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Whisper Sweet Nothings In My Ear

March 10, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Last summer there were a number of stories about how the Seoul city government installed a giant ear sculpture into which citizens could make comments. The ear was served something of a dual purpose as a comment box and art installation. The comments were recorded and then played inside city hall. Sensors measured how long people stopped to listen, archiving those that gave pause for potential further action and composting (term the article uses) those that aren’t popular into music.

It has taken about 6 months of that percolating in the back of my consciousness for the obvious to occur to me. Duplicating this effort would be a visually and procedurally interesting way to collect feedback from the community about what you should be doing. If your organization is in a high traffic area, you could put it out on the sidewalk or move it around your community setting it up at the mall, fair grounds, park and other public places so that people could tell you what they thought about your organization, the programming, outreach efforts, etc.

Basically, it might provide a good opportunity to hear from the people who never set foot near your organization. Some big sculpture is probably much more interesting and engaging than having a survey firm cold call every phone number in town in order to reach those in your community you aren’t already serving. Granted, the feedback from a phone survey can provide more scientific results, but it probably wouldn’t be as effective at building relationships and goodwill.

The other obvious use is to plop it down in your lobby to try to capture some responses from attendees who won’t provide responses to your written or online surveys. Just the novelty of interacting with whatever figure you choose to use might elicit a number of responses.

Of course, if you go the talking Paul Bunyan statue route and have a staff member get your sculpture to respond, you might actually be able to (gently) guide the discussion to topics to which you are interested in getting answers.

Audience Relations, Info You Can Use

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We Are Audience, You Will Be Assimilated

March 5, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Often we use some really general terms when referencing the people who support our organizations which tends to make us think of them as monolithic entity. Having written this blog for 10 years now, I bear more than my share of guilt despite my continuing effort to conceive of them as brains, rather than butts in the seats.

Blogger Nick Sherrard offered a little kick in the pants back in December with a post titled: Hey Arts Organisations, I am not Audience: Why arts organisations should stop talking about people behind their backs

He sums it up best in this passage (my emphasis):

The fact of the matter remains that ‘audience’ does actually mean people who take part in turning up, tuning in, or downloading what you do.

If you don’t believe me go ask them.

Turn to the nearest person who doesn’t work in the arts and ask them what an audience is.

I think that describing people in terms they wouldn’t understand themselves is generally not a good idea —its talking about people behind their backs.

He goes on to point out that what we term as our audience is actually a group that is comprised of different segments, each of which have different expectations of their relationship with our organizations.

He uses the terms customers, fans, superfans and collaborators, but there are obviously many gradations as you care to define. The first step toward that though is recognizing there are differences and discerning what the expectations of each are.

Audience Relations

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Artists Need Not Apply?

March 4, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

I hadn’t really intended for this to be a “Government and the Arts” themed week on my blog when I wrote about the search for a director of the NEA yesterday, but it seems to be shaping up that way.

Today the Ohio Arts Council posted a tweet saying they were looking for a new deputy director. Curious, I followed the link and was surprised by the minimum qualifications outlined in the job description.

– Completion of undergraduate core program in social or behavioral science or pre-medicine; 30 months experience in delivery of human services or medical assistance in governmental, community or private human support services agency or medical provider; 12 months experience in management; 18 months experience in supervisory principles/techniques.

– Or completion of graduate core program in social or behavioral science or medicine-related field; 24 months experience in delivery of human services or medical assistance in governmental, community or private human support services agency or medical provider; 12 months experience in management; 18 months experience in supervisory principles/techniques.

Wait, what?

I will concede that you don’t necessarily have to be an arts person to do an effective job in an arts related field. I have seen some people argue that a person with general experience in a role can be better than someone with a strict arts background (e.g. call center supervisor as a box office manager). I could see requiring a public policy degree instead of an arts degree, but this medical/social services orientation seems a little bit of a stretch.

Going by the position description, you don’t even need a passing familiarity with the arts to qualify.

Knowledge of social or behavioral science or pre-medicine; program planning for human service organizations; social program & policy analysis; personnel management and policies; agency & governmental laws, rules, regulations & procedures applicable to particular social program; supervisory principles/techniques; management; accounting, finance or budgeting*. Ability to deal with many variables & determine specific action; prepare & deliver speeches before specialized audiences establish professional atmosphere as administrator; handle sensitive inquiries from & contacts with officials & general public.

