Jumper

Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

Funder knows best

In a recent thought-provoking Createquity post, Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem, Ian David Moss examines one of the newer initiatives of the NEA (and its private philanthropy friends) and finds it to be lacking a logic for how it will achieve its aims. Moss criticizes this program and others for attempting to connect the arts with economic development without considering the steps in between. Moss’s post is a call for a clear and detailed theory of change for such initiatives and he goes so far as to share two models (one simple and one quite complex) that he has developed.

When I read Moss’s essay, I immediately thought of the questionable motives and unquestioned assumptions that seem to underpin many philanthropic efforts in the arts. (I thought about saying “these days” at the end of that last sentence but, to be honest, I’m not sure whether it’s ever been any different.) To the best of my knowledge, the king of arts funding, Mac Lowry at the Ford Foundation, didn’t develop a sophisticated framework or a complex theory of change when he set about altering the landscape of the arts in America. (Of course some might suggest that the arts sector would be better off now if he had.)

Moss’s models and theories are impressive (and I am quite eager to see how the work in Cincinnati develops over time); but I suspect that many arts funders would see no reason and feel no pressure to go to such lengths. There are few demands that private foundations justify their strategies and they are rarely, if ever, held accountable for poor decisions. We trust funders, perhaps to a fault. Or perhaps it’s not trust as much as behavioral conditioning. Or enlightened self interest.

While Moss is (rightfully) worried that arts funders are failing to connect the dots between their grantmaking and the goals they are aiming to achieve, I must admit that I get a little nervous when I think about some funders trying to work with logic models like the ones in Moss’s post. I scan various philanthropy announcements each week. Aside from noting the incredible number of very large donations made to universities, lately I’m often struck by how paternalistic, prescriptive, demanding, inflexible, and self-congratulatory arts funding has become.

(Or has it always been this way and I’m just getting cranky with age?)

I am concerned that arts funders are becoming ever more bullish and confident that they know what’s best for the sector. A little bit of theory and systems thinking may be worse than none at all. I worry that dabbling with or employing such models could make funders all the more convinced that they can (and should) strengthen or improve or otherwise re-shape the entire arts sector by making a few dozen grants a year. I worry that funders will blame grantees if their models don’t work. More than anything, I worry about how funders may begin to connect the dots.

POSTSCRIPT ADDED JUNE 1 2012: Here’s a link to some reflections from Jason Schupbach, NEA Director of Design in response to Ian David Moss’s post on Creative Placemaking: Creative Placemaking—two years and counting!

 

 

 

Lessons in my struggles to learn Dutch

This is a post about my struggles to learn Dutch and assimilate to my new country (which I’ve endeavored to wrap back around to the arts). The past few weeks I’ve been studying rather intensely, preparing for my NT2 Staatsexamen I—the Dutch language exam that I must pass in order to be granted permanent residency status and the ability to stay in the Netherlands with my Dutch husband and his two daughters once my PhD position at the university ends in a couple years. It’s a two-day exam that tests reading, writing, speaking, and listening proficiency.

It seems highly likely that I’m not going to pass all four sections. I may squeak by on writing and reading but my listening and speaking skills are laughable. In fact it’s all I can do not to crack myself up when I’m trying to do these parts of the test they are so hard. I’m not being hyperbolic or fatalistic. I’m terrible. My tutor basically said the same thing. Fortunately I have a couple years and a few more chances to retake the sections I fail.

They say you need to know around 5,000 words to pass the exam. I’ve drilled vocabulary and completed all three levels of Rosetta Stone and done 15-20 hours of self study for most of the past year using the system that the government supports (until next year when the subsidized programs ends). I am weary of trying to learn this language. I was weary six months ago.

I mentioned that my husband, Jaap, has two daughters. Flora and Sarah are their names. They are amazing and the picture above is of the four of us the day after Jaap and I were married last year. They are the reason that I moved to the Netherlands and Jaap did not move to NYC. It’s worth noting that for the past 18 months I have been unable to really converse with the girls beyond a few niceties: “What do you want for lunch?” “That dress is pretty.” “Have a good day at school.”  For the most part, we’ve relied heavily on gesturing and Jaap’s translation services to communicate with one another.

