Enabling rather than directing
David Jubb is the Director of Battersea Arts Centre (BAC). In this case study, adapted from an interview linked to the theme of ‘leading to create greater impact’, he talks about the process BAC undertook to change their organisational structure to more closely reflect their artistic practice of enabling rather than directing, and the benefits and impacts that flowed from this change.
This case study was sourced by Culture24 as a resource for our conference, The art of leadership.
When I joined BAC in 2004, the structure, like many in the cultural sector, resembled a 19th century organisational model with a strict hierarchy and silos, at odds with our internal creative practice. We now work in partnership with the public for social change through shared leadership models.
To reach this point we used Scratch; a trial-and —error process, with in-built feedback mechanisms, as inspiration for a new approach and structure. We now use Scratch for every aspect of our work, informing everything from our organisational structure to how we work with communities.
We have shifted hierarchy and function-based roles to flat and project-based structures. This change has affected everything; from planning, decision making, staff roles and responsibilities to financial management and delivery.
The starting point for the change was merging the Participation and Programming teams in 2006. This merged team operates a project-working structure, to emphasise organisational fluidity. We were then able to extend the co-creation practice in the creative process to our work with communities. Project working helps us react more quickly to respond to things that are happening to people in our community.
Many engagement programmes are ultimately servicing the machine of what happens on stage. Those hierarchies aren’t all gone for us, but they started to go when everyone on the team was expected to be able to programme a festival and run a workshop for four-year-olds. We’ve moved from a model of delivery to one of enabling. It’s what arts organisations do all the time with artists, so why aren’t we doing that for young people living on local housing estates? Why aren’t we developing their creative ideas?
With a co-production model informed by Scratch, our mission was clarified and we are more rooted in our local community. Staff retention and welfare has hugely improved as a result of project working. Our work and the relationships we have developed are more sustainable within our community. We are linked to housing, regeneration, adult services and youth services. We don’t do anything that is not in partnership!
Prior to the change in structure and practice we tended to super-serve a cultural elite, an issue identified in the Warwick Commission’s report. We have now democratised our audience and impact. Today we have diverse networks locally and are connected to a load of other people who aren’t in that cultural elite. We enable young people across Wandsworth to realise their creative and entrepreneurial ideas through projects such as The Agency. We are now more relevant to the lives of people in our community.
What does this way of working require of you as a leader?
I’ve come from a background of producing, where you are inherently interested in enabling other people’s ideas, which has informed my leadership of BAC. Scratch also supports enabling leadership.
To enable creative expression, you need to be able to give away power. Checking your ego as a cultural leader is also key.
Advice for colleagues
- look to others’ explore iterative models of development (advertising for example)
- explore the fundamental question of how to develop an idea with a bunch of people and then take it forward. The producing model creates an opportunity to enable and support
- try that out in your organisation, and recognise that this requires giving away power and control
- and then there is a different kind of power that is to be found – managing the process more than the product
- prototype, test, try – discover your own iterative model
- working this way may throw up questions around your management structures. Working this way with an organisational structure that is at odds with the practice is likely to yield results that aren’t authentic
- explore your leadership model – does the hierarchical model truly align with your social and cultural mission?
Resources
Case Study from Alchemy on the BAC
Case Study from the Gulbenkian Inquiry into the Civic Role of Arts Organisations
Interim report on The Agency - co-creation programmes
Creative Museums report 2015 — 2017 Final Evaluation Report
The art of leadership
