Butts In The Seats

I Know What You Said Last Summer!

There are those who feel Google has the potential of becoming Big Brother for all the information it collects and stores. However, Google will deliver some of its information horde to you without requiring you to create an account.

One of these services is Google Alerts. If you have any interest at all in what is being said about you or your organization on the Internet, this is the service to have. Every time one of their little indexing bots comes across a mention of the terms you specify, you receive an email with a link to that instance.

I do suggest encapsulating your search terms in quotes to keep your results as specific to your organization as possible. You can enter a number of different term groupings at once. For example, I have seen my blog referred to as Butts In Seats so I have specified those words along with Butts in the Seats for my search.

As an experiment, back in August I entered a request for alerts on search terms for my theatre. Some of the initial results that came back were for our webpages and old newspaper articles on past shows. In recent weeks I have been beginning to get links for newspaper stories on our current season.

The interesting thing I have learned is that the major newspapers have been printing up stories about my events in the neighborhood specific inserts that come out about 10 days before the performances. The listings are only appearing in the inserts specific to the neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of my building so I don't actually see the listings in the paper I get at home.

I had an inkling that this had been happening because we occasionally get calls from people who say they have seen something in the newspaper a week before our ads or the feature stories appear. There have been times we have chalked it up to people saving the Fall/Spring Arts pull outs, but now we know that could be an erroneous assumption.

This knowledge does help me make decisions about the timing of my ad placement and underscores the need to get good pictures out early. It has also shown me the value of learning to write well since my press release appeared verbatim in the neighborhood editions this week. This isn't the first time this has happened to me so I have become a big believer in making it easy for the papers to cover your event by providing an interesting release ready to be dropped in.

Possibly the greater value of Google Alerts is that they trawl through blog entries as well. If a newspaper doesn't like your work, their bad review will by and large be civil. Not so with blogs. The alerts help you keep an eye on conversations occurring away from the mainstream media.

If someone is saying nice stuff about you, you may decide to cultivate them and link to their work to show you are friendly with bloggers. If people are complaining about their experience, you can look into addressing the problem. If they are eviscerating you out of pure malice, you can at least monitor what is being said. (Unless you can figure out how to address the situation without exacerbating it.)

"People Gonna Talk" as the song says. You might as well know what they are saying.

So Would I Be Buttsintheseats.ArenaStage.org?

Chad Baumann, new Director of Marketing and Communications at Arena Stage has an interesting situation. In his blog, he notes that the Arena Stage will be closing down for the next two and a half years to construct a new $125 million theatre complex.

During that time, the organization will perform at two separate spaces in Virgina! Chad's problem is that for the last 50 years, people have been attending performances in Washington, DC and are now faced with crossing the Potomac, a much bigger psychic obstacle than physical one.

Chad understands that if he doesn't make the river crossing as painless as possible for the quarter million people who attend every year, he may lose a significant portion of them. He is working on getting signs erected along the route but is also creating personalized webpages for all subscribers and ticket buyers. Chad describes them as an electronic direct mail piece and says the ones they will create will contain "step by step directions from their house to the new theatre, a seating diagram showing them the location of their new seats, promotional offers from local restaurants, and an opportunity to sign up for our e-newsletter."

Reading about Personalized URLs, it doesn't seem to be as difficult to pull off as it first sounds. It does involve an investment of money and staff time, as one might imagine.

It will be interesting to see how successful the campaign is. I am reminded of the Museum of Modern Art's move to Queens when they renovating and how important public relations and image were to that transition.

I would also be interested to see if Arena Stage picks up more people than they lose from Virginians who didn't attend because they didn't want to cross the Potomac.

Add Arts For Instant SAT Score? Bah!

As much as I love to see the arts kept in K-12 education, I am often a little skeptical about how effective arts exposure is to improving math scores, etc. Cause frankly, I had a fair bit of arts exposure and I got awful math grades. Some of my doubts come partially as a backlash to the make your baby an Einstein by playing Mozart while they are in the womb movement.

I think the thing that turns me off about the Mozart genius babies is that uses the music prescriptively rather than encouraging trying to comprehend music and learn about Mozart. The whole K-12 has always seemed similar in that it implies you just add arts for quick instant SAT scores.

I had a couple entries about six months ago on the statistical correlations between arts experiences in youth and attendance as an adult so I won't get in to any of that again. (Again noting, I was never good in math.)

