Image description/credit: an autumnal looking ceramic pumpkin on a small brick wall with a background of ivy. Greens and orange tones. It’s from the Thinking Practice garden. My wife made the pumpkin a long time ago. (You can’t tell that from the photo.)
Welcome
Well, the early dark is upon us here in England and mellow fruitfulness a memory. (In more ways than one, yes.) Whether you find yourself staying in or getting out, hunkering down or starting fires, welcome. This month’s newsletter has an extract and tools to do with assets and evaluation, and flags up some recently published writing.
You can listen to the audio version if you prefer or need that.
Tactics for the Tightrope
People actually reading my book shocker
I thought I’d open with some of the feedback that has started to come through about Tactics for the Tightrope, just in case anyone reading this hasn’t already got a copy. (If Twitter-harvesting is good enough for the mainstream media, it’s good enough for my fragile ego.) I’m especially glad when the book proves useful, and when the hybrid nature of what I was trying to do works for people. Books (my books, anyway) are messages in bottles, so it’s always good to feel that sense no one is reading them, or ‘getting’ them, is mistaken. (That might sound feeble to you if you’ve never published a book, I know, but there you go.) Thanks to these people:
‘Brilliant book, speaks to long held beliefs, should be read by every arts worker, arts/cultural org.’ Mark O’Brien, Executive Director, Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland
Francois Mattarasso included Tactics in a blog rounding up recent books, and concluded it was ‘an important read… invaluable guidance for anyone trying to meet the complicated, sometimes contradictory expectations of stakeholders while keeping faith with their own core purpose.’
‘Inspiring as always, thank you! Definitely recommend the book to anyone who hasn’t read it yet.’ Mary Nagele, CEO Arts & Business Northern Ireland (after last month’s online event to discuss the book)
‘A great read filled with practical ideas to help cultural leaders and organisations adapt and build resilience’ Failspace project
‘An unusual combination of practical tools and views and suggestions about the sector and what we need to put straight (all of which I strongly endorse)’ Clare Antrobus, coach and consultant
‘I’ve been lucky enough to read this already and can highly recommend it – it’s full of ideas and practical exercises that will make you think about leadership, the arts, audiences, accessibility, democracy and all sorts. Mark’s written a brilliant thing. Go, read it!’ Eleanor Turney, editor and writer.
Extract from Chapter Four: Living inside, outside, beyond
This extract is the introduction to Chapter Four, which brings together a new take on ‘livelihood assets’ and the frame ‘inside outside beyond’ I first drew for The Bluecoat in Liverpool. Putting them together helped me clarify that the frame needed to expand to include ‘self’, to be more comprehensive, and to reflect that it is people who make those connections and journeys outside and beyond. The inequalities in who gets to work in culture can often be traced back to how those ‘livelihood assets’ are distributed in the unequal society that currently persists. It starts with a quote from one of the writers who has most influenced me, Peter Block.
“I’ve lost faith in reforming anything that calls itself an organisation. They inevitably dehumanise us... organisations value people less and less and yet... there’s enormous hope in humanising spaces in organisations.…What dehumanises organisations is the system’s design based on predictability, consistency and control. There can be experiments and exceptions locally for a while, but most often they are killed off by the system’s requirement for consistency and predictability. My aim is to carve out spaces for human possibilities. I cannot change organisations – they have this inbuilt context, and the patriarchy is so deeply embedded in us – but I can decide every time how to occupy the room.”
Peter Block, in interview.
I open this chapter with this quotation to suggest a need to work beyond restrictive structures and boundaries. As is implicit elsewhere, I acknowledge that although many things will continue to take organisational shape, they do not need to take traditional shape. They need to take any shape necessary to support and reflect the needs of individuals within them more, to see the people within an organisation, or even within a network, as integral not interchangeable. They are, though, connected to each other, and to others outside and beyond their immediate settings, in the broader system. This makes creative resilience possible across the ecosystem, as well as ensuring attention is paid to all the parts of that system.
The work of Frederic Laloux argues for organisational systems built on peer relationships, which develop practices that invite people to bring all of themselves to their work (without demanding over-commitment) and “listen to what the organisation wants to become”, and have an “evolutionary purpose”. Organisations working in this way – which he calls ‘evolutionary organisations’ - eschew traditional hierarchical structures even at scale, and build space for thought and reflection. They devolve management and decision-making, so care workers can control budgets to support older people in the community, for instance. There are examples of cultural organisations that might share some of these characteristics: networked, and yet, for all their innovation, these are still organisations, so many people whose work lives centre on creativity and culture live outside them.
