elli log week 5 part 2

Elli Log week 5 part 2:
I met with Ryan Morgana at the henry moore institute, we discussed  particularly what my placement with them would consist of,
I told Ryan that I was open to assisting them with anything and they said as well as the Queerology exhibition they were working
on a number of performances including to but not limited to, Serf, trans pride and of course Queerology,

I've since done research  and realised that these are all the same performance, that Queerology is an exhibition that has many different venues and that Serf/Warf Chambers was one of their venues, Trans Pride was the event that Queerology was going to be opening up there for, not two different performances, just goes to show that researching in your spare time can pay off and make you realise the essentials you didn't know.

Ryan also mentioned some additional information that Queerology was up for an hourly award, however leeds pride won like it had done many years at a time, essentially from what I can gather the representative of leeds pride a gay man had won for many years at a time, beating a trans woman on the way to the award, the event that was held clearly didn't understand the privilege a gay cisgender man had on a trans woman, which links to my previous comments to keep in mind about privilege and prejudice when taking future career prospects, because of this trans pride was created as a hub for representation, for trans people alike, other than one other event in England, it is the only other transgender pride event to take place in England.

After this short conversation we each went our separate ways, and Ryan gave me their poster of wharf chambers trans pride Queerology event, Ryan would later email me their schedule and I would email back what days I could essentially work on and which days I had university and was busy on, Overall this allowed me to understand what conversing with a practitioner in the industry about working with them would be like, as well as this, I'd notably seen Ryan at such events as interchangeable bodies at the live art bistro, another connecting thread between LAB and their own work.

ellis log week 5 part 1

Elli's log week five part one
We arrived at Elli's lesson and were greeted by Elli as well as Jess from Live Art bistro, after summarising our weeks so far Jess
told us of how she started out as a university student in leeds beckett, as a first year she came to many performances at
their previous theatre, the practicioners at work started to notice and Jess was recognised by Adam, who was studying in
his third year of leeds beckett university, shortly after the official theatre was knocked down due to budget cuts from
the government, because of this Live Art Bistro was slowly but surely created as Jess finished university, for a while
she was homeless unable to balance the acting life she had as well as a regular life, around this time she took a call
from one of her fellow practitioners and started to work at what would become the liver art bistro, Jess actually
met elli on the grief project as ellie helped jess create a performance in a basement, they had to create all the
lighting and set themselves and struggled with funding for many years, we found later on that the 2nd part of Ellie's
grief project was rendered in complete due to an assortment of items being stolen out of the secondary truck they had,
as well as this it was also a fair so replacing those items would cost her a fortune, however despite this both Elli
and Jess keep on making work to this day.

They marketed and spread themselves using portfolio's much like these, documenting their work and sending it off as aspiring artists, Jess has a portfolio based career, making blogs much like these about the work she creates, as I'm typing this it's made me realise that I myself could use a blog like this in future after university to promote and spread my work to those I have networked with, as well as evidence for CV's and Show reels of my live art work in future.

After hearing about Jess's transformation into the practicioner she is today, Lucy and myself conversed with her about
possibly working at the live art bistro and she suggested I work on the Friday 9th March Performance
 called 'Feline Purrrfect', as well as this I told her I had a very flexible schedule due to the fact
 that I am free on weekends as well as (usually) Tuesday and Wednesday of each week,
 after this Jess made her leave and after a few brief 1 to 1 talks, I told Ellie that I had missed Ryan's previous email,
but replied and tried to re-schedule, I would be meeting on Saturday to amend this error.

This was extremely helpful as now I would have not one, but *two* placements to work on, meaning I would have more evidence for my own work and learning process, not to mention more opportunities and future career paths ahead once I had finished university, it was practical too, as Liver Art Bistro was not far away from where I lived in mean wood, so it was only a short walk away.

After this Elli then brought up her arts council profile and explained that she had to set up an entire user profile,
some important information about this was that you had to essentially explain your performance to the art council,
who the performance was aimed at, gender, race etc, how many people were walking on it, each name of the individuals,
as well as this explanation, a request for funding, as part of this anecdote, a tip she gave was to try shortening words down, if given a grant,
the arts council would send you an offer letter, you would know wether you've been given a grant because it will say offer letter.




This helped with understanding the signs to look out for when getting a grant in the future, an alternatively a foreboding warning for if I didn't get a grant, telling everyone I would work with to pack up their things as the money needed for said performance would not be provided, with this information in advance I now have more foresight to not have this happen, and to be more on top of sorting out arts council funding.






