Managing the Arts: Marketing for Cultural Organizations

Transcript: HAU Berlin 1/3 - The cultural economy

Annemie Vanackere (Director):
I think it's important to speak about how to know a little bit about the German theatre
landscape where the theatre is very strong in society, I think.
Every city has its theatre, and it's called "Stadttheater". So the ensemble culture is very
strong. I've been working and living before in Belgium and Holland and there, this is not
the case. So it was important for me when I came here to realize that this theatre is not
normality.
So now we come on the stage of the Hebbel Theatre. Also here everything is in
preparation for the start of the season, so the stage is completely empty.
We make a programme with co-productions. It means we collaborate with the local
companies, but also with international artists. And it's interdisciplinary, so we present
theatre, dance, music, discourse, we call it dialogue.
And the so-called performance, of course, is like the undercurrent of the theatre. Maybe
also part of this house is connecting with themes and issues that are present in this
city. Berlin was of course...I mean, it's only 25 years that the city became one again.
That's not long. How to deal with the history of this?
In my team, there's people who used to live in East Berlin part of the team. There's
people who came here in the beginning of the '90s because Berlin was this magnet of
coming. And there are people who are West Berliners.
And, and it's me, and there is a colleague coming from Portugal, from the south, here.
So all this makes that we talk a lot about what is going on here. Because there's
different experiences.

Aenne Quiones (Curator):

The HAU is the international theatre in Berlin. The other theatres in the city have an
ensemble structure, but we don't have our own ensemble.
And that means that the artists who work with us work in project structures. They come
here on an invitation basis in order to work and to show their work here.
In my experience it is certainly possible for groups that are not part of an ensemble, or
an ensemble structure such as in the Stadttheater, to be integrated into the repertoire.
Often a piece is performed a few times, then it'll vanish again. And with just five
performances, it's hard to gain visibility.
I mean, there's so much going on in Berlin that it might be over before you even hear
about it. In the case of Gob Squad I was quite successful in getting a full house for the
show, even after the 10th or 20th performance.

If you have continuity in your programme it benefits the audience as well as the artists,
because they gain a totally different kind of visibility and are perceived differently in the
city's art scene.
What we often find, and among the international artists you see it too, is the distinction
between the author and the one who puts it on the stage. But it doesn't exist in that
sense here. They are people who tell stories about their daily lives, and who tackle
issues that affect them directly.
And they are the ones who convey those stories on stage. There isn't the negative
connotation of an actor's "service assignment" to present someone else's issues on
stage. And that is something that requires a different contextual approach.

Martina Gener (Administration):

Now we'll be going past our wonderful door attendants. Hello Stefan, I'm here with a
camera team. We don't need a gym here. We don't really have a conflict between rules
and creativity or money and creativity to the same extent that you might find in
'normal' theatres in Germany.
That is, "artists" here, and "money men" here. We don't have that dichotomy because
of the way we're structured.
The artistic director is also the general manager. We did it that way intentionally, and
it's a good thing because then we don't have all these silly games. In other words,
Annemie Vanackere always thinks about the financial side too. She's the perfect person
for the job because it's what she's always done.
We know we're not working in a bubble: we have to consider the financial situation too.
We try to gently implement it into the practical aspects, so we don't have to deal with
that contradiction very often.

Transcript: HAU Berlin 2/3 - The cultural economy

Annemie Vanackere (Director):
Here in Western Europe, especially in Germany, the theatre is a funded discipline.
So the economy plays quite a modest role in that sense. Theatre cannot survive without
subvention, state money.
The state still thinks it's important to fund the theatre, it's a quite luxurious situation, if
I may say so. So this, it's not like this that we are only dependent on an economic
situation. Still, to do the programme that we do, we have to look for extra money.
Actually all the time.
There's a lot of creative people living in Berlin who don't earn too much money. So you
can't ask for 40 Euros for a ticket; that would be really beyond the ideology also of this
place. So we have to look for extra money to make our programmes.
And this actually usually is coming in through funding. But again, these fundings like
"Kulturstiftung des Bundes", so it's the cultural fund of, of the state, or the
"Hauptstadtkulturfonds", which is also the cultural fund of the city of Berlin, actually
also are again subventions.
Private support for this type of theatre in Berlin actually is non-existent. I think it's
interesting to look for private money, in a way, because it creates another support in a
the society. But at the moment, this is really not part of our reality, I must say.
Private money would more go to visual arts, as I said, or the Philharmonie, you know,
or the opera, where these people can also be more representative. But our kind of
theatre is not so much about being representative. It represents something else if I
may make this pun.
So it represents another way of ...more avant-garde. I do like this because I use it in
the non-historical way this term, and it means that for companies, there's ...They really
have to believe ideologically in what we do in order for them to support us.
And you know, it's a small section of the theatre field. Art, science and education are
free, period.
It says in the constitution. But you could maybe even say the same about hospitals or
schools or that kind of institutions that we still consider as normal that the state
provides us with. Or streets, you know like, look at the whole infrastructure.
And I do think that here if even people not going to the theatre, would stand up and
say, "But it's our theatre, even if we don't go there!" If you look closer, there's ...what
type of art are we talking about? And of course, it's normal to say there's a strong
infrastructure and it's very difficult to change that.
So you have the opera houses, the theatres, the big theatres, the museums but what
with the contemporary culture, that's maybe trying to look for ... or not trying but
wanting to have other spaces or works in a different way and not in this more
representative buildings. Then it becomes more interesting and more difficult.

