Joe Patti

Even though I know Andrew Taylor has been in Pittsburgh at the National Performing Arts Convention this past week, I have been checking his blog reguarly. Even though I have seen the same entry that he will be out of town about 5 times now, today I actually followed one of the links. He and about 20 grad students have been attempting to track and report the events of the convention in real time and report back to the convention before it is over.

The link I followed actually took me to the Bolz Center webpage where I noticed he had a link to a report by a group at Princeton University about the value of such conventions and meetings in forming cultural policy. The monograph, “The Measure of Meetings: Forums, Deliberation, and Cultural Policy” finds that with few exceptions, conferences don’t help set policy at all.

Because I often find conferences to be fairly useless in this regard, I was interested to see what the exceptions might be and what changes they suggested. Now it should be noted, they were just focussing on the value of conferences to formation of policy and not the value to networking, training or dissemination of new information to attendees.

The monograph is fairly long (106 pages, double spaced) and begins with exploring the elements and influences that contribute to policy formation in other arenas like government. Anyone with a general knowledge of the political process won’t be surprised to learn that government policy is often created outside of formal meetings. Likewise, special commissions formed to address a problem are susceptible to shape their findings by political pressure and there is no guarantee that the person/body which formed the panel will actually heed its advice.

They do cite evidence (also not terribly surprising) that face to face meetings are more effective to policy development than just sending written reports to the same people. However, the meetings/interactions have to be on going rather than just one time seminars or conferences in order to build trust and looking relationships between the members. There seems to be less trust in what one hears at this one time events.

The monograph points out a number of impediments to the formation of cultural policy

In the arts, not only is visibility low, but there are also few “focusing events” or crises that demand a policy response. Second, there are few existing indicators,
especially ones that can be counted, that point to potentially serious and urgent problems facing the cultural sector. Sectors like housing, for example, rely on indicators such as new home purchases, rates of home ownership, the number of abandoned properties, and the number of homeless; transportation has statistics on highway fatalities, airline safety, U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and the capacity of public transit systems. In health care there are indicators for the number of uninsured citizens, per capita health expenditures, infant mortality, and the spread of infectious disease, among others. The cultural sector lacks these indicators, especially at the national level. Third, compared to other domains, there are few well-organized stakeholders in the cultural sector that exert consistent pressure on the political stream. Fourth, the cultural sector lacks a major public agency or department, where resources and decision making authority is centralized and where policy activity coalesces. Finally, the cultural policy community is highly fragmented with little agreement on common policy problems or concerns.

Part of the reason why conventions are such poor venues for forming cultural policy is that this is rarely the purpose of the gathering or it is poorly organized if it is.

However, a scan of the field indicates that, compared to other policy domains, strategic policy- focused convenings (task forces, commissions, and study groups) are not a regular part of the arts and culture landscape and remain underutilized policy tools. There are exceptions, some of which we will discuss below. Nevertheless, we argue, that those meetings that are organized around cultural policy issues tend to fall short of many of the criteria important for altering the public agenda or influencing decision makers. Arts meetings usually produce reports with vague and general recommendations that have little direct connection to specific policy actors; they often discuss broad issues, but fail to define clearly problems that have immediate and recognizable sequences.

They typically over represent the arts community and fail to engage effectively other policy areas and leaders from other sectors (they fall into the trap of “preaching to the choir”). Tepper and Hinton 31 Arts meetings rarely take into account the political opportunity structure, nor do they include a political strategy to move findings or recommendations into action. Dissemination and follow- up is often weak and special convenings and commissions in the arts tend to call for additional resources and new programs (“wish lists”) rather than
examine how existing programs and resources might be improved (administrative reform). Finally, these convenings rarely collect new data, nor do they involve a systematic and rigorous investigation of an issue.

In policy making, the paper identifies 10 steps that must be mounted to create good policy: Trends, Strategic Thinking, Concerns and Problem Identification, Policy Alternatives, Windows of Opportunity, Policy Barriers, Consensus Building; Selecting a Solution; Setting Priorities, Action Plan – Assigning Responsibility, Policy Enactment, Policy Implementation, Evaluation and re-design.

The study the authors conducted found most conference participants (73%) focused on the first three steps and very few (27%) focused on any steps beyond that. The authors point out that while this may make it appear that the arts are a “culture of complaint and not activism,” most conference enviroments are not designed in a way to facilitate a transition from broad to specific thinking.

A reason why conferences may not be designed to aid in effective policy formation is perceptual. The authors found that people had a “top down” view of policy making beliving that government, national organizations and foundation program officers were responsible for policy formation.

There is also a perception that the big cultural organizations set policy and that studies of cultural institutions only examine and discuss the needs of the large players. The smaller ones feel they have no choice but to follow in their wake if they are to survive because others are setting the standard for what is to be presented and funded. Conferences are seen as a good place to pick up short term strategies and best practices, but not as a forum for long term policy development.

Another obstruction to creation of policy is who is being invited to the conferences:

“[T]he vast majority of all speakers and panelists represent nonprofit organizations and that most of these are from arts-based nonprofits (both presenting and non-presenting organizations)…In fact, government representatives are visibly absent from the programs of the major
presenting arts associations…From our perspective it appears that, associations look to their own backyards when searching for speakers and panelists. In addition, if we look at trends over time (table 8), we find a decrease in the number of representatives from government and in the number of non-arts
related nonprofit speakers…In spite of the frequent rhetoric by cultural
leaders of imploring arts advocates to build bridges and make connections to other sectors and fields, it appears that, at least in terms speakers at the large annual meetings, we are increasingly drawing from within rather than from outside the arts.”

Tomorrow I hope to discuss the solutions the monograph suggests for more effective policy creation.

As I was reading the Rand report yesterday, it seemed that the report itself just expounded a bit more upon the summary at the beginning of the document. As a result, I chose to publish my blog entry. However, when I reached the section on future initiatives by State Arts Agencies (SAAs), I realized there was some interesting information to report and so, I continue today.

The Wallace Foundation granted funds to 13 SAAs to support their State Arts Partnerships for Cultural Participation initiative (START).

“By many measures, the successful proposals were quite innovative. Several START agencies proposed to teach themselves the latest audience-development and other participation-building techniques so that they in turn could pass them on to selected local arts organizations. Several also proposed to create new grant categories for demonstration projects to model these techniques. Relatively few of the proposals, however, looked beyond traditional nonprofi t arts providers as their instruments for boosting participation.”

The Wallace Foundation brought in Mark H. Moore to speak, a professor from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to speak with the SAAs. Moore has focussed a great deal of work “on developing concepts and tools for public sector strategic management.” After working with him, the SAAs shifted their focus to examining themselves as public service agencies with participation boosting activities receiving a secondary focus.

In theory, all SAAs serve the public interest. But on examination, they found they were really focussing their efforts to help artists, art lovers and arts organizations. Grants were distributed according to “whether programs ‘meet the needs of the field,’ not the needs of the various communities around their states.”

The SAAs are beginning the planning of new programs no longer tend to fund the same organizations on an annual basis.

“They are eager to develop all sorts of partnerships-be they with other government agencies, non-arts civic institutions, local communities, for-profit and amateur arts groups, etc.-any person, group, or institution with the potential to get more and different kinds of people involved in the arts is a candidate. However, even these START agencies are quite anxious about diverting scarce resources away from artists and arts groups they have long known and respected.”

As a result, the SAAs have been changing granting criteria to encourage arts organizations to pay better attention to serving the community needs. It will be interesting to see how private foundations respond to the change in the way SAAs support arts organizations given the Independent Sector paper I cited in April encourage long term support of non profits.

The Rand report cites an interesting anecdote illustrating the way funding policy is shifting.

