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Who Will Punch Our Sacred Cows?

March 28, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

I was reading a post on the Marginal Revolution blog about professionalism vs. amateurism. I had moved past it before a section of it percolated through my consciousness.

Amateurism is splendid when amateurs actually can make contributions. A lot of the Industrial Revolution was driven by the inventions of so-called amateurs. One of the most revolutionary economic sectors today — social networking — has been led by amateurs….

Amateurs are associated with free entry and a lot of experimentation. Barbecue quality is very often driven by amateurs, and in general amateurs still make contributions to food and cooking. The difficulty of maintaining productive amateurs is one of the reasons why scientific progress periodically slows down. Specialization, however necessary it may be, can make big breakthroughs harder at some margin.

I am guessing it was the sensory part of my brain thinking about good barbecue (MMMMM barbecue!) that prompted me to scroll back up. The amount of time and money people spend competing in barbecue cook offs can be pretty amazing.

It didn’t take long before I started wondering about the ways in which amateurs have driven changes in the performing arts recently. I have to confess, other than some people who financed movies by maxing out credit cards before landing a distribution deal, I couldn’t think of too many ways. Other than suggesting new ways to finance a movie, I am not sure these films brought about a lot of change. Though it did seem like the faux documentary format became popular after The Blair Witch Project. As I scour my memory it seems like, hip-hop was the last big amateur generated development in performing arts.

The easy answer is that the rest of the world has passed live performing arts by aided by technology. True, technology has provided alternative means of expression and dissemination. Shows like American Idol and Glee have inspired people to make an effort at expressing themselves through performance. But has that driven improvements in quality?

If people were showing up at an event with higher expectations of a performance as a result of YouTube videos or “nobody to star” shows, that would be great. It doesn’t seem to be happening. Or if people were coming to auditions better prepared than usual or with little formal training and knocking the socks off people, having absorbed lessons from these shows about cultivating ones abilities, that would equally desired. But I can’t think of any recent development that is widely acknowledged as a factor in forcing artists to step up their game.

I know there are groups using technology to enhance their performances or allow audiences to influence performances in real time via feedback. A lot of that is isolated and individual. The sort of change I am talking about is the type we are witnessing regarding food where people are concerned about where what they eat is sourced. Regardless of how you feel about such efforts, it has clearly influenced the way we eat and the way in which food is presented to us on a large scale. Restaurant menus now feature notes on such details. I can’t think of a similar influence in the performing arts which has forced the sector to acknowledge it.

The argument that live performing arts use antiquated means of production doesn’t seem valid. Cooking barbecue uses the same basic means of production in terms of heat, spices, enzymes, etc. Improvements have come as a result of applying those means in myriad permutations. Does the same hold true for the performing arts?

Social media tools exist that can allow someone to spread the word about their accomplishments so it is tough to claim that people are doing great work in obscurity and have no means to spread the word to other performers. The amateur barbecuing world is something of a niche community with closely guarded secret recipes, but apparently enough word gets around to influence change in restaurants.

Most of the improvements in the technical side of the arts are made by people with big budgets in Las Vegas and Broadway. LED lighting has its problems, but it holds the promise of enormous power savings and versatility that allows one instrument to replace many. Achieving the spectacle of these things is pretty expensive right now so while it may be argued they can provide improvements in environmental terms, it hasn’t been accomplished by amateurs.

Despite the high costs of creating a technically appealing production, I don’t think it can be said that there are too many barriers to entry preventing amateurs from influencing the performing arts. There are community venues across the country available as performance spaces. Not that you would necessarily need one when any space in a park or empty storefront can serve. One can self produce musical work thanks to personal computers rather than depending on gatekeepers at media companies to approve of them. There are plenty of available tools to support innovation.

I might be claimed that the performing arts community is so insular and devoted to preserving a particular way of doing things that the professionals are utterly ignoring the efforts of the amateurs and the burgeoning successes they are having. I don’t think this is the case for a couple reasons. First, a heck of a lot of people have to be complicit in this. I read a lot of articles and blogs in the course of a week and I have to believe there are at least a couple who would be pointing to the results amateurs are having and urging the rest of us to get on board or get left behind. While these sentiments have been expressed about social media and relationships with one’s community, I can’t think of an instance where people have claimed that the amateurs were eating the profession’s lunch.

