Hard Work Getting Those Grassroots to Grow

I have been hearing Americans for the Arts’ “The Less Arts Kids Get, The More It Shows” PSAs on the radio lately. Inspired, I went to the website trying to see if they had any banner ads that I could put on my organizational website when I announced my new season. I looked under all the tabs, including resources, get involved and join us. I noticed there were bumper stickers available so I sent them an email asking about web images and floating some ideas.

That was two weeks ago and I still haven’t heard from them. I intended to make a tongue in cheek post about how if I was a 20-something, I would probably simply appropriate the image from their website, photoshop it into something usable and use it in a video I posted on YouTube.

However, upon returning to the site, I noticed a link about becoming an official campaign partner. Since the list of their partners is mostly state and local arts councils, I didn’t think that applied to me. I only wanted to toss up something on my work site to show my support.

It turns out that is exactly what I was looking for. If it wasn’t for my curiosity, I may not have discovered that fact even after following the link since it isn’t until page 3 that you learn you can apply to get the logo for your website and newsletters for free.

Frankly, it seems like a lot of impediments for individual arts organizations to show their support. I can see from the structure of their campaign that they want to provide some exclusivity to the state and community arts partners who paid to participate in the effort. But I think it would all really be effective if members of the community saw the logo on webpages, brochure and program book so often that they automatically began intoning “The Less Kids Get, the More It Shows,” every time the word Art came up in conversation.

In spite of what I feel are missteps, I want to encourage everyone to think about filling out the application as a general level partner and placing the logo on your website as you begin adding the events of your next season.

If you run/host arts classes or have youth arts organizations who rent your facilities for recitals/performances, think about posting a big sign where parents dropping of their kids can see it thanking them for getting their children involved in the arts. Maybe list some of the benefits for their kids, success stories, and maybe how to get a window sticker.

And you know, if you are a passionate twenty-something (especially at heart!) who loves the arts and you are moved to create a video on YouTube…

Consider the Source

We all know (or at least suspect) that when you survey a group and allow people to reply if they are moved to do so that you will generally get responses at either end of the spectrum and not many from the middle. People will really only go to the trouble of filling out a survey if they love or hate the survey subject.

Over on Salon.com’s Machinist blog, they dealt with the same issue with online rating systems like TripAdvisor, IMDb and Amazon.com. (Read the comments section on the entry for a lot of other insight into other weaknesses in these rating systems.)

“To see how an Amazon star-rating compares to society’s “true” opinion, Hu, Pavlou and Zhang conducted their own survey of one product, singer-songwriter Jason Mraz’s 2005 album, “Mr. A-Z.” In a survey of 66 college students, about two-thirds gave the album three or four stars. There were also a bunch of twos, some ones, and very few fives. On Amazon the picture is completely different. More than half of reviewers judge “Mr. A-Z” a five-star CD, while there are only a small number of threes, twos and ones.

Pavlou explains the lovefest by citing a specific kind of response bias, what he calls “purchasing bias.” In order to review something, you must have already purchased it. But people buy stuff they think they’re going to like — that’s why they buy stuff…Purchasing bias, Pavlou points out, is related to the price of a product; a higher price reduces the probability that someone who is unlikely to enjoy a product will buy it and review it anyway….If the Jason Mraz album was $200 rather than $11, then only die-hard fans would buy it and rate it, skewing its average review higher…The more expensive a product, Pavlou says, the more you should discount its high reviews.”

The article talks about a company called Summize which is translating all the star ratings into a thermometer bar like this one for the aforementioned Mraz album. Clicking on the various colors representing the good, bad and ugly number of ratings gives you direct access to the reviews with those ratings. Seeing all the reviews of each star category together rather than interspersed with ratings of other stars aids a little more in decision making. It can also reveal if marketing departments have tried to seed in good reviews at intervals when comments with similar syntax and spelling errors pop up side by side.

As the entry also points out, considering the source is still paramount when dealing with critiques. A reviewing site called Yelp allows you to cross reference reviewers with other reviewers of similar minds to evaluate if you share their taste and thus, have a higher degree of confidence in their opinions.

Refining software to compare our taste to those of others for us is what Web 3.0 is projected to be all about. (Web 2.0 is user generated content like blogging, Wikipedia, YouTube.) It is speculated that the next generation of web applications will search the internet for what we want and like a TIVO, will gradually learn what our preferences are in order to make suggestions. Presumably, we will be able to trade these specs with loved ones to aid them in Christmas shopping for us.

