Creative Listening & Creative Agents | A Final Reflection On Community Practice

Over the course of the Neighbourhood Creative Agents programme, I have been exploring what creative listening is in arts evaluation, as it is lived out in practice. Not as a fixed idea, but as something relational, responsive and at times uncertain.

Alongside this, I was also trying to understand what it means to work as a Creative Listener, using the programme as a space to test and question that role through practice.

In my role as a Creative Listener, this began with quietly watching and listening. I made initial sketch responses, then held conversations and conducted interviews with the Creative Agents, allowing me to stay close to what was actually happening before trying to define or structure it.

My focus was not on evaluating project outputs or measuring outcomes, but on the experience of becoming a Creative Agent, how each person navigated uncertainty, decision making and responsibility within their place and community.

Given the nature of the programme, its timing, and its funding, this work did not follow through to the agent's project completion. Instead, it became a deeper investigation into the early stages of the agents' journeys, when ideas were still forming, and doubt, adjustment, and interpretation were most visible.

What emerged was not a clear method but a process involving uncertainty, testing, and, at times, recognising that ideas I believed might work did not fully hold up. This reflection brings that journey together as a form of practice-based evaluation, showing how my approach developed through doing, through difficulty, and through staying with what was actually there rather than what I expected to find.

Understanding The Role Of A Creative Listener

At the outset, I recognised that taking time to understand what it means to work as a Creative Listener in depth was not explicitly defined within the contracted terms I had been engaged in. However, it felt essential. Before I could respond to the Creative Agents with any clarity or responsibility, I needed to understand what this position required in practice and how to carry it out to a professional and considered standard. While this sits slightly alongside the expected outcomes of the evaluation, it forms an important part of the context in which the work was developed.

When I first stepped into the Neighbourhood Creative Agents programme, I quickly realised I did not fully understand what a Creative Listener was meant to be. I could sense the importance of the work and its potential, but I did not yet have a clear way of working. That uncertainty stayed with me and unsettled me more than I expected.

Before I could define this properly, I found myself needing to understand what evaluation itself meant within this context. I began by looking more broadly at how community projects are evaluated, trying to find a language and framework that made sense of what I was stepping into. You can read more about that early thinking here: How To Evaluate Community Projects As A Contemporary Community Textile Artist – 2025 Nature Connections | Derbyshire

As part of this, I attended the Nature Connectedness conference at the Museum of Making. What struck me was that, while there was clear interest from national organisations in the idea of a Creative Listener, there was no shared or clearly defined understanding of what this actually looked like in practice. It felt present, even in demand, but still in an early, developing stage. That stayed with me. It made the lack of definition more visible, and the responsibility of the work feel less certain.

Alongside this, I looked for cultural reference points that could help frame my thinking. I turned to Stephen Willats, whose work had recently been reshown locally, as well as to Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory and the 2025 Reith Lectures on community. I was trying to build an approach that felt both methodical and grounded, drawing on existing ways of understanding participation, narrative and structure within community practice.

Even with that grounding, I still needed something more tangible to work with.

My response to that was to look for a framework that could offer some clarity. I returned to Stephen Willats because his work appeared to provide exactly that. His structured approaches to mapping relationships, using questions, diagrams and visual systems, gave me something I could begin to test within my own practice. It felt rigorous and considered. It felt like it had edges.

Willats' handbook Artwork As Social Model: A Manual Of Questions And Propositions (2012), developed from his work engaging creatively with communities, became a key point of reference. I chose to adopt this as a working manual, using its questions and propositions to guide my approach and bring structure to what I was observing and recording.

This became my first attempt to understand creative listening through a defined structure, applying and testing an existing model to see whether it could support what I was witnessing in the Creative Agents’ work. You can read more about this early thinking here: Collaborative Evaluation: Stephen Willats & Community Art

Testing Methods | From Willats' Questionnaires To Representation

For the first few sessions I attended within the Creative Agents programme, I deliberately held back. I sat in on meetings, listened carefully, and used graphic recording, sketching responses in my journal to capture what I was hearing and sensing. These responses not only attempted to record technical or factual aspects, but also the emotions, sensations, and atmospheres present within the space.

