Art(ist) Education

Getting “A Real Job” Thanks To Your Arts Job

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Last month the LA Stage Times had a two part series on work and the arts. One was on jobs at alternative theatres, but the one that piqued my interest was about the benefits former arts managers felt their arts experiences brought to their for profit finance jobs.

As much as I am sad to hear that people can’t support themselves in arts related jobs, I am always interested in information that makes a case for the value of the arts. Whole entries can be devoted to the brain and talent drain the arts sector suffers due to inability to pay a living wage, but I won’t delve into that here since the two profiled who left for the for profit sector are still very invested in the organizations they left.

One gentleman stepped down from his position, though he stayed on the organization’s board, to pursue an MBA and eventually work for Citibank. He felt his experience helped him develop interpersonal skills that enhance his value to the bank. Returning to work in the arts using the skills he learned in banking is always at the corner of his mind.

“But Tarlow observes how his managing director experiences at Celebration still feed into his current job. “Because it’s not only numbers now,” he says. “It’s about meeting with people and doing things more like I did at the theater. Building relationships…I have to work with people in the same way.”
[…]
“[Celebration] was a lot of work, but the rewards I got from it were a great gift,” reflects Tarlow. “When you get to do that kind of theater, you really make what you want out of it. It was a gift for me.” And it’s possible that this “gift” could eventually return him to theater — but in a better-paying job. “I have thought about becoming the finance director of a large arts organization someday. The skills I’m learning at the bank are definitely preparing me for a role like this.”

The second person profiled is also still very much involved with the theatre group he started out with and uses his day job as an auditor to inform the advice he gives to his arts organization and vice versa. Talking to arts people with no background in accounting and finance about those concerns helps him become a better all around communicator on the subject.

“His position takes him to a wide range of companies, both non-profit and for-profit, in all parts of LA. “I’ve worked on audits for much larger arts organizations with ‘real’ budgets,” he says. “Then I look at the smaller Rogue budgets and see where we have opportunities for…growth,” he adds.

Seeing differences between for-profit and non-profit models on a regular basis puts Maes in a constant state of noting challenges for the Rogues, and most small theaters, particularly in terms of keeping theater staff and managers focused on fundraising.

[…]

With his added CPA training and work experience, Maes imposes a tougher financial regimen on the Rogues than he did in the beginning. He is particularly geared toward thinking in terms of risk management, a quality he recommends for all small theaters, where even the smallest mishap — such as a show’s underperforming box office or an unforeseen loss of assets — can wipe out a company’s already anemic bank account.

[…]

Maes wants every theater company to remember that financial people engaging in a small non-profit are most likely not there because of the numbers. Personal meetings and being involved with creative people is what makes the arts rewarding for everyone, not just the artists….

…It’s also helpful being a good communicator and coming from a communication-driven art form. Being able to explain accounting to artists helps me even if I have to talk to someone with an accounting background.”

The third person profiled has worked in the arts sector for a number of years but is now wondering if she should parlay that experience in marketing, development and producing into a job in the for profit sector or continue working for non-profits. She has the confidence that the skills she brings from her non-profit experience can land her a job in a pro-profit studio or marketing firm and finds herself caught in the classic “passion or pocketbook” internal debate.

Can We Do Lunch?

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I frequently reference the positive interactions and contributions that have resulted from one of the visual arts teachers eating his lunch backstage. He says he eats here because his students can’t find him to bug him while he is eating. While he does often eat peacefully in our building, he gets himself involved in providing advice or direct assistance on some project or another on a pretty regular basis during his meal. It leads me to suspect he is exaggerating his desire to flee his students.

I get a warm feeling when I hear him chatting with people backstage, even if it is about something entirely unrelated to performing/visual arts like remembrances of past vacation trips. I know there are relationships being strengthened in those conversations and that will manifest to our mutual benefit somewhere down the road.

I got to thinking about how this dynamic which evolved through no effort of our own could be intentionally be replicated elsewhere.

