Category Archives: strategic moves

Building community together: Northern Exposure arts conference

The Wells Hotel

I spent Thanksgiving in the Cariboo town of Wells, BC (population 259) at the Northern Exposure conference.

Here are my reflections on what we did, how we did it and what it enabled; in so doing I hope to draw the curtain back a little on effective design thinking-inspired meetings that help people move to the next level – whatever that is for them.

Putting the team together

Island Mountain Arts‘ ambitious conference attracted about 75 festival organizers, arts organization staff and volunteers and musicians from BC’s northern and southern interior, the Sunshine Coast, Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii, and the Yukon.

Island Mountain Arts (IMA – named after a local mountain, called Island) has been operating its renowned Summer School of Art since 1977 and over the years has expanded with a Public Art Gallery and Gift Shop, an International Harp School, the Toni Onley Artists’ Project and the award winning ArtsWells Festival of All Things Art.

Julie Fowler, Executive Director of IMA, invited me to facilitate this conference, based on my previous work with SPARC – Supporting Performing Arts in Rural Communities and the Yukon Arts Presenters Summit. And she recruited co-presenters and panelists from across B.C. to ensure a wide range of perspectives.

A common purpose: creating community

Speaking with Julie, we quickly established a common purpose: to build up a better networked rural festival and arts community.

My approach as facilitator and presenter was focused on creating spaces for participants to get to know each other, share knowledge and know-how, and encourage collaborative learning and action planning. Julie and her wonderful team took care of conference logistics, meals and showcases – 16 in total – at the local Sunset Theatre and the Wells Hotel. She arranged two sessions tailored for musicians.

The conference also had its share of great food by chef Sharon and the kitchen crew and a fine assortment of beverages at showcase and reception venues. Being in a small place, the conference moved as a whole from breakfast at the Wells Hotel to the Wells Community Hall for conference sessions, back up the street for lunch and showcases and then back for more learning. We shared dinner and conversations and then went off to the Sunset Theatre for showcases. A late evening snack invariably appeared at the Pub to maintain the stamina of musicians and participants alike.

I feel that having participants move together in this way, sharing meals and conversations in ever changing configurations, made for closer connections and more meaningful, relevant learning.

Pre-conference professional development

Participants during the audience development session.

The pre-conference professional development day on audience development was attended by most of the conference participants. I delivered a well-honed workshop; modified as usual to suit the rural context. This session was highly interactive, with lots of conversation by all participants and practical learning. This was followed by a full slate of 15-minute 1-on-1 sessions with me. The nine participants brought a wide range of marketing and organizational questions to these intensive conversations.

At the same time, Emma Jarrett, a performance coach, conducted a fantastic hands-on workshop for musicians and anyone else interested in honing their presentation skills.

Creating an open learning environment

I borrowed a networking exercise from the Yukon Arts Presenters Summit (Let’s Get Connected) which in turn the Yukon organizers had modified from SPARC. The four topics were:
•   who you are and what you do
•   your hopes and dreams
•   what you’re seeking
•   what you have to offer

During the Let’s Get Connected process, participants had four 10-minute segments for reflection and conversation at tables of 6 each. A quick way to meet 20+ participants in an hour.

All participants had their picture taken at registration. They recorded the information on their print outs and then discussed it with their group. Every 10 minutes a room full of participants stood up and found a new table of six to move to the next topic. It’s an amazing free-flowing choreography.

With the sheets we created a Living Wall that served as a reminder of the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience each and every participant brought to this conference.

It was a powerful beginning that I feel set the tone for a true working conference: Participants heard their own voices from the start; felt valued as experienced organizers; and they became collaborators in co-creating our conference.

After a short coffee jaunt up to the hotel, I gave a well-received keynote on Co-creating a Culture of Place, in which I made the case, as I have at other conferences, for Vibrant communities fueled by the arts and its community-engaged partnerships. Much of the data in that keynote comes from The Value of Presenting study. This study continues to deepen the conversations about arts presenters and their role and impact in their communities.

