Artsmonkey Blog

So far this year snow stopped travel plans and play commenced (as long as my feet and hands are warm I love the snow!). Being based in South Wiltshire I had to go looking for it at first but once it finally settled everything looked beautiful and so began a magical start to the year.

Creativity 4 Health is in its final and most exciting year. The project co-ordinator, lead consultant and I, have put our artistic heads together and come up with a cookery theme for linking the various strands, events and legacies of the project together. Food has always been close to my heart and there has been an upsurge of food-linked art work emerging through 2009. I am now doubly motivated to mine and excavate examples from participating Local Authorities  of how involvement with creative activities has inspired, enhanced and developed emotional, mental and  physical wellbeing for foster-children and foster-carers across the South East (or should that be recipes?). I’m also excited about our celebration event in October that is currently being shaped and planned by Kevin Skinner Ltd. Also the Creativity 4 Health website being developed by Alive With Ideas (and indeed they are!) is moving on apace as is the training package aimed at up-skilling foster carers to participate in creativity sessions with their foster children along with the accompanying *creativity cookbook* we aim to put together.

I’m also excited about working with the new South East regional development agency for the Arts Award  ‘Future Creatives’. Down the road from me the Portsmouth and urban South Hampshire ‘Find your Talent’ scheme has been promoting and enabling young people to undertake the Arts Award  and artists and arts organisations to deliver it in partnership with Artsworks ‘Academy’ project. Oxfordshire Youth Arts Partnership (OYAP) have just launched their young leaders scheme in association with Creative Junction and Oxford Brookes. The Arts Council England have launched their ‘Achieving Great Art for Everyone’ consultation and I really hope that this time they will listen to feedback and then get out there and talk to the people who respond rather than treat it as an information giving exercise dressed up as ‘debate and discussion’ the comments on Mark Robinsons brief on the ACE website are well worth a read. It’s all go, go, go.

Plus there has been the adventure of enabling young people to take over an empty shop unit aka ‘The Unit’ and turn it into a ‘youth info centre’. Myself and Director Ruth Jones at Firestarter Arts and Keith Gale the Project Manager have learnt so much about the responsibility of taking over an empty shop; from leasehold agreements to chasing changing goal posts from potential funders to handling difficult behaviour and public misconceptions but our voluntary youth committee have given impromptu presentations at local council area board meetings, met and talked with local politicians, community police, city business representatives and managers, been interviewed on local radio and shown determination and skill in acclimatising to a world of commerce with monetary expectations requiring instant outcomes and constant reassurance.

We’re getting there. Summary update = Gala Bingo the owners and our immediate neighbours have continued to support and encourage, a carpenter made us some shop window display boards, a young digital media artist has offered to help us utilise technology to promote information and activities, a local church has donated the collection from a carol concert and we have a badge making machine and to be honest, somehow the badge machine is THE thing – I had no idea just how brilliant a marketing tool a badge machine could be. It’s a very promising start to what was always going to be a challenging year.

Oh yes and this July will see another *shift* in how things happen as Pilot Theatre Company and York Theatre Royal host the third annual #Shift Happens conference . ALT SHIFT on the 5^th and 6^th July looks at Arts, learning and technology; building and strengthening networks, policy, ideas, approaches and conversations – can’t wait! Mentally, I’m already in the queue for the  bar-b-q on the opening evening.  As they say on Twitter and Facebook – YAY!

Today is November the fifth a day for plots and coup attempts, remember? Well today also marked the official launch of the National Theatre of Wales and boy did they do it in style. Not only were parties being thrown across Wales but Producer Lucy Jones and Artistic Director John McGrath shared the event online with people across the world. Let’s face it the Welsh know how to do Culture, in many ways they epitomise culture and ‘national’ they certainly know all about that, from fighting to retain their language and heritage, to forming their own Parliament to seeding their musicians, writers, actors and artistic talents across the world.

In fact, you have to wonder what kept them so long, well this was all explained at the launch and then we were treated to a filmic feast of what’s in store over the next year (2010) with live links to a school in Bridgend, an artist at the summit of Snowdonia another in a lighthouse and live chat from three young artists in the National Theatre social network chat room 

http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/8344309.stm  

The long and the short is that it is all very exciting and inclusive, as work will be truly national and taking place all over not just city-centric. For us social media queens and geeks there will be digital technology aplenty as the NTW embraces new technology and new ways of taking theatre and art to the people - I can’t wait, the ‘For Sale’ sign is up, my bags are packed and I’m moving (unless that is, train tickets get cheaper in which case, I’ll just commute as I still remember how ‘incomers’ holiday cottages were vandalised and burnt in the seventies).

