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Americans for the Arts

“…The Art That Is In You Has Only Faintly Touched The Lives Of Your People.”

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Last month, Americans for the Arts blog was printing excerpts from the writing of Robert E. Gard who primary focused on manifesting the Wisconsin Idea through theater and creative writing starting around 1945.

I first became enamored of the concept of the Wisconsin Idea about 10 years ago. The idea that a state government and university system would be focused on a holistic improvement of the lives of the state’s citizenry is pretty inspiring.  Even though political opposition began work to undermine and unravel elements of it almost immediately, people have hewn to the Wisconsin Idea for over a century.

There was an excerpt on Americans for the Arts’ blog of a piece Gard wrote in 1952 that illustrates just how long some themes and debates about the arts in the U.S. have endured.

Your struggle, America, has matured so rapidly that the quaint folkishness of your village has been swept into an almost common molding, and the economic fruit of your struggle has been so plentiful that we, your people, have tended to shun the responsibility of art, sometimes to scorn it, and to look at it askance as a manifestation unworthy of our virile American manhood. You have put down deep taproots, America, that have given us the stuff of wondrous plenty, but these same roots have starved off the expressiveness of yourself. For those of us who have loved you best have not completely understood your struggle, and the art that is in you has only faintly touched the lives of your people.

[…]

It became suddenly and completely apparent to me that we could no longer pretend that theater, to have its true vital meaning, could be fabricated and foisted upon the people as entertainment alone, or as sociology, or as an art form practiced by the few for the satisfaction of individual egos. But that theater must grow spontaneously from the lives and the necessities of the people, so that the great dream of a few men and women who saw true visions might come true: the dream of an America accepting the idea of great popular art expression without question, as a thing inherently American.

So there you go, in 1952 Gard expressed concern that: 1 – America has a slightly hostile streak when it comes to the arts or creative self-expression; 2 – Arts needed to be viewed as more than just simple entertainment; 3- Yet not viewed as the province of an elite few, but as place where people saw their own lives reflected.

In 60+ years since Gard wrote that, little has changed. These topics still dominate conversation and are cause for hand wringing.

I am optimistic that things are headed in a constructive direction. Given all the attention focused on programming, casting and employment choices being made in theater and movies, there is a greater opportunity to see oneself and one’s stories.

The same with the effort to build public will for arts and culture I have been writing about recently which has creative self-expression at its core.

I am sure Gard was pretty optimistic back then too, and with good reason if you look at all that was created and still endures in the name of the Wisconsin Idea. It is also pretty clear that the effort has to constantly be sustained against both external forces that seek to oppose and erode it, as well as simple internal neglect and entropy.

To some degree, I see the effort to build public will for arts and culture as a spiritual successor of the Wisconsin Idea. The Idea was always meant to become a national influence. While its spread hasn’t been as prevalent as initially hoped, the folks in Wisconsin have been really good about actively keeping the torch lit and the light has indirectly had a positive influence on others.

If you are looking for a guiding principle to help you speak about arts and culture to those who have negative associations with the concepts, you could do worse than to meditate upon and internalize the empathy and ambition of the last line in the first paragraph I quoted:

For those of us who have loved you best have not completely understood your struggle, and the art that is in you has only faintly touched the lives of your people.

Oh, You Want Us To Teach It, Too?

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Last month on Americans for the Arts’ Arts Blog, Elizabeth Laskowski, wrote about how she welcomed standardized testing for the arts because it was making her school finally take her seriously.

My first thought was that she was basically embracing the philosophy of the kid who always acts up in class–even attention in a negative context is better than no attention.

Because students will now be tested in the arts area, Laskowski will now receive regular evaluations of her teaching, attending her class will no longer be a “carrot and stick” privilege afforded well-behaved children, students will get up to 135-180 minutes a week with her instead of 30 and the grades in her class will actually count.

It probably goes without saying that I think it shouldn’t take the threat of testing to create a situation where a music teacher is thrilled that:

“We will no longer be simply a prep time for general education teachers, or a way for the kids to blow off a little steam before they get back to work. The arts will be full fledged, real, and valuable subjects, worthy of time, money, and respect.”

Elizabeth Laskowski’s post illustrated for me that it isn’t enough to just advocate for arts in the schools, requiring that they be treated seriously and taught is also apparently necessary.

Parents may have to scrutinize claims of arts classes being offered. It appears all classes are not created equal and one should not assume that three years of music class provides roughly equivalent instruction hours as three years of French.

Your Mouth Says Innovative, Your Pictures Say Status Quo

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Yesterday I alluded to one of my pet marketing peeves, the claim that a work of art reveals “what it means to be human.” The phrase has mercifully fallen out of frequent usage these days (or at least I am not being sent those press releases and brochures any more).

However, Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 reminds us about the importance of such buzz phrases to the non-profit arts community. She cites the (tongue in cheek) grant proposal by Michael Alexander of Grand Performances. Here is a taste:

“The Innovative Art Jargon Creation Project – An Activity for the New Millennium”

Project Synopsis
Grand Performances respectfully requests a grant of $37,500 to manage a program to develop new Art Jargon which will be necessary for effective grant writing in the next century.
[…]

HISTORY OF NEED
Each passing decade since the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts has seen a geometric growth in the number of “buzz words” used by arts grant writers in their applications. To date, there has been no formal development program to insure consistency of quality of these new phrases, nor a system for dissemination to insure that grant writers throughout the country had access to the new phrases at the same time, often giving grants writers in one geographic region or one discipline an unfair advantage over those writers not familiar with the new phrases. Certain regions and certain disciplines have been consistently underserved due to their grant writers’ inability to gain access to the new phrases in a timely manner.

…During the national economic recession of the early 1990’s grant writers hit “a brick wall” as funding decreased for the arts and the available supply of new “buzz words” diminished…A privately funded study involving independent arts grant writers, arts consultants and representatives from government funding agencies from throughout the country provided evidence that one of the major causes of the diminished funding was a scarcity of exciting and useful “buzz words” that could be used in arts grant applications.

I got some pretty good chuckles off this.

However, over on ARTSblog, Megan Pagado reflects on her experiences attending the National Arts Marketing Project Conference noting that the choices arts marketers make often perpetuate the status quo even as they express a desire to change it.

“Slowly, though, the conversation shifted from marketer-created messages to marketer-perpetuated messages. A picture of an all-white, male orchestra elicited the most memorable response: “They’re all dudes!”

Therein laid the dilemma for many of us in the room: What is our process of reviewing materials from artists? What if an artist doesn’t have a better, less stereotypical photo for a marketing team to use? And, as Amy Fox (@museumtweets) tweeted: Do artists always understand the stereotypes they perpetuate when they create?

Some marketers walked away with an action item: creating a diverse committee to review artist materials, for example.

But I think many, including myself, walked away with more questions than answers: How can I be inclusive while avoiding tokenism? When does utilizing inclusive language achieve its desired goal of making all feel welcome, and when does it simply brush issues under the rug and avoid conversations that need to be had?

I will admit I had never really thought about whether an image an artist supplied was perpetuating a stereotype. Most frequently my concern is whether the image communicates that the performance will be interesting. I just had this conversation today about an image in which a pianist appears to have dozed off at the keys.

Taken together, these two blog posts remind us to be cognizant of the impression conveyed by the words and images we employ to promote our organization and activities. Are we saying we are innovative because we are or because innovative is the trending term? Do the images we use back up that claim?

I think it can easily slip our notice that while we may be explicitly saying, “we want to include you,” the images we use may implicitly be saying “No we don’t.” Certainly the environment and attendance experience in a performance hall can communicate this as well. But I think people recognize that dress code and knowing when to clap are already sources of anxiety and have taken steps to address this. It is probably time to start paying attention to the pictures too.

We’ve Discovered Creativity!

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Creativity is getting A LOT of play lately. I have written on the subject at least six or seven times since the new year, including a discussion about the IBM study that found corporate executives value creativity over pretty much everything else. Thomas Cott features a cross section the subject in his You’ve Cott Mail today. There is the Creativity Post site which devotes itself pretty much entirely to the subject.

