a choreography of parenting
- a digital resource
Last year, The Work Room embarked on a new project, RE-EMERGING, developed as part of Creative Scotland’s Radical Care action research project that is working with organisations to try out new approaches to supporting those with caring responsibilities. It recognises that many people experience barriers to working or progressing in the arts, screen and creative industries as a result of their caring commitments.
The Work Room has a long-established practice of recognising parenting as an equalities issue within dance and the performing art, so we were keen to be involved with Creative Scotland’s Radical Care project. We initiated a programme of peer support for artist-parents at the stage of 're-emerging' into their working practice as freelance dance artists, after taking time away to care for children. The funding from Creative Scotland enabled us to work with a group of freelance dance artists with funding to support paid-time for them to participate.
In September 2022, The RE-EMERGING group came together for the first time. A peer-group of eight independent dance artists from across Scotland, who met on-line over the following 9 months. They are:
Laura Bradshaw Jude Williams Natalia Barua Nina Enemark
Oxana Banshikova Rob Heaslip Robbie Synge Sara Gordon
Six are mothers; two are fathers; some are in same sex partnerships; some are solo-mothers; some are adoptive parents; some have babies or toddlers while others have children in school. All are making shifts in how to approach their work as dance artists alongside caring responsibilities. The coming together brought with it a sense of peer support, a network and a place to ask questions. As often-migratory people, it also nested a gathering of experiences that reflected journeys of (un)support, (un)employment and (un)knowing.
On Monday 5 June, we hosted a gathering at Glasgow Women’s Library, to open up and share the process of the group and to launch, a choreography of parenting, resource pack collaboratively created through the process. Laura Bradshaw introduced the event saying,
Our parenting, arts practices and living dynamics all hold different joys and challenges and are unique to each of us. While we have been meeting regularly since September last year, this is the first time the group has met in person.
Our on-line meetings had often been made up of different constellations of the group. Some meetings there have been 3, some 5 and some all of us. Sometimes we zoom in from sports day, from bed, from a hotel room, from a walk with the baby or on mute because the children are playing or watching TV in the same room. There have been little faces popping up in our zoom squares; interrupting the conversation, allowing us all to see each other’s reason for being in the group. Our parenting fluidly seeping into our working space.
We’ve danced together, empathised with each other, got angry together and found action and softness together.
We’ve been thinking about how our different needs, and those of our families, are part of the reality of our lives as parents and how those needs might be made visible in the different contexts that we work in instead of hidden away at home so we can get on with business as usual, we want to reimagine business as usual.
What is the choreography of parenting? The rhythm of our lives that are intertwined with our families? What do we need? What do you need? What do others who we are working with or for need? How is our parenting a strength rather than a deficit? How can we build an arts ecology where we share the load, practice patience and develop trust and lean into the power of the collective.
We put some of this into practice when co-designing the resource pack. Things happened. Illness, work responsibilities, overwhelm, caring responsibilities, busy, intertwined lives. So we took up the slack, took on different roles, and contributed in the different ways that we could, with Anita reminding us that the important thing about our group has been collectively holding the responsibility to flex to people's circumstances.
The resource pack - a choreography of parenting is an offering for others; for organisations and those who employ parent-artists, as well as for other dance artists who are or are becoming parents. It tries to recognise that families come in different ways, shapes and sizes, and our hope that it might offer some companionship to ease any sense of disconnect or uncertainty and provide support when at work or returning to work.
Download a PDF version here.
A copy of the printed pack can be requested by emailing hello@theworkroom.org.uk