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Cultural Sector Re-Sorting Rather Than In Retreat

January 26, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS Experience have been dependable as always and recently provided a market outlook for arts and cultural organizations for 2026 & 2027 based on what research is telling them. (subscription required)

Two of the big general takeaways for me was: First- Use 2019 attendance as a reference point, rather than something you are striving to get back to. The operating environment has changed.

And Second:

The data does not show a sector in retreat, but a sector re-sorting.

The most important macro insight for the visitor serving sector is in 2026 and 2027 is that demand is not collapsing; it’s fragmenting along structural lines. The organizations that are doing well are growing stronger, and the organizations that have been struggling are generally facing increasing and compounding challenges.

Source

While the data shows certain disciplines will see modest to marginal improvements (zoo, aquariums, gardens, history museums/sites, live theater) and others will remain flat or see a small improvement in engagement (children museum, natural history museums, science centers, symphonies, opera, ballet.), they warn readers not to interpret that as a set destiny. These are general indications. Every individual organization is different.

They talk about the self-reinforcing death spiral that can occur when organizations cut back on capacity because they don’t have visitation. Among the things they encourage organizations to do is trying to maintain that capacity.

Additionally, they repeat the importance of findings released over the last year which I have covered. Including reducing the friction of finding information and purchasing admissions.

The fact many visitors appreciate value added experiences rather than discounted ones.

They note that while international travel is down, domestic travel to cultural destinations remains robust. However, you may recall that last month, they qualified this noting people are trying to squeeze their experiences into fewer days and cultural organizations need to have a plan to meet those needs.

Audience Relations, Business Models, Info You Can Use, Working In The Arts

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Permission To Be Creative

January 21, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

h/t to Anne Smith who posted this video on Linkedin of Ethan Hawke talking about giving yourself permission to be creative.

For me the big impactful statement he makes is that everyone thinks arts and creativity don’t matter until they encounter a moment of great sorrow or joy and need to get their bearings. Suddenly, they wonder if their experience is unique in the world or if others have gone through the same thing.

So you have to ask yourself: Do you think human creativity matters? Well, hmm. Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry. Right? They have a life to live, and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of a sudden, you’re desperate for making sense out of this life, and, “Has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?”

Or the inverse — something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much, you can’t even see straight. You know, you’re dizzy. “Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?” And that’s when art’s not a luxury, it’s actually sustenance. We need it.

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One of the big challenges for those of us that operate in the artistic and creative space is to convince people that creative experiences aren’t just for those moments of overwhelming joy or sorrow, but can be part of your everyday expressive life. Especially, as Hawke says, if you are willing to appear a little foolish.

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity

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AI Coming For ESPN Commentators

January 20, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

There’s a kinda meme image circulating where a person says they had imagined a future where AI made her work easier so that she had more time for creative leisure. Instead, AI is being used to generate creative work.

The unspoken conclusion is that the woman continues to be stuck working hard.

Additionally there is an increasing skepticism about any sort of creative work being the result of the artist. I was watching artists presenting proposals for public art installations in the last two weeks and each made very specific disclaimers about what in their presentations was AI generated. (Largely, it was the streetscapes in which the proposed art work was positioned.)

Economist Tyler Cowen recently posted a job listing which was paying people with sports expertise pretty well to evaluate AI tools analysis of basketball games. As a number of commenters noted, people would essentially be training their replacements.

Since I have already seen an AI translate foreign language into English from video and match the energy of the speaker, I imagine it won’t be long before AI is doing analysis and color sports commentary in real time, drawing from existing reporting about injuries and career history.

I guess there is potential for these tools to be applied to reviews of performances and lead to a return of arts coverage. Though I imagine that would be a lot tougher to identify the nuances in technique and tempo in dance and music those fans want vs. analysis of a basketball game. One obvious concern in addition to this tool replacing human writers is AI reviewing work created by AI.

Here is the job description Cowen posted.

Role Overview
We’re looking for Basketball experts — avid fans, sports journalists, commentators, and former or semi-professional players — to evaluate basketball games. You’ll watch basketball games and answer questions in real time assessing the quality, depth, and accuracy of AI insights, helping us refine our AI’s basketball reasoning, storytelling, and strategic understanding.

Key Responsibilities
Game Evaluation: Watch basketball games and review AI-generated play-by-play commentary and post-game analysis.

Performance Scoring: Rate the accuracy, insight, and entertainment value of AI sports coverage.

Context & Understanding: Assess the AI’s grasp of player performance, game flow, and strategic decisions.

Error Detection: Identify factual mistakes, poor interpretations, or stylistic inconsistencies.

Feedback Reporting: Provide clear written feedback highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and improvement opportunities.

Collaboration: Work with analysts and developers to enhance the AI’s basketball-specific reasoning and realism.

Source

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, creativity, Working In The Arts

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Australian Teen – You’re A Rebellious Art Lover

January 14, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

Imagine, just as you have gotten with the times and started to effectively use social media to communicate and engage with younger audiences, the tool is yanked away.

That is kinda what is happening in Australia where a new social media ban on those under 16 went into effect in early December. The Art Newspaper had contacted a number of museums in that country to get their take on what the impact would be. Some said there wouldn’t be a lot of impact because most of their attendees weren’t under 16.

Others said they had been working on cultivating engagement with teenage audiences and had seen their attendance skew younger.

However, Russell notes that “increasingly teenage audiences are a focus for museums and galleries in Australia,” adding that “some social media platforms are used strategically to engage these audiences—platforms like TikTok, for example, have offered museums and galleries opportunities to communicate their content and collections in new ways, often playfully, engaging younger audiences with cultural collections.”

[…]

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), for example, attracts a young demographic through its doors, with 50% of its visitors under the age of 35, according to a museum spokesperson. “Youth engagement is very important to MCA, and we provide options for all ages to engage across our platforms, programs and events—including our website, e-newsletters for families and parents, free access to the museum for under 18s, free group visits for school and tertiary students, and deep engagement through selected school and community outreach programs,’

Source

It will be interesting to see what direction arts organizations who would like to increase the participation of younger people may take. Messaging to parents to encourage they bring their kids utilizes a different appeal than those used with the kids themselves.

On the other hand, use of social media may be too engrained in younger people to effectively ban. Apparently young Australians are using their parent’s accounts, using VPNs that make it look like they live in other countries, migrating to new apps that aren’t currently covered by the ban. Arts organizations may find they can continue to achieve their goals by creating content for consumption by a group that technically isn’t supposed to be accessing it. In fact, there may be some value in messaging that reinforces the rebellious identity the teens & tweens feel when they are circumventing the ban.

Little post script– Case in point, Aussie museum are missing out on the opportunity to promote to the kiddies like the National Gallery of Art did today for their Open Call to remix their art work. You have to be 18+ to enter, but folks too much older than that may not understand the video.

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