Educating the next generation of arts managers

THE CONTRIBUTION

From research to professional education.

I was invited to contribute to the second edition of Managing Organizations in the Creative Economy: Organizational Behaviour for the Cultural Sector, by Paul Saintilan and David Schreiber. Published by Routledge, the textbook connects organisational behaviour with the realities of managing creative and cultural organisations.

Working with Dr Guy Morrow, I co-authored Case Study 6.2, “Burnout in Arts and Cultural Workers”, drawing on my master’s research. Published within the chapter on stress, wellbeing and self-care, it brings arts workers’ experiences into a teaching resource for people preparing to lead and work within the sector.

INSIDE THE CASE STUDY

Turning research into management questions.

The case combines research on different burnout profiles with accounts from arts and cultural workers. It asks readers to look beyond exhaustion alone and recognise how disengagement, diminished effectiveness and overextension can call for different responses.

It then connects those experiences to practical organisational choices: stronger governance and management capability, employment conditions, workload expectations, flexibility and meaningful rest. For future arts managers, these are questions about how they organise and lead the work, as well as how they support the people doing it.

“Arts and cultural organizations need clearer organizational hierarchies, more robust governance, and more skilled arts managers.”

Abe Watson & Guy Morrow · “Burnout in Arts and Cultural Workers”

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Contributing to how future managers learn.

The book’s second edition appears on university teaching lists internationally, including arts management study at the University of Bologna and organisational behaviour teaching at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

For me, the significance of the contribution is the connection between research and future practice: bringing the organisational conditions of creative work into a textbook for the people who will help shape those conditions. It extends the life of the research beyond the thesis and into arts management education.