Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
NewsRoom Contact Us

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

The Folks Who Saved Our Stages Are Fighting For A Better Ticketing Experience

by

It appears the folks that spearheaded the Save Our Stages effort during Covid which became the Shuttled Venue Operators Grant program are turning their energies toward tackling all the problematic event ticketing issues we have been hearing about recently, (but suffering for decades).

The National Independent Venue Association has been joined by 18 other national and regional organizations in the Fix The Tix coalition.  The announcement of the coalition popped up last week. They haven’t listed and specific measures for which they are advocating, but the website says:

….this coalition represents stakeholders who take on all the risk to create once-in-a-lifetime experiences and bring joy, employment, and economic impact to communities across America.

We are coming together to protect fans from price gouging and deceptive and predatory ticketing practices.

Efforts To Reduce Burn Out Are Better With Company

by

There is a fairly extensive article on the Time magazine site about using creative practice to address burnout.  The piece by Jamie Ducharme was titled “I Tried to Cure My Work Burnout. Here’s What Happened.” As readers know, I dislike the prescriptive use of the arts as a cure for physical/mental/social ills so I feared the worse.

Ducharme’s article covers the efforts of the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine’s Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab (CORAL) to do research on relieving people’s burnout. At this time they are generally focusing on healthcare workers in their research.

I was happy to see that the researchers didn’t see themselves as curing burnout as much as building resilience in participants.

But the data suggest one leads to the other: for almost 150 health care providers who joined the study from September 2020 to July 2021, the approach led to small but significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and burnout, according to a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Medicine. If the framework proves effective for people in a wider swath of health care jobs, Moss says CORAL’s approach could feasibly be adopted by burned-out workers in any industry.

What I really appreciated was the finding that it was the social activity, rather than the creative practice alone that lead to the reduction of burnout. This bolsters messaging arts and cultural organizations use regarding sharing experiences with others in a face to face environment. To some extent, the research supports providing more interactive experiences versus passively watching a show or viewing visual art without comment or discussion.

But when I asked Moss and his team if the CORAL curriculum could be distilled into something I, or any individual, could do on my own, I was met with a resounding no. The program’s magic, its facilitators said, is in bringing people together to feel the solidarity and community so often lacking in modern life. People can draw or dance or write or sing on their own, but it likely won’t have the same transformative effect without a human connection.

That’s what Dr. Colin West, who researches physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic, found in 2021, when he published a study on what happened when physicians met up for group discussions over meals. Their burnout symptoms improved, but it wasn’t necessarily the food that made the difference—it was support. “We have so many shared experiences and so many stressors that are in common, and yet physicians will often feel like, Well, I can’t talk to anybody about this,” West says. Bringing people together to share their experiences can help.

You’re Doing A Great Job, But Standards For Dissatisfaction Have Changed

by

Colleen Dilenschneider made a post comparing what factors created dissatisfaction for attendees of cultural events in 2019 vs. 2022. She posted charts for both exhibit and performance based organizations. An important thing to keep in mind is that these are factors that dissatisfied people when they actually attended an event. These aren’t things that non-attendees reported were keeping people away.

Basically on both charts, everything bugs people more. Focusing on performance events, rude patrons and rude staff top the list. Parking issues and access issues (e.g. traffic) also saw a big increase. Cost of admission saw a small increase 2019 to 2022, but cost of everything else related to the experience (presumably food, gas, parking) exploded over 2022.

Phone policy (allowing patrons to use) saw an increase where phone policy (not being able to use) saw a slight decrease. Given slightly more openness to not being able to use your phone, it might be worth making the request since allowing people to use their phones is increasingly annoying people.

Restroom availability, crowding, Hours of Operation (big increase), Cleanliness (also big increase) were all higher in 2022 than 2019. Interestingly, performance quality issues were less of a dissatisfying factor. Length of intermission, which I would have thought was relatively neutral was also created less dissatisfaction in 2022. I assume venues haven’t really tweaked the standard intermission interval so either shows are doing better starting on time, intermissions are more fun, or audiences have made their peace with the 15-20 time period.

Dilenschneider notes that standards have shifted so that even if conditions are much better than before, the perception still might be that the problem is worse. She uses the example of crowding. There may be fewer people in venues and galleries, but the criteria about what constitutes crowded may have shifted where people feel more constricted even if they have much more elbow room.

Similarly, the standard about what constitutes rudeness from patrons and staff may have likewise shifted. Attendees may find your staff to be rude even if you have done a lot of work to be kinder and more considerate after you re-opened from pandemic closures.

Sometimes You Are More Creative Without The Brainstorming Session

by

Nina Simon may have left museum administration and being an agent of change behind to write books, but she still manages to live and think right on the cusp of things. Today, I receive an article from her substack site where she reflects back on the process of creative collaboration when she was working at a museum versus her interactions with her editor as an author.

She likens the process of working as an author as baton passing. She will send materials to her editor and after some time, the editor sends the materials back with great questions and comments. When she was working in a museum, she was often in a room with many others brainstorming all sorts of ideas in real time.

Reflecting back, she wonders if she may have misused the brainstorming sessions. Was she using them to present ideas or solve problems that she hadn’t properly developed or worked through? Was she similarly demanding answers and ideas from others without providing them sufficient time to contemplate good solutions? She also wondered if used the sessions to insert herself into other people’s projects and exert control over them.

I thought this was great and something to really ponder, but fate doubled down and the second item on my social media feed came from Dan Pink who linked to a Harvard Business Review article that not only said asynchronous work can bolster creativity, but that some of Nina’s instincts were correct.

Studies show that women and people from marginalized communities are given fewer opportunities to speak and are criticized more harshly when they do in a range of synchronous work settings. Consequently, synchronous teams may inhibit women and marginalized people’s expression of new or risky ideas, ultimately making teams less equal and their output less creative

In a study conducted with Baul folk musicians in India, a style that lends itself to both synchronous and asynchronous practice, researchers found that synchronous collaboration could lead to people feeling stifled whereas asynchronous practice could result in greater creativity, despite and probably due to, mistakes practitioners made.

