Thoughts on cultural leadership

Colin Prescod: "Who is leading what, and leading whom, to where? What are we trying to do by creating all these leaders or lead activities? We usually don't acknowledge that.

"Leadership comes to be a concept that doesn't just mean people, persons who are leaders, but also kinds of activities, interventions. Particularly kinds of curation, ideas on how to mobilise stuff, leading on ideas, on acts as well. So it's people, it's also leadership in setting up critical forums, groups of people who might have a critical mass or power to make interventions or push interventions. So leadership is that whole spread."

Mike Stubbs: "I think it means using new languages, challenging existing language, showing alternative ways of doing things, being a bit left-field sometimes, surprising. Being provocative. I'm a strong believer in provocation, interfering. I've just come from the Ken Saro-Wiwa celebration this morning, who died trying to fight the Niger Delta being corrupted environmentally and challenging some major oil companies, the global oil companies including Shell. Him and eight colleagues died for his cause. So in terms of asking difficult questions or saying 'Actually, you've been doing it like that, but is that really such a great way?' That's not such a big thing, is it?

"We have to take a leadership role and be seen to challenge. I think the arts are in a way blessed to do that. The arts overall are given that permission. If you can't ask questions in an arts organisations about how things are done, if we can't create spaces where individuals and collectives can say 'We want to look at this', where else can you do it?"

Creative Choicesº: "How can you become a better cultural leader?"

Laura Sillars: "I took part in a Clore short course, which is a two-week long, very very intensive leadership training course, about two years ago. It brought together about 18 arts professionals from across the country to learn how to be better leaders and better managers.

"It's not about trying to change you, it's about trying to understand your unique set of skills and talents and augment those so that you work to your strengths whilst having an awareness of what your perceived weaknesses and perhaps your real weaknesses are. So when you're working with different members of staff or in different environments, you're trying to bring out the great things that you've got, but also bring with you people with different sets of skills and a different way of working.

"An old-fashioned leadership course is probably 'This is what a leader must have, therefore if you don't tick all these boxes then you're clearly not going to be the right kind of leader'. And the Clore wasn't about that, it was about trying to get you to interrogate what toolkit you came with, and find better ways to use those tools."

Colin Prescod: "The Cultural Leadership Programme has made a decision that it needs to create people with the potential to take leadership positions, who can enter into powerful defining situations in the cultural heritage sector, so that they can become a part of pursuing the dream of a multicultural Britain.

"We cannot rely on the existing structures, the existing professionals, the existing systems and dominators to make these boat shifts, so we have to create the agents and agencies for doing that."