{"id":1887,"date":"2012-09-17T06:36:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T11:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/?p=1887"},"modified":"2012-09-17T09:25:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T14:25:26","slug":"filling-the-house-or-filling-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/filling-the-house-or-filling-the-heart.php","title":{"rendered":"Filling the house, or filling the heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1890\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theater_seats.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1890\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1890\" title=\"Theater Seats\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theater_seats.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theater_seats.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theater_seats-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theater_seats-70x70.jpg 70w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/theater_seats-110x110.jpg 110w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1890\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Flickr user pochacco20<\/p><\/div>\n<p>For many reasons, the questions of &#8216;audience engagement&#8217; have been simmering in my head in recent weeks. For one, I&#8217;m working on a project on that very topic, as an advising consultant to AMS Planning &amp; Research for TCG&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tcg.org\/fifty\/revolution.cfm\">Audience (R)Evolution initiative<\/a>. For another, I&#8217;m prepping for this Thursday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/how-art-works-next-thursday.php\">&#8216;How Art Works&#8217; public forum<\/a> with the National Endowment for the Arts and their new systems map, which explores how individual and social impacts flow from the arts experience. <!--more-->But there have been other strands, as well:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An executive search consultant to arts organizations concerned about the shift in senior-level marketing director candidates, who see their work increasingly as a job rather than a calling (an empty seat is a missed metric rather than a lost opportunity for joy).<\/li>\n<li>A choreographer frustrated that we&#8217;ve become so focused on getting more butts in the seats that we&#8217;re dissipating the effort to deepen and enrich the experience of those already there.<\/li>\n<li>My own prep and presentation for my Survey of Arts Management class at American University, where I&#8217;ve been trying to rethink how to talk about and teach the dynamic tensions of cultural management.<\/li>\n<li>Last week&#8217;s short but elegant post by Greg Sandow on our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/sandow\/2012\/09\/four-keys-to-the-future.html\">four keys to a better future for classical music<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>My continuing pondering on the efforts and insights of &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/theatrebayarea.org\/Programs\/Intrinsic-Impact.cfm\">Counting New Beans<\/a>,&#8217; from Theatre Bay Area, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artivate.org\/?p=163\">Clay Lord&#8217;s exploration of participatory practice<\/a> in the new edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artivate.org\/?p=233\"><em>Artivate<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For myself, I resolved the question long ago about whether an arts organization is a business. Of course it is. But that doesn&#8217;t determine for me what\u00a0<em>business<\/em> an arts organization is in. In a world of scarcity and competition, we all seem tempted to be in a\u00a0<em>volume<\/em> business &#8212; grabbing as many participants as we can. But if we&#8217;re really in the\u00a0<em>meaning<\/em> business, then quantity can&#8217;t be our only metric or goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For many reasons, the questions of &#8216;audience engagement&#8217; have been simmering in my head in recent weeks. For one, I&#8217;m working on a project on that very topic, as an advising consultant to AMS Planning &amp; Research for TCG&#8217;s\u00a0Audience (R)Evolution initiative. For another, I&#8217;m prepping for this Thursday&#8217;s &#8216;How Art Works&#8217; public forum with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}