Category: ARTFUL LEADERSHIP
ARTFUL, ATYPICAL & AGILE: Here are my sketches since 2019 of the creative, critical paradigm of ‘artful leadership’: artful ways forward led by (neurodivergent) artists embedded within socio-political structures and multidisciplinary teams to catalyse change, amid a VUCA world. This is also a call for a more inclusive and imaginative ecosystem.
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YOU ARE INVITED to an animated evening that shares insights into the making of the book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation by artist-agitator-advisor Kai Syng Tan at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, UK. Drawing on the big-picture thinking and risk-taking approach of neuro-divergence, the book introduces ‘neuro-futurism’ as a toolkit, to re-claim ways to think about and do ‘leadership’ as a diversified, beyond-colonial, neuro-queered and (co-)creative change- and future-making practice.
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This is a reflection about a 12-point manifesto for the future. Co-authored by three members of the Neurodiversity In/and Creative Research Network, it argues for a decolonised ‘Creative Neurodiversity Studies’ that (re-)centres ‘neurodiasporic subjectivities’ and ‘(in)formal education’, and makes a contribution to epistemic and social justice, creative research and more.
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In the final of the 2024 run of Material Interests, we welcomed award-winning filmmaker Nausheen Khan from India. This session was critical to learn more about ways to decolonise the curriculum and the role of arts and cultural leadership to catalyse change through counter-hegemonic strategies in the face of Islamophobia, threats to human rights and democracy, and misogyny not just in the Global South but beyond, and from the perspective of a courageous young feminist filmmaker.
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The last PhD I examined — and passed — involved a hike up a hill — during winter — which included performances in-situ (plus sweat, panting and cursing on the part of examiners). The hike was part of a submission which had a written component in the form of a film script, for a doctoral degree undertaken at a School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies of a Russell Group University. If this sound like your cup of bubble tea, get in touch to work with me on your doctoral research at the University of Southampton.
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There is a new feature Making the Invisible Visible: Embracing Neurodivergent Perspectives through Art on the Guggenheim Museum website by Shanley Chien Pierce, published 8th December. This story explores the ‘Model Minority Myth’ and East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) communities, where conformity is key and strict codes are adhered to.
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I was juror for the prestigious Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF)’s New Asian Currents in Japan. There will also be a showcase for my films, during which I will show How to Thrive in 2050 (2021, commissioned for BBC Culture in Quarantine) and Chlorine Addiction (2000, which was at the NAC in 2001 too, as well as multiple international showcases including Transmediale 2001).
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I am delighted to have signed a contract in February 2023 with World Scientific (a leading academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals with partnerships with Nobel Foundation and Imperial College Press) to publish a full-length monograph (70,000 words, 12 chapters, 14 colour plates) of the same title as this website, for circulation circa Q1 2025.
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I have been awarded the Principal Fellowship of Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) by Advance HE in December 2022. The highest of the HEA fellowships, PFHEAs are awarded to professionals with sustained records of effective strategic leadership in academic practice and academic development as a key contribution to high quality student learning
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The new Creative Arts Leadership MA course, for which I am Programme Lead, is an innovative, radical trans-disciplinary programme that creatively interrogates and explores new, diversified models of ‘leadership’. Curated by UK’s oldest comprehensive art school, and co-delivered with the triple-accredited Business School, the MA scopes, maps, and enacts the possibilities of a more equitable creative leadership praxis.
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This new short film was created at the invitation of a design pedagogy event by European consortium FUEL4Design: Future Education and Literacy for Designers as International Respondent. A performance-lecture version was created as Keynote Lecturer for Deep Meaningful Conversations of the Design Management course, London College of Communication, University Arts London.
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I was Co-Researcher and Mentor in the Social Art For Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (SAFEDI, 02/2021-04/2022), an AHRC EDI Fellowship (PI: Professor Amanda Ravetz,£100,609) led by Manchester Metropolitan University, Social Art Network, & Axis, working with social artists, marginalised communities and policy makers around the UK to rethink what inclusion in the arts means. A legacy of SAFEDI is the research network Social Art Inclusion Lab (SAIL), which I am a founding member of.
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The success of others is both a duty and reflection of my own progress. Through co-creative engagement with diverse stakeholders and ‘students’ from within and beyond HE, via inclusive scholarly projects and communities, the potential for culture change and necessary attitudinal shifts to improve HE can grow exponentially. 03/2022 saw several positive outcomes.
UPDATE: As of 08 March 2022, I have resigned from the board, although my support for the Director and Fermynwoods remain. Another role I have previously resigned from was as Research Fellow from Leeds Arts University. Watch this space for a future post on walking out (why, when, where to draw the line, and what some of the lines are).
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What would a neurodiversity-led reality look like? My installation and performance at the Attenborough Arts Centre in the exhibition The World is A Work In Progress (curated by Rachel Graves, 25 September 2021 – 16 January 2022) in Leicester, UK proposes that art and neuro-inclusion are key in creating bold visions of how things can be better, and that each of us can play an active part in that process.
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Instead of OBE/MBE/CBE, we’ll have NDE (NeuroDiversity medal of Excellence). Universities will finally stop failing or boring people, offering interdisciplinary MASc and PhDs. ‘Neurodiversity’ will also become truly diversified. We’ll then run around with tentacles on our heads. New performance-lecture at Royal Society of Arts attended by 130 people.
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Since 2019, I have been thinking about ‘Artful Leadership’: thinking, making, organising and being in ways that are artful, agile and atypical. This is about leading within, as well as beyond the arts/cultural realms, by which I refer to being embedded within the socio-political structures, to effect cultural, social and systemic change.
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It’s not business as usual anymore. Instead, it’s time to lead, creatively. Redacted sketch of how I envisage a new creative arts leadership MA/MFA programme, which proposes ‘creative arts leadership’ as an interdisciplinary creative research and practice paradigm is curated through an art school ethos, and situated as extension of art intervention, social practice, seeking to catalyse and make change, in an Industry 4.0 and VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) contexts.
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Seeking collaborators/sponsors: I aim to curate a residency-cum-collaboration programme that will lead to an exhibition asking, ‘What Could A Neurodiversity-led 2050 Look Like?’ I want to matchmake unlikely pairs of neurodiverse artists and designers with scientists and technologists, and choreograph ways for them to work collaboratively towards the co-creation of new pilots and prototypes of apps, objects or experiences.
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1) WE MUST STEP UP OUR GAME 2) LET’S BECOME CRITICAL FRIENDS 3) LET’S CREATE PRODUCTIVE ANTAGONISMS 4) LET’S PLAY 5) LET’S BE ILL-DISCIPLINED 6) LET’S STEP OUT OF SILOS & EMBRACE A 360-DEGREE VANTAGE POINT 7) LET’S STEP OUT OF COMFORT ZONES 8) LET’S STEP INTO UNKNOWN TOGETHER 9) LET’S EMBRACE ERRORS 10) WE’RE STRONGER TOGETHER
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I. Step Up the Game II. Step into the Unknown III. Step Away from Comfort Zones IV. Embrace Errors V. Take Risks VI. Play VII. Change Culture VIII. Break Locks and Challenge Gatekeepers IX. Be Athletic X. Be a Running Post(hu)man XI. Be Promiscuous XII. Not All Dead White Men XIII. Be Ill-Disciplined XIV. Embrace Athletes of Creativity XV. Be Happy With The Unfinished
Book chapters and journal articles RUN is this now stub?? monster LADA transfers 8) Running Artfully Across Disciplines (23/3/2020 Workshop for medical from St Georges Hospital and medical…