State of the Arts

I was going to leave this topic to Drew McManus over at Adaptistration because his knowledge about management and musician relations in orchestras is far greater than mine. He also knows people in the Honolulu Symphony and has a better sense of what is going on.

However, one of the people Drew knows made a direct appeal that I comment and I agreed to do so. This past week, the Honolulu Symphony announced that it would not be able meet payroll for the rest of the year. The story was covered on television and in the Honolulu Advertiser. The musicians have been playing on knowing they wouldn’t be paid right before Christmas.

Orchestra musicians are apparently an optimistic breed. If you have been reading Adaptistration recently, you know that musicians in places like Tampa and Jacksonville, FL have been willing to show a lot of good faith and perform during labor disputes.

If you read the comments on the Advertiser article, you will see that the response of the local community is mixed. Some people blame the Governor for not releasing promised funds, some cite very poor policy decisions and mismanagement occurred prior to the arrival of the current executive and music directors.

The article and television report note that attendance was low because the symphony was bumped from their home and had their audience eroded by the 12 week Lion King tour. I can attest that my theatre and about 6 others on the island saw a significant drop in our audience prior to and during The Lion King run. Fortunately, my payroll isn’t as large as the symphony’s so my losses weren’t as great.

You wouldn’t think a Broadway tour would impact other arts activity so greatly. However, with the high cost of living, there is little disposable income. Yet you can’t blame people for taking the perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to see the show. But people were explicitly stating in August that they wouldn’t be resubscribing or buying single tickets to local performances because they would be seeing The Lion King in November. Even though the tour just closed and moved on, with people spending for Christmas now, many of us are wondering how long it might take before attendance rebounds.

One phrase I haven’t heard anyone utter publicly yet and I hope I won’t is “Honolulu has to decide whether they want a symphony.” There are three reasons I am against saying something like this.

First, it makes it sound like a punishment. I don’t think you want to imply that people are going to be punished for not attending your performances. Or worse yet, punished for going to see The Lion King.

Second, saying that is an open invitation for people to opine that they don’t really think their lives will be impacted by not having a symphony. As bad as it will be for someone to stand up and say, “If this is what I get for going to see The Lion King, I can live with it,” having someone say “Eh, what do I care. It’s not important,” is even worse.

Third, the statement implies that the people of Honolulu can decide to save the symphony when in reality it will be a handful of people in city and state government, foundations, banks and other corporations who will determine the fate of the organization. Some individuals will certainly lobby these institutions to support the symphony, but my sense is that there won’t be large grassroots popular support.

In a sense, it is appropriate for these entities to be the ones to make the decision rather than making it an issue of popular support. These entities understand that having a vital arts scene is what will attract people to the city and state to live and do business. The symphony, for better or for worse, is the biggest and most visible performing arts group in the state and thus serves as the cornerstone of artistic value.

Now ideally, everyone in the city if not the state should recognize the value of the symphony to its overall appeal. That will be the symphony’s job if it gets past this crisis. In the past year the symphony has been making efforts in this direction by doing concerts in different parts of the island rather than just sticking to Honolulu proper.

They even came out and performed in my venue last Spring so I am hoping they will find success. Because, well, they haven’t paid their bill yet.

Over at Theatre Ideas, Scott Walters reposted a column he wrote for his local paper in Asheville, NC against the proposed construction of a performing arts center. Even though he is a theatre person and is generally not against government spending money on the arts, he felt that the construction was oriented too much toward bringing in Broadway shows and did little to help the local artists.

“Unlike other creatively vibrant local and regional arts organizations like, for instance, Handmade in America, the Southern Highlands Craft Guild and venues like Woolworth Walk, the proposed PAC is not focused on supporting local artists, but relies on touring shows to fill the 2,400-seat auditorium at its center.”

In the blog entry that encompasses the text of his article, he discusses his feeling that the construction of the PAC is motivated by a desire to keep up with the Joneses by erecting a complex as grand as every other municipality rather than one that reflects the character and needs of the community.

“We are outsourcing our artistic life, and it is time for it to stop. There is no reason that local taxes should be used to import culture. If housing touring shows was the way to become an arts destination, Greenville-Spartanburg would be the NYC of the southeast. People come to a town because they can get something there that they can’t get elsewhere. Nobody visits a town in order to hit the local multiplex, which is what this PAC resembles.”

He suggests that the construction money be used to renovate an existing area into performances spaces that are appropriate for use by local musicians, theatre and dance groups and provides a communal gathering place.

My personal feeling is that arts spaces that are part of the daily life of a community or city (i.e galleries, band shells, cafes that can be part of a lunch hour as well as an evening out) are far more preferable than a grand facility with a more remote identity in communal life.

I must admit that in the last 5-10 years I have been a little uneasy about the construction of large performing arts centers because it does appear as if they are considered key to the prestige of city. It seems to me that the time when such structures are relevant is nearing its end and they will prove albatrosses for many cities. Unless such a facility is going to support a city’s convention and conference business, I would generally be wary about their construction.

I agree with Walters that cities should be looking to support their local arts entities before thinking to woo Broadway tours. That is even before addressing concerns like spending tax dollars to import talent over their tax paying local talent.

This may sound a little inconsistent coming from a guy who receivesWa funding from his state arts council to import talent. I have been working to identify and include an increasing number of local performers in my season, though. I am often importing artists who are esteemed in their region and I am talking up the folks from my state in other places.

Walters is right that people don’t visit places for their large PACs. Every time I visit my friends across the country we are going to the cool venues downtown, the band shells, the natural ampitheatres in the park. These are the local features they are proud of and want to show off, because they reflect the character of the community–something the big performance halls can’t really do.

It is these types of places that will attract the creative class everybody is looking for to enhance their cities. These folks need places to express their creativity. If the city is cultivating large venues over their local creatives, they are going to gravitate to towns where local talent is valued.

The ability for non-profits to research the types of projects foundations are supporting just got a little easier recently. NOZA, Inc. which maintains the largest database of charitable gifts recently made their foundation records available for free. Data on individual donors does cost a little extra. However, even with the abbreviated version there is enough information to decide if you want to view the full record. Having credits while viewing the free content has an added benefit of providing a link directly to the foundation webpage from NOZA’s site.

During your search, you can select those who gave in a certain giving range; what the nature of the gift was (annual, scholarship, in-kind, endowment, bequest), where the recipient is located, what their service area is and what services they offer. If you want to know more, you can view the full record.

The pricing looks fairly reasonable. $25 allows you to view up to 200 full records and the price per record drops as you buy more viewing credits-$250 gets you 4,175 views.

I am occasionally surprised to learn some foundations support the programs at certain organizations because their programs don’t seem to jibe with the areas foundations express an interest in funding. Websites like NOZA’s reveal not only who is supporting programs like yours but also what a foundation’s true interests might be.

There was a cartoon I read as a child, in MAD magazine I think, that stated Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and then used the profits to reward people who refused to use it. Not a good business model, that’s for sure.

What made me think of this wasn’t the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize but recent news that complemented my entries about arts support from less than politically correct sources. (Though as a popularly elected official, Gov. Huckabee is obviously politically correct for a lot of people.)

Nobel apparently had pacifist leanings and believed that people would be so horrified by the explosive power of dynamite, war would be impossible. That didn’t stop a French newspaper, upon mistaking his brother’s death for his, from exclaiming “the merchant of death is dead.”

The recent news that Altria (nee Philip Morris) would be leaving NYC heralding the end to the grant support they provided to the arts community and the closure of a branch site of the Whitney Museum.

Whether you approve of Altria or not, this is certainly a blow to many organizations in NYC which depended on the money. I don’t know what this means for the arts organizations that they support nationally. I know of a number of companies located outside of NYC who receive funding from Altria.

There were some details to the controversy over arts organizations accepting money from a tobacco company that the NY Times covered of which I wasn’t aware. There are apparently people who won’t go to see performances by companies who accept Altria funding. It makes sense that there would be since there are artists who won’t perform in places that accept the support of certain companies. I had just never come across an arts patron who boycotted a performance group.

I have to admit, I have always been suspicious of Altria’s arts philanthropy because the preponderance of their support seems to go to dance companies. As a group, dancers tend to be biggest consumer of cigarettes among performing artists due to their appetite suppressing properties which help them stay thin.

I have to also acknowledge that even though I don’t receive six or seven figure donations at my organization (and fewer five figure ones than I would like!), the source of some of those funds may conflict with my social/political/business leanings. When you put out an appeal for funding, it is difficult to control who will respond to your call. When you have knowledge of the original source of the money, the decision to accept can require a lot of soul searching.

I wonder with corporate support waning as companies and banks move or merge, will arts organizations faced with this reality have an easier time accepting or rejecting funding knowing that longevity of support is no longer assured.

