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Pre-conference pricing institute.

For those of you who deal with a box office day in, day out, keep your eye out for Steven Roth, Alan Brown and  Tim Baker and The Pricing Intitute . Their session laid out the fundamentals to analyzing ticket buying patterns and maximizing that data to increase revenue. Talk about priming the pump!

As they said in the presentation, don’t leave money on the table.

Check their site and look out for them in your city.

The hotel has a great pool and terrace on the 24th floor. If you’re here be sure to check them out.

What the hotel doesn’t have is great internet connectivity. Maybe I’m being a little West Coast centric, but I’ve come to expect wireless in conference hotels. Ethernet in the rooms is surprising to me and not being able to log on during sessions is a let down. So I’m left to post at the end of the day rather than in realtime, chrono order be damned! Read the rest of this entry »

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Hello, I am Julianne Brienza Executive Director/Founding Member of Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC. This is my first post from my first NAMP conference. I should also say this is my first conference.

The day started off with a wonderful welcome by Houston’s mayor Bill White. He was pretty cool and well spoken. The thing that stuck with me from his welcome was “we do not have an inherited culture we have inherited cultures.”

After Bill’s welcome we were greeted by Ed Keller. Who apparently is very familiar to the audience here at the conference. I had not heard of him. He spoke about and his business deals with word of mouth research. This is of a lot of interest to me…because 58 percent of Capital Fringes audience learns about us by word of mouth. He did have some good language that he used—like find the influencers in your community and get them to spread the word for you. During his talk a man stood up and gave some great advice…he said to add to every page of your website “ forward to a friend.”  This really hit—I am thing to make our website more like a blog. That it is always active and has voice. We do not have a traditional blog…as I have found no real reason or time for us to being one yet. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday was my first day at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Houston. I opted to come in a day early to participate in the pricing institute, which supplied me with a couple of good insights and an excellent reminder.

The insight: at the pricing institute, we discussed values based pricing. What value do you bring to your customer, and the importance of comprehending, creating and communicating your value. However, Tim Baker (one of the presenters) said something that really resonated with me about organizations that do a lot of new work. He said “if the customer doesn’t know the play they are going to see, it is extremely difficult for them to evaluate value, so the value equation must rest on the reputation of the institution.” I took that sentence to read that if you want to do a substantial amount of new work, you must increase your institutional marketing to brand the institution because the customer cannot make a values based decision on a product that is unknown to them. This coincides with a main argument that Michael Kaiser makes in his new book The Art of the Turnaround. Mr. Kaiser’s main mantra: good art, marketed well. And he says one of the major mistakes we make as arts marketers is concentrating too much on product marketing and not enough on institutional marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

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A number of folks attending the National Arts Marketing Project Conference this week in Houston are blogging about their experience on their personal blogs. I have linked two of them below.

• Chad Bauman, on his Arts Marketing blog
• John Weeden, on his Weeden Arts Watch blog

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An Obama Administration will Advance Bold, New Leadership for the Arts in America

WASHINGTON, DC — November 5, 2008 — Americans for the Arts Action Fund President and CEO Robert L. Lynch gave the following statement on the results of Election Day:

“The historic election of Sen. Barack Obama to be the 44th President of the United States will have tremendous impact on the nation’s arts community, public schools, and creative workforce. His commitment to arts and arts education on the campaign trail is just a preview of what his administration can accomplish. President-elect Obama demonstrates the leadership and vision to advance the arts in America through investing in more arts education in public schools, increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, promoting cultural diplomacy, and supporting artists rights. Read the rest of this entry »

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Podcast: Download (3.8MB)

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ENCOURAGING KIDS’ PARTICIPATION IN THE ARTS

WASHINGTON, DC — October 30, 2008 — Americans for the Arts, The NAMM Foundation and the Ad Council announced today an additional phase to their national public service advertising (PSA) campaign, entitled “The Arts. Ask for More.” designed to promote the benefits of arts education for children.  Created in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, the new television PSAs help inspire children to play music, dance and draw together with their family and friends by featuring characters from the popular Disney Little Einsteins franchise engaged in the arts. For more information on this campaign, please click here.

