Clore Leadership – Community of Learning Agreement    

Clore Leadership is dedicated to fostering leadership in the arts and culture sector. We acknowledge that our leaders come from diverse backgrounds and hold a wide range of perspectives. Our work is focused on equipping cultural leaders with the skills to engage thoughtfully and constructively, encouraging open dialogue and respect for differing viewpoints, and navigating cultural leadership as it shifts to meet the complexities of contemporary environments. 

Our work to support leaders to thrive in such dynamic and volatile contexts sees us creating the space for challenging discussions within our programmes. 

We want our spaces to be uplifting, supportive and inclusive for everyone who attends; therefore, we wanted to share our Community of Learning Agreement, we expect all speakers, staff and leaders who engage with us to observe. 

Guiding community principles:  

• Assume positive intention from all 

• That discriminatory, aggressive, inappropriate or abusive language and behaviours will not be tolerated. This includes, but is not limited to racism, colourism, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism and all forms of religious discrimination, homophobia, classism, disableism, ableism*, fatphobia, ageism, casteism, etc. and harassment. If discrimination, abuse or harassment occur within our programmes Clore Leadership will review and act on it accordingly. This might include issuing a verbal warning or ultimately removing an individual from our programmes/spaces. 

• That there is no one right way of doing ‘leadership’, that experience can be lived and learned, that practice and learning evolves; that diverse perspectives are valued to inform our individual and collective learning, and that there will always be new things to learn no matter how experienced or practiced we may be. 

• Recognition of and valuing the diverse lived experiences within our community, how that affects different people’s leadership experience and journeys, that learning involves vulnerability which may mean different things for different members of our community. 

• Within the community we take collective responsibility for ensuring that we will not tolerate discriminatory, abusive or aggressive behaviour. 

• Do not make assumptions about how people identify themselves or their backgrounds. Respect self-identification by using preferred pronouns and descriptors. 

• We encourage and foster open communication that is undertaken with kindness and generosity. 

• We are committed to supporting the access requirements of those amongst our learning community and to fostering dialogue around and development of understanding around access requirement, including, through open dialogue, exploration of issues and challenges around access ‘clashes’. 

• We recognise that learning is embedded at the core of leadership and that learning comes through getting things wrong, as much as it does through getting things right.  

• Clore Leadership commits to reviewing this code of conduct regularly as we strive to meet the needs of all our leaders. 

We reserve the right to remove anyone who does not comply with our code of conduct. This code of conduct applies both in person and online.   

* Ableism can be used to describe the way society and people tend to favour non-disabled people. Disablism can be used to describe more direct, conscious acts of discrimination or abuse against disabled people.  

Should you have any questions or wish to discuss anything within this Community of Learning Agreement, please contact [email protected].  

Clore Leadership 
October 2025