INTRO
LATHAM
Welcome to Artful Conversations, a podcast about arts and cultural management. I’m Annetta Latham.
INGRAM
And I'm Katrina Ingram. We interview leaders who help shape the world of arts and culture, sharing their stories, insights, and observations.
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INGRAM
Welcome to Artful Conversations, I'm your host Katrina Ingram. With me today is Adam Fox, director of programs at the National Music Center, also known simply as NMC. Welcome Adam.
FOX
Thank you. Good to be here.
INGRAM
Adam has extensive experience in radio, having managed community radio stations in Windsor, Toronto, and most recently Edmonton where he was the content director for the CKUA radio network. He also has experience in programming new media with a focus on storytelling and nurturing emerging talent. Adam has been a member of the National Music Centre's National Exhibitions Advisory Committee since May 2013, prior to taking on his current role. In his spare time, he is an accomplished musician who writes and performs music of his own.
So, Adam, tell me: what is the National Music Centre?
FOX
What is the National Music Centre. This is a question that we grapple with all the time because, you know, I think when we work at NMC we know what it is. Our marketing team has been challenged with trying to come up with an elevator pitch. Something that's snappy, you can do in 11 seconds or something like that.
I think the easiest way to talk about NMC and what we do is to start with what was the impulse for its creation. Really the first impulse was to create a home for music in Canada. There had been some unsuccessful attempts to create Canadian Music Halls of Fame in various places. Mostly in Toronto, to be honest, but they were largely unsuccessful. I think Andrew Mosker, our president and CEO – who, I should mention, is is an alumnus of MacEwan. He wanted me to give a shout out to MacEwan. But yeah, I think that was the first impulse, to create a home for music in Canada and then from there… But there was never really the impulse to create a traditional kind of museum. Certainly telling stories about music in Canada is something that is a kind of core mission of the National Music Centre.
But there was a bigger vision to not only reflect Canadian culture, and the various cultures that produced the music of our country, but also to create a place for creation of music. An organization that believes in the inherent and various powers of music that has programs around that. But really I think also to create a hub for music in Western Canada. As many folks know, the music industry in this country is a bit focused in Toronto, and again in Montreal and a bit in Vancouver as well. But we really saw an opportunity, or Andrew saw a big opportunity with the previous Cantos Collection in Calgary. There was a will, and there was the means to do it, and that's why the National Music Centre exists in Calgary.
INGRAM
Alright, you're going to have to tell us about the Cantos Centre a little bit, because now that you brought that up…
FOX
[Laughing] I have to reference it, yeah.
Well I mean, the roots of the National Music Centre go back decades. We got our start as an organ competition, an international organ competition. And from there it evolved into... We started getting gifts of organs, and then classical music became… it certainly was the chief repertoire. And pianos started to find their way, gifts of pianos started to find their way. And eventually Customs House, our old facility on 11th Avenue in Calgary… it became filled with pianos and piano technology, harpsichords all of a sudden started showing up and—
INGRAM
You need a lot of room for harpsichords, don’t you?
FOX
[Laughing] You do, you do. And so the collection just started to really grow. And then from there Andrew Mosker was working in various capacities for the organ festival. It evolved into the Chinook Keyboard Collection, from there it evolved into the Cantos Foundation. The facility at Customs House opened itself up for a lot of piano recitals and community programming, and that kind of became part of our DNA. That was an early evolutionary piece for us as far as being open to grassroots initiatives, and to local communities, and music communities in Calgary.
And then when Andrew took over, there were also opportunities. People were like, “how do these synthesizers…” you know, we've got all these keyboards and pianos. “How about, you know, synthesizers,” and things. So, all of a sudden it kept evolving to a point where we were getting donations of big collections of musical instruments to a point where—the roots of the organ competition had really just metastasized into this crazy music collection.
I think Andrew saw that as an opportunity to really build out something that was a more comprehensive and holistic vision of music because of the diversity of our collection. But also because he saw that there was a need in the country for something that celebrated Canadian music, celebrated music in Canada, and also could serve as a place for incubation and artists residencies.
