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Funding Available To Leverage Outcomes In Different Ways

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As part of the recent $17 billion settlement with Meta, each of the states and territories which were part of the lawsuit will receive a share.

Organizations in some of those states have already been provided preliminary notice that a portion of the state’s share of those funds will be made available to organizations within the state to provide different type of programming. The assumption is these funds will likely to distributed in forms of grants.

Here is the language from the settlement (Section G, Payment Purposes end of page 38)

Payment Purposes. The amount paid to each Settling State shall be used for any lawful purpose consistent with the Settling State’s Attorney General’s authority, such as the following remedial or restitutive purposes: 

(a) Crisis intervention services, specifically the expansion and operation of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and text-based youth crisis lines; 
(b) After-school or summer programs, such as sports, literacy, dance, and other activities; 
(c) Public health advertising credits; 
d) A digital wellness public education fund; 
(e) Funding outdoor activities;
 (f) Youth mental health programming; 
(g) Support the hiring of digital literacy counselors or implement phone-free school zones; 
(h) Training for medical providers on interactive media use and body dysmorphia; 
(i) Grants to school districts or other local government entities to accomplish any remedial purpose encompassed here; 
(j) Any similar remedial or restitutive purposes as those described above; and 
(k) Investigation, litigation, and related efforts to improve teen safety on social media.

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There was a post I made in August where I wrote about Angela Meleca’s observation that an unrealized outcome of an arts organization’s programming was workforce development despite the organization’s development director’s insistence that wasn’t part of their mission.

I encourage anyone looking to apply for a grant program related to these settlement monies to evaluate the outcomes of their existing programs and identify any that achieve results that may not fall within the traditional definition of arts and cultural programs.

As I had mentioned in that post, non-profit arts and cultural entities have frequently added programs in order to meet the requirements of grants. And this has placed additional burdens on staff and resources. This is not what I am advocating for.

If you have a program that has resulted in a reduction of body dysmorphia, increased mental health, seen youth so engaged they put aside their phones –even if that wasn’t the specific intent of the program. Think about how grant funding can expand your capacity in that area or provide some sort of adjacent programming. (i.e. Can lessons learned be of value to medical and mental health professionals.)

Success in getting a grant aligned with outcomes not traditionally associated with the arts may serve as a way to change the narrative with funders about the categories of support for which your work is eligible.

Myriad Methods Of Government Support Of Local Music

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Last November I had written about Huntsville, AL efforts to support the local music scene on a pretty granular level – house concerts in the city’s neighborhoods. The city was providing guidance on everything from noise ordinances, forming LLCs, liability insurance, and ticketing platforms.

About a week ago, Arts Midwest posted about research performed by Carl Atiya Swanson about music policy in different cities and states. In general, each of the locations is trying to preserve local music resources, some of which are being threatened by corporatization.

Some of the efforts involve surveying/taking a census of the general music landscape of the communities and creating networks and lines of communication so that musicians and venues can communicate with each other and the government.

Some of the efforts have involved really clarifying the parameters of noise ordinances and who can enforce them. As Swanson wrote regarding Washington D.C.’s 2024 ordinances

This represents one of the lowest hanging fruits for local government around noise issues—simply getting to clarity around who is responsible for noise policy, response, and enforcement.

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This resonated a bit with me because I had gotten a call a few weeks ago from someone who was getting complaints after they started offering live music. He wasn’t sure what the city ordinances were and wanted to know how we avoided complaints for our outdoor concerts. (Short answer, we don’t. People complain but we are well within the ordinance for both time of day and decibel level.)

Apparently New Orleans offers consultations and grants for noise mitigation work.

Other municipalities provide tax relief for small venues (Cleveland) or partial refunds of alcohol tax for venues and festivals (Texas).

There are links to many of these programs in Swanson’s piece if you are interested in learning more.

Success In Abandoning Economic Argument For the Arts

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Some students at Miami University did something last month I have been watching to see for a long time. They made an argument for the value of art to a governmental entity without using economic impact as a measure and apparently convinced the city council of Oxford, OH to take action.

According to Angela Meleca the student made an argument on the basis of well-being, belonging, and social connection after conducting a survey of 177 residents “five civic outcome categories: well-being, belonging, social connection, personal relevance, and perspective shift.”

The conversation didn’t move to whether the arts have value. It moved to: where should this go, how do we expand it, how do we integrate this into our planning process?

That is the shift. When you bring outcome data into the right room, the arts stop being defended and start being deployed.

[…]

Here’s what the data made possible that advocacy alone never could: Public art stopped being described as a cultural amenity. It started being described as infrastructure.

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In a separate post about a week later, Meleca said framing public art in the lens of the five civic outcomes is what shifted the perception from “nice to have” toward “must have.”

For decades, public art has been evaluated through output metrics: attendance figures, number of installations, and economic activity. Those measures keep public art classified as a cultural amenity rather than civic infrastructure.

The Oxford project used a different measurement framework.

Rather than counting outputs, it measured civic outcomes across five categories that decision-makers already use to justify public investment: well-being, belonging, social connection, personal relevance, and perspective shift.

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For over a decade now I have been arguing that economic impact and attendance aren’t a valid measure of the value of arts and culture. Just as Ruth Hartt notes that demographic data about your visitors doesn’t tell you about why people are participating and what they seek from an experience, economic impact doesn’t tell you how enjoyable the experience was and where the friction points might have been.

Billions are spent on construction new stadiums based on the projected economic impact. But does any of that tell you about a sense of well-being and social connection being engendered in your community? You might as well try to measure the value of a baseball game by the number of hot dogs sold.

I have been to some minor league baseball games in really small stadiums that may have cost $1 million to build, but maybe not. People are able to chat and mingle with others throughout the town and region. They feel comfortable letting their kids run around or hang out with other kids in the area foul balls are known to go.

It is much easier to lean over the railing to get something signed by the players. The fact you can get an all you can eat pass for popcorn and hot dogs for the season is part of the experience, but it isn’t the measure of value of the experience.

A minor league team logo on clothing might not have as broad a geographical cachet as the majors, but the presence of those stadiums and the experience they provide have a lot of value to the communities in which they are located for reasons other than economic impact.

Funding Goes Up In Smoke When People Stop Smoking

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ARTNews recently noted that Cleveland (OH) arts organizations have benefited from a share of a tax on cigarettes implemented for that purpose in 2007.

In fact, the funding distributed from that tax is almost six times as much as the entire state of OH has received from the National Endowment for the Arts in the same period.

 …Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the levy has supported the arts to the tune of $270 million since it was put into effect in 2007. The organization has given out some 4,000 grants to 485 nonprofit organizations, while, in the same time period, the entire state of Ohio has gotten just $48 million from the National Endowment for the Arts,…

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You may feel a little uneasy at the prospect of being in a position to even subconsciously hope people smoke more in order to ensure your arts organization’s financial health. You probably aren’t alone.

In fact, when Arts Midwest introduced their Creating Connection program to Build Public Will For Arts And Culture, one of the parallels they drew was the gradually growing effort to eliminate smoking in public places. Their goal was the opposite — cultivating a social environment in which people gradually expressed a desire for arts and cultural experiences.

Smoking rates in Cleveland, which were apparently far above the national average have dropped from 37% to 19% in the last decade. (Recall the tax has been in effect for nearly two decades.) While the revenue has fallen by half, voters supported doubling the tax on cigarettes last year.

Illinois Moves To Combat Deceptive Ticketing Practices

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About a year ago I had mentioned that states had begun creating legislation to combat problematic ticket resale practices given that legislation on the federal level was either slow to emerge or viewed as insufficient.

Recently, Illinois had joined the effort. In particular, they wanted to address the problem of speculative ticket sales:

“Every day, patrons are being sold what they believe are valid tickets, when, in reality, they are only paying for a chance that someone may be able to secure a seat,” said John Mangum, Lyric’s general director, who was also joined by leaders of The Auditorium and Harris Theater.

“This practice leads to confusion, frustration, and what many in our field now call ‘front-gate heartbreak,’ when audiences arrive at a performance only to learn that they do not actually have a valid admission ticket.”

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In some cases, the seats people purchase don’t exist either. The pavilion in which the Ravinia Festival occurs recently completed a renovation that changed their seating chart. However, the entities masquerading as the Festival’s ticket sales site are still selling tickets based on the old map which includes tickets that no longer exist.

I have run into the same issue at two venues for which I worked for the same reason. For a year or two after a renovation people show up with tickets for seats that no longer exist. It can be difficult to suppress a grimace and remain optimistic as you tell people they have been scammed and try to suggest options.

The story mentions that the Lyric Opera sets seats aside for those who arrive with fake tickets so they can see the show. But say this practice results in losses of $2500 to $5000. I am not clear if these losses are due to providing them seats at no cost rather than making them pay on top of what they already paid the scammer. If they feel the need to hold tickets aside that may mean the performances are well-attended and they are forgoing advance sales revenue and losing out when those tickets remain unused the day of the performance.

Succession Planning Case Study And Resources

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Last week, CreativeWest hosted a high quality webinar on succession planning. The guest speakers were Roy Hirabayshi, a founder of San Jose Taiko, and Tom Clareson of the Bay Area Arts Readiness Network ond Lyrasis. (Slide decks of their presentations are available.)

Roy talked about the succession planning San Jose Taiko undertook when he and his wife PJ, the Executive Director and Artistic Director, respectively, decided to retire.

I recall hearing when they retired but I was unaware they had started their succession planning seven years prior. What I found valuable about Roy’s presentation was his discussion of all the things they considered. It wasn’t just internal factors like who would succeed them, what records and information needed to be passed on, and what the impact of losing the institutional memory of two of the founders departing at the same time.

They were also concerned about the local community, including the Japantown community in San Jose. Their relationship with taiko groups in Japan and across the US, relationships with donors and funders. They worked across the succession preparation years to cultivate relationships between their successors and these external entities so that there was a level of comfort and familiarity.

They also recognized that there was a need to pay attention to cultural stewardship elements, including musical instruments, scores, and preservation of cultural expression which they embodied.

Tom Clareson’s presentation was more focused on the perspective of what do you do when you don’t have a lot of time to prepare for leadership transitions. Many of his suggestions fell into the general practice of regularly documenting and updating plans, descriptions of procedures, using a standard filing and naming process so that successors have an easier time accessing and understanding what needs to be done.

Emergencies and disasters played a big part in his presentation as well. Even if there is no loss of personnel, having back-ups, redundancies, plans of action for continuing operations in the face of natural disasters, emergencies and technological crises is important.

He said they have added a new category known as Administrative Disasters which includes funding changes/cuts; reputational disasters, event cancellations, socio-political shifts, and succession planning, as areas non-profit organizations should prepare for.

His slide deck had a lot of resources and links related to these issues. Due to recent events he had a couple slides devoted to questions about how small organizations can do succession planning and maintain programmatic and collections management continuity during staffing/leadership gaps caused by the loss of federal funding.

An A Corporation Affords Artists Alternatives

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I had seen a post on LinkedIn celebrating a bill establishing Artist Corporations passing out of committee in Colorado. Since I had never heard of that before, I did some additional research.

It is no wonder I hadn’t heard the term before. If it passes the full legislature, Colorado will be the first state to offer this corporate structure. Artists living anywhere would be able to incorporate themselves in Colorado.

According to Colorado Public Radio the goal is to make it easier for artists to incorporate versus a traditional LLC. Though the A-Corp website has a tool to help people determine whether an A-Corp or LLC would be better financially.

The A-Corp structure ensures artists maintain at least 51% ownership in order to protect their interests and the work they produce.

