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.

Management Students Got Skills. You Better Recognize That Fact

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One of the things I hate most about attending conferences is that the sessions I want to see most seem to always be scheduled at the same time. One of the tough choices I made was between a session on Emerging Leaders and one on the career opportunities for Arts Management program graduates. I attended the latter hoping to purchase the audio of the other session only to discover it wasn’t recorded due to a mix up about what hotel it was occurring at.

The session on career opportunities for arts managers was lead by Andrew Taylor of the Bolz School, Irene Conley, Chair of Performing Arts Management at the Hartt School and a gentleman whose name I neglected to note.

The discussion wasn’t so much about the job market that will greet arts managers as it was about the skillsets arts managers will need to possess.

Conley mentioned the importance of problem solving, resourcefulness, critical thinking skills and good communication skills. One of the things she requires her students to do is make four new contacts each week as a networking exercise forcing them to do enough background research on people that they can answer questions about each person.

As part of the classroom experience, she emphasizes the process of group work as well as the end product. She has the students evaluate what they did as a member of the team since that is the dynamic they need to operate within in a job environment.

She works to make sure the internship opportunities her students avail themselves of are meaningful and not just providing advanced knowledge in copier machines.

Andrew Taylor took a slightly different approach in talking about what skills managers should have. His contention is that arts organizations look for a one to one correlation between a job description and the skillset a person has. He noted that corporate recruiters know what type of person they are looking for, the skills that will translate to their industry and assume the person can acquire the specific knowledge they need on the job.

Arts organizations don’t know what they want, write up an extensive wish list and then try to find someone who has those exact skills. If I understood Taylor’s explanation correctly, finding an exact fit is not only difficult, it also contributes to a view of the organization that is limiting. The idea that the activities of development are exclusive of marketing which are exclusive of sales is the type of thinking that stunts progress. A person needs skills and understanding that encompass all these areas regardless of which one they are being hired for.

As an illustration, Taylor mentions that an associate was looking for someone to run the box office of a large performing arts center. After some dissatisfaction with candidates from the arts field, he ended up hiring a person who had run a Sears phone order center because they had a better sense of how to manage offering service on that scale.

Taylor says he trains his students to essentially take control of interviews and use answers that create a bridge between what the organization is looking for and the skills the student possess to show how their experience translates.

I made the comment that I thought another skill set people needed was the ability to talk about and advocate for the arts. I mentioned the need to communicate the value of the arts at all ends of the spectrum– advocating to governments and grant makers, (noting that recent research shows that the arts may not be best served by citing economic value of the arts), all the way down to press releases and speaking to individuals.

The part of the session that got me thinking the most though was the idea that arts organizations don’t know what they are looking for when they hire. I currently have my hands tied in that regard since I work for a state institution that pretty much codifies how good a candidate for a position is based on number of years experience and education. I have clearly seen more effective people paid less because their experience and education were less than others.

I imagine there will come a day when I can’t hide behind the strictures of a bureaucracy when it comes to determining who is best suited for a job so I have already started pondering what the skills are that candidates for arts jobs should possess. How should a job description be written to attract people with these skills and knowledge? What appears in the descriptions today that don’t reflect what we really need/should be seeking?

What I think I need to do is ask Andrew Taylor if he has come across a situation where the description, interview and actual position all correspond appropriately. I fear his answer will be that such a situation doesn’t exist within the arts world.

Preserving The Moldy Old Arts

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There is an article on the National Endowment of the Arts in Commentary this month (via Arts and Letters Daily) with a suggestion about the role the organization should play that may not please everyone.

The author, Michael J. Lewis, an Art and Architecture professor at Williams College recounts the history of the organization from President Johnson’s declaration at the NEA’s founding that “There is a quality in art which speaks across the gulf dividing man from man and nation from nation, and century from century. . . . The stakes may well be the survival of civilization” to the obscenity accusations of the 80s and the caution exhibited in the years that followed.

Lewis argues that NEA funding practices, rather than freeing artists to experiment actually promote mediocrity by funding the under served instead of quality artists and succumbing to political pressure from elected officials. (I should note that a number of his citations from two other Commentary articles on the NEA so the opinions are a little inbred.)

Having failed to cultivate new works on a wide scale, Lewis argues the NEA should re-purpose itself to preserve existing works.

“The audiences for music and dance have long been graying (perhaps whitening is now the better term), and there is much concern that they will vanish within a generation’s time. Here, the role of the NEA would not be to create but rather to preserve or, if it comes to that, to “cocoon” art by means of a holding action: for instance, subsidizing classical orchestras and ballet companies so as to maintain a cadre of professionals who will keep alive what would otherwise become a dead language. As it happens, this is precisely the area where the NEA record has historically been brightest.”

I am not sure if I appreciate his reference to orchestras and ballet companies as working in a dead language (or soon to be so.) But maybe that is a truth that needs to be faced. At the same time, I am also not terribly comfortable with the idea that the NEA should enable ballets and orchestras to avoid innovating their practices. Though I am sure if this philosophy was embraced, the nation’s flagship ballets and orchestras would be the ones receiving the funding leaving the smaller organizations to innovate or disappear.

Arts Leaders Ain’t Learnin’ Too Good

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I have just returned from the Arts Presenters Conference. I must have tried to do too much in too little time because I am fighting off a cold right now. I did want to make a post on one of the sessions I attended because some of the information communicated was simply fascinating.

In the Learning to Lead session The Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor’s graduate students presented the results of their research about what resources arts managers used to learn and solve problems. When they finished, I got up and asked a question about the results of their survey. They found that 90% of people read reports, books, etc at least once a year. I asked what end of the spectrum the majority of responses fell since last year Neill Archer Roan had presented findings at the APAP conference that said that learning was not valued in the presenting field.

Since Neill’s research was based on interviews and were anecdotal, I wasn’t sure if his results were any more scientifically based than the grad student’s results which was based on a self-selected group that filled out an online survey. I also stated some curiosity about whether people who were more comfortable with online surveys might be reading more reports via that medium. The students who responded said the reading that was taking place were skewed toward the less frequent.

I hadn’t known that Neill was sitting a couple rows behind me and soon he got up to address the issue of learning not being valued. I was so amazed by what he had to say, I bought the MP3 file of the session so that I could quote him accurately.

Speaking of the work the Roan Group does, he said,

“We believe there is a cultural bias against learning in this field and in the non-profit field as a whole. We believe that that exists for several reasons. One is cultural another is really biological. There are a lot of studies about satisfaction and how we are actually wired…Someone who is rationally satisfied behaves no differently than someone who is rationally dissatisfied. People behave differently when they are emotionally satisfied…the pathways back to learning are different where there is emotional satisfaction…I think in our field and in the performing arts, there is so much emotional satisfaction…that is actually a barrier to our need to understand and respond. (my emphasis)

The idea that emotional satisfaction, which is probably what allows people in the arts to tolerate low pay and long hours, is actually inhibiting progress just sort of blew my mind.

He goes on to say that in the arts there isn’t a practice of looking back and evaluating a situation for what works and didn’t work and then documenting the findings. Without the documentation, the arts rely on tacit knowledge carried in individuals. While tacit knowledge is superior to documented knowledge, if you have high turnover, your organization doesn’t learn.

The session was about two hours long so I imagine there will be other insights I will derive from them as I review the file.

Spinning the Hottest Shostakovich East of the Spree!

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I am packing and repacking for my trip to the APAP conference, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity point out a great story that appeared on Artsjournal.com about a rotating club show in Berlin that has people packing techno clubs on Monday nights despite the lack of advertising to listen to chamber orchestras.

Every first Monday a club night called Yellow Lounge rotates among the hottest clubs in the city. According to the article, one club turned over 100 people away. The live performance is sandwiched between DJs playing classical recordings. Part of the appeal to attendees seems to be the approach to classical music the DJs and performers bring.

“What is particularly enjoyable about the Yellow Lounge is that it is not at all intimidating. You don’t need to know anything about classical music to feel at home. There is none of the snobbery associated with the genre; Canisius never gives you a “Duh! It’s Mozart, dummy” look if you ask what he has just played, and the musicians tend to introduce each track with a non-patronising explanation of its importance. He welcomes requests, too, but only plays them “if the mood is right”.

Admission is only five euros ($7.33). Universal Music, seeing an opportunity to change perceptions about classical music, underwrites the cost of the event. The organizers are apparently free to book who they like, but many of the artists are on a Universal label.

I am not going to suggest that a similar program could be successful in the U.S. because I suspect that classical music has a more prominent place in the collective consciousness of Germans than U.S. citizens. Even if younger Germans are turning away from classical music, I imagine that the concept of what type of person listens to the music isn’t as narrowly defined as it is in the U.S.

But perhaps there is some sort of program that might have success that doesn’t necessarily involve plugging instruments into amps.

Send Me Your Press Releases…Now!

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I don’t know how wide spread this experience is, but there is one area where I assumed that technology was making a window of interest smaller that I think it is actually expanding it– Press Releases.

One of the cardinal rules of writing press releases has always been to keep the subject matter timely. This often means releasing your information within a certain window where it is not so early that news people have more immediate events to cover and not so late that you miss the deadline.

As Internet connections got better and sending images and releases by email rather than hard copies through regular mail became more prevalent, there was a brief period where sending out information closer to a performance night seemed wiser and preferred.

Now I am getting calls from newspapers 4-6 weeks before a performance asking me for a release and images. It is a minority that seems to prefer the information two weeks or so out from the performance. My theory is that technology has made it easier for news outlets to organized stories. I am guessing I get the calls because they have inputted the calendar listings I send out in the Fall into some sort of software that reminds them to call me for information. I also guess technology is helping them put their story together and lay out part of the issue it will run in weeks ahead of time.

In a certain respect, my job has actually gotten harder because I need to be thinking about these shows weeks early than I used to so I have a release ready for the asking. I also need to be bugging the performance groups for information to support what I write and images to send to the press. With some artists and agents who are not well organized, this can create a problem.

There is a standard line in most every contract I get that says press materials will be provided to me a month before a performance. I have begun toying with the idea of researching the amount of information available about an artist online and changing that to 60 days for those with a dearth of materials.

Has anyone else had this experience or am I just surrounded by a well organized, zealous media?

How Do Leaders Learn

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Next week I will attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in NY. Unlike last year where I was there for a week attending the conference and Emerging Leadership Institute, this year I am in and out very quickly in a weekend. I cringe at the thought of all that time on the plane. Once I get there, I know I will wonder why I ever resisted the idea because I get so much out of the experience. I enjoy the opportunity to see showcases, talk to artists and learn about new trends and philosophies in performing arts.

One of my biggest motivations for attending this year is to continue what was started last year in having Emerging Leadership alumni involved at the conference and advance an agenda. We have meetings and social gatherings planned this year. We were going to sponsor an issues session until we learned that Andrew Taylor’s students at the Bolz Center were going to be presenting findings from a study that was generally aligned with our purpose.

We also encouraging our membership (and anyone else interested in the topic) to attend the session at the conference, Learning to Lead: Where And How to Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft. Andrew has a post about it on his blog today. Even if you aren’t going to attend, if you are an arts leader, please consider filling out the 15 question survey that will inform the discussion and findings of the session.

The survey asks questions about where one goes looking for knowledge and help in solving problems. Though it could probably comprise an entire research session of its own, I would have liked to see some questions asking people to measure the value of the guidance/help they receive. From conversations I have had over the last year, I suspect a good many people would comment that they weren’t getting the guidance they needed or perhaps were having a hard time identifying a trustworthy person with whom to discuss their problems.

And though it wouldn’t be scientific and might have been a little more time consuming, it would have been interesting if they asked where people got their initial training in the arts. I am just curious how many people have formal education and how many were mentored and learned on the job.

In any case, while Andrew will undoubtedly have an entry discussing the session, I intend to do one as well to present my perspective. I usually try to avoid duplicating the subject of his posts since I assume we share a lot of readers. But I am making a very long flights in very short time. I am gonna earn the right to bloviate a little. I am sure my approach will differ from Taylor’s to some extent any way.

For 25 cents More You Get A Large Coke And Opera Glasses

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The NY Times covers the Metropolitan Opera’s high definition broadcast of Hansel and Gretel to movie theatres throughout the country. One of the questions they ask is whether the experience will translate into people going to see the opera live.

