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Don’t Deny Your Creativity!

March 14, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

Earlier this month, Kathryn Haydon addressed the insidious personal belief that one is not creative. I use the term insidious because I view the belief as something that undermines something essential about a person. While belief that one does not draw well may be erroneous because you haven’t given yourself time to develop the skill, denying you have the capacity to be creative denies something that one possesses almost naturally at birth.

While you may have to work at getting better at a certain set of skills as you get older, Haydon cites studies conducted with the same subjects over a period of decades that almost seems to show people work at being less creative.

Basically she says people perceive themselves as being less creative for two reasons- they compare themselves to those held up as examples of creativity and they fear judgment for being wrong.

It just might be that the main reason you think you’re not creative is because you compare yourself to others who are famous for their creativity (Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, and Lady Gaga) or to people in your own life who are known for their creativity.

When you’re in a comparison mindset, you inadvertently diminish your own creative ability. You envision Picasso and your highly divergent friends on a pedestal that you cannot possibly ascend.

[…]

Society has perpetuated the myth that creativity has to be comparative, and if comparative, mutually exclusive: “If Picasso is creative then I am not.” This reasoning is incorrect.

and later,

…fear is the only thing standing in the way of training it back. (Fear can also come in the form of saying, “I’m not creative” to protect yourself from risk. You now know that this is false, so if you keep using this line it is heretofore a cop-out. Everybody is creative.)

It is no mystery that society and our educational system emphasize discovering the right solution rather than discovering the creative solution which stacks the decks against creativity.

In order to get back in touch with your creative ability, she suggests some exercises like “Try thinking like someone else: an alien, a rock, a stray cat, a high school math teacher.” She cautions against deciding to go all-in, 100% on creativity in one shot like a resolution to start a diet on Monday.

In other words, don’t let the first risk you ever take be taking out a second mortgage on your house to try a new business idea. Start instead by doing something that gives you slight discomfort, like driving a new route to the grocery store or sharing an unconventional insight in your next meeting. As you practice taking small risks you will become more comfortable sharing the fresh perspectives that you have gained by practicing your creative thinking.

For people in the arts, talking a new route to work may seem a little elementary a step, but for some people it might be a significant step. It could be a version of “failing fast,” especially if they turn off the GPS while taking an unfamiliar route.

The strategies for cultivating creativity are all just on a relative scale of risk taking and potential failure. For an arts organization it might be new programs. For an individual, it is looking at something with a new perspective.

creativity, Info You Can Use, Working In The Arts

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This Isn’t Your Grandpa’s Retirement

March 13, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

I guess I should have waited a few more days before making last week’s post about today’s graying audiences not being the same graying audiences of two decades ago. Toward the end of last week I saw that Jimmy Buffet is launching Margaritaville branded and themed retirement communities.

Even if you view this as a cynical way to capitalize on the name, you have to admit that the Margaritaville name defines a lifestyle. There is a specific demographic who identify with this lifestyle and most of them weren’t retiring 20 years ago.

This reinforces the point I made last week that while the proportion of gray heads in the audience may seem to have remained constant for the last two decades, the current cohort that comprises your older audiences have distinct characteristics and interests. Their parents wouldn’t want to live in a Margaritaville retirement village in significant numbers, nor would their grandchildren. (Their kids, maybe.)

Ultimately, the differences between the Margaritaville communities and those already being built by the company Buffett is partnering with may be superficial. It might be the same ground plans with different color schemes, furniture and soundtrack, but the company is telling retirees that they understand they have different expectations of their retirement experience than previous generations.

More to think about, eh?

Audience Relations, General Musings, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Where Have All The Hunters Gone?

March 8, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

I am pretty open about admitting when I made a wrong call. While I consistently counsel against investing too many resources into the hottest fad, even I have to admit that the Pokemon Go! craze and the associated suggestions about how businesses could tap into it to attract customers faded out a lot faster than I would have predicted.

Back in July, I wrote about the swarms of people running around near our building and anticipated the opportunities that might emerge as the game features were developed. There were tons of articles like this one about how people were strategizing about how to use the game to connect with a new, larger segment of people.

Yes, there are still bunches of people playing the game. Its keeping people more active than they normally would be. And they are wandering into places that others would prefer they not be.

But even places that are paying to partner and attract people to their locations don’t appear to be getting many visits from their participation.

For me this just reinforces my sense that it is prudent to watch a fad and evaluate it as it matures to see if it still appears to be relevant to your goals.

Audience Relations, Marketing/PR, New Initiatives, State of the Arts

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These Aren’t Your Grandpa’s Old People

March 7, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

For the last 20-25 years, audiences have been getting grayer and dying off.

We have all heard that statement multiple times in our careers. We have probably made that statement multiple times in our careers.

But have we really thought about the logical implications of that statement as we repeat it?

Last week I was on a conference call planning next year’s Arts Midwest conference when someone made a comment that was head smackingly obvious. If you break down that initial statement you realize over the last 20-25 years, people who didn’t have gray hair now do. And a lot of people have indeed died off.

So right now we are interacting with an almost entirely new generation of people we describe as “older audience.”

What the person said was essentially that the gray haired people today were a lot more rock n’ roll than the previous gray haired crowd. The tongue-in-cheek comment was that the new old people aren’t like the old old people.

Observations have been made that often people age into an appreciation of classical arts and culture- orchestra, opera, ballet etc., but let’s not forget that they aren’t necessarily aging out of the experiences and interests they had when they were younger. If the icons of their youth are still able to rock, they are ready to rock along with them.

While you may be well aware of all this, ask yourself if you aren’t viewing older audiences’ tastes today through pretty much the same lens as you did with older audiences 20 years ago. It can be easy to do because some members of that older crowd from 20 years ago are still around. They have been loyal to you for 20 years so you want to meet their expectations and keep them around.

But if we aren’t supposed to treat millennials as a monolithic group, we can’t treat older audiences as one either.

The bulk of your current loyal audience is not the same as the loyal audience of the past. It is likely that the current audience’s loyalty manifests in a different way. They may not be subscribing to the full season, for instance, but they still feel invested in your work and tell their friends.

The comment about the “new old people” wasn’t made in connection with a proposed conference topic, but the concept caused a little discussion. I would be interested to see if it got developed into something. It is one of those ideas that immediately strikes one as relevant, but creating a productive conversation around it that doesn’t subscribe to old assumptions or condescending stereotypes is another thing.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts, Terms and Ideas

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