Today we’re wondering what we have when we’re together. 

Yesterday I was thinking about what it means to decide that something is going to change. What it means to mark the moment that things will be different. I realised that part of change is also about deciding what things should stay the same.

Tomorrow, we’ll think about the things we’d like to hold on to. 

If you send out a new set of questions I think one of them should be:

As we change, what shall we hold on to? 

In no particular order, these are some of the ways I might answer:

We are often a very silly group of people. We laugh a lot. I’d like to hold on to that.

Cooking together. 

Eating together. 

Spending time together. 

Life-friendly working hours/environment. 

Open and honest conversations. 

A desire to make things because they matter. 

A desire to make things because they are beautiful (and that matters).

A commitment to process. 

A commitment to not being funding-led. 

Integrity. 

Of course, the flip side to that question is:

As we change, what shall we have more of? 

These are some of the ways I might answer: 

Risks. 

Failure. 

Noisy politics. 

Things we don’t know how to do yet. 

Transparency. 

 

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In a year from now, when our Tenancy project is over, we’ll stop renting our office and we’ll spend the rent on a ‘working’ house instead. We’ll work from a big table in the front room. We’ll use the back room as a studio space where we can test ideas. We’ll use the bedrooms for visiting artists and people who, for various reasons, need somewhere to sleep. We’ll take it in turns to cook lunch. We’ll have a shared library. We’ll create a space for Quarantine where we can welcome people in. 

 

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Once a week I meet a person who asks me the question ‘what are you doing with my words?’

I think that’s a good question to be asking. 

What are you doing with our words? 

 

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Today we’re wondering what we have when we’re together.