Reducing Burnout through Values-led Practice: Chris Webb

How can setting values-based boundaries, working authentically, and transparently challenging issues reduce burnout and spark positive change in organisations?

Freelance arts consultant, Chris Webb, gives insight into how burnout can be caused by a lack of alignment between an individual’s ethics and the ethics of the organisation they are working for. He tells us how burnout is affecting people working in the arts and considers why burnout is so prevalent, and discusses useful tools and ways of working that can reduce and prevent burnout. 

Useful Stuff 

Chris: Let’s Make Culture: www.letsmakeculture.com

Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisjawebb/ 

Laura: www.weareculturebloom.com 

Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurafcrossley/ 

School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/performance 

Centre for Cultural Value: https://www.culturalvalue.org.uk/ 

Mental health at work

Mind: https://www.mind.org.uk/workplace/mental-health-at-work 

Funders

Clore Leadership: https://www.cloreleadership.org/ 

Arts and Humanities Research Council: https://www.ukri.org/councils/ahrc/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, I'm Laura and welcome to Joyful Work, Ending Burnout in the Arts. The podcast that helps you beat burnout in the cultural and creative sectors. Burnout amongst cultural and creative professionals is a crisis. If you work in the sector, chances are you've experienced burnout or know someone who's been through it. Burnout is making us ill, destroying our confidence, and impacting our careers. It's also leading to burnt-out organisations with less motivated, less focused staff who are desperately trying to stay afloat amongst hundreds of daily pressures. I'm an arts and workplace culture consultant from Manchester UK and an expert in creating joyful work cultures that prevent burnout. I want everyone to know that burnout in the cultural and creative sectors is not inevitable. It doesn't have to be this way. By making small changes, we can create a sector that cares for its people and organizations and where burnout isn't an inevitability. In this podcast, you'll find out about causes of burnout and what we can do to address the burnout epidemic. You'll hear from brilliant people who'll bring ideas for beating burnout, and you'll be encouraged to think about what you and your organisation can do to make burnout a thing of the past. Hope you enjoy. In this episode, we're talking to Chris Webb about burnouts for freelancers and people working in organisations and values-based practice.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So hi, I'm Chris. I'm a freelancer consultant in the sector. My work kind of cuts across museums, art, craft, and everyday culture making.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

The thread that runs through Chris's work is a commitment to transparency in culture making and his interest in facilitating collaborations that value lived experience, natural curiosity, and institutional knowledge equitably. He believes in the value of learning and engagement work for audiences and its potential to influence organizational change in institutions. In 2023, Chris set up Let's Make Culture Limited, a consultancy focused on collaboration, co-production and strategic change making in the cultural sector. Since then, Chris has applied his approach in a range of settings, including work with ARC Schools, Crafts Council, UCL's Institutes of Making, London Transport Museum, South Bank Centre, and the William Morris Gallery. As a fellow freelancer, I was very inspired by how Chris navigates his work and working relationships and always applies values-based practice. It was hugely inspiring to me and something that I am very determined to put in my own practice. I was also inspired by the conversation I had with Chris around how to think about energy and working practice and what we should put more energy into and what we don't have to put as much energy into. I thought it was a really interesting way of working. I start by asking Chris about his observations around burnout and how it's affecting leaders and staff in the sector.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

I mean, it's a big question. I think the thing I've noticed most recently and increasingly over the last couple of years, since returning to freelance, when I'm working with organizations, the thing I think I'm noticing, especially in the kind of learning and engagement teams, which tends to be where my work focuses, although I do work more broadly, is the pressure for delivery that comes from funding and also the kind of scarcity of funding. Somebody I was in a meeting with someone the other day and they use the word instrumentalized. And I think we have all these great frameworks that get learning and engagement and sort of high-quality participation at the core of what cultural organizations are doing. But that also puts pressure on those teams to deliver. And that work, which is supposed to be about engagement, reflection, learning, pushing practice, is in effect sort of instrumentalized in that it becomes about meeting your commitments to your core funding. And although a lot of that funding goes into parts of the organization that aren't about learning and participation, I think there's a there's a pressure on learning and participation teams because they hold so much of what is accounted for or reported. I think the intensity of that pressure in a sector where there's a scarcity and of funds and an increase in costs of of staff and all the other things we know, like overheads and whatnot, I think is adding to burnout. And just I'm seeing learning and engagement colleagues stretch that much further right now, I suppose. That's looking at the sector. I mean, as a freelancer, I think burnout comes from a lot of different places, but I think there is a I guess trickle-down effect, which is that the contracts that come up or the work that you're being engaged to do at its core has people's best interests at heart, but there's a sense in the pressure that it's a part of a specific agenda, and so it's a fine line when delivering, trying to do the work and meet these pressures, meet these deadlines which are kind of imposed on the work and can cause that that extra pressure, that extra burnout.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

