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For- & Non-Profit Difference Is In Relations, Not Good Intentions

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Last month, Non-Profit Quarterly reprinted a piece by Paul Hogan that explored the basic differences between for- and non-profit organizations that are not clearly understood and often lead to the “should be run like a business” statements.

Hogan says that companies that focus on the well-being of their employees and are dedicated to stewardship of the environment and other causes still have more in common with other for-profits than non-profits, despite their worthy intentions.

Higher fixed costs lead to lower net profits. But consider that in this way, the profits aren’t lost at all: They are simply allocated differently, to the greater benefit of employees or the community in which the business operates. Regardless, the for-profit enterprise still is fundamentally extractive, transactional, and profit-driven.

In comparison,

Nonprofit enterprises, on the other hand, are relational and restorative, or generative. The basis of activity in the nonprofit enterprise is personal and interactive, and seeks to restore or help generate whatever people need to improve their lives, or the life of the community in which they live.

[…]

It could be argued that even this exchange is transactional, no different from a for-profit interaction. But there is a critical difference: The person to whom the service is being provided is not usually the source of the payment for the service. I don’t pay my doctor or my dentist or my phlebotomist. Someone else does, and generally, I have no idea what amount is actually paid. So, the nonprofit person-to-person interaction is not zero-sum or about money or profit at all; it’s about the relationship that is established. And it is this disconnect of the cost of service from the third-party reimbursement for that service that destabilizes the nonprofit sector in ways that the for-profit sector does not deal with or need to understand.

And specifically in relation to the arts:

This isn’t restricted to healthcare or human services, either. The amount you pay for a ticket to many of the arts organizations you attend is subsidized, sometimes heavily, by outside public or private funders. If most arts organizations had to charge the full amount they needed in order to operate, most of us wouldn’t be able to afford to attend. That’s important because the health of people and communities depends as much on arts and culture as it does on all other nonprofit work, and arts must be as accessible as healthcare and education.

I apologize for the long series of quotes from the article, but I wanted to highlight his logic in contrasting for- and non-profit businesses and how he related insurance payments with fundraising.

I was especially interested in the way he compared insurance payments by a third party with third party funding of the arts (or any non-profit org). The idea that you need insurance because you might not otherwise be able to pay a medical bill is widely understood. That context provides a smoother segue to discussing why most of those non-profits serve couldn’t afford access to the services provided without a third party subsidizing their operations.

Of course, health insurance and healthcare costs being a hot button issue, you have to quickly insert assurances that there pretty much aren’t any heavily inflated costs related to the work you are doing.

On The Hook With Arts and Culture

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Back in 2008, I wrote how the voters of Minnesota passed an amendment to support both the arts and outdoor wildlife as a result of a political alliance between the arts community and outdoor sport enthusiasts.  The amendment increased the sales tax by 3/8 of 1%.

According to the website created to report how the money was being used, this is how much of the collected revenue has been allocated between fiscal year 2010 and 2017.

Minnesota has been known for its outdoor activities and support of the arts so it isn’t necessarily surprising that the citizens supported this tax increase. The alliance between the groups was not a forgone conclusion though. As I quote from an article from that time by Jay Weiner:

“As it was, the pioneers of the amendment idea — the sportsmen with bullets and hooks — were wary enough of the arts being included … until they saw the political power of the statewide arts and cultural organizations.”

I went on to write:

Every state should be lucky enough to have an arts community with enough political clout to help get a constitutional amendment passed. Of course, that influence didn’t magically appear, the state arts community would have been working on cultivating it over the course of years and probably decades.

[…]

The other thing he [Weiner] mentions is that berating the arts and parks people perpetuates an environment which keeps sports fans from forming coalitions.

If this program appeals to you and you want to replicate it in your state, another article written at the time outlines the pros and cons of the amendment. I am sure that nine years later, those who advocated for the amendment and those who have dealt with the appropriation and administration of the money can give valuable feedback about best practices and mistakes to avoid.

Don’t Look To Musical Theatre For National Anthems

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Given all the controversy about the depiction of presidents as stand-ins for Julius Caesar, I thought I would offer a somewhat more light-hearted example of how what we think we know about a theater piece has caused some political/diplomatic discomfort.

The belief that “Edelweiss,” a song created for The Sound of Music, is the Austrian national anthem (or of Austrian lineage at all) has crept into presidential remarks. (h/t Michael Walls on Quora for this story).

Back in 1984, references to the song kept cropping up in various remarks at a White House reception with the Austrian ambassador,

…but edelweiss, the flower “The Sound of Music” made famous, bloomed only in Reagan’s remarks: “Before the song ends, the lyrics become a prayer for Austria itself. It is a prayer Americans join in: ‘Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, and bless your homeland for ever.’ ”

Earlier in the day, music seemed to swirl through the luncheon Secretary of State George Shultz gave for the Austrians. And Austria’s ambassador here found out that the tune “Edelweiss” is just as sacred to Americans as apple pie and motherhood.

“There are 200 million Americans who know it’s the Austrian national anthem,” U.S. Trade Representative William E. Brock III told Ambassador Thomas Klestil at the luncheon.

“And whether you like it or not,” Brock teasingly said of the Rodgers and Hammerstein tune that became known to millions through “The Sound of Music,” “it is definitely yours.”

Klestil told about going to a Texas charity function whose theme for the evening was Austria. At one point he said he was invited to join everyone in singing “a beautiful Austrian song, ‘Edelweiss.’ ”

“I didn’t know the words,” Klestil confessed. “I said, ‘It is not an Austrian song, it is a movie song written in Hollywood.’ When I said I didn’t know the words, they were all shocked and they looked at me as if I were not a patriot.”

Just then, Muffet Brock, also registering shock, interrupted to ask: “You mean it isn’t the Austrian national anthem?”

Klestil shook his head, gave what some would have sworn was a polite gulp, looked across the table at Margit Fischer, wife of the Austrian minister of science and research, and began to sing “Edelweiss, Edelweiss . . .”

“You see,” said Klestil watching Fischer’s expressionless face, “here’s the wife of an Austrian government official and she doesn’t know it either.”

As amusing as the story is, it might also be subject for some serious introspection.

First, you may decide it proves Americans are ill-informed about the world and make assumptions based on pop culture. Even though this happened in 1984 prior to the information access afforded by the Internet, I don’t know that the basic problem as resolved itself.  (And I would have thought Reagan’s speechwriters would know enough so as not to characterize the song as a rallying cry for Austria.)

This story might also reinforce the argument that misrepresentations of other cultures and stories of other cultures, (The Mikado & Whitewashing in casting controversies, for example), ill-serves both the source materials and the audiences viewing them.

Or in a self-depreciating context, it is a funny story.

As we are seeing right now, snap-decisions about the meaning of things and personal bias can politicize pretty much any occurrence. (Or leave it devoid if political value if everyone decides not to pay attention.)

While this isn’t news to anyone, I think events over the last few years are reinforcing the necessity to think about how stories are being told and if it is necessary to have an informative conversation around it to illuminate the context.

The answer isn’t to simply call for people to cleave to authenticity because that removes options for interesting storytelling. The rationale behind why it is acceptable that Hamilton depicts the Founding Fathers in a range of races, but Martin Luther King can’t be cast as a white man in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop seems clear to me. I can intuit the distinction, but it might take me awhile to adequately explain all the nuances to someone else.

For a lot of people, a short, simple answer isn’t enough and can feel dismissive. Though if they have already made up their minds about what it all means, a long, thoughtful answer or series of conversations, isn’t going to help.

This took a more serious direction than I intended. I am disturbed and at a loss at how to extricate ourselves from the return of the divisive culture war environment.

Perhaps there is incremental benefit to simply making small efforts to correct relatively non-controversial mistakes like saying, this is actually the Austrian national anthem, not Edelweiss.

Giving Circles As Next Iteration of Crowdfunding?

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Last week, Non-Profit Quarterly noted that the number of Giving Circles in the US were growing and wondered if this had implications for institutional giving. If you haven’t heard of them before, Giving Circles are usually comprised of a number of individuals in a community who pool their money and collectively make decisions about what causes the circle will support.

Lynn O’Connell, DFW’s grants chairwoman, belongs to four giving circles. She said, “No circle looks or acts like any other. Dues, size, structure, and mission are all a little different. It’s not just about writing a check, but the circles area a major force in helping people learn about philanthropy and about nonprofits.” Further, because giving circles have very little overhead, most of the money raised goes directly to grants.

I want to call attention to two things in this quote. First, low overhead being cited as a benefit. Despite efforts to reduce overhead as a criteria of effectiveness, it remains part of the conversation. The second is a little more promising – the fact that circles are educating people about philanthropy and non-profits. A trend in this direction can be benefit non-profits.

An additional positive perspective: “A previous giving circle study by the University of Nebraska found that people who join giving circles give more, volunteer more, and are more engaged in their communities.”

The financial support that giving circles provide is relatively small scale compared to large established foundations. However, they are apparently growing out of a distrust of donating through mediating entities.

It’s also interesting to contrast the giving circle form as it relates to the trend away from “intermediated” giving, which has weakened general funds in United Ways and community foundations and boosted the use of donor-advised funds. Perhaps this tropism is less about greater individualism and more a “no confidence” vote on past intermediaries.

Something I wondered was if we might see online giving efforts evolve from models like that of Kickstarter where many people give to projects, to virtual giving circles where those of shared interest and giving philosophies might cooperate regardless of geographic separation.

Since wealthier individuals might have more tax incentive to form and give through foundations, it is possible that some Internet based giving circles with thousands of members could emerge as influential in diverse sectors either competing with foundations or providing leadership in new directions. A geographic spread of members might also see giving less concentrated around urban regions.

Myths And Truths About Your Brain On Music

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Pacific Standard had an interesting piece about the misconceptions music teachers and students studying to be music teachers have about the neurological benefits of music and music education.  The study was conducted in Germany so the author the article suggests that perhaps neurologists in the US do a better job of communicating the truth about music education better than their German counterparts, but I suspect that isn’t the case.

In the study, both music teachers and students were roughly equally adept (or bad) at separating myth from truth.

“Teachers and students correctly rejected 60 and 59 percent of the seven neuromyths,” the researchers report. Proven statements were correctly seen as true by 76 percent of music teachers and 78 percent of students.

That means there were a whole lot of wrong answers…

“The three most-trusted neuromyths included neuroscientific terminology, such as ‘brain hemisphere’ or ‘cognitive abilities,'” the researchers note. This suggests music teachers, like the rest of us, can be fooled into thinking an assertion is true if it is stated using neuro-jargon.

The researchers warn that this tendency may lead teachers to assign their pupils worthless or counterproductive homework. For example, 44 percent of teachers, and nearly 40.1 percent of aspiring instructors, believed this unproven statement: “The ability to improvise on the piano is controlled by the right hemisphere; special exercises can enhance the performance of the hemisphere.” In fact, such “exercises” would be a waste of time.

You can read the full study on the Frontiers in Psychology website.

The following chart from the study shows which of the myths and which of the proven statements the study participants correctly identified.  As you can see in the myths category, among some of the biggest misapprehensions were associated with music improving calculus ability; relationship between dominant hand and speech and music processing; and the impact of music education cognitive ability.

Among the substantiated theses, answers started to get a little iffy on the subject of the conditions which contributed to the positive influence of passive listening.

As the article suggests, the language used in some of these statements can be a little difficult to unravel and may influence participants’ perceptions. (At least in English, I am not sure if German terminology is clearer.) Questions 7M and 8S deal with similar concepts and probably appeared in sequence with each other.

Given that the survey was administered to music teachers and educators in training, I am sure they struggled with 1M that suggests musicians are smarter than everyone else. The fact that 75-80% answered it correctly can probably be attributed to a suspicion it was a trick question.

Being aware of what claims of benefits of arts and culture participation have been substantiated and which haven’t can be important for advocacy efforts. You don’t want to get caught citing debunked data.

Back in December, I called attention to Createquity project to survey all the available studies and evaluate the strength of the findings: Everything We Know About Whether and How the Arts Improve Lives. That page is a good place to start if you want to get a sense of whether the claims you are making are borne out by research and how strong the results are.

Judging Yourself As You Judge Others

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Something I don’t really often see people write about are the benefits of sitting on a grant panel, especially for an organization that funds you. First of all, the organization will love you for helping them out, especially during the heaviest period in their granting cycle.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for you will be identifying those areas people like yourself do well or fall short in making the case for their programs.  You can get advice about how to write an effective proposal on a monthly basis, but until you apply a critical eye to a proposal from outside disciplines, geography and demographic attributes with which you are familiar, you aren’t likely to appreciate all the potential pitfalls.

I recently participated in a panel for my state arts council for a program my organization wasn’t eligible to participate in.

There were a number of times people referenced discipline specific shorthand or neighborhoods/towns they were doing outreach in. I suspected that this information would be more compelling if I better understood the relevance.

Recognizing that I was probably making the same mistake of assuming reviewers would be excited by similar discussions of accomplishments for which they had no frame of reference, I started to pull out old grant proposals and found a number of places that could probably use additional information about why it was important that certain groups were involved or being represented in our programs.

During the panel review process I made additional notes as panelists would comment about things they wished they had seen more detail about. In other cases, it was observed too much time was spent talking about other organizational activities rather than focusing on the proposed project.

Now I will grant you, often space limitations imposed by the application form makes it difficult to provide the detail that will really allow your project to shine. It is important to make a case with the granting organization that 3-4 more lines of text would make all the difference.  Volunteering to serve on a grant panel can provide you with the opportunity to make that case in person.

I also want to acknowledge that when you are faced with a tall pile of proposals to review, the last thing you want to do is engage in prolonged introspection of the strengths and weaknesses of your own submissions. But it can be worthwhile to at least take the time to make duplicates of notes that represent potential areas of concern in your work for later review.

Then, of course, there is benefit in seeing what other people are doing. What novel ideas and approaches are out there? How are others executing their programs? How are they defining and measuring success? What strategies are they employing to deal with challenges?

One really, really general piece of advice I will give based on what I have seen is to make sure your website has links to your social media accounts. This is website and social media 101, but I was surprised at how many people mention they promote their events on social media, but don’t have links on their websites. Web searches will turn the social media accounts up, but there was often no easy way for someone who discovered an organization through their website to stay connected through social media.  (Actually, it might be more accurate to say that a web search turned some of them up, I have no idea if I found the full range of online presence.)

 

Does Your Experience Need Speed Bumps?

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Via Marginal Revolution blog, comes a story about a tourist spot in China that supposedly put in speed bumps to force people to slow down and appreciate the scenery.

It made me think, is this worth doing in places like museums where people rush past exhibits in order to get to the famous stuff so they can say they were there? Do you set things up so people have to take a circuitous route through choke points either on arrival or departure so people are forced to slow down and take a look around them for a couple minutes?

Or acknowledging the different doors for different people concept I wrote about yesterday, do you clearly mark an express lane for experience seekers who want to validate their visit with a selfie and direct everyone else in another direction so they can proceed at their own pace undisturbed?

Is the purpose as a museum to force these people to stand still long enough that they realize there are other delights to be experienced, or do you allow them to reinforce their narrow definition of what is valuable to experience?

Yes, I intentionally made both options sound negative and restricted the options to something of a false choice. There are other ways to look at an experience often the same person may seek a different type of experience in different places or different visits to the same place.

A couple years back I wrote about John Falk’s Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. Falk talks about the five different types of motivations which impel museum visitors.  It is pretty clear these categories of motivation are not exclusive to museums and can apply to any arts and culture or tourist visit activity.

I don’t think there are any clear or easy answers to the questions I initially pose. Being aware of these different motivations is helpful and important when evaluating the experience you offer visitors.

It isn’t easy to offer an experience that is 100% fulfilling on all five categories 100% of the time.

Using the example Nina Simon gave in the TEDx talk I cited yesterday, if you have an event about the history of surfing on the beach away from your traditional facility, you are likely to attract an entirely new segment of people.

Consider: What does a person exploring the topic of surf history want out of the experience? What opportunities does a person seeking the experience of being at an interesting event want? What do people seeking to facilitate the experience for others need? What do people with relatively high degree of expertise on surf history want? What about people seeking to recharge or reflect?

A crowded event on a beach may not suit the needs of a person seeking to recharge or provide the rigorous detail an expert is seeking. However, a different event on the subject in a different place might, so you make an effort to ensure those elements are present at this other event and these people are aware of the opportunity. Just be cognizant that while a topic like surf history may open them to the idea of visiting your organization for the first time, the traditional experience visitors have at your organization may still alienate them.