INGRAM
It's very bold to go from being an organ competition, to being a museum for keyboards, to declaring yourself as the National Music Centre. You reference Toronto and Ottawa – when we think of national associations, they typically are centered in that part of the country. So tell me a bit about the challenges and opportunities in creating a National Music Centre in the western city of Calgary.
FOX
Oh gosh. You know, it's funny, I came in at a really opportunistic time because Andrew had already been laying the groundwork for over a decade. What I can tell you is it's… I would say it's still a challenge, still something that we continue to have to address on a daily, weekly basis. Convincing, primarily folks in the industry in other cities and primarily in Toronto, that what we're doing is valid and credible. But I think our success and our ability to… you know, we are the home for the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame collection. That's been huge for us, because we've been able to convince the stakeholders of all those organizations that what we're doing here is credible, that we have the means to celebrate Canadian music legacy appropriately, that we have the passion to do that, that we have the means to do that, has really been huge. And I think that's a testament to the work that Andrew did largely in a diplomatic fashion.
We’ve spent a lot of time traveling. We've spent a lot of time on the road. We've been going to the Junos, we've been going to the Canadian Country Music Awards, we've been taking meetings and making meetings with folks that maybe were a bit dismissive of us at one time, because why wouldn't you be skeptical? I'm from Ontario myself, so I understand some of the skepticism of the organization, but I think one of the things that is also in NMC’s DNA is just a certain audacity. We don't wait for people to tell us we can do something. I think it's one of the things that sets us apart from other legacy institutions that have been around for decades. We don't have the burden of decades of bureaucracy. And obviously we also don't have the advantages of it. We don't have the sustainable legacy funding of those kinds of institutions. But I think it's that the nascent nature of our organization and that lack of a track record has actually been a boon for us because we're also not hemmed in by previous ideas. When you look at other museums or other collecting institutions, we do things a lot differently than other folk.
Anyway, maybe I’ve lost the plot of the question. But I guess what I would say is we've been hustling and putting in, pounding the pavement, for over a decade to convince folks of the validity and the opportunity of what we're doing. And I think we're starting to see see some of the results of that. We've hosted Sarah McLachlan, Burton Cummings, Bruce Cockburn. We're going to host more folks this year. We've got Barenaked Ladies coming in to place their plaques on the wall.
INGRAM
So, pretty much a who’s who.
FOX
Pretty much. Yeah. And why does that happen? That’s happened because Andrew, and our staff, and our board have really hustled to make those connections and develop those relationships in the industry.
INGRAM
It's really interesting, because in some ways I think you're painting a picture of a West… that audacity really speaks to the West staking our claim, because we don't really have that history that we need to lean on. What do you think having a national presence, a National Music Centre, has done for the Calgary music scene?
FOX
That's a great question. I mean, the National Music Centre was instrumental in bringing the Junos back to Calgary in 2016. And we continue to, with our facility and with the resources we have, we've been attracting a lot of activity. Bringing opportunities for artists here with our AE [Artist Entrepreneur] West program, that's really benefited tons of folks in the music scene and indeed in Western Canada. So I think it's been huge. We've got the Alberta Electronic Music Conference that is now going to be hosted on an annual basis at Studio Bell. So I think the vision and the dream is that this is a space that will be accessible to lots of different folks in the local and regional music communities.
We're bringing in national talent all the time. We’ve got an RBC-sponsored master-in-residence program that's bringing in world-renowned international talent that local and regional and national artists get a chance to work with and engage with. You know, we had Richie Hawtin in last year. Wow, that was almost a year ago, crazy how time flies. We had Richie Hawtin in last year and a local producer named Cloves had a chance to work directly with Richie. Richie was really blown away by her work, and because of that relationship that they developed he's booked her on a show in California, and he's just in touch with her. The relationships are... everything in life, period, right? So we're creating opportunities for local and regional artists to really connect, not only with artists and industry, but just with a broader community of audience, too, through our digital channels which are growing every day.
