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Back in May I wrote about research Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS derived from the National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study regarding what factors help them to feel welcome.  Briefly, it was when they they saw themselves and stories/images relevant to them on the stage or on display as well as seeing staff, audience members, and marketing materials that reflected themselves and their community.

In mid-November, Dilenschneider and her team posted the results of responses about what made an experience dissatisfying and the role staff could play in mitigating those issues. (subscription required) They separate the dissatisfying issues out for exhibit and performing arts entities.

For exhibit based organizations, the top five issues were: customer service (e.g. rude staff), parking, onsite technology issues, access issues (eg. traffic), other cost factors (eg. non-admission costs). Admission costs came in sixth.

For performance based organizations, the top five issues were: Rude patrons/guests, customer service (eg rude staff), access issues (eg. traffic), restroom availability, ticket policies (subscriber priority/exclusivity).

I was somewhat surprised to see the subscriber priority/exclusivity as an issue. Not only haven’t I seen that come up as an issue before, with all the reports of declining subscription and ticket sales, I wouldn’t think people would feel subscribers were snatching up all the good seats versus the past. I would really love to get more information about this. I half wonder if cultural organizations are doing a better job of communicating subscription and subscription benefits in recent years and newer audiences who weren’t accustomed to attending performances with high subscription rates are noticing the same chunk of preferable seating is occupied for every performance across months. They may also conflate this disappointment with resellers snatching up all the seats for concerts.

While I said I was only listing the top five, there were a couple results further down the list that caught my eye. Seventh on the list was onsite technology issues (no wifi/slow wifi). For exhibit based organizations, onsite technology issues were related to inability to buy tickets onsite and difficult to use digital engagement tools which sounds like a combination of bad wifi and experience design.

The bad wifi complaint is an indication of people’s expectations. Especially in the context that the eighth issue for performance events is not being able to use your phone. To some extent bad wifi may be more of a feature than bug since performing arts venues often prefer people not use their phones. Allowing other people to use their phones was 15th on the list of factors that detracted from people’s satisfaction. Dilenschneider suggests that other people using their phones may also actually be part of the aggregate rude patron behavior category that appears at the top of the list.

The way staff mitigates the issues are what IMPACTS categorizes as “Personal Facilitated Experience” (PFE) (my emphasis):

A traditional museum cart experience can provide a PFE. A volunteer showing you to your seat at the theater can provide a PFE. An entryway greeter can provide a PFE. So can a stationed volunteer, a wayfinder, or even a particularly attentive clerk at a museum store. Personal Facilitated Experiences are often unexpected, and they are considered PFEs if a visitor is able to recall that interaction after their visit is over and identify it as meaningful to their experience.

Shows, talks, or tours – while certainly providing value to an overall experience – do not constitute a PFE, as the market considers PFEs powerful due to the personalized attention and one-on-one nature of the interaction. While these other types of encounters are an efficient way of interacting with groups and larger numbers of guests, they do not always provide the kind of personalized experience that leads to the steep increase in overall satisfaction that is the topic of this article.

As with many things, nuance is important. While tours are not perceived as PFE, a behind the scenes experience was the number one PFE giving satisfaction for exhibit based organizations followed by exhibit interpretation. I think it would be easy to categorize those things as tour-type activities but patrons perceive it differently. Complimentary admission for a revisit and complimentary gifts were the next most satisfying experiences for exhibit based entities.

For performing arts organizations cast interactions and behind the scenes experiences were at the top of the list followed by complimentary gift and wayfinding as specific experiences.

The article goes into some detail about what constitutes each of these experiences. Just for clarity, I did want to excerpt the explanation for two of them:

A complimentary gift or product need not be expensive, but instead provides a moment of personalized interaction or it may facilitate an experience. Remember the plastic wings that some of us kids received when we boarded a plane? That’s an example. Our Content Strategist, Bethany (who is also one of this article’s editors) has a sweet story about taking her firetruck-obsessed son to the Western Reserve Fire Museum and receiving a red plastic firefighter hat from a kind staff member. Her son loved the hat and wore it all day at the museum – and kept it until it broke nearly two years later! In this case, Bethany believes that her satisfaction increased even more than 2.5%, the average for a complimentary gift.

