Audience 2.0 - Condensed, Part I

In part I of this two-part post,  I summarize the findings of Audience 2.0, while tackling the problems, questions and lack of answers in part II. Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation, the newest study released by the National Endowment of the Arts gives empirical quantitative data to support how technological trends affect arts participation, the health of the arts in the US, and the ways that arts patrons use electronic media to engage in the arts.

Audience 2.0 takes data from the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and the three other SPPA studies from 1982, 1992, & 2002 and “examines how Americans participate in the arts via electronic and digital media.” The media platforms: Radio, Audio recordings, Television, Video Recordings, Internet, & Portable Media Devices were tracked, but there is not consistant data available from every study.

The study cited three main conclusions:

• Technology is not going to be the downfall of live performances, the arts or culture in our society,
• Technology provides a new outlet for people to experience the arts who may not otherwise have participated at all.
• Participation in the arts through electronic and digital media actually spurs participation in live arts performances and exhibitions.

The study found that “people who engage with art through media technologies attend live performances or arts exhibits at two to three times the rate of non-media arts participants.” This statistic should quell many of the concerns arts organizations have about digital media replacing them and help arts institutions embrace technology as a way to reach enrich their patrons. The study shows that technology provides a way for people to interact with arts and culture outside of the traditional venue, but it does not replace attending the physical arts or event space.

“53% of US adults used TV, radio, CDs/DVDs, computers or portable media devices to view or listen to arts performances, programs about artists, art works, museums or programs about literature.” Far more people participate in the arts as a whole than those who physically attended arts events.  This shows a greater interest in arts and culture from Americans than many people had previously thought.

“For every arts performance outlet besides theater, adults were more likely to view or listen through electronic media than to attend live events.”  This statistic has many people concerned about the impact of technology on the arts, however; the data shows this to be a good thing because a majority of the participants who make up the media only category represent people who would never have attended an arts event in the first place. The NEA then draws the correlation that these people would not participate in the arts at all without media and electronic technology outlets. Technology helps to widen the breadth of reach for the arts and allows people to participate in the through new portals.

Adults who used electronic media and technology only to participate in the arts had a higher likelihood of lower-than-average household incomes, residing in rural residents, belong to racial and ethnic minorities, belonging to that age group 75+, and/or having achieved no more than some college in their life. This profile directly mirrors the profile of people who do not participate in benchmark arts events at all.

The big picture of this survey is that it really just repeated many of the SPPA findings from the past three decades through the lens of technology. Overall, Education still has the greatest weight in determining arts participation, racial and ethnic minorities participate less than non-Hispanic whites, and racial and ethnic minorities tend to participate more frequently in arts event that are associated with their heritage.

This study leaves more questions than answers and those will be tackled in part II of this series.

Links roundup

This just in: Audience data from 2008There have been plenty of reactions to the Audience 2.0 report released last month by the NEA.  In his article on the Dance/USA blog, Mark Kirschner of TenduTV reminds us that since May 2007, the beginning of the survey period, Apple has released four generations of the iPhone and Facebook's user base has grown 20-fold.  Marc Van Bree digs into what we can learn from the report, even though the data can’t be easily compared to data from earlier iterations of the study.  And Jennifer Edwards and Sydney Skybetter read the report as a call for dance artists to start engaging audiences online.  What is your reaction?  Is this report useful?

Reality, only better ReadWriteWeb’s report on a new augmented reality textbook reminded me of this story from Art21 on the Louvre-DNP Museum Lab.  And also this AR version of BP’s logo.  What is your favorite example of augmented reality?

Newspapers are over In an interview with the Guardian, Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, predicts that the traditional print newspaper is doomed and that Rupert Murdoch’s experiment in charging for online content will fail.  On a related note, the internet is over as well.  How is your marketing team taking the news?

Wait, iPods used to come loaded with Pong? This and nine other fun facts about Apple, courtesy of Mashable.

Guggenheim + YouTube = Awesome Biennial

Video may have killed the radio star, but it has done wonders in shifting the paradigm of visual art.

Since the 1960s, video art has been challenging preconceived notions about how art was supposed to look. At the time, these video artists had to fight to be recognized as worthy enough to be hanging in the same space as Monet or Picasso. And nowadays, you cannot walk into a contemporary art museum without some type of video art installation. Barriers were successfully broken down. Hooray!

