Skilful Coping with Unorder: Educating 21st Century Arts Leadership

This paper firstly addresses why innovative learning approaches are needed for 21st century leadership education in the arts and cultural sector, then moves on to a case study of how such approaches are being implemented in practice, in the Boosting Resilience project. The approaches taken here are characterised as involving a multi-disciplinary consortium of delivery partners; the use of constructivist pedagogy that draws on arts-based methods of delivery; a participatory and agile learning design process; and the incorporation of on-going evaluation activities, that are woven in to the process of design. The paper concludes with some discussion regarding the potential generalisability of approaches such as those employed on the Boosting Resilience project to arts and cultural leadership education more broadly

Taking the MICL: An Interdisciplinary Masters Programme in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership

The Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (the MICL) is an innovative, radically interdisciplinary and highly successful programme that is offered as part of the portfolio of Management Masters courses at Cass Business School in the UK. In this paper, we argue that while the world is increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA), educational responses to this have been surprisingly limited. We note the parallel development of interest in interdisciplinary activity, particularly in relation to higher education, and then describe the MICL as an interdisciplinary management education programme developed against the background of an increasingly VUCA world. We describe the aims and structure of the MICL programme, as well as some of the methods employed to assist staff and students with adopting our interdisciplinary approach. Finally, we present some quantitative data on outcomes for students after completing the programme, as well as some qualitative data relating to the first cohort of students, that lead us to believe that the MICL programme provides a strong foundation on the basis of which students can survive and thrive in a world of increasingly dramatic change and complexity

Accelerating movement across the intentional arc – developing the strategic sensographer

Our research question relates to those who need to be activists in strategic sensography as described in the call for papers. We call these activists “strategic sensographers”. Our own definition of sensuous is characterised by a pseudo-formula, namely 5S+3D (5 senses plus 3 dimensions), which we contrast with the 2S+2D world which dominates the modern office and even university.We take strategists to include both senior executives themselves and those who explicitly support them in the strategy process, whether in a line or staff role. Our model of the intuitive qualities required for strategists has in part been derived from the recruitment criteria of leading organisations, as well as from analyses of the qualities needed to support creativity and innovation (Lucas, Claxton and Spencer, 2012).We examined the routes through which strategists are currently educated or shaped, and conclude as have others (Mintzberg, 2005), that their education is biased in favour of rational-logical thinking. It is in part the tension and interplay between the rational and the intuitive that contributes to sensography, a term that has in part spun off from “stratography” (Cummings and Angwin, 2011)

Crafting strategic thinking: Creative pedagogy for management studies

This paper presents a format from the creative arts, refocused for application in management studies, as a method to enhance and support the development of strategic thinking. It involves the application of multi-page paper constructions (zines) within facilitated sessions to enhance imaginative strategic thinking by both management learners and practitioners. It draws on a longitudinal case study of the six-phase evolution of affordances of a zine as a method for reflective, creative and connected thinking. The focus moves from purely personal private reflections to the possibility of deploying zines for collective reflection and action. Specific examples are provided of zine workshops and events. Strategic thinking relates to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). The affordances of zines relating to tangibility, efficiency and mental processes appear well-suited to a VUCA context. The paper concludes with reflections on the nature of multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaborations such as this one

Arts-Aided Recognition of Citizens' Perceptions for Urban Open Space Management

Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both ecosystems and humans, and the management of the urban spaces can benefit from knowledge of individuals’/citizens’ perceptions of such environments. However, such knowledge is scarce and contemporary inquiries are often limited to cognitive observations and focused on built environmental elements rather than encouraged to recognize and communicate comprehensive perceptions. This paper investigates whether arts-based methods can facilitate recognition and understanding perceptions of urban open spaces. Two arts-based methods were used to capture perceptions: drifting, which is a walking method, and theatrical images, which is a still image method and three reflective methods to recognize and communicate the perceptions. The results show related sensations and perceptions enabled by arts-based methods comparing them to a sticker map method. The main findings were perceptions, which included information about human–environment interaction, about relations to other people and about ‘sense of place’ in urban open spaces. The hitherto unidentified perceptions about urban open space were associations, metaphors and memories. The methods used offer initial practical implications for future use

Sign- and magnitude-tunable coupler for superconducting flux qubits

We experimentally confirm the functionality of a coupling element for flux-based superconducting qubits, with a coupling strength $J$ whose sign and magnitude can be tuned {\it in situ}. To measure the effective $J$, the groundstate of a coupled two-qubit system has been mapped as a function of the local magnetic fields applied to each qubit. The state of the system is determined by directly reading out the individual qubits while tunneling is suppressed. These measurements demonstrate that $J$ can be tuned from antiferromagnetic through zero to ferromagnetic.Comment: Updated text and figure