The first session I attended at the Western Arts Alliance conference actually made the whole experience worth it in terms of professional development. I actually didn't learn more than I already knew so much as I discovered people are really getting serious and organized about teaching good leadership skills.
The session was presented by Philip Horn, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Margaret Mertz of Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts.
Their purpose was to solicit feedback about how to make the developing National Arts Leadership Institute (NALI) valuable and accessible for artists, managers, agents and others. They were asking the question "What do we need to know and be able to do to make ourselves and our field more successful?"
They were also asking how the session attendees envisioned themselves participating in the institute and perhaps contributing to it.
Philip took our suggestions and observations on big tear off sheets which he took home with him. He also handed out some really great self-evaluation surveys for both artists and presenters which help people assess what they do and don't know about the industry they are in. (I thought the spreadsheets were on the Southern Arts Federation website but I can't find them. I emailed Philip in an attempt to track them down and hope to eventually feature them here.)
These self-evaluation instruments are important because, as was pointed out in the session, "there are many on ramps to presenting." People in the industry range from those with formal training, (though apparently few management programs teach presenting), and/or long time experience in the field to amateur members of a community group who decide they want to present a performance and people in schools who get volunteered for the task because of experience in a tangentially related field.
There were a lot of great suggestions made and to my chagrin, I was so interested in the conversation I forgot to make note of half of them.
One thing that NALI is doing to make informational sessions at conferences more valuable is to require people on panels to communicate with each other weeks in advance (apparently they often don't discuss what they will cover until ten minutes prior to the panel) and to essentially create an outline or syllabus letting participants know exactly what they should expect to be covered.
They have already put this into practice. The Performing Arts Exchange conference being held in Memphis this coming week features a section on their website where you can download the course outlines and bios of the NALI sponsored sessions and instructors.
One of the goals is to specifically plan a cycle of NALI sponsored sessions at the regional conferences so that a person could attend the same conference over a period of 3-5 years and ultimately complete all the coursework one would theoretically need for presenting.
There was some discussion as to whether NALI was going to be granting people certification of some sort, what the qualifications would be, if there was going to be testing, what happens if you fail the test, etc. Philip and Margaret essentially felt it was too early in the development of the whole process to say.
This seems logical to me since they are in the solicitation phase of developing the whole program. While people felt that there was a need for better education and information exchange to help move the profession forward, no one was actually suggesting the creation of a certifying authority. One woman actually liked the idea of the program because it would mean she could take classes and continue working (rather than quit and go to grad school).
In the discussion of delivery channels for supplementary or even core information, Philip mentioned that community colleges seems to have the flexibility and power to create and offer arts management courses much more quickly than 4 year institutions.
I brought up blogs like Artful Manager a place where links to resources may be found. (As I noted in yesterday's entry, I didn't mention my own at the time. I have started to rectify that situation.)
I also mentioned podcasting as a means for disseminating important information or lessons on a weekly basis. I didn't realize the potential power of this form the way others like the Artful Manager has until I started to recently listen to a local arts podcast .
I sent the host of this podcast a press release one day and it was on the podcast the next day. Newspapers and radio stations are picky about what they announce and when, but I think getting your info announced on podcasts focussed to a specific community can end up being much more powerful a tool than print and broadcast media.
Granted, this guy's podcast has a small audience and a probably has a dearth of material to work with at the moment so I might get booted or have to compete for time in the future. But there are alliances and relationships to be forged!
In any case, I think using podcasting to send out weekly wise thoughts from arts professional on issues of the day can become a powerful tool and be especially helpful for those managers who don't have the money to attend conferences and the professional development sessions contained therein.
I also mentioned the way Annenberg/CPB delivers their Arts in Every Classroom programs over the web as another potential delivery medium. (I wrote about these great programs earlier.)
One thing another participant in the conversation touched briefly upon (and I expanded on with Philip after the session broke up) was the need to not to move the profession forward by educating presenters, artists and agents, but also educating organizations and municipalities.
There are a lot of cities and groups out there, perhaps driven by the idea of attracting Richard Florida's Creative Class, who are building arts facilities without really understanding the calibre of personnel and annual infusion of resources necessary to do justice to the $50 million it took to construct the facility.
I am seeing such a case on my local horizon, but they are living it in Madison, WI. Andrew Taylor responds here.
Whew! Covered a lot of ground today and wandered a little, but this is heady and exciting stuff. I hope NALI continues with their plan and becomes a going concern. Watch this space for more coverage!
I always like to discover organizations that find a way to offer opportunities for people to realize artistic and "practical" pursuits.
In Providence, RI is The Steel Yard which "offers arts and technical training programs designed to increase opportunities for cultural and artistic expression, career-oriented training, and small business incubation." So you can go there to pursue welding certification, learn how to weld for around the house chores or explore a new art form. (They also offer ceramics, blacksmithing and foundry casting.)
They also offer lectures, studio space, youth training partnerships and a locker in residence program where you can get access to their shop without being associated with any classes.
Sounds pretty cool. This is the one time I regret not being a visual artist cause they have an executive director position open. Sounds like an intriguing opportunity.
Another similar program is at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. They have an arts and industry program where artists take up residency at the Kohler Company which manufactures plumbing supplies.
This may sound strange, but if you think about it, the company's products require them to work in ceramics, iron and brass foundries and work with enamel. They put their equipment and materials at your disposal 24 hours a day. Only 4 people are usually in residence at any one time so accessibility to the facilities is more limited than at the Steel Yard. But everything is free to those chosen for the program, including housing, round trip transportation, materials and technical assistance. Plus you get a weekly honorarium.
The most amusing part is that many of these pieces make it back to the washrooms at the arts center. According to the arts center website, there tends to be an invasion of the opposite gender's washroom to view these works.
Explore the washrooms yourself. It is pretty cool stuff.
Alright! With Andrew Taylor's Artful Manager blog in reruns this week, I get to talk about a technological gizmo I noticed. (I just hate it when I find an article and he already blogged on it. I mean, then I have to find something else interesting to write about that day! The pressure!! Guess that is the price of living 4-5 hours behind him.)
Anyhow, while reading over at Salon.com, I came across a story about a company that provides people with the ability to discuss and organize projects on the web.
The software is called Basecamp created by a company called 37 Signals. The software is web based and hosted so it doesn't matter what platform or versions of software you have (other than up to date browser software). You can use Basecamp to organize everything from weddings to building skyscrapers.
The software provides a secure central site for people to plan and discuss projects. Everyone can be aware of due dates, to do lists and contact lists. They can share and get feedback on the progress they have made and start fitting things together.
So what does this have to do with the arts? Well if you are starting discussions on an opera, ballet or play, your directors and designers may be working in places hundreds of miles from each other and in turn may be thousands of miles from the theatre the production will take place at. With this service, designs and concepts can be shared at great distances enabling progress even though one person may be going to bed when the sun is rising in the window of another.
Designers may actually be able to take on more commissions because they don't necessarily have to travel to oversee some stages of development when digital photos will suffice. And when they do have to travel, they can be providing input on the next couple far-flung projects with which they are involved.
