Bring it to scale

Bridgespan has released a new report about bringing organizations to scale.   Organization replication and scale is something we tend to forget about when it comes to the arts.   But isn’t the first question we should ask - what is the “right-size” for an organization to accomplish its mission?

The Bridgespan report notes some key challenges for nonprofits in determining and fulfilling scale:

1. Distinguishing promising programs from proven ones is complicated, costly and essential.  Many social service organizations have little if any evidence of their programs’ efficacy. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t producing results. But it does mean we cannot say for certain that they do.
2. Scaling requires rethinking traditional patterns of funding. If we want to make a pervasive impact on our nation’s most difficult problems, we are talking about supporting fewer organizations with larger sums of money. Concentrating resources on a few organizations is rarely how money flows today.
3. Scaling a nonprofit’s programs without investing in its capacity is a recipe for failure. Building organizational and human capacity – putting in place the strategy, systems and, above all else, the right people in the right jobs to convert money into results – is as important a factor in bringing a program successfully to scale as the money itself.
4. Ongoing research, evaluation and performance measurement are imperative as an organization scales. Put simply, there is no other way to ensure that even a well-funded program with proven outcomes will be expanded and sustained. A good idea absent its execution is in fact not a good idea at all.

Last summer at Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives for Nonprofit Managers, we spent a lot of time talking about scale.  This was the first time I really fully explored the concept in terms of the arts and in particular theatre.  In the post, I pointed out four strategies in terms of scale.

1. Get support for fixed costs (and maybe semi-variable costs), and have variable (and maybe or semi-variable) costs covered by earned income.
2. Franchise.
3. Engage in partnerships (or even possibly mergers).
4. Create a subsidiary of a commercial business.

Shouldn’t successful organizations and programs be replicated? What would bringing it to scale mean for theatre? Can we "franchise?" Aren’t co-productions, touring, or moving a show be a type of franchising in the theatre?  Certainly education programs are replicated – it happens naturally more often than not without a strategic plan, but why not plan to replicate and take certain ideas for programming to scale.  In a way the NEA Big Read program is doing exactly that. 

When talking about funding models and whether theatre’s should be saved, if we can talk replication, we have to take mergers under consideration.  For some reason in the arts, mergers are often interpreted as failures.  But consolidation, restructuring, and resource-sharing can be VERY effective for theatre organizations and individual productions, so why not out-right mergers?  Certainly in terms of scale it may make sense for organizations and the community.

We certainly are seeing a form of mergers in co-productions and new play development.   Adrian Ellis wrote in the Art Newspaper that this would be one of the three ways to compensate for the losses in philanthropic, endowment and visitor incomes for museums, “what museums accept they cannot do alone, they will explore doing together more thoroughly and earnestly than in the past: collection sharing, joint acquisitions, pooling conservation resources, and pooling curatorial appointments.”

Without question determining scale is difficult and requires significant examination, but it seems to be an essential step which we don’t take enough time to address and plan.

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Cris-i-tunity

The post below is something I wrote for a new blog or perhaps even a book that I plan to start writing soon. It has been on the sidebar of Off-Stage-Right for a while, but some readers suggested I bring attention to it by making it a post. I will still leave it on the sidebar, it is a guide for me in a deeply personal way. As I was thinking today about why I am writing this blog, I realized the friends who suggested it be a post here were right:

I can't help but feel that we (and unquestionably I) have entered a new era and that we must shed the past, taking with us what we learned but facing the fact that none of it may be useful in the future.

Everyone is more than aware of the global economic turmoil we are experiencing. It is impossible to escape TV reports, newspapers and magazines, internet alerts, etc. that let us know how horrible the situation really is. Even the President of the United States has to be honest that these are trying times, and they are going to get worse. And, no one can really say how long recovery will take or what recovery looks like. We find it difficult to even discuss or if it is recovery or is it more truthfully outright change.

The world of theater - especially nonprofit theater - is not experiencing a bump in the road, a correction, or simple challenges. We must acknowledge that we are entering a new reality and must adapt our organizations and, yes, our art to thrive in this new reality.

Personally, I am also going through circumstances beyond my control that are creating a new reality for me. I have lived my professional life in the world of theater - although I had a global perspective in learning, I rarely journeyed outside of the theater world, and today I am faced with a great unknown as to whether I can or will continue to do so, or whether I am supposed to be traveling another path.

Without question this personal, national, and global crisis has manifested for myself and I am sure many others a response similar to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief -denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I am sure that dissertations have been written relating grief to life changes or periods of crisis.

However, I posit that for life changes or crises there is a sixth stage. A stage in which we take action. That stage is opportunity.

Therefore, even though my professional and personal life may be in crisis and the world is facing tremendous social, economic and cultural crises, it is time I emerge from denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance into opportunity. I expect there to be minor/major shifts and bumps in the road, so I will just call this period - Cris-i-tunity.

Moments to remember

I have been asked a lot recently about why I work in theatre…here are just a few examples why…

Each time I walk into a theatre I haven't entered before, whether for work or simple pleasure, I am awed by the sacred space in which artists do their work. No matter how small, how large, or how odd a space is, the magic that is created within it engulfs me in feelings and sensations. It is equally exciting to walk into a space that has been utterly transformed for a specific production --space that has been transformed to support a vision and convey a message.

Above all else I cherish the first moments I walked through the doors of theatres I have worked for, lived in. I remember vividly the first things I saw, the smells, the people who were there, and my stomach fluttering with excitement - whether it was MCC, Union Square, Vineyard, Signature, WCP, or the three academic institutions that shaped my love of the world of theatre. I hold those first moments in the deepest part of my heart and soul.

The show that had the most significant impact on my life professionally and personally was the original Off-Broadway production of Wit. I remember lying on the floor of my New York sublet reading the script and knowing it was something special. Of course the script has some flaws – there are no perfect scripts -- but I knew just from the first reading that it would reach into audience members' hearts and remind them to connect to the people in their lives with love and respect. The company of artists on the show became a true family – theatre people often say that but in truth, it's a very rare occurrence. I remember the break-through moment that took the show from good to great – when the set designer eliminated the rolling walls from the set and added the curtains on tracks. That simple but profound decision visually and psychologically opened the staging in a way that tied together all the elements -- the writing, directing and acting -- and fully served the arc of the piece. It was a wonder to behold.

Kathleen Chalfant led the company with grace and taught me that kindness, equity, respect and dignity were the most important tools a person could possess. It was my first show to transfer to a commercial run. I worked with all three New York companies, even after I had left MCC. I was so proud when I was introduced to Judith Light and she told me how glad she was to finally meet me because the entire company kept telling her I was the one who knew the show best and held it together. I fell in love with my husband on the show and was honored that Kathleen did a reading at our wedding and most of the members of the three companies were there to see us married, years after the show and tours had closed. Most of all I love that Maggie Edson told the story she wanted to tell, said goodbye to a dear friend after helping him achieve a directing legacy, and went back to teaching kindergarten.

At the Vineyard, I recall reading the treatment for Fully Committed and knowing it would either be brilliant or a disaster. Thank goodness it ended up the former. For weeks on end Mark Setlock (the actor playing tens of roles) and Becky Mode (the playwright) would run from the rehearsal room to our administrative offices and gather us quickly so they could run an idea by us to see if it was funny. It was a period of great spontaneity, collaboration, and fun. It was wonderful to watch the audiences each night laughing at the rudeness or foolishness of the play's restaurants' customers some of them unaware they had acted in the exact same manner towards the box office when purchasing or picking up their tickets. Our box office even wrote their own version of the show which was performed for Becky and Mark after the closing performance.

I am grateful that I got to hear Anika Noni Rose, Mandy Gonzalez, Ronell Bey, and Judy Kuhn sing the songs of Laura Nyro in Eli's Coming every night (except Mondays) for ten weeks. I hadn't even heard of Laura Nyro when we started creating the show, and although the storyline never pulled together, the music and performances were among the best I have ever witnessed. It was on this show that the true art of orchestration and arrangement was taught to me.

I was at the Vineyard on September 11, 2001. I couldn't get into the City from Brooklyn and watched it all from my roof just across the river. Our crew had gone in at 8 am that day and the master carpenter's wife worked in the North Tower –so everyone worked together to find her (thankfully we did). I remember Doug Wright who had written and directed the show that was in rehearsals at that time was also stuck in Brooklyn and we spent most of the day on the phone. We were talking when the Pentagon was hit, and I can still here Doug saying, "Jodi the world will never be the same, what is happening?" We were back in rehearsals two days later, bound together forever by the experience of walking through Union Square each day looking at the posters of those missing and the vigils. I think we all survived that week by being in the theatre working on a show.

I am one of the fortunate people in this world to have lived on Avenue Q. I learned all the ups and downs of enhancement deals on the production – if it could happen it certainly did on the original off-Broadway production. We went through six full set design versions before finding the right one for the show. We had to learn an entire art – puppet making and maintenance. We had an actor fall off stage and have to perform all of previews from a wheel-chair on the side of the house. But the entire time we laughed until we cried. I had fractured my ribs right before the tech of the show. During the tech rehearsal for the love scene between Princeton and Kate Monster, I actually laughed so hard that I re-fractured a rib. I spent the rest of the week and previews watching the show with pillows stuffed around me in my chair.

Simultaneously, with Avenue Q, I began work at Signature – working 60 hour weeks covering both jobs for 30 hours each. It was glorious. Downtown, I had the kids on Avenue Q and uptown, the talented cast of Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July. When it opened I was general manager for both the biggest hit musical in town and the hottest play revival.

At Signature there are almost too many profound, life-changing moments to list: my first conversation with Arthur Miller (very relaxed and inspiring), my first conversation with Edward Albee (very awkward and unnerving), watching Bill Irwin endlessly disappear into that trunk, and on and on.

I do have to talk about the luminous production of Horton Foote's Trip to Bountiful. The only other cast that was a family to me and still truly is to this day. I am not sure why but of all the playwrights I have ever met and worked with, I connected most powerfully with Horton . Perhaps as a fellow Texan, his words spoke to me in a special way, or perhaps it is simply that he was a true gentleman of the theatre. I am blessed to have known him, and his wonderful words will live with me forever.

There are so many more shows or moments that I could go on and on about good or bad but all cherished – like the night at the Vineyard when the grocery store above the space decided to defrost their meat freezer and the drain poured meat "by-product" that had been in the drain onto the stage and the actors. The night that a prop gun didn't go off and an actor jumped up and down on stage screaming bang, bang, bang until the other actor picked up the cue. Each standing ovation is its own memory – the ones that were earned and not obligatory as they so often are on Broadway. Or the endless times I sat watching the audience, seeing them lean in as if they could feel the moment even more if they were just a bit closer to the stage. Or the artists who proud of their performances or filled with joy of seeing their work on stage lit up a room with their smiles. And those are just the shows I worked on.

Not included are the wonderful events, galas, readings, and education programs that I carry with me. Angela Lansbury singing "Nothing's going to harm you," or David Hyde Pierce singing a John Kander song that had never been heard before by anyone as John had written it for a lost love . Kevin Bacon bringing down the house while honoring Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. And there was the magical moment when Harper Lee toasted Horton Foote on his 90th Birthday (and told me to call her Nell).

And all of this still doesn't include the shows I have seen but not worked on. Those unforgettable moments that are burned into your memory– the frying pan in Beauty Queen of Lenane or the grabber in Well. Or the emotions that well up when I think of a show I have seen, for instance, the sheer anger of Stuff Happens or the pure awe of anything done by Cirque du Soleil. Or the opportunity to see some of the great talents of our time on stage – Paul Newman in Our Town or Meryl Streep in Mother Courage. Or the joy one finds in discovering a new talent – Tom Sadowski in Reasons to be Pretty. The shows that were embarrassingly fun – Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys. Or the shows that hit you so hard in the gut that you can still feel the pain of watching them – Grey Zone or The Baltimore Waltz.

