If you are asking, “Okay, so what is negative substitution,” IMPACTS explains it like this:
Negative substitution is a phenomenon wherein the number of people who profile as active visitors leaving the market (i.e., by way of death, relocation, or migration) outpaces the number of people who profile as active visitors entering the market (i.e., by way of birth, relocation, or immigration). Essentially, people who fit the profile of a cultural visitor are leaving the market faster than cultural entities have been able to replace them by expanding their audiences. The result is a shrinking visitor base.
Engagement cycle is how the average time between when a person first visits an organization and when they return. For exhibit based organizations, this is an average of 24.7 months. However broken down by different disciplines it varies. For aquariums it is 23.8 months; art museums it is 24.1; Children’s museums it is 29.7 months.
Similarly, for performing arts organizations the engagement cycle is 28.5 months, but for symphonies it is 28.7 months and for theaters it is 25.8 months.
They break down these rates for 11 different organization types in the article. These examples are just a sample.
Negative substitution rates vary for each of the 11 types as well. For aquariums the substitution rate is .991; art museums is .955, children’s museums is .92; symphonies is .907 and theater is .946.
As an example of how these two numbers come together in a relevant way, here is an example using the general exhibit based substitution rate of .982 and engagement cycle of 24.7 months:
An organization welcoming 1,000,000 visitors per year may be engaging their current audiences effectively (via marketing, exhibits, etc.) and yet they could reasonably expect to engage only 982,000 visitors 24.7 months after that, and 964,300 visitors 24.7 months after that. Every visitation cycle leads to progressively fewer visitors, even though our hypothetical organization is doing everything right by their current audiences!
Because this organization is not actively working to expand its audience profile, it is losing attendance over time simply due to shifts in the population.
They provide a similar breakdown for each of the 11 organizations if you want to see the trends for your particular corner of the cultural landscape. Some of the numbers become a little sobering. For example, an orchestra serving 1 million people in 2025 might expect to be serving 822,600 people at the end of the second cycle in 66.2 months.
His first point about audiences not making it easy to learn what boxes they need checked reminded me of an Arts Hacker post I made which mentioned the “5 Whys” technique often required to drill down to discover root causes and motivations. This is because the first answer you often receive often just reflects a surface understanding.
The first why might elicit a response that someone values the symphony for live performance. Asking why live performance is important might get an answer of extraordinary experience. Why does that matter? Makes me a better person. Why is it important to be a better person? Creates a sense of inner harmony.
Freeman says if you only asked Why once or twice, you will end up focused on product features and benefits and not really learn about what people see is a value of the experience to them as a person.
Godin’s point about everyone not having the same boxes and that great work finds emotions, stories and possibilities dovetails with a lot of what Ruth Hartt espouses for marketing the arts in a way that responds to audience needs. Many of the marketing message examples she uses resonate with a desire to de-stress, have a sense of harmony, spend time with family and friends, and other things people may want out of an experience.
Among the most effective ways to communicate that you offer those sort of benefits is through messaging and images that tell stories and evoke emotions. To some extent using this type of messaging may help audiences create new boxes to check–or rather validate that their root needs from an experience are worth verbalizing more frequently rather than concealing.
It isn’t just the crowds, but also poor signage, flow of attendees and long waits despite holding timed admission tickets which upset people.
On Monday, a 74-year-old clinical psychologist from Paris, who said she had been a regular visitor to the Louvre for 40 years, exited the popular temporary exhibition, Figures of the Fool, feeling battered.
“I’m leaving in a state of extreme fatigue and I’ve vowed never to visit again,” she said, declining to give her name. “The noise is so unbearable under the glass pyramid; it’s like a public swimming pool. Even with a timed ticket, there’s an hour to wait outside. I can’t do it anymore. Museums are supposed to be fun, but it’s no fun anymore. There’s no pleasure in coming here anymore.
A day earlier I had seen a piece on the NBC News site where French President Emmanuel Macron announced a major renovation to the aging museum facility which would include moving the Mona Lisa to a space “accessible independently of the rest of the museum.”
I am not sure if that means it would be permanently located in a separate space or if it is only temporary for the term of the renovation. Given that many people only visit The Louvre with the express intent of viewing the Mona Lisa and leaving, it may be wise to maintain that arrangement.
As I was reading these stories, I recalled that I had written a post about organizations discovering during the pandemic that visitor satisfaction increased when capacity restrictions were in place. I had remembered that Disney had decided to limit park attendance rather than go back to pre-pandemic levels in an attempt to preserve that level of customer satisfaction.
I had forgotten that the article I cited also mentioned the Louvre was scaling back admissions from 45,000/day to 30,000/day for the same reason. I had wondered if they had reverted to admitting larger numbers again, but upon re-reading the NBC News piece, apparently they had maintained the lower capacity numbers.
In 2021, des Cars became the first woman to head the Louvre, a symbol of French culture around the world. Since then, she has introduced several measures to make the museum more accessible, including a cap on visitors in 2023 to reduce overcrowding, extending opening hours, and pushing for the creation of a second main entrance.
If they are admitting fewer people, have an additional entrance, and longer operating hours, I wonder if the dissatisfaction is more a matter of their timed ticketing being out of synch with the flow of people into and through the museum. Perhaps they aren’t spreading admissions out over a long enough period of time. (They may have extended hours, but people are still buying admission tickets during a super concentrated period of time and later hours are fairly easy to get.) Or perhaps as people say, the signage and directions are so poor, people are taking longer to move through the galleries once they are admitted and things get backed up.
What the ideas42 team found was that staffs were engaging in a lot of performative work activity. They would address tasks that were easy to tick off lists or engage in work that made them look busy. The result was that by the end of the day, they were just starting to address the big project they were supposed to be working on.
There is probably a lot in the article that reads like an argument for allowing work at home. Among the things that were slowing people down were calls, emails, and people just dropping by to chat. It took workers an average of 23 minutes, 15 seconds to reset and refocus on their work after being interrupted. Another issue was getting called into meeting that weren’t necessary.
Among the factors contributing to performative working was the mistaken impression that co-workers and supervisors were working as much, if not more, than themselves and they needed to keep up. In fact, others may have been taking lengthy breaks from work and were checking in hours later.
At work, all people see are others working. When they see late-night emails or texts, they often assume that their coworker or boss has been working all day and night without interruption, when in fact they might have been walking the dog or having dinner with their families. That life outside work doesn’t register because they don’t see it. (Often people don’t want to share their lives outside work with coworkers and bosses to preserve the busyness myth that they’re always working.)
The folks from ideas42 worked up a number of initiatives to shift the work culture of the organization. One of the things they found was that the interventions that worked least were focused on solving work-life balance issues for an individual whereas the ones that worked best were focused on solving the issues for the whole organization. Essentially, the work-life balance doesn’t get better for the individual if they perceive they are out of synch with the overall behavior of the whole.
Among the things they implemented were having supervisors model they behavior they wanted for the whole organization: visibly going to lunch, taking vacation time, talking about the time they are spending with family and friends. Eliminate the late night emails and texts. Similarly, the number of meetings and those needed to attend the meetings should be reduced.
People should be encouraged to schedule more slack time in their weeks to allow for the fact that tasks will take longer than expected. That way you don’t feel like you are behind because there is unscheduled time in which to make progress. Along the same lines, people were encouraged to schedule vacation months in advance when the future calendar is not cluttered with projects and meetings. Those scheduling time off a couple weeks in advance often try to do so around things already populating their calendars and will either take less time off or feel anxious about doing so and work from their vacation.
Along those lines one of the most interesting intervention ideas mentioned in the article was “vacation roulette.” Everyone that hadn’t taken vacation in a 90 day period would get a note copied to their supervisor listing their vacation balance and encouraging them to take time off.
They then sent them an invitation to take a random Monday or Friday off and signed the note, “From your vacation fairy godmother.” Often, the managers would encourage workers to take a break.
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….during the “vacation roulette” intervention—where managers were copied on an email encouraging employees with high vacation balances to take a day off—participating organizations saw a boost in days off for over 20 employees, and the highest rate of vacation taking for India-based employees in 5 years.
Colorado Public Radio has a weekly Q&A feature they run. A recent question about why some sports teams are named for Denver and others for Colorado even though they are all based out of metro Denver reflects the ways in which technology and connectedness change our perceptions.
Reporter Ben Marcus noted that older teams like the Denver Nuggets and Broncos are generally named after cities because many cities in the state had teams which would play against each other. In that situation there was value in emphasizing associations with the city.
As cable television helped distribute games to larger audiences, team owners recognized there was value in creating broader geographic associations. Marcus cites the examples of the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies baseball teams.
Not to mention there was financial benefit in appealing to a broader geographic base. Apparently the residents of Denver rejected a tax increase to support building a stadium for the Rockies. However, voters in the adjacent cities of the Denver metropolitan area approved the tax measure and the stadium got built.
And the Rockies draw attendees from throughout the state, a situation the executive director of the Colorado Baseball Commission attributes, in part, to the name.
Success off the field, however, is undeniable. Despite being one of the worst teams in baseball last season, an average of 31,361 fans attended games.
“A lot of the attendance at Rockies games even now are people coming from other parts of the state,” said Macey. “Grand Junction and Lamar and also from a lot of the surrounding states. So having Colorado as the name is kind of all-encompassing, and helps attract all of those people to games.”
I bring up this story to inspire some thought among arts organizations about whether there are elements of their name and branding which creates psychological and perceptional limits about who they geographically serve which is in conflict with the organizational vision of who they serve.
I know there are a number of arts organizations who effected a name change to encompass a larger geographic area. The first that comes to mind is the Honolulu Symphony becoming the Hawaii Symphony about 10-15 years ago.
But before anyone makes that change, you may want to consider the bit of insight shared at the end of the Colorado Public Radio piece which suggests streaming technology is increasing the geographic region of people which might form a relationship with an organization:
Jason Hanson, the historian, said the rise of the internet and streaming services means team owners may one day think globally, well beyond cities and states.
“You could easily imagine some kind of shake-up in the NFL, where a team moves, and as their new name picks you know the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific coast or something that would be bigger, that would have sort of more meaning in other parts of the world.”
League of American Orchestra’s Symphony.org site had an interesting piece on concert start times recently. It wasn’t really surprising to learn that organizations were experimenting with different start times to better suit the needs of their audiences.
I was, however, surprised to learn that in 2006 and perhaps even more recently, there were classical music recitals starting at 10:30 pm and selling out. (Though perhaps to be expected given they were in the city that never sleeps)
In 2006, a New York Times critic reported that the Mostly Mozart Festival’s “A Little Night Music” concerts, held at 10:30pm, were “almost always sold out,” and raised a question: “Why should cabaret acts and jazz sets be able to start late, but not classical recitals?”
The general theme of the article is that people’s expectations have changed, especially post-pandemic. The Houston Symphony apparently tried an earlier start time about a decade ago only to revert back to their regular time when the change proved unpopular. However, they have recently shifted to 7:30 pm to 8 pm and not only was it well received, surveys are showing a trending preference for a 7 pm start.