You’d almost think no one was aware of creativity until Richard Florida discovered it in 2005 launching a mad scramble to mine it.

Of course, it existed long before that..and we have proof! Maria Popova posted a videos of a talk John Cleese gave on Brain Pickings this weekend. At first I thought he just gave the talking in the last month, so timely did it sound. But he looked a lot younger than he did when I saw him a couple months ago. But you know, despite sounding so recent, he gave the talk in 1991.

Those of you who recognize Cleese’s name from Monty Python probably have no doubts about his credentials to talk about creativity. You may not know that Cleese also has a series of really good management videos, which come to think of it, I believe I first saw around 1991. He was the first to introduce me to the idea that good leadership means creating an environment which can effectively function in your absence, rather than requiring you to make every decision.

One of the things that Cleese says in the creativity video, which is borne out by research and recent writings on the subject, is that creativity is something you have to work at. He mentions that there was another member of the Monty Python troupe he felt had far more creative talent than he, but who would give up on an idea very quickly compared to Cleese because, in his view, there was a lot of discomfort associated with spending time working with a weak idea to make it stronger and more original.

Apparently research shows that people who are deemed more “creative” do spend more time playing with a problem trying to find a solution. These people learn to tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty rather than reaching for the easiest solution in order to gain the satisfaction of completion.

The need to be decisive runs counter to the process of creativity because creativity requires weighing many options. Earlier in the video Cleese talks about how it is easy to do small things that are urgent rather than taking the time to do big things which aren’t so urgent, like giving yourself the time and space to be creative. In the same manner, it is difficult in today’s work environment to escape the sense that you should be doing something (be it internal or external) long enough to stimulate creativity.

It has been suggested on Americans for the Arts Artsblog’s Private Sector Salons that the arts community has a lot to offer the private sector in terms of training in creativity.

My concern is that the arts community doesn’t really know how and why they are creative. There are things that we do that elicit creative thoughts like improvisation games, walks in the woods, etc., but we may not realize is that it isn’t the activities per se that make as creative as much as that they represent the carving out of time, space and environment separate from our daily lives in which we can be creative.

Teaching people to do improv games or telling them they should take long walks in the woods isn’t going to make them creative if they aren’t allowing their minds to leave their desks. If they don’t have the courage to embrace uncertainty, be wrong and appear indecisive, participation in playful activities won’t help. If arts groups are going to help private sector businesses become more creative, they need to be clear that the exercises they are teaching them are just tools to help them attain a creative mindset.

The activities are meaningless of themselves and interchangeable with many others that you may find convenient and enjoyable. Some are certainly more conducive to group interactions toward creativity than others, some may better suit the corporate culture, but no one activity is necessarily the key to magical creative synchronicity. You can be creative sitting at your desk if you have the discipline and courage to allow yourself to be.

The most interesting thing Cleese talks about is the importance of humor to solving problems. He notes that people may not feel humor is appropriate when addressing serious problems, but that it absolutely is. That is why I found it interesting. I would be afraid to interject humor into a serious discussion. Serious should not be confused with solemn he says. You can talk about serious matters of the day while laughing and it wouldn’t make the problems any less serious. Cleese seems to say that the use of humor can help mentally insulate you from the problem enough to arrive at creative solutions.

Stuff To Ponder: What About Engaging Arts Organizations?

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Taking up where I left off yesterday, one of the last things I mentioned was that arts people might have an easier time shifting their perceptions to be more inclusive of what constitutes artistic practice and works of art than the general public might.

The thing is, while arts people may be more able to make the shift in thinking, they may not think it is necessary unless the necessity of doing so is pointed out to them. There is a lot of effort being made on a national, regional and local level to communicate the benefits of the arts to the general public but there isn’t a complementary effort to let the arts community know what their role is.

You can help in that effort by passing on or retweeting this post! 😉

But really, I recently realized the effort to get the general public to invest in the arts is a little one sided. Americans for the Arts will run ads telling people there are things they can do give their kids more arts experiences but most of the burden is on the parents to go online to the Americans for the Arts site and seek out arts organizations in their community. There may be an assumption that whatever arts organizations are doing to generate public awareness of themselves will be enough.

While Americans for the Arts had some requirements if you wanted to partner in their last kids and the arts campaign, what perhaps they should have also done is gone to the arts organizations and said, listen, we are going to run a slew of ads in your area encouraging people to take their kids to performances and museums and sign them up for classes. We are going to tell them to look for this little smiley guy logo. You can benefit by putting this logo on your website, in your ads and on the side of your building like the Safe Place logo they have on fire stations so people can easily identify organizations that offer these services.

The NEA starting a long term campaign communicating a “its all art and you should be reaching out” message to arts organizations through various channels would help to get arts organizations on the same page with them. That way the arts groups can start providing a public message complementary to the NEA’s and begin to shift themselves and the community to a more inclusive mindset.

Heck, what might actually be effective is a national campaign like the one Dominos recently ran that acknowledges people’s complaints about arts experiences. It could simultaneously address public sentiment and let arts organizations know they have a responsibility in the relationship as well.

Of course, lacking the unified will of a corporation, the campaign can’t make concrete promises of improvement across the arts sector. And honestly, unless it was incredibly well-designed and coordinated, it could alienate the general public, arts organizations or both.

But it would also be the first time that these issues were acknowledged and addressed nationally. Those of us who regularly read blogs and attend conferences are likely well aware of the need for change. But many arts people, including board members, aren’t participating in these conversations and may not be as aware of the shifting realities. This would put the topic front and center.

There isn’t just a need to do a better job of communicating our message to our local community, we need to apply the same techniques to communicating among ourselves. Which may in turn increase the number of organizations effectively communicating with their local communities.

There are already a few communication channels being used to rally arts organizations and their supporters to contact their legislators prior to crucial votes. Those are a good starting point to mobilize arts organizations but the message needs to come from different sources: blogs, television, radio, YouTube video, tweets, Facebook. In other words, the same channels we are urged to use to engage our communities can be used to engage arts organizations.

Whatever the message is needs to be light and encouraging rather than declarative and directive. Just like our audiences, arts organizations should be hearing more from their national, state and local leadership than OHMYGOD! THEYAREALLAGAINSTUS YOUMUSTMOBILIZENOW!

There should be Van Goghurt commercials made to encourage arts organizations to do better and point out resources organizational leaders can consult.

The nonprofit arts world in the U.S. is so decentralized it is hard to effectively communicate with most of the organizations. If the government provided higher levels of funding, more organizations might have closer relationships with central funders and it would be easier to provide training and information in best practices. For many it is not worth the effort required to apply, so they remain unidentified and out of touch with service organizations.

Instead of providing a few arts organizations with the funds to improve community participation, maybe foundations/funders should focus on establishing stronger channels of communication and relationships between service organizations/arts councils and arts groups, as well as between the arts groups themselves. Once that is achieved, instead of many individual organizations trying to re-invent the wheel alone, they may become better aware of the practices of those around them which will hopefully translate over time into a community engaged with the arts rather than with specific arts organizations.

As it is now, the best engagement practices developed by the exemplar organizations being funded will only be disseminated to a few hundred people attending a conference or reading a report. Better engagement and communication between arts groups and the arts councils/organizations that serve them could multiply the impact.

Don’t Forget Leadership and Teamwork

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I was helping out a local high school by conducting mock interviews with their students today. I enjoy doing this because the school does a great job preparing the students for the experience. I often don’t realize just how nervous the students are until the sweaty palm handshake as they depart. The last student I spoke to was applying for a position as a nurses aide and I was pleased to hear him talk about how his experience as the section leader in his band conferred leadership and conflict management skills. I made sure I complimented him on mentioning that and coached him about mentioning it in future interviews. (My interview partner who was not an arts person did so as well.)

It occurred to me that when I have read about the benefits of the arts recently, leadership and teamwork didn’t seem to figure largely in the lists. Given the recent push that education make someone employable, it is probably important that it be emphasized more.

