I credit Steve Dietz, the founder and director of the Twin Cities’ treasured organization Northern Lights, with casually saying to me one day, “Build platforms not organizations.”  It stuck and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Dietz, a self-described “serial platform creator,” is the director of Northern Spark, a once-a-year, all night festival that last Saturday drew 20,000 people to St. Paul’s arty and urban Lowertown neighborhood to participate in dozens of performances, installations, and participatory experiences (sing, dance, act). To understand the Northern Spark gestalt, read about Chris Larson’s performance/installation piece, nick-named #BreuerBurn by Twitterers, for which a carefully-built replica of a Marcel Breuer- designed house in St. Paul was burned to the ground at 2:00 AM before many thousands of art hounds. Then it started raining.

“Organization as platform” is a radical lens: re-imagine your organization’s purpose as creating capabilities for the like-minded to kindle their shared enthusiasm for your mission. What if you think of your organization as a community capacity rather than a production house, a presenter, an exhibition space?

Forward-thinking organizations already are embracing this mental frame; they’re building organizations whose purpose is to foster and facilitate, not dictate. A few examples are the community curation and engagement projects of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the artist-engagement platforms of St Paul’s Springboard for the Arts, or the tools and capabilities for artists built by Fractured Atlas. Another example locally is Northern Clay Center. They don’t care what you know about clay when you walk in: their purpose is to facilitate your knowing more, and to help you meet other people who want to know more, too. Their passion is clay, not their specific current programs and pursuits.

In fact this frame is emerging in organizations everywhere, once you look. But few organizations have taken it as far as they could. And “traditional” arts organizations will need to re-frame much more quickly in order to keep up. They’ll need to re-think assets as capabilities and capacities. Suggestion: set aside an afternoon and think through how you could radically re-imagine your assets as capabilities. What assets have you developed that could go “open source” and serve many more creative purposes? Here are some places to look.

1 – Buildings. What about re-thinking buildings as platforms? So many cultural facilities deaden instead of animate their surrounding areas. What else could your building be? How could people use your space during its many “dark” or under-utilized times of day, week, and year? Why not turn your building into a co-working space, an alternative performance venue, or an arts-infused teen hang-out? Can its exterior surface be a projection surface? Can your grounds be used for picnics? (This year’s Northern Spark used St Paul’s historic and recently renovated Union Depot as its center, letting artists loose on the giant building and its loading platforms, parking garages and retail spaces. We won’t look at the building the same way again.)

2 – Functional expertise. How can you share your expertise in fund-raising, accounting, human resources? How could you make it possible for like-minded people and the projects they want to create to tap your staff’s expertise, building complimentary or innovative practices that also serve your mission? Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre has created the Garage Rep program, inviting storefront theater groups in Chicago to present work under the Steppenwolf banner, and offering them support and mentorship around strategy, financial planning, fund-raising, marketing, and dramaturgy.

3 – Artists. How could your organization serve as a broad platform for artists, both the ones you employ and independent artists? How could this help more artists connect and find new platforms and new resources for their work? The Walker Art Center’s Open Field project invites artists and visitors to “re-imagine and inhabit the museum’s campus as a cultural commons.” Then the Walker supports and promotes work the work through all of its communications channels.

4 – Audiences. Most cultural organizations know a lot about how to convene audiences, and excel at doing so for their own programs. For what other mission-related purposes could people be convened? How could you help people connect with each other? The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History is this month hosting Office Hours with the Vice-Mayor of Santa Cruz, inviting their audiences to share their “question, suggestion, or dream” for the city.

5 – Mission. We are not the only ones pursuing our missions. There are multiple organizations in the same city, region, and nation with parallel or identical purposes. How can our organizations multiply rather than divide resources by looking at our shared missions as building community capacity? The audiences among institutions are often shared.  How can we work together to make our work shared – to see it as creating community capability?

Another inspiration? This week the World Wide Developers Conference met in the Bay Area. Thousands of people who use iOS and OS X — platforms — gathered with the platform’s creator, Apple, to learn and to share ideas and experiences. Our organizations could be a lot more like that. We could convene the people (the people we formerly thought of as “the audience”) to help us create platforms as tools for their engagement, for their learning, and for their delight. Imagine a conference that’s for our “users” not for ourselves.

Platforms are open structures designed for participation and utilization. When you think like a platform, your organization automatically opens up to new possibilities.

Go ahead. Spend some time thinking about it. 

Earlier this month the Walker Art Center hosted a symposium on agonism in collaboration with Northern Lights. I only attended a small portion of the week-end’s offerings but even a small dose has been enough to keep my mind active for the past two weeks. And what’s stuck with me is the idea that there is good work to be done in being a worthy opponent, “a thoroughly dedicated adversary.” More on that in just a bit.

