$ Identity Capital $ - Freddie Wulf reflects on neoliberalism in the arts and the current pressure to capitalise on identity as an artist.

Opinion piece with words from Yewande Adeniran aka Ifeoluwa, Tom Marshman, Ania Varez & Katayoun Jalilipour is now live on Trinity website here

How could institutions support artists making work about identity?

As noted in my article for Trinity Centre, artists who hold marginalised identities are often offered opportunities which relate to speaking about their personal experiences. This creates added pressures beyond the usual work/financial pressures, which tbh are already enough in this time when rent is more than 40% of our income!

Here are some ideas for how institutions creating ‘opportunities’ for artists who hold marginalised identities, could try to make those opportunities more realistic and beneficial for the artists.

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Pastoral support

One major overlooked area, is the need for pastoral support around identity-linked opportunities. Speaking about personal issues in a professional context creates vulnerability, potentially anxiety, and could draw prejudice or criticism (which then would be hard to ignore, since its personal).

I think we are scared to draw from therapeutic models because we are terrified of saying art is therapy. Work exploring identity, is not therapy. But it makes sense that we would need to think about safety models and supervision in a similar way, since it draws on vulnerable themes - that would be due diligence on the part of the commissioner.

* if there is budget - provide a budget for the artist to access a therapeutic or coaching space to process what comes up around the work
* if there isn’t - offer to support the artist by providing a member of staff to talk through any anxieties and complexities arising from presenting the work
* regardless of pastoral support - the venue or commissioner should be engaging on a professional level with the complexities of presenting identity based work, and creating space for the artist to feed into this or share their own perspective if wanted
* write it into the contract, that in cases of online hate, you will support the artist

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Practical support

What people don’t seem to see, is how the personal factors are linked to the economic. If you are commissioning an artist who holds a marginalised identity, they may be facing marginalisation in their access to economic resources. Therefore, if you are offering a low fee which doesn’t provide space for a team to support them, please consider how this could compound with the already mentioned personal and psychological pressures associated with making work about personal identity.

I have worked in institutions on the production and admin side, and I know that venues are understaffed, staff members are paid little and there is never enough time in the day. However, essentially this isn’t the visiting artist’s problem and I think we should try to create some kind of care, where possible, within the limitations of funding.

For instance, where there is a salaried team they could be:

* booking the travel
* supporting with writing the copy and choosing an image

*paying people on time - (freelancers are relying on your payment to pay rent, and delays cause major problems both for freelancer-led projects and the people they are directly supporting. if you are a salaried member of staff at a university or other institution with a complex payment process - thankyou for using your position to leverage funds for artists. however please also factor in, if your institution has complex payment systems, it shouldn’t be on the artist to navigate them and chase late payments)

This is much easier for someone who is already doing computer work a lot of the day, who knows the local area and the format of your programme. The artist may or may not be skilled in copy writing, and may or may not have barriers which make travel booking hard, such as neurodiversity.

* providing a taxi or meeting the artist to help carry their bags (which are often transporting the whole show)
* providing a warm space with some water and easy access to nourishing food
* adding more time to the schedule to allow for a break between arriving and performing / speaking

If you imagine the pressure, of one person travelling maybe 6hrs on a megabus with a huge heavy bag which contains everything in their show, and knowing that they have to arrive and be on form to deliver a great performance, it makes sense that small gestures of care or taking one thing off their plate could help. If you then imagine the added pressure of revealing personal stuff, and possibly facing prejudice in the room or online for doing it, then you can see how practical and pastoral care are linked. They are all feeding into the general wellbeing and ability to deliver the work, and reducing the likelihood of harm being caused by these pressurised situations.

Touch is gendered … is sensation gendered?

Content note: this blog is about a sex positive project & includes sex in discussions of touch languages

In April 2022 I did a residency at Pervasive Media Studio developing my ideas for a haptics project focussing on trans touch & intimacy. Iʼm interested in the relationships between touch, sensation & gender.

Iʼm a non binary / trans masculine artist usually working in performance, sound & video - full bio here.

What do I mean, ‘touch is genderedʼ?

I realised that feeling safe with a partner and working out the types of touch I like to receive, is one of the main ways I was able to accept and process my trans-ness.

Before I did any medical transition, before it was about seeing something more comfortable in the mirror, I could experience my body in a non-dysphoric way through touch.

Reflecting on this, I was thinking – what was it about this touch that made me feel ‘masculineʼ?

My partner found ways to touch me, that reflected traditionally (gay)masculine touch languages. Touch that both looked and felt ‘rightʼ, and affirmed my understanding of myself as masculine, & that my masculinity was desirable. This was revolutionary to me, because in my experience growing up as a female-socialised person, anything perceived as 'masculine' was deeply shamed.*

So, the first lens this came to me through was personal: one particular touch relationship which helped me experience my gender in a positive way. But then I reflected on other types of touch, and the way this happens across society, in less intimate touch contexts too.

Mainly what came to mind, was the types of touch I have automatically offered to men who were my partners – like was I offering to put my arm around them, or was that feeling only open to me as the smaller/shorter/more ‘femmeʼ person? – and how that was based on gendered assumptions which were very limited. How those same assumptions are made when we offer touch in the context of greetings, comfort, and other platonic touch – slaps on the back, handshakes, strong & short hugs. Mainly the touch available to masculine people seems to me, to be quite firm and quite brief and perfunctory.

Then I thought about ways I can be touched which might feel traditionally ‘feminineʼ. There are certain types of touch which ‘feelʼ feminine to me.

(This is where I got to the question – is sensation gendered?)

Light touch, soft touch, meandering & not to the point. All these things feel femme to me. & they can be enjoyable, or there could be negatives to this, for instance I might feel dysphoric when offered those kinds of touch in certain contexts.

Obviously, itʼs a deep deep shame that people might miss out on the full spectrum of touch and sensation, due to how their gender is perceived.

BUT – there can be positives to being aware of this language of gendered touch. I can think of a lot of times in recent years where I have been able to offer a touch language that has helped my partner feel a certain way. And who knows, to be honest, whether there is anything inherent about our experience of touch/sensation/gender, or if its all due to societal conditioning. For me, at the moment, the point is that we live in this world the way it is right now, and by consciously playing with these languages we can develop an awareness, affirm the ways that our friends and partners want to feel, and at the same time start to expand what is possible – so that touch vocabulary is no longer assumed based on anatomy or gender presentation, and people can choose and find what feels good for them.

Haptics 

Haptics: ‘The science & technology of transmitting and understanding information through touchʼ, ‘any type of technology that gives you a tactile response eg. when you long press your iPhone and it vibratesʼ [OED online] 

Where this comes into my research with haptics, is beginning to look at whether the sensations I personally categorise as ‘feminineʼ or ‘masculineʼ**, share some similar resonance for other people OR whether my ‘touch meaningsʼ are actually very personal.

Then starting to work out how this maps onto the available types of sensation – what are the mediums available in haptics? How do these different types of synthesised touch feel?

This is drawn from the title of a paper: ‘User Experiences and Expectations of Vibrotactile, Thermal and Squeeze Feedback in Interpersonal Communication’, Suhonen, Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Mäkelä (2012).