By some coincidence, I received a brochure from the Philadelphia Orchestra today offering me the opportunity to host a high definition broadcast of up to five performances this year. Except that I have a 15 year old sound system in my theatre, I could easily host one of these events. Actually, since their fees are fairly reasonable, I could rent sound equipment and probably still finish in the black.

I don’t foresee hosting one of these any time soon. But I have to think, if I got one of these brochures and I don’t program classical music, who else around here has gotten one? There are plenty of other places that could hold a screening. And even though I don’t intend to present one of these, there is nothing to say that someone may not rent my facility and a sound system to do so.

So what does this mean for my local symphony whose musicians haven’t been paid in over a month? Or any symphony whose audience is faltering or, like Jacksonville, is enduring a protracted strike?

Is seeing a projection of the renown Philadelphia Orchestra for $15 in a movie theatre on speakers set to make explosions sound good (and perhaps has said explosions bleeding in from next door) preferable to hearing the local symphony for mediocre $50 seats amplified only by the building’s natural acoustics? Do sticky floors and popcorn go better with Wagner than reserved seating and wine?

Philadelphia is fully supporting the program with all sorts of promotional materials and ideas, study guides, interactive discussions and post-performance online discussions in which audiences can participate.

And like the NY Times article asks, could the Philadelphia Orchestra inspire people to see the local symphony? Or because of the money and support they enjoy, are they setting the bar so high now that local orchestras will never be able to compete? The fidelity of sound may not be as good as a live performance, but Philadelphia may be providing the environment and interactivity that people expect from their arts attendance experience these days.

Humans being social animals, I have always been a little skeptical of the idea that 100 inch flat screen televisions, TiVos, video game systems and the Internet would ever replace the appeal of the group experience. However, if attending a video feed of an orchestra performance accompanied by a bucket of popcorn constitutes the new definition of “going to the symphony,” performing arts organizations of all stripes may have to reconsider the medium through which they are delivering their product.

Jonesin’ For Pots and Bell Ringers

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Want to know why people get depressed and cranky after the Christmas and New Year holidays? It’s not that the cold blustery depth of winter sets in with no joy in sight until the Spring. It is entirely the Salvation Army’s fault. According to an article on giving by Arthur Brooks, psychologists “…believe that charitable activity induces endorphins that produce a very mild version of the sensations people get from drugs like morphine and heroin.”

So it isn’t all the snow. People are just going through withdrawal when the Salvation Army packs up their bells and kettles. You may think all that bell ringing is annoying, but in reality, they just leave you wanting more.

The article cites a number of surveys and studies which have found that people who give, be it time, money or blood, are much happier than those who don’t. “American households, people who gave money to charity in 2000 were 43% more likely than non-givers to say they were “very happy” about their lives. Similarly, volunteers were 42% more likely to be very happy than non-volunteers. ”

There is a chicken-egg question in the article. Do people who are happy to begin with give more often or does giving lead to a feeling of happiness? Brooks cites a study that shows more happiness after giving, but I still wonder if predisposition has something to do with it.

In any case, it seems that scheduling the annual deadline for tax deductible giving with the Christmas holidays is well timed. If having the atmosphere permeated with goodwill doesn’t provide the impetus to give, the tax incentive adds a little more motivation.

Charity Giving In A Gift Card

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Last week there was a story on NPR about charity gift cards. Essentially, they allow you to buy a gift card as you normally would but then the recipient can go online and choose to which charity they would like to donate.

Charity Navigator, which is mentioned in the story, has a link to the Network for Good card. The other organization mentioned, ‘Tis Best, has their own card that they offer.

Of the two, Network for Good has the most arts and culture organizations, though they tend to be individual organizations while ‘Tis Best offers the opportunity to donate to larger service organizations like Artspace, Chamber Music America, Dance/USA, Mr. Holland’s Opus, and the Assoc. of Performing Arts Presenters.

It is too late to get involved for this holiday season, but is just the right time to explore how to do so for next year!

Simple Gestures, Big Results

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Knowing that my customer service skills can be lacking, I try to keep my eyes open for practices that answer customer needs well. One of the cardinal rules for relations with anyone, be it your boss, relatives, friends or patrons is to try to anticipate the needs of the other person.

Last week I came across an instance of what to do and wanted to share it with the readers. It is a small act, but it can make a big difference.

I have been emailing back and forth among two other alumni members of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Emerging Leadership Institute about some activities we want new and alumni members to participate in as part of our attempt to enhance the value of attending the institute.

One person emailed the rest of us a draft letter addressed to the new and returning ELI members alerting them to conference sessions and social events where concerns members had would be addressed. The format was pretty simple with a listing of the event and the time. It looked fine and I replied to that effect mentioning that I would have to research one session a little more because the title made it look interesting.

The next email I received had a revision of the previous letter. This time each session listed had a full description of what the session was all about. What had impressed me was that she took a cue from my comment that I intended to research a session that sounded interesting to provide me the information herself. Obviously, she didn’t do it for me alone. If I was curious, others would be as well.

Actually, since I am praising her rather than criticizing, I don’t mind mentioning her by name- Laura Kendall, Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Learning at the Lied Center in Lincoln, NE. There, now maybe she will get a raise.

You would naturally expect someone with a title like hers to make that connection and act on it, but it is a rarer quality than you would think. It is easy to enter a mindset that the community you are engaging and educating is only your own and that you only need to do so within the context of programs planned in conjunction with performances.

And maybe she doesn’t pick up on the unspoken messages all the time either. However, I emailed her back last week praising her for recognizing that additional information would make a better letter. She said I made her day so I will bet she will be more conscious of these cues in the future regardless of how well she noticed them before.

Anticipating and answering needs people didn’t really know they had is what will help set an experience at an arts organization apart from other experiences. People are able to gain the information they want more and more easily these days. Global positioning directional units were one of the hottest selling items this Christmas season. But information sources like GPS units only provide what you ask for and not only is the information sometimes incorrect, it also lacks wisdom and discernment to advise well.

But this is only one example of good practices arts organizations should be embracing. Keeping alert for everyday occurrence that can adapted and applied to become your standard procedures is the real point of this entry. Often it isn’t that you come across a new practice as you encounter something that makes you question if you are doing it well enough.

Honolulu Symphony Musicians Play Though Promised No Pay

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I was going to leave this topic to Drew McManus over at Adaptistration because his knowledge about management and musician relations in orchestras is far greater than mine. He also knows people in the Honolulu Symphony and has a better sense of what is going on.

However, one of the people Drew knows made a direct appeal that I comment and I agreed to do so. This past week, the Honolulu Symphony announced that it would not be able meet payroll for the rest of the year. The story was covered on television and in the Honolulu Advertiser. The musicians have been playing on knowing they wouldn’t be paid right before Christmas.

Orchestra musicians are apparently an optimistic breed. If you have been reading Adaptistration recently, you know that musicians in places like Tampa and Jacksonville, FL have been willing to show a lot of good faith and perform during labor disputes.

If you read the comments on the Advertiser article, you will see that the response of the local community is mixed. Some people blame the Governor for not releasing promised funds, some cite very poor policy decisions and mismanagement occurred prior to the arrival of the current executive and music directors.

The article and television report note that attendance was low because the symphony was bumped from their home and had their audience eroded by the 12 week Lion King tour. I can attest that my theatre and about 6 others on the island saw a significant drop in our audience prior to and during The Lion King run. Fortunately, my payroll isn’t as large as the symphony’s so my losses weren’t as great.

You wouldn’t think a Broadway tour would impact other arts activity so greatly. However, with the high cost of living, there is little disposable income. Yet you can’t blame people for taking the perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to see the show. But people were explicitly stating in August that they wouldn’t be resubscribing or buying single tickets to local performances because they would be seeing The Lion King in November. Even though the tour just closed and moved on, with people spending for Christmas now, many of us are wondering how long it might take before attendance rebounds.

One phrase I haven’t heard anyone utter publicly yet and I hope I won’t is “Honolulu has to decide whether they want a symphony.” There are three reasons I am against saying something like this.

First, it makes it sound like a punishment. I don’t think you want to imply that people are going to be punished for not attending your performances. Or worse yet, punished for going to see The Lion King.

Second, saying that is an open invitation for people to opine that they don’t really think their lives will be impacted by not having a symphony. As bad as it will be for someone to stand up and say, “If this is what I get for going to see The Lion King, I can live with it,” having someone say “Eh, what do I care. It’s not important,” is even worse.

Third, the statement implies that the people of Honolulu can decide to save the symphony when in reality it will be a handful of people in city and state government, foundations, banks and other corporations who will determine the fate of the organization. Some individuals will certainly lobby these institutions to support the symphony, but my sense is that there won’t be large grassroots popular support.

In a sense, it is appropriate for these entities to be the ones to make the decision rather than making it an issue of popular support. These entities understand that having a vital arts scene is what will attract people to the city and state to live and do business. The symphony, for better or for worse, is the biggest and most visible performing arts group in the state and thus serves as the cornerstone of artistic value.

Now ideally, everyone in the city if not the state should recognize the value of the symphony to its overall appeal. That will be the symphony’s job if it gets past this crisis. In the past year the symphony has been making efforts in this direction by doing concerts in different parts of the island rather than just sticking to Honolulu proper.

They even came out and performed in my venue last Spring so I am hoping they will find success. Because, well, they haven’t paid their bill yet.

More On Cultivating Creative Minds

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Apropos of yesterday’s entry, a commenter, who some call Tim, brings this great article about the dangers of dwindling imagination to my attention.

It is fairly well sourced and talks about the subject far better than I can. In fact, it even addresses my concern that maybe I was channeling my grandfather by referencing “back in my day.” Even if you are in the arts, you might be creating an environment that doesn’t challenge your kids/nephews/students to be creative. It is worth a read for that reason alone.

Cultivating Creative Kids

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More and more frequently we read about how the next phase of the economy will be the Creative economy. It is in major magazines, the subject of conferences, and the topic of study for state and regional arts organizations.

But I am wondering if the U.S. as a society is adequately preparing the next generation to take part in this economy. I am not referring to the disappearance of arts from schools or the fact that fewer people are reading. These things are important, to be sure. I am beginning to wonder if children today are even being challenged to use their basic imagination.

As a commute to work and run errands, I often see televisions playing DVDs in cars and SUVs. I hate to lapse into a round of “in my day”, but I wonder if these kids are going to want for not being challenged to entertain themselves on trips around town, much less on long vacation trips. When I was younger, my mother would actually hide our toys about 6 weeks before a long trip and then give me back to us so that they would be new to us and keep us occupied during the trip. (I must have inherited my frugality and cleverness from her.)

Although it tests parents’ patience, there is something to be said for having to develop the self-control not to antagonize your sisters. And there is something to be said for having to invent strange games to keep yourself occupied during the trip. My sisters came up with some rules about holding your breath while passing a cemetery and lifting your feet when crossing train tracks. My father would then pretend to pass out from lack of oxygen while driving by large cemeteries and rolling to a stop on train tracks because his feet were no longer on the accelerator.

Now I will admit that not everyone is as blessed with my ability to read in moving vehicles. I will also never suggest that the television sets on airplanes be removed. I like the distraction of those itty-bitty screens just fine.

DVDs and video games are starting to tout themselves as educational and they might be. But are the games sharpening and improving creativity? Maybe, but I think it is too soon and too tough to tell.

One thing I do know is that boredom, like necessity is the mother of invention. Certainly, much of what I produced while a bored child was destructive as much as it was constructive but there is little gained and learned in the absence of taking that risk. I had acres and acres of fields and forests upon which to wreak havoc without the distraction of color television much less cable to distract me.

Many kids today may not have the physical space to explore and experiment that me and my friends did. But I also suspect and fear that some of the limits they face are barriers of imagination that they haven’t learned to surmount.

I Got A Good Seat Inside the Arts

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Observant folks and readers of the Adaptistration blog will have noted that I have joined with Drew McManus and his Merry Band over at InsidetheArts.com. Unlike the existing blogs associated with Inside the Arts which are hosted under Drew’s Typepad account, I am still solely in control of what appears here.