To some degree they credit the increase in people who are working from home who don’t have the commute from office to the theater with perhaps a trip home and dinner in the mix. Though other organizations report complaints that earlier start times don’t provide enough leeway between work and the performance so there isn’t one standard best time for all communities.
In some places they are finding that matinees are better attended than evening performances. In my own experience I am seeing that trend with renters who specialize in choral and operatic genres as well as recitals by dance schools. This probably isn’t news to many since the core audiences for both types of shows tend to want to be home earlier.
The article quotes Gwen Pappas, vice president of communications and public relations at the Minnesota Orchestra, referencing the fact that people are used to being able to access their experiences on demand.
There are many ways in which a communal performing arts experience can’t be individually curated but where we are able to give people options. They really seem to appreciate it.”
In 2023, the Minnesota Orchestra moved its Saturday night concerts to 7pm and introduced 2pm concerts on select Saturdays. Some subscription programs come with any of four different time options over a week: 11am, 2pm, 7pm and 8 pm.
My first thought is that with so many different options for concerts to start, there might be some headaches communicating the different times to inattentive single ticket buyers. The last concert they attended started at 8 pm, now they are late for the 7 pm concert or vice versa. You might be arriving for what you thought was a 2 pm matinee only to find everyone leaving from the 11 am event. I suspect they have found some good ways to address that issue, though there will always be a few people who overlook the reminders, etc.
As part of the study, the authors created a hypothetical concert venue which they used as the basis to ask people about their seating preferences when seeing a favored artist performing a favored genre of music including what price they would pay, whether they preferred reserved or general admission. Additionally they wanted to explore how willing people would be to purchase a VIP package based on cost and type of access they might be granted.
Six levels were chosen for the VIP package attribute, each comprising different combinations of three VIP services: meeting the headlining artist, taking a backstage tour, and accessing the venue early to watch the soundcheck.
Noting that people may have different seating preferences based on the venue they were attending, the researchers conducted a pre-study survey to determine the best general characteristics for their hypothetical venue.
Each area differs in terms of distance from the stage, elevation, and viewing angle. Variations in distance and angle were communicated to participants through the hypothetical venue map, as displayed in Table 1. Additionally, participants were informed that Areas 1 and 2 were located on the ground floor, Areas 3 and 4 on an elevated level, and Areas 5 and 6 on the upper level.
Here is an example of how the choices for seating, pricing, and VIP package was presented to survey takers when the artist was Taylor Swift.
Among the findings of the study are that people value being closer to the stage than further away. Reserved seating is more valuable than general admission seating. However, for people with children and older respondents, reserved seating held significantly more value. The researchers suggest that people without children and younger attendees are generally indifferent to whether seating is general admission or reserved. Whereas those who are older or have children are more willing to pay a premium for reserved seats.
In terms of the VIP package, people were more interested in meet and greets with the artist than backstage tours and early admission to soundchecks.
In terms of price, the study found that there isn’t a lot of consistency associated with specific consumer characteristics and as a result, there are limits to what artists can charge based on assumptions about consumer groups.
…there is little evidence of substantial preference heterogeneity associated with consumer characteristics. This is turn implies that limits exists with regards to musicians’ ability to practice price discrimination by targeting specific ticket types at particular consumer groups.
Furthermore, the evidence on variation in venue area preferences implies that there are limits to the returns musicians can generate by employing between—and within—venue area price discrimination.
While I was reading this study i was comparing their findings to the writings of folks like Sean Kelly at Vatic, a company that specializes in using data to dynamically price venues in order to optimize ticket revenue. My first thought was that because they were having people choose huge sections of seating, they weren’t really drilling down to discover the specific preferences people have about their seating and the price they are willing to pay.
When they look at those yellow sections in the maps above, they are imagining themselves sitting in a specific seat for which they would be willing to pay the suggested price. Ten seats to the right or left of that (or away from the aisle), they may not be willing to pay as much.
On the other hand, the researchers say there is much more capacity for musicians to generate revenue through offering VIP packages. People seem to show a greater willingness to pay more for those experiences. Though there is a suggestion that the mix of experience and cost would be specific for each artist to discover.
However, research shows that offering VIP packages can create dissatisfaction among non-VIP fans so artists who wish to cultivate an environment of fairness may choose not to offer them. Similarly, dynamic pricing may also result in a perception of unfairness. There is apparently an association made between dynamic pricing and non-traditional distribution methods which appear to disadvantage the average ticket buyer.
Indeed, the use of dynamic pricing may be constrained by consumer concerns associated with perceived fairness, and the disdain consumers typically display for non-traditional allocation methods (Sonnabend, 2019; Roth, 2007).
Indeed, important parallels exist between the contemporary experience with dynamic pricing and that of ticket auctions, the use of which has declined over time despite evidence that it enabled the market to work more efficiently (Budish & Bhave, 2023). If consumers continue to respond with repugnance to non-traditional pricing strategies in the music industry, understanding how musicians can engage in optimal posted ticket pricing when organizing concerts will remain important.
A couple caveats to note. 1 – There were a number of hypothetical elements in this study despite referencing real music artists. 2 – While there are lessons applicable in other areas, this study was conducted with self identified attendees of five specific genres of music – Pop, Rock/Alternative, HipHop/RnB, Dance/Electronic and Classical. It doesn’t include other music genres, theater, musical theater, family theater, dance, etc., so may not be completely reflective of the preferences of those audiences. Nor may it be applicable to smaller venues.
Seth Godin made a post about elite vs. elitism a couple months ago. His argument is that people can operate on an elite level (i.e. Olympic athletes, surgeons, teachers, etc) but that this doesn’t automatically result in elitism.
Elitism is a barrier, where we use a label to decide who gets to contribute and who is offered dignity. A law firm that only hires from a few law schools is elitist–they have no data to confirm that these recruits are more likely to contribute than others, they’re simply artificially limiting the pool they draw from.
Opening our filters and seeking a diversity of experience undermines elitist insecurity and creates the possibility for even better solutions and connection.
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The scientific method isn’t elitist, nor is a stopwatch used to record the 100 meter dash. Seeking coherent arguments, logical approaches and a contribution that leads to better outcomes isn’t elitist, in fact, it’s precisely the opposite.
I need to make my usual observation that just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean the number you arrive at has validity to a claim you are making. Sports fans will happily speak for hours on the fact that a high scoring game or high win record doesn’t mean a team is operating at an elite level if they have been facing weak opponents.
Generally his thoughts align with a general conversation among cultural organizations in terms of removing the filters of tradition and past practice to explore other options. Similarly, there is a lot of conversation around making data driven decisions.
As Godin says, elitism often results from limiting the pool from which you draw after defining those pools as the source of the best product. That is one of the challenges arts and cultural organizations face today. There is a self-reinforcing definition of what is superior, but not a lot of evidence gathering about whether the product they offer has any perceived value in the community.
For a time during the pandemic I would see a number of videos of farriers shoeing horses. It was fascinating and somewhat satisfying to watch horses have their hooves cleaned and repaired so they could move about more comfortably. Many of these farriers are among the elite in their trade, but most people don’t keep horses these days so the market for their skills is fairly small. Fortunately, the supply of good farriers probably reflects demand.
A similar thing is happening with piano tuners. As I wrote in 2023, there is definitely an unmet need for piano tuners among arts organizations and the lack threatens performing arts organizations’ ability to host concerts. At the same time, people can’t give pianos away and many are ending up in the dump.
Much of this is due to changing lifestyles and expectations. So while it is likely that there will always be some arts and cultural organizations operating in traditional ways which will always find they are in high demand, the number of organizations are likely to dwindle if they are not responding to the changing lifestyles and expectations.
About a year ago, we were contacted by a company proposing we enter a contract to use their reusable cup service. They would deliver the cups, retrieve them from the special collection bins, wash them, and provide us with more. We were told that since each cup could be reused up to 40 times we would be removing a lot of material from the waste stream.
Last week we were told they were dropping us as a client because we weren’t using enough of their cups. Basically, they expect us to use five times as many cups. We were told “we recognize that we are not achieving the environmental objectives we are targeting with small groups.”
Our consumption rate wasn’t any mystery to them. Before we contract with them they provided us with an estimate of how many cups we would use in a year. We actually ended up surpassing that estimate in 6-7 months so we are using more of their product than expected.
The suggestion that they weren’t achieving their environmental objectives with smaller customers does recall the argument that home based recycling isn’t really contributing to saving the environment and that these sort of changes need to be made by larger entities in order to have any impact.
We started on this service based on the recommendations of other colleagues. I wonder how many of them may be dropped by the company as well.
The cancellation of the service is disappointing because we have done quite a bit of work to educate our audiences about the use of the cups. There are signs all over the venue encouraging people to return the cups to the special bins. We have the information on lobby slide shows and pre-show informational displays.
We even tasked a specific group of volunteers to help collect the cups at the end of the evening. Not only because people would tend to throw them out after placing them inside popcorn buckets, but also because they would insist on wanting to take the cups home despite the cup company’s efforts to make them as unattractive as possible.
Essentially, we were getting to a point where we were finally creating a culture and practice with our customers and volunteers and now it is going to appear we abandoned our commitment. To the volunteers’ credit they haven’t hesitated to diligently hover near the trashcans and help people sort their refuse. They have also been good about encouraging people to return to the cups to their special bins when they are selling food and drinks. There was an immediate investment on their part.
As the title of the post says, it is strange to be judged as not having enough of a negative impact on the environment to be worth a company’s efforts to help you avoid it.
I got to see a performance of The Rose of Sonora this weekend. It is a concerto in five scenes performed by Holly Mulcahy and composed by George S. Clinton. I had first written about it around 3 years ago.
One of the things that piqued my interest was that the piece tells the story of a heist, jail break, ambush, and revenge carried out by a female outlaw in 19th Century Territory of Arizona and had its own narrative and images meant to accompany the performance.
I was a little disappointed that the images weren’t used as part of the performance. That is likely because the composer was there to read each part live.
The composer did an interview with Symphony of the Rockies conductor, Devin Patrick Hughes, about his career. Brief explanation of Rose on Tiktok and longer interview here.
The Rose of Sonora was the last piece performed by the Symphony of the Rockies as part of a whole night of Western themed music. The program included music from The Magnificent Seven and The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; William Tell Overture, and “Hoedown” from Rodeo.
The whole orchestra was dressed in Western themed clothes. At one point 2/3 of the violin section was wearing their bandanas over their mouths. The conductor made a production of drawing his baton from a holster.
It should be noted that the concert was occurring in Denver on the night the Great Western Stock Show started. So it was all very much in theme.
It also bears mentioning that Holly grew up in greater Denver and got paid to perform with the Symphony of the Rockies as a teenager. During the Q&A after the concert a young violinist asked how Holly remained so calm and poised. Holly told her she would let us know in 20 years because not only did she perform before her friends and family, many of her teachers and mentors were in the audience that night so she felt a lot of pressure.
