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Keep Your Eyes Open For NEA American Rescue Plan Grant Webinars

June 30, 2021

by:

Joe Patti

While everyone is waiting for their Shuttered Venue Operating Grant (SVOG) application to be processed, you should be taking a look at the National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding. The NEA just held a webinar today about it, but most states and regional arts organizations are having one for their members. Americans for the Arts is having one on July 6.

In a nutshell, the reason why you want to apply for this is because there are far fewer restrictions than usual on the program. The only broad categories that they won’t fund are capital improvements and project grants. Usually all they fund are projects. They still don’t provide funding to individual artists.

They will pay for operational costs like salaries and non-capital equipment. You can apply even if you have an SVOG grant pending or have received funding from other programs like PPP or EIDL. You just can’t apply for reimbursement of the same expenses covered by another program. So if other funding covers salaries until December 31, you would need to apply salaries from January 1 onward to the ARP grant. The funding can be applied across two years which allows some time to regain momentum lost during Covid.

They have a PDF prepared with all the information you will be expected to provide. Note that everyone has the deadline of August 12, 2021 to submit a short form application on Grants.gov, but then organizations whose legal identity begins with A-L will apply through the separate NEA applicant portal August 19-25 and those with names beginning M-Z will apply August 27-September 2.

My guess is that they are trying to avoid a lot of the snafus which plagued the SVOG program.

Take a look at the information and find a webinar to attend. As you might imagine there is a ton of interest in these programs. I received an email about 2-3 hours before the webinar started that they had reached capacity with registrations and keep trying to get in if you are initially blocked so I queued up 20 minutes early in the hopes of being admitted.

Finance, Fundraising, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Art As A Medium For Teaching Coding

June 29, 2021

by:

Joe Patti

In an illustration of how arts and science can be mutually supportive, NextCity had a piece about an effort to train art teachers to teach girls to code. Code/Art was started by MIT grad Amy Renshaw in an attempt to make coding more interesting and accessible to girls.

Art as a way to pique girls’ curiosity makes sense to Renshaw—art skews female when it’s an elective, and there’s more flexibility in the curriculum. Research backs her up: Girls’ interest in computer science increases when the classroom environment reflects art and nature rather than stereotypical geeky decor, like Star Trek posters. Research also shows girls’ involvement with computer science should start before eighth grade, at which point cultural stereotypes are already taking root.

[…]

To create a comfortable learning atmosphere, facilitators are open about their own struggles and encourage the teachers to tap into each other’s knowledge and experience. They are assisted by college-age interns, who are then available to help in the classroom

Code/Art started out in Miami-Dade schools in 2019. As you might imagine, the pandemic put a damper on roll out to other cities as well as the level of participation among teachers in Miami. That said, one of the teachers interviewed, Nancy Mastronardi, credited involvement in the Code/Art curriculum with keeping her energized and helping her avoid the burn out many of her colleagues felt. Some of her students started meeting on Zoom independently of her class to continue working on their ideas.

Mastronardi also started an after school Code/Art club, as have other schools in the Miami-Dade school system. While club participation in the school system dropped during the pandemic, in a survey of club participants, “…52% said they plan to major or minor in computer science in college and 87% said their club motivated them to continue coding in the future.”

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

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Really Don’t Want To Think Of Post-Covid Marketing As Online Dating

June 28, 2021

by:

Joe Patti

Back in March Harvard Business Review (HBR) had a piece on how marketing will change post-Covid. It is definitely geared toward commercial business and often oriented toward business to business sales rather than individuals, but there were some interesting observations, some of which have long been points of discussion in non-profit arts.

4. Old truth: Courting customers is just like dating.
New truth: Courting customers is just like online dating.

I mainly include this one because of the imagery this evokes. The article notes that marketing used to be a numbers game. Like dating, you would present yourself broadly in public at parties, bars, and other public places, using your best lines, seeing who might be interested. These days where people make split second decisions before swiping, they say the numbers game is algorithms and not chance and broad exposure. Essentially they say data driven decision making is going to be more valuable than trying to increase the frequency people see your face.

5. Old truth: Customers must sit at the heart of your marketing strategy.
New truth: Customers must sit at the heart of your customer journey.

…We have all called customer service and spoken to a call center rep or chatbot that was not operating with the same information as a retail location — and vice versa.

…Marketing must be viewed in the context of the full end-to-end journey and, where possible, work to connect the dots.

The idea that people would go from being first time attendees to subscribers to donors and perhaps volunteers or board members, across a span of years is a frequent subject discussed in the arts so this concept is not new.