Some of the most rewarding parts of this work so far, have been working out how to talk about personal experiences of sensation between people who have different anatomies (or, just between any two people!). Working with collaborators, some of the language that has come up has been based in sound – ‘speakers panningʼ, ‘applying a filterʼ – & this is an area I want to explore more.

I also remembered Labanʼs Movement Analysis (a way of describing movement in Dance), & the Effort axes which describe each movement eg. sudden > sustained, direct > indirect. Something about the method of identifying sensations on a continuum, felt helpful to me so I made a first draft of an adapted model with some parameters which could be used to discuss sensation:

Laban Effort graph by Jeffrey Longstaff

Some ideas for word-continuums to talk about sensation, based on the Laban Movement Analysis model

Note: we found it is really hard to talk about sensation, not touch! :) but it is really helpful to make the distinction between the two.

Next steps

I'm totally new to this field, although Iʼm experienced in talking about affect and sensation in terms of performance, & looking at embodied experience through the lens of somatics.

I have identified relevant research areas to follow up in the fields of haptics for prosthetics & haptics for VR. I would love to meet and chat with some researchers in these fields.

I also want to continue prototyping ways of creating sensation, to learn in a material way at the same time. Right now Iʼm looking for technologist collaborators who are interested in this field.

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Notes:

*My experience of being a teenager in 1999 where I grew up in a village/small town in the UK, was extremely gender-conforming. Even though my visual ‘masculinityʼ makes me feel gender euphoric now, I still carry the ingrained shame of feeling that masculinity was somehow wrong on my body.

**Just to say – these are of course not the only types of gender or gendered sensation – for instance what about things that feel completely beyond the binary, agender, ‘alienʼ, or plant like? But they are the axes I started with in this particular project, because even though they might feel quite limiting & bring up all these social contradictions, Iʼve had meaningful experiences there.

***& often drawing from film eg. ‘Haptic Visuality’ by Laura Marks[https://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks/styled-7/].

More about the residency structure & accessibility

I was there for a month, coming into the Studio 3 days a week. The part time model was great: because of my fatigue it allowed me to do the project in a gentle-ish way and then recover or switch to other types of work the rest of the time.

The Studio turned out to be a great environment for me to work in (I donʼt always find that with shared spaces). They have a ‘quiet spaceʼ where I sometimes went to lie down, which meant I could stay there all day instead of having to go home and rest.

Working with access support worker Liz Clarke was really a gamechanger - Liz helped me to process both the mundane (travel booking, invoicing) and the expansive, philosophical/ethical themes of the work.

Residency collaborator credits:

Vix Williams, slimetime

Paul Hanson

Martin O’Leary, PM Studio Creative Technologist

Liz Clarke, Access Support

Freddie Wulf is a trans masculine artist making visceral & visual performance. He is interested in sensation, embodiment & self perception. His work is sex positive & draws from kink methodologies.

Midi residency at Pervasive Media Studio

My April midi residency was announced at Pervasive Media Studio, short blog about it here

How to ‘get things done?’ - the distraction of ‘pending’, ‘creative time’, the importance of clients & task based working

Talking with my access support worker about how I ‘never feel like I can get anything done’.

The distraction of ‘Pending’

The feeling that something is ‘pending’ is such a distraction.

Urgent tasks are pressing on me, like my tax return or some show copy I need to write for a venue. I can’t concentrate on anything, until those things are ticked off. Its tempting to ‘just get it done’ and ‘focus on the creative work later’. But the reality is, there is always something ‘pending’ - when the tax return is done, it will be paying the bills, or writing a funding application, sorting out my public liability insurance, or getting a new pair of glasses.

Unexpected things seem to come up every week and hijack my time, like the burst pipe in my kitchen, having my wisdom teeth removed and needing to recover, or just a few days of bad mental health. 

If I have a meeting or a cleaning job to go to at 14:00, from 10:30 or 11:00 my brain can’t settle because of that thing coming up later on. So I can only do little tasks like emails or cleaning the house, I can’t get into ‘deep focus’ like doing my tax return or creative work.

Empty space

You would think having empty time would solve this problem.

If I have totally empty days though, that is a surefire way to get absolutely nothing done. For some reason the time stretching out in front of me is just too intimidating and I end up feeling really bad, and achieving nothing.

All of this adds up to finding it very hard to spend time actually doing my art practice.

‘Creative time’

Sometimes I would try to designate time, like one or two hours, to just ‘do my practice’ and protect that time from admin or other tasks. But somehow it never works out - that unexpected thing happens, the tax return has to get done before the deadline and so it gets pushed into the time I reserved for my practice, and ultimately because I am scared of the financial consequences it wins.

Then I feel double bad, because I had to do my tax return when I didn’t want to, AND I’m a bad artist because I let the tax return eat up my ‘creative time’.

But what really is that ‘creative time’?

I always feel like it should be totally free and aimless, and also totally pure. Like the only valid things to do in that time would be free writing or sketching with charcoal. Audio ecology listening exercises on a walk in ‘nature’, or touching soil and journalling about my physical sensations, and then turning it into a movement improvisation and videoing myself.

What are the things I always get done?

The thing is , I don’t miss deadlines. If something has to be done, I will do it - just usually it won’t be finished until right before. If there is a deadline or someone is waiting on it, I will produce it.

Unfortunately, as a solo artist, that means that the people’s stuff takes priority over my own work. HMRC or funders or promoters get better results from me than I do from myself. And ultimately I pay the price, when my own work becomes stressful or doesn’t live up to what I wanted it to be.

The things that don’t get done, are usually a) not tasks, and b) have no ‘client’. No-one else cares right now if I do them or not. (Although they might care 2yrs down the line when my show is shit).

‘Clients’ and task based working

I am thinking, maybe I can create the situation of tasks and clients for myself.

For instance, early stage prep for a show. Can I ask my collaborators or commissioners to be ‘clients’, and create a deadline to produce some information for them?

The next thing I want to do is ‘storyboard’ the episodes of the show. I also need to do this, to share with the creative team so we have something to refer to. Can I turn this into a more concrete task with stages that I can put on a to do list? Can I create a deadline which isn’t just ‘for motivation’, but actually is when I will present this info to the team?

Doing that task will probably involve lots of the things I want to do in the dreaded ‘creative time’ - drawing, writing, using visual software, creating and re-making images, editing sounds. Maybe for me this task based way of working could be a clearer, less daunting way of putting aside consistent time for my practice and early stage ideas?

Also, fluid time

I also think it would be ideal to have some space to just flow with ideas. I am interested in doing this workshop by Yumi Sakugawa, ‘Systems, Structures, Containers of Time, Magical Seeds: How to Grow and Maintain the Ecosystem of Your creative Practice’. 

It seems like they find it important to show up for creative practice as a ritual (which could be the opposite approach to what I’m saying above).

But I wonder if its possible to have balance, to pursue both?

Weeks instead of days

Finally, for me I realised that the idea of fitting so many things into each day feels, well ridiculous. But also oppressive.

How on earth do people eat 3 nutritious meals, exercise, meditate, stretch, go outside, get life admin done, do work tasks, and go out to other commitments like a cleaning job or a social engagement, all in one day?

Seeing things in the container of a 24hour period just feels totally oppressive to me.

