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Imagine The Kids After Salvador Dali Watched Them

August 3, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

I recently became aware of a company that is offering artists in NYC and Chicago a flexible alternative to the waiting tables option. Sitters Studio provides babysitting work to performing and visual artists. The parents get a babysitter who offers creative activities to their children. The artists get an opportunity to employ their training and perhaps hone their skills and approach if they have any plans for bringing arts and arts education to children and families.

Sitters Studio trains their people in CPR, does background checks and bonds them but then appears to act as a clearing house for jobs. The sitters get a minimum of 4 hours pay in cash at the end of a session and help with cab fare after 9 pm. Rates start at $18 in NYC and $15 in Chicago. The interesting thing about the NYC side is that they seem to offer their services on something of a subscription basis. For $200/year you get priority service and a better rate than single time callers. They also offer cancellation forgiveness and bulk purchase and referral incentives.

All in all, it sounds like a great idea for all involved, especially if it results in kids growing up to appreciate the arts. The company provides their babysitters with a “Tote of Toys” that according to this story, serves as an ice break and source of ideas for the babysitting experience.

“We’ve given the sitters something from every art medium,” says Wilson. “We give them something that’s from a visual art, a theatrical art, a dance discipline and also from the musical discipline and we really find that it’s a great starting off point for the kids to engage in play.”

There seems to be a fair bit of potential in this company both as a business and as a way for advancing the interests of the arts community. There is certainly always an opportunity for conflicts of interest with people taking advantage of their close relationship with a family to sell/promote their personal work. But there is also opportunity for unified action. Last December all the babysitters had their charges working on cards for the armed forces overseas. I imagine that periodically Sitters Studio could sponsor some other unified initiative that reinforced the value of the arts in people’s lives without being pedantic.

Art(ist) Education, Marketing/PR, Terms and Ideas

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Manufacturing Spontaneity

July 29, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

Via Marginal Revolution, the Wall Street Journal has a story about a girl who was paid $1,800 to reference an upcoming movie in her high school valedictory speech. The movie did rather poorly and the “amateur” video of the graduation the movie studio posted on YouTube failed to achieve viral status. I doubt that will stop anyone from trying something similar again.

One of the things I wonder is if this sort of thing might not be pursued as a funding source for cash strapped non-profits. Will it really be in the non-profit sector’s best interest to engage in something like this? We bill live performances a authentic experiences with an opportunity for the sublime (as well as screw ups and catastrophes) that television and video don’t provide. If people discover the evening has been peppered with scripted “candid” moments, will we risk losing credibility and what’s left of our regular audience.

The counterargument might be made that if we don’t cash in on the eyes and ears we have assembled, someone else might just hijack our events to do so. The school district in the story had no idea their graduation ceremony had been co-opted for this purpose. In truth, there is nothing to force marketers to deal with you at all. In fact, it probably will be less trouble to circumvent you since an arts organization will want to draw up contracts and have lawyers involved.

It would be so much easier to arrange for an elderly person to disrupt a sold out performance and have a concerned adult child wring his/her hand over the fact the parent had neglected to take their Aricept. The visceral concern your audience feels having witnessed how Alzheimer’s can cause social disruptions is a much better selling point than any television ad and pretty much guarantees dissemination by word of mouth which I suspect has a higher trust ranking than a YouTube video.

It would be much better if non-profits didn’t get involved in these efforts in the first place. Then at least if people have a negative reaction upon discover an occurrence had been planned, they won’t automatically suspect the collusion when there wasn’t based on past revelations of the organization participating in such efforts.

Audience Relations, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts

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Bean Counter Hero For A Few Days

July 28, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

As the guy controlling the budget, I often have to either say no or ask people to scale back their plans. Therefore, it gives me great joy when I am in the position of telling artists that they are limiting themselves and need to think bigger. I had that opportunity about a month ago when I was discussing the site specific performance we are developing with a local performance group for next Spring. One of the artistic directors was telling me a board member was encouraging her to limit the action of the show around the theatre building.

My whole intention in approaching her about a site specific work was to get away from the building and exploit the potential in other nearby locations. Also, given that the show is about celebrity and achieving that status is divorced from formal performance settings these days thanks to our ability to record and distribute events from practically anywhere, it seemed counter intuitive to have everything happen in the theatre environs.

Given that we are about nine months out from the performance, I told her I felt it was premature to start eliminating some nearby locations that ignited both our imaginations. It felt great to be telling someone to keep dreaming about a performance.