The first question is, what is agonism? Maybe you all already know all about it but I had to read and think about it before the symposium. Agonism (Wikipedia)  is “a political theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflicts but seeks to show how we might accept and channel this positively.” Or, “Discourse among adversaries rather enemies” (Walker web site).

The Walker symposium convened artists, architects, urban planners, and scholars who are taking the conceptual framework of agonism and exploring it in their work. Some of the questions they ask are: Is the design of public space (real and virtual) conducive for dialogue and discourse? If disagreement and conflict will always be with us (and are in fact essential to the democratic process) how do we plan (create physical and intellectual space) for conflict? How can conflict be made most constructive? Most imaginative? And, in what state of preparedness and engagement should one approach conflict given the expectation that through conflict, ideas are often improved?

Among the artworks related to the symposium that you can see online, check these out: Marisa Jahn’s Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition (available for free download, Jahn’s work is a book and set of playing cards that “explore the productive possibilities of .. a relationship built on mutual incitement and struggle”); and Carl Skelton’s Betaville,  an “open-source multiplayer environment for real cities, in which ideas for new works of public art, architecture, urban design, and development can be shared, discussed, tweaked, and brought to maturity in context, and with the kind of broad participation people take for granted in open source software development.” The Walker’s laudable commitment to digital access means that detailed links to all of the participants’ work is easily found through links to the main symposium web page.

Inherent in the idea of conflict is the existence of an opponent, or multiple opponents. And at the symposium there was mention of what it means to be a worthy opponent. We all have had opponents whose conflicts with us do not strengthen our thinking or improve our ideas, who offer no insights and do not change our minds. But sometime, I’m sure, you’ve had a conflict with someone who did expand your mind and make your ideas bigger and better. What qualities existed in that situation and what was your interaction like?

And now allow me to date myself with this quote from The Teachings of Don Juan: “Without the aid of a worthy opponent, who’s not really an enemy but a thoroughly dedicated adversary, the apprentice has no possibility of continuing on the path of knowledge.”

So what I’ve been thinking about is how this relates to advocacy and civic discourse, about public positions and changing minds. It seems to me that the practice of public and political advocacy is mainly focused on clarifying what you are for, and spending most if not all of your time thinking about how to be for your position. Usually this is done by talking to other people who think just like you do and who already agree with your position. And we excel at this in the cultural sector.

What would happen if we put as much energy, focus, and imagination into the qualities of opposition that we practice? That is, what is the most thoughtful and imaginative way to be against someone else’s position rather than merely for your own? What if we spent more time with people who are against our positions and people we rarely, if ever talk to? People who are the least “like us”? Would our habits of mind change? Would our advocacy be stronger? Would our ideas be improved?  The agonist would answer a resounding “yes” to this last question. That’s what I’ve been thinking about thanks to the Walker.

The San Francisco Symphony is celebrating its Centennial this season with gusto — they’ve invited six major American orchestras to perform in their home at Davies Symphony Hall, created three national symposia on the state of American orchestras, issued new recordings and produced new television, web, and radio broadcasts, and produced the second American Mavericks festival, the brainchild of the Symphony’s energetic music director, Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). The festival ended Sunday in San Francisco and now is traveling to Chicago, Ann Arbor and New York.

I was happy to be there last week-end for at least some of the festivities. My expectations were high. Full disclosure: I was executive producer of a 13-hour radio and web series inspired by the first American Mavericks festival in 2000. The series, hosted by Suzanne Vega, with MTT, was heard on public radio stations nationwide. (Documentation of that series is here.) It took producer Tom Voegeli and the team a couple of years to gather the festival’s concert audio, interview participants, collect contextual information, build the website, and get the series into circulation. None of us went to Mavericks the First, but we were excited to work with the music and ideas it represented.

This year’s festival reminds us not only of the energy and vitality of American music but also of how much has changed in 12 years. The landmark 2000 festival was created before we had social media, live streaming, and so many other digital discovery platforms. In 2012, the Symphony and artists are blogging, streaming, video-chatting, and using social media to talk about the work in real time (although the concerts themselves are not being live-broadcast or webcast). The Symphony’s website is chock full of links to biographical and contextual information, and recordings of the highlighted composers. To celebrate the festival’s New York visit next week, WQXR’s Q2 channel is already offering us a live web stream of “mavericks’ music” on demand. And Carnegie Hall, partner in the project, has been releasing artists’ videos and information on its Facebook page for a couple of weeks now. Beyond its digital reach the festival is also traveling – physically — this time (and to think of touring with the huge band and battery called for in Edgar Varese’s Ameriques! — it is like a production manager’s Olympics).

