A Loving Admin: The Essay

(ABSTRACT) We exist in a white supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist society that systematically conditions us to keep our work and our feelings separate from one another. As administrators and artists who work intentionally within defined communities, a detachment from feelings and work can often lead to harm, distrust, and a misalignment of values. A Loving Admin weaves administration and feeling together by asking what would happen to our understanding of administration if we infused our practice with a love ethic. By gathering three Chicago-based artists and arts administrators to discuss our values and how we work, I asked what can administrators learn from community-based artists and workers about working with people? The research also includes a companion publication titled A Loving Admin: The Workbook that experiments with different ways to articulate and share embodied knowledge from our lived experiences while utilizing research methods that activate play and imagination. A Loving Admin is an important and urgent form of knowledge sharing for administrators in the arts, schools, governments, and beyond to conceptualize their relationship with feelings and labor while redefining what it means to be an administrator.

A Loving Admin: The Workbook

A Loving Admin: The Workbook is written and designed from my Black feminist artist administrator’s perspective, and is open for all administrators in similar or varying fields to engage with. This workbook is an experimental tool designed to facilitate administrators towards deepening their understanding of their values, exploring how they interact with the ingredients of a love ethic, and creating language that describes how we work as administrators and why.