CARE LAB
Care is enabling others to reach their full potential. Care is heavy. Care is maintenance work. Care is more demanding than you think at first. Care is the manifestation of your values in behaviour. Care must be people-centred. Care should be embedded throughout practice, processes and systems. Care takes time and attention. Centring care is expensive, under-appreciated and under resourced.
What is Care?
TIME TO
How do we centre care in collaborations between artists and communities?
Poem by Deanna Rodger
Time for control to go to war with uncertainty Time to exhale the brief Time to refresh, reboot to shift and switch tack Time to stick and get stuck. Time for solutions Time for honesty Time for a chat, a cup of tea and biccy Time for failure and time for encouragement Time for manners Time to say sod off to need to please and time for no thank you We have got time. We bought it Haggled it. Hassled the powers that be for it We have time to find the questions We have time to sit in them We have time to scrabble for answers There is always time Time to run out of time Time to feel pressurised Time to think over a deadline Time to send some idea
Chasing time Open-ended time Give up time Time to unlearn wrong from right Time to connect first Time to get ready to start Time to project concerns Match time My time Your time Free time Our time Funded time Paid time Time in lieu Taking time Never enough time I’m time Me I’m crammed in between a clock and a pot Revolving, gathering momentum A potent force to be spent in time Time: the essence of care Time: missing in our action Time leaving on time.
“Care is not just a feeling; it is action, process, practice, impact.” - Tian Zhang, a manifesto for radical care or how to be human in the art.
Reflections Reflections from Suzanne Alleyne, Care Lab Facilitator Who gets the care and at what cost to others? Maria reminded us that the creative process is unpredictable and is in opposition to organisational planning and procedures. There’s that tension again! Her letter gave us an intimate insight into a fundamental question - who gets cared for, who gives the caring, who doesn’t get cared for and at what cost to them? What was really interesting for me was that when Maria spoke, I realised that historically a lot of what she said would have been put down to “well that’s the creative process, like it or lump it”. I would argue that thinking “get on with it” is a significant part of why the western world is in the space its in today. Back to Maria’s provocation. Some of the questions she asked us to think about in the context of care include “what makes artists hesitate to share what they need or think” and what happens when the artist, the commissioner and the producing team focus care on the audience and or participants but do not include themselves? It made me think of two things: what is the impact of this and going a step further, what happens when the artist sits at multiple intersections of lived experiences that often mean being an excluded voice or someone who is cared for. It also reminds me of a conversation with Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett about body budgeting, or its proper name “allostasis”, which is the way in which our bodies budget. Much like our food budget, our bodies have to decide what to do at what cost with a limited resource. We don’t only affect our own bodies’ budgets with the decisions we make we affect the bodies of those around us. So without doubt there is a clinical cost around being cared for or not. How can we say ‘I don’t know’ and how might we encourage people to feel more confident in saying this? I wonder what would happen if we ask this question with the aim of co-creating a space of care for everyone in the process? And how might that way of working and living spread out to wider society?
Moving Forward By Suzanne Alleyne I was left with the overriding question from these provocations: How do we take action whilst listening to our bodies and emotions and the bodies and emotions of those around us? How do we not become rooted in the fear of failure? What is tension and what is lack of care? Where do the two meet and overlap and for whom, how and when? Why is care important between artists and organisations and beyond, funders, wider society? Three prompts to begin Sidenote: Focus on what resonates with you but if you feel a desire to run from something, in this moment, try to think about sitting with your feelings and examining them.
Care and disruption: Asking to work with embedded care is fundamentally disruptive. How can we reduce fear around this to encourage disruption? Relationship: Usually there is a transactional relationship between artist and commissioner. How might a brief centre care rather than have a separate agreement? Change: All systems need review in order to centre care. In what ways can we use what we have more usefully? How can we communicate if systems are not fit for purpose? How can we start again?