INGRAM
Sounds like you're really raising the bar in terms of building all of those connections between various people who are in the industry and the benefits, obviously, for the audience. You mentioned the Junos, I definitely want to talk about the Junos. Tell me a bit more about that project and what that was like.
FOX
Oh, yeah, hosting the 2016 Junos in Calgary?
INGRAM
Yes!
FOX
Well it was kind of a unique time, because we weren't open yet. Studio Bell opened on July 1st 2016, and obviously the Junos were in April of that year. Our exhibitions were not yet totally complete. At the time that was kind of my primary job, implementing and completing the exhibitions project. So we were hustling like crazy just to try to get the fifth floor sorted out, because we were hosting, obviously, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. We want to make sure that exhibition was done in time for the Junos, because we were going to be inducting Burton Cummings up there. So it was a frantic, exciting, anxiety-ridden time. But we knew that when the Canadian music industry was going to be coming to Calgary - and we ended up hosting a few of the big receptions at Studio Bell. Of course the broadcast is in the Sattledome, we can't fit 18,000 people in our facility. But yeah, we had the who's who of the Canadian music industry in the facility and we were eager to show it off. Folks were blown away, even though the exhibitions weren't totally complete. People were just gobsmacked. And I think it went a long way in proving to some of the skeptics that were out there that, “oh yeah, they're building a place that is appropriately grand to celebrate the legacy of creating music.” It's important that we do that, we respect the immense contributions of Canadian artists with something that's special. And we've done that.
INGRAM
It's nice that you were able to set the tone right from the beginning, in terms of being able to entertain the who's who of Canadian music. Even though you weren't completely open, and I imagine that was a bit of a pressure cooker situation for those involved behind the scenes. I want to talk about where the building is located in Calgary, that's an interesting story about the neighbourhood. Do you want to unpack that for us?
FOX
Yeah, I mean where we're located is really important. I think that when Andrew and the board had finally decided that they wanted to do something like this, to build a National Music Centre, they looked at a variety of local options as far as locations or places to put it. There are certainly arguments to be made for placing large facilities like this closer to major highways and arteries, thinking about things like parking… I sigh because it comes up a lot with—
INGRAM
They’re practical concerns.
FOX
There are practical considerations, for sure, but for us and for the vision of what we're trying to create… I think in NMC’s DNA, we also believe in placemaking and in contributing to the developing narrative of the city that we live in. The truth is, no city is static. Cities are constantly changing, culture is constantly changing, and certainly I think that there's a dynamic in Calgary of urbanism that is really starting to take hold. I think, as an organization, we believe in a vibrant urban core as far as creating a sustainable city.
So when we were looking at locations, one of the things that came up, and another piece on top of that was… We wanted to create a National Music Centre that was rooted in a relevant and credible music history. And when you look at Calgary… as you mentioned the West, as far as our colonial history, it's…not that long. And I think we have to look for opportunities to talk about this, but there's still a music history that's worth telling. I think the King Edward Hotel, the King Eddie, created an opportunity for us to tie something that kind of looked at the past and looked at something that was, I think, a really vibrant and important piece of Calgary's music history, and reflect that past while creating something new.
The King Eddie, as many will know, closed its doors in the early oughts. Early to mid, I think 2006, and it had sat there in East Village. Honestly, it was slated for demolition because they had to move some of the civic engineering stuff around. But Andrew thought, well here's an authentic Calgary music story. Here's a venue that was the first desegregated bar and restaurant in the city. Here's a place that went through a variety of iterations, but in its most recent one was known rather infamously as one of the best blues bars, blues dives in the country and certainly in Western Canada. And again, times change, things come and go, audiences come and go as well. But that's a legacy that we really wanted to celebrate.
We saw an opportunity to not only save the Eddie and prop it back up and create a new chapter in the story, but also help to revitalize a neighborhood in Calgary's East Village that had undergone… that has seen a lot of different challenges over the years, certainly. The City of Calgary, the CMLC [Calgary Municipal Land Corporation], have been trying to reinvest in the neighborhood because they see tremendous opportunity for obvious reasons. Its location, its situation to the river has a lot going for it. So I think there was a will on part of the city for an investment. Obviously Calgary Public Library is building a gigantic new home there as well. There's a lot of activity, a lot of condos going up, a lot of new businesses going in, and they thought rightly so that NMC could be part of that revitalization. So far it's working. It's still an evolving neighborhood, but the Eddie itself is something we're still putting a lot of focus and time in, especially this year.
