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Even More Important That Panels & Post-Show Discussions Be About Audience Experience

by:

Joe Patti

Today I had a post appear on ArtsHacker where I point out some general tips for organizing panel discussions. This covers everything from pre- and post-show chats to conference panels.

Essentially, the tips follow the same philosophy generally espoused for any sort of arts and culture event — make the environment about enriching the attendee experience  rather than celebrating how awesome the people on the panel are. People are intentionally present at this conversation in the hopes of becoming better informed so the goal should be on removing any impediments to that. (And, after all, even those of us that produce and present events are audience members at some point, too. We are seeking the same enrichment.)

For discussions oriented on performances, it is all about facilitating meaningful conversations for the audience and then getting out of the way. One person I cite mentions that having performers present can inhibit a free flow conversation because people tend to censor themselves or focus on the performer rather than the performance. He suggests ways to involve performers so they don’t become the focus.

A dramaturg I quote suggests some questions that focus on the audience experience which can prevent audience members from feeling they are obligated to ask a question and resort to “How do you remember all those lines/notes/movements?”

For discussions that are the event rather than the complement to the event, the concept is very much the same. Don’t spend half the allotted time reading panelist bios and allowing them to make increasingly lengthy opening statements – keep introductions short and get right into a discussion between panelists that have real things to say to one another.

The panelists don’t have to be so diametrically opposed to each other that you need a security guard prepared to tackle them, but no one walks away with something new to consider if everyone is nodding in agreement with everyone else.

By the way, many of the same guidelines for panelists are suggested for questioners from the audience- run a disciplined Q&A with a strict time limit and ground rules stated in advance to prevent an escalating series of lengthy rants.

I am sure frequent conference attendees probably silently pray that most of these guidelines were applied to the sessions they attend.

Panels And Post Show Discussions

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Info You Can Use, State of the Arts

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Deliberate Practice Better Than A lot of Practice

by:

Joe Patti

The Guardian recently had a story about a study debunking the idea that it took 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. I have written a number of posts on the subject over the last few years, but feel it is important to revisit it often given our cultural predilection for valuing quantity over quality.

…there was little to separate the good from the best musicians, with each logging an average of about 11,000 hours. In all, the number of hours spent practising accounted for about a quarter of the skills difference across the three groups, according to the study published in Royal Society Open Science.

Macnamara believes practice is less of a driver. “Once you get to the highly skilled groups, practice stops accounting for the difference. Everyone has practised a lot and other factors are at play in determining who goes on to that super-elite level,” she said.

“The factors depend on the skill being learned: in chess it could be intelligence or working memory, in sport it may be how efficiently a person uses oxygen. To complicate matters further, one factor can drive another. A child who enjoys playing the violin, for example, may be happy to practise and be focused on the task because they do not see it as a chore.”

That last bit about the value of enjoyment is really one of the key elements. This is enjoyment in terms of being engaged by the practice, not necessarily being happy about the callouses, aches and frustrating lack of progress. (In fact Nina Simon just posted about a torturous experience whose ridiculous sadism she feels helps her prepare for the adversity life throws at us.)

If your practice is based on pushing yourself to do 5 minutes more than yesterday, then your focus will be on the clock rather than on improving.  The result is that you can play longer, but not that much better.

There is a lot of evidence that variety and deliberate practice helps much more than consistently practicing in the same way. Teaching others a skill is often very valuable to improving your own practice. Even if you don’t feel you are a particularly good teacher or enjoy teaching, the act of teaching any skill at all, even washing dishes, can instill the patience and tolerance of yourself useful for your own practice.

Since we can often be harder on ourselves than others, learning not to obsess about our mistakes might be one of the most valuable assets in practice that no one ever teaches us. A focus on achieving “not wrong” is not equivalent to achieving greater mastery. At a certain point needing to redeem the poor job you did yesterday or deriding yourself for doing better yesterday than today becomes an obstacle rather than path to growth.

As the researchers imply, there can be other factors outside of your control which limit greater mastery. But you never know if that limitation is permanent or a temporary factor associated with your current method of pursuit. Mental healthwise, it may be better to assume the latter and examine alternative approaches.

