IJAM Volume 1 Number 1 (PRINT)

EDITOR’S NOTE

Arts administration is an important -discipline involving thousands of --people around the world. Some of these people practise arts management as a profession, others are civil servants with arts councils or departments of culture, while still others are academics who make a career researching and teaching in this field.

The last thirty years have seen a proliferation of arts administration programs throughout the world, coupled with a growing body of literature; this situation culminated in the establishment of two major academic conferences: the International Conference on Cultural Economics in 1979, and the International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management in 1991. Arts administration programs are offered at both the undergraduate and graduate level, in business schools as well as in arts and humanities faculties, and a growing number of managers are enrolling in short-term seminars. Also, more and more professional associations in various countries are ensuring better communication by publishing newsletters, magazines and journals.

With the rapid disappearance of traditional frontiers between countries, managers nowadays have the possibility, and are indeed encouraged, to share their experiences with colleagues around the world. As arts administrators working in a creative field, they are highly skilled and increasingly eager for access to pertinent sources of information, including the results of academic research.

At the same time, academics are constantly building knowledge and, naturally, they are eager to share that knowledge with their practitioner colleagues – those faced with the reality of managing artistic organizations; they are also always looking for useful teaching materials for their students in arts management. 

The International Journal of Arts Management was created with the aim of meeting this diversified thirst for knowledge. With this journal, we are offering you a much-needed international vehicle that brings together practitioners and academics by providing them with a forum for exchange where managers can share their thoughts, ideas, analyses and success stories, and where academics can make their research results available. The ultimate goal, of course, is that everyone benefits from these exchanges.

We sincerely hope that this first issue will provide you with the food for thought you are seeking.

François Colbert
Editor