communicating about the arts

Mayor Mallory Loves Our Dance, Music, Festivals, Etc.

Posted by Margy Waller on 06/17/10

Earlier this year, we watched as Mayor Mallory in Cincinnati talked about the State of the City. We told you then about the marvelous things he said about our arts -- all the music, dance, museums, theaters, festivals and so on in our region. Now the talented Lisa Maly has obtained a video clip of the Mayor talking about the importance of the arts to making Cincinnati a great place to live, work, play, and stay. Take a look!

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Part 3: A National Conversation about Support for the Arts

Posted by fafadmin on 03/15/10

Art: It Connects Us and Makes Places Vibrant
continuing from Margy's previous posts on ARTSblog: Post 1 & Post 2


This week, hundreds of people met in Providence to discuss “Connecting Creative Communities” in New England.

 

While there, I had the chance to share our new research with the audience. The response was inspiring. So many people there seemed to recognize the polite head nodding we get when talking about ROI of the arts in dollars and cents. Like us, they also know it isn’t persuasive enough to decision-makers. So, the arts remain a vulnerable policy choice in the public arena.

 

These New Englanders are as happy as we are to know more about how the public thinks about art and what people value about our art: the vibrancy it brings to our neighborhoods and the way it connects people.

 

Like me, they struggle with when to talk about art as entertainment and when to avoid that idea. Talking about art as entertainment puts people in a personal, consumer frame of mind – we know now that this is a barrier to thinking about art as a citizen. In the citizen mode, it’s easier to support the arts collectively, as a public good.

So, we discussed the importance of keeping these stories separate.

 

When we want to promote the value of the arts to everyone – even those who don’t participate by going to concerts or shows – we will focus on stories like how the new theatre on 14th street in Washington DC changed the neighborhood, filling it with people and activity. And how the fringe festival in Cincinnati brings people together from all over the region – people who might not meet under any other circumstances.

 

Hundreds of interviews in our region provide the proof that this works. Just because art IS entertainment, doesn’t mean we have to always present it that way. When we want to move people to action that supports the arts sector – we should avoid the entertainment lens on the issue. On the other hand, when we are trying to sell tickets, art IS entertainment!

 

To wrap up this week of important dialog about new strategies for building support for the arts, I’ll share the fun that the New England audience got to see.

 

This is the video of a surprise public dance my organization put together for our annual community fundraising campaign for the arts.

 

You’ll notice that we don’t name any arts organizations – we just SHOW how the arts bring people together AND make our city vibrant!

 

If you want to see the “Making of Splash Dance” video when we release it in a few weeks, sign up for our occasional emails here.

 

Cross-posted on ARTSblog.

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Part 2: A National Conversation about Support for the Arts

Posted by Lisa Maly on 03/10/10

continuing from Margy's previous post on ARTSblog...

Feeling like we’d leveled off in our effort to build broad support for the arts, we decided to get more information. We studied how people think about the arts — that is, we engaged in some real research over the past 18 months. With this information, we’re crafting a new communications strategy—one built on a deeper understanding of the best ways to communicate about the arts—that we believe will lead to increased shared responsibility and motivate action in support of the arts.


In order to create a more constructive dialog, we had to explore the dynamics of the current public conversation—in the media, for instance—as well as in the thinking of the majority of people who do not focus on the arts in their daily lives. Understanding attitudes and beliefs more deeply is a key to negotiating them more successfully in future efforts. A new argument, or lens, on the issue is useful to the extent that it can move people to a collective perspective and shared action in support of the arts.


When legislators, business leaders, community leaders, and others all take in the same core message seen through the same lens—and in turn repeat them to their own constituencies—the resulting echo chamber can begin to transform the accepted common sense on the issue.

After a year of investigation and interviews with hundreds of people in the Cincinnati region and surrounding states, this research—conducted with the Topos Partnership, a national communications framing organization—found that public responsibility for the arts is undermined by deeply entrenched perceptions. Members of the public typically have positive feelings toward the arts, some quite strong. But how they think about the arts is shaped by a number of common default patterns of thinking that ultimately obscure a sense of public responsibility in this area.

For example, it‘s natural and common for people who are not insiders to think of the arts in terms of entertainment. Problematically, entertainment is a matter of personal taste, not public responsibility, and perceived as an extra, not a necessity. We need to change the landscape by employing a message strategy that:
  • Positions arts and culture as a public good—a communal interest in which all have a stake;
  • Provides a clearer picture of the kinds of events, activities, and institutions we are talking about;
  • Conveys the importance of a proactive stance; and
  • Incorporates all people in a region, not just those in urban centers.
 

Holding typical messages up to these standards clarifies why some ideas, even emotionally powerful ones, fail to inspire a sense of collective responsibility. Art as a transcendent experience, important to well-being, a universal human need, etc., all speak to private, individual concerns, not public, communal concerns. While many people like these messages, the messages do not help them think of art as a public good, and therefore inspire action.

 
Messages that are more communal in nature, such as the commonly used economic impact message, or a message about creating a great city, fail for other reasons. For instance, traditional economic arguments often compete with other (usually more compelling) ideas about how to bolster an economy.
 
