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In this episode Naomi talks to Ned Glasier, former CEO and Artistic Director of Company Three about the rights and ethics of making co-created work.
In this discussion about the rights and ethics of co-created work Ned talks about how important that it is given that we are dealing with people’s lives. Plus there is a complicated power dynamic with some people being paid and others not being paid in a lot of co-created work.
Ned believes that the idea of holding an equitable space is at the heart of this work and is an incredibly hard thing to do in the context of a world which is inequitable. For him this is about enabling people to bring their full selves into the room. In every room that he runs, this is talked about. At Company Three there is a weekly meeting where staff can think and talk about how well the company is doing to enable people to bring their full selves into the room. It is a regular item at board meetings and there is a way of reporting anonymously if people feel uncomfortable. For him, the processes that have evolved are rooted in failure and the learning that has come about from that. He talks about living with bullet holes because he has failed and hurt people in the work and having to live with that. The harm never fades. But he believes that he is better at the work as a result of the mistakes that he has made.
When the rights and ethics are taken care of, Ned believes that people feel powerful. He talks about 3 principles; relatedness, competence and autonomy. He gives the example of a 15 year old saying, no, I don’t want to do that and how important it is that the conditions are right to enable this to happen. The rights and ethics are at the bedrock of the work.
Ned talks about the importance of relatedness in working with people’s stories when co-creating theatre. He talks about how important it is that people are fully informed about why they are sharing a story, so that people feel comfortable and confident to do so. It’s important that people know that they can stop. Particularly when stories always involve other people and the sharing of the story will have an impact on others. Part of the ethics of making work is about how care works before, during and after the experience of making the art. For Ned, this forgrounds the importance of long term relationships so that people can process and support people in understanding the long term impact of the work. This includes the possibility of making the play less good because someone changes their mind because they no longer want to say this in front of a group of people that I don’t know and that I do know.
The ethics of this also include looking for what gives people joy rather than what gives them despair. He suggests that you do not attempt to dig too deep when working, for example, with a new group of people over 12 weeks. He doesn’t think it is okay to prioritise the desire for a high risk or edgy show over the experience of the people making it.
Ned talks about the importance of the people who are participating understanding what their rights are and to what extent they can change their minds during the process. He describes the importance of working with people over the long term so that people really understand what the process is about. This includes reminding people constantly that they do not have to go too deep. It includes having regular review points for people to reflect on how the experience of making the show was for them. It’s about the rigour of thinking about the rights for everyone involved in the work.
Ned thinks it’s important to think about the risks involved in the rights and ethics of making this work with the same level of seriousness about thinking about the physical safety risks of the work. He reflects that it is more common for people to get hurt emotionally or psychologically than physically in the work. And yet we don’t include the risks around rights and ethics in the risk assessment for the work.
He talks about the danger of the phrase ‘It’s all their own work’. He describes how this is untrue as it doesn’t acknowledge the input of the professional artist. But in terms of rights and ethics, the professional artist will define the stories that come out of that room. We cannot pretend that the work does not also reflect us when co-creating work. It is allowed to be yours and theirs, that is the beauty of co-creation.
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.
Insta: @naomi.ontheatre
LinkedIn: @naomiontheatre
Ned Glasier is the former CEO and Artistic Director of Company Three. He now works freelance. To find out more about his work visit his website here: http://nedglasier.com/
X: @ned_glasier
Insta: @nedglasier
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.
So welcome Ned Glasier to this episode where we are talking about the responsibility, rights and ethics.
Ned: A big subject.
Naomi: A big subject, yes. So reflecting on this responsibility of the really having a grasp on the rights and ethics involved in co-creative practice, can you tell me why you think this is important for artists who lead co-creative work?
