2001 Conference
Guest Speaker:

George Thorn,
co-director: Arts Action Research

read the speech notes here - updated - Nov 2001

George Thorn is the co-director of Arts Action Research, a national arts-consulting group which focuses on four areas:

• consulting with arts organizations, individually and in consortia,
• designing and facilitating conferences and work shops;
• initiating special research or laboratory projects to develop and test new concepts and approaches to arts organizations; and
• documenting and writing about the findings.

AAR's consulting is in the areas of definition of mission, long-range planning, organizational development, boards of trustees, and adult participation in the arts. As a consultant, he has worked with over 750 arts organizations and has made presentations to over 300 conferences and workshops. He was the Associate Director of FEDAPT, The Foundation for the Expansion and Development of the American Professional Theatre, from 1987 to 1991. In parallel with his consulting activities, for eighteen years he directed the graduate program in arts administration at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Prior to these activities, he was the Executive Vice-President of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. George spent sixteen years in New York where he had a general management firm that managed Broadway, Off-Broadway, and touring companies. He began his career as a stage manager of Broadway productions.

With Nello McDaniel, he has co-authored the following publications:

• Learning Audiences
  
• Arts Planning: A Dynamic Balance
  
• Arts Boards: Creating a New Community Equation
  
• Toward a New Arts Order: Process, Power, and Change
  
• Workpapers II: Arts Boards--Myths, Perspectives, and New Approaches
  
• A Special Report/The Quiet Crisis in the Arts
  
• Workpapers I: Rethinking and Restructuring the Arts Organization
  
• Challenge of Change
  

read George Thorn's speech notes here

resource fair | play readings | schedule
annual meeting/party | morning break-out sessions | afternoon break-out sessions

Keynote Speakers: Libby Appel | George Thorn