Bookshelf 11- Arts Management

Arts managers and artists writing about their work, and practical guides to getting it done…

Diverse Voices: Personal Journeys One of the series Collected Wisdom in Arts Management
Researched and collected by Anouk Perinpanayagam
Pub: All Ways Learning 2005 £12
Eleven fascinating individuals describe the planned and fortuitous paths of their arts management careers. These are people who have made it their business to confront risk; seize and make opportunities; and gather important lessons along the way. Diversity is present here in a multiplicity of management experiences, artform backgrounds and personal approaches to the entrepreneurial edge.
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Art & People: A practical guide to setting up and running arts projects in the community
Christine Wilkinson et al
Pub Slough Borough Council 2003 2nd edition
ISBN 090416407 £12
A nicely produced guide to the basics for those new to the field. Based on the experience of developing Community Arts Training in Slough (CATS), this has all been tried and tested in practice. Beautiful photographs of recent projects remind us of what is possible, and at the practical end of the scale, there are forms and templates including a sample budget and media consent forms.
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Art Management: Entrepreneurial Style
By Giep Hagoort
Eburon 2001 ISBN 9051668023

Giep Hagoort runs the Master Programme of Art and Media Management at Utrecht School of the Arts. The book is truly international in its examples and suggests that arts managers need to develop a 'glocal' attitude. To let the start of Chapter 1 speak for itself: 'This book is about art management, entrepreneurial style. It is intended to give practical, theoretical and conceptual insight into the management of profit and non-profit cultural organizations. The combination of art, culture and management and of theory and practice will, we believe, provide a real aid to those who want to acquire knowledge about running cultural businesses. The readers we have in mind are people who are involved with educational programmes: students, participants, teachers and programme directors. The reader will find a lot of practical cases, case studies and learning questions, which will aid the understanding of the complexity of art and cultural management. We also aim to reach artists, leaders and team members of cultural projects, managers of cultural organizations and other professionals who are interested in linking general management issues to the art and cultural sector. Review

Partnerships for Learning: A guide to evaluating arts education projects
By Felicity Woolf
Pub ACE, 2004 free ISBN 0728707918
Written to assist people involved in arts education projects understand evaluation clearly and to evaluate effectively, according to their particular needs. It divides evaluation into 5 stages - planning, collecting evidence, assembling and interpreting, reflecting and moving forward, reporting and sharing. Well-designed and with useful summaries, much of the information here could be very useful in other contexts too. There are reminders of pros and cons of various methods, and mini case studies of good practice. Excellent as an introduction or a refresher on the subject, this is a useful addition to the material available on evaluation, and particularly good on its respect for partners' differing measures of success.
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Thinking BIG! A guide to strategic marketing planning for arts organisations
By Stephen Cashman
Pub Arts Marketing Association 2003 ISBN 1903315069 £15
Written to enable even the smallest arts organisation to create and implement a strategic marketing plan, this is a significant new publication. It is all there – SWOT, scanning the world outside for competitors and collaborators, sorting your dogs from your cash cows, matrices and segment grids. An impressive range of tools drawn from a wide range of sources and presented in an arts-friendly manner. Review
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Through the Maze - A Do-It-Yourself Guide To Planning in the Arts
by Janet Summerton and Sue Kay
Pub: South West Arts 1995 free of charge ISBN 1874396043
How to achieve the plan without the pain. A brilliant, step by step, DIY consultancy enabling you to achieve a worthwhile business plan and enjoy the process. Written from experience with small arts organisations. An excellent example of recycling best practice.
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Art Matters - Reflecting on Culture
by John Tusa
Pub Methuen 2000

A series of reasoned reflections on the current state of the arts in Britain as seen by John Tusa - broadcaster and now General Manager of the Barbican Centre, London. There are three sections - Beliefs, Politics and Actions, and the titles of the essays reveal something of their contents - "I'm worried about Tony", "The Cart and the Horse, which came first the market or the arts?", and "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my identity." They are personal, passionate and sometimes provoking. The A-Z of Running an Arts Centre is an interesting account of the key issues for arts management today. Review

