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State of the Arts

There Really Is A School of Rock

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When I was visiting my sister on the East Coast this summer around the July 4th holidays, I attended a community festival where kids from The Paul Green School of Rock Music were playing. I initially thought this was an effort to cash in on the Jack Black movie, School of Rock, but the organization predates the movie and apparently served as an inspiration for it. I was actually surprised to learn there are franchises all across the country.

In a time when kids aren’t getting interactive opportunities with music in schools, (not to mention the woeful state of the current rock music scene), this school of rock’s approach may bear consideration and examination.

From their Manifesto:

“These are not your old fashioned wait -through-fifty-other-students mangling-their-songs- until-your-child’s- turn-arrives recitals, but real rock concerts at real rock venues in front of real rock audiences.

Shows are picked for their educational merit and content (for example: Queen teaches harmony, punk develops performance and stage presence and Zappa offers a crash course in musicianship). Thus, if they fail, they fail at aiming at the best. And, when they succeed, which is more often than not, they have accomplished something extraordinary.”

I wish I could remember who it was, it could have been in a movie I was watching, but I recently heard someone urge a person to consider if they wanted to be a musician or wanted to be famous. Thinking of that, I was going to suggest that these school were selling the allure of fame to kids. It may be that kids should be allowed to have fun. But there 8 year olds who may dream of being the next Yo-Yo Ma, but are already making a serious commitment to the cello.

Upon further thought, I wondered if there was any significant difference in what a school of rock and a school of cello are selling 8 year olds. Whether an 8 year old performs in a rock concert or a cello competition/recital, there is a sense of accomplishment and recognition. The cellist may have more pressure placed upon them to perform and practice, but that is based on a concern they reach a level sufficient to obtain a position in an orchestra. Few people push an 8 year old to practice out of fear they won’t gain a position in a rock band.

All things being equal in terms of their talent. If a guitarist and a cellist both give up their instrument at age 9 and pick it up again at 18, practicing assiduously, will one be a better performer than the other or enjoy performing more based on the instrument they play? If both practice equally hard from age 9 to 18 becoming excellent with their instrument, is either one guaranteed a better living than the other even though the barriers to entry are much lower for rock bands than for orchestras? The guitarist may have no problem getting into a band, but does that provide him/her a career?

Up until recently, I would say the one landing an orchestra job had a better guarantee of steady income from a single source than did a rock musician. At this point in time, I would say either is equally likely to be able to cobble a living together from freelance gigs –at least in metropolitan areas. The guitarist who devoted 10 years to practice has a much better chance of being supplanted by someone who has practiced two years than a cellist faced by the same scenario because the skills developed over that time aren’t valued as highly in rock music.

Music is a tough career choice, even if you are performing more popular music styles. I am sure along with the dream of fame, this School of Rock is mostly selling the fun and excitement of rock music to kids (hopefully sans drugs) while including some of the rigor required to master the instruments and music. One lesson the schools of cello might learn from those of rock is one of exposure. If you check out their website, the schools have their students playing at every available opportunity. It helps disseminate information about the schools and gives the kids an opportunity to play before audiences. The gig I saw them play was a mixed bag in terms of quality. The good performances did a credible job at rockin’ out.

Merging Administrative Functions

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On occasion I cite consolidation of administrative functions as a method by which arts organizations in a community can cut costs by cooperating with one another. However, if pressed, I would have to admit that I wasn’t aware of any examples of such a thing working in practice.

So I was extremely pleased to see that the Nonprofit Law Blog has been running a series on this very subject. They cite four options that can be pursued, “an administrative collaboration, administrative consolidation, MSO (Management Service Organization), or external service provider.” The most recent entry gave an impression the series was finished but it hadn’t covered external service providers. If it does continue, I will post an update link here.

The first entry, Administrative Consolidations and Management Service Organizations covers those structures and outlines what situations they work best in.

The second entry, Joining Forces in the Back Office – Administrative Collaboration and Consolidation, talks about the collaboration and consolidation formats and presents some case studies. This is also the entry in which they define the different structures.

“According to La Piana Associates, Inc., an administrative collaboration is an informal, not necessarily enduring, arrangement to share services or expertise while each organization retains its individual decision-making power; an administrative consolidation is a more formal agreement that involves shared decision making (without changing the corporate structure) and the sharing of specific functions; an MSO is a newly created organization for the purpose of integrating administrative functions; and an external service providerinvolves the outsourcing of certain administrative elements.”

One thing I found interesting about the case study presenting in this entry was that the organization, Chattanooga Museums Collaboration achieved things you might expect- cut costs, leveraged their purchasing power, improved productivity and increased unearned income through joint fund raising activities. But the partnership also made them more competitive in the larger business landscape.

“Although the “immediate reaction is that it’s the smaller guys who are getting the benefit,” Kret corrects this misconception stating that through CMC, the Tennessee Aquarium benefits as well by generating revenue from typically nonrevenue places like accounting, increasing retention by offering key employees a higher level of compensation, and offering their employees a much more rewarding and challenging work environment.”

The third entry, Joining Forces in the Back Office – Management Service Organizations, contained a case study of an MSO formed by five social service organizations which now serves 13 groups. While MSOs are separate organizations formed to provide these services, unlike commercial payroll and human resource companies, MSOs are formed for the benefit of specific entities.

The MSO in the case study, MACC CommonWealth, has an auditor appointed by multiple boards. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, you will want to read the case study which acknowledges that serving the interests of multiple boards and CEOs is potentially fraught with peril. So far, it seems to be working.

The most recent entry notes there are many successful collaborations among non-profits across the country. The main thrust of the entry are observations of why a cooperative effort funded by the The Lodestar Foundation, was unsuccessful.

The Lodestar Foundation provides grants for collaborative efforts and their website can give you a sense of the scope of the efforts being made in this direction.

Emily Chan who wrote the series on Nonprofit Law Blog cites a number of studies and books on the subject so the entries themselves provide a good starting place for exploring the possibilities offered by one of these avenues.

Question For My Inside The Arts Family

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Here on Inside the Arts, I am surrounded by orchestra professionals (or professionals closely related to orchestras). There are two conductors, a consultant, three musicians, some radio broadcasters and an opera administrator. I figure this is a good cross section of views and experience. There has been a question lingering in my mind for some years that I have wanted to ask so I thought I would toss it out there for some cross blog discussion, if my confreres are so inclined. (Certainly, readers are always welcome to chime in.)

My question is this- Orchestras have some of the best trained and skilled musicians around. Why do they primarily confine themselves to a certain genre and periods of music? Why aren’t they playing all the best music out there? I know most groups have a pops series, but that still barely scratches the surface of the available material and it is separate from their main product. And really, why are the pops separate?

This is my thought- Have an evening of music around some theme like romance. One of the pieces is Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” (or some other selection, I am just trying to stay away from the obvious “Stairway to Heaven”), maybe there is another contemporary rock/pop/blues/jass piece as well and interspersed between them are pieces of the regular repertory (or vice versa.) I am not suggesting getting rid of the current programming, just enhancing it with other works. The concept of great music being part of a continuum of excellence that didn’t stop at a certain year.

The only compelling reason I can think for not doing this is artistic unity of an evening. But I wonder, does it really matter to audiences? If you do the beginning of Hamlet set during 1920s flapper days and then shift to steampunk, audiences will find it jarring and perplexing. Would there be the same problem going from orchestrated classic rock to a baroque piece of a similar energy in the same evening?

Since many potential pieces weren’t written for orchestras, I imagine there would be some cost involved in arranging songs for a larger number of instruments. That could certainly prove an impediment for some organizations, as might royalty payments where required. It might prove a boon for lesser known ensembles if one group’s arrangement was recognized as superior to another’s. Given that the music may be more widely known, a larger segment of the population would have the discernment to make that judgment.

I know that not every piece will lend itself to adaptation for orchestra performance. Those who do not recognize that may shout “Play Freebird!” or the equivalent. But I have to believe there is potential in a lot of works.

I guess there would also be a concern that things were being dumbed down or compromised to fill seats. I have heard of symphonies playing video game themes and integrating cell phone rings into the performance. There is much more potential for a quality experience in this idea –and an interesting educational one too boot! You can have a blues guitarist perform Lead Belly’s version of “Gallis Pole” and talk about the centuries old history of the folk song and then have the whole orchestra play Led Zeppelin’s “Gallows Pole” as a comparison.

Talks about the composers might be a lot more interesting to audiences because some have lived recently enough that the circumstances that influenced their writing are more familiar to audiences. Then there are the controversies over song writing credits.

I know that it is easy for people on the outside to criticize and say they could do better. What I have described here has sort of been my idea of how I would program things if I were in charge.

But to a degree, I am.

I have a lot of under employed symphony musicians running around my community right now. What is to keep me from going to them and asking them to put together a program that mixes a few of the standard pieces with arrangements of more contemporary works for a performance some point in the future? Given my financial resources, I wouldn’t imagine I would get the whole orchestra, but 1/4 might sound impressive enough to determine if the basic concept is sound.

Any success I may have wouldn’t necessarily imply similar promise for orchestras. I do not run an orchestra so expectations of my events are much different than for theirs. While I would love to have this idea succeed and an orchestra schedule these events at my space, real success in my mind is when a change like this becomes the primary practice, not separate from it.

Just Leave Those Barriers Intact, Eh?

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Well, I am actually happy to confess that upon review, there aren’t as many artists being promoted by trite phrases as I implied at the end of my post yesterday. I get 40-50 emails a week from agents and artists during the off-season and close to that a day during the conference season. Even if only 1% contain trite phrases, I am seeing them with enough frequency that it feels like an epidemic.

The general area of offense I had in mind when I mentioned it yesterday is of the “ground breaking, barrier shattering, break through” ilk. I found quite a few of this type in my review. It appeared in emails, two cold call resumes I received in the last month and at least one radio advertisement I have heard lately. The closest to the truth any of these people seemed to get was the label experimental. I see the claim made a lot in reference to dance, but theatre and music make their share.

If you do modern dance with ballet, hiphop or jazz influences, you really aren’t pushing the envelop. Employing Hopi Indian influences gets intriguing. Getting the women of al Qaida to do modern dance is breaking all sorts of barriers. As is a ballet company doing something other than Nutcracker for their Christmas show.

Performance art pieces doing strange things in strange costumes that may or may not be a reference to the alienation of the individual by some force may be entertaining and thought provoking, but the ground was broken and has been pounded back down by many who have come before.

Taking a classic rock tune that appears fairly often on soft and light rock stations, turning it into an easy listening tune and calling it a break through crossover hit is just plain evil.

I have harped on the annoying overuse of “what it means to human” before. I am happy to see that phrase has moved to the fringes. I did see it used two weeks ago, but there had been a very welcome gap in our encounters. (I do pray it isn’t experiencing a revival.) I am hoping that the barrier breakers either find some other ways to talk about themselves or become involved with some legitimately innovative activities.

Use of trite marketing language generally doesn’t have any relation to the value of the performance or audience enjoyment. It does form a first impression so it definitely impacts the likelihood of being considered as a performer.

I’ll be the first to admit that writing effective copy is tough and if I am not, I will be among the first to shout Amen! Staying away from the trite stuff makes it harder but you ain’t gonna get any better allowing yourself to default to those word choices.

New Efforts, Briefly

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There have been a couple nice developments among the blogs I regularly read.

-Neill Archer Roan has begun blogging again. Unfortunately, the wonderful old material I linked to was retired when he moved to this new format.

-Scott Walters has semi-retired Theatre Ideas in favor of discussing trends and developments in the context of his <100k Project

–Poor Player Tom Loughlin has started a new site, Acting in America, where actors of every stripe can tell their stories.

I see these latter two additions as a sign that arts blogging is maturing. Both men have taken subjects they spoke of passionately over the course of many blog entries and spun them off into projects aimed at serving the arts community as a whole. There may be others whom I haven’t been following who have done this already (and by all means, point me to them.) The fact the numbers are growing only supports my assertion about emerging maturity.

I also don’t mean to imply that their earlier work, or than of bloggers like myself, did not contribute to the arts community. These new efforts look to examine and develop opportunities in ways that haven’t really been tried before.

Where Are All The Good Theatre DVDs?

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Last week economist Tyler Cowen pondered aloud about why there aren’t more stage plays on DVD. He had three basic theories.

1. It wouldn’t be very good. (This doesn’t stop most of what is put out on DVD. Furthermore the highly complex genre of opera on DVD works just fine and has become the industry standard.)

2. There wouldn’t be much of an audience. Yet you could sell memento copies to people who saw the plays, a few plays on DVD might hit it big, and in any case they wouldn’t cost much to produce. There are plenty of niche products on Netflix.

3. It would squash the demand for live performance. Really? Most people don’t go to the theater anyway. Those who do, in this age of 3-D cinema and TiVo, presumably enjoy live performance in a manner which is robust. It is more likely that DVD viewing would stimulate demand for the live product. Besides, they put these plays out in book form and no one thinks that is a big problem.

In my mind, it is actually the comments that really bear reading. For two pages, people debate the reasons. Some blame all the unions, producers and other entities that seek to preserve their intellectual property and financial interests. One person suggested there are play people and film people and never the twain shall meet. Others blame the cost. When you turn a movie into a DVD the primary material has been edited and is ready to go. With a play, you have the cost of the production and then the cost of filming and editing on top of it. As one commenter implied, there is also an entirely different marketing approach when promoting a DVD than a live performance. Films can effectively adapt the television ad for the theatrical release for the DVD release because people are already familiar with the material from the first advertising campaign.

The biggest general consensus though was that stage productions don’t translate well to film in terms of setting, acting technique, costuming. People have an expectation of video that staged productions can’t deliver and vice versa. An apparent theatre person using the handle, “Meisner-trained,” noted that “Much of the world’s great literature is in the form of a play — I am embarrassed at having to say this, so I won’t even provide examples. (In contrast, even “great” screenplays, like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, aren’t great literature!)”

The real reason I say the comments bear reading is due to the passion with which people argue for the validity of both live performance and film. These are the people you want on your board and advocating to government and civic groups on your behalf. My assumption is, “Meisner-trained” aside, there are more than just arts people reading and commenting on an economist’s blog. The Epicurean Dealmaker, for example runs a blog on mergers and acquisitions and notes, “A great many forms of art derive much of their power from the way they satisfy, push up against, and transgress their own limitations. (Think sonnets, or haiku, for example.)”

Something I was interested to note. Most of the comments dealt with Cowen’s first two hypotheses-quality and lack of demand due to poor quality/different expectations of the DVD medium. Almost no one addressed the idea that DVDs would undermine interest in live performance. Only the person who noted that recordings of Broadway shows aren’t available until after the show closes really addressed that idea. (Though there are a couple of less direct implications). While the comments on a blog entry are hardly scientific, the dearth is enough to make me question the validity of a objections to recordings on the grounds that it will undermine interest in live performance. I wouldn’t roll out a DVD of Les Miz during a local run, but I suspect that the existence of a DVD released a few years prior won’t significantly dampen interest in a live performance.

Unfulfilled Calls To Action

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You Got My Hopes Up!
I received an email through my blog Friday about an audience study that has recently been completed. I was elated because generally these emails, which are essentially press releases, are on topics I have no real interest in writing about. Many are on show openings and I don’t really cover those sort of things. Unless there is some experimental marketing initiative involved, I am not terribly interested. But finally, here was something I was eager to write on. I followed the link provided and….Nothing. I followed the other link to the research organization that did the study….nothing again. I decided to wait until today and try again thinking the press people may have gotten ahead of things a little. It is now a couple hours after quitting time in both organizations’ time zones and the promised reports are still not up.

Answering A Call To Action
This goes to illustrate one of the basic tenets of advertising and promotion–Don’t issue a call to action without providing your target group an ability to act. If you have an ad for a performance saying tickets on sale now, you better have a way for people to buy tickets available or you risk losing your credibility. This can be difficult if you are doing broadcast advertising and the radio or television station is giving you free air time on an “as available” basis. If you are going to have an ad running at 6 am, you may catch a good number of people during their morning commute–including your ticket office staff who haven’t gotten in to the office yet. If you can’t provide a web address to purchase tickets at, you can at least make sure to append your ticket office number with the office hours. Technology has increased the number of hours people expect to engage in transactions so the least you can do is be specific about the hours they can actually expect to contact your organization.

In any case, I am disappointed the announcement of this report preceded its actual release by so much time. I am motivated to read it so I am likely to return to the page on a couple more occasions. Others for whom the information might be useful, like arts leaders, may move on to other things and never revisit the link. Thus a valuable opportunity is lost in a sector where a large percentage of leaders do not keep abreast of the latest literature.

Cart’s Before The Horse And Speeding Away
I thought about this issue over the weekend. While I realized that as a tool, the press release was poorly used, I also recognized that technology induced expectations are outstripping our ability to provide our constituencies with the ability to act. I have recently decided to use Twitter to support event promotion efforts at our theatre. In keeping with my philosophy of not adopting the newest technological trends as they emerge, I only decided to use Twitter when I felt it was a good tool to accomplish a goal I had and knew the story I wanted it to create for our organization. But that is a subject of another entry.

Because we really don’t have a subscriber base to speak of, a formal season announcement really isn’t important. I started posting on Twitter every time we signed a contract with an artist figuring the little informal announcements of our season had the value of putting our followers in the know early on. The tweets also serve as the first of many reminders about our season that I want entering people’s subconscious. The problem is, due to myriad factors ranging from end of fiscal year wrap up, summer vacations and general logistics, we aren’t able to make the tickets available at the moment.

Only The Freshest Tweets, Please
We don’t have a lot of people following our Twitter feed right now because it is new and I haven’t made its existence widely known while I experiment and evaluate it’s use. I don’t think I am losing a lot of sales, especially given people’s propensity of waiting until the last moment to buy tickets. But what about this time next year? Every ticket sold is important these days. If I can’t figure out an alternative and get people on board, by this time next year I could be announcing performances I am not prepared to sell tickets for. Sure, I could wait and post about them when I am ready to sell tickets, but Twitter is all about immediacy–“What are you doing right now?” Months old news is stale and moldy.

Even if I could make delayed updates work without losing any credibility, the way things are moving, that option may not be viable with the next generation of technology.

“Don’t Let Them Use Your Passion Against You”

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I always enjoy reading Adam Thurman’s work on Mission Paradox. Recently he posted “An Open Letter to Arts Administrators.” As an arts administrator, I felt obligated to disseminate it a bit. It contains advice that, even if you have heard it before, bears hearing again to remind you of a few things. (It’s also mirrored on Arts Blog. You may find the comments there worth reading.)

The section that particularly resonated with me was:

3. Don’t let them use your passion against you. Consider this:

Imagine you were a lawyer. What if I told you that there were some law firms (not all, but absolutely some) that didn’t get a damn about their employees? What if I told you that some firms were designed to bring in people and get as much out of them as possible before they burned out?

Would you believe me?

Of course you would. Hell, because it’s the legal profession you would expect such behavior.

