Mom's mass was held at this beautiful church.

Since her passing I have been gifted with a string of  JOY-FILLED miracles. There is no other explanation for WHY my life has ALL OF A SUDDEN lite up like a giant birthday cake with stunning sparklers and firecrackers going off. Maybe mom’s birthday card after all has arrived and her soul has been saved.  Let me explain.

For starters a university who I will not for awhile be able to name,  has stepped forward and is ready to explore how they can become The IAE’s  academic accreditation partner. Breathtaking all by itself and THE VERY NEXT THING we MOST need right now.

A general manager from a mid level theater but 7 blocks down the street from where the IAE will open, emailed me the other day and offered to donate rehearsal space to the school.  While  Flourish Studio’s is an IDEAL classroom setting, it is NOT an artistic noise producing one. We have been pondering how we would solve this problem close to our location and then this magically appears.

Next came a wonderful opportunity for me personally to present a workshop at the 2nd annual P.A.V.E. conference at ASU. I have always wanted to meet Ben Cameron from the Doris Duke foundation and now I will finally be able to! I am so honored to participate.

Last Thursday I had lunch with the chief editor of an established AND up-and-coming Chicago based magazine. She asked if she could help me edit my revised book proposal to repackage the book I wrote 3 years ago that did not sell; Build a Blue Bike. She wants to help because she believes my book needs to be published by a big publisher and wants to do what she can to help me finally get it sold.

Incredibly, as we were returning to her parking lot, and I was about to pull into the first open parking stall to drop her off, there was a Blue SCHWINN Bike chained to the fence.   I have a 1960′s Blue SCHWINN Bike I bought for my book still in boxes in my garage, and a whole presentation I created around the material in the book that involves taking it apart and putting it back together. There is also a blue bike that roles in on my flash intro to LisaCanning.com. It too is a Blue SCHWINN. I intentionally wanted a Schwinn because the bike I rode as a child was a blue Schwinn. I even had an exchange with the marketing people at Schwinn to gain access to their image files so that I could use their brand of bike to promote my book, when it was published.

According to my new publisher friend, there has never been a bike before chained to the fence in the lot; nor have they EVER seen this bike before. ( For those of you who don’t know-Build a Blue Bike was picked up almost three years ago by NY literary agent Susan Schulman and never sold; Susan has represented Richard Florida and Julia Cameron.)

In hind site I now realize what Build a Blue Bike was missing- a hook. And dear reader, my mother, through her death, has given me the hook my book NEEDS –the stories I am now FREE to share about our dirty little family secrets.  My mothers creativity in life and through her death is simply otherworldly; breathtaking. As spectacular as all my mom could be.

This week has TRULY offered me DEEP and PROFOUND blessings. The passing of my mother, and my tormented relationship with her clearly, finally, undeniably has ended through her physical death. I TRULY feel a profound peace and gratitude for this to have happened to me. I feel 20 pounds lighter and free. I can FINALLY TELL MY STORIES ABOUT HER TO HELP TRANSFORM so many artists creativity into something valu-ABLE; NOT rudderless!

And yes, while it made me sad that so few people loved my mother enough to say their goodbyes at her funeral other than my husband, my ex-husband, my brother, the mother of my best friend when I was 10, four of my friends and two of my mothers;  I have to tell you that all of this last week has offered me NOTHING short of divinely sent miracles.

You see, when you PLAN to clear your life of the debris that is IN YOUR WAY to lead the LIFE YOU WERE MEANT  to live– it’s not total destruction and annihilation you find at YOUR ground zero- but instead the source of true miracles that will define you for the rest of time. And trust me you will know when you have arrived at your Ground Zero and when your transformation has begun.

Although I do have to tell you that I felt as though the heavens above were playing a little joke with me on Thursday afternoon when I went to pick up my mothers remains at the funeral directors office.

When I arrived at the building, I walked down the hall the wrong way.  Quickly I realized that not only was the building being dug up all around it- just like ground zero- but that indeed the funeral directors office was inside DePaul University’s Rosemont Campus and was next to be torn down. I successfully helped build a program at DePaul but it was never the arts entrepreneurship program I had hoped it would be.  Symbolically, the school I had taught at for 10 years was being dug up and replaced by a casino.  My school FOR NEW LEARNING IN THE ARTS will NEVER BE REPLACED BY A CASINO! 

So here I am picking up my mothers remains at my true ground zero. All that preceded this moment was meant to help me grow but not meant to be permanent. All that is unfolding before me NOW IS my true and undeniable destiny. THIS IS one of the hardest lessons to learn, really; how to truly change our destiny through the choices we make and the emotional shifts we must learn.

Are you ready to learn?  Are you ready to find your rudder? Won’t you please apply to the IAE, or help us promote the IAE to others you know, or add our button badge link to your website?

Isn’t it time for ALL ARTISTS to learn how to make THEIR VERY OWN MIRACLES happen at a SPECTACULAR ground zero of their  VERY OWN?

“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.

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

And for all you local artists- this Saturday is the big event! The Chicago Creative Expo runs all day! The Bite-Size Arts Ensemble is performing at 1:30 in the Claudia Cassidy Theater.  I am also offering free one on one consultations.  The consult-a-thon will be on the 5th floor on the Washington side of the Cultural Center, 78 E. Randolph. To schedule an appointment click here. I am also willing to set up additional times after the expo for any of you who are unable to schedule a time with me there. Email me at lisa@theIAE.com if you are interested.

Here is the complete list of all of the FREE workshops being offered at the expo and where they will be held! Hope to See you this Saturday at the EXPO!

What is it about Tina Fey? Wherever I find her – presenting on big award shows, interviewed as cover girl on this month’s Esquire, making the talk show rounds for her upcoming movie, Date Night, with Steve Carrell – she is always surprising me and making me smile. She continues to pile up Emmys and Golden Globes for 3o Rock, the show she created, produces and stars in. What is it that made this plain jane the AP entertainer of the year and one of the greatest creative successes of our time?

Watch 30 Rock and what you’ll see is a cavalcade of creativity, undoubtedly generated from the improvisational world of pushing the fool’s envelope. Fey first made her name here in Chicago as an improv player for Improv Olympic and Second City Theaters, where the great skills are in building on each other’s imagination, never judging an idea until later (if ever), and learning that for every time you create something idiotic there is another time you create something ingenious. I guarantee you the 30 Rock writers (and the actors) are experts in giving themselves full permission to be preposterous, because it is only when you open wide to ideas that the most creative can come out. And by creative I’m not talking just outrageous. I’m talking, as you find in each of the 30 rock characters, outrageously fitting. Which makes for funny.

But ultimately there is the great improvisor herself, the former head writer and performer for Saturday Night Live, whose Sarah Palin impression will be memorable forever. It’s Tina, whose Liz Lemon on 30 Rock is continually embarrassed and made the fool, who’s gotten so good at giving herself permission that creative gold comes out of her again and again, and the fool’s gold has become a treasure.

The better you get at giving yourself permission, the more creativity will come from you. So happy April Fool’s Day and may you take the opportunity for fool permission.

More from Adam: Check out his Innovation on my Mind blog.

A Case for The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship™

Introduction:

Founded in 2009, The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship™ (The IAE) is a Chicago-based 501c(3) organization committed to helping artists create sustainable artistic careers through achieving self –sufficiency.  Our mission is directly tied to the belief that artists have an extraordinary amount of yet-to-be-realized value they can provide to society, especially in these economically challenging times, if they can be taught to apply their artistic capacity in new ways to allow their talents to become relevant and necessary.

The 2009 Artists and the Economic Recession Survey created by Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) demonstrates how financial difficulties can impact an artists’ ability to sustain a productive creative life:

• Artists often have to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet – 66% hold at least one job in addition to their artistic practice, while 21% hold two or more additional jobs.
• Two-thirds reported their total 2008 income was less than $40,000, including nearly one-third who earned less than $20,000.
• Artists have experienced a decrease in sales of work (48%) or a need to lower fees/rates charged for work (44%), both of which suggest the arts are experiencing the contraction in consumer spending as much as many other industries.
• More than a third of artists reporting a decrease in the monetary amount of grants (37%), the number of awards granted (36%), and the number of grant opportunities available (35%). More than a third of artists’ report that compared to 2008 they have fewer bookings scheduled (38%) and fewer opportunities to exhibit/perform/present their work (35%). About three in 10 say there are fewer services available by nonprofits (31%) and fewer teaching (30%) and artist residency (27%) opportunities.

