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Please visit www.thinkingpractice.co.uk

Thinking Practice is based in Stockton, in North East England, but enjoys working anywhere.

If you're interested in Mark working with you or your organisation send him a message or ring 01642 606755.

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Popular Posts

The Art of Relevance

Nina Simon, who is the Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History , and a leading museums thinker , was the punchiest keynote speaker at the recent AMA conference. I came away with a copy of The Art of Relevance , her new book, the themes of which she set out in her talk. Relevance has the potential to give the other R word a run for its money in the 2016 Buzzword stakes, but we should not hold that against Nina or her argument. Using the images of rooms and keys and insiders and outsiders, the book is a sharp argument for mattering more to more people, not by assertion of your own intrinsic value but by making genuine connections. It uses stories and micro-case studies to illustrate how switching the terms in an open and ongoing fashion leads to change, and to relevance. Along the way there are a good number of highly quotable lines and arguments. Simon starts off by skewering two common delusions, seen weekly in the arts: firstly that what we...

The Art of Living Dangerously

Back in summer 2012 I did some research into different ways of thinking about the value created by culture, and about the role of artists in that, as part of an ambitious project started by Exchange, a group of performing arts organisations in Tyneside. They had connected to Mission Models Money (where I’m an Associate) and New Economics Foundation to think about three inter-linked issues: the role of arts and culture within sustainable economic development; how artists and other creative practitioners can contribute to sustainable development and finally how to ensure artists and creative practitioners are able to achieve sustainable livelihoods throughout their life-cycles, especially as emergent independent artists. At least that’s how we’re describing it in the paper finally published last week: The Art of Living Dangerously . The final document, whose authors were Shelagh Wright, Natalie Querol, Sarah Colston and myself, had a rather protracted gestation, with a number...

Re. arts: thoughts from Sartre - choice, collectivity, collaboration and contingency

. I recently came across Talking with Sartre , a fascinating book of ‘conversations and debates’ between Jean-Paul Sartre and John Gerassi, recorded between 1970 and 1974. When I was sixteen I had a picture of Sartre stuck to my guitar, cut from his obituary, and a Penguin Modern Classic of The Age of Reason in my long-overcoat pocket. (Think I can be a bit much now, you should have met me then...) Sartre fell out of fashion – after the collapse of the Berlin Wall I guess, but probably also because he wasn’t as cool looking as Camus – but for me he still sat there in the background, till Hazel Rowley’s book on his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir Tête à Tête revived my interest in and respect for a peculiar and flawed man who struggled to find an authentic way to be in the world, coming to define a kind of engagement with ideas and politics – and writing. I don’t have time or space for a ‘reassessment’ of Sartre, nor the philosophical knowledge. But I found this book of essays ...

Eclecticism and the creative case for diversity

Recently I chaired three ‘creative conversations’ about the ‘creative case for diversity’, organised under the banner of ‘Eclectic’ by BALTIC , Gem Arts and Zendeh and supported by the promulgators of the creative case , Arts Council England . These brought people together to hear some thoughtful and provoking speakers, and then to have open space style conversations around topics of their own choosing. The idea was that these events were very much ‘sector-led’, rather than being driven by Arts Council, and were about creativity and the creative case rather than nuts and bolts equality plan issues. It felt as if this idea was welcomed by the people who attended – although I guess you have to wonder whether it is by the people who didn’t attend. Maybe there are some NPOs and others who think the creative case doesn’t apply to them, and they are fine ‘doing what they do’ with who they do it. Maybe there are some who think they’ve heard it before and a fundamental opening up o...

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