There was a very powerful illustration in Spike Online this week about why the arts industry should be careful about promoting benefits of artistic activity that don’t include artistic qualities.

Tiffany Jenkins notes that recently seven major arts entities in England teamed up on a proposal that stated funding the arts “will improve: ‘participation’, ‘self-esteem’ ‘community cohesion’, social regeneration’, ‘economic vitality’ and ‘health’.”

Also recently, Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated that the 2012 Olympics “will increase volunteering, create community cohesion and tackle obesity.” The Treasury has suggested the games will result in “urban regeneration, to economic prosperity.”

Says Jenkins (my emphasis)-

Hence culture and sport find themselves competing, not as discreet public goods or ends in their own right, but as interchangeable vehicles aiming to deliver on a set of identical priorities, which does neither of them any favours. Once the arts are viewed merely as a tool for delivering prescribed economic or social outcomes, there is no reason why the arts should be favoured.

A bit of background if you hadn’t been following the news- The arts community in England is quite upset because their funding got cut by

Well it seems that Fractured Atlas isn’t just an information resource any more. Thanks to eagle eye folks at TheatreForte, I recently learned they have started a blog as well.

As you might imagine, they have entries on a number of interesting subjects. The one that caught my eye was a little quiz Adam Huttler ran about which presidential candidate was the source of quotes on the importance of arts education, including this one.

“I tend to think that one of the greatest mistakes in education over the past generation has been that many school districts have cut their budgets in music and art programs. And in doing so, they’ve done one of the dumbest things that could ever be done that really is harmful to students in this country.”

The answer to the little quiz was Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He made the comments before an audience at a Baptist University and based his sentiment partially on the idea that human’s reflect the creativity of the divine in who’s image they were shaped.

I was a little skeptical about his sincerity, especially when it appeared he had made the faux pas of endorsing a book he hadn’t read by encouraging his audience to read Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class. As Huttler notes, the book says that creativity thrives in communities where homosexuals can live openly.

But Gov. Huckabee seems fully invested in the idea. He has signed mandatory arts education into law and made arts education the theme of his term as chairman of the Education Commission of the States. In his address he says the country is failing it’s children by perpetuating a system that only emphasizes left brain learning.

Unfortunately, most of Gov. Huckabee’s other political views put him outside my consideration. This is just another example of how one should not categorize a person entirely by a label. While people holding liberal view are often more in sympathy with the arts, I have personally lived in a state where Republicans were resisting Democrat cuts to the arts during budget negotiations. Given that the arts groups were proving to be well organized that year and the Republicans may have seen an advantage in taking up their cause when normally they might not have.

Politics makes strange bedfellows they say.* Sometimes there is benefit in considering unfamiliar bedmates.

*Though Charles Dudley Warner said it first, adapted from Shakespeare’s Tempest..

Earlier this month Albert at philanthropy blog, White Courtesy Telephone, did an entry on “Four Common Funder Misconceptions About Non-profits” and made a post along the same vein later in the month.

The entries offer an interesting, if not daunting, peek into the thought processes of funders. Albert encourages them to rethink their attitudes in terms of micromanaging non-profits, seeing their role as culling out the weak organizations, encouraging charities to merge and run themselves in a more business like manner.

Albert encourages funders to give applicants some slack when it comes to grading neatness.

“There’s a kind of mental trap that some grantmakers fall into. When we’re learning the ropes, we quickly realize there’s not enough money to go around for all the worthy applicants who approach us for funding…So we devise many little tests of nonprofit worthiness

It’s never too early to start planning for the next conference I always say. Well, at least I have been saying it recently as a way to encourage some members of the Emerging Leadership Institute alumni to put their heads together to see how we can address some of the concerns we had last year in the upcoming conference this January.

A few of us had a conference call yesterday on the topic and will be pursuing some initiatives, some of which will make the conference experience more enjoyable for ELI alumni and new participants alike. So if you were thinking of applying for the program, it will be even more worth it next year than it was this past year! Watch the Arts Presenters Website for the opening of the application period.

One of the biggest issues that emerged during our discussions last year was the issue of succession planning. Many people felt they were being overlooked for grooming, if there was any concern about grooming anyone to begin with. Something I have heard mentioned since then is that there seems to be an unwillingness for people to stay with an organization long enough to even be considered for a leadership position, not to mention those who leave non-profit altogether for better pay.

I think we could get into a chicken-egg argument about the situation. Are people leaving because they don’t see any opportunity for advancement in the organization or are people not being given opportunities because the organization doesn’t want to invest time cultivating skills in someone who is only going to leave?

I am not sure what the answer is and I imagine different people and organizations have a variety of factors that motivate staying or going most strongly. In a discussion/interview with Jim Undercofler, now President and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Drew McManus addresses the desire to pursue a fast track career ladder and the salary arms races in the orchestra world. (Segment 5 contains the pertinent dialogue.)

Drew talks about how there exists a fairly clear predetermined path one should take if they want to be on a fast track to advancement in the orchestra world. The focus for administrators and musicians isn’t on what one has accomplished, but rather how prestigious the organization one is working for is and how to advance to the next stage.

At the same time, orchestras operate in constant fear of losing an administrator to a neighbor and end up paying salaries that may be out of proportion with the value they receive from the manager. Though he doesn’t give any specific examples, Drew suggests that orchestras to provide reasons other than money to reward administrators for staying and “building something spectacular.” I imagine these alternative rewards could be anything from additional training and education to use of timeshares.

The other thing that Drew and Mr. Undercofler allude to is the fact that not everyone thrives in every type of environment. Some people do better in smaller organizations or certain geographic locations and both the managers and boards of directors are ill served by chasing prestigious names over best fits.

Probably the bedrock upon which good succession planning is going to be based is managers learning what type of environments they best fit and boards of directors exploring what alternative benefits to money they can offer. Money has been the measure of value for jobs for so long, people really aren’t in the practice of being creative about employing alternative assets nor are job seekers practiced at considering or even suggesting those options.

The Independent Sector recently published a report on the value of volunteer time. It turns out that it is $18.77 an hour as of 2006. A chart on the webpage calculates the value of volunteerism since 1980. (Rather depressing to see that for much of my life, my labor was worth a whole lot more than I was being paid.)

There is also another chart that breaks down the value on a state by state basis. These numbers are in 2005 values since the state reporting lags the Federal reporting by a year. It turns out that Washington D.C. had the highest value at $27.44/hour. I am guessing the salaries of all those politicians, lobbyists and lawyers skews the results a little.

These numbers can be useful in reporting the value of volunteers to your organization. However, as the report notes,

“the value of volunteer services can also be used on financial statements – including statements for internal and external purposes, grant proposals, and annual reports – only if a volunteer is performing a specialized skill for a nonprofit. The general rule to follow…is to determine whether the organization would have purchased the services if they had not been donated.” (my emphasis)

Another guideline to note is that people donating their time to perform the specific skills from their profession can be valued higher than the general average, but only if they volunteering those specific skills.

“If a doctor is painting a fence or a lawyer is sorting groceries, he or she is not performing his or her specialized skill for the nonprofit, and their volunteer hour value would not be higher.”

All the information is included on a single web page with links to the appropriate sections of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Accounting Standards Board for those who are interested in learning how to calculate the value of volunteered hours more precisely (and legally).

My thanks to Grantstation Insider for the scoop.

Interesting developments in Buffalo, NY coming to me via A Poor Player blog. Facing a large deficit, the management of the Studio Arena took a number of cost cutting measures including eliminating 14 positions and reducing the number of designers for each show.

They also decided to collaborate with local performance groups and present two of their productions as part of the Studio Arena season. This is the type of thinking I, among others, have encouraged performing arts groups to engage in– partnering up rather than competing.

There was a little catch though that anyone seeking to follow my encouragement should heed. These partner organizations were comprised of non-union actors and the Studio Arena is an Equity house. Tom Loughlin who write A Poor Player includes links to three &nbsp stories about the conflict between Studio Arena and the Actors Union to provide the back story. (All Acrobat documents)

The theatre and union eventually came to a resolution and arranged for the non-union groups to be paid according to the lower LORT D payrate rather than the LORT B rate that the Studio Arena usually needs to pay actors at. The non-union actors will have the option of applying for their union cards after the performance runs are complete.

In his blog Tom raises some issues the newspaper articles don’t, issues I suspect won’t be unique to the Buffalo area. He feels that local Equity actors have never been able to win with the Studio Arena. He points out that the regional theatre movement was started with the idea that local actors could find employment. Instead, actors from New York City were hired with few local actors getting more than token smaller roles. (A long time trend I recently noted.)

Now, in tighter financial times you might think local actors would see more employment given that there is no housing and transportation expenses to pay. Instead, Tom says, the local Equity actors are being skipped over in favor of even cheaper labor from non-union actors.

