Report

1. INTRODUCTION
In January 2002 the Trustees of the Clore Duffield Foundation established a small task force, to consider the ways in which the Foundation could make a significant contribution to cultural leadership training in the United Kingdom. The commissioning of the task force was intended to stimulate fresh thinking around the issue of cultural leadership: the group was to seek opinions from across the cultural sector, identify best practice, and examine current provision of leadership training. It was asked to recommend a course of action, to be considered by the Trustees. At that point the project would, if acceptable to the Trustees, move from a research to a development stage.

The task force consisted of the Foundation's Executive Director, Sally Bacon; Pauline Tambling of the Arts Council of England; Karen Knight from Resource; and two consultants, John Holden and Robert Hewison. Following Karen Knight's move from Resource, Resource was represented by David Barrie, while Karen Knight continued to attend as an independent adviser.

The task force has met formally four times, although informally there have been many more meetings and discussions. The research was conducted through as wide a consultation as possible across the cultural sector, which we loosely defined as including museums, galleries, heritage organisations, performing arts organisations, libraries and archives. An initial paper, available on the Foundation's website at www.cloreduffield.org.uk, was circulated in February to 150 people, inviting comment. A second paper, to be found on the same website, was circulated in June to 434 individuals and organisations. This was a progress report, and outlined the development of the task force's thinking with regard to possible solutions. A total of 184 individuals and organisations have responded in writing to these two documents, a response rate of 42 per cent. The overwhelming majority of these responses have been supportive of the Clore Duffield Foundation's evolving proposals.

In addition to seeking written responses, the task force conducted interviews with a wide range of interested individuals and institutions. Meetings took place with, among others, representatives of the Arts and Humanities Research Board; the Association of British Orchestras; Dance UK; the Department of Culture, Media and Sport; the Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation; the Higher Education Funding Council; Metier (the national training organisation for the performing arts); the Museums Association; the National Museum Directors' Conference; and the Theatre Managers' Association. The Foundation was also represented at the National Museum Directors' Conference seminar, 'Leading Culture', at the British Museum on 22 May 2002.

Discussions were held with a number of leading academic providers of cultural management and leadership training, and a visit was made to the United States to observe the J. Paul Getty Trust's annual museum leadership course at Berkeley, and the Vilar Institute for Arts Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. This was also an opportunity to meet the President of the Center for Arts and Culture in Washington, and to study American approaches to cultural leadership training. Wide-ranging meetings and discussions continued to be held as the task force prepared this final report.

The task force would like to thank most sincerely those individuals and institutions that have so generously contributed their time and expertise to the evolution of this project.

2. THE QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP
When it came to exploring the issues surrounding cultural leadership, one of the first things the task force discovered, not surprisingly, was that we were not the first in the field. As far back as 1997 a report by the then Museums Training Institute, Management Training and Development in the Museums, Galleries and Heritage Sector (better known from the name of its chairman, Sir Geoffrey Holland, as the 'Holland Report'), concluded that in the museum sector 'it is imperative that those at the very top of their profession possess well-developed strategic management skills and first class leadership qualities'. (p.41) In December 2000 Metier, the national training organisation for the performing arts sector, circulated a consultation draft of its report The Leadership Challenge: A review of management and leadership in subsidised arts organisations in England. This similarly warned that: 'the sector under-invests in management and leadership development at most levels'. (p.5)

Resource's report Renaissance in the Regions: A New Vision for England's Museums, published in September 2001, speaks of a 'leadership vacuum' (p.75) in regional museums, alongside 'professional inertia' and 'apathy, low morale, and a general lack of aspiration'. (p.83) Crisis was the language of the Boyden Report on the English Regional Producing Theatres published by the Arts Council in 2000: 'At the start of a new century, a number of theatres are slipping towards financial, managerial, and artistic crisis. The process continues to turn too many working lives into a day-to-day recurring crisis.' (p.10) As Metier's Leadership Challenge puts it: 'The Arts Council fears that many of the future leaders will have left the industry around their early forties, as they find that family and other commitments necessitate better paid employment.' (p.35)