The past two weeks have been spring break for the girls. The first week of their spring break (which the girls spent with their mum) coincided with the first week of my intensive studies. It was at the end of that first week of studies that I took my practice tests and realized I was doomed to fail the speaking and writing sections of the exam. I was angry and frustrated and depressed. As much as I love my husband and the girls, and have no regrets about moving here to be with them, the past two years have been quite challenging. I changed just about every aspect of my life and left my friends and family and a city and job that I loved very much. I have been here nearly two years and everything, everyday still feels rather foreign to me. I have had my heart set on passing this exam and feeling like the universe was giving me a thumbs up that things were going to be OK for me in the Netherlands. I have really wanted—really needed—to pass this test.

On Tuesday of this week the girls came to stay with Jaap and me for a week. And something small yet rather amazing happened when they arrived. I was able to speak whole sentences to them and, for the most part, understand what they were saying to me. I may not be ready for the NT2 Staatsexamen 1, but evidently a couple weeks of intensive study has dramatically improved my ability to communicate with my stepdaughters.

A few days ago I came to a realization.

I decided, “Screw the Staatsexamen.”

Yes, of course, I must pass this exam eventually to get a residency permit—but passing the exam is so not the point.

I want to be able to talk with the girls. I want to be able to chit chat with family and friends at the rather incredible number of birthday parties that I attend each year. I want to watch Dutch news and understand what’s going on. I no longer want a group of Dutch people to have to speak English for my benefit when I’m in a meeting or at a dinner party. I want to feel like I belong here. I want to understand my new tribe. I want to be able to make people laugh in Dutch the way I can in English, at least on a good day.

It’s probably going to take many more years before I achieve these milestones. But for the moment, I can talk a bit more with my stepdaughters. And I’m holding onto that as I prepare to fail my exam tomorrow.

So what does any of this have to do with the arts?

First, It’s amazing to me how much easier it is for me to appear fluent on paper when I still have a hard time speaking three sentences in a row without stammering and having to stop and start again. I’m both grateful and frustrated by multilingual Netherlanders who immediately switch to English at my slightest hesitation with their language. It’s generous of them to speak English (which they all do amazingly well); but it isn’t helping me to master their language.  My Dutch is never really necessary or tested. I can always default back to what’s comfortable—to speaking English. Similarly, I think it’s relatively easy to fake change, innovation, and transformation on paper and I note that we often stammer about as we try to talk thoughtfully and without a bunch of jargon about what we’re really trying to do these days in the arts vis-à-vis the changing world. Moreover, it’s tempting to default back to business-as-usual when initial attempts to change our processes are frustrating to us and to our stakeholders.

Secondly, and not unrelated to point one, I was wondering last week whether (like passing the Staatsexmen) securing a high profile grant to support innovation, or change, or sustainability, or the future (or what have you) has somehow become the goal rather than a means to a higher goal. There’s so much fanfare about grant programs as they are announced and their winners celebrated. It’s as though we are living in a narrative in which the organization’s hero journey is a multi-year conversation with a major funder and grueling application process that finally leads to a five- or six- or seven-figure grant, rather than a ten-year conversation between an organization and a community that finally leads to a stronger and more vital relationship between the two.

I knew I was starting to get somewhere when I both stopped caring about the Staatsexamen and also stopped telling myself that I could probably get by without having to learn Dutch.

Finally, going through this process has given me tremendous compassion for all the leaders and staffers of arts organizations that have been turning the flywheel (to use a metaphor from Jim Collins) for several years now, trying to transform their organizations. I imagine that some must be incredibly weary of the process. This is hard, sometimes grueling, work and the returns are often small at the start. My new life is very different from my old life. That difference feels uncomfortable most days. I believe that if I continue to persevere at the university and with my Dutch lessons and with every other aspect of my new and challenging life that I will eventually find my place in this foreign land. Likewise, I believe that if the arts sector keeps turning the flywheel that it will find its purpose in this new world. The worst thing we could do at this point is stop pushing forward.

