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Vision on Contemporary Leadership: A one day seminar in Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
The European project Communicating Dance is a program focussed on developing the communication and leadership skills of the next generation of dance makers and writers/dramaturges. Kristin de Groot, artistic director of Dansateliers, choreographer Loic Perela and dramaturge Merel Heering were the Dutch participants in this project. When the Communicating Dance project almost came to an end, they chose to unlock a part of the content of this project to their local community. With the close assistance of coach and trainer Vincent Wijlhuizen and the Dansateliers team in Rotterdam, Kristin, Loic and Merel curated a one-day seminar for young arts professionals in The Netherlands called Visions on Contemporary Leadership. They put together a program existing of brainstorming, philosophizing, interviews and practical exercises.
The aim was to share their insights to empower and strengthen a larger group of young arts professionals in The Netherlands in fulfilling their ambitions and to invite them to re-think their personal leadership qualities. In this blog Loic and Merel share the insights they gained by partaking in the Communicating Dance project and by organizing this seminar, as a result of that.
Merel:
As a writer and a dramaturge I always function as the outside eye in a working process. I am therefore always the one responding to existing situations, hopping in and out as a freelancer. To think about leadership from this position was not obvious for me at the beginning of the Communicating Dance project, but it turned out to be an inspiring and liberating exercise to do so. I realized that I did have leadership potential and that it came out in different ways already – in being able to clearly formulate content and in asking the right questions for example. As a result I felt very empowered and it changed the way I was looking at myself. I felt much more strength to direct certain situations as well as to direct myself in my ambitions and wishes, through which I generated a lot more calm and trust in my job. It also clearly showed me the things I still needed to work on and develop further and which other steps I still need to make, if at some point, I do consider to become a leader of a project or an organisation. All in all, it became clear to me that thinking about leadership already in an early stage in your career is helpful, perhaps even essential. A lot of current cultural leaders ‘ended up’ in their positions because of years of experience in the field, and very often they have great artistic views, but they are just as often not necessarily trained in how to be a leader, and how to manage and lead an organisation. To acknowledge that this is a skill in itself that needs to be studied and gained through study and practice is essential for the professionalization of our cultural field, I believe. I think in the end it can save us time, money and effort that we can then spend on something else, like the content of what we do! For the next generations to start early in reflecting upon their ambitions and their leadership capacities and the way in which they communicate them therefore seems really important to me and it was one of the motivations for us to organize the seminar.
Organizing and hosting the seminar itself was a great experience. Whereas I don’t have so much trouble communicating content, I do have to learn a lot still on how to facilitate learning in others. This is something I practiced during this day. It was great to do so, in a safe and fun environment, united with my colleagues. As the participants also had a great day, we now decided to organize a follow up in autumn. I am really looking forward! It was also lovely to have two inspiring guests of our own generation at the table, being Jan Martens (choreographer) and Anne Breure (artistic director of Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam). To hear them define their positions in the field and to see the drive with which they work really made me return to my own work with even more excitement and energy than before.
Loïc:
Being part of this day with Merel, Kristin, Vincent and the participants was a wonderful experience. We set the day on the basis of shared learning and information flowing. Merel, Vincent, Kristin and I were not teachers but facilitators. It was very essential for us that the participants became very responsible for their learning and active in that process. Throughout the day and the exercises, we set up time for conversations where information that everybody could reflect on and benefit from was flowing in the room so that we could all become participants, learners, experts and ignorants. The participation of Jan Martens and Anne Breure was also very stimulating as they showed us that self tailored careers were possible, when driven from content, heart and wishes to make things happen in what we (individually) find important. That stereotypes are there to be shaken and that systems are there to be seen as flexible.
I more and more embrace this notion of sharing. Be it facilities, knowledge, information, resources, learning.. It sometimes takes effort as I am (and we are all, I think) educated differently in thinking more vertically rather than horizontally, but I see in it a great potential for empowering people and developping their capacities with a perspective of exciting outcomes to arise from it. And I truly believe that this informs us quite a bit on the notion of what leading could mean, approached from that perspective.