So don’t blame Drew for any strangeness found on Butts in the Seats like the Tag Cloud on the left which won’t turn into a weighted cloud no matter how many code changes I have made in Movable Type. Unfortunately, Drew can’t help because he just clicks a few boxes in Typepad and what he wants to happen magically appears. Movable Type is made by the same company but requires changes by hand. Something I am usually quite adept at. I am thinking I should have switched to TypePad when I upgraded my software.

Anyhow, I am happy to have joined up on Inside the Arts. I have been corresponding with Drew for a few years now and even contributed to his Take A Friend to the Orchestra project a couple times. I am very excited by the way he thinks and his vision for Inside the Arts.

I have also corresponded with Sticks and Drones contributor Ron Spigelman who has had his students at Drury University read Butts in the Seats as part of the class he teaches. How can I not want to be associated with someone with such obvious wisdom and taste?

And Ron’s partner in crime, Bill Eddins has had people complain that he wiggles his bum too much while conducting. How could I not want to be associated with a person who brings so much energy and enthusiasm to orchestra music.

As for the Arts Addict, Jason Heath– he drive a fire breathing Saturn. I am pretty sure a guy that tough can take me so I am not going to say anything that might offend.

Anyhow, I look forward to my association with these folks and those slated to join. I anticipate there will be some cross blog conversations because there are things I am curious about regarding the artistic and educational circles these guys travel in. I figure many of our readers probably are too.

So stay tuned and see what develops!

Feng Shui Your Practices

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Since things are quieting down around the theatre this week (we only have a pre-school Christmas show, college winter graduation, Nutcracker brush up rehearsal and performances). I have been trying to dispose of obsolete equipment from around the office and such.

One of the things it is difficult to do around a theatre is get rid of stuff. The technical director here is notorious for holding on to things. In one respect this is good because so much is recycled, we don’t need to purchase new materials all the time. Saving money is good.

On the other hand, there are items we have had for 25 years and haven’t used and probably will never use again. We have tried to get rid of them but he insists we keep them against a theoretical use we may have in the future. This is preventing us from freeing up some much needed storage space and actually endangering other objects given that many of the old pieces are termite infested. We are able to toss some things out while he is on vacation (parting is less painful out of sight) or when they crumble under his touch due to the aforementioned termites.

Given that he is the one that has to work around the lack of storage, the situation is really more a bother for him than for me. I merely look around the shop and sigh about all the room we would have if shelves and the area under the pit were cleaned out.

In some respects, I am as bad as he only on a much smaller scale. We got brand new shiny ticket printers this summer but I just packed away the old one “just in case” even though it won’t work well at all with our new ticketing software. If the new printer had a problem, it would be a better use of our time to hand write all our tickets rather than attempt to configure the software to the old printer.

I am sure these type of practices are a metaphor for theatre as an industry as a whole. Resistance to tossing out barely functional equipment for fear we may one day need it probably equates to holding on to old practices and programming for fear that adopting new ones might leave us with less of an audience than we are already drawing.

In fact, I am pretty sure a feng shui practitioner would say that cluttering our space with old, unused objects is anchoring us to the past and hindering the progress we could be making in our lives. Since there are some items that we use often like our platforms, those feng shui practitioners and people on those anti-clutter home improvement shows wouldn’t necessarily counsel us to toss them.

Repainting a platform to make it look better on stage is one thing, but dressing up old audience development and programming strategies is another. The platform has some functional life left to it. There is often less hope to be found in old marketing practices.

The fear of discarding something with even marginal use when you have an untried replacement–or no replacement at all, can be paralyzing. I fully acknowledged to my assistant theatre manager that I would probably toss the old ticket printer this summer but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it just right now.

Sharing the Gold and Fleece

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In years past I have written about how the members of my block blocking consortium leverage our purchasing power by proposing a tour to performers and their agents. Given the difficulty of finding workable time slots among 3-6 different organizations across the state, we often earn our discounts.

One thing I hadn’t found was a good example of producing organizations who cooperated to cut costs. Among presenters like my consortium, the questions that come up are mainly date and cost related–when are the artists available, are there openings on members’ calendars, can we afford the terms the performers seek.

Among producing organizations, there are so many more questions many potentially related to the artistic differences among the organizations- who does the casting, who designs costumes, lights, sets. Will the artistic quality and value reflect what patrons have come to expect of their local theatre. Will the other theatres have input into any of these elements? How much of the sets travel and how much is built by each organization? Given differences in stage sizes, what set pieces may be cut and still maintain the vision of the directors and designers?

How is it going to be paid for? If the theatres each normally operate under different Equity pay rates, will the actors be paid differently in each theatre?

Presenters face some of these questions on occasion, but to very limited degree compared to groups that are co-producing.

A blog entry on the McCarter Theatre website sheds some light on some of these questions. They are co-producing Argonautika with Berkeley Rep and Shakespeare Theatre Company. The show was rehearsed and first opened in San Francisco though the show was cast from auditions at all three locations. All three organizations are sharing all rehearsal costs (including the brush ups when the show moves) and presumably a portion of many of the other costs.

I liked McCarter Producing Associate, Adam Immerwahr’s reasons for partnering with other organizations.

1) it allows what would otherwise be a local production to have a much broader impact;

2) it allows an artist to continue to develop their work over time (allowing them another chance to make adjustments with each production);

3) it can be a cost-saving measure, allowing each of the theaters to share common costs (like the set, costumes, rehearsal time and casting expenses);

4) it is a way for multiple theaters to each share their expertise (new play development, mounting musicals, building big sets, etc.).

I especially appreciated the final point about shared expertise. I have been talking about cooperative efforts for a long time and while cost-savings is certainly going to be important in increasingly difficult financial times, I have always felt sharing knowledge and effort was going to prove crucial to the survival of many arts organizations because so little occurs among arts entities to begin with.

Father of the Subscription Dies

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Via Arts Addict blog comes the news that champion of the subscription ticket, Danny Newman has died.

Newman was essentially the force that promoted the idea of getting people to commit to an entire season of shows, becoming a “the saintly season subscriber” as opposed to “the slothful, fickle single-ticket buyer.” Embracing that idea helped many art organizations succeed.

Unfortunately, the day of the subscriber has waned and many arts organizations are now subject to the whims of the fickle single ticket buyer.

Back in the early 90s when I was in grad school, we were seeing the writing on the wall. In one of my classes, we were assigned to compare and contrast Newman’s Subscribe Now! with another text promoting a different theory of audience development. We essentially derided many of Newman’s suggestions as dated and having no value in the last years of the 20th century.

One of the ideas we scoffed at was his suggestion of holding subscription parties, an event similiar to Tupperware and candle parties where individuals invited friends over and encouraged them to subscribe. Damned if not two years later a theatre I was working at that had lost the confidence of the community didn’t use this very tactic to regain support. Even though subscribing was a much more deeply ingrained practice in that community than in most, the experience taught me to be a little more humble and cautious about dismissing ideas.

Even though the subscription has had diminishing value over the course of my career, I have to admire the drive and audacity of Newman in championing the concept and helping so many organizations find success through it.

The Talk

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Drew McManus at Adaptistration links to an article on The Partial Observer today on a familiar topic which author Holly Mulcahy terms, “The Talk.” You know, the one that goes “When a young man or woman grows up and falls in love with the arts, their thoughts turn to making a career of it. They impulsively jump into a passionate embrace with family, friends and faculty whispering sweet words of encouragement in their ears. They throw themselves into their art without reservation and without thought of cultivating alternative skills. But an arts career is a lot of responsibility and takes commitment and not the subject of a mere fling or dalliance. Even so, those who invest a lot of time and effort don’t always succeed.”

Mulcahy observes that most young artists aren’t given this warning during their studies even if they are too optimistic about their talent to believe they might fail.

I have seen some evidence that students are receiving warnings about job prospects from their professors and teacher more frequently of late. Tom Loughlin who teaches theatre at the State University of NY-Fredonia recently posted a survey of graduates of his program on his blog, A Poor Player. While the survey was not completely scientific and only applies to the graduates of the SUNY-Fredonia program, the 80 responses he received show enough of a trend to be sobering.

When asked how much of their income over the past year was derived from working on a entertainment related project, 30.6% said zero percent and 30.6% said one hundred percent. The rest fell in between. Although all told, 54% of the respondents made between 0% and 25% of their income so the results skewed fairly low. Working in the industry is a veritable all or nothing prospect. Half the respondents graduated between 1990 and 2000 so they have had some time to work on establishing themselves.

The following is excerpted from the conclusions of his survey. (DTD=Dept. of Theatre and Dance)

Technicians and administrators have the highest probability of earning any money in the business. Because the probabilities which follow combine the data for all types of entertainment/arts employment, it can be safely assumed that all the probabilities following are lower for performers….

…• There is about a 33% probability, or about a 1 in 3 chance, that a DTD graduate will make as much as 50% of their income from the business in any one year. All other income will come from “day jobs.”

• There is a 31% probability, or slightly less than 1 in 3 chance, that a DTD graduate will earn no money at all in the entertainment business in any one year (and thus drop out), and a 47% probability (roughly 50-50 chance) that a DTD graduate will make no money at all in live theatre after graduation in any one
year…

…• There is no direct correlation between membership in a union and earning significant income among DTD graduates. 2 out of 3 DTD graduates will not be successful in joining a union, and given the reality of multiple memberships those odds may be slightly higher.

• The probability of earning a salary which exceeds $50K in any one year in the arts/entertainment field for a DTD graduate is slightly better than 1 in 3, or 36.5%. [N.B. I suspect this statistic might be better stated as applying to only those graduates who are working in the field.]

In conclusion, the statistics seem to bear out the reality that full-time undergraduate students who major in theatre are, in all probability, preparing themselves for, at best, a part-time career. They will have to face the reality that, most likely, in any one given year they will make two-thirds of their income from a source outside the arts/entertainment field… They should enter the field with an intelligent combination of aspirations and practical planning, and with an understanding that all their hard work and preparation will be for a part-time career.

As always, your experience and mileage may vary according to your degree, experience and network of contacts. Actually, these statistics should motivate people to develop an extensive network of contacts. Having a wide network of people who think highly of your work becomes increasingly important the tougher it is to find meaningful paid work.

TOILETS SWIRLING DOWN A HOLE TO CHINA

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I won’t get in to why I came across this website. Suffice to say, some people in the office got sick over the Thanksgiving holidays. The anti-diarrhea medicine maker, Imodium A-D had a fun little feature on their website I hadn’t expected to find– a way to locate public restrooms in the U.S.

They are careful to assure you that you won’t need the map while using their product, but it is always good to know where you find facilities while traveling. You don’t want to depend on the map because it isn’t comprehensive. Imodium grabs the information from a site called The Bathroom Diaries which allows people to rate restrooms across the world. People don’t tend to share those experiences as much as say, hotel stays.

It wouldn’t hurt if you were like the Portland (Oregon) Center for the Performing Arts and had people evaluate your restrooms and point out that there was a long bench that was handy as a changing room. Or perhaps you could write something yourself. In searching for a city that had an arts organization reviewed, I noticed that every Old Navy across the country was listed as “A great place to go” and every Starbucks included the observation that “The pleasant Starbucks barristas are cool. You should buy a drink but if you don’t, they won’t mind. Ask for a key if its locked.” Apparently these corporations thought mention of their restroom situation was important enough for their business to have someone place a duplicate entry for every one of their locations. (Or at least up to a point. None of the branches of either company in my city are listed.)

There are many websites out there at aggregate obscure data into interesting data that clever arts organizations can use to their benefit. For example, this site answers the question it asks “If you dig straight down, where will you end up?” Fortunately, I never completed that hole in my backyard. I just discovered I would have ended up in the ocean about 3000 miles southwest of Perth, AUS. instead of China. It turns out, the most direct route to Beijing is through Argentina.

This handy “hole through the world” map can be employed during shows like Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing where a character begs to be sent on an errand to the Antipodes in order to avoid someone. It can be fun (and educational) to use the site to illustrate for audiences that if he had traveled to the literal antipodes of Messina (where the play is set) or London (where it was originally performed), he would have ended up in the ocean east of New Zealand.

