Changing Landscape of Cultural Participation

The NEA Survey for Participation in the Arts is revealing a suprisingly quick moving seachange in the American relationship to the arts. For those involved in longstanding institutions devoted to live exchange between artist and audience, the findings reveal stark changes to our future -- rapid adoption of online arts consumption that seems to be replacing the lived experience. For example, classical music is seeing the maturation of the seachange that has been in progress the last twenty years such that middle-aged audiences are attending less and less often yet they are still consuming mediated formats.

http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/12/day_of_reckoning.html

Many arts organizations are riding the wave of the change (see below) and it seems that many will need to do the same if there is a to be a salient future for the arts in our culture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120904233.html

More on thinning the nonprofit herd

More on thinning the nonprofit herd

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My chat with Bill Ivey

My chat with Bill Ivey

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Curtain, then finger-pointing at North Shore - The Boston Globe

Curtain, then finger-pointing at North Shore - The Boston Globe

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Worth a read and a thought

Plus -- I think it is a great title for the college crowd:


If It Was Just About The Money We'd All Be Making Porn Why it's important to know why you exist and who you want to be... - diacritical

Arts, Creativity & the Brain

I attended a fun and informative 1/2 day conference at the American Visionary Art Museum about using the arts in education.

The three take aways for me were:
a) The arts teach 6 critical skills for the 21st century citizen:
Collaboration
Critical Thinking
Communication
Content
Confidence
Creative Innovation

b) I need to get the creativity books of Keri Smith, especially HOW TO BE AN EXPLORER OF THE WORLD. I recommend that to all of you!

c) A potential teaching tool AND management option for the arts is the creative process modelled through Pixar and Dreamworks (the Talent Developer from Dreamworks was the final presenter).

Divide project into segments
Each person/team takes a segment
The review each others work -- give feedback and make improvements
Mentor Review -- present to the leadership -- get feedback and make improvements (return to peer review cycle if necessary)
Take a 'first pass' at the entire project together -- pitching it to the mentor
Revisions
Final project presentation

This is an "Iterative" process (dictionary.com) It involves shared responsibility to an outcome. How is the usual theatre process similar yet different?

Marketing

Marketing is marketing. There is no difference to the receiver if you are a for profit or non profit organization. There is no difference in the channels if you are getting messages about arts or about laundry detergent.  

The difference is the budget line for marketing. Arts marketing is done on a dime, so to speak.

How do you use every dime effectively? You know your audience and your potential audience. You don't waste money talking to the people who just won't consider you an option.

What did TCG tell you about the American Theatre audience?