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Manholes As Destination Tourism (Seriously)

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In answer to the perennial question about how the arts can show their value to the community, I came across an answer/inspiration in the form of the Flickr group, Japanese Manhole Covers. There are nearly 3000 pictures of some amazingly artistic manhole covers.

With NYC looking to ban big sugary drinks and Disney announcing that they will restrict junk food ads, it occurs to me that a constructive approach to fighting obesity would be to commission these artists to make manhole covers.

People would get out and start walking around in an attempt to see them all. Heck, people may even include a manhole tour as part of their tourism. I am sure someone will develop a social media app that maps out the locations and people would compete to check in at each of them on sites like Foursquare. (Actually, looks like there is an iphone app for Japan.) Just to keep things interesting, the public works department can switch them around every so often so that people would have to contribute to a remapping effort.

Check out the Japanese covers, some of them are pretty amazing and show a lot of investment and pride in culture and community.

(Clicking on image will take you to the specific photographer’s page rather than the larger pool of manhole photos)

Osaka Castle Artwork on Manhole cover - Osaka, Japan
Osaka Castle Artwork on Manhole cover photo credit: Neerav Blatt

Info You Can Use: Point Some Strong Light At Your Brainstorm

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Hat tip to Ian David Moss at Createquity who linked to a New Yorker article on brainstorming in one of his “around the horn” summaries.

The article talks about how the whole idea of brainstorming without criticism for fear of causing someone to censor themselves is less effective at generating good ideas than having someone work alone or engage in brainstorming with debate.

What was really interesting to me was how the importance of opposing ideas applied to artistic collaborations.

According to the data, the relationships among collaborators emerged as a reliable predictor of Broadway success. When the Q was low—less than 1.7 on Uzzi’s five-point scale—the musicals were likely to fail. Because the artists didn’t know one another, they struggled to work together and exchange ideas. “This wasn’t so surprising,” Uzzi says. “It takes time to develop a successful collaboration.” But, when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation.

[…]

The best Broadway shows were produced by networks with an intermediate level of social intimacy…A show produced by a team whose Q was within this range was three times more likely to be a commercial success…It was also three times more likely to be lauded by the critics. “The best Broadway teams, by far, were those with a mix of relationships,” Uzzi says. “These teams had some old friends, but they also had newbies. This mixture meant that the artists could interact efficiently—they had a familiar structure to fall back on—but they also managed to incorporate some new ideas. They were comfortable with each other, but they weren’t too comfortable.”

Brian Uzzi, the sociologist who is cited in the story attributes the success of West Side Story to the fact that Broadway veterans Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents brought the novice Stephen Sondheim on board.

So the lesson for arts organizations might be to keep turn over down so you maintain a good team of artistic/administrative collaborators but introduce people/concepts that take everyone out of their comfort zone a little bit. This applies to boards as much as administrative staff and artistic teams.

Adding an unknown factor to spice things up isn’t a new concept and obviously not the only ingredient for success, but still good to have a little evidence to support the practice.

The New Yorker article resonates with me because I have recently been thinking about the people who have been in the assistant theatre manager position the last few years. We have had three in the 7.5 years I have been running the facility. The first two left to enter graduate school in southeast Asia. Each one of them has brought a different set of skills and interests. I view this as an opportunity to employ their enthusiasm to implement some programs and ideas I have. (I have a few in the works I hope are successful enough to blog on in the next few months.)

Info You Can Use: Reward Disloyalty

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H/t Daniel Pink who linked to a story about a “Disloyalty Card” being used by independent coffee shops in Singapore. If you go to one of 8 coffee shops and pick up a card, go to any of the other 7 to get stamps and then come back to the original, you get a free cup of coffee.

I know some arts organizations who have tried these sort of programs to encourage patronizing other organizations with mixed results. What appealed to me about this approach was the rebellious, counter culture feel of it. I had this image of a program that encouraged people to be disloyal to movie theatres and Netflix.

What probably works for the coffee houses is that they can create a bit of an edgy or cool vibe with their stores. If arts organizations are going to try this, they either need to have the same vibe or link it to a series of shows that have that sort of feel. No one is going to feel like they are walking the path less traveled if they find themselves in a staid, completely conventional experience.

My impulse would be to avoid using it during something like a First Friday event where it might look more like a bingo game where people breezed through to get their cards stamped. That doesn’t seem particularly productive. An opportunity to do it across the course of a few months to a year could encourage people to make a more deliberate progress- see a show one weekend, walk through a gallery the next month, go to a dance concert and take visiting friends to the contemporary art museum.

It doesn’t appear that the Singapore disloyalty program requires you to visit all 8 of the coffee shops, just frequent more than one. Even disloyalty programs need to be convenient so it doesn’t make sense to force people to wander all over the place just to get a free cup of coffee. The same would likely apply to a similar program with the arts. Even if all the participating venues were in close proximity, it wouldn’t really be effective to force people to frequent places that didn’t appeal to them.

Structuring the program to encourage people to try a few new things is good. There should be a variety of disciplines represented, but they should get credit for going back to the places they liked rather than only rewarding them for hitting every place once.

Heck, it probably shouldn’t be confined solely to places that were built with the intention of housing art. Get the coffee shop or bar that hangs work by local artists involved. Even better–approach the bars and coffee shops with some opera or classical music performances like the Yellow Lounge program in Germany I wrote about a few years ago or Opera on Tap. Getting these sort of performances into the mix would make for an interesting disloyalty program.

Give The Gift Of Autonomy For Christmas

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So the big tragedy of non profit arts organizations is that while we are the champions of creativity, we don’t really provide all our employees the most conducive environments for being creative. Sometimes good things happen despite us. Because the workload to personnel ratio is usually slanted in favor of the work load, there often isn’t a lot of opportunity for people to stand back and do some creative problem solving that might result in the alleviation of some of the work load.

A recent post on the Drucker Exchange criticized the industrial age view that long hours and great effort equates to productivity when that simply is not so any more. Andrew Fuqua recently made a related post on the benefit of “slack” in the work place. His post was generally about the computer programming industry, but there were many lessons non-profit arts organizations can take away.

One of the things he says a programming company should do is, “managers must stop assigning tasks.” Instead, it is up to teams to decide how the work will be done. Of course, for non-profit arts organizations, this assumes there are enough people to comprise a team rather than 1 person (or half person departments). But essentially he says, managers shouldn’t be making assignments, handing out work or be an individual contributor.

“Well, gosh, then what should a manager do? Well, I’ll tell ya! You could manage more people. You can still step in when the team needs help (but not too quickly). You are still an agent of the company, handling legal stuff, signing off on expenditures, etc. You can still manage risks, especially if you are a skilled Project Manager.”

Even if that doesn’t sound like something that is viable given the size of your organization, there are other things he suggest that are definitely applicable.

“Keep an eye on the system, looking for improvements
Ensure cross-training is happening (not by making assignments, but making the team handle it)
Understand the dynamics of the organization
Understand how value is created
Protect the team from interference
Make the organization effective; learn to look at it as a system
Support the team
Clear roadblocks
Watch interpersonal interaction — watch when one team member pulls back, withdraws in a brainstorm (for example)
Help the team learn TDD by making room for them to learn (time – remove the schedule pressure while they learn)
Understand the capacity of the team (also a team and scrummaster job)
Think through policies, procedures and reward/review systems and improve them (what messages do they send?)
Understand what motivates knowledge workers (see the previous reference to Pink) and let creating that kind of environment be an imperative”

Arts organizations can definitely benefit from looking at the dynamics of the organization and looking at themselves as a system of interrelated and interdependent parts rather than different segments performing different functions. This approach will help the organization understand where the value they possess lies. It may not only be the stuff you are selling tickets to, but in the expertise that is possessed by the group.

You will see a lot of these factors mentioned as valuable in management texts. The one suggestion Fuqua makes that jumped out at me was in regard to watching when a team member pulls back and withdraws in a brain storm. That can say a lot about the interpersonal dynamics of the organization. It may be viewed as one less person providing opposition to your ideas, but it could be damaging to the organization long term to have someone feel disassociated from the rest of the organization or team.

You might note that Fuqua references Daniel Pink and his talk about what motivates knowledge workers. That motivation is autonomy which repeated studies have shown is more effective than cash rewards.

One of the things Pink talks about is a Australian software company, Atlassian, which periodically gives their employees 24 hours to work on whatever they want. The only proviso being that they share it with the entire company at a party they throw at the end of that period. Apparently the practice has contributed to the solving of a number of problems and the creation of new products.

Imagine what might be produced if you let a bunch of creative arts people loose of their everyday constraints for 24 hours with the promise of beer at the end!

One of the things I know is very important to a lot of people I work with in the arts is professional development opportunities. Again, this is something Fuqua references. Often the biggest thing inhibiting arts people from getting the professional development is the funding. One solution to this problem goes back to my comment a few paragraphs ago about understanding that the value possessed by the organization may not solely reside in the product you are selling to the public.

Your organization may possess expertise that is valuable to other arts organizations and for profit businesses. You might arrange for a cooperative professional development day where all the arts organizations get together and have their staffs provide learning opportunities for each other. You might be able to likewise trade your expertise to area businesses in exchange for training or advice.

Best of all scenarios–your organization (or cooperative of arts organizations) puts together training programs to sell to businesses based on your expertise. Perhaps seminars in team building, creative brain storming, or the selection and lighting of visual art in commercial office spaces.

What’s Good For The Grágás Is Good For The Arts Organization

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I was reading that Iceland is in the process of updating it constitution and is soliciting feedback from its citizens. The constitutional council is posting drafts of each section online and are integrating some of the responses into the constitution. Actually, because so much of the activity is occurring online, they have suggestions from an international audience via their Facebook page. I am not sure if they have implemented international suggestions, but the people running their Facebook account seem to be doing a pretty good job of responding to those who post about the process.

I was thinking that this might be an approach that an arts group looking to serve a community might use as they began to generate an organizational structure. There seems to be some wisdom in getting everyone involved at the point of constructing the framework and having them continue to feel invested in the organization years into its operation because it has taken the community’s needs into account. A barn raising of the Internet age, if you will.

Of course, the tricky question is the degree to which you involve everyone. Trying to please everyone on a committee doesn’t end up pleasing anyone as we well know. There has to be a small group of people deciding what the focus of the discussions will be about. That is the function the 25 member constitutional council in Iceland serves.

On the other hand, going into the process with a lot of pre-conceived notions around which you will plug in community suggestions might also yield a product that no one really gets excited to be involved with. Deciding from the outset the organization will do Shakespeare when the community indicates a live music and visual art center is needed, for example.

Crowd sourcing feedback is probably never going to be a substitute for the good judgment based on hard work and research that starting any business requires. A serious look at demographics may show that the population can’t support a music and visual arts center for more than five years versus the prospects of a destination Shakespeare festival. However, using social media tools to disseminate information about why a music and visual arts isn’t going to viable may garner a good deal of faith and respect in the burgeoning organization when the community clearly sees they have done their homework.

Obviously, the same process can be used by existing organizations to strengthen their place in their community or even realign themselves with the existing needs. Iceland isn’t starting from scratch, after all. But there has to be real conviction in the organization to effect change. There can be a lot of organizational inertia trying to keep things from truly changing. If the change is coming due the realization that the faith and investment of the community has been lost, there could be a lot of resistance to overcome before truly constructive conversations about changes can transpire.

By the way, Grágás refers to the Grey Goose laws of Iceland that were in use until the 13th century. Therefore, I took some poetic license in the title of the entry to make it fit the goose-gander saying. The constitutional council using social media is known as Stjornlagarad.

Info You Can Use: Speak Passionately, Persuasively…and Briefly

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I love it when, in the course of a few minutes, I come across different web pages that seem to go together like chocolate and peanut butter in a Reese Peanut Butter cup.

In this instance one link was provided by Drew McManus who noted Harvard Business School’s “Elevator Pitch Generator.” Based on the old scenario that you might get lucky enough to gain access to a powerful decision maker in a place away from their gatekeeper staff like an elevator, enterprising people are encouraged to find a way to talk about their idea or business in a compelling way in under a minute. The pitch generator coaches you through the process of formulating that pitch.

After answering who you are, what you do to bring value, why you are unique in delivering value, what your immediate goals are and how the listener is involved in those goals, the generator analyzes the pitch. The generator tells you your word count, how long it might take to deliver it and notes how many times you repeated words. You have the opportunity to revise your pitch or email/print it off for use.

The second web page I came across (I apologize for not properly noting the source of the link) was on Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog. Katya Andresen references Charles Green’s Trust-Based Selling where he talks about the six toughest questions customers ask sales people.

Katya uses this to create the 5 Toughest Questions Donors Will Ask:

1. Why should we choose to donate to your organization?
2. What makes your organization different?
3. What experience do you have?
4. We aren’t interested, why should we pay attention to you?
5. Why is your overhead so high?

She provides suggested answers to each and acknowledges there may be more toughest questions to add by asking readers what tough questions they have been asked.

The response I liked the best was to the last one, probably because it was expounded up at length in a separate blog post of its own.

“This is not about salaries. This isn’t about overhead. It’s about your heroic staff, creating amazing arts programs that transform the people you touch. The end results of your efforts is the story you tell in your fundraising pitch. That’s not self-serving! Your CEO talking about the lives you change is not self-promotion—it’s the beating heart of your mission. Say it loud and proud.

If I were at your arts organization, I’d tell an incredible story about one child touched by a single performance. And I’d say what made it possible was my small, dedicated team. With a donor’s support, more of that magic can happen.

You raise money by talking about the impact of your work—not about budget line items. If a donor demands to see the numbers and asks about pay, tell a great story about one of your staff to illustrate my point: that nothing wonderful happens without a creative, committed team. (I assume your staff isn’t being paid $1 million a piece—that’s something I can’t spin.)

The bottom line: Don’t be afraid of talking about your people. They aren’t overhead – they are change agents. If they do great work, put them front and center in your stories of transformation. To use a theater term, they deserve center stage.”

There is so much focus on minimization of overhead as a measure of a non-profits success, mostly brought on by a very small number of charities paying executives a great deal of money, that it is helpful to have a little guidance on the subject. Mostly, she is reminding us that it is the work that really matters and that is what should be talked about. Saying we need to pay a liveable wage to retain talented people may sound too similar to the arguments banks make that they need to pay big bonuses to retain the top talent for people to make a distinction. It is probably better to focus on the fact you are employing people who bring both talent and passion to effect change and follow Katya’s advice not to focus on the money.

It seems to me that you can use the elevator pitch generator to hone how you talk about your organization, especially to donors. Talking about how people have been affected may need to take longer than a minute to be properly persuasive. But while you don’t want to gloss over a compelling anecdote in order to tell the story of your organization in under a minute, what is said still needs to be lean and to the point.

The Farmer and the Cowman (and Restaurateur) Can Be Friends

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Last week we hosted a food sustainability conference sponsored by our culinary program. Sustainability and local food sources is a big deal in Hawaii because between 85%-90% of all our food is imported. If there was a cataclysmic event which prevented food from reaching the ports, there is only about 10 days of food available to feed the population.

I have seen a number of arts bloggers draw a connection between the slow food movement and the arts so I listened closely to what was said hoping to gain a little insight from the practices of other industries.

Since the conference was organized by a culinary program, they approached the subject from the view of how restaurants can source more of their food locally and sustainably. The panels consisted of farmers, ranchers and restaurant owners talking about some of their practices.

Culinary Convening
Farmers, Ranchers and Restaurateurs Convene

There were some inspiring examples of some farmers operating almost completely off the grid with a high degree of recycling. They farm tilapia, circulate the water through lettuce and other plants which help filter the water and send it back through to the fish. Because of a rain catchment system, they haven’t had to draw from the public water supply in many months. Some of the effluvia gets diverted to a nursery which includes fruit trees to provide fertilization. One of the chefs at the gathering said he managed to put a dinner together for a party thrown by the governor where all the ingredients were grown within 100 feet of each other by sourcing them at the farm.

What struck me as applicable to arts and cultural organizations is the stories of some of the mutually beneficial relationships restaurants have created with farmers and ranchers. Chef Roy Yamaguchi of the Roy’s restaurant group convinced a farmer who was just weeks away from closing down his farm to grow a mesclun mix and required all his restaurants to use it. This allowed the farmer to stay in business.

Another chef, Peter Merriman, said that early on he made the conscious choice not to try to guard his food sources. While it undermines his ability to lay exclusive claim to offering high quality ingredients, he recognizes he is helping to keep his suppliers in business by telling people where he gets his ingredients.

Chef Alan Wong, who was in attendance at the convening, has been a long time proponent of using local ingredients. He spoke about how he held a beef tasting at one of his restaurants as part of an effort to convince restaurateurs to support ranchers by buying local beef.

The tasting ended up solving a big problem the ranchers had. The high end restaurants would buy the prime cuts of beef and leave the ranchers with the rest on their hands. A person from a local restaurant chain at the tasting had the presence of mind to ask what was happening with the rest of the cow. Now that chain consumes 250,000 lbs of local beef a year. Because the ranchers can sell the whole cow, the price is lower for everyone and there is incentive to the ranchers expand their operations.

Every arts organization has a different operating environment so I hope people can find something analogous to their own situation in these examples. The most obvious one to me is the oft mentioned fact that the regional theatre movement was intended to employ artists locally and still can if people commit to creating an climate in which this can happen.

One of the ways might be to duplicate Alan Wong’s tasting and actively invite colleagues to see different artists, not with the intent of “selling” them as so many showcase performances do, but with the approach of highlighting and celebrating local resources in an attempt to keep and cultivate them. There is an entirely different ambiance present in the latter scenario versus the former and I suspect one would be far more receptive to the idea of employing someone because of it.