[…]

Behind-the-scenes experience … This need not include actually showing people a private room, giving a glimpse behind the stage, or providing special access to a private elevator for a guest who might need it…More often, this is perceived to be behind-the-scenes information. Unlike exhibit interpretation, wherein the content shared is perceived to be “on script,” a behind-the-scenes experience is perceived to be “off script.” These PFEs represent a moment wherein a guest feels that it’s their lucky day to come across this particular staff member willing to share information that seems as if it is not given to just anyone. Security guards at art museums often deliver among the most impactful PFEs of this type, as they are able to share behind-the-scenes stories with visitors…and many guests still don’t expect to have positive, personal interactions with these individuals.

I happened across an Aeon article earlier this month featuring a video by the Victoria and Albert Museum displaying and discussing Valentine’s Day. I thought folks might enjoy learning about this today.

Some of these cards are sweet, others are appropriately labeled “vinegar valentines” for their tart and sometimes nasty tone.

That said, the craftsmanship and intricacies of cuts that went into hand making these cards is entrancing. In one case the curator, Zorian Clayton, notes that they don’t use gloves when opening some of the cards because they are so fragile, you need the sensitivity of bare hands to be delicate enough.  He also shows off valentines made of ceramic.

At the 11:00 mark, Clayton discusses the secret meanings of flowers were attributed during the Victorian period.

Yesterday I cited a Seth Godin post about rethinking how we measure work productivity.  Around the same time he made a post along the same lines noting that while strictly following instructions might have been valuable in an economy that was focused on industrial manufacturing, the current economic model requires employees to be more autonomous and employ their own judgement.

He notes that when you did follow instructions, you were properly subordinate, but if you didn’t you were considered insubordinate. But obviously we don’t want to label people who are self-directed as insubordinate.

Complete subordination might have been the goal in an industrial setting. But now, it’s dangerous, expensive and inefficent. Because people close to the work know exactly what needs to be done.

The opposite of insubordination is now enrollment.

Someone who is enrolled in the journey doesn’t have to be told exactly what to do. Instead, given the goals, the tools and the culture, they will figure it out.

We have been seeing that those working in arts and culture have different expectations of their work environment. Some places have seen strikes, but many organizations started adjusting their work and rehearsal hours of their own accord. One of the most welcome developments of late was the revamping of apprenticeship and internship programs to add better payment terms and other benefits.

But there is still work to be done in the arts and culture work environment so Godin enjoining us to think in terms of enrollment can help reframe how the work of employees and contractors are perceived and treated.

Tyler Cowen, the economist who write the Marginal Revolution blog linked to an interesting paper from 2014, Corporate Governance Without Shareholders: A Cautionary Lesson from Non-Profit Organizations Lesson from Non-Profit Organizations . The article basically says, as bad as some corporate board are, non-profit boards are worse.

The author, George W. Dent uses the example of non-profit boards to argue against corporate board governance models in which the board of directors is strong and the shareholder power is weak. As much as corporate boards of directors may prefer it if they weren’t beholden to shareholders, it is actually the shareholders holding the board accountable which ensures better governance.

But let me tell you, even though everything Dent says about the problems with non-profit boards has long been acknowledged, it is tough reading.

Under the theory of director primacy that pressure from short-termist shareholders wreaks havoc with long-term corporate planning, NPO boards (which are free of that pressure) should be models of prudent, far-sighted leadership. However, according to a virtually unanimous consensus of experts, this is not the case at all. NPO directors are generally uninformed and disengaged. “[B]oard members . . . are faulted for not knowing what is going on in their organizations and for not demonstrating much desire to find out.

Attendance at board meetings is often spotty and participation perfunctory.” The insignificance of the directors is even touted as a benefit of the job. “[S]ome boards actually encourage the disengagement they later lament: They promise prospective board members that there will be little work to do, in the hope that low expectations will attract more prospective board members.”

In analyzing why corporate board structure is better, Dent analyzes and discards corporate board members being paid and holding stock in the company as reasons why they perform better. He also notes that while non-profit boards fiduciary responsibility is only accountable to secretaries of state, corporate board members are very infrequently sued for improperly exercising their fiduciary responsibilities.

