Managing the Arts: Marketing for Cultural Organizations

Transcript: Arjo Klamer 1/3 The Values of Art

This Keynote is about the realization of values. The claim is that whether you are an artist, running a theatre company or are working in a museum, it's all about the realization of values. That may not be obvious. Usually when you study the management of arts, you learn a lot about strategies. When you study economics, you learn a lot about pricing. The value-based approach that I would like to advance now is practical but also a philosophical basis for dealing with the arts.

It suggests that when you are an artist, you first of all have to answer the question: Why is it important for me to do what I do? It's important to have an answer for yourself. But also, especially if you work with others, to have an answer to others, why you're doing what you're doing. Or, if you are seeking money, finances, support, you have to explain to others why you are doing what youre doing.

In all those situations, you have to be able to argue why what you're doing is important. And that means you have to express your values. We are not accustomed to do so. Although I find that when you're dealing in the business world, but also in policy, people increasingly want you to be able to articulate your values. And that's what a value-based approach is suggesting.

Focus on your values. What the value-based approach has to offer is a division in types of values. So when you are running a theatre, or interested in working for a museum, or being an artist yourself, I suggest there are four dimensions you can try to look for to articulate your values. For lots of us one important dimension is the social dimension. In a social dimension, you articulate social values like friendship, belonging, status, reputation. You could say that I do this because I need a reputation, because I care about status, because I care about the people I do it with, with whom I share what I do. Like when you are having a band that you make music with, and you care about the people you do that with.

Those are social values. Quite a few people, entering the world of the arts, are also interesting in the more higher societal values. They're interested in society and have any impact on that. I know an artist friend who really makes theatre because she wants to contribute to justice. She wants to make this a more just world. Others are interested in the issues of sustainability, and their art functions to support the theme of sustainability. Others want to contribute to education,

want to educate people. Those I call are societal values. A more difficult category are what I call transcendental values. These you could say are the spiritual values that people will express, or artistic values that I really care about; artistic quality, or maybe even religious values, or that they really care about truths. They are harder to grasp but so important for many people to do what they do and also when they communicate to themselves or to others, it's a value that they appeal to.

These I call transcendental values. And finally, often overlooked but important too in the world of the arts, are what I call personal values. You want to be an artist. That's a personal value to you. You want to be good at what you're doing. That's a personal value to you. You want to have a certain role in the world. You want to be a director or a curator or ... You fill it in. You want to have a specific space, a specific role in the world, and that you value. The value based approach is about: First, being conscious of the values that are important to you. And second, about how to make them real. And that is the subject of the next part of this keynote.

Transcript: Arjo Klamer 2/3 The Values of Art

The main point I would like to make now is that art is not a product, as many people may think. But it would be better to think about art as a conversation. Just imagine that it's important for you to create great art. Music, theatre, you name it. How do you do that? Are you just making a product and selling it? I would suggest that it is a little bit more complicated than that.

When I talk with students, I like to talk about love. Many students express that they are interested in love. Love is a value to them that they cherish. You could call that a social value, or maybe even a transcendental value. But how do you make love real? Well, my suggestion is, in order to experience love you need a relationship. You need someone else to form a relationship with, and you share that with that other person. So having a relationship is a condition for experiencing love, or realizing the value of love. The same is with art.

If you make art, music, you name it, the important realization that you have, is that art is to be shared with others. It is something you make that has to be recognized as art by others.

Let's go to a museum. You buy a ticket to a museum. What do you buy? What does the ticket entitle you to? Many people say, "Oh, it's the experience, the education I receive in a museum." But that's not what you pay for. You pay for the right to entry. You pay for the right to spend a day, if you wish, in a museum. But what you do in a museum is your thing to decide. The way that the museum becomes art to you is if you make an effort. If you use your own experience, your own knowledge to create something in the objects that you are seeing, observing, and to create art in those objects, to see art in them. To understand them as art.

In other words, art comes about when someone provides an object and that others get involved to create the art.Therefore I say that in order to realize the values of art, you have to create a good, not a product, but a good that you share with others. That's why I prefer to see art as a conversation. You get other people involved in something that then will be recognized as art. And in a market you only buy the instruments to enable that experience, like a right to entry or a canvas with paint on it, or a seat in a music hall.

Those are the instruments that allow you to experience art. So art is a good unlike the private goods that we usually talk about. Its unlike even collective goods that we use to talk about. Private goods you have a property right to. Then you can say it's yours, you can buy it and sell it. Collective goods is that we all share together. Governments provide that. Art is a different type of good. I call it a shared good. Art needs to be shared with other people in order to make it art.

