21Cl Publication by Battersea Arts Centre

21st Century Leadership An ALBUM of essays and ephemera from the 2012 cohort of Battersea Arts Centreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Leadership Development Programme

Bac.org.uk mailbox@bac.org.uk 020 7223 2223 November 2012

Contents Introduction /Andy Field ......................................5 The Programme /David Jubb...................................7 Man in a Room /Alyn Gwyndaf....................................8 Anya..........................................................10 Darren.........................................................11 David Sheppeard................................................12 Deirdre McLaughlin.............................................13 The Audacious Listener /Fiona Leslie...........................14 Everyone’s A Critic /Harper Ray...............................16 Hayley McPhun..................................................18 Voyages of (Digital) Discovery: Navigating the New /Heidi Hinder .........................................................19 Vocal Tai Chi /Jenni Roditi....................................22 What is 21st Century Leadership, Jo Hammett? /Jo Hammett.......24 Katherine Jewkes...............................................27 Catalysing Change: 21st Century Leadership and the idea of PLay /Li E Chen..............................................28 I Declared: I am Invisible Now /Li E Chen......................29 I am at a MarkeD plot /Luke Pell..............................32 Marie McPartlin................................................34 Change /Matt Burman............................................35 Extract from talk ‘What’sit:all about’ /Melanie Abrahams.......36 Taking a risk /Nicola Petto....................................38 An ambition to dissolve /simon startin.........................40 When all hope is gone, Cheer On /Tom Marshman..................42

Introduction A few years ago in a short piece for a book about the art of producing, Battersea Arts Centre’s artistic director David Jubb perfectly articulated the thrilling and frequently terrifying experience of being a good leader when he confessed that most of the time the best he can do is to make it up as he goes along. ‘My work is made up of a series of hunches,’ he writes ‘a strong desire to get on with people and a willingness to combine hunch and desire to make theatre.’ And that remains still about the best description I have for what it feels like to lead your own company, or indeed, perhaps to lead anything. If you’re doing it right, most of the time you’re running through the tall grass, downhill, caught between the fear that at any point you might fall and the breath-stealing exhilaration that you haven’t done so yet, that it’s all working out as you dared to imagine it might. Of course, good leadership is planning and strategy and negotiation, but really, really good leadership is also instinct, inspiration, bluff, defiant optimism and occasional wilful contrariness. If David and I are to be believed, this project must have thus began with somewhat of a paradox; how do you create a structured, well-authored leadership programme that can teach that kind of independence and improvisation? How do you hold open a space which avoids being proscriptive or pedagogical, but nonetheless allows people to learn and to grow? Perhaps the answer is to create a programme that is as fleet-footed and opportunistic as the kind of leadership that you’re trying to encourage. From the outset I was impressed by the generous and refreshing honesty with which both participants and partners organisations approached this project. In the interviews that I sat in on, David was engagingly clear about the fact that this programme existed to take advantage of a small pool of funding that would otherwise have otherwise simply been drained away to nothing. This was a programme being created on the hoof, by producers and partners that were figuring out what it was as they went along. Similarly, the most interesting applicants were those that saw this programme as a somewhat unformed opportunity to be grasped instinctively; uncertain perhaps what they anticipated the project would be but compelled by a confidence that they could transform it into what they needed, even if they themselves weren’t sure what that was yet. Almost by necessity the programme provided the space for those involved to shape it to their own purposes. Split between three different venues in three different cities, the participants themselves were the thread that held it together; they were responsible for it. And that responsibility seemed to generate a usefully self-organising environment that bled out beyond the contours of the programme; for example, a number of the London-based people involved had organised to have regular meetings after it, in which to work alongside each other and share the development of their various projects. In its openness the project anticipated and rewarded this kind of autonomy. It benefited most those that saw its various meetings and activities as a point of departure rather than an end in and of themselves. As such it could be argued that the programme invited, even encouraged, the kind of opportunistic and improvisatory approach to leadership that produces the most exciting and innovative projects. A model of leadership not described in a presentation but embodied in an opportunity. You decide what this is, what you want it be and in doing so you’ll be playing out the kind of fiercely original and self-determined strategies that might define you as a leader. For me then, the most interesting thing there was to learn on this programme was the value of making it up as you go along. And that should undoubtedly be celebrated. Andy Field

Man in a Room, 2012 “What exactly are you?” was the innocuous comment by someone I’d known a few years. Not well, not worked with, but in that loosely-connected, networky sort of way. As a freelancer, with several strands of activity, I had no simple job title response; only a flippant resort to Tammy Wynette: “I’m just a man.” Yet this highlighted a sense that in a fluid, agile ecosystem, clarity is key, and I was pretty blurry. Somehow, this led me several months later into a room in BAC, surrounded by pieces of paper, pegs and a web of washing line that festooned the room. This was research, to explore developing an all-round résumé, what mangement-speak might call a 360o CV; to show holistically what I could do, in a way that a one-dimensional employment history couldn’t. It felt like the height of self-indulgence. But I’d committed to it, and no-one seemed too bothered, so best just to forge ahead. In a couple of days, experiences from life, work or study were each dashed onto a piece of paper, then carefully placed and pegged on a net suspended in three- dimensional space. It looked odd, it felt uncomfortable, it was probably physically hazardous; but people seemed interested in what was going on. Over the following days this drew me into deeper, unexpected territory, stringing out learnings from what I’d done and hadn’t done, leading to a wall headed ‘values’ and another headed ‘needs.’ Someone commented “it’s like you’re building yourself inside out in the room” and, as the week progressed, it seemed like those needs and values were becoming more significant than skills and experience; the stuff that escapes the traditional CV somehow becoming the stuff that really matters. Alongside the paper work, I’d been interviewing people in fireside chats: how they knew me, how they’d describe me, what might most irritate them. In return, I invited them to choose one pegged-up note and told them the full story behind it. We talked freely, around and beyond these topics. Although intended to test the model, this became something more subtle, the realisation that my eclectic self might interest others: something about validity and legitimacy. Not so much of the paper representation as my intrinsic humanity. This act of sharing seemed to create a wider conversational space. Guests would reciprocate with their own stories, ask more probing questions, share their own doubts and uncertainties. It felt like putting myself out there, honestly and authentically, gave a lead that invited further sharing and openness. Some brought a professional restraint, but generally I sensed a hunger being satisfied (and not just by flapjacks) in being able to converse and connect at an honest, human level that cut through any professional front. This rarely felt like it was about

