Sometimes all you have to do to is ask

By Ian David Moss | Published: May 5th, 2010

Image by Nikita Kashner, Creative Commons license

So last week, I tried a little experiment. I’ve been wondering for a while what to do about my weekly series “Around the Horn.” It’s the only thing I write for Createquity that’s on a timed schedule (every Monday), and as I’ve cut back my level of writing somewhat due to my new job, I found myself questioning the future of the series. After all, the Around the Horn posts never seem to go anywhere after I write them, and I rarely get any kind of feedback in the form of comments or other reactions, so it was natural of me to wonder whether they were having any impact. So I decided I’d ask readers directly.

As I was putting the question to readers in my weekly missive, I came up with the idea of giving people a more formal way to respond than by just leaving a comment. And while I was at it, I figured I’d make it into a broader questionnaire about a number of issues I’d been wondering about with respect to the blog.  All told, I got 85 responses, which is about a 12-13% response rate depending on how many regular readers there are who are not formally subscribed to this blog’s feed. Respectable for an online poll – probably not a random sample, but I figure that’s okay since (a) I’m more interested in broad strokes of reader opinion than the exact numbers; and (b) the primary bias one would expect is that people who responded are more likely to care a lot about the site, and I’m more interested in their opinions anyway. (Sorry, anyone else who’s reading this…what can I say, you had your chance!)

Before I get into the numbers and the details, I want to offer a few topline takeaways I had from the process itself.

  • This was the best idea I’ve had in a long time. Some of my good ideas take months to marinate in my head before they’re ready. This one, from coming up with the idea for the survey, to designing it in Google Forms, to finishing the post with the link to the published survey, came to fruition on a single Sunday evening. I think every blogger who’s serious about their craft should consider doing a reader poll like this one. I got so much valuable insight into readers’ thoughts that I never would have unearthed otherwise. And all I had to do was ask.
  • Don’t use Google Forms for your polls. I mean, sure, it’s neat, and it’s a useful tool for other purposes (like Createquity Tipster). But Forms offers little of the analytical capability that comes with other survey sites like Qualtrics or even Surveymonkey. And at least in my survey, it’s tallying the responses to one of the questions blatantly incorrectly.
  • “Other” is your friend. It doesn’t always result in the friendliest data, but qualitative responses add incomparable richness to survey results, and if you don’t give people a chance to share them you’ll miss out on a lot.

In fact, doing this survey was actually kind of therapeutic for me because of the completely amazing comments that people left. Here were some of my favorites:

This is the internet as it should be. Keep up the good work. I’m a newly-minted cultural industry consultant (and before that the exec director of a performing arts festival and ensemble-based experimental theatre company in Canada for eleven years). It’s things like Createquity that create a sense of substance, thoughtfulness and interconnectedness to our ‘sector’.

I only discovered Createquity in the last month, yet I already highly recommend and praise it to others. Not sure if my feedback is as important as the thoughts of a longtime reader, but it’s my lunch break and I’m devoting it to this survey regardless. [Wow! Eight more paragraphs of comment follow, including this:] Because of “Around the Horn” I have followed several links to incredibly helpful sources, news, and research. For example, this week’s link to the Kresge Foundation’s new Institutional Capitalization grant program was exactly something my organization was seeking…and you are the reason I got brownie points for bringing this to my higher up’s attention.

You and Paul Krugman (NYT) are my favorite feeds. [Holy crap! -IDM] I’m attending business school next fall, but plan to remain in the arts/nonprofit sector after graduating.  I find that your blog validates my own interests.  Your posts are not only professional and well-researched, but also full of personality and opinion.

I was going to put “never read anything by you again” but wasn’t sure you’d appreciate the joke.  ;-) -dad

So aside from finding out that I made somebody look good at work (sweet!), what else did I get from the results? Well, quite a bit actually.