It also provides an option that falls between a traditional LLC and the reporting burden of a 501 (c) (3) non-profit structure:

“Structurally, we are forced into a binary. Either operate as a traditional for-profit business, which doesn’t account for our public impact or protect us fully, or form a nonprofit, which often comes with administrative burdens that are not feasible for individual artists or small teams.”

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This feature appealed to a senator representing a rural district as enabling creatives to thrive while offering programs and opportunities to smaller communities.

Another possible benefit providing leverage in negotiating health insurance.

“It allows there to be more of a collective power where, for example, we can go to insurance companies and argue, ‘Hey, there should be a group plan for artists corporations. This is a great customer base for you to introduce a specific plan for,’” he said. “Whereas right now, artists have nothing like that.”

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Roots Of Ireland’s Basic Income For Artists Was 1981

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In the last couple weeks there have been articles about Ireland making their basic income for artists program permanent. What that means is that around 2000 artists will be randomly chosen by lottery to receive 325 euros (~$383 USD) a week for three years. Then another 2000 artists will be chosen. This mirrors the trial phase of the program which ran from 2022-2025 where 2000 artists out of 8000 applicants were chosen.

A few days later another article took a more in depth look at the program. That article noted that while a lot of those in the trial program saw an improvement in quality of life, a lot of artists were obviously left out. The fact the new program is limited to 2000 people and cycles every three years means a lot of other people will be left out.

That said, Ireland is believed to be the only country to have made a basic income program for artists permanent. Now there are movements to try to do the same for other industries such as fishing, farming and weather based tourist attractions.

What I really found interesting was the recounting of the lengthy process that lead to the establishment of the guaranteed basic income program. Apparently, Ireland’s Greens Party had been interested in the concept back in 1981. Energy didn’t really coalesce around creating a program until the sense of desperation that existed during Covid shutdowns.

Then Minister for Arts Catherine Martin created the trail program. People interviewed for the piece credit Martin with investing the time and energy to make it a reality and then moving it toward becoming a permanent feature.

Basic income for artists was the first. “And it landed at a time when I think government was very open to thinking outside the box.”

It coincided with a “hearts and minds” campaign undertaken by the NCFA about the importance of the arts and a grassroots campaign in every county. There was also a higher than usual appreciation for the arts due to the successive lockdowns. “Then it was ‘over to you, minister’,” says Dorgan. “Catherine Martin spent every single cent of her political clout getting it through … It was her hill. And I think she was prepared to die on that hill.”

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Living in a world where we can access information and order things so quickly it is easy to forget that generating energy and interest around an idea in order to bring large scale change sometimes takes decades. A lot of the basic work has to be done in order to take advantage of a moment of openness that occurred in Ireland during Covid.

It will be interesting to see if Ireland is able to expand the program to a broader range of artists and industries.

As a caveat to all this, I want to link back to a post I did in October 2025 on research that found basic income programs tend to emphasize a narrow set of positive outcomes and downplay significant areas of participants lives which did not improve. In many respects that may be an indication that the programs need to be designed to include a range of resources and support.

Case For Gov’t Support Of House Concerts

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FastCompany recently had a post by Matt Mandrella, the music officer for Huntsville, AL advocating for cities to support house concerts as a method for stimulating economic and creative vitality. According Mandrella, Huntsville has a handful of people who have set up their basements and garages to host concerts.

This raised a lot of questions in my mind about how the neighbors were impacted by traffic, parking, and possibly noise.

Mandrella said cities shouldn’t just be building amphitheaters (Huntsville has one), they should be supporting neighborhood level cultural infrastructure which are more fan and creator focused.

House shows fill a different and equally vital gap. They empower artists to control ticket prices and profit margins, bypassing bar-sales-driven venue models. They create peer networking opportunities and act as incubators for emerging talent, offering artists the chance to book, promote and manage shows on a small scale, thereby building skills that can scale to larger venues.  

Most importantly, house shows democratize music, embedding it in communities instead of keeping it behind ticketing paywalls. In short, they rebalance the live music economy. 

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He says among the things Huntsville is doing to support these small concert venues is helping people form LLCs in order to separate owners’ liability from their personal assets; advising on sound, lighting, and ticketing; having conversations about artist pay and sustainability.

And perhaps most importantly from the neighbors’ point of view – “Guiding artists through compliance with sound ordinances and neighborhood approvals.”

Mandrella also pitches vibrant house concert networks as a possible response to AI generated music in the sense that it creates local, accessible opportunities for people to connect with their neighbors and perhaps generate a sense of ownership and pride.

To some extent, this isn’t an entirely new idea. About 10 years ago I wrote about the PorchRokr Festival near Akron, OH where people hosted concerts on their porches. I subsequently became aware of other porch based concert series around the country. This is the first time I have read about a city intentionally working to create an infrastructure to support and encourage house concerts as a going concern.

Basic Guaranteed Income Programs Are Not A Cure All

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I have been reading and writing about Basic Guaranteed Income programs for quite a number of years. I was interested to see that Ireland decided to make their Basic Artist Income program permanent.

But I am also cautiously optimistic based on information I read back in August suggesting that basic guaranteed income programs aren’t as successful at achieving their goals as they may seem.

On The Argument, Kelsey Piper writes that solutions to poverty will require more than just giving people cash.

Multiple large, high-quality randomized studies are finding that guaranteed income transfers do not appear to produce sustained improvements in mental health, stress levels, physical health, child development outcomes or employment. Treated participants do work a little less, but shockingly, this doesn’t correspond with either lower stress levels or higher overall reported life satisfaction.

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This was the case regardless of how much people were getting. There have been separate studies conducted on programs where people received $333/month, $500/month, and $1000/month and the outcomes were similar.

In each case, compared to a control group that was getting between $20 and $50 a month, there was little change.

…$1,000 per month for three years, while the control group got $50 per month. They found that participants worked less — but nothing else improved. Not their health, not their sleep, not their jobs, not their education, and not even time spent with their children. They did experience a reduction in stress at the start of the study, but it quickly went away.

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To be clear, these studies found that people weren’t spending the extra money on “vice goods,” but rather on things they needed like food and clothing for their kids, paying down debt, etc. Different groups had different issues the money helped them with, and it definitely relieved some pressures but overall people’s lives and well-being didn’t improve.

Piper says that often journalists writing about these programs are cherry-picking those positive results from studies that are openly reporting the problems that have been observed. The promising news about these projects we often hear about are only part of the whole picture.

But the other side of this according to Piper, is that giving people money for very targeted purposes rather than a cure for all that ails a group do show promise. She cites programs giving cash to pregnant women to improve pregnancy outcomes and cash for parolees to prevent recidivism as among those currently under study.

So in that regard, the Irish program which was created to enable working artists to continue to be productive during Covid has been successful. The support has reportedly enabled artists to spend up to an additional 4 hours a week engaging in creative activities.

Even The IRS Is Questioning Value of DAFs

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Last week Alan Harrison did an analysis on Donor Advised Funds (DAF), the relative value of the funds disbursed and some of the loopholes provided by DAFs.

One of the things he notes is that when someone puts money into a donor advised fund, they receive the tax deduction credit for that amount today, but unlike foundations there are no requirements to disburse any of the funds in any particular year.

I have discussed this and other issues in other posts I have made over the years.

Harrison notes that if you assume 3% inflation, by the end of 10 years $100 in a DAF is only worth $78.30 in buying power. On the other hand, the value of that tax deduction will be worth $134.39 in 2034 dollars due to that same inflation.

He also notes that while you can’t use DAF money to lobby, you can direct money to the lobbying arm of a non-profit which can spend up to $1,000.000/year on lobbying. So you are essentially getting a deduction to support lobbying. Generally, non-profit lobbying groups aren’t classified in such a way as to allow a tax deduction.

I have not double checked this suggestion that DAFs are permitted to give to non-profits without tax deductible status, but Harrison cites a piece on Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy includes this among other abuses of DAFs including:

…, “DAF to DAF transfers” offered a particularly rotten result:

“…although they were recorded as grants to charities, charitable organizations did not receive funds as a result of these transfers.”

Other abuses include:

“Private foundations are not allowed to lobby, whereas publicly supported entities can spend up to $1 million per year on lobbying without penalty. If funds flow relatedly from DAFs to a variety of recipients, the donors can greatly expand the $1 million threshold.”

“the funds can remain in the DAF indefinitely because there is no required timeframe for distributions.”

“counting private foundation to DAF distributions as qualifying distributions has become a way for private foundations to circumvent the 5% minimum distribution requirement”

“a small group of donors may have disproportional impacts on charitable giving — including the cause, timing, and amounts.”

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Apparently even the IRS has been having doubts about the value of DAFs according to a link to an IRS publication Harrison provides.

“The IRS is aware of a number of organizations that appeared to have abused the basic concepts underlying donor-advised funds. These organizations, promoted as donor-advised funds, appear to be established for the purpose of generating questionable charitable deductions, and providing impermissible economic benefits to donors and their families (including tax-sheltered investment income for the donors) and management fees for promoters.

impose section 4958 excise taxes on donors or managers of donor advised funds; and/or (d) deny or revoke the charity’s 501(c)(3) exemption.

Examinations of these arrangements may result in the following Service actions in appropriate cases:

disallow deductions for charitable contributions under Internal Revenue Code section 170 for payments to the fund;

impose section 4966 excise taxes on sponsoring organizations and managers of donor-advised funds;

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Should There Be More Discussion of Mid & Long Range Collective Advocacy Plans?

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Oregon Arts Watch (h/t Artsjournal.com) provided some insight into a state advocacy group’s two year plan to propose a redesign of the state’s funding arts model in light of the national political environment.

Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon is soliciting feedback through six in-person and one online forums and a survey of arts and cultural organizations around the state.

What caught my attention was the discussion of their advocacy schedule for 2026 and 20227 based on feedback they had received from the state legislature. I had not really seen a state advocacy group provide as much detail and insight about mid-range plans advocacy plans to its members.

Granted, the states in which I have lived may not have had legislative sessions whose lengths varied so greatly on alternating years as Oregon’s does.

But often communication from advocacy groups is along the lines of needing members to call/write representatives in the next two weeks about a specific bill and to turn out on advocacy day at the legislature. The effort in Oregon outlines what they are doing now and through 2026 in preparation for 2027.

According to Hildick, legislative leaders have said the 2026 session, which is limited to a maximum of 35 days, will not have enough time to consider any comprehensive reforms or programs, no matter how justified. That means the results of The Big/Rethink will be presented in 2027, when the semi-annual “long sessions” can last up to 160 days.

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The NEA At 60, Through The Eyes Of Past Chairs

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Last week, the Arts Management program at American University released a series of video interviews with the former chairs of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) on the occasion of the NEA’s 60th anniversary.

These chairs are Jane Alexander, Bill Ivey, Dana Gioia, Jane Chu, Rocco Landesman, Maria Rosario Jackson. While the video says they interviewed seven chairs, only six videos are available. Perhaps Mary Anne Carter was interviewed but wasn’t videotaped.

There is a summary video of some of each of their thoughts which is interesting to watch.

There are also longer individual video interviews with each that I have linked to each name above. I haven’t listened to all of them as of this posting time, but it is interesting to see what each valued and brought to the job.

Jane Chu talked about how her father died when she was 9 years old and she didn’t have the words at that age to express what she was feeling, but that art provided her with an outlet. A fair bit of her focus was on the importance of the arts for social cohesion and self-expression. She cited some examples of how recognition of creative intelligence reveals aspects of people that measures of academic intelligence don’t.

Dana Gioia was apparently the first chair who set a goal to have at least one grant in every Congressional district. He said that given every district has about three-quarters of a million people in it, there must be at least one organization in there that was doing something worthy of a grant. He said this changed the relationship of the NEA with Congress and the people of many districts.

