Like anxious teenagers wondering if the cool kids will turn up to their house party, the original Clore Leadership Programme team faced a nervy wait to find out who was applying to join their brand new culture club.
“I remember that, once all the arrangements were in place, we still had no idea about either the sort of people who would be interested or the standard of applicant,” says Chris Smith, the former culture secretary and the programme’s founding director.
“We had a hunch that people were hungry for this kind of opportunity but we couldn’t be certain. Thankfully, we were bowled over by the talent, enthusiasm and raw material in the first group of fellows.”
A decade on, the programme has had a very visible impact on the museum sector with many fellows in senior jobs at major institutions and others passing on their expertise via start-up consultancies.
“Museums have always had outstanding leaders but they tended to happen more by accident than design,” says Smith, now the chairman of the Environment Agency and a member of the Clore’s advisory committee.
“Clore aims to put a bit more design in there, to give people coming through the sector the chance to hone their skills, to learn from professionals and to develop the confidence to take on bigger roles in the future.”
Its sheer scale and ambition enables the programme to have a particularly strong relevance in challenging times, says Mark Taylor, the director of the Museums Association.
“Thirty years ago, when faced with severe cuts, the sector almost collapsed. This is not the case now and that reflects the quality of the leadership we have. Clore has been a key part of that.”
And you don’t have to be at the top of an organisation to be an effective leader, says the programme’s current director, Sue Hoyle.
“Through some challenging jobs, I have learned about leadership from trying things out for myself, discovering what it is I do well, what really matters to me and how I can make a difference,” adds Hoyle, a keen advocate of the cross-cultural networks that the programme encourages through its secondment, coaching and mentoring schemes.
The increasing number of applications and a recent survey of fellows that suggested most would recommend the course to colleagues reflect a real appetite to transform the whole culture of leadership, says Hoyle.
John Holt is a freelance journalist
May Redfern
Museum consultant
“I was always interested in the management side of things and knew I didn’t want to become a curator with a single specialism like paintings,” says May Redfern, who was the head of collections, learning and access at Harewood House when she joined the Clore Year 2 cohort in 2005.
“I learned how to better articulate the value of what the museum sector does and to have confidence in what I thought about the social justice side of things and to subsequently translate that to my work.
“Clore gives you a sounding board – mentors, other fellows, expert speakers – as well as the time to think things through, something which is often in short supply during your everyday working life,” she adds.
“It also provides you with greater independence. I realised I could actually work for myself and combine consultancy with traditional museum work. Before, I used to think I’d just apply for whatever the next step up the ladder might be.”
Redfern’s secondment at Opera North in Leeds was also a stepping stone to a new professional life.
“I wrote a business plan for a new space they were developing, the first time I’d done any work like that. I’ve subsequently taken on a lot of similar projects as a consultant,” says Redfern, whose Clore relationship continued with a recent trip to Detroit on an Ellie Maxwell Travel Bursary to see how museums are responding to child poverty in a struggling city.
Nick Merriman
Director, Manchester Museum, University of Manchester
“We were pioneers, both fellows and programme leaders,” says Nick Merriman of his time in the very first Clore cohort in 2004.
Back then, he was teaching museum studies at UCL as well as curating the university’s disparate museums and collections while keeping an eye out for a suitable director’s post.
“Clore sounded like the ideal thing to help me, a bespoke package of activities that could broaden my horizons,” says Merriman.
Sharing experiences with people across a huge range of arts organisations was particularly helpful, he recalls.
“I remember discussions with someone from the theatre world who was very taken with museums not charging for admission and I know she subsequently started putting on some free performances. There was a lot of cross-fertilisation of ideas.”
Merriman stresses, however, that Clore is not just in the business of “helping a selected group of individuals obtain better jobs”.
“The idea was to transform the wider sector as a whole through the actions of emerging leaders and the work they do, both individually and collaboratively. It has helped everyone take investment in leadership much more seriously and to think realistically about succession planning.”
Merriman describes Clore as a “transformative process’” for him personally. He still regularly meets up with his cohort colleagues whom he describes as “the best kind of support group”.
“Without Clore, I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to become the director of a quite complex, medium-sized institution outside London where, after all, I had worked for 20 years.”
Mike Sarna
Director of programming and exhibitions, Royal Museums Greenwich, London
Beyond the development strategy sessions, project management meetings and financial planning seminars, many participants claim the Clore leadership game-changer is the fellows’ regular talks with the sector’s high-fliers.
