State of the Arts

“The Monster Outside The Door”

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No, the title of this entry is not another riff on my new lizard mascot in the blog header. Last month I made a post quoting Robert Hewison in an article from The Art Newspaper saying citing the economic value of the arts is bad because “But the Treasury doesn’t buy it. They can see through the “multiplier” calculations of the cultural boosters.”

Today I came across a link on Artsjournal.com to economist John Kay’s website wherein he expounds upon that subject and advises valuing art for its cultural and commercial value.

“Thousands of people build hospitals and surgeries, and many small and medium-size enterprises manufacture hospital supplies. Illness contributes about 10 per cent of the UK’s economy: the government does not do enough to promote disease.

Such reasoning is identical to that of studies sitting on my desk that purport to measure the economic contribution of sport, tourism and the arts. These studies point to the number of jobs created, and the ancillary activities needed to make the activities possible. They add up the incomes that result. Reporting the total with pride, the sponsors hope to persuade us not just that sport, tourism and the arts make life better, but that they contribute to something called “the economy”.

The analogy illustrates the obvious fallacy. What the exercises measure is not the benefits of the activities they applaud, but their cost; and the value of an activity is not what it costs, but the amount by which its benefit exceeds its costs. The economic contribution of sport is in the pleasure participants and spectators derive, and the resulting gains in health and longevity. That value is diminished, not increased, by the resources that need to be diverted from other purposes.

Similarly, the economic value of the arts is in the commercial and cultural value of the performance, not the costs of cleaning the theatre….

…The relevant economic questions are whether the cultural and commercial value of the performance offsets these costs and whether these benefits can be translated into a combination of box office receipts, sponsorship and public subsidy. The appropriate economic criterion, everywhere and always, is the value of the output.”

I have often felt that economic benefit surveys often seem to grasp at straws in an attempt to find any activity tangentially related to arts events. Though I will grant you that if a downtown area empties out at night, it doesn’t matter how scarce parking is, the spaces in a garage are worthless. Activities that put cars in that lot help keep people employed. But then, the parking company can claim they provide economic benefits to the arts by providing a safe place to park within walking distance of the venue in an area with scarce parking. Your audience may even value the close parking enough to factor it in to their attendance decision. But as the arts organization in question, do you see the parking lot as keeping you employed? You might. But if everyone starts adding up the reciprocal value they offer to each other, the result may end up being ten times the actual amount of money changing hands in that particular business district.

When you think about it in that context, then Kay’s insistence that the only appropriate economic measure is the value of the specific output becomes more apparent. And it is logical to think that value only exists when the benefit exceeds the costs. The problem the arts have is that the measure of the benefit is so nebulous that we are driven to find some concrete method with which to prove that benefit does exceed the amount granted and donated.

Plenty of people are willing to say that the arts aren’t worth very much in today’s environment. Many are just as willing to listen and believe them and that makes all of us in the arts really nervous and sends us scrambling for evidence. Kay doesn’t offer much help in making that argument and in fact, he raises the stakes a little by adding commercial success as a measure of the value. That doesn’t leave much hope for the group that only had 80 patrons, but touched them incredibly and deeply, only it is tough to demonstrate the degree.

Which is not to say he doesn’t wholly believe there is an intrinsic value to the arts.

“We need to put out of our minds this widely held notion that there is such a thing as “the economy”, a monster outside the door that needs to be fed and propitiated and whose values conflict with things – such as sports, tourism and the arts – that make our lives agreeable and worthwhile. Activities that are good in themselves are good for the economy, and activities that are bad in themselves are bad for the economy. The only intelligible meaning of “benefit to the economy” is the contribution – direct or indirect – the activity makes to the welfare of ordinary citizens.”

I am not quite sure if he is differentiating between economic value benefit to the the economy since presumably having a job cleaning a building would directly contribute to the welfare of an ordinary citizen. Assuming he is separating the two, I would use those concepts to make the following point—

Ultimately, economic benefits are replaceable and interchangeable. Back in 2007, I covered an article that noted that a group seeking funding for the arts in England cited priorities that would be served by the grant that were among the exact same benefits then Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised the 2012 Olympics would provide.

Studio 54 contributed to the economy by employing cleaning people when it was a Broadway Theatre, radio and television studios for CBS, a disco, and then back to being a theatre again when it was purchased by Roundabout Theatre. Let say all these entities existed at the same time and are arguing which gets to use the building based on economic benefit they bring. Who gets to use the building?

