We know it happens. We have seen art save lives, cultural practices bring people together, cultural activism mobilize people, and artists activate the social imagination to make something new possible. While the potency of the arts as a catalyst for civic and social change is widely observed, cultural and community leaders struggle to measure it and make the case for the value of arts in civic engagement. Whose standards should apply? What evidence should be tracked and documented? How can hard-to-measure civic outcomes be substantiated? And, can they be attributed to our arts-based civic engagement efforts exclusive of other factors?

The Kennedy Centers Summer International Fellowship Program, part of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, offers international not-for-profit arts managers an immersive program of study in arts management strategy. For four weeks each summer, for three consecutive years, international fellows undertake academic coursework, a rotation of workplace assignments under the direction of senior Kennedy Center staff, and a structured series of professional development seminars. The curriculum includes seminars and coursework in strategic planning, board development, fundraising, marketing, and artistic planning.

This afternoons highly-anticipated Spending Review announcement has reiterated that the government will maintain free entrance to museums and galleries, and confirmed that funding extensions for the Tate and British Museum will still go ahead valued at almost £350m. Arts Council England (ACE), however, has been hit with a 29.6 % budget cut, amounting to a real-term reduction of £100m from £450m to £350m by 2014. Local government also faces funding cuts of 7% year-on-year, reducing cash by 28 % by 2015. The double whammy of grim news is likely to hit the arts hard, as provision of cultural services is not a statutory duty for local authorities and ACE has already declared itself to be operating at its most streamlined.

Overall, the DCMS will lose almost 25% of its funding over four years. Chancellor George Osborne has ordered that 41% of this budget cut is to be shouldered by a reduction in the departments administrative costs. The DCMS currently receives £1.6bn grant-in-aid, which will be slashed to £1.1bn by 2014/15. Osborne also declared that front-line arts services and specific projects are to be cut by not more than 15%, with the remainder of the savings to come from admin costs. ACE has been told to cut 50% of its own administrative budget in order to protect front-line services.

Walk into a crowded museum, and what do you see? People with cameras or cellphones snapping pictures of people looking at objects. The artwork, document or fossil is a tourist site; the photograph is our souvenir. And the looking for which museums were created becomes a memory before it has even begun.

Now something else is in play that may distance the museum experience even further though it intends to do just the opposite. During the last week I have walked through galleries, half-looking at objects and half-consulting an iPhone screen.

Back in April 2008 we took a close look at the developments in human resource management, and now, two and a half years later, we would like to return back to this theme. Human resource management plays an important role in the cultural sector as it is focused squarely on individuals and how they, through their abilities, creativity, and ability to innovate, play an eminent part in organizations as a whole. The cultural sector is currently being subjected to fundamental changes, and therefore it is all the more necessary to find and hold onto the right people for the job, as well as to offer them the chance to continue their training.

For this issue of the Arts Management Newsletter we were able to get in contact with several experts in the field of human resource management, like William J. Byrnes (Utah Center for Arts Administration), Susan Annis, director of the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) in Canada, as well as Lisa Watts, CEO of ArtsHub Australia.

Strategy. One word. Multiple meanings. Some organisations direct their strategy at playing the existing game better. Some others decide to play new games. Only few decide to redefine how an existing game is being played. Avenso Projects redefined the rules in the contemporary photography market and created a new space for art photography. A sound strategy seems also crucial in the art business. The following paper will firstly describe how the strategic position of Lumas, Avensos first business unit, came about.

The Australia Council for the Arts has become one of the worlds first funding agencies to tackle the issue of how to measure the artistic vibrancy of the companies it funds.The council has developed a set of resources to encourage arts organisations to measure their artistic achievement through audience surveys and internal assessments.

The councils Executive Director of Arts Organisations, Tony Grybowski, says the new program marks an important enhancement of councils priorities and those of its funded companies.

Sustainability has been a strong focus for Australias major organisations, particularly through the global financial crisis, says Tony Grybowski.

Thats clearly still important, but if our industry leaders are to continue to develop and champion their artforms and artists, its time for a new conversation about artistic vibrancy, he said.

October 7-9, 2010, Brussels/Belgium - The Culture Action Europe conference has a long established tradition as the key focal point for cultural operators, civil society, experts and policy makers to come together and debate key issues at stake for Europes cultural life.

The conference will inspire, argue and debate what choices we make now and how they will alter the landscape of future EU policies for culture. It will try to embrace two interconnected visions: first, the contributions of arts and cultural sector to the vision of Europe in the future; second, the recognition and support for these contributions within the range of programmes and policies that the EU has to offer.

The programme for the conference is concentrated and focused on in-depth debate, allow space for extensive audience participation and interaction between speakers and delegates.

