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Is It The Mastery Of The Medium Or The Idea That Makes Good Art

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Daniel Grant had a piece on the Huffington Post about a new trend in visual arts M.F.A. programs where training is tailored to students’ particular interests. He references the programs at New York’s School of Visual Arts which has a traditional program and a multi-disciplinary degree in arts practice.

“The traditional MFA is media-specific; you are a painter, you are a sculptor, you are a printmaker, and you study those processes intensely,” said David Ross, the chairman of the Art Practice MFA program. “The Art Practice program is for artists working in more hybrid areas, incorporating a number of different media or selecting the particularly medium based on what they are trying to accomplish at a given time. Many schools now see artists choosing to define themselves post-conceptually, in which the idea comes first and the medium comes second, and these artists are more difficult for the traditional program to accommodate.”

There seems to be similar programs at the Maryland Institute College of Art and at the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University which has an MFA in Visual Art and Public Life. Grant describes the students in the Herron School program:

“Their focus is not so much creating something that can be exhibited in a gallery or even in a public square as it is developing projects in association with various business, community, cultural or governmental partners.”

I haven’t quite figured out what I think about these developments. My first thought was to wonder if perhaps these programs might be an outgrowth of the Pro-Am movement. If not directly related to or a result of Pro-Am, perhaps these programs are an expression of a general sentiment of people who are not complete experts but who are looking for a way to better express themselves.

Obviously, people who are seeking training at master’s level have a desire to be a little closer to the professional end of the scale. With a primary focus on the expression of an idea over mastery of a medium, there is much they have in common with the Pro-Am view of art creation and expression.

What I find encouraging is that these artists are looking to develop partnerships with different entities in the community. Their approach to art may result in people viewing it as more accessible and less intimidating. It looks like there is more inclusiveness in the process these artists use. It also appears as if these art students are being trained in business and social skills that can help with their careers upon graduation.

What contributes to my uncertainty is a concern that having a secondary focus on the medium will mean the students will lack the mastery to create truly innovative works. I know that the value of an art work is often more than just the adept use of materials. On the other hand, people wouldn’t value a Stradivarius if making a violin was just a matter of assembling wood well. Experimentation and understanding of how different materials interact when you combine or treat them in different ways can be a crucial to one’s development as an artist.

I am not suggesting artists be relegated to the solitary confinement of their studios. I don’t believe that is ultimately constructive for artists and their work. I also don’t think that the jack of all trades, master of none approach is valuable to artists in the long run.

I am thinking of a recent blog post by Tom Loughlin suggesting that BFA degree programs in Musical Theatre should be eliminated. In the post he points out that in the current state of the industry, those trying to train themselves to be a triple threat- someone who can act, sing and dance – will be beaten out by people trained to be specialists in those areas.

I am not saying that the generalist artist won’t create interesting works of artistic merit. I read the quote by Kenneth Krachek, director of the community arts program at the Maryland Institute College of Art where he says, “all the programs are supportive of each other, but they each have their own momentum and solar system.” Other MFA fine art students at the school “don’t interact much with us,” and that didn’t sound like an ideal dynamic to be cultivating.

I wondered if it might not serve people in both the traditional and new degree tracks if they were encouraged as students to follow a process where the generalist is mentored by the specialist of a specific discipline in the creation of a project. If this was continued when the students graduated and went out to work professionally this collaborative arrangement could be beneficial to both. The specialist would bring experience and knowledge of working in a particular medium. The generalist would bring a the experience of working with community entities and creating work for them rather solely for a gallery.

To Cut Or To Keep Arts Classes

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I am starting to wonder if the same forces that are seeing the arts disappear from K-12 schools are starting to encroach upon university level education to the same effect. There have been recent articles about eliminating the liberal arts degree. Given the amount of debt you get into going to a 4 year university, there is a concern about having a degree in practical fields like business or science one can translate directly into a job.

But I am seeing first hand that there are pressures to even retain arts classes. We just had an acting faculty member retire and I was talking to the chair of his division about when the ad to replace him might go out. Unfortunately, replacing him is not going to be automatic because there are a number of factors the upper level of administration considers before giving approval for a search.

The first is whether the class can pay for itself. It isn’t a surprise to anyone that instruction in the arts is more expensive than in other disciplines because the student – teacher ratio has to be smaller in order to be effective. One professor to 16-20 students instead of 30+. When it comes to arts classes then, general arts classes like survey world music are preferred over specialized classes like piano, voice, violin, etc because the ratio can be higher.

I should also mention for those who aren’t aware, my facility is located on community college campus so the price per credit is $95 versus $350 a credit at the system’s 4 year campus. It’s much more affordable for students to take classes here, but the college has to serve a lot of students to generate appropriate levels of revenue.

The decision to replace the acting teacher won’t entirely be made based on money. The fact is, many students who take performing arts classes are apparently not graduating. No one is suggesting there is causation in that. It looks like the type of student that are taking the courses aren’t persisting.

The courses aren’t filling up until nearly the end of the registration period which means that many in the classes may not have the organizational skills and motivation to be there that other students in the college have. Whether they have procrastinated their decision to enroll or just recently moved to the area, they may be in the class because their first preferences were full. They may not be fully invested or even able to commit to pursuing a course of study through graduation due to personal motivation or external forces.

Whatever the reason, if you are an administrator making a decision about what courses to offer and you notice that even if people have done well in a course, they aren’t likely to persist in their studies, it may not be entirely unreasonable to ponder if resources were better directed.

Some of the solutions mentioned in my conversation with the chair were not unlike those suggested for the arts in general. One was having the value of the class to students redefined in the course listings–what skills are you going to come away with, what requirements does this course fulfill, etc. Just as we talk about the value of the arts to communities.

Another was basically just increasing word of mouth advertising. Essentially talking to the counselors about steering students toward the classes earlier in the enrollment process. One potentially promising development is that the college had made orientation mandatory for all students recently and the process starts with an hour long presentation in the theatre. Since many attendees have appointments with counselors soon after their orientation, hopefully the presentation with its goofy skit will result in students being more inclined to want to register for arts classes.

At the very least, I hope the orientation sessions will end my experience where alumni tell me they graduated from the college and didn’t know there was a theatre.

This situation has been the cause of a lot of thought for me. It is easy to damn people who make decisions to cut the arts purely on the basis of return on investment. Saying a course in the arts can’t help a person get a good job will raise a chorus of howls as people reach for studies that may show otherwise. For a lot of college arts programs across the country, this may be the prime criteria for cutting or keeping.

I have a harder time finding an argument against a fairly loose definition of success like is the person likely to graduate. Talking about the value of the arts to bolster creativity and learning capacity will fall flat against that.

These students aren’t the ones getting caught up in the arts lifestyle devoting all their time to their art rather than attending to their other classes. Those guys are familiar to me because they are always hanging around the theatre. I know which ones have started getting Ds and Fs. Which ones are doing well. Which ones had to remove themselves from that life so they could turn their lives around. Which succeeded and graduated and which failed.

There are a whole bunch of others that I never really see until they get up on stage for the final performances at the end of the semester and perform before an audience for the first time in their lives. No matter what their motivation for registering for the class in the first place, they are up there now demonstrating what they have learned. If they aren’t graduating, I hope they are at least taking something constructive away from the experience.

Protecting Yourself Into Obscurity

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The debate about intellectual property rights rattled around my head while I was visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art and later the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was somewhat surprised to learn they permitted photography provided it was for private use and flash was not used. Video is forbidden. As a contrast, in most live performance settings, you can’t use any sort of recording device at all.

Now let me acknowledge from the start that there are marked differences between the two settings. In a gallery one has greater leeway in the timing of photographs. You can wait for a group to move away from a piece before taking a picture. In a live performance, great moments are fleeting. And because it is more difficult to properly frame people in motion, you often feel the need to take multiple pictures in a short time. This sense of urgency can inevitably put the photographer at a live event in a position where they are impinging on the enjoyment of other attendees far more frequently than the museum photographer. Unless most everyone is participating in recording the event, the distraction of the attempt is generally undesirable, even without flash.

But outside the time when the performance is occurring, almost every element of the performance is protected. Whether you are in the audience before the show or on a backstage tour, you can’t take pictures of the set, lights or costumes because they are considered protected intellectual property. Performers also reserve the control of their likeness.

Yet when I was at the Metropolitan Museum there was an exhibition of costumes by Alexander McQueen and unless I missed the sign, the rules about photography were the same as the rest of the museum. Perhaps it was because his designs were considered fashion and therefore meant to be photographed. But what about all the other works in the museums which are still protected by copyright and whose creators are still very much alive? Are they not being harmed by people taking pictures of their work? Maybe there is a debate raging in the visual arts world that they are. I have only really started reading about visual arts issues in earnest over the last year. Perhaps I have missed the conversation.

Heck, will my posting images from Storm King Art Center dissuade people from visiting them? If so, the genie is out of the bottle Google Maps actually lets you view photos of each piece as it is positioned on the ground. I am guessing that isn’t about to erode attendance because I saw a large number of tweets about visiting Storm King the last few days.

It got me to thinking that all these restrictions are seriously impeding the cause of the performing arts. The elements I am referring don’t even enter the discussion about whether a bootleg copy of a performance replaces a possible sale. This doesn’t approach the question about whether agreeing to allow a promotional video to be broadcast on television also gives permission for the video to be posted on YouTube, if it deserves additional compensation and if it is eroding one’s brand. These are already issues of debate and clearly worthy of discussion on their own.

Few people are going to make the decision to skip the show because they saw a close up picture of a costume or the unattractive back side of a flat. Yeah, so the illusion is broken, but for a lot of people it is exciting to compare the reality with the illusion that fooled them. Are designers going to suddenly be forced out of work or their reputations ruined when photos of the show start appearing online? Will those pictures threaten to allow less talented people to replicate the designs at a lower cost? How is this more a threat to a designer than to a visual artist? Yes, there may be proprietary technology involved. However, most people on a backstage tour don’t have the means to replicate it and if those that do can recreate it from passing photographs, they probably have the means to acquire the information with relatively little effort anyway.

What is being protected? Is the value of whatever is being protected actually enhanced by doing so? Or is the fact that so few are ever exposed to it mean that its perceived value is generally insignificant?

Summer Vacation 2011, The East Coast

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So I am back from my vacation! From the traffic statistics, it looks like a fair number of people enjoyed reading some of the back catalog of posts to which I provided links. My travels this year took me and my friends back to the East Coast to visit the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (access is regrettably much more restricted since 2001 than when I was growing up); Niagara Falls (I may actually be in a video promoting Ontario); the Civil War battlefields at Gettysburg; Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and New York City, which included visits to some Broadway shows and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One of the centerpieces of the trip and something many readers may not be familiar with, was taking a canal boat on the Erie Canal.

Erie Canal
View of the Canal

Admittedly, the coolest part was going through the locks.  Fortunately for me, the diesel engine drown out my singing of the Erie Canal Song or I am sure my friends would have tossed me overboard.

 

That’s The Way We Came In. The water was all the way up there at the top of the wet line
That’s The Way Out After a 25 Foot Drop

 

Another place we went early on in the trip was Storm King Art Center, a 500 acre sculpture park just north of NYC. I actually grew up in the same county but I never had the occasion to visit. As I wandered about, I wondered why my schools never had a trip to this place. The sheer enormity of the park and many of the sculptures would have won over most of my classmates who really would have wanted to go to an amusement park instead.

Zhang Huan, Three Legged Buddha
Menashe Kadishman, Suspended
Alice Aycock, Three-Fold Manifestation II

I guess it is true that those who live near sites of cultural/historical significance or just major attractions don’t end up visiting them because they are so easily available. I ended up traveling 5,000 miles to visit a place that was only about 45 minutes from me most of my life.

News You Can Use: Musicians Are Delicious

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If you're ready for a zombie apocalypse, then you're ready for any emergency. emergency.cdc.gov

As you can see in the above, the Centers for Disease Control have finally acknowledged the threat of a zombie apocalypse. Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for bringing this important government service to my attention.

From the CDC website:

“If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine)…Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas.”

Actually, while this is really on the CDC site, they use the subject of a zombie attack to reinforce the need to have good emergency plans and supplies prepared for any disaster. Some examples:

“First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)”

“Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home…or your town evacuates because of a hurricane.”

“Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast.”

While the whole zombie attack craze may have peaked and is already on its way out. (Yeah right, zombies are not that easy to kill!) The tongue in cheek approach mixing “fiction” (the government will never really seriously admit the zombie problem we face) with the real message they are trying to communicate–and offering social media options to spread the word–could easily be used by arts organizations to communicate their core message.

On a related topic, a study was recently released providing information that will be of great importance to arts people when the zombie attack comes. According to the Freakanomics website,

“A new study argues that musicians have more highly developed brains than the rest of us….New research shows that musicians’ brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation.”

So when the zombies come, all you really need to do is be faster than the musicians or point out the location of their delicious, highly developed brains to the zombies. Of course, given that musicians have a heightened alertness and calmness, they will likely possess the composure needed to effectively flee themselves, so you will have to be especially canny.

(Thank god for the CDC. I was wondering how I was going to address the Freakanomics piece without feeding the egos of my Inside the Arts brethren who are mostly musicians.)

If The Kids Can Do It, So Can You!

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So in a follow up to my post yesterday about giving people permission to express themselves, Daniel Pink posted today about a teacher who applied the idea of FedEx Day to instructing his sixth grade classroom. The teacher in question, Josh Stumpenhorst, called the effort “Innovation Day” and created an environment to let his students direct their learning for the day.

There was some prep work involved in getting the students focused and prepared for what they were going to do, of course. On the whole, it was pretty dang successful and the kids really got invested in the process. Among the projects the kids undertook were:

We had a student:

• Writing and performing his own guitar solo
• Creating a model out of wood of the Sears Tower
• Writing her own historical fiction short story
• Creating a Rube Goldberg machine
• Designing and creating a replica suit of Roman Armor (out of tinfoil and cardboard)
• Creating a how-to tutorial on baking a cake
• Painting a still life on canvas of a nature scene
• Writing and performing a one-man comedy act
• Researching and presenting on the concentration camps of the Holocaust
• Creating a video highlight reel of basketball moves and plays
• Building a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
• Writing a biography of his favorite teacher Mr. Stumpenhorst (<—–ok, I made this one up!)
• Creating a video documentary of Innovative Day
• Building a model of Big Ben
• Choreographing and performing a dance
• Researching Walt Disney and creating a model of the Epcot Center
• Creating a model of numerous World War II battles
• Building a model of the Eiffel Tower
• Researching and creating countless Power Points, posters, and Photo Stories

I wondered yesterday how an experience that cultivated a sense of permission to express oneself might be designed for adults. I think this project might be a good basis to start from, especially since there was a lot of natural collaboration emerging. Granted, these kids and teacher already had an existing daily relationship with each other in which there was a certain level of structure and trust. The same environment may not exist for an arts organization and a constituency that spends the majority of its day in school or at work. It might take some time and effort to get to this point–if you wanted to get to this point at all. A project that evolves in an entirely different direction based on the dynamics of the community is eminently possible.