The state of leadership in Britain
Concern about the quality of leadership is by no means confined to the arts and heritage sector. In 2000 the Department for Trade and Industry and the Department for Education set up the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership, under the chairmanship of Sir Anthony Cleaver. The creation of the Council demonstrates that there is widespread anxiety about the state of British leadership, in both the public and private sectors. In 2001 the Council published a report prepared by the Institute of Management and Demos, entitled Leadership: The Challenge for All? This was based on a survey of 1500 managers, which discovered that 'over a third of all managers, and almost half of junior managers, rate the quality of leadership in their organisations as poor'. (p.9) The report comments: 'Most leaders seem to lack the most commonly desired characteristic of leadership: inspiration. While 55 per cent of managers identified this as one of the three most important leadership characteristics, only 11 per cent said that they experienced it in reality.' (p.8)

Such comments, together with many responses to our own discussion documents, confirm that leadership is indeed a pressing issue - but there is uncertainty as to how to address it. The report for the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership states: 'Leadership development is perceived to be a lower priority among managers in the public and voluntary sectors.' (p.44) To which the Leadership Challenge adds: 'The sector seems to struggle with the concept of leadership development.' (p.29) Tim Stockil of Arts & Business is quoted as saying that 'training and development in the arts has been a long-standing issue - it continues to be ad hoc rather than strategic, and often ill conceived and of poor quality'. (p.28)

Barriers to effective leadership
There are examples of good practice to be found - notably the annual Museum Leadership Programme at the University of East Anglia. The creation of a new Sector Skills Council is expected to improve the opportunities for training at all levels, and will support the work of the Arts Council's new framework for Continuing Professional Development. The museums and heritage sector has a system for professional development in place, thanks to the Museums Association; while following their seminar 'Leading Culture', the National Museums Directors' Conference is seeking to support and encourage leadership through a system of mentoring. The Society of Chief Librarians has also put in place leadership development programmes. Some university courses address leadership as well as management in the arts and heritage, and business schools are expanding their work in the not-for-profit sector.

Where there are successful examples, we believe that it is important to support them, and not to seek to reinvent the wheel. Nonetheless, it has to be recognised that there are a number of barriers to the development of leadership training: specifically, a lack of time, money and organisational ability, together with the absence of a clear career structure. Metier estimates that perhaps 30 per cent of the organisations in its sector are achieving its training target of 45 minutes a week (five days a year). Across the cultural sector most training budgets appear to be no more than one per cent of payroll, and most organisations are too small and too stretched to think about leadership development.

It also has to be said that the promoters of better management and leadership training have to face degrees of professional resistance. There is a common belief that leaders are born, not trained. Of the museum sector, the Holland Report comments: 'There is a strong under-current of anti-managerialism. Numerous efforts have been made to break down this perception and to encourage museum professionals to embrace basic management practices - almost all of which have ended in relative failure.' (p.10).

This leads to what the Holland Report calls the 'Culture of Professionalism' (p.23), where the emphasis on subject expertise positively inhibits a curator or subject specialist from acquiring the management skills that will be necessary if he or she is to take on higher responsibilities. The same 'Culture of Professionalism' can be found in the performing arts. As the Leadership Challenge puts it, the arts '…still remain in their belief that it is the subject expertise (in this case their art forms expertise) that gives the person the right to climb the status ladder in the hierarchy of an organisation'. (p.21)

Leadership or management?
We suggest that one way of promoting a more sympathetic attitude towards the development of necessary skills might be by shifting the emphasis from 'management' to 'leadership' - though we appreciate that leadership is earned, as well as learned, and recognise that all managers have to exercise leadership at all levels in an organisation.

This begs the question, however, of what 'leadership' really means. In some senses, leadership is simply that which works. We believe, nonetheless, that leadership qualities can be distinguished from managerial competencies; and that while all managers have to lead, leaders do not always have to manage. What they do have to do is deploy their leadership skills and qualities according to shifting contexts.

As social conditions change - notably the breakdown of the hierarchic model of cultural values - so the demands on leaders change. We suggest that more attention should be paid to 'relational' leadership, where the leader works as an enabler and as a nurturer of other people's talent, and is someone who can produce stability as well as necessary change. That does not mean a loss of vision, however. If a leader is to inspire, then she or he must embody certain values. Cultural organisations are value-based enterprises: the issue is not simply one of 'value for money', but of money for values.