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Bob Lynch, President & CEO of Americans for the Arts, discusses the upcoming election and how the ArtsVote initiative can help you make an informed decision when you place your vote on November 4th.

ArtCast related resources:

• Summary of 2008 Presidential Candidates Arts Positions
• Candidate Arts Policy Links
• 2008 Congressional Arts Report Card
• ArtsVote Audio/Video Page
• Arts Action Fund Website

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The following is a passionate and eloquent call-to-action that summarizes much of the working conditions of arts education advocates. It comes from the conference brochure (pdf, 1.5 MB) of the Vermont Alliance for Arts Education (VAAE). VAAE and its director, Thomas Stevens, is hosting a one-day conference and a town hall meeting on arts education, workforce development, and making change. They call it Leap of Faith: The Future of Arts Education.

We have the dream.

Are the arts in your school considered a luxury, either by your administration or, worse, your school board? Is your morale lowered when you hear rumors of a so-called “half position” being cut, either because it’s your job or a friend’s? How am I, after all, half a position? Or less? Read the rest of this entry »

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An emerging leader listserv post by John Abodeely tapped into a subject that has been on my mind lately. Namely, how to navigate job decisions as part of a dual-career couple. Abodeely linked to a post on GeekDad about a nonprofit arts couple who made the decision to move to Kansas, only to see the wife’s job fall through, leaving the couple with limited options that could satisfy their mortgage obligations. Small towns are more affordable, but big cities (as Richard Florida points out in his latest book) offer the long-term security of suitable employers for both people in a relationship, even when something doesn’t work out as expected. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last Friday ArtsVote2008 released a Summary of 2008 Presidential Candidates Arts Positions. Information about Senator Barack Obama’s comprehensive arts policy proposal that he issued in February 2008 has been on the ArtsVote2008 website, along with those from other former candidates like Governor Huckabee, Governor Richardson, and Senators Clinton and Edwards. Last week Senator McCain issued a short statement on his position on arts education which is now also featured at ArtsVote.org. It was initially reported in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune. Read the rest of this entry »

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Creating change in education is not only a function of affecting classroom practice. To impact education, one must know and then act upon the network of decision-makers that determine what a child experiences each day in the classroom. The first step is to understand the way these decisions are made and revised within the entire network of decision-makers. Read the rest of this entry »

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In response to the devastation in Texas and Louisiana due to recent hurricane activity, Americans for the Arts is collecting donations to its Emergency Relief Fund.

We received an update from Jonathon Glus of the Houston Arts Alliance with an overview of the damage that he is aware of from Hurricane Ike. This update is both enlightening and hopeful, though it is obvious that the impact of these storms will not fully be known or understood for some time. If you are among those affected by the recent hurricanes, please share your updates in the comments. Please also join us in sending good thoughts to our arts colleagues in Texas and Louisiana by contributing to the comments below. Read the rest of this entry »

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With the recent success of ‘guest’ bloggers for both the Annual Convention and the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, Americans for the Arts is now searching for members to volunteer as year-round arts bloggers. Selected arts bloggers will be expected to post something twice a month about arts issues that are affecting their communities and organizations and about arts issues of concern to them as individuals.

This program will create an open forum for the arts community, where bloggers can share their voices and engage bloggers and readers in a dialogue across the country. If you’re interested in becoming an arts blogger, e-mail gdunstan@artsusa.org with ARTSblog in the subject. Let us know your name, organization, job title and function, contact information, whether or not you have a blog or have blogged before, and a little bit about the kinds of topics you might want to discuss. Please submit your e-mail by Monday, September 29.

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The event in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention took place at the Minnesota Children’s Museum. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee moderated the panel which included featured speakers: Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), Executive Director and CEO U.S. Conference of Mayors Tom Cochran; Emmy-award winning actor, dancer, choreographer, producer, director, and author Debbie Allen; Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne; John Rich, acclaimed country music singer, songwriter, and producer; and Missouri Governor Matt Blunt.

Learn more at www.ArtsVote.org.

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