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Away Damned Blog!

by:

Joe Patti

Since I have been invoking the idea of assessing technology and only using what is suitable for you instead of jumping on the latest trend, I need to issue a mea culpa.

At various times I have suggested in my entries that organizations should have the artistic staff blog about their rehearsal experience. I still think this is a good idea. However, of the few organizations I have seen who have had their artistic staff blog, I have to say I have been really unimpressed.

Many of them start out the first couple days of rehearsals and then either come to a dead stop or don’t pick up again until just around opening night. The entries that are there are pretty predictable. They start out talking about the great group that has been assembled and how exciting it all is. Then often nothing more.

Certainly one could get more entries generated if one made it a contractual requirement and set aside time each day during which performers and the creative team were to scribe their musings. After reading the experiences of a college professor who required her classes to blog, I am not sure this is the most constructive or productive tack to take.

Frankly, the blog postings I required my students to write were just not very interesting. Those students are bright, insightful, frequently opinionated, and, as a whole, a pleasure to be around. Their blogs were not.

I imagine that if you assembled the most brilliant group of performers and artistic collaborators the world could imagine, you might find that their brilliance was less apparent in what they produced for the blogosphere.

So I take it back. If you can do it well and your audiences will benefit from it, blog away! If not, turn the creative energies toward creating a great performance.

General Musings

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Leadership Exercise

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Joe Patti

Neill Archer Roan posted an interesting leadership case study/exercise yesterday. What I really admired about it were the questions.

I appreciated that they didn’t specifically ask who was at fault and how could the person(s) handle the situation more constructively. The questions don’t even ask how you would address the situation with the development director or the board. I am sure any group discussion of the case would probably result in blame being assigned, but I like the fact that the questions don’t necessarily imply that removing a person is part of the solution.

Too often we imagine the solution to be simpler than it is and decide “if only X were to happen, we would be all right.” The X factor is usually just a symptom or a quick fix for a symptom and doesn’t address an underlying cause.

The entry is worth taking a look at just to think about. Some of the questions Neill poses may not have any significance to any situation you are in. You may never ponder “What behavioral or cognitive patterns are in place?” for example, unless you are really interested in organizational behavior.

Even though he places the reader in the position of Executive Director, one need not take that point of view to consider any part of the scenario. In the best situation, you will come up with some questions he hasn’t posed. Moving beyond what Neill suggests shows that your brain is really churning away and exercising your problem solving muscles.

Terms and Ideas

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Direction of Things

by:

Joe Patti

I had mentioned in an earlier entry that I met blogger and arts consultant Neill Archer Roan at the APAP conference a couple weeks ago. I saw he was sitting on a conference panel during a time I had a scheduling conflict and thinking it might be my only chance to see him, stuck my head in before the session began to express my admiration for his blog.

I wasn’t going in there hoping to elicit a mutual admiration conversation so I didn’t mention Butts In the Seats. At most, I thought he would recognize my name. Instead, I was taken aback as he launched into some pretty effusive praise of my blog.

I mention this not so much by way of self-aggrandizement as full disclosure. I didn’t know at the time that I would see him again as did presented the results of a study commissioned by APAP on the state of the industry. I was really impressed the work he and Wendy Roan did on the study and the recommendations they made.

As usual, I suggest giving the study a read. It is only 16 pages long and contains excerpts from interviews with various members of the association. There was a lot that didn’t surprise me or wasn’t new, but a couple things caught my eye.

Something I hadn’t really thought about was that all the new construction of performing arts centers is as big a threat to the financial health of another center 3000 miles away as it is for an arts organization 5 miles away.

“…competition has significantly increased for those marquee attractions across categories that are deemed necessary to justify large public investments in arts-as-economic-development. Just because there are more presenters wanting to book Yo Yo Ma, The Producers, Natalie Cole, Wynton Marsalis, et al, doesn’t mean that there are more performance dates available. Presenters that have traditionally occupied a slot in particular tour route must often pay more and commit earlier to defend their ability to get first crack at the events that their audiences expect and want.” (page 6)

The report also notes that these greater expenditures at one end of a season often means funds aren’t available to present high quality artists with an appeal to a narrower niche.