What caught my attention was that they said the answer to making sure everyone in your organization was operating with the same information is not to consolidate all operations and communications through one location. Rather it is ensuring everything is aligned around the customer’s need. This certainly makes sense because you often have different types of customers. There aren’t only ticket buyers, subscribers, donors and groups, you might have operations that include renters, students, and other constituencies. The best point of contact for each of these is different, but it is definitely to your benefit if each area is aware of how the others interact with their specific group.

In other words, as I have said over the years–marketing is everybody’s job. The organization can’t run effectively by taking a siloed view as to what their role and interests are.

8. Old truth: Your brand should stand behind great products.
New truth: Your brand should stand behind great values.

[…]

In fact, key themes from EY research show that while quality, convenience, and price still very much matter to consumer choice, factors like sustainability, trust, ethical sourcing, and social responsibility are increasingly important to how consumers select their products and services. Marketing has an opportunity to educate the broader C-suite (and even the board) on the importance of brand values when it comes to differentiating in a post-pandemic marketplace where brand preferences have been upended.

If you have been working in the arts for any length of time, you know organizations have long espoused values about equity, inclusion and access, but it is no long sufficient to say these things, it is necessary to translate these values into action. The authors of the HBR article recognize that the impetus to change will not necessarily come from the top and it may require advocacy from staff to executives and board members to effect the change that is needed.

Advocacy, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Maybe It’s Not The Performance That Should Be Streamed

June 23, 2021

by:

Joe Patti

Covid forced a lot of conversations about the value of streaming content from performing arts venues and visual arts galleries. As we emerge into more optimistic times, some groups are already planning to make streaming part of their programming mix while others are happy for the opportunity to jettison the practice.

I was reading an article in FastCompany today which discussed how video games were driving tourism to places like Ireland and Italy based on fictional depictions of the terrain, buildings and other features of those places. And the games were doing it with the encouragement and cooperation of the official tourism organizations of those places.

That called to mind the fact that movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have inspired people to travel to places in Ireland and New Zealand which served as settings in those movies. Organized tours of Game of Thrones locations will take you across multiple countries.

Then there is also the issue of the quest to visit Instagrammable places by thousands threatening the natural surroundings.

This made me reflect upon the idea that it isn’t the realistic depiction of a location, but rather the idealized or creative concept overlaid on the reality which is drawing people. Yes, that is sort of central to the description of television, movies and video games and that isn’t what live arts experiences are all about.

I will admit this isn’t a fully formed idea, but it occurred to me that maybe a focus on the performance experience isn’t the way to do. I can tell you from experience that trying to stream a live event without much of the equipment used in television and movie making present yields a disappointing product. Not to mention, even if you remember the buffering issues YouTube frequently had, they have largely ironed those out. As a result, people expect the same smooth delivery experience from an image being delivered as it is being created as they receive from a video available in its entirety before you think to ask for it.

So instead of the performances which can’t meet the quality of movie and television production without a lot of money or removing the elements that make live experiences distinct from recorded experiences, are there other things that can be centered in live streamed content to encourage people to become engaged? Is there something about the exterior of the building? The surrounding town? The buzz and bustle of the audience in the lobby or in the neighborhood prior to a show? Does that activity orient around a unique feature of the lobby?

Basically, if someone wandered in accidentally, would they have a sense they were missing out on something great and can you stream that?

Likewise, is there some element of the experience that will fire the imagination even if it is overlaid with CGI for a movie or rendered in a video game? Is there a way to make these things come to pass? While you don’t want to misrepresent what you are all about and have people feel you oversold or did a bait and switch, people are clearly interested in viewing the reality behind the fiction.

The term “Internet famous” is used to imply a certain niche appeal, but sometimes that is enough.

Every location and organization is going to be different in terms of what is available to be leveraged. As I mentioned, this is definitely throw it on the wall to see what sticks type of suggestion. I toss it out in the hopes of shifting thinking away from the idea that the live performance is the central thing that draws people to conceptualizing what else may be perceived as valuable.

This is highly unlikely to generate long lasting engagement and shouldn’t be viewed as a way to build future audiences and donor bases. (Unless there is a connection with an existing affinity group like Lord of the Rings fans.) Knowing there will be guaranteed churn, you don’t want to sink a ton of resources into this unless you discover it results in increased local/regional resonance that leads to return visits. But emerging from Covid, a surge of buzz and activity around you might be what is needed to jump start things again.

Arts in an Age of Technology, General Musings

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