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State of the Arts

They Are Having More Fun In The Movie Screening Next Door

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Recently I have been seeing articles heralding the Taylor Swift and Beyonce concert movies as the recipe for financial success for struggling movie theaters—turn movie attendance into an event.

Except that those articles might have gotten ahead of themselves because attendees of those events are expressing disappointment about their experiences. Essentially, its a matter of FOMO – fear of missing out- colliding with the one thing performance venues have been heralding as the biggest benefit of live events over recordings —every experience is different.

As a recent Slate article stated, the grass seemed greener at the screening the next theater over.  Some attendees to the Taylor Swift Eras tour concert screening felt other people were having a rowdier experience than they were. Others felt like their screening was way too rowdy and they couldn’t hear Taylor.  There were inevitable articles and social media posts about proper movie attendance etiquette.

Some of this hype came from Swift herself—when she announced the concert film in August, her social media statement included the line, “Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged.” At real tour dates, fans have taken to dressing up and exchanging hand-beaded friendship bracelets, as well as vigorously singing and dancing along to the music, so Swift was setting the tone for the movie’s rollout, telling fans that they should feel free to pretend they were attending the genuine article.

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But not everyone was happy about these situations: Some of the videos depicting fans having semi-religious experiences at the movie were accompanied by posts like this one, where a user complained, “I’m at the worst screening ever cant even hear taylor :)”

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A writer for the A.V. Club shared of her moviegoing experience, “[S]eeing all those weeping fans onscreen in a silent, mostly empty theater with not even an AMC-branded friendship bracelet in sight rang especially hollow.” But she went through the grass-is-greener phenomenon in real time, going on to write, “While no one was in costume in my theater, I did take a pee break halfway through, which revealed an entirely different crowd from an earlier screening that had just let out.” The other audience had “more pink, more rhinestones, more souvenir popcorn buckets, and at least two limited edition folklore cardigans, so the vibe might have been totally different.”

Among the suggestions floated in the article were akin to the practice of scheduling accessible or sensory friendly shows. In this case there would be a choice between quiet and raucous.

Symphony Was Heading Into Trouble, But Apparently No One Told The Musicians

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I have been reading about the closure of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Ontario, Canada and some of the stories are pretty heartbreaking. The concertmaster was in a moving van driving from Montreal to start with the symphony when she received word on September 16 that the 2023-2024 season was cancelled. A few days later, the organization declared bankruptcy.

One thing that caught my eye was a quote from one of the percussionists:

“No one saw it coming — I think that’s pretty clear,” adds percussionist Ron Brown, who had been looking forward to his 50th year with the symphony.

“We were told this just a few hours before the season actually started. The word I use is ‘blindsided.’ ”

I read that to mean, no one had been communicating with the musicians because as you read further in the article, it is clear that plenty of people knew the organization was in trouble. The board chair is quoted as saying the symphony had 8,000 subscribers pre-pandemic and now only had 2,000. She is also quoted acknowledging the operational environment for performing arts in North America and orchestras in particular.

It was clear the board knew they were in trouble and that donors felt the organization needed to be restructured, but it doesn’t sound like anyone told the musicians about where things stood:

“We had gone into the line of credit, which was established to support the orchestra, because we were bankrupt,” said Smith-Spencer before the boom came down.

“We had no money in the bank. We were continuing to have conversations with our federal representatives about a grant request, and our five local MPs were not able to get any clarity. We were counting on that money to allow us to essentially start up the season and move forward.”

Desperate, they approached the same donors who had bailed them out in the past, hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

“I will be very blunt,” says Smith-Spencer.

“These are people who care deeply: past board chairs, people who have contributed so much in the past, people who were even part of the ‘Save Our Symphony’ campaign 17 years ago.

“But they had all come to the conclusion that the orchestra, as it is currently structured, is not viable.”

Another article said management just negotiated a 3% salary increase with the musicians in August which makes me wonder if management was engaging in wishful thinking about being able to raise enough money or weren’t accurately projecting costs.

In any case, in the course of negotiations the musicians should have been made aware of the financial status of the symphony. The possibility of the season being cancelled at the very least shouldn’t have blindsided the musicians, but in two different news articles different musicians state they never saw this coming.

Stuff You Don’t Think About – Relation Between Insurance And Ability To Hang Art

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Lately I have been seeing articles in The Guardian that are calling attention to overlooked aspects of creative practice that have big impacts if conditions start to change. A couple weeks ago it was the impact the dwindling number of piano tuners and technicians can have on the ability to present live performance. More recently, I saw an article about how changes in policies by Australian insurer, QBE, may limit and prohibit visual artists from painting murals and even hanging art in galleries.

This is a subject you don’t normally think about in relation to creative practice, but it seems pretty obvious that artists probably want to be protected from injury when they climb into a scissor lift or scale scaffolding.  I don’t know anything about Australian law so there may be stricter requirements to have the insurance than residents in other countries may imagine.

The article notes that in the last decade that the  National Association for the Visual Arts has been providing the policies through the insurer QBE, there haven’t been any public liability claims related to working at heights.

QBE will no longer cover artists working at heights of more than five metres, and those working at lower heights face extra premiums of up to $600 per annum.

The carve-outs would effectively prevent artists doing public art and mural projects or installing their own work in galleries, according to Penelope Benton from the National Association for the Visual Arts (Nava).

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The carve-outs would also affect professional art installers, and emerging artists and curators, who generally install their own work.

I would be interested to know if anyone sees the possibility of a similar situation emerging in their country.

Strip Club Dancers Return To Work With Actors’ Equity Representation

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Last September I made a post about strippers working at a club in Los Angeles who were approaching Actors’ Equity Association to help them unionize their workplace. Today I saw on CNN.com that they had indeed held a successful unionization vote under the auspices of Equity last May (NPR story).

While the setting of the strike may add a salacious air to the story, the basic details of the effort are pretty common across all unionization fights. The dancers forming the union were contesting their categorization as contractors rather then employees, seeking better working conditions, and better assurances of their safety and security. There were lock outs, picketing, suits contesting the dancers’ right to form a union.

It appears they don’t have a contract yet, but the dancers returned to work at the end of August in a gesture of mutual trust based on physical improvements that had been made during renovations as well as changes in policy and practice.

Actors’ Equity suggests that the legal rulings that lead to this may set a precedent for other workers in the beauty and entertainment industries to be categorized as employees rather than contractors.

Strength Of Intent To Return May Be Stronger Predictor Of Return Than Even Enjoyment Of Experience

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I recently received an email which directed me to a 2021 study funded by the Wallace Foundation called, What They Say And What They Do which essentially looked at whether people who say they will return to a venue actually do.

Bottom line is yes, the more strongly people express a desire to return, the more likely they are to return. However, as with everything, there are some interesting nuances.

A couple disclaimers, most of which appear right at the start of the presentation. First, this research was conducted pre-Covid. Second, the three organizations that participated were “large, well-established in their discipline and predominantly white.” (Goodman Theatre, Lyric Opera, both in Chicago and Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle.) So your mileage may vary.

The study was conducted across the 2014-2019 seasons. Single ticket buyers were surveyed about their interest in returning and then the organizations cross referenced that data with whether the people actually purchased again. The presentation also notes that people who fill out surveys are already engaged with the organization and therefore more inclined to return. Certainly there were many who didn’t fill out the survey that may have returned. I also wondered how many may have returned where a different family member purchased the tickets and used a different email or mailing address that might have been missed.

The finding was that the stronger people expressed their interest in returning on a Likert scale, the more likely they were to return – 49% of single ticket buyers responding as “definitely” and 31% responding “probably” returned within two years. Interestingly, while enjoyment and overall experience were also associated with an actual return, these factors weren’t as strong a predictor of return as stated intent to return.

Based on these responses, the Goodman Theater focused more expensive marketing efforts on those responding they would definitely return and experienced a higher return with that group.

While those 65 and older had slightly higher rates of return, the relation between strength of stated intent to return with an actual return held true across all age groups.

What I really found interesting was that what people said they did or didn’t like was the same whether they returned or not.  The presentation has charts which show responses to enjoyment of the performance and quality of  experience don’t vary a lot between those who do and don’t return. But the word clouds generated from the comments really illustrate how little difference positive and negative elements factored in to whether people returned or not.

I have seen a number of studies saying if you can only ask one question on a survey, it should be whether you would recommend an experience to a friend. Whether you will return yourself seems closely related to that question. While this data is definitely limited, there are hints that stated willingness to return may be a strong indicator that someone will.

Will Dwindling Supply Of Trained Piano Tuners Also Threaten Arts Orgs

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Caught a timely article from The Guardian about the dwindling number of piano tuners in Australia. I am fairly certain arts and cultural organizations in other countries are having a similar experience when trying to schedule piano tuners. Personally, I have been in a situation where we had a choice of two-three tuners which dwindled to one that lives a two hour drive away and covers a large geographic area.

I am not sure what the situation is in the US and other countries, but people interviewed for the article note that there aren’t a lot of training programs in the country and a lack of effort to make people aware that training opportunities exist. It isn’t a profession that is entered lightly.

“People think, ‘I’ll learn to tune a piano, I’ll do it in a year and that’s it’, but no, it takes 10 years to learn how to tune a piano, and 20 years to master it,” Kinney says.

The training takes even longer for piano technicians who do broader work on repairing and refurbishing pianos. Tuning can only do so much before the instrument needs a major overhaul.

By “good tuners”, Kinney means piano technicians. These are people who have undergone a year of training as piano tuners before developing their skills at international piano factories or with mentors, learning action regulation, voicing, diagnosis and complex problem solving.

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When Scott Davie, an Australian concert pianist, has toured through Australia, he’s played regional shows where the pianos had been tuned but not properly maintained. When this is the case, he must work hard to alter the way he plays to finish the show.

“I’d be remembering which notes are going out of tune and which notes are really badly out of tune, and leaving them out of chords or trying to play them so softly that you couldn’t hear them,” he says. “But it gets to a point where it sounds horrible, if a piano is really starting to break down.”

This article made me think–we are hearing about all the arts organizations that are closing or having a difficult time, but there are other elements of the infrastructure that are probably being overlooked that may cause on going issues as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Trying To Break Boundaries Threatens To Break Your Spirit

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Last week on the Association of Performing Arts Professional’s (APAP) podcast, Emily Isaacson of Classical Uprising talked about some of the frustrating experiences she has had trying to advance her goal of changing the context through which classical music is viewed and experienced.