As well as this you need to specify if you want a grant of under 15,000 or over 15,000, if under it
may only take a couple of months, for instance requested in june and coming in september or october, if over it may come
in half a year or so, around  january or february time, so you have to be very prepared in advance, it also saves all the performances you have been given funding for onto the database.


you have gotten emails for funding before in the past, as well as this if you do get the funding
and there is additional left over, spending on something such as a group dinner 'absorbs' the left over money so that
the fund is completely spent.


This allowed me to understand that even if you get the budget given to you, contingency plans on how to spend said budget would be important in the future, and to pay close attention to the money that is spent and isn't spent on each of these, because of this I was both scared and excited for the future, because I knew I could make a lot of work I enjoyed if I worked hard, but that I would also not always have the financial stability that I yearned for in the future, it was a bitter sweet lesson that had to be learned for live art.


 On top of that when requesting how much you want to be given you have to put it down to
the exact digit to get it right, also when predicting audience sizes you have to roughly but realistically estimate
how many audience members you will have coming to your live art.


This step is admittedly going to be hard for me, I have always struggled with mathematics, estimating decimals in money or percentages has always been hard for me, possibly being tutored in some mathematics skills for budgeting and funding could be something I want to invest in, in the future.


 Elli additionally added that when collaborating
with another practitioner always make sure that you connect and have similar and compatible interests in mind.

What this comes down to is being mutually compatible with someone, with similar creative ideas as you, I suppose some of it comes down to taste and others come down to experience in professional practice, it is quite subjective, but essentially researching and having that foresight could be mutually beneficial for some great collaborations in the future.


as well
as this, working on live art could lead to massive amounts of debt, Elli had to take on three jobs including her live
art work, she also was working as a stagecoach adviser and teacher at leeds beckett, so between emailing practicioners,
sorting out funding and arts council details, marketing her performances and keeping up three jobs, Elli is always busy.


I cannot iterate this enough to myself, if I could evaluate anything about myself that is a weakness and what I have to work on *Time Management* is the biggest one, it is something I must overcome in order to become professional but it is also my biggest flaw, keeping up lists, pie charts of how much I should do a day, and creating a weekly schedule should help with this.


she advised us that the fear was a big motivator.

I must add that anxiety can be a driving force behind work, and working under pressure can be beneficial, but self care is too, paying for a mental health day every so often is something I might also want to invest in, in future.


After being sufficientally scared for our futures we headed off to finish lesson and I recieved an email from Ryan saying
that they were free to discuss schedules and working with them as a placement on sunday. Overjoyed with this I responded immediately and thus it was organised, overall I have learned so much about self improvement, budgeting, career, complications of the future and what I personally need, its hard to summarise but this lesson was eye opening and really threw me in the deep end making me understand the bigger picture of my future career much more efficiently.

Elli log week four

Elli's log week four:
We joined the lesson and were welcomed by Elli and Jaye Kearney, we were
sat down on tables of 3, after this we were given sticky notes and told to
put marketing ideas for promoting a performance, some of them included
focus groups, the internet, promoting in universities towards students,
word of mouth, instagram or twitter giveaways etc.

This was important because it allowed us to understand the many different ventures of marketing our own performances after university, the different audiences we'd have to take into account, the different ventures of being online, etiquette for our twitter accounts, and scheduling time to update each of our social media accounts and keep them changing and growing.

then after this we watched her give a power point presentation on funding
it started off with her explaining to make a plan first for marketing,
if there was a company for us to play to our strengths and 'divvy up',
also to give venues a named contact from our group and talk to them
about what you will do and what the venue will do.

This really helped me to understand that emailing and contacting companies, venues and practitioners is such an essential part of working as a live artist, checking my emails at least twice a day as Elli has told me is necessary, and getting back to those emails, twitter updates, marketing, and acting websites is essential, for networking, promoting performances, and raking in an audience.


Jaye continued to explain that we would ask the venue to be honest
about ticket prices, to be realistic and to ask our friends/peers what
they know about the venue. Jaye continued to explain that smaller
budgets focus more on digital work, that smaller venues have
fewer shows and one/two off night stands, as well as the fact
they may have several strands with different levels of involvement.
In comparison bigger venues like the west Yorkshire playhouse, she
explained, have two or more large spaces with longer runs of the same
show, plus in the case of west Yorkshire playhouse, a 'studio'
space for other work, she went on to explain that they have
bigger budgets as well, more reliable on printing and advertising,
also a specialism in plays as 'core' work, not what typical live
artists do.

