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Little Bird, Will You Sing For Me?

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Short entry today because I am feeling under the weather. I wanted to briefly reflect on my experience appearing on my local public radio’s fund drive.

First of all, we made the goal for the hour which was $500 more than the goal was last year. Even though I am not a public radio employee, I was feeling a little anxious as the end of the hour was approaching and we were still a little ways from our goal. It would be a blow to my pride if they didn’t succeed while I was there. Not only did I want what I was saying on air to be an inducement to pledge, but I was worried that the tickets I was letting them give away as a gesture of appreciation wasn’t being valued by the listening audience. In the end, all the tickets to one of our performances were snatched up.

One of the most interesting things that happened during my time there was that we were getting pledges from people in California and Louisiana. I thought maybe they were from some homesick people listening online. It turned out that the phone volunteers for that hour were self-professed computer geeks and were appealing to people on their extensive Twitter network to pledge. So we had people making $50 donations who never listened to the station based on their relationship with the phone volunteers.

Last month on my Inside the Arts’ neighbor blog, Scanning the Dial, Mike Janssen wrote an entry, “How Classical Stations Could Use Twitter.” I guess this is another use to add to the list. Of course, the use is hardly specific to radio stations. If you and your patrons and donors have an established network, be it on Twitter or some other social network, you might employ this tactic yourself. Renewals may have to be through the same friend rather than your development office because the person won’t have as strong a personal connection to your organization. But this fact will go that much further in convincing your local supporters that their efforts on your behalf matter and are appreciated.

Make Those Wall Street Bums Work For Us!

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Fractured Atlas’ Adam Huttler posted about the disincentives inherent to the traditional non-profit model partially in relation to the fall of so many financial institutions over the last few weeks.

I’ve often argued that the traditional non-profit model discourages necessary risk-taking. It does this for a few reasons:

1) Employees can’t own stock, so they don’t benefit from financial success. Yet they’re still vulnerable to financial failures (i.e. they can lose their jobs or suffer career setbacks). To a lesser extent, the same is true for non-profit Board members. When someone’s got no stake in the upside but is still exposed on the downside, the rational response is extreme conservatism.

2) The culture of the non-profit sector is such that managers go to absurd, herculean efforts to avoid admitting failure, mostly in an effort not to embarrass themselves in front of funders.

3) Non-profit organizations are chronically under-capitalized. By failing to build reserves or hoard surpluses, we end up in a situation where each budget is a tightrope. A single serious misstep is enough to pose an existential threat to the organization.

He goes on to talk about how free market enterprise incentivizes excessive risk taking in the for-profit industry and lists the form this takes. Huttler notes that while regulation can help keep the activities of for-profits from becoming too risky, you can’t make for profits engage in riskier behavior. However, he feels that if the relationship with funders could be changed, risk aversion can be mitigated to a degree.

His observations paint behavior of for and not-for profits as two sides of the same coin. For profits have a short term view because they are trying to burnish their quarterly reports for the sake of enhancing earnings. Not for profits take a short term view because their funding only covers a limited period. Given the necessity to continue to seek funding, the organization has to frequently reinvent parts of itself to conform with grant opportunities.

What Huttler suggest as a solution seems very close to what the Independent Sector proposed a few years ago. The Independent Sector suggested that foundations engage in long term core support of organizations rather than program support. They also suggested foundations develop a uniform application and reporting procedure so that organizations weren’t devoting so much time and energy on applications and reporting. (The entry I link to is one I am particularly proud of so take a look! Not to mention that the issue is more complicated than I have presented here.)

Huttler notes that it is difficult to provide performance incentives on par with the for profit world given IRS rules preventing revenue sharing. He mentions that Fractured Atlas provides performance based group bonuses which are apparently legal and I am sure sound like a good idea to most non-profit employees.

One of my initial thoughts upon reading Huttler’s first point about how non-profit employees face all the risk and none of the profit-sharing reward that for profit employees do, was that this group was motivated by factors other than financial. I am glad he acknowledged that near the end of the entry though I assumed he understood this even if he never mentioned it. But as I read the entry I reached the same conclusion he did–it can be tough to translate this non-monetary motivation into risk taking.

One of the first things that popped into my mind was that attempting this could actually lead to the pursuit of grants that didn’t really align with the organizational mission. A person is enthusiastic about serving X community and comes to the leadership with a grant supporting that very thing. But is it really in the organization’s best interest? Do they really want to continue the program past the grant period? Will there be anyone to continue it after the person leaves? It is easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm of a person for a clearly worthy cause when your organization is fueled more by coffee and enthusiasm than money. Engaging an employee’s interests can reward them for all their hard work when there isn’t much else with which to reward them. But you have to weight that against the long term interests of the company.

Yet it is easy to dismiss the suggestion of a really risky venture that would be in the long term best interest of the organization based on the risk alone. A fantastic failure as a result of risk taking won’t be in the interests of the company if it closes or most everyone gets laid off. Engaging an employee’s passion when there is money readily available from a foundation looks like the sane choice even if the program it funds probably won’t exist in 3 years–at least the organization itself will.

Not all risks are directly related to finances, of course. Just as every passion doesn’t necessarily require grant funding. An employee might be interested in cultivating an online community on behalf of the organization employing software that is available for free. All you have to do is allow them a couple hours a week to work on it. But if an incident arises that causes your organization to become an object of derision online and spills over to the local print and broadcast media, that can be a huge problem for you. But if your employee manages to tap into the interests of a bunch of influential 20 or 30somethings, the effort could be rewarding for you, your employee and your new supporters. (Though this win-win-win situation could be detrimental if the established supporters feel the organizational character has changed for the worse. That is the risk you have hopefully anticipated and prepared for.)

Ultimately though this whole issue leaves me wondering if there isn’t a better way than the non-profit model. Is there someway that allows employees to share in the success of the organization and have their non-monetary motivations engaged as well? Given the complex financial instruments constructed by the investment firms that got the country into its current financial crisis, I guarantee the brain power to design a way to finance such an organization exists (both constructively and legally, of course). There is simply has been no motivation for them to turn their minds to constructing such an opportunity. Perhaps the non-profit world at large should push to have these people prosecuted for criminal malfeasance and negligence and then advocate that they be sentenced to community service creating a proposal for such a funding scheme.

Eyes Give You An F

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There have been a number of studies conducted regarding how web page visitors interact with the pages they visit and what the most effective layout might be. One of the most prominent studies was conducted by Jakob Nielsen who used eye tracking studies to discover that people viewed pages in a roughly “F” shaped pattern. People read left to right at the top of a page but as they continue, they start scanning along the left column only.

The details of the study linked to above are pretty interesting. Another website, Virtual Hosting.com coalesced the major suggestions Nielsen made along with those from other studies to create a list of simple ways people can improve the effectiveness of their websites. (Tips for blogs on conveniently on the next page.)

The most surprising of their 23 tips is the first one- Text attracts attention before graphics.

I will leave it to my curious readers to continue on and find out why…

Core Narratives

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I try to avoid any mention of politics if it isn’t directly related to the arts but I have to say that the Republican National Convention going on right now is a great illustration of how marketing is the function of everyone in an organization. Members of political parties do this sort of thing almost as second nature but that seems even more reason why a smaller group working at an arts organization can’t mobilize themselves in the same way. It should be easier for the latter group to get themselves on message.

I think the convention activities also reveal the importance of knowing what elements comprise their core identity. Let’s face it, Gov. Palin’s daughter being pregnant out of wedlock diverges from the party’s usual narrative. Let’s not kids ourselves about how it would be exploited by proxies were the shoe on the other foot. However, the party has employed other elements of their traditional narrative to fend off criticism and show how it aligns with other things the party values. How effective it is depends on the listener I suppose.

I have talked about the value of consistently and perhaps somewhat subliminally disseminating a narrative about the arts and ones organization. It is probably no mistake that the last time I discussed this, it was also in connection with a presidential candidate. In cases of obscenity, you probably can’t deflect anger no matter how well you have developed the myriad elements of your identity. Performing artists have been identified with depravity and immorality since before the United States was born (at least from the European perspective). You may be able to blunt the strength of the ire by referencing your core narrative, however.

People being a diverse bunch, members of any group are not going to be able to conform to every ideal the whole espouses. There is always going to be one person who is less committed to recycling than everyone else. There are going to be people who are just a little too rabid about Led Zeppelin for the comfort of the rest of the fan club. And lets not even get into which Star Trek series/movie was the best. But as a whole, the group reinforces all they have accomplished on behalf of the environment and wildlife as outweighing the fact one of their members doesn’t redeem the five cent deposit on their Coke cans.

Never doubt the potency of a single/handful defining image for cementing your entity in people’s minds. When I was in 4th grade a kid who was generally a bully and gadfly was harassing me. I had enough and tossed him 5-6 feet across recess yard aided somewhat by muddy ground. Now it just so happened that my mother was substitute teaching that day and saw what happened on the playground and came running out saying, “Don’t pick on Joey.”

Somehow everyone forgot that my mother came out to defend me and focused on my “victory.” I never got in another fight or did anything to reinforce the idea of my being a brawler except that I was particularly tough to take down when we played Kill The Keeper. Yet in my first week in high school a guy who didn’t start at my elementary school until 6th grade warned people not to mess with me because I threw a guy 100 feet once.

While entertaining, perhaps the heroic tales of a 10 year old aren’t entirely applicable. I don’t really sit around wondering how much my reputation would have grown had I punched a few more people out in elementary school. We all have moments in our lives, where a pivotal moment defines our childhood, high school, college, volunteer, job experiences in our minds. The same can happen for organizations. You can get a lot of mileage out of the reputation garnered as the place Bruce Springsteen did a surprise show 20 years ago leaving dozens of people convinced they can die happy having been there.

You can’t always been lucky enough to have superstars secretly appear at your theatre but you can string lesser events together into a narrative you consistently repeat and reinforce at every opportunity through various media.

Managers? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Theatre Managers!

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In my last entry I mentioned that I would make suggestions for those who might replicate planning exercise I went through at Performing Arts Center Eastside. You might notice I don’t say I will have suggestions on how to improve the experience. I think it is too early in the process to suggest improvements and as I am about discuss, what did happen exceeded my expectations.

As I was preparing for my trip to Bellevue, WA, my biggest concern was about how the participation of the Emerging Leadership Institute group would be received. There was no real precedent for anyone to base their expectations on. The Bellevue community had been planning this facility since 1988 and even if the majority of the board had only become involved in when the non-profit entity was formed in 2002, that is six years investment in planning and fund raising. How would they feel having a group of people making recommendations after only spending a weekend learning about their organization?

The same with the architects. They have a great record for designing splendid performing arts centers (check out the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts.) Would they resent us if we started criticizing their design? With all the information available to people via the Internet these days, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that someone might have fancied themselves an amateur architect and rubbed the building designers the wrong way.

These concerns didn’t keep me awake at night and they really weren’t on my mind by the time we started examining the building design. There was a time during our presentation that I realized that not only were things going a lot better than I anticipated, but there was an unspoken positive, encouraging vibe in the room. Frankly, I was almost giddy with the idea that the process had gone so well because it bodes well for our future and the prospects for replicating this in other places.

Knowing that this might not always be so, I started to think about what things an arts organization could do to ensure things went smoothly if they tried to initiate a similar program. (Other than hiring all those involved at Bellevue, of course!) Probably the best option would be taking a proactive stance and brief all the constituents about what to expect and suggest how to participate most effectively. I have no idea if the people at PACE did any prep with the architects or board members. A comment John Haynes made at dinner made me suspect he hadn’t which speaks well for the open mindedness of these groups. John and Dana didn’t formally do any of the things I am about to suggest with the Emerging Leadership group except provide comfortable surroundings.

So yes, the first suggestion is comfortable working environment with an organized itinerary and breaks scheduled at suitable intervals.

Preparing stakeholders like board members and architects to prepare in a session with a group of advisers can be tough. They can be assured that none of the final decisions are vested in the advising group. Yet you have to go into the exercise intending to value the feedback you receive otherwise you are just wasting everyone’s time. This certainly means you have to be prepared to consider what you might perceive as negative. As people who have just joined the project and aren’t familiar with the intent of every design element they may indeed offend you with what they perceive to be an innocuous comment.

So local constituents should be encouraged to value what is being suggested, try to perceive the basic motivation for advice and respond with a question to clarify that motivation. “So your concern about our plan to have the noon sun fall upon our founder’s bust on her birthday is that it limits the windows, and therefore, natural light in the lobby and creates a dark, unwelcoming atmosphere?” Certainly the board and architects have every right to expect people to back up criticisms with constructive suggestions. Given that the advising group may have only been around for a few days and are not familiar with all options, an answer that they don’t know what a solution might be also has to be respected. This doesn’t mean the concern isn’t warranted and bears additional thought and consideration.

For their part, the advising visitors should probably assume a generally neutral stance. They shouldn’t be looking to evaluate if their facilities and organizational plan is superior or inferior to that of their hosts. We have all met and probably grimaced at the person whose every suggestion is prefaced by “where I used to work, we…” While they have certainly been invited because of their prior experience, that experience isn’t going to define the new organization. Likewise, while improvements a new organization is effecting can lead to a better experience back at the home organization, there are only so many resources available. Again, you can’t define one organization in the exact terms of another.

Nothing I am suggesting here is terribly groundbreaking. They are all based on standard suggestions for listening and responding in meetings. Additional tips for preparing groups to meet could certainly be found in books and magazine articles. Probably the most important suggestion is not to make value judgments about any aspect of the project — “That’s stupid; “The building looks like a warped artichoke” (which I heard about this place); “You are an idiot and clearly have no sense or experience in these matters,” etc., If anything is going to generate resistance and resentment, it is statements in this vein.

My suggestions assume everyone is arriving at the meeting with the best intentions but with the possibility of things going awry. If there hasn’t been buy-in from all involved parties or one party is seeks to use the exercise as leverage over another, obviously there are deeper problems than can be solved by good meeting preparation.

Audience Theory

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As wonderful an opportunity it was to influence staff workplaces, those of us in the PACE advisory group still understood that the success of the building would be in how comfortable audiences were interacting with the space. When I was preparing to travel to Bellevue, I was mindful of Andrew Taylor’s observations wandering around the streets of Denver at the National Performing Arts Conference that

“block after block of glass or stone walls at the street level, many of them without a door (at least an open one) for hundreds of feet at a time. As a result, there are very few people populating the street, stopping to talk with each other, people watching, lingering, and realizing they’re in an urban streetscape of diversity and energy.”

I approached the facility design with the intention of insuring the building appeared engaging to foot traffic since there are quite a few residential complexes being constructed nearby.

The importance of physical design was actually reinforced for me as we walked to the meeting with the architects. About four-five blocks from the future PACE site, we passed a small area next to the sidewalk with hedges and benches. There was a sign noting that the area was open for public use. I would have never known that because of the way the hedges and a short set of ascending stairs lent it a sense of being private property. Because of this they had to essentially grant people permission to enter.

