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Transform Into…SUPER THEATER!!!!!!!

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Andrew Taylor tweeted today that he would be speaking about theater spaces this week in Taipei and linked to a video of the Taipei Performing Arts Center.

At first I thought Andrew was going to be speaking there, but then realized the building hasn’t been completed yet.

Watching the video, I was interested to see that the design by Rem Koolhaas addresses many recent discussion points about how building design can either engage or alienate audiences. Starting at around 1:35 the video talks about how the street runs right into the building. Even more intriguing is the inclusion of a “Public Loop” which allows the general public to pass through and apparently peek in on the different performance and production work spaces around the building.

I imagine they would have to have some well trained staff present to prevent flash photography of a performance while allowing passersby to view what was transpiring. But more importantly than that, it seems to allow the public an opportunity to see what transpires backstage in the scene shop, costume shop and perhaps even in the fly system of a theater.

The public loop doesn’t seem to be comprised entirely of darkened hallways that visitors shuffle through. There appear to be open spaces where visitors can sit and relax for a time.

One element that came as a bit of a surprise was their “Super Theater” configuration mentioned around 4:30. It allows them to take down the walls between two of the spaces to create a massive warehouse like space. They cite the fact that B.A. Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten requires a 100 meter stage. (Yes, that is right, approximately the length of a football field.)

It may seem like a lot of construction expense to accommodate a niche use until you recall that productions like Sleep No More, The Donkey Show and their ilk use large open spaces like this.

The building exterior is rather strange looking and has its detractors. My immediate concern was if the difficulty and cost of transforming the building might make such a transformation more of an aspiration than a reality.

As I wrote this post, I recalled another transforming theater, the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. It turns out that facility was also designed by Rem Koolhaas so his company has some experience with this process. As you can see in this video, it takes 11 stagehands six hours to transform that the Wyly Theatre. I imagine Taipei might require more people and closer to a day, but that probably isn’t an impediment.

I wrote about the design of the Wyly a few years back. As you can see in the video where Joshua Prince-Ramus explains the design, that building also highly flexible and has many engaging elements to it. It allows people to enter or exit through its very walls, or perhaps even sit outside and watch a performance (or rehearsal) inside.

In the context of all this, I am curious to learn what Andrew Taylor talks about in Taipei this week. Not to mention how successful the Taipei Performing Arts Center is at engaging their formal and informal audiences.

Artist conception of rival theater companies competing for market share
Artist conception of rival theater companies competing for market share

Don’t Blame Arcane Terminology and Practice

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Andrew Taylor touches upon a little of what I was thinking about this weekend in his post today. He quotes a recent piece by Marian Godfrey where she talks about how the language used by arts managers and grant makers is alienating and soul sucking.

…like any professional jargon, it puts up barriers and makes people who are unfamiliar with our dialect feel like outsiders, including the very people we are trying to support — artists and engaged people in our communities. I believe we need more humane language to describe ourselves and our visions: words and meanings that are shared by artists, administrators, and the public.

I had been thinking about the specialized language and terminologies used in the arts this weekend. I believe Godfrey was referring to the institutional and general language used to discuss the benefits of the arts as a whole, (I read the whole piece as Andrew Taylor enjoined his readers to do), whereas I was thinking about the terms specific to each arts discipline. As such, I don’t know that I can say I directly disagree with what Godfrey says.

The conclusion I came to this weekend is that while there is quite a bit of vocabulary one must learn in order to comfortably participate in a conversation about a discipline, I don’t think the need to learn a complex set of terms really comprises a significant impediment to becoming an participant or spectator. I think it is just a convenient excuse.

There are plenty of instances where people willingly engage in the time consuming process of learning special terminology. Take MMORPGs like W.O.W. where people will be exposed to terms like: tank, buff/debuff, AoE, aggro, autoloot, cooldown, PvE, PvP, grinding, griefing, among thousands of others. Players are expected to master the terminology, understand the role their character fills and how to use their abilities alongside others to achieve a goal.

Thousands of people happily undertake this challenge every day.

You might argue that people playing online games gain a sense of personal accomplishment that motivates them. But watching sports is often just as passive an activity as watching a performance, (okay, granted you can’t jump up and yell at a ballerina the moment the spirit moves you like you can with an athlete), and requires learning all sorts of arcane rules specific to each game. Often the rules are a little different for each level of play.

People learn these rules and terms because they want to. If they don’t know them, they can seek help from friends or go online to look up the information.

To illustrate this, I intentionally didn’t link to any resource with the gaming terms. Did you look them up or think about looking them up if you didn’t know what they were?

Sometimes this information is collated by the company/team/organization providing the activity. Often these days, people sharing a common interest join together to contribute information to a wiki which exists independently of the organization or activity it covers.

So when people express trepidation about learning the vocabulary and rituals of the performing and visual arts, I think the question really should be why this is so? My impulse is to respond that it is because there are not enough people they are acquainted with either personally or virtually providing a message that it is worth the trouble to learn about it.

I also don’t think there are enough informational resources out there to make it easy for people to learn if they so desire. I just did a Google search for the term “first position” because I can never remember the feet placement for the different positions. I couldn’t find it until I searched for the term “second position.” (Though I did discover A LOT of dance schools are named First Position.)

This is not to say that there aren’t many wikis and specialized dictionaries online which cover arts terminology. American Ballet Theatre has a pretty good dictionary of dance terms. It is just a coincidence that first position doesn’t appear there.

You would have to know to look there though because everyone’s go to source, Wikipedia, only has about 24 terms on it and there isn’t a good dance wiki that I could find. Information sources on theatre terminology are only slightly better.

As much as people say television shows like Glee, Smash and Bunheads don’t reflect reality, they do serve to disseminate the message that singing, theatre and dance are things people should be interested in learning more about.

