Somehow I missed this fascinating discussion on the differences between amateur and professional in the arts over at Andrew's blog. It's not a new conversation but the nuances are different in a community where there is less state support for the arts than we are accustomed to in Ireland. The dividing line between amateur and professional tends to be the award of Arts Council funding for many and the capacity to earn a living for others. Andrew's piece contains some more nuanced observations drawn from this blog entry from a photographer and Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody. Andrew makes the point that there has been a conflagration between 'professional' and 'excellent' and that is not necessarily the case. For example the Irish traditional music scene has been (and continues to be) primarily 'amateur' in that the artists involved don't necessarily make their living full time from the craft, meanwhile the quality of much of the music is excellent. 'Amateur' and 'Professional' have become limiting silos that tend to frame our enjoyment of the arts. I agree that funding agencies must have some criteria to fund - and in many cases contributing to a working wage for artists is part of that criteria - but let's not assume that everybody who claims to be 'professional' is creating compelling work while those who are amateurs are responsible for mediocrity. As one commenter in Andrew's post points out (and as I mentioned in the previous post)
The root of the word "amateur" is the Latin "amare" - to love.
Perhaps the more important question relates to quality - how we define it, how we recognise it and how we reward it. Does it really matter what the 'status' of the artist is as long as the work is something that really speaks to us? And bearing in mind that we are never going to reach a consensus on what constitutes quality anyway isn't reaching for the traditional silos of 'professional' and 'amateur' a way of relieving ourselves of the burden of exploring the 'quality' discussion in more depth. I have no answers to any of this but the original post and the enlightened comments are really worth reading. And, as ever, the above applies to the world of business as much as it does to the arts. We don't have to look too far to see how much trouble the 'professionals' have gotten us into over the past 18 months. One wonders what might have happened had we allowed a few 'amateurs' in on the act.
Quite a lot if this Newsweek article is to be believed.
In September 2008 English singer Billy Bragg performed at something called the Big Busk. After posting the chords of the songs he would play on the Internet, he invited all comers to bring their guitars. Some 3,000 did, strumming while a crew behind Bragg hoisted signs showing which chord to play. Now Southbank is hosting a nine-month Leonard Bernstein festival, which will culminate in a gala presentation of Bernstein's Mass next May 11 by 500 mostly amateur performers.
It seems that the recession is engendering a new spirit of participation in the arts driven by amateurism - and that's amateurism in its original spirit.
"The word 'amateur' comes from the Latin root for love."
What's interesting about this is that this kind of activity may challenge traditional notions of audience participation and the various (and sometimes) misguided attempts to connect with audiences and get them more involved in the artistic life of communities. If we could focus a little bit more on the expertise that all parties bring to the table and less about the marginalisation that occurs when we 'professionalise' then more magic might just happen....
It's that time of the year again when newspapers do their end of year round up and we review the past year and hope for a better one next year. I've never been one for making new year resolutions preferring to look at every day as the beginning of a new year and therefore an opportunity to do things a little differently. Mark Vernon from the School of Life however offers a different perspective on living well in 2010, one drawn from the world of philosophy. Here's his list of resolutions - many of which are as applicable to the world of work as they are to our personal lives.
1. Diet, but not to lose weight. For there's a more interesting and enriching reason for eating less. Epicurus, who was known as a hedonist, wasn't like today's hedonists. He didn't argue that the pursuit of more was the key to happiness. Quite the opposite. He said he was as happy as Zeus when all he had to eat was a glass of water and a barley cake. Enjoying less, not more. Pleasure in small things. That's the real test for us in a consumer age.
2. Work to live, don't live to work. Cleanthes, who was a Stoic philosopher and also known as the water-carrier, worked by night so that he could do philosophy by day. He was clear that he would work enough, and only enough, to support his real passion, the thinking and writing. His story is timely, for in a year that will be marked by more job insecurity and credit crises, it will be even easier to work so hard that you miss what you want.
