Organizations in some of those states have already been provided preliminary notice that a portion of the state’s share of those funds will be made available to organizations within the state to provide different type of programming. The assumption is these funds will likely to distributed in forms of grants.

Here is the language from the settlement (Section G, Payment Purposes end of page 38)

There was a post I made in August where I wrote about Angela Meleca’s observation that an unrealized outcome of an arts organization’s programming was workforce development despite the organization’s development director’s insistence that wasn’t part of their mission.

I encourage anyone looking to apply for a grant program related to these settlement monies to evaluate the outcomes of their existing programs and identify any that achieve results that may not fall within the traditional definition of arts and cultural programs.

As I had mentioned in that post, non-profit arts and cultural entities have frequently added programs in order to meet the requirements of grants. And this has placed additional burdens on staff and resources. This is not what I am advocating for.

If you have a program that has resulted in a reduction of body dysmorphia, increased mental health, seen youth so engaged they put aside their phones –even if that wasn’t the specific intent of the program. Think about how grant funding can expand your capacity in that area or provide some sort of adjacent programming. (i.e. Can lessons learned be of value to medical and mental health professionals.)

Success in getting a grant aligned with outcomes not traditionally associated with the arts may serve as a way to change the narrative with funders about the categories of support for which your work is eligible.

Gladwell had based his claim on a 1993 study of violinists. In 2019 another group tried to replicate the study but didn’t achieve the same results. One of the differences in the 2019 study was that the designers didn’t tell those evaluating the violin performances how many hours the violinists had engaged in deliberate practice. They didn’t want to even unconsciously influence the perceptions of the evaluators.

What the 2019 study found was that those rated as providing the best performance quality had practiced fewer hours than those rated as providing a good performance. Those rated as least accomplished practiced least.

They make the caveat that these results were achieved using a relatively small sample size with one musical instrument and may not reflect how skills develop in other fields of endeavor.

The point that make is that it is difficult to identify a specific set of factors which delineates the difference between best and good. The 10,000 hours provided a facile explanation to complex circumstances.

For years now I have been a proponent of helping people realize they have the capacity for creativity. The insight I had is that people may not recognize or value when their unconscious has come up with a solution. If you think creativity and talent is something other special people have, you may not put a lot of stock in those momentary bursts of inspiration you have and work on developing or applying the thoughts you have.

Essentially, it may not be enough to tell people they have the capacity to be creative and teach them different exercises to stimulate creative thinking (i.e. improv, sketching exercises, etc.), it may be necessary to help people recognize the potential value of the ideas that occur to them and grasp on to them.

The main thrust of the podcast was how solutions often come to people when they aren’t thinking directly about them. I have had this experience often where I will think of a good marketing hook or solution to a scheduling issue while hiking, taking a shower, mowing the lawn, etc.

One of the many things I learned from the podcast though is that there is a particular set of circumstances where not thinking about the problem is actually effective. In one experiment in the Netherlands that podcast guest Ap Dijksterhuis conducted, they had one group focus on solving a problem and nothing else. Another group they had think about the problem and then provided them with a distracting activity. A third group they had think about the problem, tell them to forget about the problem because it wouldn’t be brought up again, and then provided them with a distracting activity.

Both the second and third group were introduced to the problem again. (Third group was essentially told, ha ha, we lied about it not coming up again.) The third group which was told to stop thinking about the problem was no more successful than the first group in solving the problem.

Coming to a solution while not thinking about only occurs if the unconscious knows that the problem still matters and needs a solution. Even if you have decided to leave a problem at work and enjoy the weekend, your brain knowing it is waiting for you on Monday keeps itself working in the background on your behalf.

So if you tell people that they may be able to find a solution by not thinking about it, make it clear there are different levels of “not thinking about it.”

He says his own time serving on boards have been loads of fun due to what he got of the experience.

He lists five different Pleasures of Board Service.

First among them is being able to become a subject matter expert in the areas the non-profit operate. He notes there are not only opportunities to gain new knowledge and skills, but also sharpen and expand expertise one already possesses.

Second on his list is Servicing Is Learning:

His third and fourth points are networking opportunities and joining a group with whom you can form friendships. Basically, professional and personal relationships. For some people who find they are have a hard time meeting new groups of people forming new relationships, this benefit may be more highly valued than you anticipate.

His fifth benefit is doing meaningful work that fulfills a passion they may have. For many people their career may not feel meaningful or align with the sentiment of “doing something you love, and you will never work a day in your life.” Working with a non-profit can provide something people seek to add to their lives.

There were fights, threats made to staff and property damage before they started playing classical compositions.