I did a quick and, by no means exhaustive, survey of articles listing the benefits of arts education and found that my suspicion was generally true. Many talked about the cultivation of very desirable traits like intellectual and emotional development, flexibility of worldview, judgement, problem solving, expressiveness and ability to anticipate consequences.

In our desire to justify ourselves by identifying some distinctive advantages conferred only by the arts and creative expression, we seem to have forgotten some basic benefits a high school kid can cite. Speaking of which, while we are touting these benefits, it probably behooves us long term to make sure high school kids who are having these experiences can cite the benefits.

The intellectual and emotional development advantages frequently referenced are often individual achievements. Leadership and team work are assets in the social sphere and warrant inclusion. It may seem of little consequence now, but I suspect there is a fair chance that in the next 10 years technologically induced anti-social/introspective tendencies may be be deemed a crisis and these qualities will be highly prized.

This all being said, there are a lot of benefits to arts education and it is tough to list them all. If you are looking for a list to keep handy, here are some great ones. (A couple which list leadership and teamwork). Again, these are some I personally find helpful rather than an exhaustive list.

Americans for the Arts
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
Miller-McCune
Artsblog post by Kristen Engebretsen

Feel free to add a few of your favs in the comments section.

Creativity To The Left Of Me, Creativity To The Right

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I am just getting around to reading a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Stephen Tepper and George Kuh (subscription required) about the need to get serious about teaching creativity. By coincidence or design, Americans for the Arts is holding a blog salon on arts in education that also focuses heavily on creativity. Clearly this is becoming a prime topic of discussion.

Tepper and Kuh argue against a prevailing image that creativity stems from environmental conditions rather than being developed through hard work and practice.

“First, we must move beyond the naïvely egalitarian, almost mystical view of creativity advanced by many creativity enthusiasts. This view suggests that to unleash creative capacity, we have only to set up conditions in which creativity will naturally blossom—informal workspaces, nonhierarchical organizations, flexible jobs, opportunities for cross-fertilization, and diverse and hip urban spaces. Such conditions are thought to encourage lateral thinking, brainstorming, and risk taking, all of which set the stage for innovation and entrepreneurship. No wonder creativity is an irresistible solution to our nation’s most pressing challenges! It appears to flow like tap water, requiring no significant investment in research or training. To transform our economy, we just have to get out of the way and let creativity grow free, like kudzu.

Existing research suggests otherwise. Creativity is not a mysterious quality, nor can one simply try on one of Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats to start the creative juices flowing. Rather, creativity is cultivated through rigorous training and by deliberately practicing certain core abilities and skills over an extended period of time. These include:

1. the ability to approach problems in nonroutine ways using analogy and metaphor;

2. conditional or abductive reasoning (posing “what if” propositions and reframing problems);

3. keen observation and the ability to see new and unexpected patterns;

4. the ability to risk failure by taking initiative in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty;

5. the ability to heed critical feedback to revise and improve an idea;

6. a capacity to bring people, power, and resources together to implement novel ideas; and

7. the expressive agility required to draw on multiple means (visual, oral, written, media-related) to communicate novel ideas to others.”

They admit that not all university arts programs are designed to engender these qualities, nor are the arts the sole discipline that engenders these abilities, but by and large arts students are challenged in these ways.

In the last few years I have frequently talked about how businesses are saying there is a need for creativity in leaders and employees. Other than citing other people who have said it, I haven’t had any solid evidence to back the claim up. However, thanks to a post by Emily Peck on the AftA blog salon, now I do. She links to an IBM survey of 1500 executive directors, Capitalizing on Complexity, where their top insight is that CEO’s need to:

Embody creative leadership.
CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics. Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they lead and interact in entirely new ways.

Notice the words ambiguity and experimentation also listed by Tepper and Kuh.

Another salon blogger, Sarah Murr who works as an arts and culture subject matter expert for Boeing, cites Seven Survival Skills created by researcher and author Tony Wagner that …”people need in order to discuss, understand, and offer leadership to solve some of the most pressing issues we face as a democracy in the 21st century”

These too look very much like those listed by Tepper and Kuh which provides me some confidence that the thinking in the arts and business worlds are resonating to some degree. But there is still some work to be done in communicating these commonalities. Another arts in education salon blogger, Eric Booth, reported the general message he came away with from a National Arts Policy Roundtable retreat.

“The key message I took away from them could be stated like this:

Most people in business think “creativity” is a fluffy indefinite word, yet more hokum from the touchy-feely-artsy set. Indeed most business people do not want new employees arriving with the expectation that they can be creative all over the place. What we want are innovations, and hard-working employees who can recognize and deliver on the unusual occasion in which their creative input is valuable. If you can identify for me the key skills within creativity that produce successful employees in my real setting, and produce innovations that work for my company, and can show me the data that affirms you can reliably develop those key skills, I will become your biggest supporter. Til then, it sounds like fluff to me.

We can’t even name the key skills of creativity that we train, no less demonstrate that we reliably develop such skills.

[…]

I do meet a lot of creativity in good students of all interest areas, which makes me wonder if the arts really are delivering something distinctively potent. I even find research that affirms parts of this assertion that the arts are unusually powerful in developing creative capacity. But even if we are succeeding in developing creative capacity effectively, few can articulate what it is we are doing, or what those skills are.

How can we change the status quo if we can’t make a clear, well-founded statement about a core claim?

[…]

Identify the top three skills of creativity that matter to you in your work with career-track students. Not 10 or 23 skills, but the most essential two or three skills…

And one year from now, add a very simple and non-intrusive documentation-and-assessment practice that illuminates the ways in which your students are getting better at those skills over time. That’s it. That simple.

This may sound like a lot of work, but if you are in education you know that everything is moving toward evidence based whether it is K-12 No Child Left Behind or to meet accreditation standards in higher education. Measuring what Booth suggests should at least be marginally more interesting than performing most evaluations because you are establishing your own criteria.

Degree or Equivalent

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The Americans for the Arts ArtsBlog had a contribution from Zack Hayhurst, a candidate for a Masters in Arts Administration at American University. His entry talks about the benefits an arts management degree confers as well as what it doesn’t.

One of the things he says it won’t do is be beneficial to those who already have an established arts management career.

“My own experience has been that those who come to the degree program with a few years of arts management experience under their belt, are likely left feeling under-challenged. The reason for this is not because what the programs teach is not valuable or correct, but because the perspective from which subjects are taught are often taught from an introductory perspective. This is fine for people like me; however, for someone who has worked in the field – who has dealt with boards, who has managed a strategic marketing plan – the academic instruction of these subjects might seem a little too, for lack of a better word, “academic.”’

His experience at American University may be quite different than what one might find at arts management programs in other places. I know at one time the Bolz Center at the University of Madison required people to have some professional experience before entering their program. From the bios of their current students, I assume that is still the case. They probably gear their instruction accordingly.

But something I have noticed fairly often these days is that arts management jobs are saying some sort of masters in arts or cultural management is a desirable qualification these days. In such a case, what is a person without such a degree to do? Often the position will mention equivalent experience as being acceptable, but I know many organizations, including my own, will put a lot more stock in the degree over the experience.

As a person with a masters in arts management I can say that a year of experience is probably more valuable than a year of instruction, though the instruction certainly shortened the learning curve in acquiring that experience. I suspect most people who have earned an arts management degree would say that more or less. So why is the degree valued so much more?

Well, it is much easier to quantify. With a degree, I know exactly what a job candidate was required to learn. I can’t know exactly what skills a person picked up in acquiring their experience. One person in a relatively unknown theatre in a Colorado might have taken a lot of initiative and performed the functions of many positions in the understaffed theatre and has an incredible depth of knowledge. Another person working in the same position title at Lincoln Center may have acquired fewer skills because they were never challenged to expand their role. How am I to know unless the person from Colorado does a super job of outlining this experience in a cover letter and resume? The applicant has to do a great job communicating and I have to commit to listening and reading between the lines carefully to get past the prestige of Lincoln Center.