But don’t get overwhelmed by the idea of an expanding multiplicity of permutations. Remember, every person who walks in the door, regardless of whether they are new or returning, will fall into one or more of those categories.  Returning people will have the benefit of familiarity, but otherwise every visit can be viewed as an entirely new experience. There is always going to be some element of “each person, each day at a time,” to every interaction.

If Everybody Sings, We Can’t Be The Best

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In a recent article on Salon, music professor Steven Demorest, talks about the way music education in schools can create anxiety in people about singing.

He cites a scene from the Oscar winning Hungarian movie Sing where a child is told to mouth the words in choir class.

The movie goes on to reveal that Zsófi isn’t the only choir member who has been given these hurtful instructions. The choir teacher’s defense is, “If everybody sings we can’t be the best.”

I have been a professor of music education for the past 28 years, and I wish I could say that the story of a music teacher asking a student not to sing is unusual. Unfortunately, I have heard the story many times.

The article goes on to talk about the negative associations that have become attached to singing and other forms of self expression.

But I also took a look at a study conducted at the University of Calgary that he linked to. The study, which looked at the cultural influences on non-participation in singing, only had 12 participants so we can’t really draw broad conclusions from it.

However, the group met eight times over the course of five months so the researchers had some time to get the subjects to open up about the experiences which lead them to believe they had no singing ability. The ways their anxiety about singing manifested itself was interesting.

For example:

Cathie was so aware that she needed to reach a certain cultural standard to sing that even though she would sing privately in her car, she would place her cellular headset over her ear when singing. This way it would look to the other drivers like she was simply talking on the phone when she was actually singing. She was so conscious of her singing that even to a stranger in the car next to her, she had to send a culturally appropriate message.

What was fascinating was that even with their anxieties about singing, (and in one person’s case it was based in defiance of his mother), they hoped the research process would help them improve their skills.

When they did sing during the sessions, not only were they seeking a certain standard, but they were also expecting progress towards that goal with every session. This expectation of improvement is the second cultural assumption that the participants brought to the sessions. There was an underlying expectation that each individual would improve his/her musical skill during our time together. As the researcher, I had not articulated such expectations, but had inadvertently perpetuated such a view by continually adding on new musical concepts at each session. The desire to improve, eliminate mistakes, and reach perfection was strong in the participants.

Unfortunately, for some of the participants, this added to their anxiety. Some thought that the researchers would be displeased if their singing didn’t improve by the end of the study.

There was something of a suggestion that since singing and dancing are things we naturally do as children before we are taught to censor ourselves, we may have an innate desire to sing that never goes away. In that sense, the study participants were yearning to unlock their ability to a socially acceptable level.

There certainly seems to be a cultural component to this anxiety. The study authors note that in Canada, the media rarely presents images common citizens singing, perpetuating the idea that only trained professionals should be engaged in public singing.

One of the study subjects was from Guatemala where she said music is shared between generations and everyone sings throughout the day, regardless of their ability, even if it is only humming along.

I asked her if she thought she would be a non-singer if her family had remained in this Latin American culture. She laughed and said:

No. Because there is so much, you don’t even call it music performance. It is part of the culture. Everyone sings or plays something and you practice outside. You have people dancing and playing outside. They haven’t yet isolated the performer from day to day life …Even going to a concert, it doesn’t feel the same way as here. There isn’t a gap like the performer, the sole proprietor of the music and we can’t do it. It is just like someone is showing us something, sharing something that they can do and is really good. You can take part and enjoy. Rather than a showing.

Quite a bit there to think about. Where we are now may not all be entirely attributable to the oft mentioned impact of Wagner turning down the lights and expecting everyone to sit quietly and watch.

The authors of the study suggest the fact that both Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations reserved singing as something that should only be done in religious settings and only by a specific set of highly trained people might have also had an influence. Whether this is accurate or not, it is probably just as valid a theory as putting the blame squarely on Wagner’s shoulders.

I mean, there is evidence that parents in King Arthur’s time were dissuading their kids from singing.

Classical Composers Were The Rock Stars Of Their Day. Would They Be Allowed To Be Rock Stars Today?

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I don’t often advocate for specific performers here on Butts in the Seats. I get enough requests to review things on my blog and hundreds of emails from artists at my day job that I don’t want to encourage more solicitations.

However pianist Alpin Hong really impressed me when he was performing his Chasing Chopin show here last week. He did a session with 75 third graders that had the teachers and my board member in charge of outreach raving on social media.

He spoke to the students in our BFA Musical Theater program about arts careers and they loved him as well. I told him if he ever decided to move away from touring as a classical pianist, he should be a motivational speaker. I don’t mean in the mode of “energize your potential!” He has an enthusiasm and sincerity that is compelling, but grounded. He does a great job of integrating his playing into the conversation.

The only problem, I told him, is that a piano playing motivational speaker is a little outside the norm and might be a difficult sell.

But he aims to be outside the norm. He repeatedly said there are thousands of kids learning to play the piano with technical perfection so you need something to distinguish yourself.

One of the things that apparently distinguishes him is that he is physically demonstrative when he plays. He is nowhere near Jerry Lee Lewis, but as he says in Chasing Chopin, there was a time when he played to win competitions but in the face of personal tragedy, he recognized the truth in Chopin’s comment, “It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.” Now the music inhabits his body to some extent when he plays.

One of his missions is to break the stereotype of classical musicians spending hours practicing alone in dark rooms without any other interests or ambitions. He talks about wanting to be a ninja when he grew up. He is an incredible video game/table top game fanatic.

When we were waiting our turn for a radio interview, he got into a long discussion about Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer 40000 tabletop gaming with one of the other guests. I felt obligated to pull out my history with Dungeons and Dragons in order to maintain a little cred in their company.

When people try to make the music seem relevant, they cite how classical composers were the rock stars of their day. Alpin is pretty much embodying that, though not in a gratuitous way. His charisma is a sincere, natural extension of his extroverted personality. Classical music is not going to be saved by more people trying to emulate his style and method in order to appear more accessible. It will come off forced and false.

He mentioned that sometimes people comment that he is too animated when he plays and distracts from the music. I thought it was appropriate with neither dramatic flourishes or feigned seriousness. When someone is playing alone I think that is an opportunity to reveal a little bit of their personality. Only in a classical music setting could you make this complaint about his movements.

Which got me thinking—everyone references classical composers as rock stars, but do they really want those type of effusive performances? How can we tell potential audience members that the composers and musicians of yore were regarded as celebrities and then insist that both the audience and artist move as little as possible? What rock concerts have you been attending?

To be clear, despite his demeanor he is serious about his profession. He sets high standards for anyone looking to enter the performing arts because he knows what a difficult life it is. There was a pretty nice sized group of high school students in the lobby wanting to get selfies with him after the evening show. When they mentioned they were in chorus together, he made them sing for him. When they demurred, he said that this far into the semester, they should have something under their belt and ready to go. And they did.

It wasn’t a polished performance, nor did he expect one from them. He just wanted to reinforce that an artist always has to be prepared and thinking about opportunities. Even if you don’t see it as a career path, don’t shy away from exercising your creative side and showing where your effort has been going.

When he spoke to the BFA Musical Theatre students earlier that afternoon he urged them not to think of career cultivation as something that happened with other people at conferences, auditions or after graduation. He said you never know who is going to be in a position to provide you an opportunity later in life. People’s careers take unexpected directions. You need to show your classmates, professors and coaches what type of person you are right now.

Alpin’s own career arc did not follow an expected path. There were a number of years away from the piano before he decided to audition for Julliard. He has some theories about why they decided to take a chance on him, but no definitive answers.

We had many conversations across the two days (concluding with a 10 pm-12:30 am discussion in the hotel bar, so technically three days I guess). There is a lot I am not mentioning here. When I think about all the problems facing the arts and classical music in particular, I see his philosophy, approach and dedication as contributing to the solution.

Unbiased Hiring Practices Have Been Around For A Long Time (Just Not Around Here)

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Drew McManus has been discussing diversity in programming for the last week or so on Adaptistration.  With those thoughts bopping around my cranium, it was probably only natural that a post on Center for the Future of Museums blog caught my eye on my Twitter feed.

They are looking for museums to participate in the first cohort to test a process for removing bias in hiring.

Participants will work with GapJumpers to tailor a challenge-based hiring experience to their own staffing needs. We are accepting applications for the first cohort of participants through Friday, April 21, 2017. The project will run from May 1 through September 1, 2017. Participating museums will share their experiences with the field through blog posts and testimonials.

How does it work?

Together with the individual museum, GapJumpers will craft a Blind Skills Audition, part of their proprietary process that replaces the resume with examples of their job skills. Instead of submitting resumes, applicants submit their responses to a specific challenge assignment. The individual challenges are designed by GapJumpers with the input of the museum using natural language processing software. Applicants submit their answers in a digital format and are assessed by GapJumpers according to a rubric developed in partnership with the museum’s hiring manager. The hiring manager only receives an applicant pool comprised of persons who have met the standards of the assessment for review.

If this sounds interesting, read the post and contact the author Nicole Ivy.

One of the things Ivy mentions is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s use of identity blind auditions in 1952. You may wonder why these type of hiring practices aren’t more prevalent in the arts after 60+ years

I recently learned that back in mid-10th century China, the Song Dynasty instituted a policy of anonymizing imperial examinations. By the early 11th century, they decided removing the names wasn’t enough and started having the examinations recopied by clerks because the quality of the test taker’s calligraphy could reveal something about their social standing. Nearly 400,000 people took the triennial examination by the end of the Song Dynasty so that is pretty serious commitment to making the tests fair.  (During some dynasties, you could buy status at lower levels, but not at the imperial level.)

The imperial examinations for government service were held long before the Song Dynasty and ended in the late 19th century. They weren’t always inclusive and free from corruption, but a lot of effort was invested into making them so over long periods of time.

With the example of a centuries long practice like that, it is somewhat puzzling that a more equitable, unbiased hiring process hasn’t emerged.  I am not necessarily talking about a complete adaptation of practices from China as much as even a similar process that developed separately and independently.

Perhaps the distinguishing factor we have to face up to is the lack of will to create a hiring process that has sought to minimize opportunities for bias.

I think it is worth paying attention to the tools and processes the Center for the Future of Museums develops. From the description it doesn’t appear to be anything wholly exclusive to museums that can’t be adapted to other disciplines.

Arts Council Director Who Discovered He Was An Artist

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For two-three years now I have regularly revisited the situation where generally people have an easier time identifying themselves as a participant in a sport than as an artist.

Earlier this month, I came across an interview with the retiring executive director of the Perry (PA) County Council of the Arts who explicitly says he didn’t view himself as an artist until he had served as executive director for awhile.

Nine years ago, Roger Smith didn’t consider himself an artist when he became executive director of the Perry County Council of the Arts (PCCA). He had been a businessman and nonprofit executive in his former careers, but never saw his hobby as art.

When people would ask him about his experience, he’d say he wasn’t an artist, but he was a woodworker. He couldn’t connect the two things in the abstract, Smith said.

Being immersed in the local arts community over the years changed his perception.  “I’ve developed an affinity for the creative process, and PCCA honors creativity in all its forms.”

While my first impulse was to shake my head and sigh about how much work needs to be done if even the director of an arts council doesn’t view themselves as creative, I do remember that it wasn’t long ago that the “is it art or craft?” conversation was pretty common. (Maybe it still is and I am not on the distribution list.) I never saw or heard a discussion that made a definitive distinction.

As the manufacture and design of things moves toward greater degrees of autonomous automation, I wonder if it isn’t time to open the clubhouse doors to anyone who employs varying intent and judgement in their expressive process and forget about labels.

(Basically, I tried to find a definition that excludes mass production while allowing for the use of identically mass produced pieces configured in some intentional way. If you have a better approach, fire away.)

The other thing is, no leader of an arts council is likely to have comprehensive knowledge of all possible modes of creativity. Ideally, learning new things about arts and culture will enrich their tenure in the position. It would have really been an issue if the retiring executive director still didn’t consider himself to be creative after 9 years on the job.

This is not to say we shouldn’t endeavor to have every person who stands up to talk about creative expression do so with the foreknowledge that they, and everyone they are addressing, have the capacity to be creative/artistic.  I am actually pretty encouraged to see that the newspaper reporter opened the article on this idea.

Cultural Intellectual Property Rights

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A few years back I had organized a panel on presenting the work of contemporary indigenous artists at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference. We were fortunate to have Moss Patterson of New Zealand’s Atamira Dance Company on the panel.  Prior to the panel we had a good discussion about various issues facing artists who were representing their cultural practices. It is a really complicated, but interesting subject.

One of the things Moss kept mentioning was that treaty and law guaranteed the Maori cultural expressions belonged to them. I wasn’t entirely clear to me at the time why this was important because it seemed obvious that a culture could lay claim to its traditional expressions.

Okay, in my defense, the APAP conference is a really busy environment and not exactly conducive to contemplation.

It wasn’t until Andrew Taylor tweeted about Maya weavers in Guatemala who are advocating for collective intellectual property protection for their textiles that I made the connection with Moss’ comments.

The bill has two objectives. First, it calls for a recognition of a definition of collective intellectual property, which is linked to the right of Indigenous Peoples to administer and manage their heritage. Second, it asks that indigenous nations be recognized as authors, in which case they would automatically benefit from intellectual property law. Recognizing indigenous nations as authors just like individuals or companies means that corporations that benefit from the export of Maya hand-woven goods will have to pay royalties to the communities who are the authors of huipiles.

Based on this, I did a little research on intellectual property law and Maori culture and found a heavily annotated summary on the Library of Congress page. The article provides a more detailed understanding of the factors.

…issues include the use of Māori symbols or language in trademarks and inappropriate use of customary knowledge and expressions in products, advertising, and for other commercial purposes. In general, Māori consider that they are unable to exercise control of the trade of their culture in any real or comprehensive sense under the traditional intellectual property framework, and that they are also not reaping the benefits of this trade, whether nationally or internationally.

The fact that certain knowledge or cultural expressions may be seen from a non-Māori or “Western” perspective as having entered the “public domain” is important in considering the type and level of protection that can be achieved. This concept is not necessarily recognized by Māori and other indigenous peoples for whom the cultural knowledge forms an integral part of their history and identity as both individuals and as a group

[…]

The Ka Mate haka “has become a symbol, not only of the All Blacks, but of New Zealand and all its people.”…it has also been used, satirically or otherwise, in foreign advertisements for Italian cars, Scottish whisky, and for a British employment website.Māori people, and particularly the Ngāti Toa tribe of the warrior chief Te Rauparaha, who authored the haka in 1821, have taken offense and expressed their anger at the inappropriate use of the words and actions,…

The recent anger caused by the Halloween costume of the Polynesian demi-god Maui from Disney’s Moana movie may provide a relateable example of the type of things that cause concern for Maori (among other Polynesian cultures in which Maui plays a part).

My goal here isn’t get make statements about the evils of cultural appropriation, just to provide an expanded context and history of the topic from different perspectives.

For Maori, these rights extend back to 1840 and have been the basis of many laws, initiatives, debates and legal proceedings since then. On the other hand, there are emerging efforts to secure intellectual property rights in other places around the world like Guatemala. I wouldn’t be surprised if similar efforts emerged in the United States as digital media make appropriation easier and corporate efforts to perpetuate IP rights for long periods of time continue.

Talking To Your Neighbors About Saving The NEA

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Margy Waller’s piece about How To Talk About Saving the NEA has been making the rounds these last couple weeks. You should take a look at it if you haven’t already.  Her piece isn’t so much about how to convince your legislator that the NEA is worth saving as much as it is about making the case to your neighbors.  While there is a lot of immediacy about preserving the NEA, Waller’s piece integrates the longer, broader encompassing view that aligns with the agenda of building public will for arts and culture.

She addresses the common objections about supporting the arts: arts are entertainment and a private experience; they are a commodity; they are a passive experience; and a low priority.

The response she proposed advocates for support based on the ripple effect arts have (my emphasis):

A thriving arts sector creates ripple effects of benefits throughout our community, even for those who don’t attend.

These are broad-based benefits that people already believe are real—and that they value:

A vibrant, thriving place: Neighborhoods are livelier, communities are strengthened, tourists and residents are attracted to the area, etc. Note that this goes well beyond the usual dollars-and-cents economic argument and is about creating and sustaining an environment that is memorable and a place where people want to live, visit, and work.
[…]
This organizing idea shapes the subsequent conversation in important ways. It moves people away from thinking about private concerns and personal interests (me) and toward thinking about public concerns and communal benefits (we).

