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State of the Arts

Finding Some Direction In Tough Times

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Last week I participated in a conference call sponsored by APAP on the impact of the economy on the presenting field. The call was about an 75-90 minutes long and covered a fair bit of ground. They were supposed to post an audio file of the call this week but haven’t yet. Once they do, I will link to it. As you might imagine, there is quite a bit of concern about the topic. So much so that the opening plenary speaker at the conference will be an economist who will speak on how the current crisis came to be.

A lot of the participants were looking for guidance on possible solutions and ways to cope with the stresses they were feeling. There was a lot of constructive advice given but one of the earliest caveats issued was to resist making decisions that might provide short term relief but damage your organization’s reputation and goodwill over the long term. One example given was trying to dissolve contracts instead of trying to find areas to negotiate costs down.

Word gets around the industry so breaking a contract with one agent/artist can have repercussions for your organization very quickly. In the past month, I have conversations with three people who have moved to a different employer. If I had had poor relationships with any one of their former employers in the past year, word would have easily spread to take care in dealings with me.

Among the suggestions for coping with the current economic situation were examples that many arts organizations are now looking at collaborating, partnering or just plain merging operations. Some are looking at increasing their family programming since people are looking to do things closer to home. Someone on the call suggested that one of the great values of the arts is that, properly positioned, it can help communities deal with tough times and even build communities with others who are having a similarly tough time.

One term that kept coming up in the discussion was Porter’s Five Forces. (or Wikipedia entry) I could, and probably will, do an entirely separate entry on how this applies to the arts. If you have the time to read it, it will put some of the concepts brought up in the conference call in context.

One of the suggestions that was made was to examine the problems your organization has and determine if they really have their origin in the economic problems of if they are pre-existing. Were shifts in local demographics, values and preferences already leaving your organization behind? Was there another organization that had entered the market that was doing what you do, only better?

Something to look at is refocusing on the core competencies of your organization. By which the speaker meant, the elements that were central to what the public valued about your organization. The speaker (sorry, tough to keep track of people on a conference call) reiterated the idea that given another organization might now be doing a better job than you, it might be time to shift your focus.

Someone emailed in a question for the panel about how you innovate in times when there aren’t a lot of funds to support such activities. The answer that was given was to find a new path to achieve the mission. Shift the organization’s pathway away from business as usual. One should be prepared to question the underlying assumptions that you have about every aspect of the business from what your audience and community values to the effectiveness of the business model and organizational structure.

This strikes me as requiring a lot of bravery and resolve. With all the problems that an economic down turn brings, do you really have the time to devote to effecting this sort of change? Though frankly, in good times, do you really have the incentive to do so? In better times, you want to avoid the type of radical changes that may send you into a death spiral. You also have so many things to point at that are apparently working there is no need to closely examine the underlying assumptions.

Addressing other portions of the conference call will have to wait until they post the audio. The rest of my notes contain semi-cryptic messages to review parts of the session whose interesting details came too quickly for my note taking abilities. I am pleased that APAP has taken steps to inform and educated its constituency.

Theatre of the Future Gives Me Ulcers

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I happened upon the YouTube video below by Imagination Stage. I surmised that it was part of a contest of sorts held by Theatre Communications Group for organizations to make a video about the future because it is organized in the TCG YouTube account and most of the videos seem to deal with the future of theatre. Also, I have a vague recollection about the contest being listed somewhere.

At first I was a little depressed by the world they portrayed. Then I realized they probably have a pretty accurate view of how things will be. The opening where the girl is getting poor grades, most likely because she is involved in theatre, is actually pretty comforting because it show that some things won’t change.

At first I was a little put off by the idea that she was learning acting from a hologram, especially given that the hologram was pretty over the top. Of course, I figured holograms and virtual reality would be part of the future of theatre back when I started the blog. On the whole, I thought the video was well done and the details of the user interface they portrayed was spot on.

For a moment I was also a little turned off by the idea that acting instruction was structured as a video game with levels to advance through that people would try to gain shortcut cheats through.

Then I thought, we should be so lucky to have people that invested!

I was also heartened by the fact the young woman in the video wouldn’t even consider giving her friend a shortcut hint. There are no shortcuts to hard work, after all.

What disturbed me the most though was the concept that a production would be subject to the caprice of whether talented people chose to log in or not and doing so at the last minute. The video shows the young woman manifesting in a theatre and the director saying they hoped she would log on, tossing out an auditioner who was less qualified for some reason. I assumed she hadn’t obtained enough points/levels. Then the young woman rehearses as a hologram opposite live people and performs as Juliet at the opening the next night.

As I acknowledged though, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility. If audiences are waiting until the last moment to buy tickets, could not artists delay the decision about which production they wanted to be involved with until the last minute? If performers have the ability to manifest themselves as holograms in 2028, opportunities become available across the entire country and perhaps the world.

As long as there are more actors than roles, then there will always be competition. But then competition for elite performers also becomes extreme. Get great reviews for your performance as King Lear in Madison, WI one night, you could receive an offer to play Lear in Hong Kong the next night and actually be able to do it. What worries me is the ulcer inducing environment this will create for arts managers.

But damn, wouldn’t bring a real sense of excitement and unpredictability to the arts. The most notable companies won’t be those who can maintain a stable cast, it will be those who can produce a consistently high quality product regardless of the vagaries of the cast.

Must Remember: Innovative, Not Creative

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I have been over at Artsjournal.com reading the entries in the Arts Education discussion. The entry that gave me most pause was one by Eric Booth today where he notes,

“people in business have asked me if we can just stop using the word “art” because they stop listening. They then confessed they are not really interested in the word “creativity” either–they kind of glaze over–they like the word “innovation” because it is the product that they really care about, getting new business-ready products as a competitive advantage.”

A Rose By Any Other Name Is Just As Fluffy
This is not something you want to hear if these same business people are the ones involved in the philanthropy decisions for companies. Booth makes some interesting points answering comments in that entry which expound on this idea. He says business people feel creativity is a “fog-sculpting word that fluffy artsy people use.” They prefer innovation because that is the result they seek. They see creativity as being on the path to innovation and they will tolerate the use of the word as long as we can trace the path for them.

I couldn’t help thinking that innovation is easily as nebulous a word and only derives its power from the fact they repeat it back and forth to each other. Recall these are the people who were tossing “synergy” around as a desired outcome a few years ago.

Direct and Indirect Arts Encounters
As I was reading the multiple entries on arts education, I was reminded of a locally produced show on the public radio station I heard early last month on the topic of technology use in the classroom. Now there are many options for including art in a student’s experience from a direct experience with a performance or having the students perform/create themselves. On the other end of the spectrum is including art in instruction of other subjects. Making those hand shaped turkeys while teaching about the first Thanksgivings, for example.

Focus on the Objectives, Not the Tools
What I saw as applicable from the radio show about using technology in the classroom is on the latter end of the spectrum. The people on the show talked about the importance of focusing on the learning and not the device. One of the guests who is involved with a local foundation said that they wouldn’t provide grant money for a project seeking to use cell phones in the classroom because the focus was on the technology rather than the learning. The example he gave of what they would be interested in supporting was a program that focused on how students learn and how to develop critical thinking skills. If the teachers decided to have students collect and record information as part of this process and realized that one of the best methods available would be by having students utilize cellphones since they always had them handy as they go through their day, the foundation would be interested in funding this sort of endeavor.

Given that I am in the business of offering live performances, my first vote is always going to be for live interactive experiences with art. Watching or participating in some sort of activity is my first choice when it comes to arts education for any demographic or age group. You will never achieve any real aptitude either in understanding or execution if your interactions with art is slipped in between the pages of some other subject. You may develop appreciation, comfort and familiarity which these days is not to be discounted. But I want people able to enjoy interactions with art.

Wherein I Contradict What I Just Said
Now all that being said, I am going to do a little reversal. What seemed to be the core of the discussion regarding technology in the classroom was the idea that you shouldn’t define what you need to be doing in the context of popular technologies, rather how the technology can facilitate what you really need to be doing. That is my basic point when I suggest people not jump on adopting every new technology that becomes vogue. I think there may be some validity in taking this approach when advocating for arts education.

Arts Prescriptions
Right now a lot of the arts education is promoted along the philosophy of “You must have Mozart or you brain will atrophy.” This is the case made for in utero exposure as well as arguing music will raise math and science grades. The prescriptive approach to arts advocacy doesn’t really benefit us in the long run. Saying that you have to integrate cellphones into classroom instruction is much the same approach. You don’t need to use cellphones, you need to teach critical thinking and the cellphones are a tool. You can use the arts to teach critical thinking. Heck, the arts don’t exist in a vacuum today and they certainly didn’t in the past. The subject can be used to teach literature, history, politics, etc,. I did well in history, but I would have been all the more interested had I learned that someone commissioned a work to tweak the nose of an enemy or rival.

I will admit I haven’t had a lot of experience seeing it implemented, but whenever I hear people talk about integrated curriculum whether it includes arts or not, it sounds so clunky and unwieldy. The way it is described sounds very prescriptive and evokes an image of alternative subject matter inserted in a textbook on handwritten sheets of looseleaf because an administrator decided that this was the new way it was going to be taught. I am sure there are very successful programs out there on which to model an approach but I am entirely unaware of them.

Everyone Is Happier With Shoes That Fit Well
What the arts have to do is convince educators and decision makers who aren’t familiar with our disciplines that their instruction does not necessarily have to be defined by a need to shoehorn the arts in but rather that the arts can be a tool that integrates smoothly into achieving their objectives.

Of course, if you see an opening to champion direct arts instruction and after school activities, push, push, push for that!

Art Is Cake

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Thinking Big Thoughts
We were closing a production this past week so I was occupied with that project and didn’t have too much time to create entries. However, as I wandered through the lobby between acts, I did have time to ponder various subjects. One of the things I thought about was issue of arts as a way of cultivating various goals within community vs. arts as a profit making venture. I am constantly thinking about issues related to whether arts organizations should exist in their current form, the type of fare they should be offering, what philosophies they should be embracing in an age of technology and a whole host of related ideas.

That is a pretty big concept to tackle, thus my note in yesterday’s entry that I didn’t think I could and meet my obligations last evening. I continued thinking about it today while catching up on the blogs whose feeds to which I subscribe.

It turns out that Don Hall and Adam Thurman both addressed this topic two weeks ago. I won’t reiterate what they and the commenters discussed at length.

Well, except for one person.

Too Much Cake
The point made by Nick Keenan really summed up the problem we face. You can argue judgments about art are a result of snobbery and relativist visions of quality and I think it is important for these conversations to continue. But to me Nick seems have cut right to the heart of why the environment is unsustainable.

Here’s the problem: On an industry-wide scale, equating popularity with quality is a dangerous game. It fuels volatility and kills innovation, which can often lead to a lack of flexibility in the industry…

To put our playing field another way, the Jukebox musicals and reality-TV-fed downtown spectaculars may be wildly popular, but they are like Cake and Frosting. Eat too much of them, and our patrons will get a stomach ache and associate that stomach ache with the theater. We need to serve people a well-balanced meal as well as the meal that they want to buy. To me, that means innovation as entertainment, rather than fluff as entertainment. They are not generating new artists and new forms that will lead to connecting with new audiences. The R&D for that new audience solution is being done in our storefront theaters, but especially the largest theaters in our community (Broadway in Chicago) are foregoing a great deal of commitment to this R&D so that they can focus on profits.

Nick makes no claims that the storefront theatres are creating works that are more or less worthy to be called art than the product presented by the large spectaculars. He points out where the investments in the future are being made which to me is a good rational for supporting those places.

Constructive Use of Free Time
One observation I wanted to make that no one really preempted was that despite how broken (and increasingly going broke) the existing system of funding the arts is, it seems to me that since about the beginning of the 20th century the arts world has been given the breathing space to discuss these issues on a large scale.

This may be news to those actors, musicians and visual artists who are waiting tables, watching kids and working as customer service reps at insurance companies for as their first through third jobs in order to support their creative activities.

Artists may have always complained about audiences having low tastes since the Greeks but they were still beholden to patrons, be they aristocracy or townspeople gathering around their wagons and in town squares to earn their living. They had to performed what was valued to survive.

It wasn’t until relatively recently in the last century or so that those who were doing the performing (as opposed to scholars) had an opportunity and breathing room to stay in one place long enough to ponder and discuss these things among themselves and begin to comment and theorize on the state of things as a group. The Internet has merely closed the geographic gaps and allowed the conversation to become more widespread.

This freedom and flexibility was funded by Carnegie, Rockefeller and the Ford Foundation. But the model they helped introduce doesn’t seem to be viable any longer. The next model may manifest itself out of the conversations these entities enabled. It is important to cultivate and participate in them.

Preparation for Conservation on Arts Education

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The topic I was going to blog on today got me thinking so much I don’t think I can coalesce my thoughts and attend to the obligations I have this evening.

I did want to mention, if you haven’t noticed that next week Artsjournal.com is hosting a debate on arts education. Being a once and hopefully future educator, I believe in preparing for discussions. In addition to pondering the issues which face the arts in relation to education while indolently laying about after Thanksgiving dinner (or industriously scrubbing the dishes.) You may also want to prepare by reading arts education blogs like Richard Kessler’s. He will be participating in the debate next week.

I also suggest my Inside the Arts neighbor Ron Spigelman’s Audience Connection’s class podcasts. Education of artists is part of arts education and the podcasts are a primary source for the questions students are being asked and are asking. Don’t be put off by the number of podcasts listed. Each one is only about 4-5 minutes long. In fact, it it is better to experience them in the context of the original entries which are here.

I always find these conversations Artsjournal hosts to be engaging and thought provoking. Between the number of people generating entries and those commenting, there is a lot going on daily. Make some time to read every day otherwise you may be overwhelmed by the amount you need to catch up on and only skim. Arts education is a subject that deserves more than skimming.

We Got Answers, You Got the Questions?

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Everything Needs A Little Organization
I learned a semi-important lesson about injecting a little organization into seemingly low key events. We had a large group make an advance request to meet the cast of our current production after the performance. The group organizer didn’t think the older people would want to interact with the case, but was pretty sure the kids in their group would want to. I talked to the director and between us made all the required arrangements with the cast.

Essentially, the plan was to have the group come down to the edge of the stage after the show and the cast would come out to talk with them. We were open to any other members of the audience coming down to speak with the cast as well but didn’t announce the opportunity.

Before the show the group leader came to me again and double checked that their group could meet with the cast. She told me how keen they were to meet the cast. I went backstage and verified the arrangements with the director and stage manager.

Come, Talk To Us!
Well come the end of the show, the cast came out and some people came down to talk with them but most hung back and talked with other friends in their group. The cast had come out prepared to answer questions about the production and ready to interact with young people and were disappointed that the interest wasn’t as advertised.

I began to suspect that perhaps the group leader and a few others were excited at the idea of their young people meeting the cast but hadn’t actually measured or cultivated any interest in the kids. Nor did they really encourage people to come forward. It seemed the group leader was happy with the experience because those who wanted to talk and get autographs had the opportunity to do so.

My thought is that I should have talked to the group leader a little more to learn what she expected and to express how we envisioned the encounter taking place. With kids involved we obviously desired something more spontaneous than a “raise your hand Q&A” but still wanted some effort expended to corral people in our direction.

Questions Are The Hardest Part
Ultimately, I think the whole concept of a Q&A with audiences may be flawed. The majority of the time it the experience seems to be a disappointment for the artists involved. The source of this disappointment seems to be the questions being asked which tend to revolve around the basic discipline any performer must cultivate; things like how they remember all their lines or movements.

The source of this problem is that people generally don’t know what to ask. You can probably trace this all the way back to the lack of arts education in the schools without too much effort if you had a mind to. It is a matter of lack of exposure and understanding about the process. Audiences ask how long people rehearsed. Performers are dying to talk about how things evolved and were decided over the rehearsal process.

Why Does That Sound So Familiar?
Unfortunately, that conversation often has no meaning for audiences. In a Q&A for a Shakespearean play, an actor remarked that the choice was made to perform the show in the standard North American dialect. Even though the patron had just heard it for a couple hours, she asked the actor to say something in the dialect and was rather disappointed at how unremarkable it was not comprehending that the “standard” label referred to how common it is to hear people speaking that manner.

