Explore our methodology
We weigh the relationship between art-making and the creative economy, organizational development and human development, strategy and care.
If this is your work too, come closer.
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FOUNDER
Beau Kenyon is a composer and cultural strategist whose work bridges artistic practice and organizational change.
Kenyon has applied Oakley Collective methodology in partnership with MIT, NASA Space Grant, Boston Public Library, Ballet Des Moines, WGBH, MassArt, Iowa Arts Council, the City of Boston and others. Meanwhile, his music has been presented by Tribeca Film Festival, MFA Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, ICA Boston, and SITE Santa Fe. Kenyon has authored and published work that relates to arts integrated learning, the relationship between music and cognitive neuroscience, arts-based community engagement, and organizational development for arts organizations and creative enterprises.
Beau Kenyon has served as faculty at Northeastern University, M.S. in Arts Administration and Cultural Entrepreneurship, since 2018. He is currently a Board Member and Program Committee Chair of the American Composers Forum, a former Co-Chair of Boston Art Review Board of Directors, and former Co-Chair of WGBH Advisory Board. He holds degrees from Berklee College of Music and Tufts University.
More about Beau Kenyon
FIVE DISCIPLINARY INPUTS
Artistic Practice
Artistic practice grows out of curiosity and flourishes from sustained inquiry, discipline, play, and rest. Oakley Collective leverages this principle as a foundation for problem-solving, initiative-building, and interdisciplinary design, while integrating the creative process into the organizations that serve them.
Cognitive Neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience studies how the brain thinks, learns, remembers, and grows. It is how attention forms, executive function develops, and experience shapes the mind across a lifetime. Oakley strives to understand what the work is asking, why it matters now, how it needs to unfold, and when the timing is right.
Developmental Pedagogy
Student-centered teaching begins by observing learner readiness, preparing an environment to engage curiosity, and facilitating skill-acquisition through mentorship and thought-partnership. Oakley observes what is already succeeding, implements responsive learning systems, cultivates peer-to-peer learning and ongoing professional learning communities.
Political Economy
The political economy examines how political and economic systems shape each other, how societies organize production, distribution, and the valuation of what matters. Arts and cultural institutions generate healthy, human-centered civic and economic infrastructure. Oakley envisions a future in which care work is legible and ethical, feminist economies become possible.
Critical Theory & Ethics of Care
Critical theory asks how power moves through language and institutions. Ethics of care answers with a practice of attention, responsibility, and mutual becoming. Oakley refuses to sacrifice complex work to transactional interactions. We build through relationships, sustained attention, and holding the both-and tension without resolving it prematurely.
Approach the work as artistic practicePractice the disciplines of curiosity, optimism, and creativity to maintain values alignment, generate healthy collaboration, and produce outcomes true to the work's purpose.
Create a multi-perspective lensBuild teams of values-aligned partners and employees to generate intention and care across scales. Include diverse, values-aligned perspectives that will also generate healthy friction.
Utilize a compassWield organizational values and guiding principles as decision-making tools for greater flexibility and efficacy. Plans remain fluid and responsive while maintaining long-term vision and identity.
Observe before concludingMitigate false conclusions while building trust and agency among team members and partners. Observation and modeling create an environment of curiosity, interdependence, and care.
Hold the both-andRefuse capitalist reduction by holding complex realities and fortifying human-centered systems. To collapse either side is to lose the work itself.
