News came today that the warm and wonderful English actor Timothy West has died. There were two great articles in The Guardian to mark his passing so I’m not going to replicate their thoughtful commentary:

Timothy West: a modest maestro who embodied the best of British theatre https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/nov/13/timothy-west-a-modest-acting-master-who-embodied-the-best-of-british?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Popular actor known for varied roles:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/nov/13/timothy-west-obituary?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

However, I will tell the story of how Timothy caused me to take up the career of arts manager.

Once upon a time, back in the early 1980s, Timothy West was a visiting Director in Residence in the English Department at the University of Western Australia. At that time, I was a tutor in Industrial Relationsin the Economics and Commerce Faculty. As a result of a rather drunken bet with an English lecturer who had directed me as an undergraduate in a production of The Merchant of Venice, I auditioned for the show that Tim was going to direct. I should have been focusing on writing a Master’s thesis on compulsory unionism but being in a play sounded like more fun. And somewhat to my surprise given my modest theatrical skills, I was given a role – as Lydia in Thomas Middleton’s play, the wonderfully named Women beware Women.

In between tutorials and lectures, I nipped off to rehearsals and we finally presented the play in UWA’s Octagon Theatre.  On the last night, Tim asked what I was going to do with my life. What I had learned during my time with him was that I was never going to be actor. But what I also learned during that time was that I loved being with and helping artists. Much more interesting than sitting in a library pouring over old Industrial Relation Commission transcripts. And I’d discovered here was a name for that role: arts manager. So I started doing different research – about where to learn the skills required to do such a job and shortly afterwards, I enrolled to do an MBA majoring in Arts Management at what was then the South Australian Institute of Technology.

I’ll always be grateful to Tim for asking the right question at the right time because my life has been richer and more interesting because he did.

PS On that last night of Women Beware Women, some of the props were auctioned off to cover the costs of the production. I bought a live-size statue polystyrene statue of the Virgin Mary as a memento. For years, she lay in my parent’s attic until finally she took pride of place in my garden. I repainted her every couple of years but finally the rain and wind and the hail took their toll. It seems appropriate that she passed on just before the wonderful Timothy West. Both gave me great pleasure over the years.

On 13 November 2024, an article calling for “those with battle scars to sit on arts boards” was published on Arts Hub: https://www.artshub.com.au/news/opinions-analysis/the-case-for-those-with-the-battle-scars-to-sit-on-arts-boards-2760539/

John Daley and Rachel Krust argue that arts boards need to have members that “know first hand how to run the organisation’s core business”. From my experience putting former arts CEOs, Artistic Directors and Management Directors on Boards can be both a strength and a weakness. It’s a strength because of the point made by Daley and Krust but that’s exactly why it’s a weakness. Just imagine what it would be like as an arts CEO having members of a board that were continuingly challenging and second-guessing your artistic and strategic plans? Yes, a board has to have an overview of a company’s activities, but they are not there to plan their operations.

In my experience, where I have been useful on arts boards is with small to medium sized companies. Because they lack resources,  I can act as sounding board if that’s what the leadership team want and can provide advice on arts industry issues – again, if that’s what the team wants. As the CEO of a large arts company, I wanted (and mainly got) smart outsiders as Board members who ask good questions and listen to my answers. The best board members I’ve worked with have been astute enough to realise what they can usefully contribute as well as what they need to learn about the company and the environment in which it operates. The governance horror stories I’ve heard from colleagues are usually about micromanaging chairs and boards and this could be a temptation for someone who’s been an arts CEO.

The main area where arts boards can go wrong because they don’t understand the nuances of our companies is in choosing an Artistic Director. They understand the role of an administrative leader – the management of people, finance, buildings, stakeholders. But they don’t always understand of the role of the AD. I remember being surprised a couple of years ago when a major company chose Person X rather than Person Y as their Artistic Director. So it wasn’t a shock when Person X didn’t last very long in the job. In a recent conversation with a board member from that company I discovered that Person Y was rejected because they didn’t come into the interview with a detailed written statement about what they were going to do. The type of preparation one might expect from an applicant for a Managing Director role. Instead they just talked about art and artists. The board viewed this as someone unsuited to take a leadership role. If they’d listened more carefully and got advice from industry experts, they would have realised that this skilled artist was just the person they needed to heal and refocus the company.

