Tag: artful leadership
Here are my sketches since 2019 of the creative paradigm of ‘artful leadership’: artful ways forward led by (neurodivergent) artists embedded within socio-political structures and multidisciplinary teams to catalyse change. This is also a call for a more inclusive and imaginative ecosystem.
Join me on my forthcoming book tour in Helsinki, Singapore, London, Manchester and online.
My op-ed ‘What’s Love Got to Do with Neurodiversity and HE Art and Design? discusses the intersection of neurodiversity, the role of higher education art and design to counter the populist, love-less stormy reality today.
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.
Love and leadership meets ethics meet counter-mapping meets finding /forming new alliances meets a re-imagination of my new home. FAB PALS is a new project I am leading, commissioned by Social Practice Lab by invitation, and funded by the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.
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.
The following is a version of what I first published on Valentines Day on Instagram. It is a further example from my call for those in Higher Education and beyond to centre love in what / how we do, as shared in my recent op-eds.
In this op-ed published for the Valentine’s season on the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) blog, I am looking for and locating concepts and actions around a four-letter word – love.
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).
When I was asked to appear on BBC World Service to discuss women and ADHD with Kim Chakanetsa, I said yes. After all, the show’s good enough for Olympian & powerhouse (and ADHD-er) Simone Biles. When asked whom I’d like to chat with, I named my friend Dr. Jane Sedgwick-Müller. Listen in on our lively discussion 2nd October 2023.
I enjoy playing with words and the written language as creative material. However, certain ‘standard’ approaches can present difficulty. Being dyslexic, academic writing and reading aren’t my mother tongue. I am thus delighted to have signed not one but three book contracts recently. The books are distinct in their tone, case studies and reach, but also, interrelated. They will reach the world from 2024.
I’ve migrated back down south — quiet south. I’m thrilled to share that since July 2023, I’ve become Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership at University of Southampton’s Winchester School of Art.
Gallery of commissioners, clients, groups, media & organisations in & beyond research, HE, creative & cultural sectors, governmental departments & more that I’ve worked with, in Iceland, Ireland, Tokyo, NY, London, Dumaguete, Singapore & more.
Introducing the Ill-Disciplined Hyperactive Tentacular Productive Antagonist Octopussy Dr Kai Syng Tan FRSA SFHEA.
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.
I am delighted to have signed a contract with Taylor and Francis in January 2023 as Co-Editor for a new edited collection, A Handbook of Neurodiversity and Creative Research (circa Q1 2025), after being approached by the commissioning editors of Routledge.
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
This op-ed for The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE, 16 Nov 2022) outlines an inclusive and heuristic (co-) creative teaching/learning praxis that I term ‘tentacular pedagogy’ (TP), that aims to make creative arts in Higher Education more inclusive and socially-engaged, and for CA-HE to play a more (pro-)active leadership role within HE and beyond in nurturing a more creative and compassionate future, amid the perma- and omni-crises within UK HE and beyond.
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.
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.
My new, not very good article ‘The Artful Agile Atypical Octopussy’ is live in the peer-reviewed Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, On (Un)Knowns, 03 March 2022. This was one of 30 selected articles out of 160 proposals, and one of two that are in full colour.
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).
Click here to read my invited commentary, ‘Art and psychiatry in the 21st century: here’s to more messy – and magical – entanglements’ on the British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin (Cambridge University, open access), in its new the new culture section, Cultural Reflections.
What should art schools change, so that we can lead change and thrive in, with and for the next generation? Since you asked me, I’ll recommend growing tentacles. This is my new keynote for Network for higher arts education with >300,000 members in 282 institutions in Europe, N and S Americas, and AustralAsia.
What can ‘Neurodivergent Leadership’ look like? A 15-month creative practice-led research project. Get in touch now to support/collaborate!
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.
Summary some of my ongoing efforts in anti-racism and Black Lives Matter in collaboration with the outstanding Professor Ola Uduku (University of Liverpool Head of Architecture) in Manchester and the Northwest region and beyond.
Summary of some of my ongoing EDI efforts through art and performance at and beyond MMU as a Senior Lecturer there.
Highlights of career since aged 4; list of 10 fully-funded international artist-in-residency awards and artworks in 13 permanent/public collections.
>100 invited / curated keynotes and conferences, including at Sao Paulo, Association of American Geographers Annual Conference in Chicago, University of Oxford and Museum of Sydney.