Permission to Express Yourself Is Granted

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Our assistant theatre manager put a small mirror on his desk facing the door. I have no idea where he got it or why he put it there. As a bit of a joke, I put a piece of paper printed with the classic zen koan, “What was your face before your mother and father were born.” When people came in to buy tickets or meet with us, they look into the mirror and read the paper and often decide there is some great statement being made. It makes me reluctant to admit that I was making fun of attempts to manufacture profound statements like that.

But there is also the assumption that since we are an arts organization, we will surround ourselves with profound and nuanced statements. Even though we might get called out as elitist for attributing deeper meaning than is readily apparent, we still have permission to do nonsensical things in public and have it generally acceptable. I dare say it is expected.

I worked for an organization that ran a residential arts and music summer camp. Every year the kids would come in and let their hair down–many times quite literally– and include the liberal application of colored dye. During the rest of the year they felt like they had to subsume these impulses while in school and around their families. At camp, they were part of the normal group rather than the outsider.

That sense of permission to experiment and play is probably the biggest gift the arts can give people. I am still all for keeping the arts in schools and instilling people with the discipline and discernment to practice and experience the wide variety of arts in all disciplines. But failing that, if we can get people to realize they can have permission to express themselves, then there may be a small victory in it. And right now, we gotta take those small victories when we can find them.

Getting people’s butts in the seats is a short term solution to our problems, but I suspect that the arts needs to replace “if only they would come see our show, they would love it” with “if only they would try to create and express, they would love it.” The latter option is a lot more time and resource intensive a proposition though.

Confidence to step out and express oneself even in a formal setting is going to spring from increased mastery of one’s discipline. But most people probably aren’t going to have the time to devote to that. I have to think a shorter term hands-on encounter with creating art that teaches people that they have permission to experiment is going to be an important part of arts advocacy, especially if they spread the word and get friends involved. How do you present that in a balanced way? The usual approach with a lot of arts disciplines is that you have to master the rules before you can break them. It might be challenging to encourage people to have fun experimenting while instilling an understanding that there is still more to learn.

Actually, the best example I can think of is skateboarding. There is a lot of falling involved but the very people who are occasionally snickering at you when you fall are those providing you with the incentive to improve. I am not suggesting that derision be part of the approach an arts organization takes. But there may be something to an approach that creates informal cohorts of colleagues who are learning the “tricks” together. In such situations the gap in ability between members can often serve to motivate rather than intimidate, perhaps because everyone is enjoying the experience together.

No program is going to convert a large proportion of the population. Online content creation is produced by only a small percentage of people with a much larger proportion consuming it. On the other hand, that small proportion still accounts for a lot of people and the consumers for an even larger number. It could be that knowing you could create and participate if you wanted to even if you don’t, is empowering enough a concept to remove some of the intimidation factor of attending an arts event.

Of course, the expression is most accepted when a certain context is created. I don’t know anything about visual art, but my silly little display with the mirror is accepted in the context of an arts building. People working in the arts understand how to create that context regardless of the setting by manipulating mood and environmental factors. Perhaps greater success is to be found in teaching people how to do that along with formal performance techniques. By which I mean, give them the tools to create an environment in which self expression is acceptable.

As to how to accomplish all this as a practical matter, I don’t know. It may start with offering classes but ideally will expand beyond that in order to underscore the idea that expression can happen outside of a formal setting. You may dedicate your organization to creating opportunities now but not really feel that the concept has been realized in its fullest for 10 years. And at that point, people may decide that their favorite mode of expression doesn’t include your organization.

Yeah, I am not doing the best job of selling this, huh? But really, this is what we are asking of schools when we advocate for more arts education. We want them to create fallow ground in which we can cultivate patrons. Our mission statements say this is what our purpose is too, but really we want them to stick around. The most effective arts education programs in schools schools involve students in the arts experience rather than providing an experience. Perhaps where arts organizations have gone wrong is not providing enough opportunities for people to continue to be involved once they have left school.

Wait, What Is This Guy Actually Talking About?

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In the morning when I look at all the Twitter streams I follow, I often click interesting looking links and then come back to the web pages when I am done with all the new tweets. The result is often a long series of tabs on the Firefox browser and often I don’t quite know who suggested what story when I get around to reading it.

Since most of those I follow have an association with arts and culture, you might understand why I initially thought the blog post I was reading was on that subject. It wasn’t until I got to the sixth point that I had any inkling it was on another industry altogether and the eleventh before I was sure.

RULES FOR BUSINESS MODELS

* Tradition is not a business model. The past is no longer a reliable guide to future success.

* “Should” is not a business model. You can say that people “should” pay for your product but they will only if they find value in it.

* “I want to” is not a business model. My entrepreneurial students often start with what they want to do. I tell them, no one — except possibly their mothers — gives a damn what they *want* to do.

* Virtue is not a business model. Just because you do good does not mean you deserve to be paid for it.

* Business models are not made of entitlements and emotions. They are made of hard economics. Money has no heart.

* Begging is not a business model. It’s lazy to think that foundations and contributions can solve news’ problems. There isn’t enough money there. (Foundation friend to provide figures here.)

* There is no free lunch. Government money comes with strings.

* No one cares what you spent. Arguing that news costs a lot is irrelevant to the market.

* The only thing that matters to the market is value. What is your service worth to the public?

* Value is determined by need. What problem do you solve?

These sentiments are actually about news delivery and found on Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine blog. For awhile there I thought an arts blogger was replicating Adam Thurman’s posting style on Mission Paradox. I had to go back to my Twitter account to try to figure out where the heck I got this link, finally discovering it was the Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor.

Honestly now, if I hadn’t alluded to the fact it wasn’t about non-profit arts and cultural organizations, would you have known it wasn’t? Every point made is a topic of conversation that has come up regarding the arts. Hopefully, they are conversations you have had at least with yourself, if not the staff and board of your organization.

The fact that news organizations are facing these same questions is of some comfort–at least we know the arts are not alone in the challenges being faced.

At the same time, the fact these questions can be asked of the news industry only serves to confirm their wider relevance. These are questions any business must ask. The arts are not special in this regard.

As much as I feel my practical side provides a good balance to my idealism, it is tough to think about the arts not being the exception. Every time I scroll up to re-read these points and see “Virtue is not a business model,” and “Business models are not made of entitlements and emotions,” there is a part of me that says, “Yes, but the arts are different.” In many respects this is true, but the arts in the U.S. operate in an environment where what is written above is also true to a great degree and must be acknowledged.

Rather than try to talk all of us out of our belief in the sublime experience the arts can bring to every day existence, I will merely stress the need to be mindful of the aforementioned truths and not allow our aforementioned belief in the power of the arts to dismiss the stark reality they represent.

The Farmer and the Cowman (and Restaurateur) Can Be Friends

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Last week we hosted a food sustainability conference sponsored by our culinary program. Sustainability and local food sources is a big deal in Hawaii because between 85%-90% of all our food is imported. If there was a cataclysmic event which prevented food from reaching the ports, there is only about 10 days of food available to feed the population.

I have seen a number of arts bloggers draw a connection between the slow food movement and the arts so I listened closely to what was said hoping to gain a little insight from the practices of other industries.

Since the conference was organized by a culinary program, they approached the subject from the view of how restaurants can source more of their food locally and sustainably. The panels consisted of farmers, ranchers and restaurant owners talking about some of their practices.

Culinary Convening
Farmers, Ranchers and Restaurateurs Convene

There were some inspiring examples of some farmers operating almost completely off the grid with a high degree of recycling. They farm tilapia, circulate the water through lettuce and other plants which help filter the water and send it back through to the fish. Because of a rain catchment system, they haven’t had to draw from the public water supply in many months. Some of the effluvia gets diverted to a nursery which includes fruit trees to provide fertilization. One of the chefs at the gathering said he managed to put a dinner together for a party thrown by the governor where all the ingredients were grown within 100 feet of each other by sourcing them at the farm.

What struck me as applicable to arts and cultural organizations is the stories of some of the mutually beneficial relationships restaurants have created with farmers and ranchers. Chef Roy Yamaguchi of the Roy’s restaurant group convinced a farmer who was just weeks away from closing down his farm to grow a mesclun mix and required all his restaurants to use it. This allowed the farmer to stay in business.

Another chef, Peter Merriman, said that early on he made the conscious choice not to try to guard his food sources. While it undermines his ability to lay exclusive claim to offering high quality ingredients, he recognizes he is helping to keep his suppliers in business by telling people where he gets his ingredients.

Chef Alan Wong, who was in attendance at the convening, has been a long time proponent of using local ingredients. He spoke about how he held a beef tasting at one of his restaurants as part of an effort to convince restaurateurs to support ranchers by buying local beef.

The tasting ended up solving a big problem the ranchers had. The high end restaurants would buy the prime cuts of beef and leave the ranchers with the rest on their hands. A person from a local restaurant chain at the tasting had the presence of mind to ask what was happening with the rest of the cow. Now that chain consumes 250,000 lbs of local beef a year. Because the ranchers can sell the whole cow, the price is lower for everyone and there is incentive to the ranchers expand their operations.

Every arts organization has a different operating environment so I hope people can find something analogous to their own situation in these examples. The most obvious one to me is the oft mentioned fact that the regional theatre movement was intended to employ artists locally and still can if people commit to creating an climate in which this can happen.

One of the ways might be to duplicate Alan Wong’s tasting and actively invite colleagues to see different artists, not with the intent of “selling” them as so many showcase performances do, but with the approach of highlighting and celebrating local resources in an attempt to keep and cultivate them. There is an entirely different ambiance present in the latter scenario versus the former and I suspect one would be far more receptive to the idea of employing someone because of it.

I have to imagine given current trends that there is some mileage to be gotten out of boasting that the casting of a show produced a smaller carbon footprint because no one flew/drove a long distance to New York or Chicago to hire a person and the person didn’t have to travel far to appear locally. Arts organizations can celebrate their fiscal prudence by noting that they don’t have to pay for housing and per diem as they do with “imported” artists because the person already lives nearby. Therefore, much of the ticket revenue is going back into the community as artists buy goods and pay their mortgage and taxes. Perhaps the artists can make a statement about how they appreciate how the deliberate cooperation between a handful of organizations has created an environment that provides enough opportunities to live locally and raise a family rather than hustle for jobs in the big city.

Another idea would be to grow a network in which to share productions. Some theatres already invest in productions together, sharing the development costs and planning to have the show appear in both places. However, some of the members of my consortium produce shows for their own audiences while suggesting the other members might be interested as well. In most cases, each producing organization is partnering with a local performance group to develop the show already and a cost sharing agreement is already in place. Acquiring additional bookings in other parts of the state is just an added benefit for both. Having other venues willing to present the show can also assist with grant writing to support the development of  the production and support touring. I have had two shows I produced go on tour and I have hosted three that originated with consortium partners.

This sort of arrangement is easier when there is a longstanding relationship between organizations in place and they know they can trust that a quality product will be created when they commit themselves  in the conceptual stage. I think that is the sort of relationship that has been developed between the restaurants and the farmers and ranchers. The restaurants know what they are going to get from the suppliers and the suppliers know they have dependable buyers for their products.

One of the other challenges restaurants said they faced with local beef is that grass fed beef tastes different than corn fed beef. A representative from Roy’s Restaurants talked about how she has had to deal with indignant customers who demand to know what the restaurant is trying to pull when they first eat the meat. She spoke about how Roy Yamaguchi decided to not only note that the beef was grass fed in the dish description, but also put a section in the menu that explained about the beef and what it was the restaurant was trying to accomplish.

This immediately sounded like the challenge arts organizations face when trying to introduce audiences to anything outside their experience. The advantage the beef has over the arts is that while both steak and certain segments of the arts have an elitist aura about them, there is a perception that being adventurous with food is a mark of distinction while sampling a new arts experience is either intimidating or the mark of a snob. Do the arts need their own version of Anthony Bourdain to incite exploration?

(By the way, the title of this entry is a nod to the musical Oklahoma!)

Does Screaming and Demeaning Treatment Make the Show Better?

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The big discussion on the LinkedIn Performing Arts Manager forum right now is about the design of a Masters Program in Cultural Leadership. The conversation was slow in starting but sort of took off in the last couple weeks. I mention this just in passing in case anyone else wants to join the discussion and note the source of my post topic.

Anne Marie Quigg recently mentioned in the discussion that she was going to be delivering a conference presentation on her book about bullying in the arts. Bullying is a hot topic in general these days, mostly in schools. But we really don’t discuss it that much in the arts. Or rather, we grouse when we experience it, but we don’t really talk about needing to address it as a matter that undermines the health of the industry, organizations and individuals.

The description of the book notes that really awful people and situations are tolerated because they produce exceptional artistic products and that there is no really concerted effort to change that environment.

“Anne-Marie Quigg researched whether the behaviour represented isolated, rare occurrences in specific creative environments or if it was indicative of a more widespread problem in the arts and cultural sector. She discovered the highest level of bullying recorded in any single employment sector in the UK.

Bullying in the Arts reveals Dr Quigg’s findings, including the personal, organisational, legal and economic consequences of bullying behaviour. Looking at the experiences of countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, and the United States, this book challenges the notion that the arts are beyond the limitations of the ordinary milieu, exempt from the rules and regulations governing the treatment of employees. “

There have already been mentions in other articles that young leaders reject the premise that one must give their lives to the organization and pay their dues like their predecessors did and prefer a work-life balance. For this reason, many young leaders entering the field don’t aspire to the executive director role.

If this is indeed the trend, (heck, even if it isn’t) it indicates the necessity to address the negative pressures across all areas of the arts and not just administration. It is difficult to believe that only those with ambitions in administration are reticent to embrace the current lifestyle of arts managers and the performers and designers are just fine with the way things are.

Being an artist doesn’t convey a special grace that absolves one of behavior that would get people in most professions fired. Restaurant kitchens are notoriously rough places to work (and they have knives!) and there is a similar debate over the supremacy of the head chef (the way it has always been) vs. the idea that the food doesn’t taste any better for all the screaming.

Given that my experience is mostly in theatrical production and presenting, I am not entirely familiar with the world of dance, opera, classical music and visual art. Are there attempts to address this problem in other areas? What sort of behaviors and practices need to be changed?

Who Will Punch Our Sacred Cows?

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I was reading a post on the Marginal Revolution blog about professionalism vs. amateurism. I had moved past it before a section of it percolated through my consciousness.

Amateurism is splendid when amateurs actually can make contributions. A lot of the Industrial Revolution was driven by the inventions of so-called amateurs. One of the most revolutionary economic sectors today — social networking — has been led by amateurs….

Amateurs are associated with free entry and a lot of experimentation. Barbecue quality is very often driven by amateurs, and in general amateurs still make contributions to food and cooking. The difficulty of maintaining productive amateurs is one of the reasons why scientific progress periodically slows down. Specialization, however necessary it may be, can make big breakthroughs harder at some margin.

I am guessing it was the sensory part of my brain thinking about good barbecue (MMMMM barbecue!) that prompted me to scroll back up. The amount of time and money people spend competing in barbecue cook offs can be pretty amazing.

It didn’t take long before I started wondering about the ways in which amateurs have driven changes in the performing arts recently. I have to confess, other than some people who financed movies by maxing out credit cards before landing a distribution deal, I couldn’t think of too many ways. Other than suggesting new ways to finance a movie, I am not sure these films brought about a lot of change. Though it did seem like the faux documentary format became popular after The Blair Witch Project. As I scour my memory it seems like, hip-hop was the last big amateur generated development in performing arts.

