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Perhaps It Is A Lack of Desire To Make The Arts Fit

October 26, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

Looking back at past entries, I came across a post I wrote about educator Jane Remer’s thoughts about arts in education. I had read and written this post years before I began corresponding with the late Carter Gillies about the problematic instrumental view of the arts so, as they say, it hits differently now.

In her post, The Arts Just Don’t Fit in Most of Our Schools, Remer writes:

The arts community – arts educators, arts organizations, artists who work with schools, other friends of the arts–has tried and failed for years to make the case for the arts in every student’s life and learning environment. Claims abound for the arts as important intellectual and experiential domains as well as exceedingly effective instrumental bridges to other usually non-arts ends. These claims are rarely backed up by solid empirical research and when they are, the evidence is overwhelmingly correlational, not causal. These claims are almost never made by school people, K-20 and beyond, and only occasionally uttered by policy makers, whether top down legislators or bottom up teachers, leaders and district superintendents.

In another post, “What Can We Do to Make the Arts Count As Education, she lists many of the reasons art isn’t counted, partially because no one invests the attention, time and funding in doing so, and partially because benefits an+d outcomes aren’t easily captured by metrics people value:

Today, when people talk about counting the arts, they usually mean quantifying — how much, how often, by whom, for whom, at what cost, and the like. These are good things to know but they tell us nothing about what is being taught and learned, the quality of instruction and learning, the depth of inquiry, the time spent on reflection, and the methods, if any, used to assess the process and the results. They don’t tell us when to make mid-course corrections, where the learning gaps are, how teachers or students are struggling (or not), and where an infusion of technical and other professional assistance might be judicious. In other words, we don’t have the information we need to diagnose our own knowledge and behavior as well as that of our students. And, we don’t treat the arts like full-fledged core subjects that are essential to student overall growth and achievement.

Given the length of time I have been blogging, I have read a lot about arts education, but seldom has it been as specific and insightful as Jane Remer’s thoughts and observations.

Art(ist) Education

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Have Things Changed Since 2008?

October 25, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

I am going to be traveling and preparing to take up a new position so I am dipping back into the archives to help provide some content while I am busy elsewhere. One of the first entries I came across in my review of old posts seemed to be well-suited for re-examination. Back in 2009 Andrew Taylor made a post about survey work his students had done at the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) in Denver. Happily the links to his original post and survey results I included in my post reflecting on the survey results still work if you want to see them.

The conference was a meeting by members of different arts disciplines, including service organizations like Theatre Communications Group, Opera America, Chorus America, Dance/USA and League of American Orchestras. One of the observations made in the surveying was the different cultures of each discipline. I wonder if people feel things have changed since 2008/2009 or if this still generally describes things:

The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

Other topics I covered in my post had to do with degree of trust between arts administrators, community engagement practices, government relations, knowledge sharing throughout disciplines, as well as lack of sleep and succession planning.

While the status quo feels like it has remained in place on all these fronts, the one area covered in the survey which seems like it is finally being addressed seriously these last few years is diversity. Some of the summarized responses are a little cringe-worthy.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Here is the original survey report if you want to take a deeper dive.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Leadership, Working In The Arts

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Pursuit of Low Overhead Ratio Is Starving Cultural Org Of Success

October 24, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

For a long time now pursuit of a low overhead ratio has been viewed as a benchmark of good governance in the non-profit sector. There have been arguments against that view, but the perception doggedly persists. Recent research specifically focused on arts and cultural non-profits indicates that these organizations actually need to be spending between 30-35% of their budget on overhead in order to be successful.

I wrote a post for ArtsHacker on the topic recently highlighting this:

As we explained in the academic journal Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, we found that when arts nonprofits devoted 35% of their budget to overhead, they fared best in terms of attendance.

Attendance declined, by contrast, for organizations that spent extremely low and high amounts of their budget on overhead. Groups that spent far too little saw their attendance decline by 9%. Attendance for arts groups that spent way too much on overhead fell by 30%.

While there spending too much is definitely detrimental to attendance, a sizeable portion of non-profit cultural organizations are expending far below what is beneficial.

Hop over to the Arts Hacker post to get more detail about why pursuit of a low overhead ratio sends cultural organizations into a downward spiral as well as why the researchers insist there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb about expense ratios.

You Probably Need To Be Spending More On Overhead

Business Models, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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When You Realize Pandemic Stole Theatre, But Not Your Identity

October 19, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

Last month I mentioned NPR was doing a series on theatre in the US. In fact, there is an installment in that series airing today. However, today I wanted to point out a entry in the series from early October which talks about the steps some theatres have taken to create better work environments.

In this particular episode they focus on the changes Baltimore Center Stage implemented, including the elimination of 10 out of 12 work days. I could have sworn I wrote about earlier, but can’t find that entry to it seems doubly important to draw attention to it.

…Center Stage joined a handful of other theaters pledging to do away with a practice known as “10 out of 12s.” It’s a shorthand for the hours theater workers put in. It refers to a rule where actors can’t work more than 10 hours in a 12 hour day. But once the actors are done, the crew has to go over notes and problem-solve things that didn’t work. So days for backstage workers can stretch into 14 hours, 16 hours, if not more. And those last hours always seem to take the most time.

[…]

Center Stage moved to an eight out of 10 workday, drawing praise from Lindsay Jones, a composer and sound designer for theater and film based in New York City and a member of the group No More 10 out of 12s.

[…]

From Jones’ perspective, theater as an industry has a tendency to work on autopilot and avoid any self-reflection. Jones says that when a place like Center Stage makes a move like that, it makes a broader difference.

“Their taking a stand, I believe, really did encourage others to stop and think about what they had been doing in their practices and could they make those changes,” he said.

The piece mentions other steps Center Stage has taken, including increasing compensation for staff which lead them to eliminate their internship program. Even though they had offered stipends and intern housing, they felt the arrangement was still exploitative.

But perhaps the most food for thought about what a work environment might look like in the future came near the opening of the piece which mentioned that theatre people often wrap so much of their identity around their passion for their chosen art. But that after having that taken away from them by the pandemic for a year or more:

“A lot of people realized that their identity didn’t disappear when they left theater for a year,” said Rachael Erichsen, props manager at Center Stage. “And once you realize that, then you do start to weigh those options — are the long hours, is the stress worth it for me?”

Working In The Arts

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