After lunch, I had the pleasure of working with Janet Rogers – a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer and broadcaster from the Six Nations in southern Ontario, who was born in Vancouver and has been living on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people (Victoria, BC) since 1994 – to share information and lead a conversation on Cultural Tourism. I provided context and laid out a cultural tourism landscape. Janet led a conversation on how to access indigenous artists for festivals and events, and encouraged making the necessary contacts early in the event planning process. She proposed that in so doing we could move from the acknowledgement of traditional lands into meaningful inclusion and full participation by indigenous and non-indigenous artists. After all, Aboriginal tourism is seen as a key aspect of expanding Canada’s and BC’s cultural tourism potential.

I felt this was an important and open conversation about an area many of us want to get right but also feel some insecurity about. These protocols are new to most event organizers. What excites me is that meaningful change can happen through our individual decisions and actions, by getting to know each other and speaking openly and respectfully to each other. We don’t have to wait until everything is figured out in the big picture.

A small selection of our Living Wall.

Concurrently, Music BC presented a session for musicians on all of the sources of revenue available to them for their work.

I moved the programmed afternoon networking round tables outside to a walking conversation – thankfully the rain held off and the winds had died down.

Sharing stories and action planning

On the last day of the conference we were in Barkerville.

The morning featured five inspiring stories presented by Julie Fowler, ArtsWells Festival/Island Mountain Arts; Carla Stephenson, Tiny Lights Festival; Karen Jeffery, Sunset Theatre; Deb Beaton Smith, Rifflandia; and Miriam Schilling, Xatśūll Heritage Village, Soda Creek.

The panelists – participants conversation drew the curtain back a little on how to build success, how to sustain arts in small communities and the kind of perseverance, experimentation and serendipity it takes. Everyone was eager to share their experiences and it felt like the perfect transition to move toward action planning.

But first I led a practical workshop on integrated online marketing with Fraser Hayes‘ able assistance. Fraser is the station manager of CFUR Radio in Prince George; a community radio station that has built a substantial integrated online footprint to complement its broadcasts. More insights and specific action items tumbled forth and then we were ready for lunch, a walk about this amazing restored gold rush town and the final two showcases.

The conference concluded with action planning. First I asked everyone to write down key take-aways from the conference, their next action steps and desired short and long-term results. The process requires participants to write the information out twice: one copy to take home and the second copy to be shared with participants. In this way we hope to facilitate network building. (I borrowed this format in condensed form from the Yukon Arts Presenters Summit which was facilitated by Jerry Yoshitomi.) Writing this down twice gives more time to reflect and form greater commitment to taking actions. This exercise moved seamlessly into a robust conversation around participant-identified topics. We collapsed about 10 (!) suggested topics into three broad areas: programming, operations and youth. Participants quickly gravitated toward their topic and a number of specific ideas for collaborations and resource sharing were brought forward.

Finally, in closing, we ended as we began: with participants having the last word through sharing highlights from their own action plans.

It seemed everyone felt confident that this conference was not merely the culmination of a long-standing dream, but that it would be the catalyst to move forward with closer ties between participants and their organizations from all over rural BC.

While the conference concluded officially, conversations continued into the night as some participants stayed for Thanksgiving dinner and more pub time.

More than a week after leaving Wells, these days continue to reverberate in me. I am grateful for the new connections, the new friends I made and for being part of this special community of festival and arts organizers.

New office in Whitehorse complements Ottawa location

Since 2011 my work has taken a decidedly national turn with many visits in every province and territory for research and consultations, training workshops, client projects and conference presentations and keynotes.

