The release of the “Star Wars as Shakespeare would have written it” book, Star Wars, Verily A New Hope had me chuckle a bit at the concept, but also grumble about how derivative the book was.
Then I got to thinking not only about Kirby Ferguson’s Everything Is A Remix video series, but also that derivative works are pretty much what America’s identity is based on.
The upcoming festivities of the 4th of July as an example.
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” set to “John Brown’s Body,” which is at least appropriate given their mutual association with the Civil War.
But then there is “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” set to the tune of “God Save The Queen (King)” less than two decades after the War of 1812 ended. How soon we forget!
That one never fails to get me during the Olympics given all the Commonwealth nations that use it. I am always initially embarrassed for the athletes that the Olympics are playing the wrong anthem…until I remember it was their song first.
There may be a big to do about intellectual property rights these days, but the history of the country has frequently involved borrowing, stealing, mixing and mashing other people’s work.
When I was in high school, we got a kick out of singing the poems of Emily Dickinson to the tune of the “Yellow Rose of Texas.” “Because I could not stop for Death” being one of the more popular ones due to the disconnect between the tune and the subject matter.
C’mon, click the link. You know you want to try it.
In closing, I leave you with the trailer of William Shakespeare’s Star Wars.
85% of Americans surveyed believe that creativity is key to driving economic growth. Two-thirds believe that being creative is valuable to society. 75% value their own creativity in resolving personal and professional problems.
But here’s where it gets interesting: Only 25% feel they live up to their creative potential.
[…]
For the Americans surveyed, self-doubt (27%), other personal obligations (29%), other work obligations (22%), and one’s age (13%) ranked fairly low.
That leaves two self-perceived blocks: Time and Money.
54% of surveyed Americans claimed they didn’t have the financial resources to let them create. 52% perceived that lack of time kept them from being able to create.
But when you unpack this question, its potential answers, and the actual responses, much if not all of it comes back to time.
Our perception of time is tied to how we view our obligations. If we think we don’t have enough money to create, this means in part that we think we don’t have enough money to be freed up from other obligations to afford us the solitude and “off-time” necessary to be “on” creatively.
Davis goes into some detail about how people can change this situation by either changing their situation, changing their mind, or both, to make space in their lives for creative pursuits.
My first thought upon reading this was that in the coming years perhaps the real value arts organizations can offer people is guidance and support to essentially become more disciplined…about letting themselves indulge fanciful thought and experimentation.
The other thing I wanted to point out is that this survey was conducted worldwide with 1000 people each from United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.
The results are pretty dang interesting. There is a summary and infographic that accompany the study. Globally, Japan and Tokyo ranked as the most creative county and city–except among Japanese who don’t see themselves as creative. The U.S. ranked second “except in the eyes of Americans, who see themselves as the most creative.”
I haven’t gotten a chance to really consider some of the results, but there are some really glaring differences in attitudes. On the question “Being creative is still reserved for the arts community.” 78% of Japanese agreed with the statement versus 28% U.S., 35% U.K., 27% Germany and 21% in France.
There is a similar difference in response to the question “Being creative is reserved
for an elite community,” though only 52% of Japanese agreed.
Part of the difference may be attributable to what each culture defines as creative work. One culture may deem adding a funny caption to a picture and posting it on line to be creative while another may only regard someone who has gone through a lengthy apprenticeship and journeyman process to be a true creative.
Some of the responses from the different countries were included. I wondered if they were really representative of the country or chosen because they reinforce a certain image of that country.
Still, it was interesting to think about the following quote from the U.S. in the context of all the conversation that occurs about intellectual property rights.
“So many ideas have already been used, and in variation. When I think of a creative idea that I believe is new and original, it’s likely that it has already been done. I think the internet can often stray us away from our own creativity.”
or this one in the context of the stereotype that Germans are disciplined and time conscious:
“The less time the less is the creative head. Time constraints and pressure to kill creativity in the long run. Artists can only make art because they carry no other job and have this time. Creativity is born out of boredom and fun at the experiment.”
One of the questions on “Wait, Wait..Don’t Tell Me” this weekend referenced the fact that fast food giants were instructing their employees and robotic processors (which may be one in the same) to essentially dial back the quality control a bit to make food less perfect and more rustic looking in order to hitch their wagon to the artisanal trend.
Kinda makes you wonder when companies understand artisanal to be investment of less care and effort rather than more.
I metaphorically rolled my eyes (because I was driving at the time), thinking to myself that there are hundreds of performing arts organizations handcrafting works all over the country, but lacking an audience because people will really only pay so much for authenticity. Packaging that provides the rustic illusion at a cheap price will trump quality at the real price a whole lot of the time.
The reality is, there is a very real trend sustained by people who are willing to pay more for authenticity. And they aren’t all hipsters from the trendy side of town. What they value isn’t just the product, but a sense of connection with the creators/cultivators.
Most arts organizations haven’t found a way to do this in an engaging way while getting the marketing department out of the way. I am sure the primary reasons why the Trey McIntyre Project’s dancers are treated like rock stars is because the company has cultivated a public enough profile that people recognize them when they are out running daily errands.
In some cases, with a little imagination and patience, providing that sense of connection may be fairly easy to accomplish.
I went into the local art museum last Saturday. The main exhibit area was empty and the next installation won’t be in until mid-July. However, the new directors of the museum were in painting the walls getting the area ready.
When I finished looking at the permanent collection, I chatted with the directors since they were there and so readily accessible. Since I was senior to them, having started my new job a whole three weeks before they started theirs, I asked them if they had considered changing their Saturday hours, at least for the summer.
They open on Saturday afternoons an hour after the farmers market, which is held 50 feet west of their front door, closes. There are enough people visiting the market that they have to park a couple blocks east of the museum and walk right by the front door. One of the directors assured me that they had already started considering that change.
Then we chatted a little about Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog and some of the ideas for interactive exhibits she has written about. I mentioned the possibility of using some of their spaces for lectures and demonstrations connected with our shows in some of the museum spaces since they are only a block and a half from the performing arts center.
I left feeling good about prospect of future collaboration, but also for the future of the museum given that they were very visible in their space and eager to engage despite how busy they were.
I think this openness will result in an a sense of an “artisanal” experience/connection to those in the community who value it.
So I have gotten some nice responses to the question I posed about the Minnesota Legacy Tax at the end of yesterday’s post.
Paul from Minneapolis praises the Legacy tax, saying that everywhere he goes he hears that the event has been supported by the Legacy Tax.
Another commenter who wished to remain anonymous was a little annoyed because everywhere she goes, she hears about all the events in Minneapolis being supported by the Legacy Tax.
She becomes exasperated when she hears the tax is supporting the Guthrie Theatre’s babysitting program while places like Bemidji get very little support (The commenter was not from Bemidji, its just one of my favorite Minnesota place names.)
If you follow the link to the Legacy Tax project tracking website the commenter from Minneapolis provides, you will see that the frequency and amounts of the grants made in southeast Minnesota tend to be higher than the rest of the state. (Though selecting arts only spreads the frequency out across the state, most of the money is still around Minneapolis.)
This brings up the counter-truth of yesterday’s post. Yeah, politicians will give the arts short shrift, but you need them to get anything at all.
When I was growing up in New York, the perception was that only NYC, Albany and Buffalo existed in the eyes of the legislature.
I think I mentioned before on this blog that when I was working in NJ there was a rule that a certain percentage of the arts funding had to be given to the southern counties. The intent was warped a little bit so that providing more money to northern arts organization was rationalized as benefiting the southern half because they traveled south to perform.
It wasn’t until a legislator from the rural south of NJ became speaker of the assembly that this changed.
Heck, the performing arts center I am director of is named for the speaker whose influence aided in its construction. (And actually, I just noticed today is his birthday.)
We all hate thinking about the process of currying favor and politicking, but there are plenty of examples to provide a lesson as to why it works.
A cautionary tale for the “Beware Politicians Bearing Gifts” file. (A pretty thin file given the relationship between politics and the arts.)
Four years ago, I posted about how the State of New Jersey was trying to ignore a law that guaranteed funding to the arts from hotel tax revenue. This was a particularly unwise move given that cutting funding to the arts meant the tax would go away entirely thanks to a poison pill provision.
In other words, for want of cutting a couple million from arts funding, the state would lose many more millions when the hotel tax disappeared due to making the cut.
The government received a lot of criticism for contemplating the move, including from a former governor.
Now there is a new administration and a new attitude. When the tax was created, it was contemplated that the funding for the arts would increase as tax revenue increased. The problem is where the previous administration had viewed the $28 million minimum funding limit as the floor they wanted to demolish, the current administration sees it as the ceiling they are happy to bolster.
“…the tax generated more than $1.1 billion for state and local governments since it was introduced 10 years ago, but only $184 million has gone to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the largest of the four agencies that should have received a far bigger chunk of the money.
[…]
It’s a cautionary tale for supporters of a separate bill that would take a slice of the sales tax to fund the state’s open space and historic preservation programs, which have run out of money. It might look great on paper, but without the political will behind it, the promises are hollow.”
I know the Minnesota legislature has been asking if the Minneapolis Orchestra has betrayed the public trust by accepting funding but not providing concerts. My hope is that it is motivated by an appreciation of the arts and a desire to see them produced rather than a desire to scrap the funding.
Can anyone from Minnesota give me a sense of how things have worked out?
Last week I was invited to dinner to meet with a muralist who is in town painting the floodwall murals. I don’t mean to constantly harp on the small town charm I am experiencing here at my new job, but you write what you know, eh?
I have been thinking recently back to my childhood when my parents would regularly invite our teachers home for dinner. It wasn’t just my family. Every kid’s family seemed to take turns. We were all horrified because not only were our teachers invading our personal sanctums, but given we were Catholic school kids, our homes were being visited by nuns who kept us at the edge of terror!
I am not sure anyone does this any more, but this was the type of grassroots effort that let both the kids and the teachers know the community valued education.
I wonder if it might be effective to do the same thing with the arts where you invited your neighbors over to meet an artist.
I know a few groups that have house concerts by guest musicians as fund raising events. While that sort of intimacy offers a great experience, the type of people invited and the expectations placed upon them by the fund raising format aren’t really conducive to what I have in mind.
Having the party at the biggest mansion in the most exclusive neighborhood probably won’t make the arts appear accessible to new segments of the community either.
But a back yard cook out or dinner you would invite your friends to anyway, but in this instance you say, I would like you to come to dinner to meet this local/visiting artist, provides a low pressure environment that communicates that you value the arts.
The artist doesn’t need to perform or have their work on display. Just the fact they are the guest of honor to whom everyone is introduced at a gathering with good food and good company can be sufficient to influence attitudes.
When I assumed my current position, I had hoped that I had escaped the need to complete long annual reports. I was leaving a region whose higher ed accrediting body has the reputation for being the toughest. So I thought, if I did end up having to do an annual report, it wouldn’t be too onerous.
Well, I was wrong. Under the guise of a lunch invitation to meet the rest of the university leadership, I discovered that I would indeed need to do an annual report. And it seems to be more extensive than the one I used to have to do.
In addition, the reporting protocol this year seems to be entirely new, giving rise to thoughts that this is a conspiracy against me by a universe that just won’t let me escape doing annual reports!!!!
While I am not looking forward to the task, one section of the report that I must admit met my approval inquired by department culture:
3. Please answer the questions below addressing departmental culture. As you answer the questions, please include examples from the past year illustrating your points.
a. Describe your department culture?
b. What influences your culture?
c. What theories or practices inform your culture?
d. How do you assess if your departmental culture is impacting the continuous improvement of your department and the institution as a whole?