But perhaps I protest too much about being bad in math. I have to concede my comprehension did come later in life. I still can't do calculus, but I do see the relationships I didn't before. And my claims of doing poorly in math are not entirely true. As a junior in high school, I was flabbergasted to learn I had gotten an A on the state regents' math exam. This was mostly due to the fact the exam was heavy with logic problems which have a strong verbal component.

My verbal skills haven't been overly lacking and I could probably credit the arts for cultivating those skills in part. So technically, the arts probably did help me with my math scores, at least for one year.

As the Boston Globe article on the value of arts education I posted on mentioned, there are all sorts of ancillary benefits to the development of a person. I believe that being in school plays in elementary and high school helped develop my confidence and gain me a modicum of respect among peers outside my general circle of friends.

And while I haven't made my million and probably never will, I have done well enough in the arts that I could walk proudly into my class reunion next month. (Unfortunately, I can't make it :( )

What we need are ads soliciting support of the arts in school that tout the benefits as more than a recipe for better grades. There are other arguments that people can identify more closely with than grades. Granted, that is the focus of schools and if you want arts in schools, the grade improvement has to be there. But parents are also looking for schools to make their kids better people. History and science lectures aren't going to be able to accomplish that as well as hands-on creative activities.

The best way to make the appeal for arts in schools might not be the most obvious. I had read somewhere recently that most anti-drug ads have failed to lead to a drop in drug use until the current campaign showing kids just lethargically sitting around doing nothing and having no impact on the world. Whether the impact will be long lived or if the drop in use is just coincidental, I don't know.

The ads that had run prior to the campaign showing people getting in dangerous situations leading to death and injury met with the approval of older folks who tended to value safety in their lives. The concept of danger actually appealed to kids who tend to believe themselves immortal and they went out and tried drugs. These new ads make older folks uneasy because they explicitly say, I tried drugs and nobody died implying drugs aren't dangerous. But apparently kids see the users portrayed as not being the life of the party and are having second thoughts.

My point is, the most convincing argument for arts education in schools might not be the most obvious one or the one people are most comfortable with. The best argument might end up promoting the value of non-arts activities too.

Let the Hive Thwart The Spiders

As you may or may not be aware, companies send out all sorts of little spiderbots across the web to collect information. Some like Google have their spiders looking for content they can index for their searches.

Others use the spiders to collect email addresses so they can send some lovely spam your way. There is a little trick you can use to make email addresses on web pages invisible to these little spiders.

Encoders like Hivelogic: Enkoder will turn your email address into javascript code that people can read but the spider's can't. If you look in the right hand column of my home page, the Contact The Writer link was created using Hivelogic's Enkoder.

The javascript the enkoder generated version of my email address looks something like this-

{var kode= "kode=\"nrgh@%rnhg_%@@{ghnr, \\000+fghFrduFkrpiuj1lqwu@V {.;>45.@,f?3+fli6>,0"+ "+lDwghFrdufkh1rg@n~f.,l.k>jwhq1oghnrl?3>l@u+ir*>@*> {_%__C~jkqu33__3/__.ijk"+ "IugxInuslxm4otzxCY~1>A781C/ iB6.iol9A/3.oGzjkIugxink4ujCq\\001i1/o1nAmzkt4r"+ "jkquoB6AoCx.lu-AC-A~\\001(nFxm6t662b1lmnLxj {Lqxvo{p7rw}{F\\\\\\0014AD:;4F2"+ "lE91lrogr@hrnhgv1oswl*+,*u1yh"+ "uhhv,+m1lr+q**,%>{@**>iru+l@3> l?+nrgh1ohqjwk04,>l.@5,~ {.@nrgh1fkduDw+l.4,."+ "nrgh1fkduDw+l,\\000nrgh@ {.+l?nrgh1ohqjwkBnrgh1fkduDw+nrgh1ohqjwk04,=**,>\""+ ";x='';for(i=0;i

Which is why you have to cut and paste the what it generates into your webpage. As the Hivelogic page says, the only way to be completely safe is to avoid publishing your email address on the web at all. As a place of business, you want your patrons and donors to be able to easily discover how to reach you so omitting your email contact information may be an impediment to developing a relationship with valuable constituencies.

Encoders like this one can help cut down on the junk mail while making email addresses generally available.

Posted by Joe at 8:33 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Terms and Ideas

Funding Research Gets A Little Easier

The ability for non-profits to research the types of projects foundations are supporting just got a little easier recently. NOZA, Inc. which maintains the largest database of charitable gifts recently made their foundation records available for free. Data on individual donors does cost a little extra. However, even with the abbreviated version there is enough information to decide if you want to view the full record. Having credits while viewing the free content has an added benefit of providing a link directly to the foundation webpage from NOZA's site.