Whenever I’ve helped boards create recruitment and selection processes for a new Artistic Director, I’ve recommended that they set up an advisory panel of people from their arts sector so they can hear what the company and the industry needs in an artistic leader. I also recommend that a couple of those artists/creatives/arts managers be on the selection panel to provide the industry knowledge required to make the best decision. The result has always led to an informed panel making a good choice.

I’ve been on boards in industries and sectors where I didn’t know the detail of how the company needed to operate. But that’s my job – to learn enough to fulfill the key roles of a board member, of understanding and approving strategic plans and budgets, of hiring, helping and firing key leadership staff, and of guarding the organisation’s assets for the future.

For more of my thoughts on Arts Boards, check out my book: The A to Z of Arts Management.

One radio program/podcast that I’ve always found interesting and recommended to my arts management students is This Working Life, hosted by Lisa Leong, on Radio National. Having said that, I have to confess that I’m an accidental listener rather than a dedicated follower but a recent broadcast caught my attention. In September 2024, Leong interviewed Leadership expert Ashley Goodall about change. The heading was “Maybe change isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”.

When I wrote about change in The A to Z of Arts Management I said that it was inevitable. And that’s because people come and go, technology changes, the economy grows or shrinks, pandemics come out of nowhere. As managers, we have to be resilient and thoughtful about how we manage change but we don’t have to inflict change just for the sake of it. Which is the point Ahsley Goodall makes. There’s an assumption that change is necessary and a key to growth in a company but that may not be the case.

Goodall was a musician before he became a management consultant and brought his learnings from conducting orchestras into his new role. He says that the key to the role of conductor is team work and describes leadership as a way of helping other people do what you can’t do. That’s a belief I’ve always held. As a manager, you know a little about a lot but the best you can do for your organisation is to recruit experts who know much more than you and facilitate them doing the best job they can.

Back on the subject of change, Goodall sees a management cult around the idea of disruptive change. That’s the belief that for things to get better, you have to mix things up. But if the result is miserable unhappy people, how can you view such change as positive? As Goodall points out, change and improvement are different. “Change means different; improvement means better.” The job of leaders, as he says, should be to create improvement. And how do you do that? It’s back to that earlier point – helping people to do their work better. And endless change is going to get in the way of people performing well.

My advice to new arts managers has always been to listen first to what your staff have to tell you about what they need to work more effectively and Goodall makes a similar point. He says that even if you have a mandate for change in your new role, what you want the leader to do is to say “Before we get to the change stuff, what is worth preserving? What is the ‘here’ that is good and valuable and strong and grounding and underpins our ability to do what we do every day?” In other words, ensuring that you have a good foundation for change.

In The A to Z, “people are rightly nervous about what change will deliver for them personally and for the organisation they value.”  Change can rob people of their sense of agency, of their sense of belonging, even their sense of meaning. I went on to say “we have to make sure that we’re proposing change for the right reasons and ensuring that all elements of the change process including the emotional well-being of staff are considered.”

If you want to hear Ashley Goodall talk more about change and the importance of building stability into our organisations to help people deal with inevitable change: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/this-working-life/why-change-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/104238766

I was reflecting on the best way to help people learn after a session about maths and English with a young girl who is just starting high school. What were my best learning experiences? I thought back to sitting in my aunt’s kitchen when I was a teenager as she helped me learn to crotchet, to cross stitch, to sew, to bead. I don’t remember feeling frustrated or stupid as she patiently demonstrated each technique and gently corrected my mistakes. Was it because she was so good at each of those techniques that she made it look easy? Was it that she was a kindly soul and so there was never any fear on my part about the consequences of getting things wrong?

When it came to high school, who were my best teachers? Of course, there were the people who were clear conveyors of information. But I think back to a couple of subjects where I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. Both teachers gave me worse marks than I was used to but in one case, the feedback was given in a way that showed me a path to improvement but in the other, I just felt brutalized. The result was that I lost respect for that teacher and any enthusiasm for the subject matter was undermined.

