In the opening session of my first Clore Leadership residential course in Kent, one of my fellow Fellows advised that he was sick of hearing other people talk about their ‘Clore journey’. So I hesitate slightly before sharing what I’ve learned and experienced over the past 18 months through my Fellowship. But I’m going to because:
- I’d like to promote the Fellowship and encourage people to think about applying especially those working in the visual arts who are under-represented. Before I applied I had little idea of what it entailed or how valuable it could be, and so I have been trying to share what I’ve got from it through this blog.
- And, whilst the Fellowship format might not be right for everyone, lots of what I’ve done could happen outside of a formal programme and need not cost much either so I thought it might be useful to share what I’ve found to be of most use.
If I promise to keep any navel-gazing I did to myself and if you can forgive the travel metaphor in the title, I’ll summarise my main ‘take-aways’ and tips:
Top 5 things I learned/ got from the Fellowship
1) I’m not an ex-curator anymore – after years of wondering what I was, now I wasn’t a curator anymore, I finally discovered a role that suits my jack-of-all-trade talents, interest in the audience and fascination in creating the organisational structure and culture that enables artists and art to flourish. We don’t have many Executive Directors in the visual arts, but having interviewed some outstanding ones from theatre for my research project I’m excited at the prospect of someday undertaking a joint leadership role, working with an artistic director.
2) People are very generous, if you need to ask them for help - I’ve had the privilege to meet a wide range of people working in the arts through the Fellowship and learned a huge amount from them about leadership. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how generous, open and supportive complete strangers have been when I’ve asked to meet them to find out more about what they do and how. But you need to ask…
3) Charisma is passé – I’m less impressed by ambitious, solitary, personal, visions than by leaders whose vision is shaped through dialogue and who understand they rely on others to make things happen. Collaboration is the name of the game in my book.
4) Learning is brilliant – Many of us working in the arts have two or three degrees. We are highly educated lot, yet opportunities to continue learning once we enter the workplace are scarce and in the visual arts we have no formal professional qualifications or standards to guide or validate our professional activity. It’s been a huge luxury to have time and a budget to learn through the Fellowship. But learning doesn’t have to be expensive or formal, just as important is being an environment that values learning from experience, seeks to improve how things are done, makes time to reflect and is honest about what worked, and what didn’t. And to learn you’re going to have to get things wrong sometimes – which is a great consolation when you screw up but manage to learn something from it.
5) Parenthood and leadership are very similar – Beyond the books, the experts, my peers – I’ve learned plenty about leadership from being a parent. I find this deeply ironic, and more than a bit depressing, when I think about how many parents (and mothers in particular) find it hard to square parenting with the expectations of a leadership position in an arts organisation as I have ranted about before.
And here are my 5 tips for undertaking a Clore-style Fellowship on a shoestring
1) Shadowing can be a great way to find out more about another organisation, someone else’s role or style. I shadowed Andrea Nixon, Executive Director of Tate Liverpool over 3 weeks to find out more about her role and how Tate works. I also shadowed Tate Learning’s senior management team over a six month period and my mentor Nick Serota. Shadowing needn’t cost anything and, like any learning, it’s helpful to have clear objectives and chance to reflect, but it can be quick and simple to arrange.
2) Sharing your half-baked ideas via blogs (your’s or other people’s) – there’s a list of the blogs I find useful on my ‘blogroll’. Taking the time to reflect on something I’m chewing over in print via this site is often useful for me, even more so when people respond with comments – online or offline.
3) Networking beyond your field – some of the most useful and though-provoking conversations I’ve had during the Fellowship have been with museums or theatre professionals, or the international Clore Fellows. There’s nothing like a different perspective to offer fresh insights and I’ve found talking to peers in other artforms and countries to be just as useful as learning from the arts superstars who (generously) came to our residential courses to share their insights with Clore Fellows.
4) Action Learning – it’s my new big idea. Well it’s not new, and it’s not mine, and it’s as much about doing as ideas – but I’m really taken with it and this recent post explains why.
5) Learning to coach – this wasn’t free, but Relational Dynamic’s accredited coaching and leadership course is excellent value. Again I’ve blogged at length about the joy of coaching elsewhere, suffice it to say here that this course has been, and continues to be, incredibly useful for work and life (it works on toddlers too).
So, there we go. End of my Fellowship.
Overall I’ve learned a phenomenal amount and feel very lucky to have had this opportunity. It’s been fantastic – thanks Dame Vivien, thanks to the Clore Leadership team Sue Hoyle, Sharon Armstrong Williams, Sir John Tusa, thanks to my mentor Nick Serota, and thanks to my sponsor NESTA.
I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that being a parent is often considered by others as a career-impediment. Particularly if, because you have young children, you would rather work ‘normal’ hours (i.e. 9-5) or part-time.
But there are two assumptions underpinning this state of affairs which I think are fundamentally flawed.
1. Having a life outside of work means that you are not committed to your job
In my experience having a life outside of work can make you a more effective employee. I’ve just had to complete my end of Fellowship report for the Clore Leadership Programme in which I was meant to respond to the question: ‘what have you learned about leadership through your Fellowship?’. There are lots of inspirational people out there from whom I’ve learned a great deal over the past 18 months, but I think I’ve also learnt just as much about leadership from being a parent: which I find ironic given how hard it is for many women to return to or progress into leadership positions after starting a family. And this doesn’t just apply to parents, there are lots of things people do outside of work that enrich their lives and make them more effective and productive in the workplace – from being practising artists to volunteering.
2. It is desirable for employees to be constantly available and happy to work very long hours
‘Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.’ (Rework)
In their best-selling book Rework, founders of the 37signals software house share the secrets of their success – which definitely don’t include workaholism. They argue that the workplace culture of presenteeism needs to be discouraged – because ‘if all you do is work you’re unlikely to have sound judgements’. Too often the amount of ‘work’ someone appears to do is confused with what they achieve. As those of us who these days need to watch the clock so we can be out of the door by 5pm or 5:30pm to pick up the kids know, when you’ve got all the time in the world things take as much time as you have but once you have a schedule you simply need to prioritise and work smarter.
