Tactics for the Tightrope is published by Future Arts Centres, a network of over 100 UK based arts centres. Over the past few years, Future Arts Centres has brought together more than 100 arts centres from across the UK, to talk, think and work together in many different ways. We hope Tactics for the Tightrope will inspire people to work together creatively, as well as interrogate their own practice. We want to encourage everyone to consider what leadership in the 21^st century could and should look like and provide some practical tools to help in those moments when you feel yourself teetering on your own tightrope. 

It was written by Mark Robinson, founder of Thinking Practice, through which he writes, facilitates, coaches and advises across the cultural sector. Mark was previously Executive Director of Arts Council England, North East, having joined Northern Arts as Head of Film, Media and Literature. He was founder and editor of Scratch poetry magazine and press, and has also run festivals, poetry publishers, community arts programmes, taught in adult education and been a writer in residence in schools, prisons and forests. Before all that, he had a successful career as a vegetarian Head Chef. 

Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a widely anthologised, translated and award-winning poet and editor whose New and Selected Poems, How I Learned to Sing was published by Smokestack in 2013, and a Read Regional Choice in 2014. His previous books include Half A Mind, The Horse Burning Park, Gaps Between Hills (with Andy Croft and Dermot Blackburn), The Domesticity Remix, and Words Out Loud: 10 Essays about Poetry Readings (editor).