Ultimately, Dent settles on the fact that despite the hurdles they may face in doing so, corporate shareholders are able to exert influence over boards of directors to change policy. With non-profit organizations, the absence of shareholders means there is no possibility of doing so. He admits there are a lot of flaws with corporate forms of governance, but that the non-profit model “It does show, however, that freeing directors from shareholder control leads not to optimal governance, but to dysfunction.”

Now all this being said, I have seen bylaws for non-profits which have memberships where the members elect people to the board so there are some non-profit board structures which do have boards accountable to a larger group comparable to shareholders. I would be interested to know if anyone analyzed the effectiveness of non-profit boards elected by members vs. boards which are entirely self-perpetuating.

Perhaps it is just the availability of social media feeds and news aggregators to bring information to my attention, but it seems that art projects have been effective in bringing about social change. Certainly that the work is often magnifying an large shift in sentiment can certainly be a contributing factor.

For example, in my city an art project around a Confederate statue has resulted in it being moved. But just a year before the same group of county commissioners unanimously voted to reject a proposal to move it. A couple months ago, I wrote about a project by a Pittsburgh area artist which has lead to an investigation of discrimination in housing appraisals.

Now I have read an article about an artist’s projects about the prevalence of surveillance. While the work hasn’t resulted in any policy changes yet, the disquieting nature of this or similar work may lead to action in the near future.

As covered by Bloomberg, Belgian artist Dries Depoorter used publicly accessible livestream footage of cities around the world to place Instagram selfies into context. He used facial recognition software to find when the photos were being taken during the footage he recorded and then placed the image in a split screen with video of the people employing all sorts of techniques and artifice to get their shot.

For many viewers, the video — which comes from just 10 days of footage — says something more about the decay of online privacy than it does about social media superficiality.

“​​If this person can do this as an art piece, imagine what someone being paid by a big company can do with the same data, at scale, for purposes of making money, that won’t make a public tweet about it,” wrote software developer Juan Alvarado on Twitter.

Depoorter has done similar projects before, tapping into red light cameras to show people jaywalking. In another he grabbed and displayed the publicly available Facebook photos of everyone visiting museum exhibitions.

“I show the dangers of technology with my work,” he said over WhatsApp.

The artist declined to elaborate on those dangers, however, saying his main goal is to create art that speaks clearly for itself.

Dan Pink shared a link to a study that was conducted on perceptions of the most effective way to ask others for help comparing face-to-face, audio/phone, video (ie Zoom), and text (SMS, Email).

Previous studies had found that in-person requests were much more effective than requests delivered through other media, (thirty-four times more effective than email in one study), but there had been few studies that included people’s perceptions of how much more effective in-person might be to mediated requests.

The authors conducted two studies. In the first, they had people make requests for help in-person, through audio channels, and video channels. Those asking for a favor made predictions about their ability to get a positive response.  In the second study, in-person was removed and email was added to audio and video channels as an option. (Interestingly, text messaging wasn’t included in the study.)

In both cases, study participants greatly underestimated what the difference the different media would be. They intuited that face-to-face (FtF) would be more successful than a video or audio request, but the margin was much greater than they predicted. Likewise, they intuited a request made over voice or video would be more effective than email, but again the degree was much greater than predicted.

Given the large differences we observed in the effectiveness of FtF compared to mediated requests, and rich media compared to email requests in our behavioral studies, these findings suggest that people fail to fully appreciate the value of asking for help in-person, or in lieu of this possibility, through the richest possible communication medium.

Something to think about as we approach the end of the year donation solicitation season. How we make our appeals may matter more than we think.

Now interestingly, Pink had preceded his tweet about the best way to ask people for a favor with a tweet on a study about the best way to thank people:

What's the most effective to say thank you?

a) In person

b) Via video call

c) Via text

Turns out it doesn't matter much. What people appreciate is the sentiment, not the form.

So say thanks to someone today – any way you want.https://t.co/FROkrp5te9 https://t.co/BhxByu4Nph

— Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) November 15, 2021

In that case, the medium doesn’t matter as much. Though the article he linked to talked about some unexpected nuances about how people engage in the process of expressing appreciation.

“…while people generally expect an in-person thank-you to be most impactful, what happened in reality was quite different: Sending a thank-you over text was almost as impactful as delivering the message in person. Additionally, texting may be especially well-suited for situations where we feel awkward or embarrassed about expressing our appreciation.”

