Arts Management and the ampersand

Your most impactful purpose and process in managing the arts is to connect.

You think because you understand “one” you must also understand “two,” because one and one make two. But you must also understand “and.”
—Rumi

The ampersand, that squiggly punctuation mark that represents the word “and,” has a rich and wandering history (Tschichold 2017). The symbol is a “ligature” – a single character combining multiple letters – of the Latin word “et,” meaning “and.” Its first known instance was drawn by an “anonymous first-century graffiti artist who scrawled it hastily across a Pompeian wall” (Houston 2013). Its name comes from 18th-century England, where the symbol was taught as the 27th letter of the alphabet – “x, y, z, and per se and.”¹

Why the punctuation history? Because the ampersand is an evocative metaphor for the practice of Arts Management. The symbol connects objects, actions, and ideas and is itself a combination. It calls us (well, it calls me, anyway) to seek out relationships between things rather than approaching them as separate. More than that, it reminds us not only to see connections, but also to be connections ourselves.

To take a particularly dry example, consider your financial reports.

It’s easy to look at a balance sheet as a disconnected list of numbers. Each number seems to stand alone and stand apart in its assigned and sorted category. But that perception would be a dangerous mistake. Every number on a balance sheet (or any other financial statement) stands in relation to other numbers, and makes useful sense only when seen in those relationships.

For example, it’s not cash-on-hand that matters, but cash in relation to impending debt or payroll. It’s not last year’s revenue that matters, but revenue in relation to expense, or in relation to the previous year.

That’s why ratios are so important to understanding financial dynamics in an arts organization – because ratios describe relationships. A ratio, in its way, is the ampersand of the numbers world – a single number that combines one or more other numbers.

So when you find yourself engaging pieces of your work as separate or detached, take inspiration from the ampersand. There’s always a connection to be made, not only in the world but also within yourself.

Andrew

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From the ArtsManaged Field Guide

Function of the Week: Accounting
Accounting involves recording, summarizing, analyzing, and reporting financial states and actions.

Framework of the Week: Statement of Financial Position (Balance Sheet)
The Statement of Financial Position (also known as the Balance Sheet) reports a company’s Assets, Liabilities, and Net Assets at a specific point in time. It offers a “snapshot” of what a company owns and what it owes to lenders and investors.

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Photo by Corey Crook on Unsplash

Sources

• Houston, Keith. Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. Illustrated edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

• Tschichold, Jan. A Brief History of the Ampersand. Translated by Jean-Marie Clarke from Tschichold’s 1953 essay, “Formenwandlungen der &-Zeichen.” -zeug, 2017.

1. The per se is to indicate the symbol “&” rather than the word “and” – so, “and per se and” literally means “and, all alone, &” or “and, by itself, &.”