Boosting Resilience: a 2-year learning programme for leaders – in the arts

The startup and scaleup world has seen a dramatic explosion, but there has been little or no support for the development of entrepreneurs and leaders of innovation. This is one such programme.

This is a programme – in a sector whose very essence is innovation – that aims to enable senior staff from England-based arts and cultural organisations, music education hubs, museums and library services, faced with difficult times (‘the new norm’), to develop new approaches to their work.

It is one of four new flagship projects supported by Arts Council England with the aim of inspiring and supporting the development and piloting of new approaches to ‘making the most of Creative Assets and Intellectual Property’.

It is being conceived and delivered by the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at Cass Business School, the Culture Capital Exchange and the Centre for Enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The programme is working with a cohort of 27 leaders, such as Directors or Chief Executives, from a diverse range of organisations across England. It aims to help participants to: recognise and seize opportunities, to deploy resources more strategically and imaginatively and to identify and mitigate risk, focusing on developing organisations’ thinking on their creative assets, their existing and potential intellectual property, and on their abilities to maximize these through working with wider sectors.

The longer-term aim is also to benefit the wider sector, creating materials and methods to anticipate and withstand economic, social, environmental and technological change.

The programme aims to create a unique environment in which to nurture approaches to resilience and leadership in the arts and culture sectors. It consists of three residentials that bring people together to develop skills and knowledge as well as to network and engage in peer-to-peer learning. It includes action learning sets, partner evaluation groups, peer-to-peer learning, walking, mentoring, bespoke workshops, one-to-one support and an online learning environment.

Participants’ interests and aspirations, derived from their applications, together with ideas generated in three ‘ideas pools’ each in a different part of the country, provided the themes for the first residential, just completed. It concentrated on established foundational knowledge and learning approaches. Four external speakers shared their expertise – of insights on creative assets, of problem solving styles, and intellectual property.

A combination of active and digital learning enabled individuals, small groups and the whole group to work collaboratively on individual’s issues; and material was regularly made available on the website.

The taught content consisted primarily of short briefings and debriefings around hands-on activities, introducing them to current learning methods while working on topics specific to their own interests.

Participants were also supplied with custom-designed reflective journals to keep during the event, and there is also a personal secure reflection space available digitally.

It was evidently a very inspiring week-end. The subsequent residentials take place in March and November, 2018. In between residentials, participants will have opportunities to meet individually with experts and programme staff and to take part in Action Learning groups – to help develop their ideas and plans.

John Whatmore, November 2017.