But to back up a little…. I had mentioned earlier that Alan Brown made a presentation on the value of live performance. Obviously, it is in relation to the audience’s experience that his thoughts are most applicable. It wasn’t until after his presentation that I realized how significant a moment in the design process it had been. The architects and project manager had never really had these ideas addressed in connection with their work before and so were pretty attentive and taking notes. The same was true for a couple board members who were present.

Of the concepts he covered, a number of them caught my attention. The first was his suggestion that interactive experience the Nintendo Wii offers predicts one day being able to virtually perform with Pilobolus. Since he is the first person I have met who has advanced this idea since I began promoting it in 2004, he instantly endeared himself to me.

He also addressed the situation where people were waiting longer and longer to buy their tickets. He spoke of a focus group where he basically discovered young people were afraid to buy a ticket until the last minute because committing to one option closed the door on all the other possibilities. I wondered if this was an element of Generation Y’s problem with decision making.

He said he asked them to describe what they would envision as a perfect jazz club. They said it would be a coffee house during the day but a bar at night with a separate room where those who wanted to be full immersed in the music could go. However, there would also be an anteroom where people could talk with friends and still listen to the music and still another anteroom where people could interact with friends more and listen less.

It seems like a tall order to design a building to provide this experience. However the impression I took away from what Brown had to say was that people at every age really desire an experience at an intermediate stage between listening to a recording and fully attending a formal concert. He described this as a place to drop in and hang out and get more information. One suggestion he made which he certainly did not represent as encompassing all possibilities was having kiosks in the lobby where one could try all sorts of new music. (I imagined something like the listening stations in record stores.) Having a DJ mixing in an area surrounded by comfortable lobby furniture.

Alan Brown’s presentation had a tangible effect on the discussions that followed. The building design already allowed for many of the activities he mentioned so conversations revolved around the possibilities. This is fortunate because if Brown is right, there might be an increased necessity of having such a space as venue for value added benefits. Acknowledging that there are some people who are voracious for an educative experience, Alan Brown proposed that while arts organizations gave education away for free as part of their mission, he suspected people would pay a premium for a private, executive briefing on events.

I have read and heard suggestions that were related to the core idea behind this. There are some complexities to this that I haven’t fully considered so I don’t quite know what I think about this. I suspect for some communities and organizations, he is right on the money with this idea.

As you might imagine from the thought the PACE administration put into the staff work areas, there had been some investment into the design of the public areas as well. As I already mentioned, the layout lends itself to sponsoring some of the programs and features Alan Brown suggested. Some other notable concepts they had were arranging the ticket office so one’s experience was more akin to interacting with a concierge than a reinforced security checkpoint. They have also looked into situating the restrooms so that the lines at intermission don’t become the half time show.

Our advice seemed to be viewed as insightful and even viable within the overall plan and budget. I am demurring on many of the details because so much is undecided at this stage in the game and I don’t want to create any unwarranted expectations about the ultimate result. Participating in the process was very exciting and engaging. While our status as outsiders lent some weight to our observations, Alan Brown’s occasional, but well timed comments lent some reinforcement.

Believe it or not after all this writing, I still have some additional observations to make! My next entry will have some really basic suggestions for those who might want to replicate this exercise.

(Details of this entry have been altered since the original posting to comply with confidentially agreements)

Why Haven’t We Ever Done This?

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I spent the weekend in the Seattle area participating as a lead partner in the very first stages of a pilot program where emerging arts leaders provide input on the construction of Performing Arts Center-Eastside (PACE) in Bellevue, WA. I had noted my participation in an earlier entry if you would like a little more information.

I intend to spend the next few entries reflecting on the experience. However, since everyone hopes this program can be replicated for future construction, I am going to summarize the major activities in today’s entry. Anyone considering using the process during their own construction or major renovation project will have an easy reference to the basic outline.

I want to acknowledge and give a lot of credit for the creation of the program to PACE Associate Director, Dana Kernich. She brought the whole concept to Executive Director, John Haynes and then did a lot of the organizational work to make it happen. When I was advocating more professional development opportunities for the alumni of APAP’s Emerging Leadership Institute, this program barely hovered at the edge of my mind as something that might be possible.

Obviously, I also need to acknowledge John Haynes for embracing the idea and committing resources to it. It was not a cheap undertaking. PACE flew 10 of us out, housed us and fed us (and it wasn’t at Sizzler though we would have been happy for it). Haynes told me he still saw it as extremely economical. He could have spent the same amount on a week long consultant visit but he was getting 10 consultants committing themselves to providing feedback for about 3 more years.

Haynes also observed that while consultants and architects are absolutely invaluable to the construction of facilities, once the job is done they move on to the next job and aren’t involved in the experience of inhabiting and working in the space the way arts professionals like ourselves are. In this respect was expense worthwhile. (Lest anyone think they will be ignored, there have been and will continue to be discussions with artists who have experienced performing in many spaces.)

The Process

We started out with a tour of the region so that we could get a sense of the physical environment in which the PAC would operate. Traffic isn’t getting any better in the region especially with the likes of Microsoft and Google expanding their physical presence. When we returned from our tour, John Haynes gave us a briefing on the history, audience demographics, vision and financial issues for the organization.

After that we participated in a panel discussion on the Regional Arts Ecology attended by the Executive Directors of the Bellevue Philharmonic, Kirkland Performing Arts Center, Seattle Theatre Group and 4Culture. This was a very interesting session to me on a number of levels. First, I appreciated the thorough job PACE was doing in educating us. But also, while 4Culture is a funding organization and Bellevue Philharmonic will find a place to perform in PACE, the other two could easily find themselves competing with PACE for audiences and artists. They might all end up competing for funding. Their observations and answers were great in terms of providing outside parties’ view of the environment in which PACE would operate.

That evening we had dinner with the facility architects, Pfeiffer Partners. This was more of an informal meeting than any type of presentation.

The next morning began our “work day” where we started to provide feedback in the context of what we had learned. It had already been clear to me how important PACE viewed our participation given all the people they arranged for us to meet including having the architects come up from Los Angeles. But what really impressed upon me just how innovative and important this pilot program might be was the fact Alan Brown of Wolf Brown was there. Apparently John Haynes had mentioned the project to him and he asked if he could be present and observe.

The day started out with Mr. Brown discussing Cultural Participation. This was derived from the research he had done for the Major University Presenters on Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of Live Performance. I had gotten the audio from a session he and the other researchers had conducted at the APAP convention but I was still jotting down lots of notes. Perhaps more importantly, some of PACE’s board members were present and doing the same. Again, I will expound on this in later entries.

Then the architects conducted a design charrette discussing their philosophy for the facility as well as noting the way they had dealt with challenges and benefits of the physical location. One of the most helpful things in the discussion was the models they brought. One allowed us to remove each floor piece by piece and another was large enough to stick our heads into to get a sense of things.

At this point, everyone except the 10 lead partners left the room and we engaged in a brainstorming session on the design. Haynes asked us to limit ourselves to three areas since there were so many directions we could go- Assess how the building functioned as a workplace, how it facilitated the patron experience and how the “machine” of the building worked (i.e. can a dumpster be rolled outside and not have to go through the lobby)

When the allotted time expired we presented our thoughts to the architects, members of the building committee, Dana and John. As you might imagine a great deal of discussion followed. However, our observations appeared to be valuable to all involved since one of the architects asked why no one had ever done this sort of thing before. (Thus the title of this entry.)

After things wrapped up we went out for dinner with Alan Brown and all flew out the next morning. As I noted in my earlier entry on the project, this weekend was just the first stride in a three year journey. It merely provided the context for conversations and exchanges of information channeled through a blog entries and emails over the next three years. My intent is to reflect upon the experience this week and across the next few years. Even with the strictures of the confidentiality agreement, there are enough general observations about the process I can make to be valuable to others.

What Can NCLB Do For The Arts?

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It occurs to me that there is a lot of talk about how No Child Left Behind is eroding the arts in schools. Field trips and outreach programs are curtailed or eliminated. Arts classes disappear in favor of more instruction in test subjects. Recess time is likewise dwindling. (If you are wondering about the connection, I got my first black eye in 5th grade when we recreated the rumble scene from West Side Story. Kids still recreate cool scenes from musical theatre during recess don’t they?)

But it got me thinking, to be fair do the arts gain anything from NCLB? Lets face it, the arts were getting the short shrift in schools for a long time before NCLB. We claim that music classes help kids with math. Does math in turn help kids with music. Does a good foundation in math help visual artists understand scale, ratio and proportion better?

In terms of reading and writing, obviously the arts can benefit from people who have a high level of comprehension and ability to express themselves well. We can hope these things provide basis to transition from reading well to being well read and possessed of critical and analytical thinking skills. Trading out social and hard sciences to make room for more math, reading and writing may make these skills harder to acquire. If NCLB does cultivate higher quality students then it would certainly be a pleasure to see students enter college without the need for remediation.

There are a lot of people who don’t feel NCLB is going to produce a generally higher quality student which bodes poorly for every industry in the future. If you were going to fight to get the law changed, how would it be improved to benefit the arts? More arts exposure is a given, but what else do you fight for? An excellent artist really can’t develop in a vacuum only experiencing arts classes. And what if you are told arts classes are definitely off the table in this new law? How do you salvage things and make sure students gain the knowledge and discernment they need to be artists via other avenues? What’s more, artists shouldn’t have to operate in a vacuum either, what do you advocate for that will help students become appreciators and consumers of art as they proceed through life?

Did You Just Agree To Go To Abilene?

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Because non-profit arts often lead a tenuous existence which depends so heavily on the commitment of a small, fairly close knit group, organizations are likely to practice a number of organizational behaviors. One of the least constructive of these is known as the Abilene Paradox. The Abilene Paradox takes its name from an anecdote told by Jerry B. Harvey to illustrate how everyone in a group can end up agreeing to do something none of them want to do.

Harvey tells a story about a visit to his in-laws that ended with the group of them traveling to Abilene, TX in a car without air conditioning to eat an awful meal because each person assumed the others wanted to go rather than stay home and continue enjoying their game of dominoes. The Abilene Paradox is widely used in organizational dynamics classes/seminars so I hope the reputation of Abilene’s cuisine hasn’t suffered.

If you think about it, you can probably recall a similar time when you agreed to a choice you didn’t believe was correct and felt vindicated in your judgment when it failed–except you had voiced your support. Perhaps you even voiced your reservations to another who agreed and discovered they felt as you did.

There is an article by Harvey that illustrates how the paradox can manifest itself in various situations and also contains suggestions on how to avoid taking a trip to Abilene. In what might appear to be the most extreme case, he suggests that the instigator of the misguided trip may need to step forward and declare their misgivings about their own project in order to break the fear which keeps the cycle of reinforcement intact.

“… we frequently fail to take action in an organizational setting because we fear that the actions we take may result in our separation from others, or, in the language of Mr. Porter, we are afraid of being tabbed as “disloyal” or are afraid of being ostracized as “non-team players.”

This is why I felt arts organizations might be especially vulnerable to trips to Abilene. Members aren’t simply employees/volunteers/board members but assumed to be true believers in the cause. There could be a fear, real or imagined that disagreement with the group equates to lack of commitment to the greater ideals rather than merely disloyalty to the company.

The Ninty Five Processes

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Since my second blog entry ever was about parallels between arts management and religion, I was intrigued by a post Scott Walters made earlier this month suggesting that theatres be built along the same lines that Lutherans build theirs.

The process he outlines is thus:

1. Costs for the first few years are evenly split between the new congregation, the regional organization (synod), and the national organization (ELCA).

2. Money is provided primarily to cover salaries.

3. After the first couple years, the new congregation takes on a greater share of the financial burden until it is financially independent.

4. At that point, the congregation begins to make annual contributions back to the regional and national church, which continues as long as the church continues in existence.

5. The congregation is responsible for raising enough money to build a church, if it so desires, but a service organization provides a source of low-interest loans to help with that process.

He compares this with the process for theatres which is basically that you have to exist for three years before anyone will even take a look at your funding request.

The process the Lutherans use is not terribly unique. There are many immigrant groups who have done the same thing pooling their money to fund businesses which were expected to return money to the pot to fund the efforts of others. Upon such things banks were established. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the Lutheran’s practice traces its roots back to immigration.

Given that I have had interactions with people wishing to build a theatre that had no concept of what it actually takes to maintain and run one in the manner they plan, I would embrace the idea that nascent theatres would receive informed advice and guidance.

I have it on pretty good authority that there are performing arts organizations of a certain strata which already trade information and collaborate on planning. The problem is that they rarely attend conferences so few of us get to talk to them. Which is too bad because their expertise could provide a starting point for creating and funding this type of project. I am actually involved with a project which could possible provide a partial template for what Walters is suggesting.

I had a couple concerns about Walters’ suggestions. The first is that it would encourage conservative rather than innovative approaches that would move how the performing arts interact with their communities forward. This process is good for Lutherans because they are dealing with people who already subscribe to an orthodoxy and understand what the expected outcome is. This is not necessarily the case with theatre. You have a choice between different formats and genres to focus on or ignore. It would be disappointing to have groups nudged toward some form of what their advisers know or think would be appropriate. It is still their word that releases the money.

I would assume that once the group of artists had been operating for awhile, a team who specialized in the direction they wanted to pursue would shepherd their progress so everyone wouldn’t automatically be told they were going to be a 250 seat theatre or a three venue facility. Yet the best option might not be a fixed seat venue be it built, rented or borrowed from another but a partnership with a ballet and gymnastic school resulting in an organization focused as much on physical fitness for the community as performance.

My other concern is that the mechanism be able to financially and more importantly emotionally and mentally weather a lot of early failures before they get the technique refined to the point where there are enough successful organizations replenishing the funds. I believe it takes colleges 40-50 years before their alumni become sufficiently successful that they can make significant donations to the school. Granted, the theatres cultivated by this procedure would be required to give back whereas alumni aren’t. Still, it might take 15-20 years before the method is self supporting. Arts organizations and businesses alike fear the inability to show results whether it be to granting organizations or stockholders. This fear could contribute to advocating that new arts groups take a familiar, conservative approach in their activities. And short of someone like Warren Buffet, there aren’t too many funding sources that would be prepared to wait 15-20 years for positive results.

Still if the funders, organizers and participants went into the process resolved to be vigilant about their prejudices and fears and accepting the fact that it could be a long time before any return is ever seen, it could certainly work. Frankly, even if the fears and prejudices did come into play, the process would still be a vast improvement over the current system if it established the practice of arts professionals centralizing and sharing knowledge to avoid replication or re-development of procedures refined or discarded by others.

And how great would it be if causing a schism with the Catholic Church eventually resulted in the unification of the arts? (Finally, we take revenge for being placed below beggars by co-opting religion practice for our own purposes!!!)

