Business Models

Invest In The Arts – Ministry of Culture Edition

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Some time ago I came across the China Cultural Industries cultural projects page. The page is part of the China International Cultural Industries Fair website, an organization authorized by the China Ministry of Culture “as a state-level authoritative portal website of China cultural industries, integrates the comprehensive information of the cultural industries, the release and trade of the cultural projects and products.”

If you look at the project listings asking for millions and billions of RMB in investment and are a little wary in light of all the corruption stories we are hearing from China these days, you probably should be.

I created an account to get a closer look at the “View after signing in.” categories of information and it didn’t really illuminate things for me. Information was incomplete or missing, website links didn’t work. From what I could tell, all the information is supplied by the projects themselves. There may not be any vetting to assure their viability. Though some do have official government sanction.

Now all that being said, there isn’t any comparable listing in the U.S. As much as we may want to keep away from solely arguing about the economic value of the arts, having a listing of all the arts and culture related projects in the United States would help illustrate the impact pretty visibly and make arts and culture harder to dismiss.

True, there are lot of arts and culture projects listed on Kickstarter, but no publicly available list that attempts to be comprehensive. Certainly no central list of projects with the imprimatur of a government arts and cultural office at any level. (Okay, I admit there may be some state or county that has such a list and I am merely unaware of it.)

Apropos of my posting last week about art organizations experimenting with different structures and corporate expiration, such a listing would help the process along by making a greater number of people more aware of ways to organize themselves.

It might also attract investment of resources and expertise from much further afield than would otherwise be possible. People might contact the project organizers noting that the it might be better organized under an entirely different structure and provide advice on some aspects of the planning.

Having this type of exposure would require organizers to have a higher level of sophistication than might normally be required. There will be those who might be looking to exploit a project solely for their own gain. In the for-profit world, many companies who receive the support of venture capitalists find themselves so dominated and beholden to the VCs, they barely recognize the company as their own after awhile. Something similar might happen to the cultural organization, the majority of which may no longer be non-profits.

Now that President Obama has signed the JOBS Act which will allow crowdfunding on a larger scale, this situation becomes more viable. (See my discussion of the proposed legislation last December. Good series of articles on the general implications of the JOBS Act as passed for crowdfunding on William Carleton’s site.)

Thanks to this sort of legislation regarding investment opportunities, people would be able to follow up on the project listings with a higher degree of confidence in their legitimacy. There will always be the danger of being scammed. A game being funded on Kickstarter was just outed as a hoax today thanks to the fact checking of some of the claims by the online community.

But as I said, in general, such a listing would be invaluable to the arts and culture community in terms of raising awareness of the scope and impact of the sector’s activities and marshaling support for them.

What’s The Expiration Date On That Arts Organization?

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A couple weeks ago Grant Makers in the Arts posted a piece by Rebecca Novick, Please Don’t Start A Theater Company. I had been thinking about the article for some time now when I saw a similar piece by David J. McGraw, The Epoch Model: An Arts Organization with an Expiration Date. Epoch Model… was published back in 2010 in 20UNDER40: Re-inventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century.

I was going to devote part of this entry discussing the similarities between the two, until I realized Rebecca Novick’s piece also was published in 20UNDER40 back in 2010 and is not appearing for the first time this year.

What McGraw suggests in Epoch Model.. is that arts organizations should form for a seven year life span and goes on to make some interesting arguments about the benefits of doing so.

It really isn’t a new one. I have recently been reading up about Lloyds of London which has technically reconstituted itself every single year since 1774. That may not be the most apt comparison to what McGraw suggests, but Lloyds originally insured sea voyages which many times were funded by groups that came together to invest solely in a voyage or trading venture and then dissolved thereafter.

Both Novick and McGraw provide examples of groups that realized their usefulness was over and willingly dissolved and suggest that people looking to form new arts organization integrate an expiration date or expiration conditions into the very formation of the organization.

McGraw suggests the following benefit to this approach:

•A single founding vision can guide the organization from start to predetermined finish.

•Productions, exhibitions, and initiatives can be selected to follow an artistic arc rather than merely filling generic programming slots year after year.

•The company can plan its organizational growth and contraction with an eye towards its end.

•Its membership can challenge itself to fulfill its mission with greater urgency, knowing that this collaboration is a fleeting opportunity with a defined commitment from each member.

•Audiences will know that they cannot take the organization for granted and that the organization represents a specific period of time, or epoch, of the artistic life of the community.

I was intrigued by the idea that the founding vision can be maintained because the founding board is more likely to stay committed knowing the project will only span seven years with a few additional years of commitment to tie up loose ends. (Recall that it is much better to stay on the board a sinking organization than to resign.)

