a good stride in terms of quality in the last 3-4 years.

Of course, it is all really relative. In 4 more years if I have continued to refine my skills, I will probably feel these last few years haven’t measured up to what I may be producing then.

As I sit here a few days after appearing on a “my favorites” list, it is probably ironic that in the pursuit of providing a better user experience to my readers, I have deleted my blog roll.

It may reappear again at some time. But I have let it languish for years, constantly swearing that I would delete or revise it “next weekend.” Many of the sites have long since disappeared or changed their addresses so the list was continuing to decrease in value to readers.

In the future I am going to try to do a better job of providing a good reading experience and useful resources for my readers.

On that subject, thanks to the recent efforts of Drew McManus, as you can see from the mockup below, people using tablets and phones to read the blog should have a much easier time reading and navigating this site. (So if you aren’t reading on those devices, you can start now!)

Butts In The Seats Mobile

In terms of providing useful resources, I should take this opportunity to point everyone to the newly launched ArtsHacker website where I am a contributor.

As that site expands its content, you will find an increasing number of tips useful for all the hats you wear at your job. But don’t wait for us to suggest a solution for your pressing concerns–use the contact form on the right of the ArtsHacker site to ask a question.

Of course, if you have a question for me, ask it in the comments section or use the contact tab at the top of this page (or near the side on your tablet!)

Thanks again to everyone for your support.

Is It Still Possible To Slow Down And Pay Attention?

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A couple years ago, Seth Godin notes what is has probably become abundantly clear to us all– people are looking for abridged versions of pretty much every activity so they can “acquire” an experience without having to spend the time having the experience.

There is a self-perpetuating cycle set up by the media and internet which has generated the demand by creating expectations which in turn forces them to ratchet things up a bit to fulfill the expectations they helped to create.

“A performance artist was on the local public radio station the other day. He didn’t want to talk about the specifics of his show, because giving away the tactics was clearly going to lessen the impact of his work. No matter. The host revealed one surprise after another, outlining the entire show, because, after all, that’s his job–to tell us what we’re going to see so we don’t have to see it ourselves.”

Godin had an interesting observation though about the exception to this.

My full-day live seminars have impact on people partly because I don’t announce the specific agenda or the talking points in advance. It’s live and it’s alive. I have no certainty what’s about to happen, and neither do the others in the room. A morphing, changing commitment by all involved, one that grows over time.

To some degree I think all seminars, not just his, result in people feeling like it has an impact on their lives because the format itself forces people to slow down to the speed of the proceedings. (Though they may be living at a slightly different speed via their tablet computers and phones throughout the seminar.)

Godin makes a similar claim about audiobooks changing people’s lives because they can’t skip ahead and still get the full story.

This dynamic may be why the Serial podcast became such a hit. People had to navigate the story at the speed it was being delivered and no one had any idea what the ending would be.

The performing arts have long touted the uncertainty of live performance as a selling point. You never know if someone is going to flub a line or the first chair violinist will kill off the second chair by bowing too vigorously. (Don’t pretend you haven’t imagined it.)

But it seems that this level of uncertainty just isn’t enough to interest people any more. The arts may need to kick it up a notch.

Ah, but what is the answer? Certainly the endings of many performance pieces are well known or can be discovered. Even if a performance company devoted themselves to offering entirely new works all the time, it wouldn’t be long before the show is summarized and reported.

In some communities it could be more detrimental to have a new work panned on social media by a couple people than to present a well known old warhorse.

More free formatted, choose your own adventure type shows like Sleep No More offer an alternative. Except there has been a problem when people discover the outcomes designed into those shows and try to impose themselves upon the different pathways.

On a smaller scale and performed over a limited time, I imagine that this model could still prove successful for many performance companies.

I obviously don’t know the answer, but I am intrigued by the basic idea Godin presents about how an experience that forces people to travel at the pace it unfolds and evolves can have a significant impact on the participants.

This describes the experience the performing arts have always aspired to and at one time, often achieved– people walking out of a performance feeling moved by the experience. People obviously have that reaction these days too, but at one time it was happening in greater numbers and in response to content rather than spectacle.

Many aspects of those days are certainly behind us and we shouldn’t seek to restore them because they were a product of a different social and cultural environment.

The Serial team may not be able to replicate the success of their first effort, but the fact that so many people became invested in the podcast suggests it is possible that people will slow down and pay attention if you create the right product.

