Arts Issues by Alex Aldrich

Using the Left Hand

2012-01-25T10:55:00.000-05:00

It was said of Maestro Eugene Ormandy that his was the most expressive right hand in classical music. As music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra he could pull more lush sound out of 110 players—particularly string players—with just his right hand than anyone else on the planet.

A short man, accustomed to getting his way, he spoke softly, wielded a small stick and demanded perfection from every musician that worked under his direction. His left hand, for the most part, hung by his side and only rarely made a small gesture to players to indicate their cue. These, however, were nearly always invisible to the audience.

Only once, in four summers of singing with the Saratoga-Potsdam Chorus under his direction, did I see Maestro Ormandy use his left hand to dramatic effect.

We had rehearsed Verdi’s Requiem for weeks and there was a particular choral entrance he wanted emphasized.

“I’m going to wind up and give you the biggest cue you will ever see, and I don’t want just the basses to enter. I want the tenors and altos to also come in on that note. I want the audience to be knocked flat by this entrance. So watch for it. Don’t be late…” So there we were, rehearsing again and again that five-second moment that would make or break the performance.

The night of the performance, Saratoga Performing Arts Center was sold out. 7500 in the shed and another 2500 on the lawn; a beautiful evening; the soloists sounded amazing. Our big moment arrived and we geared up for the entrance.

A couple of measures before we were to sing, we all realized something was not quite right. Having been drilled by our chorus preparer, the late great Brock McElheron, we kept the mantra “hearts on fire, brains on ice” close to our thoughts. Sure enough, it happened. Maestro Ormandy, with a look of intense concentration on his face, took a short step back and fired off perhaps the biggest cue he had ever given to the largest chorus he had ever worked with…

…a full measure early.

Not a single person came in. Ormandy, leaning forward to brace himself against the expected wall of sound, almost fell into the second violins. Then, with his cue fresh in our minds, all 300 of us, with the full brass, wind and percussion sections of the mighty Philadelphia Orchestra, entered in full voice. Maestro Ormandy, in the process of recovering from his near fall forwards, was now knocked backwards—nearly into the front row of the audience. What saved him was the railing that stage management had thoughtfully built into the podium.

Reeling, Ormandy recovered his footing and, by now panicked, wildly looked around trying to fix what surely had been one of the greatest missed entrances of his career. But as a few more seconds passed and those incredibly fine-tuned ears of his reasserted themselves, he realized that we had come in exactly on time, in exactly the manner he wanted us to, and that the only thing wrong was that he had given us our cue a measure early. All was, astonishingly, well.

A few more bars passed, the chorus continued through the “Salva me…” section of the Requiem, and then it happened.

Up came the left hand.

In full view of the audience, and in the slowest and grandest of all gestures, Maestro Ormandy pointed his left index finger at his left temple, his thumb “cocked,” and pulled the trigger—all with the most beatific smile on his face.

His full and very public acknowledgment of his mistake, while the orchestra was still playing and we were all singing, was one of the greatest moments of my life. It left me reassured that any of us, no matter our aspirations, can find ourselves having to confront failure. The lesson was not in avoiding the failure but in moving past it with grace, dignity, and greater wisdom. In that sublime moment, Ormandy demonstrated his humanity and his greatness.

I wish all politicians, all public servants, could have lived through this experience and seen for themselves how Maestro Ormandy handled himself.

The quality of our political discourse, including the debates we are seeing from our Presidential candidates, is disheartening. Even worse is the quality of discourse on the internet by people on all sides of the aisle who parse every action, every statement, and every fashion choice, and lob the most withering, incendiary comments that demean and denounce the candidates from the safety and privacy of their living rooms.

The chief executive of any enterprise, whether it is a small business, a symphony orchestra, or the President of the United States should be judged not just by what he (or she) knows or by his past actions, but by the qualities and capabilities of those with whom he surrounds himself, and the degree to which he is comfortable in taking responsibility for their actions.

I no longer believe we elect a President. I believe we elect a Presidency. We elect a point of view; a set of values; a change of scenery. The President, while aspiring to be as communicative, as expressive, and as clear as possible with the right hand, must also know when to use the left hand. And so, for the record, should all of us.

A President or CEO that has not learned yet the importance of his/her left hand is lacking some critical skills…

…and probably should attend the symphony more often.

Vermont: The State of the Arts, 2012

2012-01-03T14:26:00.001-05:00

[This post first appeared in the Burlington (VT) Free Press, January 1, 2012]

I am frequently asked, what is the current state of the arts? My response?

Vermont.

Vermont is the State of the Arts.

2010 Census figures are not available, but based on 2000 data, Vermont is first in writers, seventh in visual artists, and fifth overall in the per-capita ratio of artists-to-citizens out of all 50 states. I believe, however, that visual artists are extremely under-reported in Vermont, and that once the 2010 data is out we will find ourselves ranked first overall.

From communities as diverse as Brattleboro, White River Junction, Island Pond, Rutland, Bennington, and the greater Burlington area, Vermont’s artists leave an indelible impression on citizens and visitors alike. We are a creative state whose character is hewn as much from the keyboard and the brush as it is from the soil and the forest. For most Vermont artists, the natural landscape informs their creative core (corps?). For others, Vermont’s independent streak inspires provocation and even outrage, as certainly art should from time to time. The critical note, here, is that of all states I have heard about, Vermont artists describe themselves exactly this way: “I’m a Vermont artist”—using Vermont as an adjective to encompass the depth and variety that very name conjures in the imagination. No other artist from any other state does this, to my knowledge…at least not with the same degree of commitment.

Arts institutions in Vermont—the “healthy” ones—are nimble, have strong community support, and make the most of digital media and social networking tools to reach out well beyond our border. Virtually all who regularly apply to the Council for funding fulfill the “artistic excellence” requirement with ease. Grants, therefore, tend to be awarded based organizational capacity and the value and impact that their activities have in/on their communities, not on the past record of accomplishment; a subtle but important difference. If nothing else, it indicates a sector that is fully mature, with very high standards, and aware of its important role in bringing quality programs and services to the public.

From the consumer’s perspective, therefore, the arts in Vermont are thriving. There are many arts events to choose from, not just on the weekends, but on any day of the week. And with very few exceptions, they are all of really high caliber. A glance through any community newspaper will prove the point.

The view is very different, however, from the creative/producing end.

Whether the root cause is the economy, donor fatigue from massive weather cataclysms, or the increasingly vocal, but very ill-informed, national movement to remove all so-called “nonessential government services,” the issue for all is survival. The Kennedy Center’s Michael Kaiser believes that the key to survival lies in the diversity and excellence of programming coupled with an ever-expanding commitment to marketing and promotion.

Therein lies the rub. Arts organizations are mission driven. If there is an extra dollar left over at the end of the year, the mission mandates that it be spent on programming. The result is that Kaiser’s advice to focus on diverse, excellent, new programming with an emphasis on marketing is difficult to sell to trustees and audiences.

What the sector really needs are tools for analyzing the impacts of artistic activity on education, community economic development, and social services. With the Pew Trust’s Cultural Data Project just getting started here in Vermont, and the new fields of “Social Impact Analysis” and “Brain-based Learning” coming into their own, we will soon provide policy analysts and state/local officials with much better information about why they should be advocating for significantly more resources to be spent on supporting and promoting the sector.

Artists and arts organizations are generally pretty capable at corralling what they need to put on a show. What they are less good at is reaching audiences in Boston, New York, Montreal, Albany, and the Berkshires (!) to let them know what is available less than a half-day’s drive away. This is where the state’s interests and the arts sector’s interests are currently most in alignment and where immediate returns are already beginning to be found. (There are many others, but this is the lowest of the “low-hanging fruits.”)

Vermont’s arts sector is, from an economic policy perspective, one of its last great un(der)-tapped resources. With the right kind of collaborative, strategic and socially-integrated investment, the arts sector could easily thrive and become integral to Vermont’s economic vitality, not just a pleasant, icing-on-the-cake afterthought.

Coming off a long hiatus...

2011-12-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

Starting again in January I will be posting more regularly to this blog. I haven't written much since last June, and I think I have spent long enough recharging my batteries. Immediately after it is published in the Burlington (VT) Free Press, I will post my first blog of 2012 in this space. Thereafter, I hope to push out a new post every couple of weeks.

The Vermont Arts Council, in the meantime, has been posting some really wonderful pieces by Council staff in Artmail.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Post-Irene Clean-up

2011-08-29T13:05:00.001-04:00

It had been my intention to conclude my eight-week hiatus from blogging by crafting an essay that would respond to all the national issues that have been pressing upon the arts all summer long. From macro issues, like Climate Change and the assault on public arts financing in places like Kansas, to micro issues, like how kids are engaging in creativity through their smart phones, it has been a summer of significant, blog-worthy events.

Hurricane Irene, in less than 24 hours, has changed everything.

First, my heart goes out to communities like Brattleboro, Rutland, Wilmington, Grafton, Bennington, Brandon, Waterbury, Woodstock, Quechee, and Richmond. From large towns to tiny hamlets, from major arteries, like Rtes 4, 7, and 9 to small nameless dirt roads in more than half of its counties, Vermont is reeling from the effects of Irene’s rain.

Certainly, one of the hardest hit towns is Brattleboro. The photos alone are enough to make one cry.

Vermont, however, is resilient. By noon today, the New England Youth Theater posted, “We're very optimistic! We will put a flood info page on the website as soon as we can, and we'll keep you updated on how you can help! Classes will still go 9/12!”

This from an organization that, less than 24 hours ago, had several feet of water in its lobby…

So all we can do is do all we can. To start with, we need to inventory as much of our cultural infrastructure to determine how bad things are so we can start prioritizing our response. If you are associated with any cultural facility that was affected by Irene, please let us know what its/your status is by clicking here. Please include a couple of pictures as well.

During the next few weeks, Council staff and trustees will be touring the state. We’re going to try to get to as many locations as we can and make sure that any state response that includes FEMA, DOT, or other appropriate federal and state agencies, includes our arts and cultural businesses as well. By the way, this inventory should also include galleries, artist studios (especially where the studio has a commercial presence in a town), and non-traditional venues like farmers markets.

Finally, here are a couple of resources (CERF+ and American Institute for Conservation) for those of you with immediate needs.

Good luck, and please remember to reach out to your neighbors. It’s what brings out the best in us all.

A Few New Positions

2011-06-21T16:52:00.001-04:00

A few days before Father’s Day I received a package from my father. It was a book titled “Dancing with the Queen, Marching with King”—his memoir of a life spent in public service. The title is a reference to his two most memorable life experiences: his participation in Martin Luther King’s famous march from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965 as one of the two official NY delegates (and one of only 13 white people to go the whole distance); and his foxtrot with the 26-year-old Queen Elizabeth at the opening of the new American embassy in London in 1953.

Normally I’m not a big fan of memoirs, but for the past few days I have been simply unable to put this one down. I have always loved and admired my father, but until this past week, I have never had a clue as to what he did during the day when he left our house at 7:30 in the morning. I knew what his job titles were, but I never knew of his role in quelling the Rochester (NY) riots in the 1950s; of his opening up the Erie Canal to recreation; or compelling Cardinal Spellman of New York to include Black marching bands in the St. Patrick’s Day parade for the first time. For all its flaws (some technical and a few narrative), this book has given me not just a glimpse, but a real hard stare into my father’s career, a career of which he is justifiably proud.

It has made me think of the kinds of questions my own children will be asked by their children about their grandfather (me). What did he do Dad? Why did he choose to be an arts administrator? How did he end up with that as a career?

Normally when I’m asked these questions by people networking for a new job or interested in a career change, I demur. But my father’s memoir has given me reason to be a bit more forthcoming because as I age, I remember details less and less. I need to put some of this stuff on paper before it disappears completely. I’ve thought of a title for my memoir, though. It’s called “A Few New Positions.”

I can only bring up brief episodes as being formative: such as the time my mother signed me up for an art class when I was in 8^th grade that turned out to be a life-modeling class, complete with fully nude models (my friends were so-o-o-o jealous!); and another time when a bunch of us were recruited to be extras in a film being shot at the Brooklyn waterfront. When the film was released two years later, I went to it at the CineLido East on 59^th Street with my mother, both of us brimming with anticipation. It turned out to be a soft-core porno flick and we sat in mortified silence through the entire thing. Neither of us spoke when it ended. We couldn’t even look at each other. About halfway home, at 2^nd Avenue and 60^th Street, my mother finally cleared her throat and said, “Well, Alexander, I guess you learned a few new positions, eh…?”

The far more important (though possibly less interesting) episodes that shaped my career in the arts involve a host of players, some world-renowned, some complete unknowns. There are many stories, some involving priceless punch-lines, others involving staggering examples of bravery or stupidity. Of the latter, the one that comes to mind first and foremost involves a former boss.

I was hired on a two year contract and at my first formal review I was told by him: You work well with the staff that reports to you, you get along well with your peers in other departments. But you have one major problem. Shortly after you started work here, you got married and then six months later bought a house. People look at that and say, ‘there is someone who is too ambitious.’ People don’t like people who are ambitious. It makes them nervous.

By the time my contract wasn’t renewed 18 months later I had amassed an entire notebook of notes with back-up tapes of similar conversations, and my boss’s boss, grateful to avoid a lawsuit, allowed me to remain on staff until I found another position.

I share this story because throughout my career in the arts, there have been many times when I have, to quote my mother, “learned a few new positions” quite suddenly. All have been a bit scary (no one likes being “between opportunities”), but I can assure you none has been as painfully unpleasant as sitting through that film with Mom at 13 years old. If I could survive that, I could survive anything…

Creative Economy: 13 Years of Avoiding Whiney Things

2011-06-06T18:04:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, before all the brouhaha hit the Kansas Arts Commission, I attended the Creative Communities Exchange at MassMOCA in North Adams, MA. What a difference a 13 years makes! Hosted by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) and Berkshire Creative, it was a two-day celebration of New England’s creative economy in a location that has become synonymous with the term.

In the summer of 1998 at Tanglewood, then-Boston Pops Music Director John Williams gave a talk to about 70 arts and business leaders from around New England. The arts community had been through a major national crisis a few years earlier, the result of the Sen. Helms-inspired, Speaker Newt Gingrich-led Congressional effort to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. John Williams presented a concept that had for a few years been gaining traction in Europe. There was a new force at work in our communities, one that most people were familiar with, but that was difficult to define and measure by most economic theorists and policy analysts.

Williams called it the “Creative Economy.” To paraphrase his words, he said, the Creative Economy was what happens to a place when the arts are encouraged to thrive. Not only is there an immediate and measurable economic benefit when public dollars are invested in the arts, but there is a far more lasting, though less easy to measure, improvement in the quality of life in a place. People living in a creative community tend to care more about the aesthetics of their built spaces. They care more about the quality of their schools. They care more about the degree to which school-children are engaged in school and civic life. They tend to trust the social contract that is implicit in the relationship between taxation and social services. They tend to shop locally and support their own community’s efforts at revitalization.

At the time, the Berkshires had ridden out the economic downturns of the mid-1980s and early 1990s fairly well and, with the notable exception of Pittsfield (the county seat), had little difficulty with its recovery. Why? Because the significant presence of the arts throughout the length and breadth of the county was attracting visitors, wealthy second home-owners, and—most tellingly—entrepreneurs who, with a modem and a keyboard, could build their start-up from anywhere in the country so why NOT start up in the Berkshires? From Great Barrington to Williamstown, from West Stockbridge to Otis, Berkshire County boasted nearly the same number of arts organizations in all of Vermont, and some of them were among the most prestigious organizations of their kind in the world. Collectively, they were an economic developer’s dream.

Today, 13 years later, even Pittsfield has joined its sister communities in Berkshire County and is, as a result of its mayor's eight-year commitment to investing in the arts, well on the road to recovery.

It was necessary, Maestro Williams concluded, for business and industry in New England, to understand the relationships that exist between and among all the sectors (public, private, and nonprofit) to support the Creative Economy as it grows and develops throughout the region. Over the years different states, and even different regions within states, developed their own particular “brand” of Creative Economy.

In Vermont, for example, most people think of the Creative Economy in terms of value-added agricultural food-products that are intimately connected to Vermont’s identity as a rural, slow-foods-oriented area. In Boston and Providence, the Creative Economy is more closely identified with the technology industries—particularly in the areas of medical and entertainment services.

Higher education was increasingly recognized for its role in shaping the 21^st century workforce, and it, in turn, began to sound the alarm to policy-makers about the our K-12 school system and its inability to prepare our children for those demands.

In all, a lot of great work has occurred in the 13 years since the term took root in New England’s fertile soil. Two are worth mentioning.

First is MassMOCA itself. We visited the newly-reopened converted mill in North Adams 13 years ago and while the museum was magnificent, the town of North Adams itself hadn’t quite caught up to the changes that were happening. Now, it is safe to say, North Adams has made serious headway. There were at least four restaurants between the Holiday Inn and the museum itself about 2 blocks away, and numerous galleries, studios, and small businesses dotting the downtown as well as a new (or apparently revitalized) Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. The art at Mass MOCA was amazing (as usual) but it was no more amazing, from my perspective, than the town itself.

The second was the award given to Vermont’s own Robert McBride and RAMP (Rockingham Art and Museum Project) during the gathering. With the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chair Rocco Landesman in attendance, and in front of more than 250 professionals from all over New England, Robert received the first “Creative Economy Award” presented by the NEFA. Robert has been laboring for nearly 20 years in Bellows Falls, Vermont, to restore the center of Bellows Falls using the arts as a catalyst for business development and community revitalization. That he was recognized in this setting, by a group of 250 of his closest professional colleagues was an honor of great significance for him and for Vermont. Congratulations (again!) to Robert and his partners in the town of Rockingham and the Village of Bellows Falls. It is a well-deserved honor.

Best of all was what Robert said as he accepted the award.

“If you have creative people around the table with you, you’ll do creative things. If you have whiney people around the table, you’ll do whiney things. Ask yourself, what kind of table would you like to be at?”

Well put, Robert….

