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Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice. I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/) My most recent role is as Theater Manager at the Rialto in Loveland, CO Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

A Few Lessons From Covid and SVOG

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I was attending the Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference recently and sat in on a Life After SVOG session. There were a number of things discussed that either fell into the category of “the pandemic revealed the need for this” or “this was always a problem and the pandemic revealed the need for change.”

In the former category, representatives from the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) and National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) both mentioned that it became clear that there was a need for affordable touring insurance.

The NITO rep also brought up the need to have more transparency about ticketing fees. I didn’t get a chance to seek clarification, but my assumption was that since the organization represents the artists, they were questioning whether the venue was making revenue on performances that was being excluded from what was supposed to be shared with the performers.

In terms of overall advocacy, there was discussion about breaking down silos and making common cause with other industries in the future. For example, while arts groups were successful in getting relief for organizations and individual artists in the form of millions of dollars, there was a group advocating for aid for workers excluded from payroll based programs like PPP which secured relief in the billions, some of which arts and culture workers were eligible to receive.

Along those same lines, the way the relief programs were administered varied from state to state. In Oregon offered grants to individual artists whereas New York didn’t. So there is a perceived need to ensure people and groups which were excluded in programs in the pandemic aren’t overlooked in the next crisis simply because they reside in a different state.

In terms of problems which always existed that have come to the fore, panelists mentioned that cultural workers had started to demand organizations reconcile their internal cultural to their externally declared culture. Basically, organizations would publicly advocate for a fairness and equity they didn’t provide their own staffs. Among the results have been unionization efforts among museums and theaters revising their un(der) paid intern and apprentice programs.

Another thing that people will probably says has been revealed is the hunger they have felt to be assembling again live at conferences. As much as people complained about attending conferences in the past, there are exchanges that happen in person that aren’t possible when you are half paying attention to a video screen while working in another screen.

For example, the ego boosting experience of people telling you how great your blog is and wanting to take selfies…

Best Creativity Is Messy Creativity

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In the past I have written critically about the use of creative practice as a prescriptive tool to boost the development and achievement level of children (i.e. attaching headphones to your belly to expose a baby to Mozart in utero).  Back in November, The Guardian had a long form piece on the related topic of giving kids educational toys with the same end in mind. Research basically shows it doesn’t work:

But, despite the best efforts of millions of striver parents, it doesn’t seem to be the case that you can turn three-year-olds into geniuses by giving them plastic ukuleles for their birthdays, or even drilling them on their violin scales. (You may well be able to foster in those children a paralysing perfectionism and deep sense of inadequacy.) Equally, you don’t have to grow up with hundreds of toys, or speaking three languages, in order to be extraordinarily bright. (In fact, you can still learn several languages with a high degree of fluency in later childhood and beyond.)

Not all of that nuance has broken through to parents. Already in the mid 1980s, Brian Sutton-Smith, probably the most prolific play scholar in history, could write: “We have little compelling evidence of a connection between toys, all by themselves, and achievement…”

The oft repeated story about kids being more interested in playing with the box the toy came in points to the exact type of play that does contribute to skill development. The less concrete and realistic the intended use of the object is, the better.

It seems that basically that from birth through adulthood, the best pursuit of creativity is messy, unstructured creativity.

After watching kids play with more than 100 different types of toy, the researchers concluded that simple, open-ended, non-realistic toys with multiple parts, like a random assortment of Lego, inspired the highest-quality play. While engaged with such toys, children were “more likely to be creative, engage in problem solving, interact with their peers, and use language,” the researchers wrote. Electronic toys, however, tended to limit kids’ play: “A simple wooden cash register in our study inspired children to engage in lots of conversations related to buying and selling – but a plastic cash register that produced sounds when buttons were pushed mostly inspired children to just push the buttons repeatedly.”

As a result of such research, it is increasingly acknowledged that the best new toys are the best old ones – sticks and blocks and dolls and sand that follow no pre-programmed routines, that elicit no predetermined behaviours.

A Look At Who’s Managing Foundation Funds

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For the third year in a row, the Knight Foundation has conducted a survey of the top 55 charitable foundations with the intent of measuring the diversity of those managing the assets. Of the 50 eligible to be measured, (five do not have funds under active management or engage in other approaches which don’t meet study criteria), 15 declined to provide a response to the survey.

Knight Foundation was disappointed in the lack of transparency. I had written about the problem of donor advised funds essentially sequestering charitable gifts with no obligation to to distribute them. Some of those on Knight Foundation’s list of non-responders are set up in this or similar arrangement.

Knight Foundation had examined their own practices about 12 years ago and appalled by what they found, set out to diversify the companies that handled their investments.  Reading the report, you may be disappointed to learn that 81.9% of the top 50 charitable foundations funds are invested with firms primarily owned by white men. However, at 18.1% charitable foundations are veritable role models in the investment world at large where the industry average is 1.4% invested with diverse owned firms.

Knight Foundation isn’t simply pursuing this policy to provide a fairer distribution of assets under management to diverse owned firms. They have seen that diverse owned firms engage in more diverse investment strategies avoiding “group think” approaches which may result in unhealthy concentrations of assets in problematic companies and industries, but this investment approach by diverse owned firms is no more risky than non-diverse owned ones.

That study, and the two in the series that proceeded it, found no statistically significant difference in risk- adjusted returns between diverse-owned and non-diverse-owned asset management firms. Put another way, despite no performance advantage, firms primarily owned by white men manage 98.6% of the over $80 trillion under management in the United States. And that $80 trillion represents more than three times the entire GDP of the United States.

 

What Did You Change In Yourself To Memorize Those Lines?

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I know a lot of people in the performing arts literally or figuratively roll their eyes at the inevitable question, “How do you remember all those lines.”   However, Stephen Colbert reminds us that you don’t have to always answer the exact question as asked. In a tribute to former teacher/friend/mentor Frank Galati who recently died, Colbert recently shared a commercial break conversation he had last October with John Lithgow where he discusses Galati’s thoughts on that question.

“He said, ‘how do you remember all those lines? Let’s not take for granted that there is something magical about that. You’ve changed something in yourself. People don’t sit down and memorize two hours of text. You did. Why did you do that? How did you do that?’ He goes ‘What are you when you go on stage? What is that other thing that you are becoming? How are you presenting yourself. What are you willing to become this person who wants to present ideas and emotions to an audience. How do you become beautiful?

And that the beauty of the world we see all around…and when you go on stage you answer the accusation of the world which is that you are hiding your beauty.  The beauty of the world accuses you of hiding your beauty. When you go on stage, whatever you are, whatever part of humanity you are, you are just as much a part of the world that you find beautiful. And therefore, when you’re on stage, you’re as beautiful as an statue, you’re as beautiful as any sunset. When you allow people to see you, beautifully…”

Colbert goes on to relate how Galati cited a story about choreographer George Balanchine instructed a dancer to raise her leg beautifully, which is different from gently or lovely, but that she did so beautifully because the instruction had meaning for her.

The beginning of that story where Colbert cited the idea of changing something in yourself to be able to accomplish the memorization resonated for me. Often the act of memorizing text is only one small part of what is required to memorize the character you are going to portray. That character is different from you as the actor so you have to recall a 1000 little things, including the text, to bring that person to the stage.

That is different for every actor and every part. Thinking about it in that context allows you to respond differently to that oft asked question.

Perhaps this clip resonated with me because the morning of the same day I heard it, I heard a story about a woman who made the 2,744 step ascent of the steep Manitou Incline 1003 times in 365 days. (First woman and fourth person to ever do that)  If you were to ask how she did it, she made a similar remark to Galati’s about changing something in oneself:

“I felt like it was something that I would have to level up in every area of my life: physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially … to be able to accomplish something like that,” Jones said.

It might not be a big surprise that you would have to change something about yourself to accomplish a physical feat, but a similar recognition doesn’t really exist for acting. There may be an assumption that is can all be accomplished by sitting in your living room chair. Providing a more complete answer to the question of how lines were memorized may shift that perception.

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…Reach Out

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For about a year now, I have seen Dan Pink post on social media about his survey of people’s regrets and how it can be healthy to embrace them. Finally, I decided to read about what he had to say when I saw some interview links toward the end of the December.

The interview with him on the Behavioral Scientist webpage was pretty interesting just in terms of how quickly people responded and how eager to talk about their regrets people were. They initially received 15,000 responses from 100 countries and are now close to 23,000 from 109 countries. Of those initial responses, 32% provided their email addresses and opted in to be contacted for further conversation.

Something he mentions is that younger respondents pretty much equally regretted things they had done and things they hadn’t done, but as people got older they were more likely to regret things they hadn’t done.

While it is mentioned in the Behavioral Scientist article, a separate piece on the Inc website focused on Pink’s #1 lesson to reduce regret – “Always reach out.”  Essentially, if you are wonder if you should reconnect with a friend you lost touch with or a family member with whom you may be estranged, Pink says the answer is yes.

A team led by University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business marketing professor Peggy Liu conducted a series of 13 experiments with nearly 6,000 participants all designed to gauge why people don’t reach out to friends or acquaintances and what happens when they do.

The study design may have been complicated but the results were straightforward, according to a writeup of the findings in the New York Times: “Across all 13 experiments, those who initiated contact significantly underestimated how much it would be appreciated. The more surprising check-ins (from those who hadn’t been in contact recently) tended to be especially powerful.”

As I read this, it struck me that arts organizations can use people’s willingness to discuss their regrets as the basis to create experiences for their communities. Maybe it is a storytelling topic. Perhaps it is a pop-up exhibit of artifacts from your regrets similar to the one Nina Simon discusses hosting for failed relationships in a TED Talk. Or perhaps it is the driver of a dialogue between generations similar to many of the recordings made for the Story Corps project.

Make 2023 The Year Of Library Advocacy

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Right at the end of the year, New York City based columnist for The Guardian, Moira Donegan, wrote a loving piece about how she is thankful for US public libraries.

One of the first things she mentions is that the architecture and design of many libraries is rather intimidating and makes her feel under dressed. She says when she works at tables in New York Public Library’s iconic 42nd Street branch, she is always nervous that someone is going to chase her away. I have written about how people can have a similar experience with arts and cultural organizations. Though many theaters, museums, and libraries are not as grandiose as the 42nd Street branch.

Donegan opines that the US is fortunate to have had the spate of museum construction when it did because it would be difficult to generate public will behind such an effort now. But citizens have garnered immense benefits as a result.

If the public library did not already exist as a pillar of local civic engagement in American towns and cities, there’s no way we would be able to create it. It seems like a relic of a bygone era of public optimism, a time when governments worked to value and edify their people, rather than punish and extract from them. In America, a country that can often be cruel to its citizens, the public library is a surprising kindness.

[…]

The majesty of library buildings is matched only by the nobility of their purpose. The public library does not make anyone money; it does not understand its patrons as mere consumers, or as a revenue base. Instead, it aspires to encounter people as minds. The public library exists to grant access to information, to facilitate curiosity, education, and inquiry for their own sake. It is a place where the people can go to pursue their aspirations and their whims, to uncover histories or investigate new scientific discoveries.

When I saw a tweet that NYC Eric Adams was requiring the NYC Public Libraries system to cut “cut their budgets by $13.6 million by the end of fiscal year 2023, and another $20.5 million over the next 3 fiscal years.” My first thought was that he does not truly understand the vast number of social services libraries provide to their communities. They metaphorically serve as the wetlands which buffer communities from the onslaught of hurricanes. Creating an environment where their role is diminished will only serve to magnify the manifestation of social problems throughout the City.

If you don’t know, this year make an effort to explore all the services your local libraries provide to communities from classes, computer access, tax help, shelter from the weather, social services access, counseling and, yeah, books.  Likewise think about your own value proposition for the community and increasingly communicate that outside the framework of selling tickets.

 

Abandoning Template Based Relationships With Creatives

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If you aren’t familiar with Springboard for the Arts, it is an organization based in St. Paul, MN, (with a rural office in Fergus Falls, MN), run by artists, for artists. But that is just the short description of an organization involved with tons of community projects. A few weeks ago, executive director Laura Zabel wrote an appeal to make 2023 the year to practice more equitable contracting with artists.

