Creative Strain: Burnout and the Arts

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Lit Match

Making things happen is not easy. Festivals, exhibitions, family days and concerts don’t just manifest themselves from thin air! They take endless planning, commitment and dedication. Ask any arts development manager or curator who has put together a festival and they will tell you how shattering it is. The adrenaline keeps you going but come closing night, you fall over only to begin the process again, the very next day.

Burnout is rife in the arts sector. Often, there is so much pressure to fulfill agendas from so many quarters; sponsors, stakeholders, interest groups, participants and from within the internal organisation itself, the immense pressure placed on individuals is forgotten.

Let’s face it, working in arts is not 9 to 5. Time in lieu days are often not taken because the next event is looming. Burnout in the arts sector is a serious issue with smaller teams and fewer resources to stage the same number and quality of programmes we have all come to expect.

What can you do to prevent burnout? Here a few tips I learned the hard way. I hope they help you stay focused and most of all loving your job!

1. Pace yourself. Mark the whole programme for the year in the calendar. Calculate back what needs to be done before you sign off on the programme. If the schedule is crazy, rework timelines to make your workload more manageable.

2. Think of focusing energy and resources on one or two fewer events in the year. This way the authenticity of the overall programme remains and there is a little more time to concentrate on marketing, reflection and evaluation. We all need time to breathe.

3. Ask for help. Can you find some great volunteers? Volunteers bring so much experience, friendship and an outside perspective. Start a volunteer programme and watch the benefits grow.

4. Concentrate on marketing. No point organising and funding lots of events if you don’t have the audience. Get the most you can from each event by gathering email addresses, testimonials and reviews to use next time.

5. Combine resources and expertise. Partner up with other organisations in your industry to access funding, performers, audience and consultants. This way both of you gets more bang for your buck.

6. Peer network. Take time to form great relationships with your peer network. If you are having a problem I am sure your peers have had that experience too. A problem shared is a problem halved!

7. Celebrate success.

Thanks to my friend Clare for her inspiringly honest article that prompted this blog post. It is a highly recommended read.

Have you experienced burnout? What helped you through? Any advice is much appreciated.

7 Nov, 2011  7 Comments

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7 Comments

  1. Alan O'Rourke

    November 7, 2011 @ 2:52 pm

    I agree on the do less and market it more.
    So many great great events and so few people know about them.
    Arts organisations automatically rush to put on more events to fill the gap instead of creating better exposure to what they are doing already.
    Do less, do it better, and tell people.

  2. Karina Lundström

    November 8, 2011 @ 8:12 am

    “Do less, do it better and tell people” should become the maxim for those working in the arts. Unfortunately we are all under pressure from all sides to deliver more and it’s hard to convince people (particularly ourselves) that very often “less is more”

  3. Ifty Finn

    November 16, 2011 @ 11:27 pm

    Interesting article, this issue came up at a recent symposium in Dublin, Future Forecasting: The challenge facing cultural institutions held in the National Gallery.
    Those of us working in this sector are our own worst enemy, who decides that we will do ‘all’ of the events/exhibitions/festivals that our organizations do. Normally we do. So take a step back, reconsider what we can manage with our ever shrinking teams and maybe, just maybe we can keep ourselves healthy in the longer term.

  4. Theresia Guschlbauer

    November 17, 2011 @ 5:21 pm

    funny, I was just submitting my travel report to the arts council and I suggested that perhaps the scheme should be extended to arts practitioner at risk of burnout! ie in need of nurturing and rejuvenation and looking to research a new area of interest for instance, not necessarily directly related to their work… pushing the boat a bit far, I know, but maybe needed in certain specail circumstances?

  5. Mary Carty

    November 17, 2011 @ 9:41 pm

    Do less, do it better and tell people sums it up really well! I agree with Karina it should become our mantra, especially the telling part.

    Just today I got an email telling me about this amazing conference starting Friday morning. It will be difficult to switch things around at short notice and I really am interested in the topic.

    It is annual plan time so create more space in the schedule for the marketing of each event.

    Ifty you are right it is all about quality of life and our health. I think we also need to really explore why we strive to push ourselves so hard? Is it for validation, personal or professional, or is it trying to keep up with a perceived quota of work.
    Once we get a better insight into the why maybe we can plan our time and schedules better to benefit everyone.

    Not sure Theresia how the Arts Council will view your proposal in the current climate. It certainly makes good sense.

    Thanks everyone for your thoughts and comments.

  6. Dermot McLaughlin, CEO, Temple Bar Cultural Trust (TBCT)

    November 23, 2011 @ 4:58 pm

    Mary

    Thanks for those observations and thoughts.

    Your article reminds me that in our part of the creative economy, many of us just find it difficult to say ‘no’!

    Maybe this is the fuzzy area between vocation and profession?

    I think many of us will be familiar with the tension between (a)our enthusiasm and ambition to do really interesting challenging things, and then (b) the hard question ‘why is this one of the right things for us to do?’.

    I think that sometimes two of the last things we ask ourselves are(in exaggerated language) ‘are we really able to take this on? If we do this, what will be the body count on our side?’.

    In recent years in our company we have started to develop some informal ‘lenses’ for looking at ideas, especially the ideas and opportunities that really fire our imagination and ambition.

    These ‘lenses’ include business criteria such as footfall/numbers (i.e. box-office) but also less tangible criteria such as making better opportunities for people to get closer to culture, making better use of existing facilities, and most importantly finding creative ways of collaborating with others especially in our neighbourhood (Temple Bar, Dublin).

    Usually it’s only when we get through these steps that we can even start looking at time, effort and costs.

    I find that even if we do reduce the number of things or events that we do, we will spend just as much time and effort on whatever is left. The amount of time each of us has is finite anyway, the question is how we use it and what do we use it for.

    So the issue is perhaps not so much about intensity as it is about our attitudes and behaviour when it comes to frequency, or possibly duration of programmed events where we bring something to the public eye (or ear).

    We create our own expectations. We have to be responsible for managing them.

    Usually the people who create our deadlines are us, nobody else (let’s leave external administrative and funding deadlines, and other fixed dates, out of it for now).

    I think you have usefully opened up an area of planning, management and behaviour that probably needs more thought; I think it is certainly useful to hear how others find their pathway through this.

    Also I like the strategy of do less but better and shout louder about it. That makes sense.

    You’ve got me thinking about all this again!

    Thank you

    Dermot McLaughlin

  7. Mary Carty

    November 25, 2011 @ 1:22 pm

    Hi Dermot,

    Thanks for your very detailed and honest comments. It is so true that “we create our own expectations. We have to be responsible for managing them.”

    I think creative people in general have a natural dynamism and energy to get things done, often to their cost. The need to say no more often is certainly at the heart of this issue.

    I’m glad my post has got people talking about this as it is a serious issue. I wonder how other fast paced sectors deal with burnout or is it pretty universal when dealing with creative endeavours like fashion, media, design and production?

    I believe we all can help each other in this respect, to keep an eye out for colleagues who have taken on too much/stretched themselves too far.

    Off to think about some solutions to our behaviour!

    Thanks again,

    Mary

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