An Open Letter to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

2011-05-25T11:32:00.003-04:00

May 25, 2011

The Honorable Sam Brownback

Governor of Kansas

Dear Governor Brownback,

I have been following with great interest your efforts to remove government support from the Kansas Arts Commission and to re-establish it as an independent, non-profit agency, with the expectation that doing so will relieve your administration of the responsibility of allocating taxpayer funds to match federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The budget now awaits your signature and there is a great deal of concern that you will use your line-item veto to effectively abolish the Commission which, I understand, a bipartisan coalition in the Kansas Senate representing a broad cross-section of Kansas citizens hopes you will not do.

It is neither my place nor my intention to engage in the political discourse of your state. However, since our small agency has been frequently singled out by your administration as an example of a nonprofit state arts agency that is thriving without, as the media has reported it, the benefit of state investment I am compelled to weigh in and set the record straight on just three points.

First, in Vermont our nonprofit state arts agency is effective only BECAUSE there is significant state investment in our work. Without a State appropriation of just over $500,000 we would be unable to provide the professional development services, educational outreach to underserved communities, accessibility services to hundreds of historic cultural venues that were built long before the passage of the ADA, and a host of other grants that support our creative sector.

Second, without State support we would be forced to raise more than half million dollars (to match our Federal grant from the National Endowment for the Arts) from the private sector—an activity that would put us in direct competition with the very cultural institutions that our mission requires us to support. In addition, our largest grant program (Cultural Facilities), not only provides significant improvements to our historical and cultural institutions in the area of accessibility, the funds we award employ hundreds of carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and other blue-collar workers that are, along with artists and teachers, the life-blood of our communities.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, every State SHOULD invest in the arts sector simply because it makes good economic sense. One of our most conservative policy analysts looked at state and local tax revenues that flowed to state and municipal coffers from our very narrowly-defined arts sector in Vermont. Income taxes paid by artists, arts administrators and independent arts contractors, as well as the long-established IMPLAN economic modeling analysis on just the nonprofit arts institutions in the state, reveal a total return of $19.45 million on a combined investment of $2.5 million, which includes our $500k appropriation. This annual ROI of 775% is even more astonishing since virtually all of Vermont’s state tourism dollars promote skiing, outdoor recreation, fall foliage, maple syrup, and artisanal food preparation and service, NOT art and culture—a circumstance which, I am happy to say, is going to change starting this summer.

Our legislature is getting more and more comfortable with thinking of the work we do as expanding the revenue base of our state, not increasing the expenses that our citizen taxpayers must bear. Our sector provides good jobs. It adds enormous social and civic value to our communities. It improves the relationship that young people have with their schools and communities. And it serves as a powerful attraction to entrepreneurs seeking to locate their new businesses in a creative, vital community setting. The “creative economy” is real and it is thriving here in Vermont. I believe that all these arguments are relevant to making the case for keeping the Kansas Arts Commission on sound financial, PUBLIC footing.

With great respect for you and for the wonderful citizens of Kansas, I am

Sincerely yours,

Alexander L. Aldrich

Executive Director

Vermont Arts Council

www.vermontartscouncil.org

www.artsupportsme.org

"Inspiring a Creative State..."

Counting one’s Chickens at the Vermont Legislature: A Tribute to Public Service

2011-05-10T12:37:00.000-04:00

About three weeks ago a chicken established itself next to the Vermont State House, taking up residence in a pine-tree adjacent to the west entrance. Within a few short days, she became an unofficial State House mascot, received lots of tasty handouts from passers-by consisting mostly, I suspect, of the staff of the Abbey Group who manage the State House cafeteria, and in general providing a welcome break from the far weightier issues being hammered out inside the building. Bob, the parking lot security attendant, showed me her roost and pointed out the can of rainwater and the handful of straw nearby in case she felt like nesting.

A few days ago word came down from the State House…the chicken was to be removed by the close of business; captured and sent to live out the remainder of its days on a local farm.

I have two reactions to this.

First, why remove the chicken? She’s clearly doing no harm to anyone at the State House. She has provided a disproportionate amount more levity and good will than almost any other living thing within, say, a couple hundred yards. And if the people caring for her remain vigilant, they may, from time to time, be rewarded for their kindness with a really tasty, organic, free-range egg.

Should she, in due course, suffer a Darwinian event, well—at least it won’t have been because she skied out of bounds at Killington or waded into the swollen Winooski and couldn’t be located despite a massive search-and-rescue effort by local authorities. This is a bird that, unlike Pete the Moose, was born domesticated and later, through no fault of her own, became wild.

Like Pete, the chicken has captured the fancy of many in the State House. In fact, she now even has a name: Henrietta Josephine—Josephine for short (confirmed by my esteemed colleague David Schutz, the State House Curator).

Going from the philosophical to the practical is my second reaction: good luck with that! As I stood with Bob the parking lot attendant hearing about Josephine, a security officer passed by and muttered under his breath, “give me five seconds and the chicken problem is solved,” as he meaningfully patted his holstered weapon.

Laughing I asked if he could use a taser instead to which he replied, “What, you want it roasted, too?!”

Nothing like a Vermont sense of humor…

Guns, tasers, rocket-launched nets, and trappers aside, it’s going to be darn near impossible to get near that chicken. Unless you get them accustomed to a coop, and unless it’s after dark when they have gone to roost, chickens are almost impossible to catch once they have “gone rogue.”

I truly hope Josephine enjoys her freedom now that she has won it, living off a few hand-outs from the folks in the State House and the occasional private citizen. And since this is a column about the arts, I normally draw an appropriate arts analogy to fit the circumstances. But I’ll let you have the fun of doing that.

I’m content with knowing that this particular chicken crossed the road to enjoy the hospitality of the Vermont State House. That, at least, is something all Vermonters, avian or otherwise, can generally count on.

The Difference of a Dollar

2011-04-26T12:23:00.000-04:00

On a recent trip to Washington DC I had to pause in front of a Metro card machine to decipher its instructions. As I pulled several bills from my wallet I became aware of a soft-spoken man standing a few feet away, quietly intoning “45 cents, folks. That’s all I need. It’s not a hand out, I just need to get home and I don’t have the right change. Spare 45 cents? Anybody? Please?...”

Having lived in most of the major cities on the eastern seaboard, I was not buying his act. I had seen too many hustlers and homeless people looking for an easy mark, and this guy was perfectly positioned at a spot where out-of-towners are most likely to stand for a few minutes with money in their hands figuring out, like I was, how to buy a Metro card.

Perhaps a dozen people were in the vicinity, all doing what I was doing, and as we all finished our business with the machines, the man suddenly squatted next to his bag, facing away from us, lifted both hands up next to his ears and noiselessly started to shake them. He realized that none of us were going to help him. Still shaking, and in his own private world of humiliation and embarrassment, he emitted a quiet keening sound as I, with a fresh Metro card safely in hand, turned from the machine to head through the turnstiles.

In that moment I realized that whatever else might be going on, this man really was desperate. He needed 45 cents. His life had been reduced to this almost insignificant equation and the look on his face as he stared at his bag, shaking with fear, anger, and frustration pierced my detachment like nothing has in a long time.

The fairy tale ending to this story is, having given him some money, I proceed onto the Metro feeling virtuous and the guy purchases his ticket and makes it home in time for his daughter’s birthday party.

Instead, I gave the guy a dollar, received his heartfelt thanks, got onto the Metro and experienced a tidal wave of anger. I felt that the entire encounter was an allegory for the arts in this country. The arts sector is the unknown man in the subway looking for legitimacy and support from his fellow travelers. The arts sector is the unknown man in the subway with a bag full of ideas, of projects, of potential, all waiting to be realized. The arts sector is the unknown man in the subway in need of a few pennies more to help reach a place that other travelers will only dream of. The arts sector is the unknown man kneeling in the subway shaking with sorrow, fear, and a little rage at the indifference of society.

I shared this story with a friend. He pointed out that the real lesson to be drawn from this encounter was that, in reality, someone (me) had intervened and bailed the guy out—a perfect lesson in current political theory. Let things get desperate enough and the private sector will step up and save the day.

Except, I argued back, that in this case, it wasn’t the “private sector” that stepped up and saved the day; it was me—a public servant. Moreover, it was a public servant who watched as literally dozens of “private sector citizens” walked past and ignored the man’s pleas; who took the extra moment to process the look on the man’s face; who gauged that one man’s private torment, internalized it, and who finally reached into his wallet to give the man a dollar. Did I feel virtuous? Heck no.

What’s going to happen to the next person who needs 45 cents if the public sector isn’t around? How will she fare? And the person after her…? And the one after him…?

We are going in the wrong direction. The public sector is being made out to be the enemy of progress. And the need for the arts and humanities (not to mention human services, medical care, and social security) is greater than ever.

And yet… the overpowering message coming from Washington DC still is to cut taxes and cut spending…to ignore the plight of the bereft man at the Metro card machine.

Pushing this allegory to its logical conclusion I considered how the unknown man in the subway who represents the arts sector will fare next year when he again lacks the 45 cents he needs to change the world. What can this man expect from the public sector, represented by National Endowment for the Arts?

About 40 cents.

Whose helping hand will it be next time?

I’m glad I live in Vermont

2011-04-11T17:10:00.002-04:00

The past couple of weeks have been crammed with arts advocacy-related activities. In Vermont more than 50 advocates descended on the State House for the day to make sure that the arts were not forgotten in our policy-makers’ zeal to deliver a balanced budget to the Governor for signing. While I will not comment on any specific matter that is still in play, I think it is appropriate to share one brief story from that day.

Surrounded on all sides by hundreds of people pressing in to make contact during the legislative free-for-all that is the lunch hour in the State House Cafeteria, I overheard two senators discussing the appropriations process with a constituent. “Sure,” one of them said, “the subject of whether we could afford to support the arts in this climate of deep cuts to needed human services came up. But then we all looked at each other and I said, ‘I wouldn’t want to live in a place that didn’t support art and culture.’”

I’m glad I live in Vermont. Contrast this attitude towards the arts in Vermont to what is still unfolding (some say unraveling) in our nation’s capital.

I always look forward to spending a couple of days in DC with 2500 of my fellow travelers who descend first on the Kennedy Center for the Monday evening “Nancy Hanks Lecture on the Arts” followed by a day-long program on Capitol Hill where, each year we have the pleasure of meeting with our AMAZING Vermont delegation. This year, the program was enhanced by a special White House Briefing in the Old Executive Office Building, just off the West Wing of the White House.

In this setting we were treated to a parade of four or five mid-level and senior policy advisors to the President who all assured us how much they treasured the role that the arts play in their daily lives and in their collective priorities as policy-shapers. There was only one problem.

For all their talk touting the President’s strong support for the arts as demonstrated by his first-of-a-kind campaign policy statement on the arts, and for all the posturing they were doing in front of us, their deeds stood in stark contrast to their words. As Americans for the Arts CEO Bob Lynch put it: “How can you ask us to celebrate the President’s support for the Arts when a) his recommendation for the National Endowment for the Arts is disproportionately less than almost every other agency, and b) when most of us who believe in the power and effectiveness of the arts feel like they gave at the office back in 1996 when the NEA suffered a 40% cut?”

After several minutes of hemming and hawing , one of the senior policy analysts stood in front of all of us at the White House Briefing and finally admitted to Bob Lynch: “We just don’t have a good answer for you right now.”

The reality is that the debate in Washington DC about how to grow our way out of this recession has been taken over by people who appear to lack a basic understanding of how the American government is supposed to function. Worse, the President, whose attempts to charm or manipulate his way to a healthy compromise on this and many other issues, is being met with scorn, derision, and flat out defeat at every turn.

Here is what I believe is the situation:

The combination of tea-party/Conservative office holders in Congress are pushing the House into a position that is basically undermining the ability of the government to actually govern. They intend to eliminate all discretionary funding programs (whose cost, I have heard, constitutes about 12% of this year’s total budget deficit). If they succeed, two things will surely result. One, they will eliminate all types of government support for things that actually RAISE revenues to support needed social and recreational programs (like an affordable and accessible National Park system); and two, even if they succeed in eliminating these cost areas, they STILLwill have 88% of the deficit to contend with!

So what should the President do? First, he should recognize that “compromising from the center” only plays into extremists’ hands. He should use his office to educate Americans about the importance of a strong centralized government. He should use his office to educate Congress (the House, specifically) that limiting itself to only cutting programs, and not to growing programs that deliver revenue and quality of life, is self-defeating. And he should make the case that no country that calls itself civilized should ever be allowed to throw its cultural sector under the bus.

Right-wing, tea-party extremists I have spoken to have no problem supporting the arts. They just don’t want GOVERNMENT to support the arts.

What they seem unable or unwilling to understand is that the cultural sector relies on a very sophisticated support system that has evolved over the years and which is a cornerstone on which most of our major cultural institutions rest. Without small, meaningful investments of public funds, philanthropists frequently are unaware of investment-worthy projects and programs. Without government support of the arts in our public schools, the entire creative sector would, in a few short years, begin to lose its head of steam.

Like I said, I’m glad I live in Vermont…here, at least, politicians from all sides of the aisle seem to understand that cutting alone won’t get the job done.

Senate Finance Committee Action

2011-04-01T17:24:00.002-04:00

April Fools!

March Madness

2011-03-28T14:36:00.000-04:00

In mid-July, 1964 a 40-year-old Jim Oakes (who would later be appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Federal Appeals) was a New England organizer for the Rockefeller presidential campaign. As a delegate to the 1964 Republican Convention he was one of many “socially liberal” Republicans who believed in the Republican Party’s historic stands on equality, social justice, and minimal government interference in the lives of its private citizens even while advocating for fiscal responsibility.

The 1964 Republican Convention was no picnic—despite its being held in San Francisco’s rustic-sounding Cow Palace. It is generally accepted that it served as the coming-out party for a new kind of political conservatism, one that would eventually appear to abandon most, if not all, of the lofty ideals that first imbued the party of Abe Lincoln.

Judge Oakes described to me what happened to him at the conclusion of Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech that warm July 16th in San Francisco.

“I had to leave the room—that huge room with its thousands of young Goldwater Republicans roaring their approval for the turn to the right the party had just taken. I just couldn’t believe it. I walked out into the vestibule at the Cow Palace and stood leaning on the rail overlooking the lobby. After a moment, I became aware of a well-dressed black man, about my age, who was clearly as upset as I was. I asked him what he thought of Goldwater’s speech. He replied ‘my party has abandoned me. It has abandoned my people.’

“I introduced myself to him. He was Jackie Robinson.”

Goldwater lost that election and it would be 16 years before the Conservative Revolution inside the GOP would succeed in finally elevating one of its own, Ronald Reagan, to the White House. And it would be another 16 years after Reagan’s election that neo-conservative political values would touch my profession—the cultural sector—with devastating results.

In the mid-1990s the first campaign of the so-called Culture Wars ended, and the Arts and Humanities were its first major casualties. A significant budget reduction at the Federal level in 1996 placed on the states the extraordinary burden of carrying forward the valuable work of the tiny Federal agencies charged with supporting the cultural legacy of America’s vast creative output. What was at the time considered a near “death blow” reduction of 40% to the National Endowment for the Arts was a significant step in the neo-conservative effort to reshape American culture.

Today (nearly 16 years later again) we find ourselves in the middle of another attack on our cultural support system. Not only is it the clear intent of the conservative Right to deal crippling, if not fatal, blows to the NEA and its sister agencies (the Humanities Endowment and Institute for Museum and Library Services), but also to National Public Radio, National Public Television, and to the “Nation’s Attic”—the venerable Smithsonian Institution.

This time round, however, these attacks from the Right are no longer confined to our Federal institutions. At least a half a dozen states have been trying to cope with similar efforts to disband their public cultural institutions under the guise of “balancing the budget.” For many of us, this effort has resulted in a whole new definition of “March Madness.”

While basketball fans everywhere are savoring (or cursing) the sweet runs of Butler and Virginia Commonwealth University, folks in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Kansas, Nevada, Washington and elsewhere are realizing that a cultural March Madness has gripped their State Houses or Governor’s Mansions.

Despite reams of data showing the positive effects of participating in/studying the arts at school;

Despite hundreds of independent studies showing the significant state and local revenues generated by the arts sector;

Despite literally thousands of independent sources clearly providing credible anecdotal evidence that the arts create and sustain community life; and

Despite the easy-to-verify fact that in most states the total budget for all things “cultural” (Arts, Humanities, Historical Societies, Libraries, etc.) are a tiny fraction of 1% of a state’s General Fund,

NEVERTHELESS, arts and culture are the unequivocal “first thing to go” in our schools and in our state house corridors. It is only a small comfort to know that Vermont is, for now, one of only a handful of exceptions to this trend.

Last week, while New Hampshire headlines were blaring the late-night, closed-door House vote to disallow collective bargaining by state employees, an equally insidious bill succeeded in passing in the House Finance Committee (20-6) to eliminate the New Hampshire Council on the Arts.

Yesterday the paper reported that of the more than 5 million people who filled out their NCAA brackets, only TWO predicted that the final four would include Butler and VCU and not include a single #1 seed. Two people are happy today, while all the rest tear out their hair and tear up their brackets.

Is the same thing going to happen in the arts? Is the conservative Right going to wake up tomorrow happy while millions of Americans from all walks of life will wake up to the despair that results from no longer being able to access the arts and humanities?

Sure, the comparison here is a little bit false. With respect to the NCAA tournament, two people are happy now, but in a few more days, a new basketball champion will be crowned and everyone else on college campuses and communities across America will get back to business as usual.

I only wish I could assure the arts sector (and everyone else, for that matter) of a similar outcome.

Who's In?

2011-03-15T11:23:00.003-04:00

On April 1, Vermont not-for-profit performing arts organizations who sold at least $50,000 in tickets last year will be required to collect a new 6% sales tax from their patrons. Efforts to repeal the tax (enacted as part of the omnibus Miscellaneous Tax Bill at the very end of the 2010 session) have been met with quiet certainty in the Legislature and in the Administration that those efforts will fail.

