Articles

Managing A Creative Process - The Exhibition Budgeting
By Milton McClaskey

Using the words creative and budget in the same sentence sets up a ringing cognitive dissidence in the minds of many (whereas the expression creative accounting doesn’t but instead brings up thoughts of criminal intent or tax evasion) because the words seem to come from opposing camps: the first describing a freewheeling, dancing, laughing, unrestrained joyful process and the second a staid, buttoned down, inflexible and completely under control activity. The first determinedly and deliberately going out of bounds at every opportunity and the second equally determined to keep everything contained and defend the boundaries against all assaults.

But I think of it differently. I see budgeting as a creative process in and of itself as well as a tool that can be used to manage a creative process and further, I see it as the first critical step in the process of creating a new museum show or exhibition. Yes, budgets can be about control and they are certainly about constraints and setting limits but they can also be seen as providing a map or at least defining the territory to be explored and providing markers and milestones to track the progress. Unlimited time and funds do not necessarily produce anything and why would they? From my perspective, the limitations set by a budget can be the challenge that prompts a creative response that might otherwise never arise.

Just as the creative process is about exploration and opportunity, about following intriguing ideas to see where they might lead, the budget isn’t a fixed thing but rather than ongoing, adaptive process to take advantage of opportunities uncovered in realizing a project. Budgets are both fixed, in that you have a total budget that cannot be exceeded, and flexible, in that within the fixed budget moneys can be reallocated or moved around to fund the opportunities that develop. It is normal to have undefined contingency money within a budget, particularly during the early stages of a project. But just as it is critical to allocate the available money to the different areas that have to be funded it is equally important that funds be distributed over time so that they are preserved and available when they are needed.

I try to follow three rules when I create a project budget. The first I learned from a talk given by a budget manager from NASA and his rule, stated simply, was: Make sure to start with enough money! The second rule I learned from Don Simmons, a soft-spoken contract manager for RISE Alaska with whom I worked on a recent project: Don’t leave anything out. According to Don, the biggest problems with any project budget are those things that aren’t included in it. These are things that people forgot, glossed over, overlooked or, and this happens a lot, deliberately didn’t include because they knew these items were going to be expensive and would either be cut right away if they could be or if they couldn’t be cut, would push other things out of the budget. Or maybe everything is included in a budget but certain items are “ optimistically” funded, which is to say that the value assigned to them doesn’t reflect their real cost. This is like an unfunded mandate in a bill approved by congress. It looks great to have the item in the plan, everybody is happy at the bill signing, chattering about the bill and all the great things that will happen as a result but, at some point down the road, the cold reality dawns and either the item is dropped or the funding for something else is cut to free up money for it. And this leads us to the third rule: No magical thinking. Assign realistic costs to each item.

Of course, if you pay attention to the second and third rules, the first rule, start with enough money, takes care of itself. Maybe there are only two rules that need to be followed: don’t leave anything out of the budget and assign realistic costs to each item.Do these two things and you will produce a workable project budget.

But how do you know at the beginning of a project, before you even know what exactly it is you are trying to create, what components or activities you have to fund? In other words, how can you be sure to include everything if you don’t even know what the completed project will end up being, let along what all the component parts of this project might be? Such is usually the state of things at the beginning of a project, whether one is doing one exhibit or and entire museum. One usually doesn’t have a very clear idea of what the final product is going to be, in spite of all the high-minded concepts that have been presented with many a grand flourish and trotted about dressed up in all their marketing fineness.

It helps to have been through a similar project before because at least you have some sense for the number and types of activities or line items you will need to fund in your budget. If you haven’t, it is good to talk to one and preferably several people who have managed something like what you are planning the budget for, if for no other reason than that they might be able to tell you what took them by surprise in their projects. Those things they forgot to include or where unanticipated and therefore unbudgeted problems arose. It will be useful if, before you have these discussions, you make an attempt to enumerate the tasks or costs that you know about, no matter how vague or non-specific. Just make a list or several lists.

It is useful while thinking through a new project and listing activities and costs, to think about the schedule of activities or the order in which tasks need to occur and to separate the various tasks and cost items into phases. Activities change over the course of a project and thinking about the project in terms of phases can be helpful in prompting one to think in more detail about the work to be done, which helps one identify likely expenses or additional cost categories. For example, site security might not be a cost to the exhibition budget while the contractor has control of the site and the building but what about when their work is complete and exhibit installation is underway? The same might be true of utility costs or cleaning. I typically make separate lists for the different kinds of work. This might mean creating a worksheet for tasks involved in coordinating with the owner, architect or contractor, another for exhibit design and another for exhibit fabrication and so on. And the work or tasks listed on these sheets are grouped according to time or the phase of work.

I may assign hours, labor rates and materials costs to some line items while others I may just assign a lump sum until I have a better idea of the project. In the beginning of a project I assign contingency costs to help cover those things that aren’t anticipated. In truth, early budgets are full of placeholders and it is good to have a lot of them to distribute funds throughout the project. You may overestimate the cost of some things but that is less of a problem than underestimating. And by spreading the money across the project into many small pockets there is less of a tendency to imagine that you have plenty of cash or, worse yet, have someone who is reviewing the budget gets the impression that there are large sums of unallocated funds that can be “repurposed”! Those little pockets will all get real names as the project moves forward. Ultimately I summarize all the cost categories on the worksheets and link them to a summary sheet that provides the cumulative total or the project budget.

Come to think of it, I have a fourth rule: create the budget first, this way you're more likely to "have enough budget" at the outset.

Return to top of page