Taking Creative Risk: A Catalyst for Change
August 2025 - 7 Minute Read
In a sector where audience expectations, engagement patterns and financial needs are constantly shifting, creative risk has become a divisive topic of conversation, especially around the governance of organisations, departments and project alike.
Taking creative risk isn't just about bold ideas, it requires visionary leadership and a commitment to believe that the risk will pay off. When done well, it fuels ambition, drives artistic progression and pushes the sector forward. But in today’s climate, with escalating financial pressures and shifting policy landscapes, the appetite for risk often is lacking.
With ongoing funding cuts, reduced government support and ever-moving goalposts in commissioning and grant-making, creative risk can sometimes feel less like a leap forward and more like a luxury few can afford.
Let’s be honest: it’s a tough time & when times get tough, good collective leadership & creative risk can become a thing of the past. Panic sets in, fight or flight mode is activated & we retreat into old ways & bad habits.
In the context of the cultural sector it can present itself as:
Reduction in new commissioning opportunities as providers back away into known territories, likely due to budget cuts & tightening of focus.
High turnover in roles within cultural organisations, often due to unmanageable workloads and lack of leadership.
Stagnation of new events, CPD offers & network opportunities - either it goes quiet or lots of ‘buzzword, but nothing will change meet ups’ are released to tie artists over.
A general rising frustration between cultural stakeholders (orgs, freelancers, communities) due to all of the above.
What We're Hearing
Through my interview series with creative leaders, managers executives, a recurring theme emerged. Many discussions focused on the need for creative risk taking, however there was a feeling of hesitancy around the nature, scale and capacity of such risk. The pattern looks like this:
A concern that bold or experimental ideas won’t align closely enough with current funder or organisational values, especially in a time of tightening budgets and not wanting to ‘rock the boat’.
A fear that “times are too tough” to take a chance on new voices, projects, or working models, more often due to the lack of organisational capacity, rather than low desire.
A tendency to prioritise known outcomes or repeatable formats over experimentation, particularly when resources are limited.
An awareness that innovation is needed, but the sector is too stretched, financially, emotionally, and logistically, to act on it. Often viewed as a wide sector challenge, stemmed from NPO demands and government changes.
So, What Now?
How do we ignite creative risk in a time of uncertainty?
How do we ensure that creative ambition doesn’t shrink, just because the budgets do?
I’m speaking from a place of lived duality, rooted in freelance practice & the navigation of cultural organisational experience. It's not a perfect balance, but it’s exactly this in-between space that keeps the question alive and urgent in my mind.
I’ve felt the tension between bold artistic vision and practical sustainability. It is a constant negotiation: how to protect the spark of risk while juggling resources, people and timelines. It is hard to keep all parties happy, which is why I am fascinated with how creative risk can shape new approaches to tackling this tension.
We need to flip the narrative. Creative risk shouldn't be seen as a threat to stability, it should be seen as a solution to stagnation. Interestedly, creative risk because less of a focus at time where it may be the very tool we need to revive how we work in times of challenge. We must empower organisations and artists to experiment & challenge outdated processes that are failing us. This isn’t about taking reckless chances, it’s about being strategically bold.
A Call for Collective Vulnerability
To take creative risks, I think we firstly need to embrace collective vulnerability, meaning:
People being honest about past missteps.
Opening space for new ideas and ways of working that are genuine and authentic.
Committing to shared responsibility in experimentation & doing the work to understand what ‘shared responsibility’ means.
Building trust across teams, artists and audiences through transparent communication.
Creative risk demands courage, not isolation. It thrives in environments where trust is cultivated, where leadership makes space for failure and growth and where ambition is not a liability but a necessity
How can we improve our creative risk taking when things feel already a challenge?
I’m glad you asked. From speaking with a range of creatives on this topic matter, initial ideas were clear:
Simply turning the word ‘Creative Risk’ into ‘Creative Strategy’ already enabled certain cultural departments to embrace new initiatives. “Its all pysocloglical” said one interviewee.
