the-arts

Ben Cameron. On the brink of a new chapter: Arts in the 21st Century.

While the attention of many arts organisations is directed to the global economic crisis, the issues facing the arts are far more than financial. In this keynote presentation from the Australia Council 2009 Arts Marketing Summit,  Ben Cameron, Program Director of the USA's Doris Duke Charitable Foundation speaks about the critical issues facing the arts community and the need for fundamental change.

Thank you.  I am so delighted to be here in my maiden journey Down Under. For years I have watched with envy as friends and colleagues have decamped for your shores—Naomi Grabel to the Sydney Opera, Valerie Wilder to the ballet, the deluxe Christy Edmunds to the Melbourne Festival, even Edo de Waart, the conductor of the orchestra where I lived in Minnesota and who decamped to your shores after a rather infamous concert performance of Der Rosenkavalier that was rumored to feature an ex-wife, a current wife and a current love interest in the three soprano leading roles and who inspired a waggish bumper sticker, “Honk if you’ve been married to Edo de Waart.” 

For every colleague we have sent your way, however, you have returned the gift a hundred fold, sharing so many artists whose work has enriched my life more than I can say: singers Joan Sutherland, Marjorie Lawrence, and Yvonne Kenny;  writers Peter Carey, Kate Grenville, Shirley Hazzard; photographer Helmut Newton, choreographer/dancer Roz Warby, conductor Charles MacKerras, directors Michael Blakemore and Neil Armfield (what an extraordinary EXIT THE KING we just saw in New York), and a cavalcade of actors in film, yes, but often commanding the stage as well- Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Hugh Jackman, Geoffrey Rush, recent recipients of the Tony Award, our Broadway equivalent of the Oscar, and of course Dame Edna, goddess extraordinaire.  I am honored to be in their homeland—and among all of you who play such an important role, not only in promoting their careers but in nurturing and connecting audiences for all the arts.  Thank you for all you do in that regard.

We gather tonight in the shadow of a global economic crisis—a crisis that, in the United States at least, has provoked wide spread unemployment, high home foreclosure rates, and a general social anxiety unprecedented in my own lifetime, at least.  The arts have suffered greatly in this moment: donations to the arts—individual, corporate, government and foundation—are all plummeting.  General consumer anxiety, coupled with declines in discretionary income, has led to declines in audience attendance in every performing arts field.  Indeed, according to a national study, 10,000 arts organizations and 260,000 jobs are at risk and may be lose by the end of the current calendar year. 

Many organizations have already implemented pre-emptive budget cuts in the 10-15% range for the current year and are planning cuts at least as large again for the upcoming one.  The litany of strategies within these cuts is well known: downscaling or eliminating productions and exhibitions, reducing performance weeks and resorting more frequently to small cast or reduced scale work; hiring freezes, staff furloughs, lay offs, elimination of retirement or health benefits, emergency fundraising appeals and—in the worst case—closure.  And for artists—all of whom this impacts dramatically by the reduced opportunities for their work—the downsizing in other non-arts sectors is equally problematic: many artists obtain the lion’s share of their financial income and access to health insurance (which is not covered by a national program for all citizens) through such non-arts work.  Moreover, according to a recent study from our National Endowment for the Arts, the unemployment rate for artists is growing at twice the rate of the national average.

As overwhelming as this can seem, I would humbly suggest we disserve ourselves if we define our lives in terms of the financial crisis.  Indeed, to be even bolder, while our collective financial fortunes—as meager as they are—are under assault, the crisis in the arts is not financial. 

To explain.  At the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation where I work, our late benefactress charged us in her will with the care of “actors, singers, dancers and musicians in the presentation and performance of their work”—a directive that, in intersection with her life long passions, has led us to dedicate our resources to artists working in jazz, contemporary dance, and theatre, and the organizations who nurture, present and produce them.

As we entered out 10th year of grantmaking in 2007, we convened more than 700 artists, managers, administrators and board members in 22 meetings to explore the issues they faced in the new millennium.