We Will Answer Your Questions…
One of the easiest steps to take would be to list possible discussion questions in the playbill for people to ponder while they watch the performance. Of course, there is no guarantee people will read that part of the playbill or will think at all. I have seen a couple theatres include these questions in their programs. I only remember attending Q&A sessions at one place. It didn’t eliminate questions about learning lines but the quality of questions seemed higher. I can’t say if it was a result of the discussion prompts or the general quality of the audience members being better than at other places.

Perhaps one of the elements integral to making people feel more involved with performances is really, really, really pushing them to ask questions. This means having someone with answers. Given that designers and directors move on after a show has opened, stage managers, actors and technicians are busy wrapping up after the performance any not always available, this may mean having a separate person with an intimate knowledge of the performance available in the theatre or lobby immediately after the show to fulfill patrons’ desire of instant gratification.

..But Please Don’t Text During the Show
They may also be tasked with answering questions via online forums later as people digest what they have seen. Or perhaps they are following up with answers to questions they didn’t know the night before. They may even end up fielding text messages during a performance. Not the ideal situation from the performer’s point of view, but perhaps highly valued by the patron.

Rare Relaxing Residencies for Arts and Culture Managers

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Always on the look out for programs that benefit arts managers, I came across the following listing offering residencies to arts and cultural managers at a location in Key West. For some reason, they don’t promote the opportunity on their website. You need a subscription to reach the website on which it was listed. But such is my desire to make people aware of the opportunity, I am reproducing selected portions of the listing here. If you are interested, you can contact them and they can regale you with all the benefits of their facility.

Artists and Managers in Their Natural Environment!
I am aware of numerous organizations that provide residency to artists but this is the first I have encountered that offers them to leaders and administrators. Since you would theoretically go alone, it wouldn’t be a staff retreat where you engage in group strategizing or team building activities. It might be beneficial for administrators to mix with creative artists for whom they would have no responsibility. There would be no pressure to rein in, budget money for or contract the services of the creative artists. It is not often arts managers have an extended time in an arts environment free of these considerations. It might actually help managers and artists develop healthier attitudes toward each other. From my experiences in performing arts and from what I have read on blogs and articles, I don’t think there is an arts discipline where the relationships aren’t at least guarded.

Anyhow, here is the listing. Hopefully one of my intrepid readers or their friends will have the opportunity to engage in a constructive stay.

Mull Management in Mango Tree House

IT’S NOT A JOB, IT’S A CREATIVE ISLAND ADVENTURE The Studios of Key West, an emerging creative community at America’s Southernmost Point, seeks cultural managers and innovative arts administrators for 1 to 2 week residencies in our Mango Tree House. This residency requires no work, no problem solving, no meetings or presentations, and no reporting of any kind. Directors, program officers, and Alliance of Artists Communities’ leaders: Tell us your dates, plan your travel, and think Zen.

A SHORT TROPICAL RETREAT FOR ARTS ADMINISTRATORS As a companion to our longer-term Artist-in-Residence program, this short-term stay in Key West’s Old Town can include project research, program planning, networking and collaborating; or it can simply be a retreat-like hermitage on a warm and libertarian island, away from the usual workaday environment. TSKW is currently considering the short-term residency needs of academics, cultural managers, critics, instituional officers, museum professionals, and other professional people involved in forging high, low, popular, and obscure culture. Time and space in Key West will provide new influences and fresh experiences, and an appreciation for life here in the Conch Republic, 30 leagues North of Havana, America’s Mile Marker 0, Cayo Hueso

[…]

The Studios of Key West is proud to offer a handful of 1 to 2 week residencies for America’s Cultural Managers and Arts Administrators each year. If you have time off to travel to the Southernmost Point, and are interested in a singular retreat opportunity, please contact us for details on how to proceed.

IS THIS A VACATION? Yes, but it’s also a new form of professional development, in a place that will welcome and honor your presence, at a new kind of creative community. Learn about us here www.tskw.org, then contact Eric Vaughn Holowacz Executive Director at eric@tskw.org

THE FINE PRINT Cultural managers, arts administrators, artistic directors and producers, program officers and curators who can get away from their busy roles for a week or two are welcome to express interest in the TSKW Cultural Manager Residency. Participants must be able to cover travel to and from Key West, as well as some living expenses while on the island. […]

Bullets and Hooks For The Arts!

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Amid all the press about the Obama victory last week and the extremely slim margin of votes separating Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota, you may have missed the news that Minnesotans passed a constitutional amendment to increase the sales tax 3/8 of 1% to fund the cleaning and maintenance of Minnesotan lakes, parks and wildlife areas and to fund the arts.

Arts Go Fishing And Catch Some Money
You may be wondering, as I was, how the arts and culture became a part of the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. According to a couple sources, sport fishermen and hunters found a common cause with the arts. On the Pioneer Press website, Chris Niskanen writes (my emphasis)

“A small part of the general fund (about $10 million) goes toward arts funding (out of the state’s $34 billion budget), but about one-third was cut during the state’s budget crisis in 2003. The hunting and fishing community at first opposed arts being added to the amendment, but saw arts supporters had similar arguments for funding. The alliance ultimately helped the amendment pass the Legislature and, perhaps, will help it pass on Nov. 4.”


Bait Your Hook With A Powerful Lure-Arts and Culture

But the quote I really liked came from an article Artsjournal.com linked to in which columnist Jay Weiner writes,

“As it was, the pioneers of the amendment idea — the sportsmen with bullets and hooks — were wary enough of the arts being included … until they saw the political power of the statewide arts and cultural organizations.”

My first thought upon reading this was that if this is true, the Minnesota arts community should be the envy of the rest of the country. Every state should be lucky enough to have an arts community with enough political clout to help get a constitutional amendment passed. Of course, that influence didn’t magically appear, the state arts community would have been working on cultivating it over the course of years and probably decades.

If you have any ambition of trying something like this in your state, read Niskanen’s piece which addresses the arguments for and against the amendment.

You may also want to read Weiner’s article which addresses the apparently mocking suggestion that the Minnesota Vikings should have gotten on board the amendment so they could get a stadium. Weiner points out first that as fervent as sports fans in Minnesota are, they never seem to rally behind their teams politically. The other thing he mentions is that berating the arts and parks people perpetuates an environment which keeps sports fans from forming coalitions. Some interesting thoughts on the whole from a sports writer.

Work For Obama? Yes, You Can!

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Get Your Plum
The presidential transition team has set up a website at Change.gov where you can actually apply for a non-career position with the new government. There is a link to the transition directory in the lower right hand corner to give you an idea of what to expect if you apply. Even though it is a similar color, it apparently is not the famed Plum Book though you probably can use it to get a sense of the general department for which you may want to work.

I mention this in hopes some passionate people interested in government service will step forward for the NEA, NEH and other cultural and educational departments. There is certainly a need for competent people to enter public service. A foundation endowing the Wilson School at Princeton University is suing the school for not preparing enough people to enter government.

What You Should Really Look At
Even if you have no ambition to work for the government, you may want to contribute at the American Moment: Share Your Vision link. I am sure there are a lot of people with millions of ideas who will contribute via this page and anything we send may get lost in the crush. Still there is a better chance of something happening than if nothing is said.

The page provides the ability to upload a photo or video. My immediate thought was that if someone knows of a great program out there they should create a well written document supported by images and video. Share your vision for an arts education program based on something that works in at a school district in Montana. Talk about the way the local government partnered with industry to lead community investment in that arts center overlooking Lake Erie. Tell them about your idea for changing the tax code to provide arts organizations with other alternatives to the 501 (c) (3) structure. I had no intent of submitting anything myself, but now as I write, I begin to have some ideas.

Where Is The Love?

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Where Is That “Yes, We Can Spirit?”
Well, whatever optimism people may have felt about Obama becoming president-elect, it apparently wasn’t enough to offset pessimism over the economy. Not only did the Dow drop 480 some points but I got two separate calls about problems with some tours. Even though the difficulties occur after the performers leave my venue, the whole situation reverberates up the line in the form of inquiries about how flexible I am on a number of matters.

Where Is My Partner?
Then I get a call from one of my partners about a third tour. Given everything that has happened until now, I thought her organization might cancel on a tour too. My fears were compounded by the fact I can’t reach her all morning and suddenly her phone is ringing busy for hours on end. Has she left the phone of the hook so she doesn’t have to tell me the bad news? (Then why did she call me?) Imagine my relief when I realized there was a problem with entire organization’s phone system that was causing it to ring busy and when I learned she had misplaced her copy of the tour contract I am lead partner on and had a simple question.

Where Is This All Going?
When I wrote about the possible impacts of the economic downturn a few weeks ago, I half imagined I wouldn’t have any practical interaction with any of the consequences I was mentioning. If anything, I thought it would be me negatively affecting other people–though there is still plenty of time for that to come to pass.

Where Is the Money!
One semi-positive occurrence this week. The amount the state arts foundation grant panel elected to award us was more than we expected. The bad news is that I found out at 4 pm Monday that the revised proposal was due this Friday. So there was a little bit of a rush since there are two layers of bureaucracy which must review my proposal before it could be submitted and the didn’t work on election day. Of course, the whole process is embraced by the caveat that I may get no reward for my expeditious handling of the paperwork if the governor decides to defund the state foundation.

I also have the sneaking suspicion that the larger than expected grant award is based on the assumption that few will be able to meet the fast deadline and if there is any money to disburse, there will be fewer people to split it between.

Yo Mama Says Mozart For The Win!

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Well my esteem for Stephen Colbert was nigh upon worship already due to his encyclopedic knowledge and slavish devotion to the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, but he may have gone up another notch last night. Ah, who am I kidding, the Tolkien knowledge pretty much eclipses everything else. But last evening’s show was pretty impressive since he had Yo-Yo Ma as a guest. The interview begins at about 13:30. Unfortunately, there isn’t a separate clip of the interview so you have to advance the slider. Though there is one of Yo-Yo Ma’s performance after the interview.

What’s the big deal you ask? Yo-Yo Ma is pretty much everywhere. That may be true, but is he on a show that with the audience demographics of the Colbert Report for over a third of a 21 minute program? What made the incident important in my mind was the recollection of Dana Gioia’s graduation address to Stanford University’s Class of 2007 where he noted popular culture once celebrated the achievements of public intellectuals and artists making household names of people like “Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead…”

He commented that the blame doesn’t flow in one direction, “Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.”

So when I see Yo-Yo Ma on Colbert’s show joking with Colbert about the variety of ways people pronounce his name, (including Yo Mama), and referring to himself as being Joe the Cellist in some people’s eyes, I get a little optimistic about artists’ ability to converse with general audiences. I am encouraged when Colbert asks questions like, “Are the candidates addressing the concerns of Joe the Cellist” (here are their positions, by the way) and noting Yo-Yo Ma’s involvement with a variety of projects like the Silk Road Project because it raises general awareness about the importance and reach of artistic endeavors.

Whether it was intentional or not, Colbert addresses the whole issue of classical music being elitist and artists being aloof from the general public which opens the door to Yo-Yo Ma talking about the necessity for humility and collaboration. Colbert also asks if we are winning the classical music wars since the Chinese are studying Mozart and we aren’t clamoring to learn the pipa. Ma replies that it is Mozart that is the real winner. Colbert revisits the idea of classical music being elitist by asking if there are any good cello works about American themes like “pick up trucks and kicking ass” This segues into a request that Yo-Yo Ma play a song for Joe the Truck Driver. I don’t know if the piece he and his friends play is necessarily for Joe, but it also doesn’t conform to any classic music orthodoxy. In fact, I hope the look on Yo-Yo Ma’s face while his bagpiper yawps and hoots at him makes all the average and not so average Joes curious.

Attitudes won’t change overnight but increased awareness through conduits like the Colbert Report can help in the battle. Despite the self-involved bluster his television persona exhibits, Colbert has used his position to advance causes he believes in. One of his Lance Armstrong parodies resulted in a $171, 525 donation to charity.

One comment Dana Gioia made in his Stanford address that I totally forgot about until I went back to link to it, “When a successful guest appearance on the Colbert Report becomes more important than passing legislation, democracy gets scary. No wonder Hollywood considers politics “show business for ugly people.” Given all the potential fodder for comedy during this election season, I wouldn’t be surprised if the significant time devoted to Yo-Yo Ma wasn’t intended to advance an agenda and perhaps put Colbert’s influence to work for culture rather than politics for one night.

Colbert has begun to have musical guests on his show more often. Perhaps it is time to get in touch with his talent booker and send some intriguing performers his way.

Theory Crashes Into Practice

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Over on Fractured Atlas, Kamal Sinclair posted some of the responses they have been getting while researching the professional development needs for artists. The focus of the comments in this particular entry revolve around the frustration BFA and MFA students feel when they realize their formal education taught them how to be creative but not necessarily how to exist as a practicing artist and navigate their respective industries.

The entry contains about 10-15 quotes from graduates reflecting on how well or poorly their training program prepared them for careers in their fields. Hoping to provide incentive to read the entire entry, I will resist quoting some of the ones that resonate strongest with me here.

I will note that according to Sinclair, in the course of their research Fractured Atlas found that the problem may be that the training programs are slow to recognize the pressing need. “…sources imply that universities and colleges have a long history of resistance around educating artists in “the business.” The philosophy is that art should be taught for art’s sake.”

Sinclair lists some of the suggestions the respondents had about how to improve the situation. Again, you should read the entry to learn more. Fractured Atlas’ blogs contain a lot of great material on a daily basis and if I lose readership to them by pointing you there, I will still feel victory has been achieved.

I can’t help but cite one of the suggestions that leaped out and smashed me over the head with a frying pan– “Eliminate the myth of “getting discovered.” I tell you, that is just replete with all sorts of complexities. As much as training programs may perpetuate this, it is inherent in society at large. It manifests in shows like American Idol which allows people to believe they have a reasonable chance at becoming famous–the odds of which are only slightly better than winning the Powerball lottery.

Hopefully implicit in that comment was the idea that success can be defined as more than just a Broadway role, recording contract or big gallery show. Those that decide they are just biding their time in their current job until they are discovered are closing off other potential avenues for success. The current president of Valparaiso University went to grad school for acting and directing, for example. Seventeen years and three colleges ago when he was teaching me acting, I would never have figured he would end up as a university president. While a number of doors doubtless opened for him, I am sure he worked hard to position himself near those doorways.

Getting The Dead To Blog For You

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Thanks to an interview with librarian on my local public radio station, I became aware of a fascinating blog written from beyond the grave. The grandson of William Henry Bonser Lamin is publishing his grandfather’s letters home from the trenches of WW I exactly 90 years after they were written. The first letter, written on February 7, 1917 was published on February 7, 2007. His grandson had to make some allowances in his publishing schedule since 2008 was a leap year and 1918 wasn’t. But he remains true to all gaps in letters whether due to loss or his grandfather being home on leave. Only the Lamin family knows whether the senior Lamin returned home or perished in the trenches. All misspellings, grammatical errors are preserved.

While the same element of a suspense over an unknown fate may not exist for some of the more famous artists in history but the basic idea might be one arts organizations could use either over the course of a season or in the weeks or months leading up to an event. If the letters are accessible, the organization could post them in some manner appropriate to their plan. What was Tennessee Williams writing in his correspondence while he was writing A Streetcar Named Desire? Or Van Gogh when he painted Starry Night? He had committed himself to a mental hospital at the time so it is sure to pique some interest based on that fact alone even if there is nothing untoward in his letters.

A release plan that was paced slow enough not to overwhelm people or make them feel it was a burden to follow but frequent enough to give people an excuse to return to the website regularly could be welcomed by patrons of all experience levels. This could be a good alternative to attempting to have performers and creative teams contribute to a blog during rehearsal and performance periods. A reproduced letter with notations that the untimely death of a sister referenced by a composer were the primary motivation for a symphony will probably motivate a respectable readership.

