You must meet all the eligibility criteria below: 

• you are an individual working at least 0.5 FTE in an Australian arts and culture organisation and,
• you manage a team of 2 or more staff (incl. part-time employees and contractors) and,
• your organisation has an annual turnover less than $40 million based on your most recent audited financial statements (2024-25 or 2025-26) and, 
• your organisation currently receives less than $5 million in annual funding from Creative Australia through National Performing Arts Partnership Framework, Multi-Year Investment, Visual Arts, Crafts and Design Framework or Delivery Partner programs. 

Only one person per organisation can attend the workshops. 

You can’t apply to this opportunity if:  

• you cannot attend the 2-day in-person workshop in full
• you or your organisation has an overdue report for a Creative Australia grant or opportunity
• you or your organisation owes money to Creative Australia   

Please note that only one person per organisation can attend the workshops to ensure equitable access.  

You can express your interest in attending a workshop by completing this form. 

You can express interest to attend only one of the 2-day in-person workshops, which must be your closest workshop geographically. We cannot provide travel support. Each workshop is designed to respond to the context of the location it is delivered in.  

The form will ask for: 

• your contact details
• information about your organisation
• dietary requirements
• access requirements
• your preference for breakout sessions 

If you are offered a place in the workshops, you will be able to adjust your breakout session preferences on the day of the workshop.  

Choosing your breakout sessions 

There are four breakout sessions and you must attend two of them, one each day.  

We are committed to providing equitable access for d/Deaf and disabled leaders to these workshops. 

When you complete the expression of interest form please tell us if you have access needs. This could include Auslan interpreting, captioning or other services to support you. If you are selected to attend the workshops, we will contact you to understand what you need and how we can support you. We will cover costs associated with agreed access services you might need. 

If you consent, we will also share your access needs with Portable so they can provide necessary adjustments.   

Financial support for access costs 

If you are a d/Deaf and/or disabled leader and have additional access costs so that you can participate in these workshops, you can request up to $1,000 to support those costs. This might include costs that you need to manage yourself such as engaging support workers or transport to and from the workshop venue.  

You can tell us about your request for financial support in your expression of interest form. If you are offered a place in the workshop, we will contact you to discuss your needs and how much funding we can provide.  

Creative Australia staff with diverse and relevant experience will review the expressions of interest against the moderation criteria listed below to ensure equitable access for both individuals and the organisations they work in. 

There are up to 30 places available at each workshop.  

Moderation criteria: 

• organisation size
• art form
• location  

We also consider information you provide about how you identify, where provided, to ensure equity and representation that reflects the sector. 

What happens after you express interest? 

We will notify you on Thursday 1 October if your expression of interest has been accepted and send you pre-workshop information and preparation activities. This will include up to four pages of reading or 30-mins of watching and a self-assessment activity – a total of around two hours of preparation. 

We will keep a list of reserves in case places become available. We will offer reserve places no later than two weeks before each workshop.  

If you are selected and you can no longer participate, you must notify us as soon as possible, with at least two weeks’ notice via email before your scheduled workshop. 

These workshops are for people in arts and culture who lead teams, make decisions and carry responsibility for how the work gets done. That includes heads of organisations, and people who hold genuine leadership and management responsibilities. Whether you came to leadership through study or through the work itself, the two days are about getting better at it. 

You will get the most value from attending if you need to lead, collaborate with and guide others, such as a team, a board, an advisory group or partners. If you are looking for skills development that will help you be proactive and not reactive, this workshop is for you. 

A room of up to 30 people from across arts and culture, two facilitators, and clarity about the learning environment. You will not be asked to present to the whole group or called on to answer questions. You can leave at any time without explaining why. 

The workshop is designed to help you practice what you learn on real problems. The invitation is to do real work on real problems during the two days.  

These are capability workshops rather than a support group or a debrief. While you are invited to bring your real challenges, this is for the purpose of learning new skills. If you need support with something difficult right now, this will not be the opportunity for you. 

The models come from established leadership and organisational psychology research, alongside practitioner work widely used in organisations. Some sessions teach a published model directly. Others use tools Portable has built, drawing on the research below. A full reference list will be provided to participants. Portable have adapted these models to suit this cohort and share them as tools to add to your effective leadership toolkit, not the only approach.

Foundations covered at the start of the workshop:

• the four leadership behaviours that hold up under pressure, drawing on Peter Hart and Peter Cotton's research on team culture and morale, applied here to your own leadership practice
• the states people lead from, drawing on the work of Peter Muling, Peter Hart and Roger Dingle. We have kept the structure of this model and rewritten the language to suit our context.

The four breakout sessions (of which you will select two):

1. Bringing people with you: John French and Bertram Raven's work on the sources of social power, and Gary Yukl's research on influence tactics. You'll leave with a clearer read on where your own power comes from and how to bring others with you.
2. When it goes wrong: a sequence Portable has built for the first 24 hours, drawing on crisis management research from Timothy Coombs, and Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe. You'll also leave with a repair sequence informed by Roy Lewicki and Barbara Benedict Bunker's work on trust repair.
3. Strategic decision-making: practical tools Portable has built, informed by Leslie Perlow's research on where working time actually goes, and research on protecting focused work.
4. Not carrying it alone: shared leadership research from Craig Pearce and Jay Conger, and a critical friend practice drawing on peer coaching research from Polly Parker, Douglas Hall and Kathy Kram.

An action plan for the next four weeks that you’ve talked through with another participant, and their commitment to check in with you two weeks later. Printed tools you can use again, including a version you can run with your own team. A clearer read on what you do well, and what you can work on next. You also get the handouts for the breakout sessions you didn’t attend. 

You will receive the welcome pack, a short self-assessment, a one-page reading on your chosen breakout sessions, and an optional two page reading on the foundations, offered as audio or video with captions and a transcript. We anticipate this will take approximately two hours in preparation. We also ask you to bring one real challenge you are working on.  

Everything on the day is designed to work if you arrive having read nothing. But the more you invest in the experience, the more you will gain from it. 

One leadership challenge you are trying to make progress on. That might be a change you need people to come with you on, a relationship that has stalled, a decision you keep deferring, or something only you currently know how to do. You will need your work calendar easily accessible for the planning activities. Everything else is provided, and prepared alternatives are available if you would rather not use your own situation. 

No – these workshops are about you developing your own skills and using self-assessment to help build your own awareness. Your self-assessment is not shared with Portable or Creative Australia.  

Portable will ask you to share your reflections from the workshop which will form the basis of a report to Creative Australia sharing de-identified overall findings to help inform evaluation and future delivery. 

The program has been developed by Portable and Creative Australia, through design sessions and consultation with independent advisors from The LOTE Agency,  People with Disability Australia  and  Buledya.

No, they are different opportunities. The Leadership Skills Workshops are being delivered in Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart and Melbourne for mid-career and established leaders working in organisations.  

The Leadership Labs are one-day in-person events in Adelaide and Sydney and open to anyone working in arts and culture.  

Difficult content can come up. In a room of people talking honestly about the hard parts of their working lives, what others raise may land close to your own experience. 

What is in place: 

• facilitators experienced in running these conversations, who name the limits of the session rather than working past them, and who will step out of the room with you if you need to
• a quiet space identified at each venue
• support available across both days from someone who isn’t facilitating
• support services for people working in arts and culture, shared at the start and end of each day. 

These workshops are focused on tangible leadership skills development and are not a support group or debrief. We want to be clear about the program parameters before you decide to attend.