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Public Policy Has Broader Influence On Attendance Than You May Realize

by:

Joe Patti

I had mentioned before that Colleen Dilenschneider was making weekly posts on an ongoing cycle of surveying about how Covid-19 is impacting intention to visit cultural organizations.

The post she made yesterday was especially interesting because she included a regional breakdown of attitudes. She grouped the different states according to similarity in attitude. She pointed out that while Washington, Oregon and California have similar attitudes, for some reason North Carolina residents are distinct from South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

For all her data sets, she provides survey results from the same time periods in 2019 as a basis for comparison.  In 2019, the data for NC, SC, GA, & FL were roughly equal.  This year the difference in attitude is much larger.

She hypothesizes that these differences result from the fact Covid-19 is not impacting every region equally and the public policy of each region also varies.

While the national data is helpful for a broad diagnosis of the sector as a whole, COVID-19 is not impacting regions equally at the moment. New York has seen over 3,500 deaths and is bracing for a particularly difficult week, but Georgia’s governor has reopened its beaches and South Carolina is one of the few states still holding out on a stay-at-home order at the time of the data collection. These sentiments may be informed by what’s happening on the ground (i.e., how dire is the situation in the local communities), and by prevailing public policies.

She says some of the good news is that the overall survey results are stable over the last couple weeks. If you look at the bar graphs, everyone, regardless of region expect a return to normalcy at the three month horizon onward.

Just in general, I think this survey data indicates something we have probably long suspected –that government policy at every level creates a context which impacts our successful operations. It isn’t just funding decisions, but the aggregate influence of policies that apply to everything from infrastructure, licensing, agriculture, food, housing, transportation, education, and on and on.

All the more reason to have close ties with your chamber of commerce, convention and visitors bureau to become aware of decisions that are being made. Look for opportunities to learn about and provide advocacy for areas of the local & regional economy that may not seem to have a direct impact on you. If you are on webinars with other local government, business and community leaders trying to figure out if you are eligible to apply for funding available to small businesses, take opportunity note of who is in the virtual room, especially if any appear across multiple sessions, with the goal of  cultivating relationships at some point in the future.

Audience Relations, Government Relations

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You Know You Have Developed Good Relationships When A Coal Miner Supports A Solar Power Project

by:

Joe Patti

About two years ago I briefly mentioned a presentation made by Ben Fink at a conference about a community solar project Appalshop was working on in the heart of Kentucky coal country. Fink recently had a piece on the Brookings Institution website that went into detail about the where the effort stands today.

I wanted to point to it as an example of a cultural organization working in productive partnership with a community whose politics might strongly differ from their own .

The solar project wasn’t something Appalshop decided to do whole-cloth because they thought it was the right thing for the community. It was built on the relationships and trust developed over the course of years while working in partnership on other projects that aligned with the interests and needs of the community.

Results of this community wealth-building work have included expanding an award-winning farmers’ market into a community kitchen, reviving Kentucky’s oldest community square dance, and starting a brick oven bakery where neighbors recovering from addiction and incarceration could find work.

Despite being in the middle of coal fields, one of the biggest challenges facing companies and organizations was rising energy costs that threatened the existence of everything from the local markets to the volunteer firehouse.  While solar provided a solution to this ironic situation, being located in the middle of coal fields also made it a hot button issue.

Bringing solar to coal country was risky. Coal had been king for generations, and there was plenty of propaganda accusing solar supporters of siding with “elite, anti-coal activists.” It would have been easy to assume “the community” would oppose the project—except for the fact that the community was the one running it….

[…]

But the relationships built through the CCED process remained strong; the fire chief, a former strip mine boss and lifelong right-winger, continued to champion the project.

This work is not about changing residents’ political views. It’s about neighbors coming together across differences to create a new story about the place we all live in and love. To some, it’s a story about saving the planet. To others, it’s about saving money or fighting an energy company. But to everyone, it’s about supporting our communities and the centers that keep them strong.

The reference to the fire chief remaining a supporter was a testament to the strengths of the relationships they built. The fire house was a partner in the solar project but backed out when a gas company guaranteed the firehouse would never lose its gas supply. The fact the fire chief remained a supporter illustrates that his involvement wasn’t just motivated by desperate need.