It's interesting that you spoke about that pressure on in-house staff, especially learning and engagement staff, perhaps, to deliver to sort of fund requirements, but also that pressure is on freelancers as well, that we're all working within these systems and frameworks that can cause burnout. What tools have you found to reduce burnout in your own work, I suppose, when you've been in-house and as a freelancer?

SPEAKER_00 6:02

When I've been in-house and working with teams, the kind of tools at hand, I guess, are there's the kind of day-to-day tools, which is like getting some time out, having a colleague you can blow off steam with or have a rant to, or the kind of like coping day-to-day parts. I think in a perfect world, if you're empowered to do so, looking at your portfolio and making decisions about like what is really a must, what is like the icing on the cake, and I guess setting boundaries around what needs to be delivered fundamentally and where things are sort of good enough. I once had a really great kind of operations manager within a learning team talk to the team about the quality of the provision and sort of saying, you know, it's okay to give 80% or 70% at times. There are certain boundaries, I guess, in learning and engagement. Like you can't give 70% when it comes to safeguarding or looking after people. But I guess the message that was empowering for the team was that the team's work was really strong. And so us, rather than constantly delivering what felt like 120%, if we approach things with a slightly different mindset, what we'd be delivering was still very, very good and very like meaningful to the people. And I think with within events, learning, all these parts of work, there are people who tend to hold themselves to really, really high standards. And so I think having permission to scale back capacity where you think you know you're doing well, you have a formula, you don't need to reinvent the wheel, and then identifying parts of your work where it does need a bit more time, a bit more care, a bit more head space. Those have been the kind of go-tos, I think, for me, when I've when I've been at capacity or at the risk of burning out. The challenging part being that when you're at burnout, it's so hard to look out of that moment and like actually do that thinking. And there's so few times of year or times in programs where there's time to stop and reflect.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I was really interested in what you were saying about when are things good enough and how do we let things go and change in that mindset. Do you think it's possible to change our mindsets and how might we do that?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, I mean, it's really hard. I think my mind just goes back to that, those pressures, and I think it's it's especially hard right now because the people in it are doing it because they care about the work, because they know it benefits people, they know that there are uh participants, communities, um, the different stakeholders that engage that um they want to deliver good work for. But then on top of that, there's that pressure to deliver on organizational commitments. And a lot of people working in this space hold that aspiration of using this work to kind of inform organizational change and and push boundaries internally and and all of that, all aspects of that is work and pressure, and some of it's self-imposed and some of it's uh institutionally imposed. And what's always helped me is having good communication in teams, whether that's a team I'm leading or looking to the person who manages me, but having some give and take and support to like pass batons to to have clear expectations with leadership around where there's give and take and where you're trusted to make decisions and apply your energy and apply your capacity. I've been fortunate enough to have a few roles where there it felt like there was there room for conversations about like looking at where we put energy. And in my second year working at the Barbican, every program I ran was an annual program. And with my line manager, I remember having like a tool, which is like that kind of wheel of life tool where you look at the different parts of what you're working on, and you look at your satisfaction in them. But we were actually using that that kind of measure to look at my energy or like my overall capacity and kind of having that conversation about well, this is my second year of doing this young people's program, and it's actually the fifth year of that, and the formula works really well. And apart from responding to the odd change or crisis that comes up, it doesn't need all of my energy because there are other people in the team, there are freelance leads that can hold that, but then there's this other piece of work, which is an opportunity to influence another team, to change our ways of working. That's going to need a lot more of my headspace because it's about collaboration, it's about changing people's minds, about certain approaches to working and stuff. And I remember that tool particularly being helpful, but I guess more so just having the platform to have that conversation was really helpful. And I suppose that's the same team where we had those conversations about what percent is okay to give it versus over-delivering and over-committing yourself. It's all comes down to the team and who's around you and who supports you. Um, and teams where you have that kind of rapport with colleagues and you have that knowledge of the work where you have some really off-the-shelf things that are the low-hanging fruit or the easy wins for when you have to just pull something off and you don't have the capacity to start something from scratch, but you can also lean on people and and be a sounding board, or have people be that for you around the projects that really take a bit more energy or really take a bit more head space to develop, or start from scratch, or pitch.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

