Admin earns scholarship

From Backstage to Leadership: How Administrative Skills Can Open Doors for Women in the Performing Arts

Ask any performing arts company who keeps it running, and the answer is rarely the name on the poster. It’s the person who builds the budget, books the tour, writes the funding application, manages the schedule and solves the problem at 11pm before opening night. Very often, that person is a woman.

Producing, administrating and organising are among the most valuable skills in the sector. They are also among the least recognised. The Equal Arts units explore why, and what women can do about it.

The “supporting role” trap

In Unit 1, Who Leads? Women, Voice, and Leadership in the Performing Arts, Jenny, a creative producer, lighting designer and theatre company founder, reflects on more than 25 years of touring across Europe, Australia and beyond. She describes a sector where women are routinely placed in supporting roles such as producing, administrating and enabling, while decision-making and credit flow elsewhere.

The point isn’t that these roles are lesser. It’s that the skills involved are often treated as invisible, so the women who hold them are rarely seen as leaders, even when they are leading in practice.

Turning everyday skills into evidence

The first step is to see these skills for what they are. If you have ever:

• managed a budget or tracked expenses
• coordinated artists, venues and schedules across borders
• written or contributed to a grant application
• organised an event, festival or tour
• handled contracts, communications or community partnerships

then you have already shown project management, financial responsibility, negotiation and strategic planning. These are the same skills that scholarship panels, fellowships, funders and employers look for when they assess leadership potential.

The challenge is to name them. Keep a record of what you have delivered, with numbers where you can: audience size, budget managed, countries toured, people coordinated. That record becomes the evidence in an application, a CV or a conversation about promotion.

Finding your voice in the process

Unit 1 asks what it costs to find your own voice inside structures that weren’t built with you in mind. Applying for a scholarship, fellowship or development programme is one way to claim that voice. It asks you to say, in your own words, what you have achieved and where you want to go next.

For many women this is the hard part. Unit 3, with its focus on confidence, voice and mentoring, supports exactly this, helping learners speak about their experience and identity with clarity, and to see multicultural experience as an asset in leadership rather than something to explain away.

Don’t do it alone

Unit 2, Who Holds You?, features Judith, a dance teacher and cultural organiser who built a career largely without mentoring. She reflects on what that cost her. Her message is that sustainable careers need support: someone to read your application, challenge your self-doubt or open a door.

A mentor, coach or peer group can help you spot opportunities, polish your applications and stay motivated when a rejection arrives. It can also protect against burnout, which too often comes with being the person who holds everything together.

Practical steps to start

1. Audit your experience. List what you have produced, organised and managed, and translate it into leadership language.
2. Look for opportunities. Search for scholarships, fellowships, training grants and professional development programmes in your field and country, including Erasmus+ opportunities.
3. Build your case. Write short, specific examples of impact, with figures where possible.
4. Seek feedback. Ask a mentor or colleague to review your applications.
5. Keep learning. Free resources can strengthen your profile while you apply.

A place to begin

The Equal Arts Certificate in Performing Arts Leadership is a free micro-learning course in English, Spanish and Italian, and it ends with a certificate you can add to your applications. The Digital Portfolio shows 52 real practices you can use to make the case for change in your own organisation. Both remain open at equalarts.eu.

The skills that keep the performing arts running are leadership skills. The next step is making sure they are recognised, and rewarded.

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or SEPIE.