Importantly, people who hear this message often shift from thinking of themselves as passive recipients of consumer goods, and begin to see their role as active citizens interested in addressing the public good.

Now obviously, this shift in perception can’t happen in a vacuum. There actually has to be artistic and cultural activity occurring that resonates with people as contributing to the public good.

She notes that “While it’s true that some decision-makers expect to see this economic impact data, our research reveals that it is not persuasive to the public and is not useful to build broad support for public funding.”

She provides a check list to help keep messaging focused. The following is only an excerpt so be sure to check out the whole thing.

[..]

✓ Vibrancy/Connectedness: Does the example include benefits that could be seen as examples of vibrancy/vitality or increased connectedness?

✓ Benefits to All: Does the example point out potential benefits to people who are not participating in the specific event?

✓ Behind the scenes: Does the discussion also remind people that this doesn’t happen by accident but requires investment, etc.?

✓ One of Many: When possible, it is helpful to mention additional examples in the discussion, which helps audiences focus on the broader point that a strong arts sector creates a range of benefits.

[…]

We can’t say the sky is falling—that undermines our efforts because most people won’t agree with us. We should advocate for good policy on immigration and health care, etc. because these changes could be incredibly devastating to the arts, artists and the communities where they live. It’s not responsible to fight only for the NEA budget in the face of other damaging proposals.

The first point on her check list was “Arts Organization: Are the benefits created by an organization/event/institution that NEA supported?” An important distinction to emphasize if you are talking to people about this is that while many smaller arts organizations, especially in rural locales, may not receive support directly from the NEA, there is a good chance that they do receive a fair amount of funding through their state arts agency, which in turn is strongly supported by the NEA. Since there is likely to be a dearth of private funders, arts organizations in more rural locales potentially have the most to lose even receiving indirect NEA funding.

It can be important to emphasize these indirect relationships to NEA funding because it can be easy to disregard the relevance otherwise.

As someone pointed out to me yesterday, even if you don’t ultimately see a significant impact to your finances, the fact that another organization has to scale back can mean fewer great opportunities for your organization when a group decides not to tour.  Perhaps fewer venues participating in touring means the routing doesn’t work out for your location for a performance or visual arts show. Indirect impacts can have the most significant repercussions but can be the hardest to anticipate.

Cross-Sector Training, So Hard To Get Instructed By You

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Last Fall Grantmakers in the Arts published a summary of key findings from a study about community arts training. The study focused on the increasing focus of local arts agencies into cross-sector partnerships/efforts.

What I found encouraging was the expanding view among local arts agencies about their roles and the constituencies they serve. (my emphasis)

2. Cross-sector arts partnerships are becoming a core activity for increasing numbers of local arts agencies. So, the question arises: Is this just a new funding fad that is likely to dissipate as soon as its national champions switch channels? Here are a few reasons why we think this is not the case:

74 percent agreed that cross-sector arts partnerships are central to their mission.
85 percent identified organizations from other community sectors (e.g., human services, public safety, health care, community development) as a key constituency, and 75 percent were actively partnering with them.
75 percent said their recent strategic planning process addressed “broadening the impact of the arts beyond traditional arts activities and venues” as a priority.
78 percent agreed with the statement, “we see ourselves as a change agent in our community.”

From our perspective it would be a mistake to interpret this level of collaboration and commitment outside the bounds of the typical local arts agency mission as solely opportunistic. In fact, we see this as a possible indication that some local arts agencies are shifting their mission focus from “arts-centric” to community-centric. Specific evidence of this showed up when we asked respondents what they regarded as the most critical issues facing their community. Most responses reflected problems and concerns affecting the broader community as well as (but much more than) those relevant solely to their arts constituencies.

The article notes that demand for training outstrips supply. They found that 79% of respondents were interested in receiving training in effectively working cross-sector, but only 18% of organizations were supplying that training. The report itself noted that rural respondents especially felt underserved, finding training was “…generally inaccessible, due to time, money and travel…”

If you are interested in finding training in this area, there is a list of programs of all types from page 13-42 of the study.

Something not in the study that I was pleased to see in the Grantmakers in the Arts piece was an “Implications for Funders” section.  They advocate for patience and funding for training over the long term and emphasize the need for infrastructure investment beyond just training.

One paragraph really struck me as an important lesson for arts organizations as well as funders, namely involving the community to whom you hope to bring benefits in the plan. (my emphasis)

Vague nomenclature is potentially damaging. By definition community arts practice advances the notion that the work is going to affect people’s lives. As such, the fusion of art making and community development is often a morally and ethically complex enterprise. In our work at the Center we have found that when the institutions supporting the work are vague or ambiguous about their intentions or definitions of success, this lack of clarity can migrate to the work itself and harm the communities involved. Here is one reason why. Labels like social practice, placemaking, and community cultural development all imply community involvement of some kind. In too many instances we have found that scant attention is being paid to what this means exactly. At a minimum funders and practitioners alike should be considering some critical ethical questions as a part of their basic practice. How are the people who will bear the consequences of a project’s success or failure going to be engaged? If some public benefit is part of the deal, is there any accountability built in? And when the curtain closes, who will be there to either sustain the good work — or pick up the pieces?

Post title inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s “Cross Town Traffic” Couldn’t find a video that wasn’t a cover.

You Took My Joy And I Want It Back

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If you found yourself agreeing with the thesis of my post yesterday about claiming someone is selling out or is dumbing down art is an attempt to exclude those people in order to save Art, I have something else challenging to suggest.

We don’t get to dictate who is allowed to enjoy art.

While you might immediately agree that this should be so, remember there was an effort to organize an art strike during the recent presidential inauguration. Artists have disavowed works they sold to Ivanka Trump and asked her to remove their works from her apartment.

While I can appreciate the various motivations which move artists to make these statements, I don’t think it is constructive in the long run to be sending a message that art is for you as long as the art makers approve of you. In fact, as soon as I wrote that sentence I realized how much it sounded like the rationale people make when refusing to provide services for same-sex weddings.

This is not like being upset because a political campaign is using a song without permission.  They paid the asking price, and for the most part the work appears as the background of their lives as a statement of their taste rather than to imply tacit approval.

The bigger and long term issue is that there is a contradictory message in saying art is everywhere, everyone has the potential for creative expression and engages in it more often than they realized…and then put out a call for all that to be withdrawn in solidarity.

First of all, since everyone can access some type of creative expression on their phone, they are less likely to notice something is missing than they were when accessibility was tied to a physical place.

Second, if everyone can do it, then everyone has to participate in the art strike, which is damn difficult to pull off.  In these instances you can’t go around saying, Oh no, we are the real owners of real Art, not you, we are hiding it away and you should be concerned.

The constructive thing to do is encourage people to cultivate and employ the abilities they have in the service of expressing what they think about an issue rather than withholding access to something that has no relevance to the issue of concern.

Because lets face it, there are a lot of people out there who have no compunction about expressing their views emphatically and loudly. Investing energy into removing, rather than contributing a new or counter expression, seems counterproductive.

“Makers and Takers” slides too facilely off people’s tongues these days. Let it never be said artists are takers, creativity is all about making.

Ultimately, there can’t be advocacy for universal investment and ownership in creative expression by the individual, education system, foundations and government while also reserving the right to reclaim it all.

Post title is from the lyrics of Lucinda Williams’ “Joy”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMJ_-5lVw1s

I Was 15% More Dishonest In 2016, But Can You Prove It?

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In my post yesterday, I quoted Matt Burriesci as he addressed how uncomfortable people feel when it comes to advocating the intangible value of the arts.

We should stop being ashamed to believe in a value that cannot be weighed, measured, cut, or quantified — and to try and convince others to believe it, too.

I’ve floated these ideas to a few of my friends who work in the arts — privately, of course, because one never wants to utter such things in public. Almost all of them have said the same thing, and in the same weary, confused voice: “Well, yeah, Burriesci­­, I mean, I agree — but that’s just idealism.”

This line of thought pretty much illustrates how uncertain the arts community feels when it comes to trying to justify the value of what they do. How do you validate results that are difficult to measure?

Fortuitously, Seth Godin helps to provide an answer in a context we can all understand — the value of soft skills in the workplace.

Now obviously, these same soft skills are valuable outside of the workplace, but so much of what we value as a society is in the context of economic benefits.

Organizations spend a ton of time measuring the vocational skills, because they can. Because there’s a hundred years of history. And mostly, because it’s safe. It’s not personal, it’s business.

We know how to measure typing speed. We have a lot more trouble measuring passion or commitment.

Organizations give feedback on vocational skill output daily, and save the other stuff for the annual review if they measure it at all.

And organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output all the time, but practically need an act of the Board to get rid of a negative thinker, a bully or a sloth (if he’s good at something measurable).

He likens someone whose poor skills detract from the productivity of the workplace with an employee that walks out the door with a computer under their arm every day. Both are stealing from you in some fashion.

But perhaps most applicable to the argument about the value of liberal & fine arts, culture, creativity, etc is Godin’s assertion that just because they are difficult to teach and measure, doesn’t mean so-called soft skills are not valuable and worth the effort.

We rarely hire for these attributes because we’ve persuaded ourselves that vocational skills are impersonal and easier to measure.

And we fire slowly (and retrain rarely) when these skills are missing, because we’re worried about stepping on toes, being called out for getting personal, or possibly, wasting time on a lost cause.

Which is crazy, because infants aren’t good at any of the soft skills. Of course we learn them. We learn them accidentally, by osmosis, by the collisions we have with teachers, parents, bosses and the world. But just because they’re difficult to measure doesn’t mean we can’t improve them, can’t practice them, can’t change.

Now a slight tangent here– let’s recognize arts and cultural organizations are some of the worst offenders when it comes to hiring for skills and turning a blind eye to poor interpersonal skills because the employee has passion; isn’t getting paid a lot; and there isn’t time or money to train or model proper behavior.

Don’t read Godin’s article and get trapped into thinking about how the arts can help people develop all those soft skills he lists. First, the whole point is to stay away from a utilitarian justification for the value of the arts. Second, as I note, it’s a case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes when it comes to being an exemplar for cultivating those skills in the workplace.

I think the argument to be made is that we can all generally acknowledge that the presence of arts, culture and creativity in our lives enhances society/communities in myriad ways. We can’t measure the benefit specifically or attribute improvements directly and exclusively to the presence of arts & culture. Nor do we want to because creative expression is always going to be one important factor among many (like walkability, public transportation, employment, new initiatives.)

This is important in much the same way as skills like leadership, collaboration, resilience, passion, competitiveness, resourcefulness and hundreds of other factors are important to the success of a business or organization. You can’t set a goal to improve passion by 10% and leadership by 30% next year, but you know you have to work on cultivating both.

You can hire someone based on their sense of humor, honesty and friendliness because you know those factors are important to the effectiveness of your work environment. But no one is hired as the one that fills the humor, honesty and friendliness gap on the team the way they would be for their vocational skills.

Nobody doubts these attributes are important in a business environment even though they can’t be easily measured. In fact, when a young person starts out the are likely to cite these skills in a resume to make up for their lack of experience.

The challenge of the arts and culture community then is to create an environment where the value of the presence, or lack thereof, arts/culture/creativity is acknowledged in much the same way rather than something that can be decanted in discrete amounts.

The Safe Thing Is Not Working

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There has been a lot of conversation recently about what to do in light of the Trump Administration’s stated intent to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

This past weekend Matt Burriesci had a piece on Salon that took a contrarian stance to the effort to bring pressure on Congress to preserve federal funding for arts and culture.

In Burriesci’s view arguing the economic value of the arts in order to get funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities has failed. He admits he has been complicit in perpetuating that rationale and helped send out the call for arts and culture lovers to contact their representatives every time funding was threatened.

I’ve worked in the arts for 25 years. In all that time, I’ve never met a single artist or cultural leader who has said to me, “You know what I’m really passionate about? Improving math scores, creating exports, advancing health care and helping local merchants.”…

The arts and humanities have value because they make us better human beings. That’s basically it. They teach us history and encourage virtue, they help us debate serious issues in a respectful (or sometimes indirect) manner, they make us appreciate beauty, they make us more empathetic and they challenge our own beliefs. All of this helps ensure a skeptical, human and responsible citizenry. And if you don’t think that has value, well — what rock have you been living under?

A humanistic culture does not select a crazy demagogue to lead it. We are no longer a humanistic culture. One of the reasons we are not is because we, as cultural leaders, have abandoned our charge to create that culture, and do so without shame, apology or equivocation.

He argues for a return to advocating arts for arts sake and is pretty critical of the lobbying efforts of organizations like Americans for the Arts. In his view, they have been more interested in trying to make the arts palatable to legislators rather than advancing the values and interests of the arts and culture community which he feels should be nothing more than the intrinsic value of art.

The main reason you have a lobbyist is to advance your priorities as central to the republic, and to preserve those federal agencies and policies that support those priorities. Americans for the Arts has spent years and tens of millions of dollars advancing this neoliberal defense. Have we seen a steady increase in funding for agencies like the NEA and the NEH?…For too long, arts leaders accepted a foolishly low bar for success: the mere preservation of these agencies has been accepted as victory.

He claims, and at this point it is difficult to contradict him, that those that oppose funding for arts and cultural entities have never really cared about all the charts and graphs and studies. The opposition has only delayed the process of de-funding.

But what he suggests as a course of action is difficult and would take some courage to embrace because it abandons the evidence based arguments for less tangible measures.

We can extricate ourselves from this colossal strategic failure, and return to our true business: rebuilding the culture. We should stop being ashamed to believe in a value that cannot be weighed, measured, cut, or quantified — and to try and convince others to believe it, too.

I’ve floated these ideas to a few of my friends who work in the arts — privately, of course, because one never wants to utter such things in public. Almost all of them have said the same thing, and in the same weary, confused voice: “Well, yeah, Burriesci­­, I mean, I agree — but that’s just idealism.”

Yeah.

That’s all it is.

Now whether you believe that purely arguing the merits of arts, humanities, creative and cultural pursuits for their intrinsic value will be compelling, I think you have to concede the point that the terms and perhaps the very nature of the conversation has to change.

As many of you know, I am proponent of the movement to build public will for arts and culture. One of the reasons I like it is because it freely admits there isn’t one specific answer or approach that is correct for every community and situation. That leads me to believe the approach has within it, the potential to provide a better response in the conversation.

Supporting Coverage Of The Cultural Organizations You Support

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Yesterday on ye olde Twitter feed came a story about how two Buffalo, NY area arts & culture funders were helping to establish an arts and culture desk at a local public radio station.

I don’t recall who distributed the link but what drew me to it was the question in the post about whether this might be a new mode of funding for arts coverage.

In case you missed it, both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal announced last year that they were constricting their arts and culture coverage, joining other news and media sources that had made the same decision in the past.

A press release about establishing the news desk says the intent is to cover groups, disciplines and topics that often get overlooked:

…Arts Services Initiative of Western New York Executive Director Tod A. Kniazuk said. “The establishment of this desk means that culturals of all sizes and disciplines, and artists in all mediums and stages of their careers, will have a greater opportunity to get the message out about their work and its impact.”

…explained Stanton H. Hudson, Jr., Executive Director of the TR Site…And, through a dedicated arts and culture news desk at WBFO, artists and cultural organizations will be provided enhanced opportunities for listeners to experience their work, which often address historical and contemporary social, religious, political, and cultural issues and provide a framework for exploring challenging and difficult subjects.”

A column on the Artvoice paper site applauded the decision, citing the importance of coverage for small cultural groups and how they sustained Buffalo through the tough times

This can be a particular threat to the smaller, edgier, scrappier, low budget venues, tucked into warehouse or storefront spaces, hidden in basements or abandoned social halls. These venues depend upon coverage in mainstream media to attract new audiences.

In Buffalo, where small venues have arguably sustained the city through its hard times and fueled its burgeoning renaissance, it is dangerous to neglect or abandon this aspect of a diverse and lively arts scene.

To get back to the question that lead me to the article, is this a sign of things to come? Will community foundations need to support some sort of system of coverage for the arts and cultural organizations in their community?

Will arts and cultural organizations kick in funding to support such coverage? If so, it might be best funneled through an arts council in order to avoid accusations of favoritism to those who paid the most or the emergence of a pay for review system that caused a controversy in Los Angeles.

While I do wonder if reviews are really as important as word of mouth/social media any more, and it might vary by community, I do think general coverage of news, activity and trends can be important for the cultural health of a community. Reviews and stories about specific events only provide a snapshot of an instance. Conversations about long term initiatives, trends and developments can be particularly of value because they communicate overarching information that can be missed when we are so focused on what is immediately in front of us.