Travel and housing expenses will be lower for all involved because designers need not move about so much and be present at the theatre for so long a time as they have in the past.
The cost of this service is very reasonable, spanning from $12 to $99 a month. Given that the $99 rate is for 100 projects, I imagine a theatre would find that they could coordinate their entire season of 12-15 shows for a very reasonable rate. The first 30 days are free which takes a little bit of the risk away. Actually, you can set up one project for not cost at all so an organization could conceivably use it to complete an entire production as a test.
Actually, as I look back at the Basecamp website, I notice there is a link to suggested uses. They actually list theatre applications. Among their suggestions are using it for auditions storing headshots, resumes and audio files. I hadn't thought of that! A director could actually provide guidelines for casting to someone at a theatre, have them weed out those who didn't meet the criteria and then upload video recordings of the promising auditions for him/her to review from hundreds of miles away.
Granted, a poor quality recording could cheat many a good actor of a chance at fame if not chosen far a call back. Certainly, a camera would blunt subtle skill and charisma that is clearly apparent in person. The casting director would have to be really insistent that they really thought an actor should be called back if the show director wants to pass him/her by. But again, if the auditions are Wednesday and the call backs are on Saturday, that is time and money saved.
I would really be interested to see if arts organizations start using this sort of service. I am sure there are applications of its use no one has conceived of yet.
Looking to revisit the idea of audiences reviewing performances, I took a look at some research Greg Beuthin over at Extension 311 had done on the subject. Though I did a Google search similar to the one he lists in addition to using some keywords of my own, I didn't find much more than he. Even worse, the one theatre I found in my last search that appeared to be setting up a way for performers and directors to blog has removed their website entirely. Though others like My London Life , a chronicle of a London based director's experiences, are going ahead strong. (Though understandably with some commentary on the recent bombings.)
In fact, of the sites he links, many of those that offer the opportunity to review don't have any posted. The exceptions are fringe festivals (which he says really encourage their audiences to do so). He uses the examples of San Francisco Fringe and Edinburgh Fringe (The Edinburgh ones are more like advertisements from people who have seen the pieces elsewhere since the festival doesn't actually start for another week.)
One of the best audience review sites in terms of the detail to which people go in discussing the experiences is On The Boards. I have been critical of their editorial policy in the past, but I have never questioned the quality of their entries which seems to remain high.
New York Times had a terrific story (picked up by Artsjournal.com today) about a website that will do for traveling artists what Tripadvisor.com does for hotel seekers. GoTour.org (hosted/sponsored by The Field) provides a place where artists can post and receive advice about how to go about performing at certain venues, how audiences in different parts of North America react to different types of music, where good eats can be found, etc. You can search venues by state or by region--a helpful feature if you are considering regional tours.
The website is well organized and attractive. However, its biggest strength is also its biggest weakness--it depends on people to enter the information. This is a strength in that you get some good practical advice from people who have been there. Their experience is subjective perhaps, but it is much better advice than you will get from buying a book on touring North America.
Depending on user input is also a weakness because, well, there is nothing entered in the website. While there are local guides for New York City, there isn't a single venue listed for the place, nothing at all listed for Philadelphia (or any part of PA except Allentown). I found listing for venues that no longer exist. (The NYT article says the website is celebrating its first anniversary, but I found entries from 2001 and the site has a 2003 copyright.)
Regardless of the shape it is in now, I am posting about it in the hope that readers will contribute to it and flesh it out a bit. It has a great potential for being useful to artists so everyone do your bit and update it!
Again from our friends at Artsjournal.com is a Wired article about how Internet content may not be free for much longer. (But just above it was this blog entry about how classical music fans were overjoyed that downloads of Beethoven from the BBC exceeded that of U2--except the Beethoven was free so it is unfair to compare. People like free stuff.)
The Wired article points out that television was free when it started, but now that the delivery medium has evolved, we pay for it, as basis for claiming at at some point we will regularly pay for internet content as well.
Much of the article is devoted to discussing the pitfalls of transitioning from free to pay-for-content. The worst being alienating all those who currently patronize your site and sending them to your competitor.
The very end of the article mentions that blogs will probably always be free. This might be dangerous for some websites if they cede an opinion shaping position totally over to blogs.
This was interesting and all, but the reason I chose it for today's entry is because it got me thinking that perhaps there were other ways to structure access to performances, museums and the like.
In fact, IDG is a living example of this. The company operates 300 websites and employs about 200 online strategies -- free content, cheap content, expensive content, content that requires an onerous registration process, and content that requires little more than an e-mail address and ZIP code. In some cases, a website may have three-quarters free content and a quarter requiring registration or a subscription. Or, it could offer a subscription for $150 a year but give it away if the reader fills out a detailed registration form.
Obviously applying these ideas for arts organizations where people are present physically is different from the internet where their presence is virtual and easier to limit.
Honestly, the only application I have been able to come up with that is directly associated with the structures the article mentions is for museums. You can peruse this gallery with limited Mucha prints for free, but if you want to see a more detailed exhibit, you have to pay. Unless theatres dance and concert halls let people in for the first half for free and then made them pay to come back in after intermission, I can't see it working exactly the same for live performances.
Though perhaps the perception of some value for free while the suckers paid to go back in would provide an inducement for people to attend where a totally free or totally paid event might not. I will have to think upon this whole subject some more and post about it later.
Courtesy of our friends at Artsjournal.com is a story on the BBC website about how the 21st may become the century of amateur culture. The article cites how podcasting, blogs and digital photos have really empowered people with the ability to share bits of themselves.
The article heavily quotes Lawrence Lessig who created the Creative Commons, basically a way for content creators to state what portions of their creations they will and won't allow other people to use.
The content of my blog, for example, has always had a Creative Commons license on it. Click the icon in the lower right column under the calendar and entry listings to view the details of it.
The story makes the move by many media companies to limit the usage of material they control like the last flare of a fire before it burns itself out. Though they concede that big media will always be in a strong position to create and control, amateurs will find themselves in a much better position to influence tastes than they have ever been before.
The BBC itself is digitizing its archives to allow people to remix their sounds and images in order to create something new. There is no mention about what restrictions they place on the use of the material in terms of giving recognition to the creators of the original pieces, but I imagine they won't be onerous.
My entry yesterday has received a comment from a somewhat appropriate source. Kevin Smokler has written a book, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, which essentially asks, is it worth writing a book if no one is reading them.
He also offers a consulting service to newly published and aspiring authors to help them operate in the current reality of literature. I don't know much about consulting and coaching in this area, but what you get for his rates seems pretty reasonable to me.
But anyway, at first blush his suggestions seemed pretty naive to me. As a society, we are looking for easier ways to do things and aren't about to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of nostalgia. You'd just as soon wish that the Donny and Marie Show were still on so your family would have something wholesome to watch on Friday nights. I am sure there will come a day when we look back nostalgically to the days Home Depot was bustling with excitement and talk about how much we miss the unspoken camraderie and respect when do-it-yourselfers stood side by side with building contractors.
