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State of the Arts

Best Creativity Is Messy Creativity

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In the past I have written critically about the use of creative practice as a prescriptive tool to boost the development and achievement level of children (i.e. attaching headphones to your belly to expose a baby to Mozart in utero).  Back in November, The Guardian had a long form piece on the related topic of giving kids educational toys with the same end in mind. Research basically shows it doesn’t work:

But, despite the best efforts of millions of striver parents, it doesn’t seem to be the case that you can turn three-year-olds into geniuses by giving them plastic ukuleles for their birthdays, or even drilling them on their violin scales. (You may well be able to foster in those children a paralysing perfectionism and deep sense of inadequacy.) Equally, you don’t have to grow up with hundreds of toys, or speaking three languages, in order to be extraordinarily bright. (In fact, you can still learn several languages with a high degree of fluency in later childhood and beyond.)

Not all of that nuance has broken through to parents. Already in the mid 1980s, Brian Sutton-Smith, probably the most prolific play scholar in history, could write: “We have little compelling evidence of a connection between toys, all by themselves, and achievement…”

The oft repeated story about kids being more interested in playing with the box the toy came in points to the exact type of play that does contribute to skill development. The less concrete and realistic the intended use of the object is, the better.

It seems that basically that from birth through adulthood, the best pursuit of creativity is messy, unstructured creativity.

After watching kids play with more than 100 different types of toy, the researchers concluded that simple, open-ended, non-realistic toys with multiple parts, like a random assortment of Lego, inspired the highest-quality play. While engaged with such toys, children were “more likely to be creative, engage in problem solving, interact with their peers, and use language,” the researchers wrote. Electronic toys, however, tended to limit kids’ play: “A simple wooden cash register in our study inspired children to engage in lots of conversations related to buying and selling – but a plastic cash register that produced sounds when buttons were pushed mostly inspired children to just push the buttons repeatedly.”

As a result of such research, it is increasingly acknowledged that the best new toys are the best old ones – sticks and blocks and dolls and sand that follow no pre-programmed routines, that elicit no predetermined behaviours.

What Did You Change In Yourself To Memorize Those Lines?

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I know a lot of people in the performing arts literally or figuratively roll their eyes at the inevitable question, “How do you remember all those lines.”   However, Stephen Colbert reminds us that you don’t have to always answer the exact question as asked. In a tribute to former teacher/friend/mentor Frank Galati who recently died, Colbert recently shared a commercial break conversation he had last October with John Lithgow where he discusses Galati’s thoughts on that question.

“He said, ‘how do you remember all those lines? Let’s not take for granted that there is something magical about that. You’ve changed something in yourself. People don’t sit down and memorize two hours of text. You did. Why did you do that? How did you do that?’ He goes ‘What are you when you go on stage? What is that other thing that you are becoming? How are you presenting yourself. What are you willing to become this person who wants to present ideas and emotions to an audience. How do you become beautiful?

And that the beauty of the world we see all around…and when you go on stage you answer the accusation of the world which is that you are hiding your beauty.  The beauty of the world accuses you of hiding your beauty. When you go on stage, whatever you are, whatever part of humanity you are, you are just as much a part of the world that you find beautiful. And therefore, when you’re on stage, you’re as beautiful as an statue, you’re as beautiful as any sunset. When you allow people to see you, beautifully…”

Colbert goes on to relate how Galati cited a story about choreographer George Balanchine instructed a dancer to raise her leg beautifully, which is different from gently or lovely, but that she did so beautifully because the instruction had meaning for her.

The beginning of that story where Colbert cited the idea of changing something in yourself to be able to accomplish the memorization resonated for me. Often the act of memorizing text is only one small part of what is required to memorize the character you are going to portray. That character is different from you as the actor so you have to recall a 1000 little things, including the text, to bring that person to the stage.

That is different for every actor and every part. Thinking about it in that context allows you to respond differently to that oft asked question.

Perhaps this clip resonated with me because the morning of the same day I heard it, I heard a story about a woman who made the 2,744 step ascent of the steep Manitou Incline 1003 times in 365 days. (First woman and fourth person to ever do that)  If you were to ask how she did it, she made a similar remark to Galati’s about changing something in oneself:

“I felt like it was something that I would have to level up in every area of my life: physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially … to be able to accomplish something like that,” Jones said.

It might not be a big surprise that you would have to change something about yourself to accomplish a physical feat, but a similar recognition doesn’t really exist for acting. There may be an assumption that is can all be accomplished by sitting in your living room chair. Providing a more complete answer to the question of how lines were memorized may shift that perception.

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…Reach Out

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For about a year now, I have seen Dan Pink post on social media about his survey of people’s regrets and how it can be healthy to embrace them. Finally, I decided to read about what he had to say when I saw some interview links toward the end of the December.

The interview with him on the Behavioral Scientist webpage was pretty interesting just in terms of how quickly people responded and how eager to talk about their regrets people were. They initially received 15,000 responses from 100 countries and are now close to 23,000 from 109 countries. Of those initial responses, 32% provided their email addresses and opted in to be contacted for further conversation.

Something he mentions is that younger respondents pretty much equally regretted things they had done and things they hadn’t done, but as people got older they were more likely to regret things they hadn’t done.

While it is mentioned in the Behavioral Scientist article, a separate piece on the Inc website focused on Pink’s #1 lesson to reduce regret – “Always reach out.”  Essentially, if you are wonder if you should reconnect with a friend you lost touch with or a family member with whom you may be estranged, Pink says the answer is yes.

A team led by University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business marketing professor Peggy Liu conducted a series of 13 experiments with nearly 6,000 participants all designed to gauge why people don’t reach out to friends or acquaintances and what happens when they do.

The study design may have been complicated but the results were straightforward, according to a writeup of the findings in the New York Times: “Across all 13 experiments, those who initiated contact significantly underestimated how much it would be appreciated. The more surprising check-ins (from those who hadn’t been in contact recently) tended to be especially powerful.”

As I read this, it struck me that arts organizations can use people’s willingness to discuss their regrets as the basis to create experiences for their communities. Maybe it is a storytelling topic. Perhaps it is a pop-up exhibit of artifacts from your regrets similar to the one Nina Simon discusses hosting for failed relationships in a TED Talk. Or perhaps it is the driver of a dialogue between generations similar to many of the recordings made for the Story Corps project.

Make 2023 The Year Of Library Advocacy

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Right at the end of the year, New York City based columnist for The Guardian, Moira Donegan, wrote a loving piece about how she is thankful for US public libraries.

One of the first things she mentions is that the architecture and design of many libraries is rather intimidating and makes her feel under dressed. She says when she works at tables in New York Public Library’s iconic 42nd Street branch, she is always nervous that someone is going to chase her away. I have written about how people can have a similar experience with arts and cultural organizations. Though many theaters, museums, and libraries are not as grandiose as the 42nd Street branch.

Donegan opines that the US is fortunate to have had the spate of museum construction when it did because it would be difficult to generate public will behind such an effort now. But citizens have garnered immense benefits as a result.

If the public library did not already exist as a pillar of local civic engagement in American towns and cities, there’s no way we would be able to create it. It seems like a relic of a bygone era of public optimism, a time when governments worked to value and edify their people, rather than punish and extract from them. In America, a country that can often be cruel to its citizens, the public library is a surprising kindness.

[…]

The majesty of library buildings is matched only by the nobility of their purpose. The public library does not make anyone money; it does not understand its patrons as mere consumers, or as a revenue base. Instead, it aspires to encounter people as minds. The public library exists to grant access to information, to facilitate curiosity, education, and inquiry for their own sake. It is a place where the people can go to pursue their aspirations and their whims, to uncover histories or investigate new scientific discoveries.

When I saw a tweet that NYC Eric Adams was requiring the NYC Public Libraries system to cut “cut their budgets by $13.6 million by the end of fiscal year 2023, and another $20.5 million over the next 3 fiscal years.” My first thought was that he does not truly understand the vast number of social services libraries provide to their communities. They metaphorically serve as the wetlands which buffer communities from the onslaught of hurricanes. Creating an environment where their role is diminished will only serve to magnify the manifestation of social problems throughout the City.

If you don’t know, this year make an effort to explore all the services your local libraries provide to communities from classes, computer access, tax help, shelter from the weather, social services access, counseling and, yeah, books.  Likewise think about your own value proposition for the community and increasingly communicate that outside the framework of selling tickets.

 

Creativity For Solving Problems, Not Monetizing

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Diane Ragsdale recently made a post about the design and intent of the Masters of Arts in Creative Leadership program she is leading at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).

In answering the question about why one would study leadership at an art and design college, she writes:

Creativity is consistently ranked as one of the most important skills for navigating the complexities of the 21st century….Creativity was equated in business schools with the scaling of innovations towards the ultimate goal of stimulating economic growth. I didn’t want to hook beauty onto that value chain. I would sometimes quip: This beauty course is not aimed at putting beauty in service of business. My aim is the opposite. I want leaders to put business in service of beauty.

[…]

The creation in creative leadership as we are interpreting it at MCAD is based in a foundational premise that there are ways of being, doing, and knowing that are inherent to artmaking and design that are both undervalued by society-at-large and incredibly valuable at a moment in which we are looking at the “end of the world as we have known it” and the need to make a new one

I have often written in opposition to the prescriptive approach to the arts as a way to solve problems, similar to how Ragsdale alludes to the interest of businesses to monetize creativity for the future. Essentially viewing it as a tool to be used and thus if it doesn’t yield expected results within an expected time frame, the problem must be you are using the wrong type of creativity for the job.

As most in creative fields know, it is something you practice over a long period of time rather than learn in a seminar and then go home trying to apply. No one thinks you can become highly effective at an athletic pursuit without a lot of practice, analysis of performance and negotiating bottlenecks. People focusing on employing creativity need to go through a similar process, including possibly getting past a mental wall no less imposing than one a marathon runner may need to push past.

In my post yesterday about improv helping people tolerate uncertainty and reduce social anxiety, I took pains to call attention to the fact the people conducting the study intentionally engaged professional theatre artists to teach improv to students. This is not to say that therapists and counselors can’t effectively teach students to use improv. As the study authors allude to, there is a difference between the approach of someone teaching you improv to fix something about you and the approach of people who practice and teach improv in order to get better at improv.

Yes, the theatre artists likely knew they were there to help prove improv can help people better cope with uncertainty and anxiety, but the whole study gets contaminated if the scientists are frequently talking to them about expected outcomes. So it is likely the theatre artists were jazzed to be getting paid to teach and share about improv for 10 weeks and the prospect that it might provide a model for improving the mental well-being of kids made the experience all the more satisfying.

Sharing Time With Family Is Valued Regardless Of Political Affiliation

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Apropos to my post on Monday about how gift recipients value experiences over material gifts,  Pew Research Center recently released research finding showing that spending time with family and friends was considered meaningful and fulfilling regardless of political affiliation. So taking a marketing approach that emphasizes that aspect of arts and cultural participation can be compelling to people regardless of political affiliation.

Another article provides additional context to the chart, mentioning that:

More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (83%) say spending time with family provides them a great deal or quite a bit of meaning and fulfillment…

[…]

Similar but smaller majorities of Republicans (64%) and Democrats (68%) say the same about spending time with friends.

The share of Republicans and Democrats who say they draw a great deal or quite a bit of meaning and fulfillment from being outdoors and experiencing nature is also nearly identical (72% and 70%, respectively).

Obviously, there are differences between political parties in other aspects of life that provide a feeling of fulfillment. Research results discussing that was released about a year ago in November 2021.

Post-Covid Touring Sees Cancellation Due To Inflation Infestation

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Wired recently had an article about the challenges facing independent artists when it comes to touring. Many are facing a combination of higher costs, a flooded market, and limited resources. Companies with touring equipment and vehicles report having all their inventory on the road. Not only is it difficult to find more equipment to purchase/rent in order to deploy it for tours, there isn’t enough labor to go around. Everyone from skilled technicians to bus drivers have left the industry for other opportunities that don’t demand so much of them.

Gas is pricey, batteries and other vehicle parts are more expensive, and drivers are harder to find, with many of them having switched during the pandemic to package delivery, garbage pickup, or other trucking jobs with less interpersonal contact that don’t require them to leave their families for months at a time.

While prices for hotel rooms, food, transportation, and gear have gone up, the fees performers are paid have remained flat. It appears this is due to there being more artists out there wanting to tour making supply outstrip demand, but also due to uncertainty exhibited by ticket buyers.

“There’s way less advance sales than normal. And I’m hearing this from everyone across the board,” she says. “[Fans] don’t wanna buy a ticket and get sick and have to eat it. So people are doing week-of, day-of [ticket purchases], which is tough for the venue and tough for us, because we obviously want to see advance sales.”

