Applying for master’s studies

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a master’s degree for a while already. After I graduated and got my bachelor’s degree I was definitely ready for working life as I had been studying since I started first grade at age 7. Now, two years after graduating, I’m somewhat missing being able to dive into literature, having time to write and being asked to analyze different parts of the field I work in. On top of that, Finland is quite conservative regarding employment – especially in the cultural field. It seems that if I want to continue on in my career I do actually need that master’s degree.

So this spring I’m making a first attempt at some master’s degree programmes – some are here in Helsinki, others are abroad and all of them are focused on leadership, human resources management or arts management. I’m looking for something that will take me further within mentoring and/or leadership. Yesterday I took the Novogenie test and it confirmed what i already knew with its result: You are Mentor [Futuristic Dreamer]. This is what it says about me (and all the other 3% of the population who belong to my category):

Your main quality is an active and intense caring about people and a strong desire to bring harmony into relationships. You are openly expressive and empathetic. You bring an aura of warmth to everything you do. Your feelings are intuitive towards anything new or possible. You often enjoy working to manifest a humanitarian vision, helping others to develop their potential. You naturally and conscientiously move into action to care for others, to organize the world around them, and to get things done.

Spot on if you ask me!

Impressions from To Culture With Love. Management

Last week preparing for, realizing and wrapping up To Culture With Love. Management 2011 was intense. I took pictures and made some videos during the days.

See what Marian from Trans Europe Halles has to say about the event:

See the rest of the short films here and my photos on flickr.

Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!

This week has been rough, long days! In the evenings I’ve been teaching arts management to some students who are taking a one year theatre class at Västra Nylands Folkhögskola.

It’s been fun though. I like teaching!

They’ve learned about what an arts manager does. And they did some of the things themselves as well. Like making time tables to plan for the show that they’re putting up, applying for money and learning about marketing and writing press releases. I think they did well, too. It was just a very short course, but I think they learned enough to be able to realize some small projects. Some that you could get financing for from the city youth office and such. And I think these things will help them when it comes to their show this spring. That was the goal of the course.

Being in the now and in the future

Reading this article Shaping the future: 7 predictions for the creative community by Scott Belsky, makes me think we’re so in the now and on the right track with To Culture With Love and To Culture With Love. Management, my little babies. I’m talking about the content, our topics as well as the way we organize ourselves and our work within the project.

I especially felt like his points “Crowdsourcing (As We Know It) Will Be Rendered Obsolete” and “The Rise of Creative Collectives & Mixed Media Partnerships” are relevant! I love the thought of crowdsourcing and it’s being done all over right now – and also talked about, but I don’t think it’s very sustainably organized for the long run right now. New ways of taking advantage of crowdsourcing, but still getting paid are very welcome!

And I would also love to sit in an office with people from different kind of backgrounds, working in different fields. Already sharing offices with different kind of arts people is rewarding, but having even more professions present would definitely help and stimulate.

Anyway, for the workshop in February we have over 70 registrations from 20 countries. It’s great to see how the project grows!

I can’t wait to go to Potsdam and meet all of these lovely people, new and old!

Tonight I’m going to bed early…

Arianna Huffington on the power of sleep at TEDWomen:

Berlin, my new second home?

I’m just home from being a few days in Berlin. This autumn I now been there twice and next February again. The occasion is To Culture With Love and the management workshop (BTW, registration is open!). We worked on both getting an association set up for the workshop and other future endeavours as well as planning for the workshop. 2011 is the BarCamp edition. Read about what a BarCamp is on the wiki.

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work and party

The last week has been filled with work and party. It’s been great!

Oblivia’s seminar, the one I’ve been coordinating went really well. The atmosphere was friendly, warm and calm. And the programme and timetables were greatly planned. I even had time to have lunch during the lunch breaks although there were also other things to do. That’s a rare thing when you’re responsible for the coordination.

The speakers were great. I’m now a big fan of Francis McKee from Center for Contemporary Arts. Borrowing the words of Anna: “I love these big brains.”

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Swamp

I’ve been in a swamp of work, work, more work and then some thesis work. But last night I finally finished my thesis text. The basis is now there. Some final comments from supervisors etc. may cause some changes, but it’s all there now. So relieved!

So you already saw a first picture from my thesis. Here’s the next one:

The art work in community art is the working process with the community and the artist together.

Coverage on the Net?

A conversation about cultural coverage on the net was recorded for Svenska YLE (public service journalism in Swedish here in Finland) today. I was part of it together with fellow blogger Mathias Rosenblad and Malin Wikström editor in chief at peppar.fi. So all of us are fairly young and very active on the net covering arts and culture in different ways.

Before the actual discussion we talked about the inspirational and creative surroundings of Pasila, where the YLE offices are located. Look! There is actually some art next to those big Skanska ads. < /irony >

There was a lot of consensus and the conversations didn’t grow into a real debate which I guess wasn’t the aim of the YLE reporter anyway. I just think it could’ve been more interesting to have more diversity in the group that was discussing. You might not want to create a yes-no-yes-no kind of conversation, but why not ask someone from the older generation who is active on the net to participate? They might be able to shed some light on different views, how cultural coverage has changed in general and at the same time show that different tools on the net are not just for young people.

One of my favorite “older bloggers” is John McLachlan who writes about marketing and design for the arts. He’s usually spot on and writes in a way that people who haven’t spent the last 10 years or so in the blogosphere, like I have, understand what these different tools are about. Check out his post Why Blog from earlier this autumn for example.

If you understand Swedish, check out the discussion tomorrow, Friday Oct 22 at 6:03 pm as part of the programme Kulturtimmen on Radio Vega.

Speaking of the power of pictures…

So this autumn I’m also writing my bachelor’s thesis for arts management at Novia University of Applied Sciences. I’m writing about community arts/sociocultural projects and why there should be arts managers as part of the team in those projects. I’ll post the whole thing here when it’s ready…

Sociocultural projects focus on the development of individuals. Part of a drawing for my bachelor's thesis.

But anyway, about the power of pictures. Part of my thesis is about visualizations and visual thinking (not necessarily the same thing…) and last week I got Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. The book I think has saved my thesis mostly because it got me working on it again after a long period of not finding where to continue writing. So while I was reading I started scribbling in the margins of the book and later on I continued working on the pictures, and now it looks like they will be part of my thesis.

And working on the pictures got me writing again, too. That’s what I call power of pictures :P