JOIN ME: Towards a love-led leadership practice

• WHAT’S LOVE: Drawing on anti-oppression, liberatory cultural movements (e.g. Afro-Futurism; neuro-futurism, Black standpoint feminism) and the thought-leadership and labour of creative change-makers and critical pedagogists (e.g. bell hooks, Paulo Friere, James Baldwin; Jacob V. Joyce), ‘love’ re-frames neurodivergence, LGBTQIA+, global majority, working class, decolonising, and other marginalised, minoritised and/or disruptive perspectives and approaches as essential co-creative drivers of future- and change-making.
• WHAT’S NOT LOVE: Culture wars, box-ticking via identity/experience/protected characteristics, the weaponisation of difference to discriminate and/or as deficits/pathologies to be fixed/accommodated.

• WHAT’S LEADERSHIP: ‘Leadership’ refers to critical, (co-)creative and speculative approaches in organising, strategising, visualising/envisioning, curating and/or catalysing change, in attitude culture, policy, and/or practice,  in, with, for and/or through the arts and culture, through creative-critical interventions. If ‘management’ entails the upholding of the status quo, ‘Leadership’ is about interrogating the status quo, envisioning, re-imagining and creating hope.
• WHAT’S NOT LEADERSHIP: Management; the upholding of the status quo; not taking the lead, not taking risks; focus on individuals instead of (infra-)structural transformation; hierarchical roles in ‘formal’ organisations (C-suite; director etc); aspirational ambitions associated with normative/dominant metrics of ‘success’; approaches propagated by the USD$366 billion (2019) leadership development industry (and related self-help industry) that often targets improving/fixing individuals, and functions by reproducing and reinforcing (not questioning) existing systems.

• Towards a love-led leadership practice: (Co-)creative neuroqueering and decolonising approaches to change – and future- making (hereafter ‘LOVE’) comprises a set of approaches that encompasses, but is not limited to, a range of creative, cultural, educational, civic, practical, strategic, operational, speculative ideas and activities that re-centres marginalised and/or minoritised perspectives in, with and/or through the arts, design and culture as a transformative force for change- and future-making, with a spotlight on neurodivergence and queering, and for advancing sustained, collective and (infra-)structural (not just personal/individualistic) transformation towards social, epistemic and climate justice.
• Asset-based, love-led leadership practice is grounded in radical care, compassion and empathy, and towards joy.
• Critical allyship is essential — those in formal roles, with more privileges and so on, take on the heavy-lifting as well as responsibility towards dismantling — not reproducing — harmful (infra-)structures, legacies and knowledges that govern how we work, play, learn, live .
• LOVE is conceptualised and designed by Kai Syng Tan PhD PFHEA, and draws on her sector-leading award-winning creative research, KEE and teaching innovations and initiatives. This includes my art-psychiatry programme #MagicCarpet as the first artist-in-residence at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (2017-2019), film How to Thrive in 2050 (BBC Culture in Quarantine 2021), and book Neuro-futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan 2024).
• My research in this area began in 2015, which was the year she was given the late diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia, and which I explored through my creative research, an early public record of which is in the form of a drawing collected by Wellcome Collection in 2016 and as discussed and time-stamped on my former website.