Whatever, good art deserves a chance and next year I will at the very least, be winging my way to Port Talbot for the finale - Michael Sheens collaboration with poet Owen Sheers who will be staging a contemporary version of the towns ‘Passion Play’.

London’s National Theatre is just that, in London. The National Theatre of Wales promises to be much more, much, much more. 

http://www.nationaltheatrewales.org.uk/

I have become a fan of emerging new artist Jon Hawke aka @theboywyatt especially his poetry which takes me from sadness to uncontrollable giggling fits. He recently launched his poem “That Older Woman” via Twitter and his Tumblr blog and it had a great response especially from those of us for whom it may have been written – who really felt quite flattered (slightly pink cheeked even). To echo the words of one reader Elly Laine “I want to pick him up and put him in my pocket”. I suspect it’s now pinned up on fridges all over the world, that’s the wonderment and the challenge of social media – instant access. If you take a peek and like his work, do let him know – feedback is to artists what a good hairdresser would be to Donald Trump – Vital  ;0)

Who is Seth Godin? Apparently, and that word is laced with good old British cynicism he is ‘legend’ (sneer here) among the ‘marketing’ elite publishing best selling books and revered ‘copy’ all over the world. Possibly. I don’t know him from Adam (as the saying goes) but I do know GL Hoffman, at least in the online sense I do and clever GL invited Seth to close a month of ‘sharing the podium’ on What Would Dad Say dot com without resorting to blackmail, threats or bribery. Usually at this point you’d hear me yawn ‘so what’, but some of my work recently has been working with people attempting to get a foot in the door of the creative industries here in the UK at the most challenging time you could imagine and ‘WWDS’, as I’ve come to fondly know it, has been a source of sound advice and inspiration, especially during ‘share the podium’. So I felt I owed it to GL to at least read what this Seth bloke had to say.

I may have to eat my hat (perish the thought – I’ve done this before and unwashed knitted products are very hard to swallow) Seth has some really very simple, very wise, very salient advice for those of you looking for work, or new direction or a change. It really is well worth the read here’s the link http://www.whatwoulddadsay.com and here’s a taster of what you can expect when the article goes live midday March 31st -(US time)

“DON’T TRY TO GET A JOB

Don’t you dare.” Seth Godin, March 2009.

As a dog owner I was also particularly drawn to his suggestion that I could start a ‘dog –poop shovelling business’ – is there art in this somewhere I find myself wondering?

Anyway don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself. In fact, don’t stop there, fish around for a bit, find Dave Sniadak’s Vlog on being a creative worker in a non-creative environment, enjoy and take comfort in the fact that other people know what it’s like. You can also read my guest article on Sunscreen and DNA if you really have to but if you don’t have time just play the ‘Wear Sunscreen’ song embedded at the top of the article – I won’t hold it against you, I’ll be somewhere humming along with you in spirit (Baz Luhrmann is the Man).

Simple, plain speaking advice that’s what we need, no frills, no false hopes, good old common sense with just a dash of something ‘special’ as ex theatre-designer Mary Robson might say. Just remember, you saw it here first. And should you already be ‘living’ the Seth Godin maxim then well done you. I know one or two that are and they currently ride the reccession very comfortably because every day is a new challenge to relish and conquer, because they are reaping the fruits of their labours and enjoying the labour as much as the fruitfulness. So maybe, just maybe, this Seth bloke really does know what he’s talking about.

But… you might like to read this response before you make your mind up http://blueskyresumes.com/blog/seth-godin-wrong/comment-page-1/#comment-1037 oh and then this http://corcodilos.com/blog/456/create-your-own-job

Whilst the poor girl who came on to play the Harp before the match must have felt a million miles of detachment from the impatient crowd eager for the game to get going, she was a message. Music plays an important role in setting the patriotic tone of the game – allegiances are made, emotions toyed with as both the harpist, the band and choir who led the national anthems galvanise the audience, er sorry crowd, into a deeper emotional link with their team. In fact, with a bit more stage management the whole game could have left the crowd exhausted and begging for more.

Purists, I’m sure, could happily watch the game of Rugby played in a field half-way up a mountain and do without all the flim-flam but that doesn’t pay for the horrible polyester kit, sorry, I meant hi-tech, wind shear, shower proof, breathable membraneous sportwear – (whatever happened to those good, thick, quality cotton rugby shirts that actually look good on most people? ) and probably wouldn’t begin to pay the team’s nightclub bill for the celebration/commiseration party after the game to reward all the pre-match sweat, blood and tears of rigourous training.

