Holding Space for Uncertainty: The Future for the Cultural Leader.
Feeling the weight of it all? In my latest article, I explore why mid-career creatives and cultural leaders might need to make more space for playfulness, experimentation, and tolerance—and what happens when we do.
Do you feel it too? There's a kind of exhaustion emerging among mid-career creatives and cultural leaders. It's not quite burnout in the simplistic productivity sense, but a deeper fatigue. For Millennials, in particular, we're navigating an age which overlaps with economic unpredictability, a digital acceleration like no other and, extreme political volatility. While simultaneously, caring for our older generations, mentoring upcoming leaders and carrying institutional memory. It's relentless.
Building on my last three articles, this article focuses mainly on making space for playfulness and tolerance, why we need it and how making space changes everything.
With years of experience working with exceptional leaders, cultural and (emerging) arts professionals, I’ve noticed a few common traits recently: highly capable, intellectually rigorous, and culturally fluent people are becoming more and more disconnected from intentional rest, experimentation, and play.
But why?
Taking a helicopter view, recent neuroscience and creativity research suggests that playfulness and tolerance for ambiguity are associated with creative thinking, cognitive flexibility and adaptive cognition.
Foundational studies by Deborah W. Tegano found a statistically significant relationship between adult playfulness, tolerance for ambiguity and creativity. Tegano (1990) reported that tolerance for ambiguity correlated positively with creativity, while playfulness showed an even stronger positive correlation. Importantly, playfulness remained significantly associated with creativity even when tolerance for ambiguity was controlled, suggesting that playful disposition itself may independently support (creative) capacity.
Within neuroscience, more contemporary models of creativity also describe (creative) cognition as involving dynamic shifts between associative and executive modes of thinking, with openness to uncertainty supporting flexible adaptation and idea formation (Gabora, 2019).
"In other words, moving towards cultivating conditions where adults can reconnect with curiosity, humour, and unfinished thinking, inevitably moves us towards higher tolerance, better adaptability in high-pressure situations and well, cognitive resilience."
During the 20th Century it seemed more common for cultural initiatives to hold greater significance across our societies. From my understanding, there were more spaces that offered room for experimentation, expression, and imagination—allowing ideas to remain unresolved long enough to generate new forms of art, politics, and institutional possibility. Initiative such as the:
Harlem Renaissance salons, New York: Gatherings linked to A’Lelia Walker and the Dark Tower brought Black writers, musicians and thinkers together for artistic experimentation, critique and cultural self-definition outside mainstream institutions (Hutchinson, 1995; Lewis, 1994).
Négritude gatherings, Paris: In 1930s Paris, figures including Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Paulette Nardal used salons, journals and discussion circles to challenge colonial assimilation and develop a shared Black diasporic consciousness (Britannica, 2026; Camara, 2020).
Bauhaus workshops, Dessau: From 1925, Bauhaus workshops brought art, craft, architecture and performance into collaborative spaces for interdisciplinary experimentation and innovation (Droste, 2006; Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 2026).
British Black Arts Movement, UK: In the 1980s, artists including Lubaina Himid, Sonia Boyce and Eddie Chambers built artist-led spaces and networks that challenged institutional exclusion and reshaped debates around race, representation and Black British cultural identity.
Whether or not you agree with the outcomes these initiatives produced and celebrated, the fundamental point still stands: when we intentionally create space for exploration, reimagination, and experimentation, things happen.
CALL TO ACTION...
What if we became fluent in practices that cannot be measured immediately?
What if we practiced slow conversation, high intellectual risk and unfinished experimentation?
I understand that lifestyle, work commitments, and social pressures don’t always leave room for this. But my challenge is: what if they did?
I'd like to Introduce, Acacia Roots! Acacia Roots is a social enterprise reshaping how our sector and its people approach rest, wellbeing, and success.
Acacia Roots is making space where unfinished thought can be shared safely, where ambiguity is not penalised and where uncertainty and questioning are welcomed.
Our mandate is to champion a new way of living! Join our launch and roundtable discussion this, Saturday 26th September 2026. A raw and honest conversation with leading industry professionals as we explore why rest, recovery, and organisational exploration, must become essential leadership priorities—not luxuries!
Join the conversation. Join the journey. Join the community.
References:
Gabora, L. (2019) Creativity. arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.00091. Available at: arXiv (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Merrotsy, P. (2013) ‘Tolerance of ambiguity: A trait of the creative personality?’, Creativity Research Journal, 25(2), pp. 232–237. Available at: Taylor & Francis Online (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Proyer, R.T. and Ruch, W. (2011) ‘The virtuousness of adult playfulness: The relation of playfulness with strengths of character’, Psychology of Well-Being, 1(4). Available at: SpringerOpen (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Tegano, D.W. (1990) ‘Relationship of tolerance of ambiguity and playfulness to creativity’, Psychological Reports, 66(3), pp. 1047–1056. Available at: SAGE Journals (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Tegano, D.W., Groves, M.M. and Catron, C.E. (1999) ‘Early childhood teachers’ playfulness and ambiguity tolerance: Essential elements of encouraging creative potential of children’, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 20(3), pp. 291–300. Available at: Taylor & Francis Online (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (2026) Curatorial Workshop. Available at: https://bauhaus-dessau.de/en/institution/curatorial-workshop/ (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (2026) Teaching. Available at: https://bauhaus-dessau.de/en/knowledge/teaching/ (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Britannica (2026) Negritude. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/Negritude (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Camara, G.D. (2020) ‘Faces of Blackness: The Creation of the New Negro and Négritude Movements in Harlem and Paris’, Journal of Black Studies, 51(8), pp. 771–791.
Droste, M. (2006) Bauhaus, 1919–1933. Cologne: Taschen.
Hutchinson, G. (1995) The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Lewis, D.L. (1994) When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin.
National Archives (n.d.) Black Arts Movement (1965–1975). Available at: https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power/arts (Accessed: 28 May 2026).
Smethurst, J. (2005) The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
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