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In this episode Naomi talks to freelance artist Dan Thompson about the responsibility of knowing an appropriate amount about who you are working with.
Dan talks about the impact that the work can have on people who participate in it. At its most basic level we need to know their access needs. But at a deeper level we need to understand who they are and why they are participating in the project.
He talks about the diversity of approaches that are needed when working in different contexts. Sometimes it is a deep, long term relationship and other times it is more of a fleeting relationship. As a freelance artist he has his own safeguarding policy in place. This doesn’t need to be complicated - his is less than one side of A4.
Quite often he doesn’t know anything about what has happened in someone’s life and he is okay with that. There is a discussion about the freedom in not knowing and being able to treat everyone equally. Sometimes this enables people to participate in an art project for the first time as they are free of any label or preconceptions of them.
Each artist needs to decide for themselves how much they need to know in each context they are working in. Dan talks about how layered and complex this decision making process is. When it works it can change people’s lives.
Dan talks about a challenge involved being around holding people’s traumatic stories. He talks about the importance of having someone that the artist can talk to and offload what they have heard to. A risk of not knowing enough is that it is possible to alienate people so that they do not come back again. With all of it, Dan believes that artists need to be kind and decent to the people they are working with.
Naomi Alexander is the CEO and Artistic Director of Brighton People's Theatre. Her AHRC funded research identified 20 qualities, skills and responsibilities that are important for artists leading co-creative practice. The report and illustrations are available here.
Dan Thompson is a Freelance Artist. You can find out more about his work here.
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.
On today's episode we're joined by Dan Thompson, a writer and artist making work with ordinary people about everyday life and in overlooked places. His work starts by asking people to help him explore a place and what he makes is guided by that process. His career started in theatre and he now makes festivals, exhibitions, books and posters. Welcome, Dan.
Dan: Hello.
Naomi: It's brilliant to have you here with me today talking about the responsibility, it's quite a mouthful, to know an appropriate amount about who you are working with. Reflecting on this responsibility, can you tell me why you think it's important?
Dan: As artists, as theatre makers, as writers we tend to quite often with these projects that are about co-creation land in a place and be expected to do something incredible with the people there in a short period of time and then disappear again. But we should care for those people, they're real people and what we're doing might have a bigger impact than we know. We've all got memories of that one person that came in and did a school assembly that inspired us or whatever, you know, this stuff can have a real impact.
And if we want to do that with love and care and compassion then we do need to know something about the people we're working with. We need to know their access needs at the most basic level, what can we do to sort of help them get into the space. But we also need to know, yeah, where do they come from, how did they end up here, why are they here, why are they working with us, because they're choosing to be with us or work with us. If we don't do that, we could do real damage, we could uncover things or create real problems for those people. So yeah, if we're going to care, if we're going to say this is about co-creation and that's a loving caring relationship, we need to have some understanding of who we're working with.
Naomi: Who's in the room and what do you do to hold this responsibility, like what do you do to find out an appropriate amount?
Dan: It varies from project to project. I did some work with an organisation called Company of Makers who are based down in Portsmouth. They're an organisation that works with veterans and provides writing, guitar lessons, drawing classes, all sorts of things online for veterans and it's really powerful work. One of the veterans we worked with, a guy called Mark Perryman, through a series of writing classes that I did, ended up producing a little pamphlet with him about his story of his service out in Kosovo and the Serbian civil war out there and the aftermath of that. It's really powerful stuff. He's a real person. And much as it's a huge thing to bring his stories out, it's also really obvious that we surfaced some things with him that are difficult to deal with.
So we need to know that stuff and we need to hold on to it as we work with them. It's not always possible. Sometimes the work we're doing is fleeting, sometimes the work we're doing it's a very brief relationship. But I think if you go in with that sense of I want to hold these people and look after them, then that's the good foundation.
Naomi: And how do you find out what you want to know about someone? Like do you do that face-to-face in a conversation? I mean, because you're freelance and you're employed by, I'm imagining you're commissioned mainly by arts organisations, do they hold that responsibility?
Dan: Yeah, it varies from project to project and quite often when there are more complex needs, it's because you're working with a group that an organisation has brokered a relationship with. So quite often the organisation already has some kind of working relationship with that group of people and probably has some safeguarding policies and some sort of plans and things in place. So it brings those into the relationship to start with.
I used to be a youth worker, I was a detached youth worker, street-based youth worker in Worthing on the kind of states of Maybridge and Durrington in Worthing and I do bring some of that stuff with me. So I can't help but kind of go, I have my own safeguarding policies written for my work and I also adhere to the stuff I was taught back as a youth worker that I will respect confidentiality of the people I'm with up until the point where it has an impact on their or somebody else's safety, at which point you do have to get somebody else involved. It's complicated. It's difficult. But I think it is worth us as freelance artists thinking about this stuff and having a policy document, some kind of template thing in place just because it helps to remind us that it is important, remind us that we should think about that stuff as we build those relationships.
