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Info You Can Use: Various Things Arts Orgs Are Doing To Connect

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This past weekend the students held their annual fund raiser for the Fall Mainstage production in our Lab Theatre. The event is entirely student generated and produced. Basically my only involvement over the summer is to unlock the door for them. Our technical director ensures nothing will burst into flames and everything is generally safe, but the work is largely done by the students.

I am very proud of the student who has essentially acted as the producer for the last 4 years because he keeps upping his game every year. Last Spring a new instructor introduced him to a different approach to developing a show and to the credit of all the students, they dedicated themselves to following the approach even though it meant a longer, more involved rehearsal process.

A fair segment of the audience tends to be students and for many of them, this is their first experience in a theatre of any kind. In some respects, it is a great introduction for them because it provides a less orthodox attendance experience and reveals the potential inherent in live performance. (Speaking of which, check out this baby by Great Canadian Theatre Company) On the other hand, it can make a more orthodox attendance experience seem all the more boring and disappointing by comparison.

Typically the entrance, stairway and hall to the lab theatre are heavily decorated. A woman in front of me on the ticket line who takes dance classes across the hall from theatre wondered aloud where the dance studios went. The performers also do a pre-show where they move about interacting with other performers and the audience members according to the backstory of their particular character.

My aim is to try to infuse a little more interesting and interactive experience to our mainstage space. There the expectations and context of the space creates a wholly different environment. We have added some new experiences and are continuing to think of others.

So in that vein, I wanted to point out some interesting programs I have been reading about lately that aim to change the experiences people have at arts and cultural events.

A Wall Street Journal this week had a story about silent disco parties that are being held at zoos in England and the US. It is something of an after hours party at the zoo where people are given headphone receivers. Attendees can dance to the same music without actually disturbing the animals with loud noise (though since many dress up as animals, it may make some of the predators hungry for a midnight snack as they flail silently about).

Nina Simon, Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History seems to be so dedicated to providing participatory experiences in her museum, she even has opportunities in her restrooms. Reading her blog, Museum 2.0 provides a trove of great ideas and reflections on how they worked.

Back in May, ArtsFwd featured a number of audio postcards from arts organizations around Cleveland. I confess I only recently got around to listening to them after having bookmarked it all those months ago but I am glad I did. There are some great stories being told by the arts leaders in Cleveland. One related to this topic that caught my attention was told about the Great Lakes Theater.

The artistic and executive directors talks about how they designed the Hanna Theater to facilitate social interaction between the audience and performers. The bar is in the seating area and they have different seating areas- traditional seating along with loose club chairs and lounge and bar seating.

The theatre is open 90 minutes before the show and stays open until up to 90 minutes after to provide a place for people to gather and interact rather than simply showing up a half hour in advance, watching and leaving.

A few years ago, I wrote about Alan Brown talking about Gen Y’s vision of an ideal performance venue:

He said he asked them to describe what they would envision as a perfect jazz club. They said it would be a coffee house during the day but a bar at night with a separate room where those who wanted to be full immersed in the music could go. However, there would also be an anteroom where people could talk with friends and still listen to the music and still another anteroom where people could interact with friends more and listen less.

Though this sort of arrangement is highly unlikely, Great Lakes Theater seems to get pretty close. I am curious to know if anyone has attended at the Hanna Theater and what the experience is like. There aren’t a lot of review on Yelp that I have seen. My biggest fear is that someone would knock over their glass at the bar during a highly dramatic scene or there would be some other disturbing occurrence.

Misunderstanding Your Competition

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To pick up from my last post about the Set In Stone report, the one aspect of the research I was intrigued by was their survey of people’s perceptions of the impacts (or lack thereof) of a new construction project.

As you might imagine, those who perceived themselves to be direct competitors were the least enthusiastic about a new building project. However, the groups who were most enthusiastic were those who were in the same district as the project, but didn’t view themselves as competitors.

Nope, No Impact Here

The report writers note both the positive and negative impacts of a new project- It might compete for audiences and revenues on one hand, but could also bring additional vibrancy to the area attracting businesses and traffic. Interestingly, the perceived impacts of a new project were pretty low.

• No higher than 28 percent of organizations in any subsample believed any change in their attendance was due to the new project opening; that subsample was the most closely linked to the project (competitors in the same district). The full sample result was only 12 percent believing the project opening affected their attendance.

• While 40 percent of competitors in the same district believed the project opening had an effect on new businesses opening in the area…Only 23 percent of the full sample believed the project opening was the key cause of new businesses in the area.

However, in terms of general impact, people were quite positive in their outlook about the project.

• When the question about community impact is posed in general terms, dramatically positive views are expressed. The question “Do you think the project makes the city a more attractive place to live?” generated a uniformly enthusiastic response, with the full sample generating 88 percent positive responses, and competitors within the same district reporting a 96 percent positive response.

There was also a lot of enthusiasm about the impact the new project would have in the community in advance and immediately upon the completion. However, according to the report, after the completion, enthusiasm dropped about 8% for the overall sample. However, for the group that was most enthusiastic–those in the same district who didn’t view themselves as competitors that I mentioned earlier–their optimism about the impact on economic development dropped 16 points.

I should note that the report writers emphasize that it is difficult to separate general economic conditions from project specific conditions as factors in the decline in optimism. They don’t know if the decline is due to problems with the greater economy or specific to the projects.

Foes Are Just Friends Who Compete With You

What was also interesting to me was the perception of competition versus collaboration people had in relation to projects. Those who viewed themselves as direct competitors were most likely to view the project as creating a more competitive environment while those who were located in the same district but did not view themselves as competitors felt the project created a more collaborative environment.

And yet,

Ironically, the group with the highest percentage of organizations believing that cultural organizations feel more competitive (competitors in the same district, also had the most optimistic view about increased tourism (52 percent believed it had increased). Thus, there is no evidence that community organizations link their views about changes in tourism to their views about the effect of the project on the competitive/collaborative climate.

The section of the study about competitiveness was very intriguing to me because so much of it was based on perception rather than reality. Just because people didn’t identify themselves as competitors, doesn’t mean that is really the case. The study found proximity was often a factor in identifying a project as a competitor, even if the cultural discipline didn’t match. You might expect that a museum might view a nearby performing arts center as a competitor.

Yet the study found (and I paraphrase for clarity) that a slightly higher percentage of those who identify themselves as non-competitors were located in the same district and were a cultural discipline match for the expansion project. The report authors state this “is inconsistent with expectations and inconsistent with the results observed for the “competitor” subsamples.”

You Can Have My Audience, Performers and Employees, Just Leave The Money

It made me wonder if there was a degree of wishful thinking/willful blindness among other cultural organizations that the expansion project represented a threat to them. These results left me wondering and wishing the survey had included data on whether local conditions improved or not in the wake of a project. I suspect given the scope of the study, they were unable to assemble a dependable data set to make this comparison.

Still it raises a lot of questions about how accurately cultural organizations, and I daresay businesses as a whole, assess the impact of developments on the economic conditions of their communities. I suspect the assumptions arts and cultural organizations make are little different from those other businesses make about the impact that will result upon the arrival of a big box retailer like WalMart, Best Buy or Home Depot.

Not surprisingly, money seems to be the dominant factor. The study found that the greater the funding for the expansion project came from non-local sources, the less people expressed concern that the environment had become more competitive. The perception of the economic climate seemed to be based mostly on whether the expansion project was making it more difficult to fund raise rather than whether the project was competing for audiences or talented artists and employees.

I wonder if this is something of a statement on the relative importance/availability of funding versus audiences and talent for cultural organizations: People are more easily replaced than money.

Stuff To Ponder: Process and Pitfalls Of Cultural Facility Construction

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If you are planning new building construction or a significant renovation, you would do well to check out the Set in Stone research project performed by the University of Chicago. When I first heard about the site and the research which looks at the construction of cultural arts facilities from 1994-2008, I thought it might be a thinly veiled indictment of overly-ambitious construction of arts centers.

But in fact there is far less failure reported than I expected, (though plenty of struggle), and the site is designed to be a resource for both research on the topic as well as guidance about the whole process. Prominently placed on the page is a six minute video that provides some quick advice about under taking a construction campaign.

Basically, it says people underestimate the project costs and over-estimate their ability to generate the revenue to operate the building upon completion. The video also notes that there are a lot of factors and constituencies with expectations contributing pressure to the project and suggests four questions to continually ask at all stages to keep things on track–or help ultimately decide to terminate the effort.

Four case studies illustrate the impact of these pressures on new facility construction. My favorite is the case study for the Art Institute of Chicago. It really provides some detailed insights into how the ambitions of the board, fundraisers and architect interacted to shape the construction of their new Modern Wing.

There is a quick overview of the study available but you may eventually want to take the time to read the full report. The full paper discusses construction and funding trends around the country and explores the impact of population shift and GDP on some of these trends.

There were some surprising and interesting situations they uncovered like the Pittsfield, MA metropolitan statistical area has the highest per capita spending on construction projects in the country, trailed by San Francisco; Appleton, WI; Madison, WI and Lawrence, KS. Who knew?

Interestingly, the construction during the boom period they researched didn’t seem to be in response to demand from the cultural sector.

This suggests that, in the boom period, increases in the supply of cultural facilities may not have responded to demand increases in the cultural sector. In fact, the evidence suggests that the relationships were negative during the boom period; either there was overinvestment in the supply of facilities relative to cultural sector demand for facilities, or facilities investment may have been responding to something else altogether.

What I also found interesting was that population size didn’t impact how much a city invested in the cultural infrastructure but rather how fast the population was increasing or decreasing. If the population started increasing, so did the investment in infrastructure.

What I found most informative was a comparison of the construction processes of different types of cultural organizations. There were assets and liabilities generally common to each type of cultural organization: producing theatres, museums, non-resident performing arts centers and resident performing arts centers.

Producing theatres seemed to have the easiest time with the process going from conception to completion in a relatively short time (7 years). Producing theatres were motivated to advance their mission and were able to keep that front and center throughout the process. They had the biggest cost overruns at 92% higher than the initial budget, (my emphasis)

“However, the starting budget was usually an internal figure and these projects’ managers were clever about when to announce their budgets publicly so that the escalations did not appear outrageous to the community. Interestingly, the publicly perceived escalations were often much lower—an average of about 19 percent. More importantly, the escalations that did occur often had a clear connection to organizational needs and were seen as helping the organization pursue its artistic mission.”

Museums also had a relatively short conception to completion time (about 9 years). One of the biggest challenges the report says they face is strong boards who often meddle with the plans often blurring a clear sense of leadership and leading to a fairly high rate of turnover on project boards. Cost overruns were only about 46% but were due to non-mission critical additions. Also museums were not able to be as flexible about generating revenue and often had to cut staffing and programming to deal with budget shortfalls.

The construction of Non-resident performing art centers were often strongly motivated by service to the community. (my emphasis)

“However, more often than not, community need for the nonresident PAC was not accurately determined. For example, a large majority of these projects used economic impact arguments as rationales for building. Included in these arguments was the implicit assumption that by building a cultural facility in a blighted area, it would automatically attract and sustain a substantial audience who would not otherwise have ventured there. Nine times out of ten, these assumptions were not accurately tested, and when the facility project was completed, the desired swarm of activity never materialized…Since the motivation for the project was so strongly centered in the desire to culturally enrich the broader community in a necessarily general way, a specific organizational artistic mission (if there was one) was often swept aside or obscured by a general enthusiasm for the idea of building a new arts facility for local residents.”

This situation resulted partially because these projects were organized by groups operating from a shared leadership model which meant there is often no clear stated central vision. Cost overruns of 62% were attributed to delays and lack of organization in the decision making process. Non-resident performing arts centers were generally flexible in their ability to absorb the overruns thanks to their low operating costs. Unfortunately, because most of the costs came from presenting performances, the preferred option to reducing expenses is usually to reduce programming.

Resident Performing Arts Centers have the hardest time getting started, mostly due to the need to serve the disparate requirements of multiple resident companies which often represent different arts disciplines. Because the founding organizations are often well-established, each with their own board of directors, a single clear, consistent leader is often difficult to identify.

These projects averaged 12 years from conception to completion, which doesn’t include the feasibility study period preceding the project proposal. Influence of the various groups can wax and wane quite a bit in that time. The constituent groups may be unwilling to cede authority even to the performing arts center executive once the facility begins operations. Changes in plans and leadership often means opening dates are frequently rescheduled.

“First, resident PACs were the costliest among all the different categories of projects. On average, they cost approximately $109 million to build and went about 64 percent over their initial proposed budgets. On a per seat basis, the median dollar per seat for resident PACs was $37,527, compared to $12,155 for nonresident PACs.”

The need to serve many resident organizations means that the resident PAC has less flexibility to use its spaces to generate additional revenue for the facility. Also, all the organizations are in the same boat together. If one organization faces a distressing situation, it impacts the future of all.

There were some other interesting observations that resulted from the study that I will address in a later entry. As I said, the Set In Stone site provides some pretty good resources and information to help you recognize and perhaps avoid problems others have faced with their major construction projects.

I Don’t Remember The Nest Being So Nice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thus Rises The Individual Curator and Commissioner

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There was an intriguing piece on Wired last week (h/t Thomas Cott) about an alternative approach to funding events via Kickstarter. Andy Baio talks about funding record projects, conferences and festivals by essentially lining up the speakers/performers/resources and then seeing if anyone is interested in buying tickets to the proposed events/project. If there isn’t enough interest, it doesn’t happen.

What was most interesting to me is how this type of approach really empowers an individual to curate a project. You may not be an artist yourself, but you have an idea of what combination of artists and concepts might be compelling and then can set out to bring it together.

While this is sort of my job already, there is something of an expectation that there will be balance in those I invite. I have a certain responsibility to make sure my facility and events are being run in a fiscally responsible manner. An individual isn’t necessarily saddled by those expectations. They can do a project as a one off and no one is concerned about whether their activities are serving the needs of the community.

Makes me wonder if this might be a potential mode of operation for the future. One of many that might replace the non-profit arts organization.

