A leadership development day for aspiring & developing Culture Leaders in Sheffield with a focus on culture, wellbeing and burnout.

Are you the leader of a small/medium-sized arts organization, or are you a mid-level/mid-career leader in Sheffield’s creative and cultural sector?

Are you ready to sharpen your leadership skills, expand your network and reflect on your working practices?

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Event Overview

Creative Futures returns this November with an in-person session for Sheffield’s cultural and creative practitioners, artists, freelancers and organisational leaders. Building Resilience will explore how we can sustain ourselves, our work and our organisations in a sector shaped by continual change, financial pressure and deep commitment to the work we do.

Led by Lucy Shaw and Dr Laura Crossley, the day will bring together research, practical reflection and peer exchange. We will consider resilience as more than an individual quality. It is shaped by the way work is designed, prioritised, led, resourced and experienced, and by the relationships and cultures around us.

Laura will share insights from her research on burnout in the cultural sector, offering a clear and compassionate framework for exploring the systemic, sector-wide, organisational and individual factors that affect wellbeing. Through guided discussion and practical activities, participants will have space to reflect on their own working context, recognise sources of support and pressure, and identify realistic actions they can take forward.

The day will also draw on the strength of Sheffield’s cultural ecology. Four participant lightning talks will open the session, celebrating work, relationships and examples of good practice from across the city. There will be plenty of opportunity to meet others, exchange ideas and explore the connections that can help us build more sustainable ways of working.

Whether you are freelance, working in a small creative organisation, leading a team, or developing your own practice, this session offers space to think, connect and act. You will leave with a shared language for wellbeing and resilience, new perspectives on the conditions that help people and organisations thrive, and practical next steps for your own context.

Freelance participation

We are able to offer a number of £68 honoraria to support freelance colleagues attending the session. Please contact Culture Sheffield for further information when booking, these are limited and will be allocated to freelancers on a first come first served basis.

Participant Opportunity

Call for lightning talks

Following the success of the lightning talks at the June Creative Futures event, we are inviting expressions of interest from participants who would like to share a short story from their work during Building Resilience.

We have space for four speakers in the morning. Each speaker will have 5 minutes to introduce their work, share an example of good practice and spark connections with others in the room. This is an opportunity to celebrate the work happening across Sheffield’s cultural and creative sector, while exploring what it takes to sustain it.

What could you talk about?

We invite each speaker to reflect on as many of the following as are useful to their story:

The work you are doing and why it matters

What you need at this point in your work or practice

What you can offer to others in the room

Examples of good practice you would like to share

What Building Resilience, individual and organisational wellbeing, look like to you

How individual and organisational wellbeing are connected in your experience

You do not need a finished presentation or a polished project. We are keen to hear from people at different stages and from across the city’s diverse cultural and creative community.

How to express interest: Please email Lucy Shaw at lucy@culturalassociates.co.uk by Monday 5 October 2026 with a short outline of what you would like to share.

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Facilitator Bios

Lucy Shaw

Lucy Shaw is Founder and Director of Cultural Associates Oxford (CAO) and an Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. She is a cultural entrepreneur and leadership specialist, designing and facilitating programmes that support people and organisations to lead with creativity, confidence and care. Lucy is also the Programme Director for the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at Saïd Business School, convening global senior leaders in immersive, creative learning.

Her background includes serving as Head of Programmes and Partnerships for the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums. Her work spans strategic leadership, organisational change, workforce diversity and inclusive engagement across the cultural, creative and business sectors. Lucy is a board member of Neon Dance, a qualified performance coach and an action learning set facilitator.

Dr Laura Crossley

Dr Laura Crossley (she/her) is a consultant, researcher and facilitator specialising in organisationa

Description supplied by the event organiser.