What I’m Looking Forward To At The 2018 Association of Arts Administration Educators Conference

Think fast: what’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions an Arts Administration Educators Conference?

Adaptistration People 007I can’t speak for anyone but me so to that end, I wonder about how connected arts admin educators are to real-world implementation. Moreover, if any gulf exists, are there noticeable gaps between those with full-time teaching positions and those who teach in addition to working a regular arts admin job.

As such, I’m particularly interested in the 2018 Association of Arts Administration Educators conference session titled Preach What We Practice: Challenges and Opportunities for Scholar-Practitioners and Accidental Academics.

With a four-member panel and a one-hour session, I’m very curious to see if it will be more of a “here’s what I do” session broken into equal parts per speaker or something more coordinated. If the latter, it will be fascinating to hear about the sorts of key observations they’ve identified via any existing learning gaps or recent shifts in the arts admin landscape.

As is typically the case at conferences, one of the other sessions I’d love to attend runs opposite my own. #SadTrombone

In this case, it’s the Building Communities and Creating Change by Teaching Good Governance in the Arts session.

I’m always curious to know more about how those inside academia define governance and serve it up to students as a learnable. Hopefully, the session slide deck will be made available after the session or (fingers-crossed) they’ll record the session and have it available for streaming.

Check out the full #AAAE18 schedule, what piques your interest and why?

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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