I could write forever on how much I love, crave and belong working in a theatre, watching theatre, and producing theatre. It is in a theatre that I come as alive as the actors and audience. I love the interactions with actors, crews, playwrights, directors, and the staffs who work far more hours than they can ever be financially compensated for. I could write another six pages about the moments where I saw an education program impact and change someone's life in an instant. I could certainly write a book about how the theatre has changed mine.

Theatre and its Community

I was recently asked what a theatre's responsibility to its community was...here is an excerpt of my response:

Every theatre has the responsibility to create a world where individuals can come together for a shared experience where stories are told, ideas are explored, and conversations are inspired.

The written word has long been an important outlet for the creative exploration of the human emotional and social experience. Theatre—like no other medium—has the unique ability to create a dialogue between writer and audience that also bridges the gap between the individual and shared group experience.

Theatre evolved as a social convention to teach people morals and; spur people to action through learning from the action on stage. Throughout the decades it has served as as a way to “communally experience" a situation-- family drama, war, disease, loss, or triumph -- providing an opportunity for connection or catharsis.

Although the physical structure in which theatre occurs is important what is most critical is the feeling -- the atmosphere -- that the building exudes. I believe all theatres should emulate the comfort and welcome of a living room or an old fashioned drawing room – an intimate space where friends gather for good conversation or a lively debate.

A theatre organization should strive to do the following in its own community:

• Identify and explore relevant social issues happening at a global, national and local level.
• Provide a safe forum for discussion and learning for people of all ages.
• Make the theatrical experience as accessible to as many people possible through price, location, customer service, and other forms of outreach and support that remove barriers to attending.
• Inspire audience members and participants to take action towards changing the world.

It should be noted that leading a theatre means that you must also accept certain community responsibilities. You must personally get to know your local community and be an active participant in that community. You are taking the position of an educator –the most influential person in any community. Being an educator means that you can inspire minds, both young and old, to seek their personal best and demand the community be at its best. You must accept the mission to make sure that there is a future audience, a future generation of artists, and future funders. You must help create experiences similar to the one that sparked the fire of passion inside you, that led you to pursue a life in the theatre.

You also have the responsibility to bring the national and global community to your home and to explore how the broader issues relate to us and why they are so important. Remaining relevant and current is the key to artistry. Theatre cannot be meaningful if it doesn't grow organically from your community (local) needs and yet rise to meet the national and global challenges facing us all. It cannot be forced, it must be studied, learned and lived.

What should we ask theatre artists to do for our community?

• Create a world on stage where the artists often teeter on the brink of destruction or utter happiness and we, as the audience experience living on the edge through them, without having to actually do so to understand it and learn from it.
• Bare their souls in telling a story
• State the unthinkable.
• Do the unforgivable.
• Act in weakness.
• Be trapped in fear and do nothing.
• Inspire us to speak or be safe in silence.
• State what must be said.
• Act heroically. Take risks.
• Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us do both at the same time.
• Teach us about our neighbors, people of distant lands, people from the past, and people from the future.
• Force us to lean forward in our seats, hold our breath, and wait for the next word, moment or action.
• Make us feel alive.

Board retention in good and bad times

One thing I have been thinking about a lot in the recent weeks and keep meaning to write about is board member retention during these difficult economic times.  The Wall Street Journal article below was a kick in the stomach reminder that we need to be focusing some significant attention on our boards.  In times this dire, it is essential to keep key stakeholders engaged.  With the pressing economic concerns for both the organizations and the individual board members, a delicate balance must be maintained between being honest about situations and being overly negative or pessimistic. 

It is a necessity to remember to celebrate successes no matter how small.  Even in good times this is something many nonprofits forget to do.  By nature we are problem solvers and excellent at crisis management, once something has been achieved we often make the mistake of moving onto the next task before congratulating ourselves on our accomplishments. 

Our boards need to know that they are important to us in every way possible - as a workforce, as information resources, as access to networks and as funding sources.   There are plenty of reasons for board members to be concerned - if we are conscious of this during our interactions we will find a proper balance.  But the MOST important thing is to keep them engaged!

Believe it or not most board members join a board for some reason other than to write a check - a deep connection to the mission/cause, a desire to make a difference in his or her community, social-standing/prestige, or a slew of others reasons.  Hopefully during the recruitment process and the individual's time on the board the reasons that drew the person to the board are clear.  Our job as staff leadership is to make sure that we take time to address these reasons with positive reinforcement during these times (and all others). 

In times like these we have to fight the impulse to hunker down and have a small group make the tough decisions.  A healthy process must be maintained.  We need to work with our board leadership to ensure that each board member has a chance to be heard and be part of key decisions -- especially organizations that are truly at risk or on the brink.  After all very few people join a board if they don't want to take responsibility for the organization's well-being. 

Healthy board management is going to be very important the in the months ahead.

From the WALL STREET JOURNAL

GETTING PERSONAL: Charity Board Members Insure Against Risk

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Even at charities, boards of directors are watching their backs.

In an environment ripe for investment- and employment-related lawsuits, a number of nonprofits are increasing their directors and officers coverage - or D&O - while insurance companies say they have seen an uptick in the number and severity of claims.

"Individual directors are now more concerned about making sure insurance is in place to protect them and their organization," says Michael Schraer, a vice president and not-for-profit product manager at Chubb Group of Insurance Cos.

Several prominent charities have been caught up in recent investment frauds, including the alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff, and most are struggling with shrinking endowments because of the market decline.

Charity board members can be held personally liable for mismanagement of investments or employment mishaps, among other things. An individual's umbrella insurance policy won't necessarily cover these claims.

"If a board member is sued, it means their house, their retirement savings, their investments that could ultimately come into play," says Scott Simmonds, an independent insurance consultant who advises nonprofits on D&O insurance.

This kind of insurance "pays for poor decisions," he adds.

Coverage, which can start at around $1,200 a year for organizations with fewer than 25 employees, varies by plan and carrier but D&O policies typically cover claims over misused funds or mismanaged assets.

Policies also address employment issues such as wrongful termination, discrimination and harassment - important at a time when many hard-pressed charities are being forced to trim jobs and other costs. More than 90% of claims against boards of directors involve some type of employment dispute, according to the Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance Risk Retention Group.

Know the Rules

Most states have volunteer immunity laws that protect board members from personal liability when acting in good faith. However, coverage is limited and these laws may not protect against federal civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. What's more, volunteers will likely have to pay fees to defend themselves.

Nonprofits usually say they will indemnify board members, or pay for legal costs. However, nonprofits may not be permitted to indemnify board members against all types of actions and may require the board member to pay legal fees first and then get a reimbursement.

And if the nonprofit doesn't have enough money to cover the claims or has gone out of business, the individual could be held accountable.

"Foundations that go out of business because they had all their assets invested in Madoff will not likely be able to pay for defense costs," says A.Q "Skip" Orza, a vice president at RLI Corp., an insurance company in Peoria, Ill.

D&O insurance policies can serve as additional coverage - typically at least $1 million of coverage per year - or pay claims on behalf of the nonprofit so the organization doesn't have to dip into its funds.

Sizing up your policy

D&O insurance can differ from other types of liability insurance and policies should be reviewed annually.

It typically covers lawsuits filed while the policy is in force, regardless of when the wrongful act occurred. And limits are aggregate, not per occurrence: Unlike an automobile policy that pays up to a certain amount each time you get into an accident, D&O insurance will only pay up to a set limit for all of your claims that year.

Since contracts can span 30-60 pages, board members should carefully read the terms and conditions to determine what is deemed a wrongful act and what is excluded from coverage - such as bodily injury or sexual abuse.

Board members should also keep tabs on the financial strength of insurance providers using ratings issued by companies such as A.M. Best Co.; Moody's Investors Service, a unit of Moody's Corp.; and Standard & Poors, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos.

MARCH 10, 2009, 3:31 P.M. ET

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Hartford's Cultural Institutions Take Steps To Weather Economic Storm -- Courant.com

Hartford's Cultural Institutions Take Steps To Weather Economic Storm -- Courant.com

This article gives a great overview of one city's cultural institutions.  Nice to see some smart thinking happening here in Connecticut.

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Other bloggers thoughts on the business model issue

Read these!

Beth's Blog: how nonprofits can use social media: The Crumbling of Nonprofit Arts Organizations (includes great map)

A. Fine Blog: Greatest loss of 2009: Social Capital

diacritical

Douglas McLennan of Arts Journal has started blogging - I know I thought all along surely he was, but alas... His first full post is a nice companion to many of my posts last week.

Is the NEA bad for the Arts?

Recent Articles

Some recent articles that I missed until today - maybe you did too.


Seattle Post Intellegencer goes digital only - no more print. March 16

Bloomberg Musical has cure for Broadway Blahs - in seat drinks service? on Broadway? March 17.

Guardian Arts World braces for a hurricane - a look at UK arts organizations' issues during the global financial crisis. March 14

Chronicle of Philanthropy 52% of donors plan no decrease - new survey results by Cygnus Applied Research

Nonprofit Fundraising Trends - Retriever Development Counsel survey results

Crains Experts give nonprofits tips in weather tough economic times

NY Times The Problem with Nonprofits - mini review of the book UNCHARITABLE. March 9

NY Times Charities say Government is ignoring them in Crisis - deals with implications from Obama charitable tax deduction changes. March 4

Restricted Gifts and the Arts in difficult times

In what certainly will become one of the largest examples of trying to "re-purpose" restricted gifts, Brandeis University announced a few weeks ago that it was going to close the Rose Museum to the public and sell off it's art collection to help make up for endowment losses and budget problems. Yesterday the Rose family publicly denounced the plans (see Boston Globe pay special attention to the comments).

One would think this would be national news considering the precedent it seems to set. And in different times it might be. However considering the economic news coverage and the recent, growing debates about money going to the arts or sports sponsorships from corporations, I think we are lucky this story isn't gaining too much national momentum.

Let me state first, foremost and unequivocally, restricted gifts are restricted gifts. It is up to a donor and institution to negotiate the restrictions or adapting the restrictions, but it is a partnership in which the donor's wishes will always over-rule the recipients. As the saying goes you can't have your cake and eat it too, that is just the way it is and it should stay that way. If this were to change, every time there was a shift in leadership - staff or board - the use would be open to adjustment based on an individuals whims and desires, long term strategies would be difficult to implement and the organization would likely be subject to significant mission creep based on said individuals whims and desires - even with the restrictions some individuals try to circumvent the restrictions with personal agendas.

Without question, one of the most difficult decisions an organization is faced with is when a donor want to make a restricted gift that does not fit the mission of the organization. For years, programs specific grants created many instances of ineffective results or "next new thing" programs. However, lets imagine all grants were general operating grants. Does anyone really believe we would have many of the amazing education programs that arts organizations have? Does anyone really believe that as much new work would be created? Imagine how destructive the tension between artistic staff, management staff, and the board would become.

Let's face it, we need restricted gifts.

At organizations I have worked at, I have had "passionate discussions" with an Artistic Director or Board members about restrictions on certain funds, and almost every time I have been grateful to the donor for said restrictions. If a project was clearly mission based and close to the core - it was usually easy to make the restrictions work or to renegotiate them, if not, well the restrictions certainly made the decision easier.

Are the arts a luxury or necessity?

As for the second and more important issue at the forefront of the Brandeis situation - at what point in the economic crisis do the arts become a luxury that must be eliminated or sold off? Literature and life are filled with the tales of families caught in horrible economics that must sell off their personal belonging to rebuild their lives or survive. Of course, organizations can reach a point where they are required to do the same.

