|
|
Arts Management Development
and Training and/or CPD (Continuing Professional Development)
- What is it all about?
Some thoughts
on
- learning
- what it is and how we do it
- the importance
of learning for arts managers in the current context of change
and uncertainty
- the learning
cycle and learning styles, and our own personal preferences in
learning
- identifying
the qualities and attitudes necessary in arts managers to ensure
life-long learning, with models for arts management
|
|
Learning
- What is it?
Try this
simple exercise to experience the difference between something you
have learnt and know well, and something that you have not learnt
and do not know well.
Take a pen
or pencil and write "When we know how to do something well, it seems
easy."
Now, same
again, hold the pen - but this time - change hands - write with
the hand you do not usually use - "When something is unfamiliar,
it can feel strange."
(Another
example of "learnt" behaviour or habit, is folding your arms or
crossing your legs - for many people - not all - one way comes naturally
and feels comfortable, and the other is difficult to achieve)
Think about
a time when you did not know how to do something - send an email,
ride a bicycle, use the ticket machine at the station, etc, and
then think about when you could do it.
What made
the difference?
How did you
feel about that activity before you could do it?
How did you
feel about it when you could do it?
How did
it change from one to the other - gradually or suddenly?
What does
this tell you about learning?
|
|
Learning:
some definitions
"We believe
that learning is a process of active engagement with experience.
It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world.
It may involve an increase in skills, knowledge, understanding,
values or the capacity to reflect. Effective learning will lead
to change, development and a desire to learn more." Bill
Lucas, Campaign for Learning, UK
"involving a
fundamental shift or movement of mind É Real learning gets to the
heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we recreate
ourselves. Through learning we are able to do something we never
were able to do. Through learning we perceive the world and our
relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create,
to be part of the generative process. There is within each of us
a deep hunger for this type of learning." Peter Senge, The Fifth
Discipline, 1990
CPD (Continuing
Professional Development) And Lifelong Learning
The old view
of learning - or training - was as remedial. If you needed training
it was because you were not very good at something, or training
came before doing. You could not do it, then you were trained and
then you could do it.
Now learning
is seen as developmental. We are as likely to be learning in order
to develop our strengths as to strengthen weaknesses.
CPD and Lifelong
Learning are both a recognition that learning goes on and on. That
learning is not just the L plates or water wings stage, but that
we all can go on learning throughout our lives.
"Everyone routinely
expects to update their skills throughout life." UK Government
1999
|
|
Why
Now?
Why for the arts manager now?
We
live in a time of enormous discontinuous changes - technology, globalisation
etc. Tomorrow is very different from today or yesterday and difficult
to predict or plan for. An exciting time and a challenging time.
A time when certainly what we did yesterday will not be suitable
for tomorrow.
Would
you continue to pursue the technology aspects of a business plan
written before the advent of the internet into all our lives?
Charles
Handy (a management writer), in his fascinating book The Age of
Unreason, re-tells a gruesome story about frogs. They have very
poor skin sensors and do not easily spot a change of temperature
around them. If you put a frog into a pan of cold water, and heat
it, the frog will not spot the change, and allow itself to be boiled
alive. Charles
Handy suggests if we are not alert to changes around us, then we
too could be boiled alive. A now famous equation put forward by
another management writer is:
L
> = C
The
amount of learning must be greater than or equal to the amount of
change.
|
|
The
World of Knowledge:
The
picture of the world below is how our relationship to knowledge
can be depicted:
- some things
we know we know (1) - knowledge that is readily available to us
to use in our work.
Other things
we know we donŐt know (2), for instance perhaps the detail of the
new Human Rights legislation and its impact on our work.
Some things
(3) we donŐt know we donŐt know, and we may not even know of their
existence, so how do we even know to ask someone else about them?
Equally, there
are often things (4) that we take for granted, and do based on past
experience, and perhaps do not label as knowledge, or know what
to call them. This is where we know something but do not know that
we know it.
In
today's uncertain and changing world, some of the most significant
elements of a arts manager's work are dealing with the "don't know
don't know" territory.
This
is also described as "when you do not and cannot know what to do"
and here you must rely on values and principles, and use wisdom
and judgement.
How do you know what you know?
How do you measure how knowledgeable / skilful you are?
|
|
Reviewing
Learning
Some of the
strongest learning there is comes from real life experiences - at
work and elsewhere, but often our busyness can mean that we do not
extract all the possible learning from our experiences. Taking time
to reflect - on our own or with someone else's help, can lead to
more learning.
You might
like to try this exercise with a friend or colleague, take it in
turns to follow through this process:
One of you
think of a recent management related event / episode / conversation
/ situation that you have been involved in that you think had useful
learning in it for you.
Describe
the situation,
what you did/ said,
what others did/ said,
what you felt at the time,
what you felt afterwards,
what you think that you might do/say differently another time,
what you think that you learnt from that situation.
Your partner
should listen attentively, and can prompt with the questions above.
Make a note
of anything interesting raised by this exercise. \
Did you learn
more through reflecting on the experience? - this is often the case.
|
|
Learning:
the cycle of how it happens
The model of
learning that has most influenced current thinking about it is:
David Kolb's
learning cycle:
|
|
There
can be useful learning from theory:
 |
|
There
can also be useful learning from experience:
(This can be called informal learning or experiential learning)
|
|
Learning
Styles - or how do you learn best?
