Friend and arts manager Mark Nerenhausen in Florida sent a link to this article in The Guardian about the leadership shake-up at the Royal Shakespeare Company subtitled “Debate over business in art rages as Foy quits.” The article points to a classic struggle among boards and administrators…do we hire an artist or a businessperson to […]
Archives for July 2003
How I Made $14.18
Amazon.com‘s ‘associates’ program is an exceptional example of marketing through other people’s passions. For those unfamiliar with ‘associates’ or ‘referral’ programs increasingly common among savvy web companies, they allow you to refer potential customers to them, and get a commission if the referral ends up with a purchase. It costs the associate nothing, comes with […]
Depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is…
The recent NEA report on the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (summarized in this Chicago Tribune story) receives a positive spin from the NEA (despite 9/11, arts participation stayed steady) and a gloomy spin from the Tribune (stagnant participation percentages from previous studies, same old same old audience demographics, etc.). But bundled […]
Partner in Crime
My writings and collections here will clearly have a lot to connect with fellow weblogger Greg Sandow, who’s exploring the future of classical music through frequent posts. Take a look, particularly, at his July 24 post (called ‘Snapshot’) on what some classical organizations consider to be innovation. Very frightening. Greg and I are in increasingly […]
Mission or Means
I was off-line yesterday, attending a roundtable on the future of classical music radio up at Minnesota Public Radio (here’s a press release about the project). At the event, Alan Brown gave a fabulous overview of the study he wrote on the audience for classical music. Given the study’s findings that people connect with classical […]
Reintegrating our organizations and ourselves
Choreographer/dancer Liz Lerman has always provided a broad and engaging perspective at any professional conference I’ve seen her present. A friend (thanks Becky) recently forwarded this 2001 keynote address she gave to a performing arts educators forum (available as an Adobe Acrobat file here). I’ll just let it speak for itself: I think there was […]
What does it cost?…What have you got?
David Leonhardt’s piece in the Sunday New York Times on the increasingly variable price of Broadway tickets extends a discussion that has always been true‹different people are willing to pay different prices at different times for different events. The only real story here is that finally the arts managers are part of the process. Ever […]
Imagine there’s no money, it’s easy if you try.
The August issue of Fast Company magazine has an article for the for-profit corporate set on How to Lead Now (ie, in a down economy), subtitled ‘Getting Extraordinary Performance When You Can’t Pay for It.’ It outlines those astounding business leaders who build a sense of purpose and personal connection among their workers, who extract […]
Attend the Arts…or Die…
Colin Jackson, a good friend and an ‘artful manager’ from Calgary, forwarded a link to this Swedish study that concludes: Attendance at cultural events may have a positive influence on survival. For the visually-inclined, the report also includes this handy chart (suitable for framing) of the estimated survival of people attending cultural events often, occasionally, […]
The Clap Trap
Rupert Christiansen’s latest on the increasingly tepid applause at UK performing arts events makes an interesting guess at the cause: “We are repeatedly exposed to the sounds and images of extreme drama, both actual and fictional. This may mean that the excitement that live music stimulates is less intense and surprising – we hear it, […]