
The idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master something has largely been debunked since Malcolm Gladwell first suggested it. Still, I think he did everyone a favor by suggesting this number …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:33AM[SHARE]Great ideas can be found and cultivated everywhere. That is the basic message of a blog post on the Center for Small Towns’ website. They note that reporting on rural towns often s…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:36AM[SHARE]I have a fairly regular standing appointment on a radio station to talk about upcoming events at our performing arts center. Often the host will ask me to talk about the process we go throug…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:33AM[SHARE]Via Marginal Revolution blog, comes a story about a tourist spot in China that supposedly put in speed bumps to force people to slow down and appreciate the scenery. It made me think, is thi…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:06AM[SHARE]If you haven’t been following Nina Simon on her Museum 2.0 blog or haven’t read her book, The Art of Relevance, her recent TEDx Palo Alto talk could be a good 12 minute intro to …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:54AM[SHARE]Via Artsjournal.com is a thought-provoking essay about artistic performance on Aeon. Dancer Barbara Gail Montero posits that a true expert performer doesn’t surrender to “the flo…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:31AM[SHARE]You may have heard about the lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art whose signs recommending $25 admission fee was seen as obfuscating the fact you can pay what you want. The mus…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]I have mentioned a couple times how Jamie Bennett addressed a belief in a TEDx talk that art is what other people do in other places. I wonder if there might be a little “familiari…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:54AM[SHARE]I have written about stakeholder revolts where people in the community force non-profit boards to reconstitute themselves, usually in reaction to a planned closing of the organization. …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:02PM[SHARE]In a recent article on Salon, music professor Steven Demorest, talks about the way music education in schools can create anxiety in people about singing. He cites a scene from the Oscar winn…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:18AM[SHARE]Do you have a few moments so I can share some information about a cult I joined? No, wait, wait, before you run away. This is not that type of cult. In fact, this cult demands much less in t…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:31AM[SHARE]I don’t often advocate for specific performers here on Butts in the Seats. I get enough requests to review things on my blog and hundreds of emails from artists at my day job that I do…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:36PM[SHARE]Well I am glad I mentioned yesterday how fulfilling I found all the creative projects I have been involved with over the course of my career. Today in The Atlantic, they had a story about th…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:48PM[SHARE]Every couple months the treasurer tells our board of directors how easy it would be to embezzle funds due to the lack of sufficient checks and balances. She is especially wary of the fact th…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]Recently I have been thinking back about different projects I have participated in over the last 10-15 years that I really found fulfilling. I invested a lot of time in those projects and di…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:36AM[SHARE]Back in February, Seth Godin made a post about “The two vocabularies (because there are two audiences),” discussing how the vocabulary that appeals to people who consider themsel…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:54PM[SHARE]I bookmarked this story years ago and I don’t know why I never wrote about it. Back in 2015, the Toronto Globe and Mail did an 8 part story on the rehearsal and performance process of …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:42AM[SHARE]This week Jonathan Mandell addressed an issue that has been troubling me for a few years. I have noticed more and more frequently that actors don’t seem to be taking the time to decomp…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:18AM[SHARE]Drew McManus has been discussing diversity in programming for the last week or so on Adaptistration. With those thoughts bopping around my cranium, it was probably only natural that a po…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:54AM[SHARE]This week Barry Hessenius wrote about the process of interviewing someone for a job. One of his points was not to use other people’s interview questions/generic questions you pull …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:06PM[SHARE]I have been paying attention to what people do as part of their creative process lately. So I was happy to read George Saunders’ piece in The Guardian from last month, “What writ…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:42PM[SHARE]For two-three years now I have regularly revisited the situation where generally people have an easier time identifying themselves as a participant in a sport than as an artist. Earlier this…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:18AM[SHARE]You know how they say you need to dress for the job you want rather than the job you have? In much the same way, this is true for pursuing non-profit status. A few years back Ellis Carter li…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]Even though it often feels like promoting arts and culture as a non-profit entity requires inventing entirely new methods wholecloth because our emphasis and motivations are not driven by a …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 02:24AM[SHARE]A few years back I had organized a panel on presenting the work of contemporary indigenous artists at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference. We were fortunate to have Moss…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 02:02AM[SHARE]A little while ago I came across a presentation by the Wallace Foundation that seeks to aggregate a number of studies to provide insight for building millennial audiences. If you have been f…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:42AM[SHARE]Now and again I have cited the 2010 IBM study where CEOs worldwide ranked creativity as the most relevant and important skill their employees needed to take their companies in the future.Â…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:12PM[SHARE]Margy Waller’s piece about How To Talk About Saving the NEA has been making the rounds these last couple weeks. You should take a look at it if you haven’t already. Her piece…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:48PM[SHARE]An interesting article in Pacific Standard came across my feed in the last few weeks. It suggests that male disinterest in the arts is a result of social pressure to conform during the early…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:06PM[SHARE]Ah, Spring! That time of year when an arts organization’s mind turns to thoughts of season brochures and other promotional materials. Whether those materials are created by a board com…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]This really great story on the Americans for the Arts blog caught my eye that I would label as unintentional placemaking. Though I could think of other apt terms. Douglas Sorocco writes abou…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:36AM[SHARE]

