Researchers and practitioners in the field of arts and cultural management grapple a similar topic from different perspectives. Still, there are difficulties in connecting and enriching one another. This issue of Arts Management Quarterly aims to illuminate the disparities between these two strands and provide examples of how they can be connected.
We are faced with a world that seems to get farther and farther away from utopian visions of a unified humanity. Thus, arts and cultural professionals need experiences and strategies to bridge the gaps between communities and individuals. And they need to know when they can and should accept the divisive.
There are various points of contact between arts, culture and health - not only in the course of the pandemic months. This issue of the Arts Management Quarterly shows what these are and what they mean for arts management.
In times of the pandemic, many arts and cultural institutions and professionals may find it difficult to think of others first. This issue of Arts Management Quarterly shows that it can be extraordinarily rewarding for them to commit themselves to serving local communities, now and in the long term.
Coloniality - or colonial thinking - is still prevalent in most parts of the world and most aspects of life, even in arts and culture. Professionals in the sector may not think of themselves as biased, but postcolonial studies proof them wrong. This issue of Arts Management Quarterly presents first approaches to decolonize arts and cultural management.
In recent months, some courageous arts and cultural institutions have proofed that visitors are quite willing to spend money on digital culture. In this issue, these examples shed light on how the cultural sector can develop not only exciting formats, but also an inventive mindset.
Working in a foreign cultural context can open up a lot of potentials and new perspectives for arts managers. But it can also entail difficulties. Therefore, this issue reflects on internationalization in the cultural sector from the point of view of arts and cultural managers from different regions of the world and fields of practice report on their personal experiences made while spending a longer time in completely different cultural contexts.
As the world becomes more globalized, more people interact with foreign cultures. But how are non-native art forms and institutions exported to and preserved in foreign contexts? The summer issue of the Arts Management Quarterly provides answers to this question.
Do you sometimes feel like the world is getting worse and worse and you are surrounded by only negative news? Well, as studies have shown, we humans tend to overestimate negative developments and turn a blind eye to the positive ones. Therefore, with this issue of Arts Management Quarterly, we present you examples, experiences and approaches from arts professionals around the world that will help you when you feel helpless in the face of financial, political or even institutional crises.
Arts management is an increasingly international and transcultural field of work where there are no concepts and definitions of Cultural Leadership valid and applicable to everyone. Therefore, this issue of Arts Management Quarterly wants to show different perceptions characterized by specific working realities, professional biographies and regional contexts.
Globalisation heavily affects the daily work of arts managers around the globe in both positive and negative ways. But although intercultural understanding currently may seem to be more difficult than ever before and some voices are still absent, new narratives enter the stage that can help arts managers to meet current challenges and their supra-regional impacts. This issue of Arts Management Quarterly on "Cultural Inequalities" raises the curtain for these narratives. It is the result of a stimulating cooperation with the network Brokering Intercultural Exchange. The articles present insights into the barriers for intercultural understanding and collaboration among arts managers.
Quality in the cultural field is mostly related to the artistic product. But how about the services and administration of arts organisations? How can they be defined, quantified and measured taking into account the perspectives of the different artistic sectors, institutions and countries? With this issue of Arts Management Quarterly, we shed light on existing approaches and inspire new ideas. And because we also want to offer the best possible services to our readers, we currently thoroughly overhaule our own services and are happy to already present you the new design of our journal with this issue.
The impact of the arts sector on urban development is very heterogeneous. The latest version of the two most important international roadmaps on this topic, United Nations New Urban Agenda and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, acknowledge arts and culture as facilitators in fields such as social cohesion, education, or well-being. But to implement these effects into urban development road maps, the patterns and demands of local cultural infrastructures first have to be specified. Such basic work is the perfect starting point for arts professionals and artists to become part of comprehensive urban planning processes. Issue No 127 of Arts Management Quarterly sheds light on the impact that arts and culture can have on urban development. With it, we hope to inspire you to dive deeper into urban trends and to develop visions for the city of the future.
What notion of their future job do young arts managers have? What visions of the arts sector are driving them? And what are the issues they want to find new solutions for? These are important questions that show how the arts sector can and should develop to be ready for future challenges and the changing needs of their audience. For that reason, we decided that with this issue of Arts Management Quarterly we wanted to give those among the participants of the first Young Arts Journalism Awards (YAJA) - a project powered by Art News Portal, fostering online journalism among journalism and creative art students worldwide - who dedicated their articles to the field of arts management the chance to get a word in edgeways.
The days of the lonesome artistic genius are already over for a long time. No one working in arts and culture would honestly assume that a creative process can prosper mostly in solitude. Instead, creativity and cooperation respectively collaboration accompany each other. This is also true because arts and cultural processes occur in social contexts and therefore always interact with social groups, whether it be producers, audiences, employees of institutions, sponsors, buyers and so on. Surprisingly for many, the same applies to management. And this is what makes the current issue of Arts Management Quarterly on "cooperation and collaboration" so promising.
Societies worldwide are currently facing far-reaching and often challenging developments. And although every countrys arts sector has its peculiarities, these developments influence most countries and thereby their art sector as well. So, what can arts managers do to make the best of new circumstances and to help the societies we live in handle them? How can we use the arts' inherent creative potential to anticipate the changes that will come? What competencies and knowledge will we need in the future to fulfill our tasks? The approaches in the new issue of Arts Management Quarterly on "an entirely new Arts Management" want to find answers to this questions.
Digitization is not only changing how arts organizations can convey cultural experiences, reach users and open up to the input of visitors. It is rather changing the way we think about the conditions and structures of day-to-day creative work. At the same time, digitization is opening up a multitude of possibilities of increasing the economic value of the arts. The field of cultural entrepreneurship is reconsidering the intersection of culture, technology and entrepreneurship. It uses the new dynamics that arise to the cultural sector to revolutionize current business models and redefine the impact of culture. Cultural entrepreneurship can be a way to reduce dependence on public funding and to position itself as an economic factor vis-à-vis politics and public without abandoning individual artistic and idealistic societal demands. As culture represents both artistic as well as social values, we do not intend to separate cultural and social entrepreneurship from each other in this newsletter, or, for that matter, from entrepreneurial thinking within the arts sector.
Cultural managers have an urgent need for advanced trainings to face the changes in society and politics concerning the arts. But what competences does that include? Lorraine Lim, lecturer in arts management at Birkbeck, stated in the Guardian that according to a study among her students, the important skills nowadays are not only how to run an arts institution, but to manage different kinds of projects as portfolio work and to create a career out of short-term employments. With regard to globalization and the differentiation of the cultural sector, this includes often neglected aspects like dealing with failure, intercultural communication and - since glocalization is coming along with globalization - insights in international cultural infrastructures, and social and political circumstances.
"The most precious things in life are not those you get for money," said Albert Einstein. Cultural managers, artists, and cultural policymakers are well aware that the personal and social value of culture cannot simply be measured through funding. Nevertheless, policy often tries to convey the rehabilitation of its budgets through funding cuts in the cultural sector while cultural institutions and initiatives complain about the lack of money not just since the economic crisis. In this context, the ENCATC (European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centers) placed the question "Is it all about money?" at the center of its annual conference 2014.
The Tower of Babel or the Arabian Nights: The cultural background of the historical Near East seems almost magical. The contrast with its modern counterpart could hardly be more striking, where armed conflicts and religious fervour alternate with western oriented luxury. But how about Arts and Culture during this times of crisis, conflicts and change?