The blog for Master of Management in International Arts Management had a case study post by Donna S. Finley and Vijay Sathe examining how the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) and Alberta Ballet (AB) had revamped their business model in an attempt to stabilize their finances. Feels like it has been awhile since I covered a … Read more
Being customer focused rather than internally focused is the name of the game these days. Drew McManus provided a great example of customer focused design in an interview on Dave Wakeman’s Business of Fun Podcast. Drew uses the example of his design process for UpStageCRM ticketing platform, (~6:30 mark) noting that they did interviews to … Read more
A couple months back, Arts Professional had an article by Jonathan Vaughan, Principal of Guildhall School of Music & Drama, asking if “artistic citizenship” could be taught. Defining artistic citizenship, the academic David Elliott takes Aristotle’s concept of Praxis (‘to do’ or ‘to make’) and expands it to mean active reflection and action “dedicated to … Read more
I was attending the Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference recently and sat in on a Life After SVOG session. There were a number of things discussed that either fell into the category of “the pandemic revealed the need for this” or “this was always a problem and the pandemic revealed the need for change.” … Read more
Over the years, I have written a fair bit on culture passes that various European countries have distributed to young people. In addition to passes for cultural experiences and goods, some of the passes have been focused on facilitating rail travel so young people can experience a wider swath of national and international places and … Read more
Okay, a little bit of a rant today. I have wanted to get this off my chest for a couple years now. Who decided that greeting customers with “What can I get started for you today?” was a good idea? To my mind it doesn’t build a relationship with the customer and in fact undermines … Read more
Last month I mentioned NPR was doing a series on theatre in the US. In fact, there is an installment in that series airing today. However, today I wanted to point out a entry in the series from early October which talks about the steps some theatres have taken to create better work environments. In … Read more
Over the last few months, Non-Profit Quarterly has run a series of pieces on the topic of capacity building. In particular, the authors have challenged the notion that current capacity building efforts are healthy for non-profits given that the definitions of capacity building and effectiveness are made externally by funders rather than internally by the … Read more
Countries around the world are eyeing the success of South Korea’s K-Pop, and Japan’s earlier J-Pop, and are developing national music strategies of their own according to a recent Forbes article. Thailand and Zimbabwe are prominently mentioned, but similar efforts are also being seen in Dominica, China, Oman, Philippines and Belize. A big driver is … Read more
A couple weeks ago Aubrey Bergauer hosted a LinkedIn conversation with Karen Freeman from Advisory Board for the Arts (ABA) to discuss what mattered most to arts professionals as they sought jobs in the arts. Freeman discussed a survey ABA conducted where they asked people to prioritize between different situations in order to drill down … Read more
Keep your radio tuned and your ears open to your local NPR station for the next month or so, especially if you are a theatre professional. The network is doing a series over the next five weeks about the 75th anniversary of the regional theatre movement. In a piece that aired this morning, they provide … Read more
Last week I received an email from Arts Midwest noting that September 9-18 is Welcoming Week, an international effort to provide a welcoming experience at all levels. This includes government and social policy and action to make communities more welcoming to organizational efforts to provide a sense of belonging in workplaces and other social interactions. … Read more
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the short documentary, Conducting Life, about Roderick Cox, a man who grew up here in Macon, GA who went on to become an associate conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra. Now based in Berlin, he works internationally as a guest conductor. The documentary recounts his pursuit … Read more
Many people probably heard about a Minnesota venue cancelling Dave Chappelle’s show hours before it was suppose to occur. Something similar happened a few weeks ago at a venue on the other side of my state where a comedy show with different comedians was cancelled the day before it was supposed to occur. This has … Read more
Last week German arts administrator Rainer Glaap made a Facebook post linking to the first ever study of theatres across the European Union (EU). Additionally, some of the survey participants were non-EU members of the Creative Europe program. Readers may recall I had made a number of posts looking at how various governments across Europe … Read more
Earlier this month Colleen Dilenschneider wrote a post providing data that showed Instagram was the social media platform with the highest levels of audience engagement and conversions (deciding to attend/participate in activities or subscribe to newsletter) for arts organizations. There were apparently a lot of questions raised by this information so she followed up today … Read more
For years now I have been following and writing on the Culture Track survey. At one time the survey was being conducted every three years or so in order to measure changing trends and attitudes about arts and culture. When Covid hit, the folks at Culture Track decided it was important to closely monitor the … Read more
