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Covid Restrictions May Have Resulted In Increased Social Inertia

October 25, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

I recently saw a link on a CityLab story noting that since the end of Covid restrictions, people appear to be less willing to venture outside of familiar neighborhoods and locales.

As of late 2021, people remained less likely to engage in social exploration, which the study authors define as the likelihood of visiting a new place where they earn significantly more or less than than the general population. Instead, they just returned to familiar destinations.

[…]

Fewer people are visiting attractions like museums, restaurants or parks that are outside their immediate mobility radius, and they’re spending less time among residents at different socioeconomic levels.

Outside of the concerns operators of arts organizations, restaurants, parks and other attractions may have about a drop in attendance and purchases, this has implications for the overall social cohesion in the US. While most cities studied experienced this drop of mobility, places that had fewer restrictions on public assembly and in-person office work saw a smaller decrease in relation to how much people were willing to circulate to unfamiliar locations.

If the narrowed social mobility habits of residents endure, policymakers will have to contend with an extended loss in income-diverse encounters — a trend likely to further exacerbate political polarization and diminish social capital.

Yabe said the research could help decision-makers get a better sense of the trade-offs as they try to strike a balance between safety and social cohesion.

It should be noted that while this report came out in 2023, it appears the most recent data was from the end of 2021 when people were still a little wary about moving around. While this situation may not exist to the same extent as late 2021, the implications still bear attention.

General Musings, Government Relations

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Don’t Break Up With Volunteers Over Email

October 24, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

I recently saw an article about the Portland Art Museum essentially firing all their volunteer docents by email in favor of paid students with a suggestion that the docents weren’t diverse enough. I felt a sense of deja vu and couldn’t figure out why until I saw a brief mention of the Art Institute of Chicago doing something similar. Sure enough, I had linked to posts Drew McManus and Lee Rosenbaum had made in November 2021 about the Art Institute’s firing of docents by email in favor of paid staff due to the docents not being as diverse as the organization wanted.

Drew suggested the Art Institute had created a PR crisis by fumbling the process pretty soundly. I haven’t seen a similar uproar about Portland’s decision to do the same thing. The media landscape has certainly changed in many ways since November 2021.

While working aggressively to achieve diversity goals are absolutely laudable, as Drew pointed out the Art Institute had established qualifications for docents that pretty much only wealthy, older individuals could fulfill. It appeared they both jettisoned the structure of the docent program and the participants without any thought of a gradual integration or transition to a new model that would parlay their experienced volunteers.

“Once the news went public, there was a good bit of blow back, especially after the docent group’s spokesperson said the organization’s membership supports reaching diversity goals. What they wanted to know is why they were tossed to the curb without a replacement program ready to implement nor a plan to aggressively diversify over the period of a few years.

Given that volunteers were required to maintain eighteen months of twice-a-week training to qualify as a docent and five additional years of continual research along with a laundry list of other requirements, it’s not difficult to see why there would be concern.”

The Portland docents are being encouraged to join a new program where they can act as educators, greeters and coat-check helpers. Some of the docents had already had a sense that this was going to be the direction of things and feel a bit betrayed by how the transition was being handled.

One former docent, who declined to be named, didn’t feel blindsided like Dacklin did by changes to the council. Based on what happened to the docents in Chicago and all the equity consultants PAM brought in, she had felt the “foreboding” for a couple of years. She laughed at the idea of going back to PAM as a volunteer educator: “They burned their bridge.”

Dacklin feels similarly alienated. “I’m heartbroken,” she says, her voice brimming with emotion. “Will I go back to the museum and volunteer? I don’t know anyone that’s going to do it. But I don’t know everyone.”

Volunteers

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They Are Having More Fun In The Movie Screening Next Door

October 23, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

Recently I have been seeing articles heralding the Taylor Swift and Beyonce concert movies as the recipe for financial success for struggling movie theaters—turn movie attendance into an event.

Except that those articles might have gotten ahead of themselves because attendees of those events are expressing disappointment about their experiences. Essentially, its a matter of FOMO – fear of missing out- colliding with the one thing performance venues have been heralding as the biggest benefit of live events over recordings —every experience is different.

As a recent Slate article stated, the grass seemed greener at the screening the next theater over. Some attendees to the Taylor Swift Eras tour concert screening felt other people were having a rowdier experience than they were. Others felt like their screening was way too rowdy and they couldn’t hear Taylor. There were inevitable articles and social media posts about proper movie attendance etiquette.

Some of this hype came from Swift herself—when she announced the concert film in August, her social media statement included the line, “Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged.” At real tour dates, fans have taken to dressing up and exchanging hand-beaded friendship bracelets, as well as vigorously singing and dancing along to the music, so Swift was setting the tone for the movie’s rollout, telling fans that they should feel free to pretend they were attending the genuine article.

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But not everyone was happy about these situations: Some of the videos depicting fans having semi-religious experiences at the movie were accompanied by posts like this one, where a user complained, “I’m at the worst screening ever cant even hear taylor :)”

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A writer for the A.V. Club shared of her moviegoing experience, “[S]eeing all those weeping fans onscreen in a silent, mostly empty theater with not even an AMC-branded friendship bracelet in sight rang especially hollow.” But she went through the grass-is-greener phenomenon in real time, going on to write, “While no one was in costume in my theater, I did take a pee break halfway through, which revealed an entirely different crowd from an earlier screening that had just let out.” The other audience had “more pink, more rhinestones, more souvenir popcorn buckets, and at least two limited edition folklore cardigans, so the vibe might have been totally different.”

Among the suggestions floated in the article were akin to the practice of scheduling accessible or sensory friendly shows. In this case there would be a choice between quiet and raucous.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

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FTC Proposing Transparency Rules For Ticketing Fees

October 17, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

A couple hours after I made my post about an article addressing the problem with “drip fees” in the UK and the psychology that reinforces their use, I saw that the FTC is proposing new rules to address junk fees, which are the same as drip fees in the UK.

FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement that “by hiding the total price, these junk fees make it harder for consumers to shop for the best product or service and punish businesses who are honest upfront.

[…]

A new rule with more precise language can do a better job with specifics, the agency argues:

It is an unfair and deceptive practice and a violation of this part for any Business to offer, display, or advertise an amount a consumer may pay without Clearly and Conspicuously disclosing the Total Price.
[…]

….and now this new proposed FTC rule could force other businesses in different industries, from airlines to hotels, to follow suit

If successful, the new rule could put an end to bait-and-switch tactics, which consumers have told the FTC that they’re constantly experiencing. Consumers have also said they often don’t know what certain fees are for.

Other articles about the proposed rule include examples of some of the arcane abbreviations associated with added fees that people couldn’t decipher. It was noted that the rule wouldn’t get rid of all the added fees resulting in cheaper prices, but it would force businesses like concert venues, hotels, and airlines to disclose full prices upfront.

As I mentioned in my post last week, the rule will need to be written well to eliminate loopholes which will allow for the addition of fees not covered by the rule. It should also be noted that hospitals have been required to provide transparent pricing for common procedures since 2021, but a recent study revealed only about 1/3 of hospitals are in compliance. So there needs to be real enforcement of the rules as well.

Audience Relations, Pricing

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