Because many artists need to cover a lot of these costs upfront out of pocket, there have been an increase in cancellation of dates as touring appears increasingly problematic. The prospect of going through a refund process contributes to reticence of consumers to buy tickets too far in advance..

Experiences Are The Gift They Want

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So I serendipitously started on my drive to work this past Saturday evening at the exact time a Hidden Brain episode mentioned how research shows that recipients of gifts prefer experiential gifts more than material gifts.  I thought I was coming in to the middle of a discussion only to realize after listening to the whole recording of the episode that I started my car at the moment 34:30 into the show that host Shankar Vedantam and Carnegie Mellon University researcher Jeff Galak started discussing the data.

This is the time of year a lot of arts and culture organizations encourage people to buy tickets or gift certificates and give experience as a gift so the topic aligns well with our interests. Galak says that all else being equal in terms of price, experiences tend to bring more joy to recipients than material objects. The problem he says, is that givers don’t appreciate this which creates a disconnect.

This comes up a number of times in the episode where people don’t apply the lessons they learn as recipients to their giving. I almost wonder if it is somewhat related to the perception that no one experiences problems like you do and are all happier. In this case, it is believing that others don’t enjoy the same type of gifts as you do. Perhaps, this is exacerbated by marketing and advertising that portrays people enjoying material things in order to sell those things.

Vedantam also posits that it might be related to the fact that the giver sees the visible expression of joy at receiving an object whereas the expression of joy at an experience is delayed until it happens at a later time.

Galak says that expect for his kids, he pretty much exclusively focuses on gifting experiences. He and his wife are of a similar mind on this and exchange gifts in this fashion. He says the best gift his parents can repeatedly give is coming into town and watching his kids while he and his wife get away.

Success Attracts Success

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I was interested to see there was some research conducted with some of the earliest recipients of MacKenzie Scott’s unrestricted gifts to various non-profits between 2020 and 2021. The median of the grants she distributed was $8 million as compared to a median of $100,000 given by larger funders in recent years.

To be clear, some of the organizations Scott targeted in the first few rounds of giving didn’t sound like they had been getting anywhere near $100,000 grants. The biggest finding of the study was that the Scott grants weren’t just transformational for organizations, they were equally transformational for leaders who found they no longer had to lay awake at night worrying about keeping doors open. Now they not only felt secure in knowing existing programs could be executed, they began to dream about what else it might be possible to accomplish.

In interviews, more than three-quarters of leaders discussed the shift in their thinking that accompanied the receipt of this gift. A scarcity mindset was replaced with an opportunity to pursue transformational possibilities, as leaders were able to reimagine their organizations “in the ideal way to achieve the biggest impact that we could have.”

Close to two-thirds of interviewed leaders described a sense of relief and breathing room after having received their grant. Many told us of the opportunities to innovate and take risks that their grant has afforded them, knowing their organizations are now more financially secure. “It’s an opportunity to be innovative and creative because we have more foundational support,” said one leader. Another said, “For us to have money to pilot something to see how it goes is just a miracle from heaven.” Other leaders put aside a specific portion of the gift specifically for bold or risky ideas.

The most striking response for me was a leader of color talking about how she felt affirmed and vindicated after worrying her presence was a liability to the organization:

I’ve been told about two million times that organizations led by women of color get less than others,” one leader told us. “So, I was nervous about this because I’m thinking, man, I hope that who I am doesn’t cheat this organization out of opportunities, you know? And that’s a sad thing to even admit to you, but I did think that.” The grant from Scott was powerful for this leader because, as she put it, “it positioned being a woman of color as an asset, not a liability.”

What was also encouraging was that the concern others funders would reduce their support of recipient organizations was unfounded. In many cases, the organizations reported an increase in overall fundraising after receiving MacKenzie Scott’s gifts.

Guests Can Change The Rules

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I was out taking a walk this weekend and flipped over to the NPR livestream just as an episode of the Splendid Table came on. As they introduced the second guest, Priya Parker, I wondered why her name sounded familiar until I recalled Ruth Hartt frequently cites Parker’s book, The Art of Gathering.

The interview with Parker starts at about the 35:30 mark  (if you want to miss Chef Vivian Howard’s discussion of a pine needle and rosemary turkey brine that makes you house smell like a Thanksgiving scented candle as you cook the bird, that is your business). She talks about the power of the guest in a social situation. While the host has a type of power, the guests decide whether they will assent to the rules.

Among the examples she gives are a guest at a housewarming party who asked everyone to go around and talk about what they liked about the house. Parker points out that for a host to initiate that would seem a bit arrogant and self-centered, but for a guest it is something of a gift to the host and centers the event around the reason for the gathering.

At host Francis Lam’s encouragement, Parker also shared that while she was on her honeymoon, a wedding guest emailed them with a list of 20 things they loved about the wedding. Some were things that Parker and her husband knew about, but quite a few on the list were moments of delight that the newlyweds didn’t witness. Parker says this is an example of a guest contributing to the “meaning making” of an experience. It is a reflection back to the host and perhaps other guests on those things that made the event special.

It occurred to me that social media helps people in doing that reflection, though it also can cause people to strive to manufacture meaning they hadn’t felt so that they can participate with the rest of the group. Perhaps much like the surfeit of standing ovations at the end of performances.  Though she says there is a specificity that delineates meaningful reflection from an expression of gratitude.

I figured I had enough to turn into a blog post and apply it to performing arts when Parker launched into a anecdote about how guests impacted her experience at Bemelmans Bar in NYC’s Carlyle Hotel. The bar features murals by Ludwig Bemelmans, the creator of the classic Madeline children’s books.  She related how she had been there with friends when a pianist emerged and began playing at about 5:30 pm.

About a half hour later, three people came in and sat at a table near the piano, turned their seats to face the performer rather than each other and then applauded at the end of the next song. That drew the attention of the rest of the bar  to the pianist and they began applauding as well. From that point on, there was applause after every number and people shifted their chairs around to face the piano.

Parker said the conversation didn’t stop at that point, but the pianist was acknowledged at every interval for the rest of the night. She said the action of those three people contributed to the magic of the experience for her because they “change the social contract among the guests” with a small gesture and “suddenly we belonged to a place.”

As I referenced earlier, this is an illustration of the power that guests wield in a social situation. At first, the agreed rules were that guest could ignore the musician. Then three people came in and changed the rules of the room from the musician is providing background music for your conversation to the musician is providing a performance for all of us. It would have been difficult for the host/management to demand the room pay attention to the pianist when he started playing, but three people were able to non-verbally communicate a new lens for the experience and the group complied.

It make you think about how much we should be grateful to audiences for contributing to the success of an evening.  Of course the logical extension of that is that we need to focus more on the experience and enjoyment of the audience.

I Started This Blog Post Today

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Okay, a little bit of a rant today. I have wanted to get this off my chest for a couple years now.

Who decided that greeting customers with “What can I get started for you today?” was a good idea? To my mind it doesn’t build a relationship with the customer and in fact undermines the customer’s confidence that the interaction will end satisfactorily.

When I was first greeted with that phrase in a local, independently owned coffee shop, my first unconscious thought was, “Are you not going to finish my order?”  I had the same thought on every subsequent visit and it created a sense of unease in me. But I knew the guy who started the shop so I thought maybe he had read about using the phrase in some management text and while I thought it was something of a miscue, it didn’t really bother me too much. Except that there were times that they did indeed mess up my order and that of my colleagues and it caused me to pay closer attention to my transactions going forward. Moreso than other places I chose to eat.

Then I started hearing the “What can I get started…” in other food service encounters and it definitely undermined my faith that they would get my order correct. Especially in those places where your food is subjected to an assembly line process where the person who you communicate your order to is indeed only starting it, use of the phrase only draws additional attention to the likelihood that things may not be completed correctly. Not only do other people often substitute in for the person to whom you rattled off your request,  the person at the end of the line doesn’t even know what you ordered and has to ask you.

Now, in an environment where places have signs up begging your patience because the location is understaffed, the lack of confidence is compounded.

So I am just bewildered about how this phrase became so commonplace that corporate chains and independently owned shops think there is some benefit to using it.

When stores call their customers guests and the employees team members, it is pretty transparently a superficial effort that doesn’t fool anyone, but at least you understand that the attempt is to make customers and employees feel special. I don’t understand the point behind the “what can I get started…” phrase.

I wonder if it might be a matter of a slogan by committee or the highest paid person in the room flexing their influence.

I sort of wondered the same thing about slogans on the Amazon delivery vans.

 

They have messaging that promises low prices and fast delivery, but it evokes a bit of shared culture pre-dating the internet that has entered the collective consciousness. It utilizes slightly different wording each time, but gives you the option of cheap, fast, and quality, saying you can only pick two. So every time I see one of those vans, I feel like it is basically saying I can get it fast and cheap, but the product is going to be crappy quality.

I can only think that Amazon chose to evoke that meme idea due to marketing by committee or some boss thew their weight around.

 

Where Have All The Pledge Drive Guests Gone?

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I have been listening to the pledge drive for the statewide public radio network the last couple weeks and been thinking nostalgically about my time living in Hawaii when I was a regular guest during the semi-annual drives. It was a minor point of pride feeling that I had worked my way up from being a guest an a 4:00 pm Saturday show to a midweek lunch time slot. I can’t say for sure if my clever patter as responsible for being asked to guest at seemingly more “visible” time slots, but there were times when I would finish up one slot and be asked to move to another room to appear on the second program stream.

But it doesn’t seem like public radio stations do this sort of thing any more. Having worked for organizations that depended heavily on volunteer labor, I can completely understand that it can take a lot of staff hours to schedule guests in dozens of slots across a two week period. That is in addition to the numbers you need to cover phones. With the increased move to online donating, I am not even sure if many stations need volunteers to cover phones any more. It used to be that you would hear acknowledgements of restaurants that donated food for the volunteers. I haven’t heard those in many year which means either there aren’t a lot of volunteers to feed or the stations are paying for the food directly now.

In any case, what I think has been lost by eliminating community guests from fundraising is the opportunity to provide social proof.

For the last few years, theaters like mine have worked to increase the number of audience photos on our websites and publications to show who is attending performances and the enjoyable experience they are having. I have frequently mentioned that people feel more comfortable participating in a cultural experience when they see themselves and their stories depicted.

There is a pretty distinct impression of who public radio is for. Even though the names of correspondents represent some pretty diverse backgrounds as do the stories being told, the voices telling the stories continue to cleave rather closely to the stereotypical “public radio voice.” Some of the podcasts associated with public radio diverge a little from the “voice,” but not many and few podcasts are part of the main programming stream.

In addition to adding some vocal variety in the programming, returning to having community guests on the pledge drives can provide the social proof about who values the stations and their programming. Obviously, choosing who the guests will be requires some strategy. My recollection from the past was that there were always a lot of lawyers on. That might not be the image of who the stations are for that they want to project. As much as I enjoyed the experience, maybe I am no longer the right person to be a guest any longer.

As much as I am citing the example of public radio here, I am basically using this particular situation to approach the importance of all cultural organizations providing visible social proof from a different angle.

Somber Silence The New Standing Ovation?

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I saw an article on the NBC News site questioning the value of standing ovations with a subtitle suggesting the seeming default occurrence of the act was a symptom of “‘everyone gets a trophy’ culture.” I almost passed it by because it didn’t sound like it was going to say anything new on the subject.

I am glad I didn’t because along with observations about standing ovations being meaningless if you do them all the time and suggesting that audiences can be manipulated into giving standing ovations, the writer Maggie Mulqueen, says they can also represent demands audiences expect to be met:

At a classical music concert I attended recently, the soloist left his violin backstage during his bows as a clear sign that there would be no encore despite the demands of the audience. As we headed out of the theater, I overheard grumblings of disappointment that he had not acquiesced to the call for more. We don’t expect every sporting event to go into overtime in return for giving the teams a standing ovation, so I am not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from for the performing arts.

Later, she provides an anecdote illustrating how lack of applause can be a greater testament of the power of a performance than a standing ovation—while admitting concerns that the performers might read it the wrong way.

The play ended suddenly, the stage went dark, and the audience, stunned by the power of the play, was silent for several seconds. Then, as the weight of the experience sank in, hands began to clap, tears were dried, and actors took their bows. The audience filed out quietly as we tried to regain our bearings.

Ironically, the absence of a standing ovation that night added to how memorable an event it was. Because the content of the play is sober and dark, such a gesture would have felt like a celebration and been in poor taste. As I made my way back to my hotel, I wanted to tell everyone I saw on the Tube to go see it. But mostly, I wanted to reassure the actors. “You were great,” I wanted to tell them. “Please understand it was your forceful performance that kept us in our seats.”

Quit Your Job, But Don’t Quit The Arts

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Perusing my archives, I came across a post about something Adam Thurman of The Mission Paradox blog wrote regarding the poor work environment in the arts. While people, including myself, were talking about this issue long before Adam wrote his piece, it is kinda depressing to think that it really took the upheaval of a pandemic for the arts and culture industry to listen and respond seriously to the insistence that things must change.

