(Edited by wordsmith, Lucy Bramley)
Caledonian Road/Pleasance
I won the lottery. Well, not quite….
The Arts Council have invested in me to develop my practice as a participatory and socially engaged artist over 2020. I will embark on a journey to develop from a collaborator to a collaborative lead artist. I want to create my own work, solo projects, pitch new, big ideas to buildings and really understand the reason why I am doing the work I am doing.
And I am terrified.
I have been making work for over 10 years with young people, communities, faith groups across participatory, non-traditional arts and playful spaces. So why should an artist and producer in her late 30’s need financial support to make a shift?
In 2019, I was lead artist for an eight month process with young people and communities in & around Caledonian Road. Prior to this, I led smaller projects, co-directed many as Artistic Director of MUJU and created work as a collaborator with a playful interactive theatre company, Coney. Here, I took on two commissions as lead or solo artist. These are all projects which feel like a natural progression I should have been doing earlier. I had misplaced my confidence. I have come to realise that ‘days off’’ as I perceive them, are vital for creating meaningful, high quality work. I had lost my confidence to give things a try and the art of reflection.
Creativity is having it’s own midlife crisis. Creative subjects are methodically being worked out of the curriculum. A quality in quarantine. I went to a high end meet-up recently which was focused on creativity. Affluent grown-ups talking at length about how they did not feel they had the tools or permission to be ‘creative’. One dancer who works in advertising by day noted the status of ‘creatives’ in the agency. The job title suggests that some have the permission to associate creativity with their work, and it wasn’t her. There is a hierarchy in the agency, with these ‘creatives’ high up, special, other. And this does no one any good.
I was a performer and maker from the age of 11 up to 30 years old, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. In 2010, life happened - losses, illnesses - and I lost some of my confidence along with the people in my life who were gone. I continued in the arts by way of producing - turns out that it is a lot easier to think clearly and confidently with other people’s ideas and money. Producing wasn’t a bad move. I have helped create some of the most inclusive, breath-taking and exciting projects in the sector (well, that’s what my Mum tells me…) with the Barbican, Roundhouse, Punchdrunk, Rambert Dance and most recently , with the Greater London Authority. I have produced for a range of independent artists and birthed a festival of new and interactive work at the Almeida Theatre (Almeida Greeks). I have been lucky enough to create amazing night time urban walks with Inua Ellams & The Midnight Run. I love this work. It takes bucket loads of creative thinking, resourcefulness and yup, chutzpah. However, producing for artists and organisations however creative it might seem, hasn’t fulfilled my need to continue exploring my world view through my own creative practice.
Last month Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair of the Commission and of Arts Council England released Creative Thinking: The Durham Commission’s Report. It outlines, that at this time of crisis in arts education (my words, not his), we need to encourage and teach creative thinking across all curriculum subjects. The workplace is crying out for innovation and self-starters who know how to think outside the box.
“Creativity is not something that should inhabit the school curriculum only as it relates to drama, music, art and other obviously creative subjects, but creative thinking ought to run through all of school life, infusing the way human and natural sciences are learned.” The Guardian, Oct 2019, summarising the report.
The report also highlights that teaching arts subjects is vital for teaching the creative process for making a thing. My DYCP time has shown me that this distinction is important. The discipline it takes to learn any creative craft is immense. It involves digging into your core to work out meaning, staying in a place of personal idea generation is also constantly taking risks and mostly, without a team. If you want to professionalise your craft, then you need to go further - endless practicing, publically share your work with audiences, producers, critics. And we’re back to self-belief.
At 38, are you allowed to start practising? To look silly? To not make money? It doesn’t always feel like the answer is yes. Why, as an adult, would you step off the rat race into unpaid days off work, to make something that may never see the light of day? You have to justify what is a basic human right. There are few experimental platforms for the over 30’s and little forgiveness from peers if you take ideas into public spaces which aren’t quite there yet.
I think a healthy eco system supports creative thinking in professional spaces, and encourages creative growth in professionals. I don’t want to give up producing - I like it, I am good at it but I also want to make stuff.
I believe humans have an innate desire to write, dance, perform, paint, code, sing and draw. Darren O Donnell in Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract observes that distinguishing between adulthood and childhood (with the former being seen as superior to the latter) is harming society. How do we really define when one state ends, and the other begins? And what do former children lose as they step over the threshold to become an adult?
I think we lose our permission to play and the confidence to try, and fail.
Not everyone does, of course. That’s where we get brilliant artists, self starters & risk takers. I, however, do. I am grateful for #DYCP for giving me the chance to play again, to get back to creating, trying & playing
Night at the Pleasure Fair, Coney/Culture Mile