I am not saying subsidized coverage of culture shouldn’t call attention to particular groups and events. Just that it is often easier for an organization to catch and engage momentary attention than it is to communicate the arc of progress or illuminate the entire cultural ecology of a community. That is where the real value of coverage by a media organization can lie.

Arts Aren’t Great Because Great Men Say They Are

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Since the news started going around last week that the Trump administration was looking to de-fund the NEA, NEH and PBS, there have been a ton of memes circulating quoting Winston Churchill refusing to defund the arts during the Second World War saying, “…then what are we fighting for?”

Except, as I wrote four years ago, that story is completely apocryphal. He never said that. He said some things close to that and the precursor of the Arts Council of England was formed in 1940 ““to show publicly and unmistakably that the Government cares about the cultural life of the country. This country is supposed to be fighting for civilisation.”

Yes, it may be a little pedantic to call out the error, but given that fake news is a topic of frequent discussion these days, I think accuracy may be the best policy.

As I was re-reading that post of four years ago, I noticed that included a story about how Lincoln insisted on completing the dome of the Capitol during the Civil War so that people could see the government would continue. And how Roosevelt cited that story when he was dedicating the National Gallery. And how Kennedy cited both Lincoln and Roosevelt when asking for public support of the arts saying they,

“‘understood that the life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of the nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose- and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”

I was left hoping that the Lincoln story was true because it was the foundation of rationales made by subsequent presidents.

But the real question is, are the arts only great because important people have said they are? Do the arts become less worthwhile if we can’t find important people to vindicate their value? If Lin-Manuel Miranda decides next week it is all about fly fishing, will arts, culture and creative expression be abandoned in droves? (More likely than not hordes of people would track Miranda down to a stream in Montana and serenade him.)

Famous people can be the focus or public face for will and effort, but they are not the will. Often that famous face is not required. What famous people did all the marches of this past weekend coalesce around?

Creative expression doesn’t need a famous face behind it to matter. It doesn’t need a million people to march before it matters. Though those numbers certainly make a cause compelling and something you ignore at your own peril.

I don’t look at the folder of supportive comments I collect for grant reports and think wistfully it would be great to have a quote from a famous person instead of these 50 comments from nobodies.

I am pretty cynical about this perennial threat of defunding arts and culture. I see it akin to an older kid holding a toy over a toilet bowl and threatening to drop it in. Whether they ultimately drop it in or not, the kid seems to revel in the reaction the threat elicits.

I don’t think an argument accompanying a picture of Winston Churchill is any more compelling to decision makers than a picture of any one of us saying the same thing so we might as well get in the practice of standing behind our own sentiments.

In terms of getting people to act to support the arts, I suspect for a large percentage of people on your social media feed, your picture and statement of support is going to be a lot more compelling than Winston Churchill’s.

What We Know And How Well We Know It

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Createquity just released a valuable tool for arts advocates. They compiled the data from all the studies they could find to provide a comprehensive report on Everything We Know About Whether and How The Arts Improve Lives.

I haven’t had an opportunity to dig deeply into the data and ponder what it all means. What I find most helpful is their graphical depiction about where findings about the value of arts fall on two axis – how strong the quality of the evidence is and does the evidence indicate that a benefit exists.

So you can easily see that there is low evidence that cultural engagement can help encourage healing after traumatic events and that the quality of the evidence is weak. On the other hand there is strong evidence that arts participation in early childhood promotes social and emotional development.

The good news is that no survey found that there is an absence of benefit to the arts. Some people may be disappointed to learn that there is very mixed evidence, leaning toward negative, that arts education may improve scholastic attainment in terms of test scores, grades, etc and that the quality of the research backing that is very strong. As recently as 2016 research has “found no or minimal effects for arts and cultural participation or education on attainment measures.” Even the positive research say “overall, the impact of arts participation on academic learning appears to be positive but low.”

I had heard things along these lines and had started collecting information to verify if this might be the case and assess how valid the findings were. Fortunately, the folks at Createquity have done a lot of the heavy lifting in this regard.

Despite what may seem like disheartening news, a large amount of the findings fall into the “evidence that a benefit exists” category with many having medium to high quality levels of research in support of the findings. Many of those in the low quality evidence sector are only there due to lack of research on the subject.

Createquity admits this project is a work in process. As more evidence emerges, they will update it. If they find that the basic premises and interpretations of the researchers is flawed, they will revise the materials.

So often we hear about so many different research findings about the arts it is difficult to assess the value of the findings. Createquity provides a much needed degree of clarity by putting the research on a continuum. Advocacy becomes much easier when you know what you are saying is corroborated with evidence and you know just how strong the evidence is.

Now That I Hear You Say Aloud Like That…

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There has been some trepidation among members of the Kentucky arts community following the governor’s recent dismissal and reconstitution of the state arts council. Gov. Bevin dismissed all but four of the council members, reduced the size of the council from 16 to 15 and accepted the resignation of the executive director according to a recent report.

The main cause of concern is the arts council’s newly stated focus,

In a news release, Secretary of the Cabinet of Tourism, Arts and Heritage Don Parkinson wrote: “The new arts council will focus on ensuring that Kentucky artisans have the skills and knowledge to develop and successfully sell their products.”

[…]

“The reorganized council strikes the appropriate balance of expertise in the arts and entrepreneurship,” he said. “The new arts council will focus on ensuring that Kentucky artisans have the skills and knowledge to develop and successfully sell their products.”

A more explicit entrepreneurial focus may seem innocuous …. But some worry the shift misconstrues an artist’s role in his or her community.

[…]

“Crafts, sculpture and paintings, for example — and Bevin simply plans to amplify that relatively narrow and crude approach to the arts,” Day says. “This assumes, with such deep misguidedness, that the primary value of the arts is the price they demand.”

This revisits a oft-discussed topic of this blog, what is the purpose and value of art?

Perhaps more immediately for me, I realized how the call for artists to be more entrepreneurial can very quickly be leveraged to the detriment of the arts and culture community.

When I have invoked “entrepreneurial” in the past it was with the intention that those in the arts community acquire the skills to manage their careers, not be cheated by others and make opportunities for themselves rather than wait for it to be provided by others.

In the context of this story, the same terminology almost sounds like, “helping artists make a constructive contribution to society.”

Certainly the execution doesn’t have to be that cynical. Arts Business incubators could be a boon for many communities provided they were sited in rural and other underserved areas employing a model similar to Kentucky’s Appalshop, rather just in places real estate developers wanted to gentrify.

It was instructive for me to have ideas and language I and others have used in relations to arts practice essentially repeated back to me. There is often a line that pops up in television and film comedies that goes something like “well now that I hear it said aloud like that, yes, I guess it is a little ridiculous.”

I am not saying the idea that people should acquire a set of entrepreneurial skills is silly. Rather, hearing the same terminology used in this case makes it clear that when efforts and initiatives for the arts are discussed, care must be taken to provide clear context and definition of the primary value that will result. Economic, intellectual, social, spiritual, etc. benefits may accrue, but the core creative expression has value independent, and regardless of, whether any of these benefits emerge.

How Wound Into Your Identity Is Creativity?

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My post on Monday about employing a new definition to distinguish between amateurs and professionals garnered a couple comments and multiple loooonnnng emails (you know who you are!) in response.

At the core of these responses, including the original piece I was blogging on, were questions of how one views themselves, upon what criteria are these determinations being made and whether there is any validity for these criteria and terms in the first place.

The influence of psychological, developmental, sociological, scientific and philosophical forces were mentioned in these conversations. They are all so tightly entwined with each other I don’t know that any satisfying conclusion can be reached…or at least this week.

But this idea of how people in general perceive art as part of their identity is compelling to me. It is one of the reasons I am so interested in the effort to build public will for art and culture. The effort is all about asking people to examine to what degree creative expression comprises their identity.

I also frequently cite Jamie Bennett’s TEDx Talk observation that people are more easily able to see themselves on a continuum with sports figures than to identify themselves as an artist.

This is even a bigger issue than whether people are labeled amateurs or professionals. If people who are spending time after work and on weekends engaged in some creative activity don’t consider themselves artists for some reason, that has to be addressed before even getting to the questions about whether they are a professional or amateur.

If you played baseball or went flyfishing in high school but haven’t in 10 years, are you still a baseball player or fisher today?  If you were part of the drama club, art club, choir or band in high school but haven’t done any of those things in 10 years, are you still an artist today?

Outside of picking up your instrument, I would argue it is more likely that you effortlessly employed dramatic, singing and visual arts ability during a conversation, marketing presentation or staff meeting in that 10 year interval and have in fact exercised those skills and done so more easily than you could baseball and flyfishing.

If creative expression is this deeply ingrained into your existence, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say you are an artist before an athlete?

Of course, this gets us right back to questions of value. How how much attention and worth society places upon these skills. How much we value them in ourselves.

These questions of identity and creativity almost certainly don’t apply to readers of this blog who are likely to already have some sense of the answer. The answer to the title of this blog post is we need to tease out of others.

Frank Discussion About Outreach, New Audiences Efforts In The Community

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A couple of good articles on the influence non-profits in the community came out this week. CityLab noted that in some communities, non-profits were exhibiting greater influence and leadership than politicians that represented those districts.

Based on his observations, he argues in the journal American Sociological Review, the role of nonprofits in disadvantaged city neighborhood has been changing. They’re no longer just extensions of the state or representatives of a few interest groups. They’re “legitimate representatives of poor urban neighborhoods,” and in many cases, “supersede” elected officials.

[…]

What’s happening now is that these organizations are directly negotiating for resources from public and private sector entities that hold the proverbial purse strings. Community organizations are now authoritative voices at the table, and often regarded by both private companies and bureaucrats as more invested and deeply knowledgable representatives of the neighborhoods. In Boston, “district-based elected officials, by contrast, attended ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings but were largely absent from substantive discussions of redevelopment planning,” Levine writes.

When I read this earlier this week, I thought it was interesting but didn’t think most arts organizations were deeply involved enough in their communities to wield this type of influence.

As luck would have it, I didn’t have to think too long about how I might express this in a blog post because Ronia Holmes does it so well in a post that came out today on TRG Arts’ blog.

Her post, “Your organization sucks at “community” and let me tell you why” is a must read if your arts organization conducts outreach activities or talks about attracting new audiences. I plan to distribute it to my board and partners in other arts organizations.

She makes some very frank statements which may be uncomfortable to read, but they are reasonable and empathize with the position in which arts organizations find themselves.

Almost too much to quote but I will try to keep it brief:

Disinvested communities are not devoid of arts and culture. In America particularly, communities who historically have been excluded from the table have responded by building their own tables, using whatever resources could be scraped together. Marginalized communities have established organizations that don’t treat them or their cultural output as deviations from the norm to be celebrated for diversity, but as fundamental components of society. The organizations they created, and continue to create, are replete with artists, leaders, decision-makers, and workers who look like and are part of the community they serve, who share similar lived experiences, and have a deep understanding of what programming will truly resonate.

Referring to arts organizations which are not native to these disinvested communities:

Rather than grapple with these deeply ingrained failings, most organizations have opted to substitute narrative for action. They have amended their written missions and values in order to recast themselves as inclusive organizations meant for all. They turn to the community and say, “Now we’ve got a space here for you!”

And they fail to hear this critical question: “Why should we abandon our own table for a small chair at yours?”

The following about seeking new audiences really grabbed my attention:

There is a pervasive idea that a “new” audience must be a “diverse” one, and community-building is co-opted as a tactic for patron acquisition. The hard truth is that the disinvested communities targeted by so many outreach programs simply do not have the resources to—or, frankly, the interest in—sustaining these organizations. The model of operation on which most organizations operate need constant and high influxes of cash, and the lion’s share of affluence still rests with white patrons.

The reality is that most arts organizations don’t need a “diverse” audience—they need an audience with discretionary income. Yet the almost maniacal focus on community-building keeps organizations trapped in cycles of trying to sell to—not engage with, but sell to—audiences that don’t have that resource. In the meantime, organizations are unable to concentrate fully on patron retention and loyalty, and identifying and building audiences that are able and willing to fill the funding gaps.

[…]

Every year, organizations jump through hoops to secure restricted grants that necessitate yet another outreach program or diversity week or community partnership, hoping that if they impress the funders enough they will be given money that can be used for what the organization actually has a mission to do.

If real, authentic, genuine community building isn’t central to your mission, if it isn’t your raison d’être, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Because chances are that not only are you doing it badly, you’re doing it at the expense of your real mission. The mission of most arts organizations—the real mission—is simple: to present an art form. And that’s ok. We need organizations that prioritize preservation, development, and presentation of an art form, and I for one don’t think any organization should be penalized for it.

As much as I quoted here, there is a lot I left out. Even though I probably flirted with tl;dnr eight paragraphs ago, I hope this sample is enough to make you want to read more of what she said.

While it is not the final word on the subject, I think we probably recognize the truth in what she says about outreach efforts. The futility of grant chasing has been acknowledged for quite awhile. These are ideas that need continued discussion.

While we would like to be in a position where our organizations are viewed as leaders in the community like those in the CityLab article, most arts organizations really lack the resources and mission to fulfill that role.

Funding Requests As Panhandling

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I have been listening to On The Media’s series on the way poverty is covered in America and suddenly came to the realization that the language associated with the poor has many similarities to the way Non Profit With Balls blogger Vu Le describes funders perceive non-profits.

Proud of this realization, I went to Vu Le’s blog to grab some passages to cite…only to realize he made that exact point back in July.

As I was thinking about the parallels over the weekend, I really started to wonder if arts organizations need to find another tax structure to organize themselves under so that they didn’t have these negative associations to the work they did.

Granted, this is sort of abandoning the issue rather than trying to shift the perception. Arts organizations metaphorically moving out of the tax status neighborhood doesn’t help social service organizations who are painted with the same brush as the impoverished people they seek to serve.

Except that the perception can infect the social service charities as well which shows how unhealthy it is.

In one On the Media episode, Linda Tirado is interviewed and discusses how her family’s belongings were destroyed when their apartment was flooded. Eight months pregnant, she calls a social service organization looking for a chair so she would have a place to sit.

She was told she could have the chair, but she would need to take a resume writing workshop before she could pick it up. The charity wanted to make sure she was trying to better her situation. The only times the workshops were available were when she had to work so she would essentially end up putting herself in danger of being fired for want of a chair.

That is what personal responsibility means to somebody on welfare. It means here are these stupid hoops that we’re gonna make you jump through and then we’re going to give you a solution that absolutely won’t work for you. It’s that kind of just over and over beating your head against these ridiculous regulations and these double-blinds that don’t make any sense. And the whole thing is set up specifically to humiliate you as much as possible because what we need poor people to do in America more than anything else in the world is know their place.

Compare to a similar passage from Vu Le’s post:

The No-Free-Lunch: There have been idiotic proposals by clueless politicians designed to punish the poor for violating whatever ridiculous expectations are set out for them. Like taking away food stamps if their kids don’t get good enough grades or if they’re not volunteering or seeking out employment, despite the fact that there are only so many volunteer and paid positions to go around. In our sector, our funding gets threatened if we don’t comply with various requirements, such as working toward “sustainability.” A colleague mentioned a grant that won’t pay for staff wages and other indirect expenses, and applicants have to demonstrate that they will be completely self-sustaining within a year. That gave us all a good chuckle.

If people see non-profit arts organizations in the same light as welfare recipients, is it any wonder they don’t want their kids going into the arts? If they aren’t going to be constantly asking their parents for support, they will be asking society for support and what self-respecting parent wants that right?

I am not sure people equate the two in exactly that manner, but there is possibly a greater stigma associated with non-profits than we expect. Because people’s perceptions of poverty often has a very strong emotional element, merely surveying people about their attitudes may not be effective since they may not be entirely aware of how much their unconscious associations influence them.

About five years ago, it was relatively common to see people talking about the need for arts to adopt a different corporate structure. Many different options were debated but to my knowledge, no one ever restructured or organized a new arts organization under one of the alternative models. (Though we would really only start to see proof of concept now after five years of operation.)

While the idea that arts organizations need to distance themselves from those that society looks askance at may be immediately satisfying, not only does it not really appear to be viable, it doesn’t really solve the greater issues that arts organizations and non-profits in general face.

I have written before about the effort to build public will for arts and culture which seeks to change general societal perceptions about the arts. I have to imagine that a shift in the negative associations people make with the way arts are supported and funded would integral part to that.

Gasp! Orchestra Strike Post That Doesn’t Devolve To “Overpaid Bums”

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On the Marginal Revolution blog, economist Tyler Cowen quotes bits of a Wall Street Journal article on orchestra strikes by Terry Teachout and ends with what seems to be an implication that many orchestra musicians and conductors are being paid too much.