One of the biggest impediments she has experienced was the view that she isn’t a serious artists because she is a woman and a mother. She shared, apparently for the first time publicly, that a family friend whom she had known since she was a child asked her to partner on creating a music festival, but when they got together to plan their second season, he dismissed her efforts and professionalism.

“He started to call me randomly to tell me that I would never be taken seriously as a musician that because I was a mom, I was distracted that if I thought that my degrees were worth anything, I was kidding myself because real musicians don’t care about degrees,. That I made, I was making a fool of myself on the podium.”

She said the conversation got a lot worse from there. She said she has run up against similar sentiments regarding other programming she has done:

So people wanna label me as a woman conductor, and that’s my whole soapbox. The other thing is they say, “Oh, well, the fact that she wants to do, you know, Hayden’s creation in a park must mean that she’s really not that sophisticated a musician. She’s doing it differently because she can’t hang with the big boys and the old club and you know, this, that, and the other thing.”

Or like, “Oh, isn’t it cute that she wants to do things that are not just four kids, but intergenerational because she’s a mom and so focused on being a mommy and mommy music”, …

I’m advocating for a different way of presenting and producing classical music, so that it is more social and more interactive and more casual, in the way that actually it was originally conceived.

The other thing she says she runs into is the echo chamber type thinking among different organizations. She talks about how when she attended the 2023 APAP conference, she struck up a conversation with the representative of an organization promoting a Breaking Boundaries series. She was somewhat disappointed to learn that their concept of breaking boundaries was presenting works by female composers one year and works by minority composers the next year. This essentially mirrored what so many other orchestra organizations were doing.

I’m good quick on my feet, so I pivoted and I was like, “Another way that you could think about like pushing boundaries, is by thinking about like who we’re performing for, how we’re performing and what, what are the things that we include in the performance that make people feel either included to be there or more connected to the music than they did before?” And I start giving examples from my programs about, doing Flight of the Bumble Beer where you do music flights alongside five-ounce pours of beer or doing Bach Bends Yoga.

Like really, here’s some like con this is not lofty ideas. Here’s some concrete ideas and this person could just not understand what I was talking about. That was so frustrating for me because it made me realize that the national conversation and the conversation that I’m trying to have is just ships passing in the night…

You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript to learn more. Isaacson starts the episode so her story is easy to find.

Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright

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There was an interesting and rather lengthy article in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week about the puppetry program at West Virginia University. It is apparently one of the few degree programs in puppetry in the country. As you might imagine, it is in danger of being shutdown.

The article notes that while puppetry is held in high regard in many cultures, it is considered low culture and content for children in the U.S.

In Indonesia, wayang kulit, or shadow-puppet shows, would stretch from night until dawn, illuminated by oil lamps. In Japan’s Bunraku theater, which originated in the 17th century, apprentices toiled for 10 years to master manipulating just the feet of dignified puppets.

Yet is appears in more sophisticated content evoking delight from mass audiences:

That perception has staying power, even in the midst of a multidecade renaissance. The Lion King and its dazzling animal puppets became the highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time. The internet erupted when it first saw Baby Yoda, who is brought to life in the television series The Mandalorian, in part, by a puppet.

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Puppetry abounds. And yet it remains peripheral. Puppet theater has “never fully established a fixed role for itself in contemporary American society,” writes John Bell, a prolific puppet scholar, in his 2000 book Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History. It “has had to constantly reinvent itself in order to survive.”

Of course there is also the recent production of Life of Pi that also uses life sized puppetry rather effectively. I saw this video of a lecture using the tiger puppet from the production on Reddit a few months ago. In some respects it is a more effective illustration of the work that went into the show than some of the promotional videos the production put out. Even though people can clearly see the three people manipulating the puppet within arm’s reach, the coordination and motion study the team invested sends people scurrying back.

Do You Remember Your First Concert Experience?

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Last week Washington Post contributor Theodore Johnson reflected back on the first concert he saw when he was 9 years old (The Fat Boys). He noted that due to Covid restrictions, this summer would a delayed first concert experience for a lot of young people.

Lest you think that my posts advocate for some niche arts and culture insider philosophy, Johnson, a retired naval officer and adviser to the New America think tank, writes much the same as I regarding the value of shared, in-person experiences.  He cites studies that have shown how people value collective experience concerts provide which is all the more reason to lean into those themes in marketing messaging.

And aside from how technologically advanced a major concert is now, I’m most struck by the diversity of the crowds. Maybe there is some social and civic magic to be found in our return to shared, in-person experiences.

Social scientists have identified four themes that help explain the attraction of concerts and the significance of attendance. The most prominent is the experience, followed by the engagement, the novelty and, lastly, the practical reasons.

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Engagement matters. Ours is a society that requires frequent positive community participation if it’s to be resilient against the forces pulling us apart. Scholars have explored the impact of attending concerts, and they’ve found such benefits as an increased sense of belonging and improved well-being. Concert audiences “experienced feelings of togetherness,” researchers report. Sharing a love for something facilitates a path to connection.

How Will The New Albright-Know Be Received By Buffalo’s Working Class

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Bloomberg had an article about the renovated Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, now rebranded Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Prior to the renovation, the director said people would frequently tell him the museum was meant for the elites.  The post-renovation goal is to have the working class residents of the city feel comfortable visiting the space.

It was interesting to read that the director was insistent that the town square plaza not become a lobby. There will be play areas with Legos rather than admission desks and coat checks. They also looked at 12 other cold climate cities and took inspiration from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s glass enclosed atrium to design a glass enclosed space that  will act “…as a kind of snow collector when it’s cold enough and a place to watch the rain pour down when it’s not.” They engaged the community in focus groups to get ideas about how the space should be used when the museum opens again.

I was a little concerned about how well-thought out their efforts at connecting with the working class might turn out when I read that recent programming included a gamelan and Wayang puppetry dance. But in fact, Buffalo is apparently a center of gamelan and other Indonesian arts.

The crystal sculptural elements of the Town Square space are also a favored space for selfies:

Visitors gravitated to the base of “Common Sky,” and few resisted the urge to open up the cameras on their smartphones after looking up at the mirrored panels along what is now Buffalo’s hottest selfie spot. Giving it a run for its money is Lucas Samaras’s “Mirrored Room” (1966), one of the museum’s most beloved, aptly named pieces, which has been fully restored and given pride of place in a new (free) gallery space all to itself in the Knox Building.

The Bloomberg article acknowledged some of the troubles that the museum world in general is facing by wondering aloud if this public gathering space may provide a convenient locale for protests:

Buffalo is deeply segregated by race and class, while its destination art museum is run by a nonprofit institution dependent on the support of the region’s elites. How will the museum react if a protest of a board member takes place inside Town Square? Or a rally in support of staff unionization?

More Funding, But For Status Quo Or Difficult Change?

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

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

 

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

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

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

Covid Era Virtual Programming Continues To Be Successful For Some Arts Orgs

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Amid all the stories of arts organizations closing and scaling back, I saw a piece about a dance company in Dallas that has seen their situation improve with virtual and live programming during and after the worst of the Covid shutdowns. Public radio station KERA posted a story about the steps Dallas Black Dance Theatre took that increased their exposure and reach.

While many arts organizations – particularly those that serve communities of color – shut down or lost revenue during the pandemic, Dallas Black Dance Theatre Executive Director Zenetta Drew said the organization made $100,000 in net ticket sales in 2020 from online programming.

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Drew said the theatre’s programming has continued to net six figures each year and has also brought in new audiences from across the world. Since 2020, DBDT has reached 38 states and 35 countries outside the U.S. with paid virtual content.

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While virtual and in-person arts programming have been viewed as alternatives, Drew said it doesn’t have to be either-or. Instead, she said virtual programming “gives you a chance to really whet the appetite of folks to want to have that in-person experience.”

The proof? Demand for the company’s touring engagements has quadrupled since 2019. Drew said the increased exposure to art markets across the country led to paid gigs in spaces they’d never been before, such as Yale University and Seattle.

I heard that many performing arts companies scaled back on virtual offerings once live performances were permitted again. Perhaps the dance company’s approach of using virtual and live to complement each other and the framework of their content has been beneficial to them. They may have also hit a sweet spot with audiences who wanted/were interested in seeing people like themselves in performance.

Will Airline Fraud Provide Impetus For Google To Stamp Out Clone Ticketing Sites?

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About a month ago, I wrote about the Fix the Tix Coalition which is advocating for laws to change exploitative ticket practices. Among the practices they were trying to change is websites masquerading as the official ticketing site of different venues.

Speaking from personal experience, the venue I run has a ticketing service that took out a Google ad smack in the middle of our venue listing on the Google results page.  Even though there is a button labeled for our website, we have tons of people that follow the fake link, buy tickets for many times the list price and swear up and down they bought them from us.

Well it seems scammers are doing a similar thing with the Google results for major airlines. According to an NBC News story, scammers have managed to change to list different telephone numbers for the airlines.  When people call to make or change reservations, they end up giving their credit card number and personal information to a thief.

Instead of reaching a Delta employee, Evers said he spoke to a man with a thick accent who hung up and called him back from a different number. That man then asked for payment to book a rescheduled flight. Evers recognized it as a scam and scrapped his trip.

He then went on to document six other airlines, including American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Air France, that had incorrect numbers served up by Google.

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A Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company does “not tolerate this misleading activity.”

“Our teams have already begun reverting the inaccuracies, suspending the malicious accounts involved, and applying additional protections to prevent further abuse,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson refused to address questions about how long the problem persisted, how many airlines were successfully impersonated, or why there weren’t better protections in place for major companies like the airlines.

Google has struggled to counter scammers who have learned how to get fake contact information to show up when users look up a company on Google Search or Maps.

While I would hope Google would take steps to eliminate ticketing fraud when they find a way to effectively stamp out the efforts of the folks masquerading as airlines given that they can see what a big problem it is, I suspect performance venues are too small an industry and the ad venue too enticing to inspire them to implement similar measures.

