Systems & Mitigations of Care
What is the difference between a system of care and a mitigation of care?
A system of care is a system that has been set up specifically to ensure that care happens and that the care needs of the people working within that system are listened to and reacted to. Of course a system of care can be inadequate or can fail, but its primary objective is to provide care.
A mitigation of care is something quite different. It is a set of actions or processes set up within a different system to provide care. A mitigation of care is always subordinate to the aim of the system it functions within and therefore the provision of care is usually subject to and conditional upon the ability of the primary system to fulfill its objectives.
A system of care is not guaranteed to provide better care than a mitigation of care. A very good mitigation of care, might in fact, provide better care than a very bad system of care. However, when setting up a provision of care, it is very important, in my opinion to understand which of the two we are dealing with.
I would argue that in the performance world, we do not have systems of care, but rather mitigations of care. These means that the provisions of care we have are open to certain vulnerabilities that systems of care would not be. It also opens up to the conversation around whether we need systems of care, and what those systems look like.
The mitigations of care we have in place in the performance world are:
A mitigation of care is something quite different. It is a set of actions or processes set up within a different system to provide care. A mitigation of care is always subordinate to the aim of the system it functions within and therefore the provision of care is usually subject to and conditional upon the ability of the primary system to fulfill its objectives.
A system of care is not guaranteed to provide better care than a mitigation of care. A very good mitigation of care, might in fact, provide better care than a very bad system of care. However, when setting up a provision of care, it is very important, in my opinion to understand which of the two we are dealing with.
I would argue that in the performance world, we do not have systems of care, but rather mitigations of care. These means that the provisions of care we have are open to certain vulnerabilities that systems of care would not be. It also opens up to the conversation around whether we need systems of care, and what those systems look like.
The mitigations of care we have in place in the performance world are:
- Conditional on the fulfillment of the primary function of the systems they exist within, which is to create performance work and present it to an audience in a commercial or semi-commercial environment, usually according to the rules of public funding bodies through which the majority of the work is made.
- Vulnerable to the vagaries of the funding system they are embedded within. They are funded alongside the performance work and through the systems designed to fund performance work. Funding for the mitigations of care are not safeguarded, ring fenced or regulated. If performance funding goes up or down, so does funding for the mitigations.
- Expected to be funded through the channels set up for the primary system. There is no special funding system, and there is no real guidance about how much of our budgets should be taken up through mitigations of care.
- Ad hoc and personal / optional / unregulated. Whether or not there is a provision of care around a certain performance work, is largely up to the desires of the artist involved and to some extent, the house where the work is presented. There is no consistency or expectation for there to be care provision in the work, other than the growing, vague trend that accessibility is a ‘good thing’. There is no formal requirement. No legislation or guidelines. Note, even if it became the done thing to provide mitigations of care within performance practice, and it was frowned upon not to, or even just the norm to do it, this would still constitute a mitigation of care rather than a system of care.