Workart – A Gestão e a Arte

This paper looks into the intersection of art fields and management and tries to measure the positive impact that this brings into management, and shows how can art be a form of management consulting to companies. This form of consulting has been materialized, in the last six decades, in the Workart concept. In this paper we try to show the benefices, limitations and principle flaws of this concept. After the explanation, and history, of the concept, Workart, we present a method proposition. We’ve chosen the Learning Lab Denmark method, the CoLLab. We’ve tried to show the multiples layers of the method and, in a more practical sense, the steps needed to take to implement it. The presentation of this method is an illustration of the work needed to an efficient implementation of workart. Once the concept and method of implementation cleared we present two international working cases: the Unilever UK with Catalyst and the Babson Colleg with the entrepreneurial management MBA. The two cases are the practical application of the previous concepts and permit to see the goods and bads of this application in business and education. Then we focus in the Portuguese reality. In this field we present three cases: the Unicer, the Serralves Foundation and the Academia das Emoções. The first two cases are not conclusive because the Unicer program is not an intentional application of the Workart concept and has a lack of propose and the Serralves Foundation program has been cut down in an early stage of maturation without having material results. The last case, Academia das Emoções, although the short time of activity is the more mature and well succeed case in applying the Workart concept into Portuguese business reality. With this paper we try to show the benefices of applying the Workart concept in management, as a way of bringing creativity into companies, multiples angles to look to education, human resources issues and problem solving.