[…]

Overall, video calls were just as beneficial as meeting in person. Texting was slightly less effective than video calling—it didn’t make people feel more connected and happy, while video calling did. However, participants who sent their thanks over text still experienced benefits: Texting boosted their well-being and reduced their loneliness compared to the people who wrote about celebrities.

[…]

The researchers found that how people expressed gratitude didn’t impact how happy they felt, or how meaningful the experience was to them—nor did it impact how happy they thought the recipient felt. However, people reported that thanking someone in person (as opposed to via text) was slightly more embarrassing.

Last year (December 31, so technically) I had a post on Arts Hacker taking a look at the work LaPlaca Cohen and Slover Linett Audience Research had done interpreting the Covid edition of the CultureTrack survey through the lens of race and ethnicity.

My post focused on the findings which indicated an interest in having arts organizations offer more inclusive and community focused programming that reflect the stories and faces of everyone. There were some interesting findings about how some communities saw arts and cultural organizations as a trusted source of information whereas it was barely on the radar of other communities. Most everyone saw value beyond just fun and entertainment, though those characteristics are highly valued.

This greater emphasis placed by some BIPOC Americans on the social, civic, emotional, therapeutic, and creative-expression roles of cultural participation may help practitioners and funders think more broadly about service and relevance to communities of color during difficult times.

One thing I didn’t address in that post that stood out was a question the researchers raised about why people want a greater diversity of local stories told.

It reminded me that a lot of assumptions are made about the “why,” but no one has really sought out the answers in a deliberative way. The overall conclusion of the report was that the data raised a multitude of questions in need of study. (i.e. surprising Native American affinity for photography and strong digital consumption of classical music by Black/African-Americans.)

It’s worth reflecting on how a desire to celebrate one’s cultural heritage is connected to other desires; people who are interested in celebrating their cultural heritage are also more likely to want arts and culture organizations to feature “more diverse voices and faces,” focus more on local artists and the local community, and offer stories that reflect one’s life — all of which Americans of color are more likely to express than White Americans…Perhaps White Americans don’t think of arts and culture activities or sites as places to do that kind of celebrating — or perhaps they don’t recognize the extent to which some of those activities and sites do, in fact, celebrate and exemplify European cultural heritage. Might Multiracial Americans feel that their backgrounds and identities are too complex or nuanced to be celebrated in the arts? All of this begs for further research into why many people want more diversity, localness, and stories that reflect their experiences and whether they see those things as tied to their — or their community’s — cultural heritage

Plan For An Inclusive Post-Covid Cultural Experience

Hat tip to Artsjournal.com which posted an NPR story about libraries that are bringing social workers on staff. The main reason is that libraries are serving the role as a community resource beyond a source of books. Libraries are increasingly a place for classes, after school activities, meetings as well as providing daytime shelter for homeless and unfortunately, those with drug addictions.

I served on the board of a library until about a year ago and there were frequent conversations regarding concerns about used needles and blood splatters in the restrooms. There were also debates about whether to stock Narcan and what the library’s liability might be if doses were administered. Just before I left the board, we were discussing signing a letter of agreement with social service agencies to provide services at some of the library branches.

The NPR story touches on these same issues facing the social workers at the libraries they profile. One of the benefits of having a social worker in a library is that it changes the dynamics of the traditional relationship people have with social services. Instead of people going to a government run office and waiting to petition for assistance, the social worker circulates among patrons, discusses services that are available and helps them connect with those services.

“I walk around and try to talk to people who might be experiencing homelessness. We never ask them directly, but I would just come up to them and say, ‘I don’t know if you’re aware there’s a social worker and there are social services here,’ ” she says. “Because of my role as a professional, clinical social worker, I can do assessments and determine if I need to provide extra support by linking them with community services such as clinics or mental health or for them to see a doctor.”

[…]

But Esguerra says the idea of bringing social workers into libraries isn’t just meant to help librarians; it encourages people in need to take advantage of the services the library-based social workers offer.

“Coming to the library is not attached with any stigma, unlike coming to, like, you know, other traditional settings,” she explains. “So public libraries really are the best places to reach out to the population and be effective at it.”

While not every arts organization serves groups that need this type of social service support, there may be other social support activities they can make available.  In some instances, they key may be to take the same approach as the social worker in the library. Instead of saying come here to receive these services with an eye to attracting larger groups of people, just have the services available in a low key way for those that do arrive.