* May be acquired after employment

Now, let me just say all my interactions with the Ohio Arts Council have been top notch. They have been far more enthusiastic and responsive than we deserve after all the questions and problems that we posed regarding our final grant report as I transitioned into my job last summer.

Not only that, they have been proactive about addressing potential problems, giving me a call when they noticed me doing something online in a new grant application that might cause difficulties down the road.

If this is a result of hiring people using this apparently mismatched job description, I fully endorse it. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

If the price of getting this sort of service from a government agency is to advocate for public health degrees over arts degrees, I will be the first to say we all should have entered the healthcare field, instead.

The truth is, there are plenty of people working for the Ohio Arts Council who have arts backgrounds, like the new executive director. The public information director has a background in arts journalism. The current deputy director had a visual arts background before she joined the arts council and later transitioned into the deputy position.

I am sure I would find similar stories for many of the arts council staff.

I reached out to one of my contacts at the arts council about the job description, her response (which came quickly, of course), was as I expected.

That job description is pretty standard for a broad class of deputy director positions across the entire state government system. It was the same way when I was working for the state of Hawaii, except we could insert the appropriate field of study.

The question is, does this really get government and the citizens the most effective employees? Speaking from experience, these descriptions get applied strictly during the initial screening of resumes so chances are an arts person is only going to get an interview if they just happened to get one of these degrees. It isn’t outside of the realm of possibility that a few good people have the qualifications and interest in the arts, but it isn’t an ideal situation.

But even if these criteria weren’t applied strictly, would someone with an arts background or interest in the arts even apply for this job in the first place after reading it? It sounds as if the applicant would be dealing with public health concerns rather than public art.

If someone with the exact public health qualifications applies and gets the job, would they be happy in a role when they expected to be involved with hospitals and health clinics rather than dance performances and art installations?

Government Relations, Working In The Arts

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We Expect Great Things! (just not too great, please)

March 3, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Near the end of 2013 I started seeing quite a few blog posts and tweets criticizing the Obama administration for not appointing someone to replace Rocco Landesman as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The administration may have been slow to act, but I wonder how much of the delay was due the difficulty of finding someone the administration felt they could live with and whom felt they could live with the administration.

In an opinion column in the Washington Post, a social science professor writes about her experiences as an appointee to the National Council on the Humanities.

She said there were two reasons she was rejected,

“First, taxes. In 2009 and 2010, the years of my divorce, I filed my taxes late — four weeks and 10 days, respectively. Second, I was not willing to commit to never criticizing the administration, nor to restricting my publishing agenda to topics that were unlikely to be controversial. There is just no point trying to be a public intellectual if you can’t speak your mind. This requirement was conveyed and discussed through phone calls; I have no written record to prove it. But that was how it went.”

Every government entity is risk averse to any flaw in an appointee at any level these days. This American Life recently ran a story about a student whose appointment as the student representative on the Wisconsin Board of Regents was publicly announced and then rescinded. The student absolutely impressed everyone. It was only after his appointment that it was discovered he signed a recall petition in solidarity with his mother who was a teacher.

People will say they value creativity, but they are actually uncomfortable with the fact that creative people don’t conform and will figuratively color outside the lines.

So the Obama administration may have been having a hard time finding someone who would agree not to rock the boat while they held the position. Rocco did raise some controversy with this comments about some arts organizations needing to close, but most of the yelling was within the artistic community. Given the political environment in Washington those sentiments probably comforted a good many members of Congress.

The administration may have gotten what they wanted in the nomination of Jane Chu. Many articles I have written about her imply she won’t cause trouble. The LA Times used the phrase “low profile” to describe her in an number of articles, including one that used “low profile” in the headline.

The Kansas City Star described their city’s resident as “Quietly efficient, guardedly passionate.”

This isn’t to say Chu won’t rock the boat and bring about sweeping change. There have been a number of popes, the current one included, that were assumed to be “safe” choices but proved otherwise.

But right now, Chu is being painted as a rather inoffensive choice for the position which is exactly what you want in an appointee.

Some type of statement will be made about expecting great things of her, but there will be an unspoken subtext that they hope it will not be too great.

Advocacy, Government Relations, Working In The Arts

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