Ned: Because you're working with people's lives, right? Whether those lives are present in the piece of art that you're making. I mean it's important in all work isn't it? Like I mean it's important in co-creative practice particularly, I think, because of the power dynamics involved and the fact that it's the transactions involved in this work are so much more complex and emotional than perhaps professional work. But rights and ethics and responsibilities are important across all art and the creation of all art. And often we've seen moments where artists, producers, administrators, whatever, have struggled to adequately safeguard those rights and ethics in work. Yeah, so it's important in co-creative work, but it's also important generally in the same way. Rights and ethics in the world are important.
But I guess in our particular work, we're microcosming a kind of a dynamic in which we are asking people to bring themselves as people and as often inexperienced artists to the work, and so it feels particularly poignant and important within this work that we pay really really good attention to it.
Naomi: Yes, I agree and the fact that as a professional artist you're getting paid to be there and as non-professional artists they're not being paid to be there there's already that imbalance.
Ned: Yes. I mean automatically there's a power dynamic there which is really complicated, right?
Naomi: Absolutely. So what do you as an individual or what does Company Three do to hold that responsibility?
Ned: I mean hopefully, so many things. I mean at the heart of our practice, and I don't know if it comes here, so I have a question for you really is that equity isn't a responsibility, is it? Am I right in thinking? Like I mean it is a responsibility, but it's not specifically mentioned in your work in terms of being a headline a thing. And I think so maybe it comes under rights and ethics. But that idea of holding an equitable space feels to me to be the heart of this work and particularly of this particular area of responsibility within it. And creating that in a world which is not equitable is one of the hardest things you can do, and we regularly get it wrong, everyone or regularly gets it wrong. I think it's whether you then acknowledge and learn from that, that's really important. And within Company Three, we have a system or a framework which we call social graces, so graces as an acrostic for all the ways that people are different, sometimes called protected characteristics. And as a very baseline of the work, as a very baseline of our work, it feels absolutely essential that everyone is able to the extent that the world allows to bring their full self into the room, because without that, people won't participate in the fullest possible way in the most active possible way in the creation of the work. People might get hurt, yeah, and the power of the work won't speak because people aren't bringing their full identities into the room. And making that happen is an incredibly complicated thing. But yeah, I think it sits at the kind of the very fulcrum of all the work.
Naomi: Yeah, I agree, absolutely.
Ned: So here are some very small practical things we do around that. We talk about it. I think that's the most important thing. In every room in every workshop that we run, we remind people that the graces is a thing, that the difference is a thing, and that part of graces is not about just safeguarding people's rights, it's about celebrating people's identity. We have a weekly meeting in which all staff are present which is an open meeting in, which anyone can bring any concerns or successes around kind of enabling people to bring their full identity into the room. And so all the staff kind of think and talk about that.
We have a code of conduct that operates across the work for everyone working in the company and for our young people, the young people we work with too. We have a way of reporting concerns either anonymously or through kind of the board or through the staff team. It's a regular agendered item in our board meetings. And yeah, I make a habit in every workshop that I run especially with groups of new people and I probably do it too much, but I kind of think if you do it too much, then it makes it more likely to happen of saying how was that last two hours for everyone? Is there anything I did that made you feel uncomfortable? And if there is, here are the ways you can talk about it. We do training. We do research. We think about things. Now none of this is enough because I don't think there isn't enough with it.
And I think perhaps the other most important thing that we do is that when we get it wrong, we look at it and we think about it and we take action around it to make sure that it doesn't happen again. And sometimes that's really difficult work and it's often most difficult always, I think, most difficult for the people whose identities have been some ways or whose ability to be the full self have been some ways compromised by that thing that has gone wrong and so we need to protect and safeguard those people. And those of us, I mean there's kind of a joke that within the company embody loads of the dominant what you might see as the kind of socially more dominant elements of identity, I'm white, I'm male, I'm middle class, I'm heterosexual, I'm cisgendered, like all of these things, and it's on people like me to be doing the work and to ensure that that we're not requiring those who might embody different identities or might identify in different ways to do that work too.