Like I said, the idea that there isn’t enough of a visible trend and readily available information was something of a primary impression I had. I’d be happy to hear other theories.

While I think some of the terminology and practices might need a change, I do feel fairly strongly that people’s reticence to learn more about arts disciplines can’t be laid primarily at the feet of specialized vocabulary and unfamiliar practices.

People take the necessity of doing this in stride if they are motivated to learn something. Simplifying the language and altering the practices isn’t going to result in a sudden deluge of attendees because the initial motivating impulse will be absent.

Oh What A Tangled Web…

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Today at lunch a musician friend was picking our brains about a fund raiser he wants to do for a cause he really believes in. He outlined his vision and then asked for ideas of places he could hold it. There were a couple assumptions he made about his budget that were unrealistic which we helped him to re-evaluate.

The discussion made me think of an article someone I follow on Twitter recently linked to by Nell Edgington, “5 Lies to Stop Telling Donors.”

Edgington lists the lies as:

1. X percent of your donation goes to the program
The distinction between “program expenses” and “overhead” is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, destructive… It is magical thinking to say that you can separate money spent on programs from money spent on the support of programs…“overhead” is not a dirty word…

2. We can do the same program with less money
No you can’t. You know you can’t. You are already scraping by…Politely, but firmly, explain to the donor that an inferior investment will yield an inferior result…

3. We can start a new program that doesn’t fit with our mission or strategy
Yes, that big, fat check a donor is holding in front of you looks very appealing. But if it takes your organization in a different direction than your strategy or your core competencies require, accepting it is a huge mistake…Don’t let a donor take you down that road.

4. We can grow without additional staff or other resources
Nonprofit staffers truly excel at working endless hours with very few resources…But someday that road must end…

5. 100 percent of our board is committed to our organization
If that’s true, then you are a true minority in the nonprofit sector. Every nonprofit board I know has some dead wood…It’s a fact that funders want to see every board member contributing. But instead of perpetuating the myth that 100 percent is an achievable reality, be honest with funders…It is far better to demonstrate that you are tirelessly working toward 90 percent.

I have frequently linked back to a post Andrew Taylor made about 6 years ago where he suggests non-profit organizations aren’t doing themselves any favors by keeping funders expectations high when they report everything went as good, if not better, than planned every single time.

In recent years “overhead” has come to the fore as a problematic measure of effectiveness. I think the whole idea about low overhead being a measure of effectiveness is the root of the other evils Edgington mentions in her article, in the pursuit of portraying themselves as having low overhead non-profits will say they can do more with less money, do more with same/fewer staff and the organization has a super efficient board.

An April article in the LA Times talks about why overhead is such a poor measure of a charity. In that column, Jack Shakely, president emeritus of the California Community Foundation, cites the example of a group that was buying its medicine in Canada but was using the cost of the medicine in the U.S. as a basis to report the difference in price as an in-kind donation in order to make their administrative costs appear to be a smaller portion of their budget.

Writes Shakely (with my emphasis added),

Don’t get me wrong. Low administrative costs could indicate prudence and sound judgment at a charity, but they could just as easily indicate inadequate staffing, insufficient salaries or, shall we say, fudging. Moreover, administrative costs aren’t the primary measurement of for-profit excellence. Are McDonald’s admin costs lower than Wendy’s? Apple’s lower than Microsoft’s?

[…}

But our intuitive thinking system wants an answer now, and because we are intuitively inclined to believe that the nonprofit sector is filled with soft, amateurish executives, we latch on to the pseudo-science of administrative costs as a measure of excellence. It’s hogwash; there is absolutely no way of telling that an organization with 5% administrative costs is superior to one with 20% costs based on that criterion alone. In fact, the exact opposite may be true.

As Shakely notes, it will be hard to get donors and funders to shift to better criteria when the overhead ratio appears to be so clean and rational a measure. But as both he and Edgington comment, no funder is going to use any other measure of evaluation if they aren’t told the criteria is unfair and unrealistic.

Think about what you can do to change assumptions as you make your next pitch or write your next grant proposal.

Be Perfect

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One of the ideas I have occasionally touched upon here is the idea that perfection is expected in the arts. That line of thought really started for me with an entry I did in 2006.

Audiences expect a sublime experience for what they paid. Funders expect that everything met or exceeded expectations, a mindset Andrew Taylor suggests arts organizations created and reinforce regularly.

Artists are expected to be exceptional always, yet musician openings at orchestras still frequently go unfilled despite many highly qualified people auditioning.

Come to think of it, that sounds similar in many senses to the current situation where we currently have thousands of jobs going unfilled in manufacturing because employers expect the perfect worker and are generally unwilling to provide training to close the perceived gap.

An Idea Eight Years In The Making (And Hopefully Not Nine)

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Thursday is the 8th anniversary of this blog. I made my first post on February 23, 2004. I wouldn’t normally call attention to an oddly numbered anniversary (though 8 is considered auspicious in China), however an idea I mentioned in my second post may come to fruition. Actually, the bulk of the idea was expressed in a letter to Artful Manager Andrew Taylor which ended up printed on the Artsjournal site.

In that letter I suggested that arts organizations emulate the overtly proselytizing comic book Chick Tracts. While I am generally offended by the tracts, I appreciate their use of illustrations to catch interest and their portability which lend themselves to easy distribution by handing them off to friends or leaving them in public places. I had suggested using the same format, albeit with a less heavy handed approach, to distribute information about the arts.

That idea has been percolating in my mind as I waited for the opportunity to put it into action. That opportunity seems to have presented itself.

If you recall on Monday I mentioned how I haven taken advantage of the enthusiasm my assistant theatre managers have brought to the job to implement some of my ideas. Well this is one of them.

