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Cost Is More Than Pocket Change

January 28, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

We had a meeting today with some renters to discuss an event they will be presenting in about a month. It is going to be a performance by a youth orchestra and choral group. One of the organizers told us his method of figuring out how to arrange his musicians given the space constraints. He uses pocket change.

Pennies do for most musicians but nickels are necessary for those like the flautists who need a little more room. Much of the percussion section is represented by quarters.

This low tech approach brought some “kids today” thoughts to mind. Many industries complain that recent graduates from all levels don’t possess the basic skills to perform the task at hand. It is frequently mentioned that the performing arts are so expensive because production costs can’t be circumvented/minimized by advancements in technology and efficiencies (aka Baumol’s cost disease).

However, there have been instances when technology seems to have indeed left people lacking in the ability to perform basic tasks. A few years ago, there was a problem with fitting a visiting designer’s design in the facility at which I was working. He was asked to quickly revise the problem portion and hand it off to the technicians to execute. Unfortunately, since his design software wasn’t available, it had to be done by hand and the designer didn’t have the requisite skill to effectively execute it. The project was delayed a bit longer than expected when one of the technicians had to draw what the designer dictated.

In this last year we had a similar problem with another designer who insisted the show couldn’t be done without a specific type of computer controlled lighting equipment which we didn’t have. We were somewhat incredulous when it turned out that all the special equipment for was going to be used for was backlighting. Using the special equipment would reduce the number of instruments needed by 1/3. However, we had plenty of lighting instruments and circuits to produce the effect. But it took the better part of a week to convince the guy to add the other instruments to the design rather than insisting we rent expensive equipment for a half hour piece.

Alas, technology may have advanced, but the ability for our budgets to acquire technology for our house stock hasn’t. Nor had it for three of our partners so resistance to change in the face of such dearth was also puzzling and frustrating.

I can’t say for sure if the designer wasn’t just busy with other projects and really did not want to revise plans. From my vantage and from the responses we received, it appeared to be lack of imagination and problem solving skills to conceive of alternatives.

I don’t want to leave the youngest set out so I will also roll my virtual eyes at some of our students who don’t know how to use a ruler. I am not talking about scale rulers which I will admit make my eyes glaze over. I am referring to a standard 1 foot ruler. Guys, 1/4 scale means 1 inch equals 4 feet. Shave something off that chair you made out of foamcore–it is 8 feet high on your set model!!!!

I understand that technology does actually contribute to greater efficiency. It is quicker to hang one instrument instead of three. You can also do much more with the same number of circuits. You can design much faster if the computer does it for you and automatically includes all the pertinent information people need to execute the plan. But I think there is a greater cost when people don’t possess the basic skills of their profession for which technology provides a shortcut.

I really do comprehend the desire to move beyond the basic rules to the place where we get to express ourselves. I still have a paper from college with a comment that the content of my writing was simply excellent and insightful–but the grammatical errors were legion. At the time, all I cared about was the recognition of my brilliance. My grammatical skills were obviously sufficient to allow my brilliance to shine through after all. No need to shackle myself with tedious rules which only professors valued.

Now if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you have probably come across instances where my fingers act independently of my brain. Those times notwithstanding, there came a moment when I realized if I was to advance in nearly any career, I needed to embrace basic grammatical discipline. I know now that paying attention to how others employ those picayune details has enhanced the sheer magnificence my literature professor acknowledged so long ago.

Arts in an Age of Technology, General Musings

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Interesting Thoughts From Other Places

January 27, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

Read some good stuff today on two blogs that really can’t be improved upon by any commentary I can offer so read on—

The Nonprofiteer had some sage advice in a recent entry regarding recruiting people to fill volunteer roles be it a board member or ticket taker — recruit in pairs.

The two-by-two recommendation is most often made about Board members, and specifically about minority Board members: don’t ask someone to be the only African-American or the only woman in the room. But it’s equally true of any Board recruit, or in fact of any volunteer: bring in 1 person, and you’ve got a 50% shot at keeping him/her. Bring in 2, and you’ve got an 80% shot at keeping them both.

Why? Because misery loves company, and being a newcomer/outsider is always misery. And because unless your Board or volunteer program is truly astonishing, anyone observing it from the outside will think it could use a lot of improvement. The prospect of trying to improve something unaided is usually daunting to the point of not bothering.

Seems easier to do with board members who tend to be actively recruited as opposed to volunteers for other areas which are often self-selected. You don’t want to turn someone away simply because no one else offered their services this week. It is possible though to orient people in pairs or small groups to facilitate bonding among them. If the 80% retention stat is correct, it seems prudent to arrange the situation so people’s initial volunteer encounters are in multiples.

Over at Producer’s Perspective, Ken Davenport relates an answer Sandy Block of Sernio Coyne gave to the question about why producers attempt to mount Broadway productions given the enormous challenges. Block stops the class in which the question was asked and queries those attending how many remember the first movie they saw and then how many can name the first Broadway show they saw. Few people raised their hands at the first question but everyone raised their hands at the second.