I learned that most people don’t mind when I cross-post content here that I’ve written for other sites. Over 90% of people who responded to this question told me that they either didn’t care or hadn’t noticed when I do this.  A small minority said it bothered them a little, and only one person asked me to stop – and since that person said they don’t enjoy any of the content here, I’m not exactly sure why they’re reading me at all. This is good news for me since I am getting more offers to guest-blog for various one-off salons, online panel discussions, etc., and it’s great when that content can do double-duty.

I learned that people want more coverage of arts research on the site. Unlike non-arts philanthropy and economics, of which most people said the level of coverage was about right, 35 respondents wanted to see more arts research items as compared with only three who wanted to see less. This is interesting to me because when I asked about the Arts Policy Library, which is the Createquity feature that deals most directly with arts research, a number of people responded that they don’t read it. I also got a few admonitions to keep my posts short, which the APL essays most certainly aren’t. So I’m interested to know what people mean, or thought I meant, when they said they wanted more arts research coverage. Is it just keeping on top of newly published studies, reports, etc.? Or do you all want more of a synthesis, a meta-level guide to what’s out there? In any case, it’s good to know that this is a niche with, apparently, some unmet demand.

I learned that my current posting schedule is in line with people’s preferences. There was a considerable range on this question, but the average response was about twice a week, so that works out well. I think I can do that pretty sustainably.

I learned that a majority of readers want to see more state and local arts policy coverage. This was the most popular of the new ideas with 58% in support, followed by interviews at 44%, and international coverage at 36%. Only 28% want to see more posts by guest authors.

And finally, I learned that Around the Horn is actually the most popular recurring feature on the site. Out of 84 respondents, only one said they didn’t like it, and another nine said they don’t read it. That leaves a whopping 88% who gave it the thumbs up, more than the 70% who like the Arts Policy Library, 76% who enjoy New Blogs, and 63% who heart the conference live-blogging and wrap-ups. (Not surprisingly, my attempts to unload my own music upon an unsuspecting readership garnered the lowest marks, at 32%. Too bad guys, it ain’t lettin’ up anytime soon.)

And therein lies my dilemma. When asked for suggestions for Around the Horn, a majority of you, 54%, wanted me to “keep it going as is.” No one said I should dump it. Yet I realized after I did the poll that the reason I asked what to do about Around the Horn in the first place is because I feel keeping it as is is simply not an option. To be blunt about it, I don’t want half of all of my posts for Createquity to be link round-ups. It only serves to put ideas that have been smoldering in my head on a further back burner, and puts me in what I feel is a reactive stance relative to whatever conversations other people are having instead of giving me an opportunity to help move those conversations forward by generating fully original content. If I still harbored ambitions to write for Createquity every day, as I once did, I wouldn’t mind at all continuing Around the Horn the way it is. But for right now, I just don’t think that’s going to be realistic.

So what to do? Obviously, ATH fulfills a need out there. It’s not about the aggregation, it seems; many of you wrote eloquently that you enjoy my commentary and editorial selections, and wouldn’t want it to become just another link list or Twitter feed. So what I’m going to try to do is give you what you want in a way that works better for me. I’m not sure yet exactly what that way is going to be, as I think it’s going to take some trial and error. But I’m thinking I will probably experiment with several of these strategies and see what works:

  • I’m going to liberate Around the Horn from its weekly rotation. I think at least half of my stress around ATH is simply the deadline, the feeling that I HAVE to keep it up no matter what. I’m going to try loosening up the schedule a bit and posting the round-ups whenever it seems appropriate and I have time. Hopefully that will help.
  • I’m going to try to write more short posts reacting to items I read in the meantime. Since a number of people noted that it’s my commentary that they liked most about ATH, I will try to expand that a little and be more selective and purposeful about it. In the meantime, I will try to funnel stories and posts that I find notable but don’t have much to say about to Twitter, which is clearly built for that sort of thing, with possible re-posting to the blog.
  • I’m going to experiment with crowdsourcing it — eventually. I think realistically it’s going to take a while to get enough of the right contributors on board to entrust a shared approach to ATH. If you’re interested in working on this with me, do get in touch; but for the rest of you, it’s probably going to continue to be a solo effort for the immediate future.

