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State of the Arts

Art Reflects Life. So Should Your Mission Statement

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Scott Walters made a Twitter post yesterday that suggested organizations start their existence with a Quality of Life Statement rather than Mission Statement or Values Statement.  Intrigued about where he was going with this, I popped over to his blog post on the subject.  He starts with a brief criticism that non-profit mission statements are usually so broad they are meaningless and pretty much interchangeable with those of other organizations.

He moves quickly into discussing the concept of quality of life statements (QoLS) proposed by Shannon Hayes. Hayes focus is mostly on use of QoLS by individuals and families to determine how they want to conduct their lives and relationships.  Walters does a good job of showing how answering the questions Hayes suggests for developing these statements can be applied to arts organizations.

For example:

2. “List the people that you want to populate your daily life.

…I sincerely believe that, if this question had been discussed long ago, the 6-day/8-performance week of most professional theaters would never have happened. The current theater world is notoriously hostile to families and extremely difficult on relationships. It can be very difficult to just have a life outside the theater. How might your theater support growth and happiness of members’s whole lives, not just their artistic lives?

3. “Describe the home and land surrounding you as you want it to be

…For instance, are kids welcome to hang out at rehearsal, even if they are not quiet like a mouse? Is there a theater cat? When a spectator opens the door, how are they greeted? What about after the show–is there a place for the spectators to gather to have a refreshment and talk about the show? Do the performers join them? If an audience members encounters a company member at the grocery store, how do you want them to talk to each other? How is that embodied by the way you lay out your space?

There are five points in total that Walters cites and comments on similarly. Now as we move into a next normal environment and recognize the need to do better in serving our community and meeting diversity, equity and inclusion, even established arts organizations would do well to use these questions as guides to their introspection.

While QoLS are focused on a family/organization’s internal members, Walters implication that the resulting conversations should inform external facing statements of mission and values that reflect the specific existence of the arts organization is valid.  Even if you don’t go through the practice of answering questions to develop a quality of life statement, a mission statement should grow from the reality of who you are rather than from a boilerplate form.

They’re Back! But Not Because They Waited For The Audiences To Return

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Apparently the pandemic was good for classical music stations. In a story on the Current site, the general manager WDAV in Charlotte, NC had a hard time believing his station had achieved number one market share for the first time ever.

WDAV wasn’t alone, a number of other stations had similar successes. But before you assume that the value of classical music suddenly became apparent to people in a “if you play it, they will come” sort of way, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Stations have been working to frame the music for their communities.

But by emphasizing long-held values of classical radio — to be soothing, to clear the mind, to remind people of aesthetic beauty — stations rose to the occasion to provide refuge from a world that felt scary and uncertain. That has translated into ratings records, strong fundraising and a reminder of the value of classical stations to local arts organizations.

“We heard from a significant number of listeners thanking us for being a place that was normal for them,” said Brenda Barnes, CEO of KING FM in Seattle. WDAV’s Dominguez and leaders at WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., and the USC Radio Group, which consists of KUSC in Los Angeles and KDFC in San Francisco, all said they heard the same from their listeners.

WDAV also got out into the community with their Small Batch music series where they had classical musicians perform at a local microbrewery. Will Keible, the station’s director of marketing and corporate support cited the intimidating environment of a formal concert hall and not wanting to passively wait for people to find them on the radio dial as drivers for their partnership with the brewery.

Other stations cultivated stronger relationships with the artists in their areas. The article also talks about how WXXI had reached out to ensembles and chamber groups in New York’s Finger Lakes region during the pandemic requesting recent performance recordings which they broadcast as part of a 10 week series. Many stations like WXXI have recognized the need to provide programming by musicians and composers of color and that has also helped to broaden their appeal.

“We are changing our library and our rotation cycles so that … you’re hearing representation from all different composers and performers all the time,” said WXXI’s Ruth Phinney. The station also profiles classical musicians of African descent on its website. “We’ve actually had classical musicians contact us and say, ‘I’m a classical musician, I’m not on your site yet. Can you put me on there?’”

You Don’t Have To Wait To Grow Up To Be An Artist

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Last month, Coco Allred, a teaching artist in Philadelphia had a post on Americans for the Arts about President Biden’s visit to one of the classes she teaches.  She started out with the best part right at the beginning:

On March 11, 2022, President Joseph R. Biden asked Maria, a second-grade student at Luis Muñoz Marín Elementary School in North Philadelphia, “What kind of art do you like?” Maria said, “Painting.” President Biden replied, “Do you think you’ll be a painter when you grow up?” Maria said with confidence, “I already am one.”

As Maria’s teacher, I felt proud of how she identified herself as an artist and added, “That’s the great thing about being an artist—you don’t have to wait to grow up to become one.”

Back in 2014 I made a post about a talk Jamie Bennett, then Executive Director of Art Place America, gave where he observed that people have an easier time seeing themselves on the continuum with athletes than with artists, even if they are fairly invested in a creative practice. So the fact that child views herself as an artist is greatly encouraging to me. Hopefully more kids are growing up with this perspective.

If you watch the video included in Allred’s post where the kids are interacting with President Biden, (around 20:30 mark) a student makes an comment drawing parallels between learning/teaching basketball and artistic skills. Her observation was clearly more sophisticated than the president, (or I for that matter), expected from the student.

She Made Sure We Ain’t Gonna Lose Touch With Soul

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I want to take the opportunity to call attention to an article in the NY Times this past Sunday focused on Zelma Redding, wife of the singer Otis Redding, Jr.  The Otis Redding Foundation is a close neighbor to my theater. We can see the back door of their offices from the lobby doors of the theater.   Zelma is only in the offices on occasion. The last time I saw her was a week before Covid shut everything down two years ago. However, her daughter Karla and grandson Justin are very visible, accessible and involved in the community. (I just congratulated Justin on the NY Times article in a crosswalk while returning from lunch today.)

Just as the article notes, Karla, Justin and other members of the family are active on numerous boards around the community.  But the Otis Redding Foundation has a number of programs of their own focused on music education. They have afterschool lessons and run two summer camps, one of which is focused on training kids for the music business and has seen them travel and perform in Nashville as part of the camp experience.

If you walked into their offices, you would hardly believe they run such extensive operations out of such a small space.  They actually announced construction of the Otis Redding Center for the Arts on March a half block from their current offices. It will be focused on serving students 5-18 who have interests in all aspects of music, from performance to recording technology.  Right now Justin is flying around the country raising money for the center. If anyone has any interest in being involved with the project, reach out to them.

The article does a great job of discussing the environment into which Otis Redding was launching his career and in which the Foundation operates in today. There is a Confederate statue right outside the foundation offices on a street with a history of Black owned businesses. The county’s efforts to move it have been stymied by lawsuits. The Foundation has had to be neutral on calls to have Otis Redding’s statue replace the current statue, just as they had to be with the push to have the city auditorium named for Redding.

Before I had read the NY Times article, I ended up having lunch with an elder statesman musician who grew up here and had gigged with The Pinetoppers when Otis Redding was a member prior to joining the horn section for Sam and Dave. He discussed the virulently racist mayor of Macon who nonetheless loved Otis Redding that is also mentioned in the NY Times article. (He also talked about touring in the Jim Crow era. While he made light of the situations, they must have been tense to terrifying when they happened.)

Similarly,  it is indeed “complicated” that when he died Redding had been a partner in a record label that later ended up carrying a lot of Southern Rock acts that employed Confederate symbols in their marketing.

But the Foundation probably wouldn’t even be around today if not for the dogged efforts of Zelma Redding. After Otis Redding’s death, while raising four kids, she went back to school and learned the music business, eventually opening her own music related businesses. All the way, she had to fight to make sure she was getting the royalties and payments from Otis’ work that were due his estate.

So give the article a read. It is such a great encapsulation of so many issues that remain relevant today.

Monopolies, Not Lack of Curiosity May Have Killed American Theater

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Scott Walters is a blogger I started following 15+ years ago. His work has gone through various focuses and iterations, but is always very interesting and insightful. He recently returned to the blogosphere with posts on Theatre Inspiration. He started out with a series on the wrong turns theater has made in the United States. Just as you will often see articles about how classical music concerts weren’t always the staid, rule-bound affairs they are today, Walters points out we didn’t always do things  in theatre the way we do now.

Walters says the first wrong turn theatre made was the birth of The Syndicate. While it no longer exists its influence is deeply entrenched in current practices.  One of the first blow your mind facts he lays on readers is that there used to be TONS of performances spaces around the country from which artists made a relatively good living.  In 1900 Iowa alone had 1300 opera houses. I looked it up, the population of Iowa was 2.2 million in 1900 and about 3.1 million today. I think it is safe to say there are far fewer venues now than there were then despite the increase in population. This somewhat belies the notion that a lack of interest and investment in the arts is the result of the United States’ founding by stoic Puritans.

Walters writes:

The same was true across the country. Often, one of the first things that was built in towns as they were founded were “opera houses” (i.e., rooms for performances to take place). They weren’t necessarily elaborate, but they were important to townspeople. Music, theatre, dance were all important to communities, no matter how small, and performers were able to support themselves providing that work.

Basically actor-managers would travel the country with their troupes arranging for gigs for themselves. This changed in 1896 when a group of six men who owned a string of theaters across the country got together and formed The Syndicate, in part to cut down on competition with each other and increase efficiency so that a tour didn’t show up to the same town ready to present the same show. However, as they gained power and influence they were quickly able to squash competition and require artists that wanted to perform to contract with them for whatever price they decided to pay.

If you are thinking, with thousands of performance spaces scattered throughout every state how could they have possibly ended up controlling them all? The very decentralized nature of venue ownership should work against them, right? Well that was the same thought about the internet, wasn’t it and look how that turned out.

But the reality is, they didn’t need to control it all. Walters quotes Landis K. Magnuson:

Although the Syndicate controlled the bulk of first-class theaters in the major metropolitan centers, the fact that it controlled the theaters in communities located between such theater centers provided its true source of power. Without access to these smaller towns, non-Syndicate companies simply could not afford the long jumps from one chief city to another. Thus the Syndicate actually needed to own or manage only a small percentage of this nation’s theaters in order to effectively dominate the business of touring theatrical productions–to monopolize “the road.”

The Syndicate used their power to drive artist managed groups and rival venues out of business. Many tried to resist. Sarah Bernhardt would only perform in tents in an attempt to avoid Syndicate controlled theaters. The Syndicate would tend to book lighter, entertaining fare instead of serious drama. Walters quotes writer Norman Hapgood who observed this suppressed the work of many talented playwrights and actors.

Since The Syndicate was based out of New York City, that was where the tours originated and therefore where all the shows were cast. The impact of this persists today and people have long wondered why it is necessary for actors who live in NC need to move to NYC so that they can return to NC to perform.

Walters writes:

If all this sounds familiar, it’s not surprising–little has changed since 1900. Theatre is still controlled by risk-averse commercial producers and theatre owners who are interested only in using theatre to make a tremendous profit through the production of shallow, pleasant plays. And theatre artists still feel pressured to live in New York in order to have a hope of making a living, because regional theatres across America do most if not all of their casting there. Artists are thought of and think of themselves as employees who must ask permission (i.e., audition) in order to do their art, and are told who they will work with, when they will work, and where they will work.

Walters’ work is deeply interesting in a time when the performing arts industry is considering what changes will be necessary to adapt to changing expectations and operational environment. Take the time to read it and reflect on some of the forces and events that have gotten us where we are today.

Where Is Your Favorite Podcast Getting Its Material?

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h/t to Isaac Butler who retweeted a somewhat horrifying thread written by author Brendan Koerner recounting how one of his Atlantic articles, two of his books and a WIRED piece he authored have been ripped off by podcasters.

Koerner recounts how the person who created a podcast based on his Atlantic article blatantly told him he was going to rip it off.

A couple people Koerner confronts do give some cursory acknowledgements. He feels it is insufficient, but doesn’t have the energy to fight all these battles.

Given the ever broadening proliferation of podcasts, this is going to be something to which to pay attention. People want to jump on the wave but if they don’t have original material to share, apparently they don’t have many scruples about stealing it.

I suspect we are going to see people getting paid speaking engagements or interest in developing expanded work based on their podcasts only to find there are credible claims of plagiarism and theft.

But even if it goes no further than podcast episodes, as Koerner points out, people are creating ad revenue supported episodes that compete with his books and spoil the plot twists in his writing.

Can Annotated Press Releases Be A Good Communication Tool?

