Entrepreneur the Arts » Emotional Intelligence

The Creativity Crisis

Lisa Canning — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:06:25 +0000

The Creativity Crisis

by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman July 10, 2010, Newsweek

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”

The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).

In the 50 years since Schwarzrock and the others took their tests, scholars—first led by Torrance, now his colleague, Garnet Millar—have been tracking the children, recording every patent earned, every business founded, every research paper published, and every grant awarded. They tallied the books, dances, radio shows, art exhibitions, software programs, advertising campaigns, hardware innovations, music compositions, public policies (written or implemented), leadership positions, invited lectures, and buildings designed.

Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

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The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.

It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.

Around the world, though, other countries are making creativity development a national priority. In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation, and pilot programs have begun using Torrance’s test to assess their progress. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.

Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But to scientists, this is a non sequitur, borne out of what University of Georgia’s Mark Runco calls “art bias.” The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.

Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.

To understand exactly what should be done requires first understanding the new story emerging from neuroscience. The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach.

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.

Is this learnable? Well, think of it like basketball. Being tall does help to be a pro basketball player, but the rest of us can still get quite good at the sport through practice. In the same way, there are certain innate features of the brain that make some people naturally prone to divergent thinking. But convergent thinking and focused attention are necessary, too, and those require different neural gifts. Crucially, rapidly shifting between these modes is a top-down function under your mental control. University of New Mexico neuroscientist Rex Jung has concluded that those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

A fine example of this emerged in January of this year, with release of a study by University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari and Harvard’s Aaron Berkowitz, who studies music cognition. They put Dartmouth music majors and nonmusicians in an fMRI scanner, giving participants a one-handed fiber-optic keyboard to play melodies on. Sometimes melodies were rehearsed; other times they were creatively improvised. During improvisation, the highly trained music majors used their brains in a way the nonmusicians could not: they deactivated their right-temporoparietal junction. Normally, the r-TPJ reads incoming stimuli, sorting the stream for relevance. By turning that off, the musicians blocked out all distraction. They hit an extra gear of concentration, allowing them to work with the notes and create music spontaneously.

Charles Limb of Johns Hopkins has found a similar pattern with jazz musicians, and Austrian researchers observed it with professional dancers visualizing an improvised dance. Ansari and Berkowitz now believe the same is true for orators, comedians, and athletes improvising in games.

The good news is that creativity training that aligns with the new science works surprisingly well. The University of Oklahoma, the University of Georgia, and Taiwan’s National Chengchi University each independently conducted a large-scale analysis of such programs. All three teams of scholars concluded that creativity training can have a strong effect. “Creativity can be taught,” says James C. Kaufman, professor at California State University, San Bernardino.

What’s common about successful programs is they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages. Real improvement doesn’t happen in a weekend workshop. But when applied to the everyday process of work or school, brain function improves.

So what does this mean for America’s standards-obsessed schools? The key is in how kids work through the vast catalog of information. Consider the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, a new public middle school in Akron, Ohio. Mindful of Ohio’s curriculum requirements, the school’s teachers came up with a project for the fifth graders: figure out how to reduce the noise in the library. Its windows faced a public space and, even when closed, let through too much noise. The students had four weeks to design proposals.

Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding. How does sound travel through materials? What materials reduce noise the most? Then, problem-finding—anticipating all potential pitfalls so their designs are more likely to work. Next, idea-finding: generate as many ideas as possible. Drapes, plants, or large kites hung from the ceiling would all baffle sound. Or, instead of reducing the sound, maybe mask it by playing the sound of a gentle waterfall? A proposal for double-paned glass evolved into an idea to fill the space between panes with water. Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing? Fiberglass absorbed sound the best but wouldn’t be safe. Would an aquarium with fish be easier than water-filled panes?

Then teams developed a plan of action. They built scale models and chose fabric samples. They realized they’d need to persuade a janitor to care for the plants and fish during vacation. Teams persuaded others to support them—sometimes so well, teams decided to combine projects. Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.

Along the way, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.

With as much as three fourths of each day spent in project-based learning, principal Buckner and her team actually work through required curricula, carefully figuring out how kids can learn it through the steps of Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method and other creativity pedagogies. “The creative problem-solving program has the highest success in increasing children’s creativity,” observed William & Mary’s Kim.

The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer. When UGA’s Runco was driving through California one day with his family, his son asked why Sacramento was the state’s capital—why not San Francisco or Los Angeles? Runco turned the question back on him, encouraging him to come up with as many explanations as he could think of.

Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.

Having studied the childhoods of highly creative people for decades, Claremont Graduate University’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and University of Northern Iowa’s Gary G. Gute found highly creative adults tended to grow up in families embodying opposites. Parents encouraged uniqueness, yet provided stability. They were highly responsive to kids’ needs, yet challenged kids to develop skills. This resulted in a sort of adaptability: in times of anxiousness, clear rules could reduce chaos—yet when kids were bored, they could seek change, too. In the space between anxiety and boredom was where creativity flourished.

It’s also true that highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.

In early childhood, distinct types of free play are associated with high creativity. Preschoolers who spend more time in role-play (acting out characters) have higher measures of creativity: voicing someone else’s point of view helps develop their ability to analyze situations from different perspectives. When playing alone, highly creative first graders may act out strong negative emotions: they’ll be angry, hostile, anguished. The hypothesis is that play is a safe harbor to work through forbidden thoughts and emotions.

In middle childhood, kids sometimes create paracosms—fantasies of entire alternative worlds. Kids revisit their paracosms repeatedly, sometimes for months, and even create languages spoken there. This type of play peaks at age 9 or 10, and it’s a very strong sign of future creativity. A Michigan State University study of MacArthur “genius award” winners found a remarkably high rate of paracosm creation in their childhoods.

From fourth grade on, creativity no longer occurs in a vacuum; researching and studying become an integral part of coming up with useful solutions. But this transition isn’t easy. As school stuffs more complex information into their heads, kids get overloaded, and creativity suffers. When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates.

They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.

The new view is that creativity is part of normal brain function. Some scholars go further, arguing that lack of creativity—not having loads of it—is the real risk factor. In his research, Runco asks college students, “Think of all the things that could interfere with graduating from college.” Then he instructs them to pick one of those items and to come up with as many solutions for that problem as possible. This is a classic divergent-convergent creativity challenge. A subset of respondents, like the proverbial Murphy, quickly list every imaginable way things can go wrong. But they demonstrate a complete lack of flexibility in finding creative solutions. It’s this inability to conceive of alternative approaches that leads to despair. Runco’s two questions predict suicide ideation—even when controlling for preexisting levels of depression and anxiety.

In Runco’s subsequent research, those who do better in both problem-finding and problem-solving have better relationships. They are more able to handle stress and overcome the bumps life throws in their way. A similar study of 1,500 middle schoolers found that those high in creative self-efficacy had more confidence about their future and ability to succeed. They were sure that their ability to come up with alternatives would aid them, no matter what problems would arise.

When he was 30 years old, Ted Schwarzrock was looking for an alternative. He was hardly on track to becoming the prototype of Torrance’s longitudinal study. He wasn’t artistic when young, and his family didn’t recognize his creativity or nurture it. The son of a dentist and a speech pathologist, he had been pushed into medical school, where he felt stifled and commonly had run-ins with professors and bosses. But eventually, he found a way to combine his creativity and medical expertise: inventing new medical technologies.

Today, Schwarzrock is independently wealthy—he founded and sold three medical-products companies and was a partner in three more. His innovations in health care have been wide ranging, from a portable respiratory oxygen device to skin-absorbing anti-inflammatories to insights into how bacteria become antibiotic-resistant. His latest project could bring down the cost of spine-surgery implants 50 percent. “As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”

Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.

What Are You Willing to Risk for True Creative Independence?

Lisa Canning — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:00:03 +0000

In honor of achieving independence as artists, I began a string of short creative stories about life in The Blue Bike Shop during the Fourth of July holiday back in 2007.

I was writing my book at the time, Build A Blue Bike, and thought building your own blue bike would be a lot easier to learn how to do if I shared stories about The Blue Bike shop and Miya LeBleu; the bike shop owner.

This story was also the inspiration for the ETA logo.

Do Not Enter

Posted by Lisa Canning in The Blue Bike Shop Stories on July 5th, 2007 | one response

“Do Not Enter,” cautions the sign on the red door. John stood there looking at it, wondering what to do. The guy at the bike bar told him that the first red door was the fastest way out of The Blue Bike Shop, but surely he must have been mistaken. As John looked down the hall, there were nothing BUT red doors, with the same white sign, with the same “Do Not Enter” boldly lettered red on each.

“What a strange place,” thought John. ” Nothin’ but blue bikes and red doors…”

The Blue Bike Shop was a brand new shop in downtown Nowhere. It was filled with blue bikes in every configuration imaginable: trikes, unicycles, bicycles built-for-two, mountain bikes, racing bikes and blue peddlers for the leisurely traveler.

The Blue Bike Shop had quickly become a hot spot in Nowhere. After all, The Blue Bike Shop served lunch and drinks at the Bike Bar. It was a great excuse for John to check out all the blue bikes, and dream.