To start with, she encouraged jettisoning contracts inherited from previous administrators and templates from legal websites and consider creating contracts that aligned with organizational values. That might require finding a lawyer that shared those values in order to create some new contracts. In addition to fair compensation and timely payment processing, she also advocated for a different approach to intellectual property rights and exploring partial payment scenarios in the event a project is interrupted by unforeseen circumstances like a pandemic.

Equitable intellectual property practices: Many contract templates assume that the institution wants and needs to own an artist’s intellectual property in perpetuity and for all uses. Can you make your intentions and needs around IP explicit and specific to the situation? For example, instead of a standard “work for hire” contract, try a tailored licensing perspective with language that specifies “non-exclusivity”. For example: “Presenter hereby grants a nonexclusive license to present and deliver the Event.” This kind of language can help make sure that artists can use their work for future projects or to generate income in a different way. Can you share photos and video with the artist so that they have good documentation of their work?

Realistic cancellation policies: Things are uncertain and we all know there are no sure things these days, so building in contingencies and worst case scenarios is important. Can you structure your contract so that you compensate artists as they work on a project vs. only at the completion of a project? Can you be clear with funders or supporters that if a project is canceled you will pay the artists anyway? Use the contract to lay out multiple scenarios if a project needs to be rescheduled or canceled so an artist can better plan and make sure to include a “kill clause” that details a payment you will make to the artist if the event or project needs to be canceled.

Basically, just as arts & cultural organizations are cognizant of the need to have flexible approaches to delivering their services and seek new audiences, they also need to be adjusting the nature of their relationships with artists, staff, vendors and others who contribute to the success of their organizations.

Tax Deductions For The Cost Of Being An Artist

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Just before Christmas there was an article about Actors’ Equity union pushing their members to contact Congressional representatives about passing Performing Artist Tax Parity Act (PATPA).  This law would allow more artists to take the Qualified Performing Artist (QPA) deduction which is an:

“….above-the-line” deduction for specific unreimbursed expenses. (Above-the-line deductions are those subtracted from overall gross income to calculate an individual’s adjusted gross income — meaning individuals do not get taxed on such expenses.)…

The current QPA stipulates that those with an adjusted gross income of $16,000 (before these specific deductions) are eligible — an amount that has been unchanged since the QPA was first implemented in 1986. PATPA would increase this threshold to $100,000 for single taxpayers and $200,000 for joint filers, rendering many more entertainment workers eligible for the deduction.

Experts estimate that entertainment professionals spend between 20 and 30 percent of their income on work expenses — from agent and manager fees to headshots, equipment and professional development.

This law would also help other performing artists who likewise incur many personal expenses in support of their professional career. Drew McManus created a website with great visuals that tracked these myriad costs for string instrument performers in 2017 so you know the costs have only gone up since then and may be greater or just as great for other musicians, dancers, etc.

As I was looking to see if other performing arts unions were encouraging people to write their legislators, I discovered this is an effort that has been underway since around 2019. However, since the current Congress is about to end, there is a push to get the legislation passed. If you are interested in writing a letter, you can do so via a the form here.

IRS 990 Backlog Hampering Non-Profit Giving and Transparency

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ProPublica recently reported that the IRS has yet to release nearly a half million non-profit tax records. You may be wondering why that is something you should be concerned about. In fact, the lack of records release has some pretty significant implications for transparency and charitable giving. Drew McManus has been painstakingly combing through records since 2005 to assemble his annual Orchestra Compensation Reports.  I believe among the reasons why he didn’t have a 2022 edition examining the impact of the pandemic during the 2019-2020 fiscal year was partially due to the lack of 990 filings available for review.

Additionally, many individuals, corporations and foundations use the filing data to make giving decisions.

“This is having an impact on nonprofits, fundraising, donors … and charity regulators,” said Cinthia Schuman Ottinger of the Aspen Institute, who coordinates a group of practitioners who work with nonprofit tax data (ProPublica is a part of this group). “The whole ecosystem suffers when there are delays of this kind.”

Michael Thatcher, the CEO of Charity Navigator, said the end of the year is a crucial time for charitable giving.

[…]

And, he said, “it’s not just the donors that are upset by this.” Many organizations want their latest information out there as well, especially if their finances have improved or they’ve done significant work in recent years. “They want to show that to the world, and guess what, when you go to Charity Navigator, you’re seeing two-year-old information.”

Many of the missing filings could help shed light on how organizations — and the nonprofit sector as a whole — have fared during tumultuous years marked by a pandemic, economic upheaval and large infusions of federal relief dollars.

Courtney Aladro, a charity regulator for the Massachusetts attorney general and NASCO board member, said that regulators across the country use the IRS repository of documents to confirm or corroborate the information that charities submit to their states….

“Those are some pretty important years because of some of the difficulties over the last few years,” Aladro said. “The use and expenditure of COVID relief funds, for example. It’s pretty important for charity regulators and law enforcement to monitor that, and not having that information will make it more difficult.”

The IRS has been hampered by underfunding and understaffing which has lead to both delays in release and embarrassing release of tax information that was not supposed to be released. A recent bill passed by Congress will seek to modernize systems and hire more staffing, but it could be years before the problems are ironed out.

Creativity For Solving Problems, Not Monetizing

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Diane Ragsdale recently made a post about the design and intent of the Masters of Arts in Creative Leadership program she is leading at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).

In answering the question about why one would study leadership at an art and design college, she writes:

Creativity is consistently ranked as one of the most important skills for navigating the complexities of the 21st century….Creativity was equated in business schools with the scaling of innovations towards the ultimate goal of stimulating economic growth. I didn’t want to hook beauty onto that value chain. I would sometimes quip: This beauty course is not aimed at putting beauty in service of business. My aim is the opposite. I want leaders to put business in service of beauty.

[…]

The creation in creative leadership as we are interpreting it at MCAD is based in a foundational premise that there are ways of being, doing, and knowing that are inherent to artmaking and design that are both undervalued by society-at-large and incredibly valuable at a moment in which we are looking at the “end of the world as we have known it” and the need to make a new one

I have often written in opposition to the prescriptive approach to the arts as a way to solve problems, similar to how Ragsdale alludes to the interest of businesses to monetize creativity for the future. Essentially viewing it as a tool to be used and thus if it doesn’t yield expected results within an expected time frame, the problem must be you are using the wrong type of creativity for the job.

As most in creative fields know, it is something you practice over a long period of time rather than learn in a seminar and then go home trying to apply. No one thinks you can become highly effective at an athletic pursuit without a lot of practice, analysis of performance and negotiating bottlenecks. People focusing on employing creativity need to go through a similar process, including possibly getting past a mental wall no less imposing than one a marathon runner may need to push past.

In my post yesterday about improv helping people tolerate uncertainty and reduce social anxiety, I took pains to call attention to the fact the people conducting the study intentionally engaged professional theatre artists to teach improv to students. This is not to say that therapists and counselors can’t effectively teach students to use improv. As the study authors allude to, there is a difference between the approach of someone teaching you improv to fix something about you and the approach of people who practice and teach improv in order to get better at improv.

Yes, the theatre artists likely knew they were there to help prove improv can help people better cope with uncertainty and anxiety, but the whole study gets contaminated if the scientists are frequently talking to them about expected outcomes. So it is likely the theatre artists were jazzed to be getting paid to teach and share about improv for 10 weeks and the prospect that it might provide a model for improving the mental well-being of kids made the experience all the more satisfying.

Improv Can Help Tolerate Uncertainty

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Hat tip to Dan Pink who tweeted about a study which found teaching improv to students can lower social anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty.  The study authors noted that historically,

“…intensive clinical intervention—18 weekly, 1-hour private sessions of cognitive behavior therapy—works to reduce intolerance of uncertainty. But most people, including teens, don’t have access to expensive therapies, and want to avoid the stigma of clinical disorders, says Peter Felsman, the study’s lead author and U-M doctoral graduate.”

In conducting the study, the authors recruited the involvement of 350 students in grades 8-12 at 14 schools in a 10 week program taught by improv professionals in the Detroit metro area. The students were surveyed in week 1 and week 10 to determine if there were any changes in their tolerance of uncertainty and social anxiety in their lives.

Students were asked to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 4 on social anxiety questions like:

“Fear of embarrassment causes me to avoid doing things or speaking to people,” “I avoid activities in which I am the center of attention,” and “Being embarrassed or looking stupid are among my worst fears.”

and in terms of uncertainty:

Participants were instructed to rate “how characteristic” each of the items was about themselves (e.g. “Not knowing what may happen next can make me scared or sad.”) from 0 (Not at all to 5 (Entirely).

Students were also asked questions regarding social self-efficacy and prior experience with improv in order to provide other baseline measures. In speaking about the results, the study authors found that improv supported their hypotheses regarding social anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty (IU).

…this study addressed two open empirical questions: 1) whether participating in an improv course is associated with change in IU, and 2) whether that change is associated with change in social anxiety. We found evidence to support both of our hypotheses: improv is associated with reductions in IU, and that change in IU is associated with reductions in social anxiety

I would encourage anyone who might be considering using improv to achieve similar goals to carefully read the full study. They make distinctions between the effectiveness and vigor of previous efforts in terms of frequency and length of sessions as well as the training of those administering the improv classes. They take pains to explain they intentionally designed their program to be administered in-class to everyone in order to avoid the stigma of that those chosen to participate are troubled and need help. Likewise, there is no discussion of mental health during the sessions which are lead by theatre/improv instructors rather than counselors and therapists.

Ticketmaster Serves Its Customers. The Customer Isn’t You

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I am sure most people are aware of the clamoring anger about ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s concerts, mostly blaming Ticketmaster for screwing things up, but also potentially being complicit and profiting off of high secondary market sales, plus ever increasing ticket fees.

Those who have been around while know that the anger at Ticketmaster’s fees and monopoly has been something of a cyclical topic with outrage peaking every few years. In fact, the intervals between periods of outrage seem to be decreasing of late.  You might wonder why Ticketmaster never seems to respond to ticket purchaser complaints and make the experience better.

The reason, according to an article by Mark Dent on The Hustle, is that ticket buyers are not Ticketmaster’s customer, performance venues are.  Ticketmaster’s business model prioritizes venues, artists and promoters, not buyers.

Rosen believed venues, not concertgoers, were his company’s real customers, and flipped Ticketron’s model:

  • Instead of charging venues to use their ticketing system, Ticketmaster offered to pay them with a cut of the service charges.
  • In exchange, Ticketmaster became their exclusive ticketing platform.

[….]

Many concert promoters eventually wanted a piece of the fees, too, and, years later, some top-tier artists started to negotiate for a share, according to Rosen.

The article posts numerous receipts from different concerts people purchased recently to show the type of fees people are paying. The best apples to apples comparison of fees where you can start to see there may be more hands asking for a share is Taylor Swift’s March concert in Las Vegas where you pay $5 for order processing, $8 for a facility fee and $70.40 per ticket for service fees compared to her Atlanta concert a month later where you pay $5 each for processing and facility fees and $23.20 for service fees. Base ticket price is $265.14 and $109, respectively.

Fred Rosen, former CEO of Ticketmaster is unapologetically indifferent to the complaints of the ticketbuyer.

Rosen said he didn’t care that the system annoyed fans, noting there’s still high demand for concerts, fees and all.

“When you bring that up, it’s irrelevant to me,” he said. “The fact that no one shared in the service charge was idiotic. No one thought that ticketing was a business. I thought it was a business. I’m not ashamed of that.”

Dent writes that breaking up the Ticketmaster monopoly may not do much to solve the problem. Competitors like SeatGeek and AXS subscribe to Rosen’s philosophy and likewise offer payments to venues in return for exclusivity. And that money comes from fees levied on ticket purchases.

The solution instead may be breaking up the exclusivity arrangements, though unlike how the exclusivity of telephone companies and some utility have been broken up in the US, it may be difficult to force diversification upon venues who had apparently entered into the exclusive contracts of their own freewill.

That said, Dent cites the example of Great Britan in terms of what non-exclusive arrangements might mean for consumers:

Budnick says the Great Britain model may provide lower service charges for consumers.