Initial interviews revealed that women singers performing synchronously with men felt constantly “corrected by [their] seniors” and sensed that their fellow musicians “did not stand by [them].” They did not report being offered the “encouragement” and “positive reinforcement” that their men counterparts described receiving from their colleagues.

[…]

We found that women’s performances were rated 17% higher when they recorded asynchronously, and that this effect was driven by the degree of creativity in their singing, based on ratings by experts in Baul folk music. (The experts assigned overall ratings to every track as well as timestamped all creative choices made by the singer.)

This creative freedom when singing alone was further captured in interviews with the experimental subjects. After recording asynchronously, one woman said, “I was completely free. I could sing as I wished. I missed some notes at a place, but then I caught on with it later on. I had complete independence and it felt like I was flying like a bird.” Men’s performances were not significantly different in the two conditions, and thus asynchronicity seems to help women without hurting men.

The coincidence of these two pieces on the same subject coming to my attention today provides a lot to consider.
.

Art Or Advertising? And The Lost Context Of A Summary

by

Another entry in the “What is art” debate– A bakery owner in NH allowed students to paint a mural on his building. Because the mural depicted a sun rising over mountains made of donuts and muffins, last June the town said it was in violation of the sign ordinance restricting the size of advertisements. If the mountains had looked like mountains instead of baked goods, it would have been considered art, but because they were products sold by the business, the mural is considered an advertisement.

This caused a considerable amount of discussion in the town and apparently increased attendance at Zoning and Planning board meetings, but ultimately residents voted against a proposed change that would have provided clearer rules to allow for works of art.

An organization is submitting a federal case on behalf of the bakery which is leveraging the situation to fundraise for the local high school art department.

Since fighting for the right to display what Mr. Young maintains is a mural, Leavitt’s has become an advocate for the arts. The bakery recently began selling T-shirts with the mural on the front above the words “this is art,” and the Leavitt’s sign on the back with, “this is a sign.” Proceeds benefit the Kennett High School art department. And with the help of a local philanthropist, Leavitt’s is co-sponsoring a scholarship for one student a year from Kennett High who wants to pursue the arts.

“I’m not taking it down because it’s the kids’ artwork,” Mr. Young says.

The article has pictures of the mural and the tshirts. A number of the people interviewed for the story seemed pretty supportive of the mural, including a couple local government officials who appeared to have wanted to proposed change to pass in order to provide for greater clarity. While some people were concerned about murals going up willy-nilly and the appearance of billboards, it is pretty clear the bakery mural is not meant to be a sales advertisement. There are no words at all on that part of the building, nor are any figures beckoning people in.

As an aside, I noticed as I was re-reading the article that there is a feature that allows you to toggle between a Quick Read and Deep Read, with the latter indicating it make take 6 minutes to read the longer content. I think that must be how long it takes a computer to read it aloud, because that seems pretty long. I am not quite sure what to think about this feature. While folks do seem to have a shorter attention span and providing a shorter option may encourage people to engage with the topic, it also seems to suggest there is content that isn’t important to know and can be safely omitted.

Reading the abridged version of the article changes the tone of the article. The full article seems sympathetic toward the cause of the mural, the abridged version seems to suggest anarchy will break out in the absence of local self-governance.

 

The Pause To Refresh Employment Models

by

Earlier this month, the Albany Times-Union reported that there won’t be much theatre occurring at the storied Willamstown Theatre Festival.  The reason is based on the staff walkouts and subsequent investigative reporting by the LA Times I wrote about back in 2021.

Recognizing there are many issues to address in addition to the complaints of exploitative overworking of staff and interns and unsafe working conditions, the Festival is planning on presenting different performing artists, staging readings and cabaret performances and partnering with neighbors this summer.

The reason for the absence of theater at the Williamstown Theatre Festival amounts to what is essentially a public atonement for how the festival treated interns, apprentices and other staff for decades and a commitment to finding a new model for producing a season of world-class summer theater, the company’s artistic leader said.

[…]

In Williamstown, the theater festival launches in mid-July with four performances over three days by the stand-up comic Hasan Minhaj, followed by weeks of cabarets, staged readings and workshops by artists-in-residence. Williamstown alum and Tony Award winner Laura Benanti will perform a concert, well-regarded stage and screen actors will participate in readings by known and upcoming playwrights, and the festival will contribute financial and artistic resources to assisting its neighbors at Barrington Stage on a revival in Pittsfield of “A New Brain,” a 1998 musical by BSC’s longtime associate artist William Finn (“Falsettos,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”).

Near the end of the article, writer Steve Barnes wonders if the festival can continue in the same vein as they have historically operated if they have to pay a large swath of previously unpaid interns given waning philanthropy and diminishing audiences. The festival for their part says they will be working to create a stronger relationship with audiences:

In another symbolic choice, most audiences this summer will join performers on the stage. Minhaj and Benanti will do their shows for crowds in regular theater seats, but for staged readings there will be rows of seating on three sides of the stage, and tables, chairs and drink service will accommodate onstage cabaret patrons.

Gersten said she hopes the new perspective for audiences will make an impact on them. “It was important this summer for me that people share our point of view, that they’re on the same level with the artists as we work toward these changes,” she said.

When To Belt Out In Song And Not Belt The Person Sitting Behind You

by

By now most people have probably heard about the brawl between audience members at a Manchester, England performance of The Bodyguard because people were singing along to “I Will Always Love You.”  The more I read, the more I wonder if maybe opening the bars at the theater 1.5 hours before curtain might be as big a contributor as people having poor etiquette.

Assuming many have read their fill about the incident, I wanted to point to a different article in the Toronto Star which interviewed ushers at performances in that city about audience behavior. While they say they have also seen their share of rude behavior and vain attempts to keep people from singing along with shows, the ushers point to examples of productions leaning into the trend:

One way some producers have been able to satisfy audience’s cravings to turn the theatre into an enormous karaoke bar is to end the shows with a big medley — a so-called Megamix. The recent “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” tour in Toronto used that, and wannabe Broadway singers got to belt out the songs with the cast and record themselves doing it on their phones.

