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Theater Games To Mirror Daily Interactions

January 18, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

h/t to Howard Sherman who posted a link to a story about how theater can teach empathy to kids. The article talks about how common theater games like mirroring can cultivate active listening and learning in kids. Gaining these skills helps kids become better communicators which facilitates success in both interpersonal and professional relationships.

It’s the social dynamic of theater, the give and take, the volley of listening and responding, that expands kids’ capacity to read cues, think quickly and creatively, work as an ensemble and see things from another perspective. Theater provides an awareness of space, pausing, waiting for somebody else to talk.

What I really appreciated was the inclusion of examples regarding how the same training can help people whose profession employs highly specialized and specific language communicate with general audiences. Many articles discuss positive educational outcomes from arts experiences, but don’t give concrete examples of how arts based learning is useful for adults.

Scientists are trained to speak methodically, defend their arguments and use niche jargon, a communication style that doesn’t always land with a general audience, says Laura Lindenfeld, executive director of the Alda Center for Communicating Science. Through improv, they are taught to make mistakes and laugh about it, to “give ourselves permission to fail and move on.”

“When scientists come into a room, they’re like, ‘Oh man, you’re going to put me through improv?’ ” she says. But after exercises like “the mirror,” looking intently into other people’s eyes, they realize they can’t succeed unless they’re in touch with the other person. Speaking becomes about making a human connection rather than pushing information — and that’s the point. You may have the most wonderful scientific finding, but if no one understands it, what’s the use?

Let’s be clear, even though arts professionals’ lives are saturated with these practices, they can be equally as guilty of using insider jargon if they aren’t actively employing the skills they have acquired in an intentional manner in all their interactions.

Art(ist) Education, Working In The Arts

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Non-Profit Arts Workers, What Are You Tired Of?

January 17, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

For the APAP conference this past weekend, one of the primary plenaries was “A Brutally Honest Conversation about Nonprofit, For-Profits, Government, Philanthropy, and the Arts.” (panel discussion starts about 14 min in) If you are familiar with Non Profit AF blogger Vu Le, you won’t be surprised to learn he was one of the panelists since this is ground he has staked out for years. Joining him was Producer, Artist, Strategist Sharifa Johka, and Keri Mesropov, Chief Talent Officer at TRG Arts.

The conversation started right in on issues of burn out and bad funding practices. Le said arts people are so kind and nice, they can tend to be taken advantage of, but also that when you are burnt out even if you are the most well-intentioned, you can end up perpetuating many of the injustices you hope to eliminate in the world. Le warned the audience there might be difficult language and some cussing and then the panel went straight to a survey asking attendees “What are you F***ing Tired Of?” The word cloud that was generated was enormous.

Le also brought up the problematic choices funders make about what they will support. He said non-profits have been in this situation for so long there is a degree of learned helplessness. He grumbles at foundations that say they need to reserve funding for a rainy day and asks how hard it needs to rain if the latest pandemic didn’t qualify? At one point a gentleman got up and talked about artists starting donor advised funds (DAF) so that they could make the funding decisions. Le commented that while DAFs can be a viable tool, the way the laws governing them are structured is ripe for abuse.

Lest you think from the title of the session that it was full of gripes and complaints, there was that but both panelists and audience members talked about how they were energized by the discussion and the decisions non-profits made during Covid. Le used the examples of non-profit orgs in Seattle that refused grants and asked funders to give it to colleague organizations that needed it more. Johka referenced the “We See You White American Theater” and the conversations and changes that resulted from that challenge to entrenched practices. Even as people complained and stated “we need to stop that shit,” there was a sense that conditions existed where that could realistically happen.

Of course, Vu Le brings a lot of humor to topics in need of serious consideration. Commenters picked up on that energy. One gentleman complained that black and brown people had to dramatize their trauma to be considered relevant whereas “non-black and brown folks can say I just wanna do a work about sounds and color, and its the most brilliant thing.”

Panelists advocated for more cooperative and collective action for non-profits to get what they need to operate. Le cited a group of 180 organizations in WA state got together and told funders they needed to double their funding and make multi-year, general operating grants. He said about a dozen foundations signed the pledge to do so.

