Uniquely United. A talk with Rivka Rubin

Joanna Leśnierowska: The Warsaw dance community is going to have its first-ever dance venue! The process of modelling the institution began almost a year ago, but right now we are experiencing a very fragile moment: our freshly rediscovered and meticulously rebuilt unity around the common goal – a dance venue – is being tested and suspended for a time, as the question of who will run the first pilot year of the venue comes up. The open call has been announced and proposals are being written. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear about such a situation?

Rivca Rubin: What comes to my mind is “the opportunity”: to build something from scratch by not repeating existing formulas, especially those that have proven not to work at all, or no longer work. There is an opportunity here to build something in a way that people will love. It is the very thing that is not known to us yet. In practice, we know we want something different, but we don’t quite know how, or we may not be able to articulate it theoretically. I have some experience in such processes from working with both large institutions and small teams, helping them to make shifts within existing modes of operations, and towards something more desirable for all involved, or even to start from scratch. Almost from scratch, as we never really start from scratch. There’s a lot of knowledge there already. But to start something in the way that the very system or structure around it can hold new practices of working and being with one another – that is a challenge.

JL: In Warsaw, actually. we cannot talk about rebuilding or refreshing – we are rather in this very moment when we imagine an institution that has not yet existed in Poland. And for that, for the first time in some years, the Warsaw community has gathered around the dream dreamt by generations of artists before us… We stand in front of the opportunity to make this dream into a concrete plan and to build something permanent, something that will last longer than us, keeping in mind those who will come after. For historical moments like this, you have coined an exceptional term: Uniquely United.

RR: Yes. Uniquely United taps into 2 great ideas: being unique (as every human is) and at the same time being united in an endeavour bigger than that of one human being. So therefore, the uniqueness and the difference between each and every person involved becomes something desirable rather or at least – of greater interest than something that is seen as a problem. So to be different becomes the exact “difficulty” we are looking for.

I had a chance to put it into practice in a place called Islington Mill. It’s a building, an old mill that has existed for 25 years and that has become home to 200 artists of different disciplines – some use small, some big studios, some have formed collectives, and some are still on their own. The building is run by a structure where there’s no traditionally understood hierarchy – hierarchy exists only in terms of financial responsibility, and that was our choice.

What we’ve been working on from the beginning were answers to the question of whether and how we can skip calling out to ‘community’ (a word that’s used a lot lately, and often also misused) and turn more towards something that is more understood as ‘an engagement’. How are people engaging in and forming themselves to make sure that they can do something together (be it as simple as keeping space clean, or making food for one another)? And, how can we look at solving problems together that will not require all 200 members to be involved nonstop? we believe it does require the group to have an interest in things: at the end then it is not about delegating tasks and not wanting to know about them anymore. That way we’re moving away from the service provision. At the moment in Islington Mill we do not have a full-time administrator or producer and we shift responsibilities among one another (and everybody on top is a practising artist). We also decided not to have rules and regulations. But we do have agreements. And agreements start in what we might call ‘the code of conduct’ or ‘the way we’d like to be with one another’. We deliberately avoid vocabulary that connotes the idea that someone creates the rules and imposes them on others. So, how can agreement be made together rather than given? Naturally, we need to follow some formal ways to deal with things like finances or legal issues, they require a certain amount of formality. That is in line with standard business practices, thus the community needs to comply with them and as opposed to decisions being taken by individual representatives and passing the decision down to the community.

The place works because the community is invested in it. So we’ve set up a few structures like monthly meetings called ‘last Fridays’, where we open the doors for everybody to come together. They are also open metaphorically to others to come in and learn about us. We’ve recently had a need to increase the rent because we hadn’t done it for years and all the cost of running the Mill have gone up. So we’ve been talking with the community about how that could happen. In which different ways? What might be the criteria? As you may have noticed, a lot of attention goes to how we choose to communicate with one another. We therefore reflect on the terminology we use and what the manifestations of those (terms) that we literally choose not to use, or we archive them. We have totally let go of discursive vocabulary of must/need to and then the one with the moralistic overtones shouldn’t/ought as they always got in them: according to whom? Those words hide a certain dose of hierarchy or superiority. And unfortunately, it is not particularly motivating for others to hear them and then engage because there is a high probability of being heard as a demand or command or an order. Here, is where my specialty comes in: the practice of Upwording. We’re using terminology which is always a form of an invitation and kind request. So we would like to/I would love to/I’m willing to/I’m prepared to/I want to/do you want to? would you like to? are you willing to? We say: I’m picking up the phone, not I have to pick up the phone. We would love to build a community garden rather than there should be a community garden. And in the moment it is much easier to connect and say: I’d like that too. Or I would like that though in five years…

That way there is a chance we will get into communication without anybody lecturing others. We found that using this type of terminology between us it also means that we’re always careful and as well as, always making sure we are actually prepared to do things. So if we submit a funding application and we put some ideas forward we also ask: Is it something that we can do now? Do we have the financial, mental and physical capacity, do we have enough resources, including human resources? , and is this something that is of real importance and interest to us? Proceeding like that we know we have taken a conscious considered decision. There is much more choice-driven decision-making involved rather than just a feeling it has to be done. Because we do believe in healthy environments, not created by continuing stressful situations.

