IdeaJones

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  • Arts Life — Dispatch From The Trenches #2

    As we gather information from those who know about promoting artists and arts groups, we're sharing them. May your art thrive!
    As we gather information from those who know about promoting artists and arts groups, we’re sharing them. May your art thrive!

    Let’s call this one Why Should Anyone Give A Rat’s?

    A conversation I had with someone at a gallery today brought back conversations I’ve had in the past with “gatekeepers,” the people who decide whether or not to cover something. These are editors, producers, reporters, critics — people who look at your press release, press kit, what-have-you and decide if there’s a story there. If they don’t see what will interest a reader, listener or viewer, your event won’t be mentioned.

    I’ve been given some pointers on how to make a project, or event, more appealing to a gatekeeper. I’m sharing what I’ve been told in hopes some of it will prove useful (and so I remember it myself). The idea of this lesson breaks into a few parts, so we’ll start with:

    How are you saying it?

    An idea can be more or less interesting depending on how you put it. I don’t mean “spin,” that manipulation that seeks to gild cowflops and call them gold nuggets. I mean looking at your event for what is new, unusual, or interesting about it. For example: I recently spoke with a man who organizes concerts and musical performances for a nonprofit. He was frustrated by their low success rate at getting noticed in the larger arts scene in the region.

    So we talked about a recent event he’d worked on, a concert by an elderly guitarist. Sounds ripping, right? Well, I asked a few more questions and using the techniques I’d been taught, the concert with the elderly guitarist became a “rare performance by an influential musician, an expert in classical and flamenco guitar…” All of which was true. The man rarely performs any more, and was a teacher who influenced other up-and-coming musicians, including one who opened for him.

    Not spin — what you say must be true and defensible. You should be able to make a strong case for what you’re saying if you need to. Look at your subject. What’s unusual about it?

  • Arts Life – Dispatch From The Trenches

    Arts Life – Dispatch From The Trenches

    Mistakes You Could Be Making 1 IdeaJones
    Mark and I once attended a panel discussion for writers on gaining attention for projects from the media. Editors, news producers, and people who were good at promoting their projects talked about how to approach the media when you want to get your project in front of the public.

    Then I agreed to help a few artists with their online promotion. I knew a bit about it, but sought guidance from people who were professionals on how to go about it.

    I’ve been gathering information on promoting yourself, or your arts group, on a limited budget. Today, I was speaking with representatives from a few local arts groups about what I’ve learned. Disclaimer — I’ve been good about doing these things for other people and not as regular about doing them for myself. I’m working on that. It’s a learning process, and I’m always learning. I’ve seen these things work. In this and future posts, I’ll share the lessons my teachers give me. Some of the information may be familiar, but there’s probably at least one tip that will help you better navigate the choppy waters of promotion. To start, a few basics:

    1) Take advantage of your opportunities.

    As I like to tell performers and artists, “People can’t want something until they know it exists.” They may have a vague idea they want something, but they can’t want to come to, say, your concert if they don’t know you, or the concert, exists.

    Increasingly people go online when looking for something to do. There are online events calendars like Eventful, and here in Sacramento, Sacramento365. Many local radio and tv stations, newspapers and magazines have their own online event calendars where their listeners, viewers and readers go to find entertainment choices. These are usually free to use. If you don’t have a budget large enough for advertising, or even if you do, you should take advantage of these services.

    Your local television station may have a morning show. Watch the show. See what they include that isn’t news, weather or traffic. Note how long the show is — longer shows often have guests in after the first half hour or hour is done. A two-hour show has time to fill every day, five days a week. More about this in another post.

    2) Understand what you want.

    For example, at our local public radio station, nonprofit groups can:

    1) Apply for PSAs (Public Service Announcements, very short on-air mentions of upcoming events),
    2) Post events to the Event Calendar (this one’s also available to for-profit groups/performers),
    3) Pitch events to a locally-produced show to be the focus of a segment on the air (more about this in another post).

    Applying for each of these is a separate process and submitted individually. If you only want to post to the calendar, you can do just that. If you want to be on the air, either with a PSA or on a show, you submit for each of these separately and it goes to a different person.

    “Why can’t they just look at the Event Calendar and give us a PSA or put us on the air?” (Another version: “Why can’t they just read our PSA and put our event on the calendar and…”).

    Because they don’t have time. Because it’s not that person’s job (that isn’t the only thing that person does all day — it’s one of many). That station or that paper makes this available to the community as a resource. Taking advantage of it is up to you.

    3) Don’t do it at the last minute.