I was also interested in his observation that:

“The Marketing Director has the most to gain from the Epoch Model. In addition to the novelty of creating brand awareness for such a unique company, every production will have a sense of urgency, as limited supply can increase demand. In fact, the organization may see cultural tourists from outside its region as news spreads of this relatively short collaboration of rising artists. Limited runs tend to draw more publicity and can pique the curiosity of even casual art-goers.”

He talks about the boon to real estate if the property owner in a bad market knows he can find a tenant who will occupy the property until things turn around, in the process possibly adding value to the neighborhood, as artists often do.

He also notes that an arts organization dissolving in their relative prime will actually contribute more to the community than an organization which has had to close because they were no longer financially viable. The former has a fair bit of property to pass on to various community entities, the property of the latter is generally liquidated for the sake of creditors.

Based on my reading of both articles idea of a transitory organization makes sense. We are discovering that the 501 (c) (3) model doesn’t really work for everyone. A temporary formation allows groups to essentially experiment with structures that work well for the participants and make sense for the particular community. It could be for a few months to accomplish a single project or it could be for a span of years. The board and the staff may be one in the same or they may be different entities.

I hate to invoke the image of viruses, but the short life cycles of the organizations could evolve a structure that is both effective and resistant to the travails of the social and economic forces of the time. Which of course means that continual evolution is required to meet the ever swifter shifts in social and economic forces.

There a few forces working against this sort of approach and they all involve money. As both authors note, the ever renewing arts organization idea is great when you are 20something, but once you want to settle down and get some stability, you aren’t going to want your arts organization to go gentle into the good night. Or you are going to start seeking work at conventional arts organizations. This might actually be a good thing. The infusion of people who have experimented with versatile approaches may keep the conventional organizations vital.

The other issue is that funders support a pretty narrow approach to the arts. There are certain characteristics they seek and performance measures they want to evaluate. If you have a history of success mounting a site specific dance piece in a warehouse and visual arts installation in a historic hotel but are looking to fund a theater piece in shipping containers on a barge, you may not meet any number of criteria related to being an established organization.

One thing that occurred to me as I was reading both pieces is that the people forming these organizations would have to invest the time to draw up agreements and keep good records of meetings discussion how resources will be allocated, etc. The benefit of existing corporate structures is that there are established laws which dictate the rights of board members, employees and customers.

It is easy to discount the importance of such arrangements when everyone knows the organization won’t endure. In the absence of a clear structure, people may not be paid what they are owed, conflicts may arise over ownership of assets and the board members may discover they are personally liable for the outcome of a lawsuit because no insulating structure exists.

In all, some interesting ideas are expressed in the articles, including the sobering concept emerging rather frequently that our organizations don’t necessarily have a right to continue to exist.

“But too many organizations confuse the need for art with the need for their particular company to exist. Despite emergency fundraising pleas, the death of an individual organization is not the death of an art form, nor will it deprive a community for very long.”

Dramaturgy Is Everyone’s Responsibility

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When I was studying theatre as an undergrad and grad student, there was one role in the theatre most of my fellow students never got a clear definition of, that of dramaturg. Most of our professors would wryly answer, “nobody really knows” when asked what a dramaturg did.

There was also a sense of guilt and embarrassment. Dramaturg was one of those positions you added when your theatre had money and seemed fated to be first cut when money got tight. Except the dramaturg tended to work closely with the artistic administration who were naturally resistant to the idea of cutting them so it was usually someone in development or marketing that got cut first.

If you look up dramaturgy on Wikipedia or the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) website, you will learn that a dramaturg is a sort of historian/researcher who helps all those involved with a production, from the creative ensemble to the audience, understand the greater context in which a performance occurs.

The reason why no one knows what a dramaturg does is that the role is so generally defined, the duties can vary vastly from place to place.

I explain all this to provide context for the people I am about to quote. If you think that makes me something of a dramaturg, well Amrita Ramanan, the literary manager at Arena Stage would likely agree. She recently posted a manifesto outlining her vision of role of the literary office of the future on HowlRound.

“…David Dower…talked about dramaturgy as integral to a theater company’s thru line, such that every theater maker holds the mission and vision of the art as their ultimate goal even if they explore different tactics on how to achieve them. A marketing manager practices dramaturgy by communicating to an audience to mission and vision of the art through website blurbs, posters and brochures. A development associate practices dramaturgy when they approach a potential funder, carrying and articulating the mission and vision of the art and why it needs the funders support to thrive. A casting director practices dramaturgy when casting a show by supporting the mission and the vision of the playwright’s intent and director’s concept with every person they call in.

This is a variation on the theme I have often touched upon in my blog that marketing is everyone’s responsibility.

This is one of the reasons why dramaturgy is such a nebulous position at many organizations, if it exists at all. The argument can often be made that the dramaturg’s responsibilities are more suitably performed by a number of other departments in an organization. On the other hand, do the directors of marketing, development and the performance have the time to do all the appropriate research? Is having all these people researching the same subject independently the best way to assemble information? The answers depend on the ambitions of the organization.

