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Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

Oh The Places You’ll See When You Can Ride The Rail For Free

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Last week CityLab wrote about the European Union’s plan to offer 18 year old residents a free 30 day Interrail pass this summer.  What this means is that potentially 20,000-30,000 teenagers will have the opportunity to travel across 30 countries this summer.

Why fund a bunch of free trips? The intent is to broaden young participants’ horizons and hopefully instill some sense of Europe’s connections. “Education is not only about what we learn in the classroom, but what we discover about the cultures and traditions of our fellow Europeans,” Tibor Navracsics, E.U. Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, said in a press release.

This reminded me of a program I wrote about a couple years back where the Italian government provided a culture voucher worth €500 to 18 year olds.

As I quoted from an article on The Stage (UK):

It can be used to buy books, pay for entry fees to parks, museums and archaeological sites, and instead of cash for theatre, cinema and concert tickets. The euros in the app are spent by the young people and the arts organisations then reclaim this money off the state.

I will have to see if I can find an article about how well Italy felt the program went. It bears reading The Stage article because it explores the idea of funding culture on the demand side versus the supply side.

Move Over Laughter, Singing May Be The Best Medicine

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When Daniel Pink tweets that choral singing might be the new exercise, you know I have to investigate even if it is just clickbait.

There seems to be some scientific basis to the claim, however.

Choral singing calms the heart and boosts endorphin levels. It improves lung function. It increases pain thresholds and reduces the need for pain medication,” Pink claims, citing research published in Evolution and Human Behavior. It also seems to improve your outlook, boosting mood and self-esteem while alleviating feelings of stress and depression.

These aren’t simply effects of singing. “People who sing in a group report far higher well-being than those who sing solo,” he notes. It’s about synchronizing with others. Rowers and dancers have similarly shown a greater capacity to endure pain when performing in time with others.

While there are some benefits accrued from the physical flexing of lungs and diaphragm, most of the benefits seem to result from the collaborative and communal aspects of choral music.

So even for those who don’t want to participate because they don’t enjoy singing, this seems to point to there being some benefits in active participation in arts and cultural activities. The close coordination found in choral, dance, theater productions seem to bring the best benefits, probably because they require a employing social skills connected with concession and negotiation.

But I have to imagine people would gain some benefits, albeit to a lesser degree, participating in a social, hands on creative activity with others versus passive observation.

The study in Evolution and Human Behavior looked at the bonds formed between people who met frequently (~once a week) in small choral groups and then came together with other choral groups to form a mega choir once or twice a year.

Importantly, we show that even after only a single session of singing, a large group of unfamiliar individuals can become bonded to the same level as those who are familiar to each other within that group.

[…]

Our results suggest that communal singing can cause a significant increase in social closeness of large groups of unfamiliar individuals (c.f. Pearce, Launay, & Dunbar, 2015). In other words, communal singing may bypass the need for personal knowledge about other individuals that more intimate relationships require.

I suspect the shared experience and interest in singing helps form these strong bonds quickly. The study says music specifically has a pivotal role forming bonds across human evolutionary history. The study also seems to say there is an aspect of social bonding that allow these connections to coalesce quickly even during less formal and infrequent contacts.

Something to think about and explore.

Could It Be That Pretty Much Anything Is More Engaging Than Test Focused Learning?

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Via Artsjournal.com is a piece from the Brookings Institution titled, “An unexpectedly positive result from arts-focused field trips.”

After crunching some numbers as part of research being conducted for the National Endowment for the Arts, the article author Jay P. Greene writes,

The surprising result is that students who received multiple field trips experienced significantly greater gains on their standardized test scores after the first year than did the control students.

Before you get too excited about that, the cause and effect relationship probably isn’t what you assume.

Greene notes that this was surprising because previous research has found there is no skill transfer between arts and other subjects.

…there is little to no rigorous evidence that art improves performance in math or reading, just as there is little evidence that math or reading improve performance in art.

Createquity presented similar information in 2016 when they examined the strength of existing research on the benefits of the arts.

Greene writes that based on the strength of previous research showing there was no positive transference of skills from the arts to other subject areas, they didn’t include that as part of their research design for the NEA study. However, since it wouldn’t cost more to process the data to answer the question about whether skills were transferable, they added that to part of their analysis assuming it would confirm past research that there are not statistically significant effects.

Even though they did find a statistically significant effect, Greene says that given the strength of previous research, their findings are not sufficient to invalidate what has been found.

We still do not believe that arts instruction and experiences have a direct effect on math or ELA ability. We think this because the bulk of prior research tells us so, and because it is simply implausible that two extra field trips to an arts organization conveyed a significant amount of math and ELA knowledge.

Our best guess is that test scores may have risen because the extra arts activities increased student interest and engagement in school. Looking at two different measures of student conscientiousness,…we find that treatment students experienced a significant increase on these outcomes, which may be indicators of school engagement…Maybe arts-focused field trips do not teach math or reading, but they do make students more interested in their school that does teach math and reading.

Greene says that this is just a guess or that their results might just be a fluke.

For my money, the arts improving student interest and engagement is a much better claim than improving test scores. As I have discussed before, the arts are not well served when they are seen as having a utilitarian purpose. While improving student engagement in subject matter is still a utilitarian view, it is a much more general measure than test scores. You start to move away from how many concertos and paintings are needed to raise test scores by five points.

However, just like with the economic value argument, I strongly suspect that you can substitute other activities in the arts’ place and find student engagement improves. Increasing opportunities for free play, recess, field trips, experiential learning, etc and focusing less on tests will probably improve engagement quite a bit.

Taking Arts & Culture’s Measure

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I have been cautioning the non-profit arts community about citing the economic value of the arts for over a decade now. The first time was in 2007. I wrote about it a few times in the interim, but I didn’t really start to devote time and space to the idea until the last 2-3 years.

However, if you don’t put stock in my arguments, perhaps you will find statements by celebrities with English accents to be compelling. Check out the following videos from an Arts Emergency Service convening at the Oxford Literary Festival where author Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials series) makes the same point cited in just about every piece I discussed in previous posts:

“Keep clear of economic justifications for the arts. If you do that, if you try that, you hand a weapon to the other side because they can always find ways of proving that you are wrong about it, you’ve got the figures wrong. You invite them to measure everything in terms of economic gain. My advice would be to ignore economic arguments altogether.”

Noted graphic novelist Alan Moore chimed in about “…the ridiculousness of, sort of, having to have impact. To appoint words like that to the arts, its criminal, its ridiculous.”

Pullman makes another statement that aligns with the assertions by Carter Gillies I often cite that just because something can be measured, doesn’t mean the measurement is relevant. (Diane Ragsdale also wrote a piece along these lines.)

“The government, you see, asks us to do something and then gives us the wrong tools to do it. [unintelligible] says, ‘Look I want you to measure this piece of wood. And here’s a tool for you.’ And gives you a grindstone. And one thing you can say is, ‘Why do you want to measure this wood anyway? This is firewood, I’ll burn it to keep myself warm.’ Questions arise from that. What is the right tool for measuring the arts and do we need to measure them anyway? What are we measuring them for?”

There is another video on the Arts Emergency page where the panel, which includes Arts Emergency co-founder, Josie Long, discuss the false dichotomy between art and science that is worth checking out.

As I was looking back at all the posts I made on this subject, I found the following tweet I had linked to many years ago.  It struck me that if you can’t entirely control the language your advocates use, request they make this one small change in terminology can help start to shift the “economic benefit” mindset. (Though perhaps not something to use in the context of immigration discussions.)

Uncaging The Ticket Office Staff

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Ken Davenport made a post last month about the way the New York City subway system is shifting their practice. Since more subway riders are able to pay for rides with their credit cards and even have refillable Metro cards sent to their homes, there is less need for the booth attendants.

But, NYC has been slow to adopt any changes unlike other cities around the country.

Starting to sound familiar? Labor intensive? Slow to change? Tickets that can be received at home, or from a “machine.”

However, the booth attendants aren’t necessarily losing their jobs.

In the subway case, they are talking about allowing station agents to help passengers off the train, providing service to the riders looking as they stand on the tracks, etc. They are talking about getting them out of the glass box and interacting directly with our consumers.

Why? Because riders polled LIKE having the station agents. And I bet our ticket buyers LIKE having our box office attendees as well.

As we become more and more cashless, and as we become more print-at-home, maybe an idea is to allow our box office personnel to become even more of an integral part of our promotion and advertising team (they are the few folks that actually talk to our customers). Maybe we just get them out from behind those glass walls that, frankly, are so antithetical to any sales process (ever been to an Apple store? It’s no coincidence that their salespeople walk the stores, conducting transactions from a phone that fits in their pocket).

Davenport draws the line between the station attendant and the ticket office staff which has always been regarded as the first point of contact 95% of people have with an arts and cultural organization.

About two years ago I made a similar post about using technology to unmoor the ticket office from a permanent physical location in a lobby. (Check it out, there were some good comments.) Davenport takes the next step astutely noting that the function of physically transferring tickets to someone is becoming less necessary whereas personal contact with visitors is just as, if not more, important.

Personally, knowing the subway station attendant would be getting out of those booths makes me relieved on their behalf. Ever since I was a kid (this is back to when “Y” tokens were used) those booths made me feel anxious because the attendants looked like they were imprisoned in the claustrophobic cubes while everyone else was free to travel about.

Since it has been pretty apparent in a number of places I have worked that the ticket office was the last space an architect designed, this is probably an experience shared by a lot of ticketing staff.

Getting the staff out among the visitors may bring a constructive psychological and perceptual change to the whole relationship.

But Will A Framed Canvas Fit Through The Book Return Slot?

