Creating Young Ambassadors September 24, 2010

The topic of creating an audience for the future is one of keen interest to me. And is to a lot of folks who know that they will eventually rely upon the youth of today to fill our theatres tomorrow.

I came across this great article from The Miami Herald that talks about a new teen ambassador program that allows teens to attend one performance per month for free, in exchange for the teens writing reviews of the show and sharing them through their social networks.

It’s brilliant on many levels. I’ll be very interested to read the follow-up story.

Read the entire story here.

State of the Fringe: David Jordan August 4, 2010

Today, in the second part of my week-long series on the State of the Fringe, I interview David Jordan, the Executive Director of the Vancouver Fringe Festival.

RC: Tell us a bit about the Vancouver Fringe.

DJ: This is our 26th year for the Fringe in Vancouver. It’s our tenth year on Granville Island. There are 83 shows and over 600 performances over 11 days.

RC: Who is David Jordan? And how did you end up here?

DJ: I came to Vancouver fresh from graduating with my Master’s degree in Directing. The Fringe was my first job here in

Image Courtesy of HereInVancouver on Flickr

Vancouver. I worked there for about a year and a half in various capacities, and then when the ED job came along, I applied for it, and here I am. This is my fifth year as Executive Director.

RC: How does this year’s Fringe compare to previous years?

DJ: Last year, there were 68 shows, so we’re up by about 20%. The trend that we’re seeing with the Fringe is that there are more BYOVs and found venues. For example, Boca Del Lupo is doing a show out of their office with an audience of 14. Someone else is doing a show on a pedicab. Origins Coffee has kindly let us use their space, and we are converting it into a 60-seat venue. We also have a professional development series: talks, and a Clown Conference. Our goal is to make Granville Island explode with theatre.

RC: How were you affected by the first round of cuts last summer?

DJ: We were lucky. We were in the first year of a three-year funding agreement. That money was originally taken away, but they restored it. So we have some time to plan and restructure. This government has systematically replaced operating funding with short-term project-based funding, so we have to seriously look at ways of running our organization with less funding from the government. As the Provincial Government proved to us over the past year, we can’t rely upon them for support.

RC: How have subsequent cuts affected you?

DJ: Our BC Arts Council funding was cut by 60%, down to $12,700 from $32,500. Basically, by 2012 we stand to lose $70-90,000 worth of provincial funding. That alone is the cost of running our venues, which is something that can’t be cut. Our greatest challenge will be to maintain critical mass in the face of all these cuts.

RC: Despite the current cuts, it looks as if the Fringe will go ahead as normal this year?

DJ: Yes, we are in fact finding room to grow a bit. That’s what keeps me hopeful in the face of arts cuts. We were born out of needing to find a way, and we will always find a way.

RC: How about future Fringes? What kinds of plans are you working on?

DJ: Next year, there will have to be significant changes. We don’t know exactly what it will look like yet, but we have to cut expenses and increase revenues. That’s hard to do. We are a very efficient organization as it is. Maybe site specific work in MLAs offices…?  One thing we are considering is introducing tiered fee structures. Right now, all artists pay the same fee, whether they are in the Waterfront (300+) or a smaller venue of 50. We may start charging more for the larger theatres, less for the smaller ones.  Operating venues is a huge expense for us, so we are looking at ways we can create more site-specific, outdoor venues and found spaces.

RC: Final words?

DJ: We did a survey with members of the community, and the feedback that we got was clear: the Fringe is necessary. Not just for emerging artists (although they are a very important part of the Fringe), but also for more established companies who have moved beyond the Fringe. Some companies want to do new stuff, edgy stuff that they maybe can’t take to their core audience, so they come to the Fringe. The Fringe’s roots come from a place of flexibility and experimentation. It’s artist-driven. And those are all things that we will remain true to as we move forward into the future.

RC: Thanks, David!

Read David’s interview with The Georgia Straight.

