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Stuff To Ponder: Social Media Policies And Arts Orgs

March 15, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

According to the Wall Street Journal, the New York City Ballet is becoming one of the first major performing arts groups to create a social media policy due to some impolitic tweets by one of their dancers. The proposed policy would:

“…require dancers to include a disclaimer specifying that their comments are not employer-sanctioned, according to a copy of a draft reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

It would also ban them from disclosing another dancer’s injury or illness, and from posting photographs of company events, or of “persons engaged in New York City Ballet business without their consent.”

“Additionally, in order to protect its interests, NYCB reserves the right to monitor…postings that are available to the general public or those that are not privacy-protected about the company, its employees and its activities,” the draft says.”

According to the article, the union representing the dancers doesn’t see a need for a policy. But as many other arts management bloggers (and probably not a few lawyers) have written, it is good to have a policy of some sort and make sure everyone is aware of it.

Even if it is a very relaxed policy, you should have at least engaged in a decision making process about what your approach will be, what place social media will have in your organizational goals, how social media practices mesh with your corporate culture and what possible consequences may arise for your company should people reveal information or make offensive statements.

As I read the City Ballet’s policy I think some of it may be a little overly protective. I was reminded as I often am, of the Chris Lavin article about art and sports that I wrote about in one of my first blog posts. Specifically, I am recalling his comments about how performing arts organizations’ approach to providing access was “like a cross between the Kremlin and the Vatican.”

We read about athlete injuries all the time. Is it a trade secret that dancers sustain injuries? We hear about people performing while they are ravaged by sickness. Heck, the one phrase familiar to people who aren’t really interested in the arts at all is, “the show must go on.” It is almost a foregone conclusion that people will soldier through pain and sickness. It isn’t that a dancer’s career is any more precarious than an athlete’s if news of chronic injuries becomes public. Though granted, the athlete has often accumulated a fair bit more money by that time.

The bit in their policy about reserving the right to monitor with the unspoken “and take action we deem appropriate” hanging there may appear to be counter to efforts to use social media to broaden the City Ballet’s appeal. The real proof though is in how great their degree of tolerance for what is posted and how strictly they enforce consequences. A phrase like that is almost a given in a social media policy for most companies, a fact the Wall Street journal acknowledges. It lets people know you will be watching so no one can claim ignorance.

The tricky part though is in uniformly applying whatever criteria your organization has about what subjects and language are permissible. If a person is fired for saying something they feel an earlier incident that went unpunished created a precedent for, they may have a basis for claiming they were improperly dismissed.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Management Philosophy

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What Is Well-Being

March 14, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

We in the arts often talk about the benefits our chosen vocation/avocation has for the economy, education and general well-being. In light of this, I was interested to see the recent Gallup poll measuring well-being across the country for 2010. The contribution of the arts aren’t explicitly or even clearly implicitly measured in the poll which is conducted throughout the year surveying people on life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors and basic access. While the arts don’t seem to factor in, I thought it is still valuable for arts people to look at the factors that comprise a person’s sense of general well-being.

I was surprised to see that people in the northern part of the country had such high reported well-being in comparison with those in the southern part of the country. The survey is conducted throughout the year so it isn’t impacted heavily by people specifically caught in the monster snowstorms of the past winter. Still, it was interesting to see that people from places stereotyped as having bad winters like the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana and Minnesota reported well-being in the higher range versus those in the south who generally have milder all around weather. I personally didn’t mind the winter weather of the Northeast as I was growing up and perhaps that generally applies to those who live in the northern climes regardless of how much they may complain.

Gallup has charted out a multiple year comparison of each of these factors on another graph. The end of 2008 was not a happy time for a lot of people. People seem to have developed a much better sense of well-being in the years since. I obviously can’t say that this is the cause, but when I looked at the healthy behaviors subgraph on that page, though there is always a downward trend after July/August, it amused me to think the big plunge that always occurs in November through December is due to poor eating habits during the holidays.

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While I didn’t intend for today’s post to end up as a segue to this when I spotted the well-being survey last week, obviously the people of Japan are not experiencing much well-being at the moment. If you are of a mind to donate to an organization providing help to Japan, and there are many, may I suggest these three are a good place to start.