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Last week Aubrey Bergauer made the following post calling the attention of arts organizations to an annotated press release put out by the financial company Ellevest announcing their success in raising $53 million.

While there were some silly annotations like calling Bankrate “smarties” for naming Ellevest “the #1 mission-driven investment offering,” on the whole the annotations were used to provide deeper perspective on the effort that went into raising those funds and telling Ellevest’s story.

For example, the annotation stating Ellevest is funded by 360 women and underrepresented investors revealed:

“I get the game on these raise announcements. I know what the narrative is “supposed” to be: that institutions were throwing money at us to invest in Ellevest.

What really happened: As we began our raise, we had dozens and dozens (and dozens) of meetings with potential investors, and they were going … fine. Fine to good, in fact.

And then … the women showed up.

Caroline Lewis, of Rogue Ventures, heard about our raise and contacted us. … Then, so did Jesse Draper at Halogen Ventures. And so did Jenny Abramson at Rethink Impact. And so did a number of others.

This opened up our funding round to these underrepresented investors — for them to support us (by funding the company), and, we hope, for us to support them (by working hard to deliver a strong return and build their track records). …

The annotation quoting Caroline Lewis saying there is a need for financial products that serve women stated:

“Like, actually serve women. Not just market to women. And not just be a pinkwashed version of your father’s financial advisor…”

The annotated format serves multiple purposes. For those that just want something formatted for publication to quickly copy and paste, there is the surface text. For those that want the deeper story about the challenges and process, the annotations provide threads to follow. The format opens up all sorts of possibilities.

A release about a milestone anniversary of your organization may list all the people who performed for you over the years, but an annotation on some of those artists might note that the trumpet player in the band met his wife at a performance, settled down in the community and now their daughter is the executive director.

You may send out a release acknowledging that dozens of people worked thousands of hours over the course of a year and a half to implement your equity and diversity policy and practices. You may not be able to list everyone in the press release, but you can include them in an annotation.

Obviously, the biggest issue is that an annotated press release is only available on a web format. You can’t squeeze all that into a PDF or Word document emailed to a media outlet. On the other hand, people are getting their information from traditional media outlets less and less frequently so there is a good chance to get eyeballs on your press release by linking to it via social media posts.

People are able to consume as much or as little additional information as they may like. That way you can keep the details short and sweet for people with passing interest or short attention spans, but let those who are really invested and interested in your organization feel like they are in the know by digging into the tidbits in every annotation.

If I recall correctly, it is relatively easy to include annotations on a number of web and blog platforms like WordPress. I thought my blog had that option so I could illustrate, but since I didn’t use it much I suspect it disappeared during an update years ago.

Artist Coding Switch Code Switch

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A couple weeks ago there was an article in the L.A. Times about Artists Who Code, an organization created after the pandemic hit by two Broadway performers to help artists transition into careers in coding. The two were a married couple who were having difficulty seeing the possibility of creating a stable life.

“With every big Broadway credit that I earned and the higher the ladder I climbed, I actually did an analysis; I saw my net worth going down,” she says. “I felt less and less powerful with each year I spent in the industry continuing to audition, and feeling things like typecasting and constant unemployment, and many physical injuries — it just all became very frustrating.”

Catherine Ricafort McCreary and Scott McCreary had enrolled in a coding boot camp in 2018 and had started transitioning to coding jobs when the pandemic hit. Seeing their friends in the arts struggling during the pandemic, they created Artists Who Code as a way to provide direction and support to those seeking to transition to coding.

Ricafort McCreary and McCreary built a free mini-curriculum of resources for Artists Who Code. These include advising members on how to choose a coding boot camp, setting up a mentorship program to help artists in different phases of their coding journey and offering advice on the job search and nailing technical interviews.

[…]

“It’s like a code switch. As an artist, you don’t know what a Google Calendar invite is,” McCreary says. “Absorbing the etiquette of this new world and knowing what is appropriate and what’s not and how to reach out to people, and how to advocate for yourself and how to communicate the skills that you as an artist bring to the table.”

In the early days of Artists Who Code, the couple worked to find ways to walk through technical concepts and jargon for those who were unfamiliar.

[…]

For Ricafort McCreary and McCreary, one of the most crucial aspects of Artists Who Code is the formation of a community to help artists navigate the identity crisis that often comes with changing careers. Making a new résumé is particularly painful; much of the feedback they have received, and have given, is to minimize their achievements in the arts to make space for discussing their expertise in, say, engineering. “It feels like that’s your soul and you’re crushing it and making space for this other thing,” McCreary says.

As I was reading this, I was thinking that Drew McManus might find people in this group to be helpful. As an artist who codes himself, he founded Venture Industries which provides a lot of technical services for artists and arts organizations. He has used me as a guinea pig on a couple of his projects and the user experience elements seem to be among the earliest considerations he addresses in the creation of new products.

That may be one of the competitive advantages artists have in programming. Something might work well as designed, but if people are reluctant to use it because the navigation isn’t intuitive, then it will have a difficult time being successful. And if your organization has chosen to use that service for ticket sales, donations, website, etc., poor UX design can be detrimental to the relationship you are trying to develop.

We hired someone with an artistic background a few months back and were teaching him how to use one of our pieces of software. Within the first two hours he blurted out that the UX design was awful. UX is not a niche terminology only shared by designers and software engineers. People are becoming increasingly aware of it and its value.

Starting Small And Building Momentum

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Last month, The Art Newspaper reported that NYC would begin requiring all employers to disclose the salary range of jobs starting on May 15. Many saw this as a positive step for the arts world as well as the employment environment at large, especially since it applies to many different employment arrangements, including internships.

The new ruling, an amendment to New York City Human Rights Law passed by the city council last December, applies to roles that are remote or in-person, permanent and short-term contracts, and to interns. Any company with more than four employees must adhere to it or risk civil penalties rising to $125,000 from the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

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This small shift, he says, could transform the hiring process, and potentially the wage structure, of some of the top cultural institutions in the US, many of which have been subject to activist campaigns and union pushes in recent years due to huge internal wage inequalities

[…]

Finkelpearl describes New York City’s new law as being “long overdue” and sees it as part of a “generational shift around how people look at their jobs”. He points out that it comes in the wake of the so-called Great Resignation, or the Big Quit, which saw millions of workers across the country resign from their jobs during 2021.

A tidbit I found interesting came near the end of the article where it was noted that New York State (NYS) had made it illegal for employers to ask about salary history in January 2020, but that New York City had passed that law in October 2017. As far as I can tell, New York State hasn’t passed a law about wage transparency similar to NYC’s, but there was a subtle implication that it may come in the future.

While we have seen some state governments use preemption to overrule laws made on the municipal level, there are frequently times that city level laws can evolve to encompass the whole state –even in the face of preemption. The Ballotpedia article on preemption I just linked to cites NYS governor’s override of NYC’s plastic bag ban in 2017, but a statewide ban was eventually implemented in 2020.

I bring this up because there may be some hope and value in advocating for arts and cultural causes on the local level and seeing it expand to the state. Of course, a large segment of the population needs to see the need/value to have an investment in putting laws and rules forward.  The report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences I wrote about yesterday frames the need to support culture in terms of extant support for other industry segments.   Or as in the case of Minnesota’s Legacy Fund, Art & Culture made common cause with wildlife/wilderness preservation.

What Do We Need From Artists And What Do Artists Need From Us

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Last week Laura Zabel, Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, has a piece on CityLab discussing the contributions artists can bring to pandemic recovery. She references a report issued by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that lays out policies to better support cultural organizations and workers. I haven’t read the report yet, but the title “Art is Work,” seems like a pretty good start. Near the close of her article Zabel writes along those same lines.

Artists’ contributions to the work of imagining and enacting a healthier future can be profound, but they do not come about by magic. Art is labor, and unless we build better and more equitable systems of support for artists, we will continue to miss out on this vital ingredient to help build a more just, more connected, and more human world.

The general theme of the article deals with the ability of arts projects to help solve problems, permit people to confront difficult issues, and learn about unfamiliar topics.  She mentions a number of projects that have been mounted to address immigration, communities split by construction projects and economic stability that may serve as inspiration for similar projects in your communities.

 

“Admission Tickets Are Not Bought. They Are sold.”

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Colleen Dilenschneider made a post today providing data that shows people’s tendency to stay home rather than seek cultural and entertainment experiences has increased over the last decade. This has been a topic of conversation in the arts community for quite awhile now so it won’t come as a big surprise.  However, I think this perception has been based largely on observation, assumptions, and anecdotes rather than the hard data that Colleen provides.

Perhaps most significant to the arts and cultural community, Colleen provides a graphic in her post that shows this tendency among people with a high propensity to visit live and exhibit based experiences parallels the general US population as a whole. She comments that:

These are the people who have the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that indicate a heightened interest in visiting museums and/or performing arts institutions. It includes folks who indicate that they actively visit these kinds of organizations, as well as people like them or who have an interest in attending, but have not visited recently. For these most likely audiences, their preference to stay home over the weekend has grown a staggering 60.1% since 2011.

Right off the bat, this isn’t great news. A top indicator of a person willing to attend a cultural organization is that they are willing to leave their homes in the first place! As you can see, even the people who like to go out are more interested in staying in than they were in the past.

Now you may say, wait a minute Joe, I was just over at the Adaptistration blog where Drew McManus posted today about another study which reported “96% of ticket buyers plan to come back to your venues after the pandemic.”

That actually tracks pretty closely with Colleen’s graph which shows that between 2020-2021, the number of high propensity visitors who said they would stay home increased about 1.7%. Between 2019 and 2020, it went up a little under 6%, but people were obviously forced to stay home due to Covid. Between 2018-2019 the numbers increased about 2.4%. So 96% of ticket buyers planning to return is about right. What I am hoping is that Colleen’s graphic flattens out a bit in 2022 -2023 indicating some of that 6% drop off has come back or that new audiences are obtained.

Toward the end of her post, Colleen says that cultural organizations need to step up efforts to engage people and create enough interest to fight the inertia of staying home.

“As the most successful cultural institutions already know, admission tickets are not bought. They are sold.”

Mortgages & Property Taxes As Art Projects

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While returning from a grocery shopping trip on Saturday I heard this NPR story about an art project that is calling attention to the disparity in property taxes for black owned homes vs. white owned homes.

O’DRISCOLL: The artist, Harrison Kinnane Smith, had a proposition. As part of his latest art project, the nearby Mattress Factory Museum would take out a $10,000 mortgage on one of its buildings. Then, for the next 15 years, the museum would hand Stoney the difference between what he should be paying in property taxes and what he is paying – an extra $475 a year. Smith researched local property taxes and sales prices with a data analyst. He says the disparity in Stoney’s tax burden mirrors Pittsburgh’s as a whole.

HARRISON KINNANE SMITH: There’s a 7% difference over the last 10 years in property taxation rates for Black homes and white homes.

I found an article that discusses Smith’s research and analysis in greater detail for those that are interested. The artist also replicated the recent practice of dressing a house to signal residency by a white family and then a black family in order to see if there would be differences in the assessed value of the home.

The NPR story caught my attention in part because my organization is creating a semi-related work about solutions to blight that don’t immediately involve bulldozers. The discussions and collection of stories that will form the basis of the show has resulted in some mobilization of action and partnership formation from some people with resources and influence to address the issue.

More to the point though, I was impressed by Harrison Kinnane Smith’s ingenuity in approaching and convincing Mattress Factory Museum to take out a mortgage in pursuit of this project. It is an interesting use of art as an element of civic discourse about societal issues.  As arts organizations think about how they can present work that resonates with the communities they serve, stories like these can provide a jumping off point for ideas and projects.

Is Joe Suggesting What I Think He Is Suggesting?!?!!!

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I saw a social media post by Dan Pink today that linked to an NPR story about a program where doctors in Canada can prescribe spending time outdoors and have been provided year long passes to Canada’s national parks they can give to patients.  Unfortunately there are only about 100 passes available.

The story helped me recall other culture pass programs I had written about before like the one in Italy and the Interrail pass for young people that the European Union was sponsoring to encourage them to broaden their horizons through tourism. (And actually still do, even through Covid from what I can see.)

The park pass idea got me thinking that there might be value in a similar program where arts organizations might use tickets and passes distributed through health care channels versus social media and radio giveaways. Yes, the intent of giveaways via media is to raise awareness and a fear of missing out in the larger community so giving tickets away through healthcare channels doesn’t really serve that objective.

