For years a community arts group booked the summer concerts for their resort community. Positioned as the leader in the arts, it was an obvious extension of the arts organization’s mission and offered three to four well received summer public events. The audience at the concerts ranged between 1,000 to 4,000 depending on the artist and the date. The one impediment was that the arts group was reliant on the owners of the local ski resort to provide the venue- which was typically the base of the ski slope. The resort could promote nationally recognized musical artists and was a draw for the community. The art’s organization used its expertise in the performing arts and the relationship with the resort who was interested in attracting people to its hotel and property appeared symbiotic. The musical venue was temporary and required a complete set-up and breakdown for each concert but the concert series worked for years.
Last year the ski resort owners decided to build a summer amphitheater that turned into a grand musical venue. Suddenly the ski resort decided to program the new venue with musical acts and no longer needed the expertise of the arts organization. The ski resort hired a program director to schedule the events. As the owners of the music pavilion the resort has priority over dates, artists, and vendors. Suddenly a long held tradition of summer concerts produced by the art center was no longer the headliner event. The summer will sort out the results but I think that this is a good illustration of the power and dysfunction of partnerships.
Does your enterprise have a critical resource that make you relevant to an on-going partnership? Can you be replaced? What are your contingency plans? Does your organization understand what it is uniquely positioned to do?
What-if-concepts 