Aislinn Rose [artistic director of Toronto’s not-for-profit Theatre Centre] believes theatres could go even further and designate certain performances as sing-along shows
[…]

“I’m not advocating for every performance to look like that, but there’s an opportunity to build an incredibly loyal, live following of people who want to engage with live performance. I think we should find a way to support that.”

Apparently there was a time when some Toronto based productions were trying to get audiences to sing-a-long, and couldn’t so maybe there is an element of be careful what you wish for here.

Ironically, Mirvish Productions programmed sing-along performances for their production of the Queen jukebox musical “We Will Rock You” way back in 2008-2009. It didn’t catch on.

“We printed out lyric sheets and everything,” said Karastamatis. “But very few people sang along.”

But as the article suggests at the end, you generally don’t plan to spend a lot of money on a ticket to listen to the people next to you sing off-key. So unless you are doing a show like Rocky Horror which has a long tradition of audience participation,  having designated times or performances where people can sing along is probably going to be the best approach in the short term.

A Link Between Awe And Generosity

by

Thanks to Barry Hessenius for providing my post topic today. He sent a link to an Inc magazine piece titled “Want to Raise Kind, Generous Kids? Take Them to an Art Museum.” Readers will know that I am not really big on discussion of art as a prescriptive solution based on inchoate theories and research. So I was interested to see they connected the sense of awe art generates to an increased generous impulse.

Certainly, museums make children more worldly and cultured, but how do they make them kinder? The link, according to the new study, recently published in Psychological Science, is awe. A whole line of research, and a much talked about new book, shows that experiencing awe can help adults. Feeling a sense of smallness in front of sites greater and grander than you–be that the Mona Lisa or the Milky Way–tends to tamp down runaway egos and make adults humbler, kinder, and more relaxed. This latest research looked to see if awe would have the same effect on children.

The research was conducted with 159 kids aged 8 to 13 so I am a little cautious about any definitive statements based on such a small sample size, but the results pointed to exposure creating a tendency to be more generous.

Of course, art isn’t the only source of awe in our lives. The article says ” simply looking for the awe-inspiring in the everyday can increase our perception of awe and its associated benefits” even if you don’t have ready access to museums. Some people experience awe from the natural beauty present in their every day activities, for example.

The bottom line is that nudging your kids to notice and appreciate the greatness and grandeur of the world around them won’t just make them more observant and aesthetically appreciative. The latest science shows it will also nudge them to be humble, kind, and caring.

Sometimes It Isn’t Bad To Be Rushing In Late To The Party

by

A Guardian article on classical music in Iceland caught my eye last week. The story basically suggested that because the country got a late start with classical music, (first major tour by Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra in 1926 and first full time ensemble in 1950), they don’t have the same hang-ups about what belongs in the concert hall as everyone else.

While the rest of the world was busy erecting barriers between music genres last century – roping off classical music, in particular – Iceland was simply trying to get things going. There was no time wasted deciding who was allowed to listen to what. For much of the second half of the 20th century, classical orchestral music felt new in Iceland. Here, the symphony orchestra was a postwar institution, not a 19th-century one.

According to the article,  pop artist Bjork had sang Schoenberg at the Salzburg festival and often performs with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. Rock band Sigur Ros is planning a US tour including a 41 symphony musicians and in 2020 released an orchestral piece based on a 13th-century Icelandic poem.

The Guardian suggests a possible reason for what other countries might view as a sort of open cross-pollination:

Student musicians in Iceland often find themselves crossing genre boundaries by necessity. There’s only one institution in the capital where you can study music to degree level, thrusting students of varied outlooks together. This eroding of musical silos has produced countless indefinable artists, including Hildur Guðnadóttir who became the first female composer to win an Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe in the same season. It was for her score to the film Joker – a cello concerto in disguise.

A Different Form Of Art Worship In Museums

by

This morning I saw Artsjournal had linked to a story about the seizure of a statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which had apparently been stolen from Turkey. More and more frequently there have been questions about the provenance of objects in museum collections. According to the NY Times story, the statue, which was on loan to The Met is among 18 objects in the museum’s collection that have been filed for seizure in the last three months.  The museum isn’t the only one having its collections scrutinized:

In addition to the Met, the authorities seized items from the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Fordham University Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, according to court records.

This article reminded me of a recent story on Hyperallergic about a classical Cambodian dancer who had been kicked out of the Met for dancing in front of religious objects which had been looted from her country. She discusses how dancing barefoot before the statues created by her ancestors is an appropriate form of worship. She had done so at the museum about 10 years ago, but when she repeated the act this last February, a guard stopped her.

As is appropriate, I removed my shoes (though, it being winter, I was wearing stockings) and approached the statue of the god Harihara. I prayed for his safe and prompt return to his homeland. I prayed to the four directions and then moved on to the main gallery. About two minutes into my brief dance, a member of the museum’s security team approached me and stated that I wasn’t allowed to dance there without permission. He also instructed me to put on my shoes….If I had simply walked to each statue and prayed, I doubt he would’ve felt compelled to stop me. Something about my rhythmic movement, silent and subdued as it was, set the guard on edge. One of the people recording the video told me that he found my danced prayer so powerful he was shaking.

When I first read that last line, I thought the guard was shaking from the power of the dance. Later, I realized that it might refer to the person doing the recording.

While there is an implication that dancing before the statues might be possible with permission, though perhaps not given the fact she was chased from the museum stairs when she was interviewed about the experience, I wonder if we might see start to see similar acts in galleries and museums as awareness and questions about how legitimate the methods of acquisition were.

Ringling Bros Circus Is Back With More Story And No Animals

by

Via Artsjournal.com is a story on Fast Company about the return of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus which ceased operations in 2017. Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus is looking to return to the road with a trimmed-down, humans only performance that is less abstract than Cirque du Soleil, but more adult than Feld’s Disney on Ice.