work; more like a personal conversation. I came to realise that I was indeed building and sharing my self in the room. Not a collection of skills and experience, but a body of values, beliefs and basic human needs. Just a man. In tangible terms, there is now a holistic résumé, but it came from elsewhere. An interesting project needed experience across arts, technology and management, and wanted a CV. So I created one quickly and sent it off: job done. But that seems co-incidental. The research had yielded more subtle discoveries. That the ‘packaging’ of skills and experience I’d initially sought was in fact my self; the needs and values were as important, if not more so; and I was getting comfortable with that. That is, in a busy, flexible environment, a lot is about who you are, rather than specific skills or experience. Although I knew this in principle, personally embodying that sensibility was both unexpected and challenging. Growing up with an ethos of “get a good education, work hard and do a good job,” the focus had always been on practical skills and experience. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” was an expression to deride powerful elites, rather than a maxim for living. It felt like I’d trashed a lifetime of keeping my self in the background, hiding behind my skills and putting professionalism first. An uncomfortable act of creative destruction that has given me a new perspective and confidence. This is great for me, for now. But leaves me asking what’s best for us, for the future? Sociable networks often fly in the face of diversity, outside employment equalities legislation, where ‘face fits’ connections invite homogenisation; so how can we make existing networks more welcoming to those who don’t look like us? Or is this just too informal: does valuing clubbability make us susceptible to abuses of power? Meanwhile, should we still be telling our children to gain specific, employable skills, or are they better off saving early for social capital? Is creative development inhibited by trying to fit in socially, or does this need a sense of self-belief and commitment that dares risk oddness and social exclusion? How we choose to respond to these questions will, I suspect, shape the environment for our leaders of the future.

Alyn Gwyndaf www.gwyndaf.com

Anya johnson anya.callyfestival@ gmail.com

Darren pritchard DarrenDancer@aol.com companyfierce.co.uk

David Sheppeard david@pinkfringe.org.uk

Deirdre McLaughlin mclaughlin.deirdre@ gmail.com

The Audacious Listener – Reflections

The Leadership Coat Do you want something elegant or more practical? We could take a trench coat as the basic pattern; surprisingly versatile, designed for a man of class to walk through mud and blood as if he was on his way to the opera. Oh, the war association doesn’t work for you? How about a dress coat then? Other end of the spectrum, something with a bit of skirt, moves with the hips, catches attention with the derriere page more thanFiona’s the shoulders, oh, you don’t want something feminine, you need something more neutral, eye-catching but not intrusive? Well it’s as much about fabric as cut, shall we start there? Tartan, tweed, your celtic weave - traditional materials for a coat, natural dyes intended to blend you into the countryside; mountain, moor and heath, Oh, You’re thinking more urban? Tiger economies - Rio, Shanghai, Mumbai? Well then you’re talking silk aren’t you? Plenty to go on there and the colours - delicious, imperial red, magenta and that edible citrus green, you’ll be good enough to eat. Not very practical mind, you’d need to tread delicately, what’s that? oh, you’ll also have to work up a sweat?

Fiona LeslEY fiona@mapconsortium.com

Well silk’s out of the question then isn’t it? I think we’re down to cotton, a maoist jacket could be our reference. What do you think? Gender neutral, urban yet rural, practical with a hint of status in the buttons and of course cotton takes on any colour. You want something less traditional? You were hoping for something culturally non-specific? Something that empowers the wearer but is invisible to everyone else? Something New? There is this new technologically engineered material that involves grafting the skin of chameleons onto a fibre mesh, sustainable of course. Does mean you end up looking like everyone else. That’s the idea is it? I’ll get to work right away. Where do I send the bill to? The Leadership for Change Collective you say?

I wrote this poem to document the conflict I felt around the idea of invisible leadership. It is a concept that simultaneously resonates with my practice as a collaborative leader and yet represents a conundrum in terms of changing the status quo. Some of the leaders we need to take a more centre stage position are already too invisible. I wanted to look more deeply into the journey from old-fashioned notions of hierarchy and authority to more fluid and authentic leadership.

In looking at the definitions of authority and authentic, a contradic- tion emerges around the source of respect – whether it is a thing outside of any individual, a kind of knowledge or experience that no one individual lays claim to, or whether it is determined by a source, a genuine originator. The beautiful thing is that both words involve the root of the word ‘Author’ and author is defined as; “s/he who gives rise to an action, event, circumstance, state of things”. Poets are authors of a very particular kind, and the craft of poetry dynamically embodies this notion of the action and provocation of ‘giving rise to’.

Poets construct their offer through the space between things, as much as the things themselves. Lyn Hejinian a poet and essayist has articulated this as offering up a different definition of knowledge, as she says in the introduction to her book, The Language of Inquiry,

“Poetry comes to know that things are. But this is not knowledge in the strictest sense; it is rather, acknowledgement....”1

This idea of ‘a coming to know that things are’ rather than a fixed authoritative self- expression is a journey in the development of poetry that echoes with the development of leadership theory from authoritative to authentic. It is a shift that might be described as mov- ing from clarification through self-expression, to the idea of disruption through multiple perspectives. The poetry I’m drawn to is poetry of inquiry, in dialogue with experience, aware of the shifting ground and the constructed nature of identity but not fragmented to oblivion. It is a poetry of multiple perspectives, multiple visibilities where intention and inquiry, rather than knowledge and self-expression, are the currency. In the case of these poets that intention is often towards a looking out as much as a looking in, an unpicking of the continuous construction of self and other and an ‘acknowledgement’ of their almost impossible but not redundant attempt to ‘give rise to...’ a better and a fairer world. Adrienne Rich describes this positioning beautifully in her essay “Someone is writing a poem” –

