Our Experience: Getting into the Creative Arts

On Sunday 5 July, Artswork hosted United in Art, a free online workshop festival curated by our Youth Board. United in Art was designed to widen access to creative practice, focusing on a range of skills and creative approaches that the Youth Board felt would be especially inspiring for young people, while also showcasing the work of artists representing voices from the margins. The day concluded with a conversation between three artists: photographer and videographer Rosie Hadridge-Powell, multi-disciplinary artist and musician Cleo Savva, and visual artist and theatre-maker Nicolette Carter, chaired by Kaia Allen-Bevan from Youth the Gap CIC.

This is the second of four articles edited from a transcript of their brilliant conversation, which the Youth Board wanted to publish to widen access to their inspiring ideas.

Creativity is not just an industry… creativity is an action.

Cleo:

For me, the most important things are the actionable ones. So, we can say a lot of things, we can think a lot of things, but actually it’s the doing which is what brings about the change or what brings about the creation. So, creativity – the actioning of creativity – is like the doing bit of all of the things that we dream and imagine and conceptualise and what is in your mind as an artist or a human or, you know, any living being. And the doing allows for the process, which is for me, the most exciting part of being a creative person.

Actions are choices, right? So, when you do things, you choose to do them. And we live in a world where all of our existences are inherently political, we’re all affected by the kind of things that exist in the universe, whether they’re things that have been created by us or for us or are put upon us. But for me, making art or making music or whatever creative endeavour or whatever the kind of medium of your creativity is, the making of it is the thing.

Somebody asked me once, ​‘What’s the point of artists, when you could be doing anything to help people?’ James Baldwin talks in one of his essays, I think, about how art doesn’t accept things at face value. So, you don’t have to go along with these things that you’re told. And I found that the process of making has often allowed me to question, to challenge, to dream all of the things that, you know, if we’re talking about this in a social justice context are integral to the movement towards collective liberation. Artists have a huge responsibility and a huge role in that.

And all of those things require action. So, in order to be able to make change and be a part of a much wider ongoing change, we have to choose to engage in those actions. And that often involves doing things collectively together…

Rosie:

I think for my role as in any project that I do, I spend a lot of time thinking about what my approach is and what my feeling is towards whatever the project is. And then I also collaborate with a lot of people as well. So, I get to hear their points of view and how they might want to be represented either in the photos or in the filmmaking.

And for me, working with lots of different people, having shared experiences, you connect so much with each other, even if it’s for one small moment. Or specifically thinking about theatre work and watching a performance – being in the same room with other people, feeling one thing and there being a connection when you leave that space or on a shoot and you’ve spent hours working on something and you can you can really bond with people from such a short amount of time. So yeah, for me, it’s about connecting with others, but also then recognising what feelings are brought up for myself. What am I thinking when I’m editing stuff or days later, what am I thinking about shoots or the people that I’ve worked with. So yeah, sometimes you don’t know how you feel until you start doing something.

Cleo:

I feel like for me, it’s about the connection that I make with people that I make with, but also with wider communities and also with myself. So every time I make something with someone or I co-create, like there’s a bit of me that definitely grows and there’s a bit of me that changes. And I think it’s (even if it doesn’t always feel that way) always for the better.

I’ve communicated with people who before I made something with them and made that choice to be able to work out how we’re going to communicate with each other, I would never have been able to communicate with. Maybe that was because of language or because of disability or because of whatever it is that makes us not able to connect and communicate, which often is the world that we live in. In that actually choosing to find a connection, it makes you grow. 

The cliche thing is, you know, music and art and everything, it connects us all. But it really does, because it allows us to talk about things that maybe we can’t talk about in words, or it allows us to explore things in ways together that we couldn’t necessarily explore in the wider world, or especially living in this current political climate where all of our freedoms are hugely scrutinised and there’s so much censorship, in the industry, as well as in the wider world. The role of artists is to show ​‘Well, actually, we have this whole other universe that we can talk about this stuff that we can resist, that we can challenge, and that we can disrupt as well’. That isn’t under these existing universes which are kind of being censored. I mean, people will always try, but we just imagine, you know, and so the connection means that we can collectively imagine. 

And if we can collectively imagine something out of nothing, then we can collectively imagine a future as well.

Rosie:

Coming from my point of view, documenting stuff within the creative industry, we’re documenting moments of time. And that’s historically how we know what has happened. A bit like digging up bones and stuff. But in terms of paintings, photographs, music, all of that kind of stuff – it’s documenting a moment in time of how that one person was feeling or how a collective was feeling. And I think without that, then we’re not heard and things can be erased. And I think for me, when I’m working with people, I think ​‘Am I doing this justice?’ Whatever this is that I’m filming or photographing. Because after that live performance, what is left is, essentially photos, film, you know, scripts, all of that kind of stuff. So I have to feel ​‘Am I doing this justice?’ And I think that’s why it’s important, because if none of us document any of this stuff, future people won’t know about it. So yeah, for me, it’s about being seen and heard.