3. Meet a friend face to face, when you might have chatted online. Aristotle is our advisor on this matter. He argued that good friendship - soulmateship - is only possible when friends 'share salt together'. He meant that they sit down with each other, not just over the occasional meal, but frequently and often. Then, you see each other body and soul. Texting and websites are part of modern friendship, but alone, they are not enough.
4. Start each day by contemplating the worst that can happen. It sounds like a recipe for pessimism. But the odd thing is that it isn't. In fact, the day will never look better. Zeno, the Stoic, advised this practice. His point was that we spend too much of our time anticipating the worst, when mostly there's nothing we can do about it. So embrace the worst; it probably won't happen. And enjoy the day.
5. Take a technology Sabbath. Take a break from the relentless churn of emails, blogs and websites. They flitter in front of your eyes, and it's too easy to fritter your life away in front of them. So have one day off a week from IT. Read a book, talk to friends, go for a walk instead. Secundus the Silent is our advisor here. He vowed not to speak, realizing that words are typically wasted. And he found it made him wise.
6. Talk to a stranger. There is a source of knowledge and insight all around us, and yet we barely notice it's there. It's not Google. It's the strangers with whom share our world. Socrates realized this, and so started to ask people questions as he walked the streets of Athens - what is friendship, what is happiness, what is love? It was an extraordinary thing to do, and led to nothing less than the invention of philosophy.
7. Go on retreat. To take time out, away from the world, is an old religious practice. The pace of life is slower. It creates time for reflection. It should be easy to do, but actually it's slightly frightening, for fear of what might emerge. Which is what Onescritus discovered. He went to India, and sat with the sages. He came back a changed man.
8. Write a blog for one week. If there's one quality that you need not just to live, but to live well, it's curiosity. With that, you'll really see the world, and your life, and imagine it in a different light. This is what Sappho could do. Her verse changed the world because she gave women voice. Poetry is hard, so turn your observations into a blog. And see how you see things differently.
9. Do something that will surprise your friends, and you. One day, Diogenes the Cynic observed a mouse running about. He was shocked at how free it was, and how inhibited he was in comparison. Immediately, he took up residence in a barrel. His philosophy was that conventions trap us. So try breaking one or two, he'd say. A real taste of liberty will be yours.
10. Decide what you want at your funeral. We are different from other creatures, perhaps in several ways, but one must be that we often contemplate death. Some philosophers, like Plato, believed that death directly or indirectly shapes our every waking moment, and perhaps those during sleep too. But it can be tamed, by befriending it. To learn how to die, is to learn to live well.
Whatever you decided to do in 2010 I hope it's good enough and may I take the opportunity to thank you for stopping by Interactions in 2009 - I hope I will see you again in the New Year.
Stefana Broadbent's research suggests that the internet and technology is increasing our capacity for emotional intimacy. We may have 100 people on our 'buddy lists' or Facebook pages but we in fact only talk in detail with a handful of people. New technologies enable us to keep in touch across distance and time zones. Broadbent tells a number of touching stories of couples (romantic and family) who keep in touch using phone, Skype and webcams - a baker who every morning washes the flour off his hands to call his wife and a couple who, geographically distant, once a month set up their computers with a web cam and have dinner together.
Have a look at Broadbent's TED talk and see if it fits with your view of how technology is changing how we relate.
Jobless Britons are to be offered therapy to help them get back into work, under a "talking treatment" programme to be announced by the government over the next few weeks.
On Monday the Department for Work and Pensions will announce that mental health co-ordinators will be based in Jobcentres. The plans, which will make mental health treatment and particularly cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) central to the fight to get Britain back to work after the recession, will eventually see centres providing CBT set up around the country.
I think this is a fantastic idea - and we should see more of this in Ireland and the US. CBT isn't everyone's cup of tea but as insurance companies the world over have found out - it's cheaper than other forms of talking therapy. I hope this initiative will be evaluated and that it might even open people's minds up to the possibility of other forms of psychotherapeutic interventions.
Too many leadership scholars and executives are obsessed by a pointless question: Are leaders born, or are they made?....Leadership might be learnable. But instead of taking comfort in the idea that you can develop, wake up to the sobering realization of how difficult it will be to manage novel situations continuously and under often-extreme circumstances.
