Tough Times Follow Up

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Arts Presenters posted the audio from the conference call I sat in on two weeks ago.

At the end of my last entry, I referred to cryptic notes I had made to review information. One of the notes was “write about the Boston organization.” This was in reference to Sandra Gibson’s discussion of World Music/CRASHarts in Boston. The organization is sort of shaking up the type of events they offer and how they market them. According to Gibson, they have been cutting a lot of programs over the last 10 years due to increasingly constrained budgets, but they knew they had the ability to expand their reach to younger audiences. They hired a young man who started them on the road to adding back programs. One of the things they have done is began to collaborate with other area organizations and have added 50 concerts in the last year.

This new hire was the impetus for the programming but the fact he has been promoting the events in unconventional ways is really causing conflicts in the organization. The marketing department is anxious about not knowing how to message the events. They feel they should be doing press releases and making other promotional efforts. World Music/CRASHarts lists eight different venues around Boston at which they have events so it is understandable that clear and organized communications would be highly valued. The executive director has started conversations about the situation and the staff has decided to take a chance and market these 50 concerts employing Facebook and other alternative means.

Gibson says they are seeing 60% sell outs (not sure if she means 60% capacity or 60% of the 50 events have sold out. I assume the former.) close to the performance date. As a result they are changing their income projections to reflect an expectation of cash flow later in the process. They are seeing a crossover of audiences who usually respond to subscription campaigns and mailers who are getting their information from these alternative online sources.

In the context of my last entry, this seems like a good example of an organization that has questioned their assumptions about their programming and promotion methods. World Music/CRASHarts hasn’t gotten a huge infusion of cash, yet they have expanded their programming rather than contracting it as they had in the past. Though it was a source of anxiety, they also put some effort into less tested methods of communication to promote their events. At the end of the season, the new direction may turn out to have been unsuccessful. With some luck and discernment, it may provide lessons about how their approach should be refined as they move forward. The former process is unlikely to be sustainable, especially as it apparently involved an increased series of cuts.

Finding Some Direction In Tough Times

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Last week I participated in a conference call sponsored by APAP on the impact of the economy on the presenting field. The call was about an 75-90 minutes long and covered a fair bit of ground. They were supposed to post an audio file of the call this week but haven’t yet. Once they do, I will link to it. As you might imagine, there is quite a bit of concern about the topic. So much so that the opening plenary speaker at the conference will be an economist who will speak on how the current crisis came to be.

A lot of the participants were looking for guidance on possible solutions and ways to cope with the stresses they were feeling. There was a lot of constructive advice given but one of the earliest caveats issued was to resist making decisions that might provide short term relief but damage your organization’s reputation and goodwill over the long term. One example given was trying to dissolve contracts instead of trying to find areas to negotiate costs down.

Word gets around the industry so breaking a contract with one agent/artist can have repercussions for your organization very quickly. In the past month, I have conversations with three people who have moved to a different employer. If I had had poor relationships with any one of their former employers in the past year, word would have easily spread to take care in dealings with me.

Among the suggestions for coping with the current economic situation were examples that many arts organizations are now looking at collaborating, partnering or just plain merging operations. Some are looking at increasing their family programming since people are looking to do things closer to home. Someone on the call suggested that one of the great values of the arts is that, properly positioned, it can help communities deal with tough times and even build communities with others who are having a similarly tough time.

One term that kept coming up in the discussion was Porter’s Five Forces. (or Wikipedia entry) I could, and probably will, do an entirely separate entry on how this applies to the arts. If you have the time to read it, it will put some of the concepts brought up in the conference call in context.

One of the suggestions that was made was to examine the problems your organization has and determine if they really have their origin in the economic problems of if they are pre-existing. Were shifts in local demographics, values and preferences already leaving your organization behind? Was there another organization that had entered the market that was doing what you do, only better?

Something to look at is refocusing on the core competencies of your organization. By which the speaker meant, the elements that were central to what the public valued about your organization. The speaker (sorry, tough to keep track of people on a conference call) reiterated the idea that given another organization might now be doing a better job than you, it might be time to shift your focus.

Someone emailed in a question for the panel about how you innovate in times when there aren’t a lot of funds to support such activities. The answer that was given was to find a new path to achieve the mission. Shift the organization’s pathway away from business as usual. One should be prepared to question the underlying assumptions that you have about every aspect of the business from what your audience and community values to the effectiveness of the business model and organizational structure.

This strikes me as requiring a lot of bravery and resolve. With all the problems that an economic down turn brings, do you really have the time to devote to effecting this sort of change? Though frankly, in good times, do you really have the incentive to do so? In better times, you want to avoid the type of radical changes that may send you into a death spiral. You also have so many things to point at that are apparently working there is no need to closely examine the underlying assumptions.

Addressing other portions of the conference call will have to wait until they post the audio. The rest of my notes contain semi-cryptic messages to review parts of the session whose interesting details came too quickly for my note taking abilities. I am pleased that APAP has taken steps to inform and educated its constituency.

Answering “What Can I Do To Help?”

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NPR’s All Tech Considered show today talked about a website which helps a person’s friends assist them in times of crisis. The site, Lotsa Helping Hands provides the tools to create a free site at which people can volunteer to help someone out without actually having to ask them directly during stressful times. Among the examples given in the piece and the cases discussed were cooking food for funerals or people who had undergone surgery and arranging play dates to keep kids occupied during such times.

The site gives examples of coordinating rides to medical appointments, keeping track of elderly love one’s care, including confidential legal, financial and medical details from a distance. But they also suggest uses of the product for less worrisome situations like simply organizing volunteer efforts in the community.

What made me immediately think about this as being useful for arts organizations was that I was reading the blog at the Hancher Auditorium today. This summer they had an unfortunate visit by the Iowa River when heavy rains caused flooding. They might have been able to use this web site to organize the efforts of sympathetic supporters to clean up and move equipment and materials to dumpsters and alternate performance sites.

Presumably, the software can also be used for more mundane tasks such as allowing and organizing volunteers who sign up to usher, build, conduct tours and the like. I have passed the link on to the gentleman who handles our volunteer coordination to have him assess its usefulness to us.

Creativity Now

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Sort of busy as the holidays approach but a thought came up in recent conversations.

They say the next phase of the economy will emphasize creativity and so people need to acquire the appropriate skills.

I wonder if the recent financial problems originating from Wall Street compounded by the billions lost to the massive Ponzi scheme perpetuated by Bernard Madoff might actually help usher a higher valuation of creative backgrounds along. After all that has happened, and in light of what is yet to come, perhaps an MFA might have less of a stigma than an MBA.