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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Why Don’t The Arts Have This?

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Over Christmas Break my theatre was more or less empty so in the interests of not turning on lights I didn’t need, I pretty much ended up eating lunch at my desk. On a whim I started perusing the Chronicle of Higher Education’s forums.

It wasn’t long before I was asking myself why there was nothing like this in the arts world. These forums are a great resource for people in higher education. It is mostly geared for professors, but grad students and administrators have their places too. The different areas deal with various issues from how people spend their free time to thorny ethical issues over student cheating and plagiarism.

One of the areas I think is strongest is jobs. The posters pose and answers questions about interviewing- how to dress, what to expect at a conference interview vs. campus interview, what a job talk might entail, what foods you should avoid during a meal interview- it really runs a gamut. People even solicit advice about particular towns and institutions.

What really impressed me is that there seem to be a couple of Wikis created by the forum members rather than by the Chronicle staff. One is essentially a collection of the basic wisdom covered in the forums about where to find a job and what to do when called for an interview.

The other, quite interestingly, acts as a status board about what stage different jobs are at. Since many institutions are pretty bad about communicating where a job search is at and may not even start committee review until months after the deadline, the forum members make notes about when they hear anything about a job. If there is a note saying they are calling for interviews and you don’t get a call, at least you know where things stand for you.

If one of the prominent arts entities hosted these types of forums, it would be fantastic. There could be discussions about everything-advocacy, marketing tips, law, unions, interviewing tips, technology, audience relations, fundraising, board relations, philosophy. I could really go on and on. In addition to helping arts organizations make their external relations more effective and efficient, it might bring about an improvement to employee relations too. After some posts saying “you ain’t going to be paid well anywhere in the arts so if you gotta starve, you couldn’t find a nicer group to starve alongside,” some places might experience a little bit of a brain drain.

Some of the large entities like Americans for the Arts and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters do have listservs but they are only open to the membership. I have access to a couple and they are like ghost towns. I have more discussions with people who comment on my blog. I think part of the problem is that access is closed. The other is the old chicken and egg thing. There is no discussion because nobody posts and nobody posts because there isn’t enough discussion to get them visiting.

It won’t be long though before the up and coming youth who are used to holding long conversations online start showing up and looking for some place to talk. Absent any place to do so, they will start creating their own discussions. The problem with that is the discussions will be decentralized. I can start a forum right now. The software comes with my blog account. My forum would add to the conversation and be an improvement over the present status, but not as much as one at a more highly trafficked site would.

A central forum should be started now and all the bugs ironed out so that it is ready for when the next wave of artists, managers, designers and technicians arrive on the scene. They will have a certain set of expectations from their experiences with MySpace, YouTube, internet chat, texting and whatever else may come next. If they are disappointed in what they find and go elsewhere, an opportunity to harness their energy is lost.

Whatever organization creates a good forum for discussion can have a hand in directing the energies of artists. I understand that these things take resources and that is why some of these organizations are limited access to dues paying members only. Whomever does this well will gain at the very least tacit recognition of leadership. Giving it away for free could garner greater membership and support than keeping it locked away will. Which is why I think a group like Americans for the Arts should do it. Though I wouldn’t discount ArtsJournal.com from stepping up and making a success of it.

Maybe there are highly active forums out there and I missed them. I would love it if someone could point me in the right direction. Before writing this entry, I checked out Americans for the Arts, the NEA, TCG, ASOL, DanceUSA, and Arts Presenters.

I also hit regional presenting conferences and the regional arts granters- NEFA, Mid-Atlantic Arts, WESTAF, and Southern Arts.

(All of these have great resources to check out though which is why I am going link crazy here.)

I even checked out the Center for Arts Management and Technology at Carniege Mellon University. They will license forum and listserv software to you, but they don’t actually host any public forums that I can see.

On the other hand, they don’t list Butts In The Seats as an arts management resource, so really, how good can they be?!

Anyhow, I really feel strongly about this so I am going to ponder a little more, put together a nice letter making my case and contact some likely hosts suggesting something like what I am proposing. I might enlist some of my gentle readers to lobby alongside me if I discover any promising opportunities.

I know that all solutions do not solve the problems of all people. What is creating great discussion for educators may not work for the arts world. But seeing as how no one has really tried it yet, it is worth turning over the stone and seeing what we find. Maybe there are forums in Butts in the Seats’ future.

The Secret

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I heard a poem today that really electrified me because it succinctly and adroitly summarized the relationships between artist, consumer and a work. I was excited by “The Secret,” by Denise Levertov, because it points out that your perception of a work doesn’t need to be in synch with that of the creator for you to have an authentic experience.

For that reason alone I think every beginning level fine art and literature class should start with this poem. Handing it out at arts events to assuage the fears of attendees that they are stupid if they don’t “get it” would be valuable, too.

The only flaw with this is that people have to understand the message of the poem without much need of explanation. Lengthy instruction about what they are supposed to think runs counter to the whole intent after all.

The poem also talks about how revisiting a work multiple times can be rewarding. Often I wonder if people don’t recognize this about art: How there are valid reasons to read a book, listen to a symphony work, see a play, a sculpture, a dance piece many times over the course of your life.

I could go on and on for a bit talking about what great messages I see in the poem. As I said though, that is a bit counterproductive. I am including the poem below and hope if you don’t find it particularly inspiring, you at least enjoy the sentiment.

“The Secret” Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line.

I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

Temptations of the Church

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I began this blog (nearly 3 years ago! Holy Crow!) talking about evangelism for the arts. Thoughts of religion have never been too far from my mind since then, mostly because a church has always been pretty close to my stage.

