I came across a link last week to a study the League of American Orchestras did. The freshness of the referring page and the fact that my monitor resolution didn't require me to enlarge the pages too much initially hid the fact that the story came out in January 2004. Thinking it had been published in 2008, I was wondering why Drew McManus and the other bloggers at Inside the Arts hadn't picked up on it already. For awhile there, I was excited that I might actually be scooping them on their segment of the arts.
Even given the time that has actually transpired since the publication date, the article, Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender, is quite pertinent. One of the toughest groups to survey is the non-attender so the results of any survey of these people are highly valued. And they should be given that it is difficult to find people who don't attend who are willing to respond. It isn't as simple a matter as going out during a performance and asking why people aren't at the show. (Though that does seem like a good place to start now doesn't it?)
While the results of the survey the story covers are in relation to orchestras, the lessons learned can be applied universally. The median age of these smart, aware people tends to be lower than those actually attending which makes them valuable for that reason alone. They believe they would enjoy attending a concert, but never get around to doing so. Some of the reasons are advertising design which is intimidating to those not in the know (though theatre advertising gets higher points.) Though to be fair, some of the most accessible methods of communication suffered from perception. Said one person who didn't know orchestra's had websites, “I mean, they’re playing 18th-century music. I guess I never thought they’d need
a web site."
In addition to being uneasy about how to dress and act, the Non Attenders are also concerned about not understanding the performance. It isn't just a matter of not having the experience and vocabulary to comprehend what appears to be a dense, complex work, but also not being as enraptured by the work as everyone else seems to be.
I think this is an important distinction especially in relation to music. In most people's general experience, not understanding music is not an impediment to enjoyment. Getting lyrics wrong is practically a rite of passage. Listening to music in a foreign language is quite commonplace and the unfamiliarity of the tongue not terribly distressing. Perhaps it is the attendance format combined with lack of reference points, but it appears people tend to feel more at sea attending a symphony. I cite the format as a contributing factor because even if a contemporary foreign language music performance is in a concert hall, there is often an opportunity to groove along with the music and establish a connection that is pretty much not an option in the presence of an orchestra. Or at least the glares will be quick in coming if are feelin' it enough to roll your shoulders and wiggle a little in your seat.
The article notes that one of the most important groups to an orchestra are the people who initiate the excursion. Though the percentages may be different, this is true for all the arts disciplines. There are always a few who get the ball rolling and organize the outing for rest of their group, even if it is only one other. Making this task easy for that person can go a long way toward filling the seats.
A sidebar that appeared within the article directed me to a website the League has set up to make people more comfortable with the attendance experience. This is something I have been a proponent of so I was glad to see it. Meet the Music helps you find a League orchestra near you. It also offers advice about approaching your first attendance experience. Among the things I appreciated about the site was that while they instructed you not to clap between movements, they also tell you to ignore the people who shush you if you do and acknowledge it is only recently that the practice of not clapping at that point has emerged. I also liked their advice about how to listen to the activity while the musicians warmed up.
The biggest fault I would find with the website is that it's existence isn't widely promoted. It has been around 4 years and this is the first I have heard of it. I took a look around at the websites of the members in 15 states and few people include a link to it or anything like it in their education or ticket purchasing sections of the site. In some cases, it is the less prominent orchestras in a state which do a better job linking to the site or have a similar FAQ that is easy to find. The NY Phil and San Francisco Symphony though both have FAQs that were either modeled after or the models for the guide on the League site. (I am having a real hard time finding something on the Philly site though.)
I was idly perusing a national arts job site this weekend and came across a board member solicitation for a small theatre in a major city. I thought that was interesting because an organization usually forms a nominating committee and seeks to balance the board in terms of what people might bring to short and long range plans. Though BoardSource counsels against indiscriminate recruitment, I imagined while perhaps inexperienced, they were being a little adventuresome and casting a wide net. They specified a love for theatre and preferred that the members not be theatre professionals.
Then I noticed something that made me a little wary. The cover letters and resumes were all going to the artistic director. It is something of a conflict of interest to have the people responsible for overseeing the finances and operations chosen by the person whose activities will be monitored. Adding to my unease was a check of their organization's website and 990 filings on Guidestar which revealed of the five board members, three were employees. The artistic director, managing director and production person all sit on the board. This isn't a new company that just formed and hasn't had a chance to recruit outside the handful of friends who started the venture. The organization is almost 9 years old and if their claims are true, has garnered enough critical acclaim to attract interest in serving from a decent number of people.
I checked the non-profit corporation laws for the state in which the organization is located and there is no law against such a heavy staff representation on a board. In fact, it appears only California makes such a prohibition. Don't quote me though. This type of mix is generally advised against. This exchange on Idealist.org gives a sense of some of the factors to weigh.
It initially appeared to me as if the artistic director may be trying to manipulate the selection process in order to surround himself with people who will help raise money and not challenge him. My suspicions ran so high that I was ready to name names in the post and encourage people to stay far away. However, I also considered that maybe someone advised them that their current board set up looks suspicious and they should make an effort to expand board membership if they want to attract more serious funding.
Which is not to say that next year the artistic director won't have surrounded himself with 10 yes men and women. There were some clues in the 990 and organization website that I pursued with a little Googling thatl makes me wonder how independent the other board members are. The other endeavors with which the board members have been involved makes me skeptical of any suggestion that they didn't know any better about the composition of their board.
I also have to admit there are many possible variable of which I am not aware that could explain this situation so I am not going to be outing them here. On the other hand, I am quite pleased with how easy it was for me to research the organization, the board members and the specific laws of their state dealing with non-profit boards. It is very encouraging to see the increasing ease with which research can be conducted.
Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas had some thoughts on yesterday's post and then I responded to his entry and, if I didn't mess up my submission while running back and forth preparing my dinner, just replied to his response.
With all that thinking and writing, I pretty much figure I have done my blogging contribution of the day. Whew!
Actually, I did want to highlight a project Scott has been working on in conjunction with other arts bloggers, over the course of a number of blog entries called Theatre Tribe. This project is dedicated to finding viable way to do theatre in the changing economic/political/social landscape. Since he has been developing the concept essentially from scratch in entries interspersed over the course of several months, he has set up a central page that organizes his thoughts for easy reference. I have read some of his entries at various points though when I clicked through the headers on the central page, I realized how many I had missed. Scott presents some interesting ideas for revising the way performances are mounted and the nature of the artist-community relationship.
There are times when I find Scott's writings to be strident and in opposition with my own thoughts. But he is also very thoughtful and reflective. Which is why I keep going back.
Richard Florida, who rose to fame alongside his Rise of the Creative Class figures you should evaluate if you are living where you should be. As I read the reviews and summaries of his new book, Who's Your City?, I get the impression that it may have just gotten harder to attract the creative class to one's area.
Of course, it has always been difficult or easy without Florida saying it. But from what I read and what he talks about in this newspaper article, it seems like there is an underlying vibe a lot of places that attracts (and repels) certain types of folks. If your community doesn't already have a certain nascent characteristic, it is going to be tough to cultivate a change in that direction. There is a certain inertia to some places that will hinder efforts if local government/Chamber of Commerce, etc is trying to push things in an opposite direction with the intention of attracting the treasured creatives. He even implies an entropic influence on people drawing their values and attitudes closer to being in line with the general community over time. (Though most people who are considered the loony liberal or raging conservative probably won't ever be wholly converted short of consciously willing it.)
