Your silence will not protect you
On mundanity and the power of telling
4 minute read
Your silence will not protect you Audre Lorde
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action (1977)
Lofty words to preface a blogpost about something so mundane and unexceptional it scarcely feels worth writing. But in a way that’s the point.
Silence. I talked about silencing as a participant in the University of Exeter’s Section 28 and its Afterlives project: tried and largely failed to articulate the self-erasure induced by that legislation that has now taken its place in the history books. But more on that another time.
Today’s story has no such historical significance. But in its telling, in naming (corporate) names - I hope to take back some of the power that was taken away.
21 years ago an organisation took a craft knife to a map and scored it through so surgically, that all that came after folded differently.
…
Friday morning was swimming morning. 40 lengths before work. Except this particular Friday morning, chlorinated and endorphinated, I was met with grave faces in the top office at Barnstaple’s Queen’s Theatre, where I worked as North Devon Council’s Arts Development Officer.
My manager came straight out with it. There’s a problem with your contract. I’m not supposed to tell you. You need to go straight to HR. And I’m coming with you.
I was 32 and I’d just bought a house. After 3 years commuting to the organisation that became Arts Council England, the role of Arts Development Officer had come up in my home town and I jumped. I had my cultural policy Masters, and everything was going to plan.
But that Friday morning, I left North Devon Council’s small, bright HR office and went straight home, and then to my parents, and in their familiar armchair stared out of the window concussed as a struck starling.
A common enough story. But here’s the thing: My employer requested that I not tell anyone until the committee had voted it through. Not to tell anyone. And I trusted them. After all, they had my best interests at heart, like a concerned but strict parent.
Don’t make a fuss. Cooperate.
Be a good girl. Don’t ask for help. Don’t kick up a fucking almighty stink.
And so for nearly a month I said nothing. Said. Nothing. Continued helping artists, going to schools workshops, supporting projects I knew I would never see to completion. Smiling, pretending, empty inside.
…
When it was done, I asked the union if they could help. Not for just one person, it seemed. The council had the power to make the decision. I could request the committee minute that recorded the decision. And that’s all.
Only me. The only person in the whole of North Devon Council that lost their job. And there it was in the committee minute. Arts: deleted. Arts Development Officer: deleted.
Another manager put it to me differently: We had to show some blood on the carpet. Those exact words. To get next year’s budget through. My blood to save everything and everyone else.
Redundant. No longer needed or useful. Able to be omitted. A cruel word to apply to a 32 year-old human being.
Did that redundancy set in train the long slide into precarity and poverty, snowballing with each subsequent redundancy, each short-term contract, each underpaid freelancing gig that followed?
And why speak now? Because I’ve felt the weight of insignificance: redundancy is as mundane as it gets. Even the word sounds mundane. Because in 2024 Arts Council money is pouring into my old patch and all I can do is watch, overlooked, forgotten and crushed.
Back then, when I was finally permitted to break the news, there was a whimper of disapproval. They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
How differently might things have unfolded, if I’d refused to stay silent until it was done? If I’d kicked up a fucking almighty stink.
Is there anything to be learned from this? Well, if someone in a position of power tells you to keep quiet, it’s probably not because they have your best interests at heart. And in an unequal world, mundanity is silencing too. The telling always matters.
This post is dedicated to all those facing and living with the after effects of redundancy.
AI training block is ON.