The Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE) invites educators, scholars, researchers, practitioners, and students to submit proposals for its next annual conference, which will be held from May 22-25, 2025, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The topic focuses on the culture of belonging, the culture of health and well-being, the culture of innovation, and the culture of the environment. Submission deadline is 13 January, 2025.

Indie game titles are reaping awards for creative achievements while gamification is proliferating across sectors. While the cultural sector often is traditionally a strong attraction for female professionals, games and the gaming industry are still considered a men's world. Aspects discussed in this second part of the study `Humans at Play´ are gender, AI and cross-innovation. It resonates with policy expressed in the 2023 Study of European video games sector and The state of the European game industry and how to unleash its full potential. (Hiltuten K. et al. 2024)

The games industry is increasingly becoming a recognised and important factor of the cultural economy. Unique in Europe, the first national survey of the industry in Bulgaria shows that this applies not only in terms of its economic outputs, but also regarding its spill-over effects on the wider cultural sector and beyond, for example in terms of employer attractiveness or future skills.

Like many other arts organizations, symphonic orchestras face increasing threads to their existence: growing competition to receive funds, audience ageing, and institutional legitimacy. How can classical music institutions cope with these challenges? This is the central question of "Orchestra Management”, which analyzes six institutions operating in three different European regions (the Flanders, Amsterdam, and London).

The global arts and cultural sector shows a widespread lag in the transition to sustainability. Although efforts are already being made in many places, only few institutions have acted systematically. This is what the results of the first worldwide comparative study on sustainability in the cultural sector show.

How can theatres increase international collaborations, become climate-neutral, and face the threats posed by AI? Ahead of the European Parliament elections in 2024, a new policy document, the ‘Opole Recommendations’, examines the European theatre community’s core needs for the coming years.

Venice is the first city in the world to charge an entrance fee for its famous old town in order to tackle "overtourism". As of April 25, 2024 day tourists pay 5 euros, initially on a trial basis on 29 selected days until mid-July. After an eleven-day test phase, which lasted until May 5, admission will now be charged on weekends only.

Publicly funded theaters rely on broad public financing, yet only a small fraction of the population attends. The international symposium "Becoming Public!" in Berlin, held in early November 2023, explored how theaters in Germany, France, and England can become more appealing to a wider audience and involve more people.

Women make up a large proportion of those involved in both practical cultural management and research into cultural institutions. Nevertheless, their specific perspectives and needs often remain in the background. Therefore, empowering women is the aim of the symposium "Women’s Perspectives in Arts Administration Symposium”, whose inaugural edition took place in September 2023, focusing on women-identifying scholars.

For as long as there have been digital cultural formats, there has been data on how these formats are used. But understanding digital metrics and integrating them into your own work is anything but trivial because for any serious attempt cultural organizations have to ask themselves what they actually want to know - even if it hurts.

Not only German opera companies are facing increasing financial pressure - concerns about sufficient (public) funding or its continuation are also prevalent in other European countries. Therefore, the participants of the Autumn Conference of Opera Europa in early October 2023 in Copenhagen and Malmö discussed primarily the experiences with alternative sources of income and financing possibilities in the European context and how these can be adapted to the specific conditions of each country. However, the overarching theme that resonated throughout the entire conference was the intensive consideration of the (future) relevance of music theater institutions as places of cultural education and encounters for society.

The latest book market report across 16 countries from all continents, generated by GfK entertainment and Nielsen BookData, shows an increase in turnover for the majority of countries. This increase is accompanied by much higher prices and, at the same time, a decreasing number of sold books.

Digitizing university teaching can improve sustainability, as the master’s program in cultural management at the University of Basel (SKM), Switzerland, discovered during the pandemic. Own observations and an eco-balance gave impulses to carry out the teaching offer in a more attractive and ecologically sustainable way and to reassess the previous processes.

To anchor sustainability in cultural management, it must be an integral part of the University program. That's why prospective technical directors at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences are taught, in teaching research projects, how mindfulness of resources and event management can be combined.

Games, especially video games, as a topic for arts and cultural management - that might sound surprising. But the production of digital games is a highly differentiated field with huge economic and personal significance for many people. So, it's time to examine the structures and methods of the games industry as a field of work for cultural managers.

Museums faced a huge financial loss due to the pandemic, but now could recover by reaching more people than before - through digitization and audience engagement. This will require long-term strategies for museums across Europe.

The working conditions of musicians in Western national and genre contexts are often precarious and based on structural inequalities. With its compendium of historical and contemporary case studies, "Music as Labour" presents comprehensive insights into the details, reasons and counter activities against this situation.

For some weeks, the opportunities and limits of artificial intelligence have been the subject of intense discussion both inside and outside the cultural sector. The conference "Cultures of Artificial Intelligence - New Perspectives for Museums" at the Badisches Landesmuseum (Baden State Museum) hit the zeitgeist and raised numerous questions that are worthy of discussion beyond the museum sector.

Not only have cultural networks as a hybrid form of organization gained importance over the last 30 years, the activity of networking itself has also become increasingly relevant. Especially local or regional networks belong to the realm of socio-cultural organisations that play a central role when it comes to community engagement and participation.

The scene of contemporary free music theater in Europe is as diverse as the continent itself. The anthology "Freies Musiktheater in Europa" (Free Music Theater in Europe) examines the connections between historical and cultural conditions for and within the genre as well as the specific artistic practice based on four case studies.