Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
ARTS LEADERSHIP A RESOURCE FOR CHIEF EXECUTIVES
Review
SUMMER 2019
Resiliency REQUIRED
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trgarts.com LetsTalk@trgarts.com US: 719.686.0165 UK: 020 7438 2040
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ARTS LEADERSHIP REVIEW SUMMER 2019
// FEATURES
// DEPARTMENTS
08
Leading a Culture of Resilience David Brownlee
04
Welcome Jill Robinson
14
Strong Arts & Cultural Organizations in Vibrant Cities Zannie Voss, Lindsay Anderson
06
Arts Leadership Book Club
07
Metrics that Matter
Become a Master Gardener of Audience Cultivation Jim DeGood
10
Lessons in Leadership Eric Nelson
18
Leadership in Action Stephen Skrypec
27
2020 Executive Summits
20
24
Placing Art at the Center of Our Activities to Foster Resilience Anthony Kiendl
Jill Robinson President and CEO -4-
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
Welcome
Those of you who follow us on social media, read our blog, and work with us know that we’re obsessed with translating data into action that gets results. And, action — consequential action — requires leadership. Leadership is responsible for understanding the environment; listening, making decisions, and ultimately motivating the action that gets results. Results that go beyond the immediate now and start to shift the functional culture of an organization to operate in a nimbler way. Right now, I’m obsessed with leaders who initially drive organizations to sustainability, and then move them beyond that curve to the resilience that will be required in the next decade. Developing a resilient organization requires some level of grit, I think. Angela Duckworth in her book, Grit: the Power of Passion and Perseverance, says that grit requires passion for your organization and its purpose, investing in practice to grow your leadership skills, and BELIEF that the hard work will have an impact. Take a moment and ask yourself: Are you cultivating your personal grit? Are you building grit with your team and at your institution? As leaders we must make time to develop ourselves, and dialogue with our peers can be an accelerator. I’ve developed Arts Leadership Book Club with hopes that we might provide these experiences in a low investment but high-impact way for you. I encourage you to join us for the November Book Club (see page 6 for more information).
talk to has local and national pressures right now with which they’re grappling. There are change management issues, funding challenges, and organizational identity conversations that are pre-occupying, motivating, and also threatening. The ability to navigate and lead these necessary changes requires grit. Thinking just a bit further out, in just 10 years, the aging of Boomers combined with the size of the Generation X cohort (which is 10-15% smaller) will result in a smaller population pool at the target age for arts and cultural participation. This shift, combined with differences in the ways Millennials expect to engage, is resulting in real and affecting changes. These changes are already starting to show up in the way we communicate, raise money, and nurture long-term relationships with our communities.
“Grit requires passion for your organization and its purpose, investing in practice to grow your leadership skills and belief.” We recently published our 2019 Generational Analysis which creates a compelling argument that if your organization isn’t already acting in new ways to address coming generational changes, it’s behind the curve. And if you’re leading your institution, it means you’re behind the curve. We’ve taken the next step in our work around understanding generational behaviors. Jim DeGood’s article, Becoming a “Master Gardener” of Audience Cultivation, on page 20 digs into why we think it is so important to engage Generation X as one part of a larger strategy in building a more resilient organization for tomorrow.
In May, I completed TRG’s 20th Executive Summit, this time in Colorado. The leaders that joined me agreed: resilience is now the name of the game, and resilience requires grit. We talked about my awakening to the concept of The Long Now as the Notre Dame Cathedral burned. And indeed, it was the long game that we talked about and focused on, while recognizing that there are urgent challenges facing us today. For instance, there’s a clear need to ensure that arts and culture is more relevant to more people everywhere. Equity, diversity, inclusion…every organization we
Those of us serving this sector believe in the power of arts and culture to drive new approaches, to embrace failure (and success!), and lead us into new ways of thinking in our communities and nations. That is why the organizations you’re part of matter so much. And, why you and your professional development matter so much. If resiliency requires resilient behaviors from us as leaders, then we must adopt them.
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Book Club
Arts Leadership Book Club WITH JILL ROBINSON
Executive leaders: make time to develop yourself. Arts Leadership Book Club is designed with the “learning and curious” executive leader in mind. As an extension of that conversation, we invite you to join us. For the November Arts Leadership Book Club, the conversation will focus on Chip and Dan Heath’s Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. The Heaths offer strategies and tools enabling readers to make better choices and mitigate the variety of biases and irrationalities that can cripple the decision-making process.
