On the agenda at a recent Board of Overseers’ meeting at the Curtis Institute of Music were past graduates, some with non-traditional careers both in music and not, speaking about the preparation their Curtis education provided them. The backdrop to the conversation was a speech the previous afternoon by Derek Bok, who advocated for the importance of liberal education beyond music as an essential component of an artist’s preparation.  The context for the entire discussion was the current state of the classical music field and the idea that young musicians will need resourcefulness to make their way in the world. Music “jobs” in the future are likely to be less attached to institutions (many of which are troubled in one way or another), entrepreneurial, and varied beyond a straight performance career to include all manner of teaching, coaching,  and work we could loosely call “public engagement.”  And while society’s appetite for classical music seems to be as strong or stronger than ever (more on that in a future post), the manner in which people want to engage with music and musicians is changing. What can an elite music school do to prepare its students for new opportunities?

Curtis is not the only institution thinking about this. New England Conservatory, Julliard, and places like Parsons and Cal Arts all are wrestling in one way or another with the question of young artists’ development and what new experiences and information should be added to their courses of study.  Higher ed increasingly thinks about justifying the expense of education with its practicality;  note the number of recent news stories calling the question on whether a liberal arts education can be justified financially (check out Who Needs an English Major?). The most popular college degree in America today is Business.

A life in the arts has always meant resourcefulness and artists are inspiringly resourceful — how else could they get their work done? I wonder whether a conservatory-based classical music education has really been less helpful than it could have been in this regard; witness the number of chamber ensembles (think Eighth Blackbird, among many others), chamber orchestras (think The Knights, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, many others), and music projects like Play On, Philly or KidZNotes that musicians are avidly founding and leading.  I also wonder whether resourcefulness can be taught. The most resourceful people I know are propelled by an inner muse, not one that can be gained in the classroom or studio. Their resourcefulness comes from curiosity, from courage, and from necessity, or from some combination of these.

Becoming resourceful means making a lot of mistakes. It’s an inherently creative process of trying, messing things up, learning, and trying again. On the one hand, this sounds exactly like practicing music: try/learn. On the other hand, perfecting a piece of music for performance is also about learning not to make any mistakes. So, maybe there is something in the musical training itself, rather than in any ancillary training, that could be considered if faculty want creativity and resourcefulness to flourish. Being rapped with a ruler for every mistake has fallen out of favor in the classroom.  Let’s be sure that conservatories don’t use the old-fashioned equivalent.

Conservatories should encourage young artists to read broadly, learn history, and understand science; these things make life fuller and more interesting. Many subjects can be self-taught by a motivated learner, particularly given the resources available on-line. And personally, I think everyone should know a bit of accounting. If I led a conservatory I’d be sure every young artist knows at least something about accounting and a bit about contracts, at least enough to know whether they need an accountant’s or a lawyer’s help, and enough not to be taken to the cleaners.

Beyond that, I think creating an environment where young artists can try things, make mistakes, and learn, perhaps with some mentoring but maybe without any — this is what I think will most help develop resourcefulness. The worst thing a school could do is to be over-protective, to anticipate situations where mistakes could occur and pre-empt them, or to squelch enthusiasm for an idea that seems dubious, but from which learning will occur, even if it bombs. In other words, the last thing young artists need is for someone to cut up their food and serve it to them. They need to learn how to cook.

I’m glad that Curtis is thinking about this. Curtis grads form a distinguished cohort in classical music and their future resourcefulness will be a boon to the sector. What would you change, if you could, about conservatory training?

 

 

The Station Resource Group and Walrus Research, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, published a report in June on the Performance of Classical Music Stations.   The report is part of a larger effort at the Station Resource Group to advance thinking around what it would take to expand audiences for public radio stations of all types.  Organized under the project name Grow The Audience, this multi-year effort has convened station leaders, studied high-performing stations, commissioned research, and published provocations from field leaders.  In the case of the classical station study, George Bailey of Walrus Research looked at the factors that go into differential performance.  Why do some classical music stations have an audience share two or three times larger than others’?  (“Share” is measure of the average quarter-hour audience as a percentage of all the people using radio during that quarter hour.  In other words, in any given 15-minute increment, how many of the people listening to radio are listening to a given station?  That’s “share.”  A whopping, huge share for a public radio news station would be the 7.5 share reported in SRG’s study of news listening, measured at the Raleigh-Durham station WUNC.  That’s unusual.  The SRG website details the relative share numbers for news and classical stations in the top 30 markets in the U.S.  Take a look and see how your local stations measure up. )

Over the summer I did a fair amount of driving around, a pleasure made even better if you love radio.  Some of you may pack a pocket-sized digital collection or even old-fashioned CDs for your road trips, but for me, a road trip means tuning in to local radio stations and listening to what they have to offer.  If you’re lucky and you get a truly local station, you can learn about your surroundings as you speed through the countryside, getting a sense of who lives there and what interests them.