As I thought about it though, I came to realize I had witnessed some community building activities like those he suggested. As a society, we may be moving in a certain direction, but individually, our actions and gestures still have power. Home Depot and Walmart may never notice if you don't shop in their stores, but the places you do shop instead might recognize your gesture.
Also, it may be easier than you think to build a community and establish the types of traditions and values I mentioned yesterday. My sister moved into one of those houses in the suburbs Kevin mentioned (though to be fair, the mortage payments on her large house were less than the rent on her two bedroom apartment in Hoboken, NJ). Shortly after they did, they invited their neighbors to a "meet the new folks" bar-b-que.
Come to find out, most of the neighbors had never met each other either. They enjoyed each other's company and decided they should have more parties. The started a themed round the world party at Christmas time. It is now in the 5th year. Right now, the biggest problem is whether to let others in the neighborhood into their circle because they are getting so bloated and drunk from all the food and alcohol available at the half hour stops at participating houses now.
Since then the people in #15 have established that they will have an annual picnic on July 4th and my sister has drawn her neighbors into the annual August summer party tradition she had going when she was living in Hoboken. When I was there in June, another of the neighbors had decided to establish the first annual ice cream social. (Alas, I missed it!)
In a sense, Kevin is correct. If we, as a society are engaging in conspicious consumption far beyond our means, it might be nice to turn it to the benefit of our community and create our own niche traditions and culture. Sure you have a 60' television with an awesome sound system. Pick a night and roll it out on the patio and turn your yard into a drive-in for the neighborhood kids (minus the cars, of course.) The kids are probably amusing themselves with the fact they can watch television through your windows from all the way across the street anyway.
"NYFA’s online database, NYFA Source, is the largest searchable resource of grants, services, and publications for artists in all disciplines nationwide. If you’re seeking funding, residencies, or specialized information, it’s the definitive place to search—and it's free. Yet many artists don’t utilize the breadth of information it offers, or are unaware of it altogether."
Since many artists don't know about it, I figured I would help NYFA out and let people know. NYFA, by the way, is the NY Foundation for the Arts. While many of their activities are understandably focussed on NY, their grant database is rather extensive and instructions for its use are good.
For those that are interested, there is a page where a NYFA staff member responds to comments about NYFA Source.
This month's issue of NYFA Current also discusses health care for artists. This article is New York City specific, but does discuss what one city hospital is doing to make care affordable for artists. A similar program might be worth advocating for in other cities.
I came across this article on the Chronicle of Higher Education website discussing how students at the University of Texas-Austin have created "Swarmcasting" software that allows people to essentially run their own Internet television station. Seems to me it might present a possibility for organizations to broadcast their performances some day.
How to make money off it, I am not quite certain at this point. I imagine though that as since your digital cable line is the same one that delivers your highspeed cable modem, being able to watch broadcast over the internet on your 60 inch television isn't that far off. Perhaps one day you will be able to choose between watching A Raisin in the Sun performed at Arena Stage for $60 or performed by the high school down the street for $5.
For those who are worried about piracy and reproduction of performances diluting their ability to get people to pay to view their work, the way the software delivers its product is unwieldly for use in filesharing networks. The software authors believe movies and audio distribution may take a form similar to the one they are creating in the future because of this hindering aspect.
It is hard to tell how exactly our dreams of the future will be executed. I came across this blog entry which recounts a speech made by President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The president seems rather prescient outlining his vision for the future since he describes what we know today as the Internet.
It bears mentioning that two years later on October 29, 1969, the first electronic message was sent over ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet. According to some accounts I read, Johnson set aside money in the 1968-69 Federal Budget to fund a project that emerged as ARPANET.
Alas, as visionary as he was, Johnson didn't live long enough to see his dream really come into its own as it did when it surged into public life in the 1990s. If I am visionary about this application of technology for the dissemination of the arts, I hope I am around to see some of it. Though on the other hand, I am sure Johnson is happier not knowing that his vision is also the medium by which vast amounts of pornography is also available. I may be happier not seeing it, too.
One of the plusses about working for a university is that your position is more generally secure than comparable ones in other arts organizations. On the other hand, I have quite a few people working for me on a regular basis who aren't in a funded position looking to their job for some degree of support.
In some cases, it is worse being part of a state funded institution because no one thinks you need donations. Because you are competing for government funding, it is rather difficult to cultivate one person from whom you can make an ask since there are legislators, governors and levels of college administrators who all get a say in how much you end up getting.
In my case, it is even worse. Today I had to make a pitch before faculty and staff as to why the priorities in my strategic plan action items deserve funding. They in turn get to vote on whether my suggestions get to be college priorities.
My problems are twofold:
1- There were only two people I counted at the assembly who weren't pitching their own action plans. Thus I was talking to people who were going to vote for their own priorities. There wasn't anyone in the room that there was any chance of convincing.
2- There were people there pitching to fund life altering programs like getting enough staffing to enable the rural poor to attend college. Even though I was looking to do rather worthy things, the least of which was to get the office clerk reclassified so that she is paid properly for the responsibilities she has been handling for 15 years, I couldn't help but think my requests were frivolous.
Recalling that I had read something similar in Artsjournal.com's "Is There a Better Case for the Arts" discussion, I hopped over there. It was pretty much the exact same story, an arts person went before a city council to ask for funding immediately after a group trying to reduce infant mortality rates.
Theatre Communication Group's Executive Director, Ben Cameron, address this:
...pitting the arts against other causes IS a trap. For a healthy society, it should be a both/and and not an either/or. Many of the past questionnaires ask us to prioritize how we spend money--e.g. which is more important between infant mortality and the arts--rather than asking us to describe those characteristics that comprise a healthy society. If we could look at the latter, there would be room and a necessity of a creative approach to policy--one that seeks to promote a more holistic sense of national health in which the arts MUST be counted--rather than the traps of competing causes.
Going back and reading that won't make me any more likely to be funded, but for me it provides a view of the world to advocate and work toward shaping.
Ever on the look out for harbingers of change that may some day translate into problems or solutions for me, I have been following articles about the demise of Rock radio stations of late. A recent article in the NY Times has chronicled how the new rock format has disappeared from the largest radio markets in the country these last few months. At this point, NYC and Philly (and people are keeping on eye on LA) don't have a new/alternative rock station because the Arbitron ratings were dropping and the station owners decided to change formats.
Now having lived in the NYC and Philly areas, I wasn't an avid listener to either station. (I feel compelled at this juncture to make a shout out to listener supported WXPN in Philly) It is what has happened since that has aroused my interest.
When I said that NYC and Philly didn't have new/alternative rock stations, I was sort of misstating the situation. It is more truthful to say they both don't have terrestrial stations with that format.
The old crew from Y100 in Philly is now broadcasting over the internet from their bedrooms essentially at Y100Rocks.com They are scrambling to get funding to keep their shows streaming. Despite being out of work DJs with no physical radio station, they have attracted some fairly significant names to play a concert so they can make money and stay on the air. (I don't believe they are a non-profit so it isn't a fundraiser per se.)