Naomi: So interesting, Ned. And what a range of rigorous processes you have evolved, I guess, over many years of running Company Three.
Ned: Yeah. And I think it's really, really important, I always say this because I even feel a little bit uncomfortable talking about it because I never want to place us as experts in this. We never offer training on this. We only talk about it within ourselves because we know that. And what's really really important to say first and foremost is that it is rooted in failure, like it has all of these processes have come about because we have got it wrong in the past and have had to respond and adapt and make systems and structures that help to unmake the systems that otherwise unmake people. And so it's really important that we never appear like we think we're good at this. I don't think we are. I think we're always learning and it's lifetime work.
Naomi: Yeah. Man, I so relate to everything that you've just said particularly around as always in life the deepest learning coming from the most painful mistakes.
Ned: A lot of our work has been developed with a systemic psychotherapist called Rukia Gemert who continues to be a supervisor for me in this work today. And she once said you have to learn to live with bullet holes to me, and I've carried that. I've got bullet holes and by that, I mean that I have failed and hurt people in the work, and that's not clear-upable. Do you know what I mean? Like scars fade a little bit and the hurt that I have caused in other people will always be present in some way in our relationship. In some ways, that makes the relationship between me and those people who I've hurt more complex and true to who we are and the relationship we've had and more open perhaps, but it doesn't mean that harm ever fades or disappears entirely. And we have to live with that, and we have to draw strength from those things. And I am an infinitely better person in this work because of the mistakes I've made. But the regret I will always carry is that those mistakes caused harm to people.
So yes, for me the rights and ethics of this start with questions of individual identity and the capacity of people to bring their full self to the work and the acknowledgement of power and how we shift that power and think about power in the room in a really explicit and open and honest way.
Naomi: Do you feel like it should be not that it necessarily is, but do you try to create a space where everyone entering the room have the right to be themselves fully?
Ned: Yeah, I mean it's our third rule, so we have three rules at Company Three ‘Be kind! Be brave!. Be yourself!’ I often say that be kind is like a rule, and I'm strict on it. Do you know what I mean? If someone isn't being kind, then we'll really deal with that thing. Be brave as an invitation. No one has to be brave in the room, but it's an invitation and the kindness hopefully helps you meet that invitation. But be yourself as a promise and that promise is from me that I will do everything I can individually and organizationally to make sure that you can be the fullest version of yourself in the room. And that's a recognition that the structures, the systems, the modes, the culture of the organization and the individual leader should all be set up to enable that first and foremost.
Naomi: Brilliant. What happens, do you think, when you get it right, when the rights and the ethics of the co-creative process is held effectively by the artist or the organization?
Ned: I think people feel powerful, like they can make change. We do a lot of work around self-determination theory. And which you can look up and read about, it's the kind of psychological theory, it’s human motivation and there are three conditions that scientists psychologists have discovered help people feel more like they're in control of their lives, and they are relatedness. Now relatedness only really comes when you feel like you can be your full self. And relatedness doesn't mean homogenizing people. It means celebrating difference and understanding difference for me, and then forming links through that. There's relatedness. There's competence, feeling like you're good at things, often neglected in co-creative work. And there's autonomy, and autonomy is permission to kind of do things in your own way, right or to kind of try something that you might otherwise not do because it's not cool. Or the fact that I mean, I really remember there's she won't mind me mentioning her name, I don't think, I'll check with her.
There's a person I used to work with who is called Nesima and she now works for the Bush Theatre, is that she's done so brilliantly as their marketing and development assistant. And I really really remember in a workshop I once said to her Nesima, I've got this thought for what you might do and I kind of laid out this task for her. And she said I don't want to do that, Ned. And she's a 15 year old. And I just thought there was so much power in that ability of that young person to say no I don't want to do something to like a leader of the organization. And I think when we get it right, people take autonomy and have agency and then they go off on these wild flights of like creative fantasy and they make beautiful work and they express themselves in the most wonderful way. And so ultimately, all of the stuff around rights and ethics is for me the bedrock of the work. If it's not in place, the work can't grow. And if it does grow from shaky ground, then it's unstable and potentially dangerous. And so we have to pay attention to this. You know, the longer you do this, I think, the more you pay attention to it in the room and the more you're aware of how important it is.