But really, even if neither of these people worked at a Lincoln Center and I wasn’t familiar enough with any of the places on their resumes to know what was demanded of them, how do I choose between them? Maybe I don’t have to if someone else has a degree in arts administration and a little bit of practical experience. I have hired people on the basis of experience over degree and had to write a long justification pulling apart every applicable line on their resume to explain why it was just as good or better than a degree. Being relieved of this necessity can be a powerful incentive to favor a person with a degree. It may be fear of this situation that will drive people with respectable amount of experience to enter masters programs as they see more and more jobs listing a degree as a desired qualification.

The question is, will it be a boring, financially wasteful experience for these people, or will arts administration programs provide a sort of alternative track that Hayhurst alludes to? Perhaps more valuable to people with significant experience might be shorter certificate programs, that are not necessarily based in higher education, geared toward those of their status that can supplement their knowledge in areas where they are weaker. It would just be a matter of getting employers to recognize these as qualified certification of substantial ability.

Looking North: Tax Credits For Arts Education

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Americans for the Arts blog has just finished up a week long blog salon on arts education. On the last day of discussion, AFTA staffer Tim Mikulski reported that Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the government would provide a tax credit to parents whose children participate in some form of arts education. I tried looked around the web trying to find out more details, but there really isn’t much more than what Mikulski notes. There was a similar tax credit passed for children’s fitness programs in 2007 and that the arts education tax credit was promised during the 2008 election campaigns but hadn’t manifested.

Mikulski wonders what would happen if the President introduced a bill like this to Congress at the close of his entry. Actually, off the top of my head, I would say it shouldn’t be too contentious. Tax credits and rebates seem to be a tool Congress likes to use at the moment. The culture wars have always been about having tax monies spent on things that one finds offensive. In this case, one is making their own choices. The arts have always received a bigger subsidy via tax deductible donations than through grants from the NEA and NEH. In this situation, unlike with most donations, you would receive a deduction even though you had received a service in return and presumably, it would not matter if the money was spent at a non-profit or for-profit entity. If the NEA is suggesting that people’s arts experiences outside of a formal setting should be regarded as participation, then it only seems fair that all educational efforts be eligible regardless of the vendor’s tax status.

While making any arts education expenditure deductible might mean all that money won’t get directed to non-profits, it has the potential for increasing audiences for the non-profit sector if purchase of tickets to performances and museums count toward the credit. And it gets younger people in the doors. It could even increase demand for the arts in K-12 schools if purchase of supplies for art class, make up and costumes for drama, shoes and clothes for dance and instruments for music were all eligible.

What I think would be most important is the way the tax credit was structured. As one of the commenters to this story on the CTV website points out, this type of policy can tend to favor those with the money to provide their children with lessons. Just as there are those who don’t make enough to ever qualify for a tax rebate, there are going to be people in the lower end of the income bracket who will never be able to provide their children with an art experience. On the other end of the spectrum are those who will provide for their children in the absence of any sort of tax credit.

A well designed program would target those who can do so, but aren’t, or are doing so but would certainly be able to afford it better with a credit. A good sized credit and a low enough threshold to earn it, (need to spend at least $100, but you get $30 credit, for the sake of an example), that makes it easy to decide to arrange for some classes can help eliminate the perception that this is a policy that rewards an elite class. At a certain level of expenditure, the credit would cease to be applicable.

While it would be great to have parents required to expose their children to a diversity of experiences rather than spending $300/ticket to see Spiderman on Broadway and earning a big credit for a single experience, there really is no way to legislate people’s choices.

Info You Can Use: Rebutt This!

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This first one is more of a project to contribute to than use, but ultimately useful just the same. Via the Americans for the Arts blog, an artist in Pennsylvania, Amy Scheidegger, got a little steamed when she overheard two teenagers dismissing the arts as a valid pursuit. “Art is, like, the most worthless degree anyone can get. Like, haha, they have a degree in making shit with popsicle sticks.” Scheidegger decided she was going to put together a book of responses to the idea that art is worthless, an Artistic Rebuttal Book.

She has put out a call for entries to be included in the book.

“For anybody who wants to contribute to the book with their own statement on the importance of art, or where art is hiding that the normal non-artist doesn’t see, or statistics about how much money is spent in any art-related field, whatever you want really, that cites the importance and everywhere-ness of the art we live and breath, now’s your chance to voice your love of art!

YOU don’t even have to be an artist, maybe you just know one (married one, birthed one or just appreciate their hard work, etc) And the statement can be about any kind of art as well: theater, dance, music, visual, the written word, movies, you name it,”

March 12 is her deadline so she can take an abridged version to law makers on Arts Advocacy Day. May 15 is her hard print deadline.

Second tip of the day:

You may or may not know that Facebook has changed their Pages layout. Those are the non-personal pages that businesses can make for themselves. Thanks to the Technology in the Arts Twitter feed, an article about how to best use the new features came to my attention. You should read the tips if you have a Facebook Page account because the changes become permanent whether you opt-in or not on March 1 and some settings you may have turned off will get turned back on by default.

One thing they don’t talk about that I have finally gotten to work with the upgrade is the Username function. I could never get a short, easy to remember username to register so I could actually post a Facebook address that wasn’t 60 characters long and full of arcane symbols. (e.g. www.Facebook.com/mytheatre) I was always told the name was available, but when I confirmed I wanted it, the webpage just hung. Today, first try I finally won the battle and have a nice brief address. If you too have had this problem, the solution may be at hand!

Wish They Had Given Me These Skills In High School

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Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to direct readers to an interview on an education related topic. Tim Mikulski, the arts education person at Americans for the Arts spoke to Wolf Trap Foundation Senior Director of Education Mimi Flaherty Willis about their program which brings the arts to STEM education in early childhood education. Might be of interest to those seeking to create a program to turn STEM to STEAM.

Last Tuesday I participated in a mock interview day a local high school was conducting. (Actually, it ran two days. The assistant theatre manager did the second day.) I think it was the high school’s ninth year doing this and it was very well organized. I received the resumes of the students I would be interviewing and some supporting information about two weeks prior to the day. The room had 30 tables with two interviewers scheduled at each so it was no small undertaking. (And remember, this was a two day affair!) We were given 25 minutes to interview the students, evaluate them and then call them back to provide feedback. In all we had five students to interview in these 25 minute blocks.

Let me tell you, these kids were better prepared than most of the interviewers. We were told that we didn’t have to research the companies to which the students were applying, but in a proper interview setting you ask “Do you have any questions for us?” This means that you need to know a little something in case the students ask what you like about the company or what expectations the company has for their employees. Of course, with my background in theatre, I was able to improvise inspired answers! Well…mostly, I was generally reinforcing the need for ambition, responsibility, education and good customer service.

When I say the students were better prepared than us, I am not as much diminishing the abilities of the industry people at interviewing as emphasizing just how impressive these 15 year olds were. Of the five, only one was clearly unprepared, a fact she admitted herself. The other four were very well prepared and reasonably poised. Of those, the two who most convinced us of their potential as an employee told us they shopped at our stores (an international surf chain and music store, respectively) and what they liked about it. I got up at the group debrief at the end and told the students that research and a personal connection created a strong case for employment. Most employment guides will tell you to do your research, of course, but few tend to do it.

The experience reminded me that I infrequently have someone come into my office looking for a job who says they have attended shows and really want to work here or have done much in the way of research about our programming. Most of those with arts backgrounds who come in want to act rather do administrative or technical work, alas.

I wanted to post about this experience to recommend taking the opportunity to participate in mock interview sessions like this if you have the chance. It gets your face out in the community as a representative of your organization and can help hone your interviewing skills. All the pressure is really on the interviewees. Since you don’t have to evaluate if the person would work out well in your organization, you can relax and use the experience as an opportunity to shift your perspective about how you hire and run your business a little. You can also see, as I did, what excites people about the companies to which they have chosen to apply. There might be a way to bring that same element to your organization or emphasize it more to the general public as a way to attract employees and interns.