Thursday November 5, 2019
8 pm PT | 11 am ET | 4 pm GM
Register Today!
go. t r gar t s. c o m / De c i si ve
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
Metrics that Matter
15
only
%
of arts & cultural organizations who survey their patrons follow up and talk to responders to more deeply understand their feedback.
Source: 2018 TRG Arts Field Survey on Net Promoter System use in Arts & Culture. Learn more: go.trgarts.com/2018NPS -7-
L E A D I N G A C U LT U R E O F
Resilience by David Brownlee Director of International Strategy
Arts Council England (ACE) was also worried. They commissioned Mark Robinson to research and write Making adaptive resilience real, which was published in July 2010. One of Robinson’s key arguments was that arts organizations need to adapt as they grow and mature, hence “adaptive resilience.” This seminal paper informed ACE’s new 10-year strategy where Goal 3 was defined: “the arts, museums and libraries are resilient and environmentally sustainable.” ACE’s approach picked up Robinson’s call to be agile and adaptive but focused largely on new approaches to plugging financial gaps.
Let’s go back a decade to the UK in 2009. The arts had enjoyed 15 years of the spoils of the new National Lottery and over a decade of growth in funding from both local and national government. But a storm was coming. Economically the world’s tectonic plates shifted in 2008. In the UK the not-for-profit arts sector was initially shielded from the new reality thanks to longterm national funding agreements, but those were coming to an end and a general election was on the horizon.
Fast forward to today and much has changed. Statistical evidence suggests the arts sector has largely adapted and survived (and in some places thrived) despite unprecedented cuts to public funding. The Arts Index shows that even with taking inflation and population growth into account, the combined expenditure of revenue funded per person at arts organizations grew by 23 points since the study started. That equals £600 million between 2007-08 and 2014-15.
There were many who made a prophesy of imminent disaster and irreparable damage to the sector. In 2010 the National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) launched a UK Arts Index (similar to what Americans for the Arts compiled); a holistic health check of the sector and its impact on society. Starting from our overall index of 100, we expected to track a substantial decline in the fortunes of the sector over the following years.
In advance of writing its new 10-year plan, ACE commissioned Golant Media Ventures and The Audience Agency to produce What is Resilience Anyway? (published July 2018). -8-
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
It is a comprehensive review that pulls together key findings from ten years of publications on resilience along with new primary research. As well as drawing together many great concepts, the key advance in thinking in What is Resilience Anyway? is looking at resilience at different levels: individual, organizational, and systematic. The policy focus to date has been around organizational resilience: keeping individual arts organizations alive. Yes, many times arts organizations can adapt to stay innovative and relevant, but in the arts ecosystem, we need space for new organizations to grow and flourish. In my opinion, if the “good death” of an old arts organization can support the flourishing of a new one, isn’t that good for the sector and the public we serve? We need to focus less on the health today of individual organizational trees and more on the long-term sustainability of the artistic forest. Both the 2010 and 2018 studies place a strong focus on the behaviors of resilient arts and cultural organizations. But what we can see as the indicators of a robust and healthy organization are the result of a resilient organizational culture. That culture is driven by its people, led by its chief executive. At TRG Arts, we make no apologies about focusing on supporting and often challenging the executive leaders of arts organizations. Without strong, effective leadership driving strategic focus, departments become islands focusing on (and protective of ) their own goals and targets. A culture of silos becomes prevalent. Even if an organization demonstrates what appears to be resilient behaviors today, without leadership that is constantly striving for greater alignment around key values, its seeming sustainability is actually built on poor foundations.
do’ culture with the challenges of the real world). With this model our aim is to create a tool to help leaders highlight where further alignment is needed in their organization. Using it once creates a baseline that can be used to measure progress in future months and years.
“Adaptive resilience is the capacity to remain productive and true to core purpose and identity whilst absorbing disturbance and adapting with integrity in response to changing circumstances.” – Mark Robinson
We piloted the model tool in January 2019 at a gathering of dance leaders from around the western world, organized by Dance/USA. We found that, despite very different business models, the importance of the core behaviors resonated with leaders of arts organizations across Europe and North America. We aim to continue to collect data across different sectors and nations to allow benchmarking with appropriate peers. Over time we’ll be able to see where the greatest alignment for each behavior is and where (and why) there is the biggest improvement over time. Sharing knowledge and learning from exemplars will support the whole sector. If you’d like to test how your organization and your leadership compares to our growing global benchmark, join us for one of our TRG Arts Executive Summit in 2020.
