I’m A Professional Too: Session 5 — Draw Your Boundaries

Session Summary

On November 21st, 2021, CAREspaces and SNS Arts Development Consultancy co-curated and co-hosted the fifth session of their five-part event series “I’m a Professional Too Session 5: Draw Your Boundaries.” This session unpacks the benefits and the risks of setting boundaries in the Indian Arts spaces and provides useful tools to artists in the space to set more favorable boundaries, especially when it seems difficult. Speakers for this series were Priya Purushothaman, Bhavajan Kumar, Sutikshna Veeravalli, Dr. Swarna Rajagopalan, and Sachin Pendse and this session was moderated by Janani Ramesh and Neha Krishnamachary.

The practicalities of boundary setting in a space where that has not been the norm

Boundary setting is a journey of personal wellbeing that asks you to reflect on and ask for what you need to feel safe, feel empowered, perform at your best, and feel the happiest. Asserting your boundaries, especially given the power relationships that exist in this space can be very distressing. But the onus of boundary setting is not only on one person — it’s a responsibility shared by everyone occupying a space. By communicating your needs, you are not only acting in favor of yourself but in favor of the sustenance of the entire community.

Recognize your needs

“I had never consciously thought about my boundaries… It was kind of instinctive — but even those instinctive decisions changed over the years, based on my personal experiences, or experiences my friends or peers may have had.”- Bhavajan Kumar

• The Non-Negotiables- What are you not willing to negotiable on as you navigate through this space? (physical safety? emotional safety? respect? etc)
• The Fluid Boundaries — What are you willing to negotiate on, given a particular context? (class fees, performance opportunity, contract conditions, etc)
• Symptomatic Boundary- If you have experienced any kind of violation in the past, are there ways you can keep it from happening again?
• Preventative Boundaries — If you have heard of experiences that you would like to pre-empt from happening to you, what are the steps you would take?

It’s not just you — asserting your needs is HARD. Here’s why…

“Once we cross the terrible twos, when we first learn to say no, it’s been about learning to say yes and wrapping yourself around… this careful peeling off of your choices, and learning that it’s is not okay to assert them can contribute in time to not knowing how to set any boundaries at all… Do we raise people with the confidence to say that ‘what I prefer matters’?” — Swarna Rajagopalan

Perception

In this tight-knit community, where your reputation directly impacts employability, there is a real fear of being labeled, rather mislabeled, in a certain way. There are several factors that affect this perception:

• Gender: Standards of how agreeable you are, and how much wiggle room you have to assert yourself without being perceived as “difficult” changes based on existing gender norms
• Age: In our culture, as you grow older, respect and power is accorded to you. So when you are a young artist, you haven’t been given the “permission” to even set those boundaries.
• Marital Status: There is a difference in the way people approach you after you are married — a boundary that they draw from you, in which they “back off”
• Culture: The existing culture of how an event is organized, what kind of relationship is encouraged between the stakeholders changes based on where you are and what is customary there

Risk

The risk of turning down an opportunity is that you don’t know whether that opportunity would have mattered in your career/trajectory. Based on where you are in your career, your priorities may also change: earlier in your career, success may be measured by the number of concerts while later in your career, the quality of the experiences start taking priority. So depending on where you are in your career you may or may not be able to afford to turn an opportunity down.

Power Dynamic

Boundaries have been set for you as a child by your parents and your teachers so when you get into adulthood, you either realize you have to do it for yourself or through an actualized power dynamic (privileges that come with age or roles you assume, etc), you may take the liberties to assert power over others in the space. In order to avoid this from happening, it’s helpful to understand the power dynamics that exist:

Teacher/Student: Teaching isn’t simply delivering a body of content. A teacher is joining the student in a journey in which they learn about life.

