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In this episode Naomi talks to Jess Thorpe, Co-Artistic Director of the award-winning Scottish company Glass Performance. Jess talks about through the co-creative process, the artist is bringing the framework and tools and the non professional artist is bringing their lived experience. For her it is important to ensure that the non-professional artists understand the process they are going through.
She thinks it is very important that she is not extractive, taking the best stories for her artistic glory. She prioritises the relationship with people she is working with and considers people’s emotional needs throughout the process.
Over the years she has created a process that she can pass on to others (with her collaborator Tashi Gore). Sometimes people expect a script. This is particularly prevalent in a prison context where she often works. She gives each of the stages of the process a name and writes this structure on the wall so that people understand where they are in the process. She constantly creates a shared language in the room.
Jess talks about the importance of rituals to create opportunities for feedback and dialogue within the group. They utilise questions a lot. They also have an Anonymous Anxieties box which anyone can put a question or concern in so that issues can be raised in a safe way. It brings multiple voices into the room. She brings this box into the process a couple of times when she feels she needs to know what is really going on in the space. It’s not there all the time as she would not want anxiety to overwhelm the space.
She talks about how their partnership work with Barnardos has enabled a youth worker to be part of the process who holds responsibility for the wellbeing of the young people. This enables her to focus on the theatre. This has been a game changer for Jess. She also has access to a dramatherapist for support in her work at Dundee Rep. Jess talks about the importance of being trauma informed so that everyone comes out of the project more empowered than when they started it.
In reflecting on the challenges of this responsibility, Jess talks about how exhausting it can be. Over the years she has developed stronger boundaries with a clearly articulated path ahead for the relationship once the project has come to an end. There is also a challenge around the level of editorial support that participants might want or need. Sometimes participants will know best what they are capable of and trust that the work is a vehicle for something important to them.
Jess talks about the risks of human pain if the project is not held in a way that feels good. The fear is that someone feels taken advantage of and that work has been made on the back of their life. She has been asked challenging questions by participants which have enabled her to grow because she was scared of them but engaged with them.
She says that you need to ask yourself as an artist why you are doing it. She is concerned about social tourism - where the artist and audience is a tourist in someone else’s social context with a power dynamic that is problematic. She is also concerned about value-signalling that some artists fall into a trap of talking publicly about who they are working with as if they are doing people a huge service. For her it is about lifting people up in the dialogue around your work, not lifting yourself up.
Naomi Alexander is the CEO and Artistic Director of Brighton People's Theatre. Her AHRC funded research Let's Create: Do we know how to? identified 20 qualities, skills and responsibilities that are important for artists leading co-creative practice. The report and illustrations are available here.
IG: @naomi.ontheatre
LinkedIn: @naomiontheatre
Jess Thorpe is the Co-Artistic Director of Glass Performance.
#co-creation #theatre #leadership #arts #artist #knowyourlimits #letscreate #embodied
Creators and Guests
What is Let's Create: Do We Know How To??
A deep dive into the qualities, skills and responsibilities that artists, as leaders of co-created art, embody and practice in their work.
Theatre Critic Lyn Gardner 'wholeheartedly recommends' this podcast :)
Episode 1: Open and Humble Ned Glasier from Company Three
Episode 2: Grounded and Energetic Sita Thomas from Fio
Episode 3: Empathy and Care for Others Tashi Gore from Glass Performance
Episode 4: Adaptable and Flexible Kelly Green
Episode 5: True to Yourself Conrad Murray from Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy
Episode 6: Patient Kane Husbands from The Pappy Show
Episode 7: Holding Space Tanushka Marah from ThirdSpace Theatre
Episode 8: Managing Energy Levels Jack Parris from Brighton People’s Theatre
Episode 9: Listening and Communicating Dan Thompson Freelance Artist
Episode 10: Inclusive Language Kane Husbands from The Pappy Show
Episode 11: Art Form Skills Conrad Murray from Battersea Arts Centre’s Beatbox Academy
Episode 12: Facilitation Skills Sarah Blowers from Strike a Light
Episode 13: Safety Kelly Green Freelance Artist Released
Episode 14: Safeguarding Jason Camilleri from Wales Millenium Centre
Episode 15: Being Accountable Sarah Blowers from Strike a Light Released
Episode 16: Rights and Ethics Ned Glasier from Company Three Released
Episode 17: Know your limits and involve other people Jess Thorpe from Glass Performance * Coming soon
Episode 18: To create a structure/purpose Jack Parris from Brighton People’s Theatre * Coming soon
Episode 19: To know an appropriate amount about who you are working with Dan Thompson Freelance Artist * Coming soon
Episode 20: To ensure people have a positive experience Tanushka Marah from ThirdSpace Theatre * Coming soon
Naomi: Welcome to Let's Create, Do We Know How To? My name is Naomi Alexander, I'm the CEO and Artistic Director of Brighton People's Theatre. Last year I got some funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of my CLORE fellowship to do some research into the qualities, skills and responsibilities that artists as leaders hold in making co-creative work. This podcast series explores each of the findings in a little bit more depth with a different artist.
