The formula for a good audience
When it comes to audiences what is it that makes us performers glow?
I am up to nearly 170,000 YouTube views for my 21st Century Enlightenment talk. Actually the overall number isn’t the most important thing (it’s hard to work out how much more satisfying 170,000 should feel than 120,000). More exciting is when the rate of viewing has a little spike – as it did a few days ago. I also get a thrill from the global distribution of viewers; I like the idea that there are people watching my talk in South Africa and Russia. And the fact that so many people bother to rate and comment (and that most of them are kind) is almost embarrassing.
Late yesterday afternoon I did a short interview (in a personal capacity) for the PM programme about my good friend David Miliband. Listening later to the Champions League, while cooking pasta for my sons, I was surprised to hear a clip of my interview in the main Radio 5 news bulletin.
I really enjoy being on Radio Four’s Moral Maze. There is a different subject every week, the programme is broadcast live and I have to argue with clever and sometimes hostile guests and panellists. But, although I understand it is seen as a successful and popular programme I rarely meet anyone who listens to it.
The season before last, on Match of the Day, there was a close up of Adrian Chiles watching the Albion and guess who was sitting next to him? My sons’ mates and the boys in the team I manage were dead impressed.
I wasn’t really looking forward to my talk to the Independent School Heads conference on Tuesday. But the moment I stood up I felt that release from everyday worries that sometimes comes with performing. At the end the thirty RSA pamphlets I had taken went in a second and I took away ten business cards from people wanting more.
The point of all this – apart from offering me an opportunity to talk about myself in glowing and lengthy terms (‘you don’t usually need an excuse’ I can hear my dear mum saying) – is that it got me asking; what it is about audiences that gives performers a buzz?
Positive psychologists have a happiness formula H = S + C + V (happiness (H) is determined by your biological set point (S) plus the conditions of your life (C) plus the voluntary activities (V) that you do).
But what about an audience buzz formula? What would be the factors? There are three obvious audience characteristics: size (S), quality (Q) and level of appreciation (A).
But there are also performer criteria: pride in the performance (P), the performer’s emotional need for affirmation (EN), and other benefits of the performance [most obviously cash but also whether it helps win an argument etc] (OB)
So the basic formula for how much satisfaction a performers gets from an audience is this: AS = S + Q + A + P + EN + OB. This means my perfect gig would be to be paid a great deal of money to make a speech on prime time TV to a studio audience of highly appreciative senior educationalists proving Michael Gove definitively wrong about the curriculum despite the fact that I feel really bad about myself as a person.
Of course, the hard bit (which will differ from person to person) is the weighting we attach once we get into trade offs. An obvious example being: is it better to make a risky speech (high P) even though it may get a less good reaction (lower A).
Perhaps this is all completely inane and obvious. But please – lots of you talented readers – tell me it is fascinating and made you smile. You see, I’ve had a rotten week and deep down I’m very insecure…
Being right on the left
Being in the right makes us feel good, but it also makes it harder to resolve differences.
This is now the third year of RSA fringe meetings at the major party conferences. Every event we have put on has been packed out and all have been very well received. I have lost count of the number of people who have said from the floor, or at the end, that our meetings are more interesting than the average run of the mill event. The events have also been pretty successful in generating media interest which is very impressive given all the other distractions (I often say to people who hope to generate publicity at party conferences ‘there is one thing harder than looking for a needle in a haystack – looking for a needle in a pile of needles). This morning the Today programme contained two packages which came out of our event.
Part of the secret lies in our partnerships. This year we have the kind support of The Social Investment Business, which brings new funding into the third sector and helps the sector win public service contracts and whose Chief Executive, Jonathan Lewis, spoke on the panel last night. And because of our collaboration with IPSOS/MORI our events all begin with a vivid picture (provided by the always entertaining Ben Page) of the often contradictory and idiosyncratic nature of public opinion.
