This is an interesting discussion.

Practising artists build a career on creating reflecting and developing
their art, creating their own language about their craft. It takes a life 
time to build a language describing your craft as a practising artist as it
is forever changing.

Art, described from a non practising artist's perspective, in this context
from an academic leadership and management domain, is an all 
together different thing.

Practising artists don't consider the work this group does as art. 

So what is it?

Perhaps once we understand what it is we can then talk about whatever it is
in the terms of craft.

Ralph


-----Original Message-----
From: Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Taylor, Steven S
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2016 5:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Quality of art products in arts-based methods in organizations

Forwarding this response from Piers - I concur that Jane Hilberry¹s point is
about insistence on good craftsmanship and I wonder if that gets us to a
different conversation than talking about quality in art products?


On 6/9/16, 1:25 PM, "[log in to unmask]"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hmmm. Muddle here about craft and art I think. Well crafted can be 
>unoriginal. Profound can be, on the face of it rough, but never poorly 
>crafted. Peter Brook useful here? Poor theatre vs deadly theatre. 
>Artists very rarely produce good art let alone people in a workshop. An 
>insistence on good craftsmanship is a very useful constraint when 
>trying to bring about insight in a group (Jane Hilberry's point I think).
>Artists don't make "Art" remember, they make books or plays or films or 
>paintings and if they are making a living at it, what they make will be 
>well crafted.
>Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: "Taylor, Steven S" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sender: "Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network"
>	<[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 12:15:47
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "Taylor, Steven S" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Quality of art products in arts-based methods in organizations
>
>Hi, everyone
>
>Last week at EURAM, Philippe Mairesse spoke about his work with 
>accounting students and talked about how he pushed the students to do 
>work that was better art. I am also struck that Jane Hilberry also 
>spoke about how she pushes students to write better poetry 
>(http://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/oa/vol1/iss1/6/). This has gotten me 
>thinking about the question of quality of the art (product/outcome) 
>when using arts-based methods for leadership/managerial development ­ 
>in short does it matter if the art is good if we¹re not doing it to 
>produce good art? I don¹t think anyone would claim that the LEGO 
>sculptures created in a Serious Play process are good art, or even that 
>the facilitators try to get people to create better (rather worse) art as
part of the process.
>
>My first take on this is that pushing for better quality art also 
>pushes farther into deeply embodied and often mysterious knowing and 
>away from just representing our cognitive processes in visual (or 
>poetic or
>whatever) forms. It pushes us into more ambiguous and more interesting 
>forms that also allow to go to new places (Barry & Meisiek¹s 
>departures) than something more straight forward and cognitive does. 
>Thus the push for better art also has a very useful purpose.
>
>So, what do you think? How does concern for the quality of the art 
>product/outcome fit into your own practice of arts-based methods in 
>organizations (if you have one and it does)? How would you think about 
>this? What questions does this raise for you?
>
>Regards,
>
>Steve Taylor
>
>  Steven S. Taylor, PhD
>[cid:4FEA4C90-AEE4-4F3C-99DF-657EB4452699]
>