One partner may have a hierarchical organizational structure and value accountability and predictability. Another may have experience integrating the arts into curricula and value creativity and improvisation. Such diversity can enrich the collaborative initiative. Yet differences can frustrate and fail to yield their potential benefits if they are not acknowledged and respected. Each has much to learn from the others.
Leadership is perhaps the most critical factor that sustains collaborative action.
At the start, the champion of a partnership idea may be a community arts administrator, a principal, teacher, or foundation executive. For the idea to become real, superintendents and principals must embrace the idea and exercise leadership. Good leaders are politically savvy. Within the community a nonprofit arts agency's program director must win the enthusiastic support of the chief executive, a teacher must convince the principal, etc. Over the life of a partnership the leadership baton may be passed within and between institutions.