The current assistant theatre manager had an idea to assemble a Student Media Art Collective (SMAC – her idea) to help us promote the performances at the theatre. Our intention is to have discussions about promotion, techniques and art in general. In time we hope to bring in some guest speakers to talk to the group about various topics. I have pretty much left it up to her to organize and run. I just approve the purchase of pizza, distribution of comp tickets and show up at the meetings.

I have to say, I have been pretty impressed with the way she has run it. Even though we want these people’s help promoting the theatre, she hasn’t really mentioned that at all. What she has basically done is created a place for people to meet, eat pizza and talk about their ideas. Today she had us drawing things on file cards and post-it notes.

We have only had two meetings. Between the first one two weeks ago and the one we had today, two of the people have already started collaborating on a project together. They aren’t ready to talk about it yet. From what I have glimpsed of the proposal the one guy wrote, it seems to be some sort of fictional speculation about the origins of chess as a game.

I like the energy that is developing so far. We have provided a forum for these students who are predominantly visual artists that hasn’t been available before. I think it has been good that we have let the participants talk about their ideas rather than pressing our agenda. It has helped people feel comfortable and share their goals with the group.

I had discussed my idea to emulate the Chick Tracts with the assistant theatre manager about a week ago and while I wanted to mention today, I decided to follow her lead in regard to whether we asked them to do something for the theatre. Near the end of the meeting, she invited me to share the basic concept with the group and a number of them really liked it. During the mingling at the end of the meeting, a few approached me with the ideas they had. I was surprised that many of them were interested in producing a hard copy format rather than a digital manifestation as I had suggested. Apparently having something physical to hold is valued a bit more than I had guessed.

I will follow up by sending out some links to some websites that might provide as basis of inspiration for my Arts Tracts. Then I will step back and see what happens in the next two weeks before we meet again. Hopefully something will have been produced by this time next year.

Arts Presenters 2012 Edition

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I have been attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference this past weekend. I am sure I will have more to say on the subject in future entries, but I wanted to post a few reflections and impressions while they were fresh.

First, I wanted to give some congratulations and props to Mario Garcia Durham, the new President and CEO of APAP on this, his first conference with the organization. I had met Mario a handful of times before in his capacity as the Director of Artistic Communities and Presenting at the National Endowment for the Arts. I was always set at ease by his open and welcoming manner when I had consultation sessions with him.

I took it as a good sign that he invited the Emerging Leadership Institute participants and alumni (of which I am one) up to his suite to discuss what we felt was the future for the field. We didn’t have a lot of time with him, but it was a promising sign. I also thought it was a promising sign that he got a standing ovation at the start of the conference from the membership. (And even more promising that he decides to discard a long speech he had prepared at another gathering!)

For this conference, I decided to break out my laptop and do a little live tweeting from different sessions. I had a great time doing it and could really see the utility of the activity for the conference, and somewhat by extension, for Tweet Seat programs that have been emerging at various arts events. I will say though that I really felt that I ended up missing many aspects of the sessions I was attending. Not only in terms of not entirely absorbing points people were making, but also some of the nuances of what they were saying. Even though my brain and multi-tasking abilities may not be on par with those of the younger generation, I can’t help but think they would indeed suffer from the same situation.

I was also surprised given the size of the attendance that more people weren’t tweeting from the various discussions going on, at least not on the official hashtag, #APAPNYC. Didnt see much on the counter-conference hashtag #APAPSMEAR, either. Many people used the hashtags to promote their showcases, but didn’t really seem to overdo it.

I was a little disappointed that there weren’t more people tweeting from the sessions because there were often a number I wanted to attend running concurrently and with a few exceptions, no one was reporting what was transpiring in those rooms.

On the other hand, there were a fair number of people following along. I appreciate all those who signed up to follow my twitter feed. Between those who started following me and those who were tweeting themselves, I found a number of new interesting people to follow in turn.

One interesting thing I noticed was a change in the underlying theme of the discussions at the conference. In the past it has often been about declining attendance and funding. This year it seems to be more focused on social and cultural trends, perhaps thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movements. People were talking about loss of identity, disenfranchisement, fragmentation and polarization of society.

Questions were raised about what role arts organizations would have in addressing this and place in the community rather than how to get more people through the doors. One of the major speakers at a few of the sessions was John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, PA who has attracted a lot of national attention for his efforts to revitalize his town and reverse the decline by the use of art and community efforts. As part of one effort, they took the bricks from a demolished garage to make a communal bread oven.

I will try to post more on the conference in the weeks ahead as I am able to digest the experience.

Can Arts Orgs Play Moneyball With Their Staffs?

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Ever since the movie Moneyball came out, I have been thinking about whether similar system can be applied to the arts. I mean a system by which baseball teams with small budgets were able to compete on par with the most well-funded teams by assembling a team of under utilized misfits? Heck, I am describing the place you work, right? It seems ready made for the arts!

I was happy to see a recent post by Shawn Harris on the TCG website raising the same general question. I agree with most of what Shawn suggests, including taking an objective look at different aspect of our operations and audiences to determine whether we are truly serving the interests of the community or just perpetuating assumptions.

One assumption I feel pretty safe in making is that what motivates people to attend a baseball game is different from what motivates people to attend an arts event. While celebrity is certainly a factor, people attend baseball games looking for an engaging contest. If they don’t know a lot about each of the players, that is okay if the game was well played. Can the same be said about an arts event? If someone is unfamiliar with a performance, will the fact that statistically speaking, the actors, while unknown, are the most effective performers in a period play?

