Chapter 7: Essential Skills in the Arts-Administration - Cultural Mgmt Classroom

Anne Frost is a professor in the Humber College Arts Administration- Cultural Management Post-Diploma Program. She teaches Strategic Planning.

In this course, soon-to-be graduates of the Arts Administration – Cultural Management Program are being prepared to assume an overall strategic leadership role through a holistic, applied exercise.

Each year, two professional, Not for Profit organizations (for Spring of 2007, Tapestry New Opera Works, and Theatre Museum Canada) are adopted by the program as the sites for a strategic planning exercise. Students carry out a site visit, meet with the senior management team (staff and lay leadership), execute an environmental scan/SWOT analysis of the company, draft a strategic plan over a period of five weeks, and deliver that plan in a mock Board Presentation to the assembled faculty and leadership of the host organizations.

Since this course is designed to use skills and concepts from all areas of arts management in order to develop a strategic approach to managing arts organizations, students are introduced to a comprehensive model for Strategic Planning that includes strategic formulation (situational analysis, clarification of mission), strategy integration (issues analysis, strategy analysis), implementation, evaluation and adjustment in a manner that allows for both theoretical AND applied learning.

                                                √ Oral Communications

                                                √ Working with others 

                                                √ Continuous Learning

                                                √ Thinking Skills:

                                                            √ Critical Thinking

                                                            √ Decision Making

                                                            √ Finding information

                                                            √ Job Task Planning and Organization

                                                            √ Problem Solving

                                                            √ Significant Use of Memory

Oral Communications – students are expected to take an active part in informal class discussion, and to bring their own outside information – e.g. from placement organizations – to augment the materials provided by the instructor.  Students who participate meaningfully in class discussion receive a  higher grade for the 10% of their mark which reflects this element than do students who sit quietly on the periphery.  More formally, students are required to present their finished Strategic Plan to their peers, faculty and representatives of the case study organization in a professional, businesslike setting, using appropriate technical support items such as powerpoint, and are coached in these elements as well.

Working with others – most of the work in the Strategic Planning class is carried out in teams, with a smaller number of assignments marked as individual submissions.  Working in teams is critical to success in the not-for-profit, charitable sector.  Although it is messy, inefficient, and aversive to some (especially older students), rather like democracy, it’s a necessary part of a student’s experience.

Continuous Learning – new materials are introduced during the course as a result of government legislation, funding, case study situations and other external events that affect the outcome of the strategic planning process.  Students learn that their job includes being aware of changing circumstances which affect the outcome of their work with the case study organization, and by extension, their work in the field when they graduate.  There is no static canon of material that can be relied upon to provide answers to the constantly-evolving field in which we work.

Thinking Skills:

√ Critical Thinking - students are given a wide range of examples of case study strategic plans from many different sources.  Some are exemplary, some are not.  Students are required to examine these case study documents, and to offer a critical response to them, both in writing and in a moderated class discussion setting so that learning can be shared.

√ Decision Making – students work together to make decisions about which case study organization they will work on, how they will conduct the research needed to complete the project, who will undertake which element of the research, the establishment of interim deadlines for the different project elements, and who will present each element of the final Strategic Plan.  Where students do not have enough information to make good decisions, they are supported by the instructor with suggested avenues of research.

√ Finding information – many strategies for finding information which support the strategic planning process are discussed in class.  Personal or telephone interviews with stakeholders, email correspondence, questionnaires, examination of an organization’s published materials, data from the Statistics Canada Census and other credible sources, the organization’s own website and the unmoderated information available on the world wide web are all examined.

√ Job Task Planning and Organization – students are responsible for adhering to deadlines for assignments during the course and for creating the finished product of the case study Strategic Plan for presentation at the end of the course.  Some class time is allocated to group work, as students come from a variety of distances from campus and can find it hard to schedule team working time outside of class due to travel, family, and work commitments.  Students are encouraged to keep abreast of scheduling problems and address them productively with the instructor.  The instructor offers support where necesssary to access computer labs, library resources, audio-visual technology, etc. 

√ Problem Solving – problems such as not being able to access the audited financial statements of a case study organization in a timely fashion sometimes arise.  Students are encouraged to solve these problems in a variety of ways, and are also reminded that running into these sorts of issues in a learning environment is a “rehearsal for reality” and that this experience will serve them well when the stakes are  higher once they graduate and are working in the field.

√Significant Use of Memory – students do best in their final presentation if they engage with the audience and do not rely on their powerpoint slides or their written notes.  This familiarity with the material requires significant use of memory.  The instructor gives direction as to the most effective presentation techniques, and ascribes marks to the degree to which the teams engage with their audience in a fluent, meaningful way.

Much of the classroom work provides the students with a working paradigm while offering them multiple and cumulative exercise in team work, applied research, and critical decision making as they work through a variety of scenarios to determine the best  approach to strategic planning for the case study organization.

An engaged student gets more out of the material than a passive learner. Some students need to hear a concept described in several different ways or in several different case study situations, some need to hear themselves describing it to their peers in order to grasp it fully. The instructor uses as many practical means as possible to encourage the students to respond to the exercise and to learning the essential skills, always looking for that “aha – now I get it” moment which is so rewarding to all concerned.

The course is framed as a “rehearsal for reality,” with lower stakes than in a real-world setting.  Essential skills are made explicit in the classroom in order to provide learners with a solid preparation to use these skills in the workplace.