  • British venues rarely have exclusive ticketing platforms. When companies don’t try to gain exclusivity, they don’t have to offer as large of a cut of the fees, bringing down the amount charged to concertgoers.
  • Fans typically see fees closer to 15% of the face value of a ticket.

Sharing Time With Family Is Valued Regardless Of Political Affiliation

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Apropos to my post on Monday about how gift recipients value experiences over material gifts,  Pew Research Center recently released research finding showing that spending time with family and friends was considered meaningful and fulfilling regardless of political affiliation. So taking a marketing approach that emphasizes that aspect of arts and cultural participation can be compelling to people regardless of political affiliation.

Another article provides additional context to the chart, mentioning that:

More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (83%) say spending time with family provides them a great deal or quite a bit of meaning and fulfillment…

[…]

Similar but smaller majorities of Republicans (64%) and Democrats (68%) say the same about spending time with friends.

The share of Republicans and Democrats who say they draw a great deal or quite a bit of meaning and fulfillment from being outdoors and experiencing nature is also nearly identical (72% and 70%, respectively).

Obviously, there are differences between political parties in other aspects of life that provide a feeling of fulfillment. Research results discussing that was released about a year ago in November 2021.

Post-Covid Touring Sees Cancellation Due To Inflation Infestation

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Wired recently had an article about the challenges facing independent artists when it comes to touring. Many are facing a combination of higher costs, a flooded market, and limited resources. Companies with touring equipment and vehicles report having all their inventory on the road. Not only is it difficult to find more equipment to purchase/rent in order to deploy it for tours, there isn’t enough labor to go around. Everyone from skilled technicians to bus drivers have left the industry for other opportunities that don’t demand so much of them.

Gas is pricey, batteries and other vehicle parts are more expensive, and drivers are harder to find, with many of them having switched during the pandemic to package delivery, garbage pickup, or other trucking jobs with less interpersonal contact that don’t require them to leave their families for months at a time.

While prices for hotel rooms, food, transportation, and gear have gone up, the fees performers are paid have remained flat. It appears this is due to there being more artists out there wanting to tour making supply outstrip demand, but also due to uncertainty exhibited by ticket buyers.

“There’s way less advance sales than normal. And I’m hearing this from everyone across the board,” she says. “[Fans] don’t wanna buy a ticket and get sick and have to eat it. So people are doing week-of, day-of [ticket purchases], which is tough for the venue and tough for us, because we obviously want to see advance sales.”

Because many artists need to cover a lot of these costs upfront out of pocket, there have been an increase in cancellation of dates as touring appears increasingly problematic. The prospect of going through a refund process contributes to reticence of consumers to buy tickets too far in advance..

Experiences Are The Gift They Want

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So I serendipitously started on my drive to work this past Saturday evening at the exact time a Hidden Brain episode mentioned how research shows that recipients of gifts prefer experiential gifts more than material gifts.  I thought I was coming in to the middle of a discussion only to realize after listening to the whole recording of the episode that I started my car at the moment 34:30 into the show that host Shankar Vedantam and Carnegie Mellon University researcher Jeff Galak started discussing the data.

This is the time of year a lot of arts and culture organizations encourage people to buy tickets or gift certificates and give experience as a gift so the topic aligns well with our interests. Galak says that all else being equal in terms of price, experiences tend to bring more joy to recipients than material objects. The problem he says, is that givers don’t appreciate this which creates a disconnect.

This comes up a number of times in the episode where people don’t apply the lessons they learn as recipients to their giving. I almost wonder if it is somewhat related to the perception that no one experiences problems like you do and are all happier. In this case, it is believing that others don’t enjoy the same type of gifts as you do. Perhaps, this is exacerbated by marketing and advertising that portrays people enjoying material things in order to sell those things.

Vedantam also posits that it might be related to the fact that the giver sees the visible expression of joy at receiving an object whereas the expression of joy at an experience is delayed until it happens at a later time.

Galak says that expect for his kids, he pretty much exclusively focuses on gifting experiences. He and his wife are of a similar mind on this and exchange gifts in this fashion. He says the best gift his parents can repeatedly give is coming into town and watching his kids while he and his wife get away.

Donating At Check Out, Legit or Shady?

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An interesting situation has arisen in connection with at check out donation solicitations. Credit to Isaac Butler who retweeted a link to a post about a man who brought suit against drugstore chain CVS claiming the check out solicitations were a reimbursement for a $10 million donation obligation CVS had made to the American Diabetes Association.  In November, CVS asked for the case to be dismissed based on their claim that their agreement was only to make up the difference between what customers donated and $10 million.

Emma van Inwegen who linked to both articles in a Twitter thread helpfully added a link to a third article by the Tax Policy Center that answers the question about who gets the tax benefit when you donate at checkout.

According to author Renu Zaretsky there are a lot of Tiktok videos out there that spread incorrect information about the transaction. She says her children have forbidden her to post a video on the site refuting the misinformation. (my emphasis)

To start, keep in mind that there are two ways charities can benefit from point-of-sale donations. The first is where the store donates a share of its sales. That type of donation is deductible by the business but not by its customers. The second way is where customers add something to their bill at the register with the extra amount going to charity. Customers can claim those amounts donated as deductions on their individual income tax return, though almost nobody ever does.

She goes on to explain that when you donate at check out, the business receiving the funds on behalf of a charity is only acting as the collection agent and does not get any tax benefit.

Zaretsky says the problem with giving at check out is that most people won’t get credit for that, or any other donation they make, because they don’t itemize deductions on their taxes.

Even with a receipt, more than nine out of 10 taxpayers won’t deduct this—or any other– charitable donation from their federal taxable income. That’s because they do not itemize their deductions.

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act effectively doubled the standard deduction, the number of households claiming itemized deductions fell from 46.2 million in 2017 to 16.7 million in 2018. Most of those still itemizing their deductions are higher-income households. Those making more than $3.3 million annually get more than one-third of the federal income tax benefits from charitable giving, and few of these households are likely to do much of their giving at the grocery checkout counter.

Who Is The Seat Choice Process Serving?

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Here is a fun little conversation for performing arts venues because there is a fair chance you have a different point of view as a venue operator than as a consumer.

I saw this tweet last week. Apparently the venue set-up their online ticket sales criteria to make sure there weren’t any orphan single seats left open. It hit a minor nerve with others replying they had the same issue at other venues.

I swear to you that a couple hours later, we got a call at my venue box office from a guy complaining about the opposite problem. A nearly sold out show only had single tickets left and he felt it was our responsibility to shuffle people around so he and his girlfriend could sit next to each other.

I wondered how many venues out there had their ticketing system set up so that people couldn’t leave orphan seats? What sort of feedback do you get from that?

Honestly, unless you have been really good about making sure all your rows have an even number of seats, it is almost guaranteed that there will be orphaned seats unless you have a party of odd numbers insert themselves into the row somewhere.

This approach tends to value revenue generation over customer service. Note that you are only asked to leave at least two empty seats together. So if you leave three empty seats, the next purchaser of two tickets may not be able to complete their purchase. Likewise, it may not prevent four different purchasers from leaving an empty space between their parties if there are still a good number of seats left in the row.  I actually tested skipping a single seat on a Ticketmaster site and was able to do it, but wasn’t willing to get on multiple computers to try doing it in the same row a number of times.

I definitely understand the desire to maintain effective revenue generation. When we get close to selling out, I start to scrutinize what holds we might safely release for sale. When I go to performances at other venues and movie theaters where I can choose my seat, I actually scrutinize the map and pick seats with an eye to leaving even number of seats in the row because I am sympathetic to the need for optimum seat usage.

But I also don’t want to throw up barriers that disincentivizes patrons from choosing to attend a live performance. It is really the patron’s responsibility to work out how to make seating choices that are best for the venue?

What are other people’s thoughts?

Enchanted By The Public Art

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About six weeks ago I alluded to the fact I was moving to take up a new job.  A month ago I joined the City of Loveland, Colorado Cultural Services to lead the Rialto Theater.  I have told people that I effectively talked myself into the position before my in person interview due to exploring the city a little bit. I had come out to interview just before Labor Day weekend and with all the delays and cancellations, I booked the earliest flight I could and subsequently arrived too early to check into my hotel.

I went to the visitor welcome center, but soon ended up at the Chapungu Sculpture Park which is apparently the largest collection of stone sculpture by Zimbabwean artists in North America. I am not entirely clear what led to the collection of all these works for the park because it is not part of the city art in public places program, but I am told the artists were living in various parts of the US as political exiles during the administration of Robert Mugabe and were unfortunately later deported back to Zimbabwe and unable to take their work with them.

The sculpture work is extremely interesting, especially since except for winches, no mechanical tools are used in the quarrying and shaping of the stones.

The New Child by Saidi Sabiti
Spirit Protecting Family by Fabion Madamombe
‘Mawuya’ Welcome by Colleen Madamombe

Having seen so much public art in such a short period of time, (there were a number of pieces at the welcome center), I was excited by the prospect of working in a community with such a vibrant arts environment. This continued to be borne out by the dance studios, galleries, and artist housing/studio space within a block of the theater.

After my interview, I swung by the Benson Sculpture Garden which has even more acreage and pieces. There are so many striking pieces there, I didn’t bother to grab some photos for this post. You can see most of them (up to 2016, there have been some more added) on this map. These pieces are largely made of bronze, in part due to the historic presence of foundries in the area.

Of course, there are hundreds of other pieces of public art scattered throughout the community as part of the percent for art program.

There is often a discussion about how people like to live in a community with many arts and cultural amenities, even if they don’t attend them, simply because part of their self-image involves being a person who would live in such a community. I have spoken to many people who grew up here who talk about how Loveland used to be seen as the buck-tooth rural rube of a cousin in comparison with surrounding communities, but that this perception has changed in the last twenty years or so. Many attribute it to the arts and culture vibe which has attracted companies and residents to the community.

A couple weeks after I moved here, I went back to the Benson Sculpture garden in order to see all the pieces I was sure I had missed on my first visit. I was excited to see scads and scads of young people wandering around the space. They almost out numbered the adults.

Then I realized that the location was a super hot site for playing Pokemon-Go. Still, despite the fact that these folks were peering closely at their phones as they wandered about, it did appear they were appreciating many of the sculpture pieces they were wending around to catch their prey. Ultimately I was pleased that someone had chosen to align the game with the gardens and get people interacting with the art.

Not All Excellence Is Rewarded, Not All Who Excel Can Lead Others There

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While I try to write posts about the arts in general, the fact is the content of my posts tends to orient toward performing arts rather visual arts. That said, there are a lot of parallel experiences that crop up across all disciplines. I caught a Hyperallergic post today by Paddy Johnson who was offering advice to visual artists about career viability if you don’t make art for art fairs and the value of insider/outsider feedback.

The first artist was concerned that by not participating/being invited to some of the big art fairs currently occurring, the opportunity for media coverage and recognition necessary to advance careers was being lost. I saw parallels with performing artists who don’t focus on musical theater/Broadway type content or popular trends in music in their practice and felt marginalized.

Johnson points out the oft stated sentiments about niche genres not representing the whole art world and bemoans the fact that such a narrow focus will end up stifling creativity:

The trouble, of course, is that fair art is only one form of art making, and within that environment, it’s pretty easy to forget that other types of art exist. If the main opportunities for visibility center on blockbuster events and sales, outrage, and influencer fodder, then yeah, the people forging unique paths will be perceived to have less value and fewer avenues for visibility.

And that has real consequences for art because it means less diversity, less experimentation, and ultimately a culture where innovation can’t flourish.

However, she also reminds us even outside the arts, performing at the highest level of excellence is not financially rewarded. While some have day jobs to support their creative lives, for some day jobs can preclude being able to attain the highest levels.

In professional distance running, even successful athletes often don’t earn enough from their work to make a living, and taking a job to pay the bills is discouraged. Most runners do not make enough money to cover health insurance and maintain a full-time job, despite running up to 130 miles a week. Most have little to no name recognition despite working at a level almost no other humans can match.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The exploitation of labor looks roughly the same in the arts, where most professional artists don’t make enough money to pay their bills and work in relative obscurity despite enormous talent and visibility within their field.

