Branding In The Arts: How Art Collectives Develop A Shared Sense of Meaning

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2017-08-01

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en

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Abstract

Current changes in the fields of arts and culture have resulted in a proliferation of artistic collaborations. For various reasons, artists increasingly choose to organize themselves in art collectives as emergent organizational types within the creative industries. Nevertheless, the Western image of seeing the artist as sacred genius favourably working in solitude still seems prevalent in contemporary society. As a result this study questions how these newly formed collaborations are structured and motivated with special regard to the individual ar- tist. Using a multiple case study design, this study analyses how art collectives manage to conflate their various artistic identities into a collective identity, and further portrays how this collective identity is turned into a brand identity. The results show that within the sam- pled art collectives the individual artistic status is woven into the collective identity. Thus, the artists are able to build up a strong internal brand. This identity, though, is preserved internally instead of actively communicating it externally as no relevance is being granted to branding. As such, this study is a valuable contribution to literature, as it makes a first at- tempt to define the organizational dynamics of art collectives on the basis of empirical find- ings. Moreover, it encourages artists to get more active in the field of branding while advi- sing Arts educators to incorporate a marketing perspective in their curricular.

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