• LOVE is a new, distinct and urgent direction for Art and Design in Higher Education (HE) because it fills hitherto under-discussed/neglected gaps of neurodiversity, queering and decolonising – separately, and in entanglement. This is the right moment and how this will be a positive move for the sector in terms of its culture, leadership and stakeholders.
• LOVE should be a self-reflexively leaderful application/ embodiment of what a (love-led) leadership practice can look like for the sector and beyond, and, if done correctly, should be reciprocal, rewarding, joyous.
• This strand clarifies + demonstrate how neuroqueering approaches that are decolonial and intersectional in art and design catalyse actions and conversations towards change- and future-making, and why such a joined-up, collaborative approach – termed a ‘love-led leadership practice’ – is vital for HE art and design and beyond. With/for/by stakeholders who care about HE, arts and culture, social/cultural/epistemic/climate justice – including/especially those with neurodivergent, decolonial, LGBTQIA+ and other practices and/or positionalities hitherto marginalised, LOVE opens up a unique and urgent space for the consolidation, collectivisation, and co-creation of strategies and action for more creative, inclusive futures, within and beyond the art and design school/sector .
• Together we’ll:
  • Share creative, asset-based innovative research and better practices on myriad ways of processing and being from the creative arts and how it has driven/led positive change in arts, humanities and sciences and social/civic realms;
  • Learn about how this diversity and divergence – neurodiversity and neurodivergence – relate with innovation, invention and leadership, to deepen, widen and advance how we teach, learn, research and create
  • Build on and extend learnings and findings from eg CHEAD 2024’s Creativity & Culture for Positive Change Study, through spotlighting hitherto under-discussed prisms of neoroqueering (neurodivergence + queering), decolonising and intersectionality, to strengthen and extend campaigns of creative leadership, art and design as activism and the capacity of creative education to make change and futures (neuro-futurism), and rendering this turbocharged, joined up approach as ‘love-led leadership’
  • Understand emerging ideas in critical and creative neurodiversity studies, applications withinand beyond frameworks of EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) and disability support, and how these discussions and actions entangle with and further efforts to tackle art and design HE’s existential crisis, including poor student mental health, the need to decolonise the curriculum, widen participation, narrow attainment gaps to counter art and design HE’s ableist, elitist, racist and culture and more;
  • Co-create outputs and outcomes to re-imagine better futures, by re-positioning HE art and design as a change-making force centring neurodiversity, decolonial, cultural justice force.
  • CHEAD leadership taster programme ‘What’s Love got to do with Leadership’ (12/2024), which shared guidelines for inclusivity that participants had to agree to, and carried a response by FACE founder and Uni. of Southampton VP for EDI and Social Justice Pascal Mathias;
  • CHEAD post outlining practical tips to curate love-led symposia based on a case study (11/2024, redacted from a longer piece ‘What’s Love got to do with art and design HE’ here)
  • CHEAD op-ed ‘Love-bombing HE & Beyond’ (for Valentines 2024, full article here)
  • If responses (such as on this Padlet for the taster) have been positive from CHEAD stakeholders it’s time to build on the momentum and rev up the engine. LOVE demonstrates how to extend the understanding and practice of ‘leadership’ beyond roles/hierarchy/paygrades, and instead as change-making practices encompassing the aesthetic, social, environmental, civic and more (Douglas 2009, 2013). It joins UNESCO’s call to position education as a public good by prioritising cultural justice, cultural diversity, care, and solidarity by 2050 (2021).
• LOVE is not new. A few of my efforts so far – which draw on the labour of the giants of critical pedagogy like hooks, Friere and more – have set the tone + scene for LOVE, eg:
  • CHEAD leadership taster programme ‘What’s Love got to do with Leadership’ (12/2024), which shared guidelines for inclusivity that participants had to agree to, and carried a response by FACE founder and Uni. of Southampton VP for EDI and Social Justice Pascal Mathias;
  • Post outlining practical tips to curate love-led symposia based on a case study (11/2024, redacted from a longer piece ‘What’s Love got to do with art and design HE’ here)
  • Op-ed ‘Love-bombing HE & Beyond’ (for Valentines 2024, full article here)
• If responses (such as on this Padlet for the taster) have been positive it’s time to build on the momentum and rev up the engine. LOVE demonstrates how to extend the understanding and practice of ‘leadership’ beyond roles/hierarchy/paygrades, and instead as change-making practices encompassing the aesthetic, social, environmental, civic and more (Douglas 2009, 2013). LOVE joins UNESCO’s call to position education as a public good by prioritising cultural justice, cultural diversity, care, and solidarity by 2050 (2021).

On the contrary- if you/your institution thinks this, you’re probably (part of) the problem. It is because we are in an era of poly-/omni-crisis that we need to build love into what/how we work. Homogenisation and standardisation isn’t the premise of innovation and change. As bell hooks reminds us, a ‘beloved’ community is formed ‘not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world’ (1995). 