The easy answer is that the rest of the world has passed live performing arts by aided by technology. True, technology has provided alternative means of expression and dissemination. Shows like American Idol and Glee have inspired people to make an effort at expressing themselves through performance. But has that driven improvements in quality?

If people were showing up at an event with higher expectations of a performance as a result of YouTube videos or “nobody to star” shows, that would be great. It doesn’t seem to be happening. Or if people were coming to auditions better prepared than usual or with little formal training and knocking the socks off people, having absorbed lessons from these shows about cultivating ones abilities, that would equally desired. But I can’t think of any recent development that is widely acknowledged as a factor in forcing artists to step up their game.

I know there are groups using technology to enhance their performances or allow audiences to influence performances in real time via feedback. A lot of that is isolated and individual. The sort of change I am talking about is the type we are witnessing regarding food where people are concerned about where what they eat is sourced. Regardless of how you feel about such efforts, it has clearly influenced the way we eat and the way in which food is presented to us on a large scale. Restaurant menus now feature notes on such details. I can’t think of a similar influence in the performing arts which has forced the sector to acknowledge it.

The argument that live performing arts use antiquated means of production doesn’t seem valid. Cooking barbecue uses the same basic means of production in terms of heat, spices, enzymes, etc. Improvements have come as a result of applying those means in myriad permutations. Does the same hold true for the performing arts?

Social media tools exist that can allow someone to spread the word about their accomplishments so it is tough to claim that people are doing great work in obscurity and have no means to spread the word to other performers. The amateur barbecuing world is something of a niche community with closely guarded secret recipes, but apparently enough word gets around to influence change in restaurants.

Most of the improvements in the technical side of the arts are made by people with big budgets in Las Vegas and Broadway. LED lighting has its problems, but it holds the promise of enormous power savings and versatility that allows one instrument to replace many. Achieving the spectacle of these things is pretty expensive right now so while it may be argued they can provide improvements in environmental terms, it hasn’t been accomplished by amateurs.

Despite the high costs of creating a technically appealing production, I don’t think it can be said that there are too many barriers to entry preventing amateurs from influencing the performing arts. There are community venues across the country available as performance spaces. Not that you would necessarily need one when any space in a park or empty storefront can serve. One can self produce musical work thanks to personal computers rather than depending on gatekeepers at media companies to approve of them. There are plenty of available tools to support innovation.

I might be claimed that the performing arts community is so insular and devoted to preserving a particular way of doing things that the professionals are utterly ignoring the efforts of the amateurs and the burgeoning successes they are having. I don’t think this is the case for a couple reasons. First, a heck of a lot of people have to be complicit in this. I read a lot of articles and blogs in the course of a week and I have to believe there are at least a couple who would be pointing to the results amateurs are having and urging the rest of us to get on board or get left behind. While these sentiments have been expressed about social media and relationships with one’s community, I can’t think of an instance where people have claimed that the amateurs were eating the profession’s lunch.

Second, if there was such a change I don’t think it would be possible to completely ignore. People would be giving cues. It would be like the slow food/localvore movement and people would be asking where our metaphoric produce was sourced from. In the literal context of the localvore movement, Scott Walters’ Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education may potentially be the next big movement, but it hasn’t manifested as such yet. Granted, it is entirely possible cues have been delivered time and time again and have been ignored.

Related to the idea of insularity, I also considered the possible claim that the performing arts was suppressing new innovation in this direction. I can’t believe there is enough of this stultifying energy present in the general culture of the performing arts to prevent the rise of a movement that thumbs its nose at everyone else and blazes its own trail.

Honestly, I think I am asking these questions because part of me is afraid an environment has been created where no one is invested in the performing arts enough to think it worth the effort to thumb their nose and punch a few sacred cows. Scoff all you want at the amateur, they are needed to drive change.

So I open it up to the readership. Show me where I am wrong. I am happy to learn otherwise. Perhaps there is a movement that is just developing legs that I haven’t recognized. I referenced hip-hop before. It started in the 70s but it really didn’t enter popular awareness until the 80s & 90s. It may be the same with whatever is coming. I should note that amateur lead change need not manifest itself in the destruction and supplanting of the old, it could be any sort of innovation that lead to change. In this context, perhaps the adoption of something has been so gradual and organic I have missed it.

The change also doesn’t need to have been something that achieved great popularity and acclaim. It could be an artistic development or new theory/approach whose impact is recognized internally to the performing arts but not necessarily widely acknowledged. Think Stanley McCandless, the father of modern theatrical lighting. Trained as an architect, his theories about how to approach lighting are the foundation for all lighting design today, nearly a century later. Few in audience members of the early 20th century likely recognized his efforts at improving lighting design were providing them with an better attendance experience much less knew he was responsible.

What Is Well-Being

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We in the arts often talk about the benefits our chosen vocation/avocation has for the economy, education and general well-being. In light of this, I was interested to see the recent Gallup poll measuring well-being across the country for 2010. The contribution of the arts aren’t explicitly or even clearly implicitly measured in the poll which is conducted throughout the year surveying people on life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors and basic access. While the arts don’t seem to factor in, I thought it is still valuable for arts people to look at the factors that comprise a person’s sense of general well-being.

I was surprised to see that people in the northern part of the country had such high reported well-being in comparison with those in the southern part of the country. The survey is conducted throughout the year so it isn’t impacted heavily by people specifically caught in the monster snowstorms of the past winter. Still, it was interesting to see that people from places stereotyped as having bad winters like the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana and Minnesota reported well-being in the higher range versus those in the south who generally have milder all around weather. I personally didn’t mind the winter weather of the Northeast as I was growing up and perhaps that generally applies to those who live in the northern climes regardless of how much they may complain.

Gallup Well Being Map

Gallup has charted out a multiple year comparison of each of these factors on another graph. The end of 2008 was not a happy time for a lot of people. People seem to have developed a much better sense of well-being in the years since. I obviously can’t say that this is the cause, but when I looked at the healthy behaviors subgraph on that page, though there is always a downward trend after July/August, it amused me to think the big plunge that always occurs in November through December is due to poor eating habits during the holidays.

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While I didn’t intend for today’s post to end up as a segue to this when I spotted the well-being survey last week, obviously the people of Japan are not experiencing much well-being at the moment. If you are of a mind to donate to an organization providing help to Japan, and there are many, may I suggest these three are a good place to start.

AmeriCares

Habitat for Humanity International

International Rescue Committee

Wish They Had Given Me These Skills In High School

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Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to direct readers to an interview on an education related topic. Tim Mikulski, the arts education person at Americans for the Arts spoke to Wolf Trap Foundation Senior Director of Education Mimi Flaherty Willis about their program which brings the arts to STEM education in early childhood education. Might be of interest to those seeking to create a program to turn STEM to STEAM.

Last Tuesday I participated in a mock interview day a local high school was conducting. (Actually, it ran two days. The assistant theatre manager did the second day.) I think it was the high school’s ninth year doing this and it was very well organized. I received the resumes of the students I would be interviewing and some supporting information about two weeks prior to the day. The room had 30 tables with two interviewers scheduled at each so it was no small undertaking. (And remember, this was a two day affair!) We were given 25 minutes to interview the students, evaluate them and then call them back to provide feedback. In all we had five students to interview in these 25 minute blocks.

Let me tell you, these kids were better prepared than most of the interviewers. We were told that we didn’t have to research the companies to which the students were applying, but in a proper interview setting you ask “Do you have any questions for us?” This means that you need to know a little something in case the students ask what you like about the company or what expectations the company has for their employees. Of course, with my background in theatre, I was able to improvise inspired answers! Well…mostly, I was generally reinforcing the need for ambition, responsibility, education and good customer service.

When I say the students were better prepared than us, I am not as much diminishing the abilities of the industry people at interviewing as emphasizing just how impressive these 15 year olds were. Of the five, only one was clearly unprepared, a fact she admitted herself. The other four were very well prepared and reasonably poised. Of those, the two who most convinced us of their potential as an employee told us they shopped at our stores (an international surf chain and music store, respectively) and what they liked about it. I got up at the group debrief at the end and told the students that research and a personal connection created a strong case for employment. Most employment guides will tell you to do your research, of course, but few tend to do it.

The experience reminded me that I infrequently have someone come into my office looking for a job who says they have attended shows and really want to work here or have done much in the way of research about our programming. Most of those with arts backgrounds who come in want to act rather do administrative or technical work, alas.

I wanted to post about this experience to recommend taking the opportunity to participate in mock interview sessions like this if you have the chance. It gets your face out in the community as a representative of your organization and can help hone your interviewing skills. All the pressure is really on the interviewees. Since you don’t have to evaluate if the person would work out well in your organization, you can relax and use the experience as an opportunity to shift your perspective about how you hire and run your business a little. You can also see, as I did, what excites people about the companies to which they have chosen to apply. There might be a way to bring that same element to your organization or emphasize it more to the general public as a way to attract employees and interns.

In my situation, I was also able to listen in on the interviewing techniques of people at adjacent tables. The guy behind me didn’t have a partner and had a style that would have intimidated me a little even today. I don’t know what I would have felt like when I was 15. I spoke to him afterward and discovered he does high level interviews and gets job candidates in his office after 5 other people have vetted them. What he looks for from an interview is very different than what a 15 year old might encounter in one of their first jobs. He wasn’t mean by any account, but he was thorough and at the end told each student what his impression was when they sat down versus how they changed that when they started speaking. He pointed out the value of each of the activities and experiences listed on their resumes, which tend to be sparse at this time in their lives, and how they could turn those things to their benefit in an interview. I think it was more information than some of the students expected to receive because a few looked a little stricken as they departed. I was a little awed by the quality of his technique and took some mental notes. If I had thought otherwise, he reminded me that it was important for the students that I be serious and treat them like adults during this process.

Certainly, you may not always have a group that had been as well prepared as I encountered. If we had more than just the one unprepared student, it might have been a dismal experience. Even in cases like that, while you are making suggestions for improvements, you can always advocate for the arts and suggest the students might get involved in some performance classes to raise their confidence level, poise and speaking skills. (I was happy to see two of our students were involved in the performance classes.)

Grouse: What You Do When Your Salary Is Too Meager To Afford It

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It looks like it was a weekend for griping about performing arts. Ken Davenport at Producer’s Perspective opened the floor on an atypical Saturday post asking people to share their gripes. He promised to make it a monthly ritual if he got more than 10 responses and he easily passed that mark. A summary of the comments in one sentence would be – “How can they charge such high prices for tickets, yet pay me so little if I can shoehorn my way into a position at all.” There are a few complaints about audiences thrown in for good measure. The general source of the comments seem to be people living in and around New York City with a few people coming form other places. The tenor of most of the comments will be familiar to you if you work in the arts at all and are familiar with the New York City scene. Those aspiring to careers are following the same path those before them followed. This includes tales of people both inside and outside the business wanting them to work for fun or for experience.

My initial thought was that Broadway won’t change because it doesn’t have to and that people need to look elsewhere for their experience. While a similar situation is just about as institutionalized outside of New York City, those organizations are at least marginally aware that they need to find a better way to run their business and interact with their employees.

Which brings us to the second post I came across. Barry Hessenius posted an entry on his blog noting that essentially every job description for an executive director and senior management of an arts organization seems to be taken from the same template without any effort to acknowledge the actual specific needs of their organization.

He provides a tongue in cheek translation of this:

“The successful candidate will be a strong leader with excellent management and interpersonal skills. S/he will have the proven ability to build productive relationships with a broad range of internal and external constituencies, and have the demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with the various segments of the community. S/he will be an experienced supervisor with the ability and willingness to mentor staff and encourage staff development. S/he will foster an atmosphere of teamwork and collaboration among staff and volunteers throughout the organization. S/he will have a strong working knowledge of programs, production, board relations and operations. S/he will have excellent financial management skills and a track record for achieving budget goals…”

Into this:

“We want someone smart enough to help us figure out a cool vision for our future (that one is stumping us); someone who will attract great talent to the staff (though we can’t pay the staff very much) and whom the staff (despite working conditions that are hardly ideal) will love and follow anyway (someone who will hopefully get them to perform above their potential, because actually we’re understaffed by all reasonable criteria). We want someone who can make various factions of the board (currently somewhat dysfunctional and at each other’s throats) work harmoniously together and take on an ever greater workload (or in the alternative someone who will assume the board’s workload for them because it’s highly unlikely they will do much more than they are doing right now – which isn’t that much). We try not to micromanage, but we still do. We’re looking for someone who can get the best out of us, but someone enough like us so we are comfortable with them; someone who will push themselves, but not necessarily push us too hard. Did we mention that we want someone who can raise a lot of money? “

I have only excerpted a small portion of his translation so you will want to visit the entry to read the whole thing. I have also excerpted a portion of his sample job description. Trust me when I say you don’t need to go to the entry to read that. You have seen it many times before. I did a verbatim Google search on a couple phrases from Barry’s sample and found a number of job listings using them. I understand a desire not to reinvent the wheel, but if you are looking for the same person as everyone else, most organizations are bound to be disappointed. There are only so many of those paradigms to go around. The truth is, most organizations are indeed looking for someone a little different from the rest.

You Talk Funny

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Okay, admittedly this doesn’t have a lot to do with management, arts or otherwise, but as a person who started out in theatre, I am always interested in dialects of different places. Linguist Rick Aschmann has created an interactive map of all the North American English dialects. It is really a fascinating project in terms of being able to look at the dialect boundaries for different dialects.

One of my original intentions was to point out just how small a geographic area the Greater New York City accent actually covers. I grew up just an hour north of NYC but constantly have people express amazement that I don’t have an accent. New York State isn’t New York City, kids, no matter what you see on television. But my intent was circumvented by the revelation that Downtown New Orleans is a sub-dialect of Greater New York City. Will wonders never cease!

Aschmann also has audio samples of different dialects and is grateful for suggestions and samples to add. I noticed that a lot of the samples were politicians. I figured this was because politicians posted a lot of their campaign ads on YouTube which made them good sources. Aschmann addresses this noting the different sources for dialect samples and why they tended to be reliable.

“DISCLAIMER: I do not necessarily agree with all of the people speaking here: I have simply selected them as good examples of their dialect! Nor does the fact that many of them are politicians indicate that I particularly like politicians: The fact is that politicians tend to retain their local dialect more than other public professions (actors, artists), to maintain their identity with the locals. Also, they talk in public a lot, so the data is readily available. Country singers and southern gospel singers also tend to be reliable, and I like them better than politicians. Somewhat surprisingly to me, NASCAR racers seem to be very reliable, also: even though they travel a lot for the races, they tend to raise their families in their old home town, from generation to generation, and don’t care in the least how they talk!”

We speak about the arts as a medium of expression that we don’t want to see disappear. The same can be said of many regional dialects. So take a look at the map and take pride in your dialect! (Even though you talk funny).

New Year’s Not To Do List

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So I am back and raring to go. This is the first Christmas holiday season I have been away from my bed in about 10 years. I went back to visit places I used to work and gained some insights and ideas. I bookmarked things to write about when I returned, but it will take a little bit for me to sort and process some of these things in my brain. One bit of wisdom to start off the new year I came across was linked to by Daniel Pink. It was an entry on the Drucker Exchange, a blog maintained by the late management guru Peter Drucker’s Drucker Institute.