Though he also relates an anecdote where he essentially strong armed a Congressman into attending an advocacy meeting where the representative realized a lot of his campaign donors were passionate about the arts. He makes the point that legislators’ view of things is filtered through their staff so often direct interaction and advocacy is necessary.

Jane Alexander faced something of a similar situation when she was appointed in 1993 during a big uproar over the types of work the NEA was supporting. She said she realized she needed to better communicate the work of the NEA. So she visited over 200 communities soon after she was appointed. She said once people understood that NEA funds were supporting programs in their communities that they and their families valued, they began to advocate for continued support to their representatives and senators. Like Jane Chu she cited meeting people for whom the arts provided an outlet for expression during troubled times in their lives.

Rocco Landesman seemed relatively optimistic about the NEA’s future existence. Though he outright criticized the current politicization of the NEA where some of the other chairs were a little more circumspect.

Casino Developers Betting On Museums

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Hyperallergic had a story about a couple casino developers who offered to build museums as part of a bid open some casinos in NYC.

According to the story, one would have developed a $15 million civil rights museum and the other “….included a museum dedicated to freedom and democracy, featuring works by international artists as well as pieces of the Berlin Wall.”

Both proposals, which were among about a dozen others, failed to pass review by two committees on the basis “…. staunch neighborhood opposition, increased traffic congestion, and negative effects on quality of life in their neighborhoods. “

Many of those submitting proposals also promised to build things like schools, concert venues, affordable housing, and hotels.

Apparently, the proposed museums weren’t really an enticing feature and didn’t elicit much conversation among committee members. Though New Yorkers are likely a little jaded by the plethora of museums and galleries available to them. In other communities the museums might have been more compelling elements.

A competing developer suggested

“…that the inclusion of a cultural institution as an amenity was merely a cynical ploy for public approval, rather than a sincere effort to improve communities. 

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This said, the group that proposed the civil rights museum said they intended to move ahead with the project which they claimed had many supporters. Hyperallergic noted they didn’t comment on the site of the museum and who those supporters might be.

One member of the committee reviewing the proposals was concerned about the casinos competing with other cultural icons.

 He ultimately opposed the proposal because he feared the resort would detract from the Broadway theater industry, and because he did not trust the applicant to keep promises for future housing units.

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A former commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs said that pairing casinos with cultural organizations wasn’t an absurd idea, but did warn that the association may mar the image of the museum.

“Museums have to be cautious about what this does to their reputation,” Finkelpearl said, predicting that cultural institutions “will come under all kinds of fire if they’re seen as the group that opened the door for this use that people don’t want in the neighborhood.”

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Artsjournal.com just linked to a piece on Artnet discussing this very topic of how corporate sponsorship can be a fraught topic for museums.

“There is no clear line as to what is considered good money versus bad money when it comes to corporate sponsorship,” said Leslie Ramos, co-founder of art philanthropy advisory firm The Twentieth, …“How long is a piece of string? What is considered a potentially good company and reputable company today is not necessarily going to be considered a good company in 10 or 20 years time.”

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Economist View Of The Conflicting Tensions In Arts And Culture

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Economist Tyler Cowen was interviewed by his colleague Alex Taborrak about Cowen’s 1998 book, In Praise of Commercial Culture . (Transcript) Apparently this was the book that put Cowen on the map and garnered him recognition.

Cowen talks about a lot of the debates around culture and art that still continue today.

One of the first things that caught my attention was the question of doing art which is challenging and hones the artist craft vs. doing it for commercial success which I mentioned in a post about Seth Godin’s thoughts about aligning organizational practice with the values it espouses.

Cowen said those concepts weren’t considered mutually exclusive by classical musicians and artists.

If you read the letters of Mozart or Beethoven, they’re obsessed with money. They seem to be quite good bargainers. They always want more money. You might think they’re greedy, but also money is a means toward realizing your art. How good a piano can I buy or how good an orchestra can I work with, or can I travel to give a concert in Prague or Vienna?

The more an artist cares about art in many situations, the more they’re going to care about money. It’s a very simple point. At the time or even still, you didn’t hear it much. It’s always money versus art rather than you can care about money as a means to your art. 

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In another interesting segment of their conversation, Cowen says that governments often facilitate the creation of great art at the inception of their efforts before things either become too politicized or made mediocre by the need to please the consensus.

All this came to a head in the 1990s, disputes over what the National Endowment for the Arts in America was funding. Some of it, of course, was obscene. Some of it was obscene and pretty good. Some of it was obscene and terrible.

What ended up happening is the whole process got bureaucratized. The NEA ended up afraid to make highly controversial grants. They spend more on overhead. They send more around to the states. Now, it’s much more boring. It seems obvious in retrospect. The NEA did a much better job in the 1960s, right after it was founded, when it was just a bunch of smart people sitting around a table saying, “Let’s send some money to this person,” and then they’d just do it, basically.

[…]

There are plenty of good cases where government does good things in the arts, often in the early stages of some process before it’s too politicized. I think some critics overlook that or don’t want to admit it.

Source

The whole interview is a little over an hour and covers other topics like: great art needing great audiences; artist compensation; more discussion about pursuit of art vs. creating for the market; group consumption of art is bad, you want to appeal to individual; the fact that people having greater wealth means niche artists and shows can receive support by appealing to individuals, but at the cost of fragmentation of shared culture; and the usual debate about whether modern art sucks.

It is either interesting or depressing that it is often difficult to determine whether their conversation is about the state of things today or what Cowen was observing about culture the late 1990s. It sort of indicates we are struggling with the same questions we were 25 years ago and haven’t arrived at the answers we need to move us forward.

Just the same, it is gratifying to have economists discussing the conflicting interests and views that exist in the arts and culture sector. It is something of a validation that these are real topics for consideration and not issues that have been manufactured internally.

Not Easy To Provide Cultural Experiences To A Nation’s 18 Year Olds

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Via a LinkedIn post by Rainer Glaap, I was disappointed to learn that Germany’s KluturPass program is being discontinued. (In German but most browsers can translate pretty well.) The program provided passes to 18 year olds that could be used to attend theater performances, cinema, purchase books, etc. The hope post-pandemic was to get young people out participating in cultural activities while also boosting the cash flow to cultural industries.

A number of European countries created similar programs which I have written about over the last five years or so.

The KulturPass program has been criticized for being a poor use of funds and has had funding cut a few times. Recently it was apparently determined the government doesn’t have the authority to fund the program.

The reason for this is an assessment by the Federal Court of Auditors, according to which the federal government lacks constitutional authority to finance the project. Based on this assessment, the non-partisan Minister of State for Culture, Wolfram Weimer, sees little chance for the culture pass. “From now on, we will intensify other projects to promote culture for young people,” Weimer said.

Source

According to another piece on the Politik & Kultur site to which Rainer linked, the implementation of the program was a little rough due to some young people not having the required Internet access and difficultly communicating the availability of the program due to privacy laws.

In a post Rainer made in 2023, he noted there were some pretty big hurdles to using the pass to purchase theater tickets. Apparently you could only use the pass through a central ticketing platform rather than reserving tickets directly with the theater. From what I understand, book stores had some of the best sales volume through the use of the app. It also sounds like a person would get a voucher rather than actual tickets.

Rainer wrote:

“However, anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of booking may initially struggle to find the right price category and discount, both at Eventim and in the theater’s online shop..”

Source

The writers at Politik & Kultur suggest that the program should be provided more time to work out the kinks and a commitment to more consistent support. They note that the parallel program in France started in 2021 and reaches 60% of 18 year olds (KulturPass got off the ground in 2023)

Continuing Need For “The Talk”

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A couple weeks ago I caught a news story about the California legislature restoring funding to a program which was focused on helping arts organizations make payroll after a 2019 state law required them to treat performers as employees rather than independent contractors.

The payroll fund, which only launched this year, is meant to offset the cost of complying with AB5, the 2019 law that requires theaters to treat performing artists as employees rather than independent contractors. Since the law’s enactment, small performing arts groups have seen their payroll expenses balloon.

The Equitable Payroll Fund is only available to nonprofits with an adjusted gross revenue under $2 million; organizations submit for reimbursements on their payroll expenses.

Source

This brought to mind concerns non-profits had back in 2016 when changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime exemption criteria meant that more employees would have to be paid overtime. I wrote a post back then about the unscrupulous plans some arts organizations were discussing to get around the requirement. I also noted, some of the approaches groups were using were already illegal under the criteria that existed at the time.

When I made the post I suggested it was time to have a frank conversation with boards and funders about the true cost of running an arts organization rather than trying to generate some dodgy new approaches. Fortunately, as a result of pandemic restrictions and changes in working conditions, a large number of arts organization have adjusted their operational models and were forced to engage in these discussions.

That said, the ongoing funding cuts arts and cultural organizations are facing probably means this topic is going to need to be the focus of continuous conversations for many years.

National Park Service Belies The Image Of The Unimaginative Government Agency

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Government agencies tend to have a reputation for being dull, unimaginative, and rule bound. Speaking from experience, I can confirm there is good reason for that reputation.

I have to say though that the National Park Service social media accounts can serve as an exemplar for most commercial and non-profit enterprises. There is a engaging goofiness to their posts where they mix humor with educational content about the parks.

Interestingly, the best content seems to be on LinkedIn. Though since they don’t post the same content on every social media site on the same day, I may have missed some posts on Facebook and X that may have appeared further back than I scrolled.

For example, a post today on LinkedIn about splooting (basically animals splaying their bodies out to keep cool) appeared a couple days ago on Facebook.

Last week there was a post that started “It’s not the heat that gets you, it’s the dinosaurs. 🦖 Well, it may be just the heat.” It went on to talk about the importance of staying hydrated during the summer with references to hallucinating about dinosaurs as well as references to Jurassic Park.

💧Drink water often. Stay hydrated and drink before you feel thirsty. Plan to bring extra water just in case you need to place a cup on your dashboard to watch for concentric ripples portending the arrival of a large creature.

Source

The post ends with a picture of a guy in a dino suit eating a park ranger which they caption

Image: This ranger was clearly not hydrated. Costumed dinosaur and a ranger have an awkward encounter in front of the Dinosaur National Monument sign.

Source

There was a really extensive post on Friday the 13th referencing all sorts of horror film lore while warning about approaching animals and living camp fires burning.

3: Like, he’s not that cute. 🦬

Oh my gosh, like, as if! That squirrel is, like, totally adorbs with its fluffy tail and those cute little paws. And that bison, like, needs a friend for sure, but, like, let’s not forget that squirrels can totally bite, especially from the bitey end, and that the bison has all the friends they need. Now, like, who packed the bandages and the extra leg splint?

Source

However, one of my favorite posts in recent weeks was one where they asked viewers what their favorite National Park color palette was and matched palettes up with 12 different National Park sites.

We talk about how arts organizations need to emphasize their value to their communities. National Park Service social media staff does a great job of communicating that value and capturing the national imagination.

Will Cultural Prescriptions Come To NYC?

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Earlier this week Hyperallergic had an article about the cultural plans of two candidates for NYC mayor, Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani. From the article, it appears Lander has a more detailed plan, though polls of Democratic primary voters are more favorable to Mamdani and former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Part of Lander’s plan includes ““…cultural prescription program” that would allow doctors to “prescribe” art to promote holistic health. I have written about similar programs in Canada and Europe before. These programs generally take the form of passes to organizations and places.

Lander also wants to create more funding for smaller organizations and marginalized communities and create a deputy mayor for the arts and culture

He also wants to improve lease terms for creative spaces to address displacement; increase the membership of the Cultural Institutional Group (CIG) receiving funding from the city, which currently includes primarily major museums and organizations; and boost public school art programs.

