Chapter 19: From the Artist-Director to the Director-Artist: The Case of Very Small Performing Art Organizations in France

In a context of budgetary constraints, artistic organizations must resolve the equation between economic performance and creation. But they often come up against an image conflict between art and business. From an intervention-research, we show in this chapter how an artist-manager of a Very Small Performing Arts Organization (VSPO) can develop managerial skills in order to perpetuate his activity and deploy his artistic project. This experiment highlights the improvements in the management of the organization and the need for intra-organizational learning to build a dialectical relationship between art and management.