The bigger picture: endings and aftercare

Care is such a huge topic within socially engaged and community practices that it’s no surprise it formed the stimulus for two “digital discourse” sessions: open meetings on Zoom embedded within the CROWD residency programme, bringing participating artists and organisations together with funders to discuss key ideas. The final session looked specifically at aftercare, with questions and prompts for discussion including:

What kinds of aftercare might be offered to participants – by the artists, and/or by the organisation? 

What kinds of aftercare do the artists need? 

What is needed to enable a process to end? 

What within the process might continue indefinitely? 

Who had autonomy in the process, and how is that expressed in every stage?

We were joined for this session by three visiting artists: dancer Solène Weinachter and her collaborator Lisa Fannen, a poet and celebrant who created a care framework for Solène’s exploration of death, After All; and Rajni Shah, whose recent work reconsiders listening, particularly as an antiracist practice.

Not aftercare but always-care

‘There’s this desire I have to work with people as whole human beings. What does it mean to acknowledge all the parts of a person?’ Rajni Shah

‘Who are we when we work in and with communities?’ This question from Rajni feels like a useful starting point: it turns attention to ‘where I am a community member’, for instance in relation to other professionals, and invites the artist to consider their own needs, not just those of the people they are working with. 

‘Who are we checking in with and how?’ asks Luke Pell, facilitator for The Work Room. Care is not always a soft or tender thing: it requires bolder spaces and braver spaces that can hold human complexity – what Rajni calls ‘the whole human being’. 

What these opening questions make clear is that aftercare is actually a continuation of care embedded from the beginning. It is, says Luke, always-care. 

Luke also highlights the tendency towards talking as a care act, and wonders: ‘How might checking-in be about resourcing, offering tools or practical skills that are body-based instead?’

That resourcing, says Rajni, might involve offering ourselves the capacity to tune in and notice what doesn’t feel right. It also might involve connecting with a multitude of non-human beings in more complex webs of care.

Luke: How do we know/talk about what we need, if we have never been asked/rarely recognised?

Natalia Barua, CROWD artist: The framework of “just ask for what you need” is inaccessible / impossible / so hard for so many.

Care work is creative work

‘How far can we fly when the anchor is somewhere to come back to?’ Solène Weinachter

Solène’s work increasingly builds on her awareness of – and desire to disrupt – the power dynamics and absence of care in her traditional dance training. Working with Lisa has been a crucial learning process, revealing to her the multi-dimensionality of care and what it nourishes. Initially, she admits, she didn’t know how to articulate the necessity of care within a funding application: now she sees it as ‘the spine of the project’, with clear budgetary requirements. 

For Solène and Lisa, care work is always-work and it is also creative work. ‘How do we set up spaces so there is choice?’ asks Lisa. She has learned through dialogue with participants in After All, invited to speak openly about death, that it is vital for people to know exactly what is being asked of them, to make choices of their own around how much they wish to give, and then have recourse for feedback afterwards too. Not having that clarity can make people feel vulnerable and exposed.

Putting those resources in place, says Solène, enables artists to ‘push ourselves further’ – not in the cliche ways that damage a dancer’s body or have a bourgeois shock value, but by speaking to taboo subjects and taking more risks. Care becomes an anchor, enabling flight. 

Collectivise and contextualise

‘Can makers, producers, everyone involved creatively and pastorally also be embedded in aftercare?’ Natalia Barua, CROWD artist

‘Is it possible to collectivise the process of after care?’ asks Lisa. There are multiple ways of reading this question: for one, how might the approach to care not be hierarchical/top-down? How might everyone involved be asked what they need in terms of care, and after care be designed from that?

For another, what is the role of an organisation in aftercare? Solène agrees that it is useful not to have to carry all of the responsibility for participants’ care herself. From the organisation perspective, Helen Lound, producer at FABRIC Birmingham, brings a number of questions with which she regularly grapples: for instance, if an artist is on residency at FABRIC and a community group requests a workshop, is a one-off drop-in enough? What are participants getting out of a one-off workshop? What mindfulness is being practised around not ‘taking’ from these groups?

Clearly, aftercare is not a singular practice: instead, says Lisa, it is a big umbrella term and will always be contextual. Each context might require something different: a passive after care, of anonymised forms perhaps; or an active after care, of ongoing conversation, or rituals for closing.

The work of designing after care requires thinking about structures and how those structures consider difference, says Rajni. And it holds an invitation: to learn together multiple ways to be heard, and to explore what a community – as a community, and as a complex group of individuals – might need.

What are your hopes and fears in relation to aftercare? A collective response

Hope: that everyone involved can stay connected.

Hope: that it meets expectations and allows an individual to be seen, heard and given the chance to feedback.

Fear: not having enough space to hold an exchange.

Hope: to have the chance to keep learning from participants as they perhaps develop things that were sparked during a community engaged process.

Hope: to not leave an encounter in a place of conflict.

Fear: not having the personal (emotional) capacity to keep up with people as we move out of intense collaboration.

Hope: to be able to offer/explore and receive honest critique that is useful/helpful/developmental.

Hopes: that there is time for it to happen, as and when it is needed, that it is on the terms/rhythm of the folks it’s need is arising for. That it is for everyone involved in bringing an encounter/experience/artwork into being.

Fears – or rather questions: how to be clear with boundaries. Questions around the ethics of ongoing relation/ships.

Hope: building in more (all-directions) care roles from the start, with room for movement and transformation.

Fear: that it’s a budget bolt-on rather than a starting point and core to dreaming.