The day after I posted my musings about Comic-Con International and what the non-profit arts can learn from it, I received a call from Angela Carone, the arts reporter at the local public radio/tv station asking if I’d participate in an extended dialogue on the topic. Along with me, Angela invited Tyler Richards Hewes, Executive Director of Orchestra Nova San Diego, and Edward Wilensky, the Director of Media Relations for the San Diego Opera.
Angela posted our dialogue over three days. She asked us questions about “high art” versus “low art,” Comic-Con’s use of social media, and the changing nature/loss of arts journalism when compared to Comic-Con’s embrace of citizen journalists and bloggers. There are certainly more people that grew up being comic book fans working in arts than we really know. Maybe we need to have sessons that include Comic-Con organizers at future non-profit conferences so the dialogue about what can be learned from the world of Popular Arts is brought to the center of our internal conversations and not convened by a journalist with a foot in both worlds.
For a taste of Comic-Con, check out all of Angela’s coverage at her blog Culture Lust.