Home Page

Do You Remember Why We Wanted To Build This Place?

June 25, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

CityLab (formerly Atlantic Cities) featured an article today titled, “Why Cities Should Be More Skeptical of New Cultural Centers and Expansions,” based on some findings of a book due to come out in 2015.

As I read the article, the findings sounded increasingly familiar. Indeed, the authors are the same people who wrote the Set In Stone study that came out two years ago. I posted about it here and here if you are interested in a summary.

The study looked at the impact of cultural arts facility construction/expansion to see if they ended up achieving the expected results in terms of attendance and economic impact. They also looked at what sort of impact the construction had on other arts organizations in the vicinity.

While both were interesting, I found the result of the latter investigation more intriguing because arts organizations really are never clear about who their competitors are, how much of a impact they have on each other and whether the net effect is positive or negative. Since so many of the results reported in Set In Stone were based on perception, I would really be interested to read the book to learn if the authors had been able to verify them with hard data.

The CityLab article reports that there are a number of reasons why cultural facility construction can often be detrimental to municipalities. Among them,

“The types of leaders who provide the passion and drive to build structures of this sort [major performing arts centers] are successful men and women who are accustomed to relying on their own experience and judgment,” the book reads. “They depend on what they might describe as ‘inside knowledge’—knowledge gleaned from their own experiences, and those of their collaborators’ experiences.

“What tends to be absent in their thinking, however … is ‘outside knowledge,’ such as what statisticians refer to as ‘the base rate’ regarding the distribution of projects that did not go as planned,” the book continues.

Other traps that civic leaders fall into include hindsight bias and consistency bias: People’s memories about decision-making for projects tends to change over time, and people tend to revise their memory of the past to fit present circumstances.

“While the Philadelphia Orchestra originally embarked upon a building project for the purpose of constructing a new single-purpose concert hall, the opportunity to make it an economic development anchor in downtown Philadelphia partly persuaded its leaders to morph the idea into something entirely different—a PAC [performing arts center],” the chapter explains. “Today, the reason for building the Kimmel Center is frequently remembered by its community as being to revive a distressed former industrial city’s downtown.”

The example of the motivational drift for the Kimmel Center seems to parallel the ever shifting rationale for the value of the arts- It makes kids better at math; makes an economic contribution; is a force for gentrification; attracts creatives – when the initial purpose was simply for the sake of the art.

I am sure this drift isn’t just limited to cultural facilities construction. I bet sports arena construction is sold in a similar manner. It is just a particularly good illustration that whether you want to fund a performance or the construction of a space to perform it in, the best, most true justification isn’t going to be persuasive enough for all those whose support you need.

Business Models, State of the Arts

No Comments

Gasp! They Aren’t True Believers!

June 24, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

I have been in my current position for over a year now, but I wasn’t on the job more than a month or so before I realized I was in a situation I had never experienced in my nearly 20 year long career.

I had co-workers who were not true believers.

That is, they were not working here out of some interest or passion for the arts. They did not know some basic industry terminology despite having worked here for five plus years.

One assumed the role when her previous supervisor left. The other had the seniority to bid into the position from an unrelated area. Each likes their job because it is interesting and varied, but they aren’t motivated by a deep abiding interest in any artistic discipline. They would work just as hard at an interesting job somewhere else.

Don’t get me wrong, they perform their roles with great proficiency and absolute devotion. There is never any hint of a desire to avoid working longer hours on a performance day or leaving a task undone until the next day. One made the decision to attend the board meetings when she recognized doing so would help her do her job better. I have no reservations about their work or ethic and would be anxious if I learned they found another job.

It is just that being able to get backstage and watch a performance from the wings holds no special allure for them.

I am not used to working everyday with people who don’t feel like some part of the job is filling a void in their soul. I guess this is what it is like working with normal people who just simply like their jobs.

As soon as I realized this was the case, I immediately remembered attending a conference session where Andrew Taylor mentioned a colleague, dissatisfied with job candidates with arts backgrounds, had hired someone with experience in a Sears call center to be their box office manager because they had a better sense of how to offer good customer service on a large scale.

Recalling that story, I knew I had to consider that we might be better off with people who were relatively agnostic about the arts. (And certainly given that they had far more experience running the facility than I, there was no question about who was more valuable to the operations.)

After I year, I have been pondering the trade offs of the situation. Perhaps the biggest asset has been using their relatively dispassionate relationship to the arts to assess whether a performance might have appeal to a wider segment of the population when we are planning the next season. In some respects, they are a better representatives of the community than the board members are.

On the other side, they aren’t as likely to be enthusing about an upcoming performance over beer with friends. They aren’t automatic brand ambassadors. But in that respect, they are a measure of how much effort I might have to invest in winning over the hearts and minds of the community.

I would be interested to hear any stories and insights other people have about this situation, pros and cons. Are these people taking jobs away from unemployed arts people who would truly appreciate the opportunity and happily work 10 hours overtime, to boot? Or is this balance the sort of thing arts organizations sorely need?

General Musings, Working In The Arts

4 Comments

We Are Too Small To Get Caught…Right?

June 23, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

It used to be that there were constantly stories about copyright owners going after kids who had downloaded music and video or sampled/excerpted parts of works and represented it as their own. We would hear about companies tracking stuff on computers and going after the owners.

