Leading Otherwise: Feminist Instances From the Arts

Abstract

This paper explores how feminist artists enact leadership through artistic organizing in the creative industries. Drawing on two case studies—Company Drinks and Homebaked—it examines how leadership emerges not through formal roles or strategic vision, but through practices of care. We highlight the interwoven dimensions that constitute feminist leadership and create infrastructures of belonging and continuity. To capture this, we propose the analytical device of the assembler : a feminist subject position through which leadership is enacted, and this involves the careful composition of relationships, materials, and conditions. Our analysis contributes to leadership studies by grounding calls for critical postheroic approaches in concrete feminist practices and to creative industries research by challenging dominant metrics of visibility, scale, and entrepreneurial charisma. We contend that the problem is not only the underrepresentation of women in leadership, but also the lack of feminist orientations to leadership. Artistic organizing demonstrates how leadership can be enacted otherwise while rehearsing alternative futures.