In a similar situation, the Metropolitan Opera just mortgaged it's most famous art work to raise cash. I consider the Met's decision to be creative - the mission is about Opera and leveraging the artwork in these difficult times seems like a reasonable risk.

In the case of Brandeis, I have to ask if this is a "quick/easy/obvious" decision - if it were just about closing off the museum to the public perhaps a mission argument could be made, but the proposal as a whole seems pretty drastic. Is Brandeis really at that famous Scarlett O'Hara moment - do they need to make a dress from the curtains already? I hope not, we are still pretty early in this financial crisis, and you would hope the university was better managed than to have already reached that point.

But back to the bigger more global question that looms - is there a point where the arts are just a luxury that should be eliminated? We are back to that relevancy issue and making an argument for the arts. A lot of my recent posts have circled around a major point that I want to reiterate - the key is to get past the idea that all of the arts arts elitist and making the arts more accessible if in cost alone. We have to embrace that the definition of art has evolved and needs to evolve. We have to broaden the donor and audience base. We must be relevant to our communities, or we will become a luxury not a necessity.

Andy Horwitz proposal for the Arts: Should create a lot of discussion...

Andy Horwitz proposal for the Arts from Culturebot.

A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE ARTS IN AMERICA

1. Consolidate, Innovate and Reposition

The first thing we need to do is reposition the role of arts + culture in society. For many reasons the arts have moved to the fringes of cultural conversation. We need to reintroduce the idea of the arts as a place of civic discourse. Artists and curators need to work much more closely with non-arts partners - economists, sociologists, scientists, computer programmers, city planners, demographers, etc. - to identify the pressing conceptual issues of the day. Art - no matter the form- is about creating an object or event that focuses attention on a specific idea; it is a tool for enabling human beings to collectively and simultaneously focus their thought processes - thus the arts need to collaborate directly with non-arts disciplines and start leading the conversations America will be having as we move into a global future.

Part of repositioning is innovating the modes of public engagement. Taking its cue from Harold Skramstad’s seminal 1999 article “An Agenda for American Museums In the Twenty-First Century,” the contemporary museum world has already made great strides in redefining the way the public interacts with art. In a multimedia, multidisciplinary, hybrid, networked, on-demand world we can no longer privilege one form over another. We should be looking at the members of the Contemporary Art Centers networks (The Walker, the Wexner, Yerba Buena, etc.) for scalable, multidisciplinary presenting models that will allow us to consolidate resources, streamline curatorial processes and cultural production as well as promote multidisciplinary ideas-based investigations. Certainly as the economy falters and the visual arts lose their economic engine the value of other art forms will rise - we need to leverage this for the benefit of all.

Part of this innovation is to consolidate bricks and mortar. Contemporary arts and culture spaces must be multidisciplinary with adequate, adaptable theatrical space for all different kinds of performances integrated with visual art space, screening rooms and multimedia/virtual spaces. They should be smaller. As we become more and more accustomed to mediated space and networked environments, where mass entertainment happens in sports arenas and stadiums, the unique experience of intimate live performance and/or interaction with art objects and other human beings becomes ever more valuable. Keep it small and keep it flexible. If you are presenting an artist who can draw 10,000 people, then do ten shows for 1,000 people each. It’ll be a better experience for everyone involved.

In this day and age, where one person’s iPod may well contain a dozen different kinds of music next to each other, discipline-specific delineations are less relevant than ever. While some may prefer dance and some theater, some classical and some world music, all of these disciplines can - and should - cohabitate. If we view art and culture as an essential part of civic dialogue then the public should be exposed to all forms, frequently in juxtaposition. The public must be educated to experience culture regardless of discipline and become as savvy in the parsing of cultural product as they are savvy with entertainment, movies, popular music and video games.

The hardest part of Consolidating, Innovating and Repositioning is making room for the new by LETTING THINGS DIE. It is absurd to have a regional theater, a symphony, a ballet company, an opera, and other cultural enterprises all with their own buildings, all with their own administrative infrastructures, all in competition for the same funds. Let the regional theater system die. It is antiquated, expensive and largely irrelevant. Consolidate, share resources and place art in juxtaposition. Let’s focus on the notion of a cultural “civic center” run by trained, qualified administrators and housing a variety of different arts organizations - of varying sizes, disciplines, aesthetics and ambitions.

2. Develop Sustainable Cultural Infrastructures

There are many different components to creating a sustainable cultural infrastructure. In America today it is more likely that an arts institution will embark on a capital campaign to build a new building then it will engage in an endowment campaign targeted at increasing its general operating budget to provide living wages and better quality of life to its employees. This is a HUGE MISTAKE. The arts - more than any other industry - requires sustained institutional knowledge management, innovative and nimble administrators and the ability to retain the most qualified and effective workers. However, wages in the arts + culture sector are phenomenally low, there are almost no incentives or rewards for success, opportunities for professional development are few and far between and human capital is widely seen as expendable. I could go on a foul-mouthed furious tirade about this -and have - but for decency’s sake, I’ll leave it there and move on to the key issue that is: if you want to have sustainable arts ecologies then you need to invest in people. Here are a few ways in which arts + culture could improve the lives of its workers and make it a more attractive profession:

• Pay a living wage with health benefits, retirement, etc. Arts administrators should at least be on a level with teachers, the two professions are deeply related and require similar skill sets.
• No more M.F.A.s! There is nothing more useless than a Master’s degree in arts administration or an arts administrator who possesses one. Not only does the “book learning” rarely have anything to do with the real world, it creates a peculiar breed of person who feels entitled to respect (and a senior position) without possessing any prior actual experience. Cultural institutions don’t need more MBA-style administrators who are constantly looking for the next best opportunity. Cultural institutions need administrators who are hands-on and capable. More importantly, because of the extraordinarily ephemeral nature of arts + culture, the institutions need the knowledge management which comes from long-term employee retention.
• Bring back apprenticeship! A young arts administrator should come into an organization and be able to stay for 5-10 years, learning the trade and gradually moving up. Cultural institutions are not corporations, they are organic and complicated, they are about knowledge, creativity, education and imagination. As such, without a tangible product or revenue stream, the “collective memory” of the institution must be sustained and moved forward through the cultivation of its human assets.
• Reward success. Provide opportunities for professional development, provide clear pathways to promotion and advancement, implement institutional mentoring programs, subsidies for continuing education and skills acquisition. Treat Arts Workers like Valuable Human Beings!!

In addition to revamping the culture sector’s approach to managing its human resource capital, there are other key factors to developing a sustainable arts ecology/infrastructure. I return to my previous point of consolidation.

Despite what Wall Street would have you believe, running a cultural institution is incredibly hard work. The kind of crap the banking, automotive and real estate industries get away with would never fly in the non-profit sector. For every arts organization, theater, dance company, etc. to have to function as its own 501(c)(3) is just insane.

We need to not only consolidate bricks and mortar but consolidate arts administration. The Public Theatre in NYC has actually made great strides towards housing multiple companies of various size in its building. Here is where urban planners and cultural institutions need to start innovating - how do we devise public cultural spaces that provide both physical resources and administrative infrastructure for multiple arts organizations. If a ballet company, theater company or a musical ensemble didn’t have to have a fundraiser and an executive director and a bookkeeper and all this administrative overhead, they could focus on making art. They could probably make it faster, cheaper and easier. How do we build an infrastructure that alleviates the administrative burdens on arts creators and incentivizes top-notch administrators to stay in the culture sector?

Public cultural spaces should be transparent public/private non-profit partnerships. Administratively they should be managed as public trusts, dedicated to serving the community-at-large through arts, education, humanities and enrichment. The administration of the physical plant, the fiscal dealings of the organization, all of the operational logistics should be completely separate from the creative and curatorial administration. In addition there should be alternative, innovative housing solutions that integrate artists and educators into the daily life of the community they serve.

We must renew the civic commitment to public cultural institutions. Just as those of us in New York are constantly being asked to underwrite the construction of stadiums, ballparks and basketball arenas for the benefit of massive corporations, so too should the public be responsible for funding arts and culture. The arts, at least, provide intellectual development, aesthetic refinement, the cultivation of emotional complexity and moral uplift; considerably more positive benefits than the steroids, arrogance, sexual violence, licentiousness and ignorant conspicuous consumption promoted by so-called professional sports.

This leads back, inevitably, to the notion of repositioning - if we are going to ask the public to participate in sustaining and arts + culture infrastructure we need to reassert arts + culture relevance in civic life. Which leads back to requiring artists and curators to work much more closely with non-arts partners - economists, sociologists, scientists, computer programmers, city planners, demographers, etc. - to identify the pressing conceptual issues of the day and what conversations we need to be having for the future and start having them.

Funding-wise if arts organizations had sustained and reliable general operating expenses this would alleviate the fear and stress engendered by a constant state of financial peril. This would encourage evaluators to assess administrator performance using other criteria - such as relationship building with non-arts institutions, program impact, possibly even revenue generated through the creation of intellectual property.

If arts + culture institutions invested in human capital to make administrator jobs really valuable and hard to get, they would attract better people by introducing a wider field of competition - just like Wall Street! This would also open the field in a way that no longer privileges the privileged. Currently the major qualification for executive arts leadership is often donor cultivation - which is best done by peers. This does not necessarily correspond with managerial prowess, vision, leadership or accountability.

Providing an adequate baseline of funding for a multi-disciplinary shared civic cultural space and increasing arts administrator wages so that it could be a lifelong career would create competition; rewarding experience and talent over privilege.

This would also require the implementation of a more visible and definite line between the administrative and curatorial arms. But an adequate baseline of funding would alleviate the fundraising pressures, strengthening the administrator’s ability to manage in a responsible way. It would also remove the pressure for art to be commercially viable or conventionally successful - concerns best left to the entertainment industry.

3. Decentralize Cultural Production

Think globally, act locally, get connected. Use the internet, new media and all tools available to facilitate conversation and information-sharing and artist exchange. “Regional” rtist shouldn’t have to mean “provincial” artist.

As the cost of cultural production skyrockets in major urban centers, we need to decentralize the process - finding cheaper places to build arts and culture while assuring quality and sophistication that will be competitive in a global arts market. In this day and age there is no reason why cultural civic centers can’t facilitate ongoing global dialogue, artist exchanges, residencies and public programs on the relevant issues of the day.

In addition, we need to cultivate and improve networked performance and real-time trans-geographic interaction. We must identify new ways for artists to collaborate over distances, find ways for audiences to engage regardless of place.

Ultimately this will not only benefit the field of arts and culture but it will bring the arts to life in a new way in each city and/or region. Local art museums should show local artists. Local theaters, symphonies, operas and cultural centers should all actively support the creation of new work in their communities. Projects like the New Museum’s 3M or Museum As Hub initiatives suggest possibilities for collaborative development.

Alternately cultural production could be distributed regionally according to resource availability.

4. Increase Arts Education, Widen the Frame and Democratize Cultural Access

Let’s start by “widening the frame” of what we identify art so that young people find arts and culture are RELEVANT and USEFUL. We must now remedy the 30 years of intentional destruction of the arts education in America and make the arts accessible to all and relevant to the younger generation.

That doesn’t mean forcing them to listen to opera or go see mediocre, didactic plays - it means identifying the new, encouraging innovation and inviting young people into the process of creativity; it means identifying what young people are already doing with technology and encouraging them to contextualize their natural curiosity and creativity as art.

Video games, digital music production, digital video production, web-based interaction - all of these new technologies are not merely utilities they are landscapes for imaginative play. We must encourage young people to move beyond utility and look at technology as fun - a way to make art and play and imagine and dream.

We can’t start arts education with the old, demanding that today’s kids learn about theater, classical music, poetry, etc. on our terms. We must re-frame expression and experience in a way that affirms the aesthetics of our on-demand, “personalized” society and creates new access points to art. Once we re-introduce the idea of imaginative play we can grow young people’s awareness of the history of the arts and culture, point to precedents and empower them to investigate the world around them.

