Speaker

Sarah Lutman amplified

What I learned from Bill Kling

Bill Kling photo in studio from the MPR website

Today was Bill Kling’s final day of work as President of Minnesota Public Radio, where he’s led the development of the largest and arguably the most successful public radio organization in the United States.  His 44-year tenure has been marked by a series of bold, anticipatory moves that taken together more than earn him the title of Visionary.

I worked at MPR for 9 years in a variety of roles, worked with MPR for the prior 9 years as a representative of one of the network’s largest funders, and work now for an organization that counts MPR (and its national producing company, American Public Media) among its most important, long-term partners.  It’s easy to count Bill Kling as one of the most influential leaders in Minnesota, and not just from my vantage point.  The network boasts the largest per-capita listening audience of any public radio network, its family of websites attracts visitors from around the world, its Fitzgerald Theater is a platform for iconic live events, and its development of a 100,000+ membership base means that citizens all across our fair state belong to MPR, and in an unusually loyal and passionate way.

So, here are seven big things I learned from Bill.

1. “It’s about the audience.”  This is the “Bill mantra” inside the organization.  He constantly asks staff across the organization to put the audience foremost in their minds.  He has an unusually keen ear and gut sense of when someone is producing content or positioning the organization in a way that makes it more about them than about the people on the receiving end.   Bill has trusted the audience to support the network’s ambitions and to lead the organization to bigger and better things, and he’s fiercely loyal to them. And, he’s been right.

2. The audience deserves the best. Bill is not a guy who tolerates a B+ effort.  If something can be done better — more thoroughly, more imaginatively, with better craft —  it’s best you get on with it if you want to work at MPR.  He expects everyone to work full bore and he leads by example.  When the organization is able to do something new and meaningful for the audience, you can sense Bill’s almost child-like excitement of having brought something truly special to the community.

3. Risk is necessary (and so is speed). If an idea is good, it’s important to do it.  Bill doesn’t stop to make sure everyone is on board and he doesn’t need every detail to be worked out before he’s ready to launch something.   A big part of Bill’s success is a willingness (if not an imperative) to commit now to something’s that’s timely.  If it needs doing now, he’ll get on with it and figure everything else out later (which goes back to #1 and #2 – if you’re serving the audience they will reward you for it.)

4. Organizational strength is about the balance sheet. Beyond the enormous audience gathered around MPR’s electronic hearth, Bill’s legacy is MPR’s $100+ million fund balance and 45+ radio stations, all built through ingenious and creative business and philanthropic strategies. Bill has achieved the goal of securing the long-term future of the network and giving the organization flexibility to leverage its own resources to take risks.

5.  Shared infrastructure is good business. While most nonprofits work toward building their own independent fiefdoms, Bill figured out early that if you want to create something at scale it makes most sense to share infrastructure.   The Finance, HR, Legal, and other service functions inside MPR support the three radio networks in Minnesota (News, Classical, and The Current),  stations in Los Angeles and Miami, many national programs, the digital infrastructure of all the entities, and  the Fitzgerald Theater.  We can all learn from this model.

6. Organizations need creativity to thrive. Bill respects talent and creativity.  He understands the creative temperament, and cheers those who can speak to the audience in unique ways.  Something that’s a bit messy, and good, is better than something mediocre that’s tied up with a bow.  Bill isn’t afraid of passionate people and as a result MPR is full of them.  It’s an amazing work force.

7.  Barnacles come with leadership.  Bill has ruffled more than a few feathers and raised more than a few eyebrows on the road to achieving MPR’s success.   But he stayed the course throughout, adamantly advocating for both his ends and his means.   It is interesting to experience this community’s overwhelming show of support for Bill as he’s retiring and as the news stories about his legacy proliferate.  ‘Twas not always thus.  So don’t expect everyone to agree with you if you are a trailblazer.

I saw Bill walking around Saint Paul last week on his way to lunch and he seemed cheerful and relaxed.  I can’t wait to see what he’ll achieve in the next few years as he devotes himself to the expansion of the public radio news system.   It’s been a great ride, and in Minnesota we have the best public radio system in the U.S. to show for his efforts.

This consumer movement should help us

In a recent book and several articles (Huffington Post, Strategy+Business, Forbes, others – just Google “Spend Shift”), John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio describe a new breed of consumers they’ve named “Spend Shifts.”   The co-authors say that the Spend Shift movement began before the Great Recession and consists of a large, diverse demographic group who “realize that how they spend money is a form of power, and are moving from mindless consumption to mindful consumption, increasingly taking care to purchase goods and services from sellers that meet their standards and reflect their values.”  The underlying impulse for Spend Shifters is a return to traditional values in terms of what it means to live a good life; a good life is not defined by one’s possessions but is instead focused on “community, connection, quality, and creativity.”  The consumer survey data that Gerzema and D’Antonio analyzed — including more than 100,000 interviews —  showed that consumers “want positive relationships with marketplace vendors” and that the brand attributes most ascendant in consumers’ minds include “kindness and empathy” – up a  whopping 391 percent between 2005 and 2009. (“Friendly,” “high quality,” and “socially responsible” also are up significantly.)