The harsh reality is that the State is looking for revenue under every rock, stone, pebble, and, in this case, grain of sand.

On the surface it seems reasonable to ask whether a patron paying $20, $50, or sometimes even $100 shouldn’t be asked to pony up an additional $1.20, $3, or $6. If one can afford $100, surely one can afford $106, right? For probably 99% of all patrons (including me and members of the Legislature) this statement is true.

But what about the other 1%? What about the patron who scrimps and saves every penny to be able to afford the good seats so that his/her family can see their first Nutcracker up close? The reality is that for this person, the decision will be either to not go at all or, at best, to drop down to the next most expensive category of seats. The result? The organization loses that income completely, or the difference between the higher and lower ticket price. Multiply those few patron-decisions times the number of events in a typical season and the lost revenue quickly climbs into the thousands of dollars.

Again, no big deal right? Well, on this there is a huge divergence of opinion. On one side (generally populated by people who have never managed a not-for-profit) the response is “Yeah, no big deal—what’s a few thousand bucks to an organization that’s bringing in $50,000 or more in a single year in ticket sales?” On the other side are the arts professionals who have done their homework and know exactly what their “price points” are for any given production. Furthermore, they know that even if they sell out every seat in the house, on average, the income from ticket sales will generate only about 35% of the costs needed to present the artist(s) in their seasons. “A few thousand bucks” is frequently the difference between solvency and insolvency. At the very least it's a few thousand bucks that has to be raised instead of earned.

What if there were a better way?

If the Administration and the Legislature are truly looking for more revenue, rather than tax patrons at the box office (which everyone in state government understands may increase current revenues from the sector by about $400,000), they should help the not-for-profit arts sector do the one thing that it has never been able to do for itself—market and promote the extraordinary programs available across the state to the millions of potential “cultural tourists” that live in Boston, Hartford/Springfield, New York, Philadelphia, Albany, Montreal, and Quebec.

Here’s why: with NO statewide, coordinated marketing and promotional activity across the sector EVER, this sector nevertheless contributes nearly $19.5 million each year in state and local tax revenues (not to mention all the other public benefits). Heck, it works for the ski industry, doesn't it? Imagine what the arts sector will contribute once a little grease starts oiling its promotional wheels?

Taxing patrons will hurt the sector. Spending a little bit on marketing will strengthen the sector and vastly increase state and local tax revenues. We've already started and we have the baseline information to compare our efforts to, thanks to Doug Hoffer and Melinda Moulton. Let's keep it going.

Who’s in?

Who will be first?

2011-03-03T09:14:00.001-05:00

On day 30 of the 36-day Army-McCarthy Hearings in June, 1954, attorney Joseph Nye Welch finally had enough. “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

I look at the cultural landscape of this great country during this very difficult period of deep recession, high unemployment, massive state and federal deficits, religious and ethnic mistrust, global warming, and polarizing media, and have to ask—“Have we left no sense of decency?”

Decency means many things in this context. It means possessing a concern for others, a balanced sense of morality, a basic understanding of fairness, an ability to accept blame when it is deserved and offer forgiveness where it is warranted. Above all else, it means doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

It feels as if our nation has lost its collective sense of decency. We still fight two wars on the opposite side of the globe. Our Supreme Court considers corporations to be individual people. We bail out incomprehensibly wealthy “people” who work in the financial industries (whose primary purpose is to collect transaction fees from the buying and selling of shares as opposed to producing anything of tangible value) and yet slam our working class union members including our public servants and school teachers. Even worse, we elect political leaders whose best idea for solving our problems is to reduce Government’s capacity for serving the public so much that it fails completely.

Almost every day I read an article or have a conversation in the State House about the latest "indecent" proposal to cut programs and services from those most in need. I see well-intentioned people try to make decisions about what to spend public money on based only on how much those services cost, not also on what benefit they offer. I see teachers required to teach larger and larger groups of students; to serve as social service agents or as parental proxies to the point where I have to believe that we’re not actually teaching our children, we are simply stabling them until they’re old enough to make decisions for themselves. And what kind of decisions can we expect from them? I don’t think anyone contemplating this question needs a high school diploma to come up with the answer.

My wonderful niece, one of the most “decent” people I know, is a junior in college, majoring in local food production and management. She recently told her mother (my sister) that she doesn’t expect to have children. It’s not that she doesn’t like children or can’t have them. She just can’t, in good conscience, bring them into the world that she will, in less than two years, have to face herself. How depressing is that from a young woman who just turned 21?

So who is going to be first?

Who is going to challenge corporate America and tell it that the real social contract lies in the old French concept of noblesse oblige: that those who have the means must take care of those less fortunate?

Who is going to point out the folly of fighting two foreign wars and paying for them by borrowing money from Asia, in effect saddling our grand-children and great-grand-children with crippling debt or worse, the humiliation of defaulting?

Who is going to explain to elected officials that their job is to lead and to govern, not follow the dictates of the latest opinion poll?

Who is going to explain to the public that too little government results not in less regulation but actual anarchy?

Who is going to explain that the “poverty line” is actually two or three times higher than policy-makers and economists say it is.

Who is going to remind our elected officials that their professional and moral obligation is to maximize revenues just as much as it is to reduce expenses?

Who is going to convince the electorate that returning to the tax structure of the 1990s is going to have virtually no impact on 98% of them, and that the remaining 2% can certainly afford the marginal increase?

Speaking of the wealthy, who is going to ask them what it's like, really, living in a gated community?

Who is going to tell the media that Sarah and Christine and Paul and Rush and their ilk are suitable for Entertainment Tonight, E!, or Comedy Central but, frankly, not so much for CNN, MSNBC, FN or any of the broadcast news programs?

Who is going to be the first one to stand up and tell the proverbial emperor (is it Rush or Glenn?) that he has no clothes; that he is lying to himself and to us?

Who is going to say enough already?

Vermont, it seems.

Are we ready?

Cutting off Our Noses to Kill the Golden-Egg-Laying Goose

2011-02-16T11:48:00.001-05:00

The President’s 2012 budget axe fell earlier this week and the results weren’t pretty. He recommended a nearly 13% cut to both the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) and Humanities (NEH) and one would be hard-pressed to find a better way to describe this recommendation than the title of this post.

First, even here in Vermont, it is generally acknowledged that Vermont's investment in the Arts is so small that were it to be reduced to zero, there would be a negligible reduction in expense side of the State’s ledger. But, oh my, what such a step would mean on the income side!

At the Federal level, this impact is even more negligible. Of the US's current $3.8 Trillion(!) budget, the NEA’s appropriation of $167.5 million represents just under 44/10,000ths of one percent. That’s right: .0000438 of the total $3,819,000,000,000. The cut proposed by the President would reduce that figure to 39/10,000ths of a percent. As a manager, I consider a figure that much less than one percent to not even rise to the level of a rounding error.

To help people visualize what this means by comparison, I offer the following:

If the Federal Budget represented the total mileage between, say, Montpelier and Bennington (a distance of 121 miles), the distance one could travel on just the NEA’s portion of that “budget” would be slightly less than 25 feet.

If the Federal Budget represented the 542 miles from my office at 136 State Street in Montpelier to the US Capitol Building on the National Mall (542 miles, according to Mapquest), the distance I could travel on the NEA’s portion of that “budget” would be 111.5 feet—or about halfway from our front door to the corner of State Street and Bailey Avenue.

For those of you who like temporal comparisons here are two that will make you sit up and take note:

If the Federal Budget represented the 18 hours, 20 minutes you might spend watching all the films directed by James Cameron in one sitting, including “Piranha II”, (and who among us wouldn't want that?), the amount of time you would have to suffer due to the “NEA’s Portion” of that experience would be 2.6 seconds. That’s barely enough time to take a swig of your medium Sierra Mist, no ice!

If the Federal Budget represented an eight-hour school day, and the NEA’s portion was devoted to Art Class? Hang on to your seats, people, you only have 1.1 seconds to paint, act, dance, or tickle (the ivories).

Saving 12.8% of nothing will result in saving...umm...nothing!

Doug Hoffer’s report (discussed at length in an earlier post), on the other hand reveals that, with very little marketing and promotional support from State agencies, the nonprofit arts sector (arts organizations and individual artists) provide nearly $19.5 million to State and local government coffers. State and local investment in the arts here in Vermont is generously estimated to be $2.5 million. That’s an “ROI” each year of 775%.

So, for the sake of argument, I asked: what if the expected ROI for the US was the equal to the ROI for Vermont? Or, phrased more clearly, what is 775% of $167.5 million?

(Drum roll please)

$1.298 billion...or about 6/10ths of one percent of total US receipts for 2011. By my figuring, if the President reduces the NEA’s budget to $146.3 million, it will lower receipts to $1.133 billion (146.3 x 775%). That’s a difference of $165 million dollars $1.298-$1.133). So cutting about $23 million from the NEA’s budget will reduce US revenues by an amount equivalent to the total current cost of funding the NEA!

The concept that the President has not yet figured out is that the NEA and its sister agencies more than pay for themselves every year in tax receipts paid by people whose jobs depend on a healthy arts and humanities infrastructure. No, I’m not just talking about artists, administrators, lecturers, teachers, and the like…I’m also talking about the restaurateurs, the owners of B&Bs and hotels, wedding industry professionals, and anyone else whose jobs depend on quality of life, integrity/authenticity of experience, quality of education and workforce preparation.

It seems to me the President should increase these budgets, not decrease them. More importantly, if the Republicans in the House who are insisting on even more draconian cuts are really serious about job growth and income generation, they might want to rethink their absurd strategy of cutting the NEA even more than the President.

You hear it here often…the arts exist on the income side of the public ledger, not the expense side. A thriving arts sector will always generate a lot more money for governments than it will spend. From our largest cities to our smallest villages this has proven true again and again and again. So I would suggest that if your representative is only paying attention to the expense side of the Federal budget, (s)he's doing only half his/er job. And if he or she is one of the ones who wants to eliminate the NEA, an agency that has proven, year in and year out to lay golden egg after golden egg...well!..

...there's gotta be a face-spiting, bathwater-throwing, mixed metaphor in there somewhere.

Please, will someone tell the President and the House of Representatives?

Three (types of) Questions All Board-candidates Should Ask...

2011-02-01T14:43:00.000-05:00

...and Trustees/Staff should know the answers to.

A colleague was recently about to interview for a board-candidate slot at a local arts organization and wondered what kinds of questions she should ask of other trustees and staff when she met with them. I suggested a few basic questions and then realized this was a topic that probably a lot of people either never think to explore or, if they do, are a little embarrassed to bring up for fear of insulting the organization that’s considering them for Board service.

Since good Board service is so integral to the health of any nonprofit, it is incumbent on trustees and candidates to seek answers to these questions and, more importantly, to insist that answers be full and forthcoming. Only when you know what you’re dealing with is it possible to move an organization forward.

So here is my list of some basic questions that all trustees should ask, and all organizations should be prepared to answer, broken out into three categories:

Questions Trustee Candidates Should Always Explore

Financial Questions:

· Of the total revenue, what percentage is contributed every year?

· What portion of contributed income is expected to be raised by the board directly?

· What portion is expected to be contributed personally by each board member (on average)?

· What portion is expected to be raised by the board in conjunction with staff?

· How much contributed income is staff expected to generate (applying for grants, etc.)?

· What are the most effective ways that the organization has found to raise money?

· What is a “significant” gift to the organization; i.e. at what amount is the red carpet rolled out and a special party thrown? (If it’s less than $1000, ugh.)

· And the corollary question: If a “significant” gift turns out to be less than $1,000 how is that gift recognized?

· What, if any financial relationships are there between the organization and other collaborators? How are these managed? Are the collaborative goals and expectations in writing?

Governance Questions:

· What is the mission of the organization? (You’d be surprised how often other trustees and staff hem and haw over this one!)

· What is the committee structure of the board and who reports to whom and with what frequency?

· To what degree are trustees allowed to be consulted in program planning? Related to this, how much direct participation does the staff want/expect from the board? How much does the Board expect/want to have?

· How often is the strategic plan revisited during the course of the implementation cycle? (In other words, if it’s a 3-year plan, there should be three annual work plans developed by staff and endorsed by the board, each of which is closely reviewed twice a year during a board meeting: the first time to review last year’s progress and lay out the coming year’s expectations at the beginning of the fiscal year; the second time at mid-year to review ytd progress against the stated goals and to reflect changes in opportunities and circumstances.)

· Does the Executive Director receive an annual review by the board? If so, how? If not, why?

· What are the top five most critical issues facing the organization? Or, put another way, has the organization engaged a third party to develop a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis for itself going forward through the next few years? What has it revealed?

Communications and Marketing Questions:

(Internal)

· How and how often does staff report to the board on its activities?

· Does the board have a means to communicate among its own members without staff present?

· Are board meetings generally policy/planning discussions; or are they generally reports on progress from staff to board?

· How effectively are listservs, website, and social marketing tools being used to communicate between the board and staff?

· How often does the board meet and does it make (effective) use of its committees?

(External)

· Who or what is your primary constituency? Does the organization have more than one?

· What is the relationship of the organization to the local print and broadcast media? Who manages those relationships?

· How much information is conveyed “traditionally” (print, broadcast, paid advertising, direct mail) and how much is conveyed electronically (email, listserv, web forms, social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.)?

· Are your various e-communications linked to each other and do they drive people to your website?

· What does your website’s home page ask someone who lands on it to consider doing?

· What does your Executive Director WANT someone to do when he/she lands on the website’s home page?

· How competent is staff at web “content management;” is it able to respond to the ever-changing appetites of your audience on your website or does it need training? (If staff is not managing the website’s content, this might be an area worth spending money on immediately to lower the external costs of managing the site’s content).

Some of these questions are best asked of other trustees, but some really need to be asked of staff. Remember, as a trustee, you will have a "fiduciary responsibility” for the organization. Don’t be shy about asking these questions, don't forget to leave the interview with a copy of the organizations' most recent audit in your hands, and if the answers you are given are unsatisfactory, you should seriously consider not joining the board, or doing so conditionally. Remember, no matter how heart-warming and stirring the mission of the organization is, if it is managed poorly or if the board lacks commitment to the mission, it's going to be very hard to serve on its board.

Please share questions YOU have found valuable to ask as a potential trustee!

How Art Supports us All

2011-01-19T15:57:00.001-05:00

It’s the time of year when budget discussions and funding priorities cause me to awaken each day with a need to prove to someone new that the arts matter; to explain that far from being a social amenity or, worse, a luxury for the elite, the arts provide vital connections among, and social, intellectual, and emotional content to, all parts of society.

I have put together a few examples of exactly how and why the arts really DO matter –not just to people directly involved in creating and presenting art, but to everyone.

A Town and Agency Dilemma

Several years ago we were asked by the Transportation Agency to see if the Arts Council could help it with a project in a town in the Northeast Kingdom. The Agency and the town had—at that time—spent more than 25 years disagreeing with each other about how a federal highway, which doubled as the town’s “Main Street” would be rehabilitated to current USDOT standards without ruining the essential character of the village center and its village green.

Within a matter of 20 months, artists had been selected to work with a town/agency committee, developed a design charrette that explored a variety of creative design solutions, the final result of which received the unanimous blessing of the town’s select board, its people, and the Agency.

The artists’ commitment to the project, and more importantly, their ideas, were an essential part of putting to rest the project’s troubled history and putting it on track. And it wasn’t just the “art people” who benefitted. It was the entire town—the vendors who sell their wares on the town green on market day; the kids who play catch on the green or enjoy the fall foliage festival, the folks who pay their local taxes at the town clerk’s office, or shop at the local country store. The project breaks ground this April, and when, two years from now, the work is completed, the parking will be improved, the viewscape will be enhanced, the safety of pedestrians and passersby will be ensured, and dotted throughout the ¾-mile long “canvas” will be works of sculpture and built objects that will provide echoes of the towns past and markers for its future.

A few artists helped make it happen, but everyone benefits.

Poetry: Out Loud but Not Heard

Six years ago, at the urging of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Council organized Vermont’s participation in an annual poetry recitation contest, similar in concept to the Scripps Spelling Bee Competition. Each year one Vermont High School Champion is flown to Washington DC to compete for top honors in front of a distinguished panel of judges. Winners get scholarships and their schools receive significant visibility and—perhaps more important—funds to purchase books.

Last week I and two colleagues attended a different kind of Poetry Out Loud competition—a pilot project with the Community School of Vermont whose students, for reasons that will soon be apparent, are unable to participate in the regular competition. Our journey took us almost to the Canadian border, down a country road, through a parking lot next to a wall topped with coiled barbed wire, into a waiting area, through a “lock-down” portal and into the community activities room at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport. There, six young men treated us and about 25 of their fellow inmates to an hour-long recital.

It was a two-week pilot, offered for credit, and these six young men were as passionate and professional as any other kid I’ve seen in the POL finals. One or two might have suffered from a learning disorder, or a lack of schooling “on the outside.” But the intensity they brought to their performance clearly showed how this project had reached them. Two things were particularly noteworthy. One was a poem written by Eddie* reflecting on the (presumably autobiographical) circumstances that put him in prison. “Lying there, stretched out on the pavement, he was dead. And the gun was in my hand. I hadn’t been man enough to walk the other way. Now I had to run.” In the next segment he read a work by Tupac Shakur: “The Fear in the Heart of a Man”:

Against an attacker, I will boldly take my stand
because my heart will show, fear for no man
Before a broken heart, I run with fright
scared to be blind in the vulnerable night
I believe this fear is in every man
some will acknowledge it, others will fail to understand
there's no fear in a shallow heart
because the shallow heart is faint and don't fall apart
because the shallow heart is faint don't fall apart
But feeling hearts that truly care
are fragile to the flow of air
And if I am to be true then I must give.. my fragile heart
my fragile heart

The second was a poem written by Michael *—a paean to “My Main Squeeze” in which he describes in great detail how his Main Squeeze is so important to him—is there for him night and day; there to inspire him; there to talk him through the lonely times; there to be nibbled on and caressed by his sweet lips; and who will be waiting for him when he gets out to help him put his life back in order… His Main Squeeze, it turns out, is his ballpoint pen…

The poignancy of the first and the humor of the second was proof that these were not “average” people—assuming, that is, that one could look past their being incarcerated. These six young men are in trouble now. But what happens next?