During the summer there are a lot of free plays and concerts offered across the country. There may be people who show up whom an experienced eye could identify as potentially having a need for everything from food and medicine to help registering for school and getting school supplies. I am sure I am thinking too narrowly in terms of the type of support arts organizations might offer.

Then there is the approach from the other direction where arts organizations are present at social service and medical facilities. One of my favorite stories the project that put pop up art stations at a health clinic in Minneapolis.

I have written a few times about the way people are organizing themselves in Giving Circles. It seems like an interesting approach to philanthropy because it is social and communal the way some online giving platforms are, but just as personal and local as individual giving. In some ways, it actually inspires people to be much more involved and deliberate in their giving.

Via Non Profit Quarterly is a link to a Philly.com story that talks about those very factors.

“There is tremendous anxiety out there about social inequality and how stratified our society is. People want to do something about it,” says David Callahan, editor of the Inside Philanthropy news site.

“Giving circles create structure for people with shared values to learn about the causes they care about and support them while creating community.”

For members, the experience can be identity-changing.

[…]

The intentionality of the process — the vetting of proposals, visits to potential fundee’s sites, hours of thoughtful debate with passionate circle members in five separate committees — has changed Rothenberg’s self-perception.

“I used to think of myself as a donor,” says Rothenberg, who’d annually write checks to her college alma mater and give $50 gifts to this or that cause. “But I didn’t really know where the money went, or it felt like a drop in the bucket.

“Now I see myself as a philanthropist — I’m part of something bigger. I feel invested in the success of the nonprofits we support.”

I have written before about the ethics of geofencing since there are all sorts of questions raised about where data collection stops and stalking starts.

One of the uses I had suggested might occur was geofencing other arts and cultural organizations in your region and using the information about willingness to participate to present people with options at your organization. Which again, could also been seen as letting someone else do the hard work of attracting participation and then using geofencing to gather information about those who show up.

Last week I came across a pretty puzzling use of geofencing that almost seemed to be using the technology in the to send people to a competitor. Burger King was offering people one cent Whoppers…but to qualify, you have to be standing near a McDonalds.

Burger King geofenced McDonald’s locations so that when you use their app near a Mc Donald’s you can place an order for a Whopper and will be directed to the nearest Burger King.

Big question is obviously, why someone would make an extra effort drive away from a McDonalds they just took time to get close to?

Then of course there is the fact that BK has 6600 locations. McDonalds has 14,000. Which means there is a fair chance you will actually be closer to another McDonalds than a Burger King restaurant and possibly pass it on the way to the Burger King.

This seems like the type of promotion geared toward people who already prefer Burger King over McDonalds rather than something that will attract new people to Burger King.

While art and cultural organizations might be accused of running promotions that reinforce their relationship with existing audiences even as they say they are seeking new ones, I can’t think of a practice that makes people go through such absurd lengths as stopping just short of the threshold of an alternative option to redeem it.

But if you can think of one, I would love to hear it.

Almost by chance I came across a piece on Shelterforce from about two years ago relating how turning a community room in Harlem housing community into a gallery lead to the intentional inclusion of galleries and museums in future construction. As they learned about how people used and gathered around the spaces, subsequent construction increasingly focused on arts and educational spaces. The most recent project in 2015 essentially built the housing around a museum.

This was all very intriguing as I have never heard of a housing construction project being planned around a staffed arts & culture space.

Back in the late 90s, Ana-Ofelia Rodriguez, the director of community affairs for Broadway Housing Communities (BHC) decided to turn a community room into a gallery.

Artists would set up their displays at night, and before Rodriguez could enter the building the next morning, she says tenants had critiques for her of the work that had been installed. “We realized that it had to be a permanent fixture because it had a kind of healing property. It made people talk to one another—they didn’t have to like the art, but they were talking and looking forward to the next artist,” she said.

That first effort, The Rio Gallery, was one of the first galleries in North Harlem and is still thriving today. It is visited by both residents of the housing community and people those from greater neighborhood and beyond.

The success of that gallery lead BHC to include a gallery and pre-school in the construction of the next project completed in 2003.