John had grown up in Nowhere and had never been outside its city limits. John lived down Rural Route 7, a long dirt road, which eventually, if you stayed on it long enough, would take you out of town.

Today was the day John was going to begin that ride. Impulsively, after lunch at the Bike Bar, John decided that he was ready. With every dollar he had saved in his pocket, from his job at Solo Staffing Services, he was going to buy that blue Schwinn he had his eye on.

When he handed the money over, the cash in his hand quickly became the bike in his dream. As a celebratory gesture, the clerk who sold him the blue bike stepped behind the bar and handed him a shot of Don Julio. With John’s throat on fire and his heart pounding with excitement, he asked his server, “Tell me, what’s the fastest way out of town.”

The clerk smiled and said, “Go down the hall, and take the first red door you see. It’s the fastest way.”

Several minutes had passed as John stood in front of the red door with his new shiny blue Schwinn, reflecting on the clerks last words.

“Why in the world, would this guy have told me to go through this red door if it was not the right door?” John thought.

John had never walked through a door that said “Do Not Enter” in his life. He also had never spent his entire life’s savings on a blue bike. John looked down the hall at the other red doors and again the “Do Not Enter” signs, and then he reached for the knob to his own.

“What the hell. All my life, people have been telling me ‘Do Not Enter’ this, or do that, or try this, because it is too hard, too risky, too much work or too… something. It’s time I try to go somewhere.”

When John opened the door, this is what he saw.

DISCOVER HOW TO OPEN YOUR OWN RED DO NOT ENTER DOOR TO YOUR INDEPENDENCE: WRITE DOWN THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS.

What red door with Do Not Enter written on it is stopping you from continuing to develop your artistic vision? What road blocks do you need to tear down in your mind? What about yourself do you need to accept, learn about or change to deepen your creative work?

What investment do you need to make to create a sustainable independent creative life? Write down everything you need to do in no particular order.

Who do you need to stop listening to and how will you do it? Write down every person who’s words and actions stand in your way of making true artistic, emotional and financial progress.

Where will you put your trust and who will help you in earnest to move your creative life emotionally and financially forward? True independence cannot be reached alone. It takes a village of support to make really impact FILLED life changes. Write down your plan to help you accomplish this for a minimum of 2 years. Write from your stream of conscious and don’t stop until you can’t think of anything more to write.

Buddha Boy Knows Why, Do You?

Lisa Canning — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:54:53 +0000

All last weekend we lit a candle next to our little statue named Buddha Boy in honor of my mother. We bought Buddha Boy at an AMAZING art gallery called Volcano Garden Arts very near Volcano National Park in Kona, Hawaii on our vacation last November.

This joy-filled art gallery was BRIMMING FULL with little spinning rudders and all aglow with life and vibrant creativity. My mother would have been proud.

Their little cafe, Cafe Ono, served scrumptiously HEALTHY fare. Chuck and I ate lunch there. Their food was amazingly hip in its clean organic healthy simplicity.

The grounds dripped with GREEN vibrancy and the awesomeness of it all couldn’t help but pull on your heart strings; especially when you heard their mascot, Earnest the goat, “baah!” He was a heart felt touch.

I found these pictures this past weekend as we sat around with a house full of lit candles to honor my mom and her joy and life filled moments. That’s what we hope for most while we are here on earth, isn’t it? Happiness and Joy and TRULY MAGICAL MOMENTS?

Are you doing all you can to protect and develop your creative vision to ensure yours will come, or never go away?

When we come to find both peace AND prosperity with WHY we really are here on this earth and WHO we really are meant to serve through our music, our paintings, our films, our writing, our creativity– our salvation and freedom to FULLY BE ALIVE and HAPPY is secured.

My mom never found hers. She fought tooth and nail through her life with herself and everyone around her instead because she never could. What a sad way to live with her powerful creative force that was once as vibrant and green and pure and rudder-filled as Volcano Garden Arts.

Our creativity and its highest purpose and best use needs to be discovered. We owe it to ourselves to know WHY we do what we do- what truly is driving us- and WHO we are suppose to deliver our magic and hope filled journey to…

Balancing Family with a Career in the Arts

David Cutler — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:00:32 +0000

“Is it possible to successfully raise a family and have a career in the arts?”

There’s a question that perplexes many aspiring and emerging artists. My answer…absolutely. If you truly want these things out of life, unconditionally YES!

Of course, building a great arts career is never easy. Nor is having a family. But the best things in life usually aren’t. And if you’re truly devoted to both visions, each will add fulfillment, meaning, and depth to the other.

If you’d like to have your cake and eat it too—the joy of raising a family while following your passion for a career—here are some suggestions that make this proposition more feasible.

1) Choose your partner wisely. The word “partner” is apropos. It’s essential to find someone who communicates well, shares similar values, and supports your artistic lifestyle. It also helps if you actually like the other person…a lot.

2) Choose a complementary partner. Though love may flow, it can be tough when two parents have parallel career goals. For example, if both of hope to land an orchestra position or college gig, securing work in the same city may be near impossible (unless you met on the job). It is tricky when two parents are regularly on the road, or both are subjected to the roller coaster finances of freelancing. Finding a partner who balances you professionally is a great asset.

3) Become financially literate. Both raising a family and supporting an arts habit require money. Learn how the money game works, and win big.

4) Consider cost of living. Not every artist must live in NYC, LA, or other celebrated urban area with an exorbitant cost of living. Raising a family is much easier in a house than a studio apartment. Pick your geography carefully, and reside where you can afford.

5) Live by family. It is extremely helpful to live close to at least a few family members who babysit in a pinch, play an active role in your kids’ development, and provide moral support for the ups and downs that accompany an artistic existence. When this is impossible, consider “adopting” some neighbors or colleagues who invest positive energy in your family.

6) Make great decisions early on. Living gig to gig is expected when you’re 20, but not a great place to be when 30, 45, or 60. Establish a sustainable arts business (aka your career) that automatically generates opportunity and capital as you age.

7) Practice a lot when you’re young. If you think things are busy now, just wait until you have a family! One of the first activities to be compromised is often practice time. The more you master your art technically when young, the better you’ll be able to cope with this reality.

8) Become a master of time management. Everything takes time. Learn how to work efficiently and live exceptionally. For time management strategies, click here.

9) Prioritize work and prioritize family. It’s easy to get caught up in just one. Some artists become so focused on their work, they neglect spending quality time with loved ones. Others become absorbed in family life, and cease to remain active vibrant artists. There is enough time to do both if you want them badly enough.

On a proud personal note, I just became a father for the second time! My baby daughter Alaina Avery Cutler was born June 25, 2010. Her brother Ashton Ellington, barely two, couldn’t be happier about it.

And neither could I. The time since Ashton was born has been one of the most active periods of my professional life. And spending quality time with my family has made the endless hours and hard work required to succeed as a musician all the more meaningful.

Here’s a picture of me with my beautiful son and baby daughter.

Good luck to you.

Emotionally Intelligent Artists: The New Rules

Lisa Canning — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:26:36 +0000

Ever wonder why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, our white gazelle’s who define entrepreneurial success, never finished college? Is what made them hugely successful creating their own kind of lifestyle simply all based on their ability to out smart everyone or write THE BEST business plan? How did their creativity fit into all of this and what can we learn from how effectively they used it?

Artists, after all, have GREAT ideas all the time. An idea a minute it seems- many spectacular. And yet all the studies show most cannot even make a modest living most of the time. And while this article below demonstrates that we increasingly are going to now see programs popping up to teach artists how to write a business plan, or teach them the business skills they need through an 8 to 12 week one day a week program, I believe, most may be wasting their time. It’s NOT book smarts OR a well crafted business plan that is FIRST IN LINE to turn our situation around. Sure, its on the list. Don’t get me wrong. It’s in the IAE’s curriculum for sure. But what is REALLY REQUIRED to do the job, is repairing the WAY WE EMOTIONALLY THINK about who we are and what we do that WILL FINALLY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE. And this is NOT an 8 week course! IT IS AT A MINIMUM an interdisciplinary 2 YEAR PLAN.

Thanks to what I have learned from observing highly emotionally intelligent people to help myself, and then some who were not- like my mother- I have learned very well where the differences lie; as well as how to help others deepen their own.

Entrepreneurial intelligence does not rest on what you know. You can know very little. It rests on learning HOW and WHEN to discover WHAT you need to know; and then knowing HOW TO MANAGE the context of what you have learned to achieve your result. All very subtle and it requires close, regular, personal contact to uncover. What will make artists entrepreneurs is building emotional intelligence. I am opening The IAE to build VIBRANT STRONG ENTREPRENEURIAL Emotionally Intelligence Artists. Please help me find the right artists who want to join our first class to SHOW THE WORLD how we TRULY CAN redefine our own lives in positive, healthy and life changing ways. No More Starving Artists. Let’s Change History.

