Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

Pittsburgh Likes Us, But Europe Loves Us

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Jeremy Reynolds recently wrote a great piece about the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO) European tour. The article isn’t so much about what happened during the tour as it is about why orchestras tour. The insight it provides about the way orchestra operate is pretty fascinating.

People interviewed for the article admit that PSO’s touring activities don’t really benefit Pittsburgh in terms of tourism or increased business opportunities and corporations are increasingly less willing to support the orchestra’s tours.

However, European tours are apparently a great recruitment and retention tool for the orchestra. There was concern that music director and conductor Manfred Honeck might be lured away by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which has a bigger budget and salary base, but he surprised everyone by renewing his contract with Pittsburgh–with the understanding they would continue touring.

Similarly, the role of concertmaster went unfilled for years until last Spring when David McCarroll assumed the position and part of the appeal for him was the adulation PSO received while on tour.

He said the opportunity to tour in Europe — and to be welcomed with such fervor — is something that defines a top caliber orchestra.

“I know these audiences,” he said. “The reaction to the symphony is not typical. This is not usual, it’s not normal.”

Who wouldn’t want a job where they got that kind of acclaim? Even if you have to leave your hometown to actually get it.

“We’re famous everywhere else except Pittsburgh,” said Bill Caballero, the orchestra’s principal French horn player. “We go to these places and they go crazy for us.”

Though touring can sometimes be something of a double-edged sword when it comes to recruitment. Apparently, when the Oslo Philharmonic visited Pittsburgh, PSO took the opportunity to wine and dine the music director and ultimately lured him away from Oslo.

Where you tour in Europe also apparently matters:

“Tours were this big benchmark that orchestras differentiated themselves with, right along with their base and how long their season is,” said Drew McManus, a Chicago-based orchestra consultant.

“If they went on tour, did they go to Europe? And if they went to Europe, do you mean Spain or do you mean Germany? It’s all a kind of caste system.”

There is quite a bit more detail about the tour in the article, including some nice multimedia components, so take a look and learn a little bit more about the nuances involved with orchestra touring.

The Will Exists, Arts & Culture Facilitate The Relationships & Conversation

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Given that today is Indigenous People’s Day, I wanted to mention some recent positive developments related to the arts and an increased presence and role of the Muscogee (Creek) people who once dwelt here, in and around Macon, GA. Macon is the site of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park where the Muscogee and allied tribes had long lived prior to being dispossessed to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears.

For 30 years now, every September members of the Muscogee have returned to the park for an indigenous people’s celebration. For the last two years, Covid has kept the event from happening, but this year brought about great changes. There is an effort to expand the  park into the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve which would encompass about 54 miles river plains and over 900 historic and cultural sites. Tracie Revis, former Chief of Staff for the Muscogee Nation was hired on as Director of Advocacy by the local park initiative in the interest of providing the Nation with input into how the land would be used. The Associated Press recently did a great story on the effort.

Her arrival saw a great deal of momentum build toward the strengthening of ties between Macon and the Muscogee Nation based in Okmulgee, OK. There have been mutual visits, but art and cultural expression has played a large part in building the relationship.

A few months ago, Tracie was the featured storyteller at Storyteller Macon’s monthly event and she told the stories behind three of her names. Last month, as the annual celebration was set to return to the Mounds Historic Park, the work of Muscogee Nation artists was displayed in an alley that had been set up four years ago with lightboxes to illuminate artwork. Each artist paired images from Oklahoma and the Macon area as an illustration of the ties between the communities.

The celebration was preceded by much fanfare and a banquet attended by dignitaries from both communities, including a multi-day visit by Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, who you may recall is the first Native American cabinet secretary.

A number of theatres participated by posting welcoming messages.

There is obviously a lot more work to be done. It is very easy to get behind exciting events and parties, but more difficult to have some of the conversations that may follow about preservation, acknowledgement and representation.  This progress has come much faster than I imagined it would. Four years ago, I was having trouble finding someone to discuss formulating an appropriate land acknowledgment. Last Friday I had lunch with a colleague who told me about a land acknowledgment being delivered by someone she thought would have been reluctant doing so.