“A jazz presenter, recounting his dire financial situation, was pleading for money from the agency. The staffer, who has been very involved with the START initiative, responded, ‘We don’t give you money because you need it.’ Startled, the jazz presenter replied, ‘You don’t?’ ‘No,’ said the staffer. ‘We give you money because you deliver something specific to the public that the state would like to have happen.’ According to the staffer, at some level her agency understood this prior to START, but lacked both the framework and the language for making it clear. Now they are in the midst of figuring out what that ‘something specific’ looks like in order to explain it to their would-be grantees. Most of the START agencies are doing likewise.”

The report notes this sort of approach will probably begin to alienate state arts organizations a little. Even though they may not lobby for SAAs as they once did, arts organizations are still better advocates of them in the political arena than members of the general public. The report also notes that legislators might not be pleased if prominent venues in their districts are denied funding. One of the first priorities they suggest is that SAAs begin to strengthen their political ties. The report also encourages SAAs to work hard to quantify the often hard to measure benefits of the arts on communities.

Ultimately, what the SAAs need to do is go to where the people are and discover what it is the people want so they can serve the public at large better. (How this will jibe with The Artful Manager’s recent discussion of the Simple Truth 1 that the general public doesn’t really know what they want remains to be seen.)

Thanks to Artsjournal.com, a study of state arts agencies done by the Rand Corporation came to my attention today. State Arts Agencies 1965-2003: Whose Interests to Serve by Julia F. Lowell took a look at how 13 state arts agencies were fulfilling the purpose for which they were created. The report feels that the recent cuts to state arts agencies (SAAs) by state governments may turn out to be more than just a passing thing.

The report is prefaced by a summary of the history of SAAs from 1965 when they were first beginning to be formed. They first came as a way to decentralize the power of the NEA and prevent it from becoming “European-style ‘Ministry of Culture’.” Many were formed for the sole purpose of getting federal funds rather than from an interest by states to join in the arts funding trend. Among the assumptions of early agencies was that only high arts like ballet, opera, orchestras, etc. should be funded rather than individuals and community groups. As a result, the interests of a small group of arts buffs rather than the public as a whole was served.

There was a revolt against this view as many people felt the views and cultures being presented represented too narrow a portion of what was available and that the interests of too small a group was being recognized. Many states decentralized themselves and local arts agencies were set up to direct money to community interests. A consequence was that:

“The political impact of the changes they introduced was disappointing: Local arts councils received much of the credit for regrants run through the budgets of decentralized agencies, and community-based artists and arts organizations did not turn out to be an effective lobbying force. At the
same time, many of those who believed firmly that preserving and nurturing the high arts should be an arts agency’s first priority began losing their faith in SAAs.”

In the 1980s, the decentralization of the 1970s lead to a drop in support of SAAs by the major arts organizations. Many lobbied on their own behalf for funding rather than for support of the SAAs.

The 1990s of course brought close inspection of how public funds were being used to support the arts. SAAs were in the position of trying to convince the public and legislators that the arts were important to people’s lives and that SAAs were important to the arts.

Today, supported by grants from the Wallace Foundation, some SAAs are working to refocus themselves to represent the entire population of the state rather than just arts attendees, organizations and individuals artists. The report promises to monitor the strategies and tactics each participating SAA uses to generate monographs in the future.

I came across a couple of links about Florida via Artsjournal.com in the last week or so. In different ways they seemed to illustrate how the arts are constantly in a struggle to validate their existence by showing good numbers.

The first was talking about the Florida Arts Community rallying to get state funding restored. It was rather reminiscent of last year in NJ because the governor was the biggest impediment to arts funding in that state as well. One of the points the advocates raised of course was the economic benefit of the arts in the state.

I was somewhat impressed to see the writer explore the danger in using economic benefit as a rationalization of support by quoting a Newsweek article from a year ago by Artsjournal’s Douglas McLennan regarding the problem with employing this tactic:

“By my estimation, a pure case for public funding of art for art’s sake hasn’t been made in more than a decade,” Douglass McLennan, editor of Artsjournal.com, wrote in an essay last year for Newsweek.com. McLennan questioned “reducing arguments for arts to economic impacts,” and added, “Art may be a great economic investment, but if it’s not an investment someone chooses to make, you’re out of luck. Sorry, just business.”

In this vein, the article quotes one of the arts advocacy members as suggesting a day without art where every thing that was formed by some artistic consideration including sculpture, painting, music, film, television, architecture, to the cut of the lawmakers’ suits was covered, removed and generally forbidden them for a day to show them the value of art in their lives.

A few days after reading this, I came across an article in the New York Times owned Sarasota Herald Tribune written by the President of the Sarasota (FL) Arts Council which cited the PARC study and an Americans for the Arts study. One of the things he wrote about was how the studies illustrated the economic value of the arts. However, he also went on to state “that people of all income levels attend the arts. This dispels the popular notion that culture in Sarasota County is for the elite few.”

Since I had just read the PARC study and hadn’t come away with that impression, I was a little puzzled. I went back to the study and still felt the same as a result of the following findings:

“Enjoyment is unrelated to household income level, except in Sarasota where higher household incomes are associated with greater levels of arts enjoyment.”

“In Boston and Sarasota, attendance at performing arts events is positively associated with household income. This trend generally holds in Washington and Minneapolis-St. Paul as well, although the association is not as strong.”

“This contrasts sharply with Sarasota, for example, where respondents from the wealthiest households are over three times more likely to be frequent attenders than respondents from the lowest income households.”

“Household income, age, and presence of children at home are largely unrelated to the degree to which respondents find live performing arts to be enjoyable. Sarasota is an exception, where wealthier respondents report increasingly high levels of agreement regarding enjoyment of the
performing arts.”

“In Sarasota, more highly educated people are somewhat more likely to say that the arts are a source of pride in their community.”

“In short, households with lower levels of income are more likely to cite cost of tickets as a barrier to greater attendance. This relationship is strongest in Sarasota.”

As I had mentioned in an earlier entry, there are certainly other factors that act as barriers to attendance in all cities. However, the study singles Sarasota out a number of times as being atypical among the other cities surveyed in regard to having arts attendance and enjoyment so closely linked with education and income.

I thought that perhaps the Sarasota Arts Council came to their conclusion from the Americans for the Arts survey. However, that report was focussed only on economic impact and they only collected information from people when they were attending the event. There was no information collected from those who decided not to attend.

It was upon re-reading the Herald-Tribune article that I realized the president was actually basing his non-elitist claim on a third study that was commissioned locally. The results of that survey were not available on line that I could find. The fact that it was conducted locally makes me wonder if there was an agenda behind the data collection.

The greater tragedy though is that arts organizations seem to be focussing too great a portion of their energies these days trying to prove the worthiness of their existence. It is almost akin to Valentine’s Day in grammar school where kids are concerned about making a respectable showing when cards are distributed. Except in this case, people are massaging the results by metaphorically claiming that while they didn’t get a lot of cards, 25% of those they did get were high quality Hallmark cards rather than cheapie ones proving they are held in high esteem.

I was going to write on another subject today and had some reference material all lined up. Something has been grating on me for awhile now and I decided I would address it today. For a number of months now Drew McManus has been critical of how well arts administration programs are preparing people for careers in that field. It started back in November with his original posting, followed by a rebuttal by Andrew Taylor, to which Drew replied. He has made additional comments on this theme since then. Today he quotes Klaus Heymann as saying

“There are too many arts administrators that know about the arts but are terrible managers and there are too many that are good managers that don’t know enough about the arts. Arts Administration programs need to provide much more practical experience for their students in order to better prepare them for the realities of the classical music business.”

As a graduate with a degree in arts management, this sort of thing raises my hackles a bit. I can understand that some people are just bad managers despite their degrees and that classroom education really can’t prepare you for the practical realities of running an organization. However, I am of the mind that arts groups will be better off with someone at the helm who is aware of the business environment in which their organization is operating. Historically, I feel there have been too many institutions being lead by well meaning individuals who didn’t really didn’t understand good governance and business practices. Certainly there have been many individuals who have been fantastic managers without formal training, but they have been few and far between and getting rarer as the times make more specific demands of people and allow less margin for error.

