AWR: Artist Wellbeing Rider

I was invited by Peer Projects through their ‘On Convalescence Together’ residency to collaborate with Natalie pace its director, to reflect and reimagine how an arts commissioning agency could embrace a culture of change and consciously create a caring ecology. This gave me the opportunity to build upon my own durational practice of social co-productions of economies, commons and care. The residency brought a unique opportunity as an artist to hold an honest, forthright and transparent dialogue to test new ways of working together with a commissioner. In a phase of open experimentation within Pier Project we explored many aspects of how, as creative citizens, we can claim our ‘Right to Wellbeing’ (Kropotkin, P ,1892) And returned repeatedly to questions ‘What should a caring commissioning agency look like?  How can we make the relationship ‘well’ between commissioner and artist? How can an artist articulate their own right to claim their wellbeing within artist-commissioner- commissioning ecosystem? And is there a way we can intentionally support shift tin this dynamic to allow a more considered caring arts ecosystem to emerge for both artists and commissioners? 

In this ‘post’ covid context, shared also our thinking, made and broke bread together and explored with our peers; How do we tackle our burn out, heal, come together and convalesce productively for us to continue to care?  How can we as artists and creative producers claim our ‘Right to Wellbeing’ (ibid.1892) Can we together radicalize the concept of wellbeing? Can we bring co-creative practices into models of care and wellbeing?  And what models of care are needed within our local context, to deal with immediate needs and how can this impact wider fields of practice? From this exploratory process came the idea of an AWR: Artist Wellbeing Rider, an open framework for artists to create, amend, iterate and articulate their own right to claim their wellbeing.