The link to Thurman’s blog is no longer active, but it was mirrored on the Americans for the Arts site .

At the time I wrote it, I only quoted his third point:

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

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

Would you believe me?

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

Here’s da rub:

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

But I also wanted to excerpt from a couple other of his points:

1. It doesn’t have to be like that. I know you’ve probably convinced yourself that all the garbage you deal with is just the cost of being in the field.

It isn’t. If the group you work for is being run poorly it is because people are ACTIVELY making choices that allow that to happen. It isn’t just a matter of circumstance. It’s an outcome of choice…

2. You are not the savior.

You’re smart. You see the problems in the organization. You care. You want to play a part in fixing them.

Good.

But not everything wants to be fixed. Some organizations have been run so poorly, for so long that they really can’t fathom another way. Don’t make it your responsibility to save them for the path they have chosen….

Perhaps most importantly since people are seriously considering getting out of arts and culture altogether, and it is wise to make that a subject of serious thought:

5. But don’t quit the arts. Quit your job, that’s fine. Just don’t do it without a plan (use that Year in Step 4 to develop it)

If you can’t find a job as an arts administrator in a great organization . . . maybe you get out the field for a while. That’s ok. You can come back.

But the arts need you. They need your skill, your experience, your energy. So maybe you join a Board of an organization, maybe you volunteer. Maybe you start your own organization.

[…]

This thing you love, the arts . . . it is your world too. It’s your world just as much as it belongs to any poet, any dancer, any actor.

It’s vital you remember that because along your path you will be confronted by those who alternate between seeing you as completely irrelevant to the artistic process on one hand and the great oppressor of artistic ambitions on the other.

That’s garbage.

You belong. Find your place. Use your skills. Help get great art into the world. It can’t happen without you.

Pursuit of Low Overhead Ratio Is Starving Cultural Org Of Success

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For a long time now pursuit of a low overhead ratio has been viewed as a benchmark of good governance in the non-profit sector. There have been arguments against that view, but the perception doggedly persists. Recent research specifically focused on arts and cultural non-profits indicates that these organizations actually need to be spending between 30-35% of their budget on overhead in order to be successful.

I wrote a post for ArtsHacker on the topic recently highlighting this:

As we explained in the academic journal Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, we found that when arts nonprofits devoted 35% of their budget to overhead, they fared best in terms of attendance.

Attendance declined, by contrast, for organizations that spent extremely low and high amounts of their budget on overhead. Groups that spent far too little saw their attendance decline by 9%. Attendance for arts groups that spent way too much on overhead fell by 30%.

While there spending too much is definitely detrimental to attendance, a sizeable portion of non-profit cultural organizations are expending far below what is beneficial.

Hop over to the Arts Hacker post to get more detail about why pursuit of a low overhead ratio sends cultural organizations into a downward spiral as well as why the researchers insist there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb about expense ratios.

You Probably Need To Be Spending More On Overhead

Questioning Capacity Building

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Over the last few months, Non-Profit Quarterly has run a series of pieces on the topic of capacity building. In particular, the authors have challenged the notion that current capacity building efforts are healthy for non-profits given that the definitions of capacity building and effectiveness are made externally by funders rather than internally by the non-profit entity.

Particularly because these definitions tend to hew closely to commercial quantitative metrics which aren’t particularly valid when it comes to organizations dealing with homelessness, drug rehabilitation, domestic violence, etc., where low numbers served can mean the organization needs more capacity or that they ARE being very effective in achieving their goal.

Additionally, as Marcus Littles points out in his piece, there are entrenched issues facing Black and Brown lead organizations which impede their growth in ways consultants can’t fix:

…A board development training plus a communications audit does not equal sustainability in seven months. A technology plan combined with an organizational culture audit does not equal organizational resilience in a year. Why? Because on their own, competency building and skill development do not enable Black and Brown leaders and organizations to overcome the structural inequities that make it difficult for them to thrive.

In surveying a group of leaders at Black-led community-based nonprofits, Littles notes a distrust of capacity building programs, not only because of a perception that they “perpetuate white-dominant norms of effectiveness,” but also that they signal a lack of commitment to the success of an organization by funders:

The first: “Capacity building is the consolation prize money that foundations offer when they are willing to pay for us to get advice, but they aren’t willing to resource us to help our people get free.” The second quote resonated with most of the folks we interviewed: “When I think of capacity building, the first thing I think is that capacity is the wrong word.”

Capacity is a tepid word. Once an organization’s capacity is built, what does it become? Capable? Sufficient? Competent? Capacity building is a process without a tangible aspiration. It is an investment with an unambitious return.

These perspectives made me stop to think a bit more about the idea of capacity building. The idea of capacity building as a consolation hasn’t necessarily been true in my experience since I generally have applied for separate monies to support a specific goal rather than having someone say, we won’t fund X, but we would like to offer you funding for capacity building. Though up until recently when funders began to allow funds to be used for operational expenses, it could be difficult to answer questions about how the increased capacity would be sustained in the future if the capacity wasn’t going to directly result in increased earned or unearned revenue or be volunteer supported.

So in that context, I can understand the feeling that capacity building programs can feel a little hollow without an interest and commitment to an organization to provide some sort of support over multiple years if required.

Pittsburgh Likes Us, But Europe Loves Us

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Jeremy Reynolds recently wrote a great piece about the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO) European tour. The article isn’t so much about what happened during the tour as it is about why orchestras tour. The insight it provides about the way orchestra operate is pretty fascinating.

People interviewed for the article admit that PSO’s touring activities don’t really benefit Pittsburgh in terms of tourism or increased business opportunities and corporations are increasingly less willing to support the orchestra’s tours.

However, European tours are apparently a great recruitment and retention tool for the orchestra. There was concern that music director and conductor Manfred Honeck might be lured away by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which has a bigger budget and salary base, but he surprised everyone by renewing his contract with Pittsburgh–with the understanding they would continue touring.

Similarly, the role of concertmaster went unfilled for years until last Spring when David McCarroll assumed the position and part of the appeal for him was the adulation PSO received while on tour.

He said the opportunity to tour in Europe — and to be welcomed with such fervor — is something that defines a top caliber orchestra.

“I know these audiences,” he said. “The reaction to the symphony is not typical. This is not usual, it’s not normal.”

Who wouldn’t want a job where they got that kind of acclaim? Even if you have to leave your hometown to actually get it.

“We’re famous everywhere else except Pittsburgh,” said Bill Caballero, the orchestra’s principal French horn player. “We go to these places and they go crazy for us.”

Though touring can sometimes be something of a double-edged sword when it comes to recruitment. Apparently, when the Oslo Philharmonic visited Pittsburgh, PSO took the opportunity to wine and dine the music director and ultimately lured him away from Oslo.

Where you tour in Europe also apparently matters:

“Tours were this big benchmark that orchestras differentiated themselves with, right along with their base and how long their season is,” said Drew McManus, a Chicago-based orchestra consultant.

“If they went on tour, did they go to Europe? And if they went to Europe, do you mean Spain or do you mean Germany? It’s all a kind of caste system.”

There is quite a bit more detail about the tour in the article, including some nice multimedia components, so take a look and learn a little bit more about the nuances involved with orchestra touring.

Creative Expression Is A Renewable National Resource

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Countries around the world are eyeing the success of South Korea’s K-Pop, and Japan’s earlier J-Pop, and are developing national music strategies of their own according to a recent Forbes article. Thailand and Zimbabwe are prominently mentioned, but similar efforts are also being seen in Dominica, China, Oman, Philippines and Belize.

A big driver is the perceived ability of these efforts to boost GDP, create jobs, and generate a positive image of the countries’ culture, geography and products.  The article notes that South Korea embarked on their national effort after they had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan and it took nearly 15 years before K-Pop fandom became a mainstream interest worldwide. Thus a national initiative of this type needs long term commitment which is likely to span multiple government administrations.

Likewise, the K-Pop system of artist development is attuned to the unique structure of South Korean cultural and business dynamics which probably can’t and shouldn’t be replicated in other countries.

One of the things the author points out is that the creative economy is a renewable resource for countries in that the potential is limitless as long as people are encouraged to exercise their creativity. This may be something of a selling point when discussing the value of arts and culture to the community. While I dislike validating arts and culture on a economic and prescriptive basis, reinforcing the need to preserve the environment is important messaging.

What is being celebrated now may not be a model that works everywhere, but it demonstrates what could be true anywhere – that there is economic and social potential in music and culture and with it, the benefits of soft power and positive national branding. As countries and regions look to establish economic recovery policies and create socially sustainable economies which extract less from our environment, music and culture is recognised as a viable path. The raw materials are extracted from our minds, not the ground. And the options are limitless. This is something to celebrate, as there will never be ‘peak’ music, unlike what we’re facing with peak oil.

One little disclaimer that may be needed. I hadn’t initially noticed, but this article is written by the founder of Sound Diplomacy, an organization that works on developing music based economies of communities around the world. They are currently working on such a project here in Macon, GA and I have participated in some of their focus groups.

How Are You Philanthropic Rather Than How Much

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Last week Vox had a provocatively titled article saying “Why fewer Americans are donating to charity.” Rising to that provocation, I read the fairly lengthy piece that essentially said that giving isn’t really down, but that the ways in giving is measured and defined are no longer as valid as they once were.

While billionaires are getting a lot of attention for their donations, even if the funds are placed into somewhat controversial donor advised funds, giving to political campaigns and issues groups, crowd funding efforts, mutual aid groups and in amounts of less than $25 are not being counted.

The reason people are choosing to give through these other channels is due to a perceived distrust of large institutions as well as the sense that your donations are having a more direct impact than if made to a large entity.

It’s easy to see the psychological draw of such person-to-person giving. You know to whom your money is going. It can feel more immediately impactful. You might also feel that your dollar is going further than when you give to a big cause…that already receives millions of dollars every year. That’s not to say giving to an online crowdfunding campaign is actually more impactful than giving to a nonprofit, but there’s a growing perception that it is, especially among younger Americans. According to a 2022 study by Independent Sector, a coalition of philanthropic nonprofits and corporate giving programs, 57 percent of Gen Z believe that giving directly has more impact than giving to nonprofits.

There is also a sense that by focusing on the singular act of check writing as a metric, a lot of charitable activity is being missed. (my emphasis):

In 2019, she [Lucy Bernholz] conducted a national study of 33 focus groups, asking hundreds of Americans not how much they gave or why they gave, but how they gave to make the world a better place. Their responses showed that giving money is only one small part of what philanthropy means for Americans. Giving time was just as frequently mentioned as giving money. Everyday acts of charity, such as sharing skills, giving items, and doing acts of service for neighbors and other community members, were very common.

These conversations also revealed participants’ uncertainty around whether some of their acts of generosity even counted as “giving.” Participants weren’t accustomed to thinking about or talking about how they gave, or discussing the definition of giving. It shows that the understanding of philanthropy is ambiguous, not fixed — and perhaps can evolve to be more inclusive.

The national organization behind GivingTuesday is apparently trying to adjust to the shifting sense of what constitutes philanthropy and attempting to measure all the ways in which people give to make the world a better place rather than focusing on how much people gave.

Org Culture More Important Than Artistic Reputation

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A couple weeks ago Aubrey Bergauer hosted a LinkedIn conversation with Karen Freeman from Advisory Board for the Arts (ABA) to discuss what mattered most to arts professionals as they sought jobs in the arts. Freeman discussed a survey ABA conducted where they asked people to prioritize between different situations in order to drill down to what really mattered. An example Freeman gives is would you rather have great pay, but so-so benefits or a lower pay rate but with better benefits.

Among the criteria people had to prioritize were things like artistic reputation, work from home, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), shared governance, professional development, etc., They had over 1500 respondents from organizations around the world, though with a slightly larger representation by U.S. based groups.

Freeman shared four findings among the many that she found most interesting. The first one revealed that respondents felt their current organization had medium healthcare benefits, good management, good job security, middle of the road flexibility with work hours, fairly good progress in diversity and equity and selective transparency. Freeman notes that a majority of respondents felt their organizations operated at the highest level of artistic quality which she attributes akin to a Lake Woebegone view that everyone is above average.

The second finding is perhaps the most interesting one because it provides insight into what arts organizations can do to retain employees (~13:30 in the video). In terms of what people valued most, Inclusive Culture was valued most and Other Office, which encompassed office space and technology fell at the lowest end of the range. Inclusive culture encompasses transparency, accountability, inclusive decision-making along with diversity, inclusion and equity.

Second most important was flexibility which includes flexible hours and work from home. Next is advancement, including opportunity to advance and supervise. Next is Manager which involves good manager, professional development and internal recognition. Health care and leave came next. Second to last was artistic reputation and community import.

