Let’s Create - Qualities - Open and humble

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Open and humble

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Almost every person involved in the research process talked about the importance of being both open and humble whilst leading co-creative processes.

These qualities were deemed to be absolutely essential to effective leadership, in order to give space for non-professional artists to develop their own creative ideas. The professional artist leading the co-creative process has to be open to creative influences from everyone in the room.

Quotes from the research

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“You have to be open hearted, open minded, open spirited and have an open physicality. If you're anything but open, it's not going to work.”

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“I suppose it's a humility thing, at least, an embodied understanding that you're actually beneath rather than above. You need to reign in your artistic creative voice and bring that right back so that you allow other people to space. Unless you do that, people aren't going to come forward and be leaders in their own right. So I think that humility is a really important aspect to this work. A really important quality.”

“So someone who is humble when leading a co-creative process won’t have the expectation or feeling that their work is somehow worthier than the other people in the space. They won’t be arrogant, or domineering with a top down approach.”

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“Totally role modelling humility. Yes. That you as an artist are on your journey as a human being. It’s about saying, I'm moving too and I can be moved by you.”

“It’s also important to have a sense of humility and to be humble because I think I find the differentiation between a professional and non-professional artist problematic within the idea of leadership and the power imbalance of that.”

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Podcast released on 14th May

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with Ned Glasier

Ned Glasier is a theatre director, consultant and advocate for young people. As the founding artistic director of Company Three, a multi-award winning company working with young people in North London, Ned created hundreds of projects for and by young people, including Brainstorm at the National Theatre/BBC iPlayer, When This Is Over at the Yard Theatre and the Coronavirus Time Capsule digital project. He has supported thousands of artists and organisations across the world through his training, practice-sharing and consultancy.

www.companythree.co.uk & www.nedglasier.co.uk

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