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General Musings

Being Goldilocks

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My hair like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah I adore it
Hallelujah Mary loved her son
Why don’t my mother love me?

These lyrics from the eponymous song of the musical Hair has always struck me as a great expression of the conflict an artist faces.

On one hand, you have to dress and appear professionally enough that you gain the confidence of potential employers, donors and granters.

On the other hand, you have to possess enough of an artistic aura, either in dress or behavior, that people will believe you are an artist. Appear too conventional and you cast doubt on your artistic abilities.

Working on a university campus, I been feeling a little tug of this conflict. It wasn’t a big problem in Hawaii where even bank presidents wear aloha shirts, albeit tasteful $200 silk aloha shirts.

But now I look out across campus seeing administrators running around in dresses, suit jackets and ties (not simultaneously) and I am reminded of these cultural expectations.

Because at the same time, I am out walking down the street every day to get lunch and how I dress as the director of the performing arts center contributes to the perception of what sort of people are welcome as audience members.

Probably nothing to be done to relieve folks in the arts world of this Goldilocks requirement of avoiding extremes.

So don’t neglect to wave those golden locks!

http://youtu.be/7dyl0j3WU6Y

Amuse Bouche Fund Drives

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So even though I am in a fairly rural area of Ohio, I have discovered that I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to being able to access public radio broadcast streams. There are two from Ohio universities, one from West Virginia and one from Northern Kentucky. Despite the mountains I can hear each of them fairly clearly since there are repeaters located within a few miles of my workplace.

I tell you this provide some context when I say I heard a fund raising approach I liked but can’t for the life of me figure out which station I heard it on. I have visited each station’s website and Facebook page and still don’t know whom to credit.

In any case, one of these intrepid stations announced that now that the summer had started, they would begin “One Shot Wednesday” fund drives. Instead of having a week long fund drive, they were just going to make appeals on Wednesdays throughout the summer.

I thought this was a great idea because many people will tune away for the week of a fund drive and come back when it is over. Having it once a week repeatedly introduces itself into a person’s habitual listening. Since the disruption is contained to a small period of time, people may tune away for a day, come back again and then be reminded the next Wednesday around.

The station can better retain their listeners and expose them more frequently to the message that the station needs their support before a person chooses to tune away. And who knows, people may stay with the station throughout the Wednesday since the appeal breaks are short relative to other fund drives.

I have been trying to think of what the performing arts organization version of this might look like. Attending performances is not part of most people’s daily routine so there is no week long fund drive people might seek to avoid.

Curtailing the curtain speech appeal might make many audience members happy, but what more palatable alternative do you replace it with?

I know the board of my organization enjoyed calling people up to ask them about how much they liked the past season. The effort was well received all around. It would be possible to insert an appeal at that time, but if done poorly it would probably be a negative experience for all involved.

You might try having board members or volunteers chat casually with people in the lobby before the show and introduce the idea of supporting the organization. There is more of an opportunity to monitor that the process is done well and give notes on improving in the future. The only problem might be if the lobby is too small or if most of the audience rushes in at the last moment leaving little opportunity to speak with them.

I think the real question at the base of all this is- what are we doing now that makes people uncomfortable and what can we do to make it less so. That is what the one radio station did. They took the week long fund drive that everyone groans about and parceled it up across the summer.

I have no idea how successful it is, but from the way they spoke, they have done this before. Once I find the station again, I will try to do some further investigation.

But what ideas do you have to break up the often awkward process of fundraising into something more digestible?

Watch Out Ohio!

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Yesterday marked the last of a series of entries I prepared at the end of March to cover the move to my new job in southern Ohio. After Memorial Day, I will be returning to my regular Monday – Wednesday publishing schedule. Though for many of you, it will seem like a new schedule given that even if I finished an entry at 7 pm Hawaii time, it was already midnight or 1 am the next day on the U.S. East Coast.

Like many of my new colleagues and neighbors, you may ask why the hell I would want to move from Hawaii to rural Ohio. There are some economic and personal reasons, but the local and state arts environment had significant influence on my decision to move.

Even though Cincinnati is a 2 hour drive away, the existence of organizations like ArtsWave and the support for the arts expressed and shown by Mayor Mark Mallory was very influential.

In the last couple years I have written about cooperative efforts of arts organizations in Columbus and mentioned the intriguing seating arrangements and audience relations practices of the Great Lakes Theater and other arts organizations in Cleveland.

The same state of interesting arts relationships permeates even the small town in which I now work. A very dedicated local community board has partnered with the university to present a performing arts season every year. They do a fairly significant portion of the fundraising for the series. I attended a board meeting the week before my official start date and was astonished by the sponsorship report that was given, in large part due to the graciousness and wisdom shown by one of the major sponsors.

Certainly, there are plenty of opportunities to advance the program for me to sink my teeth into and I look forward to it with relish. (Though apparently chili is the condiment of choice for hot dogs around here.)

I also look forward to plugging into the greater arts community throughout the state.

Rejoice Ohio, the state just got a little better now that I am here!

There Are Intangible Rewards

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A few years back, I followed my examining the idea of Quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with a question that still percolates in my mind. I had wondered if valuing feedback over a specific grade might be a predictor of an inclination toward non-profit work.

I had based my question on the idea floated that there was a single survey question that could predict customer satisfaction.

I had wondered if there was any research career counselors used that might point even tangentially in this direction.

I also wondered if grades and test scores were de-emphasized in schools in favor of feedback, would we see a shift in the national culture of the U.S. that resulted in less political antagonism and fewer banking scandals as the importance of conspicuous evidence of “winning” diminished.

Be The Propaganda You Wish To See

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Last Monday was March 4, according to my grandmother, the most commanding day of the year. (March Forth!). I am guessing other people’s grandmothers must have used the same line because last Monday there were a lot of hits on the post I did nine years earlier called The Most Commanding Day of the Year.

My grandmother had a lot of funny turns of phrase that she used to entertain and trick her grandkids. She was also very proud of being Irish (though she was second or third generation in the U.S.).

Now I have more German than Irish in my background from grandparents on both sides, but I didn’t realize that until I was much older thanks to my grandmother’s constant propaganda about how wonderful the Irish are and how wonderful it was that we were Irish.

I never recognized how much influence that had over my life. I have never been rabidly Irish, even on St. Patrick’s Day. However, two weeks ago I was listening to a Deutsche Welle report on how successful Ireland has been at achieving their goals while holding the European Union presidency. I felt a this sense of pride in Ireland’s accomplishment even though I only have a vague idea of how the EU presidency works.

I have generally been cynical about the effectiveness of constantly telling kids that they are smartest and most talented because reality tends to rear its ugly head a vast majority of the time and they realize they don’t measure up to the billing.

My recognition of my reaction to the Ireland story gave me some insight into the power of reinforcing ideas for kids as the grow up. It has started me thinking about the long term benefits of encouragement absent of specific value, consistently telling kids they can be artistic and creative without necessarily saying they are the most creative in class or specifying what being a successful artist looks like.

I know this sounds very vague and touchie-feelie and I will be the first to admit that I have no data to back this up.

I do know that many experts encourage parents to praise the process rather than the result– praise the hard work that went into preparing for a test rather than telling a kid they are smart for scoring so high. That way there is a sense of cause and effect behind a failure and how it might be resolved rather than a total sense of loss and bewilderment when the natural ability you have been told you possess seems to have abandoned you.

The idea that exposing and involving kids in the arts at a young age is important is barely news to any of us. My purpose in writing this post is to point to just how subtle and pervasive cultivating part a person’s identity as a child can be.

In terms of my Irishness, my grandmother’s influence was reinforced by the fact I lived an hour outside of NYC, one of the great bastions of Irish identity in the U.S.

But though my grandmother has been dead over a decade now, my immediate family, uncles and cousins inevitably bond over obscure “holidays” like March 4. My mother and I talked about it on March 3 and though neither of us spoke to my sister, she emailed out about the most commanding day of the year to my siblings and cousins on March 4.

If you think about it, there is probably some equally peculiar element from your own upbringing that influences you to this day. Considering all this, it may be helpful over the long term to include phrases like “what do you like to do?,” “what have you created lately?” in every day conversation with kids of all ages.

(By the way, I haven’t appropriated the saying commonly attributed to Gandhi for my title. There is no evidence he said it. But as with all evidence debunking misattributions, the research is pretty interesting.)

Secret Isn’t Thinking Out Of The Box, It IS The Box

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You have all heard, or even told, a story where you get a great toy for a child only to have them play with the box. The moral of the story is often to get simple stuff for kids to play with because they will be far more satisfied with that than anything else you can get them.

I recently started to suspect the same thing probably applies to arts experiences with kids. Adults have all these expectations for a high quality, well designed product that they impose on the experience. While the kids are thrilled with the whole experience, including the simple ancillary wrappings that adults will ignore or discard.

My nephews were going to the Museum of Natural History when they had off on Presidents’ Day. When they told me this, I commented “Oh, to see the dinosaurs?” They asked how I knew and without thinking, I replied, “Because that is what I remember from my visit.”

Actually, that isn’t entirely true as I will explain later, but the dinos make a big impression on kids my nephews’ age. I was the same age when I first went to Museum of Natural History.

When I asked them about how they liked the museum, my one nephew asked when he would get to see real dinosaurs (because, you know the skeletons alone are a disappointment to anyone with a vivid imagination). They also talked about riding the A train. Because the train is express at certain points, it rides the middle track which means at times you have one train zipping by in the opposite direction on one side of the train. But on the other side of the car, you have another train traveling in the same direction just “floating” alongside as it keeps pace. Honestly, even at my age I think it is a pretty cool phenomenon.

They actually loved running around Central Park more than the museum. Or at least, they talked about that about as much as the museum, if not a little more.

Talking to them reminded me that while many aspects of the experience are frustrating for adults, (including keeping on eye on the kids), almost every part of the experience can be magical and memorable for the kids.

Talking to them altered my thinking slightly. It isn’t important to expose kids to the arts, it is important to expose them to the whole experience and make it memorable. It doesn’t take much to make it memorable.

The attendance and participation experience as a kid, the whole experience, is what helps grow adults who love the arts. That my nephews and I were able to connect easily and immediately over the memory of the dinos hints at that.

The thing that is really most memorable about my first trip to the Museum of Natural History is both simpler and more complex. We made the visit around Christmas time and there was a huge tree in the lobby. At a table near the tree were a number of Japanese women teaching people to do origami. There were origami ornaments on the tree.

I know I must have spent at least an hour watching them. I had never seen anything like it before. I had no conception you could do that with paper. That was over 30 years ago and I still have the ornaments, both those I made and those the women gave me. I still remember being amazed they gave me the ornaments they folded. Given how hard it was to fold (for a 10 year old, at least) they seemed like precious objects to me.

Free Admission For True Believers

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I don’t usually promote products here on the blog, but my assistant theatre manager found this in a Pier One and bought it for the theatre. We are thinking of putting it out by the lobby for all our free events. I pretty much captures who we are and what we are trying to accomplish with many of our shows.

To Those Who Believe Sign
To Those Who Believe

If you go into Pier One to get one of your own. Tell ’em you represent a theatre, museum, dance company, school, etc., Let them know the arts organizations in the community support them.

More thankful to have staff that is on the same wavelength as me (and I will credit her for shifting my thinking, too) and taking the initiative to grab the sign for the theatre.

Info You Can Use: Leveraging Transitions Well

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So I really hadn’t intended to write too much more about my job change until I left my current job or took my next one. However, the assistant theatre manager who is chairing the search committee is using some activities which I think are really beneficial to my organization and the community.

Today she held a meeting with various stakeholders to discuss what they wanted from the person who would replace me. I wasn’t included, but I eavesdropped on the conversation rising to my office off and on for about 15 minutes.

The group was comprised of about 15 people, some of which who are members of the search committee. Among them were faculty from music, theatre, visual arts; chair of Arts and Humanities; Dean of our division; our theatre staff; community artists; representatives of three renting organizations; volunteers; and our development officer.

They started out writing down what things they valued about the theatre, focusing especially on what will be missing if the theatre didn’t continue operations. Then they took turns talking about what they had written and sticking the post-it notes up on the wall in themed groups so that they could see what values people gravitated toward.

Later they moved on to some group activities to generate suggestions.

I spoke to some people after the meeting and they seemed pleased with the process. They were especially happy that the assistant theatre manager kept things moving along.

What I thought was really great about this exercise was that it brought so many different constituencies together who never meet each other. Each one became aware of what the other did in the facility and why certain elements of the facility and the services offered were relevant to them.

More importantly, this was all done in front of college administrators and the development officer which helped them understand the wide range of activities that occurs in the facility and why its existence was important.

It sounds strange to say, but I think this process was successful because I am leaving.

If we had tried to gather a group of people to talk about why they loved the theatre, I am not sure as many people would have shown up or been as eager to participate.

I think the sense of immediacy and the opportunity to influence the type of person chosen as the new theatre manager garnered far more investment in the process.

While part of me craves melodramatic gnashing of teeth and wailing, “Oh what shall we do without you, Joe? You are our source of inspiration and have that musky, Victor Mature-like scent,” I am really happy to see the transition turning into such a constructive process.

Just offering it here as an example something other organizations might try.

Oh, and I forgot, they fed the group Valentine’s Day cupcakes. That probably helped, too.

Take My Job, Please

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Come May I will be leaving Hawaii to assume the position of Director of the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts in Portsmouth, OH. The University of Hawaii has posted my current position today and I thought I would draw attention to it since the classification of “Public Information, Public Events Planning and Publications” doesn’t quickly catch the eye of arts administrators.

My dean is rewriting the job description a little so the title is presented more naturally in the job ads. It will be posted on arts job sites shortly, but I thought I would give my faithful readers some advance notice so you can apply or pass the posting along to colleagues.

As you may have surmised from the illuminating job title, bureaucracy with all its arcane rules is the biggest impediment to the expedient execution of duties in this job. However, if you are well organized, good at planning ahead and adept at navigating bureaucracies, you can do well in this position.

The positive points about this job are numerous and are centered on the people.