I have mentioned before that a number of churches have taken turns renting our facility. The rent helps balance the budget and the church understands that the theatre’s needs come first so they need to work around our sets. (Though when we did Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses they saw the large pool of water as an opportunity for baptisms.)

There are more churches locally than there are facilities to accommodate them. I think they are basically subsidizing the public school system here because I can’t pass by a school on Sundays without seeing a directional sign for a church. Whenever a suitable building becomes vacant, there is a lot of competition between the churches as well as businesses to rent it. In fact, one of our previous church tenants built a new facility, out grew it within 6 months and were asking to come back.

One of the insidious (though they don’t mean to be) things about the churches is all the money they have to throw around. Even though they rent a storage room for us, every Sunday they bring in a large U Haul truck full of equipment. Among this is a large sound system because ours is not adequate for the number of musicians and singers they have every Sunday. They put up television monitors in our lobby for nursing mothers and over flow (a previous tenant put them in classrooms in adjacent buildings so large was their overflow.)

The insidious part isn’t that they have so much money. My envy would be my problem. It is that the money gives them the ability to offer us so much of what we need in return for concessions. A prior renter bought lighting instruments with the stipulation that half were for our use and half were to be left permanently focussed where they wanted. They also bought a projection screen which we could use any time we wanted. When they left, they only took the permanently focussed instruments and sold the screen to the next church. All in all, we haven’t done too badly.

The current church has proposed replacing our entire sound system–a $40-50,000 proposition–in return for a 3 year guaranteed lease (vs the renewable 1 year one). They say they will vacate at the end of that time regardless of whether they find a place or not and leave the sound system–and will put it all in writing.

Most of my crew has been salivating at the idea, of course. They also have their reservations. Some are small, but important, like whether they will be more lax in taking care of the facility if they know they can’t be kicked out. Others are of greater concern. Will every request that is made have an unspoken “because we bought you a $50,000 sound system, after all” tacked to the end.

There is also a cautionary tale of a local high school that was grateful to have a huge renovation and upgrade of equipment in their auditorium paid for by a local church in return for guaranteed use of the facility on certain days for which they would pay rent, of course. The problem is, now the high school can’t use their own facility on weekends and some weeknights. (And if you think that is bizarre, a local high school marching band couldn’t use their own field this Fall because the school had rented it out for use by a private school’s marching band. Such is the state of education funding.)

But this story isn’t about the growing power of churches, not really. It could have just as well been about an extremely wealthy donor or a corporation. Churches are just an emerging figure in an old story about non-profits and the hard decisions that need to be made in the face of expectations attached to the receipt of money and goods.

My particular story is interesting only because it is the offer of a church which has the potential of corrupting the soul of my organization. From the way I read things, it doesn’t appear as if those I answer to would accept the proposal despite the benefits. While I initially wrestled with the whole situation as I pondered the pros and cons, I would have to generally agree with my staff’s reservations.

I daresay, smarter people than I have had to wrestle with bigger proposals which necessitated greater compromises. The whole controversey with corporate naming rights at the Smithsonian comes to mind.

Its a situation all arts managers need to ponder. Most of the time, you think you wish you had the problem of people wanting to give you lots of money and how you would snatch it up while blithely saying “Oh you only want one of my kidneys, what a bargain!” Like most daydreams, you don’t realize how attached you are to your body parts, or organizational soul as the case may be, until you receive a genuine offer for it.

Marketing Doesn’t Celebrate Christmas

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Ah, Christmas Break! When no one is around and you can work on all those things you couldn’t when the phones were ringing and people were asking you questions. Though I have to admit the absence of others left many unanswered questions like “where do we keep the x?”

One of the suggestions that consistently pops up on our surveys is that we should advertise our events on Myspace.com. For the last few days I have been creating a presence on Myspace for my theatre. I am usually a little reserved about joining in on the newest thing.

First, if the trend is just a flash in the pan you waste time and resources getting involved only to have it wane. Second, I like to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a new trend to see if it really holds any value for me and if so, how to best employ it. I remember the 90s when everyone had to have a webpage but didn’t know how best to use it. People were adding every new special effects feature they could. Unfortunately, it all outstripped the capacity of a modem connection and ended up hurting relationships with businesses rather than enhancing them.

In the case of a Myspace presence, signing up is free and I already have images and text developed for my website. There isn’t a terribly large investment of time or new resources to make it happen. Also, Myspace has tools that allow you to tell all your friends about an upcoming events with a click of a button. Now all my theatre needs is friends…

One thing I do know I will have to spend time on is making some small changes to how I present the theatre and its events on Myspace vs. our website. Even though there are zillions of people on Myspace they actually comprise a niche market that will react better to a different approach than the one on our public website.

Speaking of fine tuning ones approach, I broke one of my cardinal rules of press release writing today. I quoted a reviewer. My general feeling is that quoting a reviewer is a crutch for the lazy and/or unimaginative.

However, I do think I used the quote in an imaginative way. The performing company had included quotes and newspaper editorials from audience members that were just dynamite. For my press release I essentially said that one might think the group was excellent from what X reviewer said, but when you read that audience members said this, this and this, not only does it sound like the reviewer is being miserly with his praise in comparison, but you can see the group really engages and excites audience members unfamiliar with the discipline.

Yeah, I know written here it sounds like I have essentially replicated those movie ads where they have “candid” interviews with people who saw the show. I think my execution is clever and original enough to expiate my sin of quoting a reviewer.

About a month ago I got a call from a reviewer who had some questions. At the end of the call she commented that she really liked my writing style and that my press releases were interesting to read. If nothing else, I know I am on the right path with my efforts to write better releases.