Women in leadership: Jessica Prendergrast, Onion Collective

This week we’re speaking with Jessica Prendergrast, one of the five Executive Directors of the Onion Collective in Somerset — who were recently awarded funding through the Arts Council’s Capital Small Grants programme for a cultural and enterprise development at East Quay.

Your varied career has included working for universities, the Home Office and a public-policy think tank. How did you end up being one of the founders of the Onion Collective?

I’ve always been interested in systems and people, and the critical interrelations between the two. My grandfather, who was a huge influence on my thinking as I grew up, was an academic, so I guess it was natural that I headed down a university research route in the early years of my career – initially exploring identity and security in Russia!

Increasingly frustrated by how divorced academic research can be from real-life, I opted to move into government research, at the Home Office and then MHCLG. In government, frustrated by how little policy is informed by evidence, I moved into the think tank world, hoping to influence systems change from the outside. In the end, I got frustrated with that too, and left Westminster for the West Country, coinciding with the birth of my daughter, Mabel.

I have always been an activist of sorts and this move gave me the opportunity to think again about systems, change and people, but in a real place with real direct impact. I also spent a lot of time in the local cider bar with some brilliant women, moaning about how ‘someone’ should ‘do something’ about a whole host of things that were wrong with the world. In the end, we simply got fed up of listening to ourselves talking about it and decided to be the people who did.

Although the system creates a barrier for women to progress their careers in more traditional senses, it often also gives women an opening to make a change – to take an intentional, purposeful decision about what they want to do with their lives.

There are five equal Executive Directors of the Onion Collective - all of whom are women. Why is the organisation structured in this way?

We always wanted as flat a structure as possible because that’s just the way we work – everyone has equal value, input, voice. We’ve tried to keep this as we have been joined by employees who are not all Directors, though of course there’s inevitability some decision-making that can’t be entirely horizontal due to financial and legal responsibilities. But, we always try as hard as we can to involve everyone. This extends not just to the company but the community on behalf of whom we work – we engage widely and deeply as much as we possibly can, even – and perhaps more so – when this is challenging and uncomfortable. This has meant our projects are more informed and responsive, just much better than they would have been if it had just been us in our bubble, however well intentioned!

The fact that all the Directors are women is not by any great intent, but just because we happen to be women. Through a systems lens, this reflects the fact that the structures of employment and family life often mean that women are in a position to re-evaluate their career choices – often after having children. Although the system creates a barrier for women to progress their careers in more traditional senses, it often also gives women an opening to make a change – to take an intentional, purposeful decision about what they want to do with their lives. For us all, this has been empowering.

The Onion Collective’s development project at East Quay in Watchet, Somerset, will include an outdoor performance space, an art gallery and studio/workshop units for artists and makers. Why is culture such an important part of regeneration?

For us it’s not really about how culture is such an important part of regeneration – though of course it can be a powerful force in economic terms – it’s more about why culture is such an important part of life. At the moment, too often, the economic system in place responds to only limited imperatives – of growth, financial gain, private profit. Yet the economic system we accept says everything about the kind of society we want to be. Economics, and regeneration in turn, should not, in our view, be just about these values but instead about the three far more important ones of social concern for the vulnerable, environmental concern for the planet and cultural concern for humankind.

We are social, cultural beings, our lives are lived in places with people, our sense of identity and belonging, our wellbeing, happiness and purpose are all tied up, not just in how much we earn or what we do at work but in what we do in all the space around that – with our friends, families, communities. It is about the things we see and experience, the music we hear, the ways we interact, the fun we have together. Without culture, and importantly, without culture experienced collectively, we are poorer in every sense. So it is not about how culture can instrumentally help with the regeneration of places, but about how our whole economic system should respond to people and the planet and art in all its glorious, life-affirming forms.

Without culture, and importantly, without culture experienced collectively, we are poorer in every sense.

You also coordinate Contains Art CIC, which was founded on the belief that “who you are, what you have, and where you live, should not restrict your opportunities to see, take part in, and create some of the best art in the world.” Can you tell us more about this?

It’s simply about justice. We hear talk of economic justice, social justice, environmental justice all the time. But why do we not talk just as much about cultural justice? It’s not about bringing art to places which are cold spots because of some sort of insulting ‘it’ll be good for them’ notion, but because access to culture should be regarded as fundamental.

In West Somerset, this could not be more critical because the lack of access also has a knock-on impact in terms of social justice. We have the lowest social mobility in the whole of the England. The evidence suggests that part of the solution is culture. For example, students from low income families who take part in arts and creative activities at school are three times more likely to get a degree than children from low income families who don’t. That’s huge. It’s about fundamental fairness. For me, one of the most powerful things about our building East Quay is that from next year, every child growing up here will be able to immerse themselves in a whole range of cultural experiences that they had no chance of doing before. For some kids, even if it’s just a few, that will change everything.

Who are some contemporary female artists you love that we should know about?

This is the kind of question that terrifies me. I’m really such an imposter in the ‘art world’, though I think this can also be a strength. There are so many brilliant women out there, who to mention?

Kathryn Boehm for a nuanced understanding of the rural and for getting deep into the question of community without sugar-coating it as some kind of amateurish happy place. Jasleen Kaur for so calmly and elegantly exploring our many multi-layered and muddy identities. Molly Soda for just being the perfect expression of the wild west that is our relationship with the internet and social media at the moment. Rachel Maclean for her unabashed challenge to the way we behave as a society and the crushing hypocrisy of it all. Eelyn Lee for putting ordinary people at the centre of powerful performance. And Bouchra Khalili for always making me cry and question whether I am doing enough.