Anyway, look at that, it’s been another super-long post from Createquity – and this one was all meta, even! But seriously, thank you all so much for your support – it means the world to me to know that I’ve helped to make a difference in some of your lives with my writing, and I hope to continue to do so for a long time to come.

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Want to work with me this summer or fall?

By Ian David Moss | Published: May 4th, 2010

My employer, Fractured Atlas, is hiring cultural and technology research interns.

We’re looking for a few individuals with a background or interest in the arts who are prepared to merge for-profit business acumen with non-profit ideals.  These interns will work under the guidance of the senior staff to craft comprehensive business plans and software development functional specification documents that include financial projections, marketing strategies, growth targets, and service portfolio changes.

From the job description:

Fractured Atlas is seeking interns to help produce business plans for several of our programs and technology initiatives. Interns will work in teams and be assigned to a single program or initiative (e.g. open-source software, cultural asset mapping, healthcare, fiscal sponsorship, etc.)…Since you will be called upon to craft a holistic plan, you should be comfortable with, at the very least: business-level strategy, corporate finance/budgeting, project management and marketing. These positions will require stellar interviewing skills, a knack for researching, the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things, and a talent for breaking complex concepts into easy-to-understand language…The position also requires a high degree of professionalism and poise, as interns will be interviewing high-level
“movers-and-shakers” in the cultural and technology sector.
Full application details are available at the above link.
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Around the horn: cliffhanger edition

By Ian David Moss | Published: May 3rd, 2010

Thank you to everyone who filled out the Createquity satisfaction survey last week. I’m still going through the results, but will have a wrap-up for you soon as well as a summary of what I’ve decided to do with what I’ve learned. In the meantime, it’s one more week of business as usual for Around the horn:

  • I’m not the only one who has survey results to report. Last week, the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Council released the findings from last year’s survey of emerging leaders in the arts. (Here’s the executive summary.) Despite the high value that emerging leaders place on professional development, only 31% report that there is a line item in their organization’s budget for professional development activities – despite the fact that more than half work for an organization with a budget of $1 million or more. You don’t need Michael Kaiser to tell you that trained arts professionals are critical to organizations’ survival in a tough economy.
  • Did you hear about this crazy scheme on the part of the Los Angeles mayor to rescind already-granted city funds to arts organizations so that he could give them to six hand-picked recipients instead? At least it looks like he’s backing down now.
  • Another conversation that’s been going around the web lately is a debate about whether video games are art, kicked off by a Roger Ebert broadside taking the opposing position. I’ll hold off on an extended response for now, but I did enjoy this riposte by Lore Sjöberg on wired.com, in particular the following observation:

    • Ultimately, what’s generally considered True Art by academics and critics is a simple matter of the age of the creation.

    Let’s examine:

    0 to 25 years old: Almost nothing is true art. Certainly nothing common or popular. Art is created by a few geniuses denied popular acclaim by their own uncompromising vision.

    25 to 100 years old: Not everything is art, but a lot is, even some of the popular stuff. At the time, people thought they were just enjoying something fun and entertaining, but actually they were in the presence of true brilliance.

    100 to 2,000 years old: Any creative work made by anyone is worth investigation, preservation and in-depth academic criticism. Every painting, poem and rustic folk song is indicative of the ineffable zeitgeist of the cultural disposition. People were surrounded by art all the time and didn’t even realize it.

    2,000 to 30,000 years old: Everything is art. Not just words and pictures, but pottery and baskets and huts. Even if they just wanted to make something to boil the tannins out of their acorns, these artists were actually participating in an age-old ritual where the creative soul and utilitarian necessity united into a singular expression of their culture’s unique viewpoint. And if they scratched a little picture into the rock that meant “stand here to watch the women bathe without them seeing you,” they were the Michelangelo of their time.

