I am currently Professor of Arts Administration in Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. My professional experience includes stints as President and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dean of the Eastman School of Music, Executive Director and Founder of the Minnesota (now Perpich) Center for Arts Education, and Director of the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Connecticut. Where my later career focused entirely on music, my earlier career involved all arts areas. Coming to Drexel has allowed me to focus again across arts disciplines, and has also given me the freedom to explore the many concerns about the vitality of the arts sector I collected over my years in the field.
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This piece about idea formation is really interesting because it does require the cultivation of a certain way of thinking. As part of that, of course, there’s the question of being disciplined and realistic about sustainability and profitability, which is tough when you love your idea and want it to work.
I’m based in London England where I’m the MD of a website for classical music, which I founded more than three years ago. The site brings together a community of musicians and listeners with relevant e-commerce functionality. We’ve had extremely positive feedback and lots of take up from many people in the industry. Nonetheless, it’s tough-going from a business standpoint because the model requires a very high volume of commercial (micro-) transactions.
In fact, I was recently invited to discuss my company some arts admin students here in London, and the main focus of our exchange was about how to make an altruistic mission (offering a platform for young classical musicians) work commercially.
Thank you for this post! I’ve been pondering the same issues since beginning my position at University of Colorado last year. It strikes me that as music educators we do precious little to actually teach our students something about the creative process — even though that lies at the heart of what we do, and is central to applying the incredibly valuable skills we learn as musicians to our professional lives.
I’ll look forward to your next installment.
Jeff
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Jeffrey Nytch, DMA
Director, Entrepreneurship Center for Music
University of Colorado-Boulder
I think there’s a misconception regarding government funding for arts and culture. It seems the culture wars brought us to this idea that government financial support is somehow an arbiter for what is good or bad art, or perhaps that the government is providing a “stamp of approval” by providing public funding for arts and cultural activities.
While I too am torn on the subject of government funding, it is not because I believe the government is trying to tell us what is “worthy or good art.” I am torn because I’m becoming more convinced that the ongoing culture wars may actually stifle creativity.
Were there a true national arts endowment at arm’s length from the government, perhaps we could distance ourselves from thinking about public funding as an approval process for the art itself and more as an incubator for creativity. It should also be remembered that nearly half of NEA money goes to state arts agencies, and a significant portion of the remaining funds are directed to projects to foster creativity and enhance accessibility to arts activities. That’s a far cry from passing judgment on the art itself.
Hello James,
I absolutely love the Portable MBA by Zach and Bygrave for undergrads (upperclassmen) and MBA students. In terms of social entrepreneurship, while we only have a few academic textbooks in social entrepreneurship, you may find the new Social Entrepreneurship Teaching Resources handbook helpful http://www.ashokau.edu The 2008 version of the handbook is available for free if you want to download it at http://www.berea.edu/epg/resources.asp
Good luck on the course!
Hi James:
I enjoyed reading your blog concerning your Arts Entrepreneur students. We all have to think outside of the box concerning sustaining the arts these days.
I was the past Executive and Artistic Director of the Savannah Orchestra (Ga) and came up with a very interesting way to build sustainable funding, when the economy turned South, so to speak.
Now I have a young LLC and share my funding model to arts 501(c)(3)s. It is based on using everyday commerce to create micro-donations to a supported charity.
I think this is a novel approach currently not in the fundraising basket of most non-profits. If any of your classes attempt to establish something tangible, I would be happy to share the model with them.
Regards,
William Keith
MICROFUNDEDARTS.ORG