I'd really like to pick up on a couple of things you said, which I thought were brilliant. Firstly, that idea that having a team where you can be open and it's okay to have those conversations, those conversations are welcomed, and that actually everyone is working together to think about how to prioritize and it doesn't all fall on one person. And secondly, the wheel of life, for example, it really spoke to me. I have a chronic illness, I get very fatigued, and I have to think in my daily life about where do I put most energy? And that is a very, very good way to help me prioritize what's really important, what really matters. I absolutely love the idea of using that as well to think about how to prioritize work. There's some things do, you know, a new initiative might take more energy, but it's worth it because it's going to have this impact on the organization or on the people that you work with. And then this initiative actually you can put a very small amount of energy into. I yeah, absolutely love that. I'd never thought about that before.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, it was a different way of using it than I think it was intended to, or or that I had used it in the past, but it was really useful. And I've used it since then in that way as well. Yeah, and I suppose the scale can be like you could do it day to day, or you could do it on a longer term, kind of what does the year ahead look like. You could play with the scale of what needs your time or monitor it, you know, how those capacities and needs fluctuate over time. I found that really useful.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I feel uh a lot of the people that I've spoken to as part of this research have said there is just simply too much to do. And so there has to be a way somehow of prioritising. I think that's a really great way to do it. I was gonna ask as well, before we talk about freelance work, you've spoken a little bit about the role that funders play in terms of setting expectations. I wondered if you could talk a bit more about that and what role, if any, you feel like funders play in uh preventing burnout or supporting the workforce.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

I feel like I'm seeing some changes in in the funding sector. I think everything that's happened over the last few years in terms of issues around equity coming to the forefront, issues around the cost of living, and as well as the economy and the pressure on the cultural sector. I think more funders are being more open in terms of being less prescriptive about what they will fund, being more potentially more open around covering core costs when it comes to delivering work. And also, I've seen a lot of projects too and been involved in projects where um the funding is more about like a process and exploring something than having X number of deliverables. And those changes I think are very nice to see. It's very incremental, so it's like not everyone's doing it, and like more of that would be better. But I do think funders can play a role in preventing burnout by being more open with how they offer funds, being more responsive or um open-minded about what people pitch for. I think one of the things that propels this churn of there being too much work to do is that everybody wants to fund something new or like a new project or something that sounds like shiny and exciting. But what about the like core work? And when you've piloted and developed something and built up relationships with different stakeholders, where's the funding to embed that into like your longer-term way of working? There's a ways to go in terms of funders not being so project-driven. For me, it's also kind of like a polar, polar extremes. Like some funders are doing more and being more proactive and engaged, but then they also ask for a lot more in that they almost want to be a delivery partner. And on the opposite side of those, you have these funders that are like uh inbox that you send a proposal to, and then your organization receives a check, and there's almost no check-ins, no communication, almost nothing, nothing but a short report. And in some ways, those funders are like very traditional but super freeing because you know they're not like turning up and asking for a reception with all the stakeholders present that's engineered for their benefit, and you know they're kind of arm's length from it. Um, so it's it's kind of like either extreme can work really well, but it's that yeah, it's that driving away from product deliverable ways of working and more towards funding that allows you to be more playful in your delivery, that like funds your core costs so that you can implement change within your core work, those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

It always really struck me that if funders did fund core work, it would actually maybe help people feel a bit freer. Because if you know that the basics are covered, then there might be more room for innovation and play. And so, although you're not engineering innovation and play by asking for shiny new projects, you are supporting that. You know, it's just like in our personal lives, if we know that we can eat and we've got a place to live, then we can, you know, spend our spare time being more creative because we're not having to worry about the basics. I also really love what you said about deliverables. I again in this sector, I always think we we always try and work to deliverables because that's what we're measured by. And I understand that obviously that serves a purpose. But it's interesting that in a creative sector where we are trying to be innovative and creative and play, that we then always define exactly what we're gonna do. And if we don't reach what we said we're gonna do, we feel like we've failed in some way. And I think that that could really do is a rethink. And I I would love to see funders be more flexible about the process rather than asking for specific outcomes.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