In NYC, Viacom/Infinity took a different tack and moved their alternative rock programming to the internet at KRock2. I think KRock was a little smarter because they get to keep a segment of their listenership which they can now advertise to visually instead of just aurally because you have to go to their webpage to listen in.
The other reason is because I am thinking that internet/satellite radio is going to be the next phase of music delivery. iTunes provides you with the ability to buy music you already listen to, but the new stuff is gonna come from someone programming a mix.
FM may not even get the chance to become AM and have to find a format like talk radio to fill the airwaves because no one will be using AM/FM radio wave receivers anymore. This isn't a matter of deciding you can afford to lose some of your customers to a competitor. This driving people to another delivery mode where there is no chance of them hitting the scan button and deciding to listen to your station again.
I can see has bits of this story makes it a metaphor for the arts in some respects and I will probably explore them in future entries.
There is another tale of possible unintentional self-sabotage in this story. Two of Y100s morning DJs left the station and were under a 6 month non-compete clause. However, a court just handed down a preliminary ruling that since the station changed formats the DJs can work in the market before the 6 months has elapsed because Radio One doesn't own a competing Rock format station in Philly anymore.
Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, has a new book out called The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent . In it he apparently argues that the current socio-political climate in the US is going to start to alienate the creative class and they will move to other countries.
I say apparently because I haven't read the book, but rather an interview with Florida on the Salon website. I am not sure I totally agree with him, but it might be because I read his entire argument a year ago in an article he did for the Washington Monthly. I have the same reservations I had in an entry a year ago.
While I would love to get a job in Wellington and am not such a model of American consumerism that I couldn't get along just fine without whatever we got that they don't, I just don't see myself moving to New Zealand any time soon. (Of course, I never really saw myself moving to Hawaii either.) Nor do I see too many of the best and brightest I know doing so either.
My feelings were echoed last month by Karrie Jacobs in a Metropolis Magazine article, Why I Don't Love Richard Florida. Like me, Ms. Jacobs doesn't actually dislike Richard Florida, just the cult that has sprung up around him. She observes that the group he calls the creative class is the same cohort that was called yuppies in the 80s. Young successful cool people are going to want to live in cool neighborhoods no matter what the era.
Florida doesn't tell anyone anything new by telling them these are the folks you want to attract. Actually, since he touts tolerance of ethnic and sexual differences as necessarily elements of successful creative communities, he is helping the social and economic mobility of a wider range of people than just rebranding yuppies (who you must admit were mostly caucasian).
I also don't fault him for writing a book that collects easily observable trends and proposes the shaping of policy based on them. One of the things I have noticed in the last 10-15 years is that things that seem to obvious to mention aren't necessarily so. People who give voice to these observations tend to get labeled geniuses. It's happened to me much to my incredulous bemusement. I was just too embarassed to exploit the opportunity.
And who can fault him for letting people give him money to give speeches on the subject. I think what Ms. Jacobs and I have both been aiming at is not to let one person's vision fill your entire horizon.
Some of you might be a little tired of me hailing blogs as the next big thing (and if you have been reading me long enough to have noticed the trend, it just goes to prove the point.) But I was reading a story that has some good lessons/thoughts about executing blogs as a business tool.
Business 2.0 had a story about how General Motors got in to blogging. It was very interesting to me to see that the company that used to be the biggest employer in the US (Remember "What's good for GM is good for America?")took a very low profile approach to starting a blog. They started with a blog on the niche subject of small block engines in October, assessed the success of that project and opened another blog (Fast Lane) on a wider scale.
"People were already talking about us all over the Internet," Wiley explains. "This blog was an attempt to get GM more involved in the dialogue and to get people talking to us. We see this as a direct line to enthusiasts, supporters -- and detractors."
True, many arts organizations only pray that people are taking enough interest in them to talk about them anywhere, much less on the internet. Heck, I'm sure I speak for all arts organizations when I say that we wish people would be as passionate about us as they are about the style of hubcaps appropriate for a vehicle--much less the carburetor.
A couple of good decisions about the blog GM has made:
One big reason for Fast Lane's success: GM is willing to accept and post criticism. Smart move. Nobody wants to read a sanitized blog. The site is also inclusive. In addition to Lutz, the company has opened the floor to other blogging GM executives, which helps give the behemoth brand a more human, approachable, and likable positioning.
And many view the art organizations the same way-inscrutable, closed off, mysterious, intimidating. (And unfortunately there can be some truth behind the perception.)
But the company is doing everything else right. Most important, GM hasn't advertised the blog. Rather, it has wisely allowed the site to grow organically, gaining further street cred. "We're really committed to avoiding corporate-speak and keeping this really transparent," Wiley says...Blog fans are actually an appealing consumer segment for an automaker, despite their image as a gaggle of unemployed malcontents sitting around in their pajamas. According to Forrester [Research], they are most likely to be male, with an average household income of $57,900. A quarter of all bloggers are ages 18 to 24, which makes them a good long-term investment. Perhaps most important, bloggers tend to be highly opinionated and highly influential -- a real benefit for a company that peddles big-ticket items in an industry where more than half of all shoppers begin their research online...
Many bloggers, being bloggers, will no doubt view GM's experiment with suspicion, so the company will need to maintain its street cred by not micromanaging content. It also needs to let the criticism roll -- no matter what.
The whole idea of maintaining your street cred resonates with my recent entry on the difficulty a theatre was having getting bloggers to review for them. And it really underscores Elisa blog post cited in that entry.
The article goes on to say while few people regularly read blogs these days, it is an up and coming. Consumers regularly reading blogs rose from 2 percent in 2003 to 5 percent in 2004.
If you are looking for a younger audience, they are starting to get into the habit of doing their research online. They may not be ready to begin attending the arts quite yet,(and maybe they never will be) but like GM you aren't ready with an effective blog and website to provide the content they seek either. Take advantage of the situation like GM did and hone your skills and techniques while there are few people around to notice your screw ups.
Back in the beginning of February among the theatre type blogs I listed in an entry was one to the Impact Theatre web page where they were offering free tickets to people who would see a show and blog for them.
As promised, I sent an email off to them yesterday to see how successful it was for them. I got a letter back from their graphics person, Cheshire Dave, who has given me permission to excerpt the email here. Apparently, as much as people seem to want to regale the blogosphere with the inane details of their lives, no one wants to write about theatre--even with a direct appeal.
Quoth Cheshire:
I am depressed to announce that yours is the very first email I've gotten from that link in the six months or so that it's been up. No joke; no exaggeration. By and large, this initiative has been a spectacular failure. Except for one case, no blogger has taken me up on it, even ones I solicited directly (some of them didn't even get back to me, and I emailed several times). The sole exception has been SFist (http://www.sfist.com), and that's a site that I write for (I'm not the one doing the reviews). But the point of SFist is to fill a need for a regional blog, so it's not like an individual's blog in that regard. So really, my plan has been totally unsuccessful.It kills me that I can't find even one blogger who wants free tickets to theater that he or she would probably really enjoy. With bloggers
more or less looked down upon by a great portion of the print establishment and not known about by even more people, it seems to me that what bloggers want is legitimacy. But when offered to them on a silver platter, they can't be bothered. It's really disappointing.