Probably not. But then again, you shouldn’t be selling the show based on statistics anyway. Even though stats are a huge part of sports, that isn’t what primarily sells tickets. While a well-known artist would make it easier to sell a show, in the long run it is going to be better to take the “brains in the seats” view and work on engaging audiences in the organization, one aspect of which is going to be based on the quality of your personnel choices.

That is what I first started thinking about when I was considering whether Moneyball could be applied to the arts–are we hiring the best people? More over, are we actively seeking the best people or just casting a net and taking whatever swims our way?

I recall going to an Arts Presenters conference where Andrew Taylor talked about how a lot of arts organizations didn’t know how to effectively evaluate the skills of job candidates. He said there was a tendency to hire to the specifics of a job description rather than to the general needs of the position. Though he did mention an associate who hired a person who managed a Sears call center to run their ticket office after some unsatisfying interviews with people from the arts field, it seemed the exception rather than the rule. Taylor said he teaches his students to take control of the interview in order to illuminate their skills and illustrate how it applies to the criteria laid out in the job description.

While I am reluctant to put arts people out of work by suggesting that you look to hire those without any industry experience, I think it can help to always be mindful of the basic abilities you seek in employees. I once had lunch with some representatives from Enterprise Car Rentals and they were so impressed by the affability and service provided by one of the wait staff, they tried to recruit her at the end of our meal.

When was the last time you even thought about adding a person you met outside the context of the arts to your team? In fact, other than pursuing people who would increase the prestige of your company, when is the last time you tried to recruit someone way from another arts organization based on abilities and effectiveness alone?

When I think about the Moneyball model of finding success putting together a seemingly mismatched set of players few other teams desired, I wonder about our collective ability in the arts to effectively identify and cultivate the talent of people who aren’t necessarily shining in their current position. I know this can be tough in the arts where everyone wants to be the star actor/dancer/artist/director. Even if you are perceptive enough to see their talent lay elsewhere, people may be resistant to taking a different role.

The thing is, non profits should be pros at identifying and leveraging undiscovered skills. With all the volunteers we use to assist us with our programs and to serve on our boards, we should be championing seemingly unorthodox hiring decisions. But if Andrew Taylor is correct, the hiring practices in the arts are actually more orthodox than in the for profit sector.

If that is the case, perhaps we aren’t using our volunteers’ skills as effectively as we could, as well. That question starts to bring me back to my post last week featuring Aaron Hurst’s suggestion that certain volunteer programs may be a waste of time.

The research he cited found little difference in effectiveness between well- and poorly- managed programs involving less than 50 people. I wonder though if well managed programs might have beneficial side-effects for organizations in the form of improved hiring skills. In other words, the capacity to identify and employ highly capable people may be developed in the process of effectively doing the same thing with volunteers.

Intersection of Artist And Audience Engagement

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Via Andrew Taylor’s Twitter feed last week, I became aware of an entry on Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog about use of space to engage arts attendees in different ways. What was really interesting about the entry was the conflict of views held by Nina, the Executive Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz and one of the artists being exhibited in the museum’s Creativity Lounge about whether the lounge activities were contributing or detracting from the exhibit.

I appreciate that the artist came to realize that the lounge was actually contributing to people’s enjoyment of her work, but what I really loved was that the theoretical conversation about the purpose and role of a museum and the experience visitors should be having was actually being played out in practice. It is easy to talk about audience engagement activities in the abstract and project the wonderful benefits that will ideally be realized. Reality challenges that when an artist feels that the grand experiment is leading to their work not being taken seriously.

Granted, artists’ vision being compromised is nothing new. Historically other artists, administrators, producers, donors and patrons have all contributed to undermining artistic expression. That’s no excuse not to think about the impact of our decisions as we take up the task of trying to engage our patrons.

One of the big debates now is over the place of social media in live performances. Do you allow people to update their Twitter and Facebook posts during a show or do you try to suppress it. If people are engaged and are telling their friends about how much they enjoy the experience, that is a plus. If the glow and activity is distracting performers and audience members that is a bad thing. If people are splitting their attention between the performance and texting, that can be a negative as well.

The fact that back in the day people spoke and moved about during Shakespeare’s plays and Mozart’s concerts is often cited as an argument against the current restrictive nature inherent to live performances.

What isn’t often mentioned is that Shakespeare’s actors didn’t spend 8 hours or more a day for 4-6 weeks rehearsing for the show. I suspect Mozart’s musicians didn’t all invest hours a day from the time they were 8 years old practicing for the chance to compete against others of the same experience for a single seat on an orchestra with whom they would spend additional hours.

High demands are placed on artists these days and they want to be taken seriously for what they are bringing. When they see something happening that seems to undermine that, it is understandable that they be a little skeptical and wary.

One thing I take away from Simon’s post is the need to execute some engagement programs in as careful and deliberate a manner as the design of a performance or piece of art. When the program experience intersects with the art experience, you can’t just say, lets try this and see how people like it in the same way you might try out different ad campaigns to see which approach might be most effective.

Simon’s Creativity Lounge could have fallen flat and been just awful had the environment not been carefully considered. It is clear from her posts and responses in the comments section that it was.

For me this post was very timely because I am immersed in discussions about renovations to our facility. Part of the plans include razing and moving the ticket office and adding a concessions area. We have the opportunity to change the environment in the front of the theatre to one that has a more welcoming vibe through changes in lighting, landscaping and seating design. The factors we need to consider are just starting to percolate to the front of my brain.

Wait, What Is This Guy Actually Talking About?

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In the morning when I look at all the Twitter streams I follow, I often click interesting looking links and then come back to the web pages when I am done with all the new tweets. The result is often a long series of tabs on the Firefox browser and often I don’t quite know who suggested what story when I get around to reading it.

