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No Print At Home & Added Will Call Charge Increasing New Barriers To Entry

February 24, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Over the weekend I received a comment on a post I made in October 2019. The post dealt with the theory that the response that an arts and cultural experience was “not for me” might be based in technological barriers people might experience. I had titled the post “How Long Before You Can Only Participate If You Bring A Phone?”

In her comment, Lady Jane said she couldn’t attend a performance because she didn’t own a smartphone. While she didn’t mind picking up tickets at will call, you apparently couldn’t enter the venue to get to the box office without some feature on a smart phone.

I had run into a similar situation twice in the last two months. A day after buying tickets for my niece and nephew as a Christmas present, I was informed there was no print at home option for the show so neither I or my sister could receive the tickets in that manner. The only option was to download a proprietary app to a phone and receive them that way. If we wanted to pick up tickets at will call, there was an extra charge.

Last month, when I was going to another performance, again there was no option to print at home and an extra charge to pick them up at will call. Because I have a pretty good familiarity with ticketing systems I was able to finagle a way to print at home rather than having to download an wallet app to receive my tickets. (This is a totally different venue than the one I purchased tickets for my sister’s family.) Had my gambit to circumvent the lack of print at home options not worked, I was going to grumble at the executive director with whom I have a relationship.

In the end there was no problem but most people don’t have the tech savvy to do as I did, nor the confidence of having a professional relationship to lean on.

My original post was made about 6 months before Covid concerns accelerated the need to have touchless interactions, (though there are just as many germs, if not more, on a phone passing a scanner than on a piece of paper undergoing the same motion), so it may have taken longer to reach this point had the pandemic not occurred.

I am not sure what is driving the move to no print at home option. The only thing I can think of is an effort to cut down on ticket resellers who transfer print at home tickets by email on the secondary market. It definitely appears to be creating a new barrier to participation for people. Especially if there is an additional charge to pick up tickets at will call.

Arts Facilities, Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Business Models

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Working Out Those Work From Home Arrangements

February 19, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

If you have staff working from home or are considering moving in that direction, I recently made a post on ArtsHacker regarding some tips for creating a successful asynchronous work environment.

The post largely draws from some tips assembled by ArtsMidwest about different tools and approaches an organization can use.

As I write in the ArtsHacker post, you may find the tips

…overly structured for the informal work environment of arts and cultural organizations, but there are likely some situations in which a strong framework is useful. It is easier to discard what isn’t useful than to try to fabricate guidelines whole cloth.

On the other hand, if it feels like things are being accomplished, but in a very much seat of your pants manner, implementing a structure can be helpful. It may feel like you have artificially imposed constraints on the work environment, but once people are able to internalize the process and begin to employ an effective shared shorthand the boundaries may dissolve into the background.

Source

Organizing For Work At Home Staffing

Leadership, Management Philosophy, Working In The Arts

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Pittsburgh Arts Council Employing AI Tools

February 18, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

In the last few weeks I came across a blog post by the CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Patrick Fisher, laying out the ways in which the Arts Council would be using new technology tools and AI to serve their constituencies.

He wrote about how they would be using AI to create event calendar listings from publicly available sources as well as an AI Concierge service to answer questions artists, organizations, and community members might have about available resources. They are also working to create an online map of resources available in the Greater Pittsburgh area as well as an assessment tool to assess the health of the arts and cultural environment.

This tool will provide critical insights into the financial stability, operational capacity, and overall well-being of arts organizations, enabling stakeholders to make data-driven decisions that enhance the sector’s long-term viability.

Source

Fisher also spends a fair amount of time discussing the ethical considerations about using AI for some of these purposes. I am glad he does, not only because there are definitely ethical issues like bias, representation in the data used to train the AI model, and whether those providing the data/content gave permission for it to be used, but also due to the over arching need to make sure the information being provided is valid.

I had bookmarked the article about two weeks ago to return to write a post on the topic. However, this past weekend we had to contend with a ticket buyer who had gotten a notification that a performance had been postponed to a date in May. The best we could figure out is that the AI sending an alert to her phone had conflated the fact the performer Saturday night had been postponed from an early date with the date of another performer in May to decide Saturday’s performance was now in May.

This moved Fisher’s post to the top of my list of things to blog about. Fisher lists seven ethical considerations for using AI powered tools, lists entry points for use of AI which arts organizations might use to start integrating the tools into regular activities, and then makes the case for why arts organizations should start embracing these technologies.

He encourages a relatively balanced and deliberate approach to their use, writing:

“…let’s embrace this moment with curiosity, courage, and due diligence.”

Source

Advocacy, Arts in an Age of Technology

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New Compliance Requirements For NEA Grants

February 17, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

There appear to be some significant changes in the grant procedures for the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to the end of the Challenge America grant program American Theatre Magazine reported changes in the compliance rules that have been recently added.

After listing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination Act, and Title IX, the page includes the following new requirements:

The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

The applicant will comply with all applicable Executive Orders while the award is being administered. Executive orders are posted at whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions.

The applicant’s compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the U.S. Government’s payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, dated January 21, 2025.

The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.

Source

The National Endowment for the Arts will be holding a seminar to discuss these changes and answer questions from 2 pm- 3 pm EST on Tuesday, February 18, 2025. The link to the Microsoft Teams Meeting may be found on the webinar page. If you miss the meeting, a link to the recording will be available on that page as well.

While it is for a different program, news sources are reporting a list of words that will trigger a manual review of papers and other documents submitted to the National Science Foundation and Centers of Disease Control.

Many of the words are ones that arts and cultural organizations have been using regularly for years like advocacy, barrier, biases, community diversity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, disabilities, diverse communities, equity, female, gender, inclusivity, historically, marginalize, sense of belonging, underserved, women.. That’s about 1/10 of the words on the list.

Fundraising, Government Relations, State of the Arts

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