The study itself might be valuable as an analysis over the period, which it covered (i.e. from 1987-2003) – it could indeed serve as a guideline, or as a possible variant. Yet orchestras – as well as other art organisations and non-profit sector actors – are not only lead by economic drivers.
Economic statistical indicators are only a partial snapshot of a situation, which do not reflect the overall picture: Equally, if you would visit your doctor tomorrow, he will take your temperature and asses it is 36,9 degrees centigrade (which is in medical terms perfectly all right) it will not prove, whether you are currently feeling happy at all. Not mentioning that your bed was a bit hard and you have a backache, or that you simply have a bad day, the fact regarding your body temperature is not conclusive.
The bottom line of the said report states that orchestras are a deep pit where money disappears – in other words: structural deficits. Economists or CEOs of huge companies would immediately draw the ‘obvious’ conclusion to pull the plug, before more loss will show in the records. Or, at best, a complete make-over of marketing, provided profitable turnover is feasible in the near-future (preferably within a time-span of 5 years maximum!). Anything in the red is not worth dealing with.
Perhaps we are hardly aware any longer, that in our modern societies, we have nevertheless services, which we as individual citizens have delegated to the community (municipal authority, government), and for which we pay, by means of taxes or through insurances. Both financed from our wallet. Is your local fire-department profitable? If not, would you abolish it? How about the school attended by your children? Or the ambulance service? And yet, correctly, societies still consider these items as essential – even though running them is a costly matter. Although we start realising, fortunately enough, that good education is essential for the long-term economic benefits, art is somehow a suppositious child… or rather an orphan. Community services even charity seem OK, but art is 'too elitist'?
In my view, the main problem is our own parochialism: We have started to learn to divide people and their disciplines into little niches. What I often sense, is the lack of being able to look a bit over the fence into other disciplines, to have a kind of cross-over in solution-seeking: A typical scenario: An orchestra is in dire financial need, a local manager - who happened to be successful in running a hardware store – is called to deliver the band from bankruptcy…and after a certain time fails. Why? Because the involved parties do not communicate on the same wave-length. The economist is academically looking at statistics and figures, while the artists are hardly interested in being bothered with management issues. Instead being deft in tackling the dynamics of the world around (a lot of creativity is required for that) it is unfortunately either this or the other opposite.
Therefore, I myself do resent the usual attitude of public taking such reports and sometimes come up with conclusions, which even my 5 year old son would be able to think of. Maybe a bit off-track, but do we realise, how much time, energy and resources such a report has cost society? We know very well, that throughout the years, many economic systems have been introduced, sometimes idolised, finding many years later out that they were not the right stuff… An example would be Keynesian economics and later Friedman and Hayek’s criticism. Therefore, economics is not dogmatic, its values never timeless. The so called economic demands are (and therefore the economic value) of a product – in our case the price society/audience would be willing to pay for concerts – is a very relative and a flexible given.
Since our modern society, with almost borderless access to any corner of the world (be it by means of modern transportation on via the electronic highway) is no longer limited to its village or town like it was in the 19th century. Technology and communication is more dynamic than was 30 years ago. This is a fact, which all of us face, and this must be the starting-point from where we should develop our strategies.
Economics is only our thermometer telling us if physically we are OK (and still, it is only one indicator; is not giving any indication of our blood-pressure). If we feel fit, happy or if we want to be successful, more is needed. What the Flanagan Report shows me, is that orchestras have little learned how to deal with governance issues, whether management was art-oriented or economy-oriented. Economics seems as if it is behaving like an enemy towards arts, but only if perceived through this narrow-minded angle. It is necessary to be aware of this, and not to be afraid of the other discipline and start learning to jointly reach for a solution. It is this creativity to develop efficient marketing, PR, branding (yes also for musicians), and networking. Not only do we have to educate our orchestras to get out of their IT-illiteracy and start using more modern ways to surface, but also our audience (society) needs to be educated, to stop thinking of only short-term profit and loss – that other intangible values are sometimes even priceless. Realising that economy is also largely driven by psychology - if not primarily.
I would like to quote a blog-commenter, whose name I do not know unfortunately (calling himself only “unkultur”); he stated that culture is as brittle as nature: for a long time, people were not interested in nature preservation, no realising what a multi fold price they have to cough up to deal with our polluted environment. Only now, we realised, that we cannot live without this nature (or that the ramifications of our long lack of interest are dramatic). In my personal conviction, we cannot live withour culture either. How long will it take, before we realise this? Hopefully, in time before it is too late.
3 comments:
"What I often sense, is the lack of being able to look a bit over the fence into other disciplines, to have a kind of cross-over in solution-seeking"
That's the reason why innovation fails. But let us face it: it's a problem concerning our society, not only our branch.
Christian, I absolutely agree. It is indeed a general malice. Although, one could perhaps have the feeling, that a IT specialist and an Economist would (just an example) would be more on the same wave-length than an artist and an economist (but that's a stark generation too).
yep ;-)
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