I had expected many of the comments that followed to state orchestra musicians are overpaid bums, but to my surprise very few of the nearly 100 comments did. Instead, there were some of the most interesting discussions about the proficiency of orchestra musicians and ensembles I have seen outside of an arts related news source.  If anything, some orchestra might be tempted to cite these commenters in their negotiations.

There were multiple mentions of musicians today being more skilled than those in the 1950s and 1960s and easily able to tackle compositions with which their predecessors struggled.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra had a number of fans and comments about them emphasized their proficiency:

26 Tununak October 25, 2016 at 11:47 am

The only time I heard the Chicago Symphony live was when I was in Chicago for a conference years ago. They played Petrouchka, and to this day I remember the flute solo as being absolutely breathtaking. I had never really thought about that solo before that moment. There really are differences between the delivery of the very top performers and the rest, and they aren’t necessarily marginal differences.

27 Steve Sailer October 25, 2016 at 7:46 pm
Yup.

For example, I attend a minor league opera series in Los Angeles called Pacific Opera Project that is wildly entertaining and quite moderately priced. They’ll do anything for a laugh. It’s great entertainment value per dollar.

The only problem is when they spring for a really good singer and he suddenly reminds you that the rest of the singers in the production aren’t really good and you are missing out on a whole world of unbelievable singing because you can’t afford it.

Steve Sailer October 25, 2016 at 7:17 am

[…]
That raises an interesting question: if the next time the CSO goes out on strike, if management could secretly fire everybody and replace them with Lyric Opera musicians, how many season ticket holders would notice that diminution in quality?

I’d guess maybe less than 50% but more than 10%, but I’m just making those numbers up.

Since I am living in Ohio, I can’t let Cleveland’s praises remain unsung:

96 Faze October 25, 2016 at 10:25 pm

The insecurity of Clevelanders is reflected in the Cleveland Orchestra’s signature sound, which is perfection. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has a looser, scrappier sound. But Cleveland can’t afford to let its hair down. Night after night, year after year, they pump out pure, transcendent perfection. The exquisite tone of the string section alone can leave you gaping. But as one Russian music student of my acquaintance said, “Eeez borink. I don’t learn from them. They have no mistakes.”

I was interested to see the following comment for the very Industrial Revolution assumptions it makes about the purpose of unions:

29 BC October 25, 2016 at 10:11 am

If musicians are that differentiated and not interchangeable, then why unionize and collectively bargain? Most unions represent interchangeable labor and indeed actively discourage differentiation (merit pay, employee evaluation, etc.). When labor is undifferentiated, unionization creates a monopoly. If musicians are individually differentiated, then each musician already has a monopoly on his or her own talents.

Professional athletes’ unions are an exception and their demands are correspondingly different than those of unions in other industries. In professional sports, the unions are pro-market, demanding things like free agency, and the owners are anti-competition, demanding things like salary caps, luxury taxes, etc. Are the musicians striking to end anti-competitve and collusive practices of orchestras or are they acting more like traditional labor unions, just asking for uniformly higher pay?

Discussions about the arts on an economics blog can yield some interesting points of view. There was a comment earlier in the thread where someone said something similar, asking why oboists, for example, didn’t hold out for more than clarinetist in communities where clarinetist were common.

It makes me wonder if part of the difficulty orchestra musicians face is this concept that unions exist to insure a supply of skilled, interchangeable cogs. I don’t think it is necessarily the term “union” that is the problem, any collective effort would likely be regarded as a union even if they called themselves more lighthearted like a Musician Clan.

From the comments and general observations, I think there is an underlying sense that talented individuals can negotiate the best deal for themselves and mediocre individuals join collective bargaining groups in order to get better pay than they would be able to get alone.

Really it is more a matter of what value is placed on the work being done than on the talent and skill of the person doing it. People initially formed unions to get better pay for work that has low value associated with it.

Whether you think orchestra musicians are overpaid or not, to read the comments in this post it appears a number of people feel that the musicians of many orchestras are to be commended for their pursuit of excellence in performance.

Can’t Brag About Them And Not Invite Them To The Table

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I attended a presentation by Mosaic Education Network about their efforts working in conjunction with the Barnett Center at Ohio State University to provide some entrepreneurship workshops for artists in the Columbus, OH.

One of the things that impressed me was that they seemed to have made an effort to attract a more inclusive range of artists than might usually be served by such gatherings. When they spoke about how the different artists came to realize that the challenges they faced weren’t exclusive to their discipline, they mentioned that some attendees thought it was just a problem DJs were facing and visual artists likewise thought it was specific to them.

It got me thinking, how many individuals or organizations seeking to convene artists to talk about entrepreneurship would include DJs on their invite list? If I had been a little quicker with this realization, I might have thought to follow up and ask about the range of disciplines and practices that were invited.

The National Endowment for the Arts expanded their definition of what constituted arts participation when they conducted a study a few years ago. If arts organizations are going to tout those statistics to prove what a wide range of Americans are engaged with arts and cultural activities, it is probably only logical and fair to put practitioners of those disciplines on the literal and figurative invite list.

What they planned to do was hold a Create-a-thon modeled on the hack-a-thon events common in software coding, emphasizing the brain storming practices. This creative event was meant to lead off an 8 week series of workshops people would attend.

What actually ended up happening is a combination of a cautionary lesson and a testament to their nimbleness and willingness to revise their plans.

Associating the Create-a-thon with the software hack-a-thon model resulted in unanticipated expectations among some attendees. People came assuming there would be venture capitalists present and that those who gathered would help them develop their business model. That wasn’t what the organizers envisioned.

I have seen a lot of people advocate for adopted the hack-a-thon for arts and culture. I think I wrote about it myself some years ago. This problem never emerged on my radar which probably means I don’t know nearly enough about hack-a-thons to be stealing the idea.

Clearly if you are considering something along these lines it is very important to communicate exactly what will be occurring or evoke an entirely different model so that people don’t make the wrong assumptions.

They had 40 people attend the first day, but only 20 people came the second day. The presenters clarified the drop in attendance wasn’t due to the absence of venture capital at the event. Some people already knew they wouldn’t be able to make both days.

I wouldn’t normally even bring up the drop in attendance on the second day except that it helps to underscore how successfully they ended up. By the completion of the eight week series of classes/workshops, they ended up serving 76 people. While the interest initially seemed to flag, they attracted additional people through word of mouth and continued attempts to increase awareness.

But it wasn’t just good advertising. They attributed their ultimate success to their willingness to recognize the mistakes in their initial assumptions and take action to alter their plans.

They had assumed that those who were interested in taking their workshops would attend all eight weeks. They learned it was better to think about the classes in a modular fashion and allow people to attend the sessions by which they felt they would be best served.

For example, Week One focused on the Mission Statement; Week Two on Vision; Week Three on Value Proposition the artist brought; Week Four on Marketing, etc.  People only attended the workshops they felt they needed.

While they had planned to offer the classes during the day, they quickly realized that most everyone who had an interest in the workshops had day jobs and shifted to offering them in the evenings.

The presentation by the partners from Mosaic and the Barnett Center was successful by the measure of leaving me wanting to know more.

They seemed to be both working with people and embodying an ethic which are appropriate to the times and environment.

For example, you may have groaned inwardly at the mention of the Mission Statement workshop. Everyone writes these big impressive sounding statements that they can’t remember and never refer back to.  They took one artist’s wordy, paragraph long statement and boiled it down to “I manipulate fabric for curious people.”

That may sound too informal, but it is easy to remember and probably fits more organically with the artist’s vision and value proposition than most arts organization mission statements. Just try memorizing your mission statement and the fabric artist’s. Tomorrow morning I bet you can recite her’s more easily than your own. I bet her’s even fires your imagination better than your own.

In a marketing project they spoke about, an artist had been updating his Instagram followers about the progress he was making on a visual art piece. When it was done, he told them it would be hidden somewhere at a festival and provided clues about where to find it. This helped the artist promote his work and helped build a relationship with the festival when he was able to show how he had driven attendance to their event. Of course, it also contributed to the relationship the artist had with his supporters.

Finally, one of the things the Mosaic Education Network and Barnett Center presenters emphasized for those planning to do Art Entrepreneurship training for their communities went right to the heart of the big debate about paying artists.

Don’t talk to artists about how their art should be profitable and how you are teaching them to be successful, while simultaneously asking those who are helping you provide the workshops to do so for free/the exposure.  No one doubts it is difficult to find funding to support training programs like this, but the people who are helping you should profit from working with you.

What Arts and Cultural Concepts Should Every American Know?

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The Aspen Institute has a project in which the arts and culture community might want to participate. They are asking “What Every American Should Know.” They acknowledge right off that the project name might be controversial because it evokes E.D. Hirsh’s book, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know which sparked a lot of debate.

I have a clear memory of picking up the book while house sitting for a professor and subsequently having a conversation with him about his objections to some of the topics on Hirsh’s list.

The Aspen Institute asks,

In our sweeping and turbulent nation, how can we cultivate a sense of shared culture and identity? The more fragmented we become, the more necessary it is for us to have a common vocabulary – a shared set of cultural and historical references – that we can all collect and understand.

I think the way the current election campaign is being conducted probably underscores the necessity of the type of thing they are doing.

The Aspen Institute list is an extension of an essay Eric Liu, executive director of the Aspen Institute American Citizenship and Identity Program wrote. In it, he defends the utility of Hirsh’s effort, in part because even protest movements need to employ the shared vocabulary of the culture they are opposing in order to be effective. He also acknowledges that a new list of 5000 topics needs to be constructed for today’s American citizens.

They have set up a website where you can contribute your top 10 topics. They have a selected lists from various distinguished persons such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, David Henry Hwang, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as examples. I hope they eventually make more lists public. I know 90% of the topics on the selected lists, but the other 5% are new to me so I am curious to know more about what I don’t know.

It probably says something about the validity of Top 10 lists on the Internet that I only started to consider this to be a serious effort when I saw they are scheduling in-person sessions at libraries to discuss the idea of “What Every American Needs To Know.” (scroll to the bottom to see if they are coming to a library near you.)

Obviously I think a lot of arts and culture topics should appear on some lists so the more people that contribute, the better. My only question is what will be done with the lists and will it contribute to effecting the change they seek.

Maybe it is enough just to have conversations in libraries. That may plant the seeds for change that are needed by getting people to talk and relate to one another. Whether it can counteract the bile one finds online remains to be seen.

If You Can’t Poach ‘Em, Praise ‘Em

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A few months back when Ceci Dadisman and Drew McManus first floated the idea of recognizing Creative Arts Administrators to the rest of us ArtHacker authors, my first thought was that the project shouldn’t just be about who is doing a great job, but rather who you would love to poach from another company.

I have mentioned this idea in something of an off-handed way in my posts from time to time. We frequently hear about people being lured or headhunted away in relation to for-profit companies. A recent discussion my board had about recruiting new members cited the fact that one woman was pursued and lured to a new job by another company in town as part of her qualifications and value to our board.

You rarely hear this sort of thing in the non-profit realm. I don’t know if people are concerned about being perceived as cutthroat. Perhaps more likely, they don’t feel they can offer pay, benefits or work environment competitive enough to entice people to leave their current job. Intangible factors like idealism about the work being done might also come into play.

All this being said, having a more competitive job market can be beneficial. First of all, it can raise employee morale if they are being courted or see colleagues being courted. It gives a sense that someone external to the organization is paying attention and recognizes their contribution. Not to mention contributing to the sense that a path to advancement exists within the industry.

This type of competition can also help justify the organization’s overhead ratio and funding requests if they can do more than cite the hypothetical need to offer good salaries to retain people. If you are losing talented people to poaching by other non-profits, that says something. (Granted, if you are losing people to poor salaries, that says something as well.)

I should note that I am not just daydreaming about how great it would be if non-profit arts organizations had to compete for the best talent. Drew McManus and I recently had a conversation where we both observed that search firms were increasingly being listed in job postings.

We were a little wary about whether this was a good thing since some of the firms don’t appear to have any experience conducting searches in the arts and culture field. This could be another indication of boards of directors looking to run the arts “more like business” and may result in organizations being lead by people with little practical background in the arts.

But it could also be an indication that arts organizations are seeing the need to have the recruitment and hiring process handled with greater care and alacrity than they possess.

So in time news that people are being actively headhunted away from an organization may come with greater regularity. Depending on what generalizations about Millennials you subscribe to, this may have the effect of attracting a greater number of very talent people to non-profit work as they pursue a desire to do meaningful work. But with that may come a lot more job switching than arts organizations are used to.

So granted, there is a fair degree of speculation in all this. Bottom line though. If you know someone in the arts you would really love to have working with you, but don’t feel like you could snatch them away —Nominate them on ArtsHacker.

And if you are working with an amazing person right now and having them snatched away would break your heart, nominate them on ArtsHacker and let them know their work is valued.

And if you are afraid calling attention to a person’s awesomeness is going to see them headhunted and it is better to keep the person hidden from sight, well you may already be creating an uncomfortable work environment that will cause them to leave anyhow.

What Oskar Said

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The keynote speaker for the recent Arts Midwest conference was Oskar Eustis who is current artistic director at the Public Theater.  Tweets in reaction to his speech have been Storified if you want some insight.

A lot of what he spoke about centered on the value of government support of the arts and the value of non-profit arts organizations, especially in his career.  One of his first jobs in the arts was supported by a CETA grant. National Endowment for the Arts money supported the development of Angels in America which he commissioned and directed.  Lin Manuel Miranda’s invitation to perform at the White House saw him perform a song that eventually became the opening number for Hamilton which Eustis developed at the Public Theater.

He also mentioned how he was sitting with Julie Taymor at a session of Aspen Ideas Festival when Michael Eisner stood up and said he thought too much importance was placed on the value of non-profit theater, citing how he had bolstered Taymor’s career when he choose her to direct The Lion King. Eustis said before he had a chance to throw down with Eisner, Taymor pointed out she only developed the skills to direct a show of the caliber The Lion King thanks to the experience she had in non-profit theater.

Like me, a lot of these topics are close to Eustis’ heart. He spoke of how worried he was that as a country we have equated having a market economy with having a market society. That is, that we judge the value of what we do based on how financially successful it is.

If you have been reading my recent posts about economic value of the art and culture vs. intrinsic value, you know this permeates societal thinking beyond just the idea that arts organizations need to be run like businesses and support themselves.

Eustis said that he had been pushing for the Public Theater to present more of its work for free as they do with Shakespeare in Central Park, but his board was reticent because they didn’t feel that people would value something they got for free. Eustis acknowledged that might be the case with some things, but given that people were camping out overnight just to get a spot on line to see Shakespeare, he was pretty sure the Public Theater’s work would be sufficiently valued. In the upcoming year, the Public Theater will mount their first free production at one of their regular spaces.

He also mentioned despite doing so many free productions in Central Park, they discovered only their prison program and the shows they trucked out to the five boroughs of NYC were the only programs that were serving a mix of people that reflected the demographics of NYC.

During the Q&A after his address, Mario Garcia Durham, President and CEO of Association of Performing Arts Presenters rose and expressed his dismay that the Kennedy Center was essentially telling people that they would need to buy subscriptions to two seasons if they wanted to get tickets to see Hamilton when it came to Washington D.C.

Durham was concerned that this would place the show out of reach of the demographics with which Miranda most wanted the show to resonate and plead with Eustis to ask Miranda to arrange auxiliary programming to accompany the show that the general population would be able to access.

Eustis replied that while he really didn’t have any control over the decisions made by organizations that presented the show, he did have a right to sit at the table and provide guidance when policies were being shaped. He said if he had his way, when it came time to make the show available for amateur performance, it would only be licensed to only high schools in perpetuity and would never be available for production by theatrical organizations.

I am embarrassed to admit there were some other noteworthy things Eustis said that I can’t recall. They were so noteworthy I tracked down  Arts Midwest President David Freher to discuss them. I figured I needn’t make note about them since they were so vivid in my mind.

If anyone else was at the keynote and was impressed by anything else they heard, please share because it may jog my memory.

Does Your City Need An Arts Bureaucrat?

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Given the Labor Day holiday and the fact that Wells Fargo seems to think kids need to set aside their childish artistic dreams for real career choices, it seems appropriate to do a post on interesting, constructive arts careers.

Jennifer Lasik, Arts Coordinator for the City of Evanston, IL makes a “Case for an ‘Arts Bureaucrat’ in City Government.”

