Living in Germany as a U.S. American

From 2017 to 2020, I pursued my master’s degree in World Heritage Studies at Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus (BTU), where I lived in the comparably small town of Cottbus for over one year and then later moved to Berlin. Personally, this experience of living outside my home country came with some costs, like a good job or close contact with friends and family, but also gave me a lot, like all the places I have been so privileged to see, new, unique experiences, including working on various cultural projects in Germany, Italy, Latvia, and even for a Biergarten in Berlin, or meeting many wonderful new people. These experiences helped me explore a variety of arts administration and cultural concepts, methods, and benchmarks for equitable cultural engagement from more international perspectives.

 

Prior to starting my master’s degree, I was trained in music arts administration and had professional experience in performing arts venues and museums. Cultural heritage and UNESCO World Heritage policy were then relatively unknown areas for me. However, exposure to more global perspectives on managing arts and culture challenged how I approach and facilitate these types of experiences, especially as a U.S. American. Utilizing a UNESCO World Heritage framework gave me the concepts, tools, and language to see that, "what lies beneath arts and culture is often forgotten” and why it is essential to understand that the work of arts and cultural administrators is never neutral, and that arts and cultural management can also be cultural mediation (Henze 2018, p. 23). 

 

As a master’s student, I also conducted different study projects with cultural heritage and arts organizations in Europe. This exposed to me see some key differences between arts entrepreneurship and administration in the U.S. versus cultural entrepreneurship and cultural heritage management in Europe. These made me even more believe that no one model is inherently better than any other and that both regions have things to learn from one another. Furthermore, neither the U.S. nor German/European cultural concepts should be treated as the ultimate benchmarks to arts administration and cultural management (especially outside Western countries), as there are a range of perspectives and modalities of thought that are often ignored, appropriated, or marginalized. Thus, these experiences trained me to be a less biased, more critical thinker as an arts administration professional.

 

 

The Brandenburg Technical University’s World Heritage Studies master’s degree was one of the first programs to design its curriculum around the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It also concentrates on growing the theoretical knowledge of students to better facilitate heritage, arts, and cultural experiences within cultural organizations while growing practical skills needed to manage, present, and interpret heritage sites. It is a multi-disciplinary program, which contrasted from my more focused and disciplinary bachelor’s degree in music arts administration, which was almost entirely tailored on organizational entrepreneurship and business administration skills. 

 

The combination of theory and the practicality of study projects at actual World Heritage sites, museums, and performance spaces with practitioners was a substantial combination for me. This helped me draw stronger connections between cultural studies, cultural policies and politics, social science research, and working in cultural management in a way that is humanizing, empowering, people-centered, and more actively working towards decolonization, for example. Engaging in these processes helped me further uncover biases and harmful systems and modes of thinking while providing frameworks or examples for building more equitable, inclusive, accessible, and diverse systems in arts and culture. 

 

While my studies in arts administration in the U.S. prepared me for effective networking, learning new technologies, business management, and marketing, during my studies in Germany I became more focused on strategic organizational thinking, processes and systems, as well as taking the larger view of a cultural economy, and ideas behind developing a cultural state (Essig 2017). This bigger picture thinking complemented my studies in the U.S. and shows how interdisciplinary, international learning can be of great benefit for expanding ideas, horizons, and ways of doing things. 

 

 

I really valued the study projects I did in Berlin (Germany), Assisi (Italy), and Kuldīga (Latvia) for their invaluable, practical experience to apply and critique ideas from my studies. It was a chance to stay in the real world and move outside the high tower of academia. 

 

Our study project in Kuldīga, Latvia, was to assist the municipality with their World Heritage nomination process, improve community relations, and provide support to local heritage organizations so that they could be more involved in the nomination overall. My group conducted a stakeholder analysis and completed an intangible heritage cultural map by surveying and interviewing local cultural institutions. The project resulted in a final report with recommendations on how to improve communications between the nomination team and local cultural heritage organizations. 

 

It was impressive to see the ways in which Kuldīga’s cultural organizations and the local municipality did work well together in order to support arts and cultural experiences for local communities and individuals as part of the fabric of society. The city emphasized how cultural organizations had a place within the cultural economy supported by public policy initiatives and supported by larger state institutions. This contrasted my experience with performing arts organizations and museums in the U.S., which focus more on their own growth as leading organizations in their communities and who were not involved in policy or community development and received little, if any, state support. 