Source

Mamdani is similarly focused on providing better accessibility to spaces for artists and organizations:

Mamdani emphasized the importance of affordability for artists in the city and reiterated his plans to build more affordable housing. Mamdani also said he would prioritize preventing New Yorkers from being “priced out” of the arts and securing more funding for arts education in public schools. 

Source

I will confess that my initial inclination was to wonder if these were just idealized plans and if the candidates had any concept of how they would be paid for. But then I was reminded that Lander is the NYC Comptroller so he is actually intimately familiar with the city’s budget and how it is spent.

New Compliance Requirements For NEA Grants

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There appear to be some significant changes in the grant procedures for the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to the end of the Challenge America grant program American Theatre Magazine reported changes in the compliance rules that have been recently added.

After listing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination Act, and Title IX, the page includes the following new requirements:

The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

The applicant will comply with all applicable Executive Orders while the award is being administered. Executive orders are posted at whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions.

The applicant’s compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the U.S. Government’s payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, dated January 21, 2025.

The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.

Source

The National Endowment for the Arts will be holding a seminar to discuss these changes and answer questions from 2 pm- 3 pm EST on Tuesday, February 18, 2025. The link to the Microsoft Teams Meeting may be found on the webinar page. If you miss the meeting, a link to the recording will be available on that page as well.

While it is for a different program, news sources are reporting a list of words that will trigger a manual review of papers and other documents submitted to the National Science Foundation and Centers of Disease Control.

Many of the words are ones that arts and cultural organizations have been using regularly for years like advocacy, barrier, biases, community diversity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, disabilities, diverse communities, equity, female, gender, inclusivity, historically, marginalize, sense of belonging, underserved, women.. That’s about 1/10 of the words on the list.

One City’s Cultural Budget Cut Exceeds Actual Culture Budget Of Multiple US Cities

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A story I was watching throughout December was the threat of Berlin cutting its funding for arts and culture. Right before Christmas, the city did indeed cut funding by $130 million which represents 12% of funding.

A lot of arts professionals in the US are probably thinking their city’s arts and culture budget isn’t anywhere near the $130 million being cut. In fact, many would feel blessed if their city had $1.3 million culture budget. So to a certain extent arts and cultural funding in Germany may still be the envy of much of the world.

This said, a lot of employment contracts aren’t being renewed and exhibition plans are being scrapped in Berlin. The laws associated with funding in Germany don’t allow private support to make up the difference.

German museums without private funding face particularly steep challenges, with fixed costs around operating collections consuming around 80 percent of budgets in many cases, leaving many exhibitions and auxiliary programs vulnerable to cancellation.

Some experts have pointed out that public museums in Germany aren’t legally able to rely on private philanthropy the way peer organizations in the U.S. and other parts of Europe do, making their futures, compared to international creative hubs less certain.

Source

An article earlier in December on Deutsche Welle looking at the impending cuts in Berlin raised the same question about whether Germany would be home to creative hubs any longer even as the city of Chemnitz, a 2025 European Capital of Culture, face budget cuts.

The eastern state of Saxony also faces a critical budget situation, with serious consequences for the cultural landscape of museums, theaters and orchestras. Hillmann said the theaters in Zwickau, Freiberg, Annaberg-Buchholz, Görlitz-Zittau and even Chemnitz — which will be a European Capital of Culture in 2025 — fear for their existence.

Source

Much as in the US, the chair of the German Stage Association, Lutz Hillmann, cites the work theaters in Germany are doing in the public sphere, moving beyond just presenting performances to become public gathering spaces and provide services to youth. Likewise, the role of culture in promotion democratic discourse in a time of divisive social dynamics was also raised.

Olaf Zimmermann, managing director of the German Cultural Council, takes the same line. “Right now, cultural venues are urgently needed to debate current issues, to offer places for democratic discourse, to stimulate reflection or simply to create cohesion,” Zimmermann wrote in the most recent issue of the association’s publication.

Source

Mistake Of Viewing Culture As An Industry

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Via Artsjournal.com, a thought provoking interview with Professor Justin O’Connor, author of the book, Culture Is Not An Industry.

His basic premise is that if culture was an industry, decisions about it would play a bigger role in international policy and relations.

If we treat culture as a real industry, in the classical sense of the word, a very different picture would emerge. It would involve competing with big players on a global level, making decisions about investing large amounts of money into key areas. You would need to focus on geographical concentrations, drive innovation, maximise profits and exports, and talk about industrial policy in the same way you would about electric vehicles, wine, or dairy industries. However, this is not the same as talking about culture and art.

He uses the example of South Korea’s focus since the 1990s to make music and television dramas into global products.

He says that the misclassification of cultural as an industry has created multiple problems and generally seen funding directed toward a few universities and think-tank groups which reinforce this state.

…the last forty years have shown that the reducing culture to an industry has led to the marginalisation of culture on policy agendas and scrapping it away from transformative policies. The ‘culture-as-an-industry’ discourse has worsened working conditions in the cultural sector pushed to spend increasingly more effort and time on quantifying its impact.

[…]

The beneficiaries of the creative industry narrative include various clusters and consortia centred around universities, research agencies, consultancies, and similar entities. These groups often have more influence on governments than artists and cultural workers.

O’Connor tends to be against speaking about culture in economic terms, but instead as an important element in achieving a livable society. The problem is, that narrative can be in conflict with the goals of governments and business.

Cultural life is an integral part of social and political life, essential in defining citizenship. Culture, therefore, deserves to be considered one of the foundational services that contribute to creating a livable society.

[…]

However, if the conversation shifts to viewing culture as part of the public service sector, as a right, or as a sustainable development goal, large corporations may not find it as appealing to be grouped with culture and the arts. It’s no surprise that the United States has resisted including culture as a sustainable development goal on the UN agenda.

Perhaps most interesting to me is his assertion at the end of the article that the cultural sector not speak in terms of intrinsic value of culture:

Then the distinction between ‘intrinsic’ and social and economic is itself a product of neoliberal economics. Separating out the ‘intrinsic’ is actually a form of neoclassical economic modelling where individual good is purely a matter of the individual and her credit card. It also acts as an oubliette into which art is dropped as policy makers hurry on to the economic value…Art and cultural value are actually established and shared socially, and the individual judgement of a particular piece of art (song, video game, film) is part of our ongoing conversation about what we value as a society.

The world of culture is about the production and distribution of what we call art and culture: highly symbolic things, such as songs, plays, films, books, games, and paintings. The responsibility of the cultural sector is to take care of this world of symbolic things that has historically proven to be highly valuable to societies, and to support the people who create these symbolic things.

This gives me a lot to think about. My instinct is that what O’Connor is proposing is the next phase of my understanding about why we shouldn’t use economic value as a measure of the value of arts and culture. This deepens my understanding of why this argument is problematic. I regret that my old friend Carter Gilles is no longer alive to help me sort through these implications.

Music Preference And Morals – Do Evil Geniuses Really Love Classical Music?

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When I saw a link on Artsjournal.com to a research study on PLOS One exploring the link between music and morality, I was half expecting to discover that evil people do prefer classical music, bolstering the stereotype of movie villains who apparently love playing that music to accompany their nefarious scheming.

Alas, the researchers didn’t specifically address that highly relevant question. I did learn that there has been a lot more research into the connections between music preference and personality types than I imagined. The literature/previous research review at the start of the research findings discuss those findings if that sounds interesting.

Rather than plotting on a good/evil axis which would require judgment calls, the researchers categorized different ends of the moral spectrum as:

“Individualising (Care and Fairness), indicative of a more liberal perspective, and Binding (Purity, Authority and Loyalty), indicative of a more conservative outlook.”

Looking at everything from lyrics, timbre, and audio elements. In the results section of the study they note the following correlations:

From the perspective of the lyrics’ linguistic cues, we saw that people who value more foundations related to Care and Fairness (Individualising values) prefer artists whose songs’ textual content is about care and joy. Those concerned more about Loyalty, Authority and Purity (Binding or ingroup) foundations tend to choose artists whose songs’ lyrics talk about fairness, sanctity, and love.

Also, individuals with strong ingroup values tend to prefer artists whose lyrics have positive sentiments and talk about dominance. This is intelligible as individuals who value Binding and their social groups tend to engage in group activities such as sports, religious events, and political gatherings, which often make use of music to promote messages of power, unity, and victory (e.g. sports chants, church choirs, etc.). On the other hand, participants with high Binding scores tend to dislike songs with negative valence, violent narratives and songs that resonate with sadness, fear, and disgust.

From an audio perspective, we saw that participants with Binding values preferred more artists whose songs are danceable, loud and with more positive sounds. In contrast, participants with Individualising values chose more artists whose songs are smooth, acoustic and have less dynamic sounds

In terms of timbre, people oriented to Care and Fairness preferred smoother to louder. Binding oriented people preferred the loud, but only conventional rhythmic songs. Binding oriented individuals disliked loud, distorted, rebellious songs that aligned with timbres common in “hard rock, metal indie, pop, and electronic music.”

Like me, you may be wondering where people who enjoy loud, hard music with lyrics about struggle or darker themes. Reading through the study, it wasn’t really clear to me what sort of moral alignment those folks might have. I will confess that I didn’t quite understand some of the technical references to to things like BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) and what fell into those classifications.

One thing that amused me was the lengthy discussion of how preferred lyrics reflected moral value. As we all know, a lot of times people aren’t paying close attention to the lyrics and if they are, they may be getting some of them hilariously wrong. It may be that on the whole, lyrics and morals do track closely, but there have been a number of instances in the last few years where people loudly proclaim that an artist has betrayed the moral values they when they were popular 10-20 years ago and the general public cackles, “Were you paying attention to the lyrics?”

There is specific mention in the article about the choice of music at political rallies in the U.S. and how that often aligns with the general moral outlook of each group.

Wait, NZ Arts & Culture Sector GDP Grew At Nearly Twice The Rate Of The Whole Economy?

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A couple weeks ago, New Zealand’s Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage (MCH) proudly announced that the GDP growth for the Arts and Creativity Sector was nearly double that of the economy as a whole for a 12 month period ending March 2022.  “The GDP of $14.9b is a 12-month increase of 10% – compared to total economy GDP growth of 5.3%.”

Some of the highlights from the report:

  • There are more than 115,000 people whose primary employment is in the arts and creativity – that’s a 3.8% increase from March 2021 to March 2022.
  • There are almost 36,000 businesses in the sector
  • Over 10,000 Māori hold primary employment in the Arts and Creative Sector
  • The Māori arts and creative sector contributed more than $1.3 billion to GDP in Aotearoa

As I wrote back in 2017, Maori intellectual property rights has been a point of tension, because as has been the case with many indigenous cultures, there have been differences of understanding both in the wording of treaties and with the concepts of property ownerships.

I am not sure how the ministry categorizes what falls under art and what falls under creativity, but the arts alone account for a much smaller slice of that GDP number (.8%) according to the article summarizing the report. However, that part of the sector is still seeing pretty good growth with employment at 2.8% compared with the 3% for the country as a whole. While arts workers are far more likely to be self-employed than people in other parts of the economy, it is apparently a growth area.

I was pleased to read that most New Zealanders working in the arts sector were considered to be performing highly skilled work, especially in comparison with the rest of the occupations in the country.

In news that will come as no surprise to many, the Arts Sector has 11,641 self-employed workers – accounting for 42% of the sector’s workforce and more than double the total NZ self-employment rate (16.2%).

Interestingly, that rate has increased by 8.1% over the past 15 years compared to the overall self-employment rate in New Zealand which has decreased by 0.9%.

80.7% of the Arts sector workforce are employed in what is described as highly-skilled occupations. This is higher than for all occupations in New Zealand (38.4%).

That number doesn’t look set to drop – Infometrics estimates that between 2023-2028, there will be 10,091 total job openings in the Arts sector (30.3% expected to be new job growth) with three-quarters of those positions likely to be highly-skilled jobs.

