Art(ist) Education

Follow My Curious Example

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Fast Company had a quick piece on the habits of curious people. I didn’t get past the second sentence, “Answers are more valued than inquisitive thought, and curiosity is trained out of us,” before I started wondering how arts organizations could engender more curiosity in potential program participants.

Moving from the statement that “curiosity is trained out of us”, it is easy to immediately blame the problem of declining audiences on the education system for valuing correct answers over inquiry and exploration. In a sense though that is just a reflection of society as a whole where having the wrong opinion on social or political issues can see you pilloried in your community or on social media.

Add to that the rising cost of attending performances and it becomes a little easier to understand why people may be averse to new experiences without some assurances that they will enjoy themselves and not be challenged too much.

One of the lines from the article that follows about “…the average teacher, who peppers kids with 291 questions a day and waits an average of one second for a reply,” reminded me of my teacher education classes where we were counseled not to be afraid of the silence between asking a question and getting an answer.

I have often mentioned that there are no special techniques or theater games that will make someone more creative. The techniques and games are useless in themselves, it is the act of taking the time apart to engage in “non-productive” activities that has value.

That time might be spent playing games, sitting quietly or contemplating how the segments of your sidewalk were formed to leave space for a tree. The leaves, bark or texture of concrete might give you insight into how to design a new type of fabric—or result in nothing at all (at least today).

But people see value in acquiring these skills for their workplace. How do you inspire people to want to become more curious? As they say, you can’t make a person change, they have to want it for themselves.

I am not sure there is a clear way of doing so other than modeling the practice for others.

Ironically, it may best be accomplished by replacing silence with silence.

Yeah, that is a little glib, but what I mean is replace the absence of an opportunity to ask questions and explore with the silence that follows asking a question.

Some of the best Q&A sessions I have experienced with an artist are when they ask: what did you think; what questions do you have; what did this make you feel? And then they waited, unafraid of the silence that might follow. Generally what happens is that after a few tentative questions, people decide it is okay to raise their hands and you end the session with unanswered questions.

But the artist or facilitator or tour guide has to be skilled at handling these interactions. A way of modeling curious behavior is to use some of the suggestions in the FastCompany piece – asking audience members/participants questions about what they think, how they felt, why they had a reaction, and encouraging them to turn those questions back on the facilitators. When the facilitators answer that they don’t know and lead the participants to hypothesize, they serve as a good example of curious behavior.

You may be thinking, we do Q&As and tours of our facility all the time, it isn’t really helping matters.

A couple questions for you though–how well do you promote these opportunities? As much as you promote your shows?

I’m sure like me, you have had people come up and say, I have lived here all my life and this is the first time I have been in this amazing building. Or this is the first time I have been in a performing arts center/museum, etc in my life.

Now with all the advertising and marketing of shows you do, you know you have been unsuccessful at getting a lot of people in your community in your doors.

Just think then, if you aren’t pushing the Q&As, lectures, tours, workshops, classes, as hard as you do your central activities, there are probably people who regularly attend your events who probably aren’t aware these activities are available.

Just last year I had someone who attended a Q&A who was amazed by the very concept of being able to have a Q&A with performers. Not with those particular performers, with the fact that the opportunity even existed. I took it for granted people knew arts organizations did this sort of thing from time to time when the chance presented itself, but that was a mistaken assumption.

As I sit here writing this post, I thought about the board meeting we are having on stage in two weeks. My guess is that 3/4 of the board members probably haven’t been backstage even after years of service on the board and I should probably have staff on hand to help give tours and stimulate their curiosity.

In some respects, encouraging people to be curious can be as easy as letting them into the less public areas of your building and allowing them to touch an old piece of scenery you walk by everyday to get to the microwave.

Info You Can Use: Can You Talk About Your Arts Org’s Secret Sauce In Less Than Two Slides?

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A little while ago Entrepreneur website had an infographic Guy Kawasaki created of the “The Only 10 Slides Needed When Pitching Your Business.”