Welcome to this episode which is about the responsibility to know your limits and involve other people. Joining me today we have Jess Thorpe who is a theatre maker, author and lecturer in the Arts in Justice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She's currently Associate Director at Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre and Co-Artistic Director of Glass Performance, an award-winning company responsible for projects such as Albert Drive, Junction 25 and the first ever youth theatre in a Scottish prison. Welcome, Jess.
Jess: Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be with you today.
Naomi: So reflecting on this responsibility to know your limits and involve other people, can you tell me why you think this is important for artists leading co-creative practice?
Jess: Well, I think that the key thing is this idea of co-creative practice. So it's not you're meeting another person in a space and you are attempting to co-create something together which is meaningful to both of you, but that most often perhaps draws upon their lived experience or their stories but you are the person that is bringing the kind of framework and you're bringing the kind of experience of theatre and you're bringing an idea about how you might want to work. So it's trying to level the playing field and to make sure that the other person that you're co-creating with also has an understanding of the tools that you're going to be using and their own power within that process so that you can make something which feels equally right for both of you and that really honours the relationship that you're wanting to build and the stories that you're wanting to tell.
Naomi: Beautiful. What do you think it is about knowing your limits and involving other people that is important for you as an artist as an individual artist?
Jess: I think it's about the responsibility, like I've long understood the responsibility of what we do in our work. So like in my practice, I work very much with platforming stories of people that I feel like aren't heard necessarily within theatre and stories also that I'm interested in, so questions that I might have about the world that we're living in right now and lived experts of those questions and inviting them to make a piece of work together.
So I feel like I have a huge responsibility for caring for the other people in the process and making sure that it's a positive thing in their lives that we're making this work and it's not something which feels token or that I'm extracting or that I'm a magpie who's just taking shiny things and showing them off for my own kind of artistic glory, but that I really understand that it's going to be a work which part of the work is the process and how careful I need to be with people's lives and feelings, and I think that for me is very pressing in any process. And sometimes that means making decisions which might not be the most theatrical or the most dramatic or the best decision for content but the best decision for that person who you're working with. And so for me the relationships are as important as whatever is we then choose to share and the journey that we've gone on to answer questions together and to understand something deeply about our human experience feels like the most important part of the work.
So it keeps me awake at night to make sure that I am holding a process properly and considering everybody's emotional needs and making sure that I'm hearing that, like and I'm also watching and seeing that and it's not just I'm not just relying on them to tell me but I'm also kind of building a process that will enable that to happen. So yeah, that's kind of important to me.
Naomi: Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. And what do you as an individual do practically or the organisation that you're working for do to hold this responsibility?
Jess: Well, we don't rush first of all. So like as we've got more a bit sort of further into our, and when I'm saying our I'm speaking about my collaborator Tashigor because we've been working together since we were 20 and we're in our 40s now, so it's been a long time of working out how to do this together. And I think that there's like for me that part of it is also the relationship with her and our commitment to co-creating together has also helped us to understand like how relationships are a big part of what it is that we're trying to do and that we've committed to a relationship above all things, I think. So yeah, what do we do?
So what has become important to us over the years has been creating a process which feels that we can pass it to someone else to understand. And that's been like because we work in devising theatre, and devising is very much a process which you can kind of make bespoke to however you work, because it's creating from scratch, it's making things as you it's inventing theatre which is super exciting, but it means that the other person that you're working with, sometimes if they haven't got a lot of experience of theatre, they expect a script, they expect you to give them how you're going to do it. And this is particularly prevalent in the prison context where I work a lot where there's a sort of dynamic of like tell me what to do, tell me how to achieve in this. And of course, with devising, we're saying actually the opposite we're going to create this together. So it's impossible for people to feel experimental and playful and confident about making theatrical choices if they don't know what it is that you're trying to do.