One thing that occurred to me was that K12 schools might set up a program where students could have lunch with artists once or twice a week. They could just hang out together without any expectation of some sort of “artistic experience” occurring and talk about sports or the weather. Maybe the artist would give some sort of advice on a project a student was working on, maybe they would just complain about the cafeteria food.

Of course, this is predicated half on the assumption there is still a music/drama/art studio in the school to hang out in and half on the assumption the arts programs in the school are either non-existent or on the wane. Obviously, this could be a great complement to school arts programs which are already vibrant. But really, one of the benefits I saw to this idea was that if the school can’t support anything else arts related, maybe they could scrape some dollars together to pay for the artist’s gas and lunch over the course of a year.

My other thought was that this could provide the most regular, unintimidating interaction with the arts a student might get. They get to hang out with a knowledgeable artist who isn’t grading or placing expectations on them on a consistent basis. There is an opportunity to actively engage with an artist in a manner that assembly performances and lecture demos by visiting artists don’t provide.

The benefit to the artist is that they gain some insight in to what younger people in the community (and perhaps the community at large) is thinking and experiencing about the arts informally over a longer period of time rather than in the short span of a Q&A or reception which impose constraints and expectations on the interaction.

Unlike a one off outreach concert/lec-dem, there is no pressure on the artist to provide an experience replete with meaning to make the kids love the arts because it might be the only experience they get at all this year.

Students having a rich and varied experience with the arts is the ideal, but maybe this simple interactions over lunch across a student’s educational career is what is needed to normalize the idea that one would go to or be involved in performance, museum, gallery opening when one got older and had the time and resources to do so.

I talk about this idea in relation to K12 schools, but obviously there is nothing to keep an arts organization anywhere from having weekly lunches anyone could attend without any preconceived expectations about the experience. Obviously it would be ideal if it could happen in an arts center so people get used to the idea of just wandering in and so you can jump up and grab something to demonstrate with if someone asks a question.

But if an arts center is physically in a bad location or people just won’t consider it as part of their lunch plans, having a weekly gathering at the local coffee shop/diner to talk about whatever can be just as effective. (Not to mention, the coffee shop owner will love your arts organization all the more.)

Thoughts about this? Ways it can be improved? This entry was about 85% stream of consciousness so I am likely to have overlooked some problems or additional opportunities.

Passion About Your Work Is Hard Work

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Apropos of my post a few weeks back about people thinking creativity as a lightning strike gift rather than a process of work over time is a piece on Harvard Business Review blog site in which the author, Cal Newport, makes a similar observation about the idea one should follow their passion when looking for a job.

Newport notes that following ones passion has become common career advice and includes a Google N-Gram charting the explosive rise of the phrase in print use during the 2000s.

“Why is this a problem? This simple phrase, “follow your passion,” turns out to be surprisingly pernicious…The verb “follow” implies that you start by identifying a passion and then match this preexisting calling to a job. Because the passion precedes the job, it stands to reason that you should love your work from the very first day.

It’s this final implication that causes damage. When I studied people who love what they do for a living, I found that in most cases their passion developed slowly, often over unexpected and complicated paths. It’s rare, for example, to find someone who loves their career before they’ve become very good at it — expertise generates many different engaging traits, such as respect, impact, autonomy — and the process of becoming good can be frustrating and take years.

The early stages of a fantastic career might not feel fantastic at all, a reality that clashes with the fantasy world implied by the advice to “follow your passion” — an alternate universe where there’s a perfect job waiting for you, one that you’ll love right away once you discover it. It shouldn’t be surprising that members of Generation Y demand a lot from their working life right away and are frequently disappointed about what they experience instead.”

The arts career path has long had a “paying your dues” period of near slavery labor for low or no pay internship followed by successfully transitioning to a near poverty level pay. I joke, but only because I don’t want to confuse the poor treatment many entry level people are subject to with the genuine need to actually go through an unsatisfying process of improving your abilities.

The dream of being discovered and making it big is what causes many to pursue a career in the arts. The fact that there are some who can make it big with no apparent effort is something of a plague on the arts industry.

Still for many people, this dues paying process gives people a realistic view of what is expected in the arts career path and they choose to leave it.