Look at other sectors, ignore varying scales & take inspiration from the core ambition. Yes, the cultural sector doesn’t have the financially backing of a large, multimillion commercial enterprise and ethically we hope to stand for more, but do they have innovative solutions we can learn from? For example, the tech industry’s approach to user experience. Companies like Airbnb or Spotify invest deeply in understanding their users and tailoring journeys that are intuitive, personalised, and frictionless. While we may not have the same budgets, the principle, putting audiences at the heart of the experience, is something we can adopt. It’s not about copying scale, but about borrowing mindset.
Investing in the teams around you, rather than isolating departments, ideas or yourself. We need to utilise the talent around us & think laterally. We like to put someone on a sole pedestal but this lacks stability and can easily result in disappointment if they lack the skill and leadership to utilise their teams well. And yes leaders… this means letting go of ‘ego’ & delegating properly. If you struggle with this, you need to address this with your colleagues (…or maybe therapy?) as having possessive ownership of projects, a compulsive need to be top dog or practicing habits of ignoring delegation, will bleed into your team and their ability to take creative risk authentically and successfully.
Questioning the ‘norms’ we hold too and why? Is it strategic or is it ‘because thats how we have always done things’ mentality. Opening our mindsets to question why we do what we do and what does it serve, is a good start to creative risk taking. Digging deeper beyond just ‘artistic mission statements’ but how a department, commissioning platform or creative team is structured or communicating can be an interesting place to start.
Creative risk is more than just artistic product - its about how that product is created, distributed, developed and evolved. Its not out about making lots of inventive art/projects, its looking at the ambition of what that art/project is saying, how it is being made and how it plans to be shared and lead. Develing deeper into these areas means the risk is less scary, because its got a plan behind it. By diving deeper into these aspects, creative risk becomes less intimidating because it’s supported by a clear, thoughtful plan.
People can sometimes assume creative risk comes with throwing everything out the window and letting it all run around. Sometimes the opposite is needed - time constraints, an unexpected deliverable, a process challenge that spurs inventive thinking. Funny, unpredictable rules and forms can produce authentic, creative risk, challenging certain artists/people to make brilliant decisions when curveballs are thrown at them.
Introducing Creative Risk through new mindsets
Planning for failures and making that the focus, rather than perfect product or delivery, can support risk taking conversations. Go wild and see whether changes to small habits & practices liberates the need to perfectly align or follow the rules.
Small steps may be:
Unconventional Networking - Forget shaking hands only within the art bubble. Let’s get weird and network beyond our usual suspects. Mix artists with bankers, nonprofits with gamers, poets with scientists. You never know what creative risk would spark when worlds collide
Failure Fridays - 10 mins in the office for people to list what goal they failed at this week. By normalising ‘failure’, we reframe the narrative to ‘we have to fail to learn’ and removes that perfect equals better pressure.
Artists get a no-judgment zone to dream outrageously big about their art and big plans. Guided by a creative producer or consultant, these sessions are all about saying ideas aloud, not judging them, because every great project starts with a crazy thought.
Hold meetings in new, alternative spaces to usual - make the effort to step out of your ‘norm’ and invite new ideas to come from fresh spaces and perspectives.
Invite third parties into creative conversations to play ‘devils’ advocate’. To counter, challenge and inspire new routes by coming to ideas from a completely different zone, perspective, target or sector.
Switch your tool or medium. You're an actor, get in a dance studio. You're a musician, have a chat with a theatre maker. You're a cultural project manager, curate your project idea with an active community facilitator. Mix up the medium you express or build your ideas to generate unexpected results.
Final Thoughts
Creative risk is needed and shouldn’t be ignored in this current climate. If we stop taking risk, we do ourselves a disservice. Now is not the time to retreat. We need to lead with out of the box thinking, creatively, courageously and collaboratively. However this doesn't happen overnight, it takes practice and collective thought. Small steps can create big impact in the world of creative risk taking, making fresh things happen in the cultural sector through new mindsets and an openness to risk.