Vision First: Educating Passion-Driven Arts Leaders for a Transformative Future

Todd Dellinger

Founder & program coordinator Arts & Entertainment Industries Management, Rider University

   April 11, 2026

What if we began not with strategy—but with vision?

Across my career as an arts executive - from dramatically transforming and saving the world renowned Graham institution to successfully leading a Graham protege's company through the shattering period surrounding 9/11 to building my own multi-arts producing and educational company and over the last 15 years leading an academic program that trains others - one principle continues to rise above all others: the most effective, resilient, and innovative leaders are those who are grounded in a clearly articulated “deepest why.” Not a surface-level mission statement—but a deeply examined, passion-driven vision that shapes decision-making, fuels persistence, and inspires others.

As we educate the next generation of arts and entertainment leaders, we must shift from purely skills-based instruction that starts with an all-too-often corporatized and sanitized mission construct to deeply vision-centered point-of-departure for both personal and professional development. This doesn’t replace technical rigor nor the essential task of effective mission-building —i t amplifies it.  

Too often, vision is treated merely as branding language, if it surfaces at all, for even the most passion-based institutions of arts, culture and entertainment. It often is something considered, polished and positioned after the real work is done - an afterthought, if thought of in any truly meaningful way at all. In reality, vision is the engine. When it informs programming choices, funding strategies, policy positions, and organizational culture, it has true power to transform. Whether developing a touring production, designing a cultural district, or building a community engagement initiative, leaders must first ask: Why does this work matter—deeply and specifically? Who does it serve—and how does it transform them - and at its deepest, how does it transform the world in which we live?

Passion is frequently misunderstood as enthusiasm. In leadership education, it must be reframed as disciplined curiosity and sustained inquiry. Passion-driven leaders are those willing to interrogate assumptions, engage communities authentically, and remain open to evolution. They do not impose vision—they discover and refine it through listening, research, and lived experience.

Vision cannot exist in a vacuum. Drawing from creative placemaking and community cultural development frameworks, students must learn to build a “thick” definition of community—one that includes relationships, cultural traditions, informal leadership, and lived realities. Vision, in this sense, becomes not just personal—but relational. It is co-informed by the communities leaders aim to serve.

Integration Across Disciplines: A vision-centered leader moves fluidly across domains: In policy, we envision worlds where legislation shapes access, equity, and expression. In fundraising, we translate vision into compelling cases for support. In production and touring, we align logistics with vision-centered purpose considering first and foremost audience impact. In venue and patron services, they design experiences that embody values and build belonging. When vision is clear, these areas are no longer siloed—they become integrated expressions of a unified intent.

Educating the Whole Leader: Preparing future leaders requires more than lectures and case studies. It demands: Reflective practices that surface personal values and motivations; Real-world applications that test and refine vision under pressure; Cross-sector analysis that connects art to economics, policy, and community impact; A willingness to embrace complexity, ambiguity, and change In short, we must educate not just what leaders do—but who they are and why they lead. And to do this, we must instill in them the necessity of deeply exploring and articulating their own personal vision - of themselves, of arts as transformative vessels and vehicles of the human spirit, and of the world they hope to advance thru the full engagement of vision-based action.

The Call Forward: In a rapidly-shifting cultural and economic landscape, technical competence alone is insufficient. The leaders who will shape the future of the arts are those who are passionately connected to a vision for themselves and who can articulate a compelling, passion-driven vision for those institutions and individuals they seek to lead. From such vision, a mission of clearly articulated, "extraordinariness of how" structured mission can flow, from which systems and cultures align - creating a dynamic ecostystem capable of sustaining institutions, constituents, communities through challenge and change.

Vision is not a luxury. It is leadership.

#ArtsLeadership #CreativeEconomy #ArtsEducation #LeadershipDevelopment #VisionForward

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Arts Integration: A Cycle of Learning and Life

Todd Dellinger Founder & program coordinator Arts & Entertainment Industries Management, Rider University 

April 16, 2026

There are moments in teaching when the throughline of one’s life’s work becomes unmistakably clear—when past, present, and future collapse into a single, deeply meaningful exchange. I am experiencing one of those moments now.