The problem with classical radio is that’s seldom the case.  A local station for folkies, rockers or country music lovers — public or commercial — inevitably will have a DJ who’s eager for you to know who’s at the local bar playing live.  Some tiny towns will mix the local town council business with an eclectic mix of local favorites and music from the band who’ll be at the Friday night dance.  But if you happen to hit on a classical station — you almost always get an announcer with a “that was …. this is” interstitial between two musical works, and you have the sense that the announcer is far away, not with you in the here and now.  You rarely get any context such as why the specific recording was picked over dozens of others, whether there is any tie to an upcoming local or regional performance, or whether the musical work itself has any relevance other than to offer you companionship that asks little from you in terms of engagement.  (Apologies to those stations that are not like this. Feel free to complain.)

SRG’s report looks at multiple factors to determine whether they affect the size of any given local classical station audience.  No relationship was found between the size of the market and a classical station’s share.  No relationship was found between the number of stations in a local market and a classical station’s share.  The strongest indicator found was the level of educational attainment in a given market.  The percentage of people in the market with a college education accounted for about 50 percent of the differential among high-performing stations.  For the research period covered by the Walrus analysis, WETA (Washington, D.C.) had a share of 4.4 — huge — while Dallas’s WRR , in a city of comparable size, had just over a 1.0 share.   And, according to the research, about 50 percent of that difference can be attributed to the census data for persons over 25 with a college degree in the specific market.  (Note that Washington has a very high percentage of college graduates, approaching 50 percent, according to the report.)  And that is where the report stops. Nothing suggests what beyond college education accounts for differences in listening to local stations.

This all connects to my road trips.  It has to do with the 50 percent of station listening that can’t be attributed to educational attainment as measured by the US Census Bureau.  It must have to do with something else — and as someone involved in programming, I have to ask the obvious.  Maybe it’s the programming, don’t you think?  And maybe, if stations want more listening, the programming needs to change to more directly connect with the energy in the classical field today.  The field is far less stodgy than it was even ten years ago, and our energy is nothing like the “that was…..this is” announcing that prevails on far too many stations.  And maybe classical radio audiences are ready to hear something more akin to the energy and passion we hear reflected on high-performing popular music stations — connected to artists and the music they’re passionate about playing, connected to local performances and events, and courageous with respect to new music and surprising musical connections.  Something that demands more of our attention, and rewards us for it.  After all, anyone with a computer or an iPod can create their own DJ-free listening mix (and we do).  In the vast sea of available background music, classical radio will need to become more compelling, it will have to matter more, if it is going to grow its audience.  At least that’s my perspective.

Are there stations where you live where the classical mix is supporting the most vibrant aspects of our field?  Do you work at a station that’s trying new things?  I’d like to hear your thoughts about it.

 

 

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?

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.

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

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.

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?

I’m ready to take a break from the supply/demand discussion, at least for a while.  As I’ve been thinking about it I find that other work I’m doing is refracted through the lens of that discussion. 

One such item is an article that Russell Willis Taylor recommended to me and I’m passing it along to all of you.  It’s called No Big Deal, by Thanassis Cambanis, and was published in January in the Boston Globe.  Cambanis writes about the Columbia University economist Scott Barrett whose research looks at the history of success or failure in resolving large-scale global problems — problems that cannot be solved by the efforts of any single nation.

Barrett’s research shows that modest and incremental efforts have resulted in lasting change in instances where global, comprehensive agreement cannot be reached.   Barrett’s analysis of a century of human problem-solving concludes that holding out for the negotiation of  “grand bargains” is tactically less promising than working on a “piecemeal approach” (Cambanis’ language in quotes).

This roughly parallels my own experiences in implementing change — that little steps add up to big steps, and it’s faster, to boot.  Consistent momentum in small steps is nearly always easier than sweeping change in grand gestures.  People and systems are also less stressed by incremental change than by sweeping change, and we can see the evidence of this in politics, business, nonprofits and in our personal lives.  Neuroscience tells us that the brain experiences change as pain.  The leader’s challenge is bring about the necessary change while being mindful of ways to minimize pain and therefore resistance.  (See The Neuroscience of Leadership by David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz to read more about this.  The site requires free registration.) 

So, while it is interesting to think about a grand re-drafting of the systems in place that inhibit the fullest expression of the arts and culture, research points us in a different direction.  We will get about the work faster and be met with less resistance if we plunge in and begin the work in little but persistent steps.   If applied to the national conversation we are having about the relevance and vibrancy of the nonprofit cultural sector, we can look to the incremental steps that artists and organizations are taking now that will add up to sweeping change in the coming years.  I would argue that changes in interactivity with audiences, in fresh approaches to community engagement, in the re-thinking of organizational structures, in the use of digital tools, and in the processes of artmaking all are proceeding creatively and effectively within our sector, and that these many small steps are adding up to big change.  Do you see this, too?