I think reflection on organizational and departmental culture in this way can be important. Even within a performing arts organization, the culture of the tech, marketing, front of house and artistic areas are distinct from each other.
Discerning what influences your culture and how your departmental culture contributes to the organization as a whole can be contribute toward bolstering the positive and making a constructive effort to repair the negative.
It can help recognize the truth of dysfunctional dynamics if a department realizes a prime influence on their culture is acting as a buffer between two other departments to prevent them from throttling each other.
Yeah, acting as a peacemaker is a positive thing, but if the result is to delay or deflect conflict rather than effect a continuous improvement, it isn’t ultimately a constructive contribution.
Part of the big news today is that GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance joined together to sign an open letter to all donors asking them not to use overhead as a primary criteria for giving.
The letter does a pretty good job in a short space of discussing how inaccurate the ratio is and the consequences for non-profits when they feel they have to hobble themselves to maintain a low number.
The letter specific cites Stanford Social Innovation Review‘s article, The Non-Profit Starvation Cycle which does a good job explaining the problem in detail.
The reason why I said the timing could be better is because it comes on the heels of a weekend where CNN has been majorly featuring a story about charities that have been fleecing donors with the causes only getting 4% in some cases.
Now make no mistake, I am not defending a 96% overhead by any means. There are a lot of scams out there and it appears pretty clear that the organizations featured in the story set out to deceive right from the moment they generated names that sound very close to nationally recognized charities.
My concern is that to people unfamiliar with charities, the timing of the letter’s release makes it almost appear to be an apologist for the high overhead ratios these dishonest groups had. Especially since a picture of the website of the one of the groups CNN damns contains a claim that Charity Navigator gave them a 3 star rating.
The proximity of these two announcements aside, the public recognition that charities should not be judged on overhead alone is a real advance in the effort to get non-profits evaluated on less superficial criteria. It will likely still happen for some time to come, but it is an encouraging sign.
Noting out how oriented toward higher education our society is, Tabbarok observes,
“College students even get discounts at the movie theater; when was the last time you saw a discount for an electrical apprentice?”
It occurred to me that extending a discount to trade apprentices might provide a continuous but subtle message that the arts are for everyone, not just the educated elite.
Obviously, this needs to be supported by programming and an attendance experience that isn’t intimidating. But I wondered if the passive act of providing a discount to laborers might succeed where active claims of the arts being for everyone have come up short.
You may not get many actual apprentices attending, but the act of publicizing the discount may contribute to a shifting perception of your organization.
Recently Marginal Revolution blogger and economist Alex Tabbarok linked to an article he wrote a year ago suggesting that the United States would be well served by adding a focus on putting students into technical apprenticeships to the current push to get kids into college.
He starts out by applauding the now familiar push by governors in many states to provide incentives to students pursuing STEM fields over Liberal Arts. “We should focus higher-education dollars on the fields most likely to benefit everyone, not just the students who earn the degrees.”
I particularly oriented in on the part of the article where he notes,
“In 2009 the United States graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math, and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual-and-performing-arts graduates in 1985.”
Wow, that is pretty great, huh? But he goes on,
There is nothing wrong with the arts, psychology, and journalism, but graduates in these fields have lower wages and are less likely to find work in their fields than graduates in science and math. Moreover, more than half of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don’t require college degrees, and those graduates don’t get a big income boost from having gone to college.
Most important, graduates in the arts, psychology, and journalism are less likely to create the kinds of innovations that drive economic growth.
I initially felt a little indignant at the idea that graduates in the arts aren’t spurring innovation. But then I started wondering if the arts sector needs to take a little responsibility for this. It seems this might be a result of a lack of training and good public relations.
There is an on going conservation about training arts students to take a more entrepreneurial approach to their work so there is already an acknowledgment that this is an area to be improved. Perhaps part of that training should emphasize not undervaluing your work so that people don’t undervalue the work that artists do.
In terms of public relations, I think there is a lack of circulation of stories about successful creatives like those I recently cited about the winners of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Competition (one with a BA in East Asian Studies and Chinese Lit., the other with a BA in Aerospace Engineering) and the Rotman School of Management’s design competition.
The main thrust of Tabbarok’s argument isn’t so much to diminish the liberal arts degree as to advocate for apprenticeships. He notes that some people are simply not suited for college but vocational education programs have a stigma of being the dumping ground for high risk kids. He points to the model of Germany (among other European countries) where students normally opt for technical training and apprenticeships that provide real world work experience while the students are in high school.
What appealed to me about this was the idea that if there is room in the day for a high school student to receive vocational training, then you have to allow that there is time in the day for arts classes.
But I am not suggesting that some kids be allowed to paint while the other kids go learn to weld. I think high school vocational training should seek to provide opportunities for students to train and apprentice at local arts organizations as well. Who says you can’t take some of your welding classes in a scene shop or art studio or that you have to do your apprenticeship in a shipyard?
Apprenticeship programs like this could strengthen ties between schools and arts organizations and reinforce the idea that vocational skills don’t have to be applied in purely practical ways.
On the other side of the coin, I have a vague recollection of reading an article that suggested many visual artists today don’t have a good understanding of the materials they use because they haven’t had a lengthy exposure working/playing with them. Even if my recollection isn’t correct, the opportunity to work with materials still exists.
The reality is, four years of college isn’t the entire key to becoming an artist either.
As I have stated before, I grew up in a rural setting in upstate NY and just before I started blogging, I worked at a rural arts and music center. But now that I am paying much closer attention to the lives of arts organizations and the communities they try to serve, moving to work in a rural environment has given much greater insight into the impetus behind Scott Walters’ efforts on behalf of rural arts organizations that lead to the creation of the Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education (CRADLE).
There may not be the financial support or audience attendance in numbers that larger cities and communities enjoy, but the impact of arts programs and opportunities can be much more immediate and apparent. This is not to say there isn’t just as profound an impact in other places, just that the feedback loop is that much smaller. Because everyone knows everyone, even if a person doesn’t make a comment about their experience to you, you are likely to hear about it from someone else.
Case in point, I met an administrator at the university early one Friday, later that day he got his haircut. That night his hairdresser, whom I had never met before, said he made positive remarks about me.
What has been interesting to me is to have confirmation of many of the benefits we in the arts claim we bring to the community.
People from the local hospital told me my arts center is important to the health of their organization because they generally don’t have problems attracting doctors to the area, but after a year or two pressure from their families often sees them moving away due to lack of activities. The better a job I do, the better it is for them.
The community board which helps us fund the bulk of our presenting was invited to have a fund raiser at a local wine store. The board had a band playing and the store owner had wine and beer tasting. The community board made quite a respectable amount of money that night so they were happy.
The owner of the shop said the arts people attracted the type of clientele he was looking for. They came, they chatted, they browsed, they bought. He was happy. I think everyone hopes there will be another opportunity to do that again.
Yeah, you can say this only reinforces the stereotype of arts people as effete wine drinkers, but you can grab a six pack of Bud in the supermarket. This business owner is focused on attracting people who drink wine and craft brewed beer and smoke cigars and the arts board helped to deliver them.
On the other hand, there were many people to just stopped in to grab a six pack and bottles who picked up performance season information and bought raffle tickets so the store potentially delivered new audiences to the theatre.
The last incident falls into the “big impact/change of life” category. This past weekend the local arts council had its first ever community arts awards event in my theatre. It was actually pretty well put together for a first attempt. Each award was interspersed with performances by youth performers.
I was surprised to learn that not only does this small town have an organization that teaches kids to do aerial acrobatics, but that the school is under the umbrella of the local museum. I am going to have to check it out. It may give Nina Simon and her Museum 2.0 a run for her money.
Probably the most conspicuous example of the arts impacting lives was the honoree who had been teaching piano for 60 years and so had a legion of people, from music teachers to kids attending top music conservatories, speaking her praises.
Among the other honorees were the Irish owners of the local pub who declared “what good is a pub without stories and music to fill it?” and the owners of a plumbing supply house who between them have sat on the boards of just about every arts organization in town.
There was a visual artist who had moved from Seattle and was instrumental in the founding of the local visual arts center. Known to be something of a recluse, the awards organizers went to his studio and made a really nice video of him talking about his art and his process. I wondered if the reception the film received from the audience emboldened him a little because he spoke a fair bit when he went on stage to accept the award.
Granted, there is a big fish in a small pond element to all of this. In terms of reaching numbers, a performer doing a show in Tampa impacts the lives of more people in one night than one of those honorees might in a year. Many times that is what foundations and granting organization are looking for.
But as I sat there Saturday night, I couldn’t help but think that what was happening in this town was what many arts organizations dreamed of. The results of an interaction with the arts, both positive and negative, and the bonds it creates between people are so easy to observe.
Person A and Person B may leave an event and separately speak about their experience with Persons C and D, respectively. No only is there a high chance that C and D will meet and speak about the experience related to them second hand, there is a good chance C will meet B, another person who actually attended, and get their view on the experience. All four then share a common bond around the experience.
Unless all four travel in the same circles, what is the chance that this interaction will happen often in a city of 300,000? Here it happens many times every day.
Obviously, there is a downside to this lack of anonymity. I was both amused and a little uneasy about having the an opinion of me by someone I just met come back to me via their hair stylist at a wine tasting that same afternoon. I am certainly going to have to step carefully at times.
But it also strikes me that for those willing to listen, it can be very easy to collect a fairly accurate view of the community without the need to resort to a lot of guess work.
Speaking of drinking wine and beer, this entry title brought to you by Cheers, of course
So even though I am in a fairly rural area of Ohio, I have discovered that I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to being able to access public radio broadcast streams. There are two from Ohio universities, one from West Virginia and one from Northern Kentucky. Despite the mountains I can hear each of them fairly clearly since there are repeaters located within a few miles of my workplace.
I tell you this provide some context when I say I heard a fund raising approach I liked but can’t for the life of me figure out which station I heard it on. I have visited each station’s website and Facebook page and still don’t know whom to credit.
In any case, one of these intrepid stations announced that now that the summer had started, they would begin “One Shot Wednesday” fund drives. Instead of having a week long fund drive, they were just going to make appeals on Wednesdays throughout the summer.
I thought this was a great idea because many people will tune away for the week of a fund drive and come back when it is over. Having it once a week repeatedly introduces itself into a person’s habitual listening. Since the disruption is contained to a small period of time, people may tune away for a day, come back again and then be reminded the next Wednesday around.
The station can better retain their listeners and expose them more frequently to the message that the station needs their support before a person chooses to tune away. And who knows, people may stay with the station throughout the Wednesday since the appeal breaks are short relative to other fund drives.
I have been trying to think of what the performing arts organization version of this might look like. Attending performances is not part of most people’s daily routine so there is no week long fund drive people might seek to avoid.
Curtailing the curtain speech appeal might make many audience members happy, but what more palatable alternative do you replace it with?
I know the board of my organization enjoyed calling people up to ask them about how much they liked the past season. The effort was well received all around. It would be possible to insert an appeal at that time, but if done poorly it would probably be a negative experience for all involved.
You might try having board members or volunteers chat casually with people in the lobby before the show and introduce the idea of supporting the organization. There is more of an opportunity to monitor that the process is done well and give notes on improving in the future. The only problem might be if the lobby is too small or if most of the audience rushes in at the last moment leaving little opportunity to speak with them.
