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Don’t Want To Ask Too Many Questions, I Might Jinx It

March 2, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

Early last month Seth Godin made a post about precision and accuracy. The more I have thought about it, the more convinced I am that he hasn’t fully considered his argument. Either that, or I am not aligned with the way he is defining his terms.

Precision requires producing the same results each time. Repeatable, measurable, dependable.

Accuracy means hitting the target.

The only way to consistently be accurate is to be precise.

But there are plenty of precision methods that don’t yield the most desired outcomes.

[…]

The world we live in is recent, and was created by a revolution in precision. We’re still working on accuracy.

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About the only thing I am in agreement with his his statement about precision methods not yielding most desired outcomes.

What first came to mind when I read this statements is that I have had periods where I was able to bowl multiple strikes consecutively, consistently send a ball through a basketball hoop, and cluster darts around a bullseye. I was repeatedly hitting my target in the sweet spot.

The only problem is, I didn’t know why I was achieving that success. I wasn’t as aware of my body as I am now. So those successes were as much as surprise to me as everyone else. When the stakes aren’t really high, you don’t ask questions and just hope things keep going your way.

Sure, arguably my skill was only repeatable and dependable over a relatively short period of time. But I would also point out that people have realized a lot of success based on the foundation of being a literal or figurative one-hit wonder in entertainment, sports, advertising, stocks, etc.

Generally though, accuracy and precision without understanding the contributing factors isn’t worth much for long.

Arts and cultural organizations run into this a lot. We realize unexpected success with an event, but can’t seem to replicate it again. We don’t know if it was that particular show/opportunity. The marketing approach. That specific set of dates in October. The weather.

Ruth Hartt has been writing about how audience motivations are largely invisible but that you can gain better insight by asking questions directed at their desired outcomes vs. the organization’s.

But it is certainly not an issue that only arts and cultural organizations face. So many bosses have asked their staff to make something viral that it has only succeeded in creating a meme. Closely related to that are the millions upon millions spent on ads during the Super Bowl that fail to connect or raise a questioning eyebrow about what the advertiser was thinking.

Audience Relations, Marketing/PR, Working In The Arts

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Knowing What You Are Not Trying To Be

February 25, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

This week Kyle Bowen at Museum as Progress made a lengthy post about why they design their gatherings the way they do. What was interesting to me was how clear they are about what they are trying not to be.

Through surveys they learned that potential participants value “Safety. Small size. Continuity. Shared challenges.” This eliminated the large conference or webinar formats.

In fact, when asked where people turned when working through hard professional problems, conferences were at the bottom of the list.

The dominant answers, by far: books, podcasts, or published content and informal conversations with peers at other museums. Then colleagues inside my institution and a peer group or executive network. Down at the bottom: professional association events or conferences.

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Recognizing there is a lot of published content and podcasts, they identified a gap between published content and informal conversations that needed to be filled.

The sector has content infrastructure. It has informal peer networks. What it doesn’t have is practice infrastructure — the structured space where professionals can act in new ways, not just think about them.

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Bowen lists three types of group sessions they are going to begin offering that pair participants up with 1-10 other people depending on the intent of the sessions. Some are one time focused on skill practice, others are recurring discussions of data and patterns. He emphasizes that there will be a guiding structure to the conversation rather than being a forum for receiving advice.

Based on early readings and consideration the concept of these sort of structured conversations with peers is appealing to me. But as I said, the process Bowen went through to identify an unmet need that has elements of what people value in their professional interactions is what really caught my attention.

The obvious question is, can a similar approach be used to identify unmet needs of audiences and communities. Perhaps participation in a structured conversations like the one Bowen is designing will lead to an answer.

Art(ist) Education, Working In The Arts

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Roots Of Ireland’s Basic Income For Artists Was 1981

February 24, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

In the last couple weeks there have been articles about Ireland making their basic income for artists program permanent. What that means is that around 2000 artists will be randomly chosen by lottery to receive 325 euros (~$383 USD) a week for three years. Then another 2000 artists will be chosen. This mirrors the trial phase of the program which ran from 2022-2025 where 2000 artists out of 8000 applicants were chosen.