The entry titled, Your Not-To-Do-List, essentially advises organizations and individuals to examine themselves and decide what efforts they are no longer going to pursue. It sort of follows the idea that if you bring something new into your house, you get rid of something old. In this case, you are encouraged to get rid of something old to leave room for the arrival of future innovations. The Drucker Exchange cites a 2004 interview in Forbes where Drucker says:

“A critical question for leaders is, “When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?” The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, “Don’t tell me what you’re doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.”

The only hitch I think arts organizations might have with this is that waning audiences can make many programs look like they should be put on the not-to-do-list when some just need the attention being spent elsewhere to succeed. I think it is telling that Drucker focuses on the almost successes and achieved goals for elimination rather than targeting poor performers. While the latter should certainly be examined for elimination, Drucker reminds us not to become too invested in the moderate successes just because they provide a degree of satisfaction.

I just read the article this morning and spent most of the day catching up with a backlog of emails so I haven’t really had time to ponder what I might want to eliminate both personally and organizationally. However, over the holidays I had been thinking of discussing with the staff a new approach to one of our events with an eye to more closely connect with the local arts community. The old approach to the event might be the perfect thing to put on the top of our not-to-do-list.

Importance of Being Involved With/From The Ground Floor

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Christopher Blair’s guest post on Adaptistration today on the subject of concert hall design is particularly relevant to me because we have been reviewing architects for a pretty major renovation of our facility. Unfortunately, my staff and I weren’t invited to the meeting where the architects were interviewed, nor did we have much opportunity to interact with them as they toured the facility so all we have to go by are the presentation packets they submitted during the interview. The presentation packets are heavy on why the architects and their team are so great and light on what their vision for the facility is. My technical director has been making inquiries about their work on some of the local projects they have listed to find out what the consensus on their work might be. (By the way, I am not using this blog as my outlet to complain. I have had conversations expressing these frustrations to the vice chancellor of operations. He is not entirely in control of what meetings we are included in and is having us participate as much as he is able. It is characteristic of a government bureaucracy that it tends to focus on its needs over that of the users.)

What I do know of the proposals is that all the candidates unanimously join us in our desire to raze our box office, a monolithic column which obstructs views of our gorgeous lobby mural, has no shelter from the rain for ticket buyers, is cramped and has poor lighting. Of course, we have our own requirements for the renovation which include improved restroom facilities, better drainage and lighting system. Though the details are scant, some of the architects are take a more utilitarian approach than others who are focused on the experience of the patron as they arrive in the parking lot until they get to their seat. Right now, that is the quality that is elevating some over others. Of course, there is also the matter of whether we can afford that vision or not.

One interesting thing that emerged from each of the proposals was that many of the same companies the lead architects were proposing to handle some of the specialty areas like environmental engineering keep appearing again and again. I don’t think I have it in me to pursue a degree in engineering as a second career, but if I were to do so, I saw some areas of low competition.

Coincidentally enough, I initially had one of the same concerns about the renovation to the stage floor that Christopher Blair had. Our current floor is pretty old larch. So many people were coming away with splinters that we covered it with a temporary masonite/plywood layer. One of the solutions proposed by an architect would be to replace it with a composite that wouldn’t splinter but would have enough spring to accommodate our frequent dance performances. While our stage is not laid over concrete as in one of the examples Blair cited, but one of my first concerns was how it might change the acoustics of the room. Even though we don’t really operate as the concert halls Blair designs for, there were some issues with the temporary flooring muting the sound someone wanted to produce almost immediately after we laid it down. My suspicion though is that it won’t adversely impact the sound in the room in any significant way. Still, it was satisfying to have confirmation from Blair that the relationship between the floor and the sound of a room are important consideration.

Silent Evangalization For The Arts

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For years now I have been getting emails from Arts Job Listing Project alerting me to job openings. I don’t quite remember how I got on the list, but I know I have been getting the emails for about 7-8 years now. Until today, I didn’t even know they had a webpage. What I also didn’t know was that the emails came to me as a service of Revelation Spiritual Church in Cincinnati. According to the pastor, Brian Eastman, the “project is a function of my church’s belief in the value of arts.” Among their other projects are apparently http://booksfortheneedy.com/ and an insulation/corn furnace project, http://cutheatingcosts.com/

I learned all this for the first time in nearly a decade because the listing project has run short of funds and Eastman sent out a plea for donations. While they will send the listings for free they apparently normally hold listings until they get a couple together. If someone wants a listing sent out quickly, they would be charged a fee and that kept the project funded for about 8 years without much problem. The last two years have been a little tougher, unfortunately. While you can send in a donation or contact them directly, their primary suggestion is to order books through their Biblio site.

Honestly, the thing that struck me most about the email was learning that there was a church that had a program initiative to support secular arts organizations. I had not ever heard of any program like that. Sure there are plenty of churches that provide support to arts organizations, mine included, but Eastman lists this effort among his church’s specific ministries. The other thing is, in 8 years of getting emails, there was never any indication of it being associated with the church. No tag at the bottom saying “Revelation Spiritual Church” or scripture passages.

You could argue this is a genuine manifestation of a religious principle of letting your actions do all the speaking. But just as a matter of practice, how many of us could go 10 years without trying to garner a little recognition for the work our organization is doing. Though there may be a difference in degree, arts organizations and churches both engage in some evangelizing to garner support.

I am not going to necessarily suggest everyone donate to them. But if you are going to buy a book, may be think about doing it through their Bibilo account.

Given that paying for rush listings supported the service for a good number of years, maybe the best thing to do is think about paying a little bit for a the service they are willing to offer completely free. Most of us do this sort of thing already by dropping some money in the “Donations Welcome” box at museums with free admission.

Where Your Duty As A Non-Profit Lies

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I had to wonder if people were intentionally misreading the post I made about the Arts Council of England requiring applications for funding. My declaration that “Once again, Europe proves their arts policy is superior to that of the U.S.!” was meant to be read a little tongue in cheek lampooning the constant refrain that the arts policy and audiences in Europe are better than in the U.S. And even if that tone didn’t come across, I would have thought that when I wrote sentence or two later that the reality was that the policy is exclusionary and then spend 500 or so words talking about how it will be improved, it would be clear that I wasn’t seriously supporting the old way of doing things.

But I wasn’t really put off by the comments on the entry or by Leonard Jacobs post criticizing this view on The Clyde Fitch Report. In my mind, I was guilty of the age old failing – If you have to explain the joke, you didn’t deliver it correctly. Besides, I figured my blog would get some traffic from the Clyde Fitch Report post.

But then I got to thinking about it. No arts organization ever forms for the purpose of filling out grant applications. Yes, you know when you form your non-profit, it is something of a necessity for doing business. It isn’t a surprise that filling them out does indeed divert energy from the core purpose of the organization. So yes, on second thought, I do think it is pretty much the duty of every non-profit organization to gain funding with the least effort possible so they can get on with their core purpose. It isn’t just me saying this. The biggest measure of non-profit effectiveness is the ratio of how much raised goes toward programs vs how much goes toward overhead and expenses. This is the measure Charity Navigator used to rate my local United Way dead last among local non-profits.

Charity Navigator admits their evaluation doesn’t look at the quality of programs non-profits offer, a fact those at the bottom of the list are quick to cite when they decry the legitimacy of the rankings. But this is a measure that is gaining more and more traction, especially among politicians who are questioning the salaries of those few non-profit executives who actually make enough worth noting.

No surprise politics plays a big part in who gets government funding and who doesn’t. In that context it is get tougher to say that the old policy for funding by the Arts Council of England is really worse than that of the NEA. There are categories of people who were once eligible for funding by the NEA who no longer are due to changes in laws and policies made in reaction to political pressure. We have had mayors of New York City who have unilaterally declared that arts organizations will not receive funding because of program content. Are situations where individuals have the power to rescind funding awarded by a small group of people based on an application any more egalitarian than a situation where a small group of people are empowered to decide who will receive funding based on their own judgments (as well informed as they may be by the vastly superior arts environment which exists in Europe)?

Actually, on the face of it, I would say yes since the criteria being used by the NEA to award grants are clear from the outset, regardless of the pressures exerted to shape those criteria. As I mentioned in my original post, the process and criteria by which the Arts Council decided which organizations to fund and how an organization might even enter the council’s consideration was murky at best. Politics are going to tinge any decision making process where judgments are present. Lets not pretend though that the lengthy application process, be it an electronic or paper submission process, is the best and only way for governments to disburse funds.

When my consortium met last week, one of the aspirations we had for our fledgling merger was right in line with the regional partner initiatives the Arts Council of England hopes to implement. We are looking to become organized enough to propose becoming a partner organization to the state arts foundation and receive annual funding for our activities outside of the normal granting process. To my mind 10-15 performing arts entities coming together to work in partnership is an approach worth funding in an alternative manner. I believe it would be counterproductive to require each of us to submit a separate applications because it would perpetuate the idea that we needed to compete as individuals for funding rather than to collaborate.

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of self-interest when non-profits are seeking funding. As Leonard Jacobs notes, many funders have restrictive criteria about what they will fund based on interests, geography and shifting priorities. Our interests in the criteria for government funding is based immediately on whether we and perhaps our close partners qualify. A desire for an egalitarian arts policy that benefits everyone else is more philosophically abstract, based generally on creating an environment in which our potential audience base comes to appreciate the arts. If our perceived rivals gain significantly more largesse, our attitudes can become less charitable.

I am all for any system that encourages a shift toward group interest and responsibility–especially if the group shares in the paperwork rather than just me. But more importantly if you haven’t guessed, I would welcome a shift away from the damn paperwork. Leonard Jacobs says to stop whining about the paperwork and do some work for it. Well, it is the art that is the work you are doing for the grant, not the paperwork. Nobody is interested in funding paperwork. Though reviewing written applications may be efficient in terms of cost, the paperwork is really about the least effective way to measure the worth of a project. It is just a measure of good writing ability, which granted is an art itself and deserving of support. But that is just the genteel way of saying that someone knows how to bullshit well and use all the correct phrases and keywords. Many of the online application forms don’t let you submit them if your costs exceed your income and therefore require that you lie to complete them even if the truth is that you spent $50 more than you made. The whole process is dishonest before anyone even looks at the application.

The arts by their very nature are meant to be seen and experienced. Yes, sending people out to visit grantees is expensive, but perhaps it would be done if there was better funding. Yes, the visiting team might make subjective judgments about the worthiness of your organization, but they are doing that already when they read your grant application.

Colleges and universities are accredited by regional bodies who send people to evaluate them on a regular basis to bring them into compliance with current standards. Now I will readily admit that compliance translates into paperwork. I will also concede that the schools probably pay quite a lot to be part of this process. And even though they aren’t part of the government, members of Congress have been criticizing the accrediting bodies. So I won’t even pretend this idea would satisfy the NEA’s biggest critics.

But if arts groups were organized under regional bodies, then the cost could be borne by many just as it is with the schools. The experience of those participating as visiting evaluators would be much more valuable than sitting on a grant review committee. Instead of learning what committees were looking for in a grant application, the committee member could actually learn about the best practices by groups in their region and share that information with their home organization. Not to mention they would be sharing information and developing deeper relationships with other arts professionals beyond what can be accomplished at conferences.

Granted so much of this is pie in the sky idealism currently, but that doesn’t mean we have to complacently accept the current way of doing things. Really, it may not be that the written application is a bad format, but rather the criteria it looks to evaluate is flawed. The visitation process I am suggesting would change the evaluation criteria out of necessity. But as an alternative, as our ability to record and share our accomplishments on media improves, it can be just as valid a tool in shifting what criteria is emphasized too.

Though I really think that that an extensive program of visits by well trained teams would go an incredibly long way in improving arts leadership and management. While I think the sites that hosts the visits might receive some excellent guidance, were I designing the program, my focus would be on cultivating the abilities of the visiting team over telling the host what they are doing wrong.

Consortium Merger Update

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This week the state booking consortium of which I am a member met to start planning our upcoming seasons and also move forward toward our plan to merge with our sister organization. The governance committee upon which I sit had met about three weeks ago to discuss the steps we would have to take to accomplish the merger and work on rewriting our bylaws to come into compliance with practice. The committee spent about an hour discussing the relevant rules and laws the state attorney general’s office has for dissolutions and asset transfers of non-profit organizations and physically rewriting the bylaws.

Another three hours were devoted to discussing the implications of the changes we were proposing. Our consortium had already agreed we should shift from a membership to a board organization. What we ended up proposing this week was to shift from having organizations as board members to having individuals as board members. This was a rather significant move so discussing how it might manifest and what the impacts might be required some serious conversation. We felt this would provide much more flexibility and open up possibilities. For example, instead of focusing on writing grants to support the tours member organizations had arranged, the consortium would seek funding for touring or educational outreach and then decide how to apply it. The difference may be hard to discern, but it is possibly a significant change in the way the consortium operates and has the potential to position us as a partner to some granting organizations and foundations.

The biggest advantage is that the board would be free to choose its members rather than depend on specific organizations to send a representative. This would provide opportunities to bring people on based on their knowledge rather than affiliation. It could also allow the consortium to decide as an entity that it wanted to initiate a statewide arts in healthcare program where artists could barter their services working with hospitals, hospices, retirement homes, etc in return for low to no cost health coverage. The consortium’s direct involvement might be arranging outreach activities to these institutions by touring artists, but the benefit would be to all artists across the state, some of which may not be members of the consortium. Yet some of the board members may represent arts organizations that frequently employ these artists and find it in their best interest that the artists not have to worry about health care as they practice their craft. In this case, the board might seek to add a member from the healthcare field to advise and perhaps rally industry support for grants.

As the governance committee meeting was drawing to a close a few weeks ago, I mentioned that what we were proposing might cause a lot of debate at the full meeting because it was such a departure from the way business had been conducted. I noted that a shift in thinking away from the way we currently did business would be required. In fact, there was a lot of discussion about the proposal. There were a lot of “what ifs” asked based on the way we engaged in our activities. Some of the questions we had already considered and had responses to, but others illuminated the need for the creation of policy and procedures. Ultimately, I was happy to hear a board member who had not been part of the governance committee pointed out that we couldn’t think about the changes in bylaws completely in the context of how we currently operated and that it would require shifting our thinking.

There is still a lot of work to be done on the bylaws and one of the members of my committee uncovered more regulations governing dissolution and mergers with which we need to comply. I feel very optimistic about the work being done and the potential of the reorganization. Of course, it helps that the local community foundation received a large amount of money from the founder of eBay and they are directing some of it toward encouraging innovation in non-profits. It makes what we are doing seem relevant and timely.

The Scandal!

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Tyler Cowen of Mariginal Revolution is reporting that the iTunes version of John Cage’s 4’33” is actually only 4’31”. Just another example of how the fidelity of classic works of art are being abridged and destroyed by technology.

The comments on the entry are pretty amusing and bear a look. My favorite –

“I saw the sheet music recently, cleverly priced at $4.33.

I memorized it on the spot rather than buying it.”

Are You Getting Your 24 Cents Worth?