Florida talks about certain communities being suited for people at different phases in their lives and lists the "best of" in large, middle and small regions. I haven't read the book but if I were to hazard a guess, given that creatives, like all mortals age and mature in their outlooks, attracting them is probably a matter of exploiting the aspects of your community that best suit a certain demographic rather than aiming for the young and hip (unless your community is a burgeoning hip place.)
What appealed to me more than the top five list was another section of the website that poses 20 questions to help you decide what communities are best for you. This is great for me because I am young and hip in atypical ways. The strength of the place finder is that it makes you examine your criteria for your ideal community and forces you to do a little research to answer all the questions.
You plug in where you live and up to four places where you want to live. It then asks you to rate each city on typical things like economy, geography, climate, available jobs, health care, arts, schools and housing costs. But it also asks you to rank them on things like trustworthiness of politicians and business leaders, availability of technology, diversity of leadership and community and openness of the community. In the end you may discover that while you always dreamed of living in Seattle, you are better off living where you are.
I suspect the place finder might even be help people focus their thinking when they consider founding an arts organization. (Maybe the NEA or Americans for the Arts should adopt a similar tool specifically for the arts.) Even without his book being published, I don't think I would be suggesting anything earth shattering were I to say that founding an arts organization that doesn't resonate with the underlying vibe of a community is a bad idea and probably destined to result in one muttering about philistines. If communities can target the wrong group of creatives, creatives can certainly target the wrong communities.
No, no, no wait. The tip isn't that I am dumb, it is actually that I am occasionally reminded that I shouldn't assume a tip I am considering writing on is so self-evident and elementary that I am insulting people by posting it.
I was checking up on Chad Bauman to see how he was faring in his effort to get people to cross the Potomac River to see Arena Stage productions in Virginia. I had posted on his use of Personalize URLS to direct people from their driveway to his driveway. It appears the effort was well worth it as they "have had less than 1/2 of 1 percent of our subscribers ask for a refund."
In the same entry he talks about a practice he adopted from Repertory Theatre of St. Louis that made me thwak my head for not perceiving the logical extension of things we already do. Essentially Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and now Arena Stage have pages (click on the preceding theatre names in this sentence) containing links so you can tell your friends about a show on the different social networking sites and via email as well as bookmark the page for future reference.
This was the part that convinced me that I shouldn't think something is too simple to mention. What made me say "Duh" is the fact that while my theatre does offer people the opportunity to send email messages with a performance description automatically inserted into the message body and have a Myspace page allowing people to send event information to Myspace friends, we haven't it possible to send Myspace alerts from our organizational web page and vice versa. I figure if I missed something this logical, other people may have has well.
There is certainly no wisdom in assuming the Myspace people only get their event information through that site. As with all things technological, I do think there is a limit to the number of modes of communication an arts organization should offer website visitors. The clutter and the surfeit of choices can be alienating.
Like the aforementioned theatres, our stated policy is that we don't store the email information. At least insomuch as we don't record any of the information in our databases. A copy of what is sent does get forwarded to my email address alone. Given the tensions I have witnessed arise from students who felt they were miscast, I wanted to make sure no one was using our system to send out messages disparaging cast members by creatively rewriting my show descriptions.
Lately, I have considered making a small alteration to our policy. Since there is usually one person who organized most of the details of any couple/group outing, I was thinking that perhaps we should institute some reward system for those who are recommending our shows to their friends. It wouldn't be a publicized program. I don't want people spamming their friends with our show information in order to get prizes. What we would do is simply contact the person and offer them free tickets or something for being so supportive of us.
The change to our policy might be something along the lines of "We will not store the recipient's email address or the content of the email in any form. We may keep a simple tally of how many times a sender as recommended a show and contact them no more than once a year to inquire on the quality of their experience."
I am sure I am missing some other logical way that will facilitate attending a performance. If you see it, speak up and submit a comment!
As something of a counterpoint to my entry yesterday on how exposure to the arts can benefit one's neurological development is this National Review piece from December in which Robert Fulford reminds us that arts exposure won't save your soul or improve your personality.
He quotes George Steiner, "'We know that a man can play Bach and Schubert and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning,'" and notes "...we also can't claim that immersion in the arts will create a lively mind. Art education has produced armies of learned bores." He also points out that artists are not imbued with any special grace as people and may possess the most vie personalities even as they produce the most engaging works we have ever encountered.
This observation is has become less true of late as an ever increasing tabloid eye on the activities of celebrities has seen art valued in the context of the artist. This isn't just a matter of actors being fired from Lost to minimize the bad press from a DUI. There is often trouble with the performance of J.S. Bach's work given a perception of anti-Semitic sentiments which may have simply been a reflection of the time in which he lived and text which he drew from. (The Gospel of John from which he derived his St. John Passion contains a good deal of derogatory content.)
What Fulford says the arts do guarantee is, "Those who give it their time and love are offered the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives." It is somewhat reminiscent of the proverb about leading a horse to water since the arts only afford the opportunity of improvement. Education and religion can also prove uplifting but only if they are embraced. Likewise, exposure to the arts with the intent of developing the neurological structures discussed in yesterday's entry only becomes meaningful in someone's life if they value the experience.
On Artjournal.com was a link to this article on Science Daily about a study the Dana Foundation commissioned on the question of "Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?" For three years researchers at a number of universities have studied this question resulting in a recently released report (downloadable as an Acrobat document here.)
I haven't read the report yet. But the Science Daily article mentions some interesting findings though they repeat the Dana Foundation disclaimer that "Much of this research is of a preliminary nature, yielding several tight correlations but not definitive causal relationships. "
1. An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition.
2. Genetic studies have begun to yield candidate genes that may help explain individual differences in interest in the arts.3. Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of music training.
4. In children, there appear to be specific links between the practice of music and skills in geometrical representation, though not in other forms of numerical representation.
5. Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway.
6. Training in acting appears to lead to memory improvement through the learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information.
7. Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics is related to a temperamental factor of openness, which in turn is influenced by dopamine-related genes.
8. Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills.
The Dana Foundation lists suggested directions for research given what has been learned thus far near the bottom of their research summary. To read the list you would think they hadn't many any progress in the research at all which is probably indicative of just how little study has been devoted to the ways art shapes our neurological processes.
Something that really surprised me comes up in the video of the presentation of findings. Michael Posner of the University of Oregon talks about how liking a particular art form, be it visual arts, linguistic arts, movement arts and music, was independent of other art forms. In other words, an artist is not particularly inclined to like arts in general but rather only find one particularly appealing. He seems to say there are structures in the brain that develop which are aligned with certain activities that exist prior to exposure to information or experience which would predispose someone toward that subject based on how developed those areas of the brain are. There is overlap in many areas, but there is enough separation to make one's interests independent of each other.