If consumers really have shifted to focus on community, connection, quality, and creativity, then our work in the cultural sector ought to be growing in appeal.   Plus, the ways that cultural organizations are themselves focusing on accessibility, community involvement, and customer service seems to parallel the trends Gerzema and D’Antonio describe.

Here’s what Gerzema and D’Antonio say that the Spend Shifts want.

First, they have “a sense of optimism and purpose.”  They are living with less and feeling greater satisfaction as a result, “Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed reported they are happier with a more back-to-basics lifestyle.”  Second, they are thrifty and they want to be more self-sufficient. Eighty-four percent agreed that, “These days I feel more in control when I do things myself instead of relying on others to do them for me.”  Third, they demand transparency.  “Companies serving these customers, who know more and expect more, will need to continuously listen, respond, and innovate.” And finally, consumers want “companies who care. The emphasis is on being more human and humane in transactions with others, and people will set these same standards for the businesses with which they deal.”

Gerzema and D’Antonio tell us that “executives … who understand this ethos and find ways to contribute to it will be embraced, no matter their … product. Those who fail to grasp it will find themselves either irrelevant or out of a job.”

Are you a Spend Shift?  Is your organization responsive to these desires on the part of the new consumer? How do you see these consumer trends showing up in your work?

Check out the proposals to change the deductibility of charitable gifts

In a previous post I wrote about a New York Times story detailing efforts that some in the federal government are exerting to help close the federal budget gap by changing the tax treatment of charitable giving.  Beyond the revenue-raising potential of any curtailment of the charitable deduction, some policymakers are advocating for changes in the charitable deduction within the framework of tax reform, with the aim of correcting perceived inequities in the ability of taxpayers at varying income levels (both low and high income households) to take advantage of preferential tax treatments, including the charitable deduction.

Now, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a study, “Options for Changing the Tax Treatment of Charitable Giving,” that reports on that agency’s financial modeling of eleven different options for changes in the tax treatment of charitable contributions. The report is not light reading, so bear with me as I summarize.

The eleven options range from retaining the current deduction for itemizers but adding a floor (i.e. allowing an itemizer to deduct, for example, charitable giving over $500 or over a percentage of Adjusted Gross Income), to allowing all taxpayers to deduct without a floor, to replacing the deduction with a non-refundable tax credit with or without a floor (two different bases for the tax credit are calculated).  For each of the eleven options, the CBO calculates what the resulting increase (or decrease) in charitable giving is most likely to be and what the increase (or decrease) in tax collection is likely to be.  Obviously, the search is for the option that predicts the lowest drop in charitable giving and the highest increase in tax collection.  Or, for those approaching the subject from the perspective of tax reform, the search is for the option that allows the widest potential spectrum of taxpayers — both low and high income — to benefit equally from preferential treatment of their charitable gifts while not increasing (and preferably decreasing) the cost to government.

The CBO report also analyzes the broad categories of recipients of charitable giving as a percentage of the giving from each household, by income level (broad categories such as religious organizations, health, education, arts).  The data show that giving to arts organizations increases as a percentage of an individual’s total charitable giving as income rises.  Households with annual incomes under $100,000 give about one percent of their total donations to the arts, while those over $200,000 give 15 percent to the arts.  In comparing the applicability of the deduction itself as most favorable to wealthy individuals who itemize their returns, and by showing that arts giving increases as household income increases, the report implies — but never overtly states — that arts organizations benefit from the inequitable tax treatment of high income households.

In this policy environment, arts organizations will need to build an even stronger case that our missions and the public value we create benefit a broad spectrum of the community and not merely wealthy individuals.   Beyond arguing the intrinsic value of art itself we will need to articulate our public value with fresh urgency.  Fortunately, there are many stellar examples of cultural institutions with deeply accessible programming, significant education efforts for both children and adults, and other initiatives aimed to enrich community life.  It is more important than ever that these efforts are understood by policymakers.  In the music field, the League of American Orchestras is engaging practitioners and policymakers in a broad advocacy discussion about how we provide public value and how that value can be understood and communicated.

The CBO report was issued in May and will help inform the debate over charitable giving that has been simmering more steadily over the past year or so.  While there is no legislation yet, advocates from across the spectrum of non-profit organizations are studying the CBO report and discussing what position will best protect the incentives the tax code has provided for nearly 100 years for individual charitable giving.  (The report provides a very brief history of the deductibility of charitable gifts, an incentive in place since 1917, and explains changes in the tax treatment of charitable giving during the Twentieth Century.)

