drawing on the outside

all good intentions are subject to the realities of life, right? so here are reflections on the last 2 ‘drawing on the outside’ meet-ups.

our second meeting was pre-empted with a flurry of reminder whatsapps and facebook group spamming. after the first session we felt sure there would be some repeat attendees.

we were wrong.

instead, a 3 hour making session in the cavernous church hall of st. mary’s church with just one participant, who had read about the project in a hyper-local online news site.

at the start, this felt so daunting – katie and i exchanging looks to this effect. but we had materials and a plan for them – we made twine, we made oak-gall ink, we made a collaborative sculpture and we drew. we found out that matthew is an artist and makes work at home. his desire for this group is to make larger scale things, as he is limited by space at home.

we need to stay calm and try not to be freaked out by the small numbers – if matthew had a meaningful experience today, then that could be deemed a success. ‘meaningful’ might be many things – a sense of the potential for a regular activity? a sense of learning something new? what i am unsure of is how or whether we will ever find out.

we are encountering some structural obstacles and challenges – the insurance situation with katie producing a project and paying me from the arts council project grant makes her an ’employer’ in the eyes of an insurance company, so the a-n insurance (upon which many of us rely to fulfil our insurance needs, whether artists or arts organisers) is woefully inadequate, and yet there was no-one at arts council or a-n who could offer us a simple solution. a (very expensive – taken out of our budget) answer has been found now, but in these days where this way of working is pushed (indeed required) by funding bodies, there is work to be done by them, NOT by individual freelancers, to find cost-effective and legally appropriate solutions to insurance requirements. few people realise the amount of work that goes on behind these seemingly simple projects, and i am soooo grateful that katie is producing ‘drawing on the outside’, leaving me free of much of the jankers, and able to focus on the process and reflection.

two weeks flew by. i am in the last couple of weeks of putting together a solo show which represents the culmination of a 7 year project, opening in southampton on november 11th , so things are quite full on. we were in a new venue this week – the ticket building of swaythling station, which is only open on weekday mornings. it is a beautiful small victorian space that also houses a foodbank at the weekends, and we hosted 4 men (2 new, 2 returners – woohoo!) in a relaxed, flowing, comfortable and enjoyable session of drawing autumn leaves.

my strategy was to keep it very simple, as i anticipated that the leaves would do the work for me – and i was right! such lovely responses to the joyful burst of colour that is autumn. we had the ink we made last week, coloured inks, brush pens, and watercolour pencils. i think you will enjoy the outcomes.

on gentle but direct enquiry, the feedback we had was that the informality and freedom to engage in one’s own way is ok at the moment. the conversation was very free-flowing and easy. there were also some periods of companionable quiet, where we were each engrossed in our drawing. we asked what people would like to do next time and the requests were for something related to the fact that southampton is coastal, and the opportunity to draw on stones. it is great to have ideas input from those participating – sharing responsibility and agency is fundamental to co-creation.

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.