And in that sense it's just like love, or friendship, or community. And if you start realizing it, there are so many other goods that cannot be bought, cannot be sold, but are created by forming a relationship, by entering conversations with others. So the value-based approach teaches you that the most important goods are not to be bought and sold, but created socially. So think about it when you run a theatre. You don't just want people to buy tickets. You want people to contribute somehow to that what you call your art. You want people to participate in the conversation, comment on it, share it with others, become ambassadors, so to say, of that what you present in your theatre, or in your museum, or in your music, or in the literature that you write. You

need others to contribute. And that is the main insight: to recognize that art is a conversation, it's not a matter of buying and selling, it's a matter of participating, of contributing. That I would like to be the insight of this part of the keynote.

Transcript: Arjo Klamer 3/3 The Values of Art

Some values are more important than others. Some goods are more important than others. When you run a theatre, let's just take a theatre as an example ... it's important to be able to articulate for yourself but also to share it with others, with whom you are working, and especially also to involve people who would like to support you financially, to articulate clearly what the purpose is of your theatre group. What are you aiming for? Some people will say, "What is your mission?" I would say the mission of your theatre group is your answer to the question, "What is this good for?" And some people say, "Well, I just want to make art."

Then the legitimate question to ask is, "What is that good for?" Some people say, "I want to make money." The legitimate question to ask in that case is, "What is that good for?" Profit, making money, is never a goal in and of itself because it doesn't answer the question "What is that good for?" In the end, when you keep asking the question "What is it good for?", you end up with some kind of value that is most important to you.

Some good that you want to realize that is most important to you. I find, in working with all kinds of theatre groups, artistic societies, festivals, that when I try to figure out, especially strategies about financing, that first we have to be clear about what the purpose is of this society, of this group, of this festival, or whatever activity. And in general, I also discover that it is pretty hard to articulate the purpose.

But if you are not clear about your purpose, you will have a hard time finding and getting the support of others. People want to support you, because they can identify with the purpose that you have in what you do. This is just like in the case of the values. I distinguish four dimensions in which you can articulate your purpose. Your answer to the question, "What is this what you're doing good for?" What some groups will say is an important focus is to generate a social good. In a sense of good colleagues, to contribute to a community of people. That is a good in itself, an ideal that you want to contribute with your art form.

Others will say, "No, my most important good is societal. What I really care about is society and I really want to contribute to something that is societal, that is my purpose". And that's clear for Greenpeace or Amnesty International, but also some artistic groups will say, "No, my main purpose is societal. I want to be able to include people who are otherwise excluded; I want to contribute to a sustainable environment. I want to contribute to a just society".

In those cases, those groups articulate their ideals and focus them on the society. However, quite a few artistic groups have what I would call transcendental goods as their purpose. They want to contribute to great art. They want to realize important spiritual values or cultural values, or historical values.

That you see also with cultural heritage. If you have a Bach society, you want to contribute to the heritage that is constituted by the music of Bach. And you want to do everything you can to sustain that tradition and to add to that tradition. That I would call a transcendental goal. But often overlooked by orchestras and choirs I'm dealing with is that there is another goal. And that you could call a personal good that you want to realize.

For a choir, it's important that you give the chance to singers, talented singers, to realize their craft: singing. For a theatre group, it's very important that you enable actors to act, directors to direct. In an orchestra, you enable musicians to make music. In other words, arts groups, orchestras, theatre groups, enable the people to realize their personal values.

That in itself could be a goal of a group: to promote talent, to enable people to do what they are good at. If you are able to articulate your goals in one of those four dimensions, preferably it would be more than one, maybe in all four dimensions, you will find that you have a firm ground to operate on. You will find, when times get tough, that you can fall back on your purpose and remind everyone, "Remember what we are doing this for. Yes, we are lacking money.

But at this point we have to focus on what the real purpose is of what we're doing." If you don't, you're really susceptible to go wherever the winds go, wherever the flows go. And my experience is, if you do so, you lose your real purpose. Because what I find in artistic groups is that it's important for them to have a clear focus in what they are doing.

Because otherwise, before you know it, you lose your sense of creating great art, and you become an entertainer to satisfy the wishes of others. And I don't think that most people involved in the arts are interested in doing that. They want to do something important. And in order to know that, they have to know their purpose.