Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
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Joe Patti

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

This Place Has Rats. But They Will Be Gone Soon!

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I know for a fact that for at least 30 years now, market textbooks and classes have made the distinction between marketing and advertising/promotion the first definition provided.  That has pretty much been a useless effort because people generally think of the terms as synonymous.

I don’t expect to move that needle much at all today, but I thought I would share a recent post Seth Godin made on the topic to get readers thinking about their own practices.

If an exterminator puts signs and banners in front of a fancy house when they’re inside killing rats, that’s promotion. But it’s not good marketing.

Marketing is creating the conditions for a story to spread so you can help people get to where they hope to go. Marketing is work that matters for people who care, a chance to create products and services that lead to change.

[…]

If you have to interrupt, trick or coerce people to get the word out, you might be doing too much promotion and not enough marketing.

I especially like this first illustration he uses. While it isn’t a universally applicable example of the difference, it does make the point that what is good promotion doesn’t necessarily create an environment that is in everyone’s interests.

In the same way, a message of “come see this show” is different from “this is a place that provides an opportunity to share experiences with family and friends.” The latter is part of a narrative about attaining what people aspire to rather than selling a single specific product.

Upgrade Your Theatre Seat For More Legroom?

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I caught a story on NPR’s Marketplace yesterday that discussed the way airlines use premium seating.  One of the people interviewed mentioned that airlines craftily use the separation of time to get people to upgrade. Because the flyer is offered the opportunity to change to premium economy around the time they check in, months or weeks after they purchased the ticket, consumers view the upgrade payment as a different transaction from the initial seat purchase rather than thinking about the total amount they have spent.

Of course, that got me thinking about how this could be applied in the arts realm. While there are performing arts venues that employ dynamic pricing to extract additional revenue from ticket sales, by and large most organizations don’t have the interest or the computing infrastructure to implement that sort of ticketing.

However, many venues have ticketing systems that are capable of providing the view of the stage from a particular seat or notes about which seats have more leg room.  There may be other characteristics about the performance space people value that can be integrated into seating choice as well.

An email can be sent out a week before the event with information about how to prepare for the visit, including parking, restaurants, etc., and offering an opportunity for an upgrade in terms of sight lines, leg room, or whatever.

The offer of the upgrade doesn’t have to wholly be driven by a profit motive. It can be offered as a loyalty incentive to help fill houses now and in the future. Because you have been a loyal attendee or purchased well in advance, you can upgrade from the $35 seat to a $60 seat for an additional $10 rather than $25.

If you know that part of your audience base are price sensitive, last minute purchasers, you have just freed up a cheaper seat that can be sold and incentivized loyal patrons who plan in advance to continue to do so.

While I was thinking about all this, I recalled an instance where a person on my staff suggested that a renter do something of an inversion of the usual seat pricing approach and price seats up close less than those further back. I was a little conflicted about this because while we as insiders felt that seats in rows G-L are among the best seats, pricing should be based more on what seats the buyer thinks are the best.

But I also wondered if people have been trained by the way things are priced to think the highest priced, closest seats are the best? Given their choice in a general admission setting at a live, non-festival experience, people rarely head immediately to the front and fill in as close as they can possibly get.  More often than not, the front 2-3 rows are virtually empty by the time the show starts unless the event is close to sold out.

Is there a psychological element inherent to reserve seating events that changes the calculus for people? If the front few rows are priced less than those behind, do people think the venue management are fools and they are getting away with something by paying less?  And is that necessarily a bad thing if it has people watching closely for when tickets will go on sale so they can grab those great seats at a cut rate? Will they relent and buy slightly higher tickets if the cheaper ones sell out before they get there?

Of course they need to be confident those seats did sell and weren’t held back to manipulate sales or weren’t grabbed by resellers. This approach wouldn’t work well in places that are subject to scalpers with an automated purchase process.

My Freshman English Grade ≠ 2022 Writing Proficiency

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There was an article on The Conversation website back in March by Elisabeth Gruner discussing how she stopped giving grades on student papers in favor of comments and wished she had done so sooner.

I was reminded of Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where he mentions doing the same thing in his classes at Montana State University in the late 1950s. Pirsig’s students reacted much like Gruner’s did some 70 years later. Basically, they freak out at the prospect of not being given a grade.

I have written about Pirsig’s book before, though it has been about 15 years since my last reference to it. My experiences since then have somewhat supplemented my perspective. In recent years I have been writing on the idea that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the resulting data is an accurate depiction of value.

In the same way, a grade doesn’t really help you master content and improve. While an instructor can obviously provide a grade and comments, as Gruner notes, students will flip past all the comments to find the grade and then they are done.

Granted, students always have the option of ignoring comments and choose not to improve their skills. But that is a choice all humans have when faced with critique and not limited to educational settings.

The other issue is that grades and comments are only a measure of your level of mastery at a moment in time.

As I mention in my post from 15 years ago, I wrote a paper based on Pirsig’s book arguing for comments on papers in favor of grades. My professor took me at my word and didn’t give me a grade until after we discussed her comments. (She was obligated by the school to provide a grade, I didn’t feel the need for one.)

Another professor commented on another paper I wrote, observing that the grammatical mistakes were legion, but that I had done a fantastic job of capturing the voice and flavor of the work upon which I based my composition.

There was a grade on that paper. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember the comment. Arguably, my writing skills have improved since then. There have been many factors which have contributed to my higher standard of writing, but it really wasn’t the grades. Memories of my educational experience and how I professors dealt with me are what have endured.

In a similar manner, measures of value that are often applied to the arts like economic impact are meaningless.  How does economic impact inform organizational decision making? How does knowing the economic impact number influence how those in the community conduct their lives?

There is a lot of other data which will help organizations strive to do better or effect change. There are other ways in which people’s lives will be impacted by an arts organization. The value of all this can be examined and observed over the course of years.

Something I wanted to call attention to that is somewhat unrelated to my point about the relevance of grades and certain metrics used to measure organizational value. I feel this is important to note for people who want to read Pirsig, or my early posts on his book, and take some lessons from his experience with grading.

In Pirsig’s book, when he talks about his experience eliminating grading in the classroom, he mentions that the A & B students’ work improved, C students either improved a bit or stayed average, and D & F students basically kept sinking.  Basically, the idea was that the students’ natural talent and work ethic were a constant regardless of whether they were graded.

Gruner has different perspective which I think is a reflection of the differences between who got to attend university in 1958 and 2020s.

My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student’s background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.

While I know that background influences the degree to which people are prepared for an educational experience, until I read that paragraph, my recollection of Pirsig’s observations about grading dominated my perspective.

A Little Night of Georgia Music

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About three months ago I mentioned that we were having a concert filmed for public television in our venue. We recently got word that it will make its broadcast debut on Georgia Public Broadcasting on July 4. After that, it will be available to stations around the country on their schedule. (So hint, hint, you should nudge your local stations to air it.)

The show is comprised of music by Georgia musicians including, R.E.M., Ray Charles, The Allman Brothers, Outkast, Ray Charles, and B-52s.  The show is a project by Mike Mills of R.E.M., classical violinist Robert McDuffie, and Chuck Leavell formerly of The Allman Brothers and currently keyboardist for Rolling Stones.

The show features Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra composed by Mills. The string orchestra performing in the recording comes from the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University.

A little bit of a preview below. I am sure there is more video to come.

Best Time To Fight Burnout Is Before You Start Feeling Burned Out

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So hat tip to Roger Tomlinson who made a social media post calling attention to “A Manager’s Guide to Helping Teams Face Down Uncertainty, Burnout and Perfectionism“    It appears it is pretty much hot off the presses because it references a number of recent events which can be contributing to the stress of staff.

While the guide is written for a broad swatch of work environments, there is a great deal with which readers are likely to identify. It isn’t very long, but does have a hyperlinked index so you quickly return to where you left off.

One of the first things acknowledged in the article is that manager in particular can be doubly impacted by burnout.

In this exclusive interview, Fosslien dives deeper into three of the weighty emotions they address in the book — but from the manager’s lens specifically. “In conversations with readers, I’ve noticed how managers are feeling particularly overwhelmed and exhausted,” she says.

Many managers are struggling with what I call “burnout burnout” — providing emotional support and looking after the well being of their team has become a bigger part of their roles in the last two years, and it’s starting to take a toll.

I am not going to even try to encompass all the contributing factors for burnout and pro-active steps the piece discusses. In broad strokes, though the authors address a lot of assumptions that people make which result in the compounding of stress. If you are implementing burnout reduction tactics when you start to feel stressed, you waited too long. But that is natural and what most people end up doing. If you don’t forgive yourself for that, it will only make dealing with it worse.

Check it out. It is an easy read with helpful illustrations with concepts worth considering.

Has Anyone Achieved Minimal Viable Audience?

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Seth Godin recently made a post with a suggestion that runs counter to concept that arts organizations need to broaden their audience.  He has made posts throughout the years about attracting the smallest “viable audience” for products, but this time he specifically applies the concept to classical music and documentary films.

His basic premise is that if you focus on pleasing the core fans, the result will be greater audience satisfaction.

The smallest viable audience for certain genres is very clear. That allows the creators of the work to be specific and to deliver on expectations.

The broader you seek to make your offering, the more likely you are to run into people who don’t care, don’t get the joke or are simply not open to being satisfied.

It’s not easy to record a symphony or edit Restrepo. But your work is more likely to pay off in audience satisfaction.

The keyword “viable” is the slippery element in this. It is pretty widely acknowledged that catering to the traditional audiences isn’t sustainable so there does need to be some expansion.  But there is also an implication in “viable” that you would stop once the audience was large enough to sustain operations. Or perhaps that you maintain a program focused on renewing people lost to whatever factors are contributing to churn in audiences.

The problem is, there really doesn’t seem to be anyone who has discovered the secret of attracting and maintaining a core sustainable audience. Not to mention that economic factors are constantly expanding the boundaries of what is required to be sustainable.

So perhaps the answer is that there hasn’t been enough work done at expanding audiences yet. And by the way, I am not specifically referring to orchestras or art film houses and producers as mentioned in Godin’s post.

I don’t deny his statement that there is a point beyond which you can not please everyone. I have definitely been in too many meetings where people have said “our market is everyone” and that simply can not be the case.

Arguably, there are probably some arts organizations people can point out that have developed a core audience to sustainable levels. I suspect that these groups fall at either end of the population density spectrum. Either there is a large enough population available to support the organization or the community is so small the organization runs a budget with few expenses.

Pretty much everyone else in between probably needs to work on expanding audiences to the minimally viable size which will likely mean providing programming in which people can feel invested.

But I am curious, does anyone have other thoughts on this? Are there more entities who are maintaining a viable, highly-satisfied core audience which allows creators to focus on a high quality product than I am giving credit for?

“…Black people, are just living works of art, in our culture and being.”

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For years now I have been following and writing on the Culture Track survey.   At one time the survey was being conducted every three years or so in order to measure changing trends and attitudes about arts and culture.

When Covid hit, the folks at Culture Track decided it was important to closely monitor the impact of the pandemic on perceptions of arts and culture. It seemed like there was a new phase of the study being conducted every six months. (Disclosure, my venue participated in the study and has been grateful to receive useful data as a result.)

One of the things they noticed early on was that racial minorities were underrepresented in the survey and worked with NORC at the University of Chicago to collect data to offset that disparity.   In the most recent phase of the survey, they included a qualitative segment in which they extensively interviewed fifty Black and African-American participants to gain insights that the broader survey couldn’t provide.

In early May, Wallace Foundation posted an interview with some of the co-authors of the report on the role of race and ethnicity in cultural engagement. I haven’t read that report yet, but the interview provides some interesting perspectives.

The same interview links to the qualitative report, A Place to Be Heard, A Space to Feel Held: Black Perspectives on Creativity, Trustworthiness, Welcome and Well Being  This is extremely valuable to read.  While there are reasons specific to them that may or may not cause Black residents of the United States to feel an organization is trustworthy or welcoming, there is a lot in the responses that illustrate why anyone in general would not feel a sense of trust and welcome.

The findings are broken into four sections: Creativity, Self-Care, Trustworthiness, Welcome & Belonging. While there is much to be garnered from the executive summary of the study, the respective sections offer a lot to sink your consideration into.

I am always keenly interested to hear how people perceive creative practice and the study did not disappoint.

Some preferred to frame their creativity as a state of mind (“feeling like an artist inside”), an attitude they viewed as fundamental to guiding one’s life. One participant described this as an active rather than spectatorial process: “It’s not just about appreciating creativity, but about bringing creativity from the world into yourself.” Others seemed hesitant to call themselves creative, especially if there were people in their lives who had pursued creative careers. “I am very in awe of art and artists,” said one participant. “I think we all have creative sides, I think mine is not as expressed as others’.