And yet these financial challenges pose more than the obvious problems they reflect in an artists’ ability to create their art or deliver quality cultural experiences to their audience. It is the belief of The IAE that the economic stability of artists, or lack thereof, has not only significantly contributed to the erosion of the demand for cultural and artistic expression in general but, in today’s economic environment, has put at risk the very need for it to exist entirely.

With roughly 100,000 fine arts majors graduating each year from institutional arts programs around the country, and no decline insight of prospective students who want to study art, the fact that only 2.1 million tax payers in the US report that they earn a living as artists demonstrates the attrition rate after graduation is quite high.

While the romantic stereotype of the “starving artist” to a young artist/student initially often serves to only further fuel their artistic imagination and desire of what life can be like living a bohemian lifestyle, comments from family, friends, employers, colleagues, and distant admirers as to their career prospects as an artist, once he/she graduates, creates both external and internal pressure to embrace a profession that assures stability. After all, even the bohemian lifestyle of an artist gets old when you can’t afford your car payment, let alone buy a house and raise a family—which an annual income, at best, of $40,000 a year income does not provide.

The IAE believes that the rate of attrition of post-graduates has contributed to the decline of the creative sector. The value of the full-time work these artists could have been doing has never been realized inside the communities they would have served. And the communities in which these artists began to work experienced, on some level, these artists inability to survive — reinforcing the lack of relevant value the arts must hold, despite their patron’s attraction to them.  Thus the notion of the starving artist syndrome continues. And as we know, perceptions create reality. And as such, over the course of a 40-year career span, the impact those artists could have made, we believe, has had a slow, steady and now significant and measurable impact on society’s view of the need and relevance for consuming cultural experiences in daily life today.

Henry Fogel in a speech he gave to the National Association of Schools of Music in November 2009 said this: “Any careful examination of newspapers across America over a fifty-year span, will demonstrate dramatically the shrinking of arts coverage. Fifty years ago, every small town newspaper had an arts critic, sometimes more than one.  Now, many smaller communities have let that lapse completely, and even many large cities have offered buyouts to retire their art critic, and chosen not to re-fill the position. Look at Public Television if you want further proof of the decreasing importance of the arts in America. Public Television was started precisely to broadcast programming that would have too small an appeal for commercial TV. (Never mind that in my youth, classical music was seen regularly on commercial TV – the Ed Sullivan Show, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s concerts, the Voice of Firestone, the Bell Telephone Hour, and live operas on NBC). Now, PBS considers Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, or André Rieu to be “highbrow” programming. The number of symphony concerts, quality jazz, dance, and even staged operas, available in this country on television has been declining at an alarming rate.”

Specifically, as a result of the absence of proper training to ensure more artists who graduate from art school can fill needs in their communities and financially afford to remain in the creative sector, we believe society has been left with little choice but to be unable to perceive the impact, value and relevance of the arts in their daily lives as a whole.

According to a 2003 major study, Investing in Creativity, completed by The Urban Institute and financially supported by over 38 foundations, only 27% of adults think artists contribute “a lot” to the general good of society, far fewer than recognize the social contributions of teachers (82%), doctors (76%), scientists (66%), construction workers (63%), and clergy (52%). The public perceives the contributions of artists in much the same way it perceives those of elected officials (26% say they contribute a lot to the general good), and just slightly better than it perceives the contributions of athletes (18% think they contribute a lot).

And yet, as noted by John Cimino, Creative Leaps International, scholar Thomas Homer Dixon says the space between problems that arise and our ability to solve them- the “ingenuity gap”- is growing today at an alarming rate in business, scientific research, education, the environment and world affairs. And innovative thought leaders like Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink and Richard Florida are helping to create a mindset that the arts, and artists, are capable of offering so much more to society. Author Ken Robinson proclaims we are “Out of our Mind” to have sidelined creativity and the arts when every layer of American society from elementary education to supply-side economics is starved for more imagination, more original thinking, and more creative intelligence”. According to business writer/entrepreneur Daniel Pink, “Artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big-picture thinkers – can now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” Economist Richard Florida argues that artists and other members of the “creative class” are vital to regional economic development.  He suggests that they comprise the vital cultural core essential to attracting and developing workers for knowledge industries, which are increasingly important to the U.S. economy.

In these economic times, innovation is a critical tool that can grow revenue like never before and catapult our largest companies and newest start-ups to new levels of international competitiveness and profitability that we truly need to not only save, but redefine how we achieve our future economic vitality. Certainly the arts offer, with training, fertile ground to devise new ways to contribute and become vital, integral and again relevant to society.

After all, the visceral nature of the arts provides a unique barrier breaker -a unifier- regardless of race, religion, gender, age, status or income across all sectors of society and industry. No matter what the subject matter, using the arts in new interdisciplinary ways can bring people to new levels of understanding and simultaneously create new sustainable financially viable career paths for artists.

According to the Investing in Creativity study by The Urban Institute, their research suggests there is a substantial demand for artists in hybrid markets and yet few programs exist to support their development. Artists are involved in art and community development, social services, education, health, civic engagement, and youth development, among other areas through arts-based organizations such as Project Row Houses in Houston, Street Level Youth Media and Little Black Pearl in Chicago, Cornerstone Theater in Los Angeles, El Centro de la Raza in Seattle, Life Pieces to Masterpieces in Washington, D.C., Zumix and Troubador in Boston and many more examples can be found in every one of LINC’s case study sites.

Although many artists do important work primarily in the context of conventional cultural markets, LINC found scores of examples like the ones listed above.  Investing in Creativity research suggests that many artists work in all of these sectors, either at the same time or switching from one to another. Their field research in fact highlighted this pattern.  It also reveals that artists seem to benefit when there is a wide range of different sector opportunities in which they can engage.

And yet demand for what artists do is not fully conceived or well articulated, in large part because the formal validation mechanisms in both arts and non-arts contexts are relatively narrowly developed.  For example, if an artist is working at the intersection of arts and community development and making contributions in both areas, it is very likely that the full extent of those contributions will not be recognized or valued in either the cultural realm or the community development realm.  Moreover, adequate language to describe such practice and contributions currently does not exist.  The IAE seeks to bring clarity to the value of these hybrid roles to the community by focusing on the development of self-sufficient career paths for artists who will be motivated to illuminate the value of their hybrid roles to society.

Additionally, arts administrators, researchers and analysts, funders and policymakers tend to view the public, commercial, nonprofit and informal sectors as separate realms with little connection to each other.  Often artists seem to be categorized as “nonprofit” or “commercial,” as if those categories were mutually exclusive and as such funding sources are difficult to obtain and not rising in priority as demand, and need, is growing because of the cross pollination that occurs in a hybrid artistic role.

Respondents to the Investing in Creativity study emphasized the critical nature of peer-to-peer and mentoring relationships for training and professional development across the discipline spectrum and how important these relationships are to successful career transitions. Artists working at the intersection of arts and other fields, such as community development, education, health, justice, or other areas noted that the public validation and training programs needed to sustain and advance these practices is generally weak. Furthermore, many artists feel they lack the skills to market themselves to the wide range of realms where they could potentially be successful.  Our own survey, currently underway, indicates the same results. Over 83% of all respondents have said they would undertake a two year course of study to increase their skills to earn a living as a self-employed artist.  Additionally, LINC’s research revealed that many higher education and training institutions for the arts are not proactive in developing markets for artists or teaching them the business skills they need to succeed and that funding for such programs is virtually non existent.

The IAE believes that by helping artists imagine and create new innovative career paths we can play a significant role in helping both artists and the community rediscover new ways for artists to be recognized as contributing “a lot of good” though the development of self-sustaining hybrid careers that can become relevant to the communities these artists will serve. As such, through our programs at the IAE, we seek to helps artists grow their artistic imaginations about what is possible, while teaching them tangible necessary skill sets to give them the assortment of tools they need to turn their creativity into self-sufficiency.

The IAE seeks to make it possible for artists to develop a business arising from identifying gaps in the market place they can uniquely fill with a form of their creative practice. These businesses will be varied and may relate directly to a product, societal problem, service or process, a form of expertise, consultancy, or their values, beliefs or knowledge.  IAE training will provide the means for artists to understand how to create the infrastructure and environment for new creative opportunities to be realized.