I have to imagine given current trends that there is some mileage to be gotten out of boasting that the casting of a show produced a smaller carbon footprint because no one flew/drove a long distance to New York or Chicago to hire a person and the person didn’t have to travel far to appear locally. Arts organizations can celebrate their fiscal prudence by noting that they don’t have to pay for housing and per diem as they do with “imported” artists because the person already lives nearby. Therefore, much of the ticket revenue is going back into the community as artists buy goods and pay their mortgage and taxes. Perhaps the artists can make a statement about how they appreciate how the deliberate cooperation between a handful of organizations has created an environment that provides enough opportunities to live locally and raise a family rather than hustle for jobs in the big city.

Another idea would be to grow a network in which to share productions. Some theatres already invest in productions together, sharing the development costs and planning to have the show appear in both places. However, some of the members of my consortium produce shows for their own audiences while suggesting the other members might be interested as well. In most cases, each producing organization is partnering with a local performance group to develop the show already and a cost sharing agreement is already in place. Acquiring additional bookings in other parts of the state is just an added benefit for both. Having other venues willing to present the show can also assist with grant writing to support the development of  the production and support touring. I have had two shows I produced go on tour and I have hosted three that originated with consortium partners.

This sort of arrangement is easier when there is a longstanding relationship between organizations in place and they know they can trust that a quality product will be created when they commit themselves  in the conceptual stage. I think that is the sort of relationship that has been developed between the restaurants and the farmers and ranchers. The restaurants know what they are going to get from the suppliers and the suppliers know they have dependable buyers for their products.

One of the other challenges restaurants said they faced with local beef is that grass fed beef tastes different than corn fed beef. A representative from Roy’s Restaurants talked about how she has had to deal with indignant customers who demand to know what the restaurant is trying to pull when they first eat the meat. She spoke about how Roy Yamaguchi decided to not only note that the beef was grass fed in the dish description, but also put a section in the menu that explained about the beef and what it was the restaurant was trying to accomplish.

This immediately sounded like the challenge arts organizations face when trying to introduce audiences to anything outside their experience. The advantage the beef has over the arts is that while both steak and certain segments of the arts have an elitist aura about them, there is a perception that being adventurous with food is a mark of distinction while sampling a new arts experience is either intimidating or the mark of a snob. Do the arts need their own version of Anthony Bourdain to incite exploration?

(By the way, the title of this entry is a nod to the musical Oklahoma!)

Looking North: Tax Credits For Arts Education

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Americans for the Arts blog has just finished up a week long blog salon on arts education. On the last day of discussion, AFTA staffer Tim Mikulski reported that Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the government would provide a tax credit to parents whose children participate in some form of arts education. I tried looked around the web trying to find out more details, but there really isn’t much more than what Mikulski notes. There was a similar tax credit passed for children’s fitness programs in 2007 and that the arts education tax credit was promised during the 2008 election campaigns but hadn’t manifested.

Mikulski wonders what would happen if the President introduced a bill like this to Congress at the close of his entry. Actually, off the top of my head, I would say it shouldn’t be too contentious. Tax credits and rebates seem to be a tool Congress likes to use at the moment. The culture wars have always been about having tax monies spent on things that one finds offensive. In this case, one is making their own choices. The arts have always received a bigger subsidy via tax deductible donations than through grants from the NEA and NEH. In this situation, unlike with most donations, you would receive a deduction even though you had received a service in return and presumably, it would not matter if the money was spent at a non-profit or for-profit entity. If the NEA is suggesting that people’s arts experiences outside of a formal setting should be regarded as participation, then it only seems fair that all educational efforts be eligible regardless of the vendor’s tax status.

While making any arts education expenditure deductible might mean all that money won’t get directed to non-profits, it has the potential for increasing audiences for the non-profit sector if purchase of tickets to performances and museums count toward the credit. And it gets younger people in the doors. It could even increase demand for the arts in K-12 schools if purchase of supplies for art class, make up and costumes for drama, shoes and clothes for dance and instruments for music were all eligible.

What I think would be most important is the way the tax credit was structured. As one of the commenters to this story on the CTV website points out, this type of policy can tend to favor those with the money to provide their children with lessons. Just as there are those who don’t make enough to ever qualify for a tax rebate, there are going to be people in the lower end of the income bracket who will never be able to provide their children with an art experience. On the other end of the spectrum are those who will provide for their children in the absence of any sort of tax credit.

A well designed program would target those who can do so, but aren’t, or are doing so but would certainly be able to afford it better with a credit. A good sized credit and a low enough threshold to earn it, (need to spend at least $100, but you get $30 credit, for the sake of an example), that makes it easy to decide to arrange for some classes can help eliminate the perception that this is a policy that rewards an elite class. At a certain level of expenditure, the credit would cease to be applicable.

While it would be great to have parents required to expose their children to a diversity of experiences rather than spending $300/ticket to see Spiderman on Broadway and earning a big credit for a single experience, there really is no way to legislate people’s choices.

Art and Fabric Softener, Perfect Together

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Earlier this month, Huffington Post featured an article about a group that is definitely out in the streets serving the community. The Laundromat Project arranges for artists to do residencies at different laundromat’s around NYC. They allow people to make art while they are waiting for their clothes to get done. When I first saw the video below, I mentally smacked myself in the head for never recognizing laundromats’ obvious position as a social gathering place to reach out to people.

You just have to make sure no one has paint on their hands when they go in to take their clothes out! Watch the video because their ambitions for their constituencies are to get them involved with projects much bigger than using finger paints and sparkles. I have a cousin who owns a laundromat in the greater NY area. I sent her information on the group to see if she might want to host them.

The Laundromat Project from The Quotidian on Vimeo.

While we are on the subject of finger painting…

There was an amusing piece in Psychology Today addressing the perennial claim that your kid could replicate the work of abstract artists. A study was conducted in which:

“30 paintings by abstract expressionists. Each painting was paired with a painting by a child, a monkey, a chimpanzee, a gorilla, or an elephant. The images were matched on superficial attributes such as color, line quality, and brushstroke, and subjects were asked which piece they personally liked more, and which they thought was a better work of art.”

They did some tricky things like obscuring or mislabeling the signatures on the pieces to test if judgments changed. The labels did influence the psychology students but not the art students. Though, “In all conditions, both art students and psychology students chose the professional works as more preferred and of better quality most of the time. (See the attached chart.) And preferences were pretty immune to labels.”

In the images they provide with the article. I could tell the difference between the profession piece and the one done by a child. However, I preferred the one done by the child. I was not alone.

“Even the art students preferred the child’s or animal’s painting over the professional’s-and judged it to be objectively better-30 to 40 percent of the time. And that’s even when they were labeled correctly.”

So there you go, for what it is worth.

Interconnected Fates

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You may have heard that the police in Madison, WI are in sympathy with many of the union members who have gathered to protest their governor’s push to end collective bargaining rights for state workers. Over the weekend I heard an interview on NPR that mentioned both police and firefighters were turning out in support of the protest even though the governor wasn’t proposing to take away their right to collective bargaining because they figured it was only a matter of time. The fire fighter interviewed said they viewed it as an effort to divide and conquer.

Earlier this month Louise K. Stevens who writes the “Arts Market On..” blog made a similar observation regarding the need for the arts to advocate in areas outside of their immediate concern. (my emphasis)

No doubt that you have and will be getting emails and calls to action about this. But probably those calls are piecemeal, asking you for you to advocate for one or another of these line items while ignoring the whole, and that’s the problem. We a splintered sector that has never to date united around the concept of our culture, and now each splinter may be too small and too isolated from its compatriots to build a coalition to save federal support for any of the splinters.

We have a few weeks to save the half century-plus of infrastructure that modest as it may be demonstrates our public commitment to the breadth and majesty of our American culture, our shared story. If we stand splintered now, we may never get a chance to regroup. If we think that saving orchestras or contemporary dance is more important or that saving library funding and museum funding matters more than poetry, or that history and heritage and historic architecture should out trump theatre…well, how will it end?

Around the same time, Arlene Goldbard (h/t to Ian David Moss) wrote a three part series titled “Life Implicates Art” which while long, I think does the best job in summing up the challenges facing the arts and the wrong turns that have been made. Other bloggers, myself included, have touched upon these issues at times but her entries are timely in the context of all the movement nationally in Congress and state legislatures in regard to arts funding. (Also, every entry she makes has an embedded music video which is kind of a cool little hook.) Her ultimate conclusion, much like that of the firefighters in Wisconsin is that there is a high degree of interconnected interests among seemingly disparate groups.

In the first entry, she addresses the problem which is mostly that arts people think that the failure to secure funding is directly related to a failure to make a strong enough case for the arts when it is often more about politics rather than money. In some respect there is actually a weakness in the way a case for the arts is made. She notes, as I have pointed out a few times, that pretty much every industry can make a claim about the economic benefits of their activity. She notes, as most of us know, that with all the money spent on combat troops in the Mid-East, maintaining a nuclear arsenal and imprisoning a large portion of the population, the expenditures on the arts is pretty minuscule but there is not enough support for the arts nationally to make it politically difficult to make cuts there first.

In the second entry, she expounds upon the forces at work that determine politician priorities. She labels the arguments suggested by Americans for the Arts recent mail-in campaign to Congress as “so bloodless and soporific that I can’t imagine anyone actually reading all the way to the end of an op-ed based on them. Yet these have been the talking points for more than three decades. The result? The real value of the NEA budget has fallen by more than half. But hey, it’s all we’ve got, right?”

Instead she suggests a more strongly worded, speaking truth to power letter to all those who voted to support the recent extension of tax cuts to millionaires the revenue of which could cover the budgets of the NEA and NEH twice over.

Here’s an open letter along the lines I’d like to see circulating in every district represented by someone who voted for the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts:

Dear Senator/Representative:

Less than two months ago, you voted for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They reduce tax revenues by an amount equivalent to paying out twice the combined budgets of the National Endowments for The Arts and Humanities, every single day of the year. At a time when our nation’s polarization of wealth is extreme—the top 10% own 80% of all financial assets; and the top 1% own more than the bottom 90%—I am shocked to think you care more about the wealthiest political donors than the well-being of the rest of us.

By cutting arts funding and other social goods, you are making the rest of us pay for millionaire tax cuts. It is wrong to sacrifice our children’s access to music and art classes to save millionaires from paying their fair share. It is wrong to abandon artists who have dedicated their lives to working in schools, hospitals, senior centers, and other places where their skills of imagination, beauty, and meaning lift spirits, build community, and help people find resilience. It is wrong to defund creativity at a time when we it is precisely what we need to excel in science and business, to align our spirits with hope and recovery.

It is embarrassing to be the richest nation on earth with the highest incarceration rate, prison population, and expenditure on war, and the lowest public investment in creativity. You want us to believe that you’re concerned about the economy and taxpayers, but really? Tote up the tax breaks included for millionaires: you just put $225 billion of taxpayers’ well-being into the pockets of people who already have more money than they know how to spend.

This is a shame and a scandal, and I’m going to do everything I can to let my fellow voters know about it. Restoring arts funding would be a tiny gesture to show you actually care about what the rest of us want: it’s literally the least you can do. You were elected to serve everyone, not just big donors. Here’s your chance to prove it. Don’t let America down!

Sincerely,

John/Jane Q. Public

In the third entry, she talks about reframing the arts. As you might imagine, the burden lays upon the arts community, especially in terms of expanding the definition of art beyond what is produced by non-profit arts organizations. There is an image of the arts as elitist that people who want to cut funding have evoked that many people in the arts chafe against because we know there aren’t people in black ties sipping champagne and making obscure literary references at our performances and exhibits. Except that there are some aspects of the elitist imagery we are responsible for perpetuating.

“It’s abstract, one step removed from things people really care about: many people who happily embrace words like music or movies, who sing or draw or love to dance, will respond negatively to the idea of “the arts”—Oh no, not me, you hear them say, I’m not into the arts. Ask that same person, “Do you like to dance?” or “Do you play an instrument?” and the answer will be “Yes,” with no evident awareness of contradiction.

That’s because they pick up on the exclusionary subtext. Many people who consider themselves part of “the arts” use that label to distinguish the work of subsidized organizations from commercial cultural industries and entertainments. An enormous industry generates multibillions each year from sales of music, movie tickets, video rentals, concert tickets, and the like; and enormous numbers take pleasure from making music, taking photographs, writing poems and songs, taking part in dance competitions and poetry slams, and so on.

Yet, except when they want to summon impressive figures about the scope of the cultural economy, mainstream arts advocates don’t mention any of this. There’s an embedded snobbery that presumes the superiority of nonprofit arts organizations and the work they support, a kneejerk dismissal of the rest. This discourse often has an air of unreality: I hear advocates saying that “the arts” are in decline, yet—to pick just one example—almost everyone I encounter integrates music into daily life, almost as a kind of medicine, self-prescribing the sounds and feelings that will support them through the day.”

Goldbard feels this can be reversed, of course, if efforts are made to change practice and national cultural policy. She derives hope from the fact that people are realizing that assessing value based on numbers doesn’t work in healthcare or education and that short term savings results in a long term cost. Care and education of the whole person today prevents more expensive problems down the road. Her suggested approach to employing the intrinsic value of the arts is no less holistic and intertwines with education, healthcare and commerce to bolster all these areas.

In an homage to Goldbard’s posting style, I embed the following video. It isn’t explicitly about art and many wouldn’t consider the singing to be art because it employs autotune, but that’s sort of Goldbard’s point.

The Importance of Asking Why

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Daniel Pink had a piece in The Telegraph last week discussing the importance of everyone in your organization being on the same page about why you are in business. He cites a study performed by a professor from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School where telemarketers were split into three groups, one that was given reading materials before making calls that discussed personal benefits to working as a telemarketer, another group read stories from those who have benefited from the funds raised by the telemarketing and the third group who were given no reading materials at all. After a month those who read the articles extolling the benefits to the telemarketer were no more productive in their fund raising than those who received no reading materials at all.

“People in the second group – who took a moment to consider the significance of their work and its effect on others’ lives – raised more than twice as much money, in twice as many pledges, as they had in previous weeks and significantly more than their counterparts in the other two groups…

Grant and some colleagues uncovered similar results in another call centre study. There, when employees spent just five minutes talking to the recipients of the funds they were raising, those employees spent twice as much time on the phone with prospective donors and raised nearly three times as much money as they had in the past. And Grant found the same phenomenon in a study of lifeguards at a community aquatics centre. A group of lifeguards read stories from previous lifeguards about rescuing swimmers. Then, a month later, those lifeguards worked more hours, and received higher ratings from their bosses, than a similar group that wasn’t reminded of its purpose. “

People in the arts tend to be so passionate about what they do, they probably don’t have as far to go as those in other industries when it comes to knowing why itis what they do. But is everyone in the company basically united behind the same purpose? We are often told that everyone in an organization should be able to recite the mission statement. But failing that, they should at least all be able to voice the same basic organizational purpose. There is a tendency to groan and perhaps roll ones eyes at the thought of being tested on the mission statement. In many cases, it can be indicative of a poorly written mission statement that it doesn’t roll easily off the tongue. Reading how effective people who are mindful of the organization’s purpose can be, spending a little more time committing the mission statement to memory doesn’t seem like such an onerous task.

Granted, it doesn’t have to be the mission statement that has to serve as the purpose. It could be something on a more granular level like the front of house staff and volunteers deciding that over the next year they are going to help reduce any intimidating elements in the attendance experience and get people excited about the shows.

As Pink’s article draws to the end, he offers an activity to put into practice. “Once a week, at that staff meeting, spend a few minutes revisiting the question. Talk about the purpose of the week’s activities. Discuss your efforts’ effect on other people’s lives. Remind each other why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place. “

Thank You, Volunteers

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Tech Soup had a tweet linking to a post on HandsOn blog post containing tips for writing thank you notes to volunteers. One of my initial reactions to some of the suggestions like writing the notes out by hand and writing drafts first, made me think that if we had time to do that, we wouldn’t need the volunteers in the first place. We actually do hand write our Christmas cards to volunteers and follow HandsOn’s tips about personalizing the message by acknowledging things they have done or contribute to our efforts. But that is a really long undertaking.

While thinking about adding writing a first draft to the process for every person makes me groan, they are correct that the more you write, the better you get and the easier it is. Also, thanking everyone by hand once a year like we do at Christmas does make the process onerous. Acknowledging people throughout the year as they provide great service breaks the effort up a bit more. It is probably more impressive to the volunteer when they receive a note out of the blue in the middle of April than at a traditional time like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I have read many of the tips they offer before, though it is always helpful to be reminded. A tip they give that I have never really considered is the first one.

1) Focus on the volunteer.
Before you write the thank you note, try writing the volunteer’s address on the envelope and write it out by hand. As you’re writing their address, think about your relationship to the volunteer; think about where they’re living and how they’re serving. It will help you to write an individual message for that volunteer.

I think that addressing the envelop first and thinking about the volunteer is a good exercise for focusing your mind on what you want to say in the message. Often I will come to a person’s name on our list and my pen will sit poised over the paper as I try to recall all the contributions they have made. Addressing the envelop fills that time and can help you generate some thoughtful remarks as you think about them. The suggestion of thinking about where people are living intrigued me a little. I never really focused too much on that, but just thinking about the process of thinking of where my volunteers live reminded me that those who volunteered for the various organizations for which I have worked have been retirees living on fixed incomes and have invested a fair portion of their limited resources in travel and preparation for volunteering. Some of the best volunteers I have had were families in the lower income range where the parents were trying to instill the values one derives from volunteering.

As something of a corollary to this subject, the blog has a link in the right column to an Acrobat document, “The Nine Basic Rules for Volunteer Recognition.” It reiterates some of the same things about timing and degree of recognition.