The chancellor of the college is extremely supportive of the arts here. In fact, I was trying to keep a low profile about my job change but he found an article online announcing my new job and sent it around to all the deans and vice chancellors at the college. The dean of our division is also a very amiable and supportive guy who wants to help the theatre thrive.

As you may have read in some of my blog posts, there is a lot of cross-discipline activity that occurs almost spontaneously in the building. The tables in our backstage are a very social area where students and faculty from theatre, music and visual arts are often found chatting and offering advice about different projects.

Being able to engage in that conversation is key to the success of the theatre manager position. I may depart my office at a certain time, but often don’t leave the building until an hour later. Many of the problems and concerns for the facility get addressed during that period.

There will be a $7-8 million renovation of the facility potentially starting in the next year. I have overseen a large part of the planning and design. The goal was to be shovel ready once the funding became available.

Even if the renovation doesn’t happen in the next year, the theatre will be celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2014. I have started some very preliminary planning and grant writing to support some great events.

The assistant theatre manager is really well organized and has a good instinct for design. Our website was much more “blah” when I was making the design decisions. She will actually be chairing the search committee.

The theatre collaborates with the Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii, a statewide consortium of presenters which leverages their collective power to negotiate contracts and write grants together. I have served as an officers on the board for the last 8 years. While you can contract artists alone, you definitely get more bang for your buck cooperating with the group.

It takes some patience and tenacity when advocating for artists. Sometimes dates and artistic mix don’t synch up for everyone at the same time. In some cases, you may have to reintroduce the artist over the course of multiple years to get the buy-in you need to make the tour happen.

On the other hand, you have people who are familiar with the intricacies of your organization bringing you well-qualified suggestions, many of them great performers you weren’t really acquainted with before. In many respects, they are helping you shoulder the responsibilities that are associated with booking a season.

The theatre also has a very active rental business with over 350 public events a year (not counting classes that schedule time on the stage). There are a lot of perennial renters who can almost run the show themselves. There are also many first time renters whose vision outstrips their budgets whom you need to teach about organizing their production. Fortunately, the technical directors have a deep commitment and long experience in doing that sort of thing.

Representatives from all these constituencies will be on the search committee–theatre staff, drama instructors, visual arts instructors, a representative of the booking consortium, perennial renters, a community artist. I believe the committee numbers about 8-9 right now.

Then, of course, there is the obvious benefit of living in Hawaii and interacting with the confluence of cultures which live and visit here.

So why am I leaving? Well many of the things I value about my current job are present in the one to which I am moving. The university president and many of the staff are really wonderful people. A community board has an amazing relationship with the university and shares in a great deal of the presenting responsibilities. I am absolutely looking forward to joining the organization.

So in short for those interested, the theatre manager position is suited for a mid-career arts professional with a solid background in performing arts who is prepared to act assertively to advance the interests of the theatre.

Please don’t apply if your qualifications don’t meet this level and are not entirely sincere. The school declared two failed searches before the search that resulted in my hire so they are not about to settle.

So write a great cover letter that inspires and expresses your vision. You will be writing to a group of arts people who want to be excited by the next theatre manager.

…Just realize those arts people are constrained by a pedantic bureaucracy that makes them go down a check list of the minimum qualifications. If they can’t find evidence you meet the qualifications in your cover letter or resume, it doesn’t matter how inspiring you are.

Also pay VERY close attention to the transcript requirements. If you submit online transcripts, the committee has to evaluate whether your experience is equivalent to a degree.

I am happy to answer any questions people may have. Just submit them through the contact link atop the page.

2012 Year In Review

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I often tell people that it surprises me what postings take off. There are things I write that I think are really insightful that barely get any notice. Other posts that I just dash off after hours of trying to think of something pithy to write about will garner all sorts of attention.

I pretty much see it as a parallel for the whole non-profit arts experience so I don’t take it personally if I don’t get a lot of attendance at the stuff I deem to be brilliant masterpieces.

However, looking back at the posts that garnered the most attention in 2012, I am assured that my dreck isn’t rising to the top.

The most traffic by far went to my post Forget Dynamic Pricing, Use Placebo Pricing

The Next Most Visited Page was The About Me page (you like me, you really like me!)

But the second most visited post was Your Mouth Says Innovative, Your Pictures Say Status Quo

Third, is unexpectedly, Dramaturgy Is Everyone’s Responsibility. In the coming year I may have to explore the subject more often.

Fourth and Fifth were June’s Embracing The (Cost) Disease and last month’s Expectations Feed The Disease. I wrote about Baumol’s Cost Disease three times last year and two of those entries popped into the top 5 so apparently the subject is of some interest.

What I was most inspired by this year was an animated typographic video of Ira Glass’ advice about creativity. The post I included it in is a little long and doesn’t do justice to the frisson I experienced when I watched the video so I won’t link to it. However, I used the video in a couple presentations this year, including a middle school career day.

My favorite line is right near the beginning where he talks about how when you first start out, what you are making isn’t really all that good, “But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer.”

Like Glass, I wish someone told me that when I was first starting out.

Fine Line Of Being For Art And Humanity

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A story on the Slate website revived the question of “what is art?” for me covering a “No Longer Art” exhibition at Columbia University. On display are damaged works which insurance companies no longer consider to be art.

“To give a brief explanation of art that is no longer art: Sometimes the cost of restoring a work of art exceeds the value of the work, in which case the insurer declares a total loss, and the work is declared no longer art—that is, of no market value. The damage can range from obvious to subtle—from a ripped painting or shattered sculpture to a wrinkle in a photographic print, or mold damage which can’t be seen at all. As it wouldn’t do to send the not-artwork to the crematorium—the work might be of scholarly value, or might one day be worth repairing, or might one day be more easily repaired—the work is stored, not dead, but in a state of indefinite coma. The Salvage Art Institute, Elka’s curatorial brainchild, collects and exhibits not-art.”

This seems to imply the work was art based on the intent of the creator and its state at the time of purchase. Often you will see a piece comprised of broken objects, whether they were intentionally damaged or found in that state. Because the artist assembled the broken items with a conscious intent, the piece is considered whole.

Like the philosophical question about how much of your body can you lose before you are no longer considered human, at what point does a work cease to be art then? If a piece of broken glass attached to canvas falls off while it is being mounted, does it cease to be art if that is one piece of 10,000? What if it is one piece of 10? What if it is a piece of blown glass that becomes detached and shatters on the floor?

What of the performing arts? If a playwright or choreographer was explicit in their directions, does a work cease to be art if the lines or movements are intentionally changed by a performance group? What if the performers try to stay true to the original but make mistakes? Are those flubs equivalent to rips, wrinkles or unseen mold damage?

We often talk about giving credit to artists if their work is sampled, but what about the other side of the situation? How much can be changed before the performing group needs to stop referring to the work as the creation of the playwright, composer or choreographer?

Should Baz Luhrmann have called his Romeo and Juliet by some other name since West Side Story smelled just as sweet? Should Arthur Laurents and Leonard Bernstein called West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet?

And then there is the question about who gets to decide if it is art any more? Should we trust an insurance company’s judgement if an artist says a new dent on a beaten piece of metal is inconsequential and it would have had the same appearance if he had decided to swing the hammer 51 times instead of 50? Do we heed the artist if the roles are reversed and he says the piece is ruined; if he had intended 51 blows, that is how many times he would have struck.

I know this conversation has gone round and round many times without conclusion, but I think this is the very core question which connects art with being human. Any other claim of “What it means to be human” is just marketing B.S. This question asks wherein resides the essence and soul of a piece of art. It is just as difficult to determine where humanity and the soul resides in a person.

The great example from college philosophy courses relates to Star Trek transporters which disassemble and reassemble humans. Once Captain Kirk is broken down to billions of atomic pieces, can the being that is reassembled be the same Captain Kirk? Where is that same point of no return for art where what is taken away removes that quality of being?

Tale of Two Husbands

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I am traveling for Thanksgiving so no lengthy post today. I am sure most of my readers are eager to enter the arms of their loved ones.

One of the small pleasures I receiving during my morning commute is catching the broadcast from StoryCorps. If you don’t know about StoryCorps, they set up booths across the country and get people to interview each other about events in their lives. All the stories are archived in the Library of Congress.

This week two guys who were married to the same woman talk about their relationship after the woman suggested that she and her second husband have Thanksgiving at her ex-husband’s house…

It is a good story for sharing at Thanksgiving. Hope you and your family create some good Thanksgiving stories this year.

Careful What You Ask

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One of the primary rules of surveying people is to avoid asking questions about things that you have no intention or ability to follow through on. A corollary to that is; and don’t do it on the internet.

The White House is probably learning this lesson after promising to respond to any petition receiving more than 25,000 signatures on their We The People website. If you haven’t heard about this already, people from every state in the union have petitioned to be allowed to secede.

Puerto Rico on the other hand just had a non-binding resolution to become a state.

As of this writing, Texas has over 100,000 signatures on their petition and a number of other states like Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee have exceeded 25,000 signatures.

Austin, El Paso and Atlanta have counter petitions to secede from their respective states to remain part of the U.S.

There are various other counter secession petitions listed as well including everything from exiling people who signed the secession petitions, making seceding states reimburse the U.S. for taxes and forcing Papa Johns and Pizza Hut to give everyone who remains in the U.S. free pizza if Missouri secedes.

There are actually some petitions that probably approach the intention of the website: asking the US to use its influence to gain the freedom of political prisoners, creating unified standards for redistricting, and justice for populations displaced by the U.S. government.

These are a little harder to find amidst all the demands for dissolution, impeachment and vote recounts.

I have read some articles that suggest that while the White House promises a response, it may resemble the form letter you get from a company after complaining: “Your concerns are important to us and we appreciate the feedback of our citizens. However, at this time the administration has no plans to dissolve the country. Be assured, we will keep your suggestions on file against the time that we might make such a decision and will contact you for your input into the process.”

I usually keep away from general politics for the simple reason that as the last election showed, there isn’t all that far to fall down the slippery slope before reaching the mud.

However, I think this is a great example, writ large, of the dangers inherent to soliciting feedback over the internet. It doesn’t take much thought about the consequences to jump on a petition signing bandwagon. Often you will get suggestions from people who have no concept of your business model, audience and organizational history.

However, if something in the input solicitation process leads them to believe there is a good chance of some action being taken and it isn’t, a simple “what do you think?” can turn someone who was generally positively inclined toward your organization into someone who has a bad impression. Better not to have asked in the first place.

The people who signed those petitions are probably expecting the White House to at least acknowledge their requests and start the process of exploring whether their state should be allowed to leave the Union. If nothing of the kind happens, people who merely grumbled “we should show them and leave the US” over a beer before may perceive the whole website as an empty sham and become even more resentful.

And sure, lets face it, that is pretty much what we have come to expect from promises politicians make. This will just be another one of those cases and nothing significant will likely come of it.

However, we do expect more from the businesses with which we interact. This petition system is just a really clear example of how you should watch what you ask, how you ask it and what expectations you create about your response.

Now For Something Completely Different

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Last year my assistant theatre manager gave me a calendar of Japanese wood block prints from MFA Boston. Most of the works included are several hundred years old and have really enjoyed looking at these past months.

Many of you may be under the impression that art from this period was very stylized and refined, and you would generally be right.

However…the subject matter which artists dealt with is another subject altogether. A scroll created by an unknown artist of the Edo Period, quite aptly named “He Gassen” tells the story of the “Great Fart War,” pre-dating Monty Python by about 200 years.

The scroll was digitized by Waseda University and all the images can be viewed on their website. Note that the proper sequence requires you to start at the top right and proceed left across the page.

While the scroll’s key demographic may strike you as being an eight year old boy, you might find yourself bookmarking this page depicting Japanese men in various degrees of undress discharging their attacks from atop horses, attempting to erect protective barriers and “recharging” around great pots of food, as something of a guilty pleasure.

You may not have credited the Japanese of the Edo period with this sort of humor. To some degree you would be correct, this period was characterized by strict Japanese isolationism. The He-Gassen scrolls are said to have reflected the anti-Western sentiment of the time.

Again, not unlike the sentiments expressed by the Frenchman toward the Englishman in the Monty Python video.

Believe it or not the “fart battle” was a fairly common subject of the time. Christie’s auction house sold fart war scrolls by another artist for about $1,500.

Will Typecasting Ruin New Zealand’s Career?

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I was reading today that the New Zealand post will be issuing legal tender coins commemorative coins for the upcoming Hobbit movie. This appears to be the first issue of coins associated with a popular culture icon (unless you count those issued for the All Blacks rugby team whose haka performance is iconic of itself).

I was both filled with a sense of amazement and concern about this. The amazement was based on the concept that an entire country could find itself identified so closely with a non-native cultural icon. The built in fan base of millions of Tolkien enthusiasts is proving something of a boon to the country which hosts tours of the many sites that appeared in the Lord of the Rings movies. While there was some digital enhancement involved in many parts of the movie, the inspiring natural beauty of the country depicted in the movies is there to be experienced.

I am sure there are many New Zealanders who are tired of foreigners trampling about looking for movie locations and reciting dialogue from the movies, but on the whole from what I have read, the country has a general sense of pride in the attention the movies have brought them.

My concern is based on the exact same thing–that the country find itself identified so closely with the movies that everything else it has to offer becomes eclipsed. Believe me, where arts and culture is concerned, the country has plenty to offer. Of the last eight seasons in my theatre, easily half of them have featured artists whose appearance was due to support from Creative New Zealand.

Here in Hawaii you can tour the locations that appeared in Lost and Hawaii 5.0, but the state’s identity isn’t closely tied to those television shows. After the planes stopped flying on September 11, 2001 and tourism dropped during the economic downturn, there has been a sense that the state needs to be known for more than just tourism, too.

I am sure there is plenty of discussion in New Zealand along the same lines. Fame and reputation can be a double edged sword that enhances your life in the short term but can be detrimental in the long term. Actors run into the same problem when they play an iconic character and then find they are inevitably cast as that same type the rest of their career. Arts organizations cultivate an aura of prestige that attracts wealthy patrons but earns them the perception of being elitist.

