Convener(s): Tony McBride

Participants: Joanna Woodware; Roddy…………….; Carolyn Graham; Philip Osment; Jim Pope; Phelim McDermot

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Concern about artists going into situations of high risk and need without having the understanding and skills base, enough to deal with challenging situations and behaviour.

We shared techniques and strategies for dealing with conflict – Carolyn talked through Mediation techniques

We talked about how we can better understand what’s behind the display of challenging behaviour and how we can best communicate with it. Roddy talked about experience of NLP and shared some techniques.

Phelim shared some ‘Life Game’ techniques that can be used to help understand others’ maps of the world

We also talked about the need to allow for deep rooted emotions to be expressed, to go towards/into the heat of the situation in order for it to be channelled

Conclusion
The session established the fact that, in order to fulfil the government’s Social Inclusion agenda, and for other more valid reasons, artists are being expected to (and choosing to) step into high risk and demanding situations – without adequate training and support.

The opportunity for people to get training is hard to find, if indeed it exists at all. There is no forum for practitioners to come together and share experience/practice and learn and develop more awareness and ways of working.

Recommendation
Set up a group/forum to which practitioners can come for sharing and exploration of practice.

The forum, or workshop will seek to develop awareness around what is creating challenging behaviour – and how to best work with it