Naomi: Yeah, that's right because it's so complex, isn't, it and we're holding so much in every project that it's quite easy to forget. And so I think yeah, the idea of almost having your own checklist, your own policies, really brilliant.
Dan: And they don't need to be complicated. I mean my safeguarding policy, I think it's one side of A4, maybe side and a half of A4. It's not a complicated thing. But it's a good reminder to me of what good practice is, what honest good practice is like.
Naomi: Do you think there is ever a time when it's not appropriate to ask or where you're better off not knowing information about who you're working with?
Dan: Quite often I won't know. Quite often if it's a relationship that I've just made through being in a place, talking to people, meeting people myself, I won't know that information. I've got no idea what's gone on in that person's life. And depending on the relationship and how deep it's going to go, that's probably absolutely fine because I'm really just there to help them talk about this one subject, talk about a piece of local history, go for a walk through neighbouring streets looking at things or whatever. That's fine. I don't need the depth there. But I think if you always think that you might need it and you don't, that's better than suddenly finding yourself in a situation where somebody's unloading something or unpacking something that they've got to deal with and you're not prepared. It's better to be conscious of it and never need it.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. I'm reminded of a story a friend told me about a time he was working in a secure unit and the staff said to him would you like to know what people did to end up here to be doing this work and they talked about it and decided no, we don't want to know.
Dan: Yeah if it's not relevant to the work if it's not something that's going to feed into the work you're making, then yeah, you don't need to know it.
Naomi: Yeah that's right and I think in that instance it was really beneficial them not knowing because actually, the staff were saying those people have never had an experience like that because what they did is deemed to be so awful that no one's wanted to work with them in that way. And so I think there is that.
Dan: And quite often you get to the end of a project if you're running a project over a number of months or weeks or months or however long in a place. Quite often you get to the end of the project and somebody will turn to you and say you know that Margaret you met she's never ever engaged in anything before and you got her to open up and she hasn't engaged because of this problem in her past. Or it's quite interesting that if you're not aware of it, you just treat them as another person and have a good relationship. Yeah.
Naomi: And there's a freedom in that for people isn't there because if they are allowed and enabled to just show up as a human being and to be met as an equal human being with their access needs taken into consideration, there's a freedom in that in terms of what they're then able to contribute creatively to the process.
Dan: One of the things I love about my projects in particular where quite often there's not a set outcome, is that quite often we'll go in and I've done a lot of work in empty shops high streets and empty shops were a big, big part of the practice over especially since 2008 over this period of recession and austerity that's a continued recession really. Lots of work in empty shops and high streets. And I've always started with a point if we're just going to say yes to everyone who comes through the door, and you get people come to oh well, I've done some painting, bring it in, we'll put it on the wall for you. Oh, I've done some knitting I'd like to knit you, come in, we'll set up a knitting group and you can do it.
And by not having any preconceptions and by just inviting people to talk about their skills and what they do, somebody who might have been labelled in one way given the chance absolutely shines at something else when you don't know that they're supposed to be a problem, when you don't know that they're difficult, when you don't know that they're not engaged. If you're open and honest, they'll come in and excel at something that nobody knew about.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess each artist always needs to define for themselves what appropriate means in each unique context that they're working in.
Dan: I think you'll have touched on this in other podcasts in the series. It's layered, it's complex, it's nuanced. There's not a set of tactics that mean you can just go out and do this. There's not a handbook. A lot of this is based on experience, is based on years of practice, is based on lots of mistakes made along the way. But also that means listen to a set of podcasts like this because the knowledge and the experience of other people is really useful if you're starting out in this kind of practice.
Naomi: Yeah, definitely. What do you think happens when this responsibility is held effectively?
Dan: If this is done right, you get the absolute best out of people. If it's done right, you can absolutely change people's lives. You know, you can completely change a life, and that's an incredibly powerful thing to be able to do and to be able to help with. Years ago, early on when we were doing a lot of this stuff back in Worthing, I had a little studio down a back street in Worthing, and we took people in on youth offending team placements and we were never told what they'd done to be placed with us but we knew that it was offending that was serious enough that they'd got community placement. And it was supposed to be slightly punitive. They were supposed to be painting out walls or doing sort of something manual. It's supposed to have a bit of punishment to it.
We had one young woman came in and she was just lovely and clearly had just done something stupid that got her into trouble. And she mentioned that she was doing GCSE art but hadn't done her coursework, we spent most of the week enabling her to do her coursework and to make some work on a bigger scale than she would do otherwise and with decent paints and all the rest of it. And that's a lovely story in itself, we helped her get some work done for GCSE, that was fantastic. About 10 years later, she got in touch with our social media and said just so you know, my GCSE art was the only GCSE I got, but that GCSE meant that I got into Northbrook College to do hair and beauty, and I've been doing hair and beauty ever since. She travelled all over the world in fact, doing hairdressing and makeup for people because of that little intimate. That's what we can do with this stuff, if we genuinely hold those people as important. And that was done without knowing. All we knew was that she somewhere down the line had got into a bit of trouble that meant she was placed with us.
