After 10 years in leadership roles, RACHAEL WILLIAMS reflects on what it means to lead an arts organisation during a time of economic crisis.
Ten years ago, I got my first leadership job in the arts. It had come after a long and frustrating search for my next move, involving a lot of job applications and an almost equivalent amount of rejection. I’d got everything I could from the job I was in and I was (I thought) ready to step up.
I was doing a producing job for a small scale venue which, over the four years I’d been in it, had incorporated not only producing the shows but also, at various points, learning to code so I could update the website, designing all the marketing materials on Photoshop, looking after all of our individual donors, having an intimate knowledge of the box office booking system, and doing a couple of front of house shifts every week for a bit of extra cash.
I thought that having that breadth of knowledge of all the different bits of an organisation would mean that, when I finally got to be one of the people in the driving seat, I would know what I was doing.
Ten years ago, I got my first leadership job in the arts. It had come after a long and frustrating search for my next move, involving a lot of job applications and an almost equivalent amount of rejection. I’d got everything I could from the job I was in and I was (I thought) ready to step up.
I was doing a producing job for a small scale venue which, over the four years I’d been in it, had incorporated not only producing the shows but also, at various points, learning to code so I could update the website, designing all the marketing materials on Photoshop, looking after all of our individual donors, having an intimate knowledge of the box office booking system, and doing a couple of front of house shifts every week for a bit of extra cash.
I thought that having that breadth of knowledge of all the different bits of an organisation would mean that, when I finally got to be one of the people in the driving seat, I would know what I was doing.
Reader, I did not...Keep reading on The Art of a Leader.