What the BBC Singers need to know about persuasive messaging
If we want to be considered essential, the arts sector must embrace a new understanding of relevance. For centuries, we’ve gotten by on a platform of artistic excellence—but as this circular reasoning collides with the 21st century world, cracks are beginning to show.
On March 7th, after a year-long study on how to “strengthen and sharpen our focus to deliver value for our audiences,” the BBC announced wide-sweeping changes to its classical music programs.
Possibly most shocking was its decision to terminate the nearly 100-year-old BBC Singers ensemble. Outrage grew quickly, with headlines like “BBC scrapping of choir has eroded public's trust” alongside a petition on Change.org that has garnered nearly 140,000 signatures.
Even composer John Adams weighed in, comparing the BBC to “the crazed character in…The Banshees of Inisherin…determined to lop off its own fingers, one by one.”
The day after the announcement, several prominent BBC musicians responded with an open letter to the British Broadcasting Corporation, citing ten reasons to justify reversing the corporation’s decision:
We enjoy worldwide renown
We are the UK’s only full-time professional choir
We have a nearly 100-year history
This will be devastating to the livelihood of the current singers (and future singers)
Our composers will no longer have a professional choir for which to compose
We are exemplars of dedication, versatility, and artistic excellence
The BBC’s arts legacy is envied around the world
Professional musicians shouldn’t have to work as freelancers
A top-class symphony orchestra can only produce its best work in a stable environment
We deliver excellence to our audiences
My heart sank as I read the letter. I care deeply about the plight of my fellow musicians, and I appreciate their reasoning—but it simply won’t work in the long term. Excellence is no longer a strong enough argument. Neither is renown or historic legacy.
Today’s pluralistic world looks dramatically different than the world of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Puccini.
“Once upon a time, high culture,” wrote David Brooks in The Atlantic, “had more social status than popular culture. Now social prestige goes to the no-brow—the person with so much cultural capital that he moves between genres and styles, highbrow and lowbrow, with ease.”
In short, millennials and their successors define culture more broadly than any previous generation. Yet, arts organizations worldwide continue to position themselves as the epitome of refinement and excellence.
Here’s the thing: When we prioritize artistic excellence as the primary reason for our existence, we conflate category with purpose. Not only do we alienate those who aren’t part of our world—and therefore can’t appreciate our excellence—we miss out on an extraordinary opportunity to illuminate what makes us truly relevant.
So, what makes us relevant, if not artistic excellence?
The origin of that word is a good place to start. Stemming from the French relevant, which originally meant “helpful”, relevance comes from the Latin relevare, meaning “to lift up, free from burden; help, or comfort.”
And this original meaning still rings true today. A recent article in Harvard Business Review tells us that "in this new era of digital-based competition and customer control, people are increasingly buying because of a brand’s relevance to their needs in the moment” (emphasis added.)
Consumers, wrote the legendary business thinker Clayton Christensen, are only motivated to buy in to something when it targets a need they’re facing in their lives. The same holds for institutions like the BBC, local governments, and communities. If arts organizations can’t articulate the needs that their offerings are best positioned to address, they simply won’t be able to convince the world of their value.
Our value doesn’t stop at artistic excellence. Sure, excellence can be inspiring, but there’s so much more that our art can do to lift up, help, and comfort our communities. There’s so much need around us that the arts are well positioned to address through our excellence.
For arts organizations, being relevant in 2023 means shifting our focus from an inward-facing reverence of our art—and our excellence—to an outward-facing mission where we use our art to meet the needs in our communities.
It’s all about asking “Why do we make our art? To what end? What impact can we have?”
The impacts of engaging with the arts—both as a maker and a beholder—are extraordinary and wide-reaching. With the rapidly growing field of neuroarts, science is finally able to quantify what we’ve known intuitively all along—the arts are astonishingly powerful. They can literally “change the structure and function of cells within our brains and bodies,” says Susan Magsamen, co-author of the new book Your Brain On Art. In essence, “sensorial experiences allow us to live our fullest lives” and are as important to daily life as nutrition, exercise, and sleep.
According to the Neuroarts Blueprint initiative, spearheaded by the Aspen institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, recent scientific studies have proven that the arts “can improve our physical and mental health, amplify our ability to prevent, manage, or recover from disease challenges, enhance brain development in children, build more equitable communities, and foster wellbeing through multiple biological systems.”
That’s a whole lot of potential impact.
Art also plays a role in advancing equity and social change, through its ability to reflect and respond to what’s happening in our world, and to catalyze transformational dialogue. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy frames it eloquently: “[The arts] give us a way to share individual experiences and to connect to one another. [They] help us understand our distinct identities and our universal humanity. They connect us to our past while helping us imagine a better future.”
And then there’s social connection. Escape from technology. Identity signaling. Collective effervescence. The list is endless.
Becoming relevant—essential, even—is about understanding the needs that each constituent faces, and helping them see the overlap between what we offer and what they need. If we can learn to effectively articulate these wide-ranging benefits to our communities, our local governments, healthcare institutions, and businesses, we just might discover that we have a renaissance on our hands.
Back to the BBC Singers. If the musicians—justifiably indignant—who wrote this letter could rework it in a way that centers the needs and motivations of the community it serves, it would look dramatically different. Rather than focusing on the musicians’ needs, it would outline the impact the musicians have had on the community, and the benefits that music itself can have on society at large—and how this impact ties to the BBC’s own mission statement.
Through our music, we have had a wide-ranging impact on society
We are one of the best sources of new compositions that address and respond to issues facing society today
We provide transformational musical experiences to our community
We are sharing stories and shaping culture with our music
We want to continue doing this transformational work on a full-time basis because our community needs us
Community-centric work is all-consuming and integral to our mission
Our wide-ranging repertoire reflects the diversity of our community and helps all voices be heard
Studies show that art helps create a more collaborative society, physical and mental wellbeing, deeper connections, and joy.
Like the BBC Singers and Orchestras, so many arts organizations are renowned for their excellence. Excellence is a worthy endeavor; we must never stop reaching for it. But excellence is what we do. It doesn’t answer the “Why?” or “To what end?” questions we must ask when we are called upon to identify our purpose and communicate our value.
As more arts organizations find themselves facing budget shortfalls, declining audiences, and possible termination, it becomes even more urgent to rethink relevance by centering the perspective of those we serve.
It’s time to show the world just how essential we truly are.
