ReWilding Arts Leadership

                                                                                                                                                                                          
ReWilding Arts Leadership is a practical enquiry and testing ground, looking at how the arts and culture sector could be more like the art we produce, promote and care for. I am curious about how practices of organisation, decision-making and leadership could be as creative, fluid, and expansive as the artistic process itself, and about what methods might help new structures to be embraced.

At the bottom of this page you’ll find a menu of ways to get involved and support the development of the ReWilding Arts Leadership approach and project.

The enquiry grew throughout my Clore Fellowship of 2023/24 and is informed by my experiences of working within and beyond the arts - through emergancy housing working, to supporting customers to upgrade their home heating, and as an artist - all are systems with a rythmn and flow. You can find out more about me and my approach to work on my ABOUT page.

My ReWilding Arts Leadership provocation paper, written for Clore Leadership, frames the context and thinking for this project, and makes a proposal for continuing the research. You will find a link to that provocation paper at the bottom of this page.

My provocation to the arts & culture sector remains now what it was in January 2023 -  that its policy, governance and executive strategies and processes could/should be more connected to, in-line with, and allied to art, and the processes of making art.

"Eh?”

I want the arts & culture sector, the art world, the creative industries, to embody the arts themselves.

“But don’t they already?”

No, they don’t.

They embody business, and business, even art business has a different set of behaviours and characteristics to art and art making.

I make this provocation as an independent artist with over twenty years of professional practice. Throughout my work I have been active with organisations and artist-led activity, mentoring, supporting situations for artists to develop work and projects, creating and making with the language and methods of art practises at the fore.

Even so, I have experienced first hand how difficult it can be for art and artists to have influence within the sector, and to encourage those with power to make sustained structural change - and where they do to be credited and remunerated appropriately.

The lack of financial parity between salaried and independent arts workers contributes to the difficulty of this power balance, as it leads to unequal levels of energy, confidence, and agency. The different methods and modes of communication within the languages of art-making and of art-administration also impacts here, as do the embedded and somewhat opaque power structures of these territories.

I am driven to ask if a shift to using the communicating, thinking, and problem solving behaviours and means commonly found in art-making within arts leadership would create a situation of greater balance in energy, agency, influence, and therefore a more egalitarian sector?

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At a time of well recognised climate crisis and limited resources, a time of acknowledgment of societal inequality, when practices of care are being called for, we need a rebalancing of power, and access to power, that is supple, responsive, reflective and in-tune with the natural cycles of our lives. Using a methodology that comes from the land we walk and live on, even eat from, feels congruent with the change we need to make.

       Extracts from ReWilding Arts Leadership, by Sovay Berriman
 

How you can get involved?

ReWilding Arts Leadership is inspired by the notion of fecundity and circular nature of our work and lives, the planet on which we live and the ecosystem we are a part of. The menu below is informed by this thinking and designed from imaginings of how we may best learn from each other. 

+ Critical Artist-in-Residence - starting at £3,000
You can host me* as a critical artist-in-residence at your organisation for a set period of time. During the residency I will get to know your organisation, its structures, process and staff team. I will hold 1:1 and group conversations with your team, freelancers, artists and/or audiences, using art-making to share and consider ideas and thinking. I will attend meetings and events, within your organisation and within the landscape that you work. Through all of this I will probe and notice with an artist’s critical eye, I will feedback noticings and ideas, discussing with you what room there is for rewilding, and how to a strategy for how it might come into being.

+ Making & Meeting - starting at £750
You can invite me* to host meetings and workshops for you that will be a ReWilding Arts Leadership taster. You tell me who needs to be at the meeting and what needs to be discussed. I will devise a structure for the meeting that holds space and time for noticing. I will gather feedback on the meeting/workshop that I will share with you during a debrief session that will cover how you will bring more ReWilding Arts Leadership into your organisation.

+ Artist’s Eye - starting at £350
You can invite me to meet with you to have an initial look at how ReWilding Arts Leadership might work with your organisation. You can ask me to observe meetings, or particular aspects of your organisation or work.

+ RAL Supporter - starting at in-kind
Do you have the facilities to offer us support? Could you contribute funds, time or expertise to help further the enquiry? 

We need >>> fundraising support > concept advocates > workshop hosts > marketing & copywriting support.

We will use funds to pay for mentoring & training bursaries for artists to

be involved and supported - do you know someone in your area you’d like to nominate and fund?

+ Trade & Exchange - sliding scale starting at pay what you can
Resouces to carry out your own ReWilding Arts Leadership work and contribute your learning and ideas to the ReWilding Arts Leadership share-space.

In recognising the power imbalances within the arts sector, this project will ask all involved organisations to carry out some prework** before an artist will visit.

Please get intouch via my contact page with any questions or enquiries.

I’m hugely grateful to all who have contributed to the project so far through art-making, conversation, thought experiment, and sharing experiences. 

Meur ras / thank you

* It’s my ambition that more artists will be involved and able to undertake the residencies & placements.

**Prework: organisations will be asked to,

- review how welcoming and brave their spaces and organisationial dynamics are, to consider what support they think a visiting freelance artist might need
- to take the time to read any Access Documents supplied by the visiting artist
- to allocate a quite space for the artist to hold meetings and work unhindered.

Read the full paper here >>

Audio version coming soon xx