Syncing
When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge. (Tuli Kupferberg)
Sync is a programme developed by myself, Sarah Pickthall, and Jo Verrent, exploring the interface between disability and leadership in the creative and cultural sector.
The term, syncopation is used to describe a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected or unusual in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced beats in a meter or pulse. These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would not normally be stressed. Accenting a usually unstressed beat creates a syncopated rhythm.
Sync, with its quirky backwards kicking y, took syncopation as its inspiration for designing a different approach to leadership learning using the lived experiences of its membership - disabled artists and cultural managers - who have since its inception in 2009, grown to 200. In Spring 2012, we launch a new membership strand - In Sync - opening our membership to a wider cohort to explore our resources for themselves.
Re-emphasis
We locked into the notion of emphasising our life experiences and creative approaches, as innovative and inspirational
(Sarah Pickthall)
In considering our own leadership positions and those of our contemporaries, we attempted to do something that would be notable for its distinctive approach – something we would wish to join.
We locked into the notion of emphasising our life experiences and creative approaches, as innovative and inspirational, creating a movement of leaders thinking differently and leading through their idiosyncracy and artistry.
We wanted to re-frame disabled people as leaders – not seeing them triumphing over impairments and access - but instead recognising the skills and talents people utilise daily, including those formed by their experiences of impairment.
We also wanted others to link into this new perception, removing the restrictive ‘box’ of disability and replacing it with the benefits of difference.
Listening differently
The Sony Walkman progenitor of the now ubiquitous iPod was the first practical device that enabled users to mix degrees of sound. (http://wn.com/Sony_Walkman)
It is often said that the Walkman gave rise to the ambient music movement through its ability to shut the world out and allow the listener to focus on a personal selection of sound in space.
It was essential that if we were to make other people think differently, including ourselves, we needed to start to listen to our own distinct rhythms and patterns of behaviour; we needed to rigorously select what we listen to within the body of ‘noise’ or critique around us. Sync in its early stages challenged people on the programme to be mindful of what they were ‘listening’ and responding to.
Sync Coaching in particular looked at how we might harness our physical and emotional energy as critical factors to the expression and development of self in all its authenticity.
As part of its coaching approach, Sync developed an energy mapping process that supported our members to consider how they were choosing to feel about what happened to them in their professional lives and encouraging them to recognise and replicate their natural survival tactics to best effect.
Variations on a theme
Sync was a chance I never had before to really get at what being a leader is all about whilst celebrating the strengths of my disability. (Caroline Ward, BBC)
Sync, from the offset, advocated that there was more than one-way to express and be ‘disabled’, lauding both the explicit and subtle variations of our diverse experience.
As we developed the programme, we discovered that within our membership, there was a myriad of resources at hand, gleaned from our different ways of navigating the world and also the ways in which many of us made art and why.
The programme then focused on selecting elements and facets of leadership theory that we felt were particularly relevant for disabled artists and arts managers, contextualising them where appropriate, and passing them through to our membership to gain knowledge and apply in their professional lives
Forging ahead
Sync has allowed me to see myself; understanding me has been a critical factor in forging ahead with my mass participatory projects that are Aspergic in their design for the Cultural Olympiad (Jon Adams - Lead Artist, Dysarticulate)
We began to witness palpable change for people taking part in the programme with disabled artists leading through their practice and having a more progressive and sustainable impact with new confidence
Through virtual and face-to-face intensive leadership learning and networking those within Sync felt better placed to extol, create and make more of their particular strengths in leadership circles. Some in particular began to articulate their own impact and influence from a Creative Case perspective - http://disabilityarts.creativecase.org.uk/ - arrived at by listening to their own rhythms and emphasising them differently.
Sync Intensive member, Artist Simon McKeown, found the Sync approach galvanising at a critical point in his most important project to date.
The Sync structure was hugely important in making the 3rd December 2010 event come to life [Simon’s exhibition ‘Motion Disabled’ was shown in 17 countries simultaneously on that day}. That started off with a piece of art that I thought would be in a gallery once. But lots of people have picked up the work and supported it, been interested in it, which has been an absolute joy, and I think that's where the whole Sync thing comes into play – confidence and contacts. Simon McKeown, Artist
In Sync
Sync has helped me to analyse a deeper understanding of what my creative practice could mean and the ways in which I am able to lead in the context of my physical and cognitive variance (Sue Austin - Artist)
Sync has became a unique device to throw light and shade on how disabled artists actually make work and the impact that this is having on the cultural landscape: not as a political statement per se but as a invaluable set of processes and procedures lauding unique disabled talent and artistic excellence - and celebrating this.
Sync’s approach to accessible learning environments has underpinned this different way of thinking and doing. It's been about learning and growing too – not just an assumption of access, but a genuine dialogue and exchange about access, enabling individuals to find their own route through their access requirements and – crucially – their own expressions of these.
Beyond the glass ceiling
In a recent ISAN conference held in Glasgow, David Wheeler of IOU, spoke about his most recent project, Vortex
Working closely with physicist, inventor and BBC science presenter Jem Stansfield, Vortex is designed to make new musical composition around the extraordinary sound produced by a vortex cannon. Vortex cannons were originally employed to change cloud constellations and have been used in certain situations to change weather outcomes.
Using natural forces and phenomena as an impetus for making art was first explored by Wheeler in the extremes of Antarctica.
Sync’s success is likewise routed in natural forces and phenomena that are the disabled experience in all its manifestations. Jo and I can see a different sort of impact that disabled creatives are making out there now.
This is not about breaking through glass ceilings but through Sync members pushing their professional lives and creative work out there in very different ways, with different emphasis and calling their own tunes, rather than singing to the tunes of others.
Future Syncing
Sync has supported a real shift for the artists and cultural leaders on our programme. It is one thing to be, think and deliver differently, but becoming different through the process is something else.
Jo and myself have also become different. ‘Creative Case’ as an approach has given us both a different set of tools for our own lives.
We are engaged in taking Sync into new territories, extending from its original starting point, as well as making artistic work and leading projects that fully explore the diverse forces that make us individual creative people.
With this new set of syncopations Sync continues to foster talent in a completely new way, encouraging artists and artistry as part of a new ecology that is the Creative Case.