We heard various issues in these conversations—idiosyncratic issues like career transitions for dancers—powerful issues for one field but relatively meaningless for the others; chronic issues that have plagued us for decades—especially ongoing undercapitalization of arts groups and persistent under-compensation of artists, managers, technicians and administrators—a recognition that our industry for decades has relied on discounted labor and that the single largest charitable sector is arguable the arts professionals on whose life the work is made. 

Four issues, however, emerged as especially powerful in all fields, and as especially particular to our 21st Century. 

First, the increasing dysfunctionality of the 501(c)3 or NGO model—the breakdown of old fundraising strategies, the difficulties of managing boards, and the hunger for new models, as arts leaders, increasingly overwhelmed by the time and effort necessary for fundraising, board cultivation, advocacy and the like, asked “Isn’t there another way for us to finance and support the work we are called to do?”

We heard concern about an impending generational transfer of leadership.  While much of the conversation focused on where we might find these new leaders, especially given different expectations from young people around higher compensation, shorter hours—in essence less patience for the sacrificed lives of dignity and the financial masochism that were the givens for so many in my own generation—the conversation was revealing in a new way.  “There are plenty of us eager to give ourselves to the arts, but we don’t want to be the mere custodians of those institutions you have already made,” the young people in the room said. “Unless we are given the same authority to reinvent and reshape organizations as you yourselves were given, we are not interested”—a point of view that focuses the issue, not on the identities of heirs apparent, but on organizational capacity for flexibility and change.

We heard about the erosion of audiences in every field—declining subscription renewals, difficulties in attracting single ticket buyers, increased “churn”—a term reflecting the high percentage—typically 70-75%--of audience members who attend a single event in a season and do not return—the collapse in the window of social planning post 9/11, when seemingly overnight audiences shifted from committing, not two to four weeks in advance, but more typically purchasing on the day of or, if you’re lucky, 24-48 hours in advance—a disorienting shift that continues to plague box office and marketing departments who struggle to understand the implications on a Tuesday for a sparsely sold Saturday performance.  We face a populace characterized by over-scheduling and exhaustion—a time in which 42% of men and 55% of women say they are too tired to do the things they truly want to do, and where the #1 answer to the question of most eagerly anticipated use of a free evening is no longer dinner with friends or a movie or a performing arts event, but is instead “a good night’s sleep.”  After decades of growth, our audiences are shrinking and that our own financial needs, driven in many cases by escalating fixed costs of facilities, insurance, health care and more, in tandem with negative shifts in funding mean escalating ticket prices that threaten to place attendance beyond so many in our communities we wish to reach and serve.

Finally, we heard the struggle to understand more fully the impact of technology on the live performing arts.  The potential of technology as a marketing device is, if anything, too effective: in trying to attract the attention of potential ticket buyers, we now compete with (depending on who you read) between 3-5,000 different marketing messages a typical American sees every single day.  In fact, technology has emerged as our biggest competitor for leisure time: Gen X-ers spend 20.7 hours of leisure time every week on TV and online combined, the majority TC; Gen Y-ers spend even more—22.8 hours, the majority on line—and growing by leaps and bounds.  By the time Net-geners reach their twenties, they will have spent more than 20,000 hours on the Internet and an additional 10,000 hours playing video games, a trend producing a radical redefinition of a cultural  market in which computer games now outsell movie and music recordings combined. 

Most profoundly, perhaps, technology is altering the very assumptions of consumption: thanks to the internet, we believe we can get anything we want, whenever we want it, customized to our own personal specifications.  We can shop at three in the morning or ten o’clock at night, expectations of convenience and personalisation that live performing arts organizations—organizations who depend on set curtain times, specific geographic venues, attendant inconveniences of parking, travel and the like—simply cannot meet. And in an age where young people especially access culture on demand through YouTube and iTunes any time they want it and for little or no apparent cost, what will it mean in the future when we ask a potential audience member to pay $100 for a symphony, opera or dance ticket, when that consumer has been accustomed to downloading on the internet for .99 a song or for free?