AmeriCares

Habitat for Humanity International

International Rescue Committee

General Musings

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Broader Definition Doesn’t Mean Lowered Expectations

March 9, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

As I was thinking about writing yesterday’s entry on my drive home, there was a part of me that was experiencing some internal conflict. I do wholeheartedly believe in what I wrote at the end of my entry about the arts being a two way street-people in general would benefit from recognizing that many of their activities involve the arts and those in the arts need to acknowledge their arts training allows them to express themselves in non-arts activities and vocations.

This all derives from the idea put forth by the recent NEA report suggesting that more activities need to be recognized as involvement in the arts. What this means for most arts people is that they need to try to avoid the reflex to deem anything that does not approach some Platonic ideal of capital “A” art as not being art. Sorry everyone, time to get a little humble and admit that awful performance or painting you just saw is actual an artistic effort. Real art is a messy process as well you know, though granted some people never make any progress from their failures.

So that brings me to the question that was causing me some mental grumblings – Should we as arts people expect recognition of elite performance?

Now notice, I got what I feel is the source of elitism in the arts, dismissal of perceived substandard work as not art, out of the way before I asked this. What I am asking is if there should be an expectation of discernment between different quality performances. I ask this because there seems to be an anti-intellectualism trend emerging in the U.S. and perhaps other parts of the world and I don’t particularly think this is an area in which the arts should concede ground.

Yes, classical music, ballet and Shakespeare are hard to understand from the outset. But you know, so are the rules of football, baseball, cricket, poker and a thousand other activities. Before I attended my first football game, my father took me down in the basement and drew a lot of Xs and Os on our blackboard to try to explain the game to me. I really wasn’t that clear about the rules when I attended, though I did enjoy the tailgating and hanging out with the other fathers and sons who attended with us. In time, I got a better sense of when to cheer.

It wasn’t much different the first couple Shakespearean plays I viewed. I only caught half of what was going on, but what I did struck me as pretty damn clever and I stuck with it. The first time I took up Drew McManus’ challenge for Take A Friend To The Orchestra month and went myself, I didn’t quite understand or like everything, but there were some sublime moments.

My point is, while it takes a lot of hard work acquiring enough experience and education to attend an arts event, the effort isn’t any more involved in learning the rules for sports. Honestly, I think most aspects of arts attendance are a lot more straightforward than sports rules. Much of the impenetrable obscurity surrounding an attendance experience is due to regular attendees reinforcing the perception to bolster self worth and intimidate others. Read the script, libretto or watch a snippet of the dance on YouTube and you are half way to understanding the actual performance despite the vibes you might be getting from the rest of the audience. You can feel just as out of place at a sporting event. My first exposure to sumo wrestling was when I went to a match by myself a few years ago and people there were shouting things in a language I don’t speak. It took me a little while to figure out the rules, but I loved every minute of it.

But back to the question of recognizing elite performances. As much as people’s activities might qualify as arts participation. There is indeed a difference in quality, between a talented amateur and a person who has dedicated their life to mastering their craft. This is standard that should not loosened as the arts make an effort to do a better job of acknowledging all the ways in which people participate in the arts. My concern is that there will be a move to blur lines and equate artists in a way that diminishes recognition of true ability and talent.

There are athletes that operate at an elite level that few can approach and you don’t hear many people claiming that their high school or college teams are as good as professional boxers or basketball/baseball/football players. You will hear people claim a performance is as good as anything on Broadway. This may cause you to cringe that Broadway should be the gold standard when so many other exemplars exist, but the real problem is that the comment may be charitable at best. There is a perception that hard work over a short term and heart is enough to earn A’s in school or an acting/dancing/singing position. Shows like American Idol may perpetuate this idea, but it is definitely a misapprehension shared by people pursuing arts training and degrees. Regardless of the profession, there are only a few who can operate at an elite level and fewer still who have invested the effort to do so.

I am no more interested in starting a conversation about whether a classical musician is a superior artist to a jazz musician/a rock musician/country musician than I am about debating whether the marathoners and decathletes on the U.S. Olympic teams are better athletes than the sprinters and high jumpers. I do think it is clearer to people that this particular group of track athletes operate at the highest levels than it is that Itzak Perlman does as well. Even if these athletes lose their events, people whose only exposure to track and field is watching it once every four years can explain why they are superior performers. When he is playing a solo at Carnegie Hall, context just as prestigious as being the US representative at the Olympics, can people with a casual relationship to classical music explain what about Perlman’s performance makes him superior?

