 and welcome to episode four of Discovery, Knight's Weekly Program on the Arts. I'm Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts, and I'm looking forward to today's exploration of insights gleaned from two studies, a special edition of La Placa Cohen's Longitudinal Research Platform Culture Track, focusing on culture and community in a time of crisis, and the recently published Knight's Study, Community Ties, Understanding What Attaches People to Places Where They Live. Links to both reports are posted in chat. Joining me today is Arthur Cohen, president and founder of La Placa Cohen, and resident guru on the topics of the wants and shifting behaviors of cultural consumers. During the session, if you have questions and are watching via Zoom, submit them using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. If on Facebook, live stream, add them to the comments or send in questions using hashtag nightlife on Twitter. And now I'd like to welcome Arthur to Discovery. Hi there. Hi, Victoria, how you doing? Welcome. So Arthur, the aim of the edition of Culture Track was to shed light on how arts and cultural organizations can address the hopes and fears and needs of Americans during the following, following the COVID-19 pandemic. Could you talk about Culture Track in general, this special edition, and then share some key insights to get us started? Sure. Well, as some of your listeners might know, Culture Track has been around, actually the first one occurred after 9-11, 20 years ago, which seems astounding now. We've been through seven different iterations, but as we started encountering the conditions of this year, which were unprecedented, I reached out to my research colleague, Peter Linnett over at Slover Linnett Research based in Chicago and his amazing team. And we decided there was an opportunity to do something together to use the same perspective Culture Track always has had, which is to focus on what we call the kind of hearts and minds of audience members. But now to ask them particular questions about how this health crisis is affecting their behaviors, their hopes, their fears, what they're thinking about, what they're missing, what they need. And to connect that to the sense of community, often that is so profoundly absent at this moment in time. So we started this research effort, which is constructed in waves. What we'll look at today are some very, very brief and selected findings from the first wave, which was in market until about May 19th. And that's an important date to keep in mind because we went into this with a single crisis in mind, which was the health crisis, the COVID crisis. But a few weeks following our completion of collecting the data obviously, was when the issues of racial justice and injustice in this country became so pronounced through the George Floyd incident that now we are in moments of at least dual crises and others, which will absolutely inform, by the way, how we will approach this in the next wave. It's structured in waves because this is an unprecedented moment in terms of both the rapidity and the nature and extent of the change that cultural organizations are navigating through. So we knew that we first had to get in there, develop a kind of baseline of what the insights and perspectives of audience members were, and then build upon that by going back in different points in time to see how those things have shifted. But now we have, again, a different kind of operational context because there's different types of crises, the different elements that are affecting people's behaviors and attitudes and thoughts and hopes, et cetera. So we will continue not only to track many of the issues that came up in this first wave, but go deeper, which I can talk about later in what we will do in the second wave, particularly with an emphasis on issues of social and racial justice. So when you shared with me the fascinating report that you guys have done about the role that culture, among many agents, plays in forming community, I thought I would zero in on a couple of very select findings. This is a huge study, one of the biggest cultural studies ever that we've conducted, comprised of over 125,000 people in every state in the country. So there was a lot of ways that we can slice and dice the data. But what we thought we would do for the sake of this conversation is focus in four very quick snapshots about this interaction and the kind of dynamism between culture and community. So if you'd like, I can go through those quickly now. Please do. Sure. Okay, let's go to the first one. So kind of addressing this first essential question, which is, should cultural organizations be active at this moment of crisis or should we be waiting for things to resolve themselves to some level and then seek to re-enter? And what we heard from the audience is resoundingly that cultural organizations have an active role to play right now, that people really need them. And if I can convey any one kind of big idea as a context setter in this conversation, it is that audiences and people in general are really hurting right now and cultural organizations have a role to play in helping them feel better and also helping reinforce and nurture senses of community. So when we asked people overall archingly, which are the kinds of things, the benefits that they can get from culture that they need most now, perhaps not surprisingly, is just people want to feel better. So 53% of people said, I just want cultural organizations to help me laugh and relax to be that desired other to take me away from so many of the things that I feel each day and I'm confronted with that I can't control, that caused me anxiety, that caused me to feel disconnected and I want a place to go to feel better and culture needs to contribute to that. Also culture as an agent of community, helping people stay connected, knowing that schools have been closed during the health crisis and that kids need access to resources that can help parents keep them engaged and educated while schools are away. Not surprisingly, we see a large kind of functional role that culture can play in helping educate kids while schools are closed. And