{"id":876,"date":"2006-04-06T09:38:37","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T16:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2006\/04\/prison_purgatory_or_playground\/"},"modified":"2006-04-06T09:38:37","modified_gmt":"2006-04-06T16:38:37","slug":"prison_purgatory_or_playground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/prison_purgatory_or_playground.php","title":{"rendered":"Prison, purgatory, or playground"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my line of work, I often find myself in front of a group of cultural managers, walking them through a particular tool or strategy used in the commercial world, the social sector, or academia, and framing a conversation about how we might use it in the arts. One of the great joys of being on a large university campus is that I stumble onto wonderful methods and models everywhere I wander &#8212; in the educational psychology department, political science, bioscience, law school, sociology, and on and on. So many of these might be applicable to cultural management if we tweaked them a bit.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve done enough of these conversations to now recognize three possible responses from cultural managers to any new tool or management method:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>It&#8217;s a Prison<\/i><br \/>\nSome percieve the tool or methodology as a horrible and horrific constraint against the creative spirit of their organization. We can&#8217;t use <i>that<\/i> in an arts organization. It&#8217;s cold, calculating, and callous (and probably some other words beginning with a &#8220;c&#8221;). This group is usually small but vocal.<\/li>\n<li><i>It&#8217;s a Purgatory<\/i><br \/>\nSome have a middling reaction to the new strategy or tool, figuring it&#8217;s one more thing they might have to do someday and will learn it when it&#8217;s necessary. This group is the majority in the room, but rarely make themselves known. They slump and talk amongst themselves.<\/li>\n<li><i>It&#8217;s a Playground<\/i><br \/>\nSome find the new tool intriguing regardless of their first impressions of its utility. It&#8217;s a new playground, a new creative constraint that might lead them somewhere&#8230;or might not. You can see this group leaning forward in their seats, wanting to grab the keys and take the idea for a spin. They may well cast it aside, and decide to label it a prison or purgatory &#8212; but only after they&#8217;ve had some time at the wheel. This group is also a small percentage of the room. They usually identify themselves after the session or in e-mails later on.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I respect <i>every<\/i> reaction. The tool may, actually, be useless. And the daily pressures and constraints of cultural management don&#8217;t generally allow for play and experimentation. But I&#8217;ll admit a special affinity for the &#8220;playground&#8221; group, since it&#8217;s much more fun and productive to explore these  tools together from various perspectives. And you can&#8217;t explore if you don&#8217;t come out to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my line of work, I often find myself in front of a group of cultural managers, walking them through a particular tool or strategy used in the commercial world, the social sector, or academia, and framing a conversation about how we might use it in the arts. One of the great joys of being [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}