During lockdown, I went for a walk with Emily Meilleur as part of my Sgyrsiau Dyffryn Peris Conversations. She mentioned how by walking rather than driving, we have a much more detailed and responsive relationship with place. We meet people (human and more than human) along the way, have time to think, take detours, notice and experience place. It’s obvious in a way, but it really brought home to me how routinely hurrying directly to our destination contributes to our disconnect from community, place and ourselves.

And the ultimate form of this is using the sat nav: We type in our destination and then blindly follow the instructions until we arrive.

The Sat Nav in the ‘art world’

It strikes me that part of the problem with the art world, is that it has fully embraced the Sat Nav model. Commissions and funders require details of ‘outcomes’ and ‘percentages’ - even ‘milestones’ - at the beginning of the ‘project’. Everyone knows that unless you are doing something very straightforward, as a lone artist creating something very prescribed, this model requires writing works of fiction. And if you receive the funding or commission there is a huge tension between doing what you said you’d do and what evolves as you are doing the work. At worst, it might mean being unable to embrace richer, unexpected twists and companions in the journey, in a rush to meet and arrive at the pre-set destination. And it might lead to such pressure and tension that the creative person suffers mental and physical exhaustion, unable to work with the very thing, their creativity, that the ‘project’ was meant to support.

Creativity does not thrive in a Sat Nav.

challenging the neo-liberal system

I don’t think this is by accident. Our predominant extractive, profit-driven, hierarchical, command and control culture demands that their agents - from universities to art schools to government departments - work within the Sat Nav model. It is embedded in our system. Of course, creatives are a danger to that system, and must be kept in line.

(for an interesting take on why this system needs to change from systematic to systemic see my husband Ed Straw’s work with Ray Ison - The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking).

Before becoming a full-time artist, I worked for 30 years as a facilitator. I was working with the public sector to try to find ways of working in new, engaged, emergent (or whole system) ways that would be more likely to support ‘sustainable development’. Here is a diagram I made in 2008, to try to explain to UK Government why - and how - things needed to change:

One of the aspects I was particularly involved in trying to ‘disband’ was the ‘systematic’ Decide-Announce-Defend (DAD) model of decision making. This is the default mode for all public sector bodies. They find it very, very difficult to work with others to shape, make and implement decisions. Thinking they ‘know all the answers’, they reduce engagement with others to ‘formal consultation’ on a few options, usually poorly disguised as an exercise in education (get everyone to understand why this is the answer). But this approach is with significant risk, and often results in poor (or, in the face of organised opposition, abandoned) decisions and ineffective implementation.

An alternative - what I call the Engage-Deliberate-Decide (EDD) model - takes longer at the beginning. But it gains momentum and buy-in and results in decisions that are more informed, nuanced, systemic, supported, and implemented by more actors. On complex issues that are controversial, with unknowable ‘solutions’, evaluation and experience shows it quickly overtakes the DAD approach in terms of time, money and results:

so How does this apply in the art world?

Over the last few years I have been working with Ffiwsar/Dyffryn Dyfodol on trying out ‘new ways’ for creatives working with communities. Funded initially by Arts Council Wales Connect and Flourish fund, the aim was:

“…to find out about people’s experiences, thoughts and ideas and together we can explore what could be possible to change, challenge or enhance – in our lives, our environment, and our communities, for everyone’s benefit. We don’t know how, we don’t have the answers – finding out together is what the project is about.” - Ffiwsar/Dyffryn Dyfodol

In January this year, we met to review where we’d got to. As the approach we were taking was new to funders, partners (Natural Resources Wales and Cartrefi Conwy Housing Association) and creatives involved, I invited everyone to try to do two diagrams as part of the review - one of the ‘usual’ way of working as a creative on a commission, and one of the ‘new’ way that we’d taken. It is probably no surprise that my two diagrams are really a creative equivalent to DAD to EDD, with the Sat Nav model being DAD and the ‘Situationist’ (or now I might say Relational or Emergent) model being EDD.

*The Sat Nav model - the ‘usual’ way of commissioning creatives/working with communities - equivalent of DAD, with emphasis on pre-determined outputs/destination*

The Situationist/Relational/Emergent model - the ‘new’ way of commissioning creatives/working with communities - equivalent of EDD, with emphasis on the ‘starting conditions’ - the enquiry and process

The interesting thing is that others also articulated their diagrams in similar (but neater!) ways:

The approach was also insightfully turned into Field Notes for Creative Friends by Emrys Plant (free download). Even the commissioning of ‘reviewers’ was done in a similar way. And keen to share insights, Iwan Williams and Katie Trent from Ffiwsar/Dyffryn Dyfodol shared the learning from this appraoch with interested organisations and individual through a series of zoom sessions, and are using it in their new programme, Gofod Glas, in partnership with the North Wales Wildlife Trust and Natural Resources Wales, with funding from Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

At root, it is all about investing in relationships around an enquiry, trusting something will emerge (how can it not?) and seeing where this leads.

Is this the beginning of starting a shift in the creative sector??

Crone Cast/Utopias Bach Ysgol Arbrofol Dod At Ein Coed, 2023

meanwhile, my practice

Well of course, there is already much wonderful creative stuff going on across the world which fits (explicity or implicitly, or most likely ‘under the radar’, by hiding the emergent nature of the work by ticking whatever boxes are required) with this ‘Situationist/Adaptive/Emergent’ approach. I just wanted to end the blog by making the connection to the various things I’m working on at the moment, by way of illustration of how this stuff ends up ‘in practice’:

Utopias Bach - an open collective, exploring the role of engaged art in creating space for meeting, creating and being the change at small scale. How can e create an open, supportive learning community that builds capacity – skills, creativity, contacts and resources – for working with the radical imagination at grass-roots level?

Rewilding the Artist - working with Gaia Redgrave and “a curiosity of artists! We come together to deliver Rewilding the Artist events in our own unique style. We have a core group who are disabled led, but also creatives that meander in and out as necessary.” “Rewilding projects start with a question in response to a problem. We consider possibilities with openness & curiosity to create projects that are multisensory spaces for exploration.”

Crone Cast - exploring “ ageing, power, identity, eccentricity and merging with the more-than-human as a process of becoming, in symbiosis with the precariousness of our times”

Stori’r Tir Dyffryn Peris - exploring how have our relationships with land in Dyffryn Peris changed over time? what are our shared myths and collective narratives? what stories do the fields, mountains, rivers, birds, rocks, insects, animals tell? how can we imagine new stories for our shared future?

Storiel/National Contemporary Art Galley for Wales Commission - exploring [how to get] into and out of the cabinet? A ‘Curious Conversation’ on how could our engaged practice relate to the national contemporary art gallery for Wales (Celf ar y Cyd website) and Storiel’s collection? This commission is by Carreg Creative, my partnership with Lisa Hudson, established to support these adaptive/emergent ways of working.

Corlan y Coed - starting with the question “how can i work in radical alliance with trees on y Ffridd?”

Ministry Dŵr Of Water - as part of Gofod Glas, creatively exploring people’s relationship with freshwater in the Conwy Catchment area. As a development project we are seeking to discover why freshwater is important to people and work towards clean and healthy freshwaters in the Conwy river catchment into the future.

… and also I’ve just had a chapter published / and an interview which goes into all this in a bit more depth.

Free download of the book/watch the interview