The part of the story that grabbed my attention most was the decision to bring the circus back without animals. In 2014 the circus had won $16 million in settlements from lawsuits brought by animal rights organizations who alleged animal cruelty, but public perception was that animals were being mistreated. However, when they announced in 2015 they were going to phase out the animals by 2018:

“Immediately, ticket sales slumped. Despite public sentiment against the use of animals, dancing tigers and trained elephants proved to be a driver of customer interest, according to Mollica. Animal acts turned out to be synonymous with the very idea of a circus.”

As soon as I read that, I thought about how this paralleled the experience of some arts organizations who made attempts to heed warnings about diminishing audiences and tried to diversify their program offerings only to find ticket sales and donations almost immediately evaporate. The lesson here is probably to consider how you are going to execute and communicate the transition because not every effort has resulted in such a strong public reaction.

The Fast Company article does a good job examining many of the decision points that were part of the revamp. For example, while there will be video and technological enhancements not found in the previous version of the circus, the creators wanted to avoid any suggestion that the performers weren’t able to perform various feats without the presence of technology.

“We don’t need technology to allow a performer to appear like they’re flying from one end of the room to the other. They actually can do that.”

Much like other live performance experiences, the newest version of the circus depends on storytelling to generate audience investment:

The new circus will also be more story-driven than previous iterations, structured around eight characters who will drive its narrative arc. Feld Entertainment has cast a musical theater entertainer, Lauren Irving, in the lead role, pointing to a substantial musical element at work within the show.

Shipton explained that leaning into narrative provides other avenues through which audience members can engage with the circus, beyond pure spectacle. “Story equals emotional connection,” he says.

The Inalienable Right To Be Untalented

by

Busy into the evening tonight so I thought these brief thoughts from New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, shared by Isaac Butler might be a good subject to ponder.

This resonates with the whole Pro-Am (Professional Amateurs) conversation from the early 2000 as well as the concept that everyone has the capacity to be creative.   There has always been a tension between the idea that insiders are gatekeeping the definition of who is an artist/creative and the concept that one should be investing time and energy into honing their abilities if they sincerely want to cultivate their creativity.

Kael notes that the untrained/no-talent has a capacity to verge off in interesting directions while having the freedom of producing something perfectly awful. The two states are not mutually exclusive since the germ of something interesting and inspired can be hidden amid the dross.

Will Augmented Reality For Cooking Provide A Successful Application For Opera Notes?

by

Rainer Glaap recently posted a story about Deutsche Oper am Rhein’s (German Opera on the Rhein) partnership with Vodaphone to offer augmented information about the opera’s production of “Die tote Stadt” (Dead City) in April. (Use Chrome browser or pop the link into Google translate to translate from German.)

I have written about the use of augmented reality devices to interact with art as well as long running projects to provide commentary for classical music concerts and opera. There hasn’t really been any leading technology that has emerged and been adopted to provide these services, but I am always interested to see what people have in the works.

The opera house has set aside 30 seats in the 2nd tier, that is where the 5G reception is best, for people who wish to use the glasses.

Although the glasses look very dark, they only dim the optical experience minimally, assures Vodafone’s head of innovation, Michael Reinartz. The glasses will also display surtitles, optionally in German or English. Apps can be controlled with the gaze. A special camera enables views into the orchestra pit.

…Christoph Meyer, General Manager of the Rheinoper. It is important to him to experiment with the prototype in order to inspire a new, technology-savvy audience for opera and ballet and to pass on the experience to other houses. “We are extremely curious to see how this works and how it will be accepted,” says Jens Breder, Marketing Director of the Rheinoper.

According to the article Vodaphone has already used this technology for football/soccer games, providing insight into a chef’s kitchen as he cooks, and neurosurgery procedures.  Given the wide use of the technology across different industries and practices, I would think this product might have the best chance of success. They need to solve problems associated with providing supporting information and visuals to people viewing action on a broad football pitch as well as extreme close-ups in surgery. The equipment needs to operate effectively outdoors in weather and in the steamy chaos of a restaurant kitchen.

I expect they might be able to draw lessons from the different arenas of application to provide information people didn’t know they wanted. Information streams that football fans want by default may enhance the experience of opera goers. On the other hand, examining how people developed superb knife skills will be equally valued by those interested in cooking and surgery.

Got A Good Beat, You Can Dance To It…And It’s Taking Our Jobs

by

I was listening to an episode of the Code Switch podcast this weekend while I was out walking. The topic was about how merengue was the basis for a culture war in Puerto Rico.  What, at first on the surface seemed to be a resistance to the introduction of a new type of pop music to compete with salsa gets entangled with cultural identity.

Merengue was essentially carried to Puerto Rico by waves of immigration from the Dominican Republic. The music had a different energy and was easier to dance to than salsa. One of the hosts mentioned her mother was embarrassed by how poorly her husband danced, but that he was able to do a passable job dancing to merengue rhythms.

However, in time there were violent protests and demands that merengue be outlawed because it was putting salsa musicians out of work. One merengue musician had his car set on fire. There was a lot of suspicion that it was salsa musicians, but the owner had no proof and so never filed a complaint.

The podcast hosts admit there may have been some nationalism and classism associated with the resistance since merengue was initially being introduced and performed by immigrants who may not arrived in Puerto Rico legally. Many of them seeking to use the island as a way to continue on to the U.S.  There may have been a sense that these folks from the Dominican Republic were interlopers who were not invested in advancing the future of the island.

The most interesting element is that in time Puerto Rican musicians made merengue their own.  The merengue song, “Suavemente,” which became ubiquitous in the late nineties was performed by a Puerto Rican musician. The guy whose car was burned was invited to the home of one of the prime suspects for the arson who admitted merengue ultimately made it possible to own the house he had.

I have been trying to think if there have been similar stories with other music forms. I know there have been plenty of protests about music being obscene or diverging from standard expectations, but has there been other instances where performers of an emerging music style have been accused of robbing other musicians of their livelihood by virtue of being more popular?

 

Unexpected Headline – Black Sabbath The Ballet Premieres In September

by

In a case of “not something I had imagined”, the Birmingham Royal Ballet recently decided to create a ballet set to the music of Black Sabbath, who got their start in the city. Lead guitarist Tony Iommi described the show as a “rags to riches” tale will attract “both our fans and ballet fans”.

