Stroom School: United We Organize

What Art has to offer to Management

Wednesday 12 June and Thursday 13 June 2013, 10.00-17.00 hrs
Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance fee: € 25,- (for 2 days, incl. lunches, drinks and dinner on day 1)
Registration required: info@stroom.nl
Language: English
Watch a number of lectures on Vimeo

Part of United We

PROGRAM: Scroll down

Art and management appear to have little in common. Art is about questioning and disrupting normality, art embraces complexity, celebrates inconsistencies and welcomes the open-ended. Management works in the exact opposite direction it seems, by favoring all that is rational, structured, simplified, tamed, and so on.

Yet, at the same time, the art world is often ‘asked' to adapt to managerial processes. To become more like "normal" businesses. Efficient, market-driven, professional, with a keen eye for the customer. Not surprisingly, this managerial ‘colonization' didn't really go down well in the art world. But is the relationship between art and management necessarily a hostile one?

In our two-day symposium United We Organize, a joint initiative of Stroom Den Haag and The Hague University of Applied Sciences (Jacco van Uden, research group Change Management), we will take a constructive approach to this topic as we explore what art and management (could) have in common. More specifically, we will be exploring ways in which art can inform new forms of organizing and managing.

We believe the art world has something to offer that is unique and valuable. And we are convinced that art can make a difference.

Management theory has always been dependent on inspiration from other disciplines. Theories of organization and management models carry the traces of this process. Today we find it makes perfect sense to talk about companies that ‘adapt to changes in the environment' and find a ‘competitive advantage' - concepts that were clearly borrowed from biologists. The same goes for notions like strategy (military studies), culture (anthropology), optimization (engineering), and so on.

The effects of introducing alien concepts and metaphors are very real. If you think of an organization as a machine, it will become one. Organization becomes a place of control, standardization, measurability, predictability, stability and optimization. Think different of organizations, and organizations will become different.

So why not open ourselves to the possibility of art and design being able to change the way we manage and organize? If we apply artistic reasoning, design thinking, art-historical concepts or concepts of craftsmanship to the world of organization, something valuable might just come from it.

This is what we will be investigating during United We Organize.

PROGRAM

DAY 1 - Wednesday June 12th
Plenary presentations, discussions and reflection.

10: 00 Doors open and welcome
11: 00 Why Management Matters to Art with Arjo Klamer (Fontys, Erasmus Universiteit), Dick Rijken (HHs, Steim), Alex Straathof (HvA) and Basten Stokhuyzen (artist).
How important has the world of business become to the world of art? In what way do matters of management and organization affect (the world of) art? How does the art scene deal with matters of management and organization? What are the main challenges for the art world? What are your options and what are promising strategies?

12:30 Lunch

13:30 What Art has to Offer with Bart van Rosmalen (ArtEZ), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Rietveld Academie, Het Nieuwe Instituut), Jeroen Lutters (Windesheim) and Céline Berger (artist).
Quite often management is portrayed as the aggressor and art as being fragile and vulnerable. But what if art is not placed in the position where it can only defend itself or simply submit and cave in? What if we appreciate art for its capacity to affect or even change the way we manage and organize? Exploring ways and modes of being ‘artistically informed'.

15:30 When Art goes Management: Reflections with Mieke Moor (Twynstra Gudde), Elias Tielemans (Orgacom), Ruud Kaulingfreks (UvH) and Anna Moreno (artist).
In what ways has art been used to inform managerial and organizational practices? What are the experiences so far? What are the key issues and challenges ahead?

17: 00 Drinks and dinner

DAY 2 - Thursday June 13th
The second day is dedicated to workshop sessions in which specific cases are discussed more in-depth. Three speakers from Day 1 have been approached to organize a workshop related to their current research. At the start of Day 2, the workshop organizers will briefly pitch their session and the audience can then decide which session they want to take part in. There is also room for two so-called wild cards: the audience can pitch a topic themselves and see if they find enough people who want to work on that with them. The amount of workshops will be between 4 and 6 and we will make sure that none of the groups are too large.

10:00 Doors open and looking back at Day 1
11:00 Workshop pitches + wild cards
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Workshops
15:30 Reports from the workshops
17:00 Drinks

Target audience
The two-day symposium United We Organize is open to anyone with a sincere interest in exploring the relationship between art and management. Participants are strongly advised to join us for the full two days (see above). A limited number of seats is available.

About The Hague University of Applied Sciences (research group Change Management)
The Hague University of Applied Sciences (Dutch: De Haagse Hogeschool) is a vocational university with campuses in The Hague, Delft and Zoetermeer. The principal aim of The Hague University of Applied Sciences is to provide high-quality education. Research contributes to this, and the institution's research groups (Dutch: lectoraten) play an important role, establishing links between teaching, practice and applied research. At the research group Change Management we develop and test innovative ways of managing and organizing. We deliberately turn to sources that appear to have little connection with how we normally conduct our business. By borrowing concepts, models or best practices from a variety of fields (from arts to sports to hacker-activism) and applying them to management and organization we explore the value of changing perspectives.
More information on the research group Change Management: www.dehaagsehogeschool.nl