Assorted Arts Candy

Okay, some fun links from around the web today-

First off, you can have your big performing arts centers and arts organizations with multi-million dollar endowments and budgets, I would wake up happy every morning if I could say I worked here. (I wonder if they have 24 hour security to keep people from eating the building.)

Second, I wanted to point out an article on the always helpful Non-Profit Law Blog about common problems with organizational by laws. I passed the link on to an organization of which I am a member because we spotted some of the same issues with our bylaws and I figured there might be more still to examine.

The entry also includes potential problems when using another organization’s bylaws as a template for ones own.

Last, I wanted to direct people to an entry on Ken Davenport’s The Producer’s Perspective about a Hungarian immigrant who created a theatre ticket discounting organization in NYC that preceded the TKTS booth in Times Square by nearly a century.

Joseph Leblang received free tickets to shows in exchange for allowing posters to be put up in his shop. What he did was turn around and sold his tickets as well as those received by the neighboring shop owners for less than full price. The theatre owners weren’t happy but ended up turning their unsold stock over to Leblang because he did such a high volume business.

Davenport ends with an observation about keeping ones eye open for opportunity. There were many shopkeepers receiving tickets who could have started the same sort of endeavor but none did. Or at least none emerged to significantly challenge Leblang.

Arts. Widget For More

Americans for the Arts have a widget available that can be easily placed on any website, blog or social media site. I put one at the bottom of my right side bar.

If you click on the share or embed link in the lower right, it provides you with the ability to either automatically insert the widget on your social media site (and many blogs) or copy the code so you can manually insert it into your blog, website, whatever.

If you click on campaign, you can see the television ads they have been running (my fav is Raisin Brahms), listen to radio ads or download some of their other logos like Elizabeth Barrett Brownies.

I think it is important to post this sort of thing just to make people aware of the lack of arts in schools by sheer numbers so please consider adding the widget to your webpages, blogs and social media accounts.

I have been critical of Americans for the Arts (or if I haven’t, I have thought it) for only allowing partners who had invested large sums of money have access to more than just a logo as a tool to promote the “Arts. Ask for More” campaign. Certainly, they had every right to place controls on how broadcast and print ads were used. It is just that the only way I could participate was by posting a logo. Now that there is something more, I am happy to use it everywhere I can and encourage others to do the same.

Wrong Words Can’t Describe This Film

Since I am always looking for a situation that provides something of value for arts administration, I take my lessons where I find them. The latest was an illustration of how what you say about an experience matters. Intellectually, we know that if we want to convince people to attend an event, we need to employ compelling word choices. Execution often fails.

Around mid-July a friend told me he and his girlfriend had gone to see a movie called Departures. The way he talked about it, it sounded like Night Shift without the call girls. He describe it as a movie about a guy who loses his job and ends up working for an undertaker. He talked about it being funny at times and sad, but never used very strong terms. As a result, my image was of a guy who spent the night in the morgue reading, making some awkward mistakes in relation to dead bodies and perhaps learning something of the way these people lived to inspire him about his future. A nice story, but it didn’t make me want to see the movie.

About two times since then he mentioned it was a good movie, but didn’t really inject any particular enthusiasm above saying he and his girlfriend liked it. The thought that went through my mind was that he wasn’t certain enough about his own tastes to speak more confidently about the film. He thought it was a good movie, but he wasn’t sure if was actually a good movie.

I can’t necessarily blame him. The movie is only playing on one screen out of 115 in the county. Can’t be that good if it is only playing at one theatre, right? But the whole issue of feeling comfortable with your encounters with art is a topic for another entry.

Last week I ran into another guy who raved about the movie encouraging me to go see it. The image he painted for me was nowhere near what the first guy had. So I went to see the movie this past weekend.

Yes, it is only playing at one theatre in the county, but it has been playing there for about 80 days. I was near that one theatre Saturday morning so I went to the 10:45 am show. The word of mouth must be good because there were about 40 people ahead of me online and nearly all of them bought tickets to the film. I know this, because the people in front of me kept remarking when someone bought tickets to our showing. I think there were only about 75 people in the theatre, but that is pretty good for a morning show nearly 80 days after it opened.

