Our Director Kristianne writes about the Clore Leadership Now event in London on 26 January;
I attended the Clore Leadership Now, London Assembly, on Friday 26 January. In partnership with Arts Council England, Leadership Now is one in a series of events for leaders of cultural organisations across England to share, explore, navigate, and co-create practical solutions for the contemporary leadership challenges faced running cultural organisations. In an exceptionally challenging time for cultural leaders, creating and sharing solutions as well as best practice the event allowed the space to explore the issues faced in a supportive environment. As Hilary Carty, Executive Director, Clore Leadership, said in her opening address it is about ‘what can we as cultural leaders do ourselves’ as much as looking to others for answers.
Hosted by the erudite Amanda Parker, founder of Arts Inc, the day was timetabled around themed tables to discuss; challenges and issues, ideas worth sharing/tactics, and solutions. I was invited to be a table host for the theme Equality, Justice, and Inclusion. We engaged in stimulating conversations talking about what is a healthy partnership, how do we sustain relationships as small organisations with the bigger ones (and vice a versa), what is the real problem in recruiting in an equitable way, should we re-frame equality, diversity and inclusion as equitable access and inclusion, equity-washing and much more.
Industry experts in law and Artificial Intelligence (AI) had been invited along to talk about current themes.
Shireen Shaikh, from the law firm Taylor Wessing (National Portrait Prize sponsor), talked about hybrid working being here to stay, and people not wanting to return to the work place ‘not normal is the new normal’ she said. She unpicked a bit around some of the current hot topics faced in the workplace including hybrid working, Gen Z, employment status, discrimination law, freedom of expression and Twitter (X) storms.
Bringing another hot topic to our attention was Peter Henegan, from The Future Communicator, who shared groundbreaking AI with us that is still in progress – being able to speak in any language from around the world online making everything we do instantly accessible to an international audience! In terms of our sector, he talked about how we can use ai as part of our everyday for tasks around things such as data, note taking, planning, and writing sections of text. Whilst he acknowledged that there is still a long way to go to ensure AI is not biased it can be used as a starting point if we make sure we check it is fit for purpose before using the output. AI has the potential to create a more level playing field, he stated ‘…the smallest player can use it (AI) to take on the biggest players in the market…’ which is encouraging for micro-organisations like us.
It was an invaluable day filled with ideas, encouragement, solutions, and generosity of spirit. More days like these are necessary in our sector to ensure the unheard voices are heard. I had already downloaded Pi.ai. onto my mobile before I caught the train home!
#clore #cloreleadership #cloreleadershipnow #leadershipnow #artscouncil #artscouncilengland #artsandculture #culture #arts #edi #equalitydiversityandinclusion #equalitydiversityinclusion #equity #equitable #inclusion #ai