I’m looking forward to writing posts on a weekly basis starting again next week. Thanks for your patience and apologies for the hiatus while I was immersing myself in Dutch the past few weeks, for the greater good of my relationship with Flora and Sarah, even if not for the reward of a passing grade tomorrow.

The beach photo was taken by the terrific Leiden-based photographer, Martin Ken.

 

On my Soapbox: Digitization of Live Performance

The Wooster Group

Clay Lord has written a provocative and rather erudite post, The Work of Presentational Art in the Age of On-Demand Technological Empowerment, in which he cautions that as arts organizations embrace or respond to pressure to record and disseminate their live work that they not lose their identity and the core of what live performance (and theater in particular, perhaps) is all about.

Clay mentions my post from last week in which I wrote: “If our goal for the next century is to hold onto our marginalized position and maintain our minuscule reach—rather than being part of the cultural zeitgeist, actively addressing the social inequities in our country, and reaching exponentially greater numbers of people— then our goal is not only too small, I would suggest that it may not merit the vast amounts of time, money, or enthusiasm we would require from talented staffers and artists, governments, foundations, corporations, and private individuals to achieve it.” In response, Clay comments, “I’m not sure I can simply agree, much as I might want to. This, more than anything, reminds me of Veruca Salt, forever simply wanting more without pausing to ask whether that was going to truly get her someplace she wanted to be at the end.”

My encouragement towards reaching greater numbers of people through other channels (generally and in the post quoted) is not meant to be a rejection of the importance and distinctive joy of an intimate, high quality, live arts experience. Those opportunities exist in great numbers in many cities in the US, for those interested and able to attend. But perhaps a personal anecdote will help to illustrate my excitement over the possibilities of recording and streaming live performances.

Despite being a ‘theater person’ I did not encounter the Wooster Group until I was in my 30s when I was working at On the Boards. Why? Because the Wooster Group didn’t travel to Kansas City when I was in graduate school. Or Idaho, when I moved there in my 20s to work in theater and run a music festival.The Woosters have never traveled to more than a select number of cities in the US (for perhaps obvious reasons). I had read about the Woosters in my edition of Brockett back in the late 80s/early 90s (a few paragraphs, as I recall) but never experienced ‘that kind of theater’. When I finally saw the Woosters, live, in my 30s, it was a seminal experience.

The same with Anne Bogart, Miranda July, Felix Ruckert, John Moran, Deja Donne, Richard Maxwell and many other artists that I was fortunate to encounter only because I had the good fortune to live in Seattle and work at On the Boards and, in particular, with Lane Czaplinski. Eventually, I moved to NY and saw 150 performances per year and it was a pretty heady period of my life. And now I’m living in a small village in the Netherlands and for many reasons (financial limitations because I’m a student, transportation issues, family obligations, etc.) it is quite difficult for me to see even the great work that is happening here in the Netherlands, much less venture to various festivals around Europe. No more Wooster Group for me.

Thus, I am (now more than ever) incredibly enthused that (for example) the the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and OtB TV now exist. I wish to God OtB TV existed in 1990 when I was trying to find a place for myself in the arts world and develop an aesthetic. If I were running an arts aministration or MFA program of any kind I would make such broadcasts/channels mandatory viewing. When I was in graduate school one of my professors screened a film of Laurie Anderson’s UNITED STATES LIVE. I had not yet seen Laurie Anderson live. It prompted me to buy a ticket to her next concert, in Lawrence, Kansas. That, too, was a seminal experience for me.

Enough with the nostalgia … Yes, hold onto the core. But, to be honest, I think the ‘core’ of theater is far more threatened by the preponderance of rather deadly small-scale teledramas that pass as ‘dynamic live theater’ in many of the regional theaters in the US than by, for instance, a broadcast of the fabulous Young Jean Lee’s SHIPMENT on OtB TV.

