From time to time, SVCREATES will publish a guest blog for our monthly e-newsletter. The letter below, written by long-time arts leader Andrew Bales of Symphony Silicon Valley, was written in response to Connie’s February 2019 blog, “Embracing Silicon Valley’s Main Event,” outlining her case that successful arts groups in Silicon Valley support, but are not in themselves, “the Main Event.”
Dear Connie,
I read your article this morning and agree with your perspective. To succeed in Silicon Valley you need to pay attention to market conditions and not expect anything from philanthropy. The Valley is not a place where people plant roots. There is too much to be gained by ‘cashing out’ as too many people have their liquidity ensconced in their homes, so it is a Sisyphean challenge to alter that dynamic. We have a proximate example in the symphony field that demonstrates the different attitudes in detail. The Santa Rosa Symphony is a very comparable symphony — a credible presenter of classical music in that community. But they generate very substantial annual contributions, while we struggle to get those same gifts. The people giving to them are typically expats who moved there from the Valley or SF after their wealth accumulating cycle was done and they are now free to distribute it. We are in the midst of wealth accumulation and it is not our culture to be very generous with it. Certainly, some do, but to a much lesser extent than others.
In response to this and reflected in the thoughts you shared, we had a revelation of sorts over the past year that has directed our organization and our Board to amend our understanding of who we are and how we talk about it. While we haven’t gone the next step of changing our name, we have altered how we define ourselves in front of others. We speak of our core competency as being high standard purveyors of large ensemble musical events and performances. The core classics is one of those elements, but it represents a tiny fraction of the community audiences we serve.
The nuance of this shift was made evident to me a year ago when we were evaluated by the City’s Arts Grant panel. We got a reasonable grant, yet it was very clear that the assembled panel looked at our classics as our real business and that all the rest was something “we had to do.” This characterized huge swaths of our services as “lesser than” — meaning that the films in concert, the anime programming, ArtSPARK (yes, it does still exist), our former Summer Pops series (still hoping to revive that), and any other outside partnerships that we develop such as Game of Thrones at SAP and the upcoming National Geographic concerts were apart from our mission. We went back to our Board and said we are miscommunicating our role in the community. More than 70% of the people who hear us each year hear us in works other than the classics. In terms of individuals, the ratio is even greater as most who attend the symphony attend multiple times each year. The classics universe contributes to approximately 10% or less of the customers who hear us. We take pride and place focus on all our other programs as they reach audiences other than the dedicated classical music lovers. For example, we served more people last May in four days when we did the anime production, over 12,000 attendees.
We now serve many distinct constituent groups: a largely senior professional class attends the symphony; young families lead the group at our Films in Concert programs; valley engineers and tech nerds fall in love with anime; and elementary school students and their teachers are part of ArtSPARK. We continue to look for other opportunities to perform for a variety of constituent groups with music that suits their interests.
These programs are all part of who we are, and they follow your article’s lead theme; find a way to serve audiences across the demographic mix of our community, thereby offering great experiences that a large ensemble of musicians can provide. So far it is working, but it would help for us to enable others to see us in that light too. This is our current charge.
Thanks for your comments. It encapsulated the challenges we face in a community where the arts per se are not the Main Event.
Best wishes,
Andrew