Seeing how the inclusion of galleries and instruction spaces was encouraging greater interaction internally and externally between residents and the larger community, the 2015 completion of The Sugar Hill Project included both the Sugar Hill Museum Preschool and the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling.

The museum features art exhibitions by Harlem and northern Manhattan artists, and its programs are designed “to nurture the curiosity, creativity, and cognition of children ages 3 to 8,” with a heavy emphasis on storytelling.

[…]

With the museum’s target audience of children ages 3 to 8, “the programming should engage both adults and children,” says Baxter. She notes that Charlene Melville, now BHC’s education director, works with museum staff to develop new methodology to engage adults. “Some parents are more familiar with engaging in play and art-making, and some are not. It’s about being flexible and creating lots of diverse opportunities—including through music and storytelling,” Baxter says.

There is probably a lot in this story that runs counter to beliefs about those most interested and willing to participate in creative activities.

There is also probably a lot in this story about how influential elements that are the intentional focus of a community can be in the lives of the residents.

Ceci Dadisman recently tweeted a PRI piece about University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology hiring Iraqi and Syrian refugees to act as tour guides in their Middle East galleries. This is in part an effort to help draw connections between ancient civilizations and the cultures of those living in those same places today.

One of the guides talks about how he played soccer in the ruins of the ancient city of Ur and it wasn’t until he grew up that he gained a sense of the enormity of the history that occurred beneath his feet.

The museum’s education director said the guides provide knowledge and context that he and other staff simply couldn’t provide.

“At some point in almost every tour somebody will say, ‘What about today? Do they still eat these things today?’ Or, ‘Is this place still a place people go?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I can’t answer your question.'”

The guides can also engage in more nuanced conversation on issues of theft of antiquities by colonial occupiers versus the intentional and collateral destruction of historic sites by conflicts throughout the Middle East

When I see stories like this, I am reminded of the museum scene at the start of the Black Panther movie and wonder if efforts like this are coincidence, intentional, or subtly influenced by the movie and similar discussions about acquisition and ownership of cultural artifacts.

Earlier this month Non Profit Quarterly wrote about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art had placed Native American art in its American wing. In the past Native American art exhibits had been placed in African, Oceania or Americas wings. NPQ says it was only due to the insistence of a donor that the art was placed in the wing of its country of origin.

“That is hard to hear—that it was the requirement of a donor that enabled a long-overdue shift away from a colonialist positioning so exclusionary that Native Americans were relegated more easily to galleries devoted primarily to other nations.”

These stories may give rise to some conflicted feelings as we struggle with long held practices. But these stories are also part of a growing recognition that for some there is value in perspectives that aren’t necessarily informed by highly educated study of topics. For example, not long ago I wrote about Jawnty tours at the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia which were being led by a range of community leaders, comic book store owners and artists.

You know I am a sucker for fun and interesting ideas for arts organization so I read Danielle Jackson’s recent piece on Artsy, Art Spaces Can Bridge Social Divides—But First You Need to Know Your Neighbor, with some interest.

Jackson makes a good observation about the appearance of involving  and engaging diverse members of a community vs. the practice of engaging those diverse members. (my emphasis)

However, just as sitting in a diverse crowd at a baseball game doesn’t necessarily create social bridges, merely standing around at an art opening together isn’t social bridging, either. For these bridges to truly form, an exchange of conversation and ideas is vital. Most importantly, it cannot happen successfully when one group is thought of as irrelevant. And though bridging may entail making resources available to those who need it, it is not the same as charity. You give and you take; it is not one-directional.

We claim credit on grant reports for counting new and different faces entering our venues, but we may not have created any sort of new, authentic connection with those people.

Jackson writes about an event she attended at Bronx River Art Center where people got to smack away at pinatas created by over 20 artists.  Tell me you don’t want to steal this idea or adapt it to your own purposes.

The organizers, artists Blanka Amezkua and Ronny Quevedo, made sure the event took place later in the evening so that local people with jobs could attend. Not only were there artists of different races present at a time when so many openings were attended by self-segregating crowds, but the room was alive with cousins and uncles and grandparents from the neighborhood, who came despite it being in the dead of winter, just after New Year’s Day. I marvelled as everyone took turns handing off the bats to one another,  joyously breaking open the piñatas together.

