Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

Perception Is More Powerful Than Money

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Today was the big day for our community’s On The Table discussion. If you aren’t familiar with the nationwide program, it is a day different groups in a community host discussions on any topic they feel needs to be addressed–including just leaving things open for whatever comes up. In our community, there were hundreds of tables hosting thousands of people doing everything from having breakfast with the mayor to discussing urban revitalization, homelessness, law enforcement, entrepreneurship, preserving oral history–you name it.

I hosted two separate sessions about Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative. I will probably reflect on that in a future post.  Perhaps the most valuable bit of insight for arts and cultural organizations didn’t emerge from a conversation in my venue, nor do I believe the slated topic of conversation was about the arts.

My marketing director was having a conversation with a woman who is an artist and currently works for a foundation which funds arts initiatives. This woman admitted that she regularly attends performances at a local theater and always see the big sign encouraging her to subscribe. However, she has never subscribed because she perceives that as something old people do. She also admitted she kicks herself later for paying full price when she could be getting a good discount by subscribing.

While this is only a single anecdotal case — notice that she would rather pay full price in order to avoid being associated with her perception of a subscriber. Perception was a much greater motivator than price. That is something to think about when price is cited as the primary impediment to participation.

When she was attending a discussion at my On The Table event, this same woman talked about her previous job working for an organization that had a gallery of work by local artists. Before she started working there, she had never entered the gallery due to concerns about whether she would be allowed to enter and if she was dressed properly.

Looking at the same gallery through the windows from the street, I would describe it as having a welcoming homey quality, but that isn’t what she saw.

Her candid conversations just reinforced for me the research findings that point to just how strong an influence one’s sense of belonging has in whether people participate in an experience or not. It is the invitation to participate, how the invitation is framed, who extends it and what the experience is that matters much more than the sticker price.

Another thing that came to light was just how difficult it is to communicate the existence of opportunities that align with people’s interests. One of our ticket clerks is a law student. Above our lobby are six floors of county offices housing everything from the district attorney, county court officials, and state/local/federal law enforcement.  A number of those offices were hosting On The Table discussions about law enforcement, courts, and sentencing as a resource for the general community.

Not only did the law student not know conversations with people with whom she would be interested in speaking were occurring, she wasn’t aware that the entire On The Table program existed. Other staff felt like we couldn’t escape information about it on social media, television, radio, posters, etc., especially in the last month. Our clerk had no concept such a program existed in the world.

Part of the blame for this falls on our shoulders. Prior to today, we apparently never told one of our most trusted employees in our most public facing office that the events would be occurring across the lobby from where she sat in case anyone asked questions.

Though by the same token, she apparently doesn’t look at the event listings on our Facebook page and website with any frequency to familiarize herself with videos and other content associated with upcoming events. But even that just illustrates how difficult it is to get information in front of people and register with their attention.

The Enduring Power Of Antici……pation

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From the “I wish we could figure out the formula and bottle this” file, we hosted a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday.

The staff at the theater had been advocating for a screening for years before I started working here. I can perhaps understand why it hadn’t been scheduled before. The screening rights are nearly three times any other movie, especially if you want to show it around Halloween, and Fox Pictures apparently also needs to sign off on it. (Rumor has it, Disney is locking down Fox’s movie catalogue so Rocky might even become more difficult to show in the future).

Based on our usual movie attendance, we figured we might have 350 people attend given Rocky Horror’s cult film cachet. We ended up with 900 people attending. We rarely sell even 25 tickets in advance of the date and we had 750 ticket sold prior to opening the ticket office that night.

A number of readers will think to themselves, of course it drew that size an audience, it is a legitimate force of nature unto itself. The movie was a regular midnight show in cinemas across the country throughout the 70s and 80s. Heck, there are still movie houses that continue to host screenings year round. It is the only movie where it is acceptable to shout at the screen. In fact, not knowing the raunchy, off-color ritual call outs marks you as an outsider and subjects you to embarrassing hazing in front of the entire audience.

(And yet apparently, clapping between movements of a symphony causes more anxiety than the prospect of literally being marked as a virgin of the experience and jeered at and pelted by a raucous mob of people, eh? Maybe the expressions of disapproval in an orchestra hall are too polite?)

The simple truth is, a smaller audience wouldn’t be unexpected.  The screenings have become a lot less frequent than they once were. I remember when the movie came out on VHS tape, I thought it would be the death knell for the whole tradition if people could watch the movie in the comfort of their own home. The whole social aspect and “oral tradition” would be lost.

Granted within a decade or so, you could download a script from the internet that prompted you with the correct responses and actions, but that does nothing to prepare you for the experience.

There definitely has been a decline in familiarity with the show and its traditions. The guy playing Rocky in our shadow cast lost his  show virginity a month ago when the cast went to Atlanta to see the shadow cast at a place that runs the show year around.

Having a large audience in our community was by no means a foregone conclusion.

We worked to make the usual experience even more of an experience. We had a shadow cast that really put in a lot of rehearsal to make their presence an asset to the show.We posted interviews with each member on social media in an effort to garner attention and support from their family and friends.

We had karaoke, hosted by a local burlesque troupe, start in one of our bar spaces two hours prior to the screen time to help people get into the mood.