• With his illegible writing, inability to complete tasks, and compulsion to dabble across the arts, engineering, sciences and more, one Leonardo Da Vinci would have been kicked out of school, let alone gone anywhere near HE (Tan 2020). Had he worked in an environment that had grasped and embraced his dyslexia and ADHD (Catani and Mazzarello 2019; Røsstad 2002), would the polymath have not just made 2500 sketches of flights of fancy – including of flying machines – but invented the helicopter in 1481?
• Fast forward to 2025, where pledges of decolonisation of the curriculum, EDI and DEI have all but DIED, and where art and design degrees are demonised as rip-off or ‘mickey mouse’: had Leonardo been not just odd, but Black, poor, queer, and/or from the global south – the odds would have been stacked yet higher against him. Still, multiply-marginalised oddballs continue to hack systems not made with/for/by them, inventing innovative moves to not just survive but thrive.
• All of this is urgent not least because neurocognitive variants like dyslexia, ADHD and autism are over-represented in art and design students (approx. 40%, based on 25% RCA 2001; 30% Bacon and Bennett 2013, 75% Steffart 1997, Universal Music 2020; versus 15-20% of the population Doyle and McDowall 2022); the figures is higher if neurodivergence is taken to include anxiety, bipolar and other mental health processes (40%, Doyle and McDowall 2022) – and higher still if we consider HE staff, people excluded from HE, and those without (access to) diagnosis.This is unsurprising, given how neurodivergence, innovation and change-making are powerfully entangled (Haartman 1993, Cancer et al 2016; Tan 2017; Lesch 2018, Catani and Mazzarello 2019; Baron-Cohen 2022; Tan 2024), which global bodies have been seizing on to even before the pandemic as the ‘next talent opportunity in the workplace’, ‘competitive advantage’ and ‘neuroleadership’ antidote to in tackling wicked challenges for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Harvard 2017; World Economic Forum 2020; NESTA nd). Indeed, ‘neurodiversity’ – broadly the coexistence of different ways of thinking, learning and being – has been a buzz word. If you didn’t know that 15-20% of humans come with (Doyle 2020), you will have run into the explosion of media coverage, shrugged at another antic of the autistic tech bro du jour Elon Musk, and/or heard your Gen-Z children/students dancing to their ‘neuro-spiciness’ on Tik Tok. Research networks and academic publications and conferences by/with/for neurodivergent creative researchers have been emerging, collectively countering deficit approaches to neurodivergence.
• Yet, why art schools – and more generally art and design HE as a sector – have continued to ignore neurodivergence as a creative resource has been a missed opportunity. Perhaps HE leaders have been too busy fighting fires, locked in a Sisyphian existential crisis amid the continued prioritisation of STEM subjects while the arts and humanities face ‘bonfires’, exacerbating its perennial issues of elitism, racism and ableism.
• Thus, LOVE prioritises not just neurodivergent and queer – neuroqueer (Walker 2021) – efforts. Following the positionality of multiply-minoritised researchers in an open letter to White disability studies and ableist institutions of higher education (Miles et al 2017) and a forthcoming outline towards a decolonial ‘creative neurodiversity studies’ prioritising ‘neurodisaporic subjectivities’ (Tan et al c2027) LOVE seeks to counter ‘white supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia; ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia; and heteronormativity and heterosexism’.