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Thanks to a partnership between the Akron Art Museum and the Akron-Summit County Public Library, not only can you get a book to place on the nightstand beside your bed, you can also get a painting to hang over your bed.

According to a recent article, the museum is creating the Akron Art Library in the Akron-Summit County Public Library Main Library. Patrons can view the art and then use their library card to borrow a work for four weeks and renew it up to five times if no one else places a request for it.

“We want to show we can trust the public with works of art,” said Art Museum Director of Education Alison Caplan. “We want people to have that moment of ‘are you sure we can take this out?'”

Even so, the fine for not returning a borrowed piece is $500 and late fees run 50 cents per day, she said.

All the art available to borrow — paintings, drawings, photos and other two-dimensional work — is created by professional Northeast Ohio artists, many of whom have been featured at the museum.

“We tried to highlight artists that came from Akron and the region and have gone on to do great things,” Caplan said. “It’s a really good mix.”

If this sounds somewhat familiar to you, it might be because four years ago I wrote about how Oberlin College has been lending out priceless works by Dali, Picasso, Chagall, etc to their students since the 1940s.

Oberlin says they haven’t had anything damaged or stolen in all that time so the risk of allowing people to take art works home with them might not be as great as you might imagine. The museum’s focus on circulating works by regional artists can help cultivate an awareness and appreciation that there are well regarded creative people perusing produce at the supermarket and laughing too loudly behind them in the movie theater.

Not to mention the Art Library program reinforces the idea that your home is an appropriate place for art that appears in a museum and that access to such work is within your reach.

I wonder if they have/will start a children’s section so kids can follow the example of their parents and check out something to hang on their walls as well.

Artists Are The Only Asset Found In Every Community

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The video of ArtPlace America’s CEO Jamie Bennett’s keynote at an Invest Health convening came across my feed recently.  What I found valuable in his speech was that he laid out an argument for the value of the arts that didn’t pivot to economic statistics.

Around the 6:50 mark he starts to talk about the factors that influence those who move into a community in making the decision to stay: social offerings; openness to new ideas and people; and aesthetics.  He says arts and culture bring all those things and helps people feel rooted in a community.

His definition of art and culture is inline with that expanded definition embraced by everyone from the National Endowment for the Arts and respondents to the recent Culture Track survey. It is the parks and food trucks as well as the opera houses.

He talks about arts and culture as a facilitator of social cohesion citing the observations of drumming circles and informal arts by an anthropologist working at the Field Museum in Chicago.  Bennett said that the anthropologist found that the act of “…art making, doing and experiencing art together, acts as a master identity.”

He goes on to say that this was based on observations of immigrants and first generation Americans living in Chicago who participated in drumming circles. As each performed drumming particular to their own cultural background, the group bonded.   Bennett says this observation is important because it potentially illustrates that arts and culture is a pathway for integrating society that doesn’t involve assimilation–“I don’t have to become more like you to become more closely bonded.”

The a-ha moment for me came around 9:15 when Bennett mentions that artists are the only asset that exists in any community. Not every community has a waterfront to develop, transportation infrastructure or an anchor institution (i.e. higher ed, medical) around which to build industry.  You can count on those who practice and participate in the arts being in your community. With some investment, those people/groups can form the basis around which community cohesion can be cultivated.

He talks about the process of Creative Placemaking as something that has to be particular to each community -“resident centric, locally informed and holistic.” You can’t copy what works somewhere else and expect it to work in your community.

While the local arts community is well-placed to respond to the needs of their community, the challenge to them is to shift their perspective to focus on creating solutions for challenges in their geographic community rather than thinking about responding to their community of donors, subscribers and peer institutions.

As an example, he cites the efforts of Springboard for the Arts in helping to mobilize 600 artists to help mitigate the negative impacts of two years of light rail construction on residents and businesses in St. Paul, MN.

Bennett says the success of this project ran contrary to many of the assumptions and expectations people have. He points out the solution came from artists who already lived in the community. No one was brought in from outside to help save the neighborhood. All the positive associations about arts and culture the project inspired didn’t require the construction of an arts center, nor was it dependent on a physical arts oriented facility or cultural district. The focus was on the human beings involved.

His comment that really intrigued me and I hope is true, is that many of the businesses in the area who benefited from the 150 events the 600 artists created have started diverting promotional money to commissioning work because they saw the events brought in more business than advertising did.

Bennett’s thought process might not immediately satisfy a government official or policy maker that wants the promise of quantifiable results. However, there is something compelling in the argument that the arts and culture community is an already present asset that can be mobilized to effect.  If they are soliciting support employing this rationale it will be incumbent upon many arts and cultural entities to start focusing on addressing the challenges in their region rather than doing more what they have done in the past.

 

They Predicted The End of Paper Too

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Apropos of my post on Monday about physical objects being valued more than digital copies, there was a fairly long piece in The Guardian about how a paperless society hasn’t been achieved yet. The implication being that people perceive a need for physical representations of ideas.

Since the death of various arts disciplines at the hands of technological developments have been predicted for ages now, there are a number of parallels with the arts in the piece.

The central focus of the article is on a paper manufacturers conference in Chicago last March. Since there has been discussion about a need to update pretty much every element and experience at the arts conferences I have attended, I had to wince when I recognized some parallels in the mild criticism of clinging to antiquated approaches at the paper conference.

…the latest issue of the Paper2017 Convention Daily, published in three separate editions for each day of the conference, and printed on obscenely large 16in by 11.75in glossy tabloid that serves as an oversized “screw you” to palm-sized devices. It is printed by O’Brien Publications, which also publishes PaperAge magazine, the newspaper of record for all things pulp and paper since 1884.
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I stroll through the CL, drawn to an unmanned National Paper Trade Association table piled high with juicy-looking literature on paper’s many virtues. I take one of each and sit down at a cocktail table to thumb through my haul of brochures announcing paper “myths” and paper “facts”.

While the paper industry may be showing some resistance to the growing use of digital at their conference, they aren’t blind to the changing environment. Use of printing and writing paper has been in decline since 2008. At the same time, with Amazon packing small items in boxes surrounded by paper and placed in bigger boxes, and increasing resistance to plastic waste, there is growing opportunity for other types of paper products.

Mohawk Paper on the other hand, says they are ignoring the consultants and have been growing their business 3%-4% a year just focusing on the core value of manufacturing really great paper.

To make it work, they have been positioning their product in the context of the satisfaction found in a physical product. (my emphasis)

It’s not that Mohawk ignores the digital revolution; rather, they have made a choice to sell the ethos of paper to the digitally fatigued. Melissa Stevens, Mohawk’s senior VP of sales, hands me Mohawk’s Declaration of Craft, an absolutely gorgeous piece of printed material chock-full of new-agey thingness. Its thesis: “In an era of impermanence, an extraordinary movement has emerged. A movement of makers where craftsmanship and permanence matter now more than ever.”

Mohawk’s communication strategy is built around this “maker” movement, which is illustrated with hipsters throwing clay in their basements, forging wrought iron and side-hustling in saxophone design. It’s impossible to tell if this is brilliant marketing or sheer impudence, or both.

I see parallels for the arts and culture sector in this as well. First, is the renewed focus on personal creative expression advocated by groups like Arts Midwest

Even more immediately and literally, I emailed Drew McManus last night observing that since he updated the design of my website to include a print option in the social sharing tool bar, I have been surprised how many people have used it. I added that over on the Arts Hacker website, an entry that hasn’t been printed at least once is the exception rather than the rule.

Even though it may be more convenient to bookmark an article and access it on demand, people are apparently printing them off for themselves or to share with others.

I started to wonder–does the knowledge that an article has been printed out 1-4 times have more value for Drew and the Arts Hacker contributors than some number of times the articles are shared on social media since printing represents that extra investment of time and material?

Speaking for myself, the fact someone did take the time to print my last AH post out is probably worth 5-10 shares. On the other hand, I was really pleased when I saw the Pennsylvania Arts Council shared the post since they are influential. So it this issue really isn’t clearcut, especially since I have no concept of the identity or influence of the others who shared the post.

A Bird In The Hand Is Worth More Than Two In Computer Memory

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Roger Tomilson tweeted about Harvard Business Review article that provides some food for thought about how people might experience arts and culture.

I’ll jump right to a quote since the article title, “Customers Won’t Pay as Much for Digital Goods — and Research Explains Why,” pretty much provides the all the introduction you need.

The greater value ascribed to physical than digital goods persisted when we accounted for people’s estimates of production costs and retail prices. It even held for goods with no resale value. Plausible alternative explanations, such as physical goods lasting longer or being more enjoyable to use than digital goods, also failed to explain this difference.

Only a difference in the extent to which people feel a sense of ownership for digital and physical objects explained their preference for the physical format. Indeed, the value gap disappeared for goods participants rented and expected to give back.

[…]

Because ownership entails a link between a person and an object, we found the gap in their value increased when that link was easy to form and disappeared when that link was hard to establish. Participants valued a physical copy of The Empire Strikes Back more than a digital copy, for instance, only if they considered the Star Wars series to be films with which they strongly identified. Participants who weren’t Star Wars fans valued physical and digital copies similarly.

To summarize: People value physical objects more than digital ones when the object represents something with which they closely identify, even if it has no monetary value, if they don’t have to give it back.

As much as I would like it to, this doesn’t really address whether people value physical encounters with transitory experiences like attending a performance or visiting a museum versus seeing a recording or a digital copy of a piece of visual art.

Even if I did try to wedge a rationalization in there, we’d still be left with the finding that, regardless of format, people place an equal value on things they don’t feel are relevant to them. Which means, people won’t automatically start to value art if they experience the physical manifestation. (You probably didn’t need research to tell you that.)