You might
want to try this exercise (if you do not already know the answer
to it) and then use it to explore a little bit about how you choose
to learn:
Draw three
rows of three dots on a piece of paper, like this:
Now,
take a pen, and go through all the dots by using four straight lines,
and without taking the pen off the paper.
Try it until either you solve it, you give up, or it is no longer
fun. (email 9dots@ksam.org.uk for
a solution)
Now,
think about how you approached it - as a simple example of problem
solving or learning:
Did
you pause, look and think, before using the pen or your finger to
try it out?
Did
you use logic (eg to calculate that with three lines of dots, drawing
four straight lines within the shape of the square they make cannot
work - so it must be another solution)?
Did
you try and see, going straight into drawing lines?
This
may tell you something useful about how you approach a new issue
/ problem / situationÉ
Another
example:
Have
you recently mastered a new piece of information technology?
How
did you choose to learn?
Did
you read the instructions?
Did
you use trial and error?
Did
you ask someone to show you?
And
a third:
Can
you think of a significant management skill that you have learnt
recently?
How
did you learn it?
What
helped your learning?
What
hindered your learning?
|
|
What these all
lead to is:
Learning
Styles
Research has
shown that there are different learning styles, and that many of
us use and feel comfortable with one way of learning, and uncomfortable
with others.
There is a value
in knowing how you learn best, so you can choose learning activities
that are suited to that style.
Equally, there
is value in learning how to learn using all learning styles, as
this allows you to access more learning opportunities.
The key work
on this area has been done by two researchers, Peter Honey and Alan
Mumford, who identify four dominant learning styles:
LEARNING
STYLES (Honey and Mumford)
Activists
- having an experience
Activists involve themselves fully and without bias in new experiences.
They enjoy the here and now and are happy to be dominated by immediate
experiences.
Reflectors
- reviewing the experience
Reflectors like to stand back to ponder experiences and observe
them from many different perspectives. They collect data, both first
hand and from others, and prefer to think about it thoroughly before
coming to any conclusion.
Theorists
- concluding from the experience
Theorists adapt and integrate observations into complex but logically
sound theories. They think problems through in a vertical, step-by-step
logical way.
Pragmatists
- planning the next stages
Pragmatists are keen on trying out ideas, theories and techniques
to see if they work in practice. They positively search out new
ideas and take the first opportunity to experiment with applications.
More information
on Learning Styles, with work by Peter Honey, is available on the
Campaign for Learning website. www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk
and Peter Honey’s own site is at
www.peterhoney.com
|
|
How can we
ensure we continue learning and what should we learn?
What qualities
make us alert to learning? How do we ensure that we learn to learn?
And what is it that we could be learning that would enhance our
practice as arts managers?
It can be useful
to have a "frame" giving some idea of what qualities we
should be aiming for as an arts manager. There are two such frames
that I have found to be robust and useful in practice, and I offer
them here:
A management
model: 11 attributes of effective managers
- Command
of the basic facts
- Relevant
professional knowledge
- Continuing
sensitivity to events
- Analytical,
problem-solving, decision / judgement making skills
- Social
skills and abilities
- Emotional
resilience
- Proactivity
- inclination to respond purposefully to events
- Creativity
- Mental
agility
- Balanced
learning habits
- Self-knowledge
Pedler,
Burgoyne and Boydell,
A Manager's Guide to Self Development, 1998
Of the eleven
qualities - the last four are described by the authors as meta qualities,
or higher order qualities.
"four of
the learning areas -
- self-knowledge,
- balanced
learning habits,
- mental agility
and
- creativity,
are thought
to be important to managers because they allow them to develop quickly
and use the other more specific skills and qualities."
They help you
"learn to learn."
Pedler,
Burgoyne and Boydell,
A Manager's Guide to Self Development, 1998
Descriptions
of this book, all those mentioned in this article, and others on
learning and on arts management can be found on SAM's Books website
at www.sam-arts.co.uk
|
|
An Arts Management
Model
The University
of Sussex Post Graduate Diploma in Arts Management proposes that
an effective arts / cultural manager can benefit from:
- A critical
awareness of cultural theory and policy issues.
- An understanding
of a range of art form practices.
- An active
involvement as practitioner, observer, consumer, or audience member
in some art forms.
- A willingness
to make informed value judgements on the art and cultural activities
themselves.
- An ability
to debate issues around what is art and evaluation of the arts.
- A mature
sense of self as learner and with skills in researching and presenting
information and personal views in both written and oral forms.
- Skills in
self management, and management of and working with others in
a wide range of organisational structures.
- Non-discriminatory
practice and a breadth of vision, valuing diversity and respecting
differences of scale, sector, and context.
- A future
orientation and ability to initiate and welcome change and thrive
on complexity.
- Flexibility
and an adaptive and inclusive attitude to allow learning from
other disciplines.
Within this
scheme, the attitudes that enable learning are:
Openness
Flexibility
Valuing diversity
Change / Future orientated.
Madeline
Hutchins : July 2000
Please email any comments / feedback that you have on the ideas
in this piece to mh@ksam.org.uk
|
|