Finding Voices, Making Choices: creativity for social change
By Mark Webster and Glen Buglass
Pub Educational Heretics Press 2005 ISBN 1900219220

An important addition to the tiny number of books written by community arts workers about their practice. As it says of itself, the book "should serve as a general introduction to the uninitiated, or as a provocative read for people already involved in its practice." It defines Community Arts, discusses process, and then tackles major themes, including participation, empowerment, and assessing the impact. Each theme has an introduction by the editor and then a piece by a contributor, taking a particular slant on the issue, and relating this to their own current practice.

Private Views: Artists Working Today
Ed by Judith Palmer
Pub Serpent's Tail 2004 £14.99 ISBN 185242821X
Interviews with and essays by, a wide range of contemporary artists - across all art forms. "And they said you’d never make it… celebrating Britain’s top artists". There are moving personal stories and humorous observations that confound many of the received myths about the life of the artist, and show shared patterns of experience and outlook across disciplines and generations.
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Art Not Chance: Nine Artists' Diaries
Ed Paul Allen
Pub: Gulbenkian Foundation 2001 0903319942

This book has grown out of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s grants programme ‘Time to Experiment’ to encourage professional artists (from all art forms) to set aside time simply to test new concepts. Nine artists were asked to keep a regular record of how they make their work and here are the results in diary form. They make fascinating reading, provide insights into artists’ processes, and much food for thought

Eyes on Stalks By John Fox
Pub Methuen 2002 ISBN 0413761908

This delightful book tells the stories of two families – the author’s family and the Welfare State International family. John Fox provides a vivid account of the company’s working practices over the last thirty years. There’s humour, there’s politics and local planning issues, there’s funding challenges, fire structures, the building of their Lantern-house home and on a more serious note, naming ceremonies and funerals. Illustrated with photos and the author’s own drawings.

The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas
By John Howkins
Pub Penguin 2001 ISBN 0140287949

This book explores the importance of copyright and patents in creative products, and provides statistical analysis of 15 core creative industries – including art, crafts and performing arts, as well as views on managing creativity and how to treat creativity as your major asset.

Management and the Arts
By William J. Byrnes
Pub Focal Press 3rd Edition 2003 ISBN 0240805372

A4 sized, with 350 pages and an impressive index this book means business! It covers a broad range of issues of interest to both experienced managers and students of arts management. It is American, covers arts and entertainment, and is performing arts based. The author has enormous experience, and blends practical know how with a belief that arts managers can apply skills from disciplines such as business, finance, economics and psychology alongside sensitivity and common sense. There’s a historical perspective of arts organisations, arts management and business management, then it covers planning and decision-making, organisational design, staffing, leadership, organisational controls and budgets, financial management, marketing, fundraising, management styles and theories and career options. There are case studies and questions. Lots of useful material here.

Arts Administration
by John Pick and Malcolm Anderton
Pub: E & FN Spon Second edition 1996 ISBN 0419115404

A more academic text, which proposes that the arts administrator must be a unique mix of manager, animator, teacher, critic, and entrepreneur. It provides an overview of the historical and current context in Britain, with some international comparisons. Interesting case studies at the back.

Managing Britannia: Culture and Management in Modern Britain
By Robert Protherough and John Pick
Pub by Imprint Academic 2003 ISBN 0907845533 £12.95

The core premise of this book is that the new orthodoxy labelled by the authors as “modern managerialism” far from solving problems is actually the cause of them. They refute the notion that ‘management’ exists, or that there are universal management skills, and believe that modern management practices have all but destroyed politics, education, culture and religion. Robert Protherough’s background is in education, and as a lay preacher and John Pick’s is in cultural policy-making and arts management. Chapters include The Cultures of Management, How Manager’s Behave, Management as an Academic Subject, Managing the Arts, Managing the Schools, Managing the Deity, Rebranding Britain, The Real World: Management in Literature and Bursting the Management Bubble.

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Bookshelf 11