New Research Announcement: Feel Your Feelings, Thriving in the Cultural Workplace

I'm delighted to be part of a newly funded cohort of research projects from Clore Leadership fellows. Each year, Clore Leadership works with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to commission research which helps to inform Fellows’ own development as future leaders as well as making a valuable contribution to the wider understanding of strategic leadership issues and challenges. This year, 15 new research projects will explore include:

Race & decolonisation: The role of cultural leadership in the decolonisation of community wealth; artistic interrogation of hunger & famine caused by colonisation to precipitate dynamic cultural change; support for leaders from minoritised backgrounds through coaching; investigation of the impact of The Space To Come’s Re-Up programme;
Community building & creativity: the role of global communications in social & cultural exchange and the formation of community identity.
Supporting freelance workers & artists: independent practitioners in visual arts & museum sectors; the impact of producers in performing arts; The practice and influence of Sonia Boyce; ethical decision-making for artists;
Leadership development & transformation: Co-leadership as a tool for enabling diversity; emotional intelligence in cultural workplaces; leading during uncertainty and through the unknown
Environmental Responsibility: understanding sustainability in the context of conservation and cultural heritage; the role of practice-based arts research in influencing the climate agenda;

...and the highlight is what I'll be contributing...

Feel Your Feelings: Thriving in the Cultural Workplace

From September 2022 to January 2023 I'll be researching the role of emotional health in leadership, specifically what impact comes from supporting leaders to embrace their feelings with vulnerability and create psychological safety for themselves and their teams. The project builds on findings from my 2018 research on Vulnerability and Cultural Leadership, and my coaching and leadership training experience since then, particularly in response to the continually challenging circumstances that cultural leaders have been operating under since before the Covid crisis.

We'll be looking at the relationship between emotional awareness, self-care, non-violent communication, creativity and capacity to respond to challenges, with the aim of refining a series of coaching and resource interventions to support people with research-based tools.

Over the next few months I'll be inviting cultural leaders to:

Tell us what emotional challenges you're facing in the workplace
Participate in an individual and group coaching programme called THRIVE
Experience a 4-week, online and self-led version of THRIVE to try out and feed back on the research-based tools and exercises we want to test
Read the research
Download our final resource pack to use and share

Finally...

A shout out to the other fellows also doing research - from what I know of them in person or from following their work from afar, all the projects will be powerful and I can't wait to see what we collectively produce in these few months!

Julia Twomlow (2004 Fellow)

Kathleen Soriano (2004 Fellow)

Helga Henry (2007 Fellow)

Kate McGrath (2008 Fellow)

Laura Sillars (2008 Fellow)

Claire Antrobus (2009 Fellow)

Gaylene Gould (2009 Fellow)

Joshua Sofaer (2010 Fellow)

Sarah Stannage (2010 Fellow)

Sholeh Johnston (2016 Fellow)

Jonathan May (2018 Fellow)

Stephen Bennett (2019 Fellow)