From the Clore Leadership Programme’s fifth birthday, director Sue Hoyle looks at what has been achieved and ahead to its future
What is a Clore Fellow? Someone who is not taught to be a leader but finds leadership in themselves, who undergoes a largely self-directed programme of workshops and courses, an extended placement, original research, and mentoring and coaching, and who has courage to explore the unfamiliar.
Above all, the Clore “experience” encourages fellows to take risks but does not specify how they do so or what they choose to learn en route. It is non-prescriptive, flexible but very intense. As one Fellow said recently, “How do you describe something that is liberating and focussed, terrifying and nurturing, tailored and completely unstructured? Clore!”
The Clore Leadership Programme has just celebrated its fifth birthday. The idea of Dame Vivien Duffield, the programme is the UK’s first cross-disciplinary leadership initiative for the cultural and creative sector.
What distinguishes the Clore programme from previous leadership projects is not only the focus on customised in-depth learning, but the diversity of participants, ranging from archivists to film and theatre directors. Fellows have come from across the UK and, increasingly, from overseas: from Canada, China, Egypt, Iran, Ireland, Hong Kong, India and the United Arab Emirates.
The immediate response to the fellowship programme was overwhelming, in terms of both the number and quality of applications. Since 2004, 157 fellowships have been awarded in response to around 2000 applications. In addition to the fellowships, the programme has run 21 short courses across the UK, each lasting two weeks and reaching nearly 500 artists, administrators, producers, curators, librarians, policy-makers and many others in the cultural and creative field. With support from the Arts Council’s Cultural Leadership Programme, we have also led board away days for 21 organisations and provided training courses for individual board members, chairs and senior executives.
The high level of demand for all of these strands, and the positive feedback we have received, demonstrate how greatly this initiative was needed. It has also proved extraordinarily influential in the UK and beyond, attracting partnership funding from over 40 different public, private and charitable sources and stimulating comparable initiatives in the Netherlands and the USA.
In achieving all this, it has been generously supported by many from across the arts and creative industries as well as from business, education and the public and social sectors: individuals and organisations who have contributed as speakers, mentors, advocates and advisers,
For many of the Fellows, the Programme has indeed been life-changing. “I believe in myself, I didn’t before. I believed I should - now I know I can!”
Some have moved on to head up museums, theatres, orchestras, festivals and library services; some have returned to their jobs with renewed confidence, more extensive networks and enhanced skills. Some fellows are working independently: others have set up ground-breaking new charities or independent businesses which focus on 21st century issues, such as Tom Andrews, whose arts charity People United promotes social cohesion and kindness, and Bev Morton, whose work focuses on leadership and well-being.
From the beginning, one of the unanticipated benefits has been the way in which each group of Fellows has formed strong bonds amongst themselves, supporting and learning from one another and cascading their learning beyond the programme as mentors, coaches, employers, board members, educators and consultants.
Perhaps the programme is already helping not only to change the leadership of culture, but is also having an influence on the culture of leadership, creating an environment where the leaders who have completed the Clore Programme are less isolated than their predecessors and more able to learn from one another and provide peer support. They also collaborate creatively and strategically across what have sometimes in the past been apparently unbridgeable divisions between different arts forms, sectors and professional hierarchies.
Looking ahead, changes in the economic environment, digital advances and increasing globalisation will continue to provide more and more new challenges and opportunities for cultural leaders - and for our Programme too.
We have already made some adjustments to the way it works and will continue to fine-tune, develop and extend it. Next year, for example, we will be publishing articles by Fellows on a range of issues including leadership and the creative economy; and, in partnership with the British Council, we will be running a three-day course in the UK for international cultural leaders.
We will be refreshing our website, with regular e-newsletters designed by guest editors and developing new content and learning styles for all our residential courses, including more contributions generated by participants.
We are introducing greater focus to the Fellowship programme, with most Fellows able to complete the core of the Programme in a concentrated seven-month period.
Recognising that financial pressures may impact on people’s ability, and willingness, to take time away from work for leadership development, we expect this to make the programme more accessible for some potential leaders and their employers, and look forward to receiving an ever-widening range of applications in the new year when we advertise the 2010-11 Fellowships.
