Artistic leadership: the flâneur, the gardener and the physician

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Brewery Green, The Tetley, Leeds (photos: Jon Price)

In another of our occasional series of guest blogs on artistic leadership, Brussels based musician and philosopher Kathleen Coessens asks how we can think about leadership from the perspective of the artist, whether the artist can be a leader, and – if so – what kind of leader?

Kathleen, a participant in our Brussels seminar during On The Edge’s Cultural leadership and the place of the Artist project in 2016, looks back to that discussion through the lens of her own artistic identity and three productive metaphors.

As always we invite further responses to continue and connect our thinking.

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Art and influence: On The Edge at the ENCATC policy debate

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On The Edge’s Jon Price has been invited by the European network ENCATC to give a keynote address to its upcoming 6th Annual Policy Debate in Brussels on Wednesday 22nd June. The event addresses European Cultural Leadership and the Role of the Artist and is targeted at cultural professionals, researchers and policy makers from all over Europe. Jon will be talking about his recent work on the Discourse of Cultural Leadership as well as the wider trajectory of On The Edge research on related topics, from the Artist as Leader onwards. [Read more…]

Holding the paradox

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photo: Chris Fremantle

How can art respond to complex social and ethical problems? When should the demand for solutions be resisted? And how might this affect our understanding of cultural leadership?

These were among the questions keenly debated in the first of our series of full day seminars on Cultural leadership and the place of the Artist which took place in Edinburgh on Friday 20th May.  Our thanks go to the artists, researchers and cultural organisers who attended and contributed so fully.  The day brought together participants from various phases of On The Edge research alongside new friends and colleagues from our project partners Creative Scotland and ENCATC.

Discussion ranged across different understandings of what is meant by leadership and how it relates to artistic production.  This led on to questions about the role of art in public life.  Some compelling suggestions were made about the distinctive capacity of art to embrace contradiction, to find potent material in the midst of uncertainty.  In a world of ‘wicked’, irresolvable problems, there is a value to being able to hold conflicting ideas in creative tension. Can art therefore help us to live with our difficulties?

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Introducing our artist in residence

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Image from ‘what remains and is to come’, a performance installation by Katrina Brown and Rosanna Irvine

On The Edge’s recent artist in residence call resulted in a wonderful response with high quality applications received from seven European countries across numerous different art forms.  We are delighted to announce Rosanna Irvine as the selected artist, and Rosanna has already attended the pilot event for Cultural leadership and the place of the artist at Woodend Barn, Banchory.

Based in Glasgow, Rosanna is an inter-disciplinary choreographer working with performance, digital media and writing practices. She works independently and in collaboration with choreographer Katrina Brown. She is also a researcher and lecturer with an interest in relational aesthetics and non-representational poetics. Her work offers an entirely different way of responding to the discussions, presentations and texts through which this project will develop. We welcome her to the team and look forward to seeing what form her interpretations will take.

We’re also very grateful to the other respondents to our call. It was a point of principle for us that there should be artistic input to this work and we were spoiled for choice. It was only disappointing not to be able to take more ideas forward. However, a really positive development is that a number of the artists who made proposals have chosen to stay in touch with the projects, correspond on the issues and contribute as participants to the forthcoming events.  Their perspectives and contributions are vital complements to the policy and training expertise contributed by our partners, and will help to maintain the central place of artists in this research.

We’re now looking forward to our first main project seminar which takes place in Edinburgh at the beautiful City of Edinburgh Methodist Church on 20th May. More to follow on this site about the key questions and ideas discussed at that event.

Questioning cultural leadership

Who do you depend upon to make your role in the arts possible? Who looks to you for support? What form of change would you most like to see happen – and who can help you bring it about?

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Photos: Graeme MacDonald

On The Edge posed these questions to a diverse group of artists, researchers and organisers at the first event of its new AHRC investigation, Cultural leadership and the place of the artist, on 14th March at Woodend Barn, Banchory. Each question was approached through the viewpoints of a range of archetypal roles: artist, funder, teacher, policy maker, board member, parent, venue manager, volunteer.  We built a network in miniature of the relationships and forms of influence through which our actions are shaped in aesthetic, organisational and social contexts.  Opening up issues of leadership in culture beyond the operation of hierarchies, we tried to understand the interplay between policy and practice; artist and institution; individual and structure; action and influence. Among the discussions that followed we introduced the ten-year trajectory of On The Edge research from The Artist as Leader onwards and tested ideas for the new project. [Read more…]

Artist in residence call

On starThe Edge research (Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen), with partners The Clore Leadership Programme, Creative Scotland and ENCATC, is pleased to announce a call for an artist in residence role connected with our current AHRC funded project Cultural Leadership and the place of the artist.

We are looking for an artist in any discipline to act as creative respondent for series of international seminars taking place this summer in Scotland, Belgium and England. A fee of £1300 plus expenses is available.

Deadline for applications: 26th February 2016. Full details about this opportunity and how to apply are available here: Grays Artist in Residence brief Feb2016

Cultural leadership and the place of the artist

Traditional Sicilian puppets at Rustico's restaurant, AberdeenOn The Edge has secured a new £100,000 international project to develop professional engagement with its research into artistic and cultural leadership at Gray’s School of Art. Establishing new relationships with the Clore Leadership Programme, Creative Scotland and ENCATC (the European network of cultural management and cultural policy education), the work will generate events and discussions with the cultural sector in London, Edinburgh and Brussels. New publications will be produced and the project aims to inform new developments in cultural leadership training, theory and practice.

The year-long initiative is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) with further support from the three partners. It builds on the longstanding ‘Artist as Leader’ research as well as Jonathan Price’s Ph.D research into ‘Discourses of Cultural Leadership’ (2012-2015).  Price will co-ordinate the new project while Professor Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, the co-authors of the Artist as Leader report, will be Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator respectively.  Douglas said: ‘This AHRC award and the support of our cultural sector partners is welcome recognition of the quality of the research at Gray’s and its significance in the professional field. This opportunity allows us to build on our earlier work and on recent doctoral research in the School, shaping debates in the UK and Europe.’

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