Now lets say the criteria used is the cultural value each organization brings. Now who gets to use the building? Maybe it is CBS both times. In the first example, they might win because they would be spending the most on payroll and other expenses. In the second, they might win because their programming reaches more households and thus touches more lives. But when it comes to determining the value offered by a night club notorious for its hedonism and excess versus theatres, the decision may be tougher to make.

My point is, while it is hard to define in concrete terms, cultural value is a much more specific property of an organization than economic benefit and is worth citing as a reason for others’ support.

Ceding Control Of Your Message (Just A Little)

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I am experiencing the slight panic that goes with having other people promote your events over social media more frequently these days. It is difficult to cede control of my information dispersal to other people, largely because it is increasingly involuntary.

Because services like Google and Twitter allow you to see what people are saying about my organization, I often find that people are forwarding incomplete information or mangled information. Some of it is a result of copy and paste which left some information behind or the necessity to truncate text for Twitter. What people are choosing to include in information to their friends often isn’t what I think sells the show. In some cases I can imagine that maybe a detail has significance to a person and their friends. Other times what they send is so nondescript, I can’t help but chalk it up to laziness and I hope that the mere idea that a friend has brought it to their attention inspires people to attend.

The temptation to correct or emphasize a point can really be strong at times. All I need to do is create a separate account of my own to set things aright. Just have to hope they don’t get too suspicious about the lack of posts or friends my brand new account has connected with it. But the consequences of injecting myself into someone else’s conversation for the purpose of correcting their information about our organization or being caught in an inauthentic masquerade are probably more damaging to us than a few incorrect dates and prices.

I have a similar situation with a local group with which we are partnering to produce a show. One of the board members is sending out press releases about the show on behalf of their organization. Personally, I think my writing is much better and paints a more complete picture. I send our partner some emails asking that certain bit of information be clarified, added or corrected.

But as many of you well know, personal relationships matter. That board member had people clamoring to write advance stories and conduct television and radio interviews in the course of a couple days. I didn’t know that a couple of the magazines even existed. In fact, one of them is just starting up and our event will have significant space in the first issue.

Personal relationships, be they virtual or other wise, seems to trump accuracy of information when it comes to getting people involved. Or perhaps it glosses over the consequences of poor information delivery. Though ultimately the annoyance of those who show up at the wrong time or expecting to pay a different price may be borne by the arts organization rather than the friend.

Do You Fight For Your Rights?

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Artsjournal is doing another one of their special week long conversations on a topic. This week it is the issue of artists and intellectual property rights. There are too many topics being bandied about to summarize them all, but as you might imagine one of the central themes is in regard to the whole tension between wanting to protect your creative rights and the ability and desire of the public at large to integrate or reimagine your great ideas into their own.

Bill Ivey does a good job of summing up the need for changing how rights are controlled.

“The notion that artists and companies share the same values when it comes to the character of our arts system is a crock. Companies worry about the theft of assets; artists worry about obscurity. These two concerns overlap at times, but often they don’t. What’s the real benefit to an artist of copyright protection that reaches beyond three-quarters of a century? What’s the real benefit to an artist if your publishing company or record company uses licensing fees to prevent your composition from being sampled. or prevents your film clip from being part of a documentary. We need to begin the organizational conversation Marty envisions by figuring out what an artist-oriented regime of laws and regulations would look like.”

There is also a discussion about whether artists are investing appropriate time and attention into protecting their rights. There was actually some pretty extensive discussion, tied together by Tim Quirk, refuting the idea that artists are/should be primarily focused on their art and can’t be bothered with mundane details of business and rights management. Quirk says:

“I had always assumed this ridiculous idea that artists are delicate otherworldly creatures who can’t and shouldn’t concern themselves with prosaic business or policy matters was being fed to them (along with other helpful notions, such as being a drunk or an addict is all part of being creative) by malicious middlemen and mendacious media.

But now I’ve read Vickie’s insightful analysis of how this dynamic is perpetuated by art schools and universities, and Bill’s observation that “things like intellectual property, media policy, unions, performance rights, and so on not show up in art schools or music conservatories, they have precious little traction in arts management programs.”

He goes on to acknowledge that intellectual property laws and the convoluted system of entities that administer them are really tough to comprehend and can be frustrating, but it is something that is worth mastering. It was interesting to me to read Bill Ivey’s thoughts on how this was an area that arts training programs fell short in. When I was pursuing my MFA, I had direct experience with different contracts, including negotiating music performance rights. Even still, the first thing I mentioned at my degree defense when asked what additional instruction would have been helpful during my studies was more contract and rights law. This was 15 years ago so I am surprised to learn that more isn’t taught given all the challenges technology presents in this area.