If I try to think about all those things, honestly I just immediately want to cry and/or die.

I am going to try out seeing things in weeks, instead of days. My Access Support Worker had that idea, like just saying ‘I would like to meditate once this week’. That seems waaaaay more spacious and realistic, and actually true and tempting, than saying ‘I want to meditate for 1min each day’. 

To me, the idea of wanting and having to do anything every day, or even every day apart from Sunday, feels really crushing. But its true to say I would like to meditate, stretch, do yoga, walk outside, lift weights, have a bath, and cook a meal from scratch, once a week.

Its true to say I would like to spend one hour flowing in thoughts or writing or moving or drawing, once every two weeks.

So maybe I’m just going to try out what happens if I see weeks as the container, rather than days.

‘The boring shit’ #3 - running budget

This is something my dyspraxic brain has always struggled with. I think since numbers and dates and time confuse me, maybe money over time is just too much to get my head around. Oh wait thats cashflow? Okay never mind.

There’s a very specific feeling I get which I associate with my brain not being able to do something because of neurodiversity. Its a really fluffy, annoying feeling of ‘bamboozled’. Like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t compute the information. That’s what I get with the running budget, or even trying to explain what I’m recording and why I’m confused.

Anyway luckily I was able to share this with the amazing Pippa Frith (Exec Producer of Fierce Festival), who is someone I actually feel comfortable expressing my bamboozlement to. She showed me some examples of how her documents work, and I made this new system.

Here are some images of an example template:

[ID: a budget spreadsheet (see audio for full description) ]

• ‘Cash budget’ is the amount you have assigned to that budget area.

• ‘Spent’ is money that has actually left the bank account.

• ‘Committed’ is money you have committed to pay, but not yet paid - eg. fee instalments.

[ID: example of a formula in the budget spreadsheet. Remaining = Cash Budget minus ((SUM:spent column)+(SUM:committed column)) ]

• ‘Remaining’ = Cash budget - (Spent + Committed).

• At the bottom of the sheet, the Remaining total should match the bank account.

• In order to ‘reconcile’ the bank account, you need to go through each bank statement and check that all the transactions are listed in the budget and have a receipt or invoice number.

• (Please please have a separate bank account for receiving grants - aside from being best practice it makes everything so much easier).

The spreadsheet should have several tabs, so you don’t have to look at too much information in one place.

My example has a tab for a list of invoices and receipts, this is where you record them and assign them a number, eg. when you buy something and there is a paper receipt, you can file it or take a picture and enter the data in the sheet, and give it a number. These can just be consecutive numbers for a list which includes both invoices and receipts. When an invoice comes in you can rename the file to include the new number.

Then a tab for the running budget, and a separate tab for the ‘original’ or ‘submitted’ budget. This is the one submitted in the funding application, so you have a record. When you start the project and probably need to modify the budget, you can just start a new one which will become the running budget and re-assign the headers there. When you do the evaluation then you can compare the original budget to the running budget.

‘My body feels like a piece of wood’ (flow & dancing discussion w Finn Love)

That’s what I said, in my first somatic therapy session.

I also spoke about how there is this gap, between an impulse & a movement. Like the impulse is there, then I get lost in this analytical thinking & second guessing, before I can move. 

I said I wanted to work on reducing tension, and increasing flow.

In relation to performance, I described my safe ‘green’ zone as slow, deliberate and pre-planned movement. Usually contained within the immediate space around my body, or with something to resist against. Free movement in a bigger space, and improvisation, would be well outside my comfort zone and result in a violent shame attack. Like in ballet, I always loved barre work but I hate floorwork, jumps and turns. Contemporary just feels like total humiliation for me.

I realised I always saw myself as less of an artist, because of this block and difficulty with flow. I was talking with an artist who really inspires me, Finn Love, about how she does her dancing - specifically how they do it sober. They told me something that really stuck:

[ID: instagram message that says ‘Follow that path and give yourself space to move in the way the music moves ur body. Rather than trying to move your body to the music’]

And

‘One major factor is that my physical fitness has improved, so I have the stamina. But artistically, like, I love moving my body. If I were high I wouldn’t move the way I do now - cos I’m learning to be more fluid.

[ID: Instagram message saying ‘Like my relationship to movement and music is something that is deep in my soul and something I think about almost constantly’]

This was illuminating but also made me feel deeply sad, cos I can tell that my relationship to my body and movement is really not like this, deep down. I have never enjoyed moving my body. It always feels stressful and shameful and difficult, with so many possibilities for getting it wrong. I cannot imagine the feeling of ‘loving moving my body’

For me, the only taste I have had of that flow, and of a feeling of fluidity in my movement, is through being high. So it was super interesting and illuminating to hear someone say, that they feel like they’re becoming more fluid by *not* being high. 

And the point about allowing the music to move you, rather than trying to move your body to the music - I feel like this is the kind of experiential level that I really need people to explain embodied things on. I never hear people saying how it *feels*, or how they make decisions about what to do with their body in improvised situations - rather than what to do. Just describing what to do, isn’t helpful for me because I can’t make my body do it. Especially if the instructions are ‘just do what you feel’. What if I don’t know what I feel or I get stuck.

I loved this insight into Finn’s practice & sobriety, and even though my relationship with my body & dance is so different, I feel like I can learn from it & take something forward about sobriety and how to connect with my body on an experiential level. <3

Containers for work - physical & digital space, precarity, annoyance, and boundaries between admin & practice

• What is needed to make containers for my work?
  
  Physical space: I need an organised place where I can sit comfortably to edit and do laptop work, drawing, thinking. I need a clear space where I can leave my things overnight (not the kitchen table). I need to be able to plug my chargers in easily!
  
  Rehearsing is different - but I don’t need that all the time. I do need to be able to test out some stuff, either in a clear space in my flat or a studio space. For this I really need an easy camera setup (or iPhone tripod) so I can just put it there and quickly film myself and watch it back. (I dread plugging in the wires, setting up the camera, tripping over everything… and thats a bit of a barrier to work).
  
  Digital space: I need containers which are already set up to upload things as soon as they are done - like this blog, or a Twitter. I need a good filing system and I need to stick to it. That takes effort to set up which I can’t do when I am in project mode, so I need to do that at another time and create good containers first.

• How precarity feeds into not being able to build those things
  
  I realised that precarious housing is really feeding into my inability to set up good work space. How am I supposed to invest in building something or buying furniture, when everything feels so temporary and I’m not sure if I can stay where I am for long?
  
  This also feeds into my ability to make work - of course I can’t focus on making a show, when I’m not sure where I will be living by the end of the process.
  
  This thinking is encouraging me to be realistic about what I need, and try hard to put it in place. When its not possible to have certainty (for instance I can’t find out for sure right now, whether I can stay where I’m living long term) - then I have to just make a decision based on what I need now, and commit.
  

• Annoyance
  
  If things consistently bug me, and stop me from looking forward to work, I need to sort them out!
  
  It might seem hard but sometimes just something small like putting up some shelves or screwing a hook into the wall for my keys can make things feel so much more organised and manageable, and stop me from dreading work.
  

• What counts as ‘practice’ - eg. Reading, writing, drawing, sound, rehearsing, talking with people, moving/stretching
  
  I want to expand my definition of ‘practice’, to take account of all the things I do which are feeding my work.
  