The biggest negative I could see if this became a common practice is that those organizations with money and prestige will be able to do more research and gain exclusive access to estate letters. But the less affluent arts organization can still flourish by employing more publicly available materials in a manner that resonates with their community.

Little Bird, Will You Sing For Me?

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Short entry today because I am feeling under the weather. I wanted to briefly reflect on my experience appearing on my local public radio’s fund drive.

First of all, we made the goal for the hour which was $500 more than the goal was last year. Even though I am not a public radio employee, I was feeling a little anxious as the end of the hour was approaching and we were still a little ways from our goal. It would be a blow to my pride if they didn’t succeed while I was there. Not only did I want what I was saying on air to be an inducement to pledge, but I was worried that the tickets I was letting them give away as a gesture of appreciation wasn’t being valued by the listening audience. In the end, all the tickets to one of our performances were snatched up.

One of the most interesting things that happened during my time there was that we were getting pledges from people in California and Louisiana. I thought maybe they were from some homesick people listening online. It turned out that the phone volunteers for that hour were self-professed computer geeks and were appealing to people on their extensive Twitter network to pledge. So we had people making $50 donations who never listened to the station based on their relationship with the phone volunteers.

Last month on my Inside the Arts’ neighbor blog, Scanning the Dial, Mike Janssen wrote an entry, “How Classical Stations Could Use Twitter.” I guess this is another use to add to the list. Of course, the use is hardly specific to radio stations. If you and your patrons and donors have an established network, be it on Twitter or some other social network, you might employ this tactic yourself. Renewals may have to be through the same friend rather than your development office because the person won’t have as strong a personal connection to your organization. But this fact will go that much further in convincing your local supporters that their efforts on your behalf matter and are appreciated.

Whatever You Want To Call It, It’s Still Bad News

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Contracting Contracts

Well, worst fears and suspicions are beginning to play out. The arts organizations in my little corner of the world plan to cut back activities next year due to tightening finances. Planned renovations and constructed additions have be scrapped or postponed indefinitely. One bit of good news is that at least one of my partners has been assured their organization’s line of credit won’t be impacted by any of the changes in the credit market.

The bad news is that given the downturn in entertainment spending, decreased endowment values and the probable decline in giving due to shrinking real estate and stock values, there is going to be a lot of retrenchment going on in the next year or so. At my consortium meeting today, some of the larger groups said they are going to cut back in the number of performances they present and are going to look to artists to accept smaller fees. One person’s board is more closely scrutinizing the choices being made and is requiring more detailed and complete information before committing. (One silver lining, some of us already feel we have previously cut back to about as far as we can go.)

Performers Get Short End

I am afraid that as frequently is the case, the performer is going to be the one that suffers most. It isn’t even a case of if you won’t cut your price, there are dozens of others out there doing the same thing you are who will. There were a handful of groups that we decided today were mutually exclusive. They were so close together genre wise that we could only ask one or the other. There was no talk of having alternatives in case one of them didn’t play ball. I can’t speak for other booking partnerships, but everyone in my group was approaching the decision making processes sincerely and not planning to leverage one group against another.

Fewer Acts Doesn’t Mean Diminished Quality

My concern is that if three out of ten groups approached won’t lower their prices, it will be viewed as all for the best since the organization wanted to cut back in programming next season anyway. So not only will the original artists not make money, but their competitors won’t either. And as far as the arts organization and its audiences will be concerned, the high quality of the offerings were maintained in tough economic times because the other seven agreed to reduce their fees.

Again, I want to emphasize, this is just one possible outcome I am anticipating. Today’s meeting was very preliminary. Most artists fell at or below our traditional fee ceiling and we weren’t looking to reduce the rate if it fell inside our normal comfort level. There were a number of groups that we were hoping would negotiate into that comfort level. Really, this is the case every year. Though I mentioned asking ten groups to reduce their fees in the previous paragraph, that is because it is a nice round number. This year there are probably five. About three we know are longshots and two are reasonable expectations. Most years if people don’t come down, some partners bite the bullet and accept the higher than average fee because they want to present the group. Next season, I am afraid the motivation, and funds, to pursue these exceptional artists will be gone.

I hate to attribute the best intentions to my group and cast others in a negative light, but I would imagine there are others who look to gain every advantage they can muster.

Burden of Promotion

Another disadvantage I could anticipate based on my experience today is that a much greater burden to promote oneself or group will now fall upon the artists. YouTube may provide a cheap way for people to access information about you but there is a cost to putting together a nice quality video of one’s work. We were looking at a DVD today of a well regarded performance group that was very poorly filmed. This wasn’t a poorly shot video by a friend put on YouTube, this was material they were handing out officially to represent them.

Websites have proved to be a great way to distribute electronic press kits (EPK), but someone has to put the kit together. Gathering reviews, scanning them and transforming them into Acrobat documents for easy download takes awhile.

Artists are also hurt by having an unresponsive agent. Problem is, since performing arts centers are talking to agents first, the artists have no idea they need to be bugging their agent to respond to inquiries. Artists, if you feel comfortable doing so, have your very most up to date tech rider on your website. Make sure your agent is sending it out too. I can’t tell you how many times performers show up and say, “Oh you must have the old rider.” Having access to the EPK and rider password protected doesn’t help if you have a non-responsive agent controlling the password.

The reason why all this is important is that some organizations and their boards are examining the saleability of groups very closely. The more evidence you provide that you appeal to the community they serve, the easier it is to make a decision to engage your services. Some boards, I am sorry to say are scrutinizing potential costs very carefully which is why an updated rider is so important. Better they be alienated by a contract before they sign it than to have the organization try to scrimp on costs come performance time.

It Isn’t Enough Their Endowments Lost Money

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I don’t know if it has any repercussions on arts organizations yet, but the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) reported yesterday that Wachovia Bank had resigned as a trustee of Commonfund, which manages funds for non-profit organizations including universities, endowments, healthcare organizations and performing arts organizations. In resigning as a trustee of the Short Term Fund (which it should be noted, is only one of many funds), Wachovia froze the assets of nearly 1000 universities. At first people could only withdraw 10% of their funds, now it is 26% but access to full funds isn’t expected until 2010.

The problem for colleges and universities is that many of them use the fund for operating expenses, including payroll. There is concern that they will not be able to pay employees or bills in the next few weeks. Financial Week says Commonfund has been having a hard time finding a trust bank to take over given that most of the candidates have either failed in recent weeks or are being bought up by others.

While many arts organizations have had their finances profoundly impacted over the last few weeks, what I have read has mostly been in relation to endowments rather than short term funds. The endowments Commonfund administers are in different funds which are apparently not impacted. Given that colleges and universities had placed their money here on the belief, as Financial Week quotes, it was a conservative, safe move, there is a good chance some arts organizations may have invested there with the same intent to use it as a source of operating funds and are looking at some tough times ahead.

At least one college representative said they were okay for now since they had recent the tuition receipts to draw upon. Unless an arts organization has a good subscriber base or has received a large grant recently, they may not have the same security available. Regrettably, many organizations who didn’t invest in this particular fund may find it difficult to conduct business due to the reduction in value of investments and endowments and, of course, reduction in patronage from groups and individuals who have faced these same events.

Must…Listen..To..Classical…Music…

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About a month ago I was attending a cocktail hour with other arts professionals a gentleman expressed concern to an orchestra administrator over the fact that he didn’t get classical music. He figured that as he got older, one day classical music would click for him but it hasn’t and he didn’t know why.

The answer the administrator gave didn’t really impress me. It is a tricky question to be sure, but she didn’t seem to be trying to convince him to attend or even offer suggestions for how to prepare ones self to attend. But I think a lot of arts organizations, regardless of genre, fail in this regard. That wasn’t what I wanted to address today anyhow.

Even though his comment carries the implication that classical music is only for older people, it also suggests that he sees enjoying the music as a sign of maturity. He seems to feel it is part of his development as a person and is a little concerned it hasn’t clicked for him. That he wants to like classical music may be reason for optimism if it is an indication of a sentiment that permeates the culture.

If it does, then that means there is still something that classical musical organizations can appeal to if they can figure out how to address the unease of not liking something you figure you should. The guy I was talking with was only 40 something so addressing the concerns he and his cohort have can go a long way in skewing median audience age younger.

I really don’t know what the answer is. I am essentially in the same camp of wanting to like the music more but not really able to get invested in it yet. Not finding the answer will represent a missed opportunity. This assumption that one should become more involved with classical music as one gets older may only be generational and a result of values passed to us by our parents. There is no guarantee that this idea is sitting as a subtle compulsion in the subconscious of the next generation.

How Will Your Organization Live On?

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In the past, whenever I would get anxious about whether a marketing plan would work, I would always think about New Coke. If ever you think that someone who is smarter, has a bigger research and marketing budget, more personnel and resources could do a better job, all you have to do is look at new Coke to realize having these benefits at your disposal are no guarantee of success.

Now as we watch Bears Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG Insurance, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Washington Mutual encounter troubles we are basically provided with more contemporary examples of how this is true.

Of course, even if your marketing budget is 1/100,000,000,000th of Coke’s, the stakes and disappointment if your plan fails are not equally exponentially less than they experienced. In fact, since there are fewer people to distribute blame around to, your experience may be greater.

It can also take far fewer and far less severe mistakes and mismanagement to lay your organization low. The events of the last few months have brought an all to familiar reminder of organizational mortality. If there is one realization most non-profit arts organizations embraced long before the for-profit world, it is that there is no such thing as “too big to fail.” A great many arts organizations have experienced “donor bailouts” and come back strong while the cash infusion allowed others to linger awhile longer before finally closing.

The reminder for many arts organizations is that they don’t have any intrinsic right to exist. There were far more people invested in the continuation of the aforementioned corporations than have ever willed the continuation of an arts organization. As a result some of these companies have been bought out or merged. But as of the time of this entry, it doesn’t look as if anyone is going to step forward to save Lehman Brothers. There have been some merger partnerships between arts organizations in the past to save one or the other of them (first that comes to mind is Asolo Repertory Theatre and Sarasota Ballet circa 1997). But for many arts organizations, that option doesn’t present itself.

As many organizations of every type are wont to say, a organization is not the physical presence as it is the people and ideal that it represents. If anything is going to remain of an arts organization after its demise, it is that. If an arts organization is smart, they will devote a lot of energy to cultivating and sustaining their image and ideal throughout their existence.

Pam Am Airlines once spanned the world regularly serving every continent except Antarctica. The airline failed in 1991 and subsequent attempts to resurrect air service under that name likewise failed. However, the cachet of the name is still powerful and currently appears with the familiar logo on the side of railroad freight cars. The company even named their quarterly reports (of hopefully their success) Pan Am Clipper, the terminology the airline used for their planes. And people still hold hope that the airline will fly again. In a Forbes article last year, a Miami attorney was looking to license the name for an airline flying internationally.

Few arts organizations have that sort of name recognition on a national level. But it is possible to generate value for an arts organization on a local or regional level. Given that it is quite possible we are in a transitional stage for the way the arts are presented and experienced, many arts entities may go out of business over the course of a few years. The name may re-emerge as with Pan Am, with a different physical manifestation altogether but with intangibles like the core identity, quality and values transferring intact.

The Asolo Theatre moved operations from a theatre that originated in Asolo, Italy into a theatre that originated in Dunfermline, Scotland. Arena Stage moved across the Potomac River into Virginia and no one doubted they were the same organization. Identity is not tied to physical places. Now if either went out of business and reemerged as a video game developer or communications company, their new customer base would probably have few overlaps with their old one. But there would still be a association with quality entertainment experiences lingering in people’s minds which can have positive results for the new companies.

Inciting Incidents

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I have recently been reminded that it is often a small incident rather than a major one that coalesces people into action. There is often no way to plan and maneuver these events into happening. Rosa Parks sits on a bus. Surely there were other people who did the same thing and met with consequences. Why then? Why that day?

When our new assistant theatre manager started a year ago, he preferred to work at a desk I hadn’t anticipated him wanting. Because we stored often used files and binders in and around the desk, I have often had to ask him to move while I retrieved it. We didn’t have time to reconfigure things until this summer which is when I suggested alternative layouts a number of times. But he never really seemed motivated to do anything. Then Wednesday I asked for his help in running an internet cable through a hole in the wall. Thursday morning I came into work and the whole office was reconfigured. I have gone into work in jeans the last two days to continue with the clean up and rearranging.

Why was the running of that cable the spark that got things going? I have no idea. I would have preferred this all to happen over the summer when I had more time. On the other hand, it provides a welcome break from reviewing last month’s expense and payroll reports.

I had the same thing happen in an online game in which I help create scenarios for players. My attempts to spark interest with subtle and blatant promises of lurking menace and untold riches have gained limited involvement at times. However a group of organizations decided to talk about setting minimum pricing for their wares and the whole game went up in arms with battle lines being drawn between erstwhile allies. I was flabbergasted at the retributive activities and threats that emerged almost immediately between people who had been friends for years and years.

It is pretty clear to people in the arts world at large that a change in the way we do business is both necessary and imminent. The problem is that no one knows what form the change will take or how to bring it to fruition. This is not to say that people aren’t trying. Arts professionals are thinking, talking and doing all sorts of little things that are hopefully greasing the skids for what is to come. But if the change is going to come from an unexpected quarter, by definition there isn’t a lot anyone can do to control its emergence. Despite the best intentions and efforts to facilitate a transition, it could be a rather bumpy ride if people are concentrating their efforts in the wrong areas.

Well At Least The Musicians And Administration Are Getting Along

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This Sunday, Honolulu Symphony principal conductor Andreas Delfs expressed some strong sentiments about the way his organization had been treated by the city. The symphony performs in the city owned Blaisdell Hall and was bumped out last year by the production of The Lion King which did not help their tenuous financial situation in the least.

Said Delfs in the Sunday newspaper article,

“I’ve never worked with an orchestra that was so good and that got so little respect from its city. I’ve never seen a city treat a major cultural and educational asset so poorly. And I think it’s been a long tradition — I don’t want to blame anyone in particular — of taking this orchestra for granted and not realizing how good it is. The people who make our lives difficult don’t really know what we’re doing.”

One of the problems the symphony is facing is that the city is limiting how far out they can schedule dates which the symphony says prevents them from engaging guest artists who arrange their appearances years in advance. Delfs says it is because the city is skeptical about the symphony’s financial stability. Another thing that makes the symphony anxious is the looming threat of another extended run of a Broadway show that might displace them from the performance hall, and in all probability, from existence.

The symphony sent out a letter to its supporters asking them to contact government officials. The letter reiterated most of the details in Delfs’ interview and expanded on their perspective of the situation.

“Blaisdell Concert Hall was always intended to be the home of the Honolulu Symphony.In fact, it was one of the reasons for its construction. The presentation of symphony concerts was a major contributing factor to its architectural design. There are by-laws allowing for the Symphony and other local performing arts organizations to have preference in securing their dates.The City and County of Honolulu continues to negotiate to bring in acts during the Symphony’s prime season. By our rental agreement, the City is required to offer an alternative venue when the symphony is bumped out of Blaisdell Concert Hall.The alternative venue offered to the symphony is the Waikiki Shell which requires amplification, provides no outdoor coverage or protection for audience or orchestra, and is unsuitable for live classical symphony performances.”

However, according to an excerpt they quote from The Honolulu Symphony: A Century of Music by Dale E. Hall, the symphony doesn’t enjoy the same relationship with the city that other symphonies do.

“The Symphony is not a “favored tenant,” a status particular performing groups sometimes enjoy in city charters. According to the standard rental agreement, the auditoriums director “may give preference” to Hawaii-based non-profit organizations, but has “full authority” in scheduling, taking into consideration “a diversity of events” and “possible financial return to the city and the overall benefits.”

This is unfortunately the latest of many problems the symphony has faced since I started writing about them three years ago. It is something of a shame because unlike the recent situations in Jacksonville, FL and Columbus, OH, the Honolulu Symphony musicians, administration and board seem to be getting along okay. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is the first time a principal conductor has gone to bat for the musicians during the difficulties of the last few years. If any have, I doubt they had Delfs’ pluck.