Here’s da rub:

Some arts organizations are the exact same way.

Just because the end product is art and not a legal brief doesn’t mean the place automatically values their employees. Just because the place is a non-profit doesn’t automatically make it a nice place to work.

But here’s the really messed up part. At some of those arts orgs, if you complain that the hours are unreasonable, or the pay is low, or your input isn’t valued . . . they imply that your commitment to the “cause” is low. They convince you that if you really were passionate about your work, you would put up with the sub par conditions.

Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap. Remember point 1, it doesn’t have to be like that . . . you deserve better.

Been there and done that. I am ashamed to say that I am pretty sure I tacitly supported the “your commitment to the ’cause’ is low” message against other people in at least one place I worked even as I resented working under those conditions. I imagine I enjoyed the approval of my willingness to suffer for the cause and in the absence of any real remuneration, sought more praise by pressuring other people to toe the line. Though I have also declined contract renewals in places with poor work environments, too.

I was encouraged by the memory of two studies I read and blogged on last year, one by Building Movement and another commissioned by the Myer Foundation which showed that the new generation of leaders seek a greater balance between work and personal life and aren’t buying the idea that suffering is proportional to commitment.

What may be the downside for many non-profit organizations is that the leadership, recalling that they sacrificed and brought the company into being by force of will, are reluctant to groom these new leaders because of a perceived lack of commitment on the would-be protege’s part. One desirable benefit can be that the replacement won’t perpetuate a stressful environment. A board expecting the miracles of the last executive director might not make that easy.

Art and Crime Bonus Entry

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Speaking of the intersection of crime and the arts, Pacific Business News reports that the already cash strapped Honolulu Symphony suffered a break in this weekend. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of damage and very little was stolen.

Jackson said Honolulu Police Department officers described the break-in as a typical “cash grab.”

“There was a ransacking of papers and that kind of thing, but only an undisclosed small amount of money was taken — no equipment or computers,” she said.

Okay guys, do you read the newspapers? You go in to business that hasn’t paid it’s employees in nearly 12 weeks trying to find money?

Still More Impact of the Economy

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I listened in on another Arts Presenters conference call on the impact of the economy last week. The panel consisted of:

Ken Foster, Executive Director, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Nicole Borrelli Hearn, Manager, Artists and Attractions, Opus 3 Artists
Sandra L. Gibson, President and CEO, Association of Performing Arts Presenters
Maurine Knighton, Senior Vice-President, Program and Nonprofit Investment, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone

There were many sentiments and examples I had heard in earlier calls so I wasn’t as assiduous about recording them. The basic themes of the call were doing more with less and preventing worries about the current situation from infecting your organization and colleagues.

Doing More With Less discussions weren’t all dire. Ken Foster talked about how his organization was de-emphasizing number of events in a season in favor of exploring extending artists’ stays and having them involved with more while they were around. Nicole Borrelli Hearn spoke of Daniel Bernard Roumain’s New Clef Coalition where Roumain is writing a new work for youth orchestras. Orchestras can buy at a reasonable rate as a commissioning partner and then they will own the piece forever. Roumain gets a residency with the youth orchestra. (Which is really another win for the orchestra.)

There were less positive observations under this subject area. Opus3 has encountered a widespread trend of groups inquiring about cancellations which resulted in a lot of renegotiation. Commenter, Mr. MOJO, told stories of not being able to even give away extra performances to presenters who either were not interested or no longer had the staff to support it.

An observation was made, confirmed by Ken Foster as Yerba Buena’s new approach, that some presenters were scheduling two separate seasons, Fall and Spring. The Spring portion would only transpire if the economy and Fall performances enabled it. This is making performers nervous because they don’t know how to plan or if they can/should keep their company active and creating new works. Foster said committing 18 months out is making less and less sense. He acknowledges that it is a challenging situation artists who are motivated to get their works seen and that presenters’ business practices shouldn’t get in the way of that.

Now I listened to that portion of the recording a few times and I had to wonder if Foster wasn’t suggesting artists do what they have to do and perhaps find a conduit for expression that circumvents the current system.

A comment Foster made was that when times get tough, presenters’ default response is to ask for a fee reduction. I actually made a similar observation in regard to audiences dissatisfaction with a show and defaulting to asking for their money back. If you have driven to a theatre having paid for dinner and a babysitter, is getting your money back really going to make you happy? In the same sense, if you have invested resources into promoting an event, will cancellations make anyone happy? My suggestion at the time, like Foster’s now, was to seek alternatives. Audiences/Artists may provide suggested solutions that may not have occurred to you.

With that mention of minimizing negative feelings, I will segue into the second general topic- don’t let anxiety infect your organization. Foster notes he has a lot of people from the financial sector on his board and many of them project the catastrophe they are facing on to the arts organization. It takes a lot of work and projecting competence and confidence to keep such fears from taking over.

He points out that arts professionals spread negativity as well. When you are surrounded by people who don’t quite understand the business of the arts and what it is you do, there is a great temptation to commiserate when you meet someone who actually has the capacity of empathize. Talking at length about how much stuff sucks brings the whole room down. Foster isn’t saying one should gloss over reality, but he mentions he has an executive coach who is not involved in the industry with whom he can safely talk about these issues and receive guidance without demoralizing anyone.

Sturm und Drang on the Bus

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A bunch of Carnegie Mellon graduates took their act the the mean streets of NYC last week. According to a NPR story, Bus Stop Opera made their Broadway debut–on the sidewalks of Broadway. The students spent time interviewing and listening to people’s stories while riding the buses of New York City and used the text to create a libretto for operatic performances set at the very stops they conducted those interviews. They tried it out in Pittsburgh first then took it to NYC.

While listening to the NPR interview, it first sounds like the group proves what we have already learned when Tasmin Little and Joshua Bell took their acts to the streets– nobody will stop and listen during rush hour. As the day progresses and the group moves to other locations, some people do pause.

As with the Bell and Little experiments, the importance of time and place when interacting with art is underscored. This isn’t just in regard to intangibles like being in a proper mental and emotional state to receive an experience but also very practical concerns like…acoustics. Not being able to hear is one of the most frequent comments made during the interview. A strong voice is no match for New York City traffic–especially the buses. The canyons of New York are also no substitute for the amphitheaters of ancient Greece when it comes to reinforcing the voice in an outdoor setting.

Bus Stop Opera gets my approval where the Bell and Little experiments didn’t. The Bell/Little events were about testing people’s reactions to great performances in their midst. Bus Stop Opera is specifically designed to be accessible and appropriate to the target audiences. An earlier approach was discarded when audiences had an averse reaction. Even though the group encountered the same indifference Bell and Little did, I suspect the results will diverge should Bus Stop Opera continue to pursue this project.

Seek Investors–Just Be Careful Who You Tell

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I have often wrote about the limitations of the 501 (c) (3) non profit status for arts organizations and how there is a need for alternatives. One of the obvious alternatives is to forget about non-profit status and incorporate as a for profit venture in pursuit of your ambitions. If you are just starting out, you and your partners may not have a lot of funding to realize your dreams and decide to seek people to invest in your new company.

According to entertainment lawyer, Gordon Firemark, you want to be very careful about using the Internet to find investors. He sees ads in Internet forums and chat rooms where people are seeking investors for independent films and stage performances. Seeking investors is subject to many securities laws the costs to comply with, Firemark says, are pretty expensive for those trying to produce on a shoestring. There are exemptions that will reduce these burdens, but unfortunately they don’t allow advertising for investors.

Exemptions from Registration: Advertising not permitted.

Although there are several exemptions from registration available, those that are most commonly available to producers of entertainment arise under SEC Regulation D. Unfortunately, these exemptions are intended for private, limited offerings, rather than offers made to the general public. As such, the regulations prohibit the use of advertising in the offer and sale of the securities.

Internet postings seeking investors ARE advertisements.

Lawyers are in agreement that any communication put on the internet for the purpose of raising money via sales of securities WILL be considered an advertisement, and thus, renders the Regulation D exemptions inapplicable. Therefore, by posting in an internet forum, chat room or social networking site, producers often make things much harder for themselves.

One way he suggests to avoid this restriction is by seeking investors who will actively participate in the project. This entails its own set of problems. First, because you will have the investors scrutinizing every choice you make. Second, because the investors share in the liabilities of the project–the very thing that provides them incentive to keep a close eye on things.

There are some other options he suggests could also be available. But of course, he suggests anyone considering any of the aforementioned consult a lawyer before pursuing them.

When Your Agent Truly Works For You

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This weekend, Drew McManus and I had a brief email exchange about the Chicago Tribune piece he discusses on Adaptistration today. My organization and most of my presenting partners don’t contract for orchestra related services. Chamber music groups are about it. However, we deal with many of the same agents. I mentioned in an email to Drew that we hadn’t really seen a reduction in fees this year. However, if the reduction in programming I have seen among my partners is echoed across the country, I thought perhaps we would see low fees in the following season. I also suggested that maybe the agents would boost the fees of the marquee artists to offset the loss of revenue from others and the A-list artists would only appear in the places that could bear the higher costs but suffer no significant loss of income.

I hoped that there might be a silver lining and the economic downturn might provide opportunities where the quality emerging artist finds success doing what they have always done–work their butts off providing a consistently great product for little money, make a reputation for said effort and gain employment at venues which may not have considered them a year or two ago.

Drew responded such a thing may not come to pass under the auspices of agents. He noted that a lot of the emerging and mid-level people had been increasingly marginalized by their agencies over the years in favor of names that sold themselves. (I am greatly paraphrasing.)

I wonder if agents really can hold all the cards anymore now that technology enables artists to to make direct appeals and handle inquiries online. I am not sure about the situation with classical music but from what I have heard, fewer presenters are attending the booking conferences in favor of researching prospective performances online. This from an agent whose artists seem pretty happy.

How long though before presenters move from following up with an agent after a visit to the agency website to corresponding with the artist directly? There have already been a couple events where I have worked so extensively with the artist, I wondered why I had spoken to the agent at all. It seemed all the agent did was assure the artist they weren’t being cheated.

That might be the type of model that emerges. If an artist is touring, it is difficult to field questions and make decisions about future dates. Some centralized source that manages information will likely be important. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a formal agency anymore. It could be a cooperative effort by artists where employees located across the country work from home to respond to inquires. Artists would still be represented by an agent(s), but in this case, the artists retain much more power in choosing which people will represent them.

If the promotional information all resides on the artists’ websites, all that is needed is a well designed central web presence to differentiate the members from others of their genre in a web search and help move it to the top of the search. Obviously, there shouldn’t be too many artists listed on the central site lest the visitor get overwhelmed by the choices.

Actually, heck with one site. If the cooperative is smart, they have a lot of specialty sites to appeal to different niches. The one for bars and clubs positions the members with one type of image. The one for colleges gives another. If there are 40-50 groups in a cooperative maybe an individual group appears with 15 others on one site that appeals to colleges, with a slightly different mix on one for small venues, on another for clubs and another for folk festivals.

Personal contact with presenters and other probable buyers is likely to always retain some importance. So perhaps the cooperative arranges for one or more of their telecommuters living near a city with a high frequency of tours to attend their performances as each group passes through so their agent can speak intelligently at conferences.

Depending on the design of the cooperatives, there could still be a lot of inequities in the representation. The groups which bring more money to the cooperative either directly or by the frequency of their performances might demand more prominent placement on websites or aggressive pushes at conferences. The larger groups may insist on agents in places their tours frequent more often leaving the others more weakly represented. They may run into a Catch-22–the small groups insist their agents book them in Raleigh so the agent can see them. Unfortunately, because the agent hasn’t seen them, she can’t speak with enough conviction to get the group a booking in Raleigh. (The solution being, if the closest the group gets to the agent is Atlanta, buy a plane ticket to Atlanta.) Over time, a group might move from one cooperative to another that better represents their philosophies.

Maybe these sort of arrangements won’t emerge but I feel pretty confident in saying that the continued development and use of technology is going to change the agent-artist dynamic over the next few years. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the next five years brought a significant shift with agents either playing a much diminished role or being valuable for entirely different reasons than they are now.

Info You Can Use To Keep Your Employees

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If you aren’t already aware, part of the federal recovery package that applies to the arts provides funding to protect jobs threatened by the economic downturn.

What is really helpful is that you can apply for funding through the NEA, your regional arts organization (New England Foundation for the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Southern Arts Federation, Western States Arts Federation) and your state arts council (each state may vary). I don’t see anything on the Arts Midwest or Mid-America Arts Alliance sites, but there isn’t anything on the Western States site either and I know they are distributing funds so it is worth an inquiry if you are served by those groups.

If you get awarded by more than one entity, you can only accept one. But the ability to submit to three different places does increase the opportunities for getting an award and choose among the best funding.

The regional and state arts groups have different criteria for awards within the umbrella of the NEA guidelines. If you are interested in applying, you better move quickly. Of those I have seen, the deadlines are end of May/first week of June.

Arts and Science Make The Whole Person

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I love it when themes come together for me. Apropos to yesterday’s entry about the place of arts in the classroom, I saw that the TED site released a talk by Mae Jemison where she discusses how being analytical and creative are not mutually exclusive. In college, her studies left her about equally likely to become a doctor as a dancer. She says her mother essentially made the decision for her. While she ended up going into space, she brought an Alvin Ailey poster along for the ride on the space shuttle.

One of her observations is when she turns the common assumptions that one is either creative or analytic around. She notes that people will often joke about not being able to grasp math and science or lack creative and artistic abilities. She suggests that given the choice of jobs where you either had to be uncreative or illogical, people would seek out jobs that allowed them to do both. Granted, for many jobs these are de facto status of employees and people willingly place themselves in that situation but they still have the freedom to encounter complementary experiences.

I think her point is that people sell themselves short in relation to their analytic and creative abilities in a way that becomes self-reinforcing and gradually colors our self perception.

If arts people are truly invested in promoting arts and creativity as necessary to become a whole person, I believe that cause is best served by also promoting the idea that analytic capabilities are important and contribute toward the whole person goal as well.

Analysis and creativity can’t be divorced from one another. I think I have mentioned before that the lectures that occur in our tech theatre classes sound a lot like my high school physics class. The backstage of a theatre is one big practical physics lab. And without an analytic mind, I would have never figured out why our ticket office reports weren’t quite resolving themselves for a show last month.

Arts (Not In) Education

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Dewey21C guest blogger Jane Remer makes a provocative statement I have always wondered/suspected.

The Arts Just Don’t Fit in Most of Our Schools

The arts community – arts educators, arts organizations, artists who work with schools, other friends of the arts–has tried and failed for years to make the case for the arts in every student’s life and learning environment. Claims abound for the arts as important intellectual and experiential domains as well as exceedingly effective instrumental bridges to other usually non-arts ends. These claims are rarely backed up by solid empirical research and when they are, the evidence is overwhelmingly correlational, not causal. These claims are almost never made by school people, K-20 and beyond, and only occasionally uttered by policy makers, whether top down legislators or bottom up teachers, leaders and district superintendents.

Because the concept is so depressing, one may attempt to discredit her by wondering if she truly has a basis for making this claim. If you read her bio at the bottom of the entry, you see that her background makes it very difficult to dismiss her. She has both practical and theoretical experience attempting to cultivate arts programs in some of the toughest educational environments around. One of her previous entries as guest blogger asked, “What Can We Do to Make the Arts Count As Education?” In that entry, she lays out some of the reasons the arts aren’t gaining traction in those schools which it is present.

Other than suggesting local action, Ms. Remer feels she doesn’t have any real strategies for getting the arts into schools.

Over this past weekend I tried working from the premise the arts would find no place in our schools. What were alternative outlets that could be developed? Schools would appear to be best medium for disseminating instruction and exposure but if that option is out, what is left? There are after school programs and summer camps. Unless the arts community can develop a compelling argument for parents about why their children should be allowed to participate, it is likely the groups currently being served in this way will continue to be the only ones.

We can look to the example of early educators in the United States who patiently approached people to convince them to let their children attend school. That might work but, don’t forget that the real progress in enrollment came when education became compulsory by force of law, and sometimes, at the end of a gun barrel. Tirelessly approaching people is one thing, but I am not sure the arts world is ready to lobby for martial enforcement quite yet.

Technology would appear to be the medium possessing the greatest potential for replacing schools as the method of arts education. I confess though that I suffer from a lack of imagination in this respect. I am currently only imagining progress in terms of the tools that already exist – People learning to paint or play bass from online sources. Perhaps they got the brushes, easels and instrument from a local arts organization seeking to make materials more available.

That’s all well and good except there is also the problem of a disconnect of what happens between the situation today and the one in my imagination to make young people excited and interested in the arts that they claim the free art tools and instruments and go home to practice? In essence, what makes 250,000 Venezuelan kids commit to El Sistema, and how do we get that to happen here? Smarter minds than mine have asked that very question.

Collective Action Report For NPAC 2008

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Last week Andrew Taylor posted an entry about the release of a report for which his students were involved collecting information at and about last summer’s National Performing Arts Convention. The report examines the capacity for the arts disciplines to engage in collective action.

As you might imagine, I found much of it very interesting. If you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, mores the pity. It is worth jumping to page 59 of the Acrobat document. The following 20 some pages have ideas for collective action on many fronts that came out of the brain storming round tables. These are not the same ideas voted as top priority items by the attendees and may represent fresh directions for you and others to embrace at national, regional and local levels.

One aspect of the convention attendees felt was lacking was a clear sense of who was going to follow up and pursue these priorities. What will likely be helpful at the next convention is if people show up to talk about their attempts to implement some of these priorities at different levels.

Plea To The Reader
If you don’t think you will read the report, at least consider reading the rest of this entry. I often include fair sized quotes that jump out at me from reports and studies because I know people don’t feel they have the time to catch up on all the reading they think they should be doing. Part of the mission of this blog is to present some concepts that perhaps you can think about during your commute if no other time presents itself. Not everything may seem that significant to you, and that’s fair. This report contained a lot of meaty observations including some things I suspected but have rarely heard discussed. So please, read on…

Boundaries
The report began by tackling a basic question–what constitutes the performing arts? In answer to the question, “When you think and talk about the ‘performing arts’ in your region, which of the following organizations do you include in your thinking?” over 50% provided answers that were “arts-focused and primarily organized as tax-exempt. Alternate venues and commercial enterprises were identified by fewer people as part of the performing arts—yet still showed up in significant numbers.”

Lest your take away from those responses is that there was a sense of exclusivity to people’s definition of the performing arts. The report notes that the subject of what constituted the boundaries of the performing arts community was frequently debated and discussed.

Internal Divisions
But heck with those perceived to be on the outside of the performing arts boundaries. There was plenty to contend with over the perceived differences between the disciplines clearly defined as being part of the performing arts.