Strive To Advertise With The Highest Quality Generics

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About a year ago, this video was making the round essentially pointing out how we are often being unconsciously manipulated by imagery in television and video ads.

[vimeo 89527215 w=500 h=281]

I have been kept it bookmarked intending to use it in a post at some point. It is fun to watch because you realize how often you have probably fallen prey to the feelings the imagery is trying to evoke. In the context of the video, the images are basically tropes.

I had a vague sense that I would probably use the video to make fun of common generic arts marketing phrases like “takes you on a musical journey” and “exploration of the human spirit.”

It has been awhile since I last watched it so I saw it in an entirely different context when I rewatched it this weekend.

Back in October, Trevor O’Donnell made a post on his blog about a video advertising an Android phone. He perceptively pointed out that the content of the Android ad focused almost wholly on the consumer and their enjoyment rather than on the product itself. He encouraged his reader to do the following:

Watch it and pay close attention to these things:

The ratio of content featuring customers vs. content featuring the product
The fresh, down-to-earth, colloquial, customer-centric language
The emotional impact of customers engaging with the product
The emphasis on YOU (meaning the customer)
The diversity of the customers shown enjoying the product
The fresh, professional, contemporary production values

Then he suggested people apply the same criteria to their last season brochure and see how it fared.

As I was watching the “This Is A Generic Brand” video again this weekend, I realized the reason these general images were so successful at influencing people no matter how many times they appeared in ads was because so many of them focus on the consumer and subjects with which they identify, value or aspire (even if it has no basis in the reality of their lives).

Watch the video again with Trevor O’Donnell’s criteria in hand and see how many of them it hits. It shouldn’t be difficult since in some cases, the voice over almost states each outright.

So while the video has a cynical tone, it also provides an illustration that a good deal of arts marketing is behind the curve when it comes to appealing to audiences in the manner in which they respond.

Yes, I hate to admit it, but it appears even in the use of generic advertising techniques, arts organizations aren’t using the highest quality product.

Low Cost and Low Expectations

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I once had a situation where I got a call from an artist agent who wanted to change the date of our performance. The alternative date he suggested was really inconvenient based both on which days of the week are best for audiences and where it fell in our calendar.

When I talked about these issues, the agent suggested that given the really great price we had been given for our original date, we didn’t have a lot of basis for complaining. And this is true, we had been given a really great price since the artist was looking for a fill date between shows (which subsequently shifted, of course).

This came to mind when I was reading a New Yorker article last month that suggested airlines are essentially employing “calculated misery” to get people to pay to be more comfortable.

But the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering begins.

Later the article reports that an unnamed airline is considering an “economy minus” class of even narrower seating than they currently provide.

I don’t mean to suggest that the agent changing the date was an intentional diminishment value because we had received a good price. I don’t doubt the price made it easier for them to ask for the change, but ultimately I think they were trying to find balanced solution that served all parties well.

The point I wanted to illustrate is that we will often compromise our standards when we feel we are paying below the going rate.

There are frequently conversations about how cutting budgets will adversely impact the end product. Orchestras cutting musicians will cause quality to suffer. Trying to do more with less will mean staff will be over worked and may burn out or quit.

What isn’t talked about as much is how we may not feel we can demand better because we know a person isn’t getting paid enough. How often do you decide a press release or design is “good enough” because an intern or dirt cheap freelancer created it? Is your customer service not up to the standard you would like because you don’t feel like you can demand more from front of house staff for the same reason?

Most often arts organizations experience this reticence with volunteers, including board members. You don’t feel like you can ask people to work harder or commit to making difficult decisions because they are providing assistance for free.

In my experience, the conversations about volunteers not meeting standards occurs more openly. Staff will talk about how they might nudge a cranky usher into being a little more civil or trying to motivate an unengaged board member. Maybe the required action doesn’t necessarily follow, but at least the consequences to the organization are publicly acknowledged.

When it comes to paid staff, while everyone will grouse and joke about not doing it for the money, the conversation about compromising expectations doesn’t happen as much. The decision not to ask for a revision can tend to be individually internalized rather than openly acknowledged among peers.

Think about it a little. How often have you said to another person in your organization, this isn’t quite what I wanted, but I didn’t feel like I could ask for better since we give him/her so many responsibilities and can’t provide professional development opportunities. How often have you just kept that thought to yourself?

