How do we practice care in our work (not just talk about it)? 

(notes from Open Space, 25 March 2023)

Notekeeper: Ailie Crerar-Blythe. Ailie is happy to be contacted at ailie.crerar@nationaltheatrescotland.com



Access needs - artists (more) often asked, but not necessarily producers or other staff. This can impact on the quality of care offered as a result. 

  • We need to include more people in whose needs are trying to be met

  • Access clash and where does the responsibility sit in working out what might take priority or what ways needs can be met? 

    • Collective responsibility

    • Transparency about what is possible being key to unlocking this



Care again being performed as content and aestheticised, but not included or considered as part of a process



What does care look like? 

  • Discussed some practical things like being paid on time; sick pay or in general a better social security net for freelancers; therapy / counselling offered to everyone engaging on projects; being able to step away from work; time; content warnings; intimacy coordinators; flexible schedules 

  • Also practising care for ourselves

    • Underlining the importance that a practice of care is not restrictive to the process of making art 



Capacity issues - being overcapacity has implications for care, reduces people’s ability to provide and practice care



Funding set-ups meaning disguising care as something else in order to be able to provide it - also a flag that it's great to have more people understanding what they can apply for through access budgets, but a wariness that this pot is finite and being mindful of how that funding is distributed



Tendency to exceptionalism in the arts, thinking we do things really well when actually a lot of practices can be exploitative and rely on free labour. Taking a standpoint that people are more important than art. How do we move away from exploiting ourselves?

  • Recognising that we can choose to do things differently 

  • Being proactive and lobbying for change rather than trying to fit into existing boxes 

  • Challenging the notion that is is hard to do things in a caring way



Enforce care as a mutual agreement at contracting stage (example given was specifying shorter working days) to help mitigate emotional labour / exploitation that can arise if it is brought up later



Recognising the potential toxicity of language, and that sometimes things can and do just go wrong, and it isn’t because of a lack of care or thought

  • Related to mutual agreement and trust



Boundaries as a form of care - making processes freer for everyone, not restricting



Who are holding the teams that hold the teams? Relates a little to the very first point - examples given included who holds the producer that is holding the wider team? Or the social media coordinator in a big organisation? 



There are also questions of power relationships and who is taking the risk in / or by being in that relationship 



Noting that we’ve not carried through learnings from the pandemic about working at different paces, in different forms 



Asking for more money, to do less, over a longer timeframe - resisting capitalist mindset of having to do the most with the least resource. Can’t properly care in a capitalist structure



Discussion around the Fair Work framework, and using this to decide for ourselves what fair pay looks like, and using this framework which is being promoted by Creative Scotland to then ask for what we need and want. Examples also of the Scottish Arts Union and Musicians Union both having better rates than Equity/ITC, and using these. Valuing ourselves and our collaborators, and reflecting that when the work is valued more than the people, care isn’t in the room



Care and ableism - there will always be people who can or will do more with less, but remembering that this won’t be possible for some so trying to collectively more away from this mindset, and recognising it doesn’t diminish the work anyone is doing



Sometimes maybe the show shouldn’t go on

  • Care for audiences? The pressure of delivering for audiences feeds into structures that don’t always allow for care, like additional days off

  • Audiences more used to cancellations etc post-pandemic - can we build trust with audiences that if we are cancelling, it is for the right reasons, and be transparent about this?

    • Money problematises this



Can care be part of training, so that it is embedded as a practice for all? 



There is lots of learning we can take from the creative learning / community engagement sector, who have a lot of good practice that could be applied across the sector. Example given of ending a day when the energy was gone, rather than keeping everyone til 5pm / 6pm because that was what the schedule said



Book recommendation: How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong

  • Connecting better as a community helps us show up for each other - can we better connect as a sector as a form of fostering care



Noting that money or salaries don’t necessarily equate to care or wellbeing, if the org you are in doesn’t care about you. 



Plurality of experiences and responsibilities, or collective thinking/working as a form of care - sharing the load but also opening up to more perspectives



How do we report instances of lack of care and what are the consequences, both for the reporter and for those being reported on?

  • Do we need an independent Arts Ethics Board? All have experiences of people continuing to be in roles/get funding who perpetuate bad practices



Concentrations of power and pressure tie in to the above, especially in organisations

  • Flat structures as a way of challenging this - collectives, Slung Low model of everyone being paid the same, and transparency around this

  • Sociocracy - can there be term limitations on positions of power, and people shifting between freelance and salaried positions (should anyone hired at Creative Scotland have had to have been freelance in X number of years before taking a post there?)



Governance - it is a form so entrenched in tradition and immovability (board structures in particular) that it can be a hindrance to practicing care 

  • In the third sector, governance models need to have input from their service users - more artists on boards

  • Where do audiences sit in governance? How can they influence the sort of work they want to see or the ways they’d like to see it made? 

  • Suggestion that all boards should be co-chaired so there isn’t that ultimate power/responsibility held in one person



Requirement to make money undermines doing things with care. We need 100% funding, without the requirement to make money, and also to be funded in line with the Fair Work thinking discussed above 



We have evidence that we can do things differently from the experience of the pandemic; from the Touring Fund not having a requirement to generate income; from working practices in dance; from orgs having co-chairs; from 2 people doing a job together (specifically not job shares)... We need to keep all this in mind when we are asking to do things differently, and lobbying for this change to become systemic