We must be willing to relinquish the dominant narrative and educate young people, give them the tools to express their personal agency in the construction of narrative with intellect, insight and responsibility.

Widening the frame cannot succeed without a commitment to arts education and art appreciation in the schools. It cannot be an afterthought - it must be restored to the core curriculum along with basic science, mathematics, English and social studies.

As culturally-specific museums renegotiate their representations of identity, they are creating literally thousands of new access points to culture for people of all identities, ethnicities, backgrounds and social status.

We need to reintroduce the arts as an educational tool and a tool for empowering young people with the skills of critical thinking, creativity and innovation.

We also need to understand that arts education is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor and consciously tailor artistic educational programs to demographics. Affluent students who come from historically philanthropic backgrounds may well require different educational access points and priorities from those who come from less comfortable backgrounds. The end goal is not unified arts education but providing as many access points as possible and giving young people whatever tools they need. Democratizing access to cultural resources also means scaling those access points strategically. It is not enough just to make things cheap - we need to make things relevant.

Arts Education is not one-sided - arts + education need to be integrated more fully and thoughtfully. We must revise and innovate the integration of educational components into the cultural production process. Every cultural institution should have in-house dramaturges and educational curriculum development professionals. They should keep records of research and process during the creation of new work, developing bibliographies, guides, online documentation and all the paratext surrounding the work. By having educational and dramaturgical professionals on-hand, working on parallel and simultaneous tracks, we can increase the transparency of the artistic process and reinforce the connection between art, ideas, public policy, politics, cultural attitudes, philosophy, economics and entertainment.

To have an informed populace in the information age, they must have the tools to parse the media - and art can create a critical context for developing skills in media analysis. Even though this sounds abstract, the right approach can make it accessible to anyone. Whether it is talking about why video games look the way they do, or why a specific camera angle is chosen, today’s youth need to be educated as much in visual and media literacy as in textual literacy. Arts + Culture is a great tool for that.

In this new world, everything is art if you see it that way. Culture is vast and all-inclusive. We must provide the citizens of tomorrow with the tools to frame cultural experience in an intelligent, empowered way. If America is to remain a dominant global cultural force then we have to be artistically and culturally advanced, conscious of the images we create and messages we disseminate and we must have a population that is literate enough to engage in these conversations.

5. Innovate Funding and Revenue Models For Cultural Production and Distribution

This is the big one - and I’m not giving it away for free. Not yet. But if you’ve read everything I’ve written thus far and think I’m talking big government and socialism, um, you’re wrong.

*I HAVE WRITTEN LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF PAGES ON THIS and would be able to write a much more cogent and complete assessment if offered a book deal [and editor!) that would enable me to quit my job and devote my energy to writing. I would love to write a lengthy treatise on the economics of cultural production in the U.S. and the systemic function it breeds, but for expediency’s sake I am reducing it to some bullet points and short paragraphs on how to fix the arts + culture infrastructure and reposition the arts in relationship to both the public and private sectors

Adrian Ellis raises some interesting questions for the museum field but they certainly carry over to all of the arts!

The recession and US museums

How to compensate for the loss of philanthropic, endowment and visitor incomes

By Adrian Ellis | From Editorial & Commentary | Posted: 11.3.09

“That was then; this is now.” A blunt expression often used in negotiations when one party wants to make clear to the other that previously reasonable expectations are unlikely to be met because of some adverse and unalterable change in circumstances. It is an expression that the cultural sector’s leadership is likely to hear frequently over the next few years as it seeks to navigate a radically changed economic and political map. The global recession that we have entered will not just knock the froth off things; it will permanently reconfigure the cultural landscape. This may happen more slowly and the events may be less flamboyantly newsworthy than the bankruptcy of Iceland, the collapse of the international banking system or the failure of the American mortgage industry, but the underlying forces at work are just as strong—indeed, they are the same forces.

This observation is hardly revelatory. The past five years of the decade-long upswing of the art market—predominantly the contemporary art market—has been largely speculative in nature, and the market correction that we are experiencing has been predicted by most parties who do not have a vested interest in the prolongation of the bubble: a period of declining volumes and prices and a shrinking of the market’s entire infrastructure—galleries, auction houses, art fairs and ancillary publications, and public relations. (In February, Standard & Poor’s gave Sotheby’s a credit rating of BBB, for example.) The scale and duration of the contraction will be directly related to the scale and duration of the wider recession. The art market trails the economy—as a whole reluctantly, but obediently. To give some indication of what’s ahead, the last time the art market experienced a major slump followed the 1987 stock-market crash. The art market fell later but further than the stock market, finally hitting bottom in 1993, with prices falling 56% on average. The market was thinner then, and therefore more volatile, but the current recession is broader and deeper, and likely to last longer; and the fall is from a higher speculative peak.

The impact of world recession on museums will be more subtle, but no less profound. The conspicuous consumption that has fuelled the art market is umbilically linked to the conspicuous philanthropy that has fuelled much of the growth in contemporary art museums throughout the US, the Middle East, South East Asia and Europe. These institutions have been significant beneficiaries of the growing and, to many, morally indefensible disparities of wealth throughout the world. It has left them heavily reliant on, and overly attuned and attentive to, a narrow constituency whose long-term appetite or capacity for support is highly questionable. The sector has come to rely disproportionately on the very wealthy, and on the role that museums can play as mechanisms for the translation of wealth into status, and status into power.

Most fundraisers in the arts freely acknowledge how much the pyramid of giving has narrowed in the past decade, with a greater reliance on an increasingly diminishing number of very wealthy donors. In Russia, India and the Middle East, the pyramid is practically a sheer-faced column—the museum sector is to a large extent the domain of the newly super-wealthy. The almost inevitably speculative nature of rapidly acquired wealth can lead to dramatic reversals of fortune, and thus of largesse. Interestingly, the success of President Obama’s electoral campaign in using web-based social networking to secure smaller donations is the talk of the charitable sector internationally. But art museums are not just short of the technological know-how to widen access to a donor base. They are also short of the arguments to galvanise them, as can be seen in the reaction of the US Congress to the provisions for the cultural sector in the Federal Bailout Bill. Museums have given a great deal of time and attention to stratification and hierarchy for the upper tiers of donors. With conspicuous consumption less in favour, speculative fortunes trimmed and priorities adjusted, the social class that art museums have smooched with most intimately is also the group most likely to sit out the next few dances.

The contraction of anything short of all-weather philanthropic support is, of course, compounded by dramatic drops of 30-50% in endowment income (whether museums’ own or of the trusts and foundations on which they rely). The precipitous drop in Brandeis Uni­versity’s endowment led to its president’s ill thought-out plan to close the Rose Museum and sell its collection. A more wily plan may well have attracted less attention. It is also compounded by cuts in public expenditure as local and national governments enter a prolonged period of austerity, reflecting their reduced tax base and the increased demands for fiscal intervention. UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said in January: “All parts of government have to hear that message and live in the real world. Some people may not like it, but the arts has [sic] to live in the real world too. Nobody is immune from what is happening.” In the US, the State of California is sending out IOUs instead of the tax rebates it owes, and most state and city arts departments—far more significant in the US than federal arts funding—have either implemented cuts or warned that they are on their way. Layoffs, furloughs (unpaid leave), pay cuts and shortened public openings are common in smaller museums and galleries in the US.

Museums of art have tended to rely more heavily on spectacle than programme to attract visitors—loud headlines rather than a fine print of involvement in the community. This is despite exhortations by trade associations such as the American Association of Museums in the US and the Museums Association in the UK that their members adopt agendas that increase and parade their social relevance, and myriad programmes of outreach and social engagement.

In the painful process of the prioritisation of public expenditure, the prospect of political underwriting—that is, a sense of obligation to sustain cultural institutions by civic leadership—is greatly diminished both by the realities of public expenditure constraint and by the growing sentiment of politicians that the art world, at least at its current scale of activity, is simply not central to a civic agenda congested with crises in health, housing, employment, education and the environment.

The brunt of the squeeze will be borne disproportionately by operating budgets (exhibition programmes, education programmes, conservation, research and curatorial functions). This is because, short of closure, the fixed costs associated with expanded infrastructure (new buildings, wings etc.) are just that—fixed. It is the need to balance the books from a higher baseline of fixed cost that is causing the pain. The drift is clear: we are entering a period when all but the most privileged and well-connected of art museums are going to come under very real financial constraints and many will be doing so with a weakened safety-net of well-disposed stakeholders. Outside of the restitution of art to Holocaust victims and the occasional censure of miscreants, museums have for the most part shown limited capacity for effective collective action. Industry-wide responses to problems (analogous to those for banks or the automotive industry) would require an appetite for solidarity that does not come naturally, even if the industry found a more willing ear in government.

Much of the reaction to these trying circumstances will therefore be confined to what individual museums, or small coalitions of museums, can do. Museums’ boards and directors are—quite reasonably, given their central mission of stewardship—highly conservative and, perhaps less reasonably, highly motivated by peer approval. Therefore, radical alternatives to genteel but irrevocable decline—such as merger, relocation, restructuring, resource sharing—are only likely to be contemplated as a last resort when an institution is faced with imminent closure. By that time, solutions are significantly more difficult to implement, as the time, money and organisational will required have been exhausted. As Hegel said, “the owl of Minerva flies at dusk”. It is interesting, if not entirely comfortable, to speculate on some of the fault lines that are likely to grow as the pressure caused by the triangulation of the dark forces of speculative expansion, recession and a diminished civic mandate increases.

Here are three possible ideas. First, dramatic and competitive physical expansion and large-scale temporary exhibitions have, in a sense, substituted for an effective agenda of community engagement. These strategies have served as a way of generating buzz and money while interest in the traditional mission of the art museum was waning to the point where it was insufficient to generate the funds required. These strategies are now stalling because of their expense; the contraction of the philanthropic and public sector funds and the cultural tourist market on which they are premised; and the diminishing returns the strategies secure in a crowded, winner-takes-all marketplace. Art museum agendas will have to shift to seek viable alternatives to these warhorses and with them, the skill sets required of museum leadership will also shift.

Second, in the search for resources, the desire to explore ways of capitalising collections will continue to grow. The straightforward fiat that is the current international norm—no deaccessioning unless you spend proceeds on more art—will either be finessed or ignored under the pressure of financial realities.

Third, what museums accept they cannot do alone, they will explore doing together more thoroughly and earnestly than in the past: collection sharing, joint acquisitions, pooling conservation resources, and pooling curatorial appointments. The museum economy is increasingly globalised and these trends will be global in their impact. The alternative to the open-minded exploration of radical alternatives is a sombre one, in which the energies and ingenuities of the sector are devoted increasingly to the support of a dysfunctional pseudo-mission: that of maintaining appearances at any cost, even if the museum becomes a sort of “living dead” organisation, in which any capacity for aesthetic or intellectual endeavour is sacrificed to the goal of keeping the institutional ego protected.

The writer is a regular columnist for The Art Newspaper and a director of AEA Consulting

Funding Opportunities

Below is a great summary of some of the funding opprouniutes for the arts from the Stimulous package - notice it isn't just the NEA funding, there is a little money out there - for better or worse. Get creative people.


http://www.nasaa-arts.org/nasaanews/stimulus-opportunities.shtml


And, the NEA and NEH got $10M budget increases from the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act.

http://www.americansforthearts.org/news/afta_news/default.asp

Cultural Post in the White House

The day after the Presidential election I started here from several friends and organizations about a push for an arts-related staff position in the Obama White House. At the TCG fall forum, the Performing Arts Alliance and American for the Arts platform clearly called for a Arts advocate on staff in the administration. Then we heard cries for a cultural czar or a cabinet level position be established and internet petitions begin. It seems the work paid off.