I bookmarked the article because even though most non-profits don’t pitch investors the way a Silicon Valley company might, they still need to convince various constituencies to support them and doing so in a simple and effective manner can be important.

Or in other words–how to do a presentation without using a massive Powerpoint presentation. Kawasaki’s infographic maps out the order in which 10 slides (15 maximum) should be presented.

At first glance, you may not think every slide is applicable, but just think about the grant applications you make. How many of them ask about your business model, strategic planning, problem you are addressing, promotional plans, evaluation method, list of board and staff members and justify why you receive funding based on past successes? All of that is in the infographic by other names.

If you are talking to potential audience members or volunteers, you can eliminate some of these slides. The question still remains, can you go out into the community and talk about the programming and opportunities you offer in a simplified and interesting way, or are you going to have a slide for each of your events?

The slides can be metaphorical by the way. This is more about tight organization of thoughts than the availability and use of a projector and screen at a presentation. Trying to include too much content in your presentation is akin to trying to cram as many images from your upcoming season in one slide in order to limit it to 10 total. It reduces the effectiveness of the whole.

Right at the top of the infographic is says, the low number forces you to focus on the absolute essentials…the more slides you need, the less compelling your idea.

Kawasaki’s chart has one slide for the Value Proposition – “Explain the Value of the Pain You Alleviate or the Value of the Pleasure You Provide,” and one slide for the Underlying Magic – “Describe the technology, secret sauce or magic behind your product…”

These are the bread and butter areas of the arts. Arts organizations are all about the pleasurable experience and magic. But can you make that case in just a couple slides, even if you were allowed a total of four slides between these two areas?

Can you do it a way that is focused on the pleasure the audience/participant will receive? Nobody buys secret sauce that only the cook thinks tastes good. People have to know they will enjoy the secret sauce as well.

Obviously, this practice is transferable to other areas of the organization, especially marketing. Can you communicate the essence of what your event is in a poster, broadcast or print ad, social media post, email blast, etc? Can you make the case for donating in a brief curtain speech or solicitation letter? Can you give a gallery tour/play talk/concert lecture that makes people want to come back and learn more or do their own research?

Why In God’s Name Does This Seem Like A Radical Notion!?

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Seth Lepore wrote a piece on HowlRound about the need for Artists to Be Entrepreneurs. I thought it was pretty well written and on the mark.

However, I have been feeling extremely frustrated by the response to his column. The amount of retweets of the piece has had me cursing under my breath because it feels like people are just discovering this idea for the first time. I know it has been a continuous topic for the last decade at least. Add to that the common refrain that arts organizations should be run like a business and I have a hard time believing this is a revolutionary notion to anyone.

I was going to start this post with the phrase “Last week Seth Lepore wrote..” because I have been seeing people mention it so much it feels like it has been a week since the post first appeared. It has only been three days.

I don’t usually like to post on topics that are getting a lot of traffic and generating conversation elsewhere. Especially if I don’t have any new insight or counterargument. But I posted a comment on Lepore’s piece saying this topic apparently needs to be discussed more often if it is garnering so much notice.

So here I am, calling additional attention to the issue.

As I suggested, I don’t really have anything to add to what he wrote. Quite honestly, just thinking about this topic is agitating me more than you can imagine and it is difficult for me to calmly compose a post.

Partially this is due to the fact that the anecdotes Lepore relates about the lack of training in these areas are completely familiar to me. I referenced the idea that performing arts training programs aren’t doing enough to train students for careers in a post last month.

Some of the content of that post comes from direct experiences I have had with formal performing arts training programs that don’t train students to manage their own careers. Nor do they encourage students to create and experiment with their own independent projects and few students seem interested or motivated in doing so on their own.

I have worked at a community college without even a certificate program in performance where students had full time jobs, went to school and were taking the initiative to create their own projects and getting involved with other people’s. Some of it stunk, but it got better every year.

