"Great! I got in! Now what?"

Abstract

The Ministry of Education of the Republic of Lithuania has recently approved the assessment procedures for entrance examinations in the arts and arts education in the country. Since 2009, common entrance policies are applied in the arts‟ schools‟ exams leaving specific task management aside. There is the research question: 1) how can the artistic abilities of the student be assessed, 2) how to deal in the future with the students who passed the exams but fail in completing the creative tasks, and 3) what are the reasons and consequences of the mentioned “innovations”. The main research question is what a culture manager is, and how to deal with this Centaurus of social sciences and humanities? The series of interviews with the students and professors of three higher education institutions: Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, Lithuanian Academy of Theatre and Music and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University are provided as qualitative research results of the paper. Very often the schools accept potential candidates without any particular cultural experience, as the new common laws do not require any of this. The paper seeks finding answers on how to manage the process of candidate selection, in order to ensure new potential for the future art managers and their professionalism.