Preface:
Speaking truth to power is hard, dangerous and risky! It’s scary for me to do but I feel it is necessary. It can be perceived as an attack. I don’t wish for that. I hope and trust that each decision maker/ gatekeeper/ funder who may read this will meet this with curiosity and with the understanding that I am aware of the challenges, your challenges, our interconnected and interdependent challenges. I live with my challenges and this is what I am giving voice to.
You can try to take the girl out of the sector but you can’t take the art out of the girl OR
What Would Christo Do?
If you don’t know who Christo and Jean-Claude are, have a look here. The particular point I’d like to make about their art is that Christo funded all their realized projects by selling his drawings. He was a commercially successful artist who used the money from that part of his art making to power the large works! Many of their works took years, sometimes decades to be realized. Like me, Christo was born in Bulgaria. When I was a wee kid I grew up with posters of their monumental works on the corridors of the student flats in Sofia. Looking back on it – perhaps that is how my art dreaming and making started.
Ok, here we go!
The other morning — within 10 minutes two hard emails arrived! What a double whammy! – A no to funding of the next project for which we have worked so hard to pull great partners together and some actual cash; and a delay of three months for another funding decision which has the capacity to enable some stability for three years. My heart sinks, my body slides off the chair and I have no words. I feel tired, I feel very tired. I feel shattered by this! Again!
These conditions are not the ones I signed up for — my hope and faith for the work are in the hands of others who are simply saying — we have no money. I mean, what is the point of a funding body without much in the way of funding (compared with the ask) – who and what is that serving? We all know that people’s lives are enriched by culture, every day, all the time.
I am left frustrated at the game that is being played at the expense of the survival of the arts worker in Scotland. It starts to feel like some sort of cruel game of fudging about – will I, won’t I (give you the money)?
So, I turn my head to the recently finished embroidery! For reassurance, I think!
I have spent the majority of the last eight months with the mantra Trust In Yourself, Trust In The Work. The mantra has and continues to be true for me – I trust both these things explicitly. I trust myself and the work we make explicitly. I know that what we do is good and could be perceived as ‘dangerous’ – we change, shapeshift and navigate cracks and we take risks, we innovate and experiment and through our persistence we have survived thus far, we pop up every now and then with a new thing that challenges and delights.
I trust all that but I don’t trust the system. The system and sector in which I am experiencing xenophobia, ableism, sexism, classism and whatever might be the word for anyone basing themselves in a rural location away from visibility because my neurodivergence needs it – I don’t know if there is a word for it, but that!
Because I know all this – I am less angry with it but I feel disempowered and very disappointed. It’s almost like a deep lack of care.
In my mind I talk to Christo about it. I ask him – what propelled him when permissions for their projects were rejected? He responds to me – I had no other choice but to keep drawing! I nod and I say – me too, I have no other choice but to keep drawing. Art as survival!
When in 2021 I made a sign with the words- Care Is Multidirectional, I committed myself to look at each and every individual with care no matter their position in the sector. The spaces such as FIELD which we carefully craft, curate, hold, produce and fundraise for are exactly that. I have spent more time giving time and care to individuals in institutions who sometimes feel threatened by the power of the artist, and by extension by FIELD itself, rather than recognising that dialogue must enable both parties to feel safe, on an equal footing to express themselves truthfully and meet people where they are with curiosity and empathy — because we are not in competition with each other – we are all running our own races – my intersection of background and lived experience will be different from yours so to put us on the same track is stupid. Anyhow! I remain committed to that sentiment.
I tell Christo about FIELD and he in his strong eastern european accent responds: That’s awesome! And you paid everyone? And I say, yeah, we did and we do. And he says again, That’s awesome!
When earlier this year I heard loudly the silence I experienced from the sector in relation to having 40/40 selected at Tanzmesse, it nearly broke me. I felt ashamed that I am not popular, I felt ashamed that only such a small number of close peers and orgs cared to say Congratulations. Not only did I hear that silence loudly – I also heard: We don’t recognise you, You are not welcome here, You don’t belong here. And so I go back to my den and I feel embarrassed, like a little kid bullied at the playground. And I was that kid.
I tell Christo about that and he has no sympathy for me — Chin up, You have to have thick skin, They push you down and you gotta get up again he says. I am tired, I say. He doesn’t respond, he just looks at me.
A little time has now passed and I am beginning to see the situation from another angle – Christo helped with this…and a real live conversation with Jo Verrent one afternoon when it really got very dark! (Thank you, Jo.) I see it differently now! Who should be embarrassed and ashamed – me or those who went out of their way to disable me? Now, don’t get me wrong — they don’t mean to! The system doesn’t mean to – it’s just the effect it actually has.
