Home Page

Now That I Hear You Say Aloud Like That…

December 6, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

There has been some trepidation among members of the Kentucky arts community following the governor’s recent dismissal and reconstitution of the state arts council. Gov. Bevin dismissed all but four of the council members, reduced the size of the council from 16 to 15 and accepted the resignation of the executive director according to a recent report.

The main cause of concern is the arts council’s newly stated focus,

In a news release, Secretary of the Cabinet of Tourism, Arts and Heritage Don Parkinson wrote: “The new arts council will focus on ensuring that Kentucky artisans have the skills and knowledge to develop and successfully sell their products.”

[…]

“The reorganized council strikes the appropriate balance of expertise in the arts and entrepreneurship,” he said. “The new arts council will focus on ensuring that Kentucky artisans have the skills and knowledge to develop and successfully sell their products.”

A more explicit entrepreneurial focus may seem innocuous …. But some worry the shift misconstrues an artist’s role in his or her community.

[…]

“Crafts, sculpture and paintings, for example — and Bevin simply plans to amplify that relatively narrow and crude approach to the arts,” Day says. “This assumes, with such deep misguidedness, that the primary value of the arts is the price they demand.”

This revisits a oft-discussed topic of this blog, what is the purpose and value of art?

Perhaps more immediately for me, I realized how the call for artists to be more entrepreneurial can very quickly be leveraged to the detriment of the arts and culture community.

When I have invoked “entrepreneurial” in the past it was with the intention that those in the arts community acquire the skills to manage their careers, not be cheated by others and make opportunities for themselves rather than wait for it to be provided by others.

In the context of this story, the same terminology almost sounds like, “helping artists make a constructive contribution to society.”

Certainly the execution doesn’t have to be that cynical. Arts Business incubators could be a boon for many communities provided they were sited in rural and other underserved areas employing a model similar to Kentucky’s Appalshop, rather just in places real estate developers wanted to gentrify.

It was instructive for me to have ideas and language I and others have used in relations to arts practice essentially repeated back to me. There is often a line that pops up in television and film comedies that goes something like “well now that I hear it said aloud like that, yes, I guess it is a little ridiculous.”

I am not saying the idea that people should acquire a set of entrepreneurial skills is silly. Rather, hearing the same terminology used in this case makes it clear that when efforts and initiatives for the arts are discussed, care must be taken to provide clear context and definition of the primary value that will result. Economic, intellectual, social, spiritual, etc. benefits may accrue, but the core creative expression has value independent, and regardless of, whether any of these benefits emerge.

Advocacy, Leadership, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

1 Comment

Who Cares About Losing & Freezing, I’m Having Fun

December 5, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

Last week Drew McManus posted about the difficulties sports teams are having filling their seats. The reasons for this problem are very similar to those faced by the arts –an approach that assumes a community owes us their attention and a focus on product, positioning and image over the customer’s experience.

Drew’s post actually helped me coalesce some thoughts I had when I was attending a football game at Notre Dame last month. At the time the team’s record was 4-7. The weather had gone from mid-60s the day before to 20s with snow the day of the game.

Despite this, the campus and the stadium were PACKED with people.

My first thought as I wandered around was that Notre Dame football had cachet that is independent of win-loss records and weather. I don’t know if this level of investment become entrenched early by movies like Knute Rockne and Rudy or thanks to generations of Catholic priests making sly mention about the team needing their congregants’ prayers.

While these factors might be significant in generating loyalty and involvement, the school invested a lot of attention in the game attendance experience. Entering and leaving the parking lots was well organized and took a reasonable amount of time. The line in the bookstore had AT LEAST 25 switchbacks before you got to the register but the line moved so quickly that you were rarely standing still and staff members were cheerleading and high-fiving people in line. Entry into the stadium also went quickly.

If you got too cold you could take refuge in the athletic center next door and watch the game on large screen monitors.

The only sour note was the food service inside the stadium was abysmally organized and their money handling discipline raised grave concerns.

Well actually, the fact Notre Dame screwed up their three touchdown lead to lose the game was pretty disappointing as well.

I am going to remember the food service experience as the worst part because everything else, including the loss, was interesting and enjoyable. (As far as I am concerned, braving the frigid cold is as integral a part of the experience as tailgating.)

While my outlook is not necessarily shared by everyone, perhaps it is illustrative of the point Drew and those he cites are trying to make. You don’t have to necessarily have the highest quality, most glamorous product if you are providing an enjoyable experience in general.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts

No Comments

How Wound Into Your Identity Is Creativity?