While her boss hates the use of that term, (the real job title is Cultural Arts Coordinator), she sees the arts bureaucrat role as one of the most important parts of her job. (my emphasis)

In public performance or art installation, there is often perceived conflict between what the artists want to accomplish and the objectives of the City regarding liability, maintenance, budgets, and code regulation.

[…]

While intended primarily as a resource for the arts community, City staff has appreciates having someone who “speaks artist,” can plan and evaluate artistic projects, and listen to and fine-tune artists’ proposals to address various departmental questions and concerns. Both groups trust me to negotiate a balance between the artistic and practical aspects of the project, helping artists through the application and permit process, and cutting through some of the bureaucratic red tape that can cause frustration and bottleneck. The time and energy this position saves for both the City staff and the artists is a compelling argument for an arts bureaucrat position.

She lays out the scope of her position which makes it sound like this position, created in 2013, was the next step in a process in which Evanston was amenable. She notes, for example that:

“Public Works uses a “Complete Streets” model, which means that when maintenance or repair work is done, other goals such as public art, accessibility and sustainability are factored into the rebuild.

At the end of her post, she provides some suggestions for municipalities that don’t have the capacity for a full time arts bureaucrat, including appointing a staff person to act as an “arts whisperer” to help facilitate communications.

Why Would We Not Want More?

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I frequently write about why arguing the benefits of the arts based on their instrumental value (e.g. improves economy or test scores) is a bad approach because it depends on an absence of a substitute which is effective at accomplishing the same ends.

The alternative is to talk about the intrinsic value of art, or art for arts sake. The problem with this approach is that it lacks that concrete data that everyone says they base their decisions on.

Or rather, it lacks the concrete data that everyone insists they are faithfully basing their decisions upon. If you have paid any attention to the way decisions are made in the political or educational arenas, you know that isn’t true. Still, if you want to make your case, you have to do it in a convincing manner in terms which people can relate.

Teacher Peter Greene had an entry on Huffington Post about a year ago which performs this task pretty effectively in regard to defending music education. It probably isn’t the exact approach to take if you are called to provide testimony at your state legislature, but he provides a general ground plan.  (my emphasis)

Music is universal. It’s a gabillion dollar industry, and it is omnipresent. How many hours in a row do you ever go without listening to music? Everywhere you go, everything you watch— music. Always music. We are surrounded in it, bathe in it, soak in it. Why would we not want to know more about something constantly present in our lives? Would you want to live in a world without music? Then why would you want to have a school without music?

[…]

Making music is even more so. With all that music can do just for us as listeners, why would we not want to unlock the secrets of expressing ourselves through it? We human beings are driven to make music as surely as we are driven to speak, to touch, to come closer to other humans. Why would we not want to give students the chance to learn how to express themselves in this manner?

Music is freakin’ magical. In 40-some years I have never gotten over it — you take some seemingly random marks on a page, you blow air through a carefully constructed tube, and what comes out the other side is a sound that can convey things that words cannot. And you just blow air through a tube. Or pull on a string. Or whack something. And while we can do a million random things with a million random objects, somehow, when we just blow some air through a tube, we create sounds that can move other human beings, can reach right into our brains and our hearts. That is freakin’ magical.

Even though the “Why would we not…” questions are not completely based on logic, it shares many of the same motivations that drive scientific inquiry.

We are surrounded by sun, air, earth and water, why would we not want to study them to better understand how they impact things like agriculture and help us prepare for drought, fires, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes?

As I said, while Greene’s reasoning doesn’t provide quantitative measurements to support it, it does provide what Carter Gillies says is often lacking in such rationale – it begins to teach people why we value the arts – and it does it with language that captures attention and starts to fire the imagination.

The Classic Or Contemporary?

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When it comes to Shakespeare, I feel like it is worth taking the time to sit and allow yourself to adjust to the language and rhythms rather than dismissing it outright as too impenetrable. There is a lot in there that can’t be accurately replicated by updating the language.

I would say the same thing about classical music and visual art. Allowing yourself time to transition your perspective from 21 century life to whatever period a piece of music was written in is worth the time.

If you are wandering a museum, you definitely need to be prepared shift between digital graphics of daily existence to Vermeer to Mark Rothko.

So I was interested to read back in April that Shakespeare enjoys a greater degree of appreciation in non-English speaking countries.

A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries reveals, for example, that 88% of surveyed Mexicans like Shakespeare, compared with only 59% of British people; 84% of Brazilians said they found him relevant to today’s world, compared with 57% in the UK; and 83% of Indians said they understood him, far more than the 58% of Britons.

Overall, Shakespeare’s popularity abroad stands at 65%, compared with 59% in the UK.

[…]

The research suggests it is experience of Shakespeare at school which plays the biggest part – studying the original text can put people off for life.

Hilhorst said most Britons were taught Shakespeare in his original English while abroad there were often translations which used a more contemporary, accessible language.

That conclusion would explain why the “do you like Shakespeare” figures are roughly the same among English-speaking countries – USA (63%), Australia (60%) and the UK (59%). In the top five are India (89%), Mexico (88%), Brazil (87%), Turkey (79%) and South Africa (73%)

Only French and Germans like Shakespeare less than English speakers.

There is an implication in the article that Shakespeare is better enjoyed in general when the language is updated to be accessible to contemporary audiences.

I am of two minds about this. First, it is irking no one is really advocating for classical music to be updated to make it more accessible. Certainly, you can put it in different contexts to make it more familiar and accessible like Bugs Bunny cartoons or playing it in bars, but will it increase appreciation and understanding of Bach to hear is played on electric bass, guitar, keyboard and a drum kit?

What about electric violins and turn table?

Does it help people understand The Last Supper if it is digitized or parodied?

star-wars-last-supper-mosaic-72dpi

If I am being honest, maybe Black Violin’s version of Bach’s Brandenburg Concert will help people become more comfortable with the original. But I imagine it is also easy to claim that while it may make you more comfortable, it doesn’t really help you understand Bach’s original composition.

I would also argue this is more akin to a shift in context than an actual adaptation into a contemporary “language.” I would place the common practice of  setting Shakespeare in different time periods while retaining the language in this category.

Which brings me to my second mind. The one advantage Shakespeare has is that the works can be adapted to contemporary times and the adaptations can help you understand the original works. I would say West Side Story may do this better for Romeo and Juliet and Throne of Blood for MacBeth than Forbidden Planet does it for The Tempest (granted, Forbidden Planet wasn’t intended as an adaptation of Tempest).

Whether adaptations like these help inspire people to explore the originals, I don’t know. My sense is that the theatrical format by its very nature lends itself to adaptation in ways that allow people to connect with the original works in ways other arts disciplines don’t.

To a certain degree, there is an argument for making Shakespeare’s language more contemporary because you can do effectively.

But it is still absolutely worth experiencing Shakespeare in the original language.

Can You Answer This Question About The Arts?

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I am a little embarrassed that it hasn’t occurred to me to post about this sooner.

Here on the old blogosphere, general Internet, at conferences, in coffee houses and on the street where you live, we often talk about educating people, reaching out to them, removing the sense of mystery about the arts. Yet it seems so difficult to figure out an effective way to do this.

While I am not going to claim it would have a high ROI, it just occurred to me, (despite participating for years), that getting more arts people answering questions on Quora would help promote and educate people about the subject. In addition, it would give those involved with the arts a sense of what people were asking and give them practice answering the questions.

I have been reading and participating on Quora for a few years and only just recently realized that the arts have pretty light representation in terms of questions and responses. I get a digest of recent responses everyday which often address questions about history (real and speculative), politics, and guns, lots of guns. I have no idea why I get so many topics on guns since that isn’t one of my stated interests.

It just occurred to me this weekend that I don’t really see much about the arts. When I do seek out questions on the topic, the most recent answers can be between 3-5 years old.

Today I got a request to answer – “Why do they tiptoe in ballet?” I have a general idea of how to respond, but many of you with a dance focus can do a better job answering than me.

Here is a brief example of the types of questions in the subject area – What makes acting believable?; How can I improve my live performance as a musician?; Theatre: Why aren’t plays recorded for commercial sale?; What are some interesting tricks that are used in theatrical set design? (this one only has two answers); Is it socially acceptable to go to the theater by myself?

Of course, there are also questions about studying an arts discipline (barely any answers on multiple theatre related ones) and dating someone who is involved in the arts.

Quora can be a great source of information on areas of interest you may have. You may often discover answers to questions you weren’t aware you had. The range of people answering questions can be surprising. Celebrities, prominent business people, Nobel Prize winners and prominent experts often offer their insight. Over time you will also start to recognize and even seek out answers by less noted people who have earned your trust by exhibiting a high level of expertise and thoughtfulness in their responses.

While you will find articles providing advice on how to use Quora for marketing and promotion, the environment of the forum doesn’t really tolerate blatant promotion.

Every Musician Is Important To A Symphony

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In a move that I like to see as reinforcing the importance of orchestra musicians in a time where their value is being diminished during contract negotiations, a long time supporter of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), Marjorie Fisher, recently left $5,000 to every one of the 78 current full-time musicians.

If supporters of other orchestras being to follow her example, we may see musicians fighting a lot harder to maintain the number of permanent positions during contract negotiations.

When I first scanned the story on the Non Profit Quarterly, I initially wondered if this bequest might be in response to the poor treatment symphony musicians have received during contract negotiations. However, given that the Fisher family has made donations to support the DSO in every way possible, (and just illuminated a new possibility), it would be difficult to make that assumption.

That said, between the prevalence of crowd funding campaigns and indications of a shift toward direct support of those in need, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that people were investing greater effort into ensuring support was going specifically where they intend.

Finding Things Out Only Adds

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Since I seem to have started on a philosophical kick this week, how about we consider Richard Feynman’s “Ode To A Flower” commentary in the video below? You can also see it illustrated in an awesome Zen Pencil’s comic.

Like Feynman’s friend, I remember being in my high school science class and thinking that it was robbing life of all its wonder. I would rather be entranced by the fictitious stories that made things seem magical than to learn the dull truth that it was all a result of chemical reactions.

Later, I came to appreciate, as Feynman points out, that science actually gives you the tools to extend your wonder and experience the delight of discovery.

For example, one of the things I have wondered about for 20+ years is whether squirrels in Florida hide nuts for the winter since there is no danger of food scarcity. If they don’t, if you transported a Florida squirrel to Boston, would instincts kick in and lead it to hide nuts or would it be in danger of starving?

It may sound like a silly question, but I keep it tucked away in the back of my mind in case I meet a scientist who can provide the answer. I find it exciting to know that I can discover that answer and receive additional interesting revelations with follow up questions.

Feynman’s short comments illustrate just how valuable the skill of communicating what you do to the uninitiated is. Feynman was great at explaining scientific concepts to people. A lot of scientists aren’t.

By the same measure, a lot of artists and arts organizations aren’t really good at explaining art and the value of the arts either. I wonder how much of that is due to simple lack of practice and how much is due to fear of being accused of selling out or dumbing things down.

I had a recent email exchange with Carter Gillies about this subject. I wondered if the scientific community felt Neil DeGrasse Tyson wasn’t a real scientist because he used his public profile to explain science to the general public. Is he accused of dumbing things down for a general audience? Do people suggest he can’t have time to engage in real scientific work due to all his media appearances?

I assume I don’t need to cite any parallel sentiments in the arts and cultural sphere.

Unfortunately, in these days when people have a high degree of control over the information they receive and are able to more easily ignore and filter out what they don’t want to hear, explaining the value of a subject becomes more difficult even for highly skilled communicators.

Frequently the initial encounter with the revelations and new questions that emerge isn’t easy or comfortable to bear.

Even with the tools to communicate your message to a wide range of people, getting someone like the high school me to accept a less magical view of the world in exchange for one that still had a lot of potential for wonder requires a retail, one-on-one, effort.

While Feynman gave physics lectures to packed lectures halls, the “Ode To A Flower” comment came from a series of one on one discussions he and artist Jirayr Zorthian had about art and physics over the course of eight years.

As an added aside: There is frequently discussion about people needing to see people like themselves on stage. I can’t express the thrill I got when I first heard a New York accent coming out of the mouth of a person acknowledged to be a brilliant scientist. I think it can be easy to underestimate the impact of those types of experiences.

Resources From Unexpected Places-Federal Reserve Banks

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Okay, I know this week I posted a piece that continued my long standing assertion that talking about the economic impact of the arts is not an effective way to garner long term support and investment around arts and cultural activities.

However, while it shouldn’t be the central argument for support, I don’t discount the value of using economic impact as corroborating data.

In that vein, I have recently been wondering if it might not be useful for the arts community to forge closer ties with the various regional Federal Reserve Banks. I have seen some publications coming from them that are valuable to non-profits and make a case for the place cultural organizations have in community development.

Last December, I used a well-written guide on managing Non-Profit Executive succession and transitions produced by the Kansas City Federal Reserve in a post I wrote for ArtsHacker.

Since then I have seen two pieces in a four part series written by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on the importance of cultural organizations in Eastern Kentucky’s transition away coal mining. The first focuses on creative placemaking and the second specifically spotlights the work of Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY.

I am not sure how many may read the articles, but the people and businesses who closely watch the activity of the Federal Reserves are not without influence. Section headers like “The economic impact of creative placemaking;” “A Case for investment: two examples;” “Making Dollars and Sense” can resonate with the interests and concerns of these groups.

It might be worth having state and regional arts councils reach out to make contacts with the respective Reserve Banks in the different regions to explore whether the councils can provide data and stories that might be of interest to the readers of the Federal Reserve publications.

Having the Federal Reserve’s research as an additional source to corroborate statements and statistics about economic impact can help bolster non-profit organization goals.

In return, the Federal Reserve banks may be able to produce publications like the non-profit leadership succession guide that are useful to non-profits. Having issues of finance, taxation, labor law, business relations, etc tailored to the national needs of non-profits could be helpful.

If the Federal Reserve produced case studies about beneficial collaborations between businesses and non-profit organizations, the gravitas they bring could cause groups to consider exploring similar efforts.

Maybe they already produce documents like this and we are just not widely aware of it. It actually took me some time to find the third installment in the series on Eastern KY on the Cleveland Fed website. Had I not had the URL of Part 2 as a guide, I may not have found it.

You Too Can Help Build Public Will For Arts And Culture

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Long time readers will know that for the last year or so I have been a bit of an evangelist for the burgeoning effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture.

What impresses me about the effort is that it learns from the successes and mistakes of past efforts. For example, they study how the a long standing concern about smoking didn’t gain much traction until the argument was reframed around the idea that one had a right to protect one’s health from second hand smoke.

Nor is the effort afraid to cede short term satisfaction in order to meet the long term goals. First rule of building public will for art and culture is you don’t talk about art and culture. (Because the term currently has negative connotations for people.)

The effort has moved to the next step with the creation of the Creating Connections website. The site has a summary of the research to date. There are tools for getting involved, including messaging, how engage with groups so they feel like they have a stake in the outcome and questions to ask oneself about the experiences you are providing to the community.

What I was surprised to see was the inclusion of talking points about the Building Public Will effort that accompanied a Powerpoint presentation on the subject.

Basically, anyone can go out and start talking to groups about this effort tomorrow if they wanted to. I feel like that is putting a lot of trust in people not to screw it up. But that also fits into the underlying philosophy about this being a grassroots effort about active participation in the arts and culture.

So if anyone wants me to come talk to their group, let me know. I am ready! More importantly, now you have the tools to deliver the talk yourself. (Though obviously a famous blogger such as myself would have WAY more gravitas!)

Data Is Nice, Stories Are Better

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It is pretty much an accepted truth that if you want to secure funding for the arts from a government entity or foundation, you need to marshal a lot of data to prove you are having an impact, especially an economic impact.

However, in a recent interview Kresge Foundation President & CEO Rip Rapson seems to indicate that story rather than data may be more important in influencing decisions and policy.

Rapson speaks about a conversation he had with former NEA Chair Rocco Landesman about the ArtPlace initiative. (my emphasis)

And I said, well, I agree with that, but how about the data, and how about the quantitative elements of all of this? Isn’t that what will tip the scales?

And he just laughed. He wore these big cowboy boots, and he stood up, and he pounded the floor, and he said, you know what? I walk into every congressional office in the United States House of Representatives, and not one asks me about the data. They all want to know a story about what happened in one of their neighborhoods, one of their communities, one of their cities.

He doesn’t say that data isn’t important. My suspicion is that politicians especially like to have data to corroborate their decisions if anyone questions them. Rapson says one of the goals of ArtPlace is to help discover:

“Is there something between the highly rigorous, systematized generation of data about how many dollars per square inch an arts activity generates and all of these millions of points of light? When are the data important? When are the stories important? How do you aggregate the stories?”

