On sacrifice, opportunity, bureaucracy and bringing about change

Susan Kempster’s work ‘Black Widow’ was showcased as part of this year’s Resolution, The Place’s annual festival for emerging artists. Amongst other themes the piece tackles the issue that dance artists do very little dancing, but lots of other work. It is part of our mission to enable artists to grow artistically and to help them understand and be efficient with all the other work they need to do to make their career work. Therefore we wanted to hear more about Susan’s ideas.

Susan Kempster and Nicholas Minns in ‘Black Widow’

Sixth network meeting for professional development

Value your work and empower yourself – meeting led by Konstantina Skalionta and Lucia Schweigert

At our sixth professional development meeting we talked about the fact that often emerging choreographers take unpaid or underpaid opportunities to show their work. While we believe there should be adequate payment, for this meeting we decided to work with the current reality and explored how, under the given circumstances, you can make sure you receive what you need and feel respected and valued at all times when accepting such opportunities.

Advice and assurance: an interview with MonixArts’ Monica Nicolaides

Monica Nicolaides. Photographer: Teresa Wilson (2015)

Monica Nicolaides very generously shared her time and experience with us as a guest speaker at our most recent professional development meeting about Grants for the Arts at Siobhan Davies Dance Studios. You will be able to read up on it soon. We asked her about her projects, how she works, and if she could give any final advice for those wanting to progress as choreographers.

You can read all about MonixArts here. Scroll down and you will also find their contact details and links to Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and Instagram and more ways to keep up to date with MonixArts.

Expanding your art

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to sit in on some creative industry talks as a media volunteer for Zealous X – an arts festival featuring musicians, designers, actors, painters and many more.

The panel discussions seemed to naturally circulate around the idea of collaboration and education within the creative industry. Looking back, there were several points made that can be used by anyone in the arts, so with our third network meeting coming up it seems appropriate that I at least pose some of the opinions and questions brought up in hopes of continuing the discussion and getting us all thinking about our decisions within the eclectic industry of art.