Let’s Create - Qualities - Adaptable & flexible
Adaptable & flexible
All the artists talked about the importance of being adaptable and flexible in the work.
We know that for any co-creative process it’s not possible to predict the artistic product, but all the artists talked about the importance of adapting and flexing the artistic process around the people who are on the journey with you. These qualities also draw on high levels of art form skill and competence to enable people to be held effectively on that journey.
Quotes from the research
“It's not sticking to the plan that you've created. You make the plan but then it's about having the competence and the quick thinking in the moment to be able to follow what is happening in the room. Something happens that is really magic, and then quickly building things around that. It’s not just going off on a big tangent for no reason. You're holding the goal for the session that you had in mind, whilst we're going in this new direction. You have to shift what you were previously planning to ensure we still achieve what we were aiming to achieve in that session.”
“You need to be able to see the end and to have a sense of this emergent thing of multiple possibilities. It’s like parallel universes, isn't it? But it's being able to scan the horizon and say, we might be going there or we might be going there or we might be going there. And I think in the first part of any co-creative process, if you don’t do that you’re really shutting down that horizon and those emergent possibilities.”
“So whilst you're delivering the workshop, you're also evaluating and revising, to get back to the goal. You're communicating, you're still holding the space and you're replanning in your head at the same time. Yeah, while everyone's watching you.”
“I think all the time you need to be really aware when you're delivering anything or speaking to the room. You have to be aware of how it's landing, and then be able to adapt what you're doing, adapt the pace, adapt absolutely everything through an awareness of how it's being received by every single person in that room.”
Listen to the Podcast
with Kelly Green
Kelly Green is a working-class, queer, neurodivergent mum and performance artist; a noisy, feisty, hot mess. Her current work is MILF the Musical is a co-creation theatre project commissioned by Camden People's Theatre with support from Heart of Glass and the Arts Council England.
