Arts Hub, Celina Lei
28 Nov 2022

‘The idea of LeaderShift came about because we were thinking about how do organisations handle succession planning, and especially if they’re looking for diverse applicants,’ says Joshua Lowe from Theatre Network Australia (TNA).

Lowe is running TNA’s LeaderShift program, which will launch with a pilot in 2023 and target diverse mid-career arts professionals to help them address systematic inequities in their workplace.

Lowe explains: ’We conducted a lot of consultations with organisations and with people who we would consider potential applicants for this program [and] who are diverse leaders already working in the sector, and two main points came up.

‘The first was that there are actually already quite a lot of people from diverse backgrounds who would be great in these leadership roles, but they just don’t want to be in them for a variety of reasons. The jobs may be in organisations that are not culturally safe, they don’t want to be the only diverse person in the organisation, or maybe they are underpaid and overworked.

‘The other half of that consultation is that people really wanted a space to meet with other people like them and talk about the challenges of being a leader as a diverse person.’

The program has been described as ’an intervention’ into a system that favours and preferences white, non-disabled people and other privileged identities.

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