I don’t know what motivated one group to create work independently of their instruction and not the others except perhaps that other people around them were already modeling that behavior and inviting them to participate. And perhaps because some of their instructors enabled them by telling the students to bring in some materials and they would show them how to make masks, etc.

But there are plenty of training programs that operate amid those sort of dynamics. As Lepore suggests, a significant contributing factor is likely that faculty never emphasized the value of entrepreneurship, investigating collaborations, etc. They never insisted students learn.

Some will obviously learn by trial and error. Others may never get to a place where they feel like they know how to take control of their careers. Certainly, knowing how to manage and promote yourself well is no guarantee of a successful career. But acquiring these skills will better enable you to understand what is not working and why.

The best suggestion I have for rectifying this situation–for making posts like Lepore’s seem common rather than groundbreaking–is to ask the school you got your arts degree from what they are doing to train their students and enable them to handle their careers. If you didn’t graduate from such a program, (and even if you did), when you meet faculty from other arts training programs, ask them the same thing.

Turn it into one of those buzz/demand generating schemes where people go into a store to ask about a product, then have family and friends call about it, too in order to make it feel like there is an unmet demand for that product.

Which in this case is absolutely true.

What Does Your Recommendation Cost You?

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Seth Godin had a great post about word of mouth last week that really bears reading and thinking about. We all know that word of mouth referrals are often more powerful than any piece of advertising you can create.

In fact, back in 2003 a Harvard Business Review piece suggested that if you only had an opportunity to ask customers one question, “would you recommend this to a friend,” was the most effective measure of satisfaction.

Given that people are abandoning traditional forms of media, arts organizations are increasingly dependent on word of mouth, especially in the form of social media.

Godin lists six reasons why people may be reluctant to give a business a referral, but the three that seem to most closely apply to art organizations deal with the basic concern of “what does this referral say about me?”

Do I want to be responsible if my friend has a bad experience? Will I get credit if it works, blame if it doesn’t?
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How does it make me look? Do people like me recommend something like this? When I look in the mirror after recommending this, do I stand taller?

Is this difficult to explain, complex to understand, filled with pitfalls?..

These seem to be issues an arts organization needs to address most given that the arts are often viewed as an elitist pursuit that is not easy to understand.

Even if you are passionate and excited about what you saw, if your friends don’t seem to have the same level of interest and curiosity in the arts that you do, you may be reluctant to encourage the experience in case they don’t enjoy it as you have; think you are an elitist snob for enjoying the arts; or think you don’t share the same values because you enjoy and understand such dense, complicated material.

The one benefit I see to social media is that it allows you to commit to different levels of referral. If you are really anxious about what people will think about you, you can simply Like something. If a friend is incredulous about your apparent interest in modern dance, you can save face by saying a couple of the moments in the video were interesting or you thought one of the dancers was particularly attractive.

But really, since everyone will like anything with little prompting, a Like can help you test the waters and perhaps even introduce your friends to the concept of liking the arts without being too detrimental.

If you are feeling a little more confident that your friends will enjoy something as much as you do, you can share without much comment. Again, if your choices are challenged, you have some room for deniability.

If you are really confident, you can post or share with comment about how much you like something.

In this respect, social media provides insulation from the negative results of an in person recommendation.

Of course, we know that insulation goes both ways. If people are going to react negatively to something you are passionate about, they may say worse things about you online than they would in person and their scorn can linger for all to see.

Godin’s last line pretty much confirms what we already know about making arts more accessible to people. Having a high quality product isn’t enough, the whole experience has to be great as well.

“Being really good is merely the first step. In order to earn word of mouth, you need to make it safe, fun and worthwhile to overcome the social hurdles to spread the word.”

There is a lot that can contribute to “safe, fun and worthwhile.” It can the social experience and the crowd you attract. Ease of parking and finding your building can be a factor. Educational programs and materials can contribute. Every community and situation is different so you need to figure out what that means for you.