But whilst these assumptions are flawed – and some would argue out-dated – they are still a powerful and often unspoken presence in our working culture in the arts and cultural sector. And whilst many arts workspaces rely on people working long hours – often unproductively and unnecessarily – then we’ll continue to see only a handful of women with young families in senior roles in our sector. If we could only break out of this pernicious habit of over-working then we’d all enjoy the benefits of a healthier working culture and more diverse leadership.
‘I have a great Board’, the Director of an arts organisation said to me recently, adding without irony ’they don’t interfere and just leave us to get on with things.’ Sadly, this is often the best an executive can hope for in their non-profit Board – so rarely do we see truly effective governance in our smaller arts organisations that many of us don’t know what we are missing. That’s not to say these organisations don’t attract good people as Trustees – individual Trustees are often brilliant in their own right – but something happens when they come together around a Board table and become ’an incompetent group of competent people’.*
A couple of weeks ago I attended a seminar, hosted by Clore Leadership Programme and Cultural Leadership Programme, looking at how CEOs and Chairs could work more effectively. For me, one of the Chairs on the platform (Doug Gurr of National Museum of Science and Industry) put his finger on three main reasons why non-profit Boards can be so challenging:
- Clarity – what is the Board there for?
- Getting volunteers to do ‘real’ work
- The relationship between CEO/Chair which can break down.
This second point interests me particularly – how to shift some Trustees’ expectation that being a Board member is simply about attending meetings at which you offer your comments towards them seeing being a Trustee as a real job: just one that is unpaid. Too often I’ve seen Boards that meddle in the work of the staff and staff who fail to make proper use of the Board – seeing them instead as a necessary evil or rubber stamp that has to be pacified.
If, as Doug Gurr’s first point implies, Trustees might not be clear what that ‘job’ is then that’s clearly not a great start. His summary of a museum trustee having four main duties is helpful in this regard:
- Direction – shared with the CEO, but Board has to jointly own, and develop, the vision
- Resources – the Board needs to ensure the organisation has the people and money it needs to deliver its mission
- Stewardship – in a museum there’s a specific focus on responsibility for the collection, but more widely Trustees are responsible for the assets of a charity.
- Reputation – trustees have an advocacy role to champion the organisation.
In terms of avoiding Trustees who just want to add their two-penneth without bringing any other value, his advice was to ensure everyone understood these generic responsibilities and had a very specific role. Like any other job. Having a clear role for individual Trustees – as well as clear sense of how the Board overall can support them – might also be a very effective way for the CEO to approach this relationship.
How do you make the most of your Board – or if you are a Trustee – make the most of your time on the Board? I’d be really interested to hear about practical ways to make this important relationship work better.
* I’ve borrowed this quote from Michael Day. CEO of Royal Historic Palaces, who led one of the workshops on Governance that I attended as part fo the Clore Leadership Programme – he wasn’t talking about his trustees – but this statement rang true to me about far too many Boards I’ve come across.
 Joint leadership: even the politicians are doing it (but don't let that turn you off) In the fourth in this series of posts about my recent research into joint leadership, I focus on how joint leadership models work.
The language of personal relationships often dominates discussions about joint leadership. Several interviewees referred to these partnerships as ‘professional marriage’. Some AD/ED pairings in theatre are long-term commitments which endure beyond one organisation with ED/AD pairings applying for roles together. ‘Personal chemistry’ is often cited as a reason why some pairings work (or fail), and less than ideal situations are described as ‘forced marriages’.
Regardless of how a pairing comes together, interviewees and the wider literature concur that, as with romantic love, it takes time – and effort – to build an effective relationship and stressed the importance of partners sharing common values. Just as sometimes ‘opposites attract’, difference of approach and experience was also apparent and found to be highly productive in professional relationships.
It is this difference which is considered the greatest asset of collaborative working – the grit in the oyster which makes the pearl. And yet it is also this difference which can lead to conflict within partnerships, ultimately poor performance or even breakdown of the relationship. For collaborative leaders, awareness of their own preferred way of interacting with others, combined with the ability to adapt their style for different situations, (‘emotional intelligence’) emerges as a key competency.
Beyond their own working relationships, collaborative leaders are adept at managing the inherent tensions within non-profit arts organisations between the different agendas of mission and money, artistic innovation and audience experience. The skill of collaborative leaders is to create an environment, a framework and an organisational culture, in which difference can support and result in a synthesis of ideas, rather than a battle between opposing camps – characterised as ‘creatives versus suits’.
Joint leaders have to be collaborative leaders, but in the arts and cultural sector what can be overlooked is that single Directors also need to be just as (if not more) collaborative as joint leaders.
AD and ED are inter-dependent roles – it is not a transactional relationship where the role is split into two distinct parts so that it can be done separately. Therefore joint leaders need to share responsibility for the key objectives (programme, budget etc). Performance management and accountability structures also need to encourage collaboration not competition.
While many working in the arts may aspire to collaboration: relatively few achieve it. As MMM highlight in their report on collaborative working, participants often know what is required in theory and have good intentions but lack the competencies required.[i] Collaboration is demanding and the necessary values to achieve success also often run counter to prevailing attitudes and ways of doing things within our organisations. Recognising the systems and behaviours that underpin collaboration and having in place measures that reflect how leaders (and organisations) work and not just what they achieve is imperative if Boards are to be able to support and challenge executive leaders.
You can read the Full Report or Executive Summary here.
[i] ‘They frequently avoid discussing difficult subjects because they want to avoid conflict. They know that trust is important but they often lack reliable strategies for building it’, Clare Cooper, 2010. Fuelling ‘The Necessary Revolution’: supporting best practice in collaborative working amongst creative practitioners and organisations – a guide for public and private funders. London: MMM, p.23.
 Gilbert & George - the British art world's favourite artistic duo In this second in a series of four posts drawn from my recent research into joint leadership models, I outline the key findings.