This put once again into perspective how bigger companies and playhouses may have less focus on live art, where as smaller theatre's like live art bistro maybe in favour to more live art, although at a smaller budget, weighing up the options on pursuit to my creativity and how much salary I would make is something I'd need to research and weigh up the options on in the future.


We then in groups created a timeline of our marketing, me ,charlotte
and Heather worked together to start one, although admittedly we
ended up only getting to the funding from the arts council and
not fully finishing the timeline, I will admit at the time I was
confused about how this all worked, I still have trouble understanding.


This confusion on reflection is due to a lack of a hands on approach in the industry, although I will admit I know a lot more about how all the inner mechanisms of being a live artist works then I ever did back then, I still have a lot to learn though and to put into practice.

Jaye mentioned even she got it wrong sometimes, she advertised
a performance that she thought would be filled with a full audience,
she ended up performing on a day where only people who had helped
working on it had showed up due to lack of promotion.
She went on to explain that with printing out advertisement to
always think about the format, who we were talking to, idiot proof it,
what we would want the reader to do, to spell check it and to spell
check again.


Proper grammar and aesthetic not only in hindsight would attract more of an audience, but also knowing that even a professional out in the live art world could get it wrong helped validate me and others that everybody makes mistakes, but also that with the correct time management, motivation and constant working on emails, budget, marketing, performance, networking , critical analysis and a steady flow of ideas put into action to an end product, we could create a professional career, and hone our craft so to speak.


She also explained that we might want to create separate social media
from our personal ones due to possible scrutinisation, on our
professional social media we would be expected to short visual
pop cultural references to our work, timely responses to enquiries,
to be selective/not clog our timeline, and to favourite and like our
user base, essentially making them feel 'loved'.

This would allow for positive feedback, as well as a back and forth communication with said user base , and to widen our appeal as live artists through the validation of feeling 'loved' by us said artists, important notes I would take on when I will hopefully accumulate a user base of my own.


As well as this to schedule our time on our professional content,
it wouldn't have to be everyday but to keep in mind that content
becomes old  fast. as well as this to create a website, a one stop
place for people to view you and your work, to future proof it,
make it available for those to see on mobile, and to regularly
update it. The last thing she told us to remember is that we are
always competing with the other ways that people choose to spend
their time and money.


The goal was essentially be to attract others and be what they would want to see in their spare time, if we couldn't be the best, most attracting, most interesting, communicating and organised live artists, someone could always go to see another performance by someone else, so we had to be motivated and to keep working on ourselves, self improvement, and perfectionism was the key.

After Jaye left I had a one to one with Ellie explaining that
although I had missed an email from Ryan I emailed them back
and re-arranged a meeting, Ellie reminded me to check my email
on the daily in case I missed anything.


Overall I think that last interaction with Ellie was relevant as that connecting with the marketing and user base communication, really drove home the lesson of being in contact and professional communication with those you want to network with as well as, time managing when you check your email or social media each day, when you print out marketing advertisement, the font used on said advertisement, the time spent selling your ideas to potential venues, marketers, sorting out budgeting, talking out performances with practitioners, your collaborating in, getting it all organised with the arts council and turning your process into a finished product.

Elli's Log Week 3

Elli's log week 3: PAULEEN AND POSSIBLY THE EMAILS
After researching Ryan Morgana, slunglow and the live art bistro over the weekend as Ellie had suggested to me I came back to my lesson with Ellie for a one to one tutorial.

I would like to add that Elli's suggestions of Ryan Morgana and The Live Art Bistro and the Leeds Queer Film Festival were so helpful for me, as well as slunglow, I was warned by Elli at the time to be wary due to the fact that Slunglow was a very masculine and loud environment and that that may conflict with my own interests, as well as this I also researched the Leeds Royal Armoury, after being told about it through critical contexts, they sometimes put on historical performances I figured I could help with prop management or as a drama-turg, this was splendid,  I literally went from having no ideas at all to having tons of them, the next step was for me to really focus on a specific placement or two and apply that into action as well as succession.