Although there are increasingly quality arts entrepreneurship courses and programs in colleges and universities around the country, given the attrition rate of artists exiting the field, the need for more quality programs is self -evident. Furthermore,  The IAE knows of no other school focused exclusively on the development of self-sustaining hybrid career paths in the arts leveraging the strengths of ongoing one-on-one mentorship and experiential learning across all artistic disciplines. The most notable nationally recognized program happens to be here in Chicago, at Columbia College. Unfortunately,  the Arts, Entertainment and Media Management Program,  not for a lack of student enrollment or interest, but instead because of a change in institutional priorities, it is in the process of undergoing a major restructuring that will result in a majority of its programs being eliminated or significantly diluted.

The IAE is committed to bringing artists and their creativity into the center of economic activity.

And it’s working for these companies, and arguably for the aspirations of underground and compensation-hungry artists around the world.

Once truly unheard of and unheralded skaters, punks, and taggers cavorting with heroin addicts, yesterday’s delinquents have become today’s leading creative directors and ad-agency execs.  They’ve created films like Kids, given street-cred to Urban Outfitters, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel, and emblazoned history with the ubiquitous Obama “Hope” poster. And now you can take in the transformation/evolution/destruction-of-purity/ascent-to-legitimacy yourself with Aaron Rose’s Beautiful Losers. One part art exhibit, one part documentary, all parts fascinating….

Beautiful Losers film trailer from beautifullosersfilm on Vimeo.

As I begin the process of applying for foundation support for The IAE, it will truly be interesting to see who else is willing to climb on board and support the future of arts training. It is going to take a village. Lip service won’t do. Are you one of our tribe?

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It is truly an honor to have been asked to speak with you today at this conference of the National Association of Schools of Music, especially when I consider all the work done by NASM member institutions, their administrators, faculty, and students, to advance music and its study throughout our nation over the last 85 years. As many of you know, I have only recently joined your world formally, but my entire life in music has been one with a strong attachment to music education, and indeed for the past eight years I have taught at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. And there has never been a time when I didn’t think about the roles of music education not only in preparing the future musicians of our society, but in helping to establish the place of music in that society.

I am sorry to say that I think that most schools of music have focused perhaps too strongly on the preparation of musicians part of that mission, and not thought enough about the second part, even though tremendous efforts continue to prepare P-12 music teachers and otherwise build support. But there is no question in my mind that a crucial part of our mission is, in fact, to work harder and smarter toward the establishment of an important place in society for the music we teach. And given the way that place has gotten smaller and more distant from the center of society in recent years, we had better focus on it.

Any careful examination of newspapers across America over a fifty-year span, will demonstrate dramatically the shrinking of arts coverage. Fifty years ago, every small town newspaper had an arts critic, sometimes more than one.  Now, many smaller communities have let that lapse completely, and even many large cities have offered buyouts to retire their music critic, and chosen not to re-fill the position. If you attend a gathering of the music critics’ association, one of the main topics of conversation is the shrinking space they are given to cover the arts.

Look at Public Television if you want further proof of the decreasing importance of the arts in America. Public Television was started precisely to broadcast programming that would have too small an appeal for commercial TV. (Never mind that in my youth, classical music was seen regularly on commercial TV – the Ed Sullivan Show, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s concerts, the Voice of Firestone, the Bell Telephone Hour, and live operas on NBC). Now, PBS considers Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, or André Rieu to be “highbrow” programming. The number of symphony concerts, quality jazz, dance, and even staged operas, available in this country on television has been declining at an alarming rate.

The federal and local governments have contributed to this decline – the National Endowment for the Arts support for arts organizations of all kinds around America has, in real dollars, declined dramatically in the past twenty-five years. State, City and county funding has also dropped significantly in recent years. And then there’s our public education system, which for the past twenty-five or thirty years in city after city has been reducing or abolishing music and the arts, in order to concentrate on testable, quantifiable results like math and science scores, and/or in response to periods of severe budget stress, when the arts are often among the first things to be eliminated. All of this is a sign of the marginalization of the arts in America.

More and more, it seems to me, there is a growing climate of anti-intellectualism in America, and with it a trend to diminish the importance of our cultural heritage. This includes not just Western classical music, but folk music, jazz, blues – the whole range of the musical arts.

I want to share a story with you – a true story, and an instructive one. In 1987, the Chicago Symphony (which I managed at the time) was on tour in the United States. On the way from Arizona to Austin, Texas, the truck carrying our instruments turned over. I wouldn’t allow the instruments to be moved until I and our stagehands were on the scene to assess damage and oversee the process – so a new truck was ordered, the Orchestra flew to Austin, and the stagehands and I chartered a small private plane to fly us to Junction, Texas, which was ten miles from the site of the accident. (The proprietor of the small airport lent us his pickup truck to drive to the site). The pilot of the small plane was right out of central casting for a Texas pilot – tall, silver-haired, sixty-ish.  In fact, he was Lyndon Johnson’s private personal pilot after Johnson left the White House.  Because the incident had already made national news, he knew about it and began to chat with us during the flight. He said that he had never been to a symphony concert, was sure that the music was too stuffy for him, that he didn’t know anything about it and in fact would be somewhat intimidated by the idea of going to a symphony concert. I told him that if we in fact got the instruments to Austin in time on a new truck, I would like him to be my guest – and he somewhat reluctantly agreed. So here, at the age of approximately sixty, this man experienced his first concert – and it wasn’t a beginner’s program: Schubert’s 5^th Symphony and Mahler’s 5^th Symphony, with Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony.  At the end, he came back stage visibly moved, saying that he had no idea that this music could reach him the way it did, and that he had just had a transforming experience.  He actually became a subscriber to the Austin Symphony that very week, and remained so until he died a few years ago.

Now – I don’t believe for a minute that by sheer coincidence, I happened to run into the one person in America who might have loved a symphony concert but who was somehow intimidated by the way the classical music industry has presented itself over the past hundred years or so. In fact, I know that he is typical of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people, people who feel that they don’t know enough to enjoy or relate to art music – and that to a large degree this fact is a major reason for the increasing isolation of what we call art music from a central place in our society. Ten years ago the League of American Orchestras conducted focus groups of people who went to the theater, to museums, but not to symphony concerts – and throughout the country, in large cities or small towns, the predominant reason that these people stayed away from “classical music” is that they were intimidated. They felt they didn’t know enough about it to appreciate it; they felt that they might embarrass themselves by, Heaven forbid, clapping at the wrong time; they felt that this music was for “the stuffed shirt crowd,” or was “stuffy.” Those words appeared over and over again.

So what does this have to do with us?  Plenty!  When some of us speak about “advocacy,” we think narrowly, in terms of influencing funding decisions, or government decisions. But we do not think enough about proselytizing, about how those who make music actually talk about it and present it, as part of advocacy – and traditionally many of us haven’t thought of it as part of our job in preparing musicians to make their way in this world.  And we had better change dramatically and rapidly. We are beginning to, but too slowly. I am pleased to see efforts developing in schools and in NASM. But, we need to grow our capabilities rapidly.

There is a serious distortion of values in the world – a set of values that puts the short term ahead of the long term, which puts financial achievement ahead of ethical standards, and a set of values that increasingly diminishes the worth of intellectual achievement and of human expression.  In fact, when future generations look back and judge the civilizations and societies of the past, it is first and foremost the cultural and artistic achievements of those societies that are spoken of.  To be sure, engineering and scientific achievements are major parts of the picture of any society. But whether it is Homer, Shakespeare, Mozart,  Rembrandt, Picasso, James Baldwin, Garcia Lorca, Duke Ellington, Woody Guthrie, or Leonard Bernstein – the artists and the art they created express the deepest and most profound thoughts of the civilizations in which they lived and worked.  And it is the achievements of those artists that, in fact, define civilizations, define humanity.  It is, in fact, the arts that distinguish us.