What I wondered is whether having something physical to take away from the experience facilitates in creating more value for people. Do well designed, informative playbills/programs/information sheets/gallery maps, etc help to solidify value for people even if they ultimately decide to toss it? Versus nothing or an digital media tour that is only available at the venue.

If so, does the effect increase if a hand-on activity is provided which produces something people can take with them? Is a link forged when someone executes an expression of personal creativity? It may have no value to anyone else but it is simultaneously allowing people to participate in the creative process and generating a physical manifestation connected to the experience.

Does this provide a greater  sense of ownership and investment in the experience?

And if you are nodding affirmatively and thinking “yes” to yourself, here is the next question – Where do selfie pictures fit in?

They are creative expressions but in digital form.  Research has shown people feel selfies and digital recording  enhance the experience…they just can’t accurately remember the content of the experience.  One potential way to mitigate this is to offer background and props for people to use in selfies as a way of saying, “we would prefer you not use your devices during the show, but we want you to remember this experience.”

Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas?

I would be interested to see if the presence of a gift shop/souvenirs increases value for people over places that don’t offer them. How many of you would stock cheesy snowglobes if there was a correlation with increased return visits in a 5 year period?

Your Resolution To Create Connections With Arts And Culture Starts Today! (or maybe tomorrow depending on when you read this)

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For over two years now I have been talking about Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative to build public will for arts and culture.

While readers have had an opportunity to review the materials on the website, few have been able to attend the Arts Midwest presentations and ask questions in person.

Well you are in luck! Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 19 @ noon CST Creating Connection program manager Anne Romens will be hosting a webinar to discuss the project and findings. You can register by following that link.

Anne also hosted a webinar on the subject last week. The video of that webinar is available if you don’t have the opportunity to participate on Tuesday. You’ll want to pay attention around the 33 minute mark for the shout out to some work I have been doing.

Even if you don’t think you will become the full throated advocate for the project that I am, at the very least you can come away from the webinar with some tips on how to change your messaging and promotional materials to be more audience and experience focused.

The webinar comes at the right time to allow you to resolve to do a better job in the New Year so check it out.

Even Wagner Can’t Shush The Italians

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When discussion turns to how audiences were once pretty raucous but are now expected to sit quietly, you get the impression that those times are long past. Those who are plugged into the opera world are probably aware, however, that at least a certain segment of the audience at La Scala is still pretty vocal. According to a piece on History Today, in 2013 the opening performance of La Traviata was accompanied by catcalls and hissing.

…having interrupted the performance several times with noisy catcalls, they rounded off the evening by booing loudly during the curtain call. The cast were devastated. The Polish tenor, Piotr Beczala – who had sung the part of Alfredo Germont – was so appalled that he refused to perform at Milan’s most celebrated cultural landmark ever again.

It wasn’t the first time that the loggionisti had made their feelings heard. In 2006, the Franco-Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna stormed off stage midway through a performance of Verdi’s Aida in protest at the furious cries that were hurled at him. Even the great Luciano Pavarotti was not spared the loggionisti’s wrath. In 1992, he was booed while playing the title role in Verdi’s Don Carlo.

Shortly before taking the Artistic Director post in 2014, Alexander Pereira, declared his determination to stamp the practice out.

The loggionisti, however, disagreed. Believing that the audience have every right to take sub-standard singers to task, they have continued to raise merry hell.

While we may want to cite numerous interruptions by cellphones, talking, consuming food, etc that occurs these days as a similar manifestation, note that the loggionisti are, at least theoretically, invested in paying attention to the performance and are relatively knowledgeable.

Though when you are talking about interruptions, that is perhaps a distinction without a difference. I wrote about similar situations before when audiences in the US were so invested in performances, they might complain during a show when an actor’s interpretation of Shakespeare didn’t align with their own.

Reading the History Today piece, you might start to think history repeats itself with its discussion of designing pieces to suit short attention spans.

Realising that no audience would listen to an entire work, composers started to produce pieces that took account of their inattention. These often included an aria di sorbetto (‘sherbet aria’), an incidental passage that allowed the audience to buy food or drink without fear of missing anything important.

Like most articles on this topic, it credits Richard Wagner’s influence and demanding plot structure as the reason audiences started to sit silently and pay attention.  The fact Wagner’s name inevitable comes up as the reason for this change makes me wonder at the veracity of this claim. Could he really have been that influential or is everyone who writes about this reading from the same source (or quoting sources that all quote that original source)?

The History Today article does say that societal changes were of greater importance in the effort to bring peace to opera houses. It suggests that with the wider variety of entertainment options available in the informal atmosphere of music halls, opera houses got quieter, leaving those that appreciated opera a growing appreciation of the silence.

What implications might this have for the current cultural environment? There are pretty strong indications that people appreciate the convenience, informality and variety of entertainment available to them at home via streaming services/video games/general Internet.

I might have come to the conclusion that cultural organizations should therefore offer a wider variety of programming in an informal environment. However, the Seattle Symphony findings I wrote about on Monday make me reconsider that.  Their newer audiences gravitated toward the informal, short programming certainly, but it was also the most narrowly programmed season.

Granted, they are a single organization practicing a single cultural discipline which ultimately constitutes a pretty minuscule sample. But reading about it makes me pause before making any blanket statements. The only thing that is easy to say is this is a complex situation requiring careful thought.

There has been this assumption that newer works that connect with the tastes and values of younger audiences need to be presented rather than returning perennially to the old warhorses. But as I wrote in an email to Drew McManus, it turns out, for the Seattle Symphony at least, that the audience open to the most eclectic mix of programming is the one that is dying out.

As I say, this may only be true for a single organization and/or classical music. It made me a little embarrassed to think that an apology might be owed to a devoted audience that has been characterized as stodgy and tradition bound when it turns out they might be the radicals.

Getting back to the History Today article. As much as I don’t want a return to the chaotic environment described in articles like this, I continue to return to the subject to remind myself (and you) that we need to keep thinking about the environment we are providing. When I wrote about the Culture Track study last month, I used a lot of slides related to motivators to visit museums and galleries but the slides for live performance events are similar.

The top motivator across most genres was Having Fun, second was Interest in Content, followed by things like feeling inspired, new experiences and social opportunities with friends. People aren’t looking to scream across the room at their friends and wreck the place. There is a strong interest in the content and its value as well.

Thanks For The All Creativity

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I am going use the assumption that everyone is focused on traveling for Thanksgiving and not on reading blog posts as a license to be admittedly a little lazy here and not dwell heavily on arts and cultural administration related topics today.

Over on ArtsHacker, we posted about what we were thankful for as arts administrators.  If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you won’t be surprised to read I appreciate the efforts people and organizations are making in advocating for the cultivation of an individual’s capacity for creativity.

More importantly, they are getting out there and providing people with hands on opportunities to help them recognize that capacity.

Hope everyone has a great time with family and friends this holiday season and travel safely.

It was with some sympathy that I read today that traffic will be awful in cities that are usually great to commute in whereas places with awful traffic jams will hardly notice it has gotten worse. Be safe out there.

In a list of the 25 U.S. metros that draw the most Thanksgiving travelers, Cleveland, Ohio, turns out to have the highest spike in pre-holiday traffic—probably because on a normal day it’s generally one of the world’s less stressful cities in which to drive.

Turkey-destined slogs through towns more generally besieged by traffic—Seattle, Dallas, and San Francisco, for example—will be still be arduous, yes, but not as shockingly so. Small comfort, I know.

Placemaking As Imagined By The People Who Live There

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The Shelterforce website had an interesting article about some data collection techniques being used for Creative Placemaking efforts. Author Keli Tianga’s description of a crowdmapping process was the approach that most intrigued me.

In crowdmapping, participants get out on foot and survey a neighborhood for its existing creative and cultural assets. “Every small group gets a small section of [a neighborhood’s] overall map to work from—this is so they can focus their efforts and share ideas with one another,” said Leo Vazquez, executive director of the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.

Teams are given color-coded stickers, and mark places on the map they’ve identified for their potential. Large, blank walls on the sides of buildings can become canvasses for murals; empty, fenced-in land owned by private business can become a site for temporary large-scale sculpture installations; community gardens can also become venues for outdoor music performances, and small parks can become designated spots for contemplation or solo art-making.

In the process, I made special note of being outside and observing how a community moves and interacts with one another and with space—where people are gathered, which streets have the most pedestrians, which playground is the most popular are all things to remember when at the point of trying to reach people “where they are.”

Crowdmapping’s virtue is its practicality and democracy—it requires no prior training, and everyone’s viewpoint is useful…

What appealed to me most was that is such great participatory activity that can go a long way toward solving the problem of involving people who are most impacted by decisions but may not show up to formal meetings. People who don’t feel like they are represented or have their voices heard can gain a measure of confidence that their contributions matter when they are made responsible for imagining/suggesting what a neighborhood might become.

The article discusses how places like Baltimore are using these type of maps, overlaid with other data about social and economic indicators to make decisions about how to deploy resources.

Keli Tianga also writes about some really intensive one on one discussions that were conducted in Cincinnati as part of a process called “design thinking.”

Following a link to a story about the design thinking process on the ArtsPlace America site provided some usefl insight about why people are reluctant to participate in community meetings soliciting feedback about development plans.

…we discovered barriers that hadn’t been considered before. Many of the events weren’t physically accessible to Walnut Hills’ older residents. Other residents said they didn’t feel safe leaving their homes, or were afraid that by vocalizing their concerns they’d be labeled as “snitches.” Finally, some admitted that they thought attending these meetings would only encourage and accelerate the gentrification of their neighborhood.