“When directors come to talk about what they do and where they came from, it gives you the confidence to think you can take that step up,” says Mike Sarna from the class of 2010–11.
“There is a dark side to leadership in the creative industries with gurus running around making everyone’s lives hell. But those sessions showed a different side that was refreshing.
“We’d be foolish not to admit we all have confidence issues about where we are and what we’re doing and it’s wonderful to explore that as a group.”
Sarna admits that Clore has taught him to relax and open up a little more in the workplace.
“Perhaps I used to stress my team out a little but it’s now more important to me to sometimes do a little less and think more. A lot of creative people often can’t get their brilliant ideas heard in a brainstormy, alpha-mentality meeting.”
Sarna contrasts this cool, calm and collected strategy with his rather hectic early days at the Natural History Museum where he worked for six years after arriving from his native US.
“It was difficult for me to adapt to a different culture and I probably stepped on a few toes, being an American. At Greenwich, thanks to Clore, it’s all about empowering my team who I tell to go off and surprise me!”
Adrian Steel
Director, British Postal Museum and Archive, London
Adrian Steel undertook a Clore short course in 2010, a residential two-week programme with a 50-50 split of expert-led discussions including finance, advocacy and media training with anything-goes group workshops.
There was, for example, time for some singing. “One of my cohort was a coach who taught us a few tunes and vocal exercises,” says Steel. “It was a bit like The Choir on TV.”
A session on the potential to cause offence through art was particularly memorable, he adds.
“As part of the presentation, I had to read out 30 of the most offensive words… and, yes, all the really bad ones were there. I never thought I’d find myself standing up in a suit and swearing like that in front of people.
“It’s good to discover your own strengths and weaknesses as it would be easy to simply model yourself on a famous museum director. The emphasis is more on being you and a confident all-rounder for your team.”
Gill Hart
Head of adult learning, National Gallery, London
With the full support of her colleagues at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Gill Hart joined the Clore 6 cohort (2009–10) and enjoyed a five-month secondment at Modern Art Oxford, a cultural exchange trip to India and an intensive course in fundraising at the Henley Business School.
So she felt a little bad when she was unable to go into too much detail about her experiences on her return.
“A lot of people thought: ‘Great, you’re going on a course and when you come back you’ll be able to tell us how to do everything properly.’ But it’s not like that at all.
“It’s about becoming better at what you do. I felt people were frustrated with me because I couldn’t spill the beans about what I’d learned because most of it was about myself and I didn’t really want to share that.
“A lot of the time it’s nothing to do with art and culture; it’s like someone holding a mirror up to your face. Growing up in the north of Scotland, there wasn’t a great deal of that kind of introspection and telling each other what you thought.
"The greatest impact is on you as an individual and that’s a difficult thing to put into words.”
One thing Hart came to realise, however, was that she was a born collaborator and facilitator. Back at work she developed programmes for people with dementia in which she deployed Clore methodologies to involve colleagues from across the institution – a model that she has since taken to the National Gallery in London.
“I had been used to doing all the outreach stuff myself but I stood on the sidelines for once thinking: ‘My workmates are just amazing.’”
Joanna Rowlands
Arts marketing and communications consultant
“Without wishing to sound too melodramatic,” says Joanna Rowlands, “Clore significantly changed my life.”
Rowlands had enjoyed six years in marketing roles at National Museums Liverpool and was wondering if and how she could make the step up to a more senior position when the Clore opportunity came along in 2009.
“My eyes were opened to the huge world around me. One of the things Clore does is teach you about yourself so I looked at every element of my life to see what was working and what wasn’t.
“It put everything into perspective. I realised what I wanted to do was to start a family. I was nine months pregnant at the end of the course.”
With renewed confidence and a Clore bursary to help her through the first year, Rowlands went freelance, armed with the advice of her programme mentor, David Kershaw, the chief executive at M&C Saatchi.
“It was important for me to have a man as a mentor because in the arts you work with a lot of other women and I needed to have that mixture. And you rarely have proper money to spend on advertising in the cultural sector so it was awfully valuable to see how an agency like that worked.”
For her Clore secondment, Rowlands went to the Battersea Arts Centre where, among other tasks, she helped organise a David Lynch festival that culminated in a Twin Peaks weekender.
“We showed both TV series in a sleep-over session. There was lots of coffee and cherry pie and a recreation of that creepy room with the zigzag floors.
