Arts as a way to attract tourists

This article mentions a number of ways Vancouver artists groups are trying to boost the city's arts visibility among tourists.

Arts Features | Artists court tourist dollars | Straight.com Vancouver, 6/21/07: Sarah Kirby Yung, director of marketing and corporate sponsorship with Tourism Vancouver, insists that's happening. "It [culture] is a very important part of selling the destination," she says. For the past five years, she notes, Tourism Vancouver has operated Tickets Tonight, a community box office that offers half-price, day-of tickets. The agency also offers a variety of packages to visitors that can include discount tickets to cultural events in the city. Organizations have to sign on to be involved in those promotions, and a Tourism Vancouver membership is required to get in on the agency's direct-to-consumer marketing. That involves a fee, but Kirby Yung says the agency does not publicize its membership rates....

With his limited marketing budget, [Howard Jang, general manager of the Arts Club Theatre] has had to be resourceful in attracting visitors. For example, the Arts Club operates a concierge program with 78 local hotels: in exchange for directing visitors to performances at the theatre, concierges pick up a small commission and are invited to attend shows for free. It's a tactic borrowed from the local restaurant industry–which, incidentally, is enjoying a worldwide reputation."

Where to put some music venues

I've started to do a bit of research for a project I am working on. And I just discovered this. It's a good place to find info on what Denver urban areas are being redeveloped.

DenverInfill.com: Downtown Denver and Its Urban Infill and Redevelopment Projects

The importance of critics to the arts community

Each Friday and Sunday, as I sit down with the Denver Post, I am grateful for all the arts coverage: the theater reviews, the art show reviews, the architecture discussions. I also like thumbing through the arts section in Westword.

I am much more likely to go to a music show than a play, but it makes me feel good that local media covers all aspects of the local arts community because it gives me a sense of being in an exciting place.

Below is an excerpt of an article written a Minneapolis actor who talks about how important critics were to his career and how they aren't covering the smaller venues these days.

I suppose that if art criticism in print declines or disappears, the Internet will take up the slack. Lots of bloggers are happy to offer their opinions. But still, there is something rewarding in seeing local papers devote space to the arts. Plus by being in the paper, these events are visible to people who are casually thumbing through the pages, whereas they might not see them in niche online sites.

Michael Kennedy: The fading away of the critics is a blow to us all - Minneapolis Star Tribune 6/18/07: "These days, all we seem to hear about is the Guthrie, recently so overpriced that nobody can afford to go. The Fitzgerald may as well be the only arts organization in this city -- if you listen to MPR. As far as art goes, we have the Walker and Minneapolis Institute of Arts. When the folks in the media want to get funky, they mention Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the Children's Theatre Company or the Weisman.

Yes, we have the smaller venues, but do you hear about them very much? Not really. We hear more about television shows, movies, traveling Broadway shows and what to wear to a nightclub than we do about the fine arts in the Twin Cities.

This city is in a quiet artistic crisis. With all of our small theaters, small galleries, music groups, dance companies and literary venues, we should be getting clear, serious criticism. We should have people working full time covering all of the theaters they can seven nights a week. There are tons of art galleries that most people have never heard of. Musical groups are everywhere.

We need the critics. Their opinions are one thing, but the fact that they can go into these small places, consider these artists and watch these performances says that the arts are a serious part of this community."

Leisure: How People Spend Their Free Time

Here's a good resource to get you thinking about American society and what we do and don't do with our free time.

Focusing on music, or even entertainment, can often be too limiting. If you are selling these concepts, you need to take into consideration all the various activities competing for a person's time, attention, and financial resources. The academic field of leisure studies gives a broad overview of time/recreation consumption.

In particular you might want to look at the PDF file, "Leisure in America: Searching for the Forest Amongst the Trees." It has culled data from a number of different research studies to give you an overview of American culture and leisure time activities.

The Compleat Leader (Getty Leadership Institute)

The economic impact of the arts

If you want some economic data on the value of arts non-profits, here's a good resource.

Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences

Here's some of the summary report:

RATIO OF LOCAL VS. NONLOCAL AUDIENCES

While the ratio of local to nonlocal attendees is different in every community, the national sample revealed that 39 percent of attendees traveled from outside of the county in which the event took place (nonlocal) and 61 percent were local (resided inside the county).

VISITORS SPEND MORE

In addition to spending data, researchers asked each of the 94,478 survey respondents to provide their home zip codes. Analysis of this data enabled a comparison of event-related spending by local and nonlocal attendees. Previous economic and tourism research has shown that nonlocal attendees spend more than their local counterparts. This study reflects those findings. Local audiences, who live in the county in which the event occurred, spent an average of $19.53 per person, per event in addition to the cost of admission. Nonlocal attendees, those who live outside the county, spent twice this amount, or $40.19 per person. As would be expected, nonlocal attendees spent significantly more in the categories of lodging, meals, and transportation. These findings demonstrate that when a community attracts arts and culture tourists, it harnesses significant economic rewards.

Attendees are 61% LOCAL / 39% NONLOCAL

NONPROFIT ARTS & CULTURE ATTENDEES SPEND $27.79 PER PERSON PER EVENT

Spending Breakdowns

Residents (Residents are attendees who live within the county in which the cultural event occurred.)

Meals/Refreshments $10.77
Gifts/Souvenirs $3.32
Lodging $1.08
Child Care $0.34
Transportation $1.62
Other $2.40 $3.45
Total $19.53

Nonresident (Nonresidents live outside of the county.)

Meals/Refreshments $16.35
Gifts/Souvenirs $4.78
Lodging $10.91
Child Care $0.33
Transportation $4.37
Other $3.45
Total $40.19

All audiences

Meals/Refreshments $13.00
Gifts/Souvenirs $3.90
Lodging $5.01
Child Care $0.34
Transportation $2.72
Other $2.82
Total $27.79


ARTS & CULTURE TOURISTS SPEND MORE AND STAY LONGER

As communities compete for a tourist’s dollar, arts and culture have proven to be magnets for travelers and their money. Local businesses are able to grow because travelers extend the length of their trips to attend cultural events.

Travelers who include arts and culture events in their trips differ from other U.S. travelers in a number of ways.

Arts and culture travelers:
• Spend more ($623 vs. $457)
• Use a hotel, motel, or bed-and-breakfast (62 percent vs. 55 percent)
• Spend $1,000 or more (19 percent vs. 12 percent)
• Travel longer (5.2 nights vs. 3.4 nights)

A 2001 research study by the Travel Industry Association of America and Partners in Tourism indicates that:
• 65 percent of all adult travelers attended an arts and culture event while on a trip that was 50+ miles away from home.
• 32 percent of these cultural travelers stayed longer because of the event.
• Of those that stayed longer, 57 percent extended their trips by one or more nights.

Happenings in Baltimore

This is an excerpt from a long article on an art/music collective, its performance space, and how it gave rise to much of the current indie music scene in Baltimore. It's quite a good profile of how a group of friends can have a significant impact on a community.

Feature: Wham City Doesn't Want To Take Over The World--But It Just Might Anyway | 5/16/2007 | Citypaper.com: "... Wham City was a rented industrial loft space squatting somewhere between Mount Vernon and Charles Village. (Its members have requested we don't divulge the exact location in print.) In its first incarnation, it was often filled with garbage. Smashing plates in a sink with a baseball bat was a popular activity when bored. But especially after it moved one floor upstairs in the same building, it was a crucial local space for "music shows, variety shows, TV talk shows, video productions, theatrical productions, lecture series, potluck dinners, photo shoots, fashion shows, [and] dance parties" in the words of Wham City member Adam Endres. Wham City united many young people in the Baltimore art and music scenes who maybe didn't even know they needed uniting

In fact, the Wham City collective is but one spiky tip of a massive, tangled ball of creativity currently lurking just under Baltimore's liquor-licensed layer of legit bars and venues, galleries, and theaters. Bands are multiplying like sui generis bunnies in little warrenlike warehouses all over the city, and they're being formed by folks either too young to be squatting and making a racket five years ago, or not even living in the city, or both. These bands do intersect occasionally with the city's longstanding free improvisation/noise crews, but with their vestigial connections to punk rock and their continual reification/recycling of the pop-cultural junk they grew up on, they're not really experimentalists. They're making pop music that bends at various wonky, acute angles.