Read the Vancouver Fringe’s Press Release

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Who’s the Boss? July 21, 2010

The other day, I was driving down the street, and I saw this woman on the sidewalk wearing the most amazingly put-together outfit: dress, shoes, hose, accessories, she looked like she was straight from the streets of NYC. I remember thinking it was the kind of outfit Carrie Bradshaw would have worn.

But despite her incredible outfit, there was something about this woman that looked not quite right. It took me a while to figure it out: it was as if the outfit was wearing her, rather than the other way around.

I’ve been thinking about my business in this way a lot lately: who’s the boss? Me or my business?

I often bemoan my inability to have vision to the members of my small business group. I often feel like my business is running me, rather than the other way around. Having said that, it’s running pretty well: I have more work than I know what to do with, and I’m taking on an office and expanding in the fall. I’ll be teaching a course on social media for artists at Emily Carr in the fall, and I just got invited to go to Melbourne to do social media workshops with the indie theatre community there.

Maybe it’s enough?

Maybe torturing myself over my lack of a 5-year plan is ridiculous. Maybe I should look at all my successes and be grateful (I am!), and leave it at that, roll with the punches, see what’s over the next hill?

Yes, books like The E-Myth and lots more urge you to have a plan for your business, and I did, when I started out. I guess the advantage of having a business plan is that you have a final goal in mind: you have a vision for what success looks like. And then you create the plan to get you there. But even the best laid plans sometimes need to shift and change sometimes.

So, what do you think? is it enough that I am doing fine, things are going well? Or is it time for me to hire a small business coach? Those of you out there who are running small businesses, do you have a plan?

Photo by Pink Monkey Studios

I already hired a stylist, so watch out Carrie Bradshaw!

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The Decision Tree July 14, 2010

Sometimes you have to make decisions about your career and your life that can be really difficult and overwhelming. Today, I talk to Carol Ann Fried, a trainer and coach, about a tool called The Decision Tree.

Click here to download the Priortizing Grid

Click here to download the Decision Tree

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Fewer clicks=more sales June 21, 2010

Let’s face it, we’re busy. Even more busy than ever, it seems, these days. Just when I think I can’t get any busier, I surprise myself.

What that means, is, if I am able to do something quickly and efficiently, I’m going to do that. When Simon and I give workshops, we call this making it stupid easy. Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that people are dumb. In fact, they are just busy. And you know as well as I do that if you have tried to do something online, and it took more time than you thought, or was more difficult than you thought, you likely gave up in a short amount of time.

For me, the power of social media, and the argument for having multiple social media streams (ie: a blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), is that you meet people where they are. If my favorite social medium is Facebook, I should be able to access your company there. If it’s Twitter, ditto. It’s easy.

It therefore makes sense to me, that if we can make buying tickets really, really easy, that we may sell more of them. Which is why most theatre companies these days have multiple ways of buying tickets: by phone, on line, or in person. Folks can pick the method that works best for them.

Some companies are now developing applications to make tickets available though social media applications. For example, when Disney recently released Toy Story 3, you could buy them directly through Facebook.

Cosmetics giant Avon recently introduced a Facebook-based store for thier “younger” brand, Mark. They did this through a new app that is being developed by a San Fransisco-based company called Payvment.

As of this moment, I can’t find any theatre companies that are selling tickets through their Facebook page, but I’m thinking it’s not far away.

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Never Bowl Alone May 17, 2010

This came through my in-box last week, and I thought I’d share it. I might go, myself!

Connect with your peers, get informed about community resources, take control of your well-being and go bowling.

A free day-long workshop aimed at developing strategies for staying healthy and happy in times of significant change.

Uncover and share strategies and tools for sustaining a career in the arts today. This expertly facilitated peer-to-peer workshop leverages our greatest resources – powerful imaginations and self-efficacy. Use this half-day session to transform roadblocks into breakthroughs. We’ll explore individual well-being and the revival of community reliance, resources and camaraderie.

