Words by Kate DeRight, Creative Director
At Spectra, we seem to have grown a habit of nourishing ourselves in January for the year ahead. We keep warm through laughter and hot drinks after fresh walks in the wintry woods. We build up heat as we play, talk and work through ideas. We stick out our elbows when busy-ness starts eating away at our rest.
Sometimes the world seems to put things in your path over and over, urging you to think on an idea. This winter, that thing in my path has been why: Why do we do what we do? The first nudge was in December, when I had the privilege of going on an amazing arts leaders’ residency run by Improbable. Amidst a world of learning, there was a resounding reminder to hold why I do things present everyday.
Hayley, our Creative Lead, and I ran a new training session called ‘Kickstart Your Creative Project’ in mid-January. It was an inclusive opportunity for people to gain clarity and make plans about running their own creative projects. As had been shared with me, I shared Simon Sineh’s Golden Circle with that group: it has Why you do things at the centre, which leads to How you do things, which then leads to What you do.
As we looked at how two projects had developed to get some insight into that process, I shared my why for starting Spectra: I believe that art creates social change and, as an artist, it is my most powerful tool for bringing about the change I want to see. Spectra’s recent 10 year anniversary and sessions like this training have gifted me the chance to reflect on how Spectra has grown from an idea to an organisation and I believe the primary reason is because our why is so clear and central for us.
I attended the More Than a Moment Summit recently. I am always fired up and inspired by these days, which are focussed on active anti-racist practice and change that will enable global majority creatives to thrive. The keynote speakers and panellists were compelling and knowledgeable. One, who spoke wisely about using data to speak to the system in the language it already knows, said something I was at odds with: she isn’t comfortable with the idea of dismantling the system because there’s no clear plan of what will take its place. She prefers to focus on small changes to the existing system.
As I listened to her, I wrote in my notebook, ‘But it’s my job as an artist to blow sh*t up and spark dreams that lead to new solutions. To hold space for chaos and the wisdom that springs from it.’
The amazing Selina Thompson spoke in the afternoon on the theme of disability justice. She spoke to the heart of what Spectra aspires to do: our Why. As well as refusing to settle for piecemeal changes to the current system, she talked about how disability justice is messy, noisy, full of emotion, chaotic, can look like failure in our current system – and feels like unbounded love. She said ‘my heart felt like a bird in my chest’ when she was in a room where everybody could unmask together.
Doing things differently, creating new systems, might appear messy to an eye that is accustomed to order. But isn’t order as we know it the problem? Isn’t wanting a new order immediately and without mess a way of clinging to the way things are and always have been? Isn’t this fear of leaping into the unknown what excludes people and keeps power safe for those who already have it – for those with able bodies, typical brains, cis-genders, heterosexuality, whiteness and wealth? Just because it looks like a mess doesn’t mean it hasn’t got structure or wisdom – and it might just look like failure because the goalposts for success are on a completely different playing field.
It’s a funny thing I wrote: holding space for chaos. Chaos is wild and refuses to be held! But I see it in our practice, in quiet leadership whose discipline is opening space and time for different bodies and voices and sharing in the delight at the beautiful noise that makes. I see it in our devising, when we hold off pressure to make decisions for longer than any of the production team thinks sensible just to give those wild ideas a few more moments to be released. In somewhat belligerently telling funders we can’t say exactly what the thing we’ll make will be, that what we’re asking for is money to kickstart chaos and see what beauty that produces. I see it in how we approach challenges, breathing and grounding into the knottiness together. In everybody needing different things, someone needing it loud, someone needing it quiet and nothing is exactly right but we’re all crying with laughter because we’re making music with the creaky floorboards. This is when I feel the little bird in my chest.
So our Why is clear and steady: we are creating the change we want to see. Our How evolves and changes as we learn. This year, we are inciting more messiness into our How; shifting fear out of the way and making noisy mistakes and feeling big passions and resting even before the thing is done. Embracing the chaos with love unbounded and letting it come to life.
You coming?