Conversations (4): artists leadership, and academia
Another great Method Conversation, this time hosted at the Hermitage Community Moorings off Wapping High Street - as we were to hear, an artist-driven development sparked by a threat to a community of boat-based creatives further up the Thames. Our meeting space, modelled on the historical boat houses of old, cost a ballpark £1 million to construct - and intriguingly was fnanced entirely by its own community's private money. Another example of artists leading on development of platforms that indicates thinking beyond traditional forms of culture patronage.
Our session was designed in collaboration with LCACE and brought together a selection of the Method artists who have had ongoing relationships with Universities/HEIs. With scene-setting from Sally Taylor, LCACE's Director, we took in thoughts on artists and leadership from David Sims from Cass Business School and Chris Howarth from the Business School at Royal Holloway; and we broadened the scope of the discourse from there. Paul Glinkowski from the Engine Room talked on how the ways that artists are perceived by policy makers are still stuck in two historical silos: 'mad, bad and dangerous' or 'unacknowledged legislators'.
Our Method cohort pitched in for part 2 of the night to trade perspectives on the opportunities and obstacles to leadership from within academia, from the artist perspective. Participants were hungry to hear whether what happened within their 'bubble' was replicated elsewhere. Sally reminded us that ultimately all successful connections into a University are with an individual rather than an institution - a point connected both to the 'find the free-thinkers' point that arose from our previous Method Conversation - and to the importance of personal chemistry between artists and lead researchers, as highlighted by Sarah Thelwall in her recent research paper, Cultivating Research : articulating value in arts and academic collaborations - around which Solar, with Sarah and Proboscis, facilitated the Jump In roundtable back in April.
I would argue that the job of the leader is to be the poet in residence of an organisation. So what a leader does is use carefully chosen and arranged words that enable people to think in a way that they weren't thinking before. - David Sims
I wonder if in that hierarchical structure where the artist is seen by all different people in the hierarchy as outside of it - that the leadership see the artist as a conduit to accessing people lower down the rungs? Because there is this familiarity and a way that the arts are seen to be speaking to people on all different levels. So I found it really easy to get the top level on board. It was almost like they had to because I was on the ground level with everyone else. So all of a sudden I was this person who was traversing the hierarchy, and they all wanted to make sure that they were with me, in a way. - Julie Freeman
Most artists do things other than art for money. There aren't that many artists that actually make a living from their art. I think there's a sense that not only are not all artists the same, but all artists have different moments when they might put their artist hat on, or might put their administrator hat on or whatever else... The interesting thing is in what capacity might you then contribute to art policy and decision making at the higher level. Do you make it in your capacity as the arts administrator or director of your artist group, or do you make it as an artist? And if you make it as an artist, would you be making a different decision than you would with a different hat on? - Rebecca Fortnum
Post a Comment
Reader Comments