Launching RAT PACK: why we need a cross-sector network for lived experience in storytelling and change-making
How many people consider language to be a “nice to have” in decision-making?
But what happens when we replace the word “language” in that sentence, with the phrase “lived experience”?
How about if we replace it with “the arts”?
The same principle applies across all three.
We need language to share knowledge, weigh options, communicate plans.
We need voices from lived experience to form the basis of that knowledge, understand what the options might look like in practice, find the language that demonstrates that understanding and trustworthiness to those who will be affected by the decisions.
Very often, someone without lived experience of something will not understand its significance through everyday language, or academic knowledge, or clinical know-how, alone.
This isn't a moral failing on their part.
We need to connect on a nervous system level to understand the nuances in urgency, priority, and agency in a situation.
We need to connect on a heart and mind level to see the human being and their place in our society - what they deserve, what of humanity we lose by sidelining them.
These connections require the spaces of sensory stimulation, and safe relenting of defenses, that the arts create.
By the same token, people with lived experience of something who are contributing to change-making efforts, need conditions in which they can lower their defenses enough to share meaningfully what they know.
Especially where post traumatic stress is present, much of that knowledge may be buried under memories that are too painful to access and tell - and that, in fact, often don't need to be accessed or told for the survivor to be able to communicate the essence of what needs to change and how.
This isn't an intellectual or strength-of-character failing.
This is a matter of starting the story where change can begin, rather than ending it where the harm has been done.
But again - everyday, linear language often doesn't reach those places. Fiction, abstraction, sound, image, humour, shared provocation and regulation, create the conditions within which this kind of deep internal knowledge can pass from person to person, without retraumatising the survivor or alienating the listener.
Lived experience is a language.
The arts are a language.
Just as science, academia, policy, practice, are all languages.
We need them all.
But the more the arts are divorced from lived experience, the more likely we are to forget that our hearts and minds play any role in understanding the need for change, and in activating our instinct to work towards it.
And the less we see the role of our humanity in our work towards change, the less we see the need to share real power with people with lived experience.
And the less we see the need to share real power with people with lived experience, the more we fail to create positive change.
Today, in launching the RAT PACK network for the advancement of lived experience leadership in storytelling and change-making, we are not launching a nice-to-have. We are filling a vital gap that is all too clear to us, and has been for a long time.
If this has sparked your interest, please have a look at the information on the RAT PACK page of the website to find out what we are doing, and how you can get involved.
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