Revenge of the fat, pink Americans?

[Image: www.tv3.co.nz]

While mainstream New Zealand agonises over whether pink "Tagger" jackets will suggest taggers are gay, I wonder what the choice of colours conveys about the cop who chose it and, by proxy, all cops – all heterosexual men for that matter. I mean, subconsciously, what was he thinking? Skater boys with spray cans wearing caps and baggy shorts, clad in pink. Sounds like a secret little homoerotic fantasy, if you ask me.

Meanwhile, America is about to make a gay-looking black man President - what does that say about Americans? They've come a long way, haven't they? Now, if Obama turns out to be a female-to-male transsexual, I'll eat my hat.

And apparently two thirds of New Zealanders are fat and offended by the stating of the fact. Well, I'm sick of being told I'm too thin, too.

So. Interesting times.

On the UK radio...

While I was in Manchester in April I was interviewed by the local gay radio show about being gay, disabled, vegetarian, kiwi and funny...

Listen here: Part 1 || Part 2

Can children healthily support disabled parents?

Recently I had a great discussion about the dangers of children assuming supportive roles with their disabled parents. As a disabled non-parent (as opposed to a non-disabled parent, hehe!), I've witnessed many disabled friends parent children who have contributed differing levels of support. I think there are a couple of issues that are important to explore.

Firstly, I think problems occur when a child feels a sense of duty to support their parent(s). This expectation limits a child's freedom to be a child and reverses the duty of care between a parent and child.

But giving a child a managed sense of responsibility may be extremely beneficial. I have seen children of disabled friends grow up with some great life skills as a result of being coached by their parents to do things other kids normally wouldn't. It seems to me that the tipping point is when kids go from feeling parented to relied upon by their parent. That emotional dynamic needs to be monitored.

As long as kids feel loved, safe and protected, I think they have huge capacity to grow up doing practical things to support themselves and others. As an uncle of four littlies, I can't wait until, in a few years, "Uncle Pip" can "borrow" his nieces and nephews in the weekends and holidays to help out!!

Thinking on the hop

So much for regular blogging - my three days of working and hanging out with the folk at arcadea was so intense that writing about it was really out of the question. Even now it's hard to know how to do the experience justice without giving myself an overuse injury. I'll start with a really brief synopsis and then add the contents of an email I've just sent to Vici, arcadea's director.

On Tuesday I spent the morning with Vici in what we tried to make a structured mentoring meeting. It ended up as the beginning of a three day tangented, organic and, at times (testament to an instant and strong mutual rapport) hilarious, discussion on cultural equality, the state of disability arts in the UK and our shared passion to inject renewed vitality into individuals and a movement experiencing changes in arts funding policies, apathy, identity confusion and what I might term loosely social fracture (difficulty in meeting together, organising, agreeing on focus etc). These discussions threaded through into a meeting with arcadea's board (only three of whom were able to attend) on Tuesday evening, a full day seminar with artists on Wednesday, and a seminar with council and arts facilities staff on Thursday morning followed by a concluding dynamic brainstorm about the future on Thursday morning. The energy created by about a dozen people who came to all or most events was palpable, of which I was honoured to be a part. I left inspired by the generation of ideas and vision that sprung from my visit.

If I were to summarise my input by way of justifying my presence, it was:

• Presenting my story as inspiiration and testament to creating internal and external change in unison.
• Introducing the idea of functional diversity as a reframing tool for the experience of disability. This generated intense discussion about language and identity, including the nature of the word 'function', which I agreed has limits due to clinical connotation, as well as a pragmatic and width of meaning. This debate has already inspired an evolution in my thinking described below.
• Reframing 'disability arts' as part of the realm of creative and social entrepreneurship, attributing barriers and resistant attitudes to the innovative aspect of the work and landscape, rather than the content of the issue. I was also able offer social entrepreneurship theory - standing still, resiliency cycles and the call to engage repetitively in complex rather than simple pursuits - to make sense of the challenges the group was facing as individuals and as a movement.
• Observing the connection between individual, internal reality and collective, external reality and using deliberate creation of the former to influence change in the latter.
• Consciously combating fatigue and weariness by observing and changing negative and patterned beliefs into useful, constructive ones.
• Capitalising on relationship building, persuasion and constructive thinking to build future direction, balancing without devaluing activism, cynicism and victim-based approaches.

Thursday's final brainstorm was testimony to the success of the three day Inspiring Internationalists event. I witnessed individual changes Vici and her three executive colleagues that bouy me in my outlook for the future for arcadea and the movement in the North East region.

The rest is taken from the email sent to Vici this morning, focusing on my thinking on functional diversity and the future:

I had a very relaxing day yesterday, barely got out of bed, and woke this morning at 5:30 with "the answer" to the functional diversity dilemma - a better term I think is EXPERIENTIAL DIVERSITY, where the enquiry is into the VALUE of UNIQUE EXPERIENCE (physical, social, emotional etc) vs COMMON EXPERIENCE - but also the EXPRESSION of Unique Experience vs Common Experience. This allows for disablement and therefore the "disabled" identity to be simply one facet of Unique Experience and Expression. I think the idea of experience also lends itself well to the idea of internal and external experience - the difference between how I experience myself and how others experience me - and using expression as the bridge.