[…]

High Fives was ultimately seen as a huge success for both the RF and Design Impact. Residents who hadn’t previously participated in listening sessions or community council meetings stepped up to plan what High Fives looked like, when it would happen and how to get other residents involved. Those who felt less comfortable leading tasks still contributed by spreading the word or distributing signs, a reminder that “resident leadership” can look different depending on the person.

End of An Era, Who Will Pick Up The Torch

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Over the last week you may have seen mention that after 10 years in existence,  Createquity will be ceasing operations at the end of the 2017 calendar year.

This is a great pity. One of the goals founder Ian David Moss had as he developed his blogging project into a think tank was to facilitate arts administrators’ ability to understand research findings since they so often didn’t have the opportunity to review, much less finish research reports. Just last week, I cited one of his recent entries as the basis for a post.

It will probably come as no surprise that difficulty finding suitable funding for Createquity’s efforts is the basis for the decision to cease operations. Ian discusses all the options they weighed and opportunities of which they tried to avail themselves.  Ultimately, in summary he says,

These are among the reasons why the arts field has, since the 1980s, dug a formidable graveyard for failed think tank initiatives, some of which have become so buried under the weight of history that I only learned about them for the first time earlier this year.

The project I most regret seeing fall by the wayside is their effort to chart what we know about the benefits of the arts in improving lives.  Createquity graphed out research studies about the benefits of the arts on a scale that indicated the quality of the evidence and whether the research said a benefit existed.  This information is extremely important to know if you are going to advocate for arts and culture and cite research findings. Looking at Createquity’s evaluation, the evidence that supports commonly made assertions about the benefit of arts in educational and social outcomes is weaker than it is made out to be or there is a lack of corroborating research.

Think about it this way. TV news programs often have short segments where they talk about the amazing benefits of dark chocolate, red wine, acai berries, etc., but when you take the time to really examine the evidence you discover you would have to consume three times your body weight daily to realize those benefits.

Funding for arts and culture entities is already tenuous as it is, (to whit, Createquity), the sector doesn’t need to have people denouncing it for making overblown claims. (And as I have often argued, we shouldn’t be invoking the utilitarian value of the arts to justify it anyway.)

There the end of his post, Moss talks about the preparations they are going through over the next few months. They will be publishing summary articles about the work they have done.  (One on cultural equity was published today.)

They intend to make their work available to anyone who might wish to continue where they are leaving off.

Over the next couple of months, we will be polishing up our internal training materials and resources to make it as easy as possible for people in the arts community to carry on aspects of the work we’ve started in their own spaces and in their own names. And in November and December, you can expect to see some parting thoughts from our team to philanthropists and researchers seeking to optimize their investments in the arts in the decade ahead. Our goal in all of this is to activate the latent potential of our work over the past ten years into the most accessible and actionable content possible.

I think there are many who join me in hoping that someone will be able to continue the important work they have started.

Planning Out Your Creative Utopia

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About two years ago I started an after (work) hours art show that would provide students and local artists an opportunity to show their work and get experience speaking about it with people who didn’t have the shared vocabulary of visual artists.

Last Thursday we had the 4th iteration of the event, which we have been holding every 6 months or so.  Due to my involvement with the Creating Connection initiative, I consciously tried to employ suggested language about personal capacity for creativity in the promotional materials. I referenced people’s past comments about not realizing their neighbors were so talented or even interested in creating works of visual art.

Our frequent local partners/collaborators, the Creative Cult, had approached me about having a hands-on activity for attendees so the opportunity to create something yourself also figured heavily in our promotional materials. Since we usually have more artists enter than we have space to accommodate, we originally discussed placing the activity in a side corridor off the lobby. However, we had fewer applications than expected so we were able to move their activities to a prime spot.

They got people involved in executing their vision of a Creative Utopia…in cardboard. While the idea was to theoretically rebuild our town with the features that would make it a great place for people to express their creativity, few people felt constrained by that basic concept. And who could blame them.

The cardboard village was dubbed “Cult-topia” since the guys from the Cult provided all the art materials and scrounged up a lot of cardboard in advance.

While young kids were the most enthusiastic and added the most color to the project, there were a lot of people of all ages who contributed to the creative utopia.

One thing we noticed about the event– People lingered a lot longer than in the past, even those who weren’t helping to build Cult-topia. We aren’t exactly sure why. Did they like watching people have fun making ugly buildings out of cardboard? Was it the presence of more cafe tables to sit at? Even though the crowd was the same size as the past, did the ambiance feel calmer and less frenetic because the layout was a little more spread out?

I was reminded of an observation Nina Simon made in her book where she mentions that her museum started offering all-ages participatory activities at their events and exhibitions. She says none of the activities were specifically targeted as family events. Kids and adults just worked side by side at many of the events. Little by little, they noticed the melded events were packed, but the Family Day branded events saw decreasing attendance. She characterized it as the appeal of a room that was large enough to accommodate everyone versus a special segment.

I wondered if something along those lines was in operation in this situation. Did the presence of participatory activities keep all attendees engaged for a longer period of time regardless of whether they contributed or even viewed themselves as someone who would dive in to cardboard construction projects with gusto?

At the end of the night, I was asked if we could leave Cult-topia up on display for a few days. Some might feel it was a mistake to agree to leave a shabby looking project created by committee prominently placed in an art center lobby. This is the type of thing that draws derisive commentary about something not being art, art being dumbed down or the infamous, “I could do that.”

But that is sort of the point. By leaving it up for about a week, we hope to validate people’s capacity to make a creative contribution. No one is saying it is great art. Just that people had a great time putting it together. It is a small step in a journey of 1000 miles.

It can be a risky move and could diminish the organization in the eyes of some. But probably the easiest way to combat the perception that work by “people like me” doesn’t appear at an arts event is to display the work of people like them.

Considering The Essence Of Being Mainstream Or Culturally Specific

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Earlier this month Ian David Moss wrote a piece challenging the arts and culture community to evaluate the language and mindset in which we frame artistic and cultural expression and practice.

He make a case that:

Separating our concepts of “mainstream” and “white” could allow us to treat European art forms as just one of many types of cultural expression within a mix of organizations and communities, instead of privileging them as the historical default.

Starting this post off with that may raise a sense of defensiveness in readers and a reluctance to continue reading which is probably why Moss doesn’t bring it up until the last quarter of his post. Nonetheless it is an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant.

Moss says there is something to consider in response by Justin Laing, a former senior program officer at Heinz Endowments, to a post last year about cultural equity,

Moss provides further context noting:

…The logic on researchers’ part is that “culturally-specific” organizations explicitly target a specific demographic population, whereas “mainstream” organizations target everyone.

[..]

But many cultural equity advocates see orchestral music as unabashedly and irredeemably white: it originated in Europe, the vast majority of composers presented (even by Latin American and Asian orchestras) are European or European-descended, and most of the people who enjoy it are of European origin. To them, when we talk about culturally-specific organizations, that includes symphony orchestras–and ballets, and operas, and encyclopedic art museums. And it’s not at all obvious to them why certain culturally-specific organizations should continue to receive such a disproportionate share of public and philanthropic support compared to other culturally-specific organizations.

Moss acknowledges there are arguments to be made for the universal appeal of these forms, citing Venezuela’s pride in El Sistema and the fact that many arts organizations have been successful at attracting attendance from Black and Latin communities.

This week Artsjournal linked to a Dance Magazine piece talking about how Philadelphia was a hub for black ballerinas from the 1930s-1950s. (Article has video interviews with some of the women that trained as dancers during the period.) There is a sense of hope that there is a trend in this general direction again.

He points out that while there is crossover appeal, it is also clear that opera, ballet, symphony, et. al are by no means the most popular art forms in the U.S. and are perhaps more appropriately labeled as culturally specific rather than mainstream if they are indeed not serving everyone.

This is where the concept of divorcing “white” from “mainstream” comes in. (Moss’ emphasis)

Were the field to adopt this new understanding, an unavoidable question would face every organization celebrating European cultural heritage in the midst of a substantial nonwhite population: is our foremost loyalty to our art form or our local community? In answering, boards and executives would need to realize that true commitment to the latter could mean dramatic changes, changes that would make their organizations unrecognizable to the individuals who founded them. Yet reaffirming a primary commitment to an art form with clear ethnic roots–which, I want to emphasize here, is an equally valid choice under this paradigm–would be a signal to the world that the organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts can only reach so far. And yes, that may make it untenable to go after large sums of money from foundations and government agencies on the premise of being a local “anchor institution.”

So much of this paragraph reminded me of a post I wrote last year citing a similar piece on the topic written by Ronia Holmes where she writes,

All that being said—I don’t think arts organizations are bad entities filled with bad people doing bad things…They really do believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and really do want to offer meaningful, authentic moments of connection.

The problem is that most organizations are not built to do that, and are constantly struggling with it because of expectations that they should be something they are not. Every year, organizations jump through hoops to secure restricted grants that necessitate yet another outreach program or diversity week or community partnership, hoping that if they impress the funders enough they will be given money that can be used for what the organization actually has a mission to do.

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

Both Holmes and Moss are acknowledging the existence of the same dynamics. I can’t imagine they are the only ones thinking along these lines which suggests that perhaps there is both potential and need to have additional conversation and thought in this direction.

It may be uncomfortable to discuss and acknowledge much of what is involved and needs to change, but the general framework of this paradigm is a fair and generally constructive way forward.

(I would suggest, however, that being completely forthright and declaring your mission is to preserve and perpetuate European cultural heritage is not going to be constructive on oh so many ways.)

Does Cultural Track Data Challenge Assumptions About Your Community?