And though the music is the loudest and most obvious manifestation of all this energy, you can feel it in everything from local T-shirt designers to zine makers to video artists to sculptors to performance-art shenanigans yet to be named. More often than not, they're the same kids in the bands. Wham City has been, if not quite at the center of all this attention, certainly a central node.

Since you can hum along to some of it, the indie-music world outside Charm City is taking note of Baltimore's young underground. National media outlets have started to glom onto Wham City and its satellites as another installment of the Baltimania that's given us a hundred half-assed articles on club music and The Wire in the last 18 months. Just a week ago, Deacon was featured in the The New York Times, where he was hilariously described as a 'sensitive electro-party rocker.' Baltimore bands recently swarmed the annual South by Southwest music industry clusterfuck in Austin, Texas; Deacon played no less than five shows that weekend.

Locally, evidence of this explosion is increasingly easy to find on the records released by labels such as Wildfire Wildfire, Creative Capitalism, and recent Washington transplant Carpark (which is sucking up Baltimore bands at a quick clip); at exhibitions and performances at Current Gallery; at the biweekly Are We Not Men? dance party at the Depot; at the Talking Head club until its closure; at shows in the artist-riddled H&H Building; at house parties and one-off loft gatherings; at Baltimore institutions of 'high' culture like the Walters Art Museum; and at Wham City itself, until recently. See, all this celebration comes at a strange time, because Wham City, as it was, is no more.

All illegal venues live on borrowed time; last September--after a string of shows plagued by assholes pulling fire alarms, smashing windows, and setting fires--Wham City was forced to stop holding shows following alleged complaints by the fire marshal to the building's management and threats of eviction from the building's owner. The collective rallied and is hunting for a new, potentially legit, space, but at the moment there's a feeling that the local arts community has lost something important just as its intensity is peaking.'...

The collective initially formed around six friends, but its ranks have swelled to include anywhere from 16 to 24 people in Baltimore, and 11 of them are here today. It's two days before everyone has to be out of the building for good....

Stranded in a city where they knew almost no one, the Purchase kids developed a drunken bunker mentality, holed up in the space that would become Wham City with no phones, blowing what little money they had at the local liquor store, and destroying personal property when boredom threatened.... [But, as the article explains, things got better.]

The past six months alone have already seen a Wham City theater night, a cross-country tour, sundry live shows around town (and their attendant poster art), two episodes of in-house talk show The Ed Schrader Show, several records released by various WC-related bands, a gallery exhibition, a museum showcase, various videos, two issues of Catatac (a traditionally folded-and-stapled zine published by Kate Levitt, Mark Brown, and Kevin Sherry that's full of contributions from Wham members), and a bunch of stuff not yet ready for prime-time consumption. "I know of at least two board games that are being developed," Connor Kizer says. Sure, not all of it needs to be documented, but the irrepressible, overwhelming mass of stuff that Wham City churns out is always impressive."

Revitalizing Denver's "Harlem"

A new theater is opening in what was once Denver's center for black culture. Now the neighborhood is a mixture of 25% black, 43% Latino, and 27% white, so this theater plans to draw upon its neighborhood history but also expand to showcase a variety of cultural influences.

5/10/07, The Denver Post - New theater opening in Five Points neighborhood: "The Denver neighborhood once called "the Harlem of the West" is enjoying a cultural renaissance of its own these days....