then finally, this is very emotional notion about offering distraction and escape, being this other, a place that you can breathe in slightly differently and feel things that you don't get to feel enough these days that people want to feel. So the next thing that we learned, if you'll advance, is when we looked at all the different questions we asked and what kind of responses got the biggest kind of nods from the public about the core community needs that culture can play, we aggregated them into four basic kind of buckets that culture has a role in helping people feel connected and in processing and understanding the moment that we're in together and bringing them together. There's a practical role in terms of looking ahead, especially in planning for recovery. The biggest single indicator again, was emotional support, the idea of laughing and relaxing, giving people a source of hope and inspiration. And then very close behind that, the idea of escape, distraction and escape and something else to think about besides the health crisis itself. Martha, I've got a question that came in that relates to this. This is from Newell via Zeme. What partnerships or extensive funding mechanisms are being refostered or explored, if you know of any, to allow cultural organizations to extend this kind of support to communities? Yeah, well, I think it's early in that discussion and I think that what's happening right now is the networks are starting to kind of recalibrate and reconstruct because maybe a bigger thing coming out of this, which we can talk about in a few moments, is the idea of a cultural destination and a center of community are potentially converging, which means that the partnerships that we'll form and we're seeing start to form are not just within what is traditionally considered to be the cultural world, but really cultural entities reaching out to community resources and forming new types of networks to be more expansive and to play a more meaningful role. I wonder if this is also, I don't think it's in one of the slides that you're gonna do, but we also learned through your study and even in nights that while they recognize that arts and culture is really important, that doesn't always translate into funding it or helping to support these art organizations. Yeah, in fact, we saw, we're not gonna show that particular slide, but I'm happy to reference it. So we saw this kind of interesting seeming paradox, which is that most people are aware of the fact that cultural organizations are suffering right now as every organization is, but that does not translate into a propensity to philanthropically support those organizations. In part, we believe, first of all, when we ask which kind of organizations people would be more inclined to support, not surprisingly the very top is human services, community resources, health, et cetera. So the way we look at that is that the value proposition of those in terms of their benefit to community is clear, perhaps, and better understood than the value proposition of many of these cultural organizations in terms of what they are contributing to community right now. So again, it's not that people don't care, it's not that people are unaware of the need the cultural organizations have, but at least at this moment, that's not necessarily translating into the action in terms of an intent to support those organizations relative to other causes they can support. Right. Should we just to finish up on a couple of other quick slides if you want to advance? Sure. So this is kind of interesting and maybe related to what we were just talking about, which is that almost everyone we spoke to, 96%, identified ways that arts and cultural organizations can help their communities during this crisis. So clearly they see a role, but where the real paradox or where the perhaps work to be done presents itself is that only one out of three of the people that we spoke to overall actually saw cultural organizations playing this role at this moment in time. So that delta, the gap between understanding, acknowledging, and expecting that cultural organizations will be leaning in and involved and participating in this moment versus actually seeing examples of that happening in people's communities, that really represents work to be done. Finally, on the next slide, actually the other way. Oh, sorry, go back one, yeah. So this is the future focused question where we ask, okay, we're not just evaluating or assessing what the role that culture can play in our lives today in the midst of this crisis and now these multiple crises, but we're also saying the question, what kinds of changes would make arts and cultural organizations better for you in the future? And we let people choose from a huge list. And first of all, the majority, the vast majority of people said they should change, three and four, and depending on what slice geographically or demographically, the number is only higher and those who agree that organizations should change, but what's really interesting. And again, this was before the issues of racial injustice became so much more in the forefront of the conversation as it has in the past few weeks, that issues of inclusivity and community as a whole represented the areas that people felt there was the greatest potential for change and improvement that would make these organizations more important, more relevant, more meaningful in their lives, followed by opportunities just to make places less formal, more fun and more child friendly, and then being a bit more kind of narrative and approach and taking an active role in helping gender reflection and innovation through conveying stories and more frequent new things to see. But what I'm really focused on in this chart is this first column because my hunch and one of the things that we'll want to track as we move into the next wave of research is whether these numbers in this kind of blue chart about inclusivity and community will actually continue to rise because we are now perhaps more aware than we've been in a very long time of the need to engage all agents of community to bring people together, to be gathering places, to be places of