If taken at its face, this approach seems shift some burden to the artists/speakers being invited. If the event doesn’t happen, will they get paid? While Baio doesn’t explicitly mention it, I am guessing you would have to provide some sort of guarantee of payment to the artist/speaker regardless of whether the performance happened or not. Baio alluded to this in a couple places, including his requirements for these projects.

Projects like these have three big requirements.

Strong, achievable concept. Commissioned works should be scoped down to something realistic, because you’re paying for their time, but high-concept enough to capture the excitement of other fans.

Organizer. The funding may come from the crowd, but there needs to be a single person managing the project and handling all the logistics and small details.

Due diligence. The organizer will need a firm agreement from the artist, committing to a timeline, payment, and any other demands. Also, if the project results in a tangible work, determine who owns the rights to it before you start raising money.

While most artists and speakers like being paid, they like to be seen and heard even more so there is also some incentive for them to help promote the cause. It may not occur too frequently at present, but it could certainly become commonplace if the practice of running a project up the flag pole becomes more wide spread.

The other thing, of course, is that it turns your audience into much more active advocates for the work because there is a possibility it won’t happen. We know that many audiences today, especially among the younger generation, tend to wait to see if something more interesting might come along before buying a ticket. Since the performance will occur regardless of their commitment, there is no incentive to commit. The threat that the event might not happen can garner an increased investment in its success even if it is only that people continually check the progress of the funding to see if the event will happen.

A commenter to the piece pointed out a service in Brazil which rewards the early adopters. It sells refundable tickets to a show until the minimum is met. Once the event has secured its funding, it starts selling non-refundable tickets and apparently starts reimbursing the purchasers of the refundable tickets up to the their full purchase price.

Manholes As Destination Tourism (Seriously)

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In answer to the perennial question about how the arts can show their value to the community, I came across an answer/inspiration in the form of the Flickr group, Japanese Manhole Covers. There are nearly 3000 pictures of some amazingly artistic manhole covers.

With NYC looking to ban big sugary drinks and Disney announcing that they will restrict junk food ads, it occurs to me that a constructive approach to fighting obesity would be to commission these artists to make manhole covers.

People would get out and start walking around in an attempt to see them all. Heck, people may even include a manhole tour as part of their tourism. I am sure someone will develop a social media app that maps out the locations and people would compete to check in at each of them on sites like Foursquare. (Actually, looks like there is an iphone app for Japan.) Just to keep things interesting, the public works department can switch them around every so often so that people would have to contribute to a remapping effort.

Check out the Japanese covers, some of them are pretty amazing and show a lot of investment and pride in culture and community.

(Clicking on image will take you to the specific photographer’s page rather than the larger pool of manhole photos)

Osaka Castle Artwork on Manhole cover - Osaka, Japan
Osaka Castle Artwork on Manhole cover photo credit: Neerav Blatt

Still More On Crowdfunding Start Up Arts Orgs

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If you have been reading my blog regularly over the last few months, you know I have been keeping an eye on the possibility of the crowd funding elements of the recently passed JOBS Act replacing non profit status as a viable method of creating and sustaining an arts organization.

If you haven’t been reading that long, well harken back to my original musings on the subject as well as some more recent musings with links to information on the implications of the law as passed.

Hat tip to Charity Lawyer Blog’s Ellis Carter (whom I have previously incorrectly identified as male. Sorry about that Ellis) for her link to a piece on Startup Company Law Blog about the problems with the law.

Author Joe Wallin confirms many of the general suspicions I had about the costs of compliance probably being overly burdensome given the $1 million limit.

One thing that surprised me was that the law actually prohibits start ups from the “do it yourself” approach which I have always assumed to be a hallmark of start ups.

3) The Law Forces Companies To Use Intermediaries

The law forces startups to use intermediaries to raise the funds. This is fundamentally different from what typically happens with startups. Most startups raise funds without the help of intermediaries. In fact, this is the prevailing norm for startup companies. The typical advice to a startup is–don’t use an intermediary! Founders, do it yourself!

 But here the law forces companies into the arms of either registered broker-dealers or registered funding portals. These entities are subject to numerous requirements, and their compliance with those requirements will make the process much more difficult and costly for companies.

Maybe arts organizations with their bare bones mentality about providing a product might make it work within the restriction, but the whole point of pursuing an alternative to the non profit business model is to adopt an alternative approach and mindset about providing cultural experiences. (a.k.a. ramen isn’t a default food group for artists.) Though it will probably bring it own attendant problems, success might be measured by how diversely arts and cultural organizations manifest after phasing away from non-profit status.

At the end of his post, Wallin suggests Congress go back and make some changes to the law to allow start ups to proliferate more easily. I am sure there is still plenty of opportunity for successful crowd funded start ups within the law. If it isn’t changed before that, perhaps the successes will lend credence to the idea this can be a viable path for entrepreneurs, moreso with a few changes.

Invest In The Arts – Ministry of Culture Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcending Expectations

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Back in December I wrote about the production of First Person: Seeing America we were hosting. I had described it as something of a live documentary with the narration, images and music all being performed in front of you rather than having the narration and music underscore the images as it might in a documentary on the History Channel.

The performance occurred this past weekend and it was just as terrific as I anticipated. They did an outreach service for the school today where they explained the process they went through in picking the text, music and images from the thousands of available choices. I was pleased that even with the limited exposure the audience had to the content of the show today, they experienced enough to realize how moving some of the pieces were even for the artists. One of the questions asked was whether the artists gave each other the time they needed to work through their emotions when they became affected by them.

But now that the show is over and the group has moved on, I can confess my embarrassment at mistaken assumptions. The production features NPR talk show host Neal Conan, actor Lily Knight and chamber music group Ensemble Galilei. I loved the concept of the multi-media production from the moment I first heard about it. I was disappointed that one of my consortium partners had managed to grab the show before me. Our geographic proximity precluded my being able to present them. I was pleased when he approached us to partner with him on the production. Yes, I wasn’t his first choice of venue, but who cares.

The mistake I made however was thinking that the production was brainchild of Neal Conan. I just figured the guy with the current affairs radio talk show would be the one who pulled people together to create a history based multi-media production. I mean, a group focused on performing something as staid as early music wouldn’t be creative enough to put a production like this together, right?

Actually, yes.

I spoke to group member Carolyn Anderson Surrick and she said that the initial idea came when she saw a phone card with pictures taken from the Hubble Telescope in a shop. She realized that the images were in the public domain and thought she could do a better job using the images than put them on a phone card. Their first project, A Universe of Dreams, brought poetry, music and images from the telescope together.

Their next project, First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World, used images from National Geographic in a piece about exploration. The current piece, First Person: Seeing America, deals with American history. While Conan has been involved with each of these projects, it was Ensemble Galilei which initially conceived of the idea.

I mention the show because this is probably a good example of how arts groups need to transcend expectations in order to make progress these days. Ensemble Galilei didn’t reinvent themselves or really compromise their identities to accomplish this.

Surrick said they played to the strengths of the ensemble which is early music and Celtic. She said people suggested they do a piece about the Works Progress Administration (WPA) but they felt it would be necessary to have more jazz oriented music to do it correctly. While they might be able to fake it, whatever they played wouldn’t elicit the same frisson experienced when the appropriate music and text came together.

I will acknowledge that one of the biggest drawback with transcending expectations is that you also transcend an audience’s familiar frame of reference. As I mentioned before about shows that shared this quality, you have to work all the harder to explain your new approach in the small window of attention people allow you.

In this instance, some creativity with the show description, the name recognition of Neal Conan and Ensemble Galilei with their respective fan bases brought in respectable ticket sales. But we doubled our sales in the 48 hours after a two page spread appeared in the weekend section of the newspaper. Once people invested enough time to read about the show and understood the concept, they really became interested.

Arts Funding and Diversity in Oregon

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The Oregonian reported this weekend that the city of Portland would start to tie arts funding to the diversity of the art organization’s board, staff and ultimately audiences.

Specifically, arts groups will be asked to increase the ethnic makeup of their staff, boards and contractors. Their audiences, too, may become more diverse through marketing and outreach. Organizations will also be expected to spend more of their budget — 30 percent being the ideal — on communities of color.

It appears the hope is that by shifting the composition of the board and employees, the type of programming will shift to be more inclusive. Though I think there is some potential for problems, I appreciate the intention behind the plan. Change the culture of your city through its arts and cultural institutions. The arts and culture community is probably a good place to start with such efforts because they are likely to regard the goal as a worthy one.

There are some practical problems as mentioned in the article. First, federal law prohibits making hiring decisions based on race.

Another problem noted is the lack of resources arts organizations have to perform the assessments and programs to which the money is tied. That said, the article notes there are plans for a new levy to fund arts organizations and arts education in the schools. This is encouraging because it acknowledges that the arts require a more supportive environment in which to operate and pursue these programs.

One thing I am most concerned about is that the programs offered to communities of color be appropriate to those communities and not simply extensions of activities which appeal primarily to Caucasian audiences. While some programs may be equally well received by all audiences and it is just a matter of making them more widely accessible, we already know that the demographics who have traditionally comprised arts audiences don’t view traditional arts programs has having relevance to them. There is a good chance that people outside of those demographics will perceive the programs as even less relevant to them.

Designing a program that is meaningful to different communities is possible. It just takes additional time and resources, two things arts organizations have in short supply. It is much easier to use a similar approach in all instances. Is there enough funding being offered by the city of Portland to make it worthwhile to customize programming?

However, since many arts organizations currently have no choice but to change their approach to their audiences and communities if they wish to continue operating, perhaps this is the most suitable time to implement this policy. If you are struggling to discover how best to engage your community, you might be open to considering expanding the definition of your community.

Do you think Portland’s plan can succeed? Not all the guidelines have been set, but do you think this is the correct approach.

One last thing to ponder. In the article Mayor Sam Adams is quote talking about the criteria they will use.

“Adams says organizations shouldn’t be intimidated by the measures. Increasing racial diversity on staff and boards and spending more money on communities of color will be just two of several factors that determine public funding. And when they are used, they’ll be interpreted flexibly. Different groups face different challenges, he says. “

I felt a little relief knowing there wouldn’t be a hard benchmark for funding. I think there has to be flexibility. On the other hand, I am a little concerned about how flexibly the criteria will be interpreted. It is one thing for private foundations to favor the same organizations with large amounts of funding. But there needs to be a higher degree of equity and transparency in the process of disbursing public funding.

Better to have clear guidelines from the outset about the type of outcomes are valued by the funding program than to sanction loose interpretations which allow the rationalization why an organization should be funded.

My perception is that this is the toughest part of funding. How do you allow for both a small organization that works with the same 20 people once a week for 9 months and a large organization that reaches 20,000 people once in the same time frame? Which is valued?

Now throw issues of race/ethnicity in as a factor and it becomes more complicated. (Yes, I am aware that diversity encompasses more than just race, but race is generally the most volatile aspect and is one of the stated criteria.) The stakes become a lot higher when you say racial composition matters and people can see where the money is going. If a medium size organization increases diversity by three on their board of ten and a large organization only increases their diversity by one on a board of 25 and the latter gets more funding in proportion to their budget, what will people think?

Does it matter that the one person on the larger board is more influential than the three on the smaller board and will potentially increase the reach and effectiveness of the organization? Well, I guess it depends on the way the funding criteria is written.

And as I said, with race as a measure, the criteria needs to be very clearly written as do the awards panel’s justifications. Leave too much ambiguity in the rules or the funding justifications and you open the whole process to accusations of racism, raising tensions rather than alleviating them. Funding for the arts is enough of a political issue as it is.

Info You Can Use: Point Some Strong Light At Your Brainstorm

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Hat tip to Ian David Moss at Createquity who linked to a New Yorker article on brainstorming in one of his “around the horn” summaries.

The article talks about how the whole idea of brainstorming without criticism for fear of causing someone to censor themselves is less effective at generating good ideas than having someone work alone or engage in brainstorming with debate.

What was really interesting to me was how the importance of opposing ideas applied to artistic collaborations.

According to the data, the relationships among collaborators emerged as a reliable predictor of Broadway success. When the Q was low—less than 1.7 on Uzzi’s five-point scale—the musicals were likely to fail. Because the artists didn’t know one another, they struggled to work together and exchange ideas. “This wasn’t so surprising,” Uzzi says. “It takes time to develop a successful collaboration.” But, when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation.

[…]

The best Broadway shows were produced by networks with an intermediate level of social intimacy…A show produced by a team whose Q was within this range was three times more likely to be a commercial success…It was also three times more likely to be lauded by the critics. “The best Broadway teams, by far, were those with a mix of relationships,” Uzzi says. “These teams had some old friends, but they also had newbies. This mixture meant that the artists could interact efficiently—they had a familiar structure to fall back on—but they also managed to incorporate some new ideas. They were comfortable with each other, but they weren’t too comfortable.”

Brian Uzzi, the sociologist who is cited in the story attributes the success of West Side Story to the fact that Broadway veterans Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents brought the novice Stephen Sondheim on board.

So the lesson for arts organizations might be to keep turn over down so you maintain a good team of artistic/administrative collaborators but introduce people/concepts that take everyone out of their comfort zone a little bit. This applies to boards as much as administrative staff and artistic teams.

Adding an unknown factor to spice things up isn’t a new concept and obviously not the only ingredient for success, but still good to have a little evidence to support the practice.

The New Yorker article resonates with me because I have recently been thinking about the people who have been in the assistant theatre manager position the last few years. We have had three in the 7.5 years I have been running the facility. The first two left to enter graduate school in southeast Asia. Each one of them has brought a different set of skills and interests. I view this as an opportunity to employ their enthusiasm to implement some programs and ideas I have. (I have a few in the works I hope are successful enough to blog on in the next few months.)

Arts And The Four Year Career

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An article recently posted on the Fast Company website talks about how transitory people’s jobs, and increasingly, career paths, are.

“According to recent statistics, the median number of years a U.S. worker has been in his or her current job is just 4.4, down sharply since the 1970s…Statistically, the shortening of the job cycle has been driven by two factors. The first is a marked decline in the “long job”–that is, the traditional 20-year capstone to a career. Simultaneously, there’s been an increase in “churning”– workers well into their thirties who have been at their current job for less than a year. “For some reason I don’t understand, employers seem to value having long-term employees less than they used to,” says Henry Farber, an economist at Princeton”

Given the idea that arts organizations need to be more nimble in the current fast changing environment and that corporate CEOs value creativity in leadership, it made me wonder if arts organizations might not be able to take advantage of this trend by creating mutually beneficial employment situations.