I think the real question at the base of all this is- what are we doing now that makes people uncomfortable and what can we do to make it less so. That is what the one radio station did. They took the week long fund drive that everyone groans about and parceled it up across the summer.
I have no idea how successful it is, but from the way they spoke, they have done this before. Once I find the station again, I will try to do some further investigation.
But what ideas do you have to break up the often awkward process of fundraising into something more digestible?
Intrigued, I followed the link and discovered that it was for the job as Climb Theatre’s accountant.
As you might imagine, many of the staff at Climb Theatre have non-traditional titles. While I wonder if “Leader of the Pack…Vroom, Vroom” might be a little too whimsical for the executive director and question how confident people might be at giving money to an organization with a “Gambling Manager” on the executive staff (Managing Director? CFO? Artistic Director?), I immediately liked most of the connotations associated with “Stabilizer.”
The only negative association I had was that the organization wasn’t fiscally stable and they were looking for someone to save them. But in the job description they say, “Happily, CLIMB’s financial position is quite solid and cash flow is not an issue.”
What I liked about the title was that it implied if you took the job, you would be an important part of the organization’s life rather than a functionary in the back office. The job description says that too, but that was the first impression I got directly from the job title.
The job title also hints that there is an attempt to make the job environment an interesting and enjoyable place to work.
Changing job title terminology may seem like an empty gesture in place of real change, and granted it often is intended to manipulate. However, there can be a difference in the way you feel about yourself as a result.
Would you rather be a sales clerk or sales associate even though the job is exactly the same? As a customer, do you think you would treat one a little differently than the other? The difference may be small, but they can accumulate over time to result in better esteem.
I am not advising a mass change of titles to make people feel better about their jobs. In performing arts organizations especially the performers and technicians get recognition and praise for executing a performance well. Directors, both administrative and artistic, get interviewed and asked to speak before crowds.
The back office people may know they are doing work that is important to the organization, but can easily feel they are interchangeable with any other accountant, human resource officer or receptionist in an organization where so many are recognized for specific and often unique contributions.
In small non-profits where rewards of any sort are especially hard to come by, it can be especially important to make everyone feel like they are an integral part of the staff who would be difficult to replace.
Crazy titles will certainly come across as disingenuous if it isn’t part of the existing organizational culture. Besides, something unique to your own business culture will go further in making someone feel they are unique.
About a month ago, I wrote about webcomic Penny Arcade’s online reality competition Strip Search which is aimed at finding the next great webcomic artist. (By the way, both the comic and the show are often NSFW)
I had mentioned that it seemed like the aim of the show was to use the Penny Arcade fame to help advance the careers of these artists.
I think their most recent episode of Strip Search provides a model for teaching arts students of all stripes about contracts.
Penny Arcade has famously signed away the rights to their intellectual property at least twice and only regained it by dumb luck. This is a topic near and dear to their hearts. I have seen the creators, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, and their business manager, Robert Khoo, talk about it in interviews and convention panels a number of times.
Khoo is probably the only business manager in the gaming world to achieve hero status for saving Krahulik and Holkins from themselves and helping to grow their company.
In this episode they have the contestants read through an exploitative contract and then go in and talk to Khoo about what they want struck or changed. Khoo basically plays a bumbling idiot in the negotiations because the whole point was to get the artists to evaluate the contract rather than necessarily deal with a combative negotiation environment.
Also, because it was a contest they only had a set amount of time to evaluate the contract and conduct negotiations. In real life situations everybody acknowledges the importance of investing all due care reading contracts and consulting with an attorney.
After the contestants spoke with him, Khoo mentioned that there were two basic approaches to the contract they could have taken. Either decided what their core values were and question whether the contract achieved or impeded those values or go through line by line analyzing each condition (or obviously a hybrid of both).
Because a classroom setting is similar to the contest environment with only a limited time to evaluate a contract (even if a student gets to take it home over the weekend), having a similar opportunity to look at a contract with many elements not in the artist or organization’s best interest and then roleplay a negotiation could certainly be helpful to arts students.
One of the things I never thought I got enough of in grad school was contracts. We got to look at a few contracts to see the sort of things that went into them and I got to read all the Actors Equity handbooks I wanted.
There really wasn’t a discussion about the type of things you would want to change because it wasn’t in your best interest.
Many people may be under the impression that a contract is something that you need to comply with as best you can if you want to do business with them at all. I think there is a basic assumption that the other party is acting in completely good faith and little acknowledgment of the possibility that the other guy may be trying to fleece you to the fullest extent possible.
Most people acting good faith with a reasonable bias toward themselves, but you had still better read the contract every single time it gets set before you.
Recently, (though it could have been 6 months ago the way time flies for me) Howard Sherman pointed back to a Huffington Post entry he did a few years ago about how the theater community looks derisively upon community theater.
I don’t know that this will ever change. But I recently got to thinking in the context of the Pro-Am trend where people are making greater efforts to hone their skills and knowledge, should community theaters be pushed to do and expect more to serve the needs of Pro-Ams and improve their own proficiencies?
Even though this proposal may see funding diverted away from larger established organizations (which has actually been suggested often in any case), in the long term it may benefit the arts in general.
Now that I am back living in a rural setting, I drive past volunteer firehouses regularly. It got me to thinking, not only are these firemen volunteering to run into burning buildings, they have to undergo 50-100 hours of training, refresher training, maintain good physical condition and show up to a certain percentage of calls to qualify for the privilege of risking their lives.
Not to mention mundane maintenance, housekeeping and fund raising duties.
I started wondering if maybe there needed to be a bit of a cultural shift for community theater groups toward requiring people to take classes and training in order to participate. I know there are many organizations that are pretty substantial and offer classes, but most come together on a project by project basis and don’t engage in a larger education effort.
Those who work backstage have the best chance of gaining additional skills because they are often being taught by people with some sort of construction background. Still, often novices are integrated into the effort without much safety training in advance. And they can be limited to only learning the techniques the most experienced person knows if there isn’t any effort to bring in outside experts.
I think actors might suffer most if they are only involved on per project basis. They gain the experience of performing and can certainly advance. But since the director is responsible for guiding many people, there is really no opportunity to instruct actors about techniques and the process of experimenting and exploring one’s options.
Having classes can enhance the value of the organization overall. Teaching is an effective path to learning so even if the group handles the classes entirely internally, they end up a little better off than when they started.
Bringing in guest teachers for seminars, whether it is a person from the community theatre the next county over, a professor at the local college or a designer from the big city, is even more ideal. (And maybe the experience will cut down on the derision a little.)
Now you may think it an awful idea to require people to attend classes if they want to participate in a performance because it puts up a barrier to entry at a time when the arts are trying to be welcoming to all.
But I wonder if a lack of this sort of rigor has resulted in the attitude we are seeing today that artists shouldn’t want to be paid because they engaged in a fun activity. Taking a class won’t necessarily guarantee a person will become any more skillful, but they will be more aware of the dedication and investment involved.
I don’t think having a requirement that if you want to participate, you should want to get better, is that onerous.
The classes don’t even necessarily need to be separate from the rehearsal process, though only having them as part of the process is actually more elitist because the training is limited to those who are cast.
When you think about it, when sports teams practice they don’t arrive at the field and move to their assigned roles. There are a lot of drills that focus on the fundamental skills of the game, improving physical condition and endurance. Players are asked to perform outside of their accustomed roles. There are clinics occasionally given by skilled practitioners.
This happens at all levels of play because the expectation is that you will strive to be a better player at the end of the season than you were when you came to the first training session. People who aren’t willing to make that commitment get cut from the team.
So that is why I wonder what sort of results would we see if funding and influence were directed toward creating an environment where honing skills became the norm.
I have been thinking for 20 minutes of a way to say it without it sounding condescending without much luck, but this bringing influence to bear would of necessity include a culture shift which saw “professional groups” partnering with community groups to provide training and assistance. As I said, I don’t think there will ever be a time when community theater will be viewed with complete parity by professional groups, but the gap will never close without increased interaction.
“came to Magee when he was sitting in on business pitches and noticed that many of them could have used an artist’s touch. “This isn’t just about businesses that need a graphic designer or have a beautiful website,” he says. “It’s about businesses with arts at their core.”
The committee for the competition received 40 submissions, but only half met the requirement of having arts at their core.
This reminded me about a post I did on the competition that University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management held last year where the teams including design students offered a more compelling and engaging pitch than the MBA students.
It reinforces the value those with creative degrees bring to business and points to the necessity to train creatives how to bring that value to businesses.
The winner of the MIT contest was a site called Mediuum and described as “a sort of iTunes for art, providing access to digitized art works for the masses.”
The art market is a $40 billion annual market, but is riddled with problems that alienate its largest potential consumer base. Digital consumers are habituated to the instant access and gratification they enjoy with other cultural content, like music and movies. By comparison, finding art they like is expensive and time consuming, and there is no digital solution.
Enter Mediuum:
Mediuum lets people discover, display and enjoy the art they love most, on digital screens. We combine an online marketplace of exceptionally high quality work by the world’s most talented artists with a platform that allows people to display that art on any screen. Our solution is creating a new online market for art discovery and consumption.
I visited the site and was a little disappointed. The only way to get on is the request an invitation. My first thought was that this was a reflection of the elitism that everyone accused the arts of perpetuating and an aspect of the alienation the project page referenced. The only way to access the art is to meet the approval of a gatekeeper.
I submitted a request for invitation and received a message that they would get back to me. Over 24 hours later, I still haven’t received a reply.
Now that being said, there have been many new online services that have required you to receive an invitation during the early stages. This has been the case with many Google products, including Gmail. In time, Mediuum may be easily available to all.
Or it could just be taking the problems of bricks and mortar establishments to the Internet.
Yesterday marked the last of a series of entries I prepared at the end of March to cover the move to my new job in southern Ohio. After Memorial Day, I will be returning to my regular Monday – Wednesday publishing schedule. Though for many of you, it will seem like a new schedule given that even if I finished an entry at 7 pm Hawaii time, it was already midnight or 1 am the next day on the U.S. East Coast.
Like many of my new colleagues and neighbors, you may ask why the hell I would want to move from Hawaii to rural Ohio. There are some economic and personal reasons, but the local and state arts environment had significant influence on my decision to move.
Even though Cincinnati is a 2 hour drive away, the existence of organizations like ArtsWave and the support for the arts expressed and shown by Mayor Mark Mallory was very influential.
The same state of interesting arts relationships permeates even the small town in which I now work. A very dedicated local community board has partnered with the university to present a performing arts season every year. They do a fairly significant portion of the fundraising for the series. I attended a board meeting the week before my official start date and was astonished by the sponsorship report that was given, in large part due to the graciousness and wisdom shown by one of the major sponsors.
Certainly, there are plenty of opportunities to advance the program for me to sink my teeth into and I look forward to it with relish. (Though apparently chili is the condiment of choice for hot dogs around here.)
I also look forward to plugging into the greater arts community throughout the state.
Rejoice Ohio, the state just got a little better now that I am here!
A few years back, I followed my examining the idea of Quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with a question that still percolates in my mind. I had wondered if valuing feedback over a specific grade might be a predictor of an inclination toward non-profit work.
I had based my question on the idea floated that there was a single survey question that could predict customer satisfaction.
I had wondered if there was any research career counselors used that might point even tangentially in this direction.
I also wondered if grades and test scores were de-emphasized in schools in favor of feedback, would we see a shift in the national culture of the U.S. that resulted in less political antagonism and fewer banking scandals as the importance of conspicuous evidence of “winning” diminished.