Thought provoking article from the Wall Street Journal inviting people to think about the reality of leading as distinct from the abstract prospect of it. The authors pose a number of questions including
How far do you want to go?
It is easy to criticize the competence of those with greater responsibilities than ourselves, and even easier to fantasize about how we would do the job better.
A useful exercise: Look at your immediate boss's job and ask yourself if you could do it as well, or better--honestly. Then, stretch even further and consider the most senior leader in your line of sight--perhaps the chief executive. Learn about what that person must deal with. Get a feel for the time, energy and capabilities required to do those jobs. What would those jobs require you to do that you can't do now, or that you don't enjoy doing? What do you enjoy now, but would have to give up?
What are you willing to invest?
Leadership certainly requires business smarts, technical capabilities and cultural sensibilities, but above all, it is about power. While this point is upsetting to some people, the brutal reality is that whatever else a leader must do, a leader must gain, exercise and retain power.
and
How will you keep it up?
Over several decades, you need ways to keep yourself going when you are not being recognized and rewarded for your performance--and to deal with criticism, resistance, setbacks and people disliking you or what you are asking them to do.
If you envision another 10, 20 or even 30 years of leadership work, then you must find effective methods for maintaining your physical vitality, your emotional flexibility and your intellectual reach and freshness.
Probably not a lot in this article that's currently taught in Business Schools.
Charles Dickens left behind one, and only one, manuscript for "A Christmas Carol,'' the tale he wrote in 1843 of an unfeeling rich man and the boy who pricked his conscience. Kept under lock-and-key for much of the year at the Morgan Library and Museum, the manuscript is not widely available, one reason, perhaps, why it has been all but impossible to track the many revisions Dickens made to the manuscript as he struggled to get his story right. A high-resolution copy of the manuscript's 66 pages, which you can examine below, may finally change that.
Today's New York Times unveils digital images of all 66 pages of Charles Dickens' manuscript for A Christmas Carol. The images are exquisite and the manuscript itself is at the Morgan Library and Museum here in New York where only one page per year is placed on view for the public coming up to Christmas. Of particular interest in the New York Times is the capacity to move between the typed version of the book and the manuscript to compare and contrast - there are also notes to the changes made by Dickens. Altogether a fascinating project - there's more here.
Today is Thanksgiving here in the US - my first time to be in the country at this time of the year. Many of my friends describe it as their favourite holiday - no gifts, just a day at home with family over a nice dinner and then back to work on Friday (or Monday if you've taken a long weekend). I am taking the opportunity to feel grateful for what has come my direction this year. Great clients with whom it has been a privilege to work, interesting travel, my health, close friends and the luxury of taking some time off to work on my research not to mention two outstanding cultural events in the last week - Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy and Philip Glass's new opera Kepler at BAM. As I continually read stories of doom and gloom, recession, flooding, my computer flatlining yesterday etc... it feels appropriate to take a day to really focus on the good stuff - the stuff that hums in the background when we're busy trying to fix the problems.
Whether you celebrate this holiday or not may I wish you a happy thanksgiving and hope that you find a moment to think about some of the good stuff that has come your way this year.
Americans are more optimistic now than a year ago about their well-being (88% vs. 84%); health, finances, relationships and odds of finding love (70% vs. 61%). Meanwhile, the Secret Society of Happy People (which "encourages the expression of happiness and discourages parade-raining") reports traffic to its not-so-secret website has increased since the downturn.....So while optimism is the all-American anesthetic, at some point Expectation Inflation was bound to take its toll.
All this and a recession too? Nancy Gibbs' article in Time Magazine makes for interesting reading about the relationship between 'stuff' and happiness (for a more comprehensive essay on this read Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice) or see the end for Schwartz's TED talk and that of Dan Gilbert's on Mistaken Expectations. She's making similar points to Schwartz in that more stuff doesn't equal happier times. In fact more stuff means more Expectation Inflation, increased choice and a type of paralysis that sets in sending us scuttling for more of the same rather than more of the other. Gibbs is also talking about the reality principle - the point at which magical thinking morphs into something more real - and here I declare an interest because disappointment is an important part of that segue. Americans may be feeling happier now than they have in a while but I wonder if that happiness will stay put if/when the recession recedes? Time will tell - or at least Time.com may.