Over time, these sensings became the focus of my work. I found myself wanting to recognise what was not immediately visible, what might not be captured through a formal report or graph. This was not about replacing those forms of evaluation, but about adding something different to the process, a way of acknowledging the relational and often unseen aspects of community practice.

I wanted to take my time, to understand, and to meet the agents where they were and for who they were, rather than moving too quickly to define or interpret.

I have always believed that if you are going to work with a model, you should take the time to properly understand it before you begin to mould it into something more aligned. I approached Willats' work in the same way I had approached the Creative Agents, taking time to sit with it, understand it, meet him, attend Nottingham's Archives to view his pieces, and not rush to adapt it too quickly. So, I committed to that.

Willats famously developed a questionnaire-based method to understand the communities he worked with, drawing out people's interests, concerns, possessions, motivations, and ways of seeing the world. I was drawn to this as a potential way of working with the Creative Agents, as it offered a structure that might help reveal and shape what often feels unquantifiable in community practice. I thought maybe by designing a booklet of questionnaires in Willats' style I could help them reveal to themselves and not just me their 'stuff' that was bubbling just out of reach in connection with the programme.

However, in practice, I found that his language and structures were complex and not always accessible within this context. I needed to rework them. I adapted the questionnaires to make them more open, more accessible, and more focused on feelings and the intangible, creating space for the agents to recognise and articulate aspects of their own experience, and allowing me to better understand what was emerging. I wasn't sure the agents understood what I was seeing in them or whether what I was concluding was correct.

Using this adapted approach, I began testing how a structured model of creative listening might fit within the Creative Agents context. But the more I tried to make it fit, the more I felt a tension I could not ignore.

I first noticed it when I trialled aspects of the approach with Bonnie. Something felt slightly misaligned, although I could not yet name it; the live and responsive nature of the work made it difficult to hold onto a fixed structure. It became clear that while the model offered clarity, it was not fully accommodating the complexity and fluidity of what the Creative Agents were experiencing. It didn't work. Attempt 1 Incorrect.

At this point, I shifted my focus.

I returned to Willats, this time focusing less on structured questioning and more on his use of visual language and representation, putting my sketchbook findings through his community, evaluating 'machine' (machine seems an appropriate word as Willats was fascinated by the processing methods of the first computers.)

I was particularly drawn to his use of the 'Tennis Supergirl' figure as a way of embodying identity, agency and experience and his 'Resource' booklets. Decoding his symbols, words and imagery and lending them to the Derbyshire project.

I developed my own version, the Derbyshire Supergirl, to represent the Creative Agents and the journeys I had been witnessing. It felt like a possible way to bring together what I had been observing, sensing and trying to understand into a form that could be shared.

However, when I presented this, it did not work as I had expected, leaving me feeling sad, as I had believed this might be the right response. Attempt 2 Incorrect.

There was a clear reaction from attendees that the idea of 'super' or heroic representation did not sit comfortably. It suggested something elevated or exceptional, whereas what I was told at this feedback session was that the Creative Agents were much more grounded, relational, and open. The strength of the work was not in being extraordinary, but in the fact that anyone could be a Creative Agent.

This moment was important. It showed me that even when working with established methodologies, translating them into a different context requires careful attention. What holds in one setting does not necessarily transfer directly into another.

Working Without Resolution | Fear, Failure & The Pressure To Respond

Alongside this uncertainty, there was also a growing awareness of time. The programme had a structure, a timeline, and an expectation that something would be formed and shared. That pressure began to build, bringing with it a sense that a response needed to be clear, understandable and professionally resolved.

But the reality of the process did not align with that expectation.

