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Follow Us Here…And Here…Here Too…And Oh Yeah, Here

November 12, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Thomas Cott shared Colleen Dilenschneider’s recent post about the futility of using social media for the sake of using social media.

“…spending copious time on the newest social media features (that none of your audiences are using), measuring success by vanity metrics, and building out features that nobody is asking for…why do organizations do these things? They don’t help support bottom lines like getting folks in the door, building affinity, increasing donor support, or sharing knowledge if they aren’t relevant to your market or strategically integrated into an engagement plan…. and yet organizations brag about these useless endeavors to their boards and at industry conferences.

Many organizations seem to be feeling so “peer pressured” to be utilizing social media that they are using it to do stupid, time-consuming things for audiences that don’t matter”

I am right there with her. I have often suggested organizations shouldn’t be jumping on to the latest social media bandwagon. Especially since news of these apps/tools is often self-perpetuating out of proportion to the percentage of the population actually using them. Once a critical mass is reached, they get reported on because everyone else seems to be reporting on it making it seem like far more people are using it than actually are.

However, I can understand why arts organizations are doing it. Yesterday the Here and Now program on NPR interviewed Amanda Palmer and the conversation got around to referencing Taylor Swift’s story about two actresses being up for a part and the one with the larger Twitter following getting it.

While Palmer goes on to talk about a large following not equaling depth of engagement just as Dilenschneider mentions, the idea that breadth of exposure is better than depth with a few people is still the dominant criteria.

Print, broadcast and online media still talk about the number of eyes and ears they can deliver when trying to sell you advertising.

Grant reports will often ask about the number of hits your website received during the grant period. I called one funder to clarify criteria to use for indirect exposure because it almost felt like an invitation to wildly estimate using a contagion theory. My guess is that some of the sources of their funding have proved to be impressed by these numbers so we are being encouraged to provide them.

And actually, when I looked up contagion theory to make sure I was using the term correctly, I found out complex contagion theory is a term associated with social media. So it isn’t entirely unreasonable that funders are interested in reporting about a shotgun approach.

The same thinking that motivates a movie or stage production to cast the actor whose commentary on their involvement in the project will reach the most people, influences the values of arts organizations and their funders. If an organization is trying to expand its reach with using the hottest new toys, don’t they appear more ambitious and progressive than the organization that has a solid 500 people savoring their every post on a single social media site?

Visit the Facebook pages of two arts organizations in a city you have never visited. When you decide which is better are you basing it on how cool their header image is and the number of likes? Or did you actually take the time to evaluate the quality of their posts?

Colleen Dilenschneider is fairly accurate in her assessment about how these efforts will not provide any meaningful results, wastes time and potentially sets your efforts back. The answer to her question about why organizations engage in futile social media efforts is that the illusion of progress is valued.

To some extent, you might ask the same question about why people use alcohol as a social lubricant instead of working on changing themselves to become more adept at handling these situations. Except that the illusion generated by this activity is widely expected and accepted. (Insert your own joke equating the idea of wasted resources and the need to use the restroom after a beer.)

Arts in an Age of Technology, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts

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Keep Board Members Heart And Soul (You May Need Them In The Future)

November 11, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

This being Veteran’s Day, I thought I would point to Simone Joyaux’s recent piece on Non-Profit Quarterly dealing with veterans of smaller scale conflicts- ex-board members.

Simone enjoins people to remember that most former board members still believe in your cause even after they have served and shouldn’t be treated like a generic donor. She lists many ways to keep former board members involved and in the loop, including enlisting them to help with board recruitment and fund raising efforts.

This article caught my attention because last week I had attended a board meeting of the community organization with which we partner. During the meeting, they dealt with the departure of one board member, the conferring of emeritus status on another (she is 103 years old, she earned it), and the approval of 4 new board members.

The board member who was leaving said he envisioned remaining involved with the organization whether he liked it or not given that he has never left job where he didn’t end up continuing to provide advice.

You often don’t get someone explicitly saying they want to stay involved like that, but you should make the effort to keep them in the loop and provide the opportunity.

Of the 4 people who will be joining the board, 2 have served before.

Which illustrates something that Simone didn’t mention–you want to treat a former board member well because it is likely that the set of people in your community willing to serve on non-profit boards isn’t so large that you won’t end up asking former members to serve again.

Boards

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The Artists, They Live Among Us

November 10, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

I didn’t really know much about Jamie Bennett when he was chief of staff at the National Endowment for the Arts or when he was appointed as executive director for ArtPlace America, but after watching a video of his talk at TEDxHudson, I figure he was the right person for the job.

There were a number of moments during his talk where I nodded my head and thought “this guy gets it.” (And not just because as kids we apparently both had our first Broadway experience seeing the same production of Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan)

He talks about growing up in Honesdale, PA and encountering the idea that art was something done by people who lived far away. He speaks of a colleague performing a study for the Urban Institute who went out and asked people who the artists in their community were, only to be told there weren’t any despite all the participation in singing and dancing going on.

He relates another experience in Aspen, CO where people in the audience readily self identified as golfers and tennis players, but not as artists. He comments that he doesn’t know:

“why we can so easily see ourselves on a continuum with Serena Williams and Tiger Woods, but we don’t think anything we do has anything in common with Sandy Duncan.”

He goes on to list all the encounters he had with artists growing up in Honesdale. He admits it even took him 30 years to realize there were practicing artists in his hometown.

He continues saying what we have probably all realized by now, that this perception of artists as an “other” is deeply rooted in society. He cites a study which found that “Although 96% of Americans value art in their communities and lives, only 27% value artists.”

When he says that the study lead to the formation of United States Artists which took the tagline “Art comes from artists,” people laugh. But I couldn’t help thinking that such an obvious statement might be required.

