Arts & International Affairs Volume 5, Number 1, Summer 2020 | Page 41

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
For more than nine years, as I educate aspiring arts managers, I critically self-reflect
on the impact I can make on the generation of my students. There is a lot of talk
and literature about empowerment these days�particularly in the context of participatory
arts projects and in intercultural arts management (Canas 2015; Fernández
Carrasco et al. 2016; Henze 2018; Matarasso 2019; McHenry and Annwar 2011) – but
not so when it comes to the education of arts management students (Durrer 2019; Saha
2013). This is a huge shortcoming, which needs to be addressed.
As educators, we have to ask ourselves: do we really empower our students to courageously
address future challenges? Do we enable them to set their own agendas and take
over responsibilities? Do we provide them with media literacy, which will allow them to
take well-informed decisions and not be prone to believe fake news and propaganda? Or
do we just teach and lecture them?
I am not saying that it is wrong to teach methodologies and theories. To the contrary,
I am convinced that we need them more than the vast amount of “best practices” in
our discipline, which will definitely not help when addressing challenges that appear in
different and more complex contexts (Mattocks 2017). This is also one of the reasons
that I am sceptical about the involvement of practitioners directly at the beginning of
study programmes. Without a sound understanding of methodology and theory, students
will not be able to transfer and apply their knowledge. Without knowing epistemologies
outside the western hemisphere, they will be ignorant of new approaches that
might help tackle current challenges at home and abroad (Henze 2019). I assume most
educators will agree to this�but let us self-critically reflect on what we really do in our
programmes. Is what our curriculae demand us to do sufficient, when we look closer at
the current and upcoming challenges that arts managers will most likely face?
Within this text, I briefly touch on populism, protection of cultural heritage, internationalisation,
and globalisation, as I consider these topics most urgent, notwithstanding the
ones that will surely emerge and that I am unfortunately unable to foresee. I then focus
on media literacy, since this seems to be missing in most arts management programmes,
even though it is a key competence. Finally, the conclusion offers first ideas on what we
as educators can do in order to help to empower aspiring arts managers.
Populism
The topic of populism is not a new one. For decades, we have experienced left-wing
populism in South and Central America (in several countries, e.g., Brazil and Argentina,
this is now shifting to the right, with a particularly dangerous and frightening situation
in Venezuela). We know the reactions from the art world to this by Augusto Boal’s Theatre
of the Oppressed, 1 for instance. I question whether we as educators have learned
1 Simplified Theatre of The Oppressed is a theatrical format coined by Brazilian artist Augusto Boal in
38