“Despite the common ground of the nonprofit arts leaders attending the Denver convention, our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in
our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

The observation team also saw many sessions peppered with misunderstandings and different interpretations of words and concepts that are fundamental to a collective action effort. Most of these went unnoticed by the group, and unresolved by facilitators of caucus sessions….Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “….I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”

Expectation of Cross-Disciplinary Learning
That said, the report notes many went to the conference with the intent of learning about other disciplines and cultivating cross-disciplinary relationships. People were eager to learn about best practices and common challenges from other disciplines. “A full 86 percent believed that the problems and opportunities faced by a small dance company are shared more with a small theater company than with a large dance company.”

Respect to Trust
The next step toward collective action, according to the report’s author’s, is to go from respecting the other guy to trusting them.

“A full 81 and 82 percent of respondents believed leaders in the nonprofit performing arts respect each other at the national and regional/city level respectively. A lesser majority, 56 and 60 percent, believed that such leaders trust each other at the national and regional/city level. This distinction between respect and trust reinforces the distinction between acting for individual and organizational interests, and acting for the benefit of the larger community.”

Things Not Often Discussed
Two of the areas covered in the report that especially struck me were some frank discussions about diversity and the perceived role of government. Everyone talks about the need to diversify audiences and performers. In fact, most funders are interested in collecting information about racial, geographic and economic diversity of audiences and performers. What emerged in the discussion wasn’t as idealistic.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Community Engagement Approach
While some people may not be prepared to actively engage in addressing diversity in their organization, I was encouraged by the comments of one person who wasn’t talking about diversity per se. He/She did seem to embody the mindset of an organization that could achieve diversity without actively pursuing it.

“One leader notes, “That’s been one thing that we’ve been most proud of. Our whole organization takes this community engagement approach. It’s not outreach. Outreach doesn’t take into consideration who you are, what your background is, what your context is, or why people should care. That’s the fault of the old outreach concept, is saying you should come hear us, maybe we’ll come to you so you’ll come hear us. That’s missing the point, saying, ‘Where do we connect?’”

Government’s Role
In relation to the role of government (my emphasis)..

“In one intriguing disconnect, respondents in the post-convention survey hope for future NPAC connections to include elected officials from local (57 percent), state (64 percent), and national (70 percent) government. Yet not one believe such officials would influence if and how they might take action on the selected agenda items. The disconnect suggests, as we will later discuss,
that while participants see elected officials as potential focus of advocacy and engagement, they do not see them as a source of insight and knowledge—even though these actors drive the decision and governing systems that inform local policy. They are eager to talk to elected officials, but not inclined to listen

…Interestingly, some constituents with relatively greater perceived power also had relatively lower perceived knowledge of the field and its challenges (political leaders at federal, state, and local levels, for example.

From my point of view, there is a whole lot to be addressed. Quite honestly, I think this almost sums up the attitude arts organizations have toward most sources of funding. There is an eagerness to talk to funders and make your case but not a lot of willingness to have them involved in your business. Except for foundations with an arts focus, those representing funding sources don’t understand the field too well because of a desire to keep them on the fringes.

Some Tunes I Have Sung Before
There were a couple topics the report touched upon that I have addressed quite a few times in the past so I won’t get into them at length.

Lack of Knowledge
One observation that was made of convention attendees was how little knowledge people had about available resources and about how laws and policy affected those resources. The report notes that a lot of time was spent discussing how helpful it would be if some source would provide resources when in fact that very situation existed.

“These indicators suggest a systematic issue around knowledge dissemination in the field. Arts leaders either lack time or incentive to discover and use existing knowledge resources, or effective knowledge dissemination mechanisms do not exist to get this information out.”

Lack of Sleep
Which goes hand in hand with the fact most arts professionals are already over worked and may not be a wits end about how to participate in collective action.

“We have a lot of passionate and highly productive people that all tend to over-extend themselves as it is ‘for the love of their art.’ I think it is difficult for many of these same people then to prioritize what they may have to stop doing in order to thoughtfully and actively participate in this ‘national dialogue’.”

Lack of Succession
Finally, there is the issue of emerging leadership. According to the report, 79% of respondents to pre-convention surveys were worried a little to alot about identifying new blood and succession planning. At the convention however, “it was striking how little conversation focused on the discovery and development of future leaders, and the skills and abilities they might require. There were a few specific sessions that touched on the topic, but the issue received little traction or attention elsewhere.”

I imagine it comes as no surprise that the performing arts sector has quite a few issues to address. You need not have attended the convention to come to that conclusion. But since the report notes that one of the major historical hurdles to collective action has been that the various disciplines don’t sit down and talk to each other, the fact they did so and produced quite a few pages of ideas for collective action likely represents a valuable first step.

Stars of Google Reader

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I came across a number of interesting posts on blogs I follow on my Google Reader account and starred them for later review. Thought I would share a few…

Ken Davenport addresses some myths and rules to consider before investing in a Broadway show.

He also provides some interesting insight about wanting your first big project to be the Great American “X,” citing the examples (and advice) of Hal Prince and Stephen Spielberg.

Given the recent story about a mystery donor giving millions to different schools across the country with the provision the schools will not try to find out the donor(s) identity, the Non-Profit Law Blog entry about formulating a policy about what sort of donations you will and won’t accept seemed rather timely. Some recipients of this anonymous largess have checked with Homeland Security to ascertain the funds were obtained legally.

Connecting To Your Community

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The arts blogosphere (or at least a small corner thereof) is abuzz with joy with the news that Scott Walters received NEA funding for his <100k Project. As noted on the <100k Project site, the purpose "is an attempt to 'bring the arts back home” to small and rural communities with populations under 100,000.'"

I come from a rural town and have something of an interest in the project's success for sentimentality sake, if nothing else. I think I would be pleased for Scott regardless of my background. The <100k Project has been percolating in Scott's head and on his blog for quite some time now. I am glad to see he is able to move forward toward implementation. (The grant he received is to convene people to address the issues he wants to tackle.)

One of the things I hope to learn by monitoring his progress is strategies for reconnecting one’s community. I am currently in a small city/suburban setting and every community is different so I don’t expect to take things whole cloth. It is just that the late arrival/early departure issues that lead me to opine on an audience’s responsibility to a community continue and are ever irksome. Mostly it is due to this being the time of year when we have a lot of events where performers’ friends and family attend. Most stick around for the whole show but a large number, 50-80, arrive late and depart early.

Friday night I saw a group departing where one woman energetically exclaimed that the piece that just finished was surprisingly good. I noted there were still more high quality pieces to come. She shrugged, said “meh” and continued out with her friends. I don’t discount the influence of the group over the individual. Had she been alone, she might have stayed. It should also be noted that the event hardly fell in the “sit quietly and appreciate the cerebral high art” category. The audience was energetic and expressive.

I mention this because while I do believe an audience member does have a responsibility to the whole, I don’t believe the behavior necessarily has to conform to a traditional status of sitting quietly in a dark room. Attending a performance is a communal relationship between the audience and the performers. It should be approached with the intent of arriving on time and staying until the end. Various factors may conspire to thwart this intent. I know that in the early days attending was a social event and a place to be seen. That doesn’t mean today it should be viewed as a party where you arrive late, stay long enough to be considered to have made an appearance and depart. If a person is going to a performance, it should be with the intent to stay. It represents a commitment to the entire community assembled there.

None of this is to say performing arts organizations shouldn’t meet their audiences part way. From everything I have recently described about my experience, the reader can rightly point out that expectations about the attendance experience are changing. Opportunities for greater interactivity can and should be explored. There are plenty of scenarios where one need not commit to sitting immobile or staying the entire time.

I don’t want to wax too poetic while idealizing the relationship between performers and the audience and among themselves as a sublime sacrament. I think it is that sort of thinking created the idea was the audience’s place to sit quietly and receive.

Yet in a time when people mediate their day to day experience through phones, texting, iPods, computers, televisions and the like, a communal gathering for a shared experience becomes more precious and can verge on the sacramental so the items of distraction should be laid aside. There is nothing wrong with sitting quietly and absorbing an experience be it at a performance, in a gallery or a mountain top. The key difference is that the audience should want to do so rather than be expected to do so. I think the time is past when arts organizations can directly tell people how they are supposed to behave and cultivate a constructive relationship. People don’t want to learn how to be poised and cultured too much any more.

I believe success will be a matter of reinforcing certain values in a more indirect manner. It will be phrases used in speeches, press releases, program notes and brochures. Hopefully it won’t be the same phrases in every community because every arts organization and dynamic with their community is different. I will be working on formulating ways to deliver these concepts. It is also the sort of thing I hope Scott Walters’ project will generate.

Sitting quietly in the dark doesn’t necessarily have to be a passive experience. If you know what you are looking for it can be very exciting and intriguing. Before I go any further, let me just say that nothing ruined the experience of attending a performance like knowing I had to write a paper about it. Audiences need to be informed so they can process the experience but their education can’t leave them paranoid about analyzing every moment to find some answer.

Having gotten that out of the way..

Live performances, as with movies and video games, have had the lighting, sound, costumes intentionally designed in a certain way. How aware you are of these elements and how they affect your experience can enhance your enjoyment. The same with the decisions made by the director and performers. Was that pause for dramatic effect? Were lines forgotten? Are things so disorganized back stage, there is a long empty moment? Or is it a trick to make us think things are going wrong?

It doesn’t require years of education to ask these questions, just an awareness that these factors play a part of a live performance. Recognizing these elements, but not knowing what the reality might be can make any performance experience, including those in movies and television exciting. But the uncertainty of live performance combined with the inability to rewind and scrutinize makes that experience all the more engaging. And there is the added opportunity of tracking a live person down after the show to ask. Making people available to illuminate the situation, even if it is by email a day or two later, is added value for audiences. Good performance discipline requires you don’t acknowledge a flub during the show, but there is no need to grin foolishly and own up to it afterward.

But as an audience member if you arrive late, leave early and spend the interim texting you can miss these things and keep your mind from processing and pondering what is happening. So yeah, for you it is probably boring. But this is a communal experience you are likely also keeping others from doing the same with all the motion. Or maybe the whole thing is poorly done and incredibly boring or bad and you are within your rights to get up, leave and do something else.

Before you do, be sure you aren’t confusing something you don’t understand with poor quality. I think Kyle Gann said it best in his entry for Take A Friend to the Orchestra Month back in 2005. Insert whatever you are seeing for classical music references.

…At the same time, keep in mind that there are lots of different kinds of musical enjoyment, some of them perhaps unrecognizable as such simply because you haven’t experienced them yet. What I always noticed, starting out, was that if a piece bored me, it was likely to always bore me, but if it irritated me, something interesting was going on.

Probably the reason I became a musician was that I kept going back to the pieces that irritated me to figure out why anyone would write something that’s irritating..

It is not the composer’s job to come up with things that you like (because who, working in his studio, can predict that?), but it is his or her job (though a lot of
bad composers deny this) to be clear and communicative. If you get the idea of the piece, the composer has succeeded, and the idea is yours to like or not. Again, watch your reaction – but don’t assume that your immediate reaction is the only important one. As far as I’m concerned, a forgettable piece is bad, but one I’m still thinking about three days later must have something going for it.

More Economic Alfalfa

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Back in March I linked to a story about how Philadelphia was trying to revitalize its South Street district by arranging for artists to temporarily take over empty storefronts.

Artsjournal featured a story from The Guardian today about a similar effort in London which seemed to be designed a little more constructively for artists. My concern about the Philadelphia initiative was that the artists’ tenure in the spaces was rather tenuous. In London’s case, the project is arranged by the South London Gallery who has secured a three year lease and will place artists in the stores for six month residencies. While this may ultimately be a much shorter time than the participants in the Philadelphia program will enjoy, at least the parameters are known from the start.

In fact, The Guardian piece acknowledges just how unstable such an arrangement can be. Referring to arrangements like the one in Philadelphia where landlords are persuaded to offer storefronts for free or low cost, Stroud Valleys Artspace director Jo Leahy notes,

“The downside for the artist is that they’re welcomed with open arms during the recession, they help to regenerate an area – and then they get tossed out when they’re no longer needed, because the economy picks up and the rents go up. So it’s worth having eye on the future, and trying to insure yourself for when times improve.”

And the good the artists’ residencies did for the city of Gloucestershire was measurable. Leahy notes that the 25 storefronts her program utilized in 13 years rented easily when her organization moved out. Even more importantly, it warded against the encroachment of negative influences.

“Leahy adds that the estate agent she works with has reported lower rates of vandalism in shops used by artists, as opposed to those that are left empty. Art in shops puts the feelgood factor back, she argues. “It’s another way of judging a town. We’re used to measuring a place by how busy the cash tills are. This is about measuring somewhere by its ideas, by the things that people are making happen here.”

What I thought was most constructive about the project South London Gallery is spearheading is that they are not merely content to plant artists in the storefronts and hope something grows. South London Gallery, which has an outreach manager, is hoping to bring arts exposure to the neighborhood in which they are located but whose residents they rarely see enter their doors. While they hope the people do one day come to the gallery, their immediate goal is to “demystify the process of creating art, taking it away from the private studio” and locating working artists in the familiar space of a business people used to patronize.

Does The Audience Serve The Community?

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Performing arts organizations are very much aware that they are increasingly at a disadvantage offering entertainment in a single location at set times in an environment when it can be obtained on demand, paused and continued. This weekend I really started wondering if we are ceding too much ground without a fight. Today, Artjournal.com happened to link to a piece on The Guardian website by Mark Ravenhill where he expressed something akin to my thoughts.

“But on one subject there does seem to be an almost universal consensus, and that is that you – the reader, the listener – are bored, most of the time. Look at any contemporary guide to making art, or working in the media, and the assumption is that an audience’s natural state is one of restless ennui. Our job as writers is to provide a sort of espresso shot. Grab them quickly, grab them hard – otherwise they will change channels or walk away.”

What I was thinking this weekend is that while we always talk about arts organizations needing to better serve their communities. We often hear how we have to change our processes and our thinking to acknowledge the changing expectations of our audiences. This is absolutely correct. We need to evaluate the ten thousand things we do every day in the context of shifting expectations.

But I got to wondering. Are our audience members serving their community very well? Don’t they have a responsibility to the larger group and are we complicit in letting them get away with shirking it?

This weekend we presented our annual dance festival where invited groups of students and professional companies perform short pieces. I have sort of resigned myself to the fact people are going to walk in at 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 minutes into the show. I think that perhaps I have started ceding too much in the way of lowered expectations to our audience.

We do close the box office 30-45 minutes after the show has started when it appears the trickle has finally abated. We still end up turning 10-15 people away who don’t have tickets but admitting that many or more who do. You know, the people carrying the pieces of paper with the time emblazoned across them who should therefore know things started 75 minutes ago?

Over the last decade or so I have trying to shift away from the disapproving figure looking at his watch noting just how late people are. It used to be that you ended up watching television monitors or wandering around the lobby if you missed the last late seating interval. Recently, I have begun to wonder if the kinder, gentler, forgiving approach in hopes of making the attendance experience of a dwindling audience feel more welcome may be counterproductive in the long term.

What really annoys me isn’t so much the late arrivals but the early departures from events after friends have performed. I have addressed this in the past. When there are children involved either as audience members or performers, the message this conveys is that the arts have no value outside of an acquaintance’s involvement in them. For older people, it further socializes the idea that the live experience is disposable.

The dance pieces this weekend weren’t lengthy or based on some abstract concept. Each group had about seven to nine minutes to perform so if you didn’t like what you saw, it was over shortly. The first piece of the night was a satire of ballet. Even if you don’t know enough about ballet to get some of the jokes, a lot of it was just physical comedy. I can think of a number of reasons why people might choose not to attend in the first place, but once one is in the theatre, it was fairly clear one need not be an initiate to enjoy the performance.

Lest you think I am attributing poor intentions to people who had other motivations for leaving, a few groups told us outright they were leaving because their friend was done dancing. (The same thing happens with our choral concerts.)

Getting back to the idea of the individual’s responsibility. Attending a live performance constitutes a relationship. It is a relationship between you, the audience and more importantly, the performers. This is the case even with those you don’t know personally. These performers can only be at a specific place at a time which dictates some of the constraints of the performance. Even though you seem to be one of possibly a very large group in the audience, how you conduct yourself has a definite impact.

This is the message the arts need to convey. Not in an explicit lecture, but in the subtext of what we communicate be it in person or via the technological tools we employ. Last week I was musing about what back to basics value the arts can embody. I am starting to think maybe it is personal relationships.

People are beginning to become disenchanted with a situation where they have 10,000 Facebook friends, but no one to bring them chicken soup when they are sick. While we have grown tolerant of it, I’ll bet people would prefer not to be placed on pause while someone answers their cellphone or displaced by a texted conversation.

Half the battle can be won by heeding the advice we have been receiving for years–provide places and opportunities for people to socialize. In some respects that is the easy part because it just involves money for renovations, furniture and staffing.

The other part of the equation is communicating the values of responsibilities to the community without preaching. It is a fine line between encouraging people to arrive promptly and remain, and adopting policies which make them feel like they are being punished for breaking the rules. For those with little experience in attending performances, it may sound contradictory to tell them not to feel inhibited about expressing approval for a wonderful performance even though people are glaring at them but that they should heed the glares when they start screaming and whistling as their friend appears on stage. One calls attention to an excellent performance, the other calls attention to you and your relationship with an individual.

Printing guidelines in programs and on your website counts on people taking the time to review them. Also, at first glance they appear to be the hidebound list of rules which intimidate some from attending in the first place. Curtain speeches can be more personable but….is preaching the the choir of prompt people.

Surely, something should be said otherwise you miss the opportunity to reinforce the value of the experience you are offering. The repercussions of not doing so might not be immediate but manifest in the next generation (or absence thereof). If you stay positive, you can be explicit and thank people for valuing the experience of live performance unmediated and insulated by technology. You welcome the opportunity to discuss the performance in person with the audience in the lobby or coffee shop after the show. And if they need time to digest the experience, you would love to read their comments on the organization’s web forum later.

Interacting with the late comers/early departers in a constructive way is tough. They already know they are breaking a convention and are prepared for any conversation, including directions to the restrooms, to be instilled with some degree of disapproval or scolding. The one approach that comes to mind leaves a lot of opportunity for patronizing tones to creep in.

My thought is that the ushers in the lobby be gracious and say he/she will escort the late comers in since it can be difficult to get ones bearings in the dark. While awaiting an appropriate break in the action, the group lingers near photos of the performers. I haven’t worked out the gist of the conversation yet because everything I think of can easily slide into the wrong tone. Essentially using the photos to give a face to the performers, the discussion touches on how long the rehearsals were and how much concentration is needed to perform before a live audience. How much the late comers will hopefully enjoy the performance and how important their approval is to the performers.

As you might surmise, the subtext is about how the performers and audience interact. While the artists are professional and will give their 110% performance regardless of audience size or reaction, things are likely to go to 125%+ for a good audience. I don’t want the performers to be vague and distant in those people’s minds, especially if their seats are indeed far from the stage. I want the late comers to feel a connection between themselves and the performers, seek them out on stage, realize the importance of their presence and hopefully, of their responsibilities, relative to those assembled in the facility.

