Ranking with Bobby Baker
Exceptionally funny, Bobby Baker, is a performance artist of rare quality and distinction. (Daily Telegraph)
The first time I met Bobby Baker face-to-face was nearly 2 years ago now, in her famous kitchen, where she has many of her ideas and often shows her work. Her work explores womanhood, life and living and she does this in a very funny and sometimes sad way.
At that time, Bobby was just recovering from cancer surgery and yet she was busy making me feel comfortable with tea and biscuits. Here are some of her baked biscuits from her recent book launch. She made them and they have her face on them.
I warmed to Bobby so much I asked her to write this article with me about rank and position and being in different situations where rank plays its part and not so good part in making us feel great or making us feel rubbish.
An odd bird
Stately was a word that was pivotal (Bobby Baker)
When I first talked with Bobby about the idea of doing an article on rank, it took a while for us to decide what we were going to say about it.
We started talking about bullying; in our personal lives and when people pull rank, make us feel that we can't lead because we have a disability and hhow we respond to this when it happens.
The big question was, how do we keep our position as Artistic Director or leader when our confidence or health comes crashing down?
Bobby has often spoken about how she has managed to keep going at her most dark moments, refusing to be boxed in,by rushing around like a Roadrunner.
“I wouldn’t have been where I am today if I hadn’t been a Roadrunner. I used to scuttle ahead of my team to get to meetings, moving in this strange crouched way, and the funny thing is, that running on the tarmac is really such an inappropriate place for a bird to run!
It was my physio who told me that my road running were not good for my body. ‘You’re a very impatient woman. Walk slowly. You’ve got to be stately Bobby and walk upright.’ Stately was pivotal. I could be like a Roadrunner when a Roadrunner is still and not just the racing side of this odd bird.
Not only did this help my struggling body, but it allowed me to consider my emotions. It gave me such power, keeping silent and still. I still do the occasional bit of road running, when no-one is looking, but most of the time, my car does the running now.”
Rank and artist
I think you have to find a way to observe, to step outside the situation you find yourself in; you need to talk to others and see how things operate and learn, and then work out how you are going to work your way through and go back in (Bobby Baker).
In our time together, Bobby has said that whilst she used to feel less of herself as a person and sometimes as a disabled person, she never feels this about the work that she makes, knowing full well when her work is good.
But she also has talked about the need to understand about the business too, to help keep her rank as an artist. She is clearer now about how to make a ‘healthy organisation,’
It was only when she got this, that she could begin to work with her team to make her work more visible for more people to enjoy (and pay for).
Fourth plinth artist, Yinka Shonibare, also a strong team working with him. For him being an artist is something that is not a very ‘realistic occupation’, so he almost laughs at himself.
He also knows the system and is working it. Here's what he says on a You Tube Video, click and watch it.
TRANSCRIPT: [Yinka] You’ve got to be a bit utopian to be an artist because it's not a very realistic occupation. The thought of being an artist is, in itself, a utopian idea, because I don’t really make anything useful and I think that that is itself an illustration of my own disposition. Half the time I don’t believe that I am doing what I’m doing! I’m realising my dream which is somehow, also, my profession. There is no line between the personal and the professional and so in a way, I feel very lucky that I can do that. I can realise my utopian dreams and still survive through doing that.
Watch a film of Yinka Shonibare MBE: Being an Artist | Art21
Pecking order
A pecking order was first described from the behaviour of poultry. (Wikipedia)
Our second tack was unpacking the pecking order many of us experience in the disability sector: who is more disabled or deaf, and why?
This week, the message coming through is that the recession is ‘all our fault,’ as our fabulous BBC Ouch Disability Bitch tells us in no uncertain ironic tones! She urges us to quit pecking and pull together in the fight, wherever we sit, whatever we believe about who is more disabled than the other.
“If you have something to say, put down your doughnuts, take to the streets, pick up your pens, do whatever is most accessible to you - and tell the politicians how you feel. Otherwise, do not come moaning to me when that brown envelope falls through the door.”
Making Sync open to all
For Sync itself, it's always felt important to explore rank in leadership circles .
So how does the Sync project show that the way it does things is powerful and could work for everyone.(Well we would say that!)
More importantly, how are we going to work with other leadership projects to show them how it works.
One way is to ensure our Sync members or 'alumni' are showing their leadership in new and exciting ways, in whatever way they chose to do so, whatever their position or impairment and at whatever pace, fast or slow, they need to go.
One of the most important things about this is how we strive to make what we do inclusive to leaders with learning disabilities as a matter of equality and principle.
This is powerful for both Bobby and myself: Sync is committed to developing the lives and leadership of artists with learning disabilities and making what we do accessible to them. No-one should feel or be left out.
The language of rank
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
No-one can make you feel inferior unless you give your consent, but if you don’t know how to give your consent or what the word consent means, there's a problem.
How many times do we make a decision about someone because of how they move, how they look and the words that they use.
When we make these decisions we are 'pulling rank'. This happens almost without thinking.
Using jargon is one way we make people feel less than and it's not good. We can all get this wrong and we need to keep on looking at this.
If we do not make our language more simple, we stop people having the chance to lead and be leaders and leave them out.
The nature of the beast
We know the material otherwise we wouldn’t have broached it. (Sarah Mainwaring, Back to Back Theatre)
This week at the Barbican, Bobby and I sat watching Food Court by Back to Back Theatre as part of the BITE festival 2010.
Not only was this a beautiful, powerful, show exploring bullying and abuse, it was made more interesting because it was horrible.
You could feel people in the audience thinking 'how could it be possible that learning disabled people could work with such an ugly subject'?
In the post-show talk, we learned this work came directly from the artists': what they see and experience in the world: be it bullying or playing Grand Theft Auto on Playstation.
They were showing us all that we are all, capable of being dark and vile as Sarah Mainwaring, one of the actors told us when asked about the drive and content of the work.
“We do this work for love, honesty and openness and we do this to give you a good show. We know the material otherwise we wouldn’t have broached it.”
The same goes for learning disabled people and leadership. Robin Meader is a learning disabled artistic director, storyteller, advocate and on the Sync Intensive Programme.
Robin uses the power of stories, from his own experiences and those of his learning disabled friends to show us the nature of beasts,and how we might achieve better harmony in our world.
Creating the right circumstances
And so, all this chat about rank , where does this leave us now?
We've still got lots of knots to unpick here yet none of this really takes away the sting of the word "rank".
Somehow it will always, in my mind, be a word we use to describe a bad smell as well as a position of power.
Should we, like Bobby, find different ways to be ‘stately’?
Should we think harder about the best way to move through the ranks to get into jobs where we can be the best we can be?
Should we be louder in our fight to make sure more disabled leaders get a chance to lead?
Why don’t you join us in thinking more about rank?
