I just wanted to point out that the reason that most western classical music, ballet, and theatre organizations bear the name of their own cities surely indicates that (in North America) when they were established, they were the groups whose performers came out of the community and went back to the community in performance -no matter what the origin and date of the work presented. In spite of how classical arts are marketed and sold, there is still a disconnect now between "my place" the classical arts and their organizations, which is possibly that old ongoing problem related to the arts cycle being broken - developing audiences, school arts education, private classes/lessons, and amateur arts community options.

THANK YOU! It's a huge delight to see Stolen Chair and the whole ERPA project on your blog Andrew. I am a huge fan of your writing.

To add to the "new business models" discussion, the thing that is vital to ERPA (and that Stolen Chair does extraordinarily well!) is a one-to-one tie between the art and the business. It isn't a simple "let's make mugs and sell them at our shows" (which is fine too!) but it is "who are we, what do we believe in, what do we do well, is there a sustainable revenue stream in here somewhere that we can mine?" These are tougher questions to ask, and all the ERPA artists are responding to these questions thoughtfully and strategically.

We look forward to following their progress too AND to getting their projects out to the wider arts economy too so that other artists can beg, borrow and steal from them.

Jennifer Wright Cook
Executive Director, The Field

Andrew - thanks for sharing this. Reminds me of perhaps an extreme version of this concept I learned about a few years ago. I attended a conference on Culture and Sustainable Development in Italy sponsored by the World Bank and Unesco, and there was a presentation by the Italian artistic director of a "pan-European" theatre company. They decided they wanted to find a way to be connected in a much more elemental way to the community. To find this connection they literally travelled to a remote South American village - I believe in Brazil - and set themselves the task of making theatre that would be relevant to these people, that they would value highly enough to "pay for" through barter. They essentially set themselves up with a "succeed or starve to death" scenario because this was the only way they had to survive - making art the only thing they had to "sell" (or trade). In the end they did succeed, and built an incredibly powerful bond with the villagers. Fascinating story!

Thank you for fueling the discussion of new business models for nonprofits, Andrew! We need as much creative exploration in this realm as possible. The Center for the Future of Museums has been pushing the issue as well:

http://bit.ly/3XWk8f

I like the idea of strategically positioning cultural organizations as community resources (sending the message to a supporter that "this is something that benefits you) rather than charities (something that benefits some other less fortunate chap.) Functionally, I think many nonprofits already use a CSA-type economic model. We bundle and pre-sell as membership/subscriptions/season-passes goods that would otherwise be purchased at time of use (tickets/admission.)

Here in the UK we've been talking about this as a theoretical possibility - and it's great to see someone actually doing it. So I, and many others, will follow this story with a great deal of interest.

If we do our history research right, I think we will find that the arts started out as community projects. There were patrons that funded the art productions and they served to lose just as much (if not more) as the artist if the production was not successful. It is interesting how the arts seem to be traveling in a full circle, both management wise and audience development wise.

Great conversation starter - thank you for posting!

Shoshana Fanizza
Audience Development Specialists

Thanks, Andrew, for picking up this story. If you're looking for more content detailing the proposal, here is video and audio from my presentation at WNYC last month. A podcast from NYtheatrecast should be coming out by early November and our mini-site, http://communitysupportedtheatre.org should be live with real content (instead of the skeleton there now) within a week or so.

I think you're right to define the options open to "unprofitable theatre" so broadly. I think my feelings regarding how Stolen Chair has chosen to align our particular business model might shift significantly if we lived in a country were arts where perceived as more of a national entitlement.

And I totally understand your nudging about my working definition of "economy." (Actually, I am quite a big fan of the framework proposed by Lewis Hyde in "The Gift".) The copy you pulled from my blog was a speech at the New Economy Smackdown where my "soapbox manifesto" needed to come in under 2 minutes, so I was trying to work with a shorthand that was, as you noted, more than a little reductive.

Looking forward to further conversations about this!

Best,
Jon & the Chairs

PS-You can follow us on Twitter @StolenChairTC.

PPS-Oh, and if anyone thinks they might enjoy being part of this experiment in arts funding, we're looking for charter members for our pilot season, including a small group of booster members who will "pay-what-they-think-is-fair" and help recruit other members. Email us at cst[at]stolenchair.org.