‘I cannot understand what benefit it is to the organisation to put all your ability to really function at a senior level into the hands of one person, because that one person can only achieve what they can physically do in any 12 or 24 hour day and it is so much more effective to have a group of empowered individuals working together towards a common goal.’
I began my research wondering whether a new leadership structure was the way forward but I conclude that it is only one part of the solution. New systems and competencies, but above all values are critical.
To respond to the external challenges– and our problems with workforce diversity and capability – we need to challenge some of our out-moded assumptions within the visual arts sector. These include:
- A lack of focus on the audience and satisfying their needs not least because the financial model, and funding practice (for all its rhetoric about extending audiences), does not currently require this.
- A related tendency to see the artistic programme (and peer approval) as the only measure of success for galleries, and the conflation of the individual curator’s taste with a wider vision for the organisation.
- A distrust and lack of respect or understanding for management and managers.
Investing in management capacity is an uphill struggle against a wider policy backdrop that sees any activity that is not ‘front-line’ as an ‘overhead’ that should be pared to the bone. Understanding how investing in and developing assets to create long-term resilience, and the role of managers in this, is one of the biggest challenges facing our arts and cultural organizations.[i]
What we can learn from theatre
Theatre offers of a model of leadership from which I believe we can learn in visual arts. It is more collaborative and respects the need for organisational as well as artistic leadership. There are many parallels between leadership in theatre and visual arts – but also some key differences. Within theatre, EDs play a key role in programming, and the audience is recognised as being fundamental to strategy – both in terms of the mission but also the simple economics of the box office.
Theatre EDs work within the theatre sector throughout their careers which means that those running theatres have a deep understanding of their artform and the business of theatre. Often there is significant overlap of experience and skills between ED and AD, although their roles are distinct.
Many EDs have been CEOs themselves, often in venues which are not producing-theatres (such as art centres). They are committed to their Artistic Directors – and particular about who they will work with – and they feel that theatres should be led by artists, not administrators. In turn, theatre ADs value organisational leaders and have visions for their organisations which extend far beyond the artistic programme to include their relationship with audiences, place and the wide range of people they recognise contribute to making successful theatre.
Re-casting the role of strategic managers
Executive Directors are usually extroverts, defined as ‘Resource Investigators’ in terms of Belbin’s team roles; put simply they are outward-facing, risk-taking, entrepreneurial people who make things happen, not the traditional accountant or administrator stereotype. Providing the structure and the resources required to achieve the mission is the core business of an ED. Therefore recasting the ED role as ‘organisational producer’ – responsible for the frameworks and resources to realise the vision – may be helpful in improving the perception, profile and understanding of these important roles.
Visual arts organisations that have invested in EDs have seen significant benefits including more ambitious programming, increased co-production and touring partnerships, increased earned and fundraised income and higher public profile. Improved stakeholder relationships, increased organisational stability and greater innovation are further key benefits of joint leadership models.
Fundamentally, leadership in the visual arts needs to change to become more collaborative – both in terms of how we work within and beyond our walls. Management capacity also needs to be urgently addressed because of the unprecedented external challenges we are facing. This does not have to be limited to the adoption of a joint leadership model. Many interviewees acknowledged the under-utilised capacity within our organisations, and potentially through volunteers, which could be unlocked with a small amount of training and peer-peer mentoring.
A stronger focus on professional standards and development
In the long term a more strategic approach professional development of curators specifically, but visual arts professionals more widely, has to be the priority. Ironically, for a sector where many employees have two or even three university degrees, professional learning seems to stop when we enter the workplace. All of us concerned with visual arts leadership need to value ongoing professional development, to develop recognised standards and invest in people to a level far beyond current practice.
A little investment, underpinned by a far bigger change towards more collaborative leadership, could unlock the skills and resources needed by this sector to become far more entrepreneurial and audience-focussed. Two heads are better than one: but why stop at two? Joint leadership models, and collaborative leadership more widely, capitalises on the new ideas that spring from bringing together different experiences and perspectives. Small teams, whether teams of two or larger management groups working to a single Director, are the most effective units for running organisations. But to thrive into the next decade we will need to engage all staff, volunteers, supporters, and audiences: collaborative leaders know how to harness and engage this far wider range of contributors.
When two heads are better than one
There is no-one-size-fits-all leadership model that is right for a gallery or an art museum: leadership choices will depend on the organisational needs (the type and scale of organisation as well as its stage of development) and the strengths and weaknesses of the potential candidates available.
However, the research suggests strongly that two heads can be better than one, particularly for many mid-scale and larger galleries, especially outside London where the need to embed organisations in their local and regional contexts is particularly high, or in circumstances of major growth (including capital developments) or change. Some people, particularly those moving into executive leadership for the first time, or those who would prefer to work part-time (or even just forty hours a week) because of caring responsibilities, might definitely prefer joint structures. Belbin also suggests that executive teams of two can be extremely powerful and effective:
‘a team of two, capable of multiple-role relationships with each other, can operate very efficiently in working arrangements, far surpassing a much larger team in what can be achieved’.[ii]
Joint leadership is not a sticking plaster that can be used to prop up Artistic Directors who don’t want to lead organisations, and is very unlikely to be successful if applied on that basis, not least as the best EDs will not be attracted to work alongside these candidates. It works best when ED and AD offer over-lapping experience and skills, and are ‘fiendishly interested’ in one another’s’ patches (to quote one ED). That means having EDs who are passionate about, and understand the artform, who see their role as making extraordinary art experiences happen, and Artistic Directors who respect how an organisation – and the people within it – works best and understand that great management enables great art to thrive.
You can download the Full Report and Executive Summary – any comments, responses or ideas are very welcome via the blog or directly to me via email at claire@claireantrobus.com
[i] Margaret Bolton, Clare Cooper, Claire Antrobus, Joe Ludlow & Holly Tebbutt, 2011. Capital Matters: how to build financial resilience in the UK’s arts and cultural sector, London: Mission, Models and Money.