The most boring learning experience I have had was a more recent one. It was TAFE course on teaching which felt somewhat ironic given that I’d been teaching at universities for years. It was meticulously designed to ensure that the same curriculum could be delivered across the country but there was no incentive to do well. The results were either pass or fail. There was no room for imagination. No room for challenge. No room for doing anything more than regurgitating the rules.

Of course, learning is not just about the teachers and the curriculum. It’s about how much we want to understand. It didn’t matter that my French teacher had a degree from the Sorbonne if I was embarrassed by the sound of my pronunciation and didn’t want to open my mouth. It didn’t matter how brilliant my statistics lecturer was if I was distracted by the social life offered by university and  had utterly lost interest in the subject. But in both cases, I had the chance to learn. In a recent article in The Monthly, it was claimed that the adult literacy rate in Tasmania was 50%[1]. What do we need to do to ensure that people are offered the chance to learn?

Part of being a manager is to provide opportunities for people to learn. This can happen through providing formal learning programs but also through the day to day sharing of information, the  provision of skills and the conveyance of values. As I said in The A to Z of Arts Management:

‘Learning should be part of every organisation. As a leader and manager, you should be taking up training opportunities to improve your skills and knowledge. And if that’s true for you, it’s also true for everyone else in the organisation.’

I think back to Auntie Dot and the example she set, sitting around that kitchen table, in creating a positive learning experience for me. Sharing her knowledge. Correcting me kindly. Helping me create. Celebrating my new found skills.

If only all managers were like that.

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[1] Feik, N 2024 ‘The rotten core’ The Monthly, February, 33.

I’ve being doing some tidying up of old University teaching files as I draw to the end of that part of my career. And there in the folder about Strategic Planning were notes from a talk I’d done about organisational ‘vision’. I can’t remember when or where I gave the talk but there are some points in it that I thought were worth revisiting.

There are technical definitions about ‘vision’ in textbooks on strategic planning but it’s really quite simple. Leaders have a vision – a dream and direction that inspires other people to follow. Each arts organisation that I’ve worked with has had a sense of what they wanted to achieve in the future. And as a leader of that organisation, in my opinion you need to:

• Articulate a vision that incorporates beliefs and values as well as actions and goals
• Help people – your board and your staff – to share that vision with you
• Be passionate about the art you’re creating and the people who are making it because without that creativity, the vision remains just words on page.

I’ve been lucky to work in organisations permeated by vision. In fact, my choice of employers has always been based on their vision. I worked 12 hours a day for a theatre company but I wouldn’t work 12 hours a day for an organisation that made concrete pipes or traded shares. I have worked for half the salary that I could get in the corporate world but I wouldn’t work for a company where the CEO earnt millions of dollars in excessive of the average worker.

But having a vision isn’t by definition always a good thing and there are times when having a vision isn’t enough.

Part of the Australian’s Government’s aid to the post-apartheid South Africa was to send various media experts to help do everything from cover an election to making news and current affairs programs that weren’t just excerpts from the regime’s press-releases. My role was to review Radio South Africa, the national English Language radio station. RSA had a vision. Their vision was to perfectly English. In the apartheid world, people of colour weren’t going to get on air but neither could most South African born English speakers because their accent wasn’t ‘good enough’. RSA wanted to be just like the BBC. But the result was a bizarre old-fashioned take on what the BBC might have been like in the 1950s. And it wasn’t just the sound of the announcers, it was the programming that also seemed to reflect an old-fashioned culture. My favourite was Music after 6 which was ‘lift’ music filling in the time leading to the 7pm news. When I asked what it was supposed to do, the answer was ‘it’s when men get home and have a sherry or cocktail with their wives before the news.” What men? What women? What cocktails? Yes, RSA had a vision but the result was a National Broadcast that only spoke in the language of a minority to an even smaller minority.

Sometimes our visions can drive people to work too hard and too long. Because those of us leading in the arts believe so utterly in the purpose of our organisations, we can easily find ourselves exploiting the people who work for us. There is plenty of evidence that arts workers will trade salaries and conditions for the privilege of working for our vision but eventually that can lead to burnout, turnover, stress, and poor industrial relations.