The whole concept of partnering on efforts remains a good one. I hate to have to qualify my feelings in the context of this incident by adding: as long as it is done with the intent of strengthening all those involved rather than circumvent obligations. There is no evidence that Studio Arena sought to exploit perceived loopholes other than the suspicions people have about its motivations.

As one of the articles notes, union membership has always been a mixed bag for actors hindering opportunities as much as facilitating them. With an increasing number of theatres finding themselves on financial unstable ground and the Studio Arena precedent, I wonder how many more concessions Actors’ Equity might find themselves making in the near future.

With the movie studios calling for an end of residual payments to writers, actors and directors, it looks like some tough years ahead for union members on many fronts.

Last month, the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed four resolutions regarding the arts.

The resolutions, which may be found on pages 7-10 of the Acrobat document were (my emphasis)

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors supports the conclusions of the Arts and
Economic Prosperity III study and urges mayors across the
country to invest in nonprofit arts organizations through their local arts agencies as a catalyst to generate economic impact, stimulate business development, spur urban renewal, attract tourists and area residents to community activities, and to improve the overall quality of life in America’s cities.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors urges mayors to consider these recommended arts policy strategies to help stimulate private giving to the arts and arts education in America.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors urges mayors to build partnerships with their local arts agencies and other members of the arts and humanities community in their cities to proclaim, to participate in, and to celebrate the month of October as National Arts and Humanities Month.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States Conference of Mayors reaffirms its support of the National Endowment for the Arts (and specifically the valuable Challenge America program), National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Office of Museum Services within the Institute of Museum and Library Services and calls upon Congress to restore full funding for these agencies in the FY’08 appropriations bills.

Now granted, these resolutions aren’t binding in the least. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it to your benefit though. Plug your mayor’s name (or city) into the search field in the upper right hand corner of the web site to determine if your mayor is a member of the conference. Then contact his/her honor and congratulate them for joining with their colleagues in ratifying these items and provide suggestions on how you can collaborate.

The better prepared you are with your proposal and the more unity you can show with other arts organizations, arts councils and even chambers of commerce, the more effective I imagine your efforts will be. It doesn’t matter if your mayor voted for the resolution or not, as noted in an earlier entry, if you give him/her an opportunity to look like a good person, there is a good chance of success. Of course, the better the local economy, the better your chances of getting direct financial support from your city.

Getting the mayor to take these resolutions to heart and advocate on behalf of the arts community to businesses and other governmental entities may end up being of greater value than what the municipal budget could provide.

The these four resolutions were submitted by the committee on tourism, arts, parks, entertainment and sports. Unfortunately, the Conference of Mayors website only lists the committee chair. It would be interesting to learn who else serves on the committee since the citizens those mayors serve would have a greater claim on those politicians to step up to their convictions.

Last month Barry Hessenius did a rather lengthy entry on his blog regarding lobbying for non-profits. I haven’t seen any mention of it elsewhere and felt it important to call attention to some of what he mentions.

Hessenius recently completed his book, Hardball Lobbying for Non-profits, so the topic is fairly close to his heart and thoughts. His thesis essentially is that like it or not, lobbying and the expenditure of money that accompanies it is absolutely necessary to maintain stable governmental funding and legislative support. There are plenty of other causes as worthy as yours out there so success on an emotional or logical appeal is going to be less likely to succeed. And if the other worthies bring money into the picture, the job becomes that much more difficult.

“Rather than acting like a $160+ billion a year industry, the national nonprofit arts field has ceded the power of its economic clout by its failure to engage in serious advocacy and lobbying efforts in comparison to other special interest groups.”

Contrary to what you may believe given the amounts involved in the recent campaign financing and lobbying scandals, he states that it doesn’t take that much money to effectively lobby legislators. However, it would behoove the industry to have a well-organized and funded lobby apparatus in place at all times keeping its interests on law makers’ radar at all times.

The worst thing that can happen, Hessenius says, is to be in the position of trying to marshal your forces in times of funding and legislative crisis. Many performing arts people are familiar with the maxim, “cheap, quick, quality, pick two” so the benefit of financing a consistent effort can be apparent.

Personally, I’d as concerned about getting my money worth from the lobbyist as I am from the legislator. I suspect that there will be a steep learning curve from mistakes made initially. Much of what he says makes sense. Organizations are urged to create a Crisis Public Relations plan in advance because there is little chance of manufacturing an effective one during one.

Hessenius says he is going to try to create the lobbying machinery for all non-profits, regardless of urban, suburban or rural setting. I don’t know what his exact plan is, but he wants to do advocacy and lobbying workshops across the country and explicitly asks for his readers’ help in arranging and hosting them. If you are in a position to help him out, read over the entry and contact him.

**He says to email him a reply to the message but there is no email listed which makes me believe he was referring to the fact many have the column automatically emailed to them. If you really want to participate, perhaps contact WESTAF which hosts his blog.

Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas has caused a stir on blogosphere the last few days. He did a 10 Questions Interview on Theatre Is Territory that was critical of the NYC orientation of the theatre profession and the training of artists in general. He says a lot of provocative stuff, including “Dogs are trained, not artists,” which make it worth reading. Long time readers might remember Walters from his discussion of Tony Kushner’s suggestion that all performance degrees be abolished that I covered about a year ago.

Actually, I should back up a little, most of the interview was about artist training and the environment in which the arts now operate. Most of the comments on the Theatre is Territory posting, Walters’ response posting, and Theatre is Territory’s response to his response dealt with one answer he gave suggesting that all roads to working in your hometown go through NYC.

Walters actually gets around to expounding on the more central ideas of the Theatre is Territory interview on his blog today. His thoughts on not taking potshots at conservatives in performances and other art works just because it is easy is something to consider.

His expansion on what he envisioned when he said that encouraging students to be innovative, experiment and take risks was the only way to move performance forward aided my understanding of his argument. I initially thought he was calling for more of the same attempt to be avant garde until he qualified it by saying

“Experimenting doesn’t just mean “doing weird shit.” You have to do it for a purpose, and pay attention to the results. And if your purpose is simply, solely something like “to confuse the audience” or “to offend the audience,” then I am going to say “That’s too easy. Raise the bar.”

Ultimately, I have to confess though that the whole NYC centric debate, while interesting, made part of me grumble inside. It wasn’t a big grumble, but still part of my mind was grumbling that the debate wasn’t contributing any solutions to the problems facing the performing arts.

Frankly, it isn’t fair to expect that every conversation on an arts blog help industry professionals sharpen their minds and hone their perceptions so that they ready to synthesize the next great artistic movement and then promote it utilizing the best techniques and emerging media channels.

On the other hand it is tough not to have an ever present anxiety about the future of the arts permeating your psyche even if you only read half the stuff I do every day. Pretty much everyone agrees the current environment is in what Seth Godin terms a conceptual dip.

Maybe Walters is right about how to educate the next generation of artists. A lot of smart people are giving well considered advice about how arts organizations can make a transition from the current mode of operations to a new way. No one really knows which projections about future trends and how to prepare for them is correct.

For many it’s hardly worth panicking that neither you nor they know which strategy is going to be most effective because you most certainly don’t have the time, money or personnel to effect whatever suggested changes you decide are best. (That is if you had time to review the most recent theories about the future of the arts in the first place.)

In this larger context of the arts creeping toward its inevitable doom, it seems rather pointless to debate the NYC effect. Even the commenters pretty much admit the city doesn’t have a nefarious plan to suck the artistic energy out of the rest of the country. Though there is something to be said for leading by example. If you want audiences to stop thinking the only things worth seeing come from NYC, theatres have to stop going there for the majority of their talent pool.

I wonder if the owners of the proprietary arts organizations, the model that preceded the current non-profit arts organizations, had similar discussions as their businesses were dying out. (For the record, I am in the freshness and relevance are needed camp rather than the end is near.) In Performing Arts, The Economic Dilemma . economists Baumol & Bowen note that at the start of the 20th century there were 327 touring theatre companies, less than 50 by 1915 and less than 25 in 1930s.

I imagine those folks were blaming the movies, records and radio for stealing their audiences as much as arts people blame DVDs, the internet and big screen televisions for diverting attention today. I’m sure they made much ado over factors that had no real bearing on the success of their businesses too because they had no idea what was coming.

Hindsight allows us to take comfort in the fact that vaudeville survived and appeared on television on the Texaco Star Theatre/Milton Berle show and Ed Sullivan. At one time there was a more golden era for the current non-profit arts model with subscribers packing the halls.

But it is no guarantee for the future. All this proves is that there is a law of conservation of artistic energy–it can not be destroyed but manifests itself in different media. Our real worry when we complain about empty seats and lack of art in schools isn’t that art will disappear. It is that it will change form and we don’t know what line to stand in to participate.