[ii] Meredith R. Belbin, 2010. Team roles at work, second edition. London: Elsevier, p.63.
 Henry Moore's 'King and Queen': joint leaders in sculpture (photo Paddy Heron, creative commons) In the third in a series of four posts drawing on my recent research into joint leadership models, I outline my main recommendations.
1. Boards, funders and visual arts leaders need to revisit our mission and values in the non-profit visual arts sector
We may need new leadership structures, but more important is a new leadership culture which I suggest is based on the following values:
- Genuine respect for artists and audiences. Belief that arts organisations exist to create art experiences for audiences and have responsibility to support and develop innovative artistic practice.
- Belief that all staff are creative and have mission-critical roles: not just the artistic team.
- Pride in developing ‘talent’ and facilitating the work of others rather than believing that you alone can achieve success.
- A vision for the arts that extends beyond the art world and sees a role for arts organisations in the life of the community.
- An understanding of the distinct role different arts organisations play in a wider ecology – i.e. looking to smaller organisations to profile emerging artists and using the resources of a larger space to develop audiences and to provide curatorially rigorous appraisals of an artist’s career, to offer fresh insights.
These values need to be discussed, agreed and, most importantly, acted on.
If these values underpin our organisations, at Board and executive level, then I believe collaborative leadership (and inter-organisational collaboration more widely) will take root. This will enable us all to respond to the enormous challenges that lie ahead, empower our organisations to engage with audiences more effectively, increase our resources and by virtue of this commitment to validate our true impact with those that come to us for stimulus, solace, or simply for enjoyment.
Funders (and principally the Arts Council) also have a role to play in ensuring the organisations they fund deliver their stated policy objectives around audience engagement and the role of the arts in society. Arguably they have failed to do this historically. In particular, ACE needs to hold larger[i] (i.e. receiving over £250K per annum) contemporary visual art galleries to account about their audiences – we should understand who they are, their needs and be able to demonstrate how this informs all aspects of planning and operations.
2. Boards need to select executive leaders who can work collaboratively and who possess a strategic vision for the organisation
- Given the historic tendency for Boards of visual arts organisations to appoint primarily on artistic credentials it is particularly important that Boards assess a potential Director’s wider vision for the kind of relationship they want with their audiences, who those audiences are and their context. Consequently Boards need to ensure they include Trustees within their ranks who bring relevant expertise to this wider strategic vision.
- Boards need to look for collaborative competencies in all leaders – whether as joint leaders or single Directors.
- Key attributes required in leaders in the visual arts include an entrepreneurial approach to resourcing the organisation and a strong vision for the kind of relationship they want with their audiences and their context.
- When looking to recruit a new leader an organisation should be open to a range of possible models including the single Director and the joint Artistic and Executive Director models.
3. Boards need to be more active in supporting and holding executive leaders to account
- Collaborative leadership is a tall order and we should therefore expect our leaders to need to continue to develop their skills throughout their careers, including after appointment.
- Performance management of executive leaders should assess how effective they are in achieving collaboration. How people achieve results, not just what they do, matters. For example, a brilliant programme is important, but not at the expense of external relationships, declining audience figures, or a high turnover of staff who declare they can’t work with a ‘difficult’ colleague.
- In a joint leadership model both the AD and the ED, and in a single Director model the whole SMT, need to be jointly responsible for delivering a high quality programme, generating the necessary income and meeting the audience engagement targets they jointly agree with the Board.
4. Boards, funders, visual arts professionals and our professional bodies and networks (including VAGA, Turning Point and PlusTate) need to take professional development far more seriously in future
- The amount of time invested in developing people needs to change dramatically. It will also take some money, but this need not be a major barrier as many low-cost and free options exist. It is primarily a change in culture that is required.
- Developing professional standards for contemporary and modern art curators would encourage curators to value professional development and to recognise the wider competencies the need to acquire. This will improve both organisational performance and individual professional development and mobility.
5. Management, and managers, needs to be better understood in the visual arts
- To create extraordinary art experiences we need to make the most of our resources – financial and human. In mid-scale and larger galleries that can be done by employing dedicated strategic managers, but this is not the only option.
- There are many other over-qualified, under-utilised people in the visual arts sector who could develop the entrepreneurial skills we badly need – given some encouragement. But this requires a shift in the culture of the visual arts so that roles beyond the curator are valued properly.
- All staff, whether technicians, marketing officers, learning professionals or curators need to feel they are equally valued by the organisation; that they ‘own’ the programme; that they contribute directly to the mission. A good collaborative leader can deliver this shared vision.
You can download a copy of the Executive Summary or Full Report here.
[i] Smaller spaces which are about profiling emerging artists – such as Chisenhale or The Showroom – should not be expected to be reaching a wide or large audience. These are clearly incubator spaces whose audience rightly is their peers and ‘early adopters’.
 Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude: a creative partnership After thirty-four interviews with people running theatres and galleries involving days spent on trains travelling from Newcastle to St Ives via Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool and Walsall, a daytrip from York to Margate, and what seems like weeks at the computer writing and editing the final report, I’ve finally completed my research into joint leadership models.
In the first of a series of four posts drawing on the research, I outline what led me to undertake the research and what the report covers:
Why do we need a new leadership model in the visual arts?
‘The traditional route to senior roles in the visual arts has been curatorial and so that’s the skills-base people start with and value […] So I think there’s a sense within the visual arts that as long as you’re a good curator that’s the most important thing – that’s going to get you profile and that will lead to a senior position.’
The vast majority of art galleries and museums in the UK are run by people who began their careers as curators and this has been the traditional career path for gallery directors since exhibition galleries first emerged after the Second World War.[i] But running an art gallery or museum in 2011 is far more challenging than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Those seeking to lead galleries and museums today can no longer expect to learn all the fundraising, business, managerial and strategic skills they need in today’s environment while ‘on the job’. Nor – I would argue – can curators single-handedly expect to master all these diverse skills alongside their core expertise of continually developing their knowledge of artistic practice.