This raises some interesting questions. There are already surveys that indicate trumpeting artistic excellence, while important, isn’t a top draw for audiences. Now we see it is almost at the bottom in terms of what organizational staff value. So perhaps it is time to examine the amount of emphasis being placed upon it.

I should note though that it isn’t clear how many of the respondents were creators and performers. Those groups may rate artistic reputation much higher than administrative staff.

Skipping to the fourth slide (~19:25) provides a little insight. When broken down by job role, people in the C-suite (aka highest paid person’s opinion) care most about artistic reputation (even more than artistic department) along with job accountability, manager quality and transparency. C-suite place least emphasis on job schedule flexibility, work from home and DEI.

When broken down by generation (~16:40), the starkest differences were that artistic reputation was most important to baby boomers and DEI was most important to Gen Z respondents.

Freeman also mentioned that they ran some simulations to make up for some potential flaws inherent to the surveying methodology they used to get the above results. In those simulations, when choosing between higher pay or artistic reputation, 54% of people would take the job with higher pay at a place with no reputation for artistic quality.

A second simulation they ran provided the choice between a place that had high pay, but hierarchical decision making, low transparency and accountability, and performative DEI against an organization with better culture on all these dimensions, but lower pay. In that case, 63% of people would take a job with the better work culture at the expense of better pay.

This was some new data for me insofar as what I thought were the start of trends are far more deeply held values than I anticipated. If you are similarly surprised, take a look at the video.

Strippers Ask Actors Equity’s Help Securing Safe Work Environment

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A couple weeks ago I caught an NPR story about a group of strippers at a bar in LA who were working to unionize under the auspices of Actors’ Equity Association.  The dancers had been dismissed and locked out after complaining and petitioning the bar’s ownership to improve working conditions, both in terms of the physical performance environment and protection from aggressive clients. After months of striking outside the bar’s parking lot, the dancers filed to join Actors’ Equity.

One of the reasons why this story grabbed my attention was that I made a post in 2021 about how Actors’ Equity had decided to significantly lower the barriers to union membership. The union essentially provided automatic membership to members of sister unions like SAG-AFTRA, AGMA and AGVA as well as anyone who was enrolled in the union candidate program. The candidate program, which required accumulating points for performing in specific types of roles in venues operating under a union classification, was scrapped in favor of the new Open Access program which just requires that you have worked professionally as an actor or stage manager in the United States.

In reviewing the program, I noticed Open Access membership is only available until May 2023 so we will have to see how membership is handled after that. However, I initially viewed the union’s willingness to go to bat for these dancers as an extension of the Open Access program. They didn’t nudge the performers toward other unions like AVGA which represents variety/cabaret performers or SEIU which the NPR story says another group of strippers joined about 25 years ago.  I similarly wondered why the dancers approached Equity rather than another union. Was it due to the union’s presence in small performance venues in LA or perhaps Open Access has made the union appear more welcoming.

It will be interesting to see how the efforts of the dancers to unionize ends up. Likewise, I will try to keep an eye for more news on the Open Access program to see if it continues/evolves after May 2023 and if the effort achieves the diversity, equity and inclusion goals Actors’ Equity intends.

I should mention, the NPR story doesn’t just report on the strike but includes four discrete profiles of the dancers for additional perspective.

NPR Series May Help Expand Conversation About Theatre in US

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Keep your radio tuned and your ears open to your local NPR station for the next month or so, especially if you are a theatre professional. The network is doing a series over the next five weeks about the 75th anniversary of the regional theatre movement. In a piece that aired this morning, they provide a little bit of a preview of the topics they are going to hit on from the impact of Covid, to economic concerns, regional theatres as a feeder to Broadway and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The short piece mentions many of the conversations and activities which have unfolded over the last few years, from the mass resignations at Victory Gardens Theatre; the “We See You White American Theater” statement; the viability of subscription model and questions about the utility of the non-profit governance structure:

Theaters also started rethinking subscription plans that prioritize well-off people who can purchase a season’s worth of prime seats in advance, while leaving everyone else scrambling for leftovers. And they began reconsidering the current, frustrating governance model at most non-profits, where theater artists must answer to a volunteer board of directors, often with little theater expertise, which has all of the authority and none of the accountability.

It may be useful to have these topics discussed by an outlet outside of the usual theatre channels. Being able to point to NPR stories may end up being like the consultant effect where an outside “expert” repeats everything internal staff has been saying resulting in decisions to mobilize to achieve important goals.

Most board members and patrons don’t read American Theatre and related information sources, but many do listen to NPR and find it a credible information source. The NPR series can provide an entree for conversation or simply raise awareness among the greater community involved with arts and cultural entities around the country.

Next To Pick Up The Reins

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Since there is a bit of a cross-readership, many of you may have already seen that Drew McManus announced yesterday that he was going to cease posting regularly on the Adaptistration blog. Drew is one of the few people who has been posting on the topic of arts management longer than I have.  Way back when he reached out to me about moving my blog from the Movable Type platform I was on to the Insidethearts.com site back in the early days of WordPress.

In his post, Drew noted that even after posting for 18 years, potential topics of discussion have not been exhausted.

Having said that, it still feels very odd to reach the realization that it’s time to stop while simultaneously having no shortage of ideas and topics that deserve attention…but it’s also clear that now is the time to let new voices step in and pick up that conversation. The emerging practice of audition fees, virtual audition practices, underpaid/overworked staff, the post-pandemic compensation reports, and so much more are all issues that need the sunlight of public examination in a non-partisan environment.

I will readily admit that the blog format has gradually fallen out of favor. My active readership has gradually decreased over the years. But I am also pretty clear that I am writing as much to help myself work through thoughts about arts policy and practice as informing a readership. Just as many people have a daily discipline of writing in a personal journal, I am mulling things over publicly.

My intent is to continue writing this blog, but as Drew says I equally hope new voices step up and address topics of concern for the arts and culture field.

Podcasting Surge Benefits Somewhat Mixed

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So it appears that podcasts have turned into public radio’s competitive advantage. According to a recent study, nearly 4 in 10 public radio listeners also listen to a podcast weekly with those that listen to the talk-radio format more likely to listen than those that listen to public radio adult alternative or classical music formats.  Younger listeners are more likely to consume podcasts than older listeners.

“… 72% of Millennial public radio listeners also consume podcasts compared to 57% of Gen X and 35% of Baby Boomers.”

This said, podcast listenership has been cooling in recent years and while podcasts are a entree to listening to terrestrial broadcasts for many, in some cases it is drawing listeners from brick and mortar stations.

While nearly two-thirds (63%) say it has no impact on the “real time” they spend with AM/FM, the survey also points to a third of weekly podcast users spending fewer hours with the broadcast station. That is even more true among listeners of news-talk stations, where 39% said they are spending less time with AM/FM in favor of podcasts.

What I found most interesting was that the cooling attitudes toward podcasts seemed to be rooted in advertising. I assumed then that the survey included podcasts created through both commercial and public radio channels because public radio usually just has a brief underwriting message rather than a longer ad that people can potentially skip. The credibility of the ads is seen as super low. I would be interested to see a deeper dive into which company’s ads were seen as more credible than others.

The Public Radio Techsurvey data shows 61% of public radio’s weekly podcast listeners are getting tired of hearing the same ads in the podcasts they listen to, including a quarter (26%) who strongly agree. Just four percent disagreed, while 29% were neutral.

[..]

It also shows that host-read ads are preferred to produced spots, particularly among younger listeners. The survey shows 43% would rather hear a host-read ad. But among Millennials that number jumps to 59%.

“The data on advertising in podcasts is an eye-opener. While podcasters like to think their ads are more engaging, our respondents suggest otherwise,” Jacobs says. “While live reads from hosts are perceived as preferable to produced spots, podcast ads overall are no more credible than commercials heard on the radio.” Their data shows just 14% of public radio listeners think the ads they hear on podcasts are more credible than what they hear from their radio.

This last bit got me wondering about the relative credibility of sponsors and advertisers listed in program books, posters, digital signage around arts and cultural entities. I am thinking about this both from the point of view of wanting to provide a bit of a valuable benefit for sponsors and from the perspective of “charity washing” conversations where it appears corporations are trying to burnish their image through charitable giving. If sponsorship placement doesn’t lend credibility to generally sincere companies, it is something of a pity. But on the other hand, if people aren’t fooled by charity washing efforts, that is a relatively positive outcome.

How Will Non-Profit Law Change To Meet Shifting Expectations?

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Gene Tagaki raises some interesting thoughts over on the Non-Profit Law blog on the question of how legal concepts and structures may need to adjust to reflect changing values in the non-profit sphere.  He lays out some thoughts in regard to Charitability, Philanthropy, Governance, Technology, Fundraising, Advocacy, and Employment.

I provide this list with the intention of sparking enough interest in folks to read more deeply because I am only going to touch on a few ideas that popped for me.

One question he raised was whether the IRS would need to adjust its definition of 501(c)(3) entities:

“Would relief of historically discriminated groups of individuals without regard to poverty or distress now qualify as charitable? Would the sale of alternative energy sources for personal use be charitable even if at market rates?”

Tagaki also points out that there is a growing shift in how fundraising is accomplished and how the work of social good is being framed. He notes that crowdfunding focused on supporting a specific project or individual versus organizations which help many. He also cites corporate efforts to “charity-wash” their activities by positioning themselves as reducing social problems.

“Fundraising trends also raise other legal concerns as nonprofit fundraisers face competitive pressure from those raising money from crowdfunding platforms to help specific individuals rather than charities, businesses proclaiming to do more social good than nonprofits, and entrepreneurs looking to both help charitable causes while creating for themselves an opportunity to earn substantial amounts of money.”

Finally, Takagi observes there is a trend not only toward remote work, but also shared leadership of organizations. This approach is likely to exist in tension, if not complete conflict with a hierarchical board governance model legally required of nonprofits in the US.

“Many organizations are struggling with this movement as there are clear and proven benefits with traditional hierarchies and the law is built on boards having ultimate responsibility and authority over the activities and affairs of their corporations. But there are shifts in power that are possible, and laws or regulatory guidance that confirm the appropriateness of certain delegations of authority may be helpful. What are some of the distributed leadership systems that would be helpful if recognized by sector leaders as good practice and by lawmakers and regulators as acceptable?”

As always, many things to think about for the future.

Interesting Thoughts On Arts Management Styles

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Andrew Taylor made an interesting video/post about dominant arts management styles on his blog recently.  I am always wary about personality type tests and categorizations, particularly because so many are based, developed and administered using questionable methodology. I do think they can be useful as a tool for self-reflection and consideration if they are subsequently discarded and not used to define oneself.

In this particular case, Taylor is applying Ichak Adizes’ PAEI management framework to arts managers. PAEI stands for Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring, and Integrating. Taylor is careful to note that this frame:

“…is not to suggest there’s just four kinds of people in the world or the working world. The purpose is to suggest that each of us brings a dominant concern to the work; a dominant way of paying attention; and a dominant understanding of what it means to be productive in the workplace.”

Because everyone employs a mix from each of these areas, to get a sense of what your dominant approach is, Taylor says you might look at how you react when you are under stress and things around you are going poorly. Also, if there are things other people do in a work environment that drive you nuts, they may be operating in a mode opposite to your dominant approach. He gives the following examples of how each of these styles might manifest in practice:

Do you double down and get the work done that’s in front of you? Are you a producing energy?

Do you pause and think about what’s the better system to manage this process? Rather than getting it done now, let’s get it done right? Making you an administrating energy?

Do you focus on a distant future and say, Well, maybe what is in front of me now is really not the useful thing. Maybe there’s something bold and new and different I should be thinking about?

Or is your impulse to check in with others and your team and see how they’re doing and what they’re doing and how they’re finding focus in their own energy in this moment?

Taylor says that the extreme of each of these can be very damaging for an organization: The Lone Wolf Producer that moves forward with the work without concern for whether it serves the needs of the organization; The Administrating Bureaucrat that focuses on things being done according to the rules and best practices, halting progress; the Arsonist Entrepreneur who consistently burns everything down in order to create something new in the ashes; the Super Following Integrator who focuses on serving whatever needs the group expresses today.

I am skipping over quite a bit here, but the video and accompanying transcript are really relatively short so if your interest is piqued, it is worth the time to check out his post and ponder the insights you may receive.

“…I had all this music inside…but I could not express it through an instrument”

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the short documentary, Conducting Life, about Roderick Cox, a man who grew up here in Macon, GA who went on to become an associate conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra. Now based in Berlin, he works internationally as a guest conductor.

The documentary recounts his pursuit of music from adverse conditions. He talks about coming home from school excited to practice only to find that his keyboard had been pawned to pay utility bills. He approached Zelma Redding, widow of Otis Redding, for money to buy a French horn for school.