  • Meant to put this in last week, but the Berkshire (MA) Creative Economy Council is part of a new strategic alliance with the Berkshire Chamber of Commerce, Berkshire Economic Development Corporation, and the Berkshire Convention and Visitors Bureau. This is a region that is serious about its creative economy.
  • As many as one-fourth of all nonprofits could lose tax exemption in May because organizations with budgets of less than $25,000 a year are now required to file with the IRS every year. It’s not actually as bad as it sounds. There are a lot of long-dead nonprofits out there who have never filed the paperwork to make it official – one of the downsides of an organizational form designed for perpetuity in a fast-changing world. But if you know anyone who has a small nonprofit but doesn’t regularly read the internet, you might want to make sure they know about this.
  • Speaking of taxes, did you know that Mexican artists can pay them in art? Michael Rushton says it’s bad policy though. For similar reasons, Holden Karnofsky makes a compelling case to donate cash to charity instead of stuff.
  • Great commentary from the Council on Foundations annual conference about the lack of artists at the table in mainstream philanthropy. I couldn’t have written it better.
  • Can’t wait for this feature from the Center for Effective Philanthropy on five of the best program officers in the country.
  • Wow, everybody’s getting into the flashmob thing now. How long until these become passé? (And here’s another question: does an arts institution’s entry into a grassroots trend artificially hasten its demise?)
  • Boo on Google for holding ArtsJournal hostage with its horrible customer service last week. As Andrew Taylor points out, if you want to control the infrastructure you gotta be willing to look after it.
  • This blog, Geocities-style. (Thanks Rob!)
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Flashback: Drum Cells

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 30th, 2010

Since a lot of people taking the survey didn’t know what the “Flashback series” was, here’s a little refresher: every so often, I like to post an audio clip here to remind people (and myself, I suppose) that I once was and may be again a composer of musical compositions and impresario of artistic endeavors. It’s terribly self-indulgent, I know, but I pay $10 a month for the privilege of putting whatever I want on the Internet and by gum I’m gonna take advantage!

(Speaking of which, if you haven’t filled out the survey yet – COUGHprocrastinatorCOUGH – you’re almost out of time. I’m closing this baby down at the end of the day Friday, so if you want your voice heard, you better click this here link now. Nearly 80 people have already chimed in – can we push it past 100?)

OK, back to the music. Way back when I was a senior in college, I composed a piece for our all-night new music marathon concert almost as a lark. It was easy to write and I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in retrospect it marked an important creative turning point for me. It was my first (completed) composition for what was, essentially, a rock ensemble: electric guitar, bass, saxophone, drums, and voice. Rather than a typical linear composition, the piece consisted of measure-long fragments that were to be repeated by each performer according to the performer’s discretion. In this way, it was rather like Terry Riley’s In C (which we also performed later that evening, or to be exact, the following morning as the sun came up), except that each instrument has different material and the “cells” don’t need to be played in order after the first one. Nevertheless, there’s a fairly long list of rules governing what’s played when, resulting in a performance that is similar every time but never the same.

excerpt of Drum Cells (2002-03), guitar part

When I graduated from college and moved to Philadelphia, I ended up falling in with a group of jazz musicians who were part of a collective called Risk Taking Type Music. They had monthly performances at the High Wire Gallery in Old City at which your $6 cover charge included a complimentary beer. I think those concerts are really what kindled my love for underground creative improvisation. They were so informal and friendly and yet the music was so good. Or if was ever not good, at least it was always different. Anyway, at the end of that year, a local band called the Way Blue Bucket joined by a friend of mine on electric bass gave the first public, non-university performance of one of my compositions. I contributed improvised, wordless vocals that were run through a series of effects processors. It was a strange day, as I found out literally as I was on my way to the concert that a very close friend’s father had just passed away suddenly. Nevertheless, it’s still my favorite live performance of this piece. The section starting at around 12:45 or so might be some of the best music I’ve ever created.