We also created prop bags, both to enhance the experience of people who had never participated, but also as a way to keep the food elements (toast, rice, etc) out of our recently renovated historic venue. There was still A LOT of clean up involved, but we were able to protect the condition of our space.

This is what is looks like before 900 people need to use newspaper to shelter themselves in a squirt gun rainstorm.

Since the Rocky Horror tradition is about 45 years old, the most interesting part of the experience was having 20-30 years accompanied by parents who convinced them to attend based on the experience those parents had when they were in their 20s.

We were really hoping for a swath of 50-60 year olds decked out in costumes, but there weren’t as many as we were praying for. (Barry Bostwick performed here 6 weeks ago. At 74 years old, he could have still rocked the corset and fishnets.)

Only in America can multiple generations strengthen their relationships yelling insults at a 45 year old movie and thunderously stomping their approval at the entrance of a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.

Ack! My Sculpture Is Overdue And I Want To Borrow Some Pottery

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Recently saw an article on the BBC website about a gallery in Cambridge, England that has been loaning out art to students for 60 years and has never had a piece damaged or lost.

I have written about this sort of arrangement before. Oberlin College has been doing it since the 1940s and has never had a problem, and they appear to be loaning out pieces with a lot more market value than the gallery in Cambridge.  On the other end of the longevity spectrum, the Akron Art Museum and Akron-Summit County Public Library started teaming up to lend out art works about a year or so ago.

But as I soon discovered, there are quite a number of universities, libraries and visual arts institutions that have been lending out art works for quite some time now. (University of Minnesota as far back as 1934)

Here is a brief list I found in a Hyperallergic post in 2018:

Sure enough, a piece appeared on Hyperallergic about 10 days ago listing or linking to visual art lending programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver,  Braddock Carnegie Library,  Minneapolis Art Lending Library , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Williams College, Kenyon College, University of Minnesota, Harvard, University of Chicago, University of California, Berkley.

I post about this again because even though this is my fourth post on the subject, it wasn’t long before these programs slipped my mind. These all seem like great efforts to get art into the hands and homes of people who might not have opportunity and access and perhaps reduce the perceptual barriers people have about art not being for them.

Next week, my city is participating in its second community wide On The Table discussion and I want to bring these type of programs up as an idea of something that might be done here. If I hadn’t seen the BBC article, I wouldn’t have remembered. I want to reference my previous posts again to remind my readers and hopefully inspire you into action.

Gradually Finding The Leader Within

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Long time readers know I am a fan of Peter Drucker’s short piece, Managing Oneself.  It has been awhile since I have sung its praises so it is timely that a TEDx Talk by Lars Sudmann about self-leadership came across my social media feeds recently.

Actually, it was a written summary of the talk on the TED website that initially came to my attention.

One of the first things I appreciated about Sudmann’s talk was that he acknowledged that good leadership is a lot easier in theory than in practice. As a subordinate, we always have ideas running through our heads about how we would do a better job than our bosses if we were in charge. Then when we are actually put in charge, we get bogged down with all the details and demands for our time.

Sudmann talks about walking in to his first staff meeting, resolved to be an inspiring, dynamic and awesome leader only to have the conversation bogged down by a discussion of email signature files.

Where I really agree with Sudmann is his suggestion that self-reflection and introspection is one of the most important traits of a good leader. It isn’t enough to simply make a list of your strengths and weaknesses and acknowledge them, you have to be in the practice of evaluating your daily decisions and activities.

Drucker covers this in his piece too. He urges people to become aware of their strengths and what they need to become better and encourages people to share how they work best with co-workers as a way of enlisting their in providing materials and opportunities in a manner that aids your improvement.

Sudmann cites Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher recognized as one of the better Roman Emperors, who focused much of his time practicing self-leadership versus trying to lead others.

Sudmann suggests that a little self-examination can result in a realization that we share many of the traits we dislike about those we consider bad leaders. You can do the same thing with the traits you admire in others:

Every day, take 5- 10 minutes to think about the challenges you’ve recently handled and the ones you’ll soon face. While Marcus Aurelius was fond of reflecting in the evening, Sudmann likes doing this over morning coffee. Questions to pose include: “How did my leadership go yesterday? How would the leader I’d like to be have faced the challenges I faced? What about my challenges today? What could I do differently?” Write down your thoughts so you can refer back to them and learn from them.

Prioritizing issues is also an important part of leadership. If you hadn’t guessed it already, a discussion about email signatures shouldn’t occupy important staff meetings.

You should engage with 9s and 10s right away, but you’ll find that many things which shatter your calm will be of lesser importance. With anything that’s a 6 or lower, either excuse yourself physically (“I need to take a quick break; be right back”) or figuratively (“Let me take a minute to go over what you’ve said”). Then, give yourself a moment to think: “How would the leader I aspire to be handle this situation?” The answer will come to you.

There are pretty much direct parallels between strategic plans and developing leadership skills. Just as you shouldn’t put a strategic plan on a shelf after investing time in examining the state of your organization and creating a plan to guide the organization into the future, you don’t want to scrutinize your strengths and weaknesses and do nothing to address them until the next crisis or next scheduled board/supervisor evaluation.

I also see parallels between the approach Sudmann  espouses and Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative.  (You knew I was going to tie something back to that sooner or later!)  Just as building public will for arts and culture is a long term plan focused on continuous improvement and consistent messaging, so too is the process of becoming a better leader.