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Daniel Pink had an entry this weekend where he presents a taxpayer receipt created as part of a policy paper by some gentlemen at Third Way. David Kendall and Jim Kessler who wrote the piece for Third Way start their paper by pointing out that we know the breakdown in the nutritional value of the food we buy, but we haven’t the faintest idea what sort of value we are getting for our taxes.

Given that so many politicians promise to control spending without touching Social Security and Medicare, they wanted to create an easy to understand listing of where all that money was going and what would likely need to be cut to make good on those promises. Since the median taxpayer in the U.S. earns $34,140 and assuming all that income is taxable, they created a graphic breakdown of where the $5,400 in taxes paid in 2009 went.

Of course, I gravitated directly to arts spending – 24 cents. Now remember, this isn’t the amount spent on arts per person, just what the median tax payer’s share is. Those with higher incomes are paying more and those with lower incomes are paying less. The amount per person is probably closer to the usual rule of thumb of the cost of a postage stamp. I was a little surprised to see that benefits and salaries for Congress fell below the arts at 19 cents until I remembered there are only 535 of them compared to all the arts organizations that seek funding.

If you visit Pink’s site, you will see that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid top the list at $1,040.70, $625.51 and $385.28, respectively. Next down on the list is interest on the national debt and military operations. Cutting spending on the arts isn’t going to vastly improve the lot of any other area. Above arts spending is the Smithsonian Museum at $1.12. Giving all the arts money to the museum doesn’t improve their budget by a quarter.

When people complain that they don’t want their tax dollars going to support degenerate art, the truth is more money was likely spent powering their computer while emailing those sentiments and then paying a Congressional staffer to read and perhaps print it out than is spent on the arts. If a person mails their complaint, well they have already spent more on the stamp than they probably paid in taxes to the arts.

Entranced by Gorey’s Details

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This weekend I attended an opening of an exhibit of the works of Edward Gorey. I honestly had no idea he was as prolific an illustrator and writer as he was. I had grown up seeing the openings he created for PBS’ Mystery and a college roommate had a poster of his Gashleycrumb Tinies. I had nearly forgotten that he did the set and costume design (as well as playbill cover) for the Broadway performance of Dracula back in the 70s.

But there are scads more that he produced, so much of it so very wickedly clever. I loved his pop up books. There was this one book that expanded like an accordion. You peered into one end and apparently as you expanded and contracted the book, the different figures would emerge and retreat from your field of vision changing your perspective about the details of the scene. (I wish I could find a picture of it online to show you!)

As I looked around, it occurred to me that technology is no substitute for talent. Gorey used paper and ink of various qualities and grades to express himself in ways that can’t be replicated or remixed by someone on a computer who lacks Gorey’s vision. He had a series of story cards with images and short phrases that could be shuffled and laid out in myriad ways to create alternative stories. The ones on display in the case had a mystery theme and depending on the order you gazed upon them could have people sneaking around possible as a cause of what came later or as a reaction to what happened earlier. There were books with the pages sliced into about ten stacks of slips that could be used the same way. Flip to the 3rd slip of the top pile, the 8th slip of the fourth pile, the 3 slip of the 9th pile and you had a one variation of a thousand stories. I liked the cards a little better because I could see them being easier to use on a long car ride and the illustrations contributed to my imagination. In one variation, those on the card looked around furtively. In another, they just looked bored.

In most theatre classes, students are often reminded that the fancy lights and effects and detailed costumes are not the performance, but merely enhance the experience. All you need is a good performer with a good story. The rest is superfluous. Gorey brings a lot to his work. Even though you experience the art and text on a static medium, as the speaker said yesterday, you have to interact with his work to get something out of it. He requires imagination, intelligence and thought.

Cherry Orchard? Check The Freezer Section

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Given my brief foray into site specific theatre last Spring, I have been keeping my eyes open for other projects. Via the Fast Company website is a The Cherry Orchard inspired piece set in an empty department store in Brighton, England.

The Fast Company site has some images, but architectural photographer Jim Stephenson has an entire walk through of the building on his blog, talking about what an attendee experienced.

A lot of it sounds like fun–entering the freezer and finding yourself looking at a winter snowscape with a model of the Cherry Orchard house. You move to the next room and you find yourself in the house modeled in the snowscape. At other times you move from the 19th century Russian house to a more contemporary Russian department store.

Take a look. See if you are inspired.

Ritual And The Arts

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So this weekend I am acting as a master of ceremonies for a wedding reception. The request was made based, I kid you not, my curtain speeches before performances. I guess that teaches me not to give discounted tickets to my friends. They also chose me for my sense of humor. I am supposed to make some humorous remarks about the bride because her sister doesn’t speak English fluently enough to tell everyone how the bride tortured her when they were younger and how devoted they are to one another.

Mostly I agreed because there wouldn’t be a DJ at the reception so I will be spared the two wedding reception songs I hate the most. Celebrate by Kool and the Gang and The Chicken Dance. Also, if I am up at the mic, I won’t have to participate in the catching of the garter!

As simple as this wedding is, there is still a fair bit of ceremony and protocol involved during the reception –more so than the actual wedding ceremony. It made me realize that people have a real need, despite protestations that they want to keep it simple, to have some propriety and procedure involved in order to validate the whole proceedings.

I got me wondering about all the complaints about the intimidating formality of attending arts events. Do people really want things to be as informal as they say they do? When you spend as much money as you do on a ticket, do people have a natural inclination to validate the experience with some sort of ritual to mark the occasion? The problem may not be that there is formality surrounding the arts event, it may simply be that the rules are unfamiliar.

You can easily spend more on tickets to a football game. If you have ever attended one of these events casually either not being a die hard fan or regular attendee, it is easy to feel intimidated by the fact that people have tail gate set ups that rival some restaurants with fiercely held opinions about barbeque.

Or just attend a comic book convention and try to follow the minutiae referenced by die hard fans.

I would mention attending a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time, but regrettably few theatres show the movie any more. I blame the VHS release of the movie for letting people watch it at home and therefore become disconnected from that particularly exhilarating audience participation ritual.

As a newcomer, any of these experiences can be intimidating to those who don’t know the rules. But aside from making fun of nerdy males for having poor social graces, no one says that the die hard fans need to make their area of interest more accessible as is done with the arts. If you want to join in, you have to learn the rules of football and how to hitch your grill to the back of your truck. If you want to hang out at the comics convention, you’ll need to know obscure facts like the first non-clone stormtroopers were recruited in the year 9 BBY. And you know you will need to bring props, learn when to use them and learn some of the common call backs for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Being a show virgin at Rocky Horror can have more public consequences than going to the theatre or symphony for the first time. So why are people so put off by the thought of going to the theatre? Best I can think of is that it may seem more possible to master the arcane details of these other pursuits, even though it is much easier to study up in advance of attending a performing arts event and fake your way along by keeping quiet and watching everyone else.

Also, knowledge of the arts can often be tied to a measure of your worth as a person. Are you educated and cultured enough? While the same can be true of some sports in many parts of the country, there are friends and family members around to teach you the rituals surrounding the sport in your daily life. This is often not the case with the arts.

So I guess we get back to the old nature and nurture situation. Desire for ritual may be a natural part of being human, but our comfort level in approaching and learning new rituals is a function of what areas of knowledge we receive nurturing in.

Concert And Brew

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So something of a tangential post to my entry yesterday featuring churches whose design and technology rival performing arts venues. Today’s topic– performance spaces you want to work at based on superficial qualities like the name or appearance alone. This is an audience participation post so feel free to add your dreams and stories in the comments box.

I will start mine out with a little confession. I used to hear promotions on the radio for Live at the Concertgebouw. The Concertgebouw is one of the premiere music venues in the world located in Amsterdam.

Not knowing this, however, I thought they were saying Concertebrau which I imagined was a concert hall in which Germans enjoyed their two great passions, classical music and excellent beer. I pictured Germans reclining, great steins in hand and reveling in the music. Since it was pretty much accepted gospel that Europeans had a much greater appreciation of classical music than Americans, I figured attendance was a commonplace past time at which beer was present.

My second theory was that there wasn’t a lot of beer involved, but that the Germans envisioned the creation of great music much like the crafting of a great brew–involving a lot of investment of time and balanced elements but ultimately intoxicating. That was a little more wishful thinking.

Not that the crossing of a concert and beer hall was very realistic. I was almost disappointed to learn that the real place was in Amsterdam. Can’t tell from the website if they serve beer.

The other places that have caught my imagination just on the basis of outward appearances are the Chocolate Church in Bath, Maine; Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre with its cool interior featuring skulls with glowing eyes and swastika. Though I have never been there, I have mentioned my infatuation with the whole idea of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center a couple times in this blog. Same with Wolf Trap. I don’t know what they are like now, but long ago I got my hands on an American Players Theatre brochure and thought it had some pretty clever and enticing writing. Enough that I still think I need to get to Wisconsin one summer soon.

I am sure there are other deserving arts organizations who have been the beneficiaries of my lust at a distance, but I can’t think of them at the moment. There are a couple that have not requited my lust and thus must suffer not being mentioned.

Any places that have fired your imaginations, gentle readers, if only based on a cool name or well designed brochure?

What Does The Lizard Represent?

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So a few changes around the blog today. I sent a few pictures of the objects on my desk to Inside The Arts fearless leader, Drew McManus to be used to spiff up the blog header and give it a new look. I sent a picture of my copy of Peter Drucker’s Managing the Non-Profit Organization among other things. Drew said the other pictures didn’t come out right, but I suspect he just felt I was getting full of myself and trying to make myself look deep and important so used the old lizard instead. (I also sent him pictures of the yo-yos and Wheel-O that also sit on my desk, but perhaps he felt that gave the wrong impression.)

But since we tend to be a little misanthropic about the state of the arts from time to time here on Inside the Arts, I also suspect that maybe the lizard and the “Culture Dinosaurs” album cover may be a sign of things to come.

With that in mind, I am about to introduce a topic reversing past statements about how the arts should be positioned.

In the past, I have argued that the value of the arts should not be spoken about in terms of prescriptive benefits – listening to Mozart will make your kids smarter being one of the more famous claims. But we can’t entirely deny that the arts are deeply steeped with pretty much every element that make us human – history, storytelling, movement, music and memory. As such the arts are a vehicle for just about every theory and idea Carl Jung espoused from archetypes to collective unconscious and can constitute an important therapeutic tool.

Psychology Today has had a series called The Healing Arts running on their blog over the past year. Every couple weeks since February, art therapist Cathy Malchiodi has been doing a countdown of her top 10, “Cool Art Therapy Interventions.” She is down to number three so presumably the top two will be coming in the next month or so. Among those therapies she has listed are mask work, mandala making, family sculpture making, photo collages and visual journaling. You can see pretty quickly how some of these activities could help a person express themselves better or introduce calm and focus. Asked to guess what activities might be helpful, I would likely mention these at some point.

Something I would not have listed because it seems so basic is Creating Together. Except for those artists who crave a solitary existence, I don’t think many in the arts would deny that part of what draws them to the arts is the collaborative experience. Even if you don’t achieve some sublime synchronicity while working with others or interacting with audiences in your daily experience, the communal act, even when simply fooling around, can bring something to each participant. About a year ago, I talked about the possible influence of high emotional satisfaction being a possible motivator for involvement in the arts. That, or something closely related, may also contribute to the therapeutic usefulness of the arts.

They May Be Big Brother, But At Least They Have Good Customer Service

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So last week I was deluged with phone calls for the college admissions and records and financial aid offices. For a long while I thought the phone system went haywire and the voice mail system was misdirecting my calls. I pleasantly redirected peoples’ calls, silently reminding myself that it wasn’t their fault and as I am fond of saying, marketing is everyone’s job. I may be king of my castle, but I am a member of a larger organization whose interests I serve.

I soon discovered though that people were actually directly dialing my number and were not being redirected by a voice mail system. I also discovered that people only have a really vague idea about where they get pieces of information. Eventually I deduced that people were being misdirected by search engines –specifically Google. I did a search for the college on Google and to my horror found that my office number was listed as the main switchboard number. This was only true for Google. Yahoo and Bing didn’t have erroneous information.

I am not sure how it happened, but my theory is that someone tagged the theatre on Google Maps and put our phone number. My building is one of the few on campus tagged on Google maps and somehow it may have become the default phone number. Once it became the top search result, everyone started calling.

Fortunately, Google has a link that allows you to submit corrections. In fact, if you have an account, you can fix it right away. So I submitted a couple corrections from different IP addresses and submitted one from my Google account. It took about 48 hours, but the listing disappeared…..

…And was replaced by a listing for the ATM machine in the library, the location of which was also tagged. Since the telephone number listed is that of the bank, I am willing to bet that the bank has been getting calls from people who haven’t been paying attention.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. Today I received a call from someone at Google Maps verifying where it was exactly that the erroneous listing was directing people. Google may be massive, but they apparently aren’t too unwieldy to fix and then follow up on problems in a timely manner. You often don’t get that sort of response from utilities and companies whose service you actually pay for.

Probably the big lesson here is that even when you are depending on other people’s labor to contribute and correct content, the endeavor can never entirely be without cost. It would be inconceivable for Google and Wikipedia to collect and present in a meaningful way the amount of information they do if they depended solely on paid staff, but they still need to create a structure and invest resources to monitor the veracity and suitability of the material they provide. In fact, I just read today that Google doesn’t outsource the review of content flagged as inappropriate and provides counseling to the staff that processes it.

I don’t mean to turn this into a plug for Google. The whole experience just reveals the importance of monitoring and addressing mistakes and that it is possible to do so no matter what your size should you make the conscious decision.

Brief Encounters With Arts In China

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So I am back from my vacation in China. I hope some of the topics I scheduled to be revisited while I was away were of some interest and use. I was pleased to have gotten a couple comments on those old entries as a result. My thanks to Drew McManus for policing the comments to make sure they approved in a timely manner.

My trip took me to various places, but mainly Beijing, Yellow Mountain and Shanghai and the World Expo. Because I was touring with a group, I didn’t have the opportunity to check out as many theatres and arts centers as I did during my trip to Ireland. As a result, I ended up in front of the Beijing Children’s Art Theater without a camera because I didn’t expect to come upon it.

I did have quite a few artistic encounters though. There was this guy painting scenery with his hands on the Great Wall near Beijing.

He claimed to be one of the best finger painters. Given there were no other painters around to gainsay him, I will have to take him at his word. I have to admit, I do regret not buying a piece when I had the chance. It was early in the tour and I was promised better, but we didn’t really come across something as good of the same size and price.

We visited Longmen Grottos in which many images of the Buddha were carved over the course of 400 years. It provides some interesting insight into how the philosophy about depicting the Buddha evolved over time as well as the politics involved. Some of the works provided a nod to the patrons who supported the endeavors. Most bore the scars of those who opposed the work and Buddhism with faces and appendages hacked away.

We traveled to Yellow Mountain, historically the de rigueur destination of any artist who wishes to be taken seriously in China. With such breath taking vistas available, it there isn’t much mystery as to why. James Cameron apparently used the mountain range as his model for the world of Pandora in Avatar. The pine trees that grow there are reputed to be the ingredient that produces highly prized ink sticks for calligraphy and ink and wash paintings.