To facilitate growing demand and durably expand my client portfolio I have opened a second office in Whitehorse, Yukon in September 2015. You might wonder why Whitehorse? It’s simple: I love the freedom of the Northern landscapes and its magnificent mountains and I have been making friends and working with colleagues who do inspiring work, leading work, at the edges of this vast country. The Yukon has an amazing scene that makes Whitehorse and Dawson brim with arts and culture of all sorts; winters are even busier than summers for all the music, theatre and community activities.

I am thrilled and grateful to work with remarkable clients in Ottawa, too. I take great care to ensure we have plenty of time for face-to-face meetings as much of the impact of our work together lies in the deeper discussions of research findings and insights and the decision-making on implications and next steps.

As I have done for the first nine years of Strategic Moves, I continue to partner with research companies, marketers, creatives and digital whizzes whenever a project benefits from a larger team to deliver the desired results.

Splitting my time between Ottawa and Whitehorse means I have a new favourite airline: Air North has established a twice weekly, direct flight between Ottawa and Whitehorse with a short stop-over in Yellowknife. That means a commute of merely 7 hours to shuttle between my offices: shorter than any other airline and usually cheaper, too.

Finally, contact information is unchanged. As always you can reach me at:

613-558-8433 (mobile, text – gotta love those “long distance included” plans)
ipetri@strategicmoves.ca.
Skype @ inga.petri
WebEx for online meetings.

All to say, I am as accessible as ever and the high degree of responsiveness my clients are accustomed to will continue to be my calling card.

My physical whereabouts in the next few months, pending any additional conferences, workshops and client meetings:

Ottawa, ON – until October 7
Wells, BC – October 8 to 13
Whitehorse, YT – October 14 to 26
Kelowna, BC – October 27 to 31
Ottawa, ON – November 1 to 4
Yarmouth, NS – November 5 to 8
Ottawa, ON – November 9 to 12
Whitehorse, YT – November 13 to 22
Ottawa, ON – November 23 to December 18
Whitehorse, YT – December 18 to January 10

[January 2016: For updates on my engagements across Canada click here.]

I’m excited to increase Strategic Moves’ footprint and to see what new opportunities and connections it will bring about.

2015 Nuit Blanche Whitehorse – The Whitehorse Steam Laundry participatory piece by Sylvie Binette.

2015 Nuit Blanche Whitehorse – Doily Webs by Nicole Bauberger and Jessica Vellenga.

Is it Sustainable? Volunteers in arts and culture

An off-the-cuff remark during the recent SPARC Network Summit, was captured by Chad Ingram of the Minden Times:

“The idea that we’re all volunteer-run [in rural communities] . . . is that sustainable?” [Inga] Petri asked, pointing out that the arts is one of very few industries where people are expected to donate much of their time. “We would never imagine mining to work that way. We would never imagine forestry to work that way.” [Or fisheries for that matter: all industries that are also often located in rural or remote locations in the country.]

So why do we not need to have volunteers running mining companies, like they run community-based arts presenting organizations in many regions of Canada? Why do forestry companies not call for volunteers to support their operations or sales teams, as many arts organizations do? Why such a dearth of volunteers in integral oversight roles in fisheries or construction industries?

Don’t worry. I get it. The performing arts is a sector where labour productivity can’t so easily be increased (that Beethoven symphony requires the same number of musicians today as it did when it premiered), unlike what has been achieved in those other industries through automation and machinery with ever greater capacity requiring ever fewer people. Yet, at the same time labour costs in the arts have to keep pace with inflation and cost of living for artists and administrators (well, that isn’t always the case, but still costs have risen while productivity has not). One response to what has been called Baumol’s Cost Disease means that it is hard to imagine the arts and culture sector existing to the degree it does in Canada without massive volunteer involvement.

Volunteerism – doing useful things in an organized way without pay to make others’ and our own lives better – is a great attribute of being part of a vibrant community. Yet, especially in smaller communities in Canada, worries about attracting, training and retaining volunteers are common. People burn out from the demands of volunteering in the arts, volunteering at the local hospital and any number of charitable and not-for-profit organizations.

