The Dawson Research Internship
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Past Presentations
2006: How We Make Meaning
2007: Professional Presenters and the Amateur Arts
2008: Learning to Lead: Where and How Do Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft?
About the Initiative
In 1996, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters created the William Dawson Education Endowment to celebrate and honor Bill Dawson, the association's Executive Director from 1972 to 1986. Bill's friends and colleagues sought to establish a fund that would help educate a new generation of arts leaders, incorporating Bill's belief in lifelong learning with his professional legacy of the successful partnership between higher education and the administration of the arts. A roster of donors to the fund is available on the Arts Presenters web site.
The result is the William Dawson Research Internship. This research program, inaugurated in 2005, supports an annual research study by selected graduate students in the Bolz Center for Arts Administration on current trends facing the presenting field. The results of this study is presented annually at the Arts Presenters national Members Conference in New York City. The project is a close collaboration of Arts Presenters and the Bolz Center for Arts Administration, where Bill Dawson also played a formative and passionate role.
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Connecting Students and Professionals,
Theory and Practice
Each year since 2005, the William Dawson Research Internship of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters has commissioned a group of Bolz Center graduate students to research, prepare, and present a national conference session on an emerging trend, issue, or question facing performing arts practitioners.
This year's topic explores an essential issue for the future of the field, and the health of the performing arts profession.
2009:
''Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer Translated''
Association of Performing Arts Presenters Annual Conference
New York, NY
Saturday, January 10, 9:30 - 11:30 am
What knowledge and skills from seasoned leaders are critical to advancing and sustaining our field? What can we learn from other industries and social systems about how such knowledge might best be fostered, captured, and transferred in the performing arts? With our field's growing emphasis on emerging leaders and next-generation innovation, we can lose sight of the extraordinary resource already in the room -- the leaders and cultural professionals with vast accumulated expertise. Join a team of graduate students and special guests in this fourth-annual effort of the Bill Dawson Research Initiative to explore generational knowledge transfer in the presenting field, and to honor Bill's life and work by connecting essential research to professional practice.
[ Watch the slides on SlideShare ]
Project Team
Abby Ballain, Michal Fischer, Jess Main, Kathryn Waters. Moderator/Advisor: Andrew Taylor. Respondent: Kenneth C. Fischer, President, University Musical Society.
Readings & Resources
Definitions, reports, and books discussed during the session. This resource sheet is also available for download (pdf format).
Definitions
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: The organization, creation, capturing or distribution of knowledge to ensure its availability for future users.
INTERGENERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER: Any interaction -- whether one-on-one, in a group, or through written communication in print or online -- that conveys facts, context, connections, processes, or other insights between two generations.
Research Studies and Reports
Books
- David W. DeLong, Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, Oxford University Press, 2004
- Thomas H. Davenport & Laurence Prusak, Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, Harvard Business School Press, 1997
- Nancy M. Dixon, Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know, Harvard Business School Press, 2000
