Trustees and staff of Creative & Cultural Skills were at Number 11 Downing Street this morning to help Chancellor Gordon Brown launch a £12 million initiative to promote excellence in management and leadership in the sector.
The two-year Cultural Leadership Programme aims to develop leadership which is dynamic, diverse and genuinely world-class. It's anticipated that over 2000 people working in the creative and cultural industries will directly benefit from leadership opportunities development opportunities through it.
"Culture in the UK helps to define and shape and deepen our lives as individuals. It also makes a significant contribution to our nation's prosperity" said the Chancellor. "If this significant part of our economy is to prosper and grow, we must recognise the role of our cultural leaders in delivering that success and ensure the emergence of a talented and diverse group of future leaders."
The programme, which is jointly led by Creative & Cultural Skills, The Arts Council of England and The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, focuses on four key areas :
- Ensuring that the skills base and support networks for creative leaders are fit for purpose
- Enabling a more diverse range of people to be leaders
- Providing development opportunities for current and prospective leaders at different stages of their careers
- Securing a long-term legacy for cultural leadership by connecting the programme to other major skills developments
Creative & Cultural Skills will deliver Creative Choices, a £2.5 million online careers portal that will enable current and future leaders to make informed decisions about courses and personal development options.
Employers across the creative and cultural Industries have welcomed the initiative which has been shaped by a major UK-wide consultation exercise. Among the speakers at the breakfast launch event was David Kershaw, partner at top advertising agency M&C Saatchi and a trustee of Creative & Cultural Skills:
"In the face of increasing global competition, complacency is not a luxury we can afford. We are successfully opening markets worldwide, including in the growing economies in the east - India and China. But as we access these markets, we will continue to find increasing competition from the bright young and hungry talent those countries have to offer.
To meet this competition, we need to expand the diversity of our workforce across the board but particularly at the highest leadership levels. While we support an equal opportunities agenda, our real focus is commercial success. We need to create a diverse workforce to respond most effectively to diverse markets in the UK and abroad.
The advertising sector has a history of recruiting the best. That best will look increasingly multicultural in years to come, reflecting a talent base across the population. The Cultural Leadership Programme can help us fast-track some of that talent."
Opportunities will be open to people throughout the UK working in working in the wider creative and cultural industries as well as the core cultural sector of crafts; libraries and archives; museums and galleries; music and the arts. Delivery partnerships will be developed across the arts and business sectors to share ideas and resources and create new opportunities for collaboration.
The Downing Street event came the morning after a launch party hosted by the music giant EMI and attended by several hundred guests. It brought together people from a wide range of cultural organisations and creative disciplines.
"Leaders above all must see the bigger picture, what's happening in the wider world, and be ready to respond" says Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House and Chair of Creative & Cultural Skills. "The challenge of that is now even bigger: we are lucky to be doing what we are in a period of enormous technological and social change.
We don't, so far, train our leaders or our managers. All the business school models of leadership are from the commercial world. We need to develop thinking about what we need to manage creativity. In the end, creativity is where the UK's future lies."
Creative and Cultural Skills at Downing Street for £12m leadership launch