An introduction to the Clore Leadership/AHRC Online Research Library
The Clore Leadership Fellowship programme brings together around 25 cultural leaders each year for extensive experiential learning including mentoring, coaching, workshops, organisational secondments and individually tailored training. Through the programme, Fellows are exposed to deep, personalised engagement with an eclectic range of diverse and international industry leaders, who inspire and stimulate as exemplars of contemporary leadership practice. Fellows are encouraged and challenged to think both creatively and strategically during their time on the programme, at the end of which they are invited to make proposals for research which further develops that thinking. Through a long-standing partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC- part of UK Research and Innovation), Fellows are able to apply for funding to research a chosen topic with the support of an academic supervisor from a UK university.
This Online Research Library is a collated repository, making publicly available the research projects completed by Clore Leadership Fellows.
In this introduction to the Research Library, we share the origins of the partnership between Clore Leadership and AHRC, and explore some highlights from the broad and rich research undertaken by Fellows. All research projects must connect to issues relevant to cultural leadership or change-making and cover topics as varied as what dance can offer leaders in the corporate sector, all the way to the use of undersea telegraph cable stations in cultural regeneration around the world. The Library will continue to grow with contributions from each cohort of Clore Leadership Fellows, reflecting current trends in Cultural leadership and serving as an invaluable resource that showcases topical research on a rich and varied set of themes central to leadership and development in the cultural and creative sectors.
Clore Leadership & AHRC – working together for almost two decades
Conceived originally as an opportunity for “research, reflection, and writing on a subject of practical relevance to the field in which they are working”, at the outset of the Clore Leadership programme in 2004, the partnership with AHRC has centred on the provision of an award to enable Clore Leadership Fellows to undertake a focused research project which is supervised by an academic at a UK university. Since its inception, the partnership has supported over 200 projects.
For AHRC, collaborating on the Clore Leadership is part of its strategic drive to support talented people and world-class ideas that enable the arts and humanities to thrive. The research has benefitted from Clore Leadership’s work to make space for leaders from across the cultural sector and a diverse variety of backgrounds to think and develop. Their passion comes through alongside the practical relevance and rigour of the papers.
Tracking complex issues in a changing world
The papers in the research library cover the life of the partnership, spanning two decades in which we have lived through huge social, political and cultural change. Leadership in the cultural sector has similarly seen a dramatic increase in complexity since the first cohort of Clore Leadership Fellows in 2004 and the topics covered by the research are consequently varied. They focus on critical elements of leadership practice and development as well by prevailing local and global issues on equity and inclusivity, and sustainability. For example, a set of papers focusing on self-reflection in leadership cover a range of topics including an ethical analysis of cultural leadership (Patel); and the meaning of leadership as an artist (Sofaer).
Critical analyses on themes of racial and other forms of equity signal a growing recognition of the importance of addressing under-representation of certain groups in the cultural sector and the means by which change may be affected. Papers in this theme tap into impacts of the Black Lives Matter protests and its impacts on people of colour in leadership roles (Gould); and issues around decolonisation and new economic models for culture (Wee).
Sustainability and climate change also loom large in more recent contributions. For example, the tensions and complementarities between sustainable development and cultural heritage conservation are explored (Stannage), whilst two contributions explore the relationship between making art and making policy in relation to climate change data (Bennett).
We recognise that this research library contains a range of terminologies and outlooks; these are reflective of the significant and ongoing changes within the cultural sector over the past 20 years. As such we urge readers to recognise that the authors’ thinking and language were a function of the time at which they were writing and may have shifted since completion of these papers, or may be in the process of shifting as consequence of their enquiries.
The papers published have been reviewed and categorised in two main schemes: leadership ‘themes’ and ‘AHRC Subject Areas’. A set of content themes links papers in the research library with a far wider corpus of thinking, writing, and activities presented across Clore Leadership’s programmes. At the same time, papers have been classified by AHRC research subject areas, which means they can be related to the breadth and richness of research supported across the AHRC portfolio in Higher Education Institutions and Independent Research Organisations.
It is impossible, in short text like this, to express the breadth of topics and approaches embodied in the Clore Leadership-AHRC Research Library, and these are only set to expand with new papers being produced annually. 2024 will see additions ranging from Inter-generational and multi-generational play through the lens of Lego and leadership, to Power, Participation, and Community Leadership in heritage-led regeneration schemes via championing social practice at a global level and bringing global learnings to a UK context.
How to explore the Clore Leadership-AHRC Online Research Library
As with all great libraries, the best way to learn about this one is to explore it, to find the unexpected inspirations or the keenly sought evidence that we might need. We hope you find value in the explorations of Clore Leadership Fellows that is represented in the Research Library.In turn, we offer their research to help stimulate andfuel further conversation, discourse and thinking about the future of leadership in our sector and beyond.
The research library is fully keyword searchable, so if you’re looking for something specific do just pop it into the Clore Leadership website search bar. Otherwise, you can browse the categories referred to above using the drop-down menus in the Learning section of the Clore Leadership website – just select ‘Research’ to get started.
