The Artful ManagerAndrew Taylor on the business of arts and culture.How about a movable performing arts center- May 29, 2008 The Guardian reports on an emerging scheme to make London's stadium for the 2012 Olympic games a portable affair. Post-Olympics, they would deconstruct it, and send it to the next Olympic city host (perhaps Chicago). Reduce, reuse, recycle, indeed. The innovation is driven by the staggering costs of hosting the Olympics -- particularly in capital investment -- and the temporary community need for a venue of such proportions. The two cities would share the costs, and both would get a stadium of.http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083962.php Phase shift- May 28, 2008 While we've all be eyeing the Internet as the transformative social technology of our generation, another less glamorous device has been quietly vying for the title. According to the International Telecommunications Union, almost half of the world's population had a mobile phone in 2007, with the most significant growth in developing countries. Mobile phones are certainly everywhere, in every demographic. And while the technology is increasingly mundane -- make a call from anywhere, send a...http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083915.php Do music degree programs create professional musicians- May 23, 2008 There's growing conversation among conservatories and other arts-focused degree programs in higher education about what it is they're actually preparing students to do. The unspoken assumption has often been that music, theater, and related degrees are intended to develop artists of high technical excellence, prepared (at least technically) for professional work as artists. Of course, many more students graduate from these programs than could ever find employment in the cultural world. And, in.http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083812.php Mass creativity- May 22, 2008 CrowdSpring is a new web resource that hopes to bring ''crowdsourcing'' to the daily lives of creative individuals. The site allows any individual or company to post a design need (generally logo designs at the moment), along with escrow funds to pay their promised fee, and then anyone can design and post a response. The response the client likes the best gets paid out of the escrowed funds. The others don't. While it may seem a bit brutal for the designer side (an individual could create a...http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083772.php Fail early, fail often- May 20, 2008 Lucy Bernholz flags an important and awkward issue in her Philanthropy 2173 blog: the essential link between innovation and failure. If we're truly committed to fostering innovation and risk-taking in our organizations' artistic and management efforts, failure should be a key indicator of our attempts to do so. If you've ever taught someone to ice skate or downhill ski, this indicator is obvious. If you don't fall frequently, you're not trying hard enough. You're stiff and conservative in your.http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083680.php One letter, big difference- May 15, 2008 Greg Sandow lobs a compelling argument in the National Performing Arts Convention blog, encouraging us to decouple ''art'' and ''the arts'' in our thinking and our planning. Says Greg: Art is an activity, sometimes sublime, and also the result of that activity. By now we know -- or certainly we ought to know -- that it might be found anywhere, in vacant lots, in silence and graffiti, in overheard remarks (see the poetry of Jonathan Williams, an advocate of outsider art, who died not long...http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083554.php You are here- May 14, 2008 If you haven't yet explored Google's ''Street View'' feature (described here, available in many area Google Maps), you should really take a moment to do so. For place-based cultural organizations (those with a building as part of their mission delivery), it offers a powerful way to connect web visitors with your actual place. Essentially, Google hires a car with a 360-degree camera and a global positioning system to drive around taking pictures every dozen yards or so. The images are then...http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083505.php Even when the big-boned lady sings, it ain't over- May 13, 2008 When you're in the business of building loyalty and coaxing repeat purchase from your audiences (and aren't we all), a positive experience with your programming is only part of the battle. The real impact comes in how the experience is remembered over time. Brain science is starting to discover how and why the actual experience and the remembered experience can be radically different. This article from Miller-McCune describes recent discoveries about the brain that suggest our memories don't...http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083451.php Attendance vs. engagement- May 12, 2008 Three foundations -- Pew, Wallace, and Philadelphia -- are ponying up $6.3 million to boost cultural engagement in Philadelphia over the next 12 years. It's a bold initiative by any measure, but vulnerable (already it seems) to some common sandtraps around goals and means. The biggest sandtrap is to conflate observed attendance with ''engagement'' or ''participation.'' The observation usually presumes you have a specific frame to do your counting (attendance at professional arts events). And...http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/083418.php |