We collected pertinent information underscoring the importance of volunteering – and inferred the great importance it signifies in terms of the arts for Canadians – in the Value of Presenting study (links to PDF):

“(…) Canadians who volunteer in the arts and culture sector gave on average more time (127 hours per year) than those in any other sector in 2010. This represents an increase of 21% since 2007, the largest increase of any sector examined at a time when 6 out of 12 sectors registered a decline. (…) When considered in terms of total hours, the amount of volunteer time equates to about 100 million hours. That is equivalent to more than 50,000 full-time jobs.

(…) in the Survey of Performing Arts Presenters … [more than] half of survey participants report more volunteers than staff. The average ratio of volunteers is 17 for each paid staff member. (…)

The profound reliance on volunteers is even more evident among presenters of entire programming seasons in small communities under 5,000 people. They are less likely to have any staff and instead tend to be entirely volunteer run. These rural organizations rely on a day-to-day volunteer complement of an average of 36, with half reporting the use of 12 or fewer volunteers and half reporting more than 12. This increases to an average of 167 during the height of their operations.

I wonder whether this reliance on volunteers is sustainable. And whether it is sufficient to off-set the cost disease that has been diagnosed. And whether it is makes sense and is fair that so many functions (we can look at them as potential full-time jobs) are filled by unpaid labour?

To be clear, arts organizations have also undertaken other strategies to alleviate the inevitable pressures, including:

Higher ticket prices
Advocacy for greater public support
Increase in private, corporate donations
Renegotiating union contracts to reign in costs

While they do not address the underlying structure of the sector, each of these strategies has bought time for many organizations, even if not all in Canada, by generating needed income.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, one place I will go is to the CAPACOA conference in Halifax, where I will discuss Digitizing the Performing Arts and explore whether that could be “the holy grail” to shifting the performing arts presenting sector’s structure toward a new model that suffers less from this dynamic.

Power of the People: Yukon Arts Summit makes change

Over 100 performing and visual arts presenters from across Yukon gathered during four days in November to develop concrete action plans for a strong, unified arts sector. The summit was designed to create a space where all participants would shape the outcomes – at once encouraging collaboration and inviting each person’s leadership. It was remarkable to be a witness – and contributor – to this process.

The energy in the room was unlike anything I have ever experienced. The work that got done, the plans that were committed to, will transform the way the Yukon arts and cultural communities work with each other, and present themselves to their stakeholders, the rest of Canada and beyond. People here not only dream big, they make big things happen. It seems they can’t help it; it is in their nature.

The summit outcomes will prove their transformative power over the next weeks, months and years.

Breakout sessions brought people together to reflect and to pollinate new thinking.

Several key elements came together to create a summit like no other I have ever seen:

An attitude that set out to “Help the Best get Better” and that delivered. Indeed the best had gathered together at this summit: 100% of First Nations Cultural Centres attended, as well as 86% of the First Nations in the Yukon, and the same proportion of all the communities across the territory. All participants had a voice and used it, shared experiences, told stories and offered new thinking that could create significant change. Both performing and visual arts were actively included, and many artistic disciplines within these were well-represented. Presenters, producers, practicing artists, funders, board members and consultants all worked together throughout. Just imagine such a truly inclusive gathering of active, ready-to-work participants in BC, Ontario or the Maritimes!
Action-oriented summit design. There were only 5 presentations/ workshops during the summit: place-based cultural tourism, collaboration, network development, marketing and funding. Each was followed by three local responders, rather than the often used Q&A format, who reflected briefly on each presentation (what resonated, what didn’t and action items) , followed by professionally facilitated breakout sessions designed to connect, reflect and plan.
Deliberate creation of spaces for reflection, and spaces for action planning. This was ingenious. The summit organizers invited participants along this journey, always stretching themselves along the way, and by day 4, the work had been done to achieve agreement on several major community-led initiatives: to establish a collaborative network of presenters, create a touring network, establish a network for First Nations Cultural Centres; and to put the arts and cultural sector into the driver seat in terms of their contribution to Yukon tourism.

