ABSTRACT
Marketing in an arts organization involves managing scarce resources effectively. Because you and your staff are your most important resource, this book ends with a chapter that looks at general management principles in the context of arts organizations. It concentrates on some basic ideas about what management is, the nature of organizations and teams, internal marketing and effective communication. Because marketing is one of the biggest spending functions in an arts organization we begin with some thoughts addressed to managers tasked with controlling budgets. Being an effective manager has much in common with marketing orientation. The more credible you are to those inside and outside your organization, the more likely it is that your colleagues (even those who have reservations about marketing) will facilitate rather than block the adoption of marketing orientation. The chapter will be relevant not only to those who manage a department with several or more members of staff, but also to people who work with a variety of organizations, alone, or in a community or amateur environment. The sections included in this chapter are:
Financial resource management – budget setting and monitoring
Human resource management – organizational structures – team building and management – working with creative people
Communications – making presentations – negotiation – internal communication – internal marketing
Managing yourself
In 2001 the Chief Executive of London’s National Gallery moved to a parallel job at the British Museum. At the time, a number of national UK arts institutions were having difficulty filling their top jobs, in recruitment exercises that resembled the reshuffling of a small pack of senior arts administrators. As a result, the Clore Duffield Foundation, a charitable trust, instituted a consultation process to examine the problem of this seeming shortage of leaders in the arts and heritage sector. Among its findings were the following:
Changes in the definition and role of arts organizations have made the job of leaders more difficult and less attractive. For example, museums 50 years ago were simply places where objects were conserved and displayed. Now they have to accept a complex of roles in the community, spanning education, commercial enterprise, entertainment and social amenity.
