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If You Were Really Creative, You Would Already Be Embezzling From Me

December 16, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

About a week ago, I think it was Dan Pink that tweeted a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled “Why Creative People Are More Likely to Be Dishonest.” I bookmarked it, but before I moved on I retweeted the link with a comment that this was an aspect of creativity we shouldn’t tout too frequently.

Creativity is getting a lot of attention these days. When I saw Tom Borrup speak yesterday, he mentioned that one of the few sectors not spending a lot of time researching creativity was arts and culture. Business, he said, sees creativity as an important asset in the effort to gain a competitive edge and is investing in studying it.

The researchers in the HBR article found that people who believed creativity was something only a few possessed were more likely to be dishonest than those who felt creativity was a talent everyone shared. The researchers said for the less honest people it appeared the idea they had a rare skill lead to a sense of entitlement that different standards applied to them.

In order to combat this, the researchers suggest companies should create a sense that creativity is something everyone shares and can tap into; focus on the team being a collective of creative individuals that succeed together; don’t give people special treatment and

Carefully define what creativity is and is not. Our results demonstrate that the definition of creativity is not fixed and can be changed. While creativity involves a certain degree of risk-taking, managers should make clear that taking risks does not mean ignoring the rules and moral guidelines.

I was pleased to see the idea that everyone can be creative being promulgated. If the arts and cultural sector is going to have a long term goal of disseminating this concept, it is helpful if the message is being spread by entities and in situations that are not perceived as being aligned with arts and culture organizations.

I emphasized the point of defining what creativity is and is not because it often feels like I read about businesses who equate creativity with the risk taking and out of the box thinking that is going to catapult them to the next stage or whatever. Most of the time creativity doesn’t really step out of the box at all but reinterprets the contents of the box to emphasize different elements.

Nearly every social media app can be described as providing the ability to share images, videos and short messages with friends. What separates Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Tumblr, Pintrest, Snapchat etc from each other is what features each focuses on.

It is probably important to point out, as the people in the article’s comment section do, that not all creative people are dishonest and not all dishonest people exhibit creativity outside of being adept at masking their dishonesty. It is also easy for people to feel entitled for reasons unrelated to recognition of their creativity.

In a number of past posts, I have noted that there is no magic formula that will engender creativity in people and organizations over the course of a short seminar. Creativity is gained by practice over time, a sentiment echoed by HBR article commenter Linda Adams.

Raise your hand if you have had an experience that resembled the first sentence:

A lot of people think creativity is simply brainstorming a bunch of ideas and that’s it—that’s where writers get “I’ve got this great idea. You write it and I’ll split it 50-50.”

But creativity is far more than coming up with ideas. It’s executing them—which is a skill that can take years or decades to learn–and taking the dynamic leaps into the unknown to see if something works. It’s taking a risk because something that we try might not work at all, but trying itself is part of the creative process and a learning experience. But most people are not going to take that much effort, and those who try are sometimes surprised about how much hard work it is.

creativity, State of the Arts

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Humility In Service

December 15, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

I was attending a creative industry conference today which gave me a lot to think about. One of the topics that came up was creative placemaking. Right now that is a big push for improving communities around the country. ArtPlace is one of the bigger efforts to this end.

However, one of the things keynote speaker Tom Borrup noted was that often placemaking has an element of placetaking.

It is widely acknowledged that gentrification displaces artists which planted the seeds for vibrancy within neighborhoods. The process of placemaking seeks to improve conditions in neighborhoods which may end up displacing a wider spectrum of residents beyond artists. Even if it doesn’t immediately displace them, the placemaking vision may implicitly be imposing a different type of art and culture than already exists there.

Borrup suggested one of the most important questions to ask is whose art and culture is being employed in the placemaking effort. Should there be an effort at placekeeping? That is, an intentional effort to determine what should be left in place rather than replaced.

This reminded me of the woman I wrote about two weeks ago who was selling a condo in San Francisco’s Mission District at below market rate. She was requiring the condo buyer to commit to a cultural promissory note to contribute to the community. One of the conditions I hadn’t mentioned was that she required the buyer not to complain about the Day of the Dead celebrations.

Whether that is a reasonable expectation of a property buyer or not, this shows a concern that the existing culture of the neighborhood not be disparaged or displaced by new residents.

Along the same lines, in another session Marc Folk, Executive Director of The Arts Commission in Toledo noted that arts people often talk about the necessity of going out into the community since the community doesn’t come to them. He said that he often approached that as if he was metaphorically riding out on his white horse to save the community.

