The ArtsMarket November Newsletter

 In this Issue…

•       The New Challenges and Opportunities for Arts in Education

•       Building Authentic Creative Economy

•       Looking for Market and AiE Research Reports?

•       Marketing Wizardry that Works

The New Challenges and Opportunities for Arts in Education

There is a new generation leading arts in education efforts.  These newcomers are stepping in to follow in the very large footsteps of the many leaders who spent the past 20 years making sure that we have state standards, assessment for learning in the arts, graduation requirements and effective local arts education partnerships.  After some difficult budget years, new pros, including educators, coordinators, artists, and planners, have stepped up to the plate.  They bring with them fresh enthusiasm and zeal for the task ahead, as well as new thinking and problem solving skills.  They need them.  Budgets have been cut to levels that are reminiscent of 10 or 15 years ago when the entire movement of planning to make the arts fundamental and basic to curriculum began its last round of intense planning and training.   In many ways, we are starting over, but thankfully, from a better place.  We have standards.  We have requirements.  We have certification.  We have research.  We have proven results.  And, we have new energy - the new generation of pros. 

Today, the entire AiE movement – it is more than a field, it is a belief and a passion – now benefits from extraordinary research that has conclusively demonstrated the impact of the arts as a learning method, a teaching tool, and a fundamental curriculum that contributes vastly to all student learning.  Professionals have the data they lacked back in the early 90s which reveals how learning in and through the arts improves test scores, student achievement, teacher capacity, and schools as a whole.   And, rather than a few voices crying out in the wilderness, AiE now benefits principals, superintendents, parents, teachers, and school communities that believe in the value of arts learning as well.

Unfortunately, in terms of funding, partnership coalitions, and capacity to deliver services, there is still a long way to go.  Schools have eliminated arts specialist positions and are increasingly seeking to make due with artist residencies to meet their state standards in each of the arts disciplines.  State Education Department administrators, rightly wanting to hold onto every art specialist position possible, do not want to place too much reliance on residencies.  Funders, wanting to see the outcome of arts learning in the schools, are pushing for innovation and solutions.  Artists and arts organizations are squeezed in between, wanting to be responsive to needs and to continue to manage their effective programs without becoming the de facto arts education provider service in their states or communities.  And, perhaps of most concern, much of the collective wisdom established and held by AiE professionals has been lost through fragmented communications, change in personnel throughout the systems, and the multiple issues that have impacted schools throughout the state. 

ArtsMarket’s President Louise Stevens recently facilitated a round table of arts education professionals called together by The Ford Family Foundation of Roseburg, Oregon to examine these problems.  The discussion included funders – the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Department of Education, representatives from a number of leading foundations, regional arts education coordinators, classroom teachers, artists who conduct residencies, and representatives of statewide arts education organizations including the Oregon Alliance for Arts Education and Young Audiences.  Here are a few of the highlights from the discussion between these professionals:

•       Building on the accomplishments of the past 20 plus years, there is new opportunity ahead, despite major budgetary issues.  There is funding to support arts in education, but from increasingly unlikely sources such as funding for technology learning, underserved and rural schools, science and literacy.   New energy is needed to link these funding sources to would-be applicants.

•       Communication, history, databases, and infrastructure: all need massive, new investment to ensure that arts education resources are wisely utilized and well targeted to meet needs.  As the delivery system for arts education continues to diversify, the need for systems grows even larger. 

•       While we have established many important benchmarks for quality arts education, the field needs to be practical in problem solving so that students actually receive the arts in their schools, given today’s economic climate.   Flexibility and creative approaches to strengthening the impact of every arts experience and partnership are as important as setting standards for quality.

•       New materials are needed to guide the field.  Much of what has been written over the past 20 years, from guidelines and criteria for excellent residencies to primers in community-based planning and partnership development needs to be re-released, refreshed, and made available.

•       New plans and goals need to be set to guide the next decade of efforts to broaden the access of quality arts education in and out of schools, delivered through specialists, classroom educators, artists and arts organizations. 

Do we really need to plan, again?  Yes.  Planning guides priorities, and focuses on the most important solutions.  Today, the dialogue has to be about effective and efficient infrastructure and delivery systems.  All providers and experiences –in-school curriculum learning through specialists and classroom educators, field trips, short term in-school events, longer residencies, organizational partnerships with schools, teacher institutes, after school/out of school programs, youth at risk programs – need to be seen as essential to the new delivery plans.   The skills, content, and service providers are all out there.  To most effectively link them and the arts learning they deliver to students, retooling and updating responsibilities and division of labor may be required.  It may mean imbedding data collection and management within coordinating agencies in a manner that makes information sharing much easier than in the past.  It may mean customizing arts education solutions – year and multi-year long solutions – for each school, based on its needs. 

There is more.  Advocacy needs to start a new chapter as well.  Though there has been much progress in making the case for arts education, there is still a long way to go.  

The impact of the arts on student learning must return to high visibility, national level dialogue, across for-profit and nonprofit sectors.  At the same time as the field builds a new delivery infrastructure to reach each child and adult, it needs to invigorate and involve those industries and agencies that, while embattled and hindered by massive financial losses, understand that without their leadership, every child will lose.  It is time to take a new, long view of the next ten and 20 years, and build a new public value for arts as a way of learning, teaching, and living.