    Stations may schedule PSAs a month in advance. Some shows line up guests 4 weeks or more ahead — and if they have a sudden cancellation they need to fill, they look at information about upcoming events they wished they could include but didn’t have time for.

    4) Follow the directions.

    Each event site has its own format. They don’t have meetings where they all decide one way to do it. Wherever you go, there will be directions. Follow them. To the letter. It shows respect for the opportunity, for one thing.

    It really isn’t hard. Have the following information handy before you start:

    * Name of the event
    * Date/time of the event
    * Location
    * Ticket price if any
    * Where you go to get tickets (website, physical box office, etc.)
    * Organization hosting the event
    * Name/email/phone of a contact person to call for the public to call for more information (if you just want them to go to a website, fine, what’s the link?).
    * Name/email/phone of a contact person for the station, paper, etc. to contact for more info (maybe not the same as for the general public).
    * A brief description of the event that tells why it’s interesting (and by brief I mean 2-3 sentences. Some sites have a limit on characters). More on that in an upcoming post.
    * Anything people might need to know (is the venue ADA accessible? Is there free parking — and if so, where? ).

    Go to the website (for tv and radio stations, you can search “television station” and your city to find some to get you started). Click on “Events” and look for a button for “Submit your event.” Follow directions. You can post your event to several sites in an hour if you have all of that ready to cut n’ paste on your computer, or on a sheet of paper you can look at to type it in.

    5) Limit yourself.

    Unless you have someone who is organized, enthusiastic, reliable and has buckets of free time, it’s not necessary to blanket the world — in fact, starting out this can be a mistake. You want to find out which online sites produce the best results for you, and this can vary. For example, if you play classical guitar, the local acid rock station might get you a few interested people as many people like more than one type of music, but if you have a public radio station, that’s probably going to be more productive.

    The strategy suggested to me is to start out with the basics (here that’s Eventful, Sacramento365, CapRadio.org, and the local papers). Make sure you enter your events on their calendars reliably. See how things look in three months. Add another and see if it makes a difference. If not, you can probably drop that one and try another.

    Don’t feel bad about not doing more — pay attention to what you’re doing so you know what’s working for you and what isn’t.

    I’ve been given more useful information, and will share it in future posts. But in the meantime, don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. Promotion is your friend. Like any good friend, if you treat it with respect, you’ll reap the benefits.

  • Learning Tips From A Tutor — Don’t Get Married For The Wedding

    Working with a friend who is seeking his GED, we talked about how he came so close when he took the GED test before, and what he can do differently this time. He was within a point of getting his GED when he took the test, a heartbreaker, and I respect him for trying again.

    When we talked about how he prepared for the test last time, I realized that he had concentrated so hard on the test, as though that would be the end of the process. He’s also studying to become licensed as a truck driver. I helped him study and pointed out that he was so fixed on the test itself, he’d lost sight of the real goal, a career. The license is necessary but the exam, and the license, isn’t the goal. Those are steps to the goal, which would be the career that followed. “You’re studying for the test,” I told him, “but the test is just to show that you know the information you’ll need when you’re doing the job. Don’t study for the test, study for the career, so you’ll know this stuff and be able to use it.”

    He blinked at me. “That’s what I do,” he said. “I study for the test. I did the same thing with the GED. I didn’t study to understand it and be able to use it — I studied to pass the test. This time I’m studying for understanding more than for the test, so I’m remembering more.” It’s true. His English has improved so much in the past year. He’s worked hard, and it shows. He hasn’t just memorized things; he’s understanding concepts. “It’s like when someone gets married for the wedding,” he told me. “A wedding isn’t about the wedding. It’s about the marriage and the years and the life that follow.”

    And learning is about understanding. Yes, we need to pass the tests, but the tests are to show that we understand and can, hopefully, make use of the information. My friend has stopped studying for the test, or, as he puts it, getting married for the wedding, and he’s really learning.

  • Happy Halloween!

    Happy Halloween!

    Happy Halloween 2 IdeaJonesI have fond memories of Trick or Treat. I could only do it when I was very young as we moved after that to several places where we had no close neighbors, but when I was five, Halloween was a very big deal. The selection of a costume was crucial as Halloween only came once a year, which meant it would be an eternity plus an eon before I could choose another costume, in Kid Time.

    When I was five, I wanted to go as Mr. Ed. If you’re younger, you may be interested to know that there were once shows on television that featured talking horses, talking cars… the 60s were an interesting time. Anyway, Mr. Ed was the talking horse and star of his own show, a beautiful Palomino with a somewhat goofy, sometimes dry sense of humor (at five, you don’t realize the horse’s voice comes from an actor reading lines).

