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Don’t Forget Lessons Learned About Business Insurance

October 14, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

One of the panel sessions at the recent Arts Midwest-Western Arts Alliance virtual conference was on Reopening. The one panelist that really caught my attention was Anna Glass, Executive Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH).

She said when the Covid emergency hit, the Cultural Institutions Group, a collection of major arts institutions in NYC area which had been organized some years prior, provided a great resource for information sharing during the crisis. Apparently there were group calls seven days a week for the first two months to discuss the issues and they have scaled back to four times a week now. The group organized itself into various working groups to help figure out solutions to problems and organize advocacy efforts.

Glass is the co-leader of the insurance working group and spoke about the rude awakening groups like hers had when they discovered how lacking their insurance policies were. One thing they didn’t realize was that there were caps on the amount of money their policies would pay out. So while DTH face the cancellations of events that annually brought in over $1 million, their policies were capped at $30,000. On top of that, while they were so sure that they could make a business interruption claim based on government action due to Gov. Cuomo’s executive order, they learned their policies would only cover them if there was physical damage to their buildings.

Glass said her insurance working group provided a lot of information to the greater Cultural Institutions Group membership about how to read their policies, make claims, etc. The working group encouraged everyone to make a claim even if they didn’t think they had a chance of having it approved just to make some noise about the issues with business insurance.

Glass said she paying greater attention to her insurance policies and really pushed back on her (previous) insurance broker for “not working for me.” She is determined not to make the same mistake twice.

The brief silver lining Glass sees in all this is that arts organizations in the NYC area are cooperating, collaborating and advocating as a unified groups in a way they hadn’t before. She hopes that becomes an ingrained habit/practice moving forward.

I wanted to bring this up in general for the broader lessons about cooperation and advocacy this has for us all, but specifically to remind people to pay attention to things like insurance policies and contracts moving forward. I am sure it will be nigh impossible to get appropriate coverage for epidemics, but you still need to think seriously about what types of coverage you need and what you will or won’t accept from a policy. There is so much other crap going on right now, it will be hard to effect change but eventually there will likely be a movement to reform insurance coverage.

Advocacy, Arts Facilities, Leadership, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts

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What I Opposed In Good Times I Praise You For In Bad

October 13, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

Recently I have been talking about how Covid times have brought a greater tolerance on the part of boards/audiences for experimentation with programming choices. I guess I have been talking about it with colleagues and co-workers because when I went to find my post I made so I could link to it, I couldn’t find it.

In any case, Drew McManus posted another episode of his Shop Talk podcast today where he talks with Jeff Vom Saal, Executive Director of Spokane Symphony & Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox and Zak Vassar, President & CEO of the Toledo Alliance for the Performing Arts.

At around the 16 min mark, Drew talks about the difference between creativity and innovation and notes there really hasn’t been a lot of the latter in the orchestra world and in fact many great administrators have been punished by boards and donors for pushing boundaries and taking risks. He says now arts organizations are paying the price for failing to become nimble enough to respond to the current challenges.

Vassar responds by talking about a trustee that recently pulled him aside and said:

“You’re trying to do something that in a good economy I would have voted down everyday of the week. But now is the time to experiment and to be nimble and to learn what we didn’t know and learn how to do it better. Because by the time the economy and the world comes back online, you’re gonna be at least one hare’s run faster on the track than the slowest tortoise…”

Let’s just ponder that for a second. I am not saying organizational staff don’t buy into this sort of thinking as well, but just imagine having a board member tell you that they would have fought you tooth and nail in better economic times, but now that you are really wondering about how you are going to meet payroll, have no audience willing to show up, slimmer fundraising prospect and almost no staff to pursue donations and grants, this is the best time to invest non-existent time, energy and resources into innovating?

I understand that when you feel you have nothing left to lose and find your perceived competitors on a level playing field (or teetering at the edge of the field) it seems like seeking new pathways is the best course of action.

Why were the decisions we are making now problematic when the economy was better and there was more ability to mitigate the impact of failure?

Perhaps the first thing in need of change the organizational dynamics that won’t tolerate change until complete failure is imminent.

We have seen the results of this type of thinking for decades – people rally around an organization at the moment its existence is imperiled. Those cases are isolated and individual. Now everyone is imperiled and we realize there is a need for a broad, communal rally–probably necessitating listening more to the other people at the rally.

Or more aptly in the terms of this metaphor, inviting a lot more people to the rally than in the past and listening to them.

If you have a board member that is either explicitly or implicitly communicating they would have opposed you before, but now they are willing to support you, you need to have a very honest talk that makes it clear there can be no return to those old modes of thinking when the economic picture improves. While the economy may improve, the operating environment and expectations people have will not return to what they were before.