This is an under recognized consequence of trying to do more with less. We know that this will result in what staff we have being asked to shoulder more work and the quality will suffer. But there isn’t really a recognition that we may gradually accept the slippage in quality in a way that institutionalizes it as the standard.

Perhaps this is another reason to be resolved to do less with less when funding drops rather than killing yourselves to maintain your level of service. Probably 95% of arts organization have something akin to “to provide the highest quality…” in a mission statement or similar document.

When budgets get tight and cuts need to be made, the decision to be less ambitious and cut quality in order to maintain the same number of services is often chosen instead of maintaining ambition and quality and providing fewer services. There are many good arguments for this, including maintaining visibility in the community and fully utilizing a facility.

All that is publicly acknowledged. However, because everyone is working harder and has less time to for introspection, there is rarely an open conversation about whether the organization has started to tacitly expect less of itself in 1000 unacknowledged ways and ask its community to do the same.

Arts organizations are not airlines. The demand for service is not the same. Airlines can (unfortunately) get away with institutionalizing increasingly low expectations for low prices.

What Do You Know About Propensity Score Matching?

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While it was relatively quiet in the office over the holidays, I made an attempt to catch up on reading reports that I had downloaded and bookmarked over the last few months.

In the process, I came across Measuring Cultural Engagement: A Quest for New Terms, Tools, and Techniques which is a summary of a symposium of “Cultural researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from the U.S., the UK, and other countries” held in June 2014.

Instead of telling you about what I read and evaluating it, I actually wanted to ask- Does anyone know anything about Propensity Score Matching?

Well, obviously I guess I probably should do a little explanation for people.

It is a statistical method that has been around for about 30 years, but this is the first I have heard of it. It’s application to the arts is discussed on page 18 and sounds pretty interesting, but I am not quite sure if it is something an individual arts organization could engage in themselves.

According to Measuring Cultural Engagement (MCE):

“The Norman Lear Center adapted PSM to evaluate the impact of media and arts programming. The idea is to isolate a piece of media or arts programming to assess whether audience members who were exposed to it were more likely to demonstrate a shift in knowledge, attitude, or behavior compared to very similar people who did not encounter the programming”

The reason this technique can be valuable to the arts is because it is often difficult and expensive to identify a representative sample group of people who have participated in a niche event. Yet arts groups often need to gather data from people in support of grants and it is often difficult to get the data you really need: (my emphasis)

“One key problem in measuring cultural engagement is confusing outputs with outcomes. It is easier to tell funders how many seats or tickets were sold or the number of “likes” on Facebook than whether a particular arts or cultural event had a substantial impact on an individual or a community. Since many cultural agencies and organizations, including the NEA, talk about the benefit or value of arts and culture to individuals and communities, it is essential that the research community develop pragmatic tools to help these groups demonstrate that their mission is being accomplished. Using PSM in this way, arts organizations can focus on outcomes instead of outputs, measuring the impact of their work on individuals and communities.”

The example used in MCE is evaluating whether people who saw the movie Food, Inc had a experienced a change in knowledge and attitude. The Normal Lear Center used surveys distributed through social media groups and email lists affiliated with the film and production company. They received about 20,000 responses.

MCE acknowledges that one of the weakness of Propensity Score Matching is that it requires a pretty large sample size, but that the Lear Center has been able to get good results from as few as 1,000 surveys. This is one of the reasons I was wondering if it is at all viable for an individual arts organization.

Being able to get results focused on outcomes rather than outputs sounds great–if it is something that can reasonably be done. Has anyone out there had any experience with Propensity Score Matching?

Something MCE mentioned that intrigued me but wasn’t expounded upon enough was (my emphasis):

“Seventeen statistically significant variables were identified that predicted the likelihood of seeing a film like Food, Inc. Of these, only three were demographic. This surprised the film’s marketing team as demographics usually form the basis of film marketing. The three variables focused on whether a survey participant was employed in certain industries or had children. Individuals were more likely to see the film if they did not have children. This was contrary to what the marketers expected.”

I really wanted to know what the nature of the other 14 significant variables were if they weren’t demographic. Arts marketing focuses pretty heavily on demographics as well so it would be really interesting to know what types of factors made up the majority of the significant variables if they weren’t demographic.

You Can Build A Toilet, But You Can’t Make Me Use It!

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There may be no greater evidence that increasing arts in schools won’t create more arts patrons/lovers than the fact people in India won’t use toilets.