after finishing our update on my progress we were told to
practice making professional and unprofessional emails and also to research Pauline Mayers, I
had previously, in lesson, found an an article describing an interview with Pauline Mayers,
it described her early dance career and how she started from tap dancing,
as well as how movement and dance allowed her to open up when she started
off, after this Pauleen would go on to tell us much like the interview
how teachers had a very fixed idea of what dancers 'should' look like
and that Pauleen didn't fit how they perceived dancers to be in their heads.
Pauleen also told us that at around 2011 she retired from dance and moved
onto live art and choreography simply because she was constantly being
told 'no' by the many people she was going to, she had a skillset and
education but she was continually told 'no', because of this she
continued and moved onto other more flexible ventures, she also
explained how hard it was to be a dancer often times being on the dole,
due to the rejection she faced from her skin colour, where as when
she continued onto theatre she found herself working constantly,
and finding more work for herself than before, collaberating
with others and sharing much more ideas.

Pauline mentioned that she liked to experiment in her performances,
much like how in one of her performances she asked everyone to take
a seat on the cushions they had, and a man refused blatantly, so
she simply allowed him to stand, after the performance had
finished and it was done and over, the man came and apologised
to her, only realising the structural prejudices and discrimination,
that she had explained and educated in her performance.
Pauline continued to explain that racism is not simply prejudice
alone, but discrimination that comes from a place of power
to prohibit the rights of people of colour with less power,
she gave an example that someone simply screaming in her face
was prejudice or discrimination, but a train driver not allowing
her on a train , or a bus driver doing the same would be
racism because it comes from a power structure, a systematic
oppression used to enforce discrimination of others with
authority.

in retrospective I must admit that my eyes were opened when
hearing her explain this, and I feel I have a better
understanding on what 'racism' is and my own privilege, this could easily apply to my own future work and placements, my own privilege as a cisgender, white, man will give me privilege into certain jobs where as, for example a black trans woman would have more difficulty in certain work due to structural and political biases (small p politics for their identity and big P for rules put in place to stop or prohibit others because of their identity) its important both in placement and life to use my privilege to help others who have less privilege and to educate myself about racism/sexism/homophobia etc. Not only that but it also showed that in other career choices my identity may be threatened for not looking or acting the right way (although notably less as a white man) such as specific parts of my identity like my Pansexuality and autism could be effected, I took note of this in future analysis of my career after university and placement opportunities

After Pauline left, we continued to work on our emails,
my good email read like for example my email
:"Dear Ryan,
My name is Leo Kilburn from leeds beckett university,
my lecturer Ellie Harrison suggested I get in contact,
I would like to volunteer as an assistant on your Queerology exhibition,
I’ll help out in any way I can and I have art/drawing skills I can provide,
I am also a member of the LGBTQA+ community as well so this exhibition means a lot to me,
I can work for 40 hours but I have a flexible schedule, please get back to me as soon as possible.
Regards,Leo Kilburn".

When showing the beta version of this Elli tweaked my email to make sure that I worded it professionally and courteously, for instance I accidentally spelt Exhibition as expedition, which has a completely different meaning, she quickly corrected that, she also later corrected the ending of the email to instead be "I look forward to hearing from you" so I would not accidentally sound demanding, this taught me that wording and professional language is *so* important when creating emails, to be passive but succinct, to the point, but calm.

My unprofessional email read like:" sup fam, im leo, i need work, so imah be there, byeee :D",the use of an emoticon being especially unprofessional, using such teen lingo as 'fam' and slang words like 'imah' unfit for an email to a practicioner, lacking clear expression and an understanding of what I want and am able to provide in a humble way, an example of being self aggrandising and a frankly, rude attitude if it were a real email as well in hindsight.

Overall this Lesson helped me to learn how my identity impacts future work, email etiquette, privilege and how the inner mechanisms of structural racism,sexism,homophobia can effect or prohibit future career opportunities. 

Elli's log week 2

Elli's log week 2: we were given the chance to give 3 suggestions that we had researched previously on our time off of lesson and as well as that to expand on our work
After researching my 3 placement suggestions the week before I had come
up with Yafta, Yorkshire Television and acting up north.


Initially I chose these on impulse, Yorkshire television for possible behind the scenes film and tv activities,helping on set, camera work, editing, lighting, props, etc.


Acting up north I thought I could do some kind of organised contemporary sessions, and YAFTA I honestly didn't have much information, my biggest weakness here was a lack of research and an error in tie management, at the time I was stressed and admittedly at a loss.