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When I got to New York the following autumn, I decided to put together my own band, and Drum Cells was the first piece we learned to play. Here we are on our debut album, a second guitar added to the mix. This recording is an amalgamation of two different improvisatory sessions held together by the fast middle section, which required multiple takes.

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You can hear the difference; it’s a little more studied this time, with some of the rough edges smoothed out but on the whole more contained. It’s almost like the piece got older with me.

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Do you want this guy on your filmmaking grant panel?

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 28th, 2010

I think you do. Per the New York Times, a grocery store clerk in Austin has watched more movies than you ever will:

But Mr. Bourland, 58, has spent nearly a decade on a monumental task that he hopes will make his a name to remember in the world of movies. He has ranked the greatest films of the 20th century. Sure, the American Film Institute and endless others have generated Top 10 or 100 Greatest lists. But Mr. Bourland goes them — well, one better isn’t even close. He has ranked the 20th century’s 9,200 greatest movies, watching more than 7,000 of them in the process.

Holy cheez-its. I don’t know about you, but according to my Netflix movie rating history, I’ve watched a few hundred movies in 30 years. I would need to watch basically a movie every other day for the next 28 to catch up with Bourland. Which brings me to this question: how many professional movie critics have seen as many movies as he has?

One of the core debates that always pops up around the arts is whether they deserve to be subsidized at all, since there are plenty of things whose worth we are content to let the commercial market decide. The oft-cited rationale for subsidizing art, of course, is that there’s something special about art that isn’t captured by the market. In making that argument, we are essentially claiming that the market–i.e. the masses, broadly defined–isn’t qualified to judge whether something is worthy of support in the present and, by extension, preservation for posterity. But who is qualified? The only reasonable criterion I can think of to distinguish someone who deserves a greater say over another in determining whether a piece of art lives or dies is whether that person is well-informed about the art’s context. Or to put it another way, the special-ness about a work of art lives in its uniqueness, its individual character – does it say something that hasn’t been said before, or in quite the same context, or to quite the same audience? And the only people who really can know whether something is unique or not are people who know that art form backwards and forwards. Which means we’re talking critics, curators, artistic advisors, literary managers, program officers, etc.–and super-fans like this guy.

Shouldn’t we start taking people in that last category seriously?

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Createquity satisfaction survey

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 27th, 2010

So, in case you missed it because you’re a skimmer (I know your type!), buried in the last post I announced a survey of Createquity readers. Some twenty-five people have filled it out already, and I am immensely grateful for their feedback. Would you do me a favor and join them? Feedburner tells me I have 636 subscribers as of today, so I’d like to get a minimum of 60 responses (and preferably more like 100) before the end of the week. I promise it won’t take you more than three minutes. (Okay, maybe five if you write a lot of comments.)

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Around the horn: Around the horn edition

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 25th, 2010

Sorry about the light posting lately – I was traveling last week for work and “Around the horn” is about all I have time to write on weeks like that. Which brings me to a question for you all. About a year ago, when this blog had many fewer readers, I asked about whether the “Around the horn” format was working for you. I didn’t get an overwhelming response, but the feedback was positive enough that I decided to keep at it. The reason I asked in the first place was because Around the horn posts almost never attract significant reader traffic, a trend that has continued into this year. The case for discontinuing the series rests on that, plus the 2-4+ hours of time that they invariably take to pull together (arguably preventing me from developing more interesting content), plus the fact that I’m certainly not the only blogger out there to offer regular link roundups. On the other hand, they do ensure that I post on a regular schedule, and it’s helpful for my own self-discipline to ensure that I actually read or at least skim the dozens of interesting articles that come my way each week.

Last year, when I was unemployed/consulting and considered this blog part of my “work,” it made sense for me to push as much content out there as possible, so Around the horn stayed. Now, though, I have a full-time job and I need to be strategic about the time I devote to Createquity. So, how about it, readers? Given everything I’ve said above, should Around the horn continue or not?