connection and shared experience. So I think that relates to another question that we've got. This is Vanessa. How is this impacting social justice arts or black indigenous people of color led organizations at this time of Black Lives Matter? Well, Vanessa, there's a couple of things I'd point out. I read that amazing thing by Willis Thompson today about his work in this area. And one of the first things that I think that needs to be acknowledged is that this work isn't just being created now. There is just, I think, a greater awareness of work that has addressed these issues and continues to address it, perhaps with greater urgency than ever before. So it's an ongoing discussion and it is a part of an ongoing dialogue and condition that is expressing itself through art and is likely to only increase. I think the difference is that perhaps a lot of established cultural organizations are just getting a little bit more caught up with it and understanding their role in helping support and showcase these kinds of works and these kinds of artists. But it's not as if there hasn't been a need and there hasn't been expressions of this art around these topics before. It's just perhaps that our awareness of it is shifting. So we've got another question that relates more, I think, to the maybe a misunderstanding or just a question about who actually was in the study. This is from Gilda. She's asking, can you be more specific in the variety of cultural institutions you are using in your study? Sure, I didn't wanna show too much detail today because of the time we have together, but I have a great guide that's a lot smarter than I will be able to explain it. But essentially it's every kind of organization. We reached out to organizations from local community art centers to the biggest museums, operas, and performance centers in the country to have a really robust range of organizations of all different levels of staffing, operating budgets, all different sizes of communities. And then we went back and we redoubled our efforts to make sure that organizations that particularly focus on communities of color and non-traditional arts-based organizations are also represented. And that's how we built up this list of 125,000. And then we added on to the from the Amerispeak panel coming out of the University of Chicago's North Center, a group that is not defined as or derived from art and cultural participation, but rather more represents the general US population so that we can look for some comparisons and contrasts without that. Our attempt was to throw a very wide net, but that said, it's never wide enough and we intend to go even broader and represent an even more diverse and inclusive population in the next time that we do this, which will be in September. Another question I think that's related to that that you're probably gonna look at in your second phase is this, how do you include other cultures in the arts and communities that have a large singular majority cultural group? It's really hard. First of all, I think there needs to be the intent and the willingness on the part of the large arts organizations to not always have to define their role as being the authority, but also to be the host and kind of gracious neighbor, meaning that the spaces that they occupy, the way they present work is not a one directional generative model, but rather one in which not only are they presenting, but they're also inviting other voices, other communities in to present from different perspectives and enlarge the conversation and enlarge the range of individuals and voices that are being represented in their spaces. So from the night study, one of the things that we found were that people often find it difficult to access arts and culture where they live. And what they actually said was that arts and cultural activities were the forced most difficult urban amenity to access nationally. After affordable housing, public transit and job opportunities. But people who chose their city based on sort of cultural amenities, we had a, there was a real difference between people of color thought they were actually more important to them in that than the white respondents did. And yet as you've discovered, so many of the people that you interviewed and that institutions as a whole have as their patrons are white. So it's, to me, it's all about this diversity issue, but also within that, you and I were talking the other day about it's, it can be money, it can be lack of transportation, it can be jobs that prevent you from being able to do what is scheduled at a certain institution. I also have a question around, are people offering the type of arts that a large group of people want to see? But then you talked about this threshold fear. It also plays a part in this. Yeah, well, you know, it's not a new idea, but it's one that is very important, I think to always keep in mind, which is that access is not solely defined by physical access. There are a number of conditions around physical access and the ability through transportation and other notions to have the physical ability to attend or participate in a place. But one seems what seems to be at least, it perhaps not even more important is the notion of whether that access is seen as inclusive, meaning this idea of threshold fear is simply that do people have the desire or interest or kind of conviction to walk across the threshold and actually go into and enter these spaces. And that has so much to do with relevance and a sense of inclusion and invitation, meaning if people look at a place, a cultural organization, for example, and don't see people who look like them or don't even see a range of different types of people, that for many is a signal that they are not invited, that they are not included, that this is not a space for them. So overcoming that threshold fear, there are many different kind of ways to address it, but you have to first of all acknowledge that it's an issue. Acknowledge that some people are self-selecting out of even participating regardless of physical access because they are perceiving you as to be a place that is not welcoming, not for people like them. One of the interesting