“We go to poetry because we believe it has something to do with us. We also go to poetry to experience the not me, enter a field of vision we could not otherwise apprehend.... Someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate vibrating range of difference, that an ‘I’ can become a ‘we’ without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images.” 2

How ‘we’ emerges, how we can enable our individual, audacious stance to meet others through as Adrienne Rich calls it, the ‘delicate vibrating range of difference’, is a central challenge for leadership. I am developing leadership practice that is about ‘giving rise to’ and using the principles and practice of poetry to anchor and guide me. The kinds of authority that are foundations of the poets’ craft and position are the kinds of authority I do not want to shy away from. The authority of witness, of invention, of risk and resistance, of imagery and metaphor, of conversation and intention. (This is an extract from a talk entitled The Audacious Listener, for a copy of the full text or any other query, please contact me by email. ) ©Fiona Lesley Bennett, September 2012 1 Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry, University of California Press, 2000. 2 Adrienne Rich, What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.

Harper Ray Harper.r@shakespearesglobe. com

Everyone’s A Critic For about a year I have had a project at the back of my mind. I think it’s a good project. Topical. Interesting. I would like to see artists and audiences become empowered to publicly add their voice to critical theatre debates often reserved for third-party professional critics. It’s a project that may benefit theatre makers, inform practise and develop audiences. Hell, I’m sure the little project could be great. Imagine more informed, creative and passionate voices joining and expanding the landscape and language of arts criticism. So I sit, ready to leap behind the banner of the leader who will make this project happen. Nothing. That’s odd. As everyone I speak to thinks it’s a great little project, but no one’s leading it. Very strange! Well I’m on this 21st Century Leadership programme so decide to chivvy the leaders along. Get them started as it were. As the project is about developing opportunities for theatre makers to enter a network of criticism, that’s where I start, with the theatre critics. I email a wellknown reviewer, she sounds keen. She gives me her direct line and asks me to call her about it. She’s interested. Well that’s great. I try some more… Companies, practitioners, venues, publications all loving it... all absolutely wanting to be ‘on board’... hang on... on board with what? Dam it, why aren’t they leading? Why isn’t somebody leading this lovely little project? It begins to dawn on me, someone is passionate about this little project, someone is advocating for it, rallying troops, gathering interest and momentum. Someone is creating networks, platforms, opportunities and collaborations in the name of this leaderless project. Someone is, in fact, leading. Oh, it’s me. But is this leading? It doesn’t feel like it. I want to engage artists in a dialogue, to empower them to become critical friends of the theatre landscape.

The trouble is who appointed me guardian? I am in a dilemma, wondering who made me a leader. My whole premise is that one voice is not more important than another, so why is mine worth listening too at all? I often measure my work through dialogue with my peers and take risks with my opinions based on my creative beliefs as an artist. I’m happy to disagree with others and even argue my case, based on my experiences as a theatre maker. My god! I’m not a critic; I’m a despot! I must be stopped! One minute I say I want dialogue between artists and the next I openly disagree with them. Where will it end? A footnote in a Machiavellian case study, perhaps? An epitaph that reads: ‘Harper Ray: Theatre maker and dictator. He ruled with an Iron Fist.’? However, this is part of the risk. A measured risk which the 21st Leadership programme is encouraging me to take. Theatre makers and theatre critics do not always share common language. I had started this leadership programme thinking that we should attempt to find a common language to critique work, but my thinking has changed. I realise the obvious...that artists are likely to share experiences. Therefore their language of ‘understanding’ the process helps to bridge the gap. By becoming vocal champions of art forms that engage us and by using our experiences to openly challenge the accepted models of criticism, we can inform the landscape into which our work is offered. We can help to create a networked debate that is challenging and embracing, passionate and informed. The problem with assuming leadership as I have, is that I have taken on a problem not championed a solution. I cannot see the route through to a solution, because I don’t know what the end goal is. However, I feel that the answer seems to be about ‘celebrating the process through different voices’ for the benefit audiences and art. With this in mind, and still unsure of a solution, I visit a Theatre Relationship Manager at ACE. Just the act of talking to him was helpful. I was encouraged to provide clarity in terms of outcomes, as he grappled to understand my idea. I talked about the importance of process, and of dramaturgy, and of how I want to see these processes revealed and shared with audiences. I talked of exchanges between different arts practices; with each voice feeding back to their own genre the process of another. As I finish I wonder if is the type of critic that theatre needs … a long-term critical friend. Is there a role for public dramaturgy, embracing an audience in the development process. Someone we can trust to inform, reflect and provoke throughout the creation process, rather than third party who is shut out off the studio and only ever offered a final ‘product’. If this is the case, my little project now seems like a paradigm shift in critical writing and arts practice! I figure perhaps it’s a case of taking what I know and being brave enough to make the links. So I turn my focus on to how I might encourage audiences to critically reflect on performances at my place of work: Shakespeare’s Globe. I contacted Lyn Gardener, the well known author and theatre critic. Her words of wisdom have often provoked me to think about criticism, reflection and authorship. Working with her I was able to create a new online resource for young people. We changed the existing and dogmatic guide ‘How to Review’ and replaced them with an essay on contemporary criticism and a series of tips for watching ... and enjoying...Shakespeare at the Globe. Written by Lyn and aimed specifically at young people this is a first step, but the site has already been seen by over 16,000 people. Hopefully this networking of people, places and voices is my leadership contribution to the topic which has held my attention for so long. In fact, perhaps the creation, supporting and guiding of invisible networks is my preferred way of leading. As I write this unfinished story I reflect that I am on a journey to explore a developing model of theatre criticism. I am also exploring the role of leadership within the Creative Industries. I know great work is already being done by organisations, like BAC, who regularly explode open the art process for debate and feedback, but perhaps new work projects in critical writing can help others form meaningful relationships between artists and audiences. Maybe, by further encouraging critical friends in to our development process and sharing the results publicly, artists can take ownership of the landscape into which we offer our work. On this journey I have questioned my title of ‘leader’ as I have struggled to define the project and provide a definitive solution. I have relied instead on collaboration, facilitation, mentoring and advocacy. But perhaps, now I think about it, that’s what 21st Century Leadership means to me after all.