You can tell I’m not sports orientated but I do appreciate the skill involved and am looking forward to seeing what Football and the Arts Award Academies get up to over the next year. The important thing is that young people have a chance to learn skills and that they have icons like Football & Rugby players to encourage them to aim high. The young welsh mascot who was marched on at the beginning of the game (alongside a goat??!) was beaming and it is very likely that he’ll be trying harder in PE for a good few months, if not years and as a result he might grow up to be a sportsman or maybe a sports commentator, a camera man or sound engineer, all equally vital parts of the modern world of Sports – if it wasn’t a good watch (ie. Entertaining) people like me would stay at home.

So we need to celebrate the opportunities where organisations invest in young people or they’ll end up like two young girls I bumped into at Cardiff Central, one clutching a bottle of Malibu, the other so high she couldn’t do her clothes up properly (or walk straight), overlooked by two stoic members of the St Johns Ambulance who’d voluntarily given up their Saturday night to be on hand with first aid, as the girls thrashed about in pursuit of a good time, looking like their ‘night out’ may just be about to end in the gloom of the platform one toilets.

Rugby is a bone crunching, awesome game when viewed from the heady heights of the Millenium Stadium, Cardiff. Choreography, speed, teamwork, body mass, muscle and nerve all come into play. This weekend’s Wales versus the Springboks (South Africa) brought 74k people to huddle under the roof of this city centre based stadium, causing network rail to galvanise staff at Cardiff Central into various attempts at shepherding those visiting safely in and out of the station (I wonder where the 6,000 people who didn’t make it got to?). Some shops saw fit to close before the game ended and I can see why, seventy four thousand people leaving a venue is quite a sight and it occured to me that if everyone there dropped a penny in the bucket that members of the Armed Forces were holding on behalf of the charity ‘Help for Heroes’ that would have been an easy seven hundred and forty pounds made, but it looked to me like most people had already spent their money on several pints of beer; I’m not a regular Rugby match attender but it does seem that this is as much a necessity as having a ticket.

It’s a sporting month in the youth arts universe; this month saw the launch of Arts Award Football Academies, an example of football and art coming together to work with young people on creative activities to gain a qualification. Already I have noted the almost dance-like grace of the Springboks where their defense was almost a choreographed routine taking them from one side of the pitch to the other with the Welsh team crashing about around them, literally like bulls in a China shop (Wales I was cheering for you, honest!) and I can see how the arts and sports are really not so different, who’s that rugby player gracefully holding his own in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’?

@ the Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion last week for own-it and Stellar Networks seminar starring the very patient and extremely well-phrased lawyer Harry Karaolou from LG Legal. The event, ‘The Writer/Producer/Director Triangle - a guide to good practice of collaboration in Theatre’ didn’t disappoint. A rare event indeed when the panel has as many questions as the audience but ever since, my head has been full of ‘creative commons, trademarks, originators, copyright, performers’ rights’, and phrases such as, “asserting your moral rights”.

What can I pass on in a creative universe where more and more people are creating bodies of work through collaboration and shared experience? That it’s important to know your intellectual property from your development or design rights? You don’t want to make the same mistakes that members of the audience have done in the past, so at the get-go agree who does what and what is whose. Get an agreement, get i-p savvy.

This past two weeks of Olympics fever has been the perfect end to a four year endurance test of my own. I am coming to the end of one of those contracts that just kept getting renewed, in frustratingly short bursts but such was my committment to the cause that each time the end was in sight I knew I had another extra mile to go, another personal best to achieve, another record to break and so I kept on until finally a re-mortgage, major house repairs and a dwindling bank balance forced me to re-think. These past few years have been all about team committment, leadership, achievement and personal bests (not just mine) and a certain amount of sports involvement which is unusual in the arts but perhaps only to be expected in ‘youth arts’, which, reflective of the young people who engage with youth arts is always taking on board new cultures, new ideas and also old ones, tinkering with them, tugging at them, re-shaping, re-forming them to see what they can come up with. So whilst the majority of the artsworld were bemoaning the advent of 2012 and the expected bleeding of government investment from the arts into sport and ‘better than Bejiing’ Olympic preparations, young people in the world of Arts Award were rising to the challenge and mulling over the links with sport and art.

In Mountbatten school, Romsey Arts Award participants worked towards running a visual arts ‘master class’ with their arts teacher to design silk banners with primary school students prior to participating in a mini olympics. The whole school has been linking arts to sport to produce a cultural olympiad week - designs for chinese kites, dance performances etc., etc., all part of their own mini-Bejiing ‘08 held in July.

