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To know an appropriate amount about who you are working with: Responsibilities of artists
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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.
X: https://twitter.com/naomi_ontheatre
IG: https://www.instagram.com/naomi.ontheatre/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomiontheatre/
Dan Thompson is a Freelance Artist. You can find out more about his work here.
X: https://twitter.com/artistsmakers
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