Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

Image courtesy of Wired At last fall's National Innovation Summit for Arts and Culture, organized by EmcArts, the Artistic Director of Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, Jack Reuler gave a great talk about what they have called "radical hospitality." One aspect of that philosophy has been providing free admission to all their performances, recognizing that cost was a significant barrier to building diverse audiences. Here is a  link  to a video of Jack's talk. And  here  is a new interview on HowlRound with Aditi Kapil of Mixed Blood, talking about "the business case for radical hospitality." The case for "free" was also made a few years ago by Chris Anderson in Wired Magazine:  Free! Why $0.00 Is The Future of Business ,  later followed by a book called  Free: The Future of a Radical Price . While for many theatres - or other art forms - such a move may be unthinkable, this strategy may not be as crazy or...

Andrew Taylor's newest blog entry , essentially expounds on another recent blog post written by Sarah Lutman. I have enormous respect for both these thought leaders, and think the issue they explore is critically important, especially in light of the growth in attention to "Creative Placemaking." Sarah, who used to run the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, muses about the current state of the Minnesota Orchestra, and uses the analogy of wine to argue for arts groups that are more deeply rooted to and OF their place. In wine, there is vins d'effort  - wine of effort  - meaning that that is the product of the work of the winemaker, versus vin de terroir - wine of place, or land that is a purer expression of where the wine is from - soil, climate, topography, etc. It does raise the legitimate question of the homogeneity of so many arts organizations, especially in the "classical" arts world. Every orchestra is striving to achieve a generic, global, objective ...