The two things you just said, the that pressure for um deliverables and that lack of core funding, I think it also contributes to burnout because we have all these incredible people who are just working project to project, contract to contract. And so you get this amazing person through your door who delivers a project, builds up all these relationships and goodwill for the organization, but then you don't necessarily have the means to keep them on, and then that person moves to another project. They're working increasingly towards burnout, but then the relationships fizzle out because the person that built all that work and and connected with schools or communities or or different participants is also moved on to something else, and so that that turn also leads to that individual burnout in terms of you can only go contract to contract to contract so long, and people do it and go beyond what they should be doing, but that uncertainty has a big impact on permanent staff and temporary staff and freelance staff.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Also, for organizations, working project to project is exactly the opposite of sort of having a vision and a long-term strategy and thinking. And yeah, having in my earlier career gone from project to project, there was a point where I just couldn't do that anymore. I think that um it does have an impact, I think, on diversity in the sector and not good for the sector. I'm gonna come on to talking about freelancing and burnout, if that's okay. I've spoken to a number of freelancers within this research, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them talk about being burnt out because of process in the sector, like poor procurement practices or low pay or not having enough budget for projects.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

I think looking back to when I started in my career, back then I was just freelancing to get as much experience as possible, and that was really the kind of project-to-project work, trying to say yes to as much as possible, um, balancing that with kind of more secure work, whether that was like working in a restaurant or cafe, or I was constantly tutoring on burnout there day to day in terms of um just trying to keep afloat, trying to not turn down work, and I guess just being a bit new and naive about the impact, I guess, of saying yes to everything. And so I see it's really easy as a freelancer, especially at the start of your career where you're doing a lot of delivery work and you're that person in a workshop or person meeting with community members, you there there's a lot of mental capacity that that takes and physical, emotional energy. Now coming back as a freelancer where what I offer is more consulting or scoping, there is there is a lot of face-to-face work, but a lot of it is also um one-to-one conversations, desk work and meetings, rather than delivering three schools, workshops in a day or or being like the front face of a program. And I think that comes with different aspects of burnout. There's definitely something around pitching, that kind of constant thinking ahead and pitching for work. And as you alluded to, like when organizations have good pitching processes and offer feedback and are transparent, that's always better. There's a lot of pitching and you never hear anything back, or there's a lot of odd, informal, trickling conversations that are work before you get paid to do any work, where you're kind of cultivating something, but you don't know what or if there'll be a payoff. I'm quite used to that, and I'm quite good at managing my expectations and not pitching for things that I think aren't going to meet my values or. ideas for how what best practice is. For me, the kind of burnout comes around navigating values in my work. It's around the kind of values and ethics of work that come up and test me mentally, physically in terms of the energy it takes to to deal with complex issues that I think often surface in places you don't expect or in briefs that look on paper really, really simple and not about ethical things or or equity or or challenges. So I find that like for me walking that path of avoiding burnout is a more like subtle, I guess delicate journey in terms of how I navigate those challenges, the where I make decisions to give feedback or challenge, and how I kind of do that in a way that supports the work, protects myself, and I guess supports the sector. But I appreciate also that that's being in a place like that is a very comes with experience and comes with the privilege of being at a place where I can offer feedback and be a bit more of a consultant in the sector rather than only taking on quite delivery, face-to-face heavy pieces of work.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