The other important element, Posner says, is an openness to the experience. You need to be open and have certain existent neural pathways to begin developing an affinity for an experience. (Unfortunately, the video has no time index that I can reference for you.) One thing he briefly mentions that made me concerned was the idea that attention needs to be sustained over a long period of time. He talks about this in connection with young children and the fact that kids acquire many of their skills by essentially engaging in repetitive play over a period of time. My concern was based on the general shortening of attention span as people seek constant stimulation from portable technology. I worried about people not cultivating an interest in the arts which will actually indicate a possible lack of important sections of the brain. (i.e. dance skills are connected to observation.)
The one bit of solace is that many kids are more interested in playing with boxes and keys on a ring than they are with what came in the box and maybe likely to develop their brains despite all the things that distract their parents and older siblings. Though it won't be long before they replicate the behavior of their family members and friends. It should also be noted that the formation of these neural structures isn't necessarily happening only in children. One of the people in the video admit that there are brain structures developing throughout one's life whose purpose scientists aren't necessarily certain about.
But this is only a small part of the study and even the research presentation. My plan is to take a more indepth look at the study soon.
It has been a busy couple days here at Butts In the Seats so I have brief offering for folks to ponder.
An illustration about how technology is changing our expectations and how tough it can be to keep abreast of the changes. When I was at the Arts Presenters conference in January I overheard people on no less than 5 occasions express a sentiment along the lines of "If only we could figure out how to use text messaging to promote our shows."
My assumption was that the difficulty people were facing is that you can only send about 160 characters via SMS and it is pretty tough to make your case and provide your contact information in that short a space. Given that many cell phone users pay per text message, they might tolerate one text message from you but sending multiple ones as a modern day Burma Shave advertisement could cause quite a bit of ill will. But since most young people don't view email as a their primary communication tool vs. texting, figuring out how to best use it is important.
I mentioned this problem in an email to Drew McManus and in his reply he essentially pointed out that with the abilities of the iPhone, the SMS format is probably going to be abandoned soon. Not everyone may buy an iPhone, but the features it contains will generate an expectation that new phones contain similar abilities. Since the iPhone does support email, perhaps that will become a valued form of communication with young people again.
But rather than re-emphasizing the use of existing channels of communication, I have a feeling we will see arts organizations scrambling to replace email blasts with distributed videos that are perhaps tailored to deliver different appeals for the same performances to various age or interest groups. The fact that the iPhone web browser doesn't support Flash images which is an element of many webpages but does have a special YouTube video player is pretty telling about the areas Apple expects to be important in the future. Steve Jobs didn't put 3.5 inch disk drives in the iMac because he didn't think that was the direction things were going. Now, even if you do have a 3.5" drive on your computer, do you use it?
But this just goes to show how quickly technology moves. It wasn't that long ago that we started seeing research that most young people eschewed emails for texting. Now just as arts managers start to think about how they can tap into that trend, a change in the favored communications channel seems likely.
Came across a link to the results of a listening tour Building Movement did among non-profit leaders back in 2004. The results of the conversations they recorded are very similar to the observations made by Ben Cameron in his address to the Southern Arts Federation this Fall. (Perhaps his speech was based on Building Movement's study?)
The conversations Building Movement (BM) recorded were mainly among leaders of social service agencies, but as implied, had many common elements. Both noted that the younger generation is interested in balancing their lives rather than devoting so much of themselves to the job as their predecessors have done. Both also discuss the eagerness of the younger generation to participate in substantive decision making and responsibilities.
The BM conversations revealed that members of Generation X feel a great deal of pressure caught between an older generation which isn't retiring and a younger generation coming into their own looking to become involved and effect change. Whereas the older generation has remained in the same positions for years, the younger ones move often looking for more promising opportunities and often contemplating leaving the field. This causes organizations to have people of a great deal of experience at a certain level and then a sharp decline just below. This can have grave implications for those places that haven't engaged seriously in succession planning.
Part of the problem, Building Movement notes, is there is no structure currently that provides these leaders with a place to go or even transition to other than retirement. They are healthy enough to continue working but there are no opportunities available to them that would result in a net increase of openings for younger people. Since they did not open a retirement account in their 20s and 30s and with Social Security and health care iffy propositions, retirement may not be a very attractive option.
The lack of mentors to help cultivate the necessarily skills was a big concern. One of the few people who did have a mentor of sorts praised the mentor's ability and willingness to point out that "new" ideas were actually old ones that have been revisited a number of times which prevented him from trying to reinvent the wheel. Another problem that was mentioned was that the older generation had all these relationships with funders that they weren't passing on to the younger generation. Because they had not had extensive interactions with long term funders, when the younger leaders took over they were "perceived as less seasoned." This lack of contact could have severe consequences for many organizations.
The most surprising result of the conversations for me was the reluctance to become executive director many of the younger generation had. I figured that position was the logical goal for those chomping at the bit for their predecessors to retire. This reticence stems back to the desire for a balanced life. The executive director position was seen as thankless and too heavy a burden to shoulder to still have time for one's family. I don't know if this sentiment is carried over to the arts. Having family members who have worked for social service non-profits, I can see the truth of this for that sector. Though I imagine they would say the same thing for the performing arts from the perspective of an outsider.
Building Movement has a monograph that integrates the findings of the talking sessions with research to make suggestions for cultivating new leaders and planning for the transition of existing leaders in a healthy manner. I haven't had a chance to look at it at any length but since I often harp on succession planning, it would be a smart thing for me to cover it here in a future entry.
In her column in this month's American Theatre, Theatre Communications group Executive Director, Teresa Eyring talks about the recognizing the growing number of Professional Amateurs in our society. Now this topic is nothing new. I have posted on the subject of Pro Ams. Andrew Taylor has done so on a number of occasions. His students did a research project on the topic. Charles Leadbetter and Paul Miller who coined the Pro Am term, wrote a book on the subject.
What makes Teresa Eyring's comments special is that she leads a major service organization and therefore is in a position to exert greater influence when she says it is worthwhile to heed a trend. (Though she was certainly influenced by all this discussion of Pro Ams.) What she has to say hasn't impacted my thoughts about Pro Ams in any direction. But it is good to see an arts leader like her encouraging people to explore the possibilities.
So if the words of all the aforementioned folks haven't gotten you to ponder the concept, maybe Eyring's will. She acknowledges that a transition that embraces Pro Ams can be difficult.
"If these shifts are irreversible and true, the question for professional arts organizations is how most effectively to embrace and respect audiences and potential audiences as they self-identify as creators, with a capacity for meaningful involvement in the artistic process that has often been closely held by professional theatre artists and organizations."...
"...For theatres and theatre artists, this trend presents questions that are both practical and semantic, such as: What do we do with the word “professional”? In the 20th-century arts world, this word has often been used to instruct the public, critics and funders to expect an experience qualitatively superior to that which is non-professional or amateur...""...However, with the growth of a pro-am culture that goes beyond art into science, technology and other realms, the power of a professionals-only province continues to fade—or at the very least, the nomenclature is less effective and meaningful. Some of the teeth-gnashing over this development has to do with how the public will know the difference between what is excellent creative expression and what is merely average..."