Arts and cultural expressions haven’t been responsible for these changes. There is obviously a will to see these things occur. But arts and culture have been among the avenues which awareness has been raised, relationships have been cultivated and conversations have been facilitated

Creative Expression Is A Renewable National Resource

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Countries around the world are eyeing the success of South Korea’s K-Pop, and Japan’s earlier J-Pop, and are developing national music strategies of their own according to a recent Forbes article. Thailand and Zimbabwe are prominently mentioned, but similar efforts are also being seen in Dominica, China, Oman, Philippines and Belize.

A big driver is the perceived ability of these efforts to boost GDP, create jobs, and generate a positive image of the countries’ culture, geography and products.  The article notes that South Korea embarked on their national effort after they had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan and it took nearly 15 years before K-Pop fandom became a mainstream interest worldwide. Thus a national initiative of this type needs long term commitment which is likely to span multiple government administrations.

Likewise, the K-Pop system of artist development is attuned to the unique structure of South Korean cultural and business dynamics which probably can’t and shouldn’t be replicated in other countries.

One of the things the author points out is that the creative economy is a renewable resource for countries in that the potential is limitless as long as people are encouraged to exercise their creativity. This may be something of a selling point when discussing the value of arts and culture to the community. While I dislike validating arts and culture on a economic and prescriptive basis, reinforcing the need to preserve the environment is important messaging.

What is being celebrated now may not be a model that works everywhere, but it demonstrates what could be true anywhere – that there is economic and social potential in music and culture and with it, the benefits of soft power and positive national branding. As countries and regions look to establish economic recovery policies and create socially sustainable economies which extract less from our environment, music and culture is recognised as a viable path. The raw materials are extracted from our minds, not the ground. And the options are limitless. This is something to celebrate, as there will never be ‘peak’ music, unlike what we’re facing with peak oil.

One little disclaimer that may be needed. I hadn’t initially noticed, but this article is written by the founder of Sound Diplomacy, an organization that works on developing music based economies of communities around the world. They are currently working on such a project here in Macon, GA and I have participated in some of their focus groups.

How Are You Philanthropic Rather Than How Much

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Last week Vox had a provocatively titled article saying “Why fewer Americans are donating to charity.” Rising to that provocation, I read the fairly lengthy piece that essentially said that giving isn’t really down, but that the ways in giving is measured and defined are no longer as valid as they once were.

While billionaires are getting a lot of attention for their donations, even if the funds are placed into somewhat controversial donor advised funds, giving to political campaigns and issues groups, crowd funding efforts, mutual aid groups and in amounts of less than $25 are not being counted.

The reason people are choosing to give through these other channels is due to a perceived distrust of large institutions as well as the sense that your donations are having a more direct impact than if made to a large entity.

It’s easy to see the psychological draw of such person-to-person giving. You know to whom your money is going. It can feel more immediately impactful. You might also feel that your dollar is going further than when you give to a big cause…that already receives millions of dollars every year. That’s not to say giving to an online crowdfunding campaign is actually more impactful than giving to a nonprofit, but there’s a growing perception that it is, especially among younger Americans. According to a 2022 study by Independent Sector, a coalition of philanthropic nonprofits and corporate giving programs, 57 percent of Gen Z believe that giving directly has more impact than giving to nonprofits.

There is also a sense that by focusing on the singular act of check writing as a metric, a lot of charitable activity is being missed. (my emphasis):

In 2019, she [Lucy Bernholz] conducted a national study of 33 focus groups, asking hundreds of Americans not how much they gave or why they gave, but how they gave to make the world a better place. Their responses showed that giving money is only one small part of what philanthropy means for Americans. Giving time was just as frequently mentioned as giving money. Everyday acts of charity, such as sharing skills, giving items, and doing acts of service for neighbors and other community members, were very common.

These conversations also revealed participants’ uncertainty around whether some of their acts of generosity even counted as “giving.” Participants weren’t accustomed to thinking about or talking about how they gave, or discussing the definition of giving. It shows that the understanding of philanthropy is ambiguous, not fixed — and perhaps can evolve to be more inclusive.

The national organization behind GivingTuesday is apparently trying to adjust to the shifting sense of what constitutes philanthropy and attempting to measure all the ways in which people give to make the world a better place rather than focusing on how much people gave.