Creative Producers

Creative Producing is a category of creative work where participatory practices, creative work, political change, technology and innovation intersect. It isn’t a new concept – producers have occupied a privileged, though often backstage, presence in the traditional creative industries of many countries. In Theatre, Film, and Broadcast, producers have usually been in charge of the management of relationships, whether between investors and artists, between technical production and creative direction, or between ‘the talent’ and the delivery of a finished article. Producing has been a key caretaking function for a whole project, ensuring delivery on time and on budget. There are other roles such as the contemporary art curator, that are deemed more as critical visionaries, but they are often still in service to the artist, the gallery, or the museum.

In this sense, the role of the creative auteur has been reserved for directors, writers or artists. It excludes the agents who practically realise ideas, curate conceptual and meaningful connections between networks of people, and whose own talents are essential for the realisation of cultural work. So while public and stakeholder understanding about Creative Producers has grown across the UK creative and cultural sector, support for Creative Producer as a unique set of talents and a unique family of practices is still rare. As Kate Tyndall, freelance arts consultant and author of The Producers: Alchemists of the Impossible, wrote in 2007: “the Creative Producer is a role that has struggled to establish itself in the arts. Yet at this time of massive social, cultural and environmental change, perhaps we have never needed them more.”

We are seeking, along with many others, to rethink the definition of producer as a caretaker, both in our home context of the UK and internationally. We want to argue for the Creative Producer to be recognised as having a skillset in their own right; as a role that mobilises the inherent creativity, power, and potential for change that comes from connecting people, institutions, and places together. Writer and cultural commentator, John Holden, identified producers as key connectors in the ecology of culture:

“…[They] put people and resources together, and move energy around the ecology. Producers and impresarios have traditionally undertaken this role, gathering together money, artists, technicians, venues, musicians, and whatever else it takes to make a cultural event happen. These connectors have to have an intimate knowledge of the micro-operations of their field and they need strong and eclectic networks.”
– (Holden 2015:30)

These roles aren’t only useful – they are vital. In a complex world of interconnected stakeholder networks, addressing messy challenges requires people with the Creative Producing skillset to bring together the resources and the people to make change happen. But to do this effectively and in a global context, we need to learn from one another, at home, and abroad.