Acknowledging the good work of Robinson, Golant, and a range of other assessments of the qualities needed in a successful organization, TRG Arts has created its own model of the behaviors that people demonstrate in the most resilient organizations that we support. The eight behaviors encompass everything from ‘strategic execution’ (having a plan and getting it done) to ‘positive realism’ (balancing optimism and a ‘can-
TRG Arts Executive Summits are the place arts executives go for cross-genre, data-driven dialogue about leading their cultural organizations.
Visit go.trgarts.com/joinUs2020 to request your invitation. -9-
Lessons in Leadership
The Beauty of
STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT How Glenn McCoy slowed down in order to become a better leader
by Eric Nelson Client Engagement Officer
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Photo Credit: Erik Tomasson
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
“All of our heads were spinning. It was so extreme, so incredible.” “It was going to lead to either paralysis or innovation,” said Glenn McCoy. Glenn, who this past June retired as executive director for San Francisco Ballet after 17 years, has been described as calm and even-handed. He’s often referred to as “The Glue Guy” by some of the staff at the Ballet. When Glenn and his team take tests to indicate work-style strengths, Glenn always scores evenly down the middle: no wonder he describes his leadership approach as a consensus builder. With his executive director legs fully grown and firmly in place, Glenn found he needed to do more back in 2008. Not only did he have to figure out how to be the glue through “difficult decisions” but how to apply that glue to cracks he had never experienced. What Glenn had to do was apply leadership grit. In her recent State of the Arts blog, Jill Robinson described this as, “understanding the environment; listening, making decisions, and ultimately motivating the action that gets results.” The need to apply this kind of grit was unexpected. When 2008 began, San Francisco Ballet was reaching one of its highest peaks. “Our 75th Anniversary was in 2008: we sold more tickets and raised more money than ever. Raising that financial capital
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helped us fund a big US tour to not only celebrate our diamond anniversary but also highlight the fact that San Francisco Ballet was the first professional ballet company in the United States. We were really happy!” exclaimed Glenn. “While we were on tour the economy collapsed. The team went from this incredible high to feeling like we had a hangover,” explained Glenn. Clearly, this was much more than a hangover: It was a punch to the gut and knocked the air out of the organization. Glenn and the team dug deep so they could lead San Francisco Ballet down the path back toward sustainability. “At first everybody was making concessions because they had their eye on the survival of the company. That took a lot. A lot of collaboration and a lot of really good honest communication,” said Glenn. Then things got worse. “We had used up all of our reserves and we found ourselves in a cash crisis. We had to pivot. We had to find new ways of working together,” he said. To do this, Glenn leaned into some advice he received early on his in tenure as executive director and has revisited a number of times throughout his career.
“I was told I needed to listen to more people, not just the most vocal ones in the room,” said Glenn. “I worked to learn how to take more time and actively listen to everyone. That way I could hear a variety of perspectives. I had to acquire this skill, it meant I had to slow down.”
“We had used up all of our reserves and we found ourselves in a cash crisis. We had to pivot. We had to find new ways of working together.”
That insight proved to be invaluable as Glenn led San Francisco Ballet into what turned out to be their salvation. He described the seed for the plan and the steps they took.
“I knew if I could keep our core operations essentially balanced, then we’d be in a better position to push harder in places in order to move the institution forward,” Glenn described. “Working with a consultant identified by one of my board members, we developed something we called our strategic alignment plan, based on the concepts of Lean Ops and the Japanese principle of Kaizen or Continuous Improvement.”
What is
Kaizen? Kaizen is an approach of constantly introducing small incremental changes in a business in order to improve quality and/or efficiency. This approach assumes that employees are the best people to identify room for improvement, since they see the processes in action all the time.
“The goal was, of course, to find savings through efficiencies, but also to free up bandwidth so staff could turn their attention to more productive work, which helped us come up with new revenue streams and enhancements for existing ones,” said Glenn. Teams comprised of senior members as well as junior members analyzed business processes to eliminate any steps that didn’t add value. This brought a new level of innovation to San Francisco Ballet’s operations. They began to break down silos and function at a higher level of entrepreneurship. With a plan in place and the organization traveling down the path of sustainability, the next leadership challenge in front of Glenn was focusing in on how to keep the team moving forward and continuing to gain momentum. “We had to get everybody on board. The first obstacle was people immediately thought that if we became more efficient that meant that they might lose their job. I quickly had to address that it wasn’t about reducing headcount. It was about freeing up bandwidth for more productive work. Where people then got hung up was when they couldn’t find ways to communicate effectively with other members of team,” he said. To get over this hurdle, Glenn had to ensure they knew this work was a priority and that his job was to help them find the time to do the work.
