Leading in Cultural Governance
In the face of uncertainty and rapid change, effective governance of arts and cultural organisations has never been more crucial.
At Clore Leadership, we have been offering board development programmes since 2007, empowering trustees and organisations to prioritise governance as a key agenda item in leading their organisations to success.
We are dedicated to fostering robust and inclusive governance practices within the cultural sector. Our recent initiatives reflect our ongoing commitment to driving positive change and empowering leaders.
We recently hosted a sell-out Diversifying Governance: From Dialogue to Action training day, both in-person at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and online. This one-day programme, co-hosted with the Cultural Governance Alliance, brought together Chairs, Trustees, and Executive-level leaders from the arts, heritage, and culture sectors. The event provided practical insights and tools to help organisations embed equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within their governance. Key discussions included an introduction to our new EDI Benchmarking Toolkit, community in governance, integrating young people onto boards, retaining diverse board members, and challenging ableism. The overwhelming demand for this event underscores the sector’s commitment to building diverse and equitable leadership.
In line with this work, we are actively developing a benchmarking tool to further support organisations in assessing and improving their governance practices, particularly in the area of diversity.
Our commitment to navigating the evolving landscape of governance was also a central theme at our last conference, “Governance Now: Imagine it Different.” Following the event, conference producer Rowena Price shared her reflections in an insightful article, “Governance: How can boards navigate perilous times?”. The article, available on our resources page, explores innovative approaches for cultural boards to address current challenges and highlights the importance of proactive and imaginative strategies for resilience and success.
World of Work: In response to the World of Work series, Arts Council England pledged to support cultural leaders and organisations in a number of ways, including a dedicated hub, packed with resources, toolkits, case studies and support materials. Find out about how they’re supporting governance across the creative and cultural sector.
You can discover more about our current governance support work, below.
Governance Now
Governance Now is the annual conference exploring the critical issues in cultural governance for leaders and trustees. It is presented by Clore Leadership and the Cultural Governance Alliance (CGA).
Each year, the conference addresses current challenges facing cultural governance. Delegates have the opportunity to connect with peers, hear provocations from experienced speakers and share learning. Governance Now tackles head-on the critical issues faced by our sector and provides the space to consider the role of boards in our collective response.
Other Governance Activity
Clore Leadership seeks to provide support to cultural organisations and their boards as they address long-standing challenges as well as new issues in a volatile world. Our governance development work has consistently provided timely responses to topical questions being faced by the sector, as well as regular support for boards and cultural sector leaders. This has included Chair/CEO days, Achieving & Retaining a Diverse Board workshops, Governance Tomorrow (supporting the inclusion of younger people as trustees), research into engagement of those with lived experience of disability in governance, and regular webinars examining topical issues.