‘I’m Just A Mouse‘ is a downloadable book to go with our production of ‘If I Was A Mouse I Would Hide In Your Hood‘. The words are by me and the pictures are by Helen Nunn.
Enjoy.
And if get a sec let us know what you think.
Download the Artist as Leader Research by Professor Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle.
Just under a month to the start of rehearsal of ‘Hannah and Harvey’. Eek. The draft of the script for the start of rehearsal is nearly ready, artwork is coming in for the projections, welding and hammering is about to start on the set, music has been written and more auditory magic is on its way. I love this moment on any show. I’ve always maintained to students that in the course of creativity decisions are as important, if not more important, than ideas. Ideas are two-a-penny to the artist – it’s what you do with them that matters. And now is the time for many, many, decisions.
The really great thing at this very moment is that I’ve just seen who Hannah is. It’s that realisation of seeing a character taking life and coming off the page. My hope is that there is enough space for Katherine, the director, and Romana, that actor, to create a ‘Hannah’ of their own and I don’t think the words are too prescriptive. But she also has a strength and identity of her own.
Back to work. Things to do.
P.S. Have a look at the video trailer. It’s brilliant! -
I’ve been working with a group of students at Williamwood High School on the history of slavery in Scotland using photography. The students took photographs at Greenbank House in East Renfrewshire and at what is now the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, but what was once the mansion of one of the tobacco barons who supported the slave trade. These photographs were then combined with archive drawings and etchings from the slave trade era.
The object of the project was to put back the history of the slave trade at the locations where it should be most felt – at the historic homes of those who became wealthy at the cost of immense suffering.
A small selection of the incredible work done by the students is below. I am now continuing with the project to organise an exhibition and launch event at the Eastwood Park Theatre in East Renfrewshire for September 2008.
The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
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In January 2008 I was one of the two directors of the first ‘Artist as Leader’ Lab. The project has been running for a couple of years, produced by the Cultural Enterprise Office, PAL (Performing Arts Laboratory) and On The Edge (Robert Gordon University Aberdeen) and in association with The Scottish Leadership Foundation. It is an examination of how artists can lead ‘through their practice’, and by that I mean their art or the process of making their art. And by that I mean artists just being artists and nothing else. This is a potentially complex idea that when discussed always raises questions of the identity of art, artists and leadership. However, whenever I talk about it to anyone there is always a great deal of interest in the subject – followed by the question of whether artists can or should be leaders. Ultimately, I think, it is about the value of art and artists in the communities and society in which we live.
So, in January we had a ‘lab’ where we brought together some leaders of cultural organisations and some artists to explore the idea using their own challenges and goals as fuel.
Participants were:
Roanne Dods (Director Jerwood Foundation)
Matt Hulse (Film-maker)
Jackie Kay (Poet)
Kirsten Lloyd (Curator, Programme Director Stills Gallery Edinburgh)
James Marriot (Sculptor, Eco-Artist, Activist)
Lucy Mason (Scottish Government)
Janice Parker (Choreographer)
Gill Robertson (Artistic Director Catherine Wheels Theatre Company)
Angela Saunders (Scottish Government)
Andrew Senior (British Council)
Jim Tough (Chief Executive Scottish Arts Council)
John Wallace (Director Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama)
And some visitors or ‘provocateurs’:
Bob Last (film producer)
Graham Leicester (International Futures Forum)
Francis McKee (curator, writer and Director Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow)
Philip Schlesinger (Glasgow University) and
Tom Shakespeare (sociologist, writer, artist)
My Co-Director in the project is Professor Anne Douglas from On The Edge. Also at the lab were Deborah Keogh (CEO), Susan Benn (PAL) and Zoe Van Zwanenberg (SLF).
The lab dealt with cultural leadership and, at the start at least, with policy level leadership. By all of us flexing our own challenges, but maintaining a positive environment for finding solutions, we leapt straight into an arena where a great deal was built very quickly. Big ideas were born and resolutions were made for those ideas to be pursued and developed.
In June the lab participants will meet again to see where the ideas have gone and matured. We will also be developing the central principles of ‘leading through practice’ and ‘artistic leadership’.
When I am applying myself to these principles I inevitably carry a very wide model of leadership that extends from influencing through ideas via team/transferable power models to charismatic front-line leadership. By applying this spectrum of leadership models it is easier to encompass the many and different ways in which art can become part of a process of change, perhaps even not under the control or assertion of the artist. An important, and practical, example for this is how this thinking may influence the inclusion of artists in community or government consultations through their art. My experience is that the most interesting material for a consultation process may well come from the artists who are not pushing themselves forward as advocates of change but who create work they can only see as personal.
There is a great danger with this work that it can lead into justifying the notion that artists have a different way of doing things derived from some special powers or ‘guru’ potential. I have a reticence in believing that artists have any special qualities to bring
to leadership that cannot be found elsewhere. However I do think there is a great potential for organisations and government to engage with art and artists in a different way and there is a great deal for the artists to gain in the process.
One word about the venue for the lab – Hospitalfields Residential Arts Centre in Arbroath. What a fantastic place! Set in a bit of woodland with the sea visible through the trees, a rambling house with places to meet and places to hide. It couldn’t have been better. The picture is of the lab participants doing a litter collection around the woodland at the end of the week.
I will write more here about the ‘Artist as Leader’ work as it progresses and develops.
From January to June 2007 I was resident at the Mearns Castle High School, East Renfrewshire, joined in March by Katherine Morley. We ran workshops with a group of 13 year-olds to research the heritage of the area and create a permanent installation for the entrance foyer of the school. The final installation was unveiled on 3 September 2007.
Each of the small boxes was the work of a pair or an individual student. They were compositions of new and archive photographs and text. The text varied from new writing to words from research, Victorian poetry to newspaper reports. The text became part of the graphic composition.
The big box is an imaginary meeting of figures found in the local library archive together with students and teachers from Mearns Castle High School and the primary schools that feed it. The landscape they are standing in is the view from the entrance of the school.