(Though I wouldn’t doubt my Inside the Arts compadres, Messrs. Spigelman and Eddins would be equal to the task, I hope they never have to face this situation.)

I can appreciate the position the city is in. The face a choice between the income from a 6-12 week run of a Broadway show versus the uncertain future of an organization that has been facing an uncertain future and having a hard time paying the bills for a number of years. (Disclosure: They owe my facility money too, though not so much that we would refuse to rent to them once they clear their account.) It has been a long, anxiety filled period for a lot of people. I have a lot of sympathy for them.

Audience Theory

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As wonderful an opportunity it was to influence staff workplaces, those of us in the PACE advisory group still understood that the success of the building would be in how comfortable audiences were interacting with the space. When I was preparing to travel to Bellevue, I was mindful of Andrew Taylor’s observations wandering around the streets of Denver at the National Performing Arts Conference that

“block after block of glass or stone walls at the street level, many of them without a door (at least an open one) for hundreds of feet at a time. As a result, there are very few people populating the street, stopping to talk with each other, people watching, lingering, and realizing they’re in an urban streetscape of diversity and energy.”

I approached the facility design with the intention of insuring the building appeared engaging to foot traffic since there are quite a few residential complexes being constructed nearby.

The importance of physical design was actually reinforced for me as we walked to the meeting with the architects. About four-five blocks from the future PACE site, we passed a small area next to the sidewalk with hedges and benches. There was a sign noting that the area was open for public use. I would have never known that because of the way the hedges and a short set of ascending stairs lent it a sense of being private property. Because of this they had to essentially grant people permission to enter.

But to back up a little…. I had mentioned earlier that Alan Brown made a presentation on the value of live performance. Obviously, it is in relation to the audience’s experience that his thoughts are most applicable. It wasn’t until after his presentation that I realized how significant a moment in the design process it had been. The architects and project manager had never really had these ideas addressed in connection with their work before and so were pretty attentive and taking notes. The same was true for a couple board members who were present.

Of the concepts he covered, a number of them caught my attention. The first was his suggestion that interactive experience the Nintendo Wii offers predicts one day being able to virtually perform with Pilobolus. Since he is the first person I have met who has advanced this idea since I began promoting it in 2004, he instantly endeared himself to me.

He also addressed the situation where people were waiting longer and longer to buy their tickets. He spoke of a focus group where he basically discovered young people were afraid to buy a ticket until the last minute because committing to one option closed the door on all the other possibilities. I wondered if this was an element of Generation Y’s problem with decision making.

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

It seems like a tall order to design a building to provide this experience. However the impression I took away from what Brown had to say was that people at every age really desire an experience at an intermediate stage between listening to a recording and fully attending a formal concert. He described this as a place to drop in and hang out and get more information. One suggestion he made which he certainly did not represent as encompassing all possibilities was having kiosks in the lobby where one could try all sorts of new music. (I imagined something like the listening stations in record stores.) Having a DJ mixing in an area surrounded by comfortable lobby furniture.

Alan Brown’s presentation had a tangible effect on the discussions that followed. The building design already allowed for many of the activities he mentioned so conversations revolved around the possibilities. This is fortunate because if Brown is right, there might be an increased necessity of having such a space as venue for value added benefits. Acknowledging that there are some people who are voracious for an educative experience, Alan Brown proposed that while arts organizations gave education away for free as part of their mission, he suspected people would pay a premium for a private, executive briefing on events.

I have read and heard suggestions that were related to the core idea behind this. There are some complexities to this that I haven’t fully considered so I don’t quite know what I think about this. I suspect for some communities and organizations, he is right on the money with this idea.

As you might imagine from the thought the PACE administration put into the staff work areas, there had been some investment into the design of the public areas as well. As I already mentioned, the layout lends itself to sponsoring some of the programs and features Alan Brown suggested. Some other notable concepts they had were arranging the ticket office so one’s experience was more akin to interacting with a concierge than a reinforced security checkpoint. They have also looked into situating the restrooms so that the lines at intermission don’t become the half time show.

Our advice seemed to be viewed as insightful and even viable within the overall plan and budget. I am demurring on many of the details because so much is undecided at this stage in the game and I don’t want to create any unwarranted expectations about the ultimate result. Participating in the process was very exciting and engaging. While our status as outsiders lent some weight to our observations, Alan Brown’s occasional, but well timed comments lent some reinforcement.

Believe it or not after all this writing, I still have some additional observations to make! My next entry will have some really basic suggestions for those who might want to replicate this exercise.

(Details of this entry have been altered since the original posting to comply with confidentially agreements)

Why Haven’t We Ever Done This?

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I spent the weekend in the Seattle area participating as a lead partner in the very first stages of a pilot program where emerging arts leaders provide input on the construction of Performing Arts Center-Eastside (PACE) in Bellevue, WA. I had noted my participation in an earlier entry if you would like a little more information.

I intend to spend the next few entries reflecting on the experience. However, since everyone hopes this program can be replicated for future construction, I am going to summarize the major activities in today’s entry. Anyone considering using the process during their own construction or major renovation project will have an easy reference to the basic outline.

I want to acknowledge and give a lot of credit for the creation of the program to PACE Associate Director, Dana Kernich. She brought the whole concept to Executive Director, John Haynes and then did a lot of the organizational work to make it happen. When I was advocating more professional development opportunities for the alumni of APAP’s Emerging Leadership Institute, this program barely hovered at the edge of my mind as something that might be possible.

Obviously, I also need to acknowledge John Haynes for embracing the idea and committing resources to it. It was not a cheap undertaking. PACE flew 10 of us out, housed us and fed us (and it wasn’t at Sizzler though we would have been happy for it). Haynes told me he still saw it as extremely economical. He could have spent the same amount on a week long consultant visit but he was getting 10 consultants committing themselves to providing feedback for about 3 more years.

Haynes also observed that while consultants and architects are absolutely invaluable to the construction of facilities, once the job is done they move on to the next job and aren’t involved in the experience of inhabiting and working in the space the way arts professionals like ourselves are. In this respect was expense worthwhile. (Lest anyone think they will be ignored, there have been and will continue to be discussions with artists who have experienced performing in many spaces.)

The Process

We started out with a tour of the region so that we could get a sense of the physical environment in which the PAC would operate. Traffic isn’t getting any better in the region especially with the likes of Microsoft and Google expanding their physical presence. When we returned from our tour, John Haynes gave us a briefing on the history, audience demographics, vision and financial issues for the organization.

After that we participated in a panel discussion on the Regional Arts Ecology attended by the Executive Directors of the Bellevue Philharmonic, Kirkland Performing Arts Center, Seattle Theatre Group and 4Culture. This was a very interesting session to me on a number of levels. First, I appreciated the thorough job PACE was doing in educating us. But also, while 4Culture is a funding organization and Bellevue Philharmonic will find a place to perform in PACE, the other two could easily find themselves competing with PACE for audiences and artists. They might all end up competing for funding. Their observations and answers were great in terms of providing outside parties’ view of the environment in which PACE would operate.

That evening we had dinner with the facility architects, Pfeiffer Partners. This was more of an informal meeting than any type of presentation.

The next morning began our “work day” where we started to provide feedback in the context of what we had learned. It had already been clear to me how important PACE viewed our participation given all the people they arranged for us to meet including having the architects come up from Los Angeles. But what really impressed upon me just how innovative and important this pilot program might be was the fact Alan Brown of Wolf Brown was there. Apparently John Haynes had mentioned the project to him and he asked if he could be present and observe.

The day started out with Mr. Brown discussing Cultural Participation. This was derived from the research he had done for the Major University Presenters on Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of Live Performance. I had gotten the audio from a session he and the other researchers had conducted at the APAP convention but I was still jotting down lots of notes. Perhaps more importantly, some of PACE’s board members were present and doing the same. Again, I will expound on this in later entries.

Then the architects conducted a design charrette discussing their philosophy for the facility as well as noting the way they had dealt with challenges and benefits of the physical location. One of the most helpful things in the discussion was the models they brought. One allowed us to remove each floor piece by piece and another was large enough to stick our heads into to get a sense of things.

At this point, everyone except the 10 lead partners left the room and we engaged in a brainstorming session on the design. Haynes asked us to limit ourselves to three areas since there were so many directions we could go- Assess how the building functioned as a workplace, how it facilitated the patron experience and how the “machine” of the building worked (i.e. can a dumpster be rolled outside and not have to go through the lobby)

When the allotted time expired we presented our thoughts to the architects, members of the building committee, Dana and John. As you might imagine a great deal of discussion followed. However, our observations appeared to be valuable to all involved since one of the architects asked why no one had ever done this sort of thing before. (Thus the title of this entry.)

After things wrapped up we went out for dinner with Alan Brown and all flew out the next morning. As I noted in my earlier entry on the project, this weekend was just the first stride in a three year journey. It merely provided the context for conversations and exchanges of information channeled through a blog entries and emails over the next three years. My intent is to reflect upon the experience this week and across the next few years. Even with the strictures of the confidentiality agreement, there are enough general observations about the process I can make to be valuable to others.

What Can NCLB Do For The Arts?

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It occurs to me that there is a lot of talk about how No Child Left Behind is eroding the arts in schools. Field trips and outreach programs are curtailed or eliminated. Arts classes disappear in favor of more instruction in test subjects. Recess time is likewise dwindling. (If you are wondering about the connection, I got my first black eye in 5th grade when we recreated the rumble scene from West Side Story. Kids still recreate cool scenes from musical theatre during recess don’t they?)

But it got me thinking, to be fair do the arts gain anything from NCLB? Lets face it, the arts were getting the short shrift in schools for a long time before NCLB. We claim that music classes help kids with math. Does math in turn help kids with music. Does a good foundation in math help visual artists understand scale, ratio and proportion better?

In terms of reading and writing, obviously the arts can benefit from people who have a high level of comprehension and ability to express themselves well. We can hope these things provide basis to transition from reading well to being well read and possessed of critical and analytical thinking skills. Trading out social and hard sciences to make room for more math, reading and writing may make these skills harder to acquire. If NCLB does cultivate higher quality students then it would certainly be a pleasure to see students enter college without the need for remediation.

There are a lot of people who don’t feel NCLB is going to produce a generally higher quality student which bodes poorly for every industry in the future. If you were going to fight to get the law changed, how would it be improved to benefit the arts? More arts exposure is a given, but what else do you fight for? An excellent artist really can’t develop in a vacuum only experiencing arts classes. And what if you are told arts classes are definitely off the table in this new law? How do you salvage things and make sure students gain the knowledge and discernment they need to be artists via other avenues? What’s more, artists shouldn’t have to operate in a vacuum either, what do you advocate for that will help students become appreciators and consumers of art as they proceed through life?

No Lack of Power Had They Lacked Power

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I hadn’t intended to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics but then I saw the footage of the rehearsals Korean television “leaked.” I was so intrigued, I got up at 2:00 am hoping to watch the ceremony streamed live. Unfortunately, NBC chose not to do so. I would have been happy to watch it with commercials inserted. Nor could I find any other source, including China’s CCTV that didn’t forbid me due to my geography. Instead I had to wait 18 hours.

I am glad I rushed home from work to watch it Friday night. I was flabbergasted at the scope and pageantry. What surprised and impressed me the most was the precision execution of things like the drums in the opening segment and the taiji players who formed perfect concentric circles without any spike marks on the floor. What left me agape was the movement of the printing blocks. I thought they were computerized hydraulics or some such until I noticed there were legs under there as the cubes rose. This was a good 2-3 minutes before they revealed that fact. There are some great still photos here.

I imagine that the London Olympic Committee was gulping at the thought of having to follow that. I have to admit the torch lighting was pretty anti-climatic in comparison with the rest of the opening ceremony. I was expecting a dragon or a phoenix to emerge to ignite it. (I have since read that the IOC requires an athlete to do the honors.)

What I liked most about the Opening Ceremony as an arts professional was that the focus was so much on the abilities of the performers. If the projections on the side of the building, the LED screen scroll on the floor and the computer enhancement of the fireworks had failed, it would have still been a superlative performance. If all the power went out so that they flying couldn’t happen, the fou drums were darkened and the globe couldn’t rise from the floor, it would have still been impressive.

I have worked in technical theatre where they are fond of pointing out that without them, the actors would be flailing around and speaking into the darkness. The truth is, if China decided to start at 8:00 am instead of 8:00 pm and planned on using natural light people would still have been wowed by the performance. (The sun was rising at 4:30 am when I was there so they would have had a fair bit to work with if the stadium walls were open in the right place.)

To my mind, China did the arts world a great service by emphasizing the power of live performance and exhibited what can be accomplished in that format. (Though granted thanks to a whole lot of money.) The reality was that even with all the rehearsals and training that made such precision possible, people still got injured. That too is a hazard of live performance and as much as we may like to sell the idea of the possibility of danger at our shows, it isn’t something we actually wish upon our performers. It is easy to blame China’s low safety standards. I might have done so except that I heard something similar nearly happened this weekend because someone neglected to secure unused equipment.

My blog is about the arts and though it might get me more readers, I stay away from politics and other matters. The controversies surrounding these Olympics loom too large not to at least acknowledge they exist. The optimist in me hopes for China it is just a matter of making up lost ground. Two days before the 1932 Summer Games in L.A. the U.S. Army conducted a bayonet charge on their own WW I veterans backed by tanks and didn’t have a very good record on the treatment of minorities. That same year, China was dealing with Mao in one part of the country and Japanese occupation in another. The US emerged from the Depression and gradually moved forward on social fronts. For China there were impediments to progress from within and without.

For the sake of all the wonderful people I met in China, my hope was that the opening ceremony was a grand declaration that the country had finished regrouping and was embarking on a campaign to be regarded once again as a giant of culture, learning and invention.

There Are No Secret Codes

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I received an interesting report in the mail this week created in partnership between the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA and Jacob’s Pillow Dance. The book, Presenting Dance, written by Mindy N. Levine discusses conversations that transpired at the National Dance Presenters Leadership Forum at Jacob’s Pillow between 2002 and 2006. Unfortunately, none of this is online for me to link to or even cut and paste from putting us all in danger from my typing skills.

As always, there were a number of things that piqued my interest and few, if any, could be exclusively applied to dance. A large part of the book was devoted to audiences and how presenters and dance companies could promote and design their offerings, including activities ancillary to the main of a performance, to better serve/connect with them.

It was decided that there are four curatorial approaches when it comes to exposing audiences to new works as a presenter; “A to B”, “A and B”, “A or B” and “Mini Festival”. A to B is essentially starting with accessible works and building toward more challenging works over the years. A and B is referred to as the loss leader approach, letting the more popular show cushion the loss of the less popular. A or B assumes people aren’t familiar enough with dance on the whole to discern between challenging and accessible. In this case, you just program what you find compelling and essentially do a lot of work promoting and educating. The suggestion here seems to be to have a sense of how you want to position your organization. The mini-festival approach is where the presenter concentrates dance events along with promotion and education efforts within a short period of time.

I want to back up to the A to B approach. Some of the problems the book points out with this approach is that sometimes the presenter underestimates their audience and thinks they are never ready to be challenged. Likewise, the audience may actually be more receptive to the challenging work than that of presumably more accessible pieces. Finally, some commented that sometimes the community never evolves past the starting point.

One of my first thoughts when reading the A to B approach was of a post Neill Roan made back in 2006 about the high rate of churn arts organizations experience with audiences. Even if the overall attendance numbers look stable, those attending this year may not have been attending two years ago and so may be at square one in their dance/theatre/visual art/music experience whereas your programming is at square five the planned progress.

There was actually one other type of approach discussed, “More is Better.” Related somewhat to the festival approach, it involves programming as much and as diversely as possible (of dance in this case.) The hope is that familiarity will breed attempt and people will be more willing to experiment.

“People don’t decide never to eat out again because they have one bad meal in a restaurant,” said a participant. But audiences often engage in a kind of “one-for-all” thinking with regard to dance; they see one dance performance they don’t like and, in the absence of evaluative context, dismiss the entire discipline.”

There is a quote from John Dewey at the beginning of a chapter in this book that probably should appear at the top of the page or as the first slide of a power point presentation for people who are intimidated or anxious over their ignorance of any art form.