I overheard a lot of positive comments from people around me during Holly’s performance that weren’t made during the rest of the night so the piece seemed well-received. During the Q&A I really wished there were a way to have gotten up and ask attendees what their thoughts were on having a bit of narration between movements since that doesn’t generally happen during orchestra performances.
The conductor had made some comments at the beginning of the evening suggesting Rose of Sonora would provide an opportunity to create a story in our minds. With the one-two sentence prompts provided at the start of each chapter, I wonder how vividly the story unfolded in each person’s mind’s eye as they listened to the music.
About a year ago Holly performed the Rose of Sonora on the other side of the state in Grand Junction, CO and apparently word of mouth saw a line around the block for the second night of performances.
As I drove home Saturday, I was wondering if that was a reaction to the quality of the piece or that the imagery/narration and topic made the experience accessible. Basically, was the audience for the second day aficionados or people who really want to try the orchestra experience but were intimidated and heard a great deal of the mystery was removed in this piece?
Thinking back to the post I made on Monday about storytelling notes next to visual art works helping people focus better on the work before them, would providing similar storytelling prompts with orchestra pieces help people enjoy the music more if they are able to provide their own mental video accompaniment? Many symphonies have started using video in conjunction with performances. But I wonder if people will feel the music is more relatable if they are creating their own narrative in response to an evocative prompt.
Noor Gillani, Digital Culture Editor, at The Conversation interviewed five experts at different Australian universities to get their take. Three of the five said it wasn’t important.
Interestingly, two of the responds cited label content focused on children.
Kit Messham-Muir, a professor at Curtin University voted No, but said:
Curators can spend many hours writing the “why”. Some explanations are great, some are not. Those aimed at kids are usually better. Either way, I’d argue you have all the information you need from the who, what and when.
Naomi Zouwer, at the University of Canberra, voted Yes and wrote primarily with children in mind. She cited different eye motion studies of how adults and children interact with visual art works than I wrote about yesterday.
When an artwork does grab a kid’s attention, they’ll usually want to know more about it. And my experience shows they’ll likely want to know what it’s about more than other details such as the medium or when it was created (unless it’s really, really old, in which case there’s a “wow” factor).
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However, it’s not one size fits all. My advice is to ask the kid what they want to know and approach it that way. While the label may not answer all their questions, it might help start a different conversation. That’s the great thing about art: it creates opportunities for deeper thinking.
Other experts focused on the capacity of people to understand the labels as the basis for their response. How long visitors typically engage with a work and the label before moving on factored into their opinion on the value of labels.
Chari Larsson at Griffith University, voted Yes and put the responsibility on the museum to provide meaningful content
Labels should be able to “speak” to a broad range of audiences: from a casual and curious visitor through to a subject-matter expert. Turgid “art jargon” is notoriously difficult to decipher and can negatively impact the visitor’s experience. This is a breach in the museum’s responsibility to their audiences.
Cherine Fahd at University of Technology Sydney, voted No for similar reasons. Poorly written labels get in the way of understanding the work in front of the visitor. She encourages people to look at the art before the label.
Many artists want viewers to bring themselves to the work, to freely interpret and be active participants. The problem is we aren’t taught how to do that with art. We expect meaning to be handed over and the didactic label sets up this expectation.
Perhaps this is an Australian condition, wherein art is often dismissed as impenetrable, or something to grow out of, or something a “five year old could have made”.
Some research how adults and children focus on visual art pieces in different ways provides some insight into how to write and present introductory and educational information to children. Not only for visual art pieces but things to call attention to with performances and other types of experience.
In an article Francesco Walker, Assistant Professor in Psychology, Leiden University, wrote for The Conversation, he talks about using eye tracking technology to see what children focus on when given different types of descriptions/prompts in advance.
Walker cites some past research which had found that children tend to focus on bright colors and bold shapes in paintings. While adults viewing the same work will call upon existing knowledge and information and orient on other elements like brush strokes.
Walker and his colleagues conducted their study tracking eye motions around three works at Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. They watched how children age 10-12 interacted with the paintings after they had been provided with existing adult oriented explanatory labels, playful storytelling labels, or no labels at all.
What they found was that children who had been provided adult oriented labels interacted with the paintings in the same way as children who had not been provided any labels at all. Whereas children provided with the playful spent more time engaging with the work and were focused on specific areas.
The children provided with child-focused, narrative-driven labels engaged with the artworks in ways we did not see at all with those who read adult-focused descriptions. They directed their gaze towards key elements of the paintings highlighted by the playful descriptions, and spent more time examining them.
In contrast, the children who received adult-oriented explanations behaved in the same way as children who received no information at all. Their attention was scattered and unfocused.
The high vantage point of this painting turns it into a sampler of human – and animal – activity during a harsh winter. Hundreds of people are out on the ice, most of them for pleasure, others working out of dire necessity. Avercamp did not shy away from grim details: in the left foreground crows and a dog feast on the carcass of a horse that has frozen to death.
The child oriented text for the same painting
He could have painted me anywhere, but where am I? Right in the middle of the picture, with my snout on the ice! The spot where everyone can see me. A man in blue pants almost trips over me. Two girls next to me giggle at my clumsiness. But I won’t give up. I’ll get back on my feet and keep going. Before winter is over, I’ll be skating like a pro!
The article provides heat maps showing where attention focused based on the three content scenarios.
Walker suggests the results of their study suggest that art education classes should shift from textbook based classroom lessons toward a more storytelling mode. He notes that art history students find it difficult to connectwith the art when the information is transmitted in lectures or via text book.
And by the way, the two studies I linked to in the previous sentence were studies conducted with undergraduate students, not grade school students so a storytelling approach can positively impact everyone’s experience and engagement
A lot of arts professionals in the US are probably thinking their city’s arts and culture budget isn’t anywhere near the $130 million being cut. In fact, many would feel blessed if their city had $1.3 million culture budget. So to a certain extent arts and cultural funding in Germany may still be the envy of much of the world.
This said, a lot of employment contracts aren’t being renewed and exhibition plans are being scrapped in Berlin. The laws associated with funding in Germany don’t allow private support to make up the difference.
German museums without private funding face particularly steep challenges, with fixed costs around operating collections consuming around 80 percent of budgets in many cases, leaving many exhibitions and auxiliary programs vulnerable to cancellation.
Some experts have pointed out that public museums in Germany aren’t legally able to rely on private philanthropy the way peer organizations in the U.S. and other parts of Europe do, making their futures, compared to international creative hubs less certain.
An article earlier in December on Deutsche Welle looking at the impending cuts in Berlin raised the same question about whether Germany would be home to creative hubs any longer even as the city of Chemnitz, a 2025 European Capital of Culture, face budget cuts.
The eastern state of Saxony also faces a critical budget situation, with serious consequences for the cultural landscape of museums, theaters and orchestras. Hillmann said the theaters in Zwickau, Freiberg, Annaberg-Buchholz, Görlitz-Zittau and even Chemnitz — which will be a European Capital of Culture in 2025 — fear for their existence.
Much as in the US, the chair of the German Stage Association, Lutz Hillmann, cites the work theaters in Germany are doing in the public sphere, moving beyond just presenting performances to become public gathering spaces and provide services to youth. Likewise, the role of culture in promotion democratic discourse in a time of divisive social dynamics was also raised.
Olaf Zimmermann, managing director of the German Cultural Council, takes the same line. “Right now, cultural venues are urgently needed to debate current issues, to offer places for democratic discourse, to stimulate reflection or simply to create cohesion,” Zimmermann wrote in the most recent issue of the association’s publication.
An interesting intersection of art and technology I saw in an article in The Harvard Gazette where an assistant professor of bioengineering, Shriya Srinivasan, created a phone app which would allow audiences to feel dancers movement through a smartphone’s vibrations.
The app makes use of the haptic feedback tools built into smartphones. When you type/dial on your phone you may experience a small vibration which reinforces the fact you successfully depressed button. (Haptic is only related to touch. The artificial click you may hear as a confirmation is audible feedback.)
Because the vibrations on a phone can vary in intensity, Srinivasan’s app is able to convey a range of sensations to the viewer. Her inspiration for creating the app was her own artistic practice in bharata natyam Indian dance. She and her team developed sensors which are attached to the ankles of dancers which transmit a signal to the phone app.
Srinivasan says the technology has the potential to make dance performances more accessible for the lay viewer, as well as visually- or hearing-impaired people.
To make the haptic feedback stimuli convey the feel of the footwork, researchers set the vibrations to different intensity levels. Light, flowing movements were represented by vibrations targeting surface-level mechanoreceptors in the skin, while more intense, punchier movements penetrated to deeper skin layers,…
They worked with Indian Classical Dance group Anubhava Dance Company to use the devices in a performance called Decoded Rhythms. PBS discussed the technology on their Nova program. I also found the following video the dance company posted which briefly discusses the use of the sensors in performance.
I have been a big fan of Springboard for the Arts and the work they do for a number of years. I look forward to their annual reports which have been depicted as infographics for the last decade or so.
They recently released the infographic for their 2024 annual report.
There is a short written annual report that accompanies this graphic which discusses the success of their programs. Among these were the expansion of their basic income program to include 100 artists for five years and their efforts to support the arts in rural locations which included supporting placemaking leaders in rural and Native Nations, hosting a Rural Futures summit, and expanding their Rural Regenerator Fellow program to include artists in Nebraska and Kansas.
Despite the claim that I could read the report to find out more about the programs depicted in the infographic, there was no mention of the 450 square foot mini-ice rink! You can’t tease us with such things and make no further mention of it!
A quick search turned up their Springboard on Ice page which lists some programs and open skate opportunities at the ice rink they set up at their new headquarters.
The lasttwo days I have been covering some of the responses the National Endowment for the Arts received in the dozen listening sessions they conducted with theaters in spring and summer of 2024.
The overall theme of the responses seemed to be that theater leadership doesn’t have the education and training it needs to address the challenges it currently faces. This held true in the section regarding workforce.
Staff members have new expectations regarding their work environment. They are no longer willing to work long hours and flirt with mental and physical burn out. A number of theaters already began to move in this direction 2-3 years ago, but:
Multiple participants said that many theaters and other arts organizations are poorly run, and that this mismanagement exacts a considerable toll on theater workers and artists. As one way to address this need, listening session participants said they would like to see more training and education for new entrants or even those currently in the field.
A number of participants discussed outsourcing some functions or exploring combining back office functions with other arts organizations. Because many people left the arts industry during and after the pandemic, many organizations are looking to hire people from outside the industry and are finding these new hires are bringing new perspectives and ideas. Similarly, theaters are exploring ways to lower barriers to entry for those that don’t have the economic means and network to support themselves through low paying jobs as they seek to develop a career.
One participant said, “We’re trying to get creative in terms of how we look at job descriptions and try to hire outside the industry and train people such as, like, expert project managers or data specialists to come into development or come into our production industry
There was also recognition that those in mid- and advanced career positions need some form of continuing education program for their own career development.