I absolutely loved the movie. Arts people should especially take note given that the lead character loses his job when his orchestra goes under. There may be another career waiting out there for you! I am told you can watch the movie on line but it would be a shame to do that. It surprisingly hasn’t opened in some parts of the country so there is still an opportunity to see it. Hopefully it is experiencing a prolonged run in those places it has opened so others can go see it if they haven’t.

Watching it online, you would also miss the communal nature of film going. The audience for this sort of movie are not as likely to talk on their cell phones throughout the show as with many films so you can be reasonably assured of a good experience. This movie is about death so there are some heart wrenching moments. It is at these times that you are reminded you aren’t experiencing these emotions alone. I think you would also lose the impact of some absolutely beautifully composed shots, including the deft grace with which the lead character performs his new job.

The movie left me wondering if they still prepare the dead in Japan in this manner. I suspect it isn’t the standard practice, but perhaps it is still common enough. The lead actor learns how to prepare a dead body to be placed in a coffin. There is a ritual cleansing of the body which is executed before the family. The entire body is disrobed, cleaned and redressed in view of the family. It is all done under a cloth draped over the body so that the family does not see the unclothed form of their loved ones. The precision and artistry with which the ceremony is performed is beautiful and entrancing.

The movie makes the point that funerals are for the sake of the living when one of the characters points out the three coffin models they sell with widely varying prices and mentions they all burn the same in the incinerator. Still, I think you would have an entirely different view of death and funerals if you knew your loved one received such attentive care before they were placed in the coffin.

So anyway, that is my attempt to sell you on the movie by telling you why I liked it while avoiding press release language. It lacks the umph of vocal expression, (OMIGOD, THE MOVIE WAS AWESOME — which is close to how I have expressed myself in person), but hopefully people are at least intrigued. I have intentionally avoided linking to the trailer because I think it does a poor job of portraying the movie. Even after seeing the movie, my excitement is dulled by the trailer. If you need to watch something, visit this page and immediately click on the picture to the right of the actor playing the cello. The little bit that plays best represents what makes the movie so good.

Presumed Disappointing

Adam Thurman at The Mission Paradox made a great blog post yesterday pointing out that, unfortunately, when it comes to the question of whether they will enjoy an opportunity to interact with the arts, the default assumption many audience members hold is “no” until convinced otherwise.

“Most people, when given the option to attend a performing arts event, are more scared that the performance is going to be disappointing then they are excited that the performance is going to be good.”

He goes on to say:

“This is the thing we have to remember:

We are in the trust business.

Not the theatre business.

Not the museum business.

The trust business.

When you are dealing with a risk averse public the only way to get them to do a risky thing is by earning their trust.

How do you earn their trust?

By building a relationship with them.

My observation is that most of us in the arts are very good at putting up programming, but we aren’t good at building relationships.”

It put me in mind of an entry I did about three years ago where I cited an entry on Neill Roan’s old blog (oh why, oh why did you shut down that blog!), titled “How Audiences Use Information to Reduce Risk.”

In the entry I talked about the efforts I was going to inform people about performances since they often commented they hadn’t seen anything about the show. Reviewing the entry, I realize now that the problem we likely face is that people’s primary expectation is to receive notice in the newspaper or radio because that is where they traditionally have gotten the information. The problem is, people aren’t using those media in the same way they used to. Their expectations don’t align with their practice any longer.

In that entry I spoke of using electronic notifications, word of mouth and opinion leaders to help disseminate information about performances. One thing I missed that Adam speaks about is relationship building. It is true that people need to view the information you provide as credible, but they also need to believe that you will provide an enjoyable experience even if they end up less than thrilled about the performance.

Just last week Drew McManus cited a situation where the non-artistic elements of an evening combined with a partially disappointing/partially sublime artistic experience with the net effect being negative. Some of the non-artistic elements were entirely out of the arts organization’s control, others could have been ameliorated to some degree.

Certainly people aren’t coming for the parking and an easy ticket office experience. You gotta deliver the goods artistically. The relationship building comes when people know your artistic quality is pretty dependable and can trust that you will make an effort meet their needs and expectations and reduce problems that arise.