But after that, things immediately took a turn for the better. All they needed to do was start playing classical music and that immediately fixed the problem.

Well, that and turning off the Wi-Fi and charge points. And shutting down parts of the restaurant. And having staff wear body cameras and and personally unlock and relock the restaurant doors for customers.

And also

But beside restricting access, extra security measures, added patrols, bans, intervention with parents, and providing additional places for young folks to hang out, the real hero here was the classical music.

That is what the headline and first sentence of the news story credits as the solution so it must be true.

Apparently the attractive murals in the area weren’t enough of an art intervention to solve the problem. (Checked Google Streetview to verify the correct McDonalds appeared in the story. Murals weren’t there in June 2024)

It totally wasn’t “….the power of a joined up, partnership approach to tackle problem behaviour,” as police Inspector Josh Carter says.

There was a period in which Edmondson thought there was a problem with her data because it was showing a strong statistical relationship between good team work and high error rates. She expected good team work to be associated with low error rates.

On a hunch she cross referenced her data with a question she asked people to rate a statement about making a mistake and how likely it would be held against you. It turned out there was a connection between fewer consequences for reporting a mistake and high error rate. In other words, people appeared to be more willing to report a mistake if there were fewer perceived consequences for doing so.

She had a research assistant go to the hospital to dig deeper into this question and the result seemed to bear out.

While we often discuss how the creative process frequently involves making mistakes and trying new approaches and how this is an practice that non-profit arts can offer the commercial sector, the truth is that arts and creative team work environments can have little tolerance for mistakes.

Outside of the official bounds of a creative environment of rehearsals and early design reviews, the expectations of executing quickly and achieving a lot in a short time at low cost can be pretty high.

I recently told some folks that I am glad there has been a general trending away from the negative aspects of the work environment of my early career. I still hear and read about some pretty unforgiving and problematic practices.

It is worth remembering what I quote Amy Edmondson saying above – demanding people eliminate errors doesn’t mean they stop happening, just that people work to make sure no one hears about them.

I sit on the safety committee for my employer. One of the near fanatical focuses they have is reporting near misses because they are leading indicators of problems. Reporting you almost got stung by a scorpion opening up a water meter box and how you and others can avoid an actual sting in the future contributes to the prevention of injury.

But that sort of honest communication only occurs if there isn’t a perception of dire consequences in admitting you should have waited for a co-worker before climbing a ladder.

He cited a study from PwC which found:

The situation seems pretty daunting for recent graduates who had previously been able to develop discernment and judgment over the course of their career and are now being expected to exhibit themwhen they walk through the door.

The source of the competitive advantage possessed by those in the creative economy isn’t a big revelation – it is the cycle of failure and iteration along with curiosity, inquiry, and experimentation that are central to all creative disciplines.

Because companies expect these skills on day way and aren’t likely to patiently wait for new employees to develop them, Schupbach says it is up to teachers, mentors, and alumni to cultivate these skillsets among younger generations.

In the newsletter Bowen cites ideas from Douglas Hubbard’s book, How to Measure Anything, indirectly echoing the lyrics of Rush’s, “Freewill”, “….if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

Though in this case it is more a matter of just because you aren’t choosing to measure it, doesn’t mean you aren’t making decisions. (my emphasis)

Bowen was posting this in preparation for a discussion group of Museum as Progress members that was held in early June. He attached a chapter from Hubbard’s book as the basis for the discussion. One section where Hubbard covers the concept of sustainability piqued my interest.

Generally when you are writing grants and the funder asks about your plans to make the funded program sustainable, they want to know how the program will support itself in a year or so when they stop providing funding.

In a section of that chapter Hubbard talks about sustainability in terms of reducing the magnitude of a harmful event, or reducing the probability of it happening. The example he gives is the collapse of agriculture resulting in famine and poverty. He says that none of the negatives outcomes can be reduced to zero, but if you are able to reduce things like the number of people impacted, the duration of the crisis or prevent it from happening at all, those outcomes indicate an increased degree of sustainability due to your efforts.

Too often the context of the sustainability term used in funding seems to expect maintaining the program at the same level as it was when grant funding was available or growing it from there.

Angela Meleca made a post today that somewhat intersects with this idea. She gives the example of a non-profit that had been informed that a funder was shifting their priorities from supporting the arts to “workforce development, economic mobility, and stronger communities.”

As she was talking about the programs the organization ran, she noted that some of them were actually aligned with some of these priorities.

The development director responded that workforce development wasn’t part of their mission. Angela says her thought was that regardless of mission, that was the outcome the program was resulting in. (I would argue it aligns with stronger communities as well.)

