Pandemic thoughtstream 2 - Strategic ideas
(This week at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra featured a work that I was greatly looking forward to, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. I’ve never had the pleasure to work on or listen to the piece live. I guess it will have to wait…)
In any case, here we are at home (again), and I am just thoughtstreaming some ideas for ways creators, orchestras, and arts organizations can spend this time planning for the future. I’m sure many folks are doing this already or thinking in this way. With two young kids to take care of, there’s not a lot of time or energy at the end of the day for all the creative work/study/composition I’d like to be doing, and thus I am imagining were I in a position of leadership with an orchestra, here are some possible things I’d encourage my team to think about and develop.
(Practice.)
Plan. Or Practice. Or both. This could be golden time. Realizing that many families are suffering either from lack of income, lack of time (work from home, with children and other responsibilities), or lack of personal space. Or worse.
If you are lucky enough to be healthy and have time on your hands, please use it.
What else are you going to do, watch TV all day?
(Practice.)
Gather Data. Trends. Audience preferences. Industry trends. Local cultural phenomena. Analyze it over and over. Find where the organization can afford to develop innovation, or where it can cut back. Get biggest bang for bucks when you reopen by running smart artistic experiments and projects.
Not a lot of $ to go around right now, so go lean. (May ask a friend to collaborate with me on a post about how we can translate lean-startup philosophy to the arts)
(Practice.)
Write future grant proposals.
(Practice.)
For larger organizations, facilitate communication between departments. Often one group of people has no idea how another one works, or what makes them tick, or what they need to be productive. If people communicate more, it will help things run more smoothly when normal operations restart. Plus, ideas will be generated and redundancies discovered that will improve efficiency and resources.
(This may also be a good time to have lots of communication between management and musicians. In addition to gathering data and analysis from the audiences and patrons, how about from the musicians?)
(Practice.)
Develop content (real or ideas) for (present or future) social media campaigns. Lots of organizations have drastically increased their social media footprint right now. No reason to stop this once we start to have live events again. We don’t need to create big ensemble videos all the time to engage people, we just need to continue to show the local/human nature of our organizations. Take down the fourth wall!
(Practice.)
Dream up programs. Dream big. Be creative. Mix genres. Have a stockpile of great ideas! Especially kids/education programming. These are hard. We need to prioritize exciting kids and engaging them more (and more often). We don’t need to “teach” them (of course we do, but that’s not the initial goal), we need to reach them. We don’t know which kids will be our future, but we know that every opportunity to interact is the potential to change lives. We may not see the immediate results, but the future of art depends on the kids.
(Practice.)
Communicate with artists you have collaborated with in the past or with potential future soloists you want to work with and champion. Some may have to work on a different budget. They will appreciate the personal contact now and personal relationships go a long way.
(Practice.)
Communicate with patrons. We will need them more than ever. Easy to set up remote events and get lots of face-to-face time from home with many members of the staff and orchestra. Opportunity for lots of interactive formats here. Again, personal relationships are key. Make patrons feel like they are part of the family, because THEY ARE!
(Practice.)
Figure out lots of alternate forms of engagement with crowds of people less than 50. This means creative programming, venues, types of events. Orchestras have many resources and personnel options. Work on the CBA and talk with Unions to figure out how to utilize and maximize hours and personnel, not limited to rehearsals and performances. This may not be what many musicians signed up for when they joined the orchestra, but flexibility will be key.
(Practice.)
Research living composers. There are a lot of them. Find some who will write music (or make art) for you. Get a consortium together to commission works related to this wacky time. Young composers will need help more than ever. Arts are more apparently relevant than ever, and we should take advantage of this and set ourselves up to be an even more integral fabric of the community when we get to see people in real life again. Start working on this now. There will be goodwill but not a lot of $. Preparation helps maximize $.
(Practice.)
Talk with local restaurants and small businesses about how to work together when we start returning to in-person performances. Local businesses need help. Figuring out partnerships now and creating events that are about the community, not just about going to a concert, will be the future of “downtown.”