The question then becomes: how might you best stay free, and connect to organisational businesses and sectors without overdosing on either compromise or risk? And how do you influence and interact with the systems of which you form a part, which you influence and which shape you? What habits and behaviours give you the best chance of living dangerously within yourself, inside work, outside in your creative communities, and beyond in the world?
THINKING /
Interview for Creative United
I had the pleasure of talking about Tactics for the Tightrope with Mary-Alice Stack, Chief Executive of Creative United. Mary-Alice and I worked together at Arts Council England, when I was chair of the trading company and she ran ArtCo, Own Art and Take It Away, innovative loan providers for visual arts, crafts and music. I’m really pleased to see Own Art and Take It Away have continued to evolve within Creative United, alongside their other work. We had to fight a few internal battles together at Arts Council, to persuade those less convinced than we were that letting people choose their own art was a good idea.
There’s something of that same spirit in my answer to Mary-Alice’s asking which of the tools I would choose, I think: “If I had to pick one it would be that… but I wouldn’t pick one! And I wouldn’t because, as the saying goes, if you only have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. I remember coming across that saying when working at Arts Council England and applying it there – if you only give grants, everything begins to look like a grant recipient. The set of tools is deliberately very various, I wanted to pass it on in a simple way that was easy to replicate and adapt. Pass on the skills and people will make what culture they want with it.”
Evaluation Principles
Image description: a quadrant of text in bright colours, with the four Evaluation Principles suggested by the Centre for Cultural Value: Beneficial (orange), Robust (red), People-centred (purple) and Connected (green).
Evaluation is either really important, or obligatory, or not that important but obligatory, or something we ought to be getting round to, or better at, or a bit of a pain in the neck, or something to think about another day… The Centre for Cultural Value have been doing some of that thinking, and drawing out how to make evaluation more useful. They have recently published a set of ‘evaluation principles’ for the cultural sector. These are:
Beneficial: committed to learning/change, ethical and applicable
Robust: rigorous, open-minded and proportionate
People-centred: empathetic, many-voiced and socially-engaged
Connected: transparent, aware and shared
I can really see how a discussion of these principles between evaluators and clients at the outset of any evaluation, or within a team where you are carrying it out yourselves, could be really helpful, and then help make a process as useful as possible. And also, how doing that every time - it need not take long - would over time lead to new habits and better experiences of evaluation - including for people on the receiving end of questions and questionnaires. I’ll be making them a more explicit part of my own evaluation work in future.
ARC Freelancers Policy
There’s a lot of focus in Tactics and in the sector as a whole at the moment on how freelancers can be better supported, involved and paid. ARC in Stockton-on-Tees have just published their first Policy for the Employment of Freelancers. This is an act of transparency and sharing typical of ARC as whole - from board to the whole staff team I’ve found them a source of great inspiration when I’ve worked with them in recent years, and not just because invoices get paid in days not weeks. (Though that helps.)
There’s loads of good practice in here, and very little rocket science. So the question for any management team or board employing freelancers in the sector should be ‘What’s stopping us implementing our own, adapted, version of this policy?’
(If you work in a University department that asks freelancers to do things and then makes them jump through hoops of fire with their passport between their teeth before they get paid, please show this to your admin/finance people. Especially if you’re the one that sent me a PDF that could not be saved, to be filled in on screen IN BLOCK CAPITALS, printed out, signed and then rescanned. Their brains may freeze with confusion, but I reckon it’s worth the risk.)
/ PRACTICE
How to… co-create an evaluation
On the subject of evaluation…
Do you want to move beyond evaluation that ‘extracts’ data from participants to turn it into neat conclusions that sit neatly on a desk? Do you want to recognise the different perspectives of different stakeholders you work with? Do you want to change your evaluation from reporting your impacts to learning together?
Well, then, I have just written the guide for you, for the Centre for Cultural Value. The guide talks you through seven common steps, from understanding who the evaluation is for, who the beneficiaries and potential collaborators are, and what they might be looking for from the work/project through to sharing findings, which can also be done collaboratively. Along the way I talk about some of the tensions involved, and the potential benefits. For me the central idea is to shift from ‘extractive evaluation’ to considering things together. People are, in my experience, more likely to share an hour to think through something, actively, in a way that engages them and gives them insight, than to read a detailed evaluation report, no matter how clearly and brilliantly written. This is entirely in tune with the evaluation principles mentioned above.
If you’re thinking about a co-created approach to evaluation, consider at least these four questions:
How much flexibility can you create in terms of what your evaluation needs to deliver? (E.g. what funder or participant non-negotiables are there to bear in mind?)