The more I see people asked about creativity, the more nuance appears. I am starting to feel this is a topic we don’t talk to people about enough. In fact, the study says that in the first phase of the survey conducted shortly after Covid started, Black respondents reported participating in fewer cultural activities than the overall pool of respondents. In this qualitative survey, the range of activities people reported participating in was much broader.

Having the conversations about what people define as creative really seems to matter.

“And that idea of creativity as ubiquitous and lived was, for some, specifically tied to being Black and practicing Black culture as an important form of creative expression….As one participant put it, “I think that everybody, particularly Black people, are just living works of art, in our culture and being.”

In the trustworthiness section of the study, one of the big takeaways I had was that just because the demographic segment whom you hoped to reach are showing up, it doesn’t mean they trust your organization.

The people we spoke with can hold a “double consciousness” about cultural organizations’ trustworthiness and experiential value…they can enjoy the experience even though they don’t have a trusting relationship with it. They’re used to some amount of cognitive dissonance in these experiences: they can relish the art and overall experience even while knowing it’s problematic in important ways

Some of the issues of trustworthiness are related to who has influence and who is making the decisions are cultural organizations. There has been a fair bit of conversation these last few years about representation on executive staffs and boards. But it is also a matter of what stories and faces are appearing on stages and walls. One of the direct quotes from a participant is particularly pointed.

Traveling internationally…when you go to museums, you see what you are told in the U.S. is not true. The narrative of African race is much more out there than in the U.S. If you go to Sweden to the Nobel Prize Museum, [you’ll be] blown away by how many Brown people have won the Nobel prize. There are a whole bunch of us across the globe… I went to Mozart’s house, and I saw how he played alongside Black classical composers. Look at all this greatness we don’t talk about [in this country].”

The question of welcoming and belonging are closely related to these same factors of representation. Just because someone feels welcomed to a space, doesn’t necessarily translate into a feeling of belonging. While it is more marked when physical traits mark you as different from the rest of the crowd, most people can understand the difference because we have all had an experience where we are excited to be somewhere, but we don’t feel like we fit in. It doesn’t even need to be something like not knowing which of five forks to use at a formal wedding reception, we have all walked into a restaurant or store and shown ourselves to be outsiders by messing up the seating or ordering process.

Just as it takes time to become accustomed to the practices of a new place, making someone feel they belong is the process of small experiences over a long time. As the study points out, this can’t entirely be achieved by making an intentional effort to be hospitable to new arrivals, there are also myriad cues about who belongs, many of which will be invisible to insiders. It will likely take conversations with those with whom you have cultivated a degree of trust to identify what cues may be undermining a sense of belonging for them and their friends.

Take the time to read the report of the qualitative study. For many, there will be some things you are aware of already, things you may have already suspected, and things you haven’t been explicitly told before.  For others, it will be a lot of what you already know and will perhaps appreciate having explicitly mentioned and talked about in a manner it hasn’t been before.

Ode To The Stage Technician

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There is a saying among those who work in the technical side of live theatre and events that if someone notices what is going on, you are doing your job wrong.  The idea is that for the most part, the technical elements of an experience should enhance and complement rather than call attention to themselves.

But that is a double-edged sword because if people aren’t aware of all the pieces that have to come together, they think their goals are easy to accomplish.

No matter where I have worked, often one of the most frustrating parts of working with an inexperienced renter is having a conversation about their needs. Their perception is that a task can be accomplished by 1-2 people when it is closer to 6-8 due to all the locations and tasks to which stagehands need to attend at the same time. (Though truth be told, there are some experienced, returning renters with whom you might revisit the same conversation on an annual basis.)

Likewise, people don’t often think through their entire process. If something is dropped, flung, placed, etc., during a performance that wasn’t used during rehearsal, it is staying there unless someone is assigned in advance to pick it up.

What brought all this to mind is seeing a story about a week ago billing the performance by Mike Mills of the band R.E.M. at a university graduation as a surprise. While term was meant to the convey that it was a surprise to the audience, it could also be read as being a spur of the moment decision.

But the fact that there was a cable for him to plug in his guitar and another cable available to amplify the violin of the guy accompanying him wasn’t something that just happened to be there by chance. In all likelihood, he probably didn’t make the decision to perform that morning and asked that cables be run when he arrived. A number of people probably knew this was happening at least a week or so in advance.

One of the characteristics that makes for an excellent stage/movie/television technician is the ability to foresee the implications of a decision when it is discussed in advance of an event or pantomimed during a rehearsal. They are able to take action or make recommendations to solve the problems they anticipate.  But they can’t anticipate what isn’t communicated.

A lot of times they work miracles just in time anyway.

So just a little ode of appreciation today to all those technicians that make it all look so easy. Because they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

 

Measuring Our Measures

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Seth Godin recently made a post on one of my favorite topics — valuing metrics that don’t really matter.

Just because they’re easy to measure doesn’t mean they matter.

[…]

If you’re working with people who say they care about measurement, it might not pay to persuade them to stop measuring.

It might make more sense to give them useful numbers to measure instead.

Personally, I think he is a tad optimistic in thinking people will stop using easily measured data if presented with data that provides a more relevant measure, especially if it is more difficult to assemble.

Though I will admit to being gratified that I am reading posts and running into people who are questioning whether economic impact is relevant when attempting to assess the value of the arts.

As we move toward the next normal, assumptions and customary approaches are being challenged so the concept of relevant metrics is something to be continually considered.

If you are a little newer to my blog, here is an entry on the topic with links to other posts on the topic.

We Work Anti-Social Hours? Never Thought Of It That Way

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Artsjournal had recently included a link to a Guardian article reporting that people working in performing arts are twice as likely as the general population to experience depression.  This finding was a result of a review of over 100 studies by Dr. Lucie Clements.

Since the article was in The Guardian, I was curious to where the mix of studies were conducted. Whether it was the US, UK, Europe, Asia, etc. In the process, I discovered at Clements has a psychology practice directly working with dancers.  While I didn’t find a link to the study on her site, there was an interesting piece where she wonders why it is normal for psychologists to work with athletes but not dancers.

The reasons for the higher instances of depression noted in The Guardian article probably won’t come as a surprise to those of us in the performing arts.  However, having just written on Monday about the scarcity mindset and how it might apply to the arts provided some additional context. Especially in respect to the following about scarcity of time:

Antisocial working hours and late-night performances may lead to disruption to sleep or inconsistent sleep routines – a known risk factor for mental health problems.

“The inconsistency of touring and pressures of time travelling, erratic working schedules (including evenings and weekend performance) and chunks of time working away mean a lack of time for loved ones, family or social life,” says the review. “Musicians, for example, spoke of going months without seeing their children. This is important since support from loved ones is known to be one of the most significant protective factors for mental health.”

I hadn’t really thought about the fact that many of us work anti-social hours in order to provide others with the opportunity to socialize and spend time with each other. While it is true, I never thought of it as a zero sum situation where others’ gain is my loss.

Anxiety related to depictions of death and rape in performance were cited along with pressures performers face to maintain a specific weight and body type.

And of course the lack of stability resulting from Covid also factors in.

Other papers found that 24% of ballet dancers reported experiencing anxiety, along with 32% of opera singers, 52% of acting students, 60% of actors and 90% of rock musicians. Among the general population, 6% of individuals are thought to experience anxiety in any given week.

Cheaper By The Dozen, But I Only Have One Set of Eyes And Ears To Experience It

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Seth Godin made a post about leveraging the power of word of mouth by incentivizing sharing with friends.

Krispy Kreme grew to become a doughnut behemoth in the US. The formula was simple: Scarce supply, high short-term taste satisfaction, and a dozen priced almost the same as just four.

As a result, most people bought a dozen. But few could eat a dozen, and you can’t really save them, so you realized that sharing a warm doughnut was the way to go.

Carmine’s restaurant in New York was the hot ticket for decades. One reason was that the only way to get a reservation was to come with five other people. So you needed to talk about it.

He goes on to talk about how a book he worked on about climate change, The Carbon Almanac, has priced pre-orders to make it cost effective to share copies with others.

The general concept is a springboard for ideas for arts organizations, which much like Krispy Kreme, offers a product with an ephemeral lifespan. Offering tickets/entry fees and memberships at prices which incentivize sharing the experience with friends–and intentionally promoting it within that framework provides exposure to a broader range of people.

While providing free admission to an event can also serve to expose your work to a broader range of people. One – surveys show that people who attend free admission events are ones who would have attended anyway. Even if they bring a friend, the friend may not be incentivized to return and pay for admission in the future.

Second – charging some form of admission creates an associated value with the experience. If tickets are $15 but five person pass costs $50, two people may technically be getting in for free, but the group is more likely to think of the tickets being $10 each.  The pass created a situation where two people who might not have attended now have.  If they have a good time, any of the five may not balk at paying $15 in the future when the pass or four friends aren’t available. (Or they may work to invite some new friends along.)

The venue I am at does something along these lines with movie passes which are good in any combination – an individual to 10 movies, five friends to two movies, two friends to five movies. Tickets are $5 regularly and with the larger passes I think you end up only paying $3/ticket. We end up selling quite a few of the passes and have a lot of them redeemed at each screening. It has been relatively easy to administer and worthwhile overall.

Reading Godin’s post has me thinking about how we might structure pricing and experiences for other events to encourage people to share then with friends.

Too Preoccupied To Weed Your Fields

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So I saw the recent Dr. Strange movie this weekend and one of the biggest takeaways I had (no spoilers) was that classical music is powerful no matter what universe you are in. Though, like anything the benefit or detriment depends on whose hands are wielding it.

While that isn’t the main thrust of my post today, the movie is somewhat pertinent. I wanted to direct readers over to Drew McManus’ Adaptistration post today where he reflects on an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast on scarcity mindset.

Since I was processing our end of fiscal year appeal letters this past week, I had some time to listen to the podcast. I recognized how a lot of the problems discussed manifest in the arts, which is always beset by a scarcity mindset. One problematic product of a scarcity mindset is tunnel vision which inhibits long term planning, rationale decision making, and awareness of repercussions.

If you have seen the Dr. Strange movie, a tunnel vision approach to problem solving is basically the central driver of the entire conflict. I felt like Drew knew about my weekend plans when he wrote the post.

However, in the less supernatural, non-fiction of our daily existence, it can also be a core problem degrading the lives of individuals and organizations.

As Drew writes:

While there are numerous examples related to the ways scarcity of resources impacts decision making, I found one of the most applicable chapters is how scarcity of time impacts professionals.

Given that the orchestra sector has a long history of staffers and managers being overworked, it’s good to have examples from Mullainathan and Shafir that quantify the dynamic impact of making this environment the norm.

Listening to the podcast episode, they made some compelling arguments about people how people living near the poverty line don’t necessarily need classes on time and money management to set them on the right track, they need support systems that recognize the impact scarcity has on people’s mindsets.

They provide some interesting examples of studies that have been conducted on the topic. I was especially struck by the observations of the change in the cognitive capacity of Indian sugarcane farmers, who go through cycles of plenty and scarcity due to when they are paid for their crops.

MULLAINATHAN: We found a huge difference. So we found that post-harvest, when they’re well-off, they have much more impulse control.

VEDANTAM: Farmers who were rich tended to think about things that would help them over the long term. This matched other research that shows, for example, that farmers who are well-off tend to weed their fields more regularly than farmers who are poor. Farmers who were poor mostly focused on how to make it to next week, short-term thinking. To be clear, it’s not that poor people focus on immediate needs because that’s all they want to think about. It’s all they can think about. Scarcity captures the mind, like it did with those starving men in Minnesota. In fact, scarcity can actually lower how you perform on an IQ test.

There is a book written on the subject which Drew links to.

All this bears thinking about because careers in the arts have always been beset by a scarcity of time, resources and money. The overall internal cultural expectation is that you soldier through and pay your dues. In the context of this book and podcast, that is the very approach which inhibits the ability to think clearly and carefully about ensuring the long term survival of our individual and collective arts organizations.

It may be why, despite the stress Covid brought to our lives, greater availability of time set into motion new ideas and practices related to programming, relationship with community, and business models.

Man Those Backseat Entertainment Screens Are Getting Bigger And Bigger

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I am always interested in seeing the novel approaches people employ to present performances. I happened to catch a story last week on Vice about a guy who is bringing pop up movie experiences to public spaces in India on the back of rickshaws.  The project is somewhat cheekily called Rick Show.  The concept was adapted from a Japanese storytelling form called Kamishibai which I was totally unfamiliar with.

Kamishibai, literally translating to “paper theatre,” was a Japanese art form popular before the advent of television, where a narrator popped up on street corners with sets of illustrated boards that were placed on a miniature stage on their bicycles, and then changed each board to communicate the storyline.