Johnson answers a second question in this post. I was almost going to omit it but I feel like it raises a common issues that doesn’t get a enough discussion in every creative discipline — whose opinion about the quality of your work should be trusted?

People without a lot of experience interacting with your discipline provide effusive feedback, but the artist doesn’t value it highly viewing the commenters are too inexperienced to provide insight. However, the highly informed insider just makes brief, vague, enigmatic comments that imply something but equally lack insight.

Johnson’s answer here suggests questions to use to draw out better feedback. But what I really liked was that she points out that just as not every highly accomplished person isn’t suited to teach excellence in their craft, every insider isn’t skilled at providing useful feedback.

If you want better feedback from your visits, you can ask questions like, “What is it about the red in this painting that works well for you?” or “What places are you thinking I should take this?” If your visitor is not a dealer or curator you want to show with, you can try inviting criticism. “Does [xyz thing about the art] seem like a problem to you?” A supportive studio visit isn’t defined by complimentary feedback so much as it is valuable feedback. If you have areas of an artwork you’re unsure about, this is an opportunity to discuss!

That said, potential collaborators who engage in your art superficially may not be good partners. When their responses bother you, don’t ask them back. Even bad work can evoke thoughtful feedback, so the art is not to blame!

When Voting Becomes An Intersection for Arts and Civics

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You may have seen news about Ulster County, NY’s demon-spider I Voted sticker. It made national news because the design by 14 year old Hudson Rowan was so strikingly cool/strange and garnered a huge majority of votes last summer to become the official recognition sticker for the county.

But a lot of places have their own distinctive flavor they apply to the stickers. A Bloomberg News article lists a number of them. Some of them are the result of an official branding effort, others like those in Alaska, feature images of wildlife created by high school students.

Of course, one of the first things that occurred to me is that this is one of those places in which civics and art can intersect. It might be worth the effort for local arts organizations and schools to look into whether there are opportunities to contribute to state or even county level sticker design. Getting students and artists actively involved in creating images for election stickers can potentially have beneficial effects.

These stickers brought to mind an entry I did a decade ago about Japanese manhole cover designs which are specific to every city in the country and reflect some degree of local pride. (Happily the Flickr account housing photos of the covers still exists so you can check out the cool designs.)

That post reminded me about a post I wrote on efforts in Lanesboro, MN where they had placed cast iron medallions around the community so visitors could engage in a sort of scavenger hunt. Not to mention the poetry verses that appear on signposts in parking lots around town as well.

Success Attracts Success

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I was interested to see there was some research conducted with some of the earliest recipients of MacKenzie Scott’s unrestricted gifts to various non-profits between 2020 and 2021. The median of the grants she distributed was $8 million as compared to a median of $100,000 given by larger funders in recent years.

To be clear, some of the organizations Scott targeted in the first few rounds of giving didn’t sound like they had been getting anywhere near $100,000 grants. The biggest finding of the study was that the Scott grants weren’t just transformational for organizations, they were equally transformational for leaders who found they no longer had to lay awake at night worrying about keeping doors open. Now they not only felt secure in knowing existing programs could be executed, they began to dream about what else it might be possible to accomplish.

In interviews, more than three-quarters of leaders discussed the shift in their thinking that accompanied the receipt of this gift. A scarcity mindset was replaced with an opportunity to pursue transformational possibilities, as leaders were able to reimagine their organizations “in the ideal way to achieve the biggest impact that we could have.”

Close to two-thirds of interviewed leaders described a sense of relief and breathing room after having received their grant. Many told us of the opportunities to innovate and take risks that their grant has afforded them, knowing their organizations are now more financially secure. “It’s an opportunity to be innovative and creative because we have more foundational support,” said one leader. Another said, “For us to have money to pilot something to see how it goes is just a miracle from heaven.” Other leaders put aside a specific portion of the gift specifically for bold or risky ideas.

The most striking response for me was a leader of color talking about how she felt affirmed and vindicated after worrying her presence was a liability to the organization:

I’ve been told about two million times that organizations led by women of color get less than others,” one leader told us. “So, I was nervous about this because I’m thinking, man, I hope that who I am doesn’t cheat this organization out of opportunities, you know? And that’s a sad thing to even admit to you, but I did think that.” The grant from Scott was powerful for this leader because, as she put it, “it positioned being a woman of color as an asset, not a liability.”

What was also encouraging was that the concern others funders would reduce their support of recipient organizations was unfounded. In many cases, the organizations reported an increase in overall fundraising after receiving MacKenzie Scott’s gifts.

Is It Better To Give Or Receive?

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I saw a tweet by Maria Popova linking to a piece she wrote about the philosopher Seneca’s thoughts on gratitude and thought it might make an appropriate post for Thanksgiving. Seneca was a proponent of the idea that giving should be done for the sake of giving, not receiving anything in return.

There is not a man who, when he has benefited his neighbour, has not benefited himself, — I do not mean for the reason that he whom you have aided will desire to aid you, or that he whom you have defended will desire to protect you, or that an example of good conduct returns in a circle to benefit the doer, just as examples of bad conduct recoil upon their authors, and as men find no pity if they suffer wrongs which they themselves have demonstrated the possibility of committing; but that the reward for all the virtues lies in the virtues themselves. For they are not practised with a view to recompense; the wages of a good deed is to have done it. I am grateful, not in order that my neighbour, provoked by the earlier act of kindness, may be more ready to benefit me, but simply in order that I may perform a most pleasant and beautiful act; I feel grateful, not because it profits me, but because it pleases me.

I happened to click a little errantly and saw Popova’s most recent post quoting John Steinbeck who felt it was more virtuous to receive well than to give.

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

It requires a self-esteem to receive — not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

In fact, Steinbeck apparently had felt a degree of disdain for wealthy philanthropists who gave large sums after engaging in extractive and exploitative practices, a situation to which we may have circled around to again by some measures.

Writes Steinbeck:

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think that the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

Germany Gives 18 Year Olds The Gift of Culture

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Over the years, I have written a fair bit on culture passes that various European countries have distributed to young people.  In addition to passes for cultural experiences and goods, some of the passes have been focused on facilitating rail travel so young people can experience a wider swath of national and international places and events.

According to a Guardian article from last week, Germany is the most recent country to tee up a program.   When Germans turn 18 they will receive a €200 Kulturpass. The goal is to not only get young people engaged with cultural activities, but to also inject some economic vitality post-Covid.

…has twin aims: to encourage young adults to experience live culture and drop stay-at-home pandemic habits; and give a financial boost to the arts scene, which has yet to recover from repeated lockdowns.

[….]

The finance minister, Christian Lindner, described the pass as “cultural start-up capital” that its recipients can use within a two-year period for everything from theatre and concert tickets to books or music. It will be managed via an app and a website that provides a direct connection to a virtual marketplace of everything from bookshops to theatres.

Perhaps most interesting is that the program is intentionally designed to have the 18 year olds “shop locally” as it were and excludes large online platforms and purchases.

Online platforms such as Amazon and Spotify have been excluded from the scheme, which places an emphasis on smaller, often local organisations, such as independent cinemas and bookshops. Individual purchases will be limited in value to prevent someone from using the voucher to buy, for example, a single concert ticket for €200.

I am curious to know if the German government analyzed the programs in places like Spain, France and Italy for design problems. The goals of these other countries were similar in terms of stimulating interest in in-person experiences. The German program seems to have more restrictions built in to achieve that.

Guests Can Change The Rules

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I was out taking a walk this weekend and flipped over to the NPR livestream just as an episode of the Splendid Table came on. As they introduced the second guest, Priya Parker, I wondered why her name sounded familiar until I recalled Ruth Hartt frequently cites Parker’s book, The Art of Gathering.

The interview with Parker starts at about the 35:30 mark  (if you want to miss Chef Vivian Howard’s discussion of a pine needle and rosemary turkey brine that makes you house smell like a Thanksgiving scented candle as you cook the bird, that is your business). She talks about the power of the guest in a social situation. While the host has a type of power, the guests decide whether they will assent to the rules.

Among the examples she gives are a guest at a housewarming party who asked everyone to go around and talk about what they liked about the house. Parker points out that for a host to initiate that would seem a bit arrogant and self-centered, but for a guest it is something of a gift to the host and centers the event around the reason for the gathering.

At host Francis Lam’s encouragement, Parker also shared that while she was on her honeymoon, a wedding guest emailed them with a list of 20 things they loved about the wedding. Some were things that Parker and her husband knew about, but quite a few on the list were moments of delight that the newlyweds didn’t witness. Parker says this is an example of a guest contributing to the “meaning making” of an experience. It is a reflection back to the host and perhaps other guests on those things that made the event special.

It occurred to me that social media helps people in doing that reflection, though it also can cause people to strive to manufacture meaning they hadn’t felt so that they can participate with the rest of the group. Perhaps much like the surfeit of standing ovations at the end of performances.  Though she says there is a specificity that delineates meaningful reflection from an expression of gratitude.

I figured I had enough to turn into a blog post and apply it to performing arts when Parker launched into a anecdote about how guests impacted her experience at Bemelmans Bar in NYC’s Carlyle Hotel. The bar features murals by Ludwig Bemelmans, the creator of the classic Madeline children’s books.  She related how she had been there with friends when a pianist emerged and began playing at about 5:30 pm.

About a half hour later, three people came in and sat at a table near the piano, turned their seats to face the performer rather than each other and then applauded at the end of the next song. That drew the attention of the rest of the bar  to the pianist and they began applauding as well. From that point on, there was applause after every number and people shifted their chairs around to face the piano.

Parker said the conversation didn’t stop at that point, but the pianist was acknowledged at every interval for the rest of the night. She said the action of those three people contributed to the magic of the experience for her because they “change the social contract among the guests” with a small gesture and “suddenly we belonged to a place.”

As I referenced earlier, this is an illustration of the power that guests wield in a social situation. At first, the agreed rules were that guest could ignore the musician. Then three people came in and changed the rules of the room from the musician is providing background music for your conversation to the musician is providing a performance for all of us. It would have been difficult for the host/management to demand the room pay attention to the pianist when he started playing, but three people were able to non-verbally communicate a new lens for the experience and the group complied.

It make you think about how much we should be grateful to audiences for contributing to the success of an evening.  Of course the logical extension of that is that we need to focus more on the experience and enjoyment of the audience.

Doesn’t It Need To Be *About* Something?

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My nephew is in the throes of writing essays for college applications so perhaps that is why a Twitter thread by author Kelly Barnhill caught my attention a month ago. She talks about how neighborhood kids have been coming and asking her for help in writing the essay. She writes about all the writing exercises and ensuing conversations she has with them trying to draw information and realization out.

“I have them write jokes, treatises, manifestos. I have them make graphic essays. Comics. Yard signs. I have them make lists. We talk about verbs. We talk about how we know what we know.”

But the part I really honed in on was this one:

She goes on to talk about how people often don’t know themselves well enough to write about themselves and in fact other people might have greater insight about you than yourself. Which is probably why it is easier to write about your grandmother.

But this resonated with me on a more practical level because I feel like the college essay about how you overcame obstacles in your life was a new enough subject when I was applying to college that it was relevant to your admission. Now, decades later it is cliched and overdone making it all the more difficult for a person with 17 years of relatively unexamined life experience to set themselves apart from other applicants. (And it probably doesn’t help that college admission consultants are telling his parents he would have a better chance of gaining admission to his top choices if he lived in the Midwest rather than East Coast.)

While Barnhill doesn’t say how successful her essay writers are in getting into their top choices, I appreciate that she provides a rather detailed accounting of how she helps create an essay that better reflects their authentic self.  She is giving them the bones of a learning how to learn process that can serve them well throughout their lives if they pay close enough attention.

Also, it occurs to me that she is inadvertently giving an answer to the oft asked query regarding a work of art – “What’s it about??, What does it mean?” Art doesn’t always have to be about SOMETHING to be about something.

I Started This Blog Post Today

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Okay, a little bit of a rant today. I have wanted to get this off my chest for a couple years now.

Who decided that greeting customers with “What can I get started for you today?” was a good idea? To my mind it doesn’t build a relationship with the customer and in fact undermines the customer’s confidence that the interaction will end satisfactorily.

