Certificate In Leadership in the Performing Arts old

Introduction to over all course:

Welcome to Equal Arts, Certificate in Leadership in the Performing Arts, created especially for women working in, or aspiring to lead within the performing arts sector. Developed as part of the KA210-VET small-scale partnerships in vocational education and training, Erasmus+ initiative, this course brings together real-life industry experience, practical tools, and forward-thinking strategies to help you grow, lead, and thrive. Whether you are stepping into a management role for the first time or deepening your existing leadership practice, this program meets you where you are. Each unit is designed to be completed in short, focused sessions that fit around your professional life. This program is built around three focused units.  Each unit is bite size is self-paced, and built to fit around your professional life. There are no lengthy lectures, just focused, meaningful learning you can apply right away. Your journey starts here in Equal Arts. Let’s build the skills, confidence, and connections to shape the future of performing arts together!

Unit 1 Jenny Villa:

Title: Sustainability & Professional Development (Who Leads? Women, Voice, and Leadership in the Performing Arts, Spain)

Introduction Unit 1.

How do you take an artistic vision from its inception to reality?

A body of work that crosses borders. And still stay true to that vision while navigating bureaucracy and decision-making at all levels?

This unit explores women’s leadership and professional voice through the lens of women working in the performing arts. You will hear from Jenny, a creative producer, lighting designer, and founder of an independent physical theater company based in Majorca, Spain. Over more than 25 years touring across Europe, Australia, and beyond, she has navigated a sector where women are routinely placed in supporting roles such as producing, administrating, enabling while the decision-making and the credit flow elsewhere.

Her experience raises questions that go beyond the stage and the rehearsal room. They are questions about who gets to lead in the performing arts, what it costs to find your own voice inside structures that were not built with you in mind, and what it means to keep going when passion alone is not enough to pay the bills.

This unit invites you to examine the systems that shape who leads and who stays invisible, and to begin imagining what your own leadership voice might look and sound like.

Course Overview on Unit 1:

To build a resilient, long-term career with sustainable practices and personal growth strategies created by Association InDance International. This unit creates the foundation for your learning development in Performing Arts Management.

Unit 1

Title: Sustainability & Professional Development (Who Leads? Women, Voice, and Leadership in the Performing Arts, Spain)

Learning Objectives

In this unit you will:
1. Recognize the structural barriers that women and others face in accessing leadership roles within the performing arts sector
2. Reflect on what leadership looks and feels like from the inside, including doubt, instinct, and the process of finding your own voice.
3. Identify at least one pattern from Jenny’s experience that resonates with your own professional context.
4. Begin to question which narratives about success and leadership you have inherited, and which ones you might choose to rewrite.

Meet the Artist – Jenny

Meet Jenny, a creative producer, lighting designer, and founder of an independent physical theater company based in Majorca, Spain. For over 25 years she has built and toured large-scale work across Europe, Australia, and beyond, producing immersive and visual theater while navigating the financial and structural realities of running an independent company largely on her own terms. In this unit, she reflects on what it took to step out of someone else’s shadow and trust her own voice as a leader, what the myth of meritocracy has cost her and others like her, and what keeps her going when passion alone is not enough.

UNIT 1: SUSTAINABILITY & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:  Who Leads? Women, Voice, and Leadership in the Performing Arts. 

Role: Creative producer, lighting designer, and founder of an independent physical theater company based in Majorca (Spain). 

Focus: Over 25+ years touring Europe, Australia, and beyond, Jenny’s experience centers on who gets to lead in the performing arts, and the cost of finding one’s own voice inside structures not built with women in mind. Her contribution serves as the unit’s framing and introduction, setting up the questions of leadership, voice, and visibility that the unit explores rather than a quiz-based lesson module.

How do you take an artistic vision from its inception to reality? A body of work that crosses borders. And still stay true to that vision while navigating bureaucracy and decision-making at all levels?

This unit explores women’s leadership and professional voice through the lens of women working in the performing arts. You will hear from Jenny, a creative producer, lighting designer, and founder of an independent physical theater company based in Majorca, Spain. Over more than 25 years touring across Europe, Australia, and beyond, she has navigated a sector where women are routinely placed in supporting roles producing, administrating, enabling decision-making and the credit flow elsewhere.

Her experience raises questions that go beyond the stage and the rehearsal room. They are questions about who gets to lead in the performing arts, what it costs to find your own voice inside structures that were not built with you in mind, and what it means to keep going when passion alone is not enough to pay the bills.

This unit invites you to examine the systems that shape who leads and who stays invisible, and to begin imagining what your own leadership voice might look and sound like.

SUB-UNIT 2: Mentoring and Mental Health (Who Holds You? Mentoring, Mental Health, and Finding Your Ground as a Woman in the Performing Arts).

Role: Judith Thetis, kizomba teacher, cultural producer, and event organizer based in Spain, originally from the French Caribbean.

This sub-unit extends Unit 1’s theme of leadership and voice into the personal ground that makes leadership sustainable: mentoring, mental health, and support. Judith interview distinguishes mentoring from coaching, describes what it means to “outsource your power” within a creative partnership, and outlines the practical causes of burnout in the performing arts and how to guard against them.

