Minneapolis College of
Art and Design
Master of Arts in Creative Leadership
Creating Transformational Change Through Progressive Leadership.
MCAD’s Master of Arts in Creative Leadership cultivates empathic and adaptive leaders who ask bold questions, take educated risks, act with courage, embrace diverse ideas, and collaborate with others around a shared purpose.
Exploring Relational Leadership Through Embodied Practice
As part of a dynamic ensemble of facilitators, I contribute an architecture of embodied practice to a week-long relational leadership residency in Minneapolis as part of this accelerated fifteen-month program designed for individuals who seek the knowledge and skills to navigate changes in their careers, organizations, and communities. The summer residency explores a range of relational practices for cultural understanding and change, in response to calls for civic imagination and systemic transformation in support of a more inclusive, equitable society. It examines how practices of artists and other creators are a means by which to develop critical (lost) ways of knowing that are central to human development and how they support an increasingly called for paradigm shift in leadership: away from one grounded in individualism, competition, scarcity, exploitation of people, and extraction of natural resources; and toward one grounded in self-organizing (or collectivism), collaboration, abundance, and care for both people and planet.
Students experience and reflect on resilience under pressure, somatic self-awareness, attentional capacity, decision-making in uncertainty, power dynamics, community-driven design processes, and creative placekeeping. This residency also fosters community building within the MACL itself and centers the value of intentionally formed networks, communities of practice, and peer groups whereby individuals with shared goals support one another, exchange knowledge, develop skills, and work to advance thinking and progress in a particular domain.