"...if theatres can find ways to tap into the growing interest among individuals in participating in the actual creation of art and the arts experience, perhaps we can move this trend to a tipping point of sorts, bringing theatre into a new period of cultural ferocity and ascendancy."
There have been a number of books and articles that have come out recently bemoaning the lack of knowledge exhibited by people today. Whether it was Miss South Carolina's flub at the Miss America contest, the woman on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader who thought Europe was a country and had never heard of Hungry (her pronunciation) or talk show stunts like Jay Leno's where he asks people easy questions for which they provide embarrassing incorrect answers.
The latest chapter in this discussion making rounds of the talk shows and newspaper reviews is Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. You can read a review here or watch a pretty good interview with a transcript with Bill Moyers here. Much of her focus seems to be on how active anti-intellectualism is causing people to essentially renounce their roles as citizens of the US.
But while some of the examples Jacoby discusses are worthy of some consideration, what she says isn't as important as the whole concept of people actively not caring that they aren't familiar with basic knowledge about the world around them. It could have been any book or discussion on this topic that suddenly raised the question, do the arts have any idea how to deal with anti-intellectualism?
Most of the strategies suggested about how to build audiences seem to assume that mistakes were made but audiences can be regained. Perhaps the attendance won't be as great as before, but it seems that arts organizations are coming to the conclusion that things changed and they weren't agile or perceptive enough to recognize it. Proposals to bolster education and effect changes that reflect shifting audience expectations about the experience and social environment all seem to assume that the arts can reclaim some of the ground it lost to the Internet, high def plasma televisions and video on demand.
But does the arts world have any solutions to combat complete indifference or even worse, active attempts reinforced by social pressure, to distance oneself from anything that might indicate that one was more than just plain folks. You have probably heard that in some communities, showing signs of being educated could find one accused of putting on airs and having elitist notions. When I was discussing the general topic of this book with a person in my office, he said that in some of the communities that the college served, some males were resistant to attend for fear of becoming homosexuals. Not being labeled--becoming. This puts a survey the college did a couple years ago in an entirely different context. One of the top answers from men regarding what they liked about the school was the attractive women.
Frankly, I wonder if there is any solution the arts world can enact in its current position. Had the arts community more influence in society, it might work to make intellectual pursuits more of a core value. Perhaps it still can, though the road will certainly be slow and long. The truth might be that there are plenty of intellectually curious people out there to whom the arts wielding a new approach might appeal. It is easy enough for shows like Jay Leno's to edit out all the correct answers in order to put a comedy bit together. And certainly the erudite answers of Miss America and game show contestants probably aren't popular viewing on YouTube if they are posted at all.
Schadenfreude aside, even if things aren't as bad as popular media makes it seem, there are genuine problems with lack of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills in the country. While handling all the other troubles that besets them, the arts community's continued existence probably hinges in a large part on combating the idea that it is okay and perhaps even preferable not to know. People may claim that they can easily look up anything they need to know, but I often wonder if they ever bother doing it. The conditions constituting a need to know seem to be none existent.
I used to joke that I was glad people were so lazy about learning because that way employers would pay me more for being competent and knowledgeable. The truth is, that isn't the type of world I really want to live in. Nor do I imagine the majority of people would. Not only would people lack the wit to laugh at my jokes, but the lack of intellectual and perhaps social and emotional engagement would be quite dispiriting. (Initially, I was also going to say it can be depressing to be surrounded by people who willingly choose not to live up to their potential but I realized I was starting to channel my mother.)
Taking a gander over at the TED website to see what talks have been released since last I visited. Apropos to yesterday's entry is this talk from Howard Rheingold about collaboration and cooperation. It is a short piece, only 20 minutes, but if you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, move the handle down to the Cooperate=Wealth section of the index that pops up when you move the cursor across the bottom of the video.
He addresses the idea that if survival is all about competition, there wouldn't be so many humans. At some point, humans began to cooperate and that helped them thrive. The benefits of cooperation are generally understood, even across cultural lines. He speaks of how players of the ultimatum game seem to innately know that proposing a 50/50 split offers the most likely path of greatest reward. (At least among Americans, Europeans and Japanese. Rheingold notes that slash and burn folks in the Amazon, pastoral herders in Central Asia and other countries proved to have different sense of fairness when playing the game.)
He also briefly addresses the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that unless there is a way to restrain overuse, humans will exhaust a commonly held resource. He cites a counter study that found that people are only captives of what is essentially a multi-player prisoner's dilemma if they view themselves as such. Those who are able to successfully break out do so by "creating institutions for collective action" with common design principles.
As his talk draws to a close, he cites the example of how some of the most cutthroat competitive corporations like IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems are open sourcing their software and some of their patents to be worked on by the commons. He mentions that Eli Lilly has "created a market for solutions for pharmaceutical problems." Though he doesn't mention it, I assume that is also an open source type effort. He also cites Toyota which works to make their suppliers more effective even though it means increasing supply efficiency for Toyota's competitors. EBay has solved the prisoner's dilemma by introducing a mechanism by which two people who can't necessarily trust each other can make an exchange. He says they are doing it because they have realized that a certain degree of cooperation is beneficial for the bottom line.
So my obvious question is, if multinational corporations can extend a little trust to cooperate, can't arts entities from the service organizations down to the smallest theatre/dance/music/visual art company find a way to do it as well? While large organizations might be most immediately influential by providing an example for many others to emulate, technology allows the successes of smaller to be disseminated as they couldn't even a handful of years ago.
While looking around at the sites on my blogroll when I came across a link (On Theatre Forte I think) to Theatre and Entertainment Law blog. The blog and associated podcast are created by Gordon Firemark who answers entertainment and intellectual property law questions.
I have addressed legal issues in the past, but obviously he is better at it and speaks with greater authority. His blog and podcast cover some of the basic issues everyone asks about like "Can I make a video tape of a play whose rights are controlled by a publisher?" He also addresses more complicated problems like negotiation and enforceability of non-compete clauses.
A little warning before you listen or read his work, while ignorance of the law is no excuse, it also brings bliss. You may be a little depressed to learn just what your responsibilities are in obtaining permissions for what seem to be the most innocuous activities like showing videos in a dorm lounge. Granted he is a lawyer so his suggestion that you do things like get a different release from a model every time you change your shooting location is all about covering every possible contingency that might arise. (He has the requisite minute long disclaimer in the middle of the podcast, of course.) Still, it is good to be aware of the issues you might face in the course of doing business.
I had a moment of panic a couple weeks ago when I was taking notes on the audio from the "Intrinsic Impacts" session at the APAP conference for one of my earlier entries. When Lisa Booth mentioned she hoped arts organizations didn't use the report as an excuse to justify providing a small group with an experience of high intrinsic value, I felt a little guilty because I had a show coming up that I knew would only have limited appeal but would provide a highly rewarding experience to those who attended.
I relaxed a few moments later because I knew that on the whole the season held wide appeal for many people. I knew this because every time I picked up the phone or checked the overnight internet ticket sales, most of the orders were for those events even though they were weeks and months hence instead of for the show we did last week. Given that most of our sales generally come in the last couple days before a performance, these steady purchases this far out is quite pleasing. Unfortunately, the weaker sales on the most recent show only served to confirm my impression that it might have a more limited appeal.