There Are No Secret Codes

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I received an interesting report in the mail this week created in partnership between the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA and Jacob’s Pillow Dance. The book, Presenting Dance, written by Mindy N. Levine discusses conversations that transpired at the National Dance Presenters Leadership Forum at Jacob’s Pillow between 2002 and 2006. Unfortunately, none of this is online for me to link to or even cut and paste from putting us all in danger from my typing skills.

As always, there were a number of things that piqued my interest and few, if any, could be exclusively applied to dance. A large part of the book was devoted to audiences and how presenters and dance companies could promote and design their offerings, including activities ancillary to the main of a performance, to better serve/connect with them.

It was decided that there are four curatorial approaches when it comes to exposing audiences to new works as a presenter; “A to B”, “A and B”, “A or B” and “Mini Festival”. A to B is essentially starting with accessible works and building toward more challenging works over the years. A and B is referred to as the loss leader approach, letting the more popular show cushion the loss of the less popular. A or B assumes people aren’t familiar enough with dance on the whole to discern between challenging and accessible. In this case, you just program what you find compelling and essentially do a lot of work promoting and educating. The suggestion here seems to be to have a sense of how you want to position your organization. The mini-festival approach is where the presenter concentrates dance events along with promotion and education efforts within a short period of time.

I want to back up to the A to B approach. Some of the problems the book points out with this approach is that sometimes the presenter underestimates their audience and thinks they are never ready to be challenged. Likewise, the audience may actually be more receptive to the challenging work than that of presumably more accessible pieces. Finally, some commented that sometimes the community never evolves past the starting point.

One of my first thoughts when reading the A to B approach was of a post Neill Roan made back in 2006 about the high rate of churn arts organizations experience with audiences. Even if the overall attendance numbers look stable, those attending this year may not have been attending two years ago and so may be at square one in their dance/theatre/visual art/music experience whereas your programming is at square five the planned progress.

There was actually one other type of approach discussed, “More is Better.” Related somewhat to the festival approach, it involves programming as much and as diversely as possible (of dance in this case.) The hope is that familiarity will breed attempt and people will be more willing to experiment.

“People don’t decide never to eat out again because they have one bad meal in a restaurant,” said a participant. But audiences often engage in a kind of “one-for-all” thinking with regard to dance; they see one dance performance they don’t like and, in the absence of evaluative context, dismiss the entire discipline.”

There is a quote from John Dewey at the beginning of a chapter in this book that probably should appear at the top of the page or as the first slide of a power point presentation for people who are intimidated or anxious over their ignorance of any art form.

“It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing anything about flowers theoretically.”

One participant in the discussions suggested turning things around on people and asking them what they do for a living. “Make them realize that you probably know nothing about their job, but that doesn’t necessarily make you feel globally stupid.”

The participants came up with a list of ways to help audiences engage.

-1) There are no “secret codes.”
-2) Trust your instincts and the work.
-3) Ambiguity can be a source of aesthetic pleasure – Essentially, people are used to movement being intentional and dance frequently is not. Enjoyment can be derived from interpreting for yourself.
-4) There are multiple ways of understanding
-5) There is value in aesthetic dissent- You don’t have to like everything you see.

One of the most valuable sections in terms of making dance more intellectually accessible to audiences is in the “Tools of the Trade” in the Cultivating Aesthetic Literacy chapter. This is really where I wish I could link to this online because there is far too much to cut and paste much less type. But I will try to give a taste here.

The chapter suggests presenting different ways for audiences to approach a dance piece, with a Journalist’s Eye, Anthropologist’s Eye, Linguist/Grammarian Eye and Colleagues and Conversation. Now I think using these terms with audience members probably will add to their anxiety but the suggestions in each area are geared toward getting people past “I liked it,” “I didn’t like it,” or “I didn’t understand it” and on to discovering why.

For the Journalist’s Eye, they suggest Who, What, Where, When, How questions to help lead to answering Why or Why Not it was good. Some examples deal with what body parts are moving, how speed changes over time, if movement is synced with the music, what connections to everyday activities can be made, how does it make you feel emotionally and physically, what is known about the choreographer and company?

For Anthropologist Eye, the audience approaches dance as if it were an unknown culture being discovered. An attitude which may actually fall closest to the mark. Questions suggested in this area might be whether men move differently from women, if movement is in isolation or groups, are their forces that bring people together or separate them, are there rules applied to the movement and if so, are they flexible or rigid?

When Linguist/Grammarian Eye was used as an exercise, participants wrote adjectives about how they felt, verbs describing the movement and adverbs about the quality of the movement. The book suggests that this exercise can be useful for people involved with the arts to “generate evocative and specific language with which to discuss work.” If people start moving away from using “electrifying” to describe their work, that is all right with me.

These approaches aren’t necessarily prescribed for novices and can be used at different levels of experience with an art form. Colleagues and Conversation is listed as a tool in professional development among people in the dance field where they talk about performances among themselves to help cultivate their own aesthetic literacy.

What I have severely summarized here is only the first 18 pages out of about 50 pages of observations and ideas. Some of the other chapters deal more with the challenges dance companies face in developing and performing their work. And of course, the challenges presenters face supporting and employing dance companies are also addressed.

Tonight I wanted to cram some of the audience development issues in my entry because tomorrow I am handing the book to my assistant theatre manager so we can have a conversation about what practices might be viable for our community. I hope to come back to the text at a later date but really wish it was available online so I could continue to comment while the ATM reads it.

Cultivating An Appeal Certainly Is Not Clear

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There is a new buzzword out there called “Murketing”, a portmanteau of murky and marketing implying a sort of under the radar effort at increasing market share, cachet, whatever. If you read my entry about the staycation, you know that I am not a fan of what I feel are often attempts to put lipstick on a pig. My problem with the murketing term isn’t that the practice is a bad idea but rather that the creation of the term implies there is some hot new trend to adopt or be left behind. I have noted before, not every new approach/technology is appropriate for everyone, but they do bear exploration.

Let me expand a little on this. The way I think the idea should be approached is to say that in the face of changing behavior of consumers which includes rising skepticism about advertising campaigns that take a direct approach, it might be prudent for companies to examine the way they approach their marketing and perhaps even re-evaluate the market to which they are appealing. Instead the coining of terms like murketing makes it sound like you have to discard the practice of marketing altogether and replace with the method of the future. The reality is as I described it — take the time to re-examine.

I am not sure if he actually created the term or not, but a gentleman named Robert Walker recently wrote a book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are which examines the idea. Forbes did a review which appears to sum up Walker’s theories about as good as any article I have read on the subject or the book.

As much as I dislike the term, I have to say I like sections of Walker’s blog, namely Subculture, Inc and The Murketing Arts. While his book deals with the efforts of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Bull as well as some smaller operations, these sections are devoted to Q&As with people involved in small scale efforts to advance their products. Given that arts organizations often fall into the small scale category, these sections of the blog along with Walker’s “Consumed” column in the New York Times Magazine and of course, the book might provide some inspiration. (Yes, I have to acknowledge that the site’s sort of anti-guru vibe might actually be calculated, per murketing, to cater to my skepticism.)

I am reluctant to mention some of the ideas that popped into my head while reading about some of those interviewed because they essentially tap into the forces other people have discovered rather than finding some local characteristic. Sure there were women who tapped into the skateboarder market despite not selling any skateboarding gear. It doesn’t mean that is an appropriate target group for your organization. (Except the stars will align for some symphony in Idaho and suddenly California arts groups will be banging their heads trying to figure out why a state replete with skateboarders can’t win with them.)

Actually, Now I Am Even More Confused

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Because copyright is a confusing issue, the folks over at the American Library Association have created this nifty little slider tool to help you determine if something is in the public domain or not. Frankly, at one time I thought there were some pretty simple rules of thumb you could use but now that I have seen this device, I am even more confused.

For instance, if you created a work before 1979 and published it before 2003, you might be protected. However, if during that time period, you happened to publish it between 1978 and March 1, 1989 and didn’t put a copyright notice on your work and never registered it, it is not protected and the work is in the public domain. Now given that I wrote a short story for school back in 1983 and did put a copyright notice on it, I think I am covered even though it was never registered or officially published. (Unless the photocopying of proud parents counts.)

Now I happened across an interesting situation. According to the chart, any work published before 1923 needs no permission and is in the public domain. Elmer Rice’s Adding Machine was first published in 1922 as noted here. While it was faithfully renewed, it should still be in the public domain. However, if you go over to the Samuel French website, they want $75 a performance for it.

So the question is, does Samuel French have the right to do so or not? The answer probably requires consulting experts. So despite the best intentions, this little device doesn’t really simplify matters at all and only serves to show us how little most of us really understand about copyright protection.

My Butt in the Seats of Your Neighborhood Stage

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This weekend I was a guest on the Your Neighborhood Stage podcast. (July 14 episode, number 3.21). The folks over there let me talk for a real long time on a lot of issues. In the course of the conversation, I promoted the iPod idea I had blogged on before. I had listened to some of their earlier podcasts to get a sense of what I was in for and one of the on going issues they have discussed is inverting the idea that “all good things must percolate down from Broadway.” They were trying to find a way that things could be developed at a local level and percolate up in much the same way niche interests suddenly explode into popular consciousness via YouTube.

It occurred to me that while local theatres couldn’t really hope to get anything on Broadway via the current development path, they could be the place where the innovations that reinvigorate the performing arts are cultivated. As I note in my interview, the stakes are pretty high on Broadway but somewhat less so on the local level. (Not to understate the impact of even small financial losses on local theatres.) But with the rise of Pro-Ams (Professional Amateurs) who have both passion and increased access to technology, there exists the potential for great things to result from unorthodox approaches and experimentation.

There were some other issues we discussed like censorship in a production of Ragtime near Chicago, copyright infringement in an Akron production of Urinetown (the earlier case from the 90s I refer to is L! V! C! in Boca Raton- covered in NY Times, 8th paragraph down) and whether bloggers who review can be sued for defamation.

If ever you wanted to hear my voice, albeit a little distorted (my fault, mostly) or simply just want to sip at the fount of my wisdom in audio form, give it a listen.

Oh, I just also note. When co-host Staci Cobb was praising me and said “Go You!” I thought she said “Go UF” and was tweaking me as a Florida State University grad by cheering on the University of Florida. It is only as I listened to the podcast that I realized I misheard her. I am sure both hosts were a little perplexed when I joked about her razzing me.

Parents No Longer Just At the Stage Door

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Recently I have been talking about the needs of the next generation of leaders in comparison with those of earlier generations. On the whole I think that those who feel the next generation lacks the commitment to the cause exhibited by theirs can respect the desire for a better work-life balance.

There is a characteristic of the next generation that might be a thornier problem for arts organizations–their parents. The term helicopter parents was originally applied to parents who “hovered” over their children when they went to college. The parents would bug professors about their children’s grades, dorm staff about room mates and in some extreme situations, would actually complete assignments for them.

As the students graduated, the parents began showing up at the work place, at interviews and going so far as to fill out applications and negotiate salaries for their children.

Now I don’t quite know if this is necessarily going to be anything new for performing arts organizations who have always had stage parents hovering around. However, a decision needs to be made on the organization’s policy on parental involvement. As the Forbes article I linked to above notes, some companies are embracing parents. Others feel it is not appropriate for parents to be involving themselves in decisions being made at work and have generated formal responses to the issue.

Fortunately, my mother restricts her complaints about how many hours I am putting in at work to me.

While I have known about helicopter parents for quite awhile now, I haven’t run across any cases anywhere I worked. (Well, one intern’s parents followed him cross country to check out his work site but didn’t contact us past that point except to make a donation.) What impelled me to cover the subject was a video the Next Generation Consulting blog linked to in the entry on mentoring I cited last week. The video is about an hour or so long on the subject of mentoring at accounting firms.

As the speaker, Rita Keller, discussed the issue of parental involvement, she noted that employers needed to be prepared to have the new employees making a lot of personal calls or texting throughout the day. Now if the parents are prodding their kids to get to bed and wake up on time, this can be beneficial to a company. The area she mentions that I believe would be the biggest concern for employers is lack of initiative and decision making skills. Because these young people have consulted with their parents and friends on so many issues in their lives multiple times a day, they tend to crave/require specific guidance or advice and lack the ability to act independently.

The results of helicopter parenting and the general technological environment the next generation of workers have grown up in is the subject of a really good article from HR Magazine that addresses the issue and how to structure the work environment to best channel younger workers’ energies. There are some benefits these folks bring like familiarity with technology and a facility of working with groups and multi-tasking. But there are also some disadvantages too like indiscretion, unrealistic expectations and impatience.

Stopgap Mentoring

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Over at her blog on the Next Generation Consulting website, Rebecca Ryan asks, Is Mentoring a Coverup for Poor Management? According to an article she links to at the end of her entry, most companies are actually coaching rather than mentoring. Coaching essentially consists of helping someone fulfill their function for the company whereas mentoring is more of a customize relationship aimed at growing the person.

In Ryan’s view, most mentoring programs are essentially buddy programs. Whereas:

“True Mentoring occurs when an elder’s intention is to entrust another with the welfare of her or his estate (or something similarly signigicant.) In business, this means that one generation of leaders takes the next generation under its wing and over time, teaches them everything they know….So you see, Mentoring is intended to occur alongside a transfer of responsibility. Most Mentoring programs have no such intention.”

The problem she feels lies in the fact that companies try to use mentoring to fill in gaps but don’t commit to designing and implementing the program resulting in low retention and burn out.

The next generation of leaders are looking for mentoring and presumably want it to be high quality. Just as interns don’t want to just be a photocopier, new employees don’t want a coaching only experience. So if you have a mentoring program, the question to ask is, Is it any good?

Constructing Leaders

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Some disclosure right from the beginning. While most of my involvement with the project I am about to describe will be voluntary, I am receiving some travel and lodging in return for my participation.

I have recently been chosen to participate as a lead partner in an very intriguing project. There is a new arts facility being planned for Bellevue, WA and I have been asked to provide input into it’s planning and construction. I assume I was chosen for my past work experience but especially because I provided input into the theatre portion of a community center the Salvation Army is building with a bequest from Ray and Joan Kroc.

But providing input into building projects is no big deal, right? What makes this so intriguing is the process the organization is using to gather and integrate the input. All ten of the lead partners (later phases will involve additional people) were chosen from among those who have participated in the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Emerging Leadership Institute. The thought behind involving ELI alumni is to tap into the collective knowledge and experience of people in mid and senior level positions who are involved in both overall policy making as well as day to day operations.

What is deemed of additional importance is providing professional development opportunities for people in these positions. The lack of these opportunities has been a concern since I first attended ELI. In explaining this need, the pilot project document quotes an address Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation made to International Association of Assembly Managers about the next generation of leaders’ view of careers in the arts which appears to be pretty much what he said to the Southern Arts Federation.

