Domino effect

The opening paragraphs of ‘Meeting the Challenge’, a Cultural Leadership Programme (CLP) report on leadership development, highlight the prominence of the UK cultural sector in the international marketplace. Yet the publication also warns that “Like every other industry, [it] will face many new challenges as the pace of societal, cultural and economic change continues to increase.” When the issue of economic change was highlighted earlier this year, no one envisaged the forces of change that now dominate our televisions, newspapers and daily conversations. The stark reality of our global connectivity has shocked and surprised us, as actions in one part of the world cascade through our diverse societies in a real life re-enactment of that incredible Guinness advert from Argentina (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyl5ws18vz8).

Except in this instance, there is no global chorus of approval as the dominoes crash into suitcases, fridges, cars and the other objects that are part of our daily lives. Just nine months ago, Arts & Business charted a record high of £600m of corporate spending on the arts. Today, a quiet fear is spreading across the UK cultural sector as we anticipate our own casualties of the financial crisis. Whilst the larger organisations may well have binding agreements that stall the inevitable reductions in support, many of the micro businesses (that form the majority of the UK cultural sector) are sponsored on short-term contracts by smaller private organisations that may well not have the flexibility to meet articulated aspirations from before the crash.
 

Weathering the storm

The cultural sector has rarely ‘had it rich’. Indeed, we perhaps have more experience than most of managing on tight budgets and stretching scant resources across priority targets. At a time like this, the job of the cultural leader is ever more critical, and the Government’s recent investment in the leadership of our sector appears both forward thinking and fortuitous. The CLP has brought about a unique coalition of lead bodies in the sector: Arts Council England, Museums Libraries and Archives Partnership, and Creative and Cultural Skills have pooled strategies to create a delivery partnership with leadership at its core. The CLP Board sees the sector partners joined by a small number of independent industry specialists, with involvement from senior professionals from organisations including M&C Saatchi, Southbank, and Manchester City Council and Art Galleries. This mixture of strategic agencies, industry expertise and a small, dedicated entrepreneurial team has “raised awareness of the importance of leadership development” according to an independent evaluation by DTZ Consulting and Research. Ours has been a grass roots and cross-sectoral approach to developing leadership skill, unpacking the key issues and questions, and sharing the key tools for an effective response with our sector. This partnership mode, informed by action research, has enabled the answers to come from within our industries rather than for and to them.

Clearly, the impact of the CLP will best be judged through the long lens of time. The early evidence is cheering: CLP has delivered 31,700 training days, and 14,000 people have participated in a CLP event – 6,000 of these face-to-face. There have been more than 100 seminars, more than 100 residential training courses, nearly 180 single day training courses, more than 400 coaching/mentoring relationships, more than 200 networking events and 50 work placements over the past two years. The CLP has worked with a range of partners large and small from the arts, museums, libraries, archives and creative industries, who have shared in constructing dynamic leadership programmes to match the bespoke needs of our sectors.

Phase two

Having successfully made the case to Government for further support to 2011, the second phase of delivery sees the return of many proven programmes. Peach Placements will continue to harness the benefits of work-based learning for mid-career leaders in a range of cultural and creative organisations across the UK; an expanded Clore Governance Programme is responding to the challenges faced by whole boards and their senior management; the ‘Dynamics of Leadership’ coaching series will include a newly developed accredited foundation course in coaching skills for leadership; and the ‘Meeting the Challenge’ development programme is building directly on the findings of the CLP’s first phase of delivery and working to enable individual organisations to strengthen their leadership practice and extend effective models across the sector as a whole.

As with the first phase of the programme, these leadership development activities will be underpinned by sector-based research, including the ‘Black and minority ethnic’ and ‘Women in leadership’ research reports, which chart issues of representation across our sectors. New in 2009 is the Advanced Creative Business Leadership programme in partnership with Ashridge Business School. Targeting senior leaders of advertising, design and commercial music, this bespoke programme places the cultural sector at the heart of international business development. The CLP will also be working with Higher and Further Education providers to develop an optional accreditation framework, offering the enticement of academic credits for work-based learning in the leadership of our sectors. In a time of uncertainty and crashing financial markets, the CLP seeks to create its own domino effect: leadership learning that provides a bedrock of sustainable good practice and triggers confident progression.