So for us, it's really important that we give them the process from the beginning. So we've given each of the stages of the process a name and we've actually written a book about that because we did it with our young company Junction 25 and that's when we realized in order to give people a voice and empower them to make exciting theatre where they feel like the authors also, we have to tell them like how we think we could do it and give them some structure. So we always write the structure on the wall in the beginning. We always explain the stages that we're going to the first stages that we're going to build the ensemble together. And we're not going to rush. We're not going to start making a piece of work until we feel ready to do that till we feel like we trust the room, that we feel happy with the relationships that we've built, that we kind of are all feeling safe in the process we're making and then we're going to determine the question that we're going to work on together.
So what is the big question that's holding this work? One of the questions was what does it feel like to be a man in Scotland today? That's the question in the room. Or whatever the question is that's holding the work, we're going to do that, it's the second stage. And the third stage is that we're going to make lots of material together. We're going to explore it using text. We're going to explore it using images or music or movement. We're going to do loads of experiments to explore our question together. And after that, we're going to structure the material in a way that makes sense to us, that has some kind of journey, that's asking the questions we want to ask, that's leaving the audience with the feeling we want them to have. Then we're going to rehearse that structure and then we're going to share it in performance.
So we give them the structure that we're going to work in so that at any point if anyone's feeling lost, the power of it is not with us but we refer back to this kind of shared structure that we've all spoken about in the beginning. And for us, that is the key like saying this is how we're going to work and just setting up the contract in the space in the beginning and giving people permission to question the tools and to say like you know, and constantly creating a shared language for making in the room.
The other thing that feels important is this idea of rituals in the works that allow for feedback and allow for voices to be heard. So in the beginning of every process, we do something which is really simple where we put loads of questions in a hat and they're questions about like anything in life, but they're not like stressful questions. So they're things like if you could cook one meal, what would it be? Or if you could you know have a perfect day, what would it involve? And we all answer these questions and we take a lot of time over this, so that we're just talking and sharing and learning about each other before we're starting to try and make anything. So that sort of practice of questions becomes kind of embedded as a ritual into the process. So that then as we get further down, the questions can be more about the work. So what feels like is missing from the work? Or like is there something in the work that you're feeling kind of icky about? Or questions that because we've practised talking we can then talk when we really need to talk about the work.
We also have a ritual which is called an anonymous anxieties box. So if you've got something about the work which is making you feel stressed, you just put it in the box and then we kind of together come up with the answers to the questions and no one needs to own the fact that they asked it. And I also put stuff in that box. So like recently, I was making a performance in a prison with men and their children and I put in the box what happens if your children don't like me, and one of the guys picked out the anonymous anxiety box and said well, we like you and we feel like and it was really helpful to me to have that mechanism for me as well. So I think for us it's about mechanisms and rituals and practices and processes that are always about like centering the voices of the people in the room, and obviously, if you've got a cast of 50, you have to find ways to do it but you always have to find ways to do it. Like I'm not interested in this idea of well I'm just in charge so therefore we're just going to do it my way and that's going to work. That can't be like how you do it.
And I've read a lot of articles about what happens when voices are not heard properly in work, and I think that for me is like the fear. The fear is that I've made something and I'm like talking about it as an artist and it's like well it's actually, I haven't, it's always been co-created, so I'm not in charge of the narrative of any of the projects. We have to do that in collaboration.
Naomi: I love the idea of an anonymous anxiety box. I think that's genius because it really frees the space for honesty in a different way.
Jess: It's been quite new actually, that one. I mean in the last process, I used it a lot because we were in a prison and a lot of the time the anxieties were like about like maybe prison officers or people from the kind of establishment part of it, so then I was able to go to prison and go listen, in the anonymous anxieties box there was like a mention of this person a couple of times, I'm just wondering what do you feel like we should do about that? And it kind of gave me the way of like having conversations which meant that it didn't come back on any one person but that we were able to kind of say there's some things which are not working so can we find a way through that.
Naomi: And can you tell me a bit more about how you facilitate that? Like do you have it there all the time and anyone is free to write something and put it in whenever they want and do you have a specific point in every workshop where you go through what's been put in it together or do you do that in private? How do you do that?