Hayley McPhun hayley@foldcollective.com www.foldcollective.com Polaroids Credited to Hayley McPhun and Katherine Jewkes

Heidi Hinder

Voyages of [Digital] Discovery: Navigating the New It’s an old employability joke but for the three aspiring years of my first degree, I was at the raw end of it: Q: What do you ask the English Literature graduate? A: Can I have a Big Mac and fries please? During university, I became part of a diverse group of friends, the majority of whom happened to be studying vocational subjects; town-planning, engineering, optometry, medicine, law. This was the mid1990s and higher education was entirely free, with maintenance grants available for additional support. So in the midst of this equality of opportunity, perhaps it was the issue of state subsidy, or maybe it was the vocational friends’ assurance of salaried employment after graduation, which gave them the confidence to openly challenge - and inherently to undermine - the validity of my degree choice in English Literature. At any rate, as a self-condemned people-pleaser, I keenly felt their demand for justification. Naturally I wanted to be useful, to contribute, to have a sense of value and purpose. Consequently, I took great solace in a Waterstone’s advert of the time, which I had torn out of the newspaper and tacked to my student bedroom wall for reassurance. The advert showed a charred and blackened book, its pages burnt and thick spine smeared with soot. This tome had barely survived a fire. On the front cover of the book, a simple observation was printed: ‘Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot & Mao Tse-Tung were right about one thing. The Power of Books.’ The stark reality of this truth, that the radical power of books, and of course plays, theatre, music, dance, film and visual arts, can impassion, envision and give voice to the individual, echoes profoundly here and now. While the recession reduces everything to a scrutiny of its financial contribution, we find ourselves subjected to an increasingly utilitarian environment; dangerously so, and humanity is lost. This could be a dictatorship of a different kind, but similarly bleak and dehumanising; like some Money Megalomaniac who instigates a programme of fiscal eugenics, artists first.

So in this context, the 21st century leadership scheme is bravely revolutionary. As an artist or creative practitioner, to be acknowledged, and more crucially valued, as a potential leader has been transformative, without as it were, having one’s metaphorical book thrown on the fire. To be granted the freedom to play and experiment, not only to be allowed, but actively encouraged to create, collaborate and cross thresholds is liberating, invigorating and empowering. Artists are visionaries and great art is historically produced in times of great change. Here we have a rare opportunity then, now we have a unique chance, as we begin to witness a seismic shift in the culture of the British workplace, in the emergent dawn of the digital era. Let the visions be realized, let the sails of the artistic future unfurl. Now, in this period of exceptional rates of change, who can we rely on to help us realize these new visions, to take the helm in navigating the new territory, as it is already erupting, and forge a path ahead through the inevitable risks? As individual artists, I do not believe it is possible to travel this singular journey alone. And in seeking the necessary support, surely it is those with the greatest energy and agility, courage and resilience, the most imaginative and inventive of leaders, in whom we would wish to find direction during these dynamic times. So for me personally, to encounter the Battersea Arts Centre in London, the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol and the Sage Gateshead through the opportunity of the 21st Century Leadership scheme, has proved particularly significant at this point in my artistic practice, where these pioneering organizations and individuals have provided both a kind of creative sanctuary, and acted as a refining furnace for my ideas, at the same time. Of course, working as a self-employed artist is constantly challenging, intensely demanding and occasionally perilous. Considering those dominant attitudes cited earlier, towards the true value of art, now more than ever, the experience of receiving investment and support through time, money, facilities, or professional development, in order to grow any creative practice, is not only vital and invaluable, but increasingly elusive and it seems, rapidly evaporating. The 21st Century Leadership scheme has provided the space in which to develop, test and evolve ideas and projects, however experimental, and to explore a new approach alongside informed and inspiring peers and mentors; and critically, all of this without the need for immediate economic return or a pre-determined set of results. Freedom, for three months then, from the fiscal eugenics. Liberation, briefly, from the financial Darwinism. My own experience of the scheme began earlier in 2012, after I had just returned to live in Bristol, my home city, following several years of working and studying in Birmingham. As an artist-inresidence at the School of Jewellery, part of Birmingham City University, I acted as a teaching assistant to the final year undergraduates for one day per week, in exchange for free use of the luxuriously equipped workshops and studio space. Alongside this arrangement, I taught part-time on another BA course at the University, in order to earn a regular income, while primarily working self-employed as an artist. Departing from this supportive and extensive community therefore, both on a practical level and a professional one, was always going to be an unknown entity and an uncertain transition. I recognised the 21st Century Leadership programme, partly as an important opportunity to begin establishing a new wider network of artistic support, something not easily or quickly acquired, particularly while I am currently unable to afford the rental of studio space on top of current living costs. Working alone and at home is, quite obviously, a solitary experience and compromises ambition with the inevitable ‘make-do-and-mend’ methods, undermining professionalism by the indistinct boundaries between business and the domestic. (I remember one particular episode of ‘Have I Got News For You’ resonating on this point. In the competition where the two teams have to guess the end of the sentence from some obscure publication, the text read: ‘[Blank] leaves you bizarrely dressed, feeling isolated and a little bit crazy?’ The answer completing the blank space was of course, ‘Working from home’).

