We are experiencing a renaissance in the power of the arts, even where political will is lacking. Artists increasingly make their own futures and work collaboratively across disciplines. Dimensions of creativity and innovation, empowered learning, distributed and ethical leadership, and entrepreneurship and activism, all of which are embedded within artistic practices, are being recognized as critical to contemporary societies in diverse ways. At the same time arts institutions in Higher Education, many of which have operated as small organizations focused on a single discipline, are starting to merge and to collaborate at interdisciplinary levels. This trend raises many questions about purpose and principles, and indeed in some contexts arts organisations are resisting pressures to merge, seeing these being driven by finance and bureaucracy, and perceiving a threat to their own core purpose and quality.

Conference themes

• Collaborative processes, conflict and leadership: leveraging individual and collective expertise, empowering new knowledge and enabling the full potential of the arts
• Improvisation, creativity and innovation: exploring tensions between traditional and contemporary practices, notated repertoire and making new work.
• Connecting the arts beyond their own disciplines: new visions for breaking through professional silos and embracing diversity
• Rethinking paradigms of purpose in the arts: dimensions of quality, entrepreneurship, impact and activism