There can be value in having an arts organization publicly announcing, “We think it is important that you take care of your physical and mental health so we have provided passes to X clinic/health system to help you try to live your life better.” It can only bolster the perception of the beleaguered healthcare industry to have other entities taking action to support them.

“But waaaiiiiitttt just a minute there, Joe,” you say. “I have been reading your blog for years now and you keep talking about how the prescriptive view of the arts is super problematic. Now you are literally advocating for arts prescriptions.”

You are absolutely right, there is a danger of this sort of program being misinterpreted in that manner which is why it would be important for everyone to communicate very clearly that this is a prescription to spend time together with family and friends. The shared experience rather than specifically the art is what will help them.  We already know that the shared time is one of the things that people value about cultural experiences.  There is also a somewhat implied idea that sitting at home watching TV has not been benefiting your well-being which might contribute to a shift of mindset about arts and cultural over the long term.

Right now this is a germ of an idea. There would need to be further discussion and study about whether a program of this type could be beneficial and what the best approach might be. There has to be a sincere desire to provide a positive experience for people, (so work to solve other negative experiences like parking), rather than use this as a cynical ploy to increase attendance.

Museums Are Secretly Controlled By Big White Paint

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On Hyperallergic today, Isabella Segalovich had a piece, 15 Things Museums Do That Piss Me Off . An avowed museum junkie, she lists what areas in which she would like museums to do a better job.

She roped me in with her first criticism about museums being too quiet by admitting she was the one shushing her mother (who stuck her tongue out at Isabella in response).

Some of the points on her list are familiar gripes – the cost, not allowing pictures, no-touch policy, accessibility for those with disabilities, picture taking policy. She also brings up issues that have arisen comparatively recently in regard to fair pay, more than superficial motions of inclusivity, and the issue of buildings and spaces being named for problematic individuals.

But she makes some newer critiques like the lack of artists living in the towns and cities whose name appears on the building while the same superstar artists’ work is shown again and again. The lack of indigenous works and folk art in “American galleries.” She complains that galleries are too white—as in the paint on the walls–creating the idea that art has to be viewed in a sterile environment.

There is a lot more nuance to her case than I am providing here. I enjoyed the TikTok video she included showing the reason why one was not permitted to touch the art–which actually might make you want to touch the art.

Kindergarten Art As Social Practice

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You may have heard a short piece on NPR this past week about Peptoc, a hotline where you can hear encouraging words from kindergartners.

 

Call a new hotline, and you’ll get just that — encouraging words from a resilient group of kindergartners.

Kids’ voices will prompt you with a menu of options:

If you’re feeling mad, frustrated or nervous, press 1. If you need words of encouragement and life advice, press 2. If you need a pep talk from kindergartners, press 3. If you need to hear kids laughing with delight, press 4. For encouragement in Spanish, press 5.

[…]

It was put together with the help of teachers Jessica Martin and Asherah Weiss. Martin, who teaches the arts program at the school, says she was inspired by her students’ positive attitudes, despite all they’ve been through — the pandemic, wildfires in the region and just the everyday challenges of being a kid.

Apparently within two days of getting the hotline operational, they were getting around 700 callers an hour.

I became aware of the story on Twitter and what caught my eye and made me follow the link was the statement that the hotline came out of a discussion with the kids about art as social practice. While that is probably not the terminology they used with the kindergartners, it stood out as an example of how it is never too early to start teach kids that artistic practice has a role in our lives other than being viewed as frivolous entertainment.

The pictures accompanying the NPR story show kids putting up posters they made promoting the hotline and delivering some of the same messaging as is found on their hotline.

The concept that you are able to contribute to the greater joy of society as a 5-6 year old has the potential for leaving a long lasting impression on these kids which will shape how they live their lives. In five or six years if these kids are told thousands of people have been calling every day to hear them laugh for half their life, that can really be meaningful.

And of course, if the hotline has helped relieve the stress of millions of adults, that has been a pretty great outcome as well.

Don’t Know If I Am Auditioning, But I Am Having Fun

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You may have seen the story on American Theatre about the slew of people who took to TikTok to “audition” for St. Louis theatre, The Muny’s production of Legally Blonde.  I use the quote marks because according to the article, the audition process involved uploading a video to YouTube or Google Drive and providing a link to The Muny by February 1.  The appearance of videos on TikTok exploded the weekend of February 3-4 and participants seemed more motivated by the desire to express themselves than win a place on the cast.

Yet, as usual on TikTok and beyond, there has been some confusion over what exactly this phenomenon is. Is this a TikTok trend or an actual audition? Several TikTokers posted videos saying that they weren’t sure if they were just participating in a TikTok trend or actually auditioning for the Muny.

Absurd as this may sound to a casual onlooker, this absurdity aligns with TikTok’s messy culture. That many of Legally Blonde dance call videos are self-deprecating adds to the Gen Z aesthetic, which continues to set the tone on the app. Many of these dancers know they aren’t going to book it; they know they’re unlikely to see their name in lights. So what do they do? They ham it up, finding the humor in the fast-paced dance.

While The Muny wasn’t using TikTok as part of the audition process, they did have 1,400 people submit through their official video submission auditioning process. This approach might go a long way toward achieving equity and representation goals for many theaters. Having all these TikTok videos may also increase interest, awareness, and perceptions of theater’s accessibility among more people.

As the American Theatre article notes, a lot of people do post their auditions to TikTok in an attempt to generate enough buzz to gain a higher level of consideration, number of followers on social media has been a consideration in the audition process for years in some places, or to simply garner fame independent of a formal production.

However, the article also addresses the mixed feelings that can arise. While productions are happy to get viral attention, there are some other considerations:

Of course, posting dance call self-tapes on TikTok raises some ethical concerns, particularly as it relates to dance copyright, which mirrors larger conversations about TikTok and dance credit. The issue of credit and payment is definitely something that choreographer William Carlos Angulo had on his mind.

“The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society is my union, and they are responsible for protecting the work I do on plays and musicals,” Angulo said. “However, because their jurisdiction covers productions only, I am left to sift through the legal implications of ‘going viral on TikTok’ completely by myself. Because I have spent my entire choreography career being protected by my union, it never occurred to me to copyright my work until now.” Angulo has only just begun the long process of copyrighting the dance call audition.

Despite these muddy waters, Angulo recognizes the “powerful culture-making” that takes place on the platform. “Learning dances in my living room by playing and rewinding tapes of old MGM musicals and awards show performances brought me a lot of joy as a child,” recalled Angulo. “Seeing that reflected back to me through the thousands of videos of young people doing my choreography in their living rooms has brought me a new kind of joy that I cannot describe.”

Once You Have Found Her, Never Let Her Go

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A couple weeks ago violinist Holly Mulcahy made a Facebook post about giving the manager at the Wichita, KS airport Enterprise counter her card which had a BOGO ticket offer printed on the back.

Organizations often have the idea of printing off promotional/discount materials and having performers and other members of the artistic staff distribute them in the hopes of attracting new audiences. But it occurred to me that these efforts aren’t really worthwhile unless there is a strong commitment from performers and staff to distribute these materials outside of their social circle and act as an ambassador for your organizational brand.

My impression is that Holly is largely in the drivers seat on this and tells the organizations with which she works what she is interested in doing and what materials would be helpful in making that happen. I still remember a post she made years ago about a little social meet-up she had a hand in organizing at a restaurant in Chattanooga that had great cinnamon buns. There is part of me that still wants to eat those cinnamon buns.

I think there is a case to be made for a bottom up approach to audience cultivation where the artists or general staff mention the type of things they would be invested in doing and working to get materials, spaces and other resources to make it happen versus administrators deciding on a new initiative and asking staff to participate.

Not every idea is going to be great, no matter where it comes from. Holly makes it look easy because she has been thinking about the audience experience every day, all the time, for years and has sorted through many ideas. When she promises some enchanted evening, she is invested in making it happen and probably had conversations with people about experiences with ticketing, parking, dining, etc,. with the goal of improving them.

It may take years of just talking about an organizational commitment to a better audience experience and enacting changes in other areas before good ideas and investment manifest.  The adage about change starting from within first is probably really applicable to audience development. You need to do cultivation work with staff before you can really be successful at audience cultivation.  The BOGO coupon comes toward the end as one tool in your process rather than defining the audience cultivation effort.

 

A First Stab At A State Of Performing Arts Survey

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Association of Performing Arts Professionals featured a webinar today reporting on the results of a survey they conducted about the state of the performing arts. Regrettably, I missed it but they posted many slides on Twitter today.  The study they conducted last month is meant to provide a baseline against which to assess how things are developing going into the future.

One of the first slides to catch my attention addressed ticket sales. We have been wondering if our sales numbers were reflected by the nation as a whole.  Sure enough, in terms of single ticket sales, numbers are down and only 52% of audiences reported buying tickets in late January/early February. (This may be a factor of supply of performances to view as it is demand, however.)

In another post, they reported subscriptions are down as well. Really, neither of these datapoints are of great surprise to me given how the state of the pandemic has fluctuated.  They also noted many organizations are offering non-ticketed content to keep audiences engaged.

Audience support of mask and vaccine mandates at performances was strong.

Also of interest was the news that arts professionals are returning to work, but are much more mindful of a work-life balance. There are concerns about being able to fully staff positions with qualified individuals due to worker expectations and people leaving the field or being lured away by better work environment and compensation.

 

Come For A Haircut, See A Van Gogh

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It will probably come as no surprise to anyone running an arts venue that many attendees are over the mask wearing thing. At my venue, we actually had a more conservative mandatory policy for mask wearing than our university parent. At the beginning of December, we were prevailed upon to loosen those restrictions by my boss so for about two weeks we were at “strongly suggested” before the omicron surge saw everyone, including our parent organization institute mandatory masking again.  Still, it wasn’t long after the new year that we had people leveraging loopholes to avoid wearing masks.

Over the holidays I was amused to read that some landmark institutions in the Netherlands were chafing against restrictions there in a fairly creative way. The Van Gogh Museum, Mauritshuis gallery, and Concertgebouw concert hall engaged some barbers, nail artists and fitness instructors to provide services at their venues because those businesses weren’t restricted in the way that art institutions were.

“We wanted to make the point that a museum is a safe visit and we should be open,” Van Gogh Museum director Emilie Gordenker told AFP.

“The mayor called me last night and she said she’s not permitting this. We expect to get a warning at some point after which we will have to close, but we wanted to make this point very badly so here we are.”

One of the barber’s clients said he had come because he was “pro-culture”.

[…]

Nearby, the “Hair salon at the Concertgebouw” event saw two masked barbers clip hair on stage, while the orchestra played Symphony No. 2 by Charles Iver.

“After two years of patience and an ever-constructive attitude, it is high time for a fair perspective for the cultural sector,” Concertgebouw director Simon Renink said.

Fitness classes took place at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, home to Vermeer’s famed “Girl with the Peal Earring, while the Speelklok museum in Utrecht set itself up as a gym.

No mention of whether the ubiquitous “Shave and a Haircut” riff was played anywhere.

While the pandemic is certainly going to force arts organizations to rethink their business models, I am not sure that salon services are going to become the next trend. Exercise and yoga classes at museums and galleries was a thing pre-pandemic so I wouldn’t completely discount the idea.

The story does remind us that arts people are very creative thinkers. If arts leaders are willing to exercise this skillset in defiance of governments, perhaps they will be more willing to try new ideas without fearing the reactions of funders and donors as much

 

Haven’t Seen You Around Recently

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I’m happy to say that things are starting to get back to a place where I feel like I can start blogging again. Hopefully it will stay that way. I really underestimated how difficult things were going to become when I made the “On Hiatus” post in November.

When I finally got a chance to start reading about practices and trends in the arts, a familiar source caught my attention – Colleen Dilenschneider. Last week she posted that not only was visitation by new and non-recent visitors up on 2020 and 2021 versus 2019 and earlier, but that visitation by self-identifying non-white members of these groups was also up in this period of time.

The percentage of new and non-recent visitors who self-identify as non-White increased 52% from 2019 to 2020! It rose from 10.0% to 15.2%. This percentage fell to 13.9% of new and non-recent attendance in 2021, but is still a dramatic 39% increase compared to 2019 levels!

Earlier in February, she had posted that in recent years people have begun to perceive many, though not all, cultural entities as being more welcoming to individuals like themselves. That article is worth reading for greater insight into this trend. Unfortunately, symphony/orchestras were most strongly perceived as “not welcoming to people like me” among survey respondents.