At Melbourne Theatre Company there were (and still are) artisans who have stayed and stayed and stayed, some working for the company for over 30 years. They stay because they love what they do – the creation of unique worlds. And they would be amongst the world’s best craftspeople in terms of their skills. But they weren’t always happy. And they are highly unionized with a history of antagonism towards ‘management’ even when they respect and admire the Artistic Director and even the Managing Director.

Why? Because although MTC pays well by industry standards, the rates don’t always reflect the workers’ value or match market rates in other industries. Because they can’t control their world – directors and designers have higher status and can make demands that increase workloads and make planning difficult.

So even in an organisation where everyone has chosen to work there because of the vision and where the vision is the defining point of every discussion on every day, you still need a range of pragmatic management skills to ensure that people in the company are respected, valued and effectively lead.

There are also times when the vision isn’t enough. No matter how glorious the vision, I don’t believe that any of the following leaders can be successful:

• The “I will scream and abuse you until you succumb out of fear” leaders
• The “this is my opinion and that’s all that matters” leaders
• The “if you don’t do it my way, don’t expect to have a job” leader
• The “you do it for me and I’ll take the glory” leader
• And yes, the “I’m a man and I know more than you” leader.

The leader who can sell the vision is:

• The “show me a good idea, I’ll help you achieve it, and you can have the glory” leader
• The “here’s a way to improve your skills and take over my job” leader
• The “come and work for me because I’ll encourage and empower you” leader.

Take two theatre companies, both creating the same sort of work, both presenting to the same sort of audiences, both – one could say – with the same vision. But they differ in the way they value their artists.

One company:

• Is open to the acting fraternity, holds open auditions, regularly employs new people
• Has a pro-active occupational health and safety strategy which provides actors with advice and training before a show starts
• Ensures that all member of its senior management team regularly visits casts and see shows.

Because there are more actors than gigs, the company that values its actors doesn’t necessarily get direct financial or artistic benefits from behaving as it does but it gets moral benefits because actors will choose to work for them and the staff will feel proud when their company is praised and valued.

Theatre can provide a great metaphor for visionary leadership. The role of theatre director is an interesting example of leadership at work. Their role is to:

• Find a way to physically interpret a text and give it meaning in a new world: articulating the vision
• Work with other creative people such as set, costume, lighting and sound designers: sharing the vision
• Choose actors and then facilitate their emotional and physical journey to inhabit this new world: ensuring that values and vision match
• Work within an economic framework to ensure that the world can be created affordably: an inspirational but also achievable vision
• Create a world that is on interest to more than just them and work with the marketing and audience development people to find audiences: implement the vision.

Having a shared vision is essential as a driver for an arts organisation. But we have to be careful that our vision is an ethical and meaningful one and that in the process of implementing our vision, we look after the wellbeing of the people who are helping us on the journey.

I used to read National Geographic magazines at the dentist when I was a child. Decades later, I decided to subscribe on behalf of my young nephew but it turns out that I found it much more fascinating than he did. He’s left home but I’m still subscribing (although I think they must have had some impact because he’s now doing a PhD in Zoology). The magazines arrive once a month in my letterbox (how old fashioned is that) and in each volume I’m taken into worlds I’ll probably never visit and offered insights into research about science, about sociology, about history. And of course, there are always brilliant photographs. In this month’s edition (06.23), there’s in an article about the Vatican Museums, there’s a summary of something those of us who love the arts have always known: the power of our emotional response to art. And the science of that subject even has a name – neuroaesthetics. Here’s a quote from the article by Gulnaz Khan:

Research shows that engaging with art can activate the brain’s reward system, releasing chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Aesthetic experiences….are also associated with decreased loneliness, improved mood, and stress reduction. Some neuroscientists have even compared viewing art to the feeling of romantic love.

Khan points to a 2019 World Health Organisation analysis of more than 3,000 research studies which showed that artistic activities promote physical and psychological health. And more recently, there’s a 2022 pilot study in Belgium between a hospital and the Brussels city authority to test a ‘museum prescription’ as a supplementary treatment for burnout and anxiety.

