CAREER FOCUS/Arts Administration: As an administrator, you can still be part of the arts in whatever area that is of interest to you. Olivia Kelly reports. The cultural sector has benefited from the buoyancy of the Irish economy

You may not be the next Ronan Keating or Samantha Mumba, but could you be the next Louis Walsh? Do you see yourself as the "man behind the music", or would you like to run an art gallery, or organise events for a theatre or a museum, or perhaps plan the arts season for a community group? If you have a flair for organisation and an interest in the arts and culture (high or low), a career in arts management might be for you.

"We're looking for the Paul McGuinnesses and Louis Walshes of this world," says Barry McIntyre, head of the BA in business studies with arts management at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology. "The whole area of the arts really needs good business and organisation skills. Creative people can be hard to manage and arts managers help bring structure to creative plans," he says.

The arts sector is increasingly in need of more sophisticated management skills, McIntyre say, and the Dún Laoghaire course is a business degree with an arts orientation. "We're building core skills in marketing, finance, economics and law and applying them to the creative world," he says.

Art management and administration is very much a vocational area, says Anne Kelly, head of the master's in cultural policy and arts management at UCD. "The people who choose this route are generally very active and have a strong passion for a music or drama or visual arts - they don't necessarily see themselves as performers, but they will see themselves as part of the artistic world."

Arts administration can involve anything from working as a receptionist in a gallery all the way up to directing a museum, Kelly says. Arts administration doesn't have a particularly clear career structure, she says, but as the UCD programme is a master's degree, graduates can expect to enter at the higher end of the business.

Arts administrators and managers find work in all aspects of the music industry; in galleries, theatres and museums, in heritage centres, independent film production and other visual art forms. With an increasing emphasis on making art accessible and bringing it into the community, local authorities are becoming significant employers of arts managers.

"All local authorities now employ arts officers," Kelly says. "They are responsible for devising policy, planning an arts programme for the county, assisting in it's delivery and linking with community groups to encourage more people into the area."

Arts managers working in museums are distinct from curators, says Kelly, and work more in the services side of the organisation. "Arts administrators will be found in the marketing and education departments of museums or working in an outreach capacity, liaising between the museum and the community."

The area of arts and culture policy has been a significant growth area in the last number of years and in particular the increase in funding for the arts has seen a need for specialists in the area, Kelly says. "For the most part, the arts are subsidised, so there are quite a number of jobs in devising and implementing funding policy. Arts managers must have a detailed knowledge of art policy from an Irish and international perspective."

Some graduates find work in commercial galleries, others choose to set up their own galleries or management companies. RTÉ also employs arts administrators, in various capacities such as the management of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.

The breadth of the cultural industry means that the job opportunities for arts managers are quite varied and their current job prospects are quite favourable, she says. "The cultural sector has benefited from the buoyancy of the Irish economy and while the arts administration area still needs development, at middle-management level there are still plenty of good opportunities."

Arts management also offers good travel opportunities, working for galleries and cultural organisations in other countries.