The artist, who goes by the name Le Gentil Garcon, worked with an architectural college to design a container to store the stage, lighting, projector, sound system and audience seating that would fit on the back of a long rickshaw. They ship their container to their target city and pop it on the back of a rented rickshaw. Then they go around and set up in public spaces like gardens and parks.

They show short, 10-20 minute films that allow passersby to pop in and out as they like. The total length of the program is about two hours.The overall goal is to bring art house films that are usually only shown in museums and specialty movie houses to the public square mixed with an element of delight at finding something unexpected.

“I liked the fact that many people who didn’t think they were going to see an art film on this particular day start to see something made by an international artist, and it’s kind of interesting,” said Le Gentil Garçon.

Difficult To Heed Polonius’ Advice These Days

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Some notable news via American Theatre, for those who have found it difficult to heed Polonius’ advice of “neither a borrower nor lender be.” (aka pretty much all of us)  The Acting Company has created a program to pay off up to $10,000 of student loan debt for any actor that is cast as in their 2022-2023 touring company.

The loan payment is made directly to the lender at the end of the repertory season. There is language about the available grant funds being split equally between all the actors, up to a maximum of $10,000 which makes me wonder if this is funded by an endowment whose value may fluctuate due to the stock market. Or perhaps they are projecting a set number of actors will have student loan debt and if the number exceeds their projections, the share of the pool will be less.

In addition to receiving the debt relief, the website says the actors will have the opportunity to:

  • Participate in a financial literacy seminar designed to ensure their understanding of the financial impact of grant funds, and to provide overall guidance on financial management and self-advocacy for theater artists. The Actors’ Funds, Artists’ Financial Support Group, or a similar organization will be engaged to conduct a program specifically for our actors.

  • Participate in teaching artist training sessions led by TAC teaching artists and education consultants. This will add to the pool of qualified alumni available to lead The Acting Company’s education programs and provide a potential new source of income to the actors.

  • Complete a season-end survey documenting their experience with the program and its impact on their artistic, professional, and financial wellbeing

Companies have long offered to pay the tuition of employees in order to help with their career advancement. The fact that The Acting Company is offering student loan debt relief is a reflection of national conversation about student loan debt. It will be interesting to see if the tuition payment benefit is replaced or joined by debt relief as an employment benefit.

I suspect it may not be offered to the degree college tuition is. Not every employee will be interested in attending college, but a large percentage of employees may be carrying student debt.  But companies seeking skilled labor may choose to offer debt relief in order to remain competitive.

 

Would You Pay For News In Return For Tax Credits?

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There was a story last month on Nieman Lab looking at how successful a tax credit for digital news subscriptions has been in Canada.  The intent was to help news organizations stay in business and according to the article, there is a similar bill being considered in the U.S.

Unfortunately, the number of people taking advantage of the program, which allows you to write off 15% of your subscription, has been pretty small. Only about 1% of Canadian taxpayers claimed a credit and some news organizations didn’t apply to be part of the program.

Some news orgs that may have qualified have declined to apply. A number of those that were deemed qualified Canadian journalism organizations have pitched the tax credit to existing subscribers, and used it as a perk to entice new ones.

At The Logic, … information on the tax credit was sent to all existing subscribers and advertised to potential subscribers, …

The end result was “negligible,” Skok said.

Rather than prompting new subscribers to sign up, Skok said, “the people who would have subscribed anyway are using the credit.” Skok suggests that subscribers weren’t swayed because they wouldn’t see the benefit until tax time and because the 15% credit was too low to change many minds on paying for news.

That doesn’t bode well for the corresponding bill proposed in the US which covers 80% of the subscription cost, but requires a multi-year commitment.

…cost of a local newspaper subscription or donation to a local news nonprofit in the first year, and 50% in the subsequent four years. So in order to earn the full $250 credit, you’d have to spend at least $312.50 on subscriptions or nonprofit news donations in the first year, or $500 in the following four years.

That’s a lot more than what most Americans pay for local news currently. Just 20% of people living in the United States say they pay for online news of any kind,…

However, the news outlet doesn’t need to be digital print media. It could be a local television or radio station as well so presumably NPR and PBS stations could benefit by seeing larger donations over multiple years.

Unfortunately, since this is a tax credit, people in lower income brackets who don’t pay taxes wouldn’t benefit if they made an attempt to support local news outlets.

What caught my eye in the article about the US bill is that it incentivizes small businesses to increase their advertising. My first thought was that this would benefit arts organizations until making the obvious realization that most arts organizations don’t pay taxes. On the other hand, it might allow arts organizations to promote activities which generate taxable unrelated business income and bolster an additional income stream.

A tax credit of up to $5,000 for small businesses that buy ads in their local publications. Small businesses could use this tax credit to advertise with local news sites, newspapers, television, or radio. As with the tax credit for individuals, local businesses would foot 20% of the costs the first year and 50% in the following years. So a local business could quintuple their current advertising in Year 1 and double it in Years 2 through 5 at zero net cost. Under the Senate bill, to qualify as “small,” businesses must have no more than 50 employees.

From what I can tell, the House version of the bill went to Ways and Means committee last June. Unless it got wrapped up in another bill it may be languishing there.

As great as this bill, which has bipartian support, may sound in terms of reviving local journalism, the article notes that most local news outlets have been bought up and drained of assets by hedge funds. So a lot of the money would end up being channeled to large corporations despite the limits on employees in the bill’s definition of local news entity.

On the other hand, the opportunity to garner greater support may see the emergence of new news outlets on the local level.

Art Reflects Life. So Should Your Mission Statement

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Scott Walters made a Twitter post yesterday that suggested organizations start their existence with a Quality of Life Statement rather than Mission Statement or Values Statement.  Intrigued about where he was going with this, I popped over to his blog post on the subject.  He starts with a brief criticism that non-profit mission statements are usually so broad they are meaningless and pretty much interchangeable with those of other organizations.

He moves quickly into discussing the concept of quality of life statements (QoLS) proposed by Shannon Hayes. Hayes focus is mostly on use of QoLS by individuals and families to determine how they want to conduct their lives and relationships.  Walters does a good job of showing how answering the questions Hayes suggests for developing these statements can be applied to arts organizations.

For example:

2. “List the people that you want to populate your daily life.

…I sincerely believe that, if this question had been discussed long ago, the 6-day/8-performance week of most professional theaters would never have happened. The current theater world is notoriously hostile to families and extremely difficult on relationships. It can be very difficult to just have a life outside the theater. How might your theater support growth and happiness of members’s whole lives, not just their artistic lives?

3. “Describe the home and land surrounding you as you want it to be

…For instance, are kids welcome to hang out at rehearsal, even if they are not quiet like a mouse? Is there a theater cat? When a spectator opens the door, how are they greeted? What about after the show–is there a place for the spectators to gather to have a refreshment and talk about the show? Do the performers join them? If an audience members encounters a company member at the grocery store, how do you want them to talk to each other? How is that embodied by the way you lay out your space?

There are five points in total that Walters cites and comments on similarly. Now as we move into a next normal environment and recognize the need to do better in serving our community and meeting diversity, equity and inclusion, even established arts organizations would do well to use these questions as guides to their introspection.

While QoLS are focused on a family/organization’s internal members, Walters implication that the resulting conversations should inform external facing statements of mission and values that reflect the specific existence of the arts organization is valid.  Even if you don’t go through the practice of answering questions to develop a quality of life statement, a mission statement should grow from the reality of who you are rather than from a boilerplate form.

Spend, Not Give Donations?

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The folks on the Non-Profit Happy Hour Facebook group posted a link to a Ohio State University (I’m sorry, THE Ohio State University) post which claims that charities should not use the word “give” when requesting donations.

They say it is a matter of feeling in control of how a donation is used. According to an analysis of the responses by 2700 people who participated in seven studies, people would rather give their time rather than money. This conflicts with charities’ general preference for monetary donations.

Overall, the study found that people prefer giving their time to nonprofit organizations rather than their money, because they feel more personal control over how their time is used, according to Malkoc.

“It is not possible to separate ourselves from our time, the way that we can from our money,” she said. “When you give your time, it is still a part of you. You are still living through it.”

The suggestion they make is that using the word “spend” provides people with a greater sense of control and therefore makes them apt to donate greater amounts.

People approached for a financial donation offered more than twice as much when they were asked to “spend” their money ($94) than when they were asked to “give” their money ($40).

And here’s why: Participants were asked several questions that measured how much control they would feel over their donations. Results showed that people who were asked to spend their money reported feeling more control than those who were asked to give their money.

[…]

When given control, people were nearly equally interested in giving, whether it was time or money.

“If nonprofits gave more control over how donations are spent, or made donors feel like they were spending their money rather than giving it, that may alleviate some of the disconnect people feel about financial gifts.”

Having read this, I believe there would have to be a good deal more work done on messaging and terminology employed to give people a sense of control rather than using a term like “spend.” The sense of donations being a transactional relationship is already a big problem in terms of the belief non-profits need to be run like a business; conceiving results achieved in terms of return on investment; large donations providing access, perqs, influence, and naming rights; the last of which many organizations have been trying to disentangle themselves.

Not to mention the growing prevalence of donor advised funds which provide tax benefits and a high degree of control without the obligation to disburse.

It seems like employing terms like “spend” will only exacerbate current problems and serve to entrench the use of restricted giving. While there are ways to give donors a greater sense of control over how their money is spent and technology available to facilitate the process, I would be concerned that this would mean staff would be further diverted from providing core services to underserved communities.

The model the study seems to be suggesting feels like it would be along the lines of the ubiquitous TV ads that told you that for $4/month you could purchase a meal for a child and that you would receive a packet with updates about the child. As a donor to this program, you feel a high degree of control over how your money is being spent.

The better solution is probably to employ broader, more consistent messaging emphasizing unrestricted giving without the expectation of expensive benefits. People absolutely do deserve a sense of assurance and control. You don’t want to give to con artists who are going to run off with your money. But that can come from providing easier access to information attesting to the legitimacy of the charity.

While there are websites that provide that sort of analysis, people aren’t widely aware of them as resources. The metrics these sites have traditionally employed have been problematic. There has been a tendency to focus on overhead ratio as a measure of effectiveness. There are probably a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion issues with what data is used and how it is analyzed too. Ultimately, a complete overhaul over a long term will be necessary.

They’re Back! But Not Because They Waited For The Audiences To Return

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Apparently the pandemic was good for classical music stations. In a story on the Current site, the general manager WDAV in Charlotte, NC had a hard time believing his station had achieved number one market share for the first time ever.

WDAV wasn’t alone, a number of other stations had similar successes. But before you assume that the value of classical music suddenly became apparent to people in a “if you play it, they will come” sort of way, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Stations have been working to frame the music for their communities.

But by emphasizing long-held values of classical radio — to be soothing, to clear the mind, to remind people of aesthetic beauty — stations rose to the occasion to provide refuge from a world that felt scary and uncertain. That has translated into ratings records, strong fundraising and a reminder of the value of classical stations to local arts organizations.

“We heard from a significant number of listeners thanking us for being a place that was normal for them,” said Brenda Barnes, CEO of KING FM in Seattle. WDAV’s Dominguez and leaders at WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., and the USC Radio Group, which consists of KUSC in Los Angeles and KDFC in San Francisco, all said they heard the same from their listeners.

WDAV also got out into the community with their Small Batch music series where they had classical musicians perform at a local microbrewery. Will Keible, the station’s director of marketing and corporate support cited the intimidating environment of a formal concert hall and not wanting to passively wait for people to find them on the radio dial as drivers for their partnership with the brewery.

Other stations cultivated stronger relationships with the artists in their areas. The article also talks about how WXXI had reached out to ensembles and chamber groups in New York’s Finger Lakes region during the pandemic requesting recent performance recordings which they broadcast as part of a 10 week series. Many stations like WXXI have recognized the need to provide programming by musicians and composers of color and that has also helped to broaden their appeal.

“We are changing our library and our rotation cycles so that … you’re hearing representation from all different composers and performers all the time,” said WXXI’s Ruth Phinney. The station also profiles classical musicians of African descent on its website. “We’ve actually had classical musicians contact us and say, ‘I’m a classical musician, I’m not on your site yet. Can you put me on there?’”

Inheriting Your Great-Great Grandparents’ Investment In Your Future

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Early in April you may have seen that Yellowstone National Park is celebrating its 150th Anniversary by offering an Inheritance Pass for $1500 with the catch that it can’t be used for another 150 years.

Well, actually while the pass isn’t usable until 2172, purchasers get a complimentary annual pass good for a year after the first use.  I am calling attention to this not to suggest this as a possible program, (I mean right now how many of us can guarantee access to our programming in 10 years much less 150), but rather to point out that there is often at least a small niche interest in bespoke arrangements. In this case, the target is families committed to conservation.  It can be worthwhile to be flexible about exploring those opportunities.

Their hope is that the Inheritance Pass—a campaign created by advertising agency Havas Chicago— could create an important legacy among families that are committed to conservation.