Unfortunately, with two exceptions, there is no place in North America that corresponds with land at its antipodal point. It would be fun to point out the location opposite the theatre where the show was being performed. The antipodes of North America is the Indian Ocean. Only the State of Hawaii which corresponds to Botswana and a corner of Namibia and a point in the Alberta plains just north of Montana which corresponds to the French and Southern Antarctic Lands match up with any landmass.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t fun to learn that you can’t reach China by digging in your backyard. It can just be interesting to have a connection with a people and land opposite you. Maybe you can research the best public restrooms in their city! (Though they don’t flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.)

The real moral of this entry is that it can be useful to bookmark websites with goofy, but interesting information because you can never tell how it might be useful in creating a connection with your activities.

Succession Expectations

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The cultivation of young, emerging arts leaders is a topic of growing importance these days. Two weeks ago, Andrew Taylor quoted as speech by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation in which Cameron noted

“….expectations from young people around higher compensation, shorter hours, in essence less patience for the sacrificed lives of dignity and the financial masochism that were the givens for so many in my own generation — this conversation brought to my ears, at least, a new strand: the unwillingness of emerging leaders to be mere custodians of organizations they inherit.

“There are plenty of us eager to give ourselves to the arts.” they said, “But unless we are given the same authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as you yourselves were given, we are not interested.”

The current issue of Inside Arts magazine addresses the same topic. (free registration required) The article, Leading into the Future, starts out talking about a young woman who becomes involved with an arts organization, ends up working 90 hour weeks and finally quits and starts working for a finance firm because the pay and opportunities to pursue her musical interests are much better. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending as the woman ends up working for the Future of Music Coalition.

The general theme of the piece is that arts organizations need to recognize what the interests and goals of young people in the arts are. While the arts can’t offer good pay, the industry can provide people with a means of expressing themselves. Only, they need to be allowed the time to do so.

The article quotes Andrew Taylor in his role as head of the Arts Management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have an astounding resource in terms of the value and power of the work, but we’ve created rigid structures that are not the kind of places young people want to work. My students are passionate, skilled and trained, but when they get into a place with an apprentice mindset, and they don’t get meaningful work for the first three to five years, it’s a waste on both sides.”

and later is quoted as saying

“Some experienced leaders say there aren’t people ready to step up, but that’s because they don’t see people exactly like them,” Taylor said. “The perception is that the younger generation is not as committed . . . [but] there are young people all over the place who are passionate and ready to lead.”

This is definitely an area to keep an eye on. As arts leadership approach retirement age, succession issues are going to come to the fore. Questions will emerge about not only who will take over but how these new leaders expect their organizations to operate in relation to employees.

Investing In Partner Success

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I am not a big Oprah fan but I heard a story last week on All Things Considered that really impressed me as to how invested her show is in the success of their partners. The story focuses on a small company with 6 employees whose soaps were chosen to be given away on air as part of Oprah’s Favorite Things.

One of the things the Oprah people did was send the company technical details for their web server to make sure their website didn’t go down from all the visits they were likely to get. Apparently Oprah’s website gets near 4 million hits alone when she does her favorite things shows. It just strikes me that the show could easily regard the show as throwing favor to the small company and let them fend as best they can. Some of the other favorite things were made by corporations like Samsung, Hasbro, United Artists and LG electronics who have to resources to maintain websites and fulfill orders and are more likely to be partners in the future.

Even though arts organizations feel like they are the ones seeking/begging favor, there are plenty of times when arts organizations have the opportunity to make a partner’s experience more enjoyable. It might be the quality of advance materials for a school outreach or giving a sponsor a high quality of care even though they aren’t one of your bigger donors.

What’s A Turkey?

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A little audience participation activity in the spirit of the season—

I was looking up the story behind terming a Broadway flop a turkey and discovered I can’t find anything definitive. The story I had originally heard was that any show that couldn’t sustain itself past the holiday season was termed a turkey. Good for consumption only during the holiday season I suppose.

Searching the internet, I came up with this quiz about turkeys in general which claims the term originates “After a show called “Cage Me a Turkey” that was so bad it closed before intermission on opening night.”

That story frankly doesn’t ring true for me.

I found another explanation on a listserv archivepost by Gerald Cohen that literally employed a turkey or the egg argument that doesn’t solve the mystery.

“Theatrical _turkey_ is traceable to burlesque theatre, but here a problem arises: we find reference both to _turkey shows_ and _turkey troupes_. Which one came first? Were the turkey shows so called because they were performed by turkey troupes? Or were the turkey troupes so called because they performed turkey shows? And whichever came first, why was _turkey_ used?”

Cohen later gives the best explanation I have found.

“In the mid-1920s _turkey (show)_ was extended from a strictly burlesque context to the legitimate theatre — a development apparently due to an unusual streak of bad quality that hit the legitimate theatre in Syracuse at that time. The road shows were derided in Syracuse as ‘turkeys,’ with clear reference to the itinerant (fly-by-night, grossly incompetent) turkey troupes of burlesque vintage. From Syracuse the extended use of _turkey_ ‘third rate production (in the legitimate theatre too)’ spread to New YorkCity and hence into standard slang.”

But that is merely the best explanation in terms of best research. I am interested in hearing what other stories are out there to back up the use of the turkey label. If you a story, I wanna hear it, so tell it in the comments section.

Prepare to Lose Your Shirt

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So the stagehands strike on Broadway is going so poorly, the producers canceled the entire next week of shows because they don’t believe there will be a resolution any time soon. I read somewhere that the folks who own and manage the theatres had been building up a war chest for a number of years so they could weather the next big strike.

Unfortunately, none of that hoarded money will go toward paying off the investors in the shows that have shut down. As far as they are concerned, everything is going to hell.

But investing in Broadway shows has always been a risky proposition. The expectation is that you will lose all your money and it is a shock when you actually see some return whereas most investments operate on the opposite assumption. The only thing you are generally guaranteed as an investor are tickets to opening night and an invitation to the opening night party. (Unless things go south before the show opens.)

If you have ever wondered about the mechanics of investing in a Broadway show, the Franklin Weinrib Rudell & Vassallo law firm website has an article on the subject. While the law doesn’t protect you from losing your shirt, it does limit losing ones shirt to those who won’t be left destitute by the loss. New York State has very stringent laws regulating investments in Broadway shows. If the total investment being solicited is in excess of $5 million, which most are these days, the show is subject to Federal Securities law. Since compliance with NY State laws can be very expensive due to all the legal fees involved, it is preferable to be subject to the Federal statutes.

Even if the total investment sought is under $5 million, a production can avoid being subject to the stringent NY State laws if “potential investors must be furnished with a thorough disclosure document (unless all the investors are accredited, in which event no particular type of information is stipulated); and there may be no more than 35 unaccredited investors, all of whom must demonstrate that alone, or together with a purchaser representative, they have the financial knowledge and experience necessary to evaluate the merits and risks of the offering.”

An accredited investor is “defined as an individual with a net worth in excess of $1 million, or who, in each of the last two years, has earned income in excess of $200,000 per year (or $300,000 with spouse), with a reasonable expectation of reaching that amount in the current year.”

Investing in Broadway shows is not for the risk averse or financially insolvent. The article discusses many of the financing structures that are used when investing in productions. The more money one brings to the table, the better deal one can negotiate–including a percentage of the producers profits above the normal investor’s cut. So if you are interested in the intricacies of funding a Broadway show, give the piece a read.

Sport Isn’t Art

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Today on NPR, commentator Frank Deford talked about the flak he got from listeners for a story he did a few weeks ago about Princeton Athletic Director, Gary Walters, belief that sports should be viewed with the same prestige as the arts.

What was interesting to me was that in his original piece a few weeks ago, Deford spoke of college sports in terms like “…dismissed as something lesser — even something rather more vulgar…”, “Its corruption in college diminishes it so and makes it all seem so grubby.” The title of the piece online even compares sports to Rodney Dangerfield.

He puts forth Walters’ argument that “Is it time, for the educational-athletic experience on our playing fields be accorded the same … academic respect as the arts?” and “Athletic competition nourishes our collective souls and contributes to the holistic education of the total person in the same manner as the arts.”

He wonders if there isn’t a double standard in that “a young musician major in music, a young actor major in drama, but a young football player can’t major in football?”

However, in his piece today, sports don’t seem to have it so bad in colleges and universities. “I’m afraid the game is over. In our American academia, the arts must be satisfied with the leftovers,” Deford says. He goes on to quote John V. Lombardi, the president of the Louisiana State University System: ”

“Mega college athletics … prospers because for the most part we (our faculty, our staff, our alumni, our trustees) want it. We could easily change it, if most of us wanted to change it. All protestations to the contrary, we … do not want to change it.”

What sums the situation up for me is Deford’s line that “sports in our schools and colleges are not only ascendant, but greedier and more invulnerable than ever.” While it is true that his first piece is about academic prestige and the second is more about which programs get better funding and a comparison of the two is apples and oranges. It seems to me that athletics have prestige and funding and seeing that they lack only recognition as a worthy academic pursuit are greedy to acquire that as well.

I have never been terribly put out by the inequities in sports and arts funding in schools. I make grumbling noises about funding decisions that favor sports over arts and the hardwood flooring and office suites athletics officials have at my school. But after a few moments, I move on and don’t dwell upon it.

I am a bit concerned though that people would be thinking that an activity that has always been adjunct to the academic experience should be an academic experience. There are already too many exceptions made for athletes academically as it is. When a dance or theatre major is failing history or missing classes because they were in rehearsal the night before, their academic career is in jeopardy. Not so with the college athlete.

Now people want to give them academic credit for playing sports? In the context of all the scandals that have emerged, how can a degree based on sports credits be viewed as credible? How can a big sports university that grants the degree maintain its credibility even? If anything, I would agree with the argument that often comes up that schools should drop the pretext that the students aren’t there primarily to perform athletically rather than academically. Better to emulate the G.I. Bill and guarantee them an education at the end of 4 years of service.

I will admit that art and sport are joined in so many discussions that in some respects their existence seems intertwined like two planetary bodies orbiting each other. In terms of aspects of each that qualify as academic pursuits, they are quite different. While there are some like Tony Kushner who believe that undergraduate art majors should be abolished, there are elements to arts training which are more dependent upon instruction in other subjects than athletics are. An artist’s understanding of their craft is enhanced far more by studying literature, history, physics, language, material sciences than for an athlete. That is, in fact, what Kushner suggests an artist study as an undergrad rather than majoring in the arts. At no time does he feel the arts are not worthy of academic study.

Which is not to say that arts majors are taking advantage of these opportunities to the extent they should any more than the athletes are. It would be great if artists were feted and recruited in the manner athletes are, but that isn’t the world we live in. Perhaps athletes should be renumerated in accordance with the financial benefit their performance has for their school, but those activities should not be equated with academic achievement.

Philanthropy Clearinghouses

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Back at the end of September a large meeting of people in the philanthropy world was held sponsored by Union Square Ventures which was recorded on their blog under the title Hacking Philanthropy. They posted the transcript of the meeting but given that there were about 40 people at this all day session, it is mighty long. Even after reformatting it so I could read and reference it a bit better, I haven’t had the time to tackle it.

One of the principals at Union Square Ventures posted his reflections on the meeting last month. One of the interesting things he observed was is that the relationship between individual donors and recipients.

“Historically, philanthropy has been dominated by organizations that gather funds from donors based on mission statement and a prior track record and then distribute those funds to those in need. Once the check was written, the donor’s work was done….

Recently we have seen the emergence of a new type of charity, one that radically changes the relationship between donors and recipients. Nonprofits like DonorsChoose and Kiva behave more like marketplaces than traditional charities. This new model allows people in need to post a request for a gift or a loan to the site, and donors to chose which of those needs they would like to fund….

….But information technology also makes it possible to have a much more immediate relationship with the person in need. The appeals to sponsor a child have always had a deep emotional resonance, but it was not possible to put every child’s picture in an ad in the NY Times magazine. Today, it is possible to host hundreds of thousands of pictures and stories on the web and to provide tools to for donors to quickly find the appeals that speak most directly to them.

Organizations like Kiva and DonorsChoose vet the recipients and certify there is no fraud involved and groups tools to promote their needs. DonorsChoose focuses on helping schools sends disposable cameras to teachers so they can document the good the donations are doing then passes the pictures and handwritten letters from students on to donors.

