Understanding Global / Local Cultural Leadership:Issues and Methods

Cultural leaders sail between the Scylla and Charibdis of aggregated trans- and supranational cultural-political discourses and the cultural needs of local communities. How do these dynamics influence the work of cultural leaders? How can we understand the work of cultural leaders to connect aggregated political discourses and globalised ideologies to the needs of the local cultural community they cater to? In a longitudinal research project named CLASP (Cultural Leadership as Situated Practice) a network of European research institutions and field organisations investigates how cultural leaders construct meaning of local and European political agendas, in a practice that requires them to mediate creative autonomy, economy and ideology. Among the objectives of this research project are the identification of which variables ‘smooth’ micro-macro translations, and which constitute barriers; how cultural leadership capacity can be built and how cultural leaders can shape cultural policy development and co-create transnational strategies for the societal role of the arts.