I’ve started setting up the course blog through which I’ll run the Media Management Praxis course this winter term (2010). The blog can be found here. Please feel free to poke around in the blog, but I’ll warn you now that it is not fully populated. I’ll get more up as we move toward the beginning of the term, especially with regards to content related to the first few weeks of the class. For those of you enrolled in the course, be aware that there are some readings to do for the first meeting connected to our guest for that day, Richard Herskowitz. As of right now, I’ve set up a password-protected page for all readings (to maintain ‘fair use’ on copyrighted materials), but I’ll get a post up with links to the readings Richard has recommeded since they are all online articles anyway.
Tag: AAD
Launching an area of concentration….
What follows is the official (at least for now) description of the newest area of concentration within the Arts and Administration Master’s degree program here at the University of Oregon. The Media Management track will begin this Fall term (2009). Read on for the details:
The Media Management area of concentration within the Arts and Administration Program at the University of Oregon meets challenges posed by media technologies to workers in arts and culture sectors. Arts administrators manage not just programming and projects involving a range of media (both new and old), but the very communication tools, strategies, and content through which programming and projects come to be. As such, media management is a central strand of arts administration, one that can be seen as a speciality or track but that should also be recognized as part of everyday professional practice. Managing media comprises more than being tech-savvy. It involves understanding the limits and potential for media to serve as delivery vehicle and communication strategy, and comprises a set of creative, practical, and critical skills that enable such communication across an array of social and cultural contexts.
Media can be understood to include text, audio, graphics, animation, video, film, and interactivity, though it should not be considered to solely encompass the “new” and/or “high tech.” Shifts in media technologies have an historical arc, and for decades arts administrators have navigated these shifts alongside artists using “new” or emergent media and audiences or communities engaging their work. Digital culture, however, represents an increased pacing of change as well as a recalibration of the “architecture of participation” attached to media in general. The Media Management area of concentration seeks to span the historical and contemporary facets of media in artistic and creative settings, and students pursuing this area of concentration will acquire knowledge and experience rapidly becoming central to leadership in arts and culture sectors across for-profit and nonprofit settings.
This area of concentration within the master’s program entails a focus on the role of media across arts and culture sectors—with an empahsis on knowledge and skills useful to administrators—that will enable students to wield media as both delivery technologies and social communications strategies. Through critical investigation into key sites of communication and cultural convergence informing arts in the 21st century, students will merge theory with practice. Robustly exploring the mediascapes surrounding arts and culture sectors through coursework and directed research will impart critical thinking and practical experience skills that situate creativity at the nexus of art and daily life. As such, students pursuing the media management concentration area will assemble a balanced toolkit of technical, practical, and critical skills integral to arts administration.