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Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
Photo Credit: Erik Tomasson
Photo Credit: Erik Tomasson
Photo Credit: Chris Hardy
Photo Credit: Drew Altizer
The Ballet put in place monthly meetings where staff collectively monitored every improvement, priority and goal for the year. If one project was falling short, the team would work together to find countermeasures in order to keep the overall plan on track. This collaborative meeting proved to be the key ingredient that solidified their new way of working together.
Glen’s Advice for Tomorrow: “Lead authentically. And, trust that what you bring to the position is going to be enough.”
“Over time we were able to close that gap and generate surpluses to build cash reserves for a few key objectives,” said Glenn. He and the team at San Francisco Ballet took that one step further: they created a survival strategy that has become part of their regular operating procedure. As they are putting the finishing touches on a new five-year plan, they have maintained the tools and discipline of strategic alignment as a way of setting goals and monitoring progress. It was this step that took them from rebuilding a sustainable organization to one that grew roots of resilience.
“To make something like this work, you’ve got to be the boss. But you also realize the job is too big for one person,” said Glenn. “As the boss you get to surround yourself with smart, capable people. Perhaps my strength as a leader here was knowing how to give people their space to succeed.”
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& Cultural Strong
Arts
Organizations
in vibrant cities by
e all know Chicago to be a city with a wide variety of entertainment experiences and a thriving arts and cultural scene. TRG Arts and the team at SMU DataArts share a belief in the impact arts and culture has on a community, and we were curious to look more closely at Chicago and better understand what makes it so culturally vibrant.
Zannie Voss
Lindsay Anderson
Director SMU DataArts
VP of Client Development TRG Arts
and public support for arts and culture on a per capita basis. In its 2018 Arts Vibrancy Index Report, Chicago* ranked 16th among cities with a population of one million or more. There’s a relationship between the cultural organizations in the Chicago community and it’s vibrancy. With its high demand, quantity and quality of arts and cultural organizations, and level of federal support, Chicago is fertile ground for organizations like Grant Park Music Festival. In return, the Festival enhances the vibrancy of Chicago’s community.
Now in its fourth iteration, the annual Arts Vibrancy Index from SMU DataArts examines data from nonprofit arts and cultural organizations and combines that with community data to create the annual report. “The integrated data set helps analysts identify factors that affect the health and sustainability of arts organizations,” said Director of SMU DataArts Zannie Voss. “Understanding community context can shed light on some of the challenges and opportunities individual organizations face.”
We chose to examine this city and organization because Grant Park Music Festival operates as a unique collaboration among the Grant Park Orchestral Association, the Chicago Park District, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Together these partners strive to bring classical music to as many people in the Chicago community as possible, thereby contributing to the city’s arts vibrancy. Building the organization’s long-term sustainability, however, requires honoring the long-standing commitment to free admission while building patron loyalty.
What helps a city like Chicago become culturally vibrant? SMU DataArts uses multiple measures to assess vibrancy that roll up to three core areas of focus: supply, demand, -14-
GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL
Results
28 Revenue increase
29% Household increase
%
35% First-time buyer increase
$9.03
Average per-capita increase
Photo Credit: Grant Park Orchestral Association
Photo Credit: Grant Park Orchestral Association
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Photo Credit: Grant Park Orchestral Association
“As a result of targeted focus and additional investment in One Night Member Passes, The Festival saw demand for this new offering grow from 2017 to 2018 by 11% in units and 12% in revenue.”
Here’s what the SMU team learned about Chicago and how that relates to the success of Grant Park Music Festival in the community:
with free concerts, education and community engagement initiatives, and a live radio broadcast that reaches an even larger audience. Its worldclass orchestra and chorus perform classical music in Millennium Park located in the heart of the city along Lake Michigan. The performance space enables the Festival to offer a variety of arts-going experiences for a large, diverse audience, from classical music enthusiasts who want to sit up close in reserved seats, to casual attendees interested in a free musical experience on the lawn with their friends or family.
1. It is a vibrant place to experience art and to work in the arts. Chicago ranks 51st in Arts Providers overall, scoring in the top 3% of markets on the per capita number of arts, culture and entertainment options. More organizations translate to more availability of arts and cultural experiences and employment opportunities for people in that community. It also means more variety, so a greater diversity of interests and preferences can be met.
2. There is high demand for arts and culture. Chicago scores 21st—in the top 2%—on Arts & Dollars spent overall and has strength in the four underlying measures. If a community were uninterested in the arts or didn’t have the means to financially support the arts, earned and contributed revenue would be low.
