As the decade comes to an end, I look back mainly to this year but also to what I have achieved in the past 10. The past 10 years were cracking- mega tough and mega brilliant. I left London, I left my ex husband, I embraced the unknown and the unknown finally lead me north and I have been enjoying north since I made the big move three years ago. I have been with the same darling for ten years and that feels really special. I have been so fortunate to work with some top theatre and dance babes and I love what that brings with each project. I have made some real friends and I have been so saddened by losing some of those I thought were my friends when I left London. After years of trying to fit in, I decided that will never happen so I began to embrace not fitting in and especially foregrounding my culture and language.
I started the decade completely broke, having little to eat, crying every day and while I carry some of that with me every day, I have more to eat and I am very happy to be sharing what I have with family and friends.
2019 has been a very busy year for me, the busiest I have ever had spanning all three of my favourite things- Two Destination Language, designing with / for brilliant artists and showing my visual art work. So, here is my year in numbers!
I designed 5 shows with collaborators/artists other than Two Destination Language.
My designs reached audiences in Ireland (with 2 different shows), China, Japan, Canada, Germany, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In royalties I received £510 for one show and £0 for another despite it being written into my contract and it touring the world. (Don’t think about saying- Why not chase it? I will tell you why- chasing money is easy for some and rather hard for me, again, wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to chase those royalties!)
The work I have designed reached 8855 live audience members.
My design fees for the 5 shows total £7900.
That is £0.89 of my work for each of those 8855 audience members.
My designs for Declining Solo are in a group exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and this year alone, live audience members are around 18,000. I have spent £734 of my own money towards this exhibition and it’s damn worth it.
I designed 2 Two Destination Language shows, both premiering in 2020, so watch this space! More about that below…
I had 1 solo exhibition featuring 101 drawings, prints, paintings and objects.
The exhibition reached more than 3,600 live audience members.
I received a £5,000 artist fee for the exhibition
The exhibition costs were £1,475
I sold 3 works during the exhibition and another 3 at other points in the year
Total sales for the year are £1354.50
I performed Fallen Fruit 29 times this year, my performance fees total £5,000.
I performed Manpower once totalling £250
I performed Lone Wolves as work in progress 4 times, totalling £750.
I saw 51 shows this year- dance, theatre, live art and I went to 1 gig. Yes, I saved up to see Bjork! I paid for 43 of those shows totalling £620. I too don’t have the go and see budget which so often programmers tell me is the thing that stops them seeing (more) work.
I shadowed 2 large scale productions with my design hat on. Both shows were interesting projects. One made me feel like despite my humble working class, unprivileged and unconnected migrant background I could make it, the other one was an absolute disaster in that respect, an affirmation that I will never make it because of my background and lack of London-based power-agent bullshit-bonanza.
I spent £1,620 on travel to meet programmers, directors, i.e people who may give me/us jobs/gigs. I can’t calculate how much of that time and expense may come off- maybe sometime in the future a project will come to live to cover that.
My total fundraising towards personal projects is £13,560 from which I paid 7 artists.
Participants in the 3 workshops I ran this year total 35 young artists, my workshop fees total £800.
So, there we have it – my total live audiences in 2019 are 30,455. THIRTY THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED and FIFTY FIVE THOUSAND. My earnings will be about £24k that is before my expenses and of course pre tax! It may seem like little to you but for me 2019 has been a phenomenal year in my calendar!
First up in 2020 is
Fault Lines in February alongside Drawing Fault Lines throughout February then Lone Wolves at the end of February!
Come see us! The first drink is on me!