In addition to providing excellent career advancement opportunities, they hope to create a template with which future projects may be built. While I will be traveling to learn more about the site and talk with those involved, a lot of the work I will perform will apparently be online discussions and reactions to materials posted by staff. Perhaps the fact that I actively use a blog was also a factor in being chosen since that will be one of the tools that will be used.

I have signed a non-disclosure agreement agreeing to keep many of the details confidential. From my experience on the Kroc Center project I understand that there is some information that can also prevent the organization from receiving the most competitive bids for services too. I am generally pretty conservative about revealing what I really know about situations so I don’t perceive any difficulties in my participation.

What I do hope to be able to do is report on some of the general topics that are discussed that are worthy of consideration by arts organizations everywhere– “How does the design make passersby feel welcomed?” “How does the design facilitate emergency evacuation.” Though I will steer clear of publicizing some questions that while valuable to ponder and a valid part of the design process, might cause people to lose confidence in the organization without reason–“Aren’t you concerned that that placement there might have a potent for a toxic spill?”

Needless to say I am pleased to be involved with the project. But also gratified to learn that people are seriously thinking about ways to create opportunities for leaders to attain career and personal growth.

Art for the Obsessive Cleaner

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The technical director in my theatre has been talking on and off about putting together a photo show of all the attempts to paint over graffiti around the city. The paint the city/county/state has been using doesn’t match the color of the concrete, of course. But it often doesn’t match the paint color they used to cover the graffiti the last time around either. The result is a patchwork that sort of looks like someone took the Army’s desert camouflage pattern and blew it up on a photocopy machine. Who knew there were so many shades of institutional gray, beige and tan?

So when I saw this video with a caption of Reverse Graffiti Project on Artsjournal.com earlier this week, I thought someone had the same idea. It is actually a lot cooler. Take a look.

For those of you who don’t have the time and inclination to take a look, the artist Moose Curtis, makes stencils (in this case of plants indigenous to California) and then uses a power washer and natural cleansers to clean dirt away from concrete walls. The result is a reverse “graffiti” image that is temporary by the nature of its placement in a dirty location.

One of the first ideas I had upon taking my current position was to have a contest with local schools to create a mural on the two ugly concrete walls at our theatre entryway. The location has been likened to a freeway underpass by some. (Although people love it for the shelter the covered area affords them when it is raining.) Many dismissed the idea saying it would attract graffiti even though the blank walls have been fairly graffiti free. I am intrigued by this project and am wondering if those walls are dirty enough to allow the technique to work. Though according to Curtis, it is probably dirtier than I think.

Given that a number of arts organizations are located in or adjacent to dirt producing/attracting locations like freeways and industrial districts since the rents are cheaper thereabouts, I wonder if this might be the basis of some inexpensive decoration for unattractive exteriors.

Of course, now this this technique is being widely promoted. someone will want to make an “artistic” statement and create dirty pictures by cleaning. Yes, even clean art can be lewd.

Donors With Baggage

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There was a short piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website about fund raising (subscription required). What caught my eye was some of the insights it provided about how people money and the act of donating it. The story cites Laura Fredricks, a former fundraiser for Pace University and Temple University, who addressed attendees at Fund Raising Day in New York 2008 last week.

Much of what I read and heard at conferences about fund raising primarily deals with strategies for developing a relationship with a donor and convincing them to support your organization. In some respects, much of the advice has been similar to what is given in regard to dating. Some of the advice is a little aggressive and cutthroat and some advocates a more practical and sensitive approach. (Of course, there is also the “be content being single” camp but that philosophy doesn’t quite work in fundraising.)

In any case the advice generally focuses on a somewhat formulaic planned approach. Just as dating tips rarely acknowledge that other people have the baggage of past dating experiences which will impact the relationship you are trying to cultivate, I rarely hear/read a similar acknowledgment in connection with fund aising.

One of the anecdotes mentioned in the story was about a wealthy developer who never gave more than $1,000 at a time to Temple. When Fredricks asked why, she discovered that even though he could afford to give more, he harbored fears about running out of money that went back to his childhood.

She recognizes that the people who ask for money like presidents and trustees also have varying degrees of comfort with the subject. “They should be treated the same way donors are—as individuals with different emotions about money—and given simple requests, she said. Instead of giving a reticent board member a list of prospective donors, Fredricks suggested starting out with the names and biographical information of two current donors and then asking the trustee to call them to say thank you.”

Back when I was fresh out of grad school I remember having a conversation with someone about fund raising. I don’t quite remember who it was but the comment was made that you couldn’t ask someone to make a large contribution of money until you had made a large contribution yourself. The idea was that if you had done so you could empathize with what motivated someone to donate that much to something they believed in and could also understand how making such a donation impacted their standard of living.

At the time a $50 would have had dire consequences on my standard of living so I really wasn’t ready to do serious fund raising at that point in my career. Some of the other advice given at the Fund raising Day in New York meeting actually revolved around this idea. One person suggested requesting large donors make the ask for similarly large gifts.

One last tip that caught my eye which might be rather difficult for some arts organizations to embrace given perennially precarious financial straits. “Don’t show your desperation, no matter how far you are from hitting your goal. You’re not raising money to keep your organization from going out of business.” Yeah, right! That little bit of advice came from Michael Margitich, senior deputy director for external affairs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The approach he said he used while at Columbia University was “he was raising additional funds to ‘maintain our level of excellence.'”

Chinese Philanthropy

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While I was in China, there were a lot of appeals for donations to the Sichaun earthquake relief effort on television. This came in the form of ads and what appeared to be telethon type programs. What I found interesting was that philanthropy on this scale seems to be a new thing for China. There was a program on CCTV International that was discussing this new development. While they do have video of the program on their website, I can’t get it to run so I will have to depend on the notes I jotted on the hotel stationary. I apologize for not having more details. I just happened upon the program while waiting to go to dinner so there was a period where I was casting about for a pen and pad.

The participants in the discussion mentioned that people were learning about how to give due to the earthquake. An American working for a foundation in Beijing mentioned the benefits of philanthropy. One example he gave was developing solidarity and morale within a company when employees at overseas branches donate to help their counterparts in China and vice versa.

What I found most interesting was the concept of recognition for donations. There seemed to be an unmentioned back story behind the host’s question regarding public recognition. I almost wondered if there were a lot of people expecting public recognition for their largesse and it might be sapping energy from the relief effort. The American foundation person pointed out that yes, while there were public monuments to large donors in the United States, there was a strong tradition of anonymous donation as well.

The discussion also touched on the idea that recipients of donations should be held highly accountable for the way they administered the money they received. And as in the U.S., donors should investigate these organizations and decide if the charities are using the donations in an effective manner.

There was also mention of whether China should institute an inheritance tax to provide an incentive for the growing affluent class to donate.

None of these concepts are new for the U.S. It was rather interesting to watch people begin to think about what it means to be charitable outside one’s local situation for the first time. I will be interested to see what develops. Despite all the input they can garner from the biggest and best charities and foundations in the world, I am sure the Chinese will create their own method of philanthropy, partially of necessity and partially based on their cultural values.

Hey You, Why Aren’t You At The Concert!?

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I came across a link last week to a study the League of American Orchestras did. The freshness of the referring page and the fact that my monitor resolution didn’t require me to enlarge the pages too much initially hid the fact that the story came out in January 2004. Thinking it had been published in 2008, I was wondering why Drew McManus and the other bloggers at Inside the Arts hadn’t picked up on it already. For awhile there, I was excited that I might actually be scooping them on their segment of the arts.

Even given the time that has actually transpired since the publication date, the article, Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender, is quite pertinent. One of the toughest groups to survey is the non-attender so the results of any survey of these people are highly valued. And they should be given that it is difficult to find people who don’t attend who are willing to respond. It isn’t as simple a matter as going out during a performance and asking why people aren’t at the show. (Though that does seem like a good place to start now doesn’t it?)

While the results of the survey the story covers are in relation to orchestras, the lessons learned can be applied universally. The median age of these smart, aware people tends to be lower than those actually attending which makes them valuable for that reason alone. They believe they would enjoy attending a concert, but never get around to doing so. Some of the reasons are advertising design which is intimidating to those not in the know (though theatre advertising gets higher points.) Though to be fair, some of the most accessible methods of communication suffered from perception. Said one person who didn’t know orchestra’s had websites, “I mean, they’re playing 18th-century music. I guess I never thought they’d need
a web site.”

In addition to being uneasy about how to dress and act, the Non Attenders are also concerned about not understanding the performance. It isn’t just a matter of not having the experience and vocabulary to comprehend what appears to be a dense, complex work, but also not being as enraptured by the work as everyone else seems to be.

I think this is an important distinction especially in relation to music. In most people’s general experience, not understanding music is not an impediment to enjoyment. Getting lyrics wrong is practically a rite of passage. Listening to music in a foreign language is quite commonplace and the unfamiliarity of the tongue not terribly distressing. Perhaps it is the attendance format combined with lack of reference points, but it appears people tend to feel more at sea attending a symphony. I cite the format as a contributing factor because even if a contemporary foreign language music performance is in a concert hall, there is often an opportunity to groove along with the music and establish a connection that is pretty much not an option in the presence of an orchestra. Or at least the glares will be quick in coming if are feelin’ it enough to roll your shoulders and wiggle a little in your seat.

The article notes that one of the most important groups to an orchestra are the people who initiate the excursion. Though the percentages may be different, this is true for all the arts disciplines. There are always a few who get the ball rolling and organize the outing for rest of their group, even if it is only one other. Making this task easy for that person can go a long way toward filling the seats.

A sidebar that appeared within the article directed me to a website the League has set up to make people more comfortable with the attendance experience. This is something I have been a proponent of so I was glad to see it. Meet the Music helps you find a League orchestra near you. It also offers advice about approaching your first attendance experience. Among the things I appreciated about the site was that while they instructed you not to clap between movements, they also tell you to ignore the people who shush you if you do and acknowledge it is only recently that the practice of not clapping at that point has emerged. I also liked their advice about how to listen to the activity while the musicians warmed up.

The biggest fault I would find with the website is that it’s existence isn’t widely promoted. It has been around 4 years and this is the first I have heard of it. I took a look around at the websites of the members in 15 states and few people include a link to it or anything like it in their education or ticket purchasing sections of the site. In some cases, it is the less prominent orchestras in a state which do a better job linking to the site or have a similar FAQ that is easy to find. The NY Phil and San Francisco Symphony though both have FAQs that were either modeled after or the models for the guide on the League site. (I am having a real hard time finding something on the Philly site though.)

Skeptical Eye on Board Recruitment

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I was idly perusing a national arts job site this weekend and came across a board member solicitation for a small theatre in a major city. I thought that was interesting because an organization usually forms a nominating committee and seeks to balance the board in terms of what people might bring to short and long range plans. Though BoardSource counsels against indiscriminate recruitment, I imagined while perhaps inexperienced, they were being a little adventuresome and casting a wide net. They specified a love for theatre and preferred that the members not be theatre professionals.

Then I noticed something that made me a little wary. The cover letters and resumes were all going to the artistic director. It is something of a conflict of interest to have the people responsible for overseeing the finances and operations chosen by the person whose activities will be monitored. Adding to my unease was a check of their organization’s website and 990 filings on Guidestar which revealed of the five board members, three were employees. The artistic director, managing director and production person all sit on the board. This isn’t a new company that just formed and hasn’t had a chance to recruit outside the handful of friends who started the venture. The organization is almost 9 years old and if their claims are true, has garnered enough critical acclaim to attract interest in serving from a decent number of people.

I checked the non-profit corporation laws for the state in which the organization is located and there is no law against such a heavy staff representation on a board. In fact, it appears only California makes such a prohibition. Don’t quote me though. This type of mix is generally advised against. This exchange on Idealist.org gives a sense of some of the factors to weigh.

It initially appeared to me as if the artistic director may be trying to manipulate the selection process in order to surround himself with people who will help raise money and not challenge him. My suspicions ran so high that I was ready to name names in the post and encourage people to stay far away. However, I also considered that maybe someone advised them that their current board set up looks suspicious and they should make an effort to expand board membership if they want to attract more serious funding.

Which is not to say that next year the artistic director won’t have surrounded himself with 10 yes men and women. There were some clues in the 990 and organization website that I pursued with a little Googling thatl makes me wonder how independent the other board members are. The other endeavors with which the board members have been involved makes me skeptical of any suggestion that they didn’t know any better about the composition of their board.

I also have to admit there are many possible variable of which I am not aware that could explain this situation so I am not going to be outing them here. On the other hand, I am quite pleased with how easy it was for me to research the organization, the board members and the specific laws of their state dealing with non-profit boards. It is very encouraging to see the increasing ease with which research can be conducted.

Other Ideas

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Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas had some thoughts on yesterday’s post and then I responded to his entry and, if I didn’t mess up my submission while running back and forth preparing my dinner, just replied to his response.

With all that thinking and writing, I pretty much figure I have done my blogging contribution of the day. Whew!

Actually, I did want to highlight a project Scott has been working on in conjunction with other arts bloggers, over the course of a number of blog entries called Theatre Tribe. This project is dedicated to finding viable way to do theatre in the changing economic/political/social landscape. Since he has been developing the concept essentially from scratch in entries interspersed over the course of several months, he has set up a central page that organizes his thoughts for easy reference. I have read some of his entries at various points though when I clicked through the headers on the central page, I realized how many I had missed. Scott presents some interesting ideas for revising the way performances are mounted and the nature of the artist-community relationship.

There are times when I find Scott’s writings to be strident and in opposition with my own thoughts. But he is also very thoughtful and reflective. Which is why I keep going back.

Are You Living Where You Should Be?

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Richard Florida, who rose to fame alongside his Rise of the Creative Class figures you should evaluate if you are living where you should be. As I read the reviews and summaries of his new book, Who’s Your City?, I get the impression that it may have just gotten harder to attract the creative class to one’s area.

Of course, it has always been difficult or easy without Florida saying it. But from what I read and what he talks about in this newspaper article, it seems like there is an underlying vibe a lot of places that attracts (and repels) certain types of folks. If your community doesn’t already have a certain nascent characteristic, it is going to be tough to cultivate a change in that direction. There is a certain inertia to some places that will hinder efforts if local government/Chamber of Commerce, etc is trying to push things in an opposite direction with the intention of attracting the treasured creatives. He even implies an entropic influence on people drawing their values and attitudes closer to being in line with the general community over time. (Though most people who are considered the loony liberal or raging conservative probably won’t ever be wholly converted short of consciously willing it.)

Florida talks about certain communities being suited for people at different phases in their lives and lists the “best of” in large, middle and small regions. I haven’t read the book but if I were to hazard a guess, given that creatives, like all mortals age and mature in their outlooks, attracting them is probably a matter of exploiting the aspects of your community that best suit a certain demographic rather than aiming for the young and hip (unless your community is a burgeoning hip place.)