Of course, the appeal I refer to is relative to audience size rather than their enthusiasm. The audience size was actually pretty good in terms of my expectations. Their enthusiasm was through the roof. Therefore I don't have any reservations about mentioning the performer was Paul Zaloom. (Who is also the guy I mentioned yesterday.) Zaloom is probably best known for his role as the wild hair mad scientist on the Saturday morning science show, Beakman's World. However, he has had a long history as a performer with Bread and Puppet, film maker and puppeteer/performer.
I had contracted him primarily to do a performance but also asked for a couple of workshops. I am glad I did because by some measures they were some of the most successful ancillary activities I have conducted. For the first workshop, I asked him to channel part of his Beakman personae and do his Science Edu-tainment workshop where he talks about how educators can teach science in an entertaining and engaging way.
With a title like that, you might think the session was a lot of flashy tricks with little substance. I have to say I was impressed by how he really emphasized the diligence he applied in making sure the specific terminology he was using on his show (and our workshop) was vetted by scientists at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I guess he did a good job because a half hour into his 90 minute presentation, one of the science faculty offered him a job as a lecturer next semester. Zaloom deferred because he doesn't have a science degree. I think his enthusiasm and contention that the best scientists are as creative as any artist really energized and excited the 50 educators and educators in training who attended the session.
The second workshop he did was titled "Theatre of Trash." This one he did for our drama students and some improv groups with an association with our school. For this workshop he raided our prop room for miscellaneous items and required participants to bring some items of their own. He gave a lecture/demo on the use of found objects in performance. Then he set the students loose on the pile and critiqued their work when they were done.
While my hope for Zaloom's visit was that people would walk away with some new ideas about creating and viewing art and science, I was really hoping this workshop in particular would inject some new perspective. A lot of what I see the students, alumni and even some renters do is derivative of others. Worse, they are borrowing liberally from other local performers who did the same so it is all pretty incestuous. Granted, with sampling, mash-ups, etc., it may just be a function of how they have been socialized to think of the creative process. They still need a kick in the pants though.
Zaloom's performance did some rump kicking of its own. As a social satirist, his work pushes some buttons at times. Because Zaloom employs found objects and puppetry in his shows it introduces a level of insulation that allows the audience to accept what is happening in a way they couldn't if a person was saying it directly to them.
After the show he invited the audience up for a backstage tour and 90% of them came up. He explained that puppeteers are the opposite of magicians in that they love to show off their secrets. He spent a fairly long time demonstrating and answering questions for the people huddled around his gear. For the third time in a week, I think people left his presence having had an entirely different experience than they usually do when they enter a familiar room, be it a classroom or theatre.
As I mentioned yesterday, there are experiences you can't replicate in all situations because the dynamic isn't there. I talked yesterday about how the audience had an entirely different relationship with Zaloom than they usually do at our shows. As an interesting counterpoint, the night he performed, one of our sister campuses was presenting a version of The Tempest employing Balinese shadow puppetry. Zaloom's show also employed shadow puppets rigged in the Balinese fashion.
The Tempest was much more technically advanced and very cleverly done. I really wanted to know how they managed to alternate between what was being projected without also including the people who appeared to be standing right in front of the screen. Unfortunately, the dynamic for that show was such that it didn't allow audience members more than a glimpse of the mechanisms at curtain call.
The ultimate result of Paul Zaloom's visit is that many people were pleased with their experiences of last week. I am getting all sorts of praise and thanks. There have also been a number of people who have stated we should be doing this type of thing more often. They forget, of course, that I actually started the process 18 months ago when I approached them about their interest in the workshops. It ain't a simple proposition. What's more, it also seems to have slipped their minds that the money to pay for artist fees, transportation, lodging and food is coming out of my earned income! Good ideas are always free. Reality costs, n'est-ce pas?
One of the things I hate most about attending conferences is that the sessions I want to see most seem to always be scheduled at the same time. One of the tough choices I made was between a session on Emerging Leaders and one on the career opportunities for Arts Management program graduates. I attended the latter hoping to purchase the audio of the other session only to discover it wasn't recorded due to a mix up about what hotel it was occurring at.
The session on career opportunities for arts managers was lead by Andrew Taylor of the Bolz School, Irene Conley, Chair of Performing Arts Management at the Hartt School and a gentleman whose name I neglected to note.
The discussion wasn't so much about the job market that will greet arts managers as it was about the skillsets arts managers will need to possess.
Conley mentioned the importance of problem solving, resourcefulness, critical thinking skills and good communication skills. One of the things she requires her students to do is make four new contacts each week as a networking exercise forcing them to do enough background research on people that they can answer questions about each person.
As part of the classroom experience, she emphasizes the process of group work as well as the end product. She has the students evaluate what they did as a member of the team since that is the dynamic they need to operate within in a job environment.
She works to make sure the internship opportunities her students avail themselves of are meaningful and not just providing advanced knowledge in copier machines.
Andrew Taylor took a slightly different approach in talking about what skills managers should have. His contention is that arts organizations look for a one to one correlation between a job description and the skillset a person has. He noted that corporate recruiters know what type of person they are looking for, the skills that will translate to their industry and assume the person can acquire the specific knowledge they need on the job.
Arts organizations don't know what they want, write up an extensive wish list and then try to find someone who has those exact skills. If I understood Taylor's explanation correctly, finding an exact fit is not only difficult, it also contributes to a view of the organization that is limiting. The idea that the activities of development are exclusive of marketing which are exclusive of sales is the type of thinking that stunts progress. A person needs skills and understanding that encompass all these areas regardless of which one they are being hired for.
As an illustration, Taylor mentions that an associate was looking for someone to run the box office of a large performing arts center. After some dissatisfaction with candidates from the arts field, he ended up hiring a person who had run a Sears phone order center because they had a better sense of how to manage offering service on that scale.
Taylor says he trains his students to essentially take control of interviews and use answers that create a bridge between what the organization is looking for and the skills the student possess to show how their experience translates.
I made the comment that I thought another skill set people needed was the ability to talk about and advocate for the arts. I mentioned the need to communicate the value of the arts at all ends of the spectrum-- advocating to governments and grant makers, (noting that recent research shows that the arts may not be best served by citing economic value of the arts), all the way down to press releases and speaking to individuals.
The part of the session that got me thinking the most though was the idea that arts organizations don't know what they are looking for when they hire. I currently have my hands tied in that regard since I work for a state institution that pretty much codifies how good a candidate for a position is based on number of years experience and education. I have clearly seen more effective people paid less because their experience and education were less than others.
I imagine there will come a day when I can't hide behind the strictures of a bureaucracy when it comes to determining who is best suited for a job so I have already started pondering what the skills are that candidates for arts jobs should possess. How should a job description be written to attract people with these skills and knowledge? What appears in the descriptions today that don't reflect what we really need/should be seeking?
What I think I need to do is ask Andrew Taylor if he has come across a situation where the description, interview and actual position all correspond appropriately. I fear his answer will be that such a situation doesn't exist within the arts world.