If you feel comfortable, I'd really be interested to hear more about the burnout caused around values and ethics. I've heard from lots of people who said that they that their burnout is partly caused by feeling like their values aren't aligned with that of their organization or that maybe the organization's stated values aren't being lived by people who work there or freelance there. And yeah, I'd be really interested to know more about how that's impacted you.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, yeah no I'm very happy to talk about that. I think about it all the time. It's one of the things I thought about most over the last couple of years, freelancing. I think yeah it's interesting because whenever you whether you're applying for a job or pitching usually people ask you to demonstrate how your values align with theirs. But we don't really have that many ways of checking if those values align. And I do think that things come up a lot in in work. And so sometimes the people like cooking up the brief are not the people who are maybe closest to the work. It's like a director or a senior leader who's spotted an opportunity or some budget that needs spending. And so a brief like that could look really simple on paper. And you're recruited and then you start your work and then and everyone's happy everyone's talking about values. But then when you go to do the work you know a specific example I come up against time and time again is that for me to do certain pieces of work I need to speak with numerous staff members many of whom are probably like in emerging in their career or in less senior roles and that's around getting names of contacts, contacting stakeholders, getting access to certain documents or parts of the server, like really practical things. But that that director who's cooked up the brief hasn't actually checked that any of the more junior staff have capacity or awareness of this work. And then suddenly I'm asking people for things that they don't have time for, they're at capacity. And so then I'm in a complex situation where I have to deliver something but I'm now a burden on a number of people who tend to be people who are not don't have a lot of power are not on permanent contracts those kinds of things. Or sometimes like ethical issues come up out of a brief where you kind of least expect it and then suddenly I'm in the middle of that and it's an awkward place to be, it's an uncomfortable place to be like these predicaments come out of places where you don't always expect them, right? It isn't always like a piece of work that is about equity and practice where the issues come up. And so something I've been doing more and more is kind of putting a value statement or a statement that just makes it really clear that when I approach my work I put a sort of inclusion equity and access first. Whether that's in a written expression of interest or in a kind of pitch meeting I try and illustrate what that could be. And maybe that comes up as when we're planning events it's really important that we have things in place to ensure that the spaces are accessible, that the artists who are involved are able to ask for what they might need, that we need BSL interpretation if that if someone might need that, we might need other supports depending on who we're working with. But other ways that might surface is like when I observe something that's really problematic and challenging because I'm spending a day in your office every week I now have a platform to kind of raise that with you. I wouldn't necessarily frame it that way in a pitch but I think the way that I frame it is that I'm really open to feedback and that as an external person coming to work with you, it's really important to me that you are open to my feedback. And it's not like I'm then going to go in with like a microscope and analyze every little thing that comes up and and be like on the hunt for challenging issues. But where I observed a pattern of members of staff referring to staff in a way that I clocked was visibly distressing to them. And then I saw that over a number of times it's a large lot of burden for me to take that home and do nothing about it, right? It's not a me problem. It doesn't help them if I make it a me problem or like take it to heart as an issue I can't solve. And it's not something I'm contracted to resolve either but it might help me get my work done. It might help progress things if I'm able to raise it to somebody senior, somebody who's contracted me. I've had those exchange of expectations with that I can like raise that. And so I I frame it as this kind of non-negotiable approach. It sounds a lot more like prickly and hard headed than it than I'm describing it maybe. Or it feels more natural and it feels more like authentic and soft. It's not like constantly calling people out on stuff. I guess using that call it in mentality of like people need to be receptive to feedback and that's something that I I can offer I think it adds to my value as a freelancer because I'm raising things where I encounter them but at the same time I have to set boundaries with it. Like I can't be there to change organizational culture as a whole. I'm just there to to do my work but that value added or that non-negotiable approach is also about me reflecting back and and not being afraid to raise the challenges that I encounter on that process of doing the work. Observations I make about ways of working or or aspects of project delivery, program delivery development that I think could be better approached or maybe I don't have a solution for it, but I can raise it and make some suggestions of where they look or where they get more insights from beyond me. Yeah it's it's effectively making it a you problem be a you problem and not a me problem. But I think that's a seems like a harsh way of putting it so I I wouldn't put it that way to the people I'm working with.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Having been a freelancer myself for many years I think it's a really inspirational approach. Also I keep thinking of the word courageous as well because it's not always easiest to call these things out. I do like really like how you frame it as not a beef problem though, that it's actually about supporting other people and helping you get the work done but also ensuring that you work within your values. I'm sure people listening to this will be really interested in how you have those conversations. So it's clear that you set some really nice like it didn't come across as heart at all came across as just setting really clear but very generous and well-meaning and well-intentioned boundaries to support you and to support staff that you're working with. But when it comes to having those conversations, yeah, how do you go about that?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I think it really depends like on a on a case by case basis. I I think it helps me that I put something in my my pitch in my expression of interest um it helps me that it's outlined there. It's it's like a starting point and although maybe people don't think it through fully when they read it in general people read it and I think they think oh that's great that's useful to know so I kind of trust and believe that there's an openness to it or somewhere there's an acknowledgement of it. I think that that helps. I think how I approach it is really different depending on the situation. Like if it's someone bringing me in to do a piece of work that not necessarily everyone that needs to work with me was consulted on or understand they'll need time with me or time to support me doing the work I think I approach it two ways. I I try and be supportive and empathetic to the people who are surprised and are at capacity in terms of being flexible with what I'm asking from them and and be willing to be the person who goes back to the person that set the brief for me rather than asking them to do it. Because hierarchy I'm external I'm contract based anyway I feel like I have a position of experience where I can raise that as a challenge in my work. I think most cases I would raise these things back to the person who either set the brief or is the kind of line manager or leader within the team. There are particular occasions where I chose to sort of call it in on a more support level because maybe somebody was coming back from I was covering an absence or something and I felt like the best thing to do would be to note it and raise it in the like handover of the work. I guess it also really depends like some projects I'm in a day or two here or there over months or over a year and then some projects it's like two week stint of something. So yeah there's no there's no quick answer but I think being aware of the project timelines, being aware of the security I have as a person who's contracted externally with an external point of view to like raise the challenges and then approaching that from a place I guess of of being helpful especially with the example around committing capacity like sometimes that that administrator coordinator's time has been mentally committed by the person setting the brief not because they're the only person who can do it because in their mind they're like well they have time even though they don't necessarily and actually sometimes it is that director or line manager or leader that actually also has access to the same system and could just export a couple of things for me or could send me some files. But it's probably more likely that they'll do it if I approach them about it than if I leave the team member in a position where they have to then go back and challenge it. And I have the time and capacity committed to this work so I feel like it's appropriate for me to raise we know where there are hurdles. But I don't think there's an easy way. And I I also want to say like I couldn't have taken this approach like 15-20 years ago when I was starting out I didn't feel confident enough. I didn't have the like security enough in terms of the work I do. It doesn't suit everybody but with the types of work I'm doing right now it feels a manageable way to set boundaries for myself and also keep those boundaries so that I'm not taking on more than I'm being paid to even though in the moments it sometimes involves a bit more diplomacy a bit a bit more dealing with complex relationships than I'm technically being asked to.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