Public Comment Praise Takeover Helps Renew Denver Guaranteed Basic Income Program

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Long time readers will be aware that I have been keeping an eye on guaranteed basic income programs in different communities, especially those that are designed to benefit artists.

Recently Denver agreed to renew their program for a second year to benefit unhoused groups. The pilot program had provided funding in different increments to people as part of an attempt to study what approaches were most effective.  I am unclear about whether they have settled on a standard amount to distribute as they move into the second year.

What caught my eye in a Vice article on the topic was the discussion of how the different advocacy groups went about lobbying for the continuation of the program, reversing the new mayor’s rejection of a proposal to renew the program.  Other groups looking to advocate for basic income programs, whether specifically for artists or not, may be able to learn from the Denver groups’ approach.

A coalition of about 20 groups advocated for the funding, including SEIU Local 105, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC), Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and Center for People With Disabilities. Advocates attended weekly city council meetings for 12 weeks wearing the color green (for money) and using the public comment period to praise the program.

“The Denver Guaranteed Income Coalition worked together to rally outside the Colorado state capitol, execute a 40-person public comment takeover at a city council meeting, send hundreds of emails to newly elected Mayor Johnston and city council members, and phone bank which resulted in over 2000 calls to Denver residents and subsequently dozens of calls to city council members,”

Covid Restrictions May Have Resulted In Increased Social Inertia

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I recently saw a link on a CityLab story noting that since the end of Covid restrictions, people appear to be less willing to venture outside of familiar neighborhoods and locales.

As of late 2021, people remained less likely to engage in social exploration, which the study authors define as the likelihood of visiting a new place where they earn significantly more or less than than the general population. Instead, they just returned to familiar destinations.

[…]

Fewer people are visiting attractions like museums, restaurants or parks that are outside their immediate mobility radius, and they’re spending less time among residents at different socioeconomic levels.

Outside of the concerns operators of arts organizations, restaurants, parks and other attractions may have about a drop in attendance and purchases, this has implications for the overall social cohesion in the US. While most cities studied experienced this drop of mobility, places that had fewer restrictions on public assembly and in-person office work saw a smaller decrease in relation to how much people were willing to circulate to unfamiliar locations.

If the narrowed social mobility habits of residents endure, policymakers will have to contend with an extended loss in income-diverse encounters — a trend likely to further exacerbate political polarization and diminish social capital.

Yabe said the research could help decision-makers get a better sense of the trade-offs as they try to strike a balance between safety and social cohesion.

It should be noted that while this report came out in 2023, it appears the most recent data was from the end of 2021 when people were still a little wary about moving around. While this situation may not exist to the same extent as late 2021, the implications still bear attention.

Sunk Cost Psychology Reinforces Added Hidden Ticket Fees

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A survey found that in the UK, 93% of event ticketers add “drip fees” on to transactions.  As you probably suspect, those are the undisclosed added fees that pop up as you go through the purchasing process.  They appear in more than just event ticket transactions. Though in the UK, event ticketers had added the fees at double the national average.

Drip pricing occurs when consumers are shown an initial price for a good/service (known as the base price) while additional fees are revealed (or “dripped”) later in the checkout process. These “dripped” fees can either be mandatory (e.g., booking fees) or optional (e.g., seat reservation on a flight). This practice means that consumers may be “baited” into choosing a product because of its (low) base price, yet possibly have to pay a much higher price to complete the purchase as consumers do not become aware of dripped fees until they have already started the checkout process.

As the article notes, one of the challenges to getting rid of the fees is that no one wants to be the first to provide the honest total price up front for fear of losing out to their competitors. If you see a flight for $99 and another for $250, the psychology of sunk cost will keep many people from abandoning a transaction in favor of the more honest airline after realizing the $99 ticket is $300 after fees because they have already spent a fair bit of time choosing seats, putting in address and credit card information.

Seeing that there is little benefit to being honest about the cost up front, many companies will resort to advertising a low price and then having add on fees for every choice you make.

Essentially what is required are rules to force people to reveal fees up front, or no one will do it. The danger is that unless the rules are particularly well-written, there are always opportunities label added fees in a way that slips through the cracks and then the whole practice starts over again.

Frank Lloyd Wright Didn’t Want A/C In Dallas Theater He Designed

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I came across an interesting story about the only theater designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  The 400 seat Kalita Humphreys Theater, constructed in 1959,  is one of the Dallas Theater Center‘s spaces, apparently one they primarily used prior to the 2009 completion of Dee & Charles Wyly Theater about two miles away.   The Kalita, as it is referred to in the story, is in need of some major repairs, many of which are outlined in the story.

The parts of the article which are most interesting to me are the influences, both good and bad, the famed architect had on the space. Tommie Ethington, who wrote the piece marvels at the intimacy of the space where you no more than 13 rows from the stage and the optical illusions created by windows, lack of right angles, and curve of the stairs.

Wright’s vision:

It involved eschewing the traditional setup, with a proscenium stage—in which audiences stare straight ahead with a single, framed view—and instead creating a circular, revolving stage that joined the actors and audience in a more unified space.

However, his vision was not always conducive to easily operating a theater. Wright would apparently have rather have staff move things by hand and audiences sweat than to install elevators and A/C.

Wright wanted windows at the back of the auditorium, but Baker worried they would interfere with stage lighting. Wright vehemently opposed a freight elevator, insisting that sets and props be wheeled up subterranean ramps (an elevator was secretly installed without Wright’s knowledge). Wright even went so far as to suggest no air-conditioning, a thought immediately dismissed by Texans who knew better.

According to his daughter Robyn Flatt, the first time Baker saw the plans for the theater, he told Wright they simply would not work. “Wright was furious,” she says. “He threw my dad out of [Wright’s home] Taliesin West and told him he could walk back to town.”

The city of Dallas technically owns the Kalita so funding for renovations will require their involvement to some extent. Political will is also involved in other respects in the form of Texas’ Drag Ban which is both noted in this article and in a Washington Post article that suggests Dallas Theater Center’s makes the mounting of the Rocky Horror Show at The Kalita a political act.

Fewer Non-Profits Engaging In Lobbying Advocacy Than 20 Years Ago

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According to a story on the Associated Press, fewer non-profits are engaging in lobbying efforts than 20 years ago. The Independent Sector had commissioned a study that found less than 1/3 of organizations engaged in lobbying over the last five years versus nearly 3/4  of organizations in 2000. Given that there was a lot of advocacy for Covid funding, these results make me wonder if more people weren’t engaged in lobbying in the last five years and didn’t consider what they were doing to be lobbying or if fewer entities did a lot of the heavy lifting versus twenty years ago.

The survey results do seem to indicate organizations are unaware of lobbying rules or uncomfortable with engaging in lobbying and lack the resources to participate.

And even though nonprofits work on a range of issues that are affected by policy choices, such as funding for the arts and science and policies on hot-button issues like abortion and gun control, less than one-third of nonprofits said they were well-versed in how to legally conduct advocacy campaigns and how much lobbying they were permitted to do. Twenty years ago more than half knew the rules, the survey found.

[…]

Holding nonprofits back, Watkins said, was a lack of money to hire full-time staff with policy expertise and fear that taking part in debates on policy matters or providing voters with nonpartisan voting guides would put their nonprofit status in jeopardy.

Independent Sector plans to conduct studies to dig deeper into the reasons for the decline, but experts said many nonprofits don’t have the money to engage in policy debates. And some organizations may fear taking public stances on issues, given the heated political environment.

Sticking their necks out could make them targets of political opponents, they said.

 

A number of survey responses seemed to indicate people were concerned about running afoul IRS rules that prohibit investing a substantial amount of time and resources into lobbying. Substantial is apparently a much higher bar than people realize, though obviously the term leaves a considerable amount of gray area open to interpretation.

While Gorovitz allowed that the IRS regulations on nonprofit advocacy can be confusing, the guidance provided by the agency, he said, is often misunderstood.

“It does not mean ‘don’t lobby,’” he said. “It means lobby. It’s an express invitation in the tax code that says you can lobby.”

Give A Kid A Culture Voucher And They Buy Books As Well As Experiences

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I have been keeping an eye on the cultural voucher programs various European countries employ to encourage young people to get out and engage in different experiences. The program differ in detail. There are some that provide rail passes to allow people to explore different geographic areas, including outside their own countries. Others are focused on arts and cultural experiences within the country.  I have written about Germany’s KulturPass before, but I recently caught a story about the most recent round of the program.

According to a recent article, as of August 9, in terms of units purchased since this year’s KulturPass program began on June 14, books and other printed materials have lead the way by far.  Then cinema tickets, concerts and theater, museums and parks, musical instruments, audio media and then sheet music.  In all, about 200,000 units have been purchased in the last two months. About 136,000 German 18 year olds have activated the passes worth €200 (US$219)

In terms of amount spent, concerts and theater lead the way given the greater cost. “….at something around or above €12 million (US$13.2); books follow with so €11 million (US$12.7 million); and cinema tickets follow in third place with €461,000 or more (US$505,900).”

Lest you think Germans are particularly bookish with 49% of voucher funds being used to purchase tomes, Italy has seen similar results with their pass.

“…Italy’s corresponding “18App”—the original “culture voucher” for young citizens in Europe. There, in 2021 specifically, the publishers association reported that 18-year-old Italians were spending 80 percent of their €500 vouchers on books during January and February of that year.”

Obviously, there may be differences in the design and implementation of the pass in Italy that encouraged larger purchases of books. The fact these numbers come from a period 10 months into the Covid pandemic when there were reduced opportunities for other activities likely influences the numbers as well. However, these programs are good examples of a tool to provide bottom up funding to provide a little stimulation to arts and culture organizations.

California Politicians Ask T. Swift To Postpone Shows In Solidarity With Union Strike

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Via the CityLab newsletter, Politico recently reported that the Lt. Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis, was among a number of politicians calling upon Taylor Swift to postpone her shows in Los Angeles to stand in solidarity with hotel workers who are striking for better pay and working conditions.

In the open letter to Swift, Kounalakis and the others wrote that the tour makes area hotels lots of money — with Los Angeles area businesses “doubling and tripling what they charge because you are coming.”

At the same time, the group wrote, many hotel housekeepers and other workers in the region can’t afford to live close to their jobs and some sleep in their cars and risk losing their homes.

“Hotel workers are fighting for their lives. They are fighting for a living wage. They have gone on strike. Now, they are asking for your support,” they wrote. “Speak Now! Stand with hotel workers and postpone your concerts.”

I have a lot of mixed thoughts about this just in terms of how responsive politicians are when the arts and culture sector lobbies for their support. How big and influential you need to be for politicians to pay attention to you. I also wonder how serious the politicians may be in making this request. Are they just posturing to make political points or are they really resolved to bear the consequences if Swift does decide to postpone the shows, potentially raising the ire of fans, but also other workers and companies that stand to benefit economically from the concerts. Apparently the tour has been paying out bonuses to the tour crew.

I am not saying that the striking hotel workers aren’t worthy of support.  It would definitely have a huge impact on behalf of the union and draw attention to their cause. It just feels like a cynical attempt to score points given that it is pretty safe bet that the shows will go on regardless of how loudly they request their postponement.

Bad News As Portland Announces Withdrawl From Regional Arts Group

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Some disappointing news out of Oregon. Portland is withdrawing support and participation from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC), an independent organization that handles granting and arts education activities in Portland and three surrounding counties. I had written about RACC and Portland’s support of arts and culture before. RACC had been strongly encouraging groups to work toward diversifying their boards, staff and audiences years before it became more of a national focus.

The city has been developing their own arts office which will take up much of the work RACC had done. According to the article, the relationship between the city and RACC had been strained for some time now.

