Life in the Arts...The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Pursual of Presenting: What of the up and coming generation?

2011-07-11T13:36:00.002-03:00

As a new member to the APA crew, and to the presenting world, I am coming into this industry with fresh eyes. Before I was hired by APA to manage the Atlantic Moves program, presenting as a profession was not on my radar. My background is in music and I went through university imagining that I had two career options; performer or music teacher. As it turns out, I studied musicology in my masters and have tried my hand at several arts-related positions in the past two years. There’s so much more out there than students realize.

I’m writing this blog to query into the continuance and longevity of fields like presenting. No one yearns to become a presenter as a child. Where are youth expected to learn of these career opportunities and how do they become educated and equipped to handle these positions? Where are they to gain experience?

On day 1 of PD sessions at White Point, NS, I realized the complexity of the situation. Save a few, most of the attendees were aged 35 and above. The prospect of retirement was certainly a topic of conversation. My attendance was due to my position with APA, which made me one of only a few individuals under 30
attending the sessions. I asked myself, what of the up and coming generation? With regard to my generation, who will be managing our theatres? Is it simply a field people come to at a later age?

The PD sessions opened my mind to the importance of educated, perceptive presenters. After all, presenters are the gate keepers of culture in their communities, especially in small communities which have less access to larger urban centres. The community is exposed to culture through their eyes. They are a lens or filter through which the community views and understands the arts.

I am gaining a unique perspective of this process as the Atlantic Moves manager. Through the Atlantic Moves program, APA is requesting a huge commitment from our presenters; that they educate themselves about contemporary dance in addition to presenting it. Participation is voluntary. A certain level of education in contemporary dance is not mandated (or in any art form for that matter) in order to present it. However, the Atlantic Moves meetings have brought to light the importance of the presenter’s ability to speak confidently and intelligently about dance while presenting it. This confidence and knowledge has a direct impact on the genre’s success in that particular region.

Success at presenting a new genre is not simply gathering the communities support for a single performance; it’s fostering and sustaining that support which allows for presentations of the art form in future. In the case of Atlantic Moves, the presenter must have a vested interest in the presentation of contemporary dance in order to stay on top of trends and up-and-coming performers/shows. It takes a lot of work, and personal investment of behalf of the presenter, to gain acceptance for contemporary dance in a region. In my mind, this requires a special, dedicated, educated individual to pull it off. I think this could be proven true in the presentation of any genre.

What do you think of this situation? As a presenter, do you believe there is a “situation” at all? Where are presenters becoming educated? Do you think it is a field that requires the participation of young professionals? What sort of experience is needed in order to become a successful presenter? Anyone care to share their story?

-This article was contributed by Jennifer Higgs. She is the Atlantic Moves Manager with the APA.

Patterns in Performing Arts Spending in Canada in 2008

2011-04-19T12:47:00.000-03:00

Below is a link to an interesting study that was completed by Hill Strategies. Hopefully we will have a new government that takes these statistics seriously!

http://www.hillstrategies.com/resources_details.php?resUID=1000385

Crowdfunding for venues?

2011-03-22T13:58:00.000-03:00

This entry was contributed by Andrew from Musquodoboit Valley Bicentennial Theatre.

I read recently of an artist using web-based crowdfunding sites to raise $25,000 for a production. I have also been a part of a crowdfunding venture; I provided a small amount to help Ryan MacGrath finish Cooper Hatch Paris, and now the album is nominated for an ECMA. Talk about return on investment!

The interest in crowdfunding has me wondering if it could be used by venues as a means of raising money to present shows. Say for example I wanted to present the Rolling Stones (let's dream big shall we). The only way my venue could afford that would be to fund it through contributions from patrons who really liked the Stones.

Are there any venues in the APA that have tried crowdfunding of this kind?

How do you think Harper's "re-branding" of the Canadian Government will affect the arts?

2011-03-08T14:59:00.000-04:00

Everyone has felt the strain of funding for the arts since Harper showed up on Parliament Hill. With the announcement of his plans to re-brand the "Government of Canada" to the "Harper Government," how do you think this will further affect the position of the arts within Canada?

Read this article from The Star for more info: Harper re-brands the government out of spite

How do you send your mass emails?

2011-02-04T15:42:00.001-04:00

Chris Ball of Astor Theatre is interested to hear whether APA members are using companies to send out mass emails or doing them in-house. If you are doing the mass emails through a company, can you please send the name of the company and your level of satisfaction.