Our theme this year has been the Big Society but with a subtly different twist at each conference. Last week Sarah Teather and Simon Hughes were eloquent in explaining why they thought the Big Society could be a Liberal Democrat idea. Last night new Labour MPs Tristram Hunt and Liz Kendall agreed with the debate proposition ‘Labour should wean itself off the big state’. Next week we will explore with the Conservatives how to generate a big society in the most deprived areas, even while they are suffering cuts to benefits and services.
Hunt and Kendall were both very impressive. It occurred to me that David Miliband’s campaign has restored the self respect and self confidence of the ’New Labour’ wing (for want of a better term) of the Labour party. These are people who had felt undermined and even tarnished by the Blair Brown Mandelson soap opera, not to mention some of Labour’s failings in Government. Despite his defeat, the honesty and clarity of the David Miliband campaign has reinvigorated the section of the party that most supported him.
Which goes to show that feeling you are right is a big source of energy. It is why defeat can sometimes be more energising that victory. However, the same emotion can also drive people to be self righteous and even become embittered. As I have said before in this blog, I wish we spent more time in debate trying to agree what we disagree about rather than simply proving the other guy wrong.
Following Ed Miliband’s solid, but less than earth shattering, speech this afternoon some David supporters may have their sense of rightness reinforced. It will, I guess, be important to the Labour Party that this energy is channelled not into recriminations but into guidance and support their new leader.
Any takers for my new idea?
The RSA Trustees are keen that as well as our increasingly influential research and world beating online lecture offer, we aim to develop concrete innovations, our own equivalent of a website like Wikipedia, a resource like MySociety or a service like Southwark Circles of Care.
This is a big ask. Invention is a hit and miss (and miss again) business. But in our methods we are trying to make success more likely. Our research projects are focussed on working in communities to develop and test ideas, rather than writing pamphlets aimed at Government ministers. And the RSA Catalyst fund is giving Fellows encouragement to develop their own ideas and social enterprises.
The Trustees’ emphasis has encouraged me to keep an eye out for new ideas that could turn into viable products. Here is one I have hit on this week. I would really value readers’ feedback as to whether it is a new and good idea.
A few days ago a casual friend (we are united by our love of West Brom) emailed me. He is about to decide what should be the topic for the dissertation he is doing for his Public Service Management MA. ‘Do you have any ideas?‘ he asked. As it happens I did – something about the relationship between public policy and promoting elite, amateur and mass participation in selected sports and arts.
But this promoted a bigger idea. Every year tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of students have to undertake extended research projects for undergraduate or Masters degrees. A lot of those students are looking for good ideas and almost all of them would like a bit of cash and other support. At the same time lots of people would like to have access to some reasonably proficient research skills. This could be to help with any of the following tasks:
• Developing a business plan
• Exploring an idea for a book
• A local history project
• Writing a proposal for a project at work
• Developing a local social enterprise
• Scoping a longer research project
Imagine, for example, someone who wanted to get the community or Council to preserve a local building, or green space. How useful might it be to have a good quality research project providing the history of the site in question or surveying local people about their attitudes to it? The local activist gets some powerful information; the student gets a good topic and local contacts to help with the study. And it would surely be a bonus for any student to know there is at least one person (beyond their tutor) who is eagerly awaiting the outcome of their labours?
The relationship between sponsor and student might simply involve a shared fascination. For example, I would love to read a dissertation from a bright English graduate comparing Matin Amis’ West London trilogy (Money. London Fields, The Information) with Philip Roth’s ‘American problem’ trilogy (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain). I like the idea of having a bound copy of a dissertation I had helped to inspire and fund and with a dedication to me in the front.
So, this is the idea: a bidding and matching website in which people who would like research undertaken are matched up with students looking for topics, cash, an audience and other forms of support. As well as the basic matching service the site could also expand to include all sorts of useful advice on how to develop and structure a research project.
What do people think? If it holds water does anyone fancy working with the RSA to develop the idea?
