Creative Choices

This essay examines some of the development and learning from the experience of delivering Creative Choices, a web-based career advisory service for emerging and mid-career leaders designed to deliver the Cultural Leadership Programme’s priority around information, advice and guidance on line. 

The Creative Choices website was designed to be a ‘one-stop shop’ offering: formal and non-formal leadership development opportunities; career development through phone-line support; guidance and intensive career counselling; sector-specific “gateways” providing access to tailored information in order to meet differing needs; as well as a place for discussion and debate around leadership development in the cultural sector more widely.

The beta version of the Creative Choices website was launched in April 2008, but continued to be developed throughout 2008-11 as the CLP entered a new phase of delivery.  In the process of delivering Creative Choices, there has been significant learning around a number of areas such as changing technical contexts and web use, increased leadership learning provision through other CLP strands, as well as important shifts in the wider funding and economic environments.

However, as well as providing important understandings on process and context, this paper details how Creative Choices, as it now stands, has taken on board the hard won learning described in this essay, and today offers a much more useable and sustainable resource for leadership and wider learning, providing valuable information about careers in the cultural and creative industries.