Building Authentic Creative Economy

ArtsMarket recently bid on – and lost, darn it – a project from a downtown business association in a large Midwest city that was looking to research and develop a major entertainment destination that would attract cultural tourists within a 120-mile radius.    We learned something valuable from the subsequent exchange we had with the agency that led the proposal, and it is cautionary to all who care about culture and creativity as real and well supported community assets, rather than just the new hip idea for quick economic fixes.  

•       The city in question wants a destination that will attract at least 500,000 visitors per year, and already has in mind that such a destination will only require about $350,000 a year to operate, based on what developers have told city leaders.   

•       It wants something that has a veneer of culture, but could provide any kind of “family entertainment.” 

•       It wants it to be self-sustaining. 

•       It wants it to be the foundation for branding the city.

•       It wants the entire surrounding neighborhood to become culturally “cool” as a result.

One tall order.    

In our proposal, we wrote about the fact that culture, first and foremost, must be authentic and intensely real, unique and meaningful to that place, with local sensibility and self.  It requires more than slapping down an IMAX theater in a downtown mall.   (In fact, put an IMAX next to regular multiplex theatres, as was done in the Newport Landing Mall right across the river from downtown Cincinnati, and the IMAX went out of business.  Put too many IMAX in the same market, as is now the case in the Boston-Providence market where the latest is attached to an experience-heavy furniture store, and museum-based IMAX visitation drops.)  We also noted that achieving and sustaining 500,000 visits per year is something that even the top family destinations and museums – including quite a few amusement parks – only dream of.  Doing this right is an investment in long-term cultural and economic development, not a quick fix, and it deserves and requires the same kind of infrastructure investment as a municipality puts into other major developments.  It needs market feasibility testing and refinement, as well as a substantial upfront investment in planning and development before jumping into construction plans.   It needs a real budget, with sustained investment to reap rewards.

Simply constructing a building and naming it “culture” does not work.  Cities need to examine cultural development opportunities deeply and wisely, and build upon what will work locally.  Then, they need to sustain and support their development in order to see the return that can come from the investment.  These returns are in the form of increased tax revenues, increased value in adjacent properties, increased desirability of the community as a center for new industry and business, and as a hub for new residents.

To ensure success in cultural development as an economic engine, planners need to ask:

•       What is the authentic cultural value in this community, in this region?

•       What really focuses community pride and effort? 

•       What is meant by “family-centered entertainment”, if we value family interaction and want to use such a destination to improve quality of life for our residents?  What will speak to the unique assets of the community – the skills, knowledge base, history, meaning – in the same way that economic development officials have long asked what kinds of industry will speak to the area values and job force? 

•       What will bring value added – service and quality enhancement to education, and to life long involvement? 

•       What will work as a true economic engine, driving new dollars into the local economy rather than merely re-circulating existing dollars? 

•       What will give the community a new self-identity, as well as a new image, to engage and win new business, residents, and visitors?

•       What market will sustain the development and be grown through the development?

•       What makes a viable business model?

•       What will be the return on investment, and how long will investment be required to realize results?

•       What will endure?

The creative economy is not a quick fix, but a true and lasting opportunity.  It is our challenge to planners.  Do not jump into a development concept without thorough assessment and solid operating plans.  Plan for decades and for the uniqueness of your community.  Invest and support, sustain and grow your vision of cultural development.   Be smart about the investment it will really take, and recognize that the economic returns will then be lasting and significant.  If done right, the creative economy does work.     

Looking for Market Research and AiE Reports?

Are you wondering if your organization has ever commissioned and used research to guide audience development, program development, or arts in education?  Chances are, if you are on this email list, ArtsMarket has provided your organization or community with resources!  We recently conducted a bit of research and contacted some of you with whom we have worked over the past five years.  Many executive directors, marketing directors, and AiE staff are new.  Many of the reports we have prepared for our clients have vanished from their files.  We can help. 

Marketing Wizardry

We recently met with a long-term client to discuss direct marketing.  Does direct marketing work?  Grandly.  But the arts field chronically under-invests in it.  Too many organizations prospect only a fraction of the households they should, and they do it rarely.  We have found that the majority of arts organizations in the US, in fact, only prospect their existing house lists and other known lists they may swap or borrow. 

Fresh prospecting to significant numbers of qualified arts attending households can win as high as a 5 percent return on the mailing.  That is using highly qualified lists - a great direct mail tool - and reinforcing the prospecting with a couple of repeat mailings, and good web and media support. 

We build highly qualified lists based on the desired target audience.  Rather than simply using a single, standard list offered by a broker, we may overlay three or four different lists to derive a truly strong, focused list based on arts and entertainment attendance, lifestyle, location, demographics, and so on.  Then, we urge our clients to mail in significant number.  A mailing of 5,000 limits not only the number of likely responses, but the buzz and overall impact that a larger mailing creates.  Large mailings create and reinforce brand image, prominence in the market, and the organization’s cache and appeal.  Think 50,000, 100,000, or 150,000 pieces depending on your market size.  Think saturation mailing to all qualified leads.  Remember, your cost per thousand in printing decreased considerably with volume.  And, calculate a 2 percent, 3 percent or even a 5 percent return, and you will see how quickly you can pay for the larger marketing reach.

Are we crazy to project such high returns?  No, not if your organization couples outstanding prospecting with the benefits of smart mail.  Do not just send a “The 2004 Symphony Season” brochure. Send a “Welcome, Sarah!  Join us as a first time subscriber.”  Technology exists to personalize every brochure, every letter.  To match the right offer to the right customer.