Home Page

Not Easy To Provide Cultural Experiences To A Nation’s 18 Year Olds

September 2, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Via a LinkedIn post by Rainer Glaap, I was disappointed to learn that Germany’s KluturPass program is being discontinued. (In German but most browsers can translate pretty well.) The program provided passes to 18 year olds that could be used to attend theater performances, cinema, purchase books, etc. The hope post-pandemic was to get young people out participating in cultural activities while also boosting the cash flow to cultural industries.

A number of European countries created similar programs which I have written about over the last five years or so.

The KulturPass program has been criticized for being a poor use of funds and has had funding cut a few times. Recently it was apparently determined the government doesn’t have the authority to fund the program.

The reason for this is an assessment by the Federal Court of Auditors, according to which the federal government lacks constitutional authority to finance the project. Based on this assessment, the non-partisan Minister of State for Culture, Wolfram Weimer, sees little chance for the culture pass. “From now on, we will intensify other projects to promote culture for young people,” Weimer said.

Source

According to another piece on the Politik & Kultur site to which Rainer linked, the implementation of the program was a little rough due to some young people not having the required Internet access and difficultly communicating the availability of the program due to privacy laws.

In a post Rainer made in 2023, he noted there were some pretty big hurdles to using the pass to purchase theater tickets. Apparently you could only use the pass through a central ticketing platform rather than reserving tickets directly with the theater. From what I understand, book stores had some of the best sales volume through the use of the app. It also sounds like a person would get a voucher rather than actual tickets.

Rainer wrote:

“However, anyone unfamiliar with the intricacies of booking may initially struggle to find the right price category and discount, both at Eventim and in the theater’s online shop..”

Source

The writers at Politik & Kultur suggest that the program should be provided more time to work out the kinks and a commitment to more consistent support. They note that the parallel program in France started in 2021 and reaches 60% of 18 year olds (KulturPass got off the ground in 2023)

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Government Relations

No Comments

All That You Can’t Leave Behind

August 27, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Folks may remember that in June 2024 the University of the Arts in Philadelphia pretty abruptly announced they were closing after about 150 years in operation. This came as a shock to faculty, staff, and students. Many students were left to scramble because the university hadn’t made any arrangements to help students transfer to other institutions.

One consequence I hadn’t really been aware of is that the school closed so abruptly that faculty and students weren’t able to retrieve the art they had produced. While security did walk them through some buildings, not all spaces were open for retrieval.

This past month there was a newspaper story about a salvage company which was going through one of the buildings that was offering to reunite students with their work before the building is converted to luxury apartments. Thunderbird Salvage was posting a lot of what they found on Instagram but warned people that they were removing so much that it was impossible to record every object.

Thunderbird’s Instagram post racked up several hundred comments within days, while Mathes warned users that the brutalist, nine-story classroom and workshop building had too much stuff inside to catalog.

[…]

Mathes says he’ll save what he can and haul it up to Thunderbird’s locations — a church on the 2400 block of Frankford and a hall on the 2800 block of Frankford — for a sale planned for mid-August. If an artist drops by with a credible claim to a specific piece, it’s theirs at no cost, he said.

[…]

What Mathes and Thunderbird don’t manage to save, workers from Richard S. Burns Waste Recycling Company are hauling to the company’s scrapyard. But Mathes soldiers on: The thought of junking items still precious to the artists, if not potential buyers, bugs him.

Source

*If you are thinking the title of this post sounds familiar, it was the name of an album U2 released in 2000.

Art(ist) Education, Arts Facilities, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Why You’ll Frickin’ Love This Collection

August 26, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

Earlier this month, Hyperallergic had a short article about a video that actor Steve Martin made for the Frick Collection in NYC. What I appreciated was the way the information in the video was ordered.

The first 1:15 is focused on what the attendee might find interesting. The next 30-45 seconds talks about the “product features.” The remainder of the 6 minute video is about the history of the Frick collection.

I have to believe that this ordering was intentional rather than a happy accident of the way the editor pulled the information together.

That second part which I label as “product features” contains internally focused language that arts organizations would primarily use up until recently listing the qualities the organization thinks are important.

“..a singular New York City experience: A storied trove of art and decorative objects housed in a meticulously restored Gilded Age mansion….”

Source

However, the video starts with the following which is externally focused and all about the visitor experience:

“Consider what you or I might be drawn to…maybe it is a gilded beard, or a velvet sleeve, a trend setter, a love triangle, a mysterious exchange…Maybe what you see reminds you of a friend or a place you’ve been, or a book you’ve read, or a show you’ve binged.

Maybe it jogs a memory or fills you with a sense of delight, desire, power, wonder, bemusement, or calm.

Maybe you need a moment to sit and think and escape. Somewhere peaceful. Somewhere with a view….this is what the Frick collection is for. For slowing down, following your eye, and getting closer to objects of beauty and awe…”

Source

The structure of the video reflects an understanding of how people consume content online (and probably through other media experiences as well.) It starts out talking about what the visitor will enjoy. Then focused on the quality of the art and experience. And then if you are still curious and want to learn more, talks about the history of the collection’s founding by Henry Clay Frick in the late 19th century.

Arts Facilities, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Marketing/PR

No Comments

Baseball Team Seeks Good Singers

August 25, 2025

by:

Joe Patti

You may not have heard about the Savannah Bananas baseball team. Or rather it may be more accurate to say Banana Ball team because they play a game that is a heavily altered version of baseball. The game is limited to two hours. Score is kept based on points rather than runs. Audience catching foul balls count as outs. One of the pitchers bats and pitches on stilts.

I have seen a handful of arts professionals cite the team as an example of the rule breaking arts organizations should embrace to remain relevant in their communities.

Their games are in pretty high demand among audiences. They played two dates earlier this month in Denver’s Coors Field which holds 50,000 people and you had to register in November 2024 for a lottery that would allow you to purchase tickets.

One of the big elements to the show/game is the choreographed dances the pitcher, catcher, infielders, and sometimes the umpire execute.

Recently there was an interview with the choreographer, Maceo Harrison, in Dance Spirit to talk about how the dances come together. I thought it was a good indication of what the Bananas are trying to accomplish when Harrison talked about how they were recruiting players with performing arts backgrounds.

Have you noticed that as the Bananas’ exposure has grown, newer players tend to come in with more arts training?

Yes, this year we are seeing a lot of players that have a wide background of skills. We have guys that can play piano. We have Dalton Mauldin, who’s an actual singer, and we have Kyle Jackson (“KJ”), who has a musical theater background. We have a lot of athletes that have hidden talents—even dancing. So I think that’s definitely what we’re gravitating towards moving forward.

citation