There has long been a conversation in non-profit arts about the problem with trying to shoe horn your programs in to matching what a grant says it will support. Often this moves an organization off mission and may even increase the burden on organizational staff as people pick up new duties to meet the promise of the grant application.

Angela’s focus in this piece and others she has written is more aligned with becoming better at looking at the outcomes your organization are achieving and making the case for the value of your programs based on that versus trying to change the organization to meet a need.

Rather than trying to convince people that arts solve specific problems, the focus is more on saying what we already do well is a solution to the problem you seek to resolve.

Getting back to the original topic of this post, just because you aren’t measuring these outcomes doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Given the way funding priorities are shifting, it may be worth paying attention and evaluating how your core strengths might already be highly valued.

Many cruise lines are upping the quality of their technical equipment and partnering with London’s West End to transfer productions to the floating stages. Additionally, some cruises are offering immersive experiences drawn from TV shows like Peaky Blinders and Dr. Who. One company is running a contest soliciting original works to be performed at sea.

Details about the challenges of mounting productions at sea are interspersed throughout the story. Even though they say feedback indicates people are booking cruises based on the performances being offered over even the destinations, the story also mentions that shows are edited to fit the space and time allotted which suggests customers aren’t getting the full experience of the original production.

Mounting some high production value original works written to meet the needs of the ship board experience may be the better option. There is a possibility we could see shows transfer from cruise ships to terrestrial based venues on the West End and Broadway.

The captive nature of the cruise environment may even help to introduce/familiarize younger demographics to performance attendance experience. According to the article in 2023 Cruise Lines International Association reported that 22% of passengers were millennials and 14% were Gen Z.

Though some performers have found that not all audiences are created the same. A comedian whose show was nominated for a comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe was met with what he described as a “a religious silence every night” on the cruise ship.

International borders and weather also present some challenges:

According to them people have an internal meter that evaluates whether a price increase is too much to continue making a purchase. By having multiple incremental increases it forces people to continually re-evaluate whether the experience is now too expensive versus instituting one big increase and leaving the price there for the same amount of time.

The other thing they point out is that you lose revenue by gradually increasing a price versus making one big increase. They note that if you have 100,000 visitors a year and make one big $5 increase that you hold for five years, you making $1 million more than if you increased the price $1 each year for five years.

They also note holding a price for a number of years results in a perception of stability versus bumping on a yearly basis. There is a sense that you planned well and haven’t needed to make changes rather than always playing catch up with the pricing.

Now in terms of dynamic pricing, the outcomes are a little less clear:

Personally, I am left wondering about the nuances that may be present in all this. Just thinking about grocery shopping, if I see prices varying in small increments, say between .59 and .89, I mostly suck it up. However, if something is now $1 more than it was last week, I hesitate to make a purchase. I have stopped buying goods where the price has shot up $1 in one week and not dropped again.

I am pretty sure there are things I have continued to purchase whose purchases are currently more than $1 more than they were a year ago, but have been increased more incrementally and haven’t tripped my internal calculus.

So I wonder if Dilenschneider’s research is based on intermittent purchases rather than weekly purchases or purchases of experiences versus purchases of goods and materials.

It may be if you are purchasing every week, you notice the big increases but aren’t alarmed by smaller increases because it part of a blur of 20 different items you are purchasing at a time.

Then if you are purchasing a handful of tickets once a month or maybe once a quarter or more, you may be more aware of what the price was last time because you are only purchasing a few items with less frequency.

If anyone has any insight into consumer behavior in these situations, I would be interested to know more. I know I am not the only person paying attention to the price of their groceries these days.

He also noted that AI tends to validate the perspective of the person asking the question. He related the story of a client who wrote a strongly worded letter based on AI advice which created an antagonistic relationship with another party which resulted in a prolonged conflict between them.

He said the whole issue could have been solved with a minor revision in contract language and a conversation.

But even more importantly, Firemark says, when you ask AI for advice or to help you produce something, you are making assumptions about what the solution is. One example he gives is asking AI to generate an independent contractor document when the legally the relationship is employer-employee.

Likewise if you aren’t familiar with the difference between copyrights and trademarks, you may end up insufficiently protecting your corporate identity. You may incorporate your business using the wrong/disadvantageous structure.

As much as you may wish to avoid the cost of working with a lawyer, they are still able to evaluate your goals and the context of your requests better than AI. They can also help you recognize that what you think is important isn’t really relevant and that you have overlooked some crucial arrangements.

Apparently, the most your responses can align with those of others in the United States is 7%.