Another person who sees the upside on the cultural front is Denver lawyer Kurt Lewis, who sold his house to open a new live theater, Crossroads at Five Points Theatre....

Five Points developer James Ellis is one of his biggest fans.

'One of the things we really like about Crossroads is that there are no boundaries, and that is implied by the name,' said Ellis, who plans to restore the facade of the historic Rossonian Hotel next door and reopen it as a live jazz venue with an upscale restaurant by summer 2008....

Five Points once boasted more than 50 jazz clubs and earned the city's first-ever designation as a neighborhood of 'cultural significance,' Ellis said. It was not only a favorite destination for such legends as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday, it was a respite from the racism that pervaded just 10 blocks to the south....

And now Lewis, a white man, has leveraged his future to build an 84-seat, $450,000 theater in a building owned by a black man.

Everyone involved with Crossroads believes the theater, and the neighborhood, can best survive into the future if it celebrates its cultural past while also welcoming, even encouraging, all those who dared not go there before. That means celebrating diversity in a rainbow of colors.

That's one reason Lewis' 3,600-square-foot theater is opening with an Irish play. 'Bold Girls' will be followed by a one-woman jazz musical, and the world premiere of 'The Sisters, Sweetwater,' the story of two black women in the 1920s written by Hugo Jon Sayles of Shadow, Denver's only black theater company.

But Lewis envisions a melting- pot community resource open all day every day for classes, jazz, cabaret, poetry, fashion shows and even weekly 'open- mic dance.' Theater performances will start no later than 7 p.m., followed by late-night spoken- word artists Café Nuba and late- late-night screenings of the cult film 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'

Allowing many visions

'Denver doesn't really have a place that embraces the creative class, and it doesn't have a place that celebrates ethnicity,' Ellis said. 'Crossroads is a place that plans to do that and then some.'

Crossroads board member donnie l. betts said the theater will be unique because it seeks a convergence of creative cultures with differing values."

Salt Lake City nightlife, or lack of it

This article discusses the pluses and minuses of nightlight in Salt Lake City. Some of the challenges are no central entertainment district, restrictive liquor laws, and too many empty streets.

Salt Lake City Tribune, 5/6/07 - In search of Salt Lake's night life: "Once you find the places to go, there are some great places here,' said Allison Martin, a development researcher for the Utah Symphony, who moved to Salt Lake City from Austin, Texas, four years ago. 'It's funny - you go out and you see people you know all the time,' Martin said. 'It's 'Small Lake City.'

The relatively small number of Salt Lake night owls means club owners such as Louise Millington have to work harder to woo customers.

'You have to capture a niche for yourself, and I think that's what makes good night life here,' said Millington, who owns The Red Door, a martini bar. 'You have to know what people want here.'

... the perception remains, said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, that buying a drink is an ordeal.

'There is absolutely no good modern-day justification for a private-club membership requirement,' he said. 'If you want to go to a couple places during the course of the night to hear music, or dine one place and go have a drink somewhere else, it can be very expensive and a huge hassle. And if we experience that as natives, consider how bizarre and inhospitable this is for people visiting our city.'"

What's a college town?

This is a very thorough look what creates a "college town" atmosphere.

Macon.com | 05/06/2007 | Is Macon a college town?

According to Blake Gumprecht, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire who studies college towns, a college town usually has at least 20% students. But the article outlines other factors that create a college town atmosphere, which could be adopted no matter the size of the school population.

Entertainment/eating establishments that are open past 2 a.m.
Bars and clubs for ages 18+
Low-cost/free entertainment
Small, funky shops
Large college sporting event
Strong independent music scene
College radio station
Community/college partnerships

Also mentioned in the article, but not listed above, is a specific district, within walking distance to campus, that caters to students.

Commutes, radio, and live music

I stumbled across this article in a blog about radio. That blog suggested that long commutes encourage radio listening because people want to feel connected. By that same token, long commutes probably discourage going out to catch live music because there just isn't time (unless it's a local concert where kids are welcome, which gives families an opportunity to do something together).