Finish the day at the Commodore Bowling lanes for a fun and stress-free end to the day.

Date: Thursday, May 20, 2010
Time: 10:00am – 3:30pm
Location: Vancouver Art Gallery, Heritage Courtroom 302
RSVP to rsvp@actsafe.ca by May 14. Please include your name, organizational affiliation (if applicable), and any dietary restrictions.
This is a free event. Limited space. Preregistration is mandatory.

Presented by: 2010 Legacies Now, Alliance for Arts and Culture, Actsafe, Boca Del Lupo, Canada Council for the Arts Equity Office, Dancer Transition Resource Centre (DTRC), Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, and the Vancouver Art Gallery

Facilitator Bios

Claudia Collins, MA, RCC has spent many years in the non-profit sector as an employment counselor, cross-cultural educator and family therapist. She also worked as an Employee and Family Assistance counselor for 12 years, providing counseling, workplace training, trauma response and organizational consultations.

Suzanne Kenney, MA, RCC has 19 years experience in the Employee and Family Assistance field in multiple roles as a counselor, trainer, and organizational consultant. Suzanne has also taught school and worked in the mental health field as a clinical counselor working with children and families.

Are You Scalable? April 12, 2010

Now, before you go make a doctor’s appointment to get some cream to help you with that, let me explain: scalability is your business’ ability to grow.

This topic has been on my mind a lot lately, because, although I love my work, my business is, in fact, not easily scalable. You see, there’s just me. And, even if I took on as many clients as I could, and worked 24 hours a day, there would still only be a finite number of people that could take on. Eventually, I’d have more work that “just me” could handle.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’m at a point in my business where I need to either a. stop taking on new clients because I’m at capacity or b. figure out a way to clone myself so that there are now two of me running my business.

For something like what I do, publicity, it’s possible for me to do this. I have a certain system that I work with, and I could teach this system to someone else, and hopefully, they’d get the same result. But if you are an artist, creating one-off original works of art, you can’t do that (even though Michangelo had assistants). As an actor, there’s just one of you. As a musician–just one.

So, you need to look for other methods of scalability, and those things often incude taking a small, less expensive piece of you and cloning it. So, for example, visual artists can create prints, cards, calendars. Actors (hopefully) get residuals from repeated productions, and musicians can sell songs.

One of the coolest ways to create scalabilty is to create a product that is automated, and can sell all on its own, even while you are asleep, or say, on a beach in Greece. This is called passive income. For me, it’s creating an e-book. For you, it could be selling prints off of the internet, or downloadable songs, or courses that show people a particular technique that you have perfected.

How can you make your business scalable?

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Outsourcing March 22, 2010

As artists in business, we are a one-person show, and we wear a lot of hats. Not only are responsible for the greatest bulk of our work, namely creating our art, but we are also responsible for the business and marketing of that work.

I talk to so many artists that say “I just want to do my work. I want someone else to handle the business.”

Realistically, you need to know how to manage your business, for a couple of different reasons. First of all, as you are just starting out, you probably don’t generate enough income to be able to pay someone to manage your business. Secondly, even if you did, many, many artists have been ripped off by unscrupulous people who recognize that the artist is willing to hand everything over and fully trust them. In order for you to not be in that kind of a position, you need to know enough about your business, and be involved enough in your business to recognize when something like this might be taking place.

So, certainly you need to have some basic knowledge in legal matters, bookkeeping and accounting, and marketing. However, at some point, you will no doubt want to outsource some of your business.

You’ll know you’re ready for this when:

1. You feel like you are able to do some of the basics, but you know that you’d be over your head if you attempted to go deeper. A good example of this is creating a website: you might have a clear idea about what you want on it and how you want it to look, but you don’t possess the technical skills to build it. Another great example is getting your taxes done by an accountant.
2. You know how to do something, but it takes you longer to do that an expert could do it, and you feel like your time is more valuable spent elsewhere. An example from my business is that I upload information about my client’s shows to certain event websites in Vancouver. Honestly, I hate this task. It’s repetitive and boring, but it’s a part of my contract, so I need to do it. I outsource this task, because my time is better spent contacting and pitching to the media and trying to get my clients preview and review articles.

