You may have heard about Lammily, the Barbie modeled after a real 19 year old girl. She’s pretty great. Check her out in this video calling out our culture’s obsession with image over accomplishments.
Is the MFA the new MBA?
MFA Mondays
“COMPANIES ALL ACROSS AMERICA ARE STARTING TO SEE A CRITICAL TALENT GAP AS OLDER EMPLOYEES RETIRE. ARTS STUDENTS MAY NOT HAVE ALL THE TRADITIONAL SKILLS, BUT THEY HAVE THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE: CREATIVITY.”
You may have seen this article floating around on social media. Here are some key points, but I encourage you to read the full article! What a perfect response to anyone who sees art as a hobby. Use this article as a way to explain why the skills of an artist go beyond the art form and are key to the growth of business in our time. It’s always great to have language on hand when our value is questioned time and time again.
“Consider this: Today’s contingent economy has people moving constantly from one job to another, one type of work to another, one industry to a different industry. In fact, on average, a person between the ages of 25 and 45 will hold 11 different jobs in their lifetime. Thirty percent of us will work in more than 15 different jobs over the course of our careers.
Organizations far and wide—perhaps even yours—will compete intensely for workers who are adaptable, resourceful, and can quickly learn and apply new skills to a variety of challenges. Where can you find such workers?
One answer runs counter to much conventional wisdom: Ask an artist.”
“Is art school the next B-school? Hardly, though artists often possess the skills and temperament that business leaders regularly say are in short supply: creativity, resiliency, flexibility, high tolerance for risk and ambiguity, as well as the courage to fail.”
Ways to engage artists in the workplace:
- Ask them to explicitly think about puzzles using their artistic hat/lens. Invite a local theater group to work with employees on improvisation exercises to free up their creative juices. Research has shown that when people engage in improv they later generate more creative ideas to a range of issues and challenges.
- Figure out how to incorporate critical feedback into an ongoing process of improvement and innovation. Ask an artist to come in and run a “critical feedback” workshop for employees.
- Have an artist facilitate a workshop where a creative task is emergent, shifting, and where new information requires adjustments and negotiation.
“Many people see artists as shamans, dreamers, outsiders, and rebels. In reality, the artist is a builder, an engineer, a research analyst, a human relations expert, a project manager, a communications specialist, and a salesman. The artist is all of those and more—combined with the imagination of an inventor and the courage of an explorer. Not a bad set of talents for any business challenged to innovate in a world of volatility, uncertainty, and change.”
The full article, “Is an MFA and new MBA?” by Steven Tepper can be found here.
MFA Monday: Why I Despise the Word “Passion”
Uncategorized 
or Establishing our Own Value
by Matthew Cumbie
How much is my career worth? How much is my art work worth? When is it ok for me to ask for expect compensation for my services?
These are questions that I struggle with almost daily. And I’m willing to wager my small salary that many of you struggle with these same, or similar, questions at various points in your artistic career. Why is that? What is the cause for this dilemma? And when did it become O.K. to divert our attention from addressing these questions by saying, “Oh, you do it because you love it”?
Before I go any further, I want to say that I feel very, very fortunate for my current situation and for those experiences and situations that have led me to where I am. I realize that few opportunities to do what I do exist, and to get paid to do those things is sometimes unreal. And I love what I do. But I don’t ever recall this to be a reason that we not pay someone for their work. Returning to our questions above, the reasons could by many: too little funding, it’s a great experience, I don’t have a budget, and many others that we could compile over a few glasses of wine I’m sure. And while these all might be true and very valid, I would like to throw one (or two, depending on how you look at it) more in the mix that I find often unacknowledged: you and me.
That’s right. We are sometimes the cause of our own problems, especially in this situation. I say this because we, as performers and makers and teachers, perpetuate this problem of not paying artists when we participate in this cycle. We do it because we have no other option. We do it because we want to be involved in this love affair at whatever the cost. We do it because we know that if we don’t, someone else will…and for free. We do it because we want that, that right there, on our CV. You know, so when we decide that we’re marketable or valuable we’ll have more artistic weight to throw around. And that’s the magic button- we decide.
This is where the water gets murky, though.