As an undergraduate and graduate student at American University, I had the profound privilege of working as an arts educator across the greater Washington, D.C. region—Southeast D.C., Fairfax County, Montgomery County, and beyond. In classrooms and community centers, often with at-risk youth, I engaged in creative drama, creative movement, and visual storytelling—using the arts not simply as enrichment, but as a means of understanding the world, processing lived experience, and building voice.

Even then, I understood—perhaps intuitively—that the arts were not peripheral to learning. They were central. They were connective tissue. They were, and remain, a powerful vehicle for what we now more formally describe as community cultural development and creative placemaking. That early work continues to shape everything I do today.

In my role as founder and program manager of the Arts & Entertainment Industries Management program at Rider University, I designed and teach our Arts Outreach & Education course as a required, culminating experience—one that asks students to move beyond theory and into practice. At its core is a commitment to the idea that arts leaders must be community builders: individuals who understand how to listen, engage, and co-create with the communities they serve.

This semester, that commitment has taken on an especially dynamic form. As part of their final Community Cultural Development projects, my students are developing arts-integrated initiatives—programs that intentionally weave artistic practice into broader learning, social, and civic contexts. These are not abstract exercises; they are grounded, applied explorations of how the arts can deepen learning, expand access, and activate communities.

To support this work, I am thrilled to welcome back into my classroom a formative influence from my own journey: Dr. Gail Humphries. Dr. Humphries, whose work on arts integration has helped define the field, was my professor years ago at American University. Today, she joins us as a colleague and collaborator—Zooming into our classroom to guide students through the principles and practices outlined in her book on Arts Integration. Through case studies and applied frameworks, her work demonstrates how learning is transformed when artistic processes are embedded across disciplines—how students not only acquire knowledge, but construct meaning.

Together, we are engaging students in a deep exploration of learning theory—moving across behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism—while also activating Howard Gardner’s framework of Multiple Intelligences as a lens for inclusive, differentiated, and human-centered education.

But more importantly, we are modeling what it means to do this work. Through creative exploration, iterative design, analysis, and feedback, students are not simply studying arts integration—they are living it. They are wrestling with how to design programs that meet communities where they are, that honor cultural context, and that invite participation, expression, and transformation.

For me, this moment is also deeply personal. To move from student to teacher, and now to colleague—alongside someone who helped shape my own understanding of arts-based learning—is both humbling and profoundly affirming. It is a reminder that education, at its best, is a continuum: a shared, evolving practice of inquiry, mentorship, and mutual growth. And it reinforces what I have long believed: That the future of arts leadership lies not only in production, management, or policy—but in the ability to harness the arts as a force for connection, understanding, and human development.

This is the work I remain deeply committed to—alongside my terrifically inquisitive and engaged students, my colleagues current and past, and the communities we serve. For authoritative and applicable practice and case representation of the power of arts as integration in educational settings, click: Arts Integration in Education: Theory, Impact, Practice

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Experiential Learning, Networks, and the “Deep Why”: Taking the Classroom to New York City

Todd Dellinger

Founder & program coordinator Arts & Entertainment Industries Management, Rider University  

April 25, 2026. 

Each spring, over five consecutive Fridays, I take a cohort of senior Arts & Entertainment Industry Management (AEIM) majors from Rider University into New York City for a course I’ve developed and refined over the past 15 years: New York Arts & Entertainment Networking. Over the span of those weeks, we engage directly with more than twenty leading arts and entertainment institutions and the professionals who shape them.

This is not a field trip. It is not observational. It is immersive, relational, and deeply intentional. It's experiential learning in its fullest sense. We gain wisened insights on vision-centric leadership from the President of Carnegie Hall, engage on education, executive leadership and development with leaders of New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. We explore  with leadership from Concord’s Worldwide Theatrical Licensing division, legal professionals at Sony Music, creative and production teams at The Public Theater, program leaders at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and many others among the 30 or so professionals with whom we meet whose daily work defines the vitality of our field.

There's a growing body of research reinforcing what many of us in applied and professional education have long understood intuitively: students learn more deeply—and more durably—when they are actively engaged in real-world contexts.

Studies from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) consistently demonstrate that high-impact practices—internships, field-based learning, and sustained professional engagement—lead to:

• Increased student retention and persistence

• Stronger critical thinking and integrative learning skills

• Greater career clarity and confidence

• Enhanced post-graduate employability and network access

LinkedIn’s own workforce insights have noted that up to 85% of jobs are filled through networking—an often-cited statistic that, while variable in its exact percentage across studies, underscores a truth our students quickly come to understand firsthand: relationships matter. In our field, they matter profoundly.

