Searching For A Form | Following Stephen Willats Into Creative Listening
- amanda haran
- Nov 13
- 11 min read
Updated: 6 hours ago
Early Experiments In Creative Listening During The Creative Agents Programme
When I began piloting my Creative Listener evaluation method, which I described in my previous reflections, I carried a strong belief that evaluation in community art should feel textured, sensory and relational. I wanted it to sit inside the Creative Agents programme as part of the creative process, not as a task that arrives afterwards. My hope was to find a way of listening that felt honest, thoughtful and responsive to the people and places of Derbyshire.
Why The Booklet First Seemed Possible
The idea of creating an evaluation booklet did not appear from instinct alone. It came from two directions at once. The first influence was Stephen Willats, whose Social Resource Projects often appeared as hand-cut booklets, filled with diagrams, symbols, photographs and relational maps. Because I had begun immersing myself in his methods, the booklet felt like a natural form to explore within my Creative Listener or Creative Evaluator work.
The second influence came from several Creative Agents, who told me they felt overwhelmed by the programme's openness. With no set direction or clear sequence, some felt unsure where to begin or frightened that they might get something wrong. Their honesty stayed with me, because I recognised that tension from my own early community projects, where loose briefs often created anxiety about expectations, outcomes and what funders might want.
I wanted to explore whether a gentle booklet could offer a sense of steadiness without interrupting the openness that makes the Creative Agents programme special.
I wondered whether a booklet could steady people without steering them.
Cybernetics & The Wish To Create A Gentle Holding
At the time, I was thinking a great deal about cybernetics, which I had explored in an earlier blog while studying Stephen Willats' systems. I understood cybernetics as a way of keeping a human system balanced through listening, small adjustments and care. In my own words, cybernetics is about understanding how things work together to keep everything balanced and happy. That idea stayed with me, because much of my work with communities has always centred on helping people feel happy, good or better within the spaces they inhabit.
This helped me think about how Creative Agents move through their communities, constantly absorbing feedback and making subtle, responsive decisions. Creative work inside a community can feel emotionally exposed. You live alongside the people you are working with. You meet them in the supermarket. You pass them on the street. You sit in council meetings with them, or avoid the politics that sit under the surface. One Creative Agent told me a story about local politics that was absolutely scandalous, and it reminded me how vulnerable creative work can feel when it happens so close to home.
It felt important to find a form that could support Creative Agents without directing them. Not a set of instructions or a checklist, but a soft structure that could offer reassurance. Something that could sit quietly inside their work and help them feel held rather than watched.
Cybernetics gave me language for this: a small, responsive holding space.
Immersing Myself In Willats' Diagrams & Symbol Systems
With these ideas in mind, I threw myself into Stephen Willats's methods with real commitment. I approached his diagrams as a language I needed to learn to understand what might be useful to carry into Creative Listening. I filled page after page in my sketchbook with relational arrows, boxes, behavioural loops and early page layouts that echoed the rhythm of his booklets.
But something unexpected emerged. I realised that I did not fully resonate with the symbols he used. They felt technical, engineered and slightly detached from the emotional worlds Creative Agents were navigating. So I began experimenting with symbols that felt more human. While I was in Australia, I sketched Aboriginal symbols in my notebook, fascinated by their ability to express place, gatherings, journeys, and presence. By coincidence, I had also collected drawings of hobo symbols, which historically helped people share knowledge, caution and kindness as they moved through communities.
I began to blend these systems together. Aboriginal symbols, hobo symbols, and the precision of Willats' relational diagrams slowly formed a hybrid symbolic vocabulary that felt more alive, more intuitive, and closer to how community relationships actually behave. The work became meditative and exacting. Every small line, shape and position felt like part of a larger conversation.
I needed symbols that felt alive, intuitive and human.
Meeting Stephen Willats & Understanding His Intentions
During this period of experimentation, I travelled to London to meet Stephen Willats in person. I wanted to understand not only the diagrams and systems but the intentions behind them. He spoke with precision about community relationships, communication networks and the role of the artist as a connector. He described his book Artwork As A Social Model as a sort of handbook for practitioners, something he hoped would help artists reflect on how people behave in social spaces and how to elicit and capture these noticings.