Will Irish Artists Sleep Better With A Guaranteed Basic Income

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I have written before about Ireland’s plan to provide a guaranteed basic income for artists. A couple weeks ago, NBC News posted a story about the program on their website. In all, 2000 artists, including architects and circus professionals, were chosen from 8000 applicants to receive €325 ($326) a week unconditionally for three years.

There is a breakdown of artists’ disciplines and where they live in a press release the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and the Media put out in September 2022.

What caught my attention in the NBC article was the type of data the Ministry was collecting on artists who were selected and not selected for the program.

Participants have to complete a survey every six months, which asks them about their artistic output and working hours, as well as their sleeping habits and the state of their mental health. The survey also asks about their societal participation, which can include activities like volunteering and caring for relatives. A control group of artists who did not receive funding will also be surveyed and tracked to compare results of those of received funding against those who didn’t.

I would be interested to learn more about what they find from this trail program. Hopefully it will come back on my radar again in 2025-2026 when the pilot is over.

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

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

Wyman writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Wanna Be Where Everybody Know Your Name

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I am not sure when Culturebot fell off my daily reading list, but the last time I referenced a post was 2014. Thankfully Artsjournal.com linked to a piece by Andy Horowitz this week so the blog is back on my radar.  Andy wrote a relatively long piece about the need to focus on audience need and experience. While he has a TL;DNR summary at the beginning, the really good stuff is buried in the expanded version.

The broad strokes won’t be new to long time readers. Horowitz notes that despite the wake up call of Covid and all the money funders have provided for engagement and innovation, a lot of theaters are still focusing on legacy audiences and providing the same type of audience experiences as they had in the past.

He says arts and culture organizations need to be creating a sense of belonging and connection for new audiences. He uses a couple of personal examples. In the first, he talks about arriving in NYC and wanting to be a part of what was happening at P.S. 122, (now known as Performance Space New York), because so much great work was happening. But he couldn’t figure out a way in. Everybody already seemed to know everyone else. He started getting involved with other organizations and projects until he eventually cultivated the right relationships and started working at P.S. 122.

In another part of his piece, he raises a similar example of his 4.5 year old son changing pre-schools mid-year:

 It was a bumpy transition since at midyear all the other kids knew each other; some had started “going to school” together during the pandemic. …His teachers said he might not feel comfortable onstage and might prefer to sit with us; he came home from school telling us how he wasn’t able to learn the songs or the choreography because the other kids already knew it, things like that. As the day approached, we were filled with trepidation and uncertainty. But lo and behold, when graduation day came, our little guy sat with his class, walked onstage with his class, sang the songs, did the choreography, and behaved perfectly the whole time!! I have never been more invested in a performance in my life.

He talks about how brave people need to be to take chances in so many respects, including learning new things and trying to integrate into social settings in which we don’t feel we belong.  Horowitz reiterates what I have written before about creating an environment in which people can see themselves and their stories depicted and spend time with family and friends. Something I have overlooked is working to provide the sense you are among friends even if you didn’t know anyone when you arrived. (his emphasis)

I think that this is what every audience everywhere wants when they come to the theater. We want to feel like we are meeting up with friends. We want to see people we know in the lobby, we want to see people we know onstage, we want to know the person that works in the box office and the ushers, we want to know the people seated next to us and across the room in another section so we can wave to them and meet them at intermission for a drink. There is nothing worse than feeling like a stranger milling around with other strangers awkwardly avoiding eye contact, worrying about if you belong. If you run a theater and you aren’t trying to create that sense of welcome, belonging and inclusion with your audience, then you are failing them, it doesn’t matter what you put onstage.

As someone whose name is on an alcohol license, I am a little wary about encouraging people to literally replicate this exact scenario, but one experience Horowitz touts as bringing people together was a scheme in which an event made ordering a single beer as expensive as ordering a beer for 10 people. The result was that strangers organized themselves into groups to get the cheapest possible drinks they could:

I don’t remember the exact amount but a single beer was, I think, $10 and 10 beers was maybe $1? Like that. So as soon as someone got to the front of the line they immediately started talking to the people around them to get enough drink orders together to get the cheaper drinks. Never have I ever seen a group of strangers connecting and laughing and cooperating so quickly and joyfully as I did that night. I’m pretty sure that the bar was itself an art project.

Perhaps it was a lesson the TV show Cheers was teaching us back in the 80s and we just weren’t paying close enough attention.

Interesting History of Drag In Twin Cities

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As Pride Month comes to an end, I wanted to call attention to an interesting piece that appeared earlier this month about the history of drag performances in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area during the late 19th to early 20th century.

Despite laws prohibiting crossdressing, its use in theatrical performance was considered appropriate at the highest strata of society.

Minneapolis maintained a city ordinance against cross-dressing between 1877 and the mid-1900s, and St. Paul didn’t repeal its 1891 ordinance prohibiting people from wearing “clothes not belonging to their sex” in public until 2003. Theater allowed drag performers to evade these legalities in ways that individuals “cross-dressing” in daily life could not. Mainstream society allowed and accepted drag so long as performers were explicitly donning a costume, maintaining a “fourth wall” between themselves and the audience. It did not make these allowances for individuals not attired in gender conforming clothing outside of explicit performance, who were far more subject to policing….

…Popular “female impersonators” like Julian Eltinge, Karyl Norman and Paul Vernon performed in venues like the Grand Opera House in St. Paul and the Metropolitan Theater and the Orpheum in Minneapolis. The elitism of the venues reflected the “fashionable society” that attended. But even during this early period of drag, performers were not exclusively men; women performed and received similar acclaim as “male impersonators.” “High-class vaudeville” artists like Mary Marble and Margaret Grayce toured nationally, stopping to perform in Minnesota in 1897 and 1908, respectively.

According to the article, there was some uncomfortable intersections with blackface performance during this time. There is an implication that some of the drag depictions might have feed into similarly offensive stereotypes regarding gender.

It wasn’t until drag started to move to nightclubs and the illusion of the fourth wall was increasingly dissolved that the practice of crossdressing began to raise alarms socially.

By the 1930s, drag was written up in newspapers more as the cause of police raids than as a performance notice. Police interfered not so much due to the content, but rather because of the interaction between performers and audiences. Police told Variety that acts contained “nothing obscene or immoral in show … but (we’d) like it stopped anyhow.”

Despite police raids and attempts to close down established and widely popular shows, drag performances continued and became more diverse.

As the 1940s progressed, drag was not exclusive to white performers. Minneapolis’s Clef Club catered to Black patrons and featured Black performers, such as the singer Alma Smith and drag artist Carroll Lee, and the 1950s and 60s brought acclaim to Black drag artists like Stormé DeLarverie, Dodie Daniels and Don Marshall, featured in the Jewel Box Revue.

Not A Good Sign When People Are Googling How to Shutdown A Non-Profit

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In a sign of an alarming possible trend, the For Purpose Law Group blog cites an observation by the CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits that (my emphasis):

….an “ominous sign” is that “… the most popular page on NCN’s website for the last few months has been an article on how to shut down a nonprofit.” It’s a “kind of burnout at the highest level …. Leaders are beyond fried,” explains the head of the nation’s largest group of nonprofits. “They’ve been trying to hold things together with baling wire and chewing gum.”

The full piece goes into depth about the factors at play, prime among them are decreases in philanthropy in the face of increasing inflation and compensation expectations.

On the arts side, we are already seeing this manifest with the closures and layoffs by major arts entities. This week the Brooklyn Academy of Music announced layoffs and shortening of their season of programming. A couple weeks ago, the Center Theater Group announced layoffs and the closure of the Mark Taper Forum. Earlier this month, the Public Theater announced the end of the Under The Radar Festival.

There are grumblings on social media about unsustainable business models, but the fact is everyone is pretty much using the same general business model as these places are. Last week I wrote about how Oregon Shakespeare Festival is experiencing a similar crisis, partially due to a heavily restricted endowment.

People who know theater history know these shifts in business models have occurred before. But we have the comfort of hindsight to know how the transition transpired so that theatrical practice continued. But when you are experiencing the transition, you don’t know if things are evolving toward a format more suitable to the times or heading to extinction.

Culture May Often Be A Pawn, But The Importance Transcends

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So in an illustration of the importance of the exercise of soft power, the U.S. has agreed to rejoin UNESCO and pay back dues to the tune of $600+ million. The US stopped paying dues in 2011 when Palestine was included as a member and the Trump administration decided to have the country withdraw entirely in 2017.

The U.S. return to UNESCO is meant to blunt China’s growing influence in the organization.

Undersecretary of State for Management John Bass said in March that the U.S. absence from UNESCO had strengthened China, and ”undercuts our ability to be as effective in promoting our vision of a free world.”

He said UNESCO was key in setting and shaping standards for technology and science teaching around the world, “so if we’re really serious about the digital-age competition with China … we can’t afford to be absent any longer.”

[…]

A UNESCO diplomat expressed hope that the return of the U.S. would bring “more ambition, and more serenity” — and energize programs to regulate artificial intelligence, educate girls in Afghanistan and chronicle victims of slavery in the Caribbean.

While arts and culture are unfortunately subject to a lot of politicization and you never want to be in a position where the only reason someone starts paying more attention to you because their rival is, the fact is, culture is a powerful asset both locally, nationally and internationally.

Having traveled around China, they very publicly cite the UNESCO Cultural Heritage designation for many places you might visit. Seemingly more so than any other place I have visited, even given that their millennia long history has provided many candidates for the designation. Since a cornerstone of China’s identity is tracing the length of their cultural lineage, it would make sense there is a focus on doing a good job of promoting any acknowledgement.

Likewise, UNESCO has expended great effort in cataloguing a lengthy list of intangible cultural heritage which encompass knowledge, practices, crafts and skills specific to communities around the world. For them, the acknowledgment of the importance of the preservation, practice, and transmission of this heritage is no less vindicating.

Water, Water Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink

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A public radio station’s report on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s (OSF) finances is a good illustration of how restricted endowments can imperil the health of a non-profit organization. OSF recently had to make an appeal for $2.5 million in order to keep their doors open. This despite the fact the organization has $96 million in assets.  About $32 million of that is in property and equipment which are generally illiquid assets. Of course it would be difficult to mount of festival if they sold off all the property and equipment.

