Sing and Split

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My recent entries on the statistical analysis and general content of the Knight Foundation Magic of Music Final Report has gotten me thinking quite a bit lately.

I am looking forward to the report the Rand Institute produces about their study of the creation of effective arts education programs for children. I am wondering if they will present any findings about the effect of the programs on learning and the students’ lives.

One of the things I have been wondering about is the impact of modeled behavior on much debated meaning of the statistic claiming that 74% of orchestra ticket buyers had played an instrument or sung at some point in their lives.

The music department at my college holds about two choral concerts a year to which the director invites community and school choral groups to participate. This is not a competition and is programmed for balanced content. The event usually starts and ends with performances by the college groups.

Inevitably, many friends and family come just for the performance of their loved ones and then depart, sometimes paying to see someone sing for 20 minutes. Often people arrive 90 minutes into the performance having missed the first time their loved one sang–or missing them altogether. This is the case for friend/family of middle/high schoolers and college students alike.

It is entirely common to see parents taking their children home immediately after the performance. (Shades of the Joshua Bell/Tasmin Little experiments. Perhaps there is something to the claim of parents dragging kids away!-scroll down to words “The Second Issue”).

I wonder if the parents of the people surveyed by the Knight Foundation supported their activities and encouraged them to attend performances aligned with their interests when they weren’t performing themselves. (Though granted, the survey question encompasses people’s entire lives which might also include college glee club and church choir, etc).

So I likewise wonder if participation in these activities by young people today will have as strong an influence in attendance (if it does) as it did on previous generations. If parents are giving their kids the message that other people’s performances don’t warrant attention, the students may not be motivated to hone their skill or appreciation by watching another. They may also not feel that their performances have any value to the general public since so many people exit between groups. Finally, they may not have any interest in seeing someone else perform when they reach adulthood.

I have a suspicion that the Rand report on arts education may find that truly effective programs have a strong element of parental investment if they think to factor that in. Though parental support won’t necessarily resolve this problem. Many of the students I have seen get a lot of support and encouragement from family and friends making it necessary for us to shush the loud photo sessions in the lobby during the performance prior to going home.

What is interesting to me is that after 6-8 of these concerts, I have never heard anyone complain about the shifting audiences. If people are focussed on paying attention only to their loved ones, they don’t seem to be insisting that others do so as well. It would be interesting to know if this behavior and expectations of the rest of the audience is specific to the local culture or if various regions of the country act differently.

Couple Entries Revisited

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I am revisiting a couple stories tonight.

The first is some applause for Michael Rice over at Cool As Hell Theatre podcast who has been picked up by station KQED in San Francisco. Michael’s podcast is the first, and at this time only podcast broadcast by the station.

I have to confess, I haven’t been listening to his podcast as often as I would like. Everytime I do listen, I scold myself for neglecting his work. I appreciate that he asks questions you want to know the answers to that most interviewers avoid.

Case in point, in his most recent interview with Alison Jean White. She is the youngest member of American Conservatory Theater’s permanent company, a distinction previously held by Annette Benning. He asks her the requisite questions about feeling pressured to live up to Benning’s legacy. But he also asks her if she felt like she was exploited as cheap labor when she was a student at A.C.T. and talks about how he felt that way when he was in a different acting training program.

Given that she is still employed by A.C.T. and probably wouldn’t want to malign the organization, he probably didn’t expect her to answer negatively if she was disgruntled. I am just always impressed that he asks questions that reveal the inner lives of artists and the struggles and concerns they face. He also makes himself vulnerable to derision by revealing that he felt so exploited and burned out that he turned down offers of employment after a showcase.

Anyhow, I have made up for my past errors by subscribing to his podcast. It will be interesting to see where things go now that he has the potential for greater distribution. (Hopefully those San Francisco Public Radio listeners are hip to podcasts!)

Second issue I wanted to revisit I wrote on a bit more recently. It seems The Independent of London decided to replicate the Joshua Bell experiment the Washington Post conducted a few months ago that I posted about a couple weeks back.

