Symbols are everywhere, used by individuals and organisations alike to define their politics, their values and their attitudes. The rise of free-markets, digital technology and the liberated individual have bequeathed a world saturated with design, media and rich, complicated forms of communication. Cultural leaders have to maintain a moral conviction and the ability to route-around, confront and subvert authority. This can be a benign, quiet act, but it can often threaten vested interests and powerful elites - especially in illiberal political regimes and places where giant-corporations hold the balance of power. The best cultural organisations produce ideas that make new ways of seeing, thinking and feeling possible - their work is an expression of human freedom. There is a complicated balance for cultural leaders to maintain.Ĭultural sector leaders often have to place themselves in danger. Rather they often need to simultaneously operate in small companies, production houses and as loan agents while being connected to rich and diverse networks of supporters, funders and collaborators. This is why cultural leaders donʼt have to be at the head of big organisations to be important. Ideas thrive in loose networks rather than rigid structures, so cultural leaders have to too. Because they canʼt produce the same play, song or installation over and over again, they have to inspire confidence in projects without precedent or known outcomes. This task is made harder because the ideas cultural organisations produce are non-replicable. Unlike business leaders who can point to the bottom line, or leaders of charities who can measure their impact against a clearly defined social problem - leaders in the cultural sector face a constant struggle to explain and communicate the value of what they do. Balancing this priority, with the need to run a financially sustainable organisation and hopefully one that makes a positive difference to the world, is which gives cultural leaders a unique set of challenges. It is their production of these new ideas as performances, exhibitions, styles and sounds which makes them cultural. But cultural organisations are different from other organisations and as such face their own distinctive challenges.Ĭultural organisations are geared towards producing new ideas. How to work in less carbon intensive, environmentally sustainable ways. How to engage with digitally connected, networked individuals. How to stay solvent in an ongoing financial crisis. Many of the challenges that cultural leaders need to navigate are common to those faced by leaders in other areas of social and economic life. Second, it means leading culture itself - making work, productions and projects which show different ways of thinking, feeling and experiencing the world - bringing dynamism to the economy and wider society. First, it concerns competently managing the organisations of the cultural sector, ensuring that they are financially viable, legal and with well-organised staff. Leading the cultural sector is practised in two different ways. In the cultural world, nobody has a monopoly on leadership. It concerns senior managers and directors in subsidised cultural institutions public officials developing and implementing policy for the cultural sector and a huge range of producers, innovators and entrepreneurs in small companies, production houses and teams. Like culture itself, it comes from many different people and can be practised in many different ways. Get a fresh view from British Council on developing Leadership in the cultural sector and the main challenges for the 21st century Cultural Leaders.Ĭultural leadership is the act of leading the cultural sector.
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