I completed my Leadership in Action placement over a period of 6 weeks in New York, with Artistic Freedom Initiative, or ‘AFI’, as I’ve come to know them. AFI is a small non-profit based out of Brooklyn composed of absolutely brilliant individuals who, in their own words, ‘protect, promote, and foster freedom of artistic expression’. Practically this is enacted through a series of highly effective programs; their main focus is legal assistance for persecuted or censored artists, including pro-bono immigration representation for artists ‘at risk’ who wish to (or more often need to) travel or immigrate to the United States to pursue their creative endeavours. They also aid their large community of artists in finding temporary housing and studio space, and connect them with employment, internship, education, residency, fellowship, and networking opportunities; some of which are programmes directly run by AFI, like the SHIM-NYC residency, or the ACN. One of their most recent endeavours was the launching of their Global Policy and Advocacy strand in 2024, accompanied by their Artists for Social Change platforming, aiming to propagate and support artistic freedom on a wider scale globally. Both programmes provide ongoing and rolling support for artists who received legal assistance for them, allowing AFI to continually alter, evolve and strengthen their work through artist feedback and participation.
During my time with AFI, I was collaborating with Amita Vempati, AFI’s Development Manager, on an Internal M&E Impact Assessment Report used to measure the efficacy of AFI’s programs, and also to collate data about the impact of resettlement on artist’s practices. On a practical day-to-day level, this involved building the project report from scratch – generating questions, editing them, discussing our theory of change, completing desk research on artists, creating consent forms and having the legal team review them, creating a series of KPIs and a coding matrix. And my favourite part – being in charge of interviewing the artists (recordings of which I would then transcribe, code, anonymise and synthesise into quantitative and qualitative data points to use in the report).
I have nothing but the highest praise for the AFI team, and especially Amita, who all welcomed me with open arms and gave me the tools to succeed in my time with them, from connecting me with CEC ArtsLink, who sponsored my necessary research visa, to including me in their weekly check-ins, and bearing with numerous requests for access to zoom accounts, audio files, and keys to the office! The work they do is vitally important, especially in light of the political instability of our current moment, and hearing from many of the artists they work with, who spoke of the organisation so warmly and generously both individually and collectively, was truly an honour.
I was lucky enough that my LIA felt like a natural continuation of my research component last summer, where I was investigating the impact of artists’ experiences of exile on their use of installation and archival forms. I felt that my research project had given me the critical, theoretical, and artistic vocabulary to ground my conversations with AFI’s artists, and ask well-informed follow-up questions about their practice, navigating a space which requires a high degree of care and sensitivity well. At the same time, the Leadership training from Laidlaw across the last year gave me a different kind of vocabulary; one of confidence, mutual respect, teamwork, and problem-solving, all values which bore me in good stead. Particular Laidlaw Change-maker values that I felt defined my time were Curiosity and Determination, which I felt were bivalve processes. Asking difficult questions often produced difficult answers, which in turn meant one had to be committed, even determined, to continue to seek knowledge and present data points which might sometimes be unexpected, or sensitive.
I’ve learned so much from my time there. One of the most important lessons for me was about setting proper boundaries around deadlines, workload, and working hours. In Cambridge, it sometimes feels like work can spill over into all hours of the day, and you’re often thinking about questions from supervisions or going down research rabbit-holes from weekly essays even outside of set contact hours. At AFI, in contrast, I learned the value of articulating what resources you need to properly complete tasks, and what you’re actually capable of within a set time-frame: that setting clear expectations around your output and having frequent and clear communication with your colleagues, as well as not ‘taking work home with you’ meant that I could actually do a lot more (stress-free!) within a shorter period of time. It was also wonderful to see the huge impact of the ‘uncool’ part of advocacy and activism; sometimes a single data point completely reframed the scope of the assessment report, or reworking the exact phrasing of a question might have a huge effect on what artists felt comfortable exploring or articulating in their interviews. This assisted me greatly in strengthening the Leadership Capacities of a Collaborative Mindset and Communication; working closely with both AFI’s team and artists helped me to develop and shore up my communication skills, especially surrounding sensitive topics. Prioritisation and Time Management, as alluded to above, also became specifically important, and something I felt much more comfortable communicating about toward the end of my project – alongside Impact Measurement, which was really the spine of my work at AFI.
The internal report data has ongoing generative potential for AFI, and I hope it will continue to be useful to the organisation and its’ artists in the future, whether that’s helping to understand artist’s self-definition, as numerical data for stakeholders and philanthropic donors, helping the organisation to assess what themes artists’ needs cluster around post-relocation, and in understanding how artists themselves are affected by the current changing political environment in the USA and worldwide. It’s a body of work that I hope will continue to be added to and edited, whether that’s by Amita or others at AFI; and I hope it helps in the development of similar assessment-style reports for other specific programs AFI runs.
I went into the LIA with a slightly naïve but well-intentioned mindset; I knew I wanted to facilitate freedom of speech and information, I knew that I felt the US was an important environment for that, I knew I wanted to extend my theoretical and conceptual work into practical application. I knew I’d be doing an internal assessment report, and I was anxious about whether my work was just ticking a box, whether it had a ‘real’ impact (something I now know, from a large amount of time spent doing an impact assessment itself, to be an almost immeasurable thing). But I’ve come out with a much clearer vision about what kind of leadership I want to embody, and what impact I want to have on the world around me; something that I learned not only from AFI’s artists and my colleagues, who tirelessly encouraged me to pursue my own interests in widening the scope of their assessment report, but also from the friends I was able to make in the city. I got (accidentally!) involved with the AntiTech Summer of Ludd movement, and through that, became friends with some of the most creative, funny, active and passionate people I’ve ever met. I could list things like the OCP Change-Maker values, but to be honest, they helped me understand that leadership sometimes can’t be distilled into neat, digestible categories (although Transcendence, Humanity, Integrity and Justice come to mind). They showed me that the real impact of leadership is demonstrable on a granular, and even rhizomatic scale; in the way you ask questions of other people, form communities and networks, organise movements, meetings and events, drop all your pre-conceived judgements of those around you, and always, always, always be open to learning from others. Whether that's learning academically, from reading friend’s well-thumbed copies of Debord and Glissant; or in learning in a non-academic sense, which I’ve found infinitely more valuable - sitting on a rooftop in Alphabet City, trying (and failing!) to do a backflip whilst watching the sun set over the Lower East Side.
I am extremely thankful to the Laidlaw Foundation and the University of Cambridge for this opportunity and to Artistic Freedom Initiative and CECArtsLink for facilitating the process. (And to the Luddites, always!)