In my situation, I was also able to listen in on the interviewing techniques of people at adjacent tables. The guy behind me didn’t have a partner and had a style that would have intimidated me a little even today. I don’t know what I would have felt like when I was 15. I spoke to him afterward and discovered he does high level interviews and gets job candidates in his office after 5 other people have vetted them. What he looks for from an interview is very different than what a 15 year old might encounter in one of their first jobs. He wasn’t mean by any account, but he was thorough and at the end told each student what his impression was when they sat down versus how they changed that when they started speaking. He pointed out the value of each of the activities and experiences listed on their resumes, which tend to be sparse at this time in their lives, and how they could turn those things to their benefit in an interview. I think it was more information than some of the students expected to receive because a few looked a little stricken as they departed. I was a little awed by the quality of his technique and took some mental notes. If I had thought otherwise, he reminded me that it was important for the students that I be serious and treat them like adults during this process.

Certainly, you may not always have a group that had been as well prepared as I encountered. If we had more than just the one unprepared student, it might have been a dismal experience. Even in cases like that, while you are making suggestions for improvements, you can always advocate for the arts and suggest the students might get involved in some performance classes to raise their confidence level, poise and speaking skills. (I was happy to see two of our students were involved in the performance classes.)

Talk About Your Org Before Someone Else Does

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Last week Americans for the Arts held a Private Sector salon on ARTSblog where they discussed where the interests of the arts and business intersected. Much of the discussion was very interesting, but one entry by Margy Waller stuck with me for a few days. Part of it was the timeliness of her subject. She cited the recent controversy at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) about a video that included ants crawling on a crucifix. She quoted a commenter on the NPR story about the controversy calling art the leisure pursuit of the elite.

It immediately made me wonder if the commenter was aware that admission at the NPG, like most of the Smithsonian museums, is free and that the gallery contains very accessible works of historical significance from portraits of Presidents, First Ladies, Founding Fathers and Cornwallis’ surrender to Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War to Stephen Colbert. I am not sure what more someone needs to feel that museum has something to offer them rather than deciding it is only in the purview of others. Even with the exposure provided by people like Stephen Colbert and millions of people wandering through the NPG for free every year, people are unaware of the experience the museum offers. The museums really only get national attention when there is controversy and at that point, no one is interviewing the person talking about the benefits of the arts or the thousands of other works hanging in the galleries.

This weekend when the Honolulu Symphony decided to ask a judge to allow them to dissolve rather than undergo Chapter 11 reorganization, (a request which as of this writing, the judge has granted), the 140+ comments people made on the initial newspaper article revealed just how uninformed and unaware about the symphony’s operations people were. I am not referring to people making spiteful comments about how elitist classical music is who weren’t making any effort to learn. There were plenty of them. But there were others conducting conversations in which people were learning about the business aspects of the symphony for the first time.

A commenter with the handle 1SWBP wrote:

“Shamonu–mahalo for the explanation. That makes more sense now. I appreciate your taking the time. My empathy now runs much more deeper and the union stuff makes perfect sense. I guess I never realized how ‘large’ our symphony was. I do regret not being able to get out more and enjoy them more often.”

What made Margy Waller’s post most inspiring however was a video of Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory talking about the economic benefits the arts have brought to his city in his State of the City address last year. It reinforces the idea that you have to talk about what you bring to the table, and talk about it, talk about it some more and then get others to talk about it when people get sick of hearing you. A little depressing though that there are only 113 views so pass it on if you like it.

Army For The Arts

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Americans for the Arts recently linked to a blog post and testimony video that Brigadier General Nolen Bivens, U.S. Army, (Ret) delivered to Congress on the importance of the arts to national security. He discusses how the arts contribute to cultural understanding and method of diplomacy around the world in places of conflict that the Army operates as well as places the country wants to maintain good relations. He also mentioned the usefulness of the arts in the therapy of soldiers.

Interesting enough, just about the time Gen. Bivens was giving this testimony in April, Vinita Rae Smith was recording an interview discussing her retirement as theatre manager of the Army Community Theatre after a 40 year career as a civil service employee of the Army. She gives a sense of the state of the theatre arts in the Army these days. She has the distinction of opening the only theater the Army has ever constructed for the express purpose of being a theater -Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Every other theater has been re-purposed from some other use. One of theater she worked at was renovated from a laundromat. That theater is still used to show movies, but the stage is no longer structurally sound enough for live performances.

She didn’t mention what the Richardson Theatre which she recently ran used to be. The woman participating in the interview with her reminisced that before Vinita arrived, they used to have to wait until the movies were over at 11:00 pm before they could start rehearsing so they didn’t generally finish until 1-2 am. Vinita made changes that resulted in a more sane schedule.

But while Vinita improved the situation for live theatre on her post, the same can’t be said for all Army bases worldwide. She mentioned that Germany used to have 30 theatres, now there are about 14. Korea had 13 and now there is one. Some of it is likely a result of the decreasing number of troops stationed in these countries and the reduced need for services. But I also suspect Gen. Bivens might have been indirectly advocating for support of the arts in the military too. Even before she thought of retiring, it was generally acknowledged that Vinita was holding her program together by force of will. You get that sense as you listen to her talk about the expectations the Army has for programs like her’s. Her replacement is coming from Germany. I both wonder if he will possess the force of personality to maintain the program and if the program he leaves in Germany will survive his departure.

Farming The Arts

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A couple weeks ago on the Americans for the Arts blog, Joshua Russell suggested a farm system for arts leadership similar to what professional sports teams use. I got to thinking about that concept in the context of arts organizations in general.

My first thought was that there is already a farm team feeder set up for so many segments of the performing arts, going something like: high school —>college/conservatory —> professional. Depending on the discipline, then you might get into different strata for theatre companies, symphonies, dance companies where performing with one is more prestigious than another.

Farm League Actors?
Then I started thinking about whether some sort of system like this might be possible in theatre since that is the area whose training and performance system I am most familiar. There are, in fact, a number of college/conservatory theatre training programs with very close associations to LORT theatres that provide actors, stage managers and technicians with practical experience (and the theatres with less expensive labor.) But there is a lot of room for expansion. Given a huge infusion of money and a shift in funding structures, could Broadway and the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) create a feeder system? Done right, it could shift the focus away from NYC, Los Angeles and Chicago as the ultimate career goal and strengthen theatre regionally. Of course, it would take about 25-30 years for attitudes to shift sufficiently away from the holy trinity as a career destination.

Toledo Tyrones, Guthrie Triple A Team
There is already a tacit acknowledgment of stature, but I imagine some people, as a matter of ego, and there is plenty of that in the arts, might not like to have their local theatre overtly regarded as substandard to the organizations they feed into. On the other hand, a lot of people find minor league baseball games and the parks that house them to be a lot more fun and family friendly than the majors. Presumably, there would be some sort of investment of funds and resources from up the chain to sustain the system of cultivation. That might improve quality on many fronts for the single A to triple A level theatres.

Setting Down Roots
I think it would also go a long way to solve some of the concerns Scott Walters and Tom Loughlin have about the careers theatre training programs are preparing students for if there were viable career opportunities that allowed people to maintain a long term regional residency. It might not stem the tide of too many people pursuing too few opportunities, but it might keep creative people closer to home where they could apply that skill in ways that would bolster the local economy.

The Wise Farmer Plans Long Term
Ultimately, short of an immense shift in thousands of elements, I don’t anticipate this happening any time soon. At least not on a national scale. I think a single regional theatre could make a commitment to sourcing locally. They could go to a couple of training programs and commit to employing their students with an eye to keeping them around for a long time. Every college program I have been associated with has a pretty good idea what high schools feed them. The colleges and the theatre could go to them and say they look forward to seeing their students on their stages and they hope the schools continue to maintain strong arts programs. The theatre could also go around to other theatres throughout the region looking for up and coming talent.

Then the theatre could employ their board connections directly and indirectly to create a program where artists could secure good rents and mortgages and get other incentives to stay locally. In turn some of those who are attracted/retained to the area can target the feeder schools as teachers and visiting artists to help cultivate that resource–and eventually expand to other schools.

By the way, this is partially how the whole regional theatre system was supposed to work. Instead, they turned to NYC to do most of their casting. This hypothetical theatre would be looking to lure people back or give them an incentive to never go. To some degree, it would actually be healthy for the theatre to have people go away to work with other actors and organizations and then return. While Broadway may always be the gold standard in many respects, it might be best to have people going away to work in places that served regional communities because those are the audiences the theatre wants its people to learn to serve.