Say what you want about whether a ballet set to heavy metal music is appropriate, my first thought was that from what I know of Birmingham the concept is suited to the history and socio-economic dynamics of the city and it is population. Obviously, these are the very forces that gave rise to the band in the first place. It may be an unorthodox pairing, but it is aligned to the community rather than an attempt at shoehorning something presumed to be good for the audiences or that they will learn to like.

I don’t doubt there will be cries of sacrilege. I am just suggesting Black Sabbath is more closely aligned to Birmingham than something like Aaron Copland & Agnes DeMille’s “Rodeo,” which has more resonance with American cowboy culture.

My thoughts about the continued timeliness of the song “War Pigs” preceded me reading Ballet director Carlos Acosta’s parallel thoughts on the song:

“”War Pigs is so relevant today, how sometimes politicians and governments hide behind words. And all the wars happening at the moment… it’s timeless.”

Australia’s Last Poet Laureate Was A Convict?

by

Big news out of Australia where the first national arts policy since 2013 was announced.  In addition to commitments of funding to specific entities and organizations, arguably the most significant element of the policy is a commitment  “….to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, with a particular brief on cracking down on fake art that plagues the $250m-a-year Australian Indigenous art market.”

Other elements of the plan include the establishment of a poet laureate position which last existed during the country’s convict era,  a state of the arts report to be issued every three years, and the establishment of  “a quota for expenditure on Australian content by multinational streaming platforms such as Netflix and Stan..” The amount of this quota is rumored to be about 20% and The Guardian article quotes people who are concerned streaming platforms may pull out of the country if they are required to produce Australia based content.

It happens that I saw a piece on Vice last night before I saw The Guardian article. Vice asked Australian artists what they thought about the plan.  Many felt the money was going to the usual suspects and advocated for a universal basic income plan for artists.

Others felt that the arts were unfunded in proportion to their footprint:

“The arts sector will get $286M over four years, or $72M a year. The fossil fuel industry gets $11.6B a year in government subsidies. Australia’s arts sector employs about six times as many people as the fossil fuel sector.

The requirement for locally generated content was cause for hope for some:

“I started to lose hope in local content knowing that reality TV filled up much of our “Australian” quota on broadcast networks. The possibility of streaming services now being made to spend 20% of their budget on original, local content honestly makes me feel hopeful and excited to pursue my career on my home turf.”

Less Attendees=Increased Satisfaction

by

Last week when I was writing about the ticketing trends being forecast for the coming year, I accidentally omitted an additional point from the article I found pretty interesting.  Apparently, during the pandemic, many attractions like  zoos, aquariums, museums and theme parks found that customer satisfaction increased when capacity restrictions were in place.

“Guests readily adapted to new procedures, which does not surprise us because it is consistent with what we have seen in our practice for many years,” Digonex’s Loewen says. “[Operators] also realized some of the business benefits. For example, when you limit the number of folks that can get into the attraction at a certain point of time, they saw all their guest satisfaction scores go up, and many of them saw all of their other per-cap revenues grow significantly. When it is less crowded, when people are having a better time, when they are feeling better about their visit, they tend to spend more on food and beverage and at the gift shop and on ride tickets.”

There have already been signs of these trends. Disney has apparently indicated they won’t go back to pre-pandemic attendance numbers. Similarly, the Louvre Museum is reducing admissions from 45,000/day to 30,000/day ““in order to facilitate a comfortable visit and ensure optimal working conditions for museum staff…”

Some US National Parks are requiring timed entry reservations from April 1-October 31.

So there is a good possibility other entities may start to use restricted admission as a customer satisfaction strategy in coming years. For some there may be a benefit to positioning their organization as an alternative activity for those who can’t gain admission to such places.

Best Creativity Is Messy Creativity

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…Reach Out

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make 2023 The Year Of Library Advocacy

by

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

 

Sharing Time With Family Is Valued Regardless Of Political Affiliation

by

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

Experiences Are The Gift They Want

by

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

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

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

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

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

Who Is The Seat Choice Process Serving?

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are other people’s thoughts?

Enchanted By The Public Art

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Voting Becomes An Intersection for Arts and Civics

by

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

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

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

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

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

Germany Gives 18 Year Olds The Gift of Culture

by

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

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

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

[….]

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

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

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

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

Guests Can Change The Rules

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Oral Tradition We Have All Joyfully Perpetuated

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where Have All The Pledge Drive Guests Gone?

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pittsburgh Likes Us, But Europe Loves Us

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where you tour in Europe also apparently matters:

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

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

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

A number of theatres participated by posting welcoming messages.

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

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

Creative Expression Is A Renewable National Resource

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Are You Philanthropic Rather Than How Much

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capacity To Synthesize Creativity

by

I have been a firm believer in the idea that everyone has the capacity to be creative so I read a piece on The Conversation discussing how creativity doesn’t occur in a vacuum with great interest. In particular, the article discusses Edward P. Clapp, of Harvard University’s Project Zero reflections on a recent Beatles documentary which employed lengthy archival footage of the band’s work creating the Let It Be album. Clapp asserts that songs like “Get Back,” sprung forth from Paul McCartney’s mind in two minutes, as a result of years of social context and the artistic dynamics in the room.

But he also emphasizes principles highlighted by researchers who have examined the phenomena of creativity: in this solitary time, they draw on past collaborations. They also engage with the technologies or tools of predecessors and they “work in relation to an often complex polyphony of current and historical audiences.”

For example, there was a social movement in England at the time to have black immigrants from former colonies to go back to their countries.  Likewise there is a pervasive undercurrent of class distinctions in England which can lead to a sense of imposter syndrome.  Apparently, McCartney’s desire to get back to live touring is a frequent topic of discussion in the documentary.  And, of course, the band was going through a fair bit of conflict and tension during the recording of the album.

Similarly, during the “Let It Be,” recording sessions, the band played/jammed on over 400 tunes of all genres, all of which created a mood and informed how the members and participating musicians were thinking and processing the experience.