In last week’s post, Dilenschneider provides some guidance about how to interpret the increased numbers:

Please resist the urge to see these numbers and think “Score! We got people who were disinterested in attending to visit us during the pandemic.” Behavioral economics and audience motivation studies suggest that entities should instead say, “Score! We got people who were already interested in visiting us to finally move us up on their to-do list and trial/re-trial our experience!”

She suggests that the uptick in attendance is likely due to the start of efforts toward diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ). Specifically she mentions that due to the pandemic, marketing messaging shifted from “Visit Now” toward DEIJ and customer-centric values.

What’s Been Learned So Far About Offering Virtual Theatre

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American Theatre released results of a survey about virtual theatre offerings during Covid this week. Respondents represent 64 organizations from 25 states.

As you might already imagine, the bad news is that virtual programming was not financially viable for nearly all organizations.

Many experienced a promising initial swell of audience interest in the early months of 2020, but also a disappointing and steady subsequent decline in interest over the past year or so. Companies that sold tickets at pre-pandemic prices almost uniformly experienced a significant dip both in number of tickets sold and box-office revenue compared to the outcomes of similar in-person plays produced during previous seasons; some companies experienced only moderate drops, while for others, the change was drastic.

[…]

Theatres that conducted their own surveys to gauge audience feedback on virtual offerings found that while the quality of the work was typically quite appreciated, audiences consistently expressed a strong preference for live, in-person theatre and saw the virtual version as a better-than-nothing alternative to no theatre at all.

Some theatres found their production costs were less than live performances, mostly due to having smaller casts, production and support crews. Others found it was actually more expensive to create virtual content.

There were some upsides reported, including expanded and increased access:

Many noted that virtual offerings served as an important way to engage their core audience base and maintain donor interest during a time when this would not be possible without the internet, producing ripple effects that cannot always easily be quantified: Most theatre companies reported increased donor support in the early months of the pandemic, and it’s possible though hard to measure whether a sustained virtual presence may have bolstered donor interest. Other companies who may not have seen an overall increase in ticket sales nonetheless reported a promising increase in viewership from younger virtual audiences.

…more than a third of respondents praised virtual theatre for increasing accessibility for those not able to attend in person, whether due to disability, health issues, transportation barriers, or living in rural areas far from the nearest theatre company. As Liz Lisle (she/her), managing director of Shotgun Players in San Francisco, put it, “For us, it is not an economic question—it is an accessibility and engagement question.” Measuring by revenue is “the wrong frame. Virtual theatre brings greater engagement.”

There is a great deal more detailed observation discussed in the article that can offer insight to organizations of multiple disciplines. One thing that seemed to be clear to most respondents is that providing virtual content isn’t simply a matter of putting cameras and sound equipment near a performance executed in a generally conventional way. The quality often compares unfavorably with professional video & film production.

Many respondents seemed to feel the best course was to provide content which supplemented or complemented a live performance. The value added element seemed more suited to achieving goals and fulfilling expectations.

Though that approach leaves people who have difficultly accessing physical spaces without the option of experience the full production. There is certainly an opportunity for those with the resources and expertise to meet an unmet need of providing virtual performances to this segment of the population nationally and perhaps internationally. I wouldn’t be surprised if people are already pursuing further experimentation with the virtual theatre form.

The American Theatre piece bears the title “The Jury Is In on Virtual Theatre,” but I think it is a little too early in the process of exploring virtual theatre offerings to make that claim.

Looking To Public Art To Revitalize Cities Post-Covid

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Somewhat in line with my post yesterday about the growing number of basic guarantee income programs for artists, Artsjournal.com had an interview with the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, about the beginning of a 10 year initiative to create public art. The program had been delayed by the start of Covid and the mayor says that has created an even greater need for public works of art.

This is true for a couple of reasons: first, I think the sense of joy — the look and feel of the city being enlivened by artistic creations of all kinds — became even more important after a desolate period when you’d walk around downtown and it was bleak, I mean it was a wasteland. The second reason, which was valid before but now became 100 times more valid, was that it also allows some of our artists to tell their stories. And beyond the benefits to us of having those stories told and those works displayed, this program will retain the services of 1,500 artists over the course of this year. That’s not unimportant in the context of a group that has been very hard hit. I’m not minimizing the problems other people have had, but artists had a terrible time. Now there’s a need to bring the city back to life and there’s nothing like the arts and culture to do that.

I was interested to see the interviewer, Jonathan Dekel, follow up by asking the mayor how this vision of supporting artists and their importance to the city reconciles with the concerns about gentrification displacing the artists. The mayor made mention of some measures like tax relief for music venues and affordable housing arrangements which recognize that artists’ income is not regular from month to month.

Guaranteed Income For Artists Spreading

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Nod to Laura Zabel who tweeted a story about the guaranteed basic income for artists pilot program being started in Ireland.  The plan is to provide €325/week to 2000 artists. This is actually more, both in terms of monthly income and number of artists included, than any similar program I have seen piloted in the US. The program will be run across three years which is also longer than any other program I have come across as well.

Minister for the Arts Catherine Martin indicated selection for participation would be random rather than competitive. It sounds like the intent is to make sure those in different sectors and career stages are represented since the article mentions “Likely “streams” will include professional artists, emerging/developing artists and creative arts workers.”

The ministry is quoted as saying there won’t be a means test for who will be able to participate in the program.

The National Campaign for the Arts which had lobbied for the pilot was quoted as saying they were:

“happy with the proposed payment of €325 per week, once it is not means tested and other benefits including disability payments are not diminished, and that there is a clear process for selection…”

In writing about other guaranteed basic income programs previously, it hadn’t occurred to me that participating in the program might end up disadvantaging people from receiving other types of aid due to income restrictions. That is something to be considered when designing programs like this –either to disburse an amount that will offset people’s losses or ensure that the amount people are receiving doesn’t adversely impact their ability to receive other aid.

How Arts Orgs Used Relief Funding Is Beginning To Be Examined

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A couple weeks ago Hyperallergic had an article that was a critical of museums who had received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds meant to keep people employed, but instead ended up laying off large numbers of people. They particularly noted that the Museum of Science Boston initially didn’t qualify for the program due to employing more than 500 people, but were later able to apply for funding after laying off more than 300 people.  The article also suggested that while some institutions needed the money to survive, some of those at the top ended up in almost better financial shape.

It found that out of $1.6 billion given to about 7,500 cultural institutions that qualified for PPP loans, nearly half of the money ($771 million) went to just 228 recipients. These same 288 institutions collectively laid off more than 14,400 employees, or at least 28% of their workforce.

[…]

However, AFSCME’s report found that not all museums faired that poorly during the pandemic. In fact, an analysis of 69 cultural institutions with available financial data revealed that 67% of them ended fiscal year (FY) 2020 with operating surpluses.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), which received $3.3 million in PPP loans, laid off 97 workers during the pandemic despite ending FY 2020 with a $2.3 million surplus. Nearby, the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County ended FY 2020 with a $23.9 million operating surplus after receiving a $4.8 million PPP loan. And yet, it furloughed its 127 part-time employees from March 2020 until the end of December 2020.

Not to excuse the act of laying off people after accepting money to keep staff employed, the fact that institutions ended fiscal year 2020 with a surplus may not be indicate they profited off of layoffs. Many non-profits have a July 1 -June 30 fiscal year so if the organization was doing well from July 1, 2019 through March 2020 when the pandemic started, losses of the three months from March-June 2020 may not have moved them into a deficit. The PPP program started in April 2020 with a deadline of June 30, 2020 so organizations may not have received the funds until their 2021 fiscal year.

It has been generally acknowledged that a lot of those who applied for the PPP program didn’t have the severe financial need the program was intended to serve. Determining whether museums used funds meant to stave off layoffs to achieve better financial footing should be examined, but it isn’t clear from the information provided here. The full report can be downloaded on the AFSCME website. I haven’t downloaded the report at this time because the registration form indicates they and others may use the information to solicit and lobby me.

It will be interesting to see if a similar examination is conducted of performing arts venues which largely fall under the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program, something most museums were not eligible due to the fixed seating requirement for that program.  From what I have seen, the administration of that program is still plagued with errors which they are trying to resolve for adversely effected venues, but that raises concerns that there was opportunity for inappropriately granting funds as well.

When It Comes To Work, What Is The Cost-Benefit Between Lethargy And A Sense Of Belonging

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Dan Pink pointed to a study (warning, ad heavy page) that suggests while office interruptions may be disruptive to one’s workflow, it ultimately creates a sense of worth and belonging for people. This is something to be considered both in terms of the conversation about shifting to working remotely and digital vs. in-person arts experiences. There seems to be an indication that as social creatures, the negatives of in-person work and play interactions may be outweighed by the positive.

The study which appears in the Journal of Applied Psychology was conducted at the University of Cincinnati:

Study authors surveyed a group of 111 employees twice per day for three full weeks. Each time, employees answered questions about their experiences at the office that day. More specifically, participants recorded if they had endured any interruptions, how mentally tired they felt, their sense of belonging, and their overall job satisfaction.

Those polls led the research team to conclude that while work interruptions in a vacuum can certainly lead to feeling more lethargic and dissatisfied, the social interactions that usually accompany those intrusions produce feelings of belonging and increased job satisfaction.

“Our study revealed that by providing this avenue for social interaction with one’s colleagues, work interruptions led to a greater sense of belonging. This sense of belonging, in turn, led to higher job satisfaction,” Dr. Puranik adds.

I am not necessarily advocating for returning to the office-centric work environment of yore. I felt like this was a relatively honest discussion of the dynamics of in-person office work. It would be interesting to see a similar study conducted with a larger sample size in a year or so when remote work has a chance to exist as a norm that (hopefully) is not necessitated by the existence of a pandemic. (It didn’t escape my notice that the researchers apparently interrupted people at work twice a day to ask them how they felt being interrupted at work.)

What I fear is that people will become acclimated to a lack of social contact and not value it as much as they do now. The lethargy and dissatisfaction people may experience when interrupted shouldn’t be discounted because a sense of belonging and job satisfaction are somehow more important or valuable. People may find the working from home uninterrupted raises their energy level and satisfaction and that is a good trade off for feeling disconnected.

It also bears considering that a work environment can be created where it isn’t a zero-sum between feeling a sense of belonging and lethargy. Those options haven’t really been explored.

But ultimately people feeling that a lack of social contact is an acceptable trade off is a bad situation for museums and live performing arts events. Digital offerings can prove a good substitute and keep people engaged when they are in a situation where they can’t be present in person, but it flattens the experience. It provides too much latitude to avoid and look away from even the least inconvenient, unchallenging situations.

I have discussed how I am definitely an introvert and have no problem being alone. There are times I don’t really want to go forth from my house, but am grateful I did after having an experience.

On Sunday, after locking up the building at 9:30 pm after our visual and performing arts event, I stood outside for 90 minutes talking to a kid that had been energized by the experience. I had already worked 8 days straight and done two 12+ hour days and had to be back at work the next morning, but I realized interacting with this 22 year old was going to be valuable for both of us. Even as I was talking to him, I was thinking that had we had this conversation in a Zoom meeting, it would have been so easy to open up other websites and watch videos/read other things or just sign off from the conversation rather than devote attention to each other for 1.5 hours.

While I would certainly be comfortable in a world absent of demands for me to be personally present, I can recognize that isn’t wholly constructive in the long run.

Concerning Trend With Regional Booking Conferences

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I was really disappointed last Friday when I read that Arts Midwest would be pausing their conference.  I have a hard time believing it will gear up again in the future. If you aren’t aware, Arts Midwest ran one of the regional conferences that presenting venues attend to book acts. Back in 2019, SouthArts announced they were ceasing operations of Performing Arts Exchange, the conference that served the southeast.  With Arts Midwest effectively ceasing to operate their conference, that just leaves the Western Arts Alliance as a regional conference for the western region.

The national conference, Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) continues to operate, as do smaller conferences like Arts Northwest, Arts Market which meets every other year, and state base conferences like Ohio Arts Presenters Network. However, the scope and reach of those conferences is limited.  For example, in addition to meeting every other year, Arts Market doesn’t have the professional development opportunities that the regional and nationals offer.

Like many others, I particularly liked the Arts Midwest conference because it was well run and had a smaller, more collegial feel than the NYC based APAP. Even though I moved to the southeast, I continued to attend the Midwest conference. APAP is definitely a great conference and there is more opportunity see performers in their “natural environment” of music clubs, dance studios, and theatres vs. hotel ballrooms, but it is expensive to attend with the added costs of NYC hotel rooms and food.