Hearing this directly from him shaped the seriousness of my approach. It helped me recognise that his diagrams were never simply drawings. They were relational tools. They were ways of noticing patterns, tensions and behaviours, and then translating those observations into a visual form that could hold complexity. I began to understand why his projects often used booklets as part of the final artwork.
At the same time, I found myself longing to see the original booklets in person. I wanted to understand the weight of the paper, the cut edges, the scale, the order of the pages and the atmosphere they created. I wanted to understand how they felt in the hand, because that is where his work quietly lives.
His diagrams were never drawings. They were tools for noticing how people behave together.
The Crucial Difference Between Willats' Context & Creative Agents
As I worked more deeply with his methods, I started to recognise something important about the way Stephen Willats carried out his Social Resource Projects. He did not usually work in the place where he lived. He entered communities from the outside, often for a set period of time, sometimes with up to eighteen months to build trust and understand the people he was working with. He could step into a neighbourhood, form connections, conduct his research, and then step away again. His presence, while generous, was temporary.
Creative Agents do not have that distance. They work inside their own communities, surrounded by people they know, people they have grown up with, and people they are likely to meet again in the supermarket the next morning. Their work unfolds within existing histories, family ties, friendships, tensions, quiet politics, and memories that lie beneath the surface. That proximity makes their work richer, but it also makes the emotional labour heavier. Every decision has a consequence that lives close to home.
This difference changed the way I understood the booklet I was making. Willats had the privilege of space. Creative Agents have the reality of closeness. The same diagram behaves differently when the people involved might knock on your door the next day to ask how it is going. It shifts the pressure, the vulnerability and the courage required to take risks.
It made me even more certain that any structure I created had to be gentle, flexible and responsive. It had to support Creative Agents without adding to their emotional load.
Willats had the privilege of distance. Creative Agents work in the place where every decision lives close to home.
Beginning The Fieldwork With Bonnie
Before I trialled any kind of structure, I knew I needed to begin with real listening. One of the people I felt it was important to work closely with at this stage was Bonnie, a Creative Agent with a thoughtful, grounded approach. I had already used her imagined circumstances to test relational diagrams in my earlier blog, but imagining is very different from listening to the truth of someone's lived experience.
The next stage of listening happened around her kitchen table. This was where I brought my early booklet ideas, symbolic sketches and simple prompts to see how they might sit within her experience. But as she talked, stories moved freely across categories, emotions shifted direction without warning, and the subtle relationships in her work refused to align with the neat shapes I had prepared.
Our second session took place at her kitchen table. That was where I brought early booklet ideas, symbolic sketches and simple prompts to see how they might sit within her experience. But as she talked, stories moved freely across categories, emotions changed direction without warning, and the subtle relationships in her work refused to align with the neat shapes I had prepared.
We set the diagrams aside. We simply talked. I jotted down instinctive notes that captured tone, atmosphere and the small human details that matter. It helped me understand that any evaluation form I created needed to stay soft, responsive and completely flexible.
The Sketchbook Becoming The Real Tool
After those conversations with Bonnie, I returned to my studio and looked again at my notes, diagrams and early booklet drafts. I could see how different the ordered shapes in the booklet were from the shifting patterns that emerged in our conversations, but I did not read this as a problem. I simply felt I needed to work harder, think more clearly, and find a better way to structure the Creative Agents experience.
My sketchbook became the place where everything gathered. It held taped scraps, crossed-out thoughts, quick emotional observations and hurried arrows pointing in every direction. Nothing was tidy, but everything felt alive. I did not see this as evidence that the booklet was struggling. I thought it was simply the messy part of the process that needed refining.
I believed that if I kept working, I could translate this energy into something useful. I could co-create a gentle system that might help Creative Agents feel more balanced and happy, as cybernetics describes. The booklet still felt like the right offer, and I wanted it to succeed. The sketchbook helped me understand the complexity, and I was determined to find a way to shape that complexity into something supportive.
The sketchbook held the truth. The booklet held the intention.
Creating Derbyshire Supergirl As The Booklet Cover
Images: Derbyshire Supergirl artwork, research and test pages being built, hybrid symbol studies, and early booklet covers created in response to Stephen Willats' methods. These visual elements show the handmade collage process, local Amber Valley references and the development of my Creative Listener evaluation approach.