1. Recognize . . . or else — The need for recognition is very important to most people. If volunteers do not get recognition for productive participation, it is likely that they will feel unappreciated and may stop volunteering with your program.

2. Give it frequently — Recognition has a short shelf life. Its effects start to wear off after a few days, and after several weeks of not hearing anything positive, volunteers start to wonder if they are appreciated. Giving recognition once a year at a recognition banquet is not enough.

3. Give it via a variety of methods — One of the implications of the previous rule is that you need a variety of methods of showing appreciation to volunteers.

4. Give it honestly — Don’t give praise unless you mean it. If you praise substandard performance, the praise you give to others for good work will not be valued. If a volunteer is performing poorly, you might be able to give him honest recognition for his effort or for some personality trait.

5. Recognize the person, not just the work — This is a subtle but important distinction. If volunteers organize a fund-raising event, for example, and you praise the event without mentioning who organized it, the volunteers may feel some resentment. Make sure you connect the volunteer’s name to it.

You will have to follow the link if you want the other 4 tips. The last tip reminded me of an embarrassing incident over 15 years ago when I was misquoted in a story about volunteers that made it sound like we used volunteers as cheap labor rather than that volunteers often provide a service which will often command a respectable wage. Thinking back on the incident and groaning a few years later, I realized it might have been better to focus more on what volunteers bring as individuals– mothering artists in the hospitality room, being as organized and motivational as a drill sergeant with a pleasant demeanor that made people forget how tired they were–rather than discussing them as a labor force. In many cases they are bringing the same passion for our cause as our employees are.

Info You Can Use: Microvolunteering

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This information has been out since this summer and I have this sense of being vaguely aware of the company being mentioned in tweets, but there was no mention of its significance or I would have covered this at the time. I figured this was reason enough to mention it here and spread the word. (Or I was just living under a rock, but I couldn’t have been the only one.)

A company called The Extraordinaries has essentially shrunk Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service down to the cell phone level with a service called Sparked. I should clarify that this isn’t Amazon’s service offered through cell phones and the service rendered is voluntary rather than the paid work Amazon offers. The similarity is that it connects the needs of companies, in this case non-profits, with volunteers willing to do the work.

According to a piece on Springwise.com,

“…it enlists both individuals and groups of company employees to contribute their expertise to a nonprofit in even the smallest chunks of time. Nonprofits begin by posting requests to the site; those, in turn, are routed to would-be volunteers based on their skills and interests. Examples might include translating a page of a document into Spanish, for instance, or helping to choose a new logo; The Extraordinaries even has pre-built “kits” that turn a series of best practices into tasks for volunteers. Willing volunteers then complete the requests during a spare moment via iPhone (through a dedicated app) or web browser—or they can share it with their colleagues.”

Sparked uses the term micro-volunteering because the tasks are broken down into whatever segments of time you have available. You could conceivably perform tasks on the train commute into work or in a taxi on the way to a party. There are some examples of work that has been completed on their blog, including a recent story about a logo that one volunteer reworked.

I am probably not the first to say it, but given the way today’s digital culture is shaping interactions, I have to think this mode of activity mediated through technology is going to begin to figure largely in organizations’ volunteer programs. It doesn’t help with ushering and important face to face interactions, but it could help with promotional efforts, research, evaluation and maybe even editing program books and designing the covers.

Though I can see it now, people are so impressed with our organization when they attend a show, the decide to start microvolunteering on their iPhones during a performance leaving the staff in a quandary about asking them to stop.

Info You Can Use: B Corporations

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Daniel Pink had a tweet today to a Washington Post story about Maryland companies signing up to be classified as a “B” corporation in that state. The B for Benefit Corporation will allow for-profit companies to operate to pursue social ideals.

You may ask what is to keep any company from operating in socially responsible ways? Many companies align themselves with causes to burnish their image, after all. It is actually the stockholders which may pose a problem apparently. According to the newspaper:

“These hybrid entities pay taxes and can have shareholders, without the risk of being sued for not maximizing profits. Companies can consider the needs of customers, workers, the community or environment and be well within their legal right.

A benefit corporation, for instance, could choose to buy from local vendors at a higher cost to reduce its carbon footprint, much as the Big Bad Woof does. The company, as a part of the incorporation, is required to file an annual report on contributions to the goals set forth in the charter and submit to an audit by an independent third party. “

This is different from the L3C structure I have mentioned before. Like the L3C, this structure is not recognized by the IRS. Though I am not sure if it is in the same nebulous area the L3C because it doesn’t seem like B companies are meant ever qualify as a program related investment for foundations. Though there is probably a lot about the structure not covered in the news article.

More information about B corporations may be found online at a site created to advance these type of organizations. I didn’t find any discussion about how the IRS views these organizations and if there are significant restrictions to investing. According to the site the need for a B corporation are: (my emphasis)

“B Corporations address two critical problems:

* Current corporate law makes it difficult for businesses to take employee, community, and environmental interests into consideration when making decisions; and
* The lack of transparent standards makes it difficult for all of us to tell the difference between a ‘good company’ and just good marketing.”

This is an effort they are trying to take nationwide so if you are interested, don’t think it isn’t applicable to you just because you don’t live in Maryland. This could be a viable structure for an arts related organization. While the status doesn’t provide any tax breaks, doing well on the required audit can be a positive signal to interested investors.

Stuff To Ponder: Alternatives To Forming A Non Profit Org

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If your new year’s resolution is to do good this year, go for it! But if you are thinking of starting up a non-profit, you should be aware of the challenges you face. Both the normal processes to follow when starting a new organization as well as emerging scrutiny by the federal government. The Non-Profit Law blog has been packing a lot of informational goodness in their posts over the end of last year and the transition in to this one. Among their tweets of the week for last week was news of extra scrutiny of non-profits by the IRS.

The Gene Takagi and Emily Chan who write Non-Profit Law Blog also linked to a piece they wrote for the American Bar Association outlining the considerations a lawyer and their clients should use to evaluate whether they should actually form a non-profit organization. Many of the suggestions made are just good sense for forming any business including evaluating the need, whether it duplicates the efforts of another group, if there is sufficient clientele and a support base present in the community. They make suggestions of alternatives to consider.

But another person they link to in their tweets of the week really does a great job of providing these alternatives. Allison Jones makes suggestions for 6 alternatives with links to more information about pursuing these options.
 I had never heard of an intrapenuership myself.

* Free agent: More and more people are affecting social change outside of an organization. Harnessing social media, you can mobilize your network to take action or support a cause without the hassle of incorporating….

* Informal group/club: If the issue you are addressing is small or very specific (cleaning up a local park or stacking shelves in a local food pantry) you may just be able to round up a group of friends and get to work….

* Giving circle: … In giving circles you pool money and resources together to support an organization you all select. The focus is usually on a local organization, often extends beyond giving financial support, and the circles can be formal or informal….

* Local chapter of a national organization: … You can build on existing resources, support, and guidance to make a difference. Organizations that focus on professions, such as Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Grant Managers Network, or Emerging Leaders in the Arts, tend to have chapters across the country. However other organizations in different causes, like the Reeve Foundation are open to supporters launching local chapters as well….

* Intrapreneurship: Do you work or volunteer for an awesome organization? Maybe you noticed a need because of the work you do? This can be tricky as many organizations are pressed for resources and time. However, you can harness your organization’s infrastructure to make small steps in addressing the need you have identified. Organizations are more willing to support innovation if there is someone (i.e. YOU!) willing to take the lead. Start by collecting information on the need and presenting it to your organization….

* Fiscal sponsorship: In fiscal sponsorship a nonprofit will allow you to operate under their 501c3 status….You should find an organization whose mission and work align with what you want to do and reach out to them directly….

New Year’s Not To Do List

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So I am back and raring to go. This is the first Christmas holiday season I have been away from my bed in about 10 years. I went back to visit places I used to work and gained some insights and ideas. I bookmarked things to write about when I returned, but it will take a little bit for me to sort and process some of these things in my brain. One bit of wisdom to start off the new year I came across was linked to by Daniel Pink. It was an entry on the Drucker Exchange, a blog maintained by the late management guru Peter Drucker’s Drucker Institute.

The entry titled, Your Not-To-Do-List, essentially advises organizations and individuals to examine themselves and decide what efforts they are no longer going to pursue. It sort of follows the idea that if you bring something new into your house, you get rid of something old. In this case, you are encouraged to get rid of something old to leave room for the arrival of future innovations. The Drucker Exchange cites a 2004 interview in Forbes where Drucker says:

“A critical question for leaders is, “When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?” The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, “Don’t tell me what you’re doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.”

The only hitch I think arts organizations might have with this is that waning audiences can make many programs look like they should be put on the not-to-do-list when some just need the attention being spent elsewhere to succeed. I think it is telling that Drucker focuses on the almost successes and achieved goals for elimination rather than targeting poor performers. While the latter should certainly be examined for elimination, Drucker reminds us not to become too invested in the moderate successes just because they provide a degree of satisfaction.

I just read the article this morning and spent most of the day catching up with a backlog of emails so I haven’t really had time to ponder what I might want to eliminate both personally and organizationally. However, over the holidays I had been thinking of discussing with the staff a new approach to one of our events with an eye to more closely connect with the local arts community. The old approach to the event might be the perfect thing to put on the top of our not-to-do-list.

Innovation In Practice

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A colleague recommended a piece on innovation that appeared in the Fall issue of Grantmakers in the Arts by Richard Evans called, Entering upon Novelty. Evans starts by talking about how the current state of things is based on the expectations created by the Ford Foundation when it was the preeminent arts granter starting in the later 1950s. He quickly moves to his vision of an alternative approach that he feels is more appropriate to the new environment within which arts organizations must operate. He presents a chart comparing the two which I have recreated here- Old Structure on the Left,  Emerging Structure on the Right

His commentary on the chart had some resonance with me.

“The emerging features are clearly those of a very different kind of organization, built on different assumptions. For example, in the third comparison, there is an underlying shift in assumptions about the nature of the artistic experience. From ”The quality of the artistic experience we can offer is dependent upon high levels of technical execution that are otherwise rarely experienced” to “The quality of the artistic experience we can offer is dependent upon the connection we make between our own and our participants’ creative aspirations.”

And, in the last comparison, there is a shift in assumptions about financial management. From “Permanent capital funds and buildings will stabilize our organization and protect us from annual upsets” to “Liquidity and fungible assets will support our ability to adapt rapidly to meet new conditions.”

Evans goes on to talk about how the arts have hobbled themselves by not engaging in a “genuine integration of artists into our organizations — not to represent a programmatic perspective, but as full members of the team, divergent thinkers and creative strategists.” It occurred to me that this approach helped to institutionalize the idea that artists must focus on their Art and can’t be distracted with the picayune details of business. Now we are engaged in attempt to get artists to think about the practical details of their careers and perhaps it is time to examine if the businesses have the artist’s creativity to be nimble and innovative in their operations.

Evans discusses how changes might manifest and the need for business models to change–and foundations’ funding criteria to make a corresponding shift in acknowledgment. What really interested me was his assertion that innovation could be institutionalized. He mentions a year long process that EmcArts, of which he is president, conducts to facilitate the move toward an institutional practice of innovation.

“The work is structured in three facilitated phases. The first phase concentrates on building an innovation team (not from the usual suspects!), researching possible new strategies, and focusing the team’s efforts on its most promising discoveries. The second phase is a midproject intensive retreat — five solid days locked away in the woods that telescope months of meetings and increase project momentum — serving as an Innovation Accelerator as decisions begin to be made. The third phase focuses on trying out the innovation through repeated prototyping and evaluation, in relatively low-stakes environments, as each organization decides whether, and how, to move forward with fuller implementation.”

It is the last stage that interested me most because as Evans says, arts organizations don’t have the resources in time/money/personnel, etc to test out new things. According to Evans, those who have participated in learning the process find that failure of an implemented plan has been productive for them and they are eager to try again.

As you know, we here at Butts in the Seats are interested in practical solutions.The desire to try again was the part that convinced me this approach might be worth serious consideration. There are a plethora of management and leadership techniques and theories that emerge all the time, many of which get discarded after a short time or when the next fad emerges. Just as when a business is recommended by a friend who says they will patronize it again, the fact someone is eager to employ an approach again says a lot for it.

Free Markets And The Artists Unappreciated In Their Own Country

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I was reading a piece by economist Tyler Cowen on how Milton Friedman’s views apply to the arts. According to Cowen, Friedman essentially felt that free market commerce creates diversity in the arts, in types, method of expression, funding and innovation. “Our most effective arts policy has been tax incentives for donations, which has kept choice and quality control in private hands,” writes Cowen.

Cowen acknowledges that we don’t always like the way this manifests itself.

“In other cases, many people, most of all intellectuals, object when apparently nonmeritorious individuals earn huge salaries. The same objections surface in the cultural realm. Madonna earns hundreds of millions, whereas a first rate opera singer might pull in only $50,000 a year or perhaps cannot earn a living from singing at all. The best response, well understood by Friedman, is the same. A system that permits such “inequities” will in fact generate the greatest number of opportunities for performers of virtually all kinds.”

I am sure I was being stubborn when I decided I wasn’t completely convinced by this assertion, though there were enough examples to support Cowen that kept creeping into my mind. It wasn’t until later in the piece when Cowen cited the example of Monet that I had to reluctantly fall more in agreement with him.

This story of free trade and creativity runs throughout the history of culture. Claude Monet had little success marketing his paintings to the government run Salon in Paris in the late nineteenth century. His style and colors were considered to be too radical and too unpleasant. Monet had greater success selling to wealthy North Americans, who were not bound by prevailing French artistic conventions. His haystack paintings proved particularly popular in this country, which is one reason why they appear so frequently in American art museums.

The Monet example illustrates a broader (but sometimes neglected) benefit of international trade. The common arguments for trade cite the benefits of drawing on producers from other countries. But trade also mobilizes the benefits of the consumers from other countries. Consumers hold embedded knowledge. Their purchases can induce suppliers to elevate quality, help suppliers pursue careers of greater pleasure (for example, art), and help generate the artistic heritage of mankind. The greater the diversity of consumers to draw on, the better markets will perform these tasks.

This past week we premiered an original work about the Hawaiian snow goddess, Poli‘ahu which pretty much illustrates his point. It employed hula, ballet and contemporary dance. The artistic director brought in dancers from Japan, a Yupik Eskimo from Alaska and an exchange student from Mongolia to work alongside local dancers to tell this story. While we hope to tour this throughout the rest of the state and take it to the continental United States, there were already plans forming to take it to Alaska and Japan as the show closed opening night. Colleagues at another performing arts center took a show about Kahekili, the chief who nearly united all the islands under one king to Germany a few years ago.

As Cowen’s talked about how international trade brings benefits to the arts, it struck me that without it, the performance we just had would not have developed as it did and the opportunities that may open up and indeed have opened up for colleagues doing similar works, would not be possible. Some of these developments are owed to technology and the internet which enables people to become aware of these shows and evaluate performance videos. But international trade and interactions make people more comfortable and curious about each other and willing to consume other artistic experiences.

The inspiration for our production of Poli‘ahu originated during a bush flight over the Anaktuvuk Pass when the artistic director we partnered with was invited to bring hula to the Arctic Circle a few years ago. Granted, trips to Alaska from Hawaii are not international and there are some areas where they share a certain kinship, but in many respects they are diametrical opposites.

The dancers from Japan didn’t bring anything overtly Japanese to the performance. The role they played could have been performed by any well trained dancers. But their presence was a product of the international commerce to which Cowen refers. The artistic director of the production had been visiting their dance school in Japan for over 10 years and had worked with these women since they were children. He arranged accommodations for them during the rehearsal period so that they could participate in his production as part of his company.

It has been awhile since I invoked the concept of the Creative Economy so let me do so here. This production probably won’t constitute a large enough segment of the emerging economy to pull us out of the recession, but the dynamics which made the production possible and the activity yet to result from it may play a tiny part in moving things toward such an economy.

Info You Can Use: Understanding Financial Statement Basics

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If you are new to a position as board member or administrator of an arts organization or if you have simply resolved to become better educated about your business’ financials, Inc magazine offers a series of articles comprising a quick primer on what they all mean. This month’s article is “How to Understand an Income Statement.” This is a good place to start if you don’t know the difference between an income statement and a cash flow statement.

It is especially a good place to start if you don’t know how a company can be extremely profitable, but unable to pay its bills each month. There are also articles on how to identify why you can’t pay your bills each month too.

If you have no idea where to begin and what is important to look at, they have articles on tracking the pertinent numbers and help you with a basic understanding of what they are and why they are important.

Of course, it is good to remember that there are some measures which a non-profit doesn’t adhere to — like profit ratios on ticket sales when it is already known that earned revenue isn’t going to cover experiences.

Info You Can Use: Considerations Before Forming A Non-Profit

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Last month, as many non-profits were faced with losing their status due to a change in the tax filing laws, Board Source President/CEO Linda Crompton suggested the situation might be good for the non-profit world by removing duplicative and ineffective/inactive non-profits. Because non-profits really aren’t required to generate a business plan or survey the need and competition before filing for status, she feels there may be too many non-profits in existence.

No for-profit company would start up without doing a thorough analysis of the competitive landscape; that analysis would be baked into the business plan and would inform all other decisions — one of which might be “not here, not now.” It’s incumbent upon our sector to school itself on this point: just because we have an idea, and a mission, and a great, good heart, does not mean that we need to start our own, brand-spanking new organization to fulfill that mission. The same truth applies to organizations in all stages of their lifecycle. Boards should be asking themselves: are we still relevant? Are we fulfilling our mission effectively and sustainably? Is there another organization across town doing the same thing, only better? Should we be discussing merger, or even dissolution?

