Creative Futures - Art in Development
University of the Arts publication, January 2024
Work community development
In developing work communities for me as an artist, it's important to face respectfully, drop the masks, be direct and be yourself. This applies both to my own work and to the safe space I want my clients to experience with their own subject matter.
Through art and as an actor from outside of the work community, I can create a space where ideas can bounce and a new kind of boundary-breaking courage can flourish. This is produced by simultaneously bypassing hierarchical systems and respecting the latent resources and skills within people.
This provides a shared experience of know-how and a new perspective on everyday challenges.
Each case is always different. As an artist, I have the ability to react flexibly to the different signals that emerge from individuals or groups during the process. Sensitivity – maintaining it and developing it – is the key. Here we are on the edge of something new and awakening already existing competences, networks and skills so not only every gig but also every moment is unique and special.
I demand of myself to be fully awake and have a good eye for detail when working with a client. For me, it's the same as when I'm working on a song or an art project, because you should only be involved in something that you can fully stand behind and know you've done your best in every moment.
This is the only way change can happen.
When things are done well, trust starts to grow in all dialogue and implementation. The miracle happens that people begin to believe in their own ability to influence their work and the decisions in their own lives.
Positive change
I am interested in bringing positive change to work communities.
This can happen through teams or staff, but leadership, leadership support and leadership development are keys to what will actually happen after the coaching.
How are insights, experiences, needs and ideas put to use? How are employees allowed to put their ideas into practice and encouraged to take them forward? These are things that I take into account from the first discussions, when designing the coaching process and when designing my proposal.
Without direct contact with management, it is difficult to verify the impact.
Africa and the school of interaction
We humans produce our reality together.
Africa has been me school perceiving and observing human interaction. My burning interest in African rhythm has led me to look at and experience the interaction within music and ritual.
As a musician, I was trained by African master drummers. I am a cultural researcher FM and have immersed myself in the West African rhythmic tradition as much as I have been able to in 28 years.
A wide range of challenging situations have become familiar in my field, both in Europe and in West Africa. But everything has been overcome and in the end the matter has always been about how people communicate with each other.
The term holistic seems like a small word in this context, but it is exactly what I also work with as a coach in work communities.
Bringing foreign culture's social wisdom as a tool for Finnish working life has been an interesting process. At the same time, the way I work with leaders, teams and experts involves much more than holistic art-making and cultural research.
The art perspective and Solution Focused Coaching
Solution focused coaching has become for me, in addition to art, an important tool for achieving impact and ensuring results.
Aiming for immediate interaction, seeing things as things (not as people's faults or shortcomings) and, raising self-esteem by awakening the community's and individuals' existing resources, are also at the core of my work.
In short, the customer brings their solution when they arrive.
Without solution focused coaching tools (open, confronting and concrete), the experience created through art is in danger of being left hanging in the air without anchoring ideas, decisions and implementation in everyday life.
It pays to act with a partner. We set up the new company and for eight years I worked closely with a leadership development specialist.
My own experience of managing bands and working with artists has been surprisingly close to the themes and challenges that leaders, regardless of the size of their organisation, struggle with.
During the years of cooperation I found my own resources in the context of working life and my thinking developed in a completely different way than it had previously as an artist-educator-teacher.
I am grateful for this experience and the perspective it brings to the "other side" of the profession. I found a meaningful angle of entry and got my feet firmly planted in the world of coaching and training.
Artist's constantly fresh perspective on the many themes of working life is an asset to be nurtured and exploited.
It is also important from the customer's point of view.
Every artist-developer has to go through this process on their own, thinking about how best to help the client and how to further develop their own skills. For me, the solution-focused approach has been particularly relevant, but I have also found the studies of Non Violent Communication (NVC) and Neuro-Lingvistic Programming NLP very insightful.
These positive psychology based methods have given me the tools I need to make meaningful change happen.
The learning path is different for all of us, but I also recommend you to get together with experts in the field because you learn by doing and that's how you also get going as an entrepreneur.
Artist-developer -entrepreneurs
We the artist-developer-entrepreneurs are many types. Each one works from their own strengths and has to find their own way, their own voice and their own network, where skills develop and love for the sport remains high.
When you work through and with respect for yourself and your passions, clients also get results by getting in touch with something about themselves and their work that non-art-based experiential learning methods cannot reach.
As I write this my new company, Drum Vision Ltd, is in the process of registration. Within the broader framework of the company, I will be coaching in a more meaningful way, as well as training and implementing collaborative projects with professionals in different fields.
At the same time, it is important for me to evolve as an artist and claim the title "white boy who plays like f*ck".*
Aakusti Oksanen
business coach, solution-focused coach, musician
*Aakusti plays AAH! Amapiano & Afro House Club live percussion every 3rd Saturday of the month at Restaurant Tanner in Helsinki. Welcome to warmth and joy.