Culture corner

Agnes Michelet

General manager of STRUT Dance Inc (three years)

WABN: Describe – in one sentence – a day at work.

AM: “Every day is an unpredictable journey”

WABN: What is the best piece of advice you can give someone to motivate a team?

AM: “Believing in what you do is the starting point. if the team members don’t believe in what they do and don’t enjoy what they do, they can leave the room.”

WABN: What HAS BEEN the most challenging event in your career?

AM: “One of the most challenging things for me is to leave. That hasn’t happened often, but it always resonates in my professional career and in my life. To overcome the difficulties is to do it. I usually commit myself enormously to the job I do and the people I work with, so when I have to go it’s always very difficult.

“When I left my first work experience, which lasted four years, it was very difficult to separate from the people I worked with. It’s the same kind of drama as a divorce. I had to leave is because there was another passion that was driving me, which was falling in love with someone; it was an exchange of passions really!”

WABN: What is the main quality are you looking for in your team members?

AM: “I work in an environment where every single person has to feel responsible, there’s no backup; it’s also the way the work environment is organized.

“We’re all managers here at Strut. It translates in the work organization. We’re all very responsible and we recognise each other’s skills. Each person brings his or her own colour and they are complementary.

“All managers have a different way of working and the way we progress is very collaborative. If I look back in my other work experiences in other companies, it was very much a matter of the artist working with arts manager; working with the technical manager is very much a collaborative process.”

WABN: What's best measurement of your performance, and can you name a highlight in your career?

AM: “I hesitate because it’s quite difficult to name one highlight; every show is different and I can’t say that one of these experiences is better than the other.

“The time when your efforts come together for something is always marvellous. If I think of one extraordinary moment, I would name one of my best memories of those experiences. It was a show that we toured in the north of England in 1994. That day, the way the show was staged came out to be completely different from the way it was set. The place we were meant to use to perform the show became unavailable for various reasons. So we had to do the show in the street in a very improvised manner and the public had to follow the artists along the streets of that little town of northern England. The result was unforgettable.”

WABN: How do you deal with egos in your workplace?

AM: “I find that a very interesting question. I always think egos are driven by passion, and that’s why they express themselves. In Charles Fourier’s Treaty on Passion the whole principle of his utopian society was to use everyone’s passion and annihilate it into creating something with a very powerful result. You don’t have artists without egos and egos can be good when they are orientated the right way.”

WABN: Is there an organisation/business model that you strive to achieve/reach? What is it?

AM: “To me, as far as the company is concerned the collective model is the best one.

“The organisation I strive to reach is a well-funded company, that’s what we spend most time doing as arts managers – to provide the resources, for the show to take place.

“Also, unite and do not go on your own; coming with a common voice for a sector is the best way to go.  Something might change [as a result of] sticking our elbows together.”

WABN: What frustrates you the most about your sector and what would you do to change it?

AM: “Frustration can come from being under-resourced. This question is pivotal. Besides applications, this is the common strategy, an experience that I had to particularly work for here, not really in France.

“I guess it’s the number of times you have to ask for money and the way, the reason why you ask for money. In France it was more based on artistic principles, what an artistic director wanted to do.

“Here you have to define why you are in the arts sector, why is there dance, why you exist. I find it very tiring.

“You have to reach outside what you are doing; the core of the thing is not about that, it’s about creating art and that’s it.

“What frustrates me the most is waste; there’s a huge waste of talent and heritage. There are definitely massive resources here, we know very well how to dig in the ground and export, but it’s not long-term thinking.”

WABN: Who is someone that you dream to work with?

AM: “There’s a person whose team I would like to be part of to see how she works – Donna Walker-Kuhne. She is from New York and came to Perth a couple of times. She is passionate about the arts.

“The work she has been doing in building bridges between arts and the community is mind boggling. She starts from the belief that the audience for museum or dance should be the same as those people working through Central Station in New York.”

WABN: Have you read a good book on management/leadership that you can recommend? What was so good about it?

AM: “I keep going on about Donna…her book that I read recently, Invitation to The Party, is about this bridge building. It says that making change it’s not necessarily about taking great actions; if you can keep going with a thread of things you can handle, you can achieve big things.”

WABN: Which personality inspired you the most throughout your career?

AM: “The first artistic director I worked with, a long time ago (between 1987 and 1991) definitely made me work in the arts as a mission. I was stung forever after working with him. It’s the level of commitment that has inspired me to continue and not leave the sector. I do think there is something in me that hasto do that, like being on a mission to allow artists to thrive.”

WABN: Who has influenced you professionally?

AM: “It’s the sense of choosing the profession. I would say my father, he was working in the bank industry and what happened in this life through this industry definitely put me off that track.”