I encourage people to watch the video of the session if you have a few moments:

Arts in an Age of Technology, Working In The Arts

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A Few Lessons From Covid and SVOG

January 16, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

I was attending the Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference recently and sat in on a Life After SVOG session. There were a number of things discussed that either fell into the category of “the pandemic revealed the need for this” or “this was always a problem and the pandemic revealed the need for change.”

In the former category, representatives from the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) and National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) both mentioned that it became clear that there was a need for affordable touring insurance.

The NITO rep also brought up the need to have more transparency about ticketing fees. I didn’t get a chance to seek clarification, but my assumption was that since the organization represents the artists, they were questioning whether the venue was making revenue on performances that was being excluded from what was supposed to be shared with the performers.

In terms of overall advocacy, there was discussion about breaking down silos and making common cause with other industries in the future. For example, while arts groups were successful in getting relief for organizations and individual artists in the form of millions of dollars, there was a group advocating for aid for workers excluded from payroll based programs like PPP which secured relief in the billions, some of which arts and culture workers were eligible to receive.

Along those same lines, the way the relief programs were administered varied from state to state. In Oregon offered grants to individual artists whereas New York didn’t. So there is a perceived need to ensure people and groups which were excluded in programs in the pandemic aren’t overlooked in the next crisis simply because they reside in a different state.

In terms of problems which always existed that have come to the fore, panelists mentioned that cultural workers had started to demand organizations reconcile their internal cultural to their externally declared culture. Basically, organizations would publicly advocate for a fairness and equity they didn’t provide their own staffs. Among the results have been unionization efforts among museums and theaters revising their un(der) paid intern and apprentice programs.

Another thing that people will probably says has been revealed is the hunger they have felt to be assembling again live at conferences. As much as people complained about attending conferences in the past, there are exchanges that happen in person that aren’t possible when you are half paying attention to a video screen while working in another screen.

For example, the ego boosting experience of people telling you how great your blog is and wanting to take selfies…

Advocacy, Working In The Arts

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Best Creativity Is Messy Creativity

January 11, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

In the past I have written critically about the use of creative practice as a prescriptive tool to boost the development and achievement level of children (i.e. attaching headphones to your belly to expose a baby to Mozart in utero). Back in November, The Guardian had a long form piece on the related topic of giving kids educational toys with the same end in mind. Research basically shows it doesn’t work:

But, despite the best efforts of millions of striver parents, it doesn’t seem to be the case that you can turn three-year-olds into geniuses by giving them plastic ukuleles for their birthdays, or even drilling them on their violin scales. (You may well be able to foster in those children a paralysing perfectionism and deep sense of inadequacy.) Equally, you don’t have to grow up with hundreds of toys, or speaking three languages, in order to be extraordinarily bright. (In fact, you can still learn several languages with a high degree of fluency in later childhood and beyond.)

Not all of that nuance has broken through to parents. Already in the mid 1980s, Brian Sutton-Smith, probably the most prolific play scholar in history, could write: “We have little compelling evidence of a connection between toys, all by themselves, and achievement…”

The oft repeated story about kids being more interested in playing with the box the toy came in points to the exact type of play that does contribute to skill development. The less concrete and realistic the intended use of the object is, the better.

It seems that basically that from birth through adulthood, the best pursuit of creativity is messy, unstructured creativity.

After watching kids play with more than 100 different types of toy, the researchers concluded that simple, open-ended, non-realistic toys with multiple parts, like a random assortment of Lego, inspired the highest-quality play. While engaged with such toys, children were “more likely to be creative, engage in problem solving, interact with their peers, and use language,” the researchers wrote. Electronic toys, however, tended to limit kids’ play: “A simple wooden cash register in our study inspired children to engage in lots of conversations related to buying and selling – but a plastic cash register that produced sounds when buttons were pushed mostly inspired children to just push the buttons repeatedly.”

As a result of such research, it is increasingly acknowledged that the best new toys are the best old ones – sticks and blocks and dolls and sand that follow no pre-programmed routines, that elicit no predetermined behaviours.

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, State of the Arts

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