• Creating space to be vulnerable: In Bharathanatyam, when dealing with repertoire like Padams and Jaavalis that talk about explicit sexual encounters, extramarital affairs- topics that are sensitive — analyzing them with a teacher/student comes with a lot of trust, with a lot of vulnerability and mutual respect. And this trust is very much earned — it’s something that is evolved and not defaulted. When these topics are discussed, it is also important to recognize what cultural context that the student may have before introducing it. For instance, in India, students are exposed to allusions to the stories in temple architectures, these stories are talked about or seen in books, so to an extent, analyzing these stories in a classroom isn’t seen as inappropriate due to the context that has been set. While the stories without this cultural context can make a student uncomfortable, due to the nature of the subject. It is important to have a nurture a relationship between a teacher a student that encourages dialogue about what the student needs to feel safe when being vulnerable.
• Creating an Environment for Mutual Respect: In a relationship that is two ways between a student and a teacher, there are practices that are traditionally practiced (like prostration, service for the guru outside of class) that skew this power dynamic. Rethinking these traditions, revising them in practice, and being more intentional about how an action skews the power dynamic between the teacher and student is important in empowering the students and creating an environment of mutual respect.

Teacher/Parent: As with any relationship, the teacher and parent relationship is also mired in power dynamics that come with age, and gender.

“As a younger teacher, as a female based teacher, I have felt wary when asking for payment — at the asking hand rather than the giving hand. But if we have to look at this black and white, I am giving service and they are receiving a service therefore, they give payment for the transaction. But there is so much more to it than that: a lot of my hesitations have been with the fact that it feels disrespectful to ask for money from the parents of my students, who are so much older than I am.” — Sutikshna Veeravalli

Artist/Connoisseur: With the advent of social media, it becomes difficult to separate personal and professional life — and you have to be explicit in defining what kind of communication you would feel comfortable with. It is your prerogative to discriminate what content you feel comfortable sharing, how much of your personal life you should post about, how to interact with people who reach out to you and when to take a break from using the platforms.

Avenues for support to aid in the decision making leading up to boundary setting

Being a community of people you know will support you and make you feel safe is the most conducive environment for knowing what your boundaries are and when they apply.

“For setting boundaries, a support system is really important because it a vulnerable period so conversations surrounding that is very important otherwise you don’t feel comfortable to set those boundaries.” — Priya Purushotham

An access need is anything that a person needs to learn or take part in a certain activity. Every single person in a community has access needs (ex: “I need step away every few hours to take a break”, “I need a contract before taking up any opportunity”) and it is the job of everyone in the space to ensure these boundaries are being enforced to maintain spaces as accessible as we can for everyone involved. We should shift the way we think about boundaries: while safety is always an important part, thinking about how “spaces” are safe enough or accessible enough for everyone. The only way you can meet the access needs is if the entire community meets them.

Peer support is something people have been doing since the dawn of time — the basis for the framework is just people who want to support each other as they’ve gone through similar lived experiences. This process for caring for each other, discussing what happened, and how each person feels distressed helps people in the community understand where their boundaries are violated, what feels right, and what needs to be amended. When you are in the presence of people who know what they are doing, it gives you the tools of language to be assertive without being rude.

Creating support community:

• It’s important for teachers/gurus to be supportive of their students having private chat groups to debrief and talk about things that are happening in these spaces. This allows for people to come to understand what they need to feel safer, perform better or feel happier in the space.
• Reaching out to people who are even outside the space to talk about certain norms that may be disempowering might also guide us to where alternatives may be able to exist.
• If you are nervous about asserting your needs to someone who you feel might not take it well, practice it with someone who is a bit more comfortable, who has bought into you.

New ways to perceive boundary setting and how it can overlap with professional conduct to make for a healthy experience

Explicit vs Implicitly Stating Your Boundaries: When you are unsure of the consequences of stating your preferences to someone, setting boundaries implicitly and silently, in a way others don’t notice, may feel like the better choice. But when you do this, you put the onus on yourself, rather than having them change anything about what they are doing. If you are indirect in the way you state your boundaries, it may even just go over their head and they might not understand the underlying message. Therefore explicitly stating your preferences simply could actually save you more grief than you initially feared.

”A misconception I had was that being relational is mutually exclusive with setting boundaries and being transactional is not just boundary setting but rude. Something I have realized is that setting boundaries have actually only strengthened the relationship because at the end of the day, if that person is well-meaning towards you and trusts you, then they will understand that you are just going what will make communication better for both of you and that boundary setting is not in the favor of the individual but in the favor of a sustenance of the entire community.” — Sutikshna Veeravalli