Let’s take a quick look at the opposite end of the art world spectrum. A magical little land on the internet where hours (and probably days) at a time can be spent: YouTube.

With the dawn of YouTube, absolutely anyone can have his or her two minutes of fame.  There is everything from a rapping weatherman to the music of Windows XP, Daft Hands and the post-it Mona Lisa… and seriously? Can you even imagine life before this guy? I know I can’t.

So we have the art world, which is harder to crack than a walnut frozen inside a glacier, and then YouTube, which could not be easier.

What happens when these two worlds join forces? YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video

The premise is to receive video art submissions from around the globe by people who may or may NOT consider themselves artists.

New. Exciting. Different. Weird. Animated. Confusing. Anything.

“We’re looking for things we haven’t seen before,” says Nancy Spector, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation.

No pressure.

So what happens after videos are submitted? A panel will review all of the videos and narrow it down to 200. From those 200, 20 will be selected to show in the first Biennial of Creative Video at the Guggenheim Museums. Yes, museums. The show will be simultaneously running at the Guggenheim in New York City, Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. All 200 finalists will have their videos shown on the YouTube Play Channel.

Partnering with the Guggenheim and YouTube, is Hewlett-Packard, who will be providing all the equipment at the museums to display the videos, as well as online tutorials about video basics such as editing and lighting.

So even if you know absolutely nothing about videos or video art, your work could be shown in one of the most renowned museums in the world. Interesting. And exciting. I think.

What are your thoughts? Will this produce great art worthy of showing in Guggenheim museums around the world? Is that even the point?

Now there is a question worth exploring… In this rapidly changing world where absolutely anyone with a camera, phone, or computer can create “art,” how do you define what is museum worthy anymore?

I think there are two schools of thought on the matter. On the one hand there are the purists who think the art world should remain an elusive and elite club that few artists ever manage to penetrate. Unfortunately, these limitations of access are crippling to the sustainability of our field. Which is what the focus should be, according to the second group. Yes, the art world must educate, question, and preserve beautiful and interesting things, but if you can’t get people to walk through the doors then what is the point? Keeping today’s audience engaged with art, regardless of the means, has become a focus for both visual and performing arts organizations. Technology is a great entry point, because everyone understands it and uses it on a daily basis. The same holds true for artists. Almost every artist I am friends with uses technology in some fashion to produce their work. They are creating amazing things, but the likelihood of top curators and critics ever hearing about them is slim to none. Which is why YouTube Play is such a great concept.

Obviously, there will be no way of creating installation style pieces similar to Bill Viola’s piece for the 2007 Venice Biennale, Ocean Without a Shore. But in this case, that is ok. Unknown artists get to show their work, interesting pieces will be created, and the museum doors will be as convenient as your computer screen.

The other day, we talked about crossing into different genres of art than you are used to… well here is your chance! Everyone is an artist.

Interested? Absolutely anyone in the world can apply by uploading your video (less than 10 minutes and created in the last 2 years) to the YouTube Play Channel. The deadline is July 31, 2010, so start creating!

Learning from PS22 Chorus, 2010 Webby Artist of the Year

PS22 Chorus’s 5 word acceptance speech.

They’re cute, they sing pop songs, and they made Tori Amos cry (in a good way).

And they have over 18 million views on YouTube.

On June 14th, the Webby Awards named PS22 Chorus its 2010 Artist of the Year “in recognition of their online contributions to music, popular culture and the online medium itself.” PS22 Chorus, a 5th grade chorus from a public school in Staten Island, joins the ranks of previous winners such as Trent Reznor and the Beastie Boys.

Formed in 2000, the chorus began to gain online popularity in 2006, shortly after choral director Gregg Breinberg (AKA Mr. B) started posting videos of the chorus. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton started promoting the PS22 Chorus videos, and their legions of fans grew.

While your organization may not yet have celebrity fans -- and your work may or may not involve dozens of adorable children singing pop music -- it’s worth taking a closer look to see what other strategies worked for this group:

• Take advantage of YouTube’s channels. PS22 Chorus customized their YouTube channel to create a look all their own. And by encouraging subscriptions, they could notify interested viewers whenever they posted new content. With more than 27,000 subscribers (as of 6/30/2010), there’s an opportunity for new videos to viral.