During your search, you can select those who gave in a certain giving range; what the nature of the gift was (annual, scholarship, in-kind, endowment, bequest), where the recipient is located, what their service area is and what services they offer. If you want to know more, you can view the full record.

The pricing looks fairly reasonable. $25 allows you to view up to 200 full records and the price per record drops as you buy more viewing credits-$250 gets you 4,175 views.

I am occasionally surprised to learn some foundations support the programs at certain organizations because their programs don't seem to jibe with the areas foundations express an interest in funding. Websites like NOZA's reveal not only who is supporting programs like yours but also what a foundation's true interests might be.

What Does Your Bookseller Say About You

A couple weeks ago I came across a webpage where an author was encouraging people to buy his book and had links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powells. Since following any link would allow you to buy the same product, I started to wonder if choosing to buy from a certain bookseller was a personal statement.

While an author would want to offer people the most options to purchase their book, it is clearly not in his/her best interest to link to Amazon because they won't receive any money on sales of the large stock of used editions Amazon makes available.

I have read some screeds on the internet about why one store is more evil than another but I haven't read enough to justify a theory that people feel like they are making a statement when they buy from a certain bookstore.

When you shop in Tiffany's or carry an iconic blue bag, people can see you and be impressed. What you are reading might say something about you, but if you buy a book online, unless you are carrying the box it came in around with you, the source of the book you are reading on the bus is invisible. As the purchasers, you know where it came from and perhaps you derive pleasure from your association with the place of purchase.

I don't think there is a question that people are motivated to do things by factors that will never receive external recognition. I have recently been pondering if there is a way arts organizations can structure the choices they offer people in a way that allows them to make a personal statement even though the ultimate result is no different from the person standing next to them.

For awhile credit card companies were emphasizing choice of card art, payment date and rewards plan as an individual decision. Other than the art, no one at the cash register had any inkling about what choices you had made unless you started tallying aloud how many frequent flier miles you were racking up.

The obvious choice for arts organizations might be donation options which benefit really specific areas with which the donor might identify and privately recognize. No one else in the audience may know or care, but that Fresnel on the first electric is there because of you baby!

In many ways, this is too easy and probably ignores other opportunities. It has also been done to death in many other forms like adopt a seat and cobblestone campaigns. It is hard to imagine other options because it is difficult to know what secretly motivates our patrons' choices and the Internet allows them even more privacy by circumventing the Tiffany's building and bags altogether.

It wouldn't surprise me if organizations started to tap into some obvious sources of personal statements and advertise that building renovations had earned some form of LEED certification in order to attract environmentally conscious individuals.

Eventually, that will become trite so the trick is to identify motivators with a similarly powerful appeal that aren't quite so obvious that might be sincerely embraced. With all the arts organizations that create new programs just to get grant funding, the last thing groups need to do is replicate this mistake by hitching to a trend that isn't compatible with their mission.

Where There Is Smoke, There is Funding

There was a cartoon I read as a child, in MAD magazine I think, that stated Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and then used the profits to reward people who refused to use it. Not a good business model, that's for sure.

What made me think of this wasn't the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize but recent news that complemented my entries about arts support from less than politically correct sources. (Though as a popularly elected official, Gov. Huckabee is obviously politically correct for a lot of people.)

Nobel apparently had pacifist leanings and believed that people would be so horrified by the explosive power of dynamite, war would be impossible. That didn't stop a French newspaper, upon mistaking his brother's death for his, from exclaiming "the merchant of death is dead."

The recent news that Altria (née Philip Morris) would be leaving NYC heralding the end to the grant support they provided to the arts community and the closure of a branch site of the Whitney Museum.

Whether you approve of Altria or not, this is certainly a blow to many organizations in NYC which depended on the money. I don't know what this means for the arts organizations that they support nationally. I know of a number of companies located outside of NYC who receive funding from Altria.

There were some details to the controversy over arts organizations accepting money from a tobacco company that the NY Times covered of which I wasn't aware. There are apparently people who won't go to see performances by companies who accept Altria funding. It makes sense that there would be since there are artists who won't perform in places that accept the support of certain companies. I had just never come across an arts patron who boycotted a performance group.