Since most of those I follow have an association with arts and culture, you might understand why I initially thought the blog post I was reading was on that subject. It wasn’t until I got to the sixth point that I had any inkling it was on another industry altogether and the eleventh before I was sure.

RULES FOR BUSINESS MODELS

* Tradition is not a business model. The past is no longer a reliable guide to future success.

* “Should” is not a business model. You can say that people “should” pay for your product but they will only if they find value in it.

* “I want to” is not a business model. My entrepreneurial students often start with what they want to do. I tell them, no one — except possibly their mothers — gives a damn what they *want* to do.

* Virtue is not a business model. Just because you do good does not mean you deserve to be paid for it.

* Business models are not made of entitlements and emotions. They are made of hard economics. Money has no heart.

* Begging is not a business model. It’s lazy to think that foundations and contributions can solve news’ problems. There isn’t enough money there. (Foundation friend to provide figures here.)

* There is no free lunch. Government money comes with strings.

* No one cares what you spent. Arguing that news costs a lot is irrelevant to the market.

* The only thing that matters to the market is value. What is your service worth to the public?

* Value is determined by need. What problem do you solve?

These sentiments are actually about news delivery and found on Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine blog. For awhile there I thought an arts blogger was replicating Adam Thurman’s posting style on Mission Paradox. I had to go back to my Twitter account to try to figure out where the heck I got this link, finally discovering it was the Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor.

Honestly now, if I hadn’t alluded to the fact it wasn’t about non-profit arts and cultural organizations, would you have known it wasn’t? Every point made is a topic of conversation that has come up regarding the arts. Hopefully, they are conversations you have had at least with yourself, if not the staff and board of your organization.

The fact that news organizations are facing these same questions is of some comfort–at least we know the arts are not alone in the challenges being faced.

At the same time, the fact these questions can be asked of the news industry only serves to confirm their wider relevance. These are questions any business must ask. The arts are not special in this regard.

As much as I feel my practical side provides a good balance to my idealism, it is tough to think about the arts not being the exception. Every time I scroll up to re-read these points and see “Virtue is not a business model,” and “Business models are not made of entitlements and emotions,” there is a part of me that says, “Yes, but the arts are different.” In many respects this is true, but the arts in the U.S. operate in an environment where what is written above is also true to a great degree and must be acknowledged.

Rather than try to talk all of us out of our belief in the sublime experience the arts can bring to every day existence, I will merely stress the need to be mindful of the aforementioned truths and not allow our aforementioned belief in the power of the arts to dismiss the stark reality they represent.

Arts, Feel The Burn. Love the Burn!

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Andrew Taylor has the video of Diane Ragsdale’s address on Arts Alliance Illinois 2010 Members’ Meeting on his blog today. Her speech was titled, “Surviving the Culture Change” and she tackled the general idea that expectations are changing and the arts need to change too. My favorite moment was when she likened the experience of attending the arts for someone who has never really done so to going to the gym. “You have to go on a regular basis before going feels better than not going.”

During her talk she references the fact that large churches often make sure newcomers are greeted and are integrated into a small group that becomes something of a social network for them so they don’t feel like a small fish in a really big pond. I made a similar observation in just the last month.

She also talked about attending performances and then wanting the arts organization to have posted some sort of downloadable material the next day that she could share with her friends. Perhaps she acknowledged the problem and I missed it, but the biggest difficulty with that is arranging for all the intellectual property clearances to pull that off. Doing what she suggests will either take a major shift in how protective IP holders are with their material..or the rise to prominence of people who don’t care to have it tightly guarded. Something that may just happen if people flock to them because they enable audiences to share clips the next day.

Ragsdale speaks on a number of topics over 45 minutes and there is a lot that is likely to interest you, so watch it below. The last thing that grabbed my attention was when she talked about saying you don’t have time to be involved with the arts is just an easy default answer. She points out that people devoted to the slow food movement/sustainable agriculture invest a great deal of time and money hunting down organic ingredients, learning to prepare meals and then engaging in the time consuming cooking process. There is a sense of satisfaction they get from this activity. Part of the trick then is to provide an opportunity to acquire a similar sense of satisfaction in the arts.

N.B. – For a shorter version of Diane’s comments and the text of the prepared remarks, see the links in Scarlett Swerdlow’s comments below. Thanks for the tip, Scarlett!

Diane Ragsdale on Surviving the Culture Change (Full Remarks) from Arts Alliance Illinois on Vimeo.

The Artisan Reformation Has Begun

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Nod to Andrew Taylor for providing a link via his Twitter feed to a speech Ben Cameron made at the Association of Arts Administration Educators conference. Cameron talks about many of the worrisome issues I have covered here in the past – finances, shrinking audiences who procrastinate on ticket buying, organizational succession by young arts leaders who want to reshape rather than maintain what they have inherited.

But as he moved past providing this context for his comments, he made one of the more interesting observations about the change that will be necessary in the arts by comparing it to the religious reformations of the 16th century. It seems there is ever a confluence of art and religion. He leaves some room for optimism while noting the necessity for nimbleness (my emphasis).

Both reformations have been spurred by technological breakthrough—the invention of the printing press and the subsequent widespread public access to scripture occasioned by the printing press certainly has parallel in the redistribution of knowledge with the invention of the Internet. Both reformations challenge old business structures—god forbid that the decimation of monastic orders is the metaphoric fate for today’s major institutions but only time will tell. And both reformations essentially challenged the necessity of intermediation in a spiritual relationship, challenging the notion of the gatekeeping priest or now artist.

