Arts & Business Council

“A&BC facilitates a blending of the arts and business worlds, preparing and then matching business people with arts organizations so that both are better for it in the end.”

--Julie Womack, On BOARD 2008
 Principal, Towers Watson
 Board member, American Theatre Company

A&BC is centered on the notion of a symbiotic relationship between the arts and business, and recognition of the two sectors’ many parallel attributes. This close interrelationship becomes especially clear to business professionals who participate in A&BC’s On BOARD training program as they delve into the “business” side of the arts through training and ultimately volunteering to join a board.

For these individuals, the arts and business symbiosis often results in the discovery or reawakening of their “inner entrepreneur.” While donating their time and talent, board members are challenged to apply their knowledge to a different scale of business—the business of the arts, managed by arts administrators who are, themselves, often among the savviest and most resourceful of entrepreneurs. What’s more, many of the skills and characteristics that employers prize in today’s nimble creative managers and business leaders are learned via experiences inherent to working alongside small-to-medium sized arts organizations:

• Creating innovative solutions with limited resources
• Reframing problems
• Wearing multiple hats
• Becoming a “quick study”
• Approaching challenges from multiple perspectives
• Thinking, planning and executing strategically
• Networking efficiently and productively
• Advocating with passion

In their book The Characteristics of the Creative Manager, Jill Hender and Malcolm Higgs go further to describe the creative manager as, among other things, “open, energetic, unorthodox, experimental and self-confident, while able to tackle conflict, think outside the box and generate ideas (or challenge those of others).” Is it any surprise that these are exactly the sorts of qualities that make for an ideal board member?

“Volunteering as a board member has allowed me to lend my professional training to the organization,” observed Frank Shaw, Attorney at Quarles & Brady LLP and 2009 On BOARD participant, “all the while sharpening my leadership, high level decision-making and networking skills—skills that I can apply in my own professional career.” Frank currently serves on the board of 826CHI.

Dee Grien, Project Leader at Boston Consulting Group and a 2008 On BOARD grad, readily agrees. “Board service offers tremendous opportunities to develop professionally—most important to me is the opportunity to work with people from very diverse backgrounds. This is diversity on steroids, something very hard to experience at work.” Dee experiences diversity as a board member of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project.

In sum, volunteering to join the board of an arts or cultural organization is a powerful way for employees to build relevant management skills in a marketplace that increasingly demands—and rewards—creativity and innovation in management. Couple that with the fact that the individual’s participation on the board is actively helping to strengthen Chicago’s cultural community and you have the arts-and-business equivalent of a perfect “win/win.” Learn more about how you can become “board-ready” via A&BC’s On BOARD program.