Home Page

Why Do I Have To Call Dun & Bradstreet To Apply For A State Arts Grant?

January 28, 2019

by:

Joe Patti

As we move further into the new year, many grant deadlines are starting to creep up en masse upon arts organizations. As you are filling out all the mandatory fields in your grant application, you may be wondering why you have to have a DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) number in addition to your Employer Id Number (EIN), especially since they are both the same number of digits.

You may also be wondering why a commercial data firm like Dun and Bradstreet gets to dole out these numbers, instead of a governmental entity. Well, I don’t have all the answers, but I did provide a good number of them in an ArtsHacker post on the subject a couple weeks ago.

As I write in that post,

The simple answer is that your EIN is associated with your IRS tax records and the DUNS number is associated with your business credit score.

[…]

One reason the DUNS numbers are separate from EIN is that a DUNS number is tied to a physical address. This makes sense in the commercial for-profit realm since a branch of a company in California may have better credit than one in Florida, but there aren’t many non-profits that are so large that they have a single EIN but require different DUNS numbers.

Learning that your DUNS number is associated with your credit score may be cause for concern—how many non-profits are going to have a great credit score after all?

Given that overhead ratio has been used as a measure of effectiveness for non-profits, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone is going to get the bright idea that credit score is a good shorthand for deciding whether a non-profit is being run well. This would be a really bad idea since the standards used to assess credit worthiness of a for-profit entity are inappropriate for non-profits.

But you know, non-profits should be run more like a business right?

In any case, if you would like to know a little more about DUNS numbers and how to get one for your organization, (or see if you already have one), check out my ArtsHacker post.

What Is A DUNS Number And Why Do I Need It?

Fundraising, Info You Can Use, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Are Audiences Ready To Directly Participate In Gamified Performances?

January 23, 2019

by:

Joe Patti

Jonathan Mandell writes about an off-off-Broadway show that has audience members to take part in the show and prepares them by sending a packet of character background information in advance. At one time, I would be skeptical about whether people would be interested in participating in this way, but the success of interactive and immersive shows like Sleep No More and The Donkey Show makes me think people might be ready for the next step of participating themselves.

Likewise, the relentlessness with which people have pursued all the possible endings in Black Mirror Bandersnatch suggests that there may be a growing interest in gamified programming.

The experience won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but we may be reaching a place where the desire to have an active experience and the ability of an arts entity to deliver it may be converging.

That said, even though it will diminish over time as a process is developed, there is a lot of time and effort that needs to be invested in the creation of shows like The Mortality Machine that Mandell writes about. The creative team invested thousands of hours in preparing the show.

Then they have to go through communicating to potential audience members what they will be expected to do. The show sends audience members

“…articles about the tragedy, obituaries of the victims, a lawyer’s letter explaining how the scene of the crime is being unsealed just for them and, most importantly, information on the characters they’ll be playing.

[…]

The Mortality Machine welcomes LARP beginners, though it may take them some time to catch on. At each performance, the 20-odd participants are given cards that include descriptions of the respective characters they’ve been assigned, and their relationships to the others. “Your name is Mars McKinsey,” one says. “You lost your fiancée Omi Johnson.” Mars knows three other characters who are also present, including Omi’s aunt and a man named Riley. Meanwhile, the character description for Riley reveals that he slept with Omi — a fact Mars is unaware of.

“A number of the characters have a secret like that,” explains Jason Knox, another Sinking Ship co-founder, who believes these complicated intertwined backstories allow audiences to have “a more emotional experience.”

[…]

“There are 13 possible endings,” Hart says. “In one, everybody dies.”

The company presenting The Mortality Machine refers to their process as LARP Theater. LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing. The term will either work against them because of the historically derisive use of the term, or they may end up redeeming the term if people are impressed with the experience.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts

No Comments

Still More Engaging Perspectives on Museum Collections

January 22, 2019

by:

Joe Patti

In the last six months it seems like I have been coming across a lot of stories about how museums tours are presenting alternative contexts for collections. Back in May I was writing about Museum Hack which is providing tours through a somewhat pop culture lens.

Since then I have come across a number of stories about efforts in Philadelphia Museums to provide tours from a number of different perspectives, including those who have lived and played around the ruins of ancient civilizations.

Last week I saw a story in the NY Times about a pilot program University of Cambridge has launched that to provide an LGBTQ+ perspective on their collections. The university recruited Dan Vo who had already established himself as a figure in alternative museum tours to help them develop their series.

His Polar Museum tour highlighted artfully carved whale teeth known as scrimshaw — a way of occupying male whalers so that they didn’t have sex with each other, Mr. Vo said — and items from indigenous communities that showed how fluid gender roles were in some Arctic populations.

Tours like these are important for the future of museums, Mr. Vo said in an interview later. “It makes them relevant,” he said, “and people want to see themselves reflected in collections.”

The article quotes Alistair Brown, policy officer at the Museums Association who says museums

“are looking at radical ways of reappraising their collections,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re either inviting critical and diverse voices into the museum, or at least welcoming their presence if uninvited.”

Some of the tours aren’t as welcome as others. The NY Times also highlighted Uncomfortable Art tours given by Alice Procter which highlight the imperialism and colonialism underlying museum acquisitions. She has received death threats because promotional images on her website label Queen Elizabeth I as a slaver and Queen Victoria as a thief. The British Museum created a tour series of their own in response to Procter’s which highlights the specific provenance of objects in their collection.

Examples like these (including the ones I cited in earlier posts) can provide a real sense of the potential inherent in museum collections and the type of things people are curious to know. It also highlights the type of details arts organizations should know about their offerings whether it is museum objects or works being performed.

It has only just started to occur to me that this is a result of the development of Professional-Amateurs predicted 15 years ago and has become something that can both challenge and threaten arts organizations and greatly enhance the work they do.

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

No Comments

Art Lovers Of The World Rise Up!…Now Sit And Relax In Another Gallery

January 21, 2019

by:

Joe Patti

Via Arts Professional UK is a Guardian story on a study that found people under 30 in the UK are twice as likely to visit a museum or gallery each month in order to de-stress.

The charity’s report, Calm and Collected, put together last year, revealed that regularly engaging with museums and galleries contributes to a sense of wellbeing. The survey of 2,500 adults showed that under-30s tend to feel much more satisfied than older visitors.

Overall, the survey found that 65% of people under 30 had felt some level of anxiety in the previous 24 hours and that they were twice as likely as others to use monthly art visits to calm down. Yet only 6% of respondents actually visited once a month or more.

Leading sources of anxiety were worry about debt and finances, at 42%, feeling lonely, and issues around social media, at 32%

Given these survey results, the Art Fund charity decided to extend eligibility for the National Art Pass discount program to people 30 and younger. Previously, only those 26 and younger were eligible.

Readers may recall that I have previously cited John Falk who wrote about recharging as one of the five identify categories motivating people to visit museums. When I have read the piece, I always assumed that rechargers which Falk lists last was the least influential motivator. It may very well have been when he did his research prior to publishing the book in 2009. Perhaps it bears re-evaluating the experience being offered in visual arts venues to resonate more with this need. (Not to mention the hours during which it is available).

While the title of the Guardian piece is “Forget yoga, under-30s use museums and galleries to de-stress,” I have come across a few museums and galleries that offer yoga classes in their spaces so they aren’t mutually exclusive.

I was still half tempted to make the title of this post “Forget Navel Gazing, Art Gazing Is The New Way To De-stress”

Art(ist) Education, Arts Facilities, Audience Relations, State of the Arts

No Comments