If the few thousand dollars we spent helps inspire even one of these six young men to turn his life around and stay out of prison—that is a huge savings to taxpayers and well-worth exploring further. Again, a few artists make it happen, but everyone benefits.

Artists May Hide, but They Can Also Run…a business that is.

We hear it all the time. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly be do that (fill out a form, learn to use a computer, apply for 501(C)(3) status, etc.). I’m not a business person. I’m an artist!” Well tell that to Simon Pearce. Tell it to Judi and Fred Danforth. Tell it to Warren and Lorraine Kimble, to Sabra Field, to Grace Potter, to Charlie Shackleton and Miranda Thomas, to the good people at Wall Goldfinger and Conant Metal and Light, and to the hundreds of filmmakers and photographers and thousands of other creative artists and craftspeople around the state whose work adorns our walls and table-tops; whose songs fill our mp3 players and smart phones, and who employ hundreds, even thousands of “average” people in shops and studios around the state.

Next month the Council will host its fourth “Breaking into Business” Workshop in Windsor. The word about these two-day intense workshops is out…we have more than 45 applicants for only 25 spots.

Our constituents wanted our help in learning how to better market and promote their work, both in Vermont and beyond its borders. They wanted the state to partner with them in promoting Vermont’s artists and art works. They wanted help in learning how to take advantage of the internet and of social media and social marketing tools like websites, facebook and twitter. They wanted to meet other like-minded people so they could share resources and provide mutual support.

In a time of scarce resources, we have to help people make connections, provide them with training and support services and zero in on just a few critical skills that are really effective at helping people help themselves. By helping one artist to become the next Simon Pearce or the next Judi Danforth, employing dozens of people in their manufacturing process, their gift shops, their fulfillment warehouses –we are helping others who aren’t artists.

All of which, by the way, are examples of how art supports me, you, your community, and the state Vermont.

Stay safe and be warm.

*Not their real names

Looking for Multi-partisanship

2011-01-04T17:35:00.000-05:00

Happy 2011! As the Vermont Legislature reconvenes and we all welcome the Shumlin Administration, it's a great time to pause and reflect on how the arts fits into the overall Vermont economic recovery picture and to look at a couple of issues that will be confronting our field in the coming biennium.

The big issue, of course, is the looming $150 million hole in the state budget. The general tendency when there is a budget deficit is to cut expenses. This strategy works for corporations and individuals. But it doesn't work so well for governments because people need government-funded services during a recession more than when there isn't one. If anything, government should actually increase its spending during a recession because it is the only sector that tends to have access to investment capital that will, if used wisely, will help us "grow our way" out of the recession.

Also, cutting expenses is only half the job of our public servants. The other half is to raise revenues--especially for those of us who are in a position to do so. The state of Vermont has many ways to increase its revenues (taxes on income, property, sales and use, room and meals; fees for hunting, driving, fishing, camping and other services; and many other things too tedious to mention here). But a recent study (from Doug Hoffer courtesy of Melinda Moulton) shows that the revenue impact of the arts sector on the State of Vermont is close to $19.5 million--or about $17 million MORE than the state invests in the arts through various agencies. This is an ROI of nearly 800%...every year!

Another aspect of economic recovery requires one to think slightly more holistically about what kinds of things generate investments that lead to jobs. Why do people choose to live and work in one town and not another Why do people choose to establish a business in Vermont and not in New Hampshire or New York?

According to people like Richard Florida, more than ever, people can live where they want because technology has enabled them to telecommute. As more and more of Vermont gets broadband (a big shout out to my pals at the Vermont Council on Rural Development), the more Vermont will become attractive to telecommuters. But broadband is only a piece of the "where to live" decision. Equally important are the availability of housing stock, the quality of the local shopping, the access to high quality recreational and cultural opportunities and, perhaps most important of all, the quality of the local schools. These last two, cultural opportunities and quality of schools are directly related to the health of the cultural sector. The healthier and more vibrant the arts in a community, the better the cultural and educational opportunities will be. And if those are good, then you've got really compelling reasons for entrepreneurs to move in, establish roots, and start employing people.

The second issue is the impact of a sales tax on tickets sold for nonprofit-produced performances. Sure, a sales tax isn't going to stop me, personally, from attending a show. But it might stop someone else. It is that last, "on the margin" ticket-buyer that is often the difference between a success or a failure in the nonprofit world. Nonprofits exist to educate, inspire, fulfill, and nurture. Ticket sales represent usually about 30 to 40 percent of a nonprofit's revenue. Donations and grants make up the remainder and it is the quality and originality of programming, the community/educational outreach, and the perceived social service value of the nonprofit that triggers these donations and grants. Taxing tickets may seem like a good idea, but it won't raise anywhere near as much money for the state as people think, and it may just induce a tipping point for some organizations whose own margins are razor-thin. Is a tax worth it? I personally don't think so, but I look forward to the debate in the Legislature in the coming weeks. I hope we will see some multi-partisan agreement coalescing around this issue.

Finally, as we look ahead just a month or two, the sixth Poetry Out Loud competition will be happening in 40 schools around the state. But what has me excited most of all right now is that one of the schools is the Vermont Community High School and it is doing its own version of Poetry Out Loud for the first time.

What, you're not familiar with this school? It's Vermont's largest public high school and it exists under the jurisdiction of the Corrections Department. But more on this unusual pilot in future posts.

For now, I'm looking forward to welcoming the new legislature and the new administration and celebrating our newest Cultural Facilities grantees on January 13th.

For all of you out there, please stay in touch and drive safely...!

ACT 160 UPDATE, Vermont Performing Arts Organizations, PLEASE READ!!

2010-12-21T15:22:00.002-05:00

Act 160, the omnibus tax bill signed into law last spring (May, 2010) contains language that will require those of you that sell $50,000 or more in tickets to performances this year to charge a 6% sales tax on tickets to your events starting this April 1st.

We have just learned that ANY organization that uses a third-party ticketing outlet will probably have to charge the sales tax, EVEN IF YOU SOLD LESS THAN $50,000-WORTH OF TICKETS IN 2010!! The reason for this is that the Tax Department is interpreting the statute to read that the ticket seller is responsible for collecting the tax, therefore it is the ticket-seller's threshold, not the presenting entity's threshold, that matters.

Therefore, REGARDLESS of whether you believe this law will apply to you starting in April, WILL ALL OF YOU PLEASE fill out our incredibly brief questionnaire on the subject, by clicking HERE?

If you filled out a similar survey we sent out last spring, please fill it out again--you probably have more accurate numbers to report anyway...

Thank you!

Whose Art is it Anyway?

2010-12-21T15:01:00.006-05:00

Much has already been written about the (Hide/Seek) brouhaha over David Wojnarowicz’s video “Fire in My Belly” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Last week the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts’ director, John Killacky wrote a wonderful commentary on the issue—giving some much needed context to his position that the Smithsonian was profoundly wrong to remove the video from the exhibit.

Wojnarowicz died in 1992 of AIDS, but his work, much as it did in the late 1980s, apparently continues to drive some people over the edge. Why?

Outside of church, people invoke the Lord, God, Jesus, or any number of Saints for a variety of reasons; usually to celebrate something good that has just happened to them (“Before I thank the Academy for this award, I’d like to first thank God…”) or because something bad has just happened, or is in the process of happening. For people who face death, a crucifix serves as a talisman of something spiritual and redemptive; a tangible reminder that Christ suffered for our sins and that the journey to the next place will be made bearable by His suffering and His presence.

So why is it somehow more acceptable for an NFL wide-receiver to catch a pass in the end-zone, point to the sky, and drop to one knee for a short prayer, than for an artist, suffering from AIDS, to use a video-image of a crucifix covered in ants to express, in part, the pain and torture of his condition? Aren’t these two sides of the same coin? If it’s okay to include God in your victory dance, shouldn’t it also be okay to include God in your rants against pain and suffering?

From where I sit, the Church (Catholic or otherwise) has pretty broad shoulders and casts a pretty large net. Millions of the faithful will not suffer as a result of Wojnarowicz’s work being exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery (despite the fact that some of the video is for mature audiences). In fact, Wojnarowicz’s video will probably bring more people to a more spiritual place than will the US House Speaker-elect’s efforts to remove it from view.

So what is really going on here?

Somehow, 25 years ago, it became politically acceptable for some politicians to impose their own intolerant moral and religious views on all Americans, and this is the latest chapter in their war on people who “aren’t like them.”

I guess we are supposed to ignore the fact that people who aren’t conservative Christians also pay taxes, represent us in Congress, fight for us every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and (for those of us with large families or large circles of friends) are loved and respected by us without question. In the eyes of a few powerful political leaders, you can’t be a “non-conservative-Christian,” create works of art using religious icons, AND have your work exhibited in a publicly-funded institution all at the same time. Why? Because you’re DIFFERENT.

Sadly, the Director of the Smithsonian removed the work without even inviting the critics on Capitol Hill to come and view it for themselves. Had he done so, an important educational dialogue might have opened.

The real question is, how tolerant can we be, or should we be, of someone else’s art if that person’s sexual orientation and/or religious views give offense? I was raised with the understanding that true Christians should be tolerant and forgiving, and that before judging others I should walk in their shoes. Aren’t elected politicians elected to represent ALL the voters, even the ones who are different?

In my view, the Government is supposed to do more than feed and clothe people, ensure their safety, and provide shelter. It should also enable a clear and accurate record of our collective journey through life to be documented and preserved. AIDS, while less in the news than it was 20 years ago, is still poignantly with us. Gay artists have always been with us, and always will be, as will their art. Religions will always compete for followers, especially in this country where freedom from religious persecution is guaranteed by our Constitution.

The Smithsonian is, if nothing else, the MOST appropriate place to present the record of one artist’s journey with AIDS. Like it or not, we all pay taxes, and we’re all going to die—some of us very slowly and painfully. Bottom line, David Wojnarowicz’s journey is our journey, his art is our art, even if Speaker-elect Boehner doesn’t seem to know it yet.

For more on this subject, click here.

To all Vermont Performing Arts Organizations...

2010-12-07T11:48:00.004-05:00

Act 160, the omnibus tax bill signed into law last spring (May, 2010) contains language that will require those of you that sell $50,000 or more in tickets to performances this year to charge a 6% sales tax on tickets to your events starting this April 1st.

We still do not have accurate numbers from all of you about what impact this will have on Vermont revenues. Furthermore, there have been questions from various sources about what impact this would have if this tax applied to ALL performing arts organizations that sold tickets (ie., eliminating the threshold of $50,000).

Therefore, REGARDLESS of whether you believe this law will apply to you starting in April, WILL ALL OF YOU PLEASE fill out our incredibly brief questionnaire on the subject, by clicking HERE?

If you filled out a similar survey we sent out last spring, please fill it out again--you probably have more accurate numbers to report anyway...

And, since my most recent post commenting on Doug Hoffer's fine report commissioned by Melinda Moulton ran without Artmail, please scroll down...

Thank you!

A Time for Thanksgiving

2010-12-01T09:38:00.007-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, policy analyst and man-who-would-be-auditor Doug Hoffer issued a four-page report on the Economic Footprint of the Arts in Vermont to Melinda Moulton, the Burlington entrepreneur and developer who commissioned it. I have known Melinda for a few years and had many rich conversations with her about the relationship between healthy communities and the arts and whenever the conversation has turned to a discussion about the “economic impact of the Arts in Vermont” we have argued about the benefit of doing such a study.

In my 35 years in the arts I have read hundreds of such studies, all of which have been commissioned by a local, state, or regional arts commission or arts advocacy group. With great anticipation, and usually at great cost, organizers of these studies have spent months articulating exactly what they hope to achieve, more months gathering data (most of the time in the form of questionnaires and surveys), and even more months crafting and publishing their reports which, with very few exceptions, prove only that the arts matter to a lot of people—a fact that I consider self-evident.

Most of them claim things like “every dollar spent on the arts has a seven to 13-dollar impact on the community where it’s spent;” or “studies prove that if your child studies a sequential program of art in school he/she will score 30-50 points higher on standardized tests, including college entrance exams.”

The problem with such claims is that policy-makers (legislators in particular) are very smart people and have access to even smarter people to advise them on how to interpret such claims. It turns out that while it may be true that a dollar spent at the Flynn may circulate throughout the Burlington economy, changing hands seven to 13 times before it finds itself in the wallet of a Jet Blue passenger to Fort Lauderdale—that is not economic impact, that’s just economic activity.

Also, while it might be true that kids that study the arts do have higher scores, on average, than those who don’t, there is nothing that says the relationship is causal. A far likelier reason might be that schools that have sequential arts programs for all their students are probably in wealthier communities. Wealth and parental educational achievement is a far likelier reason a kid does well in both the arts AND on standardized tests. The relationship between arts study and test scores is therefore, at best, correlative—not causal.

Sorry to burst your bubbles.

So why am I thankful? Because for the first time an independent policy analyst who, it turns out, is probably even more skeptical than I am about these types of studies, has been commissioned by a local businessperson who is anxious to prove that it IS possible to derive important, “impactful” conclusions about the arts in Vermont. Even more important, the cost of deriving these conclusions was a small fraction of what such studies usually cost. If I understand correctly, Doug looked at a variety of data, all readily available from sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census, and Vermont’s Dept. of Labor, and examined them through an “arts prism.”

Full disclosure: yes, I had a couple of preliminary conversations with Doug last spring after he was first approached by Melinda. In both cases, however, rather than extolling the virtues of previous studies and recommending them to him as examples of how to do his own work, I spent virtually all of our time on the phone sharing my own deeply-held suspicions, my frustration at how conclusions tended to be exaggerated and therefore unsupportable, and my concerns that very little would come of his work that would be helpful.

I like to believe that my attitude may have helped Doug to achieve the nearly-impossible.

First, Doug ignored “the Creative Economy” since studies about it include for-profit organizations whose work is based on “creative outputs.” Thus, Doug's study isn’t larded up with movie theaters, book stores, gaming studios, and other such enterprises which largely serve as a distraction to what most people are trying to focus on when they think of an “arts impact analysis.”

Second, he focused the bulk of his own analysis on hard data (not surveys) that other sectors use when reporting on their own impact, and he kept it simple, focusing, it appears, only on employment, compensation, and tax data, which are standard data sets and very easy to defend.

Third, his methodology, using IMPLAN analysis, is a standard tool used by almost all policy analysts/economists to help understand or at least gauge the scope of operations that a particular sector encompasses. When economists tell a governor, for example, that it is “a good investment” to offer $5 million in tax breaks to a high-tech manufacturing company as an inducement for them to locate here in Vermont, there is a strong likelihood that someone, somewhere has used IMPLAN to help make the case.

Finally, Doug does not allow himself to render an opinion about “impact” related to the arts and community livability, student engagement, interpersonal and intercultural relationships, health, social capital, and so on. He shares a chart with some of the findings from a group at Princeton and leaves it to the reader to agree or disagree with those findings. Instead, his only statement about impact relates to the income to state and local governments from taxes collected as a result of all the activity in Vermont that is related to the Vermont arts sector.

The bottom line for me is this: we finally have a number…a defensible number derived by a certified skeptic not in the arts and not commissioned by an arts organization, derived using a standard and widely accepted methodology, to reveal what many of us have long suspected: “the state and local tax impact (emphasis mine) of the arts in Vermont is $19,438,480.”

How about that?!!

Like a good skeptic, I had to find out what that meant in ROI terms. Sure, $19.5 million might be the income, but what is the total investment?

I am aware of only a few cities and towns that invest local tax dollars directly in the arts, and a phone call to a couple dozen of Vermont’s best known “art towns” indicates that the aggregate local investment is less than $500,000.* This figure, combined with the State’s investment in the arts (including appropriations from the General and Capital Funds, and line items for the Vermont Symphony, Humanities Council, and Historical Society, results in a total State/Local investment of less than $2.5 million.

Thus, the total ROI for state/local funds invested is just under 800%. And this is not a return over time, this is a return every year. It is also a return that takes place even though the most significant public relations engine in state government (the Dept. of Tourism and Marketing) until very recently (like maybe yesterday) has not considered the arts to be a factor in the Vermont Brand, and that with the notable exception of Vermont Life Magazine, the state has done very little to publicize the arts in Vermont.

To me the policy implications of this report are not only big, but they are important. And it all is something to be profoundly thankful for!

*Burlington leads all towns and municipalities with direct grants and services to arts organizations and activities totaling about $350,000. Coming in a surprising, though very distant second, is Killington whose local arts investment is about $27,500. Jericho is third at $10,000. Most Vermont municipalities and towns have no direct support for the arts, and of those that do, the investment is usually manifested through the Recreation department budget and ranges between a few hundred dollars and $2,500. --ALA

Five Ways to Cope

2010-11-10T10:20:00.007-05:00

In my last post (scroll down), I shared five trends that are driving the planning and operating agendas of arts organizations. Since the trends were, frankly, quite depressing, I closed by saying I'd share some strategies for how to cope with--or even take advantage of--these trying times...

Focus on Excellence
Last July the Kennedy Center's Michael Kaiser shared his thoughts about how organizations could cope with a financial crisis, and the one piece of advice that stood out for me was his admonition to NOT sacrifice artistic quality to save a few dollars. What I particularly noted was that he wasn't just saying "hire the best performers;" instead, he said "showcase new and exciting work." The lesson is, I think, people have seen Macbeth and heard Beethoven's Eroica; but they probably haven't seen Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" or the latest work by Philip Glass. In his experience, during tough economic times, patrons will pay to see something they haven't seen before (that has an excellent reputation) and not pay to see "the sure thing" that they probably have seen many times before. Keep your programs fresh...