If the ‘live’ experience is still mattering to people I believe it will compel people to go to the theater, buy a ticket (or stand in line for free tickets) and attend in person. But I would implore you not to dismiss these mediated experiences by assuming that they still generally ‘look like shit’ (as Clay suggests in his post and as they mostly did in the 20th century). Have you seen one of the Met HD Broadcasts? Personally, I think they are amazing and, as a ‘theater person’, I prefer them to the live experience as I can see the faces of the performers. Furthermore, having seen the broadcasts I now find the live experience all the richer. Not only is the technology improving but so are our skills at capturing the ‘liveness’ in a digital medium. And OtB TV is showing us that it can be done well without the price tag of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

The major institutions in this country are now quite large and hungry beasts, demanding incredible resources to be sustained. It is quite hard for me to imagine how we can continue to justify such expenditures in the face of the declining live audience trend (that seems to have begun in the 80s according to the various studies). But if we could begin to talk about a rising ‘online’ or ‘cinema’ or ‘DVD’ audience (which the Metropolitan Opera and others have been able to do) then I begin to see the logic of ongoing large investments in these institutions. And these recordings are not just about reaching audiences that can’t access the live work. Arguably, they could play a crucial role in helping artists (more easily or quickly) build a larger global audience, be ‘in dialogue with’ other artists, and have greater impact.

We can also avoid that path, preserve the current experience, and hunker down with the goal of serving the people that (again) have the interest and ability to join us at our venues. But if that’s the case then we probably need to be prepared to downsize our infrastructure over time if the audience for what we do continues to diminish over time.

I would argue that if organizations with the potential for wider reach (that is, they are producing work for which there is demand beyond their local community) can do it well, and affordably, and strategically, and ethically (paying artists their fare share), then they should embrace the possibility of mediated experiences, trusting that they can live side-by-side with the live performance (and decades of recordings by musicians that primarily make their money doing live concerts should give us some hope here). Or even better, that new, exciting art forms may emerge (think Dance on Film) geared especially to the medium.

While the recording may be a substitute for some, I also believe it will be a complementary good for others. Do I think that if mediated experiences grow in number and reach that we will necessarily maintain our current (some would say ‘overbuilt’) infrastructure in the US? I don’t. But like others, I think that some of that infrastructure needed to be dismantled anyway – long before the Met broadcasts disrupted our sector.

If I had seen a recording of the Wooster Group in my 20s I would have beaten a path to NYC or the next nearest city where they were performing to see them live. But I couldn’t conceive of what that experience would be before seeing it. (I was trying to place the Woosters within my rather limited LORT theater experiences.) That is, after all, why we call them experience goods. Giving more people an experience (even if it is a mediated experience) is better in my mind than having them sit outside the venues wondering what goes on inside or, even worse, being pretty sure they know and that they wouldn’t find it interesting.

POST SCRIPT: Coincidentally, I just came across an email about an opportunity to experience the Wooster Group on film and video. Anthology Film Archives are hosting a 7-day series that ends on the 23rd. Info here.

If you’re still awake at the end of this post (sorry for the length) grab a cup of coffee and make the time to read Clay’s thoughtful post as well as truly smart comments by Polly Carl and Linda Essig.

AJ Discussion: Lead or Follow?

In lieu of a Jumper post this week I have written a post (If this is leading, what is following?) for the Arts Journal Discussion, Lead or Follow.  Here’s the question that launched the debate, posed by AJ’s Doug McLennan:

Increasingly, audiences have more visibility for their opinions about the culture they consume. Cultural institutions know more and more about their audiences and their wants. Some suggest this new transparency argues for a different relationship between artists and audience.  So the question: In this age of self expression and information overload, do our artists and arts organizations need to lead more or learn to follow their communities more?