When I was first greeted with that phrase in a local, independently owned coffee shop, my first unconscious thought was, “Are you not going to finish my order?”  I had the same thought on every subsequent visit and it created a sense of unease in me. But I knew the guy who started the shop so I thought maybe he had read about using the phrase in some management text and while I thought it was something of a miscue, it didn’t really bother me too much. Except that there were times that they did indeed mess up my order and that of my colleagues and it caused me to pay closer attention to my transactions going forward. Moreso than other places I chose to eat.

Then I started hearing the “What can I get started…” in other food service encounters and it definitely undermined my faith that they would get my order correct. Especially in those places where your food is subjected to an assembly line process where the person who you communicate your order to is indeed only starting it, use of the phrase only draws additional attention to the likelihood that things may not be completed correctly. Not only do other people often substitute in for the person to whom you rattled off your request,  the person at the end of the line doesn’t even know what you ordered and has to ask you.

Now, in an environment where places have signs up begging your patience because the location is understaffed, the lack of confidence is compounded.

So I am just bewildered about how this phrase became so commonplace that corporate chains and independently owned shops think there is some benefit to using it.

When stores call their customers guests and the employees team members, it is pretty transparently a superficial effort that doesn’t fool anyone, but at least you understand that the attempt is to make customers and employees feel special. I don’t understand the point behind the “what can I get started…” phrase.

I wonder if it might be a matter of a slogan by committee or the highest paid person in the room flexing their influence.

I sort of wondered the same thing about slogans on the Amazon delivery vans.

 

They have messaging that promises low prices and fast delivery, but it evokes a bit of shared culture pre-dating the internet that has entered the collective consciousness. It utilizes slightly different wording each time, but gives you the option of cheap, fast, and quality, saying you can only pick two. So every time I see one of those vans, I feel like it is basically saying I can get it fast and cheap, but the product is going to be crappy quality.

I can only think that Amazon chose to evoke that meme idea due to marketing by committee or some boss thew their weight around.

 

The Oral Tradition We Have All Joyfully Perpetuated

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About a week ago, The Atlantic had an article that answered a question that has been nagging me for quite a few years – are kids still passing down the silly, nonsense jokes, hand clapping rhymes, jump rope chants, etc that we inherited as kids or has technology basically diverted their attention from those experiences?

Apparently I am not the only one who has thought this, because in the latter part of the article that exact question is addressed.

Adults, it seems, are in a perpetual state of worry that Kids These Days just don’t play like they used to, probably because of whatever technology was most recently introduced. Roud and Willett both independently brought this up to me and insisted that it’s not true. As Willett’s research shows, technology and media do influence kids’ play—but that doesn’t mean play itself is in jeopardy.

To be honest, I found myself surprised to care so much because my sister and her friends would drive me crazy repeatedly clapping out the story of Miss Suzy and her baby Tiny Tim. But as I got older I realized that these games are a tie that binds generations together. Cootie shots, cootie catchers, applying and peeling glue off the palm of your hands, sketching out that blocky S on your notebook, all comprise a type of oral tradition whose origins are difficult to trace.

Technology does morph some of the games and occasionally adds new bits of cherished lore. I am pretty sure my grandparents weren’t typing 5-8-0-0-8 into calculators and inverting the device to spell BOOBS. That is the first thing the article validates as a piece of cultural heritage. (Though knowing my maternal grandfather, that is probably pretty tame compared to some of the things he did.)

On the other hand, making up a game based on the Weeping Angels episode of Dr. Who shares similarities to games played at least 120 years ago.

Apparently, this is an aspect of our lives which perpetuates itself in a type of decentralized democracy:

Our nostalgia for our own childhood shapes what kids get exposed to. But Steve Roud, a British folklorist and the author of The Lore of the Playground, emphasized to me that folklore is by its nature not handed down by an authority. It is of the people, by the people—even if those people are children.

80 Years Before TKTS – The First Discount Ticket Booth In Times Square

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Little trip down memory lane to an entry I did referencing Joe LeBlang, the owner of a tobacco shop whose entrepreneurial mind created NYC’s first Times Square discount ticket service in 1894, long before the 1972 opening of the current TKTS booth. (h/t again to Ken Davenport)

At the time shop owners would be given tickets if they agreed to place show posters in their windows. LeBlang collected the tickets his neighbor shop owners weren’t going to use and resold them at a discount and split the profits with the other shop owners. He became so successful, not only did theatre owners come to him with their unsold tickets, but the US post office had a special division dedicated just to his business.

Despite the fact they were providing him with tickets, show producers had a love-hate relationship with LeBlang, though they shared a mutual dislike for ticket brokers (Yes, apparently secondary market resellers have been a problem for over 120 years):

Leblang and the Producing Managers’ Association

Today it’s known as The Broadway League, but in 1905 it was called the Producing Managers’ Association and Leblang’s relationship with them rotated between adoration and contempt. Most Broadway producers were personal friends of Leblang, but loathed his business model, which they charged lessened the value of their product.

They made a number of attempts to run Leblang out of the business, but as Leblang went on to save a number of Broadway shows from closure he became an integral part of the Broadway show landscape.

Leblang’s War on Ticket Brokers

Leblang and The Producing Managers Association made no secret of their dislike of ticket brokers, which they agreed alienated the ticket buying public. Leblang devised a way to limit ticket speculation; his proposal in 1919 wasn’t readily accepted, but later on elements were used by Actors Equity as a barter to begin Sunday performances.

Where Have All The Pledge Drive Guests Gone?

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I have been listening to the pledge drive for the statewide public radio network the last couple weeks and been thinking nostalgically about my time living in Hawaii when I was a regular guest during the semi-annual drives. It was a minor point of pride feeling that I had worked my way up from being a guest an a 4:00 pm Saturday show to a midweek lunch time slot. I can’t say for sure if my clever patter as responsible for being asked to guest at seemingly more “visible” time slots, but there were times when I would finish up one slot and be asked to move to another room to appear on the second program stream.

But it doesn’t seem like public radio stations do this sort of thing any more. Having worked for organizations that depended heavily on volunteer labor, I can completely understand that it can take a lot of staff hours to schedule guests in dozens of slots across a two week period. That is in addition to the numbers you need to cover phones. With the increased move to online donating, I am not even sure if many stations need volunteers to cover phones any more. It used to be that you would hear acknowledgements of restaurants that donated food for the volunteers. I haven’t heard those in many year which means either there aren’t a lot of volunteers to feed or the stations are paying for the food directly now.

In any case, what I think has been lost by eliminating community guests from fundraising is the opportunity to provide social proof.

For the last few years, theaters like mine have worked to increase the number of audience photos on our websites and publications to show who is attending performances and the enjoyable experience they are having. I have frequently mentioned that people feel more comfortable participating in a cultural experience when they see themselves and their stories depicted.

There is a pretty distinct impression of who public radio is for. Even though the names of correspondents represent some pretty diverse backgrounds as do the stories being told, the voices telling the stories continue to cleave rather closely to the stereotypical “public radio voice.” Some of the podcasts associated with public radio diverge a little from the “voice,” but not many and few podcasts are part of the main programming stream.

In addition to adding some vocal variety in the programming, returning to having community guests on the pledge drives can provide the social proof about who values the stations and their programming. Obviously, choosing who the guests will be requires some strategy. My recollection from the past was that there were always a lot of lawyers on. That might not be the image of who the stations are for that they want to project. As much as I enjoyed the experience, maybe I am no longer the right person to be a guest any longer.

As much as I am citing the example of public radio here, I am basically using this particular situation to approach the importance of all cultural organizations providing visible social proof from a different angle.

Somber Silence The New Standing Ovation?

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I saw an article on the NBC News site questioning the value of standing ovations with a subtitle suggesting the seeming default occurrence of the act was a symptom of “‘everyone gets a trophy’ culture.” I almost passed it by because it didn’t sound like it was going to say anything new on the subject.

I am glad I didn’t because along with observations about standing ovations being meaningless if you do them all the time and suggesting that audiences can be manipulated into giving standing ovations, the writer Maggie Mulqueen, says they can also represent demands audiences expect to be met:

At a classical music concert I attended recently, the soloist left his violin backstage during his bows as a clear sign that there would be no encore despite the demands of the audience. As we headed out of the theater, I overheard grumblings of disappointment that he had not acquiesced to the call for more. We don’t expect every sporting event to go into overtime in return for giving the teams a standing ovation, so I am not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from for the performing arts.

Later, she provides an anecdote illustrating how lack of applause can be a greater testament of the power of a performance than a standing ovation—while admitting concerns that the performers might read it the wrong way.

The play ended suddenly, the stage went dark, and the audience, stunned by the power of the play, was silent for several seconds. Then, as the weight of the experience sank in, hands began to clap, tears were dried, and actors took their bows. The audience filed out quietly as we tried to regain our bearings.

Ironically, the absence of a standing ovation that night added to how memorable an event it was. Because the content of the play is sober and dark, such a gesture would have felt like a celebration and been in poor taste. As I made my way back to my hotel, I wanted to tell everyone I saw on the Tube to go see it. But mostly, I wanted to reassure the actors. “You were great,” I wanted to tell them. “Please understand it was your forceful performance that kept us in our seats.”

Adding A Throwaway Option Can Solidify Decisions

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Many arts organizations are seeing a drop in ticket sales and subscriptions this year which got me to thinking about a TED talk Dan Ariely did about how unwanted options helped helped people make a decisions, in some case spending more than the cheapest option.  I had done a post about it some years ago and thought about how it might be applicable to subscriptions.

Offer people options that don’t have value to nudge them toward purchasing more a bigger subscription package than they might have. I don’t know that it would transform a lot of single ticket buyers into subscription buyers unless we are wrong about flexibility being more important than price. A mini-subscription that offered flexibility and appeared to be a great value might have some success in getting single ticket purchasers to commit.

I also wonder if offering non-premium options with your show helps make them look more attractive than your competitors’. Ariely talks about another experiment where they offered people the option of an all-inclusive trip to Rome or Paris. In this case it is really apples and oranges since the two cities are in different countries have have so many different attributes to value. Once they add the option of going to Rome but having to pay for coffee in the morning, suddenly people preferred [all-inclusive] Rome over Paris by a larger degree due to the lesser option being available.

It doesn’t seem logical to me to think that given the option between the symphony and a free cocktail at intermission and the opera and a free cocktail at intermission, that people would flock to the orchestra if a no cocktail option for the same price was offered. But as Ariely points, out the decision being made are not entirely rational.

Do Factors Underlying Desire To Work From Home Herald An Increase In Creativity?

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Back in 2009 I wrote about a TED talk Dan Pink did on motivation. In particular, he discussed how monetary rewards was successful at motivating people in mechanical tasks, but when it came to problem solving and creative solutions, in many cases the greater the reward, the longer it took people to solve a problem.

At the time I wrote:

This may explain why arts people are able to create in the absence of monetary reward.

I wouldn’t let this get around lest people insist that paying you more may rob you of your creativity.

[…]
Pink says the new operating model should be based on:

“Autonomy- Urge to Direct Our Own Lives
Mastery- Desire to get better and better at something that matters, and
Purpose- The Yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”

It seems like these concepts are beginning to increasingly manifest themselves as people start to consider work from home as an option and seek to embrace greater degrees of autonomy, mastery and purpose in their lives.

Quit Your Job, But Don’t Quit The Arts

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Perusing my archives, I came across a post about something Adam Thurman of The Mission Paradox blog wrote regarding the poor work environment in the arts. While people, including myself, were talking about this issue long before Adam wrote his piece, it is kinda depressing to think that it really took the upheaval of a pandemic for the arts and culture industry to listen and respond seriously to the insistence that things must change.

The link to Thurman’s blog is no longer active, but it was mirrored on the Americans for the Arts site .

At the time I wrote it, I only quoted his third point:

3. Don’t let them use your passion against you. Consider this:

Imagine you were a lawyer. What if I told you that there were some law firms (not all, but absolutely some) that didn’t get a damn about their employees? What if I told you that some firms were designed to bring in people and get as much out of them as possible before they burned out?

Would you believe me?

Of course you would. Hell, because it’s the legal profession you would expect such behavior.

