With apologies for cross-posting
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ESRC Seminar Series: “Rethinking Arts Marketing”
Seminar Five: Creativity and the Art Enterprise
Date/Time: Wednesday 11th April 2007
Venue: University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland

Speakers:

Pierre Guillet de Monthoux
Ben Jeffries
Ruth Rentschler
Jonathan Schroeder

PROGRAMME

9.30-10.00
Coffee and Registration in the MacRobert Arts Centre, University of Stirling

10.00-10.05	Introduction and Welcome

10.05-11.15
Sex, Lies and Museum Governance: When Creativity Goes Awry
by Ruth Rentschler, Deakin University

With so many controversies in museum governance in the past decade or more,
it is surprising that so little has been written on them in scholarly
journals. Recent controversies in museum governance illustrate the
increasingly complex relationship between boards, ‘business’ and creativity.
This paper uses contemporary case studies of ethical conflicts of interest
in museums and galleries to illustrate the way in which governance is
manifested in cultural organisations. There have been few examples or
guidelines on what constitutes conflict of interest in cultural
organisations. While such conflict draws on the same legal framework as for
other organisations, the obligations, level of trust and duty of care are
placed on a higher plane of social expectations for arts organisations. An
argument is made for what constitutes conflict of interest in these
organisations, and how governance collides with creativity. This approach
provides key points of difference between governance in cultural
organisations and governance in other organisations.

Ruth Rentschler is Executive Director of the Centre for Leisure Management
Research, Deakin University. She has managed a range of governance projects,
such as writing topical briefing papers for the board of a major visual arts
organisation; identifying best practice in sports arts and charities boards,
and analysing arts governance compliance. Ruth has held various board,
community and funding panel positions. She is currently deputy chair of the
board of Multicultural Arts Victoria and a member of Stonnington Arts
Reference Group. She is an honours graduate in Fine Arts (First Class
Honours, First Place) and German from the University of Melbourne and
maintains a strong interest in the visual arts and museums in her work and
private life. She paints and gardens in her spare time.

11.15-12.30
The Artist as Brand Manager 
by Jonathan E. Schroeder, University of Exeter 

This presentation argues that greater awareness of the connections between
the traditions and conventions of visual art and the production and
consumption of images leads to enhanced ability to understand branding as a
strategic signifying practice. It forms part of a larger call for inclusion
of art historical issues within the marketing research canon and joins in
the contention that art history can provide a necessary contextualizing
counterpoint to information processing views of branding’s interaction with
consumer behavior and visual perception. Artists offer exemplary instances
of image creation in the service of building a recognizable look, name, and
style – a brand, in other words. Successful artists can be thought of as
brand managers, actively engaged in developing, nurturing, and promoting
themselves as recognizable “products” in the competitive cultural sphere.
Brands are inherently visual – brand logos, product design, packaging, brand
identity, and brand marketing campaigns each draw upon visual materials to
create distinctive brand images – yet marketing scholars have seemed
reluctant to embrace art history and visual studies as critical fields with
potential contributions to branding knowledge. In this paper, several
prominent, successful artists serve as case studies to illuminate the
potential for insights into the interconnections between art, branding, and
consumption. This article places brands firmly within culture to look at the
complex underpinnings of the branding, linking perceptual and cognitive
processes to larger social and cultural issues that contribute to how brand
images work. 

Jonathan Schroeder’s research focuses on the production and consumption of
images, and has been published widely in marketing, psychology, design, and
law journals. His book, Visual Consumption, draws from art history,
photography, and visual studies to develop an interdisciplinary, image-based
approach to understanding consumer behaviour and how images create value. He
is recipient of a 5-year research grant ‘Brands, Companies and Consumers: A
Dynamic Perspective’ from the Jan Wallanders and Tom Hedelius Foundation. He
has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of
Rhode Island, Novgorod State University, Russia, and the Summer Exploration
Program at Wellesley College, and several executive management programs.
Jonathan was formerly Professor and Director of Marketing in the Department
of Industrial Economics and Management at the Royal Institute of Technology
(KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a frequent speaker at conferences,
industry symposiums, and universities. His latest book, Brand Culture,
includes contributions by marketing, management, organizational studies,
consumer research, and communication researchers, and provides a handy guide
to the latest thinking about brands.