Says Davenport:

There’s a highly emotional experience connected with Broadway; a passion that can be turned into profit . . . Now the real question is, how can we capitalize on that?

Davenport then asks his readers to take Sandy Block’s survey and record the first movie and first Broadway show they saw in the comments section of the entry. If you remember, go on over and write it in.

Audience Relations, Management Philosophy, Marketing/PR, Volunteers

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New Place, New Look

January 26, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

As you can see, the blog has a new look. It may not be as apparent that the blog is in a new place as well. After five years on my old Movable Type platform, I accepted Inside the Arts founder, Drew McManus’ invitation to move my blog entirely to the Inside the Arts website. I still own the Buttsseats.com domain name and have it directed here so you can keep your bookmarks. Those who subscribe by newsfeed are probably going to have to reset them. I know that some people liked a verbose feed and others preferred a more compact feed and I plan to feature both.

I apologize to those who had difficulties reaching the blog these last couple days. I was having some difficulty getting my domain name to redirect here properly. I appreciate Drew’s patience with my emails urging him to try various settings in an attempt to make things work. There are still a couple things that probably need to be worked out but my intention is to limit such flailing to times of low traffic to the blog.

My primary motivation for moving is difficulties I had getting Movable Type to do what I wanted. It is a very flexible platform for blogging and as such has a lot of settings that can be adjusted. I believe that despite my best efforts in emulating standard settings, there was something set somewhere that precluded the execution of my changes.

Had it just been a matter of cosmetics, I wouldn’t have had a problem but there were problems with comment posting where you would be scolded for not entering the spam prevention password—only you were never given the opportunity to do so unless you previewed your post first. I spent the better part of three weeks playing with various settings to no avail. I believe this new location will provide readers with a much better experience.

My second motivation was based somewhat in envy. Drew McManus is an attentive shepherd for our merry little band of bloggers here. Evey week he sends out tips on how to improve blog posts. Often these tips include information on new plugins and programs available for the WordPress platform Inside the Arts uses. Given I was faced with so much frustration, the proposition of accomplishing my goals at a click of a button was rather seductive. There are also little nifty tools that seek out broken links within entries which will enable me to keep my old entries either up to date or at least bereft of dead links. Months of coveting such luxuries inspired me to move my blog.

I am pleased thus far with the new blogging accommodations and look forward to being able to provide a more informative experience for my readers given the new tools at my disposal.

General Musings

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Tough Times Bring Not So Strange Bedfellows

January 22, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

I have often written about what I felt was the very likely need for arts organizations to start partnering in some manner, be it booking artists or sharing the cost of bookkeeping. The approaching/continuing financial crisis seems bound to force some arts organizations into such arrangements if they want to continue operating. In the Chronicle of Philanthropy, there is a piece about the distress the Charleston Symphony Orchestra has been going through as a result of their past administrative decisions.

The one thing that grabbed my attention was a quote from the Coastal Community Foundation following the mention of Charleston Stage and Charleston Ballet Theatre having similar problems.

“For the longest time, each of the organizations thought they were alone in having financial difficulties,” says George C. Stevens, the foundation’s chief executive. “When they began to realize that, no, their partner down the street is also having the same challenges, then they started saying, ‘Well, how can we work together?'”

The organizations’ first step: a $30,000 joint marketing campaign to promote their holiday performances. The city of Charleston covered the cost of the campaign.

The community foundation created a Web site to complement the advertising, and media organizations threw in donated ad time and space on top of what was purchased.

The effort seems to have paid off. The symphony sold more than 90,000 single tickets to its holiday performances, exceeding the goal it had set of 76,000.”

I am not going to claim partnering will solve problems by increasing attendance, etc. In fact, there is no mention about how well the ballet and theatre did as a result of the effort. The entire story might not be wholly positive. Still, I applaud the Coastal Community Foundation for organizing and facilitating the marketing campaign.

I also won’t claim that I know the status of all my neighbors in the arts. However, I do work together with other arts organizations to put our seasons together. For all the areas in which I wish our partnership did better, I will say that I am aware of the troubles other arts organizations are having. Frankly, I would never have listed our frequent communications on various details as a benefit of membership but in light of these Charleston groups feeling they were alone in their troubles, I guess it does assist in placing one’s situation in a larger context.

About three years ago, Andrew Taylor had an entry on his blog suggesting arts organizations be open about things that went wrong with a program on grant reports. Though you might imagine other arts organizations in your community are just waiting in the wings like hungry wolves ready to drag you down at the first sign of weakness, the stakes probably aren’t really that high. Chances are you would find it beneficial to talk about some of the significant and not so significant challenges you face.

Also—it would probably help me personally if you all would be a little more open. When people email or ask me how things are going, I am fairly open about some of the challenges we face in a general sort of way. I talk about the annoying and sort of troublesome, potentially cause for concern, but not so dire stuff. I get the sense from people’s reactions that I sound like Marvin the Paranoid Android. Okay, well maybe I stray into cynicism a little. The whole romantization of martyrdom a Catholic upbringing affords you and all. But really, once people realize half the stuff they are experiencing is actually the status quo, franker folks like me don’t come off as such downers.

State of the Arts

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