The creative class concept, where you encourage people to live at higher densities closer to cultural settings so they spend less time on the road and more time at clubs and in third places, is an attempt to counter the trends described below.

Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker, 4/16/07: "Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as 'extreme commuters'—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990. They’re the fastest-growing category, the vanguard in a land of stagnant wages, low interest rates, and ever-radiating sprawl."

Southern Cities for the Creative Class

This article isn't specifically about music, but cities that attract the creative class also tend to have great music scenes.

Ten Places in the South for the Creative Class: "These places are actively and prominently working to make their communities more attractive to knowledge workers by fostering environments for opportunity, expression and quality of life that creatives expect and demand."

The article lists Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Houston, Lafayette, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, Savannah, and St. Petersburg.

Musical innovation clusters

The author of this piece hopes to explore creativity in contemporary music.

The Creativity Exchange: It's Only Rock and Roll...: "But musical creativity occurs in sharp bursts, there are cycles of it. Sure, people are developing musical talent all along, but for a variety of reasons due to the social character of innovations, major outbursts of creativity occur in bunches or clusters. Major innovations in jazz for example occurred in the period from roughly 1920 through the 1950s, roughly. In rock and roll, innovation starts in the late 1940s, with upticks in the mid-1960s, and mid-to-late 70s, according to rock critic and social theorist Simon Fricke ....

But these concentrated bursts of transformative energy are not evenly spread across geography. They occur in space as well as in time. In other words, they cluster, concentrate and pull talent into tight spaces or scenes. Just think about the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 1970s, producing a series of stunning innovations in semiconductors, computing, software and the like, all the while informing a much broader process of cultural change and musical innovation, from its vibrant music scene to its advances in commerce and distribution especially with the invention of large music festivals."

Toronto versus New York

So New York compares itself to London, and Toronto compares itself to New York.

Torontoist: Marketing Toronto: Work vs. Play: "We are lightyears ahead of New York's nightlife, with its draconian Cabaret Law (dancing in a NYC club that lacks a dancing permit is illegal, fewer than 300 such permits exist), stringent noise laws, regular police stings and frequent padlocking of venues. At the same time, most Americans have no idea that Toronto regularly attracts many more famous international DJs and bands to its hundreds of bars, concert venues and clubs where one may drink at 19 and perhaps indulge in less-than-legal intoxicants with relative impunity, free from the American government's (and New York City government's) failed war on freedom. Are we implying that Toronto is a bit of a Sin City? Maybe just a liberated one. ...

And when asked the question, 'What more could we be doing to promote our city?' There are a number of steps we can take:

* Award more grants to nightlife event promoters. Sometimes venue rentals or flying famous artists in is just too expensive.

* Start talking about nightlife in promotional materials for the city. Maybe those purple, teardrop-shaped musical notes should be turntables and speakers.

* Allow all night dance parties on city property once again. This ban singlehandedly ended the 15,000 person dance music gatherings that characterized pre-2001 Toronto, leading to the current venue loss crisis.

* Work more closely with event promoters to help promote their larger events.

* Make it less legally risky for property owners to allow a nightlife event on their property.

* Stop crackdowns against nightlife before they start. The recent Docks liquor license suspension was scary enough.
* Repeal the curfew. Seriously. Those kids have money!

* Loosen up alcohol laws; Montréal didn't get its 'fun' reputation among Americans by closing the bars at 2."

Toronto
tourism
creative class

The hunger for community

This is about an art gathering rather than music, but I think the same concept would work. People want a community, and it could be built around music. Bring them together, have them share food, and have them bond over creativity.

Slideluck Potshow - New York Times, 3/27/07: "The main attraction, a two-hour slide show of work by 37 artists, drew nearly 800 people, representing a jaunty cross section of the city’s young creative class.