Over the past 10-15 years we have begun to see the emergence of Deputy Director and more recently Executive Director roles in the visual arts, often during periods of major growth (such as capital developments) or in response to major change. Executive and Deputy Directors are not the same: Executives tend to report directly to the Board, and play a strategic role, which includes responsibilities for organisation-wide decisions such as business planning and programming; Deputies tend to be more operational and have limited authority.
Career paths for visual arts managers are fragmented. We lose many managers who have developed a working knowledge of the sector to other non-profit and arts organisations for a variety of reasons. These include lack of recognition, poor pay and conditions and lack of career progression opportunities. Validating management as a valuable career route, to attract and retain skilled staff, is critical to the future health of this sector – as is improving the understanding of the benefits of management. The two are interdependent.
For cultural reasons, many visual arts organisations prefer to recruit single leaders (and curators specifically) although interviewees felt that there is a problem with supply of suitably experienced candidates. Research into the university sector shows that for knowledge-rich organisations (such as art galleries) having leaders who understand the core business is important for standards and internal and external credibility. It also has a demonstrable impact on business performance.
Art galleries and museums should be led by those with a deep understanding of our core mission. But the core business of arts organisations is not just the art product – it is equally the way we engage people with the art and yet we very rarely appoint learning or marketing experts to executive leadership roles in visual arts. We might take it for granted that curators have this knowledge of ‘the core business’, but they do not necessarily have expert knowledge (or a vision) about how people engage with art. Curators should lead art galleries and museums, but so should other visual arts professionals with expertise in audience engagement, such as learning and marketing staff. And if we want to develop a wider and stronger pool of future leaders in the visual arts then we need to value management and leadership and encourage curators to develop their competencies in these areas, alongside their curatorial expertise.
Purpose and approach of this research
‘People have been allowed to carry on as ‘king-curators’ devising their programmes in isolation – touring used to be much more common than it is today. We can’t tolerate any longer people who just want to do their own thing and just want to look to their international counterparts for their kudos. Their organisations will sink. The financial basis on which they operate will be so different – so they’ll need to find new sources of income and collaborate more to make best use of resources.’
Leaders of art galleries and museums face undeniably significant challenges in the coming decade. Outside the capital most art galleries and museums are heavily reliant on public subsidy for revenue funding and have not yet developed a range of reliable or sizeable income streams through fundraising or trading. With public funding of galleries now set to fall sharply at local, regional and national levels it is as yet hard to see where alternative income will be found.
More worrying still is the failure of increased public investment in arts facilities and activities to translate into a larger, more diverse and more engaged audience base for the contemporary visual arts nationally. Attendance levels for galleries and art museums as a whole have plateaued during this period of growth so that the average level of subsidy per visitor to an Arts Council-funded gallery has increased by 28%.[ii] There are also systemic problems with workforce development and diversity in the sector leading to ‘a crisis of leadership’.[iii]
Recent research[iv] reveals a sector which is over-extended and under-capitalised – in other words lacking the resilience and capacity to respond to a rapidly changing operating context where major shifts in funding, audience behaviour and technology are disrupting business models across the arts and wider society. All artforms are facing these challenges, but in the visual arts we have the added ‘problem’ of free entry. Just as the newspaper industry struggles to find a new business model in an era of free online content, we too have an existing audience base which is accustomed to free access to our core product.
My research sets out to ask whether new leadership models would be helpful, given this context. It looks at the joint leadership approach in theatre which developed around thirty years ago largely in response to a more complex and uncertain financial model. The report considers theatre’s joint model, characterised by a double-headed structure of Artistic Director and Executive Director and a more collaborative style of leadership, and asks whether it offers any benefits beyond the single Director approach preferred in the visual arts.
Theatre has its own culture and challenges, and the changes we need in the visual arts will not be found through uncritically importing models from other sectors. But by understanding better how theatre is responding to similar pressures and comparing the two sectors we can shed light onto some of the deeply embedded assumptions we hold, which may stand in the way of discovering new strategies that will enable our organisations to thrive in tough times.
The research was undertaken through a series of semi-structured interviews with those involved in leading galleries, art museums and theatres, and a review of management and leadership literature. Thirty-four interviews were completed to capture the full range of leadership models in both sectors. Many in the theatre sector had experienced different permutations of the two main models – single and joint leadership – at different stages in their careers. Others were interviewed for their experience as Trustees or in recruitment of leaders.
The report aims to do three things:
- For Boards and visual arts leaders, the report presents the case for reconsidering our leadership models (structures and approaches) in the visual arts.
- For Boards and those seeking to recruit and develop leaders in the visual arts, the report offers:
- practical advice about the range of leadership options and the context each model suits best;
- findings relating to the competencies and structures required for joint leadership models, and collaborative leaders more widely, to be effective (section five)
- an outline description of the roles and requirements for EDs (section three).
3. Finally, for all those working in the visual arts, I hope this report stimulates further discussion about our wider values in the non-profit sector and the critical need for a step-change in our approach to audiences, enterprise, management capacity and continuing professional development.
You can download the Executive Summary and Full Report here.
[i] With the exception of the Whitechapel Gallery, which was founded in 1903, most of the exhibition galleries that now form the backbone of the contemporary arts infrastructure emerged since the 1960s. For more information of the development of the gallery infrastructure in England see Claire Glossop, 2003. ‘A revolution in the gallery: From the Arts Council to the artist’, in Sculpture in 20thcentury Britain, vol.1, ed. Penelope Curtis, Leeds: Henry Moore Institute.
[ii] Sara Selwood, 2008. Towards developing a strategy for contemporary visual arts collections in the English regions, Arts Council England, London, pp.32-33 and Table 1. Selwood calculates subsidy per attendance rising from £3.40 per visit in 2004/05 to £4.35 per visit in 2006/7 among ACE funded galleries.
[iii] Arts Council England, 2006. Turning Point: a strategy for the contemporary visual arts. London: Arts Council England, p.25.