What appealed to me more than the top five list was another section of the website that poses 20 questions to help you decide what communities are best for you. This is great for me because I am young and hip in atypical ways. The strength of the place finder is that it makes you examine your criteria for your ideal community and forces you to do a little research to answer all the questions.

You plug in where you live and up to four places where you want to live. It then asks you to rate each city on typical things like economy, geography, climate, available jobs, health care, arts, schools and housing costs. But it also asks you to rank them on things like trustworthiness of politicians and business leaders, availability of technology, diversity of leadership and community and openness of the community. In the end you may discover that while you always dreamed of living in Seattle, you are better off living where you are.

I suspect the place finder might even be help people focus their thinking when they consider founding an arts organization. (Maybe the NEA or Americans for the Arts should adopt a similar tool specifically for the arts.) Even without his book being published, I don’t think I would be suggesting anything earth shattering were I to say that founding an arts organization that doesn’t resonate with the underlying vibe of a community is a bad idea and probably destined to result in one muttering about philistines. If communities can target the wrong group of creatives, creatives can certainly target the wrong communities.

Technology Tip- I Am Dumb

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No, no, no wait. The tip isn’t that I am dumb, it is actually that I am occasionally reminded that I shouldn’t assume a tip I am considering writing on is so self-evident and elementary that I am insulting people by posting it.

I was checking up on Chad Bauman to see how he was faring in his effort to get people to cross the Potomac River to see Arena Stage productions in Virginia. I had posted on his use of Personalize URLS to direct people from their driveway to his driveway. It appears the effort was well worth it as they “have had less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our subscribers ask for a refund.”

In the same entry he talks about a practice he adopted from Repertory Theatre of St. Louis that made me thwak my head for not perceiving the logical extension of things we already do. Essentially Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and now Arena Stage have pages (click on the preceding theatre names in this sentence) containing links so you can tell your friends about a show on the different social networking sites and via email as well as bookmark the page for future reference.

This was the part that convinced me that I shouldn’t think something is too simple to mention. What made me say “Duh” is the fact that while my theatre does offer people the opportunity to send email messages with a performance description automatically inserted into the message body and have a Myspace page allowing people to send event information to Myspace friends, we haven’t it possible to send Myspace alerts from our organizational web page and vice versa. I figure if I missed something this logical, other people may have has well.

There is certainly no wisdom in assuming the Myspace people only get their event information through that site. As with all things technological, I do think there is a limit to the number of modes of communication an arts organization should offer website visitors. The clutter and the surfeit of choices can be alienating.

Like the aforementioned theatres, our stated policy is that we don’t store the email information. At least insomuch as we don’t record any of the information in our databases. A copy of what is sent does get forwarded to my email address alone. Given the tensions I have witnessed arise from students who felt they were miscast, I wanted to make sure no one was using our system to send out messages disparaging cast members by creatively rewriting my show descriptions.

Lately, I have considered making a small alteration to our policy. Since there is usually one person who organized most of the details of any couple/group outing, I was thinking that perhaps we should institute some reward system for those who are recommending our shows to their friends. It wouldn’t be a publicized program. I don’t want people spamming their friends with our show information in order to get prizes. What we would do is simply contact the person and offer them free tickets or something for being so supportive of us.

The change to our policy might be something along the lines of “We will not store the recipient’s email address or the content of the email in any form. We may keep a simple tally of how many times a sender as recommended a show and contact them no more than once a year to inquire on the quality of their experience.”

I am sure I am missing some other logical way that will facilitate attending a performance. If you see it, speak up and submit a comment!

What’s Good For The Brain May Be Mud For the Soul

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As something of a counterpoint to my entry yesterday on how exposure to the arts can benefit one’s neurological development is this National Review piece from December in which Robert Fulford reminds us that arts exposure won’t save your soul or improve your personality.

He quotes George Steiner, “‘We know that a man can play Bach and Schubert and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning,'” and notes “…we also can’t claim that immersion in the arts will create a lively mind. Art education has produced armies of learned bores.”

He also points out that artists are not imbued with any special grace as people and may possess the most vie personalities even as they produce the most engaging works we have ever encountered.

This observation is has become less true of late as an ever increasing tabloid eye on the activities of celebrities has seen art valued in the context of the artist. This isn’t just a matter of actors being fired from Lost to minimize the bad press from a DUI. There is often trouble with the performance of J.S. Bach’s work given a perception of anti-Semitic sentiments which may have simply been a reflection of the time in which he lived and text which he drew from. (The Gospel of John from which he derived his St. John Passion contains a good deal of derogatory content.)

What Fulford says the arts do guarantee is, “Those who give it their time and love are offered the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives.” It is somewhat reminiscent of the proverb about leading a horse to water since the arts only afford the opportunity of improvement. Education and religion can also prove uplifting but only if they are embraced. Likewise, exposure to the arts with the intent of developing the neurological structures discussed in yesterday’s entry only becomes meaningful in someone’s life if they value the experience.

This Is Your Brain On Art

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On Artjournal.com was a link to this article on Science Daily about a study the Dana Foundation commissioned on the question of “Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?” For three years researchers at a number of universities have studied this question resulting in a recently released report (downloadable as an Acrobat document here.)

I haven’t read the report yet. But the Science Daily article mentions some interesting findings though they repeat the Dana Foundation disclaimer that “Much of this research is of a preliminary nature, yielding several tight correlations but not definitive causal relationships. ”

1. An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition.

2. Genetic studies have begun to yield candidate genes that may help explain individual differences in interest in the arts.

3. Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of music training.

4. In children, there appear to be specific links between the practice of music and skills in geometrical representation, though not in other forms of numerical representation.

5. Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway.

6. Training in acting appears to lead to memory improvement through the learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information.

7. Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics is related to a temperamental factor of openness, which in turn is influenced by dopamine-related genes.

8. Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills.

The Dana Foundation lists suggested directions for research given what has been learned thus far near the bottom of their research summary. To read the list you would think they hadn’t many any progress in the research at all which is probably indicative of just how little study has been devoted to the ways art shapes our neurological processes.

Something that really surprised me comes up in the video of the presentation of findings. Michael Posner of the University of Oregon talks about how liking a particular art form, be it visual arts, linguistic arts, movement arts and music, was independent of other art forms. In other words, an artist is not particularly inclined to like arts in general but rather only find one particularly appealing. He seems to say there are structures in the brain that develop which are aligned with certain activities that exist prior to exposure to information or experience which would predispose someone toward that subject based on how developed those areas of the brain are. There is overlap in many areas, but there is enough separation to make one’s interests independent of each other.

The other important element, Posner says, is an openness to the experience. You need to be open and have certain existent neural pathways to begin developing an affinity for an experience. (Unfortunately, the video has no time index that I can reference for you.) One thing he briefly mentions that made me concerned was the idea that attention needs to be sustained over a long period of time. He talks about this in connection with young children and the fact that kids acquire many of their skills by essentially engaging in repetitive play over a period of time. My concern was based on the general shortening of attention span as people seek constant stimulation from portable technology. I worried about people not cultivating an interest in the arts which will actually indicate a possible lack of important sections of the brain. (i.e. dance skills are connected to observation.)

The one bit of solace is that many kids are more interested in playing with boxes and keys on a ring than they are with what came in the box and maybe likely to develop their brains despite all the things that distract their parents and older siblings. Though it won’t be long before they replicate the behavior of their family members and friends. It should also be noted that the formation of these neural structures isn’t necessarily happening only in children. One of the people in the video admit that there are brain structures developing throughout one’s life whose purpose scientists aren’t necessarily certain about.

But this is only a small part of the study and even the research presentation. My plan is to take a more indepth look at the study soon.

Its What It Doesn’t Have That Is Most Important

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It has been a busy couple days here at Butts In the Seats so I have brief offering for folks to ponder.

An illustration about how technology is changing our expectations and how tough it can be to keep abreast of the changes. When I was at the Arts Presenters conference in January I overheard people on no less than 5 occasions express a sentiment along the lines of “If only we could figure out how to use text messaging to promote our shows.”

My assumption was that the difficulty people were facing is that you can only send about 160 characters via SMS and it is pretty tough to make your case and provide your contact information in that short a space. Given that many cell phone users pay per text message, they might tolerate one text message from you but sending multiple ones as a modern day Burma Shave advertisement could cause quite a bit of ill will. But since most young people don’t view email as a their primary communication tool vs. texting, figuring out how to best use it is important.

I mentioned this problem in an email to Drew McManus and in his reply he essentially pointed out that with the abilities of the iPhone, the SMS format is probably going to be abandoned soon. Not everyone may buy an iPhone, but the features it contains will generate an expectation that new phones contain similar abilities. Since the iPhone does support email, perhaps that will become a valued form of communication with young people again.

But rather than re-emphasizing the use of existing channels of communication, I have a feeling we will see arts organizations scrambling to replace email blasts with distributed videos that are perhaps tailored to deliver different appeals for the same performances to various age or interest groups. The fact that the iPhone web browser doesn’t support Flash images which is an element of many webpages but does have a special YouTube video player is pretty telling about the areas Apple expects to be important in the future. Steve Jobs didn’t put 3.5 inch disk drives in the iMac because he didn’t think that was the direction things were going. Now, even if you do have a 3.5″ drive on your computer, do you use it?

But this just goes to show how quickly technology moves. It wasn’t that long ago that we started seeing research that most young people eschewed emails for texting. Now just as arts managers start to think about how they can tap into that trend, a change in the favored communications channel seems likely.

Tough to Move Up, Tough to Move Out

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Came across a link to the results of a listening tour Building Movement did among non-profit leaders back in 2004. The results of the conversations they recorded are very similar to the observations made by Ben Cameron in his address to the Southern Arts Federation this Fall. (Perhaps his speech was based on Building Movement’s study?)

The conversations Building Movement (BM) recorded were mainly among leaders of social service agencies, but as implied, had many common elements. Both noted that the younger generation is interested in balancing their lives rather than devoting so much of themselves to the job as their predecessors have done. Both also discuss the eagerness of the younger generation to participate in substantive decision making and responsibilities.

The BM conversations revealed that members of Generation X feel a great deal of pressure caught between an older generation which isn’t retiring and a younger generation coming into their own looking to become involved and effect change. Whereas the older generation has remained in the same positions for years, the younger ones move often looking for more promising opportunities and often contemplating leaving the field. This causes organizations to have people of a great deal of experience at a certain level and then a sharp decline just below. This can have grave implications for those places that haven’t engaged seriously in succession planning.

Part of the problem, Building Movement notes, is there is no structure currently that provides these leaders with a place to go or even transition to other than retirement. They are healthy enough to continue working but there are no opportunities available to them that would result in a net increase of openings for younger people. Since they did not open a retirement account in their 20s and 30s and with Social Security and health care iffy propositions, retirement may not be a very attractive option.

The lack of mentors to help cultivate the necessarily skills was a big concern. One of the few people who did have a mentor of sorts praised the mentor’s ability and willingness to point out that “new” ideas were actually old ones that have been revisited a number of times which prevented him from trying to reinvent the wheel. Another problem that was mentioned was that the older generation had all these relationships with funders that they weren’t passing on to the younger generation. Because they had not had extensive interactions with long term funders, when the younger leaders took over they were “perceived as less seasoned.” This lack of contact could have severe consequences for many organizations.

The most surprising result of the conversations for me was the reluctance to become executive director many of the younger generation had. I figured that position was the logical goal for those chomping at the bit for their predecessors to retire. This reticence stems back to the desire for a balanced life. The executive director position was seen as thankless and too heavy a burden to shoulder to still have time for one’s family. I don’t know if this sentiment is carried over to the arts. Having family members who have worked for social service non-profits, I can see the truth of this for that sector. Though I imagine they would say the same thing for the performing arts from the perspective of an outsider.

Building Movement has a monograph that integrates the findings of the talking sessions with research to make suggestions for cultivating new leaders and planning for the transition of existing leaders in a healthy manner. I haven’t had a chance to look at it at any length but since I often harp on succession planning, it would be a smart thing for me to cover it here in a future entry.

Professionals and Pro Ams

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In her column in this month’s American Theatre, Theatre Communications group Executive Director, Teresa Eyring talks about the recognizing the growing number of Professional Amateurs in our society. Now this topic is nothing new. I have posted on the subject of Pro Ams. Andrew Taylor has done so on a number of occasions. His students did a research project on the topic. Charles Leadbetter and Paul Miller who coined the Pro Am term, wrote a book on the subject.

What makes Teresa Eyring’s comments special is that she leads a major service organization and therefore is in a position to exert greater influence when she says it is worthwhile to heed a trend. (Though she was certainly influenced by all this discussion of Pro Ams.) What she has to say hasn’t impacted my thoughts about Pro Ams in any direction. But it is good to see an arts leader like her encouraging people to explore the possibilities.

So if the words of all the aforementioned folks haven’t gotten you to ponder the concept, maybe Eyring’s will. She acknowledges that a transition that embraces Pro Ams can be difficult.

“If these shifts are irreversible and true, the question for professional arts organizations is how most effectively to embrace and respect audiences and potential audiences as they self-identify as creators, with a capacity for meaningful involvement in the artistic process that has often been closely held by professional theatre artists and organizations.”…

“…For theatres and theatre artists, this trend presents questions that are both practical and semantic, such as: What do we do with the word “professional”? In the 20th-century arts world, this word has often been used to instruct the public, critics and funders to expect an experience qualitatively superior to that which is non-professional or amateur…”

“…However, with the growth of a pro-am culture that goes beyond art into science, technology and other realms, the power of a professionals-only province continues to fade—or at the very least, the nomenclature is less effective and meaningful. Some of the teeth-gnashing over this development has to do with how the public will know the difference between what is excellent creative expression and what is merely average…”

“…if theatres can find ways to tap into the growing interest among individuals in participating in the actual creation of art and the arts experience, perhaps we can move this trend to a tipping point of sorts, bringing theatre into a new period of cultural ferocity and ascendancy.”

Is Dumb A Core Value?

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There have been a number of books and articles that have come out recently bemoaning the lack of knowledge exhibited by people today. Whether it was Miss South Carolina’s flub at the Miss America contest, the woman on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader who thought Europe was a country and had never heard of Hungry (her pronunciation) or talk show stunts like Jay Leno’s where he asks people easy questions for which they provide embarrassing incorrect answers.

The latest chapter in this discussion making rounds of the talk shows and newspaper reviews is Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. You can read a review here or watch a pretty good interview with a transcript with Bill Moyers here. Much of her focus seems to be on how active anti-intellectualism is causing people to essentially renounce their roles as citizens of the US.

But while some of the examples Jacoby discusses are worthy of some consideration, what she says isn’t as important as the whole concept of people actively not caring that they aren’t familiar with basic knowledge about the world around them. It could have been any book or discussion on this topic that suddenly raised the question, do the arts have any idea how to deal with anti-intellectualism?