Advocacy, Audience Relations, Boards, Leadership, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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The Most Important People Social Distance In The Penalty Box

October 12, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

I mentioned last week that I was in the middle of virtually attending the combined Arts Midwest-Western Arts Alliance Conference. I will probably have a couple entries of observations on particular sessions. However, I wanted to throw out two smaller bits of information I came across that I didn’t think could fill an entire entry.

First, as much as everyone is talking about streaming being the wave of the future and the only way arts organizations can survive, an attendee from Mississippi noted that a significant portion of the community she served did not have reliable high speed internet.

There was a fair bit of talk at the conference about the Covid environment providing the opportunity/forcing organizations to provide experiences that connected with a greater range of their local community. For some communities, this means that the live experience may be the only viable experience.

Likewise, it is important to remember that even though contactless payment like tapping and swiping might be the safest, there are a lot of people in our communities who are unbanked or underbanked for whom cash is the only possible medium of exchange. Be sure to consider these challenges when pledging people will find you welcoming and more accessible in the future.

Further up the Mississippi River, in Grand Rapids. MN was my favorite story about leveraging local features and assets to meet the challenges of live performance during Covid-times. Shantel Dow, Executive Director of the Reif Center said they were holding “boat-in” concerts on lake shores where the audience arrived on pontoon boats to watch the land based performance.

She also mentioned they were holding events at an outdoor hockey rink. It is roofed against rain, but open air on the sides to allow for important ventilation and air exchange. What I really loved was that they were selling the penalty boxes as VIP seating. From the pictures I saw, it looked like most people bring their own chairs and arrange themselves at a safe distance from others around the rink.

I don’t remember the exact number of events she said they had done since Covid restrictions began, but it seemed impossibly high. However, looking at their Facebook page, between the boat-in concerts, the ice hockey arena events and the movies they are projecting on the side of their building, a high number of events seemed within the realm of possibility. I am happy they were able to make so much work for them.

Arts Facilities, State of the Arts

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Mounting A Performing Arts Conference When No One Wants To Travel

October 7, 2020

by:

Joe Patti

Two regional arts conferences, Western Arts Alliance and Arts Midwest partnered on offering a single online conference to replace their respective in-person events.

I will say right from the outset, I really need an in-person conference which takes me away from my job. The online conference doesn’t offer enough content to justify my staying at home all week, but trying to participate virtually with the demands and distractions of my job is not working.

I am not saying I would have traveled to Omaha this year. I am just recognizing the benefits of intentionally carving time out to devote to your professional development.

Also, the technology they are using to deliver the conference is very frustrating to use. I suspect it looked really well designed when the conference organizers were reviewing it because it brings a lot of valuable features together in one place. I thought they made a good choice when I first poked around it prior to the conference start.

However, in practice when you have over 1000 people using it to view content and interact to conduct business, the shortcomings become clearer. There were some sessions where people have openly commented they are doing research on other platforms for conferences they organize.

This being said, the virtual conference format allows me to have my staff participate, something I wouldn’t have been able to afford with an in-person conference. Being able to divide and conquer when it comes to attending and offering observations on different conferences sessions and performance showcases is pretty valuable.

As I write this, the second day of the conference is drawing to a close. There are still two more days, but one observation my staff and I have made already is that there is a stark gulf between people who have acknowledged the future will not be the same as the past and those that view their current situation as akin to a delayed flight home–incredibly inconveniencing, but you’ll eventually get back to familiar surroundings.

In one session I attended yesterday, I wondered what people had been doing for the last seven months because people were asking questions that seemed to indicate they hadn’t really considered their options for re-opening. Sessions I attended today were much better and assuring. People were offering examples of creative approaches they were using, plans they had for the future and the responses they were seeing from the community.

My marketing director had been in a session on Failure yesterday where the host basically summed up the session by noting if organizations weren’t exploring different options now, in two-three years when new models of participation begin to solidify and gain significant traction, those organizations will be two years behind the curve. Currently, because no one knows what will happen, there is a greater tolerance for experimentation and associated mistakes. It is difficult to criticize a decision as bad if no one can say what the better decision would have been–implementing that better option next time has an almost equal chance of failing in the current operating environment.

What I think will be problematic for the performing artists showcasing at the conference is that they are packaging themselves to suit last year’s paradigm. While their showcases are pre-recorded in venues that show off their talent much, much better than an in-person experience in a conference hotel ballroom, they also don’t have the opportunity to discuss what they have to offer in light of what they may have gleaned from sessions earlier in the day.

To be clear, I definitely don’t think depending on being able to deliver a quality, problem free livestream performance would have been a better option. I am just saying had the performance been delivered live, whether in-person or live stream, artists and agents could have taken what they were hearing venues were saying about their plans and concerns over the course of the day and revised their script to present themselves as capable of providing a solution to those problems.

I was considering writing this post next week after the conference was over so I could provide a more complete assessment of the experience, but I know a few performing arts presenters who may be participating in the conference read my blog so I wanted to get them thinking about these factors which may be shaping how they are experiencing different parts of the conference.

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

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