I am happy to see some promising signs from Honolulu Symphony. Last May I made an entry on reports of infighting and tension in the symphony board and administration.

There may still be some simmering anger in the organization but it appears there are also some attempts to expand the reach and visibility of the symphony thanks to the generosity of a board member.

An email sent out to managers of theatres on all the Hawaiian Islands by an officer of the State Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism noting that a symphony board member “is the pilot of a small private airplane that may be available to fly small ensemble performance groups (i.e., Honolulu Symphony and others) between the Hawaiian islands at greatly reduced cost or possibly no cost. I thought you might find this of interest.”

What is particularly interesting, if true, is the offer to fly groups other than the symphony’s internal one to the other islands. Now granted, most of the chamber groups in Honolulu are comprised of symphony musicians. However, these folks are in business for themselves so the symphony doesn’t realize any monetary benefit from their efforts.

It is pretty expensive to fly an entire orchestra and their instruments interisland so it isn’t as if the symphony can realistically be looking to develop an audience on the other islands for their performances. (Although there is a high speed ferry in the works.) Perhaps some more people will fly in to Honolulu to see the symphony there, but it is hardly going to reverse any financial woes.

Even if it is an attempt to gain musicians more employment so they won’t look to the symphony for their main source of income, the board is still showing a lot more concern for the artists than most have in recent years. (Examples from Adaptistration here, here, and here)

It will be interesting to see if anyone takes advantage of the offer and what developes from it.

Waaay back in June, I saw this piece on the Cultural Commons website on partnerships that I meant to write on and never did. So here I go.

Essentially, the Urban Institute did an evaluation of the Wallace Foundation’s Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation (CPCP) initiative. While some organizations involved in the initiative found the experience valuable, there were problems. The biggest being that none of those involved continued the partnerships after the grant funds ran out.

The Urban Institute found many reasons why there were problems. Some had to do with foundations expectations, including a belief that partnerships were the solution to all problems.

Although all of the foundations told us they wanted to support “genuine” partnerships and avoid ventures formed solely to obtain funds, it would appear that in some cases they were unwittingly encouraging precisely such behavior by providing incentives that ironically put creating partnerships before cultural participation.

Other difficulties emerged from friction between the partnering organizations. Some problems came from just the plain fact that there wasn’t enough staffing with time, skills or opportunity to effectively execute the planned activities. And then there were the instances where the partnership just ran counter to the missions of the organizations.

The summary got me thinking about the whole subject of partnerships a bit more. When you talk about them as a concept, they sound great and like the solution to woes. Big companies collaborate with each other and with universities with regular success, why not non-profits? Is there too much ego and desperation to hold on to one’s hard won turf to make it successful?

About two years ago a friend was giving me a tour of her town. Despite having a fairly affluent demographic and strong attendance at other arts events (in some instances HUGE attendance), there was no major theatre group in town. Instead, there were two or three small theatre groups trying hard to get a performance out. It’s too bad they don’t try merging instead of trying to do their own thing my friend said.

Reading this thing about partnerships brought this experience to mind. I am sitting here trying to imagine what compelling reasons there might be not to merge.

-Classical group vs. Contemporary group?
Nah, theatres regularly offer such mixed fare in their seasons

-Avant Garde works vs. Mainstream?
Have to wonder, if you are offering an alternative to another group that has a weak presence itself, are you really offering an alternative at all? Again, market the organization the right way and the varied offerings only make you look more interesting.

Really, the only reason I can see not to merge is fear of losing what ground you have gained and personality differences. (Pretenious guy from NYC vs. the authentic locals, for example.)

This isn’t the same as partnerships where the participants expect to maintain their distinct identities. However, it goes to show if people with much more to gain and lose, (depending which way they go) can’t come together, it is easy to understand why partnerships might have difficulties.