Creative leadership
Among these values we include creativity and dynamism. Creative people are all, in a sense, leaders: they are pushing at boundaries and exploring new territory ahead of the rest of us. Whether they work independently or within an institution, they need to inhabit a funding or organisational structure that allows their creativity to flourish. This means that leadership in organisations in the cultural sector has to be geared to the leadership of creative people. It also means that new models of leadership and organisation are likely to emerge in the creative context of the arts. The organisational culture of the cultural sector will - and should - develop its own type of creative leaders.

In the arts, there is no simple 'bottom line', but a diversity of interests and constituencies to serve. Businesses may have multiple stakeholders, but they are not expected to meet the requirements of social policies imposed by funders, as appears to be increasingly the case in the arts. Conditions of law and governance are different from those in business. Cultural-sector leaders are required to manage with scarce resources, and make strategic plans in the absence of long-term financial security. They are likely to use unpaid volunteers, either as board members or as key personnel. They are under steady pressure to complete short-term projects while at the same time ensuring constant innovation.

We believe that these demands make cultural leadership different from business leadership. How far museums, heritage organisations, archives and libraries make use of generically distinct sets of practices from those in the performing arts is the subject of debate, but we believe that there is a sufficient community of interest to justify taking a cross-sectoral approach.

Cultural crisis
The study of cultural history suggests that whenever there is a burst of anxious theorising about an issue - in this case about the need for cultural leadership - two things can be deduced. Firstly, that the matter in question is going through a climacteric of change. To cite Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the particular paradigm that has framed the conception and knowledge of the subject is beginning to twist and break under pressure from new knowledge and new situations, provoking a crisis. Secondly, that following this crisis, a new paradigm - a new conceptual structure - will emerge. In the case of the arts and heritage, it may well be that that this crisis will result in structural and institutional change. We should ensure, then, that the attempt to address current concern about the supply of leaders for today's institutions is open to the possibility that these institutions may be about to change - and potentially require a different kind of leader.

The crisis of cultural leadership is partly a crisis of cultural values. No single initiative can hope to resolve this issue as a whole. Nonetheless, the response to our consultations and proposals so far leads us to the conviction that cultural leadership constitutes a particular focal point at which it is possible to make a constructive intervention. We reiterate our view that leadership, and not management per se, demands specific attention. By addressing leadership, we believe that it is possible to revitalise institutions across the cultural sector, and that those responsible for the arts and heritage will regain the creativity and confidence that the sector is in danger of losing.

3. GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Before proceeding to our specific proposals, it is helpful to identify the principles that have guided us during the period of research.

• We have striven to listen to professionals and practitioners about their needs
• We are committed to recognising and building on existing initiatives that are proving successful, and to avoiding duplication of what already exists
• We wish to create a proposal that will be thoroughly endorsed and 'owned' by the sector with which we are seeking to work
• Whatever is to be provided must be of the highest quality to attract the right candidates and partners
• We have sought to address issues of gender and ethnicity
• We have sought to integrate theories of leadership with practice
• We have recognised that leadership exists at many levels and goes by many different titles
• We have set out to learn from practical examples of what works
• We will primarily address the situation in the United Kingdom; nonetheless, we wish to learn from, and contribute to, the work of partners abroad
• Our initiative must be forward-looking, concentrating on the people, organisations and culture of tomorrow
• Our initiative must look to the long term
• We recognise that this is an experimental process, and that we must constantly adapt and modify in the light of experience. We will review results and procedures at every stage
• Our initiative should make use of new learning and communication technologies where appropriate
• We will invest in people, rather than in bricks and mortar

In order to express the purpose of what we propose, we suggest that this initiative should be defined by the following mission statement:

Our purpose is to improve the quality of leadership for cultural organisations in the United Kingdom.

Leadership is practiced at all levels within an organisation; it is defined as the ability to conceive and articulate a direction and purpose, and to work with others to achieve that purpose in both benign and hostile circumstances.

We will develop leadership abilities by creating opportunities for specialist training in cultural management and leadership skills, stimulating policy research, assisting mentoring and secondments, and supporting the exchange and communication of ideas both nationally and internationally.

