Re-rite or how to make the most of your orchestra...

I haven't had a chance to really have a look at the 'Re-rite' program, but it had me at the clever pun, and a post by Stephen Smoliar

re-rite is a new experiment by the British Philharmonia Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. It tries to confront the problem that most concert-goers not only are passive but also lack any sense of how they can actively engage through listening. re-rite tries to solve this problem by turning a recorded performance into an activity space.

Here's a bit more...

re-rite, the Philharmonia Orchestra's Digital Residency, will allow members of the public to conduct, play and step inside the Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen through audio and video projections of musicians performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Opening to the public at the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank on Tuesday 3 November, the project will show every section of the Orchestra performing The Rite of Spring simultaneously ‘as live’ throughout a four-storey warehouse building. The public will able to sit amongst the horn players, perform in the percussion section and take up the baton and control sections of the Orchestra as they play.

Stephen does a great job of summarising it and linking through to other articles...all I'm going to add is when can we do this with the AOBO?

Image source: http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/re-rite/

More refs...that I probably won't use...

Ahhh another Nina Simon treat for you all...well really for me. I think this is getting way off my topic, but interesting! Do you have any participatory experiences that aren't aimed at children or teenagers?

Why are so many participatory experiences focused on teens?

Nina Simon - Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. A large number of the collaborative projects of which I'm aware (in which staff partner with community members to co-develop exhibits or programs) are initiated with teens. Even the most traditional museums often manage educational programs in which teens develop their own exhibits, produce youth-focused museum events, or provide educational experiences for younger visitors. And while I enjoy working with youth and consuming their creations as a museum visitor, I'd like to call into question the idea that they are or should be the primary audience for participatory experiences.

Google as an arts organisation

Found through a post by Tim Roberts on Admit 2.0 which was in turn, Tim tells us, passed to him by Vicki Allpress Hill from a presenter she met at the recent Tessitura Conference...aka an example of the wonderful world of people pass on great things...as Tim did I'm posing this in full.

Erik Gensler of Capacity Interactive Inc.

Google is governed by the following: openness, sharing, aggregation and capturing customer data. The more customer data you have the more you learn and the more you can improve. So inspired by Jeff Jarvis' book What Would Google Do?, I thought about the following: If Google were a performing arts organization it would...

...aggregate all critical reviews and share them to help people decide if they want to attend a performance

...survey ticket buyers after each performance and send them to a forum where they could comment on performances they've seen

...allow people to vote on future rep

...put all production designs on line for people to examine and comment upon

...have 100% flexible exchange policies

...video and share rehearsals and other behind-the-scenes footage

...promote all other arts organizations

...encourage all management and artistic leadership to blog

Is your organization doing any of these things?

Why not?

Is crowdsourcing killing the traditional design industry?

I have a burgeoning interest in design...ok I lie...I love design, but now my burgeoning interest is being channeled into thoughts about exhibitions and design and a buzz word that keeps popping up is 'crowdsourcing'. Far from melting down strangers to make into mole (that's sauce for those non french speakers among us), or renta-friends schemes favoured by me in my early uni days (you know make friends with a random German/Brit/Canadian)...crowdsourcing appears to be asking the 'un-professional' to comment, engage, feedback or inform decision-making and creation of design, art etc etc. I've come across it in marketing wankery ('oh we crowdsourced that and X packaging test best'...aka a bad use of market testing or dare I say market research) but perhaps the most burgeoning context has been in relation to museum and gallery exhibitions. Here however we have another view on the explosion of crowdsourcing on design industry and the intermingling of the client/creator relationship. Another hero Angelina Russo takes up the debate....

Research round up: Engaging Audiences

I'm always a little wary of organisations such as this pushing their research. Those old testaments of reliability and validity rear their head and then I start asking questions about whose agenda this is pushing (who paid for the research?)..but nevertheless if the shoe fits when reading examples, surely it's worth a look?

Again, pushed to me through the magic of twitter, and there's so many reports to have a look at! Here's just one...

Engaging Audiences - Wallace Foundation

"In the midst of hard economic times, it is clearly more challenging for arts organizations to take the long view and continue to devote time and effort to building new audiences. But this report on a recent gathering of representatives from more than 50 Wallace-funded arts organizations in six cities concludes that participation-building efforts and the resulting lessons are more vital than ever to the long-term health of arts organizations and the entire arts sector. Especially in hard times, the report says, it’s essential for leaders of arts organization to take careful stock of the long-term influences and challenges affecting the arts sector such as demographic shifts and new technologies that are creating entire new “spaces” for people to come together and experience the arts. The report describes how organizations are responding creatively to those challenges using such means as market research, re-branding, and drawing audience-building lessons from other sectors such as professional sports."