Fink suggests that the relationships they formed helped overcome the perception that life in their community was a zero-sum prospect where what was better for someone else meant you lose.

Advocacy, Arts Facilities, Audience Relations, Leadership

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I Figured This Was Highly Unlikely. What A Difference A Month Makes

by:

Joe Patti

Early last month I bookmarked an article by Jeremy Reynolds in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette intending to come back to address it in a blog post in some manner. In the article, Reynolds was arguing for shorter classical music concerts.  At the time, I figured it would never happen broadly due to the inertia of tradition.

Now with public events shutdown and artists and organizations streaming their performances, I strongly suspect a lot more people are going to be open to exploring the basic concepts Reynolds espouses.

If concerts were shorter, the quality of musicianship could increase significantly. I often chastise classical groups for bloated, unnecessarily long recitals. An hour of tight, balanced, in-tune playing is vastly preferable to a two- or three-hour slog of mediocrity.

While some organizations say a program should fill an evening, offering quantity over quality is a poor strategy even if funders tend to favor inventive and diverse programming.

He also accuses ever lengthening intermissions of impeding the momentum of the experience. Since his article opens with him advising friends to go home at intermission, I imagine he would be all for a short, intermissionless performance which would solve two problems at once.

He addresses the idea that you have to give people their money’s worth:

I realize that the cost of ticket prices (which I recently argued are too expensive given how little revenue tickets generate) causes some groups to feel they need to hit a minimum threshold of time, but this is arbitrary. Maybe it’s not about the length of the program, but what an organization does with it that matters most.

[…]

The New World Symphony, a forward-thinking training ensemble in Miami, rolled out a series of concerts years ago that ran for 30 minutes and 60-75 minutes.

“The trick is not to think you have to fill an evening,” orchestra President Howard Herring said. “The question isn’t just: What music do I want to bring forth? but What is the uncompromised artistic experience that only we can provide?”

Now that groups and individuals are streaming their performances, they are almost certainly getting a lot of exercise evaluating and providing a highly focused uncompromised artistic experience. If things ever move back to the former semblance of normal, I think it would be a safe bet that those who continued to employ the “muscles” they developed while focusing on delivering an uncompromised experience will be on a firmer path to success.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Management Philosophy, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Being Generous With Your Creativity

by:

Joe Patti

Since I have been on the topic of arts and cultural organizations broadly providing content to anyone who happens by virtually, I figured there is space to point to another voice in the conversation.

Seth Godin made a post recently titled Generous isn’t always the same as free.  I raised the idea yesterday that maybe providing all this content isn’t in the best interests of creative entities in the long term.

Godin’s idea of generous not being the same as free may hold a key to resolving questions about this. He uses examples of a doctor taking the time to understand your needs, a waitress anticipating your needs and a boss who provides the challenging work you need.

In this last case, the generosity might actually result in you working longer and harder than before in order for you to grow. It may be a few years before you recognize that bit of generosity was beneficial and required more of your boss than they need have invested in you.

I don’t bring this up to transition to an argument about suffering contributing to the eventual growth or appreciation of creative organizations or those that participate in their activities. Lord knows there has been plenty of “suffering for your art” conversations throughout history.

Rather, I wanted emphasize Godin’s point that the common element in each of his examples is the contributions to stronger relationships.

Gifts create connection and possibility, but not all gifts have monetary value. In fact, some of the most important gifts involve time, effort and care instead.

[…]

In this moment when we’re so disconnected and afraid, the answer might not be a freebie. That might simply push us further apart. The answer might be showing up to do the difficult work of connection, of caring and of extending ourselves where it’s not expected.

When you are pretty anxious about the future of your organization, you may not feel you have the luxury of the deliberative, multi-week process Nina Simon laid out in her blog post I excerpted yesterday. You should have the time, though, to consider whether choices made and effort expended are generous gestures that will contribute to a relationship, albeit over a long term, or a simple freebie.

Advocacy, Arts Facilities, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Info You Can Use, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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