Project Management Without the Jargon

In creative and cultural organisations, ​“project management” can be one of those terms that causes a wave of resistance, bringing to mind corporate templates, unfamiliar jargon, added admin, and processes that feel at odds with how creative work actually happens. 

That reaction is understandable, as much of the project management guidance we encounter has been written with very different working environments in mind.

The problem isn’t project management itself though, rather, the version we’ve been sold. This is because at its core, project management is simply about helping people coordinate work.

Over the past few months, while developing a new project management course for Artswork Professional Development, we’ve been thinking a lot about what a more grounded, useful approach might look like: one that supports creativity rather than obstructing it.

Much of that thinking has been shaped by our Learning Development Manager, Lesley’s, work on the course itself. Here, she reflects on how project management can genuinely serve people working across an organisation, not just those with ​“project” in their job title.

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Bringing Project Management to the Whole Organisation

Over the past few months, I’ve been developing a new project management course for people working across arts, cultural, creative, and heritage organisations – not just programme or learning teams, but marketing, front of house, building maintenance, finance, and operations too.

So much of the guidance out there is written with corporate environments in mind: neat Gantt charts, standard operating procedures, and project boards that assume stable teams and predictable timelines. That’s not always how creative projects work.

In creative, cultural and heritage settings, projects often start with an idea, a conversation, a spark of ​“What if…?” They might involve freelancers, short-term funding, changing partners, and tight deadlines. The work is exciting, but it can also feel messy and overwhelming. This course grew out of a simple question:

How can we make project management feel useful, realistic, and shared across all parts of an organisation, without flattening the creativity and flexibility that makes our work special?

One of the key aims of the course is to create a common language around project management that works whether you:

• Coordinate building works or maintenance
• Plan marketing campaigns and social media
• Manage learning programmes or participation projects
• Look after visitor services, events, or front of house
• Hold responsibility for finance, governance, or operations

Instead of separate ​“worlds” with their own jargon and priorities, the course is about exploring with people how their contributions fit into the bigger picture of a project’s life cycle.

In developing the course, I’ve focused on three main strands:

Practical tools that fit how we really work
Simple, adaptable planning templates and tools that busy teams can actually use.

Relationships, communication, and handovers
Projects move between teams: from an initial idea to planning, delivery, marketing, building use, and evaluation. We look at who needs to know what, when, and how we can reduce crossed wires, last-minute panics, and assumptions.

Connecting back to purpose and impact
Whether your role is public-facing or behind the scenes, your work shapes a project’s impact. The course links project management to organisational values, inclusion, effective delivery, and the overall visitor or participant experience, while also supporting stronger evaluation, consultation, and community engagement.

My hope is that participants will leave the course feeling more confident about their role in planning and delivering projects, clearer about timelines, dependencies, and who needs to be involved when, and ultimately more joined up as a team, with a shared framework for talking about projects.

Above all, I want project management to feel like something that supports the work, rather than a box-ticking exercise or an extra burden.

At the heart of this thinking is an important shift: project management doesn’t need to be about control, compliance, or complexity.

When it’s shaped around real working practices, and shared across an organisation, it becomes a way of supporting collaboration, reducing pressure, and helping creative work land well.

If you’re interested in how a more grounded and practical approach to project management in creative and cultural settings could benefit you, you can read more about one of our upcoming live courses here, or contact us at training@​artswork.​org.​uk to explore how a customised version could be delivered for your organisation.

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About Lesley

Lesley Wood is Artswork Professional Development’s Learning Development Manager. She has over 25 years’ experience managing creative projects across arts, cultural and heritage settings, and has spent much of her career supporting organisations to plan, deliver and reflect on complex work in realistic, proportionate ways. Alongside her practice, Lesley brings this experience into her role as Learning Development Manager and Lead Trainer, helping teams develop shared, practical approaches to project management that reflect how creative organisations actually operate.

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