What makes this course particularly meaningful to me is that it exists within a program I built at Rider University fifteen years ago—an Arts & Entertainment Industries Management program designed from the ground up to reflect the realities of the industry. This course is, in many ways, its capstone expression.

Our students are not just meeting professionals. They're entering into conversations with individuals who are actively shaping the future of arts and entertainment. They are asking questions, making impressions, and beginning to see themselves as part of this professional ecosystem. Even more powerfully, they are reconnecting with alumni of the program—former students who once sat in their seats and are now building dynamic careers:

• On the legal team at Sony Music

• In educational programming with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

• In funding partnerships with the historic Henry Street Settlement

• In programming for the evolving performance spaces of Battery Park City

These moments create a full-circle experience that is difficult to replicate in any traditional classroom setting. Our seniors see not just possibility—but trajectory.

Reflection & Synthesis

Each week, students complete in-depth synthesis writing—processing not only what they heard, but how it connects to their own emerging professional identities. By the end of the course, they produce a final summative reflection exploring the throughlines across all engagements.

And those throughlines are strikingly consistent.

They hear—again and again—from leaders across disciplines:

• The necessity of building and maintaining networks—not transactionally, but authentically

• The importance of mentorship—both seeking it and, eventually, becoming it

• The value of curiosity as a professional habit

• And perhaps most importantly, the need to identify and articulate a “deep why”

That “deep why”—a concept we return to throughout our curriculum—becomes a kind of internal compass, anchoring decision-making, sustaining resilience, and shaping a vision for both career and life. It fuels the curiosity which keeps us vitally connected to ourselves and to one another. In one of our recent visits, the vision-centric leader of Carnegie Hall, Clive Gillinson, spoke about the importance of always looking “’round the corner”—of maintaining a forward-facing curiosity about what comes next, and how this is one of the inherent traits he values in others, particualrly those who seek to be part of his team. It is that sense of curiosity that orients arts & cultural institutions to serve individuals and communities in meaningful ways.

I love the idea of always looking 'round the corner, as it reflects not only the mindset of great arts leaders, but the kind of mindset we hope to instill in our students: one that is visionary, adaptive, and grounded in purpose.

As I move through these Fridays each spring and as I've just today wrapped my thirteenth year of leading them, I'm reminded of my own journey—of the mentors who opened doors, the colleagues who shared wisdom, and the networks that made my path possible. To now be in a position to offer that access—to share not just knowledge, but relationships—is, quite simply, one of the great privileges of my professional life.

Experiential learning, at its best, is not just about exposure, but about transformation... about helping students see themselves not as observers of the field—but as active contributors to it. When that shift happens—when a student begins to recognize their place within a living, breathing professional community education does what it is meant to do... It opens the door.

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ArtBEAST XIII: A Reflection on Building, Belonging, and the Future of Live Arts

Todd Dellinger

Founder & program coordinator Arts & Entertainment Industries Management, Rider University

May 7, 2026

As an educator and program builder, the work reveals itself in its fullest and most meaningful form when what you have long believed, designed for, and worked toward comes alive in real time, through people, through process, and through shared experience. This past week offered one of those moments.

Alongside my Arts Events & Festivals students, I had the privilege of producing our thirteenth annual ArtBEAST live arts event at Rider University. Thirteen years into this endeavor, it continues to affirm something I have held as foundational since first building our Arts & Entertainment Industries Management program fifteen years ago: that future leaders of the arts cannot be developed solely through theory or abstraction. They must build. They must create. They must experience the work in its full complexity—its challenges, its energy, its unpredictability, and its profound capacity to connect.

ArtBEAST is, in many ways, one of the clearest expressions of that philosophy. What begins as an idea—this year, “Spirit Beast: Believe with All Your Arts”—becomes a living, breathing event through a process that asks students to engage every layer of what it means to produce within our field. They move from vision into mission, from mission into identity, from identity into programming, and from programming into execution and reflection. And critically, they do so not as an academic exercise, but as a real responsibility—one that carries the weight and promise of engaging an audience, building a space, and creating something that has the potential to matter.