Grant Park Music Festival’s reaches nearly one million Chicagoans and visitors each summer -16-
While the Festival has been successful in engaging the support of patrons from the area immediately surrounding its performance venue, over the years its support has broadened to include areas beyond downtown and lakeshore neighborhoods to those in the southside, westside and other western neighborhoods, further extending its reach. The number of households in the database has more than tripled since these efforts began, and emphasis is still placed on encouraging patrons to stay active.
3. Chicago is well supported with federal arts grants and dollars while there is comparatively less availability of state support. In addition to the direct impact of funding, federal arts support has a positive influence on giving from individuals, trustees, and corporations. Photo Credit: Grant Park Orchestral Association
Grant Park Music Festival received financial support from the Chicago Park District as a result of its unique collaboration with the City of Chicago. That support is set to sunset in 2025, and the Festival has been making changes to its model to ensure it can sustain itself once that support is withdrawn. That has been a primary driver for building a more robust pathway for loyalty with its patrons and therefore a more resilient organization.
TRG and the Festival began working together in 2015 and defined a loyalty pathway to bridge the gap between free concert attendance and more consistent attendance and philanthropic support. The organization was missing a step between free lawn attendance and membership, and data collection was challenging, making it difficult for the Festival to deploy targeted invitations to deepen engagement. One Night Member Passes (like more traditional single tickets) were introduced to help address both needs, and the Festival committed additional marketing dollars to support the program, spending 25% above best practice ranges. One Night Member Passes enabled the organization to offer audiences a taste of the benefits of membership, while creating a database of potential supporters to cultivate as future members and donors. As a result of targeted focus and additional investment in One Night Member Passes, The Festival saw demand for this new offering grow from 2017 to 2018 by 11% in units and 12% in revenue.
Grant Park Music Festival’s results are inspiring, including significant growth in revenue, households and first-time buyers. The hard work of its people and the growing investment in its operation are helping them achieve the goals of the organization and its partners. The Festival’s success is inextricably linked to the arts vibrancy of the Chicago community, particularly its high level of demand as revealed in the ranking of money spent in arts and culture. At the same time, the Festival contributes to the city’s arts vibrancy through its growth and reach. It’s a symbiotic relationship we recognize can be found in many vibrant cities across North America, and these are examples we can all learn from.
Plans were also developed to grow the size of the Festival’s database, which was primarily limited to its members when we began working together. The Festival purchased lists based on demographic variables, and traded lists with other organizations using the Chicago community network databases TRG manages.
*Chicago, Naperville and Arlington Heights form one of four metropolitan divisions that make up the more expansive Chicago metro area.
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Leadership in Action
ADRIAN JACKSON’S
Strategies for
Effective Leadership by Stephen Skrypec VP, UK & Europe
Photo Credit: Graeme Braidwood
As leaders, veteran or aspiring, you can find tools, books and strategies that promise to give you the expertise and wherewithal to succeed in your sector. Where we don’t often look is backwards. Adrian Jackson, the chief executive and artistic director at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre in England, recently helped to mark the 125th anniversary of the theatre. -18-
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
The result is a deeply committed, professionally satisfied staff who have real ownership in the success (and future) of The Grand. Additionally, Adrian invests as much time as possible in connecting with his staff and communicating to them in transparent and direct ways. He holds regular “Meet the Chief Exec” for his entire staff to build trust and relationships. Adrian takes real ownership of all communication and information sharing within the organization, “If people don’t know something, then I blame myself and find the blockage.”
Jackson continues to oversee an emerging renaissance of this landmark theatre including a new performance space expansion, a plan to cover their loss in public funding, and a return to the theatre’s heritage of being a venue and producer. I asked him for his tried and true strategies for effective leadership:
True and Visible Passion
Adrian is particularly connected to Wolverhampton, as he’d performed on its stage as a young boy, so finding the fire for him was easy. But he can’t emphasize enough how integral his passion in the place, mission and programming was to his success—and it isn’t just important for staff or bookers, “If actors and performers don’t smell and feel the right vibe, you’re losing before you’ve even started. People come to the theatre to connect with what’s on stage, so if we haven’t set our artists up right to connect with our audiences, we lose crucial collateral in loyalty-building.”
Capacity to Change
Photo Credit: Jon Hipkiss
At Wolverhampton, Adrian was faced with an enormous challenge: a two-year withdrawal of local authority funding. To keep the theatre alive, and give it a chance to thrive, he had to take a risk. “It was important that the profile of the Grand Theatre was increased nationally, and this involved making substantial changes very quickly.” He and his staff led the organization through change in nearly every capacity: from programming to revenue streams to audiences. The Grand is now a robust venue garnering national attention. In hindsight, the need for change is obvious – but it was Adrian’s forethought and vision that propelled it, and him, to the success they are today.
