Planning or Improvising?
Meaning-Oriented Strategic Planning
for Artists and Creative Practitioners
It is a personal and professional development training program developed by Mahir Namur, specially designed for artists and creative practitioners and aims to give participants a space to reflect on themselves and their future plans and the necessary tools to improve their competence for dealing with challenges of their lives.
Why Meaning Oriented Strategic Planning?
Art making is on one side an emotional-mental- spiritual activity, which requires creativity and inspiration, while on the other side it is a production activity, which requires planning and implementation. Therefore not only do artists need to improve their planning and management skills, but they also develop competence for dealing with emotional challenges caused by uncertainty, tensions and limitations that impact their stated goals and aspirations.
The professional life of an artist is inseparable from their private life: this requires a new integrated approach to professional development, which sees both as one and positions the artist's professional activities within their life span. Strategic planning helps artists gain insight into their potentials and the opportunities, as well as their limitations and the future challenges, in order to take a position and to define their goals and actions in the physical outer world. Meanwhile, existential coaching can be used to deal with emotional challenges. Meaning Oriented Strategic Planning integrates both areas.
The program deals not only with the artist's activities in the physical world but also with their relations to the psychological and mental worlds. It intends to give artists:
- basic tools for strategic planning in order to review and restructure their careers and lives, which enables them to view a longer-term perspective.
- basic knowledge of project development
- self-coaching strategies for improving their goal-setting and decision-making skills,
- basic knowledge to understand and deal with own stress, anxiety, lack of motivation, procrastination, existential emptiness, etc.
- basic knowledge of some existential concepts such as meaning-making, freedom, responsibility, authenticity, values and ethics.
For more information about the training course view my article published in UAL Journal (University of Arts London).
Who is Meaning Oriented Strategic Planning relevant for?
Artists, creative practitioners and/or art educators.
I give this program as an ongoing course within the curriculums of art shools or universities or one time seminar/workshop as an invited lecturer-trainer in art schools and universities, artist NGOs and cultural organizations.
What Meaning Oriented Strategic Planning isn't?
It is not a business planning course or mentoring program for artists.
Format:
Depending on the needs, the number of participants and time available, the program can be designed as a seminar or as a training course that includes seminar and workshop modules. The total length of the full program is 50 hours. Additional group coaching and/or individual coaching sessions raise the effectiveness of the training as these help the participants to apply the methodology to themselves or to consult about team related problems.
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Click for My Training Calendar
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May 2018, UNARTE University of Fine Arts Bucharest