If you doubt a word I am saying, just read the last line of this article. Mr. Barman’s comment says it all…

Creative Types Learning to Be Business Minded By KATE TAYLOR

Published: June 18, 2010 in the New York Times

Paul Barman thinks his is a great idea for a business: personalized, hip-hop versions of the traditional Jewish wedding contract, known as the ketubah, that he writes and sings.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

He calls them Audioketubah and, at $1,500, they come in the form of handwritten scrolls and CDs, perfect gifts for a couple who cannot stomach another set of stemware.

Juan Hinojosa makes collages from found materials like Metrocards and food wrappers, and clothing tags that he filches from high-end stores. He often brings an attractive female friend along to distract the staff while he snips off the labels, though he said he has never actually taken anything of value.

On five Saturdays this month and next, Mr. Barman, Mr. Hinojosa and 54 other artists are attending a class paid for by the City of New York that is intended to help them turn their creative works into money.

“Does everyone have Excel?,” Peter Cobb, a lawyer and administrator at the New York Foundation for the Arts, which runs the program, asked the class last Saturday. “For next week, your assignment is to make a list of all your expenses for 2009.”

The sighs and complaints that followed were proof of the challenging task Mr. Cobb and his colleagues have taken on: trying to teach people who like to color outside the lines about drawing up business plans, budgeting and making a sales pitch.

The city’s cultural sector “attracts very, very creative people who have incredible ideas, but they don’t always know how to turn their ideas into financial sustainable entities,” said Seth W. Pinsky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. His agency is spending $50,000 on this program and a similar one being run by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, with Creative Capital.

It is harder than it used to be to live as an artist in New York City, given the cost of housing, studios and rehearsal space, and the Bloomberg administration does not want artists to leave the city. Culture is a magnet for tourism and a major reason why people in other professions (and often higher tax brackets) want to live here. Ergo, two city-financed courses devised to help artists help themselves.

“It’s kind of the teach-a-person-to-fish school of cultural support,” Mr. Pinsky said.

The group attending the five-week program includes painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, creative writers, actors, directors, dancers, singers, musicians — and some who defied categorization, like Ryan Murdock. He said his work encompassed filmmaking, radio documentary and photography, as well as organizing events that brought together “silent films, live music and homemade pies.” He said he had recently quit his job in public television, and hoped to arrive at “a business structure that will allow me to do everything I want to do, because I’m too curious to pin myself down.”

Along with group sessions covering subjects like intellectual property and Internet marketing, each artist has a 20-minute meeting with a New York Foundation for the Arts staff member or an outside adviser to review his or her business plan. At the end of the course, the students can apply for subsidized studio or rehearsal space at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, courtesy of Chashama, an organization that transforms vacant properties into art spaces.

“Artists are not taught to plan,” said Jackie Battenfield, a painter and the author of “The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love.” Too often, she said, they’re “going in circles, and that’s very demoralizing.”

This is the first time the city has financed such a program, though others, like one at the Bronx Museum called Artists in the Marketplace, have long strived to help artists manage their careers.

Most of the artists in the class had some kind of day job. Many teach. Mr. Barman, who has released several albums, does freelance journalism and teaches hip-hop to high school students.

Mr. Hinojosa works as an assistant to a more established artist, Shinique Smith. He has also sold his own works for as much as $2,000, and thinks that he’ll eventually be able to make a living from his art. One benefit to art made from found materials, he points out: “The supplies are free.”

Eric Wright, a lanky puppeteer, is one of a few students who already have a successful business. With two partners, he runs The Puppet Kitchen in the East Village, which has built puppets for the Disney Channel, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, the Public Theater and the noted puppeteer Basil Twist.

They have more work than they can do themselves and want to expand, but, being artists, Mr. Wright said, they need help with the financial side of things. “Most business development courses are for restaurant managers” and people in other traditional businesses, he said, so he was thrilled to find one geared to artists. “People think that art and business are at odds,” he said, but “you can create great art and have it also be a business.”

Mr. Pinsky said the city plans to follow up to see how many participants succeed in implementing their business plans.

Mr. Barman said that when it comes to his Audioketubahs, he is motivated by much more than just profit.

“It’s the most positive, fun, exciting, deep and funny thing I’ve ever been involved in,” he said of writing the songs, for which he often interviews the bride and groom at length, over drinks. “Every single one I do makes everyone so happy.”

How To Make Your Creativity Explode: Create Your Own Strategic Implode

Lisa Canning — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:54:22 +0000

It was no accident I stopped speaking to my mom four years ago almost to the day of my birthday- June 11th. One more fight didn’t “bring me there” nor were harsh words splattered between us, like the tomato sauce in my mothers cookbooks. All I had to do was stop calling her. Very plain. Quiet. Simple. Brilliantly undramatic and really a creative solution I thought.

It’s design was brilliant simple because my mom NEVER called me. She never wanted to chat or find out what was up with me. There were no lunches, no get your hair done together days. A shopping experience perhaps here and there to dress me up pretty and for her to find another $500.00+ purse or four new pairs of sparkling high heels. I remember my mom trying on a pant suit once that was $2500.00 and she asked me if I thought she would wear it. No the hope of A REAL relationship with my mother, had long ago gone.

Even when I was little I knew something was wrong..

It’s all been sorted, sifted, cried over, and ladled with a heavy cream sauce of guilt LONG before now. No, indeed it was finally over. Finally, I managed to button it down four years ago almost to the day– nice and tight for a LONG winters sleep, my relationship with my mom.

And this week I finally I get to bury her. What remains of her is now figuratively and literally dust. This week feels like an all time record life high actually. It feels like the EXTREME opposite of loss, which for me is foreign and in itself quite shocking. So shocking all I can seem to do is sit “shiva” and realize the destruction phase is over and the transformation phase has launched.

How could I not feel this way if you think about it? The ONLY WAY my my highest purpose and best use could ever be present during my time on this earth was to find a way to remain sane and hopeful of what the possibilities in life WERE for me.

I had strategically come to know that if I really wanted my creativity to grow to the point that I was TRULY ABLE to MAKE the difference I believe I was put on his earth to make, I had to orchestrate a strategic plan to out root and destroy all toxicity in my life once and for all. And that certainly had to begin with my mother.

Frankly, I am really proud of how well and carefully I did it and how masterfully I have come through it. I have learned so much from life with mom and used it so wisely to rise well above it. And yet, the harshest part of it all for me is that my mom hated me THAT MUCH more for finding ways to replace her and HEAL the pain she caused. The better I got at doing it the more creative and clever her infliction of pain became.

And I decided long ago to use her pain and dysfunction to free me. I learned how to be down right creative, entrepreneurial, artistic and PEACE FILLED ( eventually) in how I learned to respond to her actions, no matter how horrible, or low the blow. I am so proud of who I am, REALLY, and how strong I am and how well I see INTO MYSELF and others. My mother- she TRULY has blessed me. But trust me, NOT in the ways I ever thought or imagined a mother could or should.

Yes my mom is dead. The mass and funeral are on Friday. 10 am at John Continious Catholic Church 825 N Carpenter, Chicago and 1pm graveside at Evergreen Cemetery, 3401 W. 87th Street, Evergreen Park, IL 60805. phone: 708-422-9051. Section: Fairmont / Lot 46 / Part 6 / Grave 26. My mother will be buried next to my father and I pray she is NOW FINALLY overcome with joy and peace.

For most of us the grieving process starts at death. But not for me. It started in earnest when I was 13.

My parents threw a Christmas Party every year at our house for family and friends. Like so many times before, my mother had knocked herself out. Her buffet table was tantalizing, the flower arrangements so fragrant and full they competed for attention from room to room. And then there was my mother dressed to the 9’s embarrassing the hell out of me in front of my Uncle Marvin. “Lisa Alexandra Argiris are you even HERE and FULLY PRESENT and LISTENING? You just live in a world ALL your own, don’t you now?”

My mother was, as usual, making an ass out of herself. Dressed in Chanel, dripping in diamonds and slurring her barb wired bitter words at me was a routine occurrence. And yet, she was right. It was hard for me to want to listen to her anymore because of the way she treated me.

But for some reason before I could lower my self-esteem a little more and utter some form of cordial attempt at a reply, I heard a voice. A clear and convincing voice that said to me.” Lisa, your mother is crazy. She will never be able to be your mother. Run, Lisa from her. Run!”

I had never heard a voice like this before. After all, who does at 13? Time stopped.

It was the heat of the blood flowing into my cheeks and the sensation of them turning bright red that snapped me back into place. But this time, the embarrassment rising inside of me was NOT to utter some cordial attempt at a reply, but to simply let my mothers words hang lifeless like a dead man swinging from a rope. It was right then the first part of my mother died to me as my self-esteem rose.

Indeed it took me over 28 years, 6.5 months and a few days, to FINALLY TRULY accept my mother’s figurative death to me. It happened almost four years ago and almost to the day of my birthday, BY CHOICE. This day WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT FIRST of a number of significant emotional shifts I would make for MY CREATIVE LIFE to FINALLY evolve and FLOW.