We have made it clear in earlier documents that we have moved away from the idea that the initiative should be expressed in terms of bricks and mortar. Rather, we envisage an institution that is as lightly managed as possible. Our object is to maximise the resources available for those participating in the scheme. This would be best achieved by working with a number of organisations rather than by concentrating effort and investment in one place.

It is clear that the scheme should offer the maximum flexibility to those taking part, who in all probability would be unable to devote a lengthy period of time to an orthodox training scheme. In seeking to help leaders and aspiring leaders, we have in mind people with qualifications and experience who will already have had some chance to prove their potential. That means that they will be busy people. It is also evident that different participants will have different specific needs, so the approach must be tailored to different individual circumstances. For these reasons, we are proposing a 'portfolio' of activities that must be undertaken within an agreed timeframe, from which individual participants can create, under advice, their own development programme.

Every element of the scheme must be practicable not only for those participating, but also for the many organisations involved. A busy theatre, gallery or library is unlikely to want to release a member of staff for whatever period of time, if that simply creates new problems. We therefore believe that organisations should be compensated, to make it easier for them to release their staff. By encouraging secondments and substitutions, we envisage the possibility of further staff development through temporary appointments within the home organisation.

4. THE TASK FORCE PROPOSAL
This document proposes the appointment of a Director, as the first stage towards the creation of a programme, The Clore Leadership Programme, which would offer a flexible, modular approach to leadership development. Although elements in the scheme would use academic or professionally accredited programmes, it is not intended that the Programme as a whole should lead to a formal qualification. It would be established, managed and run by a Directorate (see section 7 below). Those accepted for the Programme would be funded to develop their leadership capabilities over a period of up to two years. Once accepted on the Clore Leadership Programme, participants would be entitled to call themselves Clore Fellows.

While there would be no age restrictions, the purpose of the Programme is to create a new generation of creative leaders. It is expected that they would already have demonstrated their potential for leadership. They would be young, energetic and open to fresh ideas, and would form a cadre of new leaders who would help to regenerate institutions right across the cultural sector.

Clore Fellows would have access to an individual combination of activities. For some this might mean taking part in only one or two activities; for others it may mean taking up every element of the portfolio on offer. We propose that the development portfolio could contain the following elements:

• Secondment: a period of time spent attached to an appropriate organisation, brokered by the Directorate. It is essential that the Fellow should have real responsibilities within the host organisation. It is proposed to establish a consortium of national institutions which would accept participants on secondment on a regular basis. Expressions of interest and support have been received from the Barbican, the National Gallery, the Place, the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Opera House, the South Bank Centre and the Tate. It is likely that one or two placements would be available at any one time in each case. Special provision would be made to ensure regular contact between those on secondment, and for the secondees to receive teaching during their assignments. The host organisation would need to be compensated for their acceptance of Fellows, and where relevant, the participant's home organisation also.There was substantial agreement amongst practitioners about what they would like help with, and what would be most useful to them:
• A Cultural Leadership Course: the Directorate would be charged with the creation of a Course - probably lasting two weeks - dedicated to the development of leadership across the cultural sector. The curriculum, which is being developed, would cover aspects of leadership such as strategic planning, team building, project management, fundraising, relations with funders, relations with government, relations with business, organisational behaviour, succession planning and leadership ethics. This Course, which would draw together participants from all parts of cultural life, would be the cornerstone of the Programme's activities. It is expected that all Fellows would attend this course.
• Coaching: in addition to the support of the Directorate, each Fellow would be assigned a personal coach to assist and guide their development during their participation in the scheme. The role of coach, who would work confidentially with the Fellow on developing personal goals and reinforcing insights gained, would be distinct from that of a mentor, who might well be engaged in the same field as the Fellow.
• Bursaries: to meet the costs of attending existing development and training courses both in this country and abroad. These might be vocational courses providing specific skills, or leadership courses with others from different fields of business, government and the voluntary sector. The course could be selected by the Fellows themselves, or suggested by the Directorate.
• Research Fellowships: enabling the Fellow to undertake a period of research at a university. Typically, this would involve spending a semester at a university campus. The programme of research, conducted under academic supervision, would be agreed between the Fellow, the host university and the Directorate in order to provide a focus for thought, and to develop a body of knowledge on a wide range of issues affecting cultural policy and leadership. The research data and arguments developed through the Research Fellowships would form the basis for wider advocacy about other issues of culture and leadership, such as governance and pay levels not directly addressed within the scheme (see section 9 below). We envisage that where appropriate, the Fellow's home organisation would continue to keep the Fellow on its payroll during the period at university, and that it would be provided with the financial resources to pay for a temporary replacement at the same salary level, plus a premium to provide an incentive.
• Mentoring: the Directorate would act as agent to identify an appropriate mentor, or mentoring scheme, for Fellows. It is expected that Fellows in turn would become mentors to others joining the Programme. A number of mentoring schemes exist already, and we would wish to work with them rather than to create competing provision (see section 8 below).
• An annual event: the Directorate would be charged with organising an annual gathering, entitled The Cultural Leadership Lab, at which current, past and prospective Fellows, together with members of the cultural constituency, would meet to discuss relevant issues, share good practice, and hear the presentation of research generated by the Research Fellowships funded by the scheme. It is expected that all Fellows in the Programme would attend the annual meeting, and Programme alumni would be encouraged to attend.

