Cultural Leadership: Mobilizing Culture from Affordances to Dwelling

Abstract

Developing from histories of arts administration and arts management, “cultural leadership” has recently become a focus within the cultural sector and the creative industries of the UK. This article interrogates a basic question—what is cultural leadership? Beginning with secondary sources (historical summaries, policy documents, arts/cultural grant applications), we contextualize the developments and practice of cultural leadership as an outgrowth of the discourse around arts/cultural administration and management reoriented to leadership practice in the face of significant crises (financial, administrative) in major British cultural institutions. Drawing upon primary survey and interview data from twelve cultural leadership practitioners, we then reflect upon whom cultural leaders are (career history, motivation, etc.). Turning to practice, we consider cultural leadership as advocacy for, and facilitation of, cultural activity. This is largely based on culture's perceived ability to cultivate individual and group potential. More specifically, we define leadership through descriptions of effects by cultural leadership practitioners, specifically where it taps into affordances (Gibson 1966 Gibson, J. J. 1966. The senses considered as perceptual systems, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. [Google Scholar]; Greeno 1994 Greeno, J. G. 1994. Gibson's affordances. Psychological Review, 101(2): 336–42. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; DeNora 2000 DeNora, T. 2000. Music in everyday life, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) of cultural products (material and otherwise) for world-making activity. We join recent leadership theorists in making use of Heidegger's “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” (Ladkin 2006 Ladkin, D. 2006. When deontology and utilitarianism aren't enough: How Heidegger's notion of “Dwelling” might help organisational leaders resolve ethical issues. Journal of Business Ethics, 65(10): 87–98. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Carrol et al. 2008 Carroll, B., Levy, L. and Richmond, D. 2008. Leadership in practice: Challenging the competency paradigm. Leadership, 4(4): 363–379. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to contextualize cultural leadership as activity-enabling engagement with cultural artifacts and activities. Through advocacy for, and facilitation of, cultural engagement, cultural leaders are involved in projects that invite others to situations outside “everyday experience that which is from the outset ‘habitual’’ (Heidegger 1975 Heidegger, M. 1975. “Building dwelling thinking”. In Poetry, language, thought, Edited by: Hofstadter, Trans. A. 141–60. New York: Harper and Row. [Google Scholar], 147), in attempts to emerge positive affordances from cultural interactions for world-dwelling. Cultural leadership is an activity more explicitly centered around encouraging engagement with various cultural activities, practices, and artifacts in the belief that such engagement may have positive social benefits for those engaged. It is an activity focused on emerging the emergent from cultural interactivity.

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