So I am always seeking chances to meet people, to talk, listen, exchange ideas and suggestions, to engage in the sustaining force of introductions and the kinetic energy of communication, which fundamentally lies behind all human creativity and progress. The symbolic part of the word ‘network’ for me is ‘net’, which, for the independent artist walking the tightrope, functions literally as a catch-all support system, sometimes lying dormant, but always critical. From ‘feeling isolated and a little bit crazy’ in my relocated temporary set-up then, imagine my palpable relief in gaining a place on the 21st Century Leadership scheme and meeting 18 other participants, and a host of leaders from the partnership organizations (including a mentor), with whom I could ‘talk shop’ once more; discuss ideas and projects, receive direct feedback, and incorporate suggestions. This process has accelerated and intensified my creative output, already engendering new work, a new direction and an entirely new approach, with which I am now endeavoring to continue. Ultimately, the backing provided by the partner organizations through the Arts Council, has signified a rubberstamping of acceptance, demanding a confidence to close my people-pleasing ears to those voices which question artistic value, and to operate more fully as a 21st Century Leader, exploring everything that title may imply, with a relevant, valid and valuable contribution to offer.

heidi.hinder@gmail.com www.behance.net/heidihinder

A memento mori for artists? Seize the day! ‘Fractured Values’ sculpture by Heidi Hinder, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Jenni Roditi jenni@vocaltaichi.com

Vocal Tai Chi Creator: Jenni Roditi GGSM, MMus, VMTR Composer, performer, voice movement therapist

Vocal Tai Chi is a new approach to vocal improvisation-performance and workshops grounded in a Tai Chi approach to singing, breathing and voice-body coordination. Improvisations are also supported by especially composed backing tracks. This new work is part of my evolving music practice and points to a further integration of my compositionimprovisation dialogue as a primary artistic pathway. I am also offering workshops, one-toone sessions and friends-and-family concerts that welcome all singers, non-singers and those with physical damage affecting the voice, for example long-term smokers. Public concerts may also be possible in the future. I’ve also attended several conferences in the last few months and presented Vocal Tai Chi in the contexts of: • • • •

The Global Summit on Collaboration European Association of Transformational Leadership International Association of Voice Movement Therapy National Health Service Mentoring for Diversity Programme

All of these contacts are embedding themselves for the future. My Tai Chi approach emerged from observation of a subliminal movement flow that was congruent with my vocal improvising and clearly evident in my body. I am familiar with Tai Chi from practice over a number of years. My partner named it Vocal Tai Chi after he noticed this correlation. Musically VTC takes an elemental approach to solo, duo, trio and group voice and emphasizes nongenre specific material. In workshops I invite people to explore openly, using a voice placement technique to help develop range, colour, articulation, control, stability, fluidity, confidence and depth of feeling. I also see the work as a metaphor for exploring the nature of 21st Century Leadership, authority and collaborative models – through asking (myself and others) of the improvising: What did it say to you? Did it work? Why did it work? These questions are often most easily answered through audience response, though analysis can also be used. The questions provide a felt-sense thinking space for reflection and learning.

Vocal Tai Chi embraces influences from many indigenous vocal cultures as well as the classical and modern Western art and popular traditions (demonstrated in my own singing) and looks to find new aural-visual images of voice. The vocal elements in my own Vocal Tai Chi encourage the workshop vocalist to find a way towards their own authentic vocal expression, alongside my voice coaching, based on twenty-five years experience. Vocal Tai Chi relates musical (inner) intention to musical (outer) invention. The core, body-mind stability of Tai Chi settles into a relationship with this individual intention and invention so that the voice can liberate itself. This poses another question: from where are we vocalising? Many other inquiries come out of the core questions cited here all of which can provide insights not only into the discipline of vocal improvisation, but also into the many layers of informative psycho-physical process. The work seems to consistently deliver a transformational experience, both in a listening and participatory context that many have found valuable. In its ten months of public life I have placed Vocal Tai Chi in various professional contexts - a full list of archived activities since January 2012 can be found at VTC Archive. Here is one example of a potential application for Vocal Tai Chi, as endorsed by Vick Bain, Chief Operating Officer of BASCA who approached me in August 2012: •

Vick Bain of the British Academy of Composers Songwriters and Authors requested a VTC proposal for submission to the government body Creative and Cultural Skills as part of their bid to UK Commission of Employment and Skills for funding. This was to “roll out Vocal Tai Chi throughout the creative industries”.

Stop Press: Jenni has been nominated for an Independent Music Award in the Song/Instrumental category! Winner to be announced in July. http://www.independentmusicawards. com/imanominee/12th/Song/Instru mental

www.vocaltaichi.com www.jenni-roditi.com

What is 21st Century Leadership, Jo Hammett? I think 21st century leadership is about being vulnerable. It’s bravely exposing vulnerabilities and using them as a point for collaboration to find out. I’m exploring ways to develop contemporary performance for audiences with a range of needs including an autism spectrum disorder. One of the challenges I am facing is how to bring two very different sectors together to create new performance works, who use different languages and may not hold the same priorities. This meeting of difference is provoking a whole sense of vulnerabilities. It’s a new departure for myself as a producer and it’s also new territory for my stakeholders. The sense of being vulnerable is quite daunting. I’m hoping that by discussing and exchanging the silent things that make us feel exposed will make us feel less vulnerable and bring us together. For I think vulnerability is a spectrum condition that we are all on, and could be used as an invaluable catalyst for 21st century leaders to take risks. I also think that risk is intrinsic to 21st century leadership. Everyone’s notion of risk is different. And I guess I’m talking about the feeling or emotion of what it’s like to take a chance, as well as the artistic. I think both are really important.

For me, commissioning innovative performance feels emotionally perilous as well as creatively. After all when we take an artistic risk we share an emotional risk, not only with the artists and stakeholders, but also with our audience. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re asking them to take a risk with us, and they might choose to say no. I think 21st century leadership is about taking care of that moment when we ask our audience or organisation to take a risk with us; making sure that we value the emotional feeling of risk as well as the artistic; that our audience or organisation feels safe in their vulnerabilities and not vulnerable in the risk that they have chosen to take with us, and authenticity - making sure we are all here for the right reasons.

