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Arts Council Director Who Discovered He Was An Artist

April 3, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

For two-three years now I have regularly revisited the situation where generally people have an easier time identifying themselves as a participant in a sport than as an artist.

Earlier this month, I came across an interview with the retiring executive director of the Perry (PA) County Council of the Arts who explicitly says he didn’t view himself as an artist until he had served as executive director for awhile.

Nine years ago, Roger Smith didn’t consider himself an artist when he became executive director of the Perry County Council of the Arts (PCCA). He had been a businessman and nonprofit executive in his former careers, but never saw his hobby as art.

When people would ask him about his experience, he’d say he wasn’t an artist, but he was a woodworker. He couldn’t connect the two things in the abstract, Smith said.

Being immersed in the local arts community over the years changed his perception. “I’ve developed an affinity for the creative process, and PCCA honors creativity in all its forms.”

While my first impulse was to shake my head and sigh about how much work needs to be done if even the director of an arts council doesn’t view themselves as creative, I do remember that it wasn’t long ago that the “is it art or craft?” conversation was pretty common. (Maybe it still is and I am not on the distribution list.) I never saw or heard a discussion that made a definitive distinction.

As the manufacture and design of things moves toward greater degrees of autonomous automation, I wonder if it isn’t time to open the clubhouse doors to anyone who employs varying intent and judgement in their expressive process and forget about labels.

(Basically, I tried to find a definition that excludes mass production while allowing for the use of identically mass produced pieces configured in some intentional way. If you have a better approach, fire away.)

The other thing is, no leader of an arts council is likely to have comprehensive knowledge of all possible modes of creativity. Ideally, learning new things about arts and culture will enrich their tenure in the position. It would have really been an issue if the retiring executive director still didn’t consider himself to be creative after 9 years on the job.

This is not to say we shouldn’t endeavor to have every person who stands up to talk about creative expression do so with the foreknowledge that they, and everyone they are addressing, have the capacity to be creative/artistic. I am actually pretty encouraged to see that the newspaper reporter opened the article on this idea.

Advocacy, Art(ist) Education, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity

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People Like You Read A Blog Post Like This

March 29, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

Even though it often feels like promoting arts and culture as a non-profit entity requires inventing entirely new methods wholecloth because our emphasis and motivations are not driven by a profit motive, I am encouraged when I see commonalities in research findings and advice. We are, after all, dealing with the same set of human beings.

Seth Godin recently had a post about getting people to shift to a new product. While his example revolves around getting someone to switch brands of motorcycle, I saw a few familiar lessons peeking out between the Harleys and BMWs.

If you are marketing to people who will have to switch to engage with you, do it with intention. Your pitch of, “this is very very good” is insufficient. Your pitch of, “you need something in this category” makes no sense, because I’m already buying in that category. Instead, you must spend the time, the effort and the money to teach me new information that allows me to make a new decision. Not that I was wrong before, but that I was under-informed.

This caught my attention for two reasons. First, it reinforces that providing a high quality performance is not enough if people already feel they are having quality experiences with their current choices. (Which could be everything from other experiences to entertainment delivery platforms.)

Second, it reiterates the importance of having sufficient information about the unfamiliar that I wrote about on Monday and last month.

And then there is this from Godin:

Ignore the tribal links at your peril. Without a doubt, “people like us do things like this,” is the most powerful marketing mantra available. Make it true, then share the news.

While this idea is most often emphasized in relation to getting millennial involved in what you are doing, (the study I cited on Monday being a prime example), participating in activities and associating with things that reinforce your self image is a fundamental element of our society, regardless of age.

(And I am really curious, how many people didn’t pass over this post because of the title? That would really prove a point despite being so blatantly click-baity)

Audience Relations, General Musings, Marketing/PR, Terms and Ideas, Working In The Arts

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Cultural Intellectual Property Rights

March 28, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

A few years back I had organized a panel on presenting the work of contemporary indigenous artists at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference. We were fortunate to have Moss Patterson of New Zealand’s Atamira Dance Company on the panel. Prior to the panel we had a good discussion about various issues facing artists who were representing their cultural practices. It is a really complicated, but interesting subject.

One of the things Moss kept mentioning was that treaty and law guaranteed the Maori cultural expressions belonged to them. I wasn’t entirely clear to me at the time why this was important because it seemed obvious that a culture could lay claim to its traditional expressions.

Okay, in my defense, the APAP conference is a really busy environment and not exactly conducive to contemplation.

