Join us as leadership takes center stage. The international performing arts community faces new realities including global conflicts, changing workplace culture, divisions around social issues, AI, and the climate emergency. At ISPA’s 2025 New York Congress, we’ll explore innovative approaches and leadership models that leverage creativity to inspire and lead with impact. Whether you’re an artist, presenter, manager, administrator, or cultural advocate, join us as we navigate the unique challenges and opportunities of arts leadership in today’s rapidly shifting, often polarized world.

The 2024 ISPA mid-year congress will focus on real-time examples of new international models of artistic and industry breakthroughs – whether that be through our evolution, or a revolution. Navigating the deeply challenging contexts of recent years, the congress will platform brave examples of transformation, to reinvigorate our passionate pursuit of purpose. (And a purposeful pursuit of passion). Join us in Perth, Australia for unique perspectives and insights from the region and the world.

The performing arts have long provided an effective platform for exploring greater societal issues. However, the arts sector itself grapples with the same challenges, including inequities, regional conflict, generational shifts, climate change, and scarcity of funding and training resources. These are just a few of the issues currently at hand. As we recover from years of significant upheaval, how can our sector overcome the gaps that currently exist? By reconciling these gaps in the performing arts, how can we affect positive change on greater society?

What does co-creation really mean for Performing Arts leaders? How can co-creation help our sector move forward with intention, relevance and resilience? At the ISPA 2023 mid-year congress, we will come together in Manchester to take stock of where we are, to collectively reflect on these questions and to envisage what the journey forward could look like. Delegates will be challenged and inspired by a range of speakers and panelists, and we will provide space for conversation and exchange. Manchester has creativity and culture at its heart, and we look forward to welcoming delegates to explore the rich offering in the city and across the North West region.

In 2022, we explored the “opportunity” of now. We came together to discuss issues ranging from equity to climate change and to envision a new future. One year later, “urgency” is the watchword. As the performing arts sector reopens, has there been tangible action on the pressing needs we identified? How do we meet the challenges of the present moment and uphold our commitments to change? In 2023, we will explore what we have accomplished to date and, perhaps more urgently, what still needs to be done.

Hong Kong is a gateway to China, specifically the Greater Bay Area, and to many other Asian cities. With sound fundamentals, a strategic location, advanced soft and hard infrastructure and world-class talent, it is the best place in Asia to facilitate personal and professional connections.

The 2022 ISPA mid-year congress, with the theme of “To Connect Beyond,” positions Hong Kong as a springboard to enhance the global network of arts institutions and practitioners in the region and beyond.

In 2021 we will explore the opportunities for the arts following a year of crisis, isolation, inequity, and realization. Highlighting the performing arts’ resiliency and innate creativity, we will reflect upon the sustainability of our leadership, practice, and environment. Empathy, values, social justice, and economy will be highlighted as we consider our future in this unchartered territory. Through our first fully virtual congress, let us imagine the arts and move forward, together.

The world is made up of borders both real and contrived. We speak of boundaries in terms of national frameworks, the way in which we approach work, and the way we build personal relationships. How do the performing arts shift these walls – these constructs that can sometimes inhibit our thinking and isolate interaction? What can we learn from other sectors, such as architecture and technology, that invest in innovation and question preconceived notions? Join us in New York as we explore the outer limits of the performing arts.

While we often speak of living in the moment, the reality is most of our work requires years of planning. Be it curation, facility development or anticipating new technological advancements, we need to be highly intuitive if not clairvoyant! How do we create the future today? As we adjust for ever-changing political environments, infrastructure renewal and development, technological change, and leadership development, how do we address challenges and opportunities of which we may not even be aware? The performing arts has many unique aspects but can we also learn from other sectors? Join 500 colleagues from around the world as we shape our future together.

The intersection of the creation and presentation of the arts, its role in our communities, and the transition to the next generation of arts leaders is indeed a balancing act. Global society is being shaped by many forces and this is having a fundamental impact on the arts sector. With this change, we also have opportunity not only to reflect the changing values of our broader society but indeed shape them. How will the next generation of leaders approach this evolution and further the arts as a catalyst of positive transformation?