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.

For many artists, dealing with the artistic traditions of their home country is a form of identity building and affirmation. Therefore, they can be perfect trainers for such processes. By seeing gaps in the European education system, Oumar Sagna, a musician and dancer from West Africa, is able to stand on his own two feet as a musician and dancer. He uses his cultural traditions to enrich other cultures by teaching them to children and communities, especially in the UK.

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.

Artists are turning to new technologies to gain visibility and make sales to collectors. In this article, I would like to make an overview of the available tools that visual artists may use to self-promote online, build a community around their work and communicate their vision to a wide audience globally.

Music production has long been a highly specialised business. But with the development of cheaper and easier to handle equipment, it is getting simpler to produce and market one’s own music. Nonetheless, as the example of Marcelo Fruet shows, this needs additional competencies in arts management and technology.

Even for successful Visual Artists their income from art alone is sometimes not sufficient to live properly. Combining their artistic work with experience in arts management can help making a living. But, as the example of Mickey Smith shows, even that doesn't always help against unpredictable changes in life.

Fix employments for dancers are rare - and not necessarily desirable. Laila Diallo, a dance maker living in Bristol, UK, shares her thoughts on what has supported her when she started her own business - something that isn't easy either - and how artist entrepreneurs can get jobs even if they are not the loudest self-promoters.

Beijing Poly Theatre Management, a state-owned company founded in 2003 in China, has become the world’s largest theatre chain and performing arts agency. This article tries to delve into the reasons why the company could grow so fast in less than two decades and the key role it has been playing.

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.

In April 2019, the Master of Business Administration in Arts, Media & Entertainment Management at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada celebrated its 50th birthday. This MBA was the world's first comprehensive study program specializing in arts management and cultural policy, created at a time when this field was neither a recognised research discipline nor a specifically defined field of work. The program’s history therefore reflects the development of a whole sector.

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.

In a lot of countries, arts organizations seem to be publicly funded for their mere existence without being audited continuously for their efficiency or social impact. At the same time, civil society plays an active role in the shaping of cultural policy. How could we combine both demands? The learnings of the new public management models implemented by several states in Brazil for their cultural institutions can shed light on the role of government and civil society in the cultural landscape and on the possibilities of true and effective partnerships among them.

In recent months, events such as die-in protests, debates over sponsorships, or the acquisition of the "Baby Blimp” - a huge balloon of baby Donald Trump - have demonstrated that the role of museums is changing. But although the phrase Museum activism is used more frequently by museum professionals, there is still some ambiguity about what it means. I - successfully - set out to explore this topic by reading `Museum Activism’.

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.

At the 3rd International Conference on Audience Research and Development, the focus was on EMOTIONS in museums. What role do they play in visitor engagement? We all know that emotions drive actions and arousing them - whether positive or negative - is the best way to achieve lasting connections to learning experiences and generating memories.

‘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.

Ratified international conventions are one of the most important instruments on cultural policies. For instance, the 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions aims to contribute to culture and development worldwide. But how exactly do such agreements work? How can they benefit a balanced global art economy and how can arts and cultural professionals make use of them for their own practices?

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.