Advocacy

How Important Is Creativity? Let The Census Director Count The Ways

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The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) posted a slightly longer than usual podcast episode a few weeks back with a conversation between NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson and US Census Bureau Director Robert Santos.

If you missed the introductions at the art, you might be forgiven for thinking Santos was the NEA Chair the way he went on about the importance and value of creative practice in one’s life. He talked at some length about being a live music photographer at the SXSW festivals in Austin, TX for eight years and the different perspectives he received while watching all the creatives present their work. He talked about how innovation doesn’t just emerge from scientific hypothesis and data, but by creativity fueled by an artful life.

Later, he discusses the use of art and creativity in healing, relating it to his time as President of American Statistical Association during the pandemic and using his monthly newsletter to depart from the usual messages about checking out webinars about statistic practice, but rather

“…send personal messages and reflections that would help folks understand that we’re all in this together and that we need to help each other out and we can do so virtually. So I would tell stories about of resilience and how we need to tap into them and I told stories of creativity and mentoring and it was specifically focused on thinking as creatively as I could to help the folks that were suffering so much because they were stuck in their homes.”

At another point, he mentioned the way the Census Bureau had used familiar cultural touchstones to engage with people to navigate the challenges Covid presented during the 2020 Census:

…we had artistic reincarnations of things like the Loteria, — there are cards that have little icons, very colorful, of different types of characters, and birds, and skeletons, and scorpions, and things of that sort. And because of the pandemic, we could not use our usual face-to-face methods, or community organizations couldn’t do that. So rather than having a table in a grocery store saying, “Come fill out a census,” they were going out and distributing in community centers that were giving out water, and talking about best practices for vaccines and things. They were handing out these Loteria cards that, instead of the usual icons, they had different census characters on them, like an enumerator, or a little graph, or things of that sort. So it was reinforcing the necessity and the importance of civic participation, but doing it in an artistic way that was very pleasing to the eye, and got you to think, “Oh, this is really interesting.”

The example of Albert Einstein playing violin is often used as an example of a scientist who embraced his creative side, but I am thinking it is time to find new examples to amplify this concept, starting with Santos and anyone else he might identify. Not to relieve the NEA and other creative entities from doing the same, but Santos seems really adept at identifying the bridges between creative and science based approaches and is a vocal advocate.  I mean, there was a point where he was saying, credit where credit is due, the NEA inspired me to think all federal departments should have artist-in-residence programs.

Some Ticketing Reform Bills Being Manipulated To Benefit Secondary/Speculative Market

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A nod to Erick Deshaun Dorris for the link to a Guardian article about how ticket resellers are leveraging the hatred being directed at Ticketmaster to manipulate legislation to their benefit.  The article mentions that a lot of legislatures only have a superficial understanding of the ticketing industry, mostly informed by complaints generated by big name artists like Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift.

The article quotes Kevin Erickson, Director of the Future of Music Coalition who discusses how the language of many proposed bills will actually benefit some of the larger secondary market players rather than consumers:

“Companies like StubHub, Vivid Seat, SeatGeek have been rather successful in appropriating legitimate public frustration with Ticketmaster to advance an unrelated policy agenda that’s mostly about maximising their access to inventory, to continue to be able to get as many tickets as possible and sell them at inflated prices,” he says. Erickson explains that BOSS SWIFT would eliminate legitimately helpful fan-to-fan resale sites and require “transparency of hold”, meaning that artists and venues have to disclose how many tickets will ultimately be available ahead of sale. “That sounds reasonable until you understand that that’s incredibly helpful to the brokers making their purchasing decisions,” he says. “It doesn’t benefit the individual family who just wants to buy a ticket to be able to attend the event.”

Erickson says BOSS SWIFT is unlikely to pass and fortunately a more artist and fan friendly bill, Fans First Act which mandates the full cost with fees be advertised and prevents speculative purchases, has more support and potential for passage. The article also cites efforts by individual states to provide protections through consumer protection laws. It mentions legislation in Maryland which is scheduled for a vote in the next week or so which requires price transparency, outlaws speculative ticketing, and limits price mark ups on the secondary market.

The article quotes MD State Senator Dawn Gile who says they spoke with a wide variety of venues and performing groups during the process of drafting this law. She cites experiences that many venues have faced, including my own and those of my colleagues, with regard to speculative ticketing and resale on smaller events:

“…even a local production of The Nutcracker was affected by secondary markups, while another venue found speculative tickets being sold for mezzanine and balcony seats “when the theatre doesn’t even have a mezzanine, nor a balcony”, says Gile. “The issue is pervasive. It’s been eclipsed by the topic of these really popular shows, but it’s not just Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé that are affected, it’s our smaller venues here.”