One strategy mentioned was to extend accessible opportunities for professional growth across different theater roles through accreditation or certifications in specific areas of expertise. This could be achieved through theater service organizations focusing on theater development by providing support for “accreditation and professional development in a higher-skilled way
In that same vein, some participants suggested theaters could host training programs in their own communities to teach people the different tasks required to put on a show (i.e. costumes, lighting, set design, stage management, and technical direction).
I have actually tried to offer these sort of training modules in different communities in which I have worked, mostly focused toward community arts groups and renters who might be looking to improve the quality of their work and facilitate their preparation and planning process. With few exceptions I wasn’t able to get buy-in from the groups.
Those that did avail themselves were mostly renters and only interested in specific areas. But let me tell you, things got a lot easier for both the organization and my staff once they started using what they had learned.
Yesterday, I focused on theater leadership’s perception that they didn’t have enough time to digest research on promising practices* and a desire to have access to big thinkers on systemic change from outside the theater world.
The sense that theater managers were feeling lost and unsure about how to tackle the challenges they were facing seemed to be the subtext of the responses the listening session participants provided. On an individual basis, I am sure these professionals generally felt they are competent at their jobs and secure in the knowledge they possess. In aggregate the responses almost painted a picture of a group that is struggling and didn’t feel equal to the task.
While the image of a harried, overworked staff has been a stereotype for theaters for decades if not centuries, some of the quotes the report includes about needing to have good manners when speaking with donors doesn’t do theater professionals any favors. I hope it was taken out of context.
As one participant said, “We’re finding it difficult to keep up with foundations or our state agencies and what their requirements are in terms of changing what panelists are looking at.”
Similarly, there was a recognized need for financial consultative services in many topic areas. These areas included how best to use existing funds, how to become financially stable, and how to price services or tickets. “Perhaps an area of expertise that we’re struggling with is that we are quickly having to learn how to be a single ticket shop,” one participant said. Another remarked: “It would be nice to also get funding for support in terms of financial advisement.”
…“If you’re asking people for money, you … have to have the good manners to speak their language,” one participant noted, “that’s something that would be helpful … if you can help teach or give our organization resources on the language that you need to keep your donors and your boards happy.” This service might help theaters to become transparent about their financial needs and current fiscal standing and, therefore, to communicate more effectively with employees, donors, boards, and other funders.
….Participants proposed using technological tools such as AI, electronic tip jars, ticketing apps, management apps, and fundraising software to help theaters increase and manage their financial resources.
…“We want investment from the tech sector to fix this, one participant said. “I wish we could do better because it’s hard enough … even to get working internet in our theaters so people can check the QR codes that we’ve given them already.”
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, there are already people addressing many of these issues but there is definitely a need for more robust and widespread education and resources on finances, ticket pricing, technology, communication, programming design and philosophy etc., in order to effectively respond to trends and expectations.
But again, as I suggested yesterday, does the availability of these resources do any good if those who might benefit most don’t feel they have the time and bandwidth (and money) to receive and use them?
*Want to give credit to Anika Tene from CreativeWest for introducing me to the term “promising practices” instead of best practices. Although it was a quick mention in a webinar she was leading, I immediately realized that the term relieves pressure on organizations to immediately implement new practices at the most effective level. Also, there is a suggestion in promising practices that these practices are not one size fits all organizations. They may be beneficial, but the value may not manifest in the same manner or degree for everyone.
This morning the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released Defying Gravity: Conversations with Leaders from Nonprofit Theater. The result of the report are based on conversations during 12 virtual listening sessions the NEA conducted with non-profit theater staff in spring and summer 2024. The composition of each of the listening session cohorts may be found on PDF page 27 or in the image below.
Among them were freelance artists, journalists, Theaters for Young Audiences, Leadership Alumnae and Interim Managers, Black, Indigenous and Theaters of Color. Perhaps most interesting and most appropriate given the recent theater operating environment was a session composed of Recently Close Theaters. The report authors cite the responses of the recently closed theater participants with some frequency.
The image below gives a sense of the operational challenges focused on by each of the 12 listening session cohorts
The report is only 28 pages, but I intend to highlight different topics over a couple days to keep things bite size. I am also going to largely skip over discussion of issues that seem widely known like financial difficulties, diminishing donations and ticket sales for some more focused and nuanced observations. I encourage readers to take a look at the full report if they want deeper insight.
While I often encourage people to read research and highlight how short the document is and/or how easy a read it is, we all know that arts professionals rarely can find the time to do so. And that comes up in the NEA’s report:
One participant referenced a bandwidth issue, saying, “The ability to monitor, intake, synthesize, regurgitate, [and] present on data is just something that always moves to [the] sidelines.” Research investments should include supporting the personnel required to conduct and translate it.
Another type of investment is to bring in voices from outside the theater industry to help address larger issues facing organizations. One participant said, “I would love if there was a way to bring some brilliant systematic thinkers in … who are not involved necessarily in theater, but who are working with extreme systematic change.” This approach could afford theater organizations the opportunity to engage with a more objective, external view on how to address challenges.
Listening session participants wanted to know what is or has been successful for other non-theater art forms to see if those practices could transfer to theater. As one participant asked, “What are the opportunities that are seeing dramatic growth beyond our discipline? And what might this mean?”
I almost feel like there is self-reinforcing vicious circle here because there are a number of people talking about systemic change from outside the arts using frameworks and terminologies that make the concepts relatable to arts professionals. But I am aware of these people because I read a lot of research and discussion where others haven’t created the bandwidth to do so.
Even if these arts insiders discussing these non-arts industry concepts aren’t able to provide the guidance for full extreme systemic change the listening session participants ultimately seek, they can probably provide a transitional frame of reference that would allow arts professionals to more effectively translate this change into theater practice.
In my post last month, I cited the board chair as saying the musicians invested a lot of effort in helping to save the symphony.
But let me tell you, after reading an additional piece in The Globe and Mail, I think that may have been an understatement. From the account on the newspaper site, it sounds like not only did the musicians raise $500,000 to support the out of work musicians and put on their own concerts, they also did the research and formulated the plan through which the symphony could be restored.
{French horn player Kathy] Robertson and a group of other musicians began to wonder what was salvageable from the original orchestra. If very few potential creditors would get paid from bankruptcy proceedings given the multimillion-dollar shortfall, the musicians reckoned it wouldn’t affect creditors too greatly if they avoided bankruptcy entirely and still didn’t get paid.
So they went to the Canadian Federation of Musicians, who connected the musicians with lawyers – who in turn confirmed that if they could find a way to satisfy creditors, it might be possible to save the orchestra.
New board members contributed expertise and represented the orchestra in negotiations with creditors, but it sounds like the musicians provided the impetus and significant amounts of sweat necessary to get things back to a tentative footing. I am not sure what the laws in Canada allow, but it seems like the new Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony should be constituted as something of an employee owned and operated entity.
They think a rebrand and a re-logo are the same thing, they’re not. A rebrand happens when you change the promise that you make, and the expectations we have for you. A re-logo is cosmetic. Rebrand at your peril, especially when the old brand is trusted, iconic, historic and connected to a basic human need. It’s a mistake to focus on clicks, not magic.
It is that statement about changing the promise that the company/organization is making that caught my eye. I think there is definitely a case to be made that many arts and cultural organizations have been intentionally working post-pandemic to change their promise and consumer expectations in a more constructive direction.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean a rebrand is required. Especially, as Godin says, if your current brand is already associated with a degree of trust and your efforts are seeking to deepen that trust.
Godin quotes the managing director of Jaguar talking about the need to be relevant, desirable and future-proof for the next 90 years. Godin suggests that statement won’t stand the test of time. Yet there is a lot of conversation in the arts and culture sphere about striving to be relevant. I have been advocating in that direction for close to a decade.
But I have also been saying not everything you can measure necessarily matters for an even longer time. Godin says much the same thing:
Clicks are not purchase intent.
Awareness is not desire.
Gimmicks are not marketing.
Social media followers aren’t following you.
Noise is not information.
Burning down your house draws a crowd, but it’s a lousy way to renovate.
Just because you are getting a measurable response doesn’t necessarily mean you will achieve the results you desire. In fact, there is a danger in becoming so enamored with the attention you are getting that you abandon pursuit of those meaningful results.
Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS experience released some more great research last week. This time regarding tolerance for online transaction fees. (subscription required)
High-propensity visitors to cultural organizations will likely tolerate online transaction fees up to $4.95…provided the organization charging this fee has been deemed competent and successful in terms of the guest experience, the online purchase experience, and favorable reputational equities. Critically, these data may be more insightful for market leaders considering implementing transaction fees than for those organizations which could be struggling to meet their audiences’ expectations.
Before you click away having decided that is all you need to know. There is more to consider. Number one, notice they use the term high-propensity visitors which means people who already have an inclination to attend exhibit or performance based experiences. Tolerances can differ for people who have less of an inclination for the experience. The other thing to note is that the organization must have already earned the confidence of audiences in terms of quality of difference experiences and reputation.
There are other factors like perceived value —which they take pains to note is not the same as price. An experience can be viewed as expensive while also being perceived as having high value. Readers may recall a post I made in August where IMPACTS found that free and low cost organizations often receive lower satisfaction score and intent to return responses. So low price does not always result in high satisfaction or perception of value.
Looking at perception of value, willingness to recommend to others, and intent to return, intent to return seems most impacted by online fees followed by perception of value and willingness to recommend.
Overall, intent to return begins to decline at the $3.00 mark, value perceptions begin to decline at the $5.00 mark, and willingness to recommend visiting to a friend starts to decline at the $6.00 mark. Depending on myriad factors concerning content, programming, reputation, the online purchase experience, and broad value perceptions, the ill-advised deployment of a transaction fee may risk a negative impact on an organization’s market potential and its ability to attract guests.
One other thing they called out – labeling additional fees as “convenience fees” elicits increased negative perceptions. Purchasers don’t necessarily see it as convenient for them.
There is a lot more nuanced analysis and cross-refencing to earlier posts they have made in this recent post so it is probably worth taking a closer look if you want to know more.
A recent Slate piece covered the music rights issues being faced by athletes who use music in competition – among them figure skating, gymnastics, artistic swimming, cheer, ballroom dance, and competitive dance. Essentially, pretty much no athlete at any level all the way up to the Olympics, has been securing the rights to use the music they perform to and the rights holders are bringing lawsuits against them.
To some extent it was surprising to me to learn that while Olympic athletes had been submitting a list of the songs being used in their routines, NBC wasn’t making sure the rights had been secured prior to broadcast despite the scads of lawyers that work for the network. Either that or they made sure there as language in their agreements with the different countries and athletic federations putting the onus on them to ensure the rights had been secured for the Olympics.
Complicating the situation is the fact an athlete not only has to secure the rights to the music, if they are going to perform choreography to it they will also need to secure synchronization rights. If you have ever watched any of these competitions you may have noticed that athletes often use a medley of dozens of songs which means securing the rights for each.
