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Leadership Training and Discussion Moves Forward

April 7, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

If you have seen Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser on his Arts in Crisis tour or read any of his writings on the matter of arts leadership training, you will know that he feels not enough is being done to teach people about how to do the job well. On occasion, I have also opined that arts leaders don’t talk to each other enough about the challenges we face and the processes we employ in pursuit of our jobs and goals.

It seems like that is starting to change now. In addition to the Emerging Leadership Institute program Arts Presenters runs, they have decided to partner with Research Center for Leadership in Action (RCLA) at NYU on a program for mid-career arts professionals with an eye toward grooming them for senior leadership positions. The Leadership Development Institute is accepting applications right now in fact. The deadline is April 19. The pilot phase of the program will employ “two series of collaborative inquiry sessions, virtual webinars, online resources and one-day action-learning seminars.”

Over at Americans for the Arts’ ARTSblog some interesting perspectives on leadership in the arts are emerging from the various contributors. Just today there was a post by Joanna Chin listing all the general arguments for the value of the arts that she could think of: “Arts = Arts; Arts = Humanity; Arts = Health/Quality of Life; Arts = Civic Engagement and Social Change; Arts = Economic Vitality; Arts = Creativity/Innovation = Growth/Vitality; Arts = Cultural Tourism = Economic Vitality; Arts = Jobs & Industry; Arts = Shared Benefit.” She expands briefly on each of these areas and wonders if this is an exhaustive list. If you can think of others, visit the entry and contribute your thoughts.

Marc Vogl offered a clever analogy of “What a Seder Can Teach Us about Arts Leadership”

“Those in leadership positions especially carry the burden of executing the plan of record which, as many E.D.s will attest, means putting out the fire that’s blazing now or shifting the pots on the stove around so that none boils over today.

So, who is responsible for periodically stepping in and asking the elemental but critical questions?

Perhaps it should be those on top of the organizational structure – whether administratively or in governance positions at the board level – but frequently those are the people who must answer the questions.

In the Seder it’s the kids who sing out to the elders: why are we doing things the way we’re doing things?

And it is for everyone around the table to respond, and hopefully, to reflect for a moment on the history that informs that response, to consider the present circumstances and how times have changed, and maybe even to look ahead and determine what we can do going forward so that we don’t spend another year going through rote motions and taking important things (like freedom in the case of Passover, or making art that has meaning for those of us in this field) for granted.”

Shannon Daut who is Deputy Director at the Western States Arts Federation and has a broad perspective on how the arts are developing regionally and I would imagine nationally, talks about the lack of leadership opportunities for younger administrators because those on the executive level continue to circulate between the available positions.

“I recently had a conversation with WESTAF’s director, Anthony Radich, and asked him what his resume looked like when he was my age—35. He rattled off a list of ED positions at various arts organizations. I think his experience is pretty typical. Because the arts field was so young, experienced arts administrators were not available to fill open positions. They made it up as they went along and were entrusted with great organizational responsibilities at early stages in their careers.

For the most part, today’s emerging (and mid-career) administrators have not been able to benefit from an environment that would take risks on “unproven” job candidates. “

Finally, Letitia Fernandez Ivins, addresses the all important issue of balancing work and personal life in an industry where it has always been expected that one suffers for ones art. Her entry primarily deals with the impact of pregnancy on a career in the arts. However, the general topic is clearly an important one. There are many comments on the entry already. One woman expresses her relief upon learning so many other people are facing the same choices.

Actually, I shouldn’t say finally regarding Letitia’s post. There have been more than 20 entries on the subject of leadership since Monday. These are just the handful that resonated with me most today. I should mention that Americans for the Arts have their own Emerging Leader Network from which I assume the drew many of these contributions. I am pleased to see such great movement in leadership training and discussion happening right now. It wasn’t that long ago that I was mentioning the lack of such activity. I didn’t think this much progress would be made in a few short years.

Leadership, New Initiatives, State of the Arts

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Stuff You Can Use: Ticketing Software

April 6, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

David Dombrosky, Executive Director at the Center for Arts Management and Technology posted a link to the results of a Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey they conducted last year.

They broke down the results by small, medium, large and very large organizations as defined by budget. They looked at what software, services and features people were using at each level to serve their audiences. I will reiterate the report–the respondents were self-selected so the results should not be construed as representing the market share of each ticketing option.