I did go to sfist.com and typed "Impact" into the search field to see what sorta stuff was going up. There were some nice articles for their productions with the sort of disclaimers about being involved with Impact Theatre that you would hope people being paid to promote governmental initiatives would make. Its a practice to which all uncredentialed journalist types should aspire. (I try to keep the blog generally apolitical, but sometimes, the opportunity to comment is just there.)
I sent him a couple links to some of my "bloggers as the next reviewers" entries (here, here, and here) in my inquiry email. He noted though that "One thing I didn't see in your entry about bloggers as reviewers that is a benefit to the arts organization is the opportunity for almost-instant response on the blog."
I thought I had said that somewhere already, but it certainly bears repeating. As he noted, his theatre gets most of its review driven audiences from the free weekly paper so by the time the review appears, the show is in to its second week. With the daily papers, you are sort of at the whims of the editors. A Sunday or Friday review is great--but god help you if it appears in Monday's paper as it is the least read of any day.
Since bloggers are typically very quick to report their impressions, finding a good one with a dedicated readership can potentially be worth his/her weight in gold--so a couple free tickets to a show ain't nothin' But as I noted a couple days ago, I think blogging still has to have some time to mature as a information media. Once it does, I bet you see individuals with sites like sfist.com that appear well run and probably have a dedicated group of visitors.
Until then though, I encourage everyone to be like Impact and pioneer the way.
In case you missed seeing it on Artsjournal today because it was a holiday for you, an article appeared from Wired suggesting that the future prosperity of the US lay in right brain activities.
The author foresees that as more left brain logic based jobs either get off shored or relegated to increasingly sophicated software, a demand for people with intuitive and empathic skills will emerge.
There was an interesting section that might mean good things for the arts organizations able to fulfill an apparently emerging need people are beginning to feel-
For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life.
This may present an interesting turn of events. I have been reading articles of late that talk about people skipping college or going into technical training to gain specific skills. While it is certainly true that colleges could do a better job at endowing their graduate with practical skills, if this Wired artice is correct, it may be time to shift one's concentration back to liberal and fine arts degrees to gain marketable skills.
If you read reports on why people are no longer attending arts events, inevitably television, video games and computers will be mentioned.
What isn't mentioned is that there is sort of a conservation of creative energy going on over the internet. Even though people are online more, there is a creative itch that they seem to need to scratch. Take for example the MUD Achaea (FAQ on MUDS here). They are a text based mud meaning no graphics are provided over the screen--all the colors, textures, etc are created within the player's mind from the description presented.
However, for the past 5-6 years they have held monthly artisianal and bardic contests where players create visual representations of life in this text based game or songs/stories/poems reflecting the same. Considering that they also award runners up and merit awards, that is a fair bit of art being created to give tribute to an imaginary world.
Even more--they have a sophicated mechanism that allows players to create their own plays in game on a stage in one of the towns. It even goes so far as to allow you to set ticket prices, reserve private boxes, build sets and costumes and employ special effects.
This can give some hints as to the direction technology and theatre may be headed together.
Using MUDs for something other than entertainment has long been contemplated as seen in this paper on their use in education written a decade ago.
And the theatre world has been using a form of MUDs called MOOs to hold meeting and forum for almost as long. The Association of Theatre in Higher Education created ATHE MOO to provide opportunities for discussion and debate to those who couldn't attend their annual conferences.
So I was checking my visitor stats for January. The report only shows the IP addresses of people who visited, but it does give me links to websites through which people clicked through to find me.
Turns out that people have been linking to me via the blogs maintained by a paid arts blogger, I reported on in an earlier post. The blog entries in question come from Worker Bees Blog and 42nd St. Moon.
In the former blog, she talks about the importance of monitoring your statistics and how she can now track my blog and my references to her. I imagine we will now do a humorous little turn at watching each other watch each other.
In the latter entry, she mentions how 42nd St Moon is becoming powerful at leveraging blogs. This is quite true because by visiting that entry, I then clicked through to the other related blogs, one of which is focussed on the benefit of technology to arts organizations.
Given that this whole series of events was predicated on my search for other arts blogs beyond artsjournal.com, I am starting to look at my whole effort at blogging as something of a success which is gaining momentum.
Since the December holiday season I have gotten email from people whose neices have turned them on to my blog and from an administrator at the National Dance Project because someone brought my comments to their attention.
Makes me realize that there are a lot more people intentionally visiting the website than I realized. The web stats report tells you what keywords people used in search engines to find your website. My only comment is to look at the first word in my blog's name. I will let you infer some of the bizarre search terms people are using from that.
I was visiting the Knight Foundation website and came across the aforementioned article, "Smart Concerts: Orchestras in the Age of Edutainment" by Alan Brown.
It offers some interesting reading about the tension between offering classical music in a manner that is appealing to new audiences while adhering to the expectations of long time audiences. (Of course the lessons learned are applicable to all the arts.) The former doesn't attend often, but constitutes the future of your organization. The latter frequently attend, donate much needed monies in the face of declining foundation support and sit on your board. All of which can make it difficult to innovate.
Brown gives a number of examples of innovations that orchestras are using, including Concert Companion with which readers of Greg Sandow's blog may be familiar.
He also recounts the resistance that some of these programs have faced, including booing at the Minnesota Orchestra.
A little more about that in a bit.
Brown makes some familiar observations about arts attendance. One thing he notes is that consumers want a more intense experience in a shorter time because they have less time. Thus the prevalence of extreme sports and standing ovations. People want to feel that they have had a good time in the time they had.
Another observation is that while technology makes so many more musical options available to people with the ability to download opera as easily as the latest pop single, it also allows people to continue to reinforce their own tastes by providing them with so much material, they never get tired of listening and experiment with other options.
One section I found particularly interesting:
In his book "Who Needs Classical Music?," Julian Johnson argues that classical music, fundamentally, is discursive in nature and requires careful and complete listening in order to be fully appreciated. Instead, he says, most consumers “use” (or misuse) classical music to alter or underscore their mood, or just to fill empty time.2 Mass culture’s appropriation of classical music may be good or bad, depending on your point of view, but there is a larger idea here. Much of music’s allure derives from the relative ease with which it can be selected and programmed by the listener. In focus groups, music lovers describe how they listen to one kind of music for vacuuming, another kind of music for cooking, another kind of music for exercising, and so forth. Consumers understand what it means to be your own curator, and derive great satisfaction from arranging art around them to the satisfaction of their own aesthetic – especially music and visual art.
I really appreciate Julian Johnson's views. The last artistic director I worked for wouldn't recommend musicians to people who wanted live background music at parties and receptions. His feeling was that a musician works too hard at his/her craft to be ignored and spoken over. And it reinforces the idea that their product is worthless and disposable. He felt that it was better to get a good CD player and sound system.
I also like the idea though that consumers know the value of being their own curator. I am not quite sure how to execute it, but I sense there would be great value to an arts organization in a program that validated this sentiment and empowered patrons in some manner.