I have mentioned a number of times over the years that I have often many arts organizations have been started that could have easily been part of an existing group or that could have merged with other groups when it was clear that their service area couldn’t support both groups very well. I will admit that I have seen many more groups in merger talks over the last few years since the economy has gotten worse than I had during previous economic down turns. It was good to see people considering this route. But I have also seen new groups peel off because of personality differences or a desire to perform a slightly different genre. Admittedly there is a difference between classical and modern realism, but Shakespeare festivals manage to produce both without compromising their souls.

To be honest though, I don’t know if the IRS would be in a position to evaluate whether there was or wasn’t a need for any type of non-profit, be it an arts organization or social service agency. Imagine the work involved in developing criteria to measure if there was a sufficient support base for the organization in a community. Imagine the bad press the IRS would get for denying someone non-profit status for a social service organization serving a very emotionally charged cause.

Which doesn’t mean due diligence shouldn’t be done. In a comment to Linda Crompton’s entry, Don Griesmann links to an entry on his blog in which he enumerates all the considerations that should be made before creating a non-profit. He also footnotes his arguments with the largest number of stories on the difficulties faced by non-profit organizations I have ever seen.

His entry came at the end of 2009 and he proposed that no new non-profits should be allowed to be created in 2010 unless a whole multitude of conditions were met. A brief sampling:

•Unless you understand the nonprofit will not be “your nonprofit” and you have enlisted an incorporating board that is interested in the concept and capable of performing the necessary tasks of incorporating and operating the organization and

•Unless you understand there is no “free money” from the federal or state governments. The federal government distributes funds through scholarships, fellowships, contracts, grants and loans. Each requires an application, meeting eligibility requirements, demonstration of a task to be undertaken, proof that the task was performed and the money used appropriately and in many instances a report evaluating the use of their funds…

….•Unless you have a concept of what it costs to develop and operate a nonprofit in terms of shared leadership, time, thought, study, serious planning, hard work, evaluation and annual reporting as well as money and
•Unless you have no intention of attempting to raise more than $5,000 a year for the next 5 years…

…•Unless you have performed due diligence and created a board of mixed talents, diversity, shared passion and vision concerning a truly unserved issue or need supported by some empirical evidence. If the need is an underserved need, why not join with the current providers and increase the service or product? And
•Unless you understand that there simply are not grants available to pay for the incorporation process. If you and others cannot raise the first $1,000 or so to incorporate, then where do you think you will get the money to run the organization? When someone asks, as many do, does anyone know where I can get a grant to start my nonprofit, we should either not respond or tell the truth – you are not ready to start a nonprofit. Go volunteer at a local nonprofit….

One of his next “unless” includes having a business plan that answer 19 different questions. One of his other conditions might be that you shouldn’t form a non-profit if you don’t have the patience to read his whole entry. While it is very long, it asks many pertinent questions and raises many points that ought to be considered. It is good to see people starting to advocate for this level of consideration prior to forming a non-profit.

Of course, non-profit status covers a lot of situations, including block associations and other purposes that wouldn’t necessarily be competing for grants from a shrinking pool of resources. These will certainly benefit from being well planned, but aren’t likely to struggle to stay in existence or become a drain on their community if they don’t meet every criteria.

Reflecting on Civic Reflection

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Six years ago I wrote on the practice of Civic Reflection, a process which is supposed to help non-profits and civic groups.

“Imagine getting together with other civically engaged people and talking about your values and the choices you make in serving your community.”

It still sounds interesting though I haven’t come across another mention of it in the last six years. I wonder if it can be adapted to communities based on the internet. I renew my inquiry for more information from anyone who has engaged in this practice.

What Do You Do With A Stolen Actor?

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I attended a talk by minor theater deity Richard Schechner last week at an open event for the International Brecht Society Conference. He was speaking about environmental theatre (aka site specific). We just finished a site specific work last month so I was interested to hear what a person who had been doing it for decades had to say on the subject.

There were things he spoke of which matched my original desire for the work but which got scaled back by the artistic team due to various limitations and considerations. The good thing was that one of the people on the artistic team was there listening as well so we will have a common frame of reference for our next event. The talk was scheduled for longer than I thought it would be so I couldn’t stay until the end to ask questions or speak to those friends also in attendance.

I wish I had been able to speak with him because I would have liked to know how he might balance making a performance a more interactive experience with the alienation/intimidation factor of what he was doing. Some of the things he spoke about struck me as “only in a big city like NYC.” He made groups split up on entering so that they would be forced to explore the space more trying to find each other. And if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to see his show because he had a full house every night. (That option came up a lot as he spoke about the performances he had done.) He also spoke about leaning folding chairs against the wall and letting people set them up wherever they liked without consideration of whether it would be in the way of the performance or technical operations.

My first thought was that while people may crave a more interactive experience, many are already intimidated by the thought of attending as a passive observer. How much worse might their anxiety be if they set themselves up right in the middle of some intense action? I mean I think there is too much contact when I go to a Cirque de Soleil show and one of the performers somersaults right into my lap. Okay, well that is probably too much contact for anyone, but even watching the performers move around the room playing with audience members raises some anxiety that I may be next. Though if you don’t introduce people to the concept, people can’t become more accepting of that type of interactivity. I would imagine setting has a lot to do with it. A performance in a nightclub where you expect to be bumped into and jostled might not cause the discomfort that the same activities in another place would.

The thing that really intrigued me were the rules he set up for his performances. In his production of Dionysus in 69 which is based on The Bacchae, Pentheus has an opportunity to avoid being killed. The actor goes into the audience and picks someone and starts to caress them. If the person doesn’t resist and the actor obtains satisfaction, by his own definition, from their physical contact, Dionysus loses, Penethus lives and the play ends. Schechner said there were only two times that death was avoided. Once, Pentheus ended up in a fairly torrid embrace with an audience member and left with her when they came up for air. The second time, a group of people who had seen the show and decided Pentheus was getting a raw deal abducted Pentheus when he went into the audience. The audience was dissatisfied that the show wouldn’t be concluded and Schechner called for a volunteer who would be fed the lines and actions as he/she was stripped down, anointed with blood and underwent a simulated dismemberment. Schechner said a 16 year old boy stepped forward and you could see him trembling with both fear and excitement. That is one of those powerfully visceral moments that theatre people constantly seek. Everyone is engaged in the moment because even though it is scripted, no one knows what is going to happen.

He told of another instance, I believe with Mother Courage, where they chose 15 people to come up on stage. If you were chosen you could either go up, pass being chosen on to the person next to you or leave the theatre with no recourse to return. But the show wouldn’t continue until they had 15 people. Schechner said one evening the audience apparently decided to test their resolve and the show was delayed at that point for four hours. I would say this is another one of those authentic moments in theatre, though less sought after.

I am sure people have played with the idea of propagating rules for a performance that can end it all in a potentially dissatisfying manner, but it is one of those “new to me” situations which fires the imagination. There may not be anything new under the sun, but parts of this production from 40 years ago might point the way to creating a more interesting environment for people who haven’t considered themselves as theatre attendees.

Info You Can Use: Intern or Employee?

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A few weeks ago I did an entry on the social impacts and elements of internships in the arts and very briefly referred to the question of whether unpaid internships were legal.

It only occurred to me later that the whole legality question wasn’t really dealt with very well. I read a lot about it, but didn’t really pass the information along or give readers the sense of urgency to follow through.

Well, hat tip to the ever resource full Non-Profit Law Blog which linked to an entry on Blue Avocado which really tackles the question in much greater detail than the NY Times article I had linked to in my previous entry.

The federal criteria to which you must adhere according to Ellen Aldridge at Blue Avocado are:

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction.

2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees.

3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation.

4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded.

5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and

6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

You must meet all six or else pay minimum wage. Number 4 is probably the toughest to adhere to. The fact that non-profits can have volunteers adds another dimension to the whole question. You should really read the entry because I can’t get into all the nuances like laws dealing with stipends and the nature of functions being performed without reprinting the entire entry. There is, in fact, a significant difference between an intern and a volunteer, part of which determines the type of work each can perform.

At the end of the entry, Ellen Aldridge recommends two NY Times articles on the topic. The first is the one to which I linked in my previous entry. The second is the guidance the California Labor Department provided on the subject of unpaid internships.

The guidance really just supports the expectations an intern would have of their experience– something relevant to their career goals and not predominantly copying and filing.

In that situation, the agency suggested that payment was not required if an intern “performs culinary tasks directly pertinent to his or her education only, is closely supervised,” and “does not displace regular workers.” But, the agency said, if a restaurant required an intern to bus tables or wash dishes, that would probably be considered an employer-employee relationship and the intern would most likely have to be paid.

Mr. Balter cited another guidance letter that said film studios should pay college students who do routine work like delivering messages, filing tapes and clipping newspaper articles, partly because the work was so similar to that of regular employees and could displace such employees.

In the new guidance, the agency noted that it had previously concluded that interns should be paid if they did any work normally done by a regular worker.

But showing more leeway, Mr. Balter wrote that interns could do occasional work done by regular employees, as long as it “does not unreasonably replace or impede the education objective for the intern and effectively displace regular workers.”

This is only the interpretation in the state of California, and a recently altered one at that. Your state may differ so it will be prudent to see where things stand locally. It is promising that they take their lead from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals which is considered more moderate than the 9th Circuit in whose jurisdiction California falls.

The Hidden Hands And Slow Brains of Creativity

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Rod Dreher had a couple interesting entries about creativity and the unseen entities at performances on his Beliefnet blog last week. The entries aren’t about religion except in the broadest sense in which any communal endeavor in which the final result is due to the efforts of the many in support of a goal.

Although the article about backstage workers Dreher links to does appear in In Character which is subtitled, “A Journal of Everyday Virtues,” so perhaps I shouldn’t discount the efforts of backstage workers as not having an element of religious like devotion. It isn’t new to those of us in the business, but it is gratifying to have it acknowledged by someone from without. I especially appreciated that the writer included the observation by the technical director that he isn’t a frustrated actor just awaiting the opportunity to make a star turn. I guess from the outside, performance is such a defining quality of the arts that many people have no conception that anyone would far prefer to be involved in other capacities.

And there can be ample psychic income in the commitment to the craft of play-making, from sewing the costumes to hanging the lights, as well as in contributing to an artistic endeavor that may have a lasting impact on the culture.

Still, much of the activity in the beehive of theatrical life goes on without even a minimal sort of public acknowledgment. It’s a strange dichotomy. For an art form so reliant on applause, most of those who work in the theater only hear it as muffled noise from another room. Propping up a star’s halo, the behind-the-scenes folks hardly bask in a sliver of reflected light.

It takes a special kind of humility to devote yourself to being backstage for the creation of a play, to knowing from the outset that you will receive little of the credit. There is, of course, a certain safety, too, in being out of the line of fire. But we are a culture that more and more seems to define success as the aggregation of renown, as the cachet of a boldface name, as the catalyst for a gazillion clicks of a mouse and qualifying for a sizable personal entry on Wikipedia.

So toiling anonymously in a public profession such as the theater translates for me into something rather noble. You know from the outset that there will be no fanfare for you, that the satisfactions will on some level always be vicarious. The good of the whole is what matters. Absorbing this reality requires an acceptance of modest status — a true spirit of deference.

The second article Dreher linked to was immensely interesting to me–the hypothesis that creativity might be a slow neurological process. We also think of high achievement being related to speed of thought. Solve a complex problem quickly, ring your buzzer and beat the other guy. However, as one of the scientists quotes in the piece points out, speed is not generally seen as a component of creative work.

The results are surprising, given that high white-matter integrity is normally considered a good thing, says Paul Thompson at the University of California in Los Angeles. He acknowledges that speedy information transfer may not be vital for creative thought. “Sheer mental speed might be good for playing chess or doing a Rubik’s cube, but you don’t necessarily think of writing novels or creating art as being something that requires sheer mental speed,” he says.

After performing MRI scans on people whose creativity had already been tested, Dr. Rex Jung at the University of New Mexico found:

Jung found that the most creative people had lower white-matter integrity in a region connecting the prefrontal cortex to a deeper structure called the thalamus, compared with their less creative peers.

Jung suggests that slower communication between some areas may actually make people more creative. “This might allow for the linkage of more disparate ideas, more novelty, and more creativity,” he says.

Unfortunately, lower white-matter integrity is also associated with mental illness. “So the result also strengthens the link between creativity and mental illness. One of the triggers for Jung’s study was the finding that when white matter begins to break down in people with dementia, they often become more creative.”

I remember about a year ago I blogger was complaining that the depressive/mentally ill artist was a stereotype that needed to be broken. But if what Jung gains more evidence for what he has found thus far, it may be more of a physical reality than we would like.

Intelligence and creativity aren’t mutually exclusive though-

“Each appears to be controlled by white matter in a different region. So theoretically, there’s no reason why someone might not have high integrity in the cortex, producing intelligence, but low integrity between the cortex and deeper brain regions, leading to creative thinking. “They appear to function relatively independently,” he says.”

Which makes me realize I know less about the brain than I thought because I initially assumed the integrity would be generally uniform throughout. Though if I thought about it a bit longer, it does make sense. Overall, some things to ponder.

The Developing Audience Member

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Over the last year, I have written about masterful performances that really affected me: the taiko performance a week ago, the kathak/tap dancing of Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith last year and Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer’s performance last September. There have been a couple times I have brought up the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master your craft.

It occurred to me recently that if it takes that long to become a master, it likely takes a fairly significant fraction of that to develop appreciation and discernment of arts and culture. This isn’t something that really gets discussed enough I think. In fact, with all the studies that have done been, I don’t think anyone has ever studied how long it takes for a person to develop an understanding and appreciation for art. I am sure the subject has been studied tangentially in relation to learning and meta-cognition. But has anyone sat down and approached it head on how much time people need to process and internalize experiences?

What I am really getting at is the oft espoused idea that once someone is exposed to some form of art, they will fall in love with it forever after. The fact is, once may not be enough and it is pretty unfair and unrealistic that we expect it to be. We give performers hundreds and thousands of hours to gain proficiency and yet we expect our audiences to absorb just how sublime our work is after just two hours.

Yes, we have a need to have them fall in love quickly because the opportunities for exposure are so few and audience members becoming fewer. We are doing a disservice to our audiences to expect so much from them. We want them to realize what a great experience we are offering, but don’t really know how to guide them to that place and how long it might take.

If you are involved in the arts, then your discernment and appreciation were probably developing roughly in parallel with your mastery of whatever you were pursuing. Even if you stopped, your critical skills may have continued to improve as you processed new experiences through the filter of your knowledge. You likely did not notice it happening and so assume you always had pretty good aesthetic sense. But I bet you can look back and grimace at all the crap you used to like and produce–some of it was probably pretentious crap too. (Of course, it was still better by half than the stuff kids are listening to today!)

So the more I think about it, the more I believe that becoming the audience member we all want is as gradual a process as becoming the master we want them to applaud. As I referenced producing awful stuff when we were younger in the preceding paragraph, I was envisioning my dismal acting skills in college vs. what, in my foolishness, I perceived my acting skills to be. One of the things I clearly remember from that time was a friend telling me he was really getting into Indian raga. I immediately laughed because it seemed absurd to me that anyone who wasn’t of that culture would listen to raga, (I think that was my classic rock phase), and I suspected he was saying that to get women. But he said he was serious.

But today I have cited the excellence of three events, two of which were heavily infused with Indian music and instruments and the last that included taiko drumming. At the time I was making fun of my friend about ragas, I had no concept taiko existed. Now I am encouraging people to see these performances and it is difficult to imagine people not enjoying them.

So while we don’t know how long it make take to bring someone into a receptive outlook about the arts, what we do know is that Generation X is not experiencing the upward bump in classical music attendance as they move into their 40s as previous generations did. Alex Ross doesn’t think it is too late to reverse that trend by increasing exposure through a lot of hard work.

I will openly admit that at this juncture, my thoughts on this matter are completely at a preliminary stage. This idea is only a day and a half old in my mind. But as I think about it, it seems to me that people don’t necessarily need direct experience in a situation to gradually develop the ability to confidently approach it. You may not necessarily need constant exposure to classical music and sculpture to acquire critical evaluation skills in these areas.

This winter I went to a number of contemporary art museums and I think that I gained the confidence to do so from having built and lit sets for the theatre. Even though I haven’t done so for awhile, all the times I have watched a show and evaluated these elements since then has improved my ability to recognize how certain effects have been accomplished. That in turn gave me the confidence to walk into an art museum and understand a great deal about what I was looking at. Granted, it might not be what the artist and the critics intend me to understand and perhaps that will come later. For now I am deriving enjoyment when I visit.

I had a similar experience with sumo wrestling. I really don’t watch a lot of sports at all. I have seen a little baseball, football, hockey, soccer, wrestling and martial arts in my time. I went to a sumo event a few years ago knowing nothing and was soon enjoying myself. I think the little bits of experience from these other sports provided a context for the sumo bouts. Though admittedly, sumo is pretty easy to understand. None of my past sports experience is likely to be much help with cricket.

I will concede there is a great theatricality in the sumo ritual and my experience in that area probably helped as well. I have tried to watch bouts online since and find those videos which edit out a lot of the ritual unsatisfying.

Anyway, my point is– the skills/tools/abilities needed to appreciate an arts experience isn’t necessarily cultivated solely by exposure to the arts. While one exposure may not be enough, devising a way to nail people’s feet to the floor en masse so they can’t leave won’t be necessary either. There are myriad situations which are improving people’s capacity to understand and enjoy occurring all the time. The trick is to identify these situations and make people aware of the connections. I felt confident walking into a museum because I knew my comprehension of the use of light and shadow in a performance could translate to visual art because I was aware of their use in that discipline.