The opportunity to actually see and interact with performers at some juncture contributes to this goal. I have made plenty of other entries about aloof artists and administrators so I won’t get into those aspects of the experience.

I am going to continue to think on the whole idea of reminding people they have a responsibility to the community rather than believing we need to passively accept shifting expectations. I would like to hear other people’s thoughts on this matter. Remember, I am not suggesting this stance be adopted to rationalize not changing. I merely propose that faced with millions of people Twittering everywhere they go, it doesn’t automatically follow that we need to accede to the expectation of Twittering being permitted during performances.

I am also intrigued by the idea of the arts embodying the values of personal contact and would be interested in seeing if anyone has any thoughts along these lines. I think much can be accomplished if we avoid declarative statements like You should/shouldn’t, must/mustn’t… Something as simple as, “(Discipline), It’s All About Contact” on a poster and ten thousand images can immediately be plugged in below the caption and a campaign begins.

My TAFTO Favs

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Next week the entries for this year’s Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month (TAFTO) begin. I have always enjoyed reading this series, even before I had any association with Drew McManus or joined Inside the Arts. There have been a couple entries from the past that have really stuck in my mind. While you are waiting for this year’s installments, I thought I would post a couple links to some of my favorite entries.

Nothing should be read into the fact that I haven’t included entries from 2008. These are my favorites and I make no pretense at being egalitarian. Nor am I being modest by excluding my own contributions. This is a list of the entries that popped out at me and remained in my memory over the years. Last year’s entries were just fine and whet my appetite for the 2009 batch.

2005

I really enjoyed some of the earliest entries because they focused on some of the rules for attending the orchestra. Really many of them can easily be applied to attending any arts activity whether it be performance or visual arts experience.

For this reason, Kyle Gann and Sam Bergman’s entries back in 2005 are among my favorites. They approach some of the intimidating aspects of attendance with honesty and humor.

One of the entries that I immediately associate with the whole TAFTO initiative was the WNYC interview on Soundcheck when Drew took Soundcheck host John Schaefer’s brother, Jerry to a Bartok performance at Carnegie Hall. The interview, which may be downloaded here, requires RealPlayer to play. In my view, the interview constitutes the most effective entry in the TAFTO effort. Jerry speaks with complete candor about how he only liked 2/3 of the experience. If I only had one entry to choose to help me convince someone to attend an orchestra performance, this would be the one because the listener can be most guaranteed that they are receiving an honest appraisal, realize they probably possess the capacity to evaluate and enjoy the experience, and recognize they have permission to be bored and not enjoy every moment.

2006

In this batch of writing, I liked Jerry Bowles account of how he and his wife had cultivated an appreciation of culture in general in his nephew by treating him like an adult. His entry serves to remind all arts people that appreciation of our products is a gradual process rather than an instantaneous event. Also, getting to that point requires communication, patience and trust that people will find their way rather than needing a dumbed down approach.

Kevin Giglinto’s entry traveled along the same lines, except that he spoke about his personal interactions with music that took him from Led Zeppelin through Husker Du and Sonic Youth to working for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). When he first encountered Led Zeppelin, Husker Du and Sonic Youth, he had no doubts about his relationship with the music. Even though each initial experience challenged what he knew, he believed in his capacity to comprehend it.

The prospect of working for CSO intimidated the hell out of him though.

“I probably felt the same perceived barriers that people have in their minds today that stop them from entering the doors for the first time. I asked myself the same questions I know they are asking:

“What if I don’t understand the music?”
“Will I appreciate it less without that understanding?”
“Is this music really for me, given what I usually listen to?”

Then came the first performance I attended. On the program was Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony…When the music ended, and the audience erupted with applause, I realized that all the questions I had in my head prior to the experience were irrelevant. It was the music. It took me over with the same incredible rush that I experienced with The Who, The Clash or whoever else occupied my musical drive. It was the music.”

I can’t leave 2006 without mentioning Alex Shapiro’s “screw the rules, let them wear party hats” post which I believe is still one of the most commented upon entries on the Adaptistration blog. The entry remains a must read. Alex’s point is essentially that one generally doesn’t prepare to go to a rock concert being overly concerned about hearing the lyrics much less grasping the whatever imagery and metaphor they invoke but we are pleased if we do. Going to a classical music performance should be approached in the same anxiety free manner.

And if you are thinking, yeah but at a rock concert, part of the excitement is hoping some hot guy/girl will bump into while screaming “Wahooooo!!!!”, Alex is right there with you wishing it would happen in our symphony halls.

I also enjoyed Pete Matthews recounting of his visits to three different classical music events with the same friend in the course of a month. It was just a nice, comparison of the types of music you can hear and the sort of places you could hear it. I was most encouraged by the quality experience they had in a high school auditorium given they also attended at Avery Fisher and Carnegie Halls.

2007

James Palermo, General Director of Grant Park Music Festival caught my attention with his vow not to apologize for loving classical music. I think a lot of us have found ourselves falling into the same mindset and needing to pull ourselves out.

Then I read a quote attributed to the great soprano Leontyne Price about the value of the arts. I’ll never forget it:

“We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it’s time to show us at our best.”

When a President dies, at the funeral we feature the hottest opera star singing Amazing Grace. When the media wants to associate something with class or value, it invariably uses baroque or classical era music. If a marketer wants to conjure up grandeur or power, it’s Verdi’s Anvil Chorus or Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries.

So, I vowed to stop apologizing for loving and understanding classical music. Whenever I hear negative comments from friends or colleagues, I remind them that the music is enjoyable, revelatory and full of great things for anyone who is open enough to experience it without prejudice, regardless of social class or race.

One of the most singular posts in the TAFTO was produced by Bill Harris who engaged in an extensive analysis about whether Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month was a worthwhile endeavor. His work is so insightful and unlike any other entry in the TAFTO series, it is impossible to ignore.

Hope you took a look at some of these past entries and will join the fun over at Adaptistration next week for the new installments!

Organic Arts, Taste The Difference

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My cousin is a farmer. But he isn’t just any old farmer. About five years ago he started working his farms with two massive Belgian draft horses rather than using gas powered equipment. When fuel prices started climbing last year, I figured I might end up taking lessons from him some day. He hasn’t turned his back on technology by any means and calls upon neighbors to do some of the tasks that are either too much for his horses or can’t be done with his team. But he is really committed to sustainable farming with out chemicals and the like.

I have been trying to discern what lessons his way of life might have for my way of life. My cousin’s farm contributes goods to a community supported agriculture cooperative where people subscribe to receive a share of his produce throughout the year. He would probably farm like this anyway, but his timing is fairly good in that he is doing this at a time where value is being placed on organic and free range farming. His website outlines how his crops and livestock are employed to support each other which adds value to the sides of free range beef, sheep, poultry and eggs you can purchase from him online.

So I am trying to figure out what is the back to basics approach the arts can take? Other than the piano and sheet music in the parlor, I can’t really of an archetypal image in American arts life with which to appeal to people. What ideals would you invoke to remind people of value that has been lost in present times? How are they diminished by cell phones and the Internet?

And really, it is a lot of idealism that people are buying with their free range organic food these days. It can’t diminish what my cousin is doing to say so because he is obviously a true believer. I grew up surrounded by farms, (God help me, but the smell of manure still makes me nostalgic), but most consumers have no direct experience with process by which food is produced. The basics they are trying to get back to isn’t likely something they or even their parents once had and yearn for again.

So the success of a campaign on behalf of the arts wouldn’t necessarily depend on people having experienced the arts. It would just need to evoke some value people feel is missing from their lives. One of the images we want to avoid is that of the elite, white audience. Unfortunately that is a real historical image. Not only do most arts organizations want to avoid that as they strive to be more multicultural and inclusive, but likely would prefer people not imagine audiences comprised of rich bankers.

It may sound manipulative to say success depends on using the right turns of phrase. As we are all aware though, the reality is that we start from zero with vast number of people. If more people had interaction and experience upon which to appeal, it would certainly be more effective to connect with real experience rather than a nebulous ideal. The problem people like my cousins have is that there are a lot of companies out there playing fast and loose with what constitutes what organic and free range means. It is obvious that my cousin’s operation is sustainable but the other guys can undercut his price by employing less rigorous standards and calling it the same thing. If more consumers possessed the discernment which comes from direct experience with the food production process, fewer would be fooled.

In terms of producing a sustainable arts product that has resonance with a community, Scott Walters’ Theatre Tribe appears to be a viable option. (Albeit the only considered plan of which I am aware.)

Having a good product still doesn’t solve the question of messaging. Though certainly real quality lends itself to convincing arguments about value. The simple truth is, evoking the idea that arts attendance fills a gap created by modern life may not be the most effective option. You don’t need me to tell you quality doesn’t equal success. As big a trend organic is these days, there are still far fewer farmers than there were when I was a kid.

Perhaps the only lesson to take from my cousin’s example is one we already know as arts people. First, do what fulfills you and if people are interested in paying you for it great. As I said, his decision to farm with draft animals was not motivated by the credibility he would get with consumers of organic food and hopes of income as a result. He may not even make much selling to that segment of people. (In fact, he teaches agriculture at a local high school.) He just likes working his farm.

Heading To Other Shores

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I was pleased when Ron Spigelman over at Sticks and Drones chose to start Take A Friend to the Orchestra Month by acknowledging the poise with which the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra musicians and administration were conducting business in tough economic times in contrast with the tensions other classical music organizations were facing. Granted with their pay six weeks in arrears, the moral victory didn’t go very far in putting food on the Honolulu musician’s tables or paying their mortgages, but at least they had the consolation that someone noticed and appreciated their approach to the situation.

Unfortunately, things may be getting a little tougher for the symphony. The Honolulu Symphony announced yesterday that Executive Director Tom Gulick will step down when his three year contract expires on June 30. (Seems like it was just last year I was heralding his arrival.) Gulick has been credited with doing much to increase the financial support and income of the symphony. Whether he is leaving of his own accord or because the board decided he hasn’t done enough is unknown to me at this time. In any case, this leaves the symphony without executive leadership for a time and requires the expenditure of time and dwindling resources to search for another.

Though if you think about it, Honolulu’s composure might work to its benefit. If you are a potential executive director, you know just about any organization you join in this financial climate is likely to be in tenuous financial shape. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to interview with an organization which has proved it can resist the general trend toward acrimonious relations between administration/board and musicians? (Not that living in Hawaii doesn’t have its appeal as well.)

Artists As The New Entrepreneur

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I was reading an interview on Inc.com with Jim Collins, author of Built to Last in which he says being an entrepreneur is less risky, though much more ambiguous, than working for someone else.

Not risk. Ambiguity. People confuse the two. My students used to come to me at Stanford and say, “I’d really like to do something on my own, but I’m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM.” And I would say, “You’re not ready for risk? What’s the first thing you learn about investing? Never put all your eggs in one basket. You’ve just put all your eggs in one basket that is held by somebody else.” As an entrepreneur, you know what the risks are. You see them. You understand them. You manage them. If you join someone else’s company, you may not know those risks, and not because they don’t exist. You just can’t see them, and so you can’t manage them. That’s a much more exposed position than the entrepreneur faces. But there’s lower ambiguity on the paint-by-numbers path: very clear but more risky. The entrepreneurial path: very ambiguous but less risk. Of course, the truth is that it’s all ambiguous, anyway. If you think you can predict the future, you’re crazy.

One of my first thoughts was that if this were true and everyone thought this way, everyone would be an entrepreneur and no one would be around to work. Is it the illusion of security predicated on the belief that a company has a business model and system that will ensure salary and medical insurance payments are made that causes so many to work for another instead of themselves? Who wants to handle all the legal paperwork and accounting associated with running one’s own business when you can work for someone who has lawyers and accountants to do that work already? (Though lately few are investing too much confidence in accountants and lawyers.)

But on the flip side of things, I wondered if the relative lack of security associated with working in the arts is one of the reasons so many arts organizations pop up. If the prospects of success are chancy across the board, I suppose it is logical that you cast your lot with the devil you know rather than joining someone else. You figure you can out economize them. If they are putting on good shows eating frozen pizza, you can do a better job while surviving on ramen noodles all the while hoping you will be eating better at some point down the road.

I think people in the non-profit sector embody Collin’s vision of entrepreneurs pretty well in that many do understand the risk and ambiguity involved with working for another or one’s self. I almost wonder if it might not be worthwhile encouraging people in the arts to apply this energy and willingness to endeavors outside of the arts. We have all been told, if you can imagine doing something else, do that rather than pursue a career in the arts. I am sure everyone has envisioned what that something else might be. In some cases, it might involve working for someone else, but that vision might be easily be diverted to working for oneself.

I really suspect that the internal drive an arts person has that sustains them in starving for their art is the exact same drive entrepreneurs employ in starting up their companies. The only difference is that the arts person may see growing their vision to a 500 employee company as selling out. To be fair, the whole process of meeting with venture capitalists, dealing with human resources, accounting and laws can seem intimidating and impregnable barriers. They say the next phase of the economy will emphasize the creatives. What if this might portend the emergence of organizations and processes which take advantage of the drive and vision of the artist and facilitates with the removal of the barriers either through training or performance of those functions in a manner which the artist can easily relate.

Let me be clear, I am not necessarily talking about empowering artists to be more successful artists. Yes, it would be great if solid arts organizations emerged. I am referring instead to arts people bringing their drive to the thing they would do if they weren’t in the arts. I am thinking about directing that drive toward game and software design to restaurants to human resource companies.

Wouldn’t be heartening to have worked in the arts for 10-15 years and realize that your hard work and relentless drive proves you may just have the tenacity to embrace the risks inherent to starting up a new company and there are people who want to help you do it?

April Can Be A Lot Of Things Month

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So today is Arts Advocacy Day which provides a nice segue into April, the official Take A Friend To the Orchestra (TAFTO) month. If you are not already aware, TAFTO is the brainchild of Adaptistration blogger, Drew McManus who has been promoting the idea for about 4-5 years now. The people Drew has lined up this year to write on the subject of taking friends to the orchestra look very interesting.

The last few years have seen orchestra boards across the country seemingly making every effort to avoid having their musicians perform. If you have any inclination to go to an orchestra or even chamber performance resolving to attend a performance this month can play a small part in showing the classical music groups around the country that their organization has value to the community, even if you only attend occasionally. (Of course bringing 15 friends can play a much bigger part.)

Actually, April is a good time to resolve to attend an arts or cultural event. Places like Fargo, ND notwithstanding, the weather is getting better across the country so it is a fine opportunity to get out and attend performances and go to museums. If your community has First Friday gallery walks, this is weekend could be the time to step out, mingle with others and see some art.

I just heard my mayor on the radio last week saying he wished the First Friday activities downtown happened every Friday. It would be great if every mayor could encourage that level of activity. (I know he wasn’t entirely saying that to score political points because he chaired the committee of the National Council of Mayors that introduced four resolutions about cultivating arts activities across the country.) October is National Arts and Humanities Month so if you don’t feel your community has enough arts activities, maybe for you April can be Take A Friend to the City Council Meeting month where you get the ball rolling on some sort of event(s) for October.

You Know, For The Kids (And Everyone Else, Too)

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February was a real busy month for me so I only had the time to bookmark The Nonprofiteer’s epiphany about the value of public funding for the arts.

“Of course you’re indifferent to public funding for the arts, you dodo; you live in Chicago, where major performers and exhibitions will show up anyway. Public funding for the arts isn’t for Chicago–it’s for Bloomington.

And she remembered growing up in Baltimore, which is not a small town but which waited for months between visits of major dance companies; and she remembered the thrill of seeing those dance companies for the first time. And she realized (0r remembered) that that’s the real point of public funding for the arts: to make available to everyone the thrill of exposure to first-rate art. Everyone: that means people who live in Bloomington, and International Falls, and Arroyo Hondo, even though the free market would not support a stop in any of those places by the latest tour from the Joffrey or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Met.

I thought she made quite a few good arguments on behalf of funding the arts. They seem of particular value given that she finds them compelling as a person who is not particularly supportive of public funding for the arts. It isn’t often that a non-politician who has not drank deeply of the Kool-Aid takes the time to provide considered commentary on behalf of public support of the arts so it behooves us to take note. As might be expected, I am not entirely in accord with her suggestion that support should only be in presentation rather than creation of new works. Though I certainly do see her point:

“…you have to accept another, equally painful truth, which is that no one can actually determine what’s “art” til at least 25 years after it’s been created. Probably the Nonprofiteer doesn’t need to remind you that people threw things at the stage the first time they saw and heard The Rite of Spring, now part of the musical canon. But what she probably does need to point out is that this doesn’t mean the public should accept and/or fund every objectionable thing it sees in hopes that it will ultimately turn out to be art. Rather, it means that support for creation is a mug’s game, a gamble at which most players lose, and that the public should instead put its money into presentation.”

I hadn’t initially assumed she was saying that public funding of the arts was needed to bring culture to the hinterlands. All the same, I was glad for Scott Walters’ comment to her about the importance of enabling local groups to develop works that emphasize and reinforce the value that can be found in their communities. For me that is the strongest argument for funding the creation of new work. I am not as vocal as Walters is on his blog about how the concept that artistic success originates from NY/LA/Chicago is robbing the rest of the country of talent. But I am certainly in agreement with him that there is no reason those places should be held as a standard of quality and be viewed as the only destinations for achieving artistic success.

Public monies and tax breaks are offered to attract and retain industry, perhaps the same should be done with the arts. The argument can be made that state and municipal support of the arts is doing just that. What the public support is not doing though is generally providing incentive to “buy locally.” In some cases, there has to be an equal investment in encouraging people to create locally as well. I have mentioned in a number of posts lately that while it would be much more economical for me to present local artists, there aren’t enough of quality to sustain the effort very long. There are a fair number of talented people in the community, but most (though certainly not all) are expressing themselves via Broadway plays and musicals or covers/derivatives of other people’s work.

Still, if the criteria for receiving public monies and tax breaks was 100% of the concept and execution by local artists, I could take advantage of the support at least once a year and guarantee my audiences the quality they have come to expect. That sort of confidence constitutes a good starting point in my mind.

One last bit of the NonProfiteer I would quote is her view that we need to get public support for the arts as acceptable a concept as public support for education.

Yes, yes, the Nonprofiteer knows: education isn’t well-funded either; but relatively few people argue that public funding for education is just a plot to spread disgusting lies, or to keep teachers from having to work. Let’s get the discussion about public funding for the arts to the level of conceptual agreement we have for public education, and then we can engage in any further battles that might need to be fought.

In other words, brethren in the arts community: stop talking about public funding for the arts as if the point were for the public to support YOU. No one cares about you. What we care about as a society is US, and how exposure to what you do will improve us.

I think there is a distinction between what she means by “how exposure to what you do will improve us” and the message the arts have been communicating along those lines. While improving test scores, reasoning skills and developing geniuses in the womb are probably part of what she is suggesting we talk about, it can’t be the entirety for the simple reason that it excludes anyone who is not a child. People care about their kids, yes, but everyone will only be persuaded when they perceive they are included in the benefits. I think it is pretty clear that the reasons we give can’t be about what we want people to experience but what they want to experience.

