Facilitation Skills: Leadership Skills of Artists

Let's Create: Do We Know How To?

In this episode Naomi talks to the Artistic Director of Strike a Light, Sarah Blowers. Sarah talks about the importance of never underestimating what people want to do. She notices that people are often taking a risk by coming along and getting involved. For Sarah, facilitation skills are really important to try to ensure that people feel safe. It is a tightrope of showing leadership, seeing potential and supporting people. It is really important to have an access budget to facilitate people’s involvement properly.

Sarah talks about how the work is often unpredictable and messy as you don’t know what might come up. She talks about the facilitation skills that she uses as a Producer of co-created work. She describes diving straight into working with a group, but that she builds trust by generating clarity and being super clear with people; she ‘chunks and checks’ what she is communicating. Sarah believes that it is important to use simple, clear language and to check back what has been understood.

When facilitation skills are not present, it is dangerous to attempt co-creative practice. It doesn’t work and people don’t feel safe. With good facilitation people will take really good creative risks. At Strike a Light they have 4 Community Producers on payroll who choose the artists to work with their communities. However, she notes that sometimes artists need to be ambitious about what can be achieved.

Sarah recommends having a lot of resources up your sleeve and play a lot of games. She thinks it's important to be flexible, warm and approachable, particularly when working with people who are vulnerable. This means being prepared to throw your session plan away in order to respond meaningfully to the people who are in the room. It also means taking time out to look after yourself and rest as it is demanding work.

There is a discussion about the need for supervision for practitioners to enable them to process what is happening in the creative process. Sarah talks about the importance of holding your nerve that the facilitation process will deliver the outcome you need, but might never have expected. The community will come up with ideas that the professional artists might never have had. She believes artists need to find the sweet spot where everyone is encouraged and enabled to come forward with their ideas. For her, the process of making is the most important thing.