Mix It Up Project Report: Building New Audiences - Multicultural Arts ...

The Impact of Diversity on Ways of Working
Mix It Up Research Project 2006
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Centre For Leisure Management Research
Full Tilt…had a mixed audience of artists and industry professionals coming in to it.
(Programmer, the Arts Centre)
As the Arts Centre staff interacts with people and institutions from different cultures, whose ways of working are
different and whose languages are different from our own, costly misunderstandings and even failures are
possible. All behaviour is embedded in a social and organisational context and connected to valued and
traditional ways of working. This means that the stakes are high for not finding new ways of working with
individuals and organisations from diverse cultural backgrounds. Ignoring or mishandling diversity can lead to
lack of motivation of people, marketing myopia, missed opportunities for cross-cultural alliances and failure to
adapt to the new ways of working needed in a globalised world. Resistance can lead to organisational and
individual ineffectiveness, frustration and stagnation of ideas. However, finding new ways of working can lead to
innovation in business practices, learning new ways of doing things and competitive advantage for the Arts
Centre in a rapidly changing marketplace.
The Main Thrust
The learnings going forward are that the people involved in the program gained a much
greater confidence about the marketing and the programming side of this than when we
started. (Administrator)
The main thrust of change can be narrow or broad, department wide or organisation wide. But the main thrust
must be achieving the goal that the transition requires. This was the case with the Mix It Up program. There were
changes in people, networks, administration, finance, marketing and production. The main thrust is driven by the
vision for the project: to develop multicultural programs and audiences.
People from the Arts Centre considered the relationships forged through the production of the Mix It Up program
important and would continue to be important through future projects. According to one Arts Centre staff
member engaged with the delivery of public programs through Mix it Up, “we were starting to build the whole
approach of working in theatre programs, public programs and outside organisations…I think it’s just that
relationship building has got a lot of room to grow and be very successful.”