Three years ago I arrived at Dartington College of Arts to take up a new post combining lecturing in Arts Management and developing the College's relations with the world of work, explains Mary Schwarz.
The latter was facilitated by new ?reach out? funding from the Higher Education Funding Council, enabling Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop their role in regional economic and social development, alongside teaching and research. Three years and £3/4m later (including money from the Regional Development Agency), we have just launched our eight-strong Centre for Creative Enterprise & Participation, and the Arts Management team is offering both a new honours degree in Arts & Cultural Management and an innovative award in Cultural Entrepreneurship - not unconnected developments!
The Centre?s reach out programme, Creativity at Work, involves staff and students working in the region, and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) provision. Recent projects include a regeneration initiative with artists and businesses on Dartmoor, and the customisation of a Management Diploma for the Creative Industries at Truro College, for the Creative Skills Consortium in Cornwall. We are a partner in Matrix, the South West hub of the Arts Council of England?s CreativePeople CPD Framework, and are now planning the second phase of a ?A Moveable Feast?, a Regional Arts Lottery Programme funded ?workshop for workshop practitioners? initiative. This enhances practitioners? skills, provides supported creative renewal and increases opportunities for work.
New posts focus on further ?knowledge transfer? projects and establishing a referral system across the region?s HEIs, arts and business support agencies, to meet enquiries from creative businesses. Our Arts and Humanities Research Board Research Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts is researching community based arts work in rural areas and working with South West Arts on a pilot to establish a professional Guild for community arts practitioners.
The Centre is also responsible for widening participation initiatives, careers education, information and guidance, and contact with alumni. To realise the College?s mission ?to be at the centre of education, research and development in the contemporary performance arts and to provide opportunities for creative contributions within a changing world?, we need to enact some serious joined-up thinking, linking the Centre?s different roles. For instance, we?re now well placed to develop mutually beneficial relationships with alumni, offering them CPD support but also using their experience of making a living in the arts with our students. Our graduate performance company is one example of this.
Our new degree facilitates interaction with artists, arts managers and organisations. It gives emergent managers the opportunity to develop and maintain an arts practice, and through learning alongside artists, to engage critically with new paradigms and practices in cultural work. Our widening participation work will in time bring a wider range of people into arts management, and reach out contributes to a learning-focused regional creative sector in which graduates have better development opportunities ? although we don?t mind if they make their name nationally, or internationally!
Mary Schwarz is Director of Creative Enterprise & Participation at Dartington College of Arts t: 01803 861617 e: m.schwarz@dartington.ac.uk