Here is what others had to say:

“We use an American company called PATRON MAIL through Patron Technology, Inc. It has worked very well for us.”
- Pat, Victoria Playhouse (PE)

“I do all the mass emails myself.”
- Lisa, Mermaid Theatre (NS)

“I'm currently sending them myself but would be very interested in hearing about options that are available and the audience that they target.”
- Heidi, Larlee Creek Hullabaloo (NB)

“We use the following: Mail Chimp at www.mailchimp.com.”
- Melissa, Garrick Theatre (NFLD)

“ I use Vertical Response.”
- Geoff, King’s Theatre (NS)

“We do ours inhouse. We ask patrons if they are interested in our promotional material and when we add names I use BCC, so their addresses are not shown...”
- Wanda, Arts and Culture Centre (NFLD)

“...We do not use a company , just in-house...”
- Ellen, Arts and Culture Centre (NFLD)

“We use Patron Technology. Very pleased but it costs us $100.00 dollars per month. I am trying to go with an in-house method like Chris does but now I am wondering if he is having problems with it.”
- Donald, Marigold (NS)

“I use constant contact. Awesome service!”

- Todd, Clarenville Events Centre (NFLD)

“We use Constant Contact and are reasonably satisfied. Their templates can be a little tricky to figure out, but once you've done it you can send out great looking stuff. If you have an IT person, they can design a custom template for you and then it's even better. We love that recipients can update their own contact info and/or unsubscribe at will.”
- Paul, Live Art Dance Productions (NS)

“The Houlahan Group - very satisfied.”
- Peter, Imperial Theatre (NB)

How do you send your mass emails? Use the comment box below to tell us your experiences with different email services!

Join in on the discussion on emerging digital technologies!

2011-02-01T16:39:00.001-04:00

This entry was contributed by Frédéric Julien with CAPACOA.

Do you sometimes feel that your relationship with your online ticket sales provider is more a “you win lots / I win some” than real “win/win”? Are there some service providers you would definitely not recommend to your peers? And what do you think about those resale sites that scalp tickets on a massive scale (Ticketmaster says pricey resale tickets protect consumers)? These are a few questions that I invite you to discuss online through the Cultural Human Resources Council’s study on the Impacts of Emerging Digital Technologies on the Cultural Sector. I’ll be leading this discussion on Online ticket sale, resale and groupsale on Monday February 7, at 12:00 (Eastern Time). Be part of it!

2010-12-15T16:16:00.006-04:00

This entry was contributed by Susan Hoover. She is Artistic Director for the Osprey Arts Centre.

Programming a season is what is on my mind today as I sit here trying to work on a relatively warm and sunny day 10 days before Christmas - that would be after a night of tossing and turning over worry about the big C. Since women seem to make this holiday happen and I have too much work to do, the ugly is the subject I want to address.

The programming committee that haunts my days met last night. That is, one member showed up as well as our outreach director. The boss (the GM) was sick, one member was at work (she works nights), one lobster fishing (well, we are the lobster capital of Canada), and one forgot the meeting.

I wish it was not so, but the committee wants to partake in making the programming choices (oh, and by the way, the boss agrees with this). I had a bagful (that bag the kids made for us at Contact East, which broke on the way home) of CDs and other promotional material. Most was not of interest to them (that is the other two people in the room.)

They had their own ideas about what we should present. I hate to say this but one of the two people has awful taste, which became clear after listening to the suggestions. She had no idea what our audience was interested in, nor any standards of excellence.

Fortunately the other member had some good ideas which I am happy to investigate. It would have been nice to have those suggestions earlier so that I could have prepared them but, oh well, they were ideas. Since it is so close to Christmas and I was feeling very Scroogish, I felt like suggesting that she would make a great artistic director and maybe she would like to work for peanuts instead of her civil servant salary, but I bit my tongue.

Now I start over again imagining our next season. Well, maybe I will wait until January and go out and cut some bows and find a Christmas tree. The boss is sick anyway and he will never know.

Your colleague in the complex business of making a season.
Susan Hoover

Maître diffuseur is showing it’s Presenter’s Toolkit side

2010-12-15T15:12:00.003-04:00

This entry was contributed by Frédéric Julien. He is coordinator of the Presenter’s Toolkit since last April and a happy observer of the Canadian presenting scene for eight years.

Until recently, the Presenter’s Toolkit used to be the more discreet half of Maître diffuseur, a French professional development online tool for presenter’s. Although there are many reasons to account for that, what really matters today is that Maître diffuseur / Presenter’s Toolkit is now affirming fully its dual personality (although I can’t tell which is the sweet and which is the wheat) with content in both languages.

For those who have never heard of the Presenter’s Toolkit, it’s a Canada-wide professional development initiative for performing arts presenters and cultural workers within the presenting field. It features a skills development database with resources (publications, online training, best practices, etc.) indexed by theme, as well as a guide of reference works for professional development. It is a joint initiative of RIDEAU, the Fédération culturelle-canadienne française, the Alliance des réseaux de diffusion des arts de la scène (ARDAS) and CAPACOA.

