How has the role of cultural managers in Africa evolved over the past decade, and what factors have driven this transformation?
Cultural management in Africa is currently undergoing a revival as more people recognise the centrality of cultural managers in their creative sector to make work for others, run theatres or dance companies, host exhibitions, organise festivals, manage incubator or co-working spaces, facilitate access to markets, or publicise and market these cultural initiatives.
Arts managers or cultural managers are increasingly recognised as key to a sustainable cultural and creative economy. What is less understood is the need for these mobile, adaptable creative workers to be able to integrate a patchwork of contract, part-time or self-employment work in this labour market, as well as the need for a wider skill set that focuses on higher order meta-work skills for these precarious careers.
This talk will shine a spotlight on cultural managers from across Africa that inspire precisely because of the multiple capabilities they use to lead their organisations.
The session is moderated by Jason Vitorillo.
About the speaker
Avril Joffe is an associate researcher and UNESCO Chair in Cultural Entrepreneurship and Policy in the Cultural Policy and Management Department at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is an economic sociologist with independent professional research experience in the field of cultural policy, culture and development and the cultural economy.
Avril works at the intersection of academia and practice in fields such as culture in urban life, culture and the cultural economy in realising a just and sustainable development, fairness in international cultural cooperation, decent work and the rights and status of artists and cultural professionals as well as teaching pedagogy for post graduate studies in the cultural economy.
Avril is an active member of UNESCO’s Panel of Experts for Cultural Policy and Governance, the Global Creative Economy Council, the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance and on the external international advisory panel for the Horizon Europe programme IN SITU–Place-based innovation of cultural and creative industries in non-urban areas coordinated by the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal.
Recent public research related to inequality includes Informality and the cultural economy in the Global South, the Not a Toolkit for EUNIC’s Fair Collaboration project, Promoting Decent Work for the African Cultural and Creative Economy for the ILO and China’s Institutional Cultural Engagement in Africa for Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.