Doug McClennan has put together a diverse group of debaters: the Kennedy Center’s MichaelKaiser; John Holden of Demos; Chad Bauman, marketing director at ArenaStage; Michael Phillips, movie critic of the Chicago Tribune; culturalhistorian Lynne Conner; Josephine Ramirez, program officer at theIrvine Foundation; Jenny Byrd, a graduate student in arts management at Claremont Graduate University; Bob Harlow, an arts consultant; Stephanie Barron, curator at the LA County Museum of Art; Roberto Bedoya,director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council; Kelly Tweeddale, executive director of Seattle Opera; Trisha Mead, Director of Marketing and Communications for Oregon Ballet Theatre; and Stanford Thompson,Executive Director for the El Sistema-inspired program, Play On, Philly!

I hope you’ll check it out and jump into the discussion.

And if you want to know what the onion is about, read the post. 😉

 

 

Time to start pulling off the duct tape …

In his article, Occupy the Arts, a seat at a time, NY Times critic Anthony Tomasini (like others) pounced on recent allegations of ‘elitism’ in the arts (growing out of the Occupy movement), decrying that there are loads of free and affordable arts events and that even those organizations that charge $400 per ticket also have cheap seats (and the experience is just as great from the nosebleeds, thank you very much!). Not only do Tomasini and others seem a tad defensive when they fly their Free Tickets Flag in the face of those seeking to raise a conversation about social inequalities in the arts, it seems they rather miss the point.

Tomasini writes:

But as we try to grasp what the committed Occupy Wall Street activists are saying to the performing arts, can we all agree to put aside at last the charge of elitism? Especially, I would say from my partisan perspective, regarding classical music? At least in New York and in many other American cities, as well as most college towns, there are abundant opportunities to attend free or very affordable concerts and operas.

What arouses allegations that fine arts organizations are elitist is not (primarily) that their ticket prices are sometimes high, but rather that they are (more often than not) governed by a select group of (generally wealthy, well-educated, and often white) people whose beliefs and tastes are presumed to be ‘the best’ and, therefore, good for society as a whole. Many fine arts organizations are perceived as elitist because they seem to cater to the needs, capacities, and desires of this select group of people rather than serving their communities-at-large.

Communities in which, evidently, a lot of people are quite poor. Russell Willis Taylor of National Arts Strategies and I were chatting the other day and she mentioned that the most recent US census shows that 1 in 2 people in the US are living at the poverty level (Census: 1 in 2 Americans is Poor or Low Income).

And yet, attending a fine arts event in the US one steps into a world that seems to be (and often is) completely out of touch with the reality of that census statistic …

Arts organizations could do something in response to that statistic. Several years ago now, Appalshop (an arts and education center located in the Appalachian mountain region) realized there was a tremendous (and rather sobering) ‘growth market’ in its community (and the US generally) that was not being served by the arts: people who have been or are currently in prison, or those who know people who have been or are currently in prison. A staggering number of people fall into this category—enough that the good people at Appalshop felt that their perspectives and needs were worth taking seriously and that it was important to develop programming with them and for them. To read about this extraordinary program go to the Thousand Kites homepage.

Oh, but wait just a darned minute! Isn’t Appalshop one of those ‘community-based’ organizations? So that’s different. They’re supposed to serve the needs the community-at-large. That’s their mission. As opposed to ‘Arts’ organizations which are supposed to serve … ummmm … oh, never mind.

Pffffffff.

There is a growing financial, artistic, and psychic gap between the ‘nonprofit fine arts world’ in the US and the ‘rest of the US’.

And we’ve been trying to bridge this gap with duct tape (aka, friends with money) for at least 30 years.

It’s a new year.

What better time to tear off the duct tape, see what holds, and start building something better?

It’s been a great year. Thanks!

I may be unable to post much the next few weeks as I’m on planes and trains, buried in research materials, visiting friends and family that I too rarely get to see these days, and sprinting to the finish line on a few projects. But I want to take the opportunity to thank Doug Mclennan for the opportunity to launch Jumper on ArtsJournal.com (a gift for which I will be forever grateful) and to thank everyone that has taken the time these past twelve months to read posts, post comments, send emails, Tweet, ReTweet, republish, or otherwise engage.