Situated among the countless arts organizations in New York City are enclaves of passionate culture hounds who gather under the auspices of psychoanalytic training institutes. "There are approximately 38 (such institutes) in Manhattan alone," notes Alan Grossman, LCSW, director of the NY Counseling Center's Training Institute. Joan Erdheim, PhD, President of the Psychoanalytic Society of the Training Institute for Mental Health (TIMH) noted that along with their primary purpose of educating mental-health professionals in the techniques of psychoanalysis, "Ten to fifteen percent of such institutes provide a rich variety of cultural programming."
And while I am in New York I am taking advantage of as much of this cultural programming as possible. Although regretfully I didn't have the opportunity to see some of the events listed in this Huffington Post article - particularly an evening with Jane McAdam Freud the british conceptual artist and great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. There is a transcript of here interview here in which she weaves art, politics and psychoanalysis into a seamless whole making me wonder why it is that psychoanalytic thinking seems so alien and separate from our daily comings and goings. I particularly liked her definition of the role of artists
Very interesting the idea that artists might be consulted, our ideas tapped. I believe that we (artists) pick up on the collective unconscious that contains no time in a constructed sense and so we are a conduit for ideas and actions (potential and actual) in the ether. The artist's sensibility and imagination are such that we operate like a collective voice for all that cannot be spoken or even thought (thought being a conscious act). All that is unexplained, perhaps unexplainable in terms of human behaviour and motivation that could be put down to a spiritual or other force is in my view, unconsciously driven. The unconscious operates much like we believe God operates but without the sentimentality. Art is not sentimental. It doesn't judge either. It simply presents with all the human integrity possible what is in the ether, i.e., what everybody may feel on some level.
It is the nature of artists to think independently and so have imagination without judgment in other words not to come down on either side but simply to explore and present ideas.
Artists have been and still are seen (in the time they live, i.e., not necessarily in hindsight) as mad, bad and sad. This is a description of non-conformity. Difference spells fear. Unfortunately due to very little publication or positive education about artists' intentions, this myth prevails, adding a sort of credence in the face of a public information void. These beliefs are not of course applicable to the enlightened, the intellectuals or the art-related institutions that conversely hold art in very high esteem as a cultural imperative. Art is culture. Culture is Art. (By art I mean all its expressions: 2D, 3D, film, music, literature, etc.).
and the value of psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy
Everyone can benefit from psychoanalysis, a time to reflect, to mourn and grieve the mountain of losses one incurs "daily" over a lifetime - after all every decision evokes a loss of sorts. In each choice made we reject all the other possibilities. It is a pity that there is such a stigma attached to mental health issues. Society would benefit if we treated going to the psychoanalyst as sensible, just as going for a regular check-up to the physician is sensible. We could involve psychotherapy in the preventative medicine programme: after all it is to prevent getting ill that we go for a regular check-up. We go for a fitness check so that we can work on the areas that are getting flabby and need more work.
When it comes to creativity, it's easy to imagine that more is better. Creativity lies at the heart of science. It solves problems and drives innovation. Then there's the small matter of art and literature. Humanity's self expression and aesthetic explorations are born of our creative drive.
And yet creativity has its downsides too, say Stefan Leijnen and Liane Gabora at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Creative solutions can only spread if they are adopted by other individuals. These imitators play an important role in society. They act as a kind of memory, storing the results of successful creative strategies for future generations. But the time that individuals spend creating means less time imitating. Clearly we cannot all be creators all the time but neither can we all be imitators.
This reminds me of something I heard Adam Phillips say at a discussion to the effect that there is a fetish of originality as though that were the optimal state - an achievement of the fantasy of perfection. Perfection and originality are lonely states and I think there's something very interesting in Leijen and Gabora's contention that originality has it's downsides because it really is only in the adoption of ideas that they truly live - and let's face it - what act of creativity is a solitary one? I'm of the belief that creativity is a collaborative endeavour.
