SUU Arts Administration Students Help Make a Difference in the Utah Arts Community

Published: May 18, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes

Southern Utah University’s Master of Fine Arts in Arts Administration students worked with two of Utah’s top arts organizations this semester for their arts marketing project. The experiences with the organizations have allowed them to gain hands on arts marketing experiences. There semester long project allowed the students and marketing departments of the Tuacahn Center for the Performing Arts and the Repertory Dance Theatre to work hand in hand in creating marketing plans to help to grow the organizations.

Jeff Martin, Director of Marketing at Tuacahn Theatre for the Performing Arts states, “The students in the program are very knowledgeable and I would be confident hiring any one of them to work for us if we had a position available. They have learned to utilize the most effective resources in promoting and developing the arts. It's been such a pleasure for all of us at Tuacahn to work with them, and they gave us valuable insight into our own organization.”

“Repertory Dance Theatre was thrilled to have students from Southern Utah University assist us with our marketing plans. The students I worked with were intelligent, well-informed, and easy to work with, and we are grateful for their time, energy, and expertise. As a non-profit performing arts organization, we have limited staff and budgets, and the SUU team provided us with thorough market research and excellent strategic plans that we would not have had the time and budget for otherwise. As a whole, this partnership has been incredibly useful to us as a professional organization, and we look forward to working with the arts management department in the future,” states Heidi Schmidt, Marketing & PR Director of the Repertory Dance Theatre in Salt Lake City.

The MFA Arts Administration program is a twenty-four month continuous program that teaches students to develop the skills of strategic planning, marketing, fundraising, budgeting/finance, advocacy, education, program development and community relations. MFA students work continuously alongside arts management professionals in the MFA affiliates: the Utah Shakespearean Festival, the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery and the College of Performing and Visual Arts. The unique blend of classroom involvement and hands-on practical experience propels students into the Arts Administration job market that is desperately seeking trained arts managers.

For more information on SUU College of Performing and Visual Arts programs and events, please call (435) 865-8800, or visit www.suu.edu/arts.

---

Contact Information:

435-586-5400
Contact the Office of Marketing Communication