However, after some investigation of arts administration programs, I have to say Drew might be right.

Florida State University where I earned my MFA is a good example of this. I got my MFA from the Theatre School. The requirements were 42 credits in classroom and practicum work and then a year long internship at a theatre for 18 credits (60 total).

The FSU Visual Arts School has an MA Arts Administration degree program as well. It is a 39 credit program but doesn’t even have a required practicum listed. Part of my degree program required me to take some surveying courses offered by this department and in speaking with the students there, I didn’t feel there was enough focus on practical applications.

The FSU School of Music has recently started offering an MA in Music Administration program. It is a 39 credit course load and does require a 9 credit internship.

Here we have 3 arts administration programs at the same university holding students to vastly different standards for a Master’s degree.

Andrew Taylor’s Bolz Center also has a two year arts administration degree. It doesn’t specify number of credits and the cirriculum is being changed, but it appears near 40. They offer an optional internship.

The University of Alabama has a 60 credit, 2 calendar year (no summer breaks) MFA program where you spend 9 months on campus and then 15 months straight getting practical experience at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Wayne State University has a similar 60 credit MFA program where the students essentially run the theatre company for three years alongside taking classes.

University of Oregon has a 39 credit hour program which does require a 3 credit internship. Drexel’s is 45 credit hours and also requires a 3 credit internship.

Southern Utah University (home of the Utah Shakespearean Festival) was the only place which offered a MFA in Arts Administration of 60 hours (as opposed to in a specific area like Theatre Administration)

I agree with Andrew Taylor that it is a matter of the quality of instruction rather than how much instruction you get. Certainly getting an MFA is no guarantee of ability. I think the current batch of MFA grads from FSU are getting better classroom training than I did. (Though none will ever get the practical experience in crisis management I got.) I wonder if people who intend to apply their degree to running an organization (as opposed to self-illumination or teaching) should be going after the additional 21 credits for a MFA.

I am curious to know why theatre programs seem to think their students need the extra year and the other disciplines don’t. Certainly, there is the chance that theatre people have conspired to wring a year or so of talented work for the meager expense of an assistantship salary. But I have always thought theatre managers had it together more than managers of other disciplines.

Sure, it may be egotism talking or my attempt to rationalize the value of my exhausting work for paltry wages, but I think there is something to it. There is a lot of classroom work and practical experience necessary to gain the skills to be effective as an arts manager in the current climate. Doing 20 hours a week as part of a practicum or assistantship fit in around your class schedule is certainly going to give you insight, but it isn’t likely to require enough problem solving and critical thinking to really prepare you for a job in that area.

An side note on a related program I came across. The Crane School of Music at SUNY-Potsdam has an Institute for Music Business. (It is an excellent music school. Probably because the winters are so cold, there is nothing to do but practice. I’ve been there.) The institute isn’t so much a degree program (though they plan to start one) as an attempt to: “enhance communication and facilitate a mutually beneficial partnership between The Crane School of Music and the music products industry, bridging the gap between music education and music business.” One of their initiatives is to prepare their graduates for careers.

It isn’t clear if this means giving all their graduates the skills to properly promote themselves and cope in the real world or just educating those who are interested in the business end (or perhaps both.) From what I have read recently, it might be extremely valuable for students to learn the former so they will be aware of the realities and expectations that face them upon graduation.

Anyone have any thoughts or observations about any of this?

When I was looking around the Memphis Manifesto website the other day, I came across a June 2003 Smart City interview with Ben Cameron who is currently the Executive Director of the Theatre Communications Group. TCG does advocacy and surveys on theatre, promotes some educational initiatives and publishes drama texts, American Theatre magazine and ArtSEARCH. The last publication has been one of my near companions in my job search efforts.

I any case, I stopped subscribing to American Theatre some time ago because it wasn’t delivering anything new of significance to me. However, listening to Ben Cameron, I wonder if I should revisit the publication. If nothing else, I am going to listen to more of these Smart City interviews.

He discusses that in the past the focus of the arts has been on presenting quality. Trying to figure out how to do it all better than in the past. This has been reflected by one of the key evaluations of the work–the newspaper review which has discussed the merits of performances based on the quality.

He says when he was working for Target Stores as Manager of Community Relations the message he often got was that the focus needs to be on presenting the value of attendance. Certainly, the work has to be of the highest quality, but just like Target, if people don’t see any value in walking through the doors, they never get to see the quality offerings within. He comments that this has only been recently that the arts have begun having a discussion on the value of a cultural experience.

There are 4 areas of value he says:

1) Economic-money spent by the organization and those who patronize the institutions contribute to the economic well-being of a community.

2) Education- arts benefits have manifested in studies showing that high risk students are more likely to participate in math and science, disciplinary problems and absences decrease, graduation rates increase.

3) Community Cohesion- Exposure to cultural expression increases tolerance for racial differences.

4) Civic Vitality- Cites Richard Florida studies of how creative classes contribute to municipal health.

I understandably interested in what he said after the interviewer asked him to discuss a talk he made at a Ford Foundation event that referred to how vaudeville theatre owners reacted to the emergence of film. So much of what he said reinforces topics I have read about and written on.

He echoed a fair portion of the pre-Ford Foundation history of the arts noted in the Leverage Lost… article I cited. (When I originally cited that paper I never realized it would end up having a recurring significance on a weekly basis!) He talked about how the number of professional stock theatres plumetted and how arts production shifted to the non-profit system we have today.

Cameron refers to a book titled The Radical Center: The Future of American Politicsby Ted Halstead and Michael Lind. It is difficult to transcribe the gist of his commentary on the book, but in brief, the authors noted that historically when there is war, technological change and a shift in rural-urban demographics (Civil War, Depression-WW II, etc) the tendency for the American people is to alter the social compact.

Cameron agrees with the authors that we are in the middle of a period when we will reinvent the social contract. Thinking that you can “just keep your head down” and weather the stormy economy may not be a viable strategy for continued success. He feels the challenge faced today is determining what social forces to pay attention to so we are prepared for how the situation realigns rather than waiting and trying to play catch up.

Among the examples he uses of theatres making preparations for the shifting expectations is the shifting of performance times on some nights to 6:00 or 7:00 instead of the traditional 8:00 curtain. They are doing this to in response to people’s work and travel schedules and have met with success. This allows people to go to a performance right from work and still be home to kiss the kids good night by 8 or 9pm.

He also notes that some theatres are opening their rehearsals to the public. People are curious to see the process and learn how things come together. (A subject I broached back in February.) Some theatres are apparently taking the Today Show route and rehearsing on street level in a room with a plate glass window. Others are rehearsing outdoors or inviting people in.

The move has required a revamping of rules and expectations. Cameron gives the example of Anne Bogart’s company (I assume SITI. He doesn’t mention the name.) She tried it for a production and the actors apparently screamed at her at the end of the first rehearsal. She asked them to stick with it three weeks. They had to establish some ground rules for this new way of doing things. Among the questions they had were whether they should be playing to the audience or to the director.

He doesn’t mention the answer, but it occurs to me that as simple as the question might be, it does indeed represent a complex situation. Rehearsals are about the director and actors communicating with one another on many levels. Performances are about the actors and audience communicating. Audiences would have to understand they wouldn’t be getting that communication. Actors would have to remember that a choice they made that got a pleasing audience reaction might not be a valid part of the director’s vision for the production.

The upshot of the decision though is a positive one. The actors told Anne Bogart they never wanted to rehearse any other way in the future. They saw exciting possibilities associated with having the people for whom they were making the work in the same room as them.