Ultimately, whether an arts organization of any discipline has someone acting in the role of a dramaturg (whatever it may be called), everyone involved with the organization takes on some aspects of the dramaturg role in the execution of their duties. Each person needs to be skilled in acquiring the appropriate information and putting it into practice on behalf of the production.

Success in this regard will depend on talent and training, but also opportunity. Some of this opportunity will manifest as access to information sources, but as Howard Sherman recently pointed out on his blog, some of the opportunity can be provided and encouraged by organizational culture. (my emphasis)

“Most every theatre uses the first rehearsal/first reading as a day to introduce the company and the staff of a show, but in my experience, it’s incomplete. I recall being brought into rehearsal rooms, the staff circling the company, seated at tables, as one by one we did the Mouseketeer roll call of our names and titles. There might be a speech…maybe a quick demonstration of the set model – and then we were sent back to our desks to go about our regular business. We were not invited to stay for the first reading, often told that it would make the company too self conscious; I wish that we had been required to stay and listen, that even at the most unformed step, every staffer should be made to be there at the birth of a new production, not just drop by for a wave and a bagel before things got messy. The same should probably hold true for that final rehearsal in the rehearsal hall; it further engages the staff in the creative process, and refamiliarizes the company with a staff that they may not have interacted with for some three weeks. I have heard of some companies that even hold readings of plays long before first rehearsal, with the roles divvied up among the staff – what a marvelous way to connect the staff with what they’ll soon be working on, and to connect the staff with each other.”

I remember years ago reading an entry on Greg Sandow’s blog where he mentioned that those who worked for orchestras rarely attend the performances or come into the office the next morning and talk about the event. I was floored at the time. Given all the acrimony between the administration and musicians at many orchestras these past few years, it has become easier to believe.

Even if people at your organization come in and talk about productions with great enthusiasm, Howard Sherman’s observations show that there are always more opportunities to connect and learn about the projects that can be offered. Even if there isn’t a dramaturg at your organization, sharing the knowledge that individual staff members have collected in preparation for a project can help everyone do their jobs more effectively.

What Values Matter In Arts Grad Training Programs?

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This weekend Scott Walters quoted an extensive comment made on another blog about the value of MFA acting programs. The gist is, students are ill served by the programs which need to focus on training students for 21st century opportunities.

This struck a chord with me because I had recently read a Fast Company article about how UC Berkeley’s Business School started to screen applicants based on whether they embodied the school’s core values. The school had decided to embrace these values in the interests of creating a “reduction of overconfidence and self-focus, which are perceived to be excessively present among the business graduates and leaders of the top business schools.”

At the time I read it, I was idly wondering if arts training programs at the master level might do something similar to address any perceived (and real) problems with those they graduate. It had been a long time since I was in grad school so I didn’t feel I knew enough about the state of things write a post about it. Having read Walter’s recent post, I am no more certain than before since it is the view of a single unidentified commenter. I do feel fairly confident in assuming that, as with most things, there is room for improvement.

I will readily admit that given my ignorance of the state of things, I don’t have any concrete suggestions about they might be done differently. I will say that one thing that stood out in the Fast Company piece was that Berkeley-Haas instituted significant changes in their program based on their stated values and then required their applicants to adhere to them.

Most remarkably, they are not simply communication tools but drive operations from the curriculum, research priorities to staff programs, and faculty hiring. The curriculum, for example, has been extensively revamped in order to introduce elements of creativity, innovation, collaboration, ethics, and social responsibility.

They made sure they embodied the values before they required the students to do the same. It would have been much easier for them to decide to implement the change by altering their admission criteria and assuming that choosing the right students would result in producing the right graduates. But that is less likely if the infrastructure surrounding the students doesn’t emulate and reinforce the values the school wishes to cultivate in its graduates.

Successful realization of any goal is easier for any entity if all members are aligned toward attaining it. Probably the most powerful thing an arts training program can do to convince applicants that it can prepare them to ply their craft in the current environment is to point to a major realignment of priorities to that end.

As the commenter that Walters quotes, SayItLoud, notes, theatre training programs often cite successful graduates and places their students have worked or can intern at. As impressive as that is, the reality is the path those graduates took to success may no longer be viable.

What training programs may really need to do is say to applicants, “We’ve changed ourselves from top to bottom and what success requires now is to push you off the conventional path. This is not the place to pursue training in becoming a triple-threat, actor/singer/dancer. You may have become a video editor/painter/acrobat or a ecologist/architect/percussionist or all six plus four things we aren’t mentioning. Do your interests, values and practices align with ours?”

At the very least, it will get everyone thinking about the whole training process. Given that the current conversation is that arts organizations need to change the way they operate and interact with audiences, you aren’t leading students astray by telling them they need to obtain a wider spectrum of skills. Like as not, they will be the ones helping to drive the change with the types of works they develop.