Let’s Create - Responsibilities - To ensure people have a positive experience
To ensure people have a positive experience
Some artists felt that they have a responsibility to ensure that people have a positive experience. For them, this is even true in the parts of a creative process that might touch on the sharing of more challenging emotions.
Artists need to hold this responsibly, name difficulties and close sessions properly. It’s possible for people to leave having had a positive, even cathartic experience of co-creating.
Quotes from the research
“My responsibility to those people in that room is that whilst they're working with me, they have a positive experience. And they go away feeling like something good has happened, even if part of the process has been difficult or a struggle.”
“Make sure you leave enough space to bring people together at the end and make sure people feel good before they leave you, a bit like doing a counselling session – you don’t want to let people leave if they haven’t fully processed or closed down the experience.”
“I think you've got a responsibility to be with people who have walked into the room. People are in all sorts of states and you've no idea what is going on in people's lives. And they don’t know everything that's going on in your life as well. At its basic level you don't want people to walk out in a worse state than they were when they walked in. Ideally you people to walk out better. Yeah, maybe just having learned something new about themselves or you know, having felt enriched in some way.”
“Being a responsible host, being kind and friendly, as if you're kind of welcoming people into your own home. How do you ensure they don't feel uncomfortable in your space? I think as a professional artist, understanding that you have ownership of that space, especially at the beginning of the process, you have ownership of that space, and you have to welcome people into it to make them feel at home in it. So that's kindness and friendliness and cake. Cake is always the way to do it!”
“When things get difficult you need to name it immediately, as soon as it’s happening. To actually talk about the fact that it's happening or talk about the fact that it might feel a bit awkward rather than just sort of trying to push your way through it. You need to give everyone permission to feel that it's okay. A normal part of the process. You know, it's hard work. It's not easy. Sometimes things don't come easy.”
Podcast released on 22nd October
with Tanushka Marah
Tanushka Marah is an award winning Theatre Director and founder and Artistic Director of ThirdSpace Theatre which is a youth theatre company based in Brighton. She previously founded Company:Collisions, a physical theatre company whose work toured nationally. Their production of Medea toured internationally as did their street theatre shows. She also works as a movement director and facilitator. More recently she has taken up writing.