As I said I've freelanced for many years now and um you've really really inspired me to think about how I can use my power what's kept coming up for me during our conversation is your enormous compassion that you it goes beyond empathy to really think about what people need and how you can best support people. But also something about intentionality that to some extent maybe we all have some power even if it's very small and how to use that to support other people. And I think that you've just summed that out beautifully a way that freelancers and you know external people can be that mutual perspective very, very compassionately help organizations think about how they might be putting additional burden onto staff and how to make that better. I I really appreciate the conversation it's been so inspirational.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Oh thanks I mean I yeah I don't that makes it sound so like I don't know generous and holistic and I I I maybe would just acknowledge that I think it also does come from a place of being not being burnt out but almost being burnt out of being burnt out like I there's some things I'm a bit fed up about. I'm just going to give that person feedback on that because I'm fed up of having to be the person that this weighs on or the person that has to think about this. And and though I try to approach it with generosity I think it does it also comes from experience of frustration and an experience of of being burnt out and a kind of personal unwillingness to to hold things that are going to push me to that place. It's not all generosity and it's not all putting myself last. Part of it is putting myself first as a protective way but also as I think as a way that benefits people more broadly because I think it can spark some change even incremental even small change or at least you're naming things and having the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

That totally makes sense and what's really struck me is that actually it's something that we can all do to an extent we can all have strong personal boundaries but we can also be respectful of each other's boundaries. Thank you. It's been such an interesting conversation I really really appreciate your time and I know that people are going to get loads out of it. I hope so um it's always nice to chat and yeah thank you for having me thank you for listening and thank you to Chris for a fascinating conversation. You can find more about Chris's work on his website which is in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you if you have an experience of burnout or if you'd like a chat about my work. You can find more about my research and more tips for beating burnout on my LinkedIn profile and my website both of which are linked to in the show notes. Thank you to Fundus Claw and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this podcast and my research into burnout in the cultural sector and to Professor Ben Wormsley of the University of Leeds for supervising the research. You can find a link to the School of Performance and cultural industries at the University of Leeds and the Centre for Cultural Value in You've Guessed It, the show notes. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast today please like and subscribe and if you're listening on Apple Podcasts give it a review to encourage more people to listen. Our next episode will be with Kate Oliver, arts and environmental sector freelancer and the founder of the Radical Rest Network who will be talking more about the work of the Radical Rest Network and how to create more opportunities for rest at work and crucially why that's important