• Promote across platforms. PS22 Chorus embedded YouTube videos on their blog, increasing their view count without having viewers leave the site. And, their YouTube channel prominently links back to the blog.  With your own online presence, consider how easily followers can access your content from different platforms.

• Consider giving your unconventional marketing ideas a shot. PS22 Chorus’s fame was, as New York Magazine writes, accidental.  Mr. B mentioned on a Tori Amos fan message board that he was teaching her songs to his students.  He followed up with video posts.  Amos was charmed, and months later the chorus performed for her in person.

• Don’t be afraid to have a personality. PS22 Chorus’s energy and excitement come across in their online presence. Finding your organization’s own voice can help you connect and engage with followers.

• And finally, update regularly with fresh content.

What else is PS22 Chorus doing right?  Which Webby Award winners are inspiring you?

The arts industry, beyond genres

June is conference month for arts managers. We all know the drill: sit through sessions, hobnob, and think about trying to new things that you may or may have the guts to try when you get back to your desk. I attended one of these conferences and have been listening to everyone’s feedback on the conferences they’ve attended and have come to the non-earth-shattering realization: we’re all having the same conversations.

The conversations that I had and heard about social media at Opera America were nearly identical to conversations that I've had with my friends in the non-profit theatre and orchestra industry. Yet when we try to have cross-disciplinary conversations, people start putting up walls—“Well, he works in with an orchestra. Tell me how that research relates to MY patrons.” Many of our problems are shared, we just don't get together to talk about them. Although we have the technology to collaborate, find conversations and have discussions—many of us simply don’t.

In the same sense, conferences bring us together, but they also isolate us. They affirm labels and barriers in some cases, and in others, break them. When we stand strong as orchestra managers, are we still standing strong as arts advocates? When we are united as arts marketing professionals, are we still loyal to our own organizations?

One of the sessions from the Opera America stuck with me. The session, New and Unusual Opera (a play on words with “cruel and unusual”?) was about new ways to think about opera as an art form--thinking outside the boundaries of our industry. Opera industry vet John Conklin started the session by playing "Nessun Dorma" sung by none other than Aretha Franklin. (See below.) Of course, that got the expected chuckle from the audience. But Conklin went on to make the point that, for the majority of the American public, that’s opera. If people can embrace this music on their own terms, what are we doing putting up a barrier against their entry point? Why are we so against the crossover of pop music and opera, or opera market research and orchestra market research, or the marketing and development departments within our own organizations?

Challenge for this week: Have an experience in an industry outside your own. Subscribe to a development blog if you're a marketer. Follow an opera company if you work at a museum. New ideas spring from new experiences. Start having new conversations and start breaking down those barriers for yourself and for the arts industry.

Foursquare: Helping You Find Your Favorite Playground

Foursquare is one of the newest social media platforms to be embraced in the last year and one of the most promising new applications for businesses. According to the website, foursquare is “a mobile application that is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide, and a game that encourages users to explore their neighborhoods and rewards them for doing so.” The point of the application is to help users explore their surroundings, discover new things and share their experiences with others. Foursquare uses micro-blogging similar to twitter and interfaces all of the check-ins (posts) with a virtual map. In doing this, users tag locations, businesses and events that they are currently attending for their friends to see and read about. It is a way to share knowledge, play a game and receive promotions and rewards from businesses simultaneously. Due to the mobile aspect of the application, most Foursquare users interact with the site through smart phone applications.

The game portion of Foursquare is what sets it apart from other applications that allow users to tag locations with their posts. In foursquare, a user gets points and earns badges for checking-in at different locations, the frequency of their check-ins and the uniqueness of where they travel. An example would be the Starbucks honorary barista badge. If someone checks into five different Starbucks locations, they become an honorary barista and earn the barista badge. Starbucks is tying this badge into their customer loyalty program and offering promotions and discounts to their honorary baristas.

Collecting badges has become very trendy in many urban settings and adds a fun aspect of competition to social media. Badges are just one option that Foursquare is offering for businesses to promote themselves on the site.