Pursuing an arts career with its abysmal pay can be something of a blessing in disguise as part of the dues paying process. The fact we have the stereotype of the actor who waits tables shows that many creative types are picking up other skills in the process of pursuing the dream.

Of course, the benefit of this all hinges on heeding the advice of our grandparents to do everything we do well. It is easy to fall into the practice of not taking a job seriously figuring your effort doesn’t matter since you will be gone soon enough. Then when you revise your career plans, you may suddenly find that as a result of your inattentiveness no one will credit you as having paid some dues.

One of my first jobs was doing yard work which involved everything from mowing and weeding to mucking out horse stalls and polishing brass and bronze pots. I don’t think it directly prepared me for a job in the arts, (though I did end up driving a farm tractor a lot the rural arts center I worked at), it probably instilled a work ethic, taught me about a lot uncommon practices like beekeeping and gave me many problem solving abilities. (Like the time I set fire to the…erm, well I have said too much already.)

Cal Newport calls for career advice to reference the inevitable sour period before you feel inspired by your work.

In some respects, I think the arts are blessed with the stereotype of the wait staff who wants to act. Even though no one believes they will ever have to work in a restaurant to support themselves, that waiter is in our collective unconscious and can’t be exorcised. Part of us always knows that possibility exists. Some may even be motivated to pursue excellence to ensure it doesn’t happen to them.

Still more discussion of that metaphorical waiter needs to happen to make people aware that the pursuit of their passion may not come easily or as directly as they imagine.

Many performing artists would acknowledge their awareness that the pursuit doesn’t come easily since many of them start working hard at eight or nine years old. The problem is that “practice hard to be a success” has been used to motivate them for all those years and it is not a foregone conclusion, especially in relation to orchestras these days.

Arts and culture industries needs to emphasize the fact that the path to success may not be as direct as it has been represented to encourage people to think about and be open to alternative routes.

Info You Can Use: Playing With Your Volunteers

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About a month ago I wrote about how our accreditation team used games to get the leadership ready for the accreditation process coming up this year. I had noted that while accreditation is a pretty oppressive and mind numbing subject, the games made learning about it easier. I had suggested that this was a good approach for tackling administrative and governance processes.

This weekend, we actually used a similar approach during the much more pleasant process of volunteer training so I thought I would share what we did.

We held a brunch in our lobby. My assistant theatre manager and I made Belgian waffles and pancakes to order for our volunteers (we also had eggs, breakfast meats and a pretty good toppings bar.) After eating our fill, we talked about the upcoming season of shows and why each was so interesting.

Then we had a scavenger hunt which actually proved to be a good tool for making people more aware of many aspects of their jobs and the theatre building. Some of the questions were just fun and silly like getting a picture of a prop backstage and some information from a set model. Others were more directly related to things we wanted our volunteers to know.

For example we asked how many theatre seats were in a row that had empty spots for wheelchairs so they were aware that the number on the right most seat wasn’t actually the seat count for the row.

Because there is construction next to the theatre we had them take a picture of one of the large signs directing people along the detour from the disabilities parking to the lobby which forced the volunteers to walk the path a wheelchair would have to follow.

We asked for the name of the person who sponsored the Green Room so that the volunteers knew where the green room was and were familiar with the name of one of our important donors.

And of course, we made sure they knew that most crucial of all information–where the bathrooms are–by making them count all the stalls available for use by audience members. (Which also helped them know which restrooms had the most capacity.)

I think this was a much more effective technique to simply giving a tour and pointing things out because it forced the volunteers to pay closer attention to the surroundings as they sought out our grand piano and the 2005-2006 season brochures hidden around the building. It also promoted team work and helped the volunteers bond over activities other than ripping tickets and stuffing program books.

Though to be clear, this doesn’t replace our orientation tours. Every volunteer is given a tour of the facility which points out the location of emergency exits and life safety equipment along with instruction about the procedures.

Nearly all of the volunteers are interested in going around the building again if provided the opportunity. Opening all the doors and turning on all the lights to let them scurry around looking for things changes their relationship with the facility and infuses the experience with a bit of the playfulness and fun that characterize the arts.