Summary

Curtains Up host Rohan speaks with Dr. Ursula Kuhar, Senior Lecturer in Arts Administration at Indiana University's Bloomington Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, about community engagement, arts advocacy, and careers in arts administration. Dr. Kuhar explains why engagement must be built on reciprocal community partnerships and how arts organizations can listen, demonstrate their value, and communicate it to different audiences.

Keywords

arts administration, community engagement, arts advocacy, arts education, nonprofit arts, audience development, creative placemaking

Topics

Dr. Kuhar distinguishes audience development and marketing from community engagement, which she describes as mission-based programming built on reciprocal partnerships.

Effective engagement means listening to community needs, working beyond an organization’s walls, and acting on what people share.

Her students use community mapping, environmental scans, and logic models to design collaborative programs with arts organizations.

Dr. Kuhar notes that roughly 93% of U.S. arts organizations are nonprofits, and most have operating budgets of $5 million or less.

She challenges the “starving artist” stereotype and describes arts administration paths in fundraising, artistic planning, curation, digital marketing, and research.

Arts advocacy can combine a moral case for well-being and access with evidence about jobs, education, local economies, and creative placemaking.

Arts professionals need to be master storytellers and adapt their message to parents, policymakers, funders, and donors.

Dr. Kuhar defines arts administration as “being the bridge between art and audiences” and encourages people with varied skills to enter the field.

Chapters

00:00 Why the work beyond the stage matters

01:02 Community engagement is mission-based, not just marketing

04:33 Connecting partnerships back to an organization’s mission

06:14 Moving from “we tell” to “we listen”

11:11 Nonprofit arts organizations and their purpose

15:17 Arts careers, economic impact, and the starving-artist myth

18:11 Why everyone in the arts has a role in advocacy

21:48 Combining moral arguments with data

24:09 Storytelling and speaking to different audiences

26:26 Listening to difficult feedback and adapting

28:10 Arts administration as a bridge between art and audiences

31:52 Staying creative amid uncertainty in the arts