What interested me most was the insight into the career arc toward becoming a conductor. I have often seen documentaries or fictionalized depictions of classical musicians competing for places in an orchestra, but I really don’t recall having seen much about conductors. There is footage of him being coached at the program at Northwestern University and by Robert Spano at the Aspen Music Festival.  It was amusing to watch him get instructed to be a little more expressive in these classes and then see footage of him conducting in Minnesota and other places where he cranks it up to 11+ with such full body involvement that you hope he does yoga stretching before he gets on stage.

If anything I think the documentary didn’t go deeply enough into work he did to achieve his current position. While it does show him disappointed at not being hired at various orchestras, I can’t imagine he was only auditioning at some of the bigger name organizations like Atlanta, Cleveland, LA and Salt Lake City before ending up at Minnesota, though that might have been the case.

Admittedly, in the Q&A after the screening, Cox admitted he was a somewhat reluctant participant in the documentary. He thought it was only going to be a profile piece while he was at Aspen only to find that the director was interested enough in his story to follow him around for seven more years. So he may not have afforded the filmmakers with the access they needed to make a more detailed movie.

The Q&A afterward revealed a very humble, introspective and funny person. He gave a lot of credit to different people who helped him thus far in his career. He made it very clear that while the documentary shows Otis Redding Foundation helping him buy a French horn, the reality was that when he wanted to go to England, Spain, and France to learn to be a better conductor, the foundation helped him out each time.  He also talked about a difficult experience familiar to a lot of people who pursue arts careers where he was auditioning for major classical music institutions and friends were sending him job listings for middle school band teachers.  He was also very funny while being politic in answering about the additional challenges in conducting operas and the fact that people in his hometown can circumvent his management to contract him to conduct.

If you have the opportunity, check out the documentary at a festival or see Roderick Cox at an orchestra near you.

 

Placemaking As A Space To Process Trauma

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Earlier this month, CityLab had an interesting article on the subject of trauma informed placemaking. For the most part, the article focuses on artistic projects which have given communities a place to heal after traumatic events, but also policy and practice enacted by municipal governments to avoid compounding the trauma of those displaced by natural disasters.

One of the art projects, Temple of Time, was erected after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida to provide the community with a place they could access 24/7 to process their grief and trauma. I would encourage people to check out the article to view the images because describing it as a 40 foot tall plywood structure doesn’t do justice to the elaborate scrollwork on what appears to be a Thai Buddhist temple inspired pavilion.

The other project discussed in the article inadvertently evolved into a larger placemaking effort than initially intended. Providence, RI had a building in one of their parks they didn’t know what to do with and had the idea to offer the space as affordable housing for artists.

Together they issued a call for the city’s first “Park-ists in Residence” to steward the property and carry out public engagement, working to reanimate the site and reimagine its relationship with the surrounding neighborhood.

[…]

Haus of Glitter had originally intended to use the space to host intimate indoor gallery shows, living-room concerts and salon events. “But with Covid, we found ourselves where people in the community were reaching out for support and asking for help and care during this crisis,” says Matt Garza, a founding member of Haus of Glitter. “And so we threw our old plans out the window.”

Haus of Glitter is the artist collective which became the “Park-ists in Residence” and ultimately ended up becoming a safe space for many groups, offering classes, setting up a community garden, hosting numerous performances, including an immersive opera based on the life of the house’s original inhabitant, “a short-lived naval commander and Revolutionary War figure…dismissed from the Navy, censured by Congress, and deeply complicit in the transatlantic slavery trade.”

The article notes that Haus of Glitter has ended their residence but seeks to replicate their model in other cities. The city of Providence apparently won’t be continuing the residency program, though there are efforts to continue activities at the park space and homestead. However, the project has had an impact on the city:

…the experience has given the city’s arts and culture department, and the wider planning department it sits within, a new frame for thinking about the intersection of place and trauma. And it offers a moving example for policymakers in other cities looking for ways to provide healing spaces for residents.

“Every city department touched this project in some way because of how ambitious and how long the residency was” says Micah Salkind, a program manager with the city’s arts department…

Try On Theatre, It May Fit Better Than You Think

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American Theatre recently had a great piece about an interesting approach Princeton University is using as an alternative to auditions called “Try On Theatre Days.” They describe the program as “replacing high-intensity auditions with educational workshops as a means to cast performers and stagehands for the school’s seasonal productions.”

What I appreciate about this approach is the broad invitation to the campus community to come and check out the theatre program and experience mini-lessons in various functions. This is a departure from the practice at many non-conservatory theatre programs I have worked with and encountered where the invitation to the campus community starts and ends with the audition notice. The approach that Princeton is described as using seems to do a better job of giving people the confidence they have the ability to contribute to a production both by getting them to participate in various activities and raising awareness of roles beyond performing.

There is also a hope that the process will introduce greater diversity and reduce insular clique culture in the theatre program:

The first day of the three-day process is a community day, at which all Princeton students are invited to meet the theatre department and to experience introductory-level singing, dancing, and acting workshops…The next two days are designated for students to “try on” specific shows in the upcoming season, … not only in the acting sense but also, for example, stage management, in which prospective students get the opportunity to try calling cues. The purpose is to introduce and teach students to different facets of theatre rather than make judgments about what capabilities certain students walk in the door with, and in turn let students decide if theatre is something they want to pursue.

This new process aims to level the playing field for students who didn’t have traditional theatrical training prior to attending Princeton University. The goal is to transform the student theatre culture and attract a more diverse population, as well as to reduce the cliques and the student hierarchies that often result when theatre students consistently casting their friends in productions.

The “Try On Theatre Days” grew out of an initiative where the university administration paid students to conduct teach-ins about the challenges, biases, and other discouraging factors they faced when trying to participate in productions and classes. Students interviewed by American Theatre said the result has been an increased degree of authenticity in productions, a shift in power dynamics, a rethinking of the casting process, and an improved sense capacity to participate in the creative process.

You’re Not Meant To Eat Everything On The Menu

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Many of you may have seen the news about the accusations of “wokeness” being leveled at the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel for adding plant based breakfast sausage to the menu. To be clear, they aren’t replacing the existing meat based sausage option, just adding the plant-based option.

Upon reading this, I immediately thought of a talk Nina Simon did at the Minnesota History conference discussing her book, The Art of Relevance. Specifically, I was reminded of her statement that not everything an arts organization does is for the insiders. She mentions this idea in other talks that she did, but this was my first introduction to the concept so I remembered it clearly and thought the Cracker Barrel story was a good opportunity to revisit it.

While I remembered this talk so clearly I was able to find my post on her talk immediately, I had not recalled just how appropriate it was.

Right there in the second paragraph I wrote,

“She uses the metaphor about going to a restaurant and how you don’t suddenly decide to boycott the restaurant if they start adding vegetarian and heart healthy options to their regular menu.”

Sorry Nina, it looks like you were wrong.
.
There are a lot of lessons and things to consider in the Cracker Barrel example. There are a number of other restaurants and chains that started offering faux meat like the Impossible Burger without this sort of reaction. Dunkin Donuts in particular offered the breakfast veggie-sausage patty on their menu. So why the negative reaction to Cracker Barrel’s decision? My theory is that people have made the restaurant chain part of their identity and adding a non-meat option threatens that identity in some way.

I think in a lot of ways arts organizations might view their core supporters reacting in a similar manner and be reluctant to effect change. Honestly, I don’t know that Cracker Barrel offers a cautionary tale to most arts organizations. I do think that there will be a lot of people in a community who very closely identify with and organization and are invested in its well-being, to the point they will mention a show they just attended a few months ago. The fact the show was two years ago just illustrates they feel like they have close ties.

On the whole, I think it will be like most restaurants adding heart healthy and vegetarian options — people’s eyes will pass over those listings looking for what they like. New opportunities to open doors to new audiences isn’t going to bother long term supporters overall, especially if promoted well while maintaining a perception that long term supporters aren’t losing anything by it. It think it is easy to overestimate the push back. I have seen a whole season of classical music concerts fill the house despite the inclusion of some contemporary, non-canonical pieces. The traditional audiences seemed happy to see younger audiences filling in the seats beside them.

Certainly, context matters and the emergence from Covid restrictions provides license to try new approaches. Arts and cultural organizations would be wise take advantage of this opportunity.

This is not to say that there aren’t organizations with which supporters have made their association an integral part of their identity. Supporters for whom any change feels like a personal threat. A situation like this bears very, very serious examination. Not only is it an impediment to inviting new people in to renew the vitality of the organization, but it may clash with the organization’s self-perception of who they are for. Most Cracker Barrel locations are near interstate highways so the addition of the vegetable based faux meat is meant to signal that travelers with different dietary preferences are welcome. But the response of a lot of customers is, no they are not.

Resisting The Corruption Of The Violin

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Recently I have been seeing stories about violin scammers. People performing in shopping centers and other public places with signs asking for money. What is interesting about these stories is that the claim of a scam is based on the fact these people are pretending to play violin to a recording.

There are some warnings about using payment apps to give these people money with the implication that the scammers will exploit that information in someway. But the real focus seems to be that these folks are representing themselves as having a skill they don’t possess.

There are a lot of complex factors to consider here. It is great for artists that there is some recognition of the value of discipline and training and the sense that you are being cheated of something if someone is taking shortcuts to represent themselves as having invested time into developing a skill.

On the other hand, things have seemed to come a long way since the Milli Vanilli lip syncing scandals of the late 80s.  It is pretty much an open secret that many performers lip sync and maybe even feign playing instruments to a backing track. It is less of a secret that a lot of performers use some degree of auto-tuning, vocal distortion, music sampling, etc.

So why is it viewed as problematic, bordering on illegal, that someone hanging out in a shopping mall parking lot is not a skilled musician?  If you enjoy what you hear and are moved to give money, why should it matter if it is live or Memorex?

Could it be that the negative perceptions of symphonic music being generally inaccessible and surrounded by inscrutable traditions and practices also lend the music and instruments an aura of incorruptibility?   In other words, if you employ an instrument of this genre to create music, it reflects an authentic investment of sweat equity, untouched by the compromises and shortcuts of other types of music.

It may be worth a closer examination of the social dynamics to more clearly determine what is at play.  It may be possible to leverage this sentiment to the greater benefit of artists and arts organizations.   I think the past has already illustrated that it would be a mistake to try to place the artists on a pedestal.  In general, it appears people already place them there on their own. If you read the stories, people are open to giving to the people they find in parking lots and are dismayed when they find out the music is recorded.

Over the years I have written about the whole experiment of having Joshua Bell perform in the D.C. metro, something that still annoys me to this day.  Environment and context are significant factors when it comes to a willingness to participate in an experience. Even though a parking lot or flash mob performance seems informal, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it successful for the audience.   I have written many posts about this, but perhaps the one that sums it up best covered a piece by Anne Midgette before she retired from the Washington Post.

Referencing Joshua Bell in the DC Metro, she wrote:

In the wake of that controversial performance, one busker said something that stuck with me: Musicians who regularly play on the street, from violinists to singers to trash-can drummers, learn how to connect with passersby in such a way that this doesn’t happen. Classical musicians aren’t usually trained to establish this kind of rapport..

and then later:

Outreach risks taking on a missionary, self-satisfied glow, getting caught up in the innate value of sharing such great music with those who have not been privileged to have been exposed to it. Lurking within this well-meaning construct is the toxic view of music as a kind of largesse: the idea that this music is better than the music you already like. The school concert, with all the best intentions, to some degree demonstrated that if classical music is offered in its own bubble, without context, it has little chance of really connecting with new audiences…

Time To Review Programming And Rental Procedures

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Many people probably heard about a Minnesota venue cancelling Dave Chappelle’s show hours before it was suppose to occur.  Something similar happened a few weeks ago at a venue on the other side of my state where a comedy show with different comedians was cancelled the day before it was supposed to occur.

This has gotten me to thinking that art and cultural organizations need to be doing a better job developing and implementing policies and procedures. Putting aside the question about whether these shows should be cancelled,  the decision to cancel shouldn’t be made so close to the performance date. Regardless of the content of the performers’ show, cancelling anything so close to performance time is irresponsible, unprofessional and bad for community relations.  (I know how complicated it is move venues and re-seat people having done it during Covid. The fact the Minneapolis show was immediately moved to another venue suggests the decision and arrangements were made earlier, but only announced the day of.)

The organization on the other side of my state flubbed things even more by issuing a statement that said the show was cancelled due to the content and then issuing another statement saying it was because the proper paperwork and deposits were not received.   This sort of mixed messaging is an indication that there is not a good crisis management plan in place. I am not suggesting the social and political views of a performer constitutes a crisis, but if you have a plan to have one voice addressing your roof falling in during a performance or an entire cast testing positive for Covid after a week of shows, you have a process for communicating tough decisions.