Those who choose to invest in the Inheritance Pass will receive it as soon as August of this year. It will feature the name of the donor on the back. Yellowstone Forever says that the money it raises through the campaign will go toward supporting scientific studies, trail maintenance, and wildlife conservation, among other projects.

I tried to find out how many people might have taken advantage of this program in the few weeks it has been available but couldn’t find any information. 

Quite honestly, even though they promise to keep track of the ownership of the passes, I think purchasers have to acknowledge buying the pass is tantamount to making a straight donation to the park. Will there even be websites and email addresses by which to contact Yellowstone Forever to retrieve a lost pass in 150 years?

In terms of my earlier reference to donor programs with niche appeal, the pass one receives is a physical token to accompany the concept of investing in the park to benefit future generations. It would be great if families actually retained the pass across five generations (based on a generation being about 30 years), and presented it for redemption. But the pass is just an appealing prop in a conservation donation campaign.

I would be interested in knowing how they calculate the tax deductible portion of the pass. Do they use $1500 less the current cost of an annual pass to figure out the received benefit value vs. the donated portion? Or will it be the cost of the pass in 150 years which may exceed $1500?

(Actually, given that the person making the donation will receive no benefit, I would assume the whole amount is deductible if they refuse the complimentary annual pass available in 2022.)

People Fund People Not Organizations, So Maybe Do That Even More?

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Last month Marginal Revolution blog posted an excerpt of a piece by Adam Mastroianni about how grant funding is broken.  I immediately hopped over to see what he had to say. While his post was mostly focused on grants funding science and the Rhodes scholarship process, there were a lot of common elements that are likely to be familiar to all who apply.

One of the first observations Mastroianni makes is that it is very easy to hack the grant process thanks to relationships you have. This both confirms that people give to people and organizations and that groups that may really need the funding but lack access to guidance, resources and insiders often get locked out.

For instance, most Rhodes selection committees include a cocktail party as part of their interview process. This is a pretty bad way of judging whether someone is a good person, but it’s a pretty good way of judging whether they are pleasant to talk to at a cocktail party, and so Rhodes Scholars are often charming conversationalists and sometimes bad people (see: Bill Clinton, Bobby Jindal, noted anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf).

[…]

For example, the Rhodes Trust probably hopes that by picking the most accomplished college seniors and giving them a super prestigious prize, they will encourage the youngsters to do lots of brave and risky things. Instead, the most popular destinations for my Rhodes cohort were top-tier medical schools, law schools, and PhD programs (guilty), as well as a handful of consulting companies––exactly where we would have gone if we hadn’t gotten the scholarship.

Generally, Mastroianni’s criticism is that most grant programs reward people who are already successful to the detriment of those they say they wish to help.

Mastroianni’s suggested solution is to take advantage of the flaws in the system to force it to reach into the underserved cracks and crevices. His system, which he refers to as “Trust Windfalls,” essentially allows one to provide a benefit to friends–but only once.

But isn’t it unfair that a bunch of money should go to my friends? Also yes. That’s why, if I was an Agent, I should only get one turn at awarding Windfalls. Then I’d have to pass on the responsibility to someone very different from me who I trusted to give out the second round. If I did it right, Trust Windfalls would eventually find their ways into corners of the world that conventional grants could never reach. Just a few trusted links away from me might be a Botswanan ichthyologist or a trucker smuggling medical supplies into Kiev––people who may not speak English or know the right things to say on an application or even realize there are grants they could apply for in the first place. Making Agents temporary also prevents the Trust Windfalls from being hacked: once people know you’re an Agent, every interaction with you becomes a grant application.

If people hate conventional grant funding so much, why haven’t they tried something like this? Honestly, I think it’s because trusting people seems a lot scarier than it really is. Funders have to trust Agents. Agents have to trust their grant recipients, and they have to trust the person they nominate as the next Agent. (We should maybe call the organization that oversees all this the Trust Trust.) Anybody could betray the trust put in them, which would be a huge shame and very embarrassing.

While this is an interesting idea in theory, I think it is overly idealistic in terms of thinking that people will pass the baton on to people outside their own peer group in any great numbers. Funds may be sent to a biologist studying the ecology of a Latin American country or an aid worker in Ukraine, but is the money going to a life long resident of that country or the sister of a person the Trust Agent went to college with who is working for a university program or an NGO with roots in the US? Certainly Mastroianni alludes to the fact something like this could happen.

I think the structure he suggests has a better chance at providing an equitable distribution of funds than the current system. I like the idea of leveraging the problems of current practice into a solution. But the funding source would probably need to be plugging detailed data into relationship mapping software to ensure that the 4th or 5th recipient in the chain not have multiple common ties with the 1st and 2nd people in the chain.

I guess the fact I can identify a flaw and potential solution so easily indicates it is possible to refine his proposal into something workable.  Take a read of his proposal and see what you think.

You Don’t Have To Wait To Grow Up To Be An Artist

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Last month, Coco Allred, a teaching artist in Philadelphia had a post on Americans for the Arts about President Biden’s visit to one of the classes she teaches.  She started out with the best part right at the beginning:

On March 11, 2022, President Joseph R. Biden asked Maria, a second-grade student at Luis Muñoz Marín Elementary School in North Philadelphia, “What kind of art do you like?” Maria said, “Painting.” President Biden replied, “Do you think you’ll be a painter when you grow up?” Maria said with confidence, “I already am one.”

As Maria’s teacher, I felt proud of how she identified herself as an artist and added, “That’s the great thing about being an artist—you don’t have to wait to grow up to become one.”

Back in 2014 I made a post about a talk Jamie Bennett, then Executive Director of Art Place America, gave where he observed that people have an easier time seeing themselves on the continuum with athletes than with artists, even if they are fairly invested in a creative practice. So the fact that child views herself as an artist is greatly encouraging to me. Hopefully more kids are growing up with this perspective.

If you watch the video included in Allred’s post where the kids are interacting with President Biden, (around 20:30 mark) a student makes an comment drawing parallels between learning/teaching basketball and artistic skills. Her observation was clearly more sophisticated than the president, (or I for that matter), expected from the student.

She Made Sure We Ain’t Gonna Lose Touch With Soul

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I want to take the opportunity to call attention to an article in the NY Times this past Sunday focused on Zelma Redding, wife of the singer Otis Redding, Jr.  The Otis Redding Foundation is a close neighbor to my theater. We can see the back door of their offices from the lobby doors of the theater.   Zelma is only in the offices on occasion. The last time I saw her was a week before Covid shut everything down two years ago. However, her daughter Karla and grandson Justin are very visible, accessible and involved in the community. (I just congratulated Justin on the NY Times article in a crosswalk while returning from lunch today.)

Just as the article notes, Karla, Justin and other members of the family are active on numerous boards around the community.  But the Otis Redding Foundation has a number of programs of their own focused on music education. They have afterschool lessons and run two summer camps, one of which is focused on training kids for the music business and has seen them travel and perform in Nashville as part of the camp experience.

If you walked into their offices, you would hardly believe they run such extensive operations out of such a small space.  They actually announced construction of the Otis Redding Center for the Arts on March a half block from their current offices. It will be focused on serving students 5-18 who have interests in all aspects of music, from performance to recording technology.  Right now Justin is flying around the country raising money for the center. If anyone has any interest in being involved with the project, reach out to them.

The article does a great job of discussing the environment into which Otis Redding was launching his career and in which the Foundation operates in today. There is a Confederate statue right outside the foundation offices on a street with a history of Black owned businesses. The county’s efforts to move it have been stymied by lawsuits. The Foundation has had to be neutral on calls to have Otis Redding’s statue replace the current statue, just as they had to be with the push to have the city auditorium named for Redding.

Before I had read the NY Times article, I ended up having lunch with an elder statesman musician who grew up here and had gigged with The Pinetoppers when Otis Redding was a member prior to joining the horn section for Sam and Dave. He discussed the virulently racist mayor of Macon who nonetheless loved Otis Redding that is also mentioned in the NY Times article. (He also talked about touring in the Jim Crow era. While he made light of the situations, they must have been tense to terrifying when they happened.)

Similarly,  it is indeed “complicated” that when he died Redding had been a partner in a record label that later ended up carrying a lot of Southern Rock acts that employed Confederate symbols in their marketing.

But the Foundation probably wouldn’t even be around today if not for the dogged efforts of Zelma Redding. After Otis Redding’s death, while raising four kids, she went back to school and learned the music business, eventually opening her own music related businesses. All the way, she had to fight to make sure she was getting the royalties and payments from Otis’ work that were due his estate.

So give the article a read. It is such a great encapsulation of so many issues that remain relevant today.

Becoming One Of The Unseen Creative Artists

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Yesterday we had David Grindle, Executive Director of USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology) , speak at my theater about “The Unseen Arts Economy.”

If you aren’t familiar with it, USITT was founded “to promote dialogue, research, and learning among practitioners of theatre design and technology.”  They basically are plugged into knowing what technology the smallest theaters and bars through to Disney, Cirque d’ Soelil and movie productions are using.  USITT is also invested in promoting safety and training in all the crafts and technologies practiced and utilized in these places.

If you weren’t previously aware of USITT, then Grindle’s talk was for you. While I thought it would have a slightly different focus, Grindle did a really good job of talking discussing all the unseen labor and laborers that contribute to events and productions.  I have seen other people talk about all the opportunities for non-performing artists that exist, but never did they make such a compelling case as Grindle. He smoothly wove anecdotes together with “if you are a person who enjoys X, then there are these jobs…” in a manner that made his talk relevant to the listeners and didn’t feel like a recitation.

In his view, it isn’t just the lack of arts in schools that is an issue, it is the disappearance of home ec/family and consumer sciences that is also problematic. He said the lack of people with fundamental skills in sewing and other crafting skills has become cause for concern.

Most of the audience was comprised of college students with perhaps a few high school students thrown in. Initially, when he asked if there were any questions and no one came forward, I was worried that he was talking to people who were primarily interested in performing on stage. But after a few questions, things started opening up. Some people definitely were interested in working behind the scenes when they walked in. There were others for whom Grindle’s talk had revealed some options they hadn’t been aware of.

While I am sure Grindle is a busy person individually, if anyone has an interest in having someone speak on similar topics, I am sure the folks at USITT can point you to some members who can do a credible job of it.

Monopolies, Not Lack of Curiosity May Have Killed American Theater

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Scott Walters is a blogger I started following 15+ years ago. His work has gone through various focuses and iterations, but is always very interesting and insightful. He recently returned to the blogosphere with posts on Theatre Inspiration. He started out with a series on the wrong turns theater has made in the United States. Just as you will often see articles about how classical music concerts weren’t always the staid, rule-bound affairs they are today, Walters points out we didn’t always do things  in theatre the way we do now.

Walters says the first wrong turn theatre made was the birth of The Syndicate. While it no longer exists its influence is deeply entrenched in current practices.  One of the first blow your mind facts he lays on readers is that there used to be TONS of performances spaces around the country from which artists made a relatively good living.  In 1900 Iowa alone had 1300 opera houses. I looked it up, the population of Iowa was 2.2 million in 1900 and about 3.1 million today. I think it is safe to say there are far fewer venues now than there were then despite the increase in population. This somewhat belies the notion that a lack of interest and investment in the arts is the result of the United States’ founding by stoic Puritans.

Walters writes:

The same was true across the country. Often, one of the first things that was built in towns as they were founded were “opera houses” (i.e., rooms for performances to take place). They weren’t necessarily elaborate, but they were important to townspeople. Music, theatre, dance were all important to communities, no matter how small, and performers were able to support themselves providing that work.

Basically actor-managers would travel the country with their troupes arranging for gigs for themselves. This changed in 1896 when a group of six men who owned a string of theaters across the country got together and formed The Syndicate, in part to cut down on competition with each other and increase efficiency so that a tour didn’t show up to the same town ready to present the same show. However, as they gained power and influence they were quickly able to squash competition and require artists that wanted to perform to contract with them for whatever price they decided to pay.

If you are thinking, with thousands of performance spaces scattered throughout every state how could they have possibly ended up controlling them all? The very decentralized nature of venue ownership should work against them, right? Well that was the same thought about the internet, wasn’t it and look how that turned out.

But the reality is, they didn’t need to control it all. Walters quotes Landis K. Magnuson:

Although the Syndicate controlled the bulk of first-class theaters in the major metropolitan centers, the fact that it controlled the theaters in communities located between such theater centers provided its true source of power. Without access to these smaller towns, non-Syndicate companies simply could not afford the long jumps from one chief city to another. Thus the Syndicate actually needed to own or manage only a small percentage of this nation’s theaters in order to effectively dominate the business of touring theatrical productions–to monopolize “the road.”

