A lot of early chatter about the web and its impact on community and place-based enterprise (like arts organizations) talked about the elimination of the local. In an on-line world, your ‘neighbor’ could be defined by common interests, shared profession, or similar purchase behavior, just as easily as by geographic proximity. In fact, in an […]
Look who’s six!
It was on this day in 2003 that I posted the first entry to this blog as a new experiment (for me, anyway) in online publishing. Said I back then: The world doesn’t work the way we thought it did, the way our common knowledge thinks it should, or the way our training prepared us […]
On the road, off the clock
I’m off to Boston for family affairs, and won’t be blogging this week. NEXT week will mark this blog’s sixth anniversary, and perhaps the week following will see my 1000th post. Lots to look forward to. But this week I’m off the clock.
Truth, beauty, trust
Patrick Lynch over at “A List Apart” has some useful thoughts about balancing design and content in web site construction. And his thoughts on that balance have implications beyond the web site, and throughout how arts and cultural managers do their work. Says he: In academia, text (and lots of it) is the only way […]
Considering the Creative Ecology
I had a great visit to Austin, Texas, last week to talk with artists, arts managers, creatives, and other community members. Building on their cultural planning of the past years, they are working to forge a ”creative alliance” to advance the creative life (not just cultural) of the region. Lots of great people doing extraordinary […]
A glimpse inside the Obama arts policy
I’m in Austin, Texas, for a two-day conversation on the ‘creative ecology’ leading to a public presentation/discussion on Wednesday night. So, I’ll likely not be posting to the blog this week. In the meanwhile, take a moment to watch this segment of Doug McLennan’s recent interview with Bill Ivey, former NEA chair and recent lead […]
Of boards, bungles, and the two-headed beast
The theater world in Milwaukee is reeling from the sudden announcement this week from Skylight Opera Theatre that they had dismissed their artistic director, and that the managing director would be taking over artistic leadership. Opinions are flying. Protests are planned (for this morning). Factions are forming. Petitions are posted. The Playbill story on the […]
Amateur vs. professional
The rise of digital media and networked communications is bashing apart the traditional boundary between amateur and professional, particularly in the creative fields. As Clay Shirky defines the ‘professional’ in his fabulous book Here Comes Everybody: A profession exists to solve a hard problem, one that requires some sort of specialization…. Most professions exist because […]
The evolving hybrids in corporate structure
BusinessWeek offers a useful overview of emerging innovations in corporate structure, the effort to blend for-profit flexibility and responsiveness with nonprofit emphasis on mission over profit. Says author John Tozzi: Social enterprises…often don’t fit neatly into existing ownership structures. Those that register as nonprofits have trouble tapping private capital to expand, while for-profit companies risk […]
The fewer, the older
A preview of the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts results have just been posted by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the news is a bit sobering. This is the mother ship of longitudinal surveys on arts participation in the United States — conducted in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau […]