I enjoy the regional conference because they introduce me to new cities and let me see what is great about them. For people who live in the region, it is easier to drive or take a short flight to a regional than to travel to another part of the country.

Arts Midwest President& CEO Torrie Allen writes that the decision to pause is financial:

We have deep respect and gratitude for this conference family, and we must acknowledge that we are facing a changing industry. Production costs have increased while event revenue has not. We have begun to encounter unsustainable financial losses on this event. While these losses pre-date the pivots we have made in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have grown exponentially these past two years. As a steward of private and public dollars, we have a financial responsibility to our communities, partners, and donors to pause and take the time needed to reimagine our presence in this space.

I don’t envy him this decision. He basically assumed the President & CEO role just as Covid began. Attendees to the 2019 conference got to meet him. I was personally excited to see what the future held for Arts Midwest because he seemed to have the energy and dynamism to take the organization into the future. With the conference program being cancelled, I will only be able to watch what happens from afar.

Ultimately, I am a little worried about what this might mean for touring artists and venues in the future. Learning about artists via their website, videos and Zoom is only going to be so effective. Sitting down and talking with agents in person moved the needle for me in ways that digital promotions did not. Walking up and down the aisles in the exhibition halls opened me to exploring ideas and acts I hadn’t been considering. Some of them I booked, others I didn’t but I now viewed those options as possibilities where I hadn’t before.

I wonder if efforts to advance diversity and equity in the performing arts might stall as a result of venue operators only being exposed to and seeking out artists and agents with whom they are already familiar. The other influential aspect of in person booking conferences is sitting down to see something new, being not quite sure if you like it, but having others in the room clapping and stomping their feet in reaction to what they are seeing.

Some of the other conferences might expand to fill the void, but given the economic uncertainty of the times, it is likely to take time for them to scale up and expand their reach to larger geographical areas.

As much as I write about arts administration and practices, if you have read the blog for any number of years, you know that I always come back from conferences with some new insight to discuss. I had my epiphany about building public will for arts and culture at an Arts Midwest conference and always attend anything to do with legal questions. I think the professional development opportunities and chance to network with all sorts of people is valuable for attendees. I worry that the disappearance of the regional conferences and their ability to put speakers and experts of note in front of large convenings will negatively impact the practice of arts administration across large parts of the country.

Who Gave You Your First Break?

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Tweets responding to UK based Arts Emergency’s new campaign were filling my Twitter feed today. I have written about them a couple times before. They are essentially focused on cultivating the next generation of creative workers through training opportunities, scholarships and mentoring.

The organization’s name and raison d’etre is premised on the idea that cuts in funding nationally have created an emergency for the future of the creative economy in the UK.  Their newest push is #BreakTheGlass, as in “In Case of Emergency, Break The Glass.”

What I really admire about their execution of this awareness campaign is that they aren’t focusing on the negative consequences that cause their organization so much concern, instead they have asked people to tag & tweet about the person(s) who “gave you some key advice or encouragement early in your career.”

Today my feed was packed with people calling out those who helped them get jobs in theater, in broadcasting, print media, etc. I usually view Twitter with a chronological order setting and there were so many people talking about those who gave them their first big break, I was scrolling, scrolling, and scrolling only to find I was still viewing tweets that were only 5 hours old.

I don’t want to horn in on Arts Emergency’s initiative, but maybe folks here in the US need to pick up the tune and call out those for whose help we are grateful. October is Arts & Humanities Month which would make it a suitable time. Or if we don’t want to steal attention from Arts Emergency, next month around Thanksgiving would be appropriate as well.

Ultimately, over the long term I think advocacy for arts and culture needs to have positive messaging like this that doesn’t focus on economic impact, test scores and behavioral outcomes as benefits. Talking about mentors and being grateful for opportunities and investment of trust and faith is a good way to emphasize the benefits of arts and culture in cultivating relationships and reinforcing the social fabric without explicitly making those claims.

I Wish I Was Going With You Approach To Customer Service

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This morning I attended a brand reveal for a Marriott hotel slated to open half a block from my venue in/around January. This particular collection of hotels is highly customized to the community in which it resides so there was a lot of detail discussed in the 1.5 hours of the actual presentation.

One thing that occurred to me during the presentation was that you should only pay for brand design that you have the budget to execute. The amount of money they are going to spend executing the branding vision is going to be significant.

When the designers started talking about the brand values that would be embodied, a couple struck me as concepts to be embraced by arts and culture organizations.

One was – we are not docents, we are friends-in-the-know. The other was – we are not interested, we are invested.   These statements seemed to embody the nuanced difference between good customer service and great customer service.

If you had two people working at the front desk and they each provided the same information to guests, but there was something you couldn’t put your finger on that made one of them seem superior to the other, something akin to these two concepts are likely to be present.  The better service comes from someone who isn’t just doling out information, but makes you feel they wish they were going with you or want you to have the same great experience they had when they were there.

So now I am letting these ideas percolate in my brain as I look around at our operation and think about how that can manifest at different points in our visitor experience. (Though I suppose we shouldn’t give people the impression we wish we were accompanying them when they ask directions to the restrooms.) Of course, however we decide that should be embodied in our building should be present where ever we are representing the organization outside out facilities as well.

Let me just point out that these are not entirely new concepts. In terms of marketing, they are a variation on Trevor O’Donnell’s “Gal In Starbucks” test from six years ago that I have written on a number of times. This is something the arts and culture industry should have been working toward for a few years now at least.

Visitor Expectations Of Proof of Vaccination? – Not Yet, But Maybe Soon

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People working or closely aligned with arts organizations know that a central topic of conversation in recent weeks is whether to require proof of vaccination for audiences. Drew McManus has been tracking and collecting this information closely for a few weeks now.

As has Colleen Dilenschneider and her colleagues at IMPACTS. All through Covid she has been regularly updating her readers on shifts in perspectives on the question of what will make people feel safer about attending arts events as well as when they think they will feel comfortable participating in arts experiences. In her September 15 entry, she reviews survey findings about vaccinations. 

If you have been reading my blog or her’s for the last year, you will know that at one time attendees wearing masks wasn’t on the list of responses people gave and then suddenly it was in the top five. She says the same has happened with vaccine requirements.

It is worth paying very close attention to her analysis because she goes to pains to warn against letting biases and assumptions lead you to conclusions not borne out by the data.

But “requiring proof of vaccination” is the new factor to watch here. Remember that just because people say that it will make them feel safer doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t visit if it’s not enforced – or even that they think it should be enforced yet. That said, the fact that 56% of visitors to performance-based organizations report that proof of vaccination requirements will make them feel safer is particularly notable. This safety preference may impact performance-based organizations first if these data offer any prescient insights.

[…]

As we’ve been reminding folks upon watching the data outcomes over time, people with kids under 13 in the household, as a group, were never cool with discarding masks. Kids are getting the virus and some predictions are grim. This may be one of the reasons why intentions to visit cultural organizations among people with children were lower during the time in which masks were no longer required.

She specifically addresses how easy it is to default to survivorship bias and availability heuristic:

Remember that this research contemplates potential visitors, not just recent visitors. “That’s not what we’re observing in our onsite surveys” is a silly response to this information if you don’t require proof of vaccination onsite. The people who don’t feel safe visiting aren’t there to fill out an onsite survey. They are likely staying home.

[…]

Most typically, we hear confirmation bias statements justifying and reconciling powerlessness over mask mandates, like “it’s a good thing we don’t require them because someone thanked us for being mask-free!” This is also an example of an availability heuristic when we mistake anecdotal evidence as representative data. People who don’t want masks may feel strongly about it and speak up, but those who do want mask mandates – a majority of US likely visitors to cultural entities – probably don’t think that they need to thank you for keeping them safe. Just because a group is loud doesn’t mean they are representative.

All this being said, in terms of the overall question about whether cultural organizations should require proof of vaccination, she writes that the answer isn’t currently clear but that “‘…the data suggests that the answer is “not yet…but maybe soon.'”

Enters Stage Right, Wearing Mask

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There have been a lot of stories about shows re-opening on Broadway and how important that is to the economy of NYC. While I haven’t read everything single article, one that appeared on Bloomberg yesterday is among the most complete in terms of imagery and coverage of a variety of different arts disciplines.

The article discusses the hopes of Broadway shows like Six, which went from thunderous applause at its final preview performance on March 11, 2020…to nothing when Broadway closed down on March 12. It also takes a look at dance companies and dance performance venues, the Metropolitan Opera and NY Philharmonic and speaks to restaurant owners whose livelihood is nearly inextricably linked to attendance of Broadway shows.

The large number of images are an important companion to the article because every picture of artists rehearsing or performing–including those painting in parks–show them wearing masks. All the hopes and dreams for mounting a production are entwined with those pieces of fabric and people’s willingness to wear them and get vaccinated.

And so, even as costumes are sewn, lines are rehearsed, sets are built, and playbills are printed, organizers are acutely aware that, even in a best-case scenario, audience numbers are a long way from their 2019 levels. “It may be that people don’t show up for a while, and they come back when they feel safe,” says Deborah Borda, president and chief executive officer of the New York Philharmonic, who says the first weekend of the orchestra’s season has already sold out. “But increasingly, yes, everyone has anxiety, but people are feeling like ‘Good lord, we have to find some pathway to normalization.’”

That pathway, Borda is convinced, runs straight through live performance. “I like to think that music is a fundamental human right, like good health, clean air, fresh water,” she says. “It’s that important to human beings, and I believe that. And that’s what we try to deliver.”

Sometimes You’re The Wind, Sometimes You’re The Weathervane

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Seth Godin made an interesting post that intersects somewhat with the questions arts organizations are having about putting content on digital platforms. Alas, I don’t know that it provides any of the answers being sought but he makes a crucial point about not confusing distribution capacity with influence and power.

He start with the following statement:

To be powerful, a medium needs two things:
The ability to reach people who take action
The ability for someone in charge to change what those people see and hear and do

Then he provides a number of examples which illustrate that impressive statistics about the extent of reach can be essentially meaningless. This is something to keep in mind when people cite number of impressions for websites, broadcast or print media outlets. But on the other hand, he notes that sometimes the people with control are exerting it haphazardly without any sense of how to focus it effectively:

People in the music business are flummoxed by the number of new acts that are showing up out of nowhere and becoming hits on TikTok. They’re talking about how powerful this company is.

But it’s not. It’s simply reporting on what people are doing, not actively causing it.

The folks with the power are the anonymous engineers, tweaking algorithms without clear awareness of what the impact might be.

The last bit he writes puts me in mind of my ongoing discussion about how the criteria we use to measure the value of something is frequently irrelevant, but people will be convinced of it measure’s importance.

Google and Amazon used to invite authors to come speak, at the author’s expense. The implied promise was that they’re so powerful, access to their people was priceless. But the algorithm writers weren’t in the room. You ended up spending time with people who pretended they had influence, but were more like weatherpeople, not weather makers.

[…]

There are still cultural weather makers, but they might not be the people we think they are.

Certainly that last line applies to those of us who work in the arts and culture industry. Sometimes we are the weather makers and no one gives credit, but sometimes we think we are the weather makers and don’t recognize what is really moving the winds and tides.

Seats Are Open, But So Are The Doors For More Diverse Stories

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On Friday one of my colleagues at work is flying to NYC to see Springsteen on Broadway, the show that re-opened earlier than pretty much all the others. She purchased the tickets months ago when they first went on sale.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear most people share her level of optimism. A CNBC story reported that even the most popular titles are seeing very soft sales.

Although tickets have been on sale for months, neither “Wicked” nor “The Lion King” – the top two highest-grossing musicals in history – sold out their first week of performances. “Hamilton,” which historically sold out months of performances within minutes, also has plenty of opening week availability. Between September 14, 2021, and June 5, 2022, only one performance of “Hamilton″ is sold out.

A Forbes article projects some potential doom and gloom for the production of the show Pass Over, which has been getting a lot of great press. In fact, there is a suggestion in a couple articles that they moved up the date of their opening to last Sunday in order to take advantage of the the good press they have received.

This is somewhat unfortunate for the production of Pass Over because in addition to the high quality and expectations, there are a lot of good portents associated with the show. For one, it is the first show by a Black playwright to appear in the August Wilson Theatre since the venue was named for the esteemed Black playwright in 2005. (A lot of “about time” comments on social media noting that it took 15 years for that to happen).