Here’s da rub:

Some arts organizations are the exact same way. Just because the end product is art and not a legal brief doesn’t mean the place automatically values their employees. Just because the place is a non-profit doesn’t automatically make it a nice place to work.

But I also wanted to excerpt from a couple other of his points:

1. It doesn’t have to be like that. I know you’ve probably convinced yourself that all the garbage you deal with is just the cost of being in the field.

It isn’t. If the group you work for is being run poorly it is because people are ACTIVELY making choices that allow that to happen. It isn’t just a matter of circumstance. It’s an outcome of choice…

2. You are not the savior.

You’re smart. You see the problems in the organization. You care. You want to play a part in fixing them.

Good.

But not everything wants to be fixed. Some organizations have been run so poorly, for so long that they really can’t fathom another way. Don’t make it your responsibility to save them for the path they have chosen….

Perhaps most importantly since people are seriously considering getting out of arts and culture altogether, and it is wise to make that a subject of serious thought:

5. But don’t quit the arts. Quit your job, that’s fine. Just don’t do it without a plan (use that Year in Step 4 to develop it)

If you can’t find a job as an arts administrator in a great organization . . . maybe you get out the field for a while. That’s ok. You can come back.

But the arts need you. They need your skill, your experience, your energy. So maybe you join a Board of an organization, maybe you volunteer. Maybe you start your own organization.

[…]

This thing you love, the arts . . . it is your world too. It’s your world just as much as it belongs to any poet, any dancer, any actor.

It’s vital you remember that because along your path you will be confronted by those who alternate between seeing you as completely irrelevant to the artistic process on one hand and the great oppressor of artistic ambitions on the other.

That’s garbage.

You belong. Find your place. Use your skills. Help get great art into the world. It can’t happen without you.

Perhaps It Is A Lack of Desire To Make The Arts Fit

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Looking back at past entries, I came across a post I wrote about educator Jane Remer’s thoughts about arts in education. I had read and written this post years before I began corresponding with the late Carter Gillies about the problematic instrumental view of the arts so, as they say, it hits differently now.

In her post, The Arts Just Don’t Fit in Most of Our Schools, Remer writes:

The arts community – arts educators, arts organizations, artists who work with schools, other friends of the arts–has tried and failed for years to make the case for the arts in every student’s life and learning environment. Claims abound for the arts as important intellectual and experiential domains as well as exceedingly effective instrumental bridges to other usually non-arts ends. These claims are rarely backed up by solid empirical research and when they are, the evidence is overwhelmingly correlational, not causal. These claims are almost never made by school people, K-20 and beyond, and only occasionally uttered by policy makers, whether top down legislators or bottom up teachers, leaders and district superintendents.

In another post, “What Can We Do to Make the Arts Count As Education, she lists many of the reasons art isn’t counted, partially because no one invests the attention, time and funding in doing so, and partially because benefits an+d outcomes aren’t easily captured by metrics people value:

Today, when people talk about counting the arts, they usually mean quantifying — how much, how often, by whom, for whom, at what cost, and the like. These are good things to know but they tell us nothing about what is being taught and learned, the quality of instruction and learning, the depth of inquiry, the time spent on reflection, and the methods, if any, used to assess the process and the results. They don’t tell us when to make mid-course corrections, where the learning gaps are, how teachers or students are struggling (or not), and where an infusion of technical and other professional assistance might be judicious. In other words, we don’t have the information we need to diagnose our own knowledge and behavior as well as that of our students. And, we don’t treat the arts like full-fledged core subjects that are essential to student overall growth and achievement.

Given the length of time I have been blogging, I have read a lot about arts education, but seldom has it been as specific and insightful as Jane Remer’s thoughts and observations.

Have Things Changed Since 2008?

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I am going to be traveling and preparing to take up a new position so I am dipping back into the archives to help provide some content while I am busy elsewhere.  One of the first entries I came across in my review of old posts seemed to be well-suited for re-examination. Back in 2009 Andrew Taylor made a post about survey work his students had done at the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) in Denver. Happily the links to his original post and survey results I included in my post reflecting on the survey results still work if you want to see them.

The conference was a meeting by members of different arts disciplines, including service organizations like Theatre Communications Group, Opera America, Chorus America, Dance/USA and League of American Orchestras. One of the observations made in the surveying was the different cultures of each discipline. I wonder if people feel things have changed since 2008/2009 or if this still generally describes things:

The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

Other topics I covered in my post had to do with degree of trust between arts administrators, community engagement practices, government relations, knowledge sharing throughout disciplines, as well as lack of sleep and succession planning.

While the status quo feels like it has remained in place on all these fronts, the one area covered in the survey which seems like it is finally being addressed seriously these last few years is diversity. Some of the summarized responses are a little cringe-worthy.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Here is the original survey report if you want to take a deeper dive.

Pursuit of Low Overhead Ratio Is Starving Cultural Org Of Success

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For a long time now pursuit of a low overhead ratio has been viewed as a benchmark of good governance in the non-profit sector. There have been arguments against that view, but the perception doggedly persists. Recent research specifically focused on arts and cultural non-profits indicates that these organizations actually need to be spending between 30-35% of their budget on overhead in order to be successful.

I wrote a post for ArtsHacker on the topic recently highlighting this:

As we explained in the academic journal Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, we found that when arts nonprofits devoted 35% of their budget to overhead, they fared best in terms of attendance.

Attendance declined, by contrast, for organizations that spent extremely low and high amounts of their budget on overhead. Groups that spent far too little saw their attendance decline by 9%. Attendance for arts groups that spent way too much on overhead fell by 30%.

While there spending too much is definitely detrimental to attendance, a sizeable portion of non-profit cultural organizations are expending far below what is beneficial.

Hop over to the Arts Hacker post to get more detail about why pursuit of a low overhead ratio sends cultural organizations into a downward spiral as well as why the researchers insist there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb about expense ratios.

You Probably Need To Be Spending More On Overhead

When You Realize Pandemic Stole Theatre, But Not Your Identity

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Last month I mentioned NPR was doing a series on theatre in the US. In fact, there is an installment in that series airing today. However, today I wanted to point out a entry in the series from early October which talks about the steps some theatres have taken to create better work environments.

In this particular episode they focus on the changes Baltimore Center Stage implemented, including the elimination of 10 out of 12 work days. I could have sworn I wrote about earlier, but can’t find that entry to it seems doubly important to draw attention to it.

…Center Stage joined a handful of other theaters pledging to do away with a practice known as “10 out of 12s.” It’s a shorthand for the hours theater workers put in. It refers to a rule where actors can’t work more than 10 hours in a 12 hour day. But once the actors are done, the crew has to go over notes and problem-solve things that didn’t work. So days for backstage workers can stretch into 14 hours, 16 hours, if not more. And those last hours always seem to take the most time.

[…]

Center Stage moved to an eight out of 10 workday, drawing praise from Lindsay Jones, a composer and sound designer for theater and film based in New York City and a member of the group No More 10 out of 12s.

[…]

From Jones’ perspective, theater as an industry has a tendency to work on autopilot and avoid any self-reflection. Jones says that when a place like Center Stage makes a move like that, it makes a broader difference.

“Their taking a stand, I believe, really did encourage others to stop and think about what they had been doing in their practices and could they make those changes,” he said.

The piece mentions other steps Center Stage has taken, including increasing compensation for staff which lead them to eliminate their internship program. Even though they had offered stipends and intern housing, they felt the arrangement was still exploitative.

But perhaps the most food for thought about what a work environment might look like in the future came near the opening of the piece which mentioned that theatre people often wrap so much of their identity around their passion for their chosen art. But that after having that taken away from them by the pandemic for a year or more:

“A lot of people realized that their identity didn’t disappear when they left theater for a year,” said Rachael Erichsen, props manager at Center Stage. “And once you realize that, then you do start to weigh those options — are the long hours, is the stress worth it for me?”

Actual Recognition That Return To Office Shouldn’t Be Return To Usual

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Yesterday Daniel Pink made the following Twitter post about OKRs – Objectives & Key Results (because apparently KPIs – Key Performance Indicators, needed to be replaced with another equally meaningless acronym?) and he suggested some NO-KRs which have plagued work culture to jettison.

Pink provided a link to a website summarizing the Charter Workplace Summit. This was the first time I have seen signs corporate employer making constructive attempts to revise the office work environment and move beyond threats or cheap perk ploys to get people to return to the office.

Some of the things that caught my attention:

Workers should be re-onboarded. “We’ve been spending all this energy on onboarding new employees in a unique and special way,” said Daisy Auger-Domínguez, chief people officer at Vice Media Group and author of Inclusion Revolution. “We need to do the same thing for our current employees.” She sees that as a way to remind colleagues why it’s important to come to the office.

Talk about what’s not working. “We owe it to our people to get really specific about where we’re growing, where we’re shrinking, where we think we have the most risk,” said Francine Katsoudas, Cisco’s chief people, policy, and purpose officer. “In doing so, we give our people a lot more power as well.” Providing transparency about a business’s challenges is also a way to enlist colleagues in navigating an economic downturn, said Kieran Luke, chief operating officer at Lunchbox. “We want everyone to see and understand, empathize, and take a sense of ownership.”

Audit your attention. “The scarcest resource that we have is not money and it is not time. It is attention,” said Didier Elzinga, CEO of Culture Amp. Organizations need to assess what they’re asking their leaders, managers, and individual employees to focus attention on amid numerous priorities. “We can actually sit down and look at it and give ourselves almost a budget,” he advised. “How are we going to prioritize the things we need [a company’s staff] to focus on?”

I particularly liked the idea of re-onboarding, especially if people have been working from home for any length of time because the shift back to the office is pretty much going to be akin to starting a new job in a new place mentally, emotionally, physically and relationship wise. In addition, the time and attention paid to new hires makes you feel special. I am sure a lot of us have resented seeing special offers advertised for new subscribers to a service, but no benefit given for 10 years of loyalty. I have recently seen people complain online about being denied the $2/hr bump in salary being advertised for new hires when they obviously had more experience and wouldn’t require a learning curve. It makes people feel their loyalty is taken for granted.

I also liked the concept that these days attention is a scarcer resource than time and money and that there needs to be clear communication across the organization about what priorities should receive the most attention.  We have all seen the posters wearily asking which of the 10 top priorities is actually the super-secret extra top priority the boss want you to focus on first.

What I was really surprised to see included in the list was the recognition that workplaces being a social environment, there is opportunity for tension. There seemed to be an acknowledgement not only that this may present a problem for people returning from a work from home setting, but that perhaps more could have been done to train people for that reality over the last few decades:

Practice real-life scenarios such as uncomfortable conversations. “We often give people an opportunity to expand their role and become managers without actually giving them the experiences that they need to practice the craft,” said Edith Cooper, co-founder of Medley. One way to do that is to create spaces, such as group coaching environments, where they can practice having difficult conversations without being judged or dismissed.

and

Physical offices are a place for conflict. “Conflict, disagreement, the brainstorm, the row, the ‘I’m sorry, we’re not on the same page here’” are important to spend time together with colleagues for, said Julia Hobsbawm, author of The Nowhere Office. In-person work—whether it’s in an office, coffee shop, or other location—is also important for training, mentoring, and social connections between people. “To hang out, to learn, or to argue,” is what in-person work time should be for, concludes Hobsbawm.

 

Questioning Capacity Building

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Over the last few months, Non-Profit Quarterly has run a series of pieces on the topic of capacity building. In particular, the authors have challenged the notion that current capacity building efforts are healthy for non-profits given that the definitions of capacity building and effectiveness are made externally by funders rather than internally by the non-profit entity.

Particularly because these definitions tend to hew closely to commercial quantitative metrics which aren’t particularly valid when it comes to organizations dealing with homelessness, drug rehabilitation, domestic violence, etc., where low numbers served can mean the organization needs more capacity or that they ARE being very effective in achieving their goal.

Additionally, as Marcus Littles points out in his piece, there are entrenched issues facing Black and Brown lead organizations which impede their growth in ways consultants can’t fix:

…A board development training plus a communications audit does not equal sustainability in seven months. A technology plan combined with an organizational culture audit does not equal organizational resilience in a year. Why? Because on their own, competency building and skill development do not enable Black and Brown leaders and organizations to overcome the structural inequities that make it difficult for them to thrive.