The crux of the problem for OSF is that only 15% of the approximately $39 million endowment fund is unrestricted which is roughly $5.8 million.   The remainder of the assets totaled around $25 million in cash and equivalents, but their annual expenses are around $18 million. Their business model has been to make about 70-80% of revenue from ticket sales according to the article. That worked well enough until Covid hit and audiences were subsequently became less willing to attend as restrictions eased.

While being able to access more of their endowment wouldn’t completely eliminate their woes,  the combination of lower ticket revenue and an inability to access more than $5.8 million from their endowment for unrestricted use have been contributing factors

 

The Bar That Hosts Open Mic Operaoke Nights

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Fun article I think I found on Artsjournal.com.  There is a bar in Portland, OR called Mendelssohn’s, run by a descendant of composer Felix Mendelssohn who has some opera and classical music cred having been executive director of both types of organizations.  The owner has positioned the bar as a place to demystify opera and classical music by programming a wide variety of musicians and hosting Operaoke nights.

Every other Tuesday night, musicians are given the opportunity to step into the dimly-lit bar and take over the stage, enchanting the audience with their best arias and ballads.
[…]
“We spend so much time preparing and working on this craft,” Lipton said. “You don’t often get the opportunity to play or sing or do these pieces that are lesser known. So this is kind of an avenue to do that.”

In addition to being able to perform lesser known pieces, the a Operaoke host/performer, Alex Trull noted another part of the appeal was being able to perform in a low stakes environment in contrast to the audition/training/performance context that comprises so much of the classical or operatic artist’s relationship with the music.

Fix The Tix Coalition Makes Bold Demands To End Exploitative Ticketing Practices

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A little over a month ago, I wrote about the newly formed Fix the Tix coalition which is urging the US Congress to pass legislation to protect ticket buyers from exploitative ticket pricing/manipulation, ticketing scams, and use of bots to purchase high demand tickets.

Last week they released the details of what they are pushing Congress to enact. It is pretty much everything ticket buyers and venue operators have been praying for.

In addition to restrictions on just plain gouging, the plan calls for the end of speculative ticket selling by requiring sellers to legally have physical or virtual ownership of tickets.

● require that resellers and ticket resale platforms legally obtain each ticket and have each ticket in possession, virtually or physically, prior to placing it on sale.
● require that the ticket resale platform has written proof that a reseller possesses a ticket to sell.

Similarly, they ask that attempts to make a ticketing site masquerade as official outlet of a venue be made illegal.

● make illegal the use of deceptive URLs, search engine optimization, or advertising that improves the visibility of secondary sites over primary sales platforms and makes fans believe they are buying tickets from the venue or artist.
● require secondary ticketing resellers and platforms to clearly and conspicuously disclose:
○ a notice that it is not the primary ticket issuer and venue;
○ that a ticket may still be available from the primary ticket seller and link back to the primary ticket seller;
○ the original face value and fees of each ticket; and
○ a certification that the event ticket offered for sale is in the possession of the reseller or secondary ticketing platform.

Note, I haven’t listed everything they are asking to occur in each of these situations. Check out the full document for more info.

As you might imagine, they are also insisting on full transparency for fees up front during the purchasing experience.

In terms of privacy and safety, they are asking the secondary market sellers be required to provide venues with the contact info of ticket purchasers so they can be reached in case of emergency or rescheduling. But they also insist that secondary market buyer information be protected and not used for sales and marketing without purchaser permission.

As mentioned, Fix the Tix also want to prevent tickets from being snatched up by bots and to ensure secondary ticket sales are made at or near face value on a one on one basis rather than by corporations to individuals:

● ensure that artists, working with venues, determine how to get tickets into the hands of actual fans.
● prohibit companies that operate both primary and secondary ticketing platforms from forcing tickets sold for more than face value to only be resold on their platforms.
● encourage ticketing platforms to operate exclusive, no-fee, fan-to-fan exchanges of tickets as long as they are not exchanged on those exclusive platforms for more than the face value (or the original total cost) of the ticket.
● prohibit companies that are primary sellers and secondary resellers from offering secondary resales on the same web page or display where the primary seller also offers tickets for primary sale.

Questions of Relevance Not Limited to the US

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German arts colleague Rainer Glaap has been feeding me interesting articles over the last couple weeks. I was going to follow up on some content he sent earlier, but he hit me up with an interesting study today that I am moving to the front of the line.  The recently released Culture Relevance Monitor shows a number of parallels between general cultural attitudes in Germany and the U.S.  (Note that the PDF document labeled as the German version is actually the English version and vice versa)

I use the term general cultural attitudes because many of us in the US would be envious to read of an large overall expression of support:

People in Germany (91 per cent) believe it is important to preserve cultural offerings in theatres for coming generations. A large majority (76 per cent) is also of the opinion that these should continue to be financed from the public purse. The offerings are part of Germany’s cultural identity (82 per cent) and education (91 per cent)

However, German cultural offerings seem to be faced with the same generational challenges as those in the US. Despite saying they enjoyed their experiences attending these activities when they were children, a significant segment of the population doesn’t feel these offerings resonate with them:

Both in the population as a whole and in the generation of young adults aged between 18 and 29, two-thirds are not at all interested or are not very interested in theatre performances, classical music concerts, or opera, ballet or dance performances. Four out of five respondents stated that they did not make use of traditional cultural offerings like these over the last twelve months.

37 per cent of respondents had never attended a classical music concert or an opera, ballet or dance performance (for theatre performances: 10 per cent). Many 18- to 29-year-olds feel that cultural offerings do not cater to them (43 per cent); they feel out of place there (39 per cent).

A summary of recommendations on another site also sounds similar to conversations on the same topic in the US.

  • get to know and address their target groups better: There is demand for cultural offerings such as those that are specially directed at children and teenagers (85 per cent), that make people laugh (83 per cent) and that are easy for everyone to understand (81 per cent). The performances should also stimulate social and political discussion (61 per cent) and be new and topical (63 per cent).
  • be more open and network: Theatre venues should see themselves as a gathering place (80 per cent) and offer amateur theatre groups/orchestras or similar ensembles opportunities to perform (74 per cent). Social and habitual barriers to access must be removed.
  • carry out marketing in social and modern ways: The pricing structure should be socially fair (89 per cent), and 18- to 29-year-olds in particular need easier access to programme information (42 per cent), for example via social media platforms.

The survey also asked what would have to change to make them attend more frequently:

40 percent of respondents indicated that theatre venues would have to have more cultural offerings that interested them …. 29 percent would have to have more leisure time, and for 28 percent of respondents, the tickets would need to be cheaper or free … 20 percent would need someone to accompany them for such visits, 14 percent would like it to be easier and cheaper to travel to theatre venues. 11 percent say that their health would have to improve, and 11 percent say that the quality of the cultural offerings would have to be better.

[…]

A quarter (28%) of respondents say they would need easier access to information about interesting offerings before they would attend theatre venues more often. 13 percent would like to see more diverse and varied offerings in terms of the topics, 6 percent want more options for childcare during the events.

I found it interesting that childcare came up so frequently among the 2505 respondents. This put me in mind of the last pre-Covid CultureTrack survey I wrote about in 2017 which reported on barriers to participation for those who frequently attended and those who didn’t.

For frequent attendees, the top barriers were inconvenience, no one to attend with, and rather do other leisure activities, in that order. For infrequent/never attendees, not for someone like me, didn’t think of it, and inconvenient were the top barriers, in that order.

Is There A Way Past Fighting And Bad Behavior At Shows?

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So either the disruptions at performances in the UK are growing increasingly problematic or the topic has become a favorite bete noire of news outlets because I continue to see stories on the topic. In the most recent one, The Guardian reports fist fights, loud singing, people talking on the phone, inquiring what type of sandwich friends would like to eat as they pass them around, and directly heckling the performers.

Those interviewed for the article attribute the problem to everything from the Covid shutdown, lack of education in etiquette, simple spite, and excess consumption of alcohol. While some suggest maybe actors have been coddled by behavioral expectations in recent decades which differ from the historical bawdiness of audiences, it is hard not to sympathize with performers who are being heckled while giving their all.

 Brunton has been heckled. “There was one venue where audience disruption occurred at practically every show and I just felt like I wanted the week to be over,” he says. “It’s so sad, to be in this position to play the lead in a brand new Disney production, I’ve had to jump through hoops to get here, and it’s just heartbreaking when you’ve got someone shouting at you inappropriately.”

This said, theaters have been scheduling dedicated performances specifically for sing-along and carving out moments for photo-ops like the Megasix section of Six I wrote about last week. Performing within that context has been rewarding for the actors.

Some productions known for attracting younger audiences, such as the musicals & Juliet (a jukebox show using producer Max Martin’s pop hits) and Heathers (based on the cult 1980s film), have held dedicated singalong performances during which fans were not just given permission but encouraged to join in. Erin Caldwell, who played Veronica Sawyer in Heathers, says the singalong left the cast “really overwhelmed”. “There’s a picture of me after the bows, head in hands, just crying because it was so emotional – I would do another one in a heartbeat … I wouldn’t be surprised if more shows do it in future.”

It would be interesting to see if venues increasingly schedule programs dedicated to providing custom experiences for different audience segments. There are already sensory friendly, audio-described and signed performances. Performances for sing-alongs, shared experiences for affinity groups (i.e. Black Out performances), could serve to engender a sense of belonging and access for those who haven’t felt the experience was for people like themselves.

Maintaining Relationships Has Been Key To Recovery Of Arts Orgs Post-Shutdown

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TRG Arts recently released some data showing that not all segments of performing arts have recovered from pandemic shutdowns at the same rate. Comparing four factors from 2019 to 2022:  Tickets, Ticket Revenue, Gifts, and Gift Revenue, they report that Performing Arts Centers have fared best in these categories. Ballet had done as well in terms of tickets and gifts, but had seen ticket revenue and donor revenue increase.  Theater fared worse with classical music doing slight better and showing signs of improvement.  The data is drawn from US, Canada and UK arts organizations.

TRG credits performing arts centers’ relative flexibility with their ability to start recovery in attendance and revenue earlier than other areas. Overall, they say the lessons to draw from this data is the importance of maintaining relationships with audiences and having aggressive retention practices.

Maintaining relationships with customers and donors, keeping their connections with the arts engaged and active—appears to be a key factor in driving organizational recovery from the pandemic. There were many creative ways this happened during the 2020-2022 period, from digital distribution to small ensemble performances to Zoom donor and ticket buyer gatherings to use of outdoor venues until going inside was permitted or felt safer.

