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 first 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.

Creative careers aren’t linear

Kaia:

I think there’s a lot of, I guess, myth busting around creative careers in general, around it not being just this linear line that everyone follows and you go to uni and then next week – you get a job. But actually, it’s a whole squiggle line in its progression, because that’s the whole beauty of shaping and moving and developing alongside your craft. So, can I invite each of you to talk a bit about your routes into your current working life in the industry?

Rosie:

I did a performance and visual art course at uni, although I was always interested in performing arts and photography, whether that was taking photos of friends’ bands when I was at school or being in a youth theatre group.

But when I went to uni, every project that we had, I always seemed to lean towards documenting it or taking photographs or doing film work around whatever the brief was, which then I got used to doing for my peers.

And then whilst I was at uni, I also started working with a few local people in the industry, theatre makers, that kind of people, and I basically fell into it in a very lovely way. And I think my eyes were opened then to what I was able to do. And I was kind of a bit of a ​‘yes’ person.

So, opportunities would come and I’d be like, yeah, I can do that. I think I’ll give it a go. So that’s how I gained experience. And one thing led to another. And I just started working on more and more projects, different projects. And then eventually sort of found my niche, which was mainly to do with grassroots queer performance arts in Brighton.

Nicolette:

I’m a multimedia artist. And I think I would say I love to make things and I would call myself a problem solver and a storyteller. And problem solving comes into all aspects of creative arts because you want to make something that you don’t know how to do. And I would say to those of you, you know, who are just starting out, I’m sure you have visions of what you’d like to make and you think, how on earth am I going to do that? But keep working, keep practicing, keep learning and you will get there. 

I’m going to tell you a bit about where I am now and then what’s more relevant to you, how I started pre-internet, pre-social media, but there’s still quite a lot of things in common with the current way of getting into art.

I’m with a collective of artists called Skylark Galleries. We exhibit in a gallery on the South Bank and we also do shows in other venues. At the moment, I’m exhibiting with them and I’m also exhibiting at a National Trust property with Oxford Sculptors group, which is in Grey’s Court.

If you haven’t got role models, it can be quite difficult. I was the first person in my family to try to be an artist. And in fact, I was the first person in my family to get a degree of any sort. So, I think finding role models is really important. My best friend was going to do a Foundation course and I said, what’s that? Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I’d done A level art, but I didn’t know what to do next. So, from hearing about it, I checked it out, and that was brilliant for me. And I went to West Surrey College of Art and Design, which is now called the University of the Creative Arts. And why it was perfect for me was it had a photography department, it had a film department, it had an animation department, it had sculpture, textiles, glass, ceramics. I did a Foundation course where you try out all sorts of different things. I did some animation, I did some graphics, I did some textiles, and that stood me in really good stead because I’m not in a box, I’m not just a painter, I’m someone who makes things. 

And my particular interest as I’ve got older has been theatre making and all those things, being able to make costumes, being able to paint scenery. I’ve done animation and that’s really helped me with script writing and imagining how people might move around a space. So, what I would say is don’t just pigeonhole yourself off. 

When I left art college, I was like, ​‘I’m going to be an artist. Oh, how do I do that?’ So, I was painting in my dad’s garage. I was working in an off licence and then running over the road working in a gallery in the afternoon. I thought, hang on a minute, this isn’t going to work long term. So, then I did a PGCE – a one-year teacher training postgraduate course. And I really didn’t want to be a teacher. I wanted to be an artist, but actually it was one of the best things I could have done, because teaching part time gave me a lot of flexibility. So, I might do some supply teaching, and I might work on a project or I worked two days a week and then that gave me the rest of the time in my studio. I started off in secondary teaching, but I felt like it was too draining of my creativity. So, I got into special needs and primary school teaching, and that is about the most creative thing you can do. And I got to teach art, I got to write my own productions, I got to do music. I think having an income that was stable gave me that opportunity to make what I wanted to make. It’s very difficult to get funding if you want to work on a project, getting public funding is really difficult and really competitive. But if you can find other ways of funding your own work, that is a really good way forward. 

And I would say to myself now, why did you think it was not a good idea to do teaching? Because it’s what’s given me the opportunity to do all the other things that I wanted to do and I’ve learned so much. But I think you can sort of think ​‘I am the artist and I’m not going to have any other job’. But you soon find that other artists perhaps work in a café or actors do dance teaching or there’s a lot of people who support their creativity in different ways. So that’s quite an interesting, when you’re thinking about a job, think about something with flexibility. 

I thought it’d be quite interesting for you to hear how I joined the galleries and the groups that I’m with. And it was literally by walking into place and saying, ​‘How do I exhibit with you? Do you take on new artists? This is a great show. Who are you? Where are you? How can I get involved?’ I really did put myself out there. So, when I moved to London, pre-internet, pre-social media, there was Time Out magazine and another one, Artist Newsletter. So, I’d look up the listings, get a map, look up on the A to Z how to get there by the tube and I would literally go to somewhere with galleries and I’d walk in and I’d say, ​‘Do you take on new artists? You’ve got art on the walls. Do you have exhibitions?’ And I’m an incredibly shy person, but I was just so determined. So that’s what I was going to do. Really, making connections. Connections are so important. Get out there, meet people, get experience, go to the theatre, find out from other people how they did it. 

