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.
No comments:
Post a Comment