So I saw the recent Dr. Strange movie this weekend and one of the biggest takeaways I had (no spoilers) was that classical music is powerful no matter what universe you are in. Though, like anything the benefit or detriment depends on whose hands are wielding it. While that isn’t the main thrust of my … Read more
I am always interested in seeing the novel approaches people employ to present performances. I happened to catch a story last week on Vice about a guy who is bringing pop up movie experiences to public spaces in India on the back of rickshaws. The project is somewhat cheekily called Rick Show. The concept was … Read more
Scott Walters made a Twitter post yesterday that suggested organizations start their existence with a Quality of Life Statement rather than Mission Statement or Values Statement. Intrigued about where he was going with this, I popped over to his blog post on the subject. He starts with a brief criticism that non-profit mission statements are … Read more
Scott Walters is a blogger I started following 15+ years ago. His work has gone through various focuses and iterations, but is always very interesting and insightful. He recently returned to the blogosphere with posts on Theatre Inspiration. He started out with a series on the wrong turns theater has made in the United States. … Read more
Last month, The Art Newspaper reported that NYC would begin requiring all employers to disclose the salary range of jobs starting on May 15. Many saw this as a positive step for the arts world as well as the employment environment at large, especially since it applies to many different employment arrangements, including internships. The … Read more
It seems the week to discuss Human Resource practices. Drew McManus posted the first in a series about the lack of good resources among orchestras to help address difficulties in the work environment today and Aubrey Burgauer mentioned something similar in post about hiring practice in arts organizations she made last week. Since Drew is … Read more
The Marginal Revolution blog linked to a really interesting study on talent hoarding a practice in which managers prevent productive workers from seeking promotions. The study author, Ingrid Haegele, found that when the manager is promoted, subordinates have the best opportunity to gain promotions themselves. My findings indicate that talent hoarding causes misallocation of talent … Read more
Vu Le posted this week about a well-observed phenomenon he termed “Outsider Efficiency Bias.” He defined this as basically having an outsider like a consultant come in and be lauded for making the same observations and recommendations that internal constituencies have. Because this is a common experience, I figured someone would have already coined a … Read more
American Theatre released results of a survey about virtual theatre offerings during Covid this week. Respondents represent 64 organizations from 25 states. As you might already imagine, the bad news is that virtual programming was not financially viable for nearly all organizations. Many experienced a promising initial swell of audience interest in the early months … Read more
I have been following Lucy Bernholz, a self-described philanthropy wonk, for ages it seems. She writes the blog Philanthropy 2173 and is a senior researcher at Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civic Society. When I saw an interview with the AP about a how philanthropy isn’t all about money, I took a closer look. And … Read more
I have often viewed my professional career as having moments where I build on general ideas and concepts from earlier positions, but adapted to suit the local community. I am always wary of being the guy who constantly says “well, when I was at X, we did…” And in this particular case, it was actually … Read more
Via Artsjournal.com is a FastCompany article by Amy Globus whose thesis is that Covid-19 gave the arts world the kick in the butt required to motivate it to think about how to leverage digital offerings to its benefit. I will say from the outset that like many stories I have seen written on this theme, … Read more
Something has been puzzling me lately and I haven’t come any closer to figuring out the answer. I appears to me that when there is discussion about populations which are under-served by the arts in the U.S. it seems to largely be in the context of race whereas when I see the same discussions going … Read more
I have noticed Drew McManus will get me riled up about an arts administration topic and then suggests I write an Arts Hacker post about it. Last week was no exception. Last Thursday he posted about how he had gone back to requiring employers posting positions on Arts Admin Jobs to include a salary range. … Read more
In an illustration of how arts and science can be mutually supportive, NextCity had a piece about an effort to train art teachers to teach girls to code. Code/Art was started by MIT grad Amy Renshaw in an attempt to make coding more interesting and accessible to girls. Art as a way to pique girls’ … Read more
Covid forced a lot of conversations about the value of streaming content from performing arts venues and visual arts galleries. As we emerge into more optimistic times, some groups are already planning to make streaming part of their programming mix while others are happy for the opportunity to jettison the practice. I was reading an … Read more
Links to a study examining the validity of claims about the efficacy of the arts in solving issues of health and well-being came across my Twitter feed today. The study authors, Stephen Clift, Kate Phillips, and Stephen Pritchard, examined research conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and … Read more