There is an article on the National Endowment of the Arts in Commentary this month (via Arts and Letters Daily) with a suggestion about the role the organization should play that may not please everyone.
The author, Michael J. Lewis, an Art and Architecture professor at Williams College recounts the history of the organization from President Johnson's declaration at the NEA's founding that “There is a quality in art which speaks across the gulf dividing man from man and nation from nation, and century from century. . . . The stakes may well be the survival of civilization” to the obscenity accusations of the 80s and the caution exhibited in the years that followed.
Lewis argues that NEA funding practices, rather than freeing artists to experiment actually promote mediocrity by funding the under served instead of quality artists and succumbing to political pressure from elected officials. (I should note that a number of his citations from two other Commentary articles on the NEA so the opinions are a little inbred.)
Having failed to cultivate new works on a wide scale, Lewis argues the NEA should re-purpose itself to preserve existing works.
"The audiences for music and dance have long been graying (perhaps whitening is now the better term), and there is much concern that they will vanish within a generation’s time. Here, the role of the NEA would not be to create but rather to preserve or, if it comes to that, to “cocoon” art by means of a holding action: for instance, subsidizing classical orchestras and ballet companies so as to maintain a cadre of professionals who will keep alive what would otherwise become a dead language. As it happens, this is precisely the area where the NEA record has historically been brightest."
I am not sure if I appreciate his reference to orchestras and ballet companies as working in a dead language (or soon to be so.) But maybe that is a truth that needs to be faced. At the same time, I am also not terribly comfortable with the idea that the NEA should enable ballets and orchestras to avoid innovating their practices. Though I am sure if this philosophy was embraced, the nation's flagship ballets and orchestras would be the ones receiving the funding leaving the smaller organizations to innovate or disappear.
I have just returned from the Arts Presenters Conference. I must have tried to do too much in too little time because I am fighting off a cold right now. I did want to make a post on one of the sessions I attended because some of the information communicated was simply fascinating.
In the Learning to Lead session The Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor's graduate students presented the results of their research about what resources arts managers used to learn and solve problems. When they finished, I got up and asked a question about the results of their survey. They found that 90% of people read reports, books, etc at least once a year. I asked what end of the spectrum the majority of responses fell since last year Neill Archer Roan had presented findings at the APAP conference that said that learning was not valued in the presenting field.
Since Neill's research was based on interviews and were anecdotal, I wasn't sure if his results were any more scientifically based than the grad student's results which was based on a self-selected group that filled out an online survey. I also stated some curiosity about whether people who were more comfortable with online surveys might be reading more reports via that medium. The students who responded said the reading that was taking place were skewed toward the less frequent.
I hadn't known that Neill was sitting a couple rows behind me and soon he got up to address the issue of learning not being valued. I was so amazed by what he had to say, I bought the MP3 file of the session so that I could quote him accurately.
Speaking of the work the Roan Group does, he said,
"We believe there is a cultural bias against learning in this field and in the non-profit field as a whole. We believe that that exists for several reasons. One is cultural another is really biological. There are a lot of studies about satisfaction and how we are actually wired...Someone who is rationally satisfied behaves no differently than someone who is rationally dissatisfied. People behave differently when they are emotionally satisfied...the pathways back to learning are different where there is emotional satisfaction...I think in our field and in the performing arts, there is so much emotional satisfaction...that is actually a barrier to our need to understand and respond. (my emphasis)
The idea that emotional satisfaction, which is probably what allows people in the arts to tolerate low pay and long hours, is actually inhibiting progress just sort of blew my mind.
He goes on to say that in the arts there isn't a practice of looking back and evaluating a situation for what works and didn't work and then documenting the findings. Without the documentation, the arts rely on tacit knowledge carried in individuals. While tacit knowledge is superior to documented knowledge, if you have high turnover, your organization doesn't learn.
The session was about two hours long so I imagine there will be other insights I will derive from them as I review the file.
I am packing and repacking for my trip to the APAP conference, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity point out a great story that appeared on Artsjournal.com about a rotating club show in Berlin that has people packing techno clubs on Monday nights despite the lack of advertising to listen to chamber orchestras.
Every first Monday a club night called Yellow Lounge rotates among the hottest clubs in the city. According to the article, one club turned over 100 people away. The live performance is sandwiched between DJs playing classical recordings. Part of the appeal to attendees seems to be the approach to classical music the DJs and performers bring.
"What is particularly enjoyable about the Yellow Lounge is that it is not at all intimidating. You don't need to know anything about classical music to feel at home. There is none of the snobbery associated with the genre; Canisius never gives you a "Duh! It's Mozart, dummy" look if you ask what he has just played, and the musicians tend to introduce each track with a non-patronising explanation of its importance. He welcomes requests, too, but only plays them "if the mood is right".
Admission is only five euros ($7.33). Universal Music, seeing an opportunity to change perceptions about classical music, underwrites the cost of the event. The organizers are apparently free to book who they like, but many of the artists are on a Universal label.
I am not going to suggest that a similar program could be successful in the U.S. because I suspect that classical music has a more prominent place in the collective consciousness of Germans than U.S. citizens. Even if younger Germans are turning away from classical music, I imagine that the concept of what type of person listens to the music isn't as narrowly defined as it is in the U.S.
But perhaps there is some sort of program that might have success that doesn't necessarily involve plugging instruments into amps.
Next week I will attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in NY. Unlike last year where I was there for a week attending the conference and Emerging Leadership Institute, this year I am in and out very quickly in a weekend. I cringe at the thought of all that time on the plane. Once I get there, I know I will wonder why I ever resisted the idea because I get so much out of the experience. I enjoy the opportunity to see showcases, talk to artists and learn about new trends and philosophies in performing arts.
One of my biggest motivations for attending this year is to continue what was started last year in having Emerging Leadership alumni involved at the conference and advance an agenda. We have meetings and social gatherings planned this year. We were going to sponsor an issues session until we learned that Andrew Taylor's students at the Bolz Center were going to be presenting findings from a study that was generally aligned with our purpose.
We also encouraging our membership (and anyone else interested in the topic) to attend the session at the conference, Learning to Lead: Where And How to Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft. Andrew has a post about it on his blog today. Even if you aren't going to attend, if you are an arts leader, please consider filling out the 15 question survey that will inform the discussion and findings of the session.
The survey asks questions about where one goes looking for knowledge and help in solving problems. Though it could probably comprise an entire research session of its own, I would have liked to see some questions asking people to measure the value of the guidance/help they receive. From conversations I have had over the last year, I suspect a good many people would comment that they weren't getting the guidance they needed or perhaps were having a hard time identifying a trustworthy person with whom to discuss their problems.
And though it wouldn't be scientific and might have been a little more time consuming, it would have been interesting if they asked where people got their initial training in the arts. I am just curious how many people have formal education and how many were mentored and learned on the job.
In any case, while Andrew will undoubtedly have an entry discussing the session, I intend to do one as well to present my perspective. I usually try to avoid duplicating the subject of his posts since I assume we share a lot of readers. But I am making a very long flights in very short time. I am gonna earn the right to bloviate a little. I am sure my approach will differ from Taylor's to some extent any way.