According to the New York Times President Obama "has established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs." No other real information is in the article (copied below) other than the person who is to fill the position is Kareem Dale (brief bio from Google search and a link his campaign blog below).

I have to say I am sort of glad that the call for a Czar or Cabinet level position didn't pan out. I always felt that it was asking for trouble and I didn't quite like the idea a federal arts directive under any administration. But a staff position is a completely different angle and could be something that really works well for the arts. Of course without a job description and frankly with no idea what the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs really does, I guess we will have to wait a bit to see what it really means.

I am going to remain optimistic. I hope that Mr. Dale is able at the highest level to help clearly define the value of arts in this country - for educational, cultural, and economical reasons (it's not like we artists have been doing that great job of it). We have a unique opportunity at this time to reinstate the value of the arts to society - our President and first family seem to be active arts participants by choice not force and in times of great change/challenges the arts usually become a touchstone for society. Let's put all of our creativity into creating great art and getting the word out and maybe we (with the help of the Obama administration) will be able to put the arts in a better position than they have ever been in.




Kareem Dale's Campaign Blog

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Dale previously served as the National Disability Director for the Obama for America campaign. He also served on the Arts Policy Committee and the Disability Policy Committee for then-Senator Obama.

Dale graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor's degree in Advertising in May 1995. He received his JD/MBA in May 1999 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating Cum Laude. While attending law school, Dale was also active in community service, including serving as president of two organizations, the Black Law Students' Association and Open Forum.

New York Times
March 14, 2009

Arts, Briefly

Cultural Post at White House

By ROBIN POGREBIN; Compiled by Patrick Healy

President Barack Obama has established a staff position in the White House to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs under Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, a White House official confirmed. Kareem Dale, right, a lawyer who last month was named special assistant to the president for disability policy, will hold the new position. Mr. Dale, who is partly blind, previously served as national disability director for the Obama campaign. He also served on the arts policy committee and the disability policy committee for Mr. Obama when he was a senator from Illinois. Bill Ivey, who served as the administration’s transition-team leader for the arts and humanities, said he was encouraged by the appointment and would meet with Mr. Dale next week. “It’s a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and government with mainstream administration policy,” Mr. Ivey said in an interview on Friday. The White House declined to describe the position in detail, since Mr. Dale’s appointment has yet to be formally announced. Mr. Ivey, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said he expected that the job would mainly involve coordinating the activities of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services “in relation to White House objectives.” Although there have been staff members assigned to culture under past presidents, they usually served in the first lady’s office, Mr. Ivey said.

Facebook - Innovative idea for getting butts in seats!

Now here is some fun forward thinking. Lynn Baber from Northlight thought of a great way to use Facebook to get folks to attend their production of Mauritius. Below is a note she posted on Facebook. The best part is that someone I was following in England on Twitter sent it out as a tweet, which is how I heard about it. It will be great to hear about Lynn's response.



Lynn Baber's Notes:

Dear Fan of Northlight,

Want cheap tickets to Northlight shows? You got it. Here’s how.

Change your Facebook status to “____ is seeing Mauritius at Northlight Theatre for only $1, and you can too. Ask me how!”

Then print out a screen shot of your status and bring it to the Box Office. Your ticket is just $1 (a handling fee)!*

(Of course, we’d love it if you let interested friends know how to participate when they ask you, and we’d like it even more if you sent this message to all your friends or write your thoughts about the show in your Notes…but that’s up to you!)

Thanks for being a fan of Northlight. See you at the Theatre!

*-Subject to availability. Some restrictions apply. We suggest calling ahead to check ticket availability - 847/673-6300. Reservations will not be taken.

The Playgoer: Will Theatre Outlive The Newspaper?

Interesting point here at The Playgoer blog. Perhaps we should all give up on trying to catch up and instead focus on how to get ahead of the game when it comes to the future of information dissemination.


The Playgoer: Will Theatre Outlive The Newspaper?

Time to Restructure?

I have been thinking a lot about restructuring. Not surprising since it seems to be happening everywhere.

On the personal side, Brian and I, like almost everyone I know, are restructuring our finances. Things we once thought essential - are just not important anymore. We have been talking a lot with our families about consolidating. For example, my mother and sister have homes about a mile apart. My mother more or less lives with my sister, seems logical to completely consolidate resources. Perhaps we go so far as to consolidate three households into one and a half. We are searching for other ways to consolidate with both of our families. Distance makes this somewhat difficult. It is also difficult to fight the feeling that we somehow failed, did something wrong, or are being punished. I think many of us feel s certain amount of guilt or shame about the effect the current economy has had on our personal lives.

However it made me think about something that has always been nagging at the back of my mind. Why can't nonprofits "consolidate" more often especially when it comes to infrastructure?

In 2001, my friend Roy Gabay (one of the great commercial theatre general managers) and I discussed me joining his team. The idea was that I would create a new branch of business - outside general management services for nonprofits. At the time we focused only on general management and could not find a solution to what we perceived was a tremendous competition between small off-broadway companies (for donors, ticket-buyers, human resources, and scripts). We felt the competitive nature would prevent the organizations from sharing a key position such as a general manager.

I have rehashing that idea in my mind for a while now. I don't think the real issue was the competition, but that pride and ego were a large part of the equation, as were perceptions of what defined success and on the practical side - the fact that we were narrowing the services to General Management. And even though a general manager oversees budgets, marketing etc - each theatre still would need a significant number of staff members.

What if several theatres share one institutional infrastructure and only the only position that varies (if indeed it did and most likely wouldn't have to) was that of Artistic Director? Or if theatres regularly shared spaces? Or came together for more than co-productions, advocacy or the occasional marketing project - but for fundraising, true artist development and outright survival.

Let's take a few examples of how it might work before we rip it apart with reasons why it wouldn't.

Take Arizona Theatre Company. They have two spaces one in Phoenix and one in Tucson. But they have one core infrastructure. Would this consolidation work with other theater in other states? If they were about the same size and were diverse enough geographically or in mission - it could create some amazing opportunities.

First and foremost, it would allow for better staff compensation and perhaps raise the bar on staff qualifications. Rather than having two or three understaffed Marketing and Development departments - the combined resources would allow for the creation of a unified, complete workforce. And frankly would attract a more talented staff. In the last week three theatres have trended in the opposite direction - cutting leadership staff and just spreading the work around. Isn't a shared qualified staff at least worth exploring?

It would be significantly better for the environment. In general, theatre is a tremendously wasteful art form. Although we have made great strides in recent years, we still throw thousands of dollars of lumber, steel, and goodness knows what else into landfills nationwide.

It certainly could strengthen the bonds between geographic or cultural communities. And the networks and impact of the organizations involved.

And perhaps most importantly (saved the best for last), it could mean a lot more money for productions and education programs.

Sure there are a lot of thing that would have to be sorted out - but isn't is a possible solution for some that is better than closing the doors forever.

And frankly, we are already half way there with all of the "co-pros" currently on the boards.

I am not suggesting this as something everyone could make work, but I can think of a lot of combinations that might make sense and create a tremendous amount of new opportunities.

Below is a wonderful speech that Dian...

Below is a wonderful speech that Diane Ragsdale from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave this past summer at an arts marketing summit in Australia. I found it by chance while looking for an article in my files. If you have been reading my posts it addresses a lot of the issues I wrote about last summer. I respect Diane as one of the great thinkers in the arts today, her word remind me that now more than ever we need to be thinking about whole new strategies and our relevance to our communities. All of the recent arguments about the arts in the stimulus bill simply remind me that we close to or have lost our place in many communities.



Diane Ragsdale address to Australia Council arts marketing summit

09 July 2008

US arts philanthropy expert Diane Ragsdale gave the keynote address on the subject "Surviving the culture change" to the Australia Council Arts Marketing Summit held in Melbourne on 3-4 July 2008.

I must preface my remarks by saying that my views are personal and should not be taken, necessarily, to be the views of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. I also wish to say that my perspective is decidedly American as that's the reality I know. Just as I believe that US arts leaders could benefit greatly from hearing your perspectives on these issues - and I look forward to hearing them throughout the day - I hope that hearing some ideas and examples from the US will be valuable to you.

The title of this address is "Surviving the Culture Change." Some of you may be wondering what I mean by "the culture change," and so I'd like to start with an anecdote and then describe some of the changes we're seeing in the US.

About 2 ½ years ago, I attended a retreat with leaders of a dozen orchestras, at which one lamented, likely reflecting the sentiments of more than a few in the room, "I feel like I'm the Captain of the Titanic, and there's an iceberg ahead, but rather than being on top steering the ship I'm in the bowels shoving coal in the furnace. I'm afraid if I stop shoveling coal we'll run out of steam, but I know that if I don't start steering the ship soon we're going to hit an iceberg."

It's not the most uplifting image. And, indeed, we are in exciting, but turbulent times.

In the August 2006 issue of Inside Arts, Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was quoted saying, "…the primary issues facing the American arts at present are not financial. They are cultural and social. We have a society in which the arts have become marginal. We are not producing another generation of people who attend theater, opera, symphony, dance, jazz and other art forms. Most of these audiences have declined in the last decade, some of them precipitously."

Chairman Gioia paints a sobering, but accurate, picture. The largest generation - the Baby Boomers - have sent their kids to college, have plenty of gray hair on their heads, know the difference between a Malbec and a Red Zinfandel, and can pick out a fine triple cream brie. But despite displaying considerable evidence of disposable income, ample leisure time, and sophistication appear to be less inclined than the generations before them to participate in many of the "high brow" art forms. Studies have indicated that many Americans actually have more leisure time than ever , but they appear to be choosing to spend it differently. Boomers are gardening, building decks and tiling their bathrooms, and preparing gourmet feast for their friends and families - activities which appear to have been elevated from chores to enjoyable ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. And they are, in fact, participating in arts and entertainment activities. They are learning how to play the guitar, taking photos with their digital cameras, renting films on Netflix, and at 55 they are still going to Paul McCartney concerts. In other words, contrary to what many arts organizations thought, once these Boomers hit 55 or 60 they didn't suddenly develop a deep desire to attend a Beethoven concert, or a Balanchine ballet, or a Shaw play.

And their kids? The echo-Boomers? They are creating playlists for their Ipods, making videos and posting them on YouTube, building avatars and living in Second Life, managing their MySpace and Facebook pages, creating mashups, voting for their favorite American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance contestants, and writing blogs. And they are creatively engaged and satisfied by these experiences.

About 14 years ago I learned a brutal truth about the human condition, and in particular about the relationship between many Americans and the arts.

I was teaching a general survey course, Intro to Theater, at a small public university in Idaho, a rural state known mainly for its potatoes. On the first day of class each term I would ask the 120 or so students to raise their hands if they had ever seen a professional theater production. About 10 hands would go up. I would then say, "Raise your hand if you would like to see one." 15-20 hands would go up. Remember, this was before podcasting, blogging, YouTube, MySpace, Iphones, and P2P file sharing revolutionized communication and social networking.

So, I would ask of the remaining students, "Why wouldn't you want to see a play?" The answer was generally, "I've gone this long without seeing a play, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything."

The brutal truth is … you don't miss what you've never had.

As a result of new technologies, generational shifts and economic divides, changing demographics, increasing diversity in cities and town across America, a trend towards anti-intellectualism, increased competition for people's leisure time, cuts in funding for the arts in K-12 education, the decline in arts coverage in newspapers, and many other forces, we are seeing a profound shift in the interrelated relationships between people, space, time, and art, and changes in the ways that people create, consume, commune, and communicate. This is the culture change to which I am referring.

So what does this mean for the arts?

