A lot of bloggers, myself included, talk a good deal about engaging audiences, being relevant to the community and getting people to be less passive participants but we rarely point to any examples that work.

You may not agree with their politics, but Bread and Puppet does all of these things pretty well. They are completely dedicated to doing all the things I have mentioned along with keeping art accessible to all. They have been doing it for about 40 years and until 1998, had tens of thousands of people showing up to an unadvertised annual event to participate.

Now granted, it can be easy to get people interested in what you do when they see an immense puppet hovering in the tree (third photo). And the lure of great homemade bread with garlic aioli can’t be underestimated.

They get people involved with the performance of their pieces. During the summer they have shows every Sunday that are rehearsed with members of the community on Saturday.

Back when I was an undergraduate the theatre department at my college had Bread and Puppet come in to get the students involved in a performance. I couldn’t help but be impressed by the costuming and scale of the puppets we were taught to manipulate. I still remember it quite clearly even though it was (mumble) years ago. I also recall how flexible company founder Peter Schumann was with his vision when the number of students who showed up was less than the amount he requested.

So the lesson here is to hone your papier mache and giant puppet manipulation skills, right? Well no. That is their core competency. They are good at it. Chances are you will look foolish if you aren’t. Better to say the lesson is to find a way to tell your community “this is what we do well, come join us in doing it for a day or so.”

Yes, it isn’t appropriate for everywhere. Yet this might be one of the few suggestions I have made that favors the smaller arts organization with more direct ties to the community over the larger ones with the resources to implement new technologies. Getting things rolling might be as simple as an open house with activities. Though I suspect with so many other options available to people, it will take greater cleverness and long term effort to see satisfying results.

I can be pretty dang certain that it will also take an unflinching dedication to the ideals of your effort on the scale of Bread and Puppet’s to realize success. Strange as it may sound, people seem to respond. Bread and Puppet has an apprenticeship program in which they promise apprentices hard work for no pay and a month of sleeping in a tent. Currently, they have filled their 35 apprentice slots for this summer and have a waiting list.

I did plenty of suffering for my art in squalid conditions that didn’t seem to phase me when I was younger. From the description of what the program is not in an attempt to dissuade those with an incorrect understanding of the program, it appears that more than just young students are looking to participate.

I know we would all love that sort of zeal from our employees, audiences and admirerers.

By way of Arts and Letters Daily is the text of National Endowment of the Arts Chair Dana Gioia’s graduation address at Stanford University.

He uses the apparent controversy that he wasn’t a big enough celebrity to address the graduation as a springboard for discussing the decline in appreciation of the artist, scientist and intellectual in the country over the last 50 years. But he doesn’t lay the blame entirely on popular culture and technology–

“Most American artists, intellectuals, and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.”

While he does engage in some lengthy nostalgia for the way things used to be, I think he makes a valid point about the role of culture in general when he comments, (my emphasis)

“The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.”

I liked how he addressed issue of the disappearance of the arts in schools. He supported up his claim that arts classes don’t train artists, but rather create “complete human beings” by noting that people will need the skills they confer in the emerging creative economy.

He also mentioned that studies in civic participation were showing the emergence of two types of groups, those who sat entranced before their televisions, computers and game consoles and those who balanced these things with exercise, charity work and greater social engagement. What appealed to me in this argument was the evidence that- 1) The numbers show that these behaviors are not specific to education, geography or income so everyone is equally able to participate; 2) The elements that defined what group you tended to be in were reading for enjoyment and participation in the arts.

What I appreciated is that this approach takes advantage of the underlying sentiment of the current “get up, get out and do something” well-being campaign you see a lot of these days to bolster the arts make the whole person argument. Since there has been a feeling that the arts may not be best served by advocacy stressing economic benefit, it was important to provide additional support alongside the future employability point.

As he drew his speech to a close Gioia urges the graduates to be cognizant that while the graduates may have spent a lot of time playing and socializing on their computers, their lives were balanced by intellectual rigor. He notes that this equalizing presence they may have taken for granted will now be absent from their lives upon graduation. They will be entirely responsible for how actively they live their lives.

I was having a conversation with a friend from a previous job that brought up a few questions for me about what motivates people who work in the arts to attend arts events.

This gentleman was assistant marketing director and then marketing director for a theater at which I once worked. He eventually left to work for another marketing company, formed his own company which was acquired by another and is now a partner in that combined company.

In the same period his wife has been phasing herself out of a career in which her services were in high demand and is trying to earn her Actors’ Equity card. A couple years ago they both traveled to Scotland, young children in tow, to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe.

My friend tells me he hasn’t gone to see a show at the place we worked or almost anywhere else in years because of the ticket plus babysitter costs. This is a barrier to attendance that is commonly cited so there was no surprise in that.

What I was thinking as he told me was that if a guy who was paid to convince others that there was value for them in surmounting this barrier is unwilling to attend, how much harder is it these days to appeal to those without any background in arts attendance at all.

Granted, there is the element of his daughters’ youth that has to be factored in as well. Arts person or not, there is a necessity of child rearing that must be heeded. He gave the impression that he might be attending events more often now that his girls were getting older. It will be interesting to revisit the topic in a couple years to see if he did indeed start paying to attend shows more often.

I make the specific qualifier about paying to attend because he has been attending the shows his wife performs in using the comp tickets she gets. This fact spawned another train of thought that does not reflect on my friend’s practice, but is something I have observed in general.

I have known about 20 people in the last 15 years who haven’t been able to make the philosophical transition from starving artist to paying member of public. They got used to paying $5 or getting comps when they were students and/or starting out and years after won’t attend a show unless they receive the same treatment. In some cases they appeal to some pretty tenuous connections with people they only talk to when they want tickets. At least once a year I get a call invoking the name of someone 10 years gone.

I am betting some of my readers know these people. I am also willing to wager that some of them are pretty well off and put their ramen eating days behind them or worse, are successful professionals in the industry and feel their importance earns them free admission. (I have to confess, much to my chagrin every year I am sent two season passes to a theatre based on my theoretical importance. I am typically too busy and embarrassed by the idea to attend more than once or twice a year.)

I don’t know that this type of behavior is necessarily solely endemic to the arts rather than just being a component of a personality type. I am sure there are people who expect free food when they return to a restaurant where they once worked. Personally, I would prefer the problem to be personality related than to think that a lot of arts people are parasitic jerks.

The problem with this answer is that it provides more evidence that us arts people just like everyone else. If a guy who has performed and worked in theatres for over a decade leaves the performing arts world and has as hard a time motivating himself past to attend as the couple next door, maybe the arts aren’t a calling for a special segment of the population.

Frankly, I hate to have this sort of pessimism creep into my world view. The idea that being part of the arts confers a special grace and nobility makes being flat broke a little more tolerable. (It also dovetails nicely with a Catholic upbringing replete with tales of suffering saints.) And even though I am in administration, I feel the phrase “run arts like a business” robs it of some value.

I have come to realize that this grace and nobility isn’t the sole providence of those working in the industry but rather can be shared among all those encountering it. (Which is not to say that a dirt poor existence doesn’t sharpen the senses and appreciation of those who are receptive to experiencing art!) Partaking of this grace and nobility as a suffering poverty stricken artist in your youth certainly hasn’t earned you comps for life. You can’t be part of the in-crowd forever. One day you have to join the great unwashed and pay for your tickets.