I was going to start this blog off with a post describing what I thought Cultural Management was. However after reading the article “The Arts & Leadership: Now That We Can Do Anything What Will We Do?” by Nancy J. Adler, I felt much more inspired to write about it instead.
The main point of the article was pointing out the fact that the business world (and world at whole) is changing rapidly and to cope with this we must turn to the artists of the world for help. Personally, I found this article a little far reaching with its points. True, it was able to draw on many parallels between what the business world is currently in need of and what artists possess; however a correlation doesn’t prove that bringing artists into a business setting will solve the world’s problems as this article seemed to suggest.
For example, the article states that in the past businesses have taken on the form of a hierarchy, but as times are becoming more chaotic and globalization is spreading businesses are becoming networks of people instead. This means that a group of people are set to work on a common goal and must combine their resources to get the desired outcome. Therefore businesses are requiring people with skills similar to that of dancers, musicians, and actors, who work together to create their final product(ion). This all seems like a legitimate point to me, but I feel that the author takes it one step too far by making it seem like she thinks these businesses should be hiring dancers, actors and musicians. Yes we can learn from the models that these artists have developed and apply them to business and management practices, and yes creativity and innovation are becoming out most valuable resources we as humans have, but I don’t think hiring a dancer is going to improve performance in the workplace. Perhaps leaving the reader with this feeling was accidental on the author’s part but to me it feels like she is putting too much faith in one population of people (artists), and neglecting what we really need to focus on doing – combining our skills and working together. This would mean business people and artists (and other populations) sharing their knowledge, and actively seeking out an understanding of other peoples fields as well.
This point also seems to relate to the other article assigned for this week’s readings “Arts Management: A New Discipline Entering the Millennium?” (INSERT HYPERLINK) by Yves Evrard and Francois Colbert. In their writing they discuss how we define what art is and who an artist is. What Nancy J. Adler means when she suggests that businesses are going to need to rely on artists to thrive in the future, can vary tremendously by how you define an artist. Evard and Colbert stated that there are many criterion to consider, such as genius, the sublime, intentionality, auto-definition, and peer judgement.
In defense of Adler’s article I think she made many important remarks, and did an excellent job of explaining how the business worlds needs are changing, and how this will affect who they hire, and how we as the general population are changing in relation. My favourite part of the article was her discussion of how the world needs to learn to see past the illusion which we are currently living in. Franck was quoted saying “not seeing… may well be the root cause of the frightful suffering… we humans inflict on one another, on animals, and on Earth herself” “Franck’s cure: learning how to draw, and thus how to see.” I have personally experienced this reality, discovering that when sketching the world you must peel back the layers of what you see to expose the true image. I think this is a very good practice for anyone to participate in, to increase their awareness and take off the mask which we all dawn to protect ourselves from reality.
So in the end, I can see where Adler was attempting to reach in her discussion, and I feel she had many legitimate arguments. I just felt that she had far too much faith in one facet of the population to deal with the change and chaos going on. When personally I think we need to harness many more abilities than just creativity and innovation to deal with the change which is ahead of us.
