Arts Leadership In Contemporary Contexts

This book explores and critiques different aspects of arts leadership within contemporary contexts. While this is an exploration of ways arts leadership is understood, interpreted and practiced, it is also an acknowledgement of a changing cultural and economic paradigm. Understanding the broader environment for the arts is therefore part of the leadership imperative. This book examines aspects such as individual versus collective leadership, gender, creativity and the influences of stakeholders and culture. While the book provides a theoretical and critical understanding of arts leadership, it also gives examples of arts leadership in practice.

The contemporary world faces unprecedented upheaval and change forcing institutions of all types to rethink how they are designed and how they must now function if they are to survive into an uncertain future. The performing arts are no exception; in an era of constant change and technological transformation, arts organizations and their leaders face significant organizational challenges if they are to maintain their relevance. Arts Leadership: Creating Sustainable Arts Organizations provides a contemporary overview of the field of arts leadership, focused on the performing arts. It examines what these challenges are, how they are affecting the performing arts and arts organizations in general and proposes creative ways to reimagine, build and lead sustainable arts organizations in this uncharted environment. With a global perspective drawn from his extensive experience advising arts organizations around the world and based on his own work successfully leading important performing arts organizations in the United States, Foster proposes an innovative approach to organizational design, systems, and structures for arts leaders in the 21st century that is based in ecological thinking and the creative process that is intrinsic to the arts. In disrupting conventional arts leadership practice, the book provides an exceptional tool to understand a unique sector, and is essential reading for students and practitioners across the creative and cultural industries.

An edited collection of international case studies discussing approaches to arts leadership and management

What do cultural leaders really think about the problems they, and the arts and cultural sector, face? This book brings global leaders in the cultural field into dialogue with academics and experts to offer profound insight and perspectives on the complex issues the cultural sector faces in a rapidly accelerating and destabilising twenty-first century context. The book engages directly with leaders in the arts and cultural sector, bridging the gap between academia, policy and practice. Each chapter sheds new light on national cultural policy contexts, offering different perspectives on arts subsidy, audiences, the cultural workforce, heritage, artform development and how cultural leadership functions in a fast-changing local, national and international context. Interviews are conducted by academics and experts with significant knowledge and understanding of the arts management and cultural policy field, who ask critical and probing questions. Featuring interviews with an impressively international range of senior figures from the cultural sector, from the Royal Opera House, BMW, Bloomberg and Onassis Foundation and covering countries including the UK, Germany, Chile, Singapore, Greece, USA, Serbia and Ireland, the book gives a truly global overview of cultural leadership from leaders who are open to question, critique and challenge. Each chapter offers a unique and fascinating insight into the mind of a leader in their field, with their experience ranging from huge participatory events featuring tens of thousands of people to the visual arts, opera, the Turner Prize and the #blacklivesmatter movement. This book will be essential reading for reflective cultural leaders around the world, as well as a useful resource for students and scholars involved with arts and cultural management and policy.

This book is about co-leadership: A leadership practice and structure often found in arts organizations that consist of two or three executives who bridge the art and business divide at the top. Many practitioners recognize this phenomenon but the research on this topic is limited and dispersed. This book assembles a coherent overview and presents new insights of the field. While co-leadership is well institutionalized in the West, it is also criticized for management’s constraint of artistic autonomy and for its pluralism that dilutes leadership clarity. However, co-leadership also personifies the strategic objectives of art, audiences, organization, and community, by addressing plural logics – navigating the demands of artistic vision and organizational stability. It is an integrating solution. The authors investigate its specifics in the arts, including global practice and its interdisciplinary nature. The theoretical frame of plural leadership supports their empirical explorations of the dynamics within the co-leadership relationship and with organizational stakeholders. Data includes the voices of co-leaders, artists, staff, and board members from arts organizations in Canada and Norway. Their abductive reflection generates a stimulating research experience. By viewing co-leadership in action, not as a study of static theories, the book will appeal not only to students and researchers but also resonate with practitioners in arts and cultural management and assist them to work with co-leadership and to manage its tensions. Chapters 1 and 4 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This textbook provides an expert overview of the challenge of arts and cultural leadership in the contemporary world. Grounded in theories of sustainability and with a renewed global focus for this second edition, the author’s insights from contemporary arts organizations facilitate meaningful student comprehension. Drawing on the work of practitioners and theorists in the fields of philosophy, biology, and ecology as well as the arts, Foster proposes a rethinking of organizational design, strategy, and structure that is based on ecological concepts and the creative process that is intrinsic to the arts rather than the conventional business model that currently prevails, particularly in western arts and culture organizations. He contests conventional thinking about arts administration and management and urges arts leaders to foreground innovation as they reimagine their organizations for a world unlike any other. New sections include an enhanced theoretical discussion as well as new material on business models, strategy, and organizational design and practice. Applicable to any arts organization, the entrepreneurial focus is especially relevant in the aftermath of the global pandemic, the ongoing climate crisis, and the quest for democracy and social justice. This updated edition will be a valuable resource both for present-day arts and cultural leaders who are working to adapt to the current environment as well as students and future leaders who aspire to make change in the world through arts and cultural leadership.

At a time of transformation for many arts and cultural organisations, this book provides a compact, in-depth and practical introduction to effective leadership in arts organisations. It begins with an overview of leadership theories, then moves on discuss the specific tasks and challenges of leadership in the arts, including digital leadership and remote work challenges for arts managers. Well-balanced and concise, this book combines a sound theoretical background in management with practical knowledge from the field. The underlying view is that all employees in arts and cultural institutions are responsible for successful leadership. Bearing this in mind the overall aim of this book is to provoke interest in better leadership in the arts and to generate knowledge of leading more effectively. It will be of interest to academics in the field of cultural management, creative industries management, heritage management and leadership in the arts. Additionally, it will be of interest to professionals working in these fields and explores topics that affect every leader in the arts sector, including typical framework conditions, the most important leadership tasks and responsibilities and individual leadership styles and principles.

This original book explores the character of cultural governance of arts and cultural institutions in eight countries across five continents. Examining strategy and decision-making at an organisational level, this is the first empirical contribution on cultural policy and management, revealing how it is applied across the globe in otherwise unexplored countries. Concerned with the assumption that ‘one-size fits all’, the chapter authors analyse how cultural governance is managed within arts organizations in a range of countries to assess whether some locations are trying to apply unsuitable models. The chapters aim to discover and assess new practices to benefit the understanding of cultural governance and the arts sector which have as yet been excluded from the literature. As a collection of local accounts, this book offers a broad and rich perspective on managing cultural governance around the world.