Most of the strategies suggested about how to build audiences seem to assume that mistakes were made but audiences can be regained. Perhaps the attendance won’t be as great as before, but it seems that arts organizations are coming to the conclusion that things changed and they weren’t agile or perceptive enough to recognize it. Proposals to bolster education and effect changes that reflect shifting audience expectations about the experience and social environment all seem to assume that the arts can reclaim some of the ground it lost to the Internet, high def plasma televisions and video on demand.

But does the arts world have any solutions to combat complete indifference or even worse, active attempts reinforced by social pressure, to distance oneself from anything that might indicate that one was more than just plain folks. You have probably heard that in some communities, showing signs of being educated could find one accused of putting on airs and having elitist notions. When I was discussing the general topic of this book with a person in my office, he said that in some of the communities that the college served, some males were resistant to attend for fear of becoming homosexuals. Not being labeled–becoming. This puts a survey the college did a couple years ago in an entirely different context. One of the top answers from men regarding what they liked about the school was the attractive women.

Frankly, I wonder if there is any solution the arts world can enact in its current position. Had the arts community more influence in society, it might work to make intellectual pursuits more of a core value. Perhaps it still can, though the road will certainly be slow and long. The truth might be that there are plenty of intellectually curious people out there to whom the arts wielding a new approach might appeal. It is easy enough for shows like Jay Leno’s to edit out all the correct answers in order to put a comedy bit together. And certainly the erudite answers of Miss America and game show contestants probably aren’t popular viewing on YouTube if they are posted at all.

Schadenfreude aside, even if things aren’t as bad as popular media makes it seem, there are genuine problems with lack of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills in the country. While handling all the other troubles that besets them, the arts community’s continued existence probably hinges in a large part on combating the idea that it is okay and perhaps even preferable not to know. People may claim that they can easily look up anything they need to know, but I often wonder if they ever bother doing it. The conditions constituting a need to know seem to be none existent.

I used to joke that I was glad people were so lazy about learning because that way employers would pay me more for being competent and knowledgeable. The truth is, that isn’t the type of world I really want to live in. Nor do I imagine the majority of people would. Not only would people lack the wit to laugh at my jokes, but the lack of intellectual and perhaps social and emotional engagement would be quite dispiriting. (Initially, I was also going to say it can be depressing to be surrounded by people who willingly choose not to live up to their potential but I realized I was starting to channel my mother.)

Prisoners Creating Our Own Dilemmas

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Taking a gander over at the TED website to see what talks have been released since last I visited. Apropos to yesterday’s entry is this talk from Howard Rheingold about collaboration and cooperation. It is a short piece, only 20 minutes, but if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, move the handle down to the Cooperate=Wealth section of the index that pops up when you move the cursor across the bottom of the video.

He addresses the idea that if survival is all about competition, there wouldn’t be so many humans. At some point, humans began to cooperate and that helped them thrive. The benefits of cooperation are generally understood, even across cultural lines. He speaks of how players of the ultimatum game seem to innately know that proposing a 50/50 split offers the most likely path of greatest reward. (At least among Americans, Europeans and Japanese. Rheingold notes that slash and burn folks in the Amazon, pastoral herders in Central Asia and other countries proved to have different sense of fairness when playing the game.)

He also briefly addresses the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that unless there is a way to restrain overuse, humans will exhaust a commonly held resource. He cites a counter study that found that people are only captives of what is essentially a multi-player prisoner’s dilemma if they view themselves as such. Those who are able to successfully break out do so by “creating institutions for collective action” with common design principles.

As his talk draws to a close, he cites the example of how some of the most cutthroat competitive corporations like IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems are open sourcing their software and some of their patents to be worked on by the commons. He mentions that Eli Lilly has “created a market for solutions for pharmaceutical problems.” Though he doesn’t mention it, I assume that is also an open source type effort. He also cites Toyota which works to make their suppliers more effective even though it means increasing supply efficiency for Toyota’s competitors. EBay has solved the prisoner’s dilemma by introducing a mechanism by which two people who can’t necessarily trust each other can make an exchange. He says they are doing it because they have realized that a certain degree of cooperation is beneficial for the bottom line.

So my obvious question is, if multinational corporations can extend a little trust to cooperate, can’t arts entities from the service organizations down to the smallest theatre/dance/music/visual art company find a way to do it as well? While large organizations might be most immediately influential by providing an example for many others to emulate, technology allows the successes of smaller to be disseminated as they couldn’t even a handful of years ago.

Arts and the Law

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While looking around at the sites on my blogroll when I came across a link (On Theatre Forte I think) to Theatre and Entertainment Law blog. The blog and associated podcast are created by Gordon Firemark who answers entertainment and intellectual property law questions.

I have addressed legal issues in the past, but obviously he is better at it and speaks with greater authority. His blog and podcast cover some of the basic issues everyone asks about like “Can I make a video tape of a play whose rights are controlled by a publisher?” He also addresses more complicated problems like negotiation and enforceability of non-compete clauses.

A little warning before you listen or read his work, while ignorance of the law is no excuse, it also brings bliss. You may be a little depressed to learn just what your responsibilities are in obtaining permissions for what seem to be the most innocuous activities like showing videos in a dorm lounge. Granted he is a lawyer so his suggestion that you do things like get a different release from a model every time you change your shooting location is all about covering every possible contingency that might arise. (He has the requisite minute long disclaimer in the middle of the podcast, of course.) Still, it is good to be aware of the issues you might face in the course of doing business.

Intrinsic Value of Puppets, Mad Scientists and Trash

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I had a moment of panic a couple weeks ago when I was taking notes on the audio from the “Intrinsic Impacts” session at the APAP conference for one of my earlier entries. When Lisa Booth mentioned she hoped arts organizations didn’t use the report as an excuse to justify providing a small group with an experience of high intrinsic value, I felt a little guilty because I had a show coming up that I knew would only have limited appeal but would provide a highly rewarding experience to those who attended.

I relaxed a few moments later because I knew that on the whole the season held wide appeal for many people. I knew this because every time I picked up the phone or checked the overnight internet ticket sales, most of the orders were for those events even though they were weeks and months hence instead of for the show we did last week. Given that most of our sales generally come in the last couple days before a performance, these steady purchases this far out is quite pleasing. Unfortunately, the weaker sales on the most recent show only served to confirm my impression that it might have a more limited appeal.

Of course, the appeal I refer to is relative to audience size rather than their enthusiasm. The audience size was actually pretty good in terms of my expectations. Their enthusiasm was through the roof. Therefore I don’t have any reservations about mentioning the performer was Paul Zaloom. (Who is also the guy I mentioned yesterday.) Zaloom is probably best known for his role as the wild hair mad scientist on the Saturday morning science show, Beakman’s World. However, he has had a long history as a performer with Bread and Puppet, film maker and puppeteer/performer.

I had contracted him primarily to do a performance but also asked for a couple of workshops. I am glad I did because by some measures they were some of the most successful ancillary activities I have conducted. For the first workshop, I asked him to channel part of his Beakman personae and do his Science Edu-tainment workshop where he talks about how educators can teach science in an entertaining and engaging way.

With a title like that, you might think the session was a lot of flashy tricks with little substance. I have to say I was impressed by how he really emphasized the diligence he applied in making sure the specific terminology he was using on his show (and our workshop) was vetted by scientists at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I guess he did a good job because a half hour into his 90 minute presentation, one of the science faculty offered him a job as a lecturer next semester. Zaloom deferred because he doesn’t have a science degree. I think his enthusiasm and contention that the best scientists are as creative as any artist really energized and excited the 50 educators and educators in training who attended the session.

The second workshop he did was titled “Theatre of Trash.” This one he did for our drama students and some improv groups with an association with our school. For this workshop he raided our prop room for miscellaneous items and required participants to bring some items of their own. He gave a lecture/demo on the use of found objects in performance. Then he set the students loose on the pile and critiqued their work when they were done.

While my hope for Zaloom’s visit was that people would walk away with some new ideas about creating and viewing art and science, I was really hoping this workshop in particular would inject some new perspective. A lot of what I see the students, alumni and even some renters do is derivative of others. Worse, they are borrowing liberally from other local performers who did the same so it is all pretty incestuous. Granted, with sampling, mash-ups, etc., it may just be a function of how they have been socialized to think of the creative process. They still need a kick in the pants though.

Zaloom’s performance did some rump kicking of its own. As a social satirist, his work pushes some buttons at times. Because Zaloom employs found objects and puppetry in his shows it introduces a level of insulation that allows the audience to accept what is happening in a way they couldn’t if a person was saying it directly to them.

After the show he invited the audience up for a backstage tour and 90% of them came up. He explained that puppeteers are the opposite of magicians in that they love to show off their secrets. He spent a fairly long time demonstrating and answering questions for the people huddled around his gear. For the third time in a week, I think people left his presence having had an entirely different experience than they usually do when they enter a familiar room, be it a classroom or theatre.

As I mentioned yesterday, there are experiences you can’t replicate in all situations because the dynamic isn’t there. I talked yesterday about how the audience had an entirely different relationship with Zaloom than they usually do at our shows. As an interesting counterpoint, the night he performed, one of our sister campuses was presenting a version of The Tempest employing Balinese shadow puppetry. Zaloom’s show also employed shadow puppets rigged in the Balinese fashion.

The Tempest was much more technically advanced and very cleverly done. I really wanted to know how they managed to alternate between what was being projected without also including the people who appeared to be standing right in front of the screen. Unfortunately, the dynamic for that show was such that it didn’t allow audience members more than a glimpse of the mechanisms at curtain call.

The ultimate result of Paul Zaloom’s visit is that many people were pleased with their experiences of last week. I am getting all sorts of praise and thanks. There have also been a number of people who have stated we should be doing this type of thing more often. They forget, of course, that I actually started the process 18 months ago when I approached them about their interest in the workshops. It ain’t a simple proposition. What’s more, it also seems to have slipped their minds that the money to pay for artist fees, transportation, lodging and food is coming out of my earned income! Good ideas are always free. Reality costs, n’est-ce pas?

Management Students Got Skills. You Better Recognize That Fact

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One of the things I hate most about attending conferences is that the sessions I want to see most seem to always be scheduled at the same time. One of the tough choices I made was between a session on Emerging Leaders and one on the career opportunities for Arts Management program graduates. I attended the latter hoping to purchase the audio of the other session only to discover it wasn’t recorded due to a mix up about what hotel it was occurring at.

The session on career opportunities for arts managers was lead by Andrew Taylor of the Bolz School, Irene Conley, Chair of Performing Arts Management at the Hartt School and a gentleman whose name I neglected to note.

The discussion wasn’t so much about the job market that will greet arts managers as it was about the skillsets arts managers will need to possess.

Conley mentioned the importance of problem solving, resourcefulness, critical thinking skills and good communication skills. One of the things she requires her students to do is make four new contacts each week as a networking exercise forcing them to do enough background research on people that they can answer questions about each person.

As part of the classroom experience, she emphasizes the process of group work as well as the end product. She has the students evaluate what they did as a member of the team since that is the dynamic they need to operate within in a job environment.

She works to make sure the internship opportunities her students avail themselves of are meaningful and not just providing advanced knowledge in copier machines.

Andrew Taylor took a slightly different approach in talking about what skills managers should have. His contention is that arts organizations look for a one to one correlation between a job description and the skillset a person has. He noted that corporate recruiters know what type of person they are looking for, the skills that will translate to their industry and assume the person can acquire the specific knowledge they need on the job.

Arts organizations don’t know what they want, write up an extensive wish list and then try to find someone who has those exact skills. If I understood Taylor’s explanation correctly, finding an exact fit is not only difficult, it also contributes to a view of the organization that is limiting. The idea that the activities of development are exclusive of marketing which are exclusive of sales is the type of thinking that stunts progress. A person needs skills and understanding that encompass all these areas regardless of which one they are being hired for.

As an illustration, Taylor mentions that an associate was looking for someone to run the box office of a large performing arts center. After some dissatisfaction with candidates from the arts field, he ended up hiring a person who had run a Sears phone order center because they had a better sense of how to manage offering service on that scale.

Taylor says he trains his students to essentially take control of interviews and use answers that create a bridge between what the organization is looking for and the skills the student possess to show how their experience translates.

I made the comment that I thought another skill set people needed was the ability to talk about and advocate for the arts. I mentioned the need to communicate the value of the arts at all ends of the spectrum– advocating to governments and grant makers, (noting that recent research shows that the arts may not be best served by citing economic value of the arts), all the way down to press releases and speaking to individuals.

The part of the session that got me thinking the most though was the idea that arts organizations don’t know what they are looking for when they hire. I currently have my hands tied in that regard since I work for a state institution that pretty much codifies how good a candidate for a position is based on number of years experience and education. I have clearly seen more effective people paid less because their experience and education were less than others.

I imagine there will come a day when I can’t hide behind the strictures of a bureaucracy when it comes to determining who is best suited for a job so I have already started pondering what the skills are that candidates for arts jobs should possess. How should a job description be written to attract people with these skills and knowledge? What appears in the descriptions today that don’t reflect what we really need/should be seeking?

What I think I need to do is ask Andrew Taylor if he has come across a situation where the description, interview and actual position all correspond appropriately. I fear his answer will be that such a situation doesn’t exist within the arts world.

Preserving The Moldy Old Arts

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There is an article on the National Endowment of the Arts in Commentary this month (via Arts and Letters Daily) with a suggestion about the role the organization should play that may not please everyone.

The author, Michael J. Lewis, an Art and Architecture professor at Williams College recounts the history of the organization from President Johnson’s declaration at the NEA’s founding that “There is a quality in art which speaks across the gulf dividing man from man and nation from nation, and century from century. . . . The stakes may well be the survival of civilization” to the obscenity accusations of the 80s and the caution exhibited in the years that followed.

Lewis argues that NEA funding practices, rather than freeing artists to experiment actually promote mediocrity by funding the under served instead of quality artists and succumbing to political pressure from elected officials. (I should note that a number of his citations from two other Commentary articles on the NEA so the opinions are a little inbred.)

Having failed to cultivate new works on a wide scale, Lewis argues the NEA should re-purpose itself to preserve existing works.

“The audiences for music and dance have long been graying (perhaps whitening is now the better term), and there is much concern that they will vanish within a generation’s time. Here, the role of the NEA would not be to create but rather to preserve or, if it comes to that, to “cocoon” art by means of a holding action: for instance, subsidizing classical orchestras and ballet companies so as to maintain a cadre of professionals who will keep alive what would otherwise become a dead language. As it happens, this is precisely the area where the NEA record has historically been brightest.”