Although I’ve always argued that the most important reason for governments to support art making and participation is because of the implicit value of the arts, I’m more than happy to argue the case that governments should buy us all a ticket to go the theatre or the museum or the gallery or the concert to make us feel better.

The first arts management course I taught was at the (then) South Australian Institute of Technology in 1985. And the last arts management courses I’ve taught were just a few week’s ago, at the University of Melbourne.

I’ve always enjoyed teaching (although not marking!) because it keeps me connected to the next generation of arts managers. It also ensures that I continue to learn in order to stay ahead of them (just). And I do get a sense of satisfaction as I pass on hard learnt lessons from the real world that might save others from my mistakes.

This year, my students have come from all parts of Australia but also from China, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America. And they are just the ones I know about.

To celebrate the end of nearly 40 years (on and off) of Arts Management teaching, here are photos of my last couple of classes.

Stakeholders and Fundraising in the Arts

Marketing the Arts

I’ve just finished teaching my last course on philanthropy and fundraising at the University of Melbourne. As an organised human being, my next task was to sort out what research material I’d used to create the course was worth keeping. In the tidy up, I discovered an edited version of a paper about private sector funding that I’d given at a seminar nearly 40 years ago. And this really is an example of the things that never change – either in the world or in my opinions.

The second sentence in the paper was this: All over the Western world….government budgets are being tightened and the arts budgets are cut. And that’s been an ongoing story for decades. Even with a supportive Federal Arts Minister in Australia at the moment with a slight improvement in funding for the arts, we’re all still recovering from cuts under the previous government.

I then went on to talk about some of the responses to this scenario – searching for new justifications for government arts funding, improving arts management, and finding other sources of funding such as corporate sponsorship. The seminar paper explored the rationale behind sponsorship, the arts companies/sectors that are attractive (and unattractive) to companies, the innate conservatism of such sponsorship, and various other constraints on private sector funding. Re-reading this document four decades on, there’s very little I’d change. These days, I’d add a more detailed section about the ethics of such relationships and reflect on stories where relationships have broken down due to pressure from artists (Tate/BP, Perth Festival/Chevron, British Museum/Shell, Sydney Biennale/Transfield).

I concluded my paper with this reflection about the need to determine whether the dream of private sector funding is a convenient point of distraction when public budgets are tight. Yes, I was clearly somewhat cynical in those days about sponsorship. We have moved beyond that point. Most large arts companies have no choice but to include corporate sponsorship as part of their funding mix. Most small to medium sized companies would like some corporate support but are usually limited to modest in kind contributions rather than meaningful cash amounts. And in both cases, philanthropy – from individuals and foundations – is a larger source of income than sponsorship. Even though it’s hard to know whether the source of that philanthropic income might be tainted (slavery? mining? armaments? tobacco?), it does feel slightly more comfortable to accept a donation than to enter into a commercial contract with a corporation.

Muddling through…..which is not the same as being in a muddle or muddled thinking. This is the language of Chris Rodgers in his interesting book The Wiggly World of Organization.

His position is that the world in general and organisations in particular are full of complexity and uncertainty and that managers/leaders can’t ‘control’ such environments. Instead, thoughtfully and with purpose, they have to do the best they can. Rodgers quotes Allenby & Sarewitz’s (2013) summary of what managers actually do:

Progress, when it occurs, comes through trial and error, through learning what works in particularly situations, through incremental change that incorporates such learning, and through the difficult process of political compromised that allows people to take the next step. (101)

I responded positively to Rodgers’ ideas because that’s both my life experience as a manager/leader and what I’ve written about in The A to Z of Arts Management. Yes, there are theories about management and the best of them contribute insights into how one might try to be a good manager but they can never offer ‘rules’ about every situation. There’s never one simple answer. You have to bring insight and experience and thoughtfulness into play. As Rodgers says about the concept of muddling through:

….this doesn’t mean managers and others relying wholly on instinct. Though that plays a vital part. Nor is it about indecisiveness. Instead, it’s about adopting a stance of flexible rigidity; remaining steadfast in pursuit of the broad direction of travel (for as long as it continues to make sense to do so) and, at the same time, being flexible and responsive to the practical realities of whatever emergers along the way. (108)

It’s about doing the best you can with, in Rodgers’s words, purpose, courage and skill. It’s about having a sense of direction and encouraging people to bring their skills to play as they join you on the journey. You can’t get anywhere as a manager without the active and effective participation of those who work for you.