Essentially, if there is going to be a lot of employment churn, the arts might be able to benefit in both the short and long term by making sure a jaunt in the arts is included in a person’s itinerant career path.

Arts organizations experience a fair bit of turn over in their employees. (In fact, I will bet that is what you thought the title of the entry referenced.) It may be worthwhile to hire people without backgrounds specifically in the arts into positions. Since you are probably just as likely to have to replace a person with arts background as someone who doesn’t, you aren’t overly wasting time and resources by hiring and training someone without industry experience.

The potential benefit to the arts organization is introducing some new ideas and practices to the organization. The employee gets a broader experience to add to their hodgepodge resume which may make them more marketable. (Needless to say, the work environment must be such that it accepts the former and confers the latter.)

Of course, as the article mentions, the trick is to separate those who are really driven in their pursuits from the dilettantes. Arts organizations in general aren’t particularly well skilled in those type of human resource practices. It would be worthwhile to have someone on the board with the ability to provide those services in some form, even if you have no intention of ever hiring a person without an arts background.

In the long term it could be helpful if businesses started to identify arts organizations as a good training ground for the skills they seek in employees to the point where it was as de rigueur on a resume as extra curricular activities are on a college application. It also wouldn’t hurt if the experience engendered an appreciation in the arts in the transitory employee that they will carry on to positions creating business or government policy.

Arts Presenters 2012 Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Info You Can Use: Reward Disloyalty

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H/t Daniel Pink who linked to a story about a “Disloyalty Card” being used by independent coffee shops in Singapore. If you go to one of 8 coffee shops and pick up a card, go to any of the other 7 to get stamps and then come back to the original, you get a free cup of coffee.

I know some arts organizations who have tried these sort of programs to encourage patronizing other organizations with mixed results. What appealed to me about this approach was the rebellious, counter culture feel of it. I had this image of a program that encouraged people to be disloyal to movie theatres and Netflix.

What probably works for the coffee houses is that they can create a bit of an edgy or cool vibe with their stores. If arts organizations are going to try this, they either need to have the same vibe or link it to a series of shows that have that sort of feel. No one is going to feel like they are walking the path less traveled if they find themselves in a staid, completely conventional experience.

My impulse would be to avoid using it during something like a First Friday event where it might look more like a bingo game where people breezed through to get their cards stamped. That doesn’t seem particularly productive. An opportunity to do it across the course of a few months to a year could encourage people to make a more deliberate progress- see a show one weekend, walk through a gallery the next month, go to a dance concert and take visiting friends to the contemporary art museum.

It doesn’t appear that the Singapore disloyalty program requires you to visit all 8 of the coffee shops, just frequent more than one. Even disloyalty programs need to be convenient so it doesn’t make sense to force people to wander all over the place just to get a free cup of coffee. The same would likely apply to a similar program with the arts. Even if all the participating venues were in close proximity, it wouldn’t really be effective to force people to frequent places that didn’t appeal to them.

Structuring the program to encourage people to try a few new things is good. There should be a variety of disciplines represented, but they should get credit for going back to the places they liked rather than only rewarding them for hitting every place once.

Heck, it probably shouldn’t be confined solely to places that were built with the intention of housing art. Get the coffee shop or bar that hangs work by local artists involved. Even better–approach the bars and coffee shops with some opera or classical music performances like the Yellow Lounge program in Germany I wrote about a few years ago or Opera on Tap. Getting these sort of performances into the mix would make for an interesting disloyalty program.

Info You Can Use: Age Related Discounts May Be Illegal

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Hat tip to Thomas Cott at You’ve Cott Mail for making us aware that attempts to attract younger audiences through special pricing may be a form of age discrimination. The D.C. Office of Human Rights has determined the special pricing offered to young people at 30-35 years old are a form of age discrimination.

What this specifically applies to are practices by theatres like Arena Stage and Kennedy Center. I wrote about the Arena Stage’s plan (toward bottom) back in May and felt Chad Bauman’s blog post on how he was implementing it gave theatre people a lot to think about.

Now there is some cause for rethinking.

The D.C. Office of Human Rights asked for a justification for the pricing and determined it was not sufficient to warrant the exemption senior citizens enjoy.

“The report says that the theaters had not demonstrated that the discounts are justified by business necessity, because patrons older than 35 do not have the same opportunity to buy tickets at a reduced rate.

It does offer the thought, though, that there may be an emerging need for discounts to young professionals, particularly given many young adults do not begin their careers until they are at least 25 to 30 years old, and face other financial challenges.

The report recommends that pricing be broadened so that the same type of discounts are available for those 30-64. It does not appear that the office plans to enforce the recommendations by following up further with theaters to see if changes are made.”

While the article says the D.C. office may not monitor compliance, this is a practice that may come under scrutiny elsewhere. Like Ladies’ Nights discounts at bars, there is theoretically the potential that all age based discounts in every situation including restaurants and retail sales might come under review. (Finally, I can order off the kids’ menu!) The article doesn’t say what the basis for senior citizen exemption is. An earlier article quotes the head of the D.C. Office of Human Right as saying:

“Students and seniors may not have the means for a full ticket, so it is reasonable you offer discounts to those segments,” Velasquez said. “With this situation, if you’re a professional who is 34 years old? I am not sure. That’s the reason behind the inquiry.”

I can’t believe that is the entirety of the rationale for allowing it especially since they apparently rejected the idea early careerists would need it based on income or the lack of arts education schools. If income is a prime factor in exempting senior citizens, there is a chance that someone could use the median wealth of retiring baby boomers compared to that of their parents as the basis of arguing that it is as erroneous to assume they need a discount as it is a 34 year old professional.

Pricing isn’t and shouldn’t be the only method by which to attract younger audiences, but it is a pretty powerful motivator. There may be other ways to structure attractive pricing to the same segment of the population based on or complemented by some other criteria. The Office of Human Rights only rejected the reasoning the theatres submitted. That doesn’t mean a compelling line of reasoning doesn’t exist.

Crowdfunding Become Crowdinvesting?

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In the “stuff you aren’t supposed to do” theme of yesterday’s post, is a piece from Slate about legal restrictions on crowd funding.

While thousands of people can donate to your cause via sites like Kickstarter, SEC rules prevent those same people from investing in your company. If you figure people will donate to people in return for tshirts or other small thank you gifts/services, there is probably a fair bit of potential in getting people to invest in the same project with the possibility of financial return. But the rules say no way.

“Under current law, that is often illegal. A longtime Securities and Exchange Commission rule, designed to protect unsophisticated investors, limits the number of stakeholders certain private companies can have. If you hit 500, you often have to go public. That means opening your books to additional scrutiny and your business to the whims of the market. And being public is just not a feasible option for a tiny business looking for start-up funding. Thus, an artist can receive thousands of $5 donations on a site like Kickstarter, but an incorporated farmer cannot accept investments from thousands of interested small-timers.”

These are some of the same rules that govern investing in Broadway shows and are meant to prevent people from losing large amounts of money because they were not entirely aware of the risks of investing. There is certainly some wisdom in having them.

There are some moves to change this situation. President Obama included such a revision in his American Jobs Act. Even though the act failed to pass, the basic idea has bi-partisan support and some law makers are asking the SEC to change the rules. One petition to the SEC asks for an exemption for investments made in $100 increments as a way to prevent people from losing their life savings. Given that the exemption would mean less oversight of the activities, there is good potential for unscrupulous operators to take the money and run.

Laura Horton at the Legality website has a post that discusses all the legal issues and the efforts to change the rules at length. She reports that the legislation being introduced in Congress, (as opposed to the petition for a rule change to the SEC), would allow a business to raise “$5 million in capital, with a limit on individual investments of the lesser of $10,000 or ten percent of an individual investor’s income.” Horton notes that these companies would be exempt from some of the usual reporting. Hopefully at $10,000 a person, they wouldn’t be exempt from as much as a company getting funded $100 at a time.

Crowd funding at these levels could open the doors for a lot of possibilities, including starting an arts related business. This model might provide a viable alternative to the non-profit structure. It could provide the tools to not only to get an organization started, but also to sustain it over time.

As for how fraud will be prevented, Horton says,

“those in favor of crowdfunding find that investor protection rests on a fundamental aspect of this financing, opening it to lots of people for investment. This “crowd” aspect creates transparency, which may temper the effects of deregulation. There is also a stronger sense of community support through this style of investing. Crowdfunding makes venture capital accessible to small-scale business owners.”

I have to confess some skepticism about this approach being viable in the long run. A crowd can provide good oversight in a small geographic community or when it is performed by investing clubs who meet to research and decide who to fund. My suspicion is that if this type of investment is going to reach any sort of scale, people are going to be doing it over the internet and will rely on Amazon.com type reviews to make their decisions. Presumably, the rating mechanism will be a little more rigorous and have better protections against those who might try to game the system than most online rating websites. It is still likely the system will still be vulnerable to some degree of subversion.

But who knows, it may create a burgeoning industry of companies who meet those soliciting funding and perform objective evaluations and audits. They could post all their findings online accompanied by video interviews, photos of operations, etc for investors to use in their deliberations.

Will Buffet Family Foundation Influence Other Funders?

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Non-Profit Quarterly linked to an interview in Fast Company in which Warren Buffet’s grandson talks about his approach to philanthropy as he takes up the reins of the family foundation.

As I read the interview, I vacillated between mild dread where I hoped no one else decided to adopt the approach and feeling that his approach was sensible and might provide leadership that would strengthen the general non-profit infrastructure in the United States.

What made me most uneasy was his focus on quantity over quality.

“The first question, for instance, is “Assuming we are successful, how many people would we reach directly with the funding of this gift?” Proposals gets 3 points for affecting +1 million people, 2 for greater than 100,000, and 1 for less than 100,000. Those proposals with a less ambitious scope can secure a coveted spot on the portfolio team by being particularly unique or cost-efficient.”

While he does allow for funding of smaller efficient and effective organizations, I just wonder if that will get lost in the desire to report numbers served and therefore reinforce the idea that you have fudge numbers and always report success or lose funding.

Where this is coming from for him is wanting to get away from non-profits making emotional appeals and move toward discussing the complex factors which contribute to the problems the non-profit is trying to address.

“In the philanthropic world, the problem is the product, in the business world, the product is the solution.” says Buffett, who argues that NGOs are forced to “sell suffering.” The needless focus on sappy narratives often overlooks sophisticated solutions that can’t be easily marketed with a T-shirt-clad celebrity holding a small child.”

This is where I feel he is most sensible because he is determined to fund every step in the chain to addressing a problem, including the unsexy areas. But to do that, he wants the redundant organizations to either get out of the business, partner with other groups or refocus themselves.

“…rather than dolling out cash to independent, uncoordinated actors with the most heart-string-tugging story, they could take on an entire social problems (like food security or breast cancer) by systematically lining up nonprofits to tackle each part of the causal chain, from federal policy to victim resources.

“If you are an NGO, doing the exact same thing as another NGO, and that other NGO is doing better than you’re doing it, then you are in business for the wrong reason,” Buffett says in an exasperated rant against the individualist nature of charities. Overlapping operations, he says, not only waste money through redundant overhead, but keep brilliant minds occupied with logistical distractions that sap their potential impact.

“We will give you money to execute your mission,” Buffett says, “if you work together and identify the most cost-effective and successful ways to achieve that.”

Meanwhile, looking at the entire causal chain of a crisis is key to revealing missing links in the solution, such as political or logistical hurdles that are essential to success, but not appealing enough to raise dollars.”

Granted, the focus of the foundation he is leading is on agriculture, water and feeding school children rather than arts and culture. However, the practices of a Buffet family foundation is bound to have widespread influence with funders in other areas. It is possible that other foundations may use the same criteria.

Given that the question about whether there are too many arts organizations in existence has been a hot topic of late, it is conceivable that funders are already thinking along these lines.

So let me ask-

-how many arts organizations would seriously discuss merging or refocusing if a major funder told them they were redunant and less effective than another organization?

-how many might consider abandoning major activities that were redundant if the funder offered major support to expand in their areas of strength?

-would the arts in your community be more vibrant if there were groups that focused specifically on different niches within the chain? Such as:

-organization that handed advocacy for the arts with local government
-organization that focused on advocacy for the arts in education in conjunction with other advocacy groups
-organizations that purely perform
-organization that coordinates outreaches to schools by designing programs that emphasize the strengths of the performance and presenting groups

There are more functions that different groups might handle, of course, but this serves as a good example. You might look at this and think about how difficult it would be with all these tasks so decentralized, but think about how more schools would benefit if there was an organization that was making an effort to provide uniform coverage of your entire city/county. How much easier would it be for artists to make a living in the community if there was an organization that was hiring them to do outreaches in schools or connecting artists with students seeking instruction.

All this in an environment made conducive for these activities by groups who solely focused on influencing law and policy in government and school boards. Their advocacy is made credible by the existence of organizations who attract and employ strong performers and other organizations who develop exemplary education/outreach programs and train the artists to execute them effectively.

This approach may decentralize efforts and require a lot of cooperation between different groups, but does improve on the current situation where everyone does a little of everything with different degrees of success provided they have the funding and personnel.  As Howard Buffet acknowledges, there is a lot of unsexy infrastructure that no one really wants to fund that is crucial to the success of non-profit efforts. What a boon it would be if someone would fund all those places at a level smart people would be willing to engage in the work.

Fund Making Long Term Investment In Performing Arts Orgs

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For a few years now people have been calling for foundations and other funders to provide more long term capital investment in non-profit organizations. The Social Velocity blog has an interview with Rebecca Thomas, Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at the Nonprofit Finance Fund. (NFF) (h/t National Endowment for the Arts) The NonProfit Finance Fund is in the fourth year of a decade long effort to provide $1 million of what they term change capital in each of 10 performing arts organizations they selected.

One thing Thomas talks about is how many non-profits are mis-captialized in that they have sufficient capital, but that most of it is in the form of restricted funds. She touches upon this in a separate publication, Case for Change Capital in the Arts and Financial Reporting Done Right, which I have briefly looked at and hope to blog on in the near future.