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As I promised in my last post, I took a deeper look at the Culture Track reporting over the weekend.  More specifically, I took at a look at both the Top Line deck and Supporting Data documents which are available for download. I didn’t review the raw data.

The Supporting Data document is presented with visual graphs which makes it easy to interpret. Though I also hungered for some analytical commentary from the Culture Track folks about what the greater implications might be.

A few observations from Supporting Data in the hopes of making the opportunity to dig in irresistible for readers.

First of all, the charts seem to belie the idea that Millennials are  abandoning cultural experiences. Except for watching TV (which includes streaming) they lead in every category. This is only one of three pages.

 

Now you may be saying, sure but participation once a year isn’t a high hurdle.

However, that generation also leads in frequency per month too.

 

If you remember what I quoted and wrote last week about the perceptions of those who were high frequency attenders, this has some important implications.

People who attend three or more cultural experiences per month are 94% more likely to cite “it doesn’t change” as a barrier to more frequent cultural participation compared those who attend one or fewer cultural experiences per month.

Given that what people define as a cultural experience is pretty broad, the chances that your average attendee is participating in three or more experiences a month is pretty good. Being 94% more likely to feel lack of change is a barrier to participation is pretty significant.

While you shouldn’t take all this information at face value without digging in and questioning the basis of the findings, the fact the data depicted may contradict your assumptions can be enough to get conversations started reevaluating long held beliefs.

The study authors slice and dice the data through a number of different lenses which make for interesting viewing. Most every question is presented in terms of generation, race/ethnicity, community size, education level, marital status and parental status.

So for example, the following information about where people get advertised and non-advertised information about cultural activities is presented in these contexts. (There is also a chart for offline information sources which I haven’t included)

 

Perhaps of most interest to different arts and cultural organizations, they break down motivators and barriers for participation for 12 different disciplines/cultural activities.

Below is a sample for art museums. There is also a chart with barriers for non-participants for each area.

 

 

NOTICE: The Response I Give May Only Reflect My Current Preferences

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You may have already heard that the CultureTrack report was released yesterday. Compiled and released every three years by LaPlaca Cohen, the report helps track the ways in which attitudes toward culture are shifting.

I haven’t read the full report yet. Just looking at the summary on the animated and interactive site they set up for the report, I knew this would probably be something I returned to a couple times. So for your homework, review the site and we will talk about it more on Monday.

….Unless I get distracted by something else.

What first alerted me to the release of the study was an advance piece on Artsy titled “37% of Art Museum Visitors Don’t View Them as Culture,” which did its job in getting me to read more.

Sure enough the article notes that,

“For many respondents, going to the park or eating at a food truck counts as a cultural experience, while attending a museum does not.”

This wasn’t far off from some of the responses my organization got last winter during our listening tour where people listed going to the speedway as a favorite cultural experience.

Another interesting finding highlighted in the article was largest motivation to engage in cultural activities was to have fun.

Cultural activities continue to be a source of leisure and relaxation for many. The survey found that 81% of audiences are motivated to attend a cultural activity because they want to have fun. A desire to feel less stressed was tied in third place, along with “experiencing new things,” with 76% citing both as reasons for participation. 71% cited learning something new as a reason to participate in culture.

This doesn’t mean that levity must replace education at museums, noted Harnick, but rather that the two cannot be divorced from one another. Culture offers the opportunity to connect with other people and take a pause from daily life—today’s audiences are full of anxiety and looking for a chance to relax, a conclusion that gels with other findings that show high levels of anxiety among the general population.

I spoke to someone today who suggested the current political environment in the country might be contributing to that sense of anxiety.

In terms of barriers to participation, feeling that the experience wasn’t “for someone like me” topped the list.

I can’t really cover all the findings I found interesting, but here are a few to consider.

In terms of loyalty, people rated trustworthiness, consistent quality and customer service as the top three factors. Pricing and discounts were fifth and sixth. Social media and advertising were 10th and 11th with 15% and 13% of responses, respectively. So pricing and advertising aren’t big factors in building loyalty.

Since there is a discussion about whether people want to experience culture as a passive observer or an active participant, I was interested to read that 28% of people wanted their experience to be active and 24% wanted their experience to be calm. But as with everything, there was a bit of nuance illuminated by the data. (their emphasis)

Cultural audiences—like everyone—are multidimensional, and they have different needs and wants at different times, or even simultaneously. In fact, 15% of cultural consumers who chose “calm” as one of their top-three descriptors of an ideal cultural activity also chose “active,” while 24% of those who chose “reflective” also chose “social.”

In the same section, was another valuable insight about the desire for new experiences by active culture consumers (Their emphasis).

People who attend three or more cultural experiences per month are 94% more likely to cite “it doesn’t change” as a barrier to more frequent cultural participation compared those who attend one or fewer cultural experiences per month.

Given that what people define as a cultural experience is pretty broad, the chances that your average attendee is participating in three or more experiences a month is pretty good. Being 94% more likely to feel lack of change is a barrier to participation is pretty significant. I hope there is something in the report that provides more detail about what types of experiences people are participating in and what they feel isn’t changing. Is it the programming? The overall experience?

The section on the role of digital technology in a cultural experience was also quite interesting. People responded that they felt digital enhanced their experience, provided deeper understanding and allowed them to share their experience with friends.

However, the lack of opportunity to use digital made people feel they were able to focus and become more invested in the experience, made the experience feel more authentic and less complicated.

There is a lot more to learn from the detailed study. Or perhaps it is better to say, there is a lot more I hope to learn from the detailed study.

Perhaps the takeaway is, people are more nuanced than the feedback they are giving you at the moment. Whether it is an audience survey, a comment made on social media, or to the box office a statement should be view as “this is how I feel right now, but in other times and situations, my preferences may contradict what I just said.”

Take A Rare Opportunity To Review Others’ Reflections

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Back in August I called attention to a transmedia project in Reading, PA, “This Is Reading,” that playwright Lynn Nottage and a host of others worked on creating to help the community tell stories about itself.

I had initially learned about the project via a post by Margy Waller and must credit her again for tweeting about a follow up conversation that occurred.

With such a push for placemaking and community building projects like “This Is Reading,” having access to the reflections of project participants is of great value to others engaging in similar work.  There are a number of observations and lessons learned that can provide guidance about what worked and what needed to be done better.  It is rare to have this type of material shared publicly so take advantage of the opportunity.

Not only does the newspaper article provide a summary of the report, the report itself is embedded in the webpage and is available for download.

The first thing that caught my eye was that the meetings from which the feedback was collected appeared to be driven by the participants’ desire to continue the momentum started by the project.  The impression I got from the article was that a post-mortem conversation hadn’t been planned, but the project leadership were wise enough to recognize the need to do so.

“The reason we wanted to do this meeting is because this was a more than five-year process,” he said of the installation. “A lot of the volunteers and a lot of the participants expressed interest in what’s next. To me, it was ‘Let’s debrief, let’s talk about it.’ “

The fact of Reading’s decline plays a large part in the content of the project and the subsequent feedback. (Recall the railroad was famous enough to be included in the Monopoly game.) There are multiple times in the report that the investment young people have in the community is called into question. This is in tension with the perception that the nostalgic project content had a greater resonance with older attendees than younger.

The article mentions that the phrase “Reading was…” kept coming up in conversations during the development phase of the project so the title “This Is Reading” was an attempt to emphasize the need to break from a focus on the past and dated thinking.

Given that this exactly mirrors the conversation occurring in the arts (perception youth are not committed, content only relevant to older generation) there are any number of lessons here for the arts and culture community.

Here is the summary listed in the newspaper article:

• Being a person of color in Reading is wrought with stress, tension and discomfort.
• Reading can be a vibrant center of arts and culture if there are significant outreach efforts to invite and welcome; the art is interesting to people of different ethnic, racial or economic backgrounds; and obstacles that prevent or deter participation are eliminated.
• Its self-perception impedes the city’s ability to move forward.
• There is a strong interest and desire in the resurrection of a rail system that would connect our community with nearby communities.
• Long-held community “stories” or narratives can be rewritten by the arts in public spaces.
• There is a desperate need for a shared downtown public performance arts space.
• The city needs a vision that focuses on what Reading is and can be, not what it was.
• Youth and young adults in Reading need to be encouraged, developed and engaged.
• Leadership is needed to champion efforts to build on “This Is Reading,” and the most effective champion would be the city.

An Authentic Experience Is A Branded Experience

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When people are surveyed about what they want out of an interaction with the arts, among the top answers are authentic experience and an opportunity to share that experience with family and friends.

Within the last two days I saw two articles that address how many companies are addressing this expectation among consumers.

The first was a story on Slate about how Apple’s Genius bars were developed to answer this emerging desire.

…stores and malls are looking to adopt the holistic, experiential attitude toward retail space that Apple helped pioneer, one that lures customers out of the house with an idea of service that goes far beyond sales. Sephora will put on your makeup. Sur la Table will teach you how to cook. After last week’s TaskRabbit acquisition, it looks like Ikea is about to start assembling your furniture.

[….]

…Apple retail head Angela Ahrendts unveiled at the company’s keynote last month in Cupertino, California. “We actually don’t call them stores anymore,” she said. “We call them town squares.” As a metaphor for the tech industry’s appropriation of the public sphere, it seemed a bit on the nose. But it’s a fitting culmination of Johnson’s initial strategy to cloak the exchange of cash in civitas.

If you think recasting an Apple Store as a town square is a cynical corporate attempt to cultivate a relationship with consumers, you may not like reading a piece that appeared today on CityLab that talks about corporate attempts to create a “branded experience.” In the context of the Slate story, Apple either pioneered the idea or was on the leading edge of an emerging trend.