If you have ever read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you know he engages in an examination of the concept of quality. I wrote a bit about how it applies to the arts a few years ago.
In the post I made the following observation:
We go before legislatures and tell them that they should be concentrating on all the lives that have been changed and not numbers served when choosing to fund the arts. But when we get back to our offices, damned if it ain’t a lot about the numbers, eh?
In his book Pirsig talks about how he decided not to let his students know what grade they got on a paper but instead give extensive feedback about the work they did and how to improve. The students went crazy. The comments on the quality were well and good, but they wanted a quantitative measure of their success.
When you are running an arts organization it is much the same way. You love the comments about how great the show was, but what you really care about are a satisfying number of butts in the seats (or butts passing through the doors if you are a museum/gallery.)
I think we still face the problem that art for art sake doesn’t pay the bills. The numbers, both in attendance and income, drive us just as crazy as Pirsig’s students because it is the easiest thing to evaluate success on.
On the other hand, as I noted, in the absence of grades the A & B students rose to occasion and did better, the C students either improved or hovered in that territory and the D & F sunk. We all know that not all great artists garner the attention, and certainly the monetary compensation, they deserve. But many of them continue producing great art because they are either motivated internally or by the praise they receive.
Professor Longhair and Earl Carroll of the Coasters, both took jobs as janitors when their careers faltered. Both their careers came back to a degree, Carroll for example was the subject of a kids’ book, That’s Our Custodian, and toured with the Coasters on weekends because he seemed to value being around the kids.
“Mr. Carroll told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1988. “When they found out I was a rock ’n’ roller — I was on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo with Bill Cosby — the kids couldn’t believe it.”
He added: “Now they call me the star of the school.”
What endures in people’s minds about their experiences with the arts often doesn’t include the size of the crowd. Sure I remember attending a U2 concert with thousands of others, but I don’t remember the size of the audience for my first Broadway play (Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan) or the Steppenwolf company’s production of The Grapes of Wrath.
It’s the butts in the seats that make doing the show possible and it is a sad thing that talent often goes unrecognized and labors in obscurity while trendy, flash in the pan products get recognition. It is the quality of the people, both on stage and in the audience, that often makes being in the seat worthwhile and endures in spite of the absence of recognition.
A few years back I was reflecting on a study that found arts administrators sought online data and learning opportunities that were relevant to the challenges they face. The problem, as you might imagine, is that they didn’t feel there was enough time in the day to sit down and read articles, much less seek them out. They wanted some sort of information delivery system, but didn’t quite know what those tools looked like.
At the time, I had the insight that this was the same challenge many potential audience members faced. People who may not have participated or attended arts events, upon maturing personally and financially, might desire to start becoming involved but don’t know where to learn about doing so.
At the time my suspicion was that whatever delivery system solved the arts administrators’ problem could probably be used to provide information to audiences.
But now, 6-7 years on, I am not sure a solution as arrived for either group. If anything, the situation has become even more difficult due to need to choose from among a greater proliferation of choices. There is far more information flowing from arts bloggers, forum discussion groups and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. But there are no consolidated, dependable sources of information to tap into. The individual must attempt to curate their own information.
Even though I am judicious in who I follow on Twitter and via my news reader, it is often all I can do to keep up with the flow of information coming to me. If I weren’t motivated both by a desire for professional development and material to blog about, I think I might give up on making a serious effort to stay current.
But your mileage may vary as they say. If anyone has found a method to gain the professional guidance and information they seek and not become overwhelmed by the experience, please share it.
Likewise, if you know of a good resource for audiences seeking orientation about the arts that doesn’t condescend, let me know as well.
If you do a Google search for Management vs. Leadership, you will likely find the top results imply it is much better to be a leader than a manager. (Though the Wall Street Journal guide says you need to simultaneously be both.)
I searched again this year and if anything there are only more articles that point you toward leadership over managing. Many portray managers as authoritarian and inflexible. However, as I noted in my entry there are those who acknowledge the need for both roles and the capacity of managers to be flexible and creative.
One of those I quote suggests that what might be contributing to the view of management as being detrimental to companies is that there is such a push toward leadership, no one is investing the time to develop excellent management skills.
One of the great things about the report is that it talks about the impact of the Wisconsin Idea on the arts in that state with artists crisscrossing the state helping farmers and townspeople learn how to paint, write plays and learn how to sing together.
I put a number of great quotes in my entry, but one I omitted which seems just as relevant now as it was when UW-Madison President Glenn Frank said it in 1925:
There’s a gap somewhere in the soul of the people that troops into the theater but never produces a folk drama…. The arts are vital, if in the years ahead we are to master instead of being mastered by the vast complex and swiftly moving technical civilization born of science and the machine….
Even if you don’t see your organization as serving a rural community, the reflections by the grantees about what they did wrong in their approach to serving their community, how they rectified it and how things turned out splendidly just the same.
It isn’t often you see this sort of humility in grant reports and it can serve as an example of what to emulate.
If you look around at all the negotiations between the boards of symphony orchestras and their musicians and wonder how it can all go bad so quickly, some entries in which Drew McManus recounted mock negotiation exercises he conducted might give some insight.
While I was looking back at old posts for topics to revisit while I moved jobs, I came across an entry that reminded me about the exercises Drew had run. It all seemed so timely that I knew I had to call attention back to them.
Drew recounted his experiences running mock negotiations with Andrew Taylor’s graduate students at UW-Madison in two parts.
The first part was pretty fascinating to read about as the students immediately identify problems with the accuracy of the financials they, as the musicians negotiating committee, were given by the orchestra management.
“students seemed to expect that this was all some mistake and they would receive the “correct” figures at some point. In several cases, students claimed that an organization’s figures simply couldn’t be this messed up but I helped them along with relating a number of real life examples so they could begin to establish a useable frame of reference.”
Upon realizing that Drew hadn’t misunderstood the “mock” part of the exercise to mean he mocked them with absurd scenarios, those playing the part of the musician negotiation committee begin to get very angry. They accused the management of incompetence in the face of what Drew notes are no-win proposals orchestra musicians are often faced with.
Drew had previously run the same exercise with music students at the Eastman School of Music. What happens next may be illustrative of the difference in outlooks between music students and management students.
Instead of coming back to the table with a counteroffer,
With a certain sense of smug satisfaction, they informed management that they believe the organization is being mismanaged and unless they were presented with a better offer, they were going to break away from SimOrchestra and form their own, musician run, ensemble. In a sense, they were going to take their ball and go home.
… I then inquired if they put together a counter-offer that would provide the board with a better idea of what the musicians found acceptable. They informed me that they did not have such an offer and, furthermore, they refused to craft a counter-offer and reiterated that they felt confident that they could create an organization that had an annual budget equal in size, compared to what the board was currently offering them all while creating a better artistic product than is currently produced.
That pretty much brought the exercise to a close. Drew discusses the debrief in the second entry on the exercise. The students were eager to learn how they, as managers of the future, could avoid the mistakes and problems they perceived in the management’s offer, including the error filled financial statements.
Another student was curious how musicians could come back with a counter-offer at all given that the management’s initial offer was so egregious. They said it would be extremely frustrating to present a counter-offer that management would perhaps perceive as ridiculous as the musicians found management’s offer. “So what happens then, do we just keep going back and forth until we meet in the middle?” the student asked.
Unfortunately, the answer is both yes and no. Nevertheless, this question opened the door to another core component of the mock negotiation session: the environment of collective bargaining agreement negotiations isn’t black and white. Instead, there’s an inherent political dynamic which increases proportionally based on the severity of the negotiating atmosphere.
[…]
Based on conversations with some of the students later that afternoon and the next day, I observed that they were beginning to understand that, as the managers of tomorrow, they need to be prepared to enter into an administrative world that is neither perfect nor cut and dry. They also learned that they can’t rely exclusively on their academic management skills to get them through the woodshed experiences all organizations face at some point in their development.
Drew also wrote up a comparison between the UW-Madison session and the Eastman School of Music sessions for those who are curious.
As I went back to re-read these these entries in the context of all the contentious contract negotiations that have occurred in the intervening seven years, I wonder if administration and musicians both found themselves in situations as impossible, if not more, than the scenario presented to the students.
Even in the face of an unfair labor practice complaint that Drew notes would have resulted from the musicians walking away from the table as the students did, I am surprised we haven’t seen at least one group of musicians stand up and decide to form their own new organization.
The fact that they haven’t may be a testament to the difficult operating environment orchestras face and a recognition that it isn’t so simple to avoid the ridiculous set of circumstances with which the students were presented.
Back in 2012 Trevor O’Donnell posted 10 Deadly Sins Marketing Clichés., one of which was anniversaries. He pointed out that while milestones were once of some value as hooks for news stories, that isn’t the case any more.
That reminded me of a post I did about a meeting I attended where a freelancer who wrote for a number of publications told all those assembled that themed seasons weren’t really of interest to media outlets anymore either.
But I wondered if themed seasons shared across different arts organization didn’t have some attraction for audiences. I had noted that one place I worked participated in an Oscar Wilde themed season which included a “Go Wilde!” card people could use for discounts at each venue.
Granted, that was over a decade ago, but I am still curious about whether readers have had any experience mounting a similar program in their communities.
People might be interested in a program where they were guaranteed some sort of prize for visiting 4 out of 10 events in the course of a year and getting a passport stamped. Anyone who completed that much could be entered into a drawing for a greater prize.
If you encouraged people to post pictures of their passports on Facebook every time they attended, that could generate some buzz for the program. Not to mention, people could point to their social media post to prove their attendance if they lost the passport half way through the year and had to get a new one.
I had a “where are they now” moment looking back at an entry from 2006 where I mentioned the MacArthur Foundation had given a $250,000 grant to Edward Castronova to develop Arden: The World of Shakespeare.
The idea was to create the environments out of Shakespeare’s plays and allow people to play in as realistic as possible an environment. At the time I commented,
“I wonder if playing the game might not provide good research for actors. Find out how a peasant might have really felt after spending hours of drudgery online. Want to discover real motivation for delivering Henry V’s St. Crispen’s Day speech? Get ye to the Battle of Agincourt. (Of course, you might be felled by dysentery on the way if the game keeps things realistic.)”
So I wondered what ever happened to the game because I hadn’t heard of its release. Turns out, it never got released. The ambitions and motivations didn’t align with player values.
For example, one of the lessons Castronova says he derived from the experience was,
Think About Your Audience
“We put Arden in front of Shakespeare experts and they loved it. We put it in front of play testers and they yawned. We’d get feedback like, ‘I talked to that Falstaff guy for a while and got a quest to go repair something. I logged out and never came back.’ Too much reading, not enough fighting. Arden II will be more of a hack-and-slash Dungeons and Dragons type of game.”
There are probably a ton of audience relations lessons here for arts organizations, but I also saw some common incorrect assumptions shared by amateurs and other inexperienced parties about what it takes to do things full time.
I often have people who rent our theatre complain that the amount of hours we estimate their event will take is inflated, protesting that theirs is a simple show. People don’t realize that even with all the technology available to us, it is not easy to maintain the illusion that things are proceeding seamlessly without a number of people running around backstage communicating with various parties and executing a dozen tasks a minute.
Among Castronova’s other tips are not to be overly ambitious and to have appropriate staffing for the job. The thing is, even experienced groups are just as apt to underestimate requirements.
Performing arts organizations are well aware of the time and resources they need to invest in projects having done them many times over the years, yet they will often create new programs and assign them to already overburdened departments with the assumption that it won’t require too much more effort to take it on.
