The Shoots Emerge: First year of the Young Leaders Collective

Published 15 August 2024

A look back at the 2023/24 Young Leaders Collective year

Written by Freddie Aitken, LYC Membership & EDI Manager

What a year! In 2023/24, we launched the Young Leaders Collective. As a staff team, we didn’t really know what it would look like – and that was sort of the point! We wanted it to grow organically, defined by the brilliant young people that made up the group. All we knew was that we wanted to put our members at the centre of our decision making process…how the Young Leaders Collective (or YLC for short) functioned was up to them!

12 months later, and we couldn’t be more proud and pleased with how the group grew and made the project their own. Honestly, it was an absolute delight, from start to finish.

The group had 9 meetings, an away day and spoke at a Board meeting. On each occasion, we covered a different key topic, alongside more general agenda items. Here’s a quick summary of what the group spoke about:

Meeting 1 – Getting to know each other

Meeting 2 – Terms of Reference (what is the YLC and how will we work together)

Meeting 3 – A career as a freelance music facilitator (led by Rachel Staunton, Artistic Director at LYC)

Meeting 4 – Consolidation and introducing the idea of a Recommendation to our board of trustees

Meeting 5 – First Agenda defined by the YLC & an introduction to charity governance

Away Day – Backstage tour of the Royal Albert Hall focusing on what it takes to put on an arts event

Meeting 6 – Review of LYC spring surveys and workshop on charity finance and fundraising

Meeting 7 – Nick Thorne (Executive Director of Orchestras for All) | Guest Speaker chosen by YLC – How to collaborate within the arts

Meeting 8 – Preparing the Recommendation for the board

Board Meeting – YLC presents their Recommendations to the board

Meeting 9 – Reflection and legacy

At the time of writing, recruitment for the 2024/25 cohort is live. We would strongly urge anyone interested in joining the group to apply. You won’t regret it.

2023/24 members Rachael, Emily, Octavia, Darcy, Tia, Pavlo, Matthew, Julia, Noa, Mary, Evie and Grace, thank you all so much for the time you’ve given to LYC and its members. You are all superstars and we are so, so grateful.