The thing that caught my eye was her discussion of how capital and revenue are reported on non-profit financial reports.

One of the things we learned early on in this work is that changing the financial reporting—to separate capital flows from recurring revenue—would not be an easy sell, for understandable reasons. Executive directors are reluctant to take a chance presenting new formats to donors who don’t understand the technique, and many board members aren’t inclined to re-learn nonprofit accounting principles. Moreover, NFF’s suggested methodology is not required by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and auditors don’t always feel comfortable suggesting novel formats, even when they provide heightened clarity.

[…] suffice it to say that when capital and revenue are conflated, an organization’s reports do not present a realistic view of operating performance. Unintentionally misleading information can lead to poor planning and decision making by nonprofit leaders, boards and funders.

Longer term, it will take aggressive education and advocacy efforts to convince nonprofit executives, board members and funders of the value of producing transparent financial reports and audits that reveal business model economics separate from capital infusions. Nonprofits will need to be convinced that they won’t be penalized for producing statements that may, at times, show temporary weakness in operating results during a change or growth period.

Since NFF is in it for the long haul to help the 10 organizations in their pilot program institute substantial change, my guess is that they are trying to develop a way to effectively educate and communicate the validity of this different approach in financial reporting to boards and funders.

The first thing that came to mind when Thomas talks about mis-capitalization is how the Philadelphia Orchestra declared bankruptcy while possessing a substantial, but apparently restricted endowment. I couldn’t help but wonder if implementing the type of reporting discussed here would have made the real financial situation clearer earlier on.

I also wonder if they may not be the perfect candidate for using this reporting going forward. Even with the bankruptcy, they probably have the wherewithal to alter their accounting method where most arts organizations wouldn’t. Given their prominence, they could serve as an exemplar to non-profits, their boards and funders as to why these reporting methods should be adopted and properly understood.

One thing to note if you are hoping NFF’s pilot program becomes a trend, according to Thomas not all organizations are good candidates for change capital. They have to already possess strong management and self-evaluative processes which include data informed decision making.

Info You Can Use: Acknowledging The Arts Experience

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Welcome readers of You’ve Cott Mail and myriad other places. I appreciate your interest in the blog and yesterday’s entry about speaking more honestly about how an arts experience can occasionally be disappointing.

It is with some chagrin that I have discovered NEA chair Rocco Landesman talked about this very subject at the Chautauqua Institution about two weeks ago. One always likes to fancy they have stimulated lively discussion through the introduction of a timely subject. But of course, even I have made posts on the subject before so I can hardly expect to be the only one thinking about the subject.

If nothing else, the fact that Landesman has been speaking about it gives some indication that it is indeed timely and worth discussing. I have tagged this entry as part of my “Info You Can Use” series because Landesman mentions a number of ideas for better audience relations as well as noting some approaches that arts organizations have already put into practice.

“We might see an organization with an artistic director and a co-equal audience director. Rather than a manager of visitor services who reports to the director of external affairs who reports to a deputy director.

We might see fellowships for audience members…What if we complemented artist residencies with audience residencies, where we paid some audience members to attend exhibitions and performances? Or, better yet, what if arts organizations gave stipends to “audience fellows,” so that the fellows could go see whatever they wanted to see at other arts organizations?”

This last bit about encouraging audiences to see performances at other arts organizations isn’t as far fetched as it may initially sound. Back in 2006 the Marketing Director of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts made a comment on the blog about the organization’s plan to let patrons know about performances at other venues. Looking at their website, I can’t quite tell if they are still providing this information, but it looks like the marketing director is still there and hasn’t lost his job over the program.

More from Landesman: (my emphasis)

I visited the Seattle Art Museum, and they now offer “highly opinionated tours,” in which people paid by the museum walk through the galleries talking about the things they like, but also the things they don’t like. One of these docents led a tour in which he explained why Seattle’s Pollock isn’t really a very good Pollock at all.

We need to stop pretending that every single audience member needs to like every single thing we do.

Nick Hytner at the National in London, actually has his box office staff track subscribers’ likes, dislikes, and preferences, and has them e-mail the members and suggest some of the plays they way want to skip. I think acknowledging the viewers’ own tastes—in addition to curators’ and directors’ tastes—is absolutely key.

Madeleine Grynsztejn, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago put it extremely well. She said that arts professionals need to learn how to maintain their expertise, while relinquishing control. Madeleine will always have more expertise in contemporary art than I do, but I am still entitled to my own relationship with it, my own experience of it….”

Admittedly, some of these steps are a little bolder than we might be comfortable taking. This is info you canuse, but I make no claims about whether you will wantto use it. Certainly, one probably doesn’t have to adopt something as extreme as advising people not to attend a show. Just acknowledging that the arts experience can occasionally be disappointing in the course of normal conversation may earn good will through its simple earnestness.

Landesman covers other topics in his talk which might be worth a listen to many–especially for the flash mob performance which interrupts it midway. Much of the rest of his talk revolves around the same general theme of the need to support artists and artists needing to eschew the role of being separate and special to become more involved and present in their local communities.

My Butt Among The Seats

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Thanks to the hard work of Inside the Arts mother hen, Drew McManus, Butts in the Seats has a new look.

And if I can figure out how to fully exploit some of the new features I see on the new post creation page, hopefully it will result in a better experience for readers.

Some elements of the new look represent a bit of an evolution/maturation in the way I view my online presence. When I started the blog, I wanted to maintain a sense of being an Every Man, or in this case, Every Arts Manager. I didn’t want people to read the blog and think that the things I was talking about only really applied to one particular discipline of the performing arts or one particular geographic region.

As a result I tried to stay vague in some of the details of my writing, often to protect the identities of some of those I was criticizing, but also to try to give readers a sense that the same situation might apply to them. The gymnastics I had to engage in to avoid providing details was often tougher than writing the posts themselves and probably added an element of awkwardness to my prose.

My plan is to move away from that a bit more. Some generalization is likely to remain in my writing, but I will try to provide more identifiable and specific references in the future.

I am also more identifiable on my blog. Except for a small headshot in my section banner on the central Inside the Arts site, there wasn’t any indication of what I looked like. On the new site, there is a 3/4 body shot of me in my theatre in the About the Author section. I make no warranties about whether knowing what I look like will enhance your reading pleasure, but there it is.

I have also found myself coming across a number of interesting links related to the subject of arts management lately. However, there is more information than I can blog on in a timely manner so I have finally relented and created a Twitter account for the blog at http://www.twitter.com/buttsintheseats. Links to my blog posts will appear there alongside other information pertinent to arts management I wish to share.

Hope you like the new look. Thanks for reading!

Info You Can Use: Arts in Medicine

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A commentary by Dr. Gary Christenson on the Minnesota Medicine website offers the most complete listing of the benefits of arts in medicine I have yet seen. Whether the piece inspires you to partner with medical services or not, it provides evidence of the benefits of the arts to use alongside illustrations of the intrinsic, economic and educational values.

The commentary starts out relating an anecdote about an actual emergency “stat” call for musicians in a hospital. While acknowledging that such an incident is a rare occurrence in medicine, Dr. Christenson shows that the arts are already playing an important role in the practice of medicine:

(my apologies for the length of the citation. While I did pare it down to a large degree, there were just so many exciting and compelling examples, it was difficult to decide what to excise.)

“Although some might be inclined to dismiss the arts as a triviality, luxury, or unjustified expense in a time of concern over rising health care costs, research is showing that use of the arts in health care can be cost-effective. For example, a recent study done at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare demonstrated that using music therapy when preparing children for CT scans significantly reduced use of sedative medications, associated overnight stays, and nurse time, and resulted in a cost savings of $567 per procedure. It also decreased the need for repeat CTs because of poor-quality scans. When extrapolating those numbers to all pediatric CT scans done in the United States, researchers estimated a potential savings of $2.25 billion per year.”

1. Studying the arts makes medical students into better doctors.

“In our state, storytelling and theater have been used to teach students how to effectively take a medical history. Last year, for example, Mayo Medical School and the Mayo Clinic Center for Humanities and Medicine partnered with the Guthrie Theater to offer the one-week selective “Telling the Patient’s Story,” which drew upon improvisation and storytelling to teach students to take and report patients’ medical history.”

“Harvard Medical School has found that training medical students in the visual arts can help them develop their clinical observational skills. Students who participated in formal training consisting of art observation exercises, didactics that integrate fine arts concepts with physical diagnosis topics, and a life-drawing session demonstrated better visual diagnostic skills when viewing photographs of dermatological lesions than students who only received conventional training.”

“The arts also can convey lessons in ways traditional lectures cannot. It isn’t surprising that the top-rated lecture by first-year medical students on the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus for seven consecutive years was a reading of physician and playwright David Feldshuh’s Miss Evers Boys by Guthrie Theater actors. The play, about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, illustrates ethical issues related to informed consent and human experimentation.”

2. The arts have therapeutic benefits.

“Museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts have programs for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss that use visual and cognitive stimuli to evoke memories. Dance has been shown to improve the mobility of patients with conditions such as fibromyalgia and Parkinson disease.”

“Storytelling has been noted to improve the quality of life for cancer patients,10 increase lung function associated with asthma, and reduce symptoms and doctor visits. One report noted that regularly playing the Australia didgeridoo decreased apneic episodes for patients with obstructive sleep apnea.”

3. The arts can help prevent disease.

“..a campaign to decrease heart disease in England found that people were much more responsive to the message, “Dance makes the heart grow stronger” than to “Exercise makes the heart grow stronger.” Dance is one of the best ways to improve health on a number of levels. In addition to its physical benefits, dance enhances social engagement, which is important to overall health and well-being, and it’s one of the best activities for delaying the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

4. The arts can improve the patient experience.

“…a body of research has shown that patients tend to be less stressed, less anxious, require less pain medication, and ready for discharge earlier when their environment includes views of the natural world.”

“Bedside visits by musicians and artists also distract children from pain and help them explore their feelings about their illness.”

5. The arts can promote physician well-being.

“…Although many physicians were involved in the arts before entering medical school, they put those activities on hold during their training. University of Minnesota medical students have an opportunity to keep those interests alive… The program…provides students with a small financial award to pursue and develop their interests and skills in such diverse areas as painting, drawing, singing, clowning, photography, and playing an instrument as a way to find relief from the rigors of medical study.”

Using the arts to reduce costs, provide relief and focus to patients and produce more effective doctors, what isn’t to love? As with all things, arts are only one part of bolstering well-being and providing better medical care. There is certainly a potential for it to become a much more important element in providing better medical care if employed and studied to a greater degree.

Dr. Christenson provides 20 footnoted references for his commentary which seems a good place to start for those looking to develop programs and partnerships to integrate the arts in medicine. The research is also obviously a good basis for advocacy about the value of the arts.

Stuff To Ponder: Transparent Community Driven Grant Processes

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The Hawaii Community Foundation just recently completed the first round of granting for their Island Innovation Fund. I was really very impressed by the way they went about their very transparent granting process. Instead of having a grant disappear into the bowels of the foundation offices, they got the community involved in the process of providing feedback and guidance at every step.

The blog for the local technology radio show, Bytemarks Cafe, did a good job last October of summarizing the approach they took.

On my preview, the proposal review was a 4 step process. The first step in the process is the Concept, where you submit your idea and any associated material, be it photos, video, documents or presentations. There is an open period for submittals and a deadline to meet.

Next the process enters into the Collaboration phase where proposal material is made public (public as in registered users of the site). The public has about 30 days to comment or ask questions. Applicants are able to respond to comments and make improvements to their Concept.

During the third phase, HCF personnel will review the revised Concept. Projects that best demonstrate the principles and goals of the Island Innovation Fund will be ask to submit a Proposal.

Finally in phase 4 the Omidyar Network and Hawaii Community Foundation staff will review and evaluate Proposals. The most compelling proposals get invited to present a 15 minute presentation to an independent panel of judges for final selection. This judging is open to the public. Winning proposals will be announced one week after the final presentations.

I listen to the radio show pretty regularly, but I must have missed the show where they originally discussed this because I would have definitely participated in the feedback portion of the concept phase. I think that is the best part of the entire program. Not only does it allow applicants to understand what the community needs are and adjust their application accordingly, but it also provides the Hawaii Community Foundation (HCF) with a better understanding of what the community needs from them.

It is something of a win-win for everyone. Even if the applicants aren’t proposing something that fits into the HCF or fund goals, they get valuable feedback about their concept should they wish to pursue it with another granting organization. Those who are invited to proceed, but don’t get funded also receive important feedback and I believe some will be allowed to reapply for the next round. Being able to walk away knowing how to make your proposal better and speak about it effectively is valuable in itself because you often don’t get any feedback in that vein from granting organizations.

In understanding what the community needs, HCF can begin to think about their own approaches and priorities, including assumptions about community needs they may have made. Perhaps some of the proposals didn’t adequately address how the specific submitter would effectively approach a need in the community. The need still remains and now HCF may be able to bring resources to bear having read the feedback on the community forums suggesting what considerations need to be made in effecting a solution.

I should also note that even the final presentations to the independent panel was conducted very publicly and was streamed live over the internet. The video may still be viewed on the Island Innovation Fund website.

Now in a bit of serendipity, Diane Ragsdale addressed the pursuit and funding of innovation in the arts on her blog today. She mentions that receiving funding for innovative work can actually destabilize an organization as they try to meet the heightened expectations that such recognition brings.

But she also notes that often the most innovative work is passed over in favor of more tame versions because real innovation risks failure by necessity:

“Finally, it’s perplexing and annoying to others in the arts sector when funders give ‘innovation grants’ to projects and organziations that are not, actually, innovative–particularly when one knows the projects that did NOT get funding. I’m not sure how this happens but I suspect it is in large part because ideas that are truly surprising, that may even defy written rules and conventions, are unlikely to make it all the way through the grantmaking process at most risk-averse foundations (in no small part because they make lawyers nervous).”

