Hear from Susie Thornberry, CEO & Artistic Director of Metal, as part of our Art Workers & Artists series.
Phone voices were big when I was growing up. Adults would say things like ‘hello, who’s speaking?’ or ‘hello 4554’ as they picked up. They’d clear their throats and sharpen consonants that sounded like vowels in conversations about milk or who’d smited them that day.
At work, my voice sometimes feels like that phone voice. Directors of arts organisations speak to many people at once, shapeshifting between the language of artists, residents, education specialists, health workers and local government. Right now, I’m thinking of the partners and funders who might read this.
‘Make a good impression’ is ringing in my ears.
People tell me that my writer’s voice is uncanny, weird, slippery. I make up speculative worlds where bodies hint at what lies ahead or places hold on to your most embarrassing memories.
Metal’s new Art Workers & Artists series is the first time I’m bringing my voice as Metal’s Director and an emerging writer together. And I’ve found it hard.
I worry about even admitting this split. Authentic leadership is important in the arts. I see people praised for how ‘real’ they are. I know that some of this is about being a mixed-heritage woman. I have to choose which parts of me are loud in a room and which are temporarily turned down. Something I hear from global majority directors in my orbit too.
By day, I sit at my kitchen table writing funding applications and risk registers. I’m comfortable talking about that. Late at night, I’m at the same table inventing scenarios on the edge of reality. I don’t usually talk about that at work.
Am I writing this as the Director of Metal who wants to communicate with precision or as a writer who enjoys the strange, the speculative, the oblique?
Day-to-day, I love the overlap of being an art worker and new writer. I find the shifting power dynamics helpful. It means I know how careful, kind, specific rejections can be a win, especially when you’re starting out. I understand what it is to hold a tiny part of your soul in your hand and have others poking around at it. I feel solidarity when artists are at the stage where they’ve looked at a project too much and hate everything about it. Being new to writing, and aware of the gap between my vision for a project and my ability to achieve it, helps.
At Metal, we talk often about how we can support those who necessarily work outside of institutions – inspired partly by our amazing former trustee, artist and anti-racist educator Jean Campbell – while we work with those institutions. That we are all an important part of the ecology.
I’m mindful of the economic reality of artists and talk constantly to funders about more money for freelance artists. I’m sensitive to how exposure to the market – and people who use the language of the market – too soon can strangle your work. We try to make Metal a gentle retreat from this or a place to imagine how the finances can work for individual artists.
What do I gain as a writer from being an art worker? Inspiring colleagues. Brilliant conversations about notorious landlords, ecofeminism or intertidal zones. The joy of meeting phenomenal multi-disciplinary artists and hearing about their work and daily routines. Experience of editing gazillions of funding applications with different criteria. An understanding of the structures and systems that artists must navigate.
Directors and boards, outside of founder-artist models or artistic directors making flagship shows in theatres, have told me they avoid hiring artists. I think they’re wrong. Across the Metal team, I see the dynamic of art worker and artist bringing ideas, energy, art form expertise and empathy. It collapses the line between institutions and artists.
I don’t know if it’s possible for me to fully bring the two voices together, but I want to celebrate having artists working as dedicated art workers who champion and produce the work of others alongside those whose practice is curating, governance or finance. You’ll hear from more of them at Metal in this series.