Jess: Usually, I bring it out a couple of times in the process when I feel like the work is kind of deepening or that I kind of need to know like how everybody's feeling about it or maybe I have some questions myself that need kind of like exploring together. I don't have it always there because I sort of feel like if I had it always there, then maybe this narrative of anxiety would become quite prominent. And actually, sometimes what happens is when you kind of overhold it, then the anxieties just come and then suddenly the anxieties take over. Whereas actually sometimes it's okay to be like I feel like this is a good point for us to go. Usually, when the work is shaping or maybe we're working towards a public event and it feels as if it would be really good to kind of make sure that everybody's all right with that, and those kind of moments where you think that anxiety is actually natural.
Naomi: Yes, completely rather than embedding it into the group.
Jess: Yeah. And you want to lean into it and you want to kind of give people the sense that it's really normal to like be nervous about certain things. And it's always normal to be lost and it's always normal to be like I don't think this is going to work. And of course, having said that, there's anxieties that I would not share with a group because of the fact that I have got the benefit of experience and it's not really fair for me to perform all my anxieties to the whole group because actually I do have a responsibility for holding and I do need to be the one to tell everybody it's going to be okay because it will be.
Naomi: Yes, totally. And your belief in the fact that it will be okay will carry people and quell those anxieties. Yeah, I totally know that. So you've spoken beautifully about how you hold the responsibility of that co-creative process, I'm really interested in understanding a bit about when you might have come up against your limits, either as an individual or as a company where stuff presents itself to you during the co-creative process where you go actually, I can't deal with this, it's not my role, I don't have the skills or the knowledge or experience to deal with this particular issue, I need to bring someone else in or I need to refer you to someone else, just this thing about involving other people at an appropriate time in a great way, like could you just talk through a time you've done that?
Jess: This has become something which has been really important to us in recent years as partnership approach and like bringing other people into the process. And I suppose the most clearest example is for a long time we had Junction 25 which is our young persons collective which is at tramway in Glasgow and we were making like loads of device work and touring loads and doing loads of things because we wanted young people to have a voice in performance. And that was really exciting for a long long time. And then we kind of came up against this thing of like actually like which young people are not being heard and that's when we started making a young person's theatre company in Polmont which is Scotland's national facility for young people in prison.
And in that context, we immediately knew because we knew we were going to use our process which asked young people to kind of bring themselves to it but we also knew that those young people had a lot of trauma and had a lot of challenges within their lives which would mean that they would be vulnerable immediately, so we knew we had to have a partner. And Barnardo's the children's charity were our residents in Polmont and Polmont's really cool in the fact that it's got a performing art space. I mean, I'd like to say that Polmont is not really cool because it's a young person's prison. But the point is as a facility it's got this performing art space. And yeah, like basically Barnardo's runs that space and so then we went to partnership with them.
And so what happens is we have a Barnardo's youth worker in every single session and they are responsible for holding the young people's emotional process. So if there's anything that's triggering and obviously we plan sessions so that we don't trigger. But if something comes up or if there's a dynamic in the room with two young people that are not getting on or maybe a young person's had a terrible experience in court or they've had a bereavement or any of the things that can happen in their lives, the Barnardo's youth worker is there to make a call about like how do we support that young person effectively? And also when we leave, like because obviously we do a session a week and then we come back the next week, what happens to that young person in between if there's something that's really sitting on their heart or that's been difficult for them? Barnardo's youth worker will follow it up the next day, we'll go and see them. Sometimes we'll come back and see them. But together we're holding like that experience for the young person and that has been a game changer, because it means that we can really focus on the theatre and they've got their sort of head on the mental health of the young person.
And actually, within that context, that's a really serious thing because the statistics around young people and suicide in prisons are really high mental health crisis, like we have to do that. It's not even a nice to have. It's like a definite need to be doing that and to understand that theatre involves the whole person and can bring up a lot of emotions. And emotions are not bad either. Like we invite emotional responses in theatre. It's all right for you to cry about something or to feel really excited about something. It's good to have extremity of emotion but we also need to make sure that everybody's safe. So that is what the Barnardo's youth theatre support but also Barnardo's workers do and also sometimes they're in the show because that's like how involved they are in the process. So it's been a real joy and it's been massive.
And now I think on most projects I'm thinking who else do we need in the room? So who's the support? And at Dundee rep and Scottish dance theatre, theatre that I'm working at right now we've got a drama therapy department, and if I've got a project that I think is going to include in going to involve any kind of something that I'm worried about, then I will take it to the drama therapy department and they'll advise me about okay well, maybe just give me some ideas about structure or they will think do we also need to come into the space? Or there's things like that which I'm just really concerned about.
Naomi: What an amazing resource.
Jess: It's an amazing resource, amazing. Everything I should have it's great.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. So you can literally go to them with a session plan and say can I just talk you through what I'm thinking of doing and…?
