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.
Gallery of clients and organisations in Higher Education, creative and cultural sectors, governmental departments and more that I have worked with in UK, Europe, US, Asia and more
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.
80 invited / curated keynotes and conferences, including at Sao Paulo, Association of American Geographers Annual Conference in Chicago, University of Oxford and Museum of Sydney.
Since 2003, worked in >10 roles as curator / creative research lead, with budget £0 – £4m, in Napidaw (Myanmar), Tokyo, Paris, Cardiff, Leeds, Kuopio (Finland), Israel 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
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…
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.
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.
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.
Where are neurodivergent leaders in the Cultural and Academic Sectors? Premiered at Birkbeck, Arts Week May 2019.
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’.