Shifting The Conversation
But in terms of a national movement, I think there is a better chance of Walters and Loughlin succeeding in changing the way students are trained and the way their expectations are shaped than having most theatres change how they source their talent.

Sports and Theatre
In that context, my mind turned to a comparison of the athletics and farm system for professional sports. The systems aren’t completely analogous, but there are enough similarities to speculate a little. The problem area that Walters and Loughlin identify is the college/conservatory stage where people choose to major in theatre hoping to make a career of it.

For college sports, a lot of athletes are offered scholarships to play for the school. There is a fair amount of controversy about this because there is a lot of money invested in non-academic pursuits at educational institutions. Victories bring prestige and increased donations from alumni. There is also criticism made of the fact that these students generate a lot of money for the school, but often don’t get a good education out of the deal because of low expectations of them or even lack of time to excel in both sports and academics.

Practical Professional Expectations
But the thing is, despite all the investment into the athletic programs and the players, you pretty much know that not everyone is going to get to play professionally. There are far fewer professional teams than there are college programs that can feed them. There are 32 NFL teams and about 120 college football teams in Division I alone. There are only a select few who can successfully operate at the level required by professional sports.

You occasionally hear about athletes getting short shrift on their education or having irrational expectations of being recruited to play pro right out of high school. But how many people will complain if all of Alabama’s defensive tackles didn’t get drafted to the NFL even though the school finished first in the football standings last year?

Status Enumerated
Statistically, every defensive tackle that graduates each year may have a better chance of going pro than every acting student that graduates, but for all practical purposes, the chances are the same. So what is the difference? Why aren’t more athletes taking temporary jobs, biding their time until their opportunity comes?

Well, for one thing, I think its partially that numbers help define your place in sports. You know how fast you can run, how many times you have completed an action successfully and how many times you didn’t. Personality and passion also contribute to whether someone wants you for their team, but the statistics provide a baseline comparison between you and everyone else and you know what teams value. You may think you weren’t used to your greatest potential, but you probably have few illusions about an athletics career going forward.

What Are Ian McKellen’s Stats?
In the arts, things are much more subjective. Assessment is as much about how you have improved and demonstrated you have started to grasp concepts as it is about your overall talent. Just like there are only a few people who have the ability to hit a 90 mph fastball and solve complicated physics problems, there are only a very few with magnificent acting talent. Except that personality and good looks can be just as important at the end of the day as skill. Trying harder won’t get most of us any closer to hitting that fast ball, but with such subjectivity muddying the evaluative waters, it is easy to believe success is just a matter of patience and trying hard.

In an earlier time, I think those who instructed would have had an easier time trying to disabuse their students of this notion. Now that we can watch people try out for American Idol at the mall and make it to the final rounds based heavily on charisma inspired voting, I think it is harder to convince people that the odds are greatly against them period, much less based on lack of ability.

I Didn’t Go To Class Because I Was Practicing Being A Lizard*
One of the great similarities between theatre students and athletes in Division I colleges is that grades often suffer as a result of their pursuits. (Though there is far more pressure on instructors to grade athletes more leniently.) Because of their great emotional investment in theatre, those students often neglect to complete assignments or even attend classes in favor of theatre related activities.

A number of theatre departments threaten dire consequences for students who let this happen by commission or omission. But as I have mentioned before, I think Tom Loughlin’s idea that students need to be trained to employ their abilities more widely becomes more apt. If students are going to cut class and neglect studies to do arts related stuff, you might as well have them channeling their passion toward doing something that will develop skills with wide applications.

*I didn’t skip class, but I did spend a lot of time practicing being a lizard for my scene work in Edward Albee’s Seascape

Leadership Training and Discussion Moves Forward

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If you have seen Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser on his Arts in Crisis tour or read any of his writings on the matter of arts leadership training, you will know that he feels not enough is being done to teach people about how to do the job well. On occasion, I have also opined that arts leaders don’t talk to each other enough about the challenges we face and the processes we employ in pursuit of our jobs and goals.

It seems like that is starting to change now. In addition to the Emerging Leadership Institute program Arts Presenters runs, they have decided to partner with Research Center for Leadership in Action (RCLA) at NYU on a program for mid-career arts professionals with an eye toward grooming them for senior leadership positions. The Leadership Development Institute is accepting applications right now in fact. The deadline is April 19. The pilot phase of the program will employ “two series of collaborative inquiry sessions, virtual webinars, online resources and one-day action-learning seminars.”

Over at Americans for the Arts’ ARTSblog some interesting perspectives on leadership in the arts are emerging from the various contributors. Just today there was a post by Joanna Chin listing all the general arguments for the value of the arts that she could think of: “Arts = Arts; Arts = Humanity; Arts = Health/Quality of Life; Arts = Civic Engagement and Social Change; Arts = Economic Vitality; Arts = Creativity/Innovation = Growth/Vitality; Arts = Cultural Tourism = Economic Vitality; Arts = Jobs & Industry; Arts = Shared Benefit.” She expands briefly on each of these areas and wonders if this is an exhaustive list. If you can think of others, visit the entry and contribute your thoughts.

Marc Vogl offered a clever analogy of “What a Seder Can Teach Us about Arts Leadership”

“Those in leadership positions especially carry the burden of executing the plan of record which, as many E.D.s will attest, means putting out the fire that’s blazing now or shifting the pots on the stove around so that none boils over today.

So, who is responsible for periodically stepping in and asking the elemental but critical questions?

Perhaps it should be those on top of the organizational structure – whether administratively or in governance positions at the board level – but frequently those are the people who must answer the questions.

In the Seder it’s the kids who sing out to the elders: why are we doing things the way we’re doing things?

And it is for everyone around the table to respond, and hopefully, to reflect for a moment on the history that informs that response, to consider the present circumstances and how times have changed, and maybe even to look ahead and determine what we can do going forward so that we don’t spend another year going through rote motions and taking important things (like freedom in the case of Passover, or making art that has meaning for those of us in this field) for granted.”

Shannon Daut who is Deputy Director at the Western States Arts Federation and has a broad perspective on how the arts are developing regionally and I would imagine nationally, talks about the lack of leadership opportunities for younger administrators because those on the executive level continue to circulate between the available positions.

“I recently had a conversation with WESTAF’s director, Anthony Radich, and asked him what his resume looked like when he was my age—35. He rattled off a list of ED positions at various arts organizations. I think his experience is pretty typical. Because the arts field was so young, experienced arts administrators were not available to fill open positions. They made it up as they went along and were entrusted with great organizational responsibilities at early stages in their careers.

For the most part, today’s emerging (and mid-career) administrators have not been able to benefit from an environment that would take risks on “unproven” job candidates. “

Finally, Letitia Fernandez Ivins, addresses the all important issue of balancing work and personal life in an industry where it has always been expected that one suffers for ones art. Her entry primarily deals with the impact of pregnancy on a career in the arts. However, the general topic is clearly an important one. There are many comments on the entry already. One woman expresses her relief upon learning so many other people are facing the same choices.

Actually, I shouldn’t say finally regarding Letitia’s post. There have been more than 20 entries on the subject of leadership since Monday. These are just the handful that resonated with me most today. I should mention that Americans for the Arts have their own Emerging Leader Network from which I assume the drew many of these contributions. I am pleased to see such great movement in leadership training and discussion happening right now. It wasn’t that long ago that I was mentioning the lack of such activity. I didn’t think this much progress would be made in a few short years.

Green Papers-Not What I Thought They Were About

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Due to the imminent failure of my refrigerator’s compressor, I don’t have as much time to devote to the old blog as I had hoped.

With that in mind, I wanted to direct people’s attention to Americans for the Arts’ efforts at creating a conversation around green papers on topics of importance in the arts. Given the whole push for environmentally friendly activities, I initially thought a green paper was essentially an attempt to issue a white paper on good conservation practices.

It turns out, a green paper is actually a policy document similar to a white paper, only less binding. Who knew? I mean, there are ribbons of every color for every cause, I thought this was a similar attempt.