  For instance, listening to podcasts and audiobooks has been a main source of information for me recently. Just because its not sitting down to read a physical book, doesn’t mean its not research.
  
  Going for walks allows my thoughts to flow and new / different ideas come to me while I’m walking. Even if its not directly productive, moving my body and seeing the sunlight and the water and the plants *is* my practice.
  
  I am someone who really bounces off other people. Since I am a solo artist, I need to factor in that conversations with other artists and friends, and even sometimes online discussions, are a really important part of my work and not think of them as time wasting.
  

• What counts as admin eg. Life admin, work related admin
  
  Admin is separate to practice, but important to support it, and it also needs space and the right conditions.
  
  Admin is replying to emails, writing proposals, managing budgets, sending back forms for grant conditions, updating website or social media, doing my tax return. I can’t pretend these things don’t exist, I need to leave time for them.
  
  Its also all the life tasks - ordering new bank cards, paying bills, health appointments, bureaucracy - which intersect with my ability to get other stuff done and ultimately are foundational to my ability to exist (which means they have to be done, in order to work).
  

• How to divide those times so I can put admin aside & stop thinking about it to get practice time done

  For me, the problem is when I have an admin task, especially an urgent one, its hard to think about anything else.

  For practice, I need to sink into a deep focus and stay with one task for a while. I can’t do that when my brain is constantly bubbling with thoughts about a payment I need to make, my upcoming tax return deadline, or responding to emails as they come in.
  
  I need to respect both practice & admin, and create the right conditions for them - but keep them separate. I can’t deal with admin (even if its about my practice), during practice time.
  
  No idea how to do this right now, other than staying on top of admin tasks as much as possible, and scheduling time to do them so my brain knows they will get done.

‘The boring shit’ #2 - filing system

I have never had a good filing system. Working with audio and video, I am constantly saving source files and multiple versions of the same project. 

Sounds are so hard to file! How do you categorise them? Names like ‘crunchy 2’ are everywhere.

Then how do you deal with versions? Every single time I end up with ‘[filename] final final FINAL THIS ONE’. 

Then there are the random project files the software creates which I have no idea what they are and always have some extension I can’t understand, but I assume are necessary for something? And I always forget to set it up properly so the files are just saving to some completely inconvenient location and they all get split away from the project files and then when I come to put it all back together its just a mess.

Hoping to solve this, I worked with my Access Support Worker to research how other artists - like video and sound editors - deal with filing.

One major consideration was that I work in projects which span different media types - so the existing system of Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies on a Mac wasn’t really helping me. It would be better to somehow group those things together by project first.

This tutorial was really helpful (and quite short).

These were the main things I learnt:

Project name

• Use the project name in every filename

• Create a short code eg. the first 3 letters of the project name

• The aim is to make the files searchable - so if you search that code all those files show up

• (Often I don’t have a project name at the start, so I decided this): Choose a code at the start & replace it systematically later if the project name changes

Key words

• Choose key words for filenames & always use the same - this is to tell you without doubt what is in the file

I looked at the types of files I usually have for each project and chose one way to name them (to avoid having multiple words for one file type eg. audio, sound, samples, recordings).

v.1, 2, 3 etc and ‘Submitted’ are there to avoid the curse of ‘final final 2 FINAL’ :)

With the sound & video I decided to use the venue name to show it was a final version, and which performance it was for.

Filename format

• Naming every folder & file the same format eg.

So ‘ExP’ is the project code for ‘Example Project’, then it is followed by ‘proposal’ to show what is in the file, and v.1 to show the version.

Hopefully when I go to the folder, I can scroll to the latest file version just by selecting the highest v. number.

Then, when I send something off for instance a grant application, I should save that version as ‘submitted’.

This is how I named the folders.

The numbers are just there so the Mac displays them in the right order - this helps my brain somehow.

Each project should have quite similar folders, but they can also be modified to fit the types of files needed for that project.

Do I / should I consider myself Mad and/or Disabled? (Project LETS ‘From Diagnosis to Disability + Mad Justice: Part 1’)

This essay draws from Project LETS panel ‘From Diagnosis to Disability + Mad Justice: Part 1’, you can access the recording & transcript by buying it from their Instagram @projectlets. The talk features panelists Stella Akua Mensah, Vesper Moore, Jess Stohlmann-Rainey & Chanika Svetvilas and is chaired by Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu.

I also draw from ‘Cripping the Keynote’, the opening panel from Cripping the Pain festival at Sophiensaele, Berlin with Carrie Sandahl, Kate Marsh and Noa Winter.

TW: discussion of psychiatric incarceration, mental health distress, violence, eating disorders, suicidality and self harm.

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I recently was in a meeting with a commissioner of my performance work, where we discussed funding options. I said I hadn’t connected with Disability Arts organisations, because although I feel aligned with the experiences of Disabled artists, I don’t consider myself Disabled. Its not because of shame around using that term, its because I don’t think it would be right for me to take up space or funding in those contexts. So although I can learn from Disability Justice, I don’t know if I can call myself ‘Disabled’, especially in any context where I would take up limited resources that could be given to other artists.

The feedback I got was that I should consider this more - the organisation in question is undersubscribed with neurodivergent artists and they consider neurodivergence a valid disability. 

Reflecting on how I feel -

I personally do feel disabled by my neurodivergence, and I include trauma and mental health in that. (I’ll say more about that later). I have written notes to myself in the past, describing myself as ‘relationally disabled’. By this I mean that social contexts, close relationships and work relationships are & historically have been made so difficult by the way I experience them & respond (getting flooded with extremely strong emotions during, or bombarded by intrusive looping thoughts afterwards) - that I feel that is a disability. Something other people take for granted - enjoying relaxing with friends, or simply being able to function within a ‘normal’ work hierarchy - for me are among the most difficult and painful things in my life. Unfortunately, due to my inability to relax and my looping thoughts, being alone can also be daunting for me. So I have spent much of my life on work/social burnout and masking my real (usually strong) feelings or exhaustion.

As I began to discover my CPTSD and the reasons for some of these experiences, it was primarily through the writing of Clementine Morrigan - a Canadian zine maker and writer who covers the intersections of mental health, polyamory & BDSM whose emotional world seems sometimes spookily similar to mine. They describe themselves as Disabled (I assume by their CPTSD), and I admire that choice. Their choice to use that label really opened my mind to what was applicable with the terminology of disability.

As I get older I realise there are other, subtle aspects which affect my capacity to participate - for instance fatigue (potentially muscle weakness associated with dyspraxia) and brain fog, combined with focus and attention issues, which mean I struggle to work 5 days a week or 8 hours a day in the same task, and sensory overload which means I need to take breaks away from background noise, strip lighting and screens. All of these affect my working life hugely, whilst remaining mostly invisible (until I am unable to continue). Sometimes the effects of these can actually make me look ‘Mad’, as they mostly bubble over into ‘inappropriately’ strong emotions or unusual behaviours like hiding during the working day & lying down in a quiet place with a jumper over my face.

Am I ‘Mad’?