Bring your Show to Where the People Are
Why should Philadelphia have all the fun? Two of the most moving examples of "taking it to the people" are the Opera Company of Philadelphia-led "Random Act of Culture" that involved dozens of local choruses, the "Halleluia" Chorus from Handel's Messiah, the Wanamaker Organ, and Macy's department store in downtown Philly; and their equally inspiring rendition of the "Brindisi" chorus from Verdi's La Traviata in the nearby Reading Market. These are extreme examples of what performers have known for ages: sometimes the best way to get people interested in your programs is to reach out to them first--in supermarkets and farmer's markets, in train stations, ski lodges and waterfront parks. Flash mobs may be the extreme version of what is a pretty good strategy for opening up your doors to younger audiences. Don't forget, though, the event has to be high quality to succeed...

Explore "Transient" events
Closely related to flash mobs is a growing segment of arts activities that can only be described as "transient" events. These are cultural events that occur in nontraditional spaces like parking lots, empty storefronts, public parks, and train stations, but instead of an opera company performing opera, or a dance company doing a dance, these are more often a collaboration of artists who are presenting original work that is designed specifically for the site. Whatever the collaboration needs, they figure out the cheapest most expedient way to do it. Collaborators are paid by passing a hat for a suggested donation and marketing/promotion is done entirely on Facebook or Twitter. With virtually no overhead, all of the tangible expenses handled as in-kind donations, and no formal "organization" to pay for, costs are unbelievably low and audiences are left feeling like they have been part of a planned, original "happening." While it technically a fairly "low risk" endeavor, an established arts organization might find this to be a "low reward" activity. This kind of performance, however, is proving to be a very popular pastime for the highly connected under-30 somethings on the west coast. At least that's what I've heard...

Is this the wave of the future?

Do Less with Less
Yes, this one is obvious. So why do we have such a difficult time doing less than we did last year or the year before? Because we are mission-driven, we are passionate, we believe in the all-consuming power of the arts to make our lives, schools, and communities better, and because our funders continually expect us to do more than we ever did before.

So here is a thought: disguise how you are doing less with less. Instead of doing six subscription events in a season, do five (high quality, remember), and, instead of a sixth, convene a gathering of local or regional artists for a day-long discussion of how to address the challenges facing the community. Invite the media--make an event out of it. Charge $10 to attend, and feed them all a box lunch. Your networking/planning discussions may show you new opportunities that you never would have thought of...

Or do five events of your own, and then invite your area schools to come in and present a showcase of their most talented students in a reduced-priced program whose purpose is to, say, raise funds for scholarships for their attendance at an arts school, or to make the local library more physically accessible or some other important community charitable purpose. Once you start thinking of your season as "five-plus-one," instead of "same-old-six," ideas and opportunities will start to flow.

Increase your Marketing/Promotion Budget
Most people have the biggest problem with this one. Again, because as 501(c)3s, most arts organizations are hard-wired to spend that last dollar on program, we insist on cutting marketing and promotion first. As Michael Kaiser pointed out last July, it's better to do one less event, but do everything else well--which includes marketing and promotion. As a percentage of our overall budget, I believe that we should begin to get our boards of directors and our funders comfortable with a marketing/promotion budget of at least 10%. Right now, if memory serves, our field usually spends about 3% on average. This is not enough. If people don't know the good work you are presenting, how are you going to expect them to buy a ticket? Organizations that gain audience share during times of austerity, usually keep those gains when the times get better.

Collaborate Collaborate Collaborate
Before you exhaust your organization's resources trying to cope with a tight budget and increased competition; before you burn out your administrative and artistic staff by freezing salaries, asking for more hours, or placing them on furlough; before you allow your facility to slowly deteriorate to the point of embarrassment for lack of attention to regular maintenance, please please please collaborate! Think of your competition not as competition, but your most sympathetic partner. The chances are, if you are struggling, so are they, and they will welcome any overture from you.

Interestingly, I've had conversations with organizations who have a misplaced idea of who their competition is. One individual wanted to start a dance company because, as she put it, "there are no dance companies doing what I want to do in my part of the state." What she wanted to do was reach out to high-school aged boys and girls--particularly girls--and engage them in dance. To her, the competition was other dance efforts. To me, her competition was the local recreation department's after-school sports programs. I haven't heard back from her yet...

On another occasion, I had a conversation with a member of a local theater company whose board refused to allow him to share a production with another, similarly-sized theater company less than 50 miles away. "They're our biggest competition" this person was told. Maybe. It turns out that NO ONE on the board of this theater company had ever even attended a production at the other theater, nor did they know a single audience-member who had either! So with no audience overlap, how could they POSSIBLY be competitors? If ever a collaboration was designed to function well, this was it! So far, no dice...

* * * * *

Times of austerity are times to not just think, but actually ACT outside of the box. Why? You have a ready-made excuse for failure. "We had no choice...we had to try something!" Don't be misled, however. None of the ideas I have suggested are easy. All will certainly take you so outside your comfort zone, but isn't that better than, say, forced retirement...?

Stay strong and do good work.

Five Trends and Then Some...

2010-10-25T16:06:00.007-04:00

I just returned from back-to-back conferences in Austin TX (National Assembly of State Arts Agencies) and Chicago IL (Grantmakers in the Arts). Both conferences are designed to help us provide better services to our constituencies and I spent a lot of time absorbing the latest national trends. Here they are...

Trend #1 -- Eroding Public Confidence in our Institutions
With the exception of the US Military and the Small Business Administration, major institutions in all sectors (Public, Private, and Non-Profit) have seen public confidence wane significantly in the past few years. In general, if you are large, have a high overhead, and/or are slow to develop new products and services to meet changing circumstances--you are more likely than ever to be perceived as wasteful and a burden to society. The good news is that if you are a major arts institution, at least you aren't the US Congress, a Health Care organization, an insurance company or a bank--all of which are pretty much despised by the general public these days.

Trend #2 -- Burgeoning Accountability Movement
No matter how long you have been doing what you do, if you aren't "transparent and accountable" you are at risk. No data exists that proves the value of the arts on their own primarily because the arts have never existed in a vacuum. But we are nevertheless being asked to develop performance measures and key indicators that justify the investment. This is clearly a response to both the climate of deregulation on Wall Street (and the ensuing economic meltdown) and a few examples of some serious "worst practices" in the charitable sector and is related to the eroding confidence the public has in our institutions.

Trend #3 -- Declining Arts Funding
Although the amount of dollars going into the arts from the private sector has increased in the last five years, the share of all charitable giving (individuals, corporations, and foundations) going to the arts has declined a half-percent. In other words, while our "slice of the pie" has gotten slightly larger, the pie itself has gotten REALLY large. This is mostly because as governments have turned more and more to the private sector to make up the gaps in education and human services, the arts have been perceived as being less urgent. We have to get better and better at articulating our value to society and backing it up with cogent, believable data.

Trend #4 -- Arts Participation is Changing
Audiences for the traditional "western classical art forms" are declining: getting older, dying, and not being replaced by younger, "salt and pepper" audiences. This is not necessarily all bad news...it just means that if you present symphonies, opera, theater, ballet, jazz, or are a museum, you are probably not prepared to offer "art" the way the under-30 crowd likes to receive it.

Technology and the internet have created new ways of experiencing the arts, allowing for more direct, idiosyncratic access, even "flash mob" participation. Most significant is the rise of what is now called the "curatorial me;" the individual consumer who decides for him/herself what (s)he wants, when (s)he wants it, how (s)he want it (tv, laptop, or smartphone) and expects it delivered instantaneously for only a few dollars. This is radically redefining what an audience is, what an institution is, even what a community is.

Perhaps most significant is that opportunities for creating, sharing, and consuming art are increasing a lot, despite the loss of traditional audiences and the threats to arts education. One-third of all teenagers have created and shared works of art online--sometimes to audiences numbering in the millions! This is, needless to say, creating confusion and depression on the part of marketing and programming executives in arts organizations everywhere!

Trend #5 -- Woe Woe Woe!
As you might imagine, Trends 1-4 are creating a significant problem for the financial health of the non-profit arts sector. According to Grantmakers in the Arts data, only 16% of non-profit arts organizations are expected to end FY 2010 with a surplus and 65% have less than 90-days of operating cash on-hand. They are responding to this by downsizing, reducing HR benefits, reducing program commitments, merging/collaborating, creating new marketing strategies, waiting for emergencies to occur before taking action (which sometimes works but usually inspires panic), and even closing their doors precipitously.

At the very least, organizations are for the first time planning not to do "more with less," but to do "less with less." This is a new operating condition for our mission-oriented field. We have to start thinking of unlearning practices that are almost hard-wired.
___________________________

These are scary times in the arts. Our field is under-capitalized. Our traditional delivery systems (the institutions) are lacking demand (or perhaps there is too much supply?). Funders are demanding increased accountability and sometimes even collaborative input into programming decisions (egad!).

We are faced with new funding mechanisms that are tailored to the intensely "democratic" tendencies of the web--allowing great ideas to get noticed and funded by the general public through social networks. Strategic planning horizons which used to be five to 10 years out are now less than two. And we have just learned that even though the recession has been over for 18 months or more, it will be at least another two or three years before we begin to see a recovery.

So where do we go from here?

I'll explore some ideas in my next post...

(P.s. a big shout-out to Jonathan Katz at NASAA for setting the stage for this trend report and to others at Grantmakers, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Cultural Data Project for unknowingly giving me some choice sound bytes to share...)

Doing good, or doing well?

2010-10-13T17:53:00.003-04:00

According to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, one-third of the fifty state arts agencies' per capita state appropriation is $0.50 or less for the first time since...well, forever. (Vermont's per capita support for the arts is around $.82, in case you wondered.) Even more distressing, the amount of dollars that State Arts Agencies have received since 2001 has decreased by an inflation-adjusted figure of 43%.

Put more succinctly, State Arts Agencies are doing everything they do today with about half of what they had ten years ago.

It gets more distressing...

I picked up a copy of the current issue of Forbes' 400 (hey, Jay-Z was on the cover). I was struck by a teaser headline on the cover "Best Year Ever For The Richest Taxpayers."

Turning to the article (page 202 in case your copy happens to be lying around), I read the first sentence: "For the 400 richest Americans, 2010 may go down as the best year ever when it comes to paying taxes." Sure, 2011 won't be quite as good to our richest friends, but even if you are not a close relative of George Steinbrenner (you guys hit the lottery this year!), you'll probably be okay when your taxes go up a few points next year . Better than okay, actually.

When I was growing up I learned at my grandparents knee(s) two important lessons. The first was if you wanted to achieve anything, the best way was to be generous with giving others credit. The second was, doing good is far more important than doing well.

I have a suggestion for the 400 richest Americans starting January 2011, since it is clearly going to be a "rough year" for them. Consider taking one-half of one percent of your wealth, and make a personal charitable donation to your state's community foundation to support the arts and cultural activities of your state.

If just the 10 richest did this, it would enrich our lives to the tune of $1.354 billion. That's a pretty nice tax deduction. Plus, you'll not only be doing better, you'll be doing good.

Branding Vermont (no, it’s not a town!)

2010-09-28T16:57:00.007-04:00

I had a burger at McDonald's the other day and it got me to thinking about the recent Branding exercise that State tourism and marketing professionals like to conduct once or twice a decade to make sure that Vermont’s tourism industry has the knowledge it needs to make sure visitors return again and again.

In the latest Branding study (which I learned about by participating in a really excellent webinar sponsored by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce), not only were traditional Vermont brand characteristics reviewed, but several nuances were explored.

It turns out, probably to no one’s surprise, that while people’s perception of Vermont as a natural, unspoiled, and friendly place to visit has remained virtually unchanged for well over a century, what people like to do when they are here varies quite a lot, depending where they are from.

There are understandable differences between summer and winter visitors, but the over-arching “take-away” from the webinar was that if we want to reach our Vermont market, we should focus on words and phrases (or images) that convey emotions associated with “Pure and Simple, Unhurried, and Unspoiled;” “Farmland and Forests, Mountains and Lakes, Fresh Air, Fresh Tracks, and Beautiful;” and “Down Home, Local Color, and Authenticity.”

Before I express my opinions about the study’s implications for the arts and cultural sector, let me make a few observations about Brands and what they are for.

First, a “Brand” is a snapshot or an articulation of people’s feelings and opinions about a product at a point in time and it can change over time. Vermont has a very powerful Brand because, as the study points out up front, it has remained almost unchanged since at least 1891. But at its most basic, a Brand is little more than a tool that guides marketing and promotional professionals who are trying to figure out what messages to send out about their product.

Brands can change. Remember the very popular product that told us its fans would rather fight than switch? Sure. Smoking cigarettes was once thought to project an aura of cool sophistication, of worldly knowledge. Now they project an aura of slow, wasting death by cancer or emphysema. The Philip Morris Brand became so associated with bad medical outcomes that the corporation had to change its name.

There is probably not a single Vermonter or Vermont vacationer alive who couldn’t put his or her finger on most of the key attributes of the Vermont Brand if asked. But one of the really useful aspects of a Brand study is that it allows you to not just consider and understand what your Brand is, but also to explore what your Brand could be. Where are the “gaps” between what we offer here in Vermont, and what our visitors know about what we offer?

I can tell you one. The Arts. But hold on for one more minute…

Rather than dwell on what I believe are some gaps and omissions in the study (which I hope future studies will address), let me share what I believe was good about the study.

It revealed a lot of really interesting information about the various markets we focus on (MA, NYC, and Canada Metro) and the behaviors of our visitors:

First, nearly half of all visitors to Vermont stay with family and friends! This is a startling statistic and tells me that a significantly larger effort must start IMMEDIATELY to inform Vermont residents about all the amazing cultural (and recreational and astisanal food) offerings that are easily accessible to our out-of-town guests. Right now, the State of Vermont barely advertises what it offers to its own citizens, which means we are missing an opportunity to reach nearly half our visitors from away.

Second, NYC visitors are more likely to stay longer, spend more money, and attend more cultural events than visitors from Vermont or Canada. This tells me that if you want to promote your cultural offerings you might want to focus your attention first on the NYC market.

Third, Canadians (actually they were Canadian Metro visitors—from Montreal, Quebec City, and Toronto) like to shop. Well, okay, who doesn’t? But this is mentioned in the study as being a statistically significant difference from visitors from Massachusetts and NYC, which means that if you run a boutique selling fine arts and crafts (attention Frog Hollow, Artisan’s Hand, Vermont Artisan Designs!) , you might want to give some thought to the creating a Canadian campaign—maybe collaboratively?

Fourth, Massachusetts visitors are looking for quality, “good-value,” day-trip offerings. Again—aren’t we all? If you have a couple of packages (like dinner for two and a show, say, in Brattleboro for $150/couple), you might want to consider advertising this in the Boston, Springfield, Holyoke markets.

Fifth, two statistics opened up a whole new world of possibilities. It turns out that nearly a fifth of respondents from NYC and more than a third of Canadians respondents DON’T come to Vermont because it “doesn’t offer activities they prefer.” Really? We have lots of cultural offerings and lots of great places to shop—the two things that our survey reveals distinguishes those market segments from the others. Aren’t we telling them what the cultural offerings and shopping possibilities are? I guess not.

Also, more than a quarter of respondents from Canada and NYC have never even considered visiting Vermont before—a clear indicator that our attempts to reach NEW visitors (folks not already in Tourism and Ski Association databases) are falling on deaf ears half the time. Surely we can do better than this…?

Finally, In terms of “competitive positioning” against other vacation destinations, Vermont has some great opportunities to become a leader in offering a diversity of experiences at a reasonable price that complements our unspoiled landscape and warm, friendly natives.

So getting down to the take-away lesson for me wasn’t really all that hard. All I had to do was drive by the golden arches of McDonald's…

Vermont is known for its unhurried pace, unspoiled landscape, beautiful, natural vistas and warm, inviting people. It’s known for its outdoor recreation—particularly skiing; artisanal foods—particularly fine cheeses; and maple products—particularly syrup and bright leaves. This is what has been for years advertised by the Tourism Department, in collaboration with its two primary partners, the Vermont Ski Areas Association and Cabot Cheese. All good.

McDonalds is known for its hamburgers—in all their infinite variety. It’s what they have done well at, it’s what they have advertised, it’s what most people think of when they are asked, “McDonald sells _____?”

The difference between Vermont and McDonald's is that of late, McDonald's has spent more and more time advertising its chicken, salads, and shakes—products that, in fact, it is NOT well-known for. The result: McDonald's stock has doubled since 2006.

Meanwhile, Vermont is still marketing and advertising the same products and services to pretty much the same people who already know Vermont and are already inclined to visit.

Maybe it’s time to steal a play from the McDonald’s playbook.

Maybe it’s time to let the world know Vermont has a few other products that are high-quality, unspoiled, a good value, and easy to get to.

Let’s start with the Arts.

If we do, I’ll bet the Vermont Brand will be a bit different the next time it is studied.

How does Art support you?

2010-09-15T12:31:00.007-04:00

I spent several hours on Pine Street at last weekend’s Burlington South End Art Hop (go SEABA!) encouraging people to step up to our video-camera and respond to this question on tape.

Some people acted suspicious, not because they found it odd that a stranger was asking them to speak about something so personal on camera, but because they couldn’t understand why was I bothering them about something that was so self-evident. After all, they were at the Art Hop, weren’t they?

Why indeed…

The purpose of this marketing campaign (ArtSupportsMe.org) is to get people to think differently about the role the arts play in their lives. The truth of the matter is that Art, in all its multidisciplinary glory, has never been, nor probably ever will be, given enough financial support. Foundations, philanthropists, businesses, public funding agencies have for years been faced with a nearly impossible task: to develop a set of clear and convincing reasons to increase the flow of dollars going into programs and services that nurture and sustain our various types of cultural expression. But, we asked ourselves, what if we turned that around? What if, instead of asking how we can all support the arts, we instead asked, how do the arts support us?

We are better now than we were in the 1990s at articulating the many “public value” reasons to support the arts,most of which address the Arts’ role in stimulating community economic development (just look at Church Street Market Place and the entire Pine Street Corridor if you don’t believe me).