“I was travelling to and from Liverpool and finding out London could be hard, but I saw some organic management at work. It was a mad voyage of discovery.”
“I remember that, once all the arrangements were in place, we still had no idea about either the sort of people who would be interested or the standard of applicant,” says Chris Smith, the former culture secretary and the programme’s founding director.
“We had a hunch that people were hungry for this kind of opportunity but we couldn’t be certain. Thankfully, we were bowled over by the talent, enthusiasm and raw material in the first group of fellows.”
A decade on, the programme has had a very visible impact on the museum sector with many fellows in senior jobs at major institutions and others passing on their expertise via start-up consultancies.
“Museums have always had outstanding leaders but they tended to happen more by accident than design,” says Smith, now the chairman of the Environment Agency and a member of the Clore’s advisory committee.
“Clore aims to put a bit more design in there, to give people coming through the sector the chance to hone their skills, to learn from professionals and to develop the confidence to take on bigger roles in the future.”
Its sheer scale and ambition enables the programme to have a particularly strong relevance in challenging times, says Mark Taylor, the director of the Museums Association.
“Thirty years ago, when faced with severe cuts, the sector almost collapsed. This is not the case now and that reflects the quality of the leadership we have. Clore has been a key part of that.”
And you don’t have to be at the top of an organisation to be an effective leader, says the programme’s current director, Sue Hoyle.
“Through some challenging jobs, I have learned about leadership from trying things out for myself, discovering what it is I do well, what really matters to me and how I can make a difference,” adds Hoyle, a keen advocate of the cross-cultural networks that the programme encourages through its secondment, coaching and mentoring schemes.
The increasing number of applications and a recent survey of fellows that suggested most would recommend the course to colleagues reflect a real appetite to transform the whole culture of leadership, says Hoyle.
John Holt is a freelance journalist
May Redfern
Museum consultant
“I was always interested in the management side of things and knew I didn’t want to become a curator with a single specialism like paintings,” says May Redfern, who was the head of collections, learning and access at Harewood House when she joined the Clore Year 2 cohort in 2005.
“I learned how to better articulate the value of what the museum sector does and to have confidence in what I thought about the social justice side of things and to subsequently translate that to my work.
“Clore gives you a sounding board – mentors, other fellows, expert speakers – as well as the time to think things through, something which is often in short supply during your everyday working life,” she adds.
“It also provides you with greater independence. I realised I could actually work for myself and combine consultancy with traditional museum work. Before, I used to think I’d just apply for whatever the next step up the ladder might be.”
Redfern’s secondment at Opera North in Leeds was also a stepping stone to a new professional life.
“I wrote a business plan for a new space they were developing, the first time I’d done any work like that. I’ve subsequently taken on a lot of similar projects as a consultant,” says Redfern, whose Clore relationship continued with a recent trip to Detroit on an Ellie Maxwell Travel Bursary to see how museums are responding to child poverty in a struggling city.
Nick Merriman
Director, Manchester Museum, University of Manchester
“We were pioneers, both fellows and programme leaders,” says Nick Merriman of his time in the very first Clore cohort in 2004.
Back then, he was teaching museum studies at UCL as well as curating the university’s disparate museums and collections while keeping an eye out for a suitable director’s post.
“Clore sounded like the ideal thing to help me, a bespoke package of activities that could broaden my horizons,” says Merriman.
Sharing experiences with people across a huge range of arts organisations was particularly helpful, he recalls.
“I remember discussions with someone from the theatre world who was very taken with museums not charging for admission and I know she subsequently started putting on some free performances. There was a lot of cross-fertilisation of ideas.”
Merriman stresses, however, that Clore is not just in the business of “helping a selected group of individuals obtain better jobs”.
“The idea was to transform the wider sector as a whole through the actions of emerging leaders and the work they do, both individually and collaboratively. It has helped everyone take investment in leadership much more seriously and to think realistically about succession planning.”
Merriman describes Clore as a “transformative process’” for him personally. He still regularly meets up with his cohort colleagues whom he describes as “the best kind of support group”.
“Without Clore, I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to become the director of a quite complex, medium-sized institution outside London where, after all, I had worked for 20 years.”
Mike Sarna
Director of programming and exhibitions, Royal Museums Greenwich, London
Beyond the development strategy sessions, project management meetings and financial planning seminars, many participants claim the Clore leadership game-changer is the fellows’ regular talks with the sector’s high-fliers.