However particular these issues feel to us in the arts, we are not alone: we are essentially in the midst of a realignment of cultural expression and communication—a realignment that is shaking the newspaper and television industries, the publishing and book industries, and (in an indication of what may be yet to come) has left the recorded music and music distribution industries in disarray.  For these reasons I say: the crisis the arts face is not financial.  The crisis we face is one of urgency and relevance: the financial merely redefines the resources we bring to bear in confronting the crisis.   

Surely we see ourselves in the words of poet Adrienne Rich in The Dream of a Common Language XIII: “We’re out in a country that has no language, no laws...Whatever we do together is pure invention.  The maps they gave us were out of date by years…”

And aren’t you glad you invited me here to brighten your day?

In looking to the future, I find inspiration in the words of two different thinkers: our 19th Century American President Abraham Lincoln, who in his second inaugural address said, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.  As our case is new, so must we think anew and act anew.”

And Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian ice hockey player, who when asked to account for his greatness said simply, “I skate to where the puck will be.”

In a time when the world economy is hitting the reset button and the mantra in economic circles now is less “economic recovery” than “economic reinvention,” how do we in the arts skate to where the proverbial puck will be?  How do we see the present as an invitation in the arts to fundamentally reconceived what we do and how we operate? And what does this mean for marketing?

In this journey, we must begin by asking, why must we exist today?  Because we have a building is not enough.  Because we have a history and awards and a reputation is not enough.  What is it in the world—in an external world—that mandates the flourishing of live arts and culture in our communities today? 

Groups that wish to survive need to be able to answer three questions:

1)   What is the value my organisation brings to my community?

2)   Harder; What is the value my organisation alone brings or brings better than anyone else?  Second rate or duplicated value will not stand for long in this economy.

3)   Hardest: How would my community be damaged if we closed our doors and went away tomorrow?

If we cannot answer these questions, the only  supporters we are likely to find already sit in our seats.

That said, this is a potential trap, asking us to interpret the world through the filter of our organisations as we have known them. How often do we contemplate the value of our orchestras without considering the value of symphonic music, or try to fix our theatre companies without examining the larger potential value of live dramatic narrative to our communities?  In order to reinvent and adapt to the changing conditions in the world today, we need to answer four very different questions.  To use a dance company as an example, to ask:

1)   What is the value of dance (not of my dance company) for my community?

2)   What is the value dance alone has or that dance fulfills better than anything else?

3)   How would my community be damaged if it were abandoned by dance tomorrow?

4)   And how might my organisation be optimally structured, poised and focused to be my community’s best conduit to dance?—a question that invites us not to jettison all we do, but to keep what is most central and viable, to expand to embrace the new possibilities we may not have seen, and to discard past behaviors that do not and will not serve us in the future. 

Indeed, fantastic opportunities exist everywhere around us.  Chris Anderson, editor of wired magazine and author of a book entitled The Long Tail, sees in technology the unleashing of a veritable tsunami of creative energy.  With the invention and now affordability of cell phones, mini cams, computer software and more, he notes, the means of artistic production have been democratized for the first time in human history.  In the 1930’s, people who wished to make a movie had to work for Warner Brothers or RKO, for who could afford cameras, lighting equipment, editing equipment and more?  Now who among us does not know a 14 year old hard at work on her second, third or fourth film?

Furthermore, the means of artistic distribution have been democratised.  Again, in the 30’s, the major studios played that role; now upload your film onto YouTube or Facebook, and you have instant world-wide distribution with the click of a button.

This double impact is occasioning a massive redefinition of authorship and the cultural market.  Today everyone is a potential author—and the market paradigm is shifting from one of traditional consumption to one of participation.  In the future, value will not be consumed: value will be co-created.  Let me say that again: in the future, value will no longer be consumed—value will be co-created.