Jess: Yeah. And they give us advice about stuff. And like we're clear about like what projects are not therapy projects. Drama therapy is a clinical service, like it's a different thing. But as clinical professionals, they are also really well placed to kind of just discuss things which could be trigger points. Because I also think that the world that we live in now, we're very aware of the fact we've come through a pandemic together, we've got a lot of collective trauma, but there's also a lot of trauma in other ways in our society systemic things which have caused trauma that we're seeing come to the surface and we have to, as artists, think about those things and be trauma informed in our approach to things. It cannot just be the idea of the project that wins. It has to be how you hold it, what the process is, and how everybody comes out of the project more empowered than they started it.
Naomi: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. What happens when this responsibility of knowing what your limits are and involving other people, what happens when that responsibility is held effectively?
Jess: People thrive. So you see like excited happy people. Growth happens. You feel like it's working. People come back to the sessions. The feedback that you get is positive. And sometimes what happens is that you compromise what you thought you would be doing on the project and I think that's a good thing.
So I have an example of this which is we made a show called lifelong in 2008-10 maybe and it was about me and Tash was single at the time we were like wondering if it was possible to actually have a meaningful relationship. So we put an advert in the newspaper saying have you been in love for a lifetime, if so come and tell us how to do it. And we met loads of different couples. But we met this one couple called Tilly and Ronnie and we made a show with them called lifelong which was set at their anniversary party and the audience came, and they've been married for 50 years.
One of the initial developments of the piece was with a big theatre organization that had lots of funding and they loved the idea and they kind of like brought with it like loads of resource. But one of the things they brought was a kind of pressure to make a really good show and the mentor that we had, the director who was really really successful director, he watched versions of the work and there was a story in it where Tilly and Ronnie, they'd lost their son when they were younger and we had created this piece which was to do with sort of subtitling, the audience knew that had happened, but then what they did was they just did like a really simple kind of like holding each other's sequence and that was it. And the mentor was like you know what, we need to dig into that bit because that's really interesting bit for an audience and there's a lot of drama in that bit. And it came from a place of like thinking dramaturgically about stuff.
Now of course, we felt really clearly that like that wasn't going to happen and we just said no and we ended up not doing it with that organization anymore. I'm sure it wasn't just because of that. But we had a boundary and the boundary was like that's not fair on Tilly and Ronnie to perform that every single night like we don't need that. Also, I lost my brother when I was younger and I know like that is not the fodder. And so sometimes it looks like not getting the big but feeling that the integrity of the work is in place and that your relationship is in place with them and actually that is the right way to tell that particular piece of the story and we were just not willing to go any further into that thing.
So it's just sometimes you have to kind of go this might not work for everyone, but as long as it works for us and the people that are in it, then that's the main thing and we'll find the right audience for the work. And in the end we did it in a more independent way and that was the right thing for that.
Naomi: I love that, Jess. There's a couple of things that have popped into my head during listening to you speak there. The first is that you constantly place such a beautiful emphasis on the relationships that you hold with the artists that you collaborate with but also with the people, the non-professional artists that you're collaborating with. And the centrality of the importance of the relationship is something that comes through so clearly and so beautifully in the way that you speak.
And the second thing is just listening to that example is just this idea of holding the people that you're co-creating with centrally and sometimes knowing that less is more when you're working with people's personal stories, and that the audience doesn't need to see people ripped in two knowing that their child has died, people are capable of empathy, and actually doing something in a more understated way is going to be incredibly moving and respectful.
Jess: Yeah, people haven't earned it either, like you haven't earned it to come and watch the whole process. You get to see like what we want to show you. And I also think for me, it's been the most amazing life choice to work in this way. Because with Tilly and Ronnie, it's like we did the eulogy at her funeral. In her whole life, we were the people that did the eulogy, because we essentially were like biographers sort of, and I see it as like portraiture.
Naomi: Incredible privilege.
Jess: Yeah. And more than like and another show that we made about a family of women, when one of the women died, they all did a bit from the show. Do you know what I mean? It was we've been in those situations a lot where we kind of go this is what we're doing is like creating a sort of moment in a life story and actually this huge responsibility, so taking it seriously is the least you can do.
Naomi: Yeah, I completely agree. So what are the challenges then with holding this responsibility?