I was listening to the CEO of the county YMCA finishing his comments about the athletic portion of the Kroc Center project I am advising the Salvation Army on when I started to notice some familiar themes so I began jotting down notes.

He was talking about how working out was becoming an increasingly social experience for people. Plenty of condos are being built these days featuring exercise rooms as selling points but no one is using them. As a result, the rooms are eventually being turned to other uses and the condos are asking the YMCA and other athletic clubs if they want the equipment.

This trend has also impacted the way the YMCA (and apparently other athletic facilities) are approaching developing memberships. There are now spaces called starter rooms where people can work out under specific direction with a small group of others with whom they share some connection (gender, age, ethnicity, weight).

These rooms and others like it (i.e. aerobics studios) no longer have mirrors in them. There used to be a focus on monitoring ones form and thus the mirrors. Many people didn’t want to see how bad they looked in the mirror so out the went. There has also been a shift in focus from fitness to well-being.

Once people have been working out for awhile and refined their physique and technique, they move out under their own motivation into the familiar bigger room with the mirrors where they can monitor their form and progress.

Another thing he mentioned was that the YMCA was partnering with the Boys and Girls Clubs to offer programs to get entire families participating. The Y sees its strength as getting adults involved and of course Boys and Girls Club gets the kids.

So in terms of the arts–we already know that attendance is very socially based and that the lack of people in the larger audience with whom one feels they have a connection can cause individuals to feel less inclined to attend.

There have been a lot of discussions about strategies for attracting members of different groups be it age, race or income level to the arts. The parallel of the YMCA’s new exercisers would be people who didn’t attend the arts very much but were interested in doing so. Perhaps to engage this segment of the population what is needed is an opportunity to participate in a structured arts experience in a small group environment.

The type of people the group is comprised will depend on the community. In some places and age cohorts, income and profession differences may prove more of a barrier to bonding with other group members than race or gender. I frankly don’t have any ideas at this point about what the arts experience should look like other than being structured to provide a safe environment in which to become informed and comfortable with attending an event. The eventual goal, of course, is to have people move to the “big room” with confidence.

I am betting there are organizations out there with programs that have proved to remove attendance anxiety that might be adapted for smaller groups. I imagine that any organization trying to build a similar program from scratch would find it took a long time and great investment of resources to simply let the target groups know an experience tailor made for them existed. It is generally known where one goes to exercise, but who knows where one goes to gain confidence in the arts? Perhaps a humorous ad in the spirit of the 98 lbs weakling losing his girl on the beach is the way to go.

One thing to note so you don’t get too discouraged. People are motivated to start exercising for many reasons and the three month mark is a time when many people disappear from the gyms. If you do get some sort of regular arts experience program together, the reality is that some of your regulars may lose their motivation or decided they achieved at least part of what they set out to and drift away, too.

I wonder if a change in focus akin to the fitness to well-being shift is needed. For lack of a better idea, perhaps the transition should be away from the arts as a source of entertainment and culture to well-being of the whole person as well. This could prove a little tricky since the exercise folks encourage people to abandon sedentary activities like watching TV for walking. The performing arts will be encouraging people to abandon one sedentary activity for another.

Pitched correctly, the idea of the arts as part of the well-being of the whole person could be more productive for the arts community. For one thing, if the concept was generally subscribed to it wouldn’t be so hard to justify why governments should fund the arts over human services like AIDS hospices. Both are important to the well-being of a person. In fact, government funding has made it easier for me to give free tickets to AIDS and drug treatment programs.

Disseminating the idea that it is good for people to spend 2 hours a week (just 30 minutes every other day!) in an arts activity, be it attending or creating, taps into the equivalent message people are getting about exercise. Well Being = Regular Exercise + Regular Arts.

The whole concept actually strengthens a message that is already out there, namely that arts exposure makes babies smarter, helps kids in math and socialization, etc. True, the whole Mozart while pregnant leading to higher IQ has been debunked, but the impulse is there to be tapped into. It is just as important to show those who are intimidated by the idea of Mozart that there are plenty of opportunities to access the arts in ways they are comfortable.

And just as families should exercise together, they should experience arts together. The family is the most basic social group. It isn’t a fluke that so many of the advertisements about getting fit, (I guess it’s increasing your wellness now), employ the image of family members motivating each other.

Creating this type of environment relies on effort from everyone and benefits no specific organization since the point will be to encourage people to take pottery classes, knit, paint, dance, antique, attend performances, sing, attend gallery walks, see art films, engage in graphic design, create videos to post on YouTube…

Oh no, we get back to encouraging the very things that distract people from the arts right now!!! I think part of why the exercise industry has moved away from fitness in favor of well-being is because it is tough to tell people exactly how they should be exercising so they seek victory in just getting them to do something. Likewise, the arts world may have to be satisfied with getting people to expand the scope of the something they do just a little bit.

I recently received an email asking for examples of best practices in arts management. Two years ago I was really impressed by a story about a collaborative effort between the Charlotte & Mecklenburg County Library and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (NC) called ImaginOn. Essentially, the two groups came together and would occupy the same building performing their separate functions but also leveraging their collective strengths to offer classes and creative outlets for young people.

Before I suggested ImagiOn as a best practice, I thought I should follow up to make sure it the partnership was a successful one.

According to an article in Backstage from a year ago, it apparently is. Box office revenue increased 61% for the theatre and walk in traffic for the library was approaching 400,000. The joint ImaginOn organization is consulting with Children’s Theatre Company regarding the Minneapolis theatre’s literacy oriented program –just the type of project a co-habitating theatre and library should excel in.

Libraries all over the country are actually benefiting from the partnership. Teens in the digital media program at ImaginOn and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte produced PSAs promoting summer reading being used this year by the Collaborative Library Summer Program.

Given all the recent discussions about the importance of getting younger audiences involved in the arts, a growing trend of children’s arts organization and partnerships like these may emerge. Instead of huge performing arts centers that have been constructed of late, we may end up seeing more of these mutually beneficial alliances pop up.

In the last week or so the NY Foundation for the Arts has run some articles about the difficulties artists in NYC face with affordable housing. The biggest problem being that they tend to make neighborhoods such cool places to live that people will pay a premium to do so and the artists can’t afford that much.

While the articles are about New York the stories they tell are being repeated across the country.

In the first article, NYFA Executive Director, Michael Royce, recounts his somewhat harrowing experiences with the first five apartments he had when he moved to NYC. For him and many artists, the opportunity to live in a community of artists trumped the squalid conditions and violent surroundings.

At the end of the article he lists people to contact if you are an artist living in NY State and want to participate in focus groups about affordable housing.

The second article is an interview with Paul Nagle who serves as the Director of Communications and Cultural Policy for one of NYC’s council members.

He talks about trying to create a sustainable policy for affordable housing. He acknowledges it is difficult to discuss affordable housing for artists when there is such a dearth of cheap housing for everyone but points out that the artistic presence actually enhances the quality of life in whatever neighborhoods it appears in and thus is an effective investment of funds and policy.

He also notes that policies must be created to stem the expulsive influence of gentrification because it impacts more than just the artists.

“But it’s not just the arts. It means all mixed economic activity and all middle-to-low-income activity will be driven out as well. Then you have a luxury neighbourhood, which in New York City basically means that it is completely dependent on the stock market… and I don’t know where the sustainability is in that formula. So this becomes less about being nice to artists and more about maintaining stable communities with character and diversity where people can actually live.”

It seems that any municipality hoping to attract Richard Florida’s creative class would be wise to watch the issue and fabricate a policy early on so they don’t encounter similar problems.

Apropos of my comment at the end of yesterday’s entry that one should look at statistics with a critical eye, the same obviously goes for any news report. What I specifically have in mind in this case is the Washington Post story about how Josh Bell was ignored by rush hour pedestrians at a Washington D.C. train station.

I have seen links to this article from Artsjournal.com and Arts and Letters Daily. There was a response to the article on Salon.com and discussions on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s forums.

And I guess I am contributing to the hysteria by mentioning it here. But the whole experiment really perturbed me.

The title of the article, “Pearls Before Breakfast,” an allusion to pearls before swine, really says it all. The effort seemed to be biased toward proving that the philistines of D.C. wouldn’t recognize talent. It almost seems like they set Bell up to fail. It was more of a stunt to write a provocative article about than a constructive attempt to observe and measure response. I guess I shouldn’t expect so disciplined approach from the the author, Gene Weingarten, since he is a columnist rather than a reporter.

They put him in a train station leading up to the 9:00 am hour, a time when people have work commitments they are rushing to satisfy, expecting people to engage in a leisure time activity.

Busking is prohibited in the Metro stations. In a post article discussion, the author admits he had to cajole the transit authority into violating their rules and give him permission. While people might stop because Bell’s presence was out of the ordinary, they also might ignore him assuming he was operating illegally and the police would be along to stop him soon.