Naomi: Just thinking about that a bit deeper, what do you think are the challenges with holding this responsibility? And I wonder if I can steer you to thinking a little bit perhaps around the use of personal stories because that came up quite a lot in the research and I know that that's something that you have worked with not exclusively, but you have done work around people's stories in your work. What are the challenges around the rights and ethics of working with people's stories?
Ned: I mean I think one of the beautiful things about theatre is that it's made in a certain point in time and it exists solely unless you record it in that point of time. I've been reflecting that working with teenagers that's particularly good because I think teenagers are in such a hugely transitional and fast-paced point of their life that the thing they say today is not necessarily the thing they want to be known for or say next year or even in a month. And I think that's one of the responsibilities around thinking about stories, is that I mean the first and the most important thing is relatedness, isn't it?
Like if we're going to make work that uses, and I use that word carefully ‘uses’, that we have to be careful, it's using that involves or incorporates people's stories, we have to know that they feel fully comfortable with understanding what that means to put that in front of an audience, that they feel comfortable in the first place to say it in the room. And we've had another conversation around openness, and there's sufficient openness in the room for them to know that they're not expected to tell a story, that the space is open there for them to tell a story that they really want to tell. For me, there's kind of layers and layers and layers of this which is about setting up the room right so that people feel confident to tell their story, making sure people are really, really aware that they can stop, that they don't have to with young people involving parents at certain points.
Someone said this to me the other day and it felt really important; stories are never just your story. There's always someone else in your story or there's always someone who is connected to you who will be reflected or refracted in some way through the story you tell. So it's also I think about having a really wide view of people and understanding the wider impact of the story they tell on the people they work with. I was talking to someone the other day who was working with an adult who was telling a quite personal and meaningful story and they felt really confident in her capacity to tell that story. But it was only when her husband walked in to see the show that they acknowledged they went oh gosh, he's part of that story and he's coming to see it and is that okay too.
For us, I think the absolute crucial element of our work is long-term engagement with people, long-term relationships. So part of the ethics of making this work well is understanding about how care works before during and after the process of making a piece of art. So many projects get to the show and then they have a little party afterwards and then everyone disappears. But the impact of putting something on stage particularly when you've never been on stage before and this is your first kind of acknowledgement of what it means to stand in front of a group of people and say something whether it's about yourself or of yourself, like whether it's fictional or fact, it doesn't matter I don't think, but you only really understand that once you've done it.
And so to then have the aftercare in place to help people process that and celebrate that and understand what that means for them, that feels really and for you as an artist and an organization to learn from them, from that process too, that feels really important. But also to be humble to take equality that we've spoken about enough to allow someone the space at the very last moment say I don't want to say that anymore and to change your play because of it and to make your play less good because of it, that feels really important too. And I think it's really important just to have real process in this, to have moments of opportunity for young people or participants or whoever you're working with to review the script with a specific lens of comfort, with a specific lens of am I comfortable saying this in front of a group of people I don't know and who I do know, that feels really important. I also think having a rule that we never go too deep in work.
I think another rule that I found really useful it's kind of a semi-rule, I suppose, is also to always look for joy rather than despair in the work. I think you learn as much about people through what gives them joy and makes them happy as you do from what makes them sad or what's difficult about their life. That feels like a really important thing. And to know your limits, to know your limits in terms of if you're in a 12-week process with a group you've never met before, my suggestion is to you is that you can't dig too deep. You're not allowed to because you don't know them well enough. But often I think in our industry, we place a certain pressure on artists leading short-term inverted commas co-creation projects to make something that's a bit risky or exciting or that really draws on the lives of the people who are involved in that thing, and I don't think that's right. I don't think it's okay.