Godin scored 4%. My score was around 1%.

So when you believe that millions of people think like you do, you are technically correct in that at most ~24 million people out of 342.6 million in the US hold the exact same set of beliefs as you.

But also there are even more millions who don’t.

I have been writing a bit about marketing to different audiences the past few weeks. In the context of this data it makes me wonder how valid the exercise of creating hypothetical profiles of audiences actually is.

If at most 7% of the community you are trying to reach is going to perfectly share the beliefs of others in the community, you are really angling for a small segment of the community.

The percentage is guaranteed to be smaller than 7% because at least a few percent will be knocked off when people who don’t like or feel comfortable with whatever you are offering self-select out.

Obviously the remaining 2%-4% (which may still be an overestimate) don’t have to be perfectly in-synch with one another to enjoy experiences your organization offers.

Ultimately, participation in arts and culture may indeed have niche appeal because that is the best you can hope for.

Though again, 2% of the US population is about 7 million people which isn’t a small number, except in relation to the whole nation.

The basic approach is the AI agent is writing the four different sets of copy you would write if you didn’t have the time. This is different from having AI writing copy for you because you are taking responsibility to review the copy and revise parameters so that there is basically no commonalities between the message for Insiders and Cold Prospects.

Ceci walks through the steps of writing a comprehensive prompt that ensures that messaging is crafted specifically for each audience. This requires providing details about the audience, what they know, what they don’t know, the voice to use, and most importantly; what concepts, words and jargony terms not to use.

For example from her prompt instructions:

She includes tons more insight and instructions, including how to test and evaluate what AI produces against itself and content a human has written.

Godin gave the AI credit for being honest about its corporate masters. It reported that shutting down Google Reader in 2013 meant that blog content was no longer easily accessible, breaking down the relationship between creators and readers, and shifting people to algorithm driven social media.

Then in 2023-2024 algorithm updates saw independent publishers see organic search visibility plunge 40% to 90% overnight..

Finally Gemini noted that the inclusion of AI overviews in search results has seen independent publishers and tech sites lose up to 58% of their traffic since early 2024.

This latest phase is also impacting arts organizations as well. Because Google is scraping sites for content to provide answers, a lot of arts organizations have seen their visitation numbers drop precipitously because people don’t have a reason to visit.

While Gemini was responding to Godin’s query about the impact on blogs and independent creators, its answer sheds light on the reason arts organization websites aren’t getting the traffic they once did. Google’s goal is to have the information they provide be where the visitor stops.

I performed a search asking what was happening at my theater and the response listed the next 6-8 chronological events. But there is no mention of tickets for our upcoming season going on sale soon which is something visitors would learn more about if they visited. I performed similar searches on peer organizations who had also recently announced seasons and there was no mention of their seasons being on sale in the results.

For some, there was no AI summary either which means people would have to click through to the website. I am wondering if it might be beneficial to design a website so that the content can’t be easily scraped and summarized. Though I also wonder if those sites might be demoted in future search results.

The searches I did specifically asked “What is happening at X,” where I mentioned the venue by name. But if I asked what is happening at theaters/performing arts centers in a city or region, those that can’t be easily scraped for data may not appear prominently in the results.

The bit about swapping slogans with a competitor and there being now meaningful change to the brand seems particularly applicable to mission statements. If they are so easily interchangeable between two organizations, then is there is a compelling reason for both to exist in the community?

The fact that a lot of organizations may not pay close attention to their missions may be the only saving grace in that what they do in practice may distinguish them quite a bit from the competing organization. If that is the case, there probably needs to be some introspection about aligning the guiding principles with practice.

The new program involves streaming concerts into movie theaters.

I have been debating if this was a good decision on their part. On one hand, you want to fill as much of your venue capacity as you can when the demand exists. Seeing movies in theaters is something people are already familiar and accustomed to vs. a live interactive concert experience that probably will need to be adjusted to better meet audience expectations.

My initial thought is that movie attendance is likely to ebb again and that it might have been smart to move forward with the concert series on a small scale to work out the bugs and get feedback so that it was more polished when there was a need to really promote it to fill theaters.

Now obviously I don’t know all the operational details of the plan. Part of my assumption is that the technology would connect theater audiences to a live concert happening in a large venue. If the concert was in a smaller, controlled environment where the performers were more directly focused on the theater audiences, running the concerts to a limited number of screens might not be economical.

The general basis of my internal debate is thinking about all the new programming ideas that popped up during the Covid shutdowns and how arts organizations largely shifted back to the more familiar programming approach they had been using in 2019. I am looking at AMC Theaters and seeing something of a parallel.