You need to be brave because you can’t control the future. Afterall, apart from Emily St John Mandel (2014), who else factored Covid into their strategic plan? You have to keep moving forward without being able to predict the outcome of your decisions. And you have to apply your skills – as a communicator, a negotiator, a thought provoker, a healer – in an ethical and practical way.

REFERENCES

Allenby, B & Sarewitz D 2013, The Techno-Human Condition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Mandel, ESJ 2014, Station Eleven, Picador, London

Rodgers, C 2021 The wiggly world of organisation: muddling through with purpose, courage and skill, Routledge, London

Finally, my relationship with the University of Melbourne is at an end. It started in 1994 when I was interviewed for the position of General Manager of Melbourne Theatre Company. I remember the room with the long Board table and oil paintings of dead white males (previous Vice Chancellors) on the wall. I had no sense of optimism about the interview – after all, I had never worked for a theatre company – but that might have the very reason I was offered the job. A fresh set of eyes on an arts organisation that was in trouble.

You may be wondering what MTC has to do with the University. The answer is from its very creation as the Union Theatre Repertory Company in 1953, MTC was a “department” of the University of Melbourne with a Board of Management reporting to the University Senate. So, for those 18 years that I managed MTC, I was a University employee.

In addition, to this formal role, I also taught arts management at the University, initially as a guest lecturer and then as a part-time course coordinator. Over the last 15 years, I have taught a variety of courses in Arts Management as well as a curious course on the secret life of organisations.

Combining work with teaching also lead to some interesting research on arts leadership with Kate MacNeill and Sarah Reynolds. I’d been off at a course in non-profit leadership at Stanford University and had a battle to get some of their academics to appreciate the strength of the co-leadership model you see in many arts organisations – with an artistic director and a managing director working side by side. Kate and I interviewed such leaders in Australia, the USA and the UK and published our results in a number of international journals. I’m still convinced that this is the best leadership approach for performing arts companies although such leaders need to share a vision, trust each and be respectful of their differences.

At various stages, I’ve been an Honorary Fellow and an Enterprise Fellow – all of which means that the University has valued my life experience even if I don’t have a PhD. And much as I admire those who can concentrate on one topic for years and years, that pure academic route never appealed to me.

As a thank you for my 18 years of work at MTC, the University offered me a year’s paid fellowship in 2013 which enabled me to research and write the first edition of my textbook The A to Z of Arts Management. The book, subtitled Reflections on Theory and Reality enabled me to combine those years of management practice, teaching and research in a way that I hope would offer useful insight to both students and arts managers.  Just today, I received an email from a past student who said that they still pull the book off the shelf and use it from to time. And just last month, an Artistic Director told me that it helped them make the transition from artist to leader.

The last couple of years have been demanding for academics and students alike as we reverted to online learning. I deeply admire my students, particularly those for whom English is a second language, who persevered  in the face of lockdowns and internet dropouts. It was such a joy to get back on campus and into the classroom earlier this year and see the palpable difference that face-to-face communication made to the learning process.

I have enjoyed working with some impressive senior managers and Senate members of the University as well the dedicated academics and administrative workers who make up the School of Culture and Communications. I have treasured the learning that teaching forces me to do as well as the smart, enthusiastic students I’ve had the privilege to teach. But much as I’m going to miss them, it’s time for me to step aside. Although teaching in recent times has provided me with both stimulus and income, I’ve had my turn. It’s been a struggle for bright young academics to get work and build a career and share their wisdom with the next generation of arts managers and I need to let them step up on take offer my role.

But, as I said to the Arts Management Department Head, I’m always available for a guest lecture (or two). It’s hard to let go completely after 28 years….

Update: 6 December 2022

…..and it turns out that it’s not quite over yet. The University hasn’t finished their recruitment process for a new arts management academic, so I have one more semester of teaching. Hurrah.