Not to mention, some songs have multiple rights holders who might have agreements with multiple licensing agencies. For example, for the Eagles “Hotel California,” Don Henley, Glen Frey, and Don Felder all have rights to the song. Henley and Frey’s are administered by Global Music Rights and Felder’s are handled by ASCAP.
There are songs in the public domain that may be used, but there is a desire to have the competitions feel relevant to audiences by using recognizable, contemporary music.
A quick fix, some have suggested, would be for athletes to just use classical music, which, when not fully in the public domain, often has fewer—likely less litigious—rights holders. Romain Haguenauer, coach to the 2018 and 2022 world and Olympic ice dance champions, said that if figure skating had to stop using popular music, it would be “catastrophic.”
“I think modern music is good for the audience, and especially for younger fans who can relate more to Beyoncé than [the opera] Carmen,” Haguenauer said. “If that would have to change, it’s like we will go back to the past. And that’s never good for sport.”
There are companies that have been formed to negotiate the rights for athletic competitions, but the process is slow and the available catalogue from which to choose is not extensive according to the article’s author.
What I found most interesting was how participation and attendance of different arts and cultural activities varied from state to state. While we might think of places like NYC as being a cultural center in the US, that isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, New York State’s numbers were lower than one might expect though NEA Director of Research and Analysis Sunil Iyengar partially attributed that to the fact there were still Covid restrictions on Broadway productions during 2022.
According to Iyengar,
…higher than average attendance was clocked by seven states. Utah, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Per capita, Washington DC also drew more arts participation than most states
Utah, Vermont, and Nebraska vastly outstripped the national average for attending at least one live performance. Massachusetts exceeded the national average for art museum attendance and Vermont and DC exceeded the national average for overall museum attendance.
Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Montana had higher levels of people attending stage plays or musicals (school based performances were not counted). South Dakotans attended dance in higher levels than the rest of the nation.
When it came to music, Massachusetts was on top for classical music, DC turned out for jazz, New Mexico was triple the US average for Latin, Spanish, and salsa concerts.
Iyengar said the survey didn’t drill down on every performing arts discipline and used some catch-all categories. Indiana topped attendance in that category.
“…types we do not ask about on the survey, these may have been rock or pop concerts, rap or hip hop, or even comedy shows, circuses, or magic shows. That’s a kind of lump all category. We find that 37% of Indiana residents went to one of these types of events in the last year compared to 21% of adults in general. In Michigan, another Midwestern state, the rate was also high, 34%. And out East in Delaware, it was 35%.
Of course, someone has to generate all that creative content and the survey measured that as well:
…the states that did particularly well in terms of arts creation were Wisconsin, Maine, Montana, Vermont, Nebraska, Utah, Oregon, Washington State and Ohio. All these states had above average shares of residents who personally created or performed art…. Wisconsin, where the rate of arts creation in the course of a year was 73%, versus 52% of the U.S. as a whole. Wisconsin had an especially strong showing with people doing dance, taking photographs for artistic purposes and making visual art in general. And Maine, where 71% of people made their own art, included a lot of folks working with textiles, weaving, crocheting, quilting or doing needlepoint, knitting or sewing.
The full report, 50 States of Arts Participation: 2022, can be found on the National Endowment for the Arts website. There is a quick drop down menu to show some highlights for each state, but the report does a much better job of providing specific detail.
One of the things I take from the survey is the suspicion that many people down really perceive themselves as participating in artistic and creative practice. When I see that Hawaii pretty significantly is below the national average for participation in social or artistic dancing and playing a musical instrument, it doesn’t correspond with my experience living there where everyone seemed to at least dabble a little in both if not regularly perform or take instruction.
For the record, I am not on the side of singing along with the movie in the theater.
That said, I think it is to the theater world’s credit that there is a notable debate raging about whether people should be allowed to sing along during screenings of the movie based on the Broadway musical Wicked.
The movie is very much based on the musical since it is only part 1, though it isn’t advertised as such, and even as Part 1 has a longer running time than the original musical. According to some reviewers the movie doesn’t seem to drag even though it is being stretched out.
Part 2 will apparently contain new songs by composer Stephen Schwartz which may mitigate concerns about people singing along to some degree when that movie comes out.
One of the obvious solutions to the sing-a-long issue is for movie theaters to offer audience participation screenings and no audience participation screenings. After all the same issue came up about a year ago with the Taylor Swift concert movie where some fans felt like there was too much audience participation while others were upset that the next screening over seemed to be creating a more communal experience than they were having. If theater were paying attention the last time, they could proactively address those concerns for Wicked.
I should probably amend that first sentence of this post to say I am not on the side of a sing-a-long when I am not expecting that experience. I have definitely tried to license the sing-a-long version of Song of Music and have hosted a number of screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show where participation is expected.
As I said, I think it is great that the debate is occurring with Wicked because it will likely raise awareness about the Broadway show and perhaps generate curiosity about other Broadway shows.
Though stretching the story out across two movies creates a tenuous situation. If the extended version is boring and drags, that could reflect badly on the original show. (I’m looking at you movie adaptation of The Hobbit) If it is well received, it could create expectations that a Broadway show half the length (at least) can’t meet.
We are constantly told about the hazards of inputting sensitive personal data into unsecure websites. That is pretty much what you are doing when you provide information to an AI bot and ask them to create something for you. For this reason there are some significant concerns associated with using AI to write annual reviews and evaluations. Anything you provide the AI is being used to train the AI to do a better job and has the possibility of being retrieved by third parties.
I recently had a post on ArtsHacker discussing these issues in greater detail. In that post I note using AI for annual reviews is a viable option as long as you steer clear of identifiable information like names, don’t reference things like medical conditions, or use discriminatory language related to protected classes like age, race, national origin, etc.
Tickets and programs had a life measured in terms of the dates of performance. Once the date had passed and the show run completed, tickets and programs had no value. Except in terms of a remembrance of time spent and a record of who contributed to the creation of the show. As Sincox writes, saving those tickets and programs as memorabilia has been practiced for 400-500 years.
But the move to digital delivery on tickets means there isn’t anything to save unless you specifically request to pick up tickets at will call or choose to print at home. Sincox notes that some ticketing services like TodayTix don’t deliver tickets to their app on your phone until 24 hours prior to the show time and then disappear at midnight of the show day.
As for programs, Covid saw an elimination in their use and the post-pandemic period has seen their diminished use as venues trend away from them. Even the vaunted Playbill program one gets at Broadway shows and other venues across the US was impacted as never before in its history:
Playbill’s presses ceased operations between March 2020 and August 2021 for the first time since the magazine’s 1884 founding. As Playbill’s editors reminded readers in the first postvaccine issue, the magazine had not stopped for two world wars, for Y2K, or for anything in between….After August 2021, many theaters made Playbill accessible via QR codes scanned in the lobby, much like the now-ubiquitous virtual restaurant menu
All this being said, Sincox observes near the end of the article that delivery of tickets and program content virtually still has its shortcomings. As a venue manager, I can attest that her struggles in retrieving her tickets on her phone is a common occurrence across the nation, if not the world. In the end, a good many attendees depend on the availability of the ticket office to print hard copies of their tickets so that they and their friends may share an enjoyable experience.
Seth Godin recently wrote about how, as an MBA student at Stanford, he went into an interview with the CEO of Activision waving a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article and claiming Activision was in danger of succumbing to the Marketing myopia described in the article. Godin says he was just about to be thrown out of the CEO’s office when someone came in waving a report that Activision had 9 of the top 10 video games on sale at the time.
By the time the CEO came back to his office, he forgot why he was angry with Godin and offered him the job. But Godin said the time he spent cooling his heels convinced him he was right about Activision being too focused on making games for the Atari console.
Godin tells this story as an introduction to a HBR piece he wrote about strategy myopia His main point is that strategy deals with uncomfortable uncertainty based on questions about what the future may hold based on how technology, society, and other factors are unfolding. The tactics and plans a company embrace need to derive from the strategy, which again, holds no concrete promises.
In part this myopia comes from what we expect from a new strategy. Strategy is not a plan. A plan might come with a guarantee: “If we do this, we win.” A strategy, on the other hand, comes with the motto: “This might not work.” Strategy is a philosophy of becoming, a chance to create the conditions to enable the change we seek to make in the world.
When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.
What really caught my attention was a passage that echoes the on going conversation about arts marketing being focused on the product being sold rather than the audience/consumer. (my emphasis)
Strategy myopia occurs when we fail to identify who we seek to serve, and focus on what we seek to produce instead. Empathy gives us a strategic advantage.
A tactical, short-term focus is based on the past. We can try to defend the machines and processes already in place, working to maximize the assets we’ve got. Or we can visualize the customer and serve their needs as the world changes.
[…]
Empathy begins with the humility to acknowledge that you don’t know what others know, want what they want, or believe what they believe … and that’s okay. If we’re not prepared to move to where our customers are hoping to go, it’s unlikely that they’ll care enough to adopt what we care about.
A year ago I wrote about how the musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony were blindsided by the organization declaring bankruptcy. There had been no communication prior to the declaration indicating there were any financial concerns. Indeed, the symphony had negotiated a pay increase with the musicians a month earlier.
Last week there was news that the organization was emergingfrom bankruptcy. From what I have read this seems to have been a result of creditors forgiving their debt rather than an immense fundraising campaign so the future of the organization remains to be seen. There will be a few concerts performed at a church to close out 2024.
A column in the Waterloo Regional Record cited the board chair, Bill Poole’s, belief that it may be some time before the organization returns to offering a full series of concerts with their former complement of musicians:
Poole acknowledges that the previous setup, in which 52 instrumental musicians were full-time employees, might not be deemed viable in the future. It isn’t clear yet what that working relationship will look like.
The musicians will have work, he said, and there will be concerts starting in early 2025 for which the symphony will pay them. But right now, the musicians don’t have steady jobs.
He can’t say if there will be a 2025-26 season that music lovers can subscribe to, nor if the concerts will happen at Centre in the Square, which was originally built for that orchestra.
Poole acknowledged there is a lot of trust to be earned back. I imagine that is the case with both the audience and the musicians. Though according to Poole, the musicians invested a lot of effort into helping to restore the orchestra to its current footing, precarious as it may be, including helping to recruit new board members.
The musicians raised nearly $500,000 Canadian through GoFundMe to produce their own series of concerts, support the unemployed musicians, and provide legal services.
The National Endowment for the Arts recently released the arts related results of the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Unlike the Survey on Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) which asks people about their behavior across the previous 12 months, the Pulse Survey asks about people’s behavior in the previous 30 days. They say this provides greater detail of the rate at which people are engaging with arts related activities post-Covid. The Pulse survey was conducted between April – July 2024.
In addition to asking people how often they engaged in arts attendance and arts creation and their perception of the availability of arts and cultural amenities in their community, the Pulse Survey specifically asked new questions related to loneliness and social connection. The data shows the response of attendees, creators, non-attendees, and non-creators to questions about participation in social clubs/activities, phone conversations with family and friends, and spending time with family and friends.
