Areas of expertise
Inspired by my passion for the arts, I create opportunities, execute innovative, desired programmes and develop strategies to advance goals while preserving core values. The wide variety of positions I have held demonstrate my flexibility, collaborative nature and self-motivation.
My main areas of expertise are
Arts Project Design
Although the range of my experience is wide, I’d describe myself chiefly as an Arts Project Architect. I am a person who loves to design and build arts projects. I also offer support to those who seek to develop or optimize their own projects.
Project examples are
Arts Project Assessment
My life is dedicated to the arts, my passions are exploring the cutting-edge, increasing the relevance of the arts to society and helping arts professionals develop.
My capacity to assess arts projects has been developed through a decade of concert, conference and project proposal assessments in my role as jury facilitator in Classical:NEXT’s annual programme selection. Preceding this, I spent seven years in the British Council’s Arts & Creative Industries Department reading incoming project funding applications for all arts areas (visual and performing arts). The British Council explicitly insisted upon funding only innovative and/or socially relevant art projects.
Informally, I constantly attend concerts for art music of all types, focusing on those which claim to be innovative. I also regularly attend events for theatre, contemporary dance, live art and visual art.
Classical:NEXT 2013 edition jury meeting
Photo: Piranha Arts
Conference Design & Facilitation
I have decades of experience in designing and facilitating events which aim to achieve specific goals. Examples include 10 years of coaching Classical:NEXT conference speakers to optimize their proposed session designs. In addition, I’ve given many workshops, such as for strategic planning or developing new concert formats. My Cambridge University teacher training provided me with skills to shape lessons to target specific learning goals and elicit knowledge from students, all while ensuring maximum student talk time amongst all students with a minimum of teacher talk time. My expertise has recently been enhanced with online meeting design training and formal certification.
Grant Writing
While no one enjoys writing grants, this is an unavoidable part of life in the arts. My grant writing experience in both English and German ranges from preparing relatively straightforward applications (such as for Berlin’s Hauptstadt Kulturfonds)
to the extremely complicated (Creative Europe).
Examples include
Strategic Planning
To get from A to B, one needs to have a strategy. But often, just defining b is itself a challenge. How to figure out how best to reach b if one isn’t even clear about exactly what b is?
This is strategic planning. Defining the starting points, defining the mission, vision and goals then defining how to achieve those goals. I love to help others tackle their strategic challenges and I myself have a passion for strategizing.
My most extreme strategic planning challenge was to start up Classical:NEXT. In January 2011, the president of Piranha Arts AG asked me “Would you like to make an international meeting for the classical music industry? I’ve got one partner association and they found a location. But you have no budget, no team and the event has to take place in May next year.” Not only did I have no budget, no team and a deadline, but also no contacts in the established classical music scene. It was not exactly a promising constellation. But I did have two aspects in my favour: WOMEX, the World Music Expo, was in-house and I had four months warm-up time before contracts were signed to develop a strategy. “Vision cN 2019” emerged and ultimately all targets fulfilled.
“It has been an honor to work with Jennifer Dautermann! With Jennifer four nordic baroque orchestras were able to work very effectively to clarify and develop the identity, vision, objectives and concrete goals of the new association Nordic Baroque Scene. This has been essential help in making decisions in practical questions or aiming to bigger goals together. The strategic planning workshop Jennifer put together had very inspiring and active character that allowed ideas and visions to come out.”
- Laura Kajander
Chair of Nordic Baroque Scene (NBS)
Executive Manager of the Finnish Baroque Orchestra (FiBO)
Art Music
Art Music – Western, European “classical”, early, contemporary and experimental music, has been the main arts genre of my activities for decades. My expertise comes from
Club Culture
Berlin, my home since 1995, has long been a world-renowned epicenter for club culture. From 2000 to 2007, I specialized in this area while at the British Council Berlin’s Arts & Creative Industries Department. I combined this speciality with my classical music background in creating the C3 Festival (2007-2011).
Her Majesty learns that the British Council Berlin has an official “Club Culture Expert”, to which she responds “Do we need one of those?!”
Photography
In 1990, I began studies in photography at the University of Michigan School of Art, focussing on medium/large format, studio lighting and print development. After moving to New York City, I assisted in commercial studios and at the International Center of Photography. I also worked in the photo research department of McGraw-Hill publishers (College Textbook department) from 1992-1995.
Singing
Classical singing was my first love, especially early and 20th century music. By the age of 16, I was already singing roles in local professional opera productions. At 17, I won a scholarship to attend Interlochen Arts Academy. In my first year at the University of Michigan School of Music, I took part in an open casting call with about 200 other hopefuls and successfully landed one of the 12 parts in a Michigan Opera Theater production of the Pirates of Penzance. Later that semester, I landed a professional gig for the entire summer at the Ohio Light Opera Company. It was a short, but eventful and extremely enlightening ride. I learned much about the workings of the professional and educational classical music industry in those few, early years.
Backstage with Leanord Bernstein