INGRAM
One of the themes that we've been exploring with guests is this idea of cultural regeneration, so in as much as the building itself is helping to regenerate that neighborhood. Could you maybe, let’s segue into programming and talk about how some of the programming perhaps is lending itself to that cultural regeneration.
FOX
Yeah, you know, I guess going back to the elevator pitch, I think people ask “but what is NMC?” The easiest thing to do is talk about the programs that we do and what we are. I think, as I mentioned, people expect we'll have an exhibition about Canadian music. And we do, we've got over 22 galleries. Over 22, I guess it’s 23.
INGRAM
[Laughing] That is over 22.
FOX
Let's say over 20, over 20 galleries dedicated to telling stories about music in Canada. As I mentioned, we've got the homes for the Halls of Fame. We recognize recent inductions to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in a couple of different galleries. We also do pop-up special exhibitions, we've got one up for K.D. Lang at the moment, we're going to be doing something new with another Canadian artist coming up, that's on the exhibition side. And then, of course, we tell stories with artifacts and with our musical instruments, which is part of our living collection, which is a whole other ball of wax that would take me a long time to discuss.
But a lot of that stuff contributes to our artist residency program. We have an artist residency program that creates opportunities for artists to come in and use our collection in creative ways, because we want to be a place that that promotes and helps generate new Canadian music. We have a recording facility on the West Block, kind of in the King Eddie footprint, that spans five different recording environments, four different stories throughout that block featuring some legendary recording instruments. It's a really special recording facility. And so our artist residency programs, that's what they were designed for. Of course there's other ways artists can access that as well, we have artist development programs in addition to that. So we offer a five-week artist development program called AE West, That's a collaboration with Canada's Music Incubator from Toronto. That's something that creates opportunities for emerging artists to work with Canadian music industry folks to to really sharpen and hone their skills both on the performance and the creative side, but also on the business development side.
We have education programs. We are not a music school, we're not a conservatory. I'm sitting in a great music school here today, and we respect that there's great conservatories and music schools in the province and in the country, but that's not what we're trying to do. With our education programs, we really try to use music as an entry point into core curriculum topics. We serve over 13,000 kids a year right now with primarily K to 6 in the Calgary region. We also have, of course, students and class groups visiting from all over the country as well. That's the education side.
Public programs. We have a host of special events that we do for Family Day and Canada Day, things like that. We've got special tours of the exhibitions, special tours of the recording facilities. We do pop-up music programs with community partners all the time, activating the space with interpreters that play the instruments. In addition to that live music, of course we program live music. We have a few different concert series. Alberta Spotlight is going to be the one that I'm sure the audience listening to this podcast would be interested in. We do kind of a monthly concert series with a diverse array of Alberta artists. Crossroads Music Program, that's designed to highlight the diversity of the global music that comprises Canadian music. What else do we do… we do tons.
INGRAM
One of the questions I have listening to this very exhaustive and amazing list of projects is… how do you actually get all of that done? I think it's something our students might be interested in. How do you get that done with the limited resources that you have, both financial- and personnel-wise? How do you accomplish all of that?
