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Arts In Schools Is Only Half The Battle

November 19, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Over the last couple months, I have been enjoying Jon Silpayamanant’s series on the WPA Music Project. After reading his entries, I have begun to think that the push to put more arts in schools is may only be half the effort required to really spark an interest and sense of value in the arts.

The WPA projects involved a lot of direct and personal contact with concerts and free classes, each project involving hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of people in a single region each year.

According to the latest statistics released by the Federal Music Project, 2,399,446 students unable to pay for private musical instruction attended the free classes of the project in its 140 music centers throughout Greater New York during the year ending June 30. The number of classes held reached the enormous total of 145,133. (New York Times 1936)

When the federal will and funds were aligned behind the arts, a great deal of activity occurred. But my intent is not to get into the very politicized discussion of why there should be more federal support of the arts.

One thing that struck me from a post suggesting the Depression had a far more devastating effect on classical music and orchestras than seen in current times, is just how integrated into daily life live music performance once was.

Even if you manage to convince large swaths of people to take music lessons and put a piano in their living rooms, our current lifestyles almost guarantee that we will never have such as large proportion of the population that possesses some degree of musical training as we once did. Nor will we likely return to the frequency of exposure to live music people once enjoyed.

In the early 1900s musicians weren’t just performing in concert halls, they were providing music in movie theaters, restaurants, pubs, hotels and even funeral homes. As radio and recorded music become more available, (not to mention Prohibition closing down pubs) thousands of musicians were put out of work.

From the research Silpayamanant cites, it appears that even though live music was no longer as present in everyday life as before, during the 1930s the Federal Music Project brought live performance and practice back into people’s lives pretty personally and directly.

So people of my grandmother’s generation who were born in the early 1900s were exposed to live music on all sides and then had the Federal government validate the value of the arts through myriad WPA programs. They passed these values on to my mother’s generation. My parents passed these values on to my generation, though they were further diluted by the times.

You probably see where I am going with this: these first two generations are dying off as audiences right now.

I am not suggesting that returning arts to the schools won’t be helpful. When I was a kid, it reinforced the perception of value my parents and grandparents passed on to me. Reading Silpayamanant’s posts have just reminded me that not only do arts organizations need to change the way they operate in order to acknowledge changing times, arts education has to do the same.

It is so easy to say, if only we have more of a certain type of activity, things will turn around. It is easy to forget the larger social dynamics have changed. People are no longer surrounded by the same sort of artistic exemplars in their every day life to normalize the pursuit of an artistic discipline. Celebration of those who can create in an electronic medium is more prevalent and likely provides a more familiar touchstone for today’s fledgling creatives.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Using All The Parts of The Chicken

November 18, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

“Ordinary businesses have clear-cut yardsticks to measure their performance: profits, return on investment, stock prices. But what does high performance mean for a non-profit arts group? A bigger budget? A larger audience? A shiny new building?”

You have probably read something along those lines about the difference between for profit businesses and non-profits before. But when I read this at the start of a report about data collection that the National Center for Arts Research was conducting, a thought struck me.

I was wondering if much of the construction of new buildings and expansion of programs that strained the means of non-profit groups was motivated by a desire to provide some physical manifestation of the organizations’ successes. Non-profit arts organizations are frequently urged to run themselves more like a business and are governed by board members who work for businesses who use profits, stock prices and return on investment as a measure of success.

That provides some possible context for the situation at the Minnesota Orchestra which recently underwent a major renovation of the physical plant and then turned around and has tried to cut labor costs. A publicly traded company that reported building new facilities and cutting labor costs would be viewed as a success. Not so much with the Minnesota Orchestra.

It may be that the non-profit model was doomed once the ideal of increasing shareholder value was embraced by for-profit businesses. Even though they may intellectually understand the mission of the non-profit on whose board they serve, business people may unconsciously seek to apply for-profit values to the organization in an attempt to validate its work.

Number of people served each year may provide some degree of satisfaction, but no one seriously evaluates McDonald’s success as a business by the billions served sign out front. (In fact, I can’t remember if they still have the count on the sign. That is how much I pay attention any more.) That may not be a really compelling measure for most people.

Overhead, as a measure of effective use of funds has been increasingly recognized as a flawed metric. The deeper analysis being performed by the National Center for Arts Research may provide a solution because the data is synthesized in a manner more closely resembling a stock and bond rating.

Still, this is all relative to money. Non-profits aren’t supposed to be profligate spenders, but their goal isn’t to make money and these ratings are all essentially a measure of return on investment. Experimentation and an attempt at a little R&D is going to reflect poorly on you.

I spent the weekend trying to think if there was any other metric of value that could be use instead of one relative to money and I couldn’t think of one. Unless you can conclusively prove that people have a better life, test scores, job prospects, (all of which are pretty much tied to earning potential), for having met you, there really isn’t any measure of success that can be used as an alternative to effective use of funds.

The truth is, even if chickens were medium of exchange, someone would be probably be reporting if you made good use of all the parts or threw away the beaks.

So non-profit arts organizations are stuck with money as a measure. As much as I hate to have to do it myself, completing data collection reports like the Cultural Data Project is probably going to help the arts furnish evidence of their value.

I don’t imagine that it will ever prevent some arts organizations from feeling the need to provide visible and public proof of their success, but the rigor and benchmarks that can be established may satisfy many that the organization is quite effective at what they do.

Business Models, State of the Arts

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A Musician Shall Lead Them

November 13, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

While I have left Hawaii, I still keep an eye on how things are going there and what my friends are up to. I was interested and pleased to see that Jonathan Parrish had been hired as the new executive director of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra (HSO). The HSO replaced another HSO, the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra which ceased operations a few years ago. Jonathan had been on the musicians negotiating committee for both HSO organizations.

Given all the acrimony between orchestra management and musicians over the last few years, the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra being the most recent and publicized example, it was heartening to see that the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra board decided to hire a musician into the position.

I admit that one of my first reactions was to hope that Jonathan wasn’t the figurative prom date of last resort.

I know Jonathan and worked with him from time to time and served on a board alongside him. I can attest that the press release is quite accurate when it says he did a lot of good work with Chamber Music Hawaii. Their concerts were well attended and they did a good number of education programs throughout the years.

A symphony orchestra is a whole different scale in payroll and facility rental cost alone, but having been part of the negotiations for so long, Jonathan is probably well aware of those numbers.

Not knowing was his plans are, I can’t say for sure, but I suspect HSO will be much more visible and involved in the community under Jonathan’s leadership than it has been in the past. My impression of Jonathan’s work with Chamber Music Hawaii was that he worked hard to showcase the talents of as wide a variety of the musicians as he could.

Hopefully the HSO will be able to garner the support they need from the community to continue.

Management Philosophy, State of the Arts

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Quirky Little Trick For Monetizing Creativity

November 12, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

A post yesterday on the Drucker Exchange blog caught my eye instantly. How could it not when it started (my emphasis),

The story is told that when Peter Drucker was asked how to become a better manager, he replied: “Learn how to play the violin.”

This was, apparently, Drucker’s way of saying that the best managers and knowledge workers are excellent critical thinkers, creative and open to learning new things—just a few of the attributes that, according to a recent article in Time, seem to be in increasingly short supply among recent college graduates.

…The magazine cited several surveys showing that large and growing numbers of job applicants lack “communication and interpersonal skills” or are weak when it comes to “communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration.”

The article goes on to cite Peter Drucker saying that lack of social skills shouldn’t be the biggest disqualifier for a position because you are hiring them for their brains, not to act as a social director. It goes on to quote Drucker encouraging companies to hire someone based on the strengths they bring where the company is lacking rather than trying to hire to the job description.

But the entry later quotes a talk Drucker gave where he says the employee needs to be responsible for managing themselves. (this link isn’t the talk, but an article Drucker wrote on the topic.)

“For the first time in human history, we will have to take responsibility for managing ourselves,” Drucker declared during a 1999 talk he gave in Los Angeles. “This is probably a much bigger change than any technology, this change in the human condition. Nobody teaches it—no school, no college—and it will probably be another hundred years before anybody does teach it. In the meantime, the achievers . . . will have to learn to manage themselves, to build on their strengths, to build on their values.”

Drucker may be right that these skills are not taught directly in schools, but some part of them are required in the practical activities of performing arts classes. Teamwork, goal setting, communication, vision, deadlines, it is all there and is ultimately tested when the curtain goes up. All these things can be learned in a classroom or by participating in activities of your local theatre/dance/music ensemble.

(Though certainly recognition of and building your own strengths and values is always going to be something you have to develop on your own.)

There is a question of whether performing arts students are being properly prepared to perform and work in the new modes of expression and communication that will emerge in the future. Because we don’t know what those modes will be, the question is really more about instilling flexibility and creativity of thinking as well as a degree of entrepreneurship.

But is it enough? We keep seeing articles like the one in Time magazine cited on The Drucker Exchange or whenever people reference the IBM study where CEO valued creativity as crucial to ensure the future of their companies.

And yet an ever increasing number of standardized tests are administered every year despite the fact that the only standardized test you are regularly required to pass as an adult is your tax return. And they have software and people that will help you out by soliciting information from you.

The arts aren’t the sole source of creativity in the world, and the CEOs in the IBM study weren’t specifically looking for creativity as it manifests in the arts, but it seems like there is a huge unmet need out there and maybe arts people need to sit down and figure out how package it for Fortune 500 companies if they are so desperate for it.

It probably can’t be done in the same fashion as in college art classes. Drucker is right when he suggests that there is no formal way to teach soft skills. You can’t put together a 40 hour course on being creative and issue certificates confident at having instilled the ability in your pupils.

And yet, people commit acts of creativity every day. Some times with as much effort as it takes the grass to grow, other times with much angst, but with the knowledge and confidence that they are capable of it.

But it seems that finding a method to monetize effectively teaching/instilling creativity is about the only way these days to convince people not to dismiss liberal arts as a pursuit and that there is a Way of learning that does not embrace standardize testing.

creativity, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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