[iv] For a summary of the evidence around capitalisation of the arts and cultural sector see section 3.1 of Margaret Bolton, Clare Cooper, Claire Antrobus, Joe Ludlow & Holly Tebbutt, 2011. Capital Matters: how to build financial resilience in the UK’s arts and cultural sector, London: Mission, Models and Money. In terms of the visual arts, Susan Royce concludes ‘Most visual arts organisations are under-capitalised’, in Susan Royce, 2010. Business models in the visual arts. Draft published report. Arts Council England: London, p.2.
 the rear-view as we arrived back into San Francisco at the end of our epic road trip in Sep 2010 January is a time for looking backwards at the year just gone, and forwards to the year to come.
2010 offered unparalleled opportunities courtesy of the Clore Leadership Programme: a secondment with Opera North, shadowing at Tate, various training courses including a fantastic coaching course run by Deb Barnard and Rivca Rubin, study trips to galleries around the UK and the new Pompidou museum in Metz.
During the Spring I hope to complete the Fellowship through attending a number of training courses including Action Learning Facilitation and a course at Henley Business School on Managing Change (because the only think we can be sure about in the next year is that there will be plenty of change!). I’ll also be finishing off the research project into collaborative leadership and joint leadership models that’s engrossed me over the past three months or so – more on publication plans shortly. For anyone interested in the Clore Leadership Programme, and leadership development more widely, I’ll be reflecting in a few months on what I’ve got out of the past year’s Fellowship.
Looking forward, currently I can only see about as far as Spring – but here’s the headlines:
- On January 27th I’ll be facilitating a session about new approaches to money in the arts and cultural sector at MMM’s ‘Culture Change’ conference at the National Theatre in London. Many of the speakers participated in the Capital Matters research which I contributed to last year – and which we’ll be launching at this event.
- I’m really looking forward to attending the Museum Next conference in Edinburgh 26-27 May. The theme of this next event is about how we can deepen and extend our relationships with audiences, developing them as volunteers, supporters, advocates, patrons etc which is perhaps the key question facing arts organisations and museums alike. Organised by Jim Richardson of Sumo design Museum Next conferences are among the best I’ve ever attended: I’ve ended up working with and continuing conversations with several people I met at the first event in October 2009 including one of my heroes Nina Simon.
- Throughout the Spring I’m involved in a mini research project looking at the introduction of Tate’s new learning strategy.
- From mid March I’ll be working with Artquest on a new project to support visual artists and craftspeople to develop more effective approaches to funding and financing their artistic practices. This will involve developing new online information about the range of finance options and approaches available to artists including some less trammelled routes including micr-finance, credit unions and micro-philanthropy.
- And I’m particularly looking forward to the opening of the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in April 2011 – both as a local visitor and having worked with the gallery since 2008.
If the first few months are anything to go by, it’s going to be a great year – and a busy one. Wishing you all a life-friendly, fulfilling and healthy 2011!
There’s nothing quite like stepping outside your own environment to gain a new perspective (or inviting in an outsider into your world and listening to the ‘stupid’ insightful questions they often ask). When I think about the most useful learning periods for me in my career it was when I moved to work in France for two years and started working with performing arts rather than just visual arts as Head of Arts for British Council France, or when I spent two years working in the voluntary sector at NCVO. Over the past year, as part of the Clore Fellowship, I’ve been fortunate to work with people in very different fields, including four fantastic and inspiring international fellows from India, Hong Kong and UAE, who’ve open my eyes to different ways of looking at and doing things. So the British Council’s cross-artform, international cultural leadership symposium – featuring commercial sector keynotes speakers David Kershaw (M&C Saatchi) and Patrick McKenna (Really Useful Group etc) and creative and social entrepreneurs from around the world was right up my street!
There was a rich programme of speakers (and much of the content is available from the conference blog, including podcasts, facilitated by the excellent www.amplified10.com – but I want to talk about just 1-2 contributions, in the context of thinking about cross-cultural thinking:
Gavin Stride, a champion of new theatre, spoke about some of the lazy assumptions we have in the cultural sector which limit us including our tendency to polarise things which are not mutually exclusive such as:
Experimentation & accessibility
Makers/creatives & audiences
Excellence & popularity
I’d also add to this list:
Local & high quality
Creatives & administrators/managers.
He also characterised the sector as more competitive than sport.
This really struck a chord with me in terms of the conversations I’ve been having with people in the visual arts about audiences where the minute you suggest opening up curatorial decisions people assume you want to programme galleries by voting. It’s as if there is no middle ground between expertise and the X-factor.
Similarly, the polarisation of artists/creatives and managers has been a recurrent theme and equally hot potato in many conversations in my research around joint leadership models. Curators are keen to dispel the myth that they are not interested in or able to do run organisations, just as the heckles of many managers in theatres and galleries rise if you dare to suggest their roles are not ‘creative’ or about the art. ‘You can’t have great art without great management, or great marketing’, one Executive Director said to me.
Given my ongoing research into leadership models in the visual arts sector I was interested to hear both David Kershaw and Patrick McKenna make a strong case for increased management and business skills within arts organisations at Executive and Board level (based on their experience on Boards of large non-profit performing arts companies). They made a compelling case about the kinds of expertise and skills arts organisations needed to respond to a rapidly changing environment, not least in terms of how technology is disrupting pricing, business models and distribution channels. Both business and creative skills are needed, they argued – and McKenna emphasised the importance of mutual respect and trust between those different parts of the organisation (something which in my experience can sometimes be lacking). David Kershaw went further adding that it’s essential that real commercial business skills are brought in rather than arts leaders trying to become develop them alongside their core competencies – or we end up with, in his words, some ‘ghastly blamange’.