“When directors come to talk about what they do and where they came from, it gives you the confidence to think you can take that step up,” says Mike Sarna from the class of 2010–11.
“There is a dark side to leadership in the creative industries with gurus running around making everyone’s lives hell. But those sessions showed a different side that was refreshing.
“We’d be foolish not to admit we all have confidence issues about where we are and what we’re doing and it’s wonderful to explore that as a group.”
Sarna admits that Clore has taught him to relax and open up a little more in the workplace.
“Perhaps I used to stress my team out a little but it’s now more important to me to sometimes do a little less and think more. A lot of creative people often can’t get their brilliant ideas heard in a brainstormy, alpha-mentality meeting.”
Sarna contrasts this cool, calm and collected strategy with his rather hectic early days at the Natural History Museum where he worked for six years after arriving from his native US.
“It was difficult for me to adapt to a different culture and I probably stepped on a few toes, being an American. At Greenwich, thanks to Clore, it’s all about empowering my team who I tell to go off and surprise me!”
Adrian Steel
Director, British Postal Museum and Archive, London
Adrian Steel undertook a Clore short course in 2010, a residential two-week programme with a 50-50 split of expert-led discussions including finance, advocacy and media training with anything-goes group workshops.
There was, for example, time for some singing. “One of my cohort was a coach who taught us a few tunes and vocal exercises,” says Steel. “It was a bit like The Choir on TV.”
A session on the potential to cause offence through art was particularly memorable, he adds.
“As part of the presentation, I had to read out 30 of the most offensive words… and, yes, all the really bad ones were there. I never thought I’d find myself standing up in a suit and swearing like that in front of people.
“It’s good to discover your own strengths and weaknesses as it would be easy to simply model yourself on a famous museum director. The emphasis is more on being you and a confident all-rounder for your team.”
Gill Hart
Head of adult learning, National Gallery, London
With the full support of her colleagues at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Gill Hart joined the Clore 6 cohort (2009–10) and enjoyed a five-month secondment at Modern Art Oxford, a cultural exchange trip to India and an intensive course in fundraising at the Henley Business School.
So she felt a little bad when she was unable to go into too much detail about her experiences on her return.
“A lot of people thought: ‘Great, you’re going on a course and when you come back you’ll be able to tell us how to do everything properly.’ But it’s not like that at all.
“It’s about becoming better at what you do. I felt people were frustrated with me because I couldn’t spill the beans about what I’d learned because most of it was about myself and I didn’t really want to share that.
“A lot of the time it’s nothing to do with art and culture; it’s like someone holding a mirror up to your face. Growing up in the north of Scotland, there wasn’t a great deal of that kind of introspection and telling each other what you thought.
"The greatest impact is on you as an individual and that’s a difficult thing to put into words.”
One thing Hart came to realise, however, was that she was a born collaborator and facilitator. Back at work she developed programmes for people with dementia in which she deployed Clore methodologies to involve colleagues from across the institution – a model that she has since taken to the National Gallery in London.
“I had been used to doing all the outreach stuff myself but I stood on the sidelines for once thinking: ‘My workmates are just amazing.’”
Joanna Rowlands
Arts marketing and communications consultant
“Without wishing to sound too melodramatic,” says Joanna Rowlands, “Clore significantly changed my life.”
Rowlands had enjoyed six years in marketing roles at National Museums Liverpool and was wondering if and how she could make the step up to a more senior position when the Clore opportunity came along in 2009.
“My eyes were opened to the huge world around me. One of the things Clore does is teach you about yourself so I looked at every element of my life to see what was working and what wasn’t.
“It put everything into perspective. I realised what I wanted to do was to start a family. I was nine months pregnant at the end of the course.”
With renewed confidence and a Clore bursary to help her through the first year, Rowlands went freelance, armed with the advice of her programme mentor, David Kershaw, the chief executive at M&C Saatchi.
“It was important for me to have a man as a mentor because in the arts you work with a lot of other women and I needed to have that mixture. And you rarely have proper money to spend on advertising in the cultural sector so it was awfully valuable to see how an agency like that worked.”
For her Clore secondment, Rowlands went to the Battersea Arts Centre where, among other tasks, she helped organise a David Lynch festival that culminated in a Twin Peaks weekender.
“We showed both TV series in a sleep-over session. There was lots of coffee and cherry pie and a recreation of that creepy room with the zigzag floors.
“I was travelling to and from Liverpool and finding out London could be hard, but I saw some organic management at work. It was a mad voyage of discovery.”