The Artful Manager

The latest issue of the National Endowment for the Arts magazine explores the fertile ground of 'innovation' -- with a particular focus on artistic practice. Featured are discussions with artists such as Julie Taymor, Fred Dust, Josh Neufeld, and others. And the online edition features bonus multimedia about Tony Orrico, Meredith Monk, Low Anthem, and Meejin Yoon. … [Read more...]

A marketing professor in the Wisconsin School of Business loves to share arts marketing materials in his straight-up MBA classes, just so he can mock them publicly. His favorites are hyperbolic about the experience on offer, suggesting in romantic images and flowery prose that nirvana awaits any who purchase a ticket. Every show. Every time. Every audience member will be transformed. … [Read more...]

I'm co-teaching a special topics course this Spring about the intersection of art and enterprise -- where aesthetic and expressive effort meet the marketplaces of people, places, and resources. "Arts Enterprise: Art as Business as Art" works to encourage a more connected view among the students (mostly arts majors, but from a wide range of disciplines) between a creative idea and its realization as a project, an organization, or a career. … [Read more...]

My colleague Paul Beard was telling me about the Smith Center for the Performing Arts now in development in Las Vegas, and remarked that it was actually two entirely different creatures living in the same space. The day before it opens, it will be a construction site with one set of demands and challenges. The day after it opens, it will be a complex expressive enterprise with a whole different set of operating requirements. He likened it to an insect that enters a cocoon or chrysalis as one kind of animal, and departs as another … [Read more...]

If you use the Internet, you likely have heard or read rumblings about legislation currently in Congress about Internet piracy. SOPA and PIPA were the inspiration for a blackout of several major web sites this week over concerns that the legislation would 'break' the Internet through their requirements, and change the nature of what and how we share online. If you're interested in the larger dynamics at work, particularly related to creative content in an online world, take a look at Clay Shirky's recent talk at the TED offices. Useful. … [Read more...]

A recurring theme at this year's Arts Presenters conference in New York was boundary crossing. Artists and arts organizations were celebrated for dancing with unexpected partners -- city planners, farmers, inner-city kids, health professionals. Other speakers encouraged such new connections and new commitments to becoming relevant to communities in non-traditional ways. There was also much talk about silos, about the insular structures of deep experts in arts organizations, in higher education, in scientific knowledge. Here, again, the call … [Read more...]

I'm attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conferencein New York this weekend, along with six of my MBA students from the Wisconsin School of Business. For the seventh year running, the student team has been commissioned by Arts Presenters to prepare and present a conference session on an emerging issue in the presenting field, funded by the association's William Dawson Research Internship fund. The topic this year is 'Power, Influence, and Performing Arts' (you can find past topics online here). And, as in the past, … [Read more...]

'Innovation' is the buzz word at many arts conferences these days, and among many funders. With so many things changing in our environment -- all of the STEEP variables at once (Sociological, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political) -- innovation in programming, practice, business process, strategy, and such seems a best way through. But as we're busy innovating, this Co.Design article reminds us that not all innovations are alike.  It suggests three broad types of innovation: Sustaining innovations in products or services … [Read more...]

VICE online magazine offers a fascinating bit of music history from South Africa with a story about the rise of Kwaito house music in the 1990s. Since emerging artists in this street-wise musical style couldn't get on the radio, they would give their demos to taxi drivers to be heard. Taxis provide a primary means of transport in Johannesburg and surroundings, making taxi drivers and taxi stands hubs of cultural opportunity. And as a local transportation system driven by locals, the network offered a unique distribution system for local … [Read more...]

So, you're running an arts facility or cultural organization in Anytown, USA, and your computer person (who might also be your office manager) falls ill or quits in a huff -- does anyone else know the system passwords and protocols? Or, a patron falls and breaks an arm -- is your front-line staff prepared and practiced on what to do? Or, a flood or storm or social uprising threatens your building, your collection, your costume or set shop -- who's in charge, who do they contact, how do you gather a response team quickly and effectively to … [Read more...]