Yes, while that statement may be a cheap ploy at getting you to read the rest of this post, there is some truth to it.

According to a CityLab article, even though the government of India has gone on a huge toilet building campaign in order to improve sanitation, so many people refuse to use the commodes that the government is pondering a monitoring program to make sure people do. (my emphasis)

In a recent survey of 3,200 rural households by Delhi-based Research Institute for Compassionate Economics, half of respondents who didn’t have a toilet believed that “defecating in the open is the same or better for health than using a latrine.” Most people who owned a government-constructed latrine still chose to use the outdoors. Some end up using their loo for storage or extra living space.

Many people in the article talk about the use/non-use as a factor of cultural and religious values and advocate for everything from education campaigns to social pressure and spying in order to achieve the goal of no public defecation by 2019.

It can be perplexing to read about the difficulties this effort faces despite the clear and nearly immediately demonstrable health benefits of sanitary practices (Not to mention the government will do the construction.)

We might think that the benefits and importance of using a toilet would be self evident, but apparently that is not the case in India. In that context, saying something that is far from self-evident like arts education improves test scores starts to sound a little weak as an argument.

Comparing toilets in India to Arts in America is probably rife with more flaws than I am immediately imagining. But there is a similarity in the societal inertia that needs to be overcome. Because India is a situation outside our experience, we can examine it with some objectivity and recognize some of the common issues we face.

Parents and schools providing arts experiences to kids certainly contributes to socializing young people to participate when they get older. When I look at India, it reinforces my sense that any effort to help people recognize the presence and importance of arts in their lives is going to involve a lot more than just advocating for more arts teachers in the schools.

Info You Can Use: Good Fellowship Opportunity

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Tomorrow as the new year dawns and you make a resolution to be the best darn arts administrator you can be, you might want to consider starting an application to Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s new arts administration/leadership fellowship.

According to American Theatre, the Paul Nicholson Arts Management Fellowship is meant to increase diversity among arts leadership.

The seven-month fellowships are for professionals interested in a career in arts management and artistic leadership. Candidates need only be interested in leading an arts organization; a background in theatre is not required. The chosen fellow will work in close capacity with OSF managing director Cynthia Rider, and will lead projects across multiple administrative departments.

Johka emphasizes that while the Paul Nicholson Fellowship is designed to give potential leaders of color an opportunity to develop professionally, the application process is open to all, not just candidates of color.

“You can’t make a claim to have a commitment to diversity and inclusion while maintaining that in order to bring people in, they must have a long history in a field that has been traditionally all white,” Johka adds. “You have to open up your criteria to accept and value all kinds of transferable skills.”

Just in case you breezed over the sentence I bolded above, it is not necessary that you have a background in theatre.

Deadline is February 1 and the fellowship, which includes housing, transportation and a stipend, begins March 31, 2015. Application is accepted online.

Seems like a great opportunity. My only nitpick is that the application process requires three letters of recommendation to be attached at the time of submission. I realize this is likely to be a highly competitive process and there needs to be a weeding out process. However, if the goal is to attract people of diverse backgrounds, requiring three letters of recommendation may end up excluding people who have advanced along the less traditional path with “all kinds of transferable skills” they are seeking.

Getting quality letters of recommendation for your application file in a timely manner is often even a difficult task for university doctoral students who operate in a culture in which they are de rigueur.

Not As Simple As Adding an “A” To STEM

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When the concept of teaching a STEM curriculum in schools started to take off a few years back, I was among those who quickly started advocating for turning STEM into STEAM.

However, a thoughtful piece on Education Week gave me pause and made me realize blithely calling for the arts to be inserted without really understanding what the curriculum was all about is somewhat akin to deciding an English teacher directing a play after school is sufficient to meet arts standards.

According to author Anne Jolly, the arts isn’t something you can or should simply plug in to STEM like a Lego block. (my emphasis)

Recently, the idea of adding the arts to STEM programs has been gaining momentum. Surprisingly, I’ve heard push-back from both camps:

1. From STEM proponents: STEM lessons naturally involve art (for example, product design), language arts (communication), and social studies and history (setting the context for engineering challenges). STEM projects do not deliberately exclude the arts or any other subject; rather, these subjects are included incidentally as needed for engineering challenges.The focus of STEM is developing rigorous math and science skills through engineering. How can you focus on other subjects (such as art) without losing the mission of STEM or watering down its primary purpose?