• LOVE comprises a range of inter-related and distinct items, several with their own further distinct concepts, proposals, discussions, creative outputs and outcomes, workshops and more. The following are a few examples:
• GUIDELINES FOR INCLUSIVE SPACES: Led by myself and co-created with the 460-member Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network since 2022, this has been applied and adapted by institutions.
• MASTERCLASSES TOWARDS DISMANTLING THE ‘MASTER’ STORY OF LEADERSHIP: Training programme. Conceptualised in 2019 and discussed in pp 67-68 in Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership, and running since 2023 as part of MA Arts and Cultural Leadership with guests like Dr Jack Tan and Prof Ele Belfiore (who are both neurodivergent). Following Audre Lorde’s well-known quote on dismantling harmful dominant narratives, the priority is atypical, emerging people and approaches to change-making.
• NFE: NEURO-FUTURIST MEDALS OF EXCELLENCE: As a creative response to orders of the British Empire, these are annual awards for institutions carrying out, sustaining and making positive changes in policy, welfare etc. Conceptualised in 2020 with proof of concept shared in public workshop commissioned by Royal Society of Arts, 2020, and discussed in p38 of Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership.
• MA ARTS & CULTURAL LEADERSHIP: Since 07/2023 Kai joined Winchester School of Art as Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership. As Module Leader (since 07/2023) and Programme Leader (since 07/2024) for MA Arts and Cultural Leadership, Kai’s teaching has been informed by her creative research and practice, such as ARTD6220 IDEAS AND DEBATES with a session on love-led governance, and the above-describe Masterclasses. My teaching is research-led and any teaching outcomes and outputs are associated with my creative research developed over the years.

• I’ve been strategising ways towards the formation of a Love-Led Leadership Hub (or a ‘Love Hub’), and am keen to find fellow interlocutors and collaborators (including for UK and international research grants) who may have an interest in any of the above terms/practices (‘love’, ‘leadership’) in isolation and/or in any messy/magical combination, or more generally, who wish to learn more about cultural/epistemic justice, EDI, leadership beyond roles/hierarchy/harmful legacies, and interdisciplinarity and intersectionality – salient for our turbulent times.
• This began on 14th July 2025 as a University of Southampton gathering, funded by a Winchester School of Art research fund, towards the university goal to ‘build an inclusive world and lead by example, ensuring our community is diverse and that our culture enables everyone to thrive.’  
• The session was lovely and lively. 10 staff and students, from across Winchester School of Art, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and Business School, key of whom was Dr Naveena Prakasam lecturer, author of book on decolonial leadership. Participants include early career colleagues to senior professors, from diverse job families (research, technical, management), with various specialist insights and assets (including neurodivergent, transgender, disabled), gathered for the workshop. We called upon/connected across knowledges (philosophy, linguistics, art, lived experience) and themes (joy/rage/empathy/care), the interchangeability of the terms love and leadership, and how they connect with time, space and imagination. We were critical, personal yet also playful and courageous (eg speculating on non-linear/non-hierarchical power-formations). That was our first speed-date and I hope that we can find other opportunities to continue the conversations and action.  Find in this link  the powerpoint of what Business School lecturer Dr Naveena Prakasam and myself shared. There’s also a PDF of our redacted co-created live notes, queries and thinking 
• The workshop is to ascertain interest, and find collaborators for two research funding applications, towards £10m Leverhulme grant. This would investigate, cultivate, showcase and expand thought-leadership in neuro-queering, cultural justice, and decolonial research. The Hub will gather high-value external, international collaborators with UoS groups. This draws on my ongoing research that reframes neuro-queering (neurodivergence and queering), and creative intelligence as not just identity/experience, but strategic approaches. ‘Love-led leadership’ draws on my theorisation in my monograph on ‘neuro-futurism’ (2024) which draws on Afro-futurism and the work of atypical, minoritised movers and shakers such as hooks, Lorde and Baldwin, while dismantling harmful approaches in conventional leadership approaches. That love has mileage is demonstrated in how the book is housed in 12 institutions (e.g., Cambridge, Indian Institute of Technology, UCL, Gothenburg, Translibrary Helsinki), and how it is shaping modules (eg MA Arts Education to MSc Global Health Humanities and MSc Affective Disorder and BA Art History).  
• Reflection by my PhD student and MA Arts and Cultural Leadership alumni Xiangyu Zhu of the inaugural gathering:

This three-hour session brought together 10 participants from diverse backgrounds to explore key topics from multiple perspectives. The workshop was convened to explore the concept of ‘Love-led leadership,’ which draws on the theorisation in Kai’s monograph on ‘neuro-futurism’ (2024), which reimagines neuro-queering (neurodivergence and queering) as not just identity/experience/protected characteristics to tick boxes, but essential drivers of change and future-making when entangled with creative research and intelligence, decolonization, and rooted in radical care.  