things, and you and I discussed this briefly, one interesting thing that came up in our study is the increased use of technology for cultural experiences, particularly over these past few months. And the fact that it is possible that technology, if served upright in terms of cultural content, can eliminate the threshold from the threshold fear because what we're seeing is the people who are engaging with culture and technology that in many art forms, there are many, many people who are connecting with cultural content from an organization who have, A, not physically walked into or experienced that organization in at least the last year, which speaks to a great audience development opportunity, but B, when we actually drill down and start looking at who is accessing cultural content online, we're finding that it's a more diverse audience often than the physical organizations themselves, meaning that we have not only an opportunity to increase audience and engage more people through tech in culture, but also to diversify and invite more people in because it may be the case that these technological channels can circumvent the perceptions of not being included, the threshold fears that are so often triggered. I think the other really interesting thing about this integration of technology at this time is almost the creation of new medias. That we are exploring a very different way. Alberto was talking about sort of in the land of permission now where everything doesn't have to be perfect. And people are in some cases throwing things together, but at least what I've seen in dance is people starting to choreograph when you can't be in the same space and then using technology to create new methods of expression with that in theater. I've been watching theater almost nightly and the presentations are really different. And so part of that question is post this, dear God, when we come out of this, that isn't there a need to have both? You know, as much as I love to actually be in a theater and to have that corporate experience, but you have this different way of being very open. And as you just said, anybody can access that, the anybody here obviously is, you still have to look at the digital divide and who actually has access to the ability to do this. But it's just opening up for me a really different form of creativity. Yeah, I love that idea because I think we're at a transformational point. I think when you talk, for example, to people in the tech industry, they say that all of these factors that are leading to this kind of emergence of a new role and new relevance for tech, they all existed before, but they've all now been supercharged and fast forwarded out of necessity because of the crises that we've been in. But when one thinks about it in terms of cultural experience, I think before there was a sense it's an either or that tech and digital experience was always in service to the primacy of the physical and the tactile experience. And the tactile, the tangible will always be singular and unique. But I think what is emerging is the idea that there could be parallel tracks as opposed to a subordinate relationship, a parallel track between the kind of content and experience that is developed to be physical and that which is conceived of and native to the format of tech and that is delivered digitally. That these things can actually be two different forms of expression and experience that can live side by side as opposed to one being only derived by an often secondary to the other. And we're already seeing that. I mean, you know, these plays that are being executed as Zoom chats, they're amazing to me. The way that these Instagram live performances and other YouTube feeds are taking advantage of the platform to create a sense of immediacy to provide context and background for the art creative process, perhaps in a way the physical experience hasn't been able to. So it seems to me this is a great moment of opportunity. So a couple of questions related to that and some we've talked about. One is that most of our organizations haven't been able to monetize what they're doing. So they're able to keep in contact with people but they're not able to generate revenue from that. But here's one from Hadassah who's saying during this time where physical access to these organizations isn't possible. A lot of people are just accessing through websites and those tend to be members or other people that naturally were a part of the group to begin with. But in this case, so how do you get up the word that institutions are available for anyone who is interested? Yeah, well, I think the website access, you know, that didn't come up as strongly in our work at these other channels, which is the content that people are releasing through more shared platforms, social media platforms, for example. So what's also interesting, and I don't know if this is the exact answer to the question you're looking for, Hadassah, but we see interestingly that digital experiences actually can create communities around them because they're communities of shared interest that can aggregate or be defined because the content, the artist, the performer, the generator of the work, whether it's an organization or an individual, is sending something out there that anyone who's interested in can have access to and by accessing it is immediately connected with like-minded shared interest others and that these represent opportunities for a different type of community building and audience building. The income and revenue generating question is huge and I can't answer it yet, no one can. Well, what we learned in our study, I think, is the percentage of people who can cite paying for cultural content at this moment in time online was something like 13%, it was very low. And obviously that represents real challenges for the future financial business models of cultural organizations. But it's also the platform because they've seen non-traditional competitors, people from the for-profit sector who present creative content, been able to find ways to monetize and to build audience. So what I imagine is that some of those practices will transfer into the nonprofit and public