In four football clubs across the South East young people are being invited to work with them by learning how to wirte sports articles, produce designs for promotional material, script radio adverts and use a variety of creative skills that link back into the football clubs more mainstream youth activity. Why? So they can gain an Arts Award and broaden their horizons and skills base. Pretty forward thinking, Southampton, Reading, Bournemouth and Brighton Footie Clubs - shame on you Portsmouth!

Arts is often viewed as a soft option, although some artforms such as ‘dance’ and ‘circus acrobatics’ have more obvious traits in common. Unless you’ve been in a play, produced works of art for an exhibition, performed in a band in front of a crowd, it’s hard to appreciate the myriad of skills involved, especially if you do it well and give off an aura of confidence - it looks so easy, any fool could do that couldn’t they? Sports personalities appear in Panto’s so it can’t be that difficult, can it?

Well olympian achievements aren’t just for sports men and women. Although I was riveted to the television when I watched David Davies swim his marathon, silver medal winning 2 hour open water race. His determination to carry on, despite the distinctly unsporting attempts to ‘knobble’ him (only one red card ref? there were two of them trying to drown him). The whole thing really reminded me of a Youth Arts Company I know and their gargantuan efforts to apply for and secure funding. No one can doubt the excellent work they do, the committment of the  Gold Arts Award achieving company members and the Co-Directors Nina & Jason from Peer Productions but it’s a race and there are only a certain amount of spaces at the finishing line. All sorts of obstacles in the way, only young people can apply for some funding pots, you have to meet the funding criteria, it’s not about how good your work is or the noble past acheivements of your company, you can’t just re-jig the funding application from your last application. Its tough. Each small pot of £1k or 15k applied for has to be fought hard for, homework done, budgets produced, boxes ticked, people wooed, hearts and minds won over and then you might be lucky to get it but it’s only a years worth. Funding is usually for no more than three years and is rarely enough  to enable artists and arts organisations to produce all that great work that people want them to come up with. You just have to keep going and give it all you’ve got, except in the Arts the finish line is constantly being moved a bit further away.

I don’t know much about Sports funding but Arts funding is a gritty business, unless (I hastily add) you’re an Arts Award centre and only looking for up to £500 pounds in that case you can apply for an ‘Access Fund’ Grant where the lovely fund sponsors  ‘Deutsche Bank’ have worked with Trinity Guildhall to produce a one page application, with a broad set of criteria and positively no hoops, no tricks - if only it was always that simple.

Well it isn’t. Embarking on a career in the arts; in film, dance, music, theatre, digital media - it’s a slog and no mistaking. Just as it was for those Olympian sports men and women in Bejiing, it’s a never ending road of reaching out for the unattainable. You have to have guts, focus, determination and discipline - if you don’t you won’t get the work and never be in the running for that ‘big one’ not necessarily a Bafta or an Olivier because they are (if we are honest) slightly elitist and not fully representative of the Arts. So what is the artistic equivalent of the Olympics? Well, it’s quite likely there isn’t and never will be an equivalent, because the one point where the arts disembark from a raft of commanalities with Sports is in celebrating our acheivements - we are rubbish at it. We either sing our own praises too loudly or we’re too busy working on our next artistic endeavour to stop for a pat on the back and as for competition… well that’s another discussion entirely. In the meantime, I’m off to mull over my achievements and the nature of them. I’m too old to be given a supportive glad hand by the youth driven culture of the arts - there is no platinum Arts Award for the over 25’s - so no-ones going to do it for me. Did I do well? Was I exceptional? Oh I don’t know. I’ve done good things with good people, I’ll miss it, I’ll miss them - it’s opened my eyes to new horizons, I’m bouyed by the passion, the drive, the sheer imagination of the teachers, arts officers, youth workers, education officers, care workers, mentors and artists that I have met. I feel privileged, tired but privileged and couldn’t really care less about whether I’ve earnt a medal or not. Some of the most precious achievements are felt but never known.

Whilst grateful to to Arts Council England South East, for the opportunity to network and get ‘on message’ at their annual, smoothly oiled ‘Spring Briefing’ this years offering has left me with a gnawing feeling of doubt - are they really listening? Apart from the wonderful food, the smorgasbord on offer for our delectation and absorption came under six headings (oh okay, if you must know; work related learning, catalyst for change, creating the conditions for excellence, the great outdoors, increasing engagement, stengthening the visual arts) The buzz-words of the day were ‘risk’ and ‘excellence in the arts’. Patrick Sandford (Nuffield Theatre) and Andrew Nairn (Modern Art Oxford) think we should be aiming higher, striving for excellence, treading the path of the great masters who have gone before, and that Brian McMasters’ paper on ‘Excellence’ is on the money. However those of us whose work is perhaps less ‘product’ focused and more focused on the process, the journey, the experience - weren’t so sure.