Jess: Emotionally, it's exhausting. And I've found that like more and more as I've got older, I've had to set my boundaries a little bit clearer because I used to just be everything to everyone all the time and be like on the other end of her phone all the time and I would be in the work all night, every night. And then I would have this huge responsibility afterwards to make sure I was seeing people weekly and I was doing all the right things in terms of being still very much involved in their life and they're not being a sort of cliff edge for the work. And as I've got older, I still work very much in that kind of involved way. But it also just kind of set expectations around like how much afterwards we should hang out and what the kind of we go like we're going to all get together on this time and then we're going to, you know, and I just kind of create a kind of path ahead rather than taking it all on in…
Because also now, I've got children I realize that I haven't got as much to give as I used to. And also, the work takes from you because you also are emotionally invested and there's a depletion that happens which is a tension for me with my partner all the time because I just say like oh it's totally fine and he's like no because it you have to go over it. And I didn't realize before that I would need to diary the getting over it and the kind of like holding myself in that space. Also, the challenge is if you get it wrong, like if you get the level of editorial support wrong and it becomes infantilizing because your participants or your co-creators are also have agency and you might think oh that's like with the Tilly and Ronnie example, I might have gone oh actually no, that's too vulnerable for them and they might have felt like differently, so it's about making sure.
An example of this is with them Junction 25, we've got a collaborator called Laika and she's from the Muslim community and Pollock Shields and we've collaborated with her for years. And we were making a show about politics, and she had created a piece of performance which was called ‘Dear, Person I Met on the Street’, and it was about a racist incident that happened with her in the street, we'd also been there, and she was writing back to this person. And every time she performed this text, she would like cry as part of it. And we were really like this might be too vulnerable, I don't know if this is safe, we're feeling like we're putting you in at risk in this space. Does this feel reliving this trauma? Is this useful? And she was just, can you just stop and understand that this is my political need to make a statement? She was 17 at the time and now she's on our board and she's 30 and she still talks about it. But she was like you're preventing me from, like tea is a part of my political story and I want people to see that. We just had to trust that it was her thing and we just had to hold it be really confident that was the right decision.
So even though we were anxious because we were had responsibility for and we felt we're putting her in this position, actually, it wasn't about us, and our sensibilities were not the main thing we should be concerned about. So I think sometimes you have to kind of trust that the work is a vehicle for something that might be kind of also a little bit uncomfortable to work out how to hold but actually sometimes you're not the people that need to make that choice. And she is a glorious political human who did an amazing thing by being a young person and doing that show so many times. And she changed the lives of all of the rest of the cast of that show just by being that brave and kind of putting her pain in the space in that way. So yeah, I think sometimes you have to be careful in that sense.
Naomi: Yes, that's right and involving people in that way and saying what do you want? What feels safe for you? Yeah.
Jess: And then risk assessing it and going like okay, so how do we just hold that? And how do we take a step back and like be the support network for her but not centre our own version of this, felt kind of an important lesson that she taught us when she was very young and she still teaches us now.
Naomi: Amazing. And you mentioned risks there, what are the risks if you don't hold this responsibility effectively?
Jess: Human pain. I read this brilliant article the other day because I'm doing my PhD at the moment and I'm trying to understand like some of the things I've been doing for years. But retrospectively, I read this article about this artist who ended up being a participant herself in a project and the project wasn't held in a way that she felt like good about, so she was speaking about like what the impact on all of that was on her and how she just felt totally like gutted to perform the story that felt like it had been misunderstood or like her voice had been taken away in the guise of giving her a voice. And I just felt like they just kind of stayed with me that idea because that's the fear, if you get it wrong.
The fear is that you put someone in a position and you create an experience for them which is not positive and that they feel taken advantage of and they feel that you've made work on the back of their life. And I had this experience again in Polmont but the first show we made which was national theory of Scotland and it was called Motion and it was part of a kind in Scotland year of young people and we were all making shows and it was going to be part of this national festival anyway. One of the co-creators in Polmont we were making a show about what it meant to be a man in Scotland today from the perspective of these young people in prison, and he was so clever and so like never done any theatre but so natural, so brilliant, such a creative mind and he was so challenging in such a youthful way.
So he'd say things to me, I just feel like you're just loving, like the reflected glory of working in here, and people are just, oh, Jess, how are you managing to work with such difficult young people, you must be such a brilliant artist. And he would really push those buttons for me every week, like what are you getting out of this? And I had to really be in that conversation, and be really present. And I just had to be really honest, and say, well, for me, I do get a lot out of holding spaces and we just had to have that conversation. And I just felt he pushed me in a brilliant way to really think about what I was doing there and why I was doing it, why are we working with this group in this way.