Other strategies have been to redesign the physical plant adding cafes, etc to make the theatre a social destination and not just a place you go to see a play. “Theatres thinking not about just how do we make a performance, but asking bigger questions like how do we orchestra social interaction in which the performance is a piece, but only a piece of what we are called to do.”

He goes on to talk about the importance of arts organizations to “open our embrace to the fullest spectrum of the inhabitants of our cities and towns.” He speaks not only about non-traditional casting and producing shows that have resonance with different segments of the population, but also in encouraging people of diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in the management end of the arts where they can make active contributions.

As I stated earlier, an interesting interview that I am glad I listened to out of curiousity. Some fodder for thought.

I have been looking around to see what I can find out about the efforts communities are making toward becoming one of Richard Florida’s Creative Communities. Of course, I came across the Memphis Manifesto. The links section provides a wide range of links to interviews and organizations across the nation which are trying to organize to revitalize their communities. The community website I liked best was Tampa’s–CreativeTampaBay.com

While all the other websites have information on long range planning and goals for their cities, Tampa’s front page has a number of ways people from the community can get involved in the efforts. They have salons people can attend to discuss the initiatives they are lobbying for and learn more about the creative community concept.

They also provide people with the forum to suggest their own initiatives to attract creative workers. The forum serves like meetup.com in that it is a central source of information about efforts that are being made in areas like improving transportation, technology, character building and civics, health, greenways and trails as well as arts endeavors.

It is difficult to assess how active each of these initiative groups is. It is good to see that Creative Tampa Bay is trying to harness the efforts of as many constituencies as possible and get them invested in the goal of attracting creative workers. There seems to be an effort to find strategies appropriate to the Tampa Bay area rather than appropriating what was successful for other cities as has been a concern of mine.

Excerpts of my letter to Drew McManus (much of which is covered in the entry prior to this) and his answers appear today on Adaptistration.

This weekend I came across a couple articles that illustrate the effect of national cultural policy upon a nation. The first was an article from the Minnesota Star-Tribune entitled “Music Education Permeates Finnish Society.” Essentially the article attributes all the exposure and value placed on classical music by the Finns as the reason why there is such a high concentration of musical talent there despite having a national population only slightly larger than Minnesota’s. My favorite part of the article is a comment by an American visitor that he watched 3 television channels one evening. Two had concerts and the third was carrying a debate about whether to build another orchestra hall. In a couple of articles I have quoted, the authors have said orchestras should stop blaming the disappearance of music education from schools as a reason for falling attendance. On the other hand, clearly education and exposure can’t hurt attendance.

The second article I came across was discussing the effect of focusing cultural policy on diversity. While the piece refers to British policy, I saw a number of parallels with the US cultural landscape. As much as I believe diversity is going to be a major influence on cultural programming in the US, I take this article as a warning about the negative aspects.

In the article, “Art for Inclusion’s Sake”, the author, Josie Appleton, believes that by rejecting the old methods for approaching art, current policy has also discarded some valuable principles. The author illustrates this by tracing cultural policy from the 19th century. She notes that Parliment was motivated to fund the creation of the National Gallery by the idea that exposure to the finer things would defuse the unrest among the masses. “In 1841, a Commons select committee saw art as a ‘means of moral and intellectual improvement for the people’. The view was that ‘men cease to become mob when they get a taste’. The National Gallery, said Peel, would help by ‘cementing those bonds of union between the richer and poorer orders of the state’.” The National Gallery was therefore placed centrally in London so that both rich and poor would have easy access.

She notes that the elite was acting in its own self-interest to avoid rebellion and were presenting objects that exemplified their ideal of beauty but there was also an egalitarian sentiment. There was a presumption that everyone possessed the intellect to enjoy and understand the art pieces regardless of social standing or ethnic background.

However, in the 1960s and 70s, the idea that there was a universally shared ideal of beauty began to erode. The concept instead was:

All claims to cultural value were merely the personal opinions of a white middle-class male elite, foisted on to the population in order to maintain power structures. A cultural democracy, by these terms, was a society in which everybody was able to express their opinion and create according to their taste. Only by getting rid of value judgements could culture serve everybody’s needs.

As the 80s arrived, the onus was on cultural institutions to justify their existence in economic terms. This is still very much a factor in the US where organizations justify the value in regard to how much money they bring to the community by their operations and via what patrons spend on food, lodging and gas when they visit. Even the current mania to become one of Richard Florida’s Creative Communities is more about bringing economic prosperity rather than an excitement about how much beauty and truth will enter one’s life as cultural activities become available.

During this time, Appleton says, there was such a push to have art mean as many things to as many people as possible, art lost its meaning altogether.

If you value a painting only because it can tackle unemployment or improve self-esteem, then you have no idea what it is really worth. It’s all about context, about the way in which you are using the painting, rather than the painting itself. ‘Cultural diversity’ policy blossomed as an expression of this situation. Uncertain about how to evaluate artefacts, cultural institutions celebrate difference as an end in itself. ‘Diversity’ here is really a metaphor for cultural disorientation.

She notes that museums have begun putting pieces by the Old Master’s into storage and have started asking people to bring in objects from their own lives and are putting them on display. The aim is to provide a sense of worth to a person by acknowledging that their belongings have some value. “Because cultural institutions no longer believe in cultural value, their collections of Rembrandt and Constable look shamefully narrow and exclusive. By collecting the most everyday things from the most marginalised in society, museums are engaging in self-admonishment, castigating themselves for once being so high and mighty.”

She notes that by using piece of art and artifacts define personal meaning, museums are actually working counter to diversity. If an object is used to learn more about ourselves, we aren’t learning anything about the others who made it, what their lives were like and how they contributed to our current existence. It is self-centered rather than contributing to empathy with people different from ourselves.

This result almost sounds like Orwellian newspeak–“Self-Centeredness is Diversity.” It is this along with an unintentional disempowerment of the participant I see as most worrisome and something to be wary of as arts organizations move into the future. Appleton says:

“This policy also has a low view of its visitors. The assumption is that visitors are uninterested in or unable to learn about the world. Each person is seen as trapped within his or her own private bubble, in constant need of affirmation and recognition. The idea seems to be that if people fail to see their reflection in exhibitions they will feel worthless and excluded…The image is of people wandering around aimlessly, unsure of their right to exist until their family photographs are valued by the museum. With this view of their visitors, it’s no surprise that museums have put the Great Masters in the backroom.”

Another criticism she has for diversity focused policy is that it shifts the criteria for success away from attracting large crowds to attracting large crowds with a certain color skin. For example, “Islamic art is not valued for its intricate, proportioned design, or because it provides us with an insight into one of the great historic civilisations; it is valued because it gets the right kind of punters through the doors.” She asserts that this engenders a segregationist mentality that demeans the intellect and curiousity of different racial groups by assuming they are only interested in collections that reflect their background and experience and wouldn’t understand or care for pieces connected to other traditions.

The situation in England provides some lessons for arts organizations in the US. In a pursuit of diversifying and expanding our audiences, we certainly need to provide a product that is accessible and appealing to our communities on more than a token basis. The most enthusiastic audiences are those who have a relative performing. The problem isn’t just that we can’t possibly present something that has some personal relevance to everyone in the audience. The problem is also that when people come to see their relatives, they aren’t paying attention to how well the show is done or thinking about the themes it is communicating. You aren’t engaged in audience building activities when you program with an eye to pleasing niches. The niche disappears from the seats when the element significant to them disappears from the stage.

This is why education programs like Drew McManus’ docent proposal are so important. Audiences need to be provided with insights into the value contributed by all the nieces and nephews involved with a piece. As the public is able to make choices on television, radio, and the internet that reinforce an increasingly narrow worldview, the arts may end up being the last forum in which a dialogue about wider issues can be presented.