While it used to be consulted essentially by presenting networks, I now expect that its growing contents (we’re now at 21 resources, it’s nothing to brag yet, but that’s only a beginning) will make it more and more relevant to presenters. I’ll be following this blog with a keen interest and with a particular attention to cool publications or best practices that could be posted on the Toolkit. Ultimately, I hope that the presenting community will take ownership of the tool, contribute to it and benefit from it. As the Beatles sang: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Why should you attend Contact East 2011?

2010-12-15T15:08:00.004-04:00

Every year the Atlantic Presenters Association puts together Atlantic Canada's performing arts trade show, Contact East. Performance art professionals (performers, managers and administrators) get together for a weekend of awesome music, dance, and theatre showcases; professional development sessions; and networking opportunities for colleagues from around Canada, North America and the world. We here at APA believe in the sharing of knowledge among peers and Contact East is an important tool to share ideas on best practice that lead to successful presenting in Atlantic Canda. As we look forward to Summerside 2011, we thought we would share some of our delegates' testimonials with you:

Jaffa Road played a juried showcase at Contact East this year. This was a great experience for us so far.

This summer we will be traveling coast to coast performing at the large Canadian International Jazz Festivals. Our participation at Contact East resulted in the addition of 3-6 dates at small soft seaters in Nova Scotia. In addition to that we have also been fielding interest for an additional block booking in the Maritime at a later date and interest in a block booking from American presenters in the South Eastern United States.

In addition to these very tangible results we also had the opportunity to hang out with and share strategies with some other great artists, and pick the brain's of presenters and people like Lou Plaia the founder of Reverb Nation. It seems to me that attending events like Contacts are the best way for artists to secure performance opportunities that will ultimately build their audience and result in gigs that actually generate income for the performers.
Aaron Lightstone
Member of Jaffa Road

Contact East has been a terrific launching pad for our clients. They learn the ropes of Contact Events in a supportive and well developed atmosphere, are able to network with an interesting spectrum of presenters and agents, get useful professional development, and have had opportunities to showcase with good success. The new directions in multinational partnerships have been fruitful for us, and we appreciated the opportunities to make connections and learn about the needs and activities of those presenters."

Barbara Richman

Executive Director of Strategic Arts Management

I'm writing to share with you some comments with regard to the latest edition of Contact East. As a presenter, I find that there are many benefits to attending Contact East. Informal discussions with other presenters often serve as a morale booster and the opportunity to meet agents in the contact room is also something to which I look forward. However, the feature of the conference that is most useful to me is the showcases. As leader of a successful rural organization, albeit one with a small budget, I am unable to attend the music conferences, such as CAPACOA, ROSEQ, etc., that take place outside the Atlantic Provinces. The fact that I make it a point to present mostly artists that I've seen in performance prior to presenting them has contributed greatly to our success. Contact East gives me this opportunity. Not only are the artists showcased the type of artists that we present but they are also artists that will be available to us sooner or later, not to mention artists that we can afford, for the most part.

At the recent Contact East I discovered several artists which I definitely want to present. I saw one or two that I had considered booking but which I now realize wouldn't have been a good fit for our clients, at least not in the main venue we use. A few others turned out to be much more exciting than their albums and, consequently, their performances propelled them to the top of my priority list. A few other artists prodded me to consider some types of acts that we haven't presented thus far, such as theater, comedy, and dance.

On a final note, I wish to tell you that I'm thrilled that the event now takes place every year. I'm very much looking forward to the next Contact East. As a presenter, the event simplifies my work greatly.

Paul-Emile Comeau

President and Artistic Director of Les Productions Le Moulin

I attended contact East for the first time last September and found the whole event well organized, friendly and informative. The standard of showcasing was very high and attention to detail for both performers and promoters exceptional. Apart from the obvious benefits of seeing high quality performers the showcases also benefited me greatly in terms of networking, contacts and inspiration on different ways of working.

Peter Gregory

Rheolwr Noson Allan / Night Out Manager

Thank you to all who forwarded their testimonials to Sue! We certainly appreciate the kind comments and look forward to producing the 2011 edition of Contact East in Summerside - keep an eye on our website, Facebook and Twitter for updates to come!

Welcome!

2010-11-22T17:05:00.000-04:00

Hello out there,

This is exciting! My name is Andrea Ellis and I recently came on board with APA as Membership Development Manager. Along with working for the association, I am in the final stages of my education - I'm five months from completing a masters degree in music and culture. Throughout my university years I have participated and witnessed the success of using an interactive medium, such as blogs and wikis, in the education process. There is something about the collaboration process that is immeasurable in terms of furthering knowledge in one's field. As APA is all about helping its members find the best methods in presenting the performing arts, Sue and I thought that this blog would serve as a great outlet for discussion of the aches and pains associated with the field. But we are presenters for a reason - the success stories are necessary too!

Every month, a new set of articles and entries written by members and colleagues of the APA will be posted HERE (favorite/bookmark us!!). The first round of entries should be emailed to me by December 15th, 2010. Be creative with your topics and don't hold back - this is going to be fun...