Nearby was Hongcun which was one of the villages Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed. There were many art students there as well. (Who scolded me for not bartering my purchases in the village down enough.) Art students are allowed multiple admissions over the course of a week for free to work on their pieces.

Finally, we ended up in Shanghai during which time we attended the World Expo. This was really where I started evaluating things with the eye of someone who organized a lot of events. Security was clearly a consideration surrounding the World Expo. As we approached Shanghai by bus, we were pulled aside at a toll plaza and sent to a building to have our passports inspected. Bags were scanned every time you entered the subway system. You had to go through a metal detector to enter the Expo grounds and got scanned by a wand wielding security agent. And they didn’t hover over your body like in US airports. The wand was rubbed right against you. They also didn’t allow water in the Expo, but I imagine that was more about selling it than anything else.

Hospitality wise, the city seemed invested on many levels. In every subway station there was someone in Expo garb standing next to the machines that vended the fare cards ready to help you use the machine and figure out what route to take to your destination. All the taxis we took had stickers with a number to call if you couldn’t speak enough Mandarin to tell the driver where you wanted to go.

I am told they also asked people living near the Expo site not to hang their laundry out their windows. (The picture below is from near the hotel which was a few miles away.)

I think they also cracked down pretty heavily on the street vendors too. Two years ago when I walked the Bund, we were approached and followed by people trying to sell us all sorts of things. This time there was none to be seen. In fact, in the park/walkway along the river, a couple of the shop buildings that were there last time are entirely gone. (And I was really looking forward to another gelato!)

The Expo itself was immense. It seemed like you could walk forever and barely get anywhere. Even though there were hundreds of thousands of people there the night we went, it didn’t seem crowded—until you got on line for a pavilion. In the 5 hours we were there, I only got into 4 pavilions – Nepal, India, US, UK. Others in my group went to the less popular pavilions and got through 11. One guy visited North Korea and snagged a little pamphlet by Kim Jong Il critiquing folk dance.

The US pavilion was pretty dull. The entry is one big corporate advertisement. I know they had to fund it privately rather than with public funds, but all the logos feel very heavy handed. The movies they show are pretty lackluster compared to the expectations I had.

The UK pavilion was the real winner for me. The Seed Cathedral was amazing and it rightfully had a long line for entry. (Though there was announcement they were shutting down the Germany queue when the 4 hour wait exceeded the Expo closing time. Were they giving out beer samples?) The pavilion, which is describe, I think accurately as a sculpture, is comprised of 60,000 plastic rods with seeds embedded in each. Apparently many of them will still be viable for planting after the Expo concludes.

I will let my photos do the rest of the talking.

Oh and this YouTube video too. The light was pretty low and my camera just aint that good.

Powerless Before Over Our Creativity

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This bit was included in an entry containing links to a lot of locations. Feel free to read the entry. My real reason for directing you back there is Arts Anonymous’ 12 Step Program which starts with: “We admitted we were powerless over our creativity — that our lives had become unmanageable. ”

Check out the 12 Traits they list that drive you to this situation. Good chance all or most are true for you.

Effecting Change After The Meeting

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Two entries today and sort of long.

Many of us are dubious about attending meetings because we aren’t sure any action of value will result. In two entries entitled Useless Meetings and Useless Meetings 2, I explore the monograph, The Measure of Meetings: Forums, Deliberation, and Cultural Policy.

I talk about their thoughts on why it is so hard to create cultural policy and why conventions are a poor place to attempt it–currently. They make suggestions on how to alter that situation.

Please Patronize Our Fine Competitors

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Every week Drew McManus sends out an email to all the Inside the Arts bloggers with tips about enhancing our blogs. A few months back he suggested we not take it for granted that all our readers knew as much about basic elements of the arts as we did. This is a pretty tough thing to do. I know my concern would be that I would end up covering such elementary topics, people would either feel I was condescending or not writing anything of real relevance to them.

With all this in mind, I submit to you the request my landlord emailed me last week. She wanted to take her grandsons on a date to a performance next month at the big concert hall in town and wanted my help finding the best and most inexpensive seats. My first reaction was that I wasn’t sure what I could tell her. I have only been in the theatre about five times before and it was for events entirely unlike the one she wanted to attend. I really couldn’t give her good advice on acoustics or sight lines.

I took a quick trip to the Ticketmaster website and realized her needs were much simpler. The available tickets for the lowest priced tickets were listed as being in the orchestra pit, orchestra seating and upper balcony. The seating arrangement was continental with seat #1 dead center, odds on one side and evens on the other. (Frankly, I think that seating arrangement creates more problems for audiences than it solves.) None of this meant anything to her.

I was able to do a couple quick searches on different performance times and dates before the system shutdown for maintenance and discovered the only orchestra seats were three rows from the back and the balcony seats weren’t much closer. Based on my experience, I figured all the pit seating would be off to the sides which actually wouldn’t be too bad.

I wrote back to my landlord advising her to call or go down to the venue because she would have more control over her seat choice than the internet would allow. I advised her that the evening shows might be less crowded than the matinees and where she might expect the open seats would be found in each of the available sections. I also tried to explain how the seat numbering worked.

There was a lot of what I wrote that I assumed was pretty common knowledge about ticket buying. Some of it seemed pretty obvious and I only included it to provide a context for some of the more obscure bits of wisdom I was sharing. A day later she wrote back and thanked me for my advice saying she needed every bit of it. She expressed her appreciation for sharing some of the details I assumed she already knew. Apparently not that common knowledge. She managed to snag some respectable seats for the price level she wanted.

My efforts are not likely to yield Miracle on 34th Street style results where providing helpful information on my competitor’s products improves my own bottom line. I have been living in this apartment for six years and my landlord has never come to see a show. The best I may be able to hope for is that 10-15 years down the road one of the grandsons will show up at my door having been excited by what he sees next month.

Most of us wouldn’t necessarily welcome getting calls asking for help buying tickets to another place. Even if we weren’t offended by the request, we would lack the time to address such requests. That actually brings to mind a job opening I saw about 5-6 years ago where a performing arts center decided it would become the central information source for everything going on around town, including that of their competitors. Now given that they were a multi-space venue, chances were that something appealing to most audiences would appear on one of their stages so getting the community to think of them first was probably smart. It might not be as wise for a company producing shows with a niche appeal to attempt the same thing.

But if an arts group has a close and trusting enough relationship with their community, they may be able to strengthen it by having a Q&A about topics within their discipline that they don’t specifically represent. For example, a folk art museum might entertain questions about modern art, a symphony might open the floor to jazz inquiries, a theatre company specializing in contemporary plays can address Shakespeare. Of course, they could also give tips on etiquette, dress and seating arrangements for situations with entirely different dynamics than theirs. I’d bet audiences don’t realize their friendly neighborhood staffs have a wealth of general knowledge about their disciplines.

A rising tide may raise all ships, but in such an instance you would be remiss not to note or at least imply how much more lovely and unintimidating things are at the friendly neighborhood arts place by comparison.

Info You Can Use: DON’T FORFEIT YOUR NON-PROFIT STATUS!

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I can’t believe I forgot to post this since the booking consortium I belong to had a brief heart attack until we realized we were in compliance.

According to the NY Times, about 1/4 of Non-profits will automatically lose their non-profit tax status as of May 15. Not for profit organizations that made less than $25,000 a year didn’t used to have to file. A law passed in 2006 said any non-profit that doesn’t file for three consecutive years will lose their status. Since that covers calendar years 2006-2009, that means the end is nigh for a lot of small organizations. Groups this small may not have kept their contact information up to date and didn’t receive the warning letters the IRS sent out in 2007.

This may not impact the large arts organization you work for, but the smaller charities, trade associations and membership groups (maybe your block association?) to which you belong might be at risk.

The good news is that all you need to do to comply is send back a postcard form informing the IRS that you are still exempt from having to file the full 990.

Even better news–you can file this postcard, the 990-N electronically online at the IRS website.

China Bound In May

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I have the opportunity to go back to China this summer. Picked up my visa today so I am all ready for the trip at the end of May/beginning of June. Again, much of my time will be spent outside major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The centerpiece of the trip is Huangshan -Yellow Mountain.

I will have two days in Shanghai in which to visit Expo 2010. The overall theme seems to be about sustainability, respect and living in harmony with one’s surroundings. I can’t possibly visit even half the pavilions. If anyone hears a buzz about any of the pavilions or exhibitions, let me know.

I promise, this time I will take lots of pictures, especially of any “world of tomorrow” exhibits a la the 1939 New York World’s Fair. I want to know what is supposed to becoming.

Enter The Celebrities!

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This past weekend we finally opened our site specific work, The Celebrity Project, over a year in the making. There were a lot of changes that were made since our original conception. It went from being entirely outside at another location to being closer to the theatre with part of the action occurring indoors. From the amount of effort that went into staging even part of the event outdoors, it was probably a prudent move.

To create some atmosphere, we laid down a red carpet from the foot of the stairs up to the ticket office.

You may notice a lot of wires coming out of the ticket office. The little room also doubled as our control room for sound and lights. It was great because it offered good sightlines to our stages. On the other hand it was pretty cramped with the ticket office, technical staff and stage manager all in there at once.

I observed some strange behavior in connection with the carpet. Many times people would come down the stairs and side step to the concrete on the outside of the stanchions before continuing to the ticket office. In one case, a young woman decided to walk on the carpet while her boyfriend insisted on staying on the outside. I guess people decided the carpet wasn’t for them even though it lead directly to their desired destination.

One of the iconic images employed by the performance company with whom we partnered is “Moira” a woman who sits and knits throughout the whole show. For this show, she appeared to the side of the red carpet apparently knitting since the end of her knitting was attached to the carpet. The umbrella is there to keep her dry in case of a passing shower.

In a break from the usual procedure, when the show began the announcer encouraged everyone to take pictures, twitter and live stream the event if they wanted to. He even encouraged them to take their cell phone calls. This was something of a surprise for me since they had filmed me for the interior portion of the show telling the audience not to do any of these things. That bit didn’t appear in the dress rehearsals so I heard it for the first time opening night.

Surprisingly, even though we had gotten the audience pretty riled up and excited in the first half, no one really broke the no recording/photography rules once they got inside. I think the compliance indoors may have been a result of the smaller than usual audience size. Without as many people performing undesirable actions, fewer people felt comfortable trying.

Because the two outdoor stages were so close to each other and because the masks the performers were wearing inhibited any sort of dialogue, the difference pieces on each stage were performed to the same music. Later when the performers switched to the other stage so the audience would see the entire show, the same music played again to accompany the action. Many audience members thought this was pretty clever.

On the Left Stage...
On the Right Stage...

Then we forced everyone out of their seats to witness a wrestling battle royale! We got the audience to shift to the area in front of the ticket office to watch two masked characters participate in an ever escalating battle of plastic surgery enhancements.

Followed by a revival meeting by the Reverend Wolf who got the audience howling and bearing their claws.

Finally, the glamorous celebrities descended the stairs and lead the audience inside for a more traditional experience.


In the end, it was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. We proved that this type of thing could be done. We have been a little too busy in the aftermath to ask whether we should try to do it again. There are things I would definitely change about some of the arrangements. There were a couple times when we asked ourselves if what we were doing was specific enough to the setting to require it to be done outside– the whole purpose of site specific work. Perhaps there could have been more aspects of the experience that were unique to the space.

Also, moving people from a space that limits attendance to a space that allows twice as many might have been a mistake. The audience went from a very physically intimate experience to one that allowed significant gaps between people. I am sure I could have made a case for the alienation effect of celebrity once you move from ad hoc performance spaces to the big time of formal stages, but the truth is it would have been incidental to the purpose.

However, in terms of engaging the audience, the design was pretty much on the nose. We moved them from passively watching to pressing forward to see– which is what the red carpet experience is all about. We had people howling, whimpering, growling and baring their claws on cue. People had a good time and even returned a second night because they hadn’t brought a camera the first go round. Next time, I will want to encourage more of that to see where we can go with it.

I’m Banging The Drum For You

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Last Friday, Kenny Endo’s agent told me that she had been contacted by a number of organizations that wanted to have him perform based entirely upon my entry about his performance.

I really appreciate the confidence you have shown in my recommendation of his skill and the overall quality of the show.

The agent also said the inquiries were for the specific performance I had with Kenny Endo and Kiyohiko Semba. I don’t blame you, of course. But apparently they hadn’t made any plans to get back together in the next year.

I took advantage of an email from Kenny’s wife today to include a pitch to get the band back together in my reply. No guarantees, but I figure the more people ask, the better a chance they will organize a tour in the next few years. In the meantime, as I said at the end of my entry, Kenny’s shows easily stand on their own and he is adept at collaborating with diverse performers.

The Developing Audience Member

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Over the last year, I have written about masterful performances that really affected me: the taiko performance a week ago, the kathak/tap dancing of Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith last year and Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer’s performance last September. There have been a couple times I have brought up the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master your craft.

It occurred to me recently that if it takes that long to become a master, it likely takes a fairly significant fraction of that to develop appreciation and discernment of arts and culture. This isn’t something that really gets discussed enough I think. In fact, with all the studies that have done been, I don’t think anyone has ever studied how long it takes for a person to develop an understanding and appreciation for art. I am sure the subject has been studied tangentially in relation to learning and meta-cognition. But has anyone sat down and approached it head on how much time people need to process and internalize experiences?

What I am really getting at is the oft espoused idea that once someone is exposed to some form of art, they will fall in love with it forever after. The fact is, once may not be enough and it is pretty unfair and unrealistic that we expect it to be. We give performers hundreds and thousands of hours to gain proficiency and yet we expect our audiences to absorb just how sublime our work is after just two hours.

Yes, we have a need to have them fall in love quickly because the opportunities for exposure are so few and audience members becoming fewer. We are doing a disservice to our audiences to expect so much from them. We want them to realize what a great experience we are offering, but don’t really know how to guide them to that place and how long it might take.

If you are involved in the arts, then your discernment and appreciation were probably developing roughly in parallel with your mastery of whatever you were pursuing. Even if you stopped, your critical skills may have continued to improve as you processed new experiences through the filter of your knowledge. You likely did not notice it happening and so assume you always had pretty good aesthetic sense. But I bet you can look back and grimace at all the crap you used to like and produce–some of it was probably pretentious crap too. (Of course, it was still better by half than the stuff kids are listening to today!)

So the more I think about it, the more I believe that becoming the audience member we all want is as gradual a process as becoming the master we want them to applaud. As I referenced producing awful stuff when we were younger in the preceding paragraph, I was envisioning my dismal acting skills in college vs. what, in my foolishness, I perceived my acting skills to be. One of the things I clearly remember from that time was a friend telling me he was really getting into Indian raga. I immediately laughed because it seemed absurd to me that anyone who wasn’t of that culture would listen to raga, (I think that was my classic rock phase), and I suspected he was saying that to get women. But he said he was serious.

But today I have cited the excellence of three events, two of which were heavily infused with Indian music and instruments and the last that included taiko drumming. At the time I was making fun of my friend about ragas, I had no concept taiko existed. Now I am encouraging people to see these performances and it is difficult to imagine people not enjoying them.

So while we don’t know how long it make take to bring someone into a receptive outlook about the arts, what we do know is that Generation X is not experiencing the upward bump in classical music attendance as they move into their 40s as previous generations did. Alex Ross doesn’t think it is too late to reverse that trend by increasing exposure through a lot of hard work.

