KEY POINTS:
There are jobs that just finance the weekend - ones where making the money is the primary object, and there are jobs you do as a vocation, for the love of it. However, does doing what you love mean not making the money? Not always. Take the arts
- a job that is usually done as 'for the love of it'. Is it possible to have a job in the arts and still earn decent sugar?
David Malacari, festival director and chief executive of the Auckland Festival (AK07), which is running this month, says yes. Malacari has more than 30 years experience in the cultural sector as a general manager, festival director, writer, program manager, actor and lighting designer.
So how has he achieved it? Malacari says he fell into the arts as a career rather than choosing it. It's different now, he says, people choose. He intended studying law in Perth, where he lived at the time, but became involved in the university's dramatic society and fell in love with theatre. He wanted to be an actor, but realised he was probably not good enough and there would be no continuity of work, and in Perth there was not much opportunity.
"I didn't want to be an amateur," he says, and soon decided that the technical side appealed to him.
"There's always work available, be it for theatre, rock 'n' roll events, concerts or film. It was something I could do in the arts that promised regular employment."
At this stage he went into stage-managing and lighting design. "This wasn't my life's work - I was paddling around."
He moved to Brisbane and then Sydney and worked at the Opera House and other smaller companies, gaining experience in production management and lighting design.
"I am someone who needs a creative outlet."
He soon became tired of the low wages in theatre at the time and turned to the film industry, but quickly became tired of "that machine."
"In the film industry everyone is a cog. In live theatre the scale is more human and your input is reflected in the results."
So Malacari went back to live theatre. In his late 20s he became involved in international tours for the Sydney Dance Company. But there was a point, when his partner became pregnant, that he decided he needed a more stable career.
"I almost gave up the theatre and began writing and directing for corporate videos."
Instead he got the opportunity to become involved in the world-famous Adelaide Festival.
"This was serendipitous," he says.
Malacari stayed there for 12 years working as a production manager and then programme director. He directed two festivals under contract for the Adelaide Festival in India (1996) and then London (2000).
"I now had expertise in arts management and producing festivals."
In 2001 Malacari became general manager of a start-up family theatre company, Windmill Performing arts. He stayed there for three years, producing tours of North America and Japan. In 2004 he took the job to develop the Auckland Festival.
"I was keen to do a new festival. It had teething problems, but there was a strong programme in place. Auckland is a big city, and it's harder to run a festival in a bigger rather than a smaller place, particularly when a city is so diverse and there is no centre of town."
But the Auckland Festival is growing. People are getting over their "summer beach malaise" and enjoying being challenged by performances that would never come here if it were not for the festival. The advantage for the local arts community of having a festival here is it creates great opportunities for local artists to put on ambitious projects. Audiences tend to be more adventurous during a festival.
"The festival is an opportunity to make Auckland the cultural capital of the South Pacific. It's about taking its cultural diversity to advantage." As can be seen, David Malacari has found a way to make a decent living out of the arts, but admits he has fallen into a few areas of his career without planning. Asked whether it is possible to plan for a corporate arts career, Malacari is enthusiastic.
"Arts employs an enormous number of people. Salaries have improved, but part of it is love. It's a vocation. Feeling like you're making a difference with your life's work. There's plenty of job satisfaction."
He suggests people can look at the technical side - sound/lighting, management of equipments, getting into technical services. Failing that, there's arts management. "Be in the support team, organising contracts, payment, administration, artistic administration and more."
Or think about venue management. "Buildings have to be managed and maintained. Booking systems have to be produced. There's the publicity side of things, marketing, research for what will appeal to what communities, facilitation and more."
Malacari has three suggestions of how to get into the arts field.
1. Train in another field and bring those skills into the arts. For example marketing or accounting - any skills that the arts need. You could even change over to the arts mid-career if you have qualifications of this sort.
2. Be a technical person. You can do a technical management course in tertiary education.
3. Be an artist. Go to drama school. If you want to take on a more administrative role in the arts, then there are arts management courses you can take.
Malacari stresses that there are always openings for people in the arts and moving into the field mid-career is not unheard of.
"Now there are proper career paths in arts. People can make it their life's work without having to forego having a family."
He says usually the artists have a tunnel vision, so the support staff is very important. "We serve the artists and make sure that the environment is created so the arts can get done. It's a complex area and requires lots of people with different skills."
He says when he advertises for staff, he gets replies from people from all sorts of areas.
"They often have the skills we need, but need to gain industry knowledge. That is fine. They like the environment and can learn the industry quite quickly,"he says. "To get a job in the arts you need to convince the employer you really want the job, that you're passionate about it and open about learning new things."
As far as becoming a general manager of a festival, Malacari says that cannot be planned. "I fell into it." he says.
He says it was unlikely that someone who's 20 or 22 would or should look at such a narrow path, pointing out that very few people would say: "I want to be the general manager of that global oil company or CEO of that big business.
"In any industry you start to specialise. You could get a senior position in various areas. I have the skills set that allows me to do festival management, but there are a few in the world and they tend to move around.
"There's always some clever person ready to take your place."
The Auckland Festival employs five full-time staff and 25 at the moment to run the festival. Being a bi-annual event, it doesn't need a big full-time staff. Those on contract for the festival often get other work for other arts events, be it in Edinburgh or Wellington. "You start off being reasonably mobile and then more permanent and structured."
He says it's becoming more difficult to find people willing to go on tours and do apprenticeships because the field has become more professional. People get their qualifications and then don't want to do the tour work.
"There are new challenges in the field now that arts is a respectable occupation. When I was young I had few role models. People in the arts all seemed to be young.
"But now the same people tend to have stayed. New people in the industry have access to older and wiser mentors. This is important in all career paths - being able to spot someone in the business that can be developed. I did have mentors along the way - I wouldn't be where I am now without them. To get into a senior position anywhere you need to be recognised."
Malacari says his 30-year career in the arts has been "driven by something intangible."
"It's a sense of doing something above and beyond yourself."