But it is typical of artists to decry this trend in society, and to blame society – rather than to understand that we who care about culture and music, and who make that music or train those who do, have a very real and critical role in establishing society’s impression of what we do.  We need to understand the role that the classical music world has played in isolating itself – just a few examples:

• Although it is changing now, for many years we presented program notes filled with musicological jargon that the general public could not follow – “the retrograde inversion of the principal fugal theme, resolving on the harmonic seventh…” – an approach guaranteed to make people attending concerts feel inadequate to appreciate the music.
• We refer to 25-year-old assistant conductors as “maestro.”  An off-putting word if ever there was one.
• Classical music announcers or lecturers who speak in deep, reverent tones, to let us know that we are doing a good and hallowed thing by listening to great music.
• Enforcing rituals – such as not clapping between movements. This is a 20^th century invention, historically wrong, but designed to show that “I know this piece isn’t over yet – and you don’t.” I even saw a conductor visibly admonish an audience for applauding after the first movement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, not even a structured symphony! How many more times will people pay money to be humiliated by the people they are applauding?
• I could devote a whole other speech to the issue of diversity. It is of course a national scandal that it took until 1947 for baseball to accept Jackie Robinson. But it was eight years later, 1955, when Marian Anderson was to be the first Black singer to appear on stage at the Metropolitan Opera. And it was two years after that – 1957 – when major American orchestras finally integrated, with a cellist named Donald Whyte in the Cleveland Orchestra. It took another five years for a second, a violinist named Sanford Allen in the New York Philharmonic. I served on panels with the late Donald Whyte, and he told the story of being told by some of our most prestigious orchestras, in the 1950s, not to even apply because “we don’t take coloreds!” That was only about 50 years ago, not ancient history – we’re talking about the parents, grandparents, uncles of today’s young African Americans! And we wonder why so few African Americans have thought of classical music as a career!

So why am I telling you all of this – you didn’t commit those sins, after all.  However, I believe that as a field, those of us who educate musicians, those of us who present or perform music, those of us who not only have a vested interest in the success of our art form in this country but who also should believe passionately in the inherent cultural value to a civilized society of what we do, we have had a tendency to function as if we had no roles in fixing the results of a century of bad practice.  That must change. Simply saying that we are now open to all is not enough to correct the past behavior of our field.

“Advocacy” to me means that in addition to giving technically accomplished and emotionally communicative performances of a wide music, everyone who is involved in music must understand that he or she has a role in breaking down those barriers that we all watched be put up. Everyone must understand the social and cultural context in which we will make our music – our students must be taught that context, and they must be prepared to think and speak about it, and think and speak in a way that tears down those barriers. And I don’t think we challenge our students anywhere near enough to even think about this side of being a musician.

Too often, someone says to me “why should we care about music that was written by dead, white, European males?”  My first response is to ask this: “what city in the world has the largest number of professional symphony orchestras from which musicians actually make a living?” After they guess Vienna, or London, or even New York – I tell them that the answer is Tokyo. Then I might ask in what country today are we seeing the most explosive growth of orchestras? The answer is China.  The people of those countries do not seem to have worried about the fact that western symphonic music is European based, not Asian based.  The same is true across many musical forms and idioms. People of many backgrounds can and do appreciate and relate to jazz. Look at the worldwide audience for the music of the Silk Road, and the incredible non-Indian audience held rapt by Ravi Shankar.  The tired old cliché that the music we believe in is universal, and that it has transformative powers on human beings, is a tired old cliché because it is true.  But too few of the people who actually perform that music understand the cultural and social context in which they are currently functioning, and thus do not think about much beyond the art of performing the music.

Another problem, I believe, in America today is that people in power, people who shape the civic thinking in our country, want simple and quantifiable answers – graphs, charts, numerical indications of progress. So when you talk about the non-quantifiable human qualities of music and the arts, when you start talking about the way in which an understanding of great art leads to a greater understanding of other cultures and peoples and reflects and illuminates the human spirit, you are asked to prove it. Well…I can’t document it with graphs – but every year of my life spent in music makes me more certain of it.  And exhibit A for me is not a chart – it is an orchestra, a very specific orchestra. Many of you, I am sure, have heard of it: it’s called the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and it is now in its eleventh year of existence. Founded by Daniel Barenboim, it consists of Arabs, Palestinians, and Israeli Jews – and every year for three or four weeks they live together, eat together, rehearse and perform together. My wife and I were a part of that orchestra from the beginning – and that first year was an experience I shall never forget. Daniel Barenboim, and  famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma working with him, assembled this group of young musicians, ages 17-25, and brought them together in Weimar, Germany. In addition to forming an orchestra, Barenboim and Ma invited them to form chamber music groups which they, Barenboim and Ma, would coach in preparation for a chamber music concert to take place the night before the orchestra concert. There was only one rule – no all Jewish chamber group, and no all Arab/Palestinian group. The resulting chamber music concert was 3 ½ hours long – and each group only played one movement, not whole pieces – or it would have gone on forever. To sit there and watch, for instance, a movement from a Brahms Clarinet trio, played by an Egyptian, a, Syrian, and an Israeli was one of the most moving experiences of my life – to see these kids working out musical problems together, leaning into each others’ phrases, and embracing each other while receiving applause – this was all the charting and graphing I will ever need to demonstrate what it is that music can do that nothing else can.  We know this – you and I and those who are in our fields know this. The question is how can we work together to help the rest of the world to know it – and to get the value, the human value, of this art form across to those who determine what we teach our future citizens?

So the question is “are we preparing our students to go forward in this world and help to shape the America of the 21^st Century?” If we are going to build an America that is something more than faster computers, bigger buildings, more productive factories, and certainly about something other than more devastating wars and conflicts, then we cannot exist in a self-made plastic bubble, unaware of, and unwilling to try to change, the society in which we live.

As I mentioned previously, some schools of music are definitely beginning to address some of these issues. However, I think they are in the minority and those efforts are still in their relative infancy. NASM is urging greater attention by all music schools. What are some of the things that I believe we need to think about in our preparation of the next generation of musicians? And what are things we need to think about ourselves?

• We personally need to involve ourselves with arts advocacy efforts in our own communities, and we need to encourage our colleagues and our students to do the same. Virtually every state has a state arts advocacy organization – in Illinois we have the Illinois Arts Alliance – that brings together all of those who create art, who present art, who educate, and who believe in the centrality of arts to any civilization. My friends who work in that area nationally and locally tell me that arts educators are traditionally under-represented in those arts alliances. I am told that many professional educators in the arts do not feel welcomed as strategic partners in these settings. This needs attention and change because local and state advocacy organizations help to ignite and keep alive a public dialogue about the importance of the arts in our communities, whether advocating to governmental forces, to school boards, or to those who shape public opinion. Those of us who are committed to a thriving arts community should involve ourselves in their efforts and seek their involvement in promotion of what we do.
• It is imperative that we teach musicians to think not just about the music itself, but its place in society – in this particular 21^st century American society – and about their role in ensuring and enhancing that place.
• Musicians need to learn how to speak about music to all constituencies – not just to other musicians. They need to engage with audiences and potential audiences, and they need to be trained to do this effectively.
• Musicians need to understand the need for formal advocacy – for communicating to those who set public policy, whether it is educational curricula in our school systems or our politicians – and they need to be trained in effective ways to make the case for music as an essential component of any civilized society.
• Musicians who are being trained to be orchestral players need to know how orchestras work, and how they can and must play a role in orchestras’ advocacy efforts, fundraising efforts, and audience development efforts. Now most musicians get into orchestras with only one bit of assumed knowledge about orchestras – “the management is the enemy.”  To say that that is not helpful to the successful operation of a symphony orchestra is an understatement. I teach such a course at Roosevelt – and I’ve had graduate students who were surprised to learn that members of Boards of Directors don’t get paid to be on the Board! There is a long history in America of separation between those who make music and those who administer and/or present it – that separation is unhealthy. Administrators must welcome musicians into the decision-making and governing process, and musicians must be trained to function in that process.
• Musicians need to be sensitive to, and supportive of, efforts to diversify our world – strong, pro-active efforts that will help to overcome a century of actual, real discrimination. While that situation has improved dramatically in our lifetimes, it is a very important and real part of our field’s history. Musicians need to hear from people like Aaron Dworkin of the Sphinx Foundation whose organization does a terrific job promoting string playing among young musicians of color, on the need for greater change in this area.
• Musicians need to be sensitive to changes in society. Today’s society is very much more visual oriented than was the case even thirty years ago.  We have the first generation of 50-year olds who grew up with television as a constant in their childhoods. That simple fact has re-wired people, and enhanced their expectation of some kind of visual stimulus as they experience music. Yet if you try to explain to orchestra musicians the importance of, say, risers – so people on the main floor can see something other than the socks of the front row of string players – they get angry at the thought that anything other than the way they play the notes should matter. They need to be exposed to thinking about all manners of the presentation and delivery of music – including electronic and the internet – and to engage in discussions about what that might mean for the future.
• We need to encourage exploration, debate, discussion about the history of classical music in America – how it was, in fact, used for much of the 19^th and 20^th centuries to actually separate social classes in this country – and how as our society has thankfully moved to a more democratic spirit our field has been slow to adapt, and rid itself of some of the ritualistic trappings with which the music business surrounded itself.
• In the performances that we present on behalf of our schools, we need to think about, and experiment with, all aspects of concert presentation. Educational institutions should be on the leading edge of experimentation – we should be laboratories for new approaches to the presentation of concerts. After all, we can easily afford an occasional misstep much more easily than a multi-million dollar orchestra, and we cannot be as glued to tradition as they are.  We can be a catalyst for change, actually helping the industry, the professional orchestras and opera companies, progress. And in the process we must teach musicians to be open to new approaches to presentation, to experimentation.
• If we’re going to be true advocates, we must confront the fact that ticket prices are a barrier to symphony orchestras, opera companies, and many classical concerts. A recent experience that I have had consulting with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, which almost completely sells out every single performance of a full 30-week season with three performances a week, plus additional chamber orchestra concerts – in large part because the heavy government subsidy they receive allows them to keep ticket prices very low – has underlined the importance of this issue for me. We are of course not in a position to lower the prices that our nation’s orchestras and opera companies charge – but we are in a position to raise the issue, engage the subject in serious discussion, and perhaps even partner with business schools and others in coming to grips with this issue.
• In short, musicians that are being trained for the future need to be made aware of the societal and cultural climate into which they are being sent, and they need to be made aware of the fact that they will be central players in changing that climate. This is absolutely essential if we are not to see a continued marginalization of art music in the future.

