of course, i meant to write about intention and ideas before we started the delivery phase of this project. i didn’t.
because the anxiety about whether anyone would attend was crippling.
but we are up and running.
session 1 comprised 3 men, katie and i, a planned walk that left us stranded as monks brook decided to break its banks, a gentle, easy afternoon of drinking tea, tentative but flowing conversation, and drawing the things we had collected on our walk.
we have funding for 9 months of workshops, held every 2 weeks.
the project is about offering a space for socialising and participant-generated activities, with ‘drawing from the outside’ as a very broad framework. as ever, ‘drawing’ in the most expanded way, and in both senses of the word.
there is another aspect of this project that is less visible – artist development.
in a world where arts funding is more and more tethered to public engagement and public agency and the idea that ‘everyone is an artist’, how can/does/might an artist nurture their own practice in the context of a project such as ours? where is my space and opportunity within this project?
i am determined that i WILL NOT simply be instrumentalised in the service of the government’s agenda in which artists are compelled, by the project grant funding requirements, to deliver the social care that that is chronically under-resourced by the current regime.
my practice, my process and my creative production WILL be integral to the trajectory of ‘drawing on the outside’
as will that of katie, who is producing the project. we both have strong feelings about the role of ‘public art’ and ‘socially engaged practice’ in the arts landscape, so we will be talking and musing on this theme and how we are working to nourish our own practices within this framework.
so far, the lion’s share of our time (and hence the funding, and of course, the unpaid time) has been spent on developing partnerships, recruitment, first aid and safeguarding training, financial planning, bid writing, publicity and marketing. all of these are necessary, but are not at the core of why we do what we do.
i think this is why i didn’t start this before we started the delivery of the project. now, i am free to think about the actual creative elements of this challenging endeavour.