Last night the Roanoke Ballet Theatre presented NASCAR Ballet. Their website explains it best:
“NASCAR Ballet centers around 20 ballet and modern dancers (who represent cars) who circle a forty foot horseshoe track that banks around the corner complete with break away railings.”

When I read the story last week in the Toronto Star, my first thoughts were akin to the Penelope McPhee accusations I quoted earlier this week– I felt it was an example of dumbing down the arts. I may have agreed with Ms. McPhee that this was an attitude that needs to be discarded, but I also admitted I recoil at anything that smacks of dumbing down as well.

Of course, I caught and scolded myself for not giving it due consideration before I denounced the idea. Since I haven’t seen the show, I don’t know if it was a good idea. Reading a bit about the development process and the way they intended to execute the concept, I must say I was a bit intrigued.

Good concept and execution or not, it does present a good test of the shift in attitude Ms. McPhee espoused. NASCAR probably represents the antithesis of the arts, at least stereotypically. The reality of NASCAR demographics probably conforms to a “sophisticate’s” perception as well as a “plain folk’s” concept applies to arts attendees.

The company has done some other non-traditional pieces in the past so the regular audience won’t be totally taken aback by the show. I imagine, though, that a traditionalist might be scandalized by “gauche” elements of production which include: three huge monitors. One presents a sportscaster calling the race and interviewing drivers. The second shows the “pit” where dancers/cars bedecked in sponsors’ logos are serviced. The third presents commercials by the show’s sponsors.

When I really got to thinking about it, I couldn’t see why a contemporary subject like death defying racing was any less proper a subject than courage in the face of enchantment is in Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.

The company seems to have acknowledged the reality of their situation and embraced the outlook suggested by McPhee and the creative communities monograph I recently cited.

“We are hoping through this production to expand the traditional dance audience to include others who may never have experienced dance. The race is represented in a fun, wholesome environment and respect for the sport is at it’s heart.

“In order to keep the arts alive, it is up to us to produce higher quality, exciting, never-before seen extravaganzas. We have to entice the audience in, we can no longer just expect their participation. By opening up our thematic interests, we open ourselves to a whole new segment of potential dance lovers…We need to keep experimenting, keep inventing. We have to be willing to take risks. We can’t be scared into thinking small.” says Jenefer Davies Mansfield, Executive/Artistic Director of Roanoke Ballet Theatre. “These elements are integral in keeping the arts alive in a fiscally conservative environment.””

I wish them good luck with this and future events and will be interested to see if what they are doing becomes more prevalent.

My cable modem’s insistence on not working seemed to imply I should take advantage of the turn in the weather to warmth and sun. Thus I do not have a long, involved entry today.

Instead, I bring you some resources for education in various fields. There are a great many organizations with good education outreach programs. The ones I list here have lesson plans and classroom resources or have scads of links to websites that do.

General Links

Arts Education Partnership has the most comprehensive selection of links to sites with education resources for all disciplines I have seen.

ArtsEdge, Part of the The Kennedy Center’s education website has a very extensive selection of lesson plans for every discipline.

AllLearn (Alliance for Life Long Learning) has online courses run by Yale, Oxford and Stanford. While you do have to pay for their courses, the link I list here takes one to a page with links to a number of academic subjects, including Dramatic Literature, Classical Music, Dance and Visual Arts.

Theatre
The Utah Shakespearean Festival has some excellent articles on themes from all of Shakespeare’s plays, plus all the non-Bard shows they have done. Many of the articles are from their Insights publication which they make available to patrons.

Opera
Opera America offers links to study guides by opera compnaies across the US as well as guidance on additional programs.

Orchestras
I didn’t find any resources with lesson plans, but Playmusic.org had links to the children’s pages of orchestras across the country (San Francisco, Dallas and Baltimore were my favorites!). These pages have a lot of activity suggestions for kids to do on their own or for their teachers to do in school. These were some of the best interactive education pages I saw in my search. (Translation: I spent a lot of time playing)

Visual Arts
The Getty and The Smithsonian both provide good lesson plan resources for the visual arts.

Dance
The New York City Ballet’s study guide for George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker was the only resource I could find at this point.

I am sure there are more study guide resources out there. If people want to make me aware of them, I will assemble this list on to a resource page.

So I am of mixed feelings today. Yesterday, the last place I worked enthusiastically welcomed the news that I would return for two weeks to help them run this year’s festival thereby confirming that my skills are indeed valued. But I also got a letter from Wayne State saying they are hiring someone else for the position which, of course, introduces doubts to my mind.

One thing I didn’t mention before-when I got to Detroit, I learned the woman who had held the position for three years was applying for the job as well. Apparently it was an instructor position and was being made a tenure position so she had to re-apply. At the time, I was a little annoyed at not having been told that because I wasn’t sure I would have agreed to fly out knowing I was challenging an incumbent. But I also knew it didn’t matter. These people had flown me out, fed me and had set a lot of time aside so I could discuss a topic about which I was passionate. (No, not myself, arts management!) Overall, I figure I got a pretty good deal.

This conflicted state of mind seemed like a good springboard for introducing today’s topic—My criticisms of the arts. Last week I mentioned all the reasons why I still possess an idealistic attachment for the arts and what I do and why I would seriously consider returning to work for idiots who fired me. This week I want to talk about the detrimental aspects of this thing I love so much.

I have often felt guilty that I perceived the people I worked with and for had the wrong attitude. They worked hard and were trying their best with limited resources. Who was I, as someone relatively new to the arts, to judge their outlook? However, emboldened by the remarks I read by Penelope McPhee at a retreat for symphony orchestras funded by the Knight Foundation, and having accumulated a decade or so more experience, I have to say I still think they were wrong. So, I am taking this opportunity to level some general criticisms about the state of the arts.

First of all, I would highly recommend reading the speech. Though I have a habit of quoting half an article in my entries, I am going to try to abstain from doing so here. Right from the beginning of her speech, she said something that resonated with me.

“Today, I would argue vehemently that communities don’t need an orchestra just for the sake of saying they have an orchestra. The mere existence of an orchestra in a community does not contribute to its vitality. Communities need vibrant, relevant orchestras that give meaning to people’s weary, humdrum lives.

I am increasingly convinced that orchestras that are not relevant to their communities do not contribute to their health and vitality. And I’ll go even further � the more orchestras peel off three to four percent of an economically elite, racially segregated fraction of the community, the more they’ll be part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

The caliber of the playing, the renown of the conductor, the architecture of the world-class hall mean little or nothing if the sound doesn’t resonate throughout the community.”

A little further on she says:

But if you agree with me, and accept this as your mission, you first have to fundamentally change your attitude toward your audience. You have to stop blaming them and start looking inside your institutions for answers.

From my perspective as an outsider who loves the music but is not an expert, I’d argue that for the most part, orchestras have nothing but disdain for their audiences. The whole notion that doing it differently is “dumbing it down” is disdainful. The attitude you communicate to us audience members is that you’re doing us a favor to let us pay for you to play what you want to play. You want us to pay our money and eat our spinach because it’s good for us.

Not only do you want us to eat the spinach, but you want us to choose it over ice cream every time; you want us to eat it in your restaurant at 8 p.m.; you want us to like it the way you’ve seasoned it. And, God knows, you want us to eat it pure, not in a souffle or a salad.

And, oh yes, if we’ve never eaten spinach before, we’re barely worth serving it to anyway, because if we’ve gone this long without tasting it, we must be rubes anyway and we’ll never appreciate it.

So if we’re going to be serious about serious change, we first have to get serious about this question of mission.

This essentially goes to my biggest complaint about the arts world. The “Field of Dreams” expectation that if you perform or present it, people will and should come. Yes, I have been absolutely guilty of the type of thinking I quote above. (It is especially easy to think everyone is a cretin when you are doing a job search!) Yes, I absolutely think that the arts possess incredible value for people’s lives. But I have empathy for the “great unwashed.” I don’t believe everything performed is of interest or significance to me. I feel intimidated going to gallery openings and symphonies–and I know some of the rules. (I play follow the leader to avoid clapping between movements, but still have no idea how to tell the end of a movement from the end of a piece.)