Of course, one benefit of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies is that New Zealand has a much stronger infrastructure for making and distributing films so perhaps the world will become more familiar with the creative and cultural richness of the country through movies and other digital media.

I think the country has enough diversity to offer it won’t face the danger of being typecast as Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The stereotypes other countries and racial groups have to face are bad enough, imagine people expecting everyone from New Zealand to either be an elf, dwarf or hobbit. (Kiwi are too nice to be uruk-hai.)

Go To The Theatre, Smell Like A Man!

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A little fun speculative post today.

It has been widely recognized that women generally initiate the decision to attend an arts and cultural event. Now given that the vast majority of playwrights, composers, visual artists, choreographers, etc have been Caucasian males and most audiences are comprised of Caucasians, I wonder what it is in their work that seems to speak to Caucasian women more than any other group.

As much as you can point out that it is no longer true that Caucasian male creative artists are  responsible for as large a percentage of creative output as they once were, I can link to tons of blog posts and articles that note that the ratio is still too large. I am sure there will be many who will suggest that an even larger number of women would attend if the creative content was actually geared to them.

So I ask, albeit with a little tongue in cheek, how have Caucasian male artists failed Caucasian male audiences and how can we get those men back?

This is where I want to play my speculative little game. I am not going to advocate for more White male centric art. I think its good that what is out there appeals to a wider spectrum of the community. Given that people have shown the capacity to identify with art created by those who are unlike them and that doesn’t speak directly to their experiences, I think there is room for more to be created by artists of diverse backgrounds.

But in fact, I am not going to really argue directly for artistic content at all but rather suggest maybe we need to think about how the experience is positioned.

Earlier this month, Smithsonian.com had a piece about how the United States was sold on using deodorant. It an interesting story about how deodorants and antiperspirants were formulated and ultimately advertised to the American people by playing on their insecurities about smelling bad.

However, the earliest efforts were aimed at women which resulted in deodorant use being regarded as feminine. A man was supposed to possess a manly odor!

But with half the population not buying the toiletries, manufacturers felt they were missing out on untapped potential. Early attempts were made to get women to buy deodorant for their husbands but it was still largely seen as a female product.

Comments in a 1928 survey read:

““I consider a body deodorant for masculine use to be sissified,” notes one responder. “I like to rub my body in pure grain alcohol after a bath but do not do so regularly,” asserts another.”

Now if rubbing your whole body with pure grain alcohol isn’t manly, I don’t know what is. I feel less of a man for only splashing it on my face after shaving.

Later attempts were aimed at male insecurity as well.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s men were worried about losing their job. Advertisements focused on the embarrassment of being stinky in the office, and how unprofessional grooming could foil your career, she says.

“The Depression shifted the roles of men,” Casteel says. “Men who had been farmers or laborers had lost their masculinity by losing their jobs. Top Flite offered a way to become masculine instantly—or so the advertisement said.” To do so, the products had to distance themselves from their origins as a female toiletry.

For example, Sea-Forth, a deodorant sold in ceramic whiskey jugs starting in the 1940s, “because the company owner Alfred McKelvy said he ‘couldn’t think of anything more manly than whiskey,’” Casteel says.

At this juncture, I think it is pretty much a moral imperative that I insert the following:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE&w=560&h=315]

 

I think if the arts and culture industry is going to take its cues from deodorant advertisers, (and why wouldn’t you?), it is going to need to move beyond depending on women buying tickets for husbands and boyfriends and reframe the experience in some way.

While I am not necessarily above using someone’s insecurities to motivate them into action, I think I would rather take a more constructive approach to making men believe initiating a trip to an arts and cultural event is socially acceptable and perhaps even expected.

Obviously, the arts and culture industry needs to replace the word “men” in the previous sentence with other segments of their community in an effort to serve a greater portion of their potential audience.

And while we no longer get our deodorant packaged in whiskey jugs, (pity), reformulating and packaging the product for wider audience segments is still going to be required. Can’t get away selling the same old stuff.

While it is a lot of fun equating theatre and deodorant, I have to confess I don’t really have a lot of ideas in regard to what an effective approach might be. Anyone have any thoughts?

How Do You Take Your Compliments?

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A woman who was our assistant theatre manager is now pursuing her doctorate in Thailand and recently sent us a questionnaire. She is surveying the difference between the way Americans and Thai respond to compliments based on the relative age and social standing of the person delivering the compliment. All my answers were pretty much the same but from what I know about Thai culture, your status relative to the person giving the compliment dictates how humbly you might respond.

I got to thinking a little about how we handle compliments in the arts. A few years ago, Holly Mulcahy had talked about how difficult it is for an artist to accept a compliment graciously rather than offer apologies for the performance. I remember doing something similar when I was acting, barely being able to mumble out a thanks.

It is easier now that I am in administration. I get to stand in the lobby during intermission and the end of the performance accepting compliments about the show without reservation because I am generally as unaware of the flaws the performers may perceive about their performance as the audience is. Though there have been a few rare times when I have been witness to some very tense moments backstage when artistic directors and stage managers voiced their disapproval of a performance.

As I think about the value and significance of those compliments, one thing I don’t feel I do enough of is solicit feedback beyond, “Thanks, that was a great show.” from a wider variety of people. I have advocated having conversations about the arts where ever you find the opportunity whether it is at a wedding reception or on the checkout at the grocery store in order to get people to voice what they do or don’t like about the arts experience. You can often get people who say they aren’t arts people to recognize they are actually more involved and invested than they realized. Having them reflect on that is good for the arts in the long run.

Starting and sustaining those conversations in the grocery store can be a challenge, but it is easy as falling down in a theatre lobby or gallery. I certainly do talk to a lot of people throughout an evening but it is often the same familiar faces who are knowledgeable about the arts and know they have access to me.

With them it is easier than falling down. What I need to remind myself to do is take “Thank you, that was a great show,” from “strangers” and extend my response to something beyond “Well thank you, thanks for coming out this evening.” Last year I had the presence of mind to do that with a couple and suddenly their high school aged daughter piped in with observations that were so insightful, I was about to beg her to come to college here when she graduated.

My intuition tells me making time to encourage other than the usual suspects to expound a little more on their experience is probably the doorway to better fund raising opportunities. Making the connection with new people may certainly inspire a personal donation from those who find themselves becoming more invested in the organization, but it may also indirectly lead to identifying and connecting with companies/organizations interested in providing support who were never even on your radar.

I am not suggesting that you should be in the process of always closing a fund raising pitch. Rather I am pointing out that relationships are the real basis of enduring support. It is easy to fall into the trap of always speaking with the same familiar people at every performance. It is another thing that solicit additional feedback from an unfamiliar person. Even if their first words are compliments, the next words might not be. But doing so can go a long way toward not only securing their loyalty, but alleviating the impression of elitism in the arts.

When Good Ideas Occur To Lazy Readers

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Occasionally I get a sense that I have a bunch of interesting ideas percolating in my subconscious because I will occasionally misread the title of an article and have a whole slew of assumptions about the article which don’t bear out. It makes me think my subconscious has these ideas but is just waiting for someone else to do all the hard work of proving they are viable.

This occurred with an piece in Fast Company about how Minnesota based Artspace (not to be confused with ArtPlace) prevents artists from being displaced from communities due to the gentrification they helped encourage.

Artspace has done this by building all types of artist housing/work spaces in the Twin Cities (as well as 21 other cities in the US). Because Artspace controls the housing, the artists aren’t as apt to be priced out of the neighborhood as they have been in so many other place.

But the article title which included the words “artists revived an old warehouse district–and got to stick around to reap the benefits of what they helped create” and “Give Artists Their Own Real Estate Developers,” made me think someone came up with a plan where the artists received some increasing financial benefit as the neighborhood improved.

I imagined there might be some sort of version of the 1% for art for the neighborhood where artists received a share of every real estate transaction that occurred–every time a construction project began; every time a property was sold or leased to a new business; every time an apartment was rented and re-rented–artists actually benefited financially from the improving fortunes of the neighborhood.

Since all this came flooding into my mind when I caught sight of the titles, I am not quite sure how it would work. But I wonder if a city would be willing to license an organization like Artspace or create a sort of investment fund which would receive a cut of all transactions for 25-30 years. I am not sure at what stage this might happen. Gentrification of a neighborhood often starts when artists move into spaces they aren’t really supposed to be inhabiting so they wouldn’t want to call attention to themselves too soon.

All charter artist members of the organization/fund would get a payout every so often which would help diminish the impact of the gentrification and benefit those responsible for inspiring the improving conditions. If the money was going to a non-profit like Artspace, perhaps they would use a portion of the funds to develop low cost artist accommodations and seed similar artist beneficial gentrification efforts in other cities.

Imagine artists having a piece of every Starbucks lease, every high rise luxury apartment construction project, every boutique shop renovation, every bar and restaurant opening, every skyrocketing apartment rental or sale.

And if having to pay that percentage inhibits this sort of development–well that is all the longer that artists can actually afford to live there. It would actually be good if companies started moaning publicly about paying a percentage because it would start to illustrate the real economic impact of the arts.

Just think if rather than just real estate, every transaction, from cups of coffee and shoes sold to parking fees and haircuts, within a district was charged even a quarter of a percent in support of the artists there. At the end of every year you would have some real hard data about the economic growth the presence of artists initiated in that neighborhood.

No Simple Solutions

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While I was out in the middle of the Mongolian steppes gazing out from my yurt, I happened upon a copy of the Oxford Business Group’s report on Mongolia in the dining hall. I put aside the novel I was reading and devoured the report. It was intensely interesting to me to read about all the factors that contribute to the emergence of a developing nation. In many respects, I saw some parallels to the arts and culture sector.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of Mongolia’s greatest assets is its land. The people are largely nomadic and their large herds of horses, sheep, goats and cows benefit from the grazing land. Tourists such as my friends and I come for the natural beauty. And the country has large mineral wealth.

There are many factors that must align for the country to be economically successful in each of these areas. The banks must have enough capital to support investment; insurance companies must have the resources to insure the industry; the government must be stable and generally unified in its vision; people must be confident that laws will be fairly applied and agreements honored; work force must be well trained and industrious; a quality transportation infrastructure must be in place.

This is no small task for a country that moved from Soviet style communism to a parliamentary republic in the early 1990s. The report mentioned that even countries like Canada which has a more mature and practiced economy and political system were challenged in trying to exploit their mineral wealth.

One of the things the report made clear is all these elements are interrelated. Success depends on addressing deficiencies in all theses areas and that balance is necessary. For example, there is a growing concern that the rise of the mining industry with its good salaries not develop to the detriment of other industries like manufacturing and tourism leaving the economy too dependent one segment. The impact of copper prices falling sharply a couple years ago is still fresh in people’s minds.

In the same respect, problems faced by the arts and culture sector in the U.S. and elsewhere won’t be simply fixed solely by achieving one of the following: more government funding, better cultural policy, more corporate donations, better board governance, changes in foundation policy, arts education in schools, new business model or marketing to younger audiences.

Its all of these and no one thing. We all generally know there are no simple answers, but it is difficult to remember when we are told the solutions to our problems can be achieved with a simple pill; in as little as 30 minutes a week; or just cutting/raising taxes.

Certainly when you are operating in perpetual crisis mode, or at least a low grade state of emergency as seems to be the case in the arts and culture sector, thinking the solution lies in achieving progress in one fairly significant goal provides the hope you need to carry on.

While it shows the reality of the situation to perhaps be more overwhelmingly complex, in the context of the factors necessary for developing the Mongolian economy, it is obvious that a more holistic and balanced approach to improving the operating environment is necessary.

It only makes sense that financing, infrastructure, law, education, etc are all important to a developing country. Progress won’t be made if one area is deficient. Trying to convince others to stop trying to advance conditions and policies in other areas and devote their time to what you think is important may ultimately be counter-productive.

Something to remember if you are making the rounds of conferences and such this summer and you are getting a lot of messages about what is absolutely the most important thing to do.

Summer Vacation, Asia Edition, Part II

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Okay, as promised a little bit on my view on the Mongolian stage of my vacation. Mongolia’s biggest asset is its wide open spaces of natural beauty. Only reason I can figure Genghis Khan  even thought about leaving is because winters get down to -40 degrees (it is same on Celsius and Fahrenheit).  My friends and I had the pleasure of sleeping in ger (yurts) and had a great time.

 

Our Humble Ger
Inside the Ger–Note Candles Are Only Light Source

 

A view from the Ger

Mongolians take great pride in the accomplishments of Genghis Khan and his progeny. The Khan’s figure appears in many places. The statue below just appeared out of nowhere about an hour or so from the capital, Ulan Bator. Apparently it was the site of one of his great camps.

Suddenly Genghis Khan

In the plaza across from our hotel was a government building with three different statues of the seated Khan. Below is the largest.

Middle Khan

We were somewhat fortunate to be in Ulan Bator during the national holidays for the Nadaam Festival, the athletic event showcasing the three great Mongolian pursuits-wrestling, archery and horse back riding. I say somewhat because traffic in the captial increases greatly during this time and many shops were closed for the week. We didn’t go to the stadium, but everywhere you went a television was tuned into the festival.

While I am not really into sports, I have come to recognize the importance of communal bonding around cultural events. We left Mongolia the day after the athletic competitions concluded, but the festival continued with a huge gathering of people in traditional costume in the square across from our hotel. From what we understood, it was something of a fashion show/contest.

Finally, since a country’s money often provides insight into the things the country values, I thought I would show off some of the pocket change I had left over. As you might imagine, Genghis Kahn appears on many of the higher value tugriks.  Many others have portraits of Damdin Sükhbaatar who was instrumental in gaining Mongolian independence from China in the 1920s. The backs have images of ger/yurts being moved or pictures of horses with various backgrounds.

Because of its close association with the Soviet Union after their independence, Mongolia has its own version of Cyrillic as well as an older script related to Uighur. Both types of text appear on the money.

Front of Mongolian tugriks
Back of Mongolian tugrik

While I am on the subject, the current series of the Chinese currency (ren min bi) almost exclusively features Mao Zedong. There is still some older currency  in circulation like the half yuan notes below which feature pictures of the Miao and Zhuang ethnic minorities.  Other notes had other minorities or the classic communist figures of an intellectual, a worker and a farmer.