12.30-13.30	Lunch

13.30-14.30	Who are the arts for? - Towards a realistic marketing brief
for the arts
by Ben Jeffries, Macrobert Arts Centre, University of Stirling

Ben Jeffries has worked in marketing in regional producing theatre at
Harrogate, The National Theatre, the politically engaged Tricycle Theatre,
London, and as Audience Development Officer for Arts Council England. Each
of these places has a different history and different answers to the
question ‘Who are the Arts For?’ written into their architecture, their
policies, their people and sometimes their marketing plans. The seminar will
take the form of a brief provocation to be followed by discussion before we
arrive at a final answer!

Ben is responsible for the marketing of the Macrobert which offers a
dedicated theatre for children, a state of the art cinema, a children’s art
gallery, a workshop rehearsal space as well as a stylish café bar and medium
scale theatre space.

14.30-14.45	Coffee

14.45-16.00	The Art Firm
by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, Stockholm University

Economy and its management can be art-based. Let us investigate this
proposition historically and go on trying to grasp what kind of management
we are after in this case. What kind of marketing is performed in so called
Art Firms? This makes us enter the domain of aesthetics and philosophy of
art. If an art-based economy wants to shape its marketing and management in
tune with experience from the arts what will result?

Pierre Guillet de Monthoux is Professor of General Management at Stockholm
University, adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School and
Schwungprofessor-at-large with Nurope, the Nomadic University. He publishes
articles and books on political economy and art, aesthetics and management.
He has recently made a movie and CD on the same theme. He works mainly in
Sweden but lives in Switzerland for the moment. His book The Art Firm
explores the seemingly unorthodox alliance of the arts, management, and
marketing. Art firms—as avant-garde enterprises and arts corporations—have
existed for at least two hundred years, using texts, images, and other types
of art to create corporate wealth. He investigates how to apply the methods
artists use in creating value to the methods more traditional managers use
in running their businesses. Guillet de Monthoux points out how responsible
aesthetic management and marketing can eradicate the problems of banality
and totality, the two capital sins of an art-based economy. He has also
written The Moral Philosophy of Management and edited Good Novels Better
Management (with Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges.


16.00 – 16.15	Concluding Remarks

ADMIN

Attendance fee

There is an attendance charge of Stg£ 25.00.  Lunch and refreshments will be
provided during the day. This fee is waived for bursary holders (see below).

Bursaries for Young Arts Marketers and PhD Students

As we would like to encourage the participation of current PhD students or
young practitioners in arts marketing, three travel bursaries are available
to assist in attending this seminar, by kind provision of ESRC. Please note
that to enquire about these opportunities applicants should contact Suzanne
Ashmore ([log in to unmask]).

Bookings

To reserve a place, please contact Suzanne Ashmore, at Sheffield University
Management School, [log in to unmask]

Accommodation

There is a good selection of hotels and bed and breakfasts in Stirling. On
campus accommodation is available at the Stirling Management Centre and
those hotels and bed and breakfasts listed below which are located in Bridge
of Allan and Causewayhead are within walking distance of the university.
There are frequent bus links from Stirling to the university campus.

Stirling Management Centre: http://www.smc.stir.ac.uk/content/ 
http://www.scottishaccommodationindex.com/stirling.php
http://www.stirling.co.uk/accommodation/hotels.htm
http://www.stirling.co.uk/accommodation/

Directions

For directions to Stirling University, see:
http://www.external.stir.ac.uk/students/campus_info/getting_here/index.php

For Further Information …

… on the Stirling Seminar specifically, please contact Dr Ian Fillis email:
[log in to unmask]; Telephone 01786 467392; Fax 01786 464745

… on the Seminar Series in general, please contact Daragh O'Reilly on
[log in to unmask], and see also the Academy of Marketing
Arts/Heritage/NonProfit/Social Marketing SIG web-pages at:
http://www.academyofmarketing.info/artssig/artssig1.cfm