Apropos to Monday’s post on Jargon vs. Lingo, a link came across my social media feed yesterday featuring an interview with Anand Giridharadas by Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at the University College of London on the topic of philanthropy . There is a moment right around the 23:00 mark where Giridharadas refers to a situation … Read more
Equity in funding decisions has become a hot topic of late. Last week on the Americans for the Arts blog, Krista Terrell, Acting President for Arts & Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg (ASC), the local arts agency for that North Carolina city and county, made a post discussing how an internal analysis of funding practices revealed … Read more
Advisory Board for the Arts had sent out a survey on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access (DEI&A) efforts that non-profit organizations were undertaking. They released the results in infographic form this week. Keeping in mind that the respondents were self-selected so there wasn’t a lot of rigor behind the process, the results are still an … Read more
I didn’t properly record the source, but last week someone tweeted a link to the LEGO Foundation’s document, Creating Creators, which has the subtitle: “How can we enhance creativity in education systems?” The document is a collection of seven essays on the subject. What interested me was the more international perspective on the topic than … Read more
The Atlantic ran an article about how museums are having to deal with questions about equity and representation in their programming that are posed by both external and internal constituencies. The content of the article is pretty much applicable to every arts and cultural organization, regardless of discipline because the root of the problem seems … Read more
Last day in my series this week covering the UNESCO document, Culture in crisis: Policy guide for a resilient creative sector. Big thanks again to Rainer Glaap for calling attention to it. As much as I try to keep an eye on international culture developments, Rainer is much more plugged in than I am. I … Read more
Very big THANK YOU to friend of the blog Rainer Glaap who sent me a link to an UNESCO document, Culture in crisis: Policy guide for a resilient creative sector. At this point I think I am going to approach this document over the course of multiple entries because there is so much I see … Read more
I recently came across an article the LA Review of Books on the book The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz. Obviously, this sounded like a book I wanted to learn more about. According to the reviewer, Robert Diab, Deresiewicz … Read more
In September, the National Endowment for the Arts released the results of an Arts Participation survey, Why We Engage: Attending, Creating and Performing Art. Much of the information about why people attend was very similar to other recent survey results I have written about in the last 3-6 months. To be honest, given that all … Read more
I mentioned last week that I was in the middle of virtually attending the combined Arts Midwest-Western Arts Alliance Conference. I will probably have a couple entries of observations on particular sessions. However, I wanted to throw out two smaller bits of information I came across that I didn’t think could fill an entire entry. … Read more
There was an article on San Francisco Classical Voice website on September 1 about racism in classical music titled “The Last Water Fountain: The Struggle Against Systemic Racism in Classical Music.” The last water fountain phrase was coined by Lee Pringle, founder and artistic director of the Colour of Music Festival in Charleston, SC. The … Read more
Collen Dilenschneider most a recent post about the factors that influence a cultural organization’s reputation. In order they are: Favorability, Mission Execution, Onsite Experience, Stability, Social Impact, Leadership, Testimonials, Business Results and Contributions to Education. Dilenschneider starts out saying it isn’t about the Yelp/Trip Advisory reviews so I knew testimonials wouldn’t be listed near the … Read more
Nina Simon was recently a guest on a podcast hosted by Culture Reset. As always, I find anything she has to say increases my contemplation about the way arts organizations, including my own, operate and interact with the community. There was one part of Nina’s commentary about her career that caught my attention because it … Read more
I had a post today on ArtsHacker with the click-baity title, You Can’t Just Let People Tear Your Clothes Off Anymore. The post talks about the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) reopening guideline which were released last month. Since I have been reading and writing about different guidelines, as well as reviewing our … Read more
In the Washington Post, Jon Gertner reviews a book about innovation by Matt Ridley. One aspect of the book Gertner emphasizes is Ridley’s view that innovation is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration: Ridley’s most important chapters, and his book’s most interesting, are where he calls attention to “surprisingly consistent patterns” that describe the process of … Read more
Seth Godin made a post today that addresses the current climate of Black Lives Matter, policing, statues, etc without directly naming any of these things. (A week ago he mentioned he generally tries to write posts that were evergreen rather than specific to the times in which they were penned, but felt he had to … Read more
I was wondering if you would enjoy that Ray.
Thank you for the post. Simon Rattle and the students made my day!
Santa Cruz Shakespeare has several tiers of benefits for donors/members. Some, like season-announcement parties, are open to several tiers. Some,…