Judith interview has been developed into a full learning module: Learning Objectives; a Lesson: 1 multiple-choice quiz built around “Outsourcing Your Power, Confidence, Voice, and Mentoring”; a True/False Reflection quiz; three Written Reflection statements drawn from her professional journey.

UNIT 2: SUCCESS & OPPORTUNITY, BUSINESS: Learn Money, Learn Tech. Identify Opportunities!

Role: Development Manager, Bruiser Theater Company (Ireland)

Unit 2 with Lara, introduces business structures in management as a strategic tool, teaching learners to identify opportunity, create value, and lead with confidence while applying these frameworks to their own organization or project. Lara’s interview grounds business thinking in the operational realities of running an arts organization: mastering financial and contractual fluency, learning technical skills outside one’s formal role to build authority, and treating career and organizational sustainability as a matter of structure rather than passion alone.

Lara’s interview is developed into a full learning module, built around the central theme “Learn Money, Learn Tech,” with Lesson 1: multiple-choice quiz, a True/False Reflection quiz, and three Written Reflection statements. 

SUB-UNIT 2: » You Sell the Benefits, Not the Art»!

Role: Performing Arts Freelancer, Jessica Breitenfield (International/Spain)

Jessica’s interview extends Unit 2’s business theme with a direct case study in creating and communicating value: her principle “you sell the benefits, not the art,” and her repackaging of an improvisation and clowning background as the “Adaptability Quotient” for corporate clients translating artistic skill into language that speaks to a business audience’s current priorities.

Jessica’s is developed into a full learning module, built around “You Sell the Benefits, Not the Art!,” earners will examine how authenticity, audience engagement, and management adaptability combined to create a memorable, effective professional identity and will connect these ideas to their own career experiences.

UNIT 3: PROMOTING WORK FOR WOMEN IN DIGITAL PERFORMING ARTS CREATION: You Already Have the Skills You Think You Don’t!

Role: Director, Skill Lab Consulting (Italy)

Unit 3 equips learners with practical digital skills, social media strategy, digital storytelling, online audience engagement, and virtual performance spaces to raise visibility and ensure women’s creative voices are seen, heard, and celebrated.

Antonia’s interview addresses digital confidence directly: her view that many women already use digital tools daily, and that the real work is helping them recognize and trust the skills they already have, rather than teaching entirely new ones. She also speaks to practical digital leadership tools, such as automatic transcription for meetings, that support hybrid and remote collaboration.

Antonia’s interview is developed into a full learning module, built around “You Already Have the Skills You Think You Don’t,” with a Lesson: 1, multiple-choice quiz, a True/False Reflection quiz, and three Written Reflection statements.

SUB-UNIT 3: DANCE, THEATER AND MEDIA, MENTORING, COACHING, EQUALITY, WELLBEING: Leadership in the performing arts. 

Role: Rachel Playfair, Coach and Trainer specializing in Multicultural Identity 

Rachel Playfair extends her expertise in multicultural identity integration and applied positive psychology into the digital dimension of dance, theatre, and media, addressing how performing artists and arts leaders navigate identity, visibility, and wellbeing across virtual stages, streamed performances, social media presence, and remote international collaborations.

As digital platforms increasingly demand performers and mentors to project confidence and authenticity through screens, often while managing multiple cultural audiences, online personas, and the pressures of algorithm-driven visibility, Rachel helps clients move from the fragmentation of curating disconnected digital identities to an integrated, resilient presence that translates authentically across physical and virtual spaces.

Drawing on her pedagogical experience in designing learning solutions for diverse ages and contexts, she supports arts organizations and educators in building mentoring and coaching frameworks that promote equality and psychological well-being in online/face to face creative environments, equipping performing arts leaders to embrace their multicultural complexity as a source of distinctive voice, sustainable presence, and authentic leadership in an increasingly virtual creative landscape.

Images: The Little Things 2020_5_© Luca Rocchi.JPG

CONSISTENT LEARNING IN THE PERFORMING ARTS, MANAGEMENT: Bite-sized and Self-paced Methodology.

Each contributor to Equal Arts is developed into a self-contained learning module using the same structure, so that learners experience a consistent rhythm across the whole course, whether working through a unit’s main contributor or its sub-unit area:

• Learning Objectives: What the learner will be able to do by the end of the lesson
• Lessons: Multiple-choice quiz is tied to a short video clip and framed around the contributor’s central, most memorable idea
• Reflection Quizzes: True/False check 
• Written Reflections: Three statements drawn from the individuals own professional journey, from which the learner selects one and writes their own reflection points. 
• Unit Outcomes:   Closing summary of what has been achieved in the Unit. 
• Answer Key: An instructor-facing appendix with correct answers and rationale for both quizzes, provided at the end of each lesson. 

Note: This consistent micro-learning format keeps each unit bite-sized and self-paced, while allowing the specific content and central lessons to vary according to what each individuals own experience most clearly illustrates.