[…]

Additionally, says Gile, these companies are “suggesting that somehow if we move forward with this legislation, we’re not going to have any shows come to Maryland ever – that we’re effectively killing the live entertainment industry here.” The argument is disproved, she says, by the fact that several states already cap the secondary market – including the razzle-dazzle centre of Las Vegas – “but obviously the live entertainment industry continues to exist”. Her bill, she says, “just removes the incentive from brokers from being able to try to profit off the consumer”.

What I appreciated most was a final quote from Kevin Erickson about shifting how arts and cultural activities are framed:

“There is an opportunity here to accomplish a shift in how we think of music and the arts and live events as not just about something that has economic value, but to talk about the intrinsic value of live music as a vehicle by which communities form, a vehicle for historically marginalised voices to be heard, a way that communities define themselves. Policymakers at all levels have a responsibility to centre the voices of music communities who are imperilled by the rise of extractive business models.”

You only have to look at the photos coming out of each date on the Eras tour, in which thousands of teenage girls are having their first live music experiences, to see the vast potential for community activation: here are the roots of future lives spent in music…

Artists, They Aren’t Making The Community Any Worse

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Title of the post today is intentionally leveraging a statement in a study conducted by Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Rachel Skaggs for the National Endowment for the Arts of public perception of the arts during Covid. It was the topic of an interview/post with Sunil Iyengar who heads up research and analysis at the NEA.

The full quote is:

Nearly two out of three respondents shared the opinion that, quote, “Artists who work or live in their area make it better to live,” and roughly one third affirmed that it doesn’t necessarily make communities better, but artists certainly don’t make them worse.

The encouraging takeaway is that people have a positive view of the artists across all demographics:

In 2022, however, over half of adults expressed the perception that artists uniquely contribute to U.S. communities healing and recovery from the pandemic. Fifty three percent in open-ended responses offered specific ways that artists promote that healing and recovery. I will say, Jo, that one of the surprises of the study to me is that it found virtually zero differences in social or demographic characteristics as playing a factor in the likelihood of respondents to identify positively with artists.

As the authors say, quote, “Most adults in the United States across its many socio demographic groups and perceptions of artists, roles, and communities view artists as being able to contribute to the healing and recovery of communities directly and positively from the pandemic.”

Another interesting takeaway from the research is that people are equally likely to view artists as hobbyists (30%) as they are to perceive them as wage earners (27%). I may have to seek the report out to discover what the perceptions of the other 43% are. Perhaps a combination of some hybrid perception and/or not having any opinion on the matter.

It Ain’t Easy Being Public Art

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I think Art in Public Places staff for any community have one of the most difficult jobs in the arts, particularly when it comes to public perception of the job they do.  While everyone accepts that not every work of art will be appreciated, the fact that public art installations are visible for years in places hundreds, if not thousands, of people pass each day makes them the subject of daily comment, often repeatedly by the same people.

Not to mention there are birds pooping on them, too

While some pieces become the source of enormous pride, local identity, and tourism (i.e. Cloud Gate in Chicago), and others generate a mixture of pride and bemusement (here’s to you, Blucifer), in some cases it seems you can’t win for trying.

That seems to be the case in Annapolis, MD where all three options for a traffic circle the Art in Public Places folks posted for feedback got panned.   Maybe it is the location that is cursed or the local residents who are particularly critical. The new sculpture is meant to replace one installed in 2011 that fell prey to termites.

…meant to evoke the ribs of a ship in a nautical town. Even [artist] Donovan admitted it could also be compared to whale bones on a beach or a brontosaurus-sized rack of barbecued ribs.

Among the comments people made for the submissions included noting that two of the options looked like hand of people coming out of graves. (Apparently, there are some cemeteries in the vicinity). Another said one of them looked like drowning people reaching for a lifeline. One commenter said one piece looked like it belonged at the entrance of a retirement village in Boca Raton. One piece was likened to a condom.

There were also the inevitable comments about the whole endeavor being a waste of money.

There is a rule in surveying that you should never ask for feedback if you aren’t prepared to act upon the responses. So the question is what the public places art commission intends to do with the comments they received. One option is to reject the finalist pieces and go back back with a solicitation for proposals. Another option is to ask the artists to make changes to their work in response to the comments.

A former commission member addressed the latter option:

“If you take a public comment to reconstruct an artist’s vision, then you are basically attacking the integrity of their art,” said Genevieve Torri, a former commission chair who represents the area around the circle. “It’s up to the artists. This is their vision.”