Certificate In Leadership in the Performing Arts

INTRODUCTION: 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 trainingProject ID: 2024-1-ES01-KA210-VET-000248043, 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 inshort, focused sessions that fit around your professional life. This program is built around three focused units. 

UNIT STRUCTURE: Each unit is bite-sized, self-paced, and built to fit around a busy professional life. There are no lengthy lectures just focused, meaningful learning that can be applied right away. The course draws on real, first-hand accounts from women who have built careers and organisations across the performing arts, so that theory is grounded throughout in tested, lived experience rather than presented on its own.

Each of the three units is structured around a main contributor, supported by a closely related sub-unit that deepens or extends the same theme through a second contributor’s experience.

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 theatre company based in Majorca (Spain). 

Focus: Over 25+ years touring Europe, Australia, and beyond, Jenny’s experience centres 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 theatre 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 organiser 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 Theatre 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 whilst applying these frameworks to their own organisation or project. Lara’s interview grounds business thinking in the operational realities of running an arts organisation: mastering financial and contractual fluency, learning technical skills outside one’s formal role to build authority, and treating career and organisational 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 improv and clowning background as the “Adaptability Quotient” for corporate clients translating artistic skill into language that speaks to a business audience’s actual priorities.

Jessica’s is developed into a full learning module, built around “You Sell the Benefits, Not the Art!,” learners 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 recognise 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: «Everything We Do Ends Up Being Promotion»

Role: Dance School Director (Spain)

Olga’s interview extends Unit: 3’s digital theme into applied, tactical practice: using a Digital-Kit Grant to build a website and digital tools, learning and adapting to social media algorithms over time, and combining digital marketing with community visibility and word of mouth.

Olga’s has been developed into a full learning module, built around “Everything We Do Ends Up Being Promotion,” with a Lesson: 1 multiple-choice quiz, a True/False Reflection quiz, and three Written Reflection statements.

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
• Lesson 1: Multiple-choice quiz is tied to a short video clip and framed around the contributor’s central, most memorable idea
• Reflection Quiz: True/False check 
• Written Reflection: 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. 

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.