In a year of transitions — single to married, no kids to stepmom, living in the US to living in the Netherlands, living in a cultural capital and seeing shows several nights a week to living in the suburbs and cooking potatoes several nights a week, working fulltime at a private foundation to going back to school — the transition to ‘blogger’ has been one of the best.

OK, not better than marrying my amazing husband, becoming a stepmom, and being adopted into my amazing Dutch family, but truly rewarding.

I will continue to challenge myself to make it worth your time to check out Jumper now and again; and I will continue to be grateful whenever you do so.

I will be back in full force in December.

Until then, gobble gobble.

 

Waiting for a new business model for the arts.

"The air is full of our cries." (He listens.) "But habit is a great deadener."

What do nonprofit arts people mean when they say ‘the business model is broken’? I’ve heard this phrased decried ad nauseum in the US for at least the past three years. It was a working hypothesis before the economic downturn; now it seems to be a statement of fact. So what model are we talking about? The American ‘nonprofit’ model for the arts? A particular ‘business’ model used by individual organizations? A Stanford business school professor once gave me the following definition: a model is a representation of your beliefs about causality. Perhaps more interesting questions would be, what beliefs about causality underpin our ‘model’, and are they still valid?

Last year, in his post, One business model to rule them all, Andrew Taylor referenced a comment Clara Miller of Nonprofit Finance Fund made at an Americans for the Arts conference in 2010. She said, “There is one business model: reliable revenue that meets or exceeds expenses. Any questions?” I was at that session. A lot of people chuckled when she made the comment.

And then I remember thinking: So, which revenue sources are reliable at a nonprofit arts organization? Government arts programs across the country seem to go into duck and cover mode on a regular basis; corporations are often skittish—lavish one year and austere the next; foundations are overly cautious and generally dole out funds one year at a time, being careful to avoid enabling ‘dependency’; fewer and fewer people want to commit to buying a season’s worth of tickets up front; single ticket buyers are notoriously unpredictable; and individual donors are as varied as … well, individuals: some are dependable and loyal but many are fickle and elusive.

It seems like most arts organizations start each year with very little of their income committed and spend much of the year on pins and needles waiting to see if they will hit their revenue targets. Are we operating under a delusion that there is such thing as ‘reliable revenue that meets or exceeds expenses’ in the arts? And if so, is there a corresponding faulty belief that underpins our business model? For instance, that the arts are valued by our society?

Is this what we mean by ‘the model is broken’? Or is it something else? I would love to hear reflections on the ‘broken model’. What’s broken? How do we fix it?

Desolate Tree image from by lolloj licensed by Shutterstock.com. Quote from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

Greetings from across the pond …

Diane RagsdaleSo I’ve recently made a few changes in my life.  In July 2010, I left The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where I had the privilege and joy to work in the performing arts program for six years, and moved to the Netherlands to marry a Dutchman and to work towards a PhD in cultural economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.  In addition to my role as a grantmaker, over the past couple years, I (along with others) have been writing and speaking on the larger changes in the cultural environment and ways arts organizations may need to adapt in order to survive and thrive in the coming years.  If you are interested, you can download a few things I’ve written in the aptly titled section in the right hand navigation bar of this page.

When I tell my arts friends that I’m now studying cultural economics they almost always say, “Interesting!”  This is often followed by, “What is cultural economics exactly?” and then the comment, “Oh, wait, does this have something to do with economic impact studies?”  The answer is “yes and no” (I’ll say more about the field of cultural economics in future posts).  

Given that economic impact studies and arguments are often associated with the field of cultural economics, and they are a somewhat controversial topic, I thought I’d use my first couple posts to share some reflections on them.  The first one appears today and the second will be published a week from today.

You can read a bit more about JUMPER by clicking on ABOUT at the top of this page.  I thank everyone who takes the time to follow my blog here and there; and I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you feel inclined to share them.

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license