Creative Practice

Reading ahead of my first Exec MBA paper this year, I realised I’ve been working with complexity for years. I was using a language for it, one grounded in relationships and creative practice.

Through my MFA research, grounded in Fluxus, relational aesthetics, and social practice, I’ve been operating in systems where:

outcomes can’t be predicted

participation is distributed
meaning emerges through interaction
uncertainty is something to hold, not resolve

During the EMBA, I began to recognise these patterns in frameworks like Cynefin and Complexity Leadership Theory.

Event scores → enabling constraints
Participation → distributed leadership
Relational process → adaptive systems

This wasn’t about applying management theory to art. It was recognising that my creative practice already maps onto complexity leadership.

The shift for me has been clear:

From decision-maker
to condition-setter
to steward of systems in motion

Grateful to my lecturers for helping me see and articulate this, Chris Gallavin, Stephen Kelly, and Dave Snowden for the Cynefin framework.

Here's a link to my substack where I deep dive into a project from my MFA at Whitecliffe College in 2019 - 2020.

ps. we need more creatives in leadership and governance!

https://mycreativepractice.substack.com/p/practising-complexity

Last week Museums Aotearoa surprised me with a message saying I’d been their most engaged member for the year and offered a book voucher to celebrate ~ so lovely!

I chose one on Eva Hesse, an artist whose work has always resonated with me, innovative, sensual, and sculptural, yet she also struggled with self-doubt.

It all arrived in the same week I marked one year at the Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery. A year full of building, connecting, and reimagining what engagement and care can look like in a contemporary arts organisation.

In the past twelve months I’ve:
– Developed our first Employee Value Proposition, including a new paid Wellbeing Day for staff
– Written our first Fundraising Strategy and built a grants database from the ground up
– Secured new partnerships and hosted our first Business After 5 event, helping bring the Sustainable Business Network into Northland
– Refreshed our Friends & Membership programme and grown our network of supporters
– Reconnected with our original fundraising community and national peers

It’s been a year of steady groundwork. The kind of work that happens behind the scenes but sets up everything that’s to come.

Engaging stakeholders and advocating for arts and culture has never been more challenging, but I’m deeply motivated by the belief that arts and culture are central to a life well lived. Many of us - like the team at Museums Aotearoa - are playing the long game and working hard to keep creativity visible and valued.

Alongside this, I’ve started an Executive MBA with Massey University, exploring how mana-enhancing leadership, ecological thinking, and strategic practice can strengthen Aotearoa — making real impact in people’s lives and being good stewards of this beautiful place.

Big thank you to the team at Museums Aotearoa!

There’s so much more to come, and I’m excited for what’s next. 💛

Stoked to share that I’ve started my Executive Master of Business Administration at University!

I'm most excited to bring my experience in the Arts and Culture Sector and all I have learned from working in NFP, community grassroots spaces.

In 2024 I had to think hard about how to create a more sustainable life for my family and I, it was apparent that there's just so few impactful (and well paying jobs) in the arts to justify a PHD to expand my creative Social Practice, so I am doing the next best thing.

I'm really excited to deep dive into an ecological approach to governance and leadership especially, as well as change management that sustains and supports, within an ethics of care; for people and our environment.

I've meet some amazing people already, and can't wait to get into the work!

I'll still be doing my creative mahi, and you can expect a level up in skills and support in my work with artists, creatives and organisations.