I am not sure if I appreciate his reference to orchestras and ballet companies as working in a dead language (or soon to be so.) But maybe that is a truth that needs to be faced. At the same time, I am also not terribly comfortable with the idea that the NEA should enable ballets and orchestras to avoid innovating their practices. Though I am sure if this philosophy was embraced, the nation’s flagship ballets and orchestras would be the ones receiving the funding leaving the smaller organizations to innovate or disappear.

Arts Leaders Ain’t Learnin’ Too Good

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I have just returned from the Arts Presenters Conference. I must have tried to do too much in too little time because I am fighting off a cold right now. I did want to make a post on one of the sessions I attended because some of the information communicated was simply fascinating.

In the Learning to Lead session The Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor’s graduate students presented the results of their research about what resources arts managers used to learn and solve problems. When they finished, I got up and asked a question about the results of their survey. They found that 90% of people read reports, books, etc at least once a year. I asked what end of the spectrum the majority of responses fell since last year Neill Archer Roan had presented findings at the APAP conference that said that learning was not valued in the presenting field.

Since Neill’s research was based on interviews and were anecdotal, I wasn’t sure if his results were any more scientifically based than the grad student’s results which was based on a self-selected group that filled out an online survey. I also stated some curiosity about whether people who were more comfortable with online surveys might be reading more reports via that medium. The students who responded said the reading that was taking place were skewed toward the less frequent.

I hadn’t known that Neill was sitting a couple rows behind me and soon he got up to address the issue of learning not being valued. I was so amazed by what he had to say, I bought the MP3 file of the session so that I could quote him accurately.

Speaking of the work the Roan Group does, he said,

“We believe there is a cultural bias against learning in this field and in the non-profit field as a whole. We believe that that exists for several reasons. One is cultural another is really biological. There are a lot of studies about satisfaction and how we are actually wired…Someone who is rationally satisfied behaves no differently than someone who is rationally dissatisfied. People behave differently when they are emotionally satisfied…the pathways back to learning are different where there is emotional satisfaction…I think in our field and in the performing arts, there is so much emotional satisfaction…that is actually a barrier to our need to understand and respond. (my emphasis)

The idea that emotional satisfaction, which is probably what allows people in the arts to tolerate low pay and long hours, is actually inhibiting progress just sort of blew my mind.

He goes on to say that in the arts there isn’t a practice of looking back and evaluating a situation for what works and didn’t work and then documenting the findings. Without the documentation, the arts rely on tacit knowledge carried in individuals. While tacit knowledge is superior to documented knowledge, if you have high turnover, your organization doesn’t learn.

The session was about two hours long so I imagine there will be other insights I will derive from them as I review the file.

Spinning the Hottest Shostakovich East of the Spree!

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I am packing and repacking for my trip to the APAP conference, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity point out a great story that appeared on Artsjournal.com about a rotating club show in Berlin that has people packing techno clubs on Monday nights despite the lack of advertising to listen to chamber orchestras.

Every first Monday a club night called Yellow Lounge rotates among the hottest clubs in the city. According to the article, one club turned over 100 people away. The live performance is sandwiched between DJs playing classical recordings. Part of the appeal to attendees seems to be the approach to classical music the DJs and performers bring.

“What is particularly enjoyable about the Yellow Lounge is that it is not at all intimidating. You don’t need to know anything about classical music to feel at home. There is none of the snobbery associated with the genre; Canisius never gives you a “Duh! It’s Mozart, dummy” look if you ask what he has just played, and the musicians tend to introduce each track with a non-patronising explanation of its importance. He welcomes requests, too, but only plays them “if the mood is right”.

Admission is only five euros ($7.33). Universal Music, seeing an opportunity to change perceptions about classical music, underwrites the cost of the event. The organizers are apparently free to book who they like, but many of the artists are on a Universal label.

I am not going to suggest that a similar program could be successful in the U.S. because I suspect that classical music has a more prominent place in the collective consciousness of Germans than U.S. citizens. Even if younger Germans are turning away from classical music, I imagine that the concept of what type of person listens to the music isn’t as narrowly defined as it is in the U.S.

But perhaps there is some sort of program that might have success that doesn’t necessarily involve plugging instruments into amps.

How Do Leaders Learn

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Next week I will attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in NY. Unlike last year where I was there for a week attending the conference and Emerging Leadership Institute, this year I am in and out very quickly in a weekend. I cringe at the thought of all that time on the plane. Once I get there, I know I will wonder why I ever resisted the idea because I get so much out of the experience. I enjoy the opportunity to see showcases, talk to artists and learn about new trends and philosophies in performing arts.

One of my biggest motivations for attending this year is to continue what was started last year in having Emerging Leadership alumni involved at the conference and advance an agenda. We have meetings and social gatherings planned this year. We were going to sponsor an issues session until we learned that Andrew Taylor’s students at the Bolz Center were going to be presenting findings from a study that was generally aligned with our purpose.

We also encouraging our membership (and anyone else interested in the topic) to attend the session at the conference, Learning to Lead: Where And How to Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft. Andrew has a post about it on his blog today. Even if you aren’t going to attend, if you are an arts leader, please consider filling out the 15 question survey that will inform the discussion and findings of the session.

The survey asks questions about where one goes looking for knowledge and help in solving problems. Though it could probably comprise an entire research session of its own, I would have liked to see some questions asking people to measure the value of the guidance/help they receive. From conversations I have had over the last year, I suspect a good many people would comment that they weren’t getting the guidance they needed or perhaps were having a hard time identifying a trustworthy person with whom to discuss their problems.

And though it wouldn’t be scientific and might have been a little more time consuming, it would have been interesting if they asked where people got their initial training in the arts. I am just curious how many people have formal education and how many were mentored and learned on the job.

In any case, while Andrew will undoubtedly have an entry discussing the session, I intend to do one as well to present my perspective. I usually try to avoid duplicating the subject of his posts since I assume we share a lot of readers. But I am making a very long flights in very short time. I am gonna earn the right to bloviate a little. I am sure my approach will differ from Taylor’s to some extent any way.

Cultivating Creative Kids

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More and more frequently we read about how the next phase of the economy will be the Creative economy. It is in major magazines, the subject of conferences, and the topic of study for state and regional arts organizations.

But I am wondering if the U.S. as a society is adequately preparing the next generation to take part in this economy. I am not referring to the disappearance of arts from schools or the fact that fewer people are reading. These things are important, to be sure. I am beginning to wonder if children today are even being challenged to use their basic imagination.

As a commute to work and run errands, I often see televisions playing DVDs in cars and SUVs. I hate to lapse into a round of “in my day”, but I wonder if these kids are going to want for not being challenged to entertain themselves on trips around town, much less on long vacation trips. When I was younger, my mother would actually hide our toys about 6 weeks before a long trip and then give me back to us so that they would be new to us and keep us occupied during the trip. (I must have inherited my frugality and cleverness from her.)

Although it tests parents’ patience, there is something to be said for having to develop the self-control not to antagonize your sisters. And there is something to be said for having to invent strange games to keep yourself occupied during the trip. My sisters came up with some rules about holding your breath while passing a cemetery and lifting your feet when crossing train tracks. My father would then pretend to pass out from lack of oxygen while driving by large cemeteries and rolling to a stop on train tracks because his feet were no longer on the accelerator.

Now I will admit that not everyone is as blessed with my ability to read in moving vehicles. I will also never suggest that the television sets on airplanes be removed. I like the distraction of those itty-bitty screens just fine.

DVDs and video games are starting to tout themselves as educational and they might be. But are the games sharpening and improving creativity? Maybe, but I think it is too soon and too tough to tell.

One thing I do know is that boredom, like necessity is the mother of invention. Certainly, much of what I produced while a bored child was destructive as much as it was constructive but there is little gained and learned in the absence of taking that risk. I had acres and acres of fields and forests upon which to wreak havoc without the distraction of color television much less cable to distract me.

Many kids today may not have the physical space to explore and experiment that me and my friends did. But I also suspect and fear that some of the limits they face are barriers of imagination that they haven’t learned to surmount.

Feng Shui Your Practices

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Since things are quieting down around the theatre this week (we only have a pre-school Christmas show, college winter graduation, Nutcracker brush up rehearsal and performances). I have been trying to dispose of obsolete equipment from around the office and such.

One of the things it is difficult to do around a theatre is get rid of stuff. The technical director here is notorious for holding on to things. In one respect this is good because so much is recycled, we don’t need to purchase new materials all the time. Saving money is good.

On the other hand, there are items we have had for 25 years and haven’t used and probably will never use again. We have tried to get rid of them but he insists we keep them against a theoretical use we may have in the future. This is preventing us from freeing up some much needed storage space and actually endangering other objects given that many of the old pieces are termite infested. We are able to toss some things out while he is on vacation (parting is less painful out of sight) or when they crumble under his touch due to the aforementioned termites.

Given that he is the one that has to work around the lack of storage, the situation is really more a bother for him than for me. I merely look around the shop and sigh about all the room we would have if shelves and the area under the pit were cleaned out.

In some respects, I am as bad as he only on a much smaller scale. We got brand new shiny ticket printers this summer but I just packed away the old one “just in case” even though it won’t work well at all with our new ticketing software. If the new printer had a problem, it would be a better use of our time to hand write all our tickets rather than attempt to configure the software to the old printer.

I am sure these type of practices are a metaphor for theatre as an industry as a whole. Resistance to tossing out barely functional equipment for fear we may one day need it probably equates to holding on to old practices and programming for fear that adopting new ones might leave us with less of an audience than we are already drawing.

In fact, I am pretty sure a feng shui practitioner would say that cluttering our space with old, unused objects is anchoring us to the past and hindering the progress we could be making in our lives. Since there are some items that we use often like our platforms, those feng shui practitioners and people on those anti-clutter home improvement shows wouldn’t necessarily counsel us to toss them.

Repainting a platform to make it look better on stage is one thing, but dressing up old audience development and programming strategies is another. The platform has some functional life left to it. There is often less hope to be found in old marketing practices.

The fear of discarding something with even marginal use when you have an untried replacement–or no replacement at all, can be paralyzing. I fully acknowledged to my assistant theatre manager that I would probably toss the old ticket printer this summer but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it just right now.

Sharing the Gold and Fleece

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In years past I have written about how the members of my block blocking consortium leverage our purchasing power by proposing a tour to performers and their agents. Given the difficulty of finding workable time slots among 3-6 different organizations across the state, we often earn our discounts.

One thing I hadn’t found was a good example of producing organizations who cooperated to cut costs. Among presenters like my consortium, the questions that come up are mainly date and cost related–when are the artists available, are there openings on members’ calendars, can we afford the terms the performers seek.

Among producing organizations, there are so many more questions many potentially related to the artistic differences among the organizations- who does the casting, who designs costumes, lights, sets. Will the artistic quality and value reflect what patrons have come to expect of their local theatre. Will the other theatres have input into any of these elements? How much of the sets travel and how much is built by each organization? Given differences in stage sizes, what set pieces may be cut and still maintain the vision of the directors and designers?

How is it going to be paid for? If the theatres each normally operate under different Equity pay rates, will the actors be paid differently in each theatre?

Presenters face some of these questions on occasion, but to very limited degree compared to groups that are co-producing.

A blog entry on the McCarter Theatre website sheds some light on some of these questions. They are co-producing Argonautika with Berkeley Rep and Shakespeare Theatre Company. The show was rehearsed and first opened in San Francisco though the show was cast from auditions at all three locations. All three organizations are sharing all rehearsal costs (including the brush ups when the show moves) and presumably a portion of many of the other costs.

I liked McCarter Producing Associate, Adam Immerwahr’s reasons for partnering with other organizations.

1) it allows what would otherwise be a local production to have a much broader impact;

2) it allows an artist to continue to develop their work over time (allowing them another chance to make adjustments with each production);

3) it can be a cost-saving measure, allowing each of the theaters to share common costs (like the set, costumes, rehearsal time and casting expenses);

4) it is a way for multiple theaters to each share their expertise (new play development, mounting musicals, building big sets, etc.).

I especially appreciated the final point about shared expertise. I have been talking about cooperative efforts for a long time and while cost-savings is certainly going to be important in increasingly difficult financial times, I have always felt sharing knowledge and effort was going to prove crucial to the survival of many arts organizations because so little occurs among arts entities to begin with.

Father of the Subscription Dies

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Via Arts Addict blog comes the news that champion of the subscription ticket, Danny Newman has died.

Newman was essentially the force that promoted the idea of getting people to commit to an entire season of shows, becoming a “the saintly season subscriber” as opposed to “the slothful, fickle single-ticket buyer.” Embracing that idea helped many art organizations succeed.

Unfortunately, the day of the subscriber has waned and many arts organizations are now subject to the whims of the fickle single ticket buyer.

Back in the early 90s when I was in grad school, we were seeing the writing on the wall. In one of my classes, we were assigned to compare and contrast Newman’s Subscribe Now! with another text promoting a different theory of audience development. We essentially derided many of Newman’s suggestions as dated and having no value in the last years of the 20th century.

One of the ideas we scoffed at was his suggestion of holding subscription parties, an event similiar to Tupperware and candle parties where individuals invited friends over and encouraged them to subscribe. Damned if not two years later a theatre I was working at that had lost the confidence of the community didn’t use this very tactic to regain support. Even though subscribing was a much more deeply ingrained practice in that community than in most, the experience taught me to be a little more humble and cautious about dismissing ideas.

Even though the subscription has had diminishing value over the course of my career, I have to admire the drive and audacity of Newman in championing the concept and helping so many organizations find success through it.

TOILETS SWIRLING DOWN A HOLE TO CHINA

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I won’t get in to why I came across this website. Suffice to say, some people in the office got sick over the Thanksgiving holidays. The anti-diarrhea medicine maker, Imodium A-D had a fun little feature on their website I hadn’t expected to find– a way to locate public restrooms in the U.S.

They are careful to assure you that you won’t need the map while using their product, but it is always good to know where you find facilities while traveling. You don’t want to depend on the map because it isn’t comprehensive. Imodium grabs the information from a site called The Bathroom Diaries which allows people to rate restrooms across the world. People don’t tend to share those experiences as much as say, hotel stays.

It wouldn’t hurt if you were like the Portland (Oregon) Center for the Performing Arts and had people evaluate your restrooms and point out that there was a long bench that was handy as a changing room. Or perhaps you could write something yourself. In searching for a city that had an arts organization reviewed, I noticed that every Old Navy across the country was listed as “A great place to go” and every Starbucks included the observation that “The pleasant Starbucks barristas are cool. You should buy a drink but if you don’t, they won’t mind. Ask for a key if its locked.” Apparently these corporations thought mention of their restroom situation was important enough for their business to have someone place a duplicate entry for every one of their locations. (Or at least up to a point. None of the branches of either company in my city are listed.)

There are many websites out there at aggregate obscure data into interesting data that clever arts organizations can use to their benefit. For example, this site answers the question it asks “If you dig straight down, where will you end up?” Fortunately, I never completed that hole in my backyard. I just discovered I would have ended up in the ocean about 3000 miles southwest of Perth, AUS. instead of China. It turns out, the most direct route to Beijing is through Argentina.

