The future of arts management

Rebecca Lamoin was a fellow in Michael Kaiser’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management international program over three Washington summers.  Here are some of her learnings about the future of arts management….

For three years I’ve had the incredible good fortune to spend time with about 30 arts managers from all over the world. ‘Spend time’ really is an understatement. When we gather each July in Rehearsal Room 7 at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC we know what’s ahead. We bunker down in that room for 10 hours a day working through a heavy and detailed schedule of sessions, discussions and guest speakers focused on topics across artistic planning, strategic planning, fundraising, board development and marketing. At the end of every day we move collectively back to our hotel and the discussions continue over drinks or dinner. On weekends clusters of arts managers with accents can be overheard talking about funding challenges or  difficult artistic directors as they move around Smithsonian museums, past national monuments or in and out of stores in Georgetown. In many ways it’s simultaneously the most surreal and most grittily realistic experience I’ve had.

Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser established The DeVos Institute in 2001 and the summer international program in 2008. When I was accepted into the program in 2012 I expected to learn a lot and find different insights into the content and mechanics of my job and my organisation. As the head of strategy for QPAC a multi-venue, multi art form performing arts centre my job touches almost every aspect of what we do…the learning opportunities appeared almost infinite. Unsurprisingly this turned out to be true. I return home each year (and will do so again soon) with a more sophisticated approach to the ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ of my job. I have an ever expanding bag of tactical approaches to things like fundraising (and friend raising), institutional marketing and planning. My notebooks are quite literally bursting at the seams…filled with little scribbles and grand dreams. Some will find life off the pages and other will not. But this is where I will rely on the most important lesson I have learned from my extraordinary colleagues – fearlessness.

We love art and know it’s a powerful force in individual and collective change. That drives each of us in our jobs. But what I witnessed in these people from countries across South America, Africa, Europe and Asia was more personal and profound. As a group we share common challenges regardless of the political and social contexts we work within – diminishing funding, changes in audience behaviour, ambitions that exceed our organizational capacity. As individuals we face very specific challenges and over a multitude of discussions, shared meals and late night conversations I saw people who we’re taking calls from their children locked in bomb shelters in Tel Aviv, managing exhibitions around responses to Boko Haram in Sub-Saharan Africa and navigating deep seated language, legal and cultural issues stemming from the break up of Yugoslavia. Their bravery and relentless commitment is breathtaking.

I could write a dozen different lists about the top 10 things I learned and in coming weeks as I get space to reflect and plan, I’m sure I will. In these immediate moments after having left DC, I cannot shake the idea that there is real beauty in simplicity. Every country talked about art as it relates to jobs, tourism, civic pride, organizational profile. All are valid and present very real challenges. But too often I think we ask our work to do too much, meet too many agendas, leap too many targets. At it’s core, what we are really tasked with is storytelling, creating ways to communicate the things that happen to us and the things that matter to us. The task may be complex but the idea is beautifully simple.

Rebecca Lamoin

Rebecca Lamoin is Associate Director-Strategy at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC). She has worked in arts and cultural for more than 15 years across a range of artforms and differently sized organisations. Originally trained as a journalist, she has a keen interest in writing and politics both of which are important in her current role.  She is an International Fellow of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC.

Feature image:  International Summer Program fellows celebrating 4 July, courtesy of the author