Opening up the BBC’s natural history archive

And if you just haven't had enough of cultural institutions opening up their collections online, here's another example from the good old BBC. Does this mean more David Attenborough at my fingertips 24/7? Fingers crossed!

Although, I have had trouble actually tracking the site down....hmmm...

Opening up the BBC’s natural history archive

An experience of free content

Some great reading for today from the Powerhouse's Seb Chan on the museum giving away content for free. The main jist is that opening up content has enabled:

• better documentation on part of its collection - hey after all that's their job
• the ability to reach much wider audiences - hey that's another part of their mission!
• the development of new markets for commercial activities - the old promotion thingo!

Seb also briefly outlines some cost rationalisation that has been experienced through delivery of imagery online...I'm sold...are you?

Read the whole blog at Some clarifications on our experience with 'free' content'

If you haven't seen any of the Powerhouse's Flickr images sourced from their vast photographic collections have a look here. They are wonderful!

Racegoers at Warwick Farm racecourse

ACO musicians and subscribers introduce the 2010 season

Subscription season is here and a video introducing the 2010 season on the ACO website (that's the Australian Chamber Orchestra for those playing at home) is both beautiful and touching, and so well put together...it even makes me want to be a subscriber!

ACO are are also utilising a Ning site as an easy and free means to have a blog, forum, photos, videos and news available online, click on 'Community' from the homepage.

Bravo ACO and good luck with subscriptions!

http://www.aco.com.au/

Wotopera Rocks! ...and here's the proof

I love when there are stats and research that back up a program's success. Not that anyone who was in the audience last year for Wotopera* wouldn't of felt the energy in the room these kids were creating...future creators and ticket buyers...to opera...who knows...but open to arts participation? Oui.

The link is to a piece by San Diego Opera’s general and artistic director Ian Campbell on the findings of a study that followed 15 symphony orchestras over the decade from 1994 to 2004. Ian suggests the findings could be applied to opera audiences as well. The findings as Campbell summarises them are:

a) There is no evidence that exposure programs for children — especially the large concert format offerings for school children — will turn them into ticket buyers as adults.

b) There is growing evidence that participatory music education — primarily instrumental lessons, ensemble and choral programs — will turn people into ticket buyers later in life.

Interesting! More here

*For those playing at home Wotopera is a school-based education imitative of OA where high school students working with music educators write an opera 'from page to stage' in a few weeks and then perform it in front of an audience. The program is sponsored by Graeme Wood of Wotif fame. The project was expanded into QLD earlier this year and the next Wotopera project in Sydney talks place in September 09...watch this space.

Museum Next blog

I've written about Jim Richardson before, but this week's blog posting from Museum Next has been, well, particularly inspired. Here's a few snippets....

"Should art be experienced in quiet contemplation or could a little theatre break through the polite chatter of a private view and make for a more participatory experience? Is a gallery only a space to experience the work on the walls or can it also be a stage for creative interaction?"

Jim also writes about a 'crowd sourced exhibition / competition' he is working on, while other contributors reference the work of Nina Simon on 'participatory design'...just reading of this ground breaking approach to exhibition design and conception is inspiring, wonder if that will be in my reading kit for uni? Somehow me thinks not.

Another great take away this week was the question we dare not ask..'Are museums and galleries intimidating?'

Didn't someone tell this man we never talk about the elephant in the corner...bravo Jim, keep it up!

More at http://www.museumnext.org/blog/

Wikimedia: Conference seeks open cultural content

Stealing a headline here, but following on from yesterday's mention of cultural institutions using Wikis to gather and share planning and policy...here's another one, but only about 100 times bigger!

It will be interesting to see the outtakes from this conference and its many notable speakers. Here's hoping the content is captured and shared just as they are aiming to do with Australia's (and NZ's) cultural content....although one question...er, what about the other arts?

Wikimedia: Conference seeks open cultural content

'In a world-first conference, the Wikimedia Australia community will this week sit down with more than 170 senior executives from the nation’s largest cultural institutions – from the National Gallery to the Parliamentary Library – to devise strategies to better share Australia's cultural heritage.

Called ‘GLAM-WIKI: Finding Common Ground,’ the event at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on August 6-7 brings together Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) with Wikimedia Australia, the all-volunteer force that brings Australian content to the Wikipedia site.