This session invited a re-imagination of what love is and how it relates to leadership. Participants shared that love is not just about feeling happy. “Love is joy, but love can also be anger.” When anger is used as a way to express love, it can be a powerful tool for change. Participants also shared that ‘putting profits in all of the humans, profit over people is not love’; if something is based on profit and causes a lot of harm, it’s actually not love.

Regarding ‘leadership’, the session explored different perspectives. One perspective regards leadership as a means of controlling and consolidating one’s power, with a focus on ‘protecting oneself’ and ‘strengthening oneself.’ This ‘power-over’ model is primarily about preserving hierarchy, privilege and the status quo. The other perspective views leadership as a ‘power-with’ or ‘power-to’ model, which is about ‘empowering others.’ As Kai said at the session, ‘I want more power so that I can give more power to others who are not in the space.’ This view shows that leadership should not be about clinging onto power, but about finding ways to distribute it to those who are neglected or excluded. The discussion led by Dr Naveena Prakasam also pointed out that the theory of ‘authentic leadership’ is sometimes overly optimistic and ignores power issues, emphasising that leadership should be a process of shared power and collective creation. The ‘neuro-futurist’ perspective, drawing on the octopus (which has ‘three hearts’ and ‘a brain on each tentacle’), demonstrates the potential of ‘neuro-futurism’ as a form of distributed, collaborative leadership.

The session did not shy away from the challenges encountered, including how venues lack accessible facilities, which are essentially ‘paying lip service to inclusion while actually excluding’, or newcomers to the workplace reporting that ‘while the company encourages innovation, challenging the status quo leads to punishment,’ exposing the hypocrisy of the current systems.

In contrast to ‘old-school’ leadership seeking incremental and unremarkable change, this session highlighted love-led leadership as distinct. It not only upholds Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles, but also represents a rigorous, boundary-pushing, and challenging approach to practice. It may sound “radical,” but it’s exactly what we need right now. The proposal of love-led leadership deserves celebration—it’s delightful! Its ultimate ambition is to work towards the formation of a Love-Led Leadership Hub, and fulfil the goal to build an inclusive world and lead by example, ensuring our community is diverse and that our culture enables everyone to thrive.

• Neurofuturism, creative leadership, arts and cultural leadership, neurodiversity, decolonial, neuroqueer, culture change, innovation, change-making, future-making, collective liberation, anti-oppression, social justice, cultural justice, EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, trans-inclusion
• Artistic intelligence, artfulness, creative education, compassionate advocacy, #artisessential, design as activism, activism, creative research, arts and culture, art and design, HE
• Neurodivergence, neurominority,   autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, social model of disability  

• The project/programme is designed and led by CHEAD trustee WSA Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership Kai Syng Tan PhD PFHEA. It extends Kai’s portfolio since 2000 recognised for its pioneering research, teaching, consultancy, and leadership innovation, especially around neurodiversity as a creative research and leadership discourse, critical and creative pedagogy, and cross-disciplinary arts-psychiatry research, training and policy-change around neurodivergence and mental health. In particular it applies findings from Kai’s book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) which has been praised as ‘exceptional’ by University of Cambridge’s youngest black professor who is also autistic Jason Arday
• LOVE scales up Kai’s sector-leading initiatives. Eg: founding global Neurodiversity In/And Creative Research Network which has 450 members and as many affiliated local groups from Kolkata to Kansas, Waterloo to Whitstable — members include Nick Walker who co-founded the term neurodiversity and neuroqueering; being the first artist on the editorial board of the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin and fostering STEAM dialogues and collaborations; creation of guidelines, training programmes and toolkits now applied in multiple HEIs including KCL, BBC-commissioned film manifesto; advocacy for neurodivergence in HE by introducing and formalising access agreements and embedding support funded by DWP; creating easy-read consent forms held as exemplary by UoS.
• Kai is experienced curator, producer, project manager since 2000. Successful programmes led include: Communicationss Director and Visual Director for £4.8m Opening and Closing Ceremonies of Asia’s Paralympics praised by press and disability groups as ‘game-changing’ (2015); with 11 partner institutions, co-curator for a 4-day festival to mark Black History Month which reached 18.2 million people (2020). See this film and read this page for participatory creative research programme and winner of National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Culture Change award with world-leading psychiatrists to explore ND and creativity, which includes an EU-commissioned film that reached 79,000 people. 

