Category Archives: strategic moves

2022 update on Demographic Change and the Performing Arts

This short video on demographic change is as fresh and needed today as it was a decade ago when I created it. The questions I posed for the performing arts have only become all the more urgent in this ongoing COVID pandemic reality – and in may ways they still beg to be fully answered by the live arts – as well as other sectors, like health care, housing, social services, technology.

Also, it should be obvious that the labour shortages we see now across almost every sector aren’t merely a COVID effect but largely a demographic effect. The COVID part seems more specific in that people who need to work are working but they aren’t as willing to earn low wages, and want reasonable working conditions. In fact, labour market participation is up in younger age groups as COVID recovery has advanced.

Changing Demographics and the Performing Arts from CAPACOA on Vimeo.

Here are a couple of articles on how the aging population is playing out when we don;t make the plans needed even though we can see the train leave the station decades in advance.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/dq220427a-eng.htm

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/job-skills-shortage-1.6409237

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-workers-covid-retirements-1.6529325

11 Digital Workshops Available Online

PADE (Puppetry Arts Digital Evolution) project aimed to increase access to digital tools, resources and skills for puppeteers, multidisciplinary artists and arts organizations. Through this national initiative, we shared, learnt and planned how best to implement digital knowledge and tools into individual and joint digital discoverability, marketing, and strategic future plans.

All  sessions were designed and facilitated by Inga Petri, Strategic Moves. These 11 workshops cover digital literacy and intelligence material that Inga developed  for Making Tomorrow Better. These insights and more were shared with the Canadian arts presenting sector over 3 years from 2019 to 2021. This latest series is current as of March 2022.

  1. The Fundamentals Series
  2. Beyond the Fundamentals (From Search to Discoverability)
  3. Understanding Digital Business Opportunities and Revenue Models

Workshop Series 1 – Fundamentals

Workshop 1.1: Building an Effective Online Presence Assessment (60 min)

  1. Self-Assessment tool (online) 
  2. Download Presentation Slides
  3. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 1.2: Creating web content that connects with your audiences (75 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 1.3: Truly engaging: How to create social media posts that connect ( 75 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 1.4: Mastering Google (75 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop Series 2 – Beyond Fundamentals: From Search to Discoverability

Workshop 2.1: Assessment SEO (75 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 2.2: Machine-Readable Content (90 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 2.3: Wikidata – Linked, Open Data/Wikidata (60 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 2.4: Discoverability Review (60 min)

  1. Watch workshop recording

Workshop Series 3 – Digital Business Opportunities and Revenue

Workshop 3.1: Digital Value Chain (90 min)

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 3.2 – Hybrid Business Models

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Workshop 3.3 – Digital Business Tools

  1. Download Presentation Slides
  2. Watch workshop recording

Project Partners

Rebuilding Better – Nine Trends in the Performing Arts

9 years ago, in March 2013, I wrote a call to action for the performing arts presenting sector. It was an adjunct to the seminal Value of Presenting Study that I wrote to instigate sectoral action to secure the relevance of the sector in the mid- to long-term.


These Reflections and Recommendations were:
1. Strategy and organizational design to nurture capacity for change, strengthen relevance and resilience, come into the 21st century organizationally, in terms of marketing, programming and so forth
2. Building Meaningful Statistical Frameworks – Culture Satellite Account and Mapping the sector
3. Strengthen / Role in Communities – invest in competencies and professional development as a community leader, design for community impacts, ongoing awareness raising of value and benefits of the performing arts
4. Demography and Access – Know your community and your market; Access for seniors (technology-enabled), Partnering with Indigenous peoples, Partnering with recent Immigrants (EDI)
5. Digital Technologies – embrace online and mobile distribution of live arts, create a cross-functional working group to explore digital distribution in the live arts
6. Redefining Competition (focus on non-arts industries) – Define competitive value proposition (relative to non-arts competitors)
7. Experience Design – Brand-first relationship building (not merely transactional), secondary markets (digital impact)

Most of these feel as relevant as ever to me, showing how much more progress the live arts sector needs to make to join the contemporary world with all its complicated dynamics.

In light of COVID and the early stages of – and the vagaries of – COVID recovery in 2022, I have been talking about these 9 trends requiring urgent attention in the sector if it wants to rebuild better:

1.Mental health impacts

2.Financial precarity

3.Loss of expertise and talent – COVID

4.Digital transformation of society

5.Climate change and touring

6.Need new business models re: return to gatherings

7.Ways to support local artists

8.Digital Dissemination platforms

9.Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

In part it feels like the more things change the more they stay the same. It also feels like perhaps some of us have learned enough to really tackle the big issues.
https://lnkd.in/gJRdUyVx

Rebuilding Better – Vision for the Performing Arts 2022

I’ve been speaking at two in-person conferences recently (Contact East 2021 in Moncton and Pacific Contact 2022 in Coquitlam) on the hot button topic of Rebuilding Better. I have been proposing this Radical Intent (aka vision) for the Performing Arts as the sector tries to emerge from the worst of the COVID restrictions. The presentation has been called inspiring and has been generating much hallway conversation. So here it is.