Like I said there was no drama. I did stop calling and I sent this letter:

“Dear Mom,

I love you with all my heart and soul. And yet, you are at war with the world and with anyone who loves you, especially with me. If you ever are willing to take even the smallest part of responsibility for your actions, and ever want to try and really be my mom, I will come back to your side in the flash of a moment. But short of that– PLEASE know I LOVE YOU and will be THERE FOR YOU IN YOUR GREATEST TIME OF NEED, but until that time, our relationship is over..”

And that is how I began my strategic creative-for-life sustainability plan. I rooted out ALL the dysfunction out of my life. EVERY SINGLE DROP. Just the same way eating egg whites and oatmeal, chicken and salad is CLEAN eating, I out rooted the dysfunction in my life that was depriving me of having life’s special sauce. And it was the damndest thing- about 6 months after I really let all of the dysfunction freely flow away from me, my thoughts began to change. My energy began to flow. And the real creative person I always WANTED to BECOME FINALLY SHOWED HER FACE and has begun to rock and roll.

Through my music and writing and artistry I am creating a new recipe, a new kind of artistic hope and value filled stew of possibilities.

Dear creative friends, our time to shine in life is here. It’s ARRIVED. It’s RIGHT NOW. Our broken world is literally and figuratively gushing from the bottom of the ocean and needs our creative gifts TRULY LIKE NEVER BEFORE. Our glory days helping to SAVE THE WORLD ARE RIGHT in front of us.

BUT NOT until we learn how to become the wonderful human beings we have mostly fooled ourselves into believing we are. We need to be WONDERFUL so we can work together, play together and CREATE VALUE together. We deserve to shine! Our gifts are great!

Please won’t you spread our good news and help me to open my school. This is what God put me on this earth to do. It has never been so clear or real. God bless you Lea. I would not know how to do this work if you had NOT been my mother….

Our Dirty Little Family Secret

Lisa Canning — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:19:10 +0000

As I walked out of Lifetime Fitness yesterday morning I felt depressed by the results of my metabolic basal rate test. “1400 calories is all I get to eat if I want to lose weight? No wonder my life long battle with my weight can never be won. I have mom to thank I guess. She taught me to love food.” And then the phone rang.

“Ms. Canning? This is Chris, manager of Malibu East, where your mother lives. Someone is concerned they have not heard from her in several days. Do we have your permission to enter her apartment and do a wellness check?”

December 26, 2005. A picture of me, my brother, mom and Scooby. This was the last time I saw my mom...

As the words “yes, but of course” blurted out of me, I knew immediately what had happened. My mom was dead. My mother and I had a horrible relationship. It had been 4 years, almost to the day, since we have spoken. But I knew something seriously had to be wrong when the birthday card- her only form of communication with me- did not arrive on my birthday- June 11th. As exasperating as it was to deal with my mom, she made this one and only communication clear, as the cards were never late. But this year no card arrived.

You may think me cruel or heartless or it unimaginable that a mother daughter relationship could implode. Trust me I did. But it was not for a lack of trying on my part.

And yet, my mother’s idea of a relationship was filled with dysfunction, threats, self-sabotage, hostility, addictions and pain filled memories and embarrassment. There was little that was consistent or positive about our relationship. And yet I learned so much about my own creativity through my mom.

My mother was an amazing cook. She LOVED to cook and the fancier and more complicated the recipe the better. She loved a challenge and as a Polish woman who grew up eating animal innards from the south side of Chicago, who married a well to do Greek man, she quickly learned how to embed high style Mediterranean cooking into our family nightly meals. She learned how to make mousaka, tiropita, spanakopita and every other amazing Greek dish from scratch and her presentation was breathtaking. My mother also made the best beef wellington, stuffed Cornish game hens and a killer scalloped potatoes dish I wish I had the recipe for. And on my birthday, for years, my mom made me a home made banana cream pie- my favorite. I have NEVER had one since that was anywhere close to as good as the one my mom use to make for me. Indeed, the whole back wall of our kitchen was full of recipe books that my mom studied for hours while I devoured Baermann scale books. Her cookbooks were literally falling apart, stained, ladled with butter and sauce drippings and full of her love of the art. So really, it’s no wonder I struggle with my weight. My mother taught me all the joys of eating deliciously prepared food.

But this wasn’t my mother’s only creative gift. She also had a green hand- she was blessed with more than a green thumb. My mom could revive, nurture and grow any kind of plant. She had an assortment of orchids that bloomed so vibrantly they did not even look real. I, to this day, have killed every one I have ever had. She was also a masterful artistic flower arranger. She made fresh cut flowers look like art in a vase. My mother could take any bunch of flowers and entirely change how they looked simply through her choice of vase and how she positioned and grouped them together. It was amazing to watch her fluidly and effortlessly assemble a stunning arrangement every time as if anyone could do it. I wish I could.

My mother was an amazing seamstress. She made all my clothes when I was little and I remember every one ‘oohing and ‘ahing over how cute I always looked. She also fashioned herself a furrier. While it might not be fashionable now, I grew up with the smell of garbage cans of mink pelts and a rack in the basement of home made designer quality fur coats my mother made for herself.

But my mother, unfortunately, for all her innate creative talents, was an insecure person. Despite a number of years as (almost) a professional model, she had NOTHING to BE insecure about- at least not from her looks. But my moms creativity was never validated in a way that empowered her life forward. Like so many artists, her creativity as fulfilling as it was, was rudderless. As a result, slowly, her self-esteem plummeted and the “isms” crept into her life. Of course, this further stifled her creativity and drew her deeper into the dark side of life instead of into her highest purpose and best self.

My mother became an alcoholic. She used to mix her liquor of choice with Diet Dr Pepper and hide it in the turn style in the kitchen next to the nutmeg. She would sip it as she cooked until she was so drunk so would collapse at the dinner table as my father, brother and I enjoyed her scrumptious meal. The contrast between the food we were eating and my mothers appearance were shocking. It was so sad to see her this way.

And yet how many creative types who have lost their self esteem do you know like my mother? It manifests itself in different ways but I bet a lot.

All the stories of betrayal I hear from other creative individuals who work on projects that arrive DOA. What about all of the prima donna’s- the”high priestess’s” in our field? The temper tantrums on stage in rehearsal from conductors, actors, soloists. The knowledge of who’s sleeping with whom and the question we ask ourselves” is that how they got this gig”? The low self esteem, the anger that ensues, the addictions, the sadness, and often the sense of entrapment that comes when we hear the voice in our head that says, ” my art is the only thing I want to do and that I am good at. Yet I can’t make the difference (or a living) I seek doing this.” And then, the ensuing self- sabotage that follows. All this is enough to be a worthy comparison to life with my mother.

Yes, indeed, dysfunction and “isms” are our dirty little “family secret” as artists that we try and hide from our audience, our supporters and even sometimes, ourselves. Not everyone in “our family” is like this, but it seems the arts as a whole are vulnerable in this regard. Isn’t it time we truly rallied together and finally ONCE AND FOR ALL decided to BE the DIFFERENCE we seek? Isn’t it time to fight the good fight in EARNEST and learn the skills we need to do so? If my mother had, I am sure she would have lead a totally different life. Our beauty and our glory as artists will come from being ABLE to make a difference in life. Not by burning bridges and blowing up our own lives simply because we don’t know how to BE the DIFFERENCE we seek.

It was because of my mothers creativity, and how it became stifled and then became dramatic and outrageous behavior, that I truly came to believe that creativity can take us anywhere in life we want to go, as long as you have a CREATIVE-FOR-LIFE sustainability plan. I saw how alive and vibrant my mother once was with it, and how she became without it. And I have noticed throughout my life as a result of this experience how easy it is for our creativity, just like my mothers, to die too without the support and rudder it needs; do you REALLY WANT to starve your soul from your creativity PRODUCTIVELY flowing while you are alive?

And yesterday, as I set the phone down and realized my mother was truly gone from this planet we call earth, I realized how much she had taught me about the value of my creativity and what to do and what not to do with it. I realized that as much as I had discredited her as the parent that taught me everything to not do in life, it was because of her that I was opening a school.

My idealistic values about art would protect me, and do to this day, because through my mother I learned that living a creative life can be our freedom and our salvation if we build it the rudder it needs- a creative-for-life sustainability plan- to take us ANYWHERE in life we want to go.

In honor of my mother, and in honor of your highest purpose and best creative self, I am asking you to join me.

Apply NOW to the IAE . If you believe in you and want to make a positive difference on this earth through the arts and are not sure how to, our two year program will help you bring to life your own creative-life-sustaining plan.

Attend Boost Camp. If your not sure your rudder is still attached or you have an idea how to build one, please enroll. Scholarships are available.

Support Our Work. I am asking you to support our cause by buying a button or tee shirt and spreading our mission of hope and change for artists to come.

Spread Our Word. I am asking you to believe that life CAN be DIFFERENT and that your circumstances are changeable no matter how hard and challenging they are. Spread our good news and believe we can create a life we love and that empowers us and those around us in positive and life sustaining ways.