[…]

Plan aggressively for customer retention. As your organization re-builds, do NOT think short-term, but instead make every dollar spent on acquisition go further by investing in customer relationship building and retention. We don’t have time or money to waste now…every campaign must include follow-up, invitations for our customers to join us again, and more.

[…]

Add to this reality the fact that by 2040 community demographics will be wildly more diverse than today. The result? Arts organizations will need to become expert at asking and listening, rather than assuming and telling. The art of the conversation with our customers—we’re going to need to get much better at it.

The Folks Who Saved Our Stages Are Fighting For A Better Ticketing Experience

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It appears the folks that spearheaded the Save Our Stages effort during Covid which became the Shuttled Venue Operators Grant program are turning their energies toward tackling all the problematic event ticketing issues we have been hearing about recently, (but suffering for decades).

The National Independent Venue Association has been joined by 18 other national and regional organizations in the Fix The Tix coalition.  The announcement of the coalition popped up last week. They haven’t listed and specific measures for which they are advocating, but the website says:

….this coalition represents stakeholders who take on all the risk to create once-in-a-lifetime experiences and bring joy, employment, and economic impact to communities across America.

We are coming together to protect fans from price gouging and deceptive and predatory ticketing practices.

Efforts To Reduce Burn Out Are Better With Company

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There is a fairly extensive article on the Time magazine site about using creative practice to address burnout.  The piece by Jamie Ducharme was titled “I Tried to Cure My Work Burnout. Here’s What Happened.” As readers know, I dislike the prescriptive use of the arts as a cure for physical/mental/social ills so I feared the worse.

Ducharme’s article covers the efforts of the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine’s Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab (CORAL) to do research on relieving people’s burnout. At this time they are generally focusing on healthcare workers in their research.

I was happy to see that the researchers didn’t see themselves as curing burnout as much as building resilience in participants.

But the data suggest one leads to the other: for almost 150 health care providers who joined the study from September 2020 to July 2021, the approach led to small but significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and burnout, according to a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Medicine. If the framework proves effective for people in a wider swath of health care jobs, Moss says CORAL’s approach could feasibly be adopted by burned-out workers in any industry.

What I really appreciated was the finding that it was the social activity, rather than the creative practice alone that lead to the reduction of burnout. This bolsters messaging arts and cultural organizations use regarding sharing experiences with others in a face to face environment. To some extent, the research supports providing more interactive experiences versus passively watching a show or viewing visual art without comment or discussion.

But when I asked Moss and his team if the CORAL curriculum could be distilled into something I, or any individual, could do on my own, I was met with a resounding no. The program’s magic, its facilitators said, is in bringing people together to feel the solidarity and community so often lacking in modern life. People can draw or dance or write or sing on their own, but it likely won’t have the same transformative effect without a human connection.

That’s what Dr. Colin West, who researches physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic, found in 2021, when he published a study on what happened when physicians met up for group discussions over meals. Their burnout symptoms improved, but it wasn’t necessarily the food that made the difference—it was support. “We have so many shared experiences and so many stressors that are in common, and yet physicians will often feel like, Well, I can’t talk to anybody about this,” West says. Bringing people together to share their experiences can help.

Leaders I/S/O Organizations Who Know Things Have Changed

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I had a post appear on ArtsHacker today about hiring executive leadership in the context of the social changes which have occurred since the start of the Covid pandemic. My post primarily focuses on a piece Seema Sueko wrote for American Theatre, which I would highly encourage people to read.

Sueko was serving as a field advisor for a search firm specializing in executive searches in the arts and culture field. She discusses how she initially assumed that search firm would work with their clients to identify all the social, political and economic changes that occurred since their last hire, determine how the organization would need to change, and then what qualities the new leadership would need to possess to move the organization in that direction.

Finding out that was not the case, she surveyed 4-5 other search firms that also worked with arts and culture organizations and found they operated in much the same way.

She lays out some great ideas about how organizations can do a better job with leadership hiring. Many of the suggestions would probably please candidates to no end such as the hiring committee going through mock interviews and receiving feedback on how to do a better job.

As I write in my ArtsHacker post, I thought her best idea was one about creating an introductory video of a facilitated conversation about the job:

I recommend that the search firm record a Zoom meeting with the search committee where each committee member introduces themselves, followed by a facilitated conversation about the job opportunity. This video could be shared with all the candidates to level the playing field and capture some of the culture which can’t be conveyed through a written document. Such a video would also have the added benefit of demystifying and humanizing the search committee, which, I propose, will lead to more substantial interviews with candidates.

I am not sure about the current status of hiring for executive roles in arts and culture is at the moment. Readers may know that I changed jobs in November 2022. Around February-March 2023, the very first place I interviewed for when I started my search a year earlier contacted me to say the search had failed, board membership had changed and would I like to interview again.

While this certainly not indicative of the whole industry, I suspect it might not be far off the general environment. A lot of people have chosen to leave the field and hiring committees might be finding it difficult to identify good candidates because they are looking to hire for an environment that no longer exists and candidates are looking to join an organization that has acknowledged the work and change that needs to occur.

N.B. – regarding the post title. With all the social media abbreviations, has the old print classified “in search of -/i/s/o” entirely fallen out of use or do folks use it on dating apps?

You’re Doing A Great Job, But Standards For Dissatisfaction Have Changed

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Colleen Dilenschneider made a post comparing what factors created dissatisfaction for attendees of cultural events in 2019 vs. 2022. She posted charts for both exhibit and performance based organizations. An important thing to keep in mind is that these are factors that dissatisfied people when they actually attended an event. These aren’t things that non-attendees reported were keeping people away.

Basically on both charts, everything bugs people more. Focusing on performance events, rude patrons and rude staff top the list. Parking issues and access issues (e.g. traffic) also saw a big increase. Cost of admission saw a small increase 2019 to 2022, but cost of everything else related to the experience (presumably food, gas, parking) exploded over 2022.

Phone policy (allowing patrons to use) saw an increase where phone policy (not being able to use) saw a slight decrease. Given slightly more openness to not being able to use your phone, it might be worth making the request since allowing people to use their phones is increasingly annoying people.

Restroom availability, crowding, Hours of Operation (big increase), Cleanliness (also big increase) were all higher in 2022 than 2019. Interestingly, performance quality issues were less of a dissatisfying factor. Length of intermission, which I would have thought was relatively neutral was also created less dissatisfaction in 2022. I assume venues haven’t really tweaked the standard intermission interval so either shows are doing better starting on time, intermissions are more fun, or audiences have made their peace with the 15-20 time period.

Dilenschneider notes that standards have shifted so that even if conditions are much better than before, the perception still might be that the problem is worse. She uses the example of crowding. There may be fewer people in venues and galleries, but the criteria about what constitutes crowded may have shifted where people feel more constricted even if they have much more elbow room.

Similarly, the standard about what constitutes rudeness from patrons and staff may have likewise shifted. Attendees may find your staff to be rude even if you have done a lot of work to be kinder and more considerate after you re-opened from pandemic closures.

Sometimes You Are More Creative Without The Brainstorming Session

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Nina Simon may have left museum administration and being an agent of change behind to write books, but she still manages to live and think right on the cusp of things. Today, I receive an article from her substack site where she reflects back on the process of creative collaboration when she was working at a museum versus her interactions with her editor as an author.

She likens the process of working as an author as baton passing. She will send materials to her editor and after some time, the editor sends the materials back with great questions and comments. When she was working in a museum, she was often in a room with many others brainstorming all sorts of ideas in real time.

Reflecting back, she wonders if she may have misused the brainstorming sessions. Was she using them to present ideas or solve problems that she hadn’t properly developed or worked through? Was she similarly demanding answers and ideas from others without providing them sufficient time to contemplate good solutions? She also wondered if used the sessions to insert herself into other people’s projects and exert control over them.

I thought this was great and something to really ponder, but fate doubled down and the second item on my social media feed came from Dan Pink who linked to a Harvard Business Review article that not only said asynchronous work can bolster creativity, but that some of Nina’s instincts were correct.

Studies show that women and people from marginalized communities are given fewer opportunities to speak and are criticized more harshly when they do in a range of synchronous work settings. Consequently, synchronous teams may inhibit women and marginalized people’s expression of new or risky ideas, ultimately making teams less equal and their output less creative

In a study conducted with Baul folk musicians in India, a style that lends itself to both synchronous and asynchronous practice, researchers found that synchronous collaboration could lead to people feeling stifled whereas asynchronous practice could result in greater creativity, despite and probably due to, mistakes practitioners made.

Initial interviews revealed that women singers performing synchronously with men felt constantly “corrected by [their] seniors” and sensed that their fellow musicians “did not stand by [them].” They did not report being offered the “encouragement” and “positive reinforcement” that their men counterparts described receiving from their colleagues.

[…]

We found that women’s performances were rated 17% higher when they recorded asynchronously, and that this effect was driven by the degree of creativity in their singing, based on ratings by experts in Baul folk music. (The experts assigned overall ratings to every track as well as timestamped all creative choices made by the singer.)

This creative freedom when singing alone was further captured in interviews with the experimental subjects. After recording asynchronously, one woman said, “I was completely free. I could sing as I wished. I missed some notes at a place, but then I caught on with it later on. I had complete independence and it felt like I was flying like a bird.” Men’s performances were not significantly different in the two conditions, and thus asynchronicity seems to help women without hurting men.

The coincidence of these two pieces on the same subject coming to my attention today provides a lot to consider.
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More Prescribing Arts To Cure You

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Artsjournal linked to a piece in a University of Florida journal about a program the university is piloting in the hopes of eventually rolling out a national program of prescribing arts to solve mental and physical ills. I have written about similar programs before where doctors prescribe arts and nature to patients.  My biggest issue is that instead of proactively working to change society and culture to emphasize taking care of yourself mentally and physically or normalizing participation in creative activities, the approach of these programs is to essentially prescribe carving out time to relax and take up enjoyable activities.

The article even alludes to the fact that medical care is associated with a degree of unpleasantness in the US.  Many people feel some wariness about arts experiences so making it a medical cure can compound a sense of alienation.

