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.
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