The next 10 years may see a growth in this model of fundraising. The core of an arts organization’s annual campaign may be focused on maintaining the organizational profile on donation clearinghouses rather than direct (e-) mailings and phone banks. It would be interesting to see if larger foundations farm out fraud monitoring activities to companies like Kiva and DonorsChoose as these latter entities grow their proficiencies in this area.

I hope to post my thoughts on the full transcript of the meeting some time soon. The stout of heart might want to take a look themselves.

New Haircut

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So, we have a new look here at Butts in the Seats. Things are still under construction as I work to figure out how to use this new version of Movable Type. My main motivation for upgrading was that I was getting nearly 1000 spam comments a day and I heard MT 4 had better spam filters.

Well, I haven’t gotten any yet.

I was also thinking it was about time that I upgraded the look to take advantage of new features blogging software have these days.

I will be poking around improving the look over time. Today is my only day off until Thanksgiving so some of the changes will be slow in coming.

On the positive side, you can make your visits to the site a game and try to discover what changes I have made each day!

Act Locally for Local Actors

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Over at Theatre Ideas, Scott Walters reposted a column he wrote for his local paper in Asheville, NC against the proposed construction of a performing arts center. Even though he is a theatre person and is generally not against government spending money on the arts, he felt that the construction was oriented too much toward bringing in Broadway shows and did little to help the local artists.

“Unlike other creatively vibrant local and regional arts organizations like, for instance, Handmade in America, the Southern Highlands Craft Guild and venues like Woolworth Walk, the proposed PAC is not focused on supporting local artists, but relies on touring shows to fill the 2,400-seat auditorium at its center.”

In the blog entry that encompasses the text of his article, he discusses his feeling that the construction of the PAC is motivated by a desire to keep up with the Joneses by erecting a complex as grand as every other municipality rather than one that reflects the character and needs of the community.

“We are outsourcing our artistic life, and it is time for it to stop. There is no reason that local taxes should be used to import culture. If housing touring shows was the way to become an arts destination, Greenville-Spartanburg would be the NYC of the southeast. People come to a town because they can get something there that they can’t get elsewhere. Nobody visits a town in order to hit the local multiplex, which is what this PAC resembles.”

He suggests that the construction money be used to renovate an existing area into performances spaces that are appropriate for use by local musicians, theatre and dance groups and provides a communal gathering place.

My personal feeling is that arts spaces that are part of the daily life of a community or city (i.e galleries, band shells, cafes that can be part of a lunch hour as well as an evening out) are far more preferable than a grand facility with a more remote identity in communal life.

I must admit that in the last 5-10 years I have been a little uneasy about the construction of large performing arts centers because it does appear as if they are considered key to the prestige of city. It seems to me that the time when such structures are relevant is nearing its end and they will prove albatrosses for many cities. Unless such a facility is going to support a city’s convention and conference business, I would generally be wary about their construction.

I agree with Walters that cities should be looking to support their local arts entities before thinking to woo Broadway tours. That is even before addressing concerns like spending tax dollars to import talent over their tax paying local talent.

This may sound a little inconsistent coming from a guy who receivesWa funding from his state arts council to import talent. I have been working to identify and include an increasing number of local performers in my season, though. I am often importing artists who are esteemed in their region and I am talking up the folks from my state in other places.

Walters is right that people don’t visit places for their large PACs. Every time I visit my friends across the country we are going to the cool venues downtown, the band shells, the natural ampitheatres in the park. These are the local features they are proud of and want to show off, because they reflect the character of the community–something the big performance halls can’t really do.

It is these types of places that will attract the creative class everybody is looking for to enhance their cities. These folks need places to express their creativity. If the city is cultivating large venues over their local creatives, they are going to gravitate to towns where local talent is valued.

Bad Habits of Bad Managers

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There is a column on the Fast Company website, Ten Habits of Incompetent Managers that makes for an interesting read.

Some of the habits author Margaret Heffernan mentions are pretty common sense- afraid to make a mistake, keeping too many problems secret from employees, afraid confronting a problem will hurt people’s feelings, focus on picayune details to hide general incompetence, heavy use of consultants and problem with deadlines.

There was one habit that never occurred to me and another that I wasn’t sure could be true for the arts. The habit that never entered my mind was Inability to Hire Former Employees. “Every good manager has alumni, eager to join the team again; if they don’t, smell a rat.” Heffernan believes if a person has spent a long time in the industry but hasn’t mentored people who are interested in working for them when they move on, it might be time to be concerned.

There are some areas of the arts where following someone isn’t practical, of course. But this criteria can provide a metric for some positions.

The bad habit I am not sure could be applied to the arts is Long hours. Says Heffernan-

“In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you’d better not let him manage anyone else.”

Managers in the arts work long hours because the hours are often long and there is a lot of work to be done and few people to do it. I will concede, however, that a lot of arts people see working long hours as heroic. I have conflicting thoughts about this. Since I have engaged in long hours in the name of art, I acknowledge that putting in the hours is a necessary part of the job.

I also feel that those who work long hours over an extended period of time, perhaps secretly thriving on their martyrdom, they are masking serious deficiencies in an organization. If it is not clear that the work load is beyond the organizational capacity, changes to procedures can not be effected, staffing needs aren’t addressed and additional programs are created in the belief there is a little wiggle room. It isn’t until people leave or collapse in exhaustion that the extent of the problem is realized.

Creative Arts Solve Problems

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This weekend we had some pretty heavy rains which revealed leaks in places we didn’t know we had them. And I am not using literary license when I say that. Two years ago we had 6 weeks of rain and there weren’t leaks anywhere near where it was cascading down the walls yesterday.

As a result, I spent the day repositioning fans to blow the carpet dry. However, before I left this evening I had to unplug many of them and return them backstage because they were being used for our production of the Odyssey opening this weekend. Not a few people remarked how fortuitous it was that the production design required us to buy fans to replicate the winds in the story.

One of the things I like about working in a creative setting is that one has requisite tools for said creation at one’s disposal for other purposes. You are able to respond better to problems when they tend to crop up. For example, we don’t need to put in work orders to replace light bulbs because we have ladders and genie lifts. We can rewire broken lighting fixtures, solder wires back together and test for circuit continuity. We can tighten what is loose and patch what is leaking.

Well, up to a point anyway. This weekend, all my staff could do was mop up what was leaking. Our theory is that a cast iron drain pipe has cracked in a place we can’t get to.

Of course, some times self sufficiency can be a curse as well. Since our facilities are used after normal work hours, we have the janitorial department provide us with extra stock for the restrooms in case we run out in the middle of a performance. Since the cast and crew often use the building directly behind us, we often end up restocking the restrooms there as well. Heck, about 8-10 years ago, I learned how to stop a urinals and toilets from constantly flushing and return them to service. I have been fixing the problem ever since saving lots of water. Some member of the custodial staff is getting off easy during our show runs!

Given that I have had to master a wide variety of financial, desktop publishing, database, image manipulation and word processing software in the course of my job, I figure I have picked up a goodly amount of skills in my life.

Last week I suggested that being in the arts hadn’t really helped out my math scores as much as the arts education advocacy ads suggest. I can’t deny that being involved with the arts has provided me with self confidence, self-reliance and the ability manipulate the world and address the challenges I encounter both physically and virtually.

Has participation in the creative arts prepared me for life in ways that other academic subjects, television, movies and video games never can?

You betcha.

Will it do the same for your kids? Like everything else, it depends on how long they are involved and how thoroughly they embrace it. The current stage craft class at my theatre has involved themselves with a gusto and in numbers I have never seen and the professor has rarely seen. If I knew what it was that was motivating this group, I would bottle it.

I know they are growing in knowledge and skill from the experience because they are coming in when there is no class and using what they have learned to create projects for other class—far in advance of deadlines! (Honestly, I think they are pod people or something, they are so atypical of the usual students in this class.)

So yes, working in the arts might be a thankless job with long hours, little pay and low prestige. It may not make the most convincing ad copy for the arts in education people, but I have always prized my experience in the arts for the self-reliance having such a wide variety of tools at ones disposal affords you.

I Know What You Said Last Summer!

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There are those who feel Google has the potential of becoming Big Brother for all the information it collects and stores. However, Google will deliver some of its information horde to you without requiring you to create an account.

One of these services is Google Alerts. If you have any interest at all in what is being said about you or your organization on the Internet, this is the service to have. Every time one of their little indexing bots comes across a mention of the terms you specify, you receive an email with a link to that instance.

I do suggest encapsulating your search terms in quotes to keep your results as specific to your organization as possible. You can enter a number of different term groupings at once. For example, I have seen my blog referred to as Butts In Seats so I have specified those words along with Butts in the Seats for my search.

As an experiment, back in August I entered a request for alerts on search terms for my theatre. Some of the initial results that came back were for our webpages and old newspaper articles on past shows. In recent weeks I have been beginning to get links for newspaper stories on our current season.

The interesting thing I have learned is that the major newspapers have been printing up stories about my events in the neighborhood specific inserts that come out about 10 days before the performances. The listings are only appearing in the inserts specific to the neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of my building so I don’t actually see the listings in the paper I get at home.

I had an inkling that this had been happening because we occasionally get calls from people who say they have seen something in the newspaper a week before our ads or the feature stories appear. There have been times we have chalked it up to people saving the Fall/Spring Arts pull outs, but now we know that could be an erroneous assumption.

This knowledge does help me make decisions about the timing of my ad placement and underscores the need to get good pictures out early. It has also shown me the value of learning to write well since my press release appeared verbatim in the neighborhood editions this week. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me so I have become a big believer in making it easy for the papers to cover your event by providing an interesting release ready to be dropped in.

Possibly the greater value of Google Alerts is that they trawl through blog entries as well. If a newspaper doesn’t like your work, their bad review will by and large be civil. Not so with blogs. The alerts help you keep an eye on conversations occurring away from the mainstream media.

If someone is saying nice stuff about you, you may decide to cultivate them and link to their work to show you are friendly with bloggers. If people are complaining about their experience, you can look into addressing the problem. If they are eviscerating you out of pure malice, you can at least monitor what is being said. (Unless you can figure out how to address the situation without exacerbating it.)

“People Gonna Talk” as the song says. You might as well know what they are saying.

So Would I Be Buttsintheseats.ArenaStage.org?

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Chad Baumann, new Director of Marketing and Communications at Arena Stage has an interesting situation. In his blog, he notes that the Arena Stage will be closing down for the next two and a half years to construct a new $125 million theatre complex.

During that time, the organization will perform at two separate spaces in Virgina! Chad’s problem is that for the last 50 years, people have been attending performances in Washington, DC and are now faced with crossing the Potomac, a much bigger psychic obstacle than physical one.

Chad understands that if he doesn’t make the river crossing as painless as possible for the quarter million people who attend every year, he may lose a significant portion of them. He is working on getting signs erected along the route but is also creating personalized webpages for all subscribers and ticket buyers. Chad describes them as an electronic direct mail piece and says the ones they will create will contain “step by step directions from their house to the new theatre, a seating diagram showing them the location of their new seats, promotional offers from local restaurants, and an opportunity to sign up for our e-newsletter.”

Reading about Personalized URLs, it doesn’t seem to be as difficult to pull off as it first sounds. It does involve an investment of money and staff time, as one might imagine.

It will be interesting to see how successful the campaign is. I am reminded of the Museum of Modern Art’s move to Queens when they renovating and how important public relations and image were to that transition.

I would also be interested to see if Arena Stage picks up more people than they lose from Virginians who didn’t attend because they didn’t want to cross the Potomac.

Add Arts For Instant SAT Score? Bah!

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As much as I love to see the arts kept in K-12 education, I am often a little skeptical about how effective arts exposure is to improving math scores, etc. Cause frankly, I had a fair bit of arts exposure and I got awful math grades. Some of my doubts come partially as a backlash to the make your baby an Einstein by playing Mozart while they are in the womb movement.

I think the thing that turns me off about the Mozart genius babies is that uses the music prescriptively rather than encouraging trying to comprehend music and learn about Mozart. The whole K-12 has always seemed similar in that it implies you just add arts for quick instant SAT scores.

I had a couple entries about six months ago on the statistical correlations between arts experiences in youth and attendance as an adult so I won’t get in to any of that again. (Again noting, I was never good in math.)

