GOETHE-INSTITUT’S MOOC MANAGING THE ARTS OFFERS ONLINE FURTHER TRAINING FOR CULTURAL MANAGERS WORLDWIDE

From February 2015, Chris Dercon, Director of the Tate Modern in London, will guide the online course “Managing the Arts: Marketing for Cultural Organizations” for practicing and aspiring cultural managers.

Developed by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the Mentored Open Online Course (MOOC) will be available worldwide for free interdisciplinary further training. The basis of the curriculum consists of case studies from cultural institutions in Bangkok, Berlin, Budapest and Lagos especially produced for the course. Those who complete the course successfully can gain a certificate (5 ECTS) for their home university.

Cultural institutions have a rapidly growing need for trained personnel. Since courses in cultural management cannot meet this demand, especially in the countries of the Global South, for seven years the Goethe-Institut has been offering advanced training courses worldwide on the subject. These on-site courses will be supplemented from February 2015 by the 14-week online course “Managing the Arts: Marketing for Cultural Organizations”.

Cultural managers, students, and interested parties, for example in Yangon, Dakar and Madrid, can learn the theoretical foundations of cultural management and do practical work on the online learning platform. They can explore questions such as: What is the relationship between the arts and the market and marketing? What does internationalization mean for a growing local cultural landscape? How can cultural organizations meet the demands of digitization?

Chris Dercon, Director of the Tate Modern Gallery in London, will guide students through the six-phase course. Participants will work together in small interdisciplinary groups on solutions to concrete practical scenarios. The course revolves about digital practice reports from four prestigious cultural institutions in Lagos, Budapest, Berlin and Bangkok. In on-site interviews, cultural managers talk about how they organize the areas of cultural marketing, project management, audience loyalty, sustainability, digitization and finance in their institutions.

We will hear from the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, which, as a centre for the development, presentation and discussion of contemporary visual art, pays special attention to photography, film, video, performance and installation art. In Budapest, the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts has made a name for itself with international productions in dance, theatre, literature and music. And we will gain insights into the Thai cultural scene via the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC), a venue for art, music, theatre, film, design and events in the centre of Bangkok. The Berlin HAU Hebbel am Ufer with its three venues for young, experimental theatre is the participant institution from Germany.

The case studies will be supplemented by video lectures by international cultural scholars such as Arjo Klamer from Erasmus University Rotterdam, Birgit Mandel of the University of Hildesheim and Nishant Shah of Leuphana University of Lüneburg. The course also provides interventions by experienced experts, a digital reader and thematic bibliographies for further reading. Experienced teacher-mentors will individually support the participants’ working groups and give informed feedback on their work results. Those who complete the course successfully can obtain a certificate from Leuphana University of Lüneburg with credits (5 ECTS) recognized throughout Europe. The course language is English. All of the videos can be viewed with German and English subtitles.

For more information about the MOOC “Managing the Arts: Marketing for Cultural Organizations” and a registration form go to www.goethe.de/mooc/.

The Mentored Open Online Course “Managing the Arts: Marketing for Cultural Organizations” is a project by the Goethe-Institut and the Digital School of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, technically implemented by candena GmbH. The project is supported by the Alumniportal Deutschland.