
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]Earlier this month, Kathryn Haydon addressed the insidious personal belief that one is not creative. I use the term insidious because I view the belief as something that undermines somet…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:12AM[SHARE]I guess I should have waited a few more days before making last week’s post about today’s graying audiences not being the same graying audiences of two decades ago. Toward the en…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:42AM[SHARE]I am pretty open about admitting when I made a wrong call. While I consistently counsel against investing too many resources into the hottest fad, even I have to admit that the Pokemon Go! c…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 02:24AM[SHARE]You and your staff are ready for a crisis. Everyone, including your volunteers, regularly reviews plans for handling your audience in case of fire, tornado, earthquakes, active shooters, etc…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]For the last 20-25 years, audiences have been getting grayer and dying off. We have all heard that statement multiple times in our careers. We have probably made that statement multiple time…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:03PM[SHARE]Last Fall Grantmakers in the Arts published a summary of key findings from a study about community arts training. The study focused on the increasing focus of local arts agencies into cross-…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 07:36PM[SHARE]Going back to the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project special report I referenced yesterday, there were findings in another area that grabbed my interest. The following chart breaks d…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:06AM[SHARE]The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) just released a special report that focused on how alumni of creative arts programs across different graduate cohorts felt about the educat…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:36PM[SHARE]