I suspect the venue in Minneapolis was already generally aware of the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle and the clamor of protest got to a point where it outweighed the benefits of hosting the show.  For most other programming, whether it is a solicitation to book a performance or for an outside party to rent the space, it is important to be very clear about the content and requirements of the proposed event. This is a good policy for reasons almost entirely unrelated to opinions about political and social issues.

Ninety-nine percent of the issues that have occurred in venues I have been involved with have been related to technical requirements. Often renters are too vague about their plans and technical needs or show up and add a ton of things they never mentioned before, resulting in a higher bill because we have to scramble to find equipment and staffing at the last minute. Most of our rental contracting has been held up because the technical director doesn’t have the information he needs to accurately estimate the event.  There are definitely people who neglect to submit deposits and paperwork on time, but we address that well in advance of the show.

Similarly, our biggest concern with shows we book is lack of technical details on one hand or assurances that the show will fit in our space despite misgivings. Agents and production offices 500 miles away are motivated to contract a show and leave it to the people on the ground to work around problems far too often.

We have declined to present productions or rent our venue due to technical concerns far more often than for content. Content needs to be reviewed and considered alongside technical requirements in a holistic process. Things shouldn’t reach the contracting stage if there are issues, much less be a matter of discussion a day or two before.  I suspect our colleagues on the other side of the state saw the opportunity to generate some rental revenue and didn’t really pay attention to who it was until the protests started a few days before the performance.

As for the policies and procedures you put into place, that is a matter for discussion with involvement from internal and external constituencies and some legal review. Those policies are going to differ for each organization and community.

More Europe Performing Arts Orgs During Covid

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Last week German arts administrator Rainer Glaap made a Facebook post linking to the first ever study of theatres across the European Union (EU).  Additionally, some of the survey participants were non-EU members of the Creative Europe program.  Readers may recall I had made a number of posts looking at how various governments across Europe were providing financial support to artists during the height of the Covid pandemic.  So I was interested in seeing what this report had to say.

One of the biggest difficulties faced in putting the study together was all the differences that exist between European countries in terms of number of theatre, definitions of performing arts activities, funding policies, training practices, etc. There were numerous times the report noted the difficulty in making and apples to apples comparison.

However, there were a number of interesting things I pulled from the report. For instance, apparently France and Germany are the primary models for presenting/touring versus producing.

The so-called ‘French oriented system’ is based on productions, touring and selling plays to other venues making international co-production easier to fit in a programme. In a ‘German oriented system’ whereby theatres operate as production houses with in-house established ensembles, international co-production is less natural since the programme is set for the season.

Since the degree to which European governments subsidize the arts is a frequent topic of conversation in the U.S., having a EU-wide report on this number is obviously of some interest (recall this is an average from 39 participating countries):

“ticket sales in public funded theatres usually amounts to about 25% of the theatre budget. Commercially-oriented private theatres and independent companies however rely mostly on revenues generated from the box office and other commercial activities. Among the surveyed private theatre venues and companies, revenue from sales (tickets, admissions) constituted around 40% of their budgets before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

During Covid, many of the measures taken in European countries were similar to those in the U.S. Many shifted to streamed live or archived performances, with results ranging from innovative to downright disappointing. Others found ways to perform in outdoor or non-traditional spaces. Companies in a number of countries started working with hospitals, retirement homes, schools and universities to offer performances. Some organizations experimented with the drive-in theatre experience where people remained in their cars. There was an account of a festival in France which replaced the cancelled Avignon Festival which provided press exposure to smaller arts organizations which normally wouldn’t get it and apparently enabled the organizer, Theatre 14 to reach audiences not used to attending theatre. I am not sure how it was organized to encourage that. I assumed it might be outdoors in public spaces, but it appears the performances were held in physical performance spaces.

There were examples of efforts to provide better support for artists, both in terms of government policy:

Good practices are emerging, such as negotiating a minimum wage for artistic work in the theatre, also for people working on other terms than an employment contract e.g. in Austria or Finland. In some countries, such as Poland, new legal acts and wide-ranging regulations are created to support this professional group. In Belgium, the situation of artists resulting from the pandemic pushed the creation of a new type of ‘fair trade’ contract, in order to improve the contractual relations between artists and cultural operators. As a result of such a contract, a play can either be postponed or cancelled, but in the latter case part of the fees must be paid to the artists.

[…]

….The project was funded via the European Commission’s DG Employment and Social Affairs budget line for Information and Training Measures for Workers’ Organisations. It helped the unions to train and put in place a strategy in relation to organising, with a focus on freelance, self-employed and otherwise atypical workers in the Media Arts and Entertainment sectors.”83

As well as acts of solidarity:

Nau Ivanow, a cultural residence space in Spain that has a venue, decided that all income from ticket sales during the COVID-19 pandemic will be given to the performing companies and artists.
Also, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic they decided to offer their two rehearsal spaces for free for the interested artists/companies.

[..]

Some of the [Romanian] public cultural institutions (National Dance Centre, National Heritage Institute, Clujean Cultural Centre, National Museum Complex ASTRA Sibiu, Studio M Theatre in Sfantu Gheorghe) announced that they did not attend this funding session in order to show their solidarity with the independent cultural operators, whose resources have been drastically diminished, and who were less eligible for support than state funded institutions.

The report also made some recommendations for the future which I will probably cover in my post tomorrow.

Strong Opposition To Warehousing Charitable Funding In DAFs

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how donor advised funds (DAF) had surpassed charities like the United Way as recipients of charitable giving.  I noted this is a problem because unlike foundations and other grant making institutions, DAFs have no obligation to disburse the funds they hold. The donors get the tax benefit, but the funds are not being employed for a charitable purpose.

The good folks at the Non-Profit Law blog recently shared a link to a June 2022 Ipsos poll showing public sentiment is against such arrangements. Not only do they feel DAFs should be required to distribute the funds they hold, they feel foundations should be required to distribute twice the amount they are currently.

  • With more than $1.2 trillion in charitable contributions currently sitting on the sidelines, 69 percent of adults surveyed support a 10 percent payout requirement for foundations (up from the current 5 percent) and for DAFs (which currently have no payout requirement), even if this reduces the amount of money in foundations and DAFs in the future.
  • 73 percent support requiring DAFs to make grants within 2 to 5 years of receiving donations.

The biggest impediment to generating general will toward making these changes is lack of knowledge about the situation. Of those surveyed, only 17% were aware that the tax code is structured to allow tax exemptions for charitable giving while allowing so little to be distributed to non-profit entities. Once people become aware of this information, there is bi-partisan support to make changes that will see non-profits receive a greater amount of funds sooner.

Specifically, respondents across the political spectrum expressed a strong discomfort with taxpayer subsidies allowing donors to set up perpetual foundations, with conservatives objecting to such subsidies even more strongly than liberals. What is more, both liberals (74 percent) and conservatives (70 percent) favor increasing foundation and DAF payouts to 10 percent, even if it would reduce foundation assets in the future.

Similarities, Yes, But Important Differences

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” Older audiences will only be around so long. If you teach the rising generation that the theatrical experience is completely extraneous, that experience probably won’t be around for the next one.”

Sentiments like these have been expressed for some time in the performing arts world. In fact, it has been said so often it probably has risen to the level of cliche.

However, I pulled this quote from the end of a Washington Post opinion piece regarding movie theaters.   The columnist, Sonny Bunch, placed a lot of the blame on movie studios which were either streaming movies a short time after they were released in theaters or releasing the movies straight to streaming.

Judging from the comments on the piece, older audiences may not attending movies in theaters much longer either. There were complaints that movies aren’t being made for them any longer, rising concessions prices, people eating too loudly and the power recliners being uncomfortable.

While live performances share many of the same issues with movies theaters in terms of rising prices, uncomfortable seating, and being disturbed by others in the space, one advantage live experiences have is greater control of the content and nature of the experience.   There is a greater capacity to provide content that engages the community at a time, place and manner suited to the particular needs of that place.

Likewise, there is a greater ability to make a decision to provide better hospitality and experiences customized to the content of a performance, unconstrained by corporate policy.  Leaning into that in communications and social media to raise awareness and differentiate yourself rather than constantly promoting upcoming programming are among the best ways to leverage that advantage.

Wait, Top MBA Programs Block Grade Disclosure?

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This post might go a bit on the cerebral side, but bear with me it should go along pretty quickly. Thanks to Marginal Revolution blog I learned that top MBA programs have a policy of grade non-disclosure (GND) which prevents students from revealing their grades or grade point average to potential employers.  This only applies to full time MBA students, not part-time students even if they are taking the same classes taught by the same professors.  This provided something of an opportunity for researchers to do a study  by making comparisons between the two groups.

What they found was:

We study the effects of grade non-disclosure (GND) policies implemented within MBA programs at highly ranked business schools. GND precludes students from revealing their grades and grade point averages (GPAs) to employers. In the labor market, we find that GND weakens the positive relation between GPA and employer desirability. During the MBA program, we find that GND reduces students’ academic effort within courses by approximately 4.9%, relative to comparable students not subject to the policy. Consistent with our model, in which abilities are potentially correlated and students can substitute effort towards other activities in order to signal GPA-related ability, students participate in more extracurricular activities and enroll in more difficult courses under GND…

What most interested me was the idea that while student effort decreased when they knew their grades wouldn’t be reported to potential employers, they were more likely to engage in extracurricular activities and take more difficult courses. (It should be noted most part time MBA students are already employed and taking classes for promotional opportunities. If their employer is paying, it is often contingent upon maintaining a certain GPA)

I recently made a post about how classroom grades are not an accurate reflection of future performance or capacity, extrapolating that to comment that not all metrics are meaningful to decision making. This is a similar situation. While they may prefer to have GPA revealed, employers will hire MBA graduates from top programs due to reputation, networking and the fact one was admitted to the school signals something about their economic, social and educational background.

Similarly, the work of top arts organizations in communities is perceived as valuable due to reputation, networking, and status of people attending associated with it. Like economic impact, none of these factors can be used to measure the quality and value of the work in the community.

Organizations with resources can afford to pay for product created by the highly skilled and provide a great experience. If that attracts people from out of town so they spend in restaurants, shops and hotels, then a lot of people are happy for its presence.

But if people within walking distance of the space don’t feel welcome there, does the organization have value to the community?

Neighbors feeling welcome may be just as problematic a metric as others, but why is economic impact the standard against which all cultural organizations are measured?  I feel like there is a growing trend on a local level toward valuing sense of welcome, especially post-Covid. Though I would argue given the mission statements of most non-profits, welcome should be more important than economic impact.

To a large degree we make conscious decisions about what is most important when we choose where to live, work, and play based on myriad personal and social criteria.  But we like to eliminate the nebulous factors and hew to lists created using arbitrary criteria. Which is why you can see five Best Places To Live articles a week where only a few places overlap. It is fun to see your favorite places on the list, but is that information helpful for decision making?

Donor Advised Funds Receive More Giving Than Public Charities

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Earlier this month Vu Le of the Non Profit AF blog linked to a piece reporting that Donor Advised Funds (DAF) had surpassed charities as recipients of charitable revenue.  The problem with this, as I have previously written, is that unlike public charities which are required to spend at least 5% of their funding each year, donor advised funds have no such requirement but the donor gains the tax benefit of making a donation.

In other words, the government is subsidizing giving that is not necessarily providing any charitable benefit. From the Inequity.org article:

Of particular concern are DAF sponsors that are affiliated with for-profit Wall Street financial corporations. As we have documented, these commercial DAFs provide enormous publicly-subsidized tax benefits to their high-rolling contributors while actively encouraging the warehousing of charitable wealth. And commercial DAFs have been growing explosively.

In fact, the largest commercial DAF sponsors now take in more money each year than our largest public charities.

The article has an animated graphic illustrating how over time DAFs have occupied six of the top ten recipients of charitable revenue, displacing United Way Worldwide from its top spot to number four.

There has already been some discussion about how the required minimum 5% annual distribution by charities was a low bar to meet, especially since some of the charity’s administrative expenses and activities can count toward the 5% expenditure rather than purely distributed as grants.  So the fact that so much more money is being directed toward DAFs than ever before with no requirement that it be distributed is of growing concern.

Housing Appraisal As Art For Social Change

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Back in March I made a post about an artist’s project in Pittsburgh that called attention to the disparity in appraisals between White homeowners and Black homeowners.  In a story of art having some success at bringing about social change, that project apparently lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to investigate whether there might be appraisal discrimination occurring.

One part of artist Harrison K. Smith’s project involved having a house appraised, first with the Black homeowner and then with a White stand-in. The appraisal came in higher for the stand-in.

The Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh (FHP) filed a housing discrimination complaint against the appraisal company, Ditio Inc., which conducted the first appraisal last year, after reading about Smith’s exhibit in the news. (The second appraiser wasn’t identified.) The Fair Housing Partnership found fault not only with the appraisal discrepancy, but also in the manner in which the appraisal was carried out.