Yes, Quality Will Definitely Out

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More and more the whole idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill seems to be bearing out. Last year I wrote about the astonishing excellence exhibited by Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith in the India Jazz Suite. (And I guess I did a good job because that entry is now part of their official promotional package.)

I had a similar experience this past weekend with a taiko drumming show we were presenting. Except this time, I really had not anticipated the quality of the performance and was completely taken aback by the experience.

Kenny Endo was the first non-Japanese national to be granted a natori, or master’s name and license in classical Japanese drumming. A visit that was intended to be about a year turned into a 10 year pursuit of master status. In about a month he will be having his 35th anniversary as a taiko performer.

He was performing a retrospective of his masterworks elsewhere in the state under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts’ American Masterpieces initiative. Since a lot of effort was going into bringing this event together, I was asked if we wanted to present it as well. We have been trying to arrange for Kenny to perform for awhile but could never find the right time. I was pleased then that we did have an opening for an event in which his infrequently seen works would be performed.

Kenny Endo is really a very influential person in the taiko in the U.S. and well regarded internationally. When I was searching YouTube for video of his work, I often came across people who were performing his compositions. What I didn’t know was much about the other people he was bringing with him. His NYC based bamboo flautist, Kaoru Watanabe, I had seen in many videos with him, but that was about it. The drummer he was bringing over from Japan, Kiyohiko Semba and his violinist wife were a complete mystery to me.

I guess I should have gotten a clue from the fact Kenny continually referred to Semba as if he were a partner in the show that he was something special.

Let me take a little detour to talk about the interesting symmetry between Endo and Semba. Endo grew up always interested in percussion and studied classical drumming and jazz-fusion traps before becoming enamored of taiko and ending up in Japan. Semba came from a family that founded a famous school of Japanese music. He started studying tsuzumi and taiko drumming at age three and made his kabuki stage debut at 10. In high school, he became entranced by bossa nova rhythms and began studying western drums. He noted in an interview that given his family’s strong traditions, he had to balance his practice of western music with familial respect and the study of classical Japanese music.

So we were doing this show with a Japanese-American playing taiko drums and a Japanese national playing a Western drum kit. As you might imagine, the show wasn’t entirely comprised traditional taiko compositions. There were percussion influences from all around the world including Brazilian and Hawaiian, woven in with classical and contemporary Japanese.

Let me tell you, Semba was incredible. You have this little quiet unassuming guy walking around and you have no clue what genius lurks beneath. I employ no hyperbole when I say a lot of rock and roll drummers are lucky he isn’t auditioning for rock bands because he would leave them in the dust. That might be embarrassing because Semba is probably in his late 60s or early 70s. For a time there I forgot I wasn’t watching a rock show because he was going full throttle so much of the time.

He also had an impish sense of humor. The second part of Endo’s “Symmetrical Soundscapes” has two drummers center stage improvising on a set of drums. There is video of it on YouTube—except they don’t include Semba and he brings an entirely new flavor to the work. Semba and Endo moved down to the set that had been wheeled out center stage and Semba suddenly reclines on the floor stage right and begins matching Endo’s patterns on a hand held drum. He gets up and moves center stage and they play on the set—but then Semba grabs the frame supporting the drums and starts moving around the stage forcing Endo to chase after him. They then engage in pulling and pushing the drum set toward and away from each other, spinning it back and forth, until Semba finally pushes it off stage.

Semba moves back across the stage bent over wearily tapping out some half hearted rhythms on the floor and you are thinking this guy must have worn himself out. Then he springs up on the drum riser and just starts going at it all over again.

And you realize all that playfulness wasn’t a lot of spectacle to spice up an uninteresting show or to divert attention from a lack of talent, but rather proof of Endo and Semba’s skill to go through an unrehearsed bit, (that didn’t happen in rehearsals), without missing a literal beat. As I said last year when I talked about the India Jazz Suites, it was an exhibition of joyful exuberance by two masters who took great pleasure in their mutual friendship.

There are a lot of people out there who are seeking the quick path to fame and many who make a lot of money at it. Endo and Semba may not be as financially successful, but the gulf between their ability and that of those who haven’t pursued mastery is quickly apparent.

With all this talk of the principals, I am not doing justice to the other performers like Semba’s wife, Kaori Takahashi, who is really a excellent violinist and shares a bit of her husband’s whimsical nature. And Kaoru Watanabe, who is a superb bamboo flautist himself. Watanabe actually set out on the long road to mastery and apprenticed with the drumming group Kodo, for the traditionally arduous apprentice experience so he is no slouch on the drums either. I spoke with him after the performance and he commented that he usually injects a bit of humor into his shows, but as with many things, Semba eclipses him.

It is really a pity that more venues didn’t get a chance to take advantage of this collaboration. But with that in mind, since the group has so recently practiced and Kenny said he hoped it wouldn’t be too many more years before he got to perform the works again, I am making a rare appeal for people to contact them and book the performance. You won’t be disappointed with the quality of the show, I assure you. If you are looking for some outreach/educational services, Kenny is really top notch at these things. He also has a lot of experience integrating other performance groups into his concerts (or himself into theirs, as the case may be.)

Green Papers-Not What I Thought They Were About

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Due to the imminent failure of my refrigerator’s compressor, I don’t have as much time to devote to the old blog as I had hoped.

With that in mind, I wanted to direct people’s attention to Americans for the Arts’ efforts at creating a conversation around green papers on topics of importance in the arts. Given the whole push for environmentally friendly activities, I initially thought a green paper was essentially an attempt to issue a white paper on good conservation practices.

It turns out, a green paper is actually a policy document similar to a white paper, only less binding. Who knew? I mean, there are ribbons of every color for every cause, I thought this was a similar attempt.

In any case, Americans for the Arts’ are making a big effort to have substantive conversations on many topics across the next year. In their definition:

“Green Papers are short, easy to read, visions of the future meant to inspire a nationwide dialogue on the future of the arts. As a way to celebrate the successes of the past 50 years in the arts field, Americans for the Arts has collected Green Papers from a variety of national arts service organizations and peer groups representing different perspectives and disciplines.”

Currently their topics include:

The Future of…

* Art Therapy
* Artists’ and Arts Organizations’ Preparedness and Emergency Response
* Artists’ Residency Programs
* Arts and Disability
* Arts Education
* Arts in Healthcare
* Arts Learning for Children/Youth
* Community Arts Education
* Cultural Democracy
* Dance Education
* Leadership for the Arts
* Jazz
* Preservation
* Private Sector Support for the Arts
* Public Art
* Public Voice in Arts Advocacy
* State Arts Agencies
* Strings
* Symphony Music
* Digital Infrastructure for the Creative Economy
* Theatre
* Urban Municipal Arts Agencies

They want people to get involved and contribute to the conversation. I wonder if they also need people to lead the conversations. You can’t tell from the list here, but there are no links to pages for Art Therapy, Arts and Disability, Jazz, State Arts Agencies, Symphony Music and Theatre. I don’t see a call for leaders, though I certainly may have missed it. Most of the Green Papers were rolled out on February 16, perhaps the leaders for the unactivated sections weren’t immediately available to discuss those areas.

I also am curious to know why there is someone leading Strings but not Symphony Music and why there is a Dance Education category, but no Dance. Guess I have to stick around, read and ask these questions.

Oh yeah, and where is the paper on environmental sustainability in the arts! 😉

Trash Talkin’ About The Arts

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First it was Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art wagering paintings on the outcome of the Super Bowl. Now I hear Dallas and Ft. Worth are talking smack about which of them has better cultural assets.

Please people, art is only demeaned by using it as a prop in a bet or a gauge of greatness. Oh. Well, actually I guess that is where a great deal of it obtains its value from.

I think a lot of us would be pleased to have our communities talking about how much better the arts and culture are here than in the next place over. There are sports rivalries from high school to professional levels and the fear/pride of someone else getting there first got us to the moon. Without evoking the old “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we…” trope, cultural rivalries may be something to inspire locally.

You wouldn’t want to compare yourself to New York City, because as evidenced by the end of the Dallas-Ft. Worth piece, you can’t compete with them for culture or condescension. But it could be mutually beneficial to get into a friendly rivalry with a similar municipality/county/town across the state or across state lines. Something that drives both locations to make progress against the other–but also celebrate the other’s successes, perhaps begrudgingly.

In the best of worlds, both locations might advocate for funding for the other, writing letters on their behalf. Because of course, the other guys may be more uncouth, but they are still a sight better than places X, Y and Z. If they were distant enough from each other not to overlap their audiences, some of the organizations could block book the same artists and then quiz the artists about whose theatre was nicer, whose audiences were more enthusiastic, etc. Done good naturedly, it could make artists excited to visit the other location. If the story about Philadelphia area theatres sharing the same production is any indication of the future, attempts at oneupmanship may just add to the fun.

My technical director does a version of this with the technical director at a partner organization. They send the company members to do strange things to the other one. He even has me holding up groups’ departures until he can instruct them in proper execution.

Everybody wins if both communities invest themselves in the rivalry. In addition to getting people excited about what might be coming and how they might top the other guys at their own game, it also gets people looking around for something of value to boast about in their community. Soon you get around to boasting about the quilts in all the bed and breakfasts having been created by a local artist whose quilts appeared in a show at the Smithsonian. Then you start to realize just how great it is to live where you do and how many extraordinarily talented people you never knew you had has neighbors.

My First Solicited Book Review

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Disclaimer
I recently received a request from the authors of Performing Arts Management: A Handbook of Professional Practices to review the book. (Actually, it was from one of their student assistants.) While I have read and summarized books on this blog before, they have been books I have been interested in reading rather than ones I was solicited to read. The only consideration received for this review was a free copy of the book. When I was asked if I would like to read the book, I told them I was interested in learning more, but made no promises I would write a review, much less say anything nice about it.

My Approach
I am not going to even attempt to approximate the format or voice of some of the more prestigious book reviews. Mainly my approach is going to be as a person who used theatre management texts both as a student and as a professor, seasoned with my experience working in the industry.

Overall, Great
By and large I thought the book was really excellent as a resource. Nearly every time I made a note that they hadn’t covered a topic, I later came across a chapter segment where they handled that subject in great detail. The authors, Tobie Stein and Jessica Bathurst, conducted a massive number of interviews over a number of years which yield a great deal of practical advice.

Weaknesses First
Most of this entry is going to praise the book so I thought I would get the few criticisms out of the way first. Though they were extremely thorough and detailed in most areas, one of the subjects that I would have liked to see covered was volunteer recruitment and the care and handling thereof. This includes board recruitment. Given the importance of these two groups and their comprehensive coverage of so many other areas, I was really surprised there was very little about recruitment, cultivation and retention of volunteers.

New York City Is The Center
The other thing is that the book is VERY New York City and theatre oriented. This is probably no surprise given the authors live and work in New York and Brooklyn. Many of the people and prominent organizations they need to interview are located there. There are mentions of arts organizations outside of New York like the Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theatre and New England summer stock theatres, but everything seemed to come back to New York. Discussion of Las Vegas focussed on how Broadway shows were abridged for Vegas audiences. There are interviews with people from other disciplines certainly, but so much seemed to orient on theatre.

The section on touring seemed to assume that the reader would be presenting a touring play or musical. In some regard, these are the best disciplines to cover because all the unions potentially involved gives something of a “worst case scenario” of the issues that might need to be addressed in a tour. The options of music and dance are mentioned and some of the agents interviewed mention the dance companies they represent. But the focus was so heavily on plays and musicals, I am afraid students using the book might think that is the only sort of touring that goes on.

I was also concerned that people who intended to work in other parts of the country and present differ types of performance may feel the book didn’t contain anything of value for them. I think this is especially true these days when arts organizations have to be more nimble with the type of shows they present and produce. At the very least, it would have been nice to have a contract for a dance tour or musical group included in the examples at the end of the touring chapter.

No, Performing Arts Management Isn’t Boring
The final thing I thought was a weakness for the book was employing the “professional input quote” technique in the first chapter. For most of the book, these quotes are extremely valuable and add great insight. I will even mention a couple instances later. In the first chapter, it drags it down. Here is an example on the second page of the chapter. In the first full paragraph starting with “Commercial producers organize…” The authors took three different interviews with people in different times and places and made it sound like they were participating in the same discussion.

As I read, I could see this book from the student’s point of view. If these were the sort of discussions arts managers had, the job was deadly boring. What was quoted weren’t interesting anecdotes, but rather dry definitions of commercial theatre that were probably better just stated outright rather than quoted. These definitions were made more difficult to comprehend by the inclusion of lengthy background information on the person being quoted. Do I really need to know that Sean Patrick Flahaven is Managing Director of the Melting Pot Theatre, a small off-Broadway non-profit producing theatre to absorb the fact that “The goals of the commercial venture are to first payback its investors, then make a profit and then make something with artistic integrity.” That is his only contribution on that page and he doesn’t appear again until three pages later.

As I have have mentioned, the practice of quoting people is very valuable throughout the rest of the book. There are times later in the book when quotes are also used to provide dry definitions, but they appear amid varied information and citations. But at the time, I was just dreading the whole book was going to be like the first chapter and wondered what I had gotten myself into when I agreed to read the book.

Where It Was Strong
Okay, having gotten that out of the way. I was really impressed by a lot in the book. It was much better than the text I had learned from *mumble* years ago. The comments from different arts professionals interspersed throughout the chapters made good on the promise of the book’s title to discuss the practice of arts managers.

Producer Richard Frankel’s story about how Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman turned the process around and “auditioned” producers for the production of The Producers was great. The way he described the lengths he went to make his proposal stand out was reminiscent of the things actors will do to get themselves remembered at auditions.

Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Peter Gee discussion of the way they decided to furlough employees in the wake of the financial downturn following September 11 was very relevant to the current times.

Well Supported and Designed
Every chapter has examples appropriate to the subject matter. Many right from the people cited in the chapter. I was impressed with the amount of material included in some of the chapters. Charts, graphs, spreadsheets, etc from multiple organizations were included in many chapters so that the student has examples from groups of different sizes and budgets to compare.

The thing I appreciated in terms of classroom activities was that there were discussion questions and occasionally activities/exercises after every section of a chapter. I know as a student that I would skip over the questions at the end of a chapter unless otherwise assigned. The placement of these questions are good on many levels: They are harder for the student to avoid. If a student doesn’t quite understand what they should derive from a section, the questions immediately emphasize what concepts were important in the preceding text. The questions are valuable to a professor for the same reason–if students don’t seem to grasp a concept, the questions are readily available to facilitate learning and reduce pressure to think of discussion topics to lead students to comprehension.

Clear Investment of Time
What impressed me most was the time spent on some of the subject areas. In text books I have encountered before, mission statements received a few paragraphs. In this book, there was an entire chapter on crafting mission statements and how they fed into visions statements and formulation of organizational strategy.

The legal considerations surrounding the decision to found a for or not-for-profit also received an entire chapter. Included was information on filing for non-profit status, including the forms needed and the time line for gaining state and federal approval of your application. While I said I was disappointed that board recruitment wasn’t covered, I thought the book did a very thorough job discussing bylaws and board structure and responsibilities.

I also really appreciated the treatment the book gave Educational Programs. They talked about structure and how to set them up. Included were tips on creating professional development opportunities for teachers and teaching artists. There were some nice examples of program evaluation forms at the end of the chapter.

Since many of my duties include facility management, I was happy to see a chapter on that topic. The examples of forms and policies at the end of the chapter were as long as the chapter itself. There was a chapter devoted entirely to labor relations familiarizing the reader with pretty much every organization representing artists and labor that one could conceivably ever deal with.

I was also impressed by the amount of time the authors devoted to discussing how a agent puts a tour together in the touring chapter. I have never seen the process covered in a text book before, much less in such detail. (I have also engaged the artists represented by one of the agents so I was glad to see him getting so much space.)

I think the strongest statement on the reality of the arts was that the longest chapter in the book was on how to develop a funding base followed in length by the chapter on ticket selling strategies. Again, there were a lot of good examples at the end of the chapters and the authors really encouraged people to take a realistic view of their organization and place in the community when it came to positioning themselves as a cause worth supporting and patronizing.

Good As General Resource, But What About The Students?
Most of the textbook could serve as a general resource for anyone becoming involved with presenting and/or producing performances. And of course, since that is the goal of many students who will use the book, it succeeds in that respect. But for as long as I have been involved in the performing arts, there were a few sections that provided entirely new information to me (e.g.- detailed discussion of non-profit incorporation process). So I will be holding on to this copy.

The one chapter that is particularly valuable to students though was on internships. One of the biggest challenges for students is getting a meaningful experience out of their internship. Not only does the book come right out and say this, but like the rest of the text, student anecdotes about their interning experiences fill the chapter. There is a detailed discussion of how to seek and land internships as well as what to expect.

Should It Be Included?
This chapter also delves into organizational dynamics a little bit too. This is an area I was a little on the fence about in respect to whether more should have been included. Some arts management texts I have seen do include a discussion of this topic. Is it crucial to learn if you are getting into performing arts management, especially given the length of the book already? That is hard to say. While we are all generally subconsciously aware of organizational dynamics operating around us, I personally found it helpful to have the different ways decisions are made in an organization pointed out to me when I was in school. Given the informal structure of many arts organizations, there are often systems in place by which things get accomplished which have no relation at all to job titles.

So anyway, there is its. Performing Arts Management: A Handbook of Professional Practices by Tobie S. Stein and Jessica Bathurst. It seems a valuable resource thanks to an incredible amount of research and interviewing. (The footnotes for each chapter will knock your socks off.) I plan to keep my copy for quite awhile.

Information You Can Use: Tax Treaties and 30% Withholding

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I was recently fortunate enough to get into a conflict with my disbursing office on the subject of the 30% withholding for foreign performers.

