Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
NewsRoom Contact Us

Inspiring Midwest Quirky Art Stories

by:

Joe Patti

I mentioned last week that Arts Midwest sent out a year in review newsletter recently. In addition to the laundromat turned laundrobar in Columbus, OH that has taken a place in that city’s music scene, they mentioned they got a lot of positive reactions on stories about Midwest quirk. (And by the way, the Midwest doesn’t have a lock on such things. Three-four blocks from my apartment is a barber shop with a speakeasy in the bock.)

There is a lot to love about these Midwest stories. Duluth, MN has a smelt parade complete with fish head, erm headgear, and fish puppets. It is worth following the link just for the pictures.

A couple friends in Madison, WI teamed up and bought vending machines which they placed around town to dispense art by various artist partners, all for under $20.

And in Milwaukee, another group leaned into that state’s cheese heritage to help fund artists. The Grilled Cheese grant program invites people to have a community meal and then the attendees vote for the project the proceeds of that meal will fund.

Finally, in Iowa a woman’s first attempt at documentary film making celebrates pie culture in that state with the appropriately titled film Pieowa

I had to leave this one to last because readers will probably hop up from their computers in search of pie after seeing this trailer.

Audience Relations, creativity, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Important- Postmark Will No Longer Reflect The Day Mailed

by:

Joe Patti

Totally off my radar until I saw a LinkedIn post by April Clark. Starting December 24, 2025 your local post office will no longer postmark outgoing mail. The postmark will be places on the mail by the regional post office and that may occur days after it was put in the mail.

Clark pointed out that any donations mailed at the end of 2025 may need to be credited to 2026 based on the postmark date. IRS rules tie the date of the donation to the date of the postmark.

This will impact other activities which tie validity to the date of postmarks including tax returns, mailed ballots, etc.

A Forbes article on the topic suggests mailing things in person and taking explicit steps to make sure the postmark is the date of the mailing.

Buy postage at the counter. When a customer pays for postage at a retail counter, the Postage Validation Imprint (PVI) label stamped on the mailpiece indicates the date of acceptance.

Ask for a manual postmark. Customers who want a postmark dated when the Postal Service first accepted possession of their mailpiece may, for no extra charge, request a manual postmark at any Post Office, station, or branch….

Purchase a Certificate of Mailing. If you want proof of the date on which the USPS first accepted possession of the mailpiece, you can purchase a Certificate of Mailing….

[…]

But beware: Pre-printed labels, including postage printed from Self-Service Kiosks, Click-N-Ship online postage, and meter strips, only show that you’ve bought and printed postage. They do not prove that the USPS accepted the mailpiece.

Source

Certified and registered mail are other options.

One of the things non-profits are probably going to need to do going forward is encourage people to either use online giving channels or mail their donations extra early if they aren’t going to visit the post office to mail things in person.

Audience Relations, Fundraising, Info You Can Use

No Comments

‘Tis The Season For Ticket Scams

by:

Joe Patti

Yes, ’tis the season for ticket scams I am afraid. My venue often sees an uptick in complaints around the holidays. We often attribute it to the fact we have people attending events at our venue for the first time. Except people who have kids who have performed here for years with their dance schools, etc also seem to run afoul of sites masquerading as ours.

Last week someone in my regional booking consortium shared a news article about Ballet West’s problems with fake ticketing websites. We had colleagues touring our venue last week who made note of the warning posters and flyers we have placed around our venue and grabbed some copies to help with their own efforts to communicate with audiences.

A number of states are/have taken steps to prevent these practices, but as a member of our regional booking consortium noted, a number of these resellers are located in the European Union. He reported that not only do these people sell tickets at exorbitant prices, they will often file a chargeback claim noting that since they are located in the UK, there is no way they would have purchased the tickets.

One of our colleagues on the consortium Zoom mentioned they are relenting to a degree and taking a “if you can’t beat them, join them,” approach. They have begun having conversations with StubHub to handle their ticket sales because they promise more protection against fraudulent sales.

Meanwhile, other performing arts organizations are increasingly fortifying their online sales. When I tried to purchase tickets as a gift for one of my sisters, there was a queue to enter their website every time I tried to visit (including 1 am local time). Ultimately, I needed to call my order in since online orders by out of state residents were blocked. It subsequently took two additional phone calls over three days to get the tickets I ordered moved to a digital wallet so I could pass them on to my sister.

Those defensive measures meant to slow and deter resellers probably resulted in there being tickets for me to purchase, but as a legitimate purchaser I also ended up spending time inconvenienced to effect the transaction.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

No Comments

The Thumping Of The Dryer Is The Bass Line

by:

Joe Patti

Arts Midwest sent out a year in review newsletter this week. I was pleased to see there were some stories they had shared I had missed. One was about Dirty Dungarees, a laundromat in Columbus, OH that has been around since 1978, but became a Laundrobar in 2015 when the new owner started letting his friend’s bands play. A short distance from THE Ohio State University campus, it has apparently become the core of the hardcore music scene.

The story reminded me of the Laundromat Project in NYC which started out back in 2005 organizing artist residencies in laundromats recognizing that they were places the community gathered. They were offering opportunities to participate in arts projects while your clothes swirled in the machines. (Hopefully people cleaned any paint off their hands before reaching into the dryer.)

Or at least that is what they were doing when I wrote about the project back in 2011. If you check out their website now, they have expanded out of laundromats and hosted arts field days for neighborhoods, transformed a two bedroom apartment into a community arts space and set up a store front in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood.

The video I linked to back in 2011 explains how they organized and designed their activities. You could probably copy the model exactly today and it would be just as relevant and impactful regardless of all the advances in technology and AI.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Business Models, creativity

No Comments

123…790 Next
Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

/ Find It!

/ Recent Comments

Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
LinkedIn