Russell Willis Taylor of the Washington, DC-based National Arts Strategies said to me once, when I asked her what were her greatest concerns for the arts, that she was troubled by the fact that arts organizations in the US can't easily explain to people why they matter. I would say that this - the fact that the arts don't appear to matter to people in the US - is one of the most serious consequences of the culture change. This is the iceberg… this is the thing, which if we don't start dealing with it, could sink us.

So now we've established what the culture change is. Before I talk about some ideas for surviving it in particular, I want to back up a bit and reflect on survival in general.

Last summer, on the recommendation of a field colleague, I read the book Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales. Gonzales spent years trying to understand why some people survive harrowing circumstances and others do not and trying to determine whether there are common characteristics of survivors. I was particularly interested in a chapter in which he examines how people get lost.

Gonzales explains that the way we navigate in life is by forming and following mental maps: literally pictures in our minds of particular areas or routes. Gonzales says you get lost when you "fail to update your mental map and then persist in following it even when the landscape," (the real world), "tries to tell you it's wrong." Edward Cornell, one of the scientists Gonzales showcases in the book, gives an example of this. He says, "Whenever you start looking at your map and saying something like, 'Well, that lake could have dried up,' or 'That boulder could have moved,' a red light should go off. You're trying to make reality conform to your expectations rather than seeing what's there. In the sport of orienteering, they call that 'bending the map.'"
Many arts organizations appear to be bending the map, working from outdated mental maps of the cultural landscape, outdated conceptions about the value of their organizations to the community, outdated ideas about who lives in their communities, what those individuals value, and what role the arts do or do not play in their lives.

Gonzales describes five stages that a person goes through when lost, which correlate with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Gonzales says that the final stage, acceptance, is the one that separates those that survive from those that don't.

Here's how he describes it, "… as you run out of options and energy, you must become resigned to your plight. Like it or not, you must make a new mental map of where you are." Not where you wish you were. "To survive," he says, "you must find yourself. Then it won't matter where you are."

Gonzales also says that one of the most difficult steps a survivor must take is to discard the hope of rescue.

So, wait a minute, does this mean, podcasts can't us? How about Facebook? I keep having this picture in my mind of arts organizations huddled up, frantically flipping through some metaphorical 21st century audience development playbook, trying to figure out the perfect combination of plays that will win over younger audiences: Should we get rid of subscriptions? Stream podcasts? Produce videos for YouTube? Hire DJs and VJs to play in the lobby after the show? Have a MySpace page? Text our patrons on their cell phones? Remake the season brochure? Host some sort of amateur art competition?

Maybe! But we can't answer these questions until we answer some more fundamental questions. Yes, we need to bring our marketing into the 21st century; but first, we need to bring our missions into the 21st century. This is less a failure to sell well, and more a failure to see well - a failure to see that our communities have changed, and that art and artists have changed, and that we, perhaps, as institutions that exist to broker a relationship between the two (communities and artists) have not changed in response.

A couple years ago I interviewed a Stanford University professor named Jim Phills about his book, Integrating Mission and Strategy for Nonprofit Organizations, and one of my questions was, "What advice would you give to a world-class orchestra whose audiences were declining and whose deficit was growing?" He said, "If you are an orthodox orchestra, the reason you are losing audience members (from your viewpoint) could be that the world is not good enough for you. But art really exists only in relation to audiences and their experience, particularly the performing arts. So if a symphony is seeing declining audiences, then the questions are: Would you sooner close your doors than change what you do? What is it that's important to you and why? You cannot, however, answer these questions without considering your need for audiences and/or enough people willing to subsidize you. And the fact is the number of people willing to subsidize something that is narrowly enjoyed may diminish over time. At which point, you will need to be prepared to go out of business."

He hastened to add, however, there is another option "there are organizations who are redefining their missions in relation to people."

To survive the culture change, we need to start by accepting that (1) it exists and it has fundamentally changed our world; and (2) to solve the mystery of why 30-year-olds won't buy tickets to the symphony, we're going to need to put more on the autopsy table than the season brochure.

The late, great thinker Susan Sontag once wrote, "Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future."

I take particular note of the words, "precarious attainment of relevance." Organizations cannot be granted relevance in perpetuity based on their laurels. To exist, to thrive, in the 21st century, arts organizations need to be willing to adapt in order to attain, maintain, or regain, their relevance.

The ability to adapt is one of the keys to survival, and can be very difficult for industry leaders.
In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman says that the great company IBM nearly self-destructed because it stopped listening to its customers and stopped creating value that mattered for them. Friedman explains that "when a company is the pioneer, the vanguard, the top dog, the crown jewel, it is hard to look in the mirror and tell itself it is in a not-so-quiet crisis and [that it] better start to make a new history or become history."

IBM made a new history. And so must we.

Those that are losing audiences but are unable to adapt, or that refuse to adapt, may one day find themselves caught off guard by the radical reinvention of what it means to be an arts organization that is already coming from a company that's five years old and has a relatively miniscule operating budget, and that was started by talented 25-40 year olds, who (at least in the US, you might have a different situation here) have passed on, or left, mid-level posts at larger institutions because they were not excited by the artistic programming, or saw no hope of promotion, or didn't feel encouraged to contribute creatively to the mission of the organization. But that's a topic for another day.

Today's topic is surviving, adapting to the culture change. With your indulgence, I'd like to lay out ten ideas for doing this.


1. Unsustainable Growth + Silos = Mission Creep = Bad News

Over the past few decades, the US nonprofit arts and culture sector focused on building supply and capacity, on the assumption, I suppose, that demand for the arts would grow at the same rate. We tripled the number of organizations and built bigger and better facilities. Arts organizations created hierarchical corporate structures, professionalized their staffs, and increased the size of their operating budgets, the number of programs, exhibits and performances they offer, and the number of seats in their halls. And now organizations are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to grow demand to match the current supply of arts in the US. At the recent National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, Colorado, over 2,000 arts organizations participated in a 1st Century Town Hall Meeting for the Performing Arts and the following issue was identified as the #1 issue: "Our communities do not sufficiently perceive the value, benefits, and relevance of the arts, which makes advocacy and building public support for the arts a challenge at every level." It also makes building demand very difficult.
US Arts organizations are competing fiercely for audiences and resources.

Very few arts organizations in the US could be considered prosperous; almost all are, to some greater or lesser degree, undercapitalized. One consequence of this, as Jim Phills writes in his book on mission and strategy, is that a desperation for resources makes an organization more likely to pursue opportunities that are inconsistent with its mission, the inevitable result of which pursuits is mission creep—which he defines as "the blurring of the organization's mission over time as it seeks to take on activities outside the scope of its core competencies."

But here's the rub! Those activities that are outside of the scope of an organization's core competencies have an inflationary effect on the budget—which leads to a greater desperation of resources—which can lead the organization to take on more activities outside of the scope of its mission in order to secure resources—which leads to more mission creep! It's a vicious cycle.
And silos are aiding and abetting organizations in this behavior. I have experienced and observed time and again that the blurring, stretching, and compartmentalization of mission is fostered by the hierarchical corporate structure that organizations adopt, which puts making the art, selling admissions, raising money, balancing the budget, education, and understanding the community into different silos, and often creates competition for resources among these departments.

Furthermore, these departments often have competing core values and measures of success.
Beware building supply without building demand as it puts you into permanent shoveling coal mode. Beware money (from funders or the market) that lures you off mission. It's a Faustian bargain. Over time it will cause you to lose ownership of your mission. And beware silos.

Organizational silos remind me a lot of the dissociative personality disorder, compartmentalization, which essentially allows you to split your psyche apart and keep those parts from mixing. It's not a good thing.

These are a few of my least favorite things and, combined, these practices can make it very difficult for you to adapt.


2. Don't Conflate Money or Attendance with Impact

While coal shoveling might keep an arts organization going year after year, in the same way that being on a resuscitator is really not the same as being alive, staying afloat is not the same as having impact. Furthermore, even selling a lot of tickets should not be conflated with having impact.

In his book Convergence Culture Henry Jenkins talks about a new configuration of marketing theory that he calls "affective economics," which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making. He says that commercial entertainment companies are beginning to realize what their fan communities have been saying for a long time: that what is more important than the number of people who buy your product or watch your television show is the depth of their loyalty and the quality of their engagement. Jenkins gives some examples of this trend.

He tells a story about Coca Cola CEO, Steven J. Heyer, who said in his keynote address at the 2003 Advertising Age conference that Coke would "use a diverse array of entertainment assets to break into people's hearts and minds. In that order." Heyer said Coke was "moving to ideas that [would] elicit emotions and create connections. On Coke's Web site consumers can share personal stories about their relationship with the product—stories that get organized around themes such as "romance," "reminders of family" "childhood memories" or "times with friends." Speaking to this room of advertisers, Heyer said, "The ideas which have always sat at the heart of the stories you've told and the content you've sold … whether the movies or music or television … are no longer just intellectual property, they're emotional capital."

In his book, Jenkins also introduces the ideas of Kevin Roberts, the CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, who argues that the future of consumer relations lies with 'lovemarks' [as opposed to 'trademarks'] which are more powerful than traditional 'brands' because they command the 'love' as well as the 'respect' of consumers.

These companies are talking about love and connections between people. And they are selling soft drinks and soap! And along with HBO, they are beating us at our game. These companies are smart because they understand that emotions and connections between people are strong, that many people are searching for meaning in their lives, and that consumption exists within a social and cultural context.

In her article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Let's Put the Word 'Nonprofit' Out of Business" Claire Gaudiani has proposed that we replace the word 'nonprofit' with 'social profit.' I like this idea because it forces us to remember that we are nonprofits because we exist to create value for society, rather than profits for shareholders. It reminds us that, we too, exist within a social and cultural context—and if that context changes, so too must we change.

There is a real danger if we continue to conflate growth of the budget, economic impact, or commercial success, with creating meaningful impact on individuals and on society.

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater in NYC and one of the leading thinkers in American Theater recently wrote, "Over the [past] 30 years, the American non-profit theater has been operating in an economic environment that increasingly has valorized the market as the primary, almost exclusive way of measuring value. As a result, many of the leading non-profit theaters have blurred the line between commercial and non-profit work. Even when they have been most brilliant and successful, there has been a real cost: a narrowing of the social and artistic agenda, and a diminishing of the vigor, bravery, diversity, and importance of the American theater."

Arts organizations need to find a way to assess their progress in—for lack of a better goal—making great art that matters to people—as evidenced, perhaps, by increased enthusiasm, frequency of attendance, the capacity and desire to talk or write about one's experience, or in some other way respond to the experience, the curiosity to learn about the art form and the ideas encountered, the depth of emotional response, the quality of the social connections made, and the expansion of one's aesthetics over time.

We can't declare mission accomplished just because we get people in the door—we need to care about how the experience has affected them.


3. Go Cellular

In 2005, I read an article in The New Yorker, by Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink). The article was called "The Cellular Church" and was about Rick Warren, head of one of the most successful mega-churches in the US. The way these churches maintain a "sense of community" as they grow very large, says Gladwell, is by creating "a network of lots of little church cells – exclusive, tightly knit groups of six or seven who meet in one another's homes during the week to worship and pray."

The church has thousands of volunteers who are charged with getting to know each member that walks in the door and getting that new member plugged into a small group, formed around shared hobbies and interests – knitting, quilting, mountain biking. These cells effectively function as social networks, fueling deep friendships between church members. What's clear from the article is that people who are in small groups are more likely to show up at church on Sunday, stay a member of the Church longer, and give more money. These mega-churches are succeeding because they understand that for most people, it is the social connections they form as an aspect of going to church that in large part drive them to attend and donate. Without the small group, Warren explains in the article, going to Church with 5,000 people could feel pretty impersonal. Perhaps a bit like going to a concert hall with 1,800 people?