[…]

Through HUD’s administrative complaint process, the FHP is hoping to change Ditio’s appraisal practices, and potentially open the door for broader policy changes across the industry down the road. FHP says HUD is investigating the complaint and is currently in a fact-finding stage.

You can read the article about the issues FHP has raised about the appraisal process.

Check out my March post about the details of Smith’s project if you weren’t already familiar with it. There are multiple parts and the appraisal stand-in is arguably the least interesting phase given that people in other communities have attempted the same thing.

The fact he talked a museum into taking out a mortgage on one of their properties to support another segment of the project seemed much more bold and far reaching to me.

Visiting For The Gift Shop

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Whenever I have visited a museum that forces you to go through the gift shop before you can exit, I have viewed the design as a cynical cash grab. As I think about it, while I have frequently purchased gifts for others at museums, they weren’t institutions that forced you to exit through their retail spaces.

So it was with interest and curiosity that I read Colleen Dilenschneider’s post about the strong link between museum gift shops and museum memberships.  This is definitely not something I had considered before. If you have a gallery or museum type organization, take a close read of her piece because she includes a number of caveats about reading the results in a certain manner which I am definitely not going be able to accurately reflect here.

Dilenschneider suggests that museum retail may be a strong element in re-engaging with members and the community at large in the post-Covid next normal. Many lapsed members intend to renew next time they visit and members are 15% more likely to have first visited the museum for the gift shop than non-members. So the retail space may be what draws lapsed members back first.

One thing she mentions is that gifting objects from museum retail spaces are often closely tied to self-image.

Critically, we know that people believe that visiting a museum makes them better friends, neighbors, and parents. Purchasing an item from the gift shop can reinforce perceptions that someone is the type of person who supports their community by way of supporting an organization, purchases unique gifts for friends and family, and leaves their home to have educational experiences. This factor may be even stronger for members.

While she can not definitively say self-image is stronger motivator for members, data shows that members make purchases from museum gift shops in higher percentages than non-members and tend to spend more on those purchases than non-members.

The fact that they may get a discount is ranked relatively low in importance as membership benefit.

Members consider benefits such as supporting the organization, free admission, priority access, and positively impacting the museum’s mission significantly more important. Nearly a quarter of members are having a retail interaction. Instead of assuming they’re there for the discount, consider that those interactions can be an important touchpoint of engagement for strengthening this community of supporters.

On the question of “Are members important to retail or is retail important to members?” Dilenschneider says that there are myriad interrelated factors comprising the museum experience. People’s motivations shouldn’t reduced to a single simple question. Rather as she mentions in the last line quoted above, museums/galleries should focus on using the retail touchpoint to deepen relationships with members and an opportunity to potentially cultivate non-members into members.

While Dilenschneider provides examples of two museums that do encourage membership sign ups in their retail spaces, I suspect this might be accomplished in well-designed, soft-sell manner. I am just thinking about all the stories of people who attended a performance once and resented being barraged by phone calls and mailings about subscribing and donating.

So You Want To Name A Stadium…

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Via the Marginal Revolution blog I came across a piece analyzing the economics of stadium naming.   The basic conclusion was that if you see a corporation buying naming rights for a stadium, you should sell your stock because most of the time the company ends up under performing.

What got me to read through it was the promise that by the end  I would know:

How to decide whether a company you run or advise should buy the naming rights to a sports venue (e.g. high school stadium, college stadium, major league stadium, etc).

I was hoping there would be some differentiation between the benefits of sponsoring a high school or college stadium vs. major league stadium which might point to a possible benefit to a company for sponsoring performing arts venues and interior spaces. Unfortunately, the article only deals with major league stadiums and doesn’t cover college or high school at all. There is a promise of a more detailed analysis if you subscribe to the author’s newsletters.

Overall the analysis is interesting to read due to the context of why different company’s stocks under performed. Banks and financial institutions were bailed out by the US government. Energy companies profiled were involved with all sorts of scandals or were part of a sector that just broadly under performed.

There were two examples of companies that beat the overall trend and did better:  Qualcomm which stepped in when San Diego was desperate for funding to complete a stadium expansion. As a result, Qualcomm paid much, much less than they might otherwise have.

Target was the other example. Their deal apparently included additional enhancements that sponsorships generally don’t. Among them were appearances of NBA players at stores and potentially merchandise deals.

I have never really paid much attention to stadium naming news, but the insight the article provided about some of the arrangements and how beneficial it has been to the company stock† sheds light in an easily digestible format into an area which isn’t widely reported on.

†Since I frequently mention that not all measure of value are relevant, I feel I should point out that just because the stock for many of these companies didn’t do well doesn’t mean the naming arrangements weren’t valuable to the companies in other ways.

This Place Has Rats. But They Will Be Gone Soon!

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I know for a fact that for at least 30 years now, market textbooks and classes have made the distinction between marketing and advertising/promotion the first definition provided.  That has pretty much been a useless effort because people generally think of the terms as synonymous.

I don’t expect to move that needle much at all today, but I thought I would share a recent post Seth Godin made on the topic to get readers thinking about their own practices.

If an exterminator puts signs and banners in front of a fancy house when they’re inside killing rats, that’s promotion. But it’s not good marketing.

Marketing is creating the conditions for a story to spread so you can help people get to where they hope to go. Marketing is work that matters for people who care, a chance to create products and services that lead to change.

[…]

If you have to interrupt, trick or coerce people to get the word out, you might be doing too much promotion and not enough marketing.

I especially like this first illustration he uses. While it isn’t a universally applicable example of the difference, it does make the point that what is good promotion doesn’t necessarily create an environment that is in everyone’s interests.

In the same way, a message of “come see this show” is different from “this is a place that provides an opportunity to share experiences with family and friends.” The latter is part of a narrative about attaining what people aspire to rather than selling a single specific product.

My Freshman English Grade ≠ 2022 Writing Proficiency

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There was an article on The Conversation website back in March by Elisabeth Gruner discussing how she stopped giving grades on student papers in favor of comments and wished she had done so sooner.

I was reminded of Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where he mentions doing the same thing in his classes at Montana State University in the late 1950s. Pirsig’s students reacted much like Gruner’s did some 70 years later. Basically, they freak out at the prospect of not being given a grade.

I have written about Pirsig’s book before, though it has been about 15 years since my last reference to it. My experiences since then have somewhat supplemented my perspective. In recent years I have been writing on the idea that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the resulting data is an accurate depiction of value.

In the same way, a grade doesn’t really help you master content and improve. While an instructor can obviously provide a grade and comments, as Gruner notes, students will flip past all the comments to find the grade and then they are done.

Granted, students always have the option of ignoring comments and choose not to improve their skills. But that is a choice all humans have when faced with critique and not limited to educational settings.

The other issue is that grades and comments are only a measure of your level of mastery at a moment in time.

As I mention in my post from 15 years ago, I wrote a paper based on Pirsig’s book arguing for comments on papers in favor of grades. My professor took me at my word and didn’t give me a grade until after we discussed her comments. (She was obligated by the school to provide a grade, I didn’t feel the need for one.)

Another professor commented on another paper I wrote, observing that the grammatical mistakes were legion, but that I had done a fantastic job of capturing the voice and flavor of the work upon which I based my composition.

There was a grade on that paper. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember the comment. Arguably, my writing skills have improved since then. There have been many factors which have contributed to my higher standard of writing, but it really wasn’t the grades. Memories of my educational experience and how I professors dealt with me are what have endured.

In a similar manner, measures of value that are often applied to the arts like economic impact are meaningless.  How does economic impact inform organizational decision making? How does knowing the economic impact number influence how those in the community conduct their lives?

There is a lot of other data which will help organizations strive to do better or effect change. There are other ways in which people’s lives will be impacted by an arts organization. The value of all this can be examined and observed over the course of years.

Something I wanted to call attention to that is somewhat unrelated to my point about the relevance of grades and certain metrics used to measure organizational value. I feel this is important to note for people who want to read Pirsig, or my early posts on his book, and take some lessons from his experience with grading.

In Pirsig’s book, when he talks about his experience eliminating grading in the classroom, he mentions that the A & B students’ work improved, C students either improved a bit or stayed average, and D & F students basically kept sinking.  Basically, the idea was that the students’ natural talent and work ethic were a constant regardless of whether they were graded.

Gruner has different perspective which I think is a reflection of the differences between who got to attend university in 1958 and 2020s.

My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student’s background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.

While I know that background influences the degree to which people are prepared for an educational experience, until I read that paragraph, my recollection of Pirsig’s observations about grading dominated my perspective.

Best Time To Fight Burnout Is Before You Start Feeling Burned Out

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So hat tip to Roger Tomlinson who made a social media post calling attention to “A Manager’s Guide to Helping Teams Face Down Uncertainty, Burnout and Perfectionism“    It appears it is pretty much hot off the presses because it references a number of recent events which can be contributing to the stress of staff.

While the guide is written for a broad swatch of work environments, there is a great deal with which readers are likely to identify. It isn’t very long, but does have a hyperlinked index so you quickly return to where you left off.

One of the first things acknowledged in the article is that manager in particular can be doubly impacted by burnout.

In this exclusive interview, Fosslien dives deeper into three of the weighty emotions they address in the book — but from the manager’s lens specifically. “In conversations with readers, I’ve noticed how managers are feeling particularly overwhelmed and exhausted,” she says.

Many managers are struggling with what I call “burnout burnout” — providing emotional support and looking after the well being of their team has become a bigger part of their roles in the last two years, and it’s starting to take a toll.

I am not going to even try to encompass all the contributing factors for burnout and pro-active steps the piece discusses. In broad strokes, though the authors address a lot of assumptions that people make which result in the compounding of stress. If you are implementing burnout reduction tactics when you start to feel stressed, you waited too long. But that is natural and what most people end up doing. If you don’t forgive yourself for that, it will only make dealing with it worse.

Check it out. It is an easy read with helpful illustrations with concepts worth considering.

Has Anyone Achieved Minimal Viable Audience?

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Seth Godin recently made a post with a suggestion that runs counter to concept that arts organizations need to broaden their audience.  He has made posts throughout the years about attracting the smallest “viable audience” for products, but this time he specifically applies the concept to classical music and documentary films.

His basic premise is that if you focus on pleasing the core fans, the result will be greater audience satisfaction.

The smallest viable audience for certain genres is very clear. That allows the creators of the work to be specific and to deliver on expectations.

The broader you seek to make your offering, the more likely you are to run into people who don’t care, don’t get the joke or are simply not open to being satisfied.

It’s not easy to record a symphony or edit Restrepo. But your work is more likely to pay off in audience satisfaction.

The keyword “viable” is the slippery element in this. It is pretty widely acknowledged that catering to the traditional audiences isn’t sustainable so there does need to be some expansion.  But there is also an implication in “viable” that you would stop once the audience was large enough to sustain operations. Or perhaps that you maintain a program focused on renewing people lost to whatever factors are contributing to churn in audiences.

The problem is, there really doesn’t seem to be anyone who has discovered the secret of attracting and maintaining a core sustainable audience. Not to mention that economic factors are constantly expanding the boundaries of what is required to be sustainable.

So perhaps the answer is that there hasn’t been enough work done at expanding audiences yet. And by the way, I am not specifically referring to orchestras or art film houses and producers as mentioned in Godin’s post.

I don’t deny his statement that there is a point beyond which you can not please everyone. I have definitely been in too many meetings where people have said “our market is everyone” and that simply can not be the case.

Arguably, there are probably some arts organizations people can point out that have developed a core audience to sustainable levels. I suspect that these groups fall at either end of the population density spectrum. Either there is a large enough population available to support the organization or the community is so small the organization runs a budget with few expenses.

Pretty much everyone else in between probably needs to work on expanding audiences to the minimally viable size which will likely mean providing programming in which people can feel invested.

But I am curious, does anyone have other thoughts on this? Are there more entities who are maintaining a viable, highly-satisfied core audience which allows creators to focus on a high quality product than I am giving credit for?

“…Black people, are just living works of art, in our culture and being.”

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For years now I have been following and writing on the Culture Track survey.   At one time the survey was being conducted every three years or so in order to measure changing trends and attitudes about arts and culture.

When Covid hit, the folks at Culture Track decided it was important to closely monitor the impact of the pandemic on perceptions of arts and culture. It seemed like there was a new phase of the study being conducted every six months. (Disclosure, my venue participated in the study and has been grateful to receive useful data as a result.)

One of the things they noticed early on was that racial minorities were underrepresented in the survey and worked with NORC at the University of Chicago to collect data to offset that disparity.   In the most recent phase of the survey, they included a qualitative segment in which they extensively interviewed fifty Black and African-American participants to gain insights that the broader survey couldn’t provide.