As an outside expert I was asked to participate in the whole conference. For me that meant there was a great deal of casual, hallway type conversation about anything that was on participants’ minds, mixed with formal opportunities to meet whether in a MatchUp program or over dinner. As a result I formed much deeper, richer connections with carefully thinking, smart people from all parts of Yukon, who were exploring how to use their understanding, new information and leadership for their communities’ benefit and the greater good. Listening and asking good questions can be much more powerful than speaking or telling.

My hope is that this new kind of close-knit, yet open network, grounded in shared leadership and personal commitments for specific actions, will become a beacon for established and new networks elsewhere.

Marketing Trends: New Media as The Media

Marketing has changed irrevocably over the last 10 to 15 years. While the harbingers of consumer power were evident in the late 1990s, with the advent of the Internet and mobile and then smart phones, the changes have now solidified and they continue to accelerate.

The web is no longer a new media. The body of knowledge and practice of integrated marketing has grown up.

Integration of websites with social networks and mobile apps

Youtube was launched in 2005, Facebook and Twitter came into the public view in 2006. Barely approaching a decade old they have an unprecedented reach ranging from 500 million to 1+ billion users.

Recently, smart phones with touch screens, tablets and e-readers with web access have become ubiquitous.

Great websites have evolved from early “brochure-sites”, UseNet groups and List Serves to well functioning hubs of branded transactions with considerable social media integration and mobile connectivity.

Seemingly limitless access to information, easy consumption of entertainment, and creation and sharing of content and experiences have transformed how we behave, what we expect and what we want.

Contemporary marketing more than ever is about compelling stories, co-creating meaning, and making research and purchases easy and immediate. The increasing integration of services like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and many more – with both desktops and mobile devices and within websites – creates new dynamics between organizations and their customers.

Today, website pages can be shared with a push of a button to a user’s social media universe. They can be used to amplify a use’s own brand and they can be used to ridicule or support an organization or a product. It can raise awareness, start conversations or elicit sales through these wider social networks. Similarly, organizations are cross-linking their web sites and social media presence to provide a seamless user experience, going where users are.

Do-it-yourself

Websites used to be expensive custom installations, with the best requiring substantial user research and expert programmers.

Today, WordPress and similar services have become robust DIY web tools that work well, have extensive plug-in options for customization and keep costs low.

Many of these off-the-shelf options also have an embedded option to create a mobile-friendly version of a websites. This is important as more and more users visit websites using their mobile devices and their much smaller screens.

Mobile applications

The ‘appification’ of the online experience has advanced rapidly in the last five years to the point, where man of us retain little awareness that apps use online content, i.e. content that resides on a server elsewhere. The best apps are content and feature rich, while super simply to use.

Festivals have embraced them to deliver a variety of information and on-site experiences. Here again, there is a build it once and sell it many times philosophy, enabling affordable, ready-made solutions to almost any size event.

Today, apps live on non-standard operating systems, i.e. apps are developed for the various platforms of smart phones. That means, if resources require development for just one platform, considerable thought has to go into who the target market is and the dominant platforms in use.

The power of accessing rich content through tiny devices that one carries everywhere creates a brand new dynamic of relationship to and expectation of brands.

Solving the Start-up Challenge: A National Sistema Organization

During 2012-2013 I led the needs assessment and feasibility study to explore the creation and purpose of a national service organization called Sistema Canada. This brief post discusses the status of this initiative.

Sistema Canada is in the crucial phase of securing financing needed to become a fully fledged organization. With a national feasibility study (PDF report: http://www4.nac-cna.ca/pdf/corporate/SistemaCanada_FeasibilityReport_en.pdf) complete, a strong vision for the role a national organization will play in strengthening the Canadian movement, the challenge of start-up is primarily related to not having that one crucial staff person in place.