More and more frequently we read about how the next phase of the economy will be the Creative economy. It is in major magazines, the subject of conferences, and the topic of study for state and regional arts organizations.
But I am wondering if the U.S. as a society is adequately preparing the next generation to take part in this economy. I am not referring to the disappearance of arts from schools or the fact that fewer people are reading. These things are important, to be sure. I am beginning to wonder if children today are even being challenged to use their basic imagination.
As a commute to work and run errands, I often see televisions playing DVDs in cars and SUVs. I hate to lapse into a round of "in my day", but I wonder if these kids are going to want for not being challenged to entertain themselves on trips around town, much less on long vacation trips. When I was younger, my mother would actually hide our toys about 6 weeks before a long trip and then give me back to us so that they would be new to us and keep us occupied during the trip. (I must have inherited my frugality and cleverness from her.)
Although it tests parents' patience, there is something to be said for having to develop the self-control not to antagonize your sisters. And there is something to be said for having to invent strange games to keep yourself occupied during the trip. My sisters came up with some rules about holding your breath while passing a cemetery and lifting your feet when crossing train tracks. My father would then pretend to pass out from lack of oxygen while driving by large cemeteries and rolling to a stop on train tracks because his feet were no longer on the accelerator.
Now I will admit that not everyone is as blessed with my ability to read in moving vehicles. I will also never suggest that the television sets on airplanes be removed. I like the distraction of those itty-bitty screens just fine.
DVDs and video games are starting to tout themselves as educational and they might be. But are the games sharpening and improving creativity? Maybe, but I think it is too soon and too tough to tell.
One thing I do know is that boredom, like necessity is the mother of invention. Certainly, much of what I produced while a bored child was destructive as much as it was constructive but there is little gained and learned in the absence of taking that risk. I had acres and acres of fields and forests upon which to wreak havoc without the distraction of color television much less cable to distract me.
Many kids today may not have the physical space to explore and experiment that me and my friends did. But I also suspect and fear that some of the limits they face are barriers of imagination that they haven't learned to surmount.
Since things are quieting down around the theatre this week (we only have a pre-school Christmas show, college winter graduation, Nutcracker brush up rehearsal and performances). I have been trying to dispose of obsolete equipment from around the office and such.
One of the things it is difficult to do around a theatre is get rid of stuff. The technical director here is notorious for holding on to things. In one respect this is good because so much is recycled, we don't need to purchase new materials all the time. Saving money is good.
On the other hand, there are items we have had for 25 years and haven't used and probably will never use again. We have tried to get rid of them but he insists we keep them against a theoretical use we may have in the future. This is preventing us from freeing up some much needed storage space and actually endangering other objects given that many of the old pieces are termite infested. We are able to toss some things out while he is on vacation (parting is less painful out of sight) or when they crumble under his touch due to the aforementioned termites.
Given that he is the one that has to work around the lack of storage, the situation is really more a bother for him than for me. I merely look around the shop and sigh about all the room we would have if shelves and the area under the pit were cleaned out.
In some respects, I am as bad as he only on a much smaller scale. We got brand new shiny ticket printers this summer but I just packed away the old one "just in case" even though it won't work well at all with our new ticketing software. If the new printer had a problem, it would be a better use of our time to hand write all our tickets rather than attempt to configure the software to the old printer.
I am sure these type of practices are a metaphor for theatre as an industry as a whole. Resistance to tossing out barely functional equipment for fear we may one day need it probably equates to holding on to old practices and programming for fear that adopting new ones might leave us with less of an audience than we are already drawing.
In fact, I am pretty sure a feng shui practitioner would say that cluttering our space with old, unused objects is anchoring us to the past and hindering the progress we could be making in our lives. Since there are some items that we use often like our platforms, those feng shui practitioners and people on those anti-clutter home improvement shows wouldn't necessarily counsel us to toss them.
Repainting a platform to make it look better on stage is one thing, but dressing up old audience development and programming strategies is another. The platform has some functional life left to it. There is often less hope to be found in old marketing practices.
The fear of discarding something with even marginal use when you have an untried replacement--or no replacement at all, can be paralyzing. I fully acknowledged to my assistant theatre manager that I would probably toss the old ticket printer this summer but I couldn't bring myself to part with it just right now.
In years past I have written about how the members of my block blocking consortium leverage our purchasing power by proposing a tour to performers and their agents. Given the difficulty of finding workable time slots among 3-6 different organizations across the state, we often earn our discounts.
One thing I hadn't found was a good example of producing organizations who cooperated to cut costs. Among presenters like my consortium, the questions that come up are mainly date and cost related--when are the artists available, are there openings on members' calendars, can we afford the terms the performers seek.
Among producing organizations, there are so many more questions many potentially related to the artistic differences among the organizations- who does the casting, who designs costumes, lights, sets. Will the artistic quality and value reflect what patrons have come to expect of their local theatre. Will the other theatres have input into any of these elements? How much of the sets travel and how much is built by each organization? Given differences in stage sizes, what set pieces may be cut and still maintain the vision of the directors and designers?
How is it going to be paid for? If the theatres each normally operate under different Equity pay rates, will the actors be paid differently in each theatre?
Presenters face some of these questions on occasion, but to very limited degree compared to groups that are co-producing.
A blog entry on the McCarter Theatre website sheds some light on some of these questions. They are co-producing Argonautika with Berkeley Rep and Shakespeare Theatre Company. The show was rehearsed and first opened in San Francisco though the show was cast from auditions at all three locations. All three organizations are sharing all rehearsal costs (including the brush ups when the show moves) and presumably a portion of many of the other costs.
I liked McCarter Producing Associate, Adam Immerwahr's reasons for partnering with other organizations.
1) it allows what would otherwise be a local production to have a much broader impact;2) it allows an artist to continue to develop their work over time (allowing them another chance to make adjustments with each production);
3) it can be a cost-saving measure, allowing each of the theaters to share common costs (like the set, costumes, rehearsal time and casting expenses);
4) it is a way for multiple theaters to each share their expertise (new play development, mounting musicals, building big sets, etc.).
I especially appreciated the final point about shared expertise. I have been talking about cooperative efforts for a long time and while cost-savings is certainly going to be important in increasingly difficult financial times, I have always felt sharing knowledge and effort was going to prove crucial to the survival of many arts organizations because so little occurs among arts entities to begin with.
Via Arts Addict blog comes the news that champion of the subscription ticket, Danny Newman has died.
Newman was essentially the force that promoted the idea of getting people to commit to an entire season of shows, becoming a "the saintly season subscriber" as opposed to "the slothful, fickle single-ticket buyer." Embracing that idea helped many art organizations succeed.
Unfortunately, the day of the subscriber has waned and many arts organizations are now subject to the whims of the fickle single ticket buyer.
Back in the early 90s when I was in grad school, we were seeing the writing on the wall. In one of my classes, we were assigned to compare and contrast Newman's Subscribe Now! with another text promoting a different theory of audience development. We essentially derided many of Newman's suggestions as dated and having no value in the last years of the 20th century.