The story primarily talks about branded environments in NYC so the demand for such experiences may not translate to other communities. Though I would suspect the differences are only a matter of time and degree.

I was interested to read the following which makes an argument for why in-person interactions in physical spaces remain important even if they aren’t as convenient.

The current conventional wisdom on retail holds that digital sales cannot reach far enough on their own to build sustainable customer bases, so digital-first brands have migrated toward physical stores, pop-up shops, and other experiential marketing strategies.

[…]

The new branded space doesn’t merely satisfy a customer preference for finding products IRL. It opens up a new inflection in retail’s historical role as a venue for urban sociality, spectacle, and leisure.

So while brands strive to enable people to represent their own personal brand, the ubiquity of images of other people’s similarly “authentic” experiences creates a growing sense of dissatisfaction with one’s own. In other words, back before social media expanded our awareness, ignorance was bliss.

What happens when everyone is hunting for unique markers of personality and taste while simultaneously emulating widely popular and algorithmically curated patterns of behavior?

Consumers craving “authentic” experiences tend to build their digital personas by recycling the same kinds of content that populate their own feeds. Especially on Instagram, photos of under-the-radar coffee shops, building interiors, and artful design objects begin to look utterly banal as they aggregate by the thousand. The real world, without any impetus other than the encouragement of the market, has conformed to these aesthetic standards in response.

As they (actually, Alfred Korzybski) say, the map is not the territory. The experience is the experience, not the picture of the experience.

Perhaps one of the challenges arts and cultural organizations will face is that after pouring a lot of thought and energy into wholly revamping the experience they provide, people may still be dissatisfied due to what they value.

But that isn’t new. There has never not been a misalignment between an experience and what is valued by those present. Not everything we do is for everyone. You don’t have to stand for an ovation at the end of the show and clap as hard as the next person.

If you read the CityLab article and shudder at the prospect of having to compete with the expectations created by a Cadillac showroom/lifestyle space  that bills itself as “Public Meeting Place Where Innovators, Creators and the Curious Can Find Inspiration–and one another,” yeah that is simultaneously intimidating and perplexing.

Chances are, that showroom concept isn’t going to be exist outside of NY, LA and Chicago. You know your community and the opportunities that exist to shape experience expectations. It is good to be aware that influences like Cadillac House are likely to seep into your community and influence expectations so stay aware and consider your response.

Hey Buddy, You Want To Share A Creative Experience?

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Back in August I presented material in a pre-conference session at the Arts Midwest (AMW) conference alongside AMW President/CEO David Fraher; Creating Connection Program Director Anne Romens; and my friend Nick Sherman. (Slides on the AMW site, scroll down to “Messages that Matter: Tapping into What Audiences Value + Creating Connection: What Does Your Community Value?”).

For my part of the presentation, I spoke about some of the programs we had instituted in our community based on materials from Creating Connection, or as I often refer to it, Building Public Will For Arts and Culture.

One program I hadn’t talked about was our Arts Buddy program which we developed to respond to the problem of having no one to attend an event with which is often cited as a major impediment to event attendance. Long time readers will remember I started developing the idea back in 2015 after being inspired by a program instituted by a Brazilian bus company.

Anne Romens wanted to know more about the program so they could discuss it in workshops they were conducting in September. We ended up turning our discussion into an interview which Anne posted on the Creating Connection blog last week.

Anne told me she presented the idea at 5 workshops in September and people loved the idea. They pulled out their pens and started scribbling. One person apparently asked if I had legal rights to the idea or if she could use it.

I had I known it would be so popular I would have patented it and started a licensing program!

(The idea was developed with feedback from a number of people both through my blog and emails so neither I, nor anyone else should be looking to patent it.)

You will have to read the interview to see what all the excitement was about.

The Arts Gotta Get Cookin’

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In a piece in on the Harvard Business Review site, food industry consultant Eddie Yoon notes that even as audiences show interest in cooking shows, the desire to cook is waning.

Early in my career I gathered some data for a client on cooking…At the time, the sizes of the three respective groups were about 15% who love to cook, 50% who hate to cook, and 35% who are so-so on the idea.

Nearly 15 years later I did a similar study for a different client. This time, the numbers had shifted: Only 10% of consumers now love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it. That means that the percentage of Americans who really love to cook has dropped by about one-third in a fairly short period of time.

Beyond the numbers, it also suggests that our fondness for Food TV has inspired us to watch more Food TV, and to want to eat more, but hasn’t increased our desire to cook. In part, Food TV has raised our standards to discouragingly high levels: How many of us really feel confident in our cooking skills after watching Iron Chef? (My high school chemistry teacher quit the cello in college after playing a semester next to Yo-Yo Ma.)

He goes on to talk about how consumption trends and technology may force grocers to abandon whole categories of foodstuff that are aligned to the practice of home cooking. The article is worth reading if only for its discussion of food preparation technologies that will retain the fresh taste without preservatives or need for refrigeration, providing greater opportunities to fight hunger around the world.

The article raised a number of questions for me in terms of efforts to increasingly engage communities in creative expression.

We are told people would rather do something creative and participatory than to sit passively. Does the fact that people would rather watch cooking shows than to cook themselves belie that? Is this a situation that applies differently for cooking than for other creative pursuits? Is Yoon correct in suggesting that people are intimidated by cooking shows?

The intimidation factor is something to keep in mind when trying to engage people in creative activities and help them understand their capacity to do so.  The equivalent of a cooking practice as an egg wash that seems simple to insiders may intimidate people. (If just reading “egg wash” caused slight anxiety, you know what I am talking about.)

The other thing to consider is that cooking may suffer from the same problem as other artistic and cultural pursuits. It may be perceived as something other people skilled in secret techniques do that is outside personal ability.  By pursuing a goal of empowering creative expression in others, the arts and culture community could help revive an interest in home cooking.

Consider, while the percentage of those in Yoon’s survey who love to cook has dropped 5% in 15 years, there are also 5% fewer people who hate it.  Presumably both groups have moved toward lukewarm impression given that has increased by 10%. There may be a potential to move the dial closer to love again.

On the other hand, Yoon says cold cereal consumption is shrinking and buying breakfast at Taco Bell is growing, so it may almost be too late for some people.

Stuff To Think About: The Profitability Equals Value Assumption

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You haven’t been working in the non-profit arts and culture sector long enough or you haven’t been paying close enough attention if you haven’t heard/read someone say that an arts organization shouldn’t exist if it can’t be self supporting.

If you have found yourself at a lack of response to this argument, you might read up a little on a blog post Seth Godin made earlier this year where he addresses the mistake of equating profitability with value.

Profit is a good way to demonstrate the creation of value.

In fact, it’s a pretty lousy method. The local water company clearly creates more value (in the sense that we can’t live without it) than the handbag store down the street, and yet the handbag store has a much higher profit margin. That’s not because of value, but because of mismatches in supply and demand, or less relevant inputs like brand, market power and corporate structure.

[…]

I hope we can agree that a caring nurse in the pediatric oncology ward adds more value than a well-paid cosmetic plastic surgeon doing augmentations. People with more money might pay more, but that doesn’t equate to value.

The best way to measure value created is to measure value, not profit.

The purpose of society is to maximize profit

Well, since profit isn’t a good measure of value created, this isn’t at all consistent. More important, things like a living wage, sustainability, fairness and the creation of meaning matter even more. When we consider how to advance our culture, “will it hurt profits?” ought not to be the first (or even the fifth) question we ask.

Pay attention to the last line of this next quote from Godin because it is basically verbatim a core point made by the Potter-Warrior-Philosopher Carter Gillies.

The only purpose of a company is to maximize long-term shareholder value.

Says who? Is the only purpose of your career to maximize lifetime income? If a company is the collective work of humans, we ought to measure the value that those humans seek to create.

Just because there’s a number (a number that’s easy to read, easy to game, easy to keep track of) doesn’t mean it’s relevant.

Okay, so Carter may not be a warrior, but he does fiercely fight to advance the notion that just because we can measure it, it doesn’t mean the measure is relevant.

One of my favorite quotes from Carter that runs along these lines is in a guest post he made on Diane Ragsdale’s blog.

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

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

Just as Godin says, concepts like economic impact and cognitive development can produce numbers that are easy to understand, game and keep track of which helps when making the case for funding and policy. But none of these numbers are expressions of the core value of arts and creativity. Why those of us in the field value it.

It takes more effort to explain a complex concept like the value of arts and culture which is why Arts Midwest and others are engaged in a long term project to build public will for it and create an environment in which a similarly shorthand expression of value is possible.  I don’t think anyone will necessarily equate the value of arts and culture with clean water and pediatric nurses. The goal is an environment where the value of arts and culture is generally assumed.

Back in June Diane Ragsdale made a similar post exploring the different concepts of value and cited an idea that there are different types of “economies” that exist, each with a different “currency” that serves as a valid measure of value and relevance. In this context, we wouldn’t equate the value of clean water and pediatric nurses with that of arts and culture any more than we would equate the winner of the World Series with the most effective Coast Guard cutter crew.

Oh Sure, I Love Doing That…But That’s Not Art

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Tyler Cowen featured a study on the Marginal Revolution blog noting that children in India couldn’t do formal math problems, but had no difficulty finding the solution when it was framed as a market transaction.

It has been widely documented that many children in India lack basic arithmetic skills, as measured by their capacity to solve subtraction and division problems. We surveyed children working in informal markets in Kolkata, West Bengal, and confirmed that most were unable to solve arithmetic problems as typically presented in school. However, we also found that they were able to perform similar operations when framed as market transactions. This discrepancy was not explained by children’s ability to memorize prices and quantities in market transactions, assistance from others at their shops, reliance on calculation aids, or reading and writing skills. In fact, many children could solve hypothetical transactions of goods that they did not sell. Our results suggest that these children have arithmetic skills that are untapped by the school system.