We ended up having a great relationship as part of it, and we're still in contact. But I felt like he asked me the questions, which sometimes the questions that you're afraid of, and he just said them. And sometimes he would do impressions of me, being like, oh, I'm Jess, I'm an artist. And I saw myself in this way, and I was like, oh, this is horrendous, but we just have to be here and have this. And so those moments, they're the things that make you grow, that you make you go, oh, my goodness me, like, this is so challenging, but it's so important for my own growth to be able to talk about this and to be able to answer his questions.
Naomi: What a gift.
Jess: Yeah. And so the risk is all of that. The risk is misrepresenting people, just misjudging it, creating something not authentic, creating something which causes people pain, creating something which feels tone deaf, that feels like it misses huge aspects of cultural responsibility. So the risks are huge, and that's why the process needs to try its best to create a structure for the communication so that you can, where possible, meet these risks head on. I just think you have to lean into them. You have to kind of go, like, what's the worst version of this work? And how do we stay on the other side of the path to that? But just you have to know what it looks like, I think.
Naomi: And who do we need to involve to make sure that as far as possible, we don't create the worst version of it. So, yeah, having Barnardo's youth workers in the room. And is there anything else you'd like to say?
Jess: What do I want to say is, I think it's just about asking yourself, as an artist, why are you doing it? What's it for? I've become quite concerned with things like social tourism, and kind of value signalling, and stuff, that sometimes, I think, as an artist...
Naomi: Can you say a bit more about those two terms?
Jess: Yeah, okay. So social tourism is this idea that we're like a tourist in someone else's social context, and we're looking at and saying, oh, you know, aren't they brave? Or how brilliant that they can speak about that? And the idea of coming as an audience member with a power dynamic, which is thinking that the people on stage are somehow are needing of a charitable view, because they're in a socially engaged context. And I think the way, in the past, that I have tried to combat that is just by demanding a professional aesthetic and production value to the work that we make. Obviously, that's not always possible. Not all artists have got that opportunity to do that. But for me, I have been pretty feisty when it comes to how things are framed, where they are in the brochure, the kind of words that are used to describe the work, even getting reviews, but giving the reviewers a kind of context.
But I've just been trying to really place the work in a mainstream context, whilst also, in terms of value, but also creating a kind of space which really holds what it is. And so I think there's that, which I think is really important. And just also kind of thinking as well about the sort of critical context that the work sits in, because I think sometimes, I don't know, for me, I still struggle like do I make community theatre? I don't feel like I do. But that's more because perhaps I inherited a tired version of that. So then I wanted to create a new name for it. But then in doing that, I also kind of felt like I accidentally, as a young sort of 20s artist who was just determined to create a new path. I sort of didn't really honour the path that had happened before.
So I feel like now I'm sort of recognising that terminology is also a fashion thing, and can be about, like, what funders are saying is important or what we're trying to reject and trying to create new names for things and all of that. But actually, recognising that all of this stuff critically has helped us to get where we are, and that there's a journey to all of it, and that we're part of that journey, and honouring that is really important as well.
Because, for example, Junction 25, which is our longest, probably most successful project commercially, let's say, we never used the phrase Uthea, because we were like, no, it's not Uthea, because in our minds, Uthea was like this thing that we did when we did Oliver, and we were like, it's not that. So then we created this totally different package for Junction 25, and it didn't fall into any of those kind of tropes. But then when we started our young company in Polmont, we used Uthea, because we definitely wanted it to be recognised within a bigger field, and for that field to know that there were young people in prison that also wanted to be in that field. So it was then that bracket that we'd spent so long rejecting, we needed it. So I think it's really super important to try and recognise that all of this has got a contextual background, and it's just really important to kind of honour and understand, like, the journeys of things, even if you choose different words to describe what you're doing.
Naomi: Yes, I think that's really brilliantly put. And is that what you mean by value signalling, in terms of signalling the value of what you're doing, by thinking really carefully about the words that you choose to describe it?
Jess: Yeah, but also with value signalling, I probably mean when we get like a bit of the culture that we live in now, where everyone's like telling us what they're doing on Instagram and Twitter, but when they kind of like go, and I'm working with six single parents under 16, and there's a bit of a signalling the value of my work, and I find that tricky. Because I actually go, do you know what, genuinely, I'm the one learning. And so it seems strange, this idea that sometimes, if they're not careful, artists might make it seem as if they're doing a huge service. And of course, we know that the work has got huge value, no one's questioning that. But I just think it's about how you talk about people and like how you lift people up in the dialogue around your work, rather than kind of lift yourself up, which I think is just something you need to be careful of.