The Syndicate used their power to drive artist managed groups and rival venues out of business. Many tried to resist. Sarah Bernhardt would only perform in tents in an attempt to avoid Syndicate controlled theaters. The Syndicate would tend to book lighter, entertaining fare instead of serious drama. Walters quotes writer Norman Hapgood who observed this suppressed the work of many talented playwrights and actors.

Since The Syndicate was based out of New York City, that was where the tours originated and therefore where all the shows were cast. The impact of this persists today and people have long wondered why it is necessary for actors who live in NC need to move to NYC so that they can return to NC to perform.

Walters writes:

If all this sounds familiar, it’s not surprising–little has changed since 1900. Theatre is still controlled by risk-averse commercial producers and theatre owners who are interested only in using theatre to make a tremendous profit through the production of shallow, pleasant plays. And theatre artists still feel pressured to live in New York in order to have a hope of making a living, because regional theatres across America do most if not all of their casting there. Artists are thought of and think of themselves as employees who must ask permission (i.e., audition) in order to do their art, and are told who they will work with, when they will work, and where they will work.

Walters’ work is deeply interesting in a time when the performing arts industry is considering what changes will be necessary to adapt to changing expectations and operational environment. Take the time to read it and reflect on some of the forces and events that have gotten us where we are today.

Where Is Your Favorite Podcast Getting Its Material?

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h/t to Isaac Butler who retweeted a somewhat horrifying thread written by author Brendan Koerner recounting how one of his Atlantic articles, two of his books and a WIRED piece he authored have been ripped off by podcasters.

Koerner recounts how the person who created a podcast based on his Atlantic article blatantly told him he was going to rip it off.

A couple people Koerner confronts do give some cursory acknowledgements. He feels it is insufficient, but doesn’t have the energy to fight all these battles.

Given the ever broadening proliferation of podcasts, this is going to be something to which to pay attention. People want to jump on the wave but if they don’t have original material to share, apparently they don’t have many scruples about stealing it.

I suspect we are going to see people getting paid speaking engagements or interest in developing expanded work based on their podcasts only to find there are credible claims of plagiarism and theft.

But even if it goes no further than podcast episodes, as Koerner points out, people are creating ad revenue supported episodes that compete with his books and spoil the plot twists in his writing.

Can Annotated Press Releases Be A Good Communication Tool?

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Last week Aubrey Bergauer made the following post calling the attention of arts organizations to an annotated press release put out by the financial company Ellevest announcing their success in raising $53 million.

While there were some silly annotations like calling Bankrate “smarties” for naming Ellevest “the #1 mission-driven investment offering,” on the whole the annotations were used to provide deeper perspective on the effort that went into raising those funds and telling Ellevest’s story.

For example, the annotation stating Ellevest is funded by 360 women and underrepresented investors revealed:

“I get the game on these raise announcements. I know what the narrative is “supposed” to be: that institutions were throwing money at us to invest in Ellevest.

What really happened: As we began our raise, we had dozens and dozens (and dozens) of meetings with potential investors, and they were going … fine. Fine to good, in fact.

And then … the women showed up.

Caroline Lewis, of Rogue Ventures, heard about our raise and contacted us. … Then, so did Jesse Draper at Halogen Ventures. And so did Jenny Abramson at Rethink Impact. And so did a number of others.

This opened up our funding round to these underrepresented investors — for them to support us (by funding the company), and, we hope, for us to support them (by working hard to deliver a strong return and build their track records). …

The annotation quoting Caroline Lewis saying there is a need for financial products that serve women stated:

“Like, actually serve women. Not just market to women. And not just be a pinkwashed version of your father’s financial advisor…”

The annotated format serves multiple purposes. For those that just want something formatted for publication to quickly copy and paste, there is the surface text. For those that want the deeper story about the challenges and process, the annotations provide threads to follow. The format opens up all sorts of possibilities.

A release about a milestone anniversary of your organization may list all the people who performed for you over the years, but an annotation on some of those artists might note that the trumpet player in the band met his wife at a performance, settled down in the community and now their daughter is the executive director.

You may send out a release acknowledging that dozens of people worked thousands of hours over the course of a year and a half to implement your equity and diversity policy and practices. You may not be able to list everyone in the press release, but you can include them in an annotation.

Obviously, the biggest issue is that an annotated press release is only available on a web format. You can’t squeeze all that into a PDF or Word document emailed to a media outlet. On the other hand, people are getting their information from traditional media outlets less and less frequently so there is a good chance to get eyeballs on your press release by linking to it via social media posts.

People are able to consume as much or as little additional information as they may like. That way you can keep the details short and sweet for people with passing interest or short attention spans, but let those who are really invested and interested in your organization feel like they are in the know by digging into the tidbits in every annotation.

If I recall correctly, it is relatively easy to include annotations on a number of web and blog platforms like WordPress. I thought my blog had that option so I could illustrate, but since I didn’t use it much I suspect it disappeared during an update years ago.

Artist Coding Switch Code Switch

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A couple weeks ago there was an article in the L.A. Times about Artists Who Code, an organization created after the pandemic hit by two Broadway performers to help artists transition into careers in coding. The two were a married couple who were having difficulty seeing the possibility of creating a stable life.

“With every big Broadway credit that I earned and the higher the ladder I climbed, I actually did an analysis; I saw my net worth going down,” she says. “I felt less and less powerful with each year I spent in the industry continuing to audition, and feeling things like typecasting and constant unemployment, and many physical injuries — it just all became very frustrating.”

Catherine Ricafort McCreary and Scott McCreary had enrolled in a coding boot camp in 2018 and had started transitioning to coding jobs when the pandemic hit. Seeing their friends in the arts struggling during the pandemic, they created Artists Who Code as a way to provide direction and support to those seeking to transition to coding.

Ricafort McCreary and McCreary built a free mini-curriculum of resources for Artists Who Code. These include advising members on how to choose a coding boot camp, setting up a mentorship program to help artists in different phases of their coding journey and offering advice on the job search and nailing technical interviews.

[…]

“It’s like a code switch. As an artist, you don’t know what a Google Calendar invite is,” McCreary says. “Absorbing the etiquette of this new world and knowing what is appropriate and what’s not and how to reach out to people, and how to advocate for yourself and how to communicate the skills that you as an artist bring to the table.”

In the early days of Artists Who Code, the couple worked to find ways to walk through technical concepts and jargon for those who were unfamiliar.

[…]

For Ricafort McCreary and McCreary, one of the most crucial aspects of Artists Who Code is the formation of a community to help artists navigate the identity crisis that often comes with changing careers. Making a new résumé is particularly painful; much of the feedback they have received, and have given, is to minimize their achievements in the arts to make space for discussing their expertise in, say, engineering. “It feels like that’s your soul and you’re crushing it and making space for this other thing,” McCreary says.

As I was reading this, I was thinking that Drew McManus might find people in this group to be helpful. As an artist who codes himself, he founded Venture Industries which provides a lot of technical services for artists and arts organizations. He has used me as a guinea pig on a couple of his projects and the user experience elements seem to be among the earliest considerations he addresses in the creation of new products.

That may be one of the competitive advantages artists have in programming. Something might work well as designed, but if people are reluctant to use it because the navigation isn’t intuitive, then it will have a difficult time being successful. And if your organization has chosen to use that service for ticket sales, donations, website, etc., poor UX design can be detrimental to the relationship you are trying to develop.

We hired someone with an artistic background a few months back and were teaching him how to use one of our pieces of software. Within the first two hours he blurted out that the UX design was awful. UX is not a niche terminology only shared by designers and software engineers. People are becoming increasingly aware of it and its value.

May Have Spoken Too Soon About Salary Transparency Efforts

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Apropos to my post yesterday about New York City requiring employers to list their salary range starting next month, I was happy to Vu Le’s tweet about Washington State passing a similar law.

However, there was bit of a “maybe I spoke too soon..” moment at the end of the Seattle Times article which mentioned that the NYC law may be amended before it goes into effect. Sure enough, two days ago The City reported that amendments are being introduced which may create loopholes and delay implementation until November.

“While the amendments are being sold as innocuous tweaks, when you read them closely they would essentially undo much of [the new law],” said Seher Khawaja, senior counsel for Legal Momentum, a national advocacy group for girls and women. “We think it would really undermine the impact of the law by excluding a large sector of New York’s workforce from the protections.”

One of the people quoted in the article represents a business group in NYC. Her rationale for not publicizing salary ranges because it might lead to salary inflation sounds a little flimsy given that the salary and compensation packages of CEOs and others have continued out of proportion to that of the employees despite not being publicized.

Among the other concerns, she said larger businesses risk getting out-bid by competitors if they make their salary ceilings public. She said the public postings could also spark salary inflation during a hiring crunch when current workers see a maximum posted that’s much higher than what it’s been historically.

The article about the transparency law in Washington notes that it doesn’t go into effect for another 10 months. Given that NYC’s law is facing revision only about a month out from its implementation is a warning to advocates to remain vigilant until the rules go into effect.  The Seattle Times piece quoted a business professor at University of Washington who observed it may take years for the effects of a law to be seen because inequities accumulate over people’s careers. How effective a law is at eliminating those inequities will require observation of years.

Starting Small And Building Momentum

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Last month, The Art Newspaper reported that NYC would begin requiring all employers to disclose the salary range of jobs starting on May 15. Many saw this as a positive step for the arts world as well as the employment environment at large, especially since it applies to many different employment arrangements, including internships.

The new ruling, an amendment to New York City Human Rights Law passed by the city council last December, applies to roles that are remote or in-person, permanent and short-term contracts, and to interns. Any company with more than four employees must adhere to it or risk civil penalties rising to $125,000 from the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

[…]

This small shift, he says, could transform the hiring process, and potentially the wage structure, of some of the top cultural institutions in the US, many of which have been subject to activist campaigns and union pushes in recent years due to huge internal wage inequalities

[…]

Finkelpearl describes New York City’s new law as being “long overdue” and sees it as part of a “generational shift around how people look at their jobs”. He points out that it comes in the wake of the so-called Great Resignation, or the Big Quit, which saw millions of workers across the country resign from their jobs during 2021.

A tidbit I found interesting came near the end of the article where it was noted that New York State (NYS) had made it illegal for employers to ask about salary history in January 2020, but that New York City had passed that law in October 2017. As far as I can tell, New York State hasn’t passed a law about wage transparency similar to NYC’s, but there was a subtle implication that it may come in the future.

While we have seen some state governments use preemption to overrule laws made on the municipal level, there are frequently times that city level laws can evolve to encompass the whole state –even in the face of preemption. The Ballotpedia article on preemption I just linked to cites NYS governor’s override of NYC’s plastic bag ban in 2017, but a statewide ban was eventually implemented in 2020.

I bring this up because there may be some hope and value in advocating for arts and cultural causes on the local level and seeing it expand to the state. Of course, a large segment of the population needs to see the need/value to have an investment in putting laws and rules forward.  The report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences I wrote about yesterday frames the need to support culture in terms of extant support for other industry segments.   Or as in the case of Minnesota’s Legacy Fund, Art & Culture made common cause with wildlife/wilderness preservation.

What Do We Need From Artists And What Do Artists Need From Us

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Last week Laura Zabel, Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, has a piece on CityLab discussing the contributions artists can bring to pandemic recovery. She references a report issued by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that lays out policies to better support cultural organizations and workers. I haven’t read the report yet, but the title “Art is Work,” seems like a pretty good start. Near the close of her article Zabel writes along those same lines.

Artists’ contributions to the work of imagining and enacting a healthier future can be profound, but they do not come about by magic. Art is labor, and unless we build better and more equitable systems of support for artists, we will continue to miss out on this vital ingredient to help build a more just, more connected, and more human world.

The general theme of the article deals with the ability of arts projects to help solve problems, permit people to confront difficult issues, and learn about unfamiliar topics.  She mentions a number of projects that have been mounted to address immigration, communities split by construction projects and economic stability that may serve as inspiration for similar projects in your communities.

 

“Admission Tickets Are Not Bought. They Are sold.”

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Colleen Dilenschneider made a post today providing data that shows people’s tendency to stay home rather than seek cultural and entertainment experiences has increased over the last decade. This has been a topic of conversation in the arts community for quite awhile now so it won’t come as a big surprise.  However, I think this perception has been based largely on observation, assumptions, and anecdotes rather than the hard data that Colleen provides.

Perhaps most significant to the arts and cultural community, Colleen provides a graphic in her post that shows this tendency among people with a high propensity to visit live and exhibit based experiences parallels the general US population as a whole. She comments that:

These are the people who have the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that indicate a heightened interest in visiting museums and/or performing arts institutions. It includes folks who indicate that they actively visit these kinds of organizations, as well as people like them or who have an interest in attending, but have not visited recently. For these most likely audiences, their preference to stay home over the weekend has grown a staggering 60.1% since 2011.