I am not going to claim that those awarding money from the Island Innovation Fund, even given their intriguing granting process, are any less risk averse than any other foundation out there. However, I would think that efforts toward innovation in the arts would benefit from a granting process like the one they conducted. The one benefit I hadn’t mentioned yet about this program is that even if one isn’t an applicant for the grant, just participating in the question and commenting phase can help a person refine their own nascent ideas and understand how better to execute them.

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

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

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

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

Culinary Convening
Farmers, Ranchers and Restaurateurs Convene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interconnected Fates

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You may have heard that the police in Madison, WI are in sympathy with many of the union members who have gathered to protest their governor’s push to end collective bargaining rights for state workers. Over the weekend I heard an interview on NPR that mentioned both police and firefighters were turning out in support of the protest even though the governor wasn’t proposing to take away their right to collective bargaining because they figured it was only a matter of time. The fire fighter interviewed said they viewed it as an effort to divide and conquer.

Earlier this month Louise K. Stevens who writes the “Arts Market On..” blog made a similar observation regarding the need for the arts to advocate in areas outside of their immediate concern. (my emphasis)

No doubt that you have and will be getting emails and calls to action about this. But probably those calls are piecemeal, asking you for you to advocate for one or another of these line items while ignoring the whole, and that’s the problem. We a splintered sector that has never to date united around the concept of our culture, and now each splinter may be too small and too isolated from its compatriots to build a coalition to save federal support for any of the splinters.

We have a few weeks to save the half century-plus of infrastructure that modest as it may be demonstrates our public commitment to the breadth and majesty of our American culture, our shared story. If we stand splintered now, we may never get a chance to regroup. If we think that saving orchestras or contemporary dance is more important or that saving library funding and museum funding matters more than poetry, or that history and heritage and historic architecture should out trump theatre…well, how will it end?

Around the same time, Arlene Goldbard (h/t to Ian David Moss) wrote a three part series titled “Life Implicates Art” which while long, I think does the best job in summing up the challenges facing the arts and the wrong turns that have been made. Other bloggers, myself included, have touched upon these issues at times but her entries are timely in the context of all the movement nationally in Congress and state legislatures in regard to arts funding. (Also, every entry she makes has an embedded music video which is kind of a cool little hook.) Her ultimate conclusion, much like that of the firefighters in Wisconsin is that there is a high degree of interconnected interests among seemingly disparate groups.

In the first entry, she addresses the problem which is mostly that arts people think that the failure to secure funding is directly related to a failure to make a strong enough case for the arts when it is often more about politics rather than money. In some respect there is actually a weakness in the way a case for the arts is made. She notes, as I have pointed out a few times, that pretty much every industry can make a claim about the economic benefits of their activity. She notes, as most of us know, that with all the money spent on combat troops in the Mid-East, maintaining a nuclear arsenal and imprisoning a large portion of the population, the expenditures on the arts is pretty minuscule but there is not enough support for the arts nationally to make it politically difficult to make cuts there first.

In the second entry, she expounds upon the forces at work that determine politician priorities. She labels the arguments suggested by Americans for the Arts recent mail-in campaign to Congress as “so bloodless and soporific that I can’t imagine anyone actually reading all the way to the end of an op-ed based on them. Yet these have been the talking points for more than three decades. The result? The real value of the NEA budget has fallen by more than half. But hey, it’s all we’ve got, right?”

Instead she suggests a more strongly worded, speaking truth to power letter to all those who voted to support the recent extension of tax cuts to millionaires the revenue of which could cover the budgets of the NEA and NEH twice over.

Here’s an open letter along the lines I’d like to see circulating in every district represented by someone who voted for the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts:

Dear Senator/Representative:

Less than two months ago, you voted for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They reduce tax revenues by an amount equivalent to paying out twice the combined budgets of the National Endowments for The Arts and Humanities, every single day of the year. At a time when our nation’s polarization of wealth is extreme—the top 10% own 80% of all financial assets; and the top 1% own more than the bottom 90%—I am shocked to think you care more about the wealthiest political donors than the well-being of the rest of us.

By cutting arts funding and other social goods, you are making the rest of us pay for millionaire tax cuts. It is wrong to sacrifice our children’s access to music and art classes to save millionaires from paying their fair share. It is wrong to abandon artists who have dedicated their lives to working in schools, hospitals, senior centers, and other places where their skills of imagination, beauty, and meaning lift spirits, build community, and help people find resilience. It is wrong to defund creativity at a time when we it is precisely what we need to excel in science and business, to align our spirits with hope and recovery.

It is embarrassing to be the richest nation on earth with the highest incarceration rate, prison population, and expenditure on war, and the lowest public investment in creativity. You want us to believe that you’re concerned about the economy and taxpayers, but really? Tote up the tax breaks included for millionaires: you just put $225 billion of taxpayers’ well-being into the pockets of people who already have more money than they know how to spend.

This is a shame and a scandal, and I’m going to do everything I can to let my fellow voters know about it. Restoring arts funding would be a tiny gesture to show you actually care about what the rest of us want: it’s literally the least you can do. You were elected to serve everyone, not just big donors. Here’s your chance to prove it. Don’t let America down!

Sincerely,

John/Jane Q. Public

In the third entry, she talks about reframing the arts. As you might imagine, the burden lays upon the arts community, especially in terms of expanding the definition of art beyond what is produced by non-profit arts organizations. There is an image of the arts as elitist that people who want to cut funding have evoked that many people in the arts chafe against because we know there aren’t people in black ties sipping champagne and making obscure literary references at our performances and exhibits. Except that there are some aspects of the elitist imagery we are responsible for perpetuating.

“It’s abstract, one step removed from things people really care about: many people who happily embrace words like music or movies, who sing or draw or love to dance, will respond negatively to the idea of “the arts”—Oh no, not me, you hear them say, I’m not into the arts. Ask that same person, “Do you like to dance?” or “Do you play an instrument?” and the answer will be “Yes,” with no evident awareness of contradiction.

That’s because they pick up on the exclusionary subtext. Many people who consider themselves part of “the arts” use that label to distinguish the work of subsidized organizations from commercial cultural industries and entertainments. An enormous industry generates multibillions each year from sales of music, movie tickets, video rentals, concert tickets, and the like; and enormous numbers take pleasure from making music, taking photographs, writing poems and songs, taking part in dance competitions and poetry slams, and so on.

Yet, except when they want to summon impressive figures about the scope of the cultural economy, mainstream arts advocates don’t mention any of this. There’s an embedded snobbery that presumes the superiority of nonprofit arts organizations and the work they support, a kneejerk dismissal of the rest. This discourse often has an air of unreality: I hear advocates saying that “the arts” are in decline, yet—to pick just one example—almost everyone I encounter integrates music into daily life, almost as a kind of medicine, self-prescribing the sounds and feelings that will support them through the day.”

Goldbard feels this can be reversed, of course, if efforts are made to change practice and national cultural policy. She derives hope from the fact that people are realizing that assessing value based on numbers doesn’t work in healthcare or education and that short term savings results in a long term cost. Care and education of the whole person today prevents more expensive problems down the road. Her suggested approach to employing the intrinsic value of the arts is no less holistic and intertwines with education, healthcare and commerce to bolster all these areas.

In an homage to Goldbard’s posting style, I embed the following video. It isn’t explicitly about art and many wouldn’t consider the singing to be art because it employs autotune, but that’s sort of Goldbard’s point.

If Everyone Is Gathered In The Middle of The Road, You’re A Freak On The Sidewalk

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I was catching up on some of the TED Talks I had marked on the old Google reader today when I came across a fun, short talk dissecting what makes a TED talk work vs. what elements people don’t respond as positively. The speaker, Sebastian Wernicke, even created a web site with a TED talk generator utilizing the best (and worst) words according to his statistical analysis.

It’s all tongue-in-cheek, but it also sort of falls into the category of “its funny, because its true” which in some respects isn’t so funny. A similar analysis is used to determine television and radio programming. The algorithms Pandora.com uses to suggest songs you may like based on songs you already like isn’t much different from the analysis many corporate owned radio stations use to determine whether to add a song to their play list. Even in a niche area like Hawaiian music, corporate has to evaluate and approve what gets played locally. I know because I tried.

I know it is not news that people gravitate toward the middle of the road stuff that challenges and excites just enough to keep people engaged but goes no further. Anyone who finds a new format to present this in gets copied. It strikes me that this may be part of the problem the arts face. The definition of the middle of the road has become concentrated around such a narrow point by analysis and replication that areas of the arts which used to be considered more mainstream suddenly find themselves of fringe interest.

I’ll grant that the arts suffer from a certain lack of nimbleness and we are seeing the result of that. I wonder though if the view of the arts as an interest of a fringe population is what has helped to lead to calls for defunding time and time again or for Rocco Landesman’s claim that there are too many arts organizations. There aren’t calls to evaluate organizational effectiveness and allocation of resources. The assumption seems to be that the nation is ill-served by the arts as a whole. Borders bookstores announced they were closing down stores last week. Starbucks did a similar thing a year or so ago and closed many of its stores. People may have said there were too many Starbucks around, but no has said we needed to have fewer coffee shops or book stores. The respective companies evaluated which areas were under performing and made a decision.

I will concede that governments aren’t currently in the business of evaluating arts organizations and so don’t have the data the head office a private sector company would have so they can create the criteria for cutting funding. I am certain most of us would be a little nervous about what sort of criteria might be set. Our return on investment in some areas is likely stronger in some areas than in others and it would be easy for someone who wanted to defund us to focus on our deficiencies. Or worse yet, compare us to the big impressive organization over yonder.

What I have noticed though is that no one who wants to reduce or remove funding has really made it an issue of quality. No one has even decided to call the arts on all the things arts leaders claim their disciplines provide at budget hearings. Which makes me think it isn’t a matter of the arts doing valuable work, it is matter of the arts no longer really being a mainstream concern. There are certainly other factors and it isn’t really a revelation that the arts aren’t as mainstream as they once were. It is a little depressing to recognize that no one is out there saying if we want their money, we need to do a better job at providing a benefit. Andrew Taylor noted this in an entry last week.

In terms of what the answer might be. It could lay in the direction of the random acts of culture program I wrote about the Knight Foundation sponsoring. I followed a trackback to that entry from The Waltzing Porcupine blog and discovered a link to an entry on the Asking Audiences blog that reinforced the idea that flash performances may be part of a strategy for arts organizations to become more nimble and find increased relevancy in audience’s lives. (emphasis from the original)

“What struck me most forcefully, watching videos of Random Acts of dance, poetry, classical music, and opera from around the country, was that the bystanders (well, they start as bystanders but soon become an audience) are obviously experiencing a range of real, pleasurable human emotions. That’s something you can’t usually see on the faces of arts audiences sitting in concert halls and auditoriums.

Why is that? Not just because they’re not expecting an arts attack and are thrown off balance, although clearly that’s part of the fun. I think it has to do with the fact that, in these Random Acts, the performers and the audience are in every sense on the same level. The performers are dressed like you and me. They’re in our midst, not on a stage. We’re together in this crazy business (opera, life).

[…]

But the Random Acts program is more ambitious and, from the looks of it, more dramatically subversive. It almost makes you think the arts have been in hiding all these years, playing it safe in their own cultural caves instead of venturing out to where life is really going on. Hence the feeling of celebration surrounding these performances: the arts are coming out of the closet, redefining themselves as things regular people do, in regular places — no longer “hallowed” experiences set apart from daily life.

[…]

But there is a subtle chipping-away effect. You can see the bystanders’ identities being challenged by their own reactions to the performance: “I’m not a dance (or classical music, or poetry, or opera) person. But wait a second. This is fun!”…

You Have Just Walked In To A Random Act of Culture

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Well, Opera Company of Philadelphia is at it again. Back in June I did an entry on their flash mob performance of La Traviata at Reading Terminal Marketplace. In January, they were back in Reading Terminal Marketplace with a flash mob performance of “Toreador” However, this time it was under the auspices of the Knight Foundation’s Random Acts of Culture program according to a New York Times piece. The program is centered mostly in those communities with a Knight Foundation presence, but they are looking to expand after using these communities as pilot programs. The website has video from other communities and includes opera, dance, brass and string performances in public gathering places.

“Everything we do revolves around the idea of weaving the arts into the fabric of the community,” said Dennis Scholl, the arts program’s director, who aims to produce 1,000 Random Acts by the end of 2013. “Our hypothesis is that people care about the arts, and if you analyze where they are and bring art to them, they will be passionate about it.”

One of the things I like about the Knight Foundation effort, other than the basic fact that they are supporting and promoting arts organizations, is that the program is pulling many groups together to work collaboratively. Opera Company of Philadelphia organized another event to perform Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus at a Macy’s that involved 650 people. According to the Times article this meant the inclusion of “…28 groups — ‘everything from the Presbyterian church choir to the Gay Men’s Chorus,…’ ” If they can work together on this project, perhaps whatever conditions separate their organizations can be diminished or removed for future partnerships. I am not equating the abilities of church choirs with opera singers, I am just suggesting there might be other situations where they can generate more excitement together.

As I was thinking about this program as a possible template for connecting the arts with audiences, some questions occurred to me. If malls are viewed as appropriate places for performances, what is the fate of our acoustically refined performance halls? Will people recognize their experience in the food court is far from the ideal? Will they care?

If people can see a high quality performance for free, not realizing it took $30,000 to put the Macy’s performance together, will people balk at paying $50+ for a ticket because it seems so far out of proportion? They got 650 people at Macy’s for free, after all.

The Times article mentions that when the Opera Company of Philadelphia did their flashmob La Traviata last year, there was a groundswell of support that followed and hopefully such benefits might follow those that participate in the Random Acts of Cultural Program. It might be good though to also take the opportunity to educate people about what was invested to make it all happen. A little hand out that says, “We are glad you enjoyed this so much. This was a fantastic experience for us too, involving 650 people from 28 groups, 500 rehearsal hours and $30,000 generously supported by the Knight Foundation that allowed us to provide this 10 minutes random act of culture for free. If you thought we were great here, please consider coming to see us at our best when we perform throughout the year at Lovely Venue.”

Fractured Atlas Has Found Me!

