Thinking out Loud was developed by Anna Taylor in her work on critical engagement, in dialogue with a wide range of people connected to and by our work.

It includes developing writing, films and ways of having conversations that keep collective ideas going, developing over time, and ensuring that these stay alive, feeding back into our practice through our decision making, policy and programme. And amplifying and sharing as advocacy for change.

For the In-Situ team, it includes the ongoing documentation of the collective instituting / constituting (?) of the flat organisational structure at In-Situ, creating feedback loops into policy and sharing our work in progress with peers.

We produced a series of films called Fluid Structures that surfaces the possibility, joys and challenges of this way of working and the complexities surrounding equitability and inclusivity within a diverse organisation.  

As Community
Art with people is a slowly evolving process; one thing leads to another and things layer up over time. So the method we have developed for exploring its value in our everyday lives, and getting deeper into the themes that come up is also an evolving and layering process. 

Thinking about ‘community’, all the people around In-Situ - including anyone who lives locally and engages with our work, partner organisations, artists, practitioners, collaborators, and local faith and council leaders - we are seeking to explore the underlying themes that emerge collectively through our work.

Most often we do this through conversations, but also through supporting people to develop writing or dialogue around these subjects for the first time and from lived experience, as well as inviting those more at home with writing to reflect on the work and its wider context. 

Looping Conversations

Anna has developed a method that makes these conversations loop and flow - often using a black hat which a group passes round in a circle, taking it in turns to pick and read out from (a bit like ‘the name in the hat game').

She prints, cuts up, folds and adds in quotes from the previous event to become prompts for the next one - to keep the collective voice alive in all of its complexity. Its about working together to explore and refine our questions, go deeper and find connections.