Second, if there was such a change I don’t think it would be possible to completely ignore. People would be giving cues. It would be like the slow food/localvore movement and people would be asking where our metaphoric produce was sourced from. In the literal context of the localvore movement, Scott Walters’ Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education may potentially be the next big movement, but it hasn’t manifested as such yet. Granted, it is entirely possible cues have been delivered time and time again and have been ignored.

Related to the idea of insularity, I also considered the possible claim that the performing arts was suppressing new innovation in this direction. I can’t believe there is enough of this stultifying energy present in the general culture of the performing arts to prevent the rise of a movement that thumbs its nose at everyone else and blazes its own trail.

Honestly, I think I am asking these questions because part of me is afraid an environment has been created where no one is invested in the performing arts enough to think it worth the effort to thumb their nose and punch a few sacred cows. Scoff all you want at the amateur, they are needed to drive change.

So I open it up to the readership. Show me where I am wrong. I am happy to learn otherwise. Perhaps there is a movement that is just developing legs that I haven’t recognized. I referenced hip-hop before. It started in the 70s but it really didn’t enter popular awareness until the 80s & 90s. It may be the same with whatever is coming. I should note that amateur lead change need not manifest itself in the destruction and supplanting of the old, it could be any sort of innovation that lead to change. In this context, perhaps the adoption of something has been so gradual and organic I have missed it.

The change also doesn’t need to have been something that achieved great popularity and acclaim. It could be an artistic development or new theory/approach whose impact is recognized internally to the performing arts but not necessarily widely acknowledged. Think Stanley McCandless, the father of modern theatrical lighting. Trained as an architect, his theories about how to approach lighting are the foundation for all lighting design today, nearly a century later. Few in audience members of the early 20th century likely recognized his efforts at improving lighting design were providing them with an better attendance experience much less knew he was responsible.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, General Musings, State of the Arts

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Stuff To Ponder: Surveying The Whole Person

March 23, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Two thought provoking articles about surveying popped up on my computer today. While you may not think surveying is terribly exciting, I encourage you to read on. I promise there is no talk of statistical analysis.

The first I found on the Createquity blog where Crystal Wallis recounts how the North Carolina Arts Council turned to folklorists from the North Carolina Folklife Institute to help establish an arts council in one of the counties. Once Wallis explained the reason the state arts council tapped the folklorists, it made perfect sense to include them. Then I started wondering why more surveys don’t involve folklorists.

Folklorists, as it happens, are some of the best trained interviewers out there. They also have a particular advantage when it comes to arts research: folklorists are trained to seek out and recognize creativity in all forms, especially that which comes from people who don’t consider themselves “artists.”

From all accounts, it looks like the folklorists achieved excellent penetration into all corners of the community, including many niche populations that revealed the diverse historic and present influences in daily life. They didn’t just identify these elements in the community, but spoke with them as well.

Wayne Martin, Senior Program Director for Community Arts Development at the North Carolina Arts Council, explains the benefits that came from using folklorists in this project.

* Authenticity

“By having folklorists trained in interviewing, we got some really eloquent statements that we were able to quote exactly. The results of the research were in the words of residents, which was a different tone than when other consultants would come in and write about a place. We were confident that the assets they reported on were valued by those in the community, lending an air of authenticity and connection we hadn’t had from other reports.”

Martin’s words came back to me when I read the next article on Asking Audiences blog. Peter Linett talks about a New York Times piece criticizing a Brooklyn Museum exhibit on Plains Indian tipis for being bland, blaming the use of focus groups and visitor surveys in the planning process.

Linett addresses the problem most arts organizations face when asking audiences about future programming. Programming per popular acclamation of committee results in something that is uninspiring to everyone. Foregoing feedback entirely risks appearing highbrow and elitist. Because people are often at a loss to offer suggestions and questions on topics they know nothing about, the best intentions to avoid confusing complexity and condescending simplicity result in a middle of the road product in which “you can sense the oversimplifications even if you don’t know enough to say exactly what they are, and you can feel the flat, pedantic tone.” While Linett makes this observation in term of museum exhibitions, I am sure you can think of similar examples in other disciplines.

