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May 9, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

I recently received an email asking for examples of best practices in arts management. Two years ago I was really impressed by a story about a collaborative effort between the Charlotte & Mecklenburg County Library and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (NC) called ImaginOn. Essentially, the two groups came together and would occupy the same building performing their separate functions but also leveraging their collective strengths to offer classes and creative outlets for young people.

Before I suggested ImagiOn as a best practice, I thought I should follow up to make sure it the partnership was a successful one.

According to an article in Backstage from a year ago, it apparently is. Box office revenue increased 61% for the theatre and walk in traffic for the library was approaching 400,000. The joint ImaginOn organization is consulting with Children’s Theatre Company regarding the Minneapolis theatre’s literacy oriented program –just the type of project a co-habitating theatre and library should excel in.

Libraries all over the country are actually benefiting from the partnership. Teens in the digital media program at ImaginOn and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte produced PSAs promoting summer reading being used this year by the Collaborative Library Summer Program.

Given all the recent discussions about the importance of getting younger audiences involved in the arts, a growing trend of children’s arts organization and partnerships like these may emerge. Instead of huge performing arts centers that have been constructed of late, we may end up seeing more of these mutually beneficial alliances pop up.

State of the Arts

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Number of Cockroaches Will You Share a Room With?

May 7, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

When I made my entry on artist neighborhoods and the evicting power of gentrification a couple weeks ago, I meant to link to an additional article in Business Week. Now I am sort of glad I didn’t because it provide me the opportunity to raise the subject of what environments artists really value.

The Business Week article, “Bohemian Today, High-Rent Tomorrow,” obviously deals with the issue of artists making neighborhoods too cool for them to live in.

One of the things the piece discusses is that artists will trade affordability for the chance to live near other artists or at least near people with money to consume their artistic product. The piece is coupled with a slide show of the best places for artists to live. (buttons to advance the slides in upper right hand corner.)

Interestingly, since the list came out in February, people have been regularly posting comments to the site expressing their dismay that NYC and LA and others to a lesser extent were included on the list. (Kingston, NY is the real winner in the comments.) The feeling is that some of the cities on the list are too expensive and inhospitable to artists.

The article had acknowledged this but rated other factors as compensating for these things. Given that one of these factors was a concentration of artists and arts establishments, some people are apparently willing to make the trade off. Whether they enjoy a similar standard of living as artists in the other cities on the list, (i.e. size/condition of housing and number of roommates), is unknown.

So the question for my readers is, what trade offs are you will or not willing to make in regard to the city in which you live?

General Musings

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Assembling An Arts Council

May 2, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

In the beginning of March the Rand Corporation released a report on the need for greater collaboration and centralization of arts related activities in large cities. The report examines 11 municipalities in an attempt to provide advice to Philadelphia.

I am not going to do a full review of the report titled, “Arts and Culture in the Metropolis: Strategies for Sustainability.” For those who may believe the document may have something of interest for them, but fear they may not have the time to read the whole thing, I quote the introduction.

“Readers interested in the roots of the current problems facing metropolitan arts sectors should focus on Chapter Two. Those who are particularly interested in the methods we developed with regard to applicability to other regions should look at Chapters Three and Four. Those interested solely in Philadelphia should turn to Chapter Five.”

One of the interesting things their study found was what impact audiences identifying with a region vs. a neighborhood has in support of the arts.

“…despite the difficulty of traveling from the suburbs to the city, suburban Bostonians identified with the city and were frequent attendees at city arts events, whereas residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area…identify not with the area as a whole but rather with the specific communities in which they live. One by-product of this phenomenon is that many…are building their own arts centers even though they duplicate similar centers in surrounding communities.”

(pdf pgs 49-50, doc. pg 27-28)

They go on to talk about how this causes a lot of competition for resources in the region. It occurs to me that the question cities should ask before constructing new arts centers, if they aren’t already, is what dynamic their greater metropolitan area has. You don’t want to build a huge performing arts center counting on attendance from suburbanites who aren’t inclined to show up.

I am also wondering what the best plan of action is for the future. As people’s entertainment orientation turns toward their home entertainment systems, logic might dictate an arts center close to home to make attendance an easy decision. Yet clearly you want to avoid having many arts centers competing for funding and audiences near each other.

Is the solution to have the central arts council and largest city government of a region engage in a long term campaign to encourage closer identification with the city in the hopes of preserving the financial health of the region? I am not talking about squashing competition and variety here. Having too many arts centers in competition for the marquee performers needed to attract ticket buyers and donors necessary to support operations threatens to drive up costs.

For those organizations and governments looking to set up or revamp an Arts Council of some type, Chapter 4, (pg 55ff of pdf, p33ff of doc) contains a survey of all the permutations these entities take. It is amazing to see all the different ways they have been organized as part and apart from local government and how they are funded. The myriad combinations of functions they serve including fundraising, re-granting, advice, information coordination, advocacy, promotion, alliances and even arts presenting/producing themselves.

Terms and Ideas

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Sing and Split

May 1, 2007

by:

Joe Patti

My recent entries on the statistical analysis and general content of the Knight Foundation Magic of Music Final Report has gotten me thinking quite a bit lately.

I am looking forward to the report the Rand Institute produces about their study of the creation of effective arts education programs for children. I am wondering if they will present any findings about the effect of the programs on learning and the students’ lives.

One of the things I have been wondering about is the impact of modeled behavior on much debated meaning of the statistic claiming that 74% of orchestra ticket buyers had played an instrument or sung at some point in their lives.

The music department at my college holds about two choral concerts a year to which the director invites community and school choral groups to participate. This is not a competition and is programmed for balanced content. The event usually starts and ends with performances by the college groups.

Inevitably, many friends and family come just for the performance of their loved ones and then depart, sometimes paying to see someone sing for 20 minutes. Often people arrive 90 minutes into the performance having missed the first time their loved one sang–or missing them altogether. This is the case for friend/family of middle/high schoolers and college students alike.

It is entirely common to see parents taking their children home immediately after the performance. (Shades of the Joshua Bell/Tasmin Little experiments. Perhaps there is something to the claim of parents dragging kids away!-scroll down to words “The Second Issue”).

I wonder if the parents of the people surveyed by the Knight Foundation supported their activities and encouraged them to attend performances aligned with their interests when they weren’t performing themselves. (Though granted, the survey question encompasses people’s entire lives which might also include college glee club and church choir, etc).

So I likewise wonder if participation in these activities by young people today will have as strong an influence in attendance (if it does) as it did on previous generations. If parents are giving their kids the message that other people’s performances don’t warrant attention, the students may not be motivated to hone their skill or appreciation by watching another. They may also not feel that their performances have any value to the general public since so many people exit between groups. Finally, they may not have any interest in seeing someone else perform when they reach adulthood.

I have a suspicion that the Rand report on arts education may find that truly effective programs have a strong element of parental investment if they think to factor that in. Though parental support won’t necessarily resolve this problem. Many of the students I have seen get a lot of support and encouragement from family and friends making it necessary for us to shush the loud photo sessions in the lobby during the performance prior to going home.

What is interesting to me is that after 6-8 of these concerts, I have never heard anyone complain about the shifting audiences. If people are focussed on paying attention only to their loved ones, they don’t seem to be insisting that others do so as well. It would be interesting to know if this behavior and expectations of the rest of the audience is specific to the local culture or if various regions of the country act differently.

Arts in an Age of Technology

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