How early in the design process can you involve the people your evaluation matters to the most, or a sample of them?
How might you involve participants and stakeholders in data collection and analysis – including shaping any recommendations?
How could everyone involved in the co-creation process help share the findings of your evaluation once they are produced, in whatever form that takes?
Tool: Ikigai
Image description: the Ikigai framework of four overlapping circles, black and white with text, as described in the text below.
Ikigai is a Japanese concept, often translated as ‘a reason for being’ or ‘the value in life’. Ikigai is partly credited with the longevity of healthy life of people in Japan’s Blue Zones such as Okinawa. Putting aside the intricacies of translating a word from Japanese into English, and the scientific evidence behind the potential benefits to lifespan, I find these four overlapping circles a powerful way to consider what you really want and to spend your time doing, or for explaining why you might sometimes feel a particular way.
I use the framework to explore four questions:
· What do you love?
· What are you good at?
· What does the world need?
· What can you get paid for?
As shown in the diagram above, the sweet spot of all four coinciding is a small part of the overall picture. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim for it. But if you can’t get all four all the time, it can help to understand the effects and make choices accordingly where you can – or resolve to only spend a certain proportion of time in particular areas.
Firstly note the things that matter to you most in each area.
Next, think about where you spend most of your time at the moment. Do you recognise any of the descriptions of typical feelings when not accessing one part of ikigai? What proportion of your time are you at the heart of ikigai, and how often are you, for instance, well-used but not rewarded financially, or comfortable but empty as you are not serving your mission or passion? Where are your efforts focussed now?
Finally, what are you going to do about it? What could you change that would make you feel more powerful, closer to ikigai or that you are addressing weaknesses? Set yourself some ikigai gaols for the next year. The GROW model of coaching may be useful to help decide what you should do.
Multiplying Leadership Questions
This month’s questions, taken from the set in Tactics*, are to do with learning. After reflecting on them, think what you need to do, stop doing or do even more.
v. LEARN
What have you learnt recently?
How widely have you shared what you learnt?
What are the implications of what you learnt for how you work?
* Full disclosure: these are slightly different than the book, as we left a bit of a dropped stitch on that page. It’s a rather painful process extracting bits from a published book, for a pedantic imperfectionist like myself. So it goes, ever-human, fail better etc etc….
Upcoming Events
17th-18th November Covid-19: Changing Culture? (online)
As part of a conference organised by the Centre for Cultural Value I’ll be part of a panel called ‘Change, sustainability & relevance: new business models’, alongside researchers from Leeds University into the impact of Covid on business models and Jo Burns from Wirral Museums Service. The whole conference looks great and the online format should give a real sense of coming together.
7th-9th December Creative People and Places Conference (online)
I’ll be exploring themes from Tactics for the Tightrope with Annabel Turpin (Arc), Gavin Barlow (The Albany), Leila D’Aronville (Tyne & Wear Cultural Freelancers) and Ryan Calais Cameron (Nouveau Riche Theatre) at the Creative People and Places conference, which should be another (virtual) gathering to relish.
TACTICS TOMATO #4
I’ve done A LOT of writing over the last couple of months, and have needed the instrumental more than ever. I’ve been listening to a lot of new London jazz, so that dominates this month’s pomodoro playlist. There has been something really exciting going on in UK jazz for the last few years: a fusion of influences making something new and very London - or so it seems to parochial cosmopolitan brownfield mouse me, anyway.
My favourite verbs connect, collaborate, and multiply seem very apt here, given the many permutations in which the artists here work. I have thrown in an old favourite too, from a mind-expanding album of my teens. Stick it on. Work hard for 25 minutes (and 34 seconds). Then take a walk around for five minutes before repeating...
Just one more thing…
Image description: a blurred male face with beard and hat (Mark) behind a pattern of bright blue-ish lights in arcing lines.
If you like poems, and neon, and light installations in dark parks - come on, who doesn’t? - you should come to Stewarts Park in Middlesbrough between 2nd and 5th December for the Nightfall Light Festival, if you’re anywhere near. (Or check the online materials at the time.)
This is an outdoor light festival created by Stellar Projects, which features some new commissioned poetry from me, alongside work I helped commission from Lisette Auton, Kirsten Luckins and Carmen Marcus. Our poems and stories will form part of a big series of light installations throughout Stewarts Park, in various light-filled formats, and be available online too. (The photo above is a self-portrait in one of the pieces from the last Nightfall in 2019.)
It was a great project to work on. I love writing poems to commission and working with writers. In all sorts of ways that’s how I started my career. I’d like to do more of it, hint, hint…