However one may view the efficacy or equity of the charitable deduction or any of the other myriad incentives and disincentives built into our complex tax code, for me there are three takeaways from the CBO report.  The first is that there is clearly a gathering of forces determined to change the tax treatment of charitable gifts.  There is momentum in a number of areas of government around this, and given the federal budget deficit, policymakers are looking for money wherever they can find it.  The second is that while the CBO offers a detailed analysis of the reliability of its predictions regarding the future behavior of taxpayers under a variety of tax policy options, no one really knows how changes in deductibility will affect our sector.  It could be a wild ride.  We could wait for a more substantive body of research to inform policymakers’ decisions, but that may not happen before changes are made.  So takeaway number three: we’d best prepare ourselves for both the debate and for the coming change.

Things heat up at the League of American Orchestras’ conference

Yesterday morning, more than 800 delegates to the League of American Orchestras’ 2011 conference in Minneapolis-Saint Paul gathered for “Red Alert,” a 90+ minute plenary session that framed the critical issues facing American orchestras and proposed solutions.  Jesse Rosen, the League’s president, began by putting a stake in the ground, stating that the current problems faced by many (not all) orchestras cannot be attributed to the economy but instead are symptomatic of underlying trends and conditions that have been brewing for decades.  It is time, Rosen said,  to “face our brutal truths.”  Here is his diagnosis:

1 – Declining revenues and rising costs. Orchestras’ share of corporate, foundation, and individual gifts is down sharply.  Fewer tickets are being sold per household.  Audiences are moving away from subscriptions.  Fixed costs (labor, occupancy) are rising.

2 – Donor fatigue.  Donors — individuals, foundations, and corporations — at the local and national level are telling us that until fundamental issues of the field are addressed, they are unwilling to invest.

3 – Commitment to performance excellence is not enough. Striving to attain world-class performance levels is no longer enough to assure that orchestras’ case for support is strong.  Orchestras must find new ways to relate to and serve their communities in order to attract and retain support philanthropic.

4 – Stagnant product delivery systems. Too many orchestras are stuck in the two-hour, evening, subscription concert format and there is  insufficient experimentation with other ways to bring music to listeners.  Orchestras are too absent from electronic media.

5 – Lack of diversity and its effect on our case for support and our long-term prospects for vitality. Despite our efforts, orchestras and their boards, staff, musicians and audiences remain overwhelming white at a time of increasing diversity in the American population.

What to do?  Rosen said that the League would re-focus its efforts across all programs and services to help orchestras “crash proof themselves.”   And he proposed three things that every orchestra needs to do:

1 – Understand and take responsibility for our orchestras’ true financial condition. The frail condition of orchestras results in an inability to innovate.  Though most orchestras understand their capitalization problems, we are not acting swiftly enough to change them.  Boards must not only understand this but must support management’s efforts to change it.  (After Rosen’s presentation delegates heard from Susan Nelson, who has been working with organizations and funders on capitalization issues.  More on that in another posting.)

2 – Realign with community needs. At the local level, orchestras need to become more relevant, more engaged in their communities in ways that make them invaluable participants and contributors to community life.

3 – Foster creativity. Orchestras must draw on the latent creativity within the orchestra itself and within their staffs to become more vibrant creatively.  There is overwhelming evidence that audiences can be engaged around innovations such as performances in intimate and unlikely venues, programming that speaks to broader humanities themes, programming partnership with other cultural institutions, and programming that offers interesting juxtapositions of repertoire and/or artists.

While none of the messages in Rosen’s diagnosis or in the League’s re-focus are new to observers and participants in the orchestra field,  the energy and urgency with which these messages were delivered is new for the League.

The conference continues today.  I will post more about it over the coming week but thought you would all be interested in yesterday’s session and its contents.  The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is co-host (with the Minnesota Orchestra) of this year’s conference.  Tonight we perform for delegates in a program led by Thomas Zehetmair.

Need to get more done? Maybe you need help

The May 2011 issue Harvard Business Review is dedicated to “How to Get More Done,” a topic that consumes a lot of us as we try to do more with less, while simultaneously pedaling uphill during our current recession.  There are a few good articles in the issue but the one that got me thinking is about the role of administrative support (The Case for Executive Assistants by Melba J. Duncan is available here.)  The point of the article is that cutting back on support staff is not a route to productivity for a team, and that, in fact, adding support staff, delegating more to them, and letting them help more with “air traffic control” is the better decision.

One thing that’s changed a lot is the amount of communication we all are doing and the platforms we’re doing it on.  Because individuals are available on multiple channels, it’s become a lot more difficult for support staff to do their jobs.