My current absolute love is I’m writing and producing for the theatre, and I got into that from doing school productions, and I used to write shows for 50 children. But I always wanted to do professional shows, working with actors, professional actors and musicians. So, I’ve been working with musicians, I’ve been writing and composing songs, they’ve been arranging them. It’s got an absolutely fantastic musician, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne. He’s on the radio quite a lot. And I met him by going to see a show that he was in and then I talked to him afterwards. I said, ​‘Oh, I don’t suppose you’d be interested in arranging some music’. So, I suppose what I’m saying is…

So, I just say if you’ve got a passion for the arts, you may not know exactly what aspect of it is. I thought I wanted to be an animator, but I actually wanted to be a playwright, but there was a connection between the two, but I found out a lot by doing animation.

So just dive in there and enjoy it. That’s what I would say. 

Cleo: 

There’s a lot of multis and codes in my bio because I do a lot of different things and I do them often collectively. So, all of the jobs that I do and all of the things that I do, they never had a pathway. You can’t apply for them. They’re not like a job role that you can just sign up for online.

They’re all things that I accidentally found myself in or found myself in them through working with different people or doing different things. And a lot of the things that I do, and probably the reason that I’m an artist or a creative, to be honest, is because when I was a young person, I had a bit of a rough time. I was a bit naughty, and I was in receipt of a lot of care. A lot of things, including youth clubs and stuff like this. And so, when I became an older young person, I kind of stayed in that and grew up just slightly changing my roles within it. So, somebody that was in receipt of a lot of care to then somebody that was sharing and giving and also learning and making loads of mistakes and growing and changing.

For me – my values really – I’m a person first before I’m an artist, before I am a sibling, before I’m a carer, a teacher. Whatever the label I carry, I’m a human, I’m a person before all of that. And so for me, all of the values that I choose to live my life by don’t only exist in my art and in my creative practice but exist like for me as a person first. But it means that for me, my practice is very deeply rooted in co-creation. I’ve realised actually throughout my creative journey so far (I’m only 31) so I feel like I’m still very much at the beginning of my journey – I realised that making collectively and what co-creation actually is and what it actually means to me, however many people that you co-create with, is based on values.

And they’re based on mutually agreed ones. So it’s not my values or just somebody else’s or some prescribed ones by an organisation, but ones that we’ve actually collectively decided together that support all of us in that space and for everybody’s needs to be met. So that if people have different needs or different ways of understanding or needing to process information or do things, that we actually then lift everybody up, to be able to co-create on a level that means it’s equitable for everybody. And so, whatever I’m doing, whether I’m working, you know, I work in a lot of different spaces like carceral settings, so that’s like prisons and like hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and spaces like this. I work a lot with people with learning disabilities, but I also work a lot in like social justice spaces, but also like just in my local ends. And all of this, the way that I work is – I don’t code switch. It’s the same in all of the places wherever I am. But this has caused a lot of conflict for me in the arts in general.

Not only in institutional spaces. I did my degree; I did a music degree when I was 18. That was basically just me trying to get out of Croydon. I was like, ​‘What am I going to do?’ I flopped all my A‑levels, I phoned the clearing line, I was saying ​‘Please someone take me! I’ve got to get out of here!’ So I didn’t grow up playing loads of instruments. I didn’t really have access to that stuff until I was much older. I was always finding in institutional spaces that I was meeting people who just felt like I was trying to be conflicting, but actually, I was like challenging and I was like, no, this isn’t okay. Or this person is being harmed or this process is harmful. And people will say ​‘No, this is the way that it is’. Or, if you want to make art, if you want this opportunity, then you have to agree to this. And I can’t, I mean, you know, sleeping is hard enough (!), but I don’t think I could do it if I agreed to this, and I realised that because I didn’t come from a place of financial privilege in the arts, that the only kind of integrity that I really had was my values. And so all of my decisions to this day have been based upon my own value system.

And so I’ve said no to work that pays really well or could be really cool or could get you to work with this really cool person. But if it didn’t feel right because it didn’t align with my values, then I would say no. And yeah, it’s caused some problems in the industry. However, the growth and the opportunities that I have had have been so amazing and so much more worthwhile having stuck to my values and having made those choices. Because in the moment, it might seem that like something is a loss but when you say no to that thing, something else comes that actually is aligned with your values or is in a way that is more aligned or with an organisation or a collective or another artist or a community group that is aligned with your values. And also, because a lot of us are freelancers, we don’t work for anyone necessarily. And so the way that people know you, your reputation, you could say, also follows you.

And if people know that you’re a kind person with values and who will put that to the forefront of your practise above any kind of money or clout, then people will want to work with you generally, or the people that you want to work with will want to work with you. I would say that…

And, you’re not trying to make your, ​‘best work’ I mean, who knows when that will happen?! Because actually, you’re not working towards this thing. It’s not like a job. There’s no hierarchical pyramid that you walk as a creative. And so, you know, sometimes people will feel (I mean, I think this all the time) ​‘Oh my God, what am I doing? Am I even an artist? Maybe I should just get a real job!’ And I’ve had 1000 real jobs alongside to survive. And if you’re if you’re making art every single day or if you’re making art once every three months, you’re still an artist. Do you know what I mean? It’s not about how much you make. It’s not about how much light you’re in when you make it. If you make art, you’re an artist and that’s it. And no one can tell you otherwise because people will try because people want to, you know, you’re a sellable asset. You know, there’s a million middle people in the industry who all have a piece, but without artists, there’s no industry. They have nothing to sell. There is nothing to listen to. There’s nothing to see. There’s nothing to experience, to feel, to touch. And so, they can try and put us into these boxes and make us adhere to these prescribed outcomes. But really, like the others were saying, just make.