Working on the Periphery of an Interdisciplinary Mashup

For some twenty - five years I have been working out on the periphery of an interdisciplinary mashup. What do I mean by this statement? Over the years, I have been engaged in what has become an interdisciplinary mash up of practices that includes designing and facilitating community arts education programs, facilitating a diverse range of arts based and arts infused learning and social impact programs for persons with disabilities, maintaining a thirty year plus visual arts practice, working in the medium of photography and most recently melding therapeutic arts, arts in health and creativity coaching with positive psychology.
Because I am always maneuvering out on the periphery of this interdisciplinary mashup I don’t always know where I actually belong or fit professionally. There are times when I feel like I am so far out on the periphery that those working in the visual arts don’t see what I am doing. The same can be said  in my work in community adult education, community arts facilitation and coaching.
This interdisciplinary mashup is not a lack of focus, but may be a result of contending with, something I have always suspected, but only discovered in my fifties, that I am dyslexic. As a learner who has always faced challenges of fitting in the education system, I always felt like I was out on the periphery. This started to change, however when I was able to explore the world through the lens of a camera. Photography, enabled me to see and explore the world around me in a new way. I did not have stumble over words, like I am doing writing this blog. The process of making images with a camera would lead me down the path of becoming not just an artist, but also an educator working in community. Working in community as an educator, I found myself working in the social impact sector supporting learners who, like me, did not always fit into the formal education system because of disabilities or maybe I should say because of systemic ableism. Today, as I engage in my relatively new interconnected practices as a Therapeutic Arts Practitioner, Arts in Health Consultant and Creativity Coach / Facilitator I am still out on the periphery, but I feel somewhat less anxious about it.

This may be because working out on the periphery of an interdisciplinary mashup for the past twenty five years I have learned to utilize the following skills.
 
MAKING CONNECTIONS: For many of us working out on the periphery, we often act like a translator or connector assisting in the integration of knowledge from different disciplines, bridging both critical and creative perspectives.
 
TRAVERSING AMBIGUITY: Functioning out on the periphery requires the ability to deal with chaotic and messy problems, that don’t always fit into a rigid framework of a single discipline.
 
STAYING VISIBLE: Those of us that work out on the periphery don’t always feel like we fit in, requiring us to double or triple our efforts to make our contributions seen.
 
REMAINING FLEXIBLE: Adaptability is a required strength when working out on the periphery on different projects. It is being able to straddle the various fences between chaos and creativity, knowing and unknowing, collapse and fabrication.