In June, the NEA released its national Arts Participation study for 2008, and in case nothing else I have said gives you cause for worry, that study should. It shows a dramatic decline in arts participation and attendance across the board, at all age levels, over the past six years. While we might wish to blame some of that on the economy, reading this study in detail indicates, I think something deeper – a continuing trend toward a distance between Americans and the arts. If we, at the higher education level, continue to train artists without dealing with the climate into which we are sending them, we run a very real risk of contributing to a continuing trend toward irrelevance.

Now that I am a college dean, I look forward to working alongside all of you on these very pressing issues that confront us all.  We must work to bring more and more people to our institutions and our country’s concert halls.   We must expand our audiences so they can experience all of the joys and passion every one of us experience in the concerts halls and opera houses we frequent.

The peak of human achievement, in civilization after civilization, is represented by its artistic and cultural achievements – and any society worthy of respect is a society that respects and preserves the great art handed down to it from the past, and adds to that heritage by the creation of new art. And that society must accept that bringing great art to the center of society is a responsibility that to a great degree rests with its artists.  Since our government will not likely be the body to do this, it becomes the obligation of all of us who work in music to do this critical work.

The great playwright Arthur Miller may well have put it best: “When the cannons have stopped firing, and the great victories of finance are reduced to surmise and are long forgotten, it is the art of the people that will confront future generations. The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of the politicians.” Thank you very much for listening.

What is even more cool, to me, is that Create. Innovate. Repeat: Artists and Entrepreneurs Unite! is a new brand for The IAE. It is an entrepreneurial happening. An experiment. What I mean by this is that I envision it as a playground for artists to come learn entrepreneurial skills, hang out and see what we create together and what kind of innovative things we can produce that resonate with the community. One master experiment trying our hand at entrepreneurship after another.

Our next Create. Innovate. Repeat. Artists and Entrepreneurs Unite! happening is going to be an all-artists-invited-to-participate event and along with it a week of classes open to the general public taught by the artists participating in the event. I am hunting for the right vacant Chicago storefront for rent right now for it.

It’s funny how like minds come together. It truly is a small world.  As this concept has been rolling around developing in my head,  one of the most creative and innovative people on the planet I know, Eva Niewiadomski from my favorite meeting place, Catalyst Ranch, sent me this link to Our Goods Trade School.

Our Goods Trade School barters goods, services and knowledge in pop-up storefronts in New York.

Right now you can come to Trade School for the next thirty days.  Classes are being offered every night with a range of specialized teachers in exchange for basic items and services. Here is an example of  Amy Whitaker’s class tonight. Scroll down to Wednesday February 17th and look for:

If your in New York tonight through February 28th you can bring your dinner and attend a class at GrandOpening’s Lower East Side storefront.  And if your in Chicago in April check back with The IAE because we are going to have something ready for you to learn with your dinner of our very own. You might enjoy read summaries of some of Trade School’s past classes at the OurGoods blog . You can also view more of their photos on OurGoods photos on Flickr.

139 Norfolk Street
New York, NY 10002 map
Tel 646 875 8078
info@ourgoods.org

Trade School is a collaboration between and .

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

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.

I’ve had the pleasure of producing work at the Gorilla Tango Theatre and asked Dan to talk a little bit about what drives his perspective on the relationship between business and the arts.  It’s bound to be a controversial opinion, but one that I believe has a lot of merit as one tries to break into an increasingly saturated marketplace.  To check out the Gorilla Tango Theatre and its full schedule of shows, or to find out how to produce your own (if you’re following my Produce Yourself series, this could be the perfect oulet!), check out www.GorillaTango.com.  Here’s Dan:

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Congratulations to me! I believe this is my very first blog entry of any kind. Despite my years of programming and development experience on the internet I never sat down and wrote an article(?) entry(?) post(?) whatever you want to call it. My previous writings have always been in the form of documents of higher-level philosophy courses in an academic environment. I have never entered the fast paced realm of bits and bytes article writing that is so prevalent and inviting to praise and criticism at seemingly the speed of light. Well, it’s probably best that I begin to work now in this new world of experience for me. Here it goes.

When I was asked to write this entry, I was asked to speak on the subject of the artistic as an entrepreneurial business enterprise (I’m paraphrasing, but that was the basis of it). This subject I have quite a bit of experience in and am excited to share my thoughts and the philosophies that guide Gorilla Tango Theatre, my other business ventures and dare I say it, my life in general.

The common perception of art academically, politically and culturally is that it is somehow good or valuable in itself. People living in developed nations (third world and underdeveloped nations perspectives’ on art and business could be an interesting treatise that I will leave for another day – for the purpose of this document I am limiting the scope of application to developed nations only) seem to have a built in preconceived notion of things deemed to be “art”; or the action of making “art”, etc. The word “art” carries weight above beyond the power of all things good. Something to be respected, nurtured and admired no matter what the form, circumstance or sacrifice.

From this rather lofty understanding of art we can derive a view of the “artist”. Someone who believes that what they are doing is good, great and meaningful. Without them to create “the art” a void in culture and society would develop so large that our entire system would break down and all creativity will cease to exist. That life as we know it will turn into a 1984-esque world of black and white realism. The artist is holding us back from the very brink of disaster of the human sprit, mind and experience.

These definitions of art and artist give a creative person who ultimately finds him or herself in the world of art a very difficult task. The activities that they choose to participate in have been elevated to a level beyond mere mortal behaviors and the troubles of daily lives. Thus, the expectations on the individual from the culture around them and from their internal perspectives of themselves makes them inflexible in their ability to adjust to outside stimulation and situation that is affecting their course of action. After all, what they are doing is great no matter what its form or function because they are an artist creating art as defined above. Per this classification there is no need adjust to anything outside of themselves and their art.

At this point you might be asking how does this relate to business and artistic entrepreneurial endeavors? Well, in any type of business the key is creating a product that people want. If no one wants what you are selling then, well, you better find something else to sell. The process of finding a marketable product is a process of trail and error, laser sharp focus and lucky guesses somehow all wrapped into one. Even then over time your marketable product may lose relevancy and certain aspects need to be tweaked, completely overhauled or the product may need to be abandoned all together. That is life and business, a series of births and deaths, we never know how long until the next one.

Now the problem for the artist is they don’t approach their art from this Darwinian understanding of business. They lock into a system of development/artistic expression that is about creating a product that they [the artist] desire to bring into existence not on its ability to stand on its own in the marketplace. Consequently they do not respond to the market forces that should be affecting their product. Non-art businesses, like the artist, can easily fall into these traps as well but for different reasons (that we will leave for another discussion). The reasons of course for the artist to fall into this world of iron fisted inflexibility is because they have been taught (many times formally in academia) and cultured to believe that art is not a business product but something that in itself demands respect, admiration and elevation above other activities. The falseness of the proceeding is why so many artistic ventures are complete and utter failures. Art is a product, a product is produced by business and businesses must adapt to consumer demands to succeed. The artist as a stubborn mule cannot and will not succeed in any business venture.