In early May, Wallace Foundation posted an interview with some of the co-authors of the report on the role of race and ethnicity in cultural engagement. I haven’t read that report yet, but the interview provides some interesting perspectives.

The same interview links to the qualitative report, A Place to Be Heard, A Space to Feel Held: Black Perspectives on Creativity, Trustworthiness, Welcome and Well Being  This is extremely valuable to read.  While there are reasons specific to them that may or may not cause Black residents of the United States to feel an organization is trustworthy or welcoming, there is a lot in the responses that illustrate why anyone in general would not feel a sense of trust and welcome.

The findings are broken into four sections: Creativity, Self-Care, Trustworthiness, Welcome & Belonging. While there is much to be garnered from the executive summary of the study, the respective sections offer a lot to sink your consideration into.

I am always keenly interested to hear how people perceive creative practice and the study did not disappoint.

Some preferred to frame their creativity as a state of mind (“feeling like an artist inside”), an attitude they viewed as fundamental to guiding one’s life. One participant described this as an active rather than spectatorial process: “It’s not just about appreciating creativity, but about bringing creativity from the world into yourself.” Others seemed hesitant to call themselves creative, especially if there were people in their lives who had pursued creative careers. “I am very in awe of art and artists,” said one participant. “I think we all have creative sides, I think mine is not as expressed as others’.

The more I see people asked about creativity, the more nuance appears. I am starting to feel this is a topic we don’t talk to people about enough. In fact, the study says that in the first phase of the survey conducted shortly after Covid started, Black respondents reported participating in fewer cultural activities than the overall pool of respondents. In this qualitative survey, the range of activities people reported participating in was much broader.

Having the conversations about what people define as creative really seems to matter.

“And that idea of creativity as ubiquitous and lived was, for some, specifically tied to being Black and practicing Black culture as an important form of creative expression….As one participant put it, “I think that everybody, particularly Black people, are just living works of art, in our culture and being.”

In the trustworthiness section of the study, one of the big takeaways I had was that just because the demographic segment whom you hoped to reach are showing up, it doesn’t mean they trust your organization.

The people we spoke with can hold a “double consciousness” about cultural organizations’ trustworthiness and experiential value…they can enjoy the experience even though they don’t have a trusting relationship with it. They’re used to some amount of cognitive dissonance in these experiences: they can relish the art and overall experience even while knowing it’s problematic in important ways

Some of the issues of trustworthiness are related to who has influence and who is making the decisions are cultural organizations. There has been a fair bit of conversation these last few years about representation on executive staffs and boards. But it is also a matter of what stories and faces are appearing on stages and walls. One of the direct quotes from a participant is particularly pointed.

Traveling internationally…when you go to museums, you see what you are told in the U.S. is not true. The narrative of African race is much more out there than in the U.S. If you go to Sweden to the Nobel Prize Museum, [you’ll be] blown away by how many Brown people have won the Nobel prize. There are a whole bunch of us across the globe… I went to Mozart’s house, and I saw how he played alongside Black classical composers. Look at all this greatness we don’t talk about [in this country].”

The question of welcoming and belonging are closely related to these same factors of representation. Just because someone feels welcomed to a space, doesn’t necessarily translate into a feeling of belonging. While it is more marked when physical traits mark you as different from the rest of the crowd, most people can understand the difference because we have all had an experience where we are excited to be somewhere, but we don’t feel like we fit in. It doesn’t even need to be something like not knowing which of five forks to use at a formal wedding reception, we have all walked into a restaurant or store and shown ourselves to be outsiders by messing up the seating or ordering process.

Just as it takes time to become accustomed to the practices of a new place, making someone feel they belong is the process of small experiences over a long time. As the study points out, this can’t entirely be achieved by making an intentional effort to be hospitable to new arrivals, there are also myriad cues about who belongs, many of which will be invisible to insiders. It will likely take conversations with those with whom you have cultivated a degree of trust to identify what cues may be undermining a sense of belonging for them and their friends.

Take the time to read the report of the qualitative study. For many, there will be some things you are aware of already, things you may have already suspected, and things you haven’t been explicitly told before.  For others, it will be a lot of what you already know and will perhaps appreciate having explicitly mentioned and talked about in a manner it hasn’t been before.

Measuring Our Measures

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Seth Godin recently made a post on one of my favorite topics — valuing metrics that don’t really matter.

Just because they’re easy to measure doesn’t mean they matter.

[…]

If you’re working with people who say they care about measurement, it might not pay to persuade them to stop measuring.

It might make more sense to give them useful numbers to measure instead.

Personally, I think he is a tad optimistic in thinking people will stop using easily measured data if presented with data that provides a more relevant measure, especially if it is more difficult to assemble.

Though I will admit to being gratified that I am reading posts and running into people who are questioning whether economic impact is relevant when attempting to assess the value of the arts.

As we move toward the next normal, assumptions and customary approaches are being challenged so the concept of relevant metrics is something to be continually considered.

If you are a little newer to my blog, here is an entry on the topic with links to other posts on the topic.

We Work Anti-Social Hours? Never Thought Of It That Way

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Artsjournal had recently included a link to a Guardian article reporting that people working in performing arts are twice as likely as the general population to experience depression.  This finding was a result of a review of over 100 studies by Dr. Lucie Clements.

Since the article was in The Guardian, I was curious to where the mix of studies were conducted. Whether it was the US, UK, Europe, Asia, etc. In the process, I discovered at Clements has a psychology practice directly working with dancers.  While I didn’t find a link to the study on her site, there was an interesting piece where she wonders why it is normal for psychologists to work with athletes but not dancers.

The reasons for the higher instances of depression noted in The Guardian article probably won’t come as a surprise to those of us in the performing arts.  However, having just written on Monday about the scarcity mindset and how it might apply to the arts provided some additional context. Especially in respect to the following about scarcity of time:

Antisocial working hours and late-night performances may lead to disruption to sleep or inconsistent sleep routines – a known risk factor for mental health problems.

“The inconsistency of touring and pressures of time travelling, erratic working schedules (including evenings and weekend performance) and chunks of time working away mean a lack of time for loved ones, family or social life,” says the review. “Musicians, for example, spoke of going months without seeing their children. This is important since support from loved ones is known to be one of the most significant protective factors for mental health.”

I hadn’t really thought about the fact that many of us work anti-social hours in order to provide others with the opportunity to socialize and spend time with each other. While it is true, I never thought of it as a zero sum situation where others’ gain is my loss.

Anxiety related to depictions of death and rape in performance were cited along with pressures performers face to maintain a specific weight and body type.

And of course the lack of stability resulting from Covid also factors in.

Other papers found that 24% of ballet dancers reported experiencing anxiety, along with 32% of opera singers, 52% of acting students, 60% of actors and 90% of rock musicians. Among the general population, 6% of individuals are thought to experience anxiety in any given week.

Cheaper By The Dozen, But I Only Have One Set of Eyes And Ears To Experience It

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Seth Godin made a post about leveraging the power of word of mouth by incentivizing sharing with friends.

Krispy Kreme grew to become a doughnut behemoth in the US. The formula was simple: Scarce supply, high short-term taste satisfaction, and a dozen priced almost the same as just four.

As a result, most people bought a dozen. But few could eat a dozen, and you can’t really save them, so you realized that sharing a warm doughnut was the way to go.

Carmine’s restaurant in New York was the hot ticket for decades. One reason was that the only way to get a reservation was to come with five other people. So you needed to talk about it.

He goes on to talk about how a book he worked on about climate change, The Carbon Almanac, has priced pre-orders to make it cost effective to share copies with others.

The general concept is a springboard for ideas for arts organizations, which much like Krispy Kreme, offers a product with an ephemeral lifespan. Offering tickets/entry fees and memberships at prices which incentivize sharing the experience with friends–and intentionally promoting it within that framework provides exposure to a broader range of people.

While providing free admission to an event can also serve to expose your work to a broader range of people. One – surveys show that people who attend free admission events are ones who would have attended anyway. Even if they bring a friend, the friend may not be incentivized to return and pay for admission in the future.

Second – charging some form of admission creates an associated value with the experience. If tickets are $15 but five person pass costs $50, two people may technically be getting in for free, but the group is more likely to think of the tickets being $10 each.  The pass created a situation where two people who might not have attended now have.  If they have a good time, any of the five may not balk at paying $15 in the future when the pass or four friends aren’t available. (Or they may work to invite some new friends along.)

The venue I am at does something along these lines with movie passes which are good in any combination – an individual to 10 movies, five friends to two movies, two friends to five movies. Tickets are $5 regularly and with the larger passes I think you end up only paying $3/ticket. We end up selling quite a few of the passes and have a lot of them redeemed at each screening. It has been relatively easy to administer and worthwhile overall.

Reading Godin’s post has me thinking about how we might structure pricing and experiences for other events to encourage people to share then with friends.

Too Preoccupied To Weed Your Fields

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So I saw the recent Dr. Strange movie this weekend and one of the biggest takeaways I had (no spoilers) was that classical music is powerful no matter what universe you are in. Though, like anything the benefit or detriment depends on whose hands are wielding it.

While that isn’t the main thrust of my post today, the movie is somewhat pertinent. I wanted to direct readers over to Drew McManus’ Adaptistration post today where he reflects on an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast on scarcity mindset.

Since I was processing our end of fiscal year appeal letters this past week, I had some time to listen to the podcast. I recognized how a lot of the problems discussed manifest in the arts, which is always beset by a scarcity mindset. One problematic product of a scarcity mindset is tunnel vision which inhibits long term planning, rationale decision making, and awareness of repercussions.

If you have seen the Dr. Strange movie, a tunnel vision approach to problem solving is basically the central driver of the entire conflict. I felt like Drew knew about my weekend plans when he wrote the post.

However, in the less supernatural, non-fiction of our daily existence, it can also be a core problem degrading the lives of individuals and organizations.

As Drew writes:

While there are numerous examples related to the ways scarcity of resources impacts decision making, I found one of the most applicable chapters is how scarcity of time impacts professionals.

Given that the orchestra sector has a long history of staffers and managers being overworked, it’s good to have examples from Mullainathan and Shafir that quantify the dynamic impact of making this environment the norm.

Listening to the podcast episode, they made some compelling arguments about people how people living near the poverty line don’t necessarily need classes on time and money management to set them on the right track, they need support systems that recognize the impact scarcity has on people’s mindsets.

They provide some interesting examples of studies that have been conducted on the topic. I was especially struck by the observations of the change in the cognitive capacity of Indian sugarcane farmers, who go through cycles of plenty and scarcity due to when they are paid for their crops.

MULLAINATHAN: We found a huge difference. So we found that post-harvest, when they’re well-off, they have much more impulse control.

VEDANTAM: Farmers who were rich tended to think about things that would help them over the long term. This matched other research that shows, for example, that farmers who are well-off tend to weed their fields more regularly than farmers who are poor. Farmers who were poor mostly focused on how to make it to next week, short-term thinking. To be clear, it’s not that poor people focus on immediate needs because that’s all they want to think about. It’s all they can think about. Scarcity captures the mind, like it did with those starving men in Minnesota. In fact, scarcity can actually lower how you perform on an IQ test.

There is a book written on the subject which Drew links to.

All this bears thinking about because careers in the arts have always been beset by a scarcity of time, resources and money. The overall internal cultural expectation is that you soldier through and pay your dues. In the context of this book and podcast, that is the very approach which inhibits the ability to think clearly and carefully about ensuring the long term survival of our individual and collective arts organizations.

It may be why, despite the stress Covid brought to our lives, greater availability of time set into motion new ideas and practices related to programming, relationship with community, and business models.

Man Those Backseat Entertainment Screens Are Getting Bigger And Bigger

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I am always interested in seeing the novel approaches people employ to present performances. I happened to catch a story last week on Vice about a guy who is bringing pop up movie experiences to public spaces in India on the back of rickshaws.  The project is somewhat cheekily called Rick Show.  The concept was adapted from a Japanese storytelling form called Kamishibai which I was totally unfamiliar with.

Kamishibai, literally translating to “paper theatre,” was a Japanese art form popular before the advent of television, where a narrator popped up on street corners with sets of illustrated boards that were placed on a miniature stage on their bicycles, and then changed each board to communicate the storyline.

The artist, who goes by the name Le Gentil Garcon, worked with an architectural college to design a container to store the stage, lighting, projector, sound system and audience seating that would fit on the back of a long rickshaw. They ship their container to their target city and pop it on the back of a rented rickshaw. Then they go around and set up in public spaces like gardens and parks.

They show short, 10-20 minute films that allow passersby to pop in and out as they like. The total length of the program is about two hours.The overall goal is to bring art house films that are usually only shown in museums and specialty movie houses to the public square mixed with an element of delight at finding something unexpected.

“I liked the fact that many people who didn’t think they were going to see an art film on this particular day start to see something made by an international artist, and it’s kind of interesting,” said Le Gentil Garçon.

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