Simulacra And Simulations

Things have descended into total chaos in my life, and I’ve largely been unable to continue doing anything much at all, never mind art. Without wishing to totally depress everyone completely, I’m currently paying the bedroom tax on my son’s room while we wait to find out if he comes home.

I’m incredibly angry at the DWP. When I graduated from University 5 years ago, having worked damned hard for my degree, I had planned to gain some kind of well paid employment, preferably within the arts, and no longer be reliant on benefits to support myself and my family. But here I am, five years on, still reliant on benefits, still applying for work without any reply, and without any feedback from potential employers why I wasn’t successful – my latest failed job application was for a gallery assistant at the National Centre For Craft & Design. And I set up the LAN in order to create work for myself in the spirit of entrepreneurship, but still I don’t earn any income for doing that.

I’ve been advised to apply for ACE funding – many times I’ve applied and been unsuccessful.

When I go to careers advice and state that I need some form of income to run the LAN / my own practice, I’m told to get some other job. But I’ve been applying for other jobs since I graduated, at least, ones that are suitable for single parents, that don’t require a car, a long commute on an unreliable train service, “flexible” hours (which usually means weekends or evenings) or ridiculously low pay.

I really just want to be paid for the work I do every day doodling, illustrating, observing, creating, questioning, seeking answers, whatever it is. Mainly simply living.

Time is now running out for me. I feel ever more as though I’m being pushed over the edge of some kind of financial precipice – just when I thought I’d made it to relative safety, another foothold has crumbled.

But this last week, with bills rocketing, my income dropping to below poverty levels in a sustained financially abusive regime imposed by “austerity”, feeling powerless and hopeless, some little ray of defiance picked itself up from the floor.

I submitted something for Emily Speed’s Work Makes Work blog /p/497389/

And I saw amateurs applying for funding, and I thought that I can’t let them make me feel like giving up, I have to keep pushing, no matter how futile it seems, no matter how many days, weeks, months go by with yet more dictatorial criteria being meted out at us – the latest particular evil is housing benefit sanctions for people working part time – https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/part-time-workers-to-face-housing-benefit-sanctions/

Oddly, despite this news, I decided for the first time in months to start working on the graphic novel again. The only thing that has kept me sane is doodling in my sketchbook, keeping drawing, but they’ve been just random things. If I don’t work on the graphic novel I feel as though I may as well be unemployed, and that’s not going to help.

I’m still not getting anywhere with Kickstarter funding, so I’m taking a break for a while.

The Christmas Market went well considering we had to move it at short notice. I somehow managed to set it up, and made as many sales as I did last year, which isn’t really enough, but I think that if I sell work, that’s a good thing. Recent illustration graduate Ellen Stubbings made a small profit, so I’m pleased with that.

I’m taking a break for now to get my life in some sort of order. I can’t stress enough that I said this time last year that I needed to earn an income for my work, and still nothing has changed. I don’t have any time left now. If artists are going to be paid, it has to happen now.

In Norway, there’s also been solidarity with #kunstneraksjonen

http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.co.uk/

Only 9 days left to go, and I haven’t been promoting the graphic novel Kickstarter as much as I should’ve done. However, it is being promoted during the Christmas Market http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297268149/cloudbusting-the-graphic-novel

I was starting to think we wouldn’t be able to go ahead with the Christmas Market, but we’ve been kindly offered the use of St. Mary Le Wigford church for the purpose. We’re still on the lookout for another empty shop space in Lincoln, and we have a man on the case, so let’s hope we can find our own space sometime soon.

Meanwhile, somehow, we managed to make it to The Art Party Conference last weekend, and have added the events to this blog: http://lincolnartistnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/

and which I mostly copied and pasted to my own blog here http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-art-party-conference.html

I spotted ex-Boston college lecturer and local artist Andy Black there, but unfortunately didn’t get a chance to speak to him – at that moment, Bob And Roberta Smith appeared, and ushered us to go and see Michael Grove MP. During my Foundation, it was Andy that organised a project to write manifestos. I have no idea if I still have the one I made all that time ago, if I’d known Airspace gallery would ask us to write some, then I’d have forgotten to dig it out….

I’ve never really been to a conference where I wasn’t a delegate, and had expenses paid before. We paid £5.50 to get in, petrol to get there, food wasn’t free either, only the lovely cake at AIRtime, and we had no budget to stay at a hotel, so we left to return to Lincoln around 9.30p.m. before the actual party started.

I made sure that I wrote on the feedback form “pay artists to attend as delegates”.

I spent all of last week passing my Bikeability Instructor training, and I’m hoping I can start working for this part time in the next few weeks to earn that all-important additional income. Today, however, it seems that it won’t cover much of the drop in income at all. I worked out that if I worked 2 days a week, I’d earn enough to cover the shortfall. But apparently I will then get a drop in other benefits support that means I’ll actually only be £10 a week better off. The maths doesn’t figure out.

Everyone keeps telling me I should sell work and earn money from my practice – but I pointed out that I’ve been trying to do this since January, and I’m still not earning what I should for the work I already do.

I was already starting to plan for this year’s LAN Christmas Market, but I’ve received another blow to that plan. We’re now being expected to pay to use the Empty Shop space. £50 a day. It’s a derelict shop! I could book a half-decent hotel room for that price, so why would we pay that amount for a space in which we’re not even allowed to use any form of heating?

We’re looking for another space asap – if I can’t find somewhere in the next week or so, I’m not going to be able to continue with it, and I really need the income!!

Amidst all of this, the Kickstarter campaign has been written about in this blog: http://www.anythinggeekyreviewed.co.uk/cloudbusting-as-a-single-mum/

I’m not sure everyone risks homelessness at every turn the way I seem to keep being pushed to the edges of society, I’m fairly sure that when things get tough, most people have a partner or someone that can help them out, or another job on top of their art practice. Whereas I seem to have the rug pulled out from right under me at every turn and with my back against the wall.

Right now I am literally being robbed. It’s too complicated and upsetting to go into here, so I won’t, but I keep being told that there’s nothing anyone can do to help.

I was invited to go to Derby to get involved with a project that contains aspects similar to my graphic novel, but I can’t go to the private view, because it’s on a Friday night, and that presents childcare issues.

So I emailed a reply to say that I hope to come at a more convenient time the following week during the duration of the exhibition itself, and then I get another invite to attend an all-day conference in Leicester on the same Saturday as the Art Party Conference.

We weren’t successful with funding for that either, but despite this, artists involved were still keen to go anyway. I’m not even sure if I’ll make it now. I was counting on Mum to have my son that weekend while we go, but she says she’s got something on that Sunday.

I feel more like a doormat right now. Someone that other artists wipe their feet on as they get the opportunities that are constantly denied to me.