I didn’t scrutinize the report much and what I was looking for was assuredly defined by my own criteria for a ticketing system. The thing I was interested to find as a low priority feature was barcode scanning. It makes sense that small organizations wouldn’t need it but even the very large organizations didn’t see it as a top feature. I wonder how many of those who have the ability to process bar codes actually use it.

I guess I am somewhat sensitive to the issue because our events are listed on a site that sells athletic tickets with the option of printing a pass a home. Occasionally someone asks us about that option. For us the cost is far too prohibitive and too few people order in advance to actually use the print at home option. Had we more seating capacity, it might make sense to scan the bar codes on the tickets to expedite the processing of all the at gate ticket buyers.

Even if you aren’t interested in reading about all this, the end of the report can be helpful if you are looking for new ticketing services. There are three pages of questions to ask and things to look for when evaluating ticket systems for your organization.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Info You Can Use

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Reflections On Many Recent Arts Experiences

April 5, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

I know that my season is starting to wind down when I actually have time to get out and see other people’s performances. We who work in the arts are frequently told that if we want to stay at the peak of our powers, we should always being seeing things. When you are in the middle of your season, you tend to think that you see lots of performances because you are watching a lot of different things.

The problem is, the frame of mind you are in when you watch your own show isn’t the same as when you watch someone else’s. You are thinking about arrangements that still need to be made. You are noticing things the ushers should be doing better and trying to commit that list to memory so you can attend to it during a break. You are generally less free and open to the experience. Some times you just need to go somewhere else and have the experience free of this baggage so you can progress in your own skills and abilities.

Two Fridays ago I went to see a show that contained two pieces from a work being developed to premiere on our stage this coming October. It was a nice time and I chatted with some potential donors. Granted, it wasn’t entirely free of associations with work, but not paying for any part of the production or reception certainly frees the mind of some concerns. A sentiment that one of my colleagues from another arts organization also expressed to me.

This past Friday I went to the First Friday art walk to watch excerpts for the Celebrity Project show that is opening this coming weekend. We were trying to drum up interest in the show but also gauge what did and didn’t work. I sidling up to eavesdrop on people talking about the pieces. Pretty much all our spies overheard comments on the same issues and a revamp is in the works on a couple sections.

Saturday I went to see a Fijian group that had been brought in by the East-West Center arts program as part of the celebration of their 50th Anniversary. Before the show we were told that what we were about to see was the real deal and not something that had been altered to be more palatable for tourists.

This became apparent when the group finished their first song and then went up stage and sat down in a semi-circular huddle and continued to sing–backs turned to the audience–for another five minutes. The audience seemed mostly bemused to be ignored by the performers for that period.

During this, I had a quick cascade of thoughts:

-Hmm, maybe something like this would constitute a new approach to performances.

-No, wait, this is the opposite of the current thinking. Not only is it framed in the proscenium, it moves away from interactivity and getting the audience more invested in the performance. In fact, it is actually more alienating.

-Hey, isn’t that sort of synchronous? They are performing on platforms being built for a show by the father of alienation, Berthold Brecht. Hmm, now that I think about it, someone has probably already staged a show that makes no concessions to the needs of the audience at all, ignoring and alienating them.

-Actually, this sort of activity is probably very interactive and communal in Fiji which is why they are gathered together in a circle. Since it isn’t designed to appease tourists, we are probably just in the wrong setting to experience it in the correct manner.

Anyway, after about five minutes the men got up and started dancing and the show went on from there. Different groups would get up to dance while those that finished moved back to the circle.

The singing never stopped continuing through the transitions between dancing groups. There would be a momentary pause as they shifted between songs. But the pauses were so brief that when combined with the split second tableaux the dancers would freeze into, the audience was generally uncertain when to clap.

I began to understand why attendees of classical music get so irked by applause at the wrong times. Breaks between movements are about 20 times longer than the minuscule pauses the Fijians took to pose and continue the same dance. Yet someone had to leap in and start clapping. By the third time I was muttering under my breath for people to wait a couple more beats by which time it would be clear if it was the end of the piece or just a designated pose point.

I have to give the Fijians a lot of props for their stamina and breath control. They sang continuously for 90 minutes without amplification. The only time a person didn’t sing was when they were dancing energetically around the stage. But then they sat back down and started singing again never appearing winded by their recent exertion.

The final interesting artistic encounter came today. The lobby of my building has a gorgeous 104′ x 23′ fresco mural by Jean Charlot. It is one of the last pieces he did before he died. Today his son came by to show the piece a muralist from Barcelona. I am very proud of the mural and I want to know everything I can about it so I brought my lunch to the lobby to see if I could learn anything new from Charlot’s son. There were some new revelations. Included were some fairly obvious motifs staring me right in the face I hadn’t recognized.

