Home Page

State Of Independent Venues In Your State

October 15, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

The National Independent Venue Association released the results of their first survey showing the economic impact of independent venues in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C..

The information categories provided aren’t too different from what you might see if you plug your organization’s numbers into an economic impact calculator like Americans for the Arts’

However, the data they collected is only from entities:

….not controlled by a multinational corporation or a publicly traded company, and their primary
mission is to present live performances to the public. This includes venues, promoters, festivals and more.

Source

Each state either has a notation about the contribution to tourism or profitability. Some of the profitability numbers were interesting to read. For example, apparently only 19% of venues in NY reported being profitable. Most of the other states I clicked around on with this category reported were in the 30%-40% range. The only one that was lower was Vermont at 13%. Nationally, they report 64% of stages were not profitable.

The other thing that each state reported was the operational challenges across the nation. Based on the frequency they were reported they were:

Marketing and Bringing in An Audience
Artist costs driving higher artist fees
Staffing costs
Inflation
Monopolies
Rising Insurance Costs
Scalping and Reseller Platforms
Cost of Rent and Mortgage
Uncapped, unlimited performing rights organization fees
Decreasing alcohol sales

The second to last one about performing rights organization fees I am guessing may be groups like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc charging high fees for the rights to perform songs. I didn’t see any specific explanation on the page or press release.

Many of these aren’t surprising since it is pretty clear many of these factors are driving up costs. I didn’t expect decreasing alcohol sales to make the top ten list. But that does have a certain logic to it.

Finance, State of the Arts

No Comments

Studio Tours Shouldn’t Replicate The Gallery Experience

October 14, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

For two weekends this month, the local Creative District is operating their annual artist studio tours. There are other associated activities, but the artists’ opening their spaces for people to wander in and look around is the focus of the event. And if people are moved to buy something, so much the better.

One of the features of the tour the president of the Creative District has been pushing artists to do is not sanitize their work spaces. She feels that when artists clear their materials away into closets and throw sheets over bookcases, it removes many of the interesting elements that can lead to a conversation about process.

I tend to agree. I visited a number of studios this weekend with more on my list for next weekend. In some cases I was able to stand right in the studio was people worked. Most of the time I was in a living room with all the furniture cleared out and the work hung on the walls, arrayed on display racks, or shelving.

Because I have some familiarity and knowledge, I was able to ask some questions about process and materials used, but many curious visitors would basically have had the impression they wandered into a home gallery.

Part of my concern is that seeing a person painting in their immaculate living room with a small tarp under the easel essentially reinforces the idea that art is done by a special breed of people who create things immediately without error.

When in fact, their studios are paint and clay splattered, with swaths of material shoved in to nooks and crannies, and metal filings and sawdust swept into piles. All testaments to their efforts. Not to mention photos, sketches, and early iterations that comprised their study and preparation of the final product leaning against the walls.

Galleries are places in which artists can control the context and perspective in which the visitors encounter their work. Studios tours provide an opportunity to let visitors encounter and better understand their process. There is a missed opportunity when studio tours are essentially replicas of the gallery experience.

Art(ist) Education, Arts Facilities, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Post-Pandemic Cultural Habits Are About Set

October 13, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

About twice a month Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS Experience release some interesting data they have compiled about trends they are seeing that may impact arts and cultural organizations. Recently they released an update on the recurring topic of what have audience preferences been since the start of the pandemic.

One aspect of this data I feel I have missed and not adequately emphasized in my previous posts on these articles is that they have been measuring the tendency of someone who regularly participated in an activity in 2019 to return to that behavior.

It means that people whose normal behavior in 2019 was to go to movie theaters report being less likely to return to movie theaters now. It means that people whose normal behavior was to go to public parks are even more likely to visit them now than they were before the pandemic.

Source

Among exhibit based organizations, visitors have trended away from science and children’s museums and toward outdoor spaces like zoos and gardens as well as larger museum spaces which were perceived to have more space to move around during the pandemic. These latter groups have returned to their 2019 attendance levels more rapidly than science and children’s museums.

Live performance organizations have also generally seen a slower return to 2019 levels, except for live theater which is just shy of attendance numbers of six years ago. In some cases, those audiences shifted their cultural participation to exhibit based entities.

Folks who were interested in the symphony went to the art museum instead, and many Americans habituated away from these performing arts experiences. The challenge is and has been to do our best to shake the masses and wake them back up to the magic of live theater, the power of chamber music, or the grace of the ballet.

Demand is slowly inching back to 2019 baseline, but it may be happening too slowly to meaningfully overcome negative substitution.

Source

The IMPACTS folks note that research has shown that on average habits are formed in about 66 days and it has been five years since the start of the pandemic. As a result there is a bit of inertia to contend with if you are trying to convince people to make you part of a new habit.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, New Initiatives, State of the Arts

No Comments

Are The Ordinary Bits Of Beauty Being Designed Out Of Our Lives?

October 8, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Tyler Cowen of the Marginal Revolution blog posted a short video meant as a preview of a long movie project discussing how we have eliminated ordinary beauty from our lives in the name of efficiency.

Sheehan Quirke moves about London comparing ornate, though mass produced objects from the Victorian era like lamp posts, door fixtures, etc., arguing that design has moved toward simple functionality and abandoned offering beauty in every day objects.

Perhaps the most striking example he provides is at the 6:50 mark when he introduces a location as being in Parliament before revealing the ornate room is actually located in a sewage pumping station, stating

Well people worked here and why shouldn’t people who work in sewers also have a beautiful place of work?

Source

I have to think there is more to the story than the room being a reflection of Victorian sensibilities. Not too earlier he notes a neighborhood he was walking through was likely an overcrowded tenement area with sewage openly rotting in the streets. Beauty was not a priority everywhere.

As a commenter on the Marginal Revolution post noted, there is likely a bit of survivorship bias in operation where the really ugly sewage stations have all been razed while the gorgeous one has been preserved as a tourist attraction.

His point still bears considering. He didn’t mention it directly but I did start to wonder if the reduction of every day beauty in small things around us has resulted in an reduction of appreciation of art and culture. Perhaps even impacting the perception that one has the capacity to be creative.

I am reminded of the manhole covers in Japanese cities which evoke aspects of particular pride for that locale.

In the interviews with the former NEA chairs I posted on Monday, one of the chairs, (Bill Ivey, I think) mentioned the NEA has a program that helps mayors solve design problems in their city. I had no idea. I expected the program had been dissolved since Ivey’s tenure but it indeed still exists.

So if a community wanted to start thinking about how to integrate small pieces of beauty into everyday life, that NEA program might be a place to start.