A Foot in the Door

For those starting out with very little arts management experience, naturally, you will have to make some sacrifices - and by that I mean, you will have to start out working for nothing. There is a fabulous up side, however, if you approach that non-paying opportunity in the right way.

Instead of going for the huge organizations, which will be hard to approach anyway, go for smaller, emerging non-profit arts groups. What you will find is that ANYTHING you can do for them will help them out. Many times, the founders of these groups are some type of artist or performer. They are not entirely familiar with some of the business aspects of the organization, and they need your help! Or, they may have some business-saavy people in their group, but these business types are not arts saavy!

As an emerging professinal, you are hip to the resources of the internet. The internet is usually where you can find lots of marketing and development resources for your organization. In my work for the small opera company in Philadelphia, I came up with the idea of recruiting pro-bono professionals (since the budget did lot even allow for paying these pros) for positions in development and marketing, and I used the internet to find them and entice them to come on board. Sometimes too, you can find lots of little databases and web sites to list your company's web site, bio or other info. Every little posting counts, and usually the leaders of your organization have much bigger fish to fry and don't have time to do this kind of painstaking research.

Working in these small organizations gives you the opportunity to take initiative and come up with cool ideas. The reward is amazing recommendations from the leaders you worked with and experience taking on a leadership role. You will also find that you probably get to work in a hands on way, setting up performances or exhibits, simply because there is no one specific yet in the company who does that sort of work.