Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Via Marginal Revolution blog, comes a story about a tourist spot in China that supposedly put in speed bumps to force people to slow down and appreciate the scenery. It made me think, is thi…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:06AMTuesday, May 9, 2017
If you haven’t been following Nina Simon on her Museum 2.0 blog or haven’t read her book, The Art of Relevance, her recent TEDx Palo Alto talk could be a good 12 minute intro to …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:54AMThursday, May 4, 2017
Via Artsjournal.com is a thought-provoking essay about artistic performance on Aeon. Dancer Barbara Gail Montero posits that a true expert performer doesn’t surrender to “the flo…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:31AMYou may have heard about the lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art whose signs recommending $25 admission fee was seen as obfuscating the fact you can pay what you want. The museu…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMWednesday, May 3, 2017
I have mentioned a couple times how Jamie Bennett addressed a belief in a TEDx talk that art is what other people do in other places. I wonder if there might be a little “familiarity…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:54AMMonday, May 1, 2017
I have written about stakeholder revolts where people in the community force non-profit boards to reconstitute themselves, usually in reaction to a planned closing of the organization. I…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:02PMThursday, April 27, 2017
In a recent article on Salon, music professor Steven Demorest, talks about the way music education in schools can create anxiety in people about singing. He cites a scene from the Oscar winn…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:18AMWednesday, April 26, 2017
Do you have a few moments so I can share some information about a cult I joined? No, wait, wait, before you run away. This is not that type of cult. In fact, this cult demands much less in t…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:31AMMonday, April 24, 2017
I don’t often advocate for specific performers here on Butts in the Seats. I get enough requests to review things on my blog and hundreds of emails from artists at my day job that I do…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:36PMThursday, April 20, 2017
Well I am glad I mentioned yesterday how fulfilling I found all the creative projects I have been involved with over the course of my career. Today in The Atlantic, they had a story about th…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:48PMEvery couple months the treasurer tells our board of directors how easy it would be to embezzle funds due to the lack of sufficient checks and balances. She is especially wary of the fact th…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMWednesday, April 19, 2017
Recently I have been thinking back about different projects I have participated in over the last 10-15 years that I really found fulfilling. I invested a lot of time in those projects and di…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:36AMMonday, April 17, 2017
Back in February, Seth Godin made a post about “The two vocabularies (because there are two audiences),” discussing how the vocabulary that appeals to people who consider themsel…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:54PMThursday, April 13, 2017
I bookmarked this story years ago and I don’t know why I never wrote about it. Back in 2015, the Toronto Globe and Mail did an 8 part story on the rehearsal and performance process of …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:42AMWednesday, April 12, 2017
This week Jonathan Mandell addressed an issue that has been troubling me for a few years. I have noticed more and more frequently that actors don’t seem to be taking the time to decomp…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:18AMTuesday, April 11, 2017
Drew McManus has been discussing diversity in programming for the last week or so on Adaptistration. With those thoughts bopping around my cranium, it was probably only natural that a post…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:54AMWednesday, April 5, 2017
This week Barry Hessenius wrote about the process of interviewing someone for a job. One of his points was not to use other people’s interview questions/generic questions you pull of…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:06PMTuesday, April 4, 2017
I have been paying attention to what people do as part of their creative process lately. So I was happy to read George Saunders’ piece in The Guardian from last month, “What writ…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:42PMFor two-three years now I have regularly revisited the situation where generally people have an easier time identifying themselves as a participant in a sport than as an artist. Earlier this…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:18AMMonday, April 3, 2017
You know how they say you need to dress for the job you want rather than the job you have? In much the same way, this is true for pursuing non-profit status. A few years back Ellis Carter li…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMThursday, March 30, 2017
Even though it often feels like promoting arts and culture as a non-profit entity requires inventing entirely new methods wholecloth because our emphasis and motivations are not driven by a …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 02:24AMWednesday, March 29, 2017
A few years back I had organized a panel on presenting the work of contemporary indigenous artists at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference. We were fortunate to have Moss…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 02:02AMTuesday, March 28, 2017
A little while ago I came across a presentation by the Wallace Foundation that seeks to aggregate a number of studies to provide insight for building millennial audiences. If you have been f…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:42AMWednesday, March 22, 2017
Now and again I have cited the 2010 IBM study where CEOs worldwide ranked creativity as the most relevant and important skill their employees needed to take their companies in the future. …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:12PMTuesday, March 21, 2017
Margy Waller’s piece about How To Talk About Saving the NEA has been making the rounds these last couple weeks. You should take a look at it if you haven’t already. Her piece i…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:48PMMonday, March 20, 2017
An interesting article in Pacific Standard came across my feed in the last few weeks. It suggests that male disinterest in the arts is a result of social pressure to conform during the early…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:06PMFriday, March 17, 2017
Ah, Spring! That time of year when an arts organization’s mind turns to thoughts of season brochures and other promotional materials. Whether those materials are created by a board com…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMThursday, March 16, 2017
This really great story on the Americans for the Arts blog caught my eye that I would label as unintentional placemaking. Though I could think of other apt terms. Douglas Sorocco writes abou…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:36AMWednesday, March 15, 2017
Earlier this month, Kathryn Haydon addressed the insidious personal belief that one is not creative. I use the term insidious because I view the belief as something that undermines somethi…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:12AMTuesday, March 14, 2017
I guess I should have waited a few more days before making last week’s post about today’s graying audiences not being the same graying audiences of two decades ago. Toward the en…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:42AMThursday, March 9, 2017
I am pretty open about admitting when I made a wrong call. While I consistently counsel against investing too many resources into the hottest fad, even I have to admit that the Pokemon Go! c…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 02:24AM 
