Future of the Arts
Jessica Ryan and
Future of the Arts
keeping this one one the radar.
The Great Work: Alchemy and the Power of Words – Paul Kingsnorth
Paul Kingsnorthemergencemagazine.org
On one hand, this trend is potentially devastating for the performing arts industry. On the other hand, this challenge may represent a revolutionary opportunity for these organizations to fundamentally adapt engagement methods and means to change up these experiences as we currently know them – or at least to change up business models so that they
... See moreColleen Dilenschneider • The Pandemic Has STILL Shifted the Types of Cultural Entities People Prefer to Visit
The notion that non-profit culture is much smaller than for-profit because fewer people participate is flat wrong. What sticks out in the comparison is the disparity in culture monetization. Per-attendee economics, in round numbers, are instructive. Disney’s domestic parks pull about $190 from each guest in admissions and in-park spending. An NFL game with concessions runs $150 or more. A movie ticket: roughly $11. A nonprofit theatre seat: $25 to $50. A museum visit: $0 to $25, average closer to $10 once you weight free admission and discounted hours. a single Disney park visit is monetized roughly twenty times as aggressively as a museum visit. An NFL game extracts about fifteen times what a museum visit does.
The commercial cultural economy isn’t bigger because more people show up. It’s bigger because each attendance gets monetized at a very different scale. This isn’t a moral judgment: extraction at scale is what for-profit models are built to do and they do it well. But it means the non-profit sector’s economic “smallness” is structural on purpose, not evidence of marginal cultural standing. The free museum, the priced-for-access regional theatre, the subsidized concert ticket — these aren’t bugs in the design, they are the design.