Of the many communications approaches we tested, one stood out as having the most potential to shift thinking and conversations in a good way: A thriving arts sector creates “ripple effects” of benefits throughout our community. Two ripple effects — that people already believe in — work well to build more support:
  • A vibrant, thriving economy: Neighborhoods are more lively, communities are revitalized, tourists and residents are attracted to the area, etc. Note that this goes well beyond the usual dollars-and-cents argument and becomes about creating an environment where people want to live, work, play, and stay.
  • A more connected population: Diverse groups share common experiences, hear new perspectives, understand each other better, etc.
 
Now conversations move beyond polite nodding – you know, the kind we got when we talked about ROI or economic impact of the arts. We know we’re on to something when people offer their own examples — like how their neighborhood changed after an art center opened or the experience they had connecting with others at the fringe festival.
 
 


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A National Conversation about Support for the Arts

Posted by Lisa Maly on 03/09/10


Americans for the Arts -- "the nation's leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America" -- is hosting an online discussion about support for the arts. They invited Margy to participate by blogging about The Fine Arts Fund's new research report on communicating about the arts. Here's the host's description of the discussion:

"The Private Sector Initiatives team at Americans for the Arts is leading efforts to increase partnerships between the arts and the three main areas of the private sector: business, foundations, and individuals by partnering with a national network of Arts & Business Councils, Business Committees for the Arts and United Arts Funds. These partnerships deliver economic and social benefits to communities, generating jobs, and galvanizing neighborhood revitalization efforts.....Follow the Private Sector Blog Salon on March 8-12 as more than twenty leaders from across the country discuss issues related to private sector giving and the arts."


Margy is answering one of the questions posed in her invitation to participate: "So, how do we make the case for supporting the arts in 2010?" While many of the bloggers are focusing on private sector fundraising, our research is designed to provide a way to engage the community in a broader discussion about support for the arts.

We'll be cross-posting Margy's posts here this week.

Join the national conversation on the Americans for the Arts blog site!


We’ve noticed a lot of chatter about finding a new way to talk about what we’re passionate about. We all want a value proposition that works to create support for the arts.

We followed the long exchange on the artsjournal pages and noticed that Michael Kaiser put it on his wish list for the holidays. And of course, this conversation is designed to answer the question: how do we make the case for supporting the arts in 2010? What is the message that works with private sector supporters?

We understand this interest—and we share it. My blogs this week will offer a research-based answer.
Many of us have spent years searching for the strongest possible message and the best case on which to build support for the arts. Yet, the messages we have used, and successfully integrated in the dialogue across the country, have not yielded the broad sense of shared responsibility that we seek.

So, in late 2008, leaders of the Fine Arts Fund in Cincinnati embarked on a year-long research initiative designed to develop an inclusive community dialogue leading to broadly shared public responsibility for arts and culture.

We concluded that our work with the community through arts and culture must be based on a foundation that incorporates a deeper understanding of the best way to start the conversation in order to achieve that shared sense of responsibility.

People are always telling us that they like the arts. And we know they mean it. For “insiders” (everyone reading this blog, for sure!), participating, donating, and going to shows is what we do all the time.

Most everyone else sees the arts differently—and that’s critical for us to remember. Others have nothing against art—but we haven’t given them the lens through which to see arts & culture as a benefit to the entire community, even those who don’t participate.

Right now the public is most likely to see art strictly as entertainment: what to do this weekend, etc. And that’s great—when we are trying to build audiences, sell tickets and memberships.

But when we want people to donate to our united fund, support a better arts policy, or communicate with decision makers, not many are taking an action step. That’s because when art is entertainment, supporting it is a highly personal decision—based on personal preferences and resources like time and money.

We determined that we needed more analysis and knowledge of public views and assumptions about arts and culture to develop the foundation for a conversation that leads to the necessary increased shared responsibility and public support.

Our conversation has to engage participants as residents of the community, not as consumers. Because while most people feel positively toward the arts, we will have to change the conversation in order to motivate action by the public (by which I mean the private sector too) for the arts.

In my next blogs, I’ll share 1) the key organizing idea to communicate with the goal of building broadly shared responsibility for the arts, and 2) discuss the need for an echo chamber across the country.

The private sector has a leading role to play in creating the echo chamber and it’s our job to provide the communications strategy, the message that we can all use.

 
 
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Reading Lessons: The Art Thief

Posted by Lisa Maly on 02/02/10

In the evening, I like to escape into a novel and I'm almost always reading one. (Hardly a weekend goes by without a visit to my neighborhood library -- luckily mine is open on Saturdays and Sundays.)

Last night, I came across this paragraph in my current novel, The Art Thief, by Noah Charney. It's entirely consistent with everything we've learned in our recent research on how people think about "the arts" -- through the lens of the contemporary protagonist who is tracking a series of thefts of paintings.

 

"[Art crime] was considered high class. At the top level of the caste system, art crime was socially acceptable, even thought of as prestigious and intriguing. It was the only serious crime for which the public tended to root for the criminals....The average citizen felt somewhat detached, and sometimes threatened, by fine art. It was considered elite and elusive...and therefore frightening to many. It was with some satisfaction that the public read about gracefully orchestrated art thefts. It was a combination of voyeurism into a glamorous world apart, and a satisfying jab at an institution that felt exclusive."

 

 

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