In any case, Americans for the Arts’ are making a big effort to have substantive conversations on many topics across the next year. In their definition:

“Green Papers are short, easy to read, visions of the future meant to inspire a nationwide dialogue on the future of the arts. As a way to celebrate the successes of the past 50 years in the arts field, Americans for the Arts has collected Green Papers from a variety of national arts service organizations and peer groups representing different perspectives and disciplines.”

Currently their topics include:

The Future of…

* Art Therapy
* Artists’ and Arts Organizations’ Preparedness and Emergency Response
* Artists’ Residency Programs
* Arts and Disability
* Arts Education
* Arts in Healthcare
* Arts Learning for Children/Youth
* Community Arts Education
* Cultural Democracy
* Dance Education
* Leadership for the Arts
* Jazz
* Preservation
* Private Sector Support for the Arts
* Public Art
* Public Voice in Arts Advocacy
* State Arts Agencies
* Strings
* Symphony Music
* Digital Infrastructure for the Creative Economy
* Theatre
* Urban Municipal Arts Agencies

They want people to get involved and contribute to the conversation. I wonder if they also need people to lead the conversations. You can’t tell from the list here, but there are no links to pages for Art Therapy, Arts and Disability, Jazz, State Arts Agencies, Symphony Music and Theatre. I don’t see a call for leaders, though I certainly may have missed it. Most of the Green Papers were rolled out on February 16, perhaps the leaders for the unactivated sections weren’t immediately available to discuss those areas.

I also am curious to know why there is someone leading Strings but not Symphony Music and why there is a Dance Education category, but no Dance. Guess I have to stick around, read and ask these questions.

Oh yeah, and where is the paper on environmental sustainability in the arts! 😉

Support of Great Numbers

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Today I got an appeal from a performing arts group asking me to vote for them on the Chase Community Giveaway Facebook page. The top 100 organizations get $25,000 and the top voted organization get $1,000,000. I am a little leery about this. First of all, I wonder if Chase is using this to gather names to offer their banking services to. I am also concerned about charitable giving becoming a matter of popularity and campaigning. I have never had any interaction with the group who emailed me. They likely got my address by buying a database from a professional organization of which I am a member. Now they are spamming me in an appeal for my support.

I do appreciate it when people outside corporate giving offices are provided an opportunity to direct donations. Many organizations I have worked for have benefited from employer matching donations. For Subaru’s 30th anniversary in the US, they asked their employees to nominate causes to which they would donate cars. A place I once worked received one of those cars. (And my next car is likely to be a Subaru as a result.)

Every September, a local grocery chain allows people to donate to charities at the cash register and they match it. We send out emails alerting people to this opportunity. The people we email already have a relationship with us in some form.

Just like with American Idol voting, giving based on voting results provides too much opportunity for stuffing the ballot box using scripts, duplicate Facebook accounts and other little tricks. Not only do charities not deserve to have their funding decided in this manner, but their staffs should be pursuing their core purpose, not frantically monitoring internet voting standings and trying to rally votes. The constituencies that many of these groups serve may be immensely grateful for the help they receive, but may not have the ability or time to get online to express that appreciation by voting. Those who deserve the support most may not even make it on the radar.

However, if giving decisions are going to be made via social media tools, then it behooves non-profits to raise their public profile so that people are aware of their work and accomplishments and can advocate for them.

On a related note, you may or may not be aware that when Dutch Bank DSB dropped out as sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Speedskating team, Stephen Colbert called upon his viewers to pool their money and donate to sponsor the team. The Colbert Nation logo will appear on the team’s uniforms starting at the World Games.

It started me thinking that maybe the arts should do something similar. Perhaps we could funnel our money through Americans for the Arts. But the question is, what team to sponsor? The gymnastics teams with their choreographed floor exercises might seem a good fit, but may be too obvious. Maybe the pole vaulting team. “Americans for the Arts, proud sponsor of the US Olympic pole vaulting team. Americans for the Arts, catapulting America to new heights.”

Okay, a little corny, but it could be fun. Think of it- whatever team we picked would have some of the best visual promotions out there. Visual arts could be creating all sorts of pieces in tribute to the athletes in action. We might even end up with an Olympic mascot that wasn’t immediately forgettable.

Talkin’ Bout Emerging Leaders

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Okay special double blog post today. Since my other entry was dealing with education and arts people following their passion, I felt I needed to call attention to the Emerging Leader conversation that has been transpiring in a special blogging salon on Americans for the Arts website. It started October 16 and just finished today.

There are a lot of great entries on the blog, including ones that question the definition of Emerging Leader in terms of age and experience. American’s for the Arts defines Emerging Leader as “either new to the field, with up to five years of experience, or are 35 years of age or younger.”

Ian Moss’ post on Generation Y and Entitlement garnered a long series of comments and is worth reading if have any young people working for you or ever plan to. Other participants add to the conversation like Ruby Classen’s entries on why jobbing hopping by a younger generation seeking a broader skillset can be viewed as lack of loyalty by long time arts leaders.

What was also interesting was reading that a number of veteran arts leaders were contacting people involved with organizing Emerging Leaders at Americans for the Arts and 20UNDER40 who saw these efforts as a storm the Bastille and kill the old folks.

Just as great to read the rebuttals from the veteran leaders too both as entries and comments. It shows that people from many stages in their careers are aware of these issues and engaged in these conversations.

It was also a little disconcerting to learn that because of the internal politics of some organizations, people who wanted to participate felt they had to remain silent.

People share their stories about lack of confidence they have had about their career choices and direction. This includes difficulties in finding jobs in the first place, of course. As many entries as I have linked to, it ain’t near all of them. If you have any interest in arts administration at all, bookmark the site and resolve to spend a couple minutes everyday reading a few entries until you have gotten to them all.

New Toys For The Lobby

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The college has these new flatscreen televisions on rolling mounts deployed around campus as an experiment in mobile information stations. Fortunately for me, the woman who coordinated the purchasing effort decided there would be a need for a roving screen. (The others, while mobile generally don’t move much because they are networked for ease of updating.) The benefit to me is that I can borrow the television for our events.

We had an event this past weekend so I used the opportunity to create a looping presentation with information about the band for a number of slides. Then I had information about upcoming performances, workshops and master classes. I am hoping between the television in the lobby, the brochures, notes in the program book and posters in the restrooms, we will increase people’s awareness about our events. The other screens around campus have information about our shows on them, but that is laid out by someone in a central office. The screen in my lobby has our information exclusively and if I learn of something interesting during a performance, I can update the information and have it running at intermission.

In addition to our information, I also made up a little promotional ad for Americans for the Arts, “Arts, Ask for More” campaign using the print ads you can download via the social media widget they created. (You can see the widget in the lower right hand corner of my home page. My entry on the widget is here. The text on the bottom of the ads were a little hard to read so I rewrote the text beneath the image and used their phrase “For 10 Simple Ways You Can Get More Arts Into Your Child’s Life,” followed by the Americans for the Arts web address.

I felt it was important to add this information both on the general principle of promoting arts education, but because this Friday is the first day of statewide furloughs which will take teachers, and therefore children, out of the classrooms. I wanted to provide people with a source of ideas for providing an educational experience for their kids.

So now I am contemplating how to most fully use the screen. I know there are many performance venues who use flat screens to promote their events. If anyone has some suggestions for what sort of information we can include or how to use the tool more advantageously than just a substitute for multiple posters, let me know. I have already started including trivia information about the groups to help audiences understand them a little better. I would love to include video except that YouTube videos look awful at such high resolution. I would need to rely on DVDs which artists are moving away from in favor of online video.

Arts. Widget For More

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Americans for the Arts have a widget available that can be easily placed on any website, blog or social media site. I put one at the bottom of my right side bar.

If you click on the share or embed link in the lower right, it provides you with the ability to either automatically insert the widget on your social media site (and many blogs) or copy the code so you can manually insert it into your blog, website, whatever.

If you click on campaign, you can see the television ads they have been running (my fav is Raisin Brahms), listen to radio ads or download some of their other logos like Elizabeth Barrett Brownies.