 

creativity, Working In The Arts

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A Place That Is Green

by:

Joe Patti

You may recall that two years ago the number one cultural activity people indicated they engaged in, according to the 2017 Culture Track survey, was going to the park.

Last week the Washington Post discussed a survey conducted by the University of Vermont which suggested that going to the park, and even the anticipation of going to the park, created

“a jolt of euphoria one might get on Christmas morning.

What’s more, they found, people’s moods started to improve just from the anticipation of a park outing, and the afterglow of increased happiness subsisted several hours afterward. They also found that while any sort of outdoor public gathering space boosted people’s happiness, large parks with lots of vegetation seemed to provide the biggest benefit.”

The researchers geo-tagged Twitter posts in San Francisco over the course of three months. This allowed them to figure out where people were posting from. They analyzed the word choice of the tweets by assigning words with emotional values and found the greatest positivity expressed while at the park and increased positivity before and after visits as compared to other places.

The Washington Post article has a lot of disclaimers about the limits of sentiment-analysis tools like the one used by researchers, but apparently the tools are effective when applied to large amounts of text.

Ultimately, the reason I choose to call attention to the article is to provide a bit of support for the performance in the park programs many arts and cultural organizations conduct around this time of year. Since groups are doing it anyway, they probably don’t need rigorous, unimpeachable survey results to convince them to continue.

If you pondering doing events away from your home facility, the combined data of the University of Vermont study and Culture Track survey, make a park with lush greenery a smart choice.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Tonight We Have Paired The Seared Scallops With Wine And An Aria

by:

Joe Patti

Back in May, American Theatre had an article about audience building efforts Opera Theatre St. Louis (OTSL) undertook with funding from the Wallace Foundation.  In my experience, there is always something to learn from these projects funded by the Wallace Foundation, especially since the case study reports tend to be honest about what things didn’t go well. So it is worth the time to read this short article.

One of OTSL’s efforts that drew my attention was their Opera Tastings project where they would pair tastings of food and wine with short opera performances. What I really appreciated about their effort here was that they took the program a fair distance from their home rather than concentrating on the St. Louis city limits. (my emphasis)

Hosted in a local restaurant or venue, the evening pairs 11 samples of food or drink with 11 operatic excerpts. The evenings have taken place all over St. Louis: in predominantly Black neighborhoods, in Chinatown, in Southern Illinois, or as far away as Columbia and Fayetteville, Mo. (120 miles and 145 miles, respectively).

“If the intent is to draw people in who surround you, then most of our organizations are finding that they have to be more present in the community,” says Ramos. “It’s how you build relevance. It’s how you show the work.”

[…]

Newcomers, in other words, discover what type of opera they enjoy, instead of being told why they should enjoy opera. More than three-quarters of Opera Tasting attendees are new-to-file (i.e., first time patrons), and every attendee gets $10 in “opera bucks” to redeem for a ticket to an upcoming show.

As I mentioned before, an aspect of these programs I have valued is the fact they were open about what went wrong. This type of reflection is a core part of Wallace Foundation’s ethic of “continuous learning” according to the article.

There was enough of an upside, despite the cost, to make the Opera Tastings worth retaining and refining. (my emphasis)

A lot of those opera bucks get redeemed: Right now an average of 42 percent of Opera Tastings attendees go on to buy tickets. What’s more, audience members who come to OTSL through Opera Tastings tend to buy more expensive tickets and become donors at a faster rate than expected.

One caveat: The tastings are costly to produce, costing $7,100 per tasting in 2018. And the true cost of audience recruitment may be obscured by the subsidies covered by opera bucks as well as discounted ticket prices

“It’s an expensive way to acquire new audience members,” admits Timothy O’Leary, general director of Opera Theatre from 2008 to 2018. And the majority of people who attend, 58 percent, never buy a ticket. The challenge now is to see how the tastings might be sustainable without Wallace support.

The article also talks about other programs like their Young Friends program which they estimate has a $16,000-$17,000 impact and their Opera Kids Camp for children to attend while their parents are at the opera. Take a look to learn more.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Info You Can Use, Marketing/PR, New Initiatives

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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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