 

My study project in Assisi, Italy had an entirely different focus with a more urgent need to study and recommend changes at their World Heritage site in order to counter climate change, mass tourism and eroding relations with the residents with a new, sustainable/eco-tourism-themed marketing campaign. The goal was to market Assisi as part of a larger tourism hub within the region of Umbria in order to spread out tourism more evenly. It was revealing to see how the World Heritage Site manager, the city of Assisi, and other regional municipalities and organizations were actively working together and coordinating a communications campaign that addressed the tourism concerns locally and regionally. This also contrasted with my experience as a U.S. arts administrator, where I had worked with arts organizations primarily focused on marketing as a tool to grow earned revenue rather than communicate change. 

 

One project that left a particularly lasting impression on me was at the Berlin Wall Memorial (Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer), which divided the historic West Germany and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for more than 25 years. Our project covered different ways one could interpret the history of the site and how that was connected to visitor experience, theoretically and practically. I thought this was an important lesson in seeing how a heritage site, or the Berlin Wall, was more than a visitor experience. It was also a tool to moderate dialogue on uncomfortable history. It was an invitation to consider why it is crucial to critically explore and negotiate dark pasts, historic events, and social milestones. It showed how people can be motivated to visit these sites of heritage and history for reasons outside of just recreation or education - heritage and cultural sites are also there to help society navigate through difficult emotions (Smith 2020). But overall, the memorial was not there to glorify but to reckon with an oppressive system while also being a site of healing and hope.

 

I think this experience contrasted with what I have experienced as an arts administrator in the U.S., because there is a difference in emphasis on what such cultural organizations and sites do. Again, in this context in Germany, it was revealing to see a state-sponsored cultural initiative so openly explore a difficult or taboo topic. In this respect, I think that U.S. arts organizations would benefit from taking a wider, more historically informed view of why or how they exist as organizations. We as arts administrators need to realize our work and art is not neutral; there is a need to become more involved in the healing and reparation of the effects of historic discrimination, racism, and sexism, all which permeate U.S. society. I point out Germany as just one way of seeing how this work can and is being done, even while it’s not being done perfectly. 

 

 

While I feel that my gains were intangible and helped me see my field differently, I also developed new skills like learning German, a stronger sense of intercultural competency and communication, and how to be a savvier traveler. I also met and have been lucky to cultivate many new, long-lasting friendships that have brought so much meaning to my life.

 

My time away from the U.S., learning about heritage, was all-around inspiring for me to reimagine the ways I thought I could be and live. It has made me a more creative, solutions-oriented arts and cultural administrator and has given me a different set of problem-solving skills. To live, learn, and be in places where there was recognition of the past for all its nuance showed me how much more ground the U.S. needs to cover before it can reckon with its history in a more humane way. So far, so much of our history has been retold, taught, or memorialized as a glorification of "national greatness”, or poorly disguised white supremacy - which has been taking its mental, emotional, and physical toll far before pandemic times.  

 

I also realized during my time away that the U.S., in some ways, does live up to its claim of being a "beacon of light”. There is an imperceptible yet also visible look forward towards a better future. Here, there is a strong spirit of volunteerism, giving, and community-building. When framed as an opportunity for growth and innovation in an inclusive, mindful way, entrepreneurship can be really inspiring and is part of a thriving arts ecosystem. There are many different organizations in the U.S. having hard, brave conversations on navigating change in dialogue with their communities. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the training I received in my bachelors, which focused on the nuts and bolts work of an arts organization - like development, marketing, education, and community engagement.

 

In this respect, the combined experience of living in another country, the study program, and meeting new people from all over the world prompted me to enter a deeper, more meaningful conversation with myself surrounding my citizenship, my privileges, and what this has all afforded me. It has inspired me to be more active in holding myself and the U.S. accountable and to influence public policy (especially within my field) towards more equitable, just livelihoods for those historically discriminated against, underserved, and disenfranchised. This especially includes the human right to maintain, practice, and access arts and heritage, especially in a way that centers practitioners experiencing misrecognition or marginalization (historically and today).

 

I hope I can draw upon everything I have learned to be a better person and arts administrator moving forward. I trust that these experiences will always stay with me and I look forward to the new adventures, new homes, and new friends that are ahead.