Jo Hammett JOJOHAMMETT@gmail.com

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Looking forward to seeing you!

Katherine Jewkes Katherine@ artscollective. org.uk

Polaroids credited to Katherine Jewkes and Hayley McPhun

Li E Chen info@liechen.com

Catalysing Change: 21st Century Leadership and the idea of Play Over the course of my leadership development I came to realize that there are no absolutely right or wrong approaches to leadership. The flexibility in being able to change from one to another leadership style is what is important and challenging, and I wish to explore it here. In this short essay, I will begin with a reference to Muhammad Ali, who was a master of changing his styles to suit his fights, and will follow this with a conceptual exploration of ways to understand change and movement through the concept of invisible leadership, which I have approached through photography. Muhammad Ali and Play Muhammad Ali began his career as a young dancer who could fight with his hands down because he was too fast to be hit. He was then stripped of his title for three and a half years and unable to box because he refused to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Ali became known as a civil rights and anti-war leader because of his stance, but he was also a leader in the way he boxed. When he was given back his license he was not the same fighter, and had to adapt his style to fit his skills. He won through endurance and also the mind games he would play on opponents. Even in his most difficult fights there was always an element of play, as well as adaptability, in the way he fought. Ali once said, “If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.” But Ali proves that you can make something out of you too. It is from Muhammad Ali that I have come to say: “Your mind can change a situation, how? You change your mind.” To change from one leadership style to another, you need to change your mind, your way of thinking. You may even need to invent new ways of leading to suit the new situation.

I Declared: I am Invisible Now

(on following pages)

I Declared: I am Invisible Now is a series of photographs taken outside the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre in London. The project involved photographing people before and after they declared themselves invisible. My participation in the 21st Century Leadership programme led me to explore what could happen when people made this declaration. I wanted to use photography to capture the moment of change and to experience what takes place in the participants who make the declaration. It is not an easy task to be invisible, as most of us would rather voice our own desires and have them determine the way things are organised. I was inspired by artist Phelim McDermott's talk at BAC and I asked him how to lead when others want to take control. He said it was a matter of supporting others and becoming 'invisible' yourself, not trying to take control of the open space. After six months of exploration, I came to understand that an invisible leader need not be at the centre of the group, but to be aware of what else is happening. As an invisible leader, when I notice if someone else wants to take the lead, I should support that person even if I do not necessarily agree with everything he or she wants to do. By doing this, leadership can happen and be given shape.

Breakfast Chat: A platform developed by Li E Chen See page 26

I am at a marked plot an intersection, attempting to shift Imagining a transformation A/void, a leap, an unknown visibility, a quiet dirtied disturbance I am mapping the peculiarities of this body in this place and then in that and then and then those in theirs Short of breath I am unearthing a re-knowing, some recognition, reconciliation I am a muddied mess what choices might come without killing this first Without privileging just this one way of being making in these worlds and in and in and in my mess it darkly, brightly seems these terms may no longer be sufficient for our purposes

I have come to understand I work between and on the edges of disciplines, always collaboratively in response to environment. Fascinated by detail, nuances of time and texture, memory and landscape, I function as caretaker, host and facilitator. I attempt to listen closely, touch and move gently. I hold spaces and create structures for others to inhabit and pass through. Noticing threads that weave between people and place, a genuine curiosity in the individual and community are at the heart of everything I do.

How then as a maker, curator, facilitator – an advocate for alterity – in performance do I locate myself within leadership trends. I am interested in permeating structure and hierarchy, dissolving boundaries between institution, artist, audience and performer. I wondered if leadership could be permitted as quiet, dirty, informal, doing. Space making, getting lost, asking questions that should not be answerable. Attempting to describe the indescribable, emerging, staggering squinting. I am unnerved about pyramid scaling. I admire strategy and vision. Sometimes, to fully absorb the horizon I need to be hidden. Can I lead beneath the surface, from the shore, within the intermittent dark of forest. In disappearing, beginning again. During 21CL Luke Pell considered how to clarify his identity as an independent artist working across landscapes, having worked with organisations with distinct profiles and mainstream structural models for a number of years. Developing a new phase in his practice, he spoke particularly about the want to work without needing to be seen, towards greater fluidity and a need to nurture his capacity for transformation. To develop a leadership practice that engages with spectrums of experience and layers of expertise rather than traditional vertical hierarchical models. Pursuing the premise that his sensibilities as an artist are applied and manifest in all of his outputs – regardless of role or descriptor - he used the 21CL period to develop his thinking around a curatorial frame for a multifaceted project – Anchors for An Other Place - as a model for making work in and with community.

The project would see Luke and collaborators working in residence with a community over a period of moths to create performance, installation and discourse locally, opening to the wider public as a performance, archive and social space, installed within an existing community space such as a library, community centre, church, empty shop unit.

