Just Round the Corner
This September, I rolled* out of bed and walked less than 2 minutes to work. Through the working morning of Paignton dawn, I walked round 3 corners and into a magical creative space. This definitely needs celebrating! In the centre of a grockle holiday-maker heaven, there is a plane of glass dividing the business-as-usual from radical arts, creative community and workshop. It is up to Filament/WideOpen to find a link to ensure these two worlds communicate, but there is also another world in this mix. Maybe the most important to the organisations mentioned, the people, the locals, the community of Torbay. We live, sleep, play and work in our UNESCO Geo-park** – the rock around us speaks to us, it is our culture – I am part of this community, we are here all year round, not just cheap summer deals for a break away from where ever city folk want to escape from.
Bouncing Off the Walls – A YES from ACE
We did it, we did it! I cannot describe just how ecstatic Jen and I were when reading the ACE outcome letter – elevated even more when we phoned Squeeze Box artists to let them know this fantastic news. The sense of relief was quickly washed over by utter excitement. The simple fact that we can dream again rather than wade through engagement numbers, quality assurance, buzz words in character culls, etc, is one of the best feelings in the world. Maybe to help paint the image of why my smile did not leave my face all evening, let me take you through the agonising moments of receiving the email saying a decision was made, to me having to log on to Grantium to get the actual outcome. We were going to break for tea and I just happened to look back at my desktop to see the email pop up and we both.... froze.... looked at each other. back to the screen... Jen’s excitement, my panic, our trepidation, my disappointment, Jen’s exhilaration, our terror.... back to the screen. All thoughts of hunger had truly left us! In the intervening time from finding out there was outcome to finding out what the result was, I was muttering: “at least we will know that we haven’t got the funding”, “we can start planning another application in earnest now”, “I will feel happier knowing for sure that we didn’t get the funding rather than hoping – it’s hope that kills you” … that is how utterly convinced I was that we weren’t going to be awarded the grant! We had to open it there and then and screams and squeals of delight followed by happy tears, hugs, thanks and some very high-pitched phone calls……………
A To-Do-List……. of Sorts
I am quickly discovering that I’m not very good at to-do lists – I say quickly, it’s probably more like glacier rock speed! I have had five or so years of ‘professional’ work life and three years of degree to discover this…and for the great homo sapiens male brain that is sitting in my skull, admitting that I’m not very good at something doesn’t come at great pace. Furthermore, I was even allocated a mentor/professional sorter when I was studying, at great expense of the Further Education establishments. However, with the most exciting adventures coming up and inspiring activities being set, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to remember what I’m supposed to be doing, what order I need to do something in, or indeed, why I need to do the thing in the first place.
A Thank-you Letter/A Love Letter – Addressed to Many
Dear Squeezy Team (for that is what we are called now courtesy of Care Centred brilliant Shelley – the work producer)The most amazing week has flown by, in fact, the most joyful and perfect project has zoomed past…. From the excitement we all shared through the build-up, to the magical making process and each emotional performance. Coming together the care we have for each other allowed our creativity to flow so beautifully. Over many reflection sessions, I question how we can figure out just how the Squeeze Box journey has been so joyful, full of laughter and happiness, and yet super productive – the epitome of process! One of many fond memories I have is walking into MakeTank on performance day and being astounded as to how this team has transformed an empty space into colour, depth, engagement, excitement, quality and so much more, in just a couple of days… then thanking my lucky stars I have another whole day in the company of you all.
We Workshopped
As part of the epic adventure which is Squeeze Box 23, I have been so fortunate to work with an amazing applied creative team to deliver conversation-based workshops in Manchester. After seeing on social media that Dr Tony Gee's (with co-author Warren Linds) Workshop: The Art of Creative Inquiry has been released, their book on the magic of workshops, it feels apt to share with you my reflections and learning from time spent in an extraordinary creative space with brilliant creators. These workshops were designed to be a devising/research mechanism to share practise and to learn from the disabled community – to add weight to the voice amplification in Squeeze Box and to learn from the lived experience of disabled people living in a city, feeding their experiences back to the wider communication. The weekend however totally transcended this; a reminding (if one ever needed to be reminded) that the art of workshop is a unique and powerful process in itself, not an add-on, nor a parallel process. It is rather a performance/journey/creative expression that probably can’t be matched by any individual artform or platform. Thank you so much to Longsight art space, Chi and Chris, the artistic team, and of course the participants.
And Just Like That, We are Back
That was so joyful! We zoomed together, marking the first creative activity of Squeeze Box 23 and it was worth everything. The agonising character cutting, the squeezing Squeeze Box into ACE guidelines and sometime frustrating questions, the ‘thanks for a strong application but we are not able to fund your project at this time’ from Jerwood, the to-ing and fro-ing from partners and the general head scratching over budgets. Not like some of that wasn’t exciting, meaningful and engaging (and the process and feed-back from Jerwood was immensely useful from an eventual ACE yes!), it is just difficult to compare the application process with the nourishing and energy-boost of that one Zoom!
An Almost Out-of-Body Reflection
The 15th September was a truly magical, transformative, joyful and creative evening. Aided by the fact that we were discussing the potential conclusions to the content we were sharing to an invited intimate audience/outside eyes 5 minutes before we began, there was a powerful balance between improvisation and structure. From the feedback we received, a lot of the Squeeze Box aims and objectives came across in the sharing and we are so excited to use the learning from the 15th in exploring new ways to develop Squeeze Box. After our critical friends arrived, we explained, in an informal chat, that this will be an open devising session and we encouraged the invitees to roam around the space soaking in different perspectives and feelings. The space itself was a barn divided into two rooms – one we had lights on and one was kept dark except for the projections. What follows is an abstract, distant, almost out-of-body reflection of the journey of that evening: