I read stories celebrating the fact that Covid-19 is finally making businesses recognize the benefits of telecommuting, confident that there will be this great revolution that will see people working from home in the future. To me it seems like it will be a terrible situation which will create greater class divides and income inequality. … Read more
You may have seen the video message by Guthrie Theatre artistic director Joseph Haj last week where he laid out why the Guthrie wouldn’t be offering their content virtually as other places had chosen to do. Instead, they will be producing three shows from March through August 2021. In the video, he makes the case … Read more
Non-Profit Quarterly recently wrote about the big impact the closure of libraries during coronavirus has had on communities. In recent years there have been people who have opined that libraries don’t serve a purpose because nobody reads, etc. and should be shutdown. Now everyone gets to see the implications of that. In addition to being … Read more
One of the concerns I have had with so many artists providing their talent and content for free over the internet while people are sequestered at home during the coronavirus epidemic is that there would be an expectation that it would all continue to be free as we transitioned away from this situation. I have … Read more
Back in November 2018, I wrote about how the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was hiring refugees from Middle Eastern countries to act as docents for galleries of that region. Last week, NPR ran a story on the program which has expanded to include docents from Africa and Mexico & Central American … Read more
There was an article on the Arts Professional site urging care in the Arts Council of England’s initiative to increase investment in libraries over the next decade. The author of the piece, Hassan Vawda, expresses concerns that attempts to revitalize libraries using arts may unintentionally damage all the beneficial elements of the library environment. Statistics … Read more
Hat tip to Drew McManus for reposting a link to timpanist Jason Haaheim’s summary of his 13 part series on the value of deliberate practice. I figure Drew just reposted the link as bait to me since I have frequently posted about deliberate practice. Even though I didn’t identify it as such, I think my … Read more
Recently the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published an issue of their Community Development Innovation Review (CDIR) focused on “Transforming Community Development through Arts and Culture.” If you think it strange that a Federal Reserve Bank should be devoting an entire 200 page issue to this topic, a few years back I wrote about … Read more
I recently saw an article on Arts Professional UK reporting that the governments of England and Wales would be opting out of the new creative thinking assessment section of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international standardized test administered to 15 year olds. (The United States also participates, but I haven’t been able … Read more
From the “I wish we could figure out the formula and bottle this” file, we hosted a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday. The staff at the theater had been advocating for a screening for years before I started working here. I can perhaps understand why it hadn’t been scheduled before. The … Read more
I was scanning an article on Arts Professional website and might have quickly moved on except the phrase “not for someone like me” caught my eye. That was a phrase that appeared in the last CultureTrack survey as a barrier to participation for people who didn’t normally attend arts events. In the case of the … Read more
Over on The Baffler, Kate Wagner, takes a look at the tenuous state in which classically trained musicians operate in the face of income threatening conditions like the lock-out/strike currently occurring at Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I came across the link on Arts and Letter Daily which introduced it with, “Classical music is a high-water mark … Read more
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about American Theatre’s reporting in May on a Wallace Foundation supported audience building effort at Opera Theatre St. Louis. American Theatre just published another piece about a different Wallace Foundation supported effort at Portland Center Stage (PCS). As I wrote in my earlier post, one of the things I … Read more
A couple weeks back, Slate had a long form article on people using beta-blockers to help with nervousness and stage fright. Just seeing the title, I immediately recalled a piece Drew McManus wrote 15 years ago wondering if the use of beta blockers among orchestra musicians was akin to athletes using performance enhancing drugs. The … Read more
All right. A little gripe time here. I have been nursing a sense of dissatisfaction for a couple weeks now but it sort of came to a head when I saw the title of Ceci Dadisman’s recent post, “Unpopular Opinion: It is our job to remove barriers to engagement.” She talks about removing perceptual barriers, … Read more
I recently wrote a piece for ArtsHacker about the emerging role of intimacy direction for productions on stage and screen. When I first read about intimacy direction a few years ago, it was at a time when there were revelations about people exploiting their position or opportunities without the full consent of others. The role … Read more
You have probably heard some form of the Peter Principle expressed before. At its most cynical, it is usually defined as, “A person will be promoted to their level of incompetence.” While this has often been used somewhat tongue-in-cheek, according to Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, some researchers set out to test if this was … Read more
Okay, a little break from my weighty opining on the value and philosophy of art. I caught this on the Forbes site recently. All Nippon Airways (ANA) has employed kabuki actors to appear in their safety videos. The video showcases a lot of the characteristic elements of kabuki performance, including, as Forbes notes, male performers … Read more
If you haven’t seen it already, it is worth reading Joanna Jones’ piece on Medium about how the Oakland Museum of California developed and then abandoned their social impact statement. One of the central identity problems non-profits face is generating statements of mission, goals, etc that are meaningful and alive for the organization. Creating these … Read more
It has only been in recent years that a message of embracing and talking about our failure has been part of a public conversation among arts and cultural organizations. I am not sure how many people are including these stories in their reports to funders, but little by little people are willing to admit that … Read more
Americans for the Arts had a post on their blog last week that hit a lot of the right buttons for me. Steve Sanner and his partners have the Jiffy Lube franchise for Indiana. He writes about how placing murals on their buildings and becoming involved with other mural projects has benefited and redefined their … Read more
I recently experienced a confluence of reminders that not all experiences with arts and culture result in positive responses people anticipated. I am not talking about works of poor quality or offensive works. Friend of the blog Carter Gillies sent me a link to a National Institute of Health case study on Stendhal syndrome where … Read more
There has been a fair bit of evidence that people are not generally aware whether the place they are having their entertainment experience is a non-profit or for-profit business. An experience appeals to them and they participate. All those efforts invested in curating a balanced season of offerings may receive less recognition and appreciation than … Read more
While I was at the Arts Midwest conference in November, Joanna Taft, Executive Director of the Harrison Center for the Arts, spoke about the “porching” culture that had developed in Indianapolis and spread across Indiana. A short time later, she wrote a piece on the subject for Shelterforce. I have written a fair bit about … Read more
Almost by chance I came across a piece on Shelterforce from about two years ago relating how turning a community room in Harlem housing community into a gallery lead to the intentional inclusion of galleries and museums in future construction. As they learned about how people used and gathered around the spaces, subsequent construction increasingly … Read more
Last week Drew McManus did a call out to the non-profit arts community to submit proposals for the Nonprofit Technology Conference in March 2019. (Proposal deadline is August 17) Last year, I was excited by the topic Drew was presenting – “Everything Tech Providers Wished You Knew About Writing A RFP (plus the stuff they … Read more
I frequently write about how people often don’t feel arts and cultural events are for them is because they aren’t seeing themselves and their stories portrayed. So it was with some interest that I read about Opera Philadelphia’s effort to provide a free high definition broadcast of their 2017 opera, We Shall Not Be Moved, … Read more
When I first saw this piece on Arts Professional about data driven decision making, I thought maybe the author, Patrick Towell, was cribbing Drew McManus and Ceci Dadisman’s recent conference session on the same topic. He even referenced the gut trusting HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion/in Office). I might have only had myself to blame … Read more
Last month in Harvard Business Review, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman wrote about how the most productive employees don’t make the best managers. Of the seven qualities they had listed in a previous article as being important for a top producer, only one, collaboration, overlapped with the qualities found in good managers. They note that … Read more
I was recently involved with a strategic planning session for a non-arts group where staff and representatives of community constituencies were intermingled at different tables. When we were asked to brain storm solutions to serve a greater segment of the community, I mentioned the need to go out and learn about the unfulfilled needs of … Read more
Last month the BBC had a story on their site about the creative benefits of being a loner. One reason for this is that such people are likely to spend sustained time alone working on their craft. Plus, Feist says, many artists “are trying to make sense of their internal world and a lot of … Read more
The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival just started a couple weeks ago. Despite temperatures which hover in the -20s, they are expecting about 1.5 million visitors before the festival ends in February. You can see pictures of the works like the one above on a number of websites. Every year, the artists try to … Read more
CityLab recently had an article that resurrected the subject of a debate I have been having internally and with others going on two decades now. The article is about efforts people are making in England and the US to limit piped music in public places. The plethora of Christmas carols being played everywhere make it … Read more
When discussion turns to how audiences were once pretty raucous but are now expected to sit quietly, you get the impression that those times are long past. Those who are plugged into the opera world are probably aware, however, that at least a certain segment of the audience at La Scala is still pretty vocal. … Read more
When I was writing my post last week about research suggesting that creativity is often a choice people make, I kept seeing citations referencing an article written by Howard Becker. So I followed up on those citations. It was actually Becker that pointed out many times creative practice involves executing repetitive tasks. In his article, … Read more
Over the last week you may have seen mention that after 10 years in existence, Createquity will be ceasing operations at the end of the 2017 calendar year. This is a great pity. One of the goals founder Ian David Moss had as he developed his blogging project into a think tank was to facilitate … Read more
Telling a story in an interesting and compelling way ain’t easy. Sure, we all know that, but an article about efforts Chinese creatives are making to tell their own stories through musical theater reminds us it isn’t as easy as it looks. Broadway and West End musicals are pretty popular in China, but Chinese artists … Read more
From the “why hasn’t this existed before” file is an article about staging intimacy with the same care employed with fight choreography. The fact I came across this mention on economist Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog rather than a performing arts industry aligned publication somewhat compounded my curiosity about the lack of conversation the topic. … Read more
There is often mention that if the performing arts want to be relevant, audiences need to see themselves and their stories on stage. More and more frequently I am hearing about projects like the one in Reading, PA Margy Waller wrote about last month. A number of artists and arts groups worked together to create … Read more
I am taking some time off to spend with family so I am plumbing into the archives again for a bit. A few years back, I wrote about a company that didn’t feel they had enough competitors to force them to be innovative so they invented one. Nothing consolidates a team and brushes away internal … Read more
Back in June, The Stage had an article about the dire need for changes in the theatre industry in the UK. The article summarized a report that mentioned a lot of familiar issues: low pay, overwork, dependence on unpaid interns, lack of staff from low income and minority backgrounds, and closed recruitment practices. I recently … Read more
There was a warning shot across the bows of university/conservatory arts training programs whose graduates have debt out of proportion with their earning potential in the Chicago Tribune last week. Harvard University is suspending graduate admissions for their theatre program for three years after receiving a failing grade from the Department of Education. Simply put, … Read more
Here is a cool tidbit for the 4th of July. A friend of mine owns a business that provides the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciations and translations for operas and Latin masses. So if you need to sing an aria but don’t speak Italian, German, French, etc, you can purchase a guide to the correct … Read more
Given all the controversy about the depiction of presidents as stand-ins for Julius Caesar, I thought I would offer a somewhat more light-hearted example of how what we think we know about a theater piece has caused some political/diplomatic discomfort. The belief that “Edelweiss,” a song created for The Sound of Music, is the Austrian … Read more
Last week, Non-Profit Quarterly noted that the number of Giving Circles in the US were growing and wondered if this had implications for institutional giving. If you haven’t heard of them before, Giving Circles are usually comprised of a number of individuals in a community who pool their money and collectively make decisions about what … Read more
I recently became aware of the Young Professionals’ Choral Collective out of Cincinnati and was impressed at how they structured themselves to facilitate involvement by a younger demographic. They position their identity in the following way: Do you love to sing? Did you sing in high school/college/church and miss the music-making, the friendships, the fun … Read more
Almost as soon as I published my post yesterday about building community around augmented reality, I started thinking about how that might work with live performance. One of my first thoughts was that augmented reality could allow everyone in the audience to experience the event the way they wanted. When symphony orchestras project things behind … Read more
The Washington Post had a story about an internet company in Korea which started a policy three years ago where all employees would be addressed by an English name rather than their Korean names. Actually, as the story points, out even being addressed by a name at all was strange. Generally in a Korean workplace, … Read more
I have written about stakeholder revolts where people in the community force non-profit boards to reconstitute themselves, usually in reaction to a planned closing of the organization. In other places, board are revising their membership in order to better embrace their governance role and diversifying to better reflect community demographics. It isn’t often that you … Read more
This week Barry Hessenius wrote about the process of interviewing someone for a job. One of his points was not to use other people’s interview questions/generic questions you pull off the Internet. Just like borrowing another organization’s bylaws to create your own, those questions don’t suit the specific needs of your organization. The other point … Read more
I was wondering if you would enjoy that Ray.
Thank you for the post. Simon Rattle and the students made my day!
Santa Cruz Shakespeare has several tiers of benefits for donors/members. Some, like season-announcement parties, are open to several tiers. Some,…