I'd like to second this. (Having made, I suspect, a similar shift myself.)
For every self-satisfied state beaurocrat in arts organisations, there's
someone dedicated to making great new art, and connecting up artists and
audiences and communities and working long, poorly-paid hours to do it. I
never replied to the name 'administrator', or even 'arts manager' (not even
while subscribing to 'Arts management Weekly'), as neither term hits the
essence of the job - I prefer arts development as a term, meaning it in all
senses.
best,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: British poets <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 05 December 1999 15:21
Subject: Long Live Administrators!
I was "An Administrator" for a few years -- I ran the Belltable Arts
Centre in Limerick. It was the best job in the world. Only I wasn't
suited to it. Now I have a desk in a shared office, an old laptop,
poetry submissions going in and out, little bits of business to attend to,
fragments to put together: I write poetry sometimes. Then I had a
315-seat theatre, a gallery, a coffeeshop, a budget, people, a board of
directors, a city, an audience, supporters, critics, beasties of all
kinds: Whacking materials for the production of "Art." If I had been a
different person, I could still be there booting through footballfields of
the stuff. When I think of arts administrators I think of people like Jim
Sheridan who ran the Project Arts Centre in Dublin and then the Irish Arts
Centre in New York. Now that I think of it, Niall O'Dowd was around there
a lot too. Or Jenny Haughton who put Temple Bar Arts Studios together.
Like geniuses. Like visionaries. Like tigers. Like terriers. Noble
people, administrators!
Mairead
On Sat, 4 Dec 1999 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> A(nother) Digression:
>
> >I am never forget being shouted at by the Personnel Officer at my then
> >college. "You ignored an instruction of a manager"!? she screamed at me,
> >like the Queen in Alice... And the tone she put on the word "manager" was
> >extraordinary; to adapt St Paul, if I can remember it, at the word
manager
> >every knee shall bow, somewhere between that and "a handbag!?" - she was
> >semi-literate, innumerate and couldn't tell the difference between
inclusive
> >and exclusive; but she was a manager! It wouldn't be hard to improve on
her
> >skills; and there are thousands like her
>
> I have a very clear memory of an Administrator. (There's a particular
> breed of them, probably it's in the genes, which calls up in me a
> visceral sense of repulsion; it seems to be mutual). I was rehearsing a
> monologue with an actor, and she was fussing around the theatre in a very
> officious manner looking for The Lights. Or something. While we were in
> the middle of the performance, all very serious, this woman stalked right
> across the middle of the stage, talking very loudly on her mobile phone.
> (She was, at a later date, seen at the beach, talking on her mobile
> phone, which clearly will have to be surgically removed with the tumours.)
>
> This woman was, note, supposed to be an Arts Administrator. Her
> insensitivity and ignorance was staggering, and made quite clear where
> artists stood in the Order of Things (she certainly made more money out
> of the arts than most artists). Administering things is a useful skill,
> for which I have some respect, but it's not that difficult. Here there
> seems to be a kind of apotheosis of administrators, which turns art
> institutions into organisations for perpetuating the jobs of
> administrators. Art is just interchangeable "product", a kind of
> necessary inconvenience, and in the most successfully administered arts
> organisations isn't made at all.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
> Editor
> Masthead Literary Arts Magazine
> PO Box 186
> NEWPORT VIC 3015
>
> Masthead online: http://www.masthead.com.au
> Home page: http:www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
>
>
>
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