They chose to place violinist Tasmin Little in a station far less appealing than L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. The railway bridge beside Waterloo Station is described as “…amply layered with pigeon shit, blankets belonging to the homeless lie scrunched in a corner, and no doubt the place is used as an impromptu loo by Friday night binge-drinkers. It’s also windy, cold and, with the passing trains, a bit noisy.”

The article admits the environment isn’t conducive to stopping to listen echoing many of the same complaints a French businessman makes as he passes through. In fact, members of the Philharmonia Orchestra are the first to recognize Little and won’t stop because they have a train to catch.

While I feel both the Washington Post and The Independent articles got a little melodramatic as they wailed about the poor children being heartlessly yanked away from the musicians, in The Independent story, far more young people stopped and gave money than older folks who pay large amounts to see Little in concert halls.

It makes me wonder if my earlier thoughts about finding appropriate places outside of the concert hall to perform and then studying the who, what, when, where and how of getting people to sincerely stop and listen as a way of discovering a better method of delivery might have some validity.

Resource: Cheap Housing

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As a supplement to my entry today, I offer the following handful of links on affordable housing for artists.

Artspace- Developer of Artist Housing across the country. Many of their spaces are in Minnesota where they are based, but are also found in places like Minot, Reno, Buffalo and Mt. Rainier, MD.
(Hat tip to NY Foundation for the Arts)

Chicago Artist Resource has a page on how to find space in an area zoned favorably for artists. Also has a pretty complete looking How To.. resource to help people with the legalities and logistics.

New York City and Boston have space specs if an artist needs to live in the same place he/she works.

Paducah, KY has a very attractive incentive program with low rate loans, opportunity for free lots and even partial payment of architectural fees.
(hat tip to The Law Portal for the Chicago, NY, Boston and Paducah links)

Waterloo, IA has a work and living space in a downtown area designated as an Arts and Culture District.

Riverdam Millyard in Biddeford, ME isn’t necessarily a special zoned area but the effort of some developers to bring SoHo to Maine. I note their site because their list of tenants gives you a sense of what type of mix might emerge in such a space. Not too clear if you can live there though. Suspect you can’t.

Cost You $15,000/mo. to Hang Your Hat

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In the last week or so the NY Foundation for the Arts has run some articles about the difficulties artists in NYC face with affordable housing. The biggest problem being that they tend to make neighborhoods such cool places to live that people will pay a premium to do so and the artists can’t afford that much.

While the articles are about New York the stories they tell are being repeated across the country.

In the first article, NYFA Executive Director, Michael Royce, recounts his somewhat harrowing experiences with the first five apartments he had when he moved to NYC. For him and many artists, the opportunity to live in a community of artists trumped the squalid conditions and violent surroundings.

At the end of the article he lists people to contact if you are an artist living in NY State and want to participate in focus groups about affordable housing.

The second article is an interview with Paul Nagle who serves as the Director of Communications and Cultural Policy for one of NYC’s council members.

He talks about trying to create a sustainable policy for affordable housing. He acknowledges it is difficult to discuss affordable housing for artists when there is such a dearth of cheap housing for everyone but points out that the artistic presence actually enhances the quality of life in whatever neighborhoods it appears in and thus is an effective investment of funds and policy.

He also notes that policies must be created to stem the expulsive influence of gentrification because it impacts more than just the artists.

“But it’s not just the arts. It means all mixed economic activity and all middle-to-low-income activity will be driven out as well. Then you have a luxury neighbourhood, which in New York City basically means that it is completely dependent on the stock market… and I don’t know where the sustainability is in that formula. So this becomes less about being nice to artists and more about maintaining stable communities with character and diversity where people can actually live.”

It seems that any municipality hoping to attract Richard Florida’s creative class would be wise to watch the issue and fabricate a policy early on so they don’t encounter similar problems.