It was the possibility of a lively communal viewing experience that inspired the series. Casey Kelbaugh, a goateed freelance photographer who has worked for publications including The New York Times, founded Slideluck Potshow in his tiny backyard in Seattle in 2000 with a simple invitation to friends and colleagues to bring slides and food. The idea caught on quickly, and he held 20 slide show parties there before moving to New York in 2003.

'I got here thinking, well, I have this thing that’s very popular in Seattle, but the idea of a potluck dinner in New York would never get off the ground,' said Mr. Kelbaugh, 32.

Still, he spread the word and held a Slideluck Potshow in his East Village apartment in early 2004. He was surprised when 120 people arrived, obligingly toting home-cooked dishes as well as images of their work. The event mushroomed into a kind of open-mike night for photographers and other artists, who would show up with trays of slides or CDs to show.

'The whole thing is that it’s participatory, and it’s about creative expression,' Mr. Kelbaugh said. 'It’s a little bit outside the photography establishment.'”

New York
creative class
third places
creativity

How a fan created a successful singer/songwriter concert series

The Other Paper, 3/8/07 -How attorney Alec Wightman created the town’s best-kept musical secret: "Columbus’s best-kept musical secret began 12 years ago on a whim. A fan of [Tom] Russell’s for years, Wightman received a mailing from the singer in 1995 asking his supporters to notify him about performance venues in their cities. It sat on Wightman’s desk for months.

Then, for reasons that still elude him, the attorney picked up the phone. He told Russell’s people that he would try to find the singer a venue and even help sell tickets.

'It was totally spur-of-the-moment,' Wightman said. 'I had never done anything like it.'

There were snags at first—'All the bars I contacted laughed at me,' Wightman said—but, with Russell’s encouragement, he finally resolved to rent out Columbus Music Hall and make the event happen all by himself.

'In eight days, I sold 99 tickets—all friends, clients and co-workers,' he said. 'Nobody but me knew who Tom was.' ...

'There aren’t a lot of these venues left for people on my level,' Russell said of the intimate, 100-seat performance spaces on which professional singer-songwriters have traditionally survived.'A lot of promoters just don’t want to deal with that size room because the profits aren’t there. So it pushes a lot of acts back down into the bars—and that’s pretty rough country.'”

folk music

The Design Economy

I just found this, which is another entry on the concept that we have already moved beyond the Information Age into the Age of Creativity, or, as it is called here, The Design Economy.

This quote comes from an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, but I found it on a blog about media, religion, culture.

There's something happening here. While the Religious Right is getting all of the mainstream press coverage, people are looking for ways to connect with each other through arts and culture and churches are providing those places.

ryan torma: The Design Economy: [Quoted from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune] "The information economy is still with us. But the paradoxical effect of the Internet is that it has made information so widely available that it holds no real economic value. Everybody can get incredible amounts of information, so there's no competitive advantage of having it. The idea of the design economy is that, for developed countries like ours, which cannot compete in a global marketplace on price or even quite often on the quality of a product, we have to compete on the basis of innovation, creativity and imagination, which takes you to design. By design, I don't mean just aesthetics but function and cultural adaptability."

From the blog that cited the above quote:

"Jesus is a commodity. No one needs churches or clergy to tell them about Jesus or any other religion for that matter, it can all be found somewhere else. The design economy holds true for faith communities as well, churches will be judged by how well, or not, they help live their faith, not on their ability to provide information."

creative class
third places
church

The arts and economic growth

The whole premise of the creative class is that they enrich an area and attract high quality economic development.

Here's a bit on that from the blog that covers the subject in depth.

The Creativity Exchange: The Bohemian Factor:

"Arts, design and related occupations are very highly correlated with regional wages, income and housing values. They are more closely correlated with income than life scientists, engineers, and management occupations. Only two occupations - computer scientists and business and financial professionals - outperform them.

The core arts occupations of fine artists, musicians, dancers, and so on are most important of all. The correlations between them and regional wages, income and housing values are far far higher than for designers and decorators, entertainment and media, and sports where the correlations are low or insignificant.

