Students in Arnold Breman’s International Arts Management class are given the valuable opportunity to correspond with and assist managers working for arts organizations throughout the world. The global mentorship program pairs students with arts managers from countries ranging from Uganda, to Iran, to Malaysia. Throughout the course, students learn about their mentors’ cultures and how culture relates to their work as an arts administrator. Corresponding weekly via email, each student/mentor pair comes up with a project for the student to produce for the organization.

     Mentors are secured by Breman, through relationships he has established during his years of working in international arts management and through his association with WOMEX, a world music organization with several thousand members from all over the world. Coming from twenty-four countries, spanning five continents, and representing twenty-seven different arts organizations, mentors act as resources for the students and supervise their work. Students have worked on projects with organizations such as the Shetland Arts Trust in the Shetland Isles, UK; Drum Drum Ethnic Dance Company in Darwin, Australia; The Apeejay New Media Gallery in New Delhi, India; Reykjavik Arts Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland; Uganda Arts Foundation in Kampala, Uganda; and Expo Musica Booking Agency, D.E. in Bogota, Colombia. One student, working with a record producer in Iran that produced popular American music, researched a paper on music and popular culture under an Islamic fundamentalist reign.

     The mentorship project has been very successful and, according to Breman, many students have kept up a relationship with their mentors even after the class has ended.