Conditions

Conditions is a catch all title for ongoing, growing and live research / experimentation / learning we are developing at Deveron Projects, concerned with how our work is organised and the structures and infrastructures that underpin it. 

Emerging from several years of listening, reflection and review across Deveron Projects, Conditions holds multiple entangled threads of thought, questioning and imagination. It looks outwards to ask what is the role of an arts organisation like ours here in Huntly, now and into the future, and inwards, to ask what does our organisation need to look and feel like to do this work well, with integrity, transparency and care?

This research and experimentation is driven by multiple, interconnected factors. We want to root our organisational practice in the values, ideas and politics being described and explored through our programmes, believing that artists’ deep, complex and rich creative processes can (and should) also be practiced in making our organisation. One that embodies, facilitates and supports this work to its core. Taking a step back, it’s clear that ‘business’ can’t, won’t and shouldn’t continue as usual. On every level – financially, environmentally, ethically – the systems and structures that govern and shape organisations, charities and third sector organisations such as ours are formed of violent, extractive and ‘bigger than us’ systems (capitalism, imperialism, fascism and others), inherently limiting our ability to respond to and pre-empt future challenges. When our work is focused on building communities, movements and regenerative practices, it’s clear that we must resist and find alternatives if we are to realise our vision for Deveron Projects and support a wider movement towards a liberatory horizon.

Looking within and beyond Deveron Projects we know that these alternatives are possible. Learning from projects such as the Town is the Garden and the White Wood among others, speaks to the more-than-human world, to ‘life-timespans’, interdependence and abundance. Communities in Huntly consistently demonstrate what can be realised with collaboration and commitment to a place and its people. Organisations within and beyond the arts are stepping into the space between the existing systems and something new, generously sharing their learning and thinking in open-source platforms, tools, blogs and more, demonstrating that there is room to flex and stretch within and beyond what exists already. Social justice movements, organising around global injustices continue to build new worlds through organising, political education and direct action, showing us what is possible when we pursue leader-full, mutually accountable and justice-driven work, and do this in collaboration with others who share in our desire for change.

So, where are we at? Learning and thinking from Conditions over the past year has led us to pursue several significant and ambitious changes at Deveron Projects so far. These are in the process of being formed and developed through practice:

• Testing a new organisational structure in which we work collaboratively in small teams across different areas of work with a flexible and iterative roles-based approach. Jobs will be no longer defined by a job description, rather team members holding a selection of roles that shift and change over time, as required by the individuals holding them and the collective needs of the work at hand.
• Breaking down and (re)imagining organisational policy, protocols and practices, starting with ‘human relations’ and employment practices. We want to build relationships with our team that are based in trust, mutual accountability and orientated towards our vision – what infrastructures can enable this?
• Collaborating with our trustees to plan and develop systems of governance and balance that maintain legality, yet build fairer, more ethical and collective modes of risk management and organisational sustainability.
• Participating in Citizens in Power as an associate member, to learn more about best practice in citizen led decision making and contribute to this movement within the arts and culture sector. 

A conditions group, comprised of Deveron Project’s team with board member Lynn Rutter and ex-board member and artist Karen Vaughan, will continue to develop this open-ended research project over this year through practice, cross team/board reading groups and conversations with peers and networks. We will be developing modes of sharing our learning, reflections and decisions publicly.

If you have an interest in new ways of organising or are concerned with developing alternatives to dominant systems, structures and practices within the arts or community development, then we’d love to hear from you.

Please feel free to reach out to us on info@deveron-projects.com / @DeveronProjects or if you are local, drop by our offices in Huntly library.