We already see the power of consumer participation in other industries.  The monolithic power of the restaurant critic has been shattered in the United States by Zagat, a restaurant guide where the collective consumer passes judgment and defines a restaurant value.  iPod cornered the MP3 market by going beyond “downloading” as a sales point to emphasize co-creation—the ability to create a personally curated playlist, to create or download podcasts—essentially to enter a world where you the consumer became you the creator as well.  “Dancing with the Stars,” “Australian Idol”—all are predicated on the active involvement of the consumer.

We are witnessing the emergence of a class of amateurs doing work at a professional level—a group dubbed elsewhere as the Pro-Ams—a group whose work populates YouTube, Film festivals, dance competitions and more, a group who are expanding our aesthetic vocabulary.  But they also assault our traditional notions of cultural authority and undermine the assumed ability of traditional arts organizations to set the cultural agenda.    

In thinking about the future, how do we think, not only about presentation, but about engagement—about interacting with this growing tsunami of creative energy that typically exists beyond the purview of our classrooms, our buildings and our performing arts centers?  How do we engage audiences in the creative process, not merely in the finished work?  How do we expand our vision beyond producing to be the orchestrators of social interaction—interaction in which a performance is a piece but only a piece of what we are called to do?

All of this challenges the very nature of what you, as marketing professionals are called to do.  Artists essentially place brackets around experience and offer it to a larger world for consideration.  As marketing professionals seeking to promote the survival of your organizations, your job has been at minimum to clearly communicate what the experience is, why it is worth consideration, and to convey that in compelling and inescapable terms through arguments emphasising emotion, aesthetics, differentiation, impact, ergonomics or ease of use, predictability and quality—elements that must be controlled in every print piece, every postcard, every graphic image and whose consistent execution lies at the heart of brand positioning. 

The internet affords us extraordinary new power to expand our marketing impact with new, affordable creative and distribution media that have leveled the playing field, removing the advantage of the big marketing budget and shifting the power to those with the best idea.  Thirty seconds of Roz Warby dancing on video has far more power to express personality, emotional tone, style, aesthetic and more than any print ad could every do-and indeed the most immediate power of technology at present lies in our ability to let an audience member sample the work she or he might choose to see.

Weaning themselves from traditional print advertising, dance company Larry Kegwin and Company (as reported at the recent Dance USA Conference), now establish an agreement with dancers that they will participate in creating media materials that “will kick ass.” They now create 1 minute video clips—clips that capture the energy, the quirkiness, the compelling aesthetic and distinctive movement vocabulary that still photos and captions cannot convey. They then email the clips to a select circle of supporters—supporters who in turn push the media clips out into the general population through social network channels like YouTube and Facebook, and who have helped garner the company their largest audiences in history—a strategy so successful that they have reportedly eliminated their traditional marketing staff altogether –a development likely to strike fear and terror in you all. 

But internet video also allows us new power to talk about the work--to explore and dissect both the work and the creative process with a larger public—a power that seems especially powerful not only with arts devotees but also with the uninitiated who feel potentially intimidated and under-informed about a work they may be preparing to see.  Cedar Lake Ballet has produced a series of 52 one-minute videos—a new one released every week—showing how work is made over time and all of the participants—stage hands, designers, electricians and more—who participate in bringing a work to fruition.  In the most successful of these cases and more, the leading artist—not a staffer representing the artist—is a direct presence, and the organization frequently empowers its fullest range of practitioners as well—the dancers, for example—to blog on their experiences, to share their frustrations and yes anger at times with a larger general public—an openness to sharing experiences both good and bad that distinguish a promotional website from an authentic one. 

But broadcasting is only one function of the internet—and the real power lies in open space co-creation and in social networking.  Choreographer Chris Elam of Misnomer Dance in the United States company is at the forefront of thinking creatively in more expansive terms about this new energy.  Yes, he engages his audience through streaming performances—performances that included an audience just a month ago of 80 live audience members at the Joyce Soho and an additional 1500 on line—an online audience that blogged and chatted with one another throughout the performance, sharing ideas, even asking the cameraman to switch focus or follow specific dances—and whose 1500 numbers probably under-represent the true audience, since many of the log-ons were actually parties of watchers, many of whom had been engaging in blogging with Chris for weeks leading up to the performance.  