Luke Pell luke.pell.performance@ gmail.com

Marie McPartlin mcpartlinmarie@ googlemail.com

Change

Matt Burman m.burman@warwick.ac.uk

Change. A movement from one position, one condition to another. A state not at rest. I think I’ve been here, in this state, for most of my life. I think we all have been, are, will be. Societal change is accelerating towards a epochal, paradigm shift, a technological, informational singularity. There is talk of the New Aesthetic; life, art, culture, viewed through a computer’s lens. We as societies are running to keep up. There is fear, inequality and unrest and it is nowhere near as bad as it may get. Stasis is a death of sorts. Like sharks we have to move to be alive, to be vital. It is only when we stop looking to an horizon that we forget who we can be. That’s not to say that we have to quest beyond that vanishing point to have that energy, we can hold that vision in us, by knowing that there are those places, beyond what is possible, beyond what is knowable. “The airplane flies across the sky where it goes is in your mind...” We change in looking at mountains, at stars, and feeling infinitesimally small, and wanting to understand their massiveness, imagining journeys, devising ways to reach those distant places. We can’t all be mountaineers or spacemen and perhaps just understanding the possibility of it all is enough to carry with us - valley dwellers, earthbound, flightless - in our humanity and humility, with humour at our ridiculous insignificance in the face of sheer rock, lack of oxygen, millennia-deep star clusters, dark matter, quark complexity, subatomic string networks, always expanding never ending headfuckery. What does this mean to those of us making, producing, programming, watching and engaging in theatre? To me it means that we have the responsibility: · To make and present the best work we can, to the right people at the right times in the right plac es. · To imagine, realise and communicate dramatic and post-dramatic horizons to each other. · To express the messages, ideas, concerns, wants, needs, hopes and fears of our times. · To explore, discover and test new forms of expression, that interrogate and challenge the status quo. · To locate, to talk with and support young artists and established makers in step-changes in scale and ambition. · To commit to starting, nurturing and expanding new conversations about what we want to achieve and express together through theatre (and the arts in the broadest sense). · To find languages and means of communication that remove barriers · To take risks · To sustain our passion · To challenge ourselves, makers, programmers, funders, audiences, all of us, all of the time It is never enough for someone to come away from a show unmoved, even if that emotion is anger, frustration, hatred. We should be changed in someway. Its never enough that it is just a job of work we “would be doing it even if no-one was watching”. The worst theatre is like slitting your wrists in a warm bath. The Painless. Forgettable. Death. Of the well-made play. To paraphrase Naomi Klein, we only become powerless when we forget we have power. As artists and audiences we have the power to effect change in our cultural institutions. We must tell each other what we think, what we know, we must listen, even when there are difficult truths. We must commit and take action. Away from our myriad screens demanding our glitched and shifting attention, across megachannels with their pop up windowed diffraction, there is a focused solace in community, in ephemeral, human, live, shared experiences. Change in theatre is about a hopeful journey together, artists and audiences, beyond the event horizon, into a future of unknowable complexity and potential beauty. Risk, passion, commitment. These are all.

Extract from talk ‘what’sit:all about’ Melanie Abrahams melabrahams@gmail.com

This is a short extract of a one-hour talk on leadership for which I wanted to posit a range of ideas but in mostly improvised rather than scripted fashion. The group invited to the talk included peers (The Independents) who as practitioners and artists wanting to explore leadership in different ways, were already fellow travelers… plus friends and colleagues many of whom have really supported me over the years and been part of a way in which my thinking and my frustrations of leadership have been developed and nurtured as well, which is a really important facet of leadership…

‘What I want to do is tell you two things about me or two stories about me The first thing is that I work in what’s called spoken word and literature, and have done this for well over ten years so I’ve a sense of what those sectors allow and explore. What I feel is that spoken word has become a term and a definition for very performative poetry, largely poetry; it’s often not linked to prose, and it has become a sub-genre in its own way, and slightly removed from what I see as a wider definition of spoken word which is about being able to give some well-presented speech, whether that’s done at a slower pace or whether it’s not particularly performative. I still value that as spoken word…. And I suppose that one of the reasons I keep going, and keep doing what I do, and want to explore it so much, is because I want to get that out. I want to get out the fact that spoken word is very multifaceted and in some ways it can be for everybody. It’s not just for those that are very performativey. I just made a new word.. It is for me about people that want to express something well, well being the key word here as I think there is an aesthetic and an artform, and a way of exploring it as fastidiously as you want, rather than doing a streams of consciousness thing. Obviously, if you’re brilliant at streams of consciousness then I’m sure you do brilliant spoken word. To me, it’s more about practice. It’s more about giving it time, and the journey.

Another thing (I’ve noted) is this Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers photograph (dancing together to the music ‘Let’s Face The Music and Dance’). I really like their films but the reason I chose this photograph is we’re told, and there is this language, of austerity and recession. It’s obvious that this is happening but there is the language around what is happening, which I think is important - particularly how that language then infuses leadership - and what leaders say to us. So, language of austerity and keeping on, keeping calm and carrying on, this nostalgic language seems to be seeping through these days…I find that really interesting. There’s also a sense of resilience coming through; we’re being told to ‘let’s face the music and dance’.. and there’s the sense of the Olympics coming….you probably have to dance like automatons coming up to July as there’s the sense of roadworks, of renovation, of everything being restored and all the kinds of chaos that surrounds that….So there’s a sense of us needing to dance but, more importantly, being told that we should dance and we should face the music….and I find that interesting because there’s a sense I suppose in which it can be both inspiring and it can be motivating, but it can also be quite draining and enervating in terms of the responsibility around that… particularly if there aren’t the processes and he resources, and the ‘core’ to support that.

Photo on ‘curiosity’ in the Sunday Times Magazine. What I wanted to say about this is that curiosity is becoming a term very much to the fore, particularly in the arts sector. There’s a sense that curiosity is ‘the way to go’, the way to be. I mean, I particularly espouse that… I love being curious and I enjoy being curious, But there’s this sense as well of the appropriation of language, and how in a way, certain languages and certain terms, if they are used or perhaps overused, can almost be wrested from you and lose their meaning. And the reason I say that is that (the photo) it was an Emirates advert. It’s then interesting (in) the use of exploration and curiosity….

fold ﬂaps inside

www.storycubes.net

Taking A Risk: Storytelling Exercise Nicky Petto 2012-05-13

21st Century Leadership Programme Sharing Event, Battersea Arts Centre 18 May 2012

made with www.bookleteer.com from

OUTER TOP

Taking a Risk The ideas of vision and risk arose early on in the 21st Century Leadership Programme. As a producer working within a larger organisation I found it difficult to locate my own vision or to recall the last time I had taken a creative risk of my own. I decided to ask friends, artists and others to describe a risk they had taken, using metaphor and symbols to transform their specific experience into something universal. I took up a writing class to explore my own feelings and find confidence in my own voice. The storycube was my way of sharing this process with the other members of the group and inviting them to locate their experience of risk in the realm of the imagination.