Aside from the question of am I Disabled, I also have the question can I use the label Mad? I came across the reclaiming of this term through Clementine’s work but also through Project LETS, a political education & advocacy service by/for Mad, mentally ill, Disabled & neurodivergent folks. I saw a workshop where they used the acronym MMIND* to stand for all of these categories together. It made me think yes, that acronym means me - even though I can’t necessarily separate the parts of it in my own experience.

Personally, I feel relieved and happy when I think of self identifying with the term Mad or crazy. It feels like it reflects the unpredictable ups and downs, the shifting mind states, the way my mental health can suddenly grab hold of me and make everything really intense or horrible for long periods - the way it can dictate my life. But also the unruliness of my brain and feelings - which I identify with, and am kind of proud of. I would really like to exist in spaces where my ‘Mad’ness could be held and accepted - where my extremes of anxiety, paranoia, the days when I can’t get out of bed at all or motivate myself to even move, could be held alongside the moments of feeling great, the high productivity days/weeks, the ideas that sometimes flow so freely that they get out of control, the beautiful images and connections my brain makes, and my high sensitivity to everything around me. I don’t want to romanticise madness in relation to creativity (I absolutely do not think we have to foster conditions where we stay at our most crazy to access creativity - that is what this whole project is about). But for me, my Mad / crazy is intertwined with my creativity. And living in conditions which accept one, helps the other flourish (that’s why there has to be balance and I can’t do creative work full time). 

But I am hesitant to use the term Mad - because I am not a psychiatric survivor. Clementine Morrigan is. I watched the talk ‘From Diagnosis to Disability + Mad Justice: Part 1’ by Project LETS and the panellists were all survivors of non-consensual incarceration, medication and in some cases torture by the psychiatric institution. My experience differs so greatly from this. As a young person, I made multiple attempts to get help. I didn’t know what for, but I knew I was seriously, deeply distressed and at some points suicidal. I was told by so many people that I just wanted attention, so much that I actually believed it myself. My GP’s response was to deal with my chronic bulimia & self harm by putting me on 80mg (the highest dose) of Prozac, so I lost a lot of emotional & decision making function for my later teenage years and spent a year almost completely in bed, afraid to even go out in my own garden. I was eventually connected to one counsellor on the NHS, who said they would only offer me family therapy. I refused, not surprisingly given my Dad’s history of violence and anger. I needed space to get well for myself, not to just comply. But I wasn’t ever offered that. My over-arching memory from age 15 - 19 is how much I *wanted* to go to hospital, I often felt terrified and so distraught on my own in my room at night, I just wanted someone to take me away and make me better. Now I know of course, that this would never have been the case. And I think its a very white, middle class fantasy.

The message of the Project LETS talk was that psychiatry is often just another form of incarceration, for negatively racialised people. That psychiatric experiences differ hugely based on race - and that people of colour are very unlikely to see them as potential help for their distress or to seek them out. Its more likely that psychiatry will be imposed on patients of colour. There was also a white survivor (Jess Stohlmann-Rainey) speaking of her horrible experiences in psychiatric ‘care’, so its clear once you’re in there, the system can be horribly negative for patients of all racial presentations. 

‘For me, my introduction to the DSM and diagnosis was also my introduction to forced treatment. It was a really overwhelming and scary experience for me. Specifically, as a white woman, I had been taught to trust medical systems, and my family did also.’ (Jess Stohlmann-Rainey)

It seems ridiculous to me that I dreamed of ‘hospital’, now I know what the realities are. In recent years I have been so grateful I don’t have a psychiatric diagnosis - as it would have been a reason to refuse me gender affirming trans healthcare and at the very least, complicated my transition. I freaked out when I saw that my GP notes from 2002 said ‘suicide attempt’, and I wanted to get it erased, because I was afraid it would be used against me now. So I had a tiny taste of what it would feel like to feel paranoid and controlled by the information held about my mental health.

Diagnosis & privilege

I am diagnosed Dyspraxic but I am not diagnosed with ADHD, or Complex PTSD or any other psychiatric ‘disorder’. I wonder what diagnoses I would have received at different times in my life. I know there are times when I have experienced paranoia and delusions, would I have been treated as schizophrenic (like my Granny)? In my teenage years my emotions were so wild and my self destructive behaviours so common, would I have been a stereotypical Borderline (fragile white girl)? I also have autistic traits. If I was a cis guy, would I have been diagnosed autistic and gone through ‘special schooling’?

Anyway, I have the privilege of having one not-so-stigmatized diagnosis for Dyspraxia, so I can feel ‘valid’ at least as a neurodivergent person and access any services which require diagnosis, but without having to deal with limits on my life. A very lucky situation.

During my process of finding out about myself, I desperately wanted diagnoses. Mainly I wanted an autism assessment and access to ADHD treatment. Eventually I realised that the end point of these, was potentially something I could provide for myself (coping education and targeted therapy), and that they were so inaccessible (financially and due to 4 year waiting lists on the NHS), that for me it wasn’t worth it to pursue at that moment. There are also other consequences to diagnosis, for instance an autism diagnosis can affect your ability to get car insurance. 

I realise that seeking diagnosis at all, is a white & middle class privilege. For anyone who is often categorised ‘dangerous’ by societal prejudice (for instance a racialised and/or working class person), these diagnoses can take on a whole new dimension. They are more a threat to life, than a rubber stamp to help you access services.

‘I think for Black people diagnosis has been a tool for punishment. It has been a tool for incarceration and for criminalization…It gets tricky in terms of the question of the privilege of a diagnosis.

Because I do think for Black people trans- and queer Black and Indigenous people especially diagnosis goes from a privilege, if it ever was one on an individual scale, to a dangerous one if it was a privilege to begin with.’ (Stella Akua Mensah)

Is Mad / neurodivergent, Disabled?

In the Project LETS talk I related so strongly to what Stella Akuah Mensah described about OCD:

‘I feel like I've reclaimed that kinship of the acronym OCD. I'm very opposed to thinking of my experience of being "disordered," though. 

I think that applies a certain type of maladaptive, or pathological elements…when it was actually a logical response to trauma I had. I take a lot of pride in my relationship with "OCD." Whatever it is, whether it's a state or a condition (I don't think of it as an illness), it's quite foundational to how I process things and how my brain works. 

I don't feel good about talking about that as a disorder. It's me. It's how my brain works. It's neurodiversity. And I really like that framing for myself.’ (Stella Akua Mensah)

For me, I have read enough to know that similar effects to those I experience can actually be caused by early trauma (executive dysfunction can be caused by two hemispheres of the brain not joining properly). So, who is to say whether I would have experienced the same neurodivergence without early trauma. 

To be fair, there are some signs that it runs in my family - even that unsupported neurodivergence could be a *cause* of my Dad’s angry outbursts and inappropriate coping mechanisms. So here it loops round again. Which came first - neurodivergence or [trauma and] emotional distress? And would I even experience such great emotional distress and looping thoughts and self destructive feelings if I wasn’t hyper sensitive (neurodivergent) in the first place? The loop continues.

Therefore, to me my Mad ness is also neurodivergence, its part of my neurotype. But it would be wrong to erase the Mad aspect of my experience and call it only neurodivergence, as it feels so fundamental.

Do these things combined, add up to a disability? The Project LETS talk notes that many Mad people either don’t identify as Disabled, or struggle with that question.