I will openly admit that at this juncture, my thoughts on this matter are completely at a preliminary stage. This idea is only a day and a half old in my mind. But as I think about it, it seems to me that people don’t necessarily need direct experience in a situation to gradually develop the ability to confidently approach it. You may not necessarily need constant exposure to classical music and sculpture to acquire critical evaluation skills in these areas.

This winter I went to a number of contemporary art museums and I think that I gained the confidence to do so from having built and lit sets for the theatre. Even though I haven’t done so for awhile, all the times I have watched a show and evaluated these elements since then has improved my ability to recognize how certain effects have been accomplished. That in turn gave me the confidence to walk into an art museum and understand a great deal about what I was looking at. Granted, it might not be what the artist and the critics intend me to understand and perhaps that will come later. For now I am deriving enjoyment when I visit.

I had a similar experience with sumo wrestling. I really don’t watch a lot of sports at all. I have seen a little baseball, football, hockey, soccer, wrestling and martial arts in my time. I went to a sumo event a few years ago knowing nothing and was soon enjoying myself. I think the little bits of experience from these other sports provided a context for the sumo bouts. Though admittedly, sumo is pretty easy to understand. None of my past sports experience is likely to be much help with cricket.

I will concede there is a great theatricality in the sumo ritual and my experience in that area probably helped as well. I have tried to watch bouts online since and find those videos which edit out a lot of the ritual unsatisfying.

Anyway, my point is– the skills/tools/abilities needed to appreciate an arts experience isn’t necessarily cultivated solely by exposure to the arts. While one exposure may not be enough, devising a way to nail people’s feet to the floor en masse so they can’t leave won’t be necessary either. There are myriad situations which are improving people’s capacity to understand and enjoy occurring all the time. The trick is to identify these situations and make people aware of the connections. I felt confident walking into a museum because I knew my comprehension of the use of light and shadow in a performance could translate to visual art because I was aware of their use in that discipline.

The History of (Not) Clapping

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The Guardian reprinted an excerpt from a talk Alex Ross recently gave at the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS). Full text can be found on the RPS website. The subject of Ross’ talk was the history of applause suppression in classical music.

There are some amusing anecdotes like Wagner being hissed at for applauding his Parsifal. But for the most part it is a tale of the gradual socialization of people away from their impulses and how this conflicted state manifests. Ross notes the very week an interview appeared in which Arthur Rubenstein said “It’s barbaric to tell people it is uncivilized to applaud something you like,” Rubenstein hushed an audience who started clapping after the first movements of Mozart concertos.

The history of how these attitudes developed over time is actually really interesting. I was intrigued by Ross’ citation of how “the entry for “applause” in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910-11) observes: “The reverential spirit which abolished applause in church has tended to spread to the theatre and the concert-room, largely under the influence of the quasi-religious atmosphere of the Wagner performances at Baireuth.” Perhaps this is another reason religion and theater have so many similarities.

Ultimately, I would prefer to be in that place one often is when reading history where you wonder at the strange practices of your forebearers, rather than wondering how the practice has endured so long. Though Ross says there has always been resistance:

“In 1927, a letter to the New York Times mocked the practice: “See, I not only have my big orchestra well in hand, but I can also, by a mere gesture, control a manifold larger audience!” The composer and commentator Daniel Gregory Mason sardonically wrote, “After the Funeral March of the Eroica, someone suggested, Mr. Stokowski might at least have pressed a button to inform the audience by (noiseless) illuminated sign: ‘You may now cross the other leg.’”

Of course, Ross acknowledges that absence of sound is as important to some musical compositions as the music is. He notes Beethoven’s Ninth needs silence prior to beginning to create the required atmosphere. But early on in his speech, he submits that not all compositions have the same needs. Some works hint at and even demand applause of the audience.

“Indeed, in my view, the chief limitation of the classical ritual is its prescriptive quality; it supposes that all great works of music are essentially the same, that they can be placed upon a pedestal of a certain shape. What I would like to see is a more flexible approach, so that the nature of the work itself dictates the nature of the presentation—and, by extension, the nature of the response.”

Ross offers many suggestions about what is to be done, but it is his last paragraph that really caught me (my emphasis)

“I dream of the concert hall becoming a more vital, unpredictable environment, fully in thrall to the composers who mapped our musical landscapes and the performers who populate them. The great paradox of modern musical life, whether in the classical or pop arena, is that we both worship our idols and, in a way, straitjacket them. We consign them to cruelly specific roles: a certain rock band is expected to loosen us up, a certain composer is expected to ennoble us. Ah, Mozart; yeah, rock and roll. But what if a rock band wants to make us think and a composer wants to make us dance? Music should be a place where our expectations are shattered.”

When I read this last week, I intended to make this my Monday entry. However, upon seeing the Kenny Endo performance I described yesterday, I knew I had to talk about that experience as a prelude to this entry.

I thought about all the 10,000+ hours of practice rule that Endo and Semba had adhered to in order to attain their current level of mastery. I was thinking that Semba’s kabuki debut at 10 years old really wasn’t too much different than the route many symphony musicians have taken. They start working on their instruments as children and have thousands of hours under their belts by adulthood. And their reward is being straitjacketed into the role that Ross describes here.

Perhaps it is just a stereotype of Japanese culture that I am operating under. But I imagine Semba’s father might have been very concerned about his son possibly abandoning or at least not living up to the quality expected of the family that founded a famous music school when he began to seriously pursue playing Western music. Obviously, the son earned his master’s license, (Semba is his name achieved upon mastery, his real name is Takahashi), but part of me wonders if the father was always as accepting as the son says he was. Regardless, he is having a ball exhibiting his mastery in both classical and contemporary musical forms on two different sets of percussion instruments.

I have, however, been around enough to know that musicians are bound by expectations as strong as those I am, perhaps incorrectly, attributing to Semba’s family. I have heard stories of guys who would play with an orchestra then walk out the back door and do a club gig. How many bass students today are advised to spend the summers playing jazz or blues so that they build a deep base of alternative techniques and how to improvise over the years? And how many of them are told if they don’t practice or attend a summer conservatory they will never be good enough to get a spot playing music that even Presidents of the United States need to have clapping coaches to attend?

My experience this weekend got me thinking. If we are going to start kids on the 10,000 step path to mastery, they should be able to wow people in the broadest spectrum of music possible. Part of this is selfish on my part because I really think a lot of the pop music today stinks to high heaven. There are only so many orchestra slots available and I have read that the margin of difference between the person who gets in and those that don’t is pretty slim. I figure if those that don’t make it can play other genres of music, they will supplant a good portion of the flash in the pan acts we got these days and even the music for the lowest common denominator won’t be half bad.

Yes, Quality Will Definitely Out

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More and more the whole idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill seems to be bearing out. Last year I wrote about the astonishing excellence exhibited by Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith in the India Jazz Suite. (And I guess I did a good job because that entry is now part of their official promotional package.)

I had a similar experience this past weekend with a taiko drumming show we were presenting. Except this time, I really had not anticipated the quality of the performance and was completely taken aback by the experience.

Kenny Endo was the first non-Japanese national to be granted a natori, or master’s name and license in classical Japanese drumming. A visit that was intended to be about a year turned into a 10 year pursuit of master status. In about a month he will be having his 35th anniversary as a taiko performer.

He was performing a retrospective of his masterworks elsewhere in the state under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts’ American Masterpieces initiative. Since a lot of effort was going into bringing this event together, I was asked if we wanted to present it as well. We have been trying to arrange for Kenny to perform for awhile but could never find the right time. I was pleased then that we did have an opening for an event in which his infrequently seen works would be performed.

Kenny Endo is really a very influential person in the taiko in the U.S. and well regarded internationally. When I was searching YouTube for video of his work, I often came across people who were performing his compositions. What I didn’t know was much about the other people he was bringing with him. His NYC based bamboo flautist, Kaoru Watanabe, I had seen in many videos with him, but that was about it. The drummer he was bringing over from Japan, Kiyohiko Semba and his violinist wife were a complete mystery to me.

I guess I should have gotten a clue from the fact Kenny continually referred to Semba as if he were a partner in the show that he was something special.

Let me take a little detour to talk about the interesting symmetry between Endo and Semba. Endo grew up always interested in percussion and studied classical drumming and jazz-fusion traps before becoming enamored of taiko and ending up in Japan. Semba came from a family that founded a famous school of Japanese music. He started studying tsuzumi and taiko drumming at age three and made his kabuki stage debut at 10. In high school, he became entranced by bossa nova rhythms and began studying western drums. He noted in an interview that given his family’s strong traditions, he had to balance his practice of western music with familial respect and the study of classical Japanese music.

So we were doing this show with a Japanese-American playing taiko drums and a Japanese national playing a Western drum kit. As you might imagine, the show wasn’t entirely comprised traditional taiko compositions. There were percussion influences from all around the world including Brazilian and Hawaiian, woven in with classical and contemporary Japanese.

Let me tell you, Semba was incredible. You have this little quiet unassuming guy walking around and you have no clue what genius lurks beneath. I employ no hyperbole when I say a lot of rock and roll drummers are lucky he isn’t auditioning for rock bands because he would leave them in the dust. That might be embarrassing because Semba is probably in his late 60s or early 70s. For a time there I forgot I wasn’t watching a rock show because he was going full throttle so much of the time.

He also had an impish sense of humor. The second part of Endo’s “Symmetrical Soundscapes” has two drummers center stage improvising on a set of drums. There is video of it on YouTube—except they don’t include Semba and he brings an entirely new flavor to the work. Semba and Endo moved down to the set that had been wheeled out center stage and Semba suddenly reclines on the floor stage right and begins matching Endo’s patterns on a hand held drum. He gets up and moves center stage and they play on the set—but then Semba grabs the frame supporting the drums and starts moving around the stage forcing Endo to chase after him. They then engage in pulling and pushing the drum set toward and away from each other, spinning it back and forth, until Semba finally pushes it off stage.

Semba moves back across the stage bent over wearily tapping out some half hearted rhythms on the floor and you are thinking this guy must have worn himself out. Then he springs up on the drum riser and just starts going at it all over again.

And you realize all that playfulness wasn’t a lot of spectacle to spice up an uninteresting show or to divert attention from a lack of talent, but rather proof of Endo and Semba’s skill to go through an unrehearsed bit, (that didn’t happen in rehearsals), without missing a literal beat. As I said last year when I talked about the India Jazz Suites, it was an exhibition of joyful exuberance by two masters who took great pleasure in their mutual friendship.

There are a lot of people out there who are seeking the quick path to fame and many who make a lot of money at it. Endo and Semba may not be as financially successful, but the gulf between their ability and that of those who haven’t pursued mastery is quickly apparent.

With all this talk of the principals, I am not doing justice to the other performers like Semba’s wife, Kaori Takahashi, who is really a excellent violinist and shares a bit of her husband’s whimsical nature. And Kaoru Watanabe, who is a superb bamboo flautist himself. Watanabe actually set out on the long road to mastery and apprenticed with the drumming group Kodo, for the traditionally arduous apprentice experience so he is no slouch on the drums either. I spoke with him after the performance and he commented that he usually injects a bit of humor into his shows, but as with many things, Semba eclipses him.

It is really a pity that more venues didn’t get a chance to take advantage of this collaboration. But with that in mind, since the group has so recently practiced and Kenny said he hoped it wouldn’t be too many more years before he got to perform the works again, I am making a rare appeal for people to contact them and book the performance. You won’t be disappointed with the quality of the show, I assure you. If you are looking for some outreach/educational services, Kenny is really top notch at these things. He also has a lot of experience integrating other performance groups into his concerts (or himself into theirs, as the case may be.)

Trash Talkin’ About The Arts

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First it was Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art wagering paintings on the outcome of the Super Bowl. Now I hear Dallas and Ft. Worth are talking smack about which of them has better cultural assets.

Please people, art is only demeaned by using it as a prop in a bet or a gauge of greatness. Oh. Well, actually I guess that is where a great deal of it obtains its value from.

I think a lot of us would be pleased to have our communities talking about how much better the arts and culture are here than in the next place over. There are sports rivalries from high school to professional levels and the fear/pride of someone else getting there first got us to the moon. Without evoking the old “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we…” trope, cultural rivalries may be something to inspire locally.

You wouldn’t want to compare yourself to New York City, because as evidenced by the end of the Dallas-Ft. Worth piece, you can’t compete with them for culture or condescension. But it could be mutually beneficial to get into a friendly rivalry with a similar municipality/county/town across the state or across state lines. Something that drives both locations to make progress against the other–but also celebrate the other’s successes, perhaps begrudgingly.

In the best of worlds, both locations might advocate for funding for the other, writing letters on their behalf. Because of course, the other guys may be more uncouth, but they are still a sight better than places X, Y and Z. If they were distant enough from each other not to overlap their audiences, some of the organizations could block book the same artists and then quiz the artists about whose theatre was nicer, whose audiences were more enthusiastic, etc. Done good naturedly, it could make artists excited to visit the other location. If the story about Philadelphia area theatres sharing the same production is any indication of the future, attempts at oneupmanship may just add to the fun.

My technical director does a version of this with the technical director at a partner organization. They send the company members to do strange things to the other one. He even has me holding up groups’ departures until he can instruct them in proper execution.

Everybody wins if both communities invest themselves in the rivalry. In addition to getting people excited about what might be coming and how they might top the other guys at their own game, it also gets people looking around for something of value to boast about in their community. Soon you get around to boasting about the quilts in all the bed and breakfasts having been created by a local artist whose quilts appeared in a show at the Smithsonian. Then you start to realize just how great it is to live where you do and how many extraordinarily talented people you never knew you had has neighbors.

Carl Sagan Sings About The Universe

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Hat tip to Artsjournal.com which had the video below as the video of the day last week. I normally don’t watch the videos there but something inspired me to and I am glad it did.

The video is a remix of Carl Sagan from the Cosmos television series with a little Stephen Hawking from the series Stephen Hawking’s Universe. The remix is an effort by Symphony of Science which creator John Boswell says “is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the masses, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Science and music are two passions of mine that I aim to combine in a way that is intended to bring a meaningful message to listeners, while simultaneously providing an enjoyable musical experience.”

Right now there are four videos on the site. As is the case with so many musical groups, my favorite so far is their “early work;” their first video seen above. Symphony of Science remixes the footage from Cosmos and other science shows using auto-tune to make the speakers “sing.”

Given my recent post about interdisciplinary use of arts in education, I was pleased to see an example of someone doing just that. While the videos weren’t designed for classroom use, they could easily be used as part of instruction. The videos also reminded me of the TED video featuring Mallika Sarabhai I wrote about last month. Specifically about the quote so many people seemed to love – “You have treated the arts as the cherry on the cake. It needs to be the yeast.” I seemed to me that video editing and music helped an thirty year old science series bloom a little.

I had other concerns on my mind than watching a science show back in 1980. I never realized just how beautiful the imagery was that Sagan conjured during the series both visually and descriptively in the narration. It belies the common notion of science being dry and sterile and Symphony of Science gives it another interesting twist. I see that all 13 episodes are available on Hulu. I may have to take a look at them.