A little later he gives an anecdote that illustrates how people overlook the arts in their lives and just how invested they are in their practice. He speaks of a very conservative wardperson in Minneapolis who thought the arts were a waste of time. (my emphasis)

“He actually hauled me in front of the city council committee to explain why in heaven’s name we would accept a grant like this.

So, I said, well, Walter, could we have the very first conversation in your ward, and he kind of grumbled and said all right, all right. So, we had it. It was at his Ukrainian church where he went every Sunday. We were able to identify the woman who sewed the vestments, the man who had done the mural painting on the altar, the three women, who every year created the Ukrainian Easter eggs. We got the choir director. You get the drift.

And Dziedzic walked in and saw these13 people in his congregation, and I said something to the effect of “I want to introduce you to your arts and cultural community, Walter.” And they all talked about how art became central to the way this Ukrainian church practiced, and of course he was toast; he became the biggest single advocate of how arts and culture sort of shaped community life. Now, I could have brought him all sorts of data, I suppose, but, having him sit with 13 or 14 of his congregation members talking about Ukrainian eggs and choral concerts, was really quite wonderful.

So in trying to convince people of the value of the arts in their lives, it may take focusing on impacts on a very granular level. Not just things that happen in the district or town that they identify with, but how it manifests directly in places they are deeply invested and care about.

A program that served 1000 school kids may not be as important as the joy it brought a single kid.

While the implications of that single sentence could lead to a whole debate about influence, wealth disparities, urban vs rural funding, etc., remember that not all the hearts and minds you need to influence are politicians, funding organizations and individual donors. Just shifting the general perception for a greater number of people in a community can be a victory.

Overhead Funding May Not Be Expanding, But The Conversation Is

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Something I had meant to mention in my post yesterday was that Priceonomics’ admiration of Yerba Buena’s Dream House Raffle sounded very similar to fund raising philosophy espoused by Dan Pallotta.

Said Priceonomics,

There is something admirable about Yerba Buena’s Dream House Raffle.

Every nonprofit spends a lot of time conducting and worrying about fundraising, and that is time that could be spent on the nonprofit’s mission. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts identified a new revenue stream and has done well at it. It now raises more money from its raffle than it receives from individual donations or from the city of San Francisco.

Dan Pallotta says something similar in his 2013 TED Talk:

Now, if you were a philanthropist really interested in breast cancer, what would make more sense: go out and find the most innovative researcher in the world and give her 350,000 dollars for research, or give her fundraising department the 350,000 dollars to multiply it into 194 million dollars for breast cancer research?

If you have been following my blog for any period of time, you know that there has been a lot of discussion and examination about overhead ratio as a valid measure of institutional effectiveness.

Of late, the topic has been spilling out of publications focused on non-profit audiences and into the mainstream. This week, FastCompany’s FastCoExist took up the topic in a piece titled, “Demanding That Nonprofits Not Pay For Overhead Is Preventing Them From Doing Good.”

Upon reading the transcript of Dan Pallotta’s talk, I see the FastCoExist article basically says everything he did three years earlier. Except there continues to be more research conducted that is supporting the validity of the claim. FastCo cites a new Bridgespan Group study that shows how uniformly applying a flat rate limit on overhead is undermining non-profit effectiveness.

According to a recent report by Oliver Wyman and Seachange Capital Partners only 30% of New York nonprofits can be considered “financially strong”—and “many trustees do not understand the financial condition of their organization or how it compares to its peers.”

[…]

Part of the problem is that many funders have become obsessed with measuring their impact on a per-dollar basis, which means they’re more eager to give to specific projects than the institutional upkeep that supports them. But the 15% overhead limit doesn’t even parallel what commercial companies shell out. According to Bridgespan’s research, the average S&P 500 firm spends about 34% of their budget on essential behind-the-scenes support. For IT companies it’s more like 78%, the report notes. Some 21st-century nonprofits probably require the same kind of tech firepower.

Similarly Pallotta noted,

So we tell the for-profit sector, “Spend, spend, spend on advertising, until the last dollar no longer produces a penny of value.” But we don’t like to see our donations spent on advertising in charity. Our attitude is, “Well, look, if you can get the advertising donated, you know, to air at four o’clock in the morning, I’m okay with that. But I don’t want my donation spent on advertising, I want it go to the needy.” As if the money invested in advertising could not bring in dramatically greater sums of money to serve the needy.

What Bridgespan did in their research was segment non-profits into four general areas (U.S.-based direct service, policy and advocacy organizations, international networks, and research organizations) and then broke down expenses into five different categories. It probably isn’t any surprise that different segments of the non-profit sector vary widely in their needs.

There is a graphic in the FastCo article that illustrates this, but for example research organizations spent huge percentages on physical assets compared to policy and advocacy organizations. Policy and advocacy organizations didn’t spend any money on field and network operations, whereas the international and research segments did, but in greatly differing amounts.

They use this research to support their assertion that requiring flat-rate reimbursements for overhead costs across the entire non-profit sector is inappropriate. Not to mention that the percentages they set are restrictively low.

Regardless of whether this research brings about change in the immediate future, at least the scope of those involved in the conversation continues to expand.

Pursuing Better Artist Treatment Through Cultural Shift Rather Than Rules

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Given all the attention recently being paid to the release of Americans for the Arts’ Statement on Cultural Equity, I thought it would be a good time to call attention to the draft of a Code of Conduct for Non-Equity Theatre being developed by a pilot project group in Chicago.

The Code of Conduct seeks to set guidelines for the sexual content/nudity, physical safety, violence and use of cultural representation in non-union performances. Essentially, the creators want artists to be fully informed about any of these issues from the time the audition notices go up through to rehearsals and performances.

There are also some general “be decent to the artists” guidelines like:

[at auditions] Actors will be made aware of people present that are not the casting authority.

[…]

You will not be asked to audition more than 3 times for this production;
You will not be kept at any audition more than 3 hours; or past 11pm;
You will not be asked to disrobe, or perform any intimate contact or violence as a part of your audition;

Even without sexual content and violence, the interminable, anxiety-inducing audition environment has long been a source of complaints by performers. One element of the code that appears frequently is that the performer has the right to refuse to audition or refuse a casting offer without fear of future reprisals.

The code doesn’t just stipulate that you need to tell people that the roles they are auditioning for will include sexual content, staged violence or place them in physically precarious situations, it also insists that a clear plan about how these things will be handled be communicated and provides guidelines about how to address them. (i.e. at what point in the rehearsal process is full nudity implemented and how the environment should be managed.)

Cultural appropriation and stereotypes in performance has been a frequent topic of discussion and the code includes that as well.

“…actors have the right to make inquiries about how the producer plans to use their cultural personhood…

…participants have the right to speak up if…

Costume pieces that can be reasonably understood as culturally demeaning are not disclosed at audition/casting.

Staging (culturally based violence or abuse not disclosed at the time of auditions/casting)

Accents to underscore a cultural presentation not disclosed…

Make up that can be reasonably described as “blackface” or “brown face” not disclosed…

Some elements of the code are attempts to create some parity with union situations. For example, appointing a Non-Equity Deputy as an extra set of eyes too make sure the physical, social and emotional elements of the production are being handled appropriately. Included in this is addressing an environment of harassment or intimidation, be it based on sexual, gender, racial or ethnic identity; age, ability, citizenship, etc.

Again, one of the frequently mentioned aspects of the code is a clearly defined complaint path for any issue that may arise.

Reading the Code of Conduct a number of thoughts struck me. First, there is fair bit in the document that has long been part of the rules Actors’ Equity union contracts. The code is essentially asking that all performers enjoy the same basic level of consideration that union actors have received.

At the same time, there are decades old unaddressed issues here that have long bedeviled the arts community regardless of union affiliation. These are problems that everyone has talked and complained about, but nothing has been done to rectify.

Of late, many of these complaints have been addressed by action thanks to the conversation being picked up by larger constituencies. In this I see some hope that even if this specific code of conduct is not adopted, practices may change to achieve the ends the authors seek.

As they note on the project homepage, they seek to engender a cultural shift, not construct a legal document.

Return To The Valley of Intrinsic Impact

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the important thoughts Carter Gillies had about the concept of the intrinsic value of the arts.

In light of that, I wanted to look back at where the idea of intrinsic value of the arts all began. Well, at least for me.

The first attempt to measure the intrinsic value of the arts I was aware of was a study by WolfBrown on behalf of the Major University Presenters consortium.  I wrote about WolfBrown’s presentation of the study results, Assessing the Intrinsic Impacts of a Live Performance at the Arts Presenters conference back in 2008.

In writing about the report at that time, I related the concerns expressed by then president of Arts Presenters, Lisa Booth,

And while she was glad that there was a new metric of success being developed that wasn’t based in dollars or butts in seats, she was also concerned that in the eagerness to justify the value of the arts in some quantifiable way, the arts community was trying to measure what can not be measured.

This last bit was very interesting to me because Lisa Booth seemed to recognize the inevitable if these measures became widely used. If foundations and governments start basing their funding on the intrinsic value a performance has for a community, arts organizations will probably try to measure everything imaginable to show all the levels on which a performance meets funding agendas. Just as the arts aren’t well served by showing economic impact, they probably will be equally ill-advised to create numeric values for changes in things like self-actualization, captivation, social comfort level and questions raised.

I am not sure if it is fortunate or unfortunate that funders aren’t focused on improvements in intrinsic value measures.

If you want a quick primer of WolfBrown’s process and how they define things like readiness to receive, self-actualization, captivation and social comfort level, you can take a look at the website they have created for the intrinsic impact portion of their consultant work. (It looks like they have refined some of their terminology in the last 8 years.)

In terms of whether one can accurately assess any of these things so that it results in a meaningful measure of intrinsic impact, I don’t know. Even if it does, it is likely to lack the relevance to policy makers and others who are not involved and invested in the arts that Carter talks about.

What I do think their process does is get closer to bridging the communication gap between why arts people like the arts and those who don’t see any value in the arts. When you are having conversations with people where you are paying attention to things like Emotional Resonance, Captivation, Intellectual Stimulation and Social Bonding, you can start to find common language that communicates value beyond economic stimulus and cognitive development.

Great Expectations For Middle of the Road Food

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It is probably no surprise to learn that food brings communities together. CityLab recently had a piece about a group in Tallahassee, FL that received a grant from the Knight Foundation to support a project called “The Longest Table,” intended to bring 400 strangers from all parts of the city,

“…to use the dinner table as a medium for generating meaningful conversation among people of diverse ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds.”

I was thinking this sounded a lot like a project I wrote about last fall that occurred in Akron, OH that also set up tables down the middle of the road in order to bring 500 people together for a meal and discussion about how a highway that was being closed down might be re-purposed.

It turns out on closer investigation, not only was that also sponsored by the Knight Foundation, there was an earlier iteration of the Tallahassee meal that occurred last October within a week of the one in Akron.

I think this is secretly a plot by the Knight Foundation to identify the best cooks around the country for some nefarious end!

Actually, an element of that was central to the Akron 500 Plates project. (the identifying good cooks part, not nefarious plotting)

The artists and collaborators collected recipes from each of the 22 neighborhoods in the city and printed them on each of the plates so that everyone went home with a recipe from someone in the community. Then they built tables and distributed them to each of the neighborhoods to provide a gathering point at which conversations and community meals could continue.

500 Plates has made the recipes and toolkit for replicating this in the neighborhoods and other cities available on their website.

The participants in both projects talk about how the format lends itself to discussing somewhat sensitive topics because the environment sets people a little more at ease. This type of event may help arts organizations come in contact and start a conversation with the elusive demographic of people we never meet in order to learn what their barriers to involvement are.

Music To Repel, Redeem and Raze By

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You have probably heard stories about how people blast classical music to scare drug dealers out of their neighborhoods, homeless out of train stations and teens away from convenience stores.

There was recently a story in the Wall Street Journal about a town in India that is using drummers to shame people into paying taxes.

Among my first thoughts were that it is pretty awful for a guy who has been playing drums since he was two to have his performance used to punish people. Thinking of my post yesterday, it occurred to me that this may be another manifestation of the disconnect between people who value the arts and those who see little value at all. Assumptions are made about the utility of the arts as well as about how undesirable elements of society will react when exposed to them.

There is a little more nuance to the story than that. The drummers play the same music they are hired to play at weddings and birthday parties. So as the article suggests, the drumming may indeed be more about calling attention to scofflaws than torturing them. (Though the classical music being blared in train stations to scare kids away is the same music chamber groups are hired to perform at weddings, so that isn’t proof in itself.)

Also the inclusion of the musicians is accompanied by an effort to create a safer environment. Often tax collectors are beaten up. The musicians and the collectors are accompanied by security guards bearing a banner with the city coat of arms.

On the other hand, since 1/3 of the population doesn’t pay their taxes, they assume the effectiveness of the drummers will wear off soon. They next plan to send transgender women, who are believed to be able to impose hexes on people, to perform mocking dances in front of houses. Again, using a group to shame others solely on the basis of their identity or practices makes me a little uneasy.

It is difficult to begrudge those who need money for their participation in efforts aimed to force social compliance.

It really does say something about the way the arts are perceived that people think it can be used in a prescriptive way to separate the desirable from the undesirable; improve cognition and behavior and a host of other things.

Would Walter White suddenly find stores and other places he frequented that played classical music repulsive after he started cooking meth and dealing drugs?

Of course not. If we have learned anything, its that every James Bond villain or psychopathic killer is attractive, cultured, loves classical music and wants to watch the world burn.

Clearly then, while classical music keeps riff-raff away from train stations and 7-11s, it attracts megalomaniacs to concert halls in droves.

Gives you second thoughts about Drew McManus looking so suave and sophisticated in the pictures on his orchestra consulting website, doesn’t it?

(Yeah, he only wishes he was filthy rich enough to have sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads.)

Do You Love Opera For It’s Economic Impact?

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In addition to responding to comments he makes on the blog, I have had some email exchanges with artist Carter Gillies. Many times in the course of our correspondence, he will say “I think we are talking about the same thing, just in different words.” I am not always sure that we are, but I often get the impression he is operating a few steps ahead of me.

That feeling of disconnect is actually a central feature of a guest post he wrote nearly a month ago for Diane Ragsdale’s Jumper blog.

Since it was a long piece, I bookmarked it for later reading. I am somewhat embarrassed it has taken me close to a month to read it, but I encourage everyone to do so, even if it means coming back to your bookmark a couple months hence. Having read it, a lot of what he was trying to get at in our correspondence became clearer to me.

What Carter does is take a really deep look into the way we define the value of the arts. In doing so, he bolsters the argument that we should avoid talking about the value of the arts in relation to economic, social, educational, developmental etc., benefits.

To heavily summarize what he says, he notes that people in the arts have a clear sense of the value of the arts. People who are not aware of this value and even perceive the arts as valueless, do not share the same language and metrics for evaluating the arts. Communicating the value is therefore as difficult as the challenge of describing a color to a person who in unable to perceive that color. (my emphasis)

The way we mostly talk to these people is we have found that our ends, the things we value in themselves, can be the means to their own ends. They value the economy? Well, the arts are good for the economy! They think that cognitive development is important? Well, the arts are good for cognitive development! We make our own ends the means to their ends.

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient. That’s never only what they are to us. Sometimes we just have to make the case for a lesser value as the expedient means to secure funding or policy decisions. It’s better than not making any sense at all.

I don’t wake up excited to go to work to stimulate the economy. I am not eager to go to a museum opening so I can have my cognitive abilities developed. In this context, it almost sounds ridiculous.

This illustrates the disconnect between shared metrics and terminology. As an arts person, I can understand the argument that I need to pay taxes to help stimulate the economy and contribute to the cognitive development of others, but I can’t convince the government to provide funding for the arts based on why I value the arts. I get them, but they don’t get me. I need to talk about economy and cognitive development to be able to receive that tax money.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to the arts. When we talk about why we love our parents and siblings, we may talk about how well they treat us but that doesn’t truly explain why we love them. The reasons are just external metrics we know others can understand and identify. The real reasons are ineffable. There will be people with whom you become romantically involved who may treat you much better by those same standards than your family ever did, but you will never love them the way you love your bratty sibling.

Citing Archimedes famous quote, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world,” Carter notes:

In the arts we have thrown facts together, constructing the longest possible lever, but have seemingly forgotten we also need somewhere to place it. Those facts need to rest on values that can act as a fulcrum. The facts without value, or the wrong value, will simply have no leverage. They will fail to motivate.

