Arts & Culture Strategy

Week 1: Value Then, Value Now,

Value Tomorrow
FACULTY
Russell Willis Taylor

Peter Frumkin, Ph.D

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Session 1.3

Value Through the Ages

FACULTY
Russell Willis Taylor

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“Price is what you pay,
value is what you get.”
Warren Buffet

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

 The Last 150 Years

Industrial Age Information Age Conceptual Age

Knowledge  workers,   Convergence,  
Factory  workers,  disciplined  rou4nes  
computers,  code  wri4ng   crea4vity,  design,  
 
  synthesis,  empathy  

1840                                        1970    2000  

From  A  Whole  New  Mind:  Why  Right-­‐brainers  Will  Rule  the  Future,  Daniel  Pink,  2005.  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The Industrial age
§  increasing mechanization in the workplace
§  culture provided a strong educational benefit, an enriching
of life benefit
§  for the wealthy, cultural activity was an affirmation of their
aesthetic sensibilities and their privileged place in society
§  there was a sense that culture was good for us
o  it helped develop the faculties of moral reasoning
o  generally improved the mind and therefore society as a
whole.
o  this was the platform on which the value proposition for
arts and culture was built until the 1970s
o  it remains the unspoken and inviolate value premise for
many of our cultural institutions today

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The information age
§  the rise in importance of the “knowledge worker”
§  cultural participation offered a creative outlet, an
intellectual companion to the need to process information
quickly and efficiently
§  the arts were a way of belonging to a particular tribe
§  the visual arts became very popular as they were both
visually stimulating and socially defining
§  this is the period when we see a civic value assigned to the
arts that resulted in a building boom
§  rebellion and experimentation became acceptable forms of
art creation
§  the visual arts began to really be a highly priced commodity,
as did some long running Broadway shows that recordings
made widely accessible

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The Conceptual age
§  an age of convergence, of creativity, of a strong and
commercially supported design aesthetic in markets
§  an age where the ability to rapidly synthesize a lot of
information gives individuals and organizations a
competitive edge.
§  one of the values that our cultural organizations create
now is to be what Thomas Campbell, Director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art calls the “quiet cars of the
modern age”
§  Creating, defining and communicating our value now is
the single biggest challenge for the field, and for leaders
of cultural institutions

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Session 1.4

What’s Changed?
FACULTY
Russell Willis Taylor

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The Big Changes
§  Technology
§  Consumer behavior/societal changes
§  Disintermediation
§  Education systemic change
§  Increased competition
§  Convergence Globally

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Social Innovations & Inventions
Social Innovations
Pop up restaurants, You-tube, facebook, online transactions, google
analytics, carbon trading, microcredit, consumer cooperatives, online
learning and giving platforms, virtual learning environments, corporate
universities, citizen reporters, cloud funding, fair trade, pledgebanks,
restorative justice, open source, slow food, eco-cities, consumer co-
operatives, zero carbon housing, wind farms, Hole in the Wall computers,
Mumsnet, World Café, flash mobs, Pinterest; TED and TEDx; Fan
Fiction…
Inventions
i-pod; i-phone, i-tunes, tesla electric car, AbioCor artificial heart, Blu-ray
players, Solar roof shingles, smart bullets, open space technology, 3-D
printing on demand; bio-print organ renewal mainstream in 20 years…

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Media: new technologies & me

100 hours of video uploaded every minute of every

day of every year.

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Disintermediation
Number of cable channels in 1980: 28
Number of cable channels in 2014: 900+

Number of unique internet radio channels

operated by Live365: 5000+
Number of unique custom music channels
operated by Pandora: 5 billion

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Changes in Education

I was out of school that day

– that year – that decade.
Arts Education in America:
What the Declines Mean for Arts Participation
National Endowment for the Arts, 2008

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Convergence & Competition
§  Market Thinking
§  New Players (from HBO
to Apple)
§  Increased consumer
choice in every arena

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Session 1.5

Mission & Value

What’s your mission? How do you express
it? Is value objective or subjective?

FACULTY
Peter Frumkin, Ph.D

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Mission relationship to value
§  Mission statements explain WHAT you are working on,
HOW you do the work, and WHY it matters
§  Value Propositions focus on how the world looks
different as a result of the accomplishment of mission

Value is embedded in mission but you should be able to

identify it when you hear it

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Mission Statement
§  Single powerful sentence
§  Contains no jargon
§  Can be expressed quickly and easily
§  Is memorable
§  Differentiates
§  Make a connection

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Mission of Rockefeller Foundation
For more than 100 years, The Rockefeller Foundation’s
mission has been to promote the well-being of
humanity throughout the world.

Today, we pursue this mission through dual goals:

advancing inclusive economies that expand opportunities
for more broadly shared prosperity, and building
resilience by enabling people, communities and
institutions to be prepared for, withstand, and emerge
stronger from shocks and chronic stresses.

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Mission of Skoll Foundation
The Skoll Foundation drives large scale change by
investing in, connecting and celebrating social
entrepreneurs and the innovators who help them solve
the world’s most pressing problems.

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Must mission be fixed?
§  It must be sturdy but not cast in stone
§  It must be a touchstone not an unchanging cornerstone
§  The world changes and so must nonprofits and arts
organizations in particular

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

World Economic Forum Mission Statements

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

World Economic Forum Mission Statements

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

World Economic Forum Mission today
The World Economic Forum:
§  is an International Institution committed to improving the state of the world through
public-private cooperation.
§  engages political, business, academic and other leaders of society in collaborative efforts
to shape global, regional and industry agendas.  Together with other stakeholders, it
works to define challenges, solutions and actions, always in the spirit of global
citizenship.
§  serves and builds sustained communities through an integrated concept of high-level
meetings, research networks, task forces and digital collaboration.
§  delivers unique value to its Partners, Members and Constituents through its Annual and
Regional Meetings, its Centres dedicated to global, regional, and industry issues, its
future-oriented communities of New Champions, its expert networks of Global Agenda
Councils, its TopLink knowledge and interaction platform and the Forum Academy.
§  was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit Foundation and is headquartered in
Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests,
working in close cooperation with all major international organisations.
§  strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest
while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is
at the heart of everything it does.