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Fractured Atlas has my home address. I am not sure how they got it, but I have my suspicions. (I’m looking at you Western Arts Federation and Americans for the Arts.) The reason I know this is I received a small pamphlet in the mail this weekend letting me know about Fractured Atlas’ services to artists. My assumption is that this is part of Fractured Atlas’ effort to have a more nationwide reach. While they do have membership across the U.S., the vast majority of their members are on the East Coast, especially around New York City.

As I am wont to do when I see them offering something I like, I am encouraging people to check out their services. The pamphlet says their goal is to support artists, arts groups, arts administrators and other creative types “in the business aspects of your work–through access to insurance, funding, education, technology, and more.”

They have designed the pamphlet like one of those choose your own adventure books to direct you through a survey of their services. The first page directs you either to a page on fiscal sponsorship and insurance, two of the basic services Fractured Atlas has offered since they formed. Here is a look at the center pages of the pamphlet.

Click Image to Enlarge

Fractured Atlas has been demonstrating this sense of fun a fair bit lately. Take for example their espionage themed blog posts about two of their research fellows working on their open source arts administration software ATHENA. It’s a little strange, but a far more interesting read than posts discussing how they analyzed the current market needs and their methodology.

Wait a minute, maybe I am not taking their spy stories seriously enough! Maybe their research fellows are much better than I anticipated and that is who found out where I live! If I turn up missing in the near future, start the questioning with Adam “the Hutt” Huttler.

Info You Can Use: Microvolunteering

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This information has been out since this summer and I have this sense of being vaguely aware of the company being mentioned in tweets, but there was no mention of its significance or I would have covered this at the time. I figured this was reason enough to mention it here and spread the word. (Or I was just living under a rock, but I couldn’t have been the only one.)

A company called The Extraordinaries has essentially shrunk Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service down to the cell phone level with a service called Sparked. I should clarify that this isn’t Amazon’s service offered through cell phones and the service rendered is voluntary rather than the paid work Amazon offers. The similarity is that it connects the needs of companies, in this case non-profits, with volunteers willing to do the work.

According to a piece on Springwise.com,

“…it enlists both individuals and groups of company employees to contribute their expertise to a nonprofit in even the smallest chunks of time. Nonprofits begin by posting requests to the site; those, in turn, are routed to would-be volunteers based on their skills and interests. Examples might include translating a page of a document into Spanish, for instance, or helping to choose a new logo; The Extraordinaries even has pre-built “kits” that turn a series of best practices into tasks for volunteers. Willing volunteers then complete the requests during a spare moment via iPhone (through a dedicated app) or web browser—or they can share it with their colleagues.”

Sparked uses the term micro-volunteering because the tasks are broken down into whatever segments of time you have available. You could conceivably perform tasks on the train commute into work or in a taxi on the way to a party. There are some examples of work that has been completed on their blog, including a recent story about a logo that one volunteer reworked.

I am probably not the first to say it, but given the way today’s digital culture is shaping interactions, I have to think this mode of activity mediated through technology is going to begin to figure largely in organizations’ volunteer programs. It doesn’t help with ushering and important face to face interactions, but it could help with promotional efforts, research, evaluation and maybe even editing program books and designing the covers.

Though I can see it now, people are so impressed with our organization when they attend a show, the decide to start microvolunteering on their iPhones during a performance leaving the staff in a quandary about asking them to stop.

Info You Can Use: B Corporations

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Daniel Pink had a tweet today to a Washington Post story about Maryland companies signing up to be classified as a “B” corporation in that state. The B for Benefit Corporation will allow for-profit companies to operate to pursue social ideals.

You may ask what is to keep any company from operating in socially responsible ways? Many companies align themselves with causes to burnish their image, after all. It is actually the stockholders which may pose a problem apparently. According to the newspaper:

“These hybrid entities pay taxes and can have shareholders, without the risk of being sued for not maximizing profits. Companies can consider the needs of customers, workers, the community or environment and be well within their legal right.

A benefit corporation, for instance, could choose to buy from local vendors at a higher cost to reduce its carbon footprint, much as the Big Bad Woof does. The company, as a part of the incorporation, is required to file an annual report on contributions to the goals set forth in the charter and submit to an audit by an independent third party. “

This is different from the L3C structure I have mentioned before. Like the L3C, this structure is not recognized by the IRS. Though I am not sure if it is in the same nebulous area the L3C because it doesn’t seem like B companies are meant ever qualify as a program related investment for foundations. Though there is probably a lot about the structure not covered in the news article.

More information about B corporations may be found online at a site created to advance these type of organizations. I didn’t find any discussion about how the IRS views these organizations and if there are significant restrictions to investing. According to the site the need for a B corporation are: (my emphasis)

“B Corporations address two critical problems:

* Current corporate law makes it difficult for businesses to take employee, community, and environmental interests into consideration when making decisions; and
* The lack of transparent standards makes it difficult for all of us to tell the difference between a ‘good company’ and just good marketing.”

This is an effort they are trying to take nationwide so if you are interested, don’t think it isn’t applicable to you just because you don’t live in Maryland. This could be a viable structure for an arts related organization. While the status doesn’t provide any tax breaks, doing well on the required audit can be a positive signal to interested investors.

Next Season Is So Great, It Has A Codename!

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If you use the Firefox web browser as I do, you may have noticed links on the Google search page that take you to the community they have built around the “fire foxes” (red pandas) they adopted at the Knoxville Zoo. Or a link informing you that the next version of their web browser is code named Tumucumaque after the Brazilian national park that Mozilla is supporting in partnership with the World Wildlife Federation.

My initial, and admittedly, cynical reaction is that this smells a little bit like greenwashing. Though as an open source and non-profit project, Mozilla can weather the suspicions and pessimism a little easier than most.

Since people do respond to these efforts if they feel they are sincerely done, it occurred to me that connections like this on the local level might be a win-win for non-profit arts organizations and those with whom they partner. Such an effort could bring positive attention to both organizations. Partner with an observatory to dedicate your season to a newly discovered star or planetary body. Adopt students at schools/boys and girls club/future farmers of America chapter you already work with to present a “Student of the Month” where the student’s art work is on display on your website or in your lobby.

You could even duplicate the code name route and turn the T.B.A. listing in your season brochure into the focus of intrigue and speculation. Having it connected with a partner organization may help you avoid spending more time thinking up clever code names than you did in season selection.

If you start a partnership with a local science museum, just be sure to vet any suggestions they may make thoroughly. You don’t want to end up advertising Project Nematode just because one of the scientists thinks they are the coolest critters around. Theatres have enough parasitic worms associated with them already!

Silent Evangalization For The Arts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Info You Can Use: Viral Media and Intellectual Property Guide

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The people over at the Technology in the Arts have been offering some nifty guides and podcasts for performing arts folks. Those I have looked at are fairly concise and easy to consume in a short period in your busy day. One of the more timely guides I have recently seen is about the legal considerations associated with posting video online that you hope will go viral.

As the guide author Amelia Northrup notes, technology has been moving faster than union agreements have been made so it can be difficult to know what is allowed and what is forbidden. Yet there is a fair bit of pressure to have a more extensive multi-media representation on the internet.

“Many of us have received well-intentioned comments from a friend or board member about posting performance footage online. However, there are not a lot of people giving practical advice on how to avoid an ugly legal run-in with your dancers over streaming video or negotiate with a union to ensure you are able to post the video of the third movement of a string quartet to your Facebook page. Building audiences with performance footage is wonderful, of course, but the benefit is nullified when your efforts cause a lawsuit from the composer!”

The guide has some case studies comparing the experiences of different arts organizations, both union and non-, who have worked to broadcast their works over the internet with varying results. Northrup also provides a brief guide to copyright law with a graphic that does a pretty good job at helping you get a general sense of which of the myriad copyright laws may apply to your production. (Though no guarantees you will be completely sure after looking at the graph.)

Northrup also discusses the fair use doctrine and address an assumption I never considered people might make. She points out that since using materials for educational purposes is permitted under fair use and non-profits are classified as educational entities, non-profits may assume there is nothing forbidding their use of protected materials. In short, it just ain’t so. On the other hand, some unions have rules that define use within certain parameters – “Actors’ Equity contracts have allowances for “b-roll,” which is approximately three minutes of footage that can be made publicly available, usually without royalties being paid to the performers.”

The guide also points out that more than just the work of the performers is covered by copyright and union protections and may involve payment of royalties and residuals.

“Artists contribute to the production by creating intellectual property, and therefore essentially become authors themselves. Any art used in the show, such as set, costumes, and lighting design are the intellectual property of these additional artist/authors (lighting designers, technical directors, etc.). This is also often a problem in the entertainment industry. In his book The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig describes the difficulties that movie producers have clearing rights for logos, artwork, even furniture.”

And don’t forget that a video you post online highlighting interesting sections of a performance will also involve the intellectual property work of the video editors and related production crew as well.

The guide includes a list of Dos and Don’ts which reiterates knowing what the rules are, negotiating for the widest latitude of use from the outset and sticking to the agreement. One of the case studies reinforces the “don’t” of assuming the two related unions you are making arrangements with talking to each other, even if they say they are. There was one “don’t” that wasn’t really discussed in the rest of the guide- “Don’t assume that designers, actors, or any other artist or author will automatically equate your organization’s promotions with publicity for them.”

I have never run into an instance where this became a problem between an organization and artists, but I have had encounters where people at arts organizations assumed that an artist or designer wouldn’t mind if they used the artist’s work because it would promote them. I think that could potentially be the biggest area of contention in the future since technology seems to be fostering this attitude. That was the basis for a big discussion debate on composer Jason Robert Brown’s blog this summer. Brown is a big defender of sheet music royalties and had that view challenged by a young woman who felt she was helping promote him by trading his sheet music over the internet. Brown found 4,000 instances of people offering his work for free and was a little concerned about the loss of royalties that might represent. One of the points the young woman used as a counter during their lengthy debate was that he might stand to make money if someone used the free sheet music in a talent show which lead someone else to download Brown’s music from iTunes.

This is a topic that has no quick or easy answers. There are hundreds of comments on Brown’s post debating this topic and from what I heard, visits to his site rocketed into the hundreds of thousands. I daresay the basic conversation about intellectual property and the best intentions of fans when they use it hasn’t exhausted itself yet. You can sue those with malicious intent with a clear conscience. Responding to exploitation by those who adore you is another matter entirely.

Adjust Your Back For Bach

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Via The Art Law Blog, is a story about physicians in upstate New York who have come together to barter health care for art and artists’ services. This is a topic I wrote on in the early days of this blog. In fact the program at Woodhull Medical Center which I discussed in that early post is cited in this article. It would depress me somewhat if I were to learn that Woodhull was included in the piece because it has been the only successful program of this type started in the last five years.

But that may not be the case to much longer, according to the story, the organizers of the O+ Festival (O positive) in upstate New York are looking to incorporate as a non-profit to continue these activities. “Chandler and other organizers are incorporating O+ as a nonprofit and want to put on art-for-health-care festivals in other cities next year. Like-minded artists, musicians, and physicians from Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Nashville, Berkeley, and Lowell, Mass., have contacted O+ looking to replicate the organization.”

People interviewed for the story concede this is only a stop gap solution that won’t solve the larger problem of artists not having access to affordable health care. Still the “232 hours of service, valued at more than $38,000” the health care professionals donated is nothing to scoff at. Though as The Art Law Blog reminds us, you have to declare bartered goods and services on your tax return.

**By the way, if anyone has any clever suggestions for this program a la my title, I would enjoy hearing them. Especially bad puns are welcome. Among the others I had thought of were Tosca to Set A Tibia and Cesareans for Cezzanes. There were some unformed idea about scapula and sculpture as well as some icky thoughts about colonoscopies and hernias I would prefer not to mention.

Innovation In Practice

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A colleague recommended a piece on innovation that appeared in the Fall issue of Grantmakers in the Arts by Richard Evans called, Entering upon Novelty. Evans starts by talking about how the current state of things is based on the expectations created by the Ford Foundation when it was the preeminent arts granter starting in the later 1950s. He quickly moves to his vision of an alternative approach that he feels is more appropriate to the new environment within which arts organizations must operate. He presents a chart comparing the two which I have recreated here- Old Structure on the Left,  Emerging Structure on the Right

His commentary on the chart had some resonance with me.

“The emerging features are clearly those of a very different kind of organization, built on different assumptions. For example, in the third comparison, there is an underlying shift in assumptions about the nature of the artistic experience. From ”The quality of the artistic experience we can offer is dependent upon high levels of technical execution that are otherwise rarely experienced” to “The quality of the artistic experience we can offer is dependent upon the connection we make between our own and our participants’ creative aspirations.”

And, in the last comparison, there is a shift in assumptions about financial management. From “Permanent capital funds and buildings will stabilize our organization and protect us from annual upsets” to “Liquidity and fungible assets will support our ability to adapt rapidly to meet new conditions.”

Evans goes on to talk about how the arts have hobbled themselves by not engaging in a “genuine integration of artists into our organizations — not to represent a programmatic perspective, but as full members of the team, divergent thinkers and creative strategists.” It occurred to me that this approach helped to institutionalize the idea that artists must focus on their Art and can’t be distracted with the picayune details of business. Now we are engaged in attempt to get artists to think about the practical details of their careers and perhaps it is time to examine if the businesses have the artist’s creativity to be nimble and innovative in their operations.

Evans discusses how changes might manifest and the need for business models to change–and foundations’ funding criteria to make a corresponding shift in acknowledgment. What really interested me was his assertion that innovation could be institutionalized. He mentions a year long process that EmcArts, of which he is president, conducts to facilitate the move toward an institutional practice of innovation.

“The work is structured in three facilitated phases. The first phase concentrates on building an innovation team (not from the usual suspects!), researching possible new strategies, and focusing the team’s efforts on its most promising discoveries. The second phase is a midproject intensive retreat — five solid days locked away in the woods that telescope months of meetings and increase project momentum — serving as an Innovation Accelerator as decisions begin to be made. The third phase focuses on trying out the innovation through repeated prototyping and evaluation, in relatively low-stakes environments, as each organization decides whether, and how, to move forward with fuller implementation.”

It is the last stage that interested me most because as Evans says, arts organizations don’t have the resources in time/money/personnel, etc to test out new things. According to Evans, those who have participated in learning the process find that failure of an implemented plan has been productive for them and they are eager to try again.