What I really appreciated was how passionately and eloquently the muralist from Barcelona spoke (either that or the translator was good at embellishing). He spoke of murals being the most primitive form of art dating back to cave walls. He talked about murals being the precursor of movies. He spoke of how in days when literacy was less widespread, murals told stories with sequences of images. However, unlike movies in which the sequence of event is set down by someone else, with a mural you can create your own story by choosing which image you will view next.

It occurred to me later that this activity is already in practice with people creating mash ups of other people’s work. As processing speeds increase in our various electronic devices, perhaps it will become even more prevalent. The problem today is that the person who created the original can become angry if people re-mix their work and share it with others. With a mural, the experience is much more personal within your own head or limited to whatever group you can gather around you to listen as you point out how you have re-imagined the sequence of events.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations

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Development Is Everyone’s Job Too

March 31, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

The assistant theatre manager and I had a meeting with our development officer today. I haven’t had a lot of faith in the foundation people since I took this job but today’s meeting gave me cause for optimism.

In the past, my interactions with the foundation people have mostly consisted of them telling me not to do things. I wasn’t to try contacting people, except on a very limited basis or write appeal letters, but rather give them a list of our needs and depend on the phone bank for the annual appeal. In the last six years we have had five development officers and no consistency or follow through from one to another. I have hosted four receptions in cooperation with them where there was no ask for donations. That would be fine, but there was also no follow up with the invitees to help them develop a greater investment in the theatre.

Despite all the promises and plans that were made, not only am I no closer to the endowment they keep telling me they want us to develop, but my annual contributions have been flagging every year, even before the recession. So I pointed all this out, noting that this was the fifth time I have pretty much had this meeting and asked what would be different.

The development officer acknowledged the foundation hadn’t really done well by us and then proceeded to talk about how the focus of the donor cultivation would move from her to us. We would take more ownership of the process so that if she was hit by a car tomorrow, the effort would still move forward. We aren’t going to depend heavily on gala events and chasing corporate money. We are going to clearly define giving opportunities and the case for giving to the theatre. Then we are going to start cultivating people on an informal basis.

I was glad to hear this because I figure I am already ahead in the game. I started actively cultivating relationships with people about a year ago. I was talking to a person I had specifically targeted as a prospect just last Friday. After a number of years of discussion, I am finalizing the arrangements for the donation of new carpeting for the lobby and seating areas. I had also started sending out targeted solicitation letters on the theory people give to people they know, not anonymous phone banks representing institutions. I decided if there was a foundation person to take umbrage, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be here in a year to prevent me from doing it again anyway. Yes, it might be a cynical outlook, but it has doubled my donor base. (Admitted, not a hard thing to do at this point.)

Since I regularly echo the idea that marketing is everyone’s responsibility, I am certainly on board with the idea that development requires everyone’s investment as well. When the topic of creating a case for what makes us worthy of donations came up, it was quickly decided we needed to include the technical director in some of the encounters with potential donors. He has been with the theatre for over 30 years. He has a great institutional memory and is probably the best qualified to talk about what has made us special over the years. I took it as a positive sign that the foundation was ready to give up some control when everyone quickly saw the value of having the guy with sawdust in his mustache talk to potential donors.

My suspicion is that the impetus for ceding some control and involvement is a result of the economic downturn. With staffs being shrunk, it probably became clear that the foundation couldn’t sustain the level of engagement with donors they needed to with those who remained. (The “small staff” motif was frequently mentioned by the development officer.)

I don’t know if they will be promoting the same sort of dynamic with everyone in the system. I’ll be the first to admit, not everyone is suited to advocate on behalf of their program. There are situations that really are best to defer to the professionals. The chancellor knows I have been chafing under the restrictions imposed on us and may have had a hand in getting the reins loosened a little. It may have helped that the theatre staff and I worked together to gain the donation of the new carpeting and some lighting instruments independent of the foundation.

So we will see how things unfold. The assistant theatre manager is pretty energized. Partially I think, because he hasn’t sat through this same meeting multiple times before. I am obvious still a little cautious and skeptical about the whole thing. I didn’t lay all my cards on the table in terms of possibilities I have been pursuing and after this meeting, there is less of a need to do so until the time is right.

Fundraising

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