“It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing anything about flowers theoretically.”

One participant in the discussions suggested turning things around on people and asking them what they do for a living. “Make them realize that you probably know nothing about their job, but that doesn’t necessarily make you feel globally stupid.”

The participants came up with a list of ways to help audiences engage.

-1) There are no “secret codes.”
-2) Trust your instincts and the work.
-3) Ambiguity can be a source of aesthetic pleasure – Essentially, people are used to movement being intentional and dance frequently is not. Enjoyment can be derived from interpreting for yourself.
-4) There are multiple ways of understanding
-5) There is value in aesthetic dissent- You don’t have to like everything you see.

One of the most valuable sections in terms of making dance more intellectually accessible to audiences is in the “Tools of the Trade” in the Cultivating Aesthetic Literacy chapter. This is really where I wish I could link to this online because there is far too much to cut and paste much less type. But I will try to give a taste here.

The chapter suggests presenting different ways for audiences to approach a dance piece, with a Journalist’s Eye, Anthropologist’s Eye, Linguist/Grammarian Eye and Colleagues and Conversation. Now I think using these terms with audience members probably will add to their anxiety but the suggestions in each area are geared toward getting people past “I liked it,” “I didn’t like it,” or “I didn’t understand it” and on to discovering why.

For the Journalist’s Eye, they suggest Who, What, Where, When, How questions to help lead to answering Why or Why Not it was good. Some examples deal with what body parts are moving, how speed changes over time, if movement is synced with the music, what connections to everyday activities can be made, how does it make you feel emotionally and physically, what is known about the choreographer and company?

For Anthropologist Eye, the audience approaches dance as if it were an unknown culture being discovered. An attitude which may actually fall closest to the mark. Questions suggested in this area might be whether men move differently from women, if movement is in isolation or groups, are their forces that bring people together or separate them, are there rules applied to the movement and if so, are they flexible or rigid?

When Linguist/Grammarian Eye was used as an exercise, participants wrote adjectives about how they felt, verbs describing the movement and adverbs about the quality of the movement. The book suggests that this exercise can be useful for people involved with the arts to “generate evocative and specific language with which to discuss work.” If people start moving away from using “electrifying” to describe their work, that is all right with me.

These approaches aren’t necessarily prescribed for novices and can be used at different levels of experience with an art form. Colleagues and Conversation is listed as a tool in professional development among people in the dance field where they talk about performances among themselves to help cultivate their own aesthetic literacy.

What I have severely summarized here is only the first 18 pages out of about 50 pages of observations and ideas. Some of the other chapters deal more with the challenges dance companies face in developing and performing their work. And of course, the challenges presenters face supporting and employing dance companies are also addressed.

Tonight I wanted to cram some of the audience development issues in my entry because tomorrow I am handing the book to my assistant theatre manager so we can have a conversation about what practices might be viable for our community. I hope to come back to the text at a later date but really wish it was available online so I could continue to comment while the ATM reads it.

Cultivating An Appeal Certainly Is Not Clear

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There is a new buzzword out there called “Murketing”, a portmanteau of murky and marketing implying a sort of under the radar effort at increasing market share, cachet, whatever. If you read my entry about the staycation, you know that I am not a fan of what I feel are often attempts to put lipstick on a pig. My problem with the murketing term isn’t that the practice is a bad idea but rather that the creation of the term implies there is some hot new trend to adopt or be left behind. I have noted before, not every new approach/technology is appropriate for everyone, but they do bear exploration.

Let me expand a little on this. The way I think the idea should be approached is to say that in the face of changing behavior of consumers which includes rising skepticism about advertising campaigns that take a direct approach, it might be prudent for companies to examine the way they approach their marketing and perhaps even re-evaluate the market to which they are appealing. Instead the coining of terms like murketing makes it sound like you have to discard the practice of marketing altogether and replace with the method of the future. The reality is as I described it — take the time to re-examine.

I am not sure if he actually created the term or not, but a gentleman named Robert Walker recently wrote a book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are which examines the idea. Forbes did a review which appears to sum up Walker’s theories about as good as any article I have read on the subject or the book.

As much as I dislike the term, I have to say I like sections of Walker’s blog, namely Subculture, Inc and The Murketing Arts. While his book deals with the efforts of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Bull as well as some smaller operations, these sections are devoted to Q&As with people involved in small scale efforts to advance their products. Given that arts organizations often fall into the small scale category, these sections of the blog along with Walker’s “Consumed” column in the New York Times Magazine and of course, the book might provide some inspiration. (Yes, I have to acknowledge that the site’s sort of anti-guru vibe might actually be calculated, per murketing, to cater to my skepticism.)

I am reluctant to mention some of the ideas that popped into my head while reading about some of those interviewed because they essentially tap into the forces other people have discovered rather than finding some local characteristic. Sure there were women who tapped into the skateboarder market despite not selling any skateboarding gear. It doesn’t mean that is an appropriate target group for your organization. (Except the stars will align for some symphony in Idaho and suddenly California arts groups will be banging their heads trying to figure out why a state replete with skateboarders can’t win with them.)

I Have To Wait Til I Am 60 To Get Some Respect?!

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While catching up on the Fractured Atlas blog, I caught this link to WNYC’s Soundcheck Smackdown about the need for arts organizations to cultivate younger leaders. One of the first phrases tossed around was about being on the “wrong side of 60” meaning that the leaders of some of the most prestigious/large organizations need someone with the gravitas of experience leading things.

One interesting comment that was made was that the appointment of 27 year old Gustavo Dudamel as conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic might alienate the audience who would be concerned by his apparent lack of experience. It was immediately noted that given there is such a concern about the graying of orchestra audiences, you may not want to continue to cater to their perceptions. (Though they do fund the organization in the short term and that can’t be ignored.) Later in the program a caller noted that Zubin Mehta was only 26 when he became music director of the L.A. Philharmonic and host John Schaefer opined that perhaps LA has a talent for identifying promising leaders.

Some of the issues that come up in the discussion between Schaefer and guests Lee Rosenbaum and Barry Hessenius had to do with pay, both that younger people have an expectation of making more but will accept less than A – list leaders. Given the finite resources of the 90% of organizations that don’t operate at the level of the elites, it can be difficult to attract and retain talent. But this much we knew already, eh? Hessenius notes what I have discussed in earlier entries. The organizations with the most youth involvement are those who allow young people a greater role in decision making — something the arts haven’t done as a whole.

My Butt in the Seats of Your Neighborhood Stage

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This weekend I was a guest on the Your Neighborhood Stage podcast. (July 14 episode, number 3.21). The folks over there let me talk for a real long time on a lot of issues. In the course of the conversation, I promoted the iPod idea I had blogged on before. I had listened to some of their earlier podcasts to get a sense of what I was in for and one of the on going issues they have discussed is inverting the idea that “all good things must percolate down from Broadway.” They were trying to find a way that things could be developed at a local level and percolate up in much the same way niche interests suddenly explode into popular consciousness via YouTube.

It occurred to me that while local theatres couldn’t really hope to get anything on Broadway via the current development path, they could be the place where the innovations that reinvigorate the performing arts are cultivated. As I note in my interview, the stakes are pretty high on Broadway but somewhat less so on the local level. (Not to understate the impact of even small financial losses on local theatres.) But with the rise of Pro-Ams (Professional Amateurs) who have both passion and increased access to technology, there exists the potential for great things to result from unorthodox approaches and experimentation.

There were some other issues we discussed like censorship in a production of Ragtime near Chicago, copyright infringement in an Akron production of Urinetown (the earlier case from the 90s I refer to is L! V! C! in Boca Raton- covered in NY Times, 8th paragraph down) and whether bloggers who review can be sued for defamation.

If ever you wanted to hear my voice, albeit a little distorted (my fault, mostly) or simply just want to sip at the fount of my wisdom in audio form, give it a listen.

Oh, I just also note. When co-host Staci Cobb was praising me and said “Go You!” I thought she said “Go UF” and was tweaking me as a Florida State University grad by cheering on the University of Florida. It is only as I listened to the podcast that I realized I misheard her. I am sure both hosts were a little perplexed when I joked about her razzing me.

Will You Love Me If I’m Cheap?

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While I have been encouraging arts organizations to create opportunities for local citizens who have decided fuel costs are too high to travel this summer, it has only been because I don’t have a direct line of appeal to the local citizens. One of the things I am wondering is if people will look for entertainment closer to home if they have decided not to travel or if they will simply look for entertainment at home on the 72 inch television they wisely purchased when times were better.

I have been wondering if I should promote the fact that knowing costs were on the rise, we are keeping our ticket prices the same as last year. This is absolutely true. I figured we could probably weather another season at the same prices if it made our shows more accessible to our community. But I wonder if people would care that we were trying to strengthen our relationship with them. Given that people no longer subscribe and wait until a few days before an event to buy tickets, will our attempt to stay affordable even register?

I am pretty sure I know the answer. I have read a number of studies on customer service and retention which I have cited in talks that show price does not develop relationships. This is mostly in terms of customer loyalty in situations where you and a competitor offer a comparable product. If someone defects to your competitor and says it is price, chances are the reasons run much deeper and price is the easiest excuse to use. With that in mind, it seems price should be a minor player in a campaign to win loyalty.

Another complicating factor– with the rise in fuel prices my partners and I are beginning to get requests to re-negotiate performance fees. So now I wonder if I can keep the prices the same or not and whether we will be able to afford to present as many artists come next year. I sense the developments over the next year or so will instigate a sea change in the way we do business in the future (as well as if.)

Going off on a little tangent from the topic of booking, one of the artists I was excited to be presenting decided they wanted to change the time frame that they toured. This will put them outside our planned season. We hadn’t gone to contract but thought we did have an understanding with their agent. This wasn’t related at all to fuel costs but rather the timing of other projects the artists were involved in. My partner presenters decided not to replace the group. I have a smaller schedule than they so I have been seeking a replacement and hoping I can do so before it is time for the brochure to go to press.

A substitute was suggested by some staff people and their friends. YouTube videos were reviewed and the artist judged to be of good quality. The sole booking contact channel turns out to essentially be the artist’s email address. An email is sent inquiring about availability and bounces back because the artist hasn’t been reading their email and is over quota. We may go back to them to inquire, but probably only if others don’t pan out.

Word to the wise all ye starving artists. Keep your lines of communication open and your email boxes clear! Rising fuel costs and declining attendance ain’t gonna be increasing opportunities to perform, there is no need to provide impediments to the process.

Constructing Leaders

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Some disclosure right from the beginning. While most of my involvement with the project I am about to describe will be voluntary, I am receiving some travel and lodging in return for my participation.

I have recently been chosen to participate as a lead partner in an very intriguing project. There is a new arts facility being planned for Bellevue, WA and I have been asked to provide input into it’s planning and construction. I assume I was chosen for my past work experience but especially because I provided input into the theatre portion of a community center the Salvation Army is building with a bequest from Ray and Joan Kroc.

But providing input into building projects is no big deal, right? What makes this so intriguing is the process the organization is using to gather and integrate the input. All ten of the lead partners (later phases will involve additional people) were chosen from among those who have participated in the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Emerging Leadership Institute. The thought behind involving ELI alumni is to tap into the collective knowledge and experience of people in mid and senior level positions who are involved in both overall policy making as well as day to day operations.

What is deemed of additional importance is providing professional development opportunities for people in these positions. The lack of these opportunities has been a concern since I first attended ELI. In explaining this need, the pilot project document quotes an address Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation made to International Association of Assembly Managers about the next generation of leaders’ view of careers in the arts which appears to be pretty much what he said to the Southern Arts Federation.

In addition to providing excellent career advancement opportunities, they hope to create a template with which future projects may be built. While I will be traveling to learn more about the site and talk with those involved, a lot of the work I will perform will apparently be online discussions and reactions to materials posted by staff. Perhaps the fact that I actively use a blog was also a factor in being chosen since that will be one of the tools that will be used.

I have signed a non-disclosure agreement agreeing to keep many of the details confidential. From my experience on the Kroc Center project I understand that there is some information that can also prevent the organization from receiving the most competitive bids for services too. I am generally pretty conservative about revealing what I really know about situations so I don’t perceive any difficulties in my participation.

What I do hope to be able to do is report on some of the general topics that are discussed that are worthy of consideration by arts organizations everywhere– “How does the design make passersby feel welcomed?” “How does the design facilitate emergency evacuation.” Though I will steer clear of publicizing some questions that while valuable to ponder and a valid part of the design process, might cause people to lose confidence in the organization without reason–“Aren’t you concerned that that placement there might have a potent for a toxic spill?”

Needless to say I am pleased to be involved with the project. But also gratified to learn that people are seriously thinking about ways to create opportunities for leaders to attain career and personal growth.

Shall I Not Be On A Pedestal, Worshipped And Competed For?

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There are times during the year where I find myself singing “Where Are The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” from Camelot. Now if you have seen my picture on Inside the Arts, you know Julie Andrews I ain’t. Part of the reason I start singing the song is because I spent half a summer in my younger days running spot light for a production. Another reason is that the image of me singing this song amuses me so. But really I can often identify with the raw romantic innocence Guenevere exhibits singing lines like

“Are those sweet, gentle pleasures gone for good?
Shall a feud not begin for me?
Shall kith not kill their kin for me?
Oh where are the trivial joys?
Harmless, convivial joys?
Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?”

Now given those lines fall at the end of the song, I rarely get to them for all the laughing going on by that point — mostly mine.

When people hear what my job is they view it with the same romantic innocence. Surely such a cool job is not susceptible to mundane concerns like bugging agents for contracts and images so you can put a website and brochure together. Or if the mundane does intrude, it must be over shadowed by the joy of working with such amazing artists. Actually, the last bit is true except for the “mundane” concern about why people who praise the artists aren’t buying tickets to see them. So yeah, when I am singing songs like that one, I am trying to get back in touch with the idealism that made me pursuit this path to begin with.

Fortunately, people are familiar enough with the basic functions I fulfill that they don’t assume I should do my job for fun.

And there is the tricky part. Last week, Artful Manager Andrew Taylor cited a comment from the Americans for the Arts conference that, “‘We need to stop making the arts so special.” It occurs to me that the arts community needs to be in control of the way the arts are demystified. With auditioning for American Idol essentially a rite of passage being a good performer appears to be a matter of hard work, luck and getting enough people to vote for you. Anyone can do it if the stars align correctly. The necessity of talent and hard work over decades to hone one’s skill rather than a few weeks doesn’t seem to register.

The scenario shows like “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance” promote is that amateurs thrown into a crash course in a subject can compete and be winners. Even Bravo’s “Step It Up And Dance” where the contestants were trained and danced professionally had episodes where a choreographer would say they usually worked on rehearsing a piece for 5 days and the show gave the contestants 2 hours. This isn’t just limited to performing arts. MTV has/had a show called “Made” where high school kids wanting to be basketball players, cheerleaders, stars of the Spring musical, beauty queens, lose weight, promo queen or whatever worked toward their goal for a couple months. Usually the video shot during the first 3-4 weeks consisted of the person resisting the discipline of their coach. This left 3-4 weeks at most to cram the rest of the effort in. Most had some credible results probably helped by the fact that television cameras were following them around for so long.

So what is the narrative the arts world can offer?- “You can cram a lot of training in a short time and win prizes and recognition but honestly only be mediocre or you can devote your life to excellence and barely make a living.” You thought practicing scales was boring for students before? What about now that you can become a virtuoso in six weeks? Sure eliminating one kid from your school/lesson roster a week will add drama and tension and may motivate to practice harder but it will subtract from your earnings.

I agree that we have to stop making the arts so special in regard to putting it on a pedestal. But the message that accompanies it always has to be that you can absolutely participate, have fun, find fulfillment and recognition with a little training in a short period of time so come join in. However, even given great talent to start with there is a certain level you can only attain with long study and practice.

This isn’t just true of stodgy classical music and ballet. There was an article on Salon last week about the emergence of South Korea as a power in the world of hip hop dance. The South Korean dance crews practice 5 hours a day, seven days a week because they know someone is always trying to catch up. Yet the article notes, long hours of hard work on the flashiest moves aren’t enough if you don’t truly understand your art.

