2,272 stories by "Joe Patti"
Looking back at some old posts, I really started to think about the conflict of market forces and education. I was reading an old post that cited Tony Kushner’s proposal to eliminate t…
Back in 2005, I wrote about a study by the Urban Institute dealing with attendance at cultural activities. Looking back at the study, The Diversity of Cultural Participation, I am still a li…
My suggestion for a 2012 resolution to all my readers out there is a musical one. The words of They Might Be Giants, “Whistling in the Dark.” There's only one thing that I know h…
Apropos to the recent aggregation of articles on You’ve Cott Mail about diversity in the arts, I wanted to point back to a post I did a few years ago about the pressures of protecting …
I had nearly forgotten about this arts education resource. Back before I started using the “Info You Can Use” tag I came across Annenberg/CPB Arts In Every Classroom series on te…
I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful Christmas yesterday. As I understand it, today is the seventh day of Hanukkah. And of course, we are just in the beginning of the 12 days of Chris…
By the time you read this, I should hopefully be at my sister’s house teasing my nephews. Fear not loyal readers, for I have scheduled a series of posts according to my usual publishin…
Arts Orange County Executive Director, Richard Stein, recently linked to a study his organization commissioned about how art organizations were acknowledging the rise of Professional-Amateur…
I will admit that one problem of which I have often been aware is that it is difficult to make everyone at my theatre aware of the myriad forms of relationships different people have with us…
H/t Daniel Pink who linked to a story about a “Disloyalty Card” being used by independent coffee shops in Singapore. If you go to one of 8 coffee shops and pick up a card, go to …
You may have read Kurt Andersen recent piece in Vanity Fair noting that fashion, art, design and culture in general hasn’t really changed much in the last twenty years. Or maybe like m…
I may be beating a long dead horse here but last week the National Endowment for the Arts linked to a NY Times article from their Twitter account asking what people thought. The article in q…
So the big tragedy of non profit arts organizations is that while we are the champions of creativity, we don’t really provide all our employees the most conducive environments for bein…
I was starting to write up a draft of a press release for a show we will be doing in the Spring, First Person: Seeing America. Probably the best way to describe it is as a live documentary. …
Thanks to Ken Davenport’s post on the subject, I discovered the bill to facilitate crowdfunding I wrote about at the end of October is nearing approval. The House (H.R. 2930) approved …
Those who have been reading for a number of years may recall that I have been on an advisory committee for the performing arts portion of a community center the Salvation Army is building wi…
The subject of paying interns has been in the news fairly frequently. This summer I noted that while non-profits are currently exempt from some of the rules of the Fair Labor Standards Act, …
On the Marginal Revolution blog, Tyler Cowen has a short post about a psychology professor who requires his students take turns bringing a homemade snack in to each class. If they don’…
I usually don’t do thanksgiving themed posts but I have been feeling really energized by some recent occurrences I wanted to acknowledge. -First, I have recently realized just how valu…
Hat tip to Thomas Cott at You’ve Cott Mail for making us aware that attempts to attract younger audiences through special pricing may be a form of age discrimination. The D.C. Office o…
I try a fair number of the strategies/techniques that I cover here. Some work better than others. For example, for the last seven performances we have tried just asking two questions in our …
It seems discussion of non-profit mergers is becoming more prevalent of late. I recently became aware of a research document created by Wilder Research and MAP for Non Profits looking at wha…
I was speaking about arts careers at a high school career day today. The high school had been really good about sending out information packets with suggested topics to cover with the studen…
One of the biggest topics of discussion these days is about engaging audiences. Often during these discussions, people talk about the way things used to be when audiences weren’t expec…
I have been on a few board-staff retreats and have always been a little skeptical about whether any significant change will come from them. Admittedly, in some cases some small changes have …
