The research topic of public participation in arts and culture is garnering ever-increasing international attention. A recent contribution to the international literature in this field is the German Handbuch Kulturpublikum, edited by Patrick Glogner-Pilz and Patrick S. Foehl (Handbook of Cultural Audiences. Research questions and findings). Comprised of chapters by 24 leading German scholars, this innovative resource provides a veritable encyclopedia of insight into the contemporary state of theory, methods, and practice as well as emerging international approaches to the field, thus offering the reader deep insight into what is a uniquely German scholarly lens.
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The worldwide demand for qualified personnel in cultural institutions is great, yet the opportunities for advanced training are limited. For that reason, Goethe-Institut started in 2015 its international MOOC Managing the Arts. This review may give you some impressions.
Goethe Institut's first International Forum took place October 26 - November 6 in Munich, Germany. It brought together cultural experts from different regions of the world and different cultural sectors for a two-week intensive exchange phase. During this time, the participants got the opportunity to discuss current issues of cultural management, policy and administration. The global issues, ideas and skills brought forward during the forum reflect the opportunities and needs on professional competencies in the arts sector.
Three months after the 39th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, participants of the Young Experts Forum 2015 have initiated the online platform "Young Heritage Experts". The aim is to act as a think tank and deliver an unprecedented international networking platform for young experts and activists around the topics of UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Digitization is not only changing how arts organizations can convey cultural experiences, reach users and open up to the input of visitors. It is rather changing the way we think about the conditions and structures of day-to-day creative work. At the same time, digitization is opening up a multitude of possibilities of increasing the economic value of the arts. The field of cultural entrepreneurship is reconsidering the intersection of culture, technology and entrepreneurship. It uses the new dynamics that arise to the cultural sector to revolutionize current business models and redefine the impact of culture. Cultural entrepreneurship can be a way to reduce dependence on public funding and to position itself as an economic factor vis-à-vis politics and public without abandoning individual artistic and idealistic societal demands. As culture represents both artistic as well as social values, we do not intend to separate cultural and social entrepreneurship from each other in this newsletter, or, for that matter, from entrepreneurial thinking within the arts sector.
With revenues of US$2,250 billion, Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) account for 3% of world GDP and employ 29.5 million people (1% of the worlds active population). This major contribution to the global economy is explained in a new study, jointly presented by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at UNESCOs headquarters in Paris, France, and published by EY (formerly Ernst & Young).
Alessia Usai from Italy and Annika Hampel from Germany were announced as the winners of the 2015 ENCATC Research Award on Cultural Policy and Cultural Management. The ENCATC Award targets emerging researchers in the field of cultural policy and cultural management up to 35 years of age from Europe and the rest of the world.
The South Netherlands Philharmonic (SNPh) is the result of severe cuts in Netherlands state subsidies for the arts. These cuts resulted in the merger of two former orchestras into the SNPh. The SNPh started in 2013 after extensive strategic financial and managerial approaches were made. At the beginning of its third season the new orchestra is now widely seen as a successful artistic body and a flourishing arts-institution with a close relationship to its region.
NCAR, the U.S. National Center for Arts Research, provides evidence-based insights into the national arts and cultural community. NCAR wants to enable their leaders to use data strategically to overcome challenges, transform their institutions in a sustainable way and increase impact. Marla Teyolia, Associate Director at NCAR, shows in this introduction that the research methods and tools provided by NCAR can be helpful for every arts leader to measure and improve the work of her organization, even if not situated in the U.S.
Although already from 2013, this contribution hasn't lost any of it's relevance and can be transferred to a lot of countries at least in the western world. Nesta's Manifesto for the Creative Industries proposes ten system recommendations for a fresh policy that establishes the creative industries as a serious economic force throughout Europe and beyond.
Cultural managers have an urgent need for advanced trainings to face the changes in society and politics concerning the arts. But what competences does that include? Lorraine Lim, lecturer in arts management at Birkbeck, stated in the Guardian that according to a study among her students, the important skills nowadays are not only how to run an arts institution, but to manage different kinds of projects as portfolio work and to create a career out of short-term employments. With regard to globalization and the differentiation of the cultural sector, this includes often neglected aspects like dealing with failure, intercultural communication and - since glocalization is coming along with globalization - insights in international cultural infrastructures, and social and political circumstances.
Still, information gaps exist. For instance, relevant, up-to-date and publicly accessible online information on arts and culture and their professional management can still prove hard to find for some regions and countries. Anupama Sekhar presented culture360.asef.org, an online portal on arts and culture focusing on Asia and Europe to address this knowledge gap, at the ENCATC Annual Conference 2014.
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Egypt has a vibrant, internationally inspired independent scene with dedicated employees. In contrast, the traditional culture is financially shabbily treated and reglemented by the state. In the light of censorship, centralization and a lack of professionalism in cultural management the cultural sector could hardly make any impact on its content. The Goethe-Institut wants to change that with specialized and adequate trainings.
n Iraq, cultural managers are needed to ensure that the cultural sector can grow again and fulfill its tasks in the aftermath of the war, during the development of a new governmental system and against the terrorism of the fundamentalist Islamic State. Culture in Iraq contributes to the development of education, community values, and openness more actively than it is often the case in the Western world.
SIETAR is one of the largest association of specialists who research and teach the skills necessary to develop a diverse, participatory environment, and help people to operate professionally in it. The aim of its last conference, which took place from May 21st to 23rd in Valencia, Spain, was to broach the issue of the interfaces and cultures of arts, economy, society, policy, and education to reshape intercultural discourses and question current cultural paradigms. 350 interculturalists left the Congress with a bag full of inspiring ideas.
The German arts management professor Birgit Mandel visited two arts management programs in the USA and attended the main conference of AAAE, the Association for Arts Administration Educators at Universities and Colleges, that took place April 16-18, 2015 in Portland. There, she realized several aspects of managing arts that contradict the European presumption of the arts sector in the US.
Peter Gelb is General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, one of the worlds largest and most complex arts organizations. Since his inauguration in 2006, he launched a number of new projects to attract new and younger audiences. But the debts are still growing and as the Met is the most lavish privately financed opera house in the world, the opinion of the wealth and patronaging older opera lovers play an important role when it comes to management decisions.
"The most precious things in life are not those you get for money," said Albert Einstein. Cultural managers, artists, and cultural policymakers are well aware that the personal and social value of culture cannot simply be measured through funding. Nevertheless, policy often tries to convey the rehabilitation of its budgets through funding cuts in the cultural sector while cultural institutions and initiatives complain about the lack of money not just since the economic crisis. In this context, the ENCATC (European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centers) placed the question "Is it all about money?" at the center of its annual conference 2014.
Money for publicity: this over-simplistic marketing principle that underlies any sponsorship agreement is increasingly losing its attractiveness for corporate communications. Today, entrepreneurial cultural engagement is less about image or about customer loyalty than it is about the central asset of trust. Hence, the idea of corporate cultural engagement has to be rethought.
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The Institute for Cultural Concepts Hamburg talked with Christina Gleich about the status of cultural politics and management in Ecuador.