The key to reform of almost any kind in higher education lies not in the way that knowledge is produced. It lies in the way that the producers of knowledge are produced. Despite transformational changes in the scale, missions and constituencies of American higher education, professional reproduction remains almost exactly as it was a hundred years ago.
This is true of almost any hierarchical organisational structure I can think of and the implications for management, followership, shapes and sizes of organisational structures are incredibly interesting. In an age of knowledge managment who is managing the creation of knowledge managers!
A growing number of businesses are making Facebook an indispensible part of hanging out their shingles. Small businesses are using it to find new customers, build online communities of fans and dig into gold mines of demographic information.
"You need to be where your customers are and your prospective customers are," said Clara Shih, author of "The Facebook Era" (Pearson Education, 2009). "And with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that's increasingly where your audience is for a lot of products and services."
The article quotes a number of entrepreneurs using Facebook in creative ways but it makes what I consider to be an essential point
"We can advertise all day, but if we don't give them what they want they will not be a fan anymore," said Mark Seeley, a marketing associate at Art Meets Commerce. "Even though we represent the shows as marketers, we don't want to constantly tell people to buy tickets. You talk to them like you talk to your friends on Facebook."
I don't have a Facebook page - preferring to hang out on Linkedin for professional reasons and picking up the phone for those personal ones - but I did dapple with it for a while. I became irritated with the number of organisations using the application to simply send spam messages asking me to 'buy' their wares. Why on earth would I link to an organisation who sees the communication as purely one way? If you want my allegiance (on or off line) then give me a compelling reason to link to you. Inner specialness simply isn't a good enough reason any more when there are over 300 million people out there vying for attention.
If genius, as Sartre said, is the word we use for people who get themselves out of impossible situations, what is the word for people who find themselves in impossible situations, or even seek them out? And why are fairytales so compelling that we don't think of them as stories from a particular place and time? The answer to the first question is "everybody", but the answer to the second question is that these stories are sufficiently hospitable - suggestive enough, puzzling enough - so that virtually everybody who can read can make something of them.
And then in an insight that is as much about the world of work as it is about the world of families he suggests...
There is a formative period in everyone's life when it begins to dawn on us that we can't get everything we want from the family. The one thing the family cannot prepare you for is life outside the family. The quest is always to find out if there is a place elsewhere that has the something else you want. Each of these tales intimates in different ways that all the family can help you do is live inside the family. All quests are quests for pleasure. Just as all riddles reassure us that there is something important worth knowing. So inevitably each of these tales is at once a story about curiosity, about how the miller's daughter, the princess, the hare, and the boy find out something they need to know; but also a story that only works by making us curious about curiosity.
And of course he's also writing about disappointment - and how difficult it is to do things differently - to stop what was working in the service of risking what might (or might not). How can we risk doing something differently if there is no guarantee of pleasure or positive results? Sometimes doing what we've always done guarantees us the pleasure of familiarity even if it is ultimately disappointing.
Wednesday's Financial Times has a great article with New York psychoanalyst and organisational consultant Larry Gould on the application of psychoanalysis to organisations. It's great to see a mainstream paper like the FT taking up the challenge of writing about irrational behaviour and the unconscious in such an accessible way.
Mr Gould's psychoanalytical work, like Bion's teaching, goes beyond conscious behaviour, the preserve of most psychologists, to try to overcome unconscious problems, such as bringing your earliest relationships with your parents into the workplace.
Bion understood the various patterns of feelings, behaviour and relationships that can take place in group situations, says Mr Gould. For example, employees might have an unconscious anxiety about survival, such as who is going to keep their job in a downsizing or who gets a salary rise.
"The advantage of the psychoanalytic lens is that it adds a critical dimension to understanding behaviours which cannot be accounted for by other theories," Mr Gould says. For example, a poorly performing executive might be offered executive coaching by his company. But a closer, analytic study of the executive would reveal the real reasons he has been performing badly.