He said after a time he learned that really first you needed to go out as a guest and ask to be hosted at meetings, gatherings, etc. which is a much more humble approach. I had visions of the electoral process in NH where people host intimate meetings with political candidates in their homes. Though I also suspect he may have meant being a true guest and not being the focus of attention at all the first few times out.

Similarly, in another session a panelist noted that after experiencing a lot of resistance from educators, they finally asked what they were doing wrong. They were told that generally arts organizations come along and ask the schools to participate in their programs rather than asking what initiatives the schools were pursuing that they could participate in. (I guess in some cases, arts organizations put schools into grants as program participants without even consulting with the schools.)

This general sentiment reminded me about the diversity panel I attended at the Arts Midwest conference this past Fall. When I wrote about the session, I noted:

..the focus of engaging diverse communities has been on how the arts/cultural organization can benefit from the inclusion. This can make the effort feel disingenuous and leave people feeling marginalized. Few organizations can say why engaging diverse audiences is meaningful beyond seeking to expand sources of revenue.

The first step then is to articulate why it is important and what the organization’s concept of diversity is given that the term can encompass cultural, ethnic, social, sexual and other affinity groupings.

The Arts Midwest panel talked about consulting representatives of the segment that aligns with your concept and letting them tell you what is relevant to the community rather than engaging an artist or program and expecting/telling that segment they should find your offerings relevant to them.

If you think about what is required to do any of this, you realize that you need to take the approach of truly serving the community rather than doing things you think the community will like.

Audience Relations, Leadership, New Initiatives, State of the Arts

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Internships, The Paid and The Unpaid

December 14, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

I recently got around to reading the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) special report on internships in arts fields.

There is a lot of interesting findings in the 23 page report, including the (to me) dismaying news that 87% of those who did at least one arts administration internship were unpaid. That is the highest rate of unpaid internships in any of the categories.

What I was most interested in learning was the reality of the claim that the ability to participate in an internship was dependent on receiving support from families. Sure enough, even though there was negligible difference in the amount of debt accrued by students who did an internship and those who did not, those who could depend on support from families more frequently participated in an internship.

Sixty-seven percent of recent alumni who did not intern while enrolled in school indicated that parents or family helped pay for their education; the figure is 8% higher (75%) among alumni who did intern.

The gap in family support is similar between recent alumni who had unpaid internships and those who did not; 75% of former unpaid interns indicated they received such support, compared to only 67% for alumni who did not undertake an unpaid internship.

Gender, race and socioeconomic status also were factors in choosing to do an internship and whether it was paid or unpaid.

Women were more likely than men to have undertaken an internship during their undergraduate education (56% compared to 51%). While women and men were equally likely to ever have done paid internships, women were much more likely to have been unpaid interns (57% compared to 46% for men).

Black and Hispanic/Latino alumni were less likely to have done internships than their White and Asian counterparts. Black and Hispanic/Latino graduates were also slightly less likely to have done paid internships and more likely than White alumni to have done unpaid internships.

First-generation college graduates were less likely than non-first-generation college graduates to have been interns while enrolled in school (51% compared to 56%) as well as before or after graduation (paid or unpaid)…

SNAAP data are consistent with many commentators’ concerns about the intern economy in that women, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and first-generation college graduate arts alumni all appear to have held a disproportionate number of unpaid internships—which, as will be considered below, are tied to significantly weaker career payoffs than paid internships. However, one possible explanation for this over representation might be that these demographic groups tend to cluster in majors in which unpaid internships are more common than paid ones. For this reason, to further investigate the findings above, our study considered the subsample of recent design alumni

The report authors note that in the design sub-sample, the demographic trends are even more pronounced than within the general sample. (Page 9 if you want more detail.)

Most interestingly was their finding that paid internships were more valuable than unpaid internships when it came to finding jobs. Those who did an internship were more successful at finding a job than those who did not (66% vs 57% four months after graduation, 86% vs 77% one year after graduation.)

However, the authors,

“…find that paid internships are even more closely related to finding a job than unpaid internships.

[…]

Figure 6 shows that having an unpaid internship does not appear to be related to finding a job more quickly after graduation. Conversely, having a paid internship has consistently been related to finding a job more quickly after graduation. Recent graduates (2009–2013) who have done paid internships, during school or outside of school, have fared especially well compared to alumni who have never been paid interns, with 89% of the former finding work within one year of graduation compared to 77% for the latter.

Simply securing a paid internship doesn’t necessarily guarantee a job. The authors note that ambitious, talented internship seekers who secure a paid position may apply those same traits to a job search.

