Creative Collaboration for Society

The Faculty of Arts will offer a Leadership LAB to Honours College students (3rd year feb-april 2019). In this Leadership LAB 4-18 master students will collaborate creatively in multidisciplinary teams on real life cases. During 6 weeks they will be working on a solution for a societal organisation or enterprise assisted by professional experts and academic teachers. Diversity in teams is highly valued, therefore students from all studies and nationalities are welcome to participate.

What will we do?

The Lab aims to develop a creative and sound advice for external organisations that will fit into their working practice. Every team will work on a case and produce a scientifically and financial sound advice or a prototype of a solution to the problem.

The teams will be formed in a first session exploring the knowledge and talents of all individuals. They will then choose the case they will be working on. During the process students will learn what it takes to be a cultural leader. How to make decisions in a societal context and to organize people and means. How to connect academic knowledge to practical experiences. How to design ideas and advices using the potential of a multidisciplinary team.

The Lab finishes off by presenting the advice or prototype to the organization and a personal reflection. But it could also be the start of a new individual project, for example a Masterwork.

Case 2019 “New Cultural Capital”

All cases will be fit for a multidisciplinary team, but they will also give students a sense of what the regional cultural field looks like and show how a Humanities approach works.

Museum Dr8888 and its societal role

Philanthropy and mecenat are important new potential sources of income in the cultural sector. The previous Dutch government has attempted to promote this practice by programmatically supporting the private sector to donate. An evaluation of this policy shows that private companies have indeed increased gifts after the crisis, but it is not clear whether the awareness of the possibilities has increased as well. The subject is of importance also because of the position of Leeuwarden as European Cultural Capital in 2018. Cultural institutions want to capitalise on global and local attention that event has generated, and create new, innovative and sustainable constructions for financing.
The case is to develop such a strategy for the Museum Dr8888 in Drachten.

We are welcoming students who are:

• Interested in societal challenges and the part you can play to tackle these;
• Eager to learn to think ‘out-of-the-box’ and approach problems in a creative way;
• Teamplayers (or interested in how to become one) and responsible individuals;
• Pro-active and full of initiative;
• Convinced that reflection can help us all to develop our skills and knowledge;

Teachers involved:

• Quirijn van den Hoogen, Assistant Professor Arts Policy and Arts Sociology
• Johan Kolsteeg, Lecturer Cultural Entrepreneurship

Organisations who like to be future collaborative partners could contact:

• Saskia Visser, coördinator Science Shop Language, Culture and Communication
• Esther Haag , coördinator Career Strategy