Another big difference in the 2012 Festival — four commissions and world premieres (there were none in 2000). New works from John Adams, Mason Bates, and Meredith Monk were festival highlights last week-end, with all three composers in residence, performing and engaging with audiences.  If you agree (and I do) with Ed Sanders, Google Creative Lab’s Group Marketing Manager, who said at last Saturday’s Orchestra Forum that classical music should connect with “maker culture” to engage broader audiences, then the Symphony’s efforts to include new works in the 2012 Mavericks Festival are an especially important addition. We can argue about what a maverick composer is, or what maverick means, period, in a musical context. But it’s the right impulse to show audiences that “makers and do-ers” are alive and kicking in concert music.

But Sanders’ comment also stayed with me as I’ve thought about what more the Symphony could do to connect more people – from festival newcomers to long-time subscribers – to the universe of American music that lies outside the mainstream of symphony concerts, which is to say, a lot of American music. How could a festival connect us with the pioneering spirit of “American-ness” that distinguishes so much music, but also so much visual art, poetry, film, and dance? And how can a festival about the new, be new itself? How can it inspire “maker culture” in its audiences?

And here is where the festival let me down a bit. While the content of the concerts was an ear-opening experience, the production values were as traditional as any other orchestra concert. The audience experience from start to finish was the same we’ve become accustomed to, only with longer set changes for these complicated works.  The same length, format, and pacing; the same program books and stage set up. The same distance between performer to audience.  The same formality.

The gap? The content of the American Mavericks festival puts the Symphony in an ideal position to not only present the work, but also to present it in new ways, and I don’t mean digitally, I mean physically. They could open our minds by disrupting our expectations and surprising us with new sounds and new experiences. How? By immersing us in the other art forms that could help us understand the context for a maverick sensibility, or by giving us the tools and opportunity to make art ourselves, or by breaking from standard-delivery-two-hours-with-intermission concerts to create unexplored and unexpected encounters with works of art. How about the artists talking from the stage? How about a poetry reading during the long set changes? Or multiple intermissions with activities that use Davies’ grand lobby spaces? How about an all-day instrument-building festival culminating in a concert, or other projects that could unleash the DIY energy that the Bay Area personifies? The festival could move out beyond the downtown concert hall and into other venues, or its themes could be amplified by local museums, at movie theaters, in local restaurants, at universities, or in the street. In marathons, pop-up concerts, symposia, or other formats the festival could more boldly embody the voices that are so clearly present in the music itself. I now long for a “Mavericks the Third” that would bring the whole city of San Francisco into the mix in ways that celebrate the region’s own role as maverick, a place that represents discovery, free-spiritedness, and innovation. And please, let’s not wait 12 years for this to happen!

That said, the musicmaking was terrific. With me as my plane took off for home — the haunting melodies of Meredith Monk’s Realm Variations, performed by the Symphony’s singular piccolo player, Catherine Payne, and an ensemble of singers and instrumentalists, the counterpoint in John Adams’ new Absolute Jest for the St. Lawrence Quartet and the S.F. Symphony, and the cacophony of Varese’s Ameriques. If you live in Ann Arbor or New York, plan to attend.

Snapshot of 2009 foundation funding, from Foundation Center and GIA Reader

I wasn’t sure whether or not problemization was a word until I looked it up and found that it is one. Problemization is to consider or treat as a problem (Merriam Webster).

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. The reason is that increasingly when you look at a foundation’s grant guidelines you are asked: “What problem are you trying to solve?” I put the following into Google: “Foundation funding what problem are you trying to solve.” The search result: 182 million hits that included dozens of foundations’ guidelines and many articles about how to write successful grant proposals. The additional question is “What is the need or problem that will be eliminated if your request is granted?” (And subsequent questions about how you identified and documented the problem, what logic model you followed to design your solution and how will you measure your results.)

I wonder what effect this culture of pathology, of diagnosis and treatment, is having on the nonprofit sector in general and the cultural sector in particular. Do foundations increasingly see themselves in the role of a sort of benevolent physician, identifying social “disease” and using their grants as the medication needed for wellness to be achieved? Not that long ago, a primary framework for organized philanthropy was one of ideas and experimentation; the mindset was one of risk capital and the ability to fuel new ideas that are interesting and should be tried.

The problem/solution framework is especially insidious for the arts. Yes, we do solve problems in the arts, particularly we work on aesthetic and philosophical problems, though these are not problems a foundation could help solve (at least not directly). In fact, the problems we solve are not easily documented, it is difficult to apply a social scientist’s approach to them, and our documentation of results is more likely qualitative than quantitative.

What problems are we trying to solve? Here are a few. More people should encounter beauty as part of their daily lives. Artists who are able to focus uninterrupted time on their creative work will create stronger work, work that will create more meaning and value for those who encounter it. All people deserve access to the transformative power of artmaking, and its ability to simultaneously draw on the physical, intellectual and spiritual aspects of being human. The creative impulse is as basic to our species as the need for food and cultivating individual creativity will result in richer, fuller lives.  Communities should have permanent structures where creativity can be fostered and artists can find meaningful work. There are many more.  But, do we really see these as problems?