This somewhat paralleled the concept I have raised many times here. If you ask people if they are a visual artist, dancer, singer, actor, etc, they will say no. But if you ask about their hobbies you might find they are a woodworker, sing in the church choir, design and execute elaborate parade floats, etc.  All of which yield some artistic and creative product.

There has been an effort, in varying degrees, from the National Endowment for the Arts to Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative, to reframe what people do to help them recognize their capacity for creative expression.

The last line in the passage I cited above was what made the connection for me. Just as the children have arithmetic skills untapped by the school system, people in general can have creative ability untapped by the way creative/artistic expression is currently framed.

Solving problems on a piece of paper is difficult math. Handling a complex financial transaction which ensures a livelihood is something simple you learned when you were five.

Creating a delicate sculpture is something only real artists can do. Recreating a spindly Eiffel Tower out of lumber, chicken wire and flowers so that it is structurally sound enough to travel a windy route as a parade float is the type of exciting challenge you dive into every year.

Discussing creative expression in different frames of context can help people recognize they already participate in some manner or can help remove the intimidation factor by modifying the concept of what being creative entails.

The process of that discussion takes time which is why Creating Connection is envisioned as a long term effort. It will also take creativity to help people make those connections to their personal creativity.

Fortunately, that is one resource we don’t have a shortage of.

Do We Underestimate The Power Of “Wow, I Didn’t Know You Were So Talented”?

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I had mentioned before that I will be presenting part of a pre-conference professional development session at the Arts Midwest Conference next week. I was going to make a shameless plug for people to sign up, but I see it is sold out (woo hoo!…oh wait, also increased pressure!)

The session deals with Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection/Building Public Will For Art and Culture program that I frequently discuss.

One of the central tenets of the program is helping people recognize their capacity for creativity.

As I was developing the content for my contribution, it occurred to me that one things we lose by having less art in K-12 schools is the affirmation and validation of one’s capacity to be creative. Basically, the experience of having someone walk up and say some permutation of, “Wow, I didn’t know you were so talented.”

It seems like a simple thing to stick your kid’s art up on the refrigerator, but the effect is likely cumulative. And when the opportunities for creativity stop, so does the reinforcement.

Obviously, not everyone is going to reveal a great talent or have an inclination to apply themselves.  I suspect that when art instruction, and more importantly, active creative expression, is a regular part of a child’s education rather than intermittent, the child grows to take their basic creative capacity as much for granted as they do their basic mathematic and reading ability.

This may seem blatantly obvious but I remember a time when I mentally conceded that if kids at least got exposure to the arts in school, that was acceptable.  Even that is disappearing now. Now I realize a compromise of that nature gives up development opportunities that can never be regained.

See Me (And Other Cool People) Talk About Building Public Will For Arts and Culture

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I have been writing enthusiastically about Creating Connection (a.k.a building public will for arts and culture) for so long, the folks at Arts Midwest have asked if I would speak enthusiastically about the topic.

On August 28 I will be joining Arts Midwest CEO/President, David Fraher, and Arts Midwest Program Director, Anne Romens,  to present the in-depth seminar, Messages that Matter: Tapping into What Audiences Value.

The session is being held just prior to the Arts Midwest conference in Columbus, OH, but you don’t need to be registered for the conference to participate. If you are going to be in the area, I would love to meet you.

As an added bonus, I will be bringing at least one of the members of the Creative Cult that I have written about who will talk about their founding philosophy and the work they are doing.

Hope to see you there.

Here is the session description:

What core values inspire your potential audience to participate in arts, culture, and creativity, and which messages should you use to connect people to your programs?

This in-depth seminar will share the data-driven strategies coming out of Creating Connection that can help strengthen the power of your communications, programming, and outreach. Arts Midwest leaders will discuss a growing body of research around the intersection of creativity and public values, and offer tangible messaging strategies, tools, and real-time examples aimed at helping you attract and retain audiences and connect more deeply with your communities.

Work in tandem with your artistic, marketing, and support staff during this session, and be prepared for hands-on learning that you can take back to your organization to start exploring how your offerings—no matter whether you’re a presenter or an artist or manager—can tap in to the values and motivations of diverse stakeholders.

On The Hook With Arts and Culture

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

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

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

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

I went on to write:

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

[…]

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

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

Piquing The Artistic Impulse

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A little irreverence today after talking about philosophical questions like “what is art for?”

In the past few years, I have done a lot of writing about the need to help people recognize they have the capacity to be creative.

When I was in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago, I visited the Warhol Museum and found myself inspired by some of the projects he engaged in. Much of what he did was an attempt to take the idea of art off a pedestal and bring it into everyday experience.

There was one piece in particular that appealed to me, though perhaps for the wrong reasons.

Among the museum collection was one of Warhol’s Oxidation Paintings. The piece was created by priming the canvas with metallic paint and then applying a substance that would cause a oxidation reaction.

In Warhol’s case, it was urine.

According to the card next to the painting, he and his friends and assistants:

“…experimented with both pattern and coloration…Variations in the maker’s fluid and food intake affected the oxidation impact…Warhol was particularly thrilled by the striking colorations caused by his studio assistant Ronnie Cutrone, who was taking vitamin B supplements.

Oxidation Painting, 1978

As much as you may be disgusted by the idea, (and lets face it, most paint is more toxic than urine), you have to admit that the technique would definitely pique the interest and desire to experiment in many people.

Okay, sure it might be more appealing to younger males and females, but males often see art as an effeminate activity as it. This is a way to engage more men!

I will confess that I sent this picture and information about how it was made to my friends who hold creative process events and made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion this be the next project.   While you can’t create an authentic relationship with creativity and the arts through stunt events like this, the example of it can combat the image of art as staid and inscrutable.

Even if someone looks at the painting above and says it isn’t art based on appearance alone, they can at least connect with the impulse behind its creation because everyone has had a related impulse at some point in their lives. (And may even continue to harbor that impulse in their hearts.)  You have an entirely different conversation and relationship with this piece than you would have if Warhol used ink or paint to create images many might associate with Rorschach blots.

Art As Currency For Experience

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This week Diane Ragsdale wrote a piece addressing the difficultly people have with the idea of Art for Arts Sake.  She says when she conducts workshops and asks arts administration types to fill in the blank in the phrase, Art for ____________’s sake, they never say “art.” In discussions, people aren’t able to really define what is meant by “art for art’s sake.”

She suggests part of the issue has to do with the way we define value. She uses the example of an artist she invited to speak in her class. When the artist asked if there were any questions, a business student asked if she was being responsive to the market by painting so many orchids. The artist said she was basically painting orchids because she enjoyed exploring the form and would do so until it no longer interested her.

After the fact, as I reflected on this moment, I thought it was quite brilliant. A quite reasonable question from a business school student: Is there sufficient demand for orchids? Do you know your market? Do you think you may need to diversify?

And a quite reasonable answer from an arts student: I’m interested in the idea for its own sake; right now, I’m not thinking about whether there is a market for orchids.

And I could not have architected a better moment to convey the different logics or rationalities of business and art, or what art for art’s sake, or research for the sake of research, or exploration for the sake of exploration, or excellence for the sake of excellence are all about. Through this brief conversation between an artist and  business student, I was able to experience the world of business and the world of art as parallel systems of value. This experience finally helped me make sense of, and come to terms with, the phrase art for art’s sake.

Ragsdale provides a chart created by Bill Sharpe discussing “five “economies” and their “shared denominations of value.”” For example, in competitive games, the currency is the score; in democracy, it is votes; in exchange, it is money; and in experience, it is art.

She says,

What Sharpe’s framework seeks to illustrate is the incommensurate nature of these various currencies of shared valuation. The score of a sports game may tell us who won or lost but it can’t help us understand the individual or shared experience of the game, for example.

For me, this coalesced ideas that Carter Gillies wrote in a guest post for Ragdale’s blog (my emphasis):

They value the economy? Well, the arts are good for the economy! They think that cognitive development is important? Well, the arts are good for cognitive development! We make our own ends the means to their ends.

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient.

Just as the score of a baseball game can’t describe the experience of attending, many of the criteria people wish to apply to the arts aren’t relevant as a measure of value. Arts may be good for the economy insomuch as an exchange is taking place, but we all know the value of the art is not reflected in the amount paid.

The arts may be good for cognitive development, but there is no relationship between value of a painting, play, dance or musical composition and test scores. The masterwork of a painter doesn’t raise test score higher than the preliminary sketches they made in preparation for the piece.

If Sharpe is correct that the currency of experience is art, I guess that validates John Dewey’s book, Art As Experience.

I don’t know that telling people the currency of experience is art will help people understand art better. People don’t necessarily associated the joy they experience playing with a newborn as being partitioned into units of art.

It is helpful to be reminded that many things are not valued solely in dollars, as much as it may seem that way. That we have recently seen that the amount of money thrown at an election doesn’t necessarily translate proportionally into victory seems to bear out Sharpe’s statement that votes are a distinct currency from money in the election economy.

Recently the big news has been about the Arts & Economic Prosperity 5 report. It is great that activity in the arts and culture industry has had such a strong impact in so many communities outside of the usual urban areas. But it is important to remember these numbers are just like a baseball score. They don’t tell us anything about the experience of the creators and participants, the quality of the work, or a handful of other things we might list as important before we even care about the amount of money that got exchanged.