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The case of arts & culture
§  There is something special about the arts compared to
human service or health
§  There is both artistic value and its integrity on the line
AND community or public value at stake
§  Ideally you will produce both artistic and community
value
§  Sometimes they will be in tension
§  Honestly considering tradeoffs is the only solution to
achieving a valuable and sustainable mix of the two
§  The days are gone when the two can be kept apart

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Conclusion
§  Session 1.7 introduces a tool for understanding mission
and value in relationship to both what is possible and
what is supportable.
§  We want you to hold on to what matter most artistically
but begin to see ways to produce more and more
community and public value

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Session 1.6

Value Now
Or, A Festival of Quotations
Throughout the Ages
FACULTY
Russell Willis Taylor

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The Artistic Ape

“Even at the moment of satiation, the human feasters had

to express themselves in some way rather than go sleep like
the well-fed lions.”
Desmond Morris
The Artistic Ape: Three Million Years of Art

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

C.S. Lewis on Learning in Times of War
“Plausible reasons have never been lacking for
putting off all merely cultural activities until
some imminent danger has been averted or some
crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago
chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They
propound theorems in beleagured cities, conduct
metaphysical arguments in condemned cells,
make jokes on scaffolds, discuss poetry while
advancing on the walls of Quebec, and comb their
hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our
nature.”
From a Sermon in Oxford, Autumn 1939

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet
men die miserably every day for lack of what
is found there.”
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
William Carlos Williams

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Fra Angelico Adoration

The  Adora1on  of  the  Magi,  

c.  1440/1460,  tempera  on  
panel.  Fra  Angelico  (painter)  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.
 Ad  Reinhardt  Pain1ng,  
1954-­‐58  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“We have banks that can coin the currency of
trade in those things we can pass among us.
We have art that coins meaning that we can
share only by living it.”
Bill Sharpe
Economies of Life

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“A free society gains its liberty and its
democratic vitality from civil society, and the
arts and humanities invest civil society with
its creativity, its diverseness, and its liberating
spontaneity.”
Benjamin Barber
Address to President’s 

Committee on the Arts,1997

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“Educators only interested in economic
growth will do more than ignore the arts.
They will fear them. For a cultivated and
developed sympathy is a particularly
dangerous enemy of obtuseness, and moral
obtuseness is necessary to carry out programs
of economic development that ignore
inequality.”
Martha Nussbaum
Not for Profit: Why Democracy 

Needs the Humanities, 2011

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

The power of convening

Sherry Turkle
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each
Other
hBp://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html    
hBp://www.colbertnaKon.com/the-­‐colbert-­‐report-­‐videos/371249/january-­‐17-­‐2011/sherry-­‐turkle      

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“And whoever walks a furlong without
sympathy, walks to his own funeral dressed in
his shroud.”
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself, 1855

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

 Cyrus  Cylinder  
From  Babylon,  southern  
Iraq,  circa  539-­‐530  BC  
© 2015 National Arts Strategies.
 Pieter  de  Hooch,  1663  
www.artastherapy.com  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Session 1.7

Value, Capacity & Support

Strategic Triangle

FACULTY
Peter Frumkin, Ph.D

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

What is strategy?
§  Alignment fit and coherence amongst three elements:
Value, Capacity, and Support

Capacity

Value

Support

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Value
§  The difference you make
§  Not the same as mission
§  Can be driven by the organization
§  Can be determined by audiences/customers

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

capacity
§  Operational ability to deliver what you promise
§  Spans both inside and outside the organization

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Support
§  What the world is willing to authorize and legitimize
§  Can be external, environmental
§  There is also an internal component

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

conclusion
§  Organization will move in and out of alignment
§  Strategy involves the careful and constant calculation
of greater alignment, fit and coherence
§  All three elements (including mission/value) have to be
flexible

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Session 1.8

Scope & Scale

FACULTY
Russell Willis Taylor

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Scope & Scale
How big is too big, how much is too much, and how
can we tell when we are in the land of not enough?

Too  Big  To  Fail,  

Anthony  Freda  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

•  69% of arts organizations saw increases in demands for
services, 79% expect increase for demand in 2014
•  In 2013, 30% has an operating deficit
•  In 2013, 46% has an operating surplus, 32% expected a
surplus in 2014
•  41% have less than three months cash on hand

Source: Nonprofit Finance Fund, 2014

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Useful Reading on Supply & Demand

Some  Reflec1ons  on  the  

Rela1onship  between  Supply  and  
Demand  in  the  Formalized  Arts  
Sector  by  Adrian  Ellis.  GIA  
Reader,  Vol  23,  No  1  (Winter  2012)  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Useful Reading on Supply & Demand

Set  in  Stone  

hBp://culturalbuilding.org/  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

Bigger ≠ better

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“The value of culture cannot be expressed only
with statistics. Audience numbers give us a
poor picture of how culture enriches us.”
John  Holden,  Demos  
Capturing  Cultural  Value  

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.

“Every year our expenses go up, but the
donations remain the same.”
Zubin Mehta, LA Philharmonic

Interview, 1969

© 2015 National Arts Strategies.