Oddsocks at the Melbourne Fringe Festival : a methods paper for using an arts installation in promoting public health

Installation art involves using everyday objects and spaces in an unusual way to gain attention and encourage interaction. While arts-based projects have the ability to inform and provoke interest, few have focused on public health. Oddsocks was conceived as a public health installation as part of the annual Melbourne Fringe Festival, with a primary aim to raise awareness concerning the importance of exercise and foot health. Promoting such underserved public health issues creates specific challenges which have been typically under-reported. This methods paper focuses on how these challenges can be met through arts-based initiatives and arts-based inquiry.

Size does matter : the impact of size on governance in arts organizations

This paper documents governance conformance and performance in small to medium sized arts organizations in Australia, where artistic development, innovation and stakeholder relationships inform the governance activity central to achieving their mission. The key question of this study is whether the governance of large and small arts organizations differs as they balance competing needs
in order to achieve their artistic vision. The results of the study provide evidence that size is a critical factor in how boards govern arts organizations. Using material from indepth interviews and surveys, the paper argues that governance conformance and performance are in a state of constant tension with artistic development, and governance processes are dependent on organizational size and resources.

An arts project failed, censored or … ? A critical incident approach to artist–school partnerships

When a successful primary school engaged a writer to work with children on an arts project, the teachers and the writer thought that the result would be a lively, publishable product. When the writer worked with the children, he thought that he should use the children's experiences and ideas as a basis for meaningful and engaged composition. However, the result was a text which the head-teacher and her staff felt was inappropriate. They were concerned that it could bring disapproval from parents and possible adverse publicity. The head refused to publish but continues to worry about this decision. The writer describes the project as censored. In this paper, we suggest that this critical incident raises important questions about the nature of 'partnership' between artists and schools and the role of the flagship Creative Partnerships policy and programme. We suggest some possibilities for dealing with such situations in future and argue that Creative Partnerships must do more to promote dialogue about the critical role of the arts and artists in society.

Creative partnerships? Cultural policy and inclusive arts practice in one primary school

This article traces the 'cultural turn' in UK educational policy through an analysis of the Creative Partnerships policy (New Labour's 'flagship programme in the cultural education field') and a consideration of an arts project funded under this initiative in one primary school. It argues that current educational policy foregrounds the economic importance of cultural activity and its contribution to the social inclusion agenda. However, 'creativity' is seen as being located outside mainstream school structures, in projects rather than in the National Curriculum, and in artists rather than in teachers. The emphasis is on enjoyment and inclusion rather than cultural or social critique, or significant curriculum change. The transformative potential of involvement in the arts is marginalised in favour of a relatively weak form of social inclusion.

The use of the web as a marketing tool by selected arts organisations in Vietnam : a preliminary investigation

This paper presents exploratory findings into the use of the web as a marketing tool by arts organisations in Vietnam. The uniform resource locators (URLs) of Vietnamese arts organisations listed in the cultural profiles category of the directory of Vietnamese Cultural Organisations/Departments created by Visiting Arts (UK) for the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, Vietnam (MCST) (formerly Ministry of Culture and Information – MOCI) were accessed. 17 of these websites were ‘live’ at the time of the study and were evaluated to determine current levels of marketing functionality utilised within the sites. The findings of the evaluation were analysed from the perspective of the four elements of marketing mix (price, place, product and promotion). The study found that all 17 Vietnamese arts organisations analysed were less sophisticated in the usage of the web as a marketing tool compared with their Western counterparts, and that such organisations’ websites contained basic information catalogues and contact details but had limited multimedia functionality. The implications to audience development will be explored further through a survey with stakeholders of the 17 arts organisations in Vietnam as a future research stream.

Measuring the intrinsic benefits of arts attendance

There is an emerging dissatisfaction with the current evaluative regimes for the quality and effectiveness of funded arts organizations. Far too much evaluation rests on audience satisfaction surveys and quantitative measures of audience attendance numbers, production numbers and revenue sources. The intrinsic benefits of the arts to audiences and to society are recognized to be of major importance, but the means to measure these in an acceptable and on-going manner has not been found. This article changes that. It shows, through almost three years of data collection on arts audiences, that a newly developed and tested Arts Audience Experience Index can be used and embedded by companies and government funding agencies to measure the audience experience of quality, alongside other acquittal tools.