In addition to Chinese characters and pinyin, since 1955 in something of an acknowledgement to the 50+ ethnic minorities in China each note includes the denomination written  in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang on the back. Newer notes (circa 1987) also have this information in Chinese Braille. Even though English isn’t the national language, just imagine trying to get addition languages written on currency in the United States.

RMB front
RMB Back

Summer Vacation 2012, Asia Edition

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So I am back from my vacation (my thanks to Drew McManus who kept an eye on the blog).  This trip took me to China and Mongolia, both of which will provide content for a few days of discussion. Both countries have long and interesting cultures.

However, the most immediate and visible celebration of national culture I saw was in Korea’s Incheon Airport. Not only did they showcase the talent of their classical musicians as is common in many airports. (click on any image to get an expanded view)

Music Program, Seoul Incheon Airport

 

Vibrato Ensemble

They also had people wandering the terminals in traditional costume. I had seen people in costume coming out of a back room when we transited to China and assumed perhaps it was a special occasion. It wasn’t until I returned that I realized this was a regular event. There are a number of Korea Traditional Cultural Experience Centers throughout the terminal and the costumed people move between each one, gathering a fairly large following as you might imagine. They perform a short program and then pose for pictures.

Between these performances and the multiple cultural experience centers, it appeared to me that the Korean government is pretty invested in promoting its cultural assets. They are letting people who visit know what cultural resources are available and giving people like myself who are transiting reason to think about visiting in the future.

Korean Traditional Cultural Experience

 

Taking Pictures With Visitors

One thing I have enjoyed in China are some of their large, beautiful public parks. They also have some beautiful historic gardens wedged into  the middle of their cities like Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai and Prince Gong Mansion in Beijing, both of which I visited this trip.

Yuyuan Garden Shanghai
Prince Gong Mansion, Beijing

Beijing is also the home of the 798 Art District, the site of former military factories which artists gentrified into Beijing’s version of Greenwich Village. The district has been frequently under threat of being closed down and redeveloped thanks to its geography but its prominence as a tourist attraction seems to be staving that off for the present.

An arts administrator I met while in Beijing complained that the district was becoming too commercial and the artists could no longer afford to live there. Welcome to the negative side of the market driven economy I told him.

I experienced a little of the commercialization myself during my visit. The last time I was in China, I learned about the 798 Arts District and a sculpture, The Wolf Is Coming. I was really interested in seeing the sculpture and asked my friend who had been to the district a few times before to take me.

However, this was what was in its place-

This Is Not A Wolf

Now I wonder if she was mistaken about the location because this courtyard doesn’t look like the one in the picture of The Wolf Is Coming I linked to above. That said, there were a number of Transformers robots in this courtyard and in the windows of stores and galleries around the district.

I couldn’t take pictures in the galleries but here are a few other pictures from around the district.

798 Art District Sculpture
Getting Out of A Cage
Cage You Can Get Into

 

This trip afforded us the opportunity to walk over to Macau which was generally a little too cheek to jowl living for my taste, but did have some wider, attractive plazas.

Street in Macau

We just happened on the start of a parade that included all sorts of musicians, lion dancers, people bearing a long dragon on poles, characters from Journey to the West and other mythical figures I couldn’t identify. They also had hand drawn carts with little girls perched so precariously at top a small platform that the girls had to be supported by pole bearers walking alongside.

Please Don’t Fall

This entry is getting a little long so I think I will continue tomorrow with Mongolia and some reflections on the whole trip tomorrow.

However, while I am on the topic of precarious situations, I wanted to comment on an amusing, but seemingly ill advised hotel design trend. One of the hotels we stayed at in China offered an unlooked for artistic display of a sort–windows in the shower.

A view from the bed
View from the “throne”

Yes, you are seeing correctly, the rooms offer some interesting view even with the shades closed. I thought maybe this was a trend in China but our hotel in Mongolia had the same features. I could understand if these were a romantic hotel, but both hotels were very much aimed at business travelers.  Both hotels had blinds you could close, but the ones in Mongolia were inexplicably perforated which meant you could still see someone in shower unless the lights were off. (My room mate on I opted to warn each other when we going into the bathroom.)

 

Is Art Still Good For Us?

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A few years back, I wrote some reflections on Joli Jensen’s, Is Art Good For Us? I had taken the book out of the library but have since bought a copy of that book as well as John Dewey’s Art As Experience.

The book is a very interesting look at the many definitions of the purpose of art throughout the history of the U.S. as well as the ideas about how art and democracy are related.

Reading Jensen’s work helped me flesh out my thoughts about the prescriptive model of the arts.

One aspect plays into the medicine metaphor quite well in the form of the old adage that it has to taste bad to be good for you. The value of avant garde art has always been in its power to shock and challenge. Just as consumers are always looking for a more pleasant tasting cough formula, a good portion of the public doesn’t want to pay for art that is foul to their senses. Nor do they want to be told that they will be better for it. In a way, like Mother trying to force big spoon of cod liver oil into the mouth, it treats people like children.

There will always be an audience for avant garde art. Like the pain of tattoos and piercings, its benefit is best realized by those who come to it willingly.

And as Jensen writes:

“If we gave up notions of art as social medicine, the logic of American cultural and social criticism would become unraveled. The arts must maintain their conceptual distinctiveness so that they can still be invoked as a fudge factor in criticism…”

“Invoking the arts as a fudge factor also allows us to avoid the hard work of directly defining what we value and what should be done…Current arts discourse allows us to be for all good things, and against all bad things by invoking the presumed good of the arts in opposition to the presumed bad of media, commerce and the marketplace.”

“Such a discourse has significant costs. It guarantees that our social criticism is vague, overblown, insulting and impotent. When we discuss our common life, what is wrong with it and what can be done to improve it, we need all the directness, specificity, clarity and compassion we can muster.”

There have been a lot of years of blogging since I first read Jensen’s work. I am interested in reading it again to see what new insights and understanding I may have developed since that time. I suspect (and even hope) that I may disagree with some of what I wrote in my original post.

Stuff To Ponder: Snobby Opera Lovers Aren’t The Problem

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A few years back I reported on an article by Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper in which they reported that surveys show classical music lovers are more likely to have omnivorous tastes and consume a wide range of non-elite forms of music than a lover of rock music.

But I don’t cite the article to make classical music lovers feel good about themselves, but rather to highlight their suggestion that it is technology which is creating a cultural divide between the haves and the have nots.

“A few decades ago, cultural consumption required a small number of pieces of equipment – a television set and antenna, an AM/FM radio, and a record turntable. Now cable television, high-speed Internet connections, DVD-rental services, satellite radio, and streaming-audio services all require hefty monthly fees. Even consumption that feels like a purchase, like an iTune download, is often really a rental…”

According to the authors the new cultural divide will be comprised of those who have the time, resources and knowledge to “navigate the sea of cultural choice” to inform, cultivate and share their cultural lives on one side. Those who lack these things will obviously be on the other side of the divide receiving their culture via tightly controlled media channels.

This was about six years ago and at the time I didn’t see that this divide would be any more or less destructive than the cultural divide out of which we might be transitioning, even though it may involve different segments of the population.

Looking back, I don’t know that a new cultural divide has manifested yet. I don’t doubt that the potential of a technology based divide exists, I just think that there is still a good mix of options for people. Once certain channels of delivery disappear because there is no longer a critical mass of support for them and choices are more limited, then I think we will see what the basis of the divide is.

On a related subject, I am also not quite sure if technology is segmenting or broadening audiences. While people have much greater control to choose only what they want to consume, it is also much easier to immediately explore new artists when your favorite performer says they were inspired by Etta James.

Thoughts on these ideas? Do you see a new cultural divide emerging? People’s tastes becoming more or less segmented?

Be Perfect

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One of the ideas I have occasionally touched upon here is the idea that perfection is expected in the arts. That line of thought really started for me with an entry I did in 2006.

Audiences expect a sublime experience for what they paid. Funders expect that everything met or exceeded expectations, a mindset Andrew Taylor suggests arts organizations created and reinforce regularly.

Artists are expected to be exceptional always, yet musician openings at orchestras still frequently go unfilled despite many highly qualified people auditioning.

Come to think of it, that sounds similar in many senses to the current situation where we currently have thousands of jobs going unfilled in manufacturing because employers expect the perfect worker and are generally unwilling to provide training to close the perceived gap.

Brisket Will Keep Us Together

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So I am off on vacation for a couple weeks. But not to worry, I have plumbed the depths of my archives in order to provide you something to think about while I am gone.

While I am taking a vacation to relax, I have made some arts related plans and appointments and hope to have some interesting things to report when I return.

Since I am going on vacation, I thought I would start out linking back to a light hearted remembrance of rituals some of the theatres I worked out enacted to keep the weary team bonded together.

Check it out, share some of your favorite arts related bonding rituals.

Who Owns The Meaning Of Art, Revisited

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Ray Bradbury’s recent death has had me revisiting some thoughts about the issue of who owns the meaning of art. In all the retrospectives on his life, you may have heard he intended his novel Fahrenheit 451 to be about how television would erode literature and that he never intended the book to be about censorship.

Yet pretty much every high school English class teaches that it is about censorship despite his protestations to the contrary. In fact, there is a move to designate Error 451 as a response to any content removed from the web for legal reasons.

I wrote an entry tackling this situation about 5 years ago and cited an article about Bradbury which mentions he apparently walked out of a class at UCLA where a student wouldn’t stop insisting he meant the book to be about censorship.

In that entry I pondered how much license a person has to definitively state what an artist really meant.

As we write program notes, conduct Q&As or talk to ushers and patrons in the lobby, how much are we getting wrong? Maybe the idea that Hamlet was motivated by an Oedipal complex never crossed Shakespeare’s mind. (Especially since the concept is never considered until after Freud coined the term.)

Second is the matter of balance. Where does the balance fall between telling people what is meant and telling people there is no single correct interpretation? People come to educators and arts professionals for the tools to process unfamiliar material. We try to give them language and lenses to assist in this endeavor but part of the joy of encountering art is to see something no one told you was there.

The problem is that sometimes these realizations are tainted by the context we bring to the work and don’t reflect the intentions or reality of the artist. Now granted, personal context is the basis of some works of art like Impressionist paintings. But you are also in the position of not being able to tell people they are wrong about Hamlet since you subscribe to and encourage the “No wrong answer” school of thought.

I don’t want to necessarily paint Bradbury as an obstinate curmudgeon in respect to Fahrenheit 451. It isn’t clear from his interviews if he was annoyed at people for having a different interpretation about the book or because they insisted his interpretation was invalid and ignored it.

Many creators openly welcome and celebrate the variety of experiences people have interacting with their work. Poet Denise Levertov explicitly states this in her poem, The Secret.

As I wrote in a blog post about 5 years ago, I think her poem should be required reading for fine art and literature classes at handed out at arts events to reassure people they aren’t stupid of they don’t “get it.” Your perception of a work doesn’t need to be in synch with that of the creator for you to have an authentic experience.

And because the personal context you bring shapes your perceptions, it is worth re-visiting a book, recording, performance, painting, etc many times over the course of your life in order to experience it anew.

Still we come back to the original question. Who owns the meaning of art? Who has that last word? When a creator sets it free into the wilderness, do they relinquish all claim to it?

I Don’t Remember The Nest Being So Nice

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There is potential that cities across the country can ultimately benefit from this economic downturn if they play their cards right and tap into those returning home to help contribute to raising the quality of life. This at least, according to a piece by Will Doig on Salon.com.

According to Doig, young people who have moved to the big cities around the country like NYC, LA and Chicago, find the cost of living to be too high and returning to the places they left, often to start their own businesses.

“Or as urban analyst Aaron Renn puts it: “New York City is like a giant refinery for human capital … Taking in people, adding value, then exporting them is one of New York’s core competencies.”

And it exports them in droves. People associate brain drain with the agricultural and industrial Midwest. But most years, when foreign immigration is excluded, it’s places like New York and Chicago that lose the most residents. Chicago loses nearly 81 people a day to out-migration, more than any other metro area in America. Between mid-2010 and mid-2011, nearly 100,000 people left the New York area. Los Angeles lost almost 50,000.”

Of course, this doesn’t diminish the fact that a whole lot of people are returning home to live a fairly depressing unemployed existence. But according to Doig, in returning home, these people bring expectations of products and services they experienced in the big cities, paving the way for these same products and creating demand for business and government services. They also tell their friends about the great environment in the “nests” to which they have returned attracting more people there.

The reason why I mention cities need to play their cards right is because they have a role in perpetuating an image of their cities as vibrant, interesting places to live. According to Doig’s piece, the reputation perpetuated about cities belie the actual conditions in those cities. (My emphasis)

“The mesofacts say that Charlotte [North Carolina] is a boom town and Portland [Oregon] is cool.” In reality, the economies of both Charlotte and Portland have been struggling for a while now. Yet new residents still flock to these places because the mesofacts tell them they’re hot, when it’s actually Pittsburgh they should be looking to, where per capita income has risen faster than any other major Midwestern city’s, and the unemployment rate has been lower than the national average since 2006.

“I’ve been saying to people in Pittsburgh for years, ‘What Seattle was in the ’90s, you’re going to be that big.’ And they’d laugh. But the data show it,” says Russell. “The editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette keeps saying the biggest problem in Pittsburgh is brain drain. And I’m like, you’re 20 years too late. Why are you torpedoing your own in-migration? When you’re running around saying you have a brain drain problem, what you’re saying to the world is, ‘We’re a loser.’ But if you can convince people the data are true as opposed to the mesofacts, then you open the sluicegates.”

If Doig is correct about all this, it could be the time for arts organizations to step up and take advantage of their trend. As Scott Walters and many other have noted, artists flock to cities like NYC, Chicago and LA convinced they can make their careers there. This is due not only to the alluring glow of the lights of Broadway, but to the practices of many regional theatres that often do their casting in major cities forcing actors to move there if they want to work back home.