Nicola Petto nicola.petto@googlemail. com

An ambition to dissolve... Imagine a utopian world without leaders. Just a harmonious multitude, ebbing and flowing, allowing what is meant to happen to happen. Afterall, it was going to happen anyway. No power struggles. No ego. Just a collective sea of voices singing along Time’s arrow. I came to the 21st Century programme as a core member of the Big Lounge Collective, formed in 2011 by a group of disabled theatre makers. The BLC was born first and foremost as a response to the current eco system of British Theatre. It was fuelled by a sense of injustice in that the hegemonic beliefs and aesthetics of the theatre scene were institutionally prejudiced to disabled people gaining any significant impact within the mainstream, and whilst some schemes had allowed disabled artists a modicum of acknowledgement by the institutions, there was a real sense that we were being taken to water, but not allowed to drink. Phrases like “smash the glass ceiling” and “we

Simon Startin sistartin@ googlemail. com

are no longer emerging artists, we have emerged” were bandied about. Furthermore, each of us had our own individual motivations, grown from the expediences and ambitions of our own lives. I can only speak for my motivations. I was a disabled single parent, who had lost my acting career by taking custody of my children and had moved into writing with some degree of success, and developed a few projects of my own through Arts Council funding. However, the need to earn a living and raise children left the idea of forming a company on my own rather daunting, seeming to require alot of personal infrastructure and money to achieve. So, the BLC came into being, basically by me phoning up fellow theatre makers who I had worked with in the past; qualified by their talent, experience and disability.

A collective seemed the ideal choice for disabled artists. It offered the nuture of mutual support, the strength of combined networks, and the flexibility to cope with fluctuations in our inidividual careers and health status. Everything was to nicely ebb and flow in the waters of creative collectivity, away from the rampant egos and oppressive power structures of the mainstream. In a way I came to the 21st century leader program as a sort of pale, reluctant leader. A collective cannot have leaders, can it? I’d certainly run a few projects, but not enough to stick my head above the parapet and call myself a ‘arts leader’. I came onto the programme more in the spirit of a thief carrying booty back to the cave for the rest of the gang to despoil. However, a funny thing happened... The scheme catalysed something submerged within me. Maybe by virtue of the schemes openendedness, combined with providing a space that was, let’s face it, all about me, I started to dip my toes in the waters. The principal revelation was that my resilience came not from the impenetrable crocadile skin I told myself I had wrapped myself in; thinking myself as some kind of crip Clint Eastwood rolling into the corrupt citadel to paint the town red, but from my beliefs and my deep desire to influence others with those beliefs. And I’d be engaged in that mad crusade for years. Secondly, that people were already calling me a leader, I had several fully funded self propelled projects under my belt. I was independent, so why hadn’t I been acting as such. In fact, I had been, but the articulation of the label ‘leader’ out loud and being surrounded by like minded individuals created a shift in conciousness. If I was a leader, then maybe I should behave like one. So I returned to the cave as a rather incongruous being; a leader in a collective. To be honest, it has warped proceedings. I found myself with a new confidence and desire to influence events. Furthermore, many of the other members, who were not identifying as leaders, and lacked the confidence to do this, fell into follower roles, and indeed drifted off from the project, infering their own redundancy in relation to my new energy. Now there were further problems as, in the absence of collective involvement I had in effect become the project leader but without any mandate to make decisions. An ideal collective would operate in a naturally dynamic oscillation of vertical and horizontal leadership across all of its membership. However, my vertical energy ended up sapping this collectivity in both dimensions. Given my initial motivation for forming the collective, I found this a deeply uncomfortable and unfeasible place to be. This leads me to ask what would motivate a disparate collective to stay with a project? The BLC will be examining this over the coming months through a series of facilitated meetings, to really pick apart our individual motivations and trying to find come collective synergy within them, though at the moment the principal obstacle to this seems to be our own diaries, which in and of itself seems to indicate some radical restructuring is required. I feel strongly that the rest of the collective should make the same switch I have. There needs to be a 21st century leadership scheme for independent artists with disabilties, to collectively recognise their own potential and the skills they need to acquire. As this flows from my beliefs, my desire to influence and all the paradoxes of this experience then perhaps I will lead this too, before dissolving into a sea of collective perfection. Maybe...

When all hope is gone, cheer on Not that long ago, I was the artist in residence at the Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Art. My role was to try to integrate myself with the various societies at the university that the arts centre was affiliated with, I lost count with the amount of emails I sent to the cheerleading societies, requesting to be one of the pack. I guess I never really got the message. I never got the hint that I could never be a cheerleader or at least one that they would want in their gang. I am always trying to get people involved. When developing work with artists, organisations and communities I try to meet them, share thoughts and respond to concerns from a diverse group of people. Recently I created an online â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;doodleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a time management system for busy people to let me know when they could turn up to a meeting that I had created, people filled out the dates and the date was set. But no one turned up, in dribs and drabs apologies arrived but my heart still sinks. I took it personally.

Tom Marshman tom@tommarshman. com

Ever since I can remember. I have wanted to be a cheerleader. The fact that I am nearly 40 and a boy isn’t going to stop me! I’m enthusiastic and I like wearing tight fitting costumes that must make me in some way suited. Cheer leading is an effective way to communicate a message. Especially when sometimes I feel my emails go unread, if I could cheer lead them it might make people listen!

If I could lead the ultimate cheer it would say a line in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall: “Life is ugly, miserable, depressing, and all too short.” That would make me feel a hell of a lot better about everything.

I have been thinking about my role as a metaphorical cheerleader in terms of my art practice and in terms of leadership. I have been thinking about encouraging people to get involved, be an audience or collaborator or to pull in favours and I wonder if it would be a whole lot more successful with poms poms.

It’s hard to remain positive when your ideas have been met with less enthusiasm than what you would have hoped for. Through the leadership programme, sharing experiences with my peers and speaking to my mentors I realise that this is not just my problem (The problem of getting people enthused). In order to get things done, we must cheer on. 2,4, 6,8……