The four tactics that Brown says are being employed by orchestras are: contextual programming, dramatization of music, visual enhancements and embedded interpretation. Of these, I would imagine that dramatization and visual enhancement might be considered most sacreligious by long time concert goers.
Dramatization is "theatrically produced in service of a larger concept or purpose using some combination of narration, drama, dance, scenery, lighting and video. But the music remains the main attraction.
Visual enhancement, which he describes as the most controversial, "...can be divided into two categories: visual enhancements that add an artistic element to the concert, and visual enhancements that (literally) magnify the performers. It is not unusual for orchestras to introduce visual elements such as banners, flags, projections and ambient lighting to the stage, sometimes in service of a theme or special occasion."
Since these programs try to "sex" the music up by adding new elements rather than allowing the music to stand on its own merits, I can understand why people might be upset.
Contextual programming he defines as "contextual programming as the practice of selecting programs, series and even whole seasons around unifying ideas – topics, themes, genres, idioms, artists and other constructs – however focused or oblique. Contextual programs have more conceptual glue holding them together."
One thing he points out is that unless you are a long time attendee or a musician, you might be hard pressed to understand why a particular mix of music from different composers was chosen for performance. (Lord knows, I have always wondered) Contextual programming offers some sort of narrative that explains this. As noted, it could also be oriented to a theme like The San Diego Symphony's Light Bulb Series program, "Can Classical Music Be Funny?" (Lord knows I have wondered that as well.)
Embedded Interpretation encompasses elements which are part of the performance itself, such as the Minnesota Orchestra where the conductor provided some explaination about why the pieces were put together (many loved it, some booed) and the Philadelphia Orchestra where the musicians share insights about music during their summer programs. Of course, there is also the Concert Companion which provides commentary synchronized to the music broadcast to a handheld PDA.
The whole article is worth reading because I only touch on some of the examples given and I think many of them can inspire programs for other organizations.
I talk a lot about the power of blogs for theatre, but other than the ones at artsjournal.com, I haven't seen too many.
Well, thanks to the power of google, I found a handful. The first I found was an entry appropriately entitled "Where Are The Theatre Blogs?" People who made comments to the entry actually pointed out a few to look at which was lucky because I never saw them listed on Google.
One of the best examples of what I championed in earlier entries about artists blogging about the process they go through can be found on my London life. The blog is currently following Paul Miller, a London based director (and author) who is in the process of directing a play in Japan. He has been blogging since August and has been really regular in his writing about his process and artistic experiences. Clicking back to November, one finds he had flown out then to cast the show, flew back to the UK and then back to Japan in January to direct. Guy has to be exhausted!
One of the most surprising links I came across was a story on Elisa Camahort who is not only a professional blogger--paid to blog for a company--but she is being paid to blog for 3 theatre companies in the San Francisco Bay Area! I haven't really read the different blogs in their entireity. The recent focus seems to be on news about the theatres' current and upcoming seasons and theories about acting, marketing, etc. I will be reading a bit more as I have time. (One of the best things about writing a blog--you can follow your own links to do additional research!)
I also found a person with a blog connected to Shakespeare Magazine. The blog covers stories about Shakespeare productions and projects in the US and UK. It also lists stories about the Bard himself, including recent articles about the writer having syphilis (and stories refuting that theory)
There are some interesting discussions about art coming from Canadian sources as well on a website called The Flying Monkey. While the author admits that the discussion is dying down (though there is apparently more occuring on a message board), what was really interesting is the stated purpose of the blog--"An online discussion, from the point of view of the performing arts, about the audience: who they are, what they want and what we can give them. Excerpts from this discussion will be reprinted in Ruby Slippers Theatre's annual publication, The Flying Monkey, at the discretion of Guest Editor Adrienne Wong."
I thought it was really interesting that they would include the discussion in a print publication as well. As many people as there are reading blogs, etc online, it is good to remember that there are a lot of passionate supporters out there who aren't online and they deserve to be included in the dialogue in some fashion from time to time.
Last theatre blog I wanted to direct folks to is not for live performance, but actually a movie theatre. Some intrepid folks apparently quit their high paying corporate jobs right around Christmas and moved to Springfield, MO to renovate and open a small movie house. They basically discuss every step of the project from applying to get a Small Business Administration loan to deciding how what type of soda to serve and the size seats to put in the theatre. (You want a lesson in economics, check out the Jan 8 entry --unfortunately they don't have a way to link directly to the entry)
I just came across a PBS program I was briefly introduced to when I was interviewing around for my current job. Art:21 Art in the 21st Century is a PBS program that, as you might imagine, looks at art in the 21st century.
I have actually not seen the program. Unfortunately, as Drew McManus learned in regard to the Keeping Score program featuring the San Francisco Symphony, the program doesn't get much air time. It seems like another of those great gems that gets hidden under a rock.
The website however does have a lot of resources and allows you to see snippets of the programs. It offers lesson plans and other educational resources for teachers. It also presents student art projects that were created in conjuction with the program themes.
This is sort of a nice guide for teachers I think because it gives concrete examples of projects that have emerged from the lesson plans PBS provided. Even if the lesson plans were generated after the fact by the teachers who lead classes to create the projects, I know that teachers often like to have concrete examples to go along with their lesson plans. It is interesting to see the directions different schools went with different projects.
Although PBS doesn't play the show that often, the website does offer the opportunity for people to have screenings and residencies and even provides materials to publicize the event. If an organization is interested, they can use these materials to support/complement projects of their own.
I know, I know, I have been neglecting my blog of late. However, there is very good news on the job front which I have had to begin preparing for. I haven't received a contract/letter of appointment yet and I am superstitious about posting the news until I actually have it in hand. (On the other hand, I have started moving arrangements very much in earnest.)
But I wanted to keep up my practice of giving good advice by directing readers to an Inc magazine article on cheap ways to get yourself noticed on the internet. The article talks about making sure your company is listed intelligently on search engines.
If you are thinking that people can easily find you on the internet by checking out the entertainment section of the local newspaper's website, remember that I mentioned a couple months ago that people are turning to newspapers less and less frequently for information. They might be looking at the online newspaper site, but don't count on it.
Your best bet according to the article can be to make sure the keyword section of your webpage includes the right words and phrases that identify your organization, but also that shows where you are geographically. If someone who recently moved to town types "Entertainment St. Paul, MN" you want to make sure you are listed in that search.
The article also mentions how you can get your organization to appear toward the top of the results list without too much effort.
This is what arts organizations are looking for--cheap, quick, easy way to gain exposure so read it and implement it!
A while back I noted an article that discussed the fact that while newspaper circulation is down on the whole, ethnic newspaper circulation is experiencing growth.
According to another recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the same is true of magazines and journals. Magazines focussed on to very narrow audiences, (people trying to get pregnant, people who like hybrid cars and living like tycoon Donald Trump are among those mentioned), are beginning to appear more and more often.
As I mentioned in a number of earlier entries, this type of thing makes it very difficult for organizations with limited budgets and a mission to reach a wide portion of the audience. If people are getting their news and information solely from a few sources with limited circulations, it makes it increasingly difficult and expensive to communicate with a fairly large number of people. (Of course, it being able to promote directly to people who fancy themselves tycoons can be useful.)