Plan for Success Beyond Your Tenure
Adrian places a high priority on succession planning in order to ensure changes in leadership can be made seamlessly by actively participating in planning for his departure – even though he has no immediate intentions to do so. By creating a succession plan, he is asking key stakeholders to invest strategically and practically in Wolverhampton Grand’s future. His passion for the organization drives him to think about and plan for a future that may not include him, so that his staff and board are able to nimbly propel forward through, yet again, a major change. “(Great) leaders know when to step aside, and I intend to do it well,” he says.
Acute Understanding of People
His legacy at The Grand, if and when he does step aside, will include: having built an organizational culture rooted in resiliency and passion; increasing both the organization’s revenue and community relevance; and having supported the next generational of arts leaders in the UK.
“If you’re driven to be a leader you MUST understand people,” he says. One of the ways he’s done this is by creating opportunities for his leadership team to create their own paths. In support of that he restructured the organization around their strengths, instead of their roles. -19-
BECOME A
MASTER GARDENER OF
AUDIENCE CULTIVATION
Why pollinating Gen X today will yield greater, more resilient organizations tomorrow. by Jim DeGood Director of Client Services
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Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
T
he arts and culture field has been aware of the potential for the Millennial generation, due to its sheer size, to offset anticipated losses brought about by the decline in participation by Silents and Boomers. The size of the Millennial generation has created a unique focus on developing this younger new audience cohort, to the exclusion of the smaller Generation X. Your audience cultivation plans should not select one generation over another. It’s not “Millennials over Generation X.” Your strategy must include cultivating relationships with both. And, Generation X is where your attention needs to be to reap immediate rewards. Right now, Generation X is in the prime of career building. They are earning more than other previous generations at the same age. Disposable incomes are reaching their highest levels, and with older children in the household and well-established careers, disposable time is increasing. TRG’s national data set reveals the optimal median age of 44 for cultivating repeat arts and culture participation. Generation X is squarely at the center of the audience-building target today and is showing early signs of deepening loyalty. Since 2015: • Donation rates for Generation X grew 27%. This is compared to a 2% loss in Boomers and 27% loss in Silents. • Subscription participation increased for Generation X by 10% while it decreased for Silents by 10% and Boomers saw a modest growth of 1%. • Single ticket buying was down across nearly all generational cohorts. However, Generation X participation decreased by only 8% as compared to 12% for Boomers and 22% for Silents.
2019 GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS: Read our five-part demographic analysis on the generational shifts that are occurring in North America today and over the next 10 years. go.trgarts.com/2019GenAnalysis
Single Tickets Purchased Prior to Becoming a Subscriber 2.3
1.1
silent
• Without increased participation, it takes 2.5 Millennials for every one Generation Xer to contribute the same revenue to an organization’s bottom line.
baby generation x millenials boomers
Generation X Showing Signs of Deepening Loyalty GENERATION X Participation
27%
donations
10%
subscriptions
8%
single tickets
BOOMERS Participation
1%
donations
1%
subscriptions
12% single tickets
SILENT GENERATION Participation
27%
donations
• A 1.5% increase in holistic participation by Generation X offsets a 1% reduction in participation by Silents. • Millennials take twice as long to convert to subscription and donation behaviors than Generation X.
1.4 1.0
The power of cultivating deeper relationships with the most likely generational cohort cannot be understated. Think of it this way:
10%
subscriptions
22%
single tickets
Given this final point, the truth is: we must not neglect developing the participation of Generation X. While there are 7 million more Millennials than Gen Xers, the latter generation is poised to contribute significantly to an organization’s bottom line immediately without the additional cultivation steps required by Millennials. What can you do as a leader to focus your audience development plan to ensure mid-term sustainability and long-term diversification and growth? Paint a picture of your business as it is today. Help others see the dramatic need for a different orientation.
• Determine the proportionality of your patron base by generation.
• Work with board and artistic leaders to determine the desired composition of your future audience. Compare your organization’s proportions today to your desired composition and the marketplace you serve. Take care in defining the market and narrow your comparison to the field of “likely buyers” rather than the entire population.
• Calculate how much patron- generated revenue is contributed by each generational cohort. How much growth within each cohort would your organization need to realize to offset revenue losses if all silent revenue evaporated? To replace Boomer revenue?
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Take stock of the assets available to leverage today. Plan to acquire additional resources required for change.
Season Package Shows Visited Prior to Becoming a Donor
• Is your programming reflective of the need to cultivate Generation X? Millennials? Is there multi-year commitment to ensuring a return path for these cohorts to enable long-term relationship development?