And that is often true, unless, you know, you want it to look half way decent.
Ten years ago, Inc.com anointed the employee handbook for Ann Arbor, MI’s Zingerman’s Deli as the World’s Best Employee Manual.
In all likelihood they have anointed other handbooks as the “best” since then, but from the sample pages from the handbook they have on the website, you can see that the fun handbook is something an employee would pay attention to. According to the article, Zingerman employees often carry the handbook around with them.
Since then, Zingerman’s has grown to a whole “community of businesses” run by managing partners whose vision the deli’s founders have supported. One of the businesses is actually a training arm that trains employees and conducts seminars for other businesses looking to learn about their methods.
Even if you aren’t interested in the training, the sample pages provide some good examples to emulate for your own staff and volunteer manuals to help keep the training in their minds and hands.
About seven years ago, I wrote about a friend who incorporated the company he founded in order to gain the assistance of a board to help him expand operations, only to find that they were moving to contract the operations to a place where the organization was doing less than when he was running it alone.
Now he is mainly employed by another company altogether (happily, exercising his artistic talents) and the company he founded is largely inactive. I have a somewhat better sense now than I did when I wrote the entry what the causes of this situation were.
I wondered though if anyone else had come across a similar situation where an organization ended up worse off soon after the addition of a board. Did you have a sense of what the causes were? How can that be avoided in the future?
Looking back at some of my old entries, I was surprised to find I had forgotten that five years before Rocco Landesman uttered his infamous blasphemy/straight talk about there being too much art, Western Arts Federation Executive Director, Anthony Radich had suggested killing off arts organizations.
So let’s euthanize some arts organizations. Let’s pull some of the nonprofit arts programming off the arts-production line and free up funding and talent for reallocation to stronger efforts–especially to new efforts tilted toward engaging the public. Let’s return to the concept of offering seed money for organizations that, over a period of years, need to attract enough of an audience and develop enough of a stable financial base to survive and not structure them to live eternally on the dole. Let’s find a way to extinguish those very large groups that are out of audience-building momentum and running on inertia. Instead of locking arts funders into a cycle of limited choices, let’s free up some venture capital for new arts efforts that share the arts in new ways with the public.
I guess everybody takes note of the director of the National Endowment for the Arts, but forgets about what the head of an equally important regional arts service organization says.
As with Rocco, the issue is much more nuanced than at first glance. I wrote about it and there was some good discussion on Andrew Taylor’s blog at the time.
Between a post Trevor O’Donnell recently wrote on bad press release practices and someone emailing me a press release where they spent two sentences explaining in the email that the price on the attached press release was wrong–instead of just changing the press release, I figured I had the moral duty to revisit a great post I wrote on a number of years ago.
Matthew Stibbe offered tips on writing “Press releases for human beings” He provides some very simple guidelines for writing press releases. Check the related links at the bottom of the post for some other good posts on the subject.
However, as I did when I first wrote the post, I wanted to point out Stibbe’s very valuable advice for clearing the previous version histories from your documents before sending it–or just creating a PDF.
Often what has been deleted from a press release is far more informative to journalists than what was actually sent. By viewing the deleted content, journalists can glean insight into a far more interesting story than the one you are willing to tell.
Back in 2006 I wrote on an NPR story that is probably even more relevant now than then.
The story centered around the Museum of Online Museums, a curated list of museums of all sorts around the world that had online presences. As I noted, the philosophy behind it is
The guys who run MoOM absolutely believe that seeing art in a physical museum is often a necessity and can be a transforming experience. But they also believe there are a lot of interesting collections of material out there that people should see, but that they wouldn’t necessarily ever want to drive to. They also point out that one would never have the time to visit all the bricks and mortar museums out there either so having the art online provides welcome and needed access.
Since the site has a mix of well known museums alongside ones that were curated by amateurs, the story raised the question about who is qualified to call themselves a museum and what actually constitutes qualifications.
My blog and others have countless examples of how being well trained doesn’t necessarily ensure the production of a quality product. I think the same could reasonably be said of a curator at a prestigious bricks and mortar institution. The inclusion in the story of a professor of Native American Indian studies saying that mainstream museums haven’t done a good job representing Native American cultural groups futher clouds the concept of who is qualified to assemble a collection. (Additionally, the professor is quoted as saying most tribal groups resist the term museum in favor of cultural center because it connotes something that is old and dull.)
[…]
Is the collection of magazine covers featuring the US Flag from one month 1942 more valid than the site featuring steel and coal magazine ads from all of 1966 simply because the former is on the Smithsonian site?
The same questions have been applied to who gets to call themselves artists/musicians/actors as well as what constitutes a legitimate theatre/opera/orchestra/dance company and who are just dabblers.
The answers have become more difficult to arrive at with the proliferation of so many channels of dissemination. You don’t necessarily need to have performed in an established location or be represented by a music label to be a successful and recognized music artist, for example.
I am beginning the process of moving to assume a new job in Ohio. If you are reading this, either my computer is packed and on its way to a new home or I am.
Fear not devoted readers, I have prepared a number of entries to hold you over until my computer, internet access and myself shall join up again.
Back in 2006 I cited an article Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper wrote on the growing cultural divide. (No subscription needed for the link in this post).
They discussed the emergence and impact of Pro-Ams, Professional Amateurs, a term that was fairly new back then. There is a lot to consider about what they have to say seven years later. At the time, they felt there will be a cultural divide between those who had the time and resources to navigate their choices and involve themselves in pro-am pursuits and those who didn’t.
I have to ponder more if the signs indicate things are moving in the direction they warn against or not.
What did catch my eye upon review this time around is their suggestion that we are moving toward renting culture rather than owning it.
“A few decades ago, cultural consumption required a small number of pieces of equipment – a television set and antenna, an AM/FM radio, and a record turntable. Now cable television, high-speed Internet connections, DVD-rental services, satellite radio, and streaming-audio services all require hefty monthly fees. Even consumption that feels like a purchase, like an iTune download, is often really a rental…”
This lack of ownership has been reinforced even since then by incidents where Amazon removed and changed content that people had purchased.
I wonder does this work to the benefit of live performance if music, books and videos become viewed as more ephemeral? Does the value of engaging in ephemeral experiences rise?
Or does it give rise to a notion that it is all disposable, not worth valuing and preserving since you can’t own it but can conveniently request access on demand?
April 17 is the anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s death. I thought it appropriate then to link back to a post I did titled St. Benjamin, about a man who was in many respects ahead of his time, including in relation to non-profits.
Franklin had the idea for matching grants 200 years before the Ford Foundation did. Back in 1751, he convinced the Pennsylvania Assembly to give $2,000 toward a hospital if $2,000 could be raised privately.
At the time, the idea was consider controversial, even Franklin was a little uneasy about his idea. As I wrote:
Well for one, political opponents felt the move was too conniving. I suppose it was because they didn’t believe he could raise the money and had tricked the Assembly. Franklin noted that knowing that their money would essentially doubled, they gave more.
Franklin himself referred to his innovative idea as a political maneuver so he might have felt a little uneasy about it himself. The success of his plan eased any troubled thoughts he might have had. “…after thinking about it I more easily excused myself for having made use of cunning.”
Last week I reflected on Adam Thurman’s recent post about wrestling corporation WWE reinventing itself three times to adapt to changing audiences.
He followed up with a post about how the visible manifestation of rebranding has to reflect an internalized change that has already started within the company, or else the rebranding fails.
He suggests organizations commit to rebranding themselves every 7 years or so.
His post reminded me that Japanese anime series change their opening sequence and music every time the season changes, which can happen multiple times a year. As an example, here is the opening of D.Grayman season 1 versus season 3.
There is continuity of characters and basic artistic look to let fans identify their favorite anime series when a new season comes out. However, other than the Drew Carey Show whose changes in opening sequences didn’t necessarily synch up with changes in seasons, I can’t think of too many American shows that make a regular change. (Granted, apples to oranges comparison.)
In any case, while most arts organizations may put out a different brochure every season, they may not change the look of their website as regularly. That might be something to consider, especially if you can feature the work of a local visual artist to draw attention to them as a resource.
It could be especially effective to change the header of a monthly newsletter since that can take less effort than revamping an entire website. Doing A/B testing with different art can help identify an effective look and identity for the organization.
You can probably get a high open rate on your emails if you tell people you want their feedback. This month half are getting one piece of art and the other half another, next month the art with switch for both groups. That way people not only are engaged by the request for feedback, but there is a sense of competition with another group about who got to see the better artwork first.
I am a long time reader of the web comic, Penny Arcade (sometimes NSFW) which is focused on gaming culture (online, console, tabletop) The creators, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, have been among the few people to actually make a living at it, though they have said it was a near thing a few times in their careers.
They have used their success to found charity that mobilizes the gaming industry to benefit kids and a successful series of conventions started in response to what they felt were inequities in gaming conventions.
They recently started an online reality competition, Strip Search, to find the next great web comic artist. The competition basically seems to be an attempt to give web comic artists exposure while making fun of the whole reality competition format.
They have them do goofy challenges like remembering trivia from a tour of Seattle and a drawing version of the telephone game in return for prizes. The elimination challenges are more focused toward an artist’s professional life- designing t-shirts and skateboard art to a client’s specs, interviews by the media and cultivating your brand by responding to social media praise and criticism.
The winner of the elimination challenge has to go before Holkins and Krahulik to draw a comic strip based on randomly drawn topics. The one drawing the worst strip has to leave the show.
This is where things really veer from the traditional format. While the artists draw, Holkins and Krahulik ask them all sorts of questions looking to unnerve them a little. Krahulik especially likes to say stuff like “CONTESTANTS 10 MINUTES! is what you will have in 30 minutes.” Then they make the contestants sit in the “shame hole” which is an SUV parked outside, while they judge the strips.
This may sound a bit torturous, but my view is that it is an attempt to satirize many elements of format. At the end of each episode, Holkins and Krahulik jump into the SUV with the loser and really encourage them to keep working and talk about their own experiences trying to get their careers off the ground. In a recent episode, Holkins gave one of the guys his contact information and encouraged him to contact him at any time for advice.
I think their aim is to both encourage the artist to continue and encourage their fans to support the artist. When I visited some of the artists’ sites, it appears they all got invited to the Penny Arcade Exchange conventions to speak on panels and gain more exposure.
Compared to most reality competitions, you might find this one a bit amateurish and unpolished. The production values aren’t high and Holkins and Krahulik aren’t the poised panel of judges you find on most shows. The result is some honest moments like a recent episode with audio of Krahulik cursing off camera at the prospect of having to choose between two well-executed pieces.
Ultimately, they do send someone home, but Krahulik refuses to enact the ritual destruction of the losing piece and instead gives it back to the artist to keep.
While manipulation of events and environment are the hallmarks of reality competitions, it seems like there are places Penny Arcade doesn’t want to go. For instance, while I have been watching, I found myself thinking that the contestants were being too nice to each other and complimenting their competitors’ skills.
It got me to thinking about why I thought it was necessary for them to less supportive of each other –or at least be edited to appear that way. Isn’t it tough enough to be in a competition that is broadcast all over the internet for everyone to comment on?
Heck, isn’t it tough enough just trying to make a living from being a visual artist?
It may not bring the prestige of a cable show like Top Chef, but in terms of artists using their success and following to help other artists, I think there is something there worth emulating.
Salon has an important article to read if you are an artist trying to use Kickstarter to fund a project. Apparently people don’t realize the money they receive via Kickstarter is considered taxable income by the IRS.