Simon Fanshawe hosted the day and I loved his plea for Regionally Funded organisations to not sign their Arts Council funding contracts but to draw up their own agreement and reinstate the artistic integrity and aims at the beating heart of the organisation so the contract allowed for more of a dialogue (all very well for him to say perhaps - he’s leaving!) but there’s plenty of actors’ agents and business managers who would agree that a contract is a working dialogue that should be shaped and formed to reach a comfortable state of agreement, a plateau of understanding, if you like.

The day was full of mixed messages: we were told at the start of the day that ‘all the innovation in digital media is driven by the market’ and yet the presence of digital media at the conference amounted to the showing of a few short films (sorry Glyndebourne yours didn’t move me other than to consider the pun on ‘photo-stitching’ and to remember to get my hoover fixed) and the brief titles on the power point (must we still be doing this?) When asked at the end if any of us knew about ‘twitter’ (only one example of how social media is used in business and communication these days) just four people raised their hand. Does this mean, as artists, that we are ignoring the vast and creative use of digital media in the arts and at what cost? Or does this simply reflect an ignorance at management level in the arts rather than at grass roots?

We were also invited to discuss ‘excellence’ in the arts but despite Gavin Stride (panel member and Regional Council Member) admitting it’s not a word in his artistic vocabulary and that he is more likely to think about the ‘ambition’ of the company the panel seemed to think this was an acceptance of the need to put the word ‘excellence’ at the centre of our working ethos. Indeed who really is prepared to think of themselves as being ‘excellent’, as artists we always strive for something more, something unattainable perhaps? To me excellence smacks of ‘ego’. But I was reminded this week that we all have differing perceptions of the meaning of a word, I was challenged over my use of the word ‘celebration’ which to me was to laud and reflect but to another conjured up visions of a more vigorous applauding. Whatever excellence is, it is unlikely to be ‘excellence’ that people aspire to - more likely to be the best, the chosen, commercially viable or good, or satisfying/pleasing/rewarding.

In one of the workshops ‘catlysts for change’, some of us were invited to meet Jon Adams, a visual artist who having struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia has only in recent years had the confidence to apply for funding and pursue a career as an artist. By his own admission, his art is hidden because he considers himself disabled by his lack of confidence - therefore his disability is a ‘hidden’ disability - you can’t see it, touch it, smell it. How, I can’t help but wonder, would he ever have come into the light, if all we focused on was ‘excellence’ which smacks of ‘the chosen few’ - oh yes it does, the ‘winning team’.

Does the word ‘excellence’, best serve the arts? Is it the concern of most artists? For those not in the arts world would the embellishment ‘excellent’ sway their decision to attend/participate/purchase/view/support. Surely many artists are striving for originality - how can something untried and untested be labelled ‘excellent’? Bill & Ted (who were whispering in my ear all the way home) “Most excellent, dude”, use it spuriously to express their pleasure at something, there is no quality in their judgement. After all, who is to say what is excellent - the market drives art through it’s utter abhorence of it (Damien Hurst - pickled sheep/ Gone with The Wind - The Musical) or it’s placid acceptance of it (anything Shakespeare/The National Portrait Gallery/Angel of the North) or it’s sheer exuberent love (although not always lasting) of it (Street Dance, Jordan - the autobiography, Disney, Eastenders etc.) Being the nation’s favourite artist, artform or art icon is gratifying I’m sure but does it automatically imply excellence? I don’t know. I understand where Patrick Sandford and Andrew Nairn are coming from, I totally supported Sir Peter Halls outcry at the lack of vocal skill that a rising number of actors fail to command during their live performances in theatres. I want to witness skill and craft not least in theatre, I witnessed a street performance during a festival some years ago that left me breathless at the performers skill in delivering their entire show before a threatened tumultuous downpour that was so impressive and crafted that the audience would have happily stood wet but ecstatic in the thunder and rain just for five minutes more. But there has to be room for experiment, for fumbling journeys of mistakes (through which we learn) and innovation and originality.

As someone noted at the event, most of the great masters were not recognised as such when living, only when dead. Their concern whilst living, was the exploration of their art, their style, their revoloution in their art-form, breaking barriers, challenging perceptions, breaking new ground. And what of the young, the unconfident, those not percieved as gifted and talented? Where does excellence lie in their vocabulary?