That said, Chris is also interested in engaging audiences in creation. He holds competitions for costume designs, films dancers against green screens and encourages web visitors to download the footage, add their own animation and soundtrack, etc.—a strategy now adopted by Yo Yo Ma, who has recorded single tracks for others to upload and play along with.  Moreover, Chris is acutely connected to the social organizing potential of the internet: he polls his website visitors about their interest in seeing the work live—a question that prepares him to contact a Chicago presenter, for example, able to say “3000 people have already said they would come to see our work were we in your city, 25% would bring an additional friend, and 5 are willing to cosponsor an opening night party”—an approach that allows Chris to book his tour schedule based on where his audience already is, rather than booking a tour of cities and then trying to find someone in those cities to show up.  In sum, strategies that see marketing as more than advertising per se, but that see marketing as audience development through broadcast and social networking and open source co-creation.

It is too early, frankly, to know how well these strategies will succeed and in what way: while consumers wishing to sample the work vastly outnumber those interested in artistic co-creation, the future may well bring dramatic growth in these deeper engagers, produce a deeply dedicated group of passionate adherents more likely to become donors, or both.  And while the list of websites and platforms can be overwhelming—Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Flavor Pill, new sites appearing day by day and fading—as MySpace has done—with astonishing speed,--the lesson here is less about particular platform than about the larger trend.   In this new age, every artist is a media artist and every organization a media organization, whether they know it or not.  The new emphasis on social media, on aggregation of energy, and on deeper access, openness and participation is here to stay.  Your role of marketer is likely to be less and less about sales per se than about brokering personalized creative engagement and deeper interaction through multiple points of potential contact—a shift that will require loosening of control, even placing raw materials into the hands of others to let them generate your marketing materials for you. 

We must engage in this emerging world.  If we have any prayer of skating to where the puck will be, we must require every staff member and ourselves, regardless of generation, to spend at least three hours each week on line, exploring new websites, investigating blogs, joining social networks, learning in our bones how the world works, mastering critical tools on-line to draw participants to the core tools on site.

This clearly involves planning and strategic execution. The new generation gap is indeed not about age but is about the gap between digital natives, as they are called—natives who expect and demand interactivity, participation, access and engagement—and digital immigrants—many of whom want to consume, not to participate and who form the bulk of many of our current audiences.  Indeed, your audience may be dominated by people who simply want to show up for a performance, listen and go home.  They may love the concert format as we have known it—the purity and simplicity of the stage adorned only by a cluster of musicians, engaged in collaborative expression.  Your donors may resent the intrusion of technology into the performance space or resist even the notions of talking from the podium—but for every devotee dedicated to the darkened concert hall, there are dozens of young people—young people who expect freedom of choice, customisation, collaboration and interactivity—who would say, “sitting in the dark for two hours, unable to communicate with my friends through speech or through technology, is not my idea of a good time.” 

In light of their growing numbers and our own increasing decline, we can no longer take our traditional ways of behavior for granted: what we play, exhibit or produce, where, how, with whom, what we do or do not do besides play, exhibit or produce—these are our decisions that must be strategically chosen for every engagement and leveraged to embody our deepest values. And lest we assume that this is merely old vs. young, let me say that even those of us in our mid 50’s, as I am now, shop on line, turn to Facebook before email, grapple with shortened attention spans and more. To ignore these shifting external conditions and to avoid making hard new changes in response is to surrender our artistic destinies and to become victims, rather than masters, of our own futures. 

And as we work, we must “co-opetate”—to use a term from management expert Barry Nalebuff—putting aside competition where we fight for a piece of a fixed pie, to cooperate to grow the pie for all, even as it is inevitable we will compete for a piece of it.  If we can do these things—individually and collectively--we will remember these times, not as an ordeal for survival, but as a renaissance--a time in which we renegotiated old ideas to reach a new consensual reality—a time of rebirth, yes, in which we too hit the reset button and embraced enormous change—a time in which we managed the perilous equation we all face today—working to insure our short-term survival while continuing to work towards our long-term transformation.