Naomi: And you never really know what the outcome is, do you, of the work?
Dan: No. So much of our work we'll never know what the long-term effects are.
Naomi: And what are the challenges with holding this responsibility?
Dan: Sometimes you end up holding other people's stories that are really hard to deal with. I've mentioned working with Company of Makers and the veterans. One of the groups we worked with were connected to Fighting With Pride. Fighting With Pride is the group that has brought LGBTQ+ veterans who were thrown out of the forces and has acted as their champion and advocate. There was a long-term ban on any gay people serving in any way.
And some of the stories of the trauma that they'd been through, some of the background stories that they had of being beaten up, of being attacked, of having their rank badges stripped from their uniform of being humiliated by senior officers when they were thrown out of the service, that's really hard to deal with. There were moments in some of that work, you go I need support, I need to talk to somebody. So I think one of the things out of this is you need to have some mechanism in place, if somebody's giving you their stories that you've got somebody you can go and offload to as well. Because some of what we come up with is traumatic, some of it is difficult, some of it is hard for people to deal with themselves. And we're given those stories, particularly if you're freelance, without the mechanism to go and say to somebody else I need to talk about this, I need to get this out.
Naomi: Yeah, there are some brilliant services available now aren't there which certainly weren't available when I started doing this work 30 years ago. But yeah, I get supervision now from artists well-being and that is just fantastic, isn't it, to enable you to, so you're held so that you can hold other people. It's so important. What are the risks, Dan, do you think if you don't hold this responsibility effectively in the work?
Dan: You can blunder into some really difficult situations. You could end up with putting people together that shouldn't be put together. You can end up with saying absolutely the wrong thing. The immediate outcome of that is usually that somebody doesn't come back to your workshop, doesn't come back doesn't engage again, That in itself is really sad. If you've put the foundations in that somebody walks away, but you don't know what that's doing to them further down the line.
I think with all of this we've just got to be kind decent honest people. I think a lot of the time artists are by nature a real mix of confident and cocky and arrogant because you have to be. You have to be to want to stand on stage in front of people to want to make other people read your words, to expect people to come to a gallery and see your work on the wall. There's got to be something cocky in there in the first place. But also a real fragility, all every creative person I know is constantly questioning whether they're good enough, whether they're right for this, whether they should be doing this. Are they doing their best? There's a real mix of things there.
And when we go and work with other people, we're taking those things with us. We're taking a degree of I'm an artist, it's really important that you turn up and come and talk to me because I'm an artist, that's really important. But also of my belief is that probably their stories are more important than mine, that the things that they can tell me more important than anything I can tell them. So it's a balancing act and you've got to get it right because if not, you end up at the very least unsatisfied if not damaged by the work you're doing; and you've gone and done either you've done nothing with those people and they're completely indifferent to it and they won't remember it in six months time or you've triggered something that needs more help and support further down the line.
Naomi: And also, I'm sitting here thinking about times in my own practice where that has happened and just being aware that it's not always possible to know everything that might trigger someone. Unless you do a comprehensive life history of everyone before they walk into the room, you're never going to know everything. And so it's also about, I guess, having the skills to be able to deal with in a responsible way someone's emotional reaction if they do, find something hard.
Dan: With those groups of veterans, I'm having to say at the start of sessions, I'm not a counsellor, I'm not here to give you counselling, I'm here to help you write. And I think sometimes we are as artists as creative people expected to do all of those other things as well. We're expected to be a bit of a counsellor. We're expected to look after people in lots of different ways. And we can't do all of it. We can't do all of it all the time for everybody.
I think sometimes being experienced enough to stop a conversation and say we're not going to discuss this because it's not something I can help you with, but perhaps you could find or I could help you find some counselling some support some grief counselling or whatever. I think that's quite an important thing is knowing when to stop, knowing where the lines are.
Naomi: Absolutely. That's been brilliant, Dan. Is there anything else that you would like to say about this responsibility?
Dan: It's a complicated subject it's been really good for me seeing your report because it's made me think about some of these things perhaps more than I would have done otherwise. But I think the knowledge and the support is out there. If you're interested or concerned by any of this stuff, come and talk to all of us who've done it before and let's keep the conversation going because it's a difficult thing.
Naomi: Absolutely. Brilliant. Alright, thank you so much for your time today, Dan. I really, really appreciate it. If you're interested in finding out more about Dan's work then please follow the links below this episode. Thanks, Dan.
Dan: Thank you.