You don’t hear these sort of stories as much any more. Since many of the copyright owners were big corporations, perhaps they figured there was a lot of bad P.R. associated with their efforts.

Or maybe they felt like there was too much of the activity going on that it was fruitless to try to catch everyone and try to stop it.

I know that a lot of performing arts companies have taken liberties with the shows they produce, assuming that the country is so big and their organization so small that no one will bother to check up on them.

Well thanks to technology, it is apparently getting easier for performance rights holders to monitor production activity. Or at least technology is making us more aware that the rights holders are checking on and catching people.

A recent You’ve Cott Mail brought attention to a couple cease and desist letters issued last week due to unauthorized script changes.

An article about a Milwaukee production of David Mamet’s Olenna implies they got caught making their unauthorized change when a review of the show appeared online.

As first reported by Howard Sherman, Hands on a Hardbody show creators actually attended a performance in Texas and noticed the show wasn’t the one they created. A number of actions were subsequently taken by the Dramatists Guild and Samuel French, Inc, which appear in updates on Sherman’s post.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Howard Sherman has been keeping an eye on these issues and addressing them on his blog. Back in January, he discussed the Asolo Repertory Theater having to postpone their opening when they got caught rewriting Brian Friel’s Philadelphia Here I Come! [Disclosure: I worked for the Florida State University side of the Asolo about 20 years ago.]

Sherman also covered a Long Island* high school making unauthorized alterations to the school edition of Rent

There are a lot of issues connected with artistic freedom, color blind casting, community standards and the comparative attitudes of material creators toward their works that factor into these stories. Most are addressed in the dozens of comments on Sherman’s posts. They are a good place to start if you aren’t familiar with the basic, but common, issues related to the stage.

While the performance licenses are pretty explicit about what you can and can’t do, the conversation about intellectual property is always evolving so it is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Not to mention that if you have been flaunting the conditions of your license assuming that you won’t get caught, it may be time to reassess that belief.

*I mistakenly misidentified the school involved with Rent as being in CT. Thanks to Howard Sherman for bringing the mistake to my attention

Arts in an Age of Technology, Info You Can Use, Legal Topics, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

What Responsibility to Inspire Society With Big Vision?

June 18, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

As I noted yesterday, I am breaking up my reflections on Robert Stein’s thoughts on the value of museums and the arts in to two posts.

One observation he made that particularly resonated with me was in relation to the “economic value” argument arts organizations often use. (my emphasis)

“Perhaps the most common knee-jerk reaction when Museums are pushed to make the case for their own existence is to turn to studies of economic impact. The hope is that our local constituents will embrace us with open arms if they only understand how good museums are at “pulling their weight” financially. I think we ought to be very careful not to put too much stock in this economic raison d’être.

[…]

Museums are ideally suited to generate social impact — uniquely so. Whereas every business can compete with the museum in respect to its economic muscle in the community, very few could hope to compete with the potential social impact museums are capable of making. Besides, why would we care to win a game that isn’t central to our reason for being? What happens when our city booms around us and the fiscal imprint of our museum is no longer significant to the same degree it once was? When our city is in financial trouble, does it see museums as primarily economic assets or cultural assets? When the next recession strikes and our revenues dip, does our commensurate value to the city dip as well? I hope not.

Stein talks about how the solutions to global problems require input from all areas of society — with an emphasis on the fact that diverse input is an absolute necessity.

Harvard economic historian David Landes addressed this apparent dichotomy … in his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are Rich and Some So Poor (Landes, 1998). In it he emphasizes the intangible factors surrounding the economic challenges present in developing nations and surmises the following, “if we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference.” In this simple observation, Landes has keyed in on one of the very tangible impacts that the arts can bring.

Indeed, I was intrigued by Stein’s citation of writer Neal Stephenson’s premise that writers were shirking their duty to inspire.

In one of my favorite examples, noted science fiction author Neal Stephenson famously chided his fellow scifi authors in an essay for the World Policy Journal. He noted that generations of scientists had been inspired by the work of Arthur C. Clark, William Gibson, and others, but that the current generation of science fiction authors had given up on imagining a positive future world in favor of more dystopian tales.

[…]

Later in the essay Stephenson quotes Michael Crow, the President of Arizona State University, who prodded, “scientists and engineers are ready and looking for things to do. Time for science fiction writers to start pulling their weight and providing big visions that make sense.”

There are frequent conversations about how theater and movies are revivals and adaptations of material that has proven success and have a built in audience. There are gripes that music getting broad play is tested and analyzed for general appeal which yields a generic product that pleases, but doesn’t excite.

Usually the complaints are based on the idea that artists should be producing original works that push the boundaries of creativity and perhaps challenge assumptions.

Rarely is it suggested that artists are failing a responsibility to provide big vision that inspire people to expect and achieve better for themselves. Do artists in fact have this responsibility? I believe it can be illustrated that artists have served this role at various times throughout history, so are they or are they not doing so now?

The degree of introspection required to answer this will consume more than a few days of consideration.

One of initial thoughts was that it is difficult for art organizations faced with management vs labor conflicts or the liquidation of art collections to focus on whether they are providing society with a big vision. But in some sense, these conflicts reflect upon a need for a society to expect better for themselves and not easy cede to the idea that they play an unimportant role.

Arts in an Age of Technology, creativity, State of the Arts

No Comments