Tan, K.S. (2025). Towards a love-led leadership practice: (Co-)creative neuroqueering and decolonising approaches to change – and future making. https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/love-led-leadership-practice/

The following is a selection – for more details see:

• my website https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/tag/neurodiversity/ which is licensed CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
• CV https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/tag/cv/
• ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4491-7166

SELECTION:

• Tan, Kai Syng. 2024. Re-Imagining Leadership with Neuro-Futurism: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-031-55376-9 https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/book-springer-nature/.
• Tan, Kai Syng. 2024. ‘What’s Love Got to Do with Neurodiversity and HE Art and Design?’ Society for Research into Higher Education Blog (blog). 29 November 2024. https://srheblog.com/2024/11/29/whats-love-got-to-do-with-neurodiversity-and-he-art-and-design/

• Abridged version: Tan, Kai Syng. 2024. ‘How to Curate a Love-Led Symposium? Neurodivergent Artist-Academics Show a Way’. Council for Higher Education in Art & Design CHEAD (blog). 3 December 2024. https://www.chead.ac.uk/how-to-curate-a-love-led-symposium-neurodivergent-artist-academics-show-a-way/.
• Since 2024: International book tour in the form of keynote–lectures /performative-lectures in Helsinki, Singapore, London, Southampton and online, including: Tan, K.S. (2024) ‘Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: A decolonial, neuro-queered and co-creative practice’. Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium, University of Arts Helsinki, with Research in Arts and Education Journal and International Disability Studies Arts and Education Network, 22 November. Available at: https://www.uniarts.fi/en/events/neurodiversity-in-the-arts-symposium/#keynote-speaker. 
• Tan, Kai Syng. 2024. ‘Looking for Love in 2024’. Society for Research into Higher Education (blog). 2 February 2024. https://srheblog.com/2024/02/02/looking-for-love-in-2024/.
  • The post was SRHE’s 4th most-read post between 02/2024-12/2024, with 407 views.
  • Abridged version: Tan, Kai Syng. 2024. ‘Love-Bombing Higher Education and Beyond’. Council for Higher Education in Art & Design (blog). 14 February 2024. https://www.chead.ac.uk/love-bombing-higher-education-and-beyond/.

• Tan, KS 2022, ‘The Artful, Agile and Atypical Octopussy: An embodied interdisciplinary mode of knowledge exchange & creation for atypical times.’ Performance Research Vol. 26, no.2. >1423 views. 
• Tan, KS 2021, ‘Art and psychiatry in the 21st century: here’s to more messy – and magical – entanglements’. British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin, pp. 1-4. Cambridge University Press. >2970 views.

• Since 2021: How to Thrive in 2050! 8 Tentacular Workouts for a Tantalising Future. Premiered on BBC Culture in Quarantine, then toured internationally including: Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2023, Attenborough Arts Centre The World is a Work in Progress exhibition alongside Bob and Roberta Smith and others, 2021-2022, Castlefield Gallery & more
• Tan, Kai Syng. 2020  Novel Viruses Require Artful Solutions. Op-ed, Royal Society of Arts Blog.
• Tan, Kai Syng. 2020  Artful Leadership Against a Crafty Virus. Op-ed, Arts Professional. With Tom Northey. 
• Tan, KS 2019, On Art, Neurodiversity & Giant Octopussies: Reflections on the Art-Science Commission #MagicCarpet. London: KCL. ISBN: 978-1-908951-28-1.
• 2018: National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Images Contest Award for Culture Change 
• 2016: Wellcome Trust Library. Conceptual image on ADHD