Thursday, 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 02:24AMWednesday, March 8, 2017
You and your staff are ready for a crisis. Everyone, including your volunteers, regularly reviews plans for handling your audience in case of fire, tornado, earthquakes, active shooters, etc…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMTuesday, March 7, 2017
For the last 20-25 years, audiences have been getting grayer and dying off. We have all heard that statement multiple times in our careers. We have probably made that statement multiple time…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:03PMMonday, March 6, 2017
Last Fall Grantmakers in the Arts published a summary of key findings from a study about community arts training. The study focused on the increasing focus of local arts agencies into cross-…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 07:36PMThursday, March 2, 2017
Going back to the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project special report I referenced yesterday, there were findings in another area that grabbed my interest. The following chart breaks dow…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:06AMTuesday, February 28, 2017
The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) just released a special report that focused on how alumni of creative arts programs across different graduate cohorts felt about the educat…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:36PMMonday, February 27, 2017
Two years into a six year research project, Ballet Austin has started learning things about their audiences that run contrary to their assumptions. While the audiences in every community are…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:24PMWednesday, February 22, 2017
If you found yourself agreeing with the thesis of my post yesterday about claiming someone is selling out or is dumbing down art is an attempt to exclude those people in order to save Art, I…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:18PMTuesday, February 21, 2017
Last week The Guardian wrote about how the current political climate in a number of countries has brought Arthur Miller’s The Crucible into relevance again. There are a couple sentence…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:54PMMonday, February 20, 2017
If you ever doubted that executive director positions were all about the fundraising and light on requiring artistic vision, the recent news about the firing of Ft. Worth Opera general direc…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:32PMThursday, February 16, 2017
Last month I saw a story in the New Yorker about an attempt to preserve the culture of the Iñupiat of Alaska through the creation of a video game. I initially thought that the game hadnR…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:42AMWednesday, February 15, 2017
I came across an interview Daniel Pink did with Derek Thompson, Senior Editor at The Atlantic where Thompson gives The 5 Rules for Making a Hit. Now I want to say from the outset that the ti…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:12AMMonday, February 13, 2017
Seth Godin made a post last week about maintaining a commitment to quality in your work. (my emphasis) When you seek the mass market, there are two paths available: You can dumb down your me…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:48PMFriday, February 10, 2017
One of my earliest posts on ArtsHacker encouraged people to feel comfortable with altering and amending contracts. Every organization operates in a different environment and has varying le…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMWednesday, February 8, 2017
Australia’s ArtsHub site had a valuable piece on “diversity” efforts by arts organizations. I put diversity in quotes because the title of the article is “Diversity i…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:03PMTuesday, February 7, 2017
I was reading Peter Drucker’s Managing the Non-Profit Organization. In a chapter near the end of the book he talks about self-renewal through change of perspective using examples like …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:12PMMonday, February 6, 2017
I have served on my county library system board for over half a year now. They say public libraries aren’t relevant any more but as the title of the post suggests, if this is what the …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:48PMThursday, February 2, 2017
In my post yesterday, I quoted Matt Burriesci as he addressed how uncomfortable people feel when it comes to advocating the intangible value of the arts. We should stop being ashamed to beli…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:31AMWednesday, February 1, 2017
There has been a lot of conversation recently about what to do in light of the Trump Administration’s stated intent to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Th…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:03AMMonday, January 30, 2017
I was really grateful for Aaron Overton’s very first post on ArtsHacker last week. Aaron is a programmer with a lot of experience in website development for performing arts organizat…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:42PMWednesday, January 25, 2017
Last night I gained some additional assurances that everyone has the capacity to comprehend art at a basic level when they encounter it. Some recent university grads started a “creativ…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:36PMTuesday, January 24, 2017
Yesterday on ye olde Twitter feed came a story about how two Buffalo, NY area arts & culture funders were helping to establish an arts and culture desk at a local public radio station. I…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:24PMMonday, January 23, 2017
Since the news started going around last week that the Trump administration was looking to de-fund the NEA, NEH and PBS, there have been a ton of memes circulating quoting Winston Churchill …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:04PMFriday, January 20, 2017
Many people have horror stories about working for a supervisor that micro-manages their work. While that may be a hellish experience, it is even worse if you are the executive officer of an …
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMThursday, January 19, 2017
Back in November Slover Linett released the results of a multi-year study on creative placemaking. The study was primarily focused on the impact that music pavilion and band shells that the …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:36AMWednesday, January 18, 2017
I often talk about the difficulty people have in seeing themselves as creative or as regularly participating in a creative pursuit. I was reminded recently that it can be the off-handed depr…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:04AMMonday, January 16, 2017
A few arts organizations in my community are partnering to conduct an arts listening tour where we will go out into the community and try to get a sense of what the barriers to participation…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:31PMThursday, January 12, 2017
There is a lot of conversation in the performing arts about potential audiences not seeing themselves or their stories up on stage. If this is something that concerns you, you may want to ta…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:48AMTuesday, January 10, 2017
Somewhat apropos of yesterday’s post, Non-Profit Quarterly had a post about Phoenix Comicon’s recent decision to charge volunteers to work their convention. I am not sure this is…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:18PMMonday, January 9, 2017
The idea of mandatory national service gets bandied about a lot, especially during presidential election years. This year it seemed to pop up more frequently due to the proposals for free co…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:12PMWednesday, January 4, 2017
Here is a little topic of discussion for you– Does having a boss that is an arts industry insider make for a happier work environment than working for one that comes from outside the a…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 07:33PM 