All this makes the WISE SPECIES™ model (which just didn't have time to emerge in the 3 days) more coherent. I'm really quite excited about this conceptual development because it speaks so perfectly to my wider interest in social change. It allows a language and enquiry into the Experiential/Expressive Diversity of all social groups, creating an equal space to explore a constructive/ creative perspective on experience and craft it into useful expression, without overlooking marginalisation and discrimination, powerlessness and oppression. By definition it must also include privilege, power and even criminal deviation and anti-social roles.

So, going back to the disability arts aspect and our discussion about the future on Thursday night, it seems to me this could form the basis of some more focused professional development work I could offer to artists with unique experience (informed by impairment and disability). It would be great to work with a group of artists wanting to explore their unique experience in the context of their creative/expressive work, over a longer period, perhaps a week or more, and maybe have it culminate in a public showing.

ARTS COUNCIL SYNERGY
This article came through on an IFACCA newsletter. Maybe there is a chance to strike while the iron is hot and offer dialogue for new ACE CEO in terms of his "mission to see “excellent” arts and culture made accessible to all" - I note he also mentions Newcastle/Gateshead as doing things differently - so he'll be expecting a different take from you!?!?
New arts chief on a mission to change people’s lives for better - nebusiness.co.uk

The gift of failure

Last week I presented some new work to a group of colleagues and peers and, not to put too blunt a point on it, I stuffed up big time. My presentation was unrehearsed and not targeted at the group of people I was talking to - in fact I had started by saying, "This is an outline of what I will present overseas next month." So straight away I had alienated my audience.

At the time I felt awful - and my confidence about what I was presenting took a bit of a beating. But over the last week I've had several insights as a result of my reflection.

I was reminded of a time I did a comedy gig where I did all new material. I died a terrible death on stage and vowed always in future to sandwich new material between gags that were tried and true. That formula has served me well in the last ten years. I broke that rule with this presentation and have since reworked the presentation to include familiar content that actually strengthens the new work.

From the feedback I received about the complexity of the ideas I was presenting, I realised that, in essence, I was trying to sell a car by opening the bonnet and explaining how the engine worked. Selling cars has almost nothing to do with the engine - it's the look, the feel, the style of the car - and how that will benefit the buyer - that sells it. I had made the mistake of explaining in detail my thinking, rather than the effect of my thinking on others.

The final gem from my failure was the chance to get it wrong in front of people I respected and who were respectful enough of me to give me honest feedback. I would have hated to get it wrong in front of strangers who may not have felt comfortable to tell me it sucked and I kept on sucking!

The gift of failure - one of those things you get given that you don't really want but it grows on you over time!

Positive thinking can have negative consequences

"There's a huge difference between positive thinking and constructive thinking. You are standing in a market-place and a car parks on your foot. Positive thinking suggests that you make the best of your enforced immobility. You look around and appreciate the architecture. You watch the stallholders and human nature. You inhale and appreciate the smells. You chat to children who gather around. Constructive thinking suggests you make an effort to get the car shifted."

Edward de Bono, in New Thinking for the New Millennium

This story illustrates that thinking positively can actually keep us in negative situations. In order to move on and achieve our potential, we need to think constructively, not positively.

If you'd like to know more about constructive thinking and potential, contact us at Diversityworks.
 

If you thought wheelchairs were restrictive, you need to watch this!

Fostering a spirit of teamwork

From an email received:

Fostering a spirit of teamwork is critical in times of change. The key element is trust. Trust for the leader and trust for each other.

There is a wonderful story from the play, Some Folks Feel the Rain; Others Just Get Wet, that truly captures how people really feel about working together. Here it is...Enjoy!

A man was lost while driving through the country. As he tried to reach for the map, he accidentally drove off the road into a ditch. Though he wasn’t injured, his car was stuck deep in the mud. So the man walked to a nearby farm to ask for help.

“Warwick can get you out of that ditch,” said the farmer, pointing to an old mule standing in a field. The man looked at the decrepit old mule and looked at the farmer who just stood there repeating, “Yep, old Warwick can do the job.” The man figured he had nothing to lose. The two men and the mule made their way back to the ditch. The farmer hitched the mule to the car. With a snap of the reins, he shouted,

“Pull, Fred! Pull, Jack! Pull, Ted! Pull, Warwick!”

And the mule pulled that car right out of the ditch.

The man was amazed. He thanked the farmer, patted the mule, and asked, “Why did you call out all of those names before you called Warwick?”

The farmer grinned and said, “Old Warwick is just about blind. As long as he believes he’s part of a team, he doesn’t mind pulling.”