JL: The Islington Mill is truly a great example of self-organising and co-sharing responsibilities, however, it has been developed for running an independent space and serving its members. Warsaw dance centre is going to be however an institution founded and subsidised by a city council. There will be very defined regulations to be followed and the whole set of obligations (one may even say: formal limitations) and tasks and expectations to be fulfilled. So the question is whether it is possible and if yes, how to maintain a spirit that you just described in the system that had been rigidly predefined by a city mandate?

RR: Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. Please note that for the Islington Mill things are also in great amount predefined by funders. I see Warsaw’s situation like this: whoever now applies for the pilot project to run the venue, be it a team or an individuals, is invited to respond to the call – so in fact needs to ask: am I willing to follow the given rules and obligations? They may not be the ones we would ideally like to see, now or in the future… So if we enter into running for a post, could we ask honestly: can we live with this set of rules? Because if there are certain rules and obligations of any organism, any organisation, any country that actually are totally or so strongly against my values, maybe I am not willing to respond. I think we’re continuing to upkeep systems that have social injustice within them by condoning it inadvertently because we feel we can’t do anything about it. And one step to do something about it is not to engage. So the point is, we may not agree with offered rules and obligations. We would like them to be somewhat different. Can I nevertheless though feel I’m willing to do them until such point when we can change them? So I make a conscious – again, a conscious – decision to do it. So I’m not in a battle state already. I can then use my energy in the long run to see how can some of these rules and obligations shift or be changed if they are not serving those who are working or those who are benefiting like the audiences and the performers and so on. The important thing is to know you have free will to choose if you want to engage or not and then, , please be accountable for your decision. And it might be that after checking the given criteria, we will be willing to follow nine out of 10, so maybe there is something that can be still discussed about the last one? I sadly hear a lot of: Yeah, but there’s nothing we can do. It’s not possible. And maybe the legit question is rather: how can we make it possible together? Can we engage as partners in understanding a long term needs of changes? what is our common desirable future?

JL: In your coaching work you often support teams in looking for answers to these questions, whether they look for their long term mission or when they question what are their shared values? What is their long-term sustainable change plan? How their needs and desires can be met? It’s often durational process. Where it does usually start?

RR: There are many ways to approach it, but one starting way I could think about especially for Warsaw would be to bring what the team already knows to the table. There may already be a lot of articulated (sometimes under-appreciated or unnoticed) knowledge in the room and also – outside of it. It helps to know and acknowledge who is not in the room. When coaching, I work with the currently involved but also, indirectly, with those who they have in mind, often those who are not yet born. Once I worked with Forestry Commission in England (btw, the only time actually I worked with a governmental institution) and they went far – they went 200 years into the future and then looked back as to what actually they’d created. That was extreme time span. Usually, we choose a prospect of 10 or 25 years into the future and then we release the imagination. And the imagination doesn’t come from nowhere because it is based on things we already know. For the sake of exercising, we remove the idea of impossible and not real. When one takes away impossibility, one gets to something truly imaginative and often highly unrealistic purposefully. In the next step, we combine everybody’s visions and thus begin to have one big vision still with many “impossibilities” in it. But it is exactly there where we can find ideas that have not yet been imagined and therefore, realised. We would not find them if we were throwing in the realistic (already known to us) ones. In the next step we ask: how could we get from here to there? Because on the imaginary journey, there will have been a journey back through time where the team notices the significant steps that were taken and they’re often surprised. Suddenly the vision does belong to everybody as everybody has had input and nobody edited it yet. It becomes rather self-edited. There’s usually a lot of crossover and people are going oh yeah, I love that one. And that moment is magical, already so far away from personal ownership. What we imagine becomes something owned by the four, five or six people on the team. A big part of this imagining is about impact and benefit to everyone: oneself, the people around, the people I haven’t even met yet, people that haven’t been born yet too… – the greater community, the country, the whole dance/performance scene, cultural scene, world… It’s all considered and transformed – from that absolute microcosm of oneself into the macrocosm of beyond-self. And that’s the most important bit. The whole process is in fact very impact/benefit led.

Heading towards Warsaw dance space, you can do this exercise by yourself, and then you can do it again, and again, when you know more or when you’ve tried things. It’s about having something long term in mind. Whatever you do, you’re doing it towards something that includes everybody and will last longer than you.

JL: Can you say a little bit more about your other practices – you have already mentioned Upwording and also, is there a practice of WOW – words of wisdom? Ooops, I’m sorry, words of witness…

RR: Many people do go as you for the wisdom in WOW and I love that, it’s almost a description.