Example: someone on the support team is trying to set up a meeting with staff and Board members.  A meeting request goes out, and how might we hear back? A couple of weeks ago, this happened at our office.  Several people replied to the Outlook meeting request.  A couple of others texted my mobile phone. One replied via Facebook.  And yet another replied to my personal email account.  Of course a few didn’t reply at all.  Chaos.

There are multiple reasons this can happen.  The first is that there is no single platform (yet?) that is widely used for getting people to the same place at the same time.  Go to meeting, Doodle, Evite, Outlook invitations, Google calendar — everyone is using a different platform. Even if we decided that internally, everyone will use the same platform, externally, there is no single ubiquitous option.  So the live and in-person support person becomes the communications hub, bridging the technology divide and injecting a human (and humane) touch into one of the most frustrating and time-consuming activities of contemporary business life.  The answer to: when can we get together to talk about this? is not a simple one!

The second reason people feel comfortable communicating via whatever channel is convenient: there is an underlying assumption that each of us is an individual productivity unit.  It is assumed that each person handles her own communication and juggles the channels personally.  And this is true!  I do it and I’m pretty sure that all of you do it, too.  Our brains are coordinating our work “channels,” family channels, our friends’ channels, our tweets, our snail mail, and whatever I’ve forgotten to check lately.  We keep track of our electronic task lists and our paper-based grocery lists; we book our own travel; and we synthesize paper, email, and all our other digital communication to construct our daily lives.

The cost of this is, among other things, our serenity.  (When is the last time you saw that word?)  We all know that breakthrough thinking is more likely at moments of detachment — staring out the window, going for a walk, or thinking about nothing in particular.   The cost of commotion is not only physical (stress) but also the way it handicaps the full realization of our work and ourselves. So, if we can’t locate serenity in our lives, breakthrough thinking is unlikely.

So what does this have to do with support staff?  Duncan’s HBR article argues that it has a lot to do with it.  Some of her reasoning won’t resonate because it is so focused on executive life, but she makes an important point that’s relevant to every organization.  She reminds us that support staff add people to the office equation.  People who can get things done by interacting with other people.  People are a kind of “office technology” that can provide what no software solution can:  “troubleshooters, translators, help desk attendants, diplomats, human databases, travel consultants, amateur psychologists, and ambassadors to the inside and outside world.”  We’d all do well to consider whether we are counting enough on people to get our work done, and not hoping for the technological silver bullet.

Duncan’s article is a nice reminder that there’s no substitute for the human touch.

 

 

 

New ways to think about solving intractable problems

New book from Peter Coleman

Recently I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon with Peter Coleman, author of the forthcoming book, The Five Percent, Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (the link is to Amazon because you are going to want to buy this book).  Coleman is the director of the International Center for International Cooperation and Conflict Resolution and Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University. 

Coleman leads a team whose project, “Modeling the Fundamental Dynamics of Intractable Conflict” is funded by the McDonnell Foundation.  They are working together to apply ideas and methods from complexity science to what Coleman describes as “the 5 % problem“  — those 5% of intractable, destructive and enduring conflicts that persist despite application of otherwise proven conflict resolution methodology.  Team members include Andrzej Nowak and Robin Vallacher, social psychologists with expertise in the application of dynamical systems to cognitive, interpersonal, group and social phenomena; Larry Liebovitch, a physicist with expertise in formal descriptions and modeling of system dynamics; and Andrea Bartoli, a social anthropologist and practitioner who specializes in international conflict and genocide prevention (descriptions are from the team’s website). 

In the workshop I attended Coleman used his group’s findings and applied them to difficult business problems to show how we might apply the group’s emerging theory to conflict resolution in our own workplaces.  Anyone who has held a leadership position knows that some problems resist solutions.  And, enacting proven conflict resolution strategy seems to make some resistant problems even worse.  Coleman’s work helps me understand why.

A crude oversimplification of the work is that intractable conflicts are extremely complex in nature, so complex that it is difficult to sustain a mental map of factors that influence the conflict.  The brain acts to simplify the conflict, and, in fact, the tendency is to over-simplify, to reduce the conflict to a simple us/them, pro/con, I’m right/you’re wrong.  The complexity of the conflict is too much to handle cognitively.  Once the conflict is simplified, opposing forces can dig in, increasing intractability.

Additionally, applying traditional problem-solving models typically means deploying a rational, planned process that focuses on activities like negotiation and mediation, methods that work in what Coleman calls “thinking in straight lines.” In thinking about problems, we generally believe that one thing leads to another, one thing causes the next thing to happen in a straight line of linear causality. 

However, complex and intractable problems are neither reducible nor linear.  They behave more like “problem systems,” systems that cannot be understood through simplification and which will not respond to linear approaches (or will respond in unpredictable ways).  Coleman and his team study these conflicts as dynamical systems, with loops of interactions, hubs of agreement and disagreement, and varying positions within a landscape of attractors (patterns we fall into in our relationships that resist change).   