I have to admit, I have always been suspicious of Altria's arts philanthropy because the preponderance of their support seems to go to dance companies. As a group, dancers tend to be biggest consumer of cigarettes among performing artists due to their appetite suppressing properties which help them stay thin.

I have to also acknowledge that even though I don't receive six or seven figure donations at my organization (and fewer five figure ones than I would like!), the source of some of those funds may conflict with my social/political/business leanings. When you put out an appeal for funding, it is difficult to control who will respond to your call. When you have knowledge of the original source of the money, the decision to accept can require a lot of soul searching.

I wonder with corporate support waning as companies and banks move or merge, will arts organizations faced with this reality have an easier time accepting or rejecting funding knowing that longevity of support is no longer assured.

Scoobie Doobie Drew (McManus), Where Are You?

I have some irons in the fire but nothing has developed. I did want to note the inexplicable absence of Adaptistration from the ArtsJournal.com.

I am not a big symphony fan, but I do respect Drew's writing and check him out every weekday morning. I was surprised to find the link to his blog gone today and upon typing in the blog's URL, find myself redirected to Adaptistration's new home at www.adaptistration.com.

I have dutifully changed the links on my home page. The links from my posts to Drew's entries on Artsjournal.com are still active but I don't know for how long.

In the absence of any post on either Artsjournal or the new Adaptistration regarding the change, my musing on the subject have run from the mostly benign scenario where Drew wants more control over the appearance of his blog. A more disturbing scenario has occurred to me where his assessments of orchestra websites and reporting on negotiations and revelations of other details have been welcome by many and they in turn have put pressure on Artsjournal editor Doug McLennan to reign Drew in.

The concept of the latter option has such chilling implications, I tend toward the former. Hopefully Drew will offer an explanation soon.

It bears noting that in the internet age, it can be important to get ahead of things by providing information about changes lest unfounded rumors start to emerge from idle speculations such as those offered above.

Yes, you can damn me for inconsistency by simultaneous noting this fact and posting idle speculation. But please note that most people don't provide a disclaimer that allows you to damn them for inconsistency.

Arts As Background Noise--It Can Be A Good Thing

In the comments to my recent post on Gov. Mike Huckabee, Fractured Atlas Executive Director, Adam Huttler, pointed out that some groups like the NRA supported candidates on the single issue of gun ownership. Acknowledging that it was damned effective, albeit narrow minded, he asked,

Imagine a candidate who will quadruple public funding for the arts and ensure that every arts organization in the country never has to beg for its budget again. Now imagine that he's also pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and anti-gay. Can you imagine anyone from our community supporting him?

The first, admittedly crass, thought that came to mind was that it would be akin to supporting a head of state because of an anti-communist stance despite his record of rapacious greed, corruption and human rights atrocities.

The musing that followed were, by their very nature more considered responses to the question. Still the basic idea that any cause is not well served by supporting someone who embraces ideals that are repugnant to their core beliefs remained.

That said, while I think many in the arts hold strong opinions about right to choose, gun control and the death penalty, I don't think they are defining characteristics of the arts community. If a politician stepped forward who was going fund the hell out of the arts, infuse the educational process with it and espoused pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty sentiments but held favorable views on other important issues like the environment and social services, maybe the arts community would be advised to grin and bear it.

The anti-gay issue though does impact the core identity of the arts. Depending on how restrictive the views a candidate held were, the mass support of such a person could be disastrous for the arts. In my own organization alone which is pretty small, we would probably lose about 15-20 people upon whose goodwill and assistance we regularly depend.

That is just the people who are homosexuals. The amount of support we would lose from their sympathetic friends and family of any sexual inclination should we support a candidate espousing restrictive policies would be immeasurable. Presenting shows that have traditionally raised a furor in communities like Angels in America or Oh! Calcutta! wouldn't lead to the ruin of my theatre as fast as if groups like Americans for the Arts, Actor's Equity and DanceUSA, among others, banded together to urge the support of someone who reproached the gay community.

Using the NRA as an example of what the arts should do is not quite valid. For one thing, the NRA doesn't typically ask for funding. In fact, they often encourage the government not to spend tax dollars on programs that might impact their members like information tracking. Politicians are happy to support people who give them a lot of money and don't ask for any to be spent in return.

I do think Huttler's comparison is apt in one respect, expression of passion. I don't think that arts people are active enough in advocating for funding and assume others will do it in their place.