It wasn’t until Andrew Taylor tweeted about Maya weavers in Guatemala who are advocating for collective intellectual property protection for their textiles that I made the connection with Moss’ comments.

The bill has two objectives. First, it calls for a recognition of a definition of collective intellectual property, which is linked to the right of Indigenous Peoples to administer and manage their heritage. Second, it asks that indigenous nations be recognized as authors, in which case they would automatically benefit from intellectual property law. Recognizing indigenous nations as authors just like individuals or companies means that corporations that benefit from the export of Maya hand-woven goods will have to pay royalties to the communities who are the authors of huipiles.

Based on this, I did a little research on intellectual property law and Maori culture and found a heavily annotated summary on the Library of Congress page. The article provides a more detailed understanding of the factors.

…issues include the use of Māori symbols or language in trademarks and inappropriate use of customary knowledge and expressions in products, advertising, and for other commercial purposes. In general, Māori consider that they are unable to exercise control of the trade of their culture in any real or comprehensive sense under the traditional intellectual property framework, and that they are also not reaping the benefits of this trade, whether nationally or internationally.

The fact that certain knowledge or cultural expressions may be seen from a non-Māori or “Western” perspective as having entered the “public domain” is important in considering the type and level of protection that can be achieved. This concept is not necessarily recognized by Māori and other indigenous peoples for whom the cultural knowledge forms an integral part of their history and identity as both individuals and as a group

[…]

The Ka Mate haka “has become a symbol, not only of the All Blacks, but of New Zealand and all its people.”…it has also been used, satirically or otherwise, in foreign advertisements for Italian cars, Scottish whisky, and for a British employment website.Māori people, and particularly the Ngāti Toa tribe of the warrior chief Te Rauparaha, who authored the haka in 1821, have taken offense and expressed their anger at the inappropriate use of the words and actions,…

The recent anger caused by the Halloween costume of the Polynesian demi-god Maui from Disney’s Moana movie may provide a relateable example of the type of things that cause concern for Maori (among other Polynesian cultures in which Maui plays a part).

My goal here isn’t get make statements about the evils of cultural appropriation, just to provide an expanded context and history of the topic from different perspectives.

For Maori, these rights extend back to 1840 and have been the basis of many laws, initiatives, debates and legal proceedings since then. On the other hand, there are emerging efforts to secure intellectual property rights in other places around the world like Guatemala. I wouldn’t be surprised if similar efforts emerged in the United States as digital media make appropriation easier and corporate efforts to perpetuate IP rights for long periods of time continue.

Advocacy, Legal Topics, State of the Arts, Terms and Ideas

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It’s That They Think Ticket Prices Are Too High

March 27, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

A little while ago I came across a presentation by the Wallace Foundation that seeks to aggregate a number of studies to provide insight for building millennial audiences.

If you have been following the research about performing arts audiences for any length of time, there probably won’t be much in the presentation that will surprise you. The barriers to participation, for example, are familiar: cost, no one to go with and the variety of available choices.

However, if you are new to the topic or just seeking a review, the presentation is a good tool. The visuals are easy to navigate and provide some useful insights.

Of particular interest was the topic of cost and younger audiences. In response to the objection that the cost is too high, I have often heard colleagues note that young people will easily drop more money at a bar on a week night than a ticket would cost.

As it so often is, cost is just an excuse for something else. In this case, it is the assurance that one will enjoy the experience.

Among the responses quoted in the Wallace presentation are the following:

“It’s not about the cost or whether I have the money, but just about the investment and the risk.”

and

“I can see myself paying $100 for a show I’ve wanted to see for a long time, but not more than $50-60 for a normal show, and really more like $20 to 30 if I can.”

What was most interesting was that millennials tended to overestimate the cost of the ticket by a significant margin. Check out this chart.

One of the suggestions in the presentation is obviously to find a more effective way to communicate the pricing.

As I looked through the findings, I realized there was a lot in common with the recent survey findings communicated by Ballet Austin which noted audiences were open to experimenting with unfamiliar works if they were provided with information that assured an enjoyable experience.

I subsequently realized the Wallace Foundation funded Ballet Austin’s research so the common elements are to be expected. (And explains why I was experiencing deja vu reading some of the survey quotes.) The Ballet Austin results are worth a read for the detail not mentioned in the presentation document.

One other image I wanted to share, especially for those who may not take my advice to view the full presentation, is this handy chart on experiences millenials in general seek from different performance disciplines. (As they say, your mileage may vary.)