In short, money raised from Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms is considered to be taxable income. Amazon Payments, which handles the credit card transactions for Kickstarter, disburses the funds to the project creator and sends them a 1099-K, a tax form that reports “Merchant Card and Third Party Network Payments” to the IRS. In this particular case, a pledge made by a fan to a project would be considered a third-party network payment.
[..]
“Although musicians may not necessarily be selling something via Kickstarter, they are still entering into a transaction with their backers,” he noted. “If they reach their goal of ‘X’ amount of dollars, they have certain conditions they’ve agreed to make. They should consider the money as income because the IRS defines gross income from ‘whatever source derived,’ unless specially excluded.”
The article also notes that artists often underestimate the cost and logistics of making good on their promises. One woman promised her supporters tickets to a show so when she exceeded her allocation of comp tickets, she had to buy the rest herself. Another ended up spending $10,000 in postage mailing out the items she promised.
Kickstarter also brings an issue artists have faced with their patrons since time immemorial–their desire to be involved in all the decisions.
The issue for Dawn was intensified by her raising five times the amount of her set goal. Suddenly, fans were complaining that she didn’t really need the whole $104,000 to record the album. Dawn countered by noting that not only did she use all of her Kickstarter funds, but she also opened four separate credit cards and dipped into her life savings to cover the difference.
One of those interviewed for the article suggested that anyone thinking of launching a campaign consult with an accountant or business manager first to plan for the tax liabilities and expenses the campaign will entail.
I am rather busy wrapping things up here at work and preparing to move, but I wanted to make a nod in The Mission Paradox blog’s direction for a post he made about reinventing one’s organization.
Adam Thurman had been tweeting in advance of his post about how many times he attended Wrestlemania and how wrestling held lessons for arts and cultural organizations so I was curious to see what he had to say.
I had watched wrestling once upon a time, but drifted away for various reasons, including the fact the basic plot was pretty repetitive.
Yes, you could say that about arts organizations which revive the classics. Romeo and Juliet aren’t ever gonna get any less dead (though you never know…) But these days, there are probably more people for whom the classics are brand new than repeats.
But you have to admit, while the basic formula does repeat itself, there is a heck of a lot of drama that goes on before anyone ever enters the ring. Much of it harkens back to some basic archetypes with which people can identify: heroic journeys, villains, anti-heroes, talismans of power, ethical quandaries.
Thurman addresses some interesting facts I wasn’t aware of about how wrestling giant WWE reinvented itself twice in order to appeal to changing demographics and tastes.
I heard a kid tell a joke the other day that was probably pretty old when I told it to my parents 30 odd years ago. I frequently amaze my nephews by beating them to the punchline on knock knock jokes and riddles that I remember from my childhood.
But recently, I got to wondering who is preserving the valuable fart humor and bad puns of our youth? I am guessing parents aren’t largely responsible for teaching jokes like “How do you make a tissue dance? Put some boogie in it.”
My guess is that older kids/siblings pass these things on to the younger ones insuring the continuity of the best and worst kids jokes around. Even if each successive generation is learning these jokes from adults, the kids are enthusiastically passing them around their schools and playgrounds.
This makes me think it is all the more important to get kids involved with seeing and participating in arts and cultural activities when they are young. Not only does it introduce the idea that this is something people do, it can help to acculturate their friends as well.
Granted, kids chatting about their experience all over the school yard isn’t going to immediately transform into increased admissions at performing arts centers and museums. An adult tells another adult that his kids had fun at a Colonial times reenactment village, they might go next weekend. A kid tells another kid about the musket and cannon demonstration and imaginations are fired for hours, maybe days to come.
Arts and culture doesn’t have a lock on firing kids’ imaginations. There are a lot of things that will, and in the grand scheme of things, a few incidents as a kid aren’t going to make a specific impression that carries over to adulthood. After all, one hopes people’s sense of humor will evolve past the bad jokes of their youth.
But I have this itching suspicion that word of mouth among kids is greatly underestimated in its power to influence the adult that kid will become. The oral history preservation of these bad jokes hints at this.
Seeing a play may not be as compelling to a kid as talking about farts, but whatever a kid feels about their experience, they will share if they see it makes a connection with another kid. If the other kid has had a comparable experience and can talk about it, then both kids learn at an early age that these experiences can be used as a the basis of a relationship with someone else.
For awhile there one of the biggest areas of discussion was about whether arts organizations should be like airlines an adopt dynamic pricing that responded to the demand for the show. I haven’t read much about it lately, but suspect some people are toying with the idea.
But another option has presented itself, again via airlines. Samoan Air announced that they were going to start charging people to fly based on their weight. This is because one of the biggest costs for airlines is fuel and weight determines how much fuel is necessary for a flight.
There is a certain logic behind this decision. When you ship cargo, you pay based on weight and size. It is only humans which pay a flat “piece” rate for themselves and their luggage.
So can the arts do the same? Can we charge by how much art a person consumes by their presence?
Don’t we do this to a degree already?
Tiered pricing for seating is based what we project the value of that seat is in terms of sight lines, acoustics and perhaps prestige. But when we charge one price for adults, another for students, another for senior citizens and another for kids under 12, that is due to the fact that adults are at the prime of their facilities and so are able to gain the most enjoyment and enlightenment from the experience, correct?
Yes, my facetious tone is meant to be obvious. Since people come to art with different experiences and backgrounds, it is impossible to measure who is “consuming” more from their interactions with it.
The fact of the matter is, the different level of pricing is based on the recognition that students and seniors don’t often have the income to attend. Kids pricing is to encourage/facilitate parents to bringing their kids. Military rate is good PR to recognize their services.
The reality is, the whole set up is something of a social contract with our audience where the people who don’t qualify for any discounts are pretty much in the position of subsidizing the experience for those who do qualify.
Thinking about it in this context, I wonder if we don’t really do enough to thank all those full price buyers for essentially voluntarily participating in this artificial construct. Maybe slip them a Hershey’s Kiss or a thank you note when we rip their tickets at the door.
One of the arguments against dynamic pricing is the same you might make against charging people in the same manner as cargo. For many organizations, price is part of the relationship they have with their community. On its own, pricing won’t build loyalty or relationships, but it can be an ingredient because it acknowledges something about the other person.
I make my suggestion about rewarding full price buyers with candy with some degree of seriousness because I think audiences can take their discounts for granted and it might be beneficial for all those involved to acknowledge that the discount only works with the tacit participation of many others.
Yesterday I linked to a recent post by Barry Hessenius about gatekeepers and he mentioned that Hollywood had developed a pitch system where people without the connections to get a real meeting were afforded a short time to pitch an idea.
He talks a little bit about how email subject lines are really pitches and makes some suggestions about rhyming pitches (which I can see will be effective you if you don’t go full Seuss). He also notes that questions are much more active and engaging than making statements.
He uses the example of Ronald Reagan who famously asked if his listeners were better off now than they were four years prior. Pink notes that this can get listeners filling in the blanks to convince themselves in ways your statements can’t connect with them.
He takes pains to make the point that the word pitch may imply something is traveling in a single direction, but in reality pitches today are interactive. You invite someone else to have a conversation about something with you.
The pitch I liked the best was the first one he introduces, The Pixar Pitch. This one is most suited for the arts because it is all about storytelling. Pink says this is the formula Pixar uses while planning and plotting their movies.
It runs something like this:
ONCE UPON A TIME____________, EVERY DAY___________, ONE DAY____________, BECAUSE OF THIS_____________, BECAUSE OF THIS_________________,
UNTIL FINALLY_____________________.
He notes that we don’t see life as a series of logical propositions, but rather a series of episodes and so making your case in this manner can create a powerful connection with your listeners.
This formula can be the basis for press releases and marketing materials. I took a look at the trailer for Pixar’s Finding Nemo and it follows this formula pretty closely. You don’t even need to know the formula to have your inner narrator describe the scene to you “Once upon a time there was a fish named Nemo and his dad, everyday they happily swam together under the sea until one day…..”
Obviously, newspapers would get a little tired of you if your press releases explicitly used this formula for every show, and if you can clearly see a more compelling approach to use, go with that, but the formula can under gird what you are trying to communicate about events.
If you are having difficulty getting your ideas to connect with people, don’t you think it is a good idea to check out Pink’s short video and see what might resonate with you?
Their last suggested solution to avoid this is to appoint an “Idea Czar”:
“Appoint an “Idea Czar” from outside the senior management ranks. This person becomes a human suggestion box, an ombudsman for creativity. Anyone with a novel idea that might answer a current challenge is invited to share it with the Idea Czar, who periodically reports on what he or she has learned at management team or board meetings. Then use those reports to dive deeply into a specific question that piques the particular group’s interest or that the CEO would really like the board’s or management team’s best thinking on.”
I walked around most of today pondering whether this could actually work. I mean, it would require someone with enough seniority and experience to be taken seriously by management, but who also hasn’t been around so long that they are cynical about the viability of ideas. Even if the didn’t discount them immediately, they would need to be idealistic and energetic enough to effectively advocate for the idea in the face of a resistant board and senior management.
I recognized fairly early on that in my venue the idea czar would be our assistant theatre manager. (I am fairly idealistic, but she tops me.) This made me realize that it isn’t enough to appoint someone on staff into the position, if you really want to break out of a status quo, the hiring process has to involve actively recruiting people who possess idealism and strength of character to advocate in the face of a tendency to say No.
Apropos of this, Barry Hessenius posted this week about how one can be their own best/worst gatekeepers in terms of openness to “good ideas, new thinking and ways to actually be better managers, administrators and leaders; opportunities for new projects, collaborations and ways of seeing our world.”
Just as this problem of gatekeeping can manifest on both a personal and organizational level, the solution can probably be implemented on a personal and organizational level.
It probably isn’t enough to appoint a person to be the company idea czar if the board and administration are going to perpetuate an environment that is hostile to new ideas. Management and leadership should practice self-advocacy by setting aside time each week to entertain new ideas in the same way 3M, Google and Hewlett-Packard give employees time each week to develop new ideas and products.
Management and leadership might use this time to read websites they bookmarked, jot down what interesting ideas they have and then go back to ideas they jotted down in previous sessions. I think this last step is important because realizing you had forgotten some of the great ideas you had had weeks before serves to reinforce that fact you have the capacity to have good ideas.
Even if none of those ideas ever travel from the idea journal into practice within the company, the very act of engaging with new ideas, looking at them, turning them over a little, before putting them away, helps the mind practice accepting and handling new ideas rather than simply rejecting them.
We are often warned that art, and solutions in general, created by committee isn’t any good and doesn’t please anyone. But I wonder, if everyone involved feels ownership in what is produced and it strengthens the community, does it necessarily have to be of high quality aesthetically?
The wide gazing eyes of Thomas Cott fell upon a project sponsored in Mexico by the Scribe paper company. The company attached a small apartment to a billboard to house the artist who would be painting an advertisement for the company.
Over the course of 10 days the artist took suggestions about what to paint submitted over Twitter. The result may never be hailed as a work of genius, but the project garnered a lot of attention for Scribe. (You can see section details here) I am guessing it also strengthened the company’s relationship with a good segment of their customer base.
I am not sure what sort of guidance the artist was given by Scribe about integrating suggestions into her work, but apparently about 50 were used on the billboard.
Let’s pursue art for art sake and strive for excellence always. But for as much as we talk about connecting with our communities, it can often have the subtext of “but only on our own terms.” As Howard Sherman pointed out, there is a lot of disdain for anything tinged as low populism community theatre.