“When Koreans first emerged, Americans praised them for their power moves — the highflying crowd-pleasing spins, freezes and gymnastics moves — but criticized the Seoul b-boys for lacking soul. They were thought to be mechanical, unable to rock with the beat, and lacking in “foundation skills,” such as the top-rock and footwork moves that form the historical roots of the dance.”

Even in the idealistic world of Camelot, Guenevere comes to realize it takes hard work to bring dreams to fruition. (She also realizes the hazards of youthful folly, indiscretion and why bitter half sisters of the king shouldn’t be taught magic, but at least some of that can be avoided.)

Joshua Bell, Innovator or Heir To A Tradition?

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From the “Nothing New Under the Sun” file comes the news that Gene Weingarten is pondering whether to return his Pulitzer Prize. Weigarten is the Washington Post columnist who won the Pulitizer for arranging and writing about Joshua Bell’s anonymous performance in a Washington D.C. subway station. Weingarten says he is pondering giving the prize up based on the fact it was awarded for originality and he has since learned someone beat him to it.

It seems that back in May 1930, a Chicago Evening Post reporter arranged for violin virtuoso Jacques Gordon to play incognito outside a Chicago subway station. Though he eventually drew a crowd, as with Bell, by and large no one stopped to listen and only one person recognized him. It also turned out that Bell played many of the same pieces Gordon did. I guess Schubert lends itself to outdoor concerts. Though he hasn’t played it in about seven years, for nearly a decade, Bell actually played the very violin Gordon used for the stunt.

While I have been critical of the experiment, I am not about to suggest he give the Pulitzer back. My beef is that the experiment seemed designed to maximize the opportunity to point out what philistines people are. We see enough evidence that people don’t value the arts every day without concocting situations to prove it. Just a year ago some students at Stanford University were miffed that NEA Chair, Dana Gioia, was speaking at graduation because they felt they deserved someone more famous.

The basic experiment is a valid one in my mind. It could have been used to measure when the best times for performing in myriad unorthodox locations might be as part of an outreach effort — or even a longer term change of venue. As far as I am concerned, the Bell and Gordon results just prove that subway stations are not the best place to reach people. So even if he had known about the event seven decades earlier, Weingarten would have been wise to verify the earlier results.

An additional reason why the more constructive approach would have been preferable. Weingarten notes that unlike the original which faded into obscurity after a day, his story gained feet thanks to the Internet. I honestly don’t think he knew it would become so widely disseminated. However, given it has it would have been much better if people were reading about a secret experiment aimed at serving them better rather than a secret experiment that proves what rubes people are.

Suffering Your Own Penalties

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Via Arts and Letters Daily, there is an intriguing article in Reason Magazine about how penalties for undesirable behavior can actually result in more poor behavior if people perceived paying the penalty as license to continue.

Citing a study in Science, Ronald Bailey gives the example of six Israel day cares who instituted a fee to penalize people who pick their children up late. Instead of solving the problem, this made it worse.

According to Bowles: “The fine seems to have undermined the parents’ sense of ethical obligation to avoid inconveniencing the teachers and led them to think of lateness as just another commodity they could purchase.”

The same thing happened in an experiment in Columbia. Researchers were conducting a game where people were involved with divvying up forest resources. The results of many scenarios reflected concern for the resources and other users until a situation that simulated government control fined those who overused their alloted share. People felt paying the fine justified pursuing their short term interests rather than the interests of the whole.

I tried to think of ways the arts might be providing disincentives for their audiences to act in the interests of the organization, audience or community through what they perceive to be penalties. I haven’t really thought of anything but maybe something will occur to you readers.

First thing that came to mind were the ticket fees we charge for buying tickets online or over the phone but might not charge if people come to the window. Or that we charge a lower price for subscriptions and buying single tickets before a certain date.

But neither of these things seem to create an incentive for people to buy early. I don’t think it creates a disincentive either. I think people are just busy and have changed their buying practices.

Next I wondered if holding people in the lobby for late seating hoping they, (and those they annoy when they are seated), are discomforted enough that they arrive promptly next time might have some unintended consequences. It is easy to foresee that both late comers and those seated are likely to be annoyed by the timing of the late seating interval even if it has reduced 14 potential interruptions to one. No surprise there.

It is likewise easy to anticipate reactions to policies like; No food in theatre, no exchanges or refunds, no video taping and no cell phones. Perhaps no cell phone policies and signal jammers may have caused a rise in texting, (I seem to remember jammers don’t impact texting frequencies, just voice) but even that is not unforeseen. As annoying as the glowing screens can be, it isn’t as bad as having someone pull out their cell phone and say, “Yeah, I am in the theatre. No, no, I can talk,” in the middle of a performance.

So does anyone know of a policy that was meant to control undesirable behavior that has essentially reinforced it? Drop me an email or comment below.

They Shoot Dancers Don’t They?

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In one of my first blog entries I noted a speech by Chris Lavin promoting the idea that the arts be covered like sports. I still get a kick out of his suggestion that:

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 would a director take to a theater critic watching practice and asking for his/her early analysis of the challenges this cast faces with the material — the relatively strengths and weaknesses of the lead actor, the tendencies of the play write to resist rewriting?

Over in the UK, The Guardian has taken up that idea a little. They had their arts writers review sporting events and their sports writers review arts events.

Since the critics approached the events they attended from their own point of view, some of their observations were rather fun. Writing about a horse race, dance critic Judith Mackrell notes that unlike the race ballet attendees have no desire to see a dancer fall to the benefit of another ballerina.

“And if, by some horrible chance, she gets injured, she isn’t going to be put down after the show.”

Visual arts critic Jonathan Jones went to a football/soccer game and noticed that:

“Wembley is a thrill, for all sorts of reasons. There’s the architecture – the raised external ramps are like walking on a north London Acropolis, and the roof leaves a small space over the pitch, generating powerful contrasts of light and shadow.”

Being an arts person, I was more interested in what the sports writers said about their experiences. In some cases, their comments echoed those of many first time arts attendees. Rugby columnist Thomas Castaignède noted, ”

I’ve passed Covent Garden so many times, but I had no idea it was so beautiful inside. As a social phenomenon it surprised me as well – the champagne, the way the audience had dressed up, the feeling that people were there to be seen, as well as to see.”

Golf writer Lawrence Donegan went to see the San Francisco Symphony perform and exclaimed,

“…when this concert ended the audience went (and I use the following word advisedly) bonkers. This reaction shocked me, because I had no idea that people who were into classical music were also into going bonkers at the end of a performance.”

Two of the sports writers were ultimately disappointed in their experiences because the unpredictability and high stakes inherent to sports was missing. Two others stated their appreciation for the parallels of mastery and passion common to both athletes and performers. Steve Bierley, a tennis writer who went to a gallery was greatly affected by what he saw.

“It should have carried a warning: This woman is deeply dangerous. I go back to the comfort of Roland Garros, though Bourgeois remained a haunting and disturbing presence. I’m still spooked.”

I thought that was great. What I really appreciated was Castaignède’s observations about seeing Tosca. I think he states the case for the value of arts attendance best. Perhaps it is because he was a top notch rugby player he was best of all the sports writers to appreciate the mastery possessed.

“I came to the conclusion that there is a parallel between what you feel during a top-class rugby match and what an artist feels on stage – and it’s not just the roar of the crowd. The people who are watching influence how you behave: they were viewing Kaufmann and driving him forward, just as they used to inspire me. I could empathise with Kaufmann’s total concentration on the performance, and the way he had to become one with the orchestra, who gave him the power to go beyond the norm. There is a physical aspect to opera, certainly; but more than that, on stage you see what in rugby we call “automatisms” – where you become conditioned to move and act by pure instinct. I had a sense of two completely different worlds coming together.”

As I noted, it is fun reading how each person filters their experience through the lens of their particular expertise so take a gander the both full articles.

Lots of Summer Fun In The Backyard

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If you were a canny arts administrator (or are a leader of a particularly nimble arts organization) you may have foreseen that high gas prices would be forcing people to engage in staycastioning this summer. If you don’t know what a staycastion is…well good for you. As far as I am concerned it is a sign that most mainstream media outlets don’t have any original ideas or the fortitude to resist parroting others. A staycation is a vacation you spend at home. When I was a kid that is what we called a regular vacation. To listen to the MSM, you would think it was a new cultural movement.

Fortunately, we have the Daily Show to make fun of their silliness.

My grumbling rants aside, the fact people are staying at home provides a good opportunity for arts organizations and communities in general to make citizens aware of the enjoyable resources available in the area. What better time to convince people how convenient seeing a show is during busier times of the year than when they have taken the time to slow down and look around?

So if you had the foresight to realize this window of opportunity was opening maybe you have created incentives to get people in the door or launched a campaign to make people aware of your services. If you haven’t, maybe you are as nimble enough to take advantage of this trend. Sure gas might be just as expensive next summer so you think you can wait. But people might be inured to the cost after a year and be looking to get away.

Or you could be like me and are working in an empty building as everyone takes the vacations and comp time they have earned toiling throughout the last 10 months and would be in danger of having heavy objects fall on your head if you suggested adding new programs over the summer.

Personally, I think that if you are going to have some sort of summer program, it shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. Working cooperatively with the local arts council, chamber of commerce, municipal government, etc., to make people aware of the pleasurable encounters they can have right at home just seems like the most logical step. I think attending a picnic where there is a band/orchestra/puppet show/miscellaneous performance happening as the sun sets and the baseball game wraps up embeds itself deeper in the memory as a pleasurable experience than attending a slew of First Night performances. Ah, I am feeling a little laconic just thinking about it.

Next summer isn’t really too late. I pretty much said that in order to motivate those who can mobilize this year. Start working on next summer now. See if you can get local government involved. It is a great PR opportunity for your mayor to stand up as the winter starts to break next year and say, “Hey, we know you ended up hanging around town last summer. This coming summer we are going to make you happy you did and proud of your community by offering you X, Y, Z activities in cooperation with all these organizations and businesses in our community.”

Heck, there is an election coming up. If the people in office aren’t helpful, talk to the people running against them about your idea. They can get up and talk about how they empathize with those facing high gas prices and how they planning programs to enhance the value of living in the community.

Seduce A M.B.A. Today

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Via the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required, I believe) is a story about a study of M.B.A. student perceptions that the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education conducted. Some of the results reveal some attitudes that non-profits, especially those focussed on social and environmental issues, might find heartening.

From the Chronicle article,

“Students seem to be saying that they really want to have careers with a positive impact on society, but they’re feeling like they can’t do that in mainstream business,” said Nancy McGaw, deputy director of the institute’s Business and Society Program. “There’s a disconnect there.”

Among those surveyed, “Only half of the 2007 respondents think that their personal integrity figures largely in corporate recruiters’ evaluation of them as a potential employee.” About 80% believe they will be faced with a situation that would challenge their morals and values and about 90% said they expected they would look for work elsewhere if they encountered that situation. Less than half said they would voice their objections.

This report might be a wake up call for non-profits to become more involved in recruiting M.B.As. They can provide graduates with a situation that embraced their values, provided an opportunity to make a positive impact and made them feel they could speak up rather than quit when faced with moral quandaries. I had taken a little poke at a CareerBuilder.com article a couple weeks ago for implying the grass might be greener in non-profits. One of the motivations CareerBuilder mentioned that I didn’t necessary find fault with was achieving ends by questionable means. Given that this is something MBAs imagine they would quit in order to avoid confronting, this could be one of the stronger selling points for non-profits.

Though the students are just as concerned about renumeration and work-life balance as anyone.
That factor will always need to be addressed.

I am making an assumption indirectly that non-profits are not actively recruiting MBAs given the fact that the students don’t feel that sociopolitical knowledge is valued by recruiters and that good social and environmental practices aren’t anything more than good public relations opportunities rather than integral to the value of the company and bottom line. Reading the survey results, much of this appears to be due to the way the training in their program is conducted. So it may take some lobbying of MBA programs to effect some changes in addition to showing up on career day.

Art, The Government Prescription Program

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There is a piece on the online journal, Spiked from Frank Furedi decrying the English government’s prescriptive use of music in their sponsorship of the Music Manifesto. My first thoughts were that this is what comes from positioning the arts as having all these benefits when asking for money. This is further evidence that the authors of Gifts of the Muse in saying the arts were ill served emphasizing these elements over the intrinsic value of the arts. I also thought that it should come as no surprise that governments would be employing music to advance an agenda. This has been happening for centuries from the Medicis to the current day where popular music is used to sell everything from cars to presidential candidates.

Perhaps I have been exposed too much to commercially motivated music, but I had a difficult time envisioning music as a vehicle for seeking and serving Truth. Perhaps it is the lack of this connection to Truth or my inability to see it that can be attributed to what he cites as “impersonal force of the market impinged on the development of art and culture.”

My initial cynicism about his complaints aside, there were a number of observations he made that I hadn’t really considered. For instance, he notes that by valuing who will be attracted by the experience over the art itself, “what really matters is the audience rather than the music that the audience listens to. The question of who sits in the audience, rather then what they hear, shapes official thinking on music today.”

I have seen this myself. Every final grant report I fill out regardless of whether it is privately or publicly funded asks me how many K-12 students were served. Many ask about the racial make up of the audience and if my program was designed to serve specific races or K-12 students. Some ask how the programs reinforce family values and self-sufficiency. I am occasionally tempted to ask how a particular government policy is actually reinforcing these things. The arts shouldn’t necessarily be looked to in order to patch what has been rent.

I do think that arts organizations should be paying attention to who is attending. I am happy not to have to break down my audience into all sorts of demographics for my grant reports. One should always be assessing who is attending and how they are receiving it. Though the identity and number of people attending shouldn’t form the sole measure of success.

One of the toughest parts of Furedi’s complaint to tackle is the idea of accessibility equating to dumbing down. He criticizes music classes.

“Instead of providing an opportunity for pupils to study and learn about music, ‘music-making opportunities’ are often about involving kids in playing around with digital media and pretending to be djs…But frequently the ‘music-making’ approach is praised because it allegedly removes the ‘barriers’ that prevent children from ‘making music’.”

and suggests that the real elitists are,

“the educational and cultural establishment who have so little faith in the ability of children to appreciate and learn about classical music. Their anti-elitism is a populist gesture designed to flatter ordinary folk and reassure them that not much is expected of them.”

The question that emerges in my mind is how to structure an introduction to theatre, music, dance and art to people whose experience with these disciplines has come from movies, television, MTV and Photoshop? Are the activities you intend as a bridge between these experiences and the creative/performing arts underestimating your audience or does it provide necessary context? A contributing factor to activities that do indeed dumb an experience down is the receipents may not view the relevance in the same manner you do. So the bridging activities become the whole program rather than just the initial steps of a larger plan.

For example, does all the art and literature about the transitory nature of life have the same poignancy for people who can create and destroy a visual representation with a touch of a button? How do you cultivate an appreciation for an artist’s technique in mixing colors or composing music when there is software that will correct those flaws? How do you instill a desire for preservation in someone whose criteria for doing so is based on the amount of room left on a memory card rather than what ever quality of composition is apparent on the tiny digital camera or cell phone screen?

I don’t doubt that you can cultivate appreciation and understanding of art in people amid all of these influences. But if they don’t feel it to the same degree or manner as you and your contemporaries do, you may never move beyond a certain point and allow them to develop a more sophisticated understanding. On the other hand, if you don’t take into account that people experience the world differently than when you were their age and proceed to present the discipline in the same manner it was presented to you, you risk alienating people with your insensitivity and general cluelessness.

What is the balance then between presenting an accessible context that is intellectually challenging? It is easy to say that is your goal and just as easy to be diverted from the plan by what seems to be a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism.

Hey You, Why Aren’t You At The Concert!?

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I came across a link last week to a study the League of American Orchestras did. The freshness of the referring page and the fact that my monitor resolution didn’t require me to enlarge the pages too much initially hid the fact that the story came out in January 2004. Thinking it had been published in 2008, I was wondering why Drew McManus and the other bloggers at Inside the Arts hadn’t picked up on it already. For awhile there, I was excited that I might actually be scooping them on their segment of the arts.