Now the Religious Reformation did not obliterate the Catholic Church. Just as 500 years later, many people around the world still find deep meaning in high mass and formal religious institutions, I for one believe that the historic institutions that we have funded to date at their best will continue to be worthy of our investment…

…But the Reformation more notably reshaped and broadened the universe of how religion would operate, who would be empowered to act, giving rise to new denominations, new religious rituals, new opportunities for the common layperson to assume responsibility for her own spiritual experience. Similarly in the arts, we are witnessing an explosion of arts organizations operating in new ways and the emergence of the hybrid artist: amateurs doing work at a professional level—a group dubbed elsewhere as the Pro-Ams—….and professional artists who choose to work outside of the traditionally hermetic arts environment, not from financial necessity but because the work they feel called to do cannot be accomplished in the narrow confines of the gallery, the concert hall or the theatre.”

He suggests that the training of arts administrators should include many of the traditional subjects of audience development, fund raising, accounting and entertainment law. But he says that for the next generation of leaders internships and practical experiences “with the political campaign, the sports complex, the environmental justice center” may be just as valid as a similar experience at an arts organization. He cites the MIT five step model of cultivating new businesses, “idea generation, training, mentoring, legal counsel and finally delivery to market capital” and wonders if this along with a more interdisciplinary focus might not serve students and the evolving industry better.

Even though his basic message isn’t anything new, the models and ideas he invokes are intriguing. Both the text and audio of his speech are available so you can pick your poison. You can even download the source audio and listen to his speech on your commute to work or while hiking.

Staying Married To The Artistic Process

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I came across an interesting article in The New Republic, by way of Arts and Letters Daily that suggested that a shift in business school orientation partially contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. At one time universities focused on training graduates to manage manufacturing businesses and often had mini-factories on campus to give students practical experiences.

The focus since about 1965 has shifted to finance and consulting. While this has been largely beneficial for the economy, (until they started creating bad financial products), it is one of the reasons why the country has become weaker in manufacturing. That has been pretty bad for the country.

“Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM’s top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background….But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, “That’s how you end up with GM rather than Toyota.”

At first this was just an interesting theory to me, but then I realized that this describes exactly what people are afraid will happen if arts organizations are “run more like a business.” The fear is that decisions will rest entirely on return on investment and will be divorced from the manufacturing process as it were.

There was a time I would not have imagined that any arts organization would have a disconnect between the administration and the artists. I assumed that the administrators would be passionate about the arts with which they were associated. Why else would someone work so hard for so little pay?

Nearly five years ago, I cited observations that orchestra administrations were disassociated from the performances and performers. Given all the conflicts and closures since then, I don’t think the overall environment has gotten any better since. I also don’t assume that this situation is necessarily unique to the orchestra world.

In the last week I have heard Michael Kaiser on his Arts in Crisis tour and Andrew Taylor debating the utility of the arts management degree. In both conversations there was an obvious focus on training arts managers well. But the necessity for training boards well was mentioned too.

It seems to me that maybe the need to advocate the intrinsic value of the arts is necessary internally in addition to external constituencies. Perhaps one of the dangers of emphasizing the economic contribution of the arts to the community is that it creates greater expectations for boards and administrators that the art and its creators be ever more economically viable as well.

Wry Kaiser

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Michael Kaiser was in town as part of his Arts In Crisis tour. The session was videoed. I don’t know if it will be placed on the internet, but the content was pretty much the same as when he spoke in Madison, WI. I had watched that video back when Andrew Taylor discussed Kaiser’s visit to Madison. If the video of our local session becomes available, I will post it.

I am not going to give a synopsis of his talk here as I am wont to do. His thoughts are pretty widely disseminated through videos like the in WI and via his column on Huffington Post. I am just going to reflect a little on the experience.

He was a very entertaining speaker and the session was quite enjoyable. I encouraged my Assistant Theatre Manager to go because he hadn’t really heard any of this before. And our discussions after about how we should proceed were pretty productive.

Our mayor is the chair of the culture and tourism committee of the National Conference of Mayors and he is pretty enthusiastic about those causes. (He also bills himself as the “Singingest Mayor In America.” I was surprised that he didn’t take the opportunity today.)

He spoke, I think longer than anyone expected, about how important the arts are. He also stayed for the full 1.5 hour session. This impressed on me how important the topic of the arts was to him because he is always on the go. I have seen him get off a 7 hour flight that crosses the international dateline, speak at a meeting about public transportation and then out to another meeting. Since he was still around as the Q&A started, the moderator brought him back up to the stage to field questions about the arts in the city.

A few observations about the session with Kaiser. The first isn’t predicated on something he said. The session opened traditionally with a welcoming chant and then a hula display. I am not Hawaiian, nor am I practitioner of any Hawaiian performing arts. However, my investment in those art forms were such that I wished they had done a slightly different program. The hula was accompanied by singers playing ukelele. This is something many people are familiar with due to movie depictions. So what I found myself wanting was for a performance on ipu heke–double gourd drum. I wanted him to go away perhaps surprised about Hawaiian performing arts and knowing more than he knew when he arrived.

Later, I was gratified to hear him say that was what he aimed for in his programming–having people surprised at some of the events he put together. His example was the Arab Festival at the Kennedy Center earlier this year. He noted nobody expects you to celebrate Arab art in the current political climate.

At one point he underscored how much the arts are dependent on the kindness of strangers when it comes to arts education. This is no great revelation, I am sure. He gave the example of a 3rd grader who benefits from her teacher loving the arts and providing many opportunities for exposure. When the child moves on to 4th grade, if the teacher doesn’t like the arts, then the child doesn’t get any exposure. If the 4th grade teacher doesn’t like math, they don’t have the option of shirking instruction in that. It occurred to me this is actually the case even in states that mandate an arts component because few schools value the subject enough to monitor compliance or ensure a valuable experience.

