About 20 years ago, when I was in graduate school, I came across the following poem:
When an old pond
gets a new frog
it’s a new pond.
I think the inverse also may be true.
I’ve often been the new frog jumping into an old pond. Since 1988, I’ve worked in the arts in the US in various roles (funder, practitioner, administrator, executive, teacher, and consultant), across a variety of artistic disciplines (theater, dance, film, and music), and in organizations and markets of varying sizes and types. In 2010 I jumped ponds again (quite literally this time) and moved to the Netherlands, where (alongside lecturing) I began pursuing a PhD in cultural economics.
I’m interested in the relationship between economics, ethics, and aesthetics. Jumper seeks to delve into the values, ideologies, politics, and principles that underpin current practices and purposes in the arts and to bring forward for consideration alternative (at times, perhaps, irrational) perspectives—from history we’ve forgotten or never learned, from other fields and industries, and from having been an outsider-looking-in for much of my career.