Right off the bat, this isn’t great news. A top indicator of a person willing to attend a cultural organization is that they are willing to leave their homes in the first place! As you can see, even the people who like to go out are more interested in staying in than they were in the past.

Now you may say, wait a minute Joe, I was just over at the Adaptistration blog where Drew McManus posted today about another study which reported “96% of ticket buyers plan to come back to your venues after the pandemic.”

That actually tracks pretty closely with Colleen’s graph which shows that between 2020-2021, the number of high propensity visitors who said they would stay home increased about 1.7%. Between 2019 and 2020, it went up a little under 6%, but people were obviously forced to stay home due to Covid. Between 2018-2019 the numbers increased about 2.4%. So 96% of ticket buyers planning to return is about right. What I am hoping is that Colleen’s graphic flattens out a bit in 2022 -2023 indicating some of that 6% drop off has come back or that new audiences are obtained.

Toward the end of her post, Colleen says that cultural organizations need to step up efforts to engage people and create enough interest to fight the inertia of staying home.

“As the most successful cultural institutions already know, admission tickets are not bought. They are sold.”

Mortgages & Property Taxes As Art Projects

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While returning from a grocery shopping trip on Saturday I heard this NPR story about an art project that is calling attention to the disparity in property taxes for black owned homes vs. white owned homes.

O’DRISCOLL: The artist, Harrison Kinnane Smith, had a proposition. As part of his latest art project, the nearby Mattress Factory Museum would take out a $10,000 mortgage on one of its buildings. Then, for the next 15 years, the museum would hand Stoney the difference between what he should be paying in property taxes and what he is paying – an extra $475 a year. Smith researched local property taxes and sales prices with a data analyst. He says the disparity in Stoney’s tax burden mirrors Pittsburgh’s as a whole.

HARRISON KINNANE SMITH: There’s a 7% difference over the last 10 years in property taxation rates for Black homes and white homes.

I found an article that discusses Smith’s research and analysis in greater detail for those that are interested. The artist also replicated the recent practice of dressing a house to signal residency by a white family and then a black family in order to see if there would be differences in the assessed value of the home.

The NPR story caught my attention in part because my organization is creating a semi-related work about solutions to blight that don’t immediately involve bulldozers. The discussions and collection of stories that will form the basis of the show has resulted in some mobilization of action and partnership formation from some people with resources and influence to address the issue.

More to the point though, I was impressed by Harrison Kinnane Smith’s ingenuity in approaching and convincing Mattress Factory Museum to take out a mortgage in pursuit of this project. It is an interesting use of art as an element of civic discourse about societal issues.  As arts organizations think about how they can present work that resonates with the communities they serve, stories like these can provide a jumping off point for ideas and projects.

So You Are Hiring. What Are Your HR Practices?

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It seems the week to discuss Human Resource practices. Drew McManus posted the first in a series about the lack of good resources among orchestras to help address difficulties in the work environment today and Aubrey Burgauer mentioned something similar in post about hiring practice in arts organizations she made last week.

Since Drew is still rolling out his thoughts, I want to focus on Aubrey’s post today. One of the first things she mentions, along the same lines as Drew’s post is that never in her career, from the time she was supervising an intern to when she was overseeing a department of 17 people to when she became executive director of an orchestra, did anyone ever teach her how to properly conduct a search and hire staff.

Even if you have read a lot about good hiring and interview practices, there are a number of things she discusses that aren’t usually covered in articles and conversations on the topic. Given that people are looking for the arts organizations to really step up their efforts at equity and inclusion, it bears frequently examining your process.

Don’t count on outsourcing hiring to a search firm to alleviate your responsibility in this. Frankly, outsourcing may be a detriment to your search. I see ever lengthening lists of job openings in emails I receive and sites I visit, and have checked out a couple listings. One search firm with major clients in the industry uses a form for application submissions that not only requires you to attach a document listing four references–it then asks you to fill in fields with the contact information for those self-same people.

Again completion of every field and attachment is mandatory for one to submit an application for a job. I expect that from higher ed hiring sites. It is somewhat surprising to see a recruiter for mid to executive level arts administrators using it.  How can you look for leaders who will welcome audiences back to the arts when you erect inane barriers to application?  I wonder how much the plethora of openings is due to people saying “nope!” to these forms?

Additionally, they have a Black Lives Matter statement right on the top of their site, but don’t seem to have considered that many applicants of color may not have four industry references to help them get past the gatekeeping form.

In any case, Aubrey reinforces many of the things you may have heard recently about hiring practices like evaluating whether a degree or a lengthy amount of experience is really required for the job being posted.  She points out that doing something for a lengthy period of time or doing it at a famous arts organizations doesn’t mean a person can actually do the job well.  What you are looking for is capacity to be effective, not longevity or notoriety.

Aubrey also suggests examining the language being used, noting that some terms like “ninja” and rock star” have gendered associations.

She also addresses the big topic of the day – putting salary range in the job posting:

….Or sometimes organizations are embarrassed to publish the salary range because they think it’s not competitive. Just stop…the range is what it is. Do we need to be more competitive with our salaries (especially in the arts and nonprofit sector)? Yes. But if it is what it is, don’t try to hide it is the point here.

[…]

…You can say that when making the offer: “You know, you are absolutely the person for this job, but I noticed we’re going to have to focus on xyz as you ramp up here. And that’s why I’m coming in at the middle of this range.” That’s a very honest offer to make as well as very clear about setting that person up for how they’re going to come in and enter that role. Another scenario is maybe they are that superstar and they’re amazing. Then you get to make the offer and say, “You’re the one. You are everything that we’re looking for. That’s why I’m coming in at the very top of this range, putting out the best offer I can for you.”

In terms of the interview process, Aubrey discusses behavioral questions (“tell me about a time when…”) & situational questions, (“What would you do…,”) advocating for using behavioral questions whenever possible because that is the best predictor of the future.

I appreciated when she used the example of hiring someone with skills in an area arts organizations aspire to but haven’t really cultivated people with a lot of experience.

…I was hiring for a role that necessitated someone strong at SEO (search engine optimization)…But within the arts, very rarely are we focusing on SEO, so my candidate pool wasn’t full of people who had tons of prior SEO experience…. So instead I was able to use hypothetical scenarios because this would be a novel situation for the future employee. “What would you do if you were to come here and had to ramp up and become an expert on SEO? What would that look like?” And it really helped me determine who knew exactly where they were going to look for training and how they were going to become an expert in that subject matter.

In light of the post I made last Monday about signs that people without prior non-profit experience were migrating to arts jobs, I felt like this particular sentiment was among the best she made.  Whether they are coming from inside or outside the arts world, given the lengthy listing of job openings we see these days I suspect it may become necessary to hire people without specific experience in some of the job responsibilities and so interview questions will indeed be about how resourceful people will be in acquiring those skills.

And hopefully organizations will be supportive with resources and time in helping them acquire those skills rather than resorting to the sink or swim training methodology.

There Is An Ambush In This Violin Concerto!

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Drew McManus reposted a promotional Facebook video for Wichita Symphony Orchestra’s (WSO) performance of “The Rose of Sonora” violin concerto.  I thought it was a cool little video depicting a 19th century printer creating a Wild West wanted poster. I commented on Drew’s post how I liked the how the movements were listed in the ad like chapters of a story and those titles were interesting and evocative – Escape, Love and Freedom, Ambush, Death and Healing, Vengeance.

But thinking of the post I made yesterday about the way arts marketing promises something exciting in their ads, but doesn’t really deliver on the promises in the experience, I thought it would be wonderful if the orchestra would consider projecting even one image at the start of each chapter to provide a visual connection for the audience.

When I clicked through to the WSO website, I was really pleased to see that the orchestra would be projecting images and video with a Western theme to accompany Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Aaron Copland’s Rodeo

By the time I swung back to Facebook, Drew had posted a link to a page discussing Rose of Sonora composer George S. Clinton’s concept behind titling each movement like a book chapter. Additionally, he provided a link to a set of images and introductory narration meant to be projected and/or read at the beginning of each movement–just like I was hoping they would have.

I have been casually following the development of Rose of Sonora, but never explored the website. I am really impressed by the amount of effort that has gone into making the experience interesting and accessible for audiences and easy for orchestras to decide to do.

While I am aware that The Rose of Sonora was written for violinist Holly Mulcahy, the goal of the content seems to be to get organizations to invite The Rose of Sonora into their programming rather than Holly. Presumably (and hopefully) Holly will be performing it everywhere for a good long time, but they are looking for the composition to have a life of its own long term. So it is great that will arrive accompanied by all these assets.

Love All The Songs. Show Is Kinda Boring

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A few months ago I came across a piece by Imogen Crimp which recounts her attempt to pursue a career in opera.  Her story covers some pretty crappy experiences with conservatory instructors and less than savory employment practices, but one of the parts that stuck in my mind was her reflections on what got her into opera in the first place.

When I decided, in my final year of university, to pursue singing as a career, I’d never actually been to an opera. I’d taken vocal lessons and been in choirs for most of my teenage years. Singing had always seemed to come naturally to me, and people would reliably tell me I was good at it – something very important to me as an attention-seeking youngest child. But I’d never seen an opera performed.

[…]

If I’m completely honest, I was drawn towards opera, I think, because it seemed like the most prestigious and impressive sort of singing. I wanted, with that abstract, misplaced confidence of a very young person, to be the best. I’d learnt a handful of arias from operas over the years, but beyond that I knew next to nothing about it and strangely it didn’t occur to me much that this mattered.

When I finally did go to see an opera performed, a couple of months after I’d graduated, I was – something I found difficult to admit even to myself – instantly disappointed. What had always moved me about vocal music was the sense of raw unfiltered emotion, of feeling that couldn’t be suppressed… And so going to the opera, I was sure I would witness something magical and transformative. Instead, I felt detached and indifferent and, yes, just a little bit bored.

There was a lot going on here. The first is that arts marketing talks about the experience being transformative and magical and yet for someone who knew the songs, the first experience wasn’t. It seems pretty clear that she experienced the songs out of the context of the larger piece and the environment that accompanies it.

If that was the case for her, then it is probably reasonable to assume that expecting advertising pieces with video and audio featuring the most exciting moments from a work aren’t going to be effective tools for retaining audiences. They promise an experience out of the context of the whole.

Whether it is alternative programming or new attendee welcome/orientation initiatives something else has to be there for those new to the experience. You can’t expect ads to keep people coming back for more if they felt like there was a failure to deliver on what was promised.

In a similar vein, I have occasionally seen articles noting the popularity of dancing and singing shows on television and wondering why that hasn’t translated into greater interest and investment in the arts. Obviously, all the boring and tough parts were edited out and what you see on TV is only a slice of the greater experience. It can be really disappointing to learn that there is a lot of annoying filler between those satisfying moments.

As has been noted about classic works of literature and theatre of late, Crimp feels opera isn’t holding up so well against the evolving expectations of society. She wonders how La Boheme can be considered a love story with all the creepy stuff Rodolpho does and says.  She also points out the disconnect between valorizing struggles against poverty, inequity, etc., in performances the poor can’t afford to see. There is a sense that this may also be contributing to the disconnect between what is promised and delivered to newer audiences.

When you go to watch an opera like Bohème in a big opera house, there’s an unavoidable irony: in so many of these works – from The Marriage of Figaro to Tosca to Wozzeck – money, disempowerment (particularly of woman) and social inequality are repeated themes, and yet the contexts they’re so often seen in – at large opera houses with expensive tickets and dressed-up audiences – are rich and privileged. The rituals surrounding going to operas, its entire reputation as an art form, seem to me now so at odds with the spirit of the stories and the music.

Into The Arts And Out of ‘The Real World’

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Last week Vu Le made a Twitter post alluding to the fact a lot of corporate leaders will shift to leading non-profits, but you basically never hear of a non-profit leader making a career transition to lead a corporation.

That made me think of a story Howard Sherman had linked to, (apparently back in October, it didn’t seem that long ago), reporting that cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area were courting people who didn’t have previous experience in the industry due to the high level of turn over.

There is quite a bit more nuance to the story than you might expect, especially given the context I created with Vu Le’s post (which remains a valid point, regardless.)

The piece opens mentioning an art administrator who asked for a higher salary upon applying for an arts job and was given it.

A bit later, it mentions that revamping job descriptions and interview questions to include diversity, equity and inclusion was helping to draw people to museum work.

“If you look at our job descriptions, they look like manifestos,” said Lori Fogarty, director and CEO of the Oakland Museum of California.

Each museum applicant who makes it to the interview round gets two documents describing the institution’s work on anti-racism and equity, and that’s not just informational.

“We ask questions about how values of anti-racism and equity actually show up in your work and how you would apply these values to your position,” Fogarty said. “What we’re finding is this is a big reason people are applying to the museum.”