“Our health care system doesn’t have a structure that enables people to engage in things that are enjoyable and support their health. We’re acculturated toward taking medicine,” Sonke says. “If your doctor says, ‘I think you need to take a pottery class or a dance class, to get out and be more social and more creative,’ is that going to feel like you’re not being taken seriously?”

Even the name presents an issue.

“Social prescribing as a term works in the U.K., because social care is a concept that everyone understands. In the U.S., social services are highly stigmatized and highly politicized, so that language is problematic,” Sonke says.

The only upside I see from the description of this initiative is that it is intentionally disassociated with medical facilities and personnel.

Social prescribing differs from arts in medicine in a few key ways. Instead of bringing arts into a health care setting, it aims to infuse social and cultural activities into daily life. Second, the activities are led by artists and community-based organizations, not health care workers or therapists. Third, while clinical treatments are intended to serve their purpose, then end, social and creative arts involvement can continue after medical intervention concludes.

When a health care provider identifies a patient who could benefit from social and cultural engagement, they refer them to a “link worker” whose role is to match them with an activity in their community, Sonke explains. And while it’s not meant to replace medical intervention, it gives primary-care providers more ways to help patients who aren’t thriving.

Creative activities shouldn’t be in a position of being an option of last resort for your health and well-being. The first time people are encouraged to visit a museum shouldn’t be after suffering years of sleepless nights, mounting anxiety, and heart palpitations.

Does Your Real Estate Serve Your Current Strategy?

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Bloomberg recently had a piece about how the Girls Scouts of Colorado recently opened a space in Denver known as DreamLab, envisioned to be a third space for girls.

As spaces for young people to hang out grow scarcer, and the mental health of young women, especially, reaches unprecedented lows, the Girl Scouts is investing in properties girls can make their own.

“We really want the Girl Scout DreamLab to be their third place,” after home and school, said Anne Smith, senior vice president of property strategy for Girl Scouts of the USA

Two other DreamLab spaces are under construction in NJ and LA and more may be on the way based on how Covid has apparently impacted Girl Scout operations and use of physical spaces.

“Troops found that the traditional public spaces they’d relied on to host meetings, like church basements and libraries, were getting harder to access. Girl Scout staff were embracing remote work like the rest of the workforce, leaving offices empty. Some Girl Scout councils started selling properties, as membership dues dropped.

[…]

Data showed that the best-utilized spaces were those within a 20 to 30 minute drive from the majority of their membership, for example. “There were a lot of different data points that show that our current model wasn’t meeting the needs of our girls,” said Smith.

The Denver DreamLab occupies about 4,000 square feet of leased space in a new property chosen for its prime location: It’s within 15 miles of nearly 30% of Girl Scouts of Colorado members as of 2020, and by 2026 it’s projected to be within 15 miles of more than 150,000 girls between the ages of 5 and 17.

I wondered if this might serve as an example or inspiration for arts organizations in some way. I don’t know exactly how at this point.  Back in January 2022, the Long Wharf Theater announced that after nearly 60 years operating in permanent spaces around New Haven, CT they were going to pursue being an itinerant company so that they could provide services closer to the communities they hoped to serve.  So there is something of a precedent for arts organizations disinvesting themselves of their spaces.

While there are performance, rehearsal and offices spaces that have been offered to arts organizations similar to how it seems DreamLab is being offered to Girl Scout groups, I don’t know that many arts organizations who have utilized these resources have done so with the intentional goal of being itinerant so much as adapting to the opportunities being made available.

It may not seem like a big distinction on paper, but you could say the same about Vine, Instagram, and Tiktok. While Vine seemed to be everywhere for awhile, it fell out of favor relatively quickly while other similar apps thrived.

 

When To Belt Out In Song And Not Belt The Person Sitting Behind You

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By now most people have probably heard about the brawl between audience members at a Manchester, England performance of The Bodyguard because people were singing along to “I Will Always Love You.”  The more I read, the more I wonder if maybe opening the bars at the theater 1.5 hours before curtain might be as big a contributor as people having poor etiquette.

Assuming many have read their fill about the incident, I wanted to point to a different article in the Toronto Star which interviewed ushers at performances in that city about audience behavior. While they say they have also seen their share of rude behavior and vain attempts to keep people from singing along with shows, the ushers point to examples of productions leaning into the trend:

One way some producers have been able to satisfy audience’s cravings to turn the theatre into an enormous karaoke bar is to end the shows with a big medley — a so-called Megamix. The recent “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” tour in Toronto used that, and wannabe Broadway singers got to belt out the songs with the cast and record themselves doing it on their phones.

Aislinn Rose [artistic director of Toronto’s not-for-profit Theatre Centre] believes theatres could go even further and designate certain performances as sing-along shows
[…]

“I’m not advocating for every performance to look like that, but there’s an opportunity to build an incredibly loyal, live following of people who want to engage with live performance. I think we should find a way to support that.”

Apparently there was a time when some Toronto based productions were trying to get audiences to sing-a-long, and couldn’t so maybe there is an element of be careful what you wish for here.

Ironically, Mirvish Productions programmed sing-along performances for their production of the Queen jukebox musical “We Will Rock You” way back in 2008-2009. It didn’t catch on.

“We printed out lyric sheets and everything,” said Karastamatis. “But very few people sang along.”

But as the article suggests at the end, you generally don’t plan to spend a lot of money on a ticket to listen to the people next to you sing off-key. So unless you are doing a show like Rocky Horror which has a long tradition of audience participation,  having designated times or performances where people can sing along is probably going to be the best approach in the short term.

He Proved The Power Of The Rule Of (Folding In) Thirds

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When I saw a notice about MAD Magazine artist Al Jaffee’s death at 102 yesterday, it was tucked in the corner of a website so I didn’t think there would be a lot of notice. But this morning there were a plethora of stories.

He has been feted for his work on the magazine’s fold-in back cover which turned a large picture into the wry answer the picture caption.  For me, that was an inadvertent bit of visual art education to readers of the magazine. Seeing how ultimate image was derived from the larger piece taught people to look closer at what might be happening at the edges of pictures. I can’t be the only person who tried to figure out the answer in my mind’s eye before folding the page.

While it may not have been high art, those covers could have been a great entrée for introductory level visual arts courses since so many classic paintings had meaningful images inserted in the periphery. And of course, the final fold in image wasn’t the only visual joke. The whole cover was peppered with satire and foolishness as a reward to the patient viewer.

You can find many examples of his fold-ins on different websites  DC Comics interviewed him awhile back where he discussed how he managed to engineer the covers.

Sometimes It Isn’t Bad To Be Rushing In Late To The Party

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A Guardian article on classical music in Iceland caught my eye last week. The story basically suggested that because the country got a late start with classical music, (first major tour by Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra in 1926 and first full time ensemble in 1950), they don’t have the same hang-ups about what belongs in the concert hall as everyone else.

While the rest of the world was busy erecting barriers between music genres last century – roping off classical music, in particular – Iceland was simply trying to get things going. There was no time wasted deciding who was allowed to listen to what. For much of the second half of the 20th century, classical orchestral music felt new in Iceland. Here, the symphony orchestra was a postwar institution, not a 19th-century one.

According to the article,  pop artist Bjork had sang Schoenberg at the Salzburg festival and often performs with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. Rock band Sigur Ros is planning a US tour including a 41 symphony musicians and in 2020 released an orchestral piece based on a 13th-century Icelandic poem.

The Guardian suggests a possible reason for what other countries might view as a sort of open cross-pollination:

Student musicians in Iceland often find themselves crossing genre boundaries by necessity. There’s only one institution in the capital where you can study music to degree level, thrusting students of varied outlooks together. This eroding of musical silos has produced countless indefinable artists, including Hildur Guðnadóttir who became the first female composer to win an Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe in the same season. It was for her score to the film Joker – a cello concerto in disguise.

Is Ticketmaster Powerless Before An English Accent?

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You may have seen a rise in backlash against Ticketmaster fees coming from performing artists. Neil Young recently posted that exploitative ticketing fees were taking the fun out of touring. He also mentioned how the band The Cure had pressured Ticketmaster to refund $5 to $10 to ticket buyers who had been faced with these high fees.

Last weekend, The Cure took things a step further and announced 7000 tickets on secondary resale sites had been cancelled.

“approx. 7K tickets across approx 2200 orders have been cancelled.” The singer claimed those tickets were acquired with fake accounts and/or listed on secondary resale sites. “TM have identified specific locations from secondary postings,” he said. He then asked fans who think their tickets may have been wrongly cancelled to reach out to TM fan support (@TMFanSupport).

It makes me wonder how an 80s/90s era music group was able to pull this off while other more contemporary groups have shrugged at their powerlessness. Is it the English accent which we all find so charming and appealing? Is it the dark eye make up that makes front man Robert Smith look so brooding?

As I have mentioned in other posts, Ticketmaster’s customer is generally the venue and artist, not the ticket buyer. They have mentioned they are open to taking the heat for decisions other parties have made, likely because the higher fees are so lucrative for them.

Ringling Bros Circus Is Back With More Story And No Animals

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Via Artsjournal.com is a story on Fast Company about the return of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus which ceased operations in 2017. Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus is looking to return to the road with a trimmed-down, humans only performance that is less abstract than Cirque du Soleil, but more adult than Feld’s Disney on Ice.

The part of the story that grabbed my attention most was the decision to bring the circus back without animals. In 2014 the circus had won $16 million in settlements from lawsuits brought by animal rights organizations who alleged animal cruelty, but public perception was that animals were being mistreated. However, when they announced in 2015 they were going to phase out the animals by 2018:

“Immediately, ticket sales slumped. Despite public sentiment against the use of animals, dancing tigers and trained elephants proved to be a driver of customer interest, according to Mollica. Animal acts turned out to be synonymous with the very idea of a circus.”

As soon as I read that, I thought about how this paralleled the experience of some arts organizations who made attempts to heed warnings about diminishing audiences and tried to diversify their program offerings only to find ticket sales and donations almost immediately evaporate. The lesson here is probably to consider how you are going to execute and communicate the transition because not every effort has resulted in such a strong public reaction.

The Fast Company article does a good job examining many of the decision points that were part of the revamp. For example, while there will be video and technological enhancements not found in the previous version of the circus, the creators wanted to avoid any suggestion that the performers weren’t able to perform various feats without the presence of technology.