While volunteer leadership is mandatory in Canadian charitable organizations through a board of directors, a lesser discussed aspect of sustainable organizational development is the crucial capacity that comes with a first dedicated staff person and how a partner organization can help achieve that.

It is a chicken and egg scenario where some substantive catalytic funds would fill a major gap. Without legal status in place, charitable funding is impossible to access directly. Without funding in place, a staff cannot be hired to drive forward charitable incorporation, prepare proposals and build all-important relationships. That means any interim fund development is a volunteer matter. Volunteers skilled in such areas tend to be busy people working in their day jobs; and in our case, in their own Sistema-inspired programs.

During the feasibility study, I was that paid project resource charged by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and the National Arts Centre Foundation with moving the process forward, collaborating with the national steering committee (its members volunteered countless hours), seeking input from all Canadian Sistema programs, providing expertise, building scenarios and, ultimately, delivering the outcome via a report. With a common vision and mandate agreed upon by constituents across the country, the next step is to find the right partner that can provide the needed financial support and help hire an Executive Director to kick start the organization through fund development for its core programs.

Since our report was accepted, members of the all-volunteer national steering committee have been leading the charge and are working through the challenge of moving Sistema Canada onto sustainable, scalable footing. Meanwhile, an informal network of program leaders continues to share their expertise and enthusiasm for Sistema in Canada.

For regular updates on the US and Canadian movement visit http://ericbooth.net/the-ensemble/

Arts Marketing … or Orchestras are not for everyone

I came upon this discussion of the state of orchestral music in response to Ivan Katz’ analysis of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings entered by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association early in 2011.

I am entirely unfamiliar with the specifics of these proceedings. In particular the forum posts by a Thomas Alan Broido prompted today’s post referencing something I wrote about: “Imagine: creating a brand new genre of live music making today!”

I implicitly suggested that the product/service – “live orchestral music” – would be targeted at a particular segment of the population. Taking a segmentation approach in the first place implies that ticketed (paid) orchestral music is not for everyone. That is not to say that classical music or orchestral music is not for everyone; putting a price tag on it, however, diminishes audience and market potential.

I continue to collect compelling evidence of the intrinsic values and benefits of arts and cultural participation. When the belief in these values and benefits are transferred directly to the ticketed performing arts things become murky. The unshakable importance of the arts as a public good is challenged when box office revenues must be achieved which restricts access which means the public good takes a lesser role, one balanced with revenue imperatives.

To peel back the onion on this conversation could yield new ways of thinking about the performing arts and about orchestras specifically. Thinking about what an orchestra or a theatre offers its paying customers and how to market that vigorously is qualitatively different from what an orchestra would consider if the public good, the health and well-being of the community, was of foremost concern.

On recent travels on Canada’s east coast, I have been discussing his very thing, and I realize that we pay for many pubic good, hydro, food, snow clearing – without them becoming a lesser public good. In the arts, it creates a bona fides marketing scenario, that other areas experience in different ways and in some areas less so. Snow clearing happens through taxation. Hydro development, too, even where there is competition for delivery and such. Food is super competitive, but the staples much less so. Arts, professional arts, actually need to be excellent at break-through marketing and attention getting engagement to command a serious ticket buying commitment. And I know it can be done. (See Cirque du Soleil).

I have been talking about some case studies in the arts demonstrating integrated marketing strategies. Amazing how language I used corporately in the 1990s is so top of mind now in the 2010s. Perhaps it’s just my way of integrated thinking. 🙂

This is a link to the Atlantic Presenters Association newsletter discussing my East Coast presentations and workshops, in early March. So happy to see this amazing feedback. I got to connect with 110 Atlantic arts organizations in one trip. Just amazing.
http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=98ddd3c7538d70d3aa9945907&id=041f96aa01&e=3ce7dd33bd

We can do so much, when we combine the best from all disciplines that help us connect art and audiences. Including full-on Marketing.