Fresh ideas and dynamic arts

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Posted on 19th November 2009 by masterfiddle in Uncategorized

Falling behind….

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falling leaves

Recently, this blog has been woefully neglected.  My days have been  filled with violin teaching, job hunting and arts consulting.  My brain reels with arts administration ideas that never quite make it into a coherent form.

I am now armed with a fresh approach and will once again use this blog space as a platform for current ideas and resources in the field of performing arts management.

To begin with, I’m thinking about how the role of  individual artists intersects with professional nonprofit arts organizations.  As an artist, I must evaluate my role within the community and possibly what larger impact I have on the arts.

A graduate course co-taught by Andrew Taylor and Stephanie Jutt at UW-Madison’s Bolz Center for Arts Administration explores the dynamic interplay between artistic life and business.  The course is titled Arts Enterprise: Art as Business as Art.  On his blog, Andrew Taylor shares his discussion with Bill Ivey who was a recent guest lecturer regarding cultural policy and the arts. 

Ivey is the director of the Curb Center for  Art Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, former chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, and a team leader for the Obama administration and their transition overseeing arts and humanities policy decisions.  His background provides opportunity for a systemic view of the arts and culture in the United States.

The 20-minute clip should entice a variety of audiences interested in the arts and cultural policy.  Many of the ideas presented during the interview will be adressed here in subsequent posts. 

Looking at how the arts function throgh an individualist as well as an overarching policy lense gives deep insight into the value of the arts in the U.S.  Join me as we look at some key challenges facing artists and arts organizations to maintain legitimacy and sustain a creative economy.  Exciting opportunities are possible with creative thinking and motivation to greatly impact the arts in society.

Symphony Leadership: The artistic-economic dichotomy

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Posted on 5th November 2009 by masterfiddle in Arts and Economics

After a brief sojourn to San Francisco in October, I am now reconnecting my thoughts of economics and the arts through my search for a position in symphony management.    Regardless of career aspirations, arts administrators need a strong foundation of management tools to govern their organizations effectively in the current economic climate.

Discussions of increasing audiences, donated revenue, and downsizing staff are common topics and strategies for weathering the economic downturn.  However, the economic challenges in symphony administration are intricately tied to a dichotomy between the financial and artistic sides of the organization, noted here as the economic-artistic dichotomy.

Issues of the artistic-economic dichotomy are expressed by Tuomas Auvinen, who notes that

“there needs to be a balance found as the organization experiences economic influences.  The accusations of financial carelessness and mismanagement easily come in when the general director has, from the critic’s point of view, misbalanced the equation in favor of the artistic production team, causing the issues of accountability and efficiency to be placed in a secondary position.  This easily leads to accusations of mismanagement and financial carelessness when, in effect, the question is about prioritizing the artistic output of the organization rather than the market-oriented expectation of financial accountability”.

Auvinen represents the complexity of the artistic process in opera with the following diagram:

Artistic process2 copy

From: Why Is It Difficult to Manage and Opera House? In The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society

 

The key players in orchestra administration are the board, staff, musicians, and conductor.   Each of these sections of the organization is a stakeholder in the success of the symphony season.  Ultimately, arts leaders must maintain the artistic mission while keeping the organization financially stable.

Scouring the latest issues of Symphony magazine for discussion of the economic-artistic tensions in symphony administration, three main issues facing symphony administrators stood out:

1. Increasing audiences and donors

2. Maintaining organizational sustainability

3. Connecting with communities

These three items will be addressed through subsequent posts.  Tactics, strategies, and schemes will be discussed. While the economic-artistic dichotomy is not named as such in publications of symphony management, the concept permeates orchestra administration through programming and artistic constraints. 

Despite certain challenges, the current economic crisis is encouraging symphonies to experiment with marketing and programming in new ways.   Symphony managers must approach the crisis with forward-thinking attitudes.  New visions and organizational approaches may evolve through a collaborative effort to ensure the growth of individual orchestras and the field as a whole.