In addition to these formal elements, we anticipate that the Programme would generate wide opportunities for informal learning and networking across a cadre of leaders and potential leaders, who would be encouraged and assisted by the Directorate to form their own support networks and action learning sets.

5. THE SCHEDULE
It is appreciated that it would take time to bring all these differing elements effectively into play, and that the Director would have to negotiate concrete agreements with a wide range of partners. We calculate that it would initially take 12 months for the Director to devise the Leadership Course, and we propose that the whole Programme should be introduced over a period of some two years, with secondments and a mentoring scheme developing as the scheme progresses. Fellowships would run for two calendar years, and once the scheme is up and running the annual meeting should fall in the early autumn, and the Leadership Course in the Easter period.

The scheme should be preceded by a launch conference to introduce the Programme, and gain information and support for the Leadership Course.

6. THE PARTICIPANTS
The number of Fellows in the Programme at any one time would depend on its success in attracting applicants, the amount the Trustees of the Clore Duffield Foundation decided to commit to the scheme, and the extent to which it would be possible to extend this funding through partnerships. We believe that 12 would be the minimum feasible to take part in the Cultural Leadership Course. (The Getty museum leadership course has a ceiling of 35.) Ultimately, once the Programme had been run in, the ceiling on numbers would be defined by the available financial and human resources. At present, we expect this number to be about 20 new Fellows per annum.

There would be no single, uniform process for accessing the Programme's portfolio of activities. The path of a Fellow through the Programme would depend on the needs identified by the Fellow in cooperation with the Directorate, with guidance, feed-back and assessment provided by an appropriate coach. In the secondment and mentoring elements of the scheme we would seek to encourage movement by participants between organisations, both large and small, and in both directions. We would also encourage their movement across the sector, where practicable. It is intended that by the end of the process, the Fellows would themselves be contributing to the Programme.

A typical route through the Programme might constitute:

• Application
  Self-selection or nomination
  Support from applicant's organisation
  Successful application
• Preparation
  360-degree personal assessment
  Appointment of personal coach
  Advice from Directorate and coach on content of participation
• Participation
  Attend secondment/specialist course/ take up a Research Fellowship (or a combination of these)
  Join mentoring scheme
  Attend Cultural Leadership Lab
  Attend Cultural Leadership Course
  Attend next Cultural Leadership Lab
• Continuation
  Attend further Cultural Leadership Labs
  Opportunity to take on mentoring duties
  Opportunity to participate in nomination and /or selection of new Fellows

All applicants would have to commit to the 360-degree assessment and to taking part in the Cultural Leadership Course.

7. THE DIRECTORATE
The Programme would be managed by a Director, assisted by a small staff. The Programme would operate within the present corporate structure of the Clore Duffield Foundation in the first instance, but would be overseen by a distinct Management Committee, appointed by the Trustees. The Director would consult with stakeholders and appropriate experts in the field, who would form an Advisory Group. Members of the Advisory Group would be asked to sit as necessary on a separate selection panel to consider applications. In addition to overall responsibility for the management of the Programme, the Directorate would maintain a website, to be developed as a source of information on existing cultural management and leadership courses and emerging issues, and manage a publishing programme for research and policy papers generated by the Programme.