This isn’t just the case for theatre either, Trey McIntyre confounded everyone when he chose to base his dance company in Boise, ID rather than one of the major cities. Artists aren’t just seduced away from home by the mythology of these cities, there are very practical reasons to move there if you want an opportunity to practice.

But as I said, arts organizations have an opportunity to reverse this trend by focusing on hiring locally and then getting the local arts community to tell their friends in the big cities why they should move back. For many of those who left, artistic spaces that seemed provincial and under equipped when they left may suddenly seem luxurious after working and living in dingy, holes in the wall in the big city. Yet they have also probably seen and done some pretty artistically interesting things.

As people move back, the arts organizations can tap into the returnees’ experiences interacting with the current thought and aesthetics churning in the big cities and adapt them as their own. You are never going to overcome the allure of going off to the golden cities, but by providing a reason to return, many places across the country can embrace the situation and leverage it to their own advantage.

Info You Can Use: Job Descriptions, Not Everything Is A Critical Duty

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Not long ago I came across a job posting for a non-profit organization that listed over 25 duties and marked each one of them as a core responsibility.

Now, my first thought was, if every job responsibility is a core one, why did they go to the trouble of applying a special symbol to each one.

My second thought following soon after was that this is why there is so much burn out in the non-profit field.

Theoretically, a job should only have 4-5 core responsibilities. Every other responsibility should be subsets of the core responsibilities or be something you do occasionally. (Vendor coordinator for the annual street fair, for example.)

Core job responsibilities are ones to which you should expect to devote a large portion of your day/week. If you have 25 core duties and even assuming you work at 10 hour day, you will only be able to devote 24 minutes each day to a duty. If indeed they are all core responsibilities.

If you have a job as a marketing director, your core responsibility might broadly involve promotional efforts, external relations and sales. In pursuit of that your a subset of your responsibilities might be supervising writers, designers, front of house staff, relationships with the boards, vendors and various constituencies. You will have many responsibilities, for certain, but most will be aspects of the core duties and not equal to them.

The ticket office manager’s core responsibility is to supervise the ticket office. If your core responsibility is listed as supervising the ticket office, marketing and publicity people, house manager, then you need to have as much contact time with those people each day as the ticket office manager does with the ticketing staff. Presumably those managers are competent enough that they don’t require such close supervision.

Your job descriptions may be very long in order to clearly define what your duties are. I had an email exchange with Drew McManus regarding this topic and he mentioned he has a history of advocating for detailed job descriptions.

I would probably agree with him. The way some job descriptions are worded, it often isn’t clear what the duties are. There are times I read job postings for executive director positions and I don’t know if the person will be supervising a marketing department or actually writing/designing promotional pieces themselves. With non profit arts organizations, one can never assume…

Now I will confess I understand the impulse to make everything a core responsibility. When you have so few people working for your organization, it is crucial that so many things be accomplished and you want to underscore for the job applicant—-it is IMPORTANT to our operations that these duties are successfully implemented.

(I will also confess this topic is something of a sore point with me since 90% my own job description is boiler plate putting “performing arts management” in place of the “facilities operations and management” hire the week before.)

But some things are more important than others and people need to know what the overriding priorities of their position are. The resources and personnel of the marketing department may be necessary to support fund raising campaigns and outreach programs in addition to promoting events.

Determining which of these functions receives the most priority will depend on a number of factors, but the marketing director’s position description should provide a basis for that decision. If the reality does not match the position description, it may be worth examining that fact during a performance review.

But that is a different entry altogether.

Present Ability≠Quality Of Creative Taste

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Brain Pickings had an animated kinetic typography video of Ira Glass’ advice about how to succeed in creative work. Essentially he says when you are starting out to produce creative work, your taste is likely excellent but your execution is probably going to suck. You need to refine your work by exercising your abilities at every opportunity.

This topic has been on my mind quite a bit recently. I had a slightly new understanding about that advice we usually give to young people about entering a career in the arts: “Don’t do it unless you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else for the rest of your life.”

When that advice was first given to me, I interpreted it to mean that if there was any other career path that appealed to me, I should pursue it instead. I recently realized it also means you should be prepared to spend the rest of your life honing your skills through exploration and repetition.

Depending on your specific discipline, in every moment of your life, some part of your consciousness needs to be observing the interaction and behavior of everything around you-living things, light, sound, smells, movement, material properties, physics, speech, text, color etc,. Then you need to choose to take what you observed and make it part of your practice.

Perhaps it is just being the child of two teachers, but I don’t understand people who don’t want to learn a little something more each day. I suspect most people of an artistic temperament similarly have an underlying curiosity that drives them to ask, observe and experiment.

The thing that is tough is having patience with your own failings for weeks, months and years. I pursued certification in secondary education when I was an undergraduate and I remember that one of the things my cohort suggested for our training program was a refresher in grammar. Once we got up in front of the class, we realized we couldn’t properly teach it having ignored it for so long as students ourselves.

A couple weeks ago I properly used “fewer” rather than “less” in a sentence and a woman who just started teaching second grade about five years ago asked me about the grammar rules. There were some implications in her tone that she viewed me with some respect but also as a grammar nerd. I chuckled inside recalling being at uncertain about grammar rules when I was fresh out of college. I decided not to tell her that even though I had about 20 years on her, I really only felt like I started to understand many of the grammar rules in the last 8 years I have been writing this blog.

Now I worry that my writing is getting a little too stilted every time I go back to revise sentences to read “with whom/which.”

I am not trying to promote the pursuit of good grammar as something everyone should do. Nor am I trying to say it will take 30 years to attain. I have always been a voracious reader and have done a lot of writing throughout my life so I have had a lot of exposure. I am not sure when better grammar started to matter to me.

And I certainly don’t follow all the rules. <—-I will start sentences with "and" and will use the singular "they." At some point I realized better grammar would improve the quality of my blog posts and give me a better understanding of grammar and started to make incremental changes in my practice.

I recognized an important point in Ira Glass’ assurances that inability to express one’s creativity has no bearing on the quality of your taste. There are plenty of people who have great taste who have no ambitions to express it as an avocation or vocation and suffer no anxiety over it. It is only when we are frustrated at our inability to express ourselves that we suddenly decide there is a direct relationship between our creativity and quality of its manifestation.

No one would claim you couldn’t have a great vision for an opera simply because you didn’t speak Italian. You just wouldn’t be able to create a good opera in Italian without help. Even after a year or so of learning Italian, your opera probably wouldn’t be too good because your understanding of Italian would only be overlaid on your English language skills, sitting awkwardly atop them.

It is only after long involvement with Italian when the language becomes organic that you can finally effectively express your great vision in Italian. That original vision didn’t suddenly get better because you learned Italian. Italian just happened to be superior to English as a mode for expressing your vision and it naturally took awhile to develop your proficiency.

I am digging Brain Pickings these days. You should visit the site. If you can’t do that, then at least take 2 minutes to watch Ira Glass’ advice

Talking About Your Debates

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I had an interesting conversation the other day that convinced me I don’t spend enough time talking to people from other arts disciplines. We were backstage talking to some visual arts professors about the mural project I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

The wall the mural is on is slated to come down soon. While I think it is is a little too soon, I was a little surprised to learn one of the professors (who wasn’t present) really wanted to preserve the mural and have it mounted. To me, the very media it was on–a plywood construction wall–implied a certain impermanence.

This got us to talking about theories of visual arts preservation and the extent you go to in order to keep art around. For example, if you take the chunk of wall a Banksy is on and put it in a gallery of some sort, aren’t you missing the point and leaving it bereft of its context?

When you restore a painting, how good a job do you do? Should it be absolutely indistinguishable from the original or is that fraudulent?

We talked about how theatre embraces the transitory nature of art. Sure you can have a video of the performance, but we always stress that it isn’t the same as having been there. (As it is with some visual arts pieces.) With the exception of the quest to exactly replicate all the original elements of Shakespeare’s plays, theatre people pretty much strive to find some new way frame a performance. (Some times trying far, far too hard to find an original approach.)

What theatre often obsesses about is the process of creating illusion. How does the performer depict their character? Whose approach do you subscribe to? Strasberg? Adler? Meisner? All of the above? None of the above?

There is a famous story that illustrates the conflicting theories. Dustin Hoffman is said to have stayed up two days while filming Marathon Man in order to fully empathize with his character who had also been awake for two days. Sir Laurence Olivier reportedly said, “Why don’t you try acting?”

Hoffman addresses this story in a 2003 NPR interview (around 15 min mark) giving a great testimony to Olivier.

Where theatre people don’t worry overly much about presentation, visual artists don’t really view embracing another artist’s emotional state as crucial to understanding and replicating their technique. While emotion is important to dancers, discussing how one moves through space is of much greater importance.

Yet the conversation got me thinking that someone could make an interesting project out of focusing on those areas that other disciplines find important. For instance, trying to embody the emotions of a famous painter while creating a painting or explore if improved body awareness impacted sculpting techniques.

I am not sure how it would work in the opposite direction since attempts at preservation would make a performance static and dull.

Really, my concern isn’t really with creating new approaches to artistic expression. My point is that talking about the biggest points of debate in your artistic discipline with people from another discipline can be fun and informative. The folks from the other discipline will have a basic understanding about why things like preservation of an artistic expression would be a concern, but since they are not as emotionally invested in the debate, they can bring interesting perspectives.

Who know, it the conversation might plant the seeds for a collaboration on your next project.

Should Arts Organizations Sanction Electronic Devices

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Let me just preface this entry by saying I am pretty much old school when it comes to attending performances. I don’t have any problem sitting passively in a dark room watching a performance. I don’t have any problem standing in a dark room and moving around as required for site specific performances. Sure, I get a little uncomfortable when performers in elephant masks sit on my lap and put their arms around me, but I am pretty much open to whatever experience the performers are offering me.

But as a person who programs and administers a performing arts facility, my job requires me to acknowledge that not everyone seeks the same experiences I do and I have to pay attention and be open to making changes.

When you go to the movies, you can’t bring in your own food. Not because the theatres don’t allow food, but because they want to control the environment their spaces–namely the food is purchased from them.

I wonder if the same situation exists in relation to the performing arts. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this weekend about why you shouldn’t text while in the theatre. I actually agree with the points about wasting money, annoying other people, maybe you are the one that is boring, you aren’t in the moment, you wouldn’t text while your lawyer is advising you and you are interacting with machine instead of humans.

But what is the difference between using a cell phone and Concert Companion? Many of those same points can apply, except Concert Companion is developed and supported by arts organizations and foundations. While I am not sure Concert Companion is still active, the most recent article I can find on it is seven years old, it shows that nearly a decade ago orchestras were already thinking of introducing hand held electronic devices people could reference throughout a concert into the performance hall.

Perhaps they didn’t recognize the problems this might cause, including giving license to others in the audience to pull out their own devices for other purposes. My question is, would these devices be welcomed if they were serving the arts organization? If audiences, especially new audiences, showed an interest in using their iPhones to access information about a performance and told the performing arts organization that it really enhanced the experience, would there be more tolerance for the glowing screens?

There was recently a story about Quebecois artist, Olivier Choinière, who as part of his performance piece arranged for people to attend a performance of Moliere’s School for Wives at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. The 80 people in his “audience” were instructed to hide their headphones until the lights went down and then start listening to a podcast.

“What the audience within a larger audience was then treated to was Choinière’s indignant but humorous real-time commentary, in which he questioned whether the metatheatrical production lived up to the claims, in the promotional material, that the director had found “terrible resonances with our society” (for instance, regarding pornography and pedophilia) in Molière’s 1662 play about a misogynist named Arnolphe who raises a young girl to be the perfect wife.”

I don’t really agree with Choinière’s event and would agree that it was somewhat closer to being parasitical than a performance. Yet, I think it is an interesting concept and I am sure many of you do as well. I can easily imagine arts organizations doing something similar to help guide audience members through a performance. Provided people keep the volume down so their neighbors can’t hear, ear buds are a far less obtrusive alternative to the glowing screens of Concert Companion type guides.

Though I suspect once people starting using the guides, I suspect they wouldn’t be satisfied with just listening and might crave the accompaniment of visual information as well.

So is it okay for people to listen to podcast commentary or look at supporting materials as long as it supports the show, but a invasive practice if someone is criticizing and lampooning the performance? Will ushers back away quietly when they see an approved image of John Cage on a hand held screen, but swoop down if they see someone texting about their physics homework?

Again, to my mind all these devices are extraneous and intrusive. However, I realize many people didn’t have parents and schools that exposed them to the arts (ah, memories of my sister shouting “Mommy, they are naked,” in reaction to dancers in body stockings.) Right now we see the presence of these devices as detrimental to the experience, but there is a fair possibility that if people start developing performance related content, they will viewed as useful tools for educating and enhancing the experience in the near future.

It would be great if audiences eventually got to the point where they could wean themselves off using devices, but once people start, they may expect/seek material to supplement a performance. No guarantee that the material will always be complimentary or under the arts organization’s control.

While it is easy to criticize, to do a good job providing a running criticism, you would have to know the material about as well as you would to provide a running educational commentary. If there are people like Choinière who have enough motivation to create a criticism, there are probably those just as motivated to create a helpful guide. Tough part might be identifying them so you can partner with them (or point audiences toward their material). It might make sense to seek these people out now (or task your education department to generate the material) before you find yourself scrambling to do so in reaction to a Choinière.

As I sit here writing this, I am thinking, “God, do I really want to create an environment in my theatre that encourages people to use mobile devices?” Yes, people are already doing so against our wishes, but do we really want to sanction that activity by providing content for it? If you think there is a good chance someone else might eventually create negative content, it would probably be good to at least start having hypothetical conversations about how you might implement your own program or otherwise constructively react.

——-
Reader Challenge- In addition to sanction and cleave, are there other words in the English language that have opposite meanings? I seem to remember at least one more.

Honor Your Ancestors Today

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I am rather busy and have fallen a little behind on my reading and pondering for the blog. As an alternative, I thought I would make note of some interesting art.

Today is the celebration of the Qingming Festival for China/Hong Kong/Taiwan and ethnic Chinese in other countries. It is essentially a festival honoring the dead and is also known as Ancestors Day and Tomb Sweeping Day. The festival also marks a transition into Spring: the spring plowing starts, couples start courting, green tea harvested before today fetches a higher price, etc.

