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3.5 Instruction in artistic processes in businesses
Under the banner of “creativity”, businesses have become aware that artistic processes hold potential for the development of their employees. Companies are less interested in developing the artistic expertise of their employees than in fostering certain personality traits commonly attributed to artists, or thought to be engendered through engagement with art. These traits might include a positive attitude toward open processes and searches, a high tolerance for error, the ability to shift perspectives or an independent and inventive way of approaching problems. There is currently a research project underway at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts titled
→ art in company/Kunst und Wirtschaft, which is devoted to the links between entrepreneurial activity and artistic activity.
Creaviva in Bern’s Zentrum Paul Klee, a children’s museum, offers workshops for management and employees under the banner “Art + Business”. There are also freelance cultural mediators who offer formats using music or theatre or creative writing which are intended to help companies enhance teamwork processes or improve the way businesses present themselves.
The use of artistic processes as creativity techniques for businesses is the subject of heated debate. One has to question, for instance, the purported correlation between the strategies of artist, perceived as highly flexible sole-entrepreneurs, and the strategies that employees are supposed to develop to cope with increasing demands. The following
→ statement is taken from a Swiss site advertising a programme of this kind: “The means for teambuilding in modern companies and the ones [sic] in theatre barely differ from each other”. Such claims would appear to cast doubt, albeit indirectly, on certain qualities associated with the arts, such as a spirit of
→ openness of interpretation and processes and
→ relative autonomy, and thus their critical potential. No one mentions that artistic approaches can give rise to processes and effects which are diametrically opposed to the logics of business (such as the refusal to perform a duty, questioning rules as a matter of principle, the need to isolate oneself or to slow down) or that artistic professionalism can consist of rejecting any and all intention to have an effect of any kind.
While arts mediation is not the primary objective in this type of programme (though artworks do play a role for illustrative and/or inspirational purposes), formats like these (like instruction in artistic techniques) nonetheless convey implicit knowledge about art or implicit concepts of art in the sense of a “tacit curriculum”.
