Careers, Community, and Leadership in the Arts by Goodwin, Kim;

Short description:

Careers, Community and Leadership in the Arts is a comprehensive guide that unites three essential cultural career development pillars. It examines how arts workers navigate complex and precarious career pathways, highlighting the role of community in shaping sustainable creative work.

Long description:

Careers, Community and Leadership in the Arts is a comprehensive guide that unites three essential cultural career development pillars. It examines how arts workers navigate complex and precarious career pathways, highlighting the role of community in shaping sustainable creative work.

Grounded in over a decade of research across Australia, England and Asia, this book critically examines issues of employability, career development, and leadership within the arts. It explores how effective leadership underpins individual career progression, but is also fundamental to the sustainability of arts organisations. Positioning arts leadership within the broader ecology of networks and relationships that characterise the sector, the book considers how individuals build leadership capabilities within their professional and disciplinary contexts. It further highlights the essential role of community in shaping leadership identities, fostering career resilience, and offering vital peer support.

Adopting an integrated approach, this book provides critical insights and real-world strategies to support researchers, students, and practitioners in building creative careers and developmental communities while also focusing on constructing sustainable organisations. Careers, Community, and Leadership in the Arts offers a timely contribution to advancing professional practice and scholarship within the cultural industries.

"Careers, Community and Leadership in the Arts makes an important and timely contribution to the international literature around arts leadership, successful careers in the arts and the unique role of communities of practice. Kim "Goodwin connects various fields of knowledge, as well as adding data from her own extensive research, to make an argument for a collaborative approach to enable careers in the arts sector to thrive. The arts sector is a complex and multi-faceted field that is influenced by many different sources. Goodwin has brought many of those influences together to make an impassioned argument for ways of ensuring career sustainability in a dynamic but often challenging sector. Every individual contemplating a career in the arts should read this book, in addition to those already involved in arts training and education."
Associate Professor Josephine Caust, Principal Fellow (Hon), University of Melbourne

"This book initiates a long-overdue academic discourse on building sustainable careers and effective leadership within the arts. Previously confined to informal conversations among friends and colleagues or personal self-reflection, these crucial topics now receive the rigorous scrutiny they deserve. It's vital to have an academic account of practices that are often overlooked and rarely subjected to critical attention.

The book courageously confronts the less attractive realities of arts careers, offering an honest and provocative examination. Its unflinching portrayal helps creative workers face issues and questions that are often hidden behind urgent business matters or a reluctance to engage in introspection. By bringing these challenges to light, the book empowers readers to address them head-on.

Ultimately, the conversations this book sparks about leadership, the vital role of communities, and the very nature of an arts career are critical for future generations of arts managers. These emerging professionals will shape the field with their unique experiences and life scenarios. However, the profound questions raised here are not always discussed in academic settings. This book will undoubtedly help break that pattern, exposing the fundamental truths that truly matter for thriving in the arts."
Dr Natalia Grincheva, Program Leader in Arts Management at LASALLE, University of the Arts

"An essential handbook for artists and arts workers navigating their trajectory at every point of their careers. It offers much to chew on, whether you are thinking about your next steps, reflecting on your career history, or supporting others in theirs."
Jamie Lewis, Independent Artist (and non-reluctant Arts Leader)

"An essential contribution to critical cultural leadership studies for those developing the next generation of arts workers or planning their own futures in the field. Goodwin’s insightful and globally diverse research cuts through multiple cultural sector clichés and binaries, importantly retrieving the value of community as a strategy for underpinning precarious creative professions."
Dr Jonathan Price, Lecturer in Creativity and Enterprise University of Leeds

This book makes me feel seen! It affirms that life as an arts worker and leader, even if it feels like it sometimes, is not one of passionate isolation. We exist in a spiderweb of ideas, practices and relationships - one that we need to survive and thrive.
Amrit Gill, arts facilitator and CEO, Theatre Network Australia

Table of Contents:

Introduction 1. Crafting Arts Careers 2. Career and Leadership Development in the Arts 3. Understanding Communities of Practice in the Arts 4. Characteristics of Arts Leadership 5. The Reluctant Arts Leader 6. Arts Development Through Community Participation 7. Creating Sustainable Communities of Practice in the Arts 8. Conclusion: The Power of Community