so here we are, near end of august, weather is wet and warm – as normal. the chimney has been swept today a normal thing for this time of year. we have plans for a curry tonight, one of our normal meal choices for a friday.
i’m here to write a blog post, another normal occurrence.
i’m avoiding the elephant in the room…
it’s far from normal.
today i’ve been working at rounding out the budget of my covid-19 emergency fund from the arts council and submitting to an online exhibition about works made in the last few months about the pandemic.
so what’s the emergency funded time been like?
well i began with a little an often plan. this worked well, helping me get through the difficult early days of lockdown. the plan had to adapt once i was in full flow with working with the contributed content to walking through.
concentrating my efforts and thoughts on walking through was a good thing to experience. prior to lockdown my workload was such that i was jumping between multiple projects and reflecting upon that now i can see how the jumping between was a source of unhappiness as depending where in the cycle i was there was always something that felt like it really needed attention.
returning to the last few months, i’m in a place in my practice that i can say i wouldn’t have been in before the pandemic started. the pandemic and specifically the need to apply for financial help through the arts council emergency fund for individuals has had a positive influence. in part because at the point of needing to apply i had a clear idea of what i needed to do – what would help me to plan for the future.
for part of the research i leant on a past experience – a being in the moment experience – to help ground myself. in seeing this research through i’ve been through a lot of personal upheaval that i really didn’t expect. to some extent this was work i needed to do yet had never given myself space and time to do so.
the research i’ve done so far has got me roughly to where i said i wanted to get to in the proposal. what is unexpected is the notion to continue to play and research as i think there’s a work to emerge from some continued research beyond the time afforded by the grant.
and so to walking through…
when i set out to create this work i couldn’t have imagined how it was going to turn out. i wanted to work with a community to create a lens on the time of the pandemic and those early lockdown months.
there were two really stressful periods of time. the first was in creating the invitation to contribute and the second was the distribution of the work and wether anyone would watch it.
the reactions from those who got in touch has blown me away. so many over whelming positive responses and so many very personal stories of how they experienced the work and how this had touched them in some way. i have to add that in finishing the work off to share online i was filled with a huge sense of pride – the like of which i’ve been missing for a while.
of course the stress and worry about wether what i wrote would attract any contributions was unfounded. i do expect that i will always get a little stressy where invitational words are concerned.
so here i am. another friday during pandemic, raining outside and coming to the end of the working week. i’m going to miss the new normal of working through the pandemic thanks to the covid-19 emergency fund for individuals grant. the legacy of the project has set me up for new experiences and new works and i have a warm feeling as i consider that.
thank you for reading along with me. lets see where the coming months take us both.
keep safe.
andrew. x