But the good people at Place Creative helped us home in on the Arts more powerful and compelling effect—the emotional impact it has on each of us individually and on all of us collectively. For some of us whose careers are in the arts (either as artists or teachers or presenters, etc.) the Arts support us literally, with a paycheck, a commission fee, or some kind of remuneration that enables us to pay for food and shelter.

But for most of us, defining how Art supports us requires us to be articulate about subjective impressions and emotions—something we are not comfortable with very often and something at which language frequently fails miserably. For me, art has a way of inserting itself with great subtlety and meaning into even the most mundane activities.

For example, the style of clothing you wear; the make and model car you drive; the way you cut your hair, and adorn your skin and clothing with “accessories” ALL have their basis in a creative act—not just those made by the clothing designers and car-makers, etc., but by YOU, the person who selected that particular look (or automobile) at this particular time and place.

On a slightly less subtle level are the cultural expressions that appeal to you, from the art you hang on your walls, the books you read, and the music to which you listen and sometimes dance.

And there are the obvious, “big ticket items” like concerts, exhibitions, expositions, dramatic works, films, and a host of mixed media expressions that capture our collective attention in some way or other.

Those who create “popular” art tend not to need support from foundations and arts councils because their creative output is immediately attractive to their audiences who will pay for it. But the Mozarts, Van Goghs, and other artists who are now considered “classical,” “modern,” “post-modern,” “multi-cultural.” etc. tend not to connect with enough of an audience in their lifetimes to sustain themselves. They have always needed and will continue to need support from benefactors in order to pursue their craft.

And what do we get in return for their labor? Big moments like Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Berlin Wall on Christmas Day, 1989 or Picasso’s Guernica commemorating the atrocities inflicted there by Nazi-supported Fascist troops during the Spanish Civil War. We also get smaller moments by the hundreds: the shared joy of experiencing a play written by Shakespeare or Mamet; taking in a ballet choreographed by Balanchine or Morris; attending a concert composed by Brahms or Nielsen or performed by The Boston Symphony or the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble.

And finally we get the individual moments by the thousands: the experience of encountering Michelangelo’s Pieta for the first time; or something much simpler, like hearing your child rehearse her part in the school musical.

Art is part of everything that makes us human, makes us individual, and enables us to enjoy (or least tolerate) our brief journey through life.

So the simple question we start with, we hope, will create an outpouring of sharing and understanding about the value and importance of Art to all of us. Because, whether you like it or not, whether it’s to your particular taste or not, Art really matters, in all its magnificent forms. And in Vermont, we are blessed.

How does Art Support You?

Feeling Glee-ful

2010-09-01T11:27:00.007-04:00

“…'Glee' is about the importance of arts education, so I would like to dedicate this to all my teachers who taught me to sing and finger-paint." --Ryan Murphy, “Glee” co-creator upon receiving a 2010 Emmy Award for Best Director of a Comedy

It will be National Arts in Education Week very soon. As one of the three “legs of the stool” on which our mission, vision, and goals rest, arts education figures quite prominently in the work we do at the Council. Like almost everyone I know, I am constantly impressed and amazed at the dedication and skill of the art, music, dance, and theater teachers at our schools. Although most have support networks (VATA, VMEA, and the VAAE), few believe their job is ever truly secure. Budget cuts tend to first focus on the arts and almost never on math, science, or physical education (hint to dance teachers…if you’re not already doing so, get your dance classes classified as Physical Education. You will sleep better at night!)

Into this mix comes the Arts Council with its particular focus on the teaching artist: the professional artist who either has or wants to become proficient at handling the various rules and regulations that are required for “serving it up” in a classroom setting.

We believe in the transcendent (or transformational) power of the arts to heal or empower or inspire students to achieve—not just in the arts but in life. We are convinced that creating art and bearing witness to art created/performed by others is among the most important things a young person experiences. And anyone who has gone through the agony/ecstasy of a recital, an opening night, a showcase, or any other public display where one’s “art” is featured, can tell you of the profound life lessons such events provide. Although occasionally these experiences are miserable and even destructive, for the most part, kids who survive tend to thrive, though not always as artists.

In a recent post I excoriated our Vermont education system for pretending it will succeed in the face of 20% cuts to personnel, eliminating specialists in the arts, sports, etc. In today’s post I want to draw attention to some of the positive things that are happening in Vermont's schools and arts-training programs--some of which are as professional and entertaining as anything you might see on television.

The New England Consortium of Artist-Educator Professionals (NECAP) will hold its annual conference in Brattleboro, VT on Thursday, September 23rd. Featuring world-renowned “new vaudevillian” artist Michael Moschen, the day is packed with workshops, lectures, and demonstrations. It is a great opportunity for teaching artists in all disciplines to network and share their varied experiences across New England.

The Arts Council has launched its new “Cultural Routes” initiative—a rapid-response grant program to help offset transportation costs related to delivering school children to performances at cultural institutions. These performances are frequently cited as the only professional performing arts experiences a child will have during the year. Helping schools in this cash-strapped economy will, we hope, keep this vital opportunity available to a broad cross-section of Vermonters.

More and more, our local arts presenters are taking leadership roles in delivering high quality arts-education experiences to their communities. Leading the way in Vermont is the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts whose programs and services include student matinees, camps, workshops, student passes, study guides, and curricula. But there are many others (and forgive me for presenting an incomplete list) such as Burlington City Arts (also in Burlington), River Arts (Morrisville), Catamount Arts (St. Johnsbury), Studio Place Arts (Barre), Chandler Center (Randolph), Weston Playhouse (Weston), Vermont Arts Exchange (No. Bennington), and Brattleboro Museum and Arts Center (Brattleboro), throughout the length and breadth of our small state that year after year deliver the goods.

There are the compelling programs for high school age artists of all types from the year-long Vermont Youth Orchestra and New England Youth Theatre in Colchester and Brattleboro, respectively, to more focused and discipline-specific projects like Vermont Stage Company’s Young Playwrights Project, to the well-known, two-week long “retreat” at Castleton State College known as the Governor’s Institute in the Arts. These programs focus much more on the budding creative artist and help prepare them for post-secondary and professional success as artists.

And finally, I would be remiss in not drawing special attention to G.R.A.C.E. in Hardwick—a program founded in 1975 to provide lifelong learning opportunities to elders and underserved populations throughout Vermont, and to showcase the best “outsider” art Vermont has to offer.

These institutions and many others [feel free to send me links to others I haven’t mentioned!] do so much to educate and enlighten all of us. They are the vanguard of the new arts education movement. And they all deserve our support.

Sometime in the next 20 years there will surely be another talented artist or producer or director who will pause while receiving her Emmy, Grammy, or Oscar and say “You know, the only reason I am here tonight is…I’m from Vermont.”

On Meteors and Cicadas

2010-08-19T10:21:00.005-04:00

Every year, two things creep up on me and remind me that it is August, not April, and that the curtain on Vermont’s summer will soon be drawn.

The first is the Perseid meteor shower, an annual display of heavenly fireworks that happens at the end of the second week in August each year as the Earth passes through the 130-year orbital path of the comet Swift-Tuttle.

The second is the realization that the sawing noise I’m hearing is not a neighbor weed-whacking but the annual return of the cicada, newly transformed from its underground nymph stage to its adult, tree-climbing stage where it makes as much noise as possible to attract a mate.

From astronomical and entomological perspectives, these phenomena are worth a lot of study. For me, however, they simply mean that I have run out of time. School is about to start, I have to commit to a pre-buy, and I’m looking at the calendar wondering where did all the time go.

Leaving aside the concerts, plays, openings, and other events I have been unable to get to (and God forbid I neglect visits to grand-parents and vacations with in-laws!), there are so many planning meetings, marketing meetings, development meetings, advocacy meetings still to shoe-horn in, I simply don’t know how it will all happen before Labor Day.

But somehow it will.

We all take advantage of as much as Vermont has to offer in the summer from fresh produce at farmer’s markets, to isolated lean-tos on lakes with loons, to incredible cultural events where mountain or lake views vie with the performers for the audience’s attention.

But today it’s all I can do to keep from wishing that it was April and that I still had the whole summer to get the rest of what I wanted to do, done.

First on my list...Basin Harbor. What a great program they have involving artists, adirondack chairs, the lake, fine dining and an auction to benefit the Arts Council.

I wonder how the meteors look and the cicadas sound over by the lake?

Are We Insane Yet?

2010-07-29T13:48:00.009-04:00

A few days ago, I found myself reading a recent memo from Vermont School Commissioner Armando Vilaseca. Its content was alarming.

The memo starts out with an upbeat tone, informing the reader of the Department's new mandates and goals (called "Transformation Goals") which position "the department to increase support for schools in ultimately improving outcomes for all Vermont learners. The structure we have defined is intentionally focused on mobilizing all of our staff to support schools in improving instruction and learning outcomes for all students."

Okay so far.

But then the memo gets to the real issues facing the education establishment: massive budget cutbacks, lay-offs and retirements resulting in a 20% workforce reduction, and--here's the kicker--yet another reorganization of staff around "new learning goals."

Really?!

Gone are content specialists in social studies, foreign languages, art and music, gifted and talented programs, and physical education. Those people not let go who held positions in those areas have been reassigned to something called an "Integrated Support for Learning" team. The remaining content specialists in the fields of special education, math, English language arts, English Language Learners and science will stay put as they are "part of the statewide assessment system."

This sounds to me like we are paying more and more attention to "teaching to the test" than ever. Are we surprised, therefore, that student learning is at risk? Are we surprised that more and more parents continue to question the value and efficiency of our once-vaunted school system?

None of this is the fault of one person--especially not of Commissioner Vilaseca. He's been given an impossible job to do ("Fix Our Schools") and he's doing the best he can. But this memo reminds me of my favorite Einstein quote: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Surely, by now, we are all insane. How many more times are we going to refine, reduce, reassign, re-strategize, re-formulate, re-eliminate, re-focus, and re-incentivize (using made-up words is fun because nobody can refudiate them irregardless of how they are misinterpretated) our education system before we finally come to the inescapable conclusion that this is NOT the way to "improve outcomes for all Vermont learners?"

Surely, if this method worked at all, it would have worked by now...?! (And I'll stop calling you Shirley if you agree with me :)

So what CAN be done?

Let's start with this question: What do we want our children to learn and why?

This is an important question for policy-makers to return to often, because the answer changes over time. For me, at this moment in history, there are global issues to consider all of which impact the outcome of student learning (not to mention the human condition) in profound ways. Global Warming, Renewable Energy, Religion, Population, Food and Water Management are five that immediately come to my mind. But I'm not suggesting that we run out and create curricula around these issues for first-graders.

What we must do is develop curricula that will serve as a foundation for first-graders to lean on when, as young adults, they begin to focus on solving these thorny and sophisticated problems. For example, wouldn't it make sense to start teaching a second language to preschoolers and NOT wait until they are in the 7th grade (as is the current practice in the Montpelier school system)?

Everyone who has ever had a child (or read the research literature) knows that it is during these formative years that our "language centers" are at their most receptive. Regardless of what captures the imagination of a young learner enough to cause him/her to dedicate a career to it as an adult, being able to converse with colleagues from Spain, Egypt, China and Russia who are working on the same issue(s) will certainly be advantageous.

Science and math are important, no doubt. So here's another idea: why don't we go crazy and hire some Hispanic, Arabic, Chinese, or Russian teachers to teach those subjects in their native language once our kids have enough basic linguistic knowledge under their belts? I say kill two birds with one stone: learn the language AND learn geometry! I know it can be done because I know people from Spain, Egypt, China, and Russia, and every one of them learned geometry, and lots more besides.

So right now, what do I think the goal of education should be? Simple. To help every child discover for him or herself the joy of lifelong learning.

What feeds this desire?

The ability to speak more than one language
The ability to carry on a discussion about religion with a person from another faith without resorting to epithets or physical violence.
The ability to do sums in more than one currency.
The ability to weep at the end of Madama Butterfly.
The ability to weep tears of outrage about the lost boys of Sudan.
The ability to dance with a parent more often than at your own wedding.
The ability to return to William Faulkner novels again and again...and again.
The ability to read aloud to your child.
The ability to cheer your child's role as a triceratops in his class play about dinosaurs.
The ability to explain why you're supposed to stand when the National Anthem is played.
The ability to explain why you're supposed to stand when Handel's Hallelujah Chorus is played.

Our world is very small. Understanding how to navigate its complexity starts with language and culture. We need to teach a basic appreciation for all culture, starting with our own. This includes not just social studies, but the arts, music, poetry, dance, and drama that constitute our collective human expression. From this common understanding we can nurture our expertise in the sciences, in mathematics, in the constant quest for human knowledge. This is how to instill in our young learners a hunger for learning. This is what we must demand of our schools, of our teachers, and of ourselves.

To do otherwise is insanity.

Survey Says!

2010-07-21T17:35:00.003-04:00

Summer in Vermont is the time when many of us put into action all the plans we have been fine-tuning since the weather drove us indoors last November. There is a lot to pay attention to.

Here at the Arts Council we are in the middle of taking stock of a couple of key items that have been commanding a lot of our attention.

The first is The Art of Action. We want to know from all of you who participated in it, helped organize it, or for any reason have an opinion about it, to let us know your thoughts. We are putting together a brief survey and would love to have feedback from you. Look for it in the next few days...

The second is the upcoming primary and election.

In part because so many important statewide offices are up for grabs this year (meaning an incumbent is not running), and in part because we were all quite surprised at the last-minute sales tax on tickets to non-profit performances that was passed by the Legislature in May, we felt that this was a good time to find out where all our candidates stand on arts-related issues.

A few days ago we issued our first-ever “Candidate Survey” on the arts to all those who have registered as candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor, and Vermont House and Senate, and asked them to please respond by August 2. This will give us time to tabulate responses to our questions and share them. [ Note: less than 24 hours after it dropped we already had 37 completed surveys submitted. Thank you!]

It is our intention to provide clear information about every candidate’s level of commitment to the arts and to arts education. We have also asked candidates who have already addressed the arts as part of their platform to provide a link to their documentation so that we may share that information with Artmail readers as well.

Since, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit we are not allowed to endorse any candidate for office, it is our intention to let the candidate’s own responses to our questions speak for themselves.

Some candidates have already responded by saying “I make it a policy not to respond to surveys…My record speaks for itself.” While I understand the frustration people running for office must feel about having to respond to surveys on many different subjects, my over-riding response has been to respectfully ask those candidates to reconsider their policy.

First, what "record"? In the Vermont legislature, issues involving the arts are usually buried deep in the Appropriations Bill, or—as is the case with recent 6% Sales Tax on nonprofit ticket sales—buried in a huge “Miscellaneous Tax Bill.” It is impossible to carve out an incumbent’s voting record on the arts because there are usually so many other material issues in a bill affecting a legislator’s vote. The only effective way to let the candidates speak for themselves about the arts is to ask them.

Second, I believe that there is too little attention paid by the media and, consequently, policy-makers, to the role the arts play in our economic recovery. Candidates from all parties talk about the importance of investing in vital communities, in improving communications infrastructure, creating jobs, curing whatever ails our schools, and in general improving Vermonters’ quality of life. But hardly ever does the word “art” or “culture” appear in their words or in print. (Yes, I may be exaggerating to make a point, but-ahem-my point speaks for itself!)

So here is what we need YOU to do. Between now and August 24th, let your candidates know that the arts are important to you and ask them whether they have responded to the Arts Council’s survey. If so, thank them; if not, ask them why. If they say it is not their policy, then make it YOUR policy to ask them how they would vote on increasing support for the arts, on increasing funding so that every schoolchild would have adequate resources to study the performing or visual arts during their K-12 years. Then let US know how it went…!

As soon as we have tabulated the results, we will share them. Look for them around August 10.

In the meantime, enjoy the sun, the showers, the fresh vegetables from your garden and take in a concert or a show. Or take in two or three—there is plenty to choose from!

From Point A to Point Beyond...

2010-07-06T15:38:00.002-04:00

"…there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign."

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Though Salonen was talking about transitions in music, this quote also resonates in a larger context. The problem is that in life, some transitions, even ones we should be prepared for (where "A becomes B"), are extremely hard to understand, interpret, and read meaning into.

I recently wrote about three important arts administrators who had decided to retire (with at least two more that I know of in the coming year) signaling a huge generational shift in arts management. But in the past week we have lost two people whose passion for life, for their family, and for their community touched all of us at the Arts Council.

Mary Prior was a fighter; a truly engaged community activist who loved her Danville community with all the fire and brimstone she could muster (and, boy, could she ever muster!). I knew her initially as the proprietor of the Danville Historical Society, and a very committed member of the local arts review committee that oversaw the Danville Route 2 transportation enhancement plan. For the past five or six years, however, she became more and more aware of the Transportation Agency’s inability to break ground on this award-winning project, and instead of getting depressed and throwing in the towel, she’d call me up to strategize as to what other political tack we could take.

About a year ago she told me she was dying and probably would not see the Danville Project through to completion. She made me promise not to compromise, not to forget that a really great group of people put together a great plan back in 2000, and not to waver in my commitment to see it through to completion.

Craig Byrne was a different kind of community activist. I didn’t know him as well or for as long as I knew Mary, but it was clear from our first conversation, that here was a man cut from a different sort of cloth. It was through his constant but gentle reasoning that our collaboration with Lyman Orton and Janice Izzi around the Art of Action got off the ground and became what it is today.

Where Mary might use facts fearlessly to make her case in Danville, Craig would use persuasion and humor. Where Mary might cut right to the chase, telling one and all what needed to be done and what her strongly-held opinions were, Craig was full of empathy and willing to listen completely to all the viewpoints around the table before helping us all to reach consensus about how to move forward.

I don’t believe Craig and Mary ever met each other. But wherever they are now, if they discover each other and compare notes, I imagine them coming to consensus (thanks to Craig) that Mary was someone who liked A to jump to B, while Craig liked A to “become” B.

In the end, and in their own way, they were a pleasure to work with. On behalf of everyone at the Arts Council staff who worked with them in one way or another, I send my thoughts and prayers out to Mary’s and Craig’s families. These are two transitions that will be hard to get used to.