In the 2006 New Zealand Arts Survey, the number one reason for decreased participation, given by 56% of survey responders, is "Less Time/Other Commitments." One might assume, perhaps, that the top reason for increased participation would be "More Time/Fewer Commitments." It's not. 29% of survey respondents said they were attending more frequently because they had someone to go with, and 20% said they were attending more frequently because they were "more interested" in the arts. The survey noted that when participants in the "low attendance segment," in particular, were asked why they are attending more often now than they were three years ago, this segment (more than the others) identified the need to be encouraged by their social network to attend.

Saying "no time" reminds me of the oft-used, let-me-down-easy breakup line: "It's not you, it's me."

Like these churches, arts organizations need to foster small-group, socially-driven arts participation. Here is, I think, a radical, but brilliant example of an arts organization building community.

Earlier this year, the Foundry Theater in NYC did a performance called Open House that examined the long term impacts of the escalating costs of real estate on people in the city and citywide anxiety over housing costs and neighborhood change. The two-person play took place in two dozen apartments across New York City, which the Foundry located through an "open call." When patrons bought their tickets, they signed up to see the performance at one of 24 residences around the city. I signed up to see Open House at an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Before the performance started I was able to mingle with the actors and production staff, and the other 30 or so patrons, enjoy some beverages and snacks, and meet the performance hostess and hear the history of the apartment. At the end of the performance, everyone was invited to stay and eat, drink, and talk. When the entire project was over, the Foundry invited all the individuals, couples, and families that had opened up their homes—who came from all income demographics and from neighborhoods across the five boroughs—to a dim sum party. As I understand it, not only did these generous city dwellers break bread together, but friendships were formed. The Foundry is an exemplar. They are not content to simply produce great art. They are creating great community.


4. Let The Art Dictate The Space—Not The Other Way Around

Choreographer Elizabeth Streb, who describes her work as wrestling-meets-ballet, gymnastics, and circus, has been asking questions that challenge accepted assumptions about dance for more than 20 years. About ten years ago, she says she observed that the only "public" thing she did was invite strangers into a theater for a ticket priced $25.00 - $85.00. She says she decided to re-make the where and how of making her work and in 2003 she opened a garage in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In four years she's turned that warehouse into a true community cultural center. How did she do it? For one, she opened the doors and let people come by anytime – to watch rehearsal or just to use the restroom. She added popcorn and cotton candy machines and let people walk around and eat food during the performances. I've heard Streb say that rather than being a "church" - a place you visit once a week for a sacred experience, she wanted her space to be more like a 7/11 - which is a 24-hour convenience store in the US.

In order to facilitate social behavior, art spaces need to places where people can commune with each other and with artists.

Lobbies need to be more than holding pens. A kiosk with a pot of coffee and a tip jar, or a "mini-bar" with $8 beers stuck in the middle of a cramped or cavernous room with gray walls, no comfortable seating, harsh lighting, no music, nothing to engage with visually, and that shuts down after intermission, doesn't cut it anymore. Lobbies could be living rooms, galleries, book shops, Internet cafés, or really great bars - the third space, as they say. Center Stage Theater in Baltimore has a new "GenNext Initiative." In the past year they've remodeled their lobby in order to create a more relaxed and social environment. They've also hired a GenNext Coordinator who produces events - parties with performance art and fashion shows—as a way of attracting younger people to the building.

And of course, like Elizabeth Streb, we need to think bigger than just our lobbies. Perhaps we need a moratorium on the construction of traditional museums, concert halls, and proscenium theaters and we need to allow for the fact that if we want to engage new audiences, and work with contemporary artists, we need 21st century spaces. We need to create spaces that are suited to the way artists are now making work and that encourage a more dynamic interaction between artists and audiences.

A great example of this is 3Legged Dog in New York City, which is a hi-tech hybrid space that is intentionally designed to allow artists to work across platforms and disciplines and as dynamically as possible with new media technologies. I saw a production called Fire Island a few months ago, which is about a bohemian island off the coast of Manhattan. When the audience members arrived, they were invited to enjoy complementary food and wine, and then, rather than sitting in chairs, to grab a beach blanket or beach chair and arrange their seats anywhere in the open space. The production incorporated gorgeous panoramic film footage on enormous concave and convex screens that enveloped the space and that was deftly edited against a live performance, featuring at least a dozen actors, who performed their scenes in and around the audience and throughout the open space. There was a live band with a Tuvan throat singer and the wine continued to be poured freely throughout the performance. It was a sublime experience. Here are two more examples: I find it fascinating and inspirational that The National Theatre of Scotland, a young company, run by young artists and administrators, made the bold choice when it was formed not to build a facility. On the NTS Web site it says: "With no building of its own, the National Theatre of Scotland will tour to big theatres, small theatres and places where theatre has never been, across the whole of Scotland and beyond." I hope no one ever convinces them to build a space after all.

And, finally, we need to be prepared to think virtually.

As many of you probably know, Australia Council has a Second Life artists-in-residence program and recently three artists from the program created a real-time 3-D art project called Babelswarm, which is a simultaneous installation in Second Life and in a real world gallery, where visitors can be involved directly in its creation via a computer interface.

I was taken with the following quote by Chairman James Strong on the ACA Web site: 'It is vital that government supports and fosters new digital creative practices and inventiveness in the realms of online worlds, gaming and media arts. The Australia Council supports artist residencies in many places in the real world; it is only natural for us to help artists explore the creative possibilities of residencies in virtual worlds." I couldn't say it any better.


5. Fuel A Fan Base: Sample & Share!

The rule on the Internet is: sampling is free. You can listen to an entire CD before you purchase it. In order to reach broader audiences arts organizations need to create free and low-cost opportunities for people to sample and share their art through mediated and live experiences with others.

In October 2006 I went to a really good concert by the American Composers Orchestra, which by and large does new and experimental compositions—they deeply serve a narrow niche in NYC. I experienced a terrific new composition, accompanied by a great video. Unless you could get to NYC on October 13, 2006, there was no way for you to hear and see this piece. And yet, if the ACO had put the recording of the piece, with the video, on their website, and allowed people to experience a 3 minute sample for free, or download the whole piece for $1 or $2, I would have emailed at least a dozen people the day after the concert and said, "go to the Web site and check out this piece – it's fantastic." And if the same thing had happened last week, I could have posted a message on the wall of my Facebook page, and reached every friend I have.


And the fact is that if I encourage my friends to buy that song and video, it's going to mean a lot more to them than if the ACO does. And if the premise of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail is true—that the future of culture and commerce lies not in creating blockbusters but in creating and mining niche markets—then the ACO might be amazed at how many people around the world would pay $2 to download that new music and video piece that they currently cannot access any other way.

This is not about top down control from arts organizations; it's about allowing patrons to be active participants and turning them into devoted fans and catalysts for participation by others—in other words, driving word of mouth. When the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis presented the group GobSquad last year, they were amazed to find that one of their young patrons went home that night and made a video response to the piece and posted it on YouTube. They began thinking, "How do we generate more of this?" which is the exact right question to ask.

Albums and CDs have long been considered the loss leaders for popular and indie bands who make most of their money from concerts. I find it interesting that more and more artists are giving their music away on line as a way of generating awareness, building a fan base, and developing an audience for their live performances. Is there, perhaps, a future where we give away, or sell at very low-cost, mediated experiences, as a way of generating interest and demand for live experiences?

Certainly the Metropolitan Opera in NYC is having a go at such a strategy, and appears to be meeting with great success.

Locking down the art—having an across-the-board proprietary stance—is no longer a viable option.

But why did that young girl go to GobSquad in the first place? And why was she sufficiently enthused to go home and make a short video response and post it on online? I would wager that it's in large part because The Walker's contemporary programming is particularly appealing to younger audiences, and because they have done an exceptional job at reaching teen audiences through their longstanding Teen Arts Council. This brings me to point 6.


6. You Can't Fix It In Post

You may have heard that we're having a presidential election in the US this year and that a comparatively young man named Barack Obama has emerged as the presumptive nominee for the democratic party. According to a Washington Post article, "just before every presidential campaign of the past few decades, the media have heralded The Year That Young People Will Actually Vote. Yet each of those years turned out to be a youth turnoff. The last time more than half of 18-to-24-year-olds voted in a federal election was 1968." This year appears to be different.

According to an article in Time magazine, Obama's "campaign has become the first in decades, maybe in history, to be carried so far on the backs of the young. His crushing margin of victory in Iowa came almost entirely from voters under 25 years old, and as the race moved to New Hampshire and Nevada, their votes helped him stay competitive. In South Carolina … Obama's better than 3-to-1 advantage among under-30 voters more than neutralized Clinton's narrower edge among over-65s."

The article goes on to say that "the art of political organizing is in the midst of a broad philosophical overhaul that erases many of the old distinctions between young voters and their elders. Basically, it's 19th century politics using 21st century tools. The idea is rooted in a deceptively simple truth: voters are more likely to go to the polls if they are asked face-to-face by someone they trust."

Rock-the-Vote spent a lot of time and money in 2000 and 2004 trying to get 18-24 year olds to vote. And while there was a modest bump in participation in these two elections, all the advertising and guilt-tripping in the world were not going to convince the majority of 18-24 year-olds to get out of bed and cast a vote for the candidates on the ballots.

It appears 18-24 year-olds are showing up for three reasons: (1) First, and foremost they are turned on by Barack Obama - what he is saying resonates with them; (2) in the past five years social networking tools have made it possible for these digital natives to spread their enthusiasm at rapid speed; and (3) Obama's campaign understands how to engage in this new civic space. I am convinced that reasons two and three won't get you very far without number one.

Meaning no podcast, YouTube video, or other new media strategy is going to make 25-year-olds want to go to a performance that doesn't seem relevant to their lives. Arts institutions that want to play a significant role in their communities in the future must be aware and sensitive to the current and changing social and ethnic demographics of their communities as they program.

A study by Paul DiMaggio and Toqir Mukhtar indicates that in the US the only art forms experiencing increases in attendance are museums and jazz clubs. The report speculates that this may be because Jazz is inherently an ethnically diverse artform, and that museums have worked very hard in the past 10-15 years to make their programming and exhibits more diverse.

While attendance has declined at many major orchestras in the US over the past several years, the LA Philharmonic has been playing at near capacity. A 2006 article in The New York Times states that the LA Phil's programming - modernist-leaning and often inventively theatrical - has won the envy of music lovers across the country." The Times writer, Allan Kozinn viewed the transformation of the LA Phil under Esa-Pekka Salonen as a "lesson in how to update an august cultural institution without cheapening its work." The article noted that despite the assertion from other orchestras that new music doesn't sell tickets that the LA Phil sold 93 percent of its tickets that year (a much higher percentage than many leading orchestras in the US these days).

Salonen was not an overnight success in LA. In the Times interview, he admits that he "started off maybe a little harshly" at the Phil and that he "wasn't really having a dialogue with the audience." That he was "doing the 'medicine' thing." Salonen talks about having come from Finland where "there is almost no diversity" and then landing in LA. He says he realized over time that his "rigid Northern European ideas were not necessarily valid in a culture that had such a "degree of diversity". Salonen's programming evolved in response to his engagement with the community. This wasn't about pandering; it was, to use his word, "dialogue." The LA Phil's new music director, 26 year-old Gustavo Dudamel, another bold choice, also appears to be someone that will engage deeply with the diverse communities of LA. With his role as conductor of The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and his development through the el Sistema Venezuelan youth orchestra movement, there is no doubt that Dudamel will have an impact on LA, and vice versa.

In an essay in the new book Entering Cultural Communities, Morris Fred and Betty Farrell write, "The awareness that there are other traditions, values, and interests in the arts with appeal to a more diverse range of arts audiences has been slow to take hold or to challenge the status quo in the mainstream cultural sphere. But the notion of equity is now being added to the long-held tradition of excellence in the arts, and the ethos of exclusivity has begun to give way to a commitment to inclusivity." I highly recommend this book, which features several case studies and examples of arts organizations that have strived to achieve both equity and excellence in their work.