Over the years the city has displayed unrest over the regional approach, with complaints from the city auditor’s office and some city council members that RACC wasn’t providing them with sufficient financial information.

[..]

What will the breakup mean for the city and its metropolitan neighbors? It comes at a time when the tri-county area is in the midst of developing a long-term strategy, called Our Creative Future, for regional arts: Presumably, that strategy-in-the-making will have to take a sharp turn.

Writing for Oregon Artswatch, Bob Hicks suggests the timing of this announcement introduces less stability to the already shaky operating environment arts and cultural organizations in the Portland are experiencing as they try to navigate a post-Covid losses, inflation and audience reluctance to return.

More Funding, But For Status Quo Or Difficult Change?

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There was a lot of chatter on the Twittersphere last week (which I guess is the X Corp-sphere now?) over a NY Times editorial that Isaac Butler wrote advocating for the federal government to do a big bail out of theater in the face of so many theater organizations failing.

While a lot of the comments on the NY Times article basically said theater is boring, too expensive and good riddance, folks who are more inside the arts either praised Butler’s proposal or suggested propping up a flawed business model would just perpetuate a bad situation. There were many such threads. Here is one:

 

Somewhat loudest among those opposing perpetuating the business model was Scott Walters whose thoughts you can see in that thread. He also wrote a piece on Substack expounding on his thoughts. While I don’t agree with everything Scott says, it will come as no surprise I do fall into the camp of feeling that arts organizations need to do a much better job of listening and cultivating better relationships with a broader segment of their communities. Scott suggests money be put into researching a variety of new business models, but there probably also needs to be a corresponding long term marketing campaign to normalize those approaches so that inertia doesn’t keep the non-profit model as the only acceptable one size fits all default in the minds of donors and possible funding sources.

Similarly, there should probably also be funding for consultants, partnerships, etc., which facilitate cultivating better community ties. Again that would need to be varied in application. In the last community in which I worked, funding would be useful in one way, but in the community in which I currently work, it would be better used strengthening an organization with good connections, but few resources. The stronger they got, the better position they would be in to facilitate the conversations and relationships I need to have with the community.

All that takes a lot of funding so obviously I am with Butler in calling for greater amounts of funding for the arts in general. I didn’t particularly like his comparison the funding levels in England because I have seen so many stories about that becoming increasingly restrictive over the years. I saw a tweet over the weekend from someone suggesting while England was funded the arts at a higher level than the US, it was a bad example because their per capita funding practices were pitiful compared to the rest of Europe. Butler replied that he felt he had to use England as an example because no one would believe him if he cited Germany’s numbers.

You Can’t Measure The Value Of Arts In Dollars, But Not Having It Will Cost You

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A couple weeks ago in The Globe & Mail, Max Wyman wrote an opinion piece declaring the value of art and culture in Canada shouldn’t just be measured by economic standards. Long time readers know this argument is a particular interest of mine.

Wyman writes:

Typically, if you can’t value the outcome in dollars, it doesn’t count. And it’s hard to show the value of art and culture on a cost-benefit graph. Even when they do come up with more cash, it’s usually for economic reasons. Just recently, for instance, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a new investment of £50-billion ($84-billion) to “grow the creative industries,” in the name of adding a million extra jobs in the country’s cultural sector by 2030.

He goes on to note that arts and cultural organizations are becoming more adept at discussing related benefits such as making communities desirable places to live and contributing to physical and mental health and well-being.

He goes on to cite a study that asked nearly 2000 visitors to 11 U.S. museums to place a value on the contribution to their well-being the museum visit had made. While they got an interesting result, it is somewhat unfortunately couched in economic terms.

…to assess the way their museum experiences improved their well-being in four categories – personal, intellectual, social and physical – and to put a price on those benefits on a sliding scale from US$0 to US$1,000. They came up with an average cash value, per individual visit, of US$905. When the study’s authors extrapolated this information on a national scale, they calculated an annual economic value of US$52-billion in public well-being for museum visitors.

I know, I know: small sample, based on entirely personal valuations. But in an interview with The Art Newspaper, Will Cary, the chief operating officer of the Barnes Foundation (which took part in the study), said the research gives funders and policy makers “a compelling, quantitative argument that thriving, well-supported cultural institutions are not ‘nice-to-haves,’ they are ‘need-to-haves’ and that the return on their investment is significant and multifaceted.”

As something of a supplement to this article, I was listening to a Wisconsin Public Radio story, (probably saw it on Artsjournal.com) where a caller (~11:45) said a company was visiting their village to determine whether they would site their company there or in NC. The caller, who said he served on the village council, said the company rep said his wife was into arts and the community and she will never live here. The caller said they basically lost a company that was going to employ 250 because they lacked an arts and culture infrastructure.

Non-Profits Didn’t Volunteer For Mandatory Volunteerism

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It is likely you haven’t been able to avoid the seemingly incessant discussion about the negotiations to raise the debt limit. If you haven’t been able to muster the zen-like state of letting the details of those negotiations pass through one ear and out the other, you may recall that work requirements for those receiving financial aid some some sort has been one of the sticking points.

In a post on the For Purpose Law Group blog, Linda J. Rosenthal writes about how mandatory volunteerism is a bad idea. In her piece, which contains dozens of links to studies and opinion pieces on the topic, she applies this sentiment not only to government mandates, but graduation requirements for students as well.

Of all the pieces to which she links, a statement by the National Council of Non-profits provides the most succinct summation about why this is such a bad policy. (my emphasis)

Mandatory volunteerism is harmful because the policy imposes increased costs, burdens, and liabilities on nonprofits by an influx of coerced individuals. Few if any of the mandatory volunteerism bill sponsors ever ask whether nonprofits in their communities can handle an onslaught of hundreds or thousands of individuals showing up on nonprofit doorsteps for the purpose of doing time rather than doing good.

They go on to say that they oppose any efforts that tie receipt of benefits to a requirement to volunteer because they “impose increased costs, burdens, and liabilities on nonprofits by an influx of coerced individuals.”

A number of the articles linked by Rosenthal also address the oxymoronic nature of “mandatory volunteerism,” especially in the name of trying to engender a sense of civic mindness and charity in students by refusing to let them graduate if they don’t complete their hours.

Taking A Look At A Good Old Fashion Case Study

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The blog for Master of Management in International Arts Management had a case study post by Donna S. Finley and Vijay Sathe examining how the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) and Alberta Ballet (AB) had revamped their business model in an attempt to stabilize their finances.

Feels like it has been awhile since I covered a good old fashioned case study.

One of the first things that Finley and Sathe discuss is that both organizations recognized they were already essentially serving the bulk of their core markets and that growth would only come from identifying new market segments:

At CPO, audience research led to the identification of two new audience segments: those attracted by the flexibility of single-ticket sales, and those seeking to enjoy classical music in non-traditional environments in a variety of venues within and outside of the city.

At AB, research revealed numerous new audience segments that all indicated a strong desire for before- and after-performance receptions, dining opportunities, special events for youth to meet dancers and purchase products and memorabilia, and alternative, more personal and customized venue experiences.

While these are programming and ticketing choices that have been identified as areas of opportunity for a large number of arts and cultural organizations, there was an additional area of growth Finley and Sathe mentioned that left me wanting to know more:

At CPO, new and unusual settings were found and facilitated both the renewal of traditional repertoire and the introduction of new works. New business focused on joint community programming initiatives, whereby revenues and expenses could be split between CPO and a community group such as the Rotary Club or the South Asian Association. The Orchestra found an immediate new revenue opportunity within services it had historically undervalued.

I was curious to know how this manifested. It sounds like Rotary or South Asian Association were co-sponsoring or partnering with CPO on producing new and traditional works in novel locations, but I wanted to know more about how the programming was executed, what attendance was like, if there was revenue sharing between CPO and the community organizations. Basically, all the stuff an arts administration and policy nerd gets excited by.

Another major point touched upon in the case study was both organization’s attempts to stabilize the cycle of engaging in capitalization campaigns, spending the money, then engaging in another campaign, all in the face of decreasing donations and funding. Especially while faced with the impacts of Covid. One of the things they did was outsource administrative functions to third party services providers with far more expertise which apparently saw a great deal of cost savings. When I first read the post, I thought perhaps both organizations had consolidated their back office functions in partnership with each other, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Unfortunately, they also realized savings by cutting artists contract weeks:

“…reducing musician weeks from 46 to 40 per year and dancer weeks from 42 to 36 per year; and, at CPO, reducing staff salaries by 20% while simultaneously introducing an incentive pay component with upside potential based on the entrepreneurial success in tapping new markets.”

The description of the entrepreneurial programs of both organizations were pretty general. (Granted, the title of the article does include “abridged.”) Apparently, for CPO the success of those efforts “more than made up for the 20% decrease in their base salary as part of the cost-cutting measures.”

What caught my eye was an apparent admission that for both organizations:

“… The artistic side, comprising the Artistic Director and their respective teams of artists, made its plans and decisions in isolation – disconnected from all or most aspects of the business operations.”

As a solution, both organizations are working toward streamlining their planning and reporting structures

Artist Housing Can Be A Point Of Compromise…And That Isn’t Always A Good Thing

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Back in February, Bloomberg had a story about a housing project proposed in an old police station in Silver Springs, MD where the desire for affordable housing and artist housing was bridged by Minneapolis developer Artspace. If you aren’t familiar with the organization, they work on/consult on artist housing projects across the country and currently have about 60 buildings running under their program. Not every project is residential. In some cases, they are performance and assembly spaces.

This includes the city in which I am currently living in CO. There is one completed building and another in the process of being renovated. I suspected I might exceed their income parameters, but I did inquire about an apartment before moving here and learned they had a five year waiting list.

In the case of Silver Spring, MD, as Bloomberg reports,

Completed in 2020, Artspace Silver Spring is a mixed-used artist campus comprising a four-story apartment complex with a total of 68 affordable units and 11 for-sale townhomes wrapped around a central courtyard. Each apartment unit is restricted to applicants earning less than 60% of the area median income, with preference given to artists.

The article mentions that construction of affordable housing which provides priority to artists is often a compromise position around which competing interests in a community can find agreement. However, in some cases studies have found that the screening process associated with artist housing projects can result in the residents being much less diverse than other affordable housing projects.

Artist housing, too, can be a form of compromise over subsidized housing: A 2016 study from the University of Minnesota found that several such developments had far fewer non-white tenants than than other kinds of low-income housing in the Twin Cities. In its application process, Artspace emphasizes a commitment to attracting “individuals and families from diverse artistic and cultural backgrounds” — which shouldn’t be difficult, given Silver Spring’s ethnic diversity.

The 2016 study discusses some issues with Artspace’s screening processes which look very open on paper, but may perpetuate the selection of people who are like those on the committee. I was actually struck by the similarities between the descriptions of the resident selection committees and orchestra musician interview committees. While there is discussion of loopholes which entities like Artspace have been able to take advantage of, (teacher housing projects are similarly mentioned), there is also an acknowledgement that affordable housing projects are far more palatable to communities when it is defined for artists and teachers.

Australia’s Last Poet Laureate Was A Convict?

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Big news out of Australia where the first national arts policy since 2013 was announced.  In addition to commitments of funding to specific entities and organizations, arguably the most significant element of the policy is a commitment  “….to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, with a particular brief on cracking down on fake art that plagues the $250m-a-year Australian Indigenous art market.”

Other elements of the plan include the establishment of a poet laureate position which last existed during the country’s convict era,  a state of the arts report to be issued every three years, and the establishment of  “a quota for expenditure on Australian content by multinational streaming platforms such as Netflix and Stan..” The amount of this quota is rumored to be about 20% and The Guardian article quotes people who are concerned streaming platforms may pull out of the country if they are required to produce Australia based content.