I think it is important to post this sort of thing just to make people aware of the lack of arts in schools by sheer numbers so please consider adding the widget to your webpages, blogs and social media accounts.

I have been critical of Americans for the Arts (or if I haven’t, I have thought it) for only allowing partners who had invested large sums of money have access to more than just a logo as a tool to promote the “Arts. Ask for More” campaign. Certainly, they had every right to place controls on how broadcast and print ads were used. It is just that the only way I could participate was by posting a logo. Now that there is something more, I am happy to use it everywhere I can and encourage others to do the same.

Neither Carrot Nor Stick Does Creativity Make

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A couple links as complement to my entry yesterday on motivation, customer service and volunteers.

First, Americans for the Arts, hearing President Obama’s call for Americans to volunteer more has created a website at which people can share their stories, pictures and videos – United We Serve.

A newly posted video on TED.com has Dan Pink talking about motivation. He provides some interesting findings about motivation, namely that when it comes to performing creative tasks conditional rewards (if you complete X by Y, you will receive Z bonus) are not as effective as intrinsic rewards in obtaining results. The conditional rewards actually get in the way of creative thinking. This may explain why arts people are able to create in the absence of monetary reward.

I wouldn’t let this get around lest people insist that paying you more may rob you of your creativity.

He makes a link to our current financial difficulties saying that there is a disconnects between what science has known for over 40 years and what businesses does, which is essentially the carrot and stick approach.

Pink says the new operating model should be based on:
“Autonomy- Urge to Direct Our Own Lives
Mastery- Desire to get better and better at something that matters, and
Purpose- The Yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”

Sounds a lot like the way arts organization and non-profits have been running things for awhile. If the next wave of economy is indeed going to be Creative, then perhaps non-profits and those who work for them will have something of increasing value to offer. We just need to understand what we do, how to do it well and how to teach/model it for others.

Waiting For Tickets And Healthcare

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This weekend I happened upon a few websites and stories which I felt were interesting enough to expound upon. However, under the harsh light of Monday, they didn’t really excite me much any more.

There were two tidbits I liked that explain themselves well enough without any help from me.

First was a letter reprinted on Producer’s Prospective by Ken Davenport from a woman who expresses her amazement that tourists go to NYC and stand online at the TKTS without an idea what any of the shows are about. “They were going to buy tickets and they had budgeted the money, so they were going to spend it. It didn’t really matter on what.”

She makes some suggestions about why tourists might not completely trust the young people who provide those in line with information and how things can be better handled. Probably some lessons there for all of our ticket office operations.

The second thing I wanted to point out in case it got lost amid all the other static on the topic is that Americans for the Arts was joined by a coalition of 20 arts organizations in advocating the federal government for better health care for artists.

We call on Congress to pass:

* A health care reform bill that will create a public health insurance option for individual artists, especially the uninsured, and create better choices for affordable access to universal health coverage without being denied because of pre-existing conditions.
* A health care reform bill that will help financially-strapped nonprofit arts organization reduce the skyrocketing health insurance costs to cover their employees without cuts to existing benefits and staff while the economy recovers. These new cost-savings could also enable nonprofit arts organizations to produce and present more programs to serve their communities.
* A health care reform bill that will enable smaller nonprofit and unincorporated arts groups to afford to cover part and full-time employees for the first time.
* A health care reform bill that will support arts in healthcare programs, which have shown to be effective methods of prevention and patient care.

One of my earliest blog posts was about artists exchanging their skills in a hospital for health care. The rancorous debate raging about health care should concern a lot of people because the plans being discussed in Congress represent the best hope for artists to get health care since Fractured Atlas came on the scene.

Waxing Philosophical With Donald Duck

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Apparently Donald Duck is to German philosophy and culture what Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes was to classical music. According to a Wall Street Journal piece, Donald Duck comic sell close to 250,000 copies a week in Germany. A monthly Donald Duck special sells 40,000 copies primarily to adults. Where Carl Stalling injected classical music into Bugs Bunny cartoons, Erika Fuchs spent over 50 years injecting German literature and philosophy into her German translations of the Disney icon. (my emphasis)

Dr. Fuchs’s Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”

One of my first blog entries was about using comic books to promote the value of the arts. I am thinking that may still be a good idea given the influence Fuchs and Stallings works have had in making great works familiar and accessible to audiences. Americans for the Arts seems to have already picked up on that. Their last round of “Arts, Ask for More” television commercials featured characters from Disney’s Little Eisensteins.

Some of my earliest introductions to classics of literature were Classics Illustrated. I also remember reading religious comic books about Bible stories and Johnny Cash’s fall and return from grace. While waiting for the bus in a library during the winter, I read up on the life of Crispus Attucks and Harriet Tubman. I am sure interest and understanding could be generated in Shakespeare, Moliere, Bach, Mozart, Ansel Adams and Dada if someone did a good job of it.

Anyone with a visual arts background want to apply for an NEA grant? (Of course, nice cartoon videos to post on YouTube might be cool so actors and musicians are needed, too!)

What Value The Arts In Prison?

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I was surprised to see my home town newspaper mentioned on the Americans for the Arts blog recently. Americans for the Arts’ Arts Education Manager, John Abodeely, was responding to a story about how inmates from the Woodbourne Correctional Facility were being blocked from performing at Eastern Correctional Facility by the corrections guard union. (Eastern Correctional Facility apparently inspires a lot of art. I once wrote a short story based *cough* on my time spent there.)

Abodeely responds to the union’s central argument that there is no value in the experience. “How many of these medium-security convicts do you think will go to Broadway and get a job?” One answer is Miguel Pinero’s Short Eyes–six Tony nominations, New York Drama Critics Circle Award and an Obie Award. Another is Charles Dutton. These are just off the top of my head. I am sure there are other examples.

Abodeely discusses the economic value of the arts in terms of jobs, revenue and taxes generated. I think Abodeely misses the mark on two counts. First, regardless of the economic impact statistics, it is difficult for people with arts backgrounds to gain employment in their field, whether it be on Broadway or not. An ex-con probably has just as good a chance of being employed as anyone. (So on second thought, I guess Abodeely’s numbers are valid when applied to the convicts.)

But the second point is the real issue. The subtext of the question the corrections officer posed was all about low regard for the convicts’ personal value and had little to do with economics at all. Perhaps it is clearer to me because I have been in NY prisons, but the guards’ power to deny positive experiences for inmates is a big factor here. Given the union spokesman’s assertion that “prison farms, annexes and print shops have been useful because they teach skills that can be applied toward a job on the outside,” a more compelling argument would be based on evidence of how engaging in any sort of disciplined program is beneficial to future employment and behavior in the present. There is also public speaking skills, writing skills (since the inmates wrote the play) and development of empathy that can be gained. (Construction and other organizational skills if they are building sets and costumes.)

Abodeely wouldn’t likely have the research or numbers on hand to cite, but there may be some evidence that it reduces recidivism, especially given that is the sponsoring organization, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, goal. The San Quentin Drama Workshop has been active since 1958 so even if there is no clear evidence arts in prison does not reduce recidivism, there must be some value to sustaining the program for 51 years. There is also group, Theatre in Prisons which runs similar programs internationally.

What really makes me believe that the union’s objections on the grounds theatre involvement doesn’t cultivate valuable skills is the fact that Rehabilitation Through the Arts not only does shows at the maximum security NY State run prison, Sing-Sing, but has been based out of there since 1996 and apparently has proven valuable enough to satisfy the corrections officers who I am pretty sure belong to the same union. Pinero wrote Short Eyes while incarcerated in Sing-Sing in 1972 and there was apparently a drama program of some sort there at the time.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not really a big advocate for convict rights. I didn’t particularly enjoy being dragged on visits as part of my mother’s effort to redeem these guys. (Though I does allow me to truthfully say I was in and out of prison for 9 years.) Like most of us, I am not about to allow someone to dismiss the value of participation in the arts out of hand without some rebuttal.

I suppose no discussion of performing arts in prison can be complete without citing the 1500 Filipino prisoners in Cebu doing Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

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