‘The work we do at Project LETS is building between worlds of activism, disability justice work, Mad Pride, Mad Justice, etc. 

There are connections but also a lot of distinctions. There are many evolutions of how we come to know ourselves -- the language and the tools we use, what we feel we have access too, etc. A lot of people who have been labeled as neurodivergent or mentally ill don't feel like they have access to the community.’ (Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu)

I can’t write a conclusion to this now, but I think I will continue to try & find resources to explore this question, and listen to Mad & Disabled artists to find out their perspective. I would say I already want to research the history of reclaiming the term Mad or crazy more, as that feels like something it would be useful for me to be able to express about my history and my experience. So maybe Part 2 of this talk, which touches more on Mad history, can help me with that.

01.09.21

I’m watching Cripping the Keynote for Cripping the Pain festival, and the panellists are talking about Mad non-Disabled people, or people questioning whether they fit within the Disability community, also being welcome in safe(r) disabled spaces during the festival (Noa Winter) - about how these spaces might be the place where you are able to begin to figure out how you identify. Carrie Sandahl is speaking about coalition building - about Disability community, not necessarily being for people only who identify as Disabled but for people who align with the experiences. This resonates with me and makes me feel welcome/relieved - and makes me think other people might have these questions too :)

---

Resources for further research:

Stella Akua Mensah ‘Abolition Must Include Psychiatry’

Mad Liberation: An Interview with Vesper Moore

Clementine Morrigan ‘Fucking Crazy’ [sex positive content]

Project LETS Disability Justice resource list

Project LETS Mental Illness Experiences resource list

Working with an Access Support Worker #2: meeting candidate and setting up contract, negotiating work

Starting my DYCP, I have never worked with an Access Support Worker before and I didn’t know a) what to ask for help with, and b) how to find someone to work with, and set up the working relationship. Here’s an account of how it went for me.

Finding candidates

I considered advertising nationally on Arts Council ArtsJobs and ArtsAdmin e-Digest, and locally on pages like Theatre Bristol. I also could have used Facebook to share a callout.

I was concerned about my capacity to shortlist and manage an interview process alone, so I wanted to find a more realistic solution. In the end, a friend of mine was running an interview process at the same time, so I asked her if she could send my job description to any suitable candidates that she didn’t end up working with. She actually suggested one person and put me in touch directly with them, so capacity wasn’t an issue in the end.

(Although it would be great ethically to open up employment opportunities more publicly, at this time I felt like I had to be mindful of my own capacity. In future, now that I have more experience and if I was working on a project with support available, I would probably do an interview process).

Interview

I arranged to meet the candidate over Zoom. They already had the job description and I read their CV beforehand. I was nervous since I have no experience of being an interviewer, but I was honest about that and it went fine.

In that conversation I gave more details of the project and how I saw the schedule working. I got a sense of what their availability was like, and I also asked them if they had any access needs or considerations to put in place.

We talked about their previous experience and how it related to the role, some specific skills they had and some things I wanted help with but they didn’t have experience with (eg. Budgeting). This was good because it gave me a sense of whether I would need to seek additional support for any areas of the project, and also brought up things they might be really skilled at helping with that I hadn’t already thought of. They also agreed that they were happy to do online research for tutorials for things they are not experienced in, which is really helpful.

Negotiation & setting up work

I was happy to work with the candidate I met, so then we moved on to setting up expectations for the working process. These were the things we had to cover:

• Schedule: I made a rough schedule which divided the hours across the period so they knew how many hours per week/month we are likely to work

• Flexibility: we agreed to what degree we can be flexible about changing times, dates or amounts of work per week

• Payment: on what dates would instalments of the fee be paid and by what method (in the end we agreed that I would pay them a fixed amount every month and we would also keep a log of the actual hours worked, so they could make up any un-used hours flexibly)

• Communication: what methods of communication would we use (Zoom, email and Slack)

• Time boundaries: when can we contact eachother and how quickly to expect a reply

Contract

We made a freelance contract from a template, outlining the basic details officially, and both signed it electronically.

Working with an Access Support Worker #1: job description

Starting my DYCP, I have never worked with an Access Support Worker before and I didn’t know a) what to ask for help with, and b) how to find someone to work with, and set up the working relationship. Here’s an account of how it went for me.

Job description

I got help to create a job description from the person I worked with for Access Support for my DYCP application. I based it on other people’s JDs which I saw online, and changed the fields and descriptive part to fit my needs. This is the structure I used which can be pasted as a template:

ACCESS SUPPORT WORKER: [artist name] 

Pay and timescales: 

X total fee
Broken down as: X per hour for X hours total
[dates and schedule of working] 

About me: 

Brief artist biog & any info about the project, or your needs that you want to share

What I’m looking for: (here is the actual text I used, replace this with your own)

• Someone who can support and bring structure to the creative process

• Knowledge of disability or neurodiversity access support roles & approaches

• An understanding of neurodiversity

• Good listener who is able to translate chat into action points

• 'Zoomed out' view, able to prioritise tasks and ideas

• Good at problem-solving & technical troubleshooting

• Skilled with admin and basic software/online technical skills, ability to research 'how to' if needed
  
  List of duties:

• Building structures that support me to grow my creative work, eg. access support meetings, time management, workflow and filing systems

• Being a partner for 'verbal processing' - me talking through my ideas and what I need to get done, eg. 1hr Zoom sessions with note taking

• Regular check in and setting priorities for next period of time

• Supporting to set up regular admin structures eg. monthly accounting

• Some admin & technical support and research tasks

Structure of work: 

eg. How many meetings per week, any time restrictions / requirements, how will the work be organised

Mode of working: 

eg. Remote or in person

Working language: 

Applicants of all backgrounds welcome. We can also discuss your needs in relation to the role and how the work is carried out. 

Being a dyspraxic perfectionist

Lately I have been feeling my lack of fine motor skills, and realising I might really find some tasks harder than other people.

[image description: a light purple & pink bell shaped flower, out of focus in the foreground, with bright green grass & stems tangling around a green wire fence. In the background water is visible]

Today I built a mini structure for my tomato plants on the balcony. I got some canes and when I started putting them up, I realised they needed something to hold them straight. I started by wrapping some twine around between the canes and tying them to a drainpipe, but quickly realised this wasn’t helping. Also of course the twine was pink plastic and not green or jute like most people have so it really started to look chaotic. I had some little twigs I’d saved and I started making a triangle frame between 3 canes, once at the bottom and once at the top. It was a process of discovery, how to make them tie together, and how to make it stand solid. In the end, I didn’t want to leave all the ends of the twine trailing, I realised wanted it to look neat. Its hard for me to just walk away and leave a task ‘done enough’ - once I start I’m there zoomed in to the tiny threads for hours.

I realised how much I enjoy doing stuff like that for gardening because no one is watching me! I have this underlying fear that someone is going to laugh at what I’ve done, and see how chaotic the inside of my brain really is. it made me reflect on art making, and how my perfectionism really might be a way of covering up, of coping and then over-doing it. How can I get to a place where I can put in a reasonable amount of effort, for instance for a scratch performance or a visual proposal, and not stay up all night trying to make it look ‘decent’ before its finished?