There is a famous panoramic painting by 12th century (Song Dynasty) artist, Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the Qingming Festival measuring 9¾ in by 17 ft 4 in. If that link isn’t working you can view it on the Wikipedia page, though the aforementioned link is much more beautiful.

For the 2010 Shanghai Expo, the China Pavilion featured wall sized animated versions which showed the figures in the painting moving about their day. Cleverly done and quite interesting to watch.

I like this one best

Another version. Animation is more detailed, but covers less ground

h/t Hidden Harmonies China blog

Unrelenting Pursuit of Excellence

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I am a little caught up with life issues but I noticed a movie I saw at the Hawaii International Film Festival last October is opening in wide release this weekend and I wanted to mention it.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a documentary about Jiro Ono, regarded as the world’s best sushi chef. His was the first sushi restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars. I don’t particularly like sushi but it was well worth seeing this man’s artistry depicted fifteen feet long on a movie screen.

Jiro has never been satisfied with his accomplishments and always pushes to do better even at 85 years old. He has personal relationships with his suppliers, many of whom adhere to similarly high standards. His rice supplier won’t sell the type of rice Jiro uses to anyone else because he feels they don’t know how to cook it. It actually requires cooking under very high pressure to achieve the results Jiro does.

As I watched the movie, I thought about those in the arts and culture industry and wondered who among us is willing to labor in obscurity perfecting our craft. To achieve what Jiro has, you have to be willing to pursue perfection for its own sake alone and not for recognition in any form.

How long before you compromise your vision or give up in the absence of supportive feedback? How many people have sustained their drive whom we have no knowledge?

There is certainly an argument to be made against the type of single mindedness Jiro exhibits. There have been some less than positive outcomes. Yet it is the sole factor upon which his success is based.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbV6knbeUFE]

An Idea Eight Years In The Making (And Hopefully Not Nine)

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Thursday is the 8th anniversary of this blog. I made my first post on February 23, 2004. I wouldn’t normally call attention to an oddly numbered anniversary (though 8 is considered auspicious in China), however an idea I mentioned in my second post may come to fruition. Actually, the bulk of the idea was expressed in a letter to Artful Manager Andrew Taylor which ended up printed on the Artsjournal site.

In that letter I suggested that arts organizations emulate the overtly proselytizing comic book Chick Tracts. While I am generally offended by the tracts, I appreciate their use of illustrations to catch interest and their portability which lend themselves to easy distribution by handing them off to friends or leaving them in public places. I had suggested using the same format, albeit with a less heavy handed approach, to distribute information about the arts.

That idea has been percolating in my mind as I waited for the opportunity to put it into action. That opportunity seems to have presented itself.

If you recall on Monday I mentioned how I haven taken advantage of the enthusiasm my assistant theatre managers have brought to the job to implement some of my ideas. Well this is one of them.

The current assistant theatre manager had an idea to assemble a Student Media Art Collective (SMAC – her idea) to help us promote the performances at the theatre. Our intention is to have discussions about promotion, techniques and art in general. In time we hope to bring in some guest speakers to talk to the group about various topics. I have pretty much left it up to her to organize and run. I just approve the purchase of pizza, distribution of comp tickets and show up at the meetings.

I have to say, I have been pretty impressed with the way she has run it. Even though we want these people’s help promoting the theatre, she hasn’t really mentioned that at all. What she has basically done is created a place for people to meet, eat pizza and talk about their ideas. Today she had us drawing things on file cards and post-it notes.

We have only had two meetings. Between the first one two weeks ago and the one we had today, two of the people have already started collaborating on a project together. They aren’t ready to talk about it yet. From what I have glimpsed of the proposal the one guy wrote, it seems to be some sort of fictional speculation about the origins of chess as a game.

I like the energy that is developing so far. We have provided a forum for these students who are predominantly visual artists that hasn’t been available before. I think it has been good that we have let the participants talk about their ideas rather than pressing our agenda. It has helped people feel comfortable and share their goals with the group.

I had discussed my idea to emulate the Chick Tracts with the assistant theatre manager about a week ago and while I wanted to mention today, I decided to follow her lead in regard to whether we asked them to do something for the theatre. Near the end of the meeting, she invited me to share the basic concept with the group and a number of them really liked it. During the mingling at the end of the meeting, a few approached me with the ideas they had. I was surprised that many of them were interested in producing a hard copy format rather than a digital manifestation as I had suggested. Apparently having something physical to hold is valued a bit more than I had guessed.

I will follow up by sending out some links to some websites that might provide as basis of inspiration for my Arts Tracts. Then I will step back and see what happens in the next two weeks before we meet again. Hopefully something will have been produced by this time next year.

What Must They Think Of Us

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In diplomacy terms, soft power is a nation’s culture and values as opposed to their economic and military power. Some institutions like McDonalds and Apple cross some of the boundaries between these three areas. For better or for worse, they represent aspects of both U.S. culture and economic power. This week I came across a blog post on the Voice of America (another channel of U.S. soft power) by a student from China who is studying in North Dakota.

I was a little chagrined to learn that everything Dandan knew about the U.S. before coming here, she learned from soap operas.

“When I was still in China, the only American art or entertainment I knew about was the American soap operas. In fact, I got my initial impression of America from “Criminal Minds,” “Sex and the City,” “Gossip Girl” and so on. Although these soap operas were quite ridiculous, even to my eyes, I still believed that most often they presented what was really going on in America.

These soap operas told me that the crimes in America almost existed everywhere and could be extremely disgusting, that everyone has sex and is open about talking about it, and that people in the Upper East Side were presumptuous and arrogant.

Yet when I came to America, the first lesson I learned from my classmates was that soap operas are not as popular as I expected, at least not amongst college students. Lots of people I know haven’t even watched one episode of those “famous” soap operas.

She goes on to talk about how impressed she was by a college theatre production. She also quite taken with her participation in a slavery simulation where she was sold in slave auction and escaped into the night hiding with others in basements until they reached freedom in Minnesota.

I think the arts community may need to add “tools of positive diplomacy” to the rationale for funding and look into getting on the State Department’s cultural ambassador program expanded. There is a lot of counteracting of our national image that apparently needs to be done abroad and we don’t always have to send the big symphonies, Broadway tours and ballets overseas in order to accomplish it. Not everyone is going to be able to see the big American company in the big performance hall in the major city. Smaller groups can bring interesting experiences to other places within countries.

Sure, it is in the best interests of some countries if the citizens have a poor impression of the United States. I figure if we can negotiate to have our military based placed on foreign soil, we must have the skills to create more opportunities for expressions of U.S. culture abroad. China, France and Germany have their Confucius Institutes, Alliance Francaise, and Goethe-Institut, respectively. The U.S. has the Peace Corps as one of its exemplar soft power organizations. Maybe we need an Arts and Culture Corps, too.

Honestly, I think the need and benefit of cultural exposure is probably mutual. U.S. citizens need the experience of traveling and performing abroad as much as people of other cultures need to be exposed to something other than our television programs.

Who Is More Important? The Event Or Organization?

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I had a small disagreement about marketing with one of the people partnering on a show with us that raised the question about what is more important, the artist or the organization.

The disagreement was pretty simple. We had designed an ad to promote a show. Between the sponsor and creator logos/credits and the general design of the ad, there wasn’t a lot of room left. To maintain a clean, attractive look for the show, I suggested that we omit the three names of the presenters. We would have the name of the theatre, but not “presented by X, Y, Z groups, each of which were fairly long.

My feeling was that the show was what would attract the audience. If we credited the three of us, it would look cluttered and the pertinent information would be lost. If we reduced the font size to the point the ad didn’t look cluttered, it would be too small to be of value and not worth including.

Since we had already advertised the show via brochures, posters, postcards and email blasts, most of those who associated our names with quality already knew we were involved with the show. Those whom we would be reaching with the ad would be making decisions based on the show, not who was presenting it. Therefore, our names were not as important in this particular communication channel.

My partners disagreed with my point of view (though they praised the ad image as much better than the brochure and poster images which was gratifying) and we included our names in pretty small type.

It got me to thinking, is there ever a time when the event is more important than the organization taking credit? Choosing to cede space in favor of a funder might be done out of a concrete sense of obligation (or lack thereof, I am aware of some organizations that choose to omit funder recognition.) Valuing the event/artist above the organization is a bit more theoretical and nebulous a decision.

I don’t know that it should be a default organizational policy where you decide the artist always comes first and people will have to work to find out whose efforts were responsible for their experience. There are some cases where people won’t be familiar with a work where the organizational reputation for quality will provide the confidence an audience needs.

In some cases, you may want to take credit for an experience but get very little recognition because the artist’s reputation will eclipse your own. We recently presented Ben Vereen and it was clear from the phone conversations we were having with patrons that our involvement played no part in the decision to attend.

Both Elton John and Neil Diamond are performing in town in January and February and I couldn’t tell you who the promoters are. I could make an educated guess of 3-4 different people. That is probably the best rationale for making sure your name is associated with your productions. Get a reputation for quality and people will attribute great experiences with which you had no involvement to you.

Surveys show that audiences don’t have much awareness of the tax status of the organization providing their nights’ entertainment. If people aren’t discerning between profit and non profit organizations, how aware are they of whether a show is being presented by me or someone who is renting our facility? There are times of the year that bring especially high numbers of calls from people expecting us to resolve problems with tickets they didn’t purchase from us, so I know some people aren’t aware of the distinction.

Knowing that people may not be making as great a distinction between you and everyone else as you might hope, are there situations where the event is more important than your organization? I am not talking about simply leaving your name off marketing material for the sake of aesthetics. I am asking if there is some program you have or dream of having where it doesn’t matter if anyone knows you did it?

Is it possible for a non-profit to get to that place? Do the producers of a Broadway show care if they have high personal/business name recognition if the show is profitable? Can a non-profit be that blasé as dependent as they are on attracting funders who want assurances their support is making a difference?

I don’t know the full answer to these questions because I have just started considering them and it is a complicated matter.

I don’t think the inability to subsume the organization name to that of an artist necessarily has a direct correlation to the situation Diane Ragsdale discussed in November about low pay for artists. As I note, there are many important reasons to keep name awareness high. However, the organization’s perception of artists certainly is going to factor into the question.

With all the instances recounted by Inside the Arts blogfather, Drew McManus, of orchestra boards answering the question pretty decisively in their own favor, it may be a question that needs to be asked more frequently.

Supernatural Artistic Inspiration And Music

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In the talent vs. practice debate regarding mastery we have Malcolm Gladwell’s suggestion that it takes somewhere around 10,000 hours to achieve mastery (as well as the counter argument of that it may not require even half that much).

But putting that aside and waxing a little fanciful, I was recently thinking about the attribution of supernatural intervention/inspiration as the reason for talent. We all know the famous story of Robert Johnson making a deal with the devil at a crossroads in order to acquire his blues talent.

I was recently listening to an interview on the National Endowment for the Arts website with National Heritage Fellow Ledward Kaapana who tells a story of an uncle taught to play guitar in a dream over seven days.

“And my Uncle Fred, he told me this story about how he learned to play his guitar. He dreamt for about seven nights of how to play. In his dream, someone came into his dream and taught him how to play the guitar. This guy sat under the coconut tree. In his dream, he sees the guy on a coconut tree, but he couldn’t see the guy’s face. All he seen was everything was white with a red chest. You know the Hawaii style, they always had the red chest, and sitting there and teaching him.

And as he was getting ready to go to school, his dad used to make him home lunch to go to school then, and the dad could hear him playing in the room, his guitar. So on the seventh day when he told his dad, the dad gave him one slap. So in other words, he was not supposed to say anything, because after that, that dream was gone. Never had that dream. Then you know what he told me? My uncle told me, “If I didn’t tell my dad about this dream, I could have been playing with my eyelashes.” Because he plays with his nose. He plays with his toes. He plays over the guitar.”

I love stories like this just for the themes in common with other cultures. As I got to thinking about it, it seemed that these sort of stories are always about music. I couldn’t think of any stories about actors or dancers receiving supernatural inspiration. There are stories about people dancing unto death after wearing cursed boots or being bewitched by fairies, but no positive attributions. The only supernatural inspiration for visual artworks I can think of are fairly contemporary Twilight Zone type stories where things don’t end well either.

Music frequently associated with transcendent experiences. In fact, just last week at an artist Q&A an audience member asked if the three percussion masters we had performing ever felt a oneness with the divine while playing. Perhaps that is why there are these stories of talent and ability being conferred upon people.

Help me out. Am I forgetting any classic stories of supernatural inspiration in other arts disciplines?

Arts Presenters 2012 Edition

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I have been attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference this past weekend. I am sure I will have more to say on the subject in future entries, but I wanted to post a few reflections and impressions while they were fresh.

First, I wanted to give some congratulations and props to Mario Garcia Durham, the new President and CEO of APAP on this, his first conference with the organization. I had met Mario a handful of times before in his capacity as the Director of Artistic Communities and Presenting at the National Endowment for the Arts. I was always set at ease by his open and welcoming manner when I had consultation sessions with him.

I took it as a good sign that he invited the Emerging Leadership Institute participants and alumni (of which I am one) up to his suite to discuss what we felt was the future for the field. We didn’t have a lot of time with him, but it was a promising sign. I also thought it was a promising sign that he got a standing ovation at the start of the conference from the membership. (And even more promising that he decides to discard a long speech he had prepared at another gathering!)

For this conference, I decided to break out my laptop and do a little live tweeting from different sessions. I had a great time doing it and could really see the utility of the activity for the conference, and somewhat by extension, for Tweet Seat programs that have been emerging at various arts events. I will say though that I really felt that I ended up missing many aspects of the sessions I was attending. Not only in terms of not entirely absorbing points people were making, but also some of the nuances of what they were saying. Even though my brain and multi-tasking abilities may not be on par with those of the younger generation, I can’t help but think they would indeed suffer from the same situation.