We want people to experience transcendent moments and there is a good chance the first time they sit down to hear a symphony play, they won’t have a transcendent experience. The measure of their satisfaction with the experience that night may simply be that no one caught on to their utter cluelessness. Transcendent experiences should certainly always be a goal and are absolutely attainable on ones first interaction. I just spoke to a woman today who had a group of students who did just that, though they probably couldn’t have identified it as such.

There is a difficulty in asking people what they want out of an experience with which they have had limited interaction. About 18 months ago I linked to a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about how when people were asked what kind of spaghetti sauce they liked, described the sauces they were eating. However, when presented with samples of different options, expressed strong preferences for sauces that no company actually made. When asked, people may say they like car chases and gun battles not realizing what they really may value is dramatic tension and once they get past the arcane language, a lot of Shakespeare really suits them.

If trying to draw responses of value from your audiences sounds like an intimidating process, well sure it is. There are big companies sinking millions of dollars into marketing and research trying to figure it all out too with limited success. The advantage you have is that you only have to figure it out for the community you serve.

More Impact Of The Economy Conversation

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Yesterday, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters had a follow up to the conference call on the economy I listened in on in December. Given that there weren’t enough phone lines to accommodate all those who wanted to attend, this time they employed a webinar format so people could attend online. You either listen directly or download the web session.

The call is about 90 minutes long and many on the panel mention strategies and opportunities people can take. What caught my ear and interest were the approach to programming described by Marilyn Santarelli, Executive Director of the F. M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts. She talks about how she is re-negotiating payments to artists per Numa Saisselin’s suggestions in “Arts Presenting Is Dead.”

As Saisselin suggests, she goes to the artists and talks about their sales to date, their marketing efforts and are honest about their break even point. They asked that the artist share in the risk and lower their price. They proposed that after reaching the break even point, they would start to restore to the artist “dollar for dollar from the first dollar whatever discount you gave to us.” She found the artists that bought in to this option worked harder to help promote the show with more interviews, b-roll, etc. The alternative, she told them, was canceling the show.

It sounded as if they had only done this starting last December. I am curious to know if this inhibits her planning for her upcoming season as artists and agents worry that what they initially negotiate may not be final. Likewise, would they be more open to booking with someone who has a workable alternative to cancellation if things go poorly.

She also talked about their ticket sales strategy. Her organization is discounting early in the season and offering discounts to a wider variety of people including subscribers and sponsors. I am not sure, but it sounded as if they were expanding the groups of people who are eligible for discounts. As the season goes on, the prices will go up. She hopes if they message this approach correctly, people will buy early realizing they are getting a bargain. No mention of whether they were loosening their exchange policy for people who committed early. The Kirby Center has only implemented this on a few show so far and did so because 60% of their sales were happening in the last few weeks. I suspect that this approach will vary in success from community to community and some will still rather wait and see than to buy now and that the higher price closer to the date may prove a disincentive to those with many options.

These are just some of the strategies and opportunities being employed that are mentioned in the webinar. If you are eager for a little guidance, give it a listen.

NJ Would Rather Go Broke Than Fund The Arts

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Via Artsjournal.com comes news that New Jersey Governor John Corzine wants to cut arts spending below the legal minimums. A few years ago, the NJ State legislature decided to set legal minimums for funding the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Historical Commission, the New Jersey Cultural Trust and Shore Preservation Fund.

State treasurer David Rousseau made it clear how the administration feels about those laws. They just don’t apply anymore.

“We will be setting aside those laws,” said Rousseau. “We didn’t want to be bound by laws that were created that say shore protection has to be this amount.

“Same thing with arts. Why should they be held at a higher standard just because some Legislature in the past put a law in that says it can’t go below this amount of money?”

It isn’t terribly surprising given these tight financial times that state governments would make a move to claim monies set aside for funding arts and culture. I think we pretty much expect it. What does raise eyebrows is that by doing so, New Jersey stands to forfeit greater income. The laws which set the funding minimums have poison pill clauses included to prevent just this very thing. (my emphasis)

The law changed the way New Jersey funds arts and culture by replacing their direct appropriation with a portion of the hotel tax. As revenues grew, so would the funds supporting the cultural agencies and tourism advertising. If the tax revenues dropped, the cultural and tourism programs would get less.

The law mandates the four areas receive at least $28.2 million or the tax disappears at the start of the fiscal year. Corzine’s budget allocates just $24.9 million. Similarly, the realty transfer tax has a provision that eliminates the tax if the beach replenishment fund drops below $25 million.

Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex) wondered why the administration would risk losing a tax that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars since 2003 in order to save a couple million dollars next year.

The governor and his allies in the legislature are trying to mount challenges to the poison pill provisions. It will be interesting to see if they hold or not. I have personally never heard of such arrangements being used to guarantee funding for arts and cultural purposes. If the laws hold, it might be worth advocating for similar protections in other states. (If they don’t hold on the basis of technicalities, it would be worth advocating for under better written terms.)

My suspicion is the governor figures even if the taxes do automatically disappear, the revenue source will be viewed as too crucial to the operation of the state and the legislature can be prodded into reinstating them without the arts, culture, history and shore preservation encumbrances.

I am interested to learn if any other states or municipalities have similar arrangements to keep funding for non-emergency causes secure from raiding. Comment below.

Vital To Discuss: Graduate Preparation

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In a confluence of good timing, my Inside the Arts compadre, Jason Heath, touched on a subject yesterday aligned with that of two of my favorite bloggers. In an entry with a self-explanatory title, Music School Enrollment Spikes as Economy Tanks, Jason cites a Chicago Tribune article on that subject. Jason discusses the cons of pursuing a degree in music but seems heartened by the article’s assertion that studying music confers skills applicable to other fields. (Given a recent post, that is good news to me too.) My only concern is that in tough economic times, there are so many people with direct experience with jobs, there is no need for those with skills that carry over.

The article notes that music schools are making sure their graduates have training in addition to performance to make them more capable and prepared for the realities of the industry. Theatre schools are apparently not following suit in the estimation of Theatre Ideas blogger, Scott Walters, and A Poor Player blogger Tom Loughlin who met for the first time this past weekend at the Southeastern Theatre Conference where they presented a session on revamping the way theatre students are prepared.

Both gentlemen reflect on the experience in their respective blogs with some disappointment that the conferences do not really allow serious conversations about the state of the industry and how graduates may be better prepared.

Says Mr. Loughlin:

“At places like SETC, NETC, and ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) the emphasis is 97% on “how to succeed in the theatre business by trying a little harder.” It’s self-perpetuating, narcissistic, and almost cult-like. Anybody interested in having an adult conversation about what might be wrong, what might need reform, etc., is faced with the reality that everyone else there has drunk the kool-aid of pre-professionalism. You might as well be talking to a wall.”

[….]

“As I walked through the halls of the hotel complex during the afternoon I grew more and more sad watching all these young dressed-up kids with their audition numbers pinned to their chests waiting for their turn to show everyone what they could do and begin their climb up the great Broadway ladder. They know nothing else at all about theatre except this professional business model, and they have no sense of independent thought in terms of thinking about how to push back against it. They’re just buying it hook, line and sinker. And we, the educators, are tossing them the baited hook.”

Both felt the keynote speaker, Beth Leavel, was the worst offender when it came to underplaying the difficulty of making it in theatre and overselling NYC as the sole source and standard for success.

Scott Walters’ observations were most pointed in this respect.

“The crack she peddled was pontent: she had only had to work two weeks in her entire career at anything outside the theatre. I could see young girls texting their parents with this fact, proof that their choice of a major in theatre wasn’t foolhardy in the least.”

[…]

“Not surprisingly, nobody ever asked, and clearly Beth Leavel never considered, the utter insanity of such an arrangement. Nope, it was all about New York, and Beth had made the leap from SETC to Broadway, and you can too. You just have to want it badly enough. Because we are so lucky to do what we do. Why, she burbled, I’ve never worked a day in my life, and I mean that.”

[…]

“It seemed so appallingly irresponsible. To look at all these young, hopeful people with numbers pinned to their chests, I kept thinking of Biff Loman’s pathetic plea at the end of Death of a Salesman: “Will you let me go, for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” I knew that many, many of these kids were very talented, and that for most of them those talents will go unused and unappreciated in the theatrical Oz to which Ms Leavel had pointed them. And they will limp home thereafter and, like Mr Tanner in Harry Chapin’s heart-breaking ballad of the same name, they’ll never sing again, or dance again, or act again.”

I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I found it interesting that both men reference the audition numbers pinned to each person’s chest in what is probably not even an attempted veiled allusion to the “hopes pinned” phrase. According to Walters, they did their best to dash what for most will be false hopes in their session citing dismal employment and median income figures of Equity union actors.

We urged teachers to ” take that phony dream and burn it before something happens” and replace it with something important, something rooted, something that would enrich our towns and cities and states. We urged theatre teachers (and had we not presented before she did, Beth Leavel) to get out of the export business, in which our purpose is to ship off “goods” to New York City.

None of the entries are terribly long and bear reading in their entirety. If you aren’t familiar with Loughlin and Walters, they are both professors in performing arts programs who have been reflecting for some time on the education processes with which they are involved–and on the fate of their graduates.

As a person who came out of a theatre background, I have always felt a little superior to the other arts disciplines because theatre tends to be a lot more together in many regards. In graduate preparation theatre seems to be lagging. Not all music training programs offer the type of preparation mentioned in the Tribune piece, but there are enough to serve as examples for theatre training programs.

Under Pressure To Find Value In Live Performance

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Thanks to YouTube I have been thinking a lot about the experience of live performance. A couple months ago, for reasons I can’t remember, I watched this cover of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” done by David Bowie and Gail Ann Dorsey.

I thought their rendition was great and a couple weeks later, I wanted to hear it again and ended up with this version.

It was soon clear that it wasn’t the same performance. I liked the first version much better. One of my first thoughts was how interesting it was that the same song, same performers, same tour could have a vastly different quality. It seemed to me a good argument for seeing live performance. Often people say they don’t want to see a play or hear a piece of music again because they have already seen it. People in the arts generally counter that different groups render different interpretations. If that doesn’t work, we break out the old opportunity for disaster option noting that you never know what will happen at a live performance. Even better in this case with almost all things being equal, one performance is so much more exciting than the other which proves another degree of value for live performances. I started checking to see if Bowie was coming to town soon.

Well, come to find out it is not quite all things equal. The second video is from 1997 and the first from 2003. (In my defense, not all of the copies are well dated.) I imagine part of the reason I like the 2003 video is that the sound is much better. I also believe Dorsey got more kickass in that time.

Which brings me to the second revelation about the experience of live performance–the importance of reference points. My sense of where the videos fall on the quality continuum is based on my experience with the original version by Queen and Bowie vs. 2003 Bowie and Dorsey vs. 1997 Bowie and Dorsey. What I have no ability to judge is the relative value of a piece of classical music played by the NY Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, much less the same piece by a single ensemble now and six years ago.

From my perspective, no symphony would allow themselves to take the liberties in interpreting Beethoven Bowie and Dorsey took with Queen’s original music. But I could well be wrong. I have no experience upon which to base that assertion other than my belief that symphonies are too tradition bound to do so. This lack reinforces the importance of regular and repeated exposure to the arts. It also reveals why the belief that people will become enamored of the arts if only they will step through the door is erroneous. People can only judge something is good if they have a basis upon which to make the judgment.

The general implication of making a statement about exposure to the arts is that it has to be in schools. Students are a captive audience and unformed vessels ready to receive. The parents are lost to us. They are too old and too busy at work to pay attention to our lessons. Yes, that is mostly true. But when they take breaks from work they go to things like First Friday’s downtown where they will stop and satisfy their curiosity about Southeast Asian dance if the opportunity presents itself in a easily accessible place.

Cheap dates are important in this economy so First Friday type events may present an opportunity for increased exposure. Expose people often now and maybe they will be prepared to pay for the experience by the time the economy turns around and increases their disposable income.

April is Take A Friend To the Orchestra Month (TAFTO) and provides a good opportunity to position events and opportunities that encourage friends to experience an event together.

(You don’t actually have to be an orchestra to take advantage of April in this manner. Just don’t tell Drew McManus I gave you permission.)

Looking For Shows In All The Close Places

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Last Friday I went to First Friday downtown. My main motivation was that my assistant theatre manager and his wife were performing at an outdoor stage. The theme was Asian performance so there were performances of gamelan, kulintang music, Balinese, Cambodian and Thai dance and a couple of fusion pieces.

While I came to support a friend, I was soon evaluating performances for suitability in upcoming seasons. We have been told to expect that we are all but guaranteed to lose $20,000 from a regular source so I need to identify generally inexpensive quality performances. Ultimately, I didn’t think any I saw that night were quite right and a couple, pretty awful. Before I made this determination I started to ponder how I might structure future seasons.

I started to wonder if it might be possible to follow Numa Saisselin’s example and announce a shorter season in my brochure next Fall with the intent of adding two or three performances as the opportunity presents itself. There are always a few shows that do well and a few shows that attract a third of what the best shows do. My expenses are generally the same for all of them so if I can reduce my costs a little, I will be doing better. What contributes either directly or indirectly to my costs is distance people have to travel so I can realize some significant savings if I can control those expenses. Since people are making their attendance decisions extremely close to the performance dates, I don’t think I would lose anything by having some events absent from the season brochure.

I often have a general idea of which shows will have a lower appeal but pay the price knowing that the work is worth seeing and if I don’t bring them, then no one else will. The smaller audience appreciates the opportunity no less than the larger one. Unfortunately, that idealism may have to be indulged slightly less often in favor of discerning whether there are local/regional performers who have the quality but haven’t had the opportunity to be seen.

Outside of my uncertainty about such groups existing, one concern I have is that if I don’t set my schedule early, I will have to really control what dates I rent out. We have a fairly strong facility rental program and can have most of the year rented out almost immediately after releasing the dates we don’t intend to use.

I would most certainly make more money renting instead of presenting on those same dates but I don’t want to reduce our offerings even in these financially tenuous times. I believe we would lose momentum with our community. While precious few seem to have any loyalty to us, I suspect their numbers are greater than we imagine. There is also the issue of slipping out of the collective consciousness if there are fewer mentions of us in the media.

So for the next few months I am going to be doing a lot of pondering, talking and consulting with people on our direction. There is no option before me that I want to fully commit to –fully a rental house, fully produce local performers–but the fiscal realities before me are likely to mean exploring these options to some degree.

Yes, But Can You Get Donations With It?

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In my letter to President Obama post I advocated for increased options under which non profits could incorporate. So I was very happy to see Drew McManus’ post today on that same theme.

I was even happier when one of the commenters to the entry, Ian David Moss, pointed out there were people working on that option. Namely, the L3C. In the comments section, Drew asks if anyone has successfully gotten a grant under that status. Moss responds that it lends itself more to attracting social investment and micro loans rather than grants.

I am going to keep an eye on this thread in the hopes that more information about other options emerge. (I am also going to add Non Profit Law Blog where this information originates to my reading list!)

What surprised me most was that the structure was proposed by an individual, Robert Lang, and that by getting Vermont to pass legislation recognizing it, the structure became viable nationwide since people can incorporate in Vermont the same way companies do so in Delaware. How this is all possible is being hashed out on many fora where people are a little wary about how the IRS may react. Thanks to a link on a Fractured Atlas blog post that apparently failed to register with me a year ago, I was able to track down a FAQ on the site of Americans for Community Development who are promoting this format.

I would be rather excited if this were successful because it facilitates the development of other forms of incorporation that might be helpful for activities currently performed by non profits.

Overhaul The Arts And Install New Standards

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Couple weeks back I mentioned I wanted to explore the idea of greater standards and training for administrators and board members Numa Saisselin floated in his “Arts Presenting Is Dead” piece. As one might imagine, from the number of times I have cited it, I was pleased to see Saisselin cite the Conversations With The Field study Neill Roan did for APAP which noted learning was not valued in the arts presenting field.

Saisselin feels that service organizations like APAP need to be more aggressive about identifying and contacting new entrants to the field and providing them with the basic information they will need even if the new presenter is not a member of their organization.

Just as the model of a modern presenting organization is shifting towards earned income, and on the fundraising side, earned income tactics, the model of a service organization should be shifting away from the all-access or no-access membership model, and towards an aggressive recruiting model that incorporates at least some free exchange of information.

While I agree that any organization/company/corporation is better served by actively engaging its constituencies, given the ease with which small groups can enter the field and operate on a limited basis, I am not sure how easy it might be find and identify these entities. I suppose they could start by looking through the records of where artists have recently performed in trade magazines and websites like Pollstar.

He likewise suggests that individuals avail themselves of free sources of information – “For example, Musical America, Celebrity Access and Billboard Magazine all publish free weekly newsletters by email. Countless fundraising, accounting and management firms publish their own newsletters, which often include lengthy and useful papers and articles.”

He bemoans the dearth of arts management training programs in higher education but seems to acknowledge that many working professionals don’t have the time to return to school for training. Saisselin suggests a certification system similar to one developed by the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM). I took a look at their website and it seems to be a pretty rigorous set of requirements to obtain various certifications.

Arts service agencies might do well to consider developing something similar. They have the example of the IAAM program to use as a type of template given the overlap in a number of areas. They also have the benefit of being able to consult with the existing arts management programs about the training they provide. In turn they can suggest what college students should be taught if they want to be employed. While the colleges may not be able to host classes for the busy arts professionals, they might prove good regional testing sites on weekends.

The observation Saisselin made that most interested me because I hadn’t encountered it before was in regard to board training. He makes some common observations about how poorly board members understand and are educated as to their duties. Then he relates an anecdote about a time when he and a friend were considering leaving their jobs. The friend worked for a radio station and had a fairly constructive conversation with a supervisor who understood the desire to move on and discussed the pros and cons of doing so.

Saisselin’s board was hurt that he was considering moving on and while he stayed, the dynamics between the board and himself were strained.

“….the component that is pertinent to this discussion is this: my friend’s boss was straightforward in the way he dealt with this scenario, because he worked in the same field she did, and he understood first hand why she was thinking about making a move. My board, on the other hand, with no career experience of their own in the field, responded the only way that they could: emotionally.

There is a critical weakness at the executive level of the nonprofit arts field: board members join a company at the very top of the organizational chart, but more often than not they have little or no experience in the field themselves as working professionals. Experienced board members may have vast knowledge about being a board member, but there is no way for them to personally understand the issues that professional staff members must be concerned about on a daily basis, or when thinking about their own lives and career. A board member’s personal commitment may run deep, and a paid staff member’s personal commitment may run just as deep, but the motivations of each for being involved in an organization in the first place, and for sustaining that involvement, are very different.”

Now my perception is that appointments to for profit boards aren’t necessarily made with people in the same field. Though there may be more uniformity in the way boards of widget manufacturers and banks operate than one of them and a non-profit board. The whole practice of placing inexperienced people at the top of an organizational structure may actually be flawed regardless of industry.

