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On Sunday, February 23rd, I had the pleasure of participating on a panel (Arts Research Now: NYC Dance in Context) at the Dance/NYC Symposium, hosted at the Gibney Dance Center. On the panel with me were: Anne Dunning of Arts Action Research, Ian David Moss of Fractured Atlas, Jennifer Wright Cook of The Field, Monica Valenzuela of Staten Island Arts, and David Johnston of Exploring the Metropolis. The panel was moderated by Pamela Epstein, Assistant Director, Community Arts Development Program, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

I presented some of our research toward the development of ArtsPool’s business plan, which included the convening of a group of 12 arts organizations, varying in size and scope, to serve as a sample set for our research. With this group, we conducted a series of interviews, focus groups, and data gathering, which included reviews of CDP resources, budgets, contracts, corporate documents, etc. Though nuances varied (one group found payroll to be a struggle where another found it to be an easy task), the overall need for better organized and more efficient operations was heavily underscored through our conversations with these developmental participants. Read More…

Some Personal History with Process and Product

As a teenager, once or twice I prepared mailings for a publication that my mother was managing. She taught me that I could accomplish a lot in a small amount of time if I approached it systematically. I also understood that I would earn less if I got it done quickly, but that didn’t seem to matter as much.

Working as a line cook, circa 1989, I learned how to complete high-volume work during a finite time span. There’s nothing quite like cooking and plating 100+ individual dinner orders in a few hours, by yourself, nightly. At the same time, I was continuing to learn the arts admin trade, which had a very different nature.

As a musician working with dancers and choreographers, I spent many hours collaborating in art making. Often impossibly complex and a very different equation than line cooking or administrative work, yet, deeply informative in describing the world constructed around us. In the early 90s, as Co-Director of Movement Research, everything was about process. And, a few years later, accepting my first job as a Finance Director, I began to understand certain things about systems, structures, personalities, and relationships. Also, around this time I first read about the possibilities of something called cloud computing. Read More…