I was also surprised given the size of the attendance that more people weren’t tweeting from the various discussions going on, at least not on the official hashtag, #APAPNYC. Didnt see much on the counter-conference hashtag #APAPSMEAR, either. Many people used the hashtags to promote their showcases, but didn’t really seem to overdo it.

I was a little disappointed that there weren’t more people tweeting from the sessions because there were often a number I wanted to attend running concurrently and with a few exceptions, no one was reporting what was transpiring in those rooms.

On the other hand, there were a fair number of people following along. I appreciate all those who signed up to follow my twitter feed. Between those who started following me and those who were tweeting themselves, I found a number of new interesting people to follow in turn.

One interesting thing I noticed was a change in the underlying theme of the discussions at the conference. In the past it has often been about declining attendance and funding. This year it seems to be more focused on social and cultural trends, perhaps thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movements. People were talking about loss of identity, disenfranchisement, fragmentation and polarization of society.

Questions were raised about what role arts organizations would have in addressing this and place in the community rather than how to get more people through the doors. One of the major speakers at a few of the sessions was John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, PA who has attracted a lot of national attention for his efforts to revitalize his town and reverse the decline by the use of art and community efforts. As part of one effort, they took the bricks from a demolished garage to make a communal bread oven.

I will try to post more on the conference in the weeks ahead as I am able to digest the experience.

2012 New Year’s Resolution

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My suggestion for a 2012 resolution to all my readers out there is a musical one. The words of They Might Be Giants, “Whistling in the Dark.”

There’s only one thing that I know how to do well
And I’ve often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that’s be you,
Be what you’re like,
Be like yourself,
And so I’m having a wonderful time
But I’d rather be whistling in the dark

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyhGtKAkNTo&w=420&h=315]

History Repeats Itself And Is Redundant, Too

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I was starting to write up a draft of a press release for a show we will be doing in the Spring, First Person: Seeing America. Probably the best way to describe it is as a live documentary. When you watch a documentary or a show on the History Channel, old photographs often appear on screen while music plays under a narration to create a mood. In First Person: Seeing America, all these elements are present live.

NPR’s Neal Conan (Talk of the Nation) and and actress Lily Knight read and dramatize the words of Abraham Lincoln, Langston Hughes, Damon Runyan, John Muir, Frederick Douglass, Calamity Jane and others, while accompanied by chamber music quintet Ensemble Galilei. Photographs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection including Matthew Brady, Walker Evans, WeeGee, Edward Stieglitz and Thomas Eakins are projected behind them.

It really looks like a terrific show. But since no one has really seen anything like it before, my challenge has been trying to briefly describe it in terms people will understand and be intrigued by. I actually struck on talking about it as a live documentary while a guest on an NPR fund drive in October and that has seemed to work pretty well.

While I was writing today, it suddenly struck me that history has sort of come around again and the basic premise of this show is pretty timely. What else is the popularity of social media but an interest in the first person accounting of others’ lives? Granted, most people will have more interest in the lives of those they know than historical figures. I am not sure how much traction I will get referring to Frederick Douglass as an original tweeter or blogger.

Still, at one time keeping a journal was something a person did. While the motivation for doing so now is less for personal reflection and more for public consumption, the practice has returned. Perhaps it is time for arts and literature people to harness that impulse and direct the general populace toward refining their approach. I know that there are people already doing a fine job using these tools to express themselves creativity through video, music and writing, but I have an intuitive sense that the practice has yet to reach its full maturity.

I am well aware that in all likelihood the proportion of quality writing to dreck has probably remained constant throughout history. For every Langston Hughes, there have been 99 people dashing off junk. You have to wonder though if in 100 years there will be people mining blog and tweet archives to put a similar show together bearing witness to our lives.

So much pressure to be a poignant and inspiring representative of my time!

Pools And Pre-Schools And Theatres, Oh My!

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Those who have been reading for a number of years may recall that I have been on an advisory committee for the performing arts portion of a community center the Salvation Army is building with the bequest of Joan Kroc.  I thought it was only a year ago, but it has actually been over two years since I attended the ground breaking ceremony for the center. Today I had the opportunity to tour the facility before its official opening just after the new year. I had been looking at a lot of plans so it was gratifying to walk through the actual spaces and see elements that I suggested they add.

With the official opening nearly two months away, there is still some work being done. Enough of it was complete that we had to take a circuitous route around the complex and peer through windows into rooms that had been completed and were awaiting final inspection.

Just by way of comparison, here is the front of Kroc Center Hawaii now versus the empty fields in the pictures I took at the ground breaking.

 

You can take a look at their website for all the programs they will offer which includes a pre-school, after school programs and memberships to their athletic facilities. What I am sure families will really love is the POOLS!

 

Of course, the part I was most interested in was the theatre space. If you can believe it, I was actually pushing for a venue that was more like my own to provide an alternative rental facility for all those people I have to turn away. There is nothing else really on my side of the county and this is where all the population growth is.  As much as I am interested in the theatre portion, I feel the entire project will be a real benefit to the community.

However, the Salvation Army wanted a more multi-purpose space to serve their worship services and provide the opportunity for weddings, banquet assemblies, conference trainings, etc as a supplement to their ballrooms. So there are some nice permanent seating areas.

 

And then a wide area for temporary seating, tables, etc, leading up to a low stage. They had some pretty nifty state of the art technology and a beautiful sound system which made me a little jealous.

Being the arts administration geek that I am, I was already mentally writing procedures and policies to suggest to whomever they hire to run the place. I suspect that even though the venue lacks many of the features my theatre possesses, they will see a level of demand that will force them to decide between rentals and their own programs.

My First Thanksgiving Post

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I usually don’t do thanksgiving themed posts but I have been feeling really energized by some recent occurrences I wanted to acknowledge.

-First, I have recently realized just how valuable being surrounded by the right group of people can be. Some recent additions to both my immediate circle of collaborators as well into a slightly different, but intersecting orbit has injected some new energy and zaniness that has both inspired and enabled some of my ambitions.

Even though it means more work for me, it makes me grateful to be working in a creative field. It also makes me wonder how much more would be possible if I was working in a well funded corporate environment. Though I might not have as great a degree of autonomy in the avenues I chose to pursue.

-Second, I am grateful to all those who have been participating both actively and passively with Butts In The Seats. In much the same way as the people around me, you have been providing me with additional drive in writing this blog for what is going on eight years now. Between all the little improvements Drew McManus has been implementing to Inside the Arts, the quality of writing the other Inside the Arts bloggers have been producing and the contributions of readers either commenting on articles or passing them along to friends, the number of people reading Butts in the Seats and the length of time being spent on entries has seen a respectable increase.

The neighborhood may be virtual, but it seems it is just as important to maintain the attractiveness and quality of the experience here as it is in the towns in which we live and work.

Thank you all for being interested and engaged in all the factors impacting creativity, culture and the arts.

Arts For What They Are, As Opposed To What They Are Opposed To

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Back in April, Peter Linett posted about the development of arts organizations during the 50s and 60s, commenting:

This was a negative identity, premised on oppositions rather than intrinsic attributes. The arts were non-commercial, non-profit, “high” culture as distinct from “low.” It’s almost as if the purpose of the arts, as that category came to be defined, was to be an antidote to the rest of culture: civilized because everything else was increasingly uncivil; elegant and “serious” because everything else was coarse and frivolous; formal because everything else seemed to be coming loose.

This oppositional approach has actually brought about some pretty vibrant works as artists rebel against what their contemporaries and those who preceded them do. This is what a lot of marketing and advertising efforts base their appeal to us on- that what one company offers is better than the other options. It may be related to your self-identity or making your life better/easier for an economic price.

Somewhere along the line, arts and culture got out flanked as the appealing alternative. For a long time it was holding its own against radio and television. Other alternatives developed or perhaps there was a shift in what people were looking for an alternative to. The question of “what exciting thing can I do tonight,” may be been replaced with “my life is so busy, what can I do tonight that doesn’t require me to get back in my car.”

Since it is likely that people’s criteria about what constitutes an interesting alternative is likely to shift, and shift rather often, Linett’s suggestion about presenting the intrinsic value of the arts for its own sake makes sense.

Right now the big push is to engage with audiences. If successful, these efforts should result in a much more positive and constructive relationship with audiences. But lets face it, everyone is pretty much scrambling to engage with audiences for the purpose of shifting choices toward them over someone/thing else. The race is to offer better engagement than the next guy and engage the socks off audiences until they don’t know what to do with all the engagement they are getting thrown at them. And god knows, thanks to the support of your board, you have the resources to pull it off and make everyone else’s efforts look puny by comparison.

C’mon, admit it, that is the internal conversation you are having. You have to meet payroll after all, so while part of you is sincere in your efforts, part of you is calculating the value of engagement efforts as a tool for attracting people to you in some manner.

I suspect in spite of any self interested element, individuals will come to value the arts for themselves thanks to the changes organizations make. I also suspect that arts and cultural organizations will come to enjoy providing engagement activities for their own sake and not as a means to secure grant funding or event attendance. In the best of all worlds, there will be a greater alignment between audiences and artists as the former comes to better understand the value of the arts as the artist does and artists no longer see one of their primary roles as interpreter/explainer.

Please don’t take this to mean that I think audience members don’t possess a deep appreciation for the value of the arts. Since engagement programs of necessity need to provide audiences with a different perspective on the arts experience and greater permission to be involved and understand, I anticipate that audiences will gain insights they did not possess before and artists will come to realize they can trust audiences to be smart enough to understand on their own.

Essentially, I am extending the idea of brains rather than butts in the seats toward an optimistic conclusion. Love and understanding can be ours if arts people can get past the idea that they are the arbiters of understanding. Of course, if arts people are going to cede this control, audiences have to embrace the opportunity and make an effort to understand. Good news is, a lot of them already are.

Info You Can Use: Expertise As Entertainment

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So much to do and so little time to do it! I am a little short on time for my post today but I wanted to direct attention to Eric Ziegenhagen’s TEDxMichiganAve talk, Expertise as Entertainment.

There have only been 74 views so I know you all haven’t seen it yet!

What Ziegenhagen talks about is the increasing prevalence of expertise being valued as an attraction. He focuses a lot on restaurants. It is no longer dinner and a show, dinner is the show. With the increased appreciation of culinary skills of chefs thanks to myriad television shows, people are valuing exposure to that skill as an attraction.

Restaurants in turn are designing the dining experience in response to this interest by providing information about the different components of the meal and providing more opportunities to watch the preparation process.

Ziegenhagen speaks of one restaurant that sells tickets to their seatings essentially intending them to be scalped. They apparently researched the laws governing resale of tickets and designed their reservation process in a way that permitted them to be transferred.

Ziegenhagen references the burgeoning TED lecture franchise as a evidence that people are beginning to value what is basically the pre-show lecture/post show talk back as much, if not more, than the actual show itself.

Looking at them in that context and taking a look at what makes the TED talks so engaging and interesting may provide some insight into how to make pre and post show talks more valuable to your audiences. (Clue: It might mean bringing in someone with no association to your organization at all.)

Better ROI Than Thou

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The Los Angeles Times has a video of the change over process between the LA Opera productions of Cosi fan Tutte and Eugene Onegin.

My first reaction was how cool the magic of theatre is that such transformations can take place in a short time to generate the illusion of two different places.

Then I started to think about the cost and whether it was all sustainable. They only repeat the same production once so this change over requiring 45 stage hands happens about 4 times a week- Onegin on Saturday, Cosi on Sunday, Cosi on Wednesday, Onegin on Thursday, Cosi on Saturday, Onegin on Sunday. Then I look at the design elements and wonder if they really need to have 800 gallons of water on stage for one act only to drain it and expose the Plexiglas for the second act.

Next I looked at the prices, $270 for orchestra down to $40 for an unobstructed view in the back of the balcony ($20 for an obstructed view). If they cut back on some of the design elements and changed the production schedule, they could charge less and be more accessible, right?

But you know, while I was thinking all this, I was also feeling a little torn. I felt like my grandmother who, having grown up during the Depression, would scowl at us for not washing aluminum foil and Ziploc bags so they could be used again. Was the only reason I was having critical thoughts like this because that is how those of we in the non-profit arts are brought up to think?

Opera is all about spectacle and that is what people expect from the experience. People complain about the high cost of rock concerts and Broadway shows, but there are few people arguing they have to lower the prices to make the shows more accessible. Usually the accessibility argument for rock concerts is about keeping companies from buying up huge blocks of tickets, not that the original price was too much. People complained that the Broadway previews of Spiderman were so expensive, but people kept buying and buying.

So if the demand is there, what business is it of mine whether the LA Opera is operating in a way that requires them to charge so much? The rotating schedule might actually make better financial sense for them after all. I worked at a theatre in a community with a high tourist rate where the rotating repertory schedule actually helped increase their audiences.

Yet, while it does have significant private support, Broadway shows and rock concerts don’t depend on public support the way non-profits like the LA Opera does. So the question is, do we in the arts mount bold productions that employ technology cleverly to bring our audiences delight. Or do we worry that people wanting to reduce the funding the arts receive will use groups like the LA Opera as an example of why the arts don’t need funding since they can afford to operate at such high standards.

Some of this fear comes from the hostile reception the idea of public funding for the arts receives. It is also reinforced by the practice of private funding sources. The big measure of not for profit effectiveness right now is low overhead. I can’t recall where, but I recently read a quote from an influential politician/business person who said if anything could be funded, it should be the arts because they generate such a great return on the investment.

While I am glad to hear this message repeated by people not working in the arts, the pressure to have low overhead and great results for the investment tends to create a mindset where an organization views themselves as more virtuous than a better funded one because they bring the arts to under served populations and children on a shoe string budget. Who needs hostile politicians when we are all too willing to cast a “better-ROI-than-thou” disapproving eye on each other?

That’s all well and good, but this attitude is what also contributes to few people taking an arts career seriously because no one gets well paid.

Is In-n-Out Burger more virtuous than Wendy’s because they have a smaller, leaner operation? Sure, for profits and non profits have different reasons for operating, but few people praise a commercial enterprise as being virtuous because their cost controls have kept them small.

So does it matter how much the LA Opera is spending?

