Shared Leadership and the Evolution of Festivals

Abstract

Arts leadership can have various meanings and associations, both in the context of arts practice as well as in the challenges of running an arts organization. This chapter focuses on the leadership of arts festivals. The two common models of leadership within arts festivals are individuals and duos (where one member of the duo is the general manager/executive director and the other is the artistic director). When it is an individual leader, the festival’s organization is usually built around their skills and needs. In the duo model, either organizational leadership is shared between the role of executive leader and artistic leader, who both report to the board, or one is given the overall role of organizational leader. Recently, though, in arts festivals this duo model has evolved into more complex collaborative leadership approaches. This chapter explores two such examples: Rising, where three individuals share the CEO role, and Next Wave, which has created an eight-person artistic directorate.