A problem solving approach begins with complicating rather than simplifying the conflict description.  This can be achieved visually by “conflict mapping” (creating a picture of the factors acting on all parts of a complex problem).   Then the problem solvers can use the picture to look for hubs and actionable areas of agreement, see where influencers aggregate to help or impede resolution, and work to expand on the “hidden possibilities” for agreement and resolution that the map reveals.  One of his most interesting recommendations is to “aim to alter patterns not outcomes.”  Since complex problems are built with complicated loops and circuits, altering these maps, re-wiring them if you will, is a better mental image than focusing on a specific outcome.  Think of the solution as changing the map, “changing the landscape” of the problem rather than “solving” the problem.   Finally, Coleman suggests “privileging emotions” when dealing with intractable conflict.  Ignoring the emotional content of the conflict is a form of simplification that is unhelpful to long-term solutions. 

I found Coleman’s thinking stimulating because traditionally we think of conflicts as having solutions, something like solving a math problem.  Thinking of an intractable conflict as system, whose stasis depends on persistent tending of a landscape of forces and factors, is proving a helpful new conceptual framework for me as I go about my work. 

The book will be published on Tuesday.  I have a copy on order.

Celebrate rigor

At the Salzburg Global Seminar I wrote about in my most recent post we were fortunate to have a number of leading music educators from around the world as participants.  Among them was Duffie Adelson, President of Chicago’s Merit School of Music, who spoke to us about that impressive school’s philosophy and results.  In her talk she hit a nerve with me by saying that we in the arts need to “celebrate rigor” and that “being held to a high standard is the highest possible compliment” you can pay someone.  Merit’s mission statement is overt with respect to the results expected from musical training in a nurturing and rigorous environment: “to provide life-changing experiences for children through music.”   More than 6,000 children from 140 Chicago-area zip codes are enrolled in Merit’s programs, which purposefully reach out to diverse communities and strive to remove economic, geographic, and other barriers to participation (programs are offered in more than 50 locations as well as the school’s flagship building in downtown Chicago).

Merit’s philosophy is that talent and interest in music is equally distributed in every neighborhood, city, and country, but what is not equally distributed is “exposure to the beauty and power of music, and access to training.”   Merit has created a pathway that leads from non-student to “musician and enlightened citizen.” The path starts with exposure to music, then to inspiration and motivation to learn music, then to access to training and a nurturing community of teachers and learners, and then to the embrace of rigor as an essential component of musical training. Through insistence on rigor and the pursuit of musical excellence, Adelson states that “a force of tremendous and life-altering, transformative intensity results when rigor is married with access to musical works of deep intrinsic value.  This is the most joyful and effective way to help shape our youth and civilize our world.”

Adelson’s insistence that rigor is a central, key component in musical training is worth considering deeply.   Much of the arts education in our society stops at exposure to music or at best at encouraging participation.  How many schools and programs go further to celebrate and embrace rigor, and insist on the highest standards?  I think it may be fewer than we are willing to admit.  Yet in accepting a “showing up is enough” standard for our youth do we not fail them? Do we not believe that the pursuit of excellence is a route to understanding the meaning and power of art?

Discussions of relative merit, of what makes something great as opposed to good enough, are surprisingly uncomfortable for many in the arts.  This is especially difficult when instead of comparing gradations of goodness, we have to confess that something is actually weak or downright bad.  By “bad” I mean without structure, intellectually shallow, not well performed or executed, devoid of emotional commitment, all those things that together can make the difference between a deep artistic experience and no artistic experience.

In craving the artistic experience and in promoting its soulful benefits, let’s not forget that rigor is essential.  Standards matter.  Excellence exists, and doesn’t.  We call our artistic pursuits “disciplines” for a reason.   Celebrate rigor!  And thank you, Merit School.

Salzburg manifesto: The value of music and the right to play

Last week I had the honor of serving as Co-Chair, with Nicholas Kenyon, of a session at the Salzburg Global Seminar titled, “Instrumental Value: The Transformative Power of Music.”  Nearly 60 people from 23 countries traveled to Salzburg where we met for four days to discuss the ways that music contributes to individuals, societies and cultures.  Participants were musicians, composers, presenters, music educators, policymakers, funders and patrons, neuroscientists, and others who’ve spent a lifetime in the music field.  Lively discussions about the intrinsic value of music, about music and youth development, music and creativity, music and spirituality, and music and the brain occupied us for days and nights, fueled by the beauty of the unfolding alpine spring and by the musical history of the city of Salzburg.

By the end of our session we agreed to issue a statement asserting our shared belief that music “is a proven gateway to engaged citizenship, personal development and well-being” and that “the inspiration and rewards unleashed by music are universal benefits that must be available to all as a human right.”  Here is the full text of our statement, along with the signatories.  Please share it with those in a position to ensure continued access to music education and participation.