Arts Council England (ACE) has suspended adverts for unpaid jobs on its Arts Jobs website, due to the high volume of placements that contravene minimum wage legislation. A statement on the site declares that this suspension is only temporary, but covers all unpaid work, work experience, voluntary roles and internships. In line with its commitment to ensure that artists and arts professionals are appropriately remunerated for the work they do, ACE has emphasised that it recognises the value of genuine volunteering opportunities, but states that these must be of mutual benefit not just a way of attempting to circumvent paying a proper wage.

A review on the Regional Studies Associations 16th Annual International Conference 2010

With about 600 delegates from 50 countries this years International Annual Conference took place from May, 24th till 26th. The conference was hosted in the European Capital of Culture 2010 Pécs, Southern Hungary.

The Regional Studies Association (RSA) is an international learned society concerned with the analysis of regional and urban issues. The organisation represents an authoritative voice and research network for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers. It organises events and conference, publishes journals, a newsletter and a book series and funds related research networks.

The discussion of the conferences main topic »Regional Responses and Global Shifts: Actors, Institutions and Organisations« aimed at a better understanding of the complex array of those actors involved in todays regional development agendas.

Between 11 and 16 July the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) in cooperation with the European Cultural Parliament gathered more than 30 participants at its European headquarters in central Berlin. Some participants had come from as far as Mexico, the US, Canada and Swaziland to meet with like-minded graduates and post graduates as well as young professionals in order to learn more about cultural diplomacy by following a week-long intensive programme while experiencing the summer heat in buzzing Berlin. Berlin, having become an international melting pot with an outstanding cultural offer and a compelling history and a place which is sought after by many as a conference and meetings location, did certainly further underline the case for the arts and cultural diplomacy.

Hundreds of top arts marketing and development professionals will gather on October 21-24, 2010 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles for the Arts Reach National Arts Marketing and Development Conference Fall 2010. Empower Yourself and Your Team with the Most Successful, Cost-Effective Ways to Boost Audience & Donor Growth is the theme of the event.

In light of the economic downturn, this conference is designed to help organizations focus their precious resources in the most effective ways to maximize the achievement of their organizations mission. The faculty includes leaders from such prestigious organizations as the Center Theatre Group, the Autry National Center of the American West, the Pacific Chorale, and many others.

Following a very successful launch in Brussels in July 2010, the outcomes of the European Capitals of Culture Policy Group's work have been presented in a final report. The document is the result of the international group made up of representatives from Liverpool, Stavanger, Turku, Marseille, Essen for the Ruhr and Kosice working together for one year to produce a research framework, including recommendations for future European Capitals of Culture.

The National University of Mar del Plata and the Argentinean Graduate Cultural Managers Association are glad to inform you about the realization of the First International Congress of Cultural Management New Paradigms in the context of the Bicentenary, which is going to take place in Mar del Plata on October 21-22-23, 2010.

The main aim of this congress is to create a place where ideas, experiences and reflections on cultural management may be exchanged. Moreover, the new sociocultural paradigms of management will be analyzed.

The symposium Economics of the Visual Arts is intended to bring together experts from the field of cultural economics, to discuss key issues of economics of the visual arts: arts markets and art auctions, copyright in the visual arts, economics of museums, policy and non-profit issues in the visual arts, labor market in the visual arts, etc. The topics will form guidelines for the lectures, performed by renowned experts from the field, coming from all over the world, mostly from countries where cultural economics has gained prominence in the past decades.

Apart from the invited speakers, the symposium will also host two panels, one with presentations of good practices in financing visual arts in Slovenia, and the other with presentations of selected young researchers.

The four Member State expert working groups established in the 2008-2010 Workplan for Culture have published their final reports on:

1. mobility of culture professionals;
2. cultural and creative industries;
3. synergies between culture and education;
4. museum activities,
5. Eurostat ESSnet-culture.

These groups have worked through the "Open Method of Coordination", exchanging good practices, comparing policies and making recommendations for action at national or European level. Their work is feeding into Member State discussion of the next Workplan from 2011.

The European Cultural Foundation organised with the British Council and the DOEN Foundation, the first Conference on cultural policies in the Arab region in early June. The event, which took place in Beirut, marked an important step in gathering research and setting out recommendations to support planning and cultural cooperation in the Arab region.

An Op-Ed Letter to the Editor in Support of Arts Education

Dear Mr. Anderson:

The recent coverage by The Salt Lake Tribune of Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Beckers proposal to eliminate YouthCity Artways ("Artways program appears doomed", June 6) and ("Parents, kids beg Becker: Dont stamp out Artways", May 23) as well as the Tribunes Editorial ("YouthCity Artways Only one good reason to kill it", May 26) suggests to me that the Mayor and the Salt Lake Tribunes Editorial Board are in need of a good arts education.

From Boston to Oakland, from New York to Dallas, city mayors across this country have found arts education to be both good policy and good for the economies of their cities. Early learning in the arts that a city sponsors increases arts demand that helps all arts organizations in a city and contributes to the citys creative economy. A vibrant creative economy is good economic policy. Cultural participation, which begins with arts education, leads to greater community engagement.