weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 89
of not knowing what’s going to happen next? Can you embrace
the confusion in order to have a choice of moving in a different
direction, towards a more peaceful existence? Moshe Feldenkrais’
aim was to put your nervous system in a safe environment, focusing
on going slowly and moving less than the extreme range in order to
do something with clearer initiation and greater organisation. See
also the following entries: Novelty; Integration & Functional
Integration; Neurons that fire together wire together. (TB)
c Considering Co–Creation
‘Considering Co-Creation’147 is the title of a publication from Arts
Council England in 2021 which offers the reader an opportunity
to consider how co-creation can ‘help you actively listen to and
collaborate with the local community and form new partnerships as
well as helpful insight on putting it into practice. Considering CoCreation It is rooted in discourse on cultural democracy and marks a
shift towards a more nuanced understanding of equity to ‘co-create
versions of culture’. For us, Co-Creation is about the relationship
between holistic and artistic practice, and a shared desire/objective/
agenda. Co-creation marks a shift in which a ‘participant’ has more
autonomy and agency within the process of making/doing/creating.
(HB)
a door
o O“It Only
is only a door.” – the final line in Adrienne Rich’s poem
Prospective Immigrants Please Note
Note.148 During the Reichenow
training our Weaving Voices community had the opportunity to work
with Susanna Field on a one-day vision quest activity.149 This one-day
trek into a local forest involved individuals spending time alone and
in silence as an exercise in communing with nature and connecting
more deeply with themselves. At the end of the day, we were invited
to reflect upon Rich’s poem and share our reflections. (TB)
147 Considering Co-Creation (2021) Arts Council. Available at: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/research-anddata/considering-co-creation [Accessed 22 Sept. 2024].
148 Prospective Immigrants Please Note (n.d.) All Poetry. Available at: https://allpoetry.com/-ProspectiveImmigrants-Please-Note- [Accessed 22 Sept. 2024].
149 Vision quests are rites of passage that have been carried out in Native American cultures for centuries.
The traveller, in short, journeys off into nature, marking an important transition in their life—a turning point.
Typically, vision quests are inspired by some kind of novel situation, rite of passage, challenge, or change. This
can include birth or death (real and symbolic), career changes, marriage, divorce, menopause, or other major
life events.
176
m Moving and Making a Stand
Moving between the roles of leader, participant, project manager,
space holder, maker, co-author, teacher is a leadership strategy.
When this is modelled, others can also access and contribute to
the work in these ways, and in new ways. This is also a strategy for
safeguarding the sustainability of the work – particularly when a new
community has been established through the work. Perhaps ‘good
leadership’ results in aspects of the work being able to continue
without the presence of the initial leader. Part of the agenda for the
Weaving Voices workshops in Leeds was to develop the possibilities
for initiatives to continue beyond the ‘end’ of this particular project.
Building robust partnerships is probably the most important work
towards this aim. The ‘leader’ proposes a way of working, a way
of moving between roles, a way of sharing responsibility for the
continuation of a community group. They don’t own it, it is not fixed
in terms of specific skill set, it isn’t ‘taught’ but rather shared. (HB)
Making a Stand was a large-scale public Artwork by Michael Pinsky
and Studio Bark commissioned by Leeds 2023 Year of Culture Making
A Stand and became one of three main sites we occupied to activate
our engagement with the Leeds community of passersby.150 (TB) /
(HB)
m Misunderstanding
Misunderstanding happens a lot when working interculturally. How
we manage the ‘lost in translation’ and the ‘not exactly knowing’
is part of a developing skillset. The Weaving Voices project has
had to embrace the generative power of misunderstanding and
some of the most interesting ideas I have thought stemmed from
misunderstandings! There is something to be said for the potential
insight and self-reflection that can come out of reading something
out of context and connecting it to the reader’s own context. On our
Weaving Voices project, we have all had to cultivate an approach to
communication and skills and knowledge exchange that is generous
and hold’s space for difference and the potential of new meanings.
150 Making A Stand (2023) Studio Bark. Available at: https://studiobark.co.uk/projects/making-a-stand
[Accessed 22 Sept. 2024].
177
89