Even given the time that has actually transpired since the publication date, the article, Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender, is quite pertinent. One of the toughest groups to survey is the non-attender so the results of any survey of these people are highly valued. And they should be given that it is difficult to find people who don’t attend who are willing to respond. It isn’t as simple a matter as going out during a performance and asking why people aren’t at the show. (Though that does seem like a good place to start now doesn’t it?)

While the results of the survey the story covers are in relation to orchestras, the lessons learned can be applied universally. The median age of these smart, aware people tends to be lower than those actually attending which makes them valuable for that reason alone. They believe they would enjoy attending a concert, but never get around to doing so. Some of the reasons are advertising design which is intimidating to those not in the know (though theatre advertising gets higher points.) Though to be fair, some of the most accessible methods of communication suffered from perception. Said one person who didn’t know orchestra’s had websites, “I mean, they’re playing 18th-century music. I guess I never thought they’d need
a web site.”

In addition to being uneasy about how to dress and act, the Non Attenders are also concerned about not understanding the performance. It isn’t just a matter of not having the experience and vocabulary to comprehend what appears to be a dense, complex work, but also not being as enraptured by the work as everyone else seems to be.

I think this is an important distinction especially in relation to music. In most people’s general experience, not understanding music is not an impediment to enjoyment. Getting lyrics wrong is practically a rite of passage. Listening to music in a foreign language is quite commonplace and the unfamiliarity of the tongue not terribly distressing. Perhaps it is the attendance format combined with lack of reference points, but it appears people tend to feel more at sea attending a symphony. I cite the format as a contributing factor because even if a contemporary foreign language music performance is in a concert hall, there is often an opportunity to groove along with the music and establish a connection that is pretty much not an option in the presence of an orchestra. Or at least the glares will be quick in coming if are feelin’ it enough to roll your shoulders and wiggle a little in your seat.

The article notes that one of the most important groups to an orchestra are the people who initiate the excursion. Though the percentages may be different, this is true for all the arts disciplines. There are always a few who get the ball rolling and organize the outing for rest of their group, even if it is only one other. Making this task easy for that person can go a long way toward filling the seats.

A sidebar that appeared within the article directed me to a website the League has set up to make people more comfortable with the attendance experience. This is something I have been a proponent of so I was glad to see it. Meet the Music helps you find a League orchestra near you. It also offers advice about approaching your first attendance experience. Among the things I appreciated about the site was that while they instructed you not to clap between movements, they also tell you to ignore the people who shush you if you do and acknowledge it is only recently that the practice of not clapping at that point has emerged. I also liked their advice about how to listen to the activity while the musicians warmed up.

The biggest fault I would find with the website is that it’s existence isn’t widely promoted. It has been around 4 years and this is the first I have heard of it. I took a look around at the websites of the members in 15 states and few people include a link to it or anything like it in their education or ticket purchasing sections of the site. In some cases, it is the less prominent orchestras in a state which do a better job linking to the site or have a similar FAQ that is easy to find. The NY Phil and San Francisco Symphony though both have FAQs that were either modeled after or the models for the guide on the League site. (I am having a real hard time finding something on the Philly site though.)

Wherein I Send You Reading Elsewhere

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I am working tonight (and tomorrow night for that matter) so I don’t have much time to write. I do want to take this brief opportunity to direct you to Ken Davenport’s blog, The Producer’s Perspective. As a producer of off-Broadway shows he has some great insights into the business in NYC like how to get your show produced, how much a risk it is to produce on Broadway, what does a press agent do, and the importance of having those who sell your product believe in it (and why that is tough to accomplish on Broadway).

Since he also takes a look at the implications of policy issues like today’s entry on what the universal health care program being touted by the presidential candidates may mean for Broadway.

I had actually gotten an email from one of his assistants a year or so ago inviting me to see Altar Boyz in New York, but I didn’t know he had a blog (maybe he didn’t at the time.) I have to give credit to TheatreForte for turning me on to his blog with their tireless efforts at indexing arts related blogs.

The Way It Used to Be

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We (meaning bloggers and various and sundry arts writers) often talk about how the arts attendance experience was a lot less like the staid and proper process of sitting in a dark room facing a stage. However, other than a few generalizations, we didn’t have much to offer in the way of concrete specifics.

Or at least that has been the case here at Butts In The Seats.

Fortunately, blogger and arts critic Terry Teachout comes to the rescue with an article about the good old days in Commentary this month. Since he addresses piano concerts people who perform or attend such concerts probably have a better idea about some of the things to which he refers. It is clear to the general audience that things were a little looser by today’s standards. There was more embellishment and improvisation even from the composers themselves.

“…British composer Charles Villiers Stanford heard Johannes Brahms play his Second Piano Concerto, he observed that the composer ‘took it for granted that the public knew he had written the right notes, and did not worry himself over such little trifles as hitting the wrong ones. . . . [T]hey did not disturb his hearers any more than himself.'”

Liszt apparently had a urn placed in lobbies and would sit at the piano reviewing the suggestions placed within by audience members and would chat with them between pieces. Audience members, for their part “…thought nothing of applauding not merely between movements, but in order to pay tribute to a particularly well-played passage in the middle of a piece.”

It is dishonest in a sense to talk about “how things used to be” because the reality was that these gentlemen were the popular musicians of their time and everything Teachout cites is no different than attending a contemporary music concert today. Musicians improvise on their own work knowing that the audience is aware of the more perfect version produced in a studio but don’t care that they aren’t playing it exactly like the album. The audience will applaud during the opening notes of the song, after the solo and will sing along. Unless you are the only one singing and are out of tune and drunk, no one generally cares.

Teachout says he is not encouraging a raucous free for all, but a general loosening of some aspects of the experience. I am familiar enough with classical music to be certain, but I imagine I would agree with him. I wouldn’t necessarily want people walking through the aisles hawking oranges while I am watching Shakespeare. The language is so complex and delicious that you need to devote a bit more attention than you would at a Mamet play which, truth be told, has a complexity and deliciousness of language of its own.

It doesn’t take much effort to imagine someone associated with an orchestra would say the same thing about the product they offer. It may have been popular entertainment at one time, but it does require more attentiveness to appreciate these days.

Skeptical Eye on Board Recruitment

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I was idly perusing a national arts job site this weekend and came across a board member solicitation for a small theatre in a major city. I thought that was interesting because an organization usually forms a nominating committee and seeks to balance the board in terms of what people might bring to short and long range plans. Though BoardSource counsels against indiscriminate recruitment, I imagined while perhaps inexperienced, they were being a little adventuresome and casting a wide net. They specified a love for theatre and preferred that the members not be theatre professionals.

Then I noticed something that made me a little wary. The cover letters and resumes were all going to the artistic director. It is something of a conflict of interest to have the people responsible for overseeing the finances and operations chosen by the person whose activities will be monitored. Adding to my unease was a check of their organization’s website and 990 filings on Guidestar which revealed of the five board members, three were employees. The artistic director, managing director and production person all sit on the board. This isn’t a new company that just formed and hasn’t had a chance to recruit outside the handful of friends who started the venture. The organization is almost 9 years old and if their claims are true, has garnered enough critical acclaim to attract interest in serving from a decent number of people.

I checked the non-profit corporation laws for the state in which the organization is located and there is no law against such a heavy staff representation on a board. In fact, it appears only California makes such a prohibition. Don’t quote me though. This type of mix is generally advised against. This exchange on Idealist.org gives a sense of some of the factors to weigh.

It initially appeared to me as if the artistic director may be trying to manipulate the selection process in order to surround himself with people who will help raise money and not challenge him. My suspicions ran so high that I was ready to name names in the post and encourage people to stay far away. However, I also considered that maybe someone advised them that their current board set up looks suspicious and they should make an effort to expand board membership if they want to attract more serious funding.

Which is not to say that next year the artistic director won’t have surrounded himself with 10 yes men and women. There were some clues in the 990 and organization website that I pursued with a little Googling thatl makes me wonder how independent the other board members are. The other endeavors with which the board members have been involved makes me skeptical of any suggestion that they didn’t know any better about the composition of their board.

I also have to admit there are many possible variable of which I am not aware that could explain this situation so I am not going to be outing them here. On the other hand, I am quite pleased with how easy it was for me to research the organization, the board members and the specific laws of their state dealing with non-profit boards. It is very encouraging to see the increasing ease with which research can be conducted.

Are You Living Where You Should Be?

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Richard Florida, who rose to fame alongside his Rise of the Creative Class figures you should evaluate if you are living where you should be. As I read the reviews and summaries of his new book, Who’s Your City?, I get the impression that it may have just gotten harder to attract the creative class to one’s area.

Of course, it has always been difficult or easy without Florida saying it. But from what I read and what he talks about in this newspaper article, it seems like there is an underlying vibe a lot of places that attracts (and repels) certain types of folks. If your community doesn’t already have a certain nascent characteristic, it is going to be tough to cultivate a change in that direction. There is a certain inertia to some places that will hinder efforts if local government/Chamber of Commerce, etc is trying to push things in an opposite direction with the intention of attracting the treasured creatives. He even implies an entropic influence on people drawing their values and attitudes closer to being in line with the general community over time. (Though most people who are considered the loony liberal or raging conservative probably won’t ever be wholly converted short of consciously willing it.)

Florida talks about certain communities being suited for people at different phases in their lives and lists the “best of” in large, middle and small regions. I haven’t read the book but if I were to hazard a guess, given that creatives, like all mortals age and mature in their outlooks, attracting them is probably a matter of exploiting the aspects of your community that best suit a certain demographic rather than aiming for the young and hip (unless your community is a burgeoning hip place.)

What appealed to me more than the top five list was another section of the website that poses 20 questions to help you decide what communities are best for you. This is great for me because I am young and hip in atypical ways. The strength of the place finder is that it makes you examine your criteria for your ideal community and forces you to do a little research to answer all the questions.

You plug in where you live and up to four places where you want to live. It then asks you to rate each city on typical things like economy, geography, climate, available jobs, health care, arts, schools and housing costs. But it also asks you to rank them on things like trustworthiness of politicians and business leaders, availability of technology, diversity of leadership and community and openness of the community. In the end you may discover that while you always dreamed of living in Seattle, you are better off living where you are.

I suspect the place finder might even be help people focus their thinking when they consider founding an arts organization. (Maybe the NEA or Americans for the Arts should adopt a similar tool specifically for the arts.) Even without his book being published, I don’t think I would be suggesting anything earth shattering were I to say that founding an arts organization that doesn’t resonate with the underlying vibe of a community is a bad idea and probably destined to result in one muttering about philistines. If communities can target the wrong group of creatives, creatives can certainly target the wrong communities.

Wait, Didn’t I Just Read This?

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Following a link from an entry on the Non-profiteer, I arrived at a site with a report about Non-profit leadership. The summary of the study was so similar to the Building Movement report I cited last month, I initially thought it was the same one mirrored by a partner in that 2004 study.

Come to find out this study, Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out is brand spanking new having just come out this year to report a survey of 5756 members of members of Idealist.org and constituents of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. They also held six focus groups across the country with 55 non-profit staffers who had never been executive directors.

This survey included a much larger sample size than Building Movement’s (though they certainly acknowledge BM) but generally gets the same responses. People feel they need to balance their work and personal lives, they aren’t terribly keen on becoming executive directors, don’t feel they are being mentored or have many professional development opportunities. There are some nice charts graphs and charts on the report home page, (on the Myer Foundation website by the way), that summarize many of the results. Top two of five reasons not to become Executive Director-Don’t want Fundraising responsibilities and Would Have to Sacrifice Work-Life Balance.

There were two results that I hadn’t seen before that I thought were interesting. First is that 10% more people of color were desired to become executive director than whites and people of lower income were wanted to become executive director than people from middle and upper class backgrounds. I should note that a large number of those belonging to the surveyed organizations are associated with social service/justice, health services, environmental protection/justice organizations rather than specifically with the arts.

The second finding I found interesting was that people of color and women felt they needed more education and training time before becoming executive director than white men who tended to feel they were ready now. The surveyors attribute this more to the fact that more men than women and people of color hold senior positions and are being groomed to be executive director in twice the number. They believed women and people of color felt the need to be over-educated and burgeoning with experience in reaction to this.

I should point out the survey also notes that a large portion of their sample were unemployed (11%) or in the first year (43%) of their career. I do feel women and people of color need better representation, but I don’t want my entry to serve as fodder for protest when the numbers are so slanted. I think this mix is fine for reporting aspirations but not necessarily for reporting the reality of a situation. For example, only 4% of those surveyed said they were being groomed to be executive director. However in a 2006 survey of executive directors conducted by the same group, “52% of executive directors reported actively developing one or more people on their staffs to be executive directors someday.” The relative lack of experience in this sample needs to be taken into account when looking at some of these results.

One thing I liked about the Myer Foundation website is the resource page. I will admit to only taking a cursory glance at a few of the blogs and other resources but I liked what I saw. For example, this entry on The Bamboo Project Blog that suggests using a webcam, computer and internet calling services like Skype to turn Baby Boomers retirees into long distance mentors and recording the sessions to create a mentoring library. (The use of which will require the cultivation of learning as a value among non-profit leaders, of course.)

There are also a number of links about retirement planning. The lack of which emerged as a motivating factor on many fronts in both this survey and the one Building Movement did a few years ago.

Tough to Move Up, Tough to Move Out

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Came across a link to the results of a listening tour Building Movement did among non-profit leaders back in 2004. The results of the conversations they recorded are very similar to the observations made by Ben Cameron in his address to the Southern Arts Federation this Fall. (Perhaps his speech was based on Building Movement’s study?)

The conversations Building Movement (BM) recorded were mainly among leaders of social service agencies, but as implied, had many common elements. Both noted that the younger generation is interested in balancing their lives rather than devoting so much of themselves to the job as their predecessors have done. Both also discuss the eagerness of the younger generation to participate in substantive decision making and responsibilities.

The BM conversations revealed that members of Generation X feel a great deal of pressure caught between an older generation which isn’t retiring and a younger generation coming into their own looking to become involved and effect change. Whereas the older generation has remained in the same positions for years, the younger ones move often looking for more promising opportunities and often contemplating leaving the field. This causes organizations to have people of a great deal of experience at a certain level and then a sharp decline just below. This can have grave implications for those places that haven’t engaged seriously in succession planning.

Part of the problem, Building Movement notes, is there is no structure currently that provides these leaders with a place to go or even transition to other than retirement. They are healthy enough to continue working but there are no opportunities available to them that would result in a net increase of openings for younger people. Since they did not open a retirement account in their 20s and 30s and with Social Security and health care iffy propositions, retirement may not be a very attractive option.

The lack of mentors to help cultivate the necessarily skills was a big concern. One of the few people who did have a mentor of sorts praised the mentor’s ability and willingness to point out that “new” ideas were actually old ones that have been revisited a number of times which prevented him from trying to reinvent the wheel. Another problem that was mentioned was that the older generation had all these relationships with funders that they weren’t passing on to the younger generation. Because they had not had extensive interactions with long term funders, when the younger leaders took over they were “perceived as less seasoned.” This lack of contact could have severe consequences for many organizations.

The most surprising result of the conversations for me was the reluctance to become executive director many of the younger generation had. I figured that position was the logical goal for those chomping at the bit for their predecessors to retire. This reticence stems back to the desire for a balanced life. The executive director position was seen as thankless and too heavy a burden to shoulder to still have time for one’s family. I don’t know if this sentiment is carried over to the arts. Having family members who have worked for social service non-profits, I can see the truth of this for that sector. Though I imagine they would say the same thing for the performing arts from the perspective of an outsider.

Building Movement has a monograph that integrates the findings of the talking sessions with research to make suggestions for cultivating new leaders and planning for the transition of existing leaders in a healthy manner. I haven’t had a chance to look at it at any length but since I often harp on succession planning, it would be a smart thing for me to cover it here in a future entry.

Is Dumb A Core Value?