Jackson also relates some steps her organization, Bronx Documentary Center, has taken to solicit gain insight and act as a connector in their local community,

For example, during an exhibition on Mexican photographers chronicling American life, the gallery created a working group of “community curators” culled from local Mexican-American organizations, who provided context and feedback on how the photographs might be presented.

And during an installation of an exhibition examining the war in Iraq, it came to the BDC’s attention that one of the soldiers who discovered Saddam Hussein in hiding lived within walking distance from the gallery. This might have presented an opportunity to organize a public program highlighting how global issues hit close to home. However, since he struggled with anxiety related to PTSD, we invited him to participate in a way that would feel most comfortable to him: by having a quiet meeting in the gallery with the Marine and the journalists behind the exhibition, all of whom had also spent significant time in Iraq.

I appreciated her use of the Iraq veteran as an illustration regarding how an initial instinct about the way an installation ties to the local community may not be sensitive to the needs of the community members. While the quiet meeting she described may not have had as wide reaching an influence in the community as a public program, it sounds like it was probably a meaningful experience for those that were involved.

There are other examples in her article about ways to ford social divides, some as simple as lending snow shovels and folding chairs and it worth a full read for those ideas.

I re-discovered an interesting story I had nearly forgotten about.

You may be grateful when you go around with posters for your event and businesses agree to display them for free. At one time in NYC, Broadway theaters would give merchants tickets in exchange for displaying posters. That practice contributed to a precursor of the famous TKTS booth in Times Square where one can purchase discounted tickets.

Apparently in 1894 tobacconist Joseph Leblang started taking tickets he got, as well as those he collected from other shopkeepers, and sold them at a steeply discounted rate.  While the shows may have initially been upset by him re-selling tickets he got for free, he was selling so much that the theaters began to send their surplus to him.

Today it’s known as The Broadway League, but in 1905 it was called the Producing Managers’ Association and Leblang’s relationship with them rotated between adoration and contempt. Most Broadway producers were personal friends of Leblang, but loathed his business model, which they charged lessened the value of their product. They made a number of attempts to run Leblang out of the business, but as Leblang went on to save a number of Broadway shows from closure he became an integral part of the Broadway show landscape.

Interestingly, both Leblang and the Producing Managers’ Association disliked ticket brokers because they contributed to ticket speculation which alienated audiences. It just goes to show how long the effort to stop ticket brokers from reselling tickets at sky high prices has been going on. Leblang was just beginning to see success with a plan to limit their impact when he died.

As Ken Davenport wrote in The Producer’s Perspective,

Joe took something that was handed to him, and turned it into a business. At the same time, he revolutionized an industry.

The irony is that a zillion other shop owners were given those free tickets. They all could have done the same thing. They all could have made that money . . . and more importantly . . . made that significant impact.

Opportunities are out there. You just have to keep your eyes open, and then act on them.

Does anyone know of a show, comic book, cartoon series, etc that is injecting classic literature/music/art, etc in a similar manner that Bugs Bunny cartoons had classical music soundtracks?

Every so often someone mentions how Carl Stalling injected classical music under the Warner Brothers cartoons. Or as in the case of classics like the Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera Doc, did their own interpretations of opera.

While people mention the cartoons frequently, I don’t recall anyone asking why there isn’t anyone clever enough to do something similar today.

Some years ago, I wrote about how Donald Duck comics sell 250,000 copies a week in Germany where the Disney icon is adored far more than in the US. Donald is much more erudite in Germany. According to the Wall Street Journal, thanks to translator Ericka Fuchs who references German culture,

He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”

When I was younger, I used to read Classics Illustrated which adapted literature into comic book form. More recently, I have read manga/manhua books and seen anime based on historic events and classical literature of Japan and China. While they aren’t completely true to the source material, (nor was Bugs Bunny, after all), they are relatively popular and introduce readers and viewers to the basic people and dynamics in an engaging way. Obviously it can be done and be well received.

Other than TNT’s loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s lift, I can’t think of any current attempt in this vein, but perhaps I am nothing thinking and looking broadly enough. To clarify, I am thinking more about ongoing, long term efforts to use content rather than attempts to revive and/or reinterpret a single piece of content on Broadway or in a movie.

I am off at the Arts Midwest conference this week, but as always have prepared some entries to cover my absence.