14.8
8.6
• Is your front-of-house operation reflective of experiences that resonate and inspire loyalty from Gen X and Millennials?
4.7 2.6
• Are your marketing campaigns adaptive to the value propositions uniquely appreciated by Gen X?
silent
• Is your educational programming designed to allow Millennial adults to participate with their children, and is it curated in such a way that encourages Millennial parents to return without their children?
baby generation x millenials boomers
Implications in Real Life:
38
%
Relentlessly measure. Continually adapt. Tirelessly communicate progress.
The amount the audience base would need to grow in one major U.S. orchestra in order to replace revenues from Silents and Greatest Generation patrons
• Our staff teams easily fall into old, familiar rhythms of work; these rhythms are more related to the production or exhibition cycle. Create mechanisms for measurement that transcend these typical cycles and require continual evaluation and discussion.
7.5
%
• Frame progress both through growth in households but also change in average spend by household. This will ensure you have programs that balance cultivation of new audiences while also deepening relationships with the audiences you have today.
The audience growth required to replace these generations with a focus on loyalty with modest increases in donation and ticketing spends
natural environmental ecosystem. With minimal care and attention, we trust that the audiences we invite to a performance or exhibition today will have such an enjoyable experience they will over time naturally move into multi-attendance, subscription, and finally find their way into the contributed giving program.
• Adapt plans based on your findings. This requires continual measurement and for you to hold your staff teams accountable to not “copying and pasting” the previous program plan for use in the next. • Staff teams and board members must be reminded of the importance of this work and hear regular progress reports. Every staff meeting. Every board meeting.
The arts are not as self-resilient as nature. Leaders must be more like master gardeners of audience cultivation; thoughtfully introduce specific plan varietals, cross-planing to encourage crossdevelopment, and always curating the “garden” we want to tend.
In the arts, audience development plans are often thought of as resilient and self-sustaining as our -23-
artresilience PLACING
AT THE CENTER OF OUR ACTIVITIES TO FOSTER
Photo Credit: Don Hall
by Anthony Kiendl Executive Director and CEO MacKenzie Art Gallery
he MacKenzie Art Gallery (1953) is one of Canada’s leading art museums with a storied history — it was the first art museum in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, a vast prairie region about the size of Texas. Saskatchewan is an agricultural and mineralbased economic region north of Montana and North Dakota. As the leading arts institution in the province, the permanent collection spans 5,000 years of global art history with some 5,000 works of art.
Curator at a major museum in Canada — this reflected a burgeoning reputation as a champion of Indigenous (Native American) art and artists. The MacKenzie is located in the provincial Capital Commission on the edge of Canada’s largest urban park known as Wascana Centre. The province is home to one tenth of Canada’s Indigenous population and currently comprises approximately 15% of the overall provincial population. This demographic is the most rapidly growing and will exceed one-in-four people over the next twenty or so years. Rapid immigration has created increasingly diverse populations with notable recent growth from the Philippines, south east Asia, and Africa.
In the late 90s, before any other museum in the country, The MacKenzie hired LeeAnn Martin (Mohawk) as the first Indigenous Head
When I joined the staff as executive director and CEO in May 2014, the MacKenzie had -24-
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
been struggling for several years under transitory leadership, increasing costs, diminishing government funds, and a fledgling culture of philanthropy. Shortly into my tenure, it became apparent that the gallery would struggle to maintain its capacity to deliver the program standards the community had become accustomed to and demanded. It was structurally in decline and if radical action was not taken, we would have to downsize into a less-ambitious and minor regional institution. In a summer planning retreat in 2015 the Board confirmed that not only was change needed, but that radical, transformative change was required.
Photo Credit: MacKenzie Art Gallery
I was aware of the challenges facing the gallery when I arrived, but the solutions were not straight forward. Having successfully completed a $4 million campaign and built a Photo Credit: Don Hall building for Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, I was prepared and focused on now building the MacKenzie’s fund development strategies and campaign readiness. What was becoming quickly apparent was that all the issues outlined above, readily visible from the outside, were not the most pressing demand. The main challenge was actually staff morale and the culture of the organization.