    I was madly in love with Mr. Ed and wanted to marry him, to my mother’s consternation. She tried explaining that it would work because he couldn’t eat at the dining table with us (we didn’t have room for a trough), and he couldn’t sleep in my bedroom. I shrugged that off and said we’d figure out something, and I could sleep in the barn. Mom said again that I couldn’t marry Mr. Ed. When I asked why, she said it was because he was already married. There was already a Mrs. Ed. Being a good girl, this meant he was off limits. Note that she didn’t try to say it wouldn’t work because Mr. Ed was a horse. In our family, we were used to believing six or more impossible things before breakfast, like Alice in Wonderland.

    Anyway, to help assuage my broken heart, she told me I could go trick or treating as Mr. Ed… but we couldn’t find a costume. Nowhere in Santa Cruz, and not even in the neighboring towns, which we tried. I was down, but Mom, who usually made my costumes (it was a big deal that she tried so hard to buy me one in respect for my being disappointed in love and all), said she would make me a costume. Although she was talented, she said there wasn’t time to make a horse head. Was there anything else I might like?

    I thought about it and told her I wanted to go as a tomato. All these years later, I don’t remember what it was about tomatoes that was so appealing, but I was determined. If not Mr. Ed, I wanted to be a tomato.

    She tried. She really did. Mom was a talented seamstress with a lot of inventive flair, but her best efforts left me looking more like an unfortunate medical condition than a healthy, ripe tomato. And it was the night before Halloween. In a burst of desperation, she declared I would be Santa Claus. Santa Claus? On Halloween? That just made no sense (whereas marrying a horse or being a tomato seemed altogether rational). She finished my costume and I wore it to school the next day, where kids laughed and asked me why Santa Claus. I explained that I was supposed to be a tomato but it didn’t work, which just confused everyone more.

    Came Halloween evening. Forcing a smile, I trudged out with the other kids and parents to go Trick or Treating, dreading having to explain at every single house that I was really a failed tomato. At the first house, the woman who opened the door exclaimed, “Santa Claus! That’s great!” She called everyone in the family to come see the little Santa. Versions of that happened at almost every house. People told me over and over how funny, how cute, how brilliant, even how scary (from someone who was already dreading holiday shopping) it was to go out on Halloween as Santa Claus. And I took in a real haul of candy. I was showered with Pixie Sticks, chocolate bars, even handfuls of coins. I made out like a whiskered, red-suited bandit.

    That’s the thing about Halloween. It can surprise you. May your surprises all be happy ones.

  • Learning Tips From A Tutor — Change It Up!

    I’ve been a literacy tutor for years, both formally (paid professional) and informally (volunteer), and have picked up a few tricks for learning, which I shared with a friend who came here from another country and is studying for both the GED exam and a work exam that could mean a better-paying job. For both of these, he needs to master information so he can recall it and use it under stress (exam pressure and being timed).

    The work test is a licensing exam to drive “big rigs,” tractor-trailer trucks. He needs to master a pre-trip checklist that he’d perform for the licensing test, and again before each driving assignment. When we saw each other last week, he was feeling some anxiety about the test and remembering all the items on the checklist. I suggested he try some methods for increasing retention, including this one, which he found helpful:

    When trying to learn a list, whether it’s a list of words, a list of names and dates, or a list of operations you have to perform, change up how you learn the list. Just as the nose gets accustomed to a scent that doesn’t go away and stops noticing it, the brain can get bored with repeating the same thing over and over and largely check out of the process, so while you’re repeating it, most of the brain is ignoring it as something that isn’t changing and therefore doesn’t need attention.

    Change the list. Try it from the last thing backwards to the first. Then from the first item to the last. Then find a point in the middle and go forward from there, or backward. In his case, instead of going through the checklist from the front of the truck back to the tail lights, he began starting at the tail lights and going back until he finished at the headlights, or starting in the middle at the front of the trailer, doing the list for the trailer, then going through the checklist for the cab. Changing it up forced his brain to continue to notice it. It was always slightly new, and therefore couldn’t be done on autopilot. His brain had to pay attention.

    This is a lumpy, awkward process the first time you try it. Your brain wants to get through something and be done with it. It doesn’t want a thing to keep changing. So expect this to feel like trying to start off walking with a different foot than you usually start with, or use your left hand when you’re right-handed.

    He reported back that his retention had improved a lot. He now feels readier for the test, and if the examiner gets a phone call in the middle of it, interrupting the flow, my friend is ready to continue on from that point after being interrupted — something that throws people who learn a list from beginning to end in only one way.