Weingarten cites Kant’s belief that beauty can only be appreciated under optimal conditions. Instead of trying this out in less than optimal conditions, he sets it up in abysmal conditions. Probably the only situation that would have been worse would be stationing Bell in a stadium vomitorium at a Washington Redskins game during half time.

It would have been better to try this experiment in a place where people were in a more leisurely state of mind even if they were in the process of pursuing a goal. Perhaps a shopping mall–or the National Mall.

I mention this more for the benefit of the reader than in any hope of influencing future experiments by newspaper columnists. Studies like the Magic of Music mentioned yesterday have noted people are listening to classical music fairly frequently these days. They just don’t do it in a concert hall. The performers, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, may have to go where the people are if they aren’t coming to them.

Sure there have been performances in malls and outdoor areas before, but has anyone thought to study before what it is that gets people to stop? It is easy enough to perform with no specific expectation of how many will stop and another to measure the who, what, when, why and how of getting people to sincerely do so. The answers may comprise the basis for the next method of presenting performances.

One last thing in closing that has been long debated in many forms and I won’t try to tackle tonight.

I didn’t read all the responses people made on the various websites on which the story appeared, but one interesting observation did catch my eye. There was much ado made about the fact that Bell only made $34 and attracted the attention of a handful of people vs. National Symphony music director Leonard Slatkin’s projection that a hypothetical World Class musician would make $150 and cause 75-100 to take a meaningful pause. On the Chronicle of Higher Ed forums, a poster named Grupt (comment #17) observed: “But there’s an assumption there that there should be a tight relationship between talent and take, and I doubt that relationship exists.”

There is a story bouncing around the philanthropy blogs about some shenanigans at MOMA that the IRS is looking into. The NY Times reported that Museum Director Glenn Lowry was getting quite a bit of money on the side from two board members-$35,800 to $3.5 million a year, according to Trent Stamp’s Take blog. (And the Times article which I somehow missed on first read and writing.)

The fact this sort of thing worries me is probably as irrational as people who worry about the federal estate tax. Most non-profits (and wealthy folks) will never earn enough money in a year to warrant the attention of the IRS. My concern is that governments will start sniffing around local arts organizations that appear to be doing well (though in relation to MoMA, aren’t even in the same neighborhood) with an eye to fines or rescinding non-profit status.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette (via Artsjournal.com) had an article today about how the city was looking to tax non-profits by getting them to commit to donating a certain amount every year to the city.

Even if it is in the name of assuring good governance, the scrutiny will further burden organizations already short on resources as they struggle to prove that their greatest wish is that they had a relationship with people with enough money make non-compliance with tax code a reality.

Worse, these type of stories erode the perception among the public at large that non-profit arts organizations can be good custodians of their trust and the thousands of small donations that make a difference in the programs the organizations offer.

There are other troubling governance concerns as Jack Siegel at Charity Governance blog points out. (my emphasis)

“It is very troubling that two directors are funding side payments to an executive director, particularly if this was not widely known by other board members. We don’t know how much the full board knew. Let’s be honest, however, the executive director has a lot influence in shaping any board’s view of the institution and why the board should approve certain actions, but not others. If a couple of board members are making side payments to the executive director without the knowledge of other board members, the executive director has an incentive to emphasize his benefactors’ agenda when interacting with the full board. In other words, the executive director risks becoming a toady. As a consequence, the full board may no longer be getting the benefit of the executive director’s best or impartial judgment.”

I had mentioned in an earlier entry that I met blogger and arts consultant Neill Archer Roan at the APAP conference a couple weeks ago. I saw he was sitting on a conference panel during a time I had a scheduling conflict and thinking it might be my only chance to see him, stuck my head in before the session began to express my admiration for his blog.

I wasn’t going in there hoping to elicit a mutual admiration conversation so I didn’t mention Butts In the Seats. At most, I thought he would recognize my name. Instead, I was taken aback as he launched into some pretty effusive praise of my blog.

I mention this not so much by way of self-aggrandizement as full disclosure. I didn’t know at the time that I would see him again as did presented the results of a study commissioned by APAP on the state of the industry. I was really impressed the work he and Wendy Roan did on the study and the recommendations they made.

As usual, I suggest giving the study a read. It is only 16 pages long and contains excerpts from interviews with various members of the association. There was a lot that didn’t surprise me or wasn’t new, but a couple things caught my eye.

Something I hadn’t really thought about was that all the new construction of performing arts centers is as big a threat to the financial health of another center 3000 miles away as it is for an arts organization 5 miles away.

“…competition has significantly increased for those marquee attractions across categories that are deemed necessary to justify large public investments in arts-as-economic-development. Just because there are more presenters wanting to book Yo Yo Ma, The Producers, Natalie Cole, Wynton Marsalis, et al, doesn’t mean that there are more performance dates available. Presenters that have traditionally occupied a slot in particular tour route must often pay more and commit earlier to defend their ability to get first crack at the events that their audiences expect and want.” (page 6)

The report also notes that these greater expenditures at one end of a season often means funds aren’t available to present high quality artists with an appeal to a narrower niche.

Another section of the report dealt with a problem I hope my blog helps to reduce with entries like this one.

“It is generally agreed that the culture of the presenting field has not historically been one in which knowledge and systematic learning have been valued. It is not atypical…that the knowledge outputs (e.g. reports, books, discussion documents, etc.) from significant studies, research initiatives, task forces, and work groups have been largely unread, undiscussed, and undigested. As a result, the value that is created by these initiatives remains largely under-appreciated.” (page 6)

I was also somewhat surprised to see that succession planning is such a big concern. I thought when it came up in my ELI sessions, it was perhaps partially a sign that there were a lot of young arts leaders hungry to move up the ladder and there were few opportunities. “Many participants voiced fears and frustration about their organizations’ failure to: 1) effectively plan for succession, and; 2) institutionalize and capture organizational knowledge and expertise.” (page 6 again, it was a good page!)

For awhile now I have been saying that I thought the block booking arrangement was going to have increased importance as finances become tighter and tighter. There were a number of comments (pages 8 & 9–too much to quote here) cited in the report which suggest that greater collaboration not only in the form of block booking but also information exchange and regional cooperative efforts is going to be critical for sustainability.

After this, the report deals more with the conference and Arts Presenters as an organization. My plan is to address some of these issues at a later time.

About 18 months ago I did an entry about the strange approach to arts funding in NYC. I was happy to see via the NY Times (free registration required) and the NY Sun that the city is moving to depoliticize the whole process.

In the past lobbying for funds diverted great deal of arts leaders’ time and energy. A number of people, including Mayor Bloomberg, are quoted as being pleased that with this change arts administrators can turn more attention to running their organizations. In the past, the mayor would regularly cut funding and the city council would restore it. Under the new plan, organizations would be certain what their funding was and know it much earlier, facilitating budget planning.

Part of the new funding criteria is peer reviewed applications assessing accountability and advancement of the organizational goals and impact. “What this does is tell groups, ‘You’re going to move forward, or we’re going to take away funding and give it to groups that are moving up,'” said Dominic M. Recchia Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Cultural Affairs Committee. “It’s a sign that you have to produce.”

According to the Sun article, even arts organizations located on city owned property will be held to these expectations. Historically, this group, known as the Cultural Institutions Group, has been funded at higher levels and had more of their funding guaranteed.

“To encourage good governance and counter the common complaint from other institutions that the CIGs receive their generous levels of funding without being held to any standards…Ten percent of an institution’s operating support will be dependent on a performance-based review process called CultureStat.”

The following bit really caught my eye.

“Several cultural leaders expressed surprise that the City Council would, in the interest of a more transparent and fair system, relinquish its power over the cultural purse strings. “I am really impressed that [City Council Speaker] Christine Quinn would, in a day and age when people need to raise money for their campaigns, take her member item allotments and give that to the peer review panel process,” Ms. Pasternak said.

Very interesting. I don’t know quite what to make of it not being really up on my NYC politics. I suspect that somebod(ies) is responsible for exhibiting no little wisdom and maturity in public service.

So my question is what is better for an outreach activity? An hour long lecture/demonstration for 300 kids with limited exposure to the arts in an auditorium where 20 students get a chance to participate for 5-10 minutes or a master class with 20 students with some exposure to the arts get a solid hour at least to actively learn something new.

It is the old quality or quantity debate.

Most people will probably say that both have their place in a well-designed outreach program. The problem for me is that with No Child Left Behind the opportunities for outreach are tilting toward the latter option and that worries me.

Maybe the granting agencies’ preference for big numbers served has become attached to my guilt sense and I have unrealistic expectations. Heck, the blame hardly can be directed at them. Their preference is only a reflection of the larger societal idea that the greater the number of people who like something, the more worthy it is. Reading about how students are bereft of any arts exposure at all also contributes to the sense that one provide the opportunity to as many as one can.

