The Mission Paradox Blog

Moving in our direction

As an artist the most potent weapon you have in your arsenal right now is this:

Your willingness to embrace uncertainty

It's a characteristic those of us who create or support art have displayed so often that we forget how rare it is.

Every time the pen hits paper, the music starts or the curtain rises it is a gamble.

Something incredibly good could happen.

Or it could be a disaster and a waste of everyone's time and money.

That's uncertainty.

But again, since you deal with this all the time you barely notice it.

Here's the twist:

The so called "stable" world, the world of doctors, lawyers, banker is falling apart.

All the assumptions that people have built their lives on are being shattered.

That's uncertainty.

But since they haven't been dealing with that state of being as long as you have, you can imagine that they are a bit panicked.

This is actually good news for you.

Because in an unstable world, those who are able to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty best become the ones mostly likely to succeed.

Your skills as an artist, your nature as an artist is more valuable now then ever.

If you want to learn more about this line of thinking, then it's pretty mandatory that you read Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind

 

Caused v. Exposed

I get one of those "check this out" emails.

It's a news article about yet another arts organization doing "emergency" fundraising to keep the doors open and the staff paid.

I read the article, there's no sense of why the org is such trouble . . . just one of those vaugue "caused by the recession" sort of things.

I go to the website of the org.  Again, no explanation of how they got there, no info about how they are going to get out of it . . . just talk of the recession.

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Let's draw a distinction:

There are challenges caused by the recession

And there are challenges caused by bad decision making that the recession simply exposed.

If an organization is in the midst of a financial crisis they need to let us know if the recession caused it or exposed it.

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Here's the thing, the President of the United States just placed 100 pages of detail on his federal budget on a website.

If he can do that then surely an arts organization in crisis can put a PDF on their website that says a few things:

1.  How it happened

2.  Who (within the organization) is accountable

3.  How are they going to avoid a similar situation in the future.

The thing doesn't need to be a master thesis.  You can probably do it three pages or so.  But if a company can't (or won't) explain what happened in a fairly public manner why should they get the emergency funding they seek?

 

Never Do This

Calling an art critic to complain about a poor review they gave you is almost always a bad idea.

If they reviewed your current work poorly the damage, assuming there was any, is done.

If you are venting in the hopes that they give your next work a more positive review then you have to wonder if a critic who is so easily swayed is worth bothering with in the first place.

But if you feel like you simply MUST talk to a critic after a bad review you should NEVER do what the leader of one of the largest nonprofit theatres in the country allegedly did, i.e. dismiss some of their comments as "stupid" or say that they are not really a "critic".

Why?

Because not only is bad form, you also give said critic all the ammo they need to do a blog post and let the world know about the encounter.

Look, I understand a bad review can deeply upset someone.  They spend months or years pouring their heart and soul into something only to see it beat up by somebody with a comped ticket and a note pad.

But lashing out doesn't improve the situation . . . in fact it can make it far worse.

Because the critic now has the power to blog about it.

Which led to me blogging about it.

Which will lead to others noticing it.

And thus a review whose power (assuming it had any) had long since expired is revived.

So as a general rule, leave the critics alone.  Your life will be easier if you do.

(to be honest I'm also wondering if the artist who called the critic would have been as aggressive if the critic was a "he" instead of "she" .  . . probably so, but it was something that popped in my head)

 

Avoid the Artistic Purity Test

So I'm having a conversation with a colleague.

We were having the sort of nerdy conversation arts administrators have.  Fundraising strategies, ideas for building arts infrastructure, etc.

Then she did something that stunned me.

She did one of those "dancer stretches".  She basically balanced on one leg and pulled the other one to near her ear.

Did I mention this woman is in her 50's?

It reminded me that this woman, who had served on various Boards, ran numerous arts organizations and would appear to be a prototypical arts administrator had within her the spirit and skills of an artist.

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I've talked before how all too often in the arts we draw completely artificial and often harmful lines between "artists" and "administrators".

We treat these two factions like they are the classic Tom and Jerry cartoon characters, natural adversaries trapped in a situation where they need to fight it out for control.

Then a lady balances on one leg and reminds us that often our distinctions between artists and admins are complete BS.

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It's like we have this purity test in our field where artists have to see the world a certain way to be "authentic" and arts administrators have to see the world in nothing but numbers and spreadsheets because that's what they do.

It's ridiculous.

And I truly believe that this faulty, antiquated idea that the art happens "over here" while the administration happens "over there" threatens our field as much as foundation endowments drying up or not having enough young people in the audience.