But even more importantly, arts people don't talk about their passion publicly the way members of the NRA do. You walk into store to get coffee, sit in a diner, go to a wedding or graduation and you might hear someone talking about how the government is infringing on the right to bear arms. A tension might infuse the atmosphere and a debate might erupt, but everyone standing around is already familiar with the views of the NRA even if they aren't members of the organization because the conversation is public and widespread.

Can the same be said of the NEA? How many people outside of the arts world know Dana Gioia is the chairman? Actually, how many audience members and gallery/museum attendees who nominally support the arts know who Dana Gioia is? People may not know Wayne LaPierre is the current CEO of the NRA and that John C. Sigler is the president, but can probably identify Charlton Heston as a primary spokesperson, if not past president.

While the argument for arts funding doesn't have a basis as a constitutional right, the opportunities for spreading a positive narrative are expansive. It can be as simple as talking about the joys of teaching kids to fire pottery while waiting in line at Starbucks.

Better still is taking advantage of opportunities to have other people talk about how great the arts are. While sitting at a table at a wedding reception, ask where people are from and then about the arts life in that city. With any luck, you can ask leading questions to get them to talk about how much they have enjoyed different experiences and they will leave the wedding with a warm fuzzy feeling about the arts.

If you aren't so lucky, the conversation might be why they don't like to attend. Leading the conversation in a positive direction might take more skill and humility. If one were a visual artist and people were dead set against that discipline because they didn't understand modern art, ignoring the urge to lecture about Jackson Pollack to pursue a path of less resistance in a stated interest in music or powerful acting to nudge them toward trying a pops concert or play might be tough.

Engaging in informal public conversations about the arts can help the arts person cultivate the ability to speak persuasively among people who have a low level of comfort with the arts and discover what their barriers to participation might be.

The general public becomes more familiar and hopefully more positively inclined toward the arts as their understanding expands and the general subject enters their subconscious via background conversations.

The more I read and write on this topic, the more convinced I am that funding for the arts isn't going to be achieved by mobilizing the base in times of crisis or even during legislative cycles but rather by taking a long view and making the arts part of the daily interactions. In order to convince people that arts are central to their lives, they must experience the arts centrally in their lives and not as an alternative to the mainstream practiced by perceived fringe groups.

What Do You Expect?

A dance professor at my school is trying to revive a dance festival which has, for various reasons, not been produced the last four years. It is an invitational event that has included pieces from college, high school, community dance schools and professional companies. Essentially, groups have ten minutes to show off their best stuff and wow the audience.

As the professor was following up on the invitations, one of the group leaders told the professor he didn't want to expose his students to our audiences whom he likened to football crowds. The professor was shaken so I followed up with the group leader to ascertain whether he was referring to all our audiences or just the audiences at this event and to discover if his comments were misinterpreted.

It turns out that they weren't. He felt the audience, which is generally comprised of family and friends of the dancers, needed to be educated about how to behave. He admitted he didn't know how that might be accomplished as lecturing folks before a performance on decorum would probably make people resentful.

I don't know the history of dance enough to know if formal performances (as opposed to dancing at festivals and balls where attendees participated) were once as boisterous affairs as theatre and classical music performances apparently were. If there is a trend away from passively sitting and watching, will enthusiastic reactions become the norm in the near to mid future?

Arguments for quiet can be compelling in situations where physical harm may result from distractions. I was speaking to a teacher of middle and high school students who said that it took her school five years of explaining why loud reactions might result in people getting hurt.

Others have pointed out the obvious solution. If you know the audience is going to be boisterous months in advance, you plan a program that won't imperil the dancers. Since no group has much more than 10-15 minutes to perform, it isn't as if they would run out of safe material.

The festival format is less structured than the typical dance performance so some degree of informality is to be expected. Not to mention that in an attempt to fill the house, the dancers are strongly encouraged to promote the show and sell tickets so the audience is going to be family and friends virtually by default.

More importantly, there is no guarantee that students of any performance discipline will always be plying their craft in front of refined audiences. Exposure to a "misbehaving" group can be a valuable one. The festival audience may be loud, but they are supportive. There is no guarantee that this will always be the case, either.

The comment about the festival audiences stirred up some emotions and discussion about audience expectations, both what performers should reasonably expect from them and what they may be expecting of their relationship with the performers. I have a feeling the conversations are going to continue for the next couple days as the discussion spreads among colleagues in an attempt to sort thoughts and feelings.

All Purpose Solutions=No Reason To Support

There was a very powerful illustration in Spike Online this week about why the arts industry should be careful about promoting benefits of artistic activity that don't include artistic qualities.