“The Value of Music: The Right to Play”

“The Salzburg Global Seminar meeting on The Transformative Power of Music believes that music is a proven gateway to engaged citizenship, personal development and well-being. Only through urgent and sustained action can we foster a new generation of energised, committed, self-aware, creative and productive members of society.

“ The inspiration and rewards unleashed by music are universal benefits that must be available to all as a human right. All children from the earliest age should have the opportunity to:

• unlock musical creativity,

• fulfil musical potential,

• develop musical expertise,

• shine for their musical achievements,

• encounter great music from all cultures, and

• share their new-found skills of creativity, teamwork, empathy, and discipline.

Providing these opportunities should be the responsibility of society supported by the education system, arts organisations, media and funding bodies working together. There are vital needs for:

• music education for all from the earliest age by experienced teachers,

• affordable access to training at all levels of ability,

• supportive communities nurturing children regardless of background – geographic, socio-economic, cultural,

• sustainable financial resources providing reliable support, and

• pathways to pursue excellence.

“Best practice models exist around the world, which show how this can be achieved.

“The future of music education is at risk.  Our youth deserves an immediate commitment to music as part of the core education curriculum.  There must be funding for youth music programs as part of a healthy and diverse society. We call on all governments, politicians, international agencies, educators, funders, and citizens to:

• assert the essential place of music in schools,

• support the development of new pathways for young musical talent,

• ensure that organisations offering these opportunities to young people are sustained and developed, and

• foster co-ordination between private and public agencies for support.”

 

Signed here by Fellows of the Salzburg Global Seminar 479 on April 5, 2011:

Nicholas Kenyon (co-chair), Managing Director, Barbican Centre, London

Sarah Lutman (co-chair), President and Managing Director, The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul, Minnesota

Duffie Adelson, Executive Director, Merit School of Music, Chicago

Bruce Adolphe, Composer, Educator, Performer, New York

Emily Akuno, Associate Professor, Music Performance and Education, Maseno University, Kenya

Thomas Anderberg, Music Critic, Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm; Lecturer, Philosophy Department, Uppsala University

Cecilia Balestra, Managing Director, Milano Musica; Professor of Music Management, Accademia Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Rex Barker, Director, simply transformational, London

Anton Batagov, Composer, Moscow

Zamira Menuhin Benthall, Honorary Chair, Live Music Now, Hamburg; Governor, The Yehudi Menuhin School

Moushumi Bhowmik, Vocalist, Ethnomusicologist, Kolkata

Alan Brown, Researcher and Management Consultant, WolfBrown, San Francisco

Jeremy Buckner, Director of Music Education, Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tennessee

Fred Child, Host, Performance Today, American Public Media; Announcer/Commentator, Live from Lincoln Center, New York

Juan Antonio Cuellar Sáenz, Composer; Director, Fundacion Batuta, Bogotá, Colombia

Gerardo Tonatiuh Cummings Rendon, Director of Global Education, Bluefield College, Virginia

Sarah Derbyshire, Executive Director, Live Music Now UK, London

Aneliya Dimitrova, Manager, Music Publishing and Licensing, Justin Time Records, Montreal; Administrative Director, Montreal Chamber Music Society

Noam Faingold, Composer; Doctoral Candidate, Music Composition, King’s College, London

Odile Gakire Gatese, Founder, Ensemble Ingoma Nshya, Butare, Rwanda

Mark Gillespie, Artistic Manager, YOA Orchestra of the Americas, Arlington, Virginia; Co-Founder, Filarmónica Joven de Colombia

Andrea Giraldez, Professor, University of Valladolid, Spain

Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras, Master Teacher, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Performance, Opus 118, Harlem School of Music, New York

Violeta Hemsy de Gainza, Honorary President, FLADEM (Latin American Forum for Musical Education), Buenos Aires

Sujin Hong, Doctoral Student of Music, Europe BRAin and MUSic Program, University of Edinburgh

Pierre Jalbert, Composer; Professor of Composition and Theory, Rice University, Shepherd School of Music, Houston

Alexandros Kapelis, Pianist, New York and Brussels

Charles Kaye, Director and General Manager, World Orchestra for Peace, London

Vimbayi Kaziboni, Conductor and Artistic Director, What’s Next Ensemble, Los Angeles

Ghislaine Kenyon, Arts Consultant, London

Artyom Kim, Artistic Director and Conductor, Omnibus Ensemble, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Jildiz Kudaibergen, Manager, Manas Chamber Orchestra, Bishkek

Celia Lowenstein, Film producer and director,

Ken MacLeod, President, New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, Moncton, Canada

Fiona Maddocks, Music Critic, The Observer, London

Maria Majno, Vice-President and Coordinator, “Neurosciences and Music” Series, Mariani Foundation, Milan; Task Force “Sistema Orchestre Giovanili”, Italy; President, European Mozart Ways