I know for certain that the smaller groups have a higher sense of satisfaction from the experience they receive. (I have decided, from our surveying, that right around 5th grade everything a student sees is dumb and one learns nothing from any experience.) Many of them are artist-teachers who will pass along the insights and knowledge they acquired.

I certainly walk away from both outreach activities feeling that I have made a wonderful contribution to people’s life experience. As time passes though I look back at the smaller events with less satisfaction than the larger ones. To be honest, it will probably be like this forever, or at least until I get old and crotchety and don’t give a hoot any more.

Or maybe funding philosophy will shift on a large scale and focus more on the quality experience for smaller groups thereby reinforcing an ideal with money.

Of course, then they will be criticized for not serving all those poor souls bereft of the experience….

I began this blog (nearly 3 years ago! Holy Crow!) talking about evangelism for the arts. Thoughts of religion have never been too far from my mind since then, mostly because a church has always been pretty close to my stage.

I have mentioned before that a number of churches have taken turns renting our facility. The rent helps balance the budget and the church understands that the theatre’s needs come first so they need to work around our sets. (Though when we did Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses they saw the large pool of water as an opportunity for baptisms.)

There are more churches locally than there are facilities to accommodate them. I think they are basically subsidizing the public school system here because I can’t pass by a school on Sundays without seeing a directional sign for a church. Whenever a suitable building becomes vacant, there is a lot of competition between the churches as well as businesses to rent it. In fact, one of our previous church tenants built a new facility, out grew it within 6 months and were asking to come back.

One of the insidious (though they don’t mean to be) things about the churches is all the money they have to throw around. Even though they rent a storage room for us, every Sunday they bring in a large U Haul truck full of equipment. Among this is a large sound system because ours is not adequate for the number of musicians and singers they have every Sunday. They put up television monitors in our lobby for nursing mothers and over flow (a previous tenant put them in classrooms in adjacent buildings so large was their overflow.)

The insidious part isn’t that they have so much money. My envy would be my problem. It is that the money gives them the ability to offer us so much of what we need in return for concessions. A prior renter bought lighting instruments with the stipulation that half were for our use and half were to be left permanently focussed where they wanted. They also bought a projection screen which we could use any time we wanted. When they left, they only took the permanently focussed instruments and sold the screen to the next church. All in all, we haven’t done too badly.

The current church has proposed replacing our entire sound system–a $40-50,000 proposition–in return for a 3 year guaranteed lease (vs the renewable 1 year one). They say they will vacate at the end of that time regardless of whether they find a place or not and leave the sound system–and will put it all in writing.

Most of my crew has been salivating at the idea, of course. They also have their reservations. Some are small, but important, like whether they will be more lax in taking care of the facility if they know they can’t be kicked out. Others are of greater concern. Will every request that is made have an unspoken “because we bought you a $50,000 sound system, after all” tacked to the end.

There is also a cautionary tale of a local high school that was grateful to have a huge renovation and upgrade of equipment in their auditorium paid for by a local church in return for guaranteed use of the facility on certain days for which they would pay rent, of course. The problem is, now the high school can’t use their own facility on weekends and some weeknights. (And if you think that is bizarre, a local high school marching band couldn’t use their own field this Fall because the school had rented it out for use by a private school’s marching band. Such is the state of education funding.)

But this story isn’t about the growing power of churches, not really. It could have just as well been about an extremely wealthy donor or a corporation. Churches are just an emerging figure in an old story about non-profits and the hard decisions that need to be made in the face of expectations attached to the receipt of money and goods.

My particular story is interesting only because it is the offer of a church which has the potential of corrupting the soul of my organization. From the way I read things, it doesn’t appear as if those I answer to would accept the proposal despite the benefits. While I initially wrestled with the whole situation as I pondered the pros and cons, I would have to generally agree with my staff’s reservations.

I daresay, smarter people than I have had to wrestle with bigger proposals which necessitated greater compromises. The whole controversey with corporate naming rights at the Smithsonian comes to mind.

Its a situation all arts managers need to ponder. Most of the time, you think you wish you had the problem of people wanting to give you lots of money and how you would snatch it up while blithely saying “Oh you only want one of my kidneys, what a bargain!” Like most daydreams, you don’t realize how attached you are to your body parts, or organizational soul as the case may be, until you receive a genuine offer for it.

Apropos of my bonus ponder yesterday, I commented on Artful Manager that a flexible view of non-profit status might not be well received by the IRS.

Lo and behold, the Chronicle of Philanthrophy has an article about how the IRS is scrutinizing non-profits more closely these days. The unit handling non-profits is still fairly small, but it is getting more personnel. They are conducting more audits than before. They have started a new program of preliminary investigations and partial audits to help clarify matters. (Check out the charts at the bottom to see how these activities grown in recent years.)

To balance the scary spectre of an audit, they have also started offering training for charities as well to help them keep their books in good shape and their activities in compliance.

Via Arts and Letters Daily is this article about how political correctness is undermining the quality of ballet in Britian. (As an interesting sidenote, the article is the result of an interview with a gentleman participating in a roundtable for Battle of Ideas at the end of October.)

Dance instructor turned critic Jeffrey Taylor attributes the decline to taboos about touching dance students and subjecting them to rigorous training regimines the teachers themselves experienced.

“Taylor is horrified. ‘Touching is essential! The classical ballet technique is one of the most unnatural physical regimes ever invented by man…Children cannot be coaxed into these positions by words alone: they have to be shown. There is no way a child can understand how you straighten out your lumbar region, how you tuck your hips underneath you.�”

“Another of Taylor’s laments is the non-judgemental current creeping into ballet. Just as touching is now banned, so too are the physically punishing regimes that were once the mainstay of ballet training. ‘Today it’s almost official: you never tell a child what to do unless they are willing to do it.’ This just doesn’t work. There comes a point [in ballet] when you have got to do as you are told, whether you understand or approve.”

I haven’t heard of too many similar cases in the US, but then I am not in the dance world. One thing I do know is that the concerns about inappropriate touching, while protecting the teacher, can tend to confuse the students.

One of the dance teachers on campus is careful to ask if she can touch a student before making contact to correct a posture. It turns out that some of the students find this creepy. A rank your professor website had a few comments about the professor’s sexual hang-ups based specifically on the fact she poses the question.

I am interested to find out how prevalent this is in the US. I think I will drop a note to Doug Fox over at Great Dance and see if he would be willing to address this either in a response or on his blog.

I am also going to ask some acting teachers I know if this sort of thing has become a bigger concern of late. There isn’t as much touching necessary when teaching acting as with dance. I wonder though if David Mamet’s works are banned from the scene list for fear of offending other students.

Been busy, busy, busy these last couple weeks but I wanted to do a quick entry on something I came across in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

According to a recent study by the federal agency, Corporation for National and Community Service, the post 9/11 world has seen an increase in volunteerism. If your organization needs volunteers and hasn’t made a wide appeal lately, it might be a good environment in which to do so.

The bad news in the study is that people are less trusting of donation appeals than they were before September 2001. It’s not clear from the story if this perception colors how people see arts organizations. Since the article specifically mentions a Red Cross scandal and points to friction of the use of money for human service causes, the negative view may fall predominantly upon that sector.

The situation that can be more clearly identified as a problem for arts fundraising is that so many more chartiable causes exist now than did before. Not only are there now appeals for the families of people killed on 9/11, but also for those dispossessed by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunamis. Charities are trying to do much more to help specific groups these days and are even trying to start programs to proactively prevent disasters and attacks from occuring again.

As I have mentioned in other entries, it is always a little difficult for arts organizations to make a case for funding when the choice is between them and succour for the suffering. Cathartic experiences have been a cornerstone of the arts since the Greeks so should be funded alongside the aid and relief programs.

I had a woman come take a tour of our backstage in the last month or so who runs a theatre in the New Orleans area. She has taken a big hit funding wise but is running her season as best she can because people keep calling and saying they don’t care what the show is about as long as it is funny. Her place is just as important to the rebuilding of people’s spirits as any other funded restoration that is occuring in her region.

I don’t know that there are many people who read this blog that don’t read Artful Manager, but just in case there are, I want to point you at his entry today. The Hennenius Group post he quotes is worth reading and seriously considering. (I don’t know how the heck I missed it.)

What Anthony Radich has to say is sure to be controversial. It seems counterintutive that a guy running an organization “dedicated to the creative advancement and preservation of the arts” would be suggesting the dissolution of arts organizations. In fact, if he were an elected politican, I’m sure there would already be television and print ads out there blaring that Anthony Radich wants to close your arts centers and we oughta chuck him out in November.

I don’t know what it says about arts folks (other than that they don’t read Barry’s blog) that two weeks after it was posted that there hasn’t been any real grumbling about Radich’s proposal to “euthanize nonprofit arts organizations”.

