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This article is concerned with cultural events and the way they are arranged. It discusses how the implementation of the stringent rules and organizational principles of project management might prove counterproductive in cultural events. The underlying assumption is that cultural events are complex and ever-evolving systems based on creative and artistic processes, so they escape traditional planning and control practices. The complexity of cultural events can be explored through four dimensions. The first concerns the social, cultural, economic, and technological context and the relevance of the influence held by the various stakeholders. The second dimension is related to the multiplicity of objectives underlying each cultural event. The third dimension refers to the concept, the content, and the artistic and cultural creation processes behind the uniqueness of an event. Finally, the last element concerns event management and its iterative dynamic as a project where the four dimensions of complexity are intertwined. Traditional project management usually proposes tools and techniques that tend to dominate and control the project, following a deterministic approach. This attitude may be inadequate to control the environmental, strategic, creative, and managerial complexity of any cultural event, which, rather, must be explored and absorbed. Accordingly, it is suggested that a more systemic perspective be adopted through which routine project management tools are reviewed to pave the way for a new approach when organizing and managing cultural events.

Although the potential of arts to promote social inclusion is recognised, barriers to social inclusion for disabled people in the arts is under-researched. Based on 34 semi-structured interviews with disabled people and those without disability from four arts organisations in Australia, the paper identifies barriers for social inclusion for disabled people within performing arts across four dimensions: access; participation; representation and empowerment. Findings highlight barriers are societal, being created with little aware-ness of needs of disabled people, supporting the social model of disability. Findings have implications beyond social inclusion of disabled people within the arts, demonstrating how the arts can empower dis-abled people and enable them to access, participate and represent themselves and have a voice. Our frame-work conceptualises these four barriers for social inclusion for disabled people for management to change.

Arts management is a discipline whose research domain has grown in impact over the last quarter century.This study provides an external thematic, content and citation analysis of arts management articles in top-tiermainstream management and marketing journals between 1987 and 2010. It explicates article, author andcitation frequencies based on author information, publication patterns and thematic citation metrics, thuscontributing to the development of the arts management body of knowledge. Specifically, the study examinesthe function of arts management research as a bridging mechanism to its parent disciplines in managementand marketing. The authors identify thematic citation metrics of research published in mainstream journalsas well as frequencies and publication patterns, so that scholars can make decisions affecting their futureresearch directions. The authors conclude that there is little correlation between age/rank of journal andfrequency of citations, with younger journals becoming established as key players within relatively shortperiods.

The article reviews the book "Music, Markets and Consumption" by Daragh O'Reilly, Gretchen Larsen, and Krzysztof Kubacki.

In the twenty-first century we are surrounded by brands. Born out of the Industrial Revolution, when factories needed to ‘brand’ their barrels, branding as a marketing phenomenon has risen in prominence over the last 50 years. Modern branding is linked to the rise of the television and the consequent need to drive consumption to a mass market. Marketers then had to find ways of differentiating their products. Today, few areas of modern life have escaped the influence of branding; from the shoes on our feet to the food that we eat and the cars that we drive.

In the twenty-first century we are surrounded by brands. Born out of the Industrial Revolution, when factories needed to ‘brand’ their barrels, branding as a marketing phenomenon has risen in prominence over the last 50 years. Modern branding is linked to the rise of the television and the consequent need to drive consumption to a mass market. Marketers then had to find ways of differentiating their products. Today, few areas of modern life have escaped the influence of branding; from the shoes on our feet to the food that we eat and the cars that we drive.

In the twenty-first century we are surrounded by brands. Born out of the Industrial Revolution, when factories needed to ‘brand’ their barrels, branding as a marketing phenomenon has risen in prominence over the last 50 years. Modern branding is linked to the rise of the television and the consequent need to drive consumption to a mass market. Marketers then had to find ways of differentiating their products. Today, few areas of modern life have escaped the influence of branding; from the shoes on our feet to the food that we eat and the cars that we drive.