State of the Arts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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