According to a Reuters piece, Pass Over is among a number of upcoming shows which are being supported by first time Black investors.

However, seven new plays have been announced for this fall, all by Black writers. Some are being financed by first-time Broadway investors, including co-founder of television network BET, Sheila Johnson, who is putting money behind the play “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” Johnson and celebrity chef Carla Hall are also investing in a new musical called “Grace” about Black culinary history.

Actor Blair Underwood and former basketball player Renee Montgomery are investing in the stage play “Pass Over”, a modern twist on “Waiting for Godot.”

“There is various new money that is coming into Broadway, and that money is extraordinarily helpful and it is also diverse money, which is also very interesting and new,” said Brian Moreland, producer of “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” opening in October.

Whether we like it or not, money has a big influence in terms of what stories get told so this can be a positive indication for greater representation in whose stories get told and who is involved in telling those stories.

You Can Lead A Patron To The Door, But Only They Decide If They Feel Safe Stepping In

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As something of a dovetail to my post yesterday about Drew McManus’ effort to compile a database of performing arts venue vaccination policies, (Drew reported a surge of new entries to the database overnight which I am going to credit completely to my readers), Colleen Dilenschneider posted last week that performing arts and museum audiences are increasingly interested in returning to masking requirements. (emphasis original)

At our last published masking data update (July 2), IMPACTS Experience found that 43% of high-propensity visitors to cultural entities in the United States believed that organizations should require all visitors to wear a mask. That was down from 53% on June 18, 62% on June 4, and 67% on May 2. People were feeling more comfortable going maskless!

But the percentages are going back up again.

As of August 13, 61% of high-propensity visitors to museums and performing arts organizations in the US believe these entities should mandate masks when indoors for all visitors again.

In my post yesterday, I suggested the database being compiled by McManus could be useful in supporting a case people might want to make for the implementation of masking and vaccination requirements. As Dilenschneider notes in the beginning of her post, organizational and government policy statements don’t drive attendance in and of themselves. The individual makes their own determinations about their health and safety. (my emphasis this time)

While the research is clear that potential visitors across the country are generally desiring mask mandates again and those organizations that do not have them risk jeopardizing attendance, some regions of the US don’t allow organizations to require masks…We understand that this kind of market research could be even more difficult to digest for these entities – and we hear you. Oof. However, how comfortable – or uncomfortable – people feel visiting a cultural institution given its safety protocols doesn’t change just because an entity cannot take a certain action to keep visitors safe….

Remember: Cultural leaders don’t get to decide how guests feel about their own safety, and neither does the CDC. Potential guests decide for themselves what makes them feel comfortable.

Oh Jellyfish, Where Is Thy Sting?

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Hat tip to Georgia Council for the Arts which posted a link to the Smithsonian article, Why Science Needs Art.  The article focuses largely on marine life, but the basic gist is that there is so much about science the general public doesn’t understand or have the equipment to experience that artistic execution is necessary to translate that into comprehensible terms.

One of the first examples given discusses how a student from the Maryland Institute College of Art working at the Smithsonian museum kept getting questions about how jellyfish sting.

She always got the same question from visitors, “how do jellyfish stings work?” She had the scientific answer for them but found it difficult to explain the microscopic stinging cells that fire like harpoons out of jelly tentacles without a clear visual.

That’s when a lightbulb went off in Payne’s mind. She could show visitors how jellyfish sting using art. Payne immediately got to work in the sculpture shop at her school, excited to bring the microscopic stinging cells into full view.

Payne built a 3D model of one of the stinging cells that line jelly tentacles—called a nematocyst—that visitors could touch and interact with. The model showed visitors a jelly’s stinging power and helped Payne explain how to take care of a jellyfish sting.

Later, a marine scientist discusses how she took up photography in order to capture animals in the natural habitat because they looked entirely different there than preserved in a museum.  And the merged scientific and artistic perspective have benefits toward greater application:

Her discoveries apply to fields beyond science, like technology. Right now, Osborn’s team is looking at how a spineless, free-swimming bristle worm called a Tomopteris moves to help the tech industry make better, lighter and more maneuverable robots.

But studying these and other midwater creatures takes a highly trained eye for discerning shapes. “I do illustrations, sketch and photograph the animal to understand its structure,” Osborn explained.

This ability to pay careful attention to patterns, shapes and spatial relationships helps scientists properly observe and discover—key pillars of the scientific process. It also helps them create clear visuals of the collected data. Graphs, figures and scientific illustrations are all more powerful when they have a touch of artistry.

Is Economic Impact Declining As Most Important Measure of Value?

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As I go about arguing against using measures like economic impact and test scores for valuing the arts, I occasionally get push back from people who note that for better or for worse dollars and test score are quantifiable and compelling and therefore are what will matter most to policy makers, funders, and individual donors.

The thing is, we know that a lot of people value things that aren’t so easily measured but are deemed to be important. Scott Walters recently posted a reaction to a CNN story about the impact working from home has been having:

If your browser is blocking the image, it reads: “This obsession with “the economy” distorts the issue. Is working from home good for human beings? Is it good for the environment? Instead, we focus on latte consumption. Come on, @CNN, THINK https://t.co/qH4yKTVv2b ”

We know from research conducted by projects like Creating Connection that people view participation in arts events has having positive associations with interpersonal relationships, physical and mental health, social good, self-improvement along with other benefits.

With so much in the news about people rethinking their relationship with work and its place in their lives and stories of athletes asserting boundaries about the activities in which they are willing to participate, this is a time when people are recognizing that customary process and values may no longer be relevant. Or perhaps it is better said that people are questioning whether they continue subsuming their existing values of health and well-being to economic opportunity and test scores.

In this there is an opportunity to work on reframing the terms in which the arts are valued so that they resonate in empathy with the introspection and questioning about values and norms which is occurring.

The Logo May Be A Little Different, But The Brand Remains The Same

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I had a post appear on ArtsHacker this week that dealt with the concept of rebranding.  In the post I cite an article by Mark Ritson arguing for revitalization of a brand rather than rebranding. Ritson’s position is that unless legally required to engage in rebranding, there is more to lose than gain by rebranding. He uses the UK National Lottery as a case study to make his point. I am not going to go too much into his reasoning behind revitalization here. I encourage you to read my ArtsHacker piece and perhaps move on to Ritson’s article.

The part that really got me thinking was his statement that the secret to maintaining a consistent brand was flexibility and change. His point was that the value of a brand is more related to a promise being made and not proportionally related to the quality of advertising and graphics. (my emphasis)

Step three, don’t reproduce the executions and approaches of the past – despite their proven impact. Time has moved on. Instead, ask what these key words or imperatives demand of you in 2022. That question is crucial because, although you don’t change the DNA of a brand when you revitalise it, you do have to acknowledge one of the core paradoxes of branding: consistency demands change.

[…]

If your beauty brand is all about health and nature, plastic packaging with a picture of waterfall and a product packed full of parabens might have worked once upon a time. But wake up and smell the future! Doing the same thing, over a long period of time – ironically – often makes you ultimately inconsistent with your stated brand position.

As I comment in the ArtsHacker post, if the organization identifies a problem to be solved and suggested changes are countered with “that is what people want/the way we have always done it,” that is probably the exact area you should be evaluating. It may not be that your beloved holiday tradition needs to be scrapped, but how it is conducted may no longer feel as relevant to your community as it once did.

Take a look and think about it. The post-Covid world provides an opportunity to revitalize how you are perceived in the community.

Maintaining A Consistent Brand Requires Change

Little Bit Of Love For Intangible Benefits In Economic Reporting

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Being a big proponent of libraries a radio story by Marketplace on the value of libraries caught my attention. Being an economics focused show, their analysis initially focused on return on investment:

Farrell: Well, there’s this recent study — this one grabbed my attention — [by] three economists [from] Montana State University, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Miami University. And they calculate by some measures a healthy return on investment. So among their findings, library capital investment increases children’s attendance at library events by 18%, children’s checkout of items by 21% and total library visits by 21%. Now, OK, that’s interesting, but increases in library use translate into improved children’s test scores in nearby school districts.

Long time readers know that I am also a proponent of not couching the value of everything in terms of economics and test scores so I was pleased that the reporters followed with a longer discussion of the intangible contributions libraries make to social cohesion:

Brancaccio: So there are interesting, almost hard-to-quantify benefits as well?

Farrell: That’s right. And that’s, you know, really the thing that stands out to me is we’re living through an era where there’s a lack of trust in so many institutions and, you know, the sense that we have connections with each other, I mean, that’s splintering. Well, public libraries are still trustworthy, community institutions and most important, public libraries are open to everyone. It doesn’t matter your age, it doesn’t matter your race, ethnicity, social class and net worth.

[…]

Farrell: And this is why I think the return on investment, particularly as you’ve mentioned, the return on investment on the intangibles, is so important. So a lot more needs to be done to maintain buildings, update bathrooms, increase the number of hours that they’re open, and there’s a wonderful book by sociologist Eric Klinenberg, “Palaces for the People.” And you know, in that book, he persuasively argues that libraries, the people who work there, and the people who visit that they’re essential to our democracy, and to our community. So support your local library.

Moving Beyond Under-Served

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Something has been puzzling me lately and I haven’t come any closer to figuring out the answer. I appears to me that when there is discussion about populations which are under-served by the arts in the U.S. it seems to largely be in the context of race whereas when I see the same discussions going on in the UK, it seems to be in the context of class.

Earlier this month, The Conversation had an article about there being a class crisis in the arts, citing Welsh actor Michael Sheen. The authors of the piece were based at the University of Edinburgh and University of Sheffield and it was pretty clear that they were talking about the situation in the UK.

I have also seen a fair bit of social media discussion about a Guardian article on the subject. Much of the social media conversation is oriented on class:

I am not sure if it is a matter of demographics with Caucasians, which have for better or worse been defined as the norm, being 87% of the population in the UK versus 76% of the population in US, resulting in Britons  perceiveing degree of opportunity spread more along class lines.

Or if there has been such a history in the US of linking negative associations to race, including groups who later came to be regarded as “white,” that race has become the default lens through which to assess inequities in the US.

It is not that there hasn’t been recognition in the US that inequities are based in economics. Right now people are looking a little askance at how the wealthiest individuals and corporations are spending their money and paying their taxes. In the arts, there has been a recognition that people whose families can support them through unpaid internships are often more likely to succeed. Not to mention Martin Luther King was working to build a coalition of all poor Americans, was in Memphis to support all sanitation workers when he was assassinated, and was about to embark on the Poor People’s Campaign.

It strikes me that one of the ways the arts can work toward equity and inclusion is to decouple the concept of under-served from race based demographics. I am not sure what the most constructive terminology and frame might be. I can see the consequences of only using a single dimension like economic status allowing groups to hide the fact they are neglecting to serve people of different races and abilities.  You don’t want to adopt a position of “we don’t see differences, we serve people,” because differences do exist and need to be acknowledged in order to create a welcoming environment.

Probably the best approach would be if funders did not use measures or criteria which incentivize using race, economic status, ability, etc., as a definition of under-served. The problem is, funders can collect data about participation from these demographics to show they are paying attention and want organizations to work toward welcoming a greater range of their communities, but how do you combat the perception that the organization is being rewarded for reaching out to an “other” group?

It is also difficult as an arts organization seeking to perpetuate diversity, equity and inclusion to force funders to change their criteria even as they seek support from those funders. Obviously a small step is to write a grant proposal that doesn’t employ the term under-served at all, but applications and final reports are often formatted with a bias connecting under-served with race, ability and economic status.

Are NFTs The Answer To Ticket Scalping?

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An appreciative nod to Artsjournal which posted a piece by Shelly Palmer on how the use of non-fungible tokens (NFT) can enhance event ticketing security, improve the resale market, and potentially provide expanded marketing opportunities. You may be familiar with the use of NFTs as the basis of cryptocurrencies and as a result be under the impression they are something that is mined using energy intensive high powered computing. However, if you are only concerned with creating one that is unique, but not super rare, the cost and energy required to mint, rather than mine, an NFT is low and continues to fall.

Palmer outlines some of the ways in which NFTs can be employed to make event ticketing safer and more secure.

If your ownership of an NFT has been validated, a quick matching of public and private keys (using something as common as a barcode reader) would instantly verify that the person with the NFT in their digital wallet was the authentic owner of the ticket….

