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Diversity and Disability

CLP championed the case for diversity in leadership and sought to define and promote models of good practice across the sector as a whole. To achieve that ambition we worked with a range of partners to ensure that opportunities were developed, delivered and promoted by a truly diverse range of individuals and partners - reflecting the diversity of our sectors and creating opportunities for these same groups to expand their leadership skills, practice and acumen.

In 2007, in collaboration with DALI (Disabled Action Learning Initiative) we promoted High Time - a Dialogue on leadership that created the space for an open dialogue, genuine enquiry and engagement for current and emerging leaders within the creative and cultural sectors - from a disability perspective. The key objective was to bring together key disabled leaders to discuss, explore and identify effective action to be taken in leadership.

A direct outcome of this dialogue and the support for the DALI Network through the CLP Networks initiative is the creation of a new online space for debate and discussion www.dali-online.co.uk. Two further debates took place in Spring 2009.

A second outcome was the development of a disability leadership programme, devised, developed and facilitated by disabled leaders, that questioned the benefits of bespoke leadership development. Sync 100/20 seeks to involve a wide range of disabled people, not just those with different impairments but also with different 'takes' on disability. This is why Sync reaches out to capture different voices - from those who embrace the cultural identity their impairment gives them and those for whom their impairment is just a sometimes inconvenient part of their lives.

In promoting diversity in leadership CLP sought to define models of good practice then worked to ensure that these were scaled up to feed into and add to core provision across our sectors.