Can Devotion To The Arts Be Considered An Addiction?

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Since I tend to travel to China every other year or so, I have started taking a class in Chinese.

The class has taken over my life.

It used to be that the rule of thumb for college classes was 3 hours of home work for every hour in class. In recent times, it has been scaled back to 1-2 hours per hour in class. My Chinese class seems to be old school because I spend about 10-12 hours a week doing the homework. I usually finish home work for Tuesday on the Saturday before and then start the homework for two Tuesdays hence on Sunday morning. Every morning, I wake up and do 1-1.5 hours of homework before heading off to work for the day. Saturdays I usually do several hours of work.

I figure I have to keep this schedule because our production season is starting very soon and will keep me from completing the homework before Monday or Tuesday unless I start 8 days early. What is slowing me down is writing everything in Chinese characters. It is like reproducing pictures rather than writing letters. If you write the letter J and don’t dot the lower case or cross it as an uppercase, no one will care. You leave a dot or line out on a Chinese character and it is a different word.

The thing is, I love it and anticipate taking the more advanced class next semester. While my pronunciation of the tones is probably off, I can grasp the vocabulary and grammar rules pretty well.

But it has gotten me to wondering– can I afford another time and energy consuming obsession alongside my career in the arts? I also wonder if my enthusiasm for learning the language comes from a similar place as my enthusiasm for the arts. While I was a good student when I was younger, I was never as diligent as I am with this class.

I have written a number of times on the idea that people in the arts are sustained by the emotional satisfaction they get from their jobs. This can lead to decision making which values devotion to the arts to detriment of their professional and personal development, financial situation, relationships and health.

Now given I actually have time to have something non-arts related monopolize my time is probably a sign that the amount of time I devote to my arts career may be at a healthy level. Or that I have merely displaced other portions of my life to accommodate both activities. (The pile of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes does seem higher lately…)

My brain may be releasing chemicals into my pleasure centers in relation to both arts and Chinese class, but I don’t think it comprises some sort of addiction. Still, I wonder if there is a tendency among arts people to exhibit personality traits common to those prone to addictions. If anyone has seen any studies, about arts people having addictive personalities, I would be interested to learn more.

In any case, it is something to which I will have to give more thought.

After I finish my Chinese homework.

I Liked Your Ideas Better When We Were Being Repressed

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A recent book review gave a fascinating look at how the value of ideas has declined in post-communist Czechoslovakia. In the wake of the Velvet Revolution, playwright Václav Havel became President of Czechoslovakia. He, along with other intellectuals and artists in Eastern Europe found themselves in governing roles as their countries transitioned away from communism.

And then they found themselves unwanted.

“The artistic and literary scene that flourished paradoxically under censorship and repression has died off. The public intellectual is, for the most part, no longer invited to the most important parties. Anna Porter writes, “Now that everyone can publish what they want, what is the role of the intellectuals?” and she can’t find an answer. It’s no longer the police state that’s attacking the intelligentsia — it’s disinterest and boredom. It’s distraction. It’s a trade off. And it’s one that we should be able to acknowledge and be allowed to mourn. When the historian Timothy Garton Ash visited Poland in the 1980s, he admitted to an envy for the environment there. “Here is a place where people care, passionately, about ideas.” The people of Central Europe traded in ideas for groceries and for not being beaten to death by the police. No one could possibly blame them, but at the same time, Havel and the other leaders had no sense of the true cost of democracy.”

There have been many books written about the decline of the public intellectual in the United States so it is pretty futile for me to attempt to address the causes here. It bears noting that the decline in the U.S. didn’t proceed from a point of censorship and repression. Back in the 1950s, artists like Salvador Dali and Random House publisher Bennett Cerf appeared on television game shows like “What’s My Line?” Now you would be hard pressed to name a visual artist or publisher with the same wide spread name recognition.

It clearly isn’t a matter of ideas are only important and valued when you are told you can’t have them. I do think there may be some truth in the question of the value of the value of intellectuals and artists in a time when anyone can publish or create. At one time people had many demands on their attention with farming and family but big ideas were still valued. Now while people have many draws on their attention, less of it is as compelling as seeing to your daily survival (or avoiding censorship/dealing with repression). With the leisure to decide what to focus on, you have the option to ignore big ideas that may take 30 minutes to process in favor of 30 different ideas that you can process in a minute each.

While the arts can have a role in emphasizing that big ideas matter and that we should invest the time to consider them, this isn’t a problem the arts community is going to be able to solve itself because the decline is a result of greater societal practice. The arts can deliver the message, but every strata of society has to value it– which may require valuing the arts as a valid messenger.

I don’t have any ready answers. I just offer this as something to think about– if you can allow it the time for proper consideration.

Not Necessarily 10,000 Hours

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Since the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the idea that you need 10,000 hours of practice to master a discipline/skill has started to become something of an article of faith. However, two posts on the Science of Sport blog argue that inborn talent and opportunity count for a lot more than practice and therefore, 10,000 hours is not necessary for mastery. For some people, even twice that will not result in mastery.

Now probably none of this is news to music instructors and others who are engaged to provide lessons to children who just don’t have the talent to master the subject matter despite the insistence of their parents. People who would never suggest that they could play on a college or professional football team if they only practiced long enough seem to believe that hard work is all that is needed for high achievement in the intellectual or artistic realms.

Most of the authors, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas’, discussion of genetics can be found in the second post. In the first post they directly refute what they say are unwarranted claims in Gladwell’s book.

Unfortunately, Ericsson didn’t show us this data, so we can only speculate. But that didn’t stop Malcolm Gladwell from making this statement in his book “Outliers”:

“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.

Nor could they find any “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks.” – Outliers, pg 39

Again, I don’t know how he arrives at the above statements – Ericsson presented not a single measure to support these claims (and I happen to know that he didn’t interview him either). As we’ll see shortly, it is actually inconceivable that Gladwell’s statements are true – other study of skilled performance show massive variations, and the same will be true for violinists, of this I’m certain.

They then cite some studies measuring to what degree practicing factors into performance at a masterful level.

So, the average time taken is 11,053 hours. That’s pretty much in agreement with Ericsson’s violin players. So far so good. But look at that Standard Deviation – 5,538 hours, and it gives a co-efficient of variation of 50%. For those not into the statistics, what this basically shows is a “spread” of the values around the average. If the Standard Deviation is small, and the CV is low, then you have a tight cluster – all the individuals are close to the average. But when it’s 50%, then you know you have massive differences within that group.

And that’s what happens when you start looking at individuals – one player reaches master level on 3,000 hours, another takes almost 24,000 hours, and some are still practicing but not succeeding. That’s a 21,000 hour difference, which is two entire practice lifetimes according to the model of practice. It seems pretty clear that practice, while important, is not sufficient for some. And for others, it’s not even necessary.

They also looked at studies of elite athletes on the international stage and noted that they rarely needed 10,000 hours to attain that standing. The USA Olympic athletes in wrestling, football and field hockey pursued their sport 6,000, 4,000 and 5,000 hours, respectively. One Australian netball player only had 600 hours of playing before she made the national team. Michael Phelps had only 4 years or approximately 4,000 of practice when he placed 5th in the 2000 Olympics at age 15. Granted, it was another 4 years and a total of 8,000 hours before he dominated at the 2008 Olympics, but as the authors point out, to place 5th in the world after 4 years of serious practice attests to the value of inborn talent.

The authors agree that achieving elite status is attributable to a complex set of factors that include everything from good nutrition to suitably stable political and economic environment combined with opportunities for excellent instruction and guidance. While you can’t depend solely on genetics alone to produce a superstar, in their mind, inborn ability is the most important factor in reaching the highest level of achievement.

This seems to be an important argument to pay attention, partially in regard to the training of artists, but also in garnering an interest and respect for the arts. People hardly need even 1,000 hours of training to find a lot of enjoyment in experiencing and participating in artistic opportunities. But if you extend the implications of what the authors are saying a little, the idea that people will come to love the arts after being exposed or involved starts to become uncertain. There will be some people who will, as we all hope, get it and be inspired from the first exposure. Some people will simply never ever appreciate it and some will need a lot of repeated exposure before they start to.

You might think that this is all pretty self-evident already and didn’t need pointing out. However, if Ross and Dugas are correct, whether people come to appreciate the arts will depend on their innate capacity to do so combined with the opportunity to have quality experiences rather than just be a factor of straight exposures. This realization begins to complicate the approach to audience development in communities. But it also shows that the effort faces the same circumstances as any educational or training endeavor and can employ some of the same techniques.

Art=Lemons

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I just finished Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion wherein a group sails from the Philippines to California around the start of the 18th century. Not quite knowing how to get there, the crew is stricken by scurvy on the long voyage. I got to thinking about how these days you never really worry about how you are going to obtain vitamin C, but the lack of it could eventually result in your death.

It struck me that this was actually a good metaphor for the place artistic and cultural expression plays in society. We often talk about the power of the arts in a prescriptive sense. While it won’t really cure all ills, it does play an important part in our health as humans. Yet because we don’t experience a distinct sense of the benefits at every encounter, it is easy to discount its value in our lives.

I had some orange juice this weekend and while the cool tangy flavor was a nice counterpoint to the savory flavor of the sausage I was eating, I didn’t necessarily recognize any redemptive qualities. If not for the orange juice and health care lobbies which tout the healthy benefits of drinking orange juice, the idea that it might be bolstering my health wouldn’t enter my mind. Right now I am investing no thought about seeking more sources of vitamin C.

The same is likely true for most of people. Their opportunities for artistic and cultural expression and experiences are probably frequent enough that they don’t take much note of it. As the NEA has recently noted, these experiences are varied and often informal. Even if they enjoyed their last experience, they may not be actively seeking their next one. Because the arts lobby has weaker market penetration than the citrus growers, people may be unaware of the benefits the arts bring to their lives.

While a month without vitamin C begins to result in severe deterioration in health, the symptoms related to insufficient artistic and cultural experiences aren’t as clear as malaise and lethargy, formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums and loss of teeth. (Well I mean, those are my symptoms of arts withdrawal, but I am assuming not everyone has that experience.)

A year ago, Newsweek printed an article about how creativity was in decline. While the researchers who conducted the study discussed in the piece say the arts have no special claim to instilling creativity, they note there will be repercussions if the decline continues.

University of Chicago Professor Martha Nussbaum recently warned that neglecting the arts and humanities in favor of technical skills may threaten democracy. Whether you subscribe to that view or not, we often hear about how businesses value creativity as well as technical skill in their employees and are concerned with any potential declines.

The arts are important on an even more basic level than that. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake when people were surrounded by devastation, they came together and sang songs. The songs didn’t clear the rubble and rebuild what had fallen. The songs didn’t set bones and stop bleeding. But it did dull the physical, mental and emotional pain people felt until aid could arrive. The arts are not a cure all, but their expression brings people together and binds them in a common story that helps them relate and provide comfort as a group in a way they can’t as individuals.

Society may discount the value of the arts in their lives, but they weren’t asking the accountants to rally the public to raise funds to provide relief to Haiti or even Japan in the wake of their recent earthquake. It was the artists they looked to. Artists of various disciplines helped provide a focus for soliciting and delivering aid to people in need.

The accountants were no less important to the task of directing aid to disaster areas. Most of the artists who helped raise the money probably personally lack the skills to effectively process the proceeds. Neither the accountant or the artists are likely to be as adept as the Red Cross at delivering the services that are needed. Different groups contribute to the eventual success of the whole endeavor.

It is pretty much unthinkable that artists would refuse to perform. (In fact, recent article on the BBC reveals some musicians feel emotionally blackmailed into participating.) No one is ever faced with the full consequences of no artists supporting a cause. While I could speculate, I don’t think anyone can really fully predict the results of devaluing and diminishing the presence of artistic and cultural expressions.

In fact, for as much as we talk about them, I am not sure those of us in the arts completely understand the benefits people derive.

Goodwill Benefits Of The Arts

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In the course of this blog I have posted about great customer service experiences I have encountered. I have also mentioned some superlative performances to which I have been witness. Never before have I had occasion to discuss how a great performance has earned me extended good customer service.

Last winter we had a flamenco group perform in our theatre. We had a great audience and some really good outreach events, one of which earned us the commendation of a program officer at the state arts foundation. For this alone, I would be happy.

By some confluence of events, the group and the guest services manager at the hotel we use really hit it off. I am not sure what exactly happened. The group asked us to set aside tickets for about six of the hotel staff. This doesn’t happen all the time, but it isn’t completely rare. In fact, some times I have given comps to shows front desk people have wanted to see.

This time was different from the past. In the course of the group’s stay, the front desk and they really bonded. When the group returned to Spain, they sent the guest services manager a gift. When I met with the guest services manager last week to talk about our room needs for the coming season, she mentioned that she was planning to visit the flamenco group during a vacation to Europe.

As I write this, I almost feel ashamed to admit that I have benefited from this burgeoning relationship. I haven’t pressed any advantage, but the good will the guest services manager has felt has facilitated my operations since then.

Because of flight schedules, just about every group we had perform since last winter has arrived before noon and the check in time was 3:00. In the past we were told that the hotel would try to fit them in, but it was likely they would have to wander around for awhile until the rooms were ready. This past Winter and Spring we were told the first rooms available would be theirs. No one ended up having to wander around and kill time until the rooms were ready.

As a result, the artists were more settled and rested than in the past. They were able to arrive at the theatre at the appointed time and didn’t feel rushed to set up. I can’t say they performed any better than they would have had they been obliged to wait a few hours before they checked in. I do think they left having a more positive view of our organization than they might have.

They had no idea they were the beneficiary of the good will generated by those who preceded them. From the tenor of my meeting with the guest services manager, it is likely the benefits will be extended to artists in our next season as well. Hopefully none of them will cause things to sour.

To me this is one of the intangible benefits the arts bring to the community. If I was just another company bringing a lot of business to the hotel, they would certainly make an effort to ensure all our needs were met. I don’t know that they would be as personally invested in my organization if our entire relationship was based on commerce. How we might benefit from this is a lot harder to measure than economic or even intrinsic benefits. (Though accountants will try to figure it out for you.)

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