Actually, it doesn’t have to be quite that black and white. In addition to keeping up the status quo and discontinuing the series entirely, I could also explore the following alternatives:

  • Move it to Twitter. This was my original suggestion, and currently my Twitter feed is rather underutilized. It’d certainly be more efficient, but you’d lose the commentary, and I know not everyone’s on Twitter (though I could loop it into a sidebar on the blog easily enough).
  • Crowdsource it. This may be the ideal scenario, but I’m not sure whether it would work in practice. Part of the reason why I made the Createquity Tipster form and spreadsheet was so that something like this, a weekly feature co-authored by several contributors, could be an option. But it’s going to require interested and committed web-scourers or else it will just end up going back to the status quo. Anyway, if you think you might be up for something like this, would you let me know?
  • Slice and dice it. Maybe I just need to be more selective about and/or split up what gets included in Around the horn. For example, since Createquity specializes in research, I could do an occasional (i.e., not weekly) research round-up. Or I could focus exclusively on news that affects the arts sector. I kind of liked the topical structure I experimented with in this post, did you?

So here’s your chance to tell me what you want. In fact, I’ll make it easy for you: just take this quick survey, and tell me your thoughts not just on this issue, but on how things are going in general. I can’t wait for your response!

Oh, and since it’s that time of the week again:

  • Following the news from last week about the possible elimination of the Georgia Council for the Arts, a protest from arts groups around the state led to a Georgia Senate committee restoring almost $900,000 to the council’s budget. While this is obviously an improvement and has been hailed as good news, let’s not lose sight of the fact that (a) this actually represents a likely upper bound on state arts funding, since the House version of the budget still doesn’t contain any money for the council, the Senate bill has yet to pass the full chamber, and the whole thing faces a Republican governor with a line-item veto at the end; (b) even if this passes, it’s still nearly a two-thirds cut from this year; and (c) Georgia is the ninth-most populous state in the union, meaning that the best possible outcome would take its level of state arts support to almost California-level patheticness.
  • Georgia wasn’t the only place where the jaws of life were employed recently: Bloomberg reports that the Harlem School of the Arts has received a $1 million infusion of foundation money that will allow it to stay open through the summer. The HSA also has a new board after all previous members stepped down this week. The donations and board changes were engineered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin. We’ll see if this crew comes out with a better result than last time.
  • Holy moly: foundation grantmaking went down by 8.4% in 2009. Take out the Gates Foundation and the numbers look even worse.
  • I wish we saw more of this: a foundation CEO giving an insider’s account of its own Board-level strategy meetings. Meanwhile, the Kresge Foundation has announced a new strategy for its nationwide arts and culture program focusing on community revitalization through the arts, support services and institutional capitalization.
  • Get ready for another gigantic foundation on the horizon. Good news: this one will support the arts.
  • Sounds like the L3C supporters’ utopian vision of a red-tape-free legal form for social enterprise is about to be put to the test. Meanwhile, another hybrid organization type is on the loose in Maryland.
  • Some inside dish on the Grantsfire project and what it might mean for the future of grant reporting.
  • Your weekly Richard Florida (and Charlotta Mellander and Kevin Stolarick) publication is out. This one tackles music clusters in the United States.
  • A new report is being billed as “the most significant compilation of evidence-based dance research ever undertaken” in England. (h/t LabforCulture)
  • Tom Borrup on DIY Culture in Silicon Valley.
  • Nice personal recap of Arts Advocacy Day from TCG’s Alissa Moore.
  • RIP Alan Rich. And speaking of rich, the arts’ ultra-rich are now slightly less so.
  • I thought this video was pretty effective. People have chimed in to say that it’s not that big a deal, but still…lining up at 1am in the cold for an open-call audition? You gotta admit that’s a little nuts.
  • Congrats are in order to Createquity super-commenter Ann Sachs for being one of the honorees at the annual Ensemble Studio Theatre Gala, and to Isaac on the new look.
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Live Place + Displaced webcast today