An emotional reaction may not be something that non profit organizations can escape. A year ago I talked about how the high emotional satisfaction people experience working in the arts may inhibit their desire to improve themselves. Boards involved with non profits may be so invested in the organization’s cause, it might be difficult to favor a rational reaction over an emotional one.

Frankly, I think other employees are likely to feel betrayed by a fellow who is letting the cause down or, given the generally poor pay and working conditions, escaping. Board members are probably more likely to be uniformly hurt than seasoned colleagues but I don’t think all bosses will be as supportive as Saisselin’s friend’s.

Saisselin extends his idea of insuring quality to the industry as a whole citing the example of the regional accrediting bodies which set the standards for institutions of higher learning. I get a little nervous at this suggestion. I am all for increasing the quality of arts organizations. I don’t know if formal accreditation is the way to go. Such a process is incredibly time consuming and diverts a lot of resources. For colleges, loss of accreditation means, among other things, loss of access to funding sources. I would be afraid that arts organizations that do good work would lose out on grants and foundation support because they didn’t have the wherewithal to complete an accreditation process. One of the biggest complaints people have about charities is the high percentage of their donation that goes toward administrative overhead. Accreditation process has to be incredibly well thought out to avoid this situation.

All this being said, Saisselin mentions that the granting process constitutes a de facto peer review system but that it is a binary result. You are either funded or not.

Beyond funding an application, or not, and in some cases providing applicants with a written summary of the panel’s comments, there are no “next steps” to assist organizations that don’t measure up, and the field at large desperately needs to take those next steps to strengthen the field at large.

There is no avoiding the fact that meeting greater standards requires increased effort above what is already being done. And there is no guarantee that meeting those standards will lead to greater organizational success. It is painfully clear to many in the entertainment industry that high quality product doesn’t necessarily draw a larger audience.

If there is an industry wide push for higher standards it is certain there will be instances of greater efficiencies, more effective leadership, constructive partnerships and more united advocacy efforts. But none of it is guaranteed to happen to you the individual or to your organization. In fact, the obscene inefficiency of your company may be revealed in the course of this movement putting you out of a job.

So what is your motivation as a belabored arts professional to join an effort that provides no surety of things improving for you? Well, that is about the same promise you had when you made the decision to devote your life to the equally abstract concept of artistic excellence.

Artists- Economic Alfalfa

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According to the recent Congressional debates about the economic stimulus package, the arts apparently make no significant contribution to the improvement of the economy.

I guess that is why Philadelphia’s South Street district has repeatedly owed its revitalization to artists.

According to an Associated Press piece the City of Brotherly Love is looking to have artists bring activity back to South Street for a third time.

Once it was a thriving entertainment district, then the artists were booted in favor of a planned highway that ultimately never emerged. The artists returned and enacted the old story of making the neighborhood so chic, they couldn’t afford to live there any more. Now there are empty storefronts again and the artists are being invited back rent free. All they need to do is pay utilities. The hope, of course, is that the activity will resuscitate the neighborhood again. The article makes it pretty clear that no one should expect to keep their space once conditions improve to the point where someone will actually pay to occupy the space.

“No-rent leases will be signed for two months, with month-to-month renewals, and new empty spaces will be found for the artists if their studio finds a paying renter.”

I guess I am feeling a little cynical on many fronts in regard to this story. First, I obviously resent the idea that the arts don’t contribute to the economy. As I read this article though, I wanted to be happy that people acknowledge the value of the arts to their community, but it seems like the recognition is just utilitarian. The lease arrangement feels like crop rotation. You plant artists in depleted soil and as soon as it is enriched enough to grow your target crop, you move the artist to the next depleted place. It is especially poignant for a place like South Street where artists get pushed out, return and are pushed out again.

If artists go into this with their eyes open and promote the hell out of themselves so they can make as much money as they can before they get displaced, then it can be a winning proposition. Whatever money they make becomes the seed money for developing their work elsewhere. Maybe all the artists taking up residency on South Street can get together and start planning what neighborhood to take over when they get evicted. Go to a place that has a couple decades before things get too expensive to operate so their money will last awhile. (Hello guys, Camden, NJ needs you!)

Math, Science, Reading, Writing, Thinking– It’s In There

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My assistant theatre manager and I went to speak at an elementary school career day today. This is the first time we have been invited although the school has apparently been doing career days for nearly 20 years. They often have the same groups year after year so wanted to change the line up a little this year.

Now if you are thinking a theatre manager talking about his job for 30 minutes is about 27 minutes too long for your average fifth grader, I am way ahead of you. Some of the students had been to the theatre for an outreach performance last week so that gave us an opening to talk very briefly about what went in to getting the performers to the theatre. I squeezed in a stay in school pitch by noting the necessity for good reading, writing and artistic skills in putting a brochure together but then we moved on to the exciting part of theatre–performance and technology.

The sounds and faces actors make when they are doing vocal warm ups is pure gold for getting elementary age kids to participate. I also did a bit about how performers communicate non verbally with body, props and facial features. It was a big hit with the kids and provided the assistant theatre manager photos with which to blackmail me. My consolation was that I got asked for my autograph.

Then I broke out the lighting equipment my technical director gave me for the demo. This really lent itself to our message about the value of education. I used the equipment to illustrate the importance of lighting people from all sides. Then I talked about the importance of math in figuring out how many instruments you could attach to a circuit. We had one bright light that used the limit of 1,000 watts but didn’t cover me from all angles vs. four instruments of 250 watts each that covered my whole body but wasn’t as bright. Which did they like better?

I pulled out some gels and talked very basically about additive vs subtractive color just to introduce the concept of color we perceive directly vs. what is reflected. Gotta know your science. At the student’s suggestion, we experimented using multiple gels to see what the result of mixing them together was. The big finale was putting the portable dimmer we had into demonstration mode to create a chase sequence of our gels.

I take the time to recount some of what we did because of a conversation we had with the Vice Principal at lunch. He volunteered, without anyone mentioning it, that he really wanted more art in the school but No Child Left Behind requirements were inhibiting him. He started citing studies that showed that the arts improve scores in the areas NCLB was requiring improvement.

Boy, it is great when you can eat your lunch and have people make the case you would normally deliver to them for you.

Catching up on my blog subscriptions, I came across this entry by Adam Huttler over at Fractured Atlas

I’m always skeptical of arts advocacy arguments that emphasize the importance of arts as a hobby in support of other (presumably more serious or important) endeavors. You know, like when people claim arts education is important because it helps kids do better at math. That’s great and all, but what’s wrong with the fact that it helps kids do better at art? Why isn’t that enough? Even setting aside the intrinsic value of the arts, the direct benefits to society from arts and culture activities are well documented (economic development, urban renewal, etc.) We shouldn’t have to justify our existence on the idea that, by supporting and practicing the arts, some totally unrelated but positive thing might happen by accident.

I agree wholly with him but would just like to add that people getting better at math, science and reading when they experience the arts doesn’t happen by accident either. The arts don’t existing in a vacuum and magically bestow their benefits. People become better at math, science, reading, writing, critical and creative thinking etc through the arts because the arts require you to use math, science, reading, writing, creative and critical thinking. We know that people have a more positive relationship with the arts if they have had active interactions vs. experiences where they simply watched. I feel pretty confident in claiming, without any statistical backing whatsoever, that students also gain greater benefits in the aforementioned subject areas if they have actively participated in the arts.

Living The Fantasy..Sort Of

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One of the reasons I enjoy my job is because I get to live my fantasies. One of my favorite involves standing in front of the ticket office having ticket holder praise my acumen in contracting high quality performers while those who did not purchase in advance wail in lament at seeing the sold out sign in the ticket office window.

Of course, being a fantasy, it doesn’t live up to reality. In my fantasy, the show has been sold out for weeks or showing clear signs of doing so for some time. The most recent reality is that ticket sales were steady, but few for months. At week out we we barely had 150 tickets sold. Then things started picking up 3 days before and exploded the last two days before the performance.

The people who showed up having not bought tickets had spent 6 months telling me how excited they were this performer was coming. They worked two buildings over, had a poster for the event right next to their office doors and received two emails exhorting them to purchase tickets.

It is hard to be savor being pleased with oneself when you are stifling the instinct to smack people upside their heads.

Granted, it is inevitable that a popular show will require dealing with a few disappointed souls who did not act quickly enough. My real reaction was more to roll my eyes in exasperation than to enact the V-8 forehead smack.

My real concern is that with people making decisions so close performance dates it is becoming harder to discern between a show destined to sell out and a flop before the actual performance date. In the context of the proposal of my last entry to allow presenters to cancel when ticket sales look dismal, I might have canceled had I been engaging in that practice. The article I wrote on came into my hands in a timely manner. It not only got me thinking, but it connected with a situation I was experiencing.

Numa Saisselin’s proposal to allow presenters to cancel includes proving diligence in promoting the show. In this case, I can pretty clearly trace the surge in sales to media coverage for which I did not pay. I probably need not have bought any advertising space at all. One story on the local NPR station I knew would probably happen because the interviewer asked for a contact name. The second, a feature story in the newspaper, was totally a surprise to me. The writer, who usually asks me for contact information didn’t in this case so I had no idea the story would run.

I feel confident in saying I wouldn’t have needed to advertise in this instance because I believe a lot of people knew and valued the performer. The stories were merely a kick in the butt to get them to start buying. For the rest of my performances, it can be difficult to make effective decisions. I am fairly certain advertising and electronic reminders during the week of the performance is effective for one portion of my demographic and that periodic exposure of the information over a longer period of time is effective for another segment even though both groups are buying their tickets at the last moment.

Other than the brochure and email, we aren’t quite sure what is most effective. When we ask people where they heard about the performance, many times people can’t decide through what form of media they heard it much less what station or newspaper. (It can be quite interesting to learn we are advertising on radio or television when we haven’t.)

In any case, I could have shown an investment in promoting the show through various media and promotional campaigns and asked for a cancellation based on awful ticket sales–and geez I would have been wrong. Yet there have been a few times when I would have been oh so right to cancel based on identical circumstances. Hopefully most people don’t operate in a market in which such nebulous conditions exist, but I suspect a great many do or will in the course of a few years.

And I begin to think the agents already know this and have been monitoring the situation for years. The last couple places I have worked, agents periodically call to get ticket sales counts even though the artist is guaranteed a set amount rather than a percentage of the gate. I can’t recall any agent or management company directing promotional resources to our market if tickets weren’t selling well. Yet at times the agents could be pretty relentless about getting the attendance numbers.

Saisselin’s mention of the unofficial procedure for cancellations made me think that perhaps agents may have assembled quite an in-house database of artists’ average sales X days out in cities with Y demographics. They may have a fairly accurate idea of when a cancellation request might be in the offing or perhaps when it might be prudent to either drop an artist from their roster or work with the artist to improve elements of their performance.

In spite of my sold out performance fantasies, the trend seems to be toward committing to attendance later and later in the process. If agents are in fact compiling information for decision making purposes, they may find the predictive power of their stats to be increasingly less dependable any distance out from a performance as reality confounds their expectations. (Or maybe they have really good statistical models.)

It Might Not Be Entirely Dead Yet

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The president of my consortium went to a Western Arts Federation meeting and returned with some materials for the membership to read. One of the more provocative pieces was written by Numa C. Saisselin, Executive Director at the Count Basie Theatre entitled “Arts Presenting Is Dead.” (Full disclosure, I once interviewed with Numa for a job at the Count Basie.) Unfortunately, the document isn’t online. I would have to make some inquiries to get permission to store it on my blog.

Numa’s basic premise about presenting being dead is that the practice of offering “serious work” like “theatre, dance, classical music, and maybe the occasional folk singer” and being successful focused on doing only that is no longer viable. What has eroded this situation are elements of which we are all generally aware: The low barriers to entry of the presenting field means there are more people doing it in the general vicinity; competition comes not only from other performing arts organizations, but sporting events, television, computers; costs are going up but earned income, drop in corporate support and other economic factors make it difficult for presenters to break even; organizations aren’t doing new things to attract new audiences; “every market is different, but by and large we all compete for the same programs” and “every market is different, but by and large we all employ the same generic marketing strategies.”

Saisselin does a good job tracing the direction things have been headed and giving concrete examples of how his organization has faced each of these essential areas. The way he has found success is to become more nimble in his programming focusing less on establishing a concrete season for people to subscribe to and more on taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves in the short term and then communicating these new developments with his mailing lists. While they take the long view on some things, he likens his approach to that of a concert promoter rather than the traditional definition of a presenter.

He notes this approach may not work, and should not work, for everyone given that every market is different. He also acknowledges that his organization has to ask granting entities to have faith in them since they don’t have a concrete idea about what they may do with the money at the time of application.

One of the benefits of his approach is that it allows him to take advantage of opportunities where an agent is offering an artist at a lower price in order to keep them busy between performances. Saisselin feels that presenters need to move even beyond this and educate themselves more about artistic fees rather than blindly accepting what is asked. There are databases of artists performances all over the country that can allow you to compare yourself to similar communities to get an idea of what attendance was like and what ticket price was charged.

Now I know none of this sounds terribly provocative. I included most of this narration so you could get a general idea where Saisselin was coming from. What I am told has quite a few people up in arms and calling him irresponsible for suggesting is that presenters be able to cancel a performer 30 days out.

If the artist can cancel a date on 30 days notice to take a more important gig on a TV show, a feature film, or in a Broadway production; or a more lucrative gig in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Reno or Tahoe; or in some cases for any reason, then the presenter should have the option of canceling on 30 days notice if ticket sales do not warrant proceeding. If the artist has the option of canceling to enhance their overall career or make more money, then the presenter should have the option of canceling if it’s going to lose money, or at least if it’s going to lose a lot of money.

From the artist’s and management’s perspective, not allowing presenters a cancellation option protects the artist from bad presenters. In other words, if the presenter does not do their job, the artist should not suffer, and that makes sense. But if the presenter does do its job, and tickets still do not sell, artists, agents and managers should accept at least a measure of responsibility. If we’re really all in this together, we should share the pain as well as the rewards.

He notes there is already an unofficial process one can follow to achieve this that generally ends up with the presenter paying 50% of the artist fee as a cancellation penalty. He suggests making it a formal part of contracts. While the presenter will still realize a loss, it won’t be a debilitating one

The presenter would be required to jump through some hoops to make such a request. When booking an artist, the presenter would have to submit a marketing plan, and satisfy management that the plan is reasonable, and has worked in the past. When making a cancellation request, the presenter would have to document that they had followed through on the marketing plan, without achieving the desired results…

…Artists would not be forced to play for half empty (or less) houses to collect their check, but in the event of a cancellation would still be fairly compensated for reserving the performance date. Agents and managers would be saved from having their artist develop a reputation as a box office loser, and would have the opportunity to revisit and revise their own strategies, perhaps getting their artist into smaller rooms, and building or rebuilding their artist’s career in another way. Presenters would be saved from throwing good money after bad when they already know a show is not selling.

He goes on to make some good points about improving standards for arts managers and boards of directors which I hope to address in later entries. For now I just wanted to float this idea. I am not quite sure how I feel about it. Assuming the practice moved in this direction either through active efforts of presenters or by default as tough economic times make the unspoken procedures into the standard, is it a direction we want to head?

It is easy to get angry at ever increasing fees and being left in the lurch by artists and talk about leveling the field in the abstract. There can be some unwanted repercussions though. I have been to the booking conferences and there the dynamic is one where the presenters have all the power. Artists and agents complain that presenters won’t acknowledge them or meet their eyes as they pass. I suppose if more people moved to act as promoters as Saisselin has, then fewer arrangements will be made at conferences and more will be made as a result of emails and YouTube videos. Not to imply artist cancellations for a better gig is revenge for the conference snub, but maybe it will be good if that uncomfortable vibe was removed from the equation.

My concern is that the money factor becomes a larger issue and emerging artists get further marginalized if 30 day cancellations become standard. Is an agent or manager really going to invest time in cultivating someone who is yielding them a percentage of 50% fee or are they going to go with the known quantity that dependably fills seats?

Certainly, the internet allows people to promote themselves fairly well so they don’t have to rely on an agent. For those like me who already get a constant stream of artist availability emails, more virtually unknowns adding themselves to the mix only makes things more difficult. As evil as agents may be made out to be, the good ones develop relationships with you that enable them to provide appropriate advice to presenters. Saisselin mentions his appreciation for an agent that invested years in a relationship with him before he actually booked an artist.

One road to success I can see is if the economy gets so bad that presenters turn their attention to seeking out low cost regional and local performers. Sasselin mentions how the record single went out of vogue only to come back again thanks to the iPod. Perhaps the impresario will make a return of sorts as people with theatre facilities turn their attention to cultivating the careers of regional artists as agents drop them.

Sasselin’s proposal is certainly something to consider in some form or another in order to relieve the pressure on presenters. I don’t think it can be applied in as straightforward a manner as he suggests.

**One thing that did occur to me as I was writing is that it would be great for the small touring artist if someone would create a piece of online software that integrated communications, scheduling and maps. That way a person could email, IM, etc about a gig, have the mapping feature tell them if it is actually reasonable to drive/fly that distance in the time allotted between gigs and then place it in a schedule they can access while on the road. Heck, if it could suggest flights, car rental places and hotels, that would be great too. (Except I imagine the top suggestions would be positioned there by paid advertising and may not be the most affordable for our struggling artist.)**

Art. But Only If You Say So First

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All right. I realize the question “What is art?” is extremely complex on its own and talk shows, especially comedic ones, do not lend themselves to nuanced explanations. I would think a former director of the Whitney Museum could do better than definite it solely as the artist’s intention. Yet that is exactly what David Ross, said former director of the Whitney did on the Colbert show when discussing the copyright issues surrounding Shepard Fairey’s alteration of Manny Garcia’s photo of Barack Obama.

First he says Garcia’s photo is not art because Garcia considers himself to be a journalist rather than an artist. Then goes on to say “Works of arts are essentially the function of intention.” When Colbert asks if Ross, as a professional in the visual arts field, couldn’t declare Garcia’s photo art, Ross disavows any ability to do so without Garcia taking his hint to do so. Which I guess means that all that pre-Columbian pottery on display in museums isn’t art because the potters intended them to be functional and not art.

Is this some new trend in arts ethics where you respect the creator of a work’s perception about what it is they have created? If so, it doesn’t seem like everyone has gotten the message. Ray Bradbury, for example, keeps insisting Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about censorship but people continue to insist–to his face–that it is. Of course, he intended to create a work of literature. Perhaps once you label something as art, people figure you cede ownership of the interpretation.

Ross doesn’t qualify his definition as only being in this case. He openly says that even if it is completely awful, something is arts by simple virtue of a creator’s statement. Actually, like all discussions of art, I guess it isn’t quite that simple. What if two people with song writing credit make contradictory statements about what they wrote? What happens when one person calls it art and the other considers it to be an ad jingle? Plenty of classical music appears in both television commercials and in concert halls. (I can’t find it at the moment, but I have a vague recollection of a symphony orchestra programming television jingles as a concert.)