GLAM-WIKI convener and Wikimedia Australia vice-president Liam Wyatt says the conference aims to increase the availability of Australian and New Zealand cultural content through Wikipedia in a sustainable way through collaboration and the open source treatment of cultural items.'

To visit the official wiki of GLAM-Wiki see here

Firehoses and Ladders

Ha! I knew there would be name for it! It's the same old ladder of loyalty again just with a new name and a new channel...and oh, don't forget the 'they' the ones you are after, are oh so much closer in this new space...sending out love to Jim Richardson again.

More here Creating a social media plan for a museum

Nina Simon love...

I really get inspired by almost everything Nina Simon writes...always something of interest that just piques the grey matter...

Here's another great post...

self-identification-and-status-updates

"I've become convinced that successful paths to participation in museums start with self-identification. If you want visitors to share stories or personal expression in your institution, you need to respect them as individuals who have something of value to contribute. The easiest way to do that is to acknowledge their uniqueness and validate their ability to connect with the museum on their own terms. What am I talking about? I'm talking about personal profiles.

Who is the "me" in the museum experience? Museums are surprisingly poor at allowing visitors--even members--to self-identify and relating to them based on their unique identities. Asserting personal identity with respect to an institution is something we do daily in other environments. When I walk into my climbing gym, the staff member at the desk greets me by name. When he looks me up in the computer, he sees how often I come, what classes I’ve taken, and any major safety infractions on record. In short, he knows me by my actions relative to the gym, and he can offer me custom information based on my past behavior. I have a relationship with the institution, mediated by a computer and a smiling face."

Virtuous circle – from visitor to speaker

Here's the type of stat that I would love to see more of. This could be the clincher on how to do it all. But again, it takes significant man hours from your organisation to make these type of connections, or does it? Isn't it merely a refocus of resources? Isn't it a means to unlock content that is not in the format of your usual supply, or to extend the life of the content you have? Is not this what they teach us all in marketing classes....Ladder of Loyalty anyone. I'm sure there's a communication-based model similar...and also a learning/engagement one...(wonder where those notes are?) but for me, it's simple...and as Seb Chan offers up....it works. One connection at a time. Bravo Powerhouse!

Virtuous circle – from visitor to speaker

This short post is for everyone who naively asks about the “ROI of social media” and whether “websites can be proven to result in museum visitation”.

Two years ago Bob Meade wasn’t a regular visitor to the Museum (despite being directly in one of our “target demographics”) let alone a user of our website.

Then we released a bunch of photographs to the Commons on Flickr. These peaked Bob’s interest and reminded him that the Museum existed in his very own home town. (You can read more about that in an interview with Bob from last year – part one, part two.)

Now he’s speaking at one of our weekend talks!

Bob is blogging the prospective content (and museum favourites) of his talk over at his own blog.

It is important to understand that this wasn’t the result of a “marketing strategy” – it was the result of making valuable museum content broadly available and then engaging our communities in honest, personal conversations.

If you are in Sydney, then come along and hear him speak on September 6.

Texting at a Symphony?

Cellphones are hardly applauded in concert halls, where it’s considered gauche to have them turned on, much less to pull them out during a performance. So at a recent Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concert of classics like Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, it was a little surprising when the conductor instructed audience members to take out their phones.

Symphony administrators had decided to let the audience choose the encore by text-messaging votes: “A” for Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown,” or “B” for Wagner’s prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin.” (“Hoedown” won by 23 votes.)

More to the story

Things I should of remembered from 2008

Now, how about a blast from the past? I was at this presentation. I remember it, I remember thinking yes, this is the kind of thing I need to be hearing.

I think I'm also starting to mix it up with one from the 2009 Ticketing conference in Feb this year. But no matter, never hurts to be rousted by a stirring keynote speech...

How's this for some info?

About 14 years ago I learned something about the relationship between many Americans and the arts. I was teaching a general survey course, Intro to Theater, at a small public university in ldaho, a rural state known mainly for its potatoes. On the first day of class each term I would ask the 120 or so students to raise their hands if they had ever seen a professional theater production. About 10 hands would go up. I would then say, "Raise your hand if you would like to see one." 15-20 hands would go up. Remember, this was before podcasting, blogging, YouTube, MySpace, Iphones, and P2P file sharing revolutionized communication and social networking.

So, I would ask of the remaining students, "'Why wouldn't you want to see aplay?" The answer was generally, "I've gone this long without seeing a play, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything."

You don't miss what vou've never had.

Marketing Summit 2008: video Diane Ragsdale - keynote