Member - Tara Werner |
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National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries,
Phone (00 64) 9 3737599 ext 85023 |
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Musings I've always regarded myself as a person on the margins, an onlooker and observer of people. Sometimes this activity can be quite critical in nature, other times I find a great deal of humour - much of it black - figuring out what's going on in social situations, and in particular, management. Actually, it's interesting how themes emerge from early experiences in life, and re-emerge later on, even though you may not be fully aware of it. For instance, this self-imposed 'marginal' role may stem from me coming from a Dutch Indonesian immigrant family who moved from Indonesia to Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1950s, after the Indonesian revolution. That was quite a culture shock, and made doubly so due to the fact that my parents were creative people trying to survive in a society notorious for its conformity. They had run a successful ballet school in Indonesia and attempted to do the same in Dunedin. It turned out to be a financial disaster. Not all was lost, however, since they instilled in their children a deep love for the arts and an appreciation for music. In fact classical music has been the core of my life as long as I can remember. I found the New Zealand school system an emotional trial and a dreadful bore. Evidently I asked too many questions and would not accept the orthodoxies of the time - a questioning that has lasted to this day, thank goodness. Then to university in Auckland and Wellington, where I majored in Music, Composition and Anthropology before entering the first of four careers - that of medical social worker. The following seven years were spent in various hospital boards in New Zealand and London, where I trained in group work at the Tavistock Institute, and was accepted for further social work training at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. I couldn't take up either post-grad offer due to financial circumstances, and with hindsight, I'm glad that I didn't follow that path. Although I learnt the basic philosophy of to live and let live, I would have burnt out very quickly. Instead I discovered when being a social worker I could write reports, and do so to a tight deadline. Therefore the change to my second career. I became a journalist, specialising in the arts, a music writer and music critic. I loved, and continue to love, writing about the arts. In the end I rose through the newspaper and magazine ranks in New Zealand to become a managing editor and then a publisher. Onto the third career, into publishing per se, running my own print production company, and making lots of money. Yet I soon found that earning heaps of dollars did not satisfy me and I decided to go to business school, and learn all about marketing. (So at least I could find out what I'd done right!) Somehow the University of Auckland discovered it had an arts person with a flair for business (alternatively, a business person with a love for the arts) in its midst, and the then Dean of Arts, Professor Nicholas Tarling asked me to start up the arts management programmes. He has since become a dear friend and mentor. Next, Graduate Programmes at School of Business asked me to help reorganise up their Masters programmes, and eventually I became director of the MBA programme and Master of Management, amongst other things. Finally (Phew! I can hear you say) I was asked by the Dean of Arts to help establish the new School of Creative and Performing Arts, which was disestablished at the end of 2003, to be replaced by a bigger entity – the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, I'm the Director of the Arts Management programmes. So life has gone full circle. I'm sure that early experience of observing my parents going under with their ballet school in Dunedin stuck unconsciously in my mind, and contributed to my understanding of what causes arts companies to fail. And all these various career changes have people at their centre, but from me in the role of a participant observer. Above all, the theme of classical music, and dance for that matter, has been a cornerstone - the way these wonderful forms of expression can communicate and provide moments of great beauty. I'm an intuitive person and can often see the "big" picture in a flash. And I just love applying these “flashes” to organisation theory. I've also got a strong interest in modernist literature, so just for fun I do things like comparing a Bach fugue to the structure of a novel. Looking at Virginia Woolf's work as a form of musical analysis, eg Mrs Dalloway as a three-part invention, or To the Lighthouse as ABA form! So now I've decided to become an academic and discover where that takes me. I'm excited about the prospects of research into phenomenology and the performing arts. I am particularly interested in the role artistic directors play in audience development and entrepreneurship within performing arts companies. So much so that I am completing a PhD on the subject within the Management Department at the University of Auckland. I see lots of opportunities to bring the art into management, as well as management to art. So who knows what will happen next.... Published Articles Werner, Tara. 2002. "An entrepreneurial approach to sustaining infrastructure and continued sustainability in the not-for-profit sector: A case study of two community performing arts organisations in Auckland" The New Wave: Entrepreneurship & the Arts Symposium to be held in Melbourne, Australia, 5/6 April, 2002. |
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Director, Arts Management Programmes 