It also made me think about structure. About putting structure in place as a loving act, how creating structure can help something grow (like the tomato plants). I wonder how much energy they were putting into holding themselves up *and* trying to grow fruit? I hope that giving them these canes to rest on means they can finish making fruit before the end of the summer (even if its only one :). I want to do that for my practice.

Footnote Sept 2021: they did grow fruit! only small, some red & some yellow.

Lying down, resting: ‘A Crash Course in Cloudspotting’ by Raquel Meseguer Zafe

I listened to the audio performance of A Crash Course in Cloudspotting by Raquel Meseguer Zafe, it was on at Sophiensaele and they sent a link to join remotely. It was really nice, as an experience. I did it lying on the sofa with someone I’ve been dating maybe 6 weeks. (Sorry because I know its meant to be headphones) but we listened together. It was kind of a new experience, to share something like this with a date. I always go alone to shows and love zoning into things, especially one on one things like that. But it felt nice, to lie there with another person, with their legs across me. I wore something over my eyes so I felt separate, and grounded at the same time - in my own head but in contact with their legs.

The show shares the stories of different people who need to lie down in public places often, either to rest, or deal with pain, or both. We heard the different voices telling us the details - lying in the front row of a cinema, but only after the film starts, or folding your body between the metal architecture of a train station bench. My mind was there with them, easily seeing the textures imagining the feeling of lying in these spaces. I loved the way the sounds outside the window blended with the sounds of the performance - mixing my world with theirs.

I felt really connected to this piece, really relieved, and really sad. I felt relieved because Raquel and other people with disabilities or chronic conditions are starting to be heard, and have more space to talk - at least in the UK. I felt relief because I related to these experiences and I had never heard anyone else speak about something like that. But I felt sad because of the hostility shown towards people who use public space in a different way, and the stupid unnecessary-ness of this.

After the performance I shared with my date the times I remember lying down in ‘unsuitable’ spaces. Getting migraines at work and feeling like I couldn’t go home because there was ‘too much to do’ - the time I was discovered lying underneath the Accounts person’s desk with my head wrapped in a scarf because she was part time and it was the only place I could be horizontal. The times when I used to go to the empty Studio downstairs when I worked in a theatre, because it was dark and I could hide there for a while until I recovered. Fatigue - The times I’ve laid down in the treatment space to sleep on my 25min lunch break at a beauty salon, counting the minutes until my break would end. And sometimes this strange reaction I get, where the room spins and I feel sick and have to lie on the floor in stressful situations. One time when I had to leave a performance at the Southbank and just lie on the floor right outside the theatre door, dreading the audience leaving and seeing me there, and the look the usher gave me. Knowing as well that its a privilege to be read as someone who is allowed to continue lying there and not moved on, or fired from my job.

The piece moved from stories grounded in familiar places - the toilet floor, the University lecture theatre, the cinema - to the slightly more fantastical spaces of a coastline in the jagged paintwork of Raquel’s ceiling, a Mediterranean beach, and the international space station. I loved how it flowed along, stream of consciousness, and took me to this place which felt so much like my own thoughts floating away in those stolen moments, sleeping with my head against a train window or drifting in a park. The audio talked about weightlessness & I felt myself hovering, floating, and then coming back to gravity and feeling the sofa underneath me and my weight sinking right down into the ground.

The stories shared made me a lot more aware that some people might see leaving the house as risky, that a change in state could happen at any time and how daunting that must be, to choose to be ‘out’ when you know you could end up unavoidably having to be on the ground - or like one of the stories, caught in the rain and curled up under a bush. It made me think a lot about how inhospitable the world is designed to be, and how everything flows smoothly until you need to stop for longer than a coffee. It made me think of the ‘anti-homeless’ architecture in London. And it made me think of the beauty in those moments, of the things you see and the thoughts you have in that half-waking sleep, when you can manage to snatch it. 

I don’t know why I have fatigue (its pretty mild mostly), or whether my migraines are linked to my neurodiversity, or to be honest wtf even happened medically in some of those moments when I needed to lie down at inconvenient times. But it was comforting to hear that other people have experienced something like this too, and mostly to hear the details of their experiences - the suspect pool of water on the toilet floor, the arms of the bench or the plane seats - because maybe without realising it I felt ashamed, like I was the only one who navigated those & laid there anyway. 

The sound was beautiful and after we drifted out of it, we talked and it was so nice to have been there - but also not - with someone else. I guess that’s what it would be like, lying there on the floor with other audience members. To be honest I really appreciated a performance that thought about my comfort! :) and where that wasn’t something I was sneaking by slouching down in the chair or resting my head back or making a cushion out of my backpack. hopefully there can be more.

‘The boring shit’ #1 - schedule, focus & energy

One of the major things I learnt from my first fully funded period of working full time as an artist, was that I need a schedule. For me, this is not actually so much about managing when I do things, but working with my energy and focus to make sure different tasks get done.

As a neurodivergent person I always felt like time was against me - I struggled with 9-5 working because I couldn’t direct my brain to focus on the right thing at the right time. I was consistently late for a 9am start, but working through lunch breaks or staying late to get things done. During my Master’s degree I was consistently the last one there being kicked out of the computer lab when they locked up at 9pm - my hyper focus would kick in after everyone left and I would get so absorbed in editing video I would wish for another hour every time.

When I got my first grant I felt so happy to be free of these schedule demands and be able to flow with my ideas. But it turned out, that totally unstructured time was equally as hard to manage and feel healthy in!

Over the time since then, and the pandemic I have been able to get curious about my own energy and focus and at what times, in what conditions it comes and goes. Slowly I have pieced together a schedule that works for me - so I wanted to share that here. Not because it would necessarily work for someone else, but because the types of questions I’ve asked in the process might be helpful to someone else trying to design their own schedule.

This is an example schedule of my week:

ID: example timetable of a week, colour coded (see audio for full description)

Here are a few key things to consider for scheduling:

• Focus - when is the best time for me to focus? Mine is 11am, so now I try to keep that time free every day for any cognitively taxing work, for instance writing a proposal or having an important meeting.

• Types of work - I know that I can be really effective at thinking around 11am, but not so much after 2pm. So I schedule ‘physical work’ in the afternoon.

• One thing feeds another - if I focus for several hours in the morning on a very detailed task, my mind needs to zoom out and my body needs to move. So the physical work I do in the afternoon actually supports the morning work.

• Social or connected vs solo time - I can’t work alone all day. I lose track and quickly lose motivation. I need to schedule meetings, and social types of work, throughout the week to keep me motivated and inspired.

• Energy - when am I tired? I used to push through using coffee or sugary snacks. Now I try to listen to my body and rest when I am tired, and come back to it in the morning. Usually now this is after 5/6pm. This might seem frustrating but I have found that the quality of decision making is so much better the next day, I can usually finish tasks in half the time it would take me at 8pm.

• Flexibility! even though I know these things as general rules, I still keep space and allow myself to flex when I do things as much as possible to work with my body and brain. Sometimes I do still work all evening, once in a while if I get into a flow. But then its important to rest later in the week or the weekend.

Tricks:

• Flex on, flex off - I used to try and get one task done and only focus on that, even for multiple days or weeks until it was done. Now I realise I often need to do a rough draft of something, store it away, and come back to it later with a fresh perspective.

