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The “Independent Creative Art Spaces Leadership Training”, organised by ASEF, Artfactories and Trans Europe Halles, took place from 9 to 15 December 2007 in Paris and Saint-Ouen (suburbs of Paris).
The 3 organising partners selected 22 participants in September 2007: 11 persons from Asia and 11 persons from Europe. The selection was made according to the relevance of the needs of each applicant regarding the content of the training, and also according the motivation of the applicants to get involved in a future international collaboration. One of the selected applicants could eventually not come, due to unexpected political events in his country, Pakistan, so we eventually ended up with 21 participants, coming from 19 different countries.
8 trainers/speakers/facilitators were appointed, coming from Europe and Asia.
Please check more about participants, trainers and moderators by clicking on their names on the right hand side window of this blog!
Three independent observers joined us during the lectures. They were:
- Leila Hattea, who is currently doing a European Voluntary Service in Parkteatret in Norway. She was interested in attending the programme as a future cultural manager.
- Shauna Janssen, who is currently finishing her studies in Cultural management in Montreal. She is working particularly on the issue of independent cultural centres located in former industrial buildings.
- Dominique Proy, who is working for “Earth Interactive Governance”, who is working on the topic :“how can sustainable development be implemented in independent cultural centres”.
Shauna Janssen will contribute to the follow up publication by writing an article. Dominique Proy gave an informal speech about Sustainable Development and the importance of taking this concept into account in everyday life activities.
All participants have been very articulate about what was gained from this training. Empowerment, knowledge, setting up partnerships with like-minded people, inspiration and new working methods were frequently mentioned in feedback forms.
“I came into the meeting when I was in the middle of a difficult phase with my centre. I lacked a lot of hope and energy. First of all I returned extremely empowered. I learned some general things that are very important for the future development, such as the Vision/Mission, and the communication skills, all things that one is aware of, but that I never acknowledged into such depth. Also it inspired and pushed be to professionally develop the local network of art/culture promoters and use Actes-If as an example. I learned a lot from hearing people stories and experiences. They gave me great ideas which I now want to bring to my centre.”
All participants were invited to write a postcard to themselves with a specific action they wanted to take to improve management in your organization. The postcards will be sent by mid-May…
Strong connections have been established between the different participants. The replies collected from the feedback forms show that 88% of the participants have made plans to collaborate with each other or have specific plans of action within their organization.
As a follow up of this training, a small fund is set apart for good ideas about follow up collobarations. Many participants have mentioned the will to meet again, either by organising artistic collaborations together, to get involved in staff exchange or to organise a follow up training in order to compare how solutions provided by the December training have been implemented in respective centres.
FOLLOW UP:
We would now like to receive concrete proposals from the participants with practical ideas or wishes about how to continue a follow up collaboration. So please, feel free to submit your ideas to katelijn.verstraete(at)asef.org, and we will be in touch with you soon.
We are also looking forward to the E-Publication that is being made by Sandy Fitzgerald which will allow to share this experience with a broader pool of artists/managers of independent art spaces. The E-publication is scheduled to be ready by mid 2008.
CONTENTS OF THE TRAINING
Networking in Asia and Europe – Monday 10th December 2007
Howard Chan (Community Museum Project- HK), Audrey Wong (Substation- Singapore), Birgitta Persson (Trans Europe Halles, Sweden) and Camille Dumas (Actes If- France) delivered this part of the training. It was very important for many participants to be informed about the rich resources available in Asia and Europe (networks, funding opportunities…) and for others to get an update.
The main networks in Europe were presented, as well as specific presentations of Trans Europe Halles Network, Artfactories and Actes If. The case study presented by Actes If was of extreme interest to many participants seen its unique way in sharing resources and ideas between numerous independent art spaces in Paris. The Asian trainers stressed more on the fluidity and informality of the Asian networks and how projects are more driven by individual art spaces than by networks.
The session was not only informative but also crucial to the understanding of the macro-environment of the arts and mobility opportunities, issues and differences between Asia and Europe.
Resources and concrete examples mentioned in this session will be included in the e-publication that is in progress.
Management – Tuesday 11th December 2007
The management cluster was a very rich and full programme where different issues of management were highlighted by different trainers.
Building up a Vision by Paul Bogen
This session was delivered in a very animated way and made clear why it is important for those art spaces to think long term and articulate their Vision and Missions. Examples from the business world were taken as inspiration and a structured conceptual method of creating a vision that includes identifying your core purpose, your core values, ambitious long term goals and description of the future of the organization. A second part of the training was addressing the issues of Who and What, Getting the right people on your bus and giving ideas on how to select the right people to work with.
A third part addressed the Hedgehog Concept describing that having one clear, crystal idea on what it is you want to do/achieve is more likely to be successful then having lots of smaller ideas. To identify this single idea Paul Bogen addressed the 3 circles concept: do what you are passionate about, what you can really do well and what will provide you enough income to make it happen. The session was ended by a 14 minute inspiration speech by Steve Jobs.