One of the ideas we scoffed at was his suggestion of holding subscription parties, an event similiar to Tupperware and candle parties where individuals invited friends over and encouraged them to subscribe. Damned if not two years later a theatre I was working at that had lost the confidence of the community didn't use this very tactic to regain support. Even though subscribing was a much more deeply ingrained practice in that community than in most, the experience taught me to be a little more humble and cautious about dismissing ideas.
Even though the subscription has had diminishing value over the course of my career, I have to admire the drive and audacity of Newman in championing the concept and helping so many organizations find success through it.
I won't get in to why I came across this website. Suffice to say, some people in the office got sick over the Thanksgiving holidays. The anti-diarrhea medicine maker, Imodium A-D had a fun little feature on their website I hadn't expected to find-- a way to locate public restrooms in the U.S.
They are careful to assure you that you won't need the map while using their product, but it is always good to know where you find facilities while traveling. You don't want to depend on the map because it isn't comprehensive. Imodium grabs the information from a site called The Bathroom Diaries which allows people to rate restrooms across the world. People don't tend to share those experiences as much as say, hotel stays.
It wouldn't hurt if you were like the Portland (Oregon) Center for the Performing Arts and had people evaluate your restrooms and point out that there was a long bench that was handy as a changing room. Or perhaps you could write something yourself. In searching for a city that had an arts organization reviewed, I noticed that every Old Navy across the country was listed as "A great place to go" and every Starbucks included the observation that "The pleasant Starbucks barristas are cool. You should buy a drink but if you don't, they won't mind. Ask for a key if its locked." Apparently these corporations thought mention of their restroom situation was important enough for their business to have someone place a duplicate entry for every one of their locations. (Or at least up to a point. None of the branches of either company in my city are listed.)
There are many websites out there at aggregate obscure data into interesting data that clever arts organizations can use to their benefit. For example, this site answers the question it asks "If you dig straight down, where will you end up?" Fortunately, I never completed that hole in my backyard. I just discovered I would have ended up in the ocean about 3000 miles southwest of Perth, AUS. instead of China. It turns out, the most direct route to Beijing is through Argentina.
This handy "hole through the world" map can be employed during shows like Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing where a character begs to be sent on an errand to the Antipodes in order to avoid someone. It can be fun (and educational) to use the site to illustrate for audiences that if he had traveled to the literal antipodes of Messina (where the play is set) or London (where it was originally performed), he would have ended up in the ocean east of New Zealand.
Unfortunately, with two exceptions, there is no place in North America that corresponds with land at its antipodal point. It would be fun to point out the location opposite the theatre where the show was being performed. The antipodes of North America is the Indian Ocean. Only the State of Hawaii which corresponds to Botswana and a corner of Namibia and a point in the Alberta plains just north of Montana which corresponds to the French and Southern Antarctic Lands match up with any landmass.
Which isn't to say it isn't fun to learn that you can't reach China by digging in your backyard. It can just be interesting to have a connection with a people and land opposite you. Maybe you can research the best public restrooms in their city! (Though they don't flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.)
The real moral of this entry is that it can be useful to bookmark websites with goofy, but interesting information because you can never tell how it might be useful in creating a connection with your activities.
The cultivation of young, emerging arts leaders is a topic of growing importance these days. Two weeks ago, Andrew Taylor quoted as speech by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation in which Cameron noted
"....expectations from young people around higher compensation, shorter hours, in essence less patience for the sacrificed lives of dignity and the financial masochism that were the givens for so many in my own generation -- this conversation brought to my ears, at least, a new strand: the unwillingness of emerging leaders to be mere custodians of organizations they inherit."There are plenty of us eager to give ourselves to the arts." they said, "But unless we are given the same authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as you yourselves were given, we are not interested."
The current issue of Inside Arts magazine addresses the same topic. (free registration required) The article, Leading into the Future, starts out talking about a young woman who becomes involved with an arts organization, ends up working 90 hour weeks and finally quits and starts working for a finance firm because the pay and opportunities to pursue her musical interests are much better. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending as the woman ends up working for the Future of Music Coalition.
The general theme of the piece is that arts organizations need to recognize what the interests and goals of young people in the arts are. While the arts can't offer good pay, the industry can provide people with a means of expressing themselves. Only, they need to be allowed the time to do so.
The article quotes Andrew Taylor in his role as head of the Arts Management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"We have an astounding resource in terms of the value and power of the work, but we've created rigid structures that are not the kind of places young people want to work. My students are passionate, skilled and trained, but when they get into a place with an apprentice mindset, and they don't get meaningful work for the first three to five years, it's a waste on both sides."
and later is quoted as saying
"Some experienced leaders say there aren't people ready to step up, but that's because they don't see people exactly like them," Taylor said. "The perception is that the younger generation is not as committed . . . [but] there are young people all over the place who are passionate and ready to lead."
This is definitely an area to keep an eye on. As arts leadership approach retirement age, succession issues are going to come to the fore. Questions will emerge about not only who will take over but how these new leaders expect their organizations to operate in relation to employees.
So the stagehands strike on Broadway is going so poorly, the producers canceled the entire next week of shows because they don't believe there will be a resolution any time soon. I read somewhere that the folks who own and manage the theatres had been building up a war chest for a number of years so they could weather the next big strike.
Unfortunately, none of that hoarded money will go toward paying off the investors in the shows that have shut down. As far as they are concerned, everything is going to hell.
But investing in Broadway shows has always been a risky proposition. The expectation is that you will lose all your money and it is a shock when you actually see some return whereas most investments operate on the opposite assumption. The only thing you are generally guaranteed as an investor are tickets to opening night and an invitation to the opening night party. (Unless things go south before the show opens.)
If you have ever wondered about the mechanics of investing in a Broadway show, the Franklin Weinrib Rudell & Vassallo law firm website has an article on the subject. While the law doesn't protect you from losing your shirt, it does limit losing ones shirt to those who won't be left destitute by the loss. New York State has very stringent laws regulating investments in Broadway shows. If the total investment being solicited is in excess of $5 million, which most are these days, the show is subject to Federal Securities law. Since compliance with NY State laws can be very expensive due to all the legal fees involved, it is preferable to be subject to the Federal statutes.
Even if the total investment sought is under $5 million, a production can avoid being subject to the stringent NY State laws if "potential investors must be furnished with a thorough disclosure document (unless all the investors are accredited, in which event no particular type of information is stipulated); and there may be no more than 35 unaccredited investors, all of whom must demonstrate that alone, or together with a purchaser representative, they have the financial knowledge and experience necessary to evaluate the merits and risks of the offering."
An accredited investor is "defined as an individual with a net worth in excess of $1 million, or who, in each of the last two years, has earned income in excess of $200,000 per year (or $300,000 with spouse), with a reasonable expectation of reaching that amount in the current year."
Investing in Broadway shows is not for the risk averse or financially insolvent. The article discusses many of the financing structures that are used when investing in productions. The more money one brings to the table, the better deal one can negotiate--including a percentage of the producers profits above the normal investor's cut. So if you are interested in the intricacies of funding a Broadway show, give the piece a read.