Requiescant in pace…

A Time of Transition

2010-06-08T12:31:00.007-04:00

The Arts Council’s annual meeting is always a time for reflection—a time to say goodbye to wonderful trustees who are rotating off our Board and welcome new trustees who are eager to serve.

It is a time to consider all the plans we made last year and consider what we achieved and what we let go; a time to celebrate the many considerable successes of artists and arts organizations across Vermont and the role, sometimes large, sometimes not, the Council had in helping to make those successes happen. And it is a time to reflect on the state of our sector and on how we are doing.

Later this week we will recognize three people without whom the arts in Vermont would have taken on a considerably different kind of character than it has for the past 20 or 30 years. Jane Ambrose, Jean Olson, and Andrea Rogers have all announced their retirement and we will be honoring them with our Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award at our Annual Meeting later this week.

Their retirements from The Governor’s Institutes, The Lane Series, and The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, respectively, signal a generational shift in the arts from those who successfully managed their way through the culture wars of the 80s and 90s to those who have cut their teeth on the new technologies and new political realities of the 21^st century.

The pace of change is constantly gathering speed. The number and variety of art forms grows faster and faster. Opportunities that lead to success or failure increase with each passing season. Technologies that used to attach us to a desk now allow us to do our work anywhere, any time, all the time.

So it is good to pause at least once a year and take stock. Celebrate those whose work has affected so many others. Catch up with old and new friends.

Join us at our Annual Meeting, this Thursday at 4 pm in the Vermont State House. If nothing else, it will be a welcome change of pace.

Ready? Set? Open...

2010-05-25T16:59:00.005-04:00

It's been around since long before I became director of the Arts Council. It has grown much bigger than even the tallest mountain in Vermont. It has its roots in dozens, if not hundreds, of Vermont communities. It is one of the quintessential Vermont happenings that define our collective character. And this year it is turning 20 years old.

Happy Birthday, Open Studio Weekend.

And while I'm at it, a big shout out to Martha Fitch who is the brains and the heart of this magical event that this year involves more than three hundred artists and artisans throughout the state organized by region and by type.

This annual event is a celebration of all artists and artisans--yes, even those who for a variety of reasons aren't part of the official tally of participants--who call Vermont home. Many of the participants view this as one of their primary "retail" opportunities; to connect with either an in-state or out-of-state buyer, and make enough sales to carry them through and beyond the summer season.

In most cases, artists and craftspeople open their own studios, but increasingly groups of artists are collaborating with each other; renting out empty storefronts for a short period of time, experimenting with ways to extend the luster of Open Studio Weekend by gracing an otherwise shuttered downtown street with their vibrant and colorful presence which reminds us, ultimately, of why we need art in our lives.

For the Department of Tourism, this event kicks off the Summer Travel Season which extends through fall foliage in mid-October. During these 4 1/2 months, Vermont shows off its plumage in a variety of ways. First is Open Studio Weekend, followed in short order by the Discover Jazz Festival, The Vermont History Expo, July 4th Celebrations everywhere, Yellow Barn in Putney, The Vermont Symphony's Summer Festival, Vermont Mozart Festival, Music at Marlboro...

...well, I am going to get in trouble because I can't possibly list the hundreds of extraordinary artistic offerings Vermont offers up in this column, nor have I even mentioned all the recreational and site-specific events and festivals that are out there to be enjoyed. But you really should keep track of what's going on in Vermont by visiting the statewide arts calendar frequently. It's worth your while

And after all, this post is about the Open Studio Weekend.

One of the ways the Open Studio Weekend is celebrating this anniversary is by working with the Bennington Museum to create a 50 year retrospective of the Vermont Crafts movement. State of Craft is an extraordinary exhibition that opened last weekend and will run through October and is absolutely a must for everyone this summer. Plan your staycations now, and be sure to include Bennington on your itinerary.

Well, that should do for now. Enjoy the coming weekend. Enjoy the summer. It may be short but it's packed!

* * * *

A follow-up to my last post on the Sales Tax issue (scroll down).

The final legislation was a little bit different than the draftI first reported on. It turns out the law will not change the current exemption for schools or student performances, but the law will go into effect on April 1, 2011 and not June 1, 2011 as I had been led to understand. Performances by artists after April 1, 2011, but who are under contract by June 1, 2010 will be also exempt from this law.

We will soon be dropping an organizational survey to ascertain how many arts organizations are likely to be impacted by this law--so please be on the lookout for it and get it back to us as soon as possible. Thank you!

Sales Tax and the Performing Arts

2010-05-10T16:34:00.009-04:00

Vermont is in a deep hole financially and our elected and appointed officials have, understandably, been turning over every rock and pebble looking for new revenue. One of the rocks the tax department turned over a while back was the idea of levying a 6% sales tax on tickets sold by non-profit cultural venues that present live performances.

Based on this, they conducted an audit on a couple of our major institutions which resulted in a $190,000 tax bill being presented to one of them for sales taxes and penalties owed for the last two years. The Legislature, thankfully, has agreed that levying a sales tax retroactively is unfair, but it appears that it is their intention to put it into place effective July 1, 2011, with an exemption for those with less than $50,000 in ticket sales revenue and a second exemption--as yet not clearly defined--for educational institutions/programs.

One very compelling argument in favor of levying the tax, aside from the fact that Vermont needs the money, is that it is essentially a consumer tax borne by those who attend the events and should have no material impact on the operations of the institutions that have to collect and remit it to the state. This is a point well taken, and certainly well-argued by the several legislators who are in favor of it.

A second argument in favor has to do with equity. “Isn’t it inequitable NOT to tax the non-profits?” one legislator fairly shouted at me. “One person pays a sales tax at the movie theater which is the only entertainment he can afford. Why should someone else be exempted from paying a similar tax on the $100 ticket to the opera she purchases?” Again, good point well taken.

Unfortunately both of these arguments ignore what I believe are some very important reasons to move forward slowly on this issue, if at all.

The first is that the “price point” of a particular show, in the context of all the other events and services offered by a not-for-profit venue in a season, is a very delicate matter. A non-profit board, along with its manager, probably has an intuitive sense of what happens to their ticket sales when ticket prices are increased by only a dollar or two.

It may be that the difference between paying $25/ticket or $26.50/ticket is incidental to most of us who are accustomed to paying those prices. But the point is that it isn't a big issue on the consumer end of the transaction, it's a big issue on the institutional end. If even as few as 25 subscribers decide not to buy the full season of a venue’s offerings because the cost is just 6% higher than it was last year; or if just 10 single-ticket purchasers whose self-imposed "outer limit" is $50 now have to pay $53, and therefore they don't make the purchase; that loss in revenue is where the impact truly hits. Non-profit margins are just that slim…or at least that is what my own experience has been.

Also, the measurement of success for for-profit venues is profit, and the measurement of non-profits is the degree to which they successfully live up to their mission—usually to educate, inspire, transform, or transcend. For-profit venues can change their mix very easily, or extend the run of something that, like a hot Broadway Musical, is profitable. A non-profit takes far greater risks with its programming; it is hard to justify changing its program mix once it has committed to a season; and the small “benefit” of not charging sales tax--which encourages the folks who will pay $50 but not $53—ends up often being the difference between solvency and insolvency.

The second argument against the sales tax is that it represents a significant change of policy in the State’s taxing authority with regard to the non-profit sector—a change that has come about with almost no opportunity to study its impact and to hear from a broad cross-section of those most impacted.

A third argument is that (as of this writing) the tax is going to be levied without regard to the kind of performance that is being presented. Thus, a five-dollar student matinee, a very reasonable charge for educational programs, will cost $5.30. Is this wise policy to create income from the sale of tickets to our schools, even though most of the money schools use to pay for those tickets come from car washes and bake sales? It all seems penny-wise and pound-foolish to me.

There is a fourth argument against this that is far more troubling. This new interpretation of existing statute opens the door a crack to the State to consider what other taxes it could/should be levying on non-profit cultural institutions. Sales tax this year…what will it be next year? Property taxes? What would the impact on operations be if every venue that owned its own building suddenly had to pay property taxes?

Arguments in favor of the tax are simple, direct, and speak to equity from the consumer perspective only. I am far more worried about the impact on the institutions where there will, trust me, be an adverse impact.

We have until July 2011 to figure out which argument is more likely to be true. My ultimate belief is that non-profit institutions whether they are big like the Flynn or small like Vergennes Opera House are economic engines in every community in which they are allowed to flourish. The only guaranteed thing this tax will accomplish is to make it 6% harder for these economic engines to run sweetly and in tune.

My question is, will stepping out onto this slippery slope be worth the revenue gained?

* * * * *

On a related note, I wish to extend a huge thank you to the many arts constituents who contacted their legislators over the weekend. Dozens of phone calls were made, hundreds of individual email were posted, and in the words of one of my trustees, we did what we needed to do--buy our field a little time (six months) to get some good information, analyze it, and bring it back to the Governor and legislature next year before the law goes into effect on July 1, 2011.

Particular thanks are due to several individuals whose efforts in the Vermont State House were the backbone of our advocacy: Chico Lager (Flynn Center), David Coates, David Grimm (Champlain Valley Expo), Dan Casey (Barre Opera House), Alan Jordan (Vermont Symphony), Mark Nash (Vermont Stage Company), and Eric Mallette (Paramount Theater) all testified in person or by telephone before the House Ways and Means or Senate Finance committees.

My understanding, however, is that it was in large part due to the outpouring of messages from the field that turned the tide and bought us the extra six months. For that, and on behalf of all non-profit presenters, I thank you.

Speaking of thanks, the best thing you can do now is send a message back to your legislators thanking them for being so responsive to your earlier message and yes, we are very pleased with the final result of the committees' work.

Making it Happen

2010-04-28T15:15:00.002-04:00

At its retreat in Vergennes a couple of weeks ago, the Vermont Arts Council spent some time with an artist who had participated in one of two Artist Marketing Workshops we organized this spring. Bonnie Baird of North Chittenden shared her experiences as a participant in our Rutland Workshop and for her—as for us—it signaled an important departure from “business as usual.”

A little background… A year ago we conducted a listening tour during which we asked our constituents what they needed from us that would allow them to continue to be creative. We assumed, of course, the answer would be “money,” and indeed it was. But after explaining that money would be, if anything, tighter in the immediate future (at least from state and federal sources), we pushed people for other ideas.

From artists we heard that they needed tools—marketing tools—so that they could make their businesses successful. With that, we set about designing an initiative that would not only introduce “business” skills and concepts to artists through a two-day workshop, but provide them with a forum in which they could take time to process what they learned, collaborate with colleagues, and develop a proposal for funding based on their experiences in the workshop and the specific needs they wanted to address. So far we have had two packed workshops for nearly 50 people from all over Vermont and Bonnie Baird bravely stepped in to represent what seemed to us to be the feelings of most of those who participated.

“I felt like we, as artists, were not alone in our struggles to be business people and that our state was willing to teach us better skills to stand on our own rather than just enabling us…I truly appreciated that respect.”

It is impossible for me to quote everything Bonnie said to us a few weeks ago. Suffice to say that it was the first time at an Arts Council Board meeting more than just a few eyes welled up with tears—tears that represented joy and pride and the spirit of accomplishment. Bonnie was feeding us with her words even as she was acknowledging the importance of what we were doing to help her feed herself. It was a very powerful encounter for all of us. And it’s especially nice to know that we have been able to provide seed-funding to all workshop participants who have since asked for support to implement some aspect of a plan they created based on what they learned in the workshop.

An unanticipated, but certainly no less valuable, outcome of this initiative is that we have helped generate a whole new statewide network of artists who have gotten to know each other well through this intensive two-day experience and who provide advice, assistance, and even connections to other resources to each other on a daily basis. While the specific skills that artists have sought and so far all received are important, I have a feeling that it is this network that will be the true valued legacy of this initiative.

From SoHo to Santa Fe, and from Port Townshend to Key West, there is no force on earth that can stand up to a group of artists that sets its collective mind on something. Artists’ impact might be scaled a little differently here in Vermont, but it is just as strongly felt and certainly no less valued.

I have a good friend here in Montpelier who was sick and tired of the local middle school’s lack of action in designing and building an upgraded outdoor play area. She volunteered to lead the parents’ committee charged with working with the administration on this project and in less than a year, the project was designed, spec’ed, permitted, and built.

I asked her how she did it so quickly (the dithering had been going on for years and—pause for full disclosure—my own wife is on the school board!). Her answer? “I got a bunch of my artist friends involved. Some designed the playground, well…you know the story. We just kept at it until it was done.” I laughed even harder when she closed by saying, “C’mon Alex, you of all people know that if you want to get something done you just have to get artists involved…!”

I have a feeling that there are quite a few residents of several dozen towns in Vermont who already know this to be true. I have an even stronger feeling that in a few years there will be many, many more. If you’re an artist and you want more information about our workshops you know where to find us.

They are, in the words of another participant from the Rutland Workshop, Kathy Cadow Parsonnet, “by far the most relevant, practical, and validating series of informational sessions and activities that I have encountered… [They] reinforce the message that Vermont takes ‘the creative economy’ seriously, and that it truly values the creative minds and energies of its artists.”

Cool stuff.

A Small Reminder

2010-04-14T19:01:00.005-04:00

Earlier this week I was in Washington DC advocating for the National Endowment for the Arts. I also spent a day in the Russell Senate Office Building helping curator Janet Van Fleet install The Art of Action exhibition in the Russell Rotunda.

Later that same evening I listened to Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, SC exhort 517 arts advocates and their colleagues (about 1000 total) to create great, livable cities by investing in infrastructure that fits the character, history, and culture of the neighborhoods.

The following morning, we all headed back to the Hill to attend Sen. Leahy's traditional Tuesday coffee hour and attend the "opening" of the exhibit and then go on to spend some time with Sen. Sanders's and Rep. Welch's staff before heading back to the airport and home.

Let me just say one thing about this brief trip. We have, without question, the best Congressional delegation in the country. Granted, I tend to be a one-track pony where legislative issues are concerned, but I see again and again people from other states trudging from one office to another, urging their elected representatives, despite their often terrible voting record on the arts, to expand our country's tiny investments in the arts and culture. By contrast, I and my Vermont colleagues look forward with joy to meeting with our delegation to thank them for everything they do, year in and year out.

Are we lucky? Perhaps. I think our representatives in Washington actually DO represent the body politic in Vermont. Many of our towns have thriving arts centers; artists of all stripes and colors live throughout the length and breadth of our state. Vermonters have started to accept a variety of lifestyles; welcoming outsiders from overseas as well as those from other states. Our tourism infrastructure is dependent to a large degree on the health of our cultural sectors, and these, in turn are nurtured by the artists and creative entrepreneurs that are at their core.

It is an ecosystem that our US Congressional delegation completely understands and it's why, year after year, American's for the Arts' Congressional "Arts Report Card" exhibits As and A-pluses across the board. It's also partly why the National Endowment for the Arts's budget has increased significantly in the past three years, usually over the President's own recommendation.

So here is what I need everyone reading this to do. The next time you attend a program in your local town hall theater, visit a gallery, experience a jazz or chamber festival, or in any tangible way take advantage of Vermont's large and varied cultural offerings, drop a line to Senators Leahy and Sanders and Congressman Welch and thank them for their efforts.

They deserve it.

Keep the Change (Coming)

2010-03-29T11:19:00.015-04:00

Crocuses are stabbing through the winter detritus in our yard. Mud is on the roads. Maple steam is escaping from small rustic buildings dottling the landscape. The Legislature plans to finish by the end of April (wow!).

Change is in the air.

Although I continue to come across artists and administrators who are angry or scared about their current economic condition, by far the majority of them have taken the current crisis as a starting point for exploring how to accomplish their work differently, more efficiently, and/or with greater impact. For example, I have had conversations with cultural representatives from three Vermont communities who are in various stages of consolidating a significant segment of their local cultural efforts to achieve administrative, marketing, and promotional synergies and savings.

This is the kind of change we need.

At our advocacy day on March 17th (huge thanks to all of you who came!) we heard from a variety of people about new ways to capture and use data, or better ways to position Vermont artistic products and services to broaden and deepen Vermont's audience as well as its brand identity.

Again, more change to consider.

Perhaps the most important thing artists and arts administrators could change, however, is how they approach marketing and promotion. In a very quick and totally unscientific, recent sampling of a few Vermont arts organizations I discovered two things: 1) many arts administrators don't really know what percentage of their annual operating budget they allocate to marketing and promotion. They could all form an estimate by calculating the number of events times the rough expenditures on advertising per event, but no one would commit to a firm figure without equivocating; and 2) most administrators having completed the calculation, guesstimated that they spent less than 3% of their total operating expenditures on marketing and promotion.

Here's a new way to look at marketing and promotion. Take an average of your total operating income for the last three years. Multiply that by 10%. There. That's your new budget line-item for marketing and promotion for your organization next year. That's what you are going to spend on a well-considered plan to fill your seats, to engage your audiences in new ways, to invite your legislators to come and speak at your opening night events, to showcase your organization as the center of community life that you know it to be.

"But that's too much! We've never spent more than 2% (it turns out, having now done the math). We need to spend that extra XX thousand dollars on artist fees/travel/dressing the hall/insurance/mindless debates about marketing/etc...."

Really?

What if you presented one or two fewer performances and took the money you would have spent up front on artist fees and really developed a marketing and promotional campaign that was designed to fill every seat in the house so full that you had to add an extra show? Wouldn't your board be happy? Wouldn't the artists be happy?

Our state department of Tourism and Marketing (VDTM) has a long history of marketing and promoting the Vermont Brand almost exclusively out of state. They also have a long history of partnering with private-sector partners and splitting the costs of out-of-state promotional campaigns to lure visitors here from Montreal, Boston, Albany (Capital District), New York, and Philadelphia.

We believe this is a huge opportunity to improve our own financial conditions as well as that of Vermont, which is dependent on tourism for 15% of its revenue.

