Expenditures – Artistic and Research

Rich and Poor

The rich man’s sins are hidden

In the pomp of wealth and station;

        And escape the sight

        Of the children of light,

Who are wise in their generation.

                  Thomas Love Peacock 

Artistic expenditures.  That’s where I start.  Not gross income.  Not the famous stars that have graced the institutions stage.  I start with the amount of money the theatre spends on its artistry.  It is a figure with a quantity that I understand well, the amount of money that universities spend on scientific research.  Both are managerial figures, numbers that can be used for shaping institutions.  While the parallel between the two is not perfect, a better understanding of university research expenditures suggests ways of thinking about theatre budgets and how they can be better used to direct the course of the institutions and secure its future.  

Universities get very little of their research money from earned or endowment  income.  Most comes from research contracts, agreements between the university and outside funding agencies.  In these contracts, the university agrees to perform research on a specific topic but do not explicitly guarantee a positive result.  In its turn, the funding agencies, which has reviewed both the goals and methods to be used in the research,  agrees to pay for the work.  

As a managerial figure, research expenditures is a useful tool.  It is not a perfect measure of research success, to be sure.  Yet, most schools accept without question the goal that research expenditures should constantly increase.  In managing the research assets of the university, the managers (often mid-level deans) faces a number of concrete problems.  They will have successful senior researchers who are no longer working on problems that funding agencies view as important.  They will also have junior research researchers who are having trouble getting attention.  They will have research aging facilities that need updating and investments that are needed before the school can expect contracts for certain kind of subjects.  The manager has to address these issue, as best as possible, while looking for results three to five years in the future.  

Beyond the obvious parallel between research and artistic grants, the “research expense” approach to artistic work raises some interesting questions.  Artistic expenditures are supported by a combination of earned income, grants and donations.  How can a theatre manage its assets in a way that sees its artistic expenses and the budget that supports those expenses increase year by year?  

In the world of research expenses, successful deans start their work by knowing what assets they have and what questions need to be answered.  Intellectually, this is a demanding task.  Few people are capable of doing it by themselves.  It requires a fair amount of social interaction that few would associate with the sciences.  Good managers know the history of their researchers know the accomplishments of their researchers, the state of their labs, and their interests.  They go into labs and ask what is being done, even if that gives them more details than they might want.  They go to conferences and listen to the questions that are being raised.  They visit other universities to see what other labs look like. They combine all this work into a strategy, that suggests who they will support, who they need to redirect and where they need to put their facility money.  

The community that surrounds theatres is not as tight nor as focused on a single set of questions.  To many in their audience, the theatre represents a good night now.  To the donors, it can be something like a literary club.  To the artists, it is a place to gather, a place of employment, a place to do their work.  To civic agencies, a theatre might simply be a symbol of culture, an institution that conveys the kind of refinement that they hope to see in their region.  For some, it is a social agency, something that educates the public about certain issues and ideas.  

The point of the matter is that few successful research institutions achieved their scale and scope without careful management.  Sometimes that management can be overt.  Sometimes is just a subtle nudge for a researcher to look in a new direction.   In like manner, the assets of the theatre need to be organized and deployed to meet the interest and expectations of a relatively wide number of local stakeholders. 

The obvious rejoinder to this approach is the argument that such a strategy would lead to theatres doing nothing but popular works.  All we would see in the theatre would be the “Christmas Carol” and similar shows.  That is an argument that shifts the theatres attention away from artistic expenditures and back to earned income and away from artistic expenses.  It asks to maximize income rather than identify the amount the spend on artistry and how those expenditures can be supported.  A good manager finds a balance between the assets at hand and the desires of the institution.  By starting with artistic expenditures, you are starting with aspirations and asking how they may be fulfilled. That is how research managers start their work.