This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 1, 2011 - Former St. Louisan Rocco Landesman, currently chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, touched off quite a conversation at a conference on new play development at Arena Stage in Washington last week. In his comments addressing struggling theaters, he said: "You can either increase demand or decrease supply.
"There is a disconnect that has to be taken seriously -- our research shows that attendance has been decreasing while the number of the organizations have been proliferating," Landesman said in a followup phone call with New York Times ArtsBeat blog. "That's a discussion nobody wants to have."
Understandably, the arts blogisphere reacted. When the chairman of the NEA starts talking about reducing supply, it's no surprise that grantees get concerned.
Yesterday, he published this blog post in which he expanded on his comments from last week and went beyond the issue of supply and demand to look at other business tactics arts organization should be prioritizing.
His other tactics were based around the following five business strategies:
- know your true audience predictors;
- understand your market;
- offer free samples;
- recognize that technology is a table stake;
- right-size your organization
My communications career started on the business side of theater. Young and fresh out of college, my theater production nerd friends and I spent many an evening debating the future of the theater business around many of these very topics. Now I find myself having similar conversations relating to community reporting and the role of what's been traditionally known as public media. And all of the strategies he mentions apply very much to what we're designing ourselves to do at the Beacon.
I feel like the conversation generically goes like this:
Pot stirrer: It appears there's a real shift going on. Perhaps we should be trying some new things. [insert new things]
Traditionalist: NO. It's not as bad as you say. Beside, this is the way it's always been done. We just need more funding now than ever.
Pot stirrer: But the way it's always been done doesn't seem to really be working. And funding is inarguably on the decline.
Traditionalist: You just don't see what we do as important and want us to go away.
The debate becomes about trying new things vs. doing things the same way and whether or not everyone really has the same end-goal in mind. What's missed is that middle ground where there's an intelligent and substantive conversation about what that middle ground looks like and, more importantly, how to get there and what metrics to use to know you've moved the needle.
The people who want to try new things do so in a scatter-shot way, without the input of those who really have a handle on the core product, and the folks who know only the old way try new ways of doing the old things without the benefit of innovators and trends in other industries.
Sometimes, some folks from both sides get together under the radar of the bigger and louder debate and just try some stuff. And some of it works and some of it doesn't, but it's progress.
I'm not saying that the bigger, louder conversation doesn't bear some fruit, too. But I am saying that I believe it diverts attention, time and resources from the process of getting things done.
January was a big month at the Beacon. We made a funding announcement, added a new reporter, launched a new year-long project with the History Museum and have made countless baby steps toward larger projects that will pay off in the short and the long run. But January hasn't been without moments of feeling as though a bigger, louder conversation is raging around us; and if we could just divert a small bit of it toward some of the things we're trying and thinking about we could all move at least twice as fast.
But as I write this, I suppose that this is the process, right? It takes people on both sides and in the middle to usher in change. Eventually, survival and/or efficiency and/or logic takes over and we all move forward. But the business nerd in me can't help but wish for a more direct way from A to B.
So thank you, Rocco Landesman. From his very real seat at a very real table he's starting the conversation from the middle. Let's see where it goes now.
Nicole Hollway is the Beacon's general manager.