It happens that I saw a piece on Vice last night before I saw The Guardian article. Vice asked Australian artists what they thought about the plan.  Many felt the money was going to the usual suspects and advocated for a universal basic income plan for artists.

Others felt that the arts were unfunded in proportion to their footprint:

“The arts sector will get $286M over four years, or $72M a year. The fossil fuel industry gets $11.6B a year in government subsidies. Australia’s arts sector employs about six times as many people as the fossil fuel sector.

The requirement for locally generated content was cause for hope for some:

“I started to lose hope in local content knowing that reality TV filled up much of our “Australian” quota on broadcast networks. The possibility of streaming services now being made to spend 20% of their budget on original, local content honestly makes me feel hopeful and excited to pursue my career on my home turf.”

Make 2023 The Year Of Library Advocacy

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Right at the end of the year, New York City based columnist for The Guardian, Moira Donegan, wrote a loving piece about how she is thankful for US public libraries.

One of the first things she mentions is that the architecture and design of many libraries is rather intimidating and makes her feel under dressed. She says when she works at tables in New York Public Library’s iconic 42nd Street branch, she is always nervous that someone is going to chase her away. I have written about how people can have a similar experience with arts and cultural organizations. Though many theaters, museums, and libraries are not as grandiose as the 42nd Street branch.

Donegan opines that the US is fortunate to have had the spate of museum construction when it did because it would be difficult to generate public will behind such an effort now. But citizens have garnered immense benefits as a result.

If the public library did not already exist as a pillar of local civic engagement in American towns and cities, there’s no way we would be able to create it. It seems like a relic of a bygone era of public optimism, a time when governments worked to value and edify their people, rather than punish and extract from them. In America, a country that can often be cruel to its citizens, the public library is a surprising kindness.

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The majesty of library buildings is matched only by the nobility of their purpose. The public library does not make anyone money; it does not understand its patrons as mere consumers, or as a revenue base. Instead, it aspires to encounter people as minds. The public library exists to grant access to information, to facilitate curiosity, education, and inquiry for their own sake. It is a place where the people can go to pursue their aspirations and their whims, to uncover histories or investigate new scientific discoveries.

When I saw a tweet that NYC Eric Adams was requiring the NYC Public Libraries system to cut “cut their budgets by $13.6 million by the end of fiscal year 2023, and another $20.5 million over the next 3 fiscal years.” My first thought was that he does not truly understand the vast number of social services libraries provide to their communities. They metaphorically serve as the wetlands which buffer communities from the onslaught of hurricanes. Creating an environment where their role is diminished will only serve to magnify the manifestation of social problems throughout the City.

If you don’t know, this year make an effort to explore all the services your local libraries provide to communities from classes, computer access, tax help, shelter from the weather, social services access, counseling and, yeah, books.  Likewise think about your own value proposition for the community and increasingly communicate that outside the framework of selling tickets.

 

Tax Deductions For The Cost Of Being An Artist

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Just before Christmas there was an article about Actors’ Equity union pushing their members to contact Congressional representatives about passing Performing Artist Tax Parity Act (PATPA).  This law would allow more artists to take the Qualified Performing Artist (QPA) deduction which is an:

“….above-the-line” deduction for specific unreimbursed expenses. (Above-the-line deductions are those subtracted from overall gross income to calculate an individual’s adjusted gross income — meaning individuals do not get taxed on such expenses.)…

The current QPA stipulates that those with an adjusted gross income of $16,000 (before these specific deductions) are eligible — an amount that has been unchanged since the QPA was first implemented in 1986. PATPA would increase this threshold to $100,000 for single taxpayers and $200,000 for joint filers, rendering many more entertainment workers eligible for the deduction.

Experts estimate that entertainment professionals spend between 20 and 30 percent of their income on work expenses — from agent and manager fees to headshots, equipment and professional development.

This law would also help other performing artists who likewise incur many personal expenses in support of their professional career. Drew McManus created a website with great visuals that tracked these myriad costs for string instrument performers in 2017 so you know the costs have only gone up since then and may be greater or just as great for other musicians, dancers, etc.

As I was looking to see if other performing arts unions were encouraging people to write their legislators, I discovered this is an effort that has been underway since around 2019. However, since the current Congress is about to end, there is a push to get the legislation passed. If you are interested in writing a letter, you can do so via a the form here.

IRS 990 Backlog Hampering Non-Profit Giving and Transparency

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ProPublica recently reported that the IRS has yet to release nearly a half million non-profit tax records. You may be wondering why that is something you should be concerned about. In fact, the lack of records release has some pretty significant implications for transparency and charitable giving. Drew McManus has been painstakingly combing through records since 2005 to assemble his annual Orchestra Compensation Reports.  I believe among the reasons why he didn’t have a 2022 edition examining the impact of the pandemic during the 2019-2020 fiscal year was partially due to the lack of 990 filings available for review.

Additionally, many individuals, corporations and foundations use the filing data to make giving decisions.

“This is having an impact on nonprofits, fundraising, donors … and charity regulators,” said Cinthia Schuman Ottinger of the Aspen Institute, who coordinates a group of practitioners who work with nonprofit tax data (ProPublica is a part of this group). “The whole ecosystem suffers when there are delays of this kind.”

Michael Thatcher, the CEO of Charity Navigator, said the end of the year is a crucial time for charitable giving.

[…]

And, he said, “it’s not just the donors that are upset by this.” Many organizations want their latest information out there as well, especially if their finances have improved or they’ve done significant work in recent years. “They want to show that to the world, and guess what, when you go to Charity Navigator, you’re seeing two-year-old information.”

Many of the missing filings could help shed light on how organizations — and the nonprofit sector as a whole — have fared during tumultuous years marked by a pandemic, economic upheaval and large infusions of federal relief dollars.

Courtney Aladro, a charity regulator for the Massachusetts attorney general and NASCO board member, said that regulators across the country use the IRS repository of documents to confirm or corroborate the information that charities submit to their states….

“Those are some pretty important years because of some of the difficulties over the last few years,” Aladro said. “The use and expenditure of COVID relief funds, for example. It’s pretty important for charity regulators and law enforcement to monitor that, and not having that information will make it more difficult.”

The IRS has been hampered by underfunding and understaffing which has lead to both delays in release and embarrassing release of tax information that was not supposed to be released. A recent bill passed by Congress will seek to modernize systems and hire more staffing, but it could be years before the problems are ironed out.

When Voting Becomes An Intersection for Arts and Civics

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You may have seen news about Ulster County, NY’s demon-spider I Voted sticker. It made national news because the design by 14 year old Hudson Rowan was so strikingly cool/strange and garnered a huge majority of votes last summer to become the official recognition sticker for the county.

But a lot of places have their own distinctive flavor they apply to the stickers. A Bloomberg News article lists a number of them. Some of them are the result of an official branding effort, others like those in Alaska, feature images of wildlife created by high school students.

Of course, one of the first things that occurred to me is that this is one of those places in which civics and art can intersect. It might be worth the effort for local arts organizations and schools to look into whether there are opportunities to contribute to state or even county level sticker design. Getting students and artists actively involved in creating images for election stickers can potentially have beneficial effects.

These stickers brought to mind an entry I did a decade ago about Japanese manhole cover designs which are specific to every city in the country and reflect some degree of local pride. (Happily the Flickr account housing photos of the covers still exists so you can check out the cool designs.)

That post reminded me about a post I wrote on efforts in Lanesboro, MN where they had placed cast iron medallions around the community so visitors could engage in a sort of scavenger hunt. Not to mention the poetry verses that appear on signposts in parking lots around town as well.

Germany Gives 18 Year Olds The Gift of Culture

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Over the years, I have written a fair bit on culture passes that various European countries have distributed to young people.  In addition to passes for cultural experiences and goods, some of the passes have been focused on facilitating rail travel so young people can experience a wider swath of national and international places and events.

According to a Guardian article from last week, Germany is the most recent country to tee up a program.   When Germans turn 18 they will receive a €200 Kulturpass. The goal is to not only get young people engaged with cultural activities, but to also inject some economic vitality post-Covid.

…has twin aims: to encourage young adults to experience live culture and drop stay-at-home pandemic habits; and give a financial boost to the arts scene, which has yet to recover from repeated lockdowns.

[….]

The finance minister, Christian Lindner, described the pass as “cultural start-up capital” that its recipients can use within a two-year period for everything from theatre and concert tickets to books or music. It will be managed via an app and a website that provides a direct connection to a virtual marketplace of everything from bookshops to theatres.

Perhaps most interesting is that the program is intentionally designed to have the 18 year olds “shop locally” as it were and excludes large online platforms and purchases.

Online platforms such as Amazon and Spotify have been excluded from the scheme, which places an emphasis on smaller, often local organisations, such as independent cinemas and bookshops. Individual purchases will be limited in value to prevent someone from using the voucher to buy, for example, a single concert ticket for €200.

I am curious to know if the German government analyzed the programs in places like Spain, France and Italy for design problems. The goals of these other countries were similar in terms of stimulating interest in in-person experiences. The German program seems to have more restrictions built in to achieve that.

Toward A More Artistic European Union

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As promised, I am following up on Monday’s post about about the first European Union (EU) wide survey of performing arts.

I wanted to note some of the recommendations made in the study. One of the most significant was to facilitate employment opportunities across the entire EU. The study noted that every country focused on their national performing arts entities.  Additionally, Covid restrictions have delayed the training and opportunities for younger artists to gain practical experience.

Among their proposals are to create more opportunities for artists to work across borders:

To address these concerns, the study calls for theatres around Europe to create so-called ‘third spaces’ at venues to support young artists.

Such a space would connect with theatre schools and academies to programme the work and support young artists to enter the professional theatre scene after graduating.

Similarly, the study suggests creating a ‘European Theatre Showcase’, potentially as an element added on to the European Theatre Forum, to offer a long-term perspective and provide the next generation of young artists from Europe a “much-needed industry networking space.”

Something that caught my eye were multiple statements that seemed to indicate a stark separation of interaction and dialogue between schools and training programs and performing arts venues. It hadn’t occurred to me that this might be the case given that universities can often be among the most prominent producers and presenters of performing arts in the U.S. (Association of Performing Arts Professionals which is essentially the national conference for presenters started out as Association of College, University and Community Arts Administrators (ACUCAA)) Among the proposals in this area were in regard to moving toward common standards of training and accreditation so that students were more easily employed in other countries.

Other proposals to facilitate cross-border employment included amending tax laws which often double-taxed artists; addressing sexual harassment, work environment, gender and racial disparities; mainstreaming the employment and depiction of sexual orientation, gender identity, physical and mental ability.

Another section discussed funding sustainable construction/renovation and practices with an eye to cutting energy consumption and impact on the environment.

It was interesting to read about all the factors that need to be navigated and sorted out among EU countries. Differences regarding discrimination, harassment and social standing of arts wasn’t particularly surprising. Nor was the idea that most countries focused on supporting their national arts entities.

There were many more administrative and legal hurdles noted than I imagined. If you have ever visited a European country and watched people breezing through the exit for citizens of Schengen Area countries while you queue up to be examined at customs, it is easy to think all these issues had been long settled.

More Europe Performing Arts Orgs During Covid

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Last week German arts administrator Rainer Glaap made a Facebook post linking to the first ever study of theatres across the European Union (EU).  Additionally, some of the survey participants were non-EU members of the Creative Europe program.  Readers may recall I had made a number of posts looking at how various governments across Europe were providing financial support to artists during the height of the Covid pandemic.  So I was interested in seeing what this report had to say.

One of the biggest difficulties faced in putting the study together was all the differences that exist between European countries in terms of number of theatre, definitions of performing arts activities, funding policies, training practices, etc. There were numerous times the report noted the difficulty in making and apples to apples comparison.