Clearly this involves change—enormous change.  As I round third and head for home (as we say in American baseball), let me share my experience at Target Stores in the 1990’s, which taught me invaluable lessons about change and change management.

Target uses a simple exercise to help create a first-hand “sense memory” experience around change—an exercise that, if we had time, I’d lead you through, but given time constraints that I will describe to you instead.

The exercise begins with finding a partner.  “Look deeply at your partner in silence for 60 seconds,” this starts.  Tension in the room escalates instantly: there’s a smattering of giggling, usually, some under the breath comments, a real sense of embarrassment and self-consciousness as well.  “Now turn your back to your partner and change five things about your appearance.”  Typically, men loosen their ties, women remove an earring, people move wristwatches to different arms or remove shoes.  “Now turn back and find the five things your partner changed.” Most folks are pretty successful on finding at least three or four, and a few astute folks spot all five.

“Now turn your backs again and change 10 more” (and you can’t undo a change from before and count it a new change).  A sense of alarm in the room, some more laughter, inevitably someone saying, “I didn’t dress for this; do you want me to strip?”  Not everyone even finds 10 things, but once again, you’re instructed to turn back to your partner and identify the changes—with a lower success rate over all.

“Now turn your backs and change 20 more.”  Instantly the room revolts: we can’t do this, there aren’t 20, you’re kidding me, etc.  (and this happens in EVERY room that I’ve ever seen the exercise conducted in.)  “OK, OK,” the facilitator says.  “Let’s return to our seats and talk about why this is a metaphor for change.”  Men put ties back on, women put those spike heels back on, and once we’ve comfortably restored ourselves and the room stills, the facilitator says:

1)   First of all, when I told you to look deeply at your partner or didn’t tell you why or what was coming next, the anxiety in the room went up. Change always provokes anxiety: in fact, if you’re not anxious, you’re not really confronting change.  Anxiety is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong or that you need to shift direction; anxiety simply needs to be managed.

2)   Second, change is every accelerating.  We went from 5 to 10 to 20, and the next would have been 40.  In this world especially, change is operating in exponential, rather than incremental, scales.

3)   Third, when confronted with change, people tend to react in a competitive, rather than a cooperative mode.  No one in the room typically in making those first five changes said, “What are the five most obvious changes I can make that my partner will most easily find?”  No one put a shoe on top of her head.  Instead, everyone instantly tried to make the five smallest, subtlest changes (which may also be worth noting) that her partner would not find.  People caught in change default instantly to competition, not cooperation.

4)   Fourth, in a time of change, people typically focus on what they must give up. People started taking things off; remember that “I didn’t dress for this; do you want me to strip?”  Few go back to their chairs and put things back on—hats, jackets, etc.

5)   The next two for me are perhaps the most powerful of all.  Lesson Five: during change, people typically only focus on what is already theirs.  If this woman in the front row and I had been partners, and had I then turned to the gentleman beside her and said, “Sir, take my tie; can you let me have your shoe?”—essentially if I had been able to turn my focus from what was mine to what was ours—we could have done 20, 40, 80, we could have gone on for hours.

6)   And finally, when the pressure to change is removed, people revert to old behavior, even if it is a less comfortable place to be.  Participants are much more comfortable at the end of the exercise at the end than they had been at the beginning, but as soon as the official exercise was over, those ties go back on, those spike heels back on, etc.— in essence reverted to old behavior because of its familiarity, even when the end result was a far more comfortable place to be.

Especially if you lead an organisation or a marketing staff, let me urge you to consider these lessons—and especially to free yourself of the burden of the solution by enlisting the partnership of a broader sphere of employees and board members in deriving the solutions that will help you move forward.