Speaking as someone who might be considered ‘ghastly blamange’ you may suspect I may be biased, but it occurred to me that only the largest arts and cultural organisations (and Kershaw is on the Board of SBC, for example) can really afford to have such business specialists. In the world of smaller organisations that many of us inhabit the staff structure just can’t accommodate specialists in retail, marketing, fundraising, legal, programming, finance, customer service, artistic programming, IT, HR etc many of those roles have to be combined: sometimes even into 1-2 people. And whilst large, glitzy, London organisations might be able to attract CEOs of major companies to their Boards – most smaller arts charities I know struggle to find commercial sector Trustees of the calibre of Kershaw and McKenna. So whilst I wholeheartedly agree with their analysis – that we need more high level management capacity and entrepreneurial skills in our arts and cultural organisations – I think the models which will best deliver this are different depending on the scale and type of organisation.
This brings me to the final reflection on today’s event, courtesy of Octavio Kulesz, a publisher from Argentina, who spoke about how he’d developed successful digital publishing business models (e-books, print-on-demand) in Latin America because the dominant Western models of publishing and print distribution didn’t serve his local market. His lesson was clear: strategies need to be suited to the local context, you can’t import business models from another country.
Looking at other cultures (be those literally foreign cultures, or just other worlds such as big business) can be immensely stimulating in terms of making you think again about the things we take for granted. We are limited by our assumptions (or mental models to give them another name) and if we recognised more of them for what they are – barriers – then perhaps we could find new solutions or better ways of doing things other than ‘because we’ve always done it like that’. But, looking to other sectors is perhaps more useful for helping us ask the right questions than in offering easy answers? Importing wholesale models from other countries or other sectors won’t necessarily work in a different context. For example, as many have pointed out, importing US-style philanthropy to the UK is unlikely to be universally successful. And as we found in the MMM Capital Matters research a successful business model can’t be picked off a shelf – it has to be based on the assets and context of each specific organisation. So look global, but act local. And let’s see if we can make a New Year’s Resolution to leave some of these lazy generalisations and unhelpful assumptions behind.
Are two heads better than one? Why does the visual arts tend to have a single Director (and almost always a curator by training) leading the organisation, whereas in theatre a joint leadership structure is more common? What does an Executive Director bring to the table and how do successful joint leadership models work?
These are the questions I’ve been travelling around England asking leaders from the theatre and visual arts sector over the past few months. So far I’ve interviewed 16 Directors, or former Directors, about their expeirence and views on the subjects – and between now and January I’ll be talking to another 10-15. So at this mid-point in my research I wanted to reflect on key themes and questions that are emerging – and to seek your responses and suggestions about any other angles I need to consider. How do these findings strike you – does it tally with your own experience or have I got this very wrong?
The summary below is very draft and lacks details, examples and references at this stage – it’s simply a summary of key points. Ignore these shortcomings, but please do let me know what you think of the conclusions and questions:
The need for collaboration
The case for greater collaboration in all areas of society and business is strong and my initial reading of management and leadership texts (Peter Senge, Belbin, Archer & Cameron) suggests that leaders in all domains need to work more collaboratively within and beyond their organisations to respond to an increasingly complex and inter-related operating environment – whether we’re talking about tackling climate change or responding to cuts in public services. Many commentators (MMM, Susan Royce recent report of VA business models, ACE new policy framework) demonstrate a similar increased emphasis on the need for collaboration between organisations. Commentators agree that when it works well collaboration extends the capacity and effectiveness of organisations – but it requires skills and effort to create successful partnerships, which are often under-estimated. And poor partnerships definitely cause more harm than good.
The increasing complexity of managing arts and cultural organisations – the need to engage with external stakeholders, recent capital developments, the need to generate greater income and raise funds – is driving a move towards joint leadership models. It is widely agreed that the range of skills and attributes (never mind energy and hours in the day) required of today’s leaders cannot be found in a single person any more. In the visual arts, a need to develop business models which rely less on subsidy and engage with audiences in new ways is driving some of these developments.
Benefits of joint leadership models
The perceived benefits of joint leadership models include that it increases capacity at a senior level in the organisation, particularly in the outward-facing roles of engaging with stakeholders, representing the organisation nationally and internationally, forging new partnerships for co-productions, touring etc. Many feel that better and faster decisions are made by two directors working together, providing greater confidence, a sounding board and even a safety net in some cases. Others go further suggesting this dialogue at the heart of the organisation generates new ideas and the whole is more than a sum of the parts. Several interviews saw joint leadership at the heart of a dialogic and collaborative culture than extended into the wider organisational culture. Importantly, in many cases, having a second director responsible for the organisation and business means that arts and cultural organisations can retain an artistic director at the top of the organisation – whereas if a sole Director had to lead this would be less suitable for an artistic specialist or they would be less able to fulfil their role effectively.
What makes for successful joint leadership?
Whether at an organisational or individual executive level, there are various models for articulating the conditions for success (Belbin’s team roles theory, competencies models, to name but a few). My interviews so far have revealed a consensus around ways of working, structures and skills/competencies/attributes – with communication (including ability to surface and manage conflict constructively) always near the top of the list.
Common values, and trust, are cited as being very important: and, interestingly, Belbin reports that common values enable teams to overcome difficulties that might otherwise be expected in terms of team role mis-matches. Talking to leaders who’ve been in several partnership relationships was revealing: each partnership is different, tailored to the individual strengths (and weaknesses) of the individuals concerned and the needs of the organisation at that point in time. Recruitment into partnerships and the role of the Board in managing and supporting joint leaders are clearly critical – and very live – issues, particularly in theatre.
In joint leadership models it is common that AD and ED differ in style and approach – with this being seen as an asset, although it’s also recognised these differences need to be recognised and managed. The extent to which skills and expertise were different varied – in some partnerships AD and ED shared very common skillsets and areas of expertise (although that’s not to say they had same roles), whereas in others there was far greater specialism. In team role theory and writing on collaborative leadership more widely this difference (be that in style or expertise) is considered the greatest asset of partnership working – the grit in the oyster which makes the pearl.
In the interviews I’ve explored the full range of existing options for leadership structure in performing and visual arts organisations: joint CEOs (AD/ED); AD reporting to ED; ED reporting to AD; Curator-Director with Deputy-Director. I’m not convinced that any one model is inherently better than the others and all need to be implemented well which is in itself an art (interestingly Archer & Cameron talk of 3 pillars for succesful partnership and structure is only one of them: behaviour and process are the other two).
