Leadership and Lockdown: What I’ve Learned with Bettina Korek
By Holly Howe
Bettina Korek is an American arts advocate, writer, and the founder of ForYourArt, a public practice organisation based in Los Angeles. Most recently she was Executive Director of Frieze Los Angeles, before joining the Serpentine as CEO, a mere two weeks before the start of lockdown. She shared with our members what she has learned about leadership during lockdown.
Bettina arrived in London from LA just before the start of lockdown and actually managed to work at the Serpentine offices for about a week and a half before it closed. While the galleries re-opened in mid-August, most of the team is still working remotely.
Act fast
One of the first actions she took when the pandemic hit was to switch to an emergency budget “and from there we’ve really been considering the short, medium, and long-term immediate effects. We changed our operations and our responsibility to the public and our community.”
As government guidelines kept changing (and continue to change), Bettina quickly got used to “juggling multiple futures” with her team. She concurs:
“Agility has long been a strength of the Serpentine and I think that I will look back on this and recognise that our decisive action and the swiftness with which we adapted to this was really the foundation of our survival and success.”
Listening is crucial
Bettina strongly believes that listening to communities – their donors, their own staff, and the public – is critical to surviving these sea changes and thriving in the future.
“Our values have never faced more scrutiny, and we have an opportunity to evolve from messaging into policy and action. My personal goal is to foster a collaborative and empowering culture at the Serpentine and also with our audiences.”
In terms of more strategic priorities, forecasting finances conservatively is key while keeping the staff and programming flexible to expand and contract as needed. Bettina stresses you must be open while doing this:
“Keeping the team motivated is a challenge when you’re juggling multiple futures, and it’s important to be really candid about why this is important.”
The new normal
Like many organisations, the Serpentine moved towards online interactions during lockdown, prioritising virtual engagements with patrons. But Bettina acknowledges that are pros and cons to interacting like this:
“A lot of our international friends are engaging more consistently but not everyone is comfortable with managing these multiple futures but our job is to help people feel comfortable with this reality.”
Bettina believes forms of social distancing are here to stay and believes that organisations will shift their focus to more hyper local audiences:
“We’ll really be prioritising the work that we do in Westminster and across London and collaborating with other institutions to expand this activity.”
The Serpentine had announced a commitment to slow programming, which was inaugurated with a multi-year project ‘Back to Earth’ which invited over 60 creatives – artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, etc., – to devise artist-led campaigns and initiatives that respond to the environmental crisis.
“To complement and balance that, we are going to stagger the shows that we present in the galleries over the next two years. Rather than opening them at the same time, we will maintain momentum through these editorial conceived digital programmes which will happen across all of our platforms.”
Changing to a new way of thinking
If organisations are planning to create more content, then they really need to organise it around themes and think through how audiences will engage with the work. Bettina muses “as arts leaders, how do we think more like media leaders?”
Like many organisations, the Serpentine is learning to embrace the joys of data. “We have implemented an integrated data strategy to leverage the advanced capabilities of a CRM system.”
Given the fact that visitors now have to pre-book to visit the galleries, they now have access to a greater amount of visitor data.
“I think that some of the things that we’ve had to adapt through this crisis will actually serve us in the long term. It’s really about using data to future proof your organisation, to preserve valuable resources, and to make more informed choices that allow for the integration of your audience development and your fundraising strategies.”
Promoting a diverse workforce
While the Serpentine has been known for its diverse programming, Bettina now wants to turn their focus towards strengthening their organisational diversity. They are currently working with consultants who are leading them through a process that will result in an anti-racism and inclusion plan, and Bettina and Hans Ulrich Obrist have been having sessions with every department.
“Anti-racism needs to be and will be a core component of all of our decision-making moving forward into the next half century.”