So where does that leave the artist that has a burning desire to create what they want to create, how they want to create it, void of outside influences? Simple, the same place it leaves the bowler who wants to bowl the perfect game or the kid playing video games 20 times through to see those special closing credits – the world of hobby. Art that does not respond to market forces must be understood by the artist as a hobby. It may have great personal significance but to the rest of society is of utter uselessness and is certainly of no value from a business perspective.

Now, take note that I am by no means putting down the hobby artist. Many times from the hobby bowler comes the professional, the same is true of the artist (and businessman for that matter). It’s just that the artist does him or herself a huge disservice and much time is wasted waiting for an “angel investor” to appear and help them, if they do not realize that the process, costs and burden of becoming the professional falls squarely on them and is not the responsibility of society, institutions or culture as a whole to offer support or encouragement in any form along the path.

Long story short, get ready to adapt constantly and get your teeth kicked in over and over again. It’s not fun all the time, but that is art, business and life.

So there you go. My first blog article. I know this first article took on a more general response to the topic of art and business and perhaps leaves many questions bubbling to the surface. I’m sure, if I’m asked to write again, there will be plenty of opportunity to go into great detail on a variety of artistic/business topics in more detail. Feel free to email dan@gorillatango.com with questions, ideas, etc. for future discussion.

But maybe futility is exactly the motivation we need.  As writers, we spend too much time striving to find the “brilliant idea” and use that constant mental quest to put off actually committing anything to the page.  “Brilliant” isn’t a starting point.  It’s an ending, a post script if anything.  Call me a Darwinist, but I believe in the idea of Narrative Evolution: start off with the worst possible idea you have and you have the potential to evolve it into something truly unique.

It’s important to clarify my use of the word “worst” here.  It’s a subjective term, defined by individual styles and tastes.  For me, “worst” is synonymous with “stupid.”  I like a big, stupid idea, the kind of thing that makes somebody roll their eyes when you try and describe it.  Because oftentimes, “stupid” isn’t stupid at all…it’s unique.  It’s bold.

In improvisation, there’s a teaching exercise called the Saboteur that really exemplifies this point.  One improviser is secretly assigned as (you guessed it) the Saboteur.  Their mission, over the course of the improvisation, is to do anything they can to try and ruin the piece.  Whether that means making divergent character choices, entering a dramatic scene clucking like a chicken, breaking the fourth wall and storming out of the theatre…it’s all fair game.

Since improv is all about unwavering support, what you see happen is that if one person enters a dramatic scene clucking like a chicken, all of a sudden four or five others are clucking on in right behind them.  If it’s going well, there’s no telling who the Saboteur actually is, because it forces everyone to make big, bold moves to back up their devious teammate.  And then a fairly standard dramatic scene in a restaurant becomes a tale of a town overrun by intelligent chickens.  The “stupid” choices steer the scenes and characters in directions that they never would have achieved otherwise.

With your writing, try playing Saboteur to yourself, your choices and your characters and see where it takes you.  In part one of Produce Yourself (which you can conveniently find right here), I asked you to write down 30 ideas in 30 minutes and I encouraged you to think as little as possible while doing so.  If you haven’t done it yet, take a half an hour and try it.

Got it?  Everything down on paper?  Nothing preplanned?  Good.  Now scan the list quickly and find your worst idea, however you define it.  Maybe your “worst” is something boring and generic (ie. “a husband and wife talk about their marriage”).  Maybe your “worst” is something that seems impossible to stage (i.e. 2012: The Stage Show).  Maybe your worst is like mine, and it’s something that would be outwardly deemed as “stupid.”

With your idea in hand, I want you to do a Sabotage Brainstorm.  On a sheet of paper, write your core concept in the middle (we’ll use the “husband and wife talk about their marriage” example again) and go crazy stemming out from it with lay-ons and details that could, in theory, derail the entire thing.  Here are some of mine:

“Husband and wife talk about their marriage”

• They’re on a space station hurtling towards the sun
• The husband is a dog
• The conversation is one minute long and repeats itself with slight variations 60 times
• There’s a wall between them and they don’t know who they’re talking to
• They’re both cannibals and they’re slowly devouring each other over the course of the talk

And so on and so forth.  Go nuts.  You’ll hopefully have more than that, but don’t be afraid to stem out further from those base ideas too.  Follow your inspiration and keep the pen on the page as long as you can before you run out of steam on a particular track.  All you’re doing is developing a ton of different possible approaches to the material that you can pull from and use as inspiration when you finally settle on The One.

We’ll play with these approaches more next time and start evolving them to find some substance amongst all the stupidity.  For now, happy sabotaging.

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Produce Yourself! is an ongoing series by Chicago playwright, producer and actor Shawn Bowers that goes step-by-step through the trials and tribulations of writing and producing your own theatrical work.

While it may seem juvenile that three men painted electric blue from head to toe, who splash paint and water, make sounds and music with hollow tubes, and stuff their mouths full of a wide variety of food like marshmallows and assorted cereals can be this wildly successful, the story of how and why their act came into being is as worthy of a case study in entrepreneurial artistry as one could find.

Creative experimentation has always been a core part of Phil Stanton’s development as an actor, musician, and innovator.  “I grew up singing and playing instruments in church”. Stanton’s father was an Assembly of God minister. “I tried the trumpet, the piano and the guitar. But I never became good enough because I wasn’t disciplined enough to practice,” he says.

After high school, Stanton worked for a year at White’s Hardware in downtown Savannah, then took courses at Armstrong State College, with the intention of becoming a jet pilot. “I studied math because I wanted to fly jets,” he said. “Theater was one of the farthest things from my mind.” Stanton worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during summer and Christmas breaks.

“I was in the geology –section—we  traveled around Georgia and the Carolina’s, drilling holes in the ground,” he said. After a year and a half, Stanton veered in a new –direction—northwest—and back into theater arts.

“I decided to go to Evangelical University in Springfield, Missouri – a liberal arts college of the Assembly of God,” he said. “I went there to be a music major — I felt like I was going into the ministry like my older brother.” It was there Stanton began to experiment with theater, taking some classes to explore other ways to make an impact on people. He “started doing things in the drama department” at Evangelical and graduated in 1983 with a double major in Biblical studies and theater.

Talk about an interesting double major?

Shortly after he graduated, Phil moved to New York City to study acting in a “more serious” way. “It took me a while to figure out how to stay warm,” he said of his first days in Manhattan. Phil, like many in the arts, waited tables; first in a hotel, then in an executive dining room and then for the Glorious Food catering company. The first person he met at Glorious Food was Chris Wink, who was to become a fellow Blue Man.

Wink introduced Stanton to his long-time buddy, Matt Goldman, and the three were soon staging “happenings” that evolved into the Blue Man Group performances.

In 1990 they created a show at the LaMama experimental theater in New York’s East Village, and that led, a year later, to the opening of Tubes, the Blue Man show staged at the off-Broadway Astor Place Theater that has been running since 1991!  ( Considered the longest running show today!)

In “Tubes,” the Blue Men drummed on PVC pipe, stuffed Cap’n Crunch cereal in their mouths while improvising a symphony of amplified chomping, and brought audience members onstage for a banquet of Twinkies. With Goldman doing the tossing, Stanton caught paint balls in his mouth and squirted their contents onto a canvas to create works of art.

While Blue Man Group performances always have been aimed at entertaining their audiences, for Stanton, “the whole thing is about community.” “The Blue Man,” he said, “is born out of the human need to be with other people.”  According to co-creator Matt Goldman, “Blue Man Group, started as an outrageous idea: We wanted to inspire creativity in both our audiences and ourselves. We wanted to speak “up” to the intelligence of our audience members while reaching “in” to their childlike innocence. We wanted to create a special kind of company, a place where people continually learn and grow and treat each other with just a little more consideration than is usually evident out in the ‘real world.’ We wanted to recombine influences to create something new. And we wanted to have a good time doing it.”

I think they understand the meaning of innovating through artistry? Don’t you?

Reviewers have speculated that the cobalt blue character is an alien, and that might be so, said Stanton, but he’s not from “the mother ship.” “He’s an alien from inside part of us—very human, an abstract alien,” Stanton said. “He’s come for a reason, and it’s to remind us of the need to be together with other people.”