That sense of “mattering” feels especially urgent in the current moment. We are living in a time where digital and virtual forms of entertainment—many of them now increasingly AI-generated—are ubiquitous. They are efficient, scalable, and often impressive in their own right yet, what continues to distinguish live arts experiences is something fundamentally human: presence. The ability to gather, to engage, to create and respond in real time, to feel part of something unfolding around and with you are not incidental. They are, I would argue, essential to the ongoing vitality of our industry.

What our students are learning through experiences like ArtBEAST is not simply how to “put on an event,” but how to shape environments in which that kind of presence can occur—where connection is not passive, but active; where audiences are not observers, but participants; where creativity is not presented at a distance, but invited, shared, and discovered.

This year’s event featured more than twenty-five participatory arts-making and engagement opportunities as well as live performance or art showcasing from over thirty creatives from within our Department of Performing Arts and beyond. Each activity was conceived, developed, and implemented by the student team. 

Beyond the scope or scale of the event itself, what continues to strike me most deeply is what happens within and around it. There is, first, the process of building together. Producing something of this magnitude requires students to navigate collaboration in its most real and demanding form—to lead and to listen, to adapt and to problem-solve, to support one another while maintaining a shared standard of excellence. It is, at times, messy and complex, but it is precisely within that process of turning chaos into cohesiveness that something more lasting is formed: a sense of collective ownership, a shared creative identity, and a deeper understanding of what it means to contribute to something larger than oneself.

And then there are the moments that emerge from the audience—moments that remind us why this work matters beyond the classroom, beyond the program, and beyond even the professional pathways these students will enter. At this year’s ArtBEAST, an older couple attended after reading about the event in a local paper. What was remarkable was not simply their presence, but their total and immersive engagement in all that we had to offer. They moved through the event not as observers, but as full participants—embracing every opportunity to create, to explore, and to connect. They made masks, crafted “belief” ribbons and placed them on our legacy tree, participated in tie-dye, and immersed themselves in each experience we had designed.

At one point, the wife shared something with me that deeply resonated and affirmed what the work is all about. She described the experience as a kind of reclaiming of lost youth. Growing up, she explained, in what she characterized as a particularly traditional Asian household of a certain time, her life had been structured almost entirely around study and work. There had been little space for creative exploration, little encouragement to engage in art-making simply for the sake of expression or joy. She spoke, quite candidly, about never having felt that she could allow her creative spirit to live.

And yet here she was, several decades later, moving freely from one creative experience to another—fully present, fully engaged, and unmistakably joyful. I had the opportunity to share two of those moments alongside her and her husband, witnessing firsthand the kind of openness and immediacy that only a live, participatory arts environment can invite. It struck me then, quite powerfully, that what our students had created extended far beyond an event. They had created a space in which someone could reconnect with a part of themselves that had long been set aside. A space in which creativity was not judged, but welcomed. A space in which community was not assumed, but actively built through shared experience. That, to me, is the essence of what the arts can do. And it is also where my sense of optimism for the future of our field takes root.

Working with these students—most of them in their senior year, having moved through the arc of our uniquely vision-centric program—I see a generation of emerging leaders who understand, in a deeply internalized way, the importance of vision-forward thinking. They approach their work not as a series of tasks, but as an intentional process in which vision informs mission, and mission shapes every subsequent choice. They recognize that what they create has impact—not only in terms of audience engagement, but in terms of human experience.

I see it in their commitment to live, original creation. I see it in their desire to build experiences that are shared rather than consumed in isolation. I see it in the way they interact—with one another, with their peers, and with the community members who enter the spaces they create. There is confidence there, certainly, but also a kind of grounded joy—a recognition of what they have accomplished together, and of what is possible moving forward.

In a world where so much content can now be generated without human presence, what these students are choosing to do feels both deliberate and necessary. They are choosing to gather people. To create in real time. To build environments where connection, expression, and discovery can occur in ways that cannot be replicated by any algorithm.

As I reflect on this thirteenth ArtBEAST and fifteenth year of building a program which seeks to live more as an ecology whose heartbeat is vision, I am reminded that experiences like this are not simply educational exercises. They are, in many respects, laboratories for the future of our industry—spaces in which emerging leaders test ideas, develop instincts, and begin to understand the true reach of their work. And if this year is any indication, that future remains not only viable, but deeply, vibrantly human.