November 30, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

My post on Monday about employing a new definition to distinguish between amateurs and professionals garnered a couple comments and multiple loooonnnng emails (you know who you are!) in response.

At the core of these responses, including the original piece I was blogging on, were questions of how one views themselves, upon what criteria are these determinations being made and whether there is any validity for these criteria and terms in the first place.

The influence of psychological, developmental, sociological, scientific and philosophical forces were mentioned in these conversations. They are all so tightly entwined with each other I don’t know that any satisfying conclusion can be reached…or at least this week.

But this idea of how people in general perceive art as part of their identity is compelling to me. It is one of the reasons I am so interested in the effort to build public will for art and culture. The effort is all about asking people to examine to what degree creative expression comprises their identity.

I also frequently cite Jamie Bennett’s TEDx Talk observation that people are more easily able to see themselves on a continuum with sports figures than to identify themselves as an artist.

This is even a bigger issue than whether people are labeled amateurs or professionals. If people who are spending time after work and on weekends engaged in some creative activity don’t consider themselves artists for some reason, that has to be addressed before even getting to the questions about whether they are a professional or amateur.

If you played baseball or went flyfishing in high school but haven’t in 10 years, are you still a baseball player or fisher today? If you were part of the drama club, art club, choir or band in high school but haven’t done any of those things in 10 years, are you still an artist today?

Outside of picking up your instrument, I would argue it is more likely that you effortlessly employed dramatic, singing and visual arts ability during a conversation, marketing presentation or staff meeting in that 10 year interval and have in fact exercised those skills and done so more easily than you could baseball and flyfishing.

If creative expression is this deeply ingrained into your existence, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say you are an artist before an athlete?

Of course, this gets us right back to questions of value. How how much attention and worth society places upon these skills. How much we value them in ourselves.

These questions of identity and creativity almost certainly don’t apply to readers of this blog who are likely to already have some sense of the answer. The answer to the title of this blog post is we need to tease out of others.

Advocacy, creativity, General Musings, State of the Arts

No Comments

Are You Willing To Read One Blog Post or Two?

November 29, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

In the course of 24 hours, two different articles about how to manipulate people into doing what you want came across my Twitter feed.

Okay, it isn’t totally mind control but rather how using the right word can make people more receptive to the choices you offer them.

Seth Godin mentioned “Wheeler’s Which,” a term I had never heard before. Elmer Wheeler is the guy who coined the idea of selling the sizzle rather than the steak. His “which” involves asking a question that includes two “yes” options rather than an opportunity to answer “no.”

[…Elmer Wheeler was a sales trainer nearly a century ago. He got hired by a chain of drugstores to increase sales at the soda fountain. In those days, a meal might consist of just an ice cream soda for a nickel. But for an extra penny or two, you could add a raw egg (protein!). Obviously, if more people added an egg, profits would go up. Wheeler taught the jerks (isn’t that a great job title?) to ask anyone who ordered a soda, “One egg or two?” Sales of the egg add-on skyrocketed.]

Personally, while I find the frequent question, “would you like to add X for $Y more,” annoying, I think I would be angered or insulted at the assumption I would purchase something extra. I would counsel using this technique sparingly for that reason unless you think most of your customers are less ornery than I.

There are opportunities to use “Wheeler’s which” in ways that don’t pressure people. For example, “how many of you will be attending our free playtalk” or “will you be accompanying your child to the children’s’ activities or having coffee in the parents lounge?” Using the question in this manner can help increase attendance numbers for outreach events on your grant reports.

The other magic word came from a New York magazine link Dan Pink provided about the power of “willing.” (my emphasis)

When a request framed in more direct terms is turned down, a follow-up with a willing will often get the other person to cave:

Are you the type of person to mediate? Yes or no. What was really interesting about the mediation “willings” is that if you ask someone “Are you interested in mediation?” they might say yes or no. But if you ask them if they’re willing to mediate, that requires them saying something about the type of person that they are.

[…]

With a caveat: “‘Willing’ works best after resistance, so it shouldn’t be your opening gambit,” she said. If the first approach fails, though, the trick can be a persuasive backup strategy. Now go forth and bend the world to your will.

If someone is really opposed to something I am not sure asking if they are willing or not will overcome that resistance but I thought it interesting that the question of willingness introduced the question about what sort of person you are. Are you the type of person that is open to trying something new or exploring an alternative.

Again, I don’t feel like you can just slip “willing” into any question and have it be effective. There are plenty of sentiments you can express involving willingness that will offend and anger, but just as many that can help open them to an option. My suspicion is that used repeatedly over the course of many interactions, “willing” might gradually reduce resistance.

Audience Relations, General Musings

1 Comment