Movement of Upwording was initiated in 2016 and I was developing it with my close colleague, Charles Lauder. Upwording has its roots in the idea of nonviolent communication (NVC) and follows the conviction that certain communication systems are outdated – they are authoritarian or imply superiority or supremacy. The language we use was developed once upon a time to serve those systems and make sure we can make each other do things. I believe our communication requires much more awareness. So Upwording is an invitation to notice what terminology I might be engaging in or reacting to and do I, inadvertently and without realising, take positions of superiority over someone else? Even if I don’t force people to do things literally. I like to describe the practice of Upwording as moving from toxic and tyrannical terminology to the one we want that is tonic and tasty. I think there’s something nice in the idea that communication can be tasty rather than bitter. It’s not about being a word police. It’s not about just checking your language. It’s about noticing the impact the way we speak have because it’s driven by the concepts behind it. And actually, how much impact there is – negative impact – on our health and well-being. How stress-inducing it can be in addition to, of course, circumstances being stress-inducing. Our language can be very stressful.

So the beginning of Upwording practice is anoticing the words in our communication and questioning why sometimes they have an impact opposite to our intention or don’t work at all, and instead of connecting people, words we use often land us into a spectrum that we’re so far apart from one another. We can’t even hear each other and the more there is, unfortunately is a will to be oppositional.

Since 2016 there’s been a whole group of people practising Upwroding regularly. We have a weekly free practice that anybody can come to. Come! It’s online, global and out of this practice many other ideas and practices emerged. Among them also WOW, words of wisdom or witness. It is a feedback approach, specifically around how to give feedback to work in progress. It’s about how to share information without ever going into judgement. So there is no such thing as, oh, this was great or this was good or this was confusing or this was bad or I think you should do this. There’s no advice in there. But there’s a gift round where there are things that I may invite you to, that you may find interesting to look at. We share what we may have observed with what we felt, what thoughts we had, thoughts we noticed whilst watching, and what risk we might sense from it. There might be legal risks because what we saw was too similar to something else so that can be a risk of plagiarism. There can also be something offensive or strobe lighting risking somebody’s health, etc. WOW is inspired by Edward de Bono’s thinking hats mixed with Liz Lherman methodology of critical response and Simone Forti’s witness approach. I had a privilege to work with Simone, and learnt from her the very crucial thing: that if you describe what you see and what you hear then there’s already a huge enough amount of information that the creator gets.

JL: You just mentioned you worked with Simone Forti. And how did you find your way to what you’re doing now? And, do you think that the fact your first background is in dance and choreography helps your current practice? Did it has an impact on the way you work?

RR: Oh, yeah, I was a dancer and choreographer.. so far back…. I stopped around 1995/96. And I did indeed have some amazing years of working with great artists. And yes, what I experienced with them in terms of communication is now totally informing my work. I also did a lot of improvisation. It took me a while to notice its impact , but when I first started sharing learning (previously known as “delivering training”) and that was in coaching and communication and how to create a compelling future, I noticed I was actually comfortable being in the room following where the energy of the group went, rather than coming in with a rigid idea of what in the first hour we’re going to do and then we’re going to do this and so on. Initially I did plan, sometimes, very little. I knew where I wanted to get to. Soon I started to create plans for workshops on post-its so that with a group, we could move them around, and recompose. That means that those in the room who want to have structure and a plan, see it and it will be followed. It may just not be followed in that order, and timing, as initially put.

I am usually happy to be in the moment. And the change from choreography to communication? Well, I was for a long time organising workshops for dancers/choreographers and at one point I realised I like assisting people’s creative process and development and removing restrictions in thinking. In theUK at the beginning of the 90s, nobody was teaching how to develop your thinking or how to free or liberate oneself from thinking. So I decided to study it. I did a master’s in Applied Behavioral Sciences and I didn’t know at that time that I would reenter the dance field. However, dance was always there and became my re entry point – in 2000 I set up the very first coaching course in the arts in England called The Art of Coaching later called The Creative Coach. I still do it sometimes. But generally, I moved from the body and the choreography to the communication that creates creative thinking. And you know what, I feel much more at home now. I think I would have never been an amazing choreographer. I loved performing. I didn’t like rehearsing, and when I look back, I had no idea what I was doing as a choreographer. And first of all, I realised I didn’t have a mission. I found that I liked moving within my mind and assist other people’s thinking. That’s my vocation.

JL: You also have another coaching program called: Setting Up the Climate. I believe it would be also very interesting in the moment we find ourselves in…

RR: It does focus on how we want to work together. In Warsaw’s case, how we want to work with each other in the pilot year, and also, beyond? How we can be of support to one another, regardless of who was selected to make the pilot year happen.

I’m very specifically leaving out here idea that there’s somebody who will win the open call. It automatically points also that there will be others who will lose or, there are some who are going to be successful and others that will fail … I think one thing that could really help here is trust – trust that the selection will have been made with best intentions according to clear criteria and whoever is selected simply met more criteria than others. So even if “my” proposal did not go through, nevertheless me and others, we lend our support to those who are chosen. And if we are chosen, we would like to continue to not only be supported by others but also be informed by them. It is possible to imagine space where after the verdict, we still can do things together: whether it’s idea generation, or looking at common values – what if we imagine one big application created from everybody’s ideas? I hope whoever will be granted the pilot mission remains open rather than going to do things only his/her/our way. Cause ‘our’ can be a bigger Our. And I think this is for us to practise as well, that we can literally trust and support each other. The biggest space of Our is the true mode of Uniquely United.