I imagine that as with Tivo, advertisers will be scrambling to figure out how to position their products in ways that the next generation of search agents will suggest them to consumers. (I am guessing they will pay software developers to have the agents favor them.)

The potential good news for arts organizations is that even if they don’t try to be manipulative in the type of Metawords they use in their web design, the artificial intelligences of the search agents may inform their masters that they have a high degree of confidence that they will enjoy a performance based on the years of criteria the agent has indexed even though they have never gone to see a show before.

I am sure that large corporations will see to it that software is developed enabling the agent to inform the arts organization website that this is the first time its master has purchased tickets to a show allowing the arts organization to offer great seats at reduced prices and perhaps flag the purchaser to receive free background information about the show and special attention by the front of house staff.

If the companies that develop these agents are smart, they won’t allow the users to be so specific in their criteria that they close themselves off from seemingly out of left field recommendations synthesized by the agent based on a profile it has compiled.

Assembling An Arts Council

In the beginning of March the Rand Corporation released a report on the need for greater collaboration and centralization of arts related activities in large cities. The report examines 11 municipalities in an attempt to provide advice to Philadelphia.

I am not going to do a full review of the report titled, “Arts and Culture in the Metropolis: Strategies for Sustainability.” For those who may believe the document may have something of interest for them, but fear they may not have the time to read the whole thing, I quote the introduction.

“Readers interested in the roots of the current problems facing metropolitan arts sectors should focus on Chapter Two. Those who are particularly interested in the methods we developed with regard to applicability to other regions should look at Chapters Three and Four. Those interested solely in Philadelphia should turn to Chapter Five.”

One of the interesting things their study found was what impact audiences identifying with a region vs. a neighborhood has in support of the arts.

“…despite the difficulty of traveling from the suburbs to the city, suburban Bostonians identified with the city and were frequent attendees at city arts events, whereas residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area…identify not with the area as a whole but rather with the specific communities in which they live. One by-product of this phenomenon is that many…are building their own arts centers even though they duplicate similar centers in surrounding communities.”

(pdf pgs 49-50, doc. pg 27-28)

They go on to talk about how this causes a lot of competition for resources in the region. It occurs to me that the question cities should ask before constructing new arts centers, if they aren’t already, is what dynamic their greater metropolitan area has. You don’t want to build a huge performing arts center counting on attendance from suburbanites who aren’t inclined to show up.

I am also wondering what the best plan of action is for the future. As people’s entertainment orientation turns toward their home entertainment systems, logic might dictate an arts center close to home to make attendance an easy decision. Yet clearly you want to avoid having many arts centers competing for funding and audiences near each other.

Is the solution to have the central arts council and largest city government of a region engage in a long term campaign to encourage closer identification with the city in the hopes of preserving the financial health of the region? I am not talking about squashing competition and variety here. Having too many arts centers in competition for the marquee performers needed to attract ticket buyers and donors necessary to support operations threatens to drive up costs.

For those organizations and governments looking to set up or revamp an Arts Council of some type, Chapter 4, (pg 55ff of pdf, p33ff of doc) contains a survey of all the permutations these entities take. It is amazing to see all the different ways they have been organized as part and apart from local government and how they are funded. The myriad combinations of functions they serve including fundraising, re-granting, advice, information coordination, advocacy, promotion, alliances and even arts presenting/producing themselves.

Resource: Cheap Housing

As a supplement to my entry today, I offer the following handful of links on affordable housing for artists.

Artspace- Developer of Artist Housing across the country. Many of their spaces are in Minnesota where they are based, but are also found in places like Minot, Reno, Buffalo and Mt. Rainier, MD.
(Hat tip to NY Foundation for the Arts)

Chicago Artist Resource has a page on how to find space in an area zoned favorably for artists. Also has a pretty complete looking How To.. resource to help people with the legalities and logistics.

New York City and Boston have space specs if an artist needs to live in the same place he/she works.

Paducah, KY has a very attractive incentive program with low rate loans, opportunity for free lots and even partial payment of architectural fees.
(hat tip to The Law Portal for the Chicago, NY, Boston and Paducah links)

Waterloo, IA has a work and living space in a downtown area designated as an Arts and Culture District.

Riverdam Millyard in Biddeford, ME isn’t necessarily a special zoned area but the effort of some developers to bring SoHo to Maine. I note their site because their list of tenants gives you a sense of what type of mix might emerge in such a space. Not too clear if you can live there though. Suspect you can’t.