For me, the talk solidified and confirmed some thoughts I had over Thanksgiving about how I should be approaching various elements of my job. It was good to have the Assistant Theatre Manager start to move in the same direction. I hadn’t really spoken with him about my thinking yet because I hadn’t entirely figured out how to put it into practice. Today was a good catalyst for that conversation.

Volunteering Your Way to #1

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I was listening to Andrew Taylor’s interview with Artsjournal.com founder/editor Doug McLennan today. During the interview McLennan mentioned all the ways in which organizations were creating online communities to help them achieve things. One of the ways he mentioned people’s contributions were rewarded was via a ranking system to show who had been most productive.

I started thinking about whether this might be a useful way for arts organizations to motivate volunteers. At one time, I had heard that creating contests and achievement awards for volunteers could be counterproductive in terms of motivating and retaining volunteers. I wondered if the new online rewards environment may have changed this. After some reading and thinking on the matter, I decided a ranking system is probably still not useful in many of the traditional functions of an arts organization.

One of the things I read which confirmed my recollection advising against rankings is that many volunteers are motivated by other factors than rankings. Also, different people have different ranges of ability. If someone is providing assistance because they believe in the organization but is in a situation where recognition is accorded to those who are hustling for first place, they may become disheartened. One suggestion I read was to have people compete against their own old milestones. Online communities have a certain anonymity that can insulate one from emotional investments. This may not be the case when a volunteer is working to benefit people and causes with which they can personally interact and experience.

There is also the issue that online contributions can be made on ones own schedule. Involvement and duration are self selected. Whereas many arts organizations engage volunteers during certain hours and events. There is also often a person acting as a gatekeeper determining who gets to contribute and when. A person striving to be number one may find time constraints and scheduling favoritism shown others inhibits their ambitions.

Scoring people for activities that aren’t constrained too much by time deadlines may be still possible. You can open up archives and newspaper/props storage and just let people go at it cataloging and organizing things on their own schedule. Though physically getting in each other’s way in cramped storage areas is also a problem that online activities don’t face now that most people have fairly speedy bandwidth.

If anyone has any feedback in terms of reward systems that were meaningful and didn’t alienate volunteers, ideas for ways to motivate volunteers given the expectations of the internet age or even tasks you can turn to the internet group mind to accomplish (like designing Drew McManus’ Twitter page) I would love to hear them.

Collective Action Report For NPAC 2008

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Last week Andrew Taylor posted an entry about the release of a report for which his students were involved collecting information at and about last summer’s National Performing Arts Convention. The report examines the capacity for the arts disciplines to engage in collective action.

As you might imagine, I found much of it very interesting. If you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, mores the pity. It is worth jumping to page 59 of the Acrobat document. The following 20 some pages have ideas for collective action on many fronts that came out of the brain storming round tables. These are not the same ideas voted as top priority items by the attendees and may represent fresh directions for you and others to embrace at national, regional and local levels.

One aspect of the convention attendees felt was lacking was a clear sense of who was going to follow up and pursue these priorities. What will likely be helpful at the next convention is if people show up to talk about their attempts to implement some of these priorities at different levels.

Plea To The Reader
If you don’t think you will read the report, at least consider reading the rest of this entry. I often include fair sized quotes that jump out at me from reports and studies because I know people don’t feel they have the time to catch up on all the reading they think they should be doing. Part of the mission of this blog is to present some concepts that perhaps you can think about during your commute if no other time presents itself. Not everything may seem that significant to you, and that’s fair. This report contained a lot of meaty observations including some things I suspected but have rarely heard discussed. So please, read on…

Boundaries
The report began by tackling a basic question–what constitutes the performing arts? In answer to the question, “When you think and talk about the ‘performing arts’ in your region, which of the following organizations do you include in your thinking?” over 50% provided answers that were “arts-focused and primarily organized as tax-exempt. Alternate venues and commercial enterprises were identified by fewer people as part of the performing arts—yet still showed up in significant numbers.”

Lest your take away from those responses is that there was a sense of exclusivity to people’s definition of the performing arts. The report notes that the subject of what constituted the boundaries of the performing arts community was frequently debated and discussed.

Internal Divisions
But heck with those perceived to be on the outside of the performing arts boundaries. There was plenty to contend with over the perceived differences between the disciplines clearly defined as being part of the performing arts.

“Despite the common ground of the nonprofit arts leaders attending the Denver convention, our team observed frequent and obvious disconnects between the language and culture of each discipline. The dress and demeanor of the different service organization membership was a continual point of discussion in
our evening debriefing sessions, and were often heard used as shorthand by one discipline to describe another (“take time to talk to the suits,” said one theater leader to a TCG convening, when referring to symphony professionals). Some of the difference was in rites and rituals: from the morning sing-alongs of Chorus America to the jackets and ties of League members, to the frequent and genuine hugs among Dance/USA members, to the casual and collegial atmosphere of TCG sessions.

Other differences, which manifested in more subtle ways, shed light on the deep underlying assumptions and values held by the respective disciplines. The team noticed, for example, that the word “professional” was perceived in a variety of ways in mixed-discipline caucus sessions. For many participants, “professional” staff and leadership was an indicator of high-quality arts organizations, and an obvious goal for any arts institutions. Several members of Chorus America, however, bristled at the presumption that professional staff was a metric of artistic quality, as they held deep pride in their organizations, which were run by volunteers.

The observation team also saw many sessions peppered with misunderstandings and different interpretations of words and concepts that are fundamental to a collective action effort. Most of these went unnoticed by the group, and unresolved by facilitators of caucus sessions….Catalysts note the need for basic fluency in the business models and challenges of other disciplines. Says one leader, “….I talk a lot with the heads of other performing arts organizations here [from other disciplines], and it’s all right, but oftentimes when we talk I’m spending the whole time explaining the whole story so they can understand. As opposed to sitting with somebody who’s in a different community, you can start the sentence and oftentimes that person can finish your sentence for you.”