We are looking for strong individuals with good character and clear determination to overcome their fear and life obstacles. Please, won’t you join us. No More Starving Artists. No More Dirty Little Family Secrets. Let us BECOME the DIFFERENCE we seek to be ABLE to MAKE the DIFFERENCE we WERE put on this earth to make.

Dan Pink and ArtStart Coordinator Christie Kahil Radio Interview

Lisa Canning — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:44:42 +0000

Check out this interview that was on WFAE 90.7 FM in Charlotte NC with Daniel Pink (Arts Integration Activist and Author of four books including A Whole New Mind) and Christie Kahil ArtStart Coordinator (ArtsStart develops arts integrated curriculum for Charlotte NC schools). Their radio interview was about the importance of arts integration for student success and why us right brain thinkers are going to reshape our future workforce.

This is a great interview but it will take about an hour to listen to.

Dan Pink and Christie Kahil Interview

David Cutler Speaks Out About Creativity and Life as an Arts Entrepreneur

Lisa Canning — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 14:26:21 +0000

An interview with David Cutler appeared on Carla McElhaney blog on Saturday June 5th, 2010.

Pianist, Carla McElhaney is an innovative presence in the classical music field. and is highly regarded as a passionate and dynamic performing artist, teacher, and coach. She is co-founder, pianist, and Executive/Artistic Director for REVEL, an Austin-based “classical band,” currently serves on the piano faculty at Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, and maintains a coaching practice that integrates her interest in the field of personal development, her advocacy for Creatives and their work, and her roles as a performing artist, advisor and mentor.

An Interview with David Cutler

Composer, pianist, educator, arranger, conductor, collaborator, concert producer, author, blogger, consultant, speaker, advocate and entrepreneur David Cutler talks about shooting for maximum impact in his highly charged, highly creative life.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

As the author of The Savvy Musician: Building a Career, Earning a Living & Making a Difference, David Cutler is fast becoming known as a real catalyst in the creative lives of musicians, encouraging artists to push boundaries and flex their entrepreneurial muscles. This interview with David allows you to get a glimpse inside the kind of mindset — positive, courageous, committed and passionate — that goes hand in hand with optimal creativity.

CM: As a Creative, you are immersed in ongoing creative work. Do you ever experience creative blocks, or lulls in your creative output? If so, what do you typically do to get back into the flow?

DC: Absolutely. Here’s how it works for me…It seems like there’s a light switch. Sometimes, creativity flows freely, and it takes all my energy just to keep up with the seemingly endless stream of ideas. Other times, the valve turns off and I feel stuck or paralyzed, futilely struggling to produce even a phrase of music, paragraph of prose, or other miniscule artistic contribution. And to add insult to injury, ideas generated during these painful down periods are almost always inferior to one that pop up magically in inspired moments.

During less productive periods, I find myself editing compulsively rather than creating basic premises and fixing them later. So to get over being stuck, I often challenge myself to generate as much new material as possible. Quality is not important here, just quantity. 25 themes. 3 minutes of music. 1000 words. No editing allowed. Often, the mere act of being forced to produce sheer amounts of (often bad) material ultimately leads back to the creative zone.

Another strategy is shifting focus. When no muse can be found doing one thing, move on to another project from the “to do” list.

Of course, experiencing the arts firsthand is inspirational. Taking a break to hear a concert, peruse a museum, or watch a dance recital can rejuvenate the soul.

When nothing else pans out, I usually take a bath. Lots of bubbles. Wonder of wonders!

CM: Can you give a few examples of some of the things that are most meaningful to you today, both personally and professionally? In other words, what is most important to you? What do you do to invest energy in those areas while negotiating the challenges of everyday life?

DC: As a musician and community member, my top artistic priorities are helping solve real problems, connecting with real (and often new) audiences, and making a real difference. I shoot for maximum impact. This process typically involves:

1)Offering outstanding art. This goes without saying. But high quality art alone is not enough.

2)Winning trust. It is essential to engage, connect, and intrigue early on. Thoughtful and creative programming, humor, visual elements, empathy, good listening skills, passion, and truly caring are all ways to do this. If this step doesn’t occur, neither will making a meaningful impact.

3)Providing entry points. A good place to start is identifying areas of interest held by the audience, either musically or extra musically. In other words, meet them on their turf, and engage with relevant experiences.

4)Challenging to think in new ways. I view myself as a tour guide, aiming to expand the perspective and world view of those around me. Challenging conventions and conventional wisdom are hallmarks. In each presentation, I aim to offer the uncommon and provocative as well as the comfortable and familiar. As long as trust has been established, audiences are usually open.

5)Surpassing expectations. My goal is to blast beyond a job well done and a pleasant encounter, offering unexpected surprises and extreme experiences.

6)Inspiring and motivating. If I’ve done my job well, everyone around will have grown and be filled with pro-active energy.

These priorities are valued in just about every artistic statement I make, be it writing a book or blog on music careers, composing a piece, programming a new music concert, teaching a college theory class, improvising with third graders, or directing an ensemble. They influence the kinds of projects favored, as well as the ways they are realized.

In my personal life, I strive to balance an ambitious professional schedule with being a good father (my son is just about 2, and he looks forward to becoming a big brother next month!), husband, friend, and colleague.

CM: What current or upcoming projects are you most excited about and why?

DC: There are quite a few exciting projects in the pipeline. Here are a few highlights, in no particular order.

•Book. After 5+ years in development, my book The Savvy Musician: Building a Career, Earning a Living, & Making a Difference was released last November. It’s thrilling to see a huge project like this finally come to fruition.

•Presenting. Writing a book that people care about changes your life. Since publishing The Savvy Musician, I’ve been invited to travel the country as a presenter/consultant on music careers and entrepreneurship. Through this process, I’ve met many beautiful people, and hopefully made a small impact on the way musicians approach their art and life.

•Composing. I’m finishing up a cycle of pieces commissioned by the New Century Saxophone Quartet entitled Songs for the Weekend Traveler. Each member identified a genre of music they’d like to explore, and then I composed a movement featured their instrument using that style as points of departure: New Orleans second line, Cuban salsa, Scottish ballade, Bulgarian wedding dance. Great fun!

•Performance. As a pianist and composer, my collaborations with modern/Indian kathak dancer Cynthia Lee have led to a residency and couple of shows this Fall in Taiwan.

•Teaching. At Duquesne University, I’ll be team teaching a new course called Entrepreneurial Arts Project. This class, open to business and arts students, will examine the intersection of 1) entrepreneurship, 2) the arts, and 3) collaboration. For the final project, teams of students will develop “opportunity plans” for arts-related ventures with the potential to generate revenue.

•New Institute. I’m working closely with a team of arts leaders to open The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE). This two year program will serve as a “finishing school” for accomplished artists from all disciplines, helping them transform talents into sustainable careers and businesses. Our motto: No Starving Artists!

About David Cutler

David Cutler balances a varied career as a jazz and classical composer, pianist, educator, arranger, conductor, collaborator, concert producer, author, blogger, consultant, speaker, advocate, and entrepreneur. In all these pursuits, he works to push boundaries while connecting with new audiences. His book The Savvy Musician (www.savvymusician.com) helps musicians 1) build a career, 2) earn a living, & 3) make a difference.

A multi-dimensional composer who listens to a colossal range of styles, Cutler’s eclectic output reflects this musical world. With a vocabulary ranging from beautiful lyricism to rhythmic sophistication and bizarre juxtapositions, his music has been commissioned and performed by artists such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Classical Orchestra of Milan, LAVIE Singers, Korean Chamber Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Boston Brass, Airmen of Note Air Force Big Band, singers Bobby McFerrin and Nancy Wilson, trumpeter Sean Jones, clarinetist David Krakauer, harpist Jung, and saxophonist Benny Golson.

Cutler’s playing is as wide-ranging as his composing, stretching what it means to be a pianist. Jazz and classical performances regularly incorporate improvisation, humor, audience interaction, choreography, technology, costuming, unique collaborations, and secondary instruments. The concerts he produces often defy expectations, interfacing music with dance, film, actors, costumes, stage design, and visual artists.

Dr. Cutler studied at the University of Miami, Hochschule für Musik (Vienna, Austria), Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. He teaches at Duquesne University, where he also serves as Coordinator of Music Entrepreneurship Studies. Visit David Cutler online at: www.trunkmusic.org.

Creative People Can Serve Others in “The Good Fight”

Lisa Canning — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:48:41 +0000

I received this email this morning and, with Katie’s permission, thought it was so well said I had to share it.

Hi, Lisa-

I just wanted to let you know that I found your ETA and Lisa’s Clarinet Shop websites via David Cutler’s Savvy Musician site, and I really appreciate what you are doing. I am a clarinetist starting the second year of my DMA in performance at the University of South Carolina, and your ideas pertaining to entrepreneurship as an artist really resonate with me. I also feel that there is a whole world of opportunity out there where creative people can utilize their strengths and serve others in “The Good Fight.” I think so many musicians don’t want to talk about business and money because 1.) we are sick of not having it 2.) we believe it is our duty not to have it, and 3.) we don’t want to be a part of “corporate America” as we know it. Us artistic types are (and thankfully so!) notorious idealists. We understand—through our intimate, spiritual relationship with the arts— that beauty has real value, that this life isn’t just something to be thrown out with the garbage, yet, so many business capitalize on the ugliness in the world and we would rather be poor than be a part of that!