I for one am optimistic about the future of the arts, although I have not sounded it until now.  Two years ago, I decided to plunge myself into the belly of the proverbial beast and attended Pop Tech, an annual conference in Camden ME for 500 high tech folks, bringing them together to listen to—and interact with—high level thinkers of every stripe and description.  Contrary to my expectations, this was not a conference designed to talk about startups or financing: it was—and is—a conference where we listened to world thinkers about the human brain.  Global warming.  International warfare and terrorism.  AIDS research.  And the arts, with many artists participating on panels and each session followed by a live performance—Vanessa German, a spoken word artist who blew the roof off with her raw evocation of feeling, a hip hop dancer on crutches, a Gospel Choir of HIV+ singers from the African continent.

While arts conferences are often dominated increasingly by prospects for survival—how will we compete in a market-driven world?  How will we keep ourselves on the funding agenda?  What will it take to raise an  endowment?—the issue of survivability was never raised at PopTech.  The assumption is that many will not—and perhaps should not—survive.  Instead, here the issues were not how we will survive financially, but how we will change the world.  How we will solve global warming.  How we will solve AIDS.  How we will leave the world a healthier, ecologically balanced, less poverty ridden place.  Indeed, the unspoken agenda was that there is nothing that we cannot do, and in the world of high tech, truly anything is possible.

You might call this folly of youth—and indeed, many of the participants are young.

You may call it hubris.

But what became clear to me is that within this world of infinite possibilities, there are new possibilities for us in the arts.

On the one hand, I was encouraged that this group fought to get there.  Camden, ME is not an easy place to access, and if any community can convene virtually, this one can.  Yet through PopTech and TED and more, this community insists on coming together because of the unique value of live, face to face, collective experience, to conspiring—meaning to breathe together, to breathing the same air.  And throughout PopTech, a minor chord, a palpable hunger throbbed in the background.  This group was desperate to slow down, to led less frenetic lives, to find the courage to live for their passions.  More and more, they placed premium on contemplation, on captivation, on focus and extended surrender to single experience—experiences that would captivate, resonate emotionally, at its best enhance spiritual value—to the very things that we in the arts do. 

They responded deafeningly to Daniel Pink, (interestingly enough a man in his 30’s) in his new A WHOLE NEW MIND, writes of the emerging emphasis on right brain thinking, “one that prizes aptitude the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new—as well as the ability to empathize with other, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning” to quote him. 

They recognized the ultimate irony of their own success—that prosperity without spiritual enrichment does not bring fulfillment, and in the face of a growing culture dedicated to convenience—to no-iron shirts and microwave meals, to hands free parking and more, all striving to convince us that ease is good and effort is bad, there is value—irreplaceable value in the difficult, in the complex, in the ambiguous and the real.

Especially now, in a moment when we all must confront the fallacy of a market orientation uninformed by social conscience, we must assert our role in the formation of our collective and individual characters, particularly the character of the young, who are increasingly subjected to “bombardment” of sensation through violent film and video.  In the arts, we stand instead for contemplation, deep understanding and digestion of experience, especially in a popular cultural context that often seems to value humiliation over humanity.  And in an age of demonisation and fear of difference, of intolerant social policies and politicians who encourages us to view our fellow human beings with fear and hostility and suspicion—we in the arts gather audiences to look at our fellow human beings with curiosity and generosity.  However dramatically our business models will change, the urgency of this quest will remain the same.

You are engaged in more than selling entertainment experiences.  You know firsthand that, in giving yourselves to the arts, you honor the past, commemorate the present, shape and change the future in a way that does honor to all and violence to none.  You are activists, pledged and dedicated to a world of understanding, of tolerance, of compassion, of hope.

I salute you all tonight as activists.  I promise you that the hand of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation remains outstretched to you in friendship both now and for years to come; and I thank you for your kindness and patience in listening to me this evening.  Thank you and God speed.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Chris Anderson: The Long Tail

Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff: Co-Opetition

Henry Jenkins: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

David LaPiana: The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution

Daniel Pink: A Whole New Mind

Clay Shirkey: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations

Don Tapscott: Grown Up Digital

Peter Whybrow: American Mania: When More Is Not Enough


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