But that is the subject of another entry.

I’ve never made a secret of my belief that not all arts organizations have a right to exist and expect funding. I am against the “Field of Dreams” mentality. I have frequently felt more organizations should merge their resources and efforts. But I certainly recognize the dearth of organizations as well as evinced by my recent perplexion (is that a word?) at the lack of local professional arts organizations.

Contradictory, sure. But by some definitions, the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time is a sign of enlightenment.

But that too is subject for another entry 😉

One section of what Radich said put me in mind of an entry I did two years ago. Quoth Radich:

Let’s pull some of the nonprofit arts programming off the arts-production line and free up funding and talent for reallocation to stronger efforts–especially to new efforts tilted toward engaging the public. Let’s return to the concept of offering seed money for organizations that, over a period of years, need to attract enough of an audience and develop enough of a stable financial base to survive and not structure them to live eternally on the dole. Let’s find a way to extinguish those very large groups that are out of audience-building momentum and running on inertia. Instead of locking arts funders into a cycle of limited choices, let’s free up some venture capital for new arts efforts that share the arts in new ways with the public

.

As I said, this whole argument reminded me of an entry I did on an Independent Sector proposal to change non-profit funding to a more focussed model. The proposal they make runs a little counter to Radich’s since he talks about getting organizations off the dole and the IS proposal essentially encourages foundations to deepen their commitment to support specific organizations. Radich also talks about funders having too few choices, but the IS document as well as the additional sources I cite in that entry seem to indicate funders have too shallow an investment in too many places.

Overall though the two are similar in suggesting offering comprehensive seed money to organizations to help them get off the ground. Both also use language that places funders in the position of venture captialists investing in the promotion of their agenda in return for rock solid accountability.

I wonder if some of the problems Radich sees with organizations being weak and played out might have its origin in the funding method encouraging people to stretch their resources in too many different directions until they aren’t viable any more.

Since Andrew Taylor posted Radich’s proposal, (and the Independent Sector one two years ago), I think I shall go over to his blog and ask him.

I was happy to see an interview last week with the new Honolulu Symphony executive director, Tom Gulick and hear an interview with new symphony board chair Curtis Lee last week where both men acknowledged that the situation with the sale of balcony seats has been ill-advised. (Discussed in earlier entry)

They also acknowledged that the musicians need to be paid better and utilized more efficiently. (We got our fingers crossed for you guys

There is still no mention of Tom Gulick as the new ED on the Symphony website though. He isn’t even included on the administrative staff list. I am somewhat bemused at this situation since the Symphony Musicians have linked to every bit of news about Tom Gulick on their website. It would probably serve the musicians better in salary negotiations if the public didn’t know so much about Gulick. The less people know about him, the less sympathetic public opinion will be for him if negotiations go sour and the issue begins to play out in the press.

Of course, it is more in their interest if things go well and the concert hall fills with optimistic people who donate lots of money. So they are disseminating the good news and contributing to the general optimism.

The one thing Gulick said in his interview that I took some slight exception to was that “New York is the only cultural and artistic destination in the country.” I’d say that Boston, Philly, Washington DC and Chicago can hold their own with NY when it comes to attracting artists and cultural tourists. Not to mention that some people might want to visit Minneapolis and check out the new Guthrie Theater. And in the summer, people are happy to make cross country treks to places like Ashland, OR and Cedar City, UT for the Shakespeare Festivals or Charleston, SC for the Spoleto Festival. There are some who might say Nashville is the true center of American culture.

New York might be near the top of the list of very important locales in the artistic and cultural scene, but it ain’t the only one! As a guy who grew up in NY and proudly identifies the state as his origin, even I have to admit the country has a lot of important cultural and artistic destinations.

Via Arts and Letters Daily was an article by Christina Hoff Sommers that appears in In Character, “Men or Women: Which is the More Generous Sex?”

The short answer is, it matters on the situation. The long answer, which will give you some guidance in how you make your donor appeals, is contained in the article.

Depending on how laboratory experiments are designed either men or women end up emerging as more generous. When the design rewards risk taking, men come to the fore. When the design was purely about generosity, women were kinder.

This latter situation was also borne out by surveys where women’s answers about their generousity outstripped those of men.

However, outside of the lab and away from questionnaires, things are quite different. In a 2003 survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center it was determined that when it came to actually doing something for others, “gender is not noticeably related to altruistic behaviors.”

As the article points out, women and men are different in the way they express their concern for others. Society places women in a nurturing role and men in risk taking roles. Men become firefighters and jump into burning buildings, women become nurses and tend to the burns. The article notes there is nothing wrong with men or women fulfilling either of these roles.

But what about when it comes to donating money and not saving or soothing lives? Well, it looks like in practical terms, men are more willing to part with money than women.

A 2005 analysis of federal tax data by NewTithing Group, a philanthropy research institute in San Francisco, shows that even when you control for income and assets, males still write larger checks than females. As the New York Times summarized the NewTithing findings: �The study found that single men, generally, are more generous than single women. Among the wealthiest singles, men gave 1.5 percent of assets compared with 1.1 percent for women. Wealth does not explain the disparity.�

If this isn’t what you want to hear or doesn’t mesh with your experience, then read the article. It goes into more detail and cites specific examples from fundraisers.

A couple things to pay attention to though–1) All people quoted as saying women don’t give enough are in higher education fundraising, not arts or social charities. The article alludes to this as a weakness in the argument in regard to a UCLA quote by acknowledging the female graduates might be sending their money elsewhere, but it could as easily apply to the whole article.

2) Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the right of center American Enterprise Institute which may or may not have an interest in portraying males in a positive light for giving $10,000 while saying the wife who only donates $500 can afford to give more.

Still the article provides enough generally unbiased information to perhaps illuminate and guide fundraising campaigns and direct asking strategies. For example, a study by economists James Andreoni and Lise Vesterlund: (remembering this is in a controlled lab situation)

“When altruism is expensive, women are kinder, when it is cheap, men are more altruistic.” They also showed how their findings (along with several other studies they cite) could have important implications for fund-raising as well as tax policy. For example, if the Internal Revenue Service were to increase the price of donating to charity by no longer allowing deductions, it is quite likely that men would react more negatively than women. (On the other hand, women could object that the present system favors male styles of giving.)

As a denizen of Honolulu, I have been monitoring the leadership situation at the Honolulu Symphony off and on over the past few years. Up until the last week or so they have been without an executive director and a music director and suffered some tension on the board of directors. This past Saturday an article in the local newspaper announced that Tom Gulick has been apppointed executive director.

Gulick, who counts the Detroit Symphony in his background, was recently executive director of Ballet Pacifica which has had some tough times of its own. In March Gulick left his position there for personal reasons. The ballet’s development director left around the same time. A few weeks later, artistic director Ethan Stiefel also departed barely a year after his loudly trumpeted assumption of that position citing the cancellation of the 06-07 season due to lack of funds as his reason for leaving.

There is some good news as Gulick takes up the symphony’s reins. Just last month the state allocated a $4 million grant to the organization contingent on matching funds being raised. The state also gave the symphony $150,000 for education programs. The symphony has a new board president and has recruited 13 new board members.

Gulick will need all the backing he can as he leads the largest professional performing arts company in the state. Not only does the organization need to hire a music director, it is also in contract negotiations with the musicians union who agreed to a fairly significant paycut a few years ago.

Gulick also faces some public relations problems for the symphony. In an interview on Hawaii Public Radio (mp3 format), Gulick acknowledged that he would be making a “save the symphony” appeal to the same people who gave to save the organization a few years ago and a few years before that. Among his plans to gain the trust of the community is to have fiscal transparency.

He may also want to focus on the use of the symphony web site to reassure the public about the symphony’s strength and successes. Despite the articles and radio interviews that have occurred, as of this writing there is no mention on the website that Tom Gulick is executive director or even that the symphony was preparing to announce someone soon.

There has been some grumbling among season ticket holders over the past month. Editorials in the newspaper have been complaining about a new pricing scheme in the balcony. Two couples wrote that their balcony seats have tripled in price since last year and are on par with the cost of the most expensive orchestra seating. Both decided to pass on subscribing this year, but one couple reconsidered and renewed their seats, although it was for fewer performances. Another single ticket buyer wrote to say she tried to buy balcony seats but was told they wouldn’t be sold until the orchestra seating filled up. Faced with only $60 remaining, she walked away. Two of the writers noted that given the symphony needed to match the state grant, they were surprised the symphony would risk alienating them.

While I might question the amount of the increase and the timing of some decisions, for me this just underscores just how important box office policies are in audience relations. There are some situations when communicated clearly with patrons that earn understanding and tolerance. It is just difficult to make a compelling case in a subscription brochure or train box office people to effectively do it.