Stephen E. McAdams, Canada Research Chair in Music Perception and Cognition, Department of Music Theory, Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montreal

Lisa McCormick, Professor of Sociology, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania; Member, Editorial Board, Music & Art in Action

Hiroko Miyakawa, Communication Officer, External Relations, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC

Peter Moser, Artistic Director and CEO, More Music, Morecambe, United Kingdom

Dino Mulic, Pianist; Instructor of Piano, Sarajevo Music Academy, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Maria Sherla Najera, Chair, Department of Music Education, University of the Philippines, Quezon City

Martin Neary, Organist and Choral Conductor; former Master of the Choristers, Westminster Abbey, London

Julian Philips, Composer; Head of Composition, Guildhall School of Music, London

Brent Reidy, Consultant, AEA Consulting, New York; Former Executive Director, Music for Tomorrow, New Orleans

Lloyd Shorter, Assistant Professor, Oboe, University of Delaware

John Sloboda,  Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London; Professor Emeritus, Psychology Department, Keele University

Jennifer Stasack, Professor and Chair of Music, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina

Ian Stoutzker, Founder Chairman, Live Music Now, London

Victoria Tcacenco, Professor of Music, Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts, Chisinau, Moldavia

Claudia Toni, Advisor, Padre Anchieta Foundation, Cultura Radio and TV, Sao Paulo; Former Music Advisor, São Paulo State Secretariat of Culture

Aubrey Tucker, Assistant Divison Chair, Fine Arts, Spech and Commercial Music, Houston Community College; Member, National Association of Record  Industry Professionals (NARIP)

Dobson West, Chair, Board of Directors, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minneapolis

Jane Haugen West, Medical Doctor, Minneapolis

Paulo Zuben, Composer; Musicologist; Chief Executive Officer, Santa Marcelina Cultura, São Paulo

Working to create demand

Musicians of the St Paul Chamber Orchestra on stage at Ordway Center

(This blog post was originally published on the NEA’s Art Works blog on March 16, 2011.)

I thought it would be interesting to write about the efforts we have made at The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to increase demand for our classical music concerts.  Chairman Landesman was quoted as saying that “demand is not going to increase.”  At the SPCO we just don’t believe that.  The music we perform has endured hundreds of years and is part of a vibrant living tradition.  We are passionate advocates for our art form, and for the meaning it brings to people’s lives.  Music matters!

Because of this belief we have taken many steps over the course of the past seven years to reduce barriers to audience participation and welcome new people to our concert halls.  Much of this work was instigated by former SPCO President Bruce Coppock during his remarkable tenure at the SPCO from 1999 to 2008, in partnership with then-Board Chair Lowell Noteboom and the dedicated and creative SPCO Board, staff, and our accomplished musicians.

Here are seven things we’ve done that are working.  When I say they’re working, the data is as follows.  Since 2002 our subscriber base has grown nearly 40% and our total paid attendance today is near its all-time high.  This is counter-cyclical to audience trends nationally in the classical industry and has been a durable trend for us despite tough economic times.  (As context, NEA research shows that participation rates for classical music nationally fell 20% between 2002 and 2008.)

Here’s the list.

  1. Expanded our performing venues.  As a chamber orchestra the SPCO is more portable than a symphony orchestra and we have used this advantage to bring our music out into neighborhoods around the Twin Cities.  In 2004 we began expanding the number of venues where we perform; since 2004 we have expanded from three Neighborhood concert series to seven.  We bring our music to people rather than make them come to us.
  2. Lowered our ticket prices.  Starting in 2005, the SPCO made the bold decision to lower ticket prices at all of our neighborhood venues to two prices:  $10 and $25.  Last year we made a comparable decision for our concerts at the Ordway Center in downtown St. Paul, where all tickets are now $10, $25, or $40.  We want an SPCO ticket to be as affordable, or more affordable, than other entertainment options.
  3. Welcomed young adults into our organization.  Founded in 2007, our club2030 program is a free e-mail-based club that offers its members the opportunity to buy any available ticket for $10, along with invitations to get involved in the SPCO.  To date there are more than 4,500 members of club2030 who are making a visible and energetic difference in our concert halls and in our organization.
  4. Worked to make ourselves welcoming.  SPCO musicians perform in simple black attire, shunning tuxedos and the rituals and formalities that create visual and psychic barriers between musicians and audiences.  Our program notes are written in plain English and we frequently speak from stage about our programming.
  5. Developed a robust grassroots marketing campaign, including leveraging social media tools. For several years we’ve sustained a major grassroots campaign based on encouraging our current audience members to share their love of the SPCO with friends, family, co-workers, businesses, and neighbors.  Through the creative distribution of physical and virtual free passes to our concerts, and through partnerships with local businesses and nonprofit organizations, we have nearly tripled the number of brand new concert attendees since 2008.
  6. Made our music available via digital media. For the past 18 months we’ve worked to launch a robust website where people can listen free to our concerts.  We believe that classical music needs to be as readily available online as other kinds of music so that audiences can discover what we do.  Early response to the new site has been enthusiastic.
  7. Give great concerts.  This is not a new phenomenon for us!  But it is important to state that audience development will not be successful unless new audiences experience riveting and memorable concerts.  Thanks to our SPCO musicians, new audiences hear “the real deal” – energized performances in intimate settings.