My Radical Intent for the Performing Arts to Truly Rebuild Better.

1. Stop doing more with less. Breathe. Go for a walk in the woods, on the beach, in the mountains. Educate your funders to help them see how your effectiveness as an arts worker matters more than pushing out sheer volume.

2. Do less with more! Good pay, reasonable hours, improve mental health, improve working conditions. Take care of each other, be there: we are in this together.

3. Embrace digital connection. It is real and it is rapidly growing, if you like it or not is immaterial!
Go ahead and assess digital opportunities in your context, your community and your organization and build digital business lines if it makes sense.
Think about what it looks like to meaningfully disseminate or present live arts digitally. Learn about and adopt industry backbone application (The Pitch, I want to showcase, block booking, PPN, Side door)

4. Be the change you want to see. #MeToo#blm#truthandreconciliation 

Act, don’t leave it at paying lip service; when its just words and intentions without action, folks see right through it – always.

5. Engage the public through the arts, not merely in the arts.
Climate change, housing availability, precarious employment, living wages/guaranteed income, fear-based politics / elections, dis- and mis-information, online bully pulpits – so many topics that could be made better for the majority of people as well as systemically marginalized people through creative and artistic interventions

6. Make a big difference in your community. What are the conversations that need to be had locally? Hot button issues? Get involved and convene people in conversations, curate shows to reflect on the issues, host solution summits.

Strategic Planning – Ten Strategies Framework in 2022

I have been using the Alpha Strategies framework advanced by Alan W. Kennedy and Thomas E. Kennedy, after taking a Strategy Certificate executive development courses with Alan at Schulich School of Business about a decade ago. It has been a great vessel to place assessment and planning tools like research-based SWOTs or Business Canvas tool into a broader strategic narrative. Kennedy’s eight Alpha Strategies framework has held up well and has been a useful tool in my practice. It covers eight areas to consider in its strategic management: 1) Business Definition, 2) Production/Service Delivery, 3) Infrastructure (Intellectual, real and digital properties), 4) Financial Management, 5) Marketing and Communications (Audiences and Channels), 6) Organization Management (People), 7) Growth, 8) Risk Management.

With the COVID discontinuities, a heightened focus on serious climate change impacts and major social movements and their mid- to far-right-wing backlash, I will be adding “environmental” and “social” impact strategies in my practice from here on. (Political considerations play in each of these 10 realms, so I am not adding political as a dimension of strategy.) It will be interesting to see where solutions will go from here for my clients. 

Ten Strategies for Strategic Planning 2022
Ten Strategies for Strategic Planning 2022 using Kennedy’s eight Alpha Strategies plus ESG

Interview about Digital Innovation in the age of COVID-19

As part of Yukon Innovation Week, Kari Johnston interviewed Inga Petri about her work in arts & culture in the digital world. I discuss my mission to help artists and arts & culture organizations use digital technologies in profound and new ways and build successful digital business models. It’s not about merely building a website, but about leveraging the latest web technologies and ways in which web 3.0 works to secure viable spaces for artistic and cultural expression and experiences.

Part of Yukon Entrepreneur Podcast Series

DigitalArtsNation.ca launched!

Today, we’ve launched digitalartsnation.ca, the website for Making Tomorrow Better: Taking Digital Action in the Performing Arts. This initiative received significant funding from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund in spring of 2019. The nation-wide partnership led by the Atlantic Presenters Association includes the Manitoba Arts Network, BC Touring Council, Island Mountain Arts/Northern Exposure, Yukon Arts Centre / N3 and the Yellowknife Arts & Cultural Centre.

logo Making Tomorrow Better Taking Digital  Action in the Performing Arts

Of note: most of the participants in the face-to-face workshops live on the edges of the country. therefore we tailor content to suit the realities, including slower internet connectivity,  of rural and remote communities across Canada. Because what works there, will work in urban centres, too.

This national initiative brings practical digital know-how to participants across Canada, through custom workshops, online how-to tutorials and information-sharing

These workshops are designed to help participants speak digital with confidence – that is, we will demystify and discuss the digital realm in plain English – and quickly become competent participants in arts sector conversations about leading digital tools, emerging digital innovations, and new digital business models.

Workshops are led by Inga Petri, Strategic Moves, or Tammy Lee, Culture Creates.

Watch our upcoming workshops page and see where we are headed next!