“…I had all this music inside…but I could not express it through an instrument”

by

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the short documentary, Conducting Life, about Roderick Cox, a man who grew up here in Macon, GA who went on to become an associate conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra. Now based in Berlin, he works internationally as a guest conductor.

The documentary recounts his pursuit of music from adverse conditions. He talks about coming home from school excited to practice only to find that his keyboard had been pawned to pay utility bills. He approached Zelma Redding, widow of Otis Redding, for money to buy a French horn for school.

What interested me most was the insight into the career arc toward becoming a conductor. I have often seen documentaries or fictionalized depictions of classical musicians competing for places in an orchestra, but I really don’t recall having seen much about conductors. There is footage of him being coached at the program at Northwestern University and by Robert Spano at the Aspen Music Festival.  It was amusing to watch him get instructed to be a little more expressive in these classes and then see footage of him conducting in Minnesota and other places where he cranks it up to 11+ with such full body involvement that you hope he does yoga stretching before he gets on stage.

If anything I think the documentary didn’t go deeply enough into work he did to achieve his current position. While it does show him disappointed at not being hired at various orchestras, I can’t imagine he was only auditioning at some of the bigger name organizations like Atlanta, Cleveland, LA and Salt Lake City before ending up at Minnesota, though that might have been the case.

Admittedly, in the Q&A after the screening, Cox admitted he was a somewhat reluctant participant in the documentary. He thought it was only going to be a profile piece while he was at Aspen only to find that the director was interested enough in his story to follow him around for seven more years. So he may not have afforded the filmmakers with the access they needed to make a more detailed movie.

The Q&A afterward revealed a very humble, introspective and funny person. He gave a lot of credit to different people who helped him thus far in his career. He made it very clear that while the documentary shows Otis Redding Foundation helping him buy a French horn, the reality was that when he wanted to go to England, Spain, and France to learn to be a better conductor, the foundation helped him out each time.  He also talked about a difficult experience familiar to a lot of people who pursue arts careers where he was auditioning for major classical music institutions and friends were sending him job listings for middle school band teachers.  He was also very funny while being politic in answering about the additional challenges in conducting operas and the fact that people in his hometown can circumvent his management to contract him to conduct.

If you have the opportunity, check out the documentary at a festival or see Roderick Cox at an orchestra near you.

 

Placemaking As A Space To Process Trauma

by

Earlier this month, CityLab had an interesting article on the subject of trauma informed placemaking. For the most part, the article focuses on artistic projects which have given communities a place to heal after traumatic events, but also policy and practice enacted by municipal governments to avoid compounding the trauma of those displaced by natural disasters.

One of the art projects, Temple of Time, was erected after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida to provide the community with a place they could access 24/7 to process their grief and trauma. I would encourage people to check out the article to view the images because describing it as a 40 foot tall plywood structure doesn’t do justice to the elaborate scrollwork on what appears to be a Thai Buddhist temple inspired pavilion.

The other project discussed in the article inadvertently evolved into a larger placemaking effort than initially intended. Providence, RI had a building in one of their parks they didn’t know what to do with and had the idea to offer the space as affordable housing for artists.

Together they issued a call for the city’s first “Park-ists in Residence” to steward the property and carry out public engagement, working to reanimate the site and reimagine its relationship with the surrounding neighborhood.

[…]

Haus of Glitter had originally intended to use the space to host intimate indoor gallery shows, living-room concerts and salon events. “But with Covid, we found ourselves where people in the community were reaching out for support and asking for help and care during this crisis,” says Matt Garza, a founding member of Haus of Glitter. “And so we threw our old plans out the window.”

Haus of Glitter is the artist collective which became the “Park-ists in Residence” and ultimately ended up becoming a safe space for many groups, offering classes, setting up a community garden, hosting numerous performances, including an immersive opera based on the life of the house’s original inhabitant, “a short-lived naval commander and Revolutionary War figure…dismissed from the Navy, censured by Congress, and deeply complicit in the transatlantic slavery trade.”

The article notes that Haus of Glitter has ended their residence but seeks to replicate their model in other cities. The city of Providence apparently won’t be continuing the residency program, though there are efforts to continue activities at the park space and homestead. However, the project has had an impact on the city:

…the experience has given the city’s arts and culture department, and the wider planning department it sits within, a new frame for thinking about the intersection of place and trauma. And it offers a moving example for policymakers in other cities looking for ways to provide healing spaces for residents.

“Every city department touched this project in some way because of how ambitious and how long the residency was” says Micah Salkind, a program manager with the city’s arts department…

99 Economic Concerns, But Admission Price Ain’t One

by

In a recent post Colleen Dilenschneider reported that recent research reflects the title of this post.  While inflation is a big concern for people right now, ticket/admission pricing does not seem to be a barrier to participating in a cultural experience.

However, the cost of everything else surrounding that experience is a concern – food, gas, parking, babysitting, gift shop purchases.

While those may impede the decision to attend, Dilenschneider says the research shows that often people are opting to downgrade on these ancillary aspects in order to still have the central experience.

This research suggests that people expect to spend less overall in support of their cultural experiences. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they are abandoning or deferring cultural experiences; instead, they are contemplating economic tradeoffs to align their actual spending to expectations. Think carpooling instead of driving separately. Parking in the garage instead of using the valet. Eating at a fast casual restaurant instead of the Michelin-starred culinary temple.

Dilenschneider cautions arts and cultural organizations against discounting admission as a way to entice purchases because most of the concerns people have are far outside the scope of the organization’s control and are multiple time as concerning as admission prices.  Among those with a high propensity to attend, factors like inflation, the general economy, and financial markets were much greater concerns with much more weight than admission cost.

Taking $3 off your admission prices won’t offset an airplane fare costing $400 more than it did last year. Nor will it reduce the amount of fuel required to visit or improve the ROI for someone’s 401k. More to the point, there is scant evidence that a significant number of high-propensity visitors are even asking organizations to lower their admission costs.

[…]

Tampering with your ticket prices in reaction to broad economic perceptions risks doing more harm than good. While admission pricing may be one of the few cost-related factors within our control, the research indicates that it is not a notable barrier for those with interest in attending.