Similarly, revamping job descriptions to remove degree requirements that are not necessary to perform the work and allowing the flexibility to work from home are cited as changes that are making culture jobs more attractive to applicants.

However, there was one part of the article that grabbed my attention (my emphasis):

Even with the arts’ lower salaries compared with many other hours-heavy industries, such as tech, employers say they’re still finding applicants, some of whom are transferring from one position to another within the field or coming from another industry entirely.

“Applicants are easier to find than before COVID,” said the Ballet’s St. Germain-Gordon. “I’ve interviewed people trying to get into the arts out of ‘the real world’ mostly.”

[…]

At the same time, the social justice movement has led some veterans of the arts — a field known for its long hours and low pay — to rethink their life priorities in other directions. Some have decided to leave the field altogether.

Michelle Lynch Reynolds, for example, left her role as executive director of Joe Goode Performance Group in September and does not plan to get another job in the arts. She says the problem wasn’t with her company but with the industry.

“My career felt emotionally tied to my identity as a creative individual,” she said. “That is personal, but it’s also systemic. There’s an entire culture built on the idea of, ‘This is what you’re living for.’ ”

Part of me was wondering if this was a “grass is greener” in the easy non-profit world and the folks moving into the field are in for a rude awakening or if the arts and culture world has performed a sufficient degree of self-reflection and will provide a better work environment for experienced new hires and new entrants to the field.

Around next October I would be interested to hear how things have been going, whether in SF or other parts of the country where a similar shift is playing out. Near the beginning of the article the authors mentioned that the inclusion of people from outside the arts and culture world might introduce some productive change. If new entrants are coming in at the early- to mid-career level positions, the ultimate outcomes may differ from when someone moves from the corporate to non-profit world at the executive level.

Is Joe Suggesting What I Think He Is Suggesting?!?!!!

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I saw a social media post by Dan Pink today that linked to an NPR story about a program where doctors in Canada can prescribe spending time outdoors and have been provided year long passes to Canada’s national parks they can give to patients.  Unfortunately there are only about 100 passes available.

The story helped me recall other culture pass programs I had written about before like the one in Italy and the Interrail pass for young people that the European Union was sponsoring to encourage them to broaden their horizons through tourism. (And actually still do, even through Covid from what I can see.)

The park pass idea got me thinking that there might be value in a similar program where arts organizations might use tickets and passes distributed through health care channels versus social media and radio giveaways. Yes, the intent of giveaways via media is to raise awareness and a fear of missing out in the larger community so giving tickets away through healthcare channels doesn’t really serve that objective.

There can be value in having an arts organization publicly announcing, “We think it is important that you take care of your physical and mental health so we have provided passes to X clinic/health system to help you try to live your life better.” It can only bolster the perception of the beleaguered healthcare industry to have other entities taking action to support them.

“But waaaiiiiitttt just a minute there, Joe,” you say. “I have been reading your blog for years now and you keep talking about how the prescriptive view of the arts is super problematic. Now you are literally advocating for arts prescriptions.”

You are absolutely right, there is a danger of this sort of program being misinterpreted in that manner which is why it would be important for everyone to communicate very clearly that this is a prescription to spend time together with family and friends. The shared experience rather than specifically the art is what will help them.  We already know that the shared time is one of the things that people value about cultural experiences.  There is also a somewhat implied idea that sitting at home watching TV has not been benefiting your well-being which might contribute to a shift of mindset about arts and cultural over the long term.

Right now this is a germ of an idea. There would need to be further discussion and study about whether a program of this type could be beneficial and what the best approach might be. There has to be a sincere desire to provide a positive experience for people, (so work to solve other negative experiences like parking), rather than use this as a cynical ploy to increase attendance.

Museums Are Secretly Controlled By Big White Paint

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On Hyperallergic today, Isabella Segalovich had a piece, 15 Things Museums Do That Piss Me Off . An avowed museum junkie, she lists what areas in which she would like museums to do a better job.

She roped me in with her first criticism about museums being too quiet by admitting she was the one shushing her mother (who stuck her tongue out at Isabella in response).

Some of the points on her list are familiar gripes – the cost, not allowing pictures, no-touch policy, accessibility for those with disabilities, picture taking policy. She also brings up issues that have arisen comparatively recently in regard to fair pay, more than superficial motions of inclusivity, and the issue of buildings and spaces being named for problematic individuals.

But she makes some newer critiques like the lack of artists living in the towns and cities whose name appears on the building while the same superstar artists’ work is shown again and again. The lack of indigenous works and folk art in “American galleries.” She complains that galleries are too white—as in the paint on the walls–creating the idea that art has to be viewed in a sterile environment.

There is a lot more nuance to her case than I am providing here. I enjoyed the TikTok video she included showing the reason why one was not permitted to touch the art–which actually might make you want to touch the art.

Grateful For The Recognition, But Recognize More To Be Done

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A month ago Ruth Hartt posted an image she grabbed from my venue’s website on Twitter and complimented its presentation on a number of points:

If you follow the link to see the reply, you can see our marketing director’s response to Ruth and David Rohde with another picture of audience members. As she notes, we have actively working on expanding our library of images of the audience experience for the last few years. Between shifting the programming and improving our interactions with customers at different touch points, these images have helped us communicate a more welcoming and inclusive environment. We are definitely seeing some positive results.

Though we obviously have a lot more work to do and can learn a lot from other people. This past weekend we had a family show that was a very late rental for us. Somehow, in the course of two weeks they managed to sell 500 tickets at $30 adults, $20 for kids which we thought was a little high for our market. The audience they attracted was 98% Black despite the content not being specifically aligned to them.

As far as we know, they only promoted the show on social media so we are pretty much in awe of their social media targeting game and knowing their audience. A lot of artists aren’t so on-point and dialed in. It might have been that they aren’t as successful in other communities and their efforts just resonated well here but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say we probably couldn’t have done as well promoting it ourselves.

Kindergarten Art As Social Practice

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You may have heard a short piece on NPR this past week about Peptoc, a hotline where you can hear encouraging words from kindergartners.

 

Call a new hotline, and you’ll get just that — encouraging words from a resilient group of kindergartners.

Kids’ voices will prompt you with a menu of options:

If you’re feeling mad, frustrated or nervous, press 1. If you need words of encouragement and life advice, press 2. If you need a pep talk from kindergartners, press 3. If you need to hear kids laughing with delight, press 4. For encouragement in Spanish, press 5.

[…]

It was put together with the help of teachers Jessica Martin and Asherah Weiss. Martin, who teaches the arts program at the school, says she was inspired by her students’ positive attitudes, despite all they’ve been through — the pandemic, wildfires in the region and just the everyday challenges of being a kid.

Apparently within two days of getting the hotline operational, they were getting around 700 callers an hour.

I became aware of the story on Twitter and what caught my eye and made me follow the link was the statement that the hotline came out of a discussion with the kids about art as social practice. While that is probably not the terminology they used with the kindergartners, it stood out as an example of how it is never too early to start teach kids that artistic practice has a role in our lives other than being viewed as frivolous entertainment.

The pictures accompanying the NPR story show kids putting up posters they made promoting the hotline and delivering some of the same messaging as is found on their hotline.

The concept that you are able to contribute to the greater joy of society as a 5-6 year old has the potential for leaving a long lasting impression on these kids which will shape how they live their lives. In five or six years if these kids are told thousands of people have been calling every day to hear them laugh for half their life, that can really be meaningful.

And of course, if the hotline has helped relieve the stress of millions of adults, that has been a pretty great outcome as well.

Don’t Know If I Am Auditioning, But I Am Having Fun

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You may have seen the story on American Theatre about the slew of people who took to TikTok to “audition” for St. Louis theatre, The Muny’s production of Legally Blonde.  I use the quote marks because according to the article, the audition process involved uploading a video to YouTube or Google Drive and providing a link to The Muny by February 1.  The appearance of videos on TikTok exploded the weekend of February 3-4 and participants seemed more motivated by the desire to express themselves than win a place on the cast.

Yet, as usual on TikTok and beyond, there has been some confusion over what exactly this phenomenon is. Is this a TikTok trend or an actual audition? Several TikTokers posted videos saying that they weren’t sure if they were just participating in a TikTok trend or actually auditioning for the Muny.

Absurd as this may sound to a casual onlooker, this absurdity aligns with TikTok’s messy culture. That many of Legally Blonde dance call videos are self-deprecating adds to the Gen Z aesthetic, which continues to set the tone on the app. Many of these dancers know they aren’t going to book it; they know they’re unlikely to see their name in lights. So what do they do? They ham it up, finding the humor in the fast-paced dance.

While The Muny wasn’t using TikTok as part of the audition process, they did have 1,400 people submit through their official video submission auditioning process. This approach might go a long way toward achieving equity and representation goals for many theaters. Having all these TikTok videos may also increase interest, awareness, and perceptions of theater’s accessibility among more people.

As the American Theatre article notes, a lot of people do post their auditions to TikTok in an attempt to generate enough buzz to gain a higher level of consideration, number of followers on social media has been a consideration in the audition process for years in some places, or to simply garner fame independent of a formal production.

However, the article also addresses the mixed feelings that can arise. While productions are happy to get viral attention, there are some other considerations:

Of course, posting dance call self-tapes on TikTok raises some ethical concerns, particularly as it relates to dance copyright, which mirrors larger conversations about TikTok and dance credit. The issue of credit and payment is definitely something that choreographer William Carlos Angulo had on his mind.

“The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society is my union, and they are responsible for protecting the work I do on plays and musicals,” Angulo said. “However, because their jurisdiction covers productions only, I am left to sift through the legal implications of ‘going viral on TikTok’ completely by myself. Because I have spent my entire choreography career being protected by my union, it never occurred to me to copyright my work until now.” Angulo has only just begun the long process of copyrighting the dance call audition.

Despite these muddy waters, Angulo recognizes the “powerful culture-making” that takes place on the platform. “Learning dances in my living room by playing and rewinding tapes of old MGM musicals and awards show performances brought me a lot of joy as a child,” recalled Angulo. “Seeing that reflected back to me through the thousands of videos of young people doing my choreography in their living rooms has brought me a new kind of joy that I cannot describe.”

Once You Have Found Her, Never Let Her Go

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A couple weeks ago violinist Holly Mulcahy made a Facebook post about giving the manager at the Wichita, KS airport Enterprise counter her card which had a BOGO ticket offer printed on the back.

Organizations often have the idea of printing off promotional/discount materials and having performers and other members of the artistic staff distribute them in the hopes of attracting new audiences. But it occurred to me that these efforts aren’t really worthwhile unless there is a strong commitment from performers and staff to distribute these materials outside of their social circle and act as an ambassador for your organizational brand.

My impression is that Holly is largely in the drivers seat on this and tells the organizations with which she works what she is interested in doing and what materials would be helpful in making that happen. I still remember a post she made years ago about a little social meet-up she had a hand in organizing at a restaurant in Chattanooga that had great cinnamon buns. There is part of me that still wants to eat those cinnamon buns.

I think there is a case to be made for a bottom up approach to audience cultivation where the artists or general staff mention the type of things they would be invested in doing and working to get materials, spaces and other resources to make it happen versus administrators deciding on a new initiative and asking staff to participate.

Not every idea is going to be great, no matter where it comes from. Holly makes it look easy because she has been thinking about the audience experience every day, all the time, for years and has sorted through many ideas. When she promises some enchanted evening, she is invested in making it happen and probably had conversations with people about experiences with ticketing, parking, dining, etc,. with the goal of improving them.

It may take years of just talking about an organizational commitment to a better audience experience and enacting changes in other areas before good ideas and investment manifest.  The adage about change starting from within first is probably really applicable to audience development. You need to do cultivation work with staff before you can really be successful at audience cultivation.  The BOGO coupon comes toward the end as one tool in your process rather than defining the audience cultivation effort.

 

Coming To A PBS Station Near You…

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I didn’t realize I missed posting yesterday until early this morning. Right now my team and I are really busy preparing for a concert which is being taped for PBS.  This show, A Night of Georgia Music, features violinist Robert McDuffie; Chuck Leavell (Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones) and Mike Mills (R.E.M) backed by an orchestra  from a conservatory bearing McDuffie’s name. They had performed the show in other places and had their plans to do it here in Macon curtailed by Covid.  Somewhat fortunately, that delay provided additional time to arrange for the taping.

Let me tell you, the process of getting this produced is far more complicated than you might imagine. The securing the rights for the songs being performed alone is mind boggling. The person handling the clearances does it for a living and even she had a hard time determining if what rights applications might be necessary for all the nuanced forms the concert might manifest. There is obviously broadcast rights for PBS stations. There was also the question of whether DVDs and other types of recordings might be issued and what format they might take. Would the concert be streamed by stations? Would recordings be offered as premiums for pledging or used during a pledge drive? There was even a question of non-mechanical royalties if the cameras caught a clear shot of the sheet music being used.