Many businesses are using:

• Mayoral specials – specials unlocked by foursquare to the person who has checked-in most frequently over the past 60 days
• Frequency specials – specials that are unlocked by foursquare to users every ‘X’ number of check-ins
• Check-in specials – a one time special unlocked by foursquare after ‘X’ number of check-ins or for checking-in at a specific time or date
• Wildcard specials – not managed by foursquare, but verified by the businesses staff

Once a business sets up an account with Foursquare and tags its location on the Foursquare map, users can click on the location to receive a brief description and a To-Do list. The To-Do list is a list of recommendation that the business and other user have provided for the location. A museum might add an exhibit, event or activity to their to do list along with whatever recommendations other users have added. This along with check-in based promotions adds a new level to social media marketing and community building technology for arts organizations.

How businesses can utilize Foursquare:

• Tag the location and business on the Foursquare map
• Add a brief description of the location to the map
• Link twitter account to Foursquare to increase activity
• Add items and recommendation to the To-Do list of the location
• Integrate check-in and badge based promotions
• Use Foursquare as a part of a customer/patron loyalty program

Foursquare is also providing an analytics system for businesses. Foursquare analytics has a personalized dashboard for each business that shows which users are checking-in at their locations most often, what time the location has the most Foursquare traffic, and how many check-ins are being linked to other social media plat forms. It gives a demographic breakdown of their Foursquare patrons and provides information such as total check-ins, total unique check-ins, and statistics based on daily, weekly, monthly and annual traffic. This type of data is priceless to organizations and adds a way to track profitability, return on investment, and patron use.

Foursquare is less than two years old and already has over 500,000 users. The integration of social media, entertainment and business prowess makes this company a very promising investment for the arts community. Foursquare has shown enormous potential and incredible growth. It has the possibility of becoming the next Twitter and is offering much greater potential for businesses to harness the power of social media while creating a new outlet for promotions, marketing, and community building.

Technology Needs Assessment Survey - Deadline Extended

If you work at at arts organization in any capacity, we would like to learn more about how you use technology in your organizations and how you find help when you need it. Join over 180 of your colleagues who have already responded to the Technology Needs Assessment Survey. Take the survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/techhelp

Please feel free to share this link with any other arts managers or administrators who you know. We've extended the deadline until July 16, 2010 and we'll be posting the results of the survey on our blog in August.

Emergency Preparedness for Artists, Part II: Is Your Organization ArtsReady?

Nobody ever wants to be in an emergency situation, but let’s face it, they happen. Hurricanes, floods, fires, terrorism, I.T. failures, and even epidemics are a real concern in today’s world.  Last week we talked about disaster planning for artists, but what about the organizations? Almost every for-profit organization in the country has some type of emergency preparedness plan and training for staff members. But for some reason (money, time, human resources), arts organizations are a little behind this vital curve. Which is where ArtsReady comes in! This initiative was developed several years ago by South Arts as a way to help organizations with emergency preparedness.  As you probably know at this point, developing strong management practices regarding emergencies is becoming a national conversation. (Read the Green Paper published earlier this year!)

ArtsReady Program Director, Hannah Leatherbury, explains that, “We want arts organizations to start thinking about a readiness plan like they think about a strategic plan.”  We conducted an interview with Hannah last September, and the podcast gives some great information about the history of the organization and importance of continuity planning.

There are three main components to ArtsReady:

(1) “Be ArtsReady” awareness campaign, which provides resources and guides for organizations to create “what if?” plans. Join the campaign!

(2) In-progress development of community source software, which will be a web-based tool to help arts organizations be more resilient after both minor disruptions or major crisis.  It will allow organizations to assess their risks, have a secure backed-up location for readiness documentations, and be connected to other arts organizations to share resources and stories. Check out the demo presentation for this online tool.

(3) Membership in the Coalition for Artists’ Emergency Preparedness, a voluntary task force which is committed to organizing a nationwide support system (resources, education, advocacy) for artists and arts organizations before, during, and after disasters. **Be sure to check out, "When Disaster Strikes, Are You Prepared?" a workshop they are conducting during the Americans for the Arts Half Century Summit on June 26th at 4:00pm.

What experience have you had with emergency preparedness? Does your organization have a plan in place? We love to hear what you all are doing !

We Have A Castle, Write Us An Opera!

