Tuesday, January 17, 2017
New Arts Facility? Why Sometimes We Just Say No
Clyde Fitch Report: Even though the nonprofit arts clients that hire our firm usually profess to being objective and open to our professional opinion, often they have already invested in the plan to move forward with a project. Such clients — from government to developers, schools and arts groups — are generally bent on building some kind of community facility or performing arts center. And when we come back with a negative answer, these folks are often disappointed, or even insulted.
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5 comments:
I never would have thought that people would turn down new arts facilities, but after reading the article, I understand why. What works for one place might not work for another as not all communities need the same thing. The questions that were provided in the middle really helped me understand when they say yes and no to arts centers. I also never would have thought that stepping back and saying no would spread the money around to other arts organizations that need the money more. Even though saying yes or no is not a science, it provides good parameters for others who might be in a similar spot. People’s good intentions do not always pan out and it’s good to have a metric to base when to say no off of. Its great that these people are sharing how they decide to say no that way others don’t fall into the same trap.
Its interesting the idea of saying no to this kind of thing but it makes some good points. I also thing that in a lot of cases cities want to boost their artistic communities with these kind of projects. But the community cant afford to participate or the project takes away resources from an already existing community. so rather than dumping money into some shiny new building i feel in many cases it would be more beneficial to give that money and resources directly to the community.
One aspect of the article I found interesting is that it shows how people often have a goal but haven’t necessarily thought through whether or not what they are doing is likely to accomplish that goal. In this case, people want to increase the presence of the arts in their community, but they jump to a big flashy way of doing it, a new building, rather than thinking about how it might be most effective to increase funding to organizations that are already established. I think there is something that draws people in about having something new and exciting, even when what they really want can be best achieved by less apparent but more effective methods. I do think another element to this is that people in leadership positions in a community often want to do things that are exciting and that the public will see, even though often what the community really needs is something less flashy and interesting but will have a more sustainable impact.
One of the ideas that I find the most interesting in this article is that people tend to use the construction of new arts facilities in order to make a political gain. Like Julian was saying, people tend to want to build things that will draw a lot of attention from the public as opposed to something that a lot of people wont see. It's a lot more appealing to an investor to have a brand new theatre with their name on it than giving an existing organization funds for maintenance. Demand is something else that's important to consider in this situation, as some communities simply don't need a new space. If a community was left with a theatre that they couldn't afford to maintain then no one would really benefit, and it would have been a waste of funding. Although it's not as appealing, it's very important to make sure that existing programs are taken care of before starting something totally new.
I'm interested in this blog in particular because it seems to be the blog for a person or persons who do feasibility studies for larger-scale projects. I have had some exposure to the development/renovation of two theatre spaceship being a smaller Thayer company in Downtown SF, the other being my high school.
My high school built a brand new arts center just a year before I enrolled, but my sister was already enrolled, so I was able to observe its development. It was a huge upgrade to theater program, seeing as we now had an actual scene shop, programmable dimmers and an electrical grid, instead of being stuck in one of the common rooms. It was a great little black box theatre, but there were some serious design flaws, in particular regarding egress and fire code, which ended up seriously restricting what kind of scenery we were able to build. A little more review of the architectural design (which was apparently done by the music teacher) would have solved many of the problems we encountered.
On the flip side, I witnessed first hand the renovation of a small dance space with completely unnecessary technology more befitting a larger theatre. This company, flush with donation money I guess, decided to hire a theatrical consulting company which recommended a patch bay, media controllers, network controllers, a digital sound board, and a complete Meyer Sound system, for a barely 100 seat theatre. They had he money for it I guess, but it ended up being way too complicated for their purposes, where probably an aux jack would have sufficed.
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