Arts board governance under fire: Avoiding reactive decision-making

When arts boards panic and become reactive, they lose clarity and predictive governance suffers.

On paper, Adelaide Writers’ Week is an arts management dream. The country’s longest-running dedicated writers’ festival, it has played host to literary legends including John Updike and Allen Ginsberg. But in January, following the mass shooting of Jewish people at Bondi Beach, the Adelaide Festival board intervened to disinvite Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah, citing “sensitivities” over the writer’s “pro-Palestinian views” and past commentary on Israel. 

The backlash to this programming change was rapid and widespread. By mid-January, almost 200 guests had withdrawn, including UK headline talent Zadie Smith. On 13 January, event director Louise Adler announced her resignation and the event was cancelled.

A remarkable about-face followed. Just days later, a refreshed Adelaide Festival board rescinded its statement disinviting Abdel-Fattah and new chair Judy Potter announced that the writer would be invited to appear in 2027.

This pattern of controversy-panic-fallout feels increasingly common in the arts. Cancellations, boycotts, artist withdrawals and defunding have also plagued organisations including Bendigo Writers Festival, Opera Australia and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO). At the end of 2023, the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) came under fire when three actors wore keffiyeh during the curtain call of Chekhov’s The Seagull in a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians. Creative Australia (the national arts council) experienced a months-long backlash from the arts community after abruptly withdrawing artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino from the 2026 Vienna Biennale. Concerns had been raised in federal parliament and in the news media about the “political nature”  of two of Sabsabi’s earlier works. Both Sabsabi and Dagostino were eventually reinstated.

Alongside negative discourse, these events have had significant impact at a leadership level. Board members, including former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, left the STC amid the controversy, while Creative Australia chair Robert Morgan resigned in the wake of its crisis. In 2024, MSO management earned a vote of no confidence by its musicians after a performance by pianist Jayson Gillham was cancelled due to his pro-Palestinian comments.

Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette AM later made a telling statement to Senate estimates. “Art,” he said, “has always occupied the complex and often uncomfortable space where competing perspectives and social pressures intersect.”

The arts is necessarily political. In Australia, many organisations rely on or are wholly supported by government funding, while simultaneously making and exhibiting art that challenges existing political landscapes. One could argue there is an expectation for the sector to encourage divisive ideas or share unpopular perspectives. In the words of Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave, John Ridley, “If art is a singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial.”

Those who sit on arts boards are often passionate makers and/or consumers of the marketplace of ideas. They must therefore recognise the expectation to platform controversial artists and encourage debate. So, if they know it’s coming, why have some managed it so badly?

A perfect storm

Lachlan Edwards MAICD sits on and advises a variety of boards, including within the arts. “Arts boards in this country do a phenomenal job,” he says. “Most of them do it pro bono. They’re usually successful, capable people who are all passionate about the arts, in a country where art is swamped by sport. It’s remarkable how well arts companies’ boards manage to keep afloat in the Australian context.”

But where boards are not managing to do it so well, some experts feel an element of inevitability. Kate Larsen, an arts, cultural and non-profit consultant and writer, says arts boards are dealing with issues of unprecedented magnitude and frequency. “In many ways, we’re at the eye of a perfect storm many years in the making,” she says. “They’re being hammered from inside and outside, so bad decisions are made. We can assume they didn’t have bad intentions, but they’re causing harm regardless, then doubling down and causing more harm. It’s understandable, but completely unnecessary.”

Crisis communications expert Sue Cato AM agrees. Throughout her career, she has managed and advised on some of the country’s most significant private and non-profit issues. “The arts have always seen themselves as critical to social cohesion, the people who bring civility and the leading-edge thinking that creates a just society and community,” she says. “What’s been happening for the past five years or so is that rather than being the glue keeping society together, we’re the acetate that is melting it.”

The current culture of division, says Cato, is leading some arts boards to fumble key risk indicators, driven by unpreparedness, lack of self-awareness and disconnection from their wider context.

“The recent volatility and aggression have happened because people weren’t joining the dots and paying any attention to who were the most vocal and active people in the arts community, filling roles and board seats,” she says. “No-one ever imagined you could have this kind of disruption and disharmony, because the arts didn’t see itself that way.”

She says the arts have always been political and always will be. “It’s the core of the practice and it would be naïve to think otherwise. It’s a maelstrom. I’ve been actively involved in the arts for 40 years and I’ve never seen greater division, aggression and hatred than I’m seeing at the moment. Without doubt there are extraordinary issues, but it seems we’ve lost the ability to have respectful differences of opinion.”