Well, admittedly, I didn’t feel lucky at the time. The whole issue is very confusing and time consuming. However, the outcome is such that I am a good deal wiser and more informed about the process. And more importantly, I managed with the help of the artist’s agent and the IRS to secure full payment for the foreign performers.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the issue, count yourself lucky but also be aware that you may become embroiled in a situation requiring you to withhold 30% of an artist’s fee in the future in the absence of a treaty or the proper tax paperwork. I did a couple entries about five years ago which you may want to take a look at to gain some background.

The group we were looking to bring is coming from New Zealand. Their agent was on the ball and sent me the requisite tax paperwork claiming exemption back this summer. Not wanting to have any problems crop up when it came time to send the deposit, at the end of July I sent a memo accompanying the paperwork which included the details of the engagement asking if the 30% would be withheld. I was told it wouldn’t be. It wasn’t until the check was cut and on its way over to me that the decision was made to cancel that check and issue another one less 30%.

At question was Article 7 of the US-New Zealand Tax Treaty which reads:

“The business profits of a Contracting State shall be taxable only in that state unless the enterprise carries on business in the other Contracting State through a permanent establishment situated therein. If the enterprise carries on business as aforesaid, the business profits of the enterprise may be taxed in the other State but only much of them as is attributable to that permanent establishment. “

The agent provided an interpretation where the first Contracting State was NZ. Our disbursing office interpreted the first Contracting State to be the U.S. and deemed the performance to be goods “created” in the U.S.

In came the IRS to the rescue! You won’t see that phrase too much in life so let me say it again. In came the IRS to the rescue!

The Central Withholding Agreements office provided the following guidance which they have given me permission to reprint for your edification. Be aware that all countries have different tax treaties, but many of them are very similar to the one the US has with New Zealand so this information can be applicable in many cases.

In the following, “business entity” refers to a production company or other type of operation which owns the rights to the production and performances being presented. The presumption here is that the artists/performers are either employees or contract players for the business entity, having no ownership interest or risk from loss in the production, thus making the business entity, rather than a venue or other payer, the withholding agent for payments to the artists. Payments to these performers would be subject to rules, regulations, and treaty considerations for the individuals as artists. The business entity may apply for a tax treaty benefit with regards to payments made to the business entity if the business entity is permanently located in a country that has a tax treaty with the United States.

A valid withholding certificate, W-8BEN, presented by the business entity to the venue is used to claim a tax treaty benefit for Business Profits. CAVEAT: The business entity MUST have a US Employer ID Number on the form W-8BEN to qualify for the exemption, otherwise 30% of gross income is required to be withheld and deposited with the US Treasury on behalf of the business entity.

Tax Treaties between the US and other countries are worded so that each country reads it and approaches it as a reciprocal agreement. In each case, the “Contracting State” is the country of residence of the business entity and the “other Contracting State” is the country in which they are performing services for remuneration.

Therefore, a US business entity applying Article 7 of the US-NZ tax treaty would use the US as “Contracting State” and New Zealand as the “other Contracting State” thereby claiming exemption from tax in NZ but being subject to full taxation in the US. The business entity could not claim exemption if they had a permanent establishment in NZ.

SIMILARLY, the NZ business entity would flip-flop the terminology taking NZ as the “Contracting State” and the US as the “other Contracting State” thereby claiming exemption from US taxation and subjection to full taxation in NZ. The business entity could not claim exemption if they had a permanent establishment in the US.

As a result, a non-resident alien business entity as described above will provide to the venue a Form W-8BEN claiming the business profits tax treaty provision. The venue is relieved from any withholding responsibilities for payments to the business entity.

The business entity is still required to withhold and deposit on any payments made to or for the benefit of the actual performers.

For the withholding requirements on the individual non-resident alien artists or athletes, you may contact the IRS at CWA.Program@IRS.gov

It should be noted, that while the payment may be exempt from the 30% withholding, the foreign company must still deduct U.S. taxes from payments made to their performers. More information on this may be found on the Artists from Abroad website.

Volunteering Your Way to #1

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I was listening to Andrew Taylor’s interview with Artsjournal.com founder/editor Doug McLennan today. During the interview McLennan mentioned all the ways in which organizations were creating online communities to help them achieve things. One of the ways he mentioned people’s contributions were rewarded was via a ranking system to show who had been most productive.

I started thinking about whether this might be a useful way for arts organizations to motivate volunteers. At one time, I had heard that creating contests and achievement awards for volunteers could be counterproductive in terms of motivating and retaining volunteers. I wondered if the new online rewards environment may have changed this. After some reading and thinking on the matter, I decided a ranking system is probably still not useful in many of the traditional functions of an arts organization.

One of the things I read which confirmed my recollection advising against rankings is that many volunteers are motivated by other factors than rankings. Also, different people have different ranges of ability. If someone is providing assistance because they believe in the organization but is in a situation where recognition is accorded to those who are hustling for first place, they may become disheartened. One suggestion I read was to have people compete against their own old milestones. Online communities have a certain anonymity that can insulate one from emotional investments. This may not be the case when a volunteer is working to benefit people and causes with which they can personally interact and experience.

There is also the issue that online contributions can be made on ones own schedule. Involvement and duration are self selected. Whereas many arts organizations engage volunteers during certain hours and events. There is also often a person acting as a gatekeeper determining who gets to contribute and when. A person striving to be number one may find time constraints and scheduling favoritism shown others inhibits their ambitions.

Scoring people for activities that aren’t constrained too much by time deadlines may be still possible. You can open up archives and newspaper/props storage and just let people go at it cataloging and organizing things on their own schedule. Though physically getting in each other’s way in cramped storage areas is also a problem that online activities don’t face now that most people have fairly speedy bandwidth.

If anyone has any feedback in terms of reward systems that were meaningful and didn’t alienate volunteers, ideas for ways to motivate volunteers given the expectations of the internet age or even tasks you can turn to the internet group mind to accomplish (like designing Drew McManus’ Twitter page) I would love to hear them.

Emotional Satisfaction

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A two years ago I had been entranced by a comment Neill Roan made about arts administrators being so emotionally satisfied with their jobs, they didn’t feel the need to keep current on the latest literature and theories about arts administration. Earlier this year, I was in touch with Neill on another matter and asked him about the source he had cited. The book was Human Sigma by John Fleming and Jim Asplund.

Human Sigma and Emotional Satisfaction
I had assumed Human Sigma would be about psychology or the biological factors which emphasize or inhibit our actions. Instead, the book is a response to the Six Sigma process which the authors feel is detrimental to employee and customer interactions. Six Sigma seeks to reduce inefficiencies in the workplace. The authors note that human interactions, especially those with customers, are inherently inefficient and trying to make them otherwise can be alienating.

Biology does actually wield a lot of clout in our decision making processes. The authors cite NYU neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux who,

“has argued that it is much easier for emotional responses to influence our thinking than for rational responses to temper our emotions. This is because the neural pathways that extend from the emotional system to the cognitive or thinking system of the brain are wider and faster than those that extend from the cognitive system back to the emotional processing areas.”

This is a contributing factor to the field of behavioral economics which examines why people don’t always behave rationally in their own best interests. The book mostly focuses on employee and customer interactions. My intention is to talk about some of the things that caught my interest in this and future entries.

Even though the book doesn’t explicitly address how high emotional satisfaction can cause people to–well, it is difficult to find the right word because most either connote willful or unconscious neglect or incompetence, let’s say overlook—the need to keep abreast of latest developments, there is a lot be learned about how people make their decisions. In fact, some of this might help explain why people choose to devote themselves to causes with low material rewards like the arts in the first place.

Satisfaction Ain’t Enough
About 10 years ago I went to a session on customer service where the speaker said that satisfaction and competitive price doesn’t contribute to a long term relationship with a customer. She noted that people who were satisfied with the service they received would still defect to a competitor. The book breaks this down on a finer level distinguishing between those who are emotionally satisfied and those who are rationally satisfied. Those who are emotionally satisfied with a company have a far greater investment in the company than those who are rationally satisfied.

What surprised me was that those who are rationally satisfied “behave not any differently than customers who are dissatisfied.” They use the example of a credit card company. Those who were emotionally satisfied spent an average of $251/month and used the card 3.1 times a month. Those who were rationally satisfied spent an average of $136/month and used the card 2.5 times each month. Those who were dissatisfied also spent $136/month and used the card 2.2 times.

The authors make the point that tending to a person’s emotional satisfaction can actually enhance their material value to your company. Investment in relationships is an investment in the financial health of your organization. We in the arts should understand this because of our constant efforts to woo and maintain relationships with donors. Even though we have a list of benefits we provide for different levels of support, we will go above and beyond to stay in a donor’s good graces.

The example of the credit card company was really apt in my case. I just canceled the card I had for 20 years because I felt the card company violated our relationship. I started the card with a $500 limit in 1989 and had gradually built it up to nearly $30,000 after the last two decades. After the fiscal crisis in 2008, they cut my limit by more than half despite my excellent credit. I never needed anywhere near the limit, but it was a point of pride for me that I had built it up to that level. Not an easy thing to build excellent credit while working in the arts.

There was also some deceit a couple years back when Bank of America bought the credit card company. They sent me a letter saying my card number had been compromised. When I called to find out who had been lax with my card information so that I could avoid the company, they gave me the run around before finally admitting everyone got the letter as an incentive to move to the Bank of America card.

That episode made me leery, but it was the credit limit cut that sent me into the arms of my credit union. I tolerated all sorts of rate hikes and the suspicious changes of payment due dates, but when they attacked the source of my pride it was over.

When I called to cancel the card, they didn’t even try to stop me. I have heard stories about companies being willing to reduce interest rates and do other things to keep customers, but they didn’t even ask me to reconsider after I told them my reason. I wonder if they have received so many calls they have learned that there is no use in talking people out of it.

Substitution Blues

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Ken Davenport posted some interesting information about the impact of absenteeism in Broadway shows on Producer’s Perspective. He was curious to learn if the need to have an understudy stand in was having an impact on audiences so he commissioned someone to study the question.

The impetus for this was the increasing rate of absenteeism in Broadway shows, particularly West Side Story. I had read the NY Post article Ken links to back in August and I couldn’t believe there was such a high rate of absences given that there are no lack of performers who are just as talented waiting to step on to the Broadway stage. Cameron Mackintosh did clean house on Les Miserables when he felt the quality was flagging so it seemed pretty risky for actors to appear to be slacking off. In retrospect, I suppose there is always the teensy little chance that the Post sensationalized the problem beyond the reality.

While some respondents to the survey liked the idea of an understudy having a chance to surpass the star, absenteeism was generally seen in a negative light. The perception was that it is becoming more prevalent and that the quality is not the same. Some respondents felt that they had to apologize to the guests they asked along or advise their friends not to attend the show. On the whole, people said they are becoming more cautious about their ticket purchases.

Davenport suggests the Actors Union and Producers get together to explore the problem. It should be noted that his survey results said people thought there was more absenteeism, but there was no study done on the question of whether there actually is more absenteeism over all. Though as a practical matter, the truth has little bearing if audiences have decided the problem is widespread and are acting accordingly. As Davenport suggests, better training of understudies may begin to reverse the perception that understudies are offering a vastly inferior product.

One of the commenters on the entry suggests that the understudy notice in the program book may have a psychological effect prejudicing a person against the show before the curtain rises. (Though I have attended a show where there was a small flurry of the notices falling out when I opened the Playbill. That certainly didn’t help my confidence.) Of course, eliminating proper notice probably runs afoul New York’s fraud laws.

While reading the entry, I recalled Holly Mulcahy’s September column on The Partial Observer about substitutions in orchestra programs. I wondered if the practice of changing up a concert offering was undermining confidence in orchestras as much as changes in casts are in Broadway shows. And has anyone ever done a study on that?

Neither Carrot Nor Stick Does Creativity Make

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A couple links as complement to my entry yesterday on motivation, customer service and volunteers.

First, Americans for the Arts, hearing President Obama’s call for Americans to volunteer more has created a website at which people can share their stories, pictures and videos – United We Serve.

A newly posted video on TED.com has Dan Pink talking about motivation. He provides some interesting findings about motivation, namely that when it comes to performing creative tasks conditional rewards (if you complete X by Y, you will receive Z bonus) are not as effective as intrinsic rewards in obtaining results. The conditional rewards actually get in the way of creative thinking. This may explain why arts people are able to create in the absence of monetary reward.

I wouldn’t let this get around lest people insist that paying you more may rob you of your creativity.

He makes a link to our current financial difficulties saying that there is a disconnects between what science has known for over 40 years and what businesses does, which is essentially the carrot and stick approach.

Pink says the new operating model should be based on:
“Autonomy- Urge to Direct Our Own Lives
Mastery- Desire to get better and better at something that matters, and
Purpose- The Yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”

Sounds a lot like the way arts organization and non-profits have been running things for awhile. If the next wave of economy is indeed going to be Creative, then perhaps non-profits and those who work for them will have something of increasing value to offer. We just need to understand what we do, how to do it well and how to teach/model it for others.

A Folding Table, A Jug of Water and Thou Sweating In The Parking Lot

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I am reading a book about customer service right now. My intention is to report some observations on the text as a whole at some point. However, I saw an illustration of one of the points made in an early chapter today. The book had noted the veracity of “time flies when you are having fun” pointing out that a well designed wait that is 30 minutes long can actually seem shorter than a poorly designed wait that is only a third as long. Because human perception is involved, you can ruin a relationship with a customer in the latter situation even though you significantly reduced their wait time.

Our campus is in a situation with many strikes against it. Budgets have been cut so staffing is down but enrollment is up adding an additional 1500 student to our commuter campus. Alas, the heretofore un(der) used overflow parking is now inaccessible due to long delayed construction projects.

There wasn’t much to be done about the parking unfortunately, but someone got organized this year and had information tables distributed about the campus with all sorts of hand outs and big coolers of water. There were also large color campus maps that someone slapped up on the sides of buildings so people didn’t have to seek out kiosks to figure out where they were.

I looked around wondering why no one had thought to do this before. People had always volunteered to serve an hour or so on the welcome committee but it was never this organized or welcoming. People stood around smiling, answering questions and engaging people who looked lost. Now there is a table identifiable as a source of information from a distance that is stocked with information—and most importantly after trekking in from that parking space in the hinterlands you stalked for 30 minutes–water to drink.

While I walked around comparing what I was seeing to previous years, I realized that tweaking your customer service up a level or two doesn’t just help your relationship with those you serve. It also sends a message to other employees about the commitment of the organization. Memos about improving service are useful and identify areas for improvement. In this case, there were no memos that went out about how things were going to be done better—it was just done.

I am obviously someone whose business it is to think about improving customer interactions so I notice such things. But I have to believe that others noticed the improvement, how it fit in the context of other recent changes and what it all says about the direction of the organization.

I also had some insight into the issue of providing volunteers with opportunities to feel they are doing important work. I have never really had much desire to volunteer for welcoming slots before. Today when I witnessed the increased effort at hospitality, I had a desire to participate next time around. (Just have to remember not to schedule sending the brochure to the printer, interviewing a ticket office clerk and starting internet sales on this day next time.) In previous years, my impression of the job was that it provided a pleasant first impression of the institution and directions to buildings. With the addition of tables, maps and water jugs, suddenly it seems like an important contribution to relieving anxious new arrivals.

We are planning a volunteer luncheon/training in a few weeks so perhaps I am in a receptive mindset on the subject. We have been thinking about how to design the volunteering experience so people have a greater feeling of doing something of value. We have been discussing increasing volunteers’ scope of responsibility and authority. I believe we also have to consider if these duties will allow them to feel they are providing a service patrons find valuable. Though certainly, people volunteer for different reasons and more authority may be a bigger motivator than being useful.

Will Artists Save The Motor City?

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NPR had a story on All Things Considered yesterday about people moving to Detroit lured by dirt cheap property costs and a belief in the potential the city has. (Listen to the story rather reading the text which doesn’t accurately reflect the audio.) Among those interviewed are a small group of artists hoping to establish a little colony that “are interested in working on houses but also interested in working in social ways. Be a part of the neighborhood themselves..”

It will be interesting to see if they bring vibrancy to part of the city…and resist being displaced by any gentrification they may inspire.

I haven’t really seen it as part of my career path, but I always thought if I had an opportunity like this and the resources to pull it off, I would buy up buildings or warehouses and turn them into spaces artists could practice their craft. Even though I am in the performing arts, I never really considered opening a performance space. I think I would have rehearsal spaces for theatre, dance and music as well as studios for visual artists. A good situation would also allow me to get an apartment building so that visual artists could be in residence a few months while they created and then move on. With other artists around, they might find inspiration and collaboration in the people and environment without actually having to move permanently.

While Detroit offers this sort of opportunity, I wonder if I have the energy to make something like this happen. I live a fairly spartan existence so the prospect of living in the back while renovating the front doesn’t bother me. I just don’t know if I can be a one man renovation squad for the time it would take to get things to a place where the project could start paying for the next phase. That is assuming enough artists move to Detroit interested in utilizing the spaces.

But as I said, since I never really saw this as part of my career path, I haven’t invested much thought in how I might accomplish it. The idea has mostly been idle speculation born of visiting many towns and cities that seemed to lack good rehearsal facilities for the individual/small group artists.

I figure it is worthwhile posting the idea here on the chance it inspires someone to explore doing it in their own town, say Detroit.

Human Touch Is Always Important

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Back in March I had mentioned that we were in the process of re-evaluating our emergency procedures and noted we had recently had automated external defibrillators (AED) installed.

If you aren’t familiar with them, AEDs are designed to save lives by essentially talking untrained people through the process of shocking a person’s heart back into a normal rhythm. The machine can detect a normal heartbeat so that you can’t actually use it on someone who doesn’t need it. (Such as part of a fraternity prank.) In fact, it is apparently mandated that the machine rather than a human make the decision as to whether a shock should be administered. The devices were first deployed around O’Hare airport and were such a success at saving lives, you can see them placed all over these days.