• Mini breaks - if I am feeling tired or mentally overwhelmed, I lie down and wear an eye mask for half an hour. Or if I have something to do in the evening, I rest and try to decompress from the day first.

• Stretching, bath or shower - even if I don’t have the time or motivation to exercise, stretching, or having a bath or shower helps me to get back into my body and clear my mind.

• Mini tasks - like going out to post a letter or return something to a shop. I dread these when they are on my list, but when I use them to break up my day and refresh between focussed tasks they can actually be helpful!

• Split the planning and the doing - I read somewhere (can’t remember where, sorry) that for neurodivergent brains with poor executive function, this is helpful because the planning drains all your capacity so when you get to the task your focus is too depleted to complete it. It works for me - I do the planning and break the task into steps in bullet points, then come back to it next time I have focus.

• Breaking things into steps - often the problem is the task on the list, eg. ‘Write proposal’, is actually 5 or 6 tasks. When I break it down into steps first it really helps, eg. ‘Read guidelines’, ‘research costings’, ‘get a bio from person X’, etc.

• Support or ‘body doubling’ - my Access Support Worker helps me do things like breaking tasks into steps. Many neurodivergent people work best by doing ‘verbal processing’ - talking about the task until you realise what the next steps are. I really, really need this and have also found I can share this with particular friends (obviously checking in first to ask if they have space). Usually this gets me unstuck and bumps me onto the next stage of the task.
  ‘Body doubling’ is where you arrange to work with someone - for instance just sitting together on Zoom while you both work for a fixed period of time, or checking in by text at set times to see how each other is doing.

• Food - I am terrible at this but one thing I saw recently was an ADHD nutritionist recommending banana & peanut butter on toast as a quick snack which provides slow burn energy and protein. Stuff like this does help me when I’m feeling too overwhelmed to eat but need to be on good form. I also keep protein bars in my bag for when I get a sudden energy crash during a cleaning shift or when I’m out.

Ideas for a trauma-informed performance practice

This was written after a session of ‘Bubble Baths for the Soul’, a group of queer artists using talking therapy to process issues around our practice, facilitated by Lou Platt, Artist Wellbeing; initiated by Tom Marshman; funded by Theatre Bristol and LGBTQ+ Voice & Influence.

The context of the discussion was about work in which the performer/s are dealing with themes that have a real emotional weight for them personally - which is often expected of live artists without necessarily any structure in place to deal with the aftermath.

• Use the process to deal with emotions around the themes

Maybe theatre/art making processes already have a structure that we can use to somewhat-resolve our personal feelings about the material, before we put it on stage?

I think there is a pressure within the theatre/art making culture in the UK to push personal feelings aside and be ‘productive’ in the rehearsal room - also extreme time pressure and limited budgets make it hard to make space for each person’s emotions. So often instead of using this time to slowly process whatever comes up, I was pushing feelings aside and trying to ignore them, racing to the end goal of having ‘a finished show’ or something to put onstage.

Titration: gradually increasing dosage to allow you to get used to it and find the right dosage for you. In medicine this is used for drugs, in trauma therapy this is a technique used by therapists to help clients approach traumatic themes/memories in small chunks which can be tolerated, and then move away from them again. The idea is that this allows the body/mind to slowly increase the window of tolerance for dealing with this theme, without getting triggered/retraumatised and causing further harm.

Perhaps the theatre making process (ideas > discussions > improvisations > feedback > scratch performances > feedback > final performance) actually is already structured to allow quite a lot of titration. Maybe we can just change the focus, to use that space for the performer/s to process anything that comes up & consider how manageable the performance feels for them, so that by the time we get onstage we feel somewhat resolved and don’t have the fear of a surprise trigger and mental health risk.

• Structure the performance to safely take you out of that space before the end

Jesse* said he often does this in his work - telling a story and then changing to a new scene, much lighter, and incorporating the perspective of ‘now’ as well as ‘then’.

What can we do in the structure of our writing / composing that creates a safe trajectory for the performer? On both a nervous system and conscious level. Do we need to regulate with the audience after visiting a challenging place?

This makes me reflect that I have often structured my work with only the audience in mind, and never thought about my own needs as a performer or how to write them in. Which seems silly when I am basically designing the work.

*Jesse Cooper, Bristol-based performance artist

• ‘Professionalism’ - what does it mean for a performer?

I think the reason I have often suppressed emotions in the past, is to ‘be professional’. But is that really what ‘professionalism’ is, in performance?

To me, professionalism would mean arriving onstage feeling somewhat resolved around the themes of the show, knowing that I can hold space for them and that I know how to regulate and give myself what I need, if it does get too much unexpectedly. That makes it safe(r) for me, and for my audience. And I believe that being at a slight distance, or knowing how to visit and connect to an emotional place and come back out of it, often creates work where the audience can go with the performer on their journey. Maybe that isn’t possible without having some space to deal with emotions around the topic and build skill around coping strategies.

So, maybe trying to share this idea of professionalism which actually includes emotions and discussion of what comes up in the rehearsal room, and necessitates that as part of the show-making process, could help to create better working conditions and safer, happier performers.

Welcome! why I’m writing this blog

Here is some stuff about why I’m writing the blog:

In 2019 I took a break from my art practice (performing, but also researching and developing ideas) due to mental health & burnout. At that time I was open to the idea that I would never return to making work, although I hoped that I would. I had always been seeing making ‘good art’ as the number 1 goal in my life and it was taking precedence over everything, including my health. Now in 2021 I am returning to my art practice and I wanted to document the process of trying to make it sustainable for me, and to put that somewhere public so that anyone else with similar struggles can access the same information.

I have realised over this time of taking a break, that there have been struggles I’ve had since forever that I suppressed and over-compensated for. I have never heard anyone speak in detail about *how* they actually make their art, never mind being honest about the trickier parts. Discussions of process always seem so abstracted and intellectualised. I am really interested in the day to day, and how to overcome challenges, rather than pretending they don’t exist or thinking I am a bad person for having them.

I am now (2021) starting a process of funded professional development looking specifically at these areas of struggle with my DYCP (Developing Your Creative Practice, funded by Arts Council England). This blog will include documentation of that process, as well as stuff from before and beyond that project. Since I am using public money during the DYCP which not everyone can access, I also think ethically, I would like to share and make as much available to others as possible.

In general as well I find work quite inaccessible - I have tried several different jobs alongside art making, and in my time away from art I have tried to ‘just’ work in an office job, and in a beauty salon. It was super challenging and made me realise that those roles often require me to stay in my weakest areas and rarely get to show my strengths. I went through an Access to Work process and received some coaching around neurodiversity and employment. I have had to accept that I am actually not as good at some things - admin and office work, doing long/consistent hours in the same role - as I thought I was, and that I can’t fall back on this as a ‘second career’. That’s actually a good thing, because I am really unhappy in that environment and those roles. But it was a shock, and I felt like everyone else around me, and everyone I had ever met was just ‘fine’ with lots of things I find completely insurmountable. So that’s another reason for writing about this, not only in the context of art but in the context of work, and how do we as neurodivergent people make work, work for us, in a way that is healthy long term.

I hope by sharing what my process is like from the inside, it can be useful to someone else.