arts & business council

MetLife Foundation National Arts Forums Series

Past Forum Synopsis

Arts & Business Council Inc.
New York, New York

Incorporating Creativity Arts-Based Training in Business
05/05/2004

Moderator: Gary P. Steuer, President and CEO, Arts & Business Council, Inc.

Panelists:

• Ted Buswick, Boston Consulting Group
• Harvey Seifter, President, Seifter Associates; Executive and Artistic Director, Flushing Town Hall
• Colin Tweedy, Chief Executive, Arts & Business UK

One recent and potentially far-reaching development in the relationship between the arts and business has been the growing use of arts programs and individual artists to assist the business community in meeting such needs as employee training and organizational development. Arts-based learning has become more and more a component of skill-based training programs, hands-on consultancies with business units, individual and team coaching, and lecture-demonstrations at leadership conferences. The aims of such learning are to foster creative thinking; encourage the development of new leadership models; and bolster employee skills in such areas as collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, and change management. For their part, arts organizations and individual artists view these efforts as new sources of earned income and as a way of developing closer relationships with the business community.

In his opening remarks, Gary Steuer noted how businesses are focusing more attention on increasing creativity and innovation in their organizations. At the same time, arts groups, aware of this focus, are examining how their programs can serve those business needs. All of this is happening organically and spontaneously without a single driving force galvanizing these new relationships.

Ted Buswick commented on the use of poetry in the business environment. Poetry offers nonlinear approaches to language, sensitizing listeners to nuances of language and the element of emotion in communication. Poetry develops nonlinear thinking by, among other things, improving our ability to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity. Reading poetry can help one think strategically because it teaches by analogy and is the most condensed form of expression.

Colin Tweedy explained how Arts & Business UK used the American model of the Arts & Business Council to serve both constituencies. Expanding from an organization that initially focused on the use of business volunteers to assist arts organizations, it has incorporated creative training and development as part of its mission. It uses transferable skills from the worlds of theater, music, poetry, and the visual arts to stimulate the workforce to think in new and creative ways, help build effective teams, enhance leadership skills, manage change in the organization, boost confidence, and improve external and internal communications.

To accomplish the above objectives, Arts & Business UK uses skilled trainers and facilitators from organizations including the BBC and the Royal National Theatre to develop such training packages as forum theater, participatory workshops, conference interventions, and traditional role playing. Programs are custom-tailored to meet the specific needs of a business. Its growing database of artist-trainers and organizations offering arts-based services to business currently has more than 160 entries.

Tweedy highlighted the work of Harvard Business School Professor John Kao, whose influential book, Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Corporate Creativity, demonstrates how high-performance companies have learned the lessons of creativity, and how to make creativity tangible and actionable. Such companies have learned to leverage information technology to enhance creative collaboration and, in the process, foster an environment that anticipates the needs of tomorrow. Like musicians in a "jam session," businesspeople can take an idea, challenge one another’s imagination, and produce an entirely new set of possibilities. He also noted the extraordinary efforts of Unilever UK to bring writers, actors, visual artists, and musicians to the workplace to help unlock the creativity of its employees.

Harvey Seifter discussed his experiences at Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless ensemble that has formed partnerships with businesses interested in how the relationship of the musicians to one another can serve as a model for improving the morale and productivity of their organizations. Seifter’s concern that classical music was being marginalized and having difficulty attracting audiences was a key factor that led to the orchestra’s developing new revenue-producing relationships with business.

A key question raised regarding arts-based learning programs is measuring the impact of such programs on the businesses that bring artists to the workplace. Although hard data is scarce, Buswick pointed to the program at Unilever UK, which has been in effect for more than five years, and which has the enthusiastic support of management. The academic program at Babson College in Massachusetts is noted for its incorporation of the arts into the business curriculum. Also cited was Learning Lab Denmark, established and funded by the Danish Government in 2001, which is a center for research on learning and affiliated with the Danish University of Education. It aims to solve current societal problems related to learning through experimental and practice-oriented research activities. Recently, it has been gathering data on arts and business collaborations. The results of such research are included in a recently published book by Lotte Darso (in English) called Artful Creation: Learning Tales of Arts-in-Business. Through a diverse selection of international case studies, this project attempts to formulate an overall theoretical framework that describes how the arts can bring forth new learning opportunities in business environments. The key questions asked are: "In what ways can business learn from artists," "What can be learned?," and "What kind of learning takes place?" As an indication of the global interest in this topic, Darso was also a facilitator of a workshop last year on the topic "If an Artist Ran Your Business" at the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Seifter pointed out that the main reason a company embarks on such projects is the commitment by a senior executive in the organization who sees the value of arts-based learning. He cautioned arts groups that as yet there is not a critical mass of data that quantitatively evaluates the effectiveness and impact of arts-based learning programs in corporations.

Tweedy noted that writing skills of employees have improved as a result of arts-based learning efforts and added that Unilever UK is challenging other companies to embark on arts-related efforts. He pointed that the Arts & Business UK’s website, www.andb.org.uk, offers many links to additional websites in this field, as well as references to relevant publications such as Did it Deliver?, a guide to evaluating arts-based training inside business.

Steuer raised the issue of what makes artists or arts organization effective practitioners of arts-based learning. In response, Seifter stated that the artist must be a self-aware professional who, in addition to his and her creative talents, must be interested in communicating with passion to others in a business environment. Since there are no mechanisms for providing credentials for artists (unlike law or medicine), businesses may tend to be wary of those individuals or organizations offering their services.

In summary, despite the lack of hard qualitative data, arts-based learning in business is clearly growing in importance and, through the Arts & Business Council’s new Creative Connection program, is expected to become a major component of arts and business partnerships in the future.