# Program & Production > *Program & Production* involves developing, assembling, presenting, and preserving coherent services or experiences. At the core of every arts experience is a creative action or artifact, or more likely a curated bundle of creative actions and artifacts – a play or musical, a dance performance, a collection of art objects, a series of musical works, a written or spoken word narrative or poem, as examples. But actions and artifacts are the spark of the arts experience, not the fire. The fire comes when creative work comes into meaningful contact with an audience through a channel well-suited to the work. And that requires a "program" or "production" – the whole array of actions that make a creative work coherent and connectable to its community. In Arts Management, program and production involve the assembly of disparate parts into a coherent "offer" – a good or service that might be recognized and valued by an audience. For example, a theater work may have a script and a musical score, but it isn't an arts experience until it becomes a "production" – with the full array of people, money, and stuff required for an audience to experience it. This is not uniquely a creative or management function, but at best a deep collaboration between those modes of action. Every artistic discipline has different requirements and conventions for what a program or production might be, or the elements that it might require. But the skills and capacities required to assemble and present a program or production are central to any Arts Management challenge. --- ## Tags (click to view related pages) #functions #functions/program_production #seedling