The Artful Manager

There are all sorts of interesting indicators that our discipline-specific thinking in the arts is coming unstuck. What the gatekeepers among us used to call distinct art forms like dance, music, theater, and visual art are becoming dialects of a common language, and those dialects are blending in compelling ways. … [Read more...]

Really interesting insights from Sherry Turkle on the opportunity and challenge of our evolving always-on and always-connected lives (if you'd rather read it than watch it, she shares essentially the same message in the New York Times). Paradoxically, she suggests, increasing use of mediated conversation avoids both the depth and nuance of social conversation, and the opportunity and importance of being alone with ourselves. … [Read more...]

The Stage offers an overview of a new energy-purchase club formed among UK arts venues. Banding together as a buying consortium allows the organizations to buy in bulk without actually getting bulkier. The idea of purchasing groups isn't new to the world, and not even new to the arts. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has coordinated shared purchasing and shared services -- from office supplies to health insurance to marketing purchase -- for many years. While the setup logistics can be complex, the rewards are obvious. … [Read more...]

I shared the news last week that I'm joining the faculty at American University in the fall, and leaving the wonderful students, faculty, staff, and alumni family here in Wisconsin. And while I'm truly sad to leave the Bolz Center for Arts Administration and the Wisconsin School of Business, I'm excited to see what's next for the program under new leadership. … [Read more...]

Diane Ragsdale raises some fabulous and fascinating points in her latest blog entry on 'sustainability' in the arts. Rather than accepting the common-knowledge-but-impossibly-vague use of the term 'sustainable' we hear at conferences and read in project reports, she digs a bit deeper into the concepts that lie beneath. When we talk about making an arts organization 'sustainable' in the quality, quantity, and revenue/expense balance of its work, we tend to mean that it will remain about the same … [Read more...]

While I was wandering the wilderness away from my blog (lots of reasons, I'll tell you over a drink sometime), lots of important and intriguing things happened in the arts world that I didn't get a chance to share. Chief among them was a fantastic effort by Theatre Bay Area (alongside WolfBrown) to research and test new metrics for the impact of theater. The final report (in book form) is called Counting New Beans. Rather than exploring the economic, or social, or educational impact of attending live theater events, the project dug deep to … [Read more...]

News is out officially yesterday about a next chapter in my academic and professional career. After 17 years of service to the Bolz Center for Arts Administration in the Wisconsin School of Business, ten as its director, I have accepted a faculty position at American University to begin in the fall. … [Read more...]

YouTube co-founder Christina Brodbeck is off on a new endeavor, a service to help couples stay happily together through mobile and social media. But her discoveries and advice from building that service offer some helpful insights for anyone who runs a relationship-related business (are you listening, arts organizations?). Rather than striving for efficiency and effectiveness, she suggests technology should instigate and facilitate meaningful human interaction. Her advice to designers and businesses hoping to build their business through better … [Read more...]

Mashable shares the news of a whimsical little app experiment called Happstr (developed on the "Startup Bus," winding its way to SXSW in Austin). Happstr is a website designed for your mobile device, with geotagging, that lets you press a large pink button when you're feeling happy, to mark the place (and the reason) for that happiness. … [Read more...]

Greetings blogosphere. A series of unfortunate events have kept me from blogging for many weeks now. I am still working and thinking and moving in the world. Just unable to share much about it here. I hope to return soon. … [Read more...]