Let's take aim at a realistic goal: let's get our boards to commit to spending 5% on marketing/promotion within the next two years, and 10% within five years. While you are doing that, we (the Arts Council) will:

Develop out-of-state marketing campaigns with VDTM that showcase the multiple reasons to visit Vermont for its art (Vermont is a pretty wide open source for great copy!)
Develop in-state marketing campaigns with our arts organizations, local chambers of commerce and others to reach not only the large number of Vermonters who only know what's going on in their own communities, but the large number of out-of-state visitors who stay with family and friends.
Encourage arts organizations all over the state to join forces with each other and with us and mimic the very successful brand-oriented campaigns that the likes of the Ski Areas Association and Cabot Cheese have done with VDTM.

In addition to many of the other ideas we have put forward at Advocacy Day about information-gathering, accountability, and application-streamlining, putting a new focus on marketing and promotion may be turn out to be the most significant change for the Arts Council in a generation.

Like I said, change is in the air, and these are all big.

Breathe deeply.

The Emerald Mountain State

2010-03-15T10:40:00.019-04:00

Even though The Wizard of Oz was not the first color motion picture, it made one heckuva colorful statement. Compared to the browns and grays of the sepia-toned Kansas that Dorothy left behind, Oz’s magic was made palpable by the rich tapestry of color that greeted her as she stepped out to meet the Munchkins for the first time. And oh my, who can forget that first glimpse of the Emerald City off in the distance...?

A few weeks ago the Douglas Administration recommended zeroing out the state's support for the Vermont Film Commission because (according to a well-placed administration official) "Tiger Team Analysis" showed that the "operational footprint of the Commission was negligible."

While some might wish to question the validity of this analysis and its conclusion, I would like to focus instead on why Vermont desperately needs a Film Commission—one that is properly funded and offers incentives to film-makers:

First, someone knowledgeable about film production issues needs to be available to answer the hundreds of inquiries that come into Vermont looking for locations, looking for artisans or trades-people (including writers, actors, sound engineers, costumers, designers, gaffers, best boys, etc.), or looking for on-site or post-production facilities they can use without trekking back and forth to New York or L.A.

Second, someone knowledgeable about film finance needs to be available to the Vermont legislature, the state economist, and the Governor to explain exactly how a film incentive, properly structured, can not only attract major productions to film in our state, but not necessarily cost the state a dime. Even more important, this person could also explain how to build an incredibly lucrative economic sector that has very little negative "footprint" on our proud, environmentally-conscious state.

Third, someone knowledgeable about film and new media needs to be available to link our robust cartoon sector (thank you White River Junction!) to the burgeoning industries of new media, technology, and video-gaming (thank you Marlboro and Champlain College!) which share so many of the same post-production people and technologies with the film industry.

The Administration thinks that someone in the tourism office (VDTM) can answer inquiries from the field. That may be true to a limited degree, but should VDTM's already vastly overworked staff be responsible for servicing a different industry when it is fully engaged in servicing its own? Seems like a too-tall order. Film, television, and media producers don't have a lot of time to spend and will happily hang up the phone and call Connecticut or Massachusetts or Canada if it will save them even five minutes.

As for the Incentives issue, the problem is quite simple. What is it worth to the State of Vermont to have, say, a Steven Spielberg film shot here? Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Canada offer a 25% incentive. Some economists say this is too much.

Only one state has determined that the direct income it receives from a film shoot is 16% of its tax incentive investment, based on a detailed analysis of all the direct salary, meals, sales and use tax revenue streams a production generates. (Thank you, Massachusetts, for doing this incredibly boring but necessary analysis--see page 17 where it says Mass. gets $.16 back on every dollar of tax incentive money it "spends.")

In Massachusetts, thus, a $6 million production shoot with the standard 25% incentive program will result in it"owing" foregone taxes worth $1.5 million, but reaping about $.24 million (.16 x $1.5 million). In this scenario, Massachusetts “loses” $1.26 million.

Or does it?

First of all, what value does Massachusetts place on the employment of all these people and organizations who work the shoot? What would the cost of their "un(der)employment" have been during that same period if the film hadn't been shot? What would have happened if someone from Connecticut had been hired to be a key grip on the shoot because no one knew where all the Massachusetts-based key grips could be found?

Even more important, media moguls are always pointing out the incredible value of "unpaid advertising" that happens when locations in the state are shown around the world on film or on television. (Related to this, did anyone stop to think that maybe the fact that Cider House Rules was shot partly in White River Junction might have something to do with that town's reputation as an art-friendly town--one whose creative economy is more than robust? What is the value the state places on that?)

How valuable would a Spielberg film shot in Vermont be to the long-term health of our state? I have no idea, but it has to be considerable. Heck, people still come to Vermont looking to meet Darryl...or was it his brother...?

As the Film Commission's own materials proclaim proudly:

"Film uses established resources and infrastructure without straining our school systems, highways, and community resources or putting development pressure on our cities and towns. It employs local artisans and local businesses, offering wages that are often higher than average for the state. It promotes the Vermont Brand to broad, worldwide audiences, a factor that contributes to our economy many times over in the form of tourism and related industries. Film, video, and new media are the clean, green industries of the future. The Film Commission's mission is to grow this new and vital industry, creating the kinds of jobs that will be critical to the state's economic success in the 21st Century."

It's not that the Film Commission has a "negligible footprint." It simply has been starved to death these past ten years.

So let’s try this. Let Vermont offer a 15% incentive (1% less than its expected return, based on the Massachusetts data). We might not compete with our neighbors, but we might get some who currently AREN’T coming to Vermont because we offer nothing at all.

If film is going to ever gain more than a sporadic toe-hold in Vermont; if it ever is going to make the effort to connect up to the video-gaming industry, and be at the vanguard of a new media and technology sector; it needs a magician or two right now to pull some levers (Sen. Illuzzi and Rep. Botzow, there is your cue!).

Far from being eliminated, the Film Commission should be empowered to help pull Vermont out of its sepia-toned economic tornado and restore it to its original Emerald-Mountain-State hues.

On Poetry and Politics

2010-02-26T11:30:00.009-05:00

The finals of the 2010 Vermont Poetry Out Loud (POL) recital competition is this Saturday (March 6). With more than 30 schools participating we've had to change our format and add a semifinal round prior to the final round. It should be an incredible day up at the College of Fine Arts in Montpelier.

With the growing popularity of song and dance competition shows on television, Poetry Out Loud may be the closest many Vermont students get to tasting the the nervous energy (call it stage fright) that these shows are so good at turning into high drama (okay, "low drama"). Poetry Out Loud is a competition, with real benefits to the winners, and a great educational outcome for all who participate. And for family members who comprise most of the audience, it's pure theater.

In addition to a cash prize for him/herself and school, the winner of will attend the POL finals in Washington DC under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. It's like the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee, only more lyrical. But before the Vermont winner goes to Washington DC in late April, he/she has an earlier commitment...

...at our Annual Arts Advocacy Day on March 17th in Montpelier!

Advocacy is a tricky thing when times are as difficult as they are now. Much of my time is spent talking with (your) legislators about the arts in ways that are by now familiar to everyone who reads this blog.

But here's the real truth...

No one in Montpelier can talk to your legislators the way you can. You are the one with the meaningful story. You are the one with the child who had the incredible arts experience. You are the one who is the legislator's friend or the neighbor or relative. You are the one who presents local talent to the world for the first time, who entices visitors to spend time and money in your (legislators') community. You are the one composing the song, choreographing the dance, recreating the role, capturing the essence of the place in words or images or music in the district your legislators represent.

Your messages have far more meaning than mine because, frankly, yours is the vote that counts.

So, what is your story, and when was the last time you told it?

Talking to your legislators while they are home during the Town Meeting Day break is important. But please come to Montpelier as well--for three reasons that I can think of. A lot of people from all over the state come together in Montpelier, and it's a real morale-booster to see that you are not alone. We all learn from each other, and there are several dozen people who will listen to your pitch and help you refine it. And finally, your legislators will not only see that YOU think its important enough to make the trip, they will see other legislators getting the same treatment. It makes quite an impact.

So please come to Montpelier on the 17th. Let your legislators know you're coming (click HERE for their contact information), and stay to hear a poetry recitation from this year's state POL champ. It will be well worth the visit!

Eat the Peanut Butter!

2010-02-15T12:56:00.021-05:00

We are receiving reports from various arts supporters that legislators and newspapers have received letters that target the Vermont Arts Council and a few other small agencies for elimination.

I have read a few of these letters and their basic argument is that, as with household budgets when there is less money available, Government should cut programs (like the Arts Council) until it is operating within its means.

To me this sounds like a contestant on The Biggest Loser being told to eliminate the tablespoon of peanut-butter from his diet instead of addressing his 10-chili-cheese-dog-a-day habit because the peanut butter has, pound for pound, more calories.

Eliminating the peanut butter will, like cutting the Arts Council budget, result in two sure things: the problem won't go away, and worse, without it we will suffer from the lack of some crucial nutrients which our bodies and our society can ill-afford to be without.

The Government is not the same as a Household

The basic flaw with the letters I have read is the assumption that Government functions like a household. Government is supposed to protect its interests and the citizenry (sometimes even from the citizenry itself!), negotiate with foreign countries on behalf of the people, and provide programs and services that are in the people's interest but for which there is no market incentive for investment (like schools and health-care, and teacher's and veteran's retirement programs, all of which are topics that are too big to discuss here!).

A head of household, however, tends to preserve and protect what is dear to him/her, even if it is at the expense of a neighbor or the community-at-large. Nowhere is this behavior more pronounced, its effects more devastatingly felt, than when people charged with acting in the public trust behave instead like individuals bent on preserving and protecting "what's theirs." This is essentially what happened in Washington and on Wall Street during the past five or six years during which regulations were either gutted or ignored. Speculators created high risk/high reward instruments that created fortunes for themselves overnight, and when everything went sour, turned to the Federal Government for a bail-out. So-called public servants protected their own assets at the expense of everyone else.

So here we sit in a recession/depression with private capital more or less dried up, unemployment at a 25-year high, and private enterprise at best, in a state of paralysis. It is very tempting to cut Government spending until we have once again reached the point where our revenue equals or exceeds our expenses; where our annual deficit disappears; where are accumulated national debt starts to decrease.

The problem is that if the Government does this, then unemployment will get much worse and inflation will skyrocket because there are fewer goods and services being produced. Depression in every possible meaning of the world will be the status quo on a scale not seen before...

It seems counter-intuitive to individuals dealing with their own household budgets to say that the best possible way to improve things is for the Government to spend more, but Government is the only player right now who has access to capital.

Government must invest borrowed capital in order to invest in private enterprise to create jobs and restore consumer and market confidence. It is these jobs, these industries that receive this investment that will, eventually, and not without great anxiety, allow us to move towards a recovery.

Arts=Jobs; Arts = Community

State Arts Agencies not only recognize and support vital cultural institutions and artist projects, we partner with a variety of private and public partners to showcase various attractions and festivals that cause huge numbers of visitors and entrepreneurs to come to our state. These visitors spend enormous sums in our shops, restaurants, and hotels. The entrepreneurs start businesses, employ people and contractors, and make positive demands on and contributions to our community's social fabric.

Arts agencies also serve as a catalyst that allows significant amounts of supplemental educational experiences to engage students in our schools, most of which is directly related to the schools' curriculum goals and all of which is directed towards specific performance goals for every student, not the least of which is developing skills for the 21st-century workforce that are highly prized--like collaborative decision-making, public speaking, and creative thinking.

The two most frequently cited reasons why a business chooses to locate in one community over another--all other factors like tax incentives and regulations being equal—are the quality of the schools and the quality of community life, both of which are highly dependent on a thriving arts sector.

Cutting Government’s small investment in the arts, far from improving our economic situation, will actually make if far worse. Not only will the cut place at risk 2000 jobs throughout the state, but the closing of perhaps dozens of our cultural institutions, and the drying up of arts education programs in our schools will make Vermont a significantly less attractive place for people to visit, to invest in new businesses, and to raise families.

So, please, don’t be fooled. Eat the peanut butter. It's good for you. The real threat is those chili-cheese-dogs.

100% Essential

2010-02-01T16:06:00.013-05:00

We are lucky to have a President, a Congress, and in Vermont, a Governor and a State Legislature who generally agree that the arts matter. But one legacy of the "Culture Wars" is that many ill-informed media pundits continue to assert that the arts are a luxury. Now, with the economy in the shape it's in, I keep hearing that it is time for all "nonessential government expenditures" to be cut, including the arts.

Let's take a long look at why this would be a huge mistake.

On a macro level:
1) The arts are a huge part of our gross national product. Film, television, video games and music production are collectively considered one of the biggest sectors of our economy--certainly our biggest export. Imagine the artistic output that goes into a film like "Avatar." Now imagine that plot occurring on a planet that looked like the moon and not like the Amazon rainforest. Do you think Avatar would be the second best all-time ticket seller in the history of film? Not a chance.

Now ask yourself a simple question--where did all those artists and musicians and dancers and actors come from? Where were they trained? How did they learn to draw, to compose, to play, to develop plot lines, to use their imaginations to create whole universes outside our comprehension? If we turn off the spigot that fosters and encourages those artists during their childhood years, we will truly create a bleak future for ourselves.

2) The arts generate tourism. As far as I can tell, hardly anyone visited Bilbao, Spain until the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim opened in October of 1997. The same could be said of North Adams, Massachusetts. A depressed milltown opens up MassMOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and voila!--a tourism mecca is born. Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York tried to cut all public funding for the arts in retaliation for a work put on display at the Brooklyn Museum that he found offensive. He changed his mind when he learned that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the combined arts groups that comprise Lincoln Center alone generate more tax revenue for the city of New York than the combined professional sports teams operating out of Yankee and Shea stadiums, the Meadowlands, and Madison Square Garden.

On a micro level:
1) Artistic decisions--or aesthetic decisions if you prefer--govern our individual behaviors every day. From deciding what to wear, and what make, model, and color car to drive; to what makes us choose our favorite restaurants and stores, or our favorite neighborhoods when it's time to buy a house and raise our families, how something looks or sounds or complements our personal aesthetic is almost always what causes you to decide to buy or not buy. Who makes all this stuff? And why did you buy the blue sweater and not the green sweater? If life is all about function rather than form, then we would have all evolved to wear the same clothes, drive the same cars, and enjoy the same activities. But form matters, which means design matters, which means the arts matter.

2) The arts exist, in part, to improve the human condition. For many, this is achieved through an exploration of the emotional or psychological connections that art conveys to the viewer. But for others, this is achieved in very concrete terms--in communities that renovate a community performance space (Vergennes, Derby Line, White River Junction and others) which fosters other business to locate nearby; entices good teachers to apply for jobs at the local school; and to provide a sense of place--of community well-being.

Ask yourself, why do you live and work where you do? I remember once asking a friend in DC what it was like to live in Crystal City (a complex of apartment buildings adjacent to National Airport with all its amenities like shopping and dining built underground). As a DC bedroom community it was ideal. Convenient, easy access to everywhere by Metro, and completely weatherproof. The problem, she said, was that it had no soul. It was a man-made moonscape across the river from one of the country's most vibrant cities. If she could have afforded to, she would have moved to DC in a heartbeat.

Most people will agree that responding to Haiti's needs is an essential government expense. So is fixing our own infrastructure and our own economy. Our government needs to figure out how to fund job-creation, learn how to effectively deal with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other extreme terrorist organizations without killing (and radicalizing) civilians. It needs to reorganize the delivery of affordable health care, and take care of its citizens who have the least capacity for caring for themselves. All of these are essential to restoring our government and our country to its position as a world leader.

Doing so, however, will take a lot of creative thought; a lot of anticipating the problems and rehearsing ways to get around them. It's going to take some creative vision to share what our world will look like after this exhausting and scary period is over. We're not going to do it by just listening to the economists and the militarists and the jihadists. We're going to have to listen the artists as well. They are the most creative problem-solvers and community builders among us.

So...essential? Absolutely! The arts matter now more than ever.

When Singing is all you Have

2010-01-19T09:57:00.008-05:00

Imagine Vermont; population 620,000 living, for the most part, in relative peace and security.

Now imagine a major earthquake leveling every building in Chittenden County, damaging most others across the state, killing about 13,500 outright, and destroying all highways, ports, and airports. Imagine the suffering in the intense winter cold without fresh water, heat, food, or medicine. Imagine watching your loved ones slowly dying of flu, dysentery, and untreated wounds; or suffocated under tones of crushed concrete.

Except for the cold, this is the situation in Haiti, relatively speaking. It is a catastrophe that is almost unimaginable to those of us reading the news in the comfort of our living rooms.

To Jim and Ann McGarrell, the proportions of this disaster are not unimaginable. The loss of your child (artist Flo McGarrell) is all too real, and all too tragic to bear--the result of a terrible series of coincidences in a country that has known more than its share of despair and tragedy. Our hearts go out to you, your immediate family and close circle of friends.

There are dozens of stories circulating on NPR, on YouTube, and word of mouth about individual stories of heroism, of stoicism, and of survival.

The ones that have struck me the most are the stories of people gathering, usually at nighttime, in parking lots, fields, and even in roads; sharing what little food and water they have, and...

...singing.

Sometimes they sing hymns, sometimes patriotic tunes like their national anthem, and sometimes simple folk-tunes handed down through the generations.

I am reminded of Jacques D'amboise, the well-known principal dancer for the New York City Ballet, who gave eloquent testimony to Sen. Jim Jeffords Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. He told of an imaginary tribe of iron-age hominids, sleeping outside and seeing, for the first time, the Perseid Meteor Shower. The songs and dances they created to celebrate, or perhaps ward off this extra-terrestrial display of the gods, was something he started to re-enact in the senate committee room on Capitol Hill. "Ooh!" (step, step, step) "Ahh!" (step, step, step).

Singing, especially communal singing, creates community. It bridges relationships among people. It helps them to share their joys and their woes; to celebrate their successes and acknowledge their fears. It helps heal a wounded body. It certainly heals a wounded soul.

Clearly Haiti, and many other countries besides, need much more than singing in order to survive. But singing is what they are doing now. For many, it's all they have.