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There have been a number of books and articles that have come out recently bemoaning the lack of knowledge exhibited by people today. Whether it was Miss South Carolina’s flub at the Miss America contest, the woman on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader who thought Europe was a country and had never heard of Hungry (her pronunciation) or talk show stunts like Jay Leno’s where he asks people easy questions for which they provide embarrassing incorrect answers.

The latest chapter in this discussion making rounds of the talk shows and newspaper reviews is Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. You can read a review here or watch a pretty good interview with a transcript with Bill Moyers here. Much of her focus seems to be on how active anti-intellectualism is causing people to essentially renounce their roles as citizens of the US.

But while some of the examples Jacoby discusses are worthy of some consideration, what she says isn’t as important as the whole concept of people actively not caring that they aren’t familiar with basic knowledge about the world around them. It could have been any book or discussion on this topic that suddenly raised the question, do the arts have any idea how to deal with anti-intellectualism?

Most of the strategies suggested about how to build audiences seem to assume that mistakes were made but audiences can be regained. Perhaps the attendance won’t be as great as before, but it seems that arts organizations are coming to the conclusion that things changed and they weren’t agile or perceptive enough to recognize it. Proposals to bolster education and effect changes that reflect shifting audience expectations about the experience and social environment all seem to assume that the arts can reclaim some of the ground it lost to the Internet, high def plasma televisions and video on demand.

But does the arts world have any solutions to combat complete indifference or even worse, active attempts reinforced by social pressure, to distance oneself from anything that might indicate that one was more than just plain folks. You have probably heard that in some communities, showing signs of being educated could find one accused of putting on airs and having elitist notions. When I was discussing the general topic of this book with a person in my office, he said that in some of the communities that the college served, some males were resistant to attend for fear of becoming homosexuals. Not being labeled–becoming. This puts a survey the college did a couple years ago in an entirely different context. One of the top answers from men regarding what they liked about the school was the attractive women.

Frankly, I wonder if there is any solution the arts world can enact in its current position. Had the arts community more influence in society, it might work to make intellectual pursuits more of a core value. Perhaps it still can, though the road will certainly be slow and long. The truth might be that there are plenty of intellectually curious people out there to whom the arts wielding a new approach might appeal. It is easy enough for shows like Jay Leno’s to edit out all the correct answers in order to put a comedy bit together. And certainly the erudite answers of Miss America and game show contestants probably aren’t popular viewing on YouTube if they are posted at all.

Schadenfreude aside, even if things aren’t as bad as popular media makes it seem, there are genuine problems with lack of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills in the country. While handling all the other troubles that besets them, the arts community’s continued existence probably hinges in a large part on combating the idea that it is okay and perhaps even preferable not to know. People may claim that they can easily look up anything they need to know, but I often wonder if they ever bother doing it. The conditions constituting a need to know seem to be none existent.

I used to joke that I was glad people were so lazy about learning because that way employers would pay me more for being competent and knowledgeable. The truth is, that isn’t the type of world I really want to live in. Nor do I imagine the majority of people would. Not only would people lack the wit to laugh at my jokes, but the lack of intellectual and perhaps social and emotional engagement would be quite dispiriting. (Initially, I was also going to say it can be depressing to be surrounded by people who willingly choose not to live up to their potential but I realized I was starting to channel my mother.)

Prisoners Creating Our Own Dilemmas

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Taking a gander over at the TED website to see what talks have been released since last I visited. Apropos to yesterday’s entry is this talk from Howard Rheingold about collaboration and cooperation. It is a short piece, only 20 minutes, but if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, move the handle down to the Cooperate=Wealth section of the index that pops up when you move the cursor across the bottom of the video.

He addresses the idea that if survival is all about competition, there wouldn’t be so many humans. At some point, humans began to cooperate and that helped them thrive. The benefits of cooperation are generally understood, even across cultural lines. He speaks of how players of the ultimatum game seem to innately know that proposing a 50/50 split offers the most likely path of greatest reward. (At least among Americans, Europeans and Japanese. Rheingold notes that slash and burn folks in the Amazon, pastoral herders in Central Asia and other countries proved to have different sense of fairness when playing the game.)

He also briefly addresses the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that unless there is a way to restrain overuse, humans will exhaust a commonly held resource. He cites a counter study that found that people are only captives of what is essentially a multi-player prisoner’s dilemma if they view themselves as such. Those who are able to successfully break out do so by “creating institutions for collective action” with common design principles.

As his talk draws to a close, he cites the example of how some of the most cutthroat competitive corporations like IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems are open sourcing their software and some of their patents to be worked on by the commons. He mentions that Eli Lilly has “created a market for solutions for pharmaceutical problems.” Though he doesn’t mention it, I assume that is also an open source type effort. He also cites Toyota which works to make their suppliers more effective even though it means increasing supply efficiency for Toyota’s competitors. EBay has solved the prisoner’s dilemma by introducing a mechanism by which two people who can’t necessarily trust each other can make an exchange. He says they are doing it because they have realized that a certain degree of cooperation is beneficial for the bottom line.

So my obvious question is, if multinational corporations can extend a little trust to cooperate, can’t arts entities from the service organizations down to the smallest theatre/dance/music/visual art company find a way to do it as well? While large organizations might be most immediately influential by providing an example for many others to emulate, technology allows the successes of smaller to be disseminated as they couldn’t even a handful of years ago.

I Just Invented the Wheel! Whadda You Mean You Did Too?

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My thanks to David Dombrowsky of the Center for Arts Management and Technology at Carnegie Mellon who commented on a recent entry. In response to my entry on how well things were developing for the Emerging Leadership Institute, he suggested that instead of independently inventing the wheel arts organizations like APAP, Americans for the Arts and the Southern Arts Federation which all have leadership programs combine their efforts to offer greater opportunities for learning and conversation.

He isn’t the first to express this sentiment. Andrew Taylor said the same thing two years ago when I did an entry on Southern Arts Federation’s National Arts Leadership Institute. As Andrew noted, there are many such programs throughout the country. I listed a sampling here.

Someone in my Emerging Leaders meeting at APAP suggested that it might be logical and beneficial to open a channel of communication with the American for the Arts Emerging Leaders program alumni.

I had a brief email exchange with David about causes and solutions. We generally both agreed a little bit of ego and territoriality came into play. As Andrew Taylor noted in his comment, we are often enjoined to partner and collaborate by these service organizations but they may not be providing a good example for their constituents.

One thing I mentioned to David was that change in outlook might have to come at the grassroots level and technology made such things possible where it hadn’t been before. I will make no promises or idealistic statements about success at this juncture, but I am going to talk to some people and do some research and see what develops. Given that I don’t know exactly what success will look like other than people engaging in effective communication and exchange of ideas, I can’t be more committal about what my plans are. If people have any suggestions about who to speak with or want to get involved in organizing an effort, as nebulous as it might be at this point, drop me an email.

Intrinsic Value of Puppets, Mad Scientists and Trash

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I had a moment of panic a couple weeks ago when I was taking notes on the audio from the “Intrinsic Impacts” session at the APAP conference for one of my earlier entries. When Lisa Booth mentioned she hoped arts organizations didn’t use the report as an excuse to justify providing a small group with an experience of high intrinsic value, I felt a little guilty because I had a show coming up that I knew would only have limited appeal but would provide a highly rewarding experience to those who attended.

I relaxed a few moments later because I knew that on the whole the season held wide appeal for many people. I knew this because every time I picked up the phone or checked the overnight internet ticket sales, most of the orders were for those events even though they were weeks and months hence instead of for the show we did last week. Given that most of our sales generally come in the last couple days before a performance, these steady purchases this far out is quite pleasing. Unfortunately, the weaker sales on the most recent show only served to confirm my impression that it might have a more limited appeal.

Of course, the appeal I refer to is relative to audience size rather than their enthusiasm. The audience size was actually pretty good in terms of my expectations. Their enthusiasm was through the roof. Therefore I don’t have any reservations about mentioning the performer was Paul Zaloom. (Who is also the guy I mentioned yesterday.) Zaloom is probably best known for his role as the wild hair mad scientist on the Saturday morning science show, Beakman’s World. However, he has had a long history as a performer with Bread and Puppet, film maker and puppeteer/performer.

I had contracted him primarily to do a performance but also asked for a couple of workshops. I am glad I did because by some measures they were some of the most successful ancillary activities I have conducted. For the first workshop, I asked him to channel part of his Beakman personae and do his Science Edu-tainment workshop where he talks about how educators can teach science in an entertaining and engaging way.

With a title like that, you might think the session was a lot of flashy tricks with little substance. I have to say I was impressed by how he really emphasized the diligence he applied in making sure the specific terminology he was using on his show (and our workshop) was vetted by scientists at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I guess he did a good job because a half hour into his 90 minute presentation, one of the science faculty offered him a job as a lecturer next semester. Zaloom deferred because he doesn’t have a science degree. I think his enthusiasm and contention that the best scientists are as creative as any artist really energized and excited the 50 educators and educators in training who attended the session.

The second workshop he did was titled “Theatre of Trash.” This one he did for our drama students and some improv groups with an association with our school. For this workshop he raided our prop room for miscellaneous items and required participants to bring some items of their own. He gave a lecture/demo on the use of found objects in performance. Then he set the students loose on the pile and critiqued their work when they were done.

While my hope for Zaloom’s visit was that people would walk away with some new ideas about creating and viewing art and science, I was really hoping this workshop in particular would inject some new perspective. A lot of what I see the students, alumni and even some renters do is derivative of others. Worse, they are borrowing liberally from other local performers who did the same so it is all pretty incestuous. Granted, with sampling, mash-ups, etc., it may just be a function of how they have been socialized to think of the creative process. They still need a kick in the pants though.

Zaloom’s performance did some rump kicking of its own. As a social satirist, his work pushes some buttons at times. Because Zaloom employs found objects and puppetry in his shows it introduces a level of insulation that allows the audience to accept what is happening in a way they couldn’t if a person was saying it directly to them.

After the show he invited the audience up for a backstage tour and 90% of them came up. He explained that puppeteers are the opposite of magicians in that they love to show off their secrets. He spent a fairly long time demonstrating and answering questions for the people huddled around his gear. For the third time in a week, I think people left his presence having had an entirely different experience than they usually do when they enter a familiar room, be it a classroom or theatre.

As I mentioned yesterday, there are experiences you can’t replicate in all situations because the dynamic isn’t there. I talked yesterday about how the audience had an entirely different relationship with Zaloom than they usually do at our shows. As an interesting counterpoint, the night he performed, one of our sister campuses was presenting a version of The Tempest employing Balinese shadow puppetry. Zaloom’s show also employed shadow puppets rigged in the Balinese fashion.

The Tempest was much more technically advanced and very cleverly done. I really wanted to know how they managed to alternate between what was being projected without also including the people who appeared to be standing right in front of the screen. Unfortunately, the dynamic for that show was such that it didn’t allow audience members more than a glimpse of the mechanisms at curtain call.

The ultimate result of Paul Zaloom’s visit is that many people were pleased with their experiences of last week. I am getting all sorts of praise and thanks. There have also been a number of people who have stated we should be doing this type of thing more often. They forget, of course, that I actually started the process 18 months ago when I approached them about their interest in the workshops. It ain’t a simple proposition. What’s more, it also seems to have slipped their minds that the money to pay for artist fees, transportation, lodging and food is coming out of my earned income! Good ideas are always free. Reality costs, n’est-ce pas?

Engage Your Art — Will It Be A Happy Marriage?

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While I was in the Learning to Lead session at the APAP conference, Steven Tepper was discussing his new book Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation in America’s Cultural Life just next door. It was tough deciding which session to attend and I eventually stayed in Learning to Lead and bought the audio recording Tepper’s session.

There were a number of interesting insights from his book that Tepper shared. One of the things people are concerned about is that arts audiences are disappearing but according to Tepper, participation is dropping all over. There are declines in church attendance, voting, involvement in formal political processes and even major league baseball games.

But says Tepper, It’s not that like sports less, its that we like a little sports more….It may not be case that we like arts less we may actually like arts more.” He doesn’t expound, but I think he is referring to The Long Tail economic model which essentially deals with selling a lot of niche items at higher volumes. His implication, as I understood it, was that people will value a lot of small experiences over the larger, more formal ones in the future.

Something he pointed out was that there is a shift in where people are getting their arts experiences. They aren’t just getting it on the internet and TiVo, but also in places like churches which are bringing arts experiences to their constituents both within services and independently of them. He suggested that churches could be potential partners for arts organizations.

Tepper cited survey results that said high quality art wasn’t a prime motivator for attendance. Rather celebrating heritage, socializing and supporting their community bigger motivation than quality. Social connections have long been a strong factor in arts attendance and apparently remains so. This is one of the reasons why churches could be strong partners. Not only do people who attend church participate more often in other areas of life, but churches provide a social connection.

This may be more true now than ever before given that many churches now offer counseling and assistance with things like job placement, parenting and child care in addition to sponsoring social gatherings for demographic groups. The church that rents my theatre has niche social groups for every permutation of age, marital status (and desire to be married), employment/student status and gender.

Though it does sound like one of those jokes about ordering coffee in Starbucks when a pastor introduces someone as a member of the Thirtysomething, professional single women social group. Yet if the Long Tail situation is indeed developing, services focused to these type of divisions may be what people desire. (Despite the fact that you will either go insane or print up different labels for the same product trying to serve every possible group.)

There are signs that there is a growing interest with involvement in artistic creation. UCLA administers an annual survey to students about their aspirations. Over the last decade there has been a small but noticeable increase in the number of students with a “desire to create, write something original or be accomplished in a performing art.” Tepper acknowledges that what they create might not be worth experiencing. He notes that students are experiencing frustration. Colleges and universities are having a hard time responding since the classes addressing the myriad creative areas are only available to majors. Students are coming to school with creative hobbies but don’t have a formal way of advancing their skill/knowledge.

So perhaps the role that arts organizations can fill in the future is responding to this need to hone one’s creative skills that schools are not able to provide. In the best situation, arts organizations will be partnering with schools to provide the types of experiences students are looking for rather than competing or duplicating efforts.

I have talked about the Pro Am — professional amateur — trend in earlier entries. (Not surprisingly in relation to a piece Tepper wrote before.) People are investing a great deal of time in their interests these days and technology is making it easier for them to gain expertise. There was a time when this was not so and the learning curve for amateurs was so much greater.

It may not longer be the role of the arts organization to employ those who have acquired a high level of skill in their field to exhibit it to others, but rather to invite these Pro-Amateurs to become partners/participants/students in the creation of art. I have often wondered what the next phase for arts organizations is going to be. I don’t think the future would be too bad if this was the role arts organizations played. The scary part for existing arts organizations is figuring out what their organization is going to look like and making the transition.

**Apologies to regular readers for falling off my regular posting schedule. Engaging my constituents (look for posts next week) and problems logging in to my blog contributed to my delay**

Fractured Knowledge

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A nod of appreciation to Stanlyn Brevé at the National Performance Network for noting that Fractured Atlas is continuing in the practice of being a irreplaceable resource for artists by offering online classes.

A couple weeks ago, Fractured Atlas Founder, Adam Huttler announced the opening of Fractured U. as a source of information for artists.

For the last year we’ve been quietly putting together an online curriculum in arts management aimed squarely at artists who are working outside the mainstream establishment and trying to make things happen on their own terms. The initial roster of classes provides introductions to fundraising, marketing, and professional identity. The course list is short for the moment, but we’ll be expanding it steadily over time.

Fractured U. is free and open to the public, although you’ll need to be a Fractured Atlas member to participate in discussion forums or take quizzes.

A lot of the information seems elementary to me — which is good because I went to school learn this stuff! But it also seems to be a fairly complete and clearly explained basic set of information. If you don’t have a clue about marketing or are intimidated by the concept, their information is a good place to start.

I am always happy to promote Fractured Atlas because I am grateful I am in a position where I don’t have to avail myself of their services. I am fortunate enough to have insurance coverage and a job, etc, but there are plenty of folks I know who don’t and I often point them to Fractured Atlas. They are big advocates for equitable treatment for artists with housing, healthcare and in other areas that impact artists.

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