Naomi: Absolutely, I could not agree more. And thank you for clarifying the definitions of those two brilliant bits of terminology, which I think people find really useful. Do you feel like you've covered the point of what you wanted to say within that?
Jess: Yes, I think so. I think so.
Naomi: Brilliant. Thank you. And one last question. This research was just 20 days of research that I did. And it's very much intended to be a starting point. And the reason for doing this podcast is to try and make it more accessible and to start a conversation about it. Because I absolutely don't think that this is it. But hopefully, some more research might evolve from this. So I'm just curious to know whether, when you read the report and reflected on all the responsibilities that have emerged so far, whether you think there's something missing, in terms of responsibilities?
Jess: Do you know what, I didn't look at it in that way. So like, I probably should look again and think of it in that sense. So I'll answer the question in a different way, which is not what you've asked. But I will say that this is a super exciting bit of research for me because a lot of the time, I think my actual skill set is invisible. And even in the big theatre that I work in now, it's like there's a tip of the iceberg, which is what people see. And there's everything that we do to get there. And none of that has a name, has a frame, has any kind of like, and it's I end up having to really to argue for the things that I know are really super important, for example, a hospitality line in the budget. I have a chunky line in every budget, which is about hospitality, which is about thinking about hierarchy of needs, thinking about what does someone need when they come into my session, need to have food, they can eat together and the communal eating part of it? And none of that is I don't think valued as a piece of knowledge about how human beings need to be and grow. It's just seen as like an additional expenditure, which is not the work.
So for me, this piece of research is massive, because it sort of professionalises or values the thing that we've been doing all this time. I do believe that people think of it less than other forms of theatre still. And I'm so bored of it. I'm so exhausted by it. And I'm working now in like a mainstream theatre, and it's a conversation that the theatre I work in, we're very open to and stuff, but I know that lots of other theatres are not. But I'm just you can call it whatever you like, but you still value it, you still think of it as like less, even though it should be literally the main thing we're doing, should be engaging with people to make performance in theatre. We should be literally engaging with people. Because I just think that the form of getting people to come and sit and watch something is outdated. And in some cases, this is going to sound so bold, boring. There's a place for it, of course, but it doesn't need to have constantly the kind of the highest. We can imagine cultural is far more interesting part of our lives, than this idea of consumer relationship with it. So yeah, that's where I'm at.
Naomi: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I can go and see Hamilton, if I can afford a ticket, and I will be blown away by the sheer skill and versatility of the performers and the script and everything about it, I know it's going to be amazing. But equally, I could go and see my son's school show, and be moved in a completely different way, or youth theatre production or a people's theatre production, because my relationship with the people in the show is different. And it's going to speak to me in a different way. There's been loads of research done to show that actually audiences value that more. And yet it is still, I agree, completely denigrated by mainstream theatre, which, yeah, it's quite dull.
Jess: I think my early career was really motivated by wanting mainstream theatre to see me as just as good. And that is why Junction 25 went the way it went like we ended up, and we got like a Lifetime Achievement Award or whatever for outstanding theatre with young people, which of course, was very meaningful. But it was really funny, because in that moment, when we finally, like by the critics in Scotland were given this accolade that I went in my own head. Of course, I was very proud of it. But I also went, and that's me done. Because I was I don't know who am I trying to prove this to? Why am I constantly trying to prove that I haven't taken participatory performance or socially engaged performance because I'm not good at the other thing. I'm fighting myself with that. I just need to kind of like make the work and contextualise it how I think it needs to be contextualised. But I do not need to be playing a game with other forms of theatre to make it more or less important. You just need to do it.
Naomi: Yes. But I think it's in the ether, isn't it? And you felt that because it's in the ether, that participatory work, community work is less valuable than mainstream work.
Jess: Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I'm still like, furious about the ether. But I need to give my energy to something more than trying to like, you know. I found it super interesting, this particular chapter of my life, where I've chosen to work in a venue so that I can understand and be in those conversations about that stuff in a kind of really active way. So yeah, it's been a learning chapter for sure, in that sense.
Naomi: Amazing. Jess, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. If you're interested in finding out more about Jess and her work, please follow the links on my website or under the podcast. Thanks very much, Jess.
Jess: Thank you.