I have been approached by symphony musicians with proposals to have both chamber performances and full symphony concerts in my theatre as part of an outreach to my side of the island. It will be interesting to see if any sort of momentum in that direction will develop in the next 5 years or so. Alot of new housing is popping up out here so there is a potential for new audiences as well.

As much as I enjoy James Lipton Inside the Actor’s Studio, his respectful posture and meticulous research just isn’t as fun as the host of Cool As Hell podcast’s energy and fearless interview style.

Last month Michael interviewed playwriting icon Paula Vogel and got her talking about the state of the arts in the U.S. Her ideas about getting kids doing art at the same age they are learning to kick a soccer ball and getting the arts back in schools might not be new.

She does say some interesting things about the messages artists are getting these days. Among them are her feelings that “Darwin and captialism are very bad models for art” (3:15) and art begets art.

I was also intrigued by her idea that even though she was a klutz, she had to learn to play sports and as a result, all athletes today, artists of the flesh she calls them, speak for her inner athlete. She hopes for the day that every creative artist speaks for the inner artist housed in everyone.

The thing I like about Michael is that he is respectful but he starts his interview right off saying he disagrees with some of her views. After he lets her explain, he then challenges her idealism and asks for practical ways for her vision to manifest in a country that isn’t likely to throw off the captialist model she says is unhealthy for the arts.

I don’t know that she really provides any new answers since she talks about going back to the 60s arts environment, calls for more money to fund the arts and art in schools. She does present some quotable moments like “art is a dog that you feed that bites you” (7:05) when arguing that art should challenge society but the agenda of arts funders is to make art palatable and devoid of challenge.

On the other hand, I give her credit for doing the interview. Podcasting being so new, I imagine it would be difficult to gauge how substantive a discussion she would be expected to have.

A job description came to my attention thanks to one of my old professors passing on some job listings from graduates of my program. The job is for an affinity marketer at The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Florida.

Affinity marketing is generally the approach to marketing that focuses finding customers interested in a certain product or topic, then offering that customer related products and services. It has been around since at least the late 90s and has been mostly related to ecommerce. This is the first time I have ever seen the position advertised in an arts setting.

I found an <em>Inc magazine article that talked about affinity groups in business. While the article isn’t exactly about affinity marketing, it does point out that shared affinity doesn’t mean living in the same town, driving the same cars, working in the same industry and going to the same churches. One of the groups it profiles is comprised of those “who are all under 40 and managing companies of a certain size, operate from a similar frame of reference, even though they may have vastly different businesses and experiences.”

Andrew Taylor made a few posts in recent months that points out a few ways shared affinity can be addressed in the arts.

The Broward job description has some interesting duties listed which appear to be part of these affinity marketing efforts.

– append the current database with lifestyle and psychographic info

– identify potential niches, clusters or anomalies within the database and append consumer profiles in order to target audiences and create marketing strategies.

– coordinate the marketing message to specific individuals or cluster.

– analyze and utilize data to identify opportunities and implement tactics

– manage subscription communication for affinity program patrons

It might be a sign of just how new an effort affinity marketing is to the arts that the job description doesn’t even list prior experience in affinity marketing as a desirable plus. Actually, I wonder if it is an entirely new position for the organization. I didn’t find anything on the website that collected information that might indicate the sort of connections for which they might be looking.

I am going to drop a line to the person who forwarded the info to my old professor and see what the story is. Let you all know what I turn up.

I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened. You hear about it happening to someone else–and you hope it stays that way. Yesterday I received confirmation that because of problems getting travel visas, one of the foreign performance groups for my season won’t be making it this year.

My partners and I are scrambling to figure out if we can reschedule them for next year since we have already paid hefty airline ticket prices and hope to use them. We are also looking into whether the fees and other paperwork we have completed can be applicable to a trip next year.

I have spent the last two days implementing contingency plans–namely figuring out how I will refund all the ticket purchases and publicize the cancellation in a way that doesn’t alienate my audience for next season.

One semi-fortunate element of the timing is that the news came just a day or two before the ticket purchases would have really picked up due to our promotional efforts (which had to be cancelled as well, of course). Had we found out a week or so from now we would have quite a few more tickets to refund. (An order did sneak in over the internet just as we were changing the web page and disabling the order functions though.)

It is amazing how many people have to be contacted when something is cancel even in addition to the audience members. I had to inform my staff, caterer, the car rental place, the hotel (we almost got hit with a penalty for cancelling because it was less than 30 days out), the print, radio and television advertising reps, the print, radio and television media who were going to do stories and calendar listings.

One of the people I forgot initially was the company providing the sound equipment and backline. Thankfully my tech director remembered to ask. I also had to break the disappointing news to a student group who were preparing a big welcome for the performers.

It is too early to determine what problems, if any, will come of this since so few people know about the cancelation. One of the things I am watching with interest is the way my partners announce the change. Currently, the alteration in their seasons hasn’t appeared on their websites. They are telling customers it is cancelled because a woman called to see if the show was cancelled at my theatre upon learning that the group wouldn’t be appearing near her.

Drew McManus has been hinting about good things in the wind for awhile now and finally let the cat out of the bag.

Drew is going to be doing a research project for Eastman School of Music’s Orchestra Musician Forum and Senior Editor of Special Projects for Polyphonic.org (coming April 2006).

His research project is going to address the issues which American orchestra musicians see as impacting their professional lives. The study will be used not only to improve conditions in orchestras, but also allow training programs to give their students the training and tools to cope with the realities of life as an orchestra musician.

What is really interesting is that the study is even being done at all, though there is clearly a need. I was thinking it was extraordinary that such a project be funded when I read Drew’s observation that:

Most sponsors prefer to direct their funds toward ‘solutions’ regardless if the issues are well defined or not. Directing resources toward identifying issues and developing questions isn’t a very sexy endeavor and this organization deserves a great deal of credit for understanding that without a strong foundation on which to build, any structure you put up may not be very sound.

To make this happen, Drew estimates he needs to interview 1,400 people from 90 orchestras so watch for a survey in the mail! This will probably be the biggest opportunity orchestra musicians have had a chance to speak out en mass since, well, I don’t know when. Unless they are on strike, you don’t see too many queries posed of multiple musicians on most any topic.

Congrats Drew. We will be watching and expecting great insights to emerge!

Back when the earth was cooling, the occasion of myfirst entry was having a letter I wrote to The Artful Manager appear on the Artsjournal website.

The letter essentially talked about tapping into community leaders, among them church leaders, to help increase attendance at performances. I am doing well with leaders in other communities giving me a hand in getting the word out, but the church situation has me a little puzzled in some ways.

We have a church rent the theatre every Sunday and see very little cross over to our performances. We have posters with upcoming events plastered all over the building so it is hardly a mystery about what is coming up. Yet we get very few comments made to us or on our surveys saying they heard about the show because they come every Sunday.

Our programming is far from being offensive and is quite appropriate for the family. We just aren’t seeing the results one might expect and I don’t quite know why.

What gets me to thinking about this is that for the next three nights, we have an entirely different church having a worship conference in our space. Most of it will be a lot of praise and worship gospel singing and preaching. Tomorrow they kick the whole thing off with a half hour performances from one of the biggest gospel singers around.

In preparation for this half hour performance, the church has come in and painted our dressing rooms (we have a lot of classes during the year so the facility gets quite a bit of wear and tear) and when I left work tonight, they were carrying in leather sofas for her use.

That’s a heck of a lot of enthusiasm they are investing into making things right for a real short show.

It is also the type of energy I wish I could tap in to.

Next year we are looking at some gospel singers and that will certainly connect with the church audience. However, we are looking at these musicians because they are great musicians first and not to attract the churches.

I book with an eye to taking advantage of the opportunity to bring in great musicians that I think people will enjoy. If there are interested Latino groups available on an annual basis, I will happily grab them because I know people will buy tickets. But I am not looking to fill a Latino slot on my roster every year. Nor am I interested in discarding great opportunities because they don’t fit into gospel slots.

Smart thing to do though might be to co-produce similar events in the future. Promote the event in my brochure, run ticket sales through my box office, let the enthusiatic church members handle hospitality, security and technical equipment since that is where their strengths lay and then split the box office proceeds.

A partnership that plays to our individual strengths might be beneficial to both of us. I don’t know that we will ever generate a crossover interest from the audience, but what we are doing now isn’t meeting with much success. A partnership of this type might also not make economic sense since we experience little financial risk in renting to the group. But we would also realize less of a loss than if we had engaged an artist on that date ourselves since we aren’t bearing all the costs.

The question will be, if we do co-produce with them, is it replacing a show we would have done alone or are we doing it in addition to the shows we would have done and therefore are losing on the potential gains of a rental opportunity?

I will let you know how things shake out next season!