Ideas did not settle. Approaches did not fully resolve. A growing recognition emerged that a clear or finished outcome might not be reached within the time available. With that came a deeper discomfort, the possibility of not getting it right.

At one point, the idea of presenting the work as it was, unresolved, felt closer to the truth. The carrier bag bin, filled with discarded materials, began to stand out as a possible response. It held the effort, the thinking and the attempts that had not yet formed into something complete.

But that was not what was shown.

There was hesitation. Questions surfaced around how this might be perceived, what it might suggest about professionalism, and whether it would be recognised as a valid form of evaluation. There was also a more personal concern: how this might be viewed by my own creative community. That concern was not unfamiliar. The Creative Agents had expressed similar worries about how they would be seen by the communities where they live and work. In conversation with one agent, we spoke directly about the possibility of not arriving at a 'palatable' outcome and what that might mean for how the work was understood.

In response, more time was given. Work extended beyond what had been contracted. I recognise that I did this, and I was told that some of the Creative Agents had done the same. This is not something I feel ashamed of, but it is something I recognise as part of a wider pattern within the creative arts, where care, commitment and uncertainty can lead to overextension.

The decision was made not to present the unresolved work, revealing just how strong the pressure is to produce something that appears complete and acceptable.

It was at this point that something shifted. The distance between observer and participant began to close. The uncertainty, questioning and lack of clarity were not just being witnessed in the Creative Agents; they were being experienced in parallel.

This was not separate from their journey. It was part of it.

That same pressure was clearly present within the Creative Agents. The need to shape something into a form that could be shared, even when the process was still unfolding. The concern about how work might be received if it did not appear complete.

That realisation became the final response of the work.

What would it mean to allow uncertainty to be visible within creative listening and evaluation? What would it mean to acknowledge that not all community work reaches resolution within the structures and timeframes that surround it?

I went back to the carrier bag bin.

Working With What Is Given In Community Practice

My own process began to mirror that of the Creative Agents.

Instead of forcing a model to fit, the grip on it began to loosen. Not as a rejection, but as a recognition that this context required something more responsive, something that could work with what was already present rather than impose a structure onto it.

The Creative Agents were being asked to work with what the community and the project gave them. Within this community practice, that often meant staying with material that felt unclear, unsettled or overlooked. It required looking again and not dismissing what did not immediately make sense.

That became the position I returned to. It felt both uncertain and necessary.

Rather than searching for a new solution, attention shifted back to what had already been made and set aside. The discarded printed sheets of Derbyshire Supergirl work that had once felt like the right response, but had been left behind.

Within this shift, the act of creative listening and evaluation moved away from trying to resolve and towards recognising value in what had already been given.

The Vessel | Holding Meaning Through Creative Listening & Evaluation

This is where Ursula K Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory became central to my thinking.

Rather than celebrating the heroic act, Le Guin asks us to consider the container. The thing that holds, gathers and carries. This shifted how I understood the Creative Agents. They were not there to produce neat answers or resolved outcomes, but to carry what they encountered. To hold fragments, uncertainty and meaning without forcing resolution.

This shift became the foundation for my final response, Attempt 3.

The piece I have made is a small handheld vessel, woven from the discarded printed sheets of Derbyshire Supergirl. It has a distinctly feminine shape, two openings, and it asks to be held carefully in the palm. I did not want the final response to push itself forward too loudly. Instead, it carries something of what I had seen in the Creative Agents, not simply their energy or boldness, although those are certainly present, but the quieter labour of holding thoughts, fragments, uncertainties and possibilities with care.

Making the vessel required me to learn new techniques. I began working with paper cordage and small-scale basketry methods, developing an approach through trial and testing, as I could not find an existing reference for working in this way with these materials. The process was slow and at times uncertain, requiring repeated attempts before the form began to hold.

