Reflections on Leadership: Revisiting the Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leaders Lab
Nearly a decade ago, the Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leaders Lab brought together a group of artists, administrators, and visionaries at The Banff Centre. I was fortunate to be the initial director and a lead designer for this experiment, intended to interrogate and redefine what leadership in the arts could mean. Looking back, I’m struck by how much the program anticipated the challenges we now face, but also how the questions of leadership remain as urgent and unresolved as ever.
see the full Cultural Leaders Lab documentation here
The Cultural Leaders Lab was built on an ethos of relational leadership—a recognition that leadership is less about authority or individual genius and more about the interplay of people, place, and purpose. The agenda was a mix of structured sessions and space for emergence: conversations around co-entrepreneurship, prototyping, and storytelling interspersed with activities as tactile as “making cold rooms warm” and as conceptual as “surfacing challenges”. These moments weren’t about creating a single definition of leadership but about opening up possibilities.
One theme that resonated then—and echoes louder today—is the importance of context. Leadership in the arts is not about applying business school lessons to creative organizations. Instead, it’s about rooting leadership in the specific, messy realities of cultural ecosystems. This was especially apparent as we explored Toronto’s arts ecology, a complex and interconnected web of relationships, histories, and ambitions. As arts funding and public engagement models shift, the need to honour and work within these specificities feels more critical than ever.
So, what’s changed in the years since? Certainly, the terrain on which leaders stand is more precarious. The cultural sector, already fragile, has been further destabilized by the pandemic, the rise of algorithmic decision-making, and mounting economic pressures. Leaders today are asked not only to navigate these realities but also to re-imagine them—to propose and prototype new ways of working, connecting, and creating meaning in a world increasingly dominated by speed and scale.
What hasn’t changed, though, is the need for bravery. Back in the Lab, we spoke about courage as an essential leadership trait—not the heroism of grand gestures but the quiet bravery to question assumptions, embrace uncertainty, and invite disorder into our ways of thinking and being. If anything, this feels even more urgent now. The challenges facing us demand leaders who can sit with complexity, who are willing to linger in the discomfort of not knowing, and who see the possibilities within that discomfort.
The Lab also highlighted the necessity of storytelling. Leadership isn’t just about decision-making; it’s about shaping and sharing narratives that help others find their place in the work. Today, this means not only telling compelling stories but also disrupting the narratives that no longer serve us. In a time of rising authoritarianism and environmental collapse, the stories we tell about who we are—and who we want to become—are vital.
Looking back on the Lab, I see it as both a snapshot of its moment and a provocation for the future. It challenged participants to question what leadership could mean in the arts and to envision new ways of fostering creativity and connection. As I reflect on where we are now, I wonder what lessons the Lab would teach if it were reconvened today. Perhaps the question is not whether leadership has changed but whether we have the courage to meet its changing demands.
As I consider the leaders I encounter now—across art, activism, and academia—I see a shared hunger for something deeper: a desire not just to lead but to make a home in a world that feels increasingly uninhabitable. Leadership, in this sense, isn’t about answers. It’s about holding space for new questions to emerge.