A Reminder About The Necessity For Patience and Effort Sustained Long Term

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I wanted to call attention to the recent return of the Hokule‘a, a double hulled voyaging canoe, to Hawaii after a three year voyage around the world that saw the canoe travel 42,000 miles to 150 ports and 23 countries and territories. It is the first time a Hawaiian canoe has circumnavigated the globe completely under wind power. You can see photos of the return on the Star-Advertiser newspaper site. Apparently about 50,000 people showed up to welcome the canoe.

While the voyage is impressive of itself, the Hokule‘a represents so much more in Hawaii. The canoe was first launched over 40 years ago in 1975 in an attempt to reclaim Hawaiian cultural heritage and knowledge as part of the Hawaiian Renaissance. The Polynesian Voyaging Society sought out the few remaining people who still knew how to navigate in the traditional way without instruments. Only Mau Piailug of the Federated States of Micronesia was willing to teach them.

If you have seen the movie Moana where the title character begs Maui to teach her to navigate, you have gotten a very small hint of what is involved (expand the Read More under Nainoa Thompson’s picture). While later voyages have use Western instruments like compass and sextant and have been supplemented by some technological aids, those first voyages marked the first time in over 500 years that Hawaiian sailors navigated between Hawaii and Tahiti using traditional methods. Later they would use the same techniques to travel to other Pacific Islands and reinvigorate interest in seafaring traditions among other peoples.

The canoe and its voyages have contributed a great deal to the shared cultural consciousness of Hawaii. In 1978, the canoe capsized while still within the archipelago. Crew member Eddie Akau went to get help, paddling his surf board to the island of Lanai. The rest of the crew was rescued, but Eddie was never seen again.  To this day, 40 years later, you will drive around and see bumper stickers saying “Eddie Would Go,” as a testament to his selflessness, long  established during his career as a lifeguard where he saved over 500 people, often in dangerous surf conditions.

Educators have developed curriculum and programs in connection with the voyages covering a wide range of topics from environmental concerns, geography, tides, navigation, the physics of raising the mast, and genealogy. Star Trek has a Hokule‘a class of starship

I should note, the effort to revive and employ traditional sailing methods wasn’t primarily driven by a desire for authenticity and eschewing modern options. The Hokule‘a was conceived and launched as part of a general effort to recognize and reclaim the validity of Hawaiian music, dance, language, dress, etc after a long period belief that Western/modern ways were superior. The ship answered doubts about the ability of early Polynesians to accurately and consistently navigate between Tahiti and Hawaii using available technology.

As I read about what they have accomplished, it reinforces the long view and sustained effort  required to accomplish their goals. Even that first voyage of 40 years ago was preceded by a long period of preparation. It puts the whole process of judging viability by the success or failure achieved increments of 12 months or less in perspective. I think there are lessons here about the power of cultural practices and their ability to fire the imagination.

 

On Not Surrendering To “The Flow”

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Via Artsjournal.com is a thought-provoking essay about artistic performance on Aeon. Dancer Barbara Gail Montero posits that a true expert performer doesn’t surrender to “the flow,” but only appears to do so while mindfully evaluating what they are doing.  When you become experienced and realize just how much you don’t know, what was a mindlessly simple introductory exercise becomes the subject of close scrutiny toward improvement.

Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia found that ‘the paragons of effortless performance were fifth-graders who, given a simple topic, would start writing in seconds and would produce copy as fast as their little fingers could move the pencil.’

Those fifth-graders are in flow. The young tennis player’s game is fun, and the child’s tendu is easy. It’s the experts’ technique that becomes difficult; not to the outside world, but to themselves. Just as in Plato’s dialogue the Apology, where Socrates is wise because he knows he is ignorant, it’s the capacity to recognise where there’s room for improvement that leads us to the highest levels of human achievement. In other words, the idea that expert actions are in a placid state of flow – a state in which things seem to fall into place on their own – is a myth.

Throughout her piece, she cites a number of artists and athletes whose example attest to the idea that they aren’t transitioning into a sublime spiritual world when they perform, it only appears so. For example violinist Arnold Steinhardt writes how,

Even when he’s practised innumerable times, the playing doesn’t happen on its own. That’s not to say that he can’t ‘slip into the music’s spiritual realm’, as he puts it. But this realm is also his ‘work area’, in which the members of his quartet ‘expend a significant amount of energy slaving over [their] individual instruments’. However sublime the quartet’s performances, they are not handed down from above.

She says one of the reasons why the myth of entering the flow persists is because the effort is invisible to the outside observer. She suggests that the general desire for an easy path to excellence might also motivate this perception.

Perhaps flow draws us in because we generally dislike hard work. Numerous self-help books turn on this tendency, suggesting that instead of buckling down to a lifetime of toil, you can reach great heights by simply letting go of the thought, the effort, the trying. But I suspect the popularity of these books springs from the same source as the vogue for fad diets..It’s not that they work, but they are easy to follow.

Now if you are skeptical about her basic thesis, you aren’t alone. The commenters on the piece varied in degree in their agreement or opposition to Montero’s ideas. Personally, I thought much of what she described as happening during a performance more as a focus on intentional practice rather than performance. One of the commenters, Ian Dyball, a Ph.D. student in the field of performance consciousness suggested something similar.

“Barbara, in my opinion, you confuse the notions of practice and performance. If a performer is noticing mistakes, he or she is not fully engaged in performance but is also, at that moment, practising…If a question or an analysis takes place it is a distraction to the performing artist and, potentially, to the performance. It is, to a degree, practising. The questioning mind (the person) is not in a state of flow despite the fact that the action itself may be being achieved unconsciously; as a habit programmed by, ultimately imperfect (if the thought is correct), practice.”

In her reply, Montero, does concede that she is blurring the distinction between performance and practice and that there may be people who are not engaging in self-analysis when they perform. Her experience may not be the experience of all performers. (I suspect she may not have written the headline, by the way.)

While I do question some of her assertions about what true performers are doing, I think the idea is worth some extensive thought.  I have written frequently about how the myth of inspiration and talent can cause people to think there is a magic ability you either have or don’t have. Or it can be lost and only regained through luck.

While Montero’s article goes in the other direction by suggesting every moment must be examined for a path to improvement without room for a little surrender, I think it is valuable for its emphasis on the work that is involved. In many ways, it  respects artists for seeking opportunities for improvement in the most fundamental exercises of their training.  What might appear to be disposable activities to keep novices busy and out of the way are acknowledged to be the building blocks for the entire discipline.

These ideas aren’t just important for the arts community to consider about how they approach their own practice, but I think it crucial to introduce some of these concepts when talking to people who doubt their own creativity.

Yes, everyone has the capacity to be creative. No, it isn’t a magic power that is granted or withdrawn by some impersonal force. Yes, excellence takes work, just like everything else.

So I Joined A Cult

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Do you have a few moments so I can share some information about a cult I joined?

No, wait, wait, before you run away. This is not that type of cult. In fact, this cult demands much less in the way of slavish devotion than most arts people willingly surrender to the groups they work with.

This cult emerged from the process we all idealize when we envision the result of arts education. You can read the origin story on their website, but I wanted to give my take on it.

Four guys took a class on the creative process and were so inspired by the teacher, they looked for a way to extend what they learned after the class ended. They started rooming together. They had a couple art shows of their own and entered those sponsored by others. They started a lifestyle clothing line called C*MAR which stood for Creative Minds Are Rare.

I liked their ambition and energy so at a point between their first and second art show, I approached them about helping to launch and promote a semi-annual “After Dark” art event to showcase the talent of the visual artists in the community.

Then they started a cult.

The Creative Cult to be exact. They decided they wanted to teach others the creative process. On a monthly basis, they began holding hourly events in different places around town getting the 40-50 attendees to engage in and talk about the creative process.

I have mentioned some of these events before. There are images from each of the events on their website. Don’t feel obligated to look too closely for me.

As with all cults, there was an obligatory bloody sacrifice. In this case, the guys killed off their identity as C*MAR. They realized the activities of the creative cult and their ambitions for it had eclipsed that of the lifestyle clothing company.

Also, after some conversations, they realized the name Creative Minds Are Rare is entirely contrary to their heartfelt mission, “We teach people our creative process, so that artists and ‘non-artists’ alike may develop their own.”

Now they are in talks to start Creative Cult chapters in other places. I tell them that at this point in their development, any self-respecting cult would have robes and kool-aid, but to no avail. There was a cult meeting in a candle-lit damp basement so I can hope.

I often talk about the movement to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture (so much so, you probably assumed that was the cult I joined). I really see these guys achieving this naturally by instinct whereas so many other arts entities will have to work to shift their approaches and mindset.

Which is not to say the organizers don’t work hard putting these events together and trying to learn more about the creative process. I send them literature that impresses me and they send some back. I know a couple of them are in the daily habit of creating for a few hours every morning outside of their regular work. They show up at poetry readings around town to get feedback.

My organization partnered with two other organizations to conduct an “arts listening tour” in the community and at least one of the cult organizers was at every session taking notes about people’s perceptions of the arts and culture opportunities in the area. They are committed to always doing a better job.

Yesterday I wrote about how it would be a mistake for other classical musicians to try to emulate pianist Alpin Hong’s personality in order to connect with audiences. I would say the same thing about the “inner circle” of the cult.

As young guys, they have a certain cachet with exactly the target demographic most arts organizations want to reach. It would be a disaster of comedic proportions if most of the established arts organizations in the area tried to adopt their approach. However, I think we all ultimately benefit from the work they do because it potentially opens people up to the idea of participating in other activities in town.

In turn, I have been talking them up in the circles in which I travel on the local, state, regional and national level. While we can’t replicate the exact dynamics of the Creative Cult’s relationship with each other, it is still a good example of the type of things that can be done.

Arts Council Director Who Discovered He Was An Artist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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