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 24th, 2010

This afternoon from 2-4pm, I’ll be participating in the webcast of a conversation about community change in Long Island City as part of Fractured Atlas’s Place + Displaced program. Place + Displaced is a community cultural mapping and civic participation project that is engaging with several New York City neighborhoods in different stages of gentrification. You may recall that a couple of other events I’ve attended since I started writing this blog have tackled similar issues, and not coincidentally both had the Fractured Atlas name attached to them. This time, you can be (almost) there too, by following along with Fractured Atlas’s Ustream page. If you’re in NYC yourself, you can always stop by the actual in-person event (how last decade!), which is taking place at the Irish Center at 10-40 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City.

UPDATE: Here’s the embedded stream.

Streaming .TV shows by Ustream

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Around the horn: Volcanic eruption edition

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 19th, 2010

Whew! That’s a little better – things seem to be quieting down to normal after a frenetic first part of the week. I’m also happy to see that people are using the Createquity Tipster form now. Just a reminder – in case you haven’t been following for that long, I rarely write about actual arts events here (like concerts, plays, etc.), so if you submit press releases for them they probably will get deleted. I know, it sucks, but that’s not really what this blog is about so I have to draw the line somewhere.

Anyway, here’s some other stuff you might find interesting:

  • Judith Dobrzynski reports on a Nonprofit Finance Fund survey of, uh, nonprofits’ finances, and helpfully obtains the arts-specific numbers. A big theme? Nonprofits leaders want to engage their boards more fully and need help doing so.
  • The Art Works blog has an interview with the NEA’s new Design Director, Jason Schupbach.
  • Looks like the next big state arts funding battle will be fought in Georgia, where the House of Representatives has passed a budget that would eliminate the Georgia Council on the Arts.
  • The Vermont Supreme Court is investigating whether artist residency centers need to pay property tax. [h/t Jill Leininger]
  • This event looks pretty cool: a talk with Leslie Koch about Governor’s Island, “New York City’s New Playground for the Arts.”
  • Condescending headline aside, this article offers a good wrap-up of Arts Advocacy Day on the Hill.
  • Creative Roanoke? Meet Create Denver.
  • The second issue of an online magazine called The Arts Politic has been released. This issue’s theme is “Bias” and features an article by 20UNDER40′s Edward Clapp.
  • TechSoup Global and Guidestar International (not the US-based GuideStar, but related) to merge.
  • Marc van Bree writes on the future of arts marketing for Take a Friend to the Orchestra month.
  • Nice visualization of composers’ influences and teachers from the UK.
  • Lady Gaga continues to take over the world. [h/t Richard]
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Am I going to have to do these twice a week now?

By Ian David Moss | Published: April 14th, 2010

I really hope not, because otherwise this site will start to become very boring. But sweet Jesus, there is so much going on this week that if I wait until Sunday to blog it all out for you I fear it will be next Sunday before I’m done. Let’s hope things start to quiet down after this, for my own sanity at any rate!

First off, lots of musical chairs among the nonprofit arts sector’s power elite this week:

