This week I want to focus on the idea that challenges can become an opportunities if we don’t let ourselves be defeated. An orchestra or any arts group for that matter faces so many obstacles to becoming relevant to their community. One would think that when the local paper suddenly cuts the arts section, that it would be easy to cry “that’s it, we’re done”. Here, the paper did this recently, but instead of commiserating we are celebrating!
The orchestra is not a national business, we don’t compete with one another especially the regional orchestras. We are a local business and our competition is whatever is relevant to our own communities. Relevance then is our true competition, and when applying ideas we get from elsewhere we have to be malleable and customize everything for our own communities needs. Every model of car built is the copy of the first model, but it’s suspension makes the car adjust and be flexible according to the road it is driven on. Ideas need to include this same concept when applying them from one orchestra to the next. A conductor who won a Music director’s job a few years back announced that he would focus on making it the top regional orchestra in America. Why would that be the prime focus? Subscribers from different cities are not going to make that 100, 200 etc.. mile trip no matter how good they get plus how is America going to know! We are all still trying to get more people in our communities to make the 2 mile trip to see us! Becoming a good orchestra is not just about standards, that is only part of it.
Bernard Holland reviewed the Grand Rapids symphony at Carnegie Hall in May of 2005 in the New York Times, and made this exact point:
The Grand Rapids Symphony is a regional orchestra of 50 full-time players, 30 part-timers, a respectable budget and a mandate to serve its constituents. It was born in the Depression, has assuredly known crises, but on Saturday radiated an air of optimism unusual in these dark times for the American symphonic business. I hope those supporters understand that its achievement is not playing in Carnegie Hall but playing in Grand Rapids. Music doesn’t need any more international stars; it needs people who stay home and serve their neighbors.
New York Times May 24 2005
A local paper’s arts section gives us a false sense of relevance. It is probably one of the least read sections, right down there with the court notices. In fact it is us in the arts and our patrons who make up most of the readers I suspect, and we are coming anyway! A typical knee jerk response to the local paper cutting the arts section is the notion that they don’t support us, and so from the arts community there is an outcry. Few are listening. I don’t agree that a paper does this because they are unsupportive. The reason for the cut is probably because advertising is hard to sell as there are so few readers and so a business decision is made. Callous? Not at all in my view, and it is a challenge that becomes a unique opportunity that we have embraced and has actually increased our coverage here in Springfield.
How one might ask if there is no arts section? Well, simply put, there’s now no section of the paper that is not open to us (well I guess not the court notices unless we are in trouble!). Previously, except for the education section, every story no matter the relationship to the community, would end up in the arts section. We are now out of this jail, stories can now go anywhere. If we have a story relating programming to menu building, it can go in the Food section, clothes to wear at a concert in the Style section, ticket trends/prices/sales/marketing in the business section and how about Sports? Well the Houston Symphony recently produced player trading cards, we are collaborating with our Baseball team (more later this week on this) so the Sports section is open to us, and that is probably the most read section! After all what are we if we are not human interest?
It’s not that we shouldn’t from time to time have featured stories about our concerts, it’s just that we now have to earn that story. There has to be more than “it is going to be a great concert” as the pitch. It is not our right to be featured just because we do concerts. If we become newsworthy intertwining with everything else that is going on, a part of the fabric, relevant and not out on the fringe, then we become something people will want to read about, and maybe even attend!!! It has happened here, and with no arts section in our paper, our ticket sales are up!