While shuffling of VIP seating, (I don’t know how many times I have reassigned the same blocks of tickets to different people), special meet and greets, and navigating audiences around cameras and recording equipment is definitely going to be a challenge, these are familiar activities. We are somewhat relieved that we are only responsible for handling that piece of the puzzle.

Even though it has been a tight squeeze to pull it off, the fact that our historic venue would appear on television provided a little leverage in getting some repairs made. So there has already been a little bit of a benefit from the event.

I will let folks know how things turn out and when to start looking for the concert on your local PBS affiliate. I am sure it will be awhile before it does.

If you are interested in learning more, there was a radio interview with the three principal performers that just came out.

A First Stab At A State Of Performing Arts Survey

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Association of Performing Arts Professionals featured a webinar today reporting on the results of a survey they conducted about the state of the performing arts. Regrettably, I missed it but they posted many slides on Twitter today.  The study they conducted last month is meant to provide a baseline against which to assess how things are developing going into the future.

One of the first slides to catch my attention addressed ticket sales. We have been wondering if our sales numbers were reflected by the nation as a whole.  Sure enough, in terms of single ticket sales, numbers are down and only 52% of audiences reported buying tickets in late January/early February. (This may be a factor of supply of performances to view as it is demand, however.)

In another post, they reported subscriptions are down as well. Really, neither of these datapoints are of great surprise to me given how the state of the pandemic has fluctuated.  They also noted many organizations are offering non-ticketed content to keep audiences engaged.

Audience support of mask and vaccine mandates at performances was strong.

Also of interest was the news that arts professionals are returning to work, but are much more mindful of a work-life balance. There are concerns about being able to fully staff positions with qualified individuals due to worker expectations and people leaving the field or being lured away by better work environment and compensation.

 

Is Your Talent Being Hoarded?

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The Marginal Revolution blog linked to a really interesting study on talent hoarding a practice in which managers prevent productive workers from seeking promotions. The study author, Ingrid Haegele, found that when the manager is promoted, subordinates have the best opportunity to gain promotions themselves.

My findings indicate that talent hoarding causes misallocation of talent by reducing the quality and performance of promoted workers….Manager rotations increase worker applications for major promotions by 123%, indicating that talent hoarding deters a large group of workers from applying for promotions.

[…]

I find that talent hoarding has disparate impacts by gender. Talent hoarding deters a larger share of female applicants from applying for major promotions compared to men. Female marginal applicants are twice as likely to land a major promotion than males, implying that talent hoarding
is more consequential for women’s career progression. Conditional on landing a promotion, women are almost three times as likely as their male counterparts to perform well in their new positions, suggesting that the firm may be failing to realize potential productivity gains by not enabling
talented women to progress to higher-level positions. Female marginal applicants are much more qualified than males in terms of their educational qualifications and past performance, indicating that talent hoarding affects women at a higher part of the quality distribution compared to men.

Interestingly, Haegele found that talent hoarding was generally gender neutral. Male and female managers were equally likely to hoard talent and these managers suppressed the advancement opportunities of both male and female subordinates generally equally. She says credits the gender difference to:

“….the survey finds that women in the firm place more value on preserving a good relationship with their manager and rely more on managers’ career guidance when making application decisions.”

As a result, they are less likely to apply for promotions.

A couple things to note: First, this is only a study of the impact of talent hoarding. There are plenty of other factors which contribute to workplace inequities for everyone. The author had to control for a lot of factors in her study, among them being that managers have a lot of subtle tools that their disposal to reinforce talent hoarding that are difficult to detect.

The other thing to note is that she conducted her survey on a large multi-national manufacturing corporation with most of its employees in Germany. While she does cite other studies illustrating how talent hoarding occurs in the U.S. and other countries, her findings may not be entirely applicable to small non-profits in the U.S.

Talent hoarding in staff of 12 is certain to have entirely different dynamics, especially with the limited opportunities for internal promotions.

But if anything, during this Great Resignation period where people are looking for better opportunities for themselves, being aware that your manager has a disincentive to praise your talents, both within the organization and to you personally is something to consider.

Curiosity Satisfied By A Strange Answer

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I am not sure how I came across the article, but this Fall I came across an interview on The First Peoples Fund website with master traditional folk artist Kevin Locke. In the course of the conversation, Locke notes that what is widely known as the Native American flute is a pretty recent invention that wasn’t really part of the traditional cultural practices. The bolded section is the interviewer’s question. I don’t seem to see the interviewer identified.

In 1983 or 1982, a German American named Michael Graham Allen invented the Native American flute. It’s based on the Japanese wind instrument called a shakuhachi. I asked Allen why he did that. He said he made an original Indigenous flute but he didn’t know how to market it. He came upon this tuning system based on the Japanese shakuhachi and renamed it as a Native American flute….Pretty soon, everybody all over the world got interested in this instrument. But it’s not an Indigenous North American musical aesthetic. It’s basically Japanese. But the beautiful thing about it — and I’m not knocking it, I’m just saying people need to be aware where this instrument comes from…

And the instrument sounds so good! There are thousands of Native American flute music recordings that are just improvisational. I don’t want to discredit the music. I think it’s a great thing, but it has nothing to do with Indigenous tradition.

That in itself is a problem because the original genre associated with the Indigenous flute is a classic poetic or literary style that comes from the woodlands in the Great Lakes area, Northern Plains, and Southern Plains. And it existed for so many generations because the genre has characteristics that are uniform across most of North America. It’s a formulaic compositional pattern, even though the songs are diverse within themselves.

That’s so wild. First, I didn’t know the history of the Native American flute. Initially I had mixed feelings about its non-Indigenous origins. But what I’m hearing is that this musical instrument lifts your creativity. Is that accurate? 

Yeah. 

I don’t know exactly how to process this since it pretty much seems like a type of cultural exploitation. Though I don’t know if the article provides enough information to determine that either if it was an Indigenous instrument that had Japanese tuning and was marketed as a Native American flute.  The situation is confusing and  Locke frames it in a very gracious way and seems to indicate that it has been a medium through which other Native artists have found success. It seems like it might have been invented in the name of Indigenous peoples but they also have primary ownership of it.

It does, however, clarify my previous general sense that Japanese and Indigenous cultures developed a similar musical instrument independently of each other. Not so much I guess.  I thought it worth following Locke’s suggestion about raising awareness of the instrument’s origins and posting about it.

Come For A Haircut, See A Van Gogh

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It will probably come as no surprise to anyone running an arts venue that many attendees are over the mask wearing thing. At my venue, we actually had a more conservative mandatory policy for mask wearing than our university parent. At the beginning of December, we were prevailed upon to loosen those restrictions by my boss so for about two weeks we were at “strongly suggested” before the omicron surge saw everyone, including our parent organization institute mandatory masking again.  Still, it wasn’t long after the new year that we had people leveraging loopholes to avoid wearing masks.

Over the holidays I was amused to read that some landmark institutions in the Netherlands were chafing against restrictions there in a fairly creative way. The Van Gogh Museum, Mauritshuis gallery, and Concertgebouw concert hall engaged some barbers, nail artists and fitness instructors to provide services at their venues because those businesses weren’t restricted in the way that art institutions were.

“We wanted to make the point that a museum is a safe visit and we should be open,” Van Gogh Museum director Emilie Gordenker told AFP.

“The mayor called me last night and she said she’s not permitting this. We expect to get a warning at some point after which we will have to close, but we wanted to make this point very badly so here we are.”

One of the barber’s clients said he had come because he was “pro-culture”.

[…]

Nearby, the “Hair salon at the Concertgebouw” event saw two masked barbers clip hair on stage, while the orchestra played Symphony No. 2 by Charles Iver.

“After two years of patience and an ever-constructive attitude, it is high time for a fair perspective for the cultural sector,” Concertgebouw director Simon Renink said.

Fitness classes took place at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, home to Vermeer’s famed “Girl with the Peal Earring, while the Speelklok museum in Utrecht set itself up as a gym.

No mention of whether the ubiquitous “Shave and a Haircut” riff was played anywhere.

While the pandemic is certainly going to force arts organizations to rethink their business models, I am not sure that salon services are going to become the next trend. Exercise and yoga classes at museums and galleries was a thing pre-pandemic so I wouldn’t completely discount the idea.

The story does remind us that arts people are very creative thinkers. If arts leaders are willing to exercise this skillset in defiance of governments, perhaps they will be more willing to try new ideas without fearing the reactions of funders and donors as much

 

Haven’t Seen You Around Recently

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I’m happy to say that things are starting to get back to a place where I feel like I can start blogging again. Hopefully it will stay that way. I really underestimated how difficult things were going to become when I made the “On Hiatus” post in November.

When I finally got a chance to start reading about practices and trends in the arts, a familiar source caught my attention – Colleen Dilenschneider. Last week she posted that not only was visitation by new and non-recent visitors up on 2020 and 2021 versus 2019 and earlier, but that visitation by self-identifying non-white members of these groups was also up in this period of time.

The percentage of new and non-recent visitors who self-identify as non-White increased 52% from 2019 to 2020! It rose from 10.0% to 15.2%. This percentage fell to 13.9% of new and non-recent attendance in 2021, but is still a dramatic 39% increase compared to 2019 levels!

Earlier in February, she had posted that in recent years people have begun to perceive many, though not all, cultural entities as being more welcoming to individuals like themselves. That article is worth reading for greater insight into this trend. Unfortunately, symphony/orchestras were most strongly perceived as “not welcoming to people like me” among survey respondents.

In last week’s post, Dilenschneider provides some guidance about how to interpret the increased numbers:

Please resist the urge to see these numbers and think “Score! We got people who were disinterested in attending to visit us during the pandemic.” Behavioral economics and audience motivation studies suggest that entities should instead say, “Score! We got people who were already interested in visiting us to finally move us up on their to-do list and trial/re-trial our experience!”

She suggests that the uptick in attendance is likely due to the start of efforts toward diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ). Specifically she mentions that due to the pandemic, marketing messaging shifted from “Visit Now” toward DEIJ and customer-centric values.

On Hiatus

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Apologies to my readers. The departure of some staff and absence of others has placed me in a situation where I can no longer post regularly. Hopefully this will resolve itself soon and I can return to my regular schedule. Until then, I hope you will continue to remain subscribed so you will receive notifications when my posts begin again.

I appreciate everyone’s support over the years.

Thank you

Do You Need To Feel Transcendent Or Sleep Better Right Now?

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Ruth Hartt got a bit of a kick from the post I made last week where I termed her use of stock video footage and other clips to create an video marketing piece as a “Franken-Ad.” She tagged me and others about another set of Franken-ads she made more along the lines of print or social media pieces.

She uses these ads to address the pretty much cliched use of terms like “joyful,” “nostalgic,” “rhapsodic,” “timeless,” “refined,” and “sumptuous” to suggest that people will have a transcendent experience.  She associates this with Maslow’s hierarchy of need and raises the point that during current times especially, most people are focused on solving challenges related to health and safety rather than self-actualization.

Recent studies reveal that the benefits of a peak experience don’t end at self transcendence. Science tells us that awe increases pro-social behavior and has an integral part to play in health and happiness. In fact, people who report experiencing awe regularly have remarkably stronger immune systems and better mental health. Why aren’t arts organizations touting these benefits?

“Come for the classical music; stay for the lowered levels of inflammatory cytokines!” We chuckle at this imaginary tagline, but I’m confident that there are swaths of consumers who would be intrigued by this value proposition.

Frequent readers will know that I am not a proponent of arguing the instrumental value of the arts or positioning it as a prescription for ills,  especially since so much of the research on the benefits of the arts have had questionable results. So I am not entirely on board with all the claims her mocked up ads make. However, since it is true that any pro-social behavior contributes to health and happiness, an arts experience is just as valid an option as many others.

Tolerance for uncertainty and inspiring creative risk-taking may not roll off the tongue as easily as sumptuous and transcendent, but after years exposure to those latter terms, any alternative will catch the eye and intrigue people.

I am not really suggesting listing all the terms she uses in her ads, but I do like Hartt’s choice of an image of a woman who looks like she might be poised at the edge of anticipation or anxiety juxtaposed with “Warning this concert may cause: Lowered Stress, …Improved Mood, …Decreased Pain…Increased Alertness.” There is a sense that things could go either way.

I don’t know that I would use those exact terms, but an ad that communicated these general concepts instead of suggesting transcendence presents the experience as more relatable to the viewer.  If you are a new attendee still processing your experience, you might think you did something went wrong if you aren’t experiencing the promised ecstasy.

I also appreciated that one of her ads targeted businesses. While again I would be worried about companies seeing arts experiences as another tool to be used alongside nap lounges and ping pong tables to get the best work product from employees, the general idea that the presence of these experiences makes the community more attractive and liveable for employees is as beneficial as having sincerely motivated employees.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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