The Audience is Changing, so what are you going to do about it?

In a soon-to-be published paper presented for the Coloquio Internacional in Lisboa, Portugal, Ann and her co-author Alan Brown detail the shifting landscape of engagement as the public moves from "audience" to "participant." 

Faced with excess capacity, changing demographics, and new technology, traditional theatre owners, live performance companies, performing artists and musicians are struggling to find and maintain audiences. Conventional ways of doing so—marketing, outreach, incentives— are failing.

Why? Narrow programming is one culprit, as is the fact that contemporary audiences care as much about the setting as the performance itself. Finally, participants are seeking greater engagement in the act of artistic creation, including co-curation, which is a very challenging idea for some arts organizations. How should they respond? ​

You, Your Career, and Big Data

It’s 2013, and the world is waking up to the concept of “Big Data.”  There are volumes of information being collected about what we like, where we are, and who we're talking to.  We’re asking ourselves: what does this mean for us personally and professionally?  What does this mean for our organizations?  Is this the beginning of an Orwellian privacy nightmare or is this the start of a new transparency paradigm where everybody wins? 

Modern Survey co-founder and CEO Patrick Riley will share what Big Data is, where it came from, and what it means for your life and your career in the years ahead. Learn how employers think about Big Data and how to develop and manage your ‘personal brand’ as we accelerate into the information age. 

The High Price of Work and Who’s Paying It?

In many and perhaps most cases, people in the arts, advocacy and social service are modestly paid (often without benefits) and subsidize the work of their organizations with their labor. Both by their behavior (giving long hours to the work and fewer to the cultivation of life outside of work) and by the allocation of resources (focusing on program and giving short shrift to savings), many at midlife find themselves stuck in a difficult place. Although the benefits of a life anchored in a noble purpose are huge, more and more people are unable to move through their careers, change their pace, and age in a way that is both satisfying and sustainable for them and beneficial to our communities.

The implications of the changing economy and the apparent revision of our social contract are huge.  Together, however, we could adjust the price of good work and better share its costs and benefits. ​

Creating a Career to Match Life’s Ages and Stages

Boomers are leaving behind the traditional image of retirement, the last third of life defined by saying goodbye to the workplace forever. We’re moving into a post-retirement era, less a model of disengagement from work and neighborhood to one of engagement in work and community. The returns on working longer are financial and emotional. Work represents both an income and a social environment. The logic of boomer engagement in the workplace is so powerful that it is likely to sweep aside many legal barriers and corporate practices that conspire to keep older workers from achieving their full potential.

The boomer realization that we’re working longer will also profoundly shape how younger generations think about their careers and their jobs. They’ll learn from boomers that they have time to experiment, to try different careers, to alternate the rhythm of their lives, sometimes pushing themselves deep into their careers and at other times exploring other meaningful opportunities.

A Baseball Prescription: A tonic in nine innings

You may never have heard of Hippocrates Cafe, because most of the live show's 15 original programs are presented for private audiences, at medical meetings and symposia, or as fund-raisers for nonprofit organizations. Exploring topics like memory loss, coping with cancer, and serving the under-served, Hippocrates Cafe illuminates health care through story and song, performed by leading Twin Cities' actors and musicians, and hosted by Dr. Jon Hallberg, the Cafe's creator.

On July 8th Hippocrates Cafe is coming to the Republic Seven Corners for a rare public performance. Hallberg, who is among the Twins' cohort of team physicians, will offer his unusual take on healthcare and baseball, in an entertaining, informative, wistful look at how baseball relates to our minds, bodies, and spirits. Dr. Hallberg will be joined by performers Mark Nelson, Kris Nelson, T. Michael Rambo, Dan Newton, and Robert Bell.

Renaissance man Jon Hallberg is not just a physician and Associate Professor at the U of M. He is the medical director of the innovative and award-winning Minnesota Physicians' Mill City Clinic; a regular commentator on MPR's All Things Considered with Tom Crann, and manages the Fisch Art of Medicine Student Awards Program which allows medical students to explore the arts in ways that are not possible in the regular medical school curriculum. 

New Ideas and New Forms in Cultural Media

Doug McLennan, founder and editor of Artsjournal.com, is a writer, editor, and producer of media focused on culture and increasingly on technology. As media has changed, so have Doug's activities. You might find him teaching at the Annenberg/Getty School of Journalism at USC, creating a MOOC for the Ojai Festival, or building a pop-up newsroom for the Humana Festival.

Doug will talk about some new approaches to cultural media projects in other cities. Then Dena Alspach, Kaywin Feldman, and Laura Zabel will respond with thoughts about how their organizations are approaching media and why.

The inaugural What’s Up Pop Up

Stanford Thompson is the dynamic founder of Play On Philly! an El-Sistema-inspired program serving hundreds of children from Philadelphia's low income communities who study music every day after school. A 2009 graduate of the esteemed Curtis Institute of Music, Stanford was inspired by his experience as an Abreu Fellow, when he spent several months in Venezuela learning about that country's government-sponsored music program that involves some.200,000  children and has led to the development of one of the world's great orchestras, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra.

Bringing that vision home, Stanford founded Play On Philly and has become one of our nation's most articulate and passionate advocates for using music to intervene in the lives of low-income children. Hear about his experiences at Play On Philly and his vision for classical music's future.