A Selfless Art

About 15 years ago, I did a course on coaching, not because I wanted a change of direction but to reflect on my work in co-creation from another perspective. I learned a lot, both from the teachers and my fellow students, who came from every walk of life except the arts. One of the things I was made aware of is my tendency to look for solutions when I’m listening and since then I’ve tried to keep that impulse in check.

It comes from a basic desire to help, strongly reinforced by being the person in charge of art workshops and projects. Being paid, being responsible for a good outcome, naturally encourages a goal-oriented person like me to solve problems, even those I’m not being asked to solve. In reality, unchecked, that good instinct can just create new problems.

The most basic of these is that it reinforces the unequal power dynamics that exist at the start of every co-creation process. Coming up with a solution takes agency from the other person or people who have lost the chance to find and enact their own solution. In fact, it gives me agency when I really don’t need any more. It puts me at the centre of the story – I am now the problem solver – and the story becomes one I am telling. Perhaps the people I’m working with would have gone in quite another direction: I’ll never know because I’ve stepped in again and saved the day. At least, in my terms, and no one else’s terms matter now I’ve redirected the story.

All this is the exact opposite of what I’m trying to do. It disempowers the people I am working with and excludes them from participation in co-creation. None of this may be obvious, even to myself, The good outcome makes it difficult to see that it may have been reached by a false route. And if I am well-intentioned, as I believe myself to be, how could it be wrong to have helped everyone to get to a positive result?

When I was a young community artist, I often found myself in discussions about whether the process or the product was more important in our work. I thought then, as I still do, that they were equally important but I have spent a lifetime understanding why. In fact, they are inseparable. The process shapes and defines the product. The challenge is to follow (I don’t want to say guide and still less manage) its path well enough to achieve a truly meaningful destination. And that involves leaving space for others to find their own solutions.