Learning Arts Organisations: Innovation through a Poetics of Relation

Abstract

Arts organisations have had to reimagine their ways of working, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has severely challenged the venue-based sectors and exposed the fragility of the existing business model of the ‘receiving house’. We use a specific example to address the following question: In what sense can artists lead organisational innovation, learning and change? We analyse Riffing the Archive: Building a Relation by MARIE ANTOINETTE (MA), an artist duo from Portugal, and their collaboration with the Barn, a multi-art centre in Banchory, Scotland, during the coronavirus pandemic in 2021. Édouard Glissant, a Martinique-born poet and philosopher, underpins both MA’s practice and our analysis. We draw on the key concepts of his relational philosophy, including archipelago, opacity, and disaffiliation, to clarify how MA work, what they have offered the Barn and what they can offer to other art organisations seeking innovation and organisational learning. MA’s nuanced approach, informed by Glissant, reconfigures the relationship between the artists and the art organisation and challenges existing assumptions through discontinuous and new thinking, while building a non-confrontational relationship with the Barn. It contributes to both organisational studies and arts research by highlighting the significance of MA’s approach to organisational innovation.

Keywords

• artist-led innovation
• Édouard Glissant
• relational philosophy
• organisational change
• organisational learning
• practice-led research