The primary goal of a community theatre production may have less to do with creating good art than spending time accomplishing something in cooperation with your neighbors. Heck, most guys who go fishing don’t want to actually catch something, they want to drink beer with their buddies.
So we may talk about how the arts need to connect with their community, but are we really ready to produce art for community sake, rather than art for art sake, and run the risk of creating really bad art that results in people feeling more connected with each other?
It likely takes starting from a place where you put community connections first and the pride and ego of the organization second. Scribe could have ended up in a situation where they had their name attached to a really ugly billboard in a prominent spot and they had to figure out what was the minimum amount of time they had to leave it up before they could paint it over.
It takes courage to cede control in a very public way. Just as not every masterful artist has the ability to teach what they know to others, not every artist and arts organization has the ability to lead a project like this to a good outcome.
You may have heard about Dan Palotta’s recent TED Talk about how judging charities on concepts like administrative overhead ratios is hobbling their ability to solve huge problems.
He makes some persuasive points, though some of the concerns I had with his proposals when they appeared on the Harvard Business Review blog three years ago still remain.
Gene Takagi picked up on the talk and addressed legal considerations which would prevent non-profits from operating in the manner Palotta suggests. (Just to be clear, Palotta never suggests charities cleave to non-profit status.)
Takagi notes that charity pay scales are limited by laws governing 501 c 3s and so can’t compete well on salary if supporters show tolerance for doing so to attract the best talent. Expenditures are limited in much the same manner,
“If a for-profit spends 90 cents to make $1, it may be a perfectly acceptable profit margin, but if a charity spends 90 cents to make $1, it would be widely viewed as a terrible waste. As a result, many charities fail to properly report their fundraising expenses, and the IRS has raised the possibility of utilizing the controversial commensurate test, which addresses whether a charity is using its resource in line with its charitable mission…But this can’t be judged strictly on percentages, and charities should be allowed to experiment so if an honest fundraising and mission awareness-raising campaign fails, the charity isn’t slaughtered for it. The problem, however, is not the law, but the misguided public ideology of which Dan spoke.”
Charities are also often limited and discouraged from pursuing new revenue ideas by federal and state laws as well as popular sentiment.
I think the biggest question that this whole discussion raises for me is whether social attitudes are such that a for-profit company raising money for social issues will be tolerated. Given that people will give money to projects via things like Kickstarter without much consideration about whether it is non-profit or not, is the idea that non-profits do things that companies won’t due to lack of profitability and governments can’t/won’t due to lack of political will and expertise, over?
Currently I think there is a capricious element to Kickstarter campaigns that make it an unsuitable model for garnering long term support. However the very existence of such mechanisms may be shifting mindsets to a place where worthiness and overhead ratios are not mutually exclusive.
A posting by Alex Tabarrok today on Marginal Revolution inspired some “what’s good for the goose…” thinking for me today. He links to a study showing that academics on corporate boards tend to keep the company healthy.
I am not going to suggest putting arts and culture people on corporate boards will automatically help a corporation any more than encouraging them to settle in a city will make the area more economically prosperous. However, many of the impacts the study finds academics (both professors and administrators) have on companies appear to be ones that arts professionals might bring as well.
First, academic directors are outside directors with relatively strong reputations and a tradition of independent thinking. They are trained to be critical thinkers with their own opinions and judgments, and they are less influenced by others and can be tough when necessary (Jiang and Murphy, 2007)…Fama (1980) and Fama and Jensen (1983) argue that outside directors have incentives to monitor management because they want to protect their reputation as effective, independent decision makers. Thus, the monitoring theory indicates that academic directors would be important monitors of management.
Obviously, not all professors would make good directors, nor would all arts people. However, arts people have that tradition of independent thinking and an almost inborn fear of being labeled a sell-out which can motivate them to speak their concerns.
Third, academic directors’ primary areas of expertise are academic in nature. They tend to think through problems differently than nonacademics and can provide different perspectives in the boardroom, which adds to the board’s diversity. Prior studies find that board diversity (such as occupational diversity, social diversity, gender diversity, and ethnic diversity) is an important factor that influences board efficacy and firm performance
If arts people don’t bring a different perspective to things, I don’t know who will.
The area the study found that academics contributed most to a company was in relation to oversight. As I read the following, it seemed that non-profit board meetings and the attendant committee meetings, something that is at the center of both a professor and an arts administrator’s life, might actually be an asset.
“We find that academic directors are more likely to attend board meetings than other outside directors. In addition, academic directors hold more outstanding committee memberships than other outside directors. Specifically, academic directors are more likely to sit on monitoring-related committees, such as auditing committees and corporate governance committees, than nonacademic outside directors. The results on the director attendance behavior and committee assignments indicate that academic directors are better at board governance than other outside directors.”
Other benefits to oversight the study found was that CEO turnover was more closely tied with company performance and the financial operations were run in such a way there were fewer Securities and Exchange Commission investigations of the top executives when academics sat on the board. Companies with academics on the board also tended to be more innovative.
Now, of course, the disclaimers. Not all types of companies had academics on the boards and the study finds that different types of companies benefited from different board compositions.
Business professors were the most effective board members. Other types of academic fields mentioned were technology and law. This is not to say that arts people wouldn’t be effective because it doesn’t appear that too many liberal arts professors were asked to serve. It is something of an unknown quality.
If corporations are valuing creativity and critical thinking from employees, especially recent college graduates, they could presumably benefit from tapping those who teach them.
Likewise, they could benefit from arts people who are not only creative, critical thinkers, but are constantly cobbling together coalitions to pursue projects.
But the potentially biggest impediment to effective service on a for-profit board for both academics and arts people is whether they are dependent on the corporation upon whose board they serve for support.
“Furthermore, some academic directors hold administrative positions and thus may have connections to companies through university endowments or other fundraising relationships, which may make them less independent than inside managers.”
Still, it is interesting to think about the potential benefits to a corporation to have an arts person serve on the board.
In wondering why it doesn’t happen more often, I came to the not inconsiderable or illogical conclusion that corporations may not view those who ask them for money as equal to the task of helping them make money.
Via You’ve Cott Mail comes a NewMusicBox article on how the Mondavi Center is using Google Hangouts as a way to connect with audiences and perhaps as an update of the traditional concert talk.
Author Dustin Soiseth starts out talking about the ill-fated Concert Companion and the resistance to its use which helped to keep it from spreading.
In the context of my post yesterday decrying how social media was allowing people to escape from boredom and uncomfortable situations yesterday, when I read the article I thought, “now this is social media I can support.”
I know it can seem hypocritical to be against using social media devices unless people are reading what I want them to read, but having them semi-engaged is preferable to being entirely disengaged.
I mean, if you are on a first date with a person, if they are going to be surreptitiously using their devices instead of giving you their full attention, better they be looking up information on Neutral Milk Hotel so they can pretend to be a fan and try to make a connection with you than have them looking up cat videos on YouTube. (Not that I am speaking from experience.)
As I acknowledged at the end of my post yesterday, there is an inevitability to social media’s appearance/participation in arts events so it is important to find a way to make the experience constructive.
Soiseth points out much the same thing.
The use of supertitles in opera, while commonplace now, was quite controversial when it began in America in the 1980s. When Beverly Sills introduced them at the New York City Opera in 1983, she was called a “philistine” in The New York Times. In 1985, James Levine famously replied “Over my dead body” when asked about the possibility of supertitles at the Metropolitan Opera, and yet ten years later there they were, Met Titles in the back of every seat, and in standing room, too.
Concert Companion was rebuffed and now the technology is manifesting itself in performance halls in forms the arts organization doesn’t control. Though that opportunity was lost, other opportunities are presenting themselves.
Even though the Google Hangouts Soiseth attended/researched weren’t well attended, there appears to be some potential in the model the Mondavi Center is using. Some of the difficulties they seemed to face appeared to be related to awareness and lack of familiarity with the experience.
Organizations might even be able to replicate the Concert Companion experience by putting QR codes in their program books that people can scan at the change of each scene or movement in order to access notes on the performance at each juncture. After the performance, people can scan other codes for supplemental videos, discussion fora and the like.
We all know that even without an iPhone in hand, people are going to get bored and turn their attention elsewhere, look at their neighbors, read the program book, clean their fingernails, etc. It is okay to be bored.
Given that people are likely to become disengaged at some point and given that the presence of social media devices are only likely to increase, the prudent thing to do might be to provide an outlet for people’s impulse to grab their phones in the middle of the show.
Take the approach of: we would prefer you don’t pull out your phone, but if you feel you must, here is some interesting material to look at rather than to text your friends about going to the beach tomorrow. That said, this material isn’t going anywhere and you can look at it during intermission or tomorrow morning.
I can foresee that people may use hashtags or chat environments generated by the arts organization to discuss the performance during the show. My sentiment about that is the same as yesterday–encouraging audiences it some time to percolate in their brains and discuss it later.
Not to mention, the audience at large may potentially be upset by people spread throughout the theatre giggling as they try to outdo each other insulting the actors’ costumes.
On the other hand, that interaction may provide the arts organization more feedback about their show than they have ever gotten on a survey.
If you are feeling like I am flip flopping on this topic, I have to answer by saying it is a really difficult thing to address in an objective way. I don’t think the sentiments I expressed yesterday are at all unreasonable. I am concerned about what it means for society at large when people are afraid to be alone with their own thoughts.
But I also know that using a social media device during a performance and honestly facing the truths of one’s life are not mutually exclusive and room must be made for both.
This weekend I was listening to Sherry Turkle’s 2012 TED Talk where she essentially reversed a position she held in 1996 about all the benefits technology would bring to our lives.
It isn’t really news to anyone that people are using technology to essentially mediate their interaction with their environment. However, the more I watched her talk, the more concerned I got about the implications about society at large and the more wary I got about the value of tweet seats in live performances. (my emphasis)
People text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations, actually during all meetings. People talk to me about the important new skill of making eye contact while you’re texting. People explain to me that it’s hard, but that it can be done.
[…]
I call it the Goldilocks effect: not too close, not too far, just right. But what might feel just right for that middle-aged executive can be a problem for an adolescent who needs to develop face-to-face relationships. An 18-year-old boy who uses texting for almost everything says to me wistfully, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”
When I ask people “What’s wrong with having a conversation?” People say, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.” So that’s the bottom line. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body — not too little, not too much, just right.
Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.
There is a lot more I initially quoted from her talk, but I felt like I had to trim it down a bit for brevity sake. Which is actually related to her point, I suppose.
At one point she talks about people viewing boredom and solitude as a problem that needs to be a solved with some sort of contact and so every red light and check out line is a potential cause of anxiety.
I am concerned about giving people tacit approval to shift focus to their cell phones instead of making an effort to engage with whatever is in front of them. Many shows have content that challenges audiences and makes them uncomfortable. It would be good if people didn’t have an excuse to avoid the conversation. I am not talking about in your face statements about social inequality and the inhumanity we visit upon each other, though they are worthy of discussion. I am thinking also of the disillusion faced by Willy Loman.
I guess the response is that 1- Not everyone will choose to tweet about something other than the event and may move the conversation to a larger audience and 2- You won’t have any problem if you give them something compelling to tweet about.
But the fact is, often your immediate and gut reaction to something isn’t all there is. Your response can at least wait until the end. Often you won’t know how you really feel about it until you have had a day or two to digest your experience. You may come to ruefully realize you were masterfully manipulated or that your disappointment wasn’t due to what you initially attributed it to.