That is where some of the onus to educate falls. As we know, it takes more than just a single exposure to make someone appreciate the arts. Educating them about quality requires even greater work. Yes, we want people to know the arts are for everyone and everyone is participating in the arts to a greater degree than they imagine. But we have to maintain heroes for them to idolize and they have to clearly know why the person is worthy of being admired. This doesn’t detract from the recognition the star of the local community theatre production receives any more than Major League baseball stars diminish the glory accorded the powerhouses on the local softball team. No one confuses one for the other though.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations

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Importance of the Personal “Why”

March 8, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Scott Walters has a couple of entries on Theatre Ideas worth reading if you have a career in the arts or are considering having a career in the arts or if you think an arts degree is useless. (My assumption is there aren’t a lot of the latter in my audience, but if there are, read on.) If you haven’t read his blog before, Walters is a theatre professor who is eminently concerned that higher education theatre arts training programs, are not adequately preparing their students for the the real world upon graduation. This includes reinforcing some unrealistic expectations in the students. Some of his entries have been about how training programs and the system that surrounds them are failing the students, others have been about that and how students can fail themselves.

Given this context, I was interested in reading about how he would answer a theatre major who expressed some trepidation as she was about to graduate. (Part Two appeared today.) While the state of things does weigh heavily on his mind, Walters shows his wisdom by urging his student not to define herself primarily by her theatre degree, but to also make her degree meaningful to herself.

Let’s start with what you have going for you. This has nothing to do with theatre:

1. You’re smart.
2. You’re articulate.
3. You’re likable.
4. You’re educated. (you have a BA)
5. You can work as part of a team. (that’s what shows are based on)
6. You are self-disciplined. (or else you wouldn’t learn your lines and show up for rehearsal when scheduled)
7. You can present yourself in front of people. (acting)
8. You can manage people. (directing)

So you have all the tools to be successful in whatever you do. Remember that — the conventional wisdom that a degree in theatre isn’t useful in “real life” is stupid. Don’t accept the fallacious idea that your options are waiting tables or working temp.

This may sound a lot like one of those rationalizations about how your degree in an apparently less than marketable field really gives you skills applicable in any industry, but he tells her there is some additional work she will have to do to discover what place her degree in theatre will have in her life. He urges her to do some thinking/journaling/talking to discover what her “Why” is. This is related to the post I did on the ““why” that drives big companies, only on a personal level. Again, he urges her not to define her why specifically in relation to theatre. In today’s sequel entry he says:

“Also, beware of this phrase: “Theatre is the only way I know…” To put it bluntly, theatre isn’t the only way to do anything. If that’s the only way you know how to do something, then you need to use your imagination a bit more, because there are lots of ways to accomplish a “why.” So you say ” Theatre is the only way I know to throw what I think I know and believe out there- to bounce it off someone else’s life, their perspective, their beliefs- and get an immediate response.” Really? What about more direct, less mediated ways like, say, having a conversation or writing an email or giving a speech on a street corner? Wouldn’t those options also involve saying what you believe and getting an immediate response? Wouldn’t it be more direct to become a minister or a politician rather than an actor? And are you really saying that, as an actress, you will always be speaking about what you think you know and believe? When you do that industrial, or TV commercial, or get that gig in Jersey Boys, will you be speaking your truths? Or will you, instead, be providing the mouthpiece to speak somebody else’s truths?”

It occurred to me as I read this that there should be an expectation of a type of two way street. If we want people to value their activities watching movies, singing in the church choir, dancing, writing, etc as arts participation, it is only reasonable that we encourage people with arts training to values their general abilities and activities in a non-arts context. After all, if we want to advance the value of arts education and creativity to business and industry, it would seem appropriate that we advocate employment/involvement in non-arts business and industry to those with arts training. The burden for making a case for creativity can’t be borne by the accountant who was in high school band alone. There have to be some exemplars from the arts world standing up too. What Walters says about arts people not selling themselves short by defining this as being a temp or waitress is right on the money.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts

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