The subject of whether there is a supply/demand problem in the nonprofit cultural sector is resonating with a lot of people, and for me it’s caused reflection on what’s changed that’s brought us to this discussion.   And one thing that has changed is funders’ expectations for what constitutes an appropriate grantee.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s there existed a number of intermediary cultural organizations that no longer exist (or exist with a changed mission), some national and some local, whose purpose in part was to provide the organizational structure and legal framework for associations of artists and individual artist’s creative projects to qualify for support from the philanthropic sector – government, foundations, and individuals.   In practice these organizations sought out, approved and then sponsored independent projects so that the artists involved could receive contributed support, and they allowed philanthropists to deduct their gifts by providing a bona fide tax exempt organization as the gift recipient.

I ran one such organization, at the time called Alameda County Neighborhood Arts Program (ACNAP) and then re-named Pro Arts, that provided project management and fiscal agent services for a few dozen small arts organizations and individual artist’s projects in the San Francisco Bay Area. We helped donors and artists, allowing each to take advantage of the management systems and processes that a tax exempt organization requires, but allowing the artists to remain unencumbered by the mini-bureaucracy that is required of a tax-exempt enterprise.

Over time, grantmakers decided that giving through “fiscal agents” (sometimes called “sub-granting”) did not provide adequate management, legal, or fiscal oversight of individual projects, and their guidelines became explicit that such applicants were not eligible for grants.  Another policy that undermined these more-flexible structures is that grantmakers developed rules about giving only one grant per recipient.  So, if you were an organization sponsoring dozens of projects, you would allow only one of them to apply to any given grantmaker.

In essence these guidelines against structural flexibility were public policy decisions made by grantmakers, resulting in each applicant becoming a federally approved tax exempt organization.  These policies also resulted in the expansion in the number of organizations because uniqueness, not collaboration, was rewarded.  Without your own board of directors, management structure, and tax exempt status, you could not be eligible for funding from most grantmakers.

It is exciting to see the way artists and new organizations are now evolving new structures that allow the public and private sector to support culture without creating more cultural institutions.  Innovators like USA Artists, Kickstarter, and Fractured Atlas provide flexible mechanisms for individuals, corporations, foundations, and government to provide support for artists’ projects without requiring that each artist or small organization become a 501(c)(3).  

I suspect that the the majority of vibrant tax exempt cultural organizations today have the capacity to create alliances, mergers, or other associations that would result in new creative bonds and less money spent on management and administration.  What’s needed to encourage this is a broad dialogue about the best structures for creativity, and a willingness on the part of the philanthropic sector to consider how to reward new ways to work.

In a future post I’ll lay out some ideas for how we might reshape our organizational structures and funding relationships based on today’s circumstances.  Please help me by sharing your ideas for how this can be accomplished, or point to successful new models that are already working.

In an interesting turn of events last week, the NEA Chair, Rocco Landesman, echoed the “too much art” refrain that we’ve been hearing lately.   The press quotes varied from this one on the NY Times Arts Beat e-column to this one in the Post.    The Post has him saying, “We’re overbuilt.  We have too many theaters.”   And the Times quote is, “You can either increase demand or decrease supply.  Demand is not going to increase so it’s time to start thinking about decreasing supply.”  

Let’s leave aside for today the thought that the Chair of the NEA apparently said publicly that “demand is not going to increase.”  If I thought that, I could not do my job. But that’s another subject for another day. 

At the moment, the interesting part of Mr. Landesman’s public musings has to do with whether his agency ought to give fewer, larger grants.  Whether or not there is an over-supply of theater, this would be a good idea.  Some of us can remember the days when the NEA awarded 7-figure grants that had a galvanizing impact on local support (remember the Challenge grant program?) and even made local news because NEA grants carried a meaningful (and helpful) imprimatur.  Today, if you’re lucky and you still have a local newspaper with arts coverage, your NEA grant might be listed in a column with a couple dozen other organizations, most of whom receive the same $25,000 – $75,000 (and the SPCO is extremely pleased to be on the list, at an increased funding level, this year).  Meanwhile, the grants process from application to review to reporting is if anything more cumbersome, not less so.  I’m not saying these grants don’t make a difference, they do.  It’s the matter of relative impact I’m considering.  Could the NEA make a greater impact if the agency awarded fewer grants?

Ah, but the difficulty of choosing!  If the NEA decides to give fewer larger grants in the future, they don’t need to look at this process as a sort of death panel — i.e. choosing which organizations will die without them.   What’s needed from the Endowment is to identify which leadership organizations ought to receive (federal) money to do their work – to find those who are thriving in the current chaos and help them succeed even further.  It is not a death sentence for the organizations that don’t receive funding!   Cultural organizations live and die at the local level — we serve a local audience and have local boards and primarily local donors.  Many, many organizations have and will be able to make it without the NEA.

How can the NEA identify leadership organizations?  First, let’s make this an optimistic conversation, one that’s about life (where do we find inspiration?) instead of death (which of us should be euthanized?).  Let’s agree that leadership is about what you are, not about what you aren’t.   And let’s agree that leadership organizations can demonstrate they have an engaged and growing audience, and are dedicated to that being so.  If the NEA is currently funding organizations that are not leaders, then Mr. Landesman’s public soul-searching is understandable.  To change this is within his reach.