I did feel a little bad for the nameless board member I was contradicting. Perhaps this person has made valuable suggestions in the past, but for a little while in my mind I was relegating them to the clueless board member bin. While I was feeling the hero, I was envisioning this faceless person as the stereotypical board member who valued the product, but didn’t quite understand the process of the organization which he/she served.

I didn’t think it is was particularly fair that board members end up playing that role in so many organizations. And let me be clear, since I was envisioning a theoretical board member, I certainly can’t say this is the case at all with the board of our partner organization. Let me also say that I realize this little fantasy is not only unfair to the anonymous board member, but likely short lived since the time will come soon enough when I will begin tugging on the reins and conform to the parsimonious administrator stereotype. Allow me this short time in the sun, eh?

There have been many discussions about how board members do it to themselves by not involving themselves enough. It is also true that organizations work to marginalize involvement so that the board is little more than a rubber stamp for their activities and then stays out of the way.

It seems this might be another argument for arts people not the subscribe to the notion that you have to be poor and suffer to be true to your art. In the nascent stages of some arts organizations, boards are comprised of fellow artists who understand and are invested in the work. At a certain point, it becomes clear that if the organization is to expand, it will require people of influence and means. If financial success were frowned upon less in the arts world, there would be less of a need to choose between those who get it and those who got it because they wouldn’t seem so mutually exclusive.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Leadership, Management Philosophy

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There Really Is A School of Rock

July 27, 2009

by:

Joe Patti

When I was visiting my sister on the East Coast this summer around the July 4th holidays, I attended a community festival where kids from The Paul Green School of Rock Music were playing. I initially thought this was an effort to cash in on the Jack Black movie, School of Rock, but the organization predates the movie and apparently served as an inspiration for it. I was actually surprised to learn there are franchises all across the country.

In a time when kids aren’t getting interactive opportunities with music in schools, (not to mention the woeful state of the current rock music scene), this school of rock’s approach may bear consideration and examination.

From their Manifesto:

“These are not your old fashioned wait -through-fifty-other-students mangling-their-songs- until-your-child’s- turn-arrives recitals, but real rock concerts at real rock venues in front of real rock audiences.

Shows are picked for their educational merit and content (for example: Queen teaches harmony, punk develops performance and stage presence and Zappa offers a crash course in musicianship). Thus, if they fail, they fail at aiming at the best. And, when they succeed, which is more often than not, they have accomplished something extraordinary.”

I wish I could remember who it was, it could have been in a movie I was watching, but I recently heard someone urge a person to consider if they wanted to be a musician or wanted to be famous. Thinking of that, I was going to suggest that these school were selling the allure of fame to kids. It may be that kids should be allowed to have fun. But there 8 year olds who may dream of being the next Yo-Yo Ma, but are already making a serious commitment to the cello.

Upon further thought, I wondered if there was any significant difference in what a school of rock and a school of cello are selling 8 year olds. Whether an 8 year old performs in a rock concert or a cello competition/recital, there is a sense of accomplishment and recognition. The cellist may have more pressure placed upon them to perform and practice, but that is based on a concern they reach a level sufficient to obtain a position in an orchestra. Few people push an 8 year old to practice out of fear they won’t gain a position in a rock band.

All things being equal in terms of their talent. If a guitarist and a cellist both give up their instrument at age 9 and pick it up again at 18, practicing assiduously, will one be a better performer than the other or enjoy performing more based on the instrument they play? If both practice equally hard from age 9 to 18 becoming excellent with their instrument, is either one guaranteed a better living than the other even though the barriers to entry are much lower for rock bands than for orchestras? The guitarist may have no problem getting into a band, but does that provide him/her a career?

Up until recently, I would say the one landing an orchestra job had a better guarantee of steady income from a single source than did a rock musician. At this point in time, I would say either is equally likely to be able to cobble a living together from freelance gigs –at least in metropolitan areas. The guitarist who devoted 10 years to practice has a much better chance of being supplanted by someone who has practiced two years than a cellist faced by the same scenario because the skills developed over that time aren’t valued as highly in rock music.

Music is a tough career choice, even if you are performing more popular music styles. I am sure along with the dream of fame, this School of Rock is mostly selling the fun and excitement of rock music to kids (hopefully sans drugs) while including some of the rigor required to master the instruments and music. One lesson the schools of cello might learn from those of rock is one of exposure. If you check out their website, the schools have their students playing at every available opportunity. It helps disseminate information about the schools and gives the kids an opportunity to play before audiences. The gig I saw them play was a mixed bag in terms of quality. The good performances did a credible job at rockin’ out.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, State of the Arts

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