I have a preference for which model I’d like to work in and so did some of the people I’d interviewed. Some preferred the joint model: others felt very strongly that joint responsibility wasn’t possible or ‘natural’ and that someone (either ED or AD – but most often AD) had to ultimately been solely responsible. I’m not convinced there is a ‘right’ model or that it’s worth exploring structures further – although discussions about structure do often reveal assumptions about leadership and the arts sector that are interesting. Perhaps it’s about the right model for the right context: by which I mean the needs of the organisation and the individuals forming that parternship.
What makes for a successful Executive Director?
While the responsibilities of EDs vary according to the needs of their context (both in terms of what their partner brings and also the needs of the organisation), their roles are very similar. It is essentially a strategic management role: cross-cutting, jointly responsible for developing the vision and principally responsible for creating the organisational framework and processes that underpin the implementation of this vision. In functional terms, EDs usually manage marketing/comms, visitor services, commercial activities, premises, IT, HR, development and finance but this depends on individual expertise and organisational need. Developing the brand (and organisational culture), stakeholder relationships, developing the wider strategy for the organisation beyond its programme (positioning, business plan) and organisational development were often seen as key responsibilities of the role.
The ED role was often spoken of in terms of ‘producing’ or ‘facilitating’. Many EDs brought a particular functional specialism (comms/marketing, finance, development were the most common) to the role they universally agreed that there was no standard pre-requisite technical comptencies – beyond people-skills and communication.
Whilst it was common for EDs to have artform knowledge and experience (in fact several EDs had trained as artists/ creatives) there was a far stronger artform knowledge and track record apparent in theatre – with the EDs I interviewed having spent most or all of their careers in theatre. Visual arts counterparts were sometimes in their first visual arts role, and several had begun careers in private sector. Another key difference related to their level of involvement in artistic programming with most theatre EDs being involved in programming decisions (although deferring to AD completely), and most VA managers seeing artistic decisions as quite separate and not their domain. ‘I do everything except the art’ was a common way of describing their role – although often they didn’t feel it was an accurate one. There is widespread consensus that artistic organisations should be centred on the art above everything else, and for many that also equates to the artistic personnel being at the top of the hierarchy.
Why does the visual arts sector have more joint leadership models?
The key insight I draw from my research at this stage is that there is another key question buried within my original proposal that needs considering further. Why doesn’t the visual arts sector seem to value management (and managers) and collaborative leadership more generally? What I hope the research will reveal is what the sector stands to gain by embracing both strategic management roles and a more collaborative approach to leadership.
For example, I’m struck that even those working in ED-equivalent roles in the visual arts (usually known as Deputy Directors) struggle to describe what they do in terms people understand – often resorting to unhelpful clichés (‘they do the art, I do the business; they do leadership, I do management; they do risk and creativity, I make it happen and provide the voice of caution’). There is a real difficulty articulating the management role, particularly in VA, as evidenced in the confusion around titles and lack of consistency between roles in different organisations with the same title. I’ve also noticed that former strategic managers often leave employment in the sector to become independent consultants and (based on my own experience of consulting in the sector) suspect that independent consultants are often plugging the gaps in visual arts organisations that are created by a lack of in-house strategic management capacity.
There is no equivalent of the TMA (Theatre Managers’ Association – a professional body) in the visual arts. There is no clear career path, progression or role for strategic managers in the visual arts. Opportunities for training are minimal and industry standards are non-existent (in contrast to theatre where, as one interviewee commented, ‘at least you can learn the ropes on the job because there are, at least, some ropes’). Where strategic managers do exist their profile is far lower than the AD counterparts and they are rarely known of beyond their locality (one interviewee spoke about them being ‘invisible’ and few people even in those roles are aware of their peers). They move in different circles to ADs. Therefore, thinking about the final report, it may be useful to include pen portraits of what EDs in theatre do and bring to their organisations, as well as descriptions of what the existing VA strategic managers do.
At this stage I’m only just beginning to unpick what it is about the visual arts sector, and our culture, that explains this lack of strategic managers but theories to date include:
- A strongly individualistic culture in the visual arts, based around the artist and star curators who are also ‘auteurs’, which means that leadership of organisations tends towards heroic models where individual artistic vision trumps the brand of the organisation. (One interviewee said to me about the vision for his organisation ‘the vision is what the director does’).
- Linked to this, a tendency to value the art ‘product’ above all else to the extent that other aspects of the vision (such as the relationship with audiences, the role of the institution in its locality etc) are overlooked. This can result in believing the artistic programme and the wider vision for an organisation are the same thing and that vision is the sole domain of the artistic lead.
- The invisibility, externally, of strategic managers beyond their locality means the small number of individuals in these roles currently often have a low profile nationally. Combined with a confusion around articulating their roles and titles this means the benefits these highly valued individuals (often referred to as ‘unsung heroes’) bring to organisations is not better known. So if the wider sector isn’t clearly seeing the benefits brought by strategic managers they don’t know what they are missing. As one interviewee said, ‘I don’t think many people even know Executive Directors exist’. Related to this is the question of how we measure success in the sector: which is largely centred on peer-approval. For example, if the ED has improved trading income or attendance would this be valued by many on-lookers?
- Reluctance on the part of staff, Board and funders to increase what they perceive as ‘overhead’ costs by increasingly management capacity. A scepticism about management (‘we don’t need someone to tell us what to do, we need them to do it’) is fairly widespread in a sector which is over-stretched and under-capitalised.
In a way this seems to be the most important and difficult aspect of the research, because unless we understand better what the barriers are to increasing in-house strategic management capacity then nothing will change.
I’d be really grateful for your comments (online and offline if you prefer claire@claireantrobus.com or @claireant) and suggestions based on this summary so far – particularly in relation to this last part of the question relating to our attitudes within the visual sector to management and managers.
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Tue 19th July 2011 22:04
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