The best way to generate social capital – by accident
Once in a while you read something which you know you will find yourself quoting for years. Maybe it’s funny, surprising, shocking but more often it is because it confirms something we have long believed but not found a way of proving and expressing powerfully.
Recently I came across an example in the RSA Journal and today I am going to quote it at length (in blog terms). It is from a piece by Mario Luis Small, Professor of Sociology at Chicago University, and describes the findings of a research study among mothers in New York:
Levels of commitment
Consider the centres that cared for the children of the women we studied for several years. We interviewed the directors of many different kinds of childcare centre – 23 in all, ranging from the commercial to the nonprofit, the secular to the religious, the corporate to the standalone – and observed what staff, children, mothers and fathers (though few of the latter were visible) did over the course of operations.
At the end of our study, nothing surprised us more than how much the centres differed in their social capital. In some, most mothers forged new friendships among the other parents; together, they organised parties, arranged play dates, attended movies and dinners, and developed what many of them referred to as a new community. Joining the centre had measurably transformed their social networks (as we confirmed through statistical analyses of representative data). In other centres, mothers knew few, if any, of the other parents; they did not party or dine with them, or babysit their children. These centres served as little more than drop-off and pick-up locations. In one rare example, the director had even tried to build social capital but failed: she threw a pizza party for parents to socialise and almost none of them attended.
The socially effective centres did not differ from the others in the amount of leisure time the mothers had at their disposal; in all of them, most mothers worked full-time. Race, class, lifestyle and neighbourhood did not explain the difference, and nor did these centres have particularly heroic directors committed to creating a sense of community among the parents. On the contrary, few directors displayed any interest in building social capital for its own sake. Like the rest of us, they were busy; they had a centre to run.
Instead, social capital typically emerged when directors were trying to accomplish some other task, one that gave parents opportunities to interact or incentives to cooperate. For example, many directors believed strongly that children should be exposed to zoos, museums, libraries, children’s parks and farms. But trips to these locations require many more adults than are needed in the classroom, to prevent children from sticking their hands in monkey cages, wandering off in parks or slipping into ponds at apple-picking expeditions. Since hiring more staff for these occasions was costly, the centres needed parents to attend. No parent volunteers, no field trips. Centres needed volunteers for other activities, too, such as sanding and painting playgrounds at the end of the year, contributing food for various ceremonies and raising money to keep tuition fees moderate. In some centres in low-income neighbourhoods, mothers were expected either to raise a certain amount over the course of the year – usually about US$300 – or pay it out of pocket. To avoid paying the fee, parents had to volunteer for group fundraising activities, such as selling baked goods or holding raffles.
All of these activities – field trips, clean-ups, ceremonies and raffles – required interaction and socialisation with others; they obliged parents to meet, talk, exchange phone numbers, arrange schedules and get organised. As a result, the centres that imposed greater demands on parents provided opportunities and incentives that, over the course of weeks and months, stimulated the formation of social capital.
So, organisations can generate social capital. Indeed, organisational behaviour is crucial to the overall level of social capital in a society. But the degree to which organisations act as social capital generators is a function not of the organisations’s commitment to social capital per se (forget engagement for engagement’s sake) but of its attempt to provide a better service through engaging citizens in co-producing that service.
It’s as obvious as it is powerful. And as austerity means that more and more existing and potential services rely on citizen engagement and participation this research offers concrete reasons: (a) to hope that to some extent austerity might generate new social capital and (b) to explore how we must change organisational cultures and incentives to enable managers and front line workers to engage citizens as co-producers of public value.
The Lib Dems’ Big Society big opportunity
The Lib Dems appear largely to be ignoring the Big Society. But it could be an opportunity to define themselves more clearly and create a wedge between progressive and traditional Tories.