“I felt like the experiences I had growing up in church were really powerful,” he said. “I’ve tried to capture that in a way that doesn’t refer to any type of religion—just the humanity part. Producing a sense of community “has always been our major focus,” Stanton said. “That, and also this idea—to try to break down the walls that we create to get by, to get through our days.”

Another link in Phil’s creative development came again from his father; he was a builder and “kind of an architect,” Stanton said. “He had 10 or 12 churches around the country built from his designs, including Radiant Life here,” said Stanton of his dad, Cameron. “I inherited his love of building things.”

And, said Stanton, during his stint as a salesman at White’s Hardware for a year before moving to New York City, he learned “a lot about tools and metal working.”

So what can we learn from Blue Man Group?  Here are a few of my thoughts. I am sure you will come up with more…

• No idea is too outrageous to consider if you test it and it resonates with your audience.

• While there is absolutely a role for highly perfecting one’s artistic talents, it is interestingly absent here and yet Blue Man Group is profoundly creative, artistic and successful!

• Is there such a thing as over thinking or over working the highest purpose and best use for your gifts? Maybe the answer is right in front of you…

• Learn how to use ALL your talents and experiences in life to create an environment in which you can thrive.

• The serendipity of life– or even a seemingly dead end temporary job at a catering company- can bring you all the people and resources you need to create a life long path of success with your artistry.

• Where there is passion money flows.

• One great idea can blossom 100 fold if you have the persistence, know how and drive to see where it can take you.

Blue Man has evolved into an organization of 350 people, with 30 Blue Men giving their avant-garde performances in packed theaters in the Big Apple, Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas. Blue Man Group also has appeared on The Tonight Show eight times; their CD Audio, was nominated for a Grammy award. And now they have a school… What’s next?

Are you ready to learn how to use your creative and artistic gifts to make a living? Apply now to TheIAE.com

How many times have we gone to a performance at our regional professional nonprofit theatre and been greeted at curtain time by the artistic director or managing director making a plea for support? The curtain speech plea has become ubiquitous in the last 18 months as theatres have struggled to stay alive. But, it’s a technique not confined to the nonprofit market. Broadway cast members have been making their annual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids fundraising plea for the six weeks leading up to the New Year. Both certainly have the air of the begging cup about them. The most successful development efforts, however, have nothing to do with begging during a curtain speech. Successful development efforts have at least three major components: partnering with community, developing audience, and effective grant-getting.

When development focuses solely on asking for money, it is doomed to fail. (So Jim, I agree with you on this point.) However, when a theatre (or any non-profit arts organization) meets a community need, then the community will support it. The question is not “how can we avoid the begging cup?” but rather “who can we partner with in our community?” and “how can we better serve our community?” I don’t have any easy answers, but in general, arts organizations need to be focused outwardly rather than inwardly: “who are our constituents and how can we give them something of value?” rather than “what do we need to do to maintain our current programming and structure?”

This is where the second component comes into play: audience development. If the current audience is not supportive, its time develop new audience, which usually means a change of direction or expansion of programming, rather than a contraction. I’m trying to expand our audience for my current institution by offering more performances, some at nontraditional times. Is it working? Unfortunately it’s very unclear, but we haven’t lost anything in the trying (yet). We took a risk. We’re expanding services to niche audiences like elder hostels and children. But we can’t measure success based on ticket revenue alone. We will measure success on whether or not the organizations and programs we partner with want to continue the relationships we form.

I listed effective grant-getting as a component of development because grant writing and grant-getting have several benefits. The mere act of writing grants (which are usually only available to nonprofits) forces an organization to focus and articulate its mission. Grant getting is also a form of community partnerships. Foundations want to partner with organizations that help advance the mission of the foundation. It is a bi-directional relationship.

Jim expressed a utopian idea of having many small for profit theatres, privately owned, and risk taking. Here Jim and I disagree. We have a model of for-profit theatres: Broadway. Some are privately owned, some owned by large corporations, but very very few are risk-taking and none of them small. (The risk-taking exceptions are the commercial Broadway productions mounted by nonprofit theatres – here we see riskier fare like Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room”). But, much as small independent bookstores and mom-and-pop grocers are few and far between, so too would be privately owned for-profit theatres. Such theatres would have no choice but to pander to the ticket buying audience (a demographic not always known for risk-taking) and, driven by a profit motive, would not stay small for long because if successful, there would be buy-out offers from Comcast or Universal or Disney. Making art is risky enough without the art makers having to invest and risk losing significant capital.

That having been said, maybe theatre makers should look to filmmakers for a for-profit model in which a company is formed around a specific project, money raised for that project, and then return on investment may (or may not) take place after distribution. Perhaps the way to have a for-profit theatre infrastructure is to avoid the institution structure completely and consider each project as an independent venture. That would be an idea worth pursuing – but fundraising for a for-profit project-based venture brings us full circle back to the begging cup. Perhaps there’s no escaping it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! (And don’t forget to give generously to the arts organization of your choice!)

When I talk to people though, people who run theatres, people who work for nonprofit theatres, people who know about theatre management, their mantra is almost 100% in unison: cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. A theatre that can manage its cash flow, whether by maintaining a cash reserve or accurately predicting revenue and expenses — or better yet both — seems more likely to persist. I note that given the current economy, it’s a lot easier to do the former (maintain a cash reserve) than it is to do the latter (accurately predict revenue and expenses) but both are challenging.

I’ve been preoccupied with academic matters recently, but hope to resume more regular postings after the first of the year!

1.    People are not always honest.
2.    Sometimes people do not have good intentions.
3.    When the praise is good, it is never good enough and when it is bad, it can be devastating—I have to give credit to Stan Wojewodski for this one.

And, most dangerous of all,

4.    You are reliant on other people for your sense of worth and success.

Number 4. is not a very empowering place to be. It’s not good for one’s self esteem. As a teacher, I try to instill in my students, a strong sense of having their own internal success monitor (not to be confused with self-judgment or criticism). They know how they have done and do not need to ask other people. This knowledge stems from working with goal setting and practice.

It is natural to want to hear peoples’ thoughts on how we are perceived…and it’s fun. But, the artist needs to have a core that shields him or herself from the winds of external opinion. I am a Texan and sometimes we live up to our stereotypes. In Texas, we have a sayin’. Here it is: “Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone’s got one”.So, take opinions with a grain of salt (whether positive or negative).

Now, this said,  your success in the market, which is guided by peoples’ purchasing, which is ultimately peoples’ opinions, determines one’s success and the market often has very different ideas about what is of value (when compared to peers).

Relying on other people for your sense of success in your work as an artist is poisonous thinking. It is not good for your self-esteem. Why? Because you are giving away your power.

It is far more empowering to be your own judge of how you are doing and here is a simple exercise to assist you in your process:

Goal Setting.

When approaching your respective “canvas”, have specific goals in mind (goals that are challenging, but realistic to achieve). “I want to accomplish these specific things today”… in my performance or painting…or whatever your medium.

After you complete your work, ask yourself the following:

“Did I accomplish my goals”?

If you did, awesome. Good for you. Go celebrate.

If you did not, ask yourself “Why”? Then ask “What will I do differently tomorrow” or next time?

This ritualistic self assessment of goal progress will keep you focused.

It enables you, as artist, to maintain your self-empowerment and maintain your own internal meter or monitor for success. It gives you a gauge, by which you can better yourself.

This little technique is profound, in that it enables you to become your own teacher. Become your own teacher and you will forever be in a state of learning.

Independence. Pass it on.

Jim Hart is the founder of The Hart Technique and The International Theatre Academy Norway.

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

It is no surprise when I say that our country is obsessed with celebrity. Celebrity sells and celebrity images are pumped out to the point of exhaustion.

I think that most young artists, if honest with themselves, would admit to having celebrity lust. They, themselves, in fact, may be using their educational environments as a stepping stones towards what they believe will increase their odds towards achieving celebrity and the schools that cater to these dreamy eyed prospective students, do not always guide them differently.

But why do so many of us desire to be famous?

Is it the potential deification we give celebrities for a time?
Is it the money? * Duh. *
Is it the freedom that money brings?
The parties?
The flirtations with strangers?
The public eye being cast upon you?
Mass appreciation and praise to stroke your ego?
Mrs. O’Reilly from World History will finely see?
A feeling of success?
A feeling of having overcome others or having “won”?
Again, the parties? Come on. On a scale of 1 to 10…where do parties rate?

