The MBA program in Arts Administration that I direct here in the Wisconsin School of Business hosted our bi-annual alumni conference last week, launching our celebration of our 40th year. It was a rewarding and intriguing event, as I knew it would be — get smart and fun people in a room and lob a juicy question at them, and good stuff tends to happen.
Our juicy question this time around explored the traditional boundaries of arts and cultural management along three different dimensions:
- The civic, creative, and commercial boundaries of arts and culture were nudged by Wisconsin’s own Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton, who is working perhaps more than any other state leader to reconnect arts, culture, expression, creativity, education, and commerce (at least, Americans for the Arts thinks so). I’m guessing that Wisconsin’s Arts Board is one of the few such agencies with the word ”commerce” hard-wired into its tagline.
- The corporate and tax structure boundaries around our traditional conception of arts and culture were also a matter of extended discussion. The nonprofit corporate form, particularly, was a matter of much frustration and dissatisfaction (oooh, the animosity toward board structures!). And our panel of three entrepreneurs serving arts and artists under the for-profit umbrella (Toni Sikes of Guild.com, Roy Elkins of Broadjam, and Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal) helped highlight the many ways to get our important work done.
- Finally, our keynoter Doug McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal, suggested a new role and focus for cultural organizations beyond the production and distribution of artistic content. His keynote, ”The Artistic Director of Everything Else,” explored the emerging opportunity for arts organizations to curate active and interactive communities around their work, rather than only presenting their work. The challenge is that few arts organizations are staffed and structured (or even inspired) to curate the communities that surround them.
In between all the productive conversation, of course, were fantastic opportunities to see old friends and dear colleagues. Thanks to all who came to Madison. Here’s hoping our next 40 years are as rich with friends and fun as these past four decades have been.
The Lt. Governor had us excited for what’s to come in Wisconsin. Doug had us engaged in thoughts about current technologies. Toni and Roy had us feeling entrepreurial in a positive way. The weekend was encouraging in more ways than one.
Four E’s to compliment the WI Art’s Board theme… Thanks for being our humble host, Andrew.
Will the keynote speech transcript be made available?
Sounds like it was an incredible evening!
Sadly, no. The keynotes weren’t scripted, and we didn’t record them. You had to be there!
As the loudmouth who pointed out at the gathering that Bad Board Management is not an indictment of Not-For-Profit Structure — that there are effective ways (e.g. Consent Agenda) of focusing board attention on strategic issues rather than spending hours on droning staff reports — I neglected to credit the source of this revelation, at least as it relates to my own organization.
It was none other than Andrew Taylor who, in a Spring ’07 visit with my Board of Directors, said that “boards spend time on what management puts in front of them… If the most interesting thing on the table is a $100 variance in a $50,000 budget, that’s what they’ll talk about.”
It was that comment that prompted my incoming ’07-8 president to move us to a Consent Agenda meeting structure, leaving time for productive exploration of community trends and strategic issues and the activities of our client organizations. We’re 16 meetings into the new format and I now look forward — let me say again: LOOK FORWARD — to board meetings.
So I’ll say it again (as a reformed Bad Board Manager myself): It’s not non-profit structure that’s the source of the frustration, it’s bad board management.
Thanks, Andrew, for the epiphany!