As you know, we here at Butts in the Seats are interested in practical solutions.The desire to try again was the part that convinced me this approach might be worth serious consideration. There are a plethora of management and leadership techniques and theories that emerge all the time, many of which get discarded after a short time or when the next fad emerges. Just as when a business is recommended by a friend who says they will patronize it again, the fact someone is eager to employ an approach again says a lot for it.

Must Read: For-Profit Arm No Panacea For Non-Profit Funding Woes

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If you have ever thought that starting a for-profit arm for your non-profit to help support the latter’s mission, you must read The Nonprofiteer’s post on the subject. I have been hearing it suggested that non-profits embrace these types of arrangements as grants and donations have become increasingly difficult to secure. A study linked to by The Nonprofiteer requires one to pause in such considerations.

Writes the Nonprofiteer of the study:

“nonprofit agencies which choose to support themselves with for-profit businesses end up serving their clients less and worse. Moreover, when the businesses thrive the profits go back into the business, while when the businesses falter the losses are taken out of the hide of the agencies. “

I took a look at the study, “Social Enterprise: Innovation or Mission Distraction,” in which author Rebecca Tekula analyzes the 990 filings of Human Service organizations in New York County from 2000 to 2005. The number of organizations this encompasses is not cited though Tekula writes that the data “represents 700 organizational years” which averages to 116.67 organizations for each of those six years.

What Tekula says she found is that enterprises that yield non-business related income undermine the value provided through the non-profit program-

“As hypothesized, the internal capital markets of nonprofit firms seem to follow that of for-profit firms in that diversification leads to value loss as proxied by programmatic expenditure. What can be inferred from my findings is that this particular type of external enterprising behavior is associated with less value in the programmatic output of human service nonprofits.”

And, no surprise, ineffective programs can be a drain on the resources that should be directed to the effective ones-

“My findings are in accordance with cross-subsidy theories of diversification in which internal budgeting allocates funds to divisions with few investment opportunities (ailing enterprises of nonprofits) while failing to channel funds to those with ample investment opportunities (effective, efficient programs). While this research is a first step toward identifying the factors associated with earned income behavior in nonprofit organizations, there is much work to be done in this area.”

Tekula is careful not to say this will be true for all sectors of the non-profit world and encourages similar study of the arts, healthcare and education. But does caution, (my emphasis)

“Clearly more thought and research must be invested in this area and caution must be given in popularizing and glorifying the unproven benefits of unrelated or external enterprising activities on the very organizations that have become important service providers for society’s neediest individuals.”

Consortium Merger Update

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

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

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

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

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

Arts, Feel The Burn. Love the Burn!

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Andrew Taylor has the video of Diane Ragsdale’s address on Arts Alliance Illinois 2010 Members’ Meeting on his blog today. Her speech was titled, “Surviving the Culture Change” and she tackled the general idea that expectations are changing and the arts need to change too. My favorite moment was when she likened the experience of attending the arts for someone who has never really done so to going to the gym. “You have to go on a regular basis before going feels better than not going.”

During her talk she references the fact that large churches often make sure newcomers are greeted and are integrated into a small group that becomes something of a social network for them so they don’t feel like a small fish in a really big pond. I made a similar observation in just the last month.

She also talked about attending performances and then wanting the arts organization to have posted some sort of downloadable material the next day that she could share with her friends. Perhaps she acknowledged the problem and I missed it, but the biggest difficulty with that is arranging for all the intellectual property clearances to pull that off. Doing what she suggests will either take a major shift in how protective IP holders are with their material..or the rise to prominence of people who don’t care to have it tightly guarded. Something that may just happen if people flock to them because they enable audiences to share clips the next day.

Ragsdale speaks on a number of topics over 45 minutes and there is a lot that is likely to interest you, so watch it below. The last thing that grabbed my attention was when she talked about saying you don’t have time to be involved with the arts is just an easy default answer. She points out that people devoted to the slow food movement/sustainable agriculture invest a great deal of time and money hunting down organic ingredients, learning to prepare meals and then engaging in the time consuming cooking process. There is a sense of satisfaction they get from this activity. Part of the trick then is to provide an opportunity to acquire a similar sense of satisfaction in the arts.

N.B. – For a shorter version of Diane’s comments and the text of the prepared remarks, see the links in Scarlett Swerdlow’s comments below. Thanks for the tip, Scarlett!

Diane Ragsdale on Surviving the Culture Change (Full Remarks) from Arts Alliance Illinois on Vimeo.

Will Taxes Be Known As Manadatory Donations?

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While non-profit arts organizations are looking into alternative structures under which to organize themselves like the L3C, it seems at least one municipality is looking to the non-profit model for their government structure.

Back in July, I came across an article about how Hopewell Borough in NJ is considering the non-profit model as a way to avoid state mandates. Mayor Paul Anzano posted a letter on the borough website in December:

“This would not be about seceding from the state, abandoning our responsibilities or failing to maintain the highest goals,” he wrote. “But it would most certainly involve exploring new options for delivering services based on the unique character of our borough. … Let the discussion begin.”

He was motivated by frustration he felt when the state mandated services but forbade raising taxes.

According to the newspaper article, “Under Mayor Anzano’s plan, the community would be run on a corporate model, and a board of directors, rather than a borough council, would hold residents responsible for municipal fees much like those in a co-op.”

The government wouldn’t be organized under 501 c 3 like arts organizations are so there wouldn’t be an opportunity to write off your property taxes as a deductible donation. There are a few non-profit categories under which you can organize which supporting would not be tax deductible (neighborhood associations or condo co-opts, for example).

The mention of co-opt association raised a momentary red flag for me as I recalled a recent story about how Texas Homeowner Associations can foreclose on your property without a judicial proceeding. This is the case in 33 states. I wondered if NJ were one and if Hopewell Borough might end up structured in such a way that they were exempt from any eminent domain prohibitions that usually face governments.

I was waiting to see if there might be any more development on the story, but other than the borough meeting a few days later to discuss this, I haven’t been able to find much more news on the matter.

So at this point, there is no sign that this will ever come to fruition. But if a borough of 2000 people can get a discussion started on the topic among various state government units and the associations to which they belong, maybe the charitable non-profits should get together, the hospitals, social service agencies, arts organizations, etc, and push for an alternative structure–either a new one or a new hybrid non-profit category that provides more options for operation.

Yes, We Get Snow Here

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In about five weeks we will be producing a show about the Hawaiian snow goddess, Poli‘ahu. Yes, Hawaii has snow every winter on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. It is upon Mauna Kea that Poli‘ahu and her sisters are said to reside. There are actually a lot of very interesting tales about the goddess and her sister, including a sled race against a disguised Pele, the volcano goddess.

We are working with the same company who created a Hawaiian opera based on the myth of the Naupaka flower back in 2006. One of the things that excited me about doing the 2006 show was that the artistic director was taking an approach to storytelling that was ambitious of itself, but fairly new in relation to Hawaiian culture. I thought the show might provide a good model and inspiration for other groups since Hawaii is undergoing something of a cultural renaissance. Since then we have presented a show produced by a partner organization about Kahekili who essentially played Uther to Kamehameha’s Arthur in the unification of the islands.

I had been pleased to learn that the artistic staff creating Kahekili had looked at the Naupaka performance when they were planning to remount their work created a decade earlier. In our early discussions about the Poli‘ahu, the artistic director talked about the lessons and ideas he took from the staging of Kahekili. The idea that there was an artistic conversation of sorts driving the evolution and development of works happening before my eyes really excites me.

This may not seem like big deal in most places where everyone seems to give homage/steal the best of what they see other people doing. There are strict lines of tradition and orthodoxy in hula so even if you explicitly say you aren’t doing hula, but only hula inspired work, your product must still be respectful. Likewise, anything dealing with royalty or divine entities must exhibit suitable reverence. The production of Poli‘ahu is also integrating Siberian and Yupik Eskimo chant and dance so even more attention must be paid to avoid offending someone.

Of course, we also face the challenge of trying to convince people who are familiar with the traditional performance to take a chance on the unorthodox. We have sold out these performances before so we are leaving the door open to add additional shows. But four years ago, the people who seemed to understand what we were trying to do were those least steeped in the traditional arts. In fact, one of the arts reporters who is familiar with the company’s work asked how this production would be any different from their previous work. I almost blessed the opportunity to speak to someone who was a little jaded about it all because I didn’t have to work overcome the inertia of unfamiliarity before even explaining the concept.

I can tell by the way the ticket sales are going that this show is going to be sold by word of mouth and trusted sources rather than print and broadcast media. There are shows six months down the road that are selling about as well on the strength of the brochure alone. They will probably be 1/3 sold before I even revisit my plan to promote them.

Fortunately, we have been working together this summer to line up the interest and involvement of many of these trusted entities and that effort should bear fruit very soon. Once some of that becomes public and visible, we will start reaching out to individuals in the hopes of getting the phrases “I saw…, I heard…” entering conversations, tweets and Facebook postings.

Silly Violinist, You Dance In Train Stations

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Toward the end of my work day, I received an email from a patron making a wide flung appeal:

“Opera has long been one of the arts that I don’t care about or support, but watching this video somewhat changed my mind.”

The video he refers to is the one below of the Opera Company of Philadelphia emerging from the crowds at Reading Terminal Market to perform a piece from La Traviata. The patron makes an appeal for someone on his email list to make this sort of thing happen locally and suggests a market as a site.

From my point of view, this is just part of a recent trend. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera did the same song in a Whole Foods. Another opera group also did La Traviata, though a different piece, in Valencia, Spain.

Opera seems to be for markets and musical theatre for train stations. Groups in Wellington, NZ and Antwerp, Belgium chose to give flash mob performances of “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music in local train stations. Perhaps Joshua Bell and Tasmin Little were ignored when they played anonymously in train stations because they chose to perform classical music rather than musical theatre and played music rather than danced.

To me it seems like an imaginative promotional stunt that will probably wear itself out pretty quickly given that everyone seems to be doing La Traviata and Sound of Music, regardless of geographical distance. But right now the idea is new, fresh and exciting to my local audience. So the question is–Are flash performances viable and how do you keep it fresh so the audiences don’t get jaded? These sort of performances can break down barriers to attendance by showing how accessible the material is. It will be necessary to make formal performances just as accessible though otherwise people will feel betrayed by a bait and switch.

People might be emboldened to stage similar events themselves, (please not High School Musical, please not High School Musical), and this could mark the start of a new populist form of performance (or a revival/revamping of some of basic staging concepts of the old pageant wagon mystery plays.)

Effectively Merging Non-Profits

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I apologize for missing my postings on Monday and Tuesday, I was away at a retreat to examine and discuss how to effectively merge the booking consortium to which I belong with the consortium that it spun off from. The meetings occurred in another part of the state and I didn’t have ready access to a computer and the time to write entries.

I use the phrase “effectively merge,” the same words we used throughout most of our discussions, because the truth is that an actual merger of two non-profits is a lengthy, involved and expensive process. What will happen in reality is that the one organization will be dissolved and its assets and members will be transferred to the other as is allowed by its founding documents. But in effect, it is a merger.

A good portion of the first day seemed to be spent composing the correct syntax for the required motions that would be made the next day at the annual meetings of both organizations to start this process. Since we already intended to rewrite our bylaws per the suggestions of an attorney we consulted, we were resolved to dedicate the next year to working on the rewrite. We also were determined to examine the organization and what we wanted it to be. As a consequence, both groups will remain in existence as separate entities for another year laboring jointly to define the bylaws and purpose of the combined organization.

Even though it is likely to be the most dry and boring, I joined the Governance and Membership Committee just for the experience of redefining the nuts and bolts of the organization. I figured it would make good material for blog posts if nothing else.

I also joined the Artistic Selection Committee. The other committees are Marketing/Sponsorship/Grants and Education. Among the things the committees are going to explore are what does it mean to be a member? What are the benefits of participation? Should membership be tiered to both allow casual partnerships with non-member groups and provide greater benefits to those who are more extensively involved.

We are going to examine how we go about selecting artists to present in the context of many different factors. Since we would like to pursue gaining sponsorships as a group and offer companies the opportunity to have exposure across the state, we will have to decide how the program is designed and the sponsored show is chosen. There is also the big issue of whether such arrangements will endanger relationships individual members had with these companies previously. Why sponsor shows at a single venue when you can do so across the entire state? On the other hand, perhaps your brand is diminished by having your name associated with theatres that serve a less elite clientele and you don’t want your ads appearing in their programs.

There are similar questions for the education area. A recent partnership resulted in an experience between schools, audiences and artists that could have yielded a more extensive interaction had the time and resources been available to exploit the situation. If these are the opportunities we want to pursue, where do the staff hours and other resources come from?

That brings us back to the work of the other committees exploring what it means to be a member and what sort of investment in the organization is needed to benefit from its efforts, including any packages put together to offer potential sponsors.

One of the desires stated this week was to expand the membership to include other arts organizations around the state. By redesigning the purpose of the organization a little, we hope to increase our relevance to other groups. They may only do a show once or twice a year, but they can find the process greatly facilitated by our expertise. I think there could be a reciprocal benefit. Perhaps connections the new groups have open up more churches and schools to chamber concerts and outreaches. (Or local artists and churches/schools became more aware of each other.)

So my question here at the end of the entry is this—has anyone had any experiences similar to this? I have to help generate bylaws and policies to guide this organization and it would be nice not to reinvent the wheel. Are you a member of a consortium or partnership between different arts organizations which works together to achieve certain goals?

I am looking more for an arrangement where all decisions and initiatives are generated and executed by the members rather than a situation like an arts council where the council works to advance the interests of the members. We operate as a board organization rather than a membership organization. Though I would be interested in learning about any multi-organizational partnership arrangement that diverges from everyone else does.

Leadership Training and Discussion Moves Forward

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If you have seen Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser on his Arts in Crisis tour or read any of his writings on the matter of arts leadership training, you will know that he feels not enough is being done to teach people about how to do the job well. On occasion, I have also opined that arts leaders don’t talk to each other enough about the challenges we face and the processes we employ in pursuit of our jobs and goals.