FOX
That's a really great question. It's tough because as a new organization… it's funny, I think a lot of folks see the facility and they expect, “Oh it's kind of like the Banff Center, or something like this, or is it like the ROM [Royal Ontario Museum], what's it like?” And a lot of the comparisons that folks come up with, especially when they see the volume of programs that we do, they assume we have a budget of tens of millions of dollars, upwards of 50 million. And that's the dream of course. But we operate with a fraction of that. A really small amount. And I think one of the reasons why we've been able to so far - and we've only been 20 months in a facility - been able to have some pretty successful early days here, is because of the kinds of people we've attracted and the way our team performs. As I mentioned we don't have some of the benefits and advantages of a legacy institution, but we also aren't handcuffed with some of the restraints. I think culturally, I'm talking about the internal culture of NMC, we attract people that are really passionate about music. And if you don't have passion for what you're doing, if you're the type of person that wants to punch a clock, come in exactly at 9 or 8 and leave exactly at 4:30 or 5… If everybody on our team did that we would fail. And I think the difference is we ask a lot of the people that work for NMC and we try to reward them as best we can. And I think we want to attract people that feel the reward of being able to work in music. It's a rare thing. It's harder than ever to make a living through music. And I think that goes for the arts as well, regardless of the medium. So we attract people that really just have to do it, and they believe in the opportunity of what we're making. I think National Music Centre in 5 to 10 years will look drastically different. I think our programs will continue to grow. I think our influence will expand. I think we'll get to a point where we're doing lots more partnered activity in other parts of the country, we'll start to branch out with what we do.
INGRAM
What's your dream partner? Have you thought about this?
FOX
I mean we have so many great… I don't want throw shade on any current partners, because I believe we do have dream partners already. I think CARAS [Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences] has been tremendous. Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame and the Association there have been tremendous partners.
INGRAM
Or maybe I should ask, what kind of partnerships would you like to see evolve? That could be with a current partner, or bringing in some other partners to augment something.
FOX
There’s really cool stuff happening in the private sector. When we think about partners for an arts not-for-profit, you start to think about the usual suspects. Government organizations, national broadcasters, regional broadcasters, things like that. Musicians unions or…all of those things are really important and kind of obvious, I would say. And certainly we work with lots of those normal ones. But I think we…you know, getting back to that entrepreneurial spirit that you touched on as far as the kind of western mentality out here, I think we're constantly in conversation with people at various private industries. Whether they be sponsors that are doing cool things in programming… like Red Bull, you look at a company like that and what they're doing. You look at LiveNation, music organizations that are for-profit that are doing amazing things.
And that's one of the things that I think really sets us apart is… we are a business. We’re all passionate, we all have big beating arts hearts. But in our organization we are also really keenly business-focused. We think about return on the investment, which can have all kinds of qualitative and quantitative aspects, but we're constantly thinking about it, because our time and our resources are limited as you mentioned. So we have to be really shrewd, and I think we are a shrewd organization. We are an agile organization, and we're not afraid of… if something’s not working, we’ll just abandon it. We're not super married to things, and I think we're also not afraid to screw up. We’re not afraid to launch something and say “this isn't working.”
INGRAM
Are there any examples that you can share of things that you have abandoned or not?
FOX
No, because all the programming has been perfect. [Laughing]
INGRAM
[Laughing] Okay, so let's make that clear.
FOX
You know, I guess I would say we've learned a lot. I would say that we haven’t abandoned anything outright. I think one of the challenges we have, is we get pitched and approached a lot to do different things. We've tried a lot of stuff in the last 21 months, and we've lost some money on some things that we thought we would break even on, or do better. And I think one of the things we've had to do is just constantly re-evaluate and learn, and we're still learning. We're still learning what it takes to deliver programs or experiences in the way that we'd like to. I would say that we're getting more intelligent and we're just applying that intelligence to our processes and getting more efficient and effective in our work. I think it's less about “we're not doing certain lines of work.” It's just, we're getting smarter at it, and picking our battles a little bit better, and working on our communications so that we can manage expectations with our partners and our stakeholders.
INGRAM
And what criteria are you using to analyze the work, and make some decisions around priorities?
FOX
Well, I think each department has different key performance indicators. We've spent the last 12 months working with a coach at the leadership level just to try to get a little bit more organized and focused on exactly what success is. I think it is a struggle and a challenge for a lot of arts industries to quantify the outcomes, and to communicate the value.