I think that people working in the arts see the world through the lens of human potential and not through the lens of disease (or human failing). I wonder whether this accounts for the widening chasm between foundation priorities and arts giving (arts grantmaking is shrinking as a proportion of overall grantmaking, down 21% between 2008 and 2009). Perhaps the reason is that those in the cultural sector are unwilling (and unable) to re-orient their deep-seated belief in human potential to satisfy an analysis by those who look at society and see what’s wrong, rather than what’s right.

Problemization is a world view and the nonprofit sector seems only too willing to embrace it. You may argue that this has meant more rigor, more focus on results, and better outcomes. But something also has been lost. Maybe you can help me put my finger on it.

Robert J. Flanagan

Stanford Emeritus Professor Robert J. Flanagan‘s book, The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras, Artistic Triumphs and Economic Challenges, was just released from Yale University Press and will be of interest to anyone working in, volunteering for, or listening to orchestras. The slim volume is jammed with interesting data, and its extensive bibliography will be helpful to readers who want to delve even deeper into the subject of the economics of symphony orchestras and their prospects for financial health and artistic vitality.

Flanagan’s study group was every symphony orchestra that was one of the largest 50 orchestras in the United States for at least two of the years during the period starting with the 1987-88 and ending with the 2005-6 season (which includes the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra). His research makes primary use of the federal tax returns and other publicly available reports coming directly from the study group, and data and information on members’ operations and finances provided by the League of American Orchestras and Opera America under the condition that individual performing arts organizations’ data cannot be identified in the publication.

The central thesis of the book is a search for changes in operating structures that would result in greater financial and artistic health for orchestras, given their long-standing economic challenges. Flanagan helpfully divides orchestras’ challenges between “the weather,” meaning the changes in economic cycles that bring ups and downs to the overall economy, and “the climate,” meaning the pervasive economic and societal trends and conditions that transcend the weather at any given moment and must be studied over longer periods. Weather and climate demand different responses, and in this study, Flanagan is focused on the climate.

Specifically, Flanagan looks at paths orchestras could take to arrive at a stronger operating platform.  He examines historical trends and prospects for growth in  “performance revenue,” meaning ticket sales, revenue from recordings or touring, and other direct performance revenue (school concerts, etc). He studies orchestras’ capabilities for growing “non-performance income,” defined as  government grants and subsidy, private contributions, and endowment/investment income. And finally he looks at ways orchestras have reduced or might consider reducing or slowing the growth of performance expenses.

Flanagan’s conclusion is that none of these paths, alone, is sufficient, and in fact “taken as a whole, this book documents the futility of single solutions.” We can conclude therefore that all three must be adopted. Along the way, Flanagan details some interesting facts derived from data. (And I do a bit of a disservice to the book to pick out a few points when the text is rich with much more data of interest.)

• Changes in audience behavior are “climate” not “weather” and must be dealt with as such. The public is attending classical music concerts less frequently and those who do attend are purchasing ever-smaller ticket packages. “The decline in attendance at classical music concerts may reflect broad social shifts in the use of leisure time that have little to do with orchestra policies.”
• Increasing marketing expense will not necessarily result in a larger audience since “incremental increases in marketing expenditures produce successively smaller gains in attendance per concert.”
• “Even if every seat were filled, the vast majority of U.S. symphony orchestras still would face significant performance deficits.”
• “As orchestras added concerts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, attendance per concert declined for virtually all types of concerts.”
• “Much private philanthropy rests on factors that are beyond the control of orchestras,” and is more likely to be affected by government policies to promote economic growth than an orchestra’s policies and practices.
• There’s just too much to summarize in the chapter on “Artistic and Non Artistic Costs.” It is a significant addition to the analysis of orchestra expenditures, including a fascinating re-play of the effects of the Ford Foundation’s endowment giving to orchestras on musicians’ salaries and working conditions. If you don’t know much about what and how orchestra musicians are paid and how they do their (challenging) work, this is an informative read.

The fact that there’s “no silver bullet” (Flanagan’s conclusion) to the economic challenges faced by orchestras will come as no surprise to anyone working in the field today. What Flanagan has contributed to the discussion is a thorough and fact-based analysis of how orchestras’ past choices are playing out in today’s economic and social environment. By doing so he’s informed the best choices for leading our organizations forward. His final comment is that “management, musicians, and trustees each have a role in increasing the economic security of orchestras,” and that “no single group can solve the problem by itself.” Obvious, perhaps. Helpful, indeed.

Note: Flanagan’s 2008 paper for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation on “The Economic Environment of American Symphony Orchestras” is also a worthwhile field analysis.