It seems like that is starting to change now. In addition to the Emerging Leadership Institute program Arts Presenters runs, they have decided to partner with Research Center for Leadership in Action (RCLA) at NYU on a program for mid-career arts professionals with an eye toward grooming them for senior leadership positions. The Leadership Development Institute is accepting applications right now in fact. The deadline is April 19. The pilot phase of the program will employ “two series of collaborative inquiry sessions, virtual webinars, online resources and one-day action-learning seminars.”

Over at Americans for the Arts’ ARTSblog some interesting perspectives on leadership in the arts are emerging from the various contributors. Just today there was a post by Joanna Chin listing all the general arguments for the value of the arts that she could think of: “Arts = Arts; Arts = Humanity; Arts = Health/Quality of Life; Arts = Civic Engagement and Social Change; Arts = Economic Vitality; Arts = Creativity/Innovation = Growth/Vitality; Arts = Cultural Tourism = Economic Vitality; Arts = Jobs & Industry; Arts = Shared Benefit.” She expands briefly on each of these areas and wonders if this is an exhaustive list. If you can think of others, visit the entry and contribute your thoughts.

Marc Vogl offered a clever analogy of “What a Seder Can Teach Us about Arts Leadership”

“Those in leadership positions especially carry the burden of executing the plan of record which, as many E.D.s will attest, means putting out the fire that’s blazing now or shifting the pots on the stove around so that none boils over today.

So, who is responsible for periodically stepping in and asking the elemental but critical questions?

Perhaps it should be those on top of the organizational structure – whether administratively or in governance positions at the board level – but frequently those are the people who must answer the questions.

In the Seder it’s the kids who sing out to the elders: why are we doing things the way we’re doing things?

And it is for everyone around the table to respond, and hopefully, to reflect for a moment on the history that informs that response, to consider the present circumstances and how times have changed, and maybe even to look ahead and determine what we can do going forward so that we don’t spend another year going through rote motions and taking important things (like freedom in the case of Passover, or making art that has meaning for those of us in this field) for granted.”

Shannon Daut who is Deputy Director at the Western States Arts Federation and has a broad perspective on how the arts are developing regionally and I would imagine nationally, talks about the lack of leadership opportunities for younger administrators because those on the executive level continue to circulate between the available positions.

“I recently had a conversation with WESTAF’s director, Anthony Radich, and asked him what his resume looked like when he was my age—35. He rattled off a list of ED positions at various arts organizations. I think his experience is pretty typical. Because the arts field was so young, experienced arts administrators were not available to fill open positions. They made it up as they went along and were entrusted with great organizational responsibilities at early stages in their careers.

For the most part, today’s emerging (and mid-career) administrators have not been able to benefit from an environment that would take risks on “unproven” job candidates. “

Finally, Letitia Fernandez Ivins, addresses the all important issue of balancing work and personal life in an industry where it has always been expected that one suffers for ones art. Her entry primarily deals with the impact of pregnancy on a career in the arts. However, the general topic is clearly an important one. There are many comments on the entry already. One woman expresses her relief upon learning so many other people are facing the same choices.

Actually, I shouldn’t say finally regarding Letitia’s post. There have been more than 20 entries on the subject of leadership since Monday. These are just the handful that resonated with me most today. I should mention that Americans for the Arts have their own Emerging Leader Network from which I assume the drew many of these contributions. I am pleased to see such great movement in leadership training and discussion happening right now. It wasn’t that long ago that I was mentioning the lack of such activity. I didn’t think this much progress would be made in a few short years.

Goin’ Mobile With The Orchestra

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I was driving home a week ago when I heard an interview on the radio with a couple talking about founding the Orchestra of the Hawaiian Islands. (MP3 download) Now given that the Honolulu Symphony has just declared bankruptcy after years of financial struggles, this elicited a “say what?” moment for me.

It turns out this is a program of American Music Festivals, a once Chicago and now I guess Hawaii based organization. The organization was founded in Chicago and created project based ensembles to perform cultural exchange concerts in Russia and Eastern Europe in addition to the Chicago area. Apparently this was accomplished by contracting freelance Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians.

American Music Festivals is run by a husband and wife, artistic director and executive director team. When she was offered a job at a school on the Big Island of Hawaii, they moved their operations to that state. Their intention is to utilize Honolulu Symphony musicians to increase the size of their projects from their current 12 piece string ensemble up to full symphony size.

They aren’t looking to replace the Honolulu Symphony at all. If the symphony is revitalized, they envision themselves complementing its outreach efforts. Much of their interest is in local and international outreach. Their plan is to institute cultural exchanges with Japan and perhaps other Asian countries. They hope to bring Hawaiian music to Japan and add the music to their existing exchanges in Eastern Europe.

What interested me about the interview was the concept of how technology, transportation and communications allows endeavors like this to be so mobile. Where they live seems to have little bearing on whether they can accomplish their goals.

Of course, part of this is due to the fact their organization has no fixed orchestra. When asked whether he might one day want to establish an orchestra with regular salaried members, Artistic Director Philip Simmons said, “Why would I want to do that though? Why would I want to create all those problems for myself?” The organization focuses on project driven events which provides them with the flexibility to do different things with a variety of groups locally and worldwide.

Simmons suggests that maybe the old models and formulas for a concert experience aren’t working anymore. He doesn’t say his structure is necessarily the new way, but offers it as an alternative.

Given that the Honolulu Symphony has talked about operating with a much reduced ensemble, perhaps a collaboration between them and the Orchestra of the Hawaiian Islands (OHI) can bring enough funding together to assemble the numbers the Honolulu Symphony had performing for them in the past. They wouldn’t necessarily be competing for the same funding pot. The OHI is serving an area of the state the Honolulu Symphony once did but really hasn’t had the funding to do so in recent past. OHI may be able to gain funding from people interested in supporting local performances.

Green Papers-Not What I Thought They Were About

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Due to the imminent failure of my refrigerator’s compressor, I don’t have as much time to devote to the old blog as I had hoped.

With that in mind, I wanted to direct people’s attention to Americans for the Arts’ efforts at creating a conversation around green papers on topics of importance in the arts. Given the whole push for environmentally friendly activities, I initially thought a green paper was essentially an attempt to issue a white paper on good conservation practices.

It turns out, a green paper is actually a policy document similar to a white paper, only less binding. Who knew? I mean, there are ribbons of every color for every cause, I thought this was a similar attempt.

In any case, Americans for the Arts’ are making a big effort to have substantive conversations on many topics across the next year. In their definition:

“Green Papers are short, easy to read, visions of the future meant to inspire a nationwide dialogue on the future of the arts. As a way to celebrate the successes of the past 50 years in the arts field, Americans for the Arts has collected Green Papers from a variety of national arts service organizations and peer groups representing different perspectives and disciplines.”

Currently their topics include:

The Future of…

* Art Therapy
* Artists’ and Arts Organizations’ Preparedness and Emergency Response
* Artists’ Residency Programs
* Arts and Disability
* Arts Education
* Arts in Healthcare
* Arts Learning for Children/Youth
* Community Arts Education
* Cultural Democracy
* Dance Education
* Leadership for the Arts
* Jazz
* Preservation
* Private Sector Support for the Arts
* Public Art
* Public Voice in Arts Advocacy
* State Arts Agencies
* Strings
* Symphony Music
* Digital Infrastructure for the Creative Economy
* Theatre
* Urban Municipal Arts Agencies

They want people to get involved and contribute to the conversation. I wonder if they also need people to lead the conversations. You can’t tell from the list here, but there are no links to pages for Art Therapy, Arts and Disability, Jazz, State Arts Agencies, Symphony Music and Theatre. I don’t see a call for leaders, though I certainly may have missed it. Most of the Green Papers were rolled out on February 16, perhaps the leaders for the unactivated sections weren’t immediately available to discuss those areas.

I also am curious to know why there is someone leading Strings but not Symphony Music and why there is a Dance Education category, but no Dance. Guess I have to stick around, read and ask these questions.

Oh yeah, and where is the paper on environmental sustainability in the arts! 😉

Funny Thing Happened While Revising Bylaws

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I was really surprised at some recent developments in my block booking consortium today. For about a year we have been scrutinizing our bylaws because people began to realize that practice was deviating from the specifics of the document. I had contributed some information on bylaws to the conversation based on material I wrote about in an earlier entry.

Since the last meeting a committee had met to discuss the bylaws. I wasn’t surprised to learn that people were leaning toward merging with the organization that “birthed” us. Most of the membership overlapped so we generally ended up having meetings together. The only defining difference between us were the genres of entertainment we booked. The discussion of merger brought up many technical questions that will require consulting a lawyer.

One of the interesting questions that arose was if we dissolved one organization and consolidated everyone into the other, could the funds of the dissolved organization be absorbed by the remaining organization. While non-profits’ assets are usually only transferable to other non-profits, an organization’s charter may specify where the assets should go if it ceases operation. Someone mentioned a group to which he belonged had stipulated the funds be split among some local music programs.

What surprised me was the amount of introspection that was occurring about the organizations. It turns out my experience as a member, that of a partnership to leverage our buying power and to collaborate on grants, is not the ideal upon which the groups were founded. There is a lot of history of which I am unaware. At one time there was a much greater focus on community education projects. And the membership was much larger. As coordinating tours started monopolizing greater amounts of time at meetings, the organizations became less relevant for many members and they started drifting away.

By the time the meeting ended, we decided to have a retreat prior to our annual meeting in May to examine the identity and purpose of the groups in addition to discussing whether they would merge or not. This was the last of my associations I expected to be organizing a retreat to contemplate its ideals. Everything has been very practical. Discussions have revolved around times, dates, hotel rooms needed, artistic fees and whether a group offered ed services.

Now people are questioning whether we can be a force for arts advocacy in our community.

I am starting to get a little excited about this planned retreat in May and what might develop.

Only 15 Minutes Of Fame For Tragedies?

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Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 makes some fascinating reflections on the impact of technology on giving vis a vis the Haitian earthquake relief efforts.

I confess a huge amount of skepticism when I had first heard that one could donate to the relief effort via text messaging on your cell phones. I wondered how much the phone companies were profiting off this and how big a cut the donation processors would be taking. Apparently I wasn’t the only one because according to Bernholz, the phone companies have waived the fees under pressure of public opinion.

She also talks about the possibility that those who received funds may be under greater scrutiny. I remember after Hurricane Katrina, many people were horrified to learn how great a percentage of their donations were going to administrative overhead at the Red Cross and similar organizations. The Red Cross has shown some transparency by tweeting near real time updates of the climbing donation totals. Bernholz suggests that Twitter may become the platform where this is not only reported–but where people also question what has been done with the money.

The suggestion that really grabbed my attention was her idea that technology might cause/allow people to acquire “Donor Attention Deficit Disorder”

That people all over the world can be so instantly engaged and moved to donate is certainly a good thing. But does it come with costs?

On Wednesday, January 13, #Haiti was a trending topic on Twitter all day (a measure of what the millions of tweets are discussing). By Thursday, January 14, it was gone. Does the ability to give instantly and painlessly (mobile donors won’t even see a charge for the gift until they get their next phone bill) make it extra easy to give and move on? Will “donor fatigue” be replaced by “donor A.D.D.?”

The concept that even tragedies have only 15 minutes of fame before people move on is pretty chilling. If the best tactic for successful fund raising is providing people with an opportunity to give at the point where the emotional appeal is greatest, it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain any sort of long term support. And how long will it be before people become inured to solicitations of calculated to concentrate a great deal of emotional response in a short span. Such an approach might stunt efforts to gather support for true tragedies.

It probably doesn’t help that we are told to just give money. Granted, in this case, it just isn’t practical to become physically involved. Much less so that after Hurricane Katrina. There is also something of an underlying message that once you have given, you no longer need to be engaged with the problem. All you are being asked to do is just give money and you can accomplish that by doing something you enjoy doing everyday–text a number.

First Creative Campus Class Reports In

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As I have been reading blog entries about the recent Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conference, (APAP) I have seen mentions of Creative Campus project presentations. Since this information isn’t widely disseminated, I thought I would give the projects and the participating organizations some publicity to share the news of their success.

First a little history, APAP administers the grants program but the original idea emerged back in 2004 at the 104th American Assembly. (The paper they produced on the concept may be found here.) The first group of projects is drawing to a close (though some were only one year projects and have been completed) and the granting for the next group is in process.

Many of the organizations in the first group created dedicated webpages to archive their efforts which you may be interested in visiting.

Dartmouth College dedicated themselves to exploring the class divide in the surrounding community as well as within the college community.

The University of Nebraska Lied Center worked with multimedia performance group Troika Ranch to create a new performance piece, bring the disparate departments of the university together in creative experiences, and most interesting to me, adapt motion performance software for modern dance for use with rehabilitation patients.

This is not to be confused with the efforts of the University of Kansas Lied Center’s project, Tree of Life Creativity – Origins and Evolution which involved a intra-campus collaboration as well as partnerships with other campuses.

The University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium, still displaced by the damage caused by the flooding of summer 2007, commissioned the development of a world premiere, Eye Piece, in cooperation with various departments. The work explores the process of gradually losing eye sight. The topic may seem a strange one until you learn that the university’s Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration was a project participant.

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s current theme is Diasporas. I say current, because it the description implies there is a different theme each year. Indeed, the APAP website information about the project lead me to believe it was about the death penalty. The university’s some times controversial summer reading program is a partner in this project along with the departments of communications, dramatic arts and resident LORT company, Playmakers Rep.

I wasn’t able to find information about their respective projects on the Hostos Community College or Stanford University sites, so the final project is Wesleyan University’s Feet to the Fire on global warming. This project involved interdisciplinary learning that appears to have permeated every corner of campus activities and moved out into the surrounding community. From the video summary of the project, it sounds like people who attended their events felt the power of the arts was essential to getting the message across, as was suggested in recent posting.

Even though the project officially ended last June, the university has continued to provide the experiences they initiated. Like most grant programs, I am pretty sure this was the goal–that the funded initiative will be perpetuated. If you are inspired by what you see, it is unfortunately too late to get into the current grant cycle. But it is the perfect time to start conversations about what you might like to do–including prodding a local university member of APAP to get involved.

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