Linett identifies a likely source of the problem. (emphasis his)

But that’s because we’re starting with a narrowly cognitive, educative purpose in mind. We’re interested in what visitors know about tipis rather than (for example) what they feel, what they wish, what they fear, what they find beautiful, what they find sad. We’re looking at a single, isolated aspect of human connection to the material. It’s not necessarily the most interesting aspect, but it’s the one that museums, as Enlightenment institutions, have traditionally cared about most.

What kinds of questions would we ask if we cared just as much about emotional, spiritual, social, ethical, imaginative, and physical connections to that material? How would we start a conversation with our audiences about those kinds of engagement…

Upon reading this last bit, I was struck that this was what the North Carolina folklorists were asking of those they surveyed — or at least these elements were present within the answers they were recording. The greater degree of authenticity Wayne Martin observed in the survey results was likely due in part to answers that reflected these aspects of the interviewees’ connections with arts and the idea of a county arts council.

Surveying on an emotional rather than an intellectual level makes a lot of sense. People react to art and even the idea of the arts on a visceral level that they can have difficulty verbalizing. Surveying factual information isn’t going to help elicit a truly valuable response because people often don’t know why they do or don’t like art.

At least once a day when I am reading about arts topics in a newspaper article or a blog, there will be a comment that says “as long as no tax money is used for it…” and/or “art(ists) should support themselves.” I suspect these phrases are just convenient ways for people to get past the fact they don’t really know how to discuss how they feel about the arts. Certainly this inability is shared by those who want to offer praise as well. Asking Linett’s questions about what people felt, feared, admired and pitied might bring more sophisticated answers and avoid that question all performing artists fear–“How did they memorize all those words/steps/notes.”

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Info You Can Use

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Deserve Is Not Part of the Equation

March 22, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Yesterday I speculated on the possibility of an arts education tax credit in the U.S. that mirrored one being proposed in Canada. Someone commented anonymously asking why the arts don’t just produce a product people will pay to see and support themselves.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but whether you can or should support yourself is not a primary criteria for tax credits and subsidies. Taxes and subsidies are a matter of politics and policy. The United States provides subsidies to every segment of the energy industry- oil, coal, gas, nuclear, ethanol, wind and solar. Now I just paid over $4.00/gallon for gas. Exxon/Mobile earned $30 billion in 2010 and paid $19 billion to their shareholders during that year. So why are subsidies needed? They cost the government over $20 billion a year and 70% of it goes to oil, gas and coal. Less than 5% of that goes to solar, wind and geothermal. I read a piece a few months back suggesting getting rid of the subsidies so that the renewables can operate on a more level playing field.

The same is true for farm subsidies, which also total $20 billion a year. Most of that goes to large corporations rather than supporting the small farmer.

No one would claim that energy and food producers aren’t generating products that people won’t pay for so why is it that the arts keep getting held up to this criteria? Why is no one squawking about these big expenditures to fuel and food producers? Granted, President Obama has proposed cutting about $4 billion in fuel subsidies and $2 billion in agriculture subsidies in 2012, but there is still a lot of money left on the table. A lot of it was put on the table in the first place and complaints about it were generally muted as a result of strong lobbying efforts and political pressure. The arts lack this and end up repeatedly demonized even though the benefits they realize are eclipsed by those of these other industries.

Tax credits are also a matter of policy. I did my taxes yesterday and among the tax credits available on the state and federal level were solar heating, film production and first time home buyers. Now given the big mortgage crisis only a few years ago, is it responsible for the government to continue to encourage people to buy homes? And doesn’t that discriminate against renters like myself? The production of Lost was successful enough that didn’t need tax credits, but they were available.

Hawaii, like many other states, wanted to attract productions and provide employment to residents. (Though it is something of a zero sum game.) Home ownership is seen as a sign of economic health and so the government encourages their purchase.

It will be the first to admit that it is rather cynical to say that it doesn’t matter whether you deserve a subsidy or not, it matters whether you have the political clout to get it and political will to pursue it. Like it or not, that is the fact of the matter.

Saying that there are worse things to have subsidized than your child’s piano lessons, tuition at arts summer camp, or trip to the museum, is a pretty weak rationalization to encourage people to advocate for such a subsidy. But you know, even outside the context of everything else that is subsidized, that is kinda true too.

Art(ist) Education, Government Relations, State of the Arts

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Looking North: Tax Credits For Arts Education

March 21, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art(ist) Education, Government Relations, Terms and Ideas

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