And so that's a point where perhaps sometimes in the discussion of rights and ethics in this work, sometimes we need to say let's just not do it, we can't do that, that's not possible, and to always have that button available for everyone in the room. I mean, we don't do this. But like sometimes I think it's really worth having literally a button in the middle of the room that's like a big stop button because you're physically embodying an idea of agency control over the work.
Naomi: Yeah. And the ethical responsibility of, I couldn't agree with you more about always looking for joy and not despair and just the ethical responsibility that the artist holds in that moment if they are digging too deep with a group that they don't know very well.
Ned: And the idea of digging I heard someone use the word harvesting the other day, and it made me feel a bit sick.
Naomi: So extractive.
Ned: I know it's so awful. And again, I think you know we've had another conversation around openness and humility and I think there's a real connection between this which is the thing you want to do might not be the thing that the people you're working with want to do and so you have to reconcile those things and that reconciliation might mean that you don't get to do the thing you want to do.
Naomi: Which is really important, isn't it, because it comes back to that issue of power and there ultimately...
Ned: Yeah, I mean all of this is about power, right?
Naomi: Yeah, the power has to be in the hands of the people that you're co-creating with to make their own rules about what they are and are not comfortable doing.
Ned: And for those rules to change sometimes.
Naomi: Yeah.
Ned: And sometimes one day I'm really happy to tell the quite sad story of this thing that's happened to me, and actually two weeks later I really don't want to tell that. And finding creative and artistic ways that we might otherwise enable people to express things in safe ways like we're artists, right, like metaphor exists, like movement exists, like there are ways that, as you say, we don't have to be extractive but we can allow people to express themselves without fully exposing themselves.
There’s a beautiful moment in a play that Company Three just made that Nuna who was about to become our new artistic director when I stepped down in a month's time or maybe by the time people listen to this I have stepped down, and she is the artistic director. There's a young person young adult now called Kezia who for a section of that show just dances and it's enough, it's everything. And for me, it's one of the most meaningful and powerful moments of that show and she barely says a word.
Naomi: Yeah. I mean just really, really powerful and presumably she was fully in control of that decision to dance.
Ned: Yeah, it was her. I mean it's what she wanted to do and it worked.
Naomi: Yeah. There's been so much really rich stuff in what you've said, Ned. And one of the things that I wanted to just pick up on and pull out tease out a little bit is, my understanding is what you've said, is you've talked about the importance of the people that you're co-creating with understanding what their rights are and understanding before during and after the process of co-creating what rights they have to participate fully, not fully, to fully jump in, to withdraw slightly, to change their mind. You also talked about having aftercare in place after the impact of being on stage. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about those two things: what you understand, what you do in order to enable young people to understand their rights and just about the ethics of care as well in terms of how your responsibility to really take care of people after the work? Could you just talk about those two things briefly?
Ned: Yeah, I mean there's an easy answer to both of it and it won't be applicable to every project. But for us, the mechanism for both of those things is long-term work. It's a long-term relationship with the people we work with. And so by working long term, what you achieve is a more advanced and holistic understanding within the young people that you're working with or the people that you're working with of the processes that you are going through. It means you can start gently. It means it gives people chance to understand what it means to stand on stage before they necessarily put the whole self on stage. It means that when you do a project and someone does something that feels emotionally big for them, it means that you've got years afterwards to check in and think about that, and for them to respond artistically and personally to that thing that they did.
And there are things I think you can put in place in terms of one really important thing that we do is that we train young people in the process of play making. We help them understand what it means to make a play so that they can participate within it alongside the leaders of that process on a more equitable and equal basis. And what that does is they can see the mechanics that go into creating the play and they can be more participative in it and have greater agency in it. So doing that, I think, feels really important. I mean for me, a lot of the time it's just reminding people. Everyone like we're going to think about this particular moment in our lives right now, I'm just reminding you that I don't want you to go into anywhere that feels too deep. I don't want you to bring something that you don't feel comfortable sharing with the room. It's about making the room feel like it's a really safe space for people to bring that kind of storytelling as and when they want to. It's about having specific review points after shows where you sit down and go how was that for you?