The duties of the Director would include: the development of the Leadership Programme to launch stage, and the setting of overall policy in association with the Advisory Group; the selection of Fellows through the application process; the establishment and management of an annual cross-sectoral Cultural Leadership Course; the appointment of an individual coach for each Fellow; the guidance of each Fellow's path through the Programme; the agreement of research topics with Fellows and their placement with appropriate university departments; the identification of appropriate existing training courses for Fellows wishing to take up Bursaries; negotiating secondments for Fellows; brokering a mentoring scheme; and the management of an annual gathering (the Cultural Leadership Lab). The Director would also be responsible for seeking out appropriate partnerships with other organisations in the field, in order to widen access to, and the reach of, the Programme as a whole, including the international dimension.

8. PARTNERSHIPS
While the Clore Duffield Foundation has taken the initiative in proposing the development of this Programme, it has always believed that its success would depend on establishing successful partnerships with other institutions, and on making the Programme truly national. Doing so would not only help to expand the financial resources available; it would also extend the sense of participation and ownership. The most important partnerships to be formed would be with those organisations accepting Fellows as secondees, and where appropriate, the Fellows' home institutions, for only with the support and co-operation of the home institution would it be possible for a Fellow to take full advantage of the scheme. In the light of the likely benefits to a home institution, we do not think it unreasonable to expect the home institution to contribute financially to aspects of the Fellow's activities. This might be by paying a 'joining fee' appropriate to the organisation's resources to enrol in the Programme, or by making a contribution to particular parts of the portfolio.

As far as wider partnerships with funding and other bodies are concerned, these would fall into two groups: with providers of existing services accessed by participants in the scheme; and with users of services, such as the Cultural Leadership Course, that the Programme has helped to generate.

Providers: these would include academic and training organisations running existing courses and facilities to which Fellows would have access through a Bursary. (The principle adopted by the scheme would be to fund existing providers of training by supporting the use of their services: in other words, the Fellow would be funded to pay for their chosen provision, rather the provider being funded to deliver to the Fellow.) In order to manage the proposal for Research Fellowships, it would be necessary to establish partnerships with universities to ensure proper academic supervision of the Fellow, and to encourage the Fellow to contribute to the work of the department in which the Fellowship is held.

Users: there are aspects of the Programme - principally the annual gathering and the Cultural Leadership Course - that need not be exclusive to Fellows. Depending on availability, places could be offered to people funded by other bodies. This would help create an international dimension to the Programme.

At the close of the research stage, the task force has identified a number of potential partners in different aspects of the Programme, who have responded positively to the initiative. These include: the Arts Council of England; the Arts and Humanities Research Board; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the J. Paul Getty Trust; the Higher Education Funding Council; the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts; and Resource. Secondment arrangements have been discussed with the Barbican, the National Gallery, the Place, the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Opera House, the South Bank, and the Tate. We have also already identified a number of providers of training and coaching who have expressed interest in contributing to the scheme.

9. RELATED ISSUES
Throughout the research and consultation process, we have been fully aware that the quality of leadership of cultural institutions is by no means the only issue affecting the quality of cultural life as a whole. We acknowledge that leaders cannot lead successfully when external factors make it difficult or impossible for the leader to act. However, the task force was asked to address the specific question of leadership, and we are convinced that it is on this, in the first instance, that the potential resources available should be concentrated. The most pressing problems that have been revealed by the consultation process are briefly discussed below. Although we do not believe that they can be resolved by the existence of a cultural leadership scheme alone, it is possible that the forum this would create could contribute to the resolution of these important issues:

Governance: as our interim report made clear, a pressing problem facing leaders of charitable organisations is the management of their relationship with the chairman and board, where the chief executive is excluded from the board, and the board members bear ultimate financial responsibility. It was put forcefully to us that it was not leaders, but chairmen and trustees, who needed training. There are also different, but related, issues of governance between officers and elected members in local authorities.