However, there were a number of interesting things I pulled from the report. For instance, apparently France and Germany are the primary models for presenting/touring versus producing.

The so-called ‘French oriented system’ is based on productions, touring and selling plays to other venues making international co-production easier to fit in a programme. In a ‘German oriented system’ whereby theatres operate as production houses with in-house established ensembles, international co-production is less natural since the programme is set for the season.

Since the degree to which European governments subsidize the arts is a frequent topic of conversation in the U.S., having a EU-wide report on this number is obviously of some interest (recall this is an average from 39 participating countries):

“ticket sales in public funded theatres usually amounts to about 25% of the theatre budget. Commercially-oriented private theatres and independent companies however rely mostly on revenues generated from the box office and other commercial activities. Among the surveyed private theatre venues and companies, revenue from sales (tickets, admissions) constituted around 40% of their budgets before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

During Covid, many of the measures taken in European countries were similar to those in the U.S. Many shifted to streamed live or archived performances, with results ranging from innovative to downright disappointing. Others found ways to perform in outdoor or non-traditional spaces. Companies in a number of countries started working with hospitals, retirement homes, schools and universities to offer performances. Some organizations experimented with the drive-in theatre experience where people remained in their cars. There was an account of a festival in France which replaced the cancelled Avignon Festival which provided press exposure to smaller arts organizations which normally wouldn’t get it and apparently enabled the organizer, Theatre 14 to reach audiences not used to attending theatre. I am not sure how it was organized to encourage that. I assumed it might be outdoors in public spaces, but it appears the performances were held in physical performance spaces.

There were examples of efforts to provide better support for artists, both in terms of government policy:

Good practices are emerging, such as negotiating a minimum wage for artistic work in the theatre, also for people working on other terms than an employment contract e.g. in Austria or Finland. In some countries, such as Poland, new legal acts and wide-ranging regulations are created to support this professional group. In Belgium, the situation of artists resulting from the pandemic pushed the creation of a new type of ‘fair trade’ contract, in order to improve the contractual relations between artists and cultural operators. As a result of such a contract, a play can either be postponed or cancelled, but in the latter case part of the fees must be paid to the artists.

[…]

….The project was funded via the European Commission’s DG Employment and Social Affairs budget line for Information and Training Measures for Workers’ Organisations. It helped the unions to train and put in place a strategy in relation to organising, with a focus on freelance, self-employed and otherwise atypical workers in the Media Arts and Entertainment sectors.”83

As well as acts of solidarity:

Nau Ivanow, a cultural residence space in Spain that has a venue, decided that all income from ticket sales during the COVID-19 pandemic will be given to the performing companies and artists.
Also, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic they decided to offer their two rehearsal spaces for free for the interested artists/companies.

[..]

Some of the [Romanian] public cultural institutions (National Dance Centre, National Heritage Institute, Clujean Cultural Centre, National Museum Complex ASTRA Sibiu, Studio M Theatre in Sfantu Gheorghe) announced that they did not attend this funding session in order to show their solidarity with the independent cultural operators, whose resources have been drastically diminished, and who were less eligible for support than state funded institutions.

The report also made some recommendations for the future which I will probably cover in my post tomorrow.

Strong Opposition To Warehousing Charitable Funding In DAFs

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how donor advised funds (DAF) had surpassed charities like the United Way as recipients of charitable giving.  I noted this is a problem because unlike foundations and other grant making institutions, DAFs have no obligation to disburse the funds they hold. The donors get the tax benefit, but the funds are not being employed for a charitable purpose.

The good folks at the Non-Profit Law blog recently shared a link to a June 2022 Ipsos poll showing public sentiment is against such arrangements. Not only do they feel DAFs should be required to distribute the funds they hold, they feel foundations should be required to distribute twice the amount they are currently.

  • With more than $1.2 trillion in charitable contributions currently sitting on the sidelines, 69 percent of adults surveyed support a 10 percent payout requirement for foundations (up from the current 5 percent) and for DAFs (which currently have no payout requirement), even if this reduces the amount of money in foundations and DAFs in the future.
  • 73 percent support requiring DAFs to make grants within 2 to 5 years of receiving donations.

The biggest impediment to generating general will toward making these changes is lack of knowledge about the situation. Of those surveyed, only 17% were aware that the tax code is structured to allow tax exemptions for charitable giving while allowing so little to be distributed to non-profit entities. Once people become aware of this information, there is bi-partisan support to make changes that will see non-profits receive a greater amount of funds sooner.

Specifically, respondents across the political spectrum expressed a strong discomfort with taxpayer subsidies allowing donors to set up perpetual foundations, with conservatives objecting to such subsidies even more strongly than liberals. What is more, both liberals (74 percent) and conservatives (70 percent) favor increasing foundation and DAF payouts to 10 percent, even if it would reduce foundation assets in the future.

May Have Spoken Too Soon About Salary Transparency Efforts

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Apropos to my post yesterday about New York City requiring employers to list their salary range starting next month, I was happy to Vu Le’s tweet about Washington State passing a similar law.

However, there was bit of a “maybe I spoke too soon..” moment at the end of the Seattle Times article which mentioned that the NYC law may be amended before it goes into effect. Sure enough, two days ago The City reported that amendments are being introduced which may create loopholes and delay implementation until November.

“While the amendments are being sold as innocuous tweaks, when you read them closely they would essentially undo much of [the new law],” said Seher Khawaja, senior counsel for Legal Momentum, a national advocacy group for girls and women. “We think it would really undermine the impact of the law by excluding a large sector of New York’s workforce from the protections.”

One of the people quoted in the article represents a business group in NYC. Her rationale for not publicizing salary ranges because it might lead to salary inflation sounds a little flimsy given that the salary and compensation packages of CEOs and others have continued out of proportion to that of the employees despite not being publicized.

Among the other concerns, she said larger businesses risk getting out-bid by competitors if they make their salary ceilings public. She said the public postings could also spark salary inflation during a hiring crunch when current workers see a maximum posted that’s much higher than what it’s been historically.

The article about the transparency law in Washington notes that it doesn’t go into effect for another 10 months. Given that NYC’s law is facing revision only about a month out from its implementation is a warning to advocates to remain vigilant until the rules go into effect.  The Seattle Times piece quoted a business professor at University of Washington who observed it may take years for the effects of a law to be seen because inequities accumulate over people’s careers. How effective a law is at eliminating those inequities will require observation of years.

Starting Small And Building Momentum

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Last month, The Art Newspaper reported that NYC would begin requiring all employers to disclose the salary range of jobs starting on May 15. Many saw this as a positive step for the arts world as well as the employment environment at large, especially since it applies to many different employment arrangements, including internships.

The new ruling, an amendment to New York City Human Rights Law passed by the city council last December, applies to roles that are remote or in-person, permanent and short-term contracts, and to interns. Any company with more than four employees must adhere to it or risk civil penalties rising to $125,000 from the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

[…]

This small shift, he says, could transform the hiring process, and potentially the wage structure, of some of the top cultural institutions in the US, many of which have been subject to activist campaigns and union pushes in recent years due to huge internal wage inequalities

[…]

Finkelpearl describes New York City’s new law as being “long overdue” and sees it as part of a “generational shift around how people look at their jobs”. He points out that it comes in the wake of the so-called Great Resignation, or the Big Quit, which saw millions of workers across the country resign from their jobs during 2021.

A tidbit I found interesting came near the end of the article where it was noted that New York State (NYS) had made it illegal for employers to ask about salary history in January 2020, but that New York City had passed that law in October 2017. As far as I can tell, New York State hasn’t passed a law about wage transparency similar to NYC’s, but there was a subtle implication that it may come in the future.

While we have seen some state governments use preemption to overrule laws made on the municipal level, there are frequently times that city level laws can evolve to encompass the whole state –even in the face of preemption. The Ballotpedia article on preemption I just linked to cites NYS governor’s override of NYC’s plastic bag ban in 2017, but a statewide ban was eventually implemented in 2020.

I bring this up because there may be some hope and value in advocating for arts and cultural causes on the local level and seeing it expand to the state. Of course, a large segment of the population needs to see the need/value to have an investment in putting laws and rules forward.  The report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences I wrote about yesterday frames the need to support culture in terms of extant support for other industry segments.   Or as in the case of Minnesota’s Legacy Fund, Art & Culture made common cause with wildlife/wilderness preservation.

Come For A Haircut, See A Van Gogh

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It will probably come as no surprise to anyone running an arts venue that many attendees are over the mask wearing thing. At my venue, we actually had a more conservative mandatory policy for mask wearing than our university parent. At the beginning of December, we were prevailed upon to loosen those restrictions by my boss so for about two weeks we were at “strongly suggested” before the omicron surge saw everyone, including our parent organization institute mandatory masking again.  Still, it wasn’t long after the new year that we had people leveraging loopholes to avoid wearing masks.

Over the holidays I was amused to read that some landmark institutions in the Netherlands were chafing against restrictions there in a fairly creative way. The Van Gogh Museum, Mauritshuis gallery, and Concertgebouw concert hall engaged some barbers, nail artists and fitness instructors to provide services at their venues because those businesses weren’t restricted in the way that art institutions were.

“We wanted to make the point that a museum is a safe visit and we should be open,” Van Gogh Museum director Emilie Gordenker told AFP.

“The mayor called me last night and she said she’s not permitting this. We expect to get a warning at some point after which we will have to close, but we wanted to make this point very badly so here we are.”

One of the barber’s clients said he had come because he was “pro-culture”.

[…]

Nearby, the “Hair salon at the Concertgebouw” event saw two masked barbers clip hair on stage, while the orchestra played Symphony No. 2 by Charles Iver.

“After two years of patience and an ever-constructive attitude, it is high time for a fair perspective for the cultural sector,” Concertgebouw director Simon Renink said.

Fitness classes took place at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, home to Vermeer’s famed “Girl with the Peal Earring, while the Speelklok museum in Utrecht set itself up as a gym.

No mention of whether the ubiquitous “Shave and a Haircut” riff was played anywhere.

While the pandemic is certainly going to force arts organizations to rethink their business models, I am not sure that salon services are going to become the next trend. Exercise and yoga classes at museums and galleries was a thing pre-pandemic so I wouldn’t completely discount the idea.

The story does remind us that arts people are very creative thinkers. If arts leaders are willing to exercise this skillset in defiance of governments, perhaps they will be more willing to try new ideas without fearing the reactions of funders and donors as much

 

Looking To Public Art To Revitalize Cities Post-Covid

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Somewhat in line with my post yesterday about the growing number of basic guarantee income programs for artists, Artsjournal.com had an interview with the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, about the beginning of a 10 year initiative to create public art. The program had been delayed by the start of Covid and the mayor says that has created an even greater need for public works of art.

This is true for a couple of reasons: first, I think the sense of joy — the look and feel of the city being enlivened by artistic creations of all kinds — became even more important after a desolate period when you’d walk around downtown and it was bleak, I mean it was a wasteland. The second reason, which was valid before but now became 100 times more valid, was that it also allows some of our artists to tell their stories. And beyond the benefits to us of having those stories told and those works displayed, this program will retain the services of 1,500 artists over the course of this year. That’s not unimportant in the context of a group that has been very hard hit. I’m not minimizing the problems other people have had, but artists had a terrible time. Now there’s a need to bring the city back to life and there’s nothing like the arts and culture to do that.

I was interested to see the interviewer, Jonathan Dekel, follow up by asking the mayor how this vision of supporting artists and their importance to the city reconciles with the concerns about gentrification displacing the artists. The mayor made mention of some measures like tax relief for music venues and affordable housing arrangements which recognize that artists’ income is not regular from month to month.

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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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