“We don’t need technology to allow a performer to appear like they’re flying from one end of the room to the other. They actually can do that.”

Much like other live performance experiences, the newest version of the circus depends on storytelling to generate audience investment:

The new circus will also be more story-driven than previous iterations, structured around eight characters who will drive its narrative arc. Feld Entertainment has cast a musical theater entertainer, Lauren Irving, in the lead role, pointing to a substantial musical element at work within the show.

Shipton explained that leaning into narrative provides other avenues through which audience members can engage with the circus, beyond pure spectacle. “Story equals emotional connection,” he says.

Sharing Some Info About Getting Public Art Commissions

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Hyperallergic had an article about how artists can get a public/private art commission. Paddy Johnson responds saying “…there are so many ways to get commissions, yet so few shared resources about how to secure them, that many artists never venture into the field.”

So I will start by noting that CaFE (Call for Entry), a service hosted by the Western Arts Federation for what seems like forever is one place to find information on applying for public art projects.

As I mentioned a couple months ago, I am working in a city with a large number of public art pieces so I recently was recruited to be on a panel reviewing project proposals. One of the things in Johnson’s article that rang true for me is that because public art projects are often sponsored by governmental entities like cities, the juries often include ordinary citizens so the way you discuss your project has to be pitched to them rather than visual art insiders.

“I tell artists that [writing] ‘Imagine if you will’ does not work with panelists,” she [Rebecca Rothman, public art manager, Tempe, Arizona] told Hyperallergic. Stakeholders involved in the decision-making process may be dentists or school principals who aren’t visually trained. You have to show them exactly what they will see.

The biggest issue, though, might be the shift from creating work meant to be seen inside controlled spaces such as museums, and a public space where the audience will be much more diverse and doesn’t necessarily choose to view the work. Your job is to sell what you’re going to do to that audience. “Many artists confuse a public art application with applying for a grant,” Rothman said. “It’s a switch of mindset. You’re applying for a job.”

In my experience on the panel, I didn’t really find the language used to describe the proposals difficult to understand. But then, I am something of an insider and CaFE provides a fair amount of space for work samples. I did, however, feel the tone of some of the narrative was similar to a grant proposal. That wasn’t an impediment for me, but Rothman’s comment about public art proposals not being grants immediately resonated with my experience.

Snapshot Of 2021 Arts Gives Hints About How We Got To Today

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Last week, Sunil Iyengar, Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was on the NEA’s  Quick Study podcast (transcript) talking about the state of the arts economy for 2021 based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  While we may all wish to push 2021 out of our memory, there was some interesting data that emerged after the first year plus of Covid, including some hints of decisions and trends here in 2023.

For instance:

Despite all the setbacks for the sector in the past few years, the arts value added in 2021 expanded to a record high of one trillion dollars, over one trillion actually, representing 4.4 percent of GDP, and this growth rate more than doubles that of the US economy.  The economy as a whole grew by 5.9 percent versus 13.7 percent for arts and cultural industries.

The fine print to that is that a significant part of this growth was in category of web streaming and web publishing of arts content which moved to the top position among arts industries by size. Most of this activity was in the commercial rather than non-profit sector. Similarly, most of the categories that either regained or exceeded where they were in 2019 were in the commercial realm including “movies, broadcasting, creative advertising, and arts retail,…” Government run entities like schools, arts and cultural agencies, museums, libraries, cultural exhibits and parks also held relatively steady compared to their 2019 numbers.

Iyengar said the data showed other areas doing better than 2020, but not reaching the levels they were at in 2019.

At the top of that list I’d place a category called independent artists, writers, and performers. So these are establishments led by artists that have at least one employee on payroll. This industry gained from 2020, but at 33.5 billion is still under the 41 billion it contributed to GDP in 2019. Performing arts organizations also have not quite caught up with 2019 levels, though they’re nearly there, as is the case with fine arts schools, and custom architectural services such as woodwork and metal. Then there are a couple of industries that have been in persistent decline since 2020– arts related construction, and grant making services in the arts.

I didn’t know quite what to make of that last bit. Iyengar says these declines are based on economic activity. Given the amount of time it can take to get construction projects set into motion, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that had not regained momentum after a pause. I am more concerned to think about what it means that grant making in the arts slowed in 2021. My read on that is that granting organizations were pulling back their giving in 2021. Though maybe with arts organizations closing, there were fewer recipients to whom to give?

An interesting observation Iyengar makes later is that while economic activity by self-employed workers is recognized as contributing to the Gross Domestic Product, the data does not distinguish the workers by industry. Iyengar says he suspects a lot of the growth in activity among arts industries is the result of cutting staff and using independent contractors.

“So what that means is I suspect that we’re seeing turbocharged growth for some arts industries even while they’ve lost workers since 2019, and that’s because they’re reverting to contractors such as self-employed artists and other workers who are not counted in the total employment figures here. So that might be why the total employment numbers are lower but we see economic growth still continuing.”

The Inalienable Right To Be Untalented

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Busy into the evening tonight so I thought these brief thoughts from New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, shared by Isaac Butler might be a good subject to ponder.

This resonates with the whole Pro-Am (Professional Amateurs) conversation from the early 2000 as well as the concept that everyone has the capacity to be creative.   There has always been a tension between the idea that insiders are gatekeeping the definition of who is an artist/creative and the concept that one should be investing time and energy into honing their abilities if they sincerely want to cultivate their creativity.

Kael notes that the untrained/no-talent has a capacity to verge off in interesting directions while having the freedom of producing something perfectly awful. The two states are not mutually exclusive since the germ of something interesting and inspired can be hidden amid the dross.

Will Augmented Reality For Cooking Provide A Successful Application For Opera Notes?

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Rainer Glaap recently posted a story about Deutsche Oper am Rhein’s (German Opera on the Rhein) partnership with Vodaphone to offer augmented information about the opera’s production of “Die tote Stadt” (Dead City) in April. (Use Chrome browser or pop the link into Google translate to translate from German.)

I have written about the use of augmented reality devices to interact with art as well as long running projects to provide commentary for classical music concerts and opera. There hasn’t really been any leading technology that has emerged and been adopted to provide these services, but I am always interested to see what people have in the works.

The opera house has set aside 30 seats in the 2nd tier, that is where the 5G reception is best, for people who wish to use the glasses.

Although the glasses look very dark, they only dim the optical experience minimally, assures Vodafone’s head of innovation, Michael Reinartz. The glasses will also display surtitles, optionally in German or English. Apps can be controlled with the gaze. A special camera enables views into the orchestra pit.

…Christoph Meyer, General Manager of the Rheinoper. It is important to him to experiment with the prototype in order to inspire a new, technology-savvy audience for opera and ballet and to pass on the experience to other houses. “We are extremely curious to see how this works and how it will be accepted,” says Jens Breder, Marketing Director of the Rheinoper.

According to the article Vodaphone has already used this technology for football/soccer games, providing insight into a chef’s kitchen as he cooks, and neurosurgery procedures.  Given the wide use of the technology across different industries and practices, I would think this product might have the best chance of success. They need to solve problems associated with providing supporting information and visuals to people viewing action on a broad football pitch as well as extreme close-ups in surgery. The equipment needs to operate effectively outdoors in weather and in the steamy chaos of a restaurant kitchen.

I expect they might be able to draw lessons from the different arenas of application to provide information people didn’t know they wanted. Information streams that football fans want by default may enhance the experience of opera goers. On the other hand, examining how people developed superb knife skills will be equally valued by those interested in cooking and surgery.

Artistic Citizenship – Is It Valued, Who Will Teach It?

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A couple months back, Arts Professional had an article by Jonathan Vaughan, Principal of Guildhall School of Music & Drama, asking if “artistic citizenship” could be taught.

Defining artistic citizenship, the academic David Elliott takes Aristotle’s concept of Praxis (‘to do’ or ‘to make’) and expands it to mean active reflection and action “dedicated to human well-being… the ethical care of others, and the positive empowerment and transformation of people and their everyday lives”.

Vaughan cites things like activism, critical thinking, disruption, civic responsibility, social value. Just as he comes around to mentioning a parallel with liberal arts education, I had a similar thought about liberal arts education having many of these same goals. The fact that I have been reading about the shrinking of liberal arts degree programs in colleges across the country made me question if these were qualities that were actually valued any more. There is certainly the ability to teach these skills, but does the will to instill these qualities still exist?

Vaughan asks an additional question about whether people would pursue an artistic curriculum focused on cultivating better citizenship over artistic excellence.

“Questions remain about how to include this training in an already busy, arguably overcrowded, curriculum. Where does it fit when the primary imperative of performance training must always be the production of outstanding performers who excel in their craft and artistry?

How can institutions avoid indoctrinating their students when introducing political or ideological concepts? Can the development of students’ independent critical thinking avoid that? And is the very concept of citizenship problematic or limiting to those it excludes?

To be clear, I don’t doubt for a moment that there are people who do want to acquire these skillsets in order to improve civil society. I just wonder if they will look to these institutions to provide this training as well as if the institutions, embroiled as they are in various levels of politics and internal inertia, would be prepared to provide the training students seek.

Got A Good Beat, You Can Dance To It…And It’s Taking Our Jobs

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I was listening to an episode of the Code Switch podcast this weekend while I was out walking. The topic was about how merengue was the basis for a culture war in Puerto Rico.  What, at first on the surface seemed to be a resistance to the introduction of a new type of pop music to compete with salsa gets entangled with cultural identity.

Merengue was essentially carried to Puerto Rico by waves of immigration from the Dominican Republic. The music had a different energy and was easier to dance to than salsa. One of the hosts mentioned her mother was embarrassed by how poorly her husband danced, but that he was able to do a passable job dancing to merengue rhythms.

However, in time there were violent protests and demands that merengue be outlawed because it was putting salsa musicians out of work. One merengue musician had his car set on fire. There was a lot of suspicion that it was salsa musicians, but the owner had no proof and so never filed a complaint.

The podcast hosts admit there may have been some nationalism and classism associated with the resistance since merengue was initially being introduced and performed by immigrants who may not arrived in Puerto Rico legally. Many of them seeking to use the island as a way to continue on to the U.S.  There may have been a sense that these folks from the Dominican Republic were interlopers who were not invested in advancing the future of the island.