I was refreshing my CPR/First Aid training today in a session that also dealt with AED use. Due to my impression that the machines empowered an untrained person to save a life, I was surprised to learn that CPR training was an essential component of AED use and training. The AED isn’t of any use on those whose hearts have stopped but can help if your efforts at CPR have managed to establish a rhythm. (Our model at least coaches you on whether your compressions are deep enough and provides metronome cues to keep you on pace.) Of course, CPR should be started while you are waiting for the AED to be retrieved.

There are apparently companies that eschew the CPR training and insist only on the AED training depending pretty much entirely on its abilities and those of anyone who may be passing at the time. I don’t care if the machine gets to decide whether to administer a shock. Given how much arts organizations depend on the goodwill of that community, I can’t imagine eliminating human contact in favor of a machine is wise when it comes to life saving. It was a good idea to have some CPR trained staff before the AED came on the scene and it still seems prudent even with the presence of equipment that greatly increases survival rates.

Another interesting tidbit I learned, though I can’t attest to its veracity, is that most of the first AEDs manufactured were red. Given the association of red with emergency services, this seems logical. According to our trainer, lay people were less likely to use the AEDs because they perceived them to be emergency personnel only equipment. Seems reasonable, but maybe he was just trying convince us to accept ugly neon green AEDs.

While that little fact has nothing to do with the importance of training our staffs, it does illustrate just how important even the most subtle design choices can influence people. (And lends credence to the consultants who get paid to obsess over what tie a political candidate is going to wear.)

The Bad Makes Me Look Oh So Good

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Dan Ariely did a talk for the 2008 TED conference about how irrational we are when making decisions. The whole talk is quite entertaining. What really caught my attention comes around 12:30 where he talks about how a useless option can make other options look more valuable.

He uses an example of a mistake on the Economist.com. They were offering an internet only subscription for $59, a print subscription for $125 and a print and internet subscription for $125. After talking to the Economist and learning it was apparently a mistake, he did an experiment and offered the subjects these options. The web and print subscription option was overwhelmingly favored and no one wanted the print only subscription.

Seeing that the print only subscription was not valued, he got rid of it and did the experiment with the internet only option and internet and print option. This time, the internet only option was the clear favorite. He said the print only option was useless “in the sense nobody wanted it. But it wasn’t useless in the sense that it helped people figure out what they wanted.”

He goes on to say that because we really don’t know our preferences that well, we are susceptible to all these influences.

He offers another amusing example where he has computer generated pictures of two men, Tom and Jerry and he asks people which one they would prefer to date. In half of the cases he adds a third picture with Tom’s face Photoshopped to look less attractive and the other half where is the third picture is Jerry’s face altered to look unattractive. In those cases with the ugly Tom, people preferred regular Tom over Jerry and those cases that offered ugly Jerry, people preferred Jerry. The less attractive option actually made the choice it most resembled appear more appealing than a dissimilar option.

These revelations made me wonder if these behaviors could be used in subscription and ticket sales. Offer people options that don’t have value to nudge them toward purchasing more a bigger subscription package than they might have. I don’t know that it would transform a lot of single ticket buyers into subscription buyers unless we are wrong about flexibility being more important than price. A mini-subscription that offered flexibility and appeared to be a great value might have some success in getting single ticket purchasers to commit.

I also wonder if offering non-premium options with your show helps make them look more attractive than your competitors’. Ariely talks about another experiment where they offered people the option of an all-inclusive trip to Rome or Paris. In this case it is really apples and oranges since the two cities are in different countries have have so many different attributes to value. Once they add the option of going to Rome but having to pay for coffee in the morning, suddenly people preferred Rome over Paris by a larger degree due to the lesser option being available.

It doesn’t seem logical to me to think that given the option between the symphony and a free cocktail at intermission and the opera and a free cocktail at intermission, that people would flock to the orchestra if a no cocktail option for the same price was offered. But as Ariely points, out the decision being made are not entirely rational.

One other element that gives me pause is that all these results seem to be theoretical. No one had to commit time or money to their decision. Still, it is an interesting thing to consider since being theoretically more attractive will help your organization remain in people’s minds if they don’t necessarily commit. Those who see your brochure this year may be struck by what a good deal your shows are. Even if they don’t commit to buying tickets this year, that positive impression may keep you near the fore when they are deciding to attend next year.

Imagine The Kids After Salvador Dali Watched Them

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I recently became aware of a company that is offering artists in NYC and Chicago a flexible alternative to the waiting tables option. Sitters Studio provides babysitting work to performing and visual artists. The parents get a babysitter who offers creative activities to their children. The artists get an opportunity to employ their training and perhaps hone their skills and approach if they have any plans for bringing arts and arts education to children and families.

Sitters Studio trains their people in CPR, does background checks and bonds them but then appears to act as a clearing house for jobs. The sitters get a minimum of 4 hours pay in cash at the end of a session and help with cab fare after 9 pm. Rates start at $18 in NYC and $15 in Chicago. The interesting thing about the NYC side is that they seem to offer their services on something of a subscription basis. For $200/year you get priority service and a better rate than single time callers. They also offer cancellation forgiveness and bulk purchase and referral incentives.

All in all, it sounds like a great idea for all involved, especially if it results in kids growing up to appreciate the arts. The company provides their babysitters with a “Tote of Toys” that according to this story, serves as an ice break and source of ideas for the babysitting experience.

“We’ve given the sitters something from every art medium,” says Wilson. “We give them something that’s from a visual art, a theatrical art, a dance discipline and also from the musical discipline and we really find that it’s a great starting off point for the kids to engage in play.”

There seems to be a fair bit of potential in this company both as a business and as a way for advancing the interests of the arts community. There is certainly always an opportunity for conflicts of interest with people taking advantage of their close relationship with a family to sell/promote their personal work. But there is also opportunity for unified action. Last December all the babysitters had their charges working on cards for the armed forces overseas. I imagine that periodically Sitters Studio could sponsor some other unified initiative that reinforced the value of the arts in people’s lives without being pedantic.

Merging Administrative Functions

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On occasion I cite consolidation of administrative functions as a method by which arts organizations in a community can cut costs by cooperating with one another. However, if pressed, I would have to admit that I wasn’t aware of any examples of such a thing working in practice.

So I was extremely pleased to see that the Nonprofit Law Blog has been running a series on this very subject. They cite four options that can be pursued, “an administrative collaboration, administrative consolidation, MSO (Management Service Organization), or external service provider.” The most recent entry gave an impression the series was finished but it hadn’t covered external service providers. If it does continue, I will post an update link here.

The first entry, Administrative Consolidations and Management Service Organizations covers those structures and outlines what situations they work best in.

The second entry, Joining Forces in the Back Office – Administrative Collaboration and Consolidation, talks about the collaboration and consolidation formats and presents some case studies. This is also the entry in which they define the different structures.

“According to La Piana Associates, Inc., an administrative collaboration is an informal, not necessarily enduring, arrangement to share services or expertise while each organization retains its individual decision-making power; an administrative consolidation is a more formal agreement that involves shared decision making (without changing the corporate structure) and the sharing of specific functions; an MSO is a newly created organization for the purpose of integrating administrative functions; and an external service providerinvolves the outsourcing of certain administrative elements.”

One thing I found interesting about the case study presenting in this entry was that the organization, Chattanooga Museums Collaboration achieved things you might expect- cut costs, leveraged their purchasing power, improved productivity and increased unearned income through joint fund raising activities. But the partnership also made them more competitive in the larger business landscape.

“Although the “immediate reaction is that it’s the smaller guys who are getting the benefit,” Kret corrects this misconception stating that through CMC, the Tennessee Aquarium benefits as well by generating revenue from typically nonrevenue places like accounting, increasing retention by offering key employees a higher level of compensation, and offering their employees a much more rewarding and challenging work environment.”

The third entry, Joining Forces in the Back Office – Management Service Organizations, contained a case study of an MSO formed by five social service organizations which now serves 13 groups. While MSOs are separate organizations formed to provide these services, unlike commercial payroll and human resource companies, MSOs are formed for the benefit of specific entities.

The MSO in the case study, MACC CommonWealth, has an auditor appointed by multiple boards. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, you will want to read the case study which acknowledges that serving the interests of multiple boards and CEOs is potentially fraught with peril. So far, it seems to be working.

The most recent entry notes there are many successful collaborations among non-profits across the country. The main thrust of the entry are observations of why a cooperative effort funded by the The Lodestar Foundation, was unsuccessful.

The Lodestar Foundation provides grants for collaborative efforts and their website can give you a sense of the scope of the efforts being made in this direction.

Emily Chan who wrote the series on Nonprofit Law Blog cites a number of studies and books on the subject so the entries themselves provide a good starting place for exploring the possibilities offered by one of these avenues.

Seek Investors–Just Be Careful Who You Tell

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I have often wrote about the limitations of the 501 (c) (3) non profit status for arts organizations and how there is a need for alternatives. One of the obvious alternatives is to forget about non-profit status and incorporate as a for profit venture in pursuit of your ambitions. If you are just starting out, you and your partners may not have a lot of funding to realize your dreams and decide to seek people to invest in your new company.

According to entertainment lawyer, Gordon Firemark, you want to be very careful about using the Internet to find investors. He sees ads in Internet forums and chat rooms where people are seeking investors for independent films and stage performances. Seeking investors is subject to many securities laws the costs to comply with, Firemark says, are pretty expensive for those trying to produce on a shoestring. There are exemptions that will reduce these burdens, but unfortunately they don’t allow advertising for investors.

Exemptions from Registration: Advertising not permitted.

Although there are several exemptions from registration available, those that are most commonly available to producers of entertainment arise under SEC Regulation D. Unfortunately, these exemptions are intended for private, limited offerings, rather than offers made to the general public. As such, the regulations prohibit the use of advertising in the offer and sale of the securities.

Internet postings seeking investors ARE advertisements.

Lawyers are in agreement that any communication put on the internet for the purpose of raising money via sales of securities WILL be considered an advertisement, and thus, renders the Regulation D exemptions inapplicable. Therefore, by posting in an internet forum, chat room or social networking site, producers often make things much harder for themselves.

One way he suggests to avoid this restriction is by seeking investors who will actively participate in the project. This entails its own set of problems. First, because you will have the investors scrutinizing every choice you make. Second, because the investors share in the liabilities of the project–the very thing that provides them incentive to keep a close eye on things.

There are some other options he suggests could also be available. But of course, he suggests anyone considering any of the aforementioned consult a lawyer before pursuing them.

Collective Action Report For NPAC 2008

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Last week Andrew Taylor posted an entry about the release of a report for which his students were involved collecting information at and about last summer’s National Performing Arts Convention. The report examines the capacity for the arts disciplines to engage in collective action.

As you might imagine, I found much of it very interesting. If you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, mores the pity. It is worth jumping to page 59 of the Acrobat document. The following 20 some pages have ideas for collective action on many fronts that came out of the brain storming round tables. These are not the same ideas voted as top priority items by the attendees and may represent fresh directions for you and others to embrace at national, regional and local levels.

One aspect of the convention attendees felt was lacking was a clear sense of who was going to follow up and pursue these priorities. What will likely be helpful at the next convention is if people show up to talk about their attempts to implement some of these priorities at different levels.

Plea To The Reader
If you don’t think you will read the report, at least consider reading the rest of this entry. I often include fair sized quotes that jump out at me from reports and studies because I know people don’t feel they have the time to catch up on all the reading they think they should be doing. Part of the mission of this blog is to present some concepts that perhaps you can think about during your commute if no other time presents itself. Not everything may seem that significant to you, and that’s fair. This report contained a lot of meaty observations including some things I suspected but have rarely heard discussed. So please, read on…

Boundaries
The report began by tackling a basic question–what constitutes the performing arts? In answer to the question, “When you think and talk about the ‘performing arts’ in your region, which of the following organizations do you include in your thinking?” over 50% provided answers that were “arts-focused and primarily organized as tax-exempt. Alternate venues and commercial enterprises were identified by fewer people as part of the performing arts—yet still showed up in significant numbers.”

Lest your take away from those responses is that there was a sense of exclusivity to people’s definition of the performing arts. The report notes that the subject of what constituted the boundaries of the performing arts community was frequently debated and discussed.

Internal Divisions
But heck with those perceived to be on the outside of the performing arts boundaries. There was plenty to contend with over the perceived differences between the disciplines clearly defined as being part of the performing arts.

“Despite the common ground of the nonprofit arts leaders attending the Denver convention, our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in
our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

The observation team also saw many sessions peppered with misunderstandings and different interpretations of words and concepts that are fundamental to a collective action effort. Most of these went unnoticed by the group, and unresolved by facilitators of caucus sessions….Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “….I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”

Expectation of Cross-Disciplinary Learning
That said, the report notes many went to the conference with the intent of learning about other disciplines and cultivating cross-disciplinary relationships. People were eager to learn about best practices and common challenges from other disciplines. “A full 86 percent believed that the problems and opportunities faced by a small dance company are shared more with a small theater company than with a large dance company.”

Respect to Trust
The next step toward collective action, according to the report’s author’s, is to go from respecting the other guy to trusting them.

“A full 81 and 82 percent of respondents believed leaders in the nonprofit performing arts respect each other at the national and regional/city level respectively. A lesser majority, 56 and 60 percent, believed that such leaders trust each other at the national and regional/city level. This distinction between respect and trust reinforces the distinction between acting for individual and organizational interests, and acting for the benefit of the larger community.”

Things Not Often Discussed
Two of the areas covered in the report that especially struck me were some frank discussions about diversity and the perceived role of government. Everyone talks about the need to diversify audiences and performers. In fact, most funders are interested in collecting information about racial, geographic and economic diversity of audiences and performers. What emerged in the discussion wasn’t as idealistic.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Community Engagement Approach
While some people may not be prepared to actively engage in addressing diversity in their organization, I was encouraged by the comments of one person who wasn’t talking about diversity per se. He/She did seem to embody the mindset of an organization that could achieve diversity without actively pursuing it.

“One leader notes, “That’s been one thing that we’ve been most proud of. Our whole organization takes this community engagement approach. It’s not outreach. Outreach doesn’t take into consideration who you are, what your background is, what your context is, or why people should care. That’s the fault of the old outreach concept, is saying you should come hear us, maybe we’ll come to you so you’ll come hear us. That’s missing the point, saying, ‘Where do we connect?’”

Government’s Role
In relation to the role of government (my emphasis)..

“In one intriguing disconnect, respondents in the post-convention survey hope for future NPAC connections to include elected officials from local (57 percent), state (64 percent), and national (70 percent) government. Yet not one believe such officials would influence if and how they might take action on the selected agenda items. The disconnect suggests, as we will later discuss,
that while participants see elected officials as potential focus of advocacy and engagement, they do not see them as a source of insight and knowledge—even though these actors drive the decision and governing systems that inform local policy. They are eager to talk to elected officials, but not inclined to listen

…Interestingly, some constituents with relatively greater perceived power also had relatively lower perceived knowledge of the field and its challenges (political leaders at federal, state, and local levels, for example.

From my point of view, there is a whole lot to be addressed. Quite honestly, I think this almost sums up the attitude arts organizations have toward most sources of funding. There is an eagerness to talk to funders and make your case but not a lot of willingness to have them involved in your business. Except for foundations with an arts focus, those representing funding sources don’t understand the field too well because of a desire to keep them on the fringes.

Some Tunes I Have Sung Before
There were a couple topics the report touched upon that I have addressed quite a few times in the past so I won’t get into them at length.

Lack of Knowledge
One observation that was made of convention attendees was how little knowledge people had about available resources and about how laws and policy affected those resources. The report notes that a lot of time was spent discussing how helpful it would be if some source would provide resources when in fact that very situation existed.

“These indicators suggest a systematic issue around knowledge dissemination in the field. Arts leaders either lack time or incentive to discover and use existing knowledge resources, or effective knowledge dissemination mechanisms do not exist to get this information out.”

Lack of Sleep
Which goes hand in hand with the fact most arts professionals are already over worked and may not be a wits end about how to participate in collective action.

“We have a lot of passionate and highly productive people that all tend to over-extend themselves as it is ‘for the love of their art.’ I think it is difficult for many of these same people then to prioritize what they may have to stop doing in order to thoughtfully and actively participate in this ‘national dialogue’.”

Lack of Succession
Finally, there is the issue of emerging leadership. According to the report, 79% of respondents to pre-convention surveys were worried a little to alot about identifying new blood and succession planning. At the convention however, “it was striking how little conversation focused on the discovery and development of future leaders, and the skills and abilities they might require. There were a few specific sessions that touched on the topic, but the issue received little traction or attention elsewhere.”

I imagine it comes as no surprise that the performing arts sector has quite a few issues to address. You need not have attended the convention to come to that conclusion. But since the report notes that one of the major historical hurdles to collective action has been that the various disciplines don’t sit down and talk to each other, the fact they did so and produced quite a few pages of ideas for collective action likely represents a valuable first step.

Destroy Your Way To New Audiences

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Have you been trying to attract new audiences to your organization but are at wits end to find productive programs? Have you tried open houses with barbecues, dinners before performances, cocktails after, ice cream socials, performance talks, tables at community street fairs, ticket give aways, donations to popular charities and pretty much everything inside out and in between?

How about renting a mobile shredder?

I will admit, this isn’t my idea. I saw a sign tonight inviting people to engage in some Spring cleaning and bring their sensitive documents to be shredded. While there people can participate in a potluck/streetfair type event.

It struck me that this is the type of community service an organization could offer that will NEVER in a million years show up on a survey as something you could do to help the community. It is one of those things people need but don’t realize they need when asked.