>10 roles as artistic director, curator, creative research lead, with budget £0 – £4m, in Napidaw (Myanmar), Tokyo, Paris, Cardiff, Leeds, Kuopio (Finland), and Singapore.
How To Thrive In 2050: 8 Tentacular Workouts For A Tantalising Future! is a new short film I made in Spring 2021. This is an art manifesto calling for a creative, equitable and ‘neuro-fantastic’ future by an Octopussy. The World Premiere is on BBC Culture in Quarantine Autumn 2021
This is an op-ed published in Frontiers in Psychology. It is led by Laura Gallo (formerly King’s College London neuroscience MSc student), in collaboration with myself, Dr Vincent Giampietro and Dr Patricia Zunszain (King’s College London).
This article was published in Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education April 2021. It outlines three actions for the supervisor, student and examiner, to introduce a level of anti-racist consciousness in the journey of the Fine Art PhD.
Want to work with me? Here’s how.
RAN reframes running as an artistic intervention to unpick our time of multiple global crises. At the 26 February Friday launch 10:00-17:00GMT, we presented 22 new insights into climate change, mental health, tech, inequality through running + art, poetry, theatre, sound and more by artists, poets, academics and more from UK and Europe.
I was commissioned by Fermynwoods Contemporary Arts to create a mask. So here is my set of 5, which are masks for the 21st Century Artful Agitator series.
Here are just 3 of several films on the #PAC75: The 75th Anniversary Celebrations of the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester, Viewing the Past and Looking to the Future channel. Do watch, and use them for learning, teaching and research. More videos to be uploaded during the Black History Month 2020!
Leadership: What is it? What could it be? Power posing: How is power performed? Why pose questions for those in power? Neurodiversity or neurodivergence? Being/becoming ill-disciplined: How to…
This is a recording of a performance lecture I delivered on 6 August 2020 for University of Reading, a repeat of a keynote-lecture that premiered for Royal Society of Arts on 9 July 2020 which was attended by up to 130 people.
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.
The etymologies of curating include healing and care. So, make change. Don’t waste your time, don’t waste my time. Created in mid-June 2020, this new slideshow was for a session in the MA/MFA Contemporary Curating, Manchester School of Art.
03/2020: The COVID-19 pandemic will fundamentally change what/how/who we are forever. Or will it? What is the role of art, creativity and neurodiversity?
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.
As we move from the immediate crisis towards new ones, we need atypical thinkers, agile doers and creative problem-solvers who thrive in unknowns. A call for a more inclusive and creative socio-political ecosystem.
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.
04/2020: Watch this interview (40 minutes) on ‘artful leadership’. With Dr Michael Pinchbeck.
05/2020: Germany and France have enlisted the help of humanities scholars, but we’ll need atypical thinkers and agile makers for artful ways forward.
03/2020: Struggling with social distancing and self-isolation? Here, put on my Catsuit. Meow.
04/2020: An early outline of ARTFUL LEADERSHIP artful, sly ways forward, led by artists, in productively antagonistic dialogues with members of other species, through artistic processes and outcomes, exploiting art’s power to provoke, confuse/amuse/bemuse.
Amid times of distress. we must give birth to hope. Let’s build new visions together and live happily ever after. Speed-date me. You will ask for more.
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.
Tweet/Email to collaborate on new ‘Artful Leadership’ project from 2021. I promise to be nice. It will be fun.
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
This was a commissioned keynote lecture and masterclass for an EU-funded consortium of scientists CoCA at their Annual Meeting, University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany.
Where are neurodivergent leaders in the Cultural and Academic Sectors? Premiered at Birkbeck, Arts Week May 2019.
Is there too much, or not enough ‘neurodiversity’ in art & academia in the UK? Premiered at Birkbeck, Arts Week May 2019.
04/2020: Other efforts during the pandemic in local and professional contexts and beyond.
04/2020: As UKAAN Creative and Cultural Consultant, I put together a few creative resources for mental health professionals and service users.
03/2020: Keen to explore the messy and magical entanglements between neurodiversity, creativity and research, and all the possibilities and intersections in between? Join the Neurodiversity In/And Creative Research Network, a new international hub.
04/2020: I responded to UK Parliament’s call for COVID-19 Outbreak Expert Database, as well as a separate call by the UK Government Cabinet Office’s Open Innovation Team for a similar database.
03/2020: My show at the Craft and Design Centre was shut, but I redistributed some of my fee and have begun to think more about the importance of being ‘crafty’ and ‘artful’.