Every good castle needs an opera company, or so the Savonlinna Opera Festival of Finland would lead you to believe.  They have been performing at St. Olaf’s Castle in Savolinna, Finland since 1912.  The festival took a 50-year Hyades between 1917 and 1967, but since its re-inception in the 60’s has been known for its cutting edge works and operatic premiers. Starting in their 2010 season they have decided to push the envelope of innovation even further. The Savolinna Opera Festival is crowdsourcing an opera for its 2012 season through a new project: Opera By You 2012

They are asking the public to write an opera from beginning to end for their 2012 season. They want the world to create everything from the story, set design and costume design to the music and libretto. Savolinna is providing the performers, the crew, and an orchestra; the public is providing the opera.

To my knowledge this has never been done before in Opera and certainly not to this extent. The Savolinna Opera Festival is taking advantage of wreckamovie.com to host their crowdsourcing forum. The site was originally set up for crowdsourcing movies, but also seems to be working well for opera. The only major problem I could find was the lack of music sharing technology on the site. It is still not clear how the composers will collaborate on the score for the opera.

Currently, members are working on the plot synopsis for the opera within the online forum. There are ideas ranging from aliens to sea monsters and insurance salesman to princesses, a true amalgamation of creativity. The opera is still in its early stages of creation and nothing has been set in stone yet.

I was a little frustrated that I could not find any information on how they are going to decide which ideas to use. It is not clear from the website if the management is making those decisions or if the public is going to vote. I am personally a fan of putting as much ownership on the collaborators and public creators as possible. The idea that an opera company would forgo control and perform whatever the public wants to see is very exciting.

Opera By You 2012 has the potential to change the world of opera and set a new benchmark for the use of technology in the ‘high arts’. This project is breaking many of the stereotypes typically associated with this art form and opening opera to a much wider audience. Opera By You 2012 is not about tradition or ‘the classics’, it is about making new art and opening up an opportunity for the masses to interact with opera.

Technology is helping this arts organization reach out to the world and break down some of the barriers that keep many people away from the classical music realm. Crowdsourcing taps the collective creativity of everyone involved and creates a product that is not only designed for an audience, but by them. This type of innovation is what keeps the arts current in our society. It will be very interesting to see how this opera materializes and the impacts that it will have on the world of opera.

Emergency Preparedness for Artists, Part I: Cover Your A's

"Emergency preparedness is possibly the only topic in the world that is both terrifying and boring," quips Studio Protector's Craig Nutt. Disaster planning is easy (and risky) to put off for another day.  As we enter the Atlantic hurricane season, now is a good time to consider your own emergency preparedness.  In this two-part series, we will look at resources that can help arts and culture organizations both prepare for and recover from flood, fire, and other disasters.

One resource specifically designed for artists and artisans is Studio Protector, an information toolkit created to help you "cover your A's: Art, Assets, and Archives."

Studio Protector goes beyond general preparation tips to include advice relevant to artists working with a wide variety of media.  For instance, after a flooding disaster, the "First Aid for Your A's" section explains that freezing wet items can buy time, but that not all materials are okay to freeze:  textiles and books, yes; paintings and ivory, no.  This kind of information can help you prioritize your time in a salvage situation.

The idea for Studio Protector grew out of lessons learned by artists during and after Hurricane Katrina.  Visual artists developed the tool in partnership with the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+), which provides direct grants and loans to artists who need help in emergencies.

Studio Protector is comprised of two parts:

(1) The Wall Guide contains tips and checklists that help you start small and build your disaster response plan incrementally.  Five subject-specific pullout guides, which can be easily taken off site in the event of an emergency, focus on topics such as evacuation, clean-up, and salvage.  The entire kit is the size of a calendar and is designed to hang on your studio wall.  The online video demonstration is a good introduction to what the guide looks like and how it works.  The kit is currently available through CERF+ for $16 plus shipping and handling.  Profits from the sale of the Studio Protector Wall Guide go towards CERF+ programs.

(2) The Online Guide* is designed as a supplement to the Wall Guide, with artist-to-artist videos and links to additional resources.  Because it contains a lot of basic information as well, it is a good first stop when working on your emergency plans -- or when beginning the recovery process.  The Online Guide is available for free on the Studio Protector website.

Although it is geared for visual artists and studios, Studio Protector has advice and tips that can also be useful for performing arts organizations -- particularly those with a large investment in costumes, scenery, stage equipment, or digital archives.

*Web development for Studio Protector's Online Guide was a project of Center for Arts Management and Technology, home of this blog.