The art you choose to present, the way you market it, the Board you build to support it, the way you fundraise for etc . . . they ARE NOT SEPARATE DECISIONS!  They are one decision and if they don't live in harmony with each other then trouble is pretty much inevitable

 

Common Factors

Over the past few years only two art forms have seen overall increases in attendance:

1.  Museums

2.  Jazz clubs

Some things they have in common

Price - I've never paid more then $20 for a museum ticket, never more then $25 to get into a jazz club.

Diversity - Both art forms are constantly rotating the types of offerings they provide.

Time - You can come and go from a museum as you please and a typical jazz set is maybe 90 minutes or so.

Just something to think about

Cast Size v. Revenue

Help me out here . . .

In our neck of the woods, i.e. live theatre, we see a pretty direct correlation between cast size and revenue.

Generally, the more performers on stage, the higher the revenue.

I'm curious to see if any of you out there have seen this sort of correlation in your work.

Does revenue go up if you have more dancers on stage?

Does revenue go up if you are exhibiting the work of more then one visual artist?

If you have any thoughts on this, leave a comment.

Embracing what you are

The arts is an economic engine.  Having a robust artistic environment does create jobs and brings money in a community

The arts is an educational resource.  Having art in the schools is good for teachers, students and parents.

But if I had to list the top ten reasons for any sort of arts funding (individual, corporate, or otherwise) those reasons would be number 9 and 10 respectively.

The strongest arguments for funding the arts are also the most obvious ones.

The arts enlighten us, challenge us and have the capability to broaden our horizons like few other things can.

That is our greatest strength and our greatest case for support.

When we allow other things to become the primary reason why the arts are "important" the field is weakened.

The irony is that as we in the arts kept trying to make economics our lead argument for relevance, many for profit organizations are trying to add more artistic elements to what they do.

It's not surprising now for a CEO to emphasis things like design and storytelling as much as a strong balance sheet.

So while many of us are learning to become more "business-like", corporations are trying to become more like us.

That's because they understand that in a world with too much of everything, one of the only ways to survive is by appealing to a potential customer's sense of meaning and purpose.

Which is what the arts has been doing since the beginning.

As an artist, don't be afraid to embrace the "intangible" benefits of what you do.  Yes, they may be difficult to explain (though you should try), but I think people are now more willing to embrace intangible benefits they ever before.

 

 

 

 

Adding it All Up

As I sit here working on version 6 of both the marketing expense budget and the revenue projections for my day job I feel compelled to share a word or two about the financial side of this business.

Right now a lot of arts orgs are making their decisions about next year programming.

Which means that somebody out there is making the decision today that is going to cause a lot of havok in their lives a year from now.

I could spend a lot of time talking about how important strong fiscal management is to the arts, but I'm short on time so I'll just say this:

Whenever you are projecting revenue or budgeting expenses, make sure what you are doing makes sense.

You laugh, but I'm serious.

In this line of work, most of the financial problems are caused by somebody put a number on a piece of paper that didn't really make sense and then somebody else signed off on it.

You project that an event is going to sell 30% more tickets then anything similar has ever done before . . . not because you have any real reason to believe it's going to do that . . . but because that is the amount of money you need to make.

When forecasting expenses you neglect to factor in that everything, from material costs to performer salaries, is going to be a bit higher then it was last time around.

You create budgets which leave no room for error, where basically the one way the budget will balance at the end of the year is if EVERYTHING goes exactly how you planned, when we all know NOTHING ever goes as planned in this business.

So please take your budgeting process seriously, because bad decisions now will come back to haunt you.

 

Focusing on the wrong thing

In a survey done around a couple of years back more then half of the people surveyed said that lack of time is a bigger problem then lack of money.

I still believe that thinking holds, even when people are more concerned about money then they are accustomed.

I mention this because I'm seeing a lot of arts organizations are cutting their ticket prices in the hopes that it will improve attendance.

If you already have relatively high ticket prices for your work, then cutting prices or offering discounts may be helpful to a point.

But mostly, you are just throwing money away by lowering prices.

This is because when people are considering attending your artistic event they are making time and effort decisions, not money decisions.

So if you can convince your target audience (through marketing and other efforts) that your work is worth getting off the couch, driving across town, etc. then you will be surprised what people are willing to pay for the experience.

Describing Your Art Properly - Part 2

A few add on's to yesterday's post:

1.  If you think you're art is so complex or abstract that it defies description, let me help you out . . .

It isn't.

Just because something may be difficult to describe doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do so.  If an entire political campaign can be condensed into a few phrases, "hope", "change", "yes we can", then you should be able to do something similar to your body of work.

2.  Creating simple, easy to remember ways to describe your work doesn't mean you are "dumbing things down" to appeal to the masses.

You aren't doing it because people are stupid.

You do it because people are busy and they forget things.

So if you want people to connect to your work, you have to cut through the clutter of their daily lives.  The words you use are a powerful tool for doing that.