2. From arts proponents: Engineering and technology can certainly serve the artist and help create art. But if we’re talking about how one can use art in engineering… as an artist, it seems we’re missing the point and devaluing, or not realizing, art’s purpose and importance. We have it backwards.

Jolly goes on to make some suggestions about how the arts can have a place in a STEM program, but none of them really feel like a clean melding of ideals, and she admits as much. As she points out numerous times in her writing, a good STEM program will never exclude an artistic component.

“Just one word of caution, though. Art is often touted as a method of adding creativity to STEM—but keep in mind that engineers are rarely lacking for creativity and ingenuity. Just look at the world around you for proof. The purpose of STEAM should not be so much to teach art but to apply art in real situations. Applied knowledge leads to deeper learning.”

This is one of those articles where every commenter has something insightful to add to the conversation. No one manages to come up with the definitive approach, but they draw attention to the issues that need to be considered in order that neither Arts or STEM get short shrift in a relationship.

Community Is Free

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I was in a local comic book/table top gaming store a couple weeks ago talking to the owner about providing tickets as a prize for a Magic: The Gathering tournament.  While we were chatting, a kid comes in and says it is his first time in the store. As he looks around admiring the things on sale and talking about what he would like to acquire, he mentions he just moved into town and is living at the shelter.

The first thing that popped into my mind was that if he is living at the shelter, he should be focusing on using his money for something else besides buying more Pokemon cards (his preferred game.)

A couple moments later, the 2010 Haitian earthquake came to mind. Back then one of the things that struck me was that amid all the devastation and loss people experienced, people came together and started singing. The singing didn’t help to feed anyone or clear the rubble, but it did provide a sense of community and security for people who lost so much.

In the five years since that earthquake, I often think back to that incident when people talk about how irresponsible it is to spend money on the arts and culture rather than on things like medical supplies and equipment.

But it is just as important to provide people with the opportunity to have a communal experience with others as it is to heal their bodies.

Despite all the merchandise he was admiring, the kid in the store wasn’t opening his wallet to buy anything new. He was primarily there to find a place where like minded individuals met.  While buying cards may not be free, the opportunity to sit at a table and play with other people using whatever he has is free.

A lot of times what arts organizations have to offer isn’t free, some times it is. Regardless, it is important to remember that often what you are providing people goes beyond what you think you are specifically offering at that moment.

Blog On Short Hiatus

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I am feeling rather poorly today and have had some difficulties typing straight. I am going to take a break for Christmas and pick back up in a week on January 29.

Best wishes to all for joyous and relaxing holidays.

Dabbling In The Revolution

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This week we made our first foray into the Classical Revolution movement with the help of CutTime Simfonica. Mr. Cuttime, or Rick Robinson, as his friends call him, helped us coordinate this in conjunction with the formal concert by CutTime Simfonica we presented last night.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Classical Revolution (CR), it is an effort to remove the intimidation factor from classical music by taking it out of the formal concert hall setting and bringing it to bars, clubs, houses, etc. The idea being if you find classical music doesn’t make you uncomfortable in your local watering hole, it might be something you will enjoy in a more formal setting.

Formerly a bassist with Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Rick helped to found a CR chapter in that city. (And got a Knight Foundation grant to expand it.) He encouraged us to invite local musicians to essentially “jam” with CutTime Simfonica so I started reaching out to the local wind symphony last summer and followed up with flyers and contacts throughout the last month (as did Rick).

Unfortunately, a major Christmas concert got scheduled for the same night as our Classical Revolution session so we didn’t get many outside musicians participating. (Though that concert rescheduled in order not to conflict with our formal concert Tuesday night, so we can’t complain.)

However, we did have a 15 year old flutist show up to join in so he got a lot attention that night.

Click to view full album

(The poor guy was so nervous he couldn’t eat his hamburger during the three hours of the Classical Revolution. Thankfully, the pub brought out a fresh one.)

Being Christmas time, there was a little bit of audience participation required in order to create a “stereo surround sound” jingle bells experience for the audience.

 

I am not sure that the CR event generated any additional ticket sales for the concert hall performance the next night, but it did seem to change some perceptions. The morning after the CR concert, we went on the radio to promote the show. The radio show host said her boyfriend was a little reluctant about attending, but 2.5 hours later she was ready to leave and he wasn’t.

She admitted, she never really understood classic music but her boyfriend’s insight was that it is like reading a novel, there are different plots and stories being interwoven.