One of the most meaningful parts of this stage was creating what I believed would serve as the lead for the evaluation booklet. In Stephen Willats' Nottingham project, Super Girl served as a relational anchor, a way of holding the energy of the people he was working with. Willats always designed a distinctive introductory page for his booklets, so beginning there felt like a natural first step for me, too. I wanted to honour his structure while shaping something rooted in Derbyshire.
At first, I searched online for an image of a Derbyshire woman who could represent the courage, pride and energy I saw in the programme. Nothing felt right. Everything was too polished, too anonymous or too stereotyped. A search for 'Derbyshire woman' brought up Florence Nightingale, Tess Daly and women watching horse racing — none of whom reflected the Creative Agents I knew. There were almost no copyright-free images to work with. She simply was not there. She felt elusive, and I realised that the only honest approach was to create my own.
It revealed a poverty of representation. She simply was not there online.
So I knocked on the door of a Derbyshire friend whose spirit felt perfect for the work. She had humour, presence and a deep affection for the place she calls home. She sent me photographs directly from her phone, unposed and everyday, which felt completely right. There was no contrivance, only honesty.
I worked by hand, following the Willats method closely. I printed the images, cut them carefully with scissors, repositioned them, trimmed edges, tested the scale and repeated the process again and again. No digital shortcuts. No Canva. Just the integrity of a slow, deliberate making process that mirrored the discipline of the Social Resource Project model.
I also studied Willats' work in detail. I poured over online images, book photographs and any archive material I could access. I looked closely at the subtleties of his colour choices, the rhythm of his marks and the particular way his lines carried emphasis or softness. This research was protracted and difficult because the originals are not readily available for viewing. I have a meeting with the Nottingham Art Gallery Archives in December to finally see the tennis project in the flesh, which will help me understand his process more deeply.
The introductory page then became a way of putting these observations into practice. I considered the character of each line —how fine, how bold, how steady—and how the nodes and pathways might create a recognisable sense of Amber Valley. I wanted the design to feel both inspirational and accurate. I wanted to show that I had listened to the Creative Agents, understood the places that mattered to them and translated that understanding with care.
Derbyshire Supergirl embodied the everyday courage that Creative Agents often need — the courage to ask questions, to listen, to stay open and to stand inside uncertainty. She felt strong, real and rooted in place, which made her the perfect figure to lead the booklet.
Alongside the front cover, I also created the inner cover, the final outer cover and a full interpretation board to sit beside the work. My intention was to show and explain my progress at the Open House event. At this point in the journey, everything felt aligned. I deeply believed in the Willats method and wanted to present a clear, thoughtful reflection on the Creative Agents programme, using his structure as faithfully as I could.
Preparing To Share The Work At The Open House Event
The Open House event was designed as a gathering point for the many community makers involved across Amber Valley, a space for people who had been creating, repairing, growing or connecting with others to come together and share what they had been working on. It was lively, informal and deliberately warm, a 'home from home' where people could relax, meet each other and exchange ideas. Some would bring something to display, others would offer a small making activity, and some would simply join conversations.
What does a Creative Listener do? Open House felt like the moment to finally show them.
For me, attending felt essential. As the Creative Listener, I wanted to bring a piece of my process into the room so people could see what I had been exploring and tell me whether it resonated with them. Up until this point, I think some Creative Agents had been a little unsure of what my role actually was, and truthfully, so was I. What does a Creative Listener do in practice? What is the purpose of the sketching, the note-taking, the quiet observing? Open House felt like a chance to show them, to explain that the seemingly random sketches from our sessions did have meaning and were part of a careful, developing method.
By this stage, I had created a body of work that felt ready to be shared. The introductory page, Derbyshire Supergirl, the inner cover, the outer cover and the interpretation board were carefully laid out in my studio, each element made by hand and rooted in the Willats method. I wanted visitors at Open House to see the process clearly, how the ideas had evolved, how the research had deepened and how Creative Listening might sit within a visual system without losing its sensitivity.
I worked hard to complete everything on time, then sat with the pages for a long while, gazing at them and hoping the meaning was coming through clearly. More than anything, I wanted the work to show well and to speak honestly for itself.
So I packed everything into a case: the booklet pages, the interpretation board, my sketchbooks and the reference books I had been studying. My intention was to show what I had created so far, explain my thinking and gather feedback from the Creative Agents, the programme team and any visitors who stopped to look more closely. It felt like an important moment, a chance to see how the work might live outside my studio, held in public for the first time.
