Developing new skills in arts management
Since working for a government arts group involves prestige but very low remuneration, individual artists had already wasted no time in exploiting the new opportunities created by the market economy to supplement their own modest salaries, setting up new arts groups, performing in clubs and engaging in a wide range of commercial activities outside working hours. Yet however talented they were in promoting their own careers, these individuals did not have the necessary management skills to bring about the ‘socialisation’ of the government arts companies they worked for.
Accordingly in 2000, recognising that the effective implementation of the policy of
'socialisation' (
xã hội hóa) by the arts community would demand specialised arts and heritage management skills not currently available in Việt Nam, the Ministry of Culture and Information launched an ambitious initiative aimed at equipping a new generation of Vietnamese arts and heritage managers with not-for-profit arts management skills.
The first phase of the project 'Arts Management Curriculum Development in the Context of a Market Economy' concluded in 2004. The Final Report on that initial phase of the project may be downloaded here as a pdf:
During the course of the project 'Arts Management Curriculum Development in the Context of a Market Economy' it became apparent that changes to the prescribed rules and structures of the old centralised arts economy were also needed with a view to encouraging artists and arts organisations to act in the more independent and self-motivated manner now being expected of them.
Vietnamese arts organisations had for several years been exhorted to identify and exploit new sources of income in line with the policies of ‘socialisation’, yet very few had actually begun to do so, since even a reduced level of state subsidy was still sufficient for most government arts groups to continue operating a basic programme of activities, and in any case under existing financial procedures any additional income generated by an enterprising manager from corporate sponsorship or other sources would simply be returned to the treasury.
For this reason in 2003 the then Ministry of Culture and Information introduced new financial procedures which, while placing a clear onus on state-funded organisations to seek new sources of income, now made it possible for the more enterprising ones to plough their earned income back into programming and development activity - for further details see
Government cultural funding.