The celebrity game is like high school, but high school with money…and all that that brings. Do you desire to be in the circle of the “cool kids”? Is that what this is about? Does it really come down to the fact that you were a nerd and wanted to be a cool kid in junior high? Surely for some it is.

Are celebrity dreams what brought you into artist training or was it something else?

For a large number of artists, it’s the love you had/have for the work, ‘cuz it was fun and inspiring. Is it the joy and pride you feel while creating? Did it or does it give you a feeling of self-expression (an outlet with form) and even self-knowledge? Is your “art” (or the act of creating)? Is creating enough? Is that what it is about? Would it be enough to simply make a living with your craft or will the dreams of starlight haunt you, indefinitely?

Would it be enough for you to live a life, with a modest income (but one that is much more potentially sustainable), doing what you love? Would it be enough on your “happy meter” to make much less, potentially never have fame, but get to do that thing that gives you bliss?
What kind of artist do you want to be and where in the market? What city would you love to live in, if you could live anywhere in the U.S.?

Tricky thing about survival jobs…is that they take up all of your energy and time. If you are an artist who has waited tables (or some other non-desired, but necessary work) while trying to make a living, you know how you NEVER LEAVE a restaurant or survival job. In such catch 22 scenarios, it is very difficult, when engaging in the act of creating your art, to create anything of significant worth…as when you do get around to creating, you’ll often find you are very tired…from delivering meals for other people (and while not working as an artist).

If you surrender your driving ambition of fame and fortune, the field of opportunity expands. I call this a need for a “wider directional perspective”. Suddenly, we are potentially talking about local markets, which may be non-saturated markets (with less competition). Granted, many of these markets have fewer possibilities, due to their size. However, if you create a market, if you build what is necessary, if you command greater control over your creativity and output as an artist, suddenly, your chance of living wherever you might like to live (with some limitations, of course), becomes possible.

Now ask yourself…do you need to make a living in your small area of interest? Note: I say small in comparison to all of the roles possible to play in the field of artistry. Ex. Nearly everyone begins their career in theatre in an acting class. Many then shift and  go on to discover other interests and talents (like writing, directing, producing, designing, etc).

Or

Do you just need to make a living via your creativity?

I will rephrase.

Do you desire to:

A.    Simply make a living with your creativity

or do you need to:

B.     Reach glory in your one dreamed about role? Ex. A TV or movie star.

If you answered yes to A, the field of possibility and opportunity expands incredibly. There are simply more possibilities when you are active on a plane with more opportunity and possibility. As more opportunities arise, more possibilities follow.

Must celebrity continue to be the goal? If so, why? Beyond ego, what drives our desire for celebrity? Whatever your conclusion, is that what you want your motivating energies to be committed towards? If yes, God speed you. If you answer no, look, listen and dream. What community do you want to be a part of? Where does that community need you, your creative energies, your vision, your leadership capability, your many skills acquired through your artistic study?

Jim Hart is the founder of The Hart Technique and The International Theatre Academy Norway (TITAN Teaterskole). www.harttechnique.com

During your holiday ritual, allow yourself to drift back and think about the time of season that it is.

It is autumn and damn near to winter. Autumn is a time of dying, falling and decomposing, which is followed by winter. Winter is a prolonged period of seeming and literal death, of sleep, of dark. Few leaves are on the trees. Many summer animals are hiding. The winter wind hurts my cheeks. Sludge and more sludge. It’s dark and cold and the darkness just seems to linger—like a house guest who has overstayed their visit. Then…just as you begin to entertain the thought that “maybe this year, spring will not actually arrive”, that this year, perhaps the universe is out of kilter and spring shall be no more, it comes. Then, hallelujah! Newness. Birth. More light. Sweet flowers. Green returns (seemingly on one day). Spring. is mating season…Out of the lingering fall of autumn, through the death of winter, comes life anew in spring. Nature is poetic and beautiful, yes

You are nature. Unless you believe that you were beamed here by some mysterious cosmic spaceship, then you have come up, out of the earth, just as all other living matter has. And if you buy into this thought, then you must accept that you are nature. You are a part of it and are it. Everything you do is natural, as you are nature. How could it be otherwise? You are the voice of the earth. If not you, what?

If you roll with this idea–that you are nature, then so too are you bound to the inevitable and constant transformations of all nature. We know that the only constant in the universe is change. Change is happening all around us and to us…all of the time and will continue to do so every minute of every day, the rest of our lives. Cycles of birth and death and rebirth. There exists a wonderful example of this transformation in the form of our Thanksgiving dinner. Death (whatever plant matter grandma has baked and that turkey there…sustains your life. Plant matter or animal, life is feeding on death, to continue life.

If you are the typical American on this uniquely American of days—you might find yourself, as I do, sitting on the couch with the game drearily chattering in the background. Family members bump about in the blur of your wine and turkey stupor. Your pants beg you to let your belt loose. You do. Wow. That feels much better. Much better. Bloated to the gills, you are sleepy, sleepy, sleepy from too much turkey… Your mind wanders to all sorts of places. This after eating sit, as people are cleaning dishes, chatting at the dinner table, going to the bathroom and generally wandering before regrouping in some way, is my favorite. As the blood leaves my brain, to fiercely work at digesting all that I just put in my stomach, I dream. Foggy brain time.  If you find yourself in a “this year” comatose, allow yourself to mentally hacky sack with this:

How will you choose to change this year?

There will be a ton of changes you will be a part of, of which, you will have no control over, whatsoever. No doubt about that. Death may come into your life this year, sickness, promotion, chaos, love, peace. Who knows yet?. We have a forecast of certain change ahead.

Considering how much uncontrollable change is in our lives, what will you control? What change will you CHOOSE to make? What new-ness, of your own deciding and making, will come out of you, as we enter a new calendar year? What part of you might die, be cleared away and made room for something new?

Again, change is inevitable. What change will you (at least try to) control?

Symbolically, the garden is a symbol of the soul. Doesn’t that make sense? Every time I read, hear or say that, I think, “Yea. That’s right”. My feelings might stem from my loving to garden. In the garden, you see a constant show of “Out of death, grows life”. If you look, if you pay attention, you will see new stuff “going on” every day. It is a living, evolving canvas. Any change you make to that garden is temporary, no matter how permanent your intentions.

What mangy growth do you spy in your garden? What plants have appeared, Have any invasive ones? Have you done battle with interlopers, who are determined to eat and decimate your roses, those beautiful flowers you give so much time to? What plants do you see that have potential, but need more attention? Do they need to be moved someplace else—perhaps one with less intense light and more water? When you look around that garden, what conditions and maintenance are necessary, in order to get all of your plants in your garden, to thrive? Make a list and follow through on it.

Time to clean out the waste, unless you want to still have that crap around, come spring time. We cut out the overgrowth, the seasonal plants that have expired, the parasites we find. We want to open planting space and prepare for the dramatic return of spring, in order to encourage new, desired growth. We need to clean out, to weed the unwanted or downright poisonous.

What stands in your way from realizing your higher self and your dreams? Let’s not play games. Here is the answer:  You…of course. Just you. It is a frame of mind.

Some find such a thought difficult to accept and own. But, the sooner you do own it, the faster you will begin to grow. Ever desire to be super man? Ever desire to fly? Well, until you accept that you can fly and will and will log the hours necessary to “figure it all out”, to learn to fly right (like not into buildings and whatnot), then you are grounded, indefinitely.

Get rid of all that is holding you back—whether unhealthy relationships, habits that led to poor health, poor financial structuring, lifestyle choices, etc. Whatever it is, whatever things those are…which are uniquely yours, cast them out. There is no room in the boat. With your greatest of gusto, cast them into the sea, just to feel how fast you can row your boat without them.

In the garden, remember that when weeding, unless you get them by the roots, they will come back. Streamline your life and promote only healthy growth in your garden, only life affirming elements. In doing so, you will find a greater peace, balance, health and stillness. Cultivate the positive, life-affirming relationships you have and let go of all that holds you back in any way. Once you let go of that damn heavy luggage attached to your waste (which you may not have even realized you were dragging all this year…at least), you are going to find that you can then run so fast…and skip…. and hop.

Happy Holidays.

Jim Hart

Jim Hart is the founder of The Hart Technique www.harttechnique.com and The International Theatre Academy Norway.