But really, none of that explains why Ross was so cagey about his answers. If anyone has some insight, I would be interested in hearing it. In the meantime, here is the clip.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama Poster Debate – David Ross and Ed Colbert
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

When You Grab That Cute Ball Of Fur, You Also Get The Teeth

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Sometimes I wonder if my first entries for this blog were among some of the best because I seem to find myself drawn back to their topics more often than later entries. A recent piece [ed. original link is broken, updated with 2014 retrospective post] I read via Artsjournal.com by Melodie Bahan, the Director of Communications at the Guthrie Theatre makes me think back to the piece by Chris Lavin I wrote about early on. Bahan, like Lavin argues for better writing by arts journalists. Like Lavin, regarding the depth of coverage sports sports receive, Bahan notes that articles on movies provide a fair bit of background information to a reader while it is hard to discern between preview and review pieces for theatre.

Features about theater are often glossy, shallow puff pieces that are indistinguishable from reviews. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone say to me, after reading a feature story about a show that hadn’t opened yet, “Wow, great review in the paper today.” And the very sporadic stories that do get reported are disproportionately about money – or the lack thereof – and therefore focus on only the large theaters. Plus, because these stories are so sporadic and lacking in context, complex issues are boiled down to one line conclusions.
[…]
When the Playwrights’ Center or the Guthrie or Mixed Blood gets a grant, the papers run a paragraph culled from a press release announcing the grantor, grantee, amount and purpose. And then…? Our critics don’t have time to follow the money to see how it actually creates art because they have to write reviews of the six shows that opened this week, an interview with an American Idol reject who’s appearing in a touring production of Grease, another profile of that really gorgeous actress they’ve profiled twice this year, and a Valentine’s Day poem.

In this performing arts community, there are personalities and huge egos and unsung talent and incredible artistry and gossip and bad blood and conflict. Readers are being denied those stories because our writers are spending their time writing reviews that won’t be nearly as interesting, vital, or even as accurate.

Bahan points to the work of papers like Time Out Chicago as something of an ideal. (Though she admits she might not welcome their attention were it turned on her organization.) She cites as constructive contributions to the arts articles examining the causes behind the preponderance of Caucasians in Chicago theatre and the positive and negative impact of large commercial shows on the local theatre scene.

His stories are fully reported and sourced – nowhere in his stories did I read, “Some say…” or “The theater community is buzzing about…” – both phrases used by journalists who have no sources to confirm their own opinions. Real arts journalism is informative and detailed and interesting, and it makes theater relevant.

Artsjournal also carried a rebuttal interview with Claude Peck, senior arts editor for the Guthrie’s home town paper, the Star-Tribune. Peck acknowledges that theatre reviews are generally designed to advise people whether they should spend money on a performance or not. His most pointed criticism for Bahan was that it is difficult to do any substantive journalism because arts organizations, the Guthrie especially, deny them access.

He paused, somewhat dramatically: “Very difficult, for example, in the case of the Guthrie, which has had a long reputation of giving the barest minimum of cooperation for our newsgathering efforts.”

By this point, I realized this had become a February Festivus — a full-scale airing of grievances. Bahan had exorcised some demons about writers, and Peck was now unloading on subjects: If they plead for tougher journalism, they best not be hypocrites when their own phone rings.

“We recently did a story on Guthrie director Joe Dowling’s salary,” Peck said. “Melodie made it clear to me in a conference before the story ran that she and the Guthrie would officially participate in no way whatsoever, be of any help with any numbers for that story.”

He added, “I told her I didn’t blame her, and we would try to newsgather in any way we can. And fortunately, we found board members willing to speak on the record.”

After the piece ran, he says she wrote him an email “comparing that story to a Molotov Cocktail tossed into an already fearful community. And yet we did see the news value in that story: Dowling was making more than any New York not-for-profit theater director or any regional director — even discounting a one-time $100,000 bonus, he was at the top of the heap nationally. As the economy was heading into the shitter, we felt that was some news we wanted to write about.”

This all recalls portions of Chris Lavin’s earlier piece:

When compared to the open access a sports franchise allows, most arts organizations look like a cross between the Kremlin and the Vatican. Casting is closed. Practices closed. Interviews with actors and actresses limited and guarded. An athlete who refuses to do interviews can get fined. An actor or actress or director or composer who can’t find time for the media is not uncommon….How often have journalists either ignored or been kept from financial problems that plague many arts organizations until a “crisis” makes publicity — late as it is — unavoidable.

The parallels with Lavin’s observations go a little further in this case. Bahan criticizes the local papers for not sniffing out the massive financial troubles at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Peck notes that the guarded status the arts world maintains kept his paper from confirming any rumors of problems Theatre de la Jeune Lune had for quite some time.

I just thought the whole situation was a great reminder to us all that when we bemoan the lack of good arts coverage, we should be mindful that what we wish for is a double edged sword situation and not entirely the ideal we envision.

Programming Comfort Food

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I attended the season planning meeting of my block booking consortium today. As I suspected, many projects which would have been quickly picked up by the membership in recent years were deferred to other years because of financial concerns. One partner is going into a major retrenchment mode reducing their events from 10 to three or four. I left the meeting with fewer details solidified than in the past, in part because there were fewer tours available to collaborate on. There are a few dangling possibilities that I can pursue but I will have to work much hard to build a tour working on people individually than I would have in the meeting.

The situation was expressed best by one of the members. She spoke about her audiences orienting on “comfort food” rather than experimenting with new fare. While she isn’t moving toward more pop culture acts, many of the performers she is looking at have performed at her venue before or are similar enough to previous artists to provide audiences with a familiar reference point. Because of this approach, even though economics are driving so many decisions, she actually turned down the opportunity to present a less expensive, lesser known act that would be more intellectually challenging in favor of a much more expensive, better known one.

There were a couple positive outcomes to the meeting. A board member flew over with the director of his organization in an attempt to understand how the consortium worked. When a board member is motivated by financial uncertainty to involve themselves in some aspect of operations, it can be a iffy proposition. Negative judgments made after a short exposure to an unfamiliar process can be unhealthy for an organization. In this case, it was a positive experience all around because the board member asked a lot of questions and seemed to recognize that the problems they were facing were widespread and not particular to them or due to missteps by the director.

That was the second positive outcome of the meeting. For the first time since I have been a member of the consortium, people actually took the time to talk about a number of subjects. The people who attended the Arts Presenters conference last month spoke about the Marketing Segmentation Study Alan Brown from Wolf Brown spoke on. I was pleased, of course, since I am a believer in arts people taking the time to stay abreast of recent literature and generally stay informed.

There was also discussion of different strategies people are using in pricing, marketing and sponsorship. I took quite a few notes. The one idea I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of was providing show sponsors with the option of either having a full page ad in the program book or donating the space to a non-profit. That is a win all around since the sponsor gets points with both the theatre and another non-profit and gets to write off more of the sponsorship as a donation since they didn’t get the value of the ad space. The theatre gets the financial support and scores a few points with the non-profit and its supporters. The other non-profit gets increased exposure.

Is This The First Step To Better A Structure?

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If you haven’t heard yet, Michael Kaiser, President of the Kennedy Center has decided to turn the Center’s resources, knowledge and expertise toward helping arts organizations around the country weather the current financial turmoil in a program called Arts in Crisis.

I am very hopeful about this effort and I want to encourage people to participate either as a seeker of knowledge or as a mentor. Like many people, I have some reservations. My primary concern was if he and his staff were really equipped to do this. It seems like a big job. I haven’t really been impressed by ArtsManager.org which is also a service they offer. The discussion boards are barely trafficked, resource area doesn’t have much and job boards are completely empty. I can participate in more lively discussion on blogs and other forums without having to register. There are much better free job and resource sites.

On the other hand, Arts in Crisis effort might be closer to the Kennedy Center, and certainly Kaiser’s true competencies. There are few organizations in the country who have the resources and knowledge to act as brokers of knowledge in this manner. Frankly, if this is going to work Kaiser might do well to tap those other few organizations to get involved and provide guidance, resources and leadership in encouraging people to become mentors. This may mean that Arts in Crisis needs to leave the Kennedy Center’s direct control if another has the infrastructure to marry knowledge with need. The National Performing Arts Conference Conveners and Partners, for example, have databases full of arts professionals and have had more personal and direct contact with them than the Kennedy Center has.

My optimism and hope is that the current necessity is the mother of invention of a method of partnering, mentoring, information sharing and learning that arts and cultural institutions sorely need. If some strengthening network emerges out the road Michael Kaiser and the Kennedy Center have started upon, that will be great.

My concern is that for this to happen there is a lot of resistance to overcome. People might have fear of revealing weaknesses to local competitors or fear of mentoring a competitor only to have them use the good advice to eclipse them. It might be best to match up people who aren’t too far away to drive for site visits but distant enough not to be in direct competition.

There might be fear of helping another organization will mean neglecting your own. Or people might just not think they have anything to offer. One of my initial thoughts was that I wished I had the knowledge necessary to help–forgetting for a moment that I have contributed a respectable amount of constructive feedback for the PACE construction project.

The truth is, a lot of arts professionals with a great deal to offer may not have the first clue about how to effectively mentor and provide feedback to others in the industry. It will probably be important for the Arts in Crisis team to provide training videos and printed materials to assist in the process. My suspicion is that it may take a lot of poking and prodding from discipline service organizations and state/local arts councils to get people to imagine themselves as a mentor and download the materials.

As I said, the best of all possible worlds will be one where the industry emerges with greater strength and unity, confident and having proved they are a force to be acknowledged by governmental entities.

Going beyond that, the ideal would be for many organizations to form productive partnerships and then be able to go out and instruct others in their core competencies. One group might have developed a crackerjack presenting consortium, another might have a great method for developing and producing new works in partnership with higher education writing and performing arts programs, still another might have successfully leveraged their collective purchasing power to share legal, accounting and facilities services.

What will ultimately strengthen us is not depending on the expertise concentrated in a few central entities. It is going to be cultivating collective strengths
and having a system by which others can access the knowledge, even if it is as simple as having a list of the right people to call.

Is Audacity What Counts?

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In December I wrote that one of the initial speakers at the Arts Presenters conference was going to talk about how the current financial crisis evolved. Arts Presenters posted Jeremy Nowak’s conference remarks today. It is a little long, but if you are seeking an understanding of the forces and situations that came into play, he does a thorough job explaining things.

His suggestions on how arts organizations should operate in the new economic climate appear at the end of the piece. He talks about collaboration, emphasizing the economic and status quo smashing value of creativity and cautious management, but ambitious planning.

His observations under the heading “Defining What Counts” resonated with me most. (emphasis mine)

“A crisis brings an opportunity to define what is most important – the core part of what you do and what counts the most. In this sense, a crisis can be a painfully clarifying opportunity. A crisis also creates a political screen to eliminate legacy programs and initiatives that are hard to remove for historical reasons but can be justified at a point of financial duress. A crisis is a time to preserve what is core; organize your constituents (including funders) and define what efficiencies can be instituted.”

My first thoughts connected back to a story he told early on. He talks about how his organization is rebuilding a community made famous in HBO’s The Wire.

“Two weeks ago, in a magically irrational economic act, we purchased a liquor store that was selling alcohol to young people and functioned as a gathering place for drug distribution. We overpaid because its demise was worth more to us than the market value (and the owners knew it). We then added to this irrational act by publicly burning the liquor license – which we could have sold on the market for $75,000. At least it got us a good article and picture in the Baltimore Sun.”

My first thought was that this act defined what was important. It exemplified the an argument for investing in arts and culture in times of crisis. Even though there may be a higher cost involved, you pay it because it changes the dynamics of the community and improves the environment both directly and indirectly.

My second thought focused more on the sentence in bold above. Although Nowak meant it to be an internal practice, crisis very frequently provides a political screen to eliminate funding for arts programs in communities and schools. What it is that matters is not easily defined. The result is that often the trash trimmed away having been determined not to matter can very well be another person’s treasure.

Both Andrew Taylor and Greg Sandow have entries along these lines. Sandow specifically cites the oft used argument that if a government entity supports the arts, then babies will have to go without food and medicine. This seems a bit of a false choice because there are plenty of other categories of things you can choose to cut as well that can result in more people being fed. How many more children would be alive if legislators didn’t have franking privileges? Not a question entirely lacking in relevance given the NEA’s budget is generally measured as about two postage stamps per person in the U.S.

I want to make it clear that I haven’t really been a big proponent of some sort of arts bailout. I am still not convinced the sector is best served by jumping on the bandwagon. That said, I am beginning to think that the arts and culture industry ends up being treated thus because they are not audacious enough. There is never any money in the budget for the arts but we can go deeper into debt to bailout the banks, automobile companies and wage wars.

I will acknowledge that perhaps the production methods and business models the arts employ might be as behind the times as those of the automobile industry and are need of revamp. I have admitted as much throughout this blog. It really requires some cojones to take bailout money from the government meant to provide relief to debtors and pay yourself huge amounts in bonuses. Yet despite all the displeasure the U.S. citizens. and their president feel for this activity, the administration is still working their butts off to convince Congress to find a way to give them another infusion.

I know that arts organizations get “bailed” out by state, city and county governments and concerned citizens on a regular basis and in many cases, the organization is back asking for more a couple years later. But I can’t think of any who have been accused of so blatantly misdirecting these funds the way the financial sector has, much less on the same scale. The peril is genuine.

I begin to think that maybe we should be standing up and asking for a bailout. While the effort should be entirely serious, the ultimate goal might not be to get the money as to become less timid about asking. If the banks aren’t cowed by the idea of people being dispossessed of their homes and belongings, maybe we shouldn’t be deflected in our efforts by protests that saying yes to us means people will die or live in agony. I think we are all comforted by how empathetic arts and culture people are but I wonder if the recognition of that is being employed to manipulate us.

Actors Locally

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About a year ago I started thinking about doing a project that involved our organization’s immediate artistic community, artists throughout the county and as much of the public at large as we might be able to entice into becoming involved. Bringing different artists who don’t normally work together is one goal. Second, I was thinking that as much as I talk about how groups should offer audiences alternatives to sitting passively in a dark room, I should really put my money where my mouth is. I would also like to break down barriers members of the general public have about their artistic abilities.

When I originally began considering this I was thinking of bringing out an artist who was well-practiced at taking volunteers with little or no experience and producing a show in two days. My thought was to have a site specific show developed over the course of a week to ten days and then have a final performance. The assistant theatre manager suggested a local artist who could spearhead the same sort of effort. Suddenly the necessity of having someone who had experience putting a show together in a short time was less relevant.

It also has the benefit of being less expensive since I don’t have to house, transport and feed guest artists. Ultimately, I may end up spending the same amount of money, but it will be over a longer period of time which will hopefully allow a greater number of people to be involved.

I didn’t really plan it this way, but I think I may be presenting more local artists in the near future. I suspect when I attend my consortium meeting next week, I am going to find that my partners are really scaling back their activities. I will probably have fewer opportunities to partner with them due to scheduling conflicts and differences in our respective audiences’ interests. Buying local won’t be sustainable over the long term because there are few local artists I can present that people can’t see more frequently closer to the city core and drink alcohol while they are doing so. The strength I have is an ability, limited as it may be, to encourage and cultivate some new works.

None of the three artists I have spoken with over the last month about developing performances are new acquaintances. We have had relationships over the last couple years and we have reached a point where broaching the possibility of collaboration was logical. The tough economic times weren’t really a motivation. I haven’t suddenly decided to make due with the local talent because it has become tougher to bring people in from afar.

Anyway, I spoke with the artist today and she was just thrilled by the prospect. I could see the wheels beginning to turn inside her head. I presented the whole concept to her as pretty open ended. I know who I want to have involved, but until we have a core idea I can’t go convince them to sign on. As we spoke today, we realized we can really expand this project out a little bit. There is a possibility to have the produce of workshops, continuing ed courses and street fair craft projects created over the course of a year integrated into the final performance. Some possible workshops might even be designed to begin eroding anxiety and make people comfortable with expressing themselves with the aim of involving them in the final effort.

For example, we talked about mask making classes/workshops. Masks can be fun to make and wearing them allows people to be less self conscious. The artist related a story of how she brought a group of visual artists together to help her with a performance piece and they all protested they weren’t performers. Then they began to tentatively approach the masks and play with them. By the end of two hours the biggest problem was that people couldn’t decide which of the characters they had created for the masks to use in the performance.

Right now I am pretty optimistic about the future of the project even though I don’t know when it might start or finish. The woman with whom I spoke isn’t letting any moss grow on her and wants to get right to planning. We have a meeting on Thursday to look at possible locations around the grounds. I intend to post on the progress we make in the planning and implementation of our little scheme and share some of the challenges we face so that others might avoid them.

Tough Times Bring Not So Strange Bedfellows

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I have often written about what I felt was the very likely need for arts organizations to start partnering in some manner, be it booking artists or sharing the cost of bookkeeping. The approaching/continuing financial crisis seems bound to force some arts organizations into such arrangements if they want to continue operating. In the Chronicle of Philanthropy, there is a piece about the distress the Charleston Symphony Orchestra has been going through as a result of their past administrative decisions.

The one thing that grabbed my attention was a quote from the Coastal Community Foundation following the mention of Charleston Stage and Charleston Ballet Theatre having similar problems.

“For the longest time, each of the organizations thought they were alone in having financial difficulties,” says George C. Stevens, the foundation’s chief executive. “When they began to realize that, no, their partner down the street is also having the same challenges, then they started saying, ‘Well, how can we work together?'”

The organizations’ first step: a $30,000 joint marketing campaign to promote their holiday performances. The city of Charleston covered the cost of the campaign.

The community foundation created a Web site to complement the advertising, and media organizations threw in donated ad time and space on top of what was purchased.

The effort seems to have paid off. The symphony sold more than 90,000 single tickets to its holiday performances, exceeding the goal it had set of 76,000.”

I am not going to claim partnering will solve problems by increasing attendance, etc. In fact, there is no mention about how well the ballet and theatre did as a result of the effort. The entire story might not be wholly positive. Still, I applaud the Coastal Community Foundation for organizing and facilitating the marketing campaign.

I also won’t claim that I know the status of all my neighbors in the arts. However, I do work together with other arts organizations to put our seasons together. For all the areas in which I wish our partnership did better, I will say that I am aware of the troubles other arts organizations are having. Frankly, I would never have listed our frequent communications on various details as a benefit of membership but in light of these Charleston groups feeling they were alone in their troubles, I guess it does assist in placing one’s situation in a larger context.

About three years ago, Andrew Taylor had an entry on his blog suggesting arts organizations be open about things that went wrong with a program on grant reports. Though you might imagine other arts organizations in your community are just waiting in the wings like hungry wolves ready to drag you down at the first sign of weakness, the stakes probably aren’t really that high. Chances are you would find it beneficial to talk about some of the significant and not so significant challenges you face.