If someone sells their NFT ticket, that transaction can trigger royalty payments to the issuer as well as any other stakeholder – artists, sports leagues, athletes, sponsors, promoters, a charity, or literally anyone with a digital wallet. These business rules can be hard-coded into each NFT, and like all smart contracts, when a transaction occurs and the conditions are met, funds automatically change hands….

Bots, scalpers, bad actors, criminals, and 2nd-party sales on eBay or other auction sites are common. NFT tickets offer an easy way to gather actionable business intelligence about how and where your tickets are being sold and resold. You can find the exact moment of the transaction, the exact address of the digital wallets in use, the amount of the transaction, and much, much more.

Palmer goes on to discuss how NFTs can provide expanded opportunities to learn more about attendees and market to them. For example, if someone buys tickets for themselves and friends and family, you don’t know who those other people are. However, if everyone must provide a verified NFT upon entry, the digital ticket will need to be transferred to them which potentially allows any profile information associated with each person’s digital wallet to be collected. That information would conceivably allow you to promote similar events to them due to knowing they had been in attendance. Likewise, if you had some sort of loyalty program, they could be credited as having participated where they couldn’t have been before.

Also, just imagine how things would change if the artist and presenting venue were automatically getting a cut every time a ticket was resold for over face value. The way Palmer describes it, you may even be able to limit the amount at which a ticket can be resold. Though I can already envision a couple ways sellers could circumvent that.

As a more immediate and practical example – about two weeks ago we had a rental which had been postponed from Spring 2020 due to Covid. When it had gone on sale prior to the shutdown, it sold out very quickly. Based on some conversations the ticket office had, we know tickets ended up being resold and transferred. However, because we only had the contact information for the original purchaser, we were unable to communicate the rescheduled dates to those who currently held the tickets. As a result, we had about 200 unoccupied seats. Had we known who held the tickets now, we could have directed reminder communications to them instead.

Palmer says most major ticketing providers are already working on offering a NFT based ticketing service. It will be interesting to see what opportunities unfold as people recognize how to technology can be employed.  Given that competing standards will likely be appear before one emerges as the dominant format, I would caution arts organizations from signing up too early.

I also wouldn’t assume some of the dominant parties like Ticketmaster will end up running the table. Many of the big players are not focused on providing good customer relationship management tools. I suspect whomever can deliver a product that facilitates more authentic and accurate interactions with customers with ease and low expense will do well.

There Will Be More Dancing In The Streets

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I saw an article on CityLab about some pretty successful Open Streets efforts that rose up during Covid.  If you aren’t familiar with the concept, Open Streets is a national effort to temporarily close streets down to traffic to allow for community use of the space.

Where I live, a local organization works to shut streets down a couple times a year in different neighborhoods around the city. Part of the local effort has been to perform different projects which help make the streets safer by making drivers slow down and become more aware of pedestrians.

I was surprised to read in the CityLab piece that one group successfully managed to shut down a 30 block span of a street in NYC for 12 hours every. single. day.  While technically that is a temporary shut down of the street, it is increasingly becoming a permanent feature.

Programming was paramount. Practically each day, there is something going on in the street. Salsa and the Colombian coin toss game of sapo on Tuesdays. Family bike rides on Friday. The avenue even has its own newsletter. “If you don’t activate the street, people won’t feel comfortable using it,” said Burke.

Alejandra Lopez, a local resident, had stopped by last week for a bike helmet, but they were all out. Instead, she found out about the English classes that are also held on the avenue, which brought her back today. The Open Street reminded Lopez of her hometown, Bogotá, and its famous weekly Ciclovía. “This is like the evolution of that,” she said, carrying a new helmet in one hand.

The daily effort is driven by 100 volunteers and is mostly funded by donations. Some of the people who teach the language and dance classes are paid a stipend, but most all the work is done by volunteers. The vision, however, is to turn it into a work training program.

The program could provide summer jobs for teens, or re-entry training for formerly incarcerated people, with transferable carpentry and landscaping skills. (Burke called for crossing guards to be hired from nearby communities.) To Maerowitz, the Open Street could be more than just a space to spread out: It could be a site where one’s community is strengthened.

“We can give neighbors ownership of the street through work,” she said.

The article talks about some of the issues and tensions that have emerged in different Open Streets projects around the country. There is always push back and anger from some drivers at having streets shutdown, but organizers have discovered some socio-economic forces at work as well. There has been criticism that Open Streets projects are often sited in wealthier neighborhoods, but some have observed that there is often resistance in poorer neighborhoods based in skepticism about broken promises of the past as well as lack of consultation and communication with residents.

Last year, the launch of Oakland’s Slow Streets program faced a barrage of criticism over lack of community input, with Black and low-income residents expressing far less enthusiasm for the traffic restrictions.

[…]

…in poorer areas, they hit resistance, highlighting disparities ingrained in traffic violence. If a neighbor in a marginalized community grumbles at a program meant to enhance safety, and the response is to scrap instead of fix, something else may be at play there.

“When you apply the layer of historical trauma that communities of color have experienced, it’s a reaction formation,” Logan said. “I’ve been so hurt from you that it’s easier to push you away than to collaborate and figure out a solution. The last time we talked about promises, you broke that.”

I Noticed You Checking Out Those Brush Strokes

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CityLab had an article about an art museum in Bologna, Italy which is using eye tracking to learn how visitors interact with works on display. In the process, the museum has learned unexpected things about their visitors.

Let me just get this out of the way and say that my cynical mind immediately saw this technology becoming the basis to optimize attendance, sales, and ultimately what sort of art gets created based on what seems most popular.

This being said, the technology can also provide feedback and opportunity to better inform, engage and lower barriers for visitors. Or perhaps, as suggested in the last paragraph below, curators may find that visitors don’t value the same things they do.

Part of me would be curious to see if they put this technology up in some place like the Louvre, are there works no one suspected was getting attention as people made their way to and from the Mona Lisa. Does something catch people’s eye that makes them pause a moment? Is there a minor, but significant flow, to other galleries that no one had observed?

Some of the researchers’ findings have been unexpected. Examining observer data from the two sides of a 14th-century diptych by Vitale degli Equi, data showed that “attention was immediately attracted to the ‘busier’ representation of Saint Peter’s blessing, to the right,” said Bologna Musei President Roberto Grandi. He was surprised to find that many visitors simply skipped the diptych’s left half.

The data could lead to changes in lighting, staging and placement of artworks in relation to one another, Grandi said, with findings suggesting that museums and galleries might want to rethink how to make some paintings and sculptures more visible and accessible.

The life-sized statue of Apollo of Veii, dating back to 510-500 B.C., is a case in point, the researchers said. Though the statue is one of the crown jewels at Rome’s National Etruscan Museum, a separate test of ShareArt showed that relatively few visitors give it the attention experts feel it deserves. Placement near the end of the collection, possibly chosen in a “best-for-last” approach, may be leading patrons to skip the artifact altogether, ENEA’s Marghella said.

Did Covid Suddenly Make You More Aware of Sidewalk Space?

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The Americans for the Arts blog had an interview with an arts group that was flexing their skills to solve problems in their community. They spoke with Yin Kong, one of the founders of Think Chinatown which started the initiative Assembly for Chinatown to provide outdoor dining for restaurants in New York City’s Chinatown.

While restaurants in other parts of the city were able to find ways to cope with Covid restrictions by setting up dining on sidewalks or in dedicated parking spaces on the street, Chinatown has narrower sidewalks and streets. Regulations frequently changed and violations earned a $1,000 fine. Outdoor dining really hadn’t been part of the business practice among Chinatown restaurants so between physical restrictions, legal hurdles, and custom there was little incentive for the financially ailing restaurants for that neighborhood to pursue outdoor dining options.

Think Chinatown collaborated with A+A+A Studio to write a guide on how to build affordable structures that met Department of Transportation guidelines. Artists worked with business owners to decorate the structures in colorful murals.

We removed the financial risk for these restaurants by covering the construction costs. We selected restaurants where we believed the impact could most be felt. For the most part, the project has helped bring attention to businesses and provide more space.

We are still connected with the restaurants who participate—we do not drop these and leave. We live in the neighborhood and are here to adjust. For some murals, it has been almost a year [since they were created], so we are repainting. We want them to continue to be colorful, delightful work.

The Assembly for Chinatown page mentions the project has helped 13 businesses at nine sites. In some cases, adjacent businesses got wrapped into the effort. In one case, a restaurant, cafe and florist had a structure constructed. In another, a restaurant and neighboring tea importer shared a space.

The interview is short, but it is clear that the perceptual, legal, and logistical hurdles they faced required a lot of time and effort to navigate before the first two pieces of wood were attached together. They provided access where it didn’t exist or seemed difficult to achieve and got people thinking of new possibilities for doing business in their neightborhood.

Headlines Writing Checks That The Body Text Ain’t Really Cashing

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Yesterday, economist Tyler Cowen addressed one of the dichotomies being recognized in the arts sector – the conflict between values of equity, fairness, diversity, etc., espoused in the arts world and the transactional nature of arts patronage. Discussions of how the arts are supported and funded are becoming an increasingly prevalent topic of conversation.

Cowen, who is most definitely an avowed supporter, consumer and advocate of the arts takes a bit of an academic analytical approach to the “wokeness” embodied in The Art Newspaper articles on visual art.

To put it bluntly, the art world is torn. In terms of demographics, the art world should lean fairly hard left, at least in the Anglo countries. It is highly educated, cosmopolitan, wealthy, and “aware” of the world. And many of the individuals operating in the art world do lean fairly strongly to the left. Yet the art world itself is based on principles fairly different from Woke and often directly opposed to Woke.

First and foremost, the art world is based on ownership of property. Most (by no means all) of those properties were created by dead white males, or perhaps by living white males.

Art markets typically are ruled by Power Laws and massive inequality, with most works going to zero value and a small percentage of the creators hitting it big…. Indeed, you earn status by showing how discriminating your eye is, which means by dumping on the works that aren’t going anywhere.

Textiles, which are arguably the “most female” genre in terms of their creators, are worth systematically much less in the marketplace…(…The same is true for some kinds of pottery as well….)

Some of the issues he addresses I was aware of but hadn’t thought of in the terms or context he expresses.

Part of the point of his post was illustrate there is a breadth of intellectual discourse about art & culture that doesn’t immediately gravitate toward the extremes of woke or anti-wokeness. Of The Art Newspaper he says, “It tries to incorporate Woke rhetoric into an essentially non-Woke and anti-Woke set of customs and incentives and property rights.”

You will have to read his analysis of how they achieve that balance in various articles he cites. Basically, he says the body of the articles turn out to be less controversial than the headlines suggest.

Some of the commenters to the post suggest that Cowen uses “woke” so frequently in the post because he is intentionally trying to beat all meaning and emotional associations out of the term.

It Turns Out Scooby-Doo Was Combating Unprincipled Gentrification

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Last week my organization was notified that we were being awarded funds for a grant we wrote to address the issue of blight in our community. The project was inspired by a comment a friend of the venue while indicating a house she felt was the place everything went wrong for her family.  We will be pulling stories together of houses that exist and no longer exist (demolished to create an industrial district that was in turn abandoned) to raise awareness that the solution to blight may not always be a bulldozer.

I say this to provide a little context for a story I saw in CityLab today that suggested that Scooby-Doo cartoons were responding in their own way to the widespread destruction of Victorian houses during the 1970s. The article notes that most of the stories in the cartoon were set in creepy Victorian era buildings, addressing a general perception of that style of architecture during that time.

Victorian neighborhoods fell prey to demolition during this period as urban renewal projects smashed through buildings that were often seen as musty, decrepit hangovers from a poorer, miserably car-less past.

San Francisco’s Fillmore District, for example, was substantially redeveloped, scattering its mainly African American residents to the East Bay, while the now celebrated Victorian district of Old Louisville saw over 600 buildings demolished between 1965 and 1971 alone. These losses didn’t go unnoticed, and the early 1970s was also a time when grassroots historical preservation societies fully ground into action,…

[…]

Indeed, the show sometimes tackles these issues directly. The classic Scooby-Doo villain is a developer or greedy landowner, scaring people away from their property by dressing as a ghost or monster, only to be unmasked and confess everything to the band of “pesky kids” just before each episode’s final curtain. Occasionally, even urban renewal itself crops up. In one episode a developer constructing new buildings in Seattle is also secretly plundering treasures from the subterranean street network built in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1889.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the cartoon was a reflection of the times. The Flintstones, also from Hanna-Barbera, was originally aired during prime time for an adult audience, and was not intended primarily for a younger demographic. As we have recognized in recent years, the content of comic books does not necessarily address non-serious themes.