Edmonton Symphony Orchestra To Audition Jug Players

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According to his letter to NPR’s All Things Considered in response to a recent story, Bill Eddins, the musical director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, said he wanted his orchestra sound like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a string band out of North Carolina. Well, actually he said “this is what I want my orchestra to do” (his comment is read at 1:30).

I can only assume there will be some auditions for jug and banjo players opening up soon so I thought I would get a jump on it.

Even though Bill and I both write for Inside the Arts, I have never met or spoken to him. But when I hear him say things like this, talk about his experience touring with Renee Fleming in South Africa with such verve and get in trouble for wiggling his butt while conducting, I get excited.

I have never been a big attendee of orchestra or even chamber music concerts but I really am convinced that if anyone can help me come to enjoy the music and the experience by sheer force of personality and enthusiasm it is Bill. (His co-writer Ron Spigelman’s efforts at outreach and lowering the intimidation factor would probably convince me to attend in the first place.) Of course, the fact that Bill’s family is from Buffalo, NY just like mine is already gave him points with me. I hope the folks in Edmonton realize what an asset they have.

BoardChemistry.com

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Boards seem to be a real hot topic recently. Thanks to a massive blogroll listing on the Clyde Fitch Report, I became aware of a ArtPride NJ blog post pondering why Gen X/Y is not well represented on non-profit boards. Leonard Jacobs of the Clyde Fitch report also weighed in on the subject of boards yesterday. (Busy day over at CFR, one hopes they didn’t spend all their time with the blog on Valentine’s Day.)

Hat Tip to Nonprofit Law Blog for pointing out a tweet to a Fast Company article about how for profit companies looking to provide their employees with a positive experience serving on non-profit boards can start a coaching/match making service.

I like the idea of taking the time to perform a diligent examination of your options, expectations of membership, mission and other details to assure your interest in the cause. I don’t see too many companies investing the resources to create such an office, especially in these economic times. I am wondering if this might be a task better suited to chambers of commerce or local chapters of the United Way. A centralized resource like this would be a benefit to a wider range of people and organizations than one limited to a few companies who are able to support the activities. And perhaps the central office could make an effort in concert with its members to encourage the Gen X/Y set to explore joining boards.

And if that works, maybe someone will work up a questionnaire and algorithm and make it an online service. Maybe I should go off and register BoardChemistry.com right now!

Bonus Link- Hat Tip again to Non-Profit Law blog who linked to the document the IRS uses to evaluate your non-profit during an audit.

Art. IT CAN INFECT YOUR BRAIN!!!!!

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Before the Christmas holidays I was watching a TED video of Golan Levin using interactive technology to manifest visual art in response to human action. The video is pretty cool itself, but there is a section starting around 6:30 (video embeded below) with Jaap Blonk performing Kurt Schwitters’ tone poem The Ursonate. (There is a longer YouTube video segment of Blonk’s performance here.)

Much to my surprise, the cadence of Blonk’s recitation ran around in my head for a few days after. I don’t know if it qualifies as an ear worm since I couldn’t tell you a single word. Though I could spout nonsense syllables in an approximation of Blonk’s performance. Maybe that is the point. The experience sent me to a website containing recordings of the work, including two by Blonk whose delivery varies in the two decades between the recordings.

I am sure if I started pondering the intent beyond the composition, I would be told I was over thinking it. But I am also certain that like the works of e.e. cummings, there was a great deal more energy invested in its creation than is initially apparent.

I immediately thought of my undergrad acting classes where we were supposed to carry on a conversation using numbers rather than words communicating our intent employing various vocal qualities. We generally limited ourselves to a pretty narrow range of expression.

I probably wouldn’t have appreciated the performances back then. Listening to Blonk’s and some of Schwitters’ recitations today, I recognize just how fun language can be. (I haven’t listened to all the different recordings.) Blonk especially seems like he enjoys playing with the sounds, luxuriating in the pleasure of pronunciation and takes joy in the enthusiastic exclamations. (I didn’t watch the YouTube video above until after I listened to the audio so my impression of his joy is almost entirely aural.)

By listening to vocalizations that are bereft of meaning, I also feel like I gained slightly more insight about how music acquires intellectual significance for people.

This is what is so great about the arts to me. I watched the TED video because I have an interest in technology and the arts. I thought the inclusion of Blonk’s recitation was fun, but it didn’t especially excite me. I wasn’t about to seek out performances of Dada tone poems at the end of the video. But something about it penetrated into my brain where it was identified as interesting compelling me to return for further investigation.

 

Ah, Proscenium!

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I am beginning to understand why performance spaces were constructed in the first place. I have done some talking in the past about how performances may need to be uncoupled from the traditional performance spaces to have significance to audiences whose entertainment experiences continue to evolve. But now that I am actually trying to do that…. Well, I begin to see the wisdom of having a controllable environment.

I think the problem is that we are trying to offer people a traditional experience in a non-traditional space. I have moved performance operations to remote locations and run outdoor music festivals so I am familiar with the logistics of having performances in places that were not designed to accommodate them. Some of that will help me make arrangements for our site specific production, the Celebrity Project. In the long run though I think committing to taking art out of the traditional spaces is going to require a concomitant effort to change expectations about where and how arts can be experienced. (And yes, it certainly can be argued we are trailing so far behind in that respect, we may not be in the position to shape and define these expectations.)

But in some ways, I think we are hobbling ourselves by cleaving to old practices. Our concerns revolve around getting enough lighting equipment to different outdoor locations. People will move between different locations, but will stay there for a long enough time that they may want to sit so we will have chairs set up. But the chairs need to be set up in a way that has good sight lines but doesn’t congest the movement of people between different areas.

I am starting to think that next time maybe the site specific show needs to make more use of the site specific features like natural light. The Greeks might have been big on outdoor theatre, but they knew the natural features were of great importance. But with a show dealing with celebrity, moments in the limelight certainly can’t be neglected. Modern technology helps us cheat a little and put shows where we want them rather than needing to places with natural sound reinforcement.

Part of this is because are somewhat slaves to audience expectations. If we have a show as an event rather than just a happening on the street, people have a certain expectation of length to motivate them to make the drive. Comfort and accessibility for aging audiences during that time period need to be addressed. They will also want to see and hear everything that is going on from whatever vantage point they are at. All these considerations shape the staging and seating arrangements for our performance.

Most nights we only need to direct audiences to locations that meet these expectations once a night (we assume they can find their way back pretty well after intermission.) For this project, we will need a good plan for doing it multiple times over the course of an evening. So even as rehearsals start today, we are starting to plan. Though not too carefully too soon as I am sure the layout will change a number of times before the show opens.

Holiday Memes? Bah! Humbug!

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So our glorious Inside the Arts leader Drew McManus laid down a challenge of a Holiday Extremes Meme. Now, I think if you are a musician and can only name two of four good holiday concerts and one of the two (of four) worst concerts you name involves YOU performing, it isn’t quite fair to those of us who are non-musicians!

I have been to fewer holiday concerts than Drew, though I do remember the Christmas cantatas of my youth when the Catholic and Presbyterian congregations of my small community would come together so there would be enough people for a decent size choir.

One of my favorite Christmas music memories though was when I lived in Florida. There was a radio station in Tampa at the time which started playing Christmas music for hours on end starting Christmas Eve. There were some really great songs there that I had never heard before. You would go from Bing Crosby to “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and then back to some choir softly singing.

That was when I heard the Bob Rivers’ classic, “I Am Santa Claus”

I have great memories of driving up to my sister’s house at 5 am Christmas morning listening to the music. Unfortunately, there was a year of new management and they stopped that practice.

However, in the spirit of offering new songs for the season, I wanted to turn people on to one. Don’t be fooled by the band name, Hoots and Hellmouth, or the title, A Song for Solstice, I am not trying to undermine the religious nature of the holiday. It is a nice song for the season without being cloying. The music comes courtesy of public radio station, WXPN’s 2008 12 Days of Christmas where they offered 12 free downloads of holiday music from local artists.

A Song for Solstice was smack in the middle at Day 6. If you want to check out other alternative holiday songs, scroll around on the page. I admit to being a sentimental sucker for #4 Dan May’s “Christmas in My Hometown.”

Art That Scans

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I have a few more thoughts based on the Human Sigma book I have been discussing over the last few entries. However, I wanted to present some fun stuff I have recently come across as something of a palate cleanser before I move on.

In something of a reverse of Al Hirschfeld’s work where people would try to find a bit of information, the name Nina, in the lines of his art, a Japanese company has created art out of informational lines. Via Dark Roasted Blend are these great images made out of functioning bar codes. The company in question, Design Barcode, won a top advertising award in 2006 for their work which appears all over products in Japan. A short promo video they made claims they have never had a misread. To watch the movie, click the arrow in the upper left corner.

The other tidbit I thought I would share is a link to Richard Kessler’s blog, Dewey21C. I have been biting my tongue for the better part of a month over the comments he quotes in his entry, “The Things I Hear About Arts Education.” The tongue biting is my attempt not to make snarky remarks in reaction to some of the sentiments he cites.

Regardless, they bear reading since he says they are all real quotes because they represent a spectrum of views about arts education. Some of my favs:

We like arts because there are no wrong answers.
School Principal

We do not like the arts because there are no wrong answers.
CEO

Parents are the key to arts education.
Foundation Staff Member

Parents are a waste of time.
The very same Foundation Staff Member

Parents in low income areas don’t care about the arts.
Arts Education Consultant

We must do something about ensuring that artists entering schools have basic training.
Director of Arts Education/Cultural Organization

After all the training artists have already received, why should we have to receive additional training? We’re not teachers; we’re artists.
Teaching Artist

Emotional Satisfaction

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A two years ago I had been entranced by a comment Neill Roan made about arts administrators being so emotionally satisfied with their jobs, they didn’t feel the need to keep current on the latest literature and theories about arts administration. Earlier this year, I was in touch with Neill on another matter and asked him about the source he had cited. The book was Human Sigma by John Fleming and Jim Asplund.

Human Sigma and Emotional Satisfaction
I had assumed Human Sigma would be about psychology or the biological factors which emphasize or inhibit our actions. Instead, the book is a response to the Six Sigma process which the authors feel is detrimental to employee and customer interactions. Six Sigma seeks to reduce inefficiencies in the workplace. The authors note that human interactions, especially those with customers, are inherently inefficient and trying to make them otherwise can be alienating.

Biology does actually wield a lot of clout in our decision making processes. The authors cite NYU neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux who,

“has argued that it is much easier for emotional responses to influence our thinking than for rational responses to temper our emotions. This is because the neural pathways that extend from the emotional system to the cognitive or thinking system of the brain are wider and faster than those that extend from the cognitive system back to the emotional processing areas.”

This is a contributing factor to the field of behavioral economics which examines why people don’t always behave rationally in their own best interests. The book mostly focuses on employee and customer interactions. My intention is to talk about some of the things that caught my interest in this and future entries.

Even though the book doesn’t explicitly address how high emotional satisfaction can cause people to–well, it is difficult to find the right word because most either connote willful or unconscious neglect or incompetence, let’s say overlook—the need to keep abreast of latest developments, there is a lot be learned about how people make their decisions. In fact, some of this might help explain why people choose to devote themselves to causes with low material rewards like the arts in the first place.

Satisfaction Ain’t Enough
About 10 years ago I went to a session on customer service where the speaker said that satisfaction and competitive price doesn’t contribute to a long term relationship with a customer. She noted that people who were satisfied with the service they received would still defect to a competitor. The book breaks this down on a finer level distinguishing between those who are emotionally satisfied and those who are rationally satisfied. Those who are emotionally satisfied with a company have a far greater investment in the company than those who are rationally satisfied.

What surprised me was that those who are rationally satisfied “behave not any differently than customers who are dissatisfied.” They use the example of a credit card company. Those who were emotionally satisfied spent an average of $251/month and used the card 3.1 times a month. Those who were rationally satisfied spent an average of $136/month and used the card 2.5 times each month. Those who were dissatisfied also spent $136/month and used the card 2.2 times.

The authors make the point that tending to a person’s emotional satisfaction can actually enhance their material value to your company. Investment in relationships is an investment in the financial health of your organization. We in the arts should understand this because of our constant efforts to woo and maintain relationships with donors. Even though we have a list of benefits we provide for different levels of support, we will go above and beyond to stay in a donor’s good graces.

The example of the credit card company was really apt in my case. I just canceled the card I had for 20 years because I felt the card company violated our relationship. I started the card with a $500 limit in 1989 and had gradually built it up to nearly $30,000 after the last two decades. After the fiscal crisis in 2008, they cut my limit by more than half despite my excellent credit. I never needed anywhere near the limit, but it was a point of pride for me that I had built it up to that level. Not an easy thing to build excellent credit while working in the arts.

There was also some deceit a couple years back when Bank of America bought the credit card company. They sent me a letter saying my card number had been compromised. When I called to find out who had been lax with my card information so that I could avoid the company, they gave me the run around before finally admitting everyone got the letter as an incentive to move to the Bank of America card.

That episode made me leery, but it was the credit limit cut that sent me into the arms of my credit union. I tolerated all sorts of rate hikes and the suspicious changes of payment due dates, but when they attacked the source of my pride it was over.

When I called to cancel the card, they didn’t even try to stop me. I have heard stories about companies being willing to reduce interest rates and do other things to keep customers, but they didn’t even ask me to reconsider after I told them my reason. I wonder if they have received so many calls they have learned that there is no use in talking people out of it.

Who Knew They Were Talking To Theatre Guys Today?

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The assistant theatre manager and I team spoke about working in the arts at a high school career day yesterday. Ah, I forgot the joys of teenage apathy in the classroom! Actually, I think the lack of engagement we received was due to the design of the routing assignments the students were given. We were told that the students choose which speakers they wanted to hear. The reality was that they chose which career track in which they had an interest. We were part of the arts and communications track.

We didn’t discover this until about 5 minutes into the first session when we finished our intros and asked people about their arts involvement/interest and the response was barely tepid. It turned out that none of them knew they were going to a room where theatre people would be speaking. They had simply been assigned to the room. The same was true in the second session, only we asked earlier. Few in the room were involved in performance or visual art creation even as a hobby. Those that were didn’t seem to have a lot of confidence in their abilities and no one in the room was exclaiming that someone was being too humble and was actually awesome.

We had come prepared on selling the arts as a career, but this was going to be a tougher sell. At the same time, it was a really great opportunity to introduce the concept to people who had never really considered it. I am not sure how successful we were, but there were a couple people who stuck around after each session to ask us about our performances (we brought brochures, of course) and talk a little bit about their arts experiences.

Another benefit to speaking to this sort of audience was that they seemed to take our warnings about how tough it was to make a living in the arts seriously. There didn’t seem to be anyone who felt we were talking to the others people in the room who weren’t as talented as they. We didn’t just speak about having careers in stage, screen and art galleries but also noted the importance of creativity in the coming economy.

Next week were are speaking at the career day of another school. Knowing what we do now, I am going to contact them again and determine what it is exactly the students are selecting when they are choosing to attend our presentation. We had brought a simple powerpoint presentation comprised mostly of images of shows we had presented to give a sense of what opportunities were available. If the students we interact with next week are going to have the same level of awareness about the arts as those today did, we will probably alter the content a little to better suit our audience.

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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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