What's your love language?: Invited performance-critical intervention on love-led leadership curated by Kai Syng Tan featuring artists Jade Foster and Chloe Stevenson, for Navigating Change: A Creative Leader's Role (CHEAD Annual Conference 2026)
What's your love language?: Invited performance-critical intervention on love-led leadership curated by Kai Syng Tan featuring artists Jade Foster and Chloe Stevenson, for Navigating Change: A Creative Leader's Role (CHEAD Annual Conference 2026)
Love was motif, metaphor and method for 25/3 Navigating Change: A Creative Leader's Role (Council for Higher Education Art and Design Annual Conference 2026)
CHEAD/ Council for Higher Education Art and Design, is a UK body for >70 art and design Higher Education institutions. When I was invited to chair a session with conference speakers Emeritus Professor of Creative Practice Pedagogy Susan Orr and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art Director Dr. Laura Sillars, it was clear that opening my platform to elevate and celebrate the leadership of current Teesside University students was key.
Chloe Stevenson (final year Fine Art BA) and Jade Foster (collective We Are Primary curator, MBA Cultural Leadership) joined me. We were supported by Georgia Holman and kruse. Together, we were a neuro-futuristic critical mass modelling love-led leadership.
Chloe discussed how she drew on her working class background, houselessness and addiction to found community interest company The Zoo Middlesbrough CIC, through which she channels her own funds (earned through part time jobs) to enable other working class artists to exhibit.
Through performances and prints invoking Functional Neurological Disorder, Jade formidably urged the sector to do better in disability justice. We subverted the gaze and dominant modes of leadership by re-orientating the space (speaking not on stage but from a table), with a critical text framed around voice/power, and activated silence, grunts and crip time.
We were further supported by Teeside's Dr Nina White and Rachel Teate. Together across several weeks we built a care-full scaffolded system of support so that love and radical care governed how we worked together too.
IMPACTS:
Feedback was overwhelming - the panel made a significant impact, with delegates approaching to speak with the team.
“Particularly enjoyed the performative interventions by Dr. Kai Syng Tan and Jade Foster exploring elisions and alternate voices.”“Thank you for running a wonderful session yesterday, Kai, you led the panel with care and space and brought such important discussions to the forefront of the conference”; “We are very grateful for your clear guidance on how you wanted your session to run and your support for Chloe, Jade, kruse and Georgia”; “Thank you all for making sure we were looked after. I’ve had a great time, hopefully we’ll work together again soon”. “You brought inclusion to the forefront in the conversation – it often goes unnoticed or brushed aside. The panel made sure this was front and centre and I was impressed with how the session was navigated. How the academics asked the students questions and made their own reflections, I will take a lot back to my own institution on how we can be better.”; “It was wonderful to work with you, I really appreciate the care and support you provided to the full panel”; “I had such a positive experience working with you and the team […]. I was ver nervous going in to be honest, the majority of my days are spent in the office supporting people online, so I knew it could potentially be very overwhelming being : the conference and the long travel to get there. But I enjoyed it very much and that was down to the support and care everyone showed for each other under your leadership, so thank you. I would love to work with you again if the opportunity ever arises”; “It was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. When things did get a bit nerve-wracking, you were a comfort and I genuinely appreciate that. Thank you for advocating for us throughout. And I hope we get to work with each other again soon.”
disability justice, epistemic justice, love-led leadership, arts and cultural leadership, neurodiversity, neuro-futurism, critical disability studies, neuroqueering
Tan, Kai Syng
ac184aa0-8e5b-4802-a725-80daa6231c86
25 March 2026
Tan, Kai Syng
ac184aa0-8e5b-4802-a725-80daa6231c86
Tan, Kai Syng
(2026)
What's your love language?: Invited performance-critical intervention on love-led leadership curated by Kai Syng Tan featuring artists Jade Foster and Chloe Stevenson, for Navigating Change: A Creative Leader's Role (CHEAD Annual Conference 2026).
What's Your Love Language? : (CHEAD Annual Conference 2026), , Norwich, Cambridge, Teeside, Southampton, United Kingdom.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Other)
Abstract
Love was motif, metaphor and method for 25/3 Navigating Change: A Creative Leader's Role (Council for Higher Education Art and Design Annual Conference 2026)
CHEAD/ Council for Higher Education Art and Design, is a UK body for >70 art and design Higher Education institutions. When I was invited to chair a session with conference speakers Emeritus Professor of Creative Practice Pedagogy Susan Orr and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art Director Dr. Laura Sillars, it was clear that opening my platform to elevate and celebrate the leadership of current Teesside University students was key.
Chloe Stevenson (final year Fine Art BA) and Jade Foster (collective We Are Primary curator, MBA Cultural Leadership) joined me. We were supported by Georgia Holman and kruse. Together, we were a neuro-futuristic critical mass modelling love-led leadership.
Chloe discussed how she drew on her working class background, houselessness and addiction to found community interest company The Zoo Middlesbrough CIC, through which she channels her own funds (earned through part time jobs) to enable other working class artists to exhibit.
Through performances and prints invoking Functional Neurological Disorder, Jade formidably urged the sector to do better in disability justice. We subverted the gaze and dominant modes of leadership by re-orientating the space (speaking not on stage but from a table), with a critical text framed around voice/power, and activated silence, grunts and crip time.
We were further supported by Teeside's Dr Nina White and Rachel Teate. Together across several weeks we built a care-full scaffolded system of support so that love and radical care governed how we worked together too.
IMPACTS:
Feedback was overwhelming - the panel made a significant impact, with delegates approaching to speak with the team.
“Particularly enjoyed the performative interventions by Dr. Kai Syng Tan and Jade Foster exploring elisions and alternate voices.”“Thank you for running a wonderful session yesterday, Kai, you led the panel with care and space and brought such important discussions to the forefront of the conference”; “We are very grateful for your clear guidance on how you wanted your session to run and your support for Chloe, Jade, kruse and Georgia”; “Thank you all for making sure we were looked after. I’ve had a great time, hopefully we’ll work together again soon”. “You brought inclusion to the forefront in the conversation – it often goes unnoticed or brushed aside. The panel made sure this was front and centre and I was impressed with how the session was navigated. How the academics asked the students questions and made their own reflections, I will take a lot back to my own institution on how we can be better.”; “It was wonderful to work with you, I really appreciate the care and support you provided to the full panel”; “I had such a positive experience working with you and the team […]. I was ver nervous going in to be honest, the majority of my days are spent in the office supporting people online, so I knew it could potentially be very overwhelming being : the conference and the long travel to get there. But I enjoyed it very much and that was down to the support and care everyone showed for each other under your leadership, so thank you. I would love to work with you again if the opportunity ever arises”; “It was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. When things did get a bit nerve-wracking, you were a comfort and I genuinely appreciate that. Thank you for advocating for us throughout. And I hope we get to work with each other again soon.”
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More information
Published date: 25 March 2026
Venue - Dates:
What's Your Love Language? : (CHEAD Annual Conference 2026), , Norwich, Cambridge, Teeside, Southampton, United Kingdom, 2026-03-03
Keywords:
disability justice, epistemic justice, love-led leadership, arts and cultural leadership, neurodiversity, neuro-futurism, critical disability studies, neuroqueering
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 511573
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/511573
PURE UUID: 54b3d12c-a8ee-48e7-a2ed-e542e0e31309
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 20 May 2026 17:08
Last modified: 21 May 2026 02:06
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Contributors
Author:
Kai Syng Tan
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