Museum and performing arts marketing: the age of discovery

Trends in museum and performing arts marketing from 1975 to 1994 were analyzed and suggested that a third period was emerging; the data in this article confirm that claim. Among the latest arts marketing articles, there is a significantly greater focus on marketing strategy than on the other two categories--marketing as culture and marketing as tactics.

Entrepreneurship, marketing and leadership in non-profit performing arts organisations

This paper argues that the entrepreneurial leader in non-profit PAOs has received too little attention in literature pertaining to these organisations. This criticism also applies to museums. The paper explores how leaders in non-profit performing arts organisations balance the interests of the various funding sources and market opportunities to service their revenue requirements. It reviews a tension in non-profit performing arts organisations: the relationship between limited funding and the subsequent need to act entrepreneurially and innovatively among the various funding sources. Using longitudinal analysis of annual reports, the paper uncovers interplay essential to entrepreneurship. Hence, strategies and tensions are highlighted that non-profit leaders have used. Comparisons are made with non-profit art museums which previous research has shown have the same funding tensions.

Relationship marketing, audience retention and performing arts organisation viability

Marketing strategy in performing arts organisations has become particularly important in the increasingly competitive environment in which the arts operate. Since the late 1980s there has been a necessary shift in focus to audience development away from product development. This change in focus is being encouraged to ensure the long-term viability of performing arts organisations (PAOs) and micro-economic reform. While government reports have recommended strategies aimed at building audience based recognition, this is an expensive approach for many PAOs and does not produce short term returns. Little attention has been paid to building enduring relationships with existing audiences as a way if having a more dramatic impact on PAOs' long-term viability. This paper explores this theme through relationship marketing and the implication of retaining existing audiences. The paper identifies the changing cultural environment which has led to the importance if marketing. It then explains the concepts if relationship marketing and its pertinence to PAOs' viability by presenting a loyalty ladder. The structure is modelled as a dynamic conceptualisation of the relationships (audience and organisation) to assist arts managers to decide whether to focus their efforts on catching or keeping customers to maximise earned income.

Entrepreneurship in the markets of nonprofit performing arts organisations

This paper explores how managers in nonprofit performing arts organizations balance the interests of the various funding sources and market opportunities to service their revenue requirements. It reviews a tension in nonprofit performing arts organizations: the relationship between limited funding and the subsequent need to act entrepreneurially and innovatively amongst the various funding sources. Using a longitudinal analysis of annual reports in six major nonprofit performing arts organisations in Australia since 1975, the paper uncovers some of the interplay essential to entrepreneurship. From this discussion, different strategies and tensions are highlighted that nonprofit general managers have used. Comparisons are made with nonprofit art museums which previous research has shown have the same funding tensions.

A brief review of PhDs in creative and performing arts in Australia

This paper reports on an aspect of a pilot project conducted in 2003 by the authors comprising a bibliographic analysis of all (approximately 51,000) Australian PhDs. The pilot work is both a data and methodological basis for a larger project that investigates the nature and development of PhDs in Australia as they evolved in the context of national economic, social and educational changes. This paper reviews the evidence from the bibliographic data held in library catalogues of PhDs in each Australian university. After considering the definitional properties and their operationalisation, the paper provides an overview of the first instances, locations and frequencies of PhDs in the creative and performing arts in Australia, fields which are relatively new to doctoral study and which pose challenges in terms of doctoral pedagogy and scholarship. This is contextualised in terms of the development of the contemporary university sector during the 1990s, including the growth in the creative and performing arts therein.

Masters of their own destiny : autonomy and the performing arts

2001 Kenneth Myer lecture for the George Fairfax Fellowship, at Deakin University's Toorak Campus, Thursday 22 March 2001.
"Produced and distributed by Bowater School of Management & Marketing, Faculty of Business & Law, Deakin University."

Your genre is black : indigenous performing arts and policy

In February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations on behalf of the Australian people. Now what? In this Platform Paper, mid-career Indigenous performing artists think about their post-apology future. Indigenous theatre blossomed in the 1990s when it was grasped as a means to expose social issues and advance the goals of Reconciliation. Now that generation of artists questions these motives. For some, history and community are central; others are impatient with 'your genre is black' and demand the professional respect they have earned. "Indigenous artists", says director Wesley Enoch, "have been asked for decades to work at their slowest, to bring everyone along with them. It's the equivalent of asking Cathy Freeman to run slowly, so that everyone can keep up with her." Glow and Johanson provide a forum for practitioners like Rachel Maza-Long, David Milroy, Stephen Page and Rhoda Roberts. Together they call for an end to second-best; and for measures that respond with post-apology confidence to the vision and inspiration that, in the opinion of the Australia Council, "remain at the heart of Australia's culture" .