Part of me is hoping they are continuing to develop and think about their interactive concert idea along with anything else that might draw audiences when movies being released aren’t resonating with the public.

One of the first topics she addresses is mismatch between job duties and titles. This can manifest in a multitude of ways from people having duties outside their title, people getting title promotions that don’t match duties, people having similar titles but vastly different work loads, and people having legacy titles that don’t match the current operating environment.

She had a number of suggestions such as separating reward from title if the person was deserving but there wasn’t a case to create a new position. She also advised being honest about career ceilings that exist within the organization and provide support for seeking paths elsewhere.

Among the other suggestions she made that I appreciated were:

Another issue she addresses is hiring decisions in terms of who is being hired and why they are being hired, including counter offers. She offers some good tips for analyzing need and making some data informed decisions in that direction.

The third big topic she addresses is organization charts and decisions about who is reporting to whom. She covers employees answering to too many masters as well as too many employees reporting to too few managers who are unable to support them. She includes related issues with staff taking a lot of initiative to pursue new directions, but with the result that supervisory lines are blurred.

Two of the six suggestions she made in this area that caught my eye:

In some respects, I think she saved the best for last because a reorganization isn’t going to help much if the underlying issues aren’t addressed first.

The top ranked benefit is some form of free admission followed by benefits related to priority access/seating, exclusive membership events, etc. However, access to experts and leadership have been increasing in value for both exhibit and performing arts organizations.

The increase has been greater for exhibit based entities than performing arts entities largely in part because performing arts have a longstanding practice of talks, program notes, and interactions with creative staff.

IMPACTS says that it is a mistake to underestimate the value of these interactions.

Even though performing arts have had this longstanding practice, it is important to make sure these offerings are providing experiences that the members value rather than what staff and experienced insiders values.

In fact IMPACTS encourages membership levels based on the outcomes people desire.

They also suggest that access to leadership and access to experts be two separate benefits. In part, this is to keep access limited and valued in addition to allowing leaders and experts to perform their core duties. But what a curator, choreographer, researcher, stage director has to offer is a different product from that of an executive director, V.P. of Marketing, etc.

The one insight from the article that really caught my attention and made lightbulbs come on is that while free admission may be the most valued benefit by far, it is not the benefit that will keep people engaged.

I hadn’t really thought about what sort of behaviors membership benefits were encouraging in visitors. A discount on the next time someone visits leaves their next visit up in the air. Providing reasons to return throughout the next year helps to solidify when that next visit might happen.

Members may not be able to take advantage of every interaction with an expert due to competing priorities but providing those opportunities keeps members paying attention to the schedule. That results in a higher degree of engagement than knowing you can get a 15% discount at the bar on your next visit.

I have been reading Drew’s advice on webpage design for decades. I have attended a few of his conference sessions as well. But there is always something you forget or loose focus on in the interim so I eagerly read this piece.

Drew’s overall thesis was that many arts organization websites have been designed to please and serve the insiders at the organization rather than provide the answers new visitors are coming to the website to find.

Drew says every page has one job – to move a visitor toward at least one of three things – revenue, engagement, and leads. If each page isn’t helping to achieve that, it isn’t working for the organization.

He says there are a few reasons why websites fail at this job.

Other impediments have to do with design elements. Drew notes that buttons signal importance of the content to which they link. Button and link design needs to align with the visitor’s expectation about what they will find after clicking.

Button placement also matters. Drew observes that organizations often bury important buttons for ticket purchases at the end of massive blocks of text. Same with date and time. They should first be available before descriptions, not after.

Similarly, he notes that use of image carousels at the top of webpages works against visitor intent to find specific information. Instead, he suggests a hero section:

Drew also covers other topics in his article including effective vs. weak labels for buttons and mobile first design. Not to mention going into these subjects to a deeper degree than my excerpts and summaries.

I hadn’t intended to post any pictures from my travels, but when I was in Beijing I stayed at the Beijing Shichahai Shadow Art Performance Courtyard which provided a much more detailed and interesting experience than I expected. Tucked in one of Beijing’s hutong you might miss the building. The facade is slightly more detailed than the non-descript residences that line the narrow alley but that still leaves you underestimating what is behind the doors.

In the common area, they have a shadow puppet stage at which they present performances a couple times a week. Alongside the stage, they have all sorts of design drawings with notations about what is represented and the different motifs. Being an arts person, I definitely nerded out on everything.

Outside each hotel room is imagery associated with the shadow puppetry art form. They also offer classes but we were running around too much to really inquire and participate.

Like every city around the world, there are often hidden treasures in unexpected places.