  • Perhaps the biggest news (though really, it’s all pretty big) is that the NEA has hired Jason Schupbach away from the Massachusetts Office of Business Development to be its new Design Director. Jason was the first person in history to hold a position in a statewide economic development office specifically oriented toward creative industries. Now, he’s going to be heading up the Mayor’s Institute on City Design grant program and the new Our Town initiative (assuming the latter gets approved by Congress), in addition to the NEA’s other design programming. Great for the NEA (though Judith Dobrzynski thinks this is a sign that the NEA is getting too “commercial”; I disagree), but one wonders what this means for the future of the position in Massachusetts. (If I were a real journalist, I would call and find out, but as it is you’ll have to be satisfied with idle speculation.)
  • The Knight Foundation is creating a new nationwide arts initiative, and has promoted Dennis Scholl from Miami Program Director to lead it as Vice President. Scholl is an art collector and former lawyer and winemaker.
  • Two high-profile grantmakers are actually leaving philanthropy to work at arts organizations. Claudine Brown, director of the arts and culture program for the Nathan Cummings Foundation in New York City, will become the Smithsonian’s education director in June. And John Killacky, a familiar figure for years on the West Coast as arts program officer for the San Francisco Foundation and before that head of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is moving to (quite literally) a completely different environment to take the reins of the Flynn Performing Arts Center in Brrrrlington, Vermont.
  • This one’s not a person on the move, but an organization: Grantsfire, an innovative project that developed a protocol for the automatic, real-time publication of grants data, is becoming a project of the Foundation Center. This should greatly expand the potential reach of the technology, which previously had attracted only a handful of big foundations.

Second, cool projects, data, and visualizations to geek out on:

  • FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who is pretty much my idol (seriously, it’s just not fair for someone to be that smart), has published the results of his data-based inquiry into New York’s most “livable” neighborhoods. Of course, people have seized upon the rankings, but if you actually play with the little widget they provide you’ll see that actually the top neighborhoods are separated by so little that one’s individual preferences can make quite a difference. Nate gives some additional insight on his blog. (See this post too.)
  • Theatre Bay Area’s Clay Lord spills the beans on a major, nearly half-million-dollar new research initiative evaluating the intrinsic/emotional impact of theatrical performances on audiences in six cities around the country during the 2010-11 season. The research, which will be conducted by WolfBrown, builds on Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak-Leonard’s groundbreaking study of major university performing arts centers from a couple of years ago.
  • Clay’s post was prompted by a new study out from across the pond that also looks at intrinsic impact on theatrical performances. This one uses pentagons to visualize data, and is therefore extra-awesome.
  • Kevin Bolduc reports on the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s new Donor Perception Reports, and the first community foundation to release its results publicly: the Napa Valley Community Foundation.
  • And we have another new paper from Richard Florida. Seriously, this is like one a week now. Doesn’t this guy have to teach and stuff?
  • Did you know estate taxes account for only about 1% of total tax revenue in this country? I didn’t.
  • A new book and slide presentation from Beth Kanter and Allison Fine.
  • Devon re-imagines the social media course curriculum.
  • Music royalties in various media, visualized.

Third, thought-provoking commentary as always:

  • Sean at Tactical Philanthropy has organized a blog team around the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference. Lots of great stuff, but two particularly good ones are these from Phil Buchanan and Clara Miller.
  • Gary Steuer’s fantastic wrap-up of Arts Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill and his Mayor’s testimony before Congress. Gary also weighs in on retired Brigadier General Nolan Bivens’s testimony on the arts and national security. I love Gary’s writing; it’s so lucid and easy to follow without sacrificing any substance. Kudos!
  • Amelia Northrup on how you can be an arts advocate.
  • I wouldn’t be surprised if Suzanne Lainson spent 10,000 hours writing this freakin’ post, but if you’re wondering where it’s all going, here: “The 10,000 hours concept, while useful in stressing the importance of hard work to success, seems most applicable in fields where achievements are already well-defined….But for future innovations, you might be better served by drawing upon a mixture of skills that you acquired from broad-based learning. You might invent something new because you pull together ideas and skills in unusual ways rather than practicing what is well-estab[l]ished.”
  • Arlene Goldbard on why community arts practitioners need to be identified as having “real” jobs in the jobs bill.
  • Michael Kaiser on Baumol and Bowen’s lessons for today. (B&B is next on the list for the Arts Policy Library treatment, FYI.)
  • Charles McNulty on having his committee’s recommendations overruled by the Pulitzer board.
  • Does the Mideast peace process need a three-state solution?
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