Abstract
Experience Makers: Careers in Live Events pulls back the curtain on the artists and artisans who create the fantastic worlds of live arts, cultural and entertainment events to reveal an abundance of careers available to makers of all stripes.
This book follows the working lives of makers in the performing arts, themed entertainment, museum exhibitions, parade floats, haunted attractions, live music concerts, houses of worship, retail experiences, immersive environments, living history sites, and more. The skills of a maker are universal and this book shows how people enlist those skills to cross the porous borders of live events into new fields and professions. Readers will discover careers in design, engineering, fabrication and operation across a wide range of disciplines from costuming to welding and from painting to automation.
Beyond enumerating the occupations of makers, this book provides a lucid examination of contemporary careers in live events, informed by the tools of ethnography and supported by original research, quantitative data, and photographic documentation. This study reveals false divisions between the aligned fields of live events with impacts on education and training, on organizational relationships and collaborations, on workforce development, and on techniques and best practices.
This book is for makers and students from any background who are curious about applying their skills to careers in live events. It reveals an industry that thrives on bringing people together with diverse talents to create extraordinary experiences.
click to view full proposal as PDF
click to view introduction as PDF
Foundational Research
In addition to foundational reading and research, I joined two professional organizations, The Themed Entertainment Association and The American Alliance of Museums to lay groundwork in these adjacent fields. During my academic research leave in the spring of 2022, I conducted fourty-two interviews of professionals around the country from a wide range of organizations. They involved a broad cross-section of makers including founders, presidents, managers, designers, and fabricators. I also conducted a preliminary site visit at Costume Specialists, a major design/fabrication company for mascot and corporate costumes around the world. Four of the makers interviewed are shown below.
Survey
I engaged with SMU Data Arts to develop and deploy a survey instrument to learn about the makers in our country across the many fields of live events. We created the 2022 Live Arts, Culture and Entertainment (LACE) Survey of Workforce Demographics which was open from September 12th through November 4th and garnered 651 responses. We structured the survey to parallel a 2021 survey of theatre industry demographics conducted by USITT in order to allow for an apples-to-apples data comparison. The survey site, survey document, and draft analysis are available via links on the right.
To support this work, I applied for and was awarded USITT’s inaugural PURPOSE Grant of $10,050. The grant program was established to support investigations into industry restart efforts including changed production operations, increased sustainability of physical resources, and/or improved working conditions for all involved artists and technicians.
Further Study
In the spring of 2023, I applied for and was awarded Ohio State's Arts and Humanities New Project Grant of $5,000 to support upcoming research and travel on this project. In her letter of support for the grant, the chair of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts wrote:
"Steinmetz has already been instrumental at reaching across these interdisciplinary boundaries here, and the information he gleans from this project will help shape the pedagogy that will prepare our students for the industry of the future."
click to view survey website
click to view survey document as PDF
click to view draft survey analysis as PDF
Publication
Experience Makers: Careers in Live Events is currently under contract by Routledge with a goal generating a draft manuscript by the end of 2024. The primary aim of the book is career development—to expose makers to a broad range of careers in live events. It will not be a guidebook for landing an industry-specific job, but rather a study that reveals the working lives of makers in these disparate fields and demonstrates the transferable skills they all share. One of the reviewers at Routledge stated:
“I would be excited to see the cultural shift in the industry by educating our students and the next generation of artists to truly explore all fields of employment and utilize their transferable skills.”