Opinion: Martha King on reimagining leadership for a more equitable future

We caught up with Martha King to discuss their approach to inclusive decision-making

As we shape up plans for a 2025 Assembly, we are connecting with some of the people who have been part of the journey so far to ask them how they are exploring inclusive decision-making processes.

Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), a Bristol-based arts and technology organisation, is a prime example of reimagining leadership and governance. Their commitment to creating fair and thriving neighbourhoods has led them to adopt more equitable and democratic practices.

In this piece, Martha King, co-director of KWMC, shares their reflections on how the Bristol based arts organisation are embracing different ways of ‘organising’.

Martha King, creative co-director, Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC)

KWMC is an arts and tech organisation in Bristol. Our mission is to ‘make fair and thriving neighbourhoods together, with arts, tech and care’. We believe in empowering communities and fostering non-hierarchical spaces for change making.

KWMC started in 1996. Back then it was all about democratising access to camera technology and supporting young people to tell their own stories. Now, we work with people of all ages, both locally and beyond, to imagine and co-create equitable futures through arts, technology, and collaborative making.

Being place-based, we want our organisational structure to reflect our commitment to inclusivity and non-hierarchical collaboration. This Easter, with the retirement of our founder-director, Carolyn Hassan, we saw an opportunity to re-evaluate leadership and explore new models of organising. We worked with Practical Governance Collective who helped us transition from a single CEO model to two co-directors as a step towards more distributed leadership.

Our journey towards more distributed leadership ….

During the pandemic, we connected with cooperative Outlandish, who supported our staff to use methods from Sociocracy, a values-based governance system, to embed consent-based decision-making within KWMC.

Sociocracy’s ‘circles’ method provides an easy-to-follow process where people bring forward proposals. All voices can be heard and decisions are made based on a process of iteration and consent, applying the notion of ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’.  

We support staff to use these tools through coaching and training so they can regularly develop these skills. We see coaching as a way of enabling staff, community, partners and artists to find their own solutions and assume leadership in relation to goals.

Our team of 30 is currently using Theory U, a systemic change method, to develop a refreshed collective vision.  Through active listening and co-creation, we’re forging a future built on shared understanding.  This work is drawing on methods and approaches from the Clore Leadership Systemic change programme that I attended earlier this year.

Looking ahead: experimentation and collaboration

There are many examples of good practices of organisations who are using alternative modes of organising. However, as the recent Arts Professional article highlighted, it is still not common for arts organisations to adopt non-hierarchical structures and use models such as Sociocracy. We are ready to go on this journey.  

We are mindful, however, to make sure we don’t get too caught up on internal organising at the expense of delivering our activities. We are aware we need to keep thinking about how we can increase representation of our local community and other stakeholders at different levels of decision-making, inspired by models of Citizens’ Assemblies and the adoption of citizen juries by places like Birmingham Museums Trust.

At KWMC we are excited to go further towards more radical ways of organising that match our co-creating practices and are ready to experiment, learn and share with others.

Connecting and sharing

KWMC are keen to connect with others doing similar things and are currently in conversation with FaCE about co-producing some talks that share inspirational practice in this field. Watch this space for more developments and feel free to reach out for a conversation: martha.king@kwmc.org.uk

Further resources:

• Find out more about ‘Teal’ or self-managed organisations from ‘Reinventing Organisations’ by Frédéric Laloux.
• There are useful tips on the ‘Sociocracy for all’ website on setting up ‘circles’ and using consent based decision making.
• Dark Matter Labs blogs about organising beyond the rules.