As artists we are in a position to sell something that heals— not hurts— anyone and everyone. It is so easy to fault the government, or our culture, or even sports for the sorry state of the arts in America. However, we are pointing our fingers at the wrong people. You can’t blame people for not wanting something they don’t know exists and have never really experienced. Only when we are finally thinking out of the full-time orchestra gig/ tenured-track college gig/ military band gig-shaped box will we become a driving force in this economy, and a force that shapes American culture and changes lives for the better. All of those jobs are great, but why be limited to them?

Katie Brown

Don Quijote didn’t ship

Lisa Canning — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:58:15 +0000

This post was written by Seth Godin and appeared on his blog. Thank you Bobbie Soeder for sending this on to me. Does this post remind you of any artist you know? It certainly struck a chord with me…

Society makes heroes out of entrepreneurs and adventurers that tilt at windmills and succeed. Napster slays the music industry! Twitter comes out of nowhere!

The thing about taking on the biggest giants is that most of the time (so often as to be all of the time if you’re willing to do some rounding) you fail. You don’t just fail at the end, you often fail long before the end.

Yet the dreamers persist. These are usually the garage entrepreneurs, people with little market success behind them, those working without a track record or significant resources. People forget that Google was backed with millions of dollars from the biggest VCs in the world when they took on Yahoo.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be the guy who says, “go for it!” but the fact is, most of the time the choice to take on impossible odds, to challenge the entrenched monopolist is the work of the lizard brain. After all, if you dream the impossible dream and go after the thing that can’t possibly work, you don’t have to worry about being criticized, you don’t have to worry about the responsibility of shipping or serving your customers. After all, it was impossible.

Tangling with the largest possible opponent, when you are severely over matched is a way of giving in to the resistance, of not actually shipping.

My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can’t live without you. Once you’ve demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills.

Power Tools Don’t Come with Intuition or Vision

Lisa Canning — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:22:42 +0000

This past week I had the honor of participating in The School of The Art Institute’s career development workshop titled Power Tools. The purpose of this workshop is to expose alumni and students to the resources and tools they need to succeed in their artistry.

What struck me from my particular session was the focus students placed on asking specific questions around accounting and legal issues. All of the questions they asked were great and relevant, but I found myself increasingly wondering how many realized that while the answer to their question was certainly instructive, they almost always revealed the participants lack of entrepreneurial intuition and vision.

For example, one question revolved around whether it was worth the risk of, without a license or doing proper research with the city, setting up a public art display in an area that was part public and part private. While the legal answer is clearly no, the question it raised for me was what kind of image and reputation are you trying to build and how best can you effectively communicate that message? And what kind of public space best will fit that message? Will breaking the law do it and risking the dismantling or destruction of your work? Developing entrepreneurial intuition revolves around knowing who you are first, taking a moral inventory of what principals you need to adhere to as your life as an entrepreneur unfolds, and then being able to negotiate along the path that emerges to achieve the results you are looking for.

Or what about this accounting question: I want to attend a bunch of art fairs this summer and wondered do I need to keep books and records? Well, the bigger question for me is why are you doing this? What result are you seeking from attending these fairs and how will it help you build on the vision for your business? This question begs a much deeper exploration than its answer.

While it is true, we as artists need an assortment of tools- attorneys, accountants, bankers and access to specific instructional answers to detailed questions ( how to?) to accomplish the task of building our careers, these sorts of “power tools” are after all inanimate flat objects. While we certainly need to know not only which one to use and what they can each do for us, no instructions come with them that provide the intuition and vision you need to create something meaningful simply by using them. What good is it to know what kind of drill bit to use in concrete if you don’t know what to do with the concrete in the first place? And while artists have creative vision, entrepreneurial vision requires the insertion of a second lens to view that creativity through. And with it a new set of skills that require training.

Entrepreneurial vision cannot be found inside of any one power tool, their operating manual, or any accounting or legal issues book either. Specific answers to specific questions can be, but 90% of developing as an entrepreneur is about developing your critical decision making abilities. Knowing which way to go and when you should turn left, right or go straight is the real challenge and is what divides failure from success. Timing, effectively communicating and knowing how much importance should be placed on what and when is critical to building success. Developing your entrepreneurial vision requires the development of your entrepreneurial intuition first which, with practice and guidance, becomes a clear entrepreneurial vision that will guide ALL of your decision making. Once you have entrepreneurial vision, getting the answers to specific legal or accounting questions seems perfunctory in nature.

One of the reasons I decided to take on the challenge of opening a two year program for artists, instead of offering a string of workshops on a broad list of subjects, is because you can’t develop entrepreneurial vision any other way than through immersion learning that can only occur with a trusted teacher available every step of the way. Just like one’s artistry was created with the guidance of a teacher, transforming that artistry into an income stream requires the same kind of ongoing guidance and professional assistance.

So many times I have heard from those who observe artists that “we” cannot be taught how to sell, or to think like entrepreneurs because we just are not “wired” that way. And the truth is we can. If we are willing to make the investment of time and money required to learn MORE THAN what the power tool owners manual says about how to operate the machine. We all know how badly written those manuals are and how much more quickly we learn how to really use them through the lens of experience…

After all, if you could learn how to be an entrepreneur from a book, don’t you think there would be a whole lot more of us? Who doesn’t want to be in charge of your own day and make a decent living creating a life you love? But are you willing to risk financially all you have without the educational support you need to succeed? Didn’t you already do that for the love of your artistry? Isn’t it now time to finish the process by investing in the rest of the education you need to learn to have the entrepreneurial intuition and vision you need to thrive?

Check out this story that just appeared today about one (now) flourishing artist, Shawna Lake, who was willing to invest in the development of her entrepreneurial vision. It does not matter what form of art you create. Insert you and your business idea into this article. This could be you….

How much energy do you want in life?

Lisa Canning — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:40:34 +0000

Every day of our lives we pour our energy into ideas, people and activities. Daily these choices require investments of both our time and money- both symbols of energy.

Whatever daily energy you spend, is it enough? Do you wish you had more time to create your art? More money to help change the world?

While no one can produce more time- we all have only so much of it left- we can produce more money- increasing our life power source and its capacity to illuminate the important things in our life. And ironically, if we can learn how to produce more money in less time, we can also find ourselves having more time to spend doing those things that most matter to us.

Look- WHATEVER it is you dream about- what you need to do is increase the time you have available and generate more money to allow you to achieve “it” more vibrantly.

Welcome to why I hope you will join us for one of our summer workshops or apply to our 2 year program to attend The IAE. We want our students to be artists first and forever. But we want each and every one of you to learn how to use your imaginations in new ways to learn new techniques and tools to lead you into a life that offers you more time and more money to become the brightest energy source you want to be.

I think a lot of artists think of money as something that they either have or do not. Got imagination? Come join us and we will help you grow your energy source so you can decide where to shine your bright light.

A Call To Action!

Lisa Canning — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:46:27 +0000

Our fortune cookies and No More Starving Artist Button Board were a big hit at the Chicago Creative Expo.

On Saturday April 10th, at the 7th Chicago Creative Expo held at The Cultural Center in Chicago, The IAE was in full blooming form.

Our imagination training ensemble, The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble, performed What’s Your Imagination Worth? to a just about full house in the Claudia Cassidy theater.

During the day, Bite-Size Arts Ensemble members Shawn Bowers, Lance Hall, Dharmesh Bhagat and a helper from our PR firm, PR Chicago maned the IAE booth, fielded questions and handed out applications for our workshops and 2 year program. We had so many different kinds of artists stop by, and every imaginable question asked about our workshops and programs, that not only were these guys talking all day but they gave almost ever brochure, button, and application we brought with us away!

Meanwhile, I spent the day in the Consult-A-Thon helping artists work through various issues with their existing business or start-up ideas.

Bite-Size Arts Ensemble member Dharmesh Bhagat signs up a potential student to our mailing list.

Shawn Bowers fields a question about The IAE curriculum

Bite-Size Director Lance Hall answers questions about our 12 week imagination training workshop that begins June 7th.

Here are some quotes from emails I received already today from some of the artists I met at the Consult-A-Thon!

“Thank you for giving me such a positive experience at the Consult-a-Thon.”

“You showed me so many different angles to look at things I would have never thought of (or it would take me a very long time).”
“I’m still decompressing from this weekend but will regroup and take action!”

Is Your Imagination Worth Investing Into? The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble gave away over 300 fortune cookies with our special message inside.

“Just wanted to tell you thanks for the wonderful meeting on Saturday at the Expo. You may have changed my life!”

“You gave me so much to think about. I have been in a buzz with friends ever since.”

I have already signed up for the boost camp online..”

So what about you? While the Chicago Creative Expo 2010 may be officially over, the energy, enthusiasm and support for The IAE it created has just begun and we are calling YOU to action too!

