Tuesday, November 29, 2011

I wrote this memo to  Board of Directors of The Maine Media Workshops, with hopes they would read it, and consider my recommendations.

Sitting on the sidelines as the founder and former CEO of The Maine Photographic Workshops, I’ve been watching and listening to what been happening over the past 4 years, since I turned over the schools I created to a nonprofit.  I am concerned about The Workshops and its future--as perhaps no one else can be. As the person who founded the organization, created the environment, built the campus and and developed the programs, I believe I may have a perspective that could be helpful to The Board as it moves through this transition in leadership.

The Maine Photographic Workshops was created to inspire creativity, curiosity, exploration, and risk-taking. These were the principles we wanted our students to embrace and we did this best by example. These same mandates built the place and were the principles by which we managed The Workshops for 34 years--and I say “we” for my staff and the faculty did this together.

It appears that the energy and magic which created this institution is leaking away. The school may be financial stable, but in the process has also become stagnant. There appears to no growth and very little innovation. Where has the “magic” gone?

The Workshops began with $3,000, a great deal of energy and a dream. It was my desire to create a place where creative people could gather to discuss their work, explore their visions, and develop their craft.  During our first summer in 1973, 150 enthusiastic students participated in a dozen workshops. During the early years, we continually refined our mission, by looking at what we had failed at and what successes we had. It was experience that was our mentor. Operating on a shoestring, we began making a profit in three years. Within five years, we were acquiring buildings, building a campus, and negotiating with the University of Maine to establish a joint Associate of Arts Degree program. Summer enrollment grew to over 1,000 students, there were 50 full-time students enrolled in our fall-winter-spring program. All through the 80s and 90s  summer workshop enrollment hovered between 2,000  to 2,500 photographers, journalists, and filmmakers. Annual gross income was over $5 million.

This success fueled expansion, and we  launched programs in Europe, Mexico, Africa, and Cuba. For four years,  in the late 1980s, we  organized the International Photography Congress, a week-long version of PopTech. We held The Annual Photography Competition, presented the Ernst Haas Award, named photography's top 100 emerging photographers, and held a major exhibition in New York City each fall. We had a presence at all the major festivals and trade  shows, both here and abroad.

I recount this because many of you on the Board have little knowledge of or experience with The Workshops’ past. Through the 80s, 90s, and into the 2000s, The Workshops was a major player in the world of art and media. It is not now.

It was my vision to make The Workshops a center for creative people – and it worked. What fueled The Workshops' growth and success was curiosity, imagination, risk-taking, and collaboration-with a hefty dose of showmanship. While I had a vision for what it could be, it was my staff, the faculty and alumni who created the place. As a Team, we experimented each year, adding new workshops and programs. Some were successful, others were not. We learned what worked; kept the good ideas, refined those with promise, and dropped those which failed. What we built attracted creative people. They came with their energy, ideas, and their suggestions. The place grew, not because of me (often in spite of me), but because it was what photographers and filmmakers wanted and needed. There was magic here.

Where is the excitement today? I sense that The Workshops has lost the vision: to be a place of curiosity, risk, and adventure. It no longer rides the crest, developing new markets, doing new things, or doing old things in new ways. For  35 years, The Workshops was a hive of activity, growth and experimentation. We built five buildings and renovated other six. We added a college and become world-renowned as a place of creativity and energy. In that time we set the standard by which all other photography and film workshops are run today.  We rode the edge for three decades. a feat fully expected of any creative enterprise.

A recent article in The New York Sunday Times explored the nature of innovation. The article applauded Steve Jobs, Apples founder and CEO, for the impact his vision and management style has had on today's corporate world. He built the world's largest, most profitable company. How? By being innovative, imaginative, and curious.

A study of innovation suggests that there are five traits in the richly diverse and unsettling world of creativity: questioning, experimenting, observing, associating, and networking. I would add “imagination.” Imagination and networking brings people and ideas together. This establishes relationships and collaborations that result in new products, fresh ideas and things which did not previously exist.

Innovation and imagination set American entrepreneurs apart from the rest of the world. Innovation embraces change, risk, exploration and experimentation. These are American characteristics and the lessons which need to be taught at The Workshops.

But how can The Workshops inspire students with these principles if it does not live by them? Perhaps the decline in enrollment is due to the organization's lack of imagination, leadership, exploration, its ability to identify new markets and technologies. In the past, The Workshops was a place rich with these traits.

I realize The Workshops is undergoing yet another transition. I would like to help. I have a plan I would like to share with the Board of Directors; a plan by which we can bring back the magic and creative energy for which The Workshops was famous. This plan provides renewed vision, rekindles the old spirit and passion, opens new markets, creates new revenue streams and moves The Workshops and the College forward to a position of leadership within the industry.

In my plan I cover three major areas, each of which I discuss in detail:

    Vision / Leadership

    Management

    Marketing

   

I would appreciate the opportunity to present this plan to you at your convenience and to discuss a path by which The Workshops can move forward under a new management structure.

Sincerely,

David H. Lyman

Founder

The Workshops Staff and Faculty around 1978 or 79 on teh steps to the Darkrooms in Union Hall, Rockport. Kate Carter, Craig Stevens, Carol Stevens, Sharon Fox, Mark Wallack, Carson Graves, and David Lyman, Founder and Director . . . and a few people whose names I can’t recall. If you know,  let me know.