But perhaps I protest too much about being bad in math. I have to concede my comprehension did come later in life. I still can’t do calculus, but I do see the relationships I didn’t before. And my claims of doing poorly in math are not entirely true. As a junior in high school, I was flabbergasted to learn I had gotten an A on the state regents’ math exam. This was mostly due to the fact the exam was heavy with logic problems which have a strong verbal component.

My verbal skills haven’t been overly lacking and I could probably credit the arts for cultivating those skills in part. So technically, the arts probably did help me with my math scores, at least for one year.

As the Boston Globe article on the value of arts education I posted on mentioned, there are all sorts of ancillary benefits to the development of a person. I believe that being in school plays in elementary and high school helped develop my confidence and gain me a modicum of respect among peers outside my general circle of friends.

And while I haven’t made my million and probably never will, I have done well enough in the arts that I could walk proudly into my class reunion next month. (Unfortunately, I can’t make it 🙁 )

What we need are ads soliciting support of the arts in school that tout the benefits as more than a recipe for better grades. There are other arguments that people can identify more closely with than grades. Granted, that is the focus of schools and if you want arts in schools, the grade improvement has to be there. But parents are also looking for schools to make their kids better people. History and science lectures aren’t going to be able to accomplish that as well as hands-on creative activities.

The best way to make the appeal for arts in schools might not be the most obvious. I had read somewhere recently that most anti-drug ads have failed to lead to a drop in drug use until the current campaign showing kids just lethargically sitting around doing nothing and having no impact on the world. Whether the impact will be long lived or if the drop in use is just coincidental, I don’t know.

The ads that had run prior to the campaign showing people getting in dangerous situations leading to death and injury met with the approval of older folks who tended to value safety in their lives. The concept of danger actually appealed to kids who tend to believe themselves immortal and they went out and tried drugs. These new ads make older folks uneasy because they explicitly say, I tried drugs and nobody died implying drugs aren’t dangerous. But apparently kids see the users portrayed as not being the life of the party and are having second thoughts.

My point is, the most convincing argument for arts education in schools might not be the most obvious one or the one people are most comfortable with. The best argument might end up promoting the value of non-arts activities too.

Let the Hive Thwart The Spiders

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As you may or may not be aware, companies send out all sorts of little spiderbots across the web to collect information. Some like Google have their spiders looking for content they can index for their searches.

Others use the spiders to collect email addresses so they can send some lovely spam your way. There is a little trick you can use to make email addresses on web pages invisible to these little spiders.

Encoders like Hivelogic: Enkoder will turn your email address into javascript code that people can read but the spider’s can’t. If you look in the right hand column of my home page, the Contact The Writer link was created using Hivelogic’s Enkoder.

The javascript the enkoder generated version of my email address looks something like this-

{var kode=
“kode=”nrgh@%rnhg_%@@{ghnr,
00+fghFrduFkrpiuj1lqwu@V {.;>45.@,f?3+fli6>,0″+
“+lDwghFrdufkh1rg@n~f.,l.k>jwhq1oghnrl?3>l@u+ir*>@*> {_%__C~jkqu33__3/__.ijk”+
“IugxInuslxm4otzxCY~1>A781C/
iB6.iol9A/3.oGzjkIugxink4ujCq01i1/o1nAmzkt4r”+
“jkquoB6AoCx.lu-AC-A~01(nFxm6t662b1lmnLxj {Lqxvo{p7rw}{F\\014AD:;4F2″+
“lE91lrogr@hrnhgv1oswl*+,*u1yh”+
“uhhv,+m1lr+q**,%>{@**>iru+l@3>
l?+nrgh1ohqjwk04,>l.@5,~ {.@nrgh1fkduDw+l.4,.”+
“nrgh1fkduDw+l,00nrgh@ {.+l?nrgh1ohqjwkBnrgh1fkduDw+nrgh1ohqjwk04,=**,>””+
“;x=”;for(i=0;i<kode.length;i++) {c=kode.charCodeAt(i)-3;if(c<0)c+=128;x+=S"+
"tring.fromCharCode(c)}kode=x";var i,c,x;while(eval(kode));}

Which is why you have to cut and paste the what it generates into your webpage. As the Hivelogic page says, the only way to be completely safe is to avoid publishing your email address on the web at all. As a place of business, you want your patrons and donors to be able to easily discover how to reach you so omitting your email contact information may be an impediment to developing a relationship with valuable constituencies.

Encoders like this one can help cut down on the junk mail while making email addresses generally available.

Funding Research Gets A Little Easier

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The ability for non-profits to research the types of projects foundations are supporting just got a little easier recently. NOZA, Inc. which maintains the largest database of charitable gifts recently made their foundation records available for free. Data on individual donors does cost a little extra. However, even with the abbreviated version there is enough information to decide if you want to view the full record. Having credits while viewing the free content has an added benefit of providing a link directly to the foundation webpage from NOZA’s site.

During your search, you can select those who gave in a certain giving range; what the nature of the gift was (annual, scholarship, in-kind, endowment, bequest), where the recipient is located, what their service area is and what services they offer. If you want to know more, you can view the full record.

The pricing looks fairly reasonable. $25 allows you to view up to 200 full records and the price per record drops as you buy more viewing credits-$250 gets you 4,175 views.

I am occasionally surprised to learn some foundations support the programs at certain organizations because their programs don’t seem to jibe with the areas foundations express an interest in funding. Websites like NOZA’s reveal not only who is supporting programs like yours but also what a foundation’s true interests might be.

What Does Your Bookseller Say About You

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A couple weeks ago I came across a webpage where an author was encouraging people to buy his book and had links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powells. Since following any link would allow you to buy the same product, I started to wonder if choosing to buy from a certain bookseller was a personal statement.

While an author would want to offer people the most options to purchase their book, it is clearly not in his/her best interest to link to Amazon because they won’t receive any money on sales of the large stock of used editions Amazon makes available.

I have read some screeds on the internet about why one store is more evil than another but I haven’t read enough to justify a theory that people feel like they are making a statement when they buy from a certain bookstore.

When you shop in Tiffany’s or carry an iconic blue bag, people can see you and be impressed. What you are reading might say something about you, but if you buy a book online, unless you are carrying the box it came in around with you, the source of the book you are reading on the bus is invisible. As the purchasers, you know where it came from and perhaps you derive pleasure from your association with the place of purchase.

I don’t think there is a question that people are motivated to do things by factors that will never receive external recognition. I have recently been pondering if there is a way arts organizations can structure the choices they offer people in a way that allows them to make a personal statement even though the ultimate result is no different from the person standing next to them.

For awhile credit card companies were emphasizing choice of card art, payment date and rewards plan as an individual decision. Other than the art, no one at the cash register had any inkling about what choices you had made unless you started tallying aloud how many frequent flier miles you were racking up.

The obvious choice for arts organizations might be donation options which benefit really specific areas with which the donor might identify and privately recognize. No one else in the audience may know or care, but that Fresnel on the first electric is there because of you baby!

In many ways, this is too easy and probably ignores other opportunities. It has also been done to death in many other forms like adopt a seat and cobblestone campaigns. It is hard to imagine other options because it is difficult to know what secretly motivates our patrons’ choices and the Internet allows them even more privacy by circumventing the Tiffany’s building and bags altogether.

It wouldn’t surprise me if organizations started to tap into some obvious sources of personal statements and advertise that building renovations had earned some form of LEED certification in order to attract environmentally conscious individuals.

Eventually, that will become trite so the trick is to identify motivators with a similarly powerful appeal that aren’t quite so obvious that might be sincerely embraced. With all the arts organizations that create new programs just to get grant funding, the last thing groups need to do is replicate this mistake by hitching to a trend that isn’t compatible with their mission.

Where There Is Smoke, There is Funding

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There was a cartoon I read as a child, in MAD magazine I think, that stated Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and then used the profits to reward people who refused to use it. Not a good business model, that’s for sure.

What made me think of this wasn’t the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize but recent news that complemented my entries about arts support from less than politically correct sources. (Though as a popularly elected official, Gov. Huckabee is obviously politically correct for a lot of people.)

Nobel apparently had pacifist leanings and believed that people would be so horrified by the explosive power of dynamite, war would be impossible. That didn’t stop a French newspaper, upon mistaking his brother’s death for his, from exclaiming “the merchant of death is dead.”

The recent news that Altria (nee Philip Morris) would be leaving NYC heralding the end to the grant support they provided to the arts community and the closure of a branch site of the Whitney Museum.

Whether you approve of Altria or not, this is certainly a blow to many organizations in NYC which depended on the money. I don’t know what this means for the arts organizations that they support nationally. I know of a number of companies located outside of NYC who receive funding from Altria.

There were some details to the controversy over arts organizations accepting money from a tobacco company that the NY Times covered of which I wasn’t aware. There are apparently people who won’t go to see performances by companies who accept Altria funding. It makes sense that there would be since there are artists who won’t perform in places that accept the support of certain companies. I had just never come across an arts patron who boycotted a performance group.

I have to admit, I have always been suspicious of Altria’s arts philanthropy because the preponderance of their support seems to go to dance companies. As a group, dancers tend to be biggest consumer of cigarettes among performing artists due to their appetite suppressing properties which help them stay thin.

I have to also acknowledge that even though I don’t receive six or seven figure donations at my organization (and fewer five figure ones than I would like!), the source of some of those funds may conflict with my social/political/business leanings. When you put out an appeal for funding, it is difficult to control who will respond to your call. When you have knowledge of the original source of the money, the decision to accept can require a lot of soul searching.

I wonder with corporate support waning as companies and banks move or merge, will arts organizations faced with this reality have an easier time accepting or rejecting funding knowing that longevity of support is no longer assured.

Scoobie Doobie Drew (McManus), Where Are You?

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I have some irons in the fire but nothing has developed. I did want to note the inexplicable absence of Adaptistration from the ArtsJournal.com.

I am not a big symphony fan, but I do respect Drew’s writing and check him out every weekday morning. I was surprised to find the link to his blog gone today and upon typing in the blog’s URL, find myself redirected to Adaptistration’s new home at www.adaptistration.com.

I have dutifully changed the links on my home page. The links from my posts to Drew’s entries on Artsjournal.com are still active but I don’t know for how long.

In the absence of any post on either Artsjournal or the new Adaptistration regarding the change, my musing on the subject have run from the mostly benign scenario where Drew wants more control over the appearance of his blog. A more disturbing scenario has occurred to me where his assessments of orchestra websites and reporting on negotiations and revelations of other details have been welcome by many and they in turn have put pressure on Artsjournal editor Doug McLennan to reign Drew in.

The concept of the latter option has such chilling implications, I tend toward the former. Hopefully Drew will offer an explanation soon.

It bears noting that in the internet age, it can be important to get ahead of things by providing information about changes lest unfounded rumors start to emerge from idle speculations such as those offered above.

Yes, you can damn me for inconsistency by simultaneous noting this fact and posting idle speculation. But please note that most people don’t provide a disclaimer that allows you to damn them for inconsistency.

Arts As Background Noise–It Can Be A Good Thing

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In the comments to my recent post on Gov. Mike Huckabee, Fractured Atlas Executive Director, Adam Huttler, pointed out that some groups like the NRA supported candidates on the single issue of gun ownership. Acknowledging that it was damned effective, albeit narrow minded, he asked,

Imagine a candidate who will quadruple public funding for the arts and ensure that every arts organization in the country never has to beg for its budget again. Now imagine that he’s also pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and anti-gay. Can you imagine anyone from our community supporting him?

The first, admittedly crass, thought that came to mind was that it would be akin to supporting a head of state because of an anti-communist stance despite his record of rapacious greed, corruption and human rights atrocities.

The musing that followed were, by their very nature more considered responses to the question. Still the basic idea that any cause is not well served by supporting someone who embraces ideals that are repugnant to their core beliefs remained.

That said, while I think many in the arts hold strong opinions about right to choose, gun control and the death penalty, I don’t think they are defining characteristics of the arts community. If a politician stepped forward who was going fund the hell out of the arts, infuse the educational process with it and espoused pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty sentiments but held favorable views on other important issues like the environment and social services, maybe the arts community would be advised to grin and bear it.

The anti-gay issue though does impact the core identity of the arts. Depending on how restrictive the views a candidate held were, the mass support of such a person could be disastrous for the arts. In my own organization alone which is pretty small, we would probably lose about 15-20 people upon whose goodwill and assistance we regularly depend.

