Tari's Patch

Edinburgh is gearing up for the Festival season . Twelve festivals (from the original 1947-founded International Festival to the Edinburgh Fringe, the biggest and most organically grown), five performing companies, numerous arts and cultural galleries and museums, hotels, B&Bs, guesthouses, restaurants are all getting into Festival mood. I have posted a few blogs over the past few months about the cities and the importance of the arts from a reputation point of view ( Arts and the City ,  Abdoun, New Torn and the new majlis  and  Cities - bragging or shaming ). Summer festivals make a major impact  on the economy of Edinburgh (over £250m/$385m over the summer) as well as its reputation. It's the leadership aspect which has fascinated me these past months. There has been a flurry of new CEOs' appointments of major cultural organisations. These appointments have been high profile, much speculated upon and created much debate. I will set aside, for the time b...

Brian Groom reported the launch of  OUTstanding in Business  in  today's FT , a senior network for CEO level corporate leaders aiming to encourage positive attitudes towards gay professionals. While there are plenty of gay network groups in almost every profession, such a senior level platform as this is a new and welcome initiative. The hope is that this will encourage more senior gay men and women in some of the more traditional sectors of the corporate world to come out and in turn, become role models for other young gay professionals. Women are treading the same path and have done so for a long time. Today, there are women networks aplenty but there are still relatively few networks for senior women at the top of their tree, who can use their public image as role models for young women. I have long argued that increasingly, young women look more to public role models than their mothers and women closer to home, as has traditionally been the case. Three years...