James Undercofler continues his great pondering and prodding about the best role for ‘arts entrepreneurship’ training in higher education. When he was Dean of the Eastman School of Music, he initiated some fantastic career- and community-focused initiatives for music students. In his current position in the Arts Administration program at Drexel University, he’s exploring a […]
A filmmaker discovers the presenting industry
KCRW’s The Business features a fun and wide-ranging interview with indie-film-celebrity-director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and such), who is trying to rethink the economics of filmmaking with his new release Red State. Instead of working with a major distribution partner that would add a $8- to $20-million marketing budget to […]
The Art of the Business Model
I had the pleasure of providing the opening keynote for the Arts Enterprise Summit in Kansas City last month. Arts Enterprise is a national network of student organizations on college and university campuses, striving to connect arts and business students, and to connect the dots between the disciplines. This was their second annual summit. I […]
An Oxymoron’s Guide to Arts Management
On February 18, I presented a collaborative keynote with friend and colleague Russell Willis Taylor in Washington, DC. The talk was part of American University’s Spring Colloquium for its Arts Management graduate students and guests. And our goal was to explore business and management issues in arts organizations as creative opportunities, rather than detached and […]
Is ‘arts entrepreneurship’ training really just career prep?
Over in his State of the Art blog, James Undercofler wonders if most of the ‘arts entrepreneurship’ initiatives on higher education campuses are really just mis-named career prep efforts. He identifies two tracks of business training that seem to be running separately: One relates to enhanced student preparation for careers or potential careers after graduation. […]
Measuring Arts Market Sustainability
The Columbus Foundation just released the results of an extended study of the Columbus, Ohio, arts marketplace. The ”Columbus Arts Market Sustainability Analysis” (available in PDF format) seeks to measure ‘sustainability’ for the arts and culture market far beyond the fuzzy sense of the word we usually use. To do so, it compares 14 cities […]
Merit vs. math
David Brooks offers some useful insights on the public spending debates now raging at every level of government. Here in Wisconsin, another school day has been cancelled due to work actions by public teachers, and public employees at every level of government are storming the capitol to protest the dramatic increases in benefit costs and […]
Rethinking risk at a music festival
The Spring for Music orchestral music festival scheduled to launch this May at Carnegie Hall has a range of bold goals — to foster programming innovation and laser focus among a select group of orchestras, to build excitement about orchestral repertoire in a crowded urban market, to draw attention to the diversity of the nation’s […]
Catch me if you can
I’m on the road for two keynotes later this month on the business of arts and culture. The first, at American University for their Arts Management Spring Colloquium, will be my first attempt at a collaborative keynote with my dear colleague Russell Willis Taylor of National Arts Strategies. The second is the opening keynote for […]
Bobby McFerrin on the problem with ‘performance’
Some great thoughts from singer/conductor/composer Bobby McFerrin on the Berklee College of Music podcast. He’s recounting the experience of colleague Yo Yo Ma on a visit to Botswana, where a small village had no concept of why someone would schedule a performance in a specific place at a specific time. Says McFerrin: They don’t have […]