What crystallized the experience for me was at the end of a Brahms piece, Rick Robinson commented “man, that is one sexy piece of music.” I could see there was something about it he was discovering as he played. When I mentioned this to him, he said he often didn’t get to play the cello part. So to a degree there was a discovery element for him. I loved both the verbal and non-verbal expression of delight experienced in that moment.

The formal concert the next night had the same sort of light hearted element to it that the Classical Revolution performance did the night before. As I watched, I realized there was a lot of potential for resentment in linking Classical Revolution events to more formal concert hall experiences.

People attending a CR event where they have a great time interacting with the musicians might feel like they experienced a bait and switch if they were actively encouraged to show up to a full symphony orchestra concert where the musicians barely acknowledged their presence.

While the CR and formal concert were both essentially chamber music experiences, Rick Robinson took it a step further by polling the audience about their past interactions with classical music. He had extra seats set up on stage and invited a rotating group of audience members to come up and sit close enough to “see the musicians sweat.”

As each group left the stage, he asked them what they felt. One woman said she felt like she needed to get back to playing the violin. One man commented it was interesting watching the facial expressions and interactions, especially the percussionist anticipating where he would need to come in.

The diversity of the programming also helped, running from familiar pieces by Mozart and Beethoven to the Martin Luther King movement of Duke Ellington’s “Three Black Kings.” Rick also included three of his own compositions and explained the stories behind them.

His association of music with food generated vivid imagery for the audience. He spoke of his “Pork N’ Beans,” as; taking a bite of spicy pulled pork, then a mouthful of hot beans, the heat rising in our hero’s mouth until a forkful of cole slaw cools it down. At both the concert and the Classical Revolution event, people said they could tell when each mouthful came, especially the cole slaw.

Today, as I reflected back, I realized that there is a lot of attention and conversation on doing programming that will attract younger audiences. There isn’t much discussion about transitioning existing audiences toward acceptance of that programming.

When the subject comes up, it is usually to discuss the dichotomy between what new and existing audiences like. The perception is that existing audiences are alienated by the content that appeals to new audiences.  Seldom is there discussion of a long term vision to gradually segue existing audiences toward the programmatic point that may appeal to new audiences.

I am thinking about this because I am wondering what the conversation will be at the next board meeting. What feedback have they received about an event in which the transitions between high quality music performances by Columbus and West Virginia Symphony musicians were filled with some unconventional audience interactions?

The responses I received last night and today from members of the audience have been very positive. But many of those were the people who went to sit on stage.

It started to occur to me that despite a few rough edges here and there, Rick Robinson might be developing a format that bridges that gap – palatable to existing audiences and intriguing to those looking to experiment with a classical music experience.

Info You Can Use: Minimalist Design and Slide Decks

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I just finished teaching a public speaking course this semester. One of the pieces of advice I tried to emphasize for my students was not to fill your Powerpoint slides with tons of text.

It was difficult to accomplish this goal.  I must confess part of me was secretly pleased that members of the visually oriented Millennial generation were having the same struggles with simplifying their presentations as those who pioneered the use of Powerpoint.

This being said, the minimal look is definitely in.

Drew McManus has been advocating for flat and responsive web design for awhile. You can also see the increased use of a page spanning dominant image on sites like TED.com

ted example

and the Weather Channel

weather channel example

 

The SlideShare blog recently featured slide decks that Guy Kawasaki promotes for aspiring entrepreneurs that translates this minimalist approach to slide decks. The first has a lot of great examples of text heavy slides that were heavily trimmed down and had a single central concept set against a single dominant image. (requires Flash)

[slideshare id=295996&doc=sample-slides-by-garr-reynolds-1204852162670051-5]

Slide number 5 provides a good example of how to transition from what might be your current practice to a more minimalist approach, taking an image of President Kennedy from the corner and making the slide all about the image and his “Ask not…” quote. Many of the other slides are an example of an entirely revamped approach to a topic.

The other slide deck that caught my eye was the third. It provides a template to help a marketer create a presentation about different customer personas.  It is created as something your organization or company can use immediately to present what you know about the different demographics that comprise your customer.

When I immediately, I mean it is pretty much designed so you can download it right now, delete the instructional and example slides, plug in the relevant data and images and use what remains as a basis for a presentation if you want. (requires Flash)

[slideshare id=30601327&doc=buyerpersonatemplate1-140129195502-phpapp01]

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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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