Do you know what your imagination is worth? Is it worth investing into by becoming a Bite-Size Arts Ensemble member and creating your own show to build your communication skills and test your business ideas in our 12 week workshop beginning Monday June 7th?

Or what about shaping or re-shaping your business idea to create a better plan of action to move your career and ideas forward with our 2 week Boost Camp that starts Monday July 26th?

Or what about joining us and learning how to live life on your own terms ONCE AND FOR ALL by attending The IAE’s 2 year weekend program that begins January 5th, 2011?

Early Bird registration discount of 20% for The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble Workshop or Boost Camp if you apply by May 15th. Discount code is: ICanFlourish

Self Employment in the Arts 10th Conference (SEA) Feb 19-20, Lisle, IL

Lisa Canning — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:57:00 +0000

Happy 10th anniversary SEA! The SEA conference is coming right up and if you have never attended you need to! Come learn more about how to turn your artistic passion into a living from other successful artists.

What The Conference Offers

In addition to keynote presentations, topic specific sessions by artists, panel discussions, faculty sessions, and workshops, come hang out with a lot of really fun, creative artists and entrepreneurs. I will be speaking and hanging out there too! Hope you will join the fun.

Here’s the list of speakers and topics that will be presented:

Visual Arts:

Robert Fishbone – Keynote & Social Media Panel
Jeanette Smith (Art Consultant) – Art Licensing
Robert Lee Fritz (3-D Artist) – Creating niches and corporate sales
John McDavitt (Commercial Artist) – Heroic Decision Making
Janet Bloch (Artist & Consultant) – Exhibiting Professionalism
Andie Burchett (Pencil Artist) – TBD
Jessica & John Page – Photography & New Business (Alum)
Ping Wu – Fashion Design (Alum)

Media Arts:

Kelley Baker (Filmmaker) – Guerilla Marketing & Self-Distribution
Julie Freestone (Sundance Institute) – TBD
Jeffrey Fisher (Fisher Creative Group) – Be a Mobile Media Mogul

Performing Arts:

Matt Hennessy (Musician and Recording Engineer) – Recording Industry
Greg Eichelberger (Musician) – Creating & Managing a Career
Lisa Canning (Musician & Entrepreneur) – New Economic Opportunities for Artists
Victoria Lyman (Dance Boutique)- Turning Your Artistic Passion into a Retail business
Vanessa E (Singer) – Multiple Income Streams
Matt Boresi – Mock Auditions & Closing Keynote

Literary Arts:

Jennifer McCord & Sheryl Stebbins – Publishing Today
McCord & Stebbins – Writing a book proposal
(A limited number will have the opportunity to have a book proposal reviewed.
Please see website for more details.)

Nuts & Bolts:

Elizabeth Russell (Russell Law)- Legal Issues
Tim Kelley (Columbia College) – Legal Issues for Performing Artists
Kay Osborne (Drury University) – Accounting for Artists

Panel Discussions:

Marketing
Social Media & Websites
Portfolios
Getting Started
Faculty Sessions:
2 Faculty Panels of Coleman Fellowes
Pam Mickelson (Morningside College ) – Brand Builder Matrix (for faculty & students)

Learn more about the speakers presentations:

Here is the schedule at a glance:

There is no time like RIGHT NOW to register! See you at SEA.

Can’t come to Lisle, Illinois? Here are a few other opportunities to get involved:

March 13th SEA OzArts : Coordinated by Drury University in Sprinfield, MO

March 26th & 27th SEA BizArts: Coordinated by Edmonds Community College in Washington

March 27th Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference: From Survival to Success
Coordinated by The University of North Carolina Greensboro

TBD SEA South: Coordinated by The University of Tampa

13 Steps to a Happy Artistic Life

David Cutler — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:31:38 +0000

Success is a common theme in my writing. Of course, there are many types of success: landing a job, performing well, creating a great composition, mastering a technique, getting noticed, going viral, attracting web traffic, moving audiences. Yet some artists accomplish many of these things, but still feel dissatisfied with their life in the arts. So caught up in making a living, they fail to adequately address a most important aspect of success—personal happiness.

Typically, the happiest artists:

1) Love the act of making art. The demands of an artistic life are intense, requiring long hours, hard work, and frequent attention to issues far from the reason this field was pursued. But the happiest artists are so enamored with making art that all the other stuff is somehow worthwhile.

2) Are creative. The happiest artists find avenues for creative expression. Many top orchestral players find themselves disgruntled because of the lack of creative control in their musical life, even though they have a high paying job in an outstanding ensemble. The most content members are typically those who pursue chamber music and additional artistic endeavors on the side.

3) Have a varied musical profile. The happiest artists wear a number of hats. They perform, create, record, teach, write, blog, speak, and/or consult. While balancing so many pursuits is challenging, it also provides variety while excising the monotony of just one thing.

4) Do more than art. The happiest artists balance artistic activities with other interests: family, friends, travel, reading, sports, hobbies, etc.

5) Are part of an artistic community. The happiest artists belong to one or several communities of artists with similar interests. Without this, a sense of isolation often sets in. This problem often plagues teachers who focus on art throughout the day, yet have few opportunities to connect with piers. Joining an amateur community ensemble or an arts networking club are two great solutions.

6) Pursue passion projects. Though most artists accept work that they aren’t crazy about to make ends meet, the happiest artists pursue at least one passion project. Even when these activities don’t pay well financially (or result in a deficit), they rejuvenate the soul.

7) Complete projects. Many artists imagine countless exciting projects, but never get past the idea stage, or fail to cross the finish line. The happiest artists focus energy on one or two major projects at a time, staying focused until the work is done.

8) Feel they make an impact. The happiest artists observe direct evidence that their contributions are appreciated and making a difference. Teaching, concert performance, and community engagement are all ways to immediately observe the impact of your offerings.

9) Constantly continue growing. Beware of falling into an artistic rut. The happiest artists are lifelong learners, arts fans, and explorers.

10) Have enough money. You don’t have to be rich. But the happiest artists are not constantly stressed about paying the rent, credit card debt, and other financial hardships. They find ways to ensure a healthy economic profile.

11) Are optimists. Everyone is confronted with challenges, obstacles, and unfortunate news at times. The happiest artists stay positive, looking for the silver lining.

12) Are not perfectionists. Perfectionism drives artists to work hard. But it also causes low self-esteem or even outright depression. The happiest artists love the sacred act of art music, even with mistakes along the way (as there always are).

13) Don’t take life too seriously. Though some classical musicians regally refer to their work as “serious music,” let’s put things into perspective. It’s just notes and rhythms, not life or death crises. The happiest artists know how to have fun, both in and outside their musical life.

RELATED POSTS:

What It Takes to Succeed
Do You “Play” Music?
You Fail!!! But Are You Doing it Right?

Check out David Cutler’s

THE SAVVY MUSICIAN: Building a Career, Earning a Living, & Making a Difference

“Hands down, the most valuable resource available for aspiring musicians.”

— Jeffrey Zeigler, Kronos Quartet

If You Become an Arts Entrepreneur Are You Still an Artist First?

Lisa Canning — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:30:24 +0000

It seems that every time I am interviewed by someone who is interested in my work, the question always comes up: “Well, do you still play the clarinet? What do you do as an artist?”

For some time now, I have been scratching my head and thinking to myself, “What is it that I am saying that is leading others to think I am anything BUT an artist?”

As of late, I am beginning to think it is a matter of educating others- to expand our way of thinking- about what it means to grow artistically and what are some of the innovative ways we actually can do that.

What is it that YOU think makes you an artist first?

For me it is my obsessive curiosity and devotion to learning how to further develop and express the creative being I am in every possible way in my life and work.

What amazes me, however, is that often all others see- at least at first- is that I run “a business”.

Can an artist not financially excel building a business AND remain an artist first and foremost? Or is it a preconceived notion that if you are running a business you could not possible be creating art for a living? Is art confined to the concert hall or must it hang on the gallery wall?

Well for the record, I would like to clarify what artistic skills I use daily:

I work to improve my writing and seek to find new ways to express my ideas.While I wrote a book that never sold, I use my writing daily, and work hard at trying to improve it, to reach and touch people. I write and re-write until I have captured the essence of what it is I am trying to communicate. Writing is an art form and I am developing and honing my skills daily.

Every day I spend time visually trying to communicate my ideas through imagery. Although I don’t have the gift of a painter or potter, I use my visual vision to constantly communicate without words. I am constantly thinking about how to re-design images associated with my identity and how to use imagery to more effectively communicate my hopes and dreams. I use my love of images to communicate what can only be shared through the often non verbal world of art. I share with others through this blog and through marketing materials something intimate about who I am and what my creative world can offer others.

Every day I play my clarinet. I do it to stimulate my own creativity, as well as to help others find the perfect instrument to express their unique musical voice through Lisa’s Clarinet Shop. I use my ability playing the clarinet to help others build their audiences. By helping my clients with something as personal as finding their musical voice, I am helping them share who they are through their musical performances. While I do play “gigs” and perform music on stage, in orchestra and small ensembles, my freelance work does little to further my artistic hunger.