Since people have a concept of creativity and inspiration as something that flows from the ether into blessed individuals rather than something that everyone can participate in and get better at with some effort, just like your tennis backhand, a blatant statement of the basic definition of an artist could be necessary.

I suspect this sense of special insight has been propagated by artists. If you are going to be poor and starving, it helps a little to be able to wrap yourself in an aura of uncommonality, in touch with the muses the way monks are infused with spirituality.

Bennett likens the situation to the food world which has made people more cognizant of the source of their meals leading to the concepts of eating local and farm to table, among others. He extends that idea to making people aware of the local sources of art, including themselves.

The second thing Bennett said that made me sit up and take notice was that the typical conversation about the arts in this country is about the lack of money and resources. “We open with our lack and spend every conversation with our hand out.”

He talks about the purpose of ArtsPlace America being to turn that around to draw attention to the asset common to every community-artists.

“Not every community has a waterfront. Not every community has strong public transportation. Not every community is lucky enough to be anchored by a hospital or university. But every community has people who sing and dance and tell stories.”

I don’t know that the dearth of resources is what entirely dominates my conversations, but I am going to keep a more attentive ear on what I say in the future.

Bennett goes on to talk about other benefits of the arts in communities. He touches on some concepts that were familiar to me, but provides slightly different insights about the positive ripple effects of arts participation, especially among groups of people who may not be perceived as artists.

Advocacy, State of the Arts, Terms and Ideas

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Curatin’ Ain’t Easy

November 5, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

It is ten years this month that Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller first started talking about Pro-Ams, the Professional-Amateur whose dedicated pursuit of an avocation brought them on par with professional practitioners. I have written a fair bit upon the subject over the years.

When the topic comes up for discussion in the arts, one central question often arises (or lurks shallowly in the subtext) about whether amateurs really can perform to the standard professionals possessed of a keen eye honed by experience and education can.

Essentially, if we let the amateurs get involved, will quality and artistic merit be supplanted by work that panders to popular tastes and doesn’t require any effort to understand?

This is a question that Nina Simon, Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of History and Art has had to struggle with as a practical matter. While she has increased the fortunes of her museum since assuming the director role, her means have not been without criticism.

Recently her programming decisions were discussed in in a Wall Street Journal article, Everybody’s an Art Curator. The article uses Simon’s museum as the basis of discussing a national trend of involving the community in curatorial decisions. The article mentions the departure of one of Simon’s curatorial staff and disagreements with an artist over the context in which her show was hung. The article discusses friction at other museums around the country as they attempt to enact similar programs.

Nina Simon posted about the WSJ article on her Museum 2.0 blog this week, linking to two more in depth considerations of the idea of outsourcing curation broached in “Everybody’s an Art Curator” by Ed Rodley.

As I read all these posts and articles, it occurred to me that there is a high likelihood that a lot of the blame for the weaknesses of involving amateurs probably lies with the arts organization itself.

As Rodley observes:

“I think if you were to look at a large sample of museum projects with participatory elements, you’d find plenty that had poorly thought out and articulated goals and dubious educational value. Which is something that the field as a whole could stand to look at closely.”

Arts organizations have a history of not investing enough patience and resources in a new initiative. Common discussions in the field involve the misguided expectation that new audiences segments will respond positively and feel they are being served on the basis of one event aimed at them a year. What is required are accompanying outreach efforts, conversations, and shifts in making the attendance environment more appealing to your target groups.

Chances are, Rodley is right on the money when he suggests that insufficient attention has been paid to program design.

On the other hand, arts organizations frequently run into a lack of understanding about how difficult their work is to accomplish. I have frequently encountered renters who start a conversation which “Oh it is just a simple…,” having not considered how everything is going to fall into place.

Nina Simon makes a similar observation about the perception that amateur curators are a strategy aimed at reducing and replacing staff.

“Community is not a commodity. We don’t involve people in content development to “boost ticket sales.” It’s neither “quick” nor “inexpensive” to mount exhibitions that include diverse community stories. Yes, community involvement is at the heart of our shifted, successful business model. But that business model requires experienced staff who know how to empower people, facilitate meaningful participation, respond to community issues and interests, and ignite learning. It’s not cheap. It’s not easy. It’s the work we feel driven to do to build a museum that is of and for our community.”

I feel like Simon’s efforts at community involvement actually help educate people about the work that goes into putting a show together. For example,

“Hack the Museum,” a show that invited a mix of outside professionals to live at the museum for 48 hours and build a new exhibit from the permanent collection.”

Yes, the results of their efforts may be mixed. But how exciting is it for people to camp out in a museum for two days and learn the process? I can’t imagine that giving 75 people a tour of the curatorial department would be as effective in helping them understand the process. Nor would it likely engender the investment that the participants felt. Nina made some posts about it here and here and the participants looked like they had a blast.

I am fairly certain she isn’t passing off the work of community participants as professional choices since that would be counter to her goal of convincing all visitors that their involvement with the museum is meaningful.

Those of us who work in the performing arts will often grouse that so much gets a standing ovation or accolades of “as good as professionals” when it doesn’t deserve it. However, the performing arts may have an advantage over visual arts in that there is a rough sense of a continuum between elementary school recital and full blown concert by a professional symphony orchestra.

The criteria by which to judge and classify visual art in terms of quality is less distinct, and not only because so many people think their kids could produce what they are looking at.

How many people outside of the gallery and museum world know what standards are applied in curating a show? Where exactly does your Pinterest page fall between the refrigerator and the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Where do you go to find out?

You could do worse than a sleepover at a museum.

Art(ist) Education, Leadership, New Initiatives, State of the Arts

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