INTERNATIONAL POLICY FELLOWSHIP 2003

What are the professional criteria for the managers and policy makers?
Where are the gaps that should be filled in by education?
What are the training needs?
How does the educational offer answer to those needs?
How effective and relevant are the educational programmes?
What is their impact on the cultural policy development?
Is the design of training programmes responding to real demands of the sector, especially with regard to the EU enlargement?
 
Background and choice of subject
Specific goals
Implementation
Methods used
General phases

I. BACKGROUND AND CHOICE OF SUBJECT
The cultural policy and management education has been recognised as an important factor of the public cultural sector development for several years already. The political, economic and social changes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been the direct reason for development of training programmes both within the higher education establishments and in the form of courses designed and run by private centres, NGOs, etc.
After an early period of increasing amount of cultural management courses appearing in every post-communist bloc country, differing in content, level of advancement and quality, and then disappearing, when the funding has proved insufficient or unstable, or the interests of the organisers have shifted to another sphere, we have now reached a certain level of stability. However, the situation is far from well established. At the moment there are several higher education institutions in the CEE countries offering undergraduate and graduate programmes in cultural management as well as numerous short courses, but we do not have sufficient knowledge on their effectiveness or influence they have on the cultural sector as such. Why is it so important? If we assume that cultural policy should be shaped not only by the political decision-makers, but also by well-educated and informed members of the professional circles within the arts and culture, we can easily understand why the right profile of education is so crucial.

Hypothesis:

• A cultural manager is not only running an institution on the day-to-day basis, he/she should be an active participant in the cultural policy development on the local/regional/national level. His/her competencies include not only business skills or artistic/cultural knowledge, he/she also knows how to advocate arts and culture in the public policy domain. In the light of the EU-accession the cultural manager has all the “know how” allowing to strengthen the cultural sector in their respective country.
• Educational programmes in the cultural policy and management in Poland and Hungary and Czech Republic are ready to offer the relevant knowledge and skills enabling the managers to fulfil the roles mentioned above.

• What is the professional profile of a public cultural institution managers as seen by:

a) the public administration (local government) officials employing the directors of such institutions;
b) the managers themselves?
And how they correspond to each other?

• What are the training needs of the public cultural sector?
• Does the educational offer of the higher education institutions respond to those needs? In what way? To what extent the educational programmes support creating and strengthening cultural policy development? Have the changes been made in the curricula in response to changing environment?
• Have the educational programmes had a real impact on the cultural policy and management development in the respective countries? In what way?

II. SPECIFIC GOALS
The proposed research will seek:
Firstly:
1. to identify and main actors in the cultural policy and management education field and to define their range of interest and scope of activities (what are the education and training providers, what target groups of the arts and cultural community they reach, how are the providers and the receiving groups diversified);
2. to describe existing educational offer within the cultural policy and management, to analyse the programmes’ content and to check if and how the content has changed over recent years;
Secondly:
3. to identify in a general manner main areas of activities covered by manager’s job in public cultural intitutions (including arts and heritage institutions) and competencies required in order to fulfil the job;
4. to identify and describe main training needs within particular groups (managers, policy makers), as well as to describe existing procedures for the training needs assessment. The main groups researched include public administration officials and public cultural institutions’ managers.
5. to confront the intended professional profile of the cultural policy and management graduate with the real needs of the job (are they really well prepared not only to lead the cultural institutions, but also to advocate the arts and culture and to influence the cultural policy, especially in the light of the EU enlargement?). This will be the first step to establishing methods of evaluation of effectiveness of the programmes.
The findings of the research will result in the following:
1. The educational offer within cultural policy and management education and training in Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic is described, analysed, and compared.
2. The competencies of public cultural institutions’ managers are defined and compared.
3. The relation between the expectations of public administration structures, hiring the managers, and the real competencies and skills of managers is described and analysed.
4. The training needs assessment in the respective countries is compared.
5. The relation between profiles of the graduates of educational programmes and the expected competencies, especially those that go beyond the conventionally understood business skills, inlcuding culture advocacy and cultural policy making, is described and analysed – the programmes undergo a certain kind of evaluation.
Comparing the three countries will provide a broader picture of the practices in the region and help to observe to what extent certain characteristics are particular to one country, and what is common to all of them. It will help to assess the real reasons behind some developments and define solutions to possible problems.

III. IMPLEMENTATION
The findings of the research may have a very practical value for educational and training institutions. As for an example: through defining major gaps between the training needs and the educational programmes offers, the findings of the research may serve to adjust the programmes. It may also provide the funders with information on how effective the funded educational programmes are.
The direct result of the proposed research will be a relatively detailed picture of the cultural management education field and the relationship between the offered programmes and the sectoral needs, with identifying weak and strong points and their consequences for the sector – now and possibly in the future, in the enlarged Europe.
The further result of the research, however, might be an attempt to create a model of:
a) training needs assesment, leading to
b) defining methods of developing educational/training programmes, and
c) defining methods of evaluation of such programmes.
The final result will be published (in Polish and English) in the Jagiellonian University publications, and in the electronic version on the Internet.
Additionally a seminar/conference with participation of experts and decision-makers in the cultural management education field is proposed to “wrap up” the project and to initiate a debate in the sector.

IV. METHODS USED IN THE RESEARCH
1. Content analysis of existing documentation (educational programmes, procedures description, etc.)
2. Questionnaires sent to programmes graduates, managers – to gather and analyse their opinions.
3. Interviews with public administration officials, leaders of cultural institutions – to examine and discuss their attitudes and opinions.
4. Focus groups meetings – within particular groups and within “mixed” groups representing managers, policy makers, educators, trainers, students, etc.

V. GENERAL PHASES OF THE RESEARCH
1. Identifying partners in the respective countries. This step has partly been realised through the collaboration within th European Network of the Cultural Administration Training Centres.
2. Consultations with the partners, possible adjustments of the scope of research.
3. Developing the detailed research plan and preparing the research tools: questionnaires, focus group and interviews plans.
4. Gathering and analysing the documentation (the content analysis)
5. Carrying out the research in respective countries.
6. Developing methodology for the comparative analysis.
7. Additional fundraising for the final conference complementing the result of the project.
8. Preparing the final outcome of the research.
9. The final publication and conference.
 
 
 
 
 

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