A few days later another article took a more in depth look at the program. That article noted that while a lot of those in the trial program saw an improvement in quality of life, a lot of artists were obviously left out. The fact the new program is limited to 2000 people and cycles every three years means a lot of other people will be left out.

That said, Ireland is believed to be the only country to have made a basic income program for artists permanent. Now there are movements to try to do the same for other industries such as fishing, farming and weather based tourist attractions.

What I really found interesting was the recounting of the lengthy process that lead to the establishment of the guaranteed basic income program. Apparently, Ireland’s Greens Party had been interested in the concept back in 1981. Energy didn’t really coalesce around creating a program until the sense of desperation that existed during Covid shutdowns.

Then Minister for Arts Catherine Martin created the trail program. People interviewed for the piece credit Martin with investing the time and energy to make it a reality and then moving it toward becoming a permanent feature.

Basic income for artists was the first. “And it landed at a time when I think government was very open to thinking outside the box.”

It coincided with a “hearts and minds” campaign undertaken by the NCFA about the importance of the arts and a grassroots campaign in every county. There was also a higher than usual appreciation for the arts due to the successive lockdowns. “Then it was ‘over to you, minister’,” says Dorgan. “Catherine Martin spent every single cent of her political clout getting it through … It was her hill. And I think she was prepared to die on that hill.”

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Living in a world where we can access information and order things so quickly it is easy to forget that generating energy and interest around an idea in order to bring large scale change sometimes takes decades. A lot of the basic work has to be done in order to take advantage of a moment of openness that occurred in Ireland during Covid.

It will be interesting to see if Ireland is able to expand the program to a broader range of artists and industries.

As a caveat to all this, I want to link back to a post I did in October 2025 on research that found basic income programs tend to emphasize a narrow set of positive outcomes and downplay significant areas of participants lives which did not improve. In many respects that may be an indication that the programs need to be designed to include a range of resources and support.

Advocacy, Business Models, Government Relations, Working In The Arts

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What Will We Do? The Paintings Aren’t Working!

February 23, 2026

by:

Joe Patti

Via Artsjournal.com is a piece on The Critic addressing the trend in thinking art has curative abilities. I have long written about the problem with measuring the value of art in prescriptive terms.

While the piece focuses on The Tate in the UK, the points are applicable world wide.

Writes Ella Nixon in “It’s not the Tate’s job to heal you”:

These cultural institutions are transforming curatorial practice in order to combat the spread of anxiety and depression — particularly amongst the young. Taxpayer value is proven through demonstrable worth. Curators are incentivised to diagnose and treat societal ailments through exhibition practices as a means of demonstrating their social utility and thereby justifying their public funding, at the expense of art’s true potential to cultivate society.

Source

But as Goodhart’s Law states, when the measure becomes the goal, the measure ceases to have any value.

Nixon cites examples of when the art created has had to take a backseat to the goals of addressing inequity, social issues, and environmental concerns.

One manifestation of the medicalisation of artistic value is the latest Turner Prize winner. Commentators — including chair of the jury and director of Tate Britain, Alex Farquharson — focused excessively on the fact that Nnena Kalu was the first learning-disabled artist to win the prize, rather than on discussing the artistic qualities of her work.

Not only are curators expected to address complex manifestations of medical disabilities, but also to inextricably link care and climate change. One wall text at Tate Britain declares, “We continue to struggle with the planet-wide impact of the climate emergency.”

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Certainly artists intentionally address issues which are meaningful to them in their creations. But if the didactic messaging is the primary recognized value and the artistic expression is expected to take a secondary or tertiary role, wouldn’t it be better to just commission a PSA?

In the same way, viewing and using art in a prescriptive manner intended to solve some ill makes the artistic value and creativity invested in it subservient at best and in danger of being regarded alongside a tablespoon full of cod liver oil at worst.

Audience Relations, creativity, State of the Arts

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