Arts Funding Now

I add my thanks and appreciation to everyone who participated in this year’s gala. Here are some photos of the fun.

We have been receiving lots of emails about the state budget. It is so important right now to let our legislators know how important arts funding is to us and to the communities we serve. I understand that legislators are dealing with difficult issues right now, but if arts funding is cut, AGAIN, we will have to work that much harder to get it back. Funding for the arts has never been more important and we endured deep cuts last year, please contact your legislators and ask your constituents to contact theirs. It is crucial that we act to preserve arts funding in Illinois.

Deb

Thank You!

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

I would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who helped make our 30th Anniversary Gala on Monday at the Palmer House a success. It was a fantastic evening with great friends and supporters, delicious food and drink, moving and hilarious speeches and performances and tons of warm fuzzies. Congratulations again to each of our honorees: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Janet Davies, the side project, and Marcie McVay. It was a special night and a perfect celebration of our 30th anniversary.

Special thanks to Diana Martinez our incredible Gala Chair (one more year?), Rue McClanahan, our generous and supportive board of directors, and the entire membership. The event would not have been possible without your many contributions, from donating tickets, subscriptions, and auction packages to decorating and creating unique and imaginitive centerpieces.

On behalf of the League staff, we wish you all a relaxing and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.

Lots Going On

Well…the League gala is Monday night and I look forward to seeing some of you there. Rue McClanahan, my favorite Golden Girl is going to be there and I think it’s going to be a great night.

Tomorrow is the kick-off for the Illinois Cultural Data Project. I encourage you all to attend if you can, it is at the Cultural Center at 9:30. I told you earlier how excited I am about this project coming to Illinois and this is a chance to learn more. Also, trainings are starting to be held in Chicago, you can find out more at www.ilculturaldata.org. I hope to see a lot of you at the kick-off tomorrow.

Deb

Peak Experiences

Yesterday morning I was lucky enough to be able to hear Chip Conley speak. He wrote a book called PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, and is the founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality. He’s not a guy I would choose to go see on my own but the invite came from the Arts Engagement Exchange so I went.

He had a lot of really interesting ideas – I thought one of his best comments was when he was asked what we could do in this economy to try to be better, he said create small wins. By doing that, energy is redirected toward those wins and away from the crisis at hand. I thought that was really smart.

Chip runs hotels…way different from a theatre…but he said that he provides a transformative experience. He talked about tools for measuring a customer’s experience – cleanliness, timeliness, etc. He said that metric measures the bottom of the pyramid. In other words, those are measures of things the customer should expect, and in order to create a transformative experience you have to go way above that on the pyramid (which is too much to explain here) to the Peak…

Good stuff.

Deb

What next?

Swine Flu, please, I understand Joe Biden told everybody to stay home this morning. Thanks Joe. Certainly I don’t want anybody getting swine flu, but really the economy, sub zero temperatures for days on end and now this. Inevitably someone is going to call me and ask what effect the Swine Flu is having on Chicago Theatre. Get ready for a survey. That’s it for the rant.

In a couple of weeks we are going to have the results of our Online Ticketing Market Research Survey. We surveyed patrons in theatres and the Hot Tix buyers list. Some of the preliminary findings are very interesting and not what we think. The survey was completed by Slover-Linnet and funded by The Chicago Community Trust. More to come soon.

Deb

Methinks thou hast verily the most bewitchingest of promotions

A couple of great ideas have come to my attention in the past few days. Chicago Shakes takes the cake with their Talk Like Shakespeare Day promotion. Brilliant and engaging, they are reaching out to their community in a whole new way, celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday, using twitter, a website and lots of other internet-y doodads and getting a ton of press out of the deal.

Chicago Opera Theater did a vote for next season’s opera contest (The People’s Opera), in which patrons paid one dollar per vote and voted for one of three choices. With a matching grant from an anonymous donor, they raised $47,000 last year and are running it again this year. I was at their show the other night and people were lining up to vote. What a great idea, it gets people engaged in what operas are under consideration, gives them a way in to donate without feeling like they need to give a lot of dough, and it’s fun.

Post some promotions you think worked really well.

Until the morrow,

Deb

Earth Day

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

This upcoming Wednesday, April 22 is Earth Day. The mission of Earth Day is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide, and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle for promoting a healthy, sustainable environment. In support of Earth Day check out this list of 50 Things You Can Do To Be a Greener Theater, courtesy of Greentheaters.org and think of what you can do to make a difference at your theater. Is there anything not on the list? What else can we do to be more environmentally friendly and leave less of an imprint?

See what is going on around the world for Earth Day
For a lot of interesting articles and ideas on Green Theater check out GreenTheaters.org

Food for Thought AND a Personal Story

I heard on the radio this morning that JP Morgan Chase is going to post a profit for the last quarter of 2.1 billion and that they and Goldman Sachs want to repay the TARP money given to them (apparently it’s more complicated than “hey, here’s your money back”). Good news I think. Also, the number of people applying for unemployment compensation dropped. Could be that there is a light, I hope so and I know you all do too.