Of course, the Field of Dreams view doesn’t only apply to attendance, but funding as well. I have worked for organizations who lost the faith of thier audiences and launched huge “save us” campaigns. I know that a desire to keep ones job factors into it, but I think it is rather egotistical to expect foundations and governmental bodies to bail you out because you have mended your ways and may possess the potential to contribute something of value to your community again.

On the other hand, I have been employed by organizations who have worked for 5-7 years to develop solid relationships with foundations and politicans. I am not talking about throwing a lot of money at them and wine and dine schmoozing, but painstakingly proving oneself over time. When the organization gets a sizable chunk of funding, smaller organizations cry foul and write editorials saying we were favored because we were the big kid on the block.

Yes, this is essentially true. When you are a small, volunteer run organization, you can’t expect to get the money an institution with a full time development director can get. In many cases, those smaller organizations are getting funded at a much higher ratio to the effort they expended securing the money than my organization was. There are a lot of arts organizations out there working damn hard for what they get and they have very few assets with which to grease palms.

There is no god given right for every arts organization to exist. Everyone has the freedom to give it a try, but it doesn’t mean people have to come see your shows or pay for you to stay open. You can decry the soulless commercialism of the place across town and do avant garde stuff, and the more power to you. You just need to be aware that there are consequences for every decision. You may have to work harder to attract audiences and suffer being labeled as obscene.

I interviewed at a place this fall that didn’t have its own performing spaces and instead presented in churches and outdoors. They were still held in a higher regard than the theatre companies that had their own stages. The theatre companies all competed tooth and nail with each other, insisting that each remain autonomous rather than uniting to focus their energies to achieving common goals.

I used to blame the non-profit system. The fact that non-profits were placed in a position of having to compete for funding to get the majority of their money from unearned revenue. But I realized community service was becoming an increasingly smaller concern for many organizations as they focussed more and more on just keeping the doors open. It might almost be better if some of them became for profit. Although, there is the danger of finding box office receipts unchanged regardless of classification. Audiences seldom make entertainment decisions based on tax status.

I don’t have any easy answers for combatting these perceptions of audiences and each other. Certainly improved empathy and communication will be essential elements in any solution. McPhee’s speech makes some suggestions, but I don’t think they will completely resolve the problem.

For all the critical aspects of Ms. McPhee’s speech that I agree with, there were also some observations in which I saw some hope. She comments:

“But newspaper journalists, decrying diminishing subscribers, worry that the democracy is at risk because people aren’t getting the news – from them.

Orchestras, being mostly led by tyrants, aren’t concerned with the death of democracy. But they do believe the very fabric of Western Civilization is at risk if people don’t get classical music – from them…

…They’re confusing the content with the delivery system. In fact, people are getting much more news, much more quickly, than ever before. The difference is that the content is coming from lots of different places, and newspapers no longer own the franchise.

The solution she suggests, may be found by emulating newspaper’s who now offer both print and internet access to their stories.

And here’s another important parallel. They’ve given up on the crossover idea. They are no longer expecting readers who get their news on the Net to decide to subscribe to the traditional paper. The Internet news is not a marketing tool for the “real thing.” They have thousands of new readers for the “new thing.” I hope if Magic of Music does nothing else, it will put to rest the idea of crossover and adopt the idea that we can sell multiple products to multiple audiences.

To me, one of the promising findings of the market segmentation research it demonstrates is that there’s a vast potential audience of living, breathing individuals with different – but real – connections to the art form and to our orchestras. These aren’t uninformed rubes who need us to show them the light. Neither are they look-alike, think-alike mannequins receiving the Canon as dictated by us. These are individuals who make purposeful and highly personal decisions. Some of them have actually tested our product and found it wanting. The question is are we listening to the very clear signals they’re sending. And, are we willing and able to let go of our prejudices and respond to the message in diverse and innovative ways?

For me, these data validate everything we’ve been trying to accomplish in the Magic of Music. They tell us unequivocally that whether we want to strengthen, deepen or broaden ties to the orchestra, we need to do something fundamentally different than what we’ve done before. We need to put everything – repertoire, musical genres, ensemble configurations, venues, performance times, guest artists – everything, on the table for review and negotiation. The data also makes it clearer than ever before that there is no one solution. No magic bullet. Different folks need different strokes. And we must be nimble, flexible and open enough to allow for that.”

And a little further on

“I believe wholeheartedly in that mission, and I do not believe for a minute that listening to audiences is pandering or diminishes quality. I think it’s just good business.”

This was very reminiscent of the portion of the “Cultural Development in Creative Communities” monograph I excerpted last week. I had cited it because it counseled different strategies for different communities (as McPhee’s does here).

I also stated some concern for the idea that arts organizations had to diversify their services and offerings. Part of my concern was (and still is) that by offering a little bit of everything, organizations would do no one thing with a level of excellence. Part of this was a fear that people’s view of the arts not be debased.

I was also concerned that by answering the expectations of the community, arts institutions would diverge from what funders expected of them. I was encouraged by Ms. McPhee’s speech because it showed that a funder not only understood this was a trend for the future, it also encouraged organizations to embrace the changing times.

So there you go. My candor may not be helping my employment prospects, but the mission of my blog is to provide solutions. The only way to do that is to recognize some problems to comtemplate and discuss.

The entries over the last couple days have been about me and my family so I decided to get back to researching and exploring implications. Turning to my “Good Ideas” file, I found a monograph co-authored by the Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor for Americans for the Arts, “Cultural Development In Creative Communities.” The monograph discusses how cities are attempting to revitalize themselves by attracting the “Creative Class” described by Richard Florida. Right from the beginning they warned against trying to exactly replicate strategies that other communities had successfully employed . Since I had railed against this in an earlier entry, I was glad to see the injunction so prominently placed.

Something near the end of the paper (page 8) caught my interest. In discussing the evolution of arts and culture in communities, the authors wrote:

“Some have already noted a dark side to the positioning opportunity engendered by Florida’s book: conflicts among major institutions and cultural facilities, small arts organizations, individual artists, and the formal and informal arts as each vies for a piece of this new – or re-made – pie.

This struggle is not new to the cultural development field. Our definition of culture has steadily broadened as the field-including major institutions�has reached out to informal, participatory, neighborhood, and community based arts to embrace them as vital components of a local cultural ecosystem.

Audience research suggests that cultural consumers aren’t very interested in boundaries either, but freely graze as cultural omnivores among a range of choices from country music to opera, bead work to Cezanne, experimental film to the latest DVDs.

As we broaden the definition of cultural activity there is no need�and, in fact, great harm�in defining out existing institutions, audiences, and supporters.”

This monograph provided additional insight to my earlier ponderings about the next evolution in the ways Americans will experience arts and culture. Their assertion seems to be borne out in the trends written on in newspaper and journal articles. What I am reading indicates that the transition to this new format may be rather uncomfortable and since I am trying to eke out an existence in the arts, that worries me.

One of the biggest impacts will apparently be in funding. In a different entry entitled “What About Discussing ‘Worst’ Practices”, Andrew Taylor talks about how important rosy results are to attaining funding:

“Given our funding structure, our advocacy efforts, and our culture of feeling constantly under seige, we seem to lack an open place to discuss what we do wrong. Almost every foundation report I read about a funded project carries good news (underserved audiences were reached, goals were achieved, worlds were changed)….Unfortunately, the system we’ve established has a bias toward vaguely positive spin. Anyone receiving a major grant, and hoping to get another one someday, will want to show how wonderfully they managed the project and the cash. Most publicly promoted research on the benefits of the arts is prepared and presented by organizations with a direct financial stake in showing those connections.”

