What we wrote on the application was:The Poly-Technic is an idea which can change shape while maintaining it’s form. It works across disciplines and with multiple partners with the aim of developing and promoting the idea of Wider World Artists - artists in the world, not artists just in the artworld. We offer a mentoring service and have to date offered opportunities such as bursaries, a summer school, residencies and a commissions scheme. As such this bursary would offer us the chance to visit other like minded, active, non building based, new model, leading arts organisations to explore thinking, critically reflect, look to the future, expand our network, develop profile, get new ideas and increase the Poly-Technics capabilities to deliver relevant, useful and accessible work.
What we said we would do was:
Visit -The CCA in Glasgow and inspirational director Francis McKee. He advocates principles in line with the Poly-Technics: use the resources and space you have to the most effect. The CCA is recognised as a leading contemporary art space with an international reputation yet is clearly 'owned' by its local community. Francis' has used this building and it's potential to create change in Glasgow and people pay him back with support and commitment. All this on little money but through a creative, resourceful, artistic mind.
The National Theatre of Wales, doesn't have a building, yet creates new relevant interesting work in alternate venues in partnership with others. It has built a reputation for working differently and with innovation which enables it to be at the forefront of new thinking about the production, development and delivery of the arts.
These 2 organisations the CCA and NTW inspire us - they offer creative resistance and innovative models that drive change. We want to use their lead to improve ours. We want to learn and think and reflect, seeing perhaps key ideas that we can utilise to develop.
We thought all that would help us and our peers because:
We would learn, be changed and thinking deepened - which of course would improve the work and therefore our offer in the world. We would also improve our contacts and this would be passed onto our network - we are trying in small way to develop opportunities for artists to make work, find a way in the worked and effect change. As we are sustainable and run with little/no on costs we would like to explore in-depth with the CCA and NTW ideas of sustainability, partnership working and commercial enterprises. This knowledge would be passed on to our network through the mentoring, advising and education based work we undertake.
SO WHAT DID WE DO, HOW DID IT GO AND WHY HAS IT TAKEN US SO LONG?
Just after receiving the award I [Kate] went on a Clore Short Course, which was great and interesting and challenging and useful. On that course i met Eve Poole she worked with the group to look at leadersmithing - the crafting of leadership principles and approaches based on creative making and failing. She was fascinating and it resonated with my understanding of leading through practice - the main aim of the Poly :
Leadersmithing.
Like all craftsmen, leaders have to prove themselves through apprentice
pieces, then they spend most of their career as journeymen, daily
improving their skill as they travel towards mastery. I've also done
quite a lot of research into how leaders learn their craft, and they do
it the hard way, through critical incidents that test their skill - See
more at:
http://www.cloreleadership.org/item.aspx?id=50#sthash.b8au6GyT.dpuf
Leadersmithing. Like all craftsmen, leaders have to prove themselves
through apprentice pieces, then they spend most of their career as journeymen,
daily improving their skill as they travel towards mastery. I've also done
quite a lot of research into how leaders learn their craft, and they do it the
hard way, through critical incidents that test their skill. E Poole
By May we had given up on the NTW, we'd been trying without any success and lots of leads in to get a meeting. So instead we made an executive decision to go and visit Eve in London and talk to her more, more about what she does and how that could help us at the Poly. We met at the Whitechapel, saw a great Steven Willats show which also was food for thought and bought her lunch. She introduced us to thinking we didnt know about and we introduced her to David Pye and the Craftmanship of Risk. The Poly is now working on a 2 year ACE funded project that is called Artist taking the Lead - we used ideas that came from Clore and Eve in the writing of that bid. The project builds on what we'd done before but brings in new partners, multiple sites and has a large CPD project. Like Eve, we recognise we had been crafting, doing our time building our experience and trying things out - we continue to learn, and risk and fail but in doing so grow and become better.
The CCA was also a problem to pin down, Frances couldnt give us as much time as we wanted and we felt that actually what might be more interesting was visit MIMA - given that Alistair Hudson had moved there from Grizedale and was trying to connect the city and gallery in a more useful or Artful way. His approach seemed to make sense to us - how to be more artful, how to create useful spaces that generate ideas to see or at least look differently. He seems to be asking what we are - What can art do here? He was very generous with his time and thoughts and we had a good day, the shows were great too. I think we left feeling that the Poly was still glad it didn't have a building to sort and run but that new models and approaches were happening in these situated space and this could onlybe a good thing. Oh and lets not forget Alistairs impact on this years Turner Prize, something we think is good, because it makes you realise it doesnt matter what you call something it matters what you do.
By now we had broken all the rules, we hadnt visited anything we said we would or met anyone we originally wanted to, so with the last bit of money we decided that it no longer mattered what we did so we ventured north to Edinburgh to visit artist Anthony Schragg. He'd not long got back from walking from Deveron Arts in Scotland to Venice for this year Biennial. His practice is participatory and i suppose some might say our is. He is interested in asking difficult questions around what art might look like and what working in the world as an artist could be - all central concerns of ours. Again we were met with a generous man, keen to offer us his day to share ideas, talk work and phd stuff and future plans. I came across him in a publication that i too was in and then we realised he too has also been part of Axisweb's Validation beyond the gallery research. At our meeting we talked alot about validation and non traditional ways of working - about how as artists growing work from the ground up you struggle to get the exposure because of the lack of a link to a gallery. I think it was useful to meet with an artist who struggles like us but is in a slightly different stage of their career, allowing us to consider new ways of working and also what does working in line with galleries offer.
Our work and networks have with out doubt been deepened and thinking stretched due to the people we met and places visited, their ideas have and continue to resonate with our work. Without doubt the Artist Taking the Lead self initiated project we are delivering would be lesser without this time out to think and explore. We feel that the visits have benefited us and the people we work with - we are of course richer from the process. We didnt do what we said we would, and i suppose like making art or working artfully you have to go to the right places at the right time. As our work changes and adapts we adapted the go see opportunity accordingly. So sorry A-N if we broke the rules, but thank you of course for letting us.
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