He suggests what is needed is a change of perspective rather than trying to change minds. While this might be accomplished via the proposal to create public will for the arts that I often cite, Carter also notes that the arts community needs to change its perspective as well.

The confusion we are mired in is thinking that our difficulty is practical when in fact the impediment is structural. We need to better understand this to make appreciable headway. We can celebrate both the good art does and the good art is, a structural difference, the lever and the fulcrum. That is the value of intrinsic value for the arts.

I should note, whether you agree with the practice or not, use of taxes for economic development and education weren’t foregone conclusions. It required a change in perspective to implement both.

Got Stagefright?

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In the process of trying to convince people of the value of attending a live event, performing arts people will often cite the opportunity for chaos. They will say something along the lines of a recording will be the same every time, but in a live performance, anything can happen.

I wonder if this is really fair to the performers and crew that worked on the show because it essentially tells the audience they should be rooting, just a little, for something to go wrong.

It may seem relatively harmless, especially if you aren’t out there loudly proclaiming the certain death of the lion tamer or acrobat who operates without a net. There are a lot of performers out there who (mostly) quietly suffer from stage fright and even just a little hype can exacerbate their anxiety.

A book review in the New Yorker last August recounts some of the more famous/infamous instances of stage fright suffered by Daniel Day-Lewis,  Laurence Olivier and Glenn Gould, among others. It talks about the different things that weigh on performer’s minds, no matter how hard they try, including whether they can live up to the legend that has been attached to them.

The audience rooting against them or judging them is among the anxieties they suffer:

Some performers displace this cruelty onto the audience. The pianist Charles Rosen believed that the spectators were out there waiting for the performer to slip up: “The silence of the audience is not that of a public that listens but of one that watches—like the dead hush that accompanies the unsteady movement of the tightrope walker poised over his perilous space.”

[…]

Baryshnikov believes that it is the feeling of obligation to the audience that triggers stagefright: “Suddenly the morality kicks in. These people bought a ticket to your show.”

The problem of stage fright may be more widespread than we are generally aware. In addition to silently coping with the problem, the New Yorker article notes that many artists use beta-blockers to help them deal with their fear. This is not without some controversy.

Some people said they resulted in “phoned in” performances. Some raised the ethical question, asking whether the use of beta-blockers by pianists was any different from the use of steroids by athletes. (There is an important distinction, though. Steroids add to the body, increasing muscle mass in order to improve performance. Beta-blockers remove something from the body—the flutist’s lip tremors, the cellist’s hand tremors—in order to permit the person to produce the kind of performance he has already shown himself capable of, outside the auditorium.)

This reminded me that Drew McManus had written about the issue of “performance enhancing drugs” for musicians a dozen years ago for The Partial Observer.

I briefly thought that a more constructive use of the “anything can happen” phrase might be to associate it with idea that you may see a breakthrough performance or a moment of inspiration and synchronicity that transcends the normal experience.

I quickly realized this approach may increase the anxiety for the audience. “Am I witnessing a transcendent moment? How do I really know? I wasn’t really bowled over, but maybe I missed it. I should probably join the standing ovation just to be sure, right?”

The truth is, live performance has the potential for witnessing some crises and participating in moments of transcendence. To ignore that these opportunities exist does a disservice to the experience. Regardless of whether these factors are mentioned, performers are still going to experience stage fright and audiences are still going to wonder if they are missing something everyone else seems to get.

Not to mention, these experiences aren’t unique to the performing arts. Athletes fear they will lose the edge that makes them great and many spectators find themselves unable to figure out what is going on or why anyone gets excited by the sport in the first place.

While it is generally acknowledged that the arts have to be sensitive to the barriers that may exist for audiences, the same isn’t really true for the performers.

In many other fields of employment there are coaches, counselors and human resource personnel available. Granted, many of these resources are less than perfect. A highly paid athlete is going to get a lot more support and guidance from the team’s infrastructure if they fall into rut than a fast food worker will from their company.

How many theater companies, dance companies and orchestras have a program in place to provide coaching for a performer who has lost their edge? (Actually, the dance company practice of having regular classes might count as that.) Or acknowledge that people might have debilitating stage fright, much less provide help for people who are experiencing it?

I am left wondering how prevalent it is since it isn’t often discussed. Given that seven people, (a fairly large number for that column), commenting on Drew’s Partial Observer admitted to using a drug to deal with anxiety, I suspect it is more prevalent than we imagine.

They Are Us, We Are They

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Seth Godin made a post in which he listed some of the following features of crowds:

[…]
The crowd gets on its feet when your band plays the big hit, and sits down for the new songs….

The crowd will always pick the movie over the book.

The crowd would rather wait in line for the popular attraction.

The crowd likes to be chased.

[…]

The crowd’s favorite words include fast, easy, cheap, fun, now and simple.

The crowd needs a deadline.

The crowd is the group of people who don’t get what you do, who loom on the horizon as the reward for making your work more popular.

And yet, the crowd continually gets more than it deserves, because people like you make work that matters. Work that you’re proud of.

Many of us can identify with that final line. We are under appreciated for the work we do in our communities.

It is important to remember, we too, are the crowd.

Most of these sentiments can apply to each of us as well in regard to that bakery, bookstore, school, fund raiser, festival, etc., that we think is really great but we don’t have the time, energy or opportunity to frequent as much as we would like. There are people who complain about our lack of engagement with them as much as we complain about theirs in regard to us.

I used to like to say, “Customers are idiots, I should know because I am one.” There is an incident that occurred at a Tesco in Ireland eight years ago that I am still not sure if I was being a stupid, clueless American or the employee was being inattentive. (I suspect I was being stupid and clueless regardless of nationality but there is room for doubt.)

It is impossible to be as attentive and have the same level of priorities as every struggling entity needs us to have. Working in the arts and non-profit sector, we are able to be a little more empathetic and mindful than most of the consequences our choices have on others.

As members of the crowd, we are also cognizant of the fact that it can be really difficult to inspire and motivate us contrary to our taste and priorities.

It is just that we forget that or wish it to be otherwise when it comes to other’s lack of investment in our work which is clearly better than they deserve.

The Stakeholders Are Watching

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In Non Profit Quarterly, Ruth McCambridge wrote a pretty involved comparison between the stakeholder revolts which reversed board decisions to close San Diego Opera and Sweet Briar College.

There is a lot to be gleaned about how popular support has apparently turned things around for the two organizations. It is worth reading on that basis alone.

There were a few things that popped out at me as general lessons, not necessarily dependent on these scenarios, about the environment in which arts organizations are operating.

First was an observation by current San Diego board chair, Carol Lazier, that:

“…the community was absolutely furious. We had a great opera company, a cultural jewel, and no one wanted to lose it. We had people who didn’t even go to the opera who were fighting closure, saying, ‘This is not right—this is owned by the public; this is not owned by the small group of people on the inside.’”

It is easy to have mixed feelings about this response because indignation by people who never attended doesn’t pay your bills. Yet we clearly know that arts organizations are viewed as a community asset by both individuals and businesses. People may not actually participate in your activities, but they like the idea of living in a community that has an opera, symphony and art museum. Businesses and individuals will relocate to places with these amenities.

While the presence of your arts organization is definitely an intangible asset, the value of which is difficult to quantify to politicians and others who want to cut arts funding, this type of reaction does allow you to answer the question about how your community would be impacted if your organization didn’t exist.

Another observation made about San Diego Opera board governance provided some insight into a downside of a “Get, Give or Get Off” policy of board membership.

The San Diego Opera was one of those organizations where having a large number of people on the board was a function of fundraising. You pay x amount of money and you’re on the board, and no one wants to alienate any of those folk with contentious conversations that cause discomfort. But that is certainly not a good modus operandi for an organization facing the whitewater of the twenty-first-century cultural organization. And, it was not only the business model that had to change but the governance model, too.

The implication that a non profit needs to have a governance structure that allows it to be nimble is something to seriously consider. Scrutiny of non-profits is shifting focus about the role of a board away from fund raising and toward effective governance.

The San Diego Opera board went from 53 to 24 in the course of a few days due to resignations. A quick look at the opera website shows it continues to maintain those numbers two years later.

Not only is there no correlation between the ability to make large donations and the ability to effectively govern an organization, some people may have no interest in doing so. This made me recall a story told by an executive director about a large donor who showed relief when presented the option of NOT serving on the board because they didn’t see it as a reward at all.

Finally, in relation to the Sweet Briar closure, I was quite intrigued to learn that generally those who most supported the closure were from among the earliest graduates. When they attended, a women’s college was the only option for higher education. Now that a woman could attend anywhere they wished, they didn’t feel single gender higher education was relevant any longer.

It is the younger generations that intentionally chose to attend Sweet Briar when hundreds of other options existed that have been the most invested in keeping the institution open.

This information brought to mind the question that arts organizations have increasingly been challenged to ask themselves over the last few decades: Given that so many other options exist for people, are you providing those who intentionally choose to engage with the arts a reason to continue to do so?

The example of Sweet Briar seems to illustrate that answering in the affirmative is what turns people into invested stakeholders.

Reaching The Unknown Non-Participant

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I almost threw money away, literally.

I received piece a mail last week bearing the logo of a state university indicating a survey was enclosed. I was just about to throw it away when I became curious to see if they were doing a market survey to gauge the educational needs of the community.

When I opened it, I saw it was a public health survey. Just as I was about to throw that away, a $2 bill fluttered out on to my coffee table. I understand why they may have chosen to include the money as an inducement to complete the survey, but I wonder how much money has literally been thrown away in unopened envelopes around the state this week.

I feel some empathy for those administering the survey because this illustrates the effort and expense you have to go in order to reach people with whom you don’t have a relationship.

One of the challenges the arts have is to have a conversation with those who aren’t participating in order to learn why they aren’t. There will always be people who will never participate in an activity, regardless of what you do, but there are many who will be willing but do not participate for various reasons.

These reasons might be lack awareness; currently lacking the time due to child rearing obligations which will abate in a few years; perceive they lack the time, knowledge, etc, for whom opportunities exist and can be communicated or created.

Reaching these unknown people to survey them or even communicate with them is even more difficult now than a decade or so ago. So many people lack landlines that there is no destination for even an annoying robocall to reach.

Thanks to the option to receive financial statements, bills and other communications online, it is much easier to identify the few pieces of postal mail that is relevant to you without even opening them. (Those emails about winning $5 million in the Irish-Nigerian lottery that was liberated after a palace coup dispossessed the prince of an oil rich nation still almost fool me.)

As we can see, even trying to bribe people to participate is fraught with its own challenges.

My feeling is that an effective campaign to reach the unreached is going to require much more personal interactions either with organizations reaching out to individuals in an involved, relationship building effort or calling upon people with whom they already have a relationship to reach out to people and encourage them to at least respond to a request for information.

Certainly, technology can facilitate this by allowing people to spread the word quickly over social media. A degree of trust in all involved parties needs to be there. I am thinking, in part, about the post I made last week about a greater lack of willingness to trade privacy for benefits than we have been lead to believe.

It would be great if someone could figure out how to create survey that engaged as many people as asking about what color lightsaber you would wield while yielding, effective, meaningful, actionable results. (Which of Yo Yo Ma’s cellos are you?)

Until then, it may take a lot of asking.

Info You Can Use: Getting Meaningful Feedback From Your Community

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Last month, I wrote about attending a session at creative industry conference where Marc Folk, Executive Director of The Arts Commission in Toledo, spoke about learning that one needs to go out to the community as a guest, asking to be hosted at meetings, gatherings, etc.

At the time, I wasn’t sure exactly how that idea translated into practice. Initially I envisioned something akin to the  electoral process in NH where people host intimate meetings with political candidates in their homes or perhaps being invited to speak at a community or church meeting.

I also thought that he might have meant participating as a true guest at first where you weren’t necessarily the focus of attention as a speaker, etc, but just invited to sit quietly and observe the first time out.

Marc had mentioned sometimes there was a tendency to view yourself as “riding in on a white horse” to save a community so I thought being the guest of honor at a meeting might reinforce that conceit.

Just last week, Margy Waller addressed the same issue in an Americans for the Arts blog post, “We Are From the Arts and We’re Here to Help.”

“In one of the sessions, a group of participants had a passionate discussion on using the word “help.” They noted that it really isn’t possible to have a conversation about an equitable community if one party is offering to help the other. The word help itself implies that one group has more than the other—more to offer, more knowledge, more resources, more capacity, and so on. Using the word help shifts the perceived balance of power—in a way likely to shut down true collaboration and partnership efforts.

The solution? If you find yourself using the word help when talking about the role of arts in community, stop. Listen carefully and ask whether this is really the way toward an equitable community.”

Curious about the process he and his staff used, I reached out to Marc just prior to the holidays to learn more, summarizing my impressions and assumptions noted above. With his permission, I am reprinting a portion of his response:

Our approach utilized a combination of techniques, including what you listed above.

As far as process we first identified a local community partner.  If possible, it was a community center or arts center in the neighborhood.  We then reached out to the leadership of the center or another community group if the center did not have leadership, or there was no center and asked for a meeting.  We then met with them and/or their board leadership to ask for their help in organizing a community meeting.

Once a meeting was called, we went back into the community centers/host venues and held “a listening tour” if you will.  An important technique was that we hired a facilitator/consultant that facilitated these sessions.  This created a degree of separation between the Arts Commission staff and the community issue and allowed for a more open and candid dialog from the community.

Out of this, we became more connected with “culture” or activities in these neighborhoods which has led to the building of genuine relationships.

A copy of the plan can be found here.

The reports from the neighborhood conversations can be found at the back of the plan.

I think the most important lesson is about language syntax/communication and authentic relationship development.  My point at the conference about the white horse or “going into these neighborhoods” revealed much about our perspectives and gave great clue to where we needed to start our work.

For those that are interested, the neighborhood reports start around page 50 of the strategic plan.

I greatly appreciate Marc taking the time to outline the process for me. The importance of involving a facilitator was something I suspected in the back of my mind that he confirmed.

Based on his response, I have already started a conversation with my board president about how we might adapt this in our own community. I have mentioned to colleagues at other arts organizations I had some ideas I wanted to run past them in the hopes of establishing a cooperative listening tour.

When Honesty Is Better Than Doing Your Best

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Back in September, Seth Godin wrote a short post on the idea of doing one’s best.

It’s a pretty easy way to let ourselves (or someone else) off the hook. “Hey, you did your best.”

[…]

By defining “our best” as the thing we did when we merely put a lot of effort into a task, I fear we’re letting ourselves off the hook.

[…]

It’s entirely possible that it’s not worth the commitment or the risk or the fear to go that far along in creating something that’s actually our best. But when we make that compromise, we should own it. “It’s not worth doing my best” is actually more honest and powerful than failing while being sort of focused.

Since it is the beginning of the new year, a time of making resolutions to do better, I thought it was an appropriate time to call attention to this idea.

(By the way, what does it say that I took a short post about doing your best and abridged it further, thereby lowering expectations of the reader’s attention span?)

I chose this post of Godin’s and edited it as I did because I wanted to focus on the sincerity inherent in being realistic rather than being idealistically aspirational.

There is already a lot of idealism in the non-profit arts, especially when it comes to creation, and there is nothing wrong with that. If there is, I am among the chief offenders.

There is also a lot of idealism in non-profit arts organization mission statements that promise to offer the “highest quality, best-in-class, world-class, superior” etc., product or experience.

In the face of declining donations and revenue generating attendance, groups often don’t have the resources to provide the highest quality product and experience. Instead of making a resolution for the new year to strive for some nebulous standard of excellence†, I think it is worth engaging in a little self-examination along the lines Godin suggests and acknowledge where you are not providing the best.

For example, are you offering the very best events your budget will allow, even though that means there will only be four events a year? Or are you making compromises so that you can offer a wider variety of experiences over the course of 8 events?

Is your staff trying to do more with less or have you scaled back services due to budget constraints?

An honest assessment of this situation rather than continuing to mouth platitudes about offering the highest quality interactions may help you better understand the implications of these trade offs. If you can say, yes we decided it wasn’t worth keeping the office open as many hours six days a week, you take responsibility for choosing not to serve a segment of your community or at least choosing a course that makes it difficult for some to receive service.

While it can be disappointing to face the areas in which you are falling short, it is a more constructive approach than claiming you are at a loss to know why attendance is falling or a demographic of the community is failing to engage with you. You can better address these issues if you have a good sense of the causes behind them.

†If you have a well-defined plan for achieving excellence with criteria, milestones and resources dedicated to achieving it, by all means go for it!

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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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