Việt Nam: Developing new skills in arts management

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OVERVIEW:

Cultural policy

Origins of Vietnamese cultural policy

Building a socialist future – Vietnamese cultural policy after 1945

Into a market economy

‘Socialisation’

‘A progressive Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity’

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.

Ha Noi Library Children's Section (Tim Doling)

Supported by the Ford Foundation and developed in co-operation with UK cultural agency Visiting Arts with academic adviser Gerald Lidstone from Goldsmiths, University of London, the project 'Arts Management Curriculum Development in the Context of a Market Economy' (2000-2004) was designed to enable staff from three cultural training institutions - the Việt Nam Institute of Culture and Arts, the Hà Nội University of Culture and the Culture, Sports and Tourism Managers' School - to learn from the widest range of overseas arts management experience, at the same time equipping them with the skills to devise integrated short, in-service, undergraduate and postgraduate arts and heritage management curricula appropriate to the Vietnamese context.

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:

Curriculum Development Project Final Report

Set up in 2005, the Centre for Research Support and Development of Culture (A&C) is currently the principal agency involved in the development of Culture Management curricula in Việt Nam. A four-year undergraduate programme in Culture Management has already been launched at the Hà Nội University of Culture, and both postgraduate (MA and taught PhD) and short/in-service courses are now being developed.

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.

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