This is not about commercialization of the arts; it's about understanding the communities you serve. Who are they? What are their core values? How does your programming reflect that you understand these things? You don't need to serve everyone, but you need to be clear about who you are serving, and why.

Just a quick sidebar here on ticket prices: I firmly believe that in the US if we want the arts to matter to more people we must address the fact that arts organizations have raised ticket prices to a such a level that they have created a psychological barrier, if not an actual economic barrier, for most Americans. It may be true that young people will fork out $180 for sneakers and beg their parents to pay twice that to take them see Miley Cyrus, but it appears many are not compelled to pay the same to see a classical music concert. Furthermore, the perception that the fine arts are only for wealthy people persists in the US. I'm not advocating that all ticket prices must be low; but the arts must address these perceptions.


7. Let People In On The Action

Once Elizabeth Streb opened her warehouse she started noticing that her patrons literally wanted to get in on the action, so she put in a trapeze and started to teach people how to fly. In four years, her school has grown from 10 to 40 classes per week for preschoolers, elementary and junior high school students, and adults, and enrollment and tuition income have increased ten-fold. Education and access are now core to the mission of STREB. The organizational materials state that the company's approach seeks to demystify the process of making art by bringing the once private creative activity into the traffic of everyday existence.

Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago has an exemplary program called First Look 101 in which they invite 101 patrons to join them at every step along the rehearsal process. They attend the first read-through, blocking rehearsals, and tech.

But letting people in on the action isn't only about inviting them into the artistic process. It's also about sharing the limelight. In the 2004 pamphlet Pro-Am Revolution, How Enthusiasts Are Changing Our Economy and Society, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller write: "Pro-Ams—people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards—are an increasingly important part of our society and economy."

The Internet has given everyone with access the tools to create and distribute their own art. Arts organizations could become mentors, resource providers, or sources of content that could be re-purposed by amateur artists. Or they could invite pro-am artists to submit artistic work that could be displayed on their Web sites as a way of building community—and, who knows, maybe even finding new talent or new programming ideas.

For an exhibit of an avant-garde multimedia group called The Residents, MOMA in NYC curated 11 videos to accompany a short audio piece by the Residents. These videos were created by the general public in response to an open call. The top 11 videos curated by MOMA, were then posted on YouTube, and the public was invited to weigh in, and vote for their favorites. From the public feedback, MOMA ultimately determined which videos to screen at the museum. This is a great example of unleashing amateur creativity and public participation.

Here's another: Auckland Theater Company's Open Call. Ten participants were selected through a nationwide audition process, which was open to anyone 18 to 25 years old with no professional experience as an actor to be in an adaptation of Taming of the Shrew. One online reviewer called it "the most vibrant, engaging and truly alive 90 odd minutes of theatre I have ever witnessed from Auckland Theatre Company."

What about patron as pro-am critic? If the consumer has achieved tastemaking status anyway, then why not elevate seasoned patrons to the role of reviewers and encourage them to write reviews, posted as blogs on your Web sites? Prior to joining the Foundation I was the managing director of a Seattle-based organization called On the Boards that presents avant-garde music, theater, dance, and anti-disciplinary performance art from around the world. With the help of Doug McClennan at ArtsJournal.com, artistic director Lane Czaplinski and I started what is believed to be the first patron review blog in the US in late 2003. It's been incredibly successful.

Patron reviews not only give your organization critical information about what patrons are thinking, but help patrons build community, and improve their capacities to process, discuss and understand what they have experienced—in other words, develop cultural literacy. It also promotes alternate viewpoints from those espoused by the local art critic - let's not forget that art is subjective, after all; and, in the absence of a review, a patron review is a strong substitute for satisfying those "latemovers" who need to hear what people think before they will buy tickets. And they may trust your patron reviews more than they trust the local critic, anyway.


8. Be a Concierge: Filter and Make Recommendations

One of the greatest challenges for consumers created by the Internet is having too many choices—people are bombarded with information. Consumers increasingly expect customization, and for retailers to understand their preferences and market to them accordingly. Recommender-sites understand this. Arts organizations, on the other hand, really don't get this and are generally terrible at helping patrons make smart, satisfying purchase decisions.

Arts organizations tend to tell the public "We've got 8 or 18 shows this season, and they are all fantastic (!!)" Well, they may all be pretty good, but they are not all the same, and by not helping patrons find the play that they are most likely to enjoy seeing, there is a greater likelihood that they will either choose none of the above; or not have an enjoyable experience.

Arts organizations need to get beyond transactional experiences and become arts concierges: responsive, reliable, and trusted friends who help patrons make decisions about what to see, who to invite, and where to go for dinner before hand. They also need to help people sort through the vast array of cultural options in their community and make better decisions.

I've often wondered why arts organizations don't cross promote and upsell more often. If you buy a book on Amazon, it often encourages you to buy another book by the same author and get both at a discounted price. If I buy a ticket to Three Sisters on one theater's Web site, why doesn't the site then say, "You bought a ticket to Chekhov's Three Sisters. Here are other cultural activities that might interest you. Bundle any of these other items with your ticket purchase and receive a discount on all the items." If every cultural organization did this in partnership with other cultural organizations I would almost guarantee we could actively increase cultural participation. We live in a time when most people don't have a culturally sophisticated friend or relative to help them engage with the fine arts so arts organizations need to take on this role. But being arts concierges, filtering, and building partnerships organization by organization may be just the beginning.



9. Aggregate Supply and Demand for All Culture

Imagine this idea scaled for an entire city. What if all the products from all the arts organizations in Melbourne were aggregated by a site called "MelbourneCultureClub.org" and you could get a periodic email in your in box making personal culture recommendations to you from everything that's happening in your city. In much the same way as the online dating service Eharmony uses surveys to gather information and match people up, a community-wide Web site could collect data on patron preferences - favorite composers, actors, directors, authors, styles, types of experiences, books, movies, televisions shows, radio programs - and develop a sophisticated recommender system. Coupled with a social networking site and patron reviews these tools could help patrons make more informed decisions, make recommendations to each other, and perhaps even entice patrons to try performances they might not otherwise have sought out.

And what if this aggregation of products and customer data meant that local citizens, and tourists who belong to the CultureClubs in their home cities, could create customized subscriptions or vacation packages with the click of a button? To create basically horizontal packages bundling artistic experiences across the product lines of the various organizations? For those that don't feel comfortable creating their own package, the site could suggest some thematic packages: "A Masterworks package" an "An Avant-Garde package" "A Wholesome Family Entertainment package" a "Hot Art with Cool Parties package" etc.

Whether pre-packaged or customized, by bundling horizontally, one play on your season, or one exhibit in your museum, could appear on hundreds of niche packages. And what if these packages weren't limited to nonprofit fine arts organizations? What if they included nightclubs, commercial theater, films, gallery exhibits, books, cds and other entertainment? Blasphemy?

In fact, why not tie a site like this to Amazon, NetFlix, Public Radio, TV, Cable? What if because you bought a ticket to a play through a site like this, you could automatically get an alert when the play was being discussed on your local public radio station? What if the interview was automatically downloaded as a podcast to your device of choice, or emailed to you? Andrew Taylor and I started brainstorming a concept a couple years ago called Amazon-Live. (BTW you can read Andrew's blog on artsjournal.com) What if, because you bought a particular Shostakovich CD, Amazon alerted you when a piece on that CD was going to be played by your local orchestra? What if you were one click away from buying a ticket? Does bundling with commercial product make us sleazy or super smart?

In 1992 sociologist Richard Peterson coined the term Cultural Omnivore to describe the tendency of many people to develop tastes for everything: high art and pop culture and everything in between. We may have a generation of cultural omnivores out there, but we've made it difficult for them to feast because we've created silos between high art and low art, and between the disciplines of music, theater, dance, opera, and the visual arts. Why not help these omnivores find their ways from Six Feet Under to the playwright Adam Bock? In the minds of the consumer, it's all culture. By maintaining our "separate and better than others" status the arts could be losing their spot at the banquet. Rather than competing against one another to sell subscriptions and single tickets, perhaps arts organizations could work together to increase cultural participation—create "Cultural Omnivore Subscriptions."

We can aggregate supply and demand for culture, and grow the pie for everyone, or we can have turf battles. If we choose the latter, I fear that HBO, American Idol, book clubs, cooking, knitting, gardening and home improvement, and now even Coca Cola, will beat us at our game.


10. Beware the Search for Silver Bullets and Innovation for Its Own Sake

There is no formula for how we engage people in the new civic space. The answer is not "podcasts + Facebook + $10 tickets." I recently saw the ENO/Met production of Philip Glass's Satyagraha, directed by Phelim McDermott, co-founder of the Manchester-based theater company, Improbable. My colleague at the Foundation, Susan Feder, recently pointed out a line by Mr. McDermott in the program notes that I think has pertinence to this conversation. "Improvisation as we practice it is less about being quick-witted and wacky and more about embracing paradoxical skills. These include the ability to be courageous and decisive while at the same time open and vulnerable to whatever happens around you. We work on developing the ability to be humble, not armored, in the face of unexpected events …" Sounds like Mr. McDermitt could have written a chapter on Deep Survival.

Innovation has quickly become a buzz word among arts funders and organizations in the US the past few years. Unfortunately, a call for innovation for its own sake too often results in a scramble for wacky ideas. This is not the answer. There's no silver bullet that will conquer the culture change.

What do the many organizations I've cited today have in common? First, their artistic leaders were involved in and deeply committed to their transformations. Second, they do not behave as if achieving artistic virtuosity and being relevant to the community are competing or mutually exclusive goals. They are pursuing both excellence and equity. Third, they had the courage, capacity, and willingness to adapt.

The ability to adapt is critical to surviving disasters, and it's also a characteristic of high-impact organizations, according to a 2007 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The author of Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales, says, "Those who avoid accidents are those who see the world clearly, see it changing, and change their behavior accordingly."

He also says, "People survive better in numbers." Interestingly, another of the characteristics of high impact organizations is their ability to network and build effective partnerships in order to achieve greater social impact. Finally, Gonzales says, "Plan the flight and fly the plan. But don't fall in love with the plan. Be open to a changing world and let go of the plan when necessary so that you can make a new plan."

The American writer, philosopher and publisher Elbert Hubbard said, "Art is not a thing; it is a way." We must forge the way with art. As Jim Phills said, there is an alternative for an organization that's struggling to survive. It doesn't have to close its doors—it can create value by redefining its mission in relation to people. It is not acceptable to have merely transactional relationships with our patrons—to create artistic experiences and sell or give them away without regard for the capacity of people to receive them and find meaning in them. We must understand that audience development is not about derrieres in chairs, but rather about brokering a relationship between people and art. And in order to do that job well we must be open to the ways that art and artists are changing, and the ways that society is changing.

In 1963, the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III proclaimed, "the arts are not for the privileged few, but for the many. Their place is not on the periphery of daily life, but at its center." America didn't fulfill Rockefeller's vision in the 20th century. But wouldn't it be great if we could do it in the 21st? If we can be open to, and courageous in the face of, the changing world, I believe we can.

I've talked about some new, perhaps even impossibly new, ideas. I want to end today by sharing a 60 year-old idea from Lewis Hyde. In his 1945 book, The Gift, Hyde says, "The art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received. Even if we have paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which has nothing to do with the price." Hyde says that whereas "the commodity moves to turn a profit, the gift moves to the empty place. It turns toward him that has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him."

Perhaps it's time for us to stop waiting for people to find us, to appreciate us, and instead move toward them; seek to understand them; break into their hearts and minds—in that order.