We Are All Books In The Human Library

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Looking at some storytelling resources I came across a related project I was unaware of. The Human Library trains volunteers to be “books” you withdraw to learn something about some taboo/prejudice/discomforting feelings you may have about a topic.  The Human Library tagline is “Unjudge Someone.”

The videos I have found are much better at explaining the process than any written materials I managed to come across.  The project was started in 2000 in Denmark by Ronni Abergel whose TEDx video is the first below. They have spread the idea to 84+ countries. The library project collects human books on different topics ranging from religion, race, national origin, belief/philosophy, gender, appearance, sexual identity, body type, disabilities, experiences and myriad other categories.

Librarians have a list of books available to be taken out on any particular day. The reader(s) (the conversations may be one on one or small group) request a human book on a topic they want to learn more about and then they go off to have an encounter for about 30 minutes. Since the organizers want to ensure a safe space for everyone, my impression is they limit the physical borders in which the books may be read.  According to Abergel, if there is a question the human book wishes not to answer, they respond by saying something along the lines of “that page has not been published yet.”

I am sure there are other measures they must take to make sure people feel safe. Perhaps it is part of the training they do with their human books. Participation requires making yourself really vulnerable. Abergel says we often censor ourselves in public and don’t ask questions that are considered impolite, (i.e. Why are you so fat?), and this is an opportunity to ask those questions.

He also cites an example of a reader not believing a human book was Muslim because they didn’t conform to an image they held about Muslims. I wasn’t quite sure if the person recognized they had preconceptions or if they refused to believe the truth of the situation. Regardless, I am sure there are some people who will leave still holding the beliefs they entered with.  The Human Library organization is making a bet that people’s notions will change at some point, even if it isn’t immediately.

On the other hand, the organization also knows that we all have some aspect of ourselves which would qualify us to be one of their books–something that others see as a taboo topic or would be uncomfortable discussing–it might be as simple as experiencing the death of a loved one. If they can get participants to recognize that then there is an opportunity for greater empathy.

 

Interviews with participants at a Human Library sited at University of Albany (NY)

Keep Your Eyes Open For NEA American Rescue Plan Grant Webinars

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While everyone is waiting for their Shuttered Venue Operating Grant (SVOG) application to be processed, you should be taking a look at the National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding. The NEA just held a webinar today about it, but most states and regional arts organizations are having one for their members. Americans for the Arts is having one on July 6.

In a nutshell, the reason why you want to apply for this is because there are far fewer restrictions than usual on the program. The only broad categories that they won’t fund are capital improvements and project grants. Usually all they fund are projects. They still don’t provide funding to individual artists.

They will pay for operational costs like salaries and non-capital equipment.  You can apply even if you have an SVOG grant pending or have received funding from other programs like PPP or EIDL.  You just can’t apply for reimbursement of the same expenses covered by another program. So if other funding covers salaries until December 31, you would need to apply salaries from January 1 onward to the ARP grant. The funding can be applied across two years which allows some time to regain momentum lost during Covid.

They have a PDF prepared with all the information you will be expected to provide. Note that everyone has the deadline of August 12, 2021 to submit a short form application on Grants.gov, but then organizations whose legal identity begins with A-L will apply through the separate NEA applicant portal August 19-25 and those with names beginning M-Z will apply August 27-September 2.

My guess is that they are trying to avoid a lot of the snafus which plagued the SVOG program.

Take a look at the information and find a webinar to attend. As you might imagine there is a ton of interest in these programs. I received an email about 2-3 hours before the webinar started that they had reached capacity with registrations and keep trying to get in if you are initially blocked so I queued up 20 minutes early in the hopes of being admitted.

Art As A Medium For Teaching Coding

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In an illustration of how arts and science can be mutually supportive, NextCity had a piece about an effort to train art teachers to teach girls to code.  Code/Art was started by MIT grad Amy Renshaw in an attempt to make coding more interesting and accessible to girls.

Art as a way to pique girls’ curiosity makes sense to Renshaw—art skews female when it’s an elective, and there’s more flexibility in the curriculum. Research backs her up: Girls’ interest in computer science increases when the classroom environment reflects art and nature rather than stereotypical geeky decor, like Star Trek posters. Research also shows girls’ involvement with computer science should start before eighth grade, at which point cultural stereotypes are already taking root.

[…]

To create a comfortable learning atmosphere, facilitators are open about their own struggles and encourage the teachers to tap into each other’s knowledge and experience. They are assisted by college-age interns, who are then available to help in the classroom

Code/Art started out in Miami-Dade schools in 2019. As you might imagine, the pandemic put a damper on roll out to other cities as well as the level of participation among teachers in Miami. That said, one of the teachers interviewed, Nancy Mastronardi, credited involvement in the Code/Art curriculum with keeping her energized and helping her avoid the burn out many of her colleagues felt. Some of her students started meeting on Zoom independently of her class to continue working on their ideas.

Mastronardi also started an after school Code/Art club, as have other schools in the Miami-Dade school system. While club participation in the school system dropped during the pandemic, in a survey of club participants, “…52% said they plan to major or minor in computer science in college and 87% said their club motivated them to continue coding in the future.”

Really Don’t Want To Think Of Post-Covid Marketing As Online Dating

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Back in March Harvard Business Review (HBR) had a piece on how marketing will change post-Covid.  It is definitely geared toward commercial business and often oriented toward business to business sales rather than individuals, but there were some interesting observations, some of which have long been points of discussion in non-profit arts.

4. Old truth: Courting customers is just like dating.
New truth: Courting customers is just like online dating.

I mainly include this one because of the imagery this evokes. The article notes that marketing used to be a numbers game. Like dating, you would present yourself broadly in public at parties, bars, and other public places, using your best lines, seeing who might be interested. These days where people make split second decisions before swiping, they say the numbers game is algorithms and not chance and broad exposure. Essentially they say data driven decision making is going to be more valuable than trying to increase the frequency people see your face.

5. Old truth: Customers must sit at the heart of your marketing strategy.
New truth: Customers must sit at the heart of your customer journey.

…We have all called customer service and spoken to a call center rep or chatbot that was not operating with the same information as a retail location — and vice versa.

…Marketing must be viewed in the context of the full end-to-end journey and, where possible, work to connect the dots.

The idea that people would go from being first time attendees to subscribers to donors and perhaps volunteers or board members, across a span of years is a frequent subject discussed in the arts so this concept is not new.

What caught my attention was that they said the answer to making sure everyone in your organization was operating with the same information is not to consolidate all operations and communications through one location. Rather it is ensuring everything is aligned around the customer’s need. This certainly makes sense because you often have different types of customers. There aren’t only ticket buyers, subscribers, donors and groups, you might have operations that include renters, students, and other constituencies. The best point of contact for each of these is different, but it is definitely to your benefit if each area is aware of how the others interact with their specific group.

In other words, as I have said over the years–marketing is everybody’s job. The organization can’t run effectively by taking a siloed view as to what their role and interests are.

8. Old truth: Your brand should stand behind great products.
New truth: Your brand should stand behind great values.

[…]

In fact, key themes from EY research show that while quality, convenience, and price still very much matter to consumer choice, factors like sustainability, trust, ethical sourcing, and social responsibility are increasingly important to how consumers select their products and services. Marketing has an opportunity to educate the broader C-suite (and even the board) on the importance of brand values when it comes to differentiating in a post-pandemic marketplace where brand preferences have been upended.

If you have been working in the arts for any length of time, you know organizations have long espoused values about equity, inclusion and access, but it is no long sufficient to say these things, it is necessary to translate these values into action. The authors of the HBR article recognize that the impetus to change will not necessarily come from the top and it may require advocacy from staff to executives and board members to effect the change that is needed.

Arts Incubators Can Offer A Different Type of Education

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An article from Oregon Arts Watch about an arts incubator program, Tulatin Valley Creates  rolled across my feed this week. The article inevitably talked about how the program helped artists apply for Covid relief from various entities across the span of the last year.

What I was interested to see was artists talking about how participation in the incubator helped them re-evaluate their work and employ a new approach.

Julian Saporiti who graduated from Berklee School of Music drew a distinction between the training received in degree programs and in the incubator:

“That’s different from education programs that focus on individual virtuosity,” he says. “The incubator classes were very much emboldening participants, with the aim being to spread that collaborative approach to the rest of the community.”

One artist, Emily Miller, said that conversations in the incubator lead her to broaden her approach.

“What I realized during the incubator and looking at it from different perspectives is that I had to keep redirecting conversations away from the same narrative we hear about ocean plastic — whose fault is it? How can we solve it? The incubator helped me get from that point to, ‘OK we understand this problem — now where are we going?’ I want people to focus on creative transformation, and how they can apply it in their own lives — even if they have nothing to do with ocean plastic.” The changes she’s making as a result broaden her project’s relevance to more people.”

Another participant, Jamie Cromier, went in planning to open a gallery but her thinking evolved after recognizing a number of factors:

“…she decided instead to partner with people in the community who were already working in that area, and to focus instead on what she was passionate about: not the administrative work of founding and running a gallery (while raising three children), but instead helping them make art that served mental health. She wound up creating art boxes that would go out to people with mental health issues who could use them to create art.”

I appreciated the fact that the incubator program has a process which is helping people think and reflect on their plans and practice. Hopefully there are other programs out there having similar outcomes.

Ten Pounds of Arts Funding Doesn’t Yield 20 Pounds of Peace

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So like me, you may have been driving home Monday night and heard an interview on NPR conducted by host Mary Louise Kelly with poet Tess Taylor discussing art as civic repair.  Taylor talks about how a plethora of festivals in Belfast have helped people to come together peacefully since the Good Friday Agreement brought about a general cessation of violence in Northern Ireland.  She draws some parallels to political division in the United States.

She tells a story about being assigned to write a travel story about Virginia shortly after the 2016 election. She arrives in Floyd, VA, a mecca of bluegrass and is torn between being upset at the election results and wanting to square dance.

KELLY: You write, (reading) I realized I could either be mad or I could dance, but I can’t do both, so I’m going to dance.

TAYLOR: There might have been so many people right then at that square dance with whom I really had nothing to say about politics. But while we’re doing this dance, we’re actually partaking in a community action that takes place with an old pattern, and people swing around, they have to change partners, nobody can be left out, everybody is called in, and I understood the square dance is a ritual meant to build community and meant also to be sure that people had some relationship with one another so that they were kind of agreeing, perhaps, in a rural, small community to care for each other in some way. But I also felt very amazed by the ability of the dance itself to make me feel more able to work with people around me and to feel as if somehow, in that moment, we had put aside our differences and come together into something bigger.

As the interview closed, it was mentioned that Taylor had written a longer piece on this subject for Harper’s this month so I sought the article out.

There was a great deal of nuance in Taylor’s piece which was careful to say while there were similarities between the friction in the U.S. and Northern Ireland, there were differences that made them, and thus the solutions, distinct.

What I really appreciated was just how much Taylor’s article paralleled my post yesterday about viewing the arts as a prescriptive solution for problems. While Taylor cited research that showed how arts activities can create bonds of friendship, empathy and cooperation, she also noted arts weren’t, and will likely never be, the totality of the solution for Belfast in and of themselves. (my emphasis)

…Artists knew that arts programming was an effective means of weaving people together; they had written many grants justifying projects in these terms, and some were tired of the process. Some expressed concern about instrumentalizing art. “It’s not as if you put in ten pounds of arts funding and get out twenty pounds of peace,” said Glenn Patterson.

…But Durrer is the first to say that investments in reconciliation are naturally hard to quantify: “It’s not as if you can count the number of Protestants and Catholics who sat next to one another in a theater and know anything about how well people are actually reconciling.” My friend Stephen Connolly, a poet, warned me that the festivalization of Belfast can at times feel like a “manufactured peace.” Others felt uneasy about looking to anything in Northern Ireland as a model. Everyone stressed that what had been achieved in the north of Ireland has since frayed and grown tender.

But FitzGibbon, who has collaborated with Boyd on outdoor performances and directed the Belfast Children’s Festival for thirteen years, also emphasized the giddy feeling of making interventions that seemed to result in collective delight.

There is a lot of thoughtful reflection in the Harper’s story and it bears looking at regardless of whether you are considering connecting the arts with social change.

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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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