I would love to hear what kinds of tasks you outsource from your business, and why. Please share!

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The power of just showing up March 10, 2010

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a past career, I was an employment counsellor. I would meet with people who were unemployed and looking for work, and help them to spruce up their resume, apply for jobs, or refer them to programs that could help them find work.

I remember one client particularly. She was in the film industry, so we saw her every few months. She had a computer and internet connection at home, so there was really no reason for her to come in and use our resource centre. But yet, like clockwork, every few months, she’d show up at our door, and be looking for work.

Many years ago, I read a book called Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Now, Frankl was a Jewish psychologist in pre-Nazi Austria, Vienna to be exact. In 1942, he, like many other Jews, was sent to a concentration camp, along with his wife and parents. By all reports, I can’t imagine a more horrifying or black place to be. And yet, he talks in his book about getting up every morning and shaving himself with a piece of glass. This symbolic gesture of getting ready for the day was psychological preparation, and it worked. Frankl survived the concentration camp–the rest of his family did not.

I know that looking for a job or writing a blog is not nearly the same kind of life-or-death stakes that Frankl faced every day in that camp. But the principle remains the same: the people that got up every day, put on some decent clothes, and showed up at my work every day at 9:30 had a much higher chance of getting a job than those that rolled in at 1 pm in crumpled jeans after sleeping in until noon.

Writing a blog works on the same principle: if you commit to a schedule and stick to it, I promise you will see results. Will every post you write be a gold-medal winner (sorry, the Olympics are kinda dominating things in Vancouver, right now!)? Nope, certainly not. But by writing sheer quantity, you are bound to create some posts of quality. And the more you do it, the better you get…

This image was originally posted to Flickr by chokola at http://flickr.com/photos/22671579@N00/1229450683

And then, sometime around the three-week mark, something magical happens. It stops being more of a chore, and just becomes another thing that you do in your day. It incorporates itself into your life.

So grab yourself a calendar, decide how many posts you want to do per week, and then schedule them on your calendar. Go so far as to write what the topic of each of those posts will be. Set an alarm if you need to. Then write.

Just showing up will give you results–I guarantee it.

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Vancouver 2050: A Creative City February 26, 2010

Ah, I love social media. The networking opportunities are endless.

I was recently introduced to Sean Bickerton via Susan Weiss, neither of whom I have met in person, but am friends with through Facebook and Twitter.

Sean Bickerton is planning a very cool and interesting forum called Vancouver 2050: A Creative City. It takes place from 8:30 am to 1 pm on Saturday, April 24. As we move forward, post-Olympics and in the face of devastating arts cuts, we may well be asking, what’s next??

From Sean’s blog:

I’m pleased to announce Vancouver 2050: A Creative City! – a public Arts & Culture Forum moderated by Max Wyman and featuring addresses by Maestro Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony, and Norman Armour, Artistic Director of the PUSH Festival, with one additional speaker remaining to be confirmed.

Our three distinguished arts leaders will each present their vision of what Vancouver as a Creative Capital would look like in 2050, with a view to infrastructure, sustainability and the kind of innovation and enrichment of activities that could energize broader community engagement.

After those presentations, a high-level panel drawn from the arts, business and social profit sectors will discuss with the speakers the concepts they’ve presented, and then open the discussion up to include invited arts, business & community leaders and members of the public.

Our goal with this discussion is to bring leaders from the arts and business communities together in order to fully imagine Vancouver as a 21st-century Creative City with a correspondingly vibrant creative economy.

Click here to read the full post, and to contact Sean.

The forum is free. I hope to see you there!

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