Americans for the Arts

Katherine Mooring

It’s an understatement to say that I learned a great deal from some very engaged individuals representing both the arts and the corporate worlds while writing the recently released BCA Monograph. But one comment in particular, from Bob Speltz, The Standard’s Director of Public Affairs, has really kept my mind turning. “We are facing intergenerational changes in business leadership,” he said. “The elder statesman CEO is gone, and the men and women leading companies today are seeing fundamental change. Doing it “the old way" is not an option, and it will require a very different set of skills for arts administrators to appeal to new leadership and the people who work around them.” Bob was a fantastic interview, but I found this to be an especially insightful observation. For me, it was particularly refreshing to hear given the NEW ways we’ve begun experimenting with professional and leadership development initiatives for Charlotte-area arts leaders, many of whom have direct responsibility for securing private sector support.

Certainly Arts &Science Council is not alone as an arts council in providing critical capacity building and technical assistance programs for the artists and organizations we support, and like many others, we started down this new-ish path (for us) with a more traditional approach. Over the past 5 years or so, we’ve offered a series of high quality full and half-day workshops featuring hot topics of the day delivered by experts in the field, and we’ve had success with that approach - great attendance, positive feedback, and appreciative constituents. In the past year though – largely in response to significant psychological changes faced by those of us still working in a sector that’s taken quite a beating – we’ve shifted the focus somewhat. We’re still offering workshops, but intuitively it began to feel like those of us working in the cultural sector were really craving opportunities for deeper, more personal professional and leadership development. So, we’ve gone in a few new directions…!

Bruce Whitacre

Jeff Hawthorne’s assessment that we need to listen to corporations to address their needs resonates with our experience here at National Corporate Theatre Fund.  His point about the employee focus, which others in this round of blogs have made, rings especially true to us.

As a national representative of resident theatres located all across the country, we focus our attentions on the New York companies that do business in those markets.  Yet this abstract geographic argument—talking to New Yorkers about supporting theatres they may never have heard of—is bolstered by our highly popular employee access programs for New York and national theatre.  THAT point, the employee access, has been more compelling than the “arts per se” argument, no matter how prominent and successful our member theatres may become.

Yet many of our colleagues in the culture business note how difficult it can be to activate employee access programs.  Companies are large and geographically dispersed; arts-loving employees may be hard to identify; corporate communications channels are already strained with the volume of other messages they must carry.

Here are some employee-engagement best practices we have seen or used.  Please add more!

Akhtar Badshah

Over the last decade we have seen an increasing number of arts organizations effectively using technologies as a way to get out in front of their audiences and to enhance the relationship arts organizations have with their patrons, participants, supporters etc.   I can talk a lot about CRM systems as a way to have an effective database that can pull member information, ticketing information, funder information all in a seamless manner providing information at the fingertips to the executive director, the development officer or the communications manager.   What I want to share, though, is a few thoughts on how to effectively use IT to unleash the creativity within arts organizations and make for fresh, richer programming experiences to attract new and young patrons.

With the advent of the CLOUD, web 2.0 and other social media platforms we have, at any given moment, a seamless flow of information between devices whether they are in your hand with a smartphone, or on your desk (PC) and on your wall (TV).  This convergence - where you are able to seamlessly get data in a highly interactive manner is making for a much richer experience for the user.  Already today the MET broadcasts their Opera’s with translation via the web.  With the increase in available bandwidth and high definition screens the quality of broadcast will continue to improve.  What is the opportunity to combine individual web-based experience and bring them into the theatre to see live performances?