This handy “hole through the world” map can be employed during shows like Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing where a character begs to be sent on an errand to the Antipodes in order to avoid someone. It can be fun (and educational) to use the site to illustrate for audiences that if he had traveled to the literal antipodes of Messina (where the play is set) or London (where it was originally performed), he would have ended up in the ocean east of New Zealand.

Unfortunately, with two exceptions, there is no place in North America that corresponds with land at its antipodal point. It would be fun to point out the location opposite the theatre where the show was being performed. The antipodes of North America is the Indian Ocean. Only the State of Hawaii which corresponds to Botswana and a corner of Namibia and a point in the Alberta plains just north of Montana which corresponds to the French and Southern Antarctic Lands match up with any landmass.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t fun to learn that you can’t reach China by digging in your backyard. It can just be interesting to have a connection with a people and land opposite you. Maybe you can research the best public restrooms in their city! (Though they don’t flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.)

The real moral of this entry is that it can be useful to bookmark websites with goofy, but interesting information because you can never tell how it might be useful in creating a connection with your activities.

Succession Expectations

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The cultivation of young, emerging arts leaders is a topic of growing importance these days. Two weeks ago, Andrew Taylor quoted as speech by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation in which Cameron noted

“….expectations from young people around higher compensation, shorter hours, in essence less patience for the sacrificed lives of dignity and the financial masochism that were the givens for so many in my own generation — this conversation brought to my ears, at least, a new strand: the unwillingness of emerging leaders to be mere custodians of organizations they inherit.

“There are plenty of us eager to give ourselves to the arts.” they said, “But unless we are given the same authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as you yourselves were given, we are not interested.”

The current issue of Inside Arts magazine addresses the same topic. (free registration required) The article, Leading into the Future, starts out talking about a young woman who becomes involved with an arts organization, ends up working 90 hour weeks and finally quits and starts working for a finance firm because the pay and opportunities to pursue her musical interests are much better. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending as the woman ends up working for the Future of Music Coalition.

The general theme of the piece is that arts organizations need to recognize what the interests and goals of young people in the arts are. While the arts can’t offer good pay, the industry can provide people with a means of expressing themselves. Only, they need to be allowed the time to do so.

The article quotes Andrew Taylor in his role as head of the Arts Management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We have an astounding resource in terms of the value and power of the work, but we’ve created rigid structures that are not the kind of places young people want to work. My students are passionate, skilled and trained, but when they get into a place with an apprentice mindset, and they don’t get meaningful work for the first three to five years, it’s a waste on both sides.”

and later is quoted as saying

“Some experienced leaders say there aren’t people ready to step up, but that’s because they don’t see people exactly like them,” Taylor said. “The perception is that the younger generation is not as committed . . . [but] there are young people all over the place who are passionate and ready to lead.”

This is definitely an area to keep an eye on. As arts leadership approach retirement age, succession issues are going to come to the fore. Questions will emerge about not only who will take over but how these new leaders expect their organizations to operate in relation to employees.

Prepare to Lose Your Shirt

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So the stagehands strike on Broadway is going so poorly, the producers canceled the entire next week of shows because they don’t believe there will be a resolution any time soon. I read somewhere that the folks who own and manage the theatres had been building up a war chest for a number of years so they could weather the next big strike.

Unfortunately, none of that hoarded money will go toward paying off the investors in the shows that have shut down. As far as they are concerned, everything is going to hell.

But investing in Broadway shows has always been a risky proposition. The expectation is that you will lose all your money and it is a shock when you actually see some return whereas most investments operate on the opposite assumption. The only thing you are generally guaranteed as an investor are tickets to opening night and an invitation to the opening night party. (Unless things go south before the show opens.)

If you have ever wondered about the mechanics of investing in a Broadway show, the Franklin Weinrib Rudell & Vassallo law firm website has an article on the subject. While the law doesn’t protect you from losing your shirt, it does limit losing ones shirt to those who won’t be left destitute by the loss. New York State has very stringent laws regulating investments in Broadway shows. If the total investment being solicited is in excess of $5 million, which most are these days, the show is subject to Federal Securities law. Since compliance with NY State laws can be very expensive due to all the legal fees involved, it is preferable to be subject to the Federal statutes.

Even if the total investment sought is under $5 million, a production can avoid being subject to the stringent NY State laws if “potential investors must be furnished with a thorough disclosure document (unless all the investors are accredited, in which event no particular type of information is stipulated); and there may be no more than 35 unaccredited investors, all of whom must demonstrate that alone, or together with a purchaser representative, they have the financial knowledge and experience necessary to evaluate the merits and risks of the offering.”

An accredited investor is “defined as an individual with a net worth in excess of $1 million, or who, in each of the last two years, has earned income in excess of $200,000 per year (or $300,000 with spouse), with a reasonable expectation of reaching that amount in the current year.”

Investing in Broadway shows is not for the risk averse or financially insolvent. The article discusses many of the financing structures that are used when investing in productions. The more money one brings to the table, the better deal one can negotiate–including a percentage of the producers profits above the normal investor’s cut. So if you are interested in the intricacies of funding a Broadway show, give the piece a read.

Sport Isn’t Art

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Today on NPR, commentator Frank Deford talked about the flak he got from listeners for a story he did a few weeks ago about Princeton Athletic Director, Gary Walters, belief that sports should be viewed with the same prestige as the arts.

What was interesting to me was that in his original piece a few weeks ago, Deford spoke of college sports in terms like “…dismissed as something lesser — even something rather more vulgar…”, “Its corruption in college diminishes it so and makes it all seem so grubby.” The title of the piece online even compares sports to Rodney Dangerfield.

He puts forth Walters’ argument that “Is it time, for the educational-athletic experience on our playing fields be accorded the same … academic respect as the arts?” and “Athletic competition nourishes our collective souls and contributes to the holistic education of the total person in the same manner as the arts.”

He wonders if there isn’t a double standard in that “a young musician major in music, a young actor major in drama, but a young football player can’t major in football?”

However, in his piece today, sports don’t seem to have it so bad in colleges and universities. “I’m afraid the game is over. In our American academia, the arts must be satisfied with the leftovers,” Deford says. He goes on to quote John V. Lombardi, the president of the Louisiana State University System: ”

“Mega college athletics … prospers because for the most part we (our faculty, our staff, our alumni, our trustees) want it. We could easily change it, if most of us wanted to change it. All protestations to the contrary, we … do not want to change it.”

What sums the situation up for me is Deford’s line that “sports in our schools and colleges are not only ascendant, but greedier and more invulnerable than ever.” While it is true that his first piece is about academic prestige and the second is more about which programs get better funding and a comparison of the two is apples and oranges. It seems to me that athletics have prestige and funding and seeing that they lack only recognition as a worthy academic pursuit are greedy to acquire that as well.

I have never been terribly put out by the inequities in sports and arts funding in schools. I make grumbling noises about funding decisions that favor sports over arts and the hardwood flooring and office suites athletics officials have at my school. But after a few moments, I move on and don’t dwell upon it.

I am a bit concerned though that people would be thinking that an activity that has always been adjunct to the academic experience should be an academic experience. There are already too many exceptions made for athletes academically as it is. When a dance or theatre major is failing history or missing classes because they were in rehearsal the night before, their academic career is in jeopardy. Not so with the college athlete.

Now people want to give them academic credit for playing sports? In the context of all the scandals that have emerged, how can a degree based on sports credits be viewed as credible? How can a big sports university that grants the degree maintain its credibility even? If anything, I would agree with the argument that often comes up that schools should drop the pretext that the students aren’t there primarily to perform athletically rather than academically. Better to emulate the G.I. Bill and guarantee them an education at the end of 4 years of service.

I will admit that art and sport are joined in so many discussions that in some respects their existence seems intertwined like two planetary bodies orbiting each other. In terms of aspects of each that qualify as academic pursuits, they are quite different. While there are some like Tony Kushner who believe that undergraduate art majors should be abolished, there are elements to arts training which are more dependent upon instruction in other subjects than athletics are. An artist’s understanding of their craft is enhanced far more by studying literature, history, physics, language, material sciences than for an athlete. That is, in fact, what Kushner suggests an artist study as an undergrad rather than majoring in the arts. At no time does he feel the arts are not worthy of academic study.

Which is not to say that arts majors are taking advantage of these opportunities to the extent they should any more than the athletes are. It would be great if artists were feted and recruited in the manner athletes are, but that isn’t the world we live in. Perhaps athletes should be renumerated in accordance with the financial benefit their performance has for their school, but those activities should not be equated with academic achievement.

Philanthropy Clearinghouses

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Back at the end of September a large meeting of people in the philanthropy world was held sponsored by Union Square Ventures which was recorded on their blog under the title Hacking Philanthropy. They posted the transcript of the meeting but given that there were about 40 people at this all day session, it is mighty long. Even after reformatting it so I could read and reference it a bit better, I haven’t had the time to tackle it.

One of the principals at Union Square Ventures posted his reflections on the meeting last month. One of the interesting things he observed was is that the relationship between individual donors and recipients.

“Historically, philanthropy has been dominated by organizations that gather funds from donors based on mission statement and a prior track record and then distribute those funds to those in need. Once the check was written, the donor’s work was done….

Recently we have seen the emergence of a new type of charity, one that radically changes the relationship between donors and recipients. Nonprofits like DonorsChoose and Kiva behave more like marketplaces than traditional charities. This new model allows people in need to post a request for a gift or a loan to the site, and donors to chose which of those needs they would like to fund….

….But information technology also makes it possible to have a much more immediate relationship with the person in need. The appeals to sponsor a child have always had a deep emotional resonance, but it was not possible to put every child’s picture in an ad in the NY Times magazine. Today, it is possible to host hundreds of thousands of pictures and stories on the web and to provide tools to for donors to quickly find the appeals that speak most directly to them.

Organizations like Kiva and DonorsChoose vet the recipients and certify there is no fraud involved and groups tools to promote their needs. DonorsChoose focuses on helping schools sends disposable cameras to teachers so they can document the good the donations are doing then passes the pictures and handwritten letters from students on to donors.

The next 10 years may see a growth in this model of fundraising. The core of an arts organization’s annual campaign may be focused on maintaining the organizational profile on donation clearinghouses rather than direct (e-) mailings and phone banks. It would be interesting to see if larger foundations farm out fraud monitoring activities to companies like Kiva and DonorsChoose as these latter entities grow their proficiencies in this area.

I hope to post my thoughts on the full transcript of the meeting some time soon. The stout of heart might want to take a look themselves.

Let the Hive Thwart The Spiders

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As you may or may not be aware, companies send out all sorts of little spiderbots across the web to collect information. Some like Google have their spiders looking for content they can index for their searches.

Others use the spiders to collect email addresses so they can send some lovely spam your way. There is a little trick you can use to make email addresses on web pages invisible to these little spiders.

Encoders like Hivelogic: Enkoder will turn your email address into javascript code that people can read but the spider’s can’t. If you look in the right hand column of my home page, the Contact The Writer link was created using Hivelogic’s Enkoder.

The javascript the enkoder generated version of my email address looks something like this-

{var kode=
“kode=”nrgh@%rnhg_%@@{ghnr,
00+fghFrduFkrpiuj1lqwu@V {.;>45.@,f?3+fli6>,0″+
“+lDwghFrdufkh1rg@n~f.,l.k>jwhq1oghnrl?3>l@u+ir*>@*> {_%__C~jkqu33__3/__.ijk”+
“IugxInuslxm4otzxCY~1>A781C/
iB6.iol9A/3.oGzjkIugxink4ujCq01i1/o1nAmzkt4r”+
“jkquoB6AoCx.lu-AC-A~01(nFxm6t662b1lmnLxj {Lqxvo{p7rw}{F\\014AD:;4F2″+
“lE91lrogr@hrnhgv1oswl*+,*u1yh”+
“uhhv,+m1lr+q**,%>{@**>iru+l@3>
l?+nrgh1ohqjwk04,>l.@5,~ {.@nrgh1fkduDw+l.4,.”+
“nrgh1fkduDw+l,00nrgh@ {.+l?nrgh1ohqjwkBnrgh1fkduDw+nrgh1ohqjwk04,=**,>””+
“;x=”;for(i=0;i<kode.length;i++) {c=kode.charCodeAt(i)-3;if(c<0)c+=128;x+=S"+
"tring.fromCharCode(c)}kode=x";var i,c,x;while(eval(kode));}

Which is why you have to cut and paste the what it generates into your webpage. As the Hivelogic page says, the only way to be completely safe is to avoid publishing your email address on the web at all. As a place of business, you want your patrons and donors to be able to easily discover how to reach you so omitting your email contact information may be an impediment to developing a relationship with valuable constituencies.

Encoders like this one can help cut down on the junk mail while making email addresses generally available.

Arts, More Than Just Test Scores

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By way of Arts and Letters Daily, The Boston Globe has a column by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland that addresses the apparent misapprehension that arts classes improve test scores for students. Their research found the absence of a causal relationship between arts classes and a rise in test scores.

They did, however, find “that arts programs teach a specific set of thinking skills rarely addressed elsewhere in the curriculum.” They feel arts advocates do their cause an injustice by focusing on the weak relationship with improved test scores.

Where the other classes emphasize and reward memorization and recall of facts, their year long study showed that arts classes cultivated “visual-spatial abilities, reflection, self-criticism, and the willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes.” The authors note that these skills, along with thinking processes like “observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, and reflective self-evaluation,” are valuable life long and among those needed for careers. The authors expand upon the value of each though process in the article.

One of the statements that struck me was “many people don’t think of art class as a place where reflection is central, but instead as a place where students take a break from thinking.” That was certainly my perception when I was in school. In fact, I eschewed visual art classes when I was in high school in favor of more serious subjects. (Though I was a member of the after school drama club.) Reading the study observations I realize I was learning more than I thought when I was younger.

The authors note that there are many possibilities for running classes in other subjects so that they cultivate the same thinking processes–and that many teachers already do so.

The big caveat I have for the article is essentially the one common to the entire education system these days. The schools which they studied to show how well the approach works are the type of schools where parents, students, teachers and administrators all contribute to a learning environment where the complex interactions necessary to implement this sort of curriculum can occur.

In a situation where there are antagonistic teacher-student and student-student relationships, great need for remediation and a host of negative external influences, it can be easier to look to standardized test scores as a of measure success.

Most likely the only way to prove that this view of arts education can be valid across the board is to sustain its presence right from the first grade when the fundamental relationships and expectations about what the educational process entails can be established with the students.

Easy to say and easy to start since all kids are pretty much sweeties in first grade. Much tougher to maintain 5th/6th grade onward when new realizations about Venus de Milo and Michaelangelo’s David and life in general begin to develop.

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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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