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.

Leading an institution in a period of change is one of the toughest challenges in cultural management today. As director of the philharmonie zuidnederland (South Netherlands Philharmonic), Stefan Rosu developed the idea of an independent scientific centre on Classical Music to conduct research on orchestras and advise them regarding innovation and renewal.

In the beginning of September 2018, the German Library Association invited me to travel to Latvia and Lithuania to trace the status quo of digitization in big and small libraries in Riga, Klaipda, Plunge and Vilnius together with a group of German journalists. Above all, I took one thing with me: compared to Germany, digitization is a matter of course in the Baltic States.

How to build an independent art scene? For those directly involved in the Lubumbashi Biennial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this is an urgent question that has clear social consequences. By investing in its own locality while forging its place in the world, the Biennial is leading the way.*

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.

Compared to the large public institutions, small theatres have to fight for their survival time and again. But this independence also allows freedom to experiment, whether in terms of artistic formats and themes or cultural management. The Theatre Får302 in Copenhagen has been doing this very successfully for over 30 years and has repeatedly attracted national attention.

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

This paper is a guide to the basics of up-to-date communication in the arts sector. It focuses on the key point in making communication with arts audiences more efficient: to convey your values and to connect with peoples needs and desires.

In October 2017, eleven students of the Zurich University of the Arts, study programme Cast/ Audiovisual Media travelled to Hong Kong to take over the "Zurich meets Hong Kong" city festivals social media channels and report on around 50 events as an "embedded social media team".

The book by Jenny Svensson - by now only published in German under the title Die Kunst, Kultur (nicht) nur zu messen: Evaluation im Theater- und Kulturbetrieb - presents a functional model of evaluation measures of public funded cultural enterprises. Thus, it makes a fruitful contribution to the path to further professionalization of the cultural industry and cultural management.

While #metoo dominates the media, there is a growing debate about gender equality in the cultural field as well. But where do the German and international art scene stand when it comes to art and gender? Katrin Hassler's book (currently only available in German) attempts to explore this in a quantitative study and provides figures on the significance of gender for filling leading positions in the art field.