The Official Start of Summer

This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend and it is, according to lore, the “official” start of the New England summer season.  In Vermont, we start celebrating the summer as soon as the last of the snow leaves the shady spots and the daytime temperature climbs above 40 degrees.  Thus, for many of us, “gearing up for another amazing summer arts season” has been in full swing for about a month now.

In virtually every corner of the state, in every nook and cranny throughout the length and breadth of the Green Mountains, along the highways and byways that capture the minds and hearts of both residents and visitors, you can find almost any kind of cultural entertainment you like. But it is the Memorial Day Weekend Open Studio tour and Bennington Mayfest that, for most people, signal the start Vermont’s most vital (in economic terms) tourist season.

Having just celebrated its 20^th anniversary in 2012, the Open Studio tour (organized by its founder, Martha Fitch, director of the Vermont Crafts Council) will showcase more than 240 artists and artisans in their studios throughout the state.  It is considered by many to be one of the best reasons to visit Vermont since it allows visitors from near and far to get to know their favorite artists/artisans in person over the years.

Bennington Mayfest, is organized very differently.  Designed as a one-day festival, the setting covers just a few blocks of downtown of Bennington and showcases artists, artisans, and food vendors in stalls and tents, all in a family and pet-friendly environment.  Now in its 28^th year, the Mayfest might have the bragging rights where longevity is concerned, but Open Studio tour covers a lot more ground and showcases many more artists.  Each event, however, in its own way successfully showcases the variety and talent of Vermont artists and craftspeople.

And that is just a small taste of a few things that are on tap for the next couple of months.  For a complete guide to what is happening not just in the visual arts but in the performing arts let me simply suggest you keep an eye out for the Times-Argus’s Summer Guide to the Arts which should be dropping as an insert in the May 24^th issue.  If ever there was a reason to get excited about the next few months, this is it.  From classical to folk/traditional concerts and festivals, to amateur and professional theater offerings all over the state, the Times-Argus’s guide is one of the few pieces that I keep handy.  A copy on my desk at work, a copy in my car, a copy or two at home—it serves as a constant and handy resource that helps me plan my summer.  Don’t miss it!  In fact, check out a few things that interest you and invite some friends for a visit.  First on my plate? The Burlington Discover Jazz Festival.  But that’s possibly the subject of another whole post…

Enjoy!

How does Art support you?

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?

Keep the Change (Coming)

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.