Author: johnob21

Is there an opportunity for Ireland’s arts and culture industry to carve out a niche in the Event Cinema Market? After all, this is a market that has grown from nothing to almost $1 billion dollars in just under a decade; it’s a market that allows the Metropolitan Opera (the Art form with the smallest audience in the world) to post profits in the millions of dollars on its cinema seasons; it allows the National Theatre of Great Britain to reach audiences it would not otherwise reach, (sometimes in excess of 100,000 per performance) and it allows for occasional hits to break cinema box office records as in the case of Billy Elliot, The RSC’s Richard II, and of course the irrepressible Andre Rieu (who recently pushed himself to the top of the Box Office again). It also allows for exhibitions by Museums and Galleries to share both the objects and – more importantly – the stories behind them with hundreds of thousands of people around the world who would never otherwise experience them. It’s given cinema owners access to a whole new audience,  its generated a host of new distribution businesses and its opened arts and culture providers to new business models and investment sources. (Digital Theatre has built an impressive business model around an ever-increasing catalogue of live events for private consumption through an impressive subscription strategy and significant venture fund investment). Julie Taymor’s recent production of A Midsummernight’s Dream carried the art form a step further by being – to my knowledge – the first Event Cinema production to take an award at a Film Festival. Without a doubt Event Cinema is one of the more effective bridges between the cultural and creative industries.

After two years of research and networking, analyzing the business models, the marketing strategies,  the audience distribution and behavour within this industry the answer to the opening question is a resounding yes. With the following caveats:

Continue reading Event Cinema and Ireland’s Culture Industry

Have you ever walked into a bar, or a restaurant, or a shop, or even into a friends house and experienced a feeling of being unwelcome? You know the one, when everybody at the bar looks at you kinda suspicious like and you know they’re all thinking “you’re not from around here, are you”. Nearly every single time that happens we close the door and head on down the street, or we make our excuses to our friend and get the hell out of their house as soon as possible and make arrangements to meet them somewhere “neutral” next time. Why is that? It’s simple, if I open a door and I don’t see me or my people staring back at me, then there’s no way I’m staying.  Truth be told I didn’t come here to meet you, I came here to meet me.  Think about this the next time you look at your website, or your print material. People don’t want to see you, they want to see themselves. Continue reading You’re not from around here, are you? You, your audience and your Online Presence.

I’ve asked a lot of people and organisations for money and stuff over the years. Some people have said yes and some have said no. I’ve attended workshops and seminars, and researched the psychology of the ask and there’s a couple of principles you should always keep in mind. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking for a grant, a donation or an investment.

The first principle is the most important: nobody ever gave money to somebody they didn’t know. Continue reading “You Want me to Give you WHAT??!” How to ask for money and stuff.

The story going around, particularly in Ireland,  is that Arts and Culture are not – and can never be – a business because it can never ever turn a profit. Arts and Culture – by their very nature – are not commercial assets and are not worthy of investment. I mean look at all the struggling artists and small arts organisations fighting for a small piece of the tiny pool of state support. While it may or may not have a certain intrinsic or social value it’s just not a realistic investment risk.

Yet, according to Niamh Bushnell, Dublin’s Start-up Commissioner, 95% of all start-ups fail. 95%. That’s a hell of an attrition rate. It means that the risk of investing in a start-up is at least equal to, if not greater than, investing in arts and culture. And we need to bear in mind that no industry has a 100% hit rate. The market failure that we associate with Arts and Culture (and that is used to justify state subsidy) is at least on a par with start-ups. The big difference is that the failure is corrected in the Arts through subsidy, while in start-ups failure is accepted as an essential part of the ecosystem.  I accept that there are certain institutions and activities that should be funded, but not that the current model of funding is effective or that they should be denied access to private investment capital. But that’s a different discussion (watch this space)

I want to look at this story from the investors viewpoint for a moment. Because, to take the single example of theatre, an investor can realise a a very significant (30%+) return on an investment and turn the whole thing around in four months and I’ve never met a start-up that can offer that. Further,  if you choose to invest in a portfolio of productions over a three-year period you can also avail of a number of interesting tax opportunities depending on how you choose to promote and deliver the shows.

 

Continue reading Culture as an Asset Class

I had a very interesting conversation with one of our finest young theatre artists at the start of the week. We disagreed on dying. I would suggest that everything – including the organisations that we build (commercial and cultural) have a life cycle (as opposed to a trajectory with no end point) We struggle, we grow, we peak, we decline and we die. Culturally, we are not good at accepting this and certainly not good at talking about it. The real problem  is that when an organisation or a talent becomes completely dependent on funding, and consequently the funding body becomes dependent on the continued existence of the organisation/talent in its current form to justify their own existence we end up with zombies: unstoppable, insatiable, and deathly. Continue reading The Arts of Living and Dying