these constraints. While I was aware that if things did not change the museum would be in deep trouble financially in a short period of time, discussion of this type became viewed as veiled threats or a bargaining strategy. I also wanted to not appear alarmist, as we needed to generate support for the organization in the community. These constraints led me to feel isolated and appear reserved. Staff did not know me well yet and questioned whether there was some secret plan that I was concealing from them. In many ways, I did not yet have the answers. Working closely with our management team, a plan was developing. Our goal was to launch a major campaign to raise necessary funds for our programs and make required upgrades and Photo Credit: Don Hall improvements to numerous deferred capital projects. While still a beloved local institution, I felt a generational rift was developing where younger visitors were not engaged by our offerings, and an Photo Credit: MacKenzie Art Gallery older generation was content to maintain the status quo, particularly in a difficult economic environment. We needed to critically analyze our program, and I engaged professional support to undertake a curatorial review which clarified and began to build consensus around necessary changes in our programs. We began the hard work of re-focusing our program on visitors. A number of new initiatives included hiring Storykeepers to facilitate visits to the gallery, and ultimately creating a new position of Curator of Community Engagement. In addition, we identified four short-term goals required just to ready us to re-position the gallery’s value proposition and engender a tenable new narrative that people would diversify our audiences and our revenue. They included:
After years of uncertainty, staff were deeply demoralized and, in some cases, suspicious. We had entered into collective bargaining with unionized employees. Communications had to become highly structured, and any talk of the future or change had to be in the context of the bargaining table or would be considered bargaining in bad faith. I struggled as a leader with appearing transparent and authentic amid -25-
• a renovation for a new community program space and opening a permanent museum café for the first time in our history;
scenes, and yet no less impactful, other events also transpired. In the March 2017 provincial budget, the government directed the University of Regina to cut off an annual allocation of $400,000 to the gallery that was used to care for the university’s permanent art collection and a range of program partnerships. This annual allocation has been diminished by $100,000 per year until it will evaporate in 2020. This decision alone threatens to consume about half of the annual revenue we are budgeting as income from the new endowment. Currently, the City of Regina is implementing a new policy that may see non-profits, including the MacKenzie, pay property taxes for the first time.
• a new visual identity and brand exercise;
• and, perhaps most-importantly, commissioning a major new outdoor artwork to grace the façade of our building.
• working with our provincial landlord to designate more and clearly marked parking at the facility; Approaching five years into my tenure as CEO, I am pleased that we are about to achieve all of these short-term goals.
As these developments transpired, it became all-the-more apparent that in order to ensure our sustainability, we had to become more publicfacing and build upon the visitor experience and customer service. While governments are increasingly unreliable, we can win the hearts and minds of visitors and patrons—we have proven that—and in doing so ensure our ongoing success and relevance. To further these initiatives, we engaged TRG Arts to help us transform our operations. Historically, gallery admission has been free of charge. This spring we are implementing a new admission policy and fee, and a renewed membership program. To facilitate this, we are continuing the facelift of the gallery entrance, and again we will be incorporating a new opportunity to make art part of the visitor’s first and primary experience. I am confident that by building on the quality of our offerings, and improving communication with a revitalized membership, we will build a more reliable and engaged donor base.
This is deeply satisfying, however, it still is just a beginning. These changes have brought us to the brink of a new reality, but now we need to double down and realize that transformational change. In August 2018 we announced an anonymous donation of $25 million to create a new endowment for the gallery. In January 2019 we announced a promised gift of 1,000 works of Indigenous art from private collectors. These gifts were from donors identified among our campaign prospects and I was moving ahead full speed with donor prospecting as opportunities arose, even as we were still not ready for the campaign. This past year we unveiled a major public art commission entitled Kâkikê / Forever (2018) by Omaskêko Ininiwak (Cree) artist Duane Linklater. It is a site-specific text-based work, drawing from unattributed Indigenous words spoken during the making of treaties (between Indigenous nations and the Crown of England): “As long as the sun shines, the river flows, and the grass grows,” poetically reflecting Canada’s conflicted past, charged present, and future (post) colonial imaginary. We further developed a new community program space that consists of meeting rooms and an open design for reception and events adjoining an independently managed café. Central to the design of the space was another artist commission and installation by Bill Burns, a Regina-born artist who has exhibited internationally. This summer we will launch our new brand, visual identity, and website.
I hold opportunities to work with artists and support their practice as imperative to our work and of greater importance than all our other measures and initiatives. Engaging with artistic practice elevates all of us—staff, board, stakeholders and visitors—and focuses on our mission. It upholds art and artists as of primary importance. It improves our quality of life. I have always maintained that artists have a unique ability to shift the frame, re-articulate our real problems and opportunities, and find alternative means to negotiate the world. Whatever challenges are thrown at us, I will remain committed to negotiating the world through the lens of art, and in doing so, revealing never before seen opportunities and perspectives.
While I am encouraged by these developments, numerous other opportunities and challenges have arisen during this time. More behind the -26-
Arts Leadership Review // Summer 2019
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