I know a complete resistance by outlawing social media devices is not going to be practical. And there are likely many very constructive ways an art organization can cultivate and guide the conversation to create a larger discussion that results in people valuing their presence, even if they never attend an event.
But again, I come back to the question, can’t it wait?
Something a former employer has started doing has reminded me to always keep your options and mind open even if the potential value is unclear.
I used to coordinate the operations for the Appel Farm Arts and Music Festival. A few years ago, one of the board members, (now executive director), had the idea to offer a 25 mile bike ride on the festival day. I believe this year will be the third year they are doing it.
Because the festival is outdoors in a rural area, having a bike ride does fit the vibe of the event and the lifestyle of many of those who attend. But I gotta tell you, it would have never occurred to me that people would be up for a 25 mile ride followed by a full day attending an arts and music festival.
Just thinking about it is exhausting to me. Also, most of the audience does not live in the immediate area. Will people really want to haul their bikes to south Jersey to do this ride and attend the festival?
Just based on my experience living where I do now, I know there are enough bike enthusiasts who won’t hesitate to answer yes to all of the above. 10 years ago, I would have discounted the idea. And in fact, maybe all the elements weren’t in place to make it an attractive option back then.
As the guy responsible for all the logistics for the event, there are details related to adding the ride that would have concerned me and made me resist it. But there was a good volunteer corps that supported the festival so none of the details would have been too troubling in the end.
I applaud them for making the initial investment of time and energy to try it out. It is easy to advocate for experimenting and trying new things, but there are always practical considerations. The festival is a big event and to add something new diverts attention away from the core activity.
It may sound simple to gather a bunch of people on bikes, send them on a ride and make sure to have water and snacks available at the planned rest stops. There is still a lot of planning and tracking involved with the ride and I imagine the festival staff and volunteers make it look a lot easier than it is.
I think that it can sometimes be easier to diverge from the core mission of the organization in order to chase funding and grant money, but more difficult to add activities which complement existing programs but do not have a clear potential for financial gain.
I am not saying this was the case with the bike ride. They may have seen the opportunity to add 50 new attendees for all I know. I am just observing what is a potential paradox of just about any business. It is easy to get sidetracked by the prospect of new opportunities to the detriment of enhancing the value of existing conditions.
People may think that doing something with no apparent benefit is the cornerstone of a non-profit organization’s existence, but living and working under that philosophy doesn’t make the decisions any easier–especially when you are frequently enjoined to act more like a business.
So it appears that Google is phasing out its Reader service. This is rather annoying because it is the way I follow the vast majority of blogs. Given that it appears they are also phasing out Feedburner, it looks like the writing is on the wall that Google is no longer interested in helping people follow blogs.
So if you are subscribing to this blog via Feedburner, I encourage you to subscribe to my blog directly by using the subscribe by email field to the right——>
I have seen a fair bit of annoyance and anger over the impending disappearance of Google Reader. The strongest came from Maria Popova:
(The language is a little strong so I am placing it after the fold)
I have been thinking a bit more on my post about when you get your first hint that things aren’t going well for your organization. I haven’t thought up any more interesting warning signs, but I have been thinking about the “after action” conversations between staff members I mentioned.
It isn’t necessarily a sign that things are going downhill, but I do think at least a semi-formal post mortem discussion that leads to action is necessary for the health of the organization. If people gather around the water cooler, talk about how great the show was, sigh “if only more people were in the audience” and then go back to their desks leaving it to the marketing department to fix or hoping things are better next time around, that isn’t really constructive.
I have worked for companies where a post mortem discussion focused on the technical issues that needed to be fixed/learned from the next time around, but I have come to realize that development, marketing and audience services need to be given equal time. And they need to be at the same meeting with the technicians.
I will be the first to admit I don’t do this to the extent I am envisioning it should be done as I write this.
There may be smaller meetings prior to the post mortem where each department collects their thoughts so they can summarize their victories and challenges and keep the meeting short. But if you are going to embrace the idea that responsibility for marketing and development are shared across the organization, then every department probably needs to be largely present.
It is too easy otherwise for those who are not present to feel disconnected and uninvested in the central goals of the organization, inhibiting long term progress.
It can be easy to address concrete technical problems like broken equipment and missed cues. It is more difficult to figure out intangible things like how to attract audiences and motivate volunteers. When the decision is made to have a cabaret in the lobby prior shows in order to engage audiences as they arrive, it is better that the tech people were in on that entire discussion and know the motivation rather than being told they now needs to support a cabaret before every show.
Probably annually there should be a discussion about whether what the organization is doing is working. The ultimate decision will be up to the board, but the staff are all experts in their respective fields. They may be best positioned to say whether what the organization is doing is working. If the season is programmed out of a sense of obligation (seven shows, Shakespeare in the Fall, Musical in the Spring) rather than as an acknowledgement of the current operating environment and community, then the impetus for change and the supporting evidence may need to come from the organization’s staff.
Admittedly, it is difficult to move against the inertia of an organization’s history and business model for both staff and board. I don’t know that a staff would initiate a radical change. On the other hand, if they were regularly involved with providing feedback and saw it was often acted up, who know what people might feel empowered to suggest.
The impetus for this post came not only from thinking about the warning signs post from last month, but also thinking about a post I did from a year about about founding arts organizations with planned expiration dates. Though I thought expiration dates are a great idea, I wondered if anyone would have the fortitude to do it.
From there my thoughts turned to the concept that any business should always strive to do things a little better the next time around. I figure there is a better chance of arts organizations putting a self-evaluation process in place than planning for their own demise. Given that, I started thinking about what practices need to be in place to allow an arts organization to be responsive to changing times?
What I would really be interested in is knowing if anyone works for any sort of organization or business that has institutionalized a really effective self-reflective process like this. What about the corporate/organizational culture has made it so effective?
People will avoid the mechanical imposition of this sort of structure so there needs to be some whole hearted investment by the employees. I would bet that any organization that does a good job examining themselves also has a highly effective personnel review process.
Last Monday was March 4, according to my grandmother, the most commanding day of the year. (March Forth!). I am guessing other people’s grandmothers must have used the same line because last Monday there were a lot of hits on the post I did nine years earlier called The Most Commanding Day of the Year.
My grandmother had a lot of funny turns of phrase that she used to entertain and trick her grandkids. She was also very proud of being Irish (though she was second or third generation in the U.S.).
Now I have more German than Irish in my background from grandparents on both sides, but I didn’t realize that until I was much older thanks to my grandmother’s constant propaganda about how wonderful the Irish are and how wonderful it was that we were Irish.
I never recognized how much influence that had over my life. I have never been rabidly Irish, even on St. Patrick’s Day. However, two weeks ago I was listening to a Deutsche Welle report on how successful Ireland has been at achieving their goals while holding the European Union presidency. I felt a this sense of pride in Ireland’s accomplishment even though I only have a vague idea of how the EU presidency works.
I have generally been cynical about the effectiveness of constantly telling kids that they are smartest and most talented because reality tends to rear its ugly head a vast majority of the time and they realize they don’t measure up to the billing.
My recognition of my reaction to the Ireland story gave me some insight into the power of reinforcing ideas for kids as the grow up. It has started me thinking about the long term benefits of encouragement absent of specific value, consistently telling kids they can be artistic and creative without necessarily saying they are the most creative in class or specifying what being a successful artist looks like.
I know this sounds very vague and touchie-feelie and I will be the first to admit that I have no data to back this up.
I do know that many experts encourage parents to praise the process rather than the result– praise the hard work that went into preparing for a test rather than telling a kid they are smart for scoring so high. That way there is a sense of cause and effect behind a failure and how it might be resolved rather than a total sense of loss and bewilderment when the natural ability you have been told you possess seems to have abandoned you.
The idea that exposing and involving kids in the arts at a young age is important is barely news to any of us. My purpose in writing this post is to point to just how subtle and pervasive cultivating part a person’s identity as a child can be.
In terms of my Irishness, my grandmother’s influence was reinforced by the fact I lived an hour outside of NYC, one of the great bastions of Irish identity in the U.S.
But though my grandmother has been dead over a decade now, my immediate family, uncles and cousins inevitably bond over obscure “holidays” like March 4. My mother and I talked about it on March 3 and though neither of us spoke to my sister, she emailed out about the most commanding day of the year to my siblings and cousins on March 4.
If you think about it, there is probably some equally peculiar element from your own upbringing that influences you to this day. Considering all this, it may be helpful over the long term to include phrases like “what do you like to do?,” “what have you created lately?” in every day conversation with kids of all ages.
(By the way, I haven’t appropriated the saying commonly attributed to Gandhi for my title. There is no evidence he said it. But as with all evidence debunking misattributions, the research is pretty interesting.)
I initially only scanned the article, but listening to the Marketplace report on the radio on the way home brought me back to read it again when I heard the president of a technology company talk about how they make their new hires read Cato the Elder and Suetonius. He mentioned they were looking for people who could talk about the process of putting an idea forward, supporting it and problem solving.
“We do that because we ask them to look at the process – the abstract process – of organizing ideas,” Boyes says.
Sounds a lot like an argument for liberal arts education, at a time when more students are being told to study science and technology as a path to a career. Maguire Associates, the firm that conducted the survey, says the findings suggest colleges should break down the “false dichotomy of liberal arts and career development,” saying they’re “intrinsically linked.”
Or, as Boyes puts it: “We don’t need mono-focused people. We need well-rounded people.” And that’s from a tech employer.”
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how college students need to focus on practical majors like business and STEM fields rather than wasting their time on Liberal Arts. But businesses keep saying they need well rounded problem solvers, not just people with technical knowledge.
Yet that technical knowledge and specific experience is becoming ever more important, predominantly in the form of internships. The Chronicle of Higher Education addresses that specifically in a separate section of their report. What I really liked about it is that it starts by relating a story about a student failing in her internship and learning from it. I think that is a hallmark of a good internship experience.
What I was a little taken aback by was the fact this woman had six internships. My concern is based on the fact that it takes considerable resources to support oneself while they are participating in an internship. Cost of college and the necessity of attending is certainly revealing the gap between the wealthy and those with fewer means. Now to learn that incurring the cost of internships is increasingly important for employment and to see that one woman has worked six of them presumably to make herself more marketable, is somewhat disheartening to someone like myself whose family didn’t have a lot.
As I read and listened to the sections of this report, it occurred to me that arts training programs need to insure their education and internship opportunities are providing is relevant and valuable. But it also occurred to me that arts organizations offering the internship opportunities would benefit by marketing them to students outside the arts.
The interns from other disciplines can gain the practical experience and educational “leavening” they need to become more well-rounded. The arts organization can benefit in turn by having someone with a non-arts perspective working for their company.
True, this may reduce the number of internships available for people pursuing arts careers, but those students can also benefit from working for a non-arts company to become well rounded in other areas and pick up skills they can bring back to the arts.
Let me tell you, I wouldn’t have thought doing semi-farm work as a teenager would have translated into anything useful for the arts until it came time to drive a farm tractor around while setting up the grounds for an outdoor arts and music festival.
The Chronicle article mentions much the same thing:
Such exercises don’t always ensure connections, at least at first. Jacquelyn M. Lomp, who graduated from UConn last May with a B.A. in English, initially wasn’t sure how her internship, in which she wrote newsletters for the university’s pharmacy department, related to her studies. “I’d go from dissecting different pharmaceutical research,” she says, “to studying Norse mythology.”
Only after college did she come to recognize that both her academic work and her internship required intense focus and the ability to analyze language for deeper meaning.
The title of this post, inspired of course, by the song from Kiss Me Kate:
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