Due to the inflexibility of this blog (nice idea 1&1 but you need to update and add functions as technology moves on apace). All posts on this blog have been moved and are now available on http://www.artsmonkey.posterous.com
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 5th and 6th 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!
I travel quite a bit in my role as a freelance creative consultant and often at my own expense, so I’m careful about my journeys. One of my favourite journeys is returning home from Brighton.
Brighton, as far as I can tell is like Marmite, you either love it or you hate. I love it. I always meet interesting people, I often learn something new and am usually invigorated by the cultural buzz of the place. My journey there could involve the M25 but for obvious reasons only does so if I need to avoid the racing traffic in the summer. Usually I travel out of Wiltshire into Hampshire and take the scenic route via West Sussex into East Sussex. Skirting past Southampton and Portsmouth along the M27, to join the A27 through Chichester, Arundel and Lancing, before finally dipping into Brighton via the Devils Dyke.
Sometimes if my meeting or event is at a reasonable time, I’ll park at Chichester and get the train in and out which is usually fun and never dull. However, my favourite journey is the one home, when occasionally I have the leisure to travel back along Brightons Regency seafront with the sea on one side, bandstands, mini golf, the rusting silhouette of the West Pier and beautiful architecture from many decades, on the other. The landscape closes in a bit after Hove, passing by Hove Lagoon and more beach huts, then on to Shoreham which gets more commercialised and ‘shipping industrial’.This week I was travelling at dusk and the fishing boats in Shoreham harbour were dramatically lit up as a flock of seagulls circled above in the darkening sky. Shoreham is a mish-mosh of run down industrial, estuary foreshores, maritime contemporary and reviving town with a history, the Rope Tackle Building is a treat to come across as I veer off across the bridge over the mud flats (depending on the tides) past all the new apartments and houses on Shoreham Beach towards Lancing and then Worthing.
Travelling with glimpses of the sea on one side always raises my spirits and the light that changes, as anyone who lives by the sea will know is magical, suprising, breath-taking often. Always taking the chore out of sitting in any traffic that may occur at any point. And then Worthing, with its seafront Guest Houses and B&B’s. If you turn left as you enter the town you can travel along the Worthing seafront with its theatre on the pier and grand seafront hotels and buildings towards the very Wildian ‘Goring by Sea’ where in the summer I detour via Ferring beach to drink in the salty air and art deco houses. Then on via Littlehampton past Poling through Wick and Lyminster to rejoin the A27 just before Arundel perched so majestically on its hill.
Then I’m back in the heart of horse and hounds county of West Sussex with its racing of the equine and automotive kind courtesy of Fontwell and Goodwood, only glimpsing the sea again as I approach Portsmouth for another visual feast as Langstone Harbour comes into view. I get one final contact with the sea as I cross the river Hamble before returning to the leafy, earthy loamy views of Wiltshire fields and rolling hills.
It pains me to contemplate what I’ll do if my work stops taking me to East Sussex with its historic sea frontage and the compelling lure of the sea.
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