This is also the sort of thing that breaks down barriers to attendance. You advertise an open house barbecue picnic at your organization and as someone who has never been to an arts organization, I might figure the only difference between the picnic and attending a performance is good ribs. Faced with the prospect of being the only person there who doesn’t know how to speak theatre/ballet/classical music/visual art, there may still be a high anxiety factor even if I don’t have to go into the building.

A shredder truck in the parking lot on the other hand is a service I can actually use. While I am there, maybe I grab some hamburgers and look around a little. If things get a little uncomfortable, the shredder provides my excuse as I notice the line is getting shorter, excuse myself and go over there. Heck, there isn’t much danger in bringing the kids either. Even if the arts stuff doesn’t appeal to them, watching papers get consumed by a giant machine is always interesting.

In fact, if you plan some family friendly performances, be prepared to be upstaged by the shredder truck regardless of how positively inclined the parents might be toward you. All the moving parts may not be visible, but as we all know, imagination can be pretty powerful nonetheless.

The simple truth is that maybe people will come to your picnic, shred their papers and tour your spaces for five years before they show up to a performance or maybe they don’t ever come to a performance. The good will you generate and decreased intimidation factor of your building can manifest positively in other ways, including good word of mouth to other people.

Overhaul The Arts And Install New Standards

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Couple weeks back I mentioned I wanted to explore the idea of greater standards and training for administrators and board members Numa Saisselin floated in his “Arts Presenting Is Dead” piece. As one might imagine, from the number of times I have cited it, I was pleased to see Saisselin cite the Conversations With The Field study Neill Roan did for APAP which noted learning was not valued in the arts presenting field.

Saisselin feels that service organizations like APAP need to be more aggressive about identifying and contacting new entrants to the field and providing them with the basic information they will need even if the new presenter is not a member of their organization.

Just as the model of a modern presenting organization is shifting towards earned income, and on the fundraising side, earned income tactics, the model of a service organization should be shifting away from the all-access or no-access membership model, and towards an aggressive recruiting model that incorporates at least some free exchange of information.

While I agree that any organization/company/corporation is better served by actively engaging its constituencies, given the ease with which small groups can enter the field and operate on a limited basis, I am not sure how easy it might be find and identify these entities. I suppose they could start by looking through the records of where artists have recently performed in trade magazines and websites like Pollstar.

He likewise suggests that individuals avail themselves of free sources of information – “For example, Musical America, Celebrity Access and Billboard Magazine all publish free weekly newsletters by email. Countless fundraising, accounting and management firms publish their own newsletters, which often include lengthy and useful papers and articles.”

He bemoans the dearth of arts management training programs in higher education but seems to acknowledge that many working professionals don’t have the time to return to school for training. Saisselin suggests a certification system similar to one developed by the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM). I took a look at their website and it seems to be a pretty rigorous set of requirements to obtain various certifications.

Arts service agencies might do well to consider developing something similar. They have the example of the IAAM program to use as a type of template given the overlap in a number of areas. They also have the benefit of being able to consult with the existing arts management programs about the training they provide. In turn they can suggest what college students should be taught if they want to be employed. While the colleges may not be able to host classes for the busy arts professionals, they might prove good regional testing sites on weekends.

The observation Saisselin made that most interested me because I hadn’t encountered it before was in regard to board training. He makes some common observations about how poorly board members understand and are educated as to their duties. Then he relates an anecdote about a time when he and a friend were considering leaving their jobs. The friend worked for a radio station and had a fairly constructive conversation with a supervisor who understood the desire to move on and discussed the pros and cons of doing so.

Saisselin’s board was hurt that he was considering moving on and while he stayed, the dynamics between the board and himself were strained.

“….the component that is pertinent to this discussion is this: my friend’s boss was straightforward in the way he dealt with this scenario, because he worked in the same field she did, and he understood first hand why she was thinking about making a move. My board, on the other hand, with no career experience of their own in the field, responded the only way that they could: emotionally.

There is a critical weakness at the executive level of the nonprofit arts field: board members join a company at the very top of the organizational chart, but more often than not they have little or no experience in the field themselves as working professionals. Experienced board members may have vast knowledge about being a board member, but there is no way for them to personally understand the issues that professional staff members must be concerned about on a daily basis, or when thinking about their own lives and career. A board member’s personal commitment may run deep, and a paid staff member’s personal commitment may run just as deep, but the motivations of each for being involved in an organization in the first place, and for sustaining that involvement, are very different.”

Now my perception is that appointments to for profit boards aren’t necessarily made with people in the same field. Though there may be more uniformity in the way boards of widget manufacturers and banks operate than one of them and a non-profit board. The whole practice of placing inexperienced people at the top of an organizational structure may actually be flawed regardless of industry.

An emotional reaction may not be something that non profit organizations can escape. A year ago I talked about how the high emotional satisfaction people experience working in the arts may inhibit their desire to improve themselves. Boards involved with non profits may be so invested in the organization’s cause, it might be difficult to favor a rational reaction over an emotional one.

Frankly, I think other employees are likely to feel betrayed by a fellow who is letting the cause down or, given the generally poor pay and working conditions, escaping. Board members are probably more likely to be uniformly hurt than seasoned colleagues but I don’t think all bosses will be as supportive as Saisselin’s friend’s.

Saisselin extends his idea of insuring quality to the industry as a whole citing the example of the regional accrediting bodies which set the standards for institutions of higher learning. I get a little nervous at this suggestion. I am all for increasing the quality of arts organizations. I don’t know if formal accreditation is the way to go. Such a process is incredibly time consuming and diverts a lot of resources. For colleges, loss of accreditation means, among other things, loss of access to funding sources. I would be afraid that arts organizations that do good work would lose out on grants and foundation support because they didn’t have the wherewithal to complete an accreditation process. One of the biggest complaints people have about charities is the high percentage of their donation that goes toward administrative overhead. Accreditation process has to be incredibly well thought out to avoid this situation.

All this being said, Saisselin mentions that the granting process constitutes a de facto peer review system but that it is a binary result. You are either funded or not.

Beyond funding an application, or not, and in some cases providing applicants with a written summary of the panel’s comments, there are no “next steps” to assist organizations that don’t measure up, and the field at large desperately needs to take those next steps to strengthen the field at large.

There is no avoiding the fact that meeting greater standards requires increased effort above what is already being done. And there is no guarantee that meeting those standards will lead to greater organizational success. It is painfully clear to many in the entertainment industry that high quality product doesn’t necessarily draw a larger audience.

If there is an industry wide push for higher standards it is certain there will be instances of greater efficiencies, more effective leadership, constructive partnerships and more united advocacy efforts. But none of it is guaranteed to happen to you the individual or to your organization. In fact, the obscene inefficiency of your company may be revealed in the course of this movement putting you out of a job.

So what is your motivation as a belabored arts professional to join an effort that provides no surety of things improving for you? Well, that is about the same promise you had when you made the decision to devote your life to the equally abstract concept of artistic excellence.

Art. But Only If You Say So First

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All right. I realize the question “What is art?” is extremely complex on its own and talk shows, especially comedic ones, do not lend themselves to nuanced explanations. I would think a former director of the Whitney Museum could do better than definite it solely as the artist’s intention. Yet that is exactly what David Ross, said former director of the Whitney did on the Colbert show when discussing the copyright issues surrounding Shepard Fairey’s alteration of Manny Garcia’s photo of Barack Obama.

First he says Garcia’s photo is not art because Garcia considers himself to be a journalist rather than an artist. Then goes on to say “Works of arts are essentially the function of intention.” When Colbert asks if Ross, as a professional in the visual arts field, couldn’t declare Garcia’s photo art, Ross disavows any ability to do so without Garcia taking his hint to do so. Which I guess means that all that pre-Columbian pottery on display in museums isn’t art because the potters intended them to be functional and not art.

Is this some new trend in arts ethics where you respect the creator of a work’s perception about what it is they have created? If so, it doesn’t seem like everyone has gotten the message. Ray Bradbury, for example, keeps insisting Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about censorship but people continue to insist–to his face–that it is. Of course, he intended to create a work of literature. Perhaps once you label something as art, people figure you cede ownership of the interpretation.

Ross doesn’t qualify his definition as only being in this case. He openly says that even if it is completely awful, something is arts by simple virtue of a creator’s statement. Actually, like all discussions of art, I guess it isn’t quite that simple. What if two people with song writing credit make contradictory statements about what they wrote? What happens when one person calls it art and the other considers it to be an ad jingle? Plenty of classical music appears in both television commercials and in concert halls. (I can’t find it at the moment, but I have a vague recollection of a symphony orchestra programming television jingles as a concert.)

But really, none of that explains why Ross was so cagey about his answers. If anyone has some insight, I would be interested in hearing it. In the meantime, here is the clip.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama Poster Debate – David Ross and Ed Colbert
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

More Manufacturing Your Worst Enemy

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As the title of the entry implies, I did a little more digging on the subject I covered in my last entry. The author of the story I originally quoted, Kaihan Krippendorff, mentioned that he would be writing about his interview with ePrize founder, Josh Linkner, over the course of a week so I sought out the other entries. In one of the entries, Krippendorff links to the audio of his interview.

There were a couple things of note. First was a promotional service (starting around 23:00) he designed to be affordable and accessible to the owner of “Jimmy’s Pizza Shop.” ePrize’s clients essentially pool their money in order to syndicate participation in the pool drawing of promotional prizes. Presumably, you can’t promise a Ford truck if you aren’t investing as much money as Coke does (or maybe you can, I won’t make any claim of being an expert on the business model.) The small business owner can log on and guided by a web based program, design their own promotion in about 15 minutes and have it immediately go live. The drawing is legal in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

If it is as easy as Linkner says, this could be a great resource for arts organizations. You could offer subscriber and employee rewards and perhaps even show related promotions.

Back on the topic of their invented rival, Slither, Linkner verifies that my suspicion of Krippendorff taking poetic license was completely unfounded. Slither did indeed “invade” the company to commit sabotage and espionage (starts around 33:00).

There were some things said in the interview which expound on the concept of how useful an invented enemy can be to a business. One benefit to corporate culture Linkner cites is that it allows open conversation that can circumvent office politics. Normally, he says, one might be hesitant to suggest that a policy is flawed for fear they will insult the person who created it. In a meeting Linkner says he may ask how Slither approaches a problem or to talk about the one thing a Slither counterpart does better than him/her. This allows conversations about weak spots in the organization’s processes and policies and how to improve rather than criticizing something specifically and marking it for elimination.

Preparation for Conservation on Arts Education

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The topic I was going to blog on today got me thinking so much I don’t think I can coalesce my thoughts and attend to the obligations I have this evening.

I did want to mention, if you haven’t noticed that next week Artsjournal.com is hosting a debate on arts education. Being a once and hopefully future educator, I believe in preparing for discussions. In addition to pondering the issues which face the arts in relation to education while indolently laying about after Thanksgiving dinner (or industriously scrubbing the dishes.) You may also want to prepare by reading arts education blogs like Richard Kessler’s. He will be participating in the debate next week.

I also suggest my Inside the Arts neighbor Ron Spigelman’s Audience Connection’s class podcasts. Education of artists is part of arts education and the podcasts are a primary source for the questions students are being asked and are asking. Don’t be put off by the number of podcasts listed. Each one is only about 4-5 minutes long. In fact, it it is better to experience them in the context of the original entries which are here.

I always find these conversations Artsjournal hosts to be engaging and thought provoking. Between the number of people generating entries and those commenting, there is a lot going on daily. Make some time to read every day otherwise you may be overwhelmed by the amount you need to catch up on and only skim. Arts education is a subject that deserves more than skimming.

Rare Relaxing Residencies for Arts and Culture Managers

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Always on the look out for programs that benefit arts managers, I came across the following listing offering residencies to arts and cultural managers at a location in Key West. For some reason, they don’t promote the opportunity on their website. You need a subscription to reach the website on which it was listed. But such is my desire to make people aware of the opportunity, I am reproducing selected portions of the listing here. If you are interested, you can contact them and they can regale you with all the benefits of their facility.

Artists and Managers in Their Natural Environment!
I am aware of numerous organizations that provide residency to artists but this is the first I have encountered that offers them to leaders and administrators. Since you would theoretically go alone, it wouldn’t be a staff retreat where you engage in group strategizing or team building activities. It might be beneficial for administrators to mix with creative artists for whom they would have no responsibility. There would be no pressure to rein in, budget money for or contract the services of the creative artists. It is not often arts managers have an extended time in an arts environment free of these considerations. It might actually help managers and artists develop healthier attitudes toward each other. From my experiences in performing arts and from what I have read on blogs and articles, I don’t think there is an arts discipline where the relationships aren’t at least guarded.

Anyhow, here is the listing. Hopefully one of my intrepid readers or their friends will have the opportunity to engage in a constructive stay.

Mull Management in Mango Tree House

IT’S NOT A JOB, IT’S A CREATIVE ISLAND ADVENTURE The Studios of Key West, an emerging creative community at America’s Southernmost Point, seeks cultural managers and innovative arts administrators for 1 to 2 week residencies in our Mango Tree House. This residency requires no work, no problem solving, no meetings or presentations, and no reporting of any kind. Directors, program officers, and Alliance of Artists Communities’ leaders: Tell us your dates, plan your travel, and think Zen.

A SHORT TROPICAL RETREAT FOR ARTS ADMINISTRATORS As a companion to our longer-term Artist-in-Residence program, this short-term stay in Key West’s Old Town can include project research, program planning, networking and collaborating; or it can simply be a retreat-like hermitage on a warm and libertarian island, away from the usual workaday environment. TSKW is currently considering the short-term residency needs of academics, cultural managers, critics, instituional officers, museum professionals, and other professional people involved in forging high, low, popular, and obscure culture. Time and space in Key West will provide new influences and fresh experiences, and an appreciation for life here in the Conch Republic, 30 leagues North of Havana, America’s Mile Marker 0, Cayo Hueso

[…]

The Studios of Key West is proud to offer a handful of 1 to 2 week residencies for America’s Cultural Managers and Arts Administrators each year. If you have time off to travel to the Southernmost Point, and are interested in a singular retreat opportunity, please contact us for details on how to proceed.

IS THIS A VACATION? Yes, but it’s also a new form of professional development, in a place that will welcome and honor your presence, at a new kind of creative community. Learn about us here www.tskw.org, then contact Eric Vaughn Holowacz Executive Director at eric@tskw.org

THE FINE PRINT Cultural managers, arts administrators, artistic directors and producers, program officers and curators who can get away from their busy roles for a week or two are welcome to express interest in the TSKW Cultural Manager Residency. Participants must be able to cover travel to and from Key West, as well as some living expenses while on the island. […]

Work For Obama? Yes, You Can!

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Get Your Plum
The presidential transition team has set up a website at Change.gov where you can actually apply for a non-career position with the new government. There is a link to the transition directory in the lower right hand corner to give you an idea of what to expect if you apply. Even though it is a similar color, it apparently is not the famed Plum Book though you probably can use it to get a sense of the general department for which you may want to work.

I mention this in hopes some passionate people interested in government service will step forward for the NEA, NEH and other cultural and educational departments. There is certainly a need for competent people to enter public service. A foundation endowing the Wilson School at Princeton University is suing the school for not preparing enough people to enter government.

What You Should Really Look At
Even if you have no ambition to work for the government, you may want to contribute at the American Moment: Share Your Vision link. I am sure there are a lot of people with millions of ideas who will contribute via this page and anything we send may get lost in the crush. Still there is a better chance of something happening than if nothing is said.

The page provides the ability to upload a photo or video. My immediate thought was that if someone knows of a great program out there they should create a well written document supported by images and video. Share your vision for an arts education program based on something that works in at a school district in Montana. Talk about the way the local government partnered with industry to lead community investment in that arts center overlooking Lake Erie. Tell them about your idea for changing the tax code to provide arts organizations with other alternatives to the 501 (c) (3) structure. I had no intent of submitting anything myself, but now as I write, I begin to have some ideas.

Getting The Dead To Blog For You

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Thanks to an interview with librarian on my local public radio station, I became aware of a fascinating blog written from beyond the grave. The grandson of William Henry Bonser Lamin is publishing his grandfather’s letters home from the trenches of WW I exactly 90 years after they were written. The first letter, written on February 7, 1917 was published on February 7, 2007. His grandson had to make some allowances in his publishing schedule since 2008 was a leap year and 1918 wasn’t. But he remains true to all gaps in letters whether due to loss or his grandfather being home on leave. Only the Lamin family knows whether the senior Lamin returned home or perished in the trenches. All misspellings, grammatical errors are preserved.

While the same element of a suspense over an unknown fate may not exist for some of the more famous artists in history but the basic idea might be one arts organizations could use either over the course of a season or in the weeks or months leading up to an event. If the letters are accessible, the organization could post them in some manner appropriate to their plan. What was Tennessee Williams writing in his correspondence while he was writing A Streetcar Named Desire? Or Van Gogh when he painted Starry Night? He had committed himself to a mental hospital at the time so it is sure to pique some interest based on that fact alone even if there is nothing untoward in his letters.

A release plan that was paced slow enough not to overwhelm people or make them feel it was a burden to follow but frequent enough to give people an excuse to return to the website regularly could be welcomed by patrons of all experience levels. This could be a good alternative to attempting to have performers and creative teams contribute to a blog during rehearsal and performance periods. A reproduced letter with notations that the untimely death of a sister referenced by a composer were the primary motivation for a symphony will probably motivate a respectable readership.

The biggest negative I could see if this became a common practice is that those organizations with money and prestige will be able to do more research and gain exclusive access to estate letters. But the less affluent arts organization can still flourish by employing more publicly available materials in a manner that resonates with their community.

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

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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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