They may also be securing the paid internships thanks to family connections and a familiarity and ability to navigate social interactions and systems that first generation students and other demographic groups don’t possess or are comfortable with.

There is a lot of interesting data in the report. If nothing else, you can get a sense of what percentage of undergraduates in your discipline intern and what the paid versus unpaid numbers look like.

With the current conversation about inequity and exploitation related to internships, it can be easy to overlook the finding that those who participate in internships report a higher satisfaction with their training and education experience than those who don’t participate.

Which is not to say they wouldn’t be that much more satisfied if they were paid and treated a little better.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Oh Please Let Someone Start Singing Ode To Joy In The Produce Aisle

December 9, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

On my Twitter feed I got a link to an announcement that a documentary on Knight Foundation’s Random Act of Culture program won a regional Emmy. As I watched the first brief video where Dennis Scholl talks about first getting the idea from a pop up opera performance in Valencia, Spain where they ended by holding a sign saying “So You Don’t Think You Like Opera?,” two questions came to mind.

The first is I wondered why people reacted so positively to having performers throw off their “mundane” identities and burst into action in public spaces, but will pass by Joshua Bell or Tasmin Little in street clothes playing in a railway station.

I am on record expressing disdain for the way the Joshua Bell situation was set up because it seemed positioned to allow the journalist to call out people as uncultured philistines. I wrote about a great three part podcast (which alas has disappeared) where the contributors discussed how important setting and context are to creating a receptive mindset in people and how these things are not present in rail stations.

But people aren’t naturally placed in this mindset in shopping malls and supermarkets either. People may be less harried than when they are rushing to work or to connect to another form of transportation, but they generally aren’t going shopping secretly hoping the crowd will burst into “Ode To Joy.” Yet people are immediately delighted when it happens. Why is that?

The difference may be the scale. Walking up on a busker or group of performers on the street is a different experience from having the people around you start to participate in something. You have more permission to enjoy yourself if 40 people standing around you start singing versus seeing the 40 people nearby stride with determination past buskers.

There is also a different sort of theatricality involved with flash performances than busker setting up an open instrument case. If Joshua Bell had flung off his jacket with a flourish and dove into a lively piece as he descended the escalator at the Metro station, it might have engaged the curiosity of more people.

The second question that occurred to me was the one posed at the end of the performance in Valencia about not liking opera. It probably is easy to be open to liking opera in a 5-10 minute segment when everyone around you seems to be participating. It may not seem as enjoyable to go to an opera house and try to follow the plot of an entire opera in a foreign language. Heck, it may not seem enjoyable if a group did a pop up performance of the entire opera, blocking the aisles for two hours while you were trying to buy groceries for your family.

This isn’t a criticism of the Random Acts of Culture program. Inciting curiosity and showing people they have the capacity to enjoy opera, dance, etc., is an asset to the arts.

We just can’t acclaim that particular tactic as the answer to getting new audiences hooked. It’s no more the solution than the idea that people only need to see our work once before they are hooked.

In fact, it may be less so. For people who are not frequent attendees, the experience of going to the opera after seeing a pop up performance may seem like a bait and switch. For people who work in the field, it can be difficult to imagine how stark the contrast may seem to them.

Thankfully, many in the field are able to imagine that performance attendance experience may be losing its relevance for today’s audiences and there is a fair bit of conversation occurring about what alternatives are possible.

On the other side of the equation, when arts practitioners advocate for taking art and culture to people where they live, it should be remembered that these experiences are only a delight because they are unexpected, infrequent and in small doses. Too much of it and you are an unwelcome intrusion on people where they live.

It would be better if arts practitioners could find a place nearby where people could gather and be delighted that doesn’t interfere with the daily flow of life.

Oh wait, there are already a bunch of those. They are the places nobody under the age of 60 seems to want to go to have an arts experience.

Clearly, there has to be a medium between the two environments and it is going to take some work to determine what it is exactly.

One of the things I suspect, but I would be interested to see a study confirm, is that the pop up performances like those in the Knight Foundation’s Random Acts of Culture may make spectators more confident in their own ability to be creative. Even though the person standing next to them who started singing may have many years of training and rehearsed for five hours in order to make everything look effortless, the illusion is there that the average John or Jane has the potential for excellence. A concept that is reinforced by shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.

Since we are seeing signs that the concept of personal creativity is more appealing than the concept of art and culture, pop up performances could be one of many tools used to encourage people toward participation in creative endeavors. That can’t be the only tactic used and the execution has to come off more organic than just planting performers in the audience.

To whit: