Audience development vs. filling seats

We just said good bye on Sunday to the people who attended the conference we co-hosted with the Orange County Arts and Cultural Affairs office. One of the conversations that struck a chord with me was the difference between audience development and filling seats. Is there a difference one attendee asked? Isn't audience development supposed to put people into the seats? Yes, ultimately as an end goal, butts in seats is where the compass should be pointed.

I believe there is a distinct difference. Ultimately, I look at audience development as the cultivation of long-term relationships from a diverse population that the arts community engages, educates and encourages participation in a creative and generally entertaining experience as part of an important partner in the creation and execution of art.

Filling seats is short-term focused and driven by bottom line motivations. How can we get more seats sold this week or next for said production? It is important and necessary for an arts organization to meet its budget demands, but filling seats has become our only modus operandi and many times is presented as interchangeable with audience development. When we do this, we will essentially reduce our attendance down to a small segment of the population.

The Alliance doesn’t control the content, production and product produced. Our job is also not filling seats. It is audience development. Now, some of the programs like Red Chair Rewards will help to ultimately fill seats, but the intent is to grow the recipient list to be the largest in the region, so that we can educate new audiences to engage in the arts. The special offer is only the stimulus to try.

The beauty is that by working together, both with attempting to fill seats to maintain the bottom line (arts organization role) and on audience development (Alliance role) through new collective initiatives our whole community will gain. That is where the real bottom line of producing art becomes more than just a commodity or widget to be promoted. It becomes a part of the completion to being human.

Collaboration is King

I mentioned before that the Performing Arts Alliance is hosting a national conference for the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (APASO). Yes, there is an association for everything. That conference kicks off this week. Terry Olson's office of arts and cultural affairs at Orange County is co-hosting the event. Fifty people from 23 different organizations (our Alliance and Terry's office not included) from 16 cities as far as London and Vancouver are attending the event.

We are excited and overwhelmed at hosting the event. On the exciting front, many of the attendees will be visiting several of our area arts and culture venues for exhibits or performances and the conference itself as we are using cultural venues for the presentations. It will be a time to highlight our growth as a cultural community and to showcase our city to those attending from rich in cultural history like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, Boston and London. The overwhelmed part is the to-do list.

One of the topics that will be discussed in great deal will be the concept and practice of collaboration. Each of the 25 organizations represented is a catalyst in some form or fashion in their respective cities. Many of these organizations have decades of experience at helping to leverage the collective power of a community's arts and culture organizations.

Many of the cities are represented in a Power Point presentation from Alan Brown & Associates research. When talking to those in leadership positions at these organizations, many have commented that Orlando is in a good position to establish and build on collaboration early and often. I couldn't agree more and couldn't be more excited about our potential to positively build on our early victories of collaboration. Here is to picking up some more best practices.

Is the Alliance stealing?

I attend the United Arts Executive Director meetings monthly to represent the latest happenings with Red Chair Project and Orlando Arts Getaway. Last week, I mentioned to the group that we had companies that are interested in sponsoring Red Chair Project now that the website www.redchairproject.com has proven early success. One of the ED's asked if he was being naive, but wouldn't the pursuit of sponsorship via Red Chair Project interfere with his or other organization's attempt to gain sponsorship monies for their own organization. Do we need yet another entity sucking from the money pool? Essentially, the Alliance would be stealing the limited funds available for its devious purpose to increase participation on behalf of all arts and culture organizations.

Naive? No, not naive. Ignorant of basic principles on collaboration, but not naive. I won't begin with the assumption that everyone works from the theory of abundance, which clearly this ED does not, but I don't think you have to have an optimistic outlook on Central Florida's untapped financial sponsorship resources to understand the basic principles of collaboration. Two key principles are longevity and leverage.

Longevity: Research, experience and best practices all point to the fact that for long-term success, collaboration needs a third party to drive the project or program. Does that mean that two or more groups can't get together without a third party like the Alliance to work on a project to advance their mission? Of course not.

It has been proven, however, that these collaborations are generally for a short, defined period. For long-term success, as a program takes on a life of its own, it stretches beyond any one group's ability to manage outside of the group's main mission, whether that be producing plays, music or otherwise.

Leverage: Red Chair Project is community owned and intended to increase participation in the entire arts and culture community. The Alliance is the third party along with partners United Arts, Orange County Arts and Cultural Affairs and the Orlando/Orange County CVB that is driving the project on behalf of the community. Right now the Red Chair Project is primarily funded through United Arts, but UA's money isn't even close to keeping the staff necessary to run the project. In fact, we are a staff person short as other city's use a minimum of three people to manage a project of this scope.

A full staff is only part of the equation to advancing the success. Marketing takes money. We just got a call on Friday from an artist asking where the marketing for Red Chair Project is. It is sitting on my desk right now because it doesn't have the financial resources to be realized. So, if Red Chair Project obtains a sponsorship that allows it to be more visible, hence allowing more people to participate in the arts and culture community, is that taking away or leveraging our community's overall success?

Now not every leader or arts administrator sees the pot as so small that we have to all position ourselves as a pack of wolves deciding how to share a small rabbit instead of seeing over the horizon that there is a whole herd of antelope with plenty of meat for all of us. (forgive me for the animal reference for our vegetarians)

My encouragement is this. We haven't scratched the surface on two things: the amount of sponsorship out there for our community and the leverage the Alliance can represent. Leverage is a key component for collaboration's success. If you want more reading, email me. I have a great Power Point on the subject. I couldn't figure out how to attach it. I also have many more articles, books and personal experiences that I can share with you on how to pursue collaboration. One of them is not cynicism. Don't let that be a cancer where you reside.

Miami bus to Marketing and more

A great opportunity for comraderie and learning is on tap in Miami. The National Arts Marketing Conference is scheduled for November 2 - 7 this year. http://www.artsusa.org/events/2007/abc/namc/default.asp I have attended the conference twice in other cities, presenting at one of them on collaborative audience development. The best practice information and peer group connections are invaluable. The fact that the conference is in our back yard makes this conference very affordable. We are looking into a bus to take a pack of us to the conference. There is nothing better than an old-fashioned road trip together to help us build deeper relationships, while also picking up information to help us advance our missions. If you are interested, please contact me at jmorris@orlandoperforms.com.

I also caught wind of a new study on nonprofit employment across the country and region. It was an interesting look at the growing number of people entering the work force in the nonprofit world. Average wages are also a part of the study. http://www.jhu.edu/ccss/research/bulletins.htm

Sports doing drama better than arts?

As a passionate arts guy who spends his full day figuring out ways to increase participation in our arts and culture community, I am also a big sports fan. I know of many people who live on either the "arts only" island or the "sports only" island, not crossing the water to visit the other. Some of that separation starts early in childhood when we are figuring out what we are gifted (or not gifted) to do. I was actually very good at sports and a late bloomer to the arts world. I played high school football and baseball. It wasn't until college before I saw my first play. It wasn't that I had anything against the arts, I just never was exposed. Thus, I have a passion to be a catalyst for others to learn of the arts no matter the age. I grew up in a really small town and my family had no money, so I was never presented with the opportunity to be a part of the arts.

Well, for those "arts only" people, the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl on Sunday. I am from Indiana, so as a fan, I got to share in the glory, along with my three-year-old son. That would be Dylan dressed in his "I want to be Peyton Manning" outfit to the left. After watching the hours of pre-game, I was struck once again how sports have taken a page or maybe the whole book from the arts to promote the actual game. If you follow sports, there is a story played out in any game and plenty of drama, but sports have gone beyond the game. The Super Bowl is the premiere sporting event in our country, so it is even more magnified, but the amount of drama and story telling building up to the game was done so well, that even if you were not a football fan, you would be hard pressed not to be engrossed in some form.

I read an recent article in Arts Reach (http://www.artsreach.org/), "What Can the Arts Learn from Sports?" This gist in the article is that sports do a better job of being a place of pride for the community and connecting the fans with the players than the arts do. There is much we could debate about, but I think the writer missed the point about sports really borrowing and then enhancing the drama surrounding the game. The arts are about telling a story, whether the medium is stage or canvas. Where we could learn from sports is the build up. Every story about the people involved is uncovered in sports. By the time you get to the game, if you are not a true fan, it could almost be a let down. What else could we learn from sports? Sports fill a great need in humanity for many. My son has a hero figure in Peyton Manning to model himself. The arts also fill a great place in humanity. Sports have borrowed from our stage. What can we borrow from sports?

I know that sports have more coverage, 24-hour television and radio, but instead of whining about it, what can we do about it? Have we asked the Sentinel why it doesn't do an arts insert for high school students to showcase what is being accomplished like it does for high school sports students weekly? Are we open enough as a community? Could we do a better job of telling our story before we tell our story? Do we take ourselves too seriously? It isn't about converting the "unchurched" sports fan to become an arts aficionado or vice versa. Many audience research studies show that it is more about participation anyway. The last evidence I saw was that 60% of sport attendees also attend the arts. It was more about finding people who are active. My questions circle around what as a community we could do to promote ourselves better so that more people who are active participate in all that our arts community has to offer. In the meantime, I will relish the Colts victory and see you at the show.