Artist as Leader - Lab 1
In January 2008 I was one of the two directors of the first ‘Artist as Leader’ Lab. The project has been running for a couple of years, produced by the Cultural Enterprise Office, PAL (Performing Arts Laboratory) and On The Edge (Robert Gordon University Aberdeen) and in association with The Scottish Leadership Foundation. It is an examination of how artists can lead ‘through their practice’, and by that I mean their art or the process of making their art. And by that I mean artists just being artists and nothing else. This is a potentially complex idea that when discussed always raises questions of the identity of art, artists and leadership. However, whenever I talk about it to anyone there is always a great deal of interest in the subject - followed by the question of whether artists can or should be leaders. Ultimately, I think, it is about the value of art and artists in the communities and society in which we live.
So, in January we had a ‘lab’ where we brought together some leaders of cultural organisations and some artists to explore the idea using their own challenges and goals as fuel.
Participants were:
Roanne Dods (Director Jerwood Foundation)
Matt Hulse (Film-maker)
Jackie Kay (Poet)
Kirsten Lloyd (Curator, Programme Director Stills Gallery Edinburgh)
James Marriot (Sculptor, Eco-Artist, Activist)
Lucy Mason (Scottish Government)
Janice Parker (Choreographer)
Gill Robertson (Artistic Director Catherine Wheels Theatre Company)
Angela Saunders (Scottish Government)
Andrew Senior (British Council)
Jim Tough (Chief Executive Scottish Arts Council)
John Wallace (Director Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama)
And some visitors or ‘provocateurs’:
Bob Last (film producer)
Graham Leicester (International Futures Forum)
Francis McKee (curator, writer and Director Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow)
Philip Schlesinger (Glasgow University) and
Tom Shakespeare (sociologist, writer, artist)
My Co-Director in the project is Professor Anne Douglas from On The Edge. Also at the lab were Deborah Keogh (CEO), Susan Benn (PAL) and Zoe Van Zwanenberg (SLF).
The lab dealt with cultural leadership and, at the start at least, with policy level leadership. By all of us flexing our own challenges, but maintaining a positive environment for finding solutions, we leapt straight into an arena where a great deal was built very quickly. Big ideas were born and resolutions were made for those ideas to be pursued and developed.
In June the lab participants will meet again to see where the ideas have gone and matured. We will also be developing the central principles of ‘leading through practice’ and ‘artistic leadership’.
When I am applying myself to these principles I inevitably carry a very wide model of leadership that extends from influencing through ideas via team/transferable power models to charismatic front-line leadership. By applying this spectrum of leadership models it is easier to encompass the many and different ways in which art can become part of a process of change, perhaps even not under the control or assertion of the artist. An important, and practical, example for this is how this thinking may influence the inclusion of artists in community or government consultations through their art. My experience is that the most interesting material for a consultation process may well come from the artists who are not pushing themselves forward as advocates of change but who create work they can only see as personal.
There is a great danger with this work that it can lead into justifying the notion that artists have a different way of doing things derived from some special powers or ‘guru’ potential. I have a reticence in believing that artists have any special qualities to bring
to leadership that cannot be found elsewhere. However I do think there is a great potential for organisations and government to engage with art and artists in a different way and there is a great deal for the artists to gain in the process.
One word about the venue for the lab - Hospitalfields Residential Arts Centre in Arbroath. What a fantastic place! Set in a bit of woodland with the sea visible through the trees, a rambling house with places to meet and places to hide. It couldn’t have been better. The picture is of the lab participants doing a litter collection around the woodland at the end of the week.
I will write more here about the ‘Artist as Leader’ work as it progresses and develops.