Instead, the solutions are strategic: Keep engaging digitally to motivate attendance. Underscore your credibility with fantastic content. Continue to strive to be relevant. Keep being your inspiring, amazing institutional self, such that the quality of your experience cannot be ignored.

Try On Theatre, It May Fit Better Than You Think

by

American Theatre recently had a great piece about an interesting approach Princeton University is using as an alternative to auditions called “Try On Theatre Days.” They describe the program as “replacing high-intensity auditions with educational workshops as a means to cast performers and stagehands for the school’s seasonal productions.”

What I appreciate about this approach is the broad invitation to the campus community to come and check out the theatre program and experience mini-lessons in various functions. This is a departure from the practice at many non-conservatory theatre programs I have worked with and encountered where the invitation to the campus community starts and ends with the audition notice. The approach that Princeton is described as using seems to do a better job of giving people the confidence they have the ability to contribute to a production both by getting them to participate in various activities and raising awareness of roles beyond performing.

There is also a hope that the process will introduce greater diversity and reduce insular clique culture in the theatre program:

The first day of the three-day process is a community day, at which all Princeton students are invited to meet the theatre department and to experience introductory-level singing, dancing, and acting workshops…The next two days are designated for students to “try on” specific shows in the upcoming season, … not only in the acting sense but also, for example, stage management, in which prospective students get the opportunity to try calling cues. The purpose is to introduce and teach students to different facets of theatre rather than make judgments about what capabilities certain students walk in the door with, and in turn let students decide if theatre is something they want to pursue.

This new process aims to level the playing field for students who didn’t have traditional theatrical training prior to attending Princeton University. The goal is to transform the student theatre culture and attract a more diverse population, as well as to reduce the cliques and the student hierarchies that often result when theatre students consistently casting their friends in productions.

The “Try On Theatre Days” grew out of an initiative where the university administration paid students to conduct teach-ins about the challenges, biases, and other discouraging factors they faced when trying to participate in productions and classes. Students interviewed by American Theatre said the result has been an increased degree of authenticity in productions, a shift in power dynamics, a rethinking of the casting process, and an improved sense capacity to participate in the creative process.

You Now Have Permission To Have An Authentic Response

by

Last month the San Francisco Chronicle ran an opinion piece by Nataki Garrett, the Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, titled Theater can help drive economic recovery in S.F. and elsewhere. But not if it stays so white

She talks about how there are a lot of barriers to participation in theatre for new audiences like ticketing pricing, lack of representation on stage and in leadership, accessibility, etc., but focuses most of the piece on the formal attendance etiquette. She notes that in addition to “how to behave” sections on organization websites, Business Insider had published a similar guide as Broadway prepared to open post-Covid.

Even as the opportunity to re-write the narrative about who was was welcome presented itself as Covid restrictions loosened, traditional gatekeeping practices re-asserted themselves. She cites the example of the Tina Turner musical which encouraged audience response by design:

The musical takes audiences through the life of legendary rock ‘n’ roll icon Tina Turner, using her own popular songs to tell her story. It’s a theatrical performance that compels the audience to physically react, something Hall encourages in her audiences. Yet, when attending a preview performance in 2020, I watched white audience members scold other audience goers for their audible reactions to the electrifying performance. Their message was clear: Adhere to our rules or you’re not welcome.

In terms of alternative messaging to use in order to welcome audiences, Garrett gives the example of the playwrights notes for the Broadway show, “Skeleton Crew:”

Inserted in every “Playbill” was a note from the playwright on “Permissions for Engagements.” It reads in part: “Consider this an invitation to be yourselves in this audience. You are allowed to laugh audibly. You are allowed to have audible moments of reaction and response. This can be a church for some of us, and testifying is allowed.”

This isn’t a boilerplate text for widespread use. Every organization and show has a different context requiring a differently worded invitation.

A storytelling group in my community does a pretty good job of this prior to every session they have when they layout a framework of behavior. The rules are mostly about eliminating crosstalk at the tables while people were telling stories. People are encouraged to snap, stomp and yell things like “You know that’s right!”

I think this works out well for them because there is really only one thing they ask you not to do and then invite you to feel free to have a spontaneous response. By providing examples of what form that response might take, they manage to generally keep things from getting too disruptive for both the audience and storytellers unaccustomed to public speaking.

Resisting The Corruption Of The Violin

by

Recently I have been seeing stories about violin scammers. People performing in shopping centers and other public places with signs asking for money. What is interesting about these stories is that the claim of a scam is based on the fact these people are pretending to play violin to a recording.

There are some warnings about using payment apps to give these people money with the implication that the scammers will exploit that information in someway. But the real focus seems to be that these folks are representing themselves as having a skill they don’t possess.

There are a lot of complex factors to consider here. It is great for artists that there is some recognition of the value of discipline and training and the sense that you are being cheated of something if someone is taking shortcuts to represent themselves as having invested time into developing a skill.

On the other hand, things have seemed to come a long way since the Milli Vanilli lip syncing scandals of the late 80s.  It is pretty much an open secret that many performers lip sync and maybe even feign playing instruments to a backing track. It is less of a secret that a lot of performers use some degree of auto-tuning, vocal distortion, music sampling, etc.

So why is it viewed as problematic, bordering on illegal, that someone hanging out in a shopping mall parking lot is not a skilled musician?  If you enjoy what you hear and are moved to give money, why should it matter if it is live or Memorex?

Could it be that the negative perceptions of symphonic music being generally inaccessible and surrounded by inscrutable traditions and practices also lend the music and instruments an aura of incorruptibility?   In other words, if you employ an instrument of this genre to create music, it reflects an authentic investment of sweat equity, untouched by the compromises and shortcuts of other types of music.

It may be worth a closer examination of the social dynamics to more clearly determine what is at play.  It may be possible to leverage this sentiment to the greater benefit of artists and arts organizations.   I think the past has already illustrated that it would be a mistake to try to place the artists on a pedestal.  In general, it appears people already place them there on their own. If you read the stories, people are open to giving to the people they find in parking lots and are dismayed when they find out the music is recorded.