In a Newsweek article, Douglas McLennan made some related comments on arts funding:

“But for a decade now, public arts agencies that should have been promoting the best artistic vision have instead been following behind the public, trying to find a denominator that, if not lowest, is most common. The arts are not most common. The arts ought to lead. Public arts funding is important�for better or worse, money is how government signals what it thinks is important. ”

What happens when things change? How do you track who is being served when people make their attendance decisions at the last moment when it is most difficult to collect data about them? Does grant reporting move further into the territory of outright lying? Do funders need to change the criteria by which they evaluate programs they underwrite?

Since it costs more to attract new people than it does to retain existing audiences, how are arts organizations going to remain financially sound when attracting new audience members consumes so much more money?

What of the missions of organizations as strictly defining oneself becomes more of a libability as the monograph suggests? Does the focus of arts organizations become so diverse that they dabble in a little of everything in order to attract the widest base, but do no one thing well?

While I think a situation close to what the monograph suggests is inevitable, I don’t think things will be as grim as my questions imply. (Though certainly many of the questions will prove to be pitfalls for some organizations.)

I do think that it is important right now to change the criteria that foundations and granting organizations use in determining who will receive their support. This will be especially true for governmental support. If public art support lags behind as Mr. McLennan suggests, it would not be surprising to see a handful of change resistant arts institutions begin the thrive for a short time as governments reward them for conforming with their views. Disaster would probably follow as the government support was suddenly shifted to catch up with the new public values.

A campaign to gradually shift the expectations of funders to reflect the changing reality of arts and culture would reduce the consequences of support lagging too far behind the trend. It might be good if the new reporting procedures valued institutional self-education and growth and required providing information on successes and failures. Open recognition of areas of weakness would allow organizations more freedom to mobilize their staff to address them. (Rather than exerting effort to mask problems for fear of losing funding.) Discussing these problems at conferences will also help others to avoid them and can make use of the assembled brain power to create solutions for those who face them.

On the other hand, technology may make this whole funding structure obsolete. It is becoming increasingly possible to track individuals by the signals cell phones, etc. give off. Is the ability to accurately assess the complete background of every person being served by a theatre, symphony, pottery class and poetry reading too far off?

The frightening Big Brother implications aside, wouldn’t knowing so much more about one’s audience help to serve them better? As long as a new funding system didn’t reward people in direct proportion to the number of transponders which entered the doors, technology may have some promising implications for better audience relations and the distribution of funds.

I got an email from Drew McManus today regarding some of my past posts (I knew there had to be someone out there reading this! Thank god I was complimentary of him.) He had quite a few observations about the subjects of my entries. Perhaps I will integrate some of them in future postings.

One of the things he mentioned was an article he did for Partial Observer which further supplements the (on going) discussion I noted yesterday about the importance of providing interesting information in press kits and releases.

He also made mention of the similarities between breakdown of position duties in my entry, Executives Without Direction, and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Thinking again about how much of an executive director’s focus is on fundraising these days reminded me of a paper I read on the history of arts funding in the US.

I went back and read the article, “Leverage Lost
The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era” by John Kreidler, which appeared in In Motion magazine. (Note: There is a mistake in the link to the 3rd section that takes you back to the first section of the article. The correct link is http://inmotionmagazine.com/lost3.html) In rereading the article, a number of interesting points caught my eye.

First, I was reminded that at one time in US theatre history the “executive director” of a proprietary theatre company didn’t have much time to do strategic planning at all because they were acting, doing publicity, backstage work and financial management. Things have certainly improved since then, but obviously, I think there is still a bit to go.

The education aspect also caught my eye. In the article it says of the time between the Industrial Revolution and 1957:

“The rise of public education during the industrial revolution surely contributed much to the development of both artistic labor and arts consumerism during that time.

The studies that link education to arts participation usually use grade levels as the measure of educational attainment. Thus, college graduates are far more likely to attend museums or become poets than high school dropouts. It is quite likely, however, that nonformal educational attainment also correlates closely with arts participation. For example, children who are encouraged to sing in the home are probably more inclined to sing or attend choral concerts as adults . In the 19th century, amateur and church-based choral ensembles flourished, and it is likely that this movement helped to stimulate public demand for the services of professional orchestras that were beginning to form in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.”

It was both amusing and of some concern to me to think that TV, movies and other technologies might indeed be to blame for some of the ills of the world (as is so often claimed) and for the possible degradation of arts appreciation because they supplanted the piano as the center of family life.

The article also talks about how industry created the middle class, provided them increased wealth and leisure time and increased the population of cities. This population shift to cities along with increased wealth and leisure time created environments for creative expression to thrive in many metropolitan areas.

The author illustrates the shift from proprietary ownership of arts companies to formations of arts organizations with boards of directors and professional managers with an orchestra example.

“The experience of American symphony orchestras provides one illustration of the evolution of arts organizations during the pre-Ford era. By the mid 19th century, musical literacy was relatively high among Americans. Children learned to sing and play instruments at an early age, and performance within families was a popular form of entertainment. Amateur choruses began to form, and some of these hired musicians for accompaniment. The musicians, in turn, formed themselves into orchestras, hired conductors and began to produce public concerts as proprietary organizations independent of the choral societies. Many orchestras continued to operate in this manner until the end of the 19th and early 20th century when a transition gradually was made to nonprofit organizations as the primary organizational model. In the nonprofit model, the orchestra came under the control of a lay board of directors, usually prominent citizens, which employed a professional conductor and manager. The conductors were given responsibility for hiring the musicians in the nonprofit orchestras, whereas the musicians had often controlled the proprietary orchestras in the early pre-Ford era. Whether operating as proprietary or nonprofit organizations, however, all orchestras remained heavily dependent on ticket sales in the marketplace for much of their income.”

He goes on to talk about how the dearth of proprietary companies was seen as a harbinger of the end of arts activity.

“The traditional commercial forms of theater, vaudeville and circus declined or vanished in the face of the new medium of movies. Other performing arts forms were also affected by the new technologies of recorded music and radio, and ultimately by television. Some observers viewed these developments as the death of the live performing arts, and while it is evident that many proprietary performing arts organizations dissolved, it is not so clear that the overall output of arts goods and services was declining at all.”

The last sentence implying that the format and organization of artistic expression was evolving into something new while the output remained fairly constant seems an important one. Today arts people see the decline and closing of established arts companies and venues as a destruction of their way of life. The truth may be that there is a change similar to the transition from the proprietary system to the non-profit situation we have today. We just need to be aware of what the trend is toward.

By the same token, during this period there was apparently a loss of attendance to technology. This would certainly be of concern when looking at the implications of the next evolution in the arts environment. The author writes:

“Whereas broad-based audiences, comprised of both commoners and educated, well-to-do elites had once attended proprietary productions of Shakespeare, even in small towns and mining camps across the nation, in the twentieth century the commoners began to gravitate toward the movie houses and other new technologies, leaving only the elite to patronize an assortment of proprietary high art.

Given this substantially smaller base of customers, the laws of supply and demand would allow only one outcome: the high art sector had to diminish substantially in rough proportion to the diversion of demand toward the popularized new forms of art and entertainment, and the remaining high art consumers had to accept increased prices to maintain their favored art forms. In large measure, these increased prices took the form of organizational subsidies (donations), rather than user fees. Prior to the arrival of the new technologies, the basic model of the proprietary arts organization had served reasonably well. At this juncture in history, however, popular art continued to follow the proprietary pattern, while high art, cut off from much of its consumer base, started to adopt a new model: the subsidized nonprofit organization.”

The author continues into the period between 1957-1990 which he characterizes as a sort of golden age for the arts in modern times. The author cities the philanthrophy of the Ford Foundation and the embracing of high culture during the Kennedy administration as the impetus for the formation of the NEA and the widespread rise of corporate and foundation support of the arts.