I thought it would be appropriate to revisit part of a report that was issued after the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention.  (I took a more extensive look at the report back in 2009. Some of the discussions are dated with the passage of time.)

The convention was attended by representatives of theatre, dance, choral and instrumental music disciplines, including those respective service organizations.  In assessing the opportunities for cross-disciplinary collective action, the report found that differences in language and culture were potential impediments.

Nearly 10 years later, I wonder if people still feel this is the case or have things developed to the point that the different disciplines can join in a more united front.

Were these really significant impediments to action at all and the will is simply lacking?

…our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals).

Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

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

[….]

Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “Being an executive director is an incredibly lonely job because you’re the only person in your community who has this set of challenges. You build your network. I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”

Here is a cool tidbit for the 4th of July.

A friend of mine owns a business that provides the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciations and translations for operas and Latin masses. So if you need to sing an aria but don’t speak Italian, German, French, etc, you can purchase a guide to the correct pronunciation and literal translation of the work from him.

What I never really thought about is that people who don’t speak English also need help singing songs in that language as well.

This week, my friend posted about how the US State Department had contacted him back in 2013 to get the IPA pronunciation for the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Pledge of Allegiance” so that immigrants seeking naturalization would have help with both.

Like the rest of us, they are left on their own to wrestle with the vocal range of the national anthem.

This morning, The Atlantic published a story about The Plight of the Overworked Nonprofit Employee that addresses the conflict non-profits face between paying employees well and devoting funds to services.

While this is not a new conversation at all for those of us in the non-profit sector, it isn’t one that is often discussed in the general media. It is good to see the topic getting out there.

The main impetus for this story seems to be the concern many non-profits feel over the new Department of Labor wage rules which won’t allow companies, including non-profits, to classify employees as exempt from overtime payment rules.

Anyone making less than $47,476 salary a year will be eligible for overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week.

The article notes that many non-profit organizations depend heavily on staff classified as exempt to work overtime in order to achieve their missions. They point out the dichotomy “…between the values that many nonprofits hold and the way they treat their own staffs.”

I felt like the article did a good job of illustrating the tension between wanting to do good in communities with limited funding that often has strings attached and the fact that low salaries and long hours often mean employees are only slightly less stressed than the people they serve.

It is one thing to feel indignant upon reading about the double-standard that exists (my emphasis):

Strangely, though nonprofits are increasingly expected to perform like businesses, they do not get the same leeway in funding that government-contracted businesses do. They don’t have nearly the bargaining power of big corporations, or the ability to raise costs for their products and services, because of tight controls on grant funding. “D.C. is full of millionaires who contract with government in the defense field, and they make a killing, and yet if you’re a nonprofit, chances are you aren’t getting the full amount of funding to cover the cost of the services required,” Iliff said. “Can you imagine Lockheed Martin or Boeing putting up with a government contract that didn’t allow for overhead?”

But when you read about how people who assist those experiencing trauma can’t afford to get help dealing with their own trauma, there is a greater sense of urgency that the environment needs to change:

When Roberts arrived, the battered woman clung to her and asked her to listen to a recording of the sounds of fighting and of the woman screaming and crying. Roberts joined her in prayer, helped her move her things to a new apartment, went back to the agency, locked herself in the bathroom, and sobbed. On days like that, Roberts wanted to get therapy, but knew that she couldn’t afford it. “If I had gotten paid for all the hours I was working, even at my base rate, I would have jumped at the opportunity to seek care to make sense of what I’ve experienced on the job,” Roberts says. “But I wasn’t making enough to pay for anything more than my basic needs.”

It should be noted that the Ms. Roberts’ employer forbids people to work overtime, but there was an organizational culture that dissuaded people to take time off or flex their time when the demands of the job went past 5 pm.

As I read the article, there seemed to be a slight subtext suggesting that the new labor laws may force a lot of the issues into the light and lead to reformation. Once non-profits tell government agencies and other funders they can no longer legally accomplish the same things for the old levels of funding, then long overdue decisions will have to be made.

The new salary rules eliminate the margins that allowed non-profits to try to do more with less. While it may be a relief when non-profit employees finally begin to get paid and scheduled appropriately, the communities those non-profit organizations serve may suffer a great deal more before the reality of the situation is acknowledged and appropriate steps are taken.