Over the years I have written about the whole experiment of having Joshua Bell perform in the D.C. metro, something that still annoys me to this day.  Environment and context are significant factors when it comes to a willingness to participate in an experience. Even though a parking lot or flash mob performance seems informal, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it successful for the audience.   I have written many posts about this, but perhaps the one that sums it up best covered a piece by Anne Midgette before she retired from the Washington Post.

Referencing Joshua Bell in the DC Metro, she wrote:

In the wake of that controversial performance, one busker said something that stuck with me: Musicians who regularly play on the street, from violinists to singers to trash-can drummers, learn how to connect with passersby in such a way that this doesn’t happen. Classical musicians aren’t usually trained to establish this kind of rapport..

and then later:

Outreach risks taking on a missionary, self-satisfied glow, getting caught up in the innate value of sharing such great music with those who have not been privileged to have been exposed to it. Lurking within this well-meaning construct is the toxic view of music as a kind of largesse: the idea that this music is better than the music you already like. The school concert, with all the best intentions, to some degree demonstrated that if classical music is offered in its own bubble, without context, it has little chance of really connecting with new audiences…

Dance As A Gateway Drug To Coding

by

Via Artsjournal.com was a Chalkbeat story about DanceLogic, a program in Philadelphia “designed to educate, inspire, and cultivate girls of color in STEM.”

 

The premise: Both coding and dance use repetition and combination, so using dance as a hook to attract girls to the program could lead to an interest in coding.

[…]

Each Saturday, the girls participate in dance class from noon to 1:20 p.m., take a short break, and then go into coding class until 2:30 p.m. Sessions run from October through June, culminating with a performance at the annual West Park Arts Fest.

[…]

For example, she said, the class developed a dance score using coding language to note choreography. “In the future, I hope to expand on this with the girls and see how it progresses with their understanding of both worlds,” she said.

The program has had some indirect, though semi-predictable result such as participants finding their math classes easier understand. There were other beneficial outcomes which illustrate the value of arts based education, but don’t fit neatly into grant applications because they need to be the result of organic decisions by the participants.

Students have shown an eagerness to take charge of the choreography and exchange ideas about what the dances should be. Bridgers said she’s seen many of the girls who participate develop into strong leaders and mentors. “We make a space for these young women to expand their agency and autonomy in the field of STEM,” she said.

One danceLogic student even developed her own coding curriculum and taught younger children in her neighborhood library, said Lindley. DanceLogic also hired the student when the pandemic forced a switch to virtual learning, charging her with designing and implementing a virtual video-game design class for children, Lindley said.

A student taking the initiative to teach coding to younger kids is a powerful testament to the influence of the DanceLogic program in her life. But you couldn’t have written a grant saying that X students would be inspired to start their own programs. (Unless it was a grant to train people to teach others, of course.)

Asking “What Would You Like Future Attendees To Know?”

by

I had planned to write about something different today but this post by Ruth Hartt on LinkedIn grabbed my attention.

Cain Lewis goes on to talk about how he doesn’t care about Airbnb:

So telling me ‘we’d love to know how it went’ doesn’t compel me to leave a review at all 😴

But I *do* care about helping other travellers like me find good experiences. And avoid the bad ones.

Because I appreciate reviews when I’m looking to book something too.

I’d bet most of their customers feel the same way.

So, here’s what I’d change it to:

‘Remember to leave a review for your Northwest Jeep Experience. Your feedback will help other travellers know what to expect!’

Less about Airbnb, more about supporting the community that I rely on so heavily myself.

This got my mind going because Hartt is right, this slight shift in perspective has wider implications. Many arts organizations send surveys after events so directing people to your social media pages when asking people to complete a survey aligns with the concept that their response will help other attendees. Asking people to complete a survey alone based on an appeal to help other visitors know what to expect will likely be met with skepticism.

Even though people may make negative comments on your social media pages, at least those comments are in a place you can see and know about rather than in places far outside your awareness.

Just the same, I think that the perspective of  your answers as a participant are making things better for the next person can be applied to surveys that only staff are likely to see.  Reframing survey questions in this context can communicate a sincere desire to improve the experience.

For example, instead of asking people how they would rank a performance, the service they received and restroom cleanliness on a Likert scale (1 being worst, 5 being best), questions can ask, “What would you like future attendees to know about our performances/ticket ordering experience/restrooms?

Obviously, it doesn’t have to be that exact syntax repeated for every question, but the general subtext can be present.  This line of questioning has “would you recommend us to your friends?” baked into it while adding a sense of “what do you wish you had known/read about us before you arrived?”

For repeat attendees, some of these questions will be a bit less relevant because they are familiar with your physical plant and how to navigate purchasing and attendance. But you can also get feedback about things a first time attendee might think was a one off mistake but a frequent visitor has noticed and wants to warn others about. i.e. “They will tell you they are having problems with X tonight, but it is always like that.”

I also think that asking questions in this manner with a sincere intent to remedy what you can, the first rule of surveying is never ask a question you aren’t willing to act upon, is that it will differentiate your organization from others. Perhaps it will even encourage people to respond to your surveys more frequently.

I know Americans for the Arts are making a strong national survey push over the next year, but their focus is very much on economic impact and asking you how much you spent before you leave the venue. Those who are frequent arts attendees are going to be asked to complete the survey often over the next year. It may be difficult for organizations to find people who are willing to complete their personal, non-AftA surveys, so asking questions focused on the interests of other attendees versus the organizational interest may make the difference.

Just as an added aside – the venue I am currently at will have alternating bursts of reviews for events on our Google profile and Facebook page. I have no idea what the common element is. Why did 10 attendees of a dance recital review us on Google, but a handful of attendees to another event flock to Facebook? Anyone have any insight based on what they have observed?

My Freshman English Grade ≠ 2022 Writing Proficiency

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Measuring Our Measures

by

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monopolies, Not Lack of Curiosity May Have Killed American Theater

by

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

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

Walters writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walters writes:

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

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

Starting Small And Building Momentum

by

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

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

[…]

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

/ Find It!

/ Recent Comments

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