Next course starts 10 April 2025

Fees

Regular Fee: £1200
from 19 December 2024

Location

Location: Battersea campus
2 days in person
Day 1: 10 April 2025 (10am – 5pm BST)
Day 2: 11 April 2025 (10am – 5pm BST)

Watch the course introduction video

Creative Leadership is not a typical leadership strategy.

At the heart of our model are three leadership values that apply to everyone:

Empathy is the hallmark of a twenty-first century leader (widely spoken about by Forbes, Harvard Business Review and others)
Creativity is an innate ability to develop solutions (this course is delivered by creatives with international profiles)
Clarity is needed to balance and activate empathy (this is often undervalued, but we will give you a grounding in this)

The course will take you through these three leadership attributes, showing how to engage and upskill. It is for those currently in leadership, aspiring leaders and those who were never encouraged to be leaders (the largest category of all).

Catalysing change can be external, but real change starts within. Creative Leadership is a transformational process that focuses on your individual growth. This can powerfully affect the organisation, team, or projects around you.

The Creative Leadership short course at the Royal College of Art has been pioneered by Rama Gheerawo, Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, to address the need for new models of leadership across job roles, organisational departments and industry domains.

This executive masterclass is based on the tried and tested methods of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. It draws on expertise the Centre has acquired delivering over 300 projects for clients ranging from businesses to government and the third sector. The workshop includes examples of real-world case studies of Creative Leadership in action and is delivered face to face on campus.

About the course

Course structure

Day 1

Creative Leadership: a new model for 21st-century leadership

Theory and definitions
Research, values, applications

The values of Creative Leadership (part 1)

Empathy
Case studies
Group workshop activities
Introduction to CL tools
Guest Speaker talk

Day 2

The values of Creative Leadership (part 2)

Disclaimer: The information given is accurate at the time of publication, however, the RCA reserves the right to amend the described course as circumstances dictate.

Personal and organisational benefits

The benefits to you and your organisation include:

the opportunity to develop and apply the core RCA Creative Leadership attributes and processes that activate and step beyond empathy
access to world-class expertise
strategies to cultivate your individual leadership profile using empathy, clarity and creativity
interaction and networking with peers from different backgrounds
a certificate of attendance.

What will you learn?

You will learn to:

practice Creative Leadership on an individual and collective level
apply the attributes, tools and frameworks of Creative Leadership in your personal and professional development
recognise and address the need for Empathy, Clarity and Creativity in your interactions with colleagues, clients and partners
understand the value of these leadership attributes in ideation, research and project delivery.

How will you learn?

Learning takes place over 2 days in person, participants get taught as a group and work in smaller teams.

The course includes:

lectures / building blocks
feedback from facilitators
resources, e.g. journal articles, videos and case studies.
Creative Leadership Tools (worksheet templates)

Who should attend?

This course is highly suited to:

chief design officers
mid-to-senior level management
in-house R&D teams
business developers
sales, marketing and design teams
entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs
anyone from the creative industries
talent consultants
traditional services e.g. finance, accounting, IT, law etc
government and civil service
public sector and NGOs.

On campus delivery

This course will be delivered face-to-face at our new flagship building in Battersea.

Covid-19

Our planning incorporates the latest Government guidance as well as consideration of how best to ensure a safe and inclusive learning space for participants and staff team.

Our participants health, wellbeing and quality of experience while attending our on-campus courses is paramount to us.

Full details of the Covid safe guidelines in place for the course will be provided to you in advance of your start date with your welcome information.

Disclaimer: Change to online delivery

It may be necessary due to Covid-19 restrictions to change the mode of delivery to live online. We will endeavour to notify all participants in advance of any changes, no later than two weeks before the course start date.

Terms & conditions apply.

“The Creative Leadership course was absolutely fantastic and will provide me with some invaluable skills that I will use for the rest of my career.”
Jessica Horton, Senior Design Lead, CNWL NHS Foundation Trust October 2024 participant
“The RCA’s Creative Leadership course is engaging, inclusive and inspiring. Over two days, the fantastic team created an environment where everyone can be a creative. And by the end, you truly believe that with empathy, clarity and creativity, we can change the world for the better.”
Jillian Kay, Corporate Director, Wellbeing, BCP Council October 2024 participant
“The Creative Leadership course is a must-do course for anyone in leadership or anyone who wants to be able to recognise good leadership. It will challenge your thinking around the importance of empathy, clarity and creativity working together, as well as giving wisdom on maintaining healthy boundaries when it comes to empathy to avoid burnout.”
Kate Russell, BS&T Digital, Senior Creative Lead March 2024 participant
“The Creative Leadership course was a great introduction into the inner thinkings of what it takes to become a creative leader in today's world. As technology changes, people remain human and we must treat each other as such. The course is a gateway to unlocking the necessary traits, of which we all possess, for a creative leader.”
Greg Gilfillan, Global Creative Lead at PwC 2023 participant
“Captivating delivery of powerful values of empathy and clarity, encouraging the injection of love and joy into projects and business. Riding the crest of inclusivity and humanising the world around us, Creative Leadership at the RCA provides an essential toolkit for work/life.”
Rob Finch, Creative Consultant at Liberty 2023 participant
“Creative Leadership is the leadership course for those who don't like leadership courses. No pseudo-science, popular frameworks or metrics here: just a clear focus on real leadership through empathy, clarity and creativity - all learned together through activities and conversations.”
Alex Moseley, Head of Learning and Teaching at Anglia Ruskin University 2022 participant
“This is an excellent course where we become part of a global classroom to understand what are the hallmarks of the leaders we all need - and need to be - to change the world for the better. I absolutely loved it!”
Rachel Auty, Director & Engagement Strategist at Raucous Agency Ltd 2021 participant
“It was amazing to be led by the actual academics shaping and pushing forward this work - to have access to their knowledge and experience in the moment really enhanced the course and made the content feel alive and important but also implementable day to day.”
Sarah Robertson, Director of Communications & Special Projects at Bristol Beacon/Clore Leadership 2021 participant
“If you are looking for a fresh mindset for creative leadership, rather than a fixed set of processes and tools, this is the class for you.”
Ann-Kristin Delfmann, Head of UX and Design at Nomoko 2021 participant
“Empathy is increasingly seen as the most important leadership quality. But what other values sit beside it and activate it? New research from the Royal College of Art shows how. You have worked on your business. Have you worked on yourself?”
Rama Gheerawo Course leader, Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design