Tiffany Jenkins notes that recently seven major arts entities in England teamed up on a proposal that stated funding the arts "will improve: ‘participation’, ‘self-esteem’ ‘community cohesion’, social regeneration’, ‘economic vitality’ and ‘health’."

Also recently, Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated that the 2012 Olympics "will increase volunteering, create community cohesion and tackle obesity." The Treasury has suggested the games will result in "urban regeneration, to economic prosperity."

Says Jenkins (my emphasis)-

Hence culture and sport find themselves competing, not as discreet public goods or ends in their own right, but as interchangeable vehicles aiming to deliver on a set of identical priorities, which does neither of them any favours. Once the arts are viewed merely as a tool for delivering prescribed economic or social outcomes, there is no reason why the arts should be favoured.

A bit of background if you hadn't been following the news- The arts community in England is quite upset because their funding got cut by £152million (~$309 million) to offset cost overruns for the Olympics.

While U.S. arts organizations don't have to worry about having that much money cut from their funding since the 2007 NEA budget was only about $124 million, equal to less than half the amount the English funding was cut, it provides a cautionary tale about the framework one employs to persuade others for support.

Selling You Everything, Including the Server That Processed Your Order

It looks like Amazon has decided since they have gone to the trouble of putting together a sophisticated purchasing system to sell goods, they might as well make money giving people access to their system and computing capacity.

According to Non-profit Tech blog, Amazon's offer of access to their Flexible Payment System can be a boon to non-profits. As a person who is familiar with these types of systems, Allan at Non-Profit Tech Blog clearly sees more possibilities than do I. I suspect that the opportunities I see are too grounded in what is already being done rather than what is possible.

The benefits I can immediately see are that the system they offer uses their already familiar interface. If a person has an account with Amazon, they can use the credit card on file to purchase from you.

Because of all the options and conditions you can impose upon sales, it appears as if it would be easy to create all sorts of discount packages based on innumerable combinations of things people ordered. Helpful for subscription ticket packages as well as museum gift shops.

From what I can tell it would be a great tool to use with donors who want to spread their donation out across many months because it allows you to automatically charge people on a regular basis.

The people I think it might be a real valuable tool for are central arts councils in rural or suburban areas that fundraise for member organizations who don't have the resources to do their own development. The Amazon tool allows for the transfer of money from one person straight to a third party.

So a donor could visit the arts council website and have their donation go into Small Town Historical Society's bank account. The arts council can choose to have a percentage removed to help pay the IT person who keeps the donor system running if they like.

If you have a savvy IT person on staff or on your board of directors, it might be worth having them look at the entry and Amazon's page to determine what the other possibilities might be.

Unlikely Bedfellow

Well it seems that Fractured Atlas isn't just an information resource any more. Thanks to eagle eye folks at TheatreForte, I recently learned they have started a blog as well.

As you might imagine, they have entries on a number of interesting subjects. The one that caught my eye was a little quiz Adam Huttler ran about which presidential candidate was the source of quotes on the importance of arts education, including this one.

"I tend to think that one of the greatest mistakes in education over the past generation has been that many school districts have cut their budgets in music and art programs. And in doing so, they've done one of the dumbest things that could ever be done that really is harmful to students in this country."

The answer to the little quiz was Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He made the comments before an audience at a Baptist University and based his sentiment partially on the idea that human's reflect the creativity of the divine in who's image they were shaped.

I was a little skeptical about his sincerity, especially when it appeared he had made the faux pas of endorsing a book he hadn't read by encouraging his audience to read Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class. As Huttler notes, the book says that creativity thrives in communities where homosexuals can live openly.

But Gov. Huckabee seems fully invested in the idea. He has signed mandatory arts education into law and made arts education the theme of his term as chairman of the Education Commission of the States. In his address he says the country is failing it's children by perpetuating a system that only emphasizes left brain learning.

Unfortunately, most of Gov. Huckabee's other political views put him outside my consideration. This is just another example of how one should not categorize a person entirely by a label. While people holding liberal view are often more in sympathy with the arts, I have personally lived in a state where Republicans were resisting Democrat cuts to the arts during budget negotiations. Given that the arts groups were proving to be well organized that year and the Republicans may have seen an advantage in taking up their cause when normally they might not have.

Politics makes strange bedfellows they say.* Sometimes there is benefit in considering unfamiliar bedmates.

*Though Charles Dudley Warner said it first, adapted from Shakespeare's Tempest..