So for example, when #blackis was made by Nuna in September of 2023, that work grew out of a space that she made called Black is Safe that was a safe space for black young people to speak without filter about their experience of the world and of growing up in London. And that group continued after the show. And so there was a defined space for those young people to both reflect on the show but also to move their conversation on beyond it to think about new things that emerged in and that they wanted to talk about as well. Again, it's rigour, isn't it, and I'm very cautious about saying that we do enough because I don't think it's ever possible to do enough, but really thinking about the rights of the young people or the participants or whatever you're calling them, the non-professional participants in your work and the professional ones like you know it's important for everyone as a kind of absolute foundation. And if that foundation goes, the rest of the work goes. You can't do it.
Naomi: So what are the risks then if you don't hold the rights and the ethics of everyone involved in a co-creative process, if you don't hold that responsibility effectively, what are the risks involved do you think?
Ned: I think it's really useful to think about risks around this in the same level of importance that we think about physical safety. And I think if we did that more, harm would happen less. Because it is rare, isn't it, that in our work people get seriously hurt physically. It's rare in theatre generally that people get moderately or seriously hurt. In fact, it's rather they get even slightly hurt physically. But it is not rare and taking this as a broad thing, that when talking about rights and ethics, it's not rare that people get slightly moderately or seriously hurt. And so it's not a direct answer to your question. But in some ways, I think it's useful.
Naomi: It's really useful. Because it means, for example, if you're doing a risk assessment, I haven't put this into a risk assessment and I'm just thinking why not?
Ned: No, exactly.
Naomi: You're right. I put the risk of someone falling off a table, but I don't put the risk of an artist asking a question that actually is just too deep, it's too raw. It's not been enough thinking or planning or preparation to ensure that as far as possible there is safety in the room. I don't think you can ever guarantee there's safety in the room. But that's another conversation.
Ned: No, in the same way that you can't physically, either like something might fall off the ceiling that you didn't know was going to fall off the ceiling. But if, for example, someone was regularly coming into the room and getting a very small electric shock from something that you'd left out, not so small that it's prevented them coming into the room each time but was uncomfortable and over time actually more and more uncomfortable, you'd probably get rid of the thing that was causing the electric shock, right? But in so many rooms if you're walking in and your whatever cultural need isn't being met, that might equate to the same level of discomfort or there's a microaggression that happens on a regular basis. But often we are less competent and deliberate about getting rid of that thing.
And I guess what I'm saying is that the risks of not attending to these things are equivalent to the risks of physical harm. They are mentally harming to people. Like without even beginning to think about the impact that that might have on the dynamics of the group of the process of playmaking of that whatever, all those things are peripheral for me. What I'm acknowledging here is the pain to the person primarily. And we need to think about it in those terms, I think, the lack of power, the microaggression, the moment where you feel where oppression happens in the room or where you feel that you can't be your full self, all of these things are examples of pain of some degree greater or lesser, and we should attend to them, I think, in the same way that we do for physical pain.
Naomi: I totally agree with you. And I think it sounds to me like at Company Three you have found a way of having what I imagine can be quite difficult conversations for everyone involved. And there's something about fixing a broken electrical socket involves someone who understands about electrics coming in and fixing it, right? But this stuff is about what it is to be human and what it is to be fully vulnerable and open and actually talk about what's really going on. And that's hard. And not everyone has the skills to do that. And so again, I guess that comes to the responsibility of the ethics of being able to hold that space where people can have those conversations in a way that feels okay to them.