I was somewhat perplexed that they did not address how age and other demographic factors may have impacted whether people spoke on the phone with family and friends as they did with other categories. They only broke down the results in terms of attendees vs non-attendees and creators vs. non-creators.
In terms of loneliness and social support, for the most part those that attended events experienced less loneliness than non-attendees and creators experienced it less than non-creators. Similarly, those who perceived themselves as having access to arts activities also felt loneliness less than those who perceived themselves as having low or no access.
However, there was a noted exception in the creator category:
Adults who created art were more likely to report experiencing loneliness “sometimes” or “rarely” (31.9 and 34.7 percent, respectively) than were those who had not created art (27.2 and 32.2 percent, respectively). However, at least some level of loneliness proved more familiar to creators of art than to non-creators. That is, 18.4 percent of those who created art in the last month reported “never” experiencing loneliness, versus 27.3 percent of those who did not create art.
There were somewhat similar results related to feeling social and emotional support. Those who attended or created art or those who felt they had high access to arts resources felt a greater level of support than those who didn’t attend, create or have access to resources.
Again there was a difference on the absolute end of the scale among creatives (my emphasis)
Adults who created art were more likely to say they usually received social support than those who did not create art (38.8 percent compared to 30.2 percent for non-creators “usually” receiving support). Arts creators were also less likely to say they never received support (4.1 percent versus 10.1 percent of non-creators). However, non-creators were more likely to say they “always” receive social and emotional support than were arts creators (28.8 percent of creators versus 24.6 percent of non-creators).
While I have some theories bumping around my head, I am not exactly sure what all the implications of that might be. On a very basically level of course, the creative act will always require a degree of loneliness associated with it. Even if you are in a large orchestra, there is a lot of time spent practicing alone. Even in a small music group the folks writing the words and lyrics may feel isolated from other members of the group. And the creative who hasn’t felt they don’t have social and emotional support for their endeavors are few indeed.
The chapter addressed the value of data to museums, but I was obviously approaching it from the perspective of the value of data for all sorts of organizations. Falk mentioned many museums aren’t really clear about what to measure. They often don’t understand what data points matter most to their organization.
He acknowledged most institutions don’t have the resources to have a data focused team on staff or engage an entity to help them collect and manage their data. He felt there must be a collective effort through some of the larger museum service and advocacy institutions to collect some of this data. Though at the same time, individual entities must work on collecting data that is specifically relevant to their communities.
A person attending the session asked how organizations can survive and thrive executive leadership transitions. Falk’s response was that middle managers needed to identify the data that is most persuasive to leadership, not just colleagues and one’s self. He noted that the financial bottom line is often the most persuasive factor for executive leadership so you often have to show how your ideas and data will advance that concern.
This suggestion gave me a little pause because it felt like it reinforces short term goals over long term changes to culture that will have impact. One of the real issues facing both commercial and non-profit entities is the adoption of the flavor of the week. This also seemed to advocate for catering to the HiPPO in room (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion).
I am not sure that Falk was advocating for catering to the highest paid person’s opinion because the conversation soon turned to the need to break down internal organizational silos. People mentioned that often data is difficult to acquire because internal parties gatekeep access to it. Falk said that leadership is responsible for opening access to data across the organization both in the direction of top down, from the bottom up, and internal to each department pressing to de-silo that information. There is a need to share data and understand each other’s data.
When asked what the most desirable qualities of a museum leader were, Falk said it was a degree of numeracy. He said people didn’t need to be statisticians or a data wonk, but needed to at least appreciate the value of data in decision making. Ideally they should have some ability to analyze and employ data. Discussing an example from his book where someone thought the most important knowledge set for a museum executive was art history, Falk said you can hire people who know art history but as an executive leader you need to know how to work with data.
He also felt it was important for a leader to have the capacity and judgment to hire staff who possessed the people skills to serve an audience. Museum success is all about people after all so you need a staff which is adept at creating a welcoming environment for attendees.
As much as the conversation for the session revolved around data, Falk emphasized the value of co-creation with the community. He said you can build an exhibition designed to achieve certain learning objectives and it might meet those objectives. However, it is far, far, far better to go to the community and say we can create an exhibition around X subject or concept, what would you want this exhibit to help you learn about this subject? While this is much more time and labor intensive, Falk felt that the outcomes are far greater when the end user is involved with the co-creation.
I felt like this really dovetailed well with my post yesterday about the length and content of labels in museum exhibits. One of the final passages I quoted from the article mentioned that museum staff would observe how people interacted with labels and question them about whether they derived the information they wanted from the labels. I think that is probably a good practice regardless, but it might not be necessary to revise the labels so much if some of the target audience had provided input about desired outcomes of an exhibition.
Ruth Hartt had reposted an Observer debating what sort of information and how much makes for a good museum label. It immediately occurred to me that this can be a tall order based on the fact that museum visitors may have different agenda every time they enter the doors. Thinking about the types of museum attendees discussed by John Falk, people may be coming to explore one day, facilitate friends and family another day, approach the experience through a more professional lens the next time, or just want to unwind and recharge.
My thoughts went to the Axios.com site which uses Zoom In, Zoom Out, and Go Deeper sub-heads in many of their articles. I thought that might be a good format so that people could decide how much detail they wanted about an object. However, there were people interviewed for the Observer article who not only thought less is more, in some cases they advocated that nothing is more.
Ours is a literate culture rather than a visual one, and “there is a comfort in reading a label,” Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, told Observer. “You are offered facts that are very relatable, whereas artworks themselves aren’t so easily contained. Labels are a left-brain experience, while art is experiential and not a test of knowledge. In my world, people wouldn’t need the damn label at all.”
[…]
“Every year, I take my students to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which doesn’t provide any labels for artworks on display,” James Pawelski, director of education at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center, told Observer. “There is no intermediary between the viewer and the art, so students have to deal directly with the art.” He is not opposed to labels per se, but like many others, Pawleski has something to say about the many museum placards he sees. “You don’t want the label to take away the mystery of the artwork, what makes it interesting and inspiring. That’s why I prefer labels that help people become immersed in a work of art.”
Some of those that do use labels engage in a lengthy creation and editing process that spans different departments, acknowledging that museum professionals are so close to their work they often use insider terminology or emphasize aspects that appeal to professionals rather than the lay person.
At Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, labels originate with a curator, “written with the assistance of curatorial research associates,” and are then passed to the Department of Museum Interpretation for a review of “clarity of narrative and messaging, tone of voice, reading level and word count,” Mekala Krishnan, the museum’s associate director of museum interpretation, told Observer. But they’re not done yet. “There is usually some back and forth between the curatorial and interpretation departments before it then gets passed to our editor, who is the final gatekeeper for formatting, spelling, grammar and punctuation, as well as for overall clarity….
Some institutions keep working on their labels even after they are installed, with staffers watching visitors as they move through galleries, timing how long they stand in front of any object and watching their eyes to see if they are reading more than looking. Visitors may be questioned about what they saw: “What did you take away from this exhibition?” or “What do you know now that you didn’t know before?” This is quite labor-intensive and expensive, but it may be the only way to know for certain if the label did its job.
The article goes much deeper into the nuance and considerations that factor into label design. There is a fair bit of overlap between the philosophy of what to include on museum labels and performer bios and performance notes for live events…not to mention promotional materials. It is worth reading the article even if you aren’t in the exhibit based world in order to gain something of a disinterested perspective you can apply to experiences you may offer to audiences.
People can drive around the farm land of Wisconsin to see various art installations and performances staged in the fields. The whole circuit is about 50 miles. Among the performances this year were the Hay Rake Ballet choreographing the movements of three tractors. There is video in the Hyperallergic article. It appears there may have been a line dancing component involved as well based on a call for participants on the Wormfarm site.
According to the choreographer Sarah Butler,
“It’s not every day that these farmers are driving and doing pirouettes with the tractors,” said Butler in an interview with Hyperallergic. “But nothing I was asking them to do was something they don’t do every day. It was really cool to see these three guys who are total masters of their craft being celebrated by their own community, as well as people visiting who are coming to see the DTour … for things they do every day that are oftentimes not really recognized as art.”
The concept behind Farm/Art D’tour is to raise awareness of the process by which food reaches people’s table and diminish perceptions that farmers and farming are disconnected from art. Based on the experience of one of the farmers participating in Hay Rake Ballet, he and some of his friends and neighbors are beginning to see that connection:
While some farmers refused to take part and one even backed out during rehearsals, Enge said he and his two fellow performers were exhilarated. “Seeing the joy in the other drivers and in the crowd … it really touched me.” On the drive home one of the other farmers told Enge, “Hey, if they’re going to do it again, count me in.”
There are some good images of some of the other projects in the Hyperallergic piece and on Wormfarm’s Facebook page.
At one of my previous positions, I had started a conversation with a local storytelling group about partnering on a curated storytelling series. This conversation happened a month before the outbreak of the pandemic. The series went on more or less as planned, albeit in a much larger space that allowed for social distancing. I credit that series with helping to breakdown perceptual barriers about our venue and who it as for and contributing to the further development of a relationship between under served segments of our community.
There are a number of rules for participation he outlines, but one of those appears to be key to the experience is:
And finally (this is important) everyone is asked not to share the story they think of when they hear the initial prompt (more on prompts below), but to listen carefully to the stories that come before theirs, and then to share a story that complements, complicates, contradicts, or otherwise responds to the stories they’ve heard so far.
Near the end Fink provides the following insight from his decade experience participating in story circles:
In a story circle, people who tend to dominate discussions learn to listen, knowing they’ll have their turn to speak and be heard; and people who tend to hold back find themselves speaking up, knowing that no one will interrupt or talk over them. At the end, when the group reflects together about the stories they’ve just heard, they inevitably discover elements of a “story in the center of the circle”–a story that they find, to their surprise, they all somehow share.
The rules and guidelines – and the facilitation guide makes a distinction between the two – are designed to achieve this sort of result where the garrulous listen and the introverted are allowed the space to speak.
In the middle of the article were a couple paragraphs that suggested the dividing line between artists and scientists isn’t as stark as described.
Beyond the usual example of Albert Einstein and other scientists have creative hobbies Levitin seems to suggest that the effort to establish a distinction between art and science may be based in a degree of discomfort with anything that might blur those lines. (my emphasis)
Good medicine relies on clinical judgment, refined through the same sort of trial and error and creative problem solving that artists and scientists use. Both the master physician and master baker must improvise. (Although the thought of a brain surgeon “improvising” may fill you with terror, it’s actually necessary, as neurosurgeon Theodore Schwartz explains. “Not only is the normal anatomy of every human variable, and unique, every tumour has its own configuration that distorts the landscape into which it has dug itself in a slightly different way. Inevitably, the reality we encounter differs from our expectations of what we thought we would find.”)
The most important distinction, then, isn’t in separating artists from scientists and doctors but in separating creative thinkers from formulaic ones, separating those who can tolerate uncertainty from those who cannot. Art, science, and medicine trade in doubt—and in its remedy, improvisation. Moreover, to be effective, the musician, the therapist, the scientist, and the physician must establish a rapport and a relationship of trust with people they may have never met.