I think that's something we've been thinking about a lot too, because we're still trying to raise money for what we're doing. We are not…we don't draw a government subsidy for our operations. Of course we get grants, and different programming grants and things like that, but we don't…unlike other crown corporations, we’re not. We don't draw that. So we draw a lot of our cash and support from philanthropy, and from donors and sponsors, and a lot of those folks. It's funny, because we were like “oh, must be so easy to raise money for music, everybody loves music” and what we found is, that's actually not true. Not everybody sees the intrinsic value of music. I've got to tell you that, as crazy as that sounds to you and me. But we've been spending a lot of time thinking about and doing research through the Alberta Music Cities Initiative, looking at other music cities across the world. Which is a huge trend, obviously. It’s happening not only in the Austins and Nashvilles of the world. But London, and you name it, every city. I mean London, Ontario, for crying out loud, is looking into this stuff.
So we're constantly looking at that, and trying to quantify and figure out what the outcomes are. Because we know that there's more value in music than just the intrinsic feel good stuff - which I think is incredibly valuable and really important socially - but just trying to quantify and measure those outcomes as best we can. Looking at the financial impact of the music industry, a lot of that goes unreported or ungathered. There's a lot of raw data sitting out there that just needs to be marshaled together. And people will start to realize the importance of nighttime economies, the importance of arts and artists, for the vibrancy of a city. The importance of that vibrancy, and attracting and retaining skilled labour, especially for cities that are trying to develop an economy in a post-industrial landscape.
So all those things are feeding in, and we're thinking about that a lot at the leadership table with the National Music Center, and looking at key performance indicators. Certainly for programming, I'm looking at things all the time like…there's the obvious ones, like what is our attendance? How's our gate doing? Certainly you want to make your budget on your revenue and your expense. Those are the easy ones. But then we also survey our audience all the time, and we're also always playing with that to get some quantitative stuff, but also qualitative. We want to hit a participant satisfaction rating of over 80%, and I’m pleased to say we've been able to do that. We're closer to 90 percent. So those are the little ones. But then there’s larger ones, like how diverse is our programming? Are we representing cultures from five different, or the many different regions in Canada? Or are we representing all of these different genres? So there's a lot.
INGRAM
So who is your audience, and who is your audience right now and who do you want your audience to be? And maybe they're the same thing.
FOX
I mean, this is a really tough one. Back when I was more focused in radio and in digital media I had a little bit easier time with this. But I would say I look at an organization like the CBC. I think we have a similar challenge that the CBC has at NMC so far as we aren't a single genre organization. We don't have a single fragmented audience that we can point to. We believe that music is universal, and when you work with something that's universal then the universe is your audience.
So it does create distinct challenges, and I guess that's why we have such a hard time with our elevator pitch. Because if we're the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, we can say “yeah, it's rock fans, rock and roll music.” And maybe you can get into some navel gazing into what rock and roll music is, but that gives you a framework to work in. We don't have that. So right now, what I can tell you is… I think we've broken down a lot of different demographics, and thought about things… and we do think about that on a regular basis. Certainly, we see trends with some of our programs and we track that information. But I think for us…How I would say we're conceiving our audience right now is in the first 5 to 10 years we really need to focus on local and regional audiences. So that spans demographics, but I think there's more specific psychographics that we're looking at. That's for people that that are musically interested, number one. That are curious, that want to learn more, because ultimately we are a charitable educational institution, and we want to be educating folks as much as possible.
But it's really important for us to cement this national organization in our hometown, and in the region, and that's why we work with over two dozen community partners to program. That's why our co-presentations are really important, that’s why creating accessibility to community groups and other local presenting partners is important, and I think that'll continue to be important. I think we will be challenged with serving our national mandate in that regard. But we've been doing a pretty good balance these days. We are bringing in the stars and also serving… you know, Jam Club is serving 25 inner city kids a week. So we are balancing the stars with the local needs and local desires from our community.
INGRAM
Well, we need to wrap up our time. But for those aspiring arts managers who are listening, tell us the best part of your job and what you find most challenging or frustrating.