Ned: Yeah. And I think it's really important just to be really clear in talking about making, like I'm very cautious and very cautious, particularly in like work around equity of making comparisons between things because everything is different. I think it's really important to say that the pain of, for example, discrimination is not the same as physical pain. But I am saying like the level of importance that we place on it might, like thinking about ensuring that our processes place them at like the same or even greater levels of importance than kind of the physical harm like feels a valuable thing that we might do.
Naomi: Really valuable, thank you. We're coming to the end of this podcast, Ned. Is there anything else you would like to say about this responsibility of rights and ethics in co-created practice?
Ned: Yeah, there is one thing or maybe two things. I often hear in artists who lead co-creation practice, them say something which I think is dangerous and I think it relates to rights and ethics. And that is, it's all their own work. And in this sentence, there is the participants that they're working with, the people that they're working with, the non-professional performers or makers. And I think it's really dangerous because one, it's untrue, because it's not. As an artist, you have brought people together. You have used your artistry and your craft and your experience to create something with them together.
And so it's dangerous in terms of like not acknowledging your own, the importance of the artist in that space and the create, like, you know. And by doing that, I think in some ways, also, you create an environment in which you don't adequately develop yourself, in which you don't train properly, in which you don't give yourself the time to like properly plan it. Like we have to pay attention to ourselves because we are important in that room. But the bigger danger in terms of rights and ethics for me is that it is absolutely clear to me that the artist who leads a process will define either deliberately or unconsciously the stories that are told by people within it. And to acknowledge that, I think, is really important. It doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means it's important that you know that your place in that room has defined the things that have come out of it. And that feels to me like genuine collaboration rather than pretending that this group of people have kind of come to a certain point entirely independently of you. I have definitely done this.
But I often think we say, oh, it's all about them, it's all their own work, it's nothing to do with me because we're excusing the work because we're scared to be seen as part of it. But we are part of it. And I think a fundamental part of the ethics of making this is acknowledging it as genuine collaboration rather than pretending you're facilitating a load of people who would do it otherwise if you weren't there in the room. And I think that also relates to the ownership of work, which is a subject within this as well. It's allowed to be yours and theirs. And that's a beautiful thing. When I work with a group of young people, like the work comes from a space between us and is impacted by all of us. And I love that about my work. It is my work and it is my work and their work and our work all together. And to pretend anything different is completely disingenuous and weird, but on a more positive way, it's also what a beautiful thing to acknowledge and to understand.
Naomi: Yeah, absolutely. Because ultimately that's what we're talking about, right, in terms of the magic of co-creation is that it is the thing that evolves. It's completely unknown at the start of the process if you're doing it right. And it's the magic that evolves in the in-between. So just reflecting on the responsibilities that emerged in the research, do you think there's anything missing?
Ned: I think I would like equity to have its own title.
Naomi: Yeah, I think you're right.
Ned: I think it is incumbent in safety, I mean, just reading down your list, in safeguarding, in accountability, in rights and ethics, in knowing your limits. But I think either needs to be explicit in every one, or it needs to be the thing that starts it all. And maybe it needs to sit above all of this. I don't know. But in some ways I think without it, we can't do anything. And I don't mean without pure equity. I mean, good Lord, can you imagine like... But what I mean is without it being a fundamental foundation for all of this work, without it being tended in every moment, then there's a real danger in the work, I think. And I haven't actually searched through.
Naomi: I think we need to do some more research.
Ned: Yeah, I mean, I would be really interested because I think people are scared of it and scared of defining it instead of thinking about it and scared of operating it in the room because it's full of complications and the potential for harm even in the discussion of it. But if we don't do it, then all we do is just embed it in a systemic way that is embedded throughout the rest of society and our industry and systems.
Naomi: Yeah, great. Thank you so much for your time today, Ned. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. If anyone listening would like to find out more about Ned's work and the work of Company Three, the links to those websites will be just below this podcast. Thanks, Ned.
Ned: Thank you.