Dave Wakeman’s appearance on Angela Meleca’s ARTS Redefined podcast was making the rounds of LinkedIn last week. One section in particular where Wakeman discussed his opposition to discounting caught my attention. (Starting at 27:10, the index in the video is way off for some reason)
Wakeman says people tell stories about themselves –what type of person they are, what value they have in the world. He says discounts do the exact opposite – it removes the value narrative and says you are a commodity and suggests you don’t believe in the value you are offering.
Wakeman recalls one of his marketing professors taught him that for every 1% you discount, you can lose up to 40% of your profit. Wakeman acknowledges it is an extreme example and the typical loss is around 10-11%. He cites additional research on the other side that shows for every 1% you raise your price, you gain 10-11% in profitability.
He says that the first time you discount, you might get good results but then people learn to wait for the discount. The better approach is to just recognize you set the price too high, change the price and continue with that new price.
Without naming names, Meleca gives Wakeman the example of an arts organization that makes all their tickets $11 with the expectation that people will enjoy the experience and come back again at a higher price.
This is clearly a reference to Opera Philadelphia’s $11 pay what you want campaign that was introduced at the end of August. I suspect the podcast episode must have been recorded around then because Wakeman doesn’t seem aware of this and I am reasonably confident I saw him comment on the story in early September.
I will say that based on Opera Philadelphia reported ticket revenue being generally 13% of their revenue, I don’t necessarily think they were depending on people returning at a much higher price point in the future. Fundraising is probably at the core of their plan to stay in the black.
Interestingly, Wakeman brings up a “not going to name name’s” example of a sports team that did the same thing. He characterizes the belief that people will come back at a higher price as just stupid. He says it is much tougher to raise a price when you have lowered it.
He goes into detail about the approach of just changing the price and how to communicate it in a way that is positive for you. Announcing a whole new block of seats at $20 Vs 20% off ticket price is a more constructive framing. The discount raises questions about the value of the show and how it is selling.
That said, I want to point out you can only do that so much. There were a lot of concerts this past summer where people had purchased tickets at $300 or more several months out only to find them selling at around $50 dollars a couple weeks out from the show. Based on what I saw unfold on regional concert venues this summer, I am pretty sure some of that is attributable to 3rd parties buying up all the tickets, ratcheting the price, and then trying to unload them when they wouldn’t sell.
Whether it was 3rd parties or the venue themselves, there were a lot of pissed off people making videos and comments on social media because their perception shifted from being smart for getting tickets early to being cheated of the hundreds or thousands of dollars difference between their purchase price and the current sale price.
Wakeman talks about this shift in perceived value in regard to discounting as well. He suggests having a strong data based process in place for price setting so that you have the best chance of creating an accurate price in the first place.
He says pegging it to the actual cost of presenting the show is bad because that often doesn’t align with perceived value.
Once you set the price, don’t be timid or apologize for it – promote it confidently and proudly.
Last month, the Bloemencorso Zundert, caught my attention. It is the largest flower parade in the world held in Zundert, Netherlands. Twenty hamlets compete to have their parade float judged as the best. Apparently, they only use dahlias are used in the Zundert parade and six of the nearly eight million flowers are cultivated in Zundert. The parade started in 1936 with 17 hamlets. The other three have joined more recently.
The entire effort appears to be volunteer run from the cultivation of the flowers, to the design, to the assembly of the flowers just days before the parade. Not to mention the movement – the floats tend to be human powered. If you look closely at some of the videos below, you can see the feet of the people acting as the internal engines. The webpage for the event translates relatively well into English.
Being a Tolkien fan, a video of the Khazad-Dum float is what had initially caught my attention and led me to do some further investigation of the event.
One of those asked to respond was Everette Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter, a site that has essentially become the alternative to foundations, governments, and institutional funders as a funding source for creative projects.
He says a partnership with Skoll Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Creative Capital to provide $700,000 in funding to 600 BIPOC creators helping them raise $11.7 million.
“In recent research, still unpublished, Kickstarter creators report earning $5.15 in additional revenue from each dollar raised on Kickstarter. That places the total estimated economic impact of the $700,000 fund at close to $70,000,000, a 100x return on that cultural investment.”
That data comes from one of his recommendations about making funding to creatives more accessible, especially for smaller scale projects. Part of that includes making it easier for people to apply with fewer strings and follow up reporting burden attached.
His second recommendation is about strengthening community among art makers by providing some infrastructure for creating networks and sharing work, and encouraging cross-pollination and collaboration.
His third recommendation referenced changing the definition of art making, including who gets to participate in making art. He lists all the projects that have been funded by Kickstarter highlighting the expansive storytelling techniques facilitated by books, tabletop games, roleplaying games receiving support. He points to these games as something of an underdeveloped framework for allowing more people to participate in a creative process.
He warns that AI is in a position to marginalize and supplant many of the burgeoning creatives who have only just begun to realize success through opportunities for funding that platforms like Kickstarter provides. There is something of an implication that as much as Kickstarter has done to help these artists, their capacity is still comparatively too narrow to provide the support and resources the creative community needs to succeed.
For example, I have found that I have a more difficult time creating anything with verbal or written content if music has lyrics. However, if I am working with numbers, say balancing accounts, lyrics don’t inhibit me at all. (Though my singing along might disturb my co-workers.) Though age may also be a factor because I don’t remember having as much difficulty with writing to music with lyrics when I was younger. And the article sort of alludes to the fact that different people have different capacity to multi-task.
Here is some of what the article has to say. A fair bit of space is also devoted to the damage volume can have on hearing.
Numerous studies have discovered how music can affect study and work habits:
Listening to instrumental or familiar music in the background competes less with a study assignment than music with lyrics or unfamiliar music. Instrumental music also seems to interfere less with reading comprehension and assignments requiring verbal and visual memory than does music with lyrics.
Upbeat music with a higher tempo may help when you’re doing something requiring movement or motivation, such as exercising or cleaning your room.
The more difficult your task is – for instance, memorizing material, problem-solving or learning something new – the more likely the music is distracting and people often need to turn it off.
…according to its 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 48.5 percent of adults reported having read at least one book in the past year, compared with 52.7 percent five years earlier, and 54.6 percent ten years earlier. Meanwhile, in 2022, just 37.6 percent reported reading a novel or short story, compared with 41.8 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012. As we said at the time, the fiction-reading rate was the lowest in the history of the SPPA, a survey that goes back more than three decades.
[…]
….the share of 13-year-olds who reported reading for fun “almost every day.” In 2023, the figure was 14 percent, down from 17 percent in 2020 and 27 percent in 2012. The share of 13-year-olds who fell into this reading category in 2023 was lower than in any previous test year, …
[…]
For decades, more than half of all nine-year-olds reported reading for fun “almost every day.” In 2012, that figure was 53 percent. In 2020, it dropped to 42 percent, and in 2022 (the most recent year for which data are available), 39 percent. Also in 2022, the share of nine-year-olds who “never or hardly ever” read for fun was at its highest: 16 percent.
Since these trends existed prior to the pandemic, we can’t blame it on Covid. I was harboring some hope that being cooped up at home might have led more people to pick up reading as a habit.
On the other hand, Barnes and Noble is planning on opening 58 stores in 2024, more stores in a year than they have since 2009. In some cases, they are re-occupying buildings they left years ago. From what I have been reading over the last year, some of their success seems to be attributable to the corporate office giving the individual stores more license to customize their spaces to the communities in which they are located and aim for a more independent bookstore vibe. The company recently bought a local bookstore chain in CO with the intent of operating under the local name rather than Barnes and Noble which seems to reinforce their local flavor strategy.
The BN store near me seems to always be hopping despite the dwindling fortunes of the mall surrounding it. It has appeared to be a third place gathering space for a lot of tweens to interact in a way that makes me secretly grateful. I have seen articles claiming there is a resurgence of reading among Gen Z thanks to the BookTok trend on Tiktok.
But I think both the decline of reading and Barnes and Noble’s growing success can be true. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Barnes and Noble is increasingly finding success selling non-book products, services, and programs. It all bears watching and considering.
h/t to my friend Tonja Khabir for linking to a CNN piece about Yamilée Toussaint, the founder of STEM for Dance, a program which integrates dance with STEM subjects to encourage girls of color to pursue careers in STEM fields.
For Toussaint, the germ of STEM for Dance started when she was studying mechanical engineering at MIT and was one of two women of color in her major. The article says the organization has programs in nine cities. It appears the activities are a mix of school clubs and camps in which the girls can participate.
The organization’s school and summer programs typically attract girls who identify as dancers but are hesitant about STEM. Through the supportive community and hands-on projects, the girls begin to see themselves as programmers, engineers, and innovators.
[…]
Rather than teach dance and STEM separately, the program combines the two. Working in small groups, the girls choreograph dance routines that include STEM elements, such as LED light strips that they code to light up with the music. The girls also create songs through computer science that they incorporate into their performance.
The article initially caught my attention due to its focus on Carter’s interactions with musicians who lived in Macon, GA where I had lived for a time:
In that interview, Carter mentioned that when he became governor, he got to know some of the people at Capricorn Records in Macon, Georgia — among them Otis Redding.
“It was they who began to meld the White and Black music industries, and that was quite a sociological change for the region. So as I began to travel around Georgia I made contact a few days every month or so with Capitol Records, just to stay in touch with people in the state, and got to know all the Allman Brothers, Dickey Betts and others. Later on, I met Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band.” As time went on, Carter realized the importance of the arts and music to bringing people together, says Paige Alexander, CEO of the Carter Center.
Not everything he did as governor of Georgia was always pro-arts. During his tenure the State Arts Commission was eliminated and arts funding severely cut. Though by the end of his term in 1975, the funding increased from $128,000 to $183,000 ($1,069,256 today).
In 1973, apparently in the wake of the success of the movie Deliverance, he created the State Motion Picture & Television Advisory Commission in an effort to tout Georgia as a filming location. Not quite the movie I would be promoting as a good representation of the people and locations available in the state. But the state has become a very active filming location, especially in recent years.
Carter himself became interested in woodworking and painting when he was in the Navy and took it up more actively after his term as president. And, of course, he was active in wood working of another sort via Habitat for Humanity.
Over the last decade or so, I have been pleased to periodically read articles about people taking up dance classes as adults. As someone who advocates for people to recognize they have the capacity to be creative, it is always encouraging to read that people are connecting to that aspect of themselves.
Though I feel like it is rare to see articles about people taking up their instruments, singing, acting, or visual arts practice again. We know it is happening, but maybe it isn’t deemed as news worthy?
Interest in adult ballet has increased by 75% over the last three to five years, according to Patti Ashby, U.S. National Director of Royal Academy of Dance, the primary ballet organization in the country that trains teachers and tracks national engagement with ballet. And the number of adult ballet summer intensive programs have nearly doubled since the pandemic, according to the weekly online ballet-centric magazine Pointe.
