Sync

Swimming Out of My Depth

Looking back, I reckon have chosen to swim in quite a small swimming pool rather than attempt to swim in open water.

What do I mean?

For the last 20 years, most of my work has been in overlap between the disability and the arts sectors. Whether it’s been with mainstream arts organisations developing their approaches to inclusion, building the capacity of disability-related arts organisations, supporting disabled people to consider training or working in the industry or running projects, programmes, events and organisations – most things have focused on disability or, occasionally, diversity in a wider sense.

It’s safe and comfortable and, after 20 years of practice, a field in which I am now reasonably well known.

The game plan

This wasn’t the game plan, however. When I acquired my hearing aids (at the same time as acne, not a great duo for adolescence, I thought), I was not remotely interested in spending my life working with ‘people like me’. My career aims were strictly mainstream and throughout the first two years of my degree course it was all about fitting in, minimising my impairment and getting by.

I have to say though that there were points at which I rebelled. I can remember the ‘learning to go deaf’ course I went on when still at school where they explained that as my hearing dropped I wouldn’t be able to eat spaghetti in restaurants any more. Puzzled, I asked for more information. Apparently you have to look down to ensure you get it on your fork and that’s not great for lip-reading your companion. Well, thanks all the same, but I’d rather have a gap in the conversation and eat what I damn well like, if it’s all the same to you…

So I just got by. It wasn’t until my third year, when a tutor suggested I write my dissertation on theatre with and for deaf people that I realised there was something ‘marketable’ about my difference. And my research led to a postgraduate in Theatre of the Deaf and I finally had a focus. And as I got further in to the disability arts world, I met more and more disabled people, and got more and more work in that field. Occasionally I have strayed out of the arts arena – I ran some training in the NHS and did some work with some rat catchers once for a local authority, but I always came back to arts and culture, as it was what I knew.

Following the leader

A month or so ago I was asked if I did any work that wasn’t about disability. Now there have been the odd bits – I remember doing some education evaluations, some research into festivals and recently I devised and delivered a nine day training course for artists wanting to be project managers, But for some reason, the question really made me think this time. Why have I chosen to spend the last 20 years working in this sector?

Is it passion, or fear? I’ve always believed that I work in my field because this is the arena I love, that I feel passionate about. That’s still true, but I’m also now questioning myself. Is it also because I fear that I’m ‘not good enough’ to get work outside of my niche?

I feel like I am looking over the wall and seeing the sea for the first time. What would it be like to swim in that rougher, more challenging, expanse? Are the waves too big? Are there creatures that I can’t see that would set out to sink me? Do I need a map that I just haven’t got?

I’ve been able to get my needs met in my small pond – the way I work, the way I organise my time, the support I use. If I swam out, would those things still be available, still be seen as usual? When I watch something like The Apprentice, I’m always very aware of how poorly I’d fit into that environment. I don’t like using the phone to call people I don’t know, I can’t work 24/7 and, with three kids and a husband, I’m not moving into to a flat with a group of megalomaniacs. Does that mean I can’t ‘do’ mainstream?

Going under the water

On holiday recently I took up scuba diving. A fantastically scary opportunity to see into an underwater world from a completely different perspective. And for me, a perfect fit - a world that has very little reliance on sound. I was, of course, amazed by what I saw, but equally amazed by how I felt pushing through the fear barrier (well, we aren’t designed to breathe underwater, are we?). There was a real sense of giddiness, of achievement. I couldn’t stop smiling (especially once I had worked out you can laugh underwater with all the kit on and it won’t make you drown). Maybe this is what it would be like out of the pool?

Maybe I just need to take the same approach – get the training, get the equipment, find out the local context, map out the route and find some strong allies to go in with. Then just jump in and go with the flow.

I hope that Sync and the connections I make through it may be one way of supporting me to dive in waters in further a field. But having swum so long in the pool, I’m clear about my terms. Any swimming I do from now on still has to be on my terms, and meet all my needs – including those I have as a disabled person.

Jo Verrent

Sync Project Manger