We believe that it would be possible to contribute to the improvement and better understanding of matters of governance by stimulating research and debate on this issue through the Research Fellowship Programme and the Cultural Leadership Lab. Matters of governance would also form part of the curriculum of the Cultural Leadership Course. Once the scheme is successfully in place, it may be possible to develop a special programme (including trustee training) that addresses the specific issue of CEO/chairman/trustee relationships.

Salaries: we recognise that work in the cultural sector does not usually bring high financial rewards. Salary levels in the second tier - the principal source of potential leaders - are particularly poor, and it is at this stage that many leave the sector. We believe that the existence of the proposed leadership scheme would have a positive effect on morale, by recognising and rewarding potential, and creating a sense of expectation that will raise standards. By fostering connections and networks, and encouraging participants to relate their activities to the wider public sphere, we believe that it would be possible to create a better understanding of the contribution of the cultural sector, and at the same time to restore the sector's self-confidence. This in turn would increase the sector's powers of advocacy, with beneficial results for salary and funding levels as a whole.

Organisational change: it has been put to us that not only in matters of governance, but also more generally, it is organisations that need training and change, while our proposed scheme addresses only the situation of individuals. Our reply is that, of course, leaders do not exist outside the organisations they lead; but that the nurturing of leadership must begin with the individual, who can then lead institutional change. Again, both the research and debate stimulated by the proposed scheme, and aspects of the Cultural Leadership Course, would address organisational change. We also believe that coaching can play an important part in helping a leader to effect organisational change.

Methods of appointment: the process of appointment of a new director or chief executive provides a particular moment in the life of an organisation when it focuses on the requirements of leadership. It has been put to us that boards and appointment committees often need expert assistance and guidance at this time in order to choose the right leader for their organisation's future. While we can see the merit in this argument, the focus of the scheme at present needs to be on the development of potential leaders rather than on their appointment. However, by helping to define appropriate leadership qualities and disseminating good practice, the Programme could contribute to the appointment process.

10. CONCLUSION: THE CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS
In the course of our research, the task force has asked itself many times how it would be possible to judge whether the Cultural Leadership Programme we are proposing had been successful. We are dealing with individuals and with human resources, and - especially in the light of the need for creativity in cultural leadership - these are not factors easily confined to the tick-boxes of financial targets or performance indicators. Nonetheless we believe that an investment in the rising generation of cultural leaders is necessary, and timely.

If the proposed schedule for the introduction of the Programme is accepted, it will take two years to introduce, and it is essential that there be opportunities for revision as the Programme is developed. Since one aim is to generate contacts and informal networks across the sector, it would not be possible to judge its success until a sufficient number of Fellows had passed through the scheme. This judgement would not be fully practicable before Year 5, and a major review is proposed for that year.

The criteria for that review should include that:

• All aspects of the programme as developed by the Director will have been up and running for at least two years
• The Programme has attracted additional partners and financial support
• Policy research by Fellows will not only have been published, but will have had an influence on public debate
• A significant number of Fellows from the first cohort will have achieved promotion to leadership posts
• Women and minorities will be better represented at leadership level
• The number of applications to join the scheme indicate that there is steady or rising demand
• Administration costs should be judged to be reasonable in proportion to income and the number of Fellows

Ultimately, the success of the Programme would be judged by the effect it had on the issue it was created to address: the quality of cultural leadership in the United Kingdom. We know that there are already many examples of good leadership, of all kinds, and at all levels, to be found right across the cultural sector. Our intention is to learn from these, in order to raise standards as a whole. We believe that our proposal will have beneficial results beyond the immediate issue of leadership, by restoring a sense of confidence to the cultural sector, by strengthening its powers of advocacy, and by reasserting the importance of culture and creativity to the economic and social health of this country.

Robert Hewison and John Holden, December 2002

REFERENCES
Peter Boyden Associates, Roles and Functions of the English Regional Producing Theatres, Arts Council of England, May 2000 (The Boyden Report)
Institute of Management/Demos, Leadership: The Challenge for All?, 2001 (Report commissioned by the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership)
T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, 1970
Metier, The Leadership Challenge: A review of management and leadership in subsidised arts organisations in England, consultation draft, December 2000
Museum Training Institute, Review of Management Training and Development in the Museums, Galleries and Heritage Sector, December 1997 (The Holland Report)
Resource, Renaissance in the Regions: A New Vision for England's Museums, 2001