Ideas to support Cultural Leadership in Regional Australia

As part of my preparation to present at Kumuwuki http://www.kumuwuki.org.au/ this year, I felt it was high time I pulled myself out of strategic business plans, staff contracts, running workshops, and programmes for half an hour and dedicate that time to considering the substance that feeds all of that work - the thing or things that keeps me going when the 'arts' seems to have vanished from the reason I work in the arts.

As a kick start to the panel 'What Cultural Leadership Looks Like' where I'm representing the regional perspective, I thought I should recommence this long forgotten blog and build it into the basis from which I can share the ideas we practice at Arts North West www.artsnw.com.au (the regional arts board for the New England North West of NSW) and that have been developed and implemented from a range of arts practitioners, community do-ers, academic and industry research and from my own research findings into the the practice of flow improve sustainability in Australian independent theatre Together Alone: Conditions for Sustainability in Australian Independent Theatre (UOW Electronic Copy.

I want to start with where I am right now. In an office in the roof of the Visitor Information Centre that runs alongside the New England Highway. Here with a view over spring blossoms, country traffic and McDonalds signs I am often speaking with who I consider to be cultural leaders. These are the people who do. The people who inspire others to do. The people who keep doing despite issues such as burn out, isolation, and lack of funding or income. Without such leaders many local, regional, and much larger projects would not exist or would not thrive and benefit our community in the way they do.

When everything is working well, our regional arts board generally will not hear from such projects and their leaders unless it is to witness the positive reviews in the media or through other promotional connections. The call from those leaders or the communities they work comes more often when there's a glitch, a missing link, a sense of fatigue, a problem to be solved or some support or advice required. Having extensively researched the beneficial impact of positive psychology principles being carried out in the arts, often unknowingly, and not having a big budget or pool of resources ourselves, this is one area where Arts North West can support those leaders and we attempt to build those principles into the range of services we provide.

I have identified core principles that we build into the programmes or support Arts North West provides because they cost very little except time and mindfulness for a lot of gain. The principles I adhere to provide:

• a sense of oneness (a sense of being at one with one’s self, and one’s processes and environment);
• immediate feedback (contact and support turnaround times of under 24hrs - usually less);
• clear goals (working with artists and cultural leaders to identify what they want out of that phone call, that funding application, that day, that year, that overwhelming community project);
• a feeling of control (NOT being in control - which is rarely possible - but feeling a sense of control);
• a dynamic balance of capacities with challenges or opportunities (implementing ways to balance the wonderful feeling of being alert and inspired but without falling too often into a state of being overwhelmed or stressed). 

Some might argue that cultural and regional leaders are already aware of the need to identify these principles in the work that they do and that this is why they ARE cultural leaders (I sense I'll be delving into the current research into this theory again fairly soon). However, speaking from a personal as well as research and evidence-based perspective, often the burden on that leader can be too much for one person at one time. My role as Regional Arts Development Officer is to provide those leaders, those doers, with the support that they need so that they can continue to provide support to their communities? Another part of my role is to make sure that I apply those same principles to our organisation and to the part I play as a cultural leader.

Over the next month I hope to be able to better track examples of such principles and their impact on cultural leaders and projects and programmes and to build them into this blog. So this is a test for me as well: if I can find the time to maintain this blog then I am building the principles that I preach into my own working life. 

Any examples or ideas in relation to this post are gratefully received!