Every day I am working on my skills as an actress. Through the Bite-Size Arts Ensemble™ show I am developing: What is Your Imagination Worth? A New Kind of ROI. Through this artistic lens, I am both learning how to conceive ideas in a theatrical way as well as use those ideas to teach others about the powers of developing their imaginations through both my abilities, and soon their own, on and off stage.

Every day I speak persuasively to others about how we, together, can change the world by looking at how art is created and through all kinds of new lenses it can be viewed through. Art can look very different, and still BE art, if we open our minds and allow it to. I wake up everyday an artist. I go to sleep the very same way. I consider my business a 100% reflection of my art and my art 100% my business.

My art is about building community. I use the tools of my trade to emotionally impact others and call them to action. I use my art to education others about a new world of possibilities as well as help them trust that they too can use their gifts to create art in totally new ways.

Sure, my art, if you only look skin deep- can look like a business. It does because I have organized my ideas using my skills of logic to try and make the tools of my artistry as cohesive and purpose filled as possible. Part of my art is using my organizational skills to help my artistry reach new heights. A business is about taking an idea and making it become a reality. My art, through the lens of business transcends the concert hall, theater stage, pages of a book and the picture that hangs on the gallery wall.

My art also has transcended me. What I am trying to say is that the fulfillment I receive from my art comes from your expression from it, your action through it and your transformation (if I am lucky enough) because of it. My art is simply not all about how it makes me feel when I am creating it– my art is about what it DOES for others.

What about you? Are you willing to stretch your ideas about what your art means to you? Are you willing to fly into a new world and evolve? I hope so. I am here waiting for you. I can hardly wait to meet you. Come on in. The water is just fine….

Are you ready to combine the power of your beliefs and values with your artistic gifts to give the world something brand new that only your artistic vision can see?

Come explore what TheIAE.com has to offer.

4 Tips to Attracting Media with Your Press Release

Lisa Canning — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:36:42 +0000

As some of you may be aware, The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship just hired PR CHICAGO to help up get the word out about The Institute.

On Thursday December 17th, 2009, between 6:30 and 6:50 pm, our first official press release was picked up on news feeds thanks to PR Newswire, a distribution service for press releases that I believe is likely the best service. PR Newswire is known for getting 12% more of their distributed releases picked up in news feeds than other distributors and are viewed by over 1 million unique visitors- 30% more than their competition.

I have used PR Newswire only once before for a fundraiser The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble gave more than a year ago, but did not have the same success we just experienced with this release. Why you ask? Well, that is a good question! Here are a few things I am learning about PR that you might find helpful.

#1 What is considered newsworthy enough for any media outlet to pick up on any given day, depends partially on the amount of news generated that day. (I knew this but, its funny how you really learn what this means when it matters to you if you actually are considered newsworthy enough to get picked up….)

#2 What gets picked up is subjective and based on the person reading what was sent when it comes across the wire.

#3 What you send out has to be interesting to the media and their audience to be selected and reprinted so make sure to write your release to those you wish to attract. But also remember, PR is a funny business and much harder to get noticed these days. It does not always make sense why something gets picked up and something of similar quality elsewhere does not. The thing about PR is that it takes 1-2 years of consistent circulation to be of any real help to your bottom line. After all, while media attention is great, it takes real interest from real customers to make your PR efforts truly helpful.

I can’t tell you how many artists I know who have had major media hits – landing in People Magazine or on the front pages of other major publications – and then never see an uptick in their business as a result. It is only the ones who consistently work on getting PR who eventually get the traction their willingness to “get the word” out deserves.

And besides, if the PR you seek to generate is about how YOU can help others benefit from your artistry, and others find it newsworthy, is it really a big deal to draw attention to yourself ? I don’t think so. This kind of attention seems cool to me. I love the idea that I could become really well known for what I most love to do, that can be of service and help to you. That works for me. I’d like to help you find your own way to make it work for you too.

#4 While we picked and paid for only a Chicago area release, PR Newswire sent ours out nationally instead for only $150.00 instead of $700.00. Sometimes a deal can be had- thank you Toni for saving me some money. Although I pay a monthly retainer to PR Chicago, incidentals like PR Newswire’s fee are additional costs to me– so getting more for the money matters!

Our first press release for the Institute was picked up by:

Business Journals for the following Cities and States: Dallas, Orlando, New Mexico, Birmingham, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Boston, Albany, Minneapolis, Tampa Bay, Nashville, Kansas City, Denver, Charlotte, Memphis, Jacksonville, St. Louis, Sacramento, Austin, Milwaukee, Dayton, Cincinnati, San Antonio, Wichita, South Florida, and Portland.

Other Business Journals: St.Louis Triangle Business Journal-NC, Atlanta Business Chronicle, San Francisco Business Times, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, Buffalo Business First, Pacific Business News, Puget Sound Journal, News Blaze, Pittsburgh Business Times, Columbus Business First, Las Vegas Review Journal, Louisville Business First.

Other Media: Interest! ALERT, KTRE- TX, KLFY-TV- LA, Congoo, KESQ News Channel 3-CA, KHRD-TV ABC 40, Active Media Archives, The Sun Herald, Earth Times, YV&C News Desk.

Including Forbes Magazine.

Amen.

Let’s Innovate Through Artistry. Are you Ready to Begin? Classes Start Monday, September 14th of 2010. Apply Now.

Gosh. I am such a sucker for love…

Lisa Canning — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:40:47 +0000

OK… so I changed my mind. I am allowed to right? I spent almost a year with interns building The ETA Resource Center for you. I thought given how much time and money it cost me to build — almost $4000.00, a true labor of love– that it was worth the price of admission.

Admission being your email address.

Well, it looks like I was wrong. All of you fine people keep going to the landing page for it, but few of you have become paying customers…

SOoo guess what?

You now can get in the door for FREE!

No line and NO WAITING to improve your entrepreneurial know how.

FREE!! ABSOLUTELY STINKING FREE! OVER 1000 researched resources and growing…..

Are you ready to learn how to earn a living with your gifts? www.TheIAE.com

Overtly Criticized? That’s a Great Sign.

James Hart — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:09:37 +0000

When you engage in the act of creating something new, if that thing develops roots and begins to take hold, you will find a mix of public reactions. You will likely hear lots of support from friends, family, colleagues, peers, well-wishers and others. Simultaneously, you will likely encounter sour pusses, bitterness, glass half empty types and tons and tons of people who will tell you how insignificant your product or ideas are and how you will never succeed…or shouldn’t be allowed to.

People will criticize you for a whole host of reasons and rarely will you ever learn of the true nature or origin of the criticism. Admittedly, sometimes criticism comes out of societal duty–like if you have committed a crime or have acted in a manner that is harmful. They may criticize you, as you do something out of social bounds. Let’s recognize that for a moment. This said, sometimes criticism comes for other reasons. Might it stem from jealousy? Inferiority complex? Self-loathing? Bitterness? Does it come from a desire to more effectively compete, but the criticizer does not know of healthy ways to do so? Some people will even criticize you as a way of engaging you, of getting next to you, of hoping you will share secrets while defending yourself (think of the boy hitting the girl on the playground–as a way of flirting). As unenlightened and as nasty as such approaches can be, they happen. Whatever the nature of the criticism you receive, one thing is for sure—it will come.

Let’s not think of it as a bad thing. Criticism is necessary. I would rather have people saying nastiness, than saying nothing at all. In time, people forget the content of what was said, but the name may stick (hence, there is not such thing as bad press). Bad press is press and do you know how hard it is to generate press? Critics become your helpers. They disseminate your ideas and awareness of your existence. In so doing, they think they are acting against you in a harmful fashion, but are really doing you a good. So, if your ego can handle it, hang tight. Your criticism is likely a sign that you are on a good path.

During this inevitable early stage of development, I like to think about the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s Three Stages of Truth:

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident”.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Basically, first they make fun of you and hold you up as a buffoon. You are the laughing stock of the party (at least in the critic’s mind).

Next, they attempt to bash you down and discredit your ideas. This is the practice of Jantes Law and Tall Poppy Syndrome, which I have written about in past blog posts. Here too, you can think of the medium fish and its desire to eat smaller fish. Those middle fish do not want to see you (the small fish) grow into a medium or big fish. Big fish eat medium fish and if you become a medium sized fish, you will threaten the food source for other medium sized fish. So, they must eat you first or compete with you on a later day for food–or they one day become your food source.

Finally, they accept your offerings (product or ideas), as though they or it had always existed. At such a point, the critics may even take credit for your work and list themselves as those who discovered you or “it” in the first place. Once you reach this stage, a new type of criticism comes, that of larger waters.

Criticism is good for the creator. It causes them to reflect on their work and ask, “Is such criticism true”? Such self-evaluation is vital for personal development. In this thinking, the criticizer actually becomes an ally.

Criticism let’s you know that you are on the map. Why would people even criticize you in the first place, if you were not viewed as a threat in some way? Why would they even bother?

Jim Hart is the founder of The Hart Technique www.harttechnique.com Jim Hart may be contacted at jim@harttechnique.com