In surveying a group of leaders at Black-led community-based nonprofits, Littles notes a distrust of capacity building programs, not only because of a perception that they “perpetuate white-dominant norms of effectiveness,” but also that they signal a lack of commitment to the success of an organization by funders:

The first: “Capacity building is the consolation prize money that foundations offer when they are willing to pay for us to get advice, but they aren’t willing to resource us to help our people get free.” The second quote resonated with most of the folks we interviewed: “When I think of capacity building, the first thing I think is that capacity is the wrong word.”

Capacity is a tepid word. Once an organization’s capacity is built, what does it become? Capable? Sufficient? Competent? Capacity building is a process without a tangible aspiration. It is an investment with an unambitious return.

These perspectives made me stop to think a bit more about the idea of capacity building. The idea of capacity building as a consolation hasn’t necessarily been true in my experience since I generally have applied for separate monies to support a specific goal rather than having someone say, we won’t fund X, but we would like to offer you funding for capacity building. Though up until recently when funders began to allow funds to be used for operational expenses, it could be difficult to answer questions about how the increased capacity would be sustained in the future if the capacity wasn’t going to directly result in increased earned or unearned revenue or be volunteer supported.

So in that context, I can understand the feeling that capacity building programs can feel a little hollow without an interest and commitment to an organization to provide some sort of support over multiple years if required.

Great Experience Is Crucial To Achieving Perfect Acoustics

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I haven’t really been paying close attention to all the recent stories about the re-opening of the renovated Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, but a New Yorker article about how the acoustics have been re-engineered caught my notice. Our main guides through the article are acoustical-engineers Christopher Blair and Paul Scarbrough of the firm, Akustiks, who were hired to solve the sound problems of the hall.

The fact they were advising that the adhesive coating on wood paneling be 3/16 inch thick rather than 1/8 and were concerned that the fabric samples for the seating was too thin, you get a sense of just how exacting the tolerances they work with. So you can imagine just how upsetting it was to the original acoustic engineer when 200 seats were added to the initial construction of the hall in the 1950s without consulting with him. That decision apparently has contributed to the sound problems of the hall ever since.

The new design eliminates 200 seats, increases the pitch of the seating and moves the orchestra 25 feet closer to the audience. This will mean instead of 30% of seats being 100 feet or more from the orchestra, only nine percent will.

But Blair and Scarbrough say that the audience experience of the space is of greater influence on how the room sounds than all the science based adjustments they are implementing, something known as psychoacoustics.

Scarbrough said that the Royal Festival Hall of London was one of his favorite venues: “You cross the Thames on the Hungerford Bridge, you can see Parliament, the London Eye, St. Paul’s Cathedral. The lobby is active, it’s like the living room for all of South Bank. You progress upstairs, and—”

“—and it almost makes up for the acoustics,” Blair interrupted.

“True. But you feel you’re in a special place. It’s the psychoacoustics that works so well there.”

[…]

People often have a special feeling about listening to opera outdoors, under the stars with a bottle of wine. The sound is usually weak, or amplified, or in other ways just not that good—yet, still, great.

The author of the New Yorker piece, Rivka Galchen, cites the way sound plays in Hagia Sophia, Chichén Itzá and Toshogu Shrine, in Nikko, Japan as examples of how people have been integrating psychoacoustics to create a sense of importance to a place.

For Geffen Hall, these principles aren’t just being applied inside the hall, but in terms of how audiences approach the doors and move throughout the space. We talk about how there is often a sense that you have to possess inside knowledge to attend an orchestra concert, but architect Gary McCluskie is quoted as saying that was the case if you wanted to even find the door.

“With the old hall, it was difficult to even find the entrance, unless you already knew where it was,” McCluskie said. They wanted the hall to feel welcoming to everyone, not only to those people who were—in whatever way—in the know.

Clearly, a great deal of effort and attention is being paid to getting things right and erasing past perceived flaws with the space currently known as Geffen Hall. In reading the article, I also became aware of the time and effort that went into writing the piece. This piece is set to appear in the print edition of the New Yorker on October 17, but Rivka Galchen notes that she first met with Blair and Scarbrough to discuss their work in November 2021, spoke to New York Philharmonic conductor Jaap van Zweden in June and references people she spoke with at two tuning rehearsals which started in August.

I just wanted to note that while I knock out these posts in the course of an hour or so, I need to acknowledge I am benefiting from much greater efforts made by others.

Pittsburgh Likes Us, But Europe Loves Us

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Jeremy Reynolds recently wrote a great piece about the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO) European tour. The article isn’t so much about what happened during the tour as it is about why orchestras tour. The insight it provides about the way orchestra operate is pretty fascinating.

People interviewed for the article admit that PSO’s touring activities don’t really benefit Pittsburgh in terms of tourism or increased business opportunities and corporations are increasingly less willing to support the orchestra’s tours.

However, European tours are apparently a great recruitment and retention tool for the orchestra. There was concern that music director and conductor Manfred Honeck might be lured away by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which has a bigger budget and salary base, but he surprised everyone by renewing his contract with Pittsburgh–with the understanding they would continue touring.

Similarly, the role of concertmaster went unfilled for years until last Spring when David McCarroll assumed the position and part of the appeal for him was the adulation PSO received while on tour.

He said the opportunity to tour in Europe — and to be welcomed with such fervor — is something that defines a top caliber orchestra.

“I know these audiences,” he said. “The reaction to the symphony is not typical. This is not usual, it’s not normal.”

Who wouldn’t want a job where they got that kind of acclaim? Even if you have to leave your hometown to actually get it.

“We’re famous everywhere else except Pittsburgh,” said Bill Caballero, the orchestra’s principal French horn player. “We go to these places and they go crazy for us.”

Though touring can sometimes be something of a double-edged sword when it comes to recruitment. Apparently, when the Oslo Philharmonic visited Pittsburgh, PSO took the opportunity to wine and dine the music director and ultimately lured him away from Oslo.

Where you tour in Europe also apparently matters:

“Tours were this big benchmark that orchestras differentiated themselves with, right along with their base and how long their season is,” said Drew McManus, a Chicago-based orchestra consultant.

“If they went on tour, did they go to Europe? And if they went to Europe, do you mean Spain or do you mean Germany? It’s all a kind of caste system.”

There is quite a bit more detail about the tour in the article, including some nice multimedia components, so take a look and learn a little bit more about the nuances involved with orchestra touring.

The Will Exists, Arts & Culture Facilitate The Relationships & Conversation

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Given that today is Indigenous People’s Day, I wanted to mention some recent positive developments related to the arts and an increased presence and role of the Muscogee (Creek) people who once dwelt here, in and around Macon, GA. Macon is the site of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park where the Muscogee and allied tribes had long lived prior to being dispossessed to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears.

For 30 years now, every September members of the Muscogee have returned to the park for an indigenous people’s celebration. For the last two years, Covid has kept the event from happening, but this year brought about great changes. There is an effort to expand the  park into the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve which would encompass about 54 miles river plains and over 900 historic and cultural sites. Tracie Revis, former Chief of Staff for the Muscogee Nation was hired on as Director of Advocacy by the local park initiative in the interest of providing the Nation with input into how the land would be used. The Associated Press recently did a great story on the effort.

Her arrival saw a great deal of momentum build toward the strengthening of ties between Macon and the Muscogee Nation based in Okmulgee, OK. There have been mutual visits, but art and cultural expression has played a large part in building the relationship.

A few months ago, Tracie was the featured storyteller at Storyteller Macon’s monthly event and she told the stories behind three of her names. Last month, as the annual celebration was set to return to the Mounds Historic Park, the work of Muscogee Nation artists was displayed in an alley that had been set up four years ago with lightboxes to illuminate artwork. Each artist paired images from Oklahoma and the Macon area as an illustration of the ties between the communities.

The celebration was preceded by much fanfare and a banquet attended by dignitaries from both communities, including a multi-day visit by Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, who you may recall is the first Native American cabinet secretary.

A number of theatres participated by posting welcoming messages.

There is obviously a lot more work to be done. It is very easy to get behind exciting events and parties, but more difficult to have some of the conversations that may follow about preservation, acknowledgement and representation.  This progress has come much faster than I imagined it would. Four years ago, I was having trouble finding someone to discuss formulating an appropriate land acknowledgment. Last Friday I had lunch with a colleague who told me about a land acknowledgment being delivered by someone she thought would have been reluctant doing so.

Arts and cultural expressions haven’t been responsible for these changes. There is obviously a will to see these things occur. But arts and culture have been among the avenues which awareness has been raised, relationships have been cultivated and conversations have been facilitated

Creative Expression Is A Renewable National Resource

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Countries around the world are eyeing the success of South Korea’s K-Pop, and Japan’s earlier J-Pop, and are developing national music strategies of their own according to a recent Forbes article. Thailand and Zimbabwe are prominently mentioned, but similar efforts are also being seen in Dominica, China, Oman, Philippines and Belize.

A big driver is the perceived ability of these efforts to boost GDP, create jobs, and generate a positive image of the countries’ culture, geography and products.  The article notes that South Korea embarked on their national effort after they had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan and it took nearly 15 years before K-Pop fandom became a mainstream interest worldwide. Thus a national initiative of this type needs long term commitment which is likely to span multiple government administrations.

Likewise, the K-Pop system of artist development is attuned to the unique structure of South Korean cultural and business dynamics which probably can’t and shouldn’t be replicated in other countries.

One of the things the author points out is that the creative economy is a renewable resource for countries in that the potential is limitless as long as people are encouraged to exercise their creativity. This may be something of a selling point when discussing the value of arts and culture to the community. While I dislike validating arts and culture on a economic and prescriptive basis, reinforcing the need to preserve the environment is important messaging.

What is being celebrated now may not be a model that works everywhere, but it demonstrates what could be true anywhere – that there is economic and social potential in music and culture and with it, the benefits of soft power and positive national branding. As countries and regions look to establish economic recovery policies and create socially sustainable economies which extract less from our environment, music and culture is recognised as a viable path. The raw materials are extracted from our minds, not the ground. And the options are limitless. This is something to celebrate, as there will never be ‘peak’ music, unlike what we’re facing with peak oil.

One little disclaimer that may be needed. I hadn’t initially noticed, but this article is written by the founder of Sound Diplomacy, an organization that works on developing music based economies of communities around the world. They are currently working on such a project here in Macon, GA and I have participated in some of their focus groups.

How Are You Philanthropic Rather Than How Much

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Last week Vox had a provocatively titled article saying “Why fewer Americans are donating to charity.” Rising to that provocation, I read the fairly lengthy piece that essentially said that giving isn’t really down, but that the ways in giving is measured and defined are no longer as valid as they once were.

While billionaires are getting a lot of attention for their donations, even if the funds are placed into somewhat controversial donor advised funds, giving to political campaigns and issues groups, crowd funding efforts, mutual aid groups and in amounts of less than $25 are not being counted.

The reason people are choosing to give through these other channels is due to a perceived distrust of large institutions as well as the sense that your donations are having a more direct impact than if made to a large entity.

It’s easy to see the psychological draw of such person-to-person giving. You know to whom your money is going. It can feel more immediately impactful. You might also feel that your dollar is going further than when you give to a big cause…that already receives millions of dollars every year. That’s not to say giving to an online crowdfunding campaign is actually more impactful than giving to a nonprofit, but there’s a growing perception that it is, especially among younger Americans. According to a 2022 study by Independent Sector, a coalition of philanthropic nonprofits and corporate giving programs, 57 percent of Gen Z believe that giving directly has more impact than giving to nonprofits.

There is also a sense that by focusing on the singular act of check writing as a metric, a lot of charitable activity is being missed. (my emphasis):

In 2019, she [Lucy Bernholz] conducted a national study of 33 focus groups, asking hundreds of Americans not how much they gave or why they gave, but how they gave to make the world a better place. Their responses showed that giving money is only one small part of what philanthropy means for Americans. Giving time was just as frequently mentioned as giving money. Everyday acts of charity, such as sharing skills, giving items, and doing acts of service for neighbors and other community members, were very common.