This is probably one of those cases where reality runs counter to expectations. The advent of email was heralded as the beginning of the paperless revolution, instead paper consumption went up. Now where the internet might be expected to be cutting costs since you can email instead of snail mail brochures and information to patrons, it has created the expectation that one can access information specially prepared and filtered for one's own interests and view of the world. So now those "savings" have to be employed to put your information in a thousand places instead of a handful.
Don't you just love progress?
Last month I made an entry about the Seattle theatre On the Board's use of blogs to present attendee's reviews of the shows. I had been disappointed by the fact that an administrator from the theatre was acting as a gatekeeper and approving the entries.
I came across a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article via Artsjournal.com today that discusses the blog project in a bit more depth. I accept that they felt the post approval process was necessary to avoid language and personal attacks. I have read some internet forums where the conversation left the topic and devolved into such attacks. I have also been a member of forums where people were very civil and the worst attacks were teasing about someone's love of Kit-kats. I think it insults the audience to assume that things are going to go badly from the outset.
I have purposely left the comments portion of this blog open for that very reason. If anyone wants to post something, good or bad, they are free to. This is not to say I don't keep an eye on what is said and edit it. To this point, I have only removed ads for penis enhancement. I may edit derogatory language in the future, but I prefer to leave things open at all times. I believe that the power of this medium lies in the fact that someone can say something incredibly critical of someone and there is an opportunity for someone else to see it or Google to archive it before it gets deleted.
This has happened recently with the federal government before they took steps to avoid having their pages archived. Departments shifted their officially stated policy and tried to make their webpages seem like it was always that policy until someone dug up the archived copy that showed it wasn't so.
Because it is so easy to make changes to electronically presented material, the "truth" become violatile and transient. Even if it reflects negatively on me, I think it is important that there exists an opportunity for my critics to discover what it was I deleted in anger.
My philosophy of the blogosphere notwithstanding, I did find a couple of things On the Boards is doing to be interesting. The fact they are not just letting audiences know the opportunity to blog exists, but rather are inviting specific people to review them is great. (Though they undermine their position of openness credibility by reserving the right to edit.) Despite the fact many people seem to have no problem expressing their opinion online, there are still many folks who have strong views and don't comment. (Hint hint all ye readers of my blog.) Picking people to write gets the ball rolling and insures at least their friends will visit the site to read what they had to say.
It is no surprise what other parts of the article I found interesting--it was the sections that confirmed my vision of what blogging can bring to arts organizations."Because OTB performances typically run either three or four nights and daily newspapers no longer review theatrical events overnight, people who wait for a critical heads-up before deciding to buy a ticket have a single night to do so, at most two. By that time, if it's a hot performance, tickets are gone.
Imagine for a moment that newspaper reviews were plentiful, timely and unfailingly expert. They would still be one-way streets. Critics expound. Readers moved to reply have to write the critic for a response or write the editor to see their letter in print, and by that time the performance has concluded its run.
OTB bloggers begin typing after the curtain closes, posting their reviews opening night. Readers respond and presto: OTB has a real dialogue on its hands."
and a little further on:
"What a gift, especially if you happen to hang out with dullards. You love them, but they're more likely to sprout wings than be able to discuss the aesthetics of Shaw on stage. Now you can kiss your dullard goodnight and log onto the intellectual action. "
I especially liked this last bit because I had never thought about it before. It isn't world shattering and a bit humorous, but it does take the pressure off a friend/significant other who attends with an avid arts lover to provide an intelligent discourse on what they just saw. Husbands already feel they have done enough by staying awake through the ballet but to have to talk about it afterward! That is the straw that breaks the camel's back! Now they can be judged a good spouse for tolerating a night at the ballet because there is a ready made community in which the wife can debate the finer points ad infinitum.
Of course, as an arts administrator, my goal would be to find a way for the husband to enjoy himself as well. For those who are interested in the arts but are intimidated, the blogging and discussion forums can be as valuable a resource as it is for the afficinado. People's true identities are protected by the nicknames they assume so the novice attendee can feel comfortable asking elementary questions without fear of being identified in the lobby as the stupid one. Or they can simply lurk in order to read and learn from what other folks have to say.
Dang, I really need to get employed soon. I am just dying to start to put some of these ideas to use!
Comments anyone?
Some positive movements lately on the job search front kept me from posting yesterday. We will see what develops.
I came across an essay by John Eger titled "The Future of Work in the Creative Age." It sort of added another piece to the puzzle of how to attain Richard Florida's creative communities. In a time where outsourcing fears cause anxiety about one's job future, Eger says the US should focus its efforts on cultivating creativity.
Many, like the Nomura Research Institute, argue that the stage is set for the advance of the "Creative Age," a period in which America should once again thrive and prosper because of our tolerance for dissent, respect for individual enterprise, freedom of expression and recognition that innovation is the driving force for the U.S. economy, not mass production of low value goods and services.
Today, the demand for creativity has outpaced our nation's ability to create enough workers simply to meet our needs. Seven years ago, for example, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers asked the governor of California to "declare a state of emergency" to help Hollywood find digital artists. There were people aplenty who were computer literate, they claimed, but could not draw. In the New Economy, they argued, such talents are vital to all industries dependent on the marriage of computers and telecommunications.
He goes on to mention a couple schools which are rearranging their cirriculum to integrate an arts focus. He also quotes HP CEO Carly Fiorina as saying soon pools of skilled creatives will replace tax incentives and infrastructure as the elements which entice industry to a locality.
He suggests that divorcing the arts from math and science of the last couple decades has actually been detrimental to America's ability to compete in these areas. He points out that Einstein played violin, Galileo wrote poetry and Samuel Morse painted portraits. They may not have had the time and talent to become virtuosos in these pursuits, but the implication is that they supplemented the quality of the scientific products of these men.
Unfortunately, the subtle influence of arts upon scientific accomplishment and vice versa is one of those areas that resists precise measurement by standardized testing and other empirical measures. Only after a sustained shift in policy are we likely to realize the benefits of a more holistic education and exposure.
I was reading Adaptstration today in which Drew McManus was talking about seeing an orchestra program which was specially designed to show off the technological advantages of HDTV. It reminded me of another article I read back in February where students from MIT were dreaming up ways that technology could enhance an arts attendance experience. One of their ideas was to project a hologram of a conductor in Germany in front of an orchestra in Miami and have them make music with half the world between them.
When I originally read that article in February, it reminded me of some musings I had years before on the future of theatre. With the trend of people deciding to receive their entertainment at home, theatres would have to adapt by presenting their product across the same delivery channels. Arts on television currently doesn't have much of an audience. However, I was thinking that an emerging holograph or virtual reality technology could provide the answer.
My wild idea was that people could choose to plug in to watch a live performance from home. However, they could not only choose to watch from an audience's point of view, but also from the point of view of each character via a small camera mounted over the ear like a body mic. In this manner, they could experience what it was like to be up on stage in front of an audience, what it was like waiting in the wings or rushing around to enter from the other side of the stage. Some costume changes might have to be censored out depending how much they revealed.