Another section of the report dealt with a problem I hope my blog helps to reduce with entries like this one.

“It is generally agreed that the culture of the presenting field has not historically been one in which knowledge and systematic learning have been valued. It is not atypical…that the knowledge outputs (e.g. reports, books, discussion documents, etc.) from significant studies, research initiatives, task forces, and work groups have been largely unread, undiscussed, and undigested. As a result, the value that is created by these initiatives remains largely under-appreciated.” (page 6)

I was also somewhat surprised to see that succession planning is such a big concern. I thought when it came up in my ELI sessions, it was perhaps partially a sign that there were a lot of young arts leaders hungry to move up the ladder and there were few opportunities. “Many participants voiced fears and frustration about their organizations’ failure to: 1) effectively plan for succession, and; 2) institutionalize and capture organizational knowledge and expertise.” (page 6 again, it was a good page!)

For awhile now I have been saying that I thought the block booking arrangement was going to have increased importance as finances become tighter and tighter. There were a number of comments (pages 8 & 9–too much to quote here) cited in the report which suggest that greater collaboration not only in the form of block booking but also information exchange and regional cooperative efforts is going to be critical for sustainability.

After this, the report deals more with the conference and Arts Presenters as an organization. My plan is to address some of these issues at a later time.

State of the Arts

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Reaching Next Generation Arts Audiences

by:

Joe Patti

One of the early super sessions I participated in at the APAP conference earlier this month featured Rebecca Ryan speaking about how to attract young people to the arts. Ryan is the principal at Next Generation Consulting which did a pretty good study for the Arts Council of Indianapolis about just that topic. They ask about behavior rather than intent–what is the last arts event you attended rather than what type of event do you think you might like to attend.

She shared some of the conclusions of that study at the conference, the executive summary of which may be found on her website. Some of the more interesting findings about the under 40 set may be found on page 3 where she talks about why young people attend the arts, how much they are typically willing to pay and what the best media for reaching them can be.

The whole summary is only 7 pages long so read it! But in order to entice you into doing so, a few highlights-

“Young patrons attend arts and cultural events for reasons beyond the art itself. Specifically, young patrons want experiences that foster learning, connecting, and sensing.” (page 3)

(Their site has a blog entry giving an example of this during a visit to MoMA)

– The most popular reason 20-40 years olds attend arts andculture events is to learn something;

– Being social is the second most popular reason young patrons attend arts and culture events;

– Supporting an artist or arts organization ranked third among the reasons all arts patrons (regardless of age) attend arts and culture events. (page 4)

Pay attention to this one (my emphasis):

Our research shows many young people who, when asked for examples of their arts participation, mentioned for-profit galleries, house concerts, rock shows, and music clubs. These young people didn’t consider arts events to only be non-profit arts events, but rather had a much broader definition of ‘art.’ (page 4)

One of the ways she suggested was easy to tap into the younger generation’s desire to share an experience is to include a “Tell A Friend” link to each event page. Since we here at Butts In the Seats are all about inexpensive, practical solutions, (well, that and attractive arts management groupies, but we haven’t found any yet), I thought I would provide the HTML code for doing a tell a friend link.

The following method will launch a person’s email program (so it won’t work if they access email via web browsers), insert a subject line and put a short blurb about your show in the body of the email. You can do much more attractive jobs with java script set ups, this method doesn’t even allow for blank lines between information, but if you choose your information wisely, you can do an effective job.

Code:

<a href=”mailto:?subject=Your Subject Here&body=Description of a really great show with lions and tiger and bears, oh my! on Saturday, February 3, 8 pm. $23 adults/$19 students, seniors, military. More information at http://mytheatredomain.com”>Tell A Friend!</a>

Note: The ampersand before body has to be &”amp; without the quotes. I couldn’t make show up correctly without making it confusing.

Assuming you have a mail client that will launch, click on the following to see this in action:

Tell A Friend!

And I would be remiss if I didn’t provide an opportunity for you to tell your friends about Butts In The Seats-

Tell A Friend About the Butts In The Seats Blog

Terms and Ideas

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