That is just the people who are homosexuals. The amount of support we would lose from their sympathetic friends and family of any sexual inclination should we support a candidate espousing restrictive policies would be immeasurable. Presenting shows that have traditionally raised a furor in communities like Angels in America or Oh! Calcutta! wouldn’t lead to the ruin of my theatre as fast as if groups like Americans for the Arts, Actor’s Equity and DanceUSA, among others, banded together to urge the support of someone who reproached the gay community.

Using the NRA as an example of what the arts should do is not quite valid. For one thing, the NRA doesn’t typically ask for funding. In fact, they often encourage the government not to spend tax dollars on programs that might impact their members like information tracking. Politicians are happy to support people who give them a lot of money and don’t ask for any to be spent in return.

I do think Huttler’s comparison is apt in one respect, expression of passion. I don’t think that arts people are active enough in advocating for funding and assume others will do it in their place.

But even more importantly, arts people don’t talk about their passion publicly the way members of the NRA do. You walk into store to get coffee, sit in a diner, go to a wedding or graduation and you might hear someone talking about how the government is infringing on the right to bear arms. A tension might infuse the atmosphere and a debate might erupt, but everyone standing around is already familiar with the views of the NRA even if they aren’t members of the organization because the conversation is public and widespread.

Can the same be said of the NEA? How many people outside of the arts world know Dana Gioia is the chairman? Actually, how many audience members and gallery/museum attendees who nominally support the arts know who Dana Gioia is? People may not know Wayne LaPierre is the current CEO of the NRA and that John C. Sigler is the president, but can probably identify Charlton Heston as a primary spokesperson, if not past president.

While the argument for arts funding doesn’t have a basis as a constitutional right, the opportunities for spreading a positive narrative are expansive. It can be as simple as talking about the joys of teaching kids to fire pottery while waiting in line at Starbucks.

Better still is taking advantage of opportunities to have other people talk about how great the arts are. While sitting at a table at a wedding reception, ask where people are from and then about the arts life in that city. With any luck, you can ask leading questions to get them to talk about how much they have enjoyed different experiences and they will leave the wedding with a warm fuzzy feeling about the arts.

If you aren’t so lucky, the conversation might be why they don’t like to attend. Leading the conversation in a positive direction might take more skill and humility. If one were a visual artist and people were dead set against that discipline because they didn’t understand modern art, ignoring the urge to lecture about Jackson Pollack to pursue a path of less resistance in a stated interest in music or powerful acting to nudge them toward trying a pops concert or play might be tough.

Engaging in informal public conversations about the arts can help the arts person cultivate the ability to speak persuasively among people who have a low level of comfort with the arts and discover what their barriers to participation might be.

The general public becomes more familiar and hopefully more positively inclined toward the arts as their understanding expands and the general subject enters their subconscious via background conversations.

The more I read and write on this topic, the more convinced I am that funding for the arts isn’t going to be achieved by mobilizing the base in times of crisis or even during legislative cycles but rather by taking a long view and making the arts part of the daily interactions. In order to convince people that arts are central to their lives, they must experience the arts centrally in their lives and not as an alternative to the mainstream practiced by perceived fringe groups.

What Do You Expect?

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A dance professor at my school is trying to revive a dance festival which has, for various reasons, not been produced the last four years. It is an invitational event that has included pieces from college, high school, community dance schools and professional companies. Essentially, groups have ten minutes to show off their best stuff and wow the audience.

As the professor was following up on the invitations, one of the group leaders told the professor he didn’t want to expose his students to our audiences whom he likened to football crowds. The professor was shaken so I followed up with the group leader to ascertain whether he was referring to all our audiences or just the audiences at this event and to discover if his comments were misinterpreted.

It turns out that they weren’t. He felt the audience, which is generally comprised of family and friends of the dancers, needed to be educated about how to behave. He admitted he didn’t know how that might be accomplished as lecturing folks before a performance on decorum would probably make people resentful.

I don’t know the history of dance enough to know if formal performances (as opposed to dancing at festivals and balls where attendees participated) were once as boisterous affairs as theatre and classical music performances apparently were. If there is a trend away from passively sitting and watching, will enthusiastic reactions become the norm in the near to mid future?

Arguments for quiet can be compelling in situations where physical harm may result from distractions. I was speaking to a teacher of middle and high school students who said that it took her school five years of explaining why loud reactions might result in people getting hurt.

Others have pointed out the obvious solution. If you know the audience is going to be boisterous months in advance, you plan a program that won’t imperil the dancers. Since no group has much more than 10-15 minutes to perform, it isn’t as if they would run out of safe material.

The festival format is less structured than the typical dance performance so some degree of informality is to be expected. Not to mention that in an attempt to fill the house, the dancers are strongly encouraged to promote the show and sell tickets so the audience is going to be family and friends virtually by default.

More importantly, there is no guarantee that students of any performance discipline will always be plying their craft in front of refined audiences. Exposure to a “misbehaving” group can be a valuable one. The festival audience may be loud, but they are supportive. There is no guarantee that this will always be the case, either.

The comment about the festival audiences stirred up some emotions and discussion about audience expectations, both what performers should reasonably expect from them and what they may be expecting of their relationship with the performers. I have a feeling the conversations are going to continue for the next couple days as the discussion spreads among colleagues in an attempt to sort thoughts and feelings.

All Purpose Solutions=No Reason To Support

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There was a very powerful illustration in Spike Online this week about why the arts industry should be careful about promoting benefits of artistic activity that don’t include artistic qualities.

Tiffany Jenkins notes that recently seven major arts entities in England teamed up on a proposal that stated funding the arts “will improve: ‘participation’, ‘self-esteem’ ‘community cohesion’, social regeneration’, ‘economic vitality’ and ‘health’.”

Also recently, Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated that the 2012 Olympics “will increase volunteering, create community cohesion and tackle obesity.” The Treasury has suggested the games will result in “urban regeneration, to economic prosperity.”

Says Jenkins (my emphasis)-

Hence culture and sport find themselves competing, not as discreet public goods or ends in their own right, but as interchangeable vehicles aiming to deliver on a set of identical priorities, which does neither of them any favours. Once the arts are viewed merely as a tool for delivering prescribed economic or social outcomes, there is no reason why the arts should be favoured.

A bit of background if you hadn’t been following the news- The arts community in England is quite upset because their funding got cut by

Selling You Everything, Including the Server That Processed Your Order

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It looks like Amazon has decided since they have gone to the trouble of putting together a sophisticated purchasing system to sell goods, they might as well make money giving people access to their system and computing capacity.

According to Non-profit Tech blog, Amazon’s offer of access to their Flexible Payment System can be a boon to non-profits. As a person who is familiar with these types of systems, Allan at Non-Profit Tech Blog clearly sees more possibilities than do I. I suspect that the opportunities I see are too grounded in what is already being done rather than what is possible.

The benefits I can immediately see are that the system they offer uses their already familiar interface. If a person has an account with Amazon, they can use the credit card on file to purchase from you.

Because of all the options and conditions you can impose upon sales, it appears as if it would be easy to create all sorts of discount packages based on innumerable combinations of things people ordered. Helpful for subscription ticket packages as well as museum gift shops.

From what I can tell it would be a great tool to use with donors who want to spread their donation out across many months because it allows you to automatically charge people on a regular basis.

The people I think it might be a real valuable tool for are central arts councils in rural or suburban areas that fundraise for member organizations who don’t have the resources to do their own development. The Amazon tool allows for the transfer of money from one person straight to a third party.

So a donor could visit the arts council website and have their donation go into Small Town Historical Society’s bank account. The arts council can choose to have a percentage removed to help pay the IT person who keeps the donor system running if they like.

If you have a savvy IT person on staff or on your board of directors, it might be worth having them look at the entry and Amazon’s page to determine what the other possibilities might be.

Unlikely Bedfellow

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Well it seems that Fractured Atlas isn’t just an information resource any more. Thanks to eagle eye folks at TheatreForte, I recently learned they have started a blog as well.

As you might imagine, they have entries on a number of interesting subjects. The one that caught my eye was a little quiz Adam Huttler ran about which presidential candidate was the source of quotes on the importance of arts education, including this one.

“I tend to think that one of the greatest mistakes in education over the past generation has been that many school districts have cut their budgets in music and art programs. And in doing so, they’ve done one of the dumbest things that could ever be done that really is harmful to students in this country.”

The answer to the little quiz was Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He made the comments before an audience at a Baptist University and based his sentiment partially on the idea that human’s reflect the creativity of the divine in who’s image they were shaped.

I was a little skeptical about his sincerity, especially when it appeared he had made the faux pas of endorsing a book he hadn’t read by encouraging his audience to read Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class. As Huttler notes, the book says that creativity thrives in communities where homosexuals can live openly.

But Gov. Huckabee seems fully invested in the idea. He has signed mandatory arts education into law and made arts education the theme of his term as chairman of the Education Commission of the States. In his address he says the country is failing it’s children by perpetuating a system that only emphasizes left brain learning.

Unfortunately, most of Gov. Huckabee’s other political views put him outside my consideration. This is just another example of how one should not categorize a person entirely by a label. While people holding liberal view are often more in sympathy with the arts, I have personally lived in a state where Republicans were resisting Democrat cuts to the arts during budget negotiations. Given that the arts groups were proving to be well organized that year and the Republicans may have seen an advantage in taking up their cause when normally they might not have.

Politics makes strange bedfellows they say.* Sometimes there is benefit in considering unfamiliar bedmates.

*Though Charles Dudley Warner said it first, adapted from Shakespeare’s Tempest..

Is That What My Funder Is Thinking?

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Earlier this month Albert at philanthropy blog, White Courtesy Telephone, did an entry on “Four Common Funder Misconceptions About Non-profits” and made a post along the same vein later in the month.

The entries offer an interesting, if not daunting, peek into the thought processes of funders. Albert encourages them to rethink their attitudes in terms of micromanaging non-profits, seeing their role as culling out the weak organizations, encouraging charities to merge and run themselves in a more business like manner.

Albert encourages funders to give applicants some slack when it comes to grading neatness.

“There’s a kind of mental trap that some grantmakers fall into. When we’re learning the ropes, we quickly realize there’s not enough money to go around for all the worthy applicants who approach us for funding…So we devise many little tests of nonprofit worthiness

What Would Your Answers Be?

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Last week I received a questionnaire from a Performing Arts Management student at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford. With her permission, I am reposting it here. It gives some insight into what up and coming leaders are thinking.

As a theatre/company manager…

What educational background is required/expected?

What kind of experience is required/expected?

Where are the jobs? Who does the hiring?

Will there be jobs in this field in 5 years? 15 years?

What are the “big names” in the field?

What personal characteristics are needed for success in this field?

I haven’t formulated my answers yet. I am a little wary about prognosticating on the whole idea of whether there will be jobs in 5 years or 15 years. My answer will certainly be longer than a yes or no.

The question that interested me most was regarding who the big names in the field are. Folks like Joe Dowling at the Guthrie and Libby Appel who just left Oregon Shakespeare come to mind. But it occurs to me that unlike other areas of the arts, there are no managers that I ever hear people say they want to emulate.

When a design from a big name designer comes in, I have heard tech directors and designers make impressed noises. When the names of noted directors, choreographers, musicians, actors and dancers are attached to a production, it lends a degree of gravitas. Artists and even theatre managers often express an interest in working with these talented people, but rarely, if ever, have I heard anyone say they wanted to work with a specific theatre manager. I have heard people voice strong desires to work at theatres, but can’t remember anyone say they wanted to absorb the wisdom of one of the administrative leaders.

My theory is that this is because a theatre manager is effective in relation to the community in which they operate. What they do well may not translate well to other places. Knowing this, other theatre managers don’t tend to idolize too many others. which is not to say they don’t envy another’s resources and budget.

Now one may claim that directors, performers and designers must tailor their approaches to different physical spaces, technical resources and personnel. However, these people are dealing with others who share a standard vocabulary. They can send emails and FEDEX packages in advance of their arrival and progress can be made without anyone even knowing what they look like.

A theatre manager can’t administer from afar and sight unseen based on inventory lists, census data and other transmitted information. They have to walk around the facility and physically assess assets and liabilities, they have to drive around town and get a sense of the community, they have to make personal contact with people.