The most interesting element is that in time Puerto Rican musicians made merengue their own.  The merengue song, “Suavemente,” which became ubiquitous in the late nineties was performed by a Puerto Rican musician. The guy whose car was burned was invited to the home of one of the prime suspects for the arson who admitted merengue ultimately made it possible to own the house he had.

I have been trying to think if there have been similar stories with other music forms. I know there have been plenty of protests about music being obscene or diverging from standard expectations, but has there been other instances where performers of an emerging music style have been accused of robbing other musicians of their livelihood by virtue of being more popular?

 

Unexpected Headline – Black Sabbath The Ballet Premieres In September

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In a case of “not something I had imagined”, the Birmingham Royal Ballet recently decided to create a ballet set to the music of Black Sabbath, who got their start in the city. Lead guitarist Tony Iommi described the show as a “rags to riches” tale will attract “both our fans and ballet fans”.

Say what you want about whether a ballet set to heavy metal music is appropriate, my first thought was that from what I know of Birmingham the concept is suited to the history and socio-economic dynamics of the city and it is population. Obviously, these are the very forces that gave rise to the band in the first place. It may be an unorthodox pairing, but it is aligned to the community rather than an attempt at shoehorning something presumed to be good for the audiences or that they will learn to like.

I don’t doubt there will be cries of sacrilege. I am just suggesting Black Sabbath is more closely aligned to Birmingham than something like Aaron Copland & Agnes DeMille’s “Rodeo,” which has more resonance with American cowboy culture.

My thoughts about the continued timeliness of the song “War Pigs” preceded me reading Ballet director Carlos Acosta’s parallel thoughts on the song:

“”War Pigs is so relevant today, how sometimes politicians and governments hide behind words. And all the wars happening at the moment… it’s timeless.”

Videogame Inspired Tourism

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I saw this tweet the beginning of the month and was engaged by the idea of video game inspired tourism.

I tried to see if there was a recording made of her talk, but haven’t been able to find it. Given that people have trekked to see the locations appearing in Star Wars films and episodes of shows like Game of Thrones, it isn’t surprising that people want to see these places in real life. What is a bit more interesting is that a video game about a post-apocalyptic world would take the pains to accurately depict real life locations.

Does this reflect a tension between the pursuit of creating fictional worlds and scenarios and a desire for authenticity? What drives the desire for authenticity, the gaming company, the players, a combination of both? With the emergence of AI created art, which can presumably integrate elements of real locations as well as generate completely new environments, will the drive for authenticity continue or will gaming studios and players be satisfied with AI generated worlds?

Not to mention, will those artist jobs continue to exist?

The fact that people are traveling to these locations suggests people have an interest/curiosity in extending their virtual explorations into the physical realm. This bodes well on many levels if game designers continue to actively seek new interesting places in the real world to translate into the games.

When Audiences Take “Best Party In Town” Marketing At Their Word

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The last few months I have been seeing a number of stories about audiences in UK theaters being abusive toward staff and other patrons. A week or so ago, The Stage reported that Edinburgh Playhouse staff had been punched and spat upon, moving the director to call out the bad behavior on Twitter, saying the abuse was affecting the mental health of staff.

“Where in the past we had very isolated incidents, we now have a greater number of incidents. But when people are asked to modify their behaviour, the most common answers are: ‘I don’t care.’ And when we tell them they are disturbing people behind them, they say: ‘I don’t care, I have paid for my ticket, I will do what I want.’ That seems to be the most common thing.”

[…]

“It is really horrible for them and staff can be scared to come to work. And what I hear from other theatre directors is that we are dealing with a mental-health crisis in our staff as well, and this is part of it, a part of what fuels it,” he said.

The bad behavior has become such a problem, theater management are reportedly changing their marketing messaging, asking that phrases like “best party in town” and “dancing in the aisles” not be used.

On Tuesday, Colin Marr, director of the Edinburgh Playhouse theatre, told the Stage that audience behaviour was the worst he had known in his five years in charge. “One of the main things we are trying to do is around messaging and working closely with producers,” he said. “We are talking to them about marketing. So, when we market shows let’s not have phrases such as ‘best party in town’ or ‘dancing in the aisles’ – the show has something much stronger than that to sell.”

[…]

An ATG spokesperson confirmed the company was working with producers on marketing. “We’re taking a multidisciplinary approach to tackling challenging audience behaviour, covering all points of the customer journey, including how we market shows. We want everyone to fully enjoy the experience of a show and we work closely with producers to create appropriate marketing material,” they said.

These stories raise an interesting point. There has been a lot of conversation about how many performing arts experiences used to be bawdy, raucous affairs and the current sedate, staid attendance experience has been artificially imposed relatively recently. But given that there is physical and emotional violence being directed at staff and other audience members, is a return to a less restricted environment the best course? Should theater staff step back and not try to impose a specific type of behavior on attendees who want to sing and dance along the show, thereby removing the point of tension and potentially leaving them in a safer place?

Creating Conversations Around Arts Reality Shows

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You may have recently seen that MTV and the Hirshhorn Museum are teaming up to create a TV series to find the next great visual artist. As soon as I saw this, I recalled that there had been similar reality TV visual arts contests before. The bottom of the article references Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist which ran for two seasons around 2010-2011.

But I had actually written about the show ArtStar back in 2006. Most of the links in that post don’t work, but the Slate article and Wikipedia entry both still exist.  There was a fair bit of criticism about both shows. The Arts world hated both, while Work of Art was generally popular with audiences. ArtStar was widely accused of being an extended self-promotional video for the gallery owner/host.

Art critic Jerry Staltz, who was a judge on Work of Art wrote a piece for Art News reflecting on the experience.  He notes that the show was never really about finding the best artist, despite the title.

I agree with the many viewers who said it didn’t reflect the “real art world” — although it was never meant to. It was intended as a game-show version of undergraduate art school where assignments are given, studios supplied, and people kicked out (without, of course, owing $100,000 in school loans). A lot of the challenges were inane …. People on my Facebook page invented far better challenges,…

[…]

If I could change anything about Work of Art, it would be how the contestants are selected. Clearly Bravo’s criteria were more numerous than mere talent, because the contestants simply weren’t good enough. I wish the judges had picked the competing artists, the way they do on American Idol.

Staltz seemed to feel like the biggest benefit of the show was the conversations it generated.

Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic. I responded frequently, admitted when I was wrong, and asked others to expand on ideas.

It made me think that his approach to reality TV arts competitions is a constructive one. Essentially use a conversation about the process being employed not being a realistic method for identifying a great artistic talent as a jumping off point that helps arts professional connect with audiences, validating their instincts and capacity to judge while gaining a better understanding of what about artistic practice engages people.

What Is The Value Of A Press Release When News Stories Are Written By AI?

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Many readers know that I recently moved from Macon, GA to take up a job in Colorado. Even before I moved, I was astounded by the number of articles that were being written about Macon, encouraging people to visit.  I kept asking what Visit Macon, the convention and visitors bureau was doing to encourage all this coverage which included Frommers, Southern Living, Yahoo! Conde Nast Traveler, AFAR, Bloomberg, Men’s Journal, INSIDER, CBS This Morning, and The New York Times. For a time I thought it was the ghost of the effusive vice president of sales and services for Visit Macon who died in September smiling down on the city.

As you might suspect all this success was the result of the work of a PR firm, TK PR. The folks from Visit Macon recently posted a newsletter piece from TK PR trumpeting their success promoting Macon. One thing that grabbed my attention was that they had gotten eight stories for Macon in 2022 resulting in 678 million impressions and $6.2 million in value at the cost of $0, plus 29 other stories for additional clients without once using a press release.

In the newsletter, TK PR founder, Taryn Scher, challenges readers to do away with press releases in 2023.

And while I can’t tell you in just a few sentences what we did to land each story, the one absolute thing we didn’t do to land any of these stories? Send a press release.

Y’all I hate to tell some of you this: but press releases died with the fax machine. If you are one of those few people who still relies on either, I’m sorry but I’m here to tell you it’s time to come on over into 2023. It’s nice out here. A little tech-heavy but we’re all adjusting.

Seriously though, you have to stop thinking that a press release is going to land you any sort of real quality media coverage.

Noting that CNET and others are publishing stories written by AI, she implies that living beings may no longer even be looking at press releases any more.   In this context, she suggests that waiting on someone to approve a quote that will appear in a press release is likely going to be a waste of your time.

Among the things to do instead is pitch the story directly:

That’s not to say the information isn’t important- but you need to take that who, what, when, and where and make it relevant to WHY NOW- why is this part of a bigger trend or relevant for the current news cycle? Why should a journalist care? And more importantly why will their readers care?

 

Why You Are Streaming Broadway Shows Produced In London

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I have been following Diep Tran on social media for years so I got a minor thrill when she announced she was named editor-in-chief of Playbill last October.  Last week she posted an explainer about why it is so difficult to stream Broadway shows resulting in most content on Broadway HD being filmed in London.

A lot of it has to do with the upfront costs. It isn’t easy or cheap to create a high quality recording of a Broadway show. Tran reports that the production of Hamilton paid close to $10 million to record the show and then sat on it for years until Disney+ offered $75 million to stream it. Most productions aren’t so successful as Hamilton that they were able to front that amount and then wait for a good offer.

Contributing to those costs is the fact that unlike film productions, theatrical productions involve people who are members of dozens of disparate unions with whom a streaming contract has to be negotiated. Tran notes that during the pandemic Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA created a contract that allows livestreaming of productions, but the number of streamed views is tied to the live attendance of the production. Other than that, there are no standard contracts associated with recording or livestreaming a production so every negotiation of terms basically starts from scratch.

So while it may be easiest to assume its the producers wanting you to see the show live that limits streaming, there are actually many more people either invested or contributing to that situation.

All this is much easier in England as Tran writes:

But wait, you might be asking, the National Theatre in London has figured out how to stream its shows, why can’t Broadway producers? Well for one, the National Theatre receives subsidies from the UK government, which helps fund their livestreams. And union rules in the UK are different than the U.S., and the payout for residuals is much less for U.K. productions.

I suspect, however, that there may be increasing pressure toward a standard set of terms that will enable US based shows to be more easily streamed in coming years. I wouldn’t be surprised to find this being accomplished by moving shows out of NYC to places with robust production resources, but fewer unions involved.

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

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