So often we are having to make projects happen on so little money. Nobody in a funder role advocates for it, but projects frequently over-deliver, without resource for everyone to be paid properly, because there isn’t time or capacity to apply for a next stage, a next time, another attempt.
So often we make decisions about whether to take opportunities which don’t pay for themselves – I mean look at touring in the UK… Every venue knows that the fee they may offer is only a tiny fraction of the costs so it’s on the artist again to go write the funding bids, and obtain all the tour dates — it’s so much work going largely unpaid. And even that, only if you have the capacity or know how to even go for that cash.
And of course, increasingly, everywhere, so few shows get to tour. Even though I’ve been really fortunate, and taken 40/40 to audiences in 19 venues around the UK, there are other projects which haven’t happened this year, and won’t now happen at all. Audiences I wanted to experience our work, and won’t get to, or at least not for years. And so much time and energy and creative preparation goes into those abandoned projects, and each rejection adds to my sense of a failed creative ambition. You see how one NO is not just another NO, it’s another NO which can have long lasting detrimental consequences. This is what I call – systemic failure on a large scale!
So, so,so,so….
So, I think – do I withdraw from this once in a lifetime opportunity (because Tanzmesse is just that), or do we try our hardest to see how it could be possible to make it happen in the hope that the opportunity will pay for itself sometime in the future. What would you do?
I talk to Christo about it and he said – You have to make that work. It took me over two decades to get permission to wrap the Reichstag. I am not trying to wrap the Reichstag, I am just trying to do one show. Christo looks at me, smiles and replies My Reichstag, your show – it’s all the same! He is right!
For months I felt ashamed that we did Tanzmesse without funding support and now I feel that I should be the last person holding any shame — I was the person who made all that happen despite all that. And yes, it’s shattering!
I tell Christo about how I walked on the stage at Tanzmesse and it was so quiet. There was silence. And you know what Christo said? He said, They came to hear your story, that’s why they were silent – they came to listen. I smile. He knows what I want to hear so I just smile. And my mind wonders into thoughts of what it is like to be heard and to be seen – what rare joy that is. That rare joy when I feel seen!
Shame and embarrassment are so powerful and in the capitalism system we operate it has led us to believe that we must be successful at all times in order to feel valuable and valued. I am guilty of this too! More likes, more followers, more, more, more whatever! The system tells us that failure is a dirty word and we must not share our failures! And so I am a little bit worried that people will view this little blog through that lens and I am here to say – I don’t want that. Because this isn’t failure I write about – I write about some challenges which helps me to articulate why the system is broken and how, at best, serves very few already privileged.
Me and Christo talk about that a lot. He tells me that it was better in the seventies and eighties and nineties. And I am like – But I am alive now. And he says, I am sorry my dear, I can’t help with that!
I really don’t need you to feel sorry for me — I am not here for that. To feel sorry for me would be to feel sorry for all of us artists – and that is pointless!
I want you to feel empowered to empower me! I want you to want to empower us all! I want you, Mr. Minister to want to put your money where your mouth is – I want you to believe as much as I do and more!
Right now, it feels like we are waiting! I feel that I am waiting for someone to decide my faith. I don’t want that – I have my intersection of migration, gender, heritage, class already doing some of that – from here – I want to make my own choices!
Choices! I know – what a privilege that is!
I talk to Christo about choices. And he tells me – It’s all choices my dear. I chose to flee and never to return. I ask about that- why never return? He doesn’t say!
I want us to think about how to challenge the system constructively. Because it is not serving the artists – the very workers at the front line, meeting the audience and creating alternate realities and mirrors for a better, more equitable world of delights, joys and truths and challenges!
Because the system consistently relies on us to keep making no matter what – and we do it. We do it because we can’t help ourselves – it’s what we know best, like the water we drink and the food we eat – it’s essential to us to keep making and keeping being artists….but for how long and for how many of us are still standing?
Christo pipes up! Art will never die my dear. I did and you will but the art you have made and the art will make until you die – that will live on…in small and big ways! In memories if nowhere else!
I start to cry! Not least because I don’t much like recognising that the system will continue to have its wicked ways, it will continue to disable me and BUT I need to choose how much of my energy is spent trying to get the system to listen and how much energy I am going to spend in making the art. And for me — I know the answer!
You can try and take the girl out of the sector but you can’t take the art out of the girl OR What Would Christo Do?