There's challenges also for cultural politics, to see how ...when does cultural politics
follow a trend or tries to be ahead of a trend. I think here the new developments
...Let's put aside the word "trend" because it's too much fashionable.
But new really developments in making arts, like in ... For the theatre, it would be the
performance art, contemporary dance, the interdisciplinary collective working ...That for
this type of working, it's cultural policy reacts very, very slowly.
And also for this art it's even more difficult to find private funding or find, you know,
maybe also the support from a broader public sphere. Because we would say it's critical
art. So it's always question marks, because we talk a lot about it in my team:
"Is art always critical? Does it criticise society? Does it ask questions?"
So what we want from society is that it pays exactly the thing that criticizes it, or can
pull the rope, the carpet under its legs. And that's actually what a state that is at ease
with itself can do. You know, the idea of the joker at the court, right? The joker can
kind of say the truth about the king without ...The joker was still welcomed in a way.

Transcript: HAU Berlin 3/3 - The cultural economy

Martina Gener (Administration):
Productions that are successful in an economic sense are not really possible in our
establishments. They're all too small for that. So that something ...It's said that you
should always be in the black. That's nonsense, it's simply impossible. I think that if it
leads to interesting discussions and if at least a few people turn up, then it's a success.
Annemie Vanackere (Director):
I see myself as a spectator. And I ... it's ...It really grew like this that as growing up in
a village near a small town in Belgium, because that's where I'm coming from, and
having had the wish to ...or having had the chance, let's put it like this, to ...just like a
couple of times a year to go to the "Schauburg" of this small town, and kind of having
felt it as a meaningful thing; that it had some connection with me, and then as a
teenager getting in touch with the more contemporary work, where it really had to do
something ...said something about my life and I was very greedy in discovering more.
Learning about life and getting new ideas, new emotions, understanding maybe
emotions, all this ... This realm of things is still a motivation. Simple. I think if I would
become very cynical and having no gusto whatsoever to see new work, I should really
stop.
Because there are not so many jobs that are such nice jobs like mine. Then it should be
left to people who are ...who are passionate about what they do.
Martina Gener (Administration):
I studied law, then I wanted to act, but it didn't work out. And then I said to myself: I
want to dedicate my modest talents to serve the arts. Then I started to work as a
lawyer, I was in a theatre department, and while I was there, this theatre was
renovated.
And then I said, if they need an administration manager, I'd like to work here. The
loveliest stage in the world! This really is a magical place. There's too much stuff lying
around, but its... It's a really exciting feeling just to stand here, preferably in the dark.
And then they said: "All the posts are filled, but we need someone for the accounts."
And so I took on that job. The fact that I stayed here ...I don't know, there are many
reasons.
But one reason is most certainly that it has constantly developed. And it hasn't really
become boring in any way. As a limited company we can afford to have fluctuations,
sometimes making a profit, other times a small loss. But it shouldn't be so much that
you go bankrupt.
It's always that way: If we're in the black, the managers are praised; but if we're in the
red, the administration is blamed. So I'm quite lucky that the management don't make
that distinction.

They never said, "Okay, you're out ..." Normally you would end up getting fired. If at
some point there's a risk of bankruptcy, people are fired and they think it helps. But
that's nonsense.
Annemie Vanackere (Director):
We don't cater to demands. In a way, we ...The new forms would be offered, or
invented, or developed together with artists in the first place.
And ...But artists are part of a public too, you see, so the artists have ...or live in this
society and develop their new forms with or without us, you know?
So it would start there, and then we would go in dialogue with them and try to facilitate
or produce those works and think of the audiences, absolutely.
But it's that way and not the other way round, that we would say, ah people are like so
busy with their smartphones, let's think of a performance that's dealing with
smartphones.
That's like not my imagination or ... Yeah, it's going through ideas of artists, going
through ideas that we think are relevant, and there the relevance term is coming in
again.