The top 10 regions for core arts occupations are: New York, DC, LA, Honolulu and San Franciso.

Santa Fe tops the list for fine artists.

LA leads in actors with Orlando second.

Honolulu, San Fran, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City top the list for dancers.

Honolulu, New York, San Fran and Nashville lead for musicians."

economic development
creative class

Arts and religion

In my blog I have highlighted a number of churches that are also serving as music venues. It's not that I am a spokesperson for the religious right. Rather, what I see is that churches are moving into a void left by a lack of "third places" which bring people together around music.

Bars are not appropriate places for many people to enjoy music. The alternative (coffeehouses and all-ages clubs) can't always make it if they have to bring in a certain amount of income.

But churches, which exist to serve people on Sunday, but sit empty much of the rest of the week, offer available venues.

This particular article talks about the need to foster both creativity and Jesus. What caught my eye was the quote below.

I have written extensively about people in the information society, and I have seen many engineers laid off as jobs are outsourced overseas. So I have questioned the wisdom of encouraging students to specialize in science, math, and engineering careers when those offer no more lifetime job security than less "practical" endeavors.

The quote below is the first I have seen to suggest that the information age is already over.

Refractions: Being a Child of the Creative Age: "The Information Age is behind us, and yet we, in America, are educating our children to thrive in that past. The skills and knowledge for Information Age are now outsourced, but we are ill equipped to lead in the age of imagination, the age of synthesis."

creative class
third places
creativity
church

Small towns can have great performance arts centers

Some good information on how a small (but wealthy) ski town was able to build a state-of-the-art performance center.

Jackson Hole Guide News & Guide, 2/28/07 - Jackson Hole center for the arts opens: "Off Square Theatre Company, one of the Center for the Arts’ 17 resident organizations, will rent the pavilion’s rehearsal hall, adjacent to the lobby, as its own space for classes, auditions, rehearsals and more. It currently pays $16,000 a year for its offices in the Arts and Education Pavilion, and will pay $15,000 a year for the rehearsal hall. Charges for nonprofit use of the Center Theater for ticketed events amount to $500 a night for rehearsals and technical run-throughs and $1,000 a night for performances. The center charges slightly more for non-ticketed events as it will lose revenue if not handling ticket sales, for which it charges a 10 percent surcharge. For ticketed events, the facility provides box office and marketing services, concessions and ushers.

Commercial renters of the Center Theater will pay $2,500 a night. ...

The Center for the Arts’ capital campaign to raise $35 million completely paid for the Arts and Education Pavilion and for the design, engineering, construction and equipment in the Performing Arts Pavilion – 'everything down to the piano,' Berry said proudly of the newly acquired 9-foot Steinway grand. ...

The Center for the Arts’ project started as an ad hoc collection of Jackson Hole arts organizations in 1991. Following several years of feasibility studies, the center incorporated in 1995 and embarked on the design and fundraising process. A dedicated board and staff were assembled and, through a public/private partnership, the center was funded by its $35 million, seven-year private capital campaign. In total, the Center for the Arts encompasses 15 studios, 21 administrative offices, three classrooms, three conference rooms, two galleries, five outdoor public spaces, two lobbies, six theater support rooms, one darkroom lab and one theater."

economic development
creative class
third places
Jackson Hole

Bringing younger audiences to the arts

This article has a number of excellent ideas about how to reach young adults.

Arts groups creating ways to lure young audiences - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2/25/07

Here are some of the ideas mentioned:

1. Gallery crawls, which are pitched to 20-to-40-year -olds and offer hors d'oeuvres and music in addition to art.

2. Making sure people know you don't have to dress up to attend the theater and classical music concerts.

3. Bringing in young professionals as volunteers to help various arts organizations.

4. Offering affordable tickets.

5. Combining theater events with a pre-show cocktail party.

6. Promoting events via email, websites, radio, and word-of-mouth, not just through more traditional methods like newspapers, billboards, and posters.

creative class
classical music
Pittsburgh