Though to be fair, as Brian Newman notes, there is a lot to be taught already. I was intrigued to learn in one of his posts that in film at least, the very people who are now clamoring for film makers to become involved in policy debates helped to dismantle the organizations which could have been instrumental in driving that discussion. I wonder if that is the case in other disciplines.

“In the world of film, we used to have a very strong network of media arts centers around the nation. As foundations shifted priorities (and the NEA’s support changed dramatically), however, many of these organizations have shut down or refocused energies to where the money is – social issue action, youth training or corporate support for large activities, like film festivals. When attending a Grantmakers in the Arts conference a couple of years ago, I was amazed that there was a group of funders upset that they couldn’t get filmmakers active in the policy debate – but they had helped disband the very network that could have served to rally filmmakers around these issues.”

Intellectual properties rights is likely to continue as an important topic for years to come so it is worth following the whole conversation. I have barely represented the breadth of it here. They are covering nuances between people who live or die by the strength of protections versus people who need loose protections to thrive and further develop their work. There is also the inevitable discussion of how money determines whose voices and interests are being heard and transformed into policy and law.

Buying From The Source

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I recently became a member of my local public radio station. I “came out” as a non-member while a guest on the Spring Fund drive and declared I was ready to sign up. My hope was that it would inspire others to do the same. What I didn’t mention was that while I really enjoyed the high quality news and information, what tipped me into the membership column was the show This American Life. I am crazy about the show and wish I had gone to see host Ira Glass speak at the Arts Presenters conference when I was there a few years back.

The thing is, I am not usually listening to the radio when the show is on so I generally consume the program over my computer while I am at home. Consume is an appropriate word because there have been times where I have listened to three shows from the archive in one sitting. (Well, often I am dusting, mopping the floor or folding laundry, but you get my point.) Not long ago, before you could listen to any episode, a short segment would play with Glass asking you to donate to support the rigorous story gathering process they engage in.

If you aren’t aware, generally your donation to the radio station goes to pay for the programming you hear. Your support of the station indirectly supports shows like This American Life. It made me think–I am not listening to the show on the radio. Even though my donation is going to support the show, should I perhaps not be supporting the show more directly? I am using their internet bandwidth to listen to the show. Coupled with some other recent occurrences, I realized this sort of thinking may end up impacting arts organizations in the near future.

In the last week or so, National Public Radio decided it was changing its name to NPR just like Federal Express changed to FEDEX some years ago. Their decision is based on the fact that the content is no longer only delivered and received over the radio and can be heard on the web and in podcasts, among other media. In fact, often you can scan the transcripts of a segment on their website rather than listening at all. They are beginning to increase their focus on online presence and delivery of content. But what if the individual shows do their own fund raising? It might be possible that they will undermine the local stations’ fund drives. This American Life does some really impassioned and well argued promos for the local radio fund drives. But as funding gets tighter, might shows like their shift focus to their own survival?

The national office of PBS is looking at making a nationwide fund raising appeal directly to donors and it is making local television stations nervous that it might undermine their own efforts. It might be a bad idea if it did since PBS needs the television stations as a distribution system. Unless they are seeing more people interested in viewing their content online rather than on television.

But nothing can compare to live performance right? Well, as you may be aware, the Metropolitan Opera has a fairly successful program where they broadcast their shows to movie theatres. And a writer for the London Telegraph says watching the National Theatre in a movie theatre is better than attending the event live. You already have the opportunity see the National Theatre productions at about 50 cinemas around the US this summer.

One thing NPR has going for it is the variety of programming it offers. If I donate $50 to This American Life, that is all I have supported. If I donate the same or more to my local NPR station, I am supporting a wider variety of programming I enjoy. That is the potential advantage the cinema owners have. There is a possibility of curating a wide experience from the very best in the field. This is what I and many others around the country do now, only the guys with the movie screens won’t have to pay for hotels and travel which immensely increases the pool from which to select. Their curated season might include opera from the Metropolitan Opera, classical music from the Philadelphia Symphony, theatre from the Guthrie Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. While I would argue you miss half the experience by not attending the latter two in person, such a program would bring excellent performance to people who don’t have the means to travel. (Though you will still have to shush those damn kids in the back rows.)

Of course, it also changes expectations of performances by everyone else. So the question is, will a rising tide raise all ships as people become more interested and less intimidated by the attendance experience or will the cinema events cannibalize local audiences who would rather see the Broadway production rather than the local production or the bus and truck tour. Likely it is a time will tell situation which hinges upon how wide the cinema project spreads and how invested those with the means become in creating and promoting these shows.