He also points to education, more leisure time and change in demographics as contributors to an arts boom:

“The era had truly arrived when the baby boom generation appeared in vast numbers on college campuses throughout the nation. This large, mostly white, and relatively affluent generation not only provided most of the discounted labor for the surge of arts production and formation of new nonprofit arts organizations, but also contributed substantially to the enlargement of consumer demand for the arts…”

“…an even more pronounced shift developed in the late 1950’s and early 1960s in reaction to the widely held perception of cultural inferiority that marked the post war years. This shift in favor of open expression (free speech, free art, free love) was accompanied by a complementary change in attitudes toward public service. The notion that work in public service was virtuous, in comparison to work in private enterprise, gained currency…”

“Another planet that aligned at the beginning of the Ford era was the pinnacle of the American public education system, and a heightened emphasis on the liberal arts. A greater proportion of the population was enrolled in higher education than at any previous time and, according to some authorities, the quality of the public educational system reached its peak. It is also significant that, given the values and prosperity of this time, unprecedented numbers of college students chose to study the liberal arts. Comparative literature, drama, fine arts, art history, music and a host of other arts-related disciplines flourished.

Probably the majority of liberal arts students had no particular career ambition in these fields. The number of drama graduates in any given year, for example, substantially exceeded the supply of full time acting jobs in the entire nation. Still, at the time it was widely believed by students that any college degree, even in the arts, was a passport to an entry level job in some reasonably well-paid profession. Until the early 1970s, a seller’s market prevailed for holders of undergraduate degrees, so one could afford to obtain a college degree for its own sake rather than committing oneself as an undergraduate to a business or technical degree. Thus, institutions of higher learning were producing legions of students, many of whom, whether they realized it or not, were becoming prepared to work in the nonprofit arts or to become arts consumers.”

The author then goes into the post-Ford era of 1990-present and talks about issues arts people are very much aware of as elements in the decline of the non-profit system: cut backs in private/government/foundation funding; rise in cost of living/drop in disposable income; expectation of higher pay and job security; dimmer view of public service; decline in education, focus on 3 Rs to detriment of arts education; lack of leisure time; and technology displacing arts attendance as an entertainment activity.

The author pretty much echos the finding of the PARC survey I cited in an earlier entry–education matters. It seems to me that if the other two elements common to past growth in interest of the arts–change in demographics and increase in leisure time–are present and education and exposure are not, there is little hope of a revitalized interest of arts in the future.

What is to be done then? I have made a number of suggestions in past entries about employing technology to this end (quick index found here). There are plenty of constructive solutions discussed by arts administrators. The author of “Leverage” mentions some practices arts organizations can adopt to make themselves less vulnerable to the changes and more aware of shifting expectations.

There was one section of “Leverage” that especially resonated with me.

“This generation also may be reluctant to purchase even a single ticket to a high art event that requires arrival at a set time, and constrains the audience to a silent, passive posture until the performance ends. Rather, the increasing preference may be shifting to forms of performance, such as comedy, literary salons and jazz, that are more interactive, flexible with regard to arrival and departure times, and less constraining on one’s behavior during the course of the event.”

This was almost verbatim the opening of my talk, “Arts in an Age of Technology” (which I originally wrote in 1999. I am sure I didn’t read “Leverage” until 2003) It had additional significance in that it was also a topic Drew McManus addressed in the Partial Observer article I cited above. “The audience � and therefore the community – won because they were presented with a concert experience that included them as opposed to the stereotypical �sit, listen, and go home� occasion most people relate to. ”

While I regret that I am not the genius I thought I was when I first expressed that sentiment back in 1999, it is good to know that others in the arts world are thinking along similar lines. This way I don’t have to bear the burden of evangelizing to the entire world alone!

Short Aside

Before I begin the main portion of my entry today, I just wanted to call attention to an article about how publishers are wooing top amateur reviewers on Amazon by providing them with free books to read and write about. Quite similiar to the idea I put forth in my entry a week or so ago, Bloggers As the New Arts Critics?

On With the Show

One of the things I have been considering lately is the practice of management in the arts, specifically in terms of the position of executive director. In theory, the CEO of most businesses is supposed to be looking at short and long range planning, trying to determine trends and identify opportunities for the future. In practice this may not be generally true, but from my perspective, it almost didn’t seem true at all as applied to the arts.

I wanted to see if my perception was valid and decided to do some research. I couldn’t really bother a lot of executive directors to ask them how much time they spend on management activities as opposed to leadership activities. (I found two interesting articles about the difference between leadership and managment from Inc magazine and the Small Business Administration) Instead, I decided to look at what executive directors were ideally expected to do in the course of their jobs by looking at position descriptions.

I looked at 26 job descriptions for executive director dating back to August 2003 that were listed on the NY Foundation for the Arts website, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters website, and ArtSEARCH. Some of the jobs are currently listed, others I had copied on to my computer over the course of my job search. There was a fair cross section of theatre, dance, music and visual arts organizations (or organizations which encompassed more than one of these areas).

I tallied the expected tasks executive directors were required to fulfill:

Fundraising-20
Budgeting-16
Rent/Manage Facilities-2
Strategic Planning/Vision/Direction-6
P/R, Marketing-11
Personnel Management-12
Programming/Booking Events-9
Oversee restoration of building-2
Board Development-1
Outreach/Community-Government relations-6
Volunteer Development-2
Partnerships-1
Event Management-1

As I expected fundraising was the most often mentioned job. This shouldn’t be a surprise given that non-profits are expected to raise a fair portion of their budgets through donations and grants. However, in 16 instances it was the first thing listed and just as often seemed to be the specific duty of the executive director rather than a function of a development director that the position oversaw.

I have often read that university presidents are discouraged because an increasing portion of their jobs is fundraising rather than leading their schools. I was likewise discouraged to see that so many organizations listed fundraising as an expectation and so few listed long range vision and strategic planning. The implication is that it is more important that the director keeps things running and much less important that he/she shepherds organizational development.

The majority of the responsibilities listed in these descriptions seemed to be more appropriate for a managing director and artistic director. I didn’t look at the specific staff set up for each organization, but from the listing of duties I would feel confident guessing many didn’t have managing or artistic directors or even general managers. In about five cases, it was pretty clear there also weren’t marketing and development directors. In a couple instances, it was evident that the executive director was just about the only paid employee.

Because the executive director has to take on the responsibilities usually handled by artistic and managing directors (and then some), it is no wonder there are few expectations the the person will employ a cohesive vision for the future–there isn’t any time.

In times of economic hardship, it isn’t unexpected that organizations will seek to save money by consolidating job functions into one position. Something valuable is lost in doing this with a chief executive position. When a CEO gets bogged down in dealing with the day to day concerns of an organization, they lose more than time needed to create a vision that will move the organization forward. If the person doesn’t have the time to get educated and consider the potential negative effects of trends upon the organization, they will find themselves scrambling to find solutions in reaction to the consequences.

The ultimate health of the organization depends on the CEO having the opportunity to act in advance to minimize these negative effects. Being in the position of dealing with the picayune daily concerns of an organization and then being forced to play catch up to deal with situations there was no time to foresee can overwhelm and burn out the executive director.

When disaster strikes, 20/20 hindsight can cause boards of directors and executive directors to say, “It was so evident this would be an important variable! You should have seen it coming!” Indeed, it should have been foreseen–if the director had had the time and opportunity to rise above the day to day concerns cast an uncluttered look over the landscape.

The executive director has to be free to be a leader and leave the management of the organization to other people. Certainly, having more time to survey the situation is no guarantee of success. A bad CEO will be a bad CEO with more time on his/her hands. The good CEO will take the opportunity to emerge from the mines and shine in the sun providing a beacon for others to follow along the new paths the executive director surveys from this new perspective.