FOX
Well the best part of my job is witnessing amazing live music. I would say it's my favorite thing. Well no, that's not it. I love when we have artists-in-residence that are making music in the space and that are engaging. I love showing artists around the space and seeing the wonder and opportunity in their eyes. And then witnessing them performing in the space. I have one of the greatest jobs in music in the world, and that isn't lost on me. I'm incredibly grateful for it, which makes it easier to deal with some of the crazy stuff.
It's a stressful job, it's really hard. It takes a ton of time. It's not something you can punch a clock and work 35, 40 hours a week, those don't exist. Weekends and evenings are part of the deal, especially in music. It's a nighttime economy, so my team hustles 8-to-5 everyday, and then a lot of times we're working through the evening. So it’s hard on the body, it's hard on the stamina, and balance is hard to come by. I guess that's one of the things that I find frustrating sometimes, is trying to find that balance. Because I also like to make music, my artistic practice is important.
But I guess one of the things I would say is if you really love your work, and if you are also committed to having artistic practice, you'll find a way. Just sacrifice your personal relationships and you'll be fine.
INGRAM
[Laughing] There you go. Problem solved.
Is there anything else, Adam, that we haven't covered yet, that you want to add to this conversation?
FOX
I guess what I would say is, to anybody that's looking to… it's funny, because I had no desire to be a manager at any time in my life. I didn't study management. I didn't go to school for it. I fell into this work because I was passionate about music and opportunities just came up. So I would say investigate your passion, and if you're really passionate about something, good things will happen. Show up on time, be passionate, care a lot. Take pride in your work, and work on building good relationships with the people you work with. If you do all those things, you're going to be successful. If your passion isn't there, do something else. Find it, because you're not going to succeed.
INGRAM
Words of wisdom. Thanks so much Adam. On behalf of MacEwan, thank you so much for being here.
FOX
It's my pleasure. Thank you.
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LATHAM
Katrina, that was an amazing interview with Adam Fox. There was so much in that, and there's so much depth to everything he was saying. So when you think about letting that come from…you know, where do we start, really? A couple of things really resonated with me, and one of them was the organization itself and how they, in some ways, have grown quite organically and have responded to what's happening around them. I think that's really exciting way to grow an organization.
INGRAM
Yeah, it's really interesting when we talk about going from a little organ museum kind of tucked away in the corner of the city, to the National Music Center, and just really staking their claim to that title. It was a really fascinating conversation and one of the things that I picked up on was this idea of marketing music, something that's really universal, and he talked about the challenge and having this universal product.
I was thinking about that from a marketing perspective, because when you have a limited budget and limited resources, you really need to pick a target audience. You can't market to everyone, it's virtually impossible. So I thought it was really interesting that they landed on two different aspects to hone in on. One was a psychographic of people who are musically interested. And then there was this demographic aspect of looking at the region of Calgary and Alberta. I thought that was really interesting.
LATHAM
A great way to think about it, too. It kind of goes back to what we're talking about with them as an organization the way it’s organic. I think even that's growing, and how the marketing has grown as well. One of the things I really did like, he did kind of say it as a bit of a joke at the end, was his honesty about the stressfulness of being a manager. And I loved it.
INGRAM
I loved that too. It was just such… it was actually one of my favorite parts of the conversation. It's something that I think we know as arts managers, that this is a stressful job. It's not a 9-to-5. He talked about the nighttime economy, and how his staff has to work late hours, and that's the reality of our world. I think it was just really great to have somebody say that really authentically and honestly. But at the same time he said “but I love my job.”
LATHAM
Yeah, yeah, an absolute pearl.
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This show was created by:
Executive Producer - Annetta Latham
Producer - Katrina Ingram
Technical Producer - Paul Johnston
Research Assistant - Rael Lockwood
Theme Music - Emily Darfur
Cover Art - Constanza Pacher
Latham, A. (Executive Producer). Regan-Ingram (Host). (2018, April 2). Artful Conversations [Season 1: Episode 1]. Adam Fox. Podcast retrieved from https://www.artfulconversations.com/transcriptions/2019/1/4/ep-1-adam-fox
Artful Conversations is a production of Annetta Latham in partnership with MacEwan University. All rights reserved.