Looking to the Future

With the completion of Creative Producers International, we have looked back over the programme in this report, reflected on the role of the Producer; what they are for, what they do and how they can be supported. We provided seed money and support to begin a networked conversation, and collectively sketched out the first attempts to draw together an international practice that looked at creative producing as part of city change. We’ve seen that the methodology and tools in this report have already been borrowed, hacked and built into programmes in cities all over the world. We are now looking forward to continuing our relationship as part of this extraordinary global network, and hope that it has indeed become a living, breathing, caring thing of its own, strong enough to adapt, thrive and grow.

In this emergent, extended set of relationships we have been reminded that the notion of Creative Producer must be held quite lightly. ‘Creative Producer’ continues to be a complex term, understood differently across sectors, and sometimes not at all; we might talk about Possible Producers, or Creatish Producer-like work, or producers with a very gentle ‘p’. We have come to recognise Creative Producing as a group of attributes and approaches to work that transcend one occupational category. We are interested above all in the work that is done and the how and the why it is achieved. Creative Producing is not a linear process, and mobilising networks, organisations, institutions and people is often about flexibly managing, and often capitalising, on unexpected outcomes. However, a discussion of the practice of producing has always included  attention to questions of power, complexity, culture, courage, value and contradiction. Where creative producing and city change intersect, the conversation extends to include the materials of the city – the buildings, the technology, the people, the streets, the weather and more – always in negotiation with its systems; its rules, its markets, its histories, its politics, its relationships. These are conversations underpin the practices we supported in this project. We see it as vital to have and to create space for these discussions as a core part of generating change, and we hope that our cohort continue to convene them with people who are supporting creative work that itself attends to these things.

The group sits in a circle at the end of two long days together in a beautiful, light room in central Durban. We have talked about the sub-cultures that offer artistic identity but divide audiences, about the lines of race and class that intersect the city, about the value of trying to make change at home and the benefits of moving away. Earlier in the day we lay on the floor and drew around each other, populating the strange silhouettes with our skills and qualities – some proudly declared, others gently noticed. As we go around the circle sharing reflections, this session is mentioned again and again – to spend time thinking about their own development in the negotiated presence of others feels like a radical conversation here. One woman looks down at her notebook and quotes me from the day before ‘to invest in yourself is to invest in your community’ she reads and though I don’t remember saying it, I hear Lety and Sarah and Alice and Malaika and Kate in the thought… ‘I feel less on my own in my work now’ she adds and I agree, she invites the group to meet at her place next time.

Our network is growing exponentially, with our cohort of Producers developing communities of friends, teams and colleagues who have a kind of shared language – their work rooted in their local environment but connected to an international set of ideas and experiences. We think that this both enables learning through difference and comparison but also engenders a kind of global outlook that might inspire in ways that are hard to describe or predict. This recognition of how different perspectives on creative producing are played out in different contexts has been vital. In Lagos we found observations about how people eat in public space were a key indicator of engagement for our evaluations. We saw that games are played differently; in Durban we didn’t play a game with lemons so as not to waste or trivialise food, and in Tokyo we experienced the strong cultural norms associated with how public space should be used appropriately, and learned how creative responses must be sensitive as they engage with them. If you are tangled up in a system that you want to change, getting a perspective on it from someone else, somewhere else, who understands how to look at systems but has a different vantage point to your own might shine a light on things that you can’t see.

As with our Creative Producers and their work in their cities, we have found that a little can go a long way. It can be a daunting idea to think about your work as part of a complex international system but when the energy and knowledge is well connected it can be widely dispersed. A weekend visit, an hour online together, a WhatsApp group chat – being exposed to other people’s ideas and sharing your own in return – can have more impact than you might imagine. At Watershed we sometimes talk about Producers building corridors, passageways between things so that other people can more easily travel between them. As our network of Producers grows so too does the maze of routes by which to support new work. The cohort have begun to commission artists from each others’ communities, share creative products and co-locate projects. In a world that can sometimes feel increasingly fragmented and difficult to navigate, this approach offers us the possibility to support a creative response.

Watershed exists in a particular context with a set of particular values and methodologies about art, technology and culture and yet the more we work internationally, the more we find that our approach resonates in unexpected places. The depth of our partnership with UWE Bristol and our shared approach to research and development, knowledge production and critical practice is more unique than we previously understood and a model that other cities are keen to learn from. At the same time, we have learned from the approaches and visions of practitioners from across the world. Together, the impact of art, play and technology in public space has been interrogated. We have built on the existing momentum to work more inclusively to explore questions about who is allowed to play, what behaviour is excluded through the design of new technologies, who are the gatekeepers of ‘public’ space and whose story is told. Our commitment to supporting the practice of Creative Producing as an agent of change is stronger than ever, and we now have a stronger network, and a more refined set of tools that can adapt to context and build sustainable practice.