Expectation of Cross-Disciplinary Learning
That said, the report notes many went to the conference with the intent of learning about other disciplines and cultivating cross-disciplinary relationships. People were eager to learn about best practices and common challenges from other disciplines. “A full 86 percent believed that the problems and opportunities faced by a small dance company are shared more with a small theater company than with a large dance company.”

Respect to Trust
The next step toward collective action, according to the report’s author’s, is to go from respecting the other guy to trusting them.

“A full 81 and 82 percent of respondents believed leaders in the nonprofit performing arts respect each other at the national and regional/city level respectively. A lesser majority, 56 and 60 percent, believed that such leaders trust each other at the national and regional/city level. This distinction between respect and trust reinforces the distinction between acting for individual and organizational interests, and acting for the benefit of the larger community.”

Things Not Often Discussed
Two of the areas covered in the report that especially struck me were some frank discussions about diversity and the perceived role of government. Everyone talks about the need to diversify audiences and performers. In fact, most funders are interested in collecting information about racial, geographic and economic diversity of audiences and performers. What emerged in the discussion wasn’t as idealistic.

“Diversity was the most polarizing priority in the AmericaSpeaks process, and the issue for which there is the most disconnect in language and priorities….Some flatly stated that they did not think diversity was a priority, and others noted that people in their organizations may claim to support diversity, but don’t really mean it. Many noted ambiguity in defining diversity: that diversity “means different things to different people—there is no common agenda for inclusion.”

This was revealed in the stark differences in responses ranging from the claim that minority arts groups don’t have to make any efforts at white inclusion (“Why is it that primarily Caucasian-based groups look to ‘diversify’ their audiences while minority-based groups do not?”), to people who thought diversity meant “Getting minorities to see the importance of what we do.” Still others rejected the audience development perspective and saw the need for more systemic change. Said one respondent, “most of our organizations are not ready—we want to talk about it, but we are not prepared to become ‘diverse’ and accept the changes that may follow.” Some acknowledged that there were challenges in terms of comfort zones. Some noted that tying funding to diversity or pursuing diversity and losing money on such efforts might be counterproductive…

Respondents were more concerned with what they saw as others’ failure to address or understand diversity than with their own ability to effectively address the issue. As such, many did not envision opportunities for progress although they agreed that progress is needed.”

Community Engagement Approach
While some people may not be prepared to actively engage in addressing diversity in their organization, I was encouraged by the comments of one person who wasn’t talking about diversity per se. He/She did seem to embody the mindset of an organization that could achieve diversity without actively pursuing it.

“One leader notes, “That’s been one thing that we’ve been most proud of. Our whole organization takes this community engagement approach. It’s not outreach. Outreach doesn’t take into consideration who you are, what your background is, what your context is, or why people should care. That’s the fault of the old outreach concept, is saying you should come hear us, maybe we’ll come to you so you’ll come hear us. That’s missing the point, saying, ‘Where do we connect?’”

Government’s Role
In relation to the role of government (my emphasis)..

“In one intriguing disconnect, respondents in the post-convention survey hope for future NPAC connections to include elected officials from local (57 percent), state (64 percent), and national (70 percent) government. Yet not one believe such officials would influence if and how they might take action on the selected agenda items. The disconnect suggests, as we will later discuss,
that while participants see elected officials as potential focus of advocacy and engagement, they do not see them as a source of insight and knowledge—even though these actors drive the decision and governing systems that inform local policy. They are eager to talk to elected officials, but not inclined to listen

…Interestingly, some constituents with relatively greater perceived power also had relatively lower perceived knowledge of the field and its challenges (political leaders at federal, state, and local levels, for example.

From my point of view, there is a whole lot to be addressed. Quite honestly, I think this almost sums up the attitude arts organizations have toward most sources of funding. There is an eagerness to talk to funders and make your case but not a lot of willingness to have them involved in your business. Except for foundations with an arts focus, those representing funding sources don’t understand the field too well because of a desire to keep them on the fringes.

Some Tunes I Have Sung Before
There were a couple topics the report touched upon that I have addressed quite a few times in the past so I won’t get into them at length.

Lack of Knowledge
One observation that was made of convention attendees was how little knowledge people had about available resources and about how laws and policy affected those resources. The report notes that a lot of time was spent discussing how helpful it would be if some source would provide resources when in fact that very situation existed.

“These indicators suggest a systematic issue around knowledge dissemination in the field. Arts leaders either lack time or incentive to discover and use existing knowledge resources, or effective knowledge dissemination mechanisms do not exist to get this information out.”

Lack of Sleep
Which goes hand in hand with the fact most arts professionals are already over worked and may not be a wits end about how to participate in collective action.

“We have a lot of passionate and highly productive people that all tend to over-extend themselves as it is ‘for the love of their art.’ I think it is difficult for many of these same people then to prioritize what they may have to stop doing in order to thoughtfully and actively participate in this ‘national dialogue’.”

Lack of Succession
Finally, there is the issue of emerging leadership. According to the report, 79% of respondents to pre-convention surveys were worried a little to alot about identifying new blood and succession planning. At the convention however, “it was striking how little conversation focused on the discovery and development of future leaders, and the skills and abilities they might require. There were a few specific sessions that touched on the topic, but the issue received little traction or attention elsewhere.”

I imagine it comes as no surprise that the performing arts sector has quite a few issues to address. You need not have attended the convention to come to that conclusion. But since the report notes that one of the major historical hurdles to collective action has been that the various disciplines don’t sit down and talk to each other, the fact they did so and produced quite a few pages of ideas for collective action likely represents a valuable first step.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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