Larry Gould also refers to the fact that he doesn't alert business clients to the fact that he is a psychoanalyst because of the negative associations..I find it to be the case also that my training as a psychotherapist isn't something I foreground when working in a business context but ultimately it's the key elements when I'm working with 'stuckness' and relationship management in the workplace.
What we find lacking in bankers is Magnificence. We are incensed not by the quantity of their wealth, but its quality and tone. Bill Gates is always clear he believes himself lucky. This makes him hard to hate. Footballers do something thrilling and beautiful to earn their money which makes them magnificent in our eyes. Rock star decadence is cool and warns us of the dangers of excess. Bankers, in contrast, appear only to have piles of money and the trinkets it buys them. If they could learn from Aristotle to be a little more magnificent they would be easier to love, or at least a little harder to loathe.
A very simple exercise designed to get a group of currently under-employed professionals to identify their current skill set generated a very interesting finding today. The first part of the exercise, conducted in private, yielded a skill set readily identifiable as a list of job related attributes - capacity to market, network, people manage etc. The second part of the exercise, conducted in pairs, set about inquiring further into the taken for granted skills that we often forget to mention. If something comes naturally to us we tend to think it's simple and not that important. Other stuff we have had to labour over and 'learn' tends to make it to the top of the list as something we've earned. In pairs, the participants interviewed each other, inquired further into fascinating stories and extended that list of skills. The extended list consisted of a broader and richer list of attributes - soft skills, interpersonal and relational expertise, in short - unrelated (in an obvious way) to a particular job but ultimately a compelling list of transferrable skills that can be used across a wide range of entrepreneurial activity.
The question it raised for me is why does an invitation to think about skills immediately evoke our last job as distinct from life skills and what we learn outside of that 9 to 5 existence?
The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination was established to promote an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of creativity and the imaginative process.
I'm enjoying the number and variety of psychodynamic offerings in New York - particularly those open to the public and made accessible to an interested and non-expert audience. So far I have attended
This is in marked contrast to the dearth of offerings in Dublin...so I'm cramming as much in as I can and really enjoying the opportunity to think about the relevance of psychodynamic thinking to organisational work.
Vitae has produced a series of short films with PhD students who have successfully completed their research on a part time basis. It's a fascinating insight into not only the variety of topics people choose but the age range, gender and approaches people take to a significant part time endeavour while doing something else. This short film is the 'top tips' the researchers would offer others embarking on a similar exercise - I particularly liked the 'trust your subconscious' one and not all extended periods away from the research is wasted time (that's my guilty sub conscious kicking in:). What did strike me was how relevant much of this advice is, from those who have walked their talk, to the world of work regardless of what your task is.
I listened to New York Times writer Barbara Ehrenreich speak at Barnes and Noble last week - her new book Bright Sided has just been published and it's a damming indictment of the cult of the positive that bedevils America. She spoke with wit and elegance about her diagnosis of breast cancer 8 years ago and the pressure to 'be positive' surrounded by a sea of pink ribbons and teddy bears. The first chapter of the book describes in detail her journey through 'supportive' fora online - each more insistent than the last that she 'must' be positive or else it would affect the progression of her disease.
It's about time....I'm all for positive thinking in moderation but when positive thinking has, as its shadow side, the implication that fear, negativity and other difficulties and ills that befall us are in some way 'our fault' for not attracting positivity to ourselves then it's time to question what's really going on. ?
But Ehrenreich is also interested in corporate life - from an interview in Democracy Now
I can't tell you how many times I have read people who have lost their jobs in this recession in the newspaper saying, "But I'm trying so hard to be positive." Well, maybe there's no reason to be positive. Maybe you should be angry, you know? I mean, there is a place for that in the world.
It does make you wonder - what exactly is positivity a defense for? Splitting feelings into good/bad is a useful defense sometimes but it's also a disappointing one. Maturity and a capacity to be in a healthy relationship (with ourselves as well as with others) depends on being able to manage the spectrum of emotions we experience. The more attached we are to one end of the spectrum the more interesting it is to wonder what we're avoiding on the other.
