Aboard the Learning Boat: Don’t just ask it, live it

In 2011 I helped set up a project called the Learning Boat. Over the coming weeks different collaborators in this project will be sharing their thoughts and details of the projects we are collaborating on through a series of blogs here on ArtsProfessional.

The Learning Boat is a beautiful barge docked off the Thames, hosted for living residencies, day-time working and cosy private gatherings. Due to mooring restrictions the project can’t be opened publicly, but a group of people have joined as friends and collaborators, each encouraged to share an important question in their life.

In fact they are doing much more than just thinking about it, they actually live it.

Some people’s questions are concerned with practical concepts, such as sustainability. Others play with more intangible ideas, like how to live life ‘from the heart’. By living the questions we encourage each other to try out new things, to explore and experiment. These lived moments can be seen and experienced by others, and different kinds of understanding, connection and collaboration are beginning to emerge.

It is still early days but six months in we have a wonderful melting pot – a place where people can do much more than talk. We can experience, feel and challenge each other’s work in a different way.

We are playing with the notion that to arrive on the boat you have to cross a threshold, and that the boat is literally a suspended space for new things to emerge.
We are trying to break down boundaries of separateness. For some, this is home. For others it is their office. For a visitor it might be an intriguing meeting space or an amazing ‘secret supper’ venue. The boat acts as all of these at once. It is inspiring and enlightening, often tiring or bewildering as well. But it is an experiment, and each and every moment can be seen as a source of learning or inspiration.

Somehow we are exploring what this is as we go along, it is a space that will adapt with time as we balance out needs, practicalities and shared finances. It asks new questions of what it is to host, to share, to lead, to create. We are learning the art of openness; of mutual learning; of giving and support. At the same time it calls questions of what leadership or direction might mean.

Looking out to the world from the boat, seeing how hard it is for us to connect as people and knowing some of the challenges we face in the world, it makes me think we could do with more places like the Learning Boat. More places to reconnect; share questions, hopes, fears and passions and to commit to helping each other on our journeys. Do this – live life through the questions that matter; support each other – and life will surely feel fuller in return.

What next for the Learning Boat? We are inviting others that may be interested in working from the space to come and meet us. Perhaps over time we will develop different spaces, larger or further afield. We would love to hear of similar projects around the world too – and perhaps one day there might be a network of magical places like this, where separateness falls away and we grow fuller through richer connections as people.