I later admitted to Elli, I felt anxious and didn't really have a clue about what I wanted to do for my placement, in retrospective this was the best decision I could have made, I've learned that sometimes reaching out to tell others that you need a helping hand can be the best decision you could make, its essentially using the resources and privilege you have as a student and seeking guidance, I've since learned that after university it is a lot harder to find this information so using the tools around me, is the best action I could have taken at this point.

 after words we
were put into a long line based off what theatre or studio we thought
would have roughly the biggest audience which we thought would have
the smallest audience spanning from lab to disney and universal studios.
we were also given one to one tutorials where I admitted to Elli that
I was nervous about this module and wasn't sure what to do,Elli suggested
to research slunglow as well as a few other companies and I felt much
more secure.


I believe this was important to put into spectrum the big picture of potential collaborators and massive organisations, from a local theatre group, to a company as big as Disney, this helped me to know what was more accessible and what was very much a big branded company that would take years of work to get into, which in process of elimination and in hindsight really helped me to narrow down the placements near me and what I wanted, it also helped me to understand what was practical and what frankly was unrealistic


After this we were told to write down a list of our best traits and
tell them to each other in opposing lines, I put that I was punctual,
passionate, optomistic and creative, we then were told to do the same
but with our biggest flaws, I once again said that I was impatient,
disorganised,anxious, and stressed easy, afterwards we were then told
to research our placements more and to bring in more thorough suggestions
next time


My overall learning from this and outcome I would take from this would be to take the most efficient, organised, professional, and mentally best version of myself to placement, its like they say, the first step to working on your problems is to acknowledge them, I believe this activity helped me become self aware of my flaws, as well as this this it helped me to plan ahead to overcome my weaknesses in my learning experience and personality, so that in the future I would have the best most organised placement experience.

ellis log week one: INTRODUCTION LESSON

Elli's log week one: INTRODUCTION LESSON
We started the lesson off by being introduced to the module by Ellie,
she told us that we would have to organise finding our placements on
our own as well as our time management, and I was quite anxious and
stressed because of this, she also gave us our module hand book papers,
and because of the fact that the papers were un clipped our first task,
was to organise the papers in order and successfully clip them together,
luckily we were all successful and after we had finished Ellie and
all of us read the handbook together.


I believe this would later help us on our organisational skills as
well as teaching us first hand to be self sufficient in a hands on approach,
this could be applied to hands on tasks that may come and go on the practical
side of the placement.


As we read the module handook we soon found out that the placement
would be negotiated by us, with communication of course with our
tutor Ellie, and a regional or national partner from the placement
being involved as well, as well this we would arrange our
placement, email the placement and organise the schedule of
when we would be working with that placement as well, also
we would document our process and were expected to lead
and conduct our own research for these placements and
our documentation.


In relation to what I had learned from this lesson this was important because it put into perspective how much of the placement was on us it also helped me realise that documentation of the entire module was key to my study and would help me later down the line.


As well as this we were expected to be attending all lessons
so as to document the happenings in each of them and possibly
apply what we had learned into working on our placements and
our documentation of future work on those placments, our
learning outcomes included:"Have engaged with, and reflected upon,
a BA (Hons) Performance related work-based placment" "Be able
to document an understanding of the requirements and expectations
of the industry in terms of skills and standards" "Be able to
demonstrate concise and accurate communications skills both
verbally and in a written context" and "Be able to evaluate
concisely the enterprising knowledge you have developed and
identify your future learning needs".


In relation to our placements this meant we would have to have engaged and reflected whilsty working with our placements and regional contacts,as well this to engage and understanding of requirements and expectations of the industry could apply to email etiquette, turning up on time, keeping a professional attitude when working, keeping a steady work schedule and good time management, identifying future learning needs could also relate to ways I need to improve my study, how to further network with companies and practitioners, what is the best version of myself to present to a placement or on future work and just an over all knowledge of the big picture in the live art community as well as what work would be best for me after university and what kind of live art I would want to make.


After this we were given our Module Timetable
spanning from the week of January 29th to the week of
the 23rd of April when the module would finish, we were then
given our assessments which were 1.a weekly written
reflection of our experiences much like this log.
And 2.a critical evaluation of our experience on
our placement, we were given the assessment of
giving a verbal presentation, which would
require us to create and deliver a 10 minute presentation,
and answer questions based upon our learning experiences
on the module.


This would help my learning experience overall because a strength I have is with a more hands on approach of being able to communicate my ideas in person, rather than in text, just because of overall structure.


After finishing the module Handbook we were given the homework
of finding 3 placement suggestions and having to give reasons
for each of why we would want to work on those placements.