Our communities’ entertainment options are proliferating.  Fewer students have an opportunity to study classical music in school.  Many people work longer hours and stay tethered electronically when not working.  Incomes are stretched.  Technological advances have resulted in more and more enticing entertainment opportunities that can be enjoyed in the comfort of one’s own home.  Against these societal trends, our field must find new ways to welcome people to the art forms we exist to nurture and sustain.  For the SPCO, being an indispensable community asset means that we must make and re-make ourselves constantly, so that we are bringing our music to people in ways that make sense to them.

We are proud of the work we are doing at the SPCO to attract new people and make it as easy as possible for them to participate in the work of our organization.  We want more people to discover great music.  And we believe that demand will increase if we work creatively to make it so.

Teaching how to learn

Last month I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days with senior educators from Interlochen Center for the Arts, where I am a board member.  We were doing a deep dive into the ways teaching and learning are changing, given the immediate availability of information and ideas via digital devices in the classroom.

I am not an expert in educational theory, having never taken a class or read very much about how teachers learn to teach.   But I have been fortunate to have been on the receiving end of memorable teaching from a handful of great teachers who made their classes pure joy and who made a lifelong imprint on me.  After the Interlochen meeting I got to thinking about this because personally I associate great teaching with great presenting, with  teachers who used a lecture-based format to bring their subject matter to life with intensity, clarity, and passion.

Now it looks like my ideas about great teaching are outdated.  And it isn’t just me who needs to make the adjustment.  Educational institutions are training new teachers, or re-training teachers “of a certain age,” to take advantage of digital tools and to evolve their teaching styles based on the idea that the best teachers are not “the sage on the stage” but rather act as “the guide at the side.”  In fact if you put that phrase into Google, you’ll get a few million hits, explaining that the “transmittal” method of teaching is increasingly unhelpful (the teacher knows something that the student does not, and his/her job is to transmit it to the class) because it won’t prepare people for the lives they will need to lead in the future (particularly since we expect the rate of change to increase).  Instead, we need to help students learn to teach themselves throughout their lifetimes.   The underlying premise is that information is readily available, but knowledge must be constructed by the individual.  And this is best nurtured through inquiry-based teaching methods.  The teacher’s job  is not to impart information but to create the context within which students discover what is important to be known.  Questions, games, or “challenges” are designed to facilitate discovery, and the teacher is the resource for problem-solving, not the one with the Answer Key.

Debates about the best teaching methods have been going on for a long time (centuries) and would not be particularly noteworthy, except that with the advent of portable computing devices, the ability to discover information has never been easier.  As classrooms move to “one to one” computing (each student has her own untethered device), teaching methods can be device-powered in new ways.  Apps that support inquiry-based classroom education are proliferating, making education more easily self-directed and rendering printed textbooks obsolete. (Check out, for example, the beautiful educational apps from Touch Press, including the Solar System app pictured above.)  Teachers can use these tools to power student learning, but their styles and methods need to evolve.

Assuming these trends in education are pervasive and increasing,  the next generation of  graduates will expect to interact in new ways not only in their workplaces, but also in our theaters, museums, and concert halls.   In the workplace, people will have greater expectations for independent and team-based problem-solving,  and will be comfortable working with minimal hierarchical supervisory structures.   In other words, bosses who are bossy will need to adjust their styles.  This trend is already underway, and seems favorable for employee engagement and for making work interesting and fun.

In terms of audience and community engagement, audiences will expect us to offer them a meaningful role within more open systems of curation and presentation (asking our organizations to behave more like the guide and less like the sage).  Cultural groups that today are experimenting with ways of giving the audience a voice in their artistic projects are on the right track.  Projects like the Walker Art Center’s Open Field project,  Spring for Music’s Fantasy Program Contest, or philanthropic sites that let the public help decide which works to commission through online donations (check out the London Sinfonietta’s Sinfonietta Shorts program, one of many such examples) — all these are inspired by digital tools and the engagement possibilities that they enable.   Organizations that continue to practice rigid or cloistered decision-making will lose out on the benefits that audience engagement will bring to the mix.   It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next decade or so, and to see how the nonprofit cultural sector learns to take advantage of changed expectations.   Do you have any examples to share?

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