There would be, of course, the added thrill of taking the point of view of one of the actors who about to be kissed by the celebrity sex symbol so that you feel you are being kissed yourself.
This is the advantage of live creative arts over film. Movies might be able to provide people with the point of view of being in the actual movie. But because films are shot out of order and there are long periods of inactivity for those involved, they can't provide real time behind the scenes insights and interaction.
When I first envisioned this idea, I figured technology might make it viable by the time I was 70. However, it appears the bright minds are moving ahead faster than I gave them credit for. Be interesting to see how soon it is a reality.
I have been closely watching a series of articles Drew McManus is writing on the topic "How to Save Classical Music." He is using the docent program at the Denver Zoo as a case study of how to use volunteer labor to aid in the revitalization of orchestras. He begins by defining the problem, then talks about the Denver Zoo program and has most recently written on how to apply these lessons to orchestras. Volunteer programs are of special interest to me so I have already put a fair bit of thought into his entries. I suspect that additional consideration will so occupy me that this entry meant for Friday won't be posted until Saturday.
Drew starts out with the premise that while most arts organizations inevitably have education as part of their mission, the focus of education departments is typically on school programs rather than on audience education. He suggests training and empowering docents will provide support in the areas of marketing, public relations, education and outreach. Docents are traditionally individuals who do tours and lectures at museums and cathedrals. Mr. McManus' suggestion is to minimize the teaching posture and position docents more as knowlegeable companions.
He goes on to discuss the similarities between the Denver Zoo and orchestras which make the comparison valid. He also mentions the problems facing orchestras echoing the sentiments of the McPhee Knight Foundation speech I cited last week. The solution, he says, lies in adopting the Denver Zoo's aims:
They facilitate people in their community with the tools they need to become an integral part of the zoos mission instead of looking at them as merely check writing automatons. The zoo gives up a measure of its own control over the institution, but in turn they create a passionate group of stakeholders that perpetuate ongoing community interest and involvement with the zoo. They enable members of the community to become involved partners as opposed to static participants. In turn, the zoo entrusts these individuals with the important responsibility of communicating with the public the value of their mission and to create an interest in the actual “product”.
Personally, I have always been interested in getting volunteers more involved in the organizations for which I have worked. However, I have been concerned about the administration's committment and investment in the volunteers. This is why I would be cautious about starting such a program in an arts organization.
The problem I have faced is that administration often looks upon volunteer help as a forgone conclusion. There is a Field of Dreams assumption similar to the one made about audiences--if you are offering the opportunity to volunteer, then certainly people are going to want to do it so they can be associated with the wonderful things the organization does.
One place I worked had often discussed, but never held, a volunteer appreciation event in the 15-20 years of the program. I felt victorious at having been the first to successfully organize one. When it came time to plan for the next one, I was told money wasn't the issue but in light of the fact that after 20 years without an event, only 40 out of 350 invitees came, maybe it was better to have it every 2-3 years.
I was extremely annoyed. We had started doing performances at a 1000 seat venue that was much more accessible to major roadways than our other performance spaces, but with which our audience base was not familiar. The first show we hardly had 200 people attend. However, we didn't abandon doing shows there but worked on increasing awareness of the venue. In my mind, we could have done the same thing by noting the party date 6 months out on every piece of correspondence sent to participating volunteers.
As a result of perceiving an exploitative motivation with little thought of appreciation, I have never proposed additional programs in which volunteers could be involved. I do, however, collect ideas such as Drew's against the day I am in a position to direct policy.
In the second day's entry, McManus discusses how the program of the Denver Zoo is structured. I was impressed by the amount of training the docents underwent and how much they were invested in the zoo. One of the biggest compliants the volunteers had was that the program became too formalized and that full time employees assumed functions they once performed. It is to the volunteers' credit that they feel such ownership for the program. The zoo is so happy with the program they intend to double its size to 600 docents in the near future.
In his third entry, Mr. McManus discusses the problems with orchestras and how the docent program can help. One of the biggest problems, he says, is that orchestras devote an increasingly larger portion of their ticket revenue to market to the same, ever decreasing, segment of the public. When they do try to attract more diverse audiences, "it often comes off looking like a tragically unhip old guy trying his best to look young and cool."
Educational information that is provided is usually in the form of reams of printed material utilizing arcane terminology and might be supplemented by a brief pre-performance lecture. What it lacks, he says, is personal face to face contact with someone who is passionate and knowledgeable, but like you, doesn't have all the answers. He also suggested essentially gutting the PR department of everyone except an editor and let docents write press releases.
My reservations about the exploitation of volunteers aside, I found his suggestions very exciting. Certainly the training of docents would have to be well planned and executed. I know that some people volunteer for the social prestige association with an organization or art form brings. People who want to impress others with what they know may only compound the intimidation a novice feels. Excluding a volunteer from being a docent can lead to a whole other set of PR problems.
The benefits for this program could be enormous. You could offer any level of interaction from having docents mingling in the lobby answering questions to offering a low intimidation program people register for in advance. In the latter program you might have a docent contact a person on Wednesday saying "Hey, why don't I meet you for coffee before the show Friday night, my treat. Then I will make sure you get to your seat, we can talk at intermission and after the show. But if you have to get home to your kids, you can always email me with questions."
If your worst problem is that the new attendee ties up your docent by wanting to meet for coffee before every concert, is that really a problem? You can always introduce new attendees to each other and encourage them to meet for coffee as a group. (Then hit up the coffee shop for a program book ad at the very least since you are sending so many people his way.) You can also direct people to internet tools like meetup.com (which includes classical.meetup.com and theater.meetup.com) and evite.com that make it easy for those who share interests to organize discussions with people they have never met.
The idea about volunteers writing press releases was very intriguing. I am not as confident about the writing skills of volunteers as Drew is, but I have never tried it. This actually may be the answer to the boring press release thread Greg Sandow brought up. If you have docents submit press releases that highlight why they are excited by the piece or person performing, you excise the boring "professionally" written junk. As Drew suggested, all it takes is an editor (who can resist the temptation to insert boring stuff) to polish it up and perhaps reorder some points so the release starts out with the attention grabbing details.
Drew also suggests that docents could be valuable in attracting new audiences from the diverse communities they live in by disseminating information and generally acting as an advocate for the insititution. My thought was that unless people from these communities were already experimenting with attendance and just needed to be empowered by such a program in order to gain the confidence to volunteer as a docent, there wasn't much chance of achieving diversity.
I mentioned this to Drew and he agreed drawing docents from the current audience would only serve to continue drawing the current audience. He said instead "the trick is to get the program started with a core group that is not entirely representative of the current audience. A few ideas I've had is for orchestras to utilize individuals such as private music teachers who have adult students, retired school teachers." This sounded like the most prudent course to me.
A variation of the Denver Zoo docent program could certainly be worth the effort to implement. I didn't check out the Denver Zoo marketing budget, but the fact they estimated it only cost them about $25,000 to run a 300 person docent program is probably a miniscule portion of the budget. However, according to Drew's survey they heavil