I’m wondering if anyone has been working on any strategies or if you have an idea that could make your company stronger the next time this happens, and it will happen again people, it always does. My dad sold investments for a living as did his brother, his dad and his grandfather. He and my mom are retired now and they live off of their investments. He is the only person I know who HAS NEVER MENTIONED the economic crisis unless someone else brings it up. When someone else does mention it, he says the most maddening things like “what goes up must come down,” and “buy low, sell high,” and “what do you want to know honey?” Uncommunicative though he is, bottom line is this, HE DOESN’T CARE, HE PLANNED FOR THIS. His father weathered the depression in that business, my dad weathered every other economic downturn of the last century in that business. With the greatest of equanimity he will tell you that it will come back, that it always has and it always will.

It’s so hard, it’s hard getting to the next show never mind planning for the next economic crisis, but I hope I come out of this having learned something about what I do and I hope we all do. Here’s to things possibly? maybe? looking up soon…

Deb

Cultural Data Project

OK – this is the greatest thing. I heard about it a few years ago and thought it would never really come true, but then I heard it was in place in Pennsylvania and I was hearing good things about it and THEN, I heard it was coming to Illinois and NOW it is. What it does is simply this: it provides a data collection system. But…WE will be able to use the data. We will be able to compare our data against other organizations of the same size or different size or geographic location or whatever. Things like salary averages, average ticket prices, annual budget, all sorts of information. Of course, the information will not be attributed to a particular organization (i.e. you will compare yourself with other theatres with budgets of between $250,000 and $500,000, as an example, not against a particular theatre). We will also be able to benchmark our own progress over the years. Now here’s the really cool part, a lot of funders are on board with this and what will happen is that we will put the information in to this system once and then we will only have to click a button to generate a financial report for that particular funder. Uh-huh, no more rearranging the budgets to fit the particular funders needs for a report. Uh-huh click a button, that’s right. The data project WILL DO IT FOR US. The folks in Pennsylvania love it. I don’t want to oversell it but really, it sounds awesome. More in next week’s broadcast about the roll out.

Deb

World Theatre Day Recap

World Theatre Day reminded me why I LOVE CHICAGO THEATRE. People from all over the world uploaded to the tumbler feed and the blog, especially great were the numerous “Neo-Futurists Presents” videos, if you haven’t seen them, check them out, hilarious. The party at the Chopin was seriously fun. Hundreds of people showed up and it was just beautiful to see all these Chicago theatre artists and there was so much good will and pride in what we do and if you missed it I really feel bad for you. Jess Hutchinson and Nick Keenan rounded up a bunch of folks to volunteer their time and their talents and really made it collaborative and spirited and, I’ll say it again fun. Lela and Zygmunt at Chopin Theatre were our gracious hosts. I was so proud to be a part of it and of this community.

I look forward to next year, but in the meantime I hope we find other ways to come together as a community and celebrate ourselves.

Deb

APASO

By Ben Thiem, Director of Member Services

I am writing this post from the city of Boston, where for the next few days I am at the annual Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (APASO) conference. The APASO conference is an annual gathering of performing arts service organizations from across the US and Canada to share best practices, challenges and successes, and discuss how we can best serve our constituents and collaborate nationally to advance the performing arts. There are representatives from all across the United States and Canada including Theatre Bay Area, Theatre Puget Sound, Austin Circle of Theatres, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, Atlanta Coalition for the Performing Arts, Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, Theatre Communications Group, and Theatre Development Fund to name a few. This is my fourth APASO conference, so I know the staff at many of the other organizations pretty well now and it feels a bit like a family reunion when we gather again each year.

It's an exciting and intense three days full of group discussions, breakout sessions, panels and speakers. The conference provides an opportunity to reflect on what we're currently doing at the League and do some big picture thinking about the future. I always leave APASO feeling rejuvinated and filled with new ideas to bring back to Chicago. While each city and performing arts community is unique, we share many commonalities and the need for us to gather and share knowledge and resources is important and valuable, especially in these challenging times.

If you are interested in some of the topics that we'll be discussing, follow us on Twitter the next few days and I will see you back in Chicago.

Resource Sharing – Hot Topic

On Monday the League will be hosting a discussion on resource sharing. There will be a panel discussion followed by a community brainstorming session. I think this is a starting point for discussions about new models of operating, and new ways of cooperating and sharing. There are a lot of interesting things already beginning to happen. I think that now is the time for us to examine our operating models and look for what could best serve us now and in the future. I know many of you have interesting ideas. Please join us.

The panel will consist of: Lane Alexander, co-founder and director of Chicago Human Rhythm Project was a member of Arts Bridge and is currently working on new resource sharing projects. Suellen Burns, former executive director of Arts Bridge from 1996 to 2000. Arts Bridge was the nation’s first incubator for the arts. Housed at the Atheneum, Arts Bridge served a large number of performing arts organizations. Ivan Sygoda, director of Pentacle in New York. Pentacle provides a wide variety of services to artists and arts organization including grant writing, fiscal administration, and a help desk. Pentacle largely serves the dance community.

The event will take place on Monday, March 23 beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the DCA's Storefront Theater, 66 E Randolph. RSVP to ben@chicagoplays.com to attend.

Deb