Living Arts is a nonprofit organization that provides arts education to over 3,600 children annually. They were having problems managing their digital files, including late payments to teachers, lost work, and issues arising from employee turnover. The organization had an artist-led culture that valued creativity over structure. The consultants addressed the file management issues by taking a flexible, decentralized approach that fit with Living Arts' culture, emphasizing options rather than rigid prescriptions to organize files in a way that balanced structure and individual expression.

1. LIVING ARTS
DETROIT
SI501 Tinge

2. When art meets
businessOr, how do you deal with a creative client that has a business problem?

3. Their mission:
Empowering youth through
arts education

4. 3,600children
Impacted through arts education that improves adolescent confidence, freedom of
expression, and academic performance

5. Their problem:
Managing their digital files

6. Late paymentsOf teachers
InaccurateDue to using outdated files
Lost workFrom improper archiving

7. ● Hard to manage history files
● Time-consuming when searching files
● Impossible to transfer the ownership
from old employees
What they told
us:

8. What we
discovered:They are fundamentally an artist-led culture

9. They’d tried the
“business”
approach before
attempt

10. Locking down
files
Lasted: 1 week

11. So we knew we’d have
to do something
Less formal

12. Decentralization
Caution
Inconsistency
WHAT TO ADDRESS:

13. Decentralization
∎ Two File Systems
∎ Organizational logic of file systems are very different
∎ No company-based Google Drive

14. Inconsistency
∎ Everyone interprets file system differently
∎ No standards for saving and accessing files from 2 locations

15. Caution
∎ High turnover
∎ Minimal training
∎ Everyone has their own niche
∎ Unwilling to interfere with others’ niche

16. How we
addressed it

18. Paths,
not
Padlocks

19. And options,
not
prescriptions
BetterGood Best

20. In sum
∎ The problem may not always be on the surface
∎ While Living Arts understood the symptoms, they didn’t see
how their “art” was impacting their “business”
∎ Any solutions, to really solve the issue, needed to fit their
culture
∎ Their artist-led culture was something for us to embrace!

21. THANKS
!
Any questions?

22. Works cited
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