Richard Reeves (my former opposite number at Demos and now political strategist to Nick Clegg) will have mixed feelings this morning. The DPM’s speech succeeded in getting across its core messages, but as a piece of rhetoric it was generally found wanting. It’s the message that matters, but any speech-writer hopes that their work will be appreciated as a political art form. Having said which, Clegg’s pre-conference speech calling for a ‘horizon shift’ in politics and policy making bore the Reeves imprint more clearly and was also much more intellectually nourishing than yesterday’s effort.
Not that I have much experience to go on. I was always singularly unsuccessful at getting more than the occasional one-liner into Tony Blair’s speeches. The only exception was in 2003 when he used three full paragraphs of mine to announce what came to be called the ‘Big Conversation’. The next day it was precisely these paragraphs which a number of commentators – I remember Jonathan Freedland in particular – described as being the low point of the speech.
My problem was usually over-intellectualising. While I always wanted to qualify or justify a claim or promise, the more effective speech writers knew it was enough simply to assert it. Indeed the habit of short verb-less assertions is one Clegg seems to have adopted from Blair. So, when today in Liverpool, at the first of this year’s RSA fringe meetings, I criticise the Lib Dems for a lack of intellectual rigour it might reasonably be viewed as simply more evidence of my political naivety.
I will argue that the conference seems – perhaps inevitably – dominated by the question of the relationship between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. This suggests that Clegg’s political options all lie on a linear continuum between political submissiveness and internal opposition. This is not good positioning. As the Government becomes more unpopular and the Party more restive, it could easily become a trap; staying in the same place being merely the least worst option to moving in either dangerous direction.
Instead, had I been a Lib Dem strategist, I would have tried to use the conference not just to pledge that certain of the Party’s policies aspirations would be delivered, but to underline the distinct intellectual and political contribution the Lib Dems make to the Coalition.
One example of this missed opportunity lies in the predictable, but not necessarily wise, blanket condemnation of Labour’s record. This is fine – and probably justified when it comes to civil liberties – but perhaps not so clever when Nick Clegg and his colleagues attack Labour’s failure on inequality, asserting that the gap between rich and poor grew between 1997 and 2010. Not only is this untrue (unless you are very selective with statistics) but, more importantly, it ignores the fact that the effect of Labour tax and spend policies were substantially redistributive. The conundrum is that despite a redistributive Government spending a higher proportion of national income on public services, inequality levels remained stubbornly high. If the Lib Dems are to have any chance of making an impact on inequality in the face of austerity, the natural tendency for cuts to impact hardest on the poorest, and the limited (at best) enthusiasm of most Conservatives for redistribution, they will to spend less time attacking Labour’s record and more time trying to understand why it made as little progress as it did.
A second example concerns the Big Society. The polling IPSOS/MORI’s Ben Page will present today shows three main findings. The first is that people broadly accept the idea we need to give back more to our local community. The second is a gap between, on the one hand, people’s support of the idea and their willingness to step forward themselves and, on the other, between their support for devolving power and their intolerance of ‘postcode lotteries’. The third finding is that unless politicians are talking about the Big Society constantly it soon slips from public imagination. Recognition of the idea seems to have fallen in the last few months.
Rather than ignoring it (which seems to be the present strategy), the Lib Dems need their own their own take on the Big Society. With the Party’s long standing commitment to localism and its powerful brand of pavement politics the Coalition’s junior partner has more credibility and expertise in this area than the Conservatives. The Lib Dems should be ‘Big Society supporters who mean it’. They should argue that a Big Society approach needs to be at the heart of all public service strategies (it is currently absent from health and welfare to work policy and only at the margins in relation to schools) and that the Big Society is not credible unless it involves investing substantially in capacity building in poorer communities. Given that David Cameron’s sincere enthusiasm for the idea is not as deeply held by other senor Conservatives, the Big Society also offers the Lib Dems a way of creating a useful wedge between progressive and more traditional Conservatives.
Anyway, this is what I intend to say at lunchtime. I’ll tell you tomorrow how it goes down.
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