This felt closely aligned with what I had witnessed in the Creative Agents. They were not working from fixed methods, but responding to what their communities and projects required of them. That often meant learning new approaches, adapting skills, and working without a clear template. In this way, the making of the vessel became another point of connection, not only in what was made, but in how it was made.

I saw each Creative Agent holding this small, precious vessel, made from what others might have considered rubbish, gently cupped in their hands. It became an embodiment of their place within their community, something I had been unable to fully articulate through words, questionnaires, sketches or collage.

What feels important is that this piece was not the intended outcome. At one stage, Derbyshire Supergirl felt like the right response. There was spirit in the agents. Humour, sass, courage and a kind of everyday power. Some of that still feels true. But through testing, first with Bonnie and then again at the exhibition, it became clear that this was not the whole truth.

It risked elevating the figure of the agent into something heroic or exceptional, when what had become most meaningful was something more open, more ordinary, and in many ways more radical. The point was not that only certain people could do this work, but that anyone can become a Creative Agent when they notice, listen, respond and begin to act within the life of their own community.

What this process revealed was not only something about the agents, but about evaluation through practice. The first response is not always the right one. Testing is not a sideline; it is part of the work itself.

There was disappointment in that. There was grief in that. There was also fear, the fear of not getting it right and having to begin again.

Alongside this sat another tension, the expectation to arrive at a resolved outcome within a defined timeframe. To produce something coherent, legible and professionally acceptable. But community work does not adhere to fixed timelines, and understanding does not always arrive when expected.

At one point, the bin itself felt like the most truthful response. The discarded sheets, the attempts, the work that had not yet been resolved. Part of me still believes that would have been an honest ending.

But that is not what I showed.

There was a decision, shaped by how the work might be perceived, by questions of professional standing, and by how difficult it can feel to allow something unresolved, or even failing, to be visible.

The vessel sits within that tension.

It does not resolve everything. It does not claim to have found a final answer. Instead, it holds what was encountered. The uncertainty, the fragments, the attempts, and the care required to stay with them.

In that sense, the vessel is not just a response to the Creative Agents. It reflects the position they were working within. To hold, to carry, and to continue, even when resolution is not yet possible.

This shift continues through my work on baskets and the Carrier Bag Theory: What Creative Listening Becomes | Photocopy Paper, Bags, Flax, Baskets & Participatory Practice

You can also read my return to Stephen Willats and community practice here: Creative Listening, Community Practice & Stephen Willats

What This Means For Creative Agents & Community Practice

If I step back and look at the Make/Shift Creative Agents Programme as a whole, what stays with me is not a single method or outcome, but the experience of people working carefully with what they encountered in their communities.

I saw agents meet material that was not straightforward. Information that was partial, sometimes unsettling, sometimes difficult to interpret, and often the kind of thing others might overlook or dismiss as irrelevant.

But this was the community's true response.

And the agents stayed with it.

My work as a creative listener within this community evaluation process was to respond to that. Not to tidy it up too quickly. Not to correct it. Not to turn it into something more acceptable or easier to report.

But to witness it, to stay with it, and to find a form that could carry something of that experience. Ursula K Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory helps frame this clearly.

The Creative Agents were not there to produce neat outcomes. They were carriers.

They gathered, held and moved fragments, contradictions, stories and responses through their communities.

The labour of the work lay in that act of holding, an often unseen but essential part of socially engaged practice and creative evaluation.

My final piece now makes sense to me in those terms.

It is not a solution. It is a container.

And it leaves me with a question.

What would it look like to fully support Creative Agents in working in this way?

To allow space for community practice that does not resolve neatly within a set timeframe. To recognise the labour of holding, not just producing. To value creative listening as a valid form of evaluation, even when it does not lead to something immediately complete or easily measured.

Because if Creative Agents are asked to carry what emerges from their communities, and my work was to respond to that through creative listening and evaluation, then the question becomes whether we are willing to recognise that work even when it does not resolve neatly, fit expected outcomes, or arrive within the timeframes we set.