Money, Money, Money …by Paul Bogen
In this session Paul Bogen addressed the importance of basic financial knowledge while running an art space, looking at how to raise money and how to manage your finances. He began by stating the fact that arts organizations are very bad at fundraising in the first place. His revelatory point was that if you don’t ask potential sponsors or funders for money it is certain that you won’t receive any. He then went on to outline how to ask for funding. He also looked at trends in funding for culture and the necessity to research and understand the general area of grant giving and sponsorship in your local context.
Another area of possible fundraising Paul illustrated for the group was earned income, the possibility to identify a profit centre within the organizations (say the bar), and how this might become, what he called a ‘cash cow’ for the funding of programme within an organization.
Paul then looked at the crucial area of managing money, explaining the elements necessary for financial reporting and planning: cash flow charts, profit and loss accounts, balance sheets. How to budget and budgeting terminology was also addressed.
This vital but often intimidating area of finance was presented in clear and understandable prose by Paul, avoiding jargon, and seemed to open doors for people into a hitherto secret world.
Resolving conflicts by Sigrid Niemer
This session mainly addressed issues of communication as an organization and as a person within the organization and how the way you communicate is very culturally defined. Sigrid presented a model of communication which looked at how messages in spoken word arrive as factual content, self-disclosure, relationship and appeal messages and stressed on the necessity for us to be aware of how we listen to messages.
Human Resources Management by Audrey Wong
The lack of manpower/human recourses in artists run spaces was addressed extensively as well as ways to cope with this chronic problem. Experiences of participants were used as examples and ways to cope with the problems were researched. The case of Substation was taken to discuss leadership style, organizational culture (the four categories by Charles Hardy) and to address issues in volunteer management.
Sustainable Cooperation with the Private Sector by Raoul Grunstein
Raoul began with a general sketch of the situation in the present day business world. He then linked this to possibilities for the cultural sector and how they could make appropriate connections with business for support, without losing their ‘soul’. He explained global trends and how the continuing move towards an ‘experience’ economy can only be good news for cultural organisations. He outlined the seven dimensions of sponsorship (image, media, sales promotion, relationship marketing, cultural competence, social goodwill, community networking) and explained the importance of each and how an organisation might ‘pitch’ their appeal for sponsorship. He also discussed what companies might look for in return and the importance of clarity and having a clear contract between the organisation and the sponsor. The move towards an experience economy can be leveraged by the cultural sector to create stronger connections between the business partner and the audience. He finished by discussing new dimensions of sponsorship and different approaches towards cooperation with the business sector.
Community Participation – Wednesday 12th December 2007
Towards Social Resources Creation by Howard Chan
www.hkcmp.org was the case study presented by Howard to discuss the connection between social enterprise and culture and to show how he ‘curates social resources’ by setting up an informal network of re-cycled material.
Setting up a Festival by Annette Wolfsberger (Austria)
This session took Enter_Unknown Territories, a festival at the intersection of new technology arts, business and research as an example of how to engage with audiences, how to work collaboratively across different sectors and tackled issues of project planning. Critical issues and challenges in setting up such events were highlighted.
On the Mobalising Arts Communities (MAC) – Theatreworks Experiences by Tay Tong (Singapore)
MAC has a local, regional and global vision of complementing creative initiatives by being an ‘enabler’. MAC uses the word creator instead of artist because they want to move beyond the idea of an ‘artist’ and incorporate all creativity e.g. pop music, architecture, design. MAC as an idea has grown from the experience of Tay Tong and his own company, Theatreworks. Based in Singapore, Tay Tong was inspired to break out of the isolation often felt in Singapore, looking to both build and create bridges for artists, both in Singapore and abroad. They have just moved into a new 1.5 million euro building called 72-13, and they are beginning to investigate ideas of what it means to be Asian and European through their work. Key words in their mission are: mutual respect, multiple voices, negotiation, translation and celebrating difference.
Lecture by artist Guy-Andre Lagesse on Community Art.
Guy Andre surprised all of us with his way of looking at everyday life as a poetic adventure. Guy began by stating how things change continually. His example ‘orange and brown were two colors considered great in the 1960’s’ had people laughing from the outset. Then he took us on a tour of weird and wonderful creations, built by people from Marquises to Marseille, Paris to the Fiji Islands. These were examples of how open creativity is and something we do all the time. Calling it art does not matter to the people who do it, whether it’s building a house from driftwood or creating a sculpture in your garden from scrap metal. It’s part of everyday life, as it should be. Guy called it ‘a tribute to humanity of inventing every day’.
Case studies – Thursday 13th December 2007
Split in four groups, the 21 participants worked all day on identifying different issues on practical situations of four centres. From the issues raised, their assignment was to give a proposition for the development and the improvement of the management of the centre, based on what they learnt on the three previous days of the training.
Presentation of the case studies outcomes / Feedback – Friday 14th December 2007
On Friday morning, the four groups presented the outcomes and their propositions born from their analysis. The four different groups actually came out with very different working methods and solutions. The four participants whose centre has been analysed were invited to give their point of view, what would be feasible or not back home and why.
On Friday afternoon, everybody: organizers, participants, trainers, observers sat together in a circle and were invited to give their impression and answer the question: “what will you bring back home?”. Loads positive substantial ideas were said and a very positive energy came out of this discussion. A lot of people expressed the will to be in contact again.