Also—it would probably help me personally if you all would be a little more open. When people email or ask me how things are going, I am fairly open about some of the challenges we face in a general sort of way. I talk about the annoying and sort of troublesome, potentially cause for concern, but not so dire stuff. I get the sense from people’s reactions that I sound like Marvin the Paranoid Android. Okay, well maybe I stray into cynicism a little. The whole romantization of martyrdom a Catholic upbringing affords you and all. But really, once people realize half the stuff they are experiencing is actually the status quo, franker folks like me don’t come off as such downers.

Letter to President Obama

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The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

There are many calling for you to create a cabinet level position for arts and culture. There are certainly many factors involved in such a decision. There is a necessity to exhibit how the country values arts and culture by providing leadership, but also revising the way we fund these disciplines. You may not be aware, but the section of the tax code under which many non-profit arts and culture organizations operate, 501 (c) (3), does not mention the arts and culture at all. Despite this, it is fortunate that the generosity of the American people, businesses, foundations and endowments flows to arts and cultural organizations under the auspices of this section of the tax code. Whether or not arts and culture find a greater representation within your administration, you can do a great service to the community by creating an improved, more focused way for the arts to acquire support.

For a sense of why the current method of funding the arts is in need of change, one might read John Kreilder’s “Leverage Lost The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era.” In the third section of the piece, Kreilder notes that the theory employed by the Ford Foundation was that support they provided could be leveraged by stimulating donations from other sources. This same approach has been used by the National Endowment for the Arts, many state arts agencies and some private funders.

But as Kreilder notes:

“Any student of biological, physical or economic systems would immediately recognize the flaw in the logic of funding leverage, as it has been practiced not only in the arts, but also throughout the nonprofit sector. One of the fundamental tenets of systems studies is the “free lunch” principle: no system can depend on the unlimited growth of resources. The leveraged funding strategy of the Ford era can be likened to a chain letter, a Ponzi scheme, or any other pyramidal growth system. The initiators of chain letters and Ponzi schemes often claim that, for a small effort or investment, a virtually limitless return will be realized, and though initially this prophecy may appear to be feasible, inevitably all such arrangements must fail because resources are finite. In other words, there is no perpetual free lunch. Ultimately, funding leverage will become unsustainable.”

Five years ago the Independent Sector issued a statement calling on foundations and endowments to shift their focus to long term broad support of organizational core programs rather than the short term project support prevalent today. The Independent Sector felt this short term emphasis keeps non profit organizations focused on reinventing their programs to comply with narrow guidelines rather than investing their energy in building institutional capacity.

If your administration were able to provide leadership and incentives to encourage longer term, core support of non-profit organizations, it would be a boon for the entire sector. But for non-governmental funding of non-profits to thrive, there needs to be greater opportunities both in the way these entities can incorporate themselves as well as the mechanisms by which they can raise money. The origins of both these solutions will be found in the tax code.

One of the ways this might manifest is by providing increased options for the formation of non-profit entities. Among the possible processes by which a company might form could be as hybrids between the current 501 (c) (3) and for profit methods of incorporation. It might be necessary for such an entity to pay more taxes than a current non-profit but such arrangements will expand the avenues by which people can pursue serving myriad constituencies while facilitating opportunities for greater self-support.

As for diversifying the means for garnering support, Douglas K. Smith had an intriguing idea a few years back he termed, Dynamic Deductibility The piece he authored explains it in detail, but simply, a person would buy X amount worth of shares in an organization but doesn’t take a deduction until he sells the shares. If the share value goes up, he takes a bigger deduction than he would have had he donated directly. If not, he takes a smaller deduction.

The primary way this would differ from the stock market is a non-profit would get money every time the stock changed hands rather than the one time infusion a for-profit gets at its initial public offering. This option doesn’t exist as yet because there are no laws creating or governing such transactions. Certainly there is much to be considered in how the tax code and laws might be written to accommodate such an arrangement and guard against abuse. When I first read the article, I wondered if the activities of non-profits would be substantial enough to attract investment interest. Having since learned of the financial instruments in which people were investing that lead to the current financial crisis, I am convinced these organizations offer more than enough tangibility. Donors employing this avenue to support an organization realize returns in the form of both observing how the non-profit is able to serve its constituencies and tracking how the organization is valued via its shares.

My hope would be that smaller non-profit organizations who did not feel they could garner significant interest on their own, or even larger organizations looking to enhance their value, would come together to offer shares in partnership with one another. I am an arts person so my immediate vision is of visual and performing arts organizations cooperating to increase their shared value. It doesn’t take much effort, however, to also imagine social work and health care organizations working together to improve the value of their shares by improving the lives of the communities they serve.

I hope you have noticed, President Obama, that while our endowments and savings, small as they were already, have shrunk severely we in arts and culture have not asked for a bailout. Certainly it has been suggested. It is difficult not to want a portion of the billions of dollars being distributed. Yet the loudest cries right now aren’t for you to increase the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, but rather to create a cabinet position. We don’t want a bailout as much as we want the esteem and respect of our government and our countrymen. We want to be better organized and educated so we can achieve and serve with greater efficiency.

What I ask is in the same vein. Assist us in becoming more viable and integral contributors to the economy, the national cultural and social identity.

Most respectfully,

Joseph Patti

What Price Cultural Leadership?

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There has been a real big push in the last month or so between articles and email exhortations to have President Elect Obama appoint a cabinet level secretary of culture. As I read these things it really appears that no one has really stopped to consider what the implications of such a position might entail. There was an article that appeared right after the idea came up at the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) this summer. I have spent about 8 hours over the last three days, alas to no avail, trying to find it because it made a convincing case for being wary about instituting such a position. It might be that I am misremembering when it appeared and that is preventing me from finding it.

From what I do recall of the article, one of the points it made was that the effort would cost the President a huge amount of political capital because there is no national popular support of the arts. Education, Health, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, etc can all have cases made for their importance and people will go along. Government support for the arts has often been a contentious issue disproportionate to the actual funding it receives. It certainly isn’t a reliable survey method, but when you read comments on the articles about a cabinet level culture position, those against pretty much unanimously mention not wanting their tax dollars to go to the arts. If the Obama administration pushes for the creation of this position, there is going to be a great deal of public debate on the topic.

Now I will be the first to admit that short of some transformative incident, national support and appreciation for the arts will likely never emerge on its own. I don’t anticipate there will ever be a good time to institute this position so there may be no point in waiting. If the next phase of the economy is going to be creative, then we certainly want strong leadership in that direction. Arts and Culture could absolutely benefit from stronger central leadership and advocacy. I would welcome a scenario where everyone working in an cultural organization was better educated and equipped, working collaboratively with other entities and enjoyed the confidence of having support on the national level.

A Secretary of Culture would also benefit the country internationally since we don’t have a central person with whom foreign officials of similar portfolios can meet. There would be much rejoicing if Visa processes for artists were facilitated and that pernicious 30% tax on foreign performer income was adjusted.

The thing to remember is that the agendas of the government, no matter how sympathetic an administration might be to one’s cause, is unlikely to be synchronized with the agendas of the arts and culture organizations of the country. It is one thing to disagree with the initiatives of the National Endowment for the Arts because the worst impact they can have on you is to decide not to fund you. When you have a person making cultural policy decisions for the entire country, that is a different matter. And if you stepped up to call for this cabinet level position, your cooperation will certainly be expected.

There is the question of whose interests will this person predominantly represent. Both Hollywood and folk artists are home grown and national treasures, but money buys access and influence. Will the Secretary of Culture press for greater freedoms of artistic expression or fight to preserve and extend copyright and intellectual property protections at the behest of large corporations? Will live experiences and interactions with art be valued or more virtual experiences like television, film, internet and video games?

If one thing is supported, other areas end up lacking by simple default. What happens though if an administration decides something should be actively censored or undermined? Things can be declared as unrepresentative of the culture of the United States or simply un-American and we will have asked that someone be placed in the position of doing so.

Don’t think it will happen? Last year British Culture Minister, Marge Hodge, criticized The Proms of…well actually being too British and not inclusive enough of the multi-ethnic backgrounds of the country. Yes, multi-cultural focus is to be desired, but it could have easily gone the other way and people were still miffed at her comment. In 2002 another British culture minister, Kim Howells, stated the contenders for the visual arts Turner Prize had produced “conceptual bullshit.”

It is one thing if a senator stands up and criticizes a work of art but quite another when someone whose job it is to eat, drink and sleep arts and culture and theoretically knows what they are talking about makes damning statements.

Finally, don’t forget, there is no guarantee arts and cultural institutions will get any additional money. The budget can be cut regardless of the title the nation’s top arts official holds. In fact, for a number of years Congress will be able to claim they quintupled the arts budget without grant awards increasing a penny because all the money will be directed to the bureaucracy of this new Department of Culture.

So the question is, are you willing to accept the possibility of all this? As cynical as I may sound here, honestly as soon as I read about the NPAC proposal to have a cabinet level position, my first thought was of Gilberto Gil. In my mind, he is the Culture Minister to emulate in terms of striking a balance between the interests of the creators and consumers and promoting creative expression.

But I am also cautious. Given how we have discovered that the Justice Department and Inspectors General of many government offices have been subverted and suborned in recent years, there are no assurances anyone can offer me that my gravest concerns can be warded against.

I guess for me, it comes back around to where I started this post. If there is enough political will to make the position effective and credible to accomplish all the positive things we hope for, then I am generally willing to accept the potential for the negatives.

What Price Success?

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A recent revelation that Guthrie Theatre director Joe Dowling makes over $680,000 in salary and benefits in 2007 has a lot of people grumbling. As of this writing, there are 156 comments on a Star-Tribune article on Dowling’s pay. Some commenters defend the salary in the context of the Guthrie being at the top of the theatre game as opposed to the local sports teams who are not performing too well and get paid much more and receive public funding for stadiums. Others are saying his pay is ludicrous and that the theatre should not be receiving any more public money if they can afford to pay him that amount. Of cited is a desire that proceeds of the tax passed last month to benefit the arts not go to the theatre.

Dowling is purported to be the highest paid theatre director in the country. I don’t have my passwords to the latest salary surveys with me to check but I will assume it is correct or nearly so. A couple years ago, I asked if a musical director of a symphony was really worth X times as much as the musician. (I can’t seem to find the entry, so it might have been another highly placed position in a symphony.) Looking at the same comparison on an annual basis between Dowling and an actor or perhaps ticket office clerk, I would say Dowling wasn’t worth it.

However, looking at Dowling’s history at the Guthrie, that is another matter. He has spent the last 13 years there. Twelve of those years the theatre has been in the black. He retired $1.8 million in debt, expanded audiences and guided the organization to construct a new facility on the Mississippi River. ($100,000 of his 2007 salary was a bonus for doing so.) In this context, he is someone the board of directors will want to keep around. Whether they could do so for less might be the question but they would certainly be fools to immediately pay whomever eventually replaces him close to his departing salary. I daresay there are few in the country capable of directing the Guthrie at the level it currently operates.

As something of a comparison, this past November it was revealed that the highest paid university president in the country was David Sargent at Suffolk University. It raised quite a ruckus when it was learned he makes $2.5 million when the median salary for presidents is about $500,000. There were some extenuating circumstances like the fact he has worked for the university since 1956 and has been president for the last 19 years and never taken a sabbatical in that time.

Is longevity and dedication worth that much? Is it worth that much in light of the rising cost of college educations and the declining value of personal assets?

Given the tough financial times, people are especially sensitive to any indication people receiving public monies are squandering it. There is some indication that Dowling is responsive to the needs of the organization. According to the article when times were tough back in 2003, he took a voluntary 20% pay cut. Now assuming he was making around $300,000 at the time, (I don’t use Guidestar often enough to spring for the Premium membership necessary to view 990s from that far back.), that is a $60,000 cut.

For a lot of theatres, that number probably represents a position or two. Given his most recent salary, the same percentage would probably represent four or five positions. In that context, you can see why people commenting on the article are suggesting public and personal funds be directed toward the less affluent arts organizations. It is people’s right to spend their money where they feel it will do the most good.

I would argue though that the Guthrie Theatre isn’t just any ordinary theatre. It’s founding has a place in theatre history at the start of the residential theatre movement with the intention of being an alternative to Broadway. It is ironic then that the first salary comparison the article makes it to New York. The Guthrie is meant to set a standard, and by many measures it does, but Broadway is apparently still the gold standard. So if the Twin Cities and surrounding region feel the organization has lived up to the promise of it’s founding and has cultivated a high quality product for audiences without commercial success being the sole driving force, they ought to be proud and support it.

This is an entirely different issue than how much the people responsible for creating this state are being paid to do so. There are far too few great theatres around to damn the organization for how much the director is being paid. It is perfectly valid to be identify the Guthrie as a source of Minnesotan pride and ask the board to engage in a conversation about the appropriateness of the leadership’s salaries. I am afraid it would get lost in the noise of a hundred other issues that spawn objections, but it would really be exciting and interesting to have someone lay out the case for why the pay is justified.

Because you know, everyone is focused on the issue of why he gets paid so much more than everyone else for the work he does. No one in the article or comments asks why it is everyone else puts up with getting paid so much less for the work they do. That is the conversation the Guthrie should start.

N.B. – January 6 – Editorial in the Star Tribune defending Guthrie board’s decisions regarding Dowling’s salary. Additionally notes that in the larger world of non-profits, Dowling comes in at #14 in the Minneapolis area.

Information You Can Use- Grants and Foundations

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I don’t know if there is something in the air or just a lot of grant deadlines coming due but there were quite a few funding opportunities listed on the WESTAF website last week. I thought I would post on some of the opportunities that caught my eye. These aren’t all of them. WESTAF does good work and I don’t begrudge them their subscription fees which are pretty reasonable given the number of opportunities they list. Based on my assumption that everyone needs money and opportunities these days, it seems a moral imperative to post this information.

Google Grants
The first one is for free advertising for your non-profit from Google. It is similar to their Ad Words service though you don’t get as ready access to keywords and your ad has to be focused on your organization’s mission which is to be expected.

This is actually only one of the services they offer to non-profits. Check out the aptly named, Google for Non-profits for more information.

PennPAT
I have to say, I love PennPAT. They provide nice support for artists and organizations in the Mid-Atlantic States. I just wish I lived in the Mid-Atlantic states! However, no matter where you live, PennPAT will provide assistance with travel costs from anywhere in the US if you are traveling to see one of their artists perform. From the way I read the eligibility requirements, you could be living in Oregon and traveling to California to see one of their artists on tour. Or you could attend their annual showcase in Pennsylvania.

Wachovia Foundation
To receive support from these folks, you pretty much have to live in an area served by Wachovia Bank because they support non-profit organizations with which their employees volunteer. Focus is making artistic opportunities available to people with low to moderate incomes. If you think you are eligible, check out the details. At the very least, it is good to know the bank encourages their employees to volunteer with non-profits and then backs it up with some financial support. (Hey, I also don’t live in a Wachovia state!)

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
As the foundation name suggests, they are primarily focused on contemporary visual arts. However, they do occasionally support performing artists “when the visual arts are an inherent element of a production.” The scope of what they support in visual arts is pretty broad and includes scholarship as well as exhibitions, catalogs and creation of new works. There is also an award for defending the First Amendment right of artists.

Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs
This one is actually a program of the U.S. State Department supporting “cultural exchanges around the world as part of the nation’s public diplomacy strategy. ‘The Department’s agreements support academic, cultural and professional exchange and training programs as a means of seeking mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries and to promote the free exchange of information and ideas.'” If you want to be part of promoting international understanding, you may want to check out the website. I am actually not clear how performers position themselves to be considered since the project proposals apparently originate from what I assume are U.S. Embassies abroad.

The Dana Foundation
The Dana Foundation supports programs that provide professional development opportunities for arts specialists and professional artists who teach preK-12. They are looking for people who have created a curriculum for teaching the teachers essentially. Bad news is the are interested in supporting project originating in 50 mile radius around NYC, Los Angeles or Washington D.C. OR in rural areas. Not so good for those folks in Chicago and Dallas, et. al. but there are still a lot of people able to qualify from rural areas.

National Education Association (NEA) Foundation
The NEA you may not be as familiar with. These folks are also interested in supporting education, but don’t have a geographic limit. They also don’t have a subject area limit so you are potentially competing with everyone from every public school and public higher education institution. On the flip side, this provides possibilities for interdisciplinary and college prep projects.

The Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund
“A program of Creative Capital, supports original new work in all disciplines and traditions of the live performing arts. The goal of the MAP Fund is “to assist artists who are exploring and challenging the dynamics of live performance within our changing society, thus reflecting our culture’s innovation and growing diversity.” I haven’t applied for this but some groups with whom we closely partner have. It is a pretty competitive from what I hear.

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
The NEA we all know. Whether Barack Obama will be able to make good on his promises to have a robust arts policy while he is fighting to get the economy stimulated to the point it can be described as tepid remains to be seen. Still, seems like the time to stand up and advocate and apply for some funding.

Tough Times Follow Up

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Arts Presenters posted the audio from the conference call I sat in on two weeks ago.

At the end of my last entry, I referred to cryptic notes I had made to review information. One of the notes was “write about the Boston organization.” This was in reference to Sandra Gibson’s discussion of World Music/CRASHarts in Boston. The organization is sort of shaking up the type of events they offer and how they market them. According to Gibson, they have been cutting a lot of programs over the last 10 years due to increasingly constrained budgets, but they knew they had the ability to expand their reach to younger audiences. They hired a young man who started them on the road to adding back programs. One of the things they have done is began to collaborate with other area organizations and have added 50 concerts in the last year.

This new hire was the impetus for the programming but the fact he has been promoting the events in unconventional ways is really causing conflicts in the organization. The marketing department is anxious about not knowing how to message the events. They feel they should be doing press releases and making other promotional efforts. World Music/CRASHarts lists eight different venues around Boston at which they have events so it is understandable that clear and organized communications would be highly valued. The executive director has started conversations about the situation and the staff has decided to take a chance and market these 50 concerts employing Facebook and other alternative means.

Gibson says they are seeing 60% sell outs (not sure if she means 60% capacity or 60% of the 50 events have sold out. I assume the former.) close to the performance date. As a result they are changing their income projections to reflect an expectation of cash flow later in the process. They are seeing a crossover of audiences who usually respond to subscription campaigns and mailers who are getting their information from these alternative online sources.

In the context of my last entry, this seems like a good example of an organization that has questioned their assumptions about their programming and promotion methods. World Music/CRASHarts hasn’t gotten a huge infusion of cash, yet they have expanded their programming rather than contracting it as they had in the past. Though it was a source of anxiety, they also put some effort into less tested methods of communication to promote their events. At the end of the season, the new direction may turn out to have been unsuccessful. With some luck and discernment, it may provide lessons about how their approach should be refined as they move forward. The former process is unlikely to be sustainable, especially as it apparently involved an increased series of cuts.

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