My Clore Fellowship 5 years on: time for rest
Admire, Aspire, Acquire (2011) drawing from a residency at Hethel Engineer Centre, Norfolk.
June 2023
Since I graduated my creative practice Masters degree nearly 20 years ago I have explored some of the many facets of work. From the seemingly ordinariness of a white shirt and what it can tell us about differing values and methods of labour, the work environments and processes of engineering and architecture and the practice of ergonomics, I have continually sought to explore ‘what does that look like’ from creative, collaborative, aesthetic, historical and sociological perspectives. As I write this it is nearly 5 years since I completed my Clore Fellowship (supported by a-n The artists information company,) so it seems a good time to take stock.
Applying to the fellowship as a freelancer and undertaking a period of intense leadership development through that lens, I found when I completed the formal programme in summer 2018 many of my contacts had moved on and projects put on the back burner had lost momentum. I had this bank of new ways of working and knowledge to apply but no organisational structure or live project within which to trial and test them. I remember clearly that for a while it was hard going both emotionally and financially. When I was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research grant through Clore, little did I know the research problem I had identified would become the vehicle through which to apply my fellowship learning, whilst also developing new research skills.
The AHRC research grant provided me with the resources (paid time and expenses) to explore a gap I noticed in the then recently-published Creative Health Report, which highlighted the evidence base for the benefits of arts to health, but paid little attention to the support of the artists who were initiating, developing and delivering this work. After a great deal of questioning, effort and angst, and supported by my supervisor Dr Chris Fremantle, the Artists Practising Well research report was published in 2019.
I was clear when writing the report - and pulling together the short summary and slide deck - that I wanted this research to be accessible to a wide readership which informed my writing style and approach. It was important that I gave presentations and answered questions about the research, inviting practice-based perspectives to encourage discussion and shape further questions for myself and the work. Collaborating with the Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance during Creativity and Wellbeing Week to launch the report and holding a workshop to discuss its findings was the start of an important and ongoing partnership. It was clear how much the report was welcomed, and how people enjoyed the accessible nature of the writing - research can be lonely process so to hear positive stories of impact was gratifying. When research meets people it’s a really interesting time as the work is stretched, picked apart, discussed and extended. Following the launch I gave talks to different groups, worked with creative practitioners, designed and delivered training focused on support, and worked with lots of different organisations, but before anyone really knew what was happening we had moved into pandemic conditions, and so many things were turned upside down. Creative freelancers were hit and hit hard, but the pandemic only exacerbated the significant and deep inequalities many had already faced for years previously.
Front covers of research reports Artists Practising Well (2019) and Practsing Well Conversations & Support Menu (2021)
In summer 2020 I was granted further AHRC funding to extend the research, again working with Chris Fremantle, bringing together an extensive literature review with focus groups and semi-structured interviews. In this research I was really focused on investigating the reflective practices of other people-orientated professions, and sought to understand what the barriers were to mainstreaming a support conversation. Practising Well: Conversations & Support Menu was launched in early 2022, with a series of in-conversation events in February and March. These conversations provided an opportunity to hear from speakers and to meet with peers to discuss how things were in practice. Invitations and talks once again followed, and this I understand is a key aspect of the work I do and something I immensely enjoy - building direct relationships with people who are connected with this work: the artists working in practice, the organisations supporting them, the practitioners providing reflective practice spaces where experiences can be processed and the funders and development agencies who are making changes to the ways in which they support this work. Connecting with this wide range of people is important to me - it does mean that at times I’m standing in the centre of a very complex network of conflicting priorities and finite resources, and seeking to see things from multiple perspectives including individual autonomy, institutional structures and bureaucratic processes; but in so doing I always seek to meet people where they are, and to do so as wholeheartedly and generously as I can.
Frustratingly, the arts and culture sector is still largely difficult to break into for wide sections of the population, as the very insightful and thoroughly-researched book Culture is bad for you attests. If you ever felt like your progress in arts and culture was slow, and you were blaming yourself for not working hard enough, this book is for you. Likewise, if you are still struggling to earn a living wage from your creative and artistic labours then Structurally F_cked offers insights into just how endemic low pay is in the visual arts sector, with an overall median hourly rate of £2.60 per hour. Earlier this month the Freelancers Make Theatre Work group published the results of their recent survey which highlights a pay-gap between men and women of 37.4%, with this gap widening to 47.7% for freelancers with 21-30 years' experience. These are shocking statistics, but are all too familiar to many people working in the sector. In short, it’s still difficult to make it into the creative and cultural sector, and once there pay is a massive problem. We need to find ways to address this as the arts workforce needs be representative of the population in all its diversities, because this is it what it means to live in an equitable society. Further, it feeds directly into creative processes and projects, helping to ensure they are relevant to individuals and communities. This is where I reflect on how my research work and its focus on instrumental and affective support can help inform and support change.
Opportunities for creative practitioners and workers to process and reflect on their work-based experiences are growing in number. These are being offered both within organisations for their own teams and by organisations who seek to support the wider workforce. The Baring Foundation is championing practitioner support - asking questions in grant application forms about how artists will be supported and paying reasonable associated costs. I’m one of a number of researchers exploring this topic - the valuable research of Eleonora Belfiore is informing the direction of this work and my own ideas of what comes next. Receiving positive feedback from the clients and partners I have worked with over the last 5 years has been validating and motivating. To see the artists support programme I led with Luminate Scotland featured in the recently published Illustrated Fair Work Guide: A Guide to Putting Fair Work into Practice for the Creative and Cultural Sectors in Scotland was heartening. This new publication is a must read for anyone interested in what fair work looks like across a range of organisational structures, geographic locations and leadership approaches.
Book covers: Work - A very short introduction by Stephen Fineman & Recovery - the lost art of convalescence by Dr Gavin Francis.
With 5 years under my belt post-Clore Fellowship, and nearly 20 years since completing my creative practice Masters, I have put out into the world what I believe to be valuable contributions around the interrogation of work, working practices and conditions, and now it is time - for a while at least - to turn towards prioritising rest. Reading Recovery by Dr Gavin Francis has helped me to think about the ways in which we don't necessarily need to be unwell in order to prioritise rest and to consider how rest can look like a lot of different things. I am also reminded of a very important albeit short conversation that I had on the first day of my Clore residential, with my peer fellow Ed Ikin: we talked about the future of a silver birch I had grown on from a sapling, which has led to me regularly lean towards the use of plant metaphors to support my understanding of complex and conflicting things, including those times of decision making. With metaphor firmly at the front of my mind, I looked at an area of my allotment which last year was dedicated to sweetcorn: the soil was left exhausted and then intentionally fallow. This use of fallow - to leave an area unsown, unseeded or uncultivated - allowed for an array of plants to self-sow and in June of this year, to flower. There was no predicting how spectacular this display of plants would be, or how useful they would be to an array of bumblebees. So I’m taking this idea of being fallow into my period of leave and for work things to be - for a while at least - unmanaged, untended and uncultivated, to see what comes to the surface without intention or strategy. There’s a trust needed for that, but as with all things experimentation is important, and who knows what will bloom.
Video description: Bees feeding on wild poppy pollen.