In November 2019 I was lucky to attend the International Winter School ‘Brokering Intercultural Exchange within Societies’. During the three days, I had a very warm feeling of being understood. Though the participants came from different countries and had different backgrounds, we were a community of like-minded people who are truly passionate for arts and culture.

The success of artists lies very much within their own mission. Often the struggle of earning enough money to live can mean that artists start working in ways that causes exhaustion and upset. anGie seah is an artist living in Singapore who follows her heart and measures success against her level of enjoyment. But, does this pay the bills? It seems that it can.

Hilary Carty is one of the most prominent voices in cultural leadership in UK and abroad. Beth Ponte had a chance to visit her in her office at Clore Leadership, located at Somerset House in London, for an interview and she talked with great clarity about changes in cultural leadership, the relationship between governance and diversity as well as trends in leadership training for the cultural sector.

Since 2012, SPACE has been leading partner on delivering artist professional development programmes for the arts sector in London. During this time, our focus has been on encouraging artists to reframe their practice as a business. Here is what the artists - and we as training providers - learned.

The damaging nature of bullying behaviour, which can have both psychological and physical effects, makes dealing with it in the workplace an enormous challenge. Therefore, I collected some tips for cultural organisations, followed by a few pointers for individuals who are experiencing or witnessing bullying at their workplace.

Crises come in all shapes and sizes: they mean different things to different people. The #MeToo debate publicly demonstrates how destructive behaviours such as bullying and harassment can cause personal crises for individuals and group crises both within an organisation and at institutional level. Further, an entire sector can become contaminated by abuse, while persecution at national and international levels often leads to conflict and war.

Just two and a half years after its founding, the Network Brokering Intercultural Exchange has achieved to bring together arts and cultural researchers and professionals from numerous continents and countries and to address the difficulties of the international cultural sector. The Annual Gathering in May 2019 on "Democratizing the Arts and the Arts Sector" has once again put its finger on the wound and shown how far the international cultural sector, despite all its ambitions, is still from equal rights and participation.

‘Courageous Citizens’ aims to address the ‘role of culture in social change’ through interviews, excerpts from speeches, photographs and scribbles. Rather than a practical guide, it is an almost philosophical collection of observations and experiences of arts professionals on the question of how arts and culture besides institutional structures can help reflect current societies and create more equal ones by courage and empathy.

Pablo Picasso’s is an excellent example to show how art has the power to make us better people. The importance of combining art and critical thinking skills, in a myriad of formal and informal approaches, can prove very effective in improving the quality of life for individuals and societies. This article discusses how the creative/ artistic mind, in tandem with the problem-solving/ practical mind, can better serve pursuits of happiness, shape our values, and reach for higher goals, especially in times of crisis.

Arts Management is a broad field where a lot of things happen simultaneously. New approaches are constantly appearing on the tableau and most of them disappear very quickly again. Together with experienced researchers, Constance DeVereaux has taken on the difficult task of identifying the most promising ones for her new volume - published 2018 by Routledge - and mapping their status quo between theory and practice.

Most book reviews are written without including feedback or background information by the author. For this review, Constance DeVereaux decided to not only write about Jim Volz’ latest book "Introduction to Arts Management” but to additionally talk to him about why he thought another introduction to the field was needed.

This or a similar formulation can be found in various study and examination regulations of arts management study courses: The aim is "to enable graduates to meet current challenges in the cultural sector in a competent, creative and solution-oriented way". That is good - and yet still too little.

During the first Global Cultural Leadership Programme (GCLP) in 2016, forty young cultural leaders travelled from across the globe to meet in Valetta, Malta for one week. We - Alison Uttley (Canada), Beth Ponte (Brazil), Faye Hobson (Ireland) and Ruhi Jhunjhunwala (India) - were members of the inaugural cohort of the GCLP and the experience proved to be transformative for each of us in unexpected ways.

What is leadership if not a relationship and role we take within a community? We live in complicated times that urge us to embrace new forms of leadership. And since arts and culture can give us deep insights into how we form relationships and how we relate to the world and help us envision leadership styles beyond neoliberal approaches, leadership in this sector should also focus on caring and growing.

The responsibility of cultural managers in transformation societies was the central topic of the first winter school for master's and doctoral students organised by Heilbronn University and the Brokering Intercultural Exchange (BIE) network with participants from 16 countries. It took place at the end of November 2018 in Berlin in cooperation with MitOst e.V. and the Robert Bosch Cultural Managers Network.

Over the last thirty+ years the Fine Arts have found themselves in an increasingly tight squeeze between a rock and hard place in most Western countries. Their development shows why not every arts market segment can be measure by the same criteria – like an egalitarian community purpose, financial independence or adaptation to capitalist logic – and why there is still a need for Arts for Art’s Sake.

We have witnessed the development of the field of arts management with its own professional identity and academic programs around the world. But one wonders if its theoretical framework, curricula and approaches really respond to the reality of the different countries, especially when considering the distinction between North and South. The book Introduction to International Arts Management by Raphaela Henze assumes the important role of provoking this discussion.

On 27 September, Dr. Alba Victoria Zamarbide Urdaniz from Waseda University in Japan was announced as the winner of the 5th ENCATC Research Award on Cultural Policy and Cultural Management for her PhD on "Re-defining the role of 'buffers' in the management of the historical territory. The discrepancies between theoretical concepts and practical interpretations of 'buffer' zones in Eastern and Western Cultural World Heritage sites.”

In order to fully exploit the potential of the Robert Bosch Cultural Managers Network (RBCM Network), a group of Master students from Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences, Germany evaluated the network and identified central aspects for its further development.

This paper deals with the power mechanisms inherent in our knowledge system, particularly focusing on the language used in arts management practice.