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 was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA. 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.

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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.