cultural sectors and that there will be an emergence of perhaps new ways of creating community and perhaps creating a monetization opportunity around those communities as some are starting to see, but for example, doing an online performance that is gated, that requires a ticket price. Paywall. So we're just starting to learn about it. There's so much work to be done, it's a huge challenge but there does seem to be the interest and as long as that demand exists at the foundational level, it speaks to I think an opportunity and the potential. So Arthur, this next question and we're getting close to our time and I do want you to be able to talk about the second wave as people are asking about it as well. But one of these questions, this is from Eugene. What efforts are being made to bring those thresholds closer to the neighborhoods of those who are reluctant to cross through them? And I'm wondering if that relates some to some of your implications. Well, I wonder if what you mean is the physical neighborhood or the kind of neighborhood of relevance, you know? I don't know, maybe Eugene will respond and I can tell you. Because I think that this is absolutely a transformational moment and when I speak with different cultural organizations, you can kind of tell right now which group they're in, whether they're in the group that's just kind of waiting for this to pass so that they can in their minds re-engage with and pick up where things got left off versus those that understand that this is a moment of complete structural and perhaps societal reset and that the role that cultural organizations are gonna play in the future is going to evolve and transform and I think be much, much more community focused and obviously to be community focused, to be much more inclusive and relevant to a broader and more diverse range of people. I think this is just what the new norm that will emerge from this will be and there will be people who will lead this and others who will follow but it will become, I think, the performance standard for what a truly important, relevant and meaningful cultural organization will be in the future. So why don't you talk about your second wave? Sure, thanks. So we have spent a lot of time getting feedback on the first round of information that we just shared last week and you can go to the culturecheck.com website over 6,000 people have downloaded our Key Insights Report in the past week so thanks for that, that's amazing. But there's three areas that we're particularly focused in based on the needs that are out there. One, not surprisingly, is looking much more deeply and approaching the way we even construct and ask questions with an eye towards racial and social justice issues. There is absolutely a growing expectation, demand from the audience that cultural organizations and the cultural world at large play an active role in this discussion and lead the way by example. So we wanna look at that from the viewpoint through the eyes of the audience. How are they experiencing it? What are their expectations? What will they be looking for in the future? So that is a huge area for us. One of the other areas that people are really interested in as Victoria alluded to before is technology. This is an ongoing discussion that is changing and transforming and evolving so rapidly that we feel it warrants going even deeper and to kind of both catch up with the continued changes in behavior and perceptions around technology particularly as a channel for cultural expression. And to come back in a few months and say, well, what are you doing now and how is this informing how you might be doing things different in the future when we're not at this moment of necessity but rather you're making the choice about which channel which type of experience you wanna have to get your culture. And then the third point is that because we are now going into a period where the restrictions on behavior and the opportunity to physically re-encounter and re-enter cultural spaces is gonna become more prevalent. We've seen not a linear progression to that and a couple steps backwards as well but there will be more and more examples of cultural entities reopening and re-inviting people in. So we wanna know from the audience perspective, how's that going? Are you confident enough and comfortable enough to re-enter these spaces? If you are, what are the experiences you're having? Cause one of the things that we all have to acknowledge is that all of a sudden these are spaces where people with different points of view about health and hygiene behaviors for example will be put in proximity to one another. What happens when that happens and what role does the cultural organization hosting that experience have in either arbitrating or enforcing behaviors and standards of activity between people? So that's kind of a great unknown right now that we'll want to understand particularly from the perspective of the audience to see how it affects their propensity and interest in re-entering and participating in the future. I'm excited about the second wave. We've gotten so many interesting questions that we're out of time for but I can tell you that some of these about the need for policy or the overarching structure of large government and NGOs is a question. One came in about how about the traditional model of intellectual property control when we have all these things that are being done online. I can promise you as we continue with discovery sessions we're going to look at these. So I want to thank all of you for joining us today. A special thank you to Knight's IT and Combs Department that have become television production teams and they're the best. I also a very special thanks to our guest Arthur Cohen. The beats at the beginning of the show were created by Knight's own Chris Barr and the music that will play us out by Akron jazz pianists and composer Theron Brown. Next Friday's discovery will be hosted by Priya Sarkar, director of arts at night and her guest will be Joy Bailey Bryant of Lord Cultural Resources, the topic, meeting people where they are. Again, thank you so much. Please join us next Friday at one o'clock. Have a great day.