Now my alternate theory is that given reports I have read noting that theatre managers rarely get a chance to review the latest literature on myriad topics related to running their organization, no buzz is being generated about management superstars.

One thing I have heard often which backs up my “good management is local” theory is people expressing admiration for managers at their organization or organizations in their area. It is these managers with whom people have regular contact that they wish to emulate.

My answer to the student’s question about big names will probably encompass a bit of what I have written here as well as the names of some management theorists with whom I believe managers should be familiar.

I present these questions here as a challenge to my blog readers to consider what your answers might be to this student. And if anyone has any thoughts, I would be happy to pass them along to her.

Work to Support Your Play or Work for the Joy of It?

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There must be something in the air because I keep finding interesting articles on employment. I am going to have to create a category specifically for the topic if this keeps up.

This time around it is a piece by Arthur C. Brooks in The American called “I Love My Work.” In it, Brooks talks about how important work is to providing meaning and direction in day to day living.

As I have noted before, the feeling that one’s work is meaningful, at least by ones own standards, is a powerful motivator.

“…people who think their work allows them to be productive are about five times more likely to be very satisfied with their jobs than people who do not feel they can be productive. And those who are proud to work for their employers are more than ten times as likely to be very satisfied with their jobs as those who are not proud.”

Brooks cites a survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago which showed that 89% of people who worked at least 10 hours a week were very to somewhat satisfied with their jobs. The percentages remained about the same whether people were in high income or low income jobs, whether they completed college or not and regardless of working in private, non-profit or government jobs.

And given an opportunity to be financially secure for life without having to work again, 69% of American adults would continue working in some capacity.

One of the areas that I was a little skeptical about was the idea that pay and benefits such as vacations actually detracted from people’s enjoyment of work.

“Indeed, there is strong evidence that compensation such as pay and vacation

Boards Evaluating Chief Executives

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I don’t know why my entries have been revolving around employment and leadership the last couple weeks but here I go again….

I happened across a brief article on BoardSource about assessing an organization’s chief executive. As the piece points out, boards go to great pains in the interview process to ensure they are hiring the most capable candidate but rarely set up a formal process by which they can regularly provide feedback.

There are going to be periods of high emotion when the chief executive is either being patted on the back or glared at. Waiting until these times to assess a person is not the most constructive for the chief executive’s development and growth, even if one has a positive impression of them.

I should note that the article I linked to partially consists of instructions of how to set up a review process using the assessment tool BoardSource has developed. I generally try to avoid hawking other peoples services specifically if they aren’t fairly inexpensive. But having sat on many boards and attended meetings of boards of which I was not a member, I can attest to the number of meetings some boards will take parsing the language on simple amendments to the governing rules. It might take years for a board to draw up an assessment instrument.

BoardSource has an assessment tool that can be completed on a print version or online by board members. Their questions at the very least provide a strong starting point if the board feels the need for a more customized questionnaire.

That said, the online tool while time saving and convenient on a number of fronts is also 4 1/2 times more expensive than the print version. Unless it allows 5-10 years of usage, it seems excessively expensive to process the assessment of a single person. Human Resource professionals can probably speak on the reasonableness of the cost better than I. I understand they need to recoup their investment in developing it, but if it were the only option available, I am sure the cost would present an even greater impediment to evaluating a chief executive for many boards.

For most boards, whether they know about the assessment tools or not, it can be easier to promise a chief executive a similar amount of money as a bonus next year if they improve or as a raise if the valued person stays than to invest weeks completing, collecting and collating an evaluation. Given the salaries and bonuses for profit CEOs are granted by their boards, it wouldn’t be surprising if non-profit boards perceived money as the medium by which rewards and severance are conducted.

Why Do You Want To Leave Your Job?

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Neill Archer Roan doesn’t write as often as I would like him to, but when he does, it is always worth reading. Apropos to my entry last week about how I suspected turnover in nonprofits was having a greater negative impact than organizations were letting on, Neill quotes a gentleman named Matthew Kelly on the core reasons for turnover.

“The #1 reason people leave a job is not because they have a dysfunctional relationship with their manager or because they don’t feel appreciated. They leave because they cannot see the connection between the work they are doing today and the future they imagine for themselves.”

Now given that I have had those exact same thoughts verbatim when I was considering leaving a job and until this morning believed I was the pretty much the only one who did, I felt an obligation to quote it. While I haven’t always liked my bosses and certainly felt under appreciated, it wasn’t enough to make me want to leave. Others I have worked with have said, and occasionally fumed, they were leaving because of bosses, under appreciation, lack of pay and work environment.

I always thought I was atypical for having “pictured something different for myself as a primary reason for moving on. Frankly, next to “the boss is a bastard,” it seems like pretty weak motivation. If the boss isn’t a jerk and things aren’t overly oppressive, why would anyone want to move on?

Probably because the boss is a jerk is a more convincing reason than I want more self-actualization and so the boss gets blamed a lot more often than he/she should because nobody has the guts to admit they want more fulfillment. People expect fulfillment from their spouses and low cal, low fat brownies, work is supposed to be dispiriting, endured and complained about. I want more from my job sounds whiny in comparison.

Interestingly enough, about 10 years ago I was attending a customer service seminar. The woman leading it quoted stats showing that quality of product being equal, people don’t defect to a competitor because they are cheaper, that is just the easiest excuse to use. Kelly’s message seems to be quite similar.

While I wouldn’t be surprised to learn a little consumer mentality has crept into how we approach our jobs over the last decade, I suspect that this unspoken motivation has been lurking below the surface for a long while now.

I will say that was I a little disappointed with the way Kelly’s piece ended. It started out being damn interesting and thought provoking but ended with a him encouraging people to follow their dreams which just seemed de rigeur motivational speaking.

So You Think You Are An Emerging Leader…

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…or maybe there is someone you think is.

Arts Presenters is soliciting applications for participants at the next Emerging Leader Institute being held at conference January 2008.

Deadline is next Monday though. I am sorry I didn’t see the announcement on the website sooner. The application may be found here and the guidelines here. There are some nice benefits like free APAP membership for a year and free conference admission if you are a first time attendee. You do have to be affiliated with a member entity- presenter, artist, agency, etc.

I attended last year (which you can read about here and here), and found the experience enjoyable and valuable.

In fact, I had a conference call today with some other alumni of the program to discuss steps we would like to take to improve the experience for both new attendees and alumni both at the conference and after they return home. This is an effort that had its impetus with the alumni of the program who wish to have the emerging issues facing arts leaders addressed and planned for. And to develop a network of support.

Frankly, if I have my druthers, I’d want whatever network of support is developed opened to all arts people be they members of the organization or not.

But that could be many years down the road. In the meantime, if you are interested in the program, apply!

Creativity A Euphemism for Extreme Thrift?

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Apologies to regular readers of the blog. I started using a new ticketing system and started training a new staff person in the same week which has not be conducive to blog entries. But things have evened out a bit and here I am.

I read a report over the weekend on the perceived lack of qualified workers in non-profit settings. A study done by people at Johns Hopkins of all non-profit sectors, including performing arts, found that, in general, it wasn’t as difficult to find qualified people to fill positions as some recent newspaper articles have made it out to be. Most organizations were also mostly pleased by the quality of the people they did hire.

There were some areas that were harder to recruit for than others. Organizations that served the elderly had a slightly harder time than most finding people. Fundraisers and information technology staff were among the toughest positions to fill. Trying to achieve greater minority representation was also quite difficult. The report did note that few organizations made special efforts to attract minorities, though.

For the arts in particular, there were some details that boded well and others not so well. On the positive side, “…turnover and hiring activity was somewhat lower…among theaters. On the negative side, both theatres and museums were the group most dissatisfied with the diversity of their applicants and with their ability to meet the salary requirements of their applicants.

I had mixed feelings about the results the survey found regarding staff turnover. Eighty percent of those surveyed had turn over in the year prior.

“Surprisingly, however, the proportions claiming negative effects from this turnover were less pronounced than might have been expected, and were often offset by roughly similar proportions claiming positive effects.”

In the accompanying chart on page 5, the only categories in which the positive responses outstrip the negative are in organizational budget and staff creativity. The negatives were much higher than the positives in productivity, morale and burnout.

The positives about the budget are obvious. Not having to pay someone helps save money. I am uneasy about the staff creativity result because I think the go to position for so many non-profits when they face staff shortages of any sort is to smile and determine to work harder and smarter.

I suspect creativity claim is actually a ploy to cope with the increased workload and is a facade for the damage to morale and feeling of burnout. Having been in similar situations, I imagine that the creativity manifests itself in penny pinching steps akin to my grandmother washing aluminum foil and hanging it on the line to dry so it can be reused.

Everyone stands around and congratulates each other on how clever they are to be so thrifty. Then go back to their offices and skip lunch so they can get all their work done, their hunger pangs temporary dulled by the recently shared optimism over how creative the staff has become.

The areas where the negatives and positives were close were ability to fulfill mission, quality of programming and quantity of programming. I would be interested to know if there was a correlation between those who felt the staff became more creative and those who cut programming and reported the quality of the programming increased. I know I sound cynical, but again I suspect that people soothed their concerns about cutting back on programming by convincing themselves that they had succeeded in providing higher quality with fewer resources.

I have had the same conversation internally and among staff at a number of places. So yes, you can accuse me of projecting my biases, but I can’t imagine those dialogs are anywhere near atypical.

When I read in the report about how resilient these nonprofits are, I think about the fact that it is actually individual people who provide the resiliency by redoubling their efforts out of dedication to a cause. I am pleased that many organizations are able to satisfy their personnel needs. But the situation still bears watching because the individual’s determination to soldier on may be masking a problem that will suddenly emerge with mass burnout or retirements.

Ushering — Destroyer of Souls!

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I was listening to the latest entry from the Cool As Hell Theatre podcast while reviewing the financials from last month when both the host and the interviewee began talking about how ushering in return for admission was demeaning and soul killing (around 13:00). I actually backed the audio up and listened and then did so again when I got home.

I am not quite sure what Nick Olivero objection to the practice is, especially since the show his company is producing apparently is all about the whole labor for money for goods exchange.

Of course, this is the show the company is doing free of charge so their whole point about the labor-cash exchange might go in a different direction. However, since they praise Starbucks for giving everyone benefits and talk about how their company is paying performers more and more each year, I can’t think that they damn the process too much.

The lead in to the criticism of ushering is that Nick, being dirt poor, feels it is important to offer performances for free because the only way he has been able to see shows otherwise has been to usher. Then he and host, Michael Rice, start talking about how demeaning and soul killing it is.

I acknowledge that the situation of being so poor that you can’t afford a ticket to a show can be demeaning. So the fact that you have to split your attention between the show and seating patron, scowling at cell phone users and tracking down video tapers when you could be focusing entirely on the performance can be depressing. But the forces which shape this reality are external to the theatre’s see the show for free policy.

The alternatives are to ask people to usher and not see the show or pay people to usher in which case the management may have greater expectations of the ushers which would preclude the opportunity to see the show. One of my paid staff or I watch the lobby so our volunteer ushers can see the show. If I were paying them, I would expect them to be in the lobby far longer in order to serve late comers.

But in the interests of understanding this point of view, if anyone can offer some insight into where they are coming from, I would appreciate knowing.

Thinking about this issue got me reminiscing about a time early in my career when I learned that some of our core volunteers were actually working the arts organization circuit. I was crushed since we obviously offered a superior artistic product to the other guys and went to a lot of effort to treat our volunteers well. I felt the cuckold.

This was back in the days when I believed that all one had to do was produce good work and the public, as enthusiastic about the arts as I was, would flock to the door. Frankly, I think there may have been more truth to that sentiment then than now.

But those volunteers were having a wonderful time in their retirement being involved with a number of arts organizations and seeing lots of good stuff. I have a good group of those type of people volunteering for me right now as well as those who want to do the least they can for the greatest opportunity to see a show.

Except for a couple high school students, I don’t really have any passionate young artistic types who can’t afford to buy tickets to the performances. Perhaps I am still possessed of naivety, but sincerity counts a lot for me. In many respects, I would rather have an entranced student letting things fall through the cracks as the weakest member of the volunteer team than a person completing tasks with the least effort required to gain admittance.

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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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