We have co-written a set of 9 principles to guide our work and our decision making, to empower people on the team to lead and develop creatively in the work they are doing and to make clear what we stand for and how we work and why.
Up until now our work has been guided by a Code of Ethics that was written early on. While this is still an important and useful touchstone, we noticed that much of this has now been written into policy and has been absorbed part of our day to day. And so much in the world has changed since this was written!
This set of Principles has been developed in a shared process involving the collective input and editing by the whole team and hopefully allows space for individual interpretations and ways of working as well as bringing together our shared values and ambitions for our work.
For anyone interested in going deeper, these principals act as a pathway into our co-designed policies which will link throughout.
1. Valuing art in everyday life
Whether from inner and imaginary worlds, lived-in climates, home lives and leisure time, or decision-making processes and visions of future justice; we believe there is no set way to do or describe art. Art has multiple different (and sometimes difficult) ways of existing in the world, uses and associations. We encourage everyone to go deeper into their creativity in a way that has value to them. In our work, sometimes an artist leads and owns the outcome, at others art plays a part in a collectively owned process. In every case, our art does not extract and allows space for exploration, challenge, exchange, flexibility, failure and continuity. Our art creates space over time for people to move between roles and share power.
2. Creating space for difference
The impact of our work is in bringing together and holding space across difference We locate our work in situations where there will be difference, complexity and collision! We acknowledge that this often presents challenges that we need to make space and time to work through. We seek to create opportunities to act on shared values and to learn, unlearn, rework and revise. We are nurturing skillsto do this and acknowledge that there can be no completely safe space, but our methods aim to make it as safe as possible.
3. Decision making
Our shared values guide our decisions, rooted in authenticity and inclusivity The position we speak from is informed by longterm relationships, local knowledge and lived experience on the team and within the community. We build in inclusive and equitable pathways and transparency into shared decision making, (relative to scale) ensuring we are staying relevant and responding, asking “and what’s needed now?” We also encourage and support people to take decisions within their own area or growing expertise.
4. Empowering our team and the community
Making space for others to contribute, lead and grow As individuals, an organisation or as a society, where we become ‘big’ we use this position to share power and to make way for those who have previously not entered the space to articulate their views, experiences, contribute their ideas and skills and to grow in this. We value individual interpretations and people’s journeys and prioritise growing new ideas and approaches through a diversity of skills, lived experience and imagination. Team and community participants are enabled to take responsibility and supported to be their own guides, asking, where does the priority of my work lie and what do I need to grow into this?
5. Reparation and building community
Climate and social justice run throughout our work We acknowledge that we are living in a time of collapse, and seek for our work to enable us to ‘collapse better’, through education, collective action and practices of care and reparation. Starting from ‘Where we are (at)’ as individuals, an org, community and society, it is our responsibility in our embedded practice to understand more of the impacts of multiple crises and to amplify this. We understand that listening is our greatest tool and we trust the wisdom in the room. We speak to the good in all people and provide opportunities to enact the values that align with positive change.
6. Challenge and alterity
We value our autonomy to challenge, ask questions and co-devise alternatives to business-as-usual ways of doing things We are engaged in the work of advocating for a fair and equal society and developing alternatives that can dismantle oppressive and extractive foundations. A crucial part of challenging the system is ensuring we are working within it, with decision makers and bridging divides. This takes courage, bravery, emotional labour and sometimes painful compromise, which requires care and support. We continually revisit complex questions: Where are our limits lie and what we choose to let go in order to stay in the room? What are our responses to injustice and oppression, knowing that this is often nuanced within our community. We respect difference of opinion, but how is it impacting others? We make time and space for these difficult conversations and do not react in the moment.
7. Quality is about depth
We won’t work in ways that are extractive of people who live here, but which present genuine opportunities for empowerment, new journeys, transitions and transformations Long term, embedded commitment to place, relationship, trust and familiarity with our methods. Continuity over the longterm and enables us to also seek out new places to interact with new people. We work on subjects that affect everyday lives and futures by making connections; we don’t deal with things in isolation. We prioritise systemic change over individual action. But by working at depth we empower people to discover their collective agency through creativity, being heard and seen and finding the space to join with others to contribute to something bigger than themselves.
8. Process, failure and reflection
‘Good enough for now, safe enough to try’ We are content with imperfection knowing we are building an inclusive structure and methodology, not an end product. We are evolving policies and procedures; these things are not fixed and we can continually revise and discuss, asking “and what is needed now?” We value process over outcomes and give time and space to evolve things at a pace that allows for inclusivity, wellbeing, adaptation. reflection and new thinking. We acknowledge failure as a place to start from, challenge as a point of learning and that its OK not to know what to do or how to begin.
9. The work starts with us
We are building the structures and awareness's internally that could enable the change we want to see in the world, based on care, equality and ethical practice We value all the team equally and are continually working on the adaptations and reparations needed to enable others to contribute, lead and grow. We work within our shared means and will not compromise the wellbeing or emotional safety of team members in order to deliver our work. We are cultivating practices and skills of listening, coaching, non violent communication and self awareness. We also acknowledge and value each person is at different stages in their own journey and how this effects their capacity to do the work. We reflect our internal work externally with partners and funders in advocation of equality, transparency and participatory democracy, care and imagination.
Working with artists policy (coming soon)