These conversations also revealed participants’ uncertainty around whether some of their acts of generosity even counted as “giving.” Participants weren’t accustomed to thinking about or talking about how they gave, or discussing the definition of giving. It shows that the understanding of philanthropy is ambiguous, not fixed — and perhaps can evolve to be more inclusive.

The national organization behind GivingTuesday is apparently trying to adjust to the shifting sense of what constitutes philanthropy and attempting to measure all the ways in which people give to make the world a better place rather than focusing on how much people gave.

Interviewing Post Covid: How Do You Want To Do It?

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Last week Barry Hessenius sent me a link to a Buzzfeed article listing answers to job interview questions, suggesting it might make a good blog post. This suggestion was well-timed because Drew McManus had also posed a question on LinkedIn about whether cover letters were useful any more, spurring a spirited conversation among arts professionals on that topic.

Between the two, there is a lot to think about in terms of how we interview, both as employers and potential candidates.  For example, in the LinkedIn discussion, Tyler Rand mentioned his company inviting people to introduce themselves by choosing from a number of formats including letters, email, personal statements, videos and showing their suitability for the position through either resumes, work samples, links to websites or LinkedIn profiles.

The Buzzfeed piece claims the list contains clever answers to tough job questions. While there are some suggestions like describing yourself in the context of your Hogwarts house and how to navigate the dreaded “what are your weaknesses” and uncomfortable salary questions, many of the tips mentioned are smart responses to typical interview questions rather than a matter of clever maneuvering.

For example asking

“What’s the biggest pain point in the company/office/on your team, and what could I do to address it if I started tomorrow?”

Can be useful in uncovering issues about the work environment that hadn’t come out during the interview, possibly revealing an organizational culture that doesn’t suit you.

Similarly,

“When they ask if you have any questions, ask what current/past employees in this role find the most rewarding and challenging about the position. If there are red flags, you’ll get them here. It’s basically asking the interviewer what the job’s strengths and weaknesses are but more effective.”

I have been asked a number of times what my plan for my first 90 days on the job will be, but it never occurred to me to turn it around and ask the obvious:

‘What are your 30/60/90 day goals for the role?’

I have asked what the goals for the new person might be and how my skillset might be applicable toward fulfilling them, but the X days horizon can give you a sense of top priorities and allow you to judge whether they are realistically attainable in that time period.

Anyone have any additional thoughts on obvious, but seldom asked questions or processes they feel are antiquated?  Are there ways you would rather interview, both as an employer or candidate, but feel stuck in a framework of expectations?  I suspect there are questions some candidates would love to ask but there is a fear of appearing too presumptuous to the prospective employer.

If Only These Problems Were Myths Of A Past Age

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If you have read Ve Le’s Non-Profit AF blog, you know that he often frames serious topics with a bit of humor, often extolling vegan cuisine and his obsession with the Oxford comma. Frequently though, he will go into full entertainment mode riffing on a theme and applying it to the non-profit world.

A couple weeks ago, he wrote a post recasting Greek myths as if they occurred in world run as a non-profit. With a hurricane recently piling on to the problems which have faced Puerto Rico over the last few years and another heading toward Florida, non-profits are going to be mobilizing to help affected communities recover. It seemed like a good time to point to humorous content before groups had to seriously dive in.

Le addresses a number of stories, but here are some of my favorites. In his retelling of the Trojan horse, the horse doesn’t contain soldiers who spread out to slay the city’s defenders:

The following days, they joined the boards of directors of several organizations in the city. They never read board packets, always stopped much more knowledgeable staff from taking bold actions, caused missed quorum, insisted on golf tournaments, and gradually ruined morale. And that was how the city of Troy fell.

In Le’s retelling of the story of Echo who had been cursed by Hera to repeat only what other people say:

One day, Echo met Narcissus and fell in love with him. “I should start a nonprofit,” he said to her. She repeated, “start a nonprofit.” He ran off and founded a nonprofit that gave used togas to poor people abroad, and Echo was heartbroken. But joke’s on Hera, because eventually, Echo became a nonprofit consultant who mainly repeated what the staff says, and boards thought she was so smart and she got paid a ton of money.

My favorite story was Le’s version of Hercules’ 12 Labors:

Those were: Plan a silent auction, diversify a board, give someone feedback, get everyone to track their expense receipts, conduct a 360 assessment without someone getting hurt, endure an icebreaker that involves making random mouth sounds, fire someone who is really nice but sucks at their job, call out a major donor for being a jerk, translate a budget into a funder’s own budget format, get more than ten likes on a social media post about an upcoming event, get a several people’s schedules to align for a meeting, and save enough for retirement.

There are about six-seven stories in all and Le has promised a part two which hasn’t surfaced yet. What I appreciate about Vu Le’s writing style is that the problems he addresses are obviously sources of frustration and anxiety for folks in the non-profit sector, but he skewers them so satirically you can feel a slight sense of relief at having an ally by your side that understands.

Org Culture More Important Than Artistic Reputation

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A couple weeks ago Aubrey Bergauer hosted a LinkedIn conversation with Karen Freeman from Advisory Board for the Arts (ABA) to discuss what mattered most to arts professionals as they sought jobs in the arts. Freeman discussed a survey ABA conducted where they asked people to prioritize between different situations in order to drill down to what really mattered. An example Freeman gives is would you rather have great pay, but so-so benefits or a lower pay rate but with better benefits.

Among the criteria people had to prioritize were things like artistic reputation, work from home, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), shared governance, professional development, etc., They had over 1500 respondents from organizations around the world, though with a slightly larger representation by U.S. based groups.

Freeman shared four findings among the many that she found most interesting. The first one revealed that respondents felt their current organization had medium healthcare benefits, good management, good job security, middle of the road flexibility with work hours, fairly good progress in diversity and equity and selective transparency. Freeman notes that a majority of respondents felt their organizations operated at the highest level of artistic quality which she attributes akin to a Lake Woebegone view that everyone is above average.

The second finding is perhaps the most interesting one because it provides insight into what arts organizations can do to retain employees (~13:30 in the video). In terms of what people valued most, Inclusive Culture was valued most and Other Office, which encompassed office space and technology fell at the lowest end of the range. Inclusive culture encompasses transparency, accountability, inclusive decision-making along with diversity, inclusion and equity.

Second most important was flexibility which includes flexible hours and work from home. Next is advancement, including opportunity to advance and supervise. Next is Manager which involves good manager, professional development and internal recognition. Health care and leave came next. Second to last was artistic reputation and community import.

This raises some interesting questions. There are already surveys that indicate trumpeting artistic excellence, while important, isn’t a top draw for audiences. Now we see it is almost at the bottom in terms of what organizational staff value. So perhaps it is time to examine the amount of emphasis being placed upon it.

I should note though that it isn’t clear how many of the respondents were creators and performers. Those groups may rate artistic reputation much higher than administrative staff.

Skipping to the fourth slide (~19:25) provides a little insight. When broken down by job role, people in the C-suite (aka highest paid person’s opinion) care most about artistic reputation (even more than artistic department) along with job accountability, manager quality and transparency. C-suite place least emphasis on job schedule flexibility, work from home and DEI.

When broken down by generation (~16:40), the starkest differences were that artistic reputation was most important to baby boomers and DEI was most important to Gen Z respondents.

Freeman also mentioned that they ran some simulations to make up for some potential flaws inherent to the surveying methodology they used to get the above results. In those simulations, when choosing between higher pay or artistic reputation, 54% of people would take the job with higher pay at a place with no reputation for artistic quality.

A second simulation they ran provided the choice between a place that had high pay, but hierarchical decision making, low transparency and accountability, and performative DEI against an organization with better culture on all these dimensions, but lower pay. In that case, 63% of people would take a job with the better work culture at the expense of better pay.

This was some new data for me insofar as what I thought were the start of trends are far more deeply held values than I anticipated. If you are similarly surprised, take a look at the video.

Strippers Ask Actors Equity’s Help Securing Safe Work Environment

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A couple weeks ago I caught an NPR story about a group of strippers at a bar in LA who were working to unionize under the auspices of Actors’ Equity Association.  The dancers had been dismissed and locked out after complaining and petitioning the bar’s ownership to improve working conditions, both in terms of the physical performance environment and protection from aggressive clients. After months of striking outside the bar’s parking lot, the dancers filed to join Actors’ Equity.

One of the reasons why this story grabbed my attention was that I made a post in 2021 about how Actors’ Equity had decided to significantly lower the barriers to union membership. The union essentially provided automatic membership to members of sister unions like SAG-AFTRA, AGMA and AGVA as well as anyone who was enrolled in the union candidate program. The candidate program, which required accumulating points for performing in specific types of roles in venues operating under a union classification, was scrapped in favor of the new Open Access program which just requires that you have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager in the United States.

In reviewing the program, I noticed Open Access membership is only available until May 2023 so we will have to see how membership is handled after that. However, I initially viewed the union’s willingness to go to bat for these dancers as an extension of the Open Access program. They didn’t nudge the performers toward other unions like AVGA which represents variety/cabaret performers or SEIU which the NPR story says another group of strippers joined about 25 years ago.  I similarly wondered why the dancers approached Equity rather than another union. Was it due to the union’s presence in small performance venues in LA or perhaps Open Access has made the union appear more welcoming.

It will be interesting to see how the efforts of the dancers to unionize ends up. Likewise, I will try to keep an eye for more news on the Open Access program to see if it continues/evolves after May 2023 and if the effort achieves the diversity, equity and inclusion goals Actors’ Equity intends.

I should mention, the NPR story doesn’t just report on the strike but includes four discrete profiles of the dancers for additional perspective.

NPR Series May Help Expand Conversation About Theatre in US

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Keep your radio tuned and your ears open to your local NPR station for the next month or so, especially if you are a theatre professional. The network is doing a series over the next five weeks about the 75th anniversary of the regional theatre movement. In a piece that aired this morning, they provide a little bit of a preview of the topics they are going to hit on from the impact of Covid, to economic concerns, regional theatres as a feeder to Broadway and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The short piece mentions many of the conversations and activities which have unfolded over the last few years, from the mass resignations at Victory Gardens Theatre; the “We See You White American Theater” statement; the viability of subscription model and questions about the utility of the non-profit governance structure:

Theaters also started rethinking subscription plans that prioritize well-off people who can purchase a season’s worth of prime seats in advance, while leaving everyone else scrambling for leftovers. And they began reconsidering the current, frustrating governance model at most non-profits, where theater artists must answer to a volunteer board of directors, often with little theater expertise, which has all of the authority and none of the accountability.

It may be useful to have these topics discussed by an outlet outside of the usual theatre channels. Being able to point to NPR stories may end up being like the consultant effect where an outside “expert” repeats everything internal staff has been saying resulting in decisions to mobilize to achieve important goals.

Most board members and patrons don’t read American Theatre and related information sources, but many do listen to NPR and find it a credible information source. The NPR series can provide an entree for conversation or simply raise awareness among the greater community involved with arts and cultural entities around the country.

Next To Pick Up The Reins

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Since there is a bit of a cross-readership, many of you may have already seen that Drew McManus announced yesterday that he was going to cease posting regularly on the Adaptistration blog. Drew is one of the few people who has been posting on the topic of arts management longer than I have.  Way back when he reached out to me about moving my blog from the Movable Type platform I was on to the Insidethearts.com site back in the early days of WordPress.

In his post, Drew noted that even after posting for 18 years, potential topics of discussion have not been exhausted.

Having said that, it still feels very odd to reach the realization that it’s time to stop while simultaneously having no shortage of ideas and topics that deserve attention…but it’s also clear that now is the time to let new voices step in and pick up that conversation. The emerging practice of audition fees, virtual audition practices, underpaid/overworked staff, the post-pandemic compensation reports, and so much more are all issues that need the sunlight of public examination in a non-partisan environment.

I will readily admit that the blog format has gradually fallen out of favor. My active readership has gradually decreased over the years. But I am also pretty clear that I am writing as much to help myself work through thoughts about arts policy and practice as informing a readership. Just as many people have a daily discipline of writing in a personal journal, I am mulling things over publicly.

My intent is to continue writing this blog, but as Drew says I equally hope new voices step up and address topics of concern for the arts and culture field.

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