Lessons in Digital Conference Management during COVID-19

The Arts & Cultural Management Conference for Students and Young Professionals first took place in 2018 and has since been organized by students and researchers in arts, culture, and heritage at various host universities in northern and central Europe. COVID-19, however, presented new challenges for 2021. Rather than skip this year’s conference, lead organizer Andreea Lupu — along with co-organizers Kelsey Maas, Lauren Wilson, and Rozzy Knox, myself, and a few others — decided going virtual. This presented a unique opportunity to establish a cultural and arts management support network with a more global focus and reach.  

 

ACMC 2021 had 211 registrants, 50 presenters, and six "Localized Hubs” that presented from India, Germany, Romania, the Netherlands, and England. Sessions included live and pre-recorded presentations with Q&As, panel discussions, workshops, performances, and posters. Most attendees and speakers reported from all parts of Europe. Some tuned in from South Africa, Canada, US, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and India. 

 

Topics spanned arts and cultural management, heritage management, cultural policy, visual and performing arts, illustration, art and artist studies, border studies, feminist studies, event management, photography, digital arts, climate change, and more. Our four guiding speakers Lluís Bonet, Savina Tarsitano, Amy Whitaker, and Steven Hadley - connected to us by the European Network for Cultural Management and Policy (ENCATC) - are all established arts and cultural researchers and amplified and echoed our main themes: "REvisiting Borders: Resilience, Reinterpret, and Reimagine”.

 

On day one, Lluís Bonet questioned what it means to have borders — culturally, physically, politically — during COVID-19, how these definitions are always shifting, and what that means for us as cultural managers trying to maneuver through it all. Savina Tarsitano later presented, "Towards new alliances after COVID-19: Rethinking the Role of the artist in society”. Steven Hadley opened day two with "Audience development, culture-as-vocation and democratic cultural policy”, which outlined definitional differences between "cultural democracy” and "democratization of culture” and why we should pay attention to this distinction. The final keynote, Amy Whitaker’s "Inventing Point B: Reimagining collaboration and restitution using blockchain technologies” encouraged us to reimagine how we might revive and restructure the arts and cultural sectors in a post-pandemic world. She also spoke on how this might encompass cultural ownership by incorporating developing technologies to "invent Point B”, rather than defining a straight path from Point A (where we are) to Point B (where we need/want to go).

 

As an emerging professional with some international experience, this conference and its main theme of "revisiting borders” encouraged me think about how we as facilitators and practitioners can keep pushing for structural changes to allow for more porous "borders” between cultural institutions, communities, and individuals worldwide. How can we create open lines of dialogue and opportunities to reshape cultural institutions into more democratic spaces? In this sense, Hadley’s talk on articulating the differences between cultural democracy and the democratization of culture was particularly impressive for me and reminded me that having "access” to culture doesn’t make a cultural space democratic in the first place. Arts and cultural institutions all over the globe are encountering these topics and so having a global conversation is necessary to effectively problem-solve and share solutions. 

 

 

We organizers tried to avoid thinking that a virtual conference would be inherently more accessible or more inclusive. To address this, we tried structuring the conference as a network with regular meetings which led up to the conference and which also served as a way for us to navigate planning decisions with more input. This created opportunities for dialogue on items like conference themes. The meetings also functioned like a forum to share research and project ideas, to connect with one another, and provide emotional support and motivation as we all went in and out of our various lockdowns.  

 

We also encouraged the formation of "Localized Hubs”, an idea from Andreea Lupu, where participants created and led mini-sessions both during and leading up to the conference. All together there were six Hubs ranging from groups of four to over fifteen people. The coordination could be tricky at times but was largely resolved through granting the Hubs total agency in planning their own talks, panels, performances, and more. Some of these Hubs recorded and shared performances, short tours of heritage sites, and panels discussions. The BTU Cottbus Hub (Germany) dedicated an interactive panel on how to continue one’s dissertation research while balancing personal mental health needs during a pandemic. We could have improved the function of these Hubs by offering clearer directions for involvement or more encouragement to lead discussions outside the conference and during regular networking meetings. But overall, the Hubs worked well and introduced a chance for groups and organizations to add discussion to the conference in a unique way. 

 

A personal highlight during the conference was a live performance by a Localized Hub in Kolkata, India — Jodi Bolo Rongin — on day two (Reinterpret). It offered an emotional release from all the discussion and showed how well theory and praxis balance one another, especially in the arts. A bilingual performance by Srikanta Acharya and Pt. Subhankar Banerjee offered the quote, "we only exist because of others”, which shone like a call to reaffirm faith in humanity. It prompted questioning about the motives of an arts conference like this — it was not just to talk about papers, but to reconnect as arts, cultural, and heritage managers, to offer mutual support of one another’s initiatives, studies, and to challenge one another to do better by ourselves, each other, and the sector by reimagining a better future. 

 

ACMC 2021 was possible because of the support of many people and organizations — especially all the volunteers who provided technical support and moderation during the conference. ACMC was promoted and sponsored by The European Network on Cultural Management and Policy (ENCATC), the Network of European Museum Organizations (NEMO), and Arts Management Network. ACMC also raised nearly €1500 on Eventbrite through ticket donations. This paid for marketing costs and our online conference platform, Hopin. The remainders will be passed to the 2022 planning team. 

 

 

Did this emphasis on building a network make a measurable difference in the conference experience or in its function to share or build upon sector knowledge? To answer this question, I think a more in-depth study is necessary — along with more solid definitions of buzzwords like accessibility and inclusivity in conference spaces. In my viewpoint, what worked well was building a conference that encouraged and welcomed shared decision-making and specifically asked not only for academic research but also for insights informed and enhanced by researchers’ lived experience. To this end, I think our virtual conference format contrasted from a traditional academic setting because it offered alternative accounts of cultural management knowledge.

 

My key takeaway: for as long as we are dealing with COVID-19 - and in light of global networking and travelling sustainability surely even beyond that - we will be turning to online platforms for events and programs usually done in person. More discussion should be cultivated on how to build conference frameworks that challenge inaccessibility. This includes more open exchange about how digital/virtual conference platforms are not inherently more accessible in order to work towards solutions.  

 

Additionally, not lastly, online conference platforms must improve for and by those experiencing a disability that prompt differences in online communication, something we noticed many event platforms were not prepared to provide. A lesson I hope to carry with me from this experience is a deep appreciation for the work it takes to create the networks needed to guide the arts, culture, and heritage sectors past the rapid changes of digitization and the long-overdue answers for accountability — especially by introducing elements of shared decision-making around knowledge creation.