And as you might expect, there is an “adult ballet” TikTok trend which probably both reflects and cultivates this.
The trend is also alive and well on TikTok, where the popular hashtag “adult ballet” retrieves countless videos of women documenting their progress in the dance form. Professional ballerinas such as Mary Helen Bowers, with half a million followers on Instagram (@balletbeautiful), stream ballet-inspired workouts that focus on feeling beautiful while building strength.
An encouraging positive aspect accompanying this return to dance is that many participants aren’t experiencing the focus on ideal body standards associated with the dance form. Some of those interviewed expressed they had some anxiety in that regard prior to starting classes. Finding that the old stereotypes didn’t exist in these classes, they were free to enjoy the experience and focus on their practice.
Seth Godin recently wrote that while many professions are just as important as they were 30-50 years ago, the basic skills required for those professions have changed. Pharmacists no longer have to mix their own medicines, opticians no longer have to grind lens, lawyers have templates from which to generate documents, graphic designers aren’t required to be skilled in drawing by hand.
He concludes with:
In your work, are you fighting the change or leading it?
It’s hard to see us going back.
I attended a webinar Ruth Hartt was delivering today where she made a similar point about audience expectations, noting that while everyone acknowledges audiences for arts and cultural activities are shrinking, programming and marketing still tends to center the tastes of the older, diminishing audience and donor base.
To some extent, while it is important to have programming that reflects a broader segment of the community you wish to serve, Aubrey Bergauer has often spoken about audience feedback that focused more on the language, images, and experiences being focused on the arts organization and their needs vs. externally focused externally on audience expectations and needs. She has mentioned very few comments are about the programming, compared to comments about promotional language “reading like inside baseball.”
These observations are much in-line with Ruth Hartt’s discussion of Clayton Christensen’s research indicating consumers respond best to language and images that tells them how the product fulfills a need they have or aligns with what is important to them.
CEO Patrick Fisher — while acknowledging that his group has done much good over the years — writes that “regardless of intentions, the Arts Council has caused harm by being inconsistent, unresponsive, or culturally inept.”
[…]
Fisher said it has sometimes been through poor planning and management of initiatives like the Disabled Artists Creative Cohort and the Black Arts Action Committee. GPAC “over-promised and under-delivered” on these underfunded attempts to increase opportunities for disabled and Black artists and left behind disappointed constituencies, he said.
Other programs that initially served a purpose failed to change as needed. One, Fisher said, was Art on the Walls, which at first addressed a very real lack of exhibition opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists. But it also kept diverting resources from more urgent projects even after other opportunities for such artists emerged, he said.
Likewise, certain grant programs for local artists ran out of money, leaving artists in the lurch.
Last April I wrote about the group, Crappy Funding Practices, which has been calling attention to onerous requirements and problematic expectations that funding entities have for grantees. The ultimate goal has been nudge funders to engage in the sort of self-examination that GPAC has undertaken.
As far as I recall, GPAC hasn’t been a subject of a post by Crappy Funding Practices, but some of those mentioned by the group have revised their practices when it has been called to their attention. It is to their credit that the CEO and members of the arts council have engaged in a listening tour, solicited feedback, and made changing some of these practices part of their next strategic plan.
I have made a number of posts over the years on the practice of contextomy which is the practice of selectively editing quotes, often in connection with movie and show reviews, to make it appear reviewers enjoyed what they saw.
Creators who engage with these promoters or otherwise participate in the purchase of fake reviews are now squarely in the FTC’s crosshairs. The FTC has made it clear that ignorance is no defense; if you’re benefiting from fake reviews, even if you didn’t personally buy them, you could be held liable. This could result in hefty fines, legal action, and irreparable damage to your brand’s reputation.
He lists a number of practices podcasters can employ– mostly avoiding the temptation to buy reviews, vetting promoters, focusing on creating good content, and encouraging sincere reviews.
About a week ago, Haydn Corrodus posted this fun video from the Beamish Museum on LinkedIn
I appreciated Haydn making the following comment which acknowledges it takes time to achieve a level of virality, especially when employing modern slang with a deadpan delivery:
From looking at their page briefly, it seems like it was only a matter of time before one of their videos went viral.
There was some disappointing news a week or so ago when the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) announced the sunsetting after 28 years of the National Theater Project and National Dance Project due to a priority shift by the Mellon Foundation.
Across the course of my career, I availed myself of the opportunity to present dance companies supported by the National Dance Project. The support helped to cultivate an audience for dance in a couple communities in which I worked. The funding helped remove some of the risk inherent to introducing dance to communities who had low to no familiarity with the art form.
The deadline for the last phase of the National Theater Project is in October and the final iteration of the National Dance Project will be in Januar/February.
The preliminary application for the final NTP grant cycle in its current form opens on September 6, 2024, and closes on October 10, 2024.
The preliminary application for the final NDP grant cycle in its current form will open in January 2025.
The statement released by NEFA says the following about the Mellon Foundation priority shift:
…Mellon partners as they do the important work of aligning their resources to best serve social justice in the performing arts for future generations
My first impression was that they would be supporting internal capacity of arts organizations to be more equitable and inclusive along the lines of creating a better working environment by establishing fairer pay and work hours. But as I re-read the statement I realized it encompasses one of ten thousand different options. I guess we will see when Mellon chooses to clarify their new goals.
Apparently I wasn’t paying close enough attention because I didn’t realize they have had more than one cohort of artists participating in separate 18 month phases. The groups in urban and rural Minnesota received $500/month to do with however they chose. All told, $675,000 was distributed through the program. This month Springboard for the Arts will host an art show compromised of the work of those supported by the project. The artists chosen for the show have received an additional $5000 to create a piece for the show.
There are teams from Guaranteed Income Pilots Dashboard (GIPD) run by the Stanford Basic Income Lab, the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research, and the University of Tennessee who have been tracking what the artists have been spending the money on to get a better sense of how funds were being used. The funds were distributed via pre-paid debt cards which facilitated the tracking.
The GIPD studied Springboard’s guaranteed income program and found that artists used the cash primarily on retail purchases (35.94%), food and groceries (30.26%), and housing and utilities (10.04%).
According to figures Springboard provided to Hyperallergic, 70% of recipients were BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), LGBTQ+, artists from rural areas, or artists with disabilities.
I will be interested to see if there is additional insight that emerges as they analyze and collect feedback about the pilot program. The value of these funds to the artists seemed best expressed in an article I quoted in an October 2021 blog entry during the pandemic (my emphasis):
Most importantly, the artists say, they feel valued after an incredibly difficult pandemic year. “I feel like people just don’t understand how hard [the pandemic] has hit artists — the arts just went away for over a year,” says Gamble. “It almost feels like a luxury to feel valued, because it usually feels like there’s never enough funds for artists.”
Andrew Taylor recently wrote on a topic I haven’t covered in some time – exploiting the passions of arts and cultural staff and creatives. He points out that a lot of non-profits of all types frequently discuss the benefits they have provided which have elevated the status and experiences of customers and clientele while neglecting to provide the same treatment for their organizational staff.
As it turns out, the passion-driven nature of arts work can be part of the problem. One study found that assumptions of passion and purpose in the workforce can “license poor and exploitative worker treatment” (Kim et al 2020). Across seven experiments and a meta-analysis, the authors found that:
…people do in fact deem poor worker treatment (e.g., asking employees to do demeaning tasks that are irrelevant to their job description, asking employees to work extra hours without pay) as more legitimate when workers are presumed to be “passionate” about their work.
This “legitimization of passion exploitation” flowed from two primary factors: assumptions that passionate workers would have volunteered for this work if given the chance, and beliefs that the work itself is its own reward. Either of those sound familiar?
As Taylor says, being told that you shouldn’t expect to be paid to have fun or for what you would have done anyway or even that you weren’t showing commitment to the cause are all things people in the arts have heard multiple times. And let’s not forget, needing to pay your dues when you are starting out.
Taylor cites five factors identified by the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard as essential. Those having the highest measure in all five are experiencing the most well-being. There are deeper explanations of each factor in Taylor’s piece, but in short they are: Happiness and Life Satisfaction; Mental and Physical Health; Meaning and Purpose; Character and Virtue; and Close Social Relationships.
I mention these in part to provide context for Taylor’s accompanying observation:
It may be surprising to learn that “Financial and Material Stability” is not considered a core domain, but rather a supporting variable that helps individuals maintain well-being in the other domains over time.
So in essence, proper level of remuneration can indeed help people buy/support happiness. I mean, you knew that, but it is good to see it backed by some data.
ArtNews had a piece last month examining the world of Immersive Art shows. You may have seen ads for these events which animate the works of Van Gogh or Monet and project them on the walls of a large space. To my surprise, those shows represent a small and decreasing share of the market compared to shows that animate the works of living artists or long term installation such experiences like those offered by companies such as Meow Wolf.
Immersive shows for Van Gogh and Monet are somewhat controversial based on the manipulation of artists’ work and the perception that the shows are lightweight and sort of dumb down the art viewing experience.
Museums that are interested in providing these sort of programs run up against capacity issues, both in terms of personnel and physical space:
Adapting or acquiring, and then equipping large amounts of space is one clear constraint. Size matters here. Small spaces simply do not have the same experiential impact. To compete with the big players, a museum will need to build out or otherwise secure several thousand square meters of floor space. Quality projection-based art often requires a 10-meter or even higher ceiling. These are halls that many existing institutions don’t have or can’t justify surrendering for extended periods.
Up next, new skills are needed. Creating an immersive art experience is akin to developing a branded consumer product. It relies on a multidisciplinary team to develop a single large-scale work…
On the other hand, Felix Barber, who authored the ArtNews piece suggests that the immersive art show can be taken out of the museum space to reach new audiences where they live. He cites collaborations in France where ” Grand Palais Immersif, in turn, joined forces with the Opera National de Paris to create an immersive space inside the Opera Bastille.” But also points out that other spaces like warehouses, empty spaces in shopping malls, and churches can provide the requisite physical space for these shows:
To find the space, a museum may not have to build at its existing high-cost, city-center location. Instead, it can look for a more affordable solution, while potentially engaging a new audience where they live. Many immersive studios work with real estate partners that are seeking to invigorate shopping centers and struggling urban areas. Others take over disused industrial premises. Culturespaces in Baux de Provence operates in an old quarry. Eonarium uses churches.
Ultimately those Barber interviews suggest that while museums in the current form will likely always be attractive, more options are becoming available to consumers who may prefer an experiential interaction versus standing in front of a work and reading a plaque.
In the end, it all comes back to the quality of the art. What will unlock museums’ interest in immersive experience is work that embodies beauty and meaning, presented at scale with a powerful sensory flourish.
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Even so, and no matter what, art museums now face new competitors. Sitting back and watching them capture audiences is not a promising option. Museums have to respond. One size will not fit all.
Santa Cruz Shakespeare has several tiers of benefits for donors/members. Some, like season-announcement parties, are open to several tiers. Some,…