Audience experience : measuring quality in the performing arts

Traditional measures of quality in the performing arts include critical reviews, awards, attendance data, the reputation of the director, company or lead performers, and attributions of success such as festival participation or sponsorship and grants. However, the recent literature on audience values, quest for authenticity and the personal experience suggests the need for empirical research into the capacity of the audience experience as an appropriate and important measure of quality in the performing arts. The authors use primary research with performing arts audiences to explore notions of quality, audience risk and audience experience to redefine the quality-measurement paradigm.

Considerations for performing arts organisations in a climate of transition to the open market context in Vietnam

The emergence of a global economy and culture has created a worldwide climate of change since the 1980s. These changes impact on the growth of a national economy and change the significance of sectors in society, for example the service sector, which increasingly accounts for an important part of the economy (Burbules & Torres, 2000). The arts have also been profoundly influenced by social changes, and technological development. While these changes pose new challenges for the arts, most of which struggle for financial viability in an era of globalisation, privatisation and reduced public funding, the developments also open new opportunities for arts companies/artists but require them to possess the capability to identify and adapt to change. This process underlines the necessary new capacities of arts management, arts marketing, arts leaders and artists.

Doi moi - Vietnamese economic reforms in 1986 - provided impetus for change in every sector, resulting in growth of the service sector in Vietnam (UNDP, 2002). Arts organisations in Vietnam found themselves operating in a more competitive environment, forcing them to adjust to this new economic structure. Improved Vietnamese living standards helped to create more demands for a diverse entertainment industry and allowed both the government and individuals to spend more on the arts. A new cultural policy - socialisation (somewhat equivalent to privatisation in Western countries) was implemented in the arts and cultural sector, producing for performing arts organisations (PAOs) as well as a broader cultural milieu in Vietnam, challenges of being self-sustaining but also more autonomy and greater funding diversity. Simultaneously, this led to upgraded artistic standards, improved infrastructure and higher musicians’ salaries; the latter having only experienced slow improvement during the subsidised era.

This paper investigates how social changes affected organisational operations of selected PAOs in Vietnam and Australia. The analysis of how PAOs in each country adjusted to rapid changes will provide experience for learning from each other, particularly for the Vietnamese case. These analyses provide points of discussion, comparison and implications for development of arts management training in Vietnam. Case studies, personal interviews with key participants and policy actors have been used to discern which direction performing arts management should take in order to correspond with Vietnam’s present and future economic situation and its political position in the world.

Instrumentalism and the 'helping' discourse : Australian indigenous performing arts and policy

Indigenous arts are significant to the way Australia is represented to the world. Since the early 19705 Indigenous cultural policies, at both federal and state levels, have helped to shape the development of Indigenous performing arts in Australia. Over this period, cultural policies, in confluence with the aims of Indigenous artists and civil rights activists, have produced and reproduced instrumentalist rationales for the support of Indigenous arts. In particular, the sector has deployed <helping' rationales for cultural policies which focus on social and economic outcomes. This article addresses current debates around the instrumentalist purposes of cultural policy and the participation of Indigenous practitioners in reproducing the 'helping' discourse. The article, however, finds evidence of a recent break in the consensus which sees some Indigenous artists resisting the historical imperative for their arts practice to be exclusively focused on instrumentalist outcomes.

How to (re) value Indigenous performing arts

In their paper on “Excellence and access: Indigenous performing arts” the problem that Hilary Glow and Katya Johanson describe is discursive, one that also has a discursive solution. An alternative can come from thinking through the process by which “value” is created, supported and circulated in the art world. Strategies to re-value Indigenous performance can thereby be directed to the various sites of institutional value which have long characterized Australian cultural policy – its importance to national identity, in the connection between culture and economics as well as to the debate over access and excellence – and come from artists as well as the communities they serve.

Indigenous performing arts and the problem of judging 'excellence': A discussion paper

In this paper we look at the persistent